kdiddy.org

I want to start off by saying that my Internet was broken over the weekend. I'm not sure what the ultimate problem was but things seem to be functioning fine. Despite that, I hate you, Verizon.
Anyway, the swooshy event on Saturday was pretty fun. The boyfriend and I were quite a handsome couple. My mom even took pictures of us before we left, and I couldn't help but gush, “It's like the prom we never had!” Well, it was just like that except he didn't give me a corsage and I didn't get laid afterward. Drat.
Adding to the promness of the evening, my mom let us borrow her Civic. We were all in agreement that pulling up to a swooshy event in the 1990 Ford Tempo/Indie Rockmobile would be low-class.
The new convention center is just enormous. It's nice, but it still has a very industrial feel to it. Not too warm. The section we were in was decorated all neat and Jurassic Park-like, and I finally got to see all of the dinosaurs up close. (If you would like to see what dinosaurs I'm talking about, go to http://www.dinomitedays.org/pictures.htm for pics.) The coolest part of the evening were these stiltwalkers. They're pretty hard to describe, but there's a picture of one of them here: http://www.post-gazette.com/seen/20031020event1020p1.asp
I'm not very good at schmoozing, but I did my best. During the “grazing” style dinner, I talked to some business-looking people who were pretty nice and they introduced me to a bunch of their friends. One guy was talking to me about being a writer and whatnot and somehow got my last name totally wrong. He kept introducing me to other people as Kelly or Katie DeLAWNey. He introduced me to Marilynn Uricchio, who was, to my dismay, not trying to take my picture for the SEEN column. Pfft. I tried to chitchat with her about the PG, but she was distracted. Coincidentally, I ran into one of the my writing teachers at the Eddie Izzard show last week. He's the drama critic for the PG and I went over to say hi to him. He was distracted as well. I don't know what it is with the staff at the PG. None of them like me anymore. Humph.
The auction part was pretty exciting. I think the highest bid got up to $18,000, all of which is going to the museum and to charity.
After the auction, I went to try to find the PR people. I guess since the boyfriend and I were more or less the youngest people there, security tried to give us shit. I don't know how often people go to the trouble of putting on tuxedoes and evening gowns to crash galas, but it must be more often than I thought. We were stopped at the entrance and interrogated about where our tickets were and whatnot. I kept trying to explain that I was supposed to be there, even though I hadn't purchased a ticket. They wouldn't listen to me, so finally I got kind of shitty and irate (no doubt partially due to the fact that I had been in high heels for far too long and my strapless bra was really starting to hurt), shoved my press kit in their faces and said, “LOOK! I am with the MEDIA! the MEDIA! I AM SUPPOSED TO BE HERE! I don't have a ticket because I AM WITH THE MEDIA!” They gave me a dirty look but let me back in. Snots. I felt kind of like a fraud, though, since all of the other media people had an entourage and stuff. I told the boyfriend I should have just given him my camera and made him follow me around while I barked orders at him. That made him laugh.
We met Mayor Tom Murphy aka the Most Unpopular Man in Pittsburgh. He's short. He was just walking around by himself, so we just introduced ourselves to him. He was pretty nice and talked to us for a good 15 minutes. When I told him that I wrote for Pulp, he laughed, which made me blush. When I was telling Shanley this today he said it was probably because Pulp has run two cover stories about how he should be impeached. Maybe.
The party portion for the evening was alright. The DJ, Lady Bunny, was this drag queen who wore this really sickeningly sequined dress and lip synched along to the songs she was playing. All of the drunken socialites got out on the dancefloor and started getting their Cabbage Patch on. We stayed off to the side and giggled, until we realized that, since the party was open to the public, all of the riffraff was starting to show up (ie, hipsters). Two guys in track suits, mullet wigs, and aviator glasses started faux-breakdancing on the dancefloor. The socialites thought this was hysterical. I left the boyfriend shaking his head while I went off in search of a cocktail. Sigh. All I have to say is fuck an open bar if you're not going to have any good alcohol at it. I asked for a Cosmopolitan and got a splash of Jacquin's, a splash of cranberry juice, and about a 1/2 cup of grenadine. In a red wine glass. Barf. I drank it anyway, because I figured if it's free then I might as well get a little tipsy. Didn't work though. More drag queens showed up. Then this very handsome older gay guy came over to us and asked the boyfriend if he minded if he gave me a compliment. The boyfriend said no, of course not. Then he said to me, “You look like you stepped out of a Botticelli painting. You're gorgeous.” *melt* I blushed so hard that I made the guy laugh, then made a mental note that I need to have more gay guys in my circle of friends. 😉
I finally ran into the PR girl again, who introduced me to some friend of hers as “Kristen Delaney.” I was really starting to get uncomfortable at that point. My shoes were killing me and my bra seemed to have some kind of time-release rib-stabbing contraption installed. We bought the baby a souvenir tshirt, stood around for a little while longer, then left.
When we got home, I tripped and fell walking up to the house…because I'm an ass. I tore my skirt a little bit, but it's on the seam so I think it'll be okay.
Yesterday, instead of doing fun stuff like go to the Allegheny Cemetery with and , I had to go to a Ladies' Luncheon. These are gatherings that my grandmother hosts for all of the ladies in our family and they happen twice a year. That wouldn't be too bad except that they're always on really busy weekends. The one this past May was the day after my graduation party, so I had to sit through lunch and chitchat while nursing a hangover. Yesterday I was just really tired, but another problem is that they always happen when the baby should be taking his nap. Long story short, we were there for FIVE HOURS. Toward the end the baby and I were both close to tears. When we finally got home, I had a mini-meltdown because the Internet was still broken and my Discover card bill was late. I called Discover to beg them not to charge me a late fee, but to no avail. $25 down the drain. Fuck debt. Discover sucks, too.
The baby went to bed pretty early and I curled up in front of the TV to watch Carnivale. My mom went to the store “just for a few things.” Right at a big, climactic moment of the show, the phone rang. My mom needed help unloading the groceries. She always does that. Luckily, I was taping the show.

The baby's been resisting his nap lately and I really hope that that doesn't mean that he's done with naps altogether. That would really really suck. Right now, for instance, he's just sitting in his crib, talking. Grunt.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2003 at 10:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.