daisy's birthday weekend

saturday night. tanc, beesch & fogel came over and picked daisy and myself up to go and see scuba play at rock & roll (yeah).

tiernan was having to work downstairs (bummer), but managed to steal a few mins while scuba was playing. you had to feel for scuba as the sub kept cutting out and i'm sure he hadn't played anywhere where people were playing pool less than 20 ft away from where he was dj'ing...this hit me when he said that he'd played at fabric in london the previous friday. great dubstep set. miguel migs at club five? i really don't think so.

then it was off with the crew to annie's in a torrential downpour with daisy driving victor's car. if only she'd managed to open and drive off in the car parked right outside rock & roll hotel that she thought was victor's and she tried to unlock, what a laught that would have been...

packed at annie's and the usual scene, and then towards the end of our meal two transvestites walked in and sat behind our table. "more sausage rehda?" i asked with a 'zoolander' look, to which he responded (also with a zoolander look) by showing me his remaining plate of sausage saying "they're cut...".

walked back home in the rain. it's now 4:00am. i realise that i have to get up to watch the grand prix of bahrain in just 2 and a half hours to see if our man, lewis hamilton can become the first ever man in formula one history to podium in his first 3 starts. i set my alarm and fall asleep.

amazingly, i awake 2 minutes before the alarm goes off. i'm so tired at this point, but i get up and make myself a cup of tea and force my self to watch the motor racing, fighting the need to sleep half distance throughout the race. it's a great race, and massa wins, silencing his critics, with hamilton second, securing his place in the record books. i return to bed exhausted. it's now absolutely chucking it down outside and we have to drive to west virginia tomorrow.

managed to leave the apartment around 1:30pm. arrived sometime before 4:30pm. huge room, but no kettle. got a pitcher of barely hot water from the tavern and made a cup of tea. we decided to eat early and headed to the tavern around half past six for dinner. our older-than-nightclub-standard, but very freindly barmaid, evelyn who helped us out with the hot water helped liven the atmosphere. there's only another couple and three other ladies there (celebrating their 40th birthdays in the same year). the music is horrific, with some talentless female belting out something with the words "i surrender" which is supposed to be a love long, but is just making me want to leave. finally i can take no more and ask daisy if she can request a music change.

the vast cd music retinue consisted of 8 rod stewart's one cher, one neil diamond and one al green. without hesitation, i went for al green. finally some sanity!

we never knew he could yodel. or skip. then, just a few minutes in, he stopped completely. at this point, i asked if i could put on some of my music, and, to which the response was "i don't see why not".

back to the room, grabbed my cd case, and we are soon listening to sanchez. yes. the country inn at berkeley springs in west virginia was getting some sanchez. followed by layo & bushwacka!, followed by groove amada, followed by the "do you know house" cd as a final musical adieu as we hit some beers and talked with the ladies. at the late hour of 9pm, the bar shut so we retired for the evening, but i left evelyn the cd since she was evidently enjoying the house music.

it's now rebecca's birthday and we are woken up by an air-raid siren going off at 7:15am. not your usual start to a relaxing spa treatment... it's also snowing a little outside. over breakfast at the tavern, we were told this was because of all the flooding, and the siren was to alert rescue teams. there are hiker trails nearby. many people were unable to get to their homes, and on the tv, we saw that there were some 234,000 people without power. no matter, to us anyway. after lots of hot coffee it was off to our spa treatment.

if only the elevator was working! i had to walk outside in my t-shirt & shorts in freezing cold wind up to the 4th floor. but once there , we were treated to a great hot whirlpool and we each had a great massage. great way to spend a crappy morning!

since the weather was so crap, we decided to head back to d.c after stopping off somewhere in town for lunch. tari's cafe seemed to be the place, as pelting sleet came down. me still in my shorts, of course.

as i look around, i notice a big sign at the far end of the bar.

it reads:
DEAD GUN ALE
BEER OF THE MONTH
ROGUE
OREGON BREWED

as i take this in, my attention wanders to the tv news.
a 'BREAKING NEWS' is flashing. '30+ killed in a shooting at virginia tech'. i can't help but look at the sign at the end of the bar, hating guns even more than i did before.

just what will it take to for america to look at it's gun culture? will this be it? or is this not enough? we'll see.

the 'right to bear arms' is as relevant today with regard to semi-automatic weapons as using the sun to navigate and gps satellite. surely technology has now forced the past to be reviewed with regard to this particular technology?

and before monday, i thought the most absurd thing in this country was that it didn't use the metric system, yet it insists that every scientific paper published use metric units.

america. land of extremes and absurdities.

that's some weekend...