Friday night I had dinner with my family for my dad's birthday, at Centro in Central Square. They sat us at the table with the couch. ;-) My brother and I sat on the couch, as my parents would have had difficulty getting back out afterwards.

My parents had met the chef's father while travelling, which they mentioned to the waiter, and the chef sent word that coffee and dessert were on him. Which my parents felt a bit embarrassed by, as that wasn't their purpose in mentioning it, but I told them to accept graciously and just write a nice note. Then he was near the door as we left, so we got to actually chat with him.

Then there was Jeremiah-watching. Jeremiah was very sentimental this week, but pretty good. I didn't like it quite as much as the folks I was watching it with seemed to. I did like the transvestite madam, though. How very Rocky Horror.

rmd and I stayed at my place so we could go to the Somerville Gay Pride flag-raising in Davis Square in the morning. We were late for 9:00 but so was the flag-raising. ;-) It started around 9:20, which was just as well as some places had published it as being at 9:30. Given all the politicians who spoke, it must have taken half an hour or so. It was wonderful to see how many did speak: the mayor, various appointees, a gubernatorial candidate (Grossman), legislators Toomey and Jehlen, an alderman candidate, and the cutest baby dyke, the president of the Somerville High Gay Straight Alliance. Hey! We're a lobby!

The turnout was disappointingly small. I hadn't been before, but I'd seen pictures from two years ago, when there was a much larger crowd. I'm wondering whether Cambridge's flag raising at 9:30 didn't collide and reduce attendance.

Anyway, we went and pride-brunched in a church basement (joev, Mark, Greg, Dan, Liz, Jason, rmd and I).

Some folks went on to Boston Pride, others went home, and rmd and I went to hang out at Diesel. Amazingly, we snagged a table in front while we were still in line for our drinks, and sat and read newspapers and so forth. We'd caught sight of cthulhia's psanky (part of the Windows Art Project) as we'd come in to Davis Square, and we went for another look and to visit more windows. I particularly like the Greek Vase egg. Looking through the web site, I also really like the Accidental Stonewash, but I don't recall whether it was in the window.


We visited Topper's window and surrealestate's, catching most of the windows as we went. The store keeps hiding pheromone's photographs behind an outdoor rack of clothes. Hang them higher! They're fun pieces. I really liked Topper's bread/wheat piece, and went into the store to get a reverse view of the positive and negative space. She'd stained the back, too, and it makes for a striking silhouette.

My favorite pieces were the sculpture in, if I recall correctly, the McIntyre & Moore window, "No Lines, No Waiting", a tentacled nightmare of fast food service; one in the Goodwill window that puts strange hybrids of food and appliances in Sunday circular ad-speak with sculpture to match; and the civil rights piece somewhere along Highland Ave. (the Arts Council should really put the leaflet with map up as a .pdf or something on their site) that meditates on the lunch counter activists of the 60's from the point of view of a girl watching them on TV in her kitchen--it was one of the more thoughtful uses of the "Food for Thought" theme. Of course, the news clippings included the prom desegregation headline from 2002 in the mix. A bit depressing, no?

We'll have to go back before June 28, to get the windows we missed, on College Ave. and upper Holland Ave.

We had burritos for lunch and then took a nap that I thought would be a half hour but turned into three. Very late in the day we got to T's birthday party, where we saw bikergeek, hammercock, and other folks (hee, chick vibes!). We spent a very congenial couple of hours there, meeting all the pets including the new dog, Daisy. T is quitting the glitter and temp. tattoos thing she's been doing, so we took away some of each at cost. The rest goes to eBay, heh.

Sunday was a very slow-starting day, and then I had wanted to stop by the consignment shop around the corner and possibly buy a set of two mahogany chests of drawers. About half an hour into this process I realized we were going to completely miss picnicking with friends on the Common. Aw. And I'd been hoping to drag people to watch the end of the dragon boat races. But now I have two lovely pieces of real adult furniture that I'll need to love with Murphy's Oil Soap occasionally but it will be worth it. And, see, it has drawers. Into which I can put clothes. Thereby reducing clutter in my rooms. What will they think of next?

We ran the AC for a while to cool off from all the furniture-moving. It wasn't so much that the bureaus were heavy--they weren't. It was that for once I really cared that they not bump into banisters or doorways, and it requires much more concentration and strain to have fine motor control over a bureau than to heft about a pine futon you're not too worried about. As rmd said, "yeah, but then all you have is a futon". Heh.

We went out for Indian food (rmd bought, because she's about to be employed again--kick ass!) We went back to rmd's place and finally watched the SFU pilot. We'd missed it and I guess one other episode, when we got started on the series in reruns last summer. claudia_media for that and more on Jeremiah.

zartan posted. Not happy reading, but excellent.