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This morning one of the mailroom guys came to me with a package, which was a surprise, since the only packages I receive at the office are from our freelance abstractors, and I wasn’t expecting a shipment. Well, imagine my anticipation when I saw that the box was labeled “proflowers.com.” I opened the gift card, and it was from my honey bunny, Thom! The collection of Easter presents include: a yellow miniature rose plant, two boxes of bunny Peeps, chocolates in an egg-shaped tin, and a cute little bunny toy (with posable ears!). Yay, best boyfriend ever.

So I’ve been listening to Jason Mraz (Waiting for My Rocket To Come) a lot lately. My usual mode of music exposure these days is to put a CD in my discman and listen to it over and over again, during my commute and/or at work, until I’m completely infused with it (read: tired of it), and only then do I change CDs. Lather, rinse, repeat. Earlier this evening on the Metro, I had one song on repeat and I thought, this song would totally make me cry if I were in the right mood–or wrong mood, depending on how you look at it. It’s a heart-breaker: “Absolutely Zero.”

Who am I to say this situation isn’t great?
It’s our time to make the most of it
How could we ever know that this would happen to me,
   not that easy, no
All along the fault is up for grabs and there you have it
Well it’s for sale go make your offer,
I’ll sell it for no less than what I bought it for
Pay no more than absolutely zero.

I’m planning to visit my parents at the end of April. I’ve been looking at fares online, which you know I love to do–I could spend hours playing travel agent–and the cheapest fare I found is on JetBlue, which runs two nonstop flights daily between Washington (Dulles) and Oakland. National and San Francisco are my preferred airports for the sake of convenience–I live minutes from National, and my parents live minutes from SFO–but I’m used to schlepping for cheaper fares. And it might be worth the supposedly better JetBlue experience. I’ve heard mostly good things about them and am kind of curious. Anyone have any JetBlue experiences to share?

Yesterday was Tartan Day, and it reminded me that I meant to write about kilts. Not history, mind you, but just the fact that I wouldn’t mind wearing something kilt-like now and then. A few months ago, the Met held an exhibition (an expanded version of the one at the V&A) called “Bravehearts: Men in Skirts,” and in February, about 100 men in kilts and skirts converged in New York to proclaim their right to wear unbifurcated garments. Intrigued, Thom and I did some websearching, and found some neat links. Of course there’s Utilikilts (which we’ve known about for some time), Hector Russell (which carries a comprehensive traditional line, but also more modern designs, yum), and Men in Time (a German firm that designs mostly long, elegant skirts for men). I wonder how popular or practical their skirts are. They’re pretty fabulous. Then again, anything looks good on their tall and perennially shirtless model.

I really like the “Primary Sources” section of The Atlantic. Each month it summarizes and excerpts various recent reports and studies, and usually has some interesting maps and charts. This month’s issue has a bit about the geography of campaign contributions (“The Nation in Numbers”), based on maps at Fundrace.org. The May 2004 issue includes a look at gay demographics (“Ozzie and Harry”), and reprints a map (PDF) showing the concentration of same-sex couples in D.C., based on the forthcoming Gay & Lesbian Atlas by Gary Gates and Jason Ost of the Urban Institute.

According to the authors, same-sex couples account for nearly one percent of households. Not surprisingly, male homosexual couples are likely to live in major urban areas, particularly along the East and West Coasts: San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Miami all score high on the study’s “gay index.” (In spite of its reputation, San Francisco–where 16 to 25 percent of adult males are thought to be homosexual–is only the tenth gayest town in the country, beaten out by Provincetown, Mass., and other famous gay meccas, but also by more-obscure locales, including North Druid Hills, Ga.) Lesbian couples, in contrast, tend to favor smaller cities, such as Portland, Maine, and Burlington, Vt., and also bucolic college towns–Northampton, Mass., for example. Such clustering aside, the study concludes that gay and lesbian couples are found virtually everywhere: in 99 percent of U.S. counties, according to the 2000 census. And more than a quarter of same-sex couples are raising children; these couples, like straight parents, have an average of two per family.

More articles on gay demographics are available on the Urban Institute website.

As a follow-up to yesterday’s entry, I came across a recent Curtis comic that was apropos (via Sam). Click for full size:

In my entry on Bye Bye Birdie a while back, I forgot to mention that one of the pre-show announcements recognized some special guests in the audience, members of a local high-school gay-straight alliance. That’s awesome. (Why, back in my day… okay, fine, I can’t imagine my high school, a private Catholic school, having a gay-straight alliance, even now.) But anyway, it’s encouraging these days to see more and more gay youth getting the support they need. This reminds me that Youth Pride Day in D.C. is coming up, Saturday, Apr. 24. I’m definitely at the fringes of the target demographic, but I went last year with Lindsey and Lucy (both more youthful than I, let’s say), and it was kind of fun. Can you believe I hadn’t been to the P Street Beach before then?

Speaking of things queer, last week my mom sent me a letter and enclosed with it an article clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle: “Family legacy of fighting for freedom to love” (Mar. 12, 2004). It’s written by a lesbian–one of the first to be publicly married at City Hall in February–whose parents are an interracial couple and had their own struggles to face in the 1940s and ’50s. It’s a good read. Many thanks go to my mom for thinking of me when she read it, and taking the time to send it to me. My parents and I still have some gaps to bridge on the whole gay issue, lots of uncharted territory, but every now and then we take another surprising step, and that’s encouraging.

Most people might find this confusing; I think only people in my business–the oh-so-exciting world of abstracting and indexing–would find it funny. Which, in the end, is kind of sad. Enjoy this bibliographic divertissement, quoted in last week’s New Yorker (Mar. 29, 2004):

Department of Utter Confusion

From the Key Reporter, a newsletter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Librarians, archivists, and others who save The Key Reporter will note that starting with this issue–Number 1–the newsletter is numbered in accordance with the January-December calendar cycle. The first issue in a sequence of four will be published in January. The previous sequence followed the academic calendar, with the Number 1 issue appearing in the fall.

The Fall 2003 edition was wrongly identified as Number 3; it was Number 4. In past years the Summer issue was published in July and the Fall issue in November. In order to report promptly on the 40th Triennial Council last August, there was no Summer edition, and the Fall Key Reporter was mailed in September.

Well, that clears things up.