Friday: "I really really really wanna zig-a-zig-AH!"

After working for a couple hours I met up with Will, Molly, & Kat at Mokabes for some mocha and a terrible round of "Password". It's much harder than Regis makes it look.

Following an indeterminable amount of boredom, and failing to come up with something to do, we moved to Molly's to try the interweb for ideas only to fall short again. Then some genius (ehem, me) thought it would be fun to go to a park and/or grill some food.

Commence drive to Wal-Mart, listening to Spice Girls, to pick up needed grill and supplies. *Sidenote: Yay! I have my own grill! It's portable, yet decent sized and only cost $10*

Somehow the park turned into Steph's backyard

Me: "It's kinda weird to actually have a backyard now..."
Kat: "Or a house?"
Me: "Yeah. That too."

Smores where eaten. Booze was imbibed. It was a good time. And strangely made us all feel very adult. Sitting around doing nothing in a backyard, drinking alcohol, and grilling out--yep sounds like my parents. Next I'll have to build a deck.


Saturday: "You! I wanna take you to a gay bar!"

Same culprits, different day.

PrideFest = Gay Day. And where the gays are, you know there's hundreds of booths full of pamphlets and information about important causes, and plenty of petitions to sign. So gay. I'm a sucker though, so you know I donated money I didn't have, signed up for some mailing lists, and seriously contemplated adopting a dog. In the end, no dog for me (yet) but I did leave a newly registered voter of the state of Missouri--something I was planning on doing soon anyways, so it was nice to save a trip downtown. Plus, I totally made that guy's day. I used his last registration form, so he was done for the day.

Besides the booths, there wasn't a whole lot going on. Some lectures and workshops, which are fine and dandy, but not terribly exciting. Will had finally gotten a hold of "The Rose" starring the Divine Miss M herself, so we decided to go to Molly's and watch it.

Of course, I had to leave early to meet up with Stacey, Janie, and Petra to go see "Wanted", but luckily I caught enough of Bette Midler rocking out on stage like a Mick Jagger/Janis Joplin hybrid that I was satisfied. Plus, I managed to hear what I assume is the best line of the whole film before I walked out. "I'll calm down...when you sit on my face!" Hahahaha. I love it.

So, "Wanted" blew.

After that I followed Will to some random beer pong party, where we didn't know anyone. So we proceeded to eat pretzels, and invite the strangers to our conversation by asking them what they proposed the "opposite of fisting" is?

By midnight it was time to switch from scaring strangers to sweating on them. We headed to Novak's with addition of Aaron, and danced the night away.

It was the most fun I've had in a club since I was living in London. Even the cover charge was jacked so high that was familiar too. To be fair, since it was the night of the gays a couple bars had joined together and closed the street off in between them, so the $15 cover charge (somehow I managed to get in for $5) got you in to both bars, and the street party.

Sunday: "True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow"

Technically the day started with me getting home at 6am. Yet, Aaron's mom was coming to town for the Pride Parade, so I dragged myself out of bed in time to meet up with them. His mom was amazing. I love her already. She's coming up again in a couple weeks cause she wants to go crazy dancing at Novak's too.

Strange Encounter #1: The day before, I had been asking Sam when Jonathan and Lauren would be getting back from their honeymoon semester in Tailand, and then Sunday we were walking down the street and bam! There's Lauren! Which was a pretty good hint they were back in the States. Always good to see her (Jon was nowhere to be found).

When the parade was finished we walked over to the park where the festivities were continuing to grab some lunch. I had brought my own selection of picnic snacks, including some watermelon and kiwi. Delicious.

After escaping a few near death by football incidents (thanks girls!) and another strange but pleasant conversation with strangers(this time about flying cadavers and lawyers) we wandered around. I swear the booths had multiplied and moved around since Saturday to try and trick me into going to all of them once again.

So we mosied enough to find some more drinks, and plopped down on a spot near the stage to enjoy the performances. I must say, the drag queen performing to a Julie Andrews song was more enjoyable than Julie Andrews in drag performing to her own song.

In between one of the trips to the ATM for more drinks monies, I had

Strange Encounter #2: So Saturday night when we were at the strangers house, for some reason Will and I had started talking about old classmates, and I asked him where Heather from our floor freshman year had ended up. He said he actually ran into her a couple weeks before in Best Buy, and that her kid was enormous by now! (She's only two years old, but it's still much bigger than the bump in Heather's belly, which was the last time we'd seen her).

Anyway. I was waiting for Kat to get a margarita and this totally rad looking girl (as she always was) comes up to me and starts to say

"Hey...do you remember me, we used to live on the same floor"

at the same time I'm going,

"Omg! It's Heather! Weird! This is weird! Of course I remember you!"

and grabbing her into a hug, haha.

If I hadn't been thinking about her so recently, I might have had a more normally paced reaction, but it's like I was expecting her, so I was extra excited and it was great to catch up with her too.

Finally, around 6:00pm things were starting to die down, and I was still exhausted from the evening before, so Kat and I bid Aaron and his momma goodbye and carpooled it back to the Meatlocker. We got there just as Will was getting home, but I was too tired to hang around. The gay done worn me out.

So I went home and finished a perfectly gay evening by watching the latest episode of Kathy's Griffin's "My Life on the D-List" where she flies to Oz on a pink plane, snuggles koala's with Lance Bass, and shops for crowns and tiaras with Margaret Cho and Cindy Lauper for the Australian Mardi Gras.

Overall, it was probably the best weekend I had this year. I almost said semester. Weird.

I remember writing in my blog around this time last year almost exactly this time last year (I had to check. Off by 3 days.) and making a conscious decision to get more involved in LGBT events--especially when it comes to LGBT legal issues in politics. So I was extremely happy to have found myself at Pride parade a year later. It was my first, but it definitely won't be my last.

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