White Out.

It would be much more enjoyable to get snowed in during the week, but this damn blizzard hit over the weekend. Gave me an opportunity to take down my Chri-muss tree (What? It ain't Valentino Day yet--give me a damn break), fire up the crotch pot and tidy up the hot mess that has become my house.

What would you do with two days trapped in your house with an acceptable excuse to blow off all your obligations?

I cranked up Prince and danced around my kitchen as I moved between cooking and doing laundry.

And to be honest, I did leave the damn house--the gym didn't close for the snow days, so today I still had to teach spinning. Then I decided to stay and take the next class. Why? Because it made me warm.

Friday, after spinning for three hours (endorphin high, anyone?), I got to see an extraordinary dance performance. Since I didn't have to review it, I just got to be a delighted audience member, pleasurably taking it all in. When the curtain rose, the dance transported me--right to the center of whatever tangible divinity we can access as mere mortals. The music, the skilled dancers moving through space together in their gorgeous bodies showed me--in an instant--what a glorious thing it is to be alive. To really be alive. To make meaning of experience and communicate it through symbols that penetrate all of us who take the human form is the highest of arts. And being in the presence of that is among life's greatest gifts.

I felt all that in about 3.2 seconds Friday night.

I live in a strange little city that doesn't make the map for the vast majority of people. Yet I get to take in the kinds of arts and culture on a weekly, if not daily basis, that truly fill me up. I also get to be in the presence of others who choose to do the same thing, and then are willing to sit back and talk about it with me. Often because I don't give them a choice in the matter (ha! LOVE being a teacher!), but still. I figured out how to teach Oscar Wilde in a journalism class, and I made my students read this. You should read it, too, if you're not familiar with it. God damn that man was a genius. And he continues to inspire me and give me new justifications for my life and choices. Love that!

After the dance performance, I hightailed it to a little brewpub where I met up with Kiki and the Bear to see a Glaswegian band headline a sold-out show to a roomfull of dirty hipsters, half of whom I knew. This means (1) this town is officially too small for me, and (2) Kiki, the Bear, and I were the only three present who had dragged a comb through our hair in the past three days. But the show was fun. The temperature outside had dipped well below zero, and as the little greaseheads in their flashdance outfits slipped outside to smoke their Gaulloises, I could feel the cold burst in and see the heat as it escaped. The small windows peering out of the painted, exposed-brick walls fogged up with condensation in the corners from the sweaty bodies bopping around like freshly-caught fish in a bucket. It made me smile and think, son of a bitch, this is what it is to be alive and young(ish) in Michigan.

But the fucking snow has foiled my plans for what Sid deemed the gayest Super Bowl Sunday party ever. Since K and B can't get out here without risking life and limb, we can't spend the afternoon watching this, drinking highballs and eating the roast beast I made in the crotch pot, slowing down only to catch the half-time show. I mean, hello? Prince, and perhaps a glimpse of those finely chiseled asses in tight, shiny pants?

I'll miss the boys. But don't you worry. I'll still be on that cruise ship--might even dress the part while I sing along. Too bad it's not as fun without an audience, though.