Version 2.0!!! Now with pictures!

Oh.  Hey everyone!  Seems I've been slacking on the posts.  That's an understatement.  It's been 6 months since I've written something on here.  Not for lack of anything, though.  I've just been really lazy.  Oh, and I've written two books which will probably not see the light of day, but enough about that.  Let's get to the good stuff.  What have I been up to since we last met...

Colorado.  Or a Borg ship.  

 Our NYE venue: The Viper Room.  

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Disneyland.  January 2nd.  80 friggin degrees!

The closest I ever want to get to the "It's A Small World" ride.

Gwen and I decided to skip out of town for the new year and head over to the cultural wasteland of California, home of Hollywood, L. Ron Hubbard's Winter Wonderland, In-N-Out Burger and Disneyland.  After a 5 1/2 hour layover in Denver, and the tiniest problem of my awful credit denying us a car rental, we finally got to West Hollywood just in time to make it to the Viper Room for their NYE lineup of The Binges, Rhino Bucket and The Head Cat.  Good times, even if I did get felt up by Barney.  Yes, the big purple dinosaur.   I swear when we saw him the next day in front of the Kodak Theater he recognized me, even though I was coming off a double-double animal style high.  

We saw Sherlock Holmes at the Chinese Theater, and even though I abhor THX, there's something to be said about seeing a flick in Hollywood.  Everyone's a movie snob.  All the theaters try to one-up each other by having the best 20 foot hi-def, flat screen and the craziest Dolby Sound systems and the cushiest seats.  You could hear and see everything, which makes it my favorite place to see a movie anywhere.  Afterward, we went to the bathroom, and I swear to jeebus I was transported back in time to the 50's when they used to have the Oscars there and I could see Marilyn Monroe powdering her nose in the mirrored entryway to the toilets.  So freaking cool.  Well worth the 13 bucks we shelled out for the movie.  

Of course all that sun and smog got to us and we remembered that it was New Year's Day and the buses weren't on their regular schedule, so we decided to take the Metro to Vermont Station and walk the seemingly 13 blocks back to our hotel on West 3rd Street.  Needless to say, the Metro maps lied, and we had a jaunty walk through "Little Mexico", walking past karaoke bars where ladies were singing Selena songs and the men outside smoking cigarillos were talking about our culos.  After almost 2 hours of walking, we were nowhere close to the hotel, so I called my new best friends, Checker Cab.  They came and got us at a random Mobil station on the corner of Santa Monica and Vermont, and the cabbie told us he would have been there sooner if it hadn't been for the cops commandeering his cab and telling him to take some druggie to the hospital because he got shot or stabbed or something. He was driving about a million miles an hour and chastised us for walking around in that neighborhood.  Gwen and I just sat in the back seat, mouths agape, trying to wrap our heads around his story.  I was never so happy to be out of a car in all my life.

I know I had dreams of going to Disneyland on New Year's Day and riding the teacups for an hour till my hangover went away, but we went the next day, just to be sure all the rides would be open.  And open, they were.  I hadn't been there when all the rides were open and the park filled to capacity.  There was a 3 hour line circling around the Matterhorn twice, and it was scorching hot.  Too hot to be January.  We woke ourselves up with coffee and overpriced fruit in Tomorrowland, then got down to business.  Star Tours, Honey I Shrunk The Audience, Jedi training, Pirates, getting lost in Frontierland, Jungle Cruise, Indiana Jones, Pirates (AGAIN), pictures in Fantasyland, Toon Town.... I don't know how we had time to fit everything in.  Usually I can do that park in 4 hours, but with all those people I found myself scrambling to see everything.  We ended the night in the Hall of Presidents, looking at the Disneyland of yore.  That old codger definitely knew what he was doing. 

Baby puppy!

After California, I tried to get back into the swing of things here, which wasn't easy considering it snowed forever and I kept on forgetting we skipped NYE here and that it was a new decade.  But I persevered, and my cousin Nikki took a road trip to Fort Lauderdale, bringing home this little nugget with her.  Only a Portagee like her would buy a teacup chihuahua from a flea market.  That being said, Cocoa's adorable, and I want to wrap him up in a tortilla and eat him like the burrito he is.

Pirate ship!  Or just the Mayflower 2.

 Scary cutouts of Pilgrims dranking.

 Gwen saluting the nautical crazies.

 Gwen needed to be tied up....

Ominous pathway back to the car.

Gwen and I spent Easter with the Pilgrims.  Not really, but we did make the drive to Plymouth, like everybody else in Massachusetts did.  It was so nice out, and we had a nice day dreaming and scheming and hiding from her parents, who were flying kites on the beach.  Yes, you read that right.  I have no words.

Baby bunnies like RuPaul too!

Oh, the bunnies.  How I miss the bunnies.  It was only a week ago that it was about 40 degrees and raining and we were nursing five bun-buns back to health.  Only this lil' fella decided watching RuPaul's Drag Race was more entertaining than getting lukewarm kitten formula shoved down his gullet with an eyedropper.  I wholeheartedly agree with that. 

First fire of the season.

What a quiet Sunday afternoon turns into....

Which brings us to the present.  Sunday we hosted a little reading circle in Gwen's backyard.  Only minus the reading and add white wine spritzers, YouTubing random video mashups, and watching the Inbetweeners until twelve in the morning.  Lovely day, lovely company.  We had every intention of being genteel ladies and painting pictures of Mother Russia, but the fates had other ideas, which included Jackie and Tristen, fresh off his truck from Saratoga Springs.  Despite the citronella candles, I still got bit to death by mosquitoes.  No, it's not too early for them, and yes, I keep on finding bites everywhere.  

I could tell you all about how I spent most of the winter holed up in Lindsey's new apartment watching the Golden Girls and drinking my weight in High Lifes, or about when we finally decided to go out on a Friday night two weeks ago I drank 5 pints in an hour and peed myself while driving home, then spent the next day doing four pedicures in a row and willing myself not to puke on my client's toes.  But I'll save you from all that.  Besides, summer's just around the corner, and I'm sure there will be many more stories that will trump those.  

Take tonight, for instance.  We're supposed to be going to the inaugural revival of 80's night at Hell.  I remember when we used to go to that shit on the regular.  But now the idea of partying on a Tuesday night kind of makes me want to reconsider my life, and whether or not I might be an alcoholic.  All I know is, I can't pee my pants again.  Wish me luck.