You know, for a weekend where we set out to do very little, it turned out that we actually accomplished a good bit.

On Friday, we were bad boys – we skipped the gym because I was tired and Dan wasn’t feeling particularly motivated. We came home after work and relaxed a bit and realized that we weren’t feeling particularly motivated to cook, either, so we headed out in search of dinner. We figured we’d walk through the Glenwood South district, the home for many trendy new restaurants and your basic yuppie hell. We saw some interesting contenders, but finally settled on Hard Times Cafe. Their vegetarian chili hit the spot perfectly for me – quite tasty with a medium background heat, and interesting textures provided by the mushrooms and the soy flakes (yeah, it sounds weird, but it was delicious!). I got the chili mac 5-way: spaghetti with chili topped with cheese, beans, and onions. Very tasty, though the pasta didn’t really add anything to the dish. During dinner we got a phone call from rustitobuck confirming that he would be rooming with us at Anthrocon. Yay! After dinner, we stopped by Cream and Bean and rediscovered their yummy waffle cones and homemade hot fudge sauce (drool). All in all a lovely evening.

Saturday was a nice slow start, just the way I like my weekends. I had a few hours alone downstairs to surf the net, catch up on e-mail, and feed my latest addiction. When takaza woke up we had a fun afternoon of just chatting and hanging out. We made a quick early dinner then met up with Donald and Janelle and headed up to Raleigh for Drag Bingo. Yes, Drag Bingo.

Drag Bingo is a benefit for the Alliance of AIDS Services – Carolina. It’s essentially an evening of bingo hosted by drag queens (In this case, the talented Mary Kay Mart), the BVD’s, or Bingo Verifying Divas (including Winnie Bago and Chocolate Shakes), with some excellent singing numbers thrown in for fun. Although the queens played a lot for laughs, they were serious about two things: bingo and raising funds. The bingo games were great, with some very nice prizes donated by local businesses, including a set of four tickets to the North Carolina Symphony, a half-hour massage at a day spa, and (what I really wanted) two tickets to see a stage production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. We didn’t win any of these, of course, but we sure had a fun time trying. The underlying purpose of the event, fundraising, was stressed from time to time, and the crowd of several hundred was quite willing. At the end of the night, they announced that $6,000 had been raised. The final game of the night was a special game where each card (containing four Bingo squares) was $5. 50% of the take from those cards went to AAS-C and 50% was for the cash prize for the game. They sold out of the cards and the prize was $500. The game was Blackout, meaning you had to cover every single square on your board. Well, no one at our table even got close, but two guys up front got Bingos at the same time. they split the pot, $250 apiece, and just to show what the general feeling of the evening was, one of them immediately donated his $250 back to AAS-C. Afterwards Dan asked me if I would have done the same if I had one. I thought about it and realized that that really is the Right Thing To Do. I’d probably do it through gritted teeth, but when I think about the people in need of AAS-C’s services, compared to the trinkets or whatever we might use that money for, I realized that I’d be a complete heel not to return the money.

Anyway, we all had a good time, got to share a table with some cute and amusing guys, and Dan and I enjoyed an evening in an overwhelmingly gay-positive setting (though Donald and Janelle were comfortable there, too, I hope!) Afterwards, we further abused out bodies by returning to Cream and Bean for dessert 🙂

Today started pretty much like yesterday – quite nice. I had a nice long chat with my parents, and found out amusing things like they’re replacing all the carpet and linoleum in the house three days before my sister and her family visit, and that my dad might be spending three-quarters of his time in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for the next three years for a job. Hoo-boy. We got motivated a little faster than yesterday and made shopping lists, planned meals for the next two weeks, showered, and hit the road. Our first stop: Best Buy. Yes, we bought a new toy, the first product of which you can see as my new icon above. There’ll be more, I’m sure. We’ve had a hankering for another digital camera ever since my last one was stolen when our house in Joliet was broken into. Best Buy has a special this week, all digital cameras and accessories at 18-months-same-as-cash. After a little Internet research, we jumped on the deal. After Best Buy, we hit Target for a new air mattress so either Rusty or mirkowuff (our other roommate at Anthrocon) has something to sleep on, in addition to the loveseat hideabed mattress we were planning on bringing up anyway. From there, it was stops by Whole Foods Market and Lowes Foods for the weekly grocery shopping, then back home to play with our toys and make dinner.

It turned out to be a pretty eventful weekend, after all. I was going to write of our plans for a very well-traveled July, but it’s late and I should head to bed. I’ll write more tomorrow. G’night all!