crazy day

Wow, today has been intense!

My cousin Spitfire showed up at my place early this afternoon. She and her boyfriend are on their way to New Orleans from Hawaii via Seattle, where they had their van shipped to the mainland. They are staying the night but may stay an additional one because the alternator on their van went out as they were leaving to visit her boyfriend's son in Salem.

We had a pretty intense conversation about my aunt -- Spitfire's mom -- this afternoon. Rather unexpected. Then I went to school and had a much less intense but still pretty provocative conversation with a professor about ... how shall we put this? ... my evolving professional identity. My teacher called me "a wonderfully complex person." I'm assuming that was a compliment.

After leaving that meeting, I ran into S2 and a classmate who witnessed my little Theater of the Absurd performance in last week's class. The other classmate surprised me with what she said, which basically were positive comments about the "impact" of my tyrranic-like lecture. A third classmate later told me it was the "three-snap performance of the term" and said that the last line of my little speech -- "By the time that you counsel your first same-sex couple, I hope you will have given as much consideration to our issues as I have given to yours" -- saved the whole thing from just sounding like a rant. Hmmmm.

Anyway, that was some intense feedback to get. A very saturdated day.

Then I came back here and found Spitfire and her boyfriend here, crashed out on a little bed they set up in front of my television. The boyfriend, who I got to know on my last trip to Hawaii, was crashed out, and Spitfire and I spent about two hours talking over thai food and tea.

I eventually excused myself and took a long walk with the dog. First bit of "alone" time I had since shortly after waking this morning. On the walk, we had what felt very much like a creepy guy on our tail for a block or so, and I regretted, for the first time ever, going into the neighborhoods -- away from the commercial strip on which I live -- so late at night. But the pup seems to have picked up on the vibe from that dude and kept turning around and staring at him. It was an interesting display of body language on that dog's part, I tell ya. Anyway, I quickly got back on the main street and everything was cool.

So now I am feeling trashed and am needing to jot some notes to myself on a story I'm writing before I hit the hay. I bid you a goodnight.