Earl and I are just getting home from the New York State Fair. I have several pictures to share and tales to spin, but I thought I would share my video first.
Every year I ride just one ride on the midway, and that ride is called the “Top Spin”. This year I took my video camera along for the ride.
The man running the ride gave us an extra spin, so there’s an edit. You’ll see that we rode for nearly five minutes.
I am not the one screaming like a girl.
It’s been a while since I’ve highlighted a song from one of my DJ gigs. I just discovered this song this morning and I have to say that I’m loving it. It’s already found a spot in my playlist for next week.
Here’s Captcha with “Close 2 Me”.
When my sister moved in with us a couple of weeks ago she brought along her cat Xena. Xena is around seven years old and very set in her ways. She’s nearly the direct opposite in demeanor from our cat Tom; she’ll think nothing of swatting at you while you’re feeding her or hissing at you if she doesn’t like your boots.
I’ve always been a cat person (perhaps I was meant to be a lesbian or something) and I have always been able to tame the wildest of the feline beasts. Folks would tell me that their cat hides from everyone but I’d always manage to get them into my arms and perhaps evoke a purr from the whole ordeal.
Xena, on the other hand, hates my guts.
Because Tom doesn’t let along with other cats and Xena isn’t diggin’ the new digs all that much, she is living in the basement. She has quite the set up; sleeping bags to hide in, cat toys to bat about, a litter box that is cleaned daily and several servings of “treats”.
She still hates my guts. She screams and hisses at me every chance she gets and once in a while she’ll come batting at my feet. I once laid down on the floor to get her to cozy up to me and she acted all innocent and then when she got within a foot me she started screaming and hissing and coming at me with her (lack of) claws. I usually speak to her in a stern voice when she does this and she’ll go running up the stairs and into the rafters between the basement and the first story floor.
She just hates me.
I’m not giving up the challenge though. I’ll still make sure she’s well attended to and keep trying to get on her good side until we ship her off to Switzerland with my sister and the baby (my brother-in-law is playing hockey on a Swiss team this season).
But it’s obvious that there is no love lost from Xena to her Uncle J.P.
I just finished watching Hillary Clinton’s speech at the Democratic Convention last night. I’ve never sat through an entire political speech in my life. I watched and listened to every word that Senator Clinton had to say. I teared up.
Here’s the thing. I am a supporter of Hillary Clinton. It is my dream to be able to meet her in person, shake her hand, look her in the eye and simply say “thank you”. I firmly wanted Hillary Clinton as our next President of the United States. I still believe that Hillary Clinton will be the first female President of the United States. She clearly has what it takes.
But it’s not going to happen in 2008.
My support is now fully behind Senator Barack Obama. For the next three months I am going to learn, research and listen to everything I can to know about this man. I know that I won’t be disappointed. When I vote for Obama as President in November, I will be a well-educated voter who is being a responsible American. To do any less is to throw your vote away.
Anyone that votes for Mc Cain out of spite because Senator Clinton is not the Democratic nominee is a dumb shit, plain and simple. Voting for Mc Cain is your way of saying ‘I do not believe in what the Democratic party represents, I do not believe in what Senator Clinton is fighting for, and I am happy with the current direction of the United States.’
Earl and I had dinner at a local Greek restaurant today. Seated next to us was an obnoxious man with obnoxious teenagers and a wife that was oddly dressed like a pimento. They were discussing the Democratic Convention and how absurd it was. The pimento stated she couldn’t bring herself to watch it. I think she had the vapours or something. The ring leader of the bunch went on and on about how Obama doesn’t stand a chance in winning the Presidency. “No one will vote for him”.
I believe he was wrong.
Together, we can make sure he was.
Earl and I kept silent during this loud declaration at the next table as it wasn’t really our place to say anything. Let’s face it, we were eavesdropping. I deduced that they are the product of big government, big corporations and privileged upbringing. Granted it was an assumption, but I had the feeling that they didn’t need to worry about paying medical bills, paying their mortgage or putting food on the table. I envisioned them driving a Hummer, oblivious to the men and women that are dying in Hummers in Iraq in a senseless war.
A vote for Mc Cain is a vote for four more years of the “same same same”. A vote for Mc Cain is a vote for “no, I do not believe you and Earl should be entitled to equal rights.” A vote for Mc Cain is a vote for “only those that can afford exorbitant medical fees should have health care.”
Set the pouting aside, be a good American and make a responsible vote in November.
By the way, if you don’t vote at all in November not only are you a dumb shit, you are a very bad American.
I’m getting ready to hit the road again for a bit. I hope to ride 90 minutes before supper.
Proper clothing is always required for the serious cyclist.
I am sitting at the Marina along the Erie Canal on an abbreviated lunch hour. Work is very crazy today in that I’m getting a lot of “dumb customer” calls. One woman asked if cat pee would hurt the keyboard. The answer would be “yes”. I remarked on Twitter that perhaps licensing should be required to own a computer.
I am listening to a DJ Feel mix on my iPod; the mix is a gift from dave in Toronto. We are both fans of the work of DJ Feel, a Russian Trance DJ. This mix decidedly different than the other work I have heard from him but equally as enjoyable. His work inspires me to look for more gigs as DJ SuperCub.
A large 747 just flew over the car, it’s headed for the old Air Force base. This 747 has a large radar dish on the top of it, the dish rotates as they fly. How impressively high-tech!
The clouds are giving way to blue sky. My bike ride tonight should be quite enjoyable. The breezes are cool, autumn is warning us of her arrival. I welcome the impending debut of my favorite season of the year.
Life at the Manor has been interesting this weekend. The baby is doing well but Earl and I are definitely not used to a house full of people. It’s all working out but it’s definitely a different experience.
I have been rather lazy in my health goals over the last couple of weeks. I have been slowly losing weight but I would say that my attempts have been half-hearted at best. I decided at the end of last week that I had approached this latest attempt wrong. Yesterday I ramped up my efforts and made new goals for myself. So far, so good.
One of the things that I felt was amiss was that I was thinking of this as a “diet” rather than “eating healthier”. Quite frankly I’m sick of dieting. Then again, who isn’t sick of dieting? It seems like since I lost that first bunch of weight back in the beginning of the oughts that I’ve been dieting ever since. I never learned new habits, instead I denied myself food (at times) so that I wouldn’t gain the weight back. This approach isn’t working. It won’t work for the long term and the result is a constant battle of the bulge.
So what am I doing differently? For starters I stopped weighing myself. I don’t care how much I weigh, as long as it’s a good weight. I often mention that I drop kick my scale from time to time. I could easily lose weight by starving myself but then I’d be losing muscle mass, not fat. I need to lose fat. Therefore I’m gauging my success by my BMI (body mass index) and I’m striving to cut that in half by the end of the year. It’s an ambitious goal. I’m looking forward to the challenge.
I didn’t want to admit it when I talked about this before but I need to just give up beer and all alcohol for that matter. I don’t know if I want to do this permanently but at the very least I need to do it to get things under control. A lite beer once a month isn’t going to kill me but I’ve been chugging down the cheap stuff with the best of them this summer and quite frankly all that beer has parallel parked itself over my abs. Does that mean I’ll skip Saranac Thursday for the remaining two weeks? No. I’ll just be the designated driver and drink water.
I want to be able to take a punch in the gut without having things swing or bounce around after I take the punch. You never know when you’re going to have to take a punch in the gut but I figure it’s good to be prepared. I was never a boy scout but I certainly know the importance of some of the things that they teach and being prepared is one of them.
And lastly I am going to stick to the cycling and such until my feet freeze to the ground from the cold temperatures. Autumn is my favorite season and a beautiful time for exercise and I plan on embracing all that Mother Nature has to offer. I am allowing myself ONE day without outdoor exercise a week. It’s a shame I don’t deliver mail because I’ll be out there doing something for an hour a day six days a week. This exercise will be complimented with the various crunches, squeezes, lifts and whatnot that I do inside.
I’ve never measured health success by BMI before so this will be a new experience for me. I believe I’ve set myself up for success and I am confident that I will achieve it. At the very least, I’ll feel quite confident in my Blue Marvel costume at Halloween.
I jumped on my bike and rode 24 km (about 15 miles)1 this morning. I had a burst of creativity about a third of the way into the ride and I formulated a bunch of blog entries I’m going to tackle over the next couple of weeks. I even remembered to write down my thoughts when I arrived home.
By the way, I have discovered the bliss of no underwear under my bike shorts. w00t!
Here’s a snippet of the ride. Notice I don’t know what the date is.
1 In an effort to support my sister who now lives in Canada (most of the time) and because I am such a geek and this weird need to make myself stand out a bit, I have made a personal conversion to metric. Well, most of the time.
I’m always amused when I read various blogs from big city folk and they talk about how the clubs are too busy and things are just too gay gay gay some days. There is just simply too much to do and they have no idea how they are going to fit it all into their schedule.1
After a one week absence, last night I DJ’d at the only gay club within 50 miles of our house. It’s my regular Friday night gig and one that I moderately enjoy. I have to tame my music selection considerably in order to keep the crowd’s attention, as the belief in these parts is that if you haven’t heard it regurgitated on the radio and can’t sing the words to it, it’s not worth the time or energy to dance to. At least I have gotten them trained to realise that remixes are o.k. and that super electronically augmented Britney is still super electronically augmented Britney regardless of what has been done to the song to make it a little more bearable.
There were less than 20 people in the club the entire night. At 12:50 a.m. I couldn’t continue the gig in good conscious and drain one of the cash registers with my appearance fee, so I slashed my prices faster than you can say Wal*Mart (Always White Trash, Always), popped in one of my pre-mixed CDs that would carry them to closing and said good night. It wasn’t that I couldn’t fill the dance floor with the music selection, there wasn’t anyone to get onto the dance floor to begin with. The club used to thrive and the dance floor used to be packed. Last night I considered shooting off a cannon to see if I could hit anyone.
At first I took this personally and figured that this old warhorse has run his course and can’t draw the crowds in like he used to. But as we made our way home Earl and I drove through the Brewery District and found all the clubs there dead as well. There just ain’t any people here.
That kind of sucks.
Earl and I do a lot of traveling to keep our schedules busy, to play with those that think like us and to find a day that is just too gay gay gay. So if you’re a reader from a big city that has managed to squeeze the time to read this entry into your hectic schedule, please be advised that there are many of us out here that have little to do outside of bitching about the small town we live in on our blog.
1 This is not to be confused with being too immersed in the culture. Sometimes too much of a good thing is really too much of a good thing, but it’s still a good thing.
This has been an interesting week for me. Last weekend was a long weekend for us. We didn’t get home from our adventure in Toronto until Monday evening, and that was after a stop at the hospital to meet the baby boy my sister had given birth to that day.
Work has been going along phenomenally well this week. I finally signed the papers that sealed the deal that I would be a full-time employee come Labor Day. I am very excited about working full-time again. Things on the work front have just “clicked” into place. I don’t dread getting up in the morning, I embrace it.
The people that have said that “life really begins at 40” are pretty much dead on. In my 20s I had no idea who I was. In my 30s I knew who I wanted to be. At 40, I feel like I’m the person I was meant to be.
The picture above is Earl and I enjoying brunch on the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto last weekend. We walked along the paved trail and we talked about things that only lovers talk about. We reveled in the sun and lost ourselves in the shadows. I couldn’t ask for a better partner for this crazy thing we call life. He’s behind me no matter what I do, say or feel. When he said “I do” all those years ago he really meant it (as did I). I never forget how fortunate I feel.
We made new friends last weekend and we solidified growing friendships with others. We played with those that play like us. As we crossed borders, lines were blurred. We hung out and chatted with old friends this week. We drank with old friends that party like us. New family members made their appearance and old family members came to greet him. I stand surrounded by those the care for me and I stand and care for those that might need a piece of me from time to time.
I always believe that life is all about learning. And what I’m learning is that life is really and truly good.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!