Pride!

I am eating leftover deep-dish Chicago-style pizza. If you can think of a better thing to suddenly remember is in the fridge, I would like to hear about it (don’t say “a million dollars”).

Yesterday was Fathers Day and to celebrate, my dad and I rode in a gay pride parade float. It was a truly memorable day. Basically my friend, mentor, and undergrad advisor got our college a spot in the pride parade, and got her neighbor to pull us on a flatbed behind his truck in the parade, and got a couple of students and Katy and me to play music on the flatbed, and that was our float. We didn’t really decorate–there were some streamers sort of masking-taped to the side of the flatbed, which was mostly filled with paper sacks and people’s bikes and backpacks and sweatshirts. We were right behind this incredible float that had something to do with Latino/Latina culture and gay marriage, and consisted of an enormous wedding cake with all these gorgeous people in wedding drag dancing on it. So my point is that in comparison I think we left a little to be desired, which was especially funny since we had literally four hours to decorate but spent most of that time trying to get cables for the PA. But it didn’t matter! Everyone was uniformly stoked and happy. A majorly positive experience.

So then we went through the parade, playing our songs. The truck pulling the flatbed was full of children eating pizza. My dad and Jae sat on the side waving. It was a truly confusing message but one nonetheless that bespoke friendship and goodwill. We were all so happy and the crowd was so game about cheering for us. I would say our float consisted 80% of just Katy ripping nasty guitar solos and yelling “WOOOOOO!!!!” to herself. So in conclusion, it was the awesomest thing I have ever done.

We also slipped a little “Margaritaville” in there when no one was paying attention.

I hope my dad enjoyed that method of celebrating Fathers Day. My dad is nothing if not game. He is up for anything and it is very hard to faze him. He meets the weirdest weirdos who tell him their insane life stories and he’s just like “pretty interesting!”

I submitted an abstract to a conference and never heard back, and then one day they sent out the program and my name wasn’t on it, so I assumed that was their rude way of letting people know they’d been rejected. I forgot about it. Now it’s months later and suddenly I am getting emails asking me for my full title and affiliation and where will I be staying and stuff. I checked the program online again, and still my name is not in there. I emailed asking what gives, and have not heard back. This is pretty weird. Still, if I’m accepted after all, I’m up for it! My new thing is only submitting to conferences I can drive to, so whatever, you can let me know last minute. The paper’s sort of written, all I need’s a projector! Lets do this