lilitu23

After a rough start I ended up having a pretty good day yesterday. Got my nails painted (toes red and fingers black) and spent all afternoon goofing off online with Facebook. I hate it when I fritter away so much time with useless online distractions (I ought to be practicing my music or something like that). But after a hastily prepared dinner I went to the orientation meeting for the Society of Janus, and it looks like a club I could really benefit by joining. Been wanting to explore BDSM practices for a long time and this looks like a way to make connections with intelligent like-minded people in a low-stress manner (not in bars and that whole scene which I can't deal with). The $40 membership fee is more than I should spend on my budget, but it might pay off. Better chance of meeting someone this way, with all the events they organize and promote, than paying the same amount to some online dating service where I'll meet people who want to cyber-flirt and then never follow through on actually meeting. Then after the orientation, I almost went straight home but I was feeling so good (from the Cymbalta?) I went to a free music gig at the Make-Out Room that had already started. I walked in on a fantastic performance by a 23-piece big band with five-member chorus led by Graham Connah, whose Zappa-influenced compositions and arrangements were staggeringly brilliant. What a phenomenal bunch of musicians, too, in a tiny club with great sound. The four best clarinetists in the SF Bay Area - Beth Custer, Ben Goldberg, Cornelius Boots and Aaron Novik - were sitting directly across from me. And Steve Adams from ROVA Sax Quartet was on flute. And many other top-notch players. Went and talked to Graham afterwards and told him how great it was. Here is the MySpace page for the group: Admiral Ted Brinkley...

So it's too soon to say if my good mood is a result of the 20mg Cymbalta I just started, but I took the second dose this morning. And tonight I go see my doctor at the Transgender Clinic and hopefully get my first prescription for the estrogen. And if I can, I am going to take BART over to Berkeley and go to the chanun'pa prayer circle that I've missed the last two Tuesday nights.

The one thing I will say is that I had a really hard time getting to sleep last night. Got home around midnight and goofed off more on the computer till almost three am, went to bed and couldn't sleep, got up again and posted on Facebook, went back to bed at four and don't know how long it took me to get to sleep. So either the Cymbalta is keeping me awake, or it could have been the black tea I drank yesterday (but that was at noon and wasn't that strong to keep me up after 16 hours). My alarm went off at eight (I'm trying to break the habit of sleeping in all morning) and I went back to sleep, and got up feeling tired at ten am. It's noon now and I'm wide awake...