It's Raining Men

I awoke early yesterday morning to a miserably grey day in Chicago. The rain was softly falling and the sky was all clouded over. Weather-wise, it was not a very promising start to Pride Parade 2006.

Indoors, Lexie and Emma and myself had agreed to host a pre-Parade get together for our friends for 10am. I bought a lot of rainbow decorations including beads, to help give the apartment a more festive feel. I did buy a face mask with feathers all over it, but given the rain outside on the day, I chose not to wear it. Instead, I made a rainbow necklace of all the different colours of beads and that worked nicely. The apartment looked great though, and we think we might just leave the decorations up for a while.

Lexie's work friends arrived first and we all sat around just laughing and drinking. Of course I was not quite ready to face beers at that time of day, so I settled instead on mimosas, and made sure I had adequate supplies of champagne and OJ to keep my friends happy. But as it turned out, only Irene turned up, and she was such a trooper. She'd only had about 3 hours sleep, and somehow rather impressively kept up the pace until the early afternoon.

The Parade itself was such fun. The floats were colourful and so was everyone that marched. The dance beats that were coming from the floats were deafening, but all really contagious and I was grooving along from the side of the road as everyone travelled by. Not quite the same calibre as Sydney's Mardi Gras of course, but it was fabulous all the same.

And then to cap off the day beautifully, Ems and me joined Lexie and her work friends at a house party. That's right friends, I went to my first kegger. I felt so American, for the first time since I arrived here. I didn't know the boys hosting the party, but it didn't matter in the least. We imbibed cheap beer pumped straight from the keg, and convened outside in the front yard to chat well into the early evening. Everyone was mixing really well and the vibe from the Parade kept the party going strongly.

By 9pm though, it was all over for us, and Lexie and me took ourselves home while we were still having fun - certainly the right time to leave any party. And all in all, it was a wonderful weekend. Our apartment had survived its first party and my only regret was that the evil girls on the ground floor weren't around to hear us.