Gypsy

Tonight, I'm going to check out De La Soul. They're performing on the main stage at City Fest at 9:00 PM. I loved them in high school! After, I'm going to Theatre Bizarre for the bonfire in Peachy's honor! I'm so glad I'll catch her while she's in town. She was at Lakes of Fire and I wasn't so I was bummed to miss her.

Thursday, I'm finally gon' git my hair did. I wonder how many hours I've spent in salon chairs...

Friday I have the day off and will get my car's brakes replaced. I wonder how many hours I've spent in auto shop waiting rooms... That night I want to see Public Enemies, the new Johnny Depp movie about Dillinger.

Saturday is shopping with Hannah, Tassie and ( SAMARCHY!!! )

I got a phone call at 5:07 AM today. It was Evan, calling from the Westland Police Department asking me to come pick him up after 7:00 AM. The police popped him leaving our friend Steve's apartment at 4:10 this morning. Despite having waited at Steve's for an hour and a half to sober up, he managed to blow a .095. The legal limit in Michigan is .08.

I went to get him. Five hours and over several hundred dollars later, his car is out of impound and he's on his way to work.

I'm exhausted. I asked him if he realized how incredibly white trash this is - an OWI in Westland? Classy, man.

I'm also a little worried because he believed himself to be stone sober when he was driving. I have a feeling that .08 is far, far easier to get to than I think it is. If that is the case, this means I too have been driving legally drunk 90% of my weekend nights. This disturbs me. I stopped drinking about two weeks ago for a different reason, but it just makes it easier now that he's decided to stop drinking for the forseeable future.

I have no idea what's going to happen to him next. We'll see.

Someone asked me what it would take for me to stay in the area and/or live in the city of Detroit proper. I jokingly said "a five bedroom, three bathroom home with a two car garage for under $20,000".

So apparently, I have quite a few options in this category. These things do exist, much to my shock.

Too bad I don't have money to fix a place up a bit. I think I'd be ready to make the plunge.

Seven bedrooms? And it's in the Boston-Edison district, too! http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/589-E-Boston-Blvd_Detroit_MI_48202_1109683232

DEMF Weekend
Friday - Prodigy show and Striz's afterparty at Harry's
Saturday - Hannah's 30th birthday party, visited with my parents, Ghostly show, afterparty at The Mansion
Sunday - John & Lailee's bbq, DEMF, Motor City Breakdown (which was SO FUN!), hosted Radiohiro and Co. at my place
Monday - DEMF (including KILLER Bassnectar set!) and another afterparty at The Mansion
Tuesday - vacation day from work and SLEEP, then Hopewell at the Lager House

Two weekends ago
Friday - dinner with Skinny D. and bonfire at TB
Saturday - MCVR planning, Roller Derby Girl bout, late dinner at Slow's BBQ, Derby afterparty at Small's, another bonfire at TB
Sunday - vegan dinner and Sacred Geometry discussion at The Detroit Evolution Laboratory then Jane's Addiction and Nine Inch Nails concert (thank you, Amanda!)

This past weekend
Friday - homework until 1:30 AM
Saturday - Balboa show at Northern Lights then Jerry's "End of the World" themed birthday party
Sunday - Motor City Pride Festival in downtown Ferndale

A couple of things have happened recently that have me thinking. For instance, DEMF weekend at the Prodigy concert, I was with one of my girlfriends. She was wearing a short dress, but not obscenely short. Some drunk little runt asshole guy kept sticking his hand up the back of her dress and trying to grab her ass and crotch while she was dancing. She didn’t say anything to him and instead, just kept moving closer and closer to me. Finally, I turn to the guy and say “You’re being a stinking drunk asshole. Back up!” He starts mocking me like “What? I can’t even hear you.” Then he turns around and so do I. He elbows me REALLY hard in the ribs. I turned around, braced myself, and shoved him backward as hard as I could. He knocked over a cocktail table, three beers and two of his friends when he went backward. The two friends stood up half-shocked, half-pissed. I screamed “I said BACK OFF!” He was an angel the rest of the night.

What got me thinking was this: why the hell didn’t my friend say anything? Why does it seem most girls don’t say anything? I mean, I’ve seen this kind of thing happen over and over again. Why am I always the one stepping up to defend myself and every other girl? I can’t even count how many times I’ve put my hand on some drunk guy’s chest or shoulder and pushed back just enough and said “You’re too close, buddy!”

If I think further, I’m also shocked at the number of girls I know who were sexually assaulted or raped and they didn’t say or do anything for YEARS. I was talking about this with a couple of other girls recently and I realized something. Out of all of us, I was the only one whose father/mother had said “you will never get in trouble for defending yourself if a man tries to hurt you.” I couldn’t believe it. Really? No other parents bothered to address this with their daughters? Incredible. I told this to my father and he was equally shocked. He stuck to this, too, by the way. Three times during my school career, I hit a guy for getting too grabby with me when he wouldn’t stop. True to his word, my father didn’t get mad at me and I wasn’t in trouble for it. My sister even got suspended for hitting a guy at school. She didn’t get into trouble from my parents either.

So I now wonder: Do all of you understand this? You will never, ever, ever “get in trouble” by me for sticking up for yourself if a man tries to hurt you. Burners, no one in the MI BM community will be angry with you for defending yourself and making a fuss, even if it turns out later that you might have overreacted a little. If you say something happened, you will be believed.

I expect you to come to me or someone else you trust if something happens to you that you’re not able to handle yourself. I expect that you will not keep quiet for months and years. If you hear of anything happening to one of our friends, I expect you to tell me and not to keep quiet. I cannot promise you that the way I will handle everything will be perfect 100% of the time, but I do promise to listen to everything you say and to take it all under consideration.

I really feel it’s time we start to change our culture in this regard. I don’t care if you were drunk, he was drunk, where you were when it happened, or what the situation was. You are not going to be in the wrong for “getting into that situation”. No. Matter. What. The OFFENDER is in the wrong for hurting you!

Please comment to let me know you understand what I’m saying and to ask me any questions.

"You may want to smash a painful emotion to bits, but you can't blow it up with a nuclear bomb," wrote Tsoknyi Rinpoche in his book Fearless Simplicity. What makes the situation even more poignant is that the painful emotion may be based on a wrong interpretation of experience. It may also be caused by some faulty conditioning that got imprinted on your sensitive psyche when you were a toddler. Having said that, Cancerian, I'm pleased to inform you that you currently have the power to significantly dissipate the intensity of a certain painful emotion you thought you'd never shake. To initiate the process, invoke forgiveness in every way you can imagine -- toward those who hurt you, those who ignored you, those who misled you, and you yourself.

How do people get it all done? I have a full time-plus job and one class and it seems like there is never, ever enough time to get things done. What do people do who are married and have children and stuff???

Car:
oil change
fuel system flush
transmission fluid replaced
tires rotated and balanced
front brakes checked and probably replaced
full detailing

House:
install the following - four sets of new curtain rods
three curtain tieback hooks
two closet hooks
three ceiling hooks
cable tacks
disassemble table in garage, bring it inside and reassemble
rearrange basement furniture
vacuum basement
glue broken bookend
cut shelf liner
get my vacuum fixed
wash grease spots off the walls in three rooms

Work:
do database cleanup on 1,200 names
create contact list for entire General Motors Information Technology division
run hours report for department since January and update spreadsheet
plus 14 office/facilities items in a To Do list all their own

School:
Read five chapters
Listen to two 1-hour archived chats
Turn in one presentation
Read through discussion board

Health:
Get remainder of acid reflux Rx from Walgreens
Get bloodwork
Get glucose tolerance test
Finish test from hematologist
Follow up with hematologist
Update Rx spreadsheet after calling Cigna and Walgreens
Call nutritionalist on rebilling
Call Cigna on weird bill
Buy a pedometer
Get some damned exercise
Buy a bike to replace the one I sold to Evan

General:
Return all the bottles from housewarming
Return headlamp
Get quote on gels for MCVR
fold the last of the laundry
make a hair appointment
get Clutch tickets
call Amanda about plans for NIN concert this Sunday
call Comcast for credit
decide what to do for my birthday