Ooops, I did it again

Yeah, I’ve been gone a while. Life gets in the way of blogging, and I haven’t got much to say.

Woohoo! I have warm, clean air. Heh. So do my tenants but there was no point in not replacing both units at the same time. The new furnaces were installed last week after after I had the ducts cleaned and each new furnace sports an Aprilaire air cleaner. Between the duct cleaning and the filters, we’ve noticed a real difference in the air quality. It’s nice not to wake up with headache or all stuffed up. The systems were prepped for central air installation when the weather gets nicer. Yeah, I went the whole nine yards.

Also on deck in the next two months is exterior trim painting (the house is brick), window repair and a bunch of other repairs, including the installation of soffit vents. This is shaping up to be an expensive year for me since I’m not a d-i-y kinda gal for exterior work or anything complex.

Mel and I went to see a performance of the Buffalo Philharmonic recently that included a short performance by the BGMC. It was most enjoyable. A few days later I received a call from “Cindy” at the BPO sales office asking how I liked the performance and whether I’d gone because of the programming or the guest appearances. She also wanted to know how I’d learned about the performance. Once I let it be known that I’d seen a flyer at the local Pride Center and I was primarily interested in hearing the BGMC sing, that was it.

Cindy immediately confided she was a member of “the community” and tried to sell me tickets to an upcoming k.d. lang performance. She even went so far as to tell me about another local LGBT event where I could buy raffle tickets to win k.d. lang passes. She went on and on. Finally, I had to stop her. “Look, you’ve made an erroneous assumption here” I said. “I am not interested in seeing k.d. lang.” Boy, was she suprised. Frankly, I was annoyed. Why do some lesbians assume we all like the same thing?

Sadly, the women’s chorus I’d been singing in disbanded yesterday. The chorus was started late last summer by a couple I know. I’d been friends with one of the women for a long time until her partner came along — you know how it is when people couple up and drop all the friends they had when they were single. So, in addition to singing I was glad to be able to socialize with my friend again and get to know her partner, Kay, a little better. It was really Kay that was the driving force behind starting and leading the chorus. My friend, being an easy going, medicated-for-depression, third-shift worker and asthmatic with a variety of medical problems isn’t known for her initiative or follow-through.

Kay had gotten us an excellent conductor a few weeks ago and we hoped to attract a few more women to give this conductor a good group to work with. But, despite advertising in a variety of ways in the last few months we were never able to get more than 8 semi-regular members. Then Kay came and dropped the bomb that she needed a “sabbatical” because, among other things, her home life with my friend was suffering. Actually, my friend hadn’t shown up to sing for a while by this point. None of the rest of us felt that we could take the leadership position, especially knowing what little momentum we had would take a big hit over the summer anyway. So we are done, at least temporarily. I know that essential self-preservation means not taking on too much and being able to back off when you have. But, I still feel like we were a victim of someone else’s ennui. God, I hate that.