Mood:
happyNow Playing: Somebody Told Me
That's right, I spent the 21st thru the 28th of December in Colorado visiting my friend Jayne. I'm going to try to recap things the way they happened but I slept so little while I was there that days started to blend into each other. If you stop by Jayne, and I've messed this up, let me know so I can adjust days etc. Word to the wise, this will probably be a long post.
Tuesday, December 21st:
I flew out early in the morning so I would get into Colorado by 2:00 pm or so. Unfortunately, because my ID hasn't been changed yet I had to fly in boy mode to avoid hassles. Can't wait until that won't be an issue. The airport was fairly quiet and I had no problem finding my flight but it seemed like people were giving me a lot of odd looks. I have a feeling that I'm not doing a great job passing as a boy in boy mode these days. Thank God I finally bought an iPod (which I reccommend to everyone even though I hate apple computers) so I had something to do during my flights and layovers. Lets face it, airplane music just isn't cutting it these days and most of the movies are Cs and Ds. I arrived in Denver around 2:00 pm and was able to find Jayne pretty quickly and we were on our way. We ended up hanging out at her place for the first evening during which time she ran to work for a few hours and left me time to change, unpack and just veg a little. When she got back from work we decided to go out and catch a movie and settled on Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events which was very good :-) And believe it or not, I used the women's room in public for the first time halfway through the movie. Sad that it's taken me this long, no? It's kind of odd but even when I was in Boston, I always managed to use the bathroom in the hotel rather than while I was out though I wasn't consciously trying to. For those of you who have never done it, it's not that big of a deal but before you've done it it definitely has a scarey edge to it. As it turned out it was almost a bit anticlimactic since there was no one in there at the same time I was (though later on during my trip I used public restrooms several times that were FULL of women). After the movie we ended up crashing and talking late into the night (a common theme for this trip).
Wednesday, December 22nd:
We woke up late on Wednesday and were pretty lazy most of the morning. Eventually we got showered and changed and then had lunch at a quaint little place (and the name escapes me) with the most delicious food. As I always seem to be, I was a bit paranoid about being "clocked" but Jayne yelled at me enough that I stopped mentioning it for a while. After lunch we stopped at Marshalls to do a little shopping (big mistake to take me shopping :-P) for Jayne but I think I ended up buying more than she did before we left. That was also the first time I had use the women's dressing room while out shopping. In the past when I went shopping with T* we tended to do one of three things: buy clothes in what we thought would be the right size and then return them if needed for different sizes, have T* try on clothes (worked well with pants since we wear the same size) to see how they fit before we bought them, or grabbed some clothes and go find a mens fitting room where I could hop in and try things on. Silly, no? So yeah, first time in a women's changing room and I was being my stupid quiet self while Jayne was chatting away in the room next to me and knocking on my door periodically to ask how things fit. I should have loosened up a bit more and enjoyed myself but it was still a great experience. After shopping (where I found some killer pinstripe pants) Jayne dropped me off at her place and went to do a few hours at work during which time I updated here. When she got back we decided to get a little girled up (little for me, lot for her hot self) and go get some dinner. We ended up settling on the olive garden which wasn't exactly super fancy but it was still fun and italian food is always a treat.
Thursday, December 23rd:
On Thursday we decided to buy some groceries so we had access to food through the holiday (always useful) so we wandered the aisles at one of the local markets where no less than 2 guys hit on Jayne. Hee hee. Eventually we found everything we were looking for and were on our way. Later on that day we went to a video place to rent some movies to watch (Jayne introduced me to Eddie Izzard, so funny) and then afterwards we got a chance to hang out with some of her friends from work which was a lot of fun. Just to be able to sit and talk with some random people that had no idea about my gender issues and didn't really care anyways was definitely good for me.
Friday, December 24th:
The only thing I remember about Christmas eve is cooking a yummy yummy dinner. Jayne and I made steak with onions and mushrooms and seasonings and added a beef based rice to the side. It was so good and we had a lot of fun just playing around in the kitchen. Jayne's going to have to fill in this gap in my memory. I'm drawing a blank on what we did the rest of the day. :-P
Saturday, December 25th:
Merry Christmas (if you celebrate)
We slept in fairly late on Christmas but I ended up getting a chance to chat with my fam which was nice. We had decided to take a drive in the mountains since not much else would be going on so we packed some stuff up and hopped in the car and were off. Jayne provided a very cool soundtrack for our trip full of Indie Rock along with a nice mix of more mainstream stuff (music I subsequently stole from her, lol) and we wound our way up and down the mountains for most of the morning. The views were completely amazing and NPR was fun. Eventually we came across Black Hawk Casino (don't ask me where that is) somewhere up in the mountains which is an indian run casino so it was definitely open on Christmas. In fact, it had it's own town to go with it which was open as well so we decided to stop and wander around a bit. We parked in a garage connected to one of the casinos (since it was free) and wandered in. Well of course they always check ID on anyone who looks semi-young so Jayne handed over her ID and then I gave the attendant mine. Unfortunately, because my license is from out of state it gets extra scrutiny in CO anyways so of course the guy looked it over and over which only made me more self-conscious (first person I had had to give my license to when out as myself, remembering that I haven't finished my name change nor changed the M to F) but we got through unscathed. We wandered a bit and eventually ended up in a little Irish restaurant where we got lunch and Jayne picked on me for ordering chicken fried steak (yes, I live in a trailerpark ok? :-P). The Casino was interesting and a nice place to wander a bit but neither one of us were gamblers so eventually we continued on our way and headed home. In the evening we went to the movies (Oh yeah! The movies are open on Christmas day!) and caught House of Flying Daggers which I thought was really good and reminded me a lot of Hero.
Sunday, December 26th:
On Sunday Jayne drove me around looking for a place to get my navel pierced but the places she had heard were good all ended up being closed. We did happen to come across one place that was open (though they hadn't planned to be) so I told her we had to stop because I wasn't sure I'd have the nerve to do it again if I passed up the opportunity. Inside I told the guy what I wanted and then of course we did the whole fun driver's license thing again. Plus, this time I had to sign my name and fill out consent forms which sucked but I managed. Getting the piercing put in is not as painful as I thought it would be and the guy who did it was really very cool about the whole thing and gave me his number to call if I had any problems with it. However, it did end up being sore for the next few days and rubbing it against things (like clothes or blankets) definitely made me wince, but I think it turned out nicely. Later that night we went to Denver to just see the city and go the clubs. That story will need an entry of it's own so keep an eye out for it soon.
Monday, December 27th:
On Monday we didn't do much other than hang out and recoup a little. We ordered some pizza in the morning and just sat around talking most of the day. Towards the evening I made Jayne take me to Best Buy so I could get a jumpdrive to steal some of her music with (verified music addict) and then we stopped to get some dinner for the last time while I was there. When we got home I packed and then we did our best to get some sleep since my flight left early in the morning but at 2:00 am we were both still up so we quit trying and watched White Oleander instead (which is an amazing movie).
Tuesday, December 28th:
We ended up awake right through the night and continued chatting as I finished packing and we got ready to go to the airport. It was depressing knowing that after spending a week as me, I had to go back home in boy mode and back to school as a guy, but it did help to harden my resolve to move to fulltime as soon as I'm able to. We said our goodbyes quickly and I was on my way home.
Thanx Jayne :-)
