They'll call it chance, or luck, or call it Fate

I didn't do much yesterday, but I did finally message Joe to tell him that I only like him as a friend. He had been hinting that he wanted me to come over to his place and hang out, and I needed to put a stop to that train of thought. He was disappointed, but seemed to take everything pretty well (at least he didn't seem upset in the message). He said he understood that I couldn't force there to be feelings if there weren't any and thanked me for being honest with him. I'm glad that I've got that straightened out now.

Today was a fun day. I met up with Masami, a friend that I met through Elise (who I met through Yumi). Masami is a graduate student at Waseda University and she wanted to interview me for her research. This weekend was also the gakuensai (school festival) at Waseda, so she invited me to go with her. Her kouhai in Waseda's Sexual Minority Club had filmed a movie to show at the festival, so we went to watch it. It was a really done movie about the lives of gay Japanese college students. The stories were good and it had surprisingly good production values for a student film. I couldn't understand everything that was said in the movie, but I understood enough to get the major points of what was going on (I think), so I was happy about that. After the movie we walked around for a bit to see more of the festival and eat some food. I had dukbokki (spicy Korean rice cakes) for the first time after the students at the booth kept challenging me to try it lol. It was yummy.

After the festival, Masami and I went to a cozy little cafe to do our interview. She's writing her thesis about yaoi and gender identity, so she thought it would be interesting to interview someone with a western perspective. I think her research is really interesting and it's a subject that I like talking about, so I was happy to do the interview. I really enjoyed discussing things with her. I also got to eat delicious baked cheesecake while we were talking, so that made things even better.

And now I should get ready for bed. I've got a busy week ahead of me. G'night!

This weekend was fun, but very tiring. By Friday night stellawind, Greta, Nicole, and Zuryvette had all arrived at my house for the weekend. I was so happy to see them! I really miss them. Saturday was my (and Adam's) graduation party. It was good to get the chance to see most of my relatives before I leave for Japan (though I think I answered the same three questions about when I was leaving, where I would be living, and who I'd be teaching a million times). Seeing my friends was nice too because I haven't seen most of them very much this summer. I was happy that yaexrae visited on Saturday, too! It would have been nice to have a bit more time with my friends, but I wanted to also visit with my family. One of my favorite parts of the party was when my friends and I were playing with Hayden, helping him blow bubbles. It was too cute. I'm going to miss that little guy while I'm gone. I also laughed at the fact that my neighbor assumed there was something going on between DJ and I, even though I told her he was just a friend. (I think I've lost count of the number of people who've assumed that DJ and I are together, lol.) I also loved getting to see baby Graysen and holding him. He's so sweet~

Another fun weekend has come and gone. It started on Friday night, which I was expecting to be pretty boring and low key. Then Zuryvette came over to work on her dress for her faux queen performance at Uncle E's. She brought her friend David, who also does drag, over for us to meet. This led to the three of us sitting on the floor gluing rhinestones onto clothing, while we listened to Cher and Gaga. Lol. Then, Zury (the other Zury) came over and brought Emily with her. I've hardly had the chance to see Emily at all this semester and she was away all of last semester, so it was good to see her again. We ended our night by listening to some K-pop and then it was time for everyone to leave and me to get some extra sleep.

On Saturday, stellawind, yaexrae, Payne, and Julie all came to visit from out of town. We ran over to the costume store for various cosplay odds and ends in the afternoon and then got as much of the group together for dinner at Friday's as we could. Then it was time for the main event of the night, the monthly drag competition at Uncle E's. I actually knew a fair number of the people competing this time. (One of them was even my gender studies professor from last year.) This time Alie competed as a faux queen and she did an awesome job! She didn't end up winning, but the crowd loved her and she's going to be competing again next month. We had a huge group of people out to see both Zuryvette and Alie. I ended up sitting right in front of the stage, so throughout the course of the night I got humped by one of the drag kings and groped by one of the queens. Lol!

Sunday was a pretty quiet affair as some of the girls had to leave early in the day. The rest of us went to the Chinese food buffet at Great Wall for lunch. Then the rest of the girls from out of town needed to leave, too. The rest of the day was spent doing homework and not much else.

Hopefully, I won't have too much work to do this week. Then I can finish getting the pieces together for my Gaga outfit. The concert is a week from today! I'm really looking forward to going home for the weekend (and of course to the concert).

The past two nights have been pretty fun. On Friday night, Alie and I went with immelmanturn and her roommate to see IU's production of The Vagina Monologues. I'd heard a lot about it, but didn't actually know much about it. I enjoyed it though. It made me feel all empowered as a woman. After that we headed over to Uncle E's, where we caught the weekly Friday drag queen show. It was a good time. I especially enjoyed the queen who danced to "Born This Way" and then later to "Bohemian Rhapsody".

It was back to Uncle E's again on Saturday night, this time to watch Zuryvette compete in the Ms.Ter South Central Indiana drag king contest. She didn't win, but we still had a great time. The king who did win did a great job (and he was pretty attractive too). A bunch of other kings and queens performed during the breaks in the contest, too. At one point, while one of the queens was performing a candle caught some papers of fire at the table nearest the stage. Luckily, the queen skillfully walked over an blew it out without breaking a beat. xD

Now that I've waded through part of the piles of Japanese homework that I have, I'm going to relax a bit. I'm going to turn the Grammys on so I can see Gaga perform, while I work on gluing rhinestones to the boots I'm wearing to the Gaga concert. The outfit that I'm going to wear for her concert is starting to come together!

This weekend has been much busier than I expected it to be. It was busy in a good way though. Nicole came back early from her time at home (and she'll be going to Ohayocon with us after all!). It's good to have her back. Then there was a lot of hanging out with friends (our house was filled with a ton of people most of the weekend), several excursions to the mall, and a little bit of going out to eat.

The best part of the weekend was going out dancing at Uncle E's last night. immelmanturn, Cat, Alie, Zuryvette, and I all decided to go. It was so much fun!  We danced for hours. We saw one of the queens that we had been talking with at the drag competition last weekend. He was out of drag and recognized us. We spent some time dancing with him, too. He was more than a little drunk, but was sweet and fierce. He told me that he loved me because I reminded him of one of his high school friends, lol. We ended up staying at the bar until closing time and I didn't get to bed until 4 AM. I can't wait until the next time we go back. I have a feeling that Uncle E's is going to become "our" bar in Bloomington because we always have a good time there (much like how Tommy Nevin's is the bar my friends and I usually go to at home).

I also finished reading Soulless, the first book in Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series. It's quite a fun read. The story involves Victorian England, steampunk, werewolves, vampires, comedy, romance, parasols, and tea. If you like any of these I would recommend reading this book. I like the main character Alexia because she's strong and has a mind of her own. I'm also quite fond of Lord Akeldama and all his fabulousness. I went out today and picked up Changeless, the second book in the series.

Now, I need to go finish a bit of homework and do some grocery shopping. I'm almost out of food. -_-;

The three day weekend is over. It was nice, even if parts of it were slightly uneventful. On Friday night, my roomies and I finished watching the last season of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's such an adorable and fun show! At first I had a casual interest in it, but as the series went on it got better and better. Zuko was definitely my favorite character. Then, on Saturday night Greta and I went to anime club (after a semester of not attending very often), where we watched a couple episodes of Hayate the Combat Butler (which appears to be on large amounts of crack and contains numerous instances of fourth wall breaking) and FMA: Brotherhood (which was amazing, as always). Then we left early to pick up Cat, and made our way to meet up with everyone else at Uncle E's for the drag show and dancing. We were highly amused as the drag queens playfully harassed Alie all night, even dragging her up on stage at one point. And we even managed to get Cat out on the floor with us, though she considers herself a terrible dancer. It was a really fun time! We're thinking about going again this weekend for their dance party. The rest of the weekend was spent in relative laziness. We started watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and are on the second season. It's entertaining, even if it is a bit cheesy sometimes. I have a feeling that I'll like it better once Spike shows up it gets into the later seasons.

And now I should probably think about getting some sleep, instead of playing more Persona 3. Night!

Here's some updates on what's been going on in my life recently. The semester is winding down, all I have left is a smallish paper and four finals. I spent a good part of the weekend finishing a ten page paper for Cross-Cultural Communication. I'm so glad to have that out of the way. I can't let myself shut down like I would like to though because I still need to do well on finals next week. I'll be done with the semester next Wednesday afternoon. I'm looking forward to it!

I had an unexpectedly good time this past Saturday. stellawind and yaexrae made a surprise visit! They were in town to see the Nutcracker and surprised me with a bit of an early birthday present. They can't be in town for my birthday this Saturday, so it was nice to get the chance to see them. And yaexrae made me an adorable tiny top hat, with pink flowers and ribbon on it, for my present! (I can't wait until we have our elegant picnic in the spring and I can wear it!) Then the bunch of us went out to dinner at the Irish Lion. I tried some of the escargot Alie ordered, and actually liked it. It tasted a lot better than I thought it would be. After dinner we went out to Uncle E's, Bloomington's local gay bar. Zuryvette was performing the first time as a drag king in a drag competition that the bar was holding. It was a pretty fun time! Zuryvette even won the competition~

Now, I should probably go off the internet and study a bit more because I have an early final tomorrow. It'll be nice to get it out of the way.

Yesterday was a fun time. DJ and I went to Market Days, up in Boystown. There was all sorts of food, drink, music, and various other forms of entertainment there. The first thing we ended up doing was wandering over to the Brit Beat concert. They were a pretty great Beatles tribute band. They played songs from the different Beatles eras and even changed costumes to fit the each era. Afterwords, we met up with immelmanturn, who spent the rest of the afternoon with us. Between wandering around, we caught a bit of a drag show. Sadly, we had just missed the Gaga impersonator. Later we made our way back to that area and a dance party had started. We spent some time talking with a couple boys DJ knew and watching a fierce drag queen dancing on stage (her platform shoes were amazing). After a while, immelmanturn and I ran off to join the dancing. I think my favorite moment of the day was before we joined in the dancing, when all of us were standing around near the side of one of the buildings. All of the sudden a rain of glitter fell on us. We looked up and found that the people living in the building were shaking glitter out of the window and onto the crowd. Boystown: the only place where it rains glitter. XD

This weekend was a good time. It started on Friday night, when DJ and I met up with Chris. Chris was house-sitting for people with a bunch of pets, so we stopped by so Chris could feed the animals. Among the many pets there was a sweet bullmastiff and some darling bichon/dachshund puppies. (There was also a cockatoo that shrieked like the devil, which I was not okay with.) That put me in a good mood. We then went over to DJ and Chris's friend Alex's house. Alex was still at work, and didn't get back until a bit later, but we sat around and drank with her mother Tyra for a bit. Tyra is pretty awesome, one of those mothers who is genuinely cool, not just trying to be a cool and hip adult around their kids. She's very accepting, friendly, and easy to talk to. Chris then drove all of us over to Tommy Nevin's Pub because someone we knew from high school was playing there with her band. Tyra then proceeded to buy drinks for all of us there. Lol. (Most of us weren't too tipsy, but I'm glad that Chris played DD for us anyways.)

Sunday was the Chicago Pride Parade! This was my third year in a row going. It was fine, but not as fun as last year was. I think part of the reason why this year wasn't as great was because I didn't know as much of our group. DJ and I ended up being the only ones from our usual friend group who could attend, so we joined up with Chris's group. So, out of a group of a dozen or so people I knew DJ, Chris, and Savannah. The parade was still pretty good though; loud, and colorful, and joyous like it is every year. We had originally planned on finding something fun to do after the parade (like the after party we went to last year), but we were so hot and tired that we just ended up going home. It ended up being a nice, but tiring day.

So, it seems that the issue with my friends has been somewhat glossed over by many of the people in our friends group. There's still a bit of underlying tension, but things are better then they were at this point last week. Now, I'm just kind of waiting to see what happens next. Blah.

I finally got my copy of DIM, the GazettE's new CD, last week! alfkhjklghf I'm in love with it. Been listening to it constantly. It just reminds me all over again why they're my favorite band.

Saturday, I got to go see HBP again, but this time I got to see it in 3-D IMAX!  I would say about the first 10 minutes of the movie were in 3-D. It was very cool. I was just disappointed that more of the movie wasn't 3-D. It felt like a bit of a rip off. Luckily, the tickets had been free through my dad's work.

Yesterday, DJ and I went downtown, to Market Days up on North Halsted. Being on North Halsted pretty much puts the event in the center of Boystown, so you can imagine that the event was pretty fabulous. It was pretty much a big open-air market set up in the street. There were lots of vendors and food, as well as stages featuring musical entertainment. It was a lot of fun! My favorite part of the day was when DJ was being shamelessly flirted with by an attractive Latino man. XD

Today, I finally got the chance to finish my copy of Shadow Magic, the sequel to Havemercy. I greatly enjoyed it! Caius, in all his insanity, is totally my favorite. The Japanese influences in the story also made me so happy. It referenced a bunch of stuff that I learned in my Japanese history classes this year, including the story of Yoshitsune and Benkei! *insert me geeking out over Japan here*