Related to my earlier post about becoming a Buffalonian, it just finally clicked and I realized why the Livejournal community Buffalo Dorks is so successful. Other cities have communities like it, and they're always dead, or just spam (come to my show! new store opening! with no replies or comments or anything); newcomers to Buffalo and the Dorks community are always astonished.
But it's just more of the same: the natural Buffalonian tendency to use people to get information, the tendency to want everything to come from other humans.
I like it a lot. If I want a haircut, instead of just going to the closest place, I ask on there. (Actually, I go to Style Lab and ask for Cha-Cha because she skates with me and is awesome-- but same deal.) If I need a doctor, I ask if anyone knows a good one. If I have a garage sale, I post about it on there. If I need to find a sofa, I post and ask if anybody's got one going spare.

Today I drove to Cheektowaga and got twenty free strawberry plants from a fellow Buffalo Dorks member, because she posted on there to offer them to good homes. This is a pretty good deal, as strawberry plants are like three dollars each at the garden center, so I'd never be able to afford twenty. They'll spread, too, so I may have some to give away next year. (Meanwhile, if anybody wants strawberry plants, let me know; she said she still may not be able to find homes for all of them. She had a *lot*. They're June-bearing but I don't know the specific variety.)

It's not just that Buffalonians want to get information from other people-- if it was just wanting, it would still be not a very good community. But it seems we love to give information, too. And even if we don't know an answer, we often will post to point to someone who will. I just told someone who was asking if anyone knew any mountain dulcimer players who gave lessons that they should go to the Irish session at Nietszche's on Saturdays, because even if none of those musicians knew that instrument, they would certainly know someone who did.

Anyhow. More Buffalo-related navel-gazing.

Hm, maybe this summer I can get the house and yard squared away nicely enough that I could host my own (e:strip) party. That would be fun.

And OH!

I saw (e:mike) and (e:jill) at Allentown on Saturday morning! (At least I'm pretty sure it was you two! I kind of couldn't actually see...) You guys walked past while I was in the yoga cool-down part of the Mia Mauler Workout. If we hadn't been all twisted up like pretzels, and I hadn't been on the completely opposite side of the room, I totally would've yelled something to you, but it seemed, well, not only inappropriate but actually impossible.
So anyway.
Come at 11:30 next week and do the whole class. It starts off with like an hour of cardio kickboxing but after the initial shock wears off, you totally swear that you could kick someone's ass. Lately I almost want someone to try to start some shit with me so that I can fucking take him out. That would be great.
After the kickboxing portion (and lest you think "kickboxing" means "Billy Blanks Tae-Bo Bullshit", Ms. Mauler was the 2003 champion of her weight class in real actual kickboxing, with three victories by knockout in that season. There's kind of a reason we're called the Knockouts. But I digress), it switches over to weight-lifting-- squats and chest work with usually some triceps thrown in. Then after that, she does a couple of ab sets, which are usually murder. Then after that is finally the yoga.
It's a class with everything in it. It is fiendishly hard, but not actually all that difficult; it is usually something that most fitness levels can adapt to and do fairly well at, but you can challenge yourself every week.
And she is *such* an engaging leader, always charming and entertaining and just a tiny bit scary.

So really, all y'alls who signed up for Allentown should come this Saturday. I'll be there. Mia will be there. What more do you need?

So I have this theoretical situation brewing in the back of my mind about a hypothetical scenario in which I might have the need to create an ambiance of fog around an area, through which perhaps an actor will move.
(I'm being circumlocutious because that's really funny when you're as hammered as I am. And I am absolutely sure that the word circumlocuitous or circumlocutious is a word, and I refuse to look it up, but I wish I was sure of the placement of that final I. Spellcheck is unsurprisingly unhelpful.)

Anyway. The venue wherein I was considering this creation of artificial fog has a fog machine, but its use has been banned due to a particular colleague's severe allergy to the stuff.
So I thought perhaps dry ice would suffice.
I asked (e:zobar) and he shrugged; he studied chemistry, but not very intensely, so he knows very little about the theatrical applications of dry ice. Unsurprising.

"Hm," I said. "Who do I know who would know?"
I mentally ran through all my friends, relatives, and acquaintances before I realized that this is it. I've finally gone native. I'm finally thinking like a Buffalonian.

In my native culture, my reaction above would have been, "Where can I look that up?"

But in Buffalo, you don't look stuff like that up, you ask your friends and find somebody who knows about it.

Because everybody in Buffalo knows everybody else, and an expert is usually only one or two degrees of separation away. Knowledge and social obligation go more or less hand-in-hand; networks of favors and those indefinable interpersonal connections that you have to nurture; moms' anniversaries and kids' birthdays and the kinds of parties where you stand around in the attached garage fishing cans of beer out of big plastic ice buckets. You've got a problem, somebody related by blood or marriage, or possibly who you went to school with, either is a guy, or knows a guy, who owns a business that deals with that, or that studied it in school, or that knows the guy who wrote the law about it. It's all in the family, somehow.

I admit this is a more entertaining and satisfying system than just looking shit up. And it's been remarkably effective in a lot of things-- I never look online for custom t-shirts now that I skate on a team with a woman who owns a silkscreening facility.

Anyhow, I just thought I'd share my cultural observation here.

Incidentally after last night's roller derby bout, the Knockouts and Saucies are facing a winner-takes-all situation for the league championship at the next bout. May 31st. I'm serious, it will be really exciting.

Oh hey, I heard a bunch of you were joining Allentown as a group?
And going to Mia's fitness class?

If you are, I'll see you there this morning.

This morning, we will be working on snap-kicks.
Do you know what that is?
Me neither.
Frankly, I'm terrified. :D

I never know what (e:zobar) is telling you about me.

I have one photo to share, though it's posted elsewhere, of the lesbian shotgun wedding.


It was lovely.
I will post the rest of my London photos at some point. Most of them are of Z making stupid faces over weird food.

I am here to do the obligatory pimpage of roller derby. There's a bout tonight. 7 pm, Rainbow Rink, 101 Oliver St. in North Tonawanda.
But what's really amusing is that my team isn't skating, we're hosting it, and we've decided to do so in costume.
The bout theme is "Hell on Wheels", and various of the girls are bringing all their biker friends.
So we're dressing like biker chicks.

If you've ever wanted to see me in a pleather miniskirt, tonight's the night.


Unrelated: Chita is on the shelf by the picture window in the living room, stalking the birds outside. She just crawled slightly backward to see them better, and... fell off the shelf. It was pretty funny.
She's pretending she meant to do that, of course.

It's official, we are seriously actually going to go to the UK in three days to attend a lesbian shotgun wedding.
I am terribly excited.
There are apparently no consequences for doing it all at the last minute.
If I'd known that I wouldn't have spent the last five months worrying constantly about it.

Eh it'll be awesome. I have a good feeling about it all.

I'm totally going to find the weirdest shit I possibly can and feed it to (e:zobar) and be all, "This is normal! Don't ruin my cultural experience!"
It will be brilliant.

Z has spent today angrily calling things "rubbish" and "shite". He claims to be warming up.

I have bought my ex-girlfriend a baby t-shirt that says "I Love The USA" on it in sequins. (Really a baby shirt, for her baby. I'm not getting her anything for her wedding, because I just dropped three grand on getting there and finding somewhere to sleep.)
I also bought her Richard Scarry books that will teach her child American words (like "truck") and THE WRONG SPELLING of things. I am trying to warp him already.
MUA HA HA.

However, Lowly Worm did not appear in either book. I thought he was a consistent recurring character. What the hell book is Lowly Worm in??? Someone help me out here.