Love bites

Tonight was the last Love Bites singalong at the downtown location. There's something moving and incredible about an entire theater of people jumping out of their seats to sing and dance to "Total Eclipse of the Heart." There's something crazy about the whole thing, about feeling part of this surge of rock addled emotions and memory. For whatever reason, the Journey songs make the crowd go nuts. There are a lot of Journey fans out there. During Def Leppard's "Sugar" they were running around throwing packets of saccharine in the air, ripping them open and dusting people with handfuls of sweetener. I could taste the odd chemical burn in my mouth like the memory of being eleven years old and staying up at night to watch the MTV top ten videos of the day when "November Rain" held that spot for almost an entire year. For the final song, the staff handed out roses to everyone. I think the Alamo must have knocked over a florist earlier in the day. We all held them aloft during "Every Rose has its Thorn" by Poison. It was sweet, and moving. I was happy to be there with two of my favorite people, Sarah and Mike. I sang until my throat hurt, and my ears sort of ring from the sound.

Mike and I originally saw this show back in February. It was that date, more than anything else, that made me think this relationship was becoming more than just something I did for fun in my spare time. I remember holding hands walking down 5th street towards the Alamo, and all that green glitter.

Today is Mike's birthday. We are going to try and go to the lake if the weather holds steady.

It's inevitable, the fact that we're going to get down to it.

Today is Mike's 25th's birthday. To celebrate, we slept in late, picked up lunch at Whole Foods and went to the lake. It was a gorgeous hot day, with puffy white clouds drifting by and the lake is full to the brim. The sandy islands we saw in March are all gone, and it requires very little climbing over the rocks to get down into the water now. We floated and paddled around for hours, drying out on the big limestone and granite boulders. I was full of that ravenous hunger and pleasurable fatigue from all the swimming and sunlight.

Dinner was at Drakula, where Mike and I went on our first date back in December. They make superb meatballs and stuffed cabbage. Mike ordered the "castle drakula" which was a big chunk of chicken covered in cheese and mushrooms over a ton of buttered vegetables. There was Romanian wine, and Romanian pop music. We were happy. Then we picked up cupcakes, a little ice cream cake and beer for our evening festivities of video games. Oh, and Doritos, because I think I sweated out every bit of salt in my body.

One of Mike's rats is named She Who Hates Me. She is the biting kind. Part of her fur is falling out and it looks like she has a tumor. Poor thing. She's still eating and moving around, and doesn't seem to be in too much pain. Oddly, I owe part of my current relationship to She Who Hates Me. If she hadn't bitten me, I would never have used the Hello Kitty bandaid. Hahahah. Too weird.