Tag Archives: neel eargood

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send off


Ulysses

Last night was xenohomo‘s last night in town.

We headed downtown to hang out and watch him re-arrange the U-Haulâ„¢ trailer which now contains his entire life. A couple of other friends showed up and we all basically huddled around the trailer like a bonfire and chatted.

It’s sometimes hard to believe it’s been 5 years since Neel first came to town. The disbelief disappears when I consider how many changes we’ve both been through since then.

I kept cracking smiles remembering antics from the years of his sentence here in St. Louis….

Bon Voyage mon ami.

Je ne blogging pas.

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trip-nick

Worked all the way through Saturday to help compensate for our impending pilgrimage to chrisglass‘s fine town on Thursday.

While doing laundry yesterday we realized that we’ve worn out most of our jeans and we were down to about four pairs of shorts between the three of us. So we piled into the car and headed to the new Kohl’s they just built up the street.

Nothing profound to report there – it’s like a mall-less department store… The prices were good.

Is it my imagination or has fashion come to a screeching halt? Over 1/3 of the men’s department was some sort of variation of cargo pants or shorts. (*This doesn’t bother me since I’ve loved and been wearing cargo pants since college). I just expected to be more weirded out by current fashions – only to notice that things haven’t changed much, (from my perception) from five years ago. Well – except for the apparent emergence of flip-flops). I bought a pair. They were too hippy to pass up and 30% off.

The afternoon drug on longer than we expected nichtsing our plans to try and hang out with Leah and Steven – so we just opted to stay home and do a closet-audit… untillllll… the phone rang. xenohomo wanted to know what we were doing. To which I replied: “The same thing we’re always doing… Hiding in our home in a self-absorbed, anti-social, nesting binge.”

I’ve said this before and I still fall into the same rut of self-induced disappointment: “I need to pay closer attention, because I’m going to blink my eyes and (**insert name**) is going to be gone.” I said this for my now passed on grandfather… I’ve said it before for friends in college days… I’m saying it now for Neel….

I’m going to blink my eyes and he’ll be in San Francisco. Gone.

“Of course come over.. We’re not doing anything special… but then again – when are we?!”

He arrived an hour later… Cookies, conversation, toasted ravioli, pizza and Family Guy episodes.

Somewhere in the evening he hauled out a dog-eared road atlas and outlined his upcoming odyssey.

I met Neel shortly after moving out to my first apartment. He’s been a fixture for most of my independent adult life.

I listened intently and enviously at his plan…

I don’t think I blinked the whole night.

I don’t blog.

LIVE

saints… and sinners

and over there we’ll put the burning effigy

Got to the office and Kevin exploded with energy and within two hours our storage area in the basement was cleared out and everything that’s to move with us was brought upstairs…

After a few phone calls, and a good spell jamming out to innocu-rock on hold with Sprint – we arranged for our land-line to be transfered and added as a second cell phone.

Out to Radio Shack to pick up an extra cell phone – most likely the ugliest one I’ve ever seen, but it was cheep and fills the need now. (Kevin promises we can fullfill my toy-lust once we stabilize after the move, catch up on bills and the phone I really want gets released in a blue-tooth friendly version (so it will work with iSync).

Lunch at Hard Rock and picked up babybear and headed down to meet xenohomo at… ironically, the building we’re moving the studio to…. Unknown to us, while we were spinning the deal to get the corner in our friend’s loft, Neel was negotiating with the building’s owners to have this year’s Saints and Sinner’s ball on one of their vacant floors.

Mardi Gras is a big deal in St. Louis – we’re second to New Orleans.
Every year The AIDS Foundation of St. Louis has a fundraising ball which coincides with the season. This year, Neel is the chairman for the event.

He asked if we’d help him out with decorations for the ball…. Leery of the previous years of being pro-bono’d to death by the bears – but genuinely wanting to help our friend out, we agreed to pitch in and lend a hand.

We walked through the space and Neel and Kevin talked about decorations, Chad listened quietly – and I took photos and had phony-sweet exchanges and glaring contests with the building’s rep, who… coincidentally also works for an ex-client. The last conversation I had with the woman was rather nasty and heated, probably because she thought I was being unreasonable because I was refusing to do projects until they paid their invoices which had aged beyond 9 months. We finally got paid – but we haven’t worked with them since… I miss the account, but then again – I don’t miss working and not getting paid.

She was shocked to see me there… She’s new to town and is probably still learning just how “small town” and incestuous St. Louis is.
It can make you… and break you…

We parted company and I gave her a wink, and a smug grin and told here “You’ll be seeing more of me”…

I can be a phony bitch when it’s called for.

I can be a blog-denying smart ass too.