Okay, so things here are settling down a bit. So now that I'm mostly done with my schoolwork (just one 5-page paper due late next week), I'm off to Chicago for the weekend to see my friend Spencer from undergrad. The agenda:

Tonight: David Halperin will be giving a talk on gay men's health and his new book, What Do Gay Men Want? at the Center on Halsted as part of the "'Good' Sex? 'Bad' Sex? Just What Do Gay Men Want Anyways?" event this evening. Jim Pickett of Lifelube has been a key organizer of this.

Tomorrow: WICKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Need I say more? I can't wait! Stacey Ellen Wolf from UT-Austin was here a few weeks ago giving a talk called "Defying Gravity: Queer Conventions in the Musical Wicked." It was really quite a fabulous talk on how typically romantic / hetero conventions in musical theatre (down to the kinds of chords used in songs) are used in Wicked to build the relationship between the two female leads. So I'm really excited to finally see this play!

Saturday: I'm torn about Saturday. Do I stay or do I go? My dear friend Maxime's friend will be visiting Ann Arbor from NYC, and they're going to go party it up in Detroit. So I'm tempted to come back for that. But I'm also tempted to stay in Chicago and party my face off with Spencer. Decisions, decisions!

Hope you have a good weekend, too! I'll be reporting back.