I got my hair done! The stylist was great. I'm a light-ish redhead now, though I will note the people I went out with last night did not notice. Possibly because it was dark and all that :P

Last night's karaoke:

Redhead Sarah of course did not go, said her car battery was dead. Vaguely debated driving over to get her, but then figured "you know what, some other damn thing would come up and it still somehow wouldn't happen, never bloody mind." But Jim and Ashley went, so yay!

I did find the PDF with the list of karaoke songs right before going to the bar, but I didn't get that far into looking at the list/writing stuff down. It's 188 pages!

The bar (UOB) was ah, quite crowded like life was back to normal. (Should I be doing this? Probably not, but as Jim put it, after a year of lockdown, fuck it.) The DJ, Rance, was nice and we were at the top of the rotation, which actually went to 33 people at one point? Dang, even more than on Monday night.

There were a few cute guys in there (no ping, of course), one that looked like my old celebrity crush and another with a cowboy hat on that looked a lot like Michael on Roswell. And one girl with an odd outfit...lacy bra and overalls. The overalls were spaghetti strap and barely staying on her there.... hmmmmm.

Jim is buddies with a waitress there, who just got another job and requested that he sing "Take This Job And Shove It" when her boss came in. Hee hee heh. There's also a drink called the "Agg Egg" or something like that--apparently a large layered beer/cider drink, I tried it but it tasted like Windex--that if you order it and post it on social media, you can get a free shirt. So Ashley got the shirt and while we tried the drink, mostly we had Jim drink that one. I had two delicious ciders, so yay for cider.

If anything was slightly not awesome, it was trying to figure out how karaoke works in this bar. I'm not that loud of a singer (and to be fair, didn't pick super super popular songs, more on that below) so even I found myself hard to hear in that bar. I noted that as the night went on, it's the super popular/loud songs that most people knew that got response and singalongs in that bar. On a related note, Jim and company are working on a "Karaoke Bingo" for the most typical songs done at karaoke, and of course we all had suggestions and got inspired by song selections in the bar.

Oh yeah, AND RANCE HAS ALL OF HAMILTON ON KARAOKE. He did "You'll Be Back" and I later did "Helpless," which a few girls were really into :P (Poor Scott, I finally found somewhere that has Hamilton karaoke....but I'll never tell him and he'll never go so what's the point.) That was probably my best one of the night there, but I think next week I'll have to go for something loud and popular. Perhaps "I Touch Myself?"

But seriously, drink and singing along in a bar was marvelous, and why can't life be like that all the time?

As for today, nobody showed up for collage club again. Figures.

I got the other pair of shoes in the mail--the brand that Jean originally wanted. They are...well, close, but (a) toes a little tight in the toes again and (b) these shoes literally MAKE FARTING NOISES WHEN I WALK. Which would be so lovely to hear during a dancing performance! I found YET ANOTHER PAIR of (the Jean recommended) shoes, used, in size 7, to try via Amazon again, to show up by the end of this week. GODDAMN I HATE SHOE SHOPPING FOR VERY SPECIFIC SHOES. I already HAVE black flats, they're just not what Jean wants, but seriously, I don't need pairs and pairs I can't wear or walk in. Grrrr.

So I drove to Sacramento and DSW, because their website indicated that they have Mary Janes (i.e. flats with a strap). They did not. I did actually find one comfortable pair of black flats, which have a corset lacing on the back and no strap, but that was literally the best I could do, and Jean may very well have to suck it up and deal with it. I'll give pair of shoes #4 a try, but at this point I have low to no hopes on this score.

Driving to Sac was fine, but driving back was excruciating, because GPS was trying to direct me past some "road closure" and told me to get off in West Sacramento...and then the GPS on the car screen keeled over and died RIGHT at a crucial intersection and I ended up driving into the middle of goddamned nowhere, unable to pull over or do much of anything. The GPS was still working on the phone but I couldn't get the volume to come up and I was trying to hold up the phone to check it....and the GPS had me go to I-5 north, Woodland, and then all the way back to my town.

Even worse: I had programmed the GPS to go to some "maker faire" I saw a flier for in town. It turned out to be at some beer brewery on the absolute edge of town, in what we'd call the "bad part" of town (which here is basically like, ONE STREET in which about half of it is ratty AF) and well, it was about five craft booths and I wasn't into any of that. Probably wouldn't have cared if I'd just driven over from being in town, but after all of that driving it was like, ugh. And then I was low on gas, so I still had to drive for more gas.

While there, I ran into someone who used to interim-run my office and is now happily retired. She was kind of amused at our giant overturning of leadership but glad she doesn't have to read/care about all the emails any more. "How long do you have to retire?" she said. "Uh, 20+ years," I said. She was all "you could retire at 30 years, around age 55" and I don't know about that....it's one of those "brief bit of hope" moments and then I realize that I just don't think I'd feel comfortable retiring and then what happens if something bad happens and I need to work again, especially living life on my own....I don't know. She said I have so many other skills and I said "yeah, but none of them make money" and she was all "wouldn't it be nice to just get to do them" and.... yeah....that's a fucking fairy tale along the lines of me finding true love. NEVER FUCKING HAPPENING BECAUSE REALISM.

I decided to reward myself with a slushie while I was over there, decided to get a Coke flavored one, and then it just poured out nothing but liquid. That's when I realized it was kind of a mild trainwreck kind of day and really, I should just go home and hang it up for the day.

Reggie's moving in a week, we exchanged emails. I dunno if I'll ever hear from him again, I guess we'll see, same as everyone else.

Working on my vest for Ravellenic Games has been going well, except I got to the point of covering my boobs today and lord, this vest is too tiny for my boobs. I was making size 38, but you cannot tell. I'm gonna have to fudge the hell out of this thing to make it look less tiny and skimpy.

The Women's Theatre Festival (i.e. the place where I saw the workshops the last few weeks) had a "Best of Fringe" going on today. Kelly forwarded me a play that we watched at the same time, "No Justice" about an African-American law student doing virtual therapy during quarantine about her mother being ill. She requested an African-American therapist who'd understand what's going on, and ended up with a white one, but they power through anyway. I liked it. I may end up meeting one of the playwrights of it at some point since she applied for the "Off Color" festival we're doing.

Another one I watched is "Recommended For You," in which a family set up some kind of video chat for the dying Rebecca from beyond the grave--her twin worked for the company, I guess--and most of it is her wife Juliet having video chats with her and then say, let's wipe Rebecca talking about cancer and stuff like that.... Later it's mentioned that the company seems to be annoyed when Juliet is busy with their kid and can only video chat with the dead 5 days a week instead of seven, and eventually brother Cal uh, somehow no longer works for the company and he won't say why but he's mad....And there's a story from the dead woman about how their dad substituted in another puppy after losing the first one, but the brother could tell.... Then one day Rebecca just starts spouting an advertisement, "which I can't afford to get rid of." And of course the company is listening in on everything (duh) and the brother can't get anywhere near Juliet any more. And it dawns on Juliet that they're collecting all the data on her in the new house she's in...."I WANT TO CANCEL MY SUBSCRIPTION!!!!!"

I also watched "Motherland (same link as the "No Justice" one), which is a play about a girl in college, Iris, who thinks she's going to China to visit Grandma/do summer abroad. But her dad's lost his job and he doesn't tell his wife for ages, and then the mom is pissed off/scrambling to get money and loses it when Iris, unknowingly, doesn't get the financial aid due date right, and finally it ends with Iris finding out and rightfully calling Mom out for not telling her she's not going to China until thirteen days before leaving. Iris is grown up enough to handle it and ah, things that could have been brought to her attention sooner than this? Good job, there. In the end, Grandma pays for her to go to China.

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