Category: whimsy

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Five Things

Apparently I’ve been tagged for a blog meme, by Debra over at Tragic/Beautiful.

I’m supposed to come up with Five Things You Don’t Know About Me. I’m going to hope that none of my very old friends are reading, since what they know about me may be very different from what a more generic “you” might know.

(1) I have always worried that all of my eccentricity is really driven by a niggling fear that I am painfully mediocre.

(2) I started my undergraduate career as a Theology major at Fordham University. I wanted to be a priest when I was a child and often wonder if I won’t end up some kind of monk/nun by the end of my days.

(3) My first boyfriend’s name was also Jason. (My friend Ming took to calling him “the wrong Jason” when I met the person who you all know as Betty.)

(4) I spent a good chunk of my 20s traveling:

  • in 1991: to San Francisco (I was 22)
  • in 91/92: to India
  • in summer 92 I drove across the USA with a friend
  • in 1993 I went to New Orleans
  • in 1996 to Singapore, Bali (Indonesia) and Burma (Myanmar)
  • in 1997 to Singapore and Viet Nam (then later in the same trip, to Chicago, Nashville, and Charleston)
  • in 1998 to London
  • in 1999 to Sao Paulo and Rio in Brazil and later that year to London and Paris (we were in London for the Millennium changeover)
  • in 2000 to London and Scotland (our engagement tour, as it were)
  • in 2001 to Hawaii (for our honeymoon)

As a result of the books and my lectures, after I turned 30, I have since seen, all stateside: Eureka Springs, AR; Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; Atlanta, GA; Chicago, IL; Hammond, IN; Provincetown, MA; Las Vegas, NM; Albany, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Sherman, TX, and Burlington, VT. As a result of being keynote speaker at First Event this year, I’ll finally get to see Boston!

(5) I am allergic to almost everything a person can be allergic to (dogs, cats, mold, dust, etc.) with the bizarre exception of cockroach poop.

& Now I will tag three other bloggers to list five things we don’t know about them: Betty Crow, Caprice Bellefleur, and John.

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Helen’s Holiday Gift Guide

So. I’ve noticed that two lovely women, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Tristan Taormino, have put up their holiday gift guides, and while they cover our erotic lives, I know every year I’m a loss for what to buy people that won’t stink of consumerism and waste.

That is, I seek to assuage my own guilt about being an overeducated person who lives in a Western country with clean water and half-decent healthcare (unlike most of the world’s population).

As a result, I’ve found a neat list of places who sell cool stuff for good causes:

For you doggie types, Schmitty is a Yorkie whose proceeds to go an organization called Dogs Who Care. The North Shore Animal League, on the other hand, has stuff that makes us cat types happy: Betty and I are getting new PJs courtesy of them! And if you can’t find anything at either of those two places, the Animal Rescue Site also has a store with lots of animal-inspired gifts no matter what types of critters you like.

It’s also easy to go from that site to some others with cool stuff, like the Rainforest Site’s store, where you can get anything from Fair Trade products to Brazilian art works. (Did I mention they have lots of pretty jewelry?)

For lower-impact, good health types of gifts, try gaiam.com for things like yoga videos or light therapy for the depressive in your life. (Just don’t look at their shoes. Only me and a couple of other partners would wear any of them.)

And to round things out, NOW’s store has a bunch of groovy t-shirts and you can buy one that says “Question Gender” to help support the student-run TIC conference.

So go do some good with your money, okay? Just about every organization out there sells cool stuff. If you find anything similarly cool, please post about it in the comments section.

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Dressed to Kill

Or rather, Dressed to Speak.

As an early Christmas present, I bought my outfit for First Event. I will not have the flippery hair, of course, and I’m not sure about the tuxedo shirt. And no silly shoes, either – I’ll be wearing flat shoes, of course. Mine is not a size 0 or 2 like the one shown in the catalog photo, either (and now I’m wondering if I should be posting this photo at all, since I’ve just realized I will look both shorter and fatter than this lady in the picture.)

I gave in and bought it for two reasons: (1) it was made by Ann Taylor Loft, and their clothes fit me well, and aren’t so bad cost-wise, and (2) because the “tux” I wore for the past two years was not even mine – the jacket was my sisters’s – and wasn’t actually a tux, just a tuxedo jacket and a pair of pants that matched well enough.

But otherwise (ha), voila. The tux in which I will speak.

Betty bought a very pretty black cocktail dress to be my stunning date. Now we just have to figure out who leads when we dance; that’s one we still haven’t sorted out.

But we’re clear that I’m the one who’ll be speaking, no matter how many people call me “Betty” via email.