Welp, the smoke hit here today. Officially you can't be inside or outside any more! Greaaaaaaaaaat. Just in time for me to have some weekend plans involving outdoors at various points. Oh well, I now have KN95 masks around the house for this sort of thing, I suppose. Yaaaaaaaaay.

Work was quiet today, thank goodness. Mostly we just talked about what we want to do for a work schedule. I will have to go in on (at least) Thursdays and Fridays, and since I no longer have vacation/travel plans, might as well. My boss did say that we're not going to have anyone "on call" and if someone who's supposed to be in the office calls in sick, they won't have anyone on call to have to go in and will just deal with one person. Basically we are just there to babysit the younger employees at the front counter. My teammates are not particularly thrilled on this topic either, and Hope asked if we have to be answering questions for things we don't know anything about (in my experience, FUCK YES WE DO) and boss was all the questions will probably be geared towards areas you know. Yeah, right. Oh, and "we have to do four hours of service a week." Sigh.

I watched Femme Fatale Play Festival today. 220 plays were submitted this year, eleven made it in (go Kelly!). Saw two today:

The Single Ladies Cozy Murder Book Club: about ladies meeting on Zoom for a club that you don't even have to read a book for...and I notice that they're being quite brave to enter other people's homes during pandemic...FOR MURDER. One lady's daughter comes on talking about her ex, and her mother takes some time out to go over to his house....

Quotes: "My ex boyfriend, the duck killer." "You murdered Mr. Puddles!" "It was an accidental drowning!" "Ducks don't just drown, Paul?" (Paul holds up wooden duck) "I made it for you. It's a new Mr. Puddles." "If you murdered our child, you couldn't make Pinocchio and call it a real boy!" Paul claims the duck was already dead and he ate it "so it wouldn't go to waste." Uh-huh. "Motherducking bastard!" Paul: "What I did was inexcusable. It was a total duck move." "Did you just make a JOKE?" We got to see a murder on Zoom, as Paul gets up to answer the door and falls back with a bloody throat. Then the girl's mom logs on from her phone with a bloody front. You're an official club member now!

From the talkback: The playwright was given a wooden duck as a prop for a 24 hour playwriting thing. "Duck jokes are fun." "I've committed to the duck." "It's a little weird to have a pet duck, and that's okay."

One cast member: "I've been single 21 years and i have some guys I could add to this list! Including my last date!" Another cast member: "If the police call me, I'm gonna be honest." "We had no problems killing Paul." "I always say all my exes, their heads are in jars in my basement." "Two people gloriously covered in blood today." "Thank you for sacrificing your shirts."

The longer play was "Shark Bite," about a grandpa and granddaughter hanging out in the woods in the middle of nowhere with no Internet, in the winter. Grandpa does animal-related wilderness stuff that Ava doesn't approve of, Ava keeps talking about their friend Andy/i who's a "them" and Grandpa doesn't get it. Then they go outside and Grandpa has a TIA and can only sort of talk and it's up to Ava to save the day. Later she reveals that she's depressed, cutting, and hates herself. (Then Mom called and ....sigh.... well, I missed a lot.)

Grandpa: "I'd go crazy if I stayed inside for a whole week. It's not good for you to stay inside breathing stale air." Welcome to pandemic plus fires, y'all!

Grandpa makes partridge soup. Ava: "Don't you feel sorry for the partridge?" "I don't think he cares one way or the other at the moment."

Ava: "Ever since I figured out that Barbie was evil."

Ava: "I liked your condo! It smelled like cookies, not dead animals!"

"Stories are what keep people with you." -Grandpa

Mom called, wanting to know what to do tomorrow and telling me I should quit therapy if I'm never going to do anything. Which I agree with, but it's a depressing conversation anyway.

Rae called, being very sweet and inviting me to hang out in SF and drink mocktails next weekend. Sign me up! She needs a friend and so do I.

I looked on Sarah's invite list and Scott was invited and said "maybe," which means "yeah right, never." Nothing to worry about. Robert also put maybe, which makes me sad, as did Stephanie. So far looks like me, her, and Sarajean, which I could use, haven't seen HER in ages. Sigh.

I'll note that the theme was "Sugar Daddy's Funeral" (she made up this whole story about how her rich boyfriend died in bed...guess what he was doing) and Sarah had on this witch sexy dress, fishnets, corset, heels, fake dead fur and black hat ensemble. It's a good thing I checked the birthday invite spelling out to wear black, because I had intended to wear a red dress (in the "I hope you drop dead and I'll wear a red dress to your funeral" sort of way) and changed at the last minute* and everyone else WAS in black outfits!

* Albeit it's black with rainbow flowers, because me. People appreciated that.

Anyway, it took till 8 for Sarah to get there--she apologized for this later, but said "if I'd said 8 p.m. then I would have been late until 9," which is true. I was happy to see that Robert and Janene showed up! Sarajean and her new boyfriend Loren were there and I much like him, he's a vast improvement compared to her nearly silent boyfriend before. This one will tell jokes and got a tattoo of a fossil from when he used to be a paleontologist. I asked about that and he said there aren't very many jobs in paleontology. Anyway, come back any time, Loren! We also met Sarah's neighbors across the street, Alli and Casey, who were also nice and fun. Alli mentioned one time she was in a bar and a guy kept talking on and on about himself and she finally said, "I'll let you talk all you want on one condition: What is my name?" You can guess how that ended :P

(Of course Scott didn't show up. I think he's just done with the entire crowd or socializing or everything. Well, if you know what, if you don't want to keep these friendships by being around people in person while you still can, that's on you.)

So we had an appetizer sampler platter at Hooby's outside, and during that I mentioned that I had gone karaoke bar'ing with Jim and mentioned Miss Darla's having it seven nights a week. To which Sarah perked up because she had wanted to do something or other tonight but nothing was open. So....we all ended up going to Miss Darla's.

Yes, it was my idea to go to an indoor karaoke bar during Delta variant in a county where their health office refuses to put back a mask mandate "because it doesn't do any good anyway." So everything that comes upon us all after this is 100% my decision, fault, what have you. I could have kept my mouth shut, but I did not. And well, clearly we all threw caution to the winds on this one, even the more prudent people like R&J.

Anyway, we got to the bar (pretty full-ish, nobody had masks on but me, Robert and Janene) and Jim and Ashley were already in there! Ashley was singing, even. She had medical testing this week, which she had to get up early for multiple days this week and that sucked (but I'm guessing she was in the clear for Covid testing). She also saw Pyrate Matthew this week for lunch along with Jim and apparently Pyrate now works in my hometown! It would be funny if I ever ran into him, but probably not happening. (Especially if he's there weekdays and I'm weekends, if that.) It was so good to have everyone (well, almost everyone, but fuck him) reunited again!!!! So everyone was very happy to see each other and reunite for a few hours, until Jim and Ashley went home around 11. I even saw a few other folks from our bar there last night, Marlena and Ivory. The bar was still open by the time we left around 1:45, which surprised everyone (I thought the Internet said 1:30).

I'll say this for the DJ on Friday nights: this is the most bored karaoke DJ you ever saw in your life. Like I'm seriously wondering how he got into this business if he seemed so entirely meh about the whole thing. He didn't have a catalog or rotation, you just wrote down what song on the paper and your name and he got to it whenever. It took awhile for me to get in--I did two songs ("That's Not My Name" and "Into The Groove") and felt like that's all I felt like pushing since it took awhile. Sarah did...at least six? I think? A lot. He did have more of a "dance party" thing going on though, as people here would spontaneously break out into dance and encourage people to hit the dance floor, which was great.

I got home around 2 and attempted to go to bed...hahahah.

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