Weekend with a guest
Feb. 16th, 2010 01:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterThis weekend I had a friend from IRC come down from Kansas City for a visit. It was a visit of indefinite duration, and it turned out to start Saturday afternoon and end this afternoon.
I spent Saturday afternoon at the Sertoma Chili Cookoff, sampling all kinds of different chili from all sorts of chili contestants, including a Ronald Reagan fan club and a female roller derby team (fishnet stockings and all). I was delighted to discover that the event included an hour-long performance by local band (and distant cousins of mine) Big Smith. It was the first time I've had the chance to see them do an actual show-length set, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. (Got video of a couple of the songs, too. Not terribly high quality, but maybe I'll upload it to Youtube anyway.)
That afternoon, I got notice that my friend Felix was coming down. He's a Navy vet, 60 years of age, with a bad hip. He hangs out on the IRC channel associated with the Shifti.org transformation stories archive, where he is probably at least 20 years older than most other participants.
Lately, he's been having some trouble with his roommate/landlord, who apparently wanted him to buy the house they'd been sharing because the roommate was moving into another, or something. I'm not exactly clear on the details, and they're probably not anybody else's business anyway. At his time of life, Felix wasn't interested in owning a house, and his finances wouldn't support it anyway. So he was looking into moving out, and had a subsidized apartment lined up, but wasn't going to hear back about it until sometime this weekâbut then the roommate/landlord shut off the gas in the house. I guess as a way to encourage him to move out or something.
Anyway, it wasn't going to do Felix any good to have to sleep in the cold, and I had told him that if he needed to, he was welcome to come down and stay with me for a while. So he did. It was a little short notice, but it's not as if I had any engagements to cancel.
Saturday morning, my friendtbutler helped him move some stuff out of his house and into storage. After that, Felix headed down my way.
He arrived that evening, exhausted. I got him on IRC on my laptop for a while, then he crashed in my guestroom and I went to bed shortly afterward.
Sunday morning, we went up to George's for breakfast, then came back and I showed some movies. I started with Porco Rosso, which Travis told me that he had told Felix he needed to see. I then moved on to the Lupin III episode "Albatross: Wings of Death", and concluded with the George Pal Doc Savage movie. ("I'll never hear 'Stars and Stripes Forever' the same way again," Felix said ruefully afterward.) Felix, being an airplane buff, was able to identify a lot of aircraft models from all three movies.
After that, we drove down to visit my parents, 60 miles out of town. They all hit it off pretty well, and we had home-cooked spaghetti for dinner. It was starting to snow by the time we left, and was coming down pretty hard by the time we got home.
Since it was Jack Benny's 116th birthday, I showed Felix "The Mouse That Jack Built" and the episode of the Jack Benny show I have on DVD from my Beat the Devil DVD. We then hit the sack.
This morning, I showed Felix the John Huston Bogart/Greenstreet/Lorre film Beat the Devil, which he found suitably bizarre. Then I showed him The Smallest Show on Earth.
Five minutes from the end, he got a phone call: his subsdized apartment had come through! I was very happy for him. He decided to head back up to the house, sleep in the cold one last time, then head into town tomorrow morning to close the deal on the apartment. So he packed back up and was soon on his way.
I hope he's able to find someone to help him move in. My friend Travis who helped him on Saturday is working, so won't be able to help. Anyway, the new apartment sounds like a great place, and I hope he's able to get settled in without any trouble.
I was glad to have him visit, but I have to admit I'm glad he's gone back to K.C. too. I've got a paid article to write this week, not to mention all the articles I have to do for TeleRead. It'll be good not to have the distraction.
I spent Saturday afternoon at the Sertoma Chili Cookoff, sampling all kinds of different chili from all sorts of chili contestants, including a Ronald Reagan fan club and a female roller derby team (fishnet stockings and all). I was delighted to discover that the event included an hour-long performance by local band (and distant cousins of mine) Big Smith. It was the first time I've had the chance to see them do an actual show-length set, and I enjoyed the heck out of it. (Got video of a couple of the songs, too. Not terribly high quality, but maybe I'll upload it to Youtube anyway.)
That afternoon, I got notice that my friend Felix was coming down. He's a Navy vet, 60 years of age, with a bad hip. He hangs out on the IRC channel associated with the Shifti.org transformation stories archive, where he is probably at least 20 years older than most other participants.
Lately, he's been having some trouble with his roommate/landlord, who apparently wanted him to buy the house they'd been sharing because the roommate was moving into another, or something. I'm not exactly clear on the details, and they're probably not anybody else's business anyway. At his time of life, Felix wasn't interested in owning a house, and his finances wouldn't support it anyway. So he was looking into moving out, and had a subsidized apartment lined up, but wasn't going to hear back about it until sometime this weekâbut then the roommate/landlord shut off the gas in the house. I guess as a way to encourage him to move out or something.
Anyway, it wasn't going to do Felix any good to have to sleep in the cold, and I had told him that if he needed to, he was welcome to come down and stay with me for a while. So he did. It was a little short notice, but it's not as if I had any engagements to cancel.
Saturday morning, my friend
tbutler helped him move some stuff out of his house and into storage. After that, Felix headed down my way.He arrived that evening, exhausted. I got him on IRC on my laptop for a while, then he crashed in my guestroom and I went to bed shortly afterward.
Sunday morning, we went up to George's for breakfast, then came back and I showed some movies. I started with Porco Rosso, which Travis told me that he had told Felix he needed to see. I then moved on to the Lupin III episode "Albatross: Wings of Death", and concluded with the George Pal Doc Savage movie. ("I'll never hear 'Stars and Stripes Forever' the same way again," Felix said ruefully afterward.) Felix, being an airplane buff, was able to identify a lot of aircraft models from all three movies.
After that, we drove down to visit my parents, 60 miles out of town. They all hit it off pretty well, and we had home-cooked spaghetti for dinner. It was starting to snow by the time we left, and was coming down pretty hard by the time we got home.
Since it was Jack Benny's 116th birthday, I showed Felix "The Mouse That Jack Built" and the episode of the Jack Benny show I have on DVD from my Beat the Devil DVD. We then hit the sack.
This morning, I showed Felix the John Huston Bogart/Greenstreet/Lorre film Beat the Devil, which he found suitably bizarre. Then I showed him The Smallest Show on Earth.
Five minutes from the end, he got a phone call: his subsdized apartment had come through! I was very happy for him. He decided to head back up to the house, sleep in the cold one last time, then head into town tomorrow morning to close the deal on the apartment. So he packed back up and was soon on his way.
I hope he's able to find someone to help him move in. My friend Travis who helped him on Saturday is working, so won't be able to help. Anyway, the new apartment sounds like a great place, and I hope he's able to get settled in without any trouble.
I was glad to have him visit, but I have to admit I'm glad he's gone back to K.C. too. I've got a paid article to write this week, not to mention all the articles I have to do for TeleRead. It'll be good not to have the distraction.