You know the scene in Best of Show when the gay guys are packing kimonos? "Okay, now counting that one, you've packed six kimonos. We're going to be in Philadelphia forty-eight hours." "So I really need... I really need one more, I need seven." Well, Bruce was here visiting me for a few days. Although he didn't bring kimonos, he did bring lavender vanilla aromatherapy spray to spray on the pillows. That is equivalent to six kimonos in terms of gayness. Really. There's a chart somewhere.

That stuff smells fantastic, though, so I'm glad Bruce is so gay. And when he was left to his own devices on Monday (I had to teach and go to class) he went shopping downtown and bought me my very own bottle. I am now at two-and-a-half kimonos on the gay man scale of gayness because I own this bottle. (You get way more points for traveling with your gay items.)

So, Bruce was only here for a few days, but we had a great time. He came on Sunday night, and brought me a giant Kermit-the-Frog. I was so excited. Every time we go to the Muppet area of the new Disney theme park, I am tempted to buy Kermit paraphernalia. Now I finally own the best Kermit item of all!

I also had a gift for him: a Kung-Fu Hamster. It sings "Kung-Fu Fighting" in a squeaky hamster voice and whirls tiny nunchucks around, and does a karate chop move. It's a Kung-Fu Hamster! I've had it in my bathroom for a while. I'll miss listening to it sing its squeaky little song and, you know, kick ass among my toiletries.

When Bruce got here, we went out to dinner and brought Kermit and the Kung-Fu Hamster along. The wait staff thought we were cute. Or possibly insane. Hard to tell.

On Monday, Bruce went shopping and I taught my class. I forgot all my lecture notes at home, but it didn't matter, because I remembered enough to do my lecture anyway. I was on, man. One of my last lectures, and it was a good one. It was about persona. From the Latin word meaning "mask" in case you care. Come over to my house sometime, I'll give you a great hourlong lecture about it.

I realized while I was carpooling my friends across the bridge that I get such an adrenaline rush while teaching that for a couple of hours after that, I can't stop talking. I mean, I can NOT stop talking. I'm like, "Hi! How are you guys? My lecture was amazing today! And my kids' poems were great. I'm so proud of them! Their reading is on Friday, did you know that? Oh, I better change lanes. Hello! So what's going on? Oh, class was so good, even though I left my notes at home. I talked the whole time and it was great! So where do you want to go to lunch? I lectured on persona today, which means mask, did you know that? Hello! How are you guys?"

I have a sinking feeling that I've been doing this all semester long. I hope none of my friends have been trying to tell me that their dog died, or they have some kind of wasting disease. Because if they did, I missed it. "Yeah, right, dead dog. My class was great! Hello! What's up?"

After class, Bruce and I went out to dinner at this amazing restaurant that I found out about when Danni took me there on our first date. (Danni's birthday party is coming up, to which I've been invited, so I'm going to see her again soon.) They didn't have the Best Wine in the World from last time, which was disappointing, but the dinner was good. Then we went and saw Monsters, Inc. which was so great, much better than I expected it to be. Bruce already saw it, but he decided I had to see it, because of little Boo. I loved little Boo!

I got Bruce addicted to Zoo Tycoon this weekend. We made a big zoo and had fun naming all the animals. We had the Amazing Procreating Wildebeests, who kept having babies, which we named stuff like The Condom Broke and We're Catholic and Horny Wildebeest. Then we stuck a couple of ostriches in there (because why not) and we thought the Wildebeests would eat them. They didn't eat them; they liked them! So we had two ostriches among the forty-five Wildebeests, and we named them They Didn't Eat Me and Yet, and then they had babies, which we named The Hell? and Am I A Wildebeest?

I know you're probably wholly uninterested in our Zoo Tycoon adventures, but it was fun. Oh, and we had guests who ended up wandering completely away from the main part of the Zoo into this sandy area. "Check them out, they're wandering out in the desert." "What, are they Jewish?" So we had little wandering Jewish people. We gave them a vending machine.

Let's see, what else? Oh, we went to the Musee Mechanique, below the Cliff House. This place kicks all kinds of ass. It's a whole bunch of old games from the 20s and stuff-- most of which operate on quarters, but there are dime, nickel and even penny machines. It's free to get in, but you need to bring plenty of change to play with the machines.

There was a fortune-telling machine that types out your fortune on an old typewriter. There was a 3-D picture show about the 1906 earthquake. There was a machine to test your loveability that pronounced Bruce as "Gay" within a second and a half. (I think I scored "Lukewarm" or something.) And the "test your strength" machines where if you got to the top you were a "Champion" and if you got about a third of the way up, you were a "Woman."

There were a lot of these diorama type ones, with scenes that come to life if you put a quarter in, like a bunch of frolicking fairies, or a barbershop quartet, or Santa's workshop. My favorites were the morbid ones, though. The first one I tried was the "Opium Den" where all these Chinese people are sitting around with pipes, and when you put in your quarter, they start twitching, and a dragon comes out of the wall. How unbelievable is that? Then there's the execution ones, like the one where the little doors open, and a little priest makes the sign of the cross, and this guy's little head gets chopped off.

Oh, we also went to Sonoma, to go wine tasting. We had a good time, but man, 2000 must have been a bad year for vintners, because we tasted a lot of substandard wine. I got a bottle of wine for my dad, because it is named after him, but I didn't get anything else. In retrospect, I wish I had bought a bottle of the dessert wine that Bruce got-- it was delicious, the only really great thing we tried. But it was expensive, so I passed on it.

To sum up: the visit was great. I adore Bruce. We fought like mad when we were dating, but ever since we ironed out the Bruce is Gay thing and stopped trying to make our relationship something it was clearly never meant to be, we've had a great relationship.

I can't recall a single fight, or drifting apart, or hostility, or weirdness, or anger, or coolness, or even mild annoyance, not for the past seven years-- isn't that incredible? We love each other, we cherish our time together, we take our stuffed animals out to dinner.

Aww, I'm feeling all warm and fuzzy now.

Zoo Tycoon is warping my brain. I'm tempted-- reeeally tempted -- to buy a third parakeet next year. I know that three parakeets is kind of a crapshoot-- it has the potential to go horribly awry, especially with the two freaks who already live in the Cassiecabana (also known as Phoebe's House of Self Love).

They already have this relationship set up, where Phoebe beats up Pigwidgeon, and Pigwidgeon takes it like a man. (Or in this case, a deformed parakeet.) And a third parakeet could completely upset this delicate balance of power, I know.

But part of me just wants to see what would happen. A new parakeet! A hand-fed one, who would help me demonstrate to Phoebe that if she sits on my hand, I most likely won't kill her. A white one, who I could name Hedwig.

Yeah, I want this parakeet, I do. Somebody hold me back.

"It wasn't until I stood on the other side of the counter that I realized how exorbitant those prices really are. Someone orders a drink and something to eat, and hands me a ten dollar bill, and I hand them back... well, basically nothing."