Kate that sounds really scary, I hope they find something easy to fix!!

They drew the World Cup groups last night so now I’m digging into where I want to go and when, for next Jul/August. All the group stage games are in New Zealand, then (depending of course on how they do) Sydney or Melbourne, Wellington, Auckland, Sydney (if they make it to the final)

Health-ma to Daniel. Serenity and strength to Windsparrow. All best diagnosis, treatment and health to Kate's mom, and strength to you and your family, Kate.

Congratulations to Laura and DH! Also to Gud and family! House-ma to Matt.

Continued good wishes to Sheryl, Gary, and Mr. S.

Extra health-ma and recovery to Epic.

Yays and sympathies to those whose lives have tended either way recently.

Life at Casa Bev continues placidly onward. Mostly.

One suggestion- at a lot of hospitals there is valet parking that is very close or sometimes equal to the garage rates. Eg, at Rush it’s $8 in the garage for up to three hours. Valet is $10. Worth checking in to. Finding little ways to make it easier on yourself can make a huge difference in coping.

They do have valet parking. I am keeping it in mind for days when I'm hurting more. Stopped at Walgreens on the way today, bought some aspirin and acetaminophen to take. Knees are much happier today. Also, I took advantage of my cute little red car being little to squeeze between a concrete pillar and an SUV in the compact cars only section. Soooo much closer to the actual hospital.

Thank you for the good wishes, everyone. No real update yet except that she's being moved from a small hospital in Western Mass to Mass General tonight. I hope to the gods that means she'll be under the care of a great medical team who can see the whole scope of her illness and figure out what the hell is going on.

WindSparrow, all good thoughts to you and Daniel too.

So much love and health~ma to Kate & her mom, Daniel & WindSparrow, and Epic.

Continued quick recovery wishes for Daniel and hope they figure out quickly what’s happening with your Mon, Kate.

I took my friend Jes to a vampire themed cabaret on Friday night for her birthday.

The creator/performer, Kat Robichaud, had never seen Buffy before last March and then binged the entire series (plus Angel) and became obsessed with Spike. So she spent the second half of the show in gorgeous Spike drag, singing his songs from the musical and even reciting the Love's Bitch speech.

But plenty of other acts were included, like the stripper, Satanica Pandemonium, from Dusk to Dawn. And a truly spectacular aerial act with a woman drag king doing Nandor from What We Do In The Shadows.

Let me just list that again for dramatic effect:

Drag King
Nandor
Aerial Act

They also managed to reference just about every imaginable 80/90s vampire rock song and goth adjacent things like Siouxsie's Spellbound and NIN's Head like a whole and Rasputina's Transylvania Concubine.

Kat always writes two new original songs for every show, including this banger.

[link]

After the show, Jes and I went to our favorite tiki bar, Zombie Village and had a good, serious talk. Which went so long that her car was trapped when the parking garage was locked up for the night so we had to hoof it and Lyft to get home at like 1:30am.

The next day I met Jes to go collect her car (I had the parking garage ticket and had offered to pay). We wanted lunch/brunch but all of our usual spots had long lines, but we discovered a new French bistro/Viennoiserie and it was lovely and calm and the music was great and food fantastic.

[link]

Check out their Le Classique Tea Service: [link]

So what had started as a fix-your-fuck-up task of car collection turned into a bonus Fancy Brunch. Best Croque Monsieur I ever had.

Then, stuffed with carbs and chocolate I came home and napped for a shamefully long time, waking to make Matilda dinner (a curried chicken soup with turkey meatballs and fusilli).

After eating I complained to Matilda that she'd been insufficiently supporting the effort to watch Halloween movies and she said she was game. So we watched Near Dark, which is just as beautiful and cool as ever.

JZ was off at RenFaire all weekend scolding people and feeling completely recharged to have a theater/live activity that has really been energizing and fun and restorative for her.

So that was a pretty good weekend, really.

And a truly spectacular aerial act with a woman drag king doing Nandor from What We Do In The Shadows.

Yes friends, I gasped.

Sounds like fun times!!

I just cooked up my last blue apron recipe for this week. And I can’t tell if my sense of smell is off, if pork usually smells that way and I just don’t normally suspiciously sniff pork, or if it’s bad. I’m leaning towards “bad” but that super sucks because now I have potatoes and peppers but no protein.

because now I have potatoes and peppers but no protein.

This is why I keep a bag of TJ's turkey meatballs in the freezer. Which I needed to deploy with Matilda's soup because the roasted chicken had gone off.