Today is National Coming Out Day. I know it’s a little late in the season for reruns, but here’s my story.
J.P.
Introspective.
I’ve been kind of low key on the blog lately. I guess I haven’t been in the mood to write. My schedule has been crazy, my school deadlines are demanding and I feel like I’ve been white knuckling it a little bit for the past few days.
My complaint of professors that don’t care continues. On Friday we were given a multiple choice exam in my math class. The idea of a multiple choice exam in math is nothing new; you figure out the equation or whatever and select your answer from one of the four given. Here’s the kicker. About a quarter of the way into the exam the professor announced that he had made several typos in the exam and there were questions where none of the answers to choose from were correct, so we were to write in our answer and give justification. He geniunely made the errors, it wasn’t some tricky subplot to a continuing story arc.
It’s hard to care when the professor doesn’t seem to care. Nevertheless, I got an 82 on the exam. I thought I had done worse.
It has been unseasonably warm in these parts this week. I heard another citizen remark on the street to her friend, “I just love this global warming. It’s so balmy.” Meanwhile, the reservoir that provides our drinking water is 11 feet below it’s normal level and now they’re draining the canal to provide more water to the city by sending it back to the reservoir, the same city that dumps raw sewage into the canal because the sewer treatment plant is a mess.
Viva la poo poo.
Meanwhile I’ve been tinkering with photography. I find few suitable to share but I enjoy the escapism nonetheless.
Shadow.
I’m not a photographer. I don’t pretend to be. I thank the Universe for digital cameras, because I’m able to take a thousand shots of one scene and pick out the one that looks just right without having to purchase stock in Kodak.
I was inspired by the sunlight coming in the patio window. This is the shot I liked. My iPhoto has many near misses.
Trigonometry.
With today being observed as Columbus Day here in the states I didn’t have school today. I figured it would be the perfect day to catch up on my homework and get my scholarly affairs in order. Tomorrow we pretend it’s Monday at school to make up for the day off. It’s all very scholarly.
I really chose a sucky schedule this semester. Actually, I’m hoping that I chose a sucky schedule because the alternative would be that I’m not cut out for what I’m studying for and I’m not prepared to make that judgment yet.
Anyway, the professor gave us a handout entitled “Trigonometry” with the simple instructions, read it and do these exercises: 2, 28, 44, 194, 30, 36, 61 and 202. You think they’d be in numeric order but no, there they are in a seemingly random order, which works well with the handout, as the exercises are numbered equally as randomly.
I figured two hours would be enough to get this assignment done. I’m such a fool. I didn’t factor into the equation another variable: said handout is a print out of a webpage and he printed it out in color, and then photocopied everything in black and white, so highlighted phrases and all the figures and diagrams are missing from the packet.
How long ago did I accuse my professors for not giving a flip as to what their handouts contained? Chalk this up to the “they don’t give a damn” column.
Luckily, he used Internet Exploder Explorer to print out this lesson, so I was able to see the address of the site and look up the diagrams and key phrases he conveniently left off of the paper.
I feel bad for my fellow students that might not have a computer at home.
I should have become a porn star. Then I would just have to worry about inches.
BFF.
So Earl and I spent last night in Buffalo. It was their annual bear run, fittingly called “Bear Trap” and it had been nearly a year since we were in Buffalo last.
It’s amazing how time flies when you’re not even thinking about it.
Having arrived too late to join the crowd of bears for the dinner at Century Grill, we opted to go it alone at the Pearl Street Grill and Brewery. Earl had been there before and knew that the place was right up my alley and he was absolutely right. I have to admit that I had a few fleeting moments of worry as we were driving to the restaurant, as I have recently decided to give up drinking alcohol completely. I’ve never been much of a drinker, in fact, I really only started drinking beer and such when I started at the telephone company a couple of years ago. However, the experience of going back and reading a couple of blog entries I had written while drunk and a conversation that Earl and I had while driving home from a dinner in which I was going to be the designated driver, and then ended up drinking, persuaded me that I definitely don’t need to incorporate alcohol into my future social plans. All the heavy stuff aside, the Pearl Street Grill and Brewery is a great place to go if you’re in the Buffalo area. Like so many other buildings in Downtown Buffalo, it’s an old brick building with that feeling of the industrial revolution of the early 20th century. So many cities have opted to tear these places down and build something in stunning concrete in their place; I admire when a business takes an existing space and turns it into something special. I wish more places would learn to do this.
The food is great too.
After dinner we freshened up a bit at the hotel and headed to the Town Ballroom for the evening’s festivities. All of the Buffalo Bears were gracious as always as we shared many hugs and kisses with those we hadn’t seen in so long. Earl and I both got a little tearful when we saw the two guys we consider to be our closest friends walk into the club. Here’s a picture from a camping excursion from a couple years ago of our friends Tim and Steve.
We used to see Tim and Steve quite a bit when Earl was traveling to Buffalo on a weekly basis, but now that his work locations have moved around, coupled with my school responsibilities and general life chaos, it’s been entirely too long since we’ve seen these guys. God bless them both, it was like we had seen them just yesterday.
The Buffalo Bears traditionally held all of their events at a local club, first Buddies and then it’s successor Buddies II. However, Buddies II recently closed so they were forced to the Town Ballroom, which is an absolutely fabulous space. It has had several incarnations; a casino, a dinner club (think Ricky Ricardo), a gay bar and now an entertainment venue. The Bears utilized a couple of the rooms well; one room was the dance floor (and Karl the DJ [skabear] played the extended disco mix of the theme from “Wonder Woman”!), the “Leopard Lounge” was used as a quieter space for conversation and in the middle lobby was a huge circular bar. Again, this is another old space in Buffalo that they continue to breathe life in.
Afterwards we went to the after hours party where we stayed until the closing of the room at 4 a.m. There was a lot of giggling in the hallway; it’s a good thing that we had the whole floor of the hotel.
This morning we joined our friends for brunch before heading out. Again, more tears and hugs as we made our way to the door.
All in all it was a wonderful weekend in many ways for us, and it was great to reconnect with our friends. We’ve always found the boys in Buffalo to be quite hospitable and this weekend was no exception. We look forward to going out there again soon.
Milepost 353.
Sometimes you just have to put a roadtrip on pause.
We had an *amazing* overnight in Buffalo and I’ll have a tale to spin after I resume this nap now that we’re home safe.
Buffalo, New York.
Earl and I are stationed in Buffalo tonight for their annual bear run. The festivities started up yesterday and continue through late tomorow. We just got in and will do some exploring and catching up with old friends. It should be fun.
Climb Ev’ry Mountain.
Earl and I went for a ride today. That in itself is not unusual. He took the afternoon off from work and I had no scholarly obligations, so we went for a ride into the beautiful Adirondacks.
What makes this ride into the Adirondacks special is that it is relatively close to 11 years since we made a similar journey. On October 13, 1996, Earl and I climbed what we thought was Bald Mountain (turns out it’s Rocky Mountain) near Inlet. At the top of the that mountain, overlooking the Fulton Chain of Lakes and in front of 30 or so other mountain climbing enthusiasts, I got down on my knee and proposed to Earl.
We haven’t been to the top of that mountain since. Today we climbed it again. At nearly 2300 feet above sea level (impressive for this part of the country) and near the peak of leaf peeping season, the scenery was impressive. The trail is around a 1/2 mile long and fairly steep. It was a pretty good workout getting to where we had stood over a decade ago. The scenery along the trail was beautiful.
Once at Rocky Point, we sat down on a rock together, reminisced about our life together, cried a bit, laughed a lot, made a little video and took lots of pictures. Previous visitors had left a discarded Triscuit, so a chipmunk joined us and ate the one hor d’oeurve we had to celebrate the occasion. The sky was a brilliant blue, the lakes were beautiful and the leaves are turning all sorts of autumn colors in magnificent brilliance.
[MEDIA=35]Just for the heck of it, I put photos from our two climbs side by side. I think we’re holding up pretty well.
