today was an improvement

Today was good. I woke up in the morning, showered, ate some yogurt and toast with jam (everyone makes fun of me for calling it marmalade in English, but I do it because I say "mermelada" so much in Spanish that it just rolls off my tongue as "marmalade" now), went to meet Rosie for lunch at a vegetarian joint in Providencia, but ended up running out of time in transit because she had to meet Tim at 2:45 for the gay pride parade in Plaza Italia (three blocks from her apartment). So I just ended up chilling with her for a little bit. Tim came by on schedule and we walked up to Plaza Italia to find a kind of meager and quiet crowd assembling at 3 (the scheduled start time). But the crowd grew steadily and some music got going from trucks parked along General Bustamante street. It wasn't a big gathering by any stretch of the imagination, especially for a city of 5.5 million: maybe 400 people all told. But plenty of drag queens and outrageous political statements and flags and even a walking condom. I took some pics, we walked around, met a girl from California who had been looking for the parade in the wrong place and found it by accident (love when that happens), we sat down, people watched for a while and decided it was time to get something to eat. On to Amadeus, where we just missed the lunch kitchen, much to my disappointment. But we got some hot drinks and a big, delicious slice of raspberry-chocolate cake. Tim has been feeling sick and realized he couldn't finish his tea with milk, so after my cortado I polished that off for him. We sat there for a while, just talking about things. It was really nice, Tim's really cool and I like that I've been spending more time with him in the past couple of weeks than in the beginning. He and Rosie talked about how crazy it is that they've only got 2.5 months left, which really is pretty nuts. That's 10 weekends. No time at all. I can't really relate because I've got 9.5 months left, but even that seems like not so much. I'm in single digits month-wise. Weird. I was about to write that on the one hand it feels like I just got here and on the other it feels like I've been here forever, but the truth is that it feels like I've been here just about 2.5 months. I'm comfortable here, still-meh Spanish be damned.

Anyhow after Amadeus, we went back to Rosie's, chilled for a while, Tim left to get food and figure out what to do tonight. I had really wanted to go to the Club de Jazz tonight, but Gaby and Vale bailed on me and no one else was interested and so I was disappointed. I thought about going alone, but couldn't stand the thought of that. Just too lame, too much money for the social payback. Who knows, maybe I would've met some awesome person if I'd gone, but I was disheartened and sapped of desire to do anything after getting shot down. I ended up just watching City of God with Rosie and then coming home. Which wasn't so bad, in the end, I'd been wanting to see that again and am glad I did. It's a very good movie, if you're prepared for the brutality.

So now I'm home and not really tired and writing this. Also, I want to relate an idea that I had for writing the other day, which might be incredibly stupid but I don't care because it tickles me. Wouldn't it be interesting to write two parallel or somehow connected stories and then overlap them by alternating words. So if one started "Once upon a time..." and the other "Call me Ishmael..." the finished product would go "Once call upon me a Ishmael time..." It just seems like it'd be interesting to see the sentences and phrases and such that resulted from that. Tim pointed out that you might even need to have three stories to make sure the reader understood what was going on. I am a genius and one of these days I'm going to do that. The above idea is copyright Luke Bostian, 2006, so nobody even think about stealing it or I'll sue you blind.

On a slightly down note, neither Mara nor Laura called today, so that was kind of a bust. But that's all right, I was half-expecting them not to call. Still, it's a disappointment. This day was kind of lame, actually. I didn't do very much, I ate practically nothing (I haven't been eating particularly well the past couple of days, which will change tomorrow because if I leave the house at all, which I might not owing to my homework load, it'll be to hit up that vegetarian place in Providencia) and I had a couple of medium-sized disappointments. But I'm in a good mood nevertheless. Songs of the day: Taj Mahal's cover of "Johnny Too Bad" and "Seed 2.0" by the Roots. 'Night (or should I say, 'Morning?).