it's not working

I'm sitting in Filter trying trying TRYING to work on this copy for a website I should be working on and there's this kid sitting to my left writing in his little journal and I"m so envious that he's got the time. And there's this girl to my right and she's working on a grant proposal and she seems to be working diligently but what the heck do I know abou that, right?

Now one of my customers is here (the other girl who's working is actually a customer, as well - there's something about which to feel positive) with some friends and this is the second time I've run into her here. It feels nice here. Like I'm growing a family or a support network of some sort, even if it's kinda just here and rarely intersects with me elsewhere.

So, I went to see Meatbeat Manifesto last week (six days ago) and I had wanted to write about it right away, but of course didn't. It was a fun experience. The opening band, Dub Trio was pretty good...at first. After a while it got to be a little boring. They were like a super-trippy reggae band with no black guys. Lots of triplets and staccatto guitar with huge echo/reverb effects. Drummer was fantastic.

Meatbeat was fun to watch again. On the way home from Wisconsin yesterday (I'll get to that in a moment) I saw a car that had been pulled over. It was a pickup truck and two people were riding in the back. I remembered that it was about 12 years ago that I had rode in the bed of a pickup truck to see Meatbeat with 808 State with my friend Mike and his brother Jim. Mike and I had stayed lying down for the whole ride. I had had a big crush on Mike and the whole trip had been a little romantic in my head. The two of us lying side-by-side, the clear blue sky passing by at sixty miles an hour but looking like it was not moving at all until we passed under a viaduct, which was like this sudden physical punch of movement. We had both remarked on how "cool" the sensation was whenever we'd passed under one.

Time time time. Look what's become of me.

John, my boyfriend, comments occasionally on how I seem to be holding onto my youth. He says it in a slight denegrative way. It bothers me a little. I'm not sure if it bothers me because I think he's wrong or because I think he's right.

So, instead of going to the Pride Parade festivities on Sunday, John and I went up to Green Bay to attend his little sister's Graduation party. She's graduated from the police academy, of all things. And no, she's not a lesbian. At least as far as anyone can tell. John says she vacillates between being the kind of cop who is altruistic and genuinely wants to do good for society and being a cop who is drunk with power. Scary thing. It's the power-hungry cop that makes John sometimes wonder if she's a lesbian, which I don't think says the nicest thing about lesbians, but I'm sure he's doing the age-old thing, which is equating lesbianism with masculinity, which is classically aggressive. Either way, enough with the post-feministic theory.

The trip north wasn't what I'd call fun. It was something I did for John. It turned out Racecar had the most fun. I'd venture to say that it may have been one of Racecar's funnest days ever. He got to play in two large, fenced-in yards and go swimming for the first time in his life. For this reason alone, the trip would have been worth it for me.