J.P.

Crush.

We were recently talking about our first crush. I remember my first crush. I was seven years old. If I could have made out with the television without experiencing an electric shock, I would have.

My first crush was on the character Rick Mason, played by Brian Cutler on “The Secrets of Isis.” Even at seven years old, I just *knew* that he was the bees’ knees. The tossled blond hair, the mustache, the boyish charm… *sigh*

Rick Mason - Isis

And here he is from an earlier film, “Catalina Caper”. Even 30 years later, I still find him the bees’ knees.

young Brian Cutler

4 June 2005 by Gayish. 0

Service People Abuse.

I just know that what I’m experiencing is karma. “What goes around comes around”, isn’t that what they say? Its because that time I almost made the DirecTV help desk person cry out loud during one of my rants about their service.

Today I had to endure the customer from hell. She was absolutely convinced that I had connected her to a party-line and that I was doing everything short of pissing on her telephone cable to make her telephoning experience less than pleasant. She knew what was wrong. She told me what I needed to do to fix it. She told me how to fix it. She just knew that because Verizon is in the process of getting sold (???) they had no interest in investing in the cabling (??) and no interest in repairing her phone service. (By the way, I do not work for Verizon, though I have dreamed of working for one of the Baby Bells one day). I resisted the urge to tell her the best way to fix her line problem was to stick a knitting needle in the electric wall socket closest to her phone jack and make an adjustment that way. And with all the hard earned money her company paid the company I worked for, being our biggest customer and all (she has one residential line, and by the way, her husband pulled the rest of the business months ago to the relief of everyone I work with), I should get my ass out there and get that line fixed. Pronto.

I stayed nice. I did my best to help. I used our motto, “Thanks For Calling.” I even got a tech out there by the end of the day.

After I hung up the phone, I yelled out loud what I thought about her. “That whore is a Bitch Bag!”, I declared to anyone that would listen. My co-workers understood. They’d dealt with the Bitch Bag before.

I’ve learned my lesson. I shall never be rude to anyone on the other end of the phone again, no matter how stupid, rude, ignorant or unfamiliar with the English language they may be. I shall treat each and every contemporary, regardless of the industry they’re in, with the respect they deserve. And when you’re feeling your blood pressure rise because the outsourced fool on the other end of your computer support call is acting like they have no idea what a computer is, just remember…

You could be the Bitch Bag in a blog entry some day.

3 June 2005 by Why. 0

Talk Your English Goodly.

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the 21st century. You are witness to the complete and utter destruction of the American English language. The internet, with all its methods of high-tech communication, is slowly destroying our language. The slang “Have Fun” has become “1/2Fun”. “Are you having a good day?” has morphed into “How R U?”. There’s the cryptic “C U l8r.” Then we have one of the most notorious mispellings known to man, “loose”, as in “I want to loose a few pounds.”

Criminy!

It’s LOSE. L-O-S-E. “I want to lose a few pounds so I have loose pants.”

Good God!

I try to sound like the educated person I believe myself to be when I speak. I like to use big words. I somewhat mimic the cultured accent of Elizabeth Montgomery or Maurice Evans on Bewitched. Not quite British, definitely not Australian, perhaps more like Barbara Budd (from the CBC’s As It Happens) from Ontario, Canada. I throw in a few “eh’s” on the end of sentences. I try to neutralize my nasal, native Central New York accent. In this area, “merry”, “Mary” and “marry” all sound the same, like “Mary”. It helps to scrunch your nose a little when you say it. Even though I live on the eastern side of the state (decidely “soda” territory), I’m not afraid to employ the more whimsical “pop”.

I find speaking interesting and I find writing stimulating. I try to do both to the best of my abilities. I make an effort to convey my unique flair for language when I write online. While remaining conversational, I like to utilize complete sentences and spell out words in their entirety. I’m blessed with the ability to type very quickly and I use that gift to my advantage by making proper use of capital letters and employing a full set of punctuation. After all, CAPS LOCK is a privilege, not a right.

I don’t expect people to communicate via sonnet. I’m not having visions of bloggers writing in haiku or limerick while composing their entries. I even overlook spelling and occasional grammar errors. Lord knows I’ve had my share of them. Just make an effort. Utilize all the letters of our glorious alphabet and write out complete words.

And please remember this: “You want two desserts while dining in the desert.”

2 June 2005 by Why. 0

June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.

It’s not often that I write in my blog before going to work but for some reason the inspiration has slapped me upside the head for a change.

It’s June.

I’m reminded of a song we used to sing in high school chorus. “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over. All over the meadows and hills…” Actually, I sang that song as a high school sophomore in Area All-State Chorus which was being hosted in Holland Patent (local school) that year. That weekend was memorable in many ways for me.

My maternal grandmother and my dear Aunt Jenn came to that concert, along with my mom, dad and sister. The concert was held in the gymnasium instead of the auditorium for some reason. The audience had to sit on the bleechers. I miss my Gram and Aunt Jenn very much. We all rode home in the ’78 Impala together after the concert.

Because Holland Patent was quite a distance from Pulaski, all of students from Pulaski spent the night between rehearsal and the concert in a small motel outside of Rome. The motel is still there. We hung out at the bar next door that night. We slept four to a room, two to a bed. I didn’t sleep, because, well, I was a sophomore in high school that knew what he was to become but dared not tell a soul who was sleeping in the same room with three other guys…

“Because It’s June. June. June. June.”

It’s funny how a particular memory can trigger another memory which goes on and on and on. I believe the song that’s ripping through my head now is from “Carousel.” It was part of a medley we sang that also included the song “When you walk, through a storm, hold your head up high. And don’t be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm, there’s a starry sky…”, or something like that.

Today the sky is full of sunshine and the horizon is clear. And my mood and the weather are in concert today.

Because it’s June. June. June. June.

1 June 2005 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Workin’ the Dreamscape.

Earl and I jammed so much into this past weekend that it felt like we had a whole week of vacation. That made work especially tough to look in the face this morning. I woke up feeling all depressed about having to go back to work and drudging through another day. But I got up, opted to go for a nice power walk and took the morning square on.

It wasn’t bad once I got to work. It was thankfully rather busy today so the day just flew by. I don’t know why I get down in the dumps getting up in the morning, because I certainly love my job. I just do so well when I’m dreaming. I mean dreaming, as in dreaming while I’m asleep. All the things I wish I could do, I do. I studied lucid dreaming, where you basically are aware that you’re dreaming and control what you’re dreaming, a number of years ago and I pride myself on the fact that I’m fairly good at it. I have to remember not to do it too often, for then I don’t get any rest and I end up cranky. But I bet I’m the only nose twitching dreamer on this side of the whole dreamscape. On the other hand, perhaps this is only a dream and I’m currently sitting in a nut house making rag rugs with blunt scissors and humming to myself loudly. Who knows. It does make on thing along the lines of “The Matrix”, does it not?

31 May 2005 by Flickr 0

Workin’ the Dreamscape.

Earl and I jammed so much into this past weekend that it felt like we had a whole week of vacation. That made work especially tough to look in the face this morning. I woke up feeling all depressed about having to go back to work and drudging through another day. But I got up, opted to go for a nice power walk and took the morning square on.

It wasn’t bad once I got to work. It was thankfully rather busy today so the day just flew by. I don’t know why I get down in the dumps getting up in the morning, because I certainly love my job. I just do so well when I’m dreaming. I mean dreaming, as in dreaming while I’m asleep. All the things I wish I could do, I do. I studied lucid dreaming, where you basically are aware that you’re dreaming and control what you’re dreaming, a number of years ago and I pride myself on the fact that I’m fairly good at it. I have to remember not to do it too often, for then I don’t get any rest and I end up cranky. But I bet I’m the only nose twitching dreamer on this side of the whole dreamscape. On the other hand, perhaps this is only a dream and I’m currently sitting in a nut house making rag rugs with blunt scissors and humming to myself loudly. Who knows. It does make on thing along the lines of “The Matrix”, does it not?

31 May 2005 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Grand Old Weekend.

Well now it’s time to wrap up a glorious weekend and settle back into the work routine. I’m heading into an on-call week, so I feel like I’m diving into the rat race with both feet. Hopefully it won’t be so overwhelming to make me miserable. Earl has decided to dive into the fun right along with me and will be spending the week at home with me. Let’s see if that holds out after a few nights!

We celebrated the Memorial Day holiday today by getting stuff done around the house. I planted a few more flowers, and we started setting up the pool for the season. Ugh. We’ve both survived the ordeal but unfortunately its not finished yet as there are some piping issues (read leaks) when we run the pump. So we’ll be tackling it again tomorrow night after supper. Maybe I’ll make my work pager beep so I can get out of the fun innocently.

We also assembled the new futon for the “creative room” as I like to refer to it. And we took the opportunity today to add a stool to the setup, so I can actually sit at the Mac Mini while I’m working on music stuff. I’m probably going to be using the Mac Mini a little bit more for routine stuff as well, because I really like this set up. PowerBook for geek stuff (web pages, coding, etc), Mac Mini for blogging, surfing and playing Mr. Sound Engineer.

I kicked off the day with a fine 16 mile bike ride, which was good. I hope to do the same tomorrow before heading off to work, but it’ll probably be a little shorter ride. That’ll get the blood moving for the day. Let’s see if I actually go through with it!

30 May 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Monster-In-Law.

That sucking noise you just heard is our families saying to themselves, “Oh shit, who is he writing about now.” Let me just say that they can all calm down and stop being so selfish to think that I’m writing about them in my blog.

Of course, this is all about me, me, ME.

Actually, Earl and I went to see “Monster-In-Law” tonight, of course starring Jennifer Lopez and Jane Fonda. This is the first time I’ve seen Jennifer Lopez in a movie (contrary to popular belief, I am not one of the five people that went to see “Gigli”) and I must say that she was quite enjoyable. I enjoyed her character very much. I also enjoyed Ms. Fonda as well. It’s been quite a while since we’ve seen her on the big screen and while the movie does wear a little thin in places, all in all it was an enjoyable experience.

Tonight’s movie was the nightcap to an enjoyable day up in my hometown, spending time with my Dad and his girlfriend Karen and her sister and her family. Earl and I expanded the family circle (not in a “Fockers” sort of way though) a little bit. Dad and I took a long walk together to walk my grandfather’s dog that’s visiting. It’s been a long time since we’ve walked that route, down to the crossroad, across the corn field and back up the railroad tracks, to come up through the woods behind his house. I’ve walked that route over a hundred times over the years, and I still enjoy it very much.

My father did grab my face and said “I thought you were going to shave this”, referring to my beard in a mock-angry parental sort of way. I don’t think he’s ever done that before. He seemed o.k. when I told him I’d think about trimming it around my birthday (which is in mid July).

We kicked back, drank some beer, ate some great food and basically just shot the bull. The way a Memorial Day weekend afternoon should go.

30 May 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Baby You Can Drive My Car.

Kicking off the unofficial start to summer in style, Earl and I took one of our long, traditional road trips. We’ve just arrived home after driving for about 13 1/2 hours. Initially I wanted to drive to Tennessee and back, but Earl said no. So we kept it in state.

This was the maiden voyage for the new Malibu, as we wanted to see how comfortable she would be on the road for long drives, as we intend on taking it to Florida and such when we vacation next winter. I’m happy to say that it is very comfortable to ride in and is a wonderful “family” car.

Our drive took us to the edge of New York State and back, as we basically toured around the Southern Tier and then came back across the Thruway. Our first stop was the Village of Owego, which is along the Susquehanna River near the Pennsylvania border. I wanted to get out and walk around, just to see what the downtown type area had to offer, but it was rainy and such so we decided just to drive around a bit.

We also drove around the little village of Angelica and then headed out into the countryside, looking for the gay campground “Jones Pond” just so we knew where it was for future reference. It’s really out there in the middle of nowhere. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen so many dirt roads, but it was kind of fun driving around and exploring. Admittedly it would have been more fun in the Jeep, but the Malibu made a fine substitute. Good thing we didn’t have the Acura, I would not have been happy on dirt roads in the Acura!

We ended up eating dinner at a family restaurant I knew about but had never eaten at. It’s called Davidson’s, and it’s in the suburban village of Lakewood outside of Jamestown. You seat yourself, the server just handles the basics and the food is all good. Perfect for what we were looking for. I was quite proud of myself for not adding gravy to the fries this time! I lived in Jamestown for a couple of years (1986-88 and again in 1990) and I was quite amazed at how much the area has grown. Jamestown seems to have pulled itself up by the bootstraps and from what I could tell, is recovering somewhat from the economic downturn that has plagued Upstate N.Y. Good for them.

We then plowed along the Thruway from Fredonia to home, with the trip totally just shy of 700 miles. Very cool.

Now it’s time to get some sleep!

29 May 2005 by Fun and Games Dept

Motivation.

I am trying to build up the motivation to get back on a healthy lifestyle again. If you take a look at the Moblog and gander at the picture entitled “Heid’s”, you’ll note that last night’s supper was a large fries smothered in beef gravy, a hot dog with sauerkraut and mustard, a hot dog with chili and cheese, a half a deli-style pickle and a medium diet pop.

This gluttenous supper was in celebration of the fact that Earl and I had just spent an hour or so walking at a good pace along Onondaga Lake Park.

To celebrate eating the entire meal and refraining from licking the tray (we were in public after all), I had a hot fudge sundae about an hour later. The trouble is, all that food was good. My stomach was saying “feed me!” “feed me!” and I was saying “yeah, baby! yeah, baby!”.

I can’t motivate myself to eat a salad instead of fries with gravy. In the past I’ve eaten so much salad I’ve pooped dandelions. Fat free dressing is taste free dressing. And now we have those wonderful “healthy” alternatives of Olestra and Splenda. Why does better living through chemistry always use names that end in “a” or “uh”. I’ve mentioned in the past was a wonderful experience Olestra was (the tree that I borrowed along the Thruway still has not recovered) and Splenda gives me a headache. As I’m typing this, I’m thinking “man I have a headache”, small wonder, I drank that stupid diet pop last night!

I try to drink iced tea but you can only take that for so long. Lemonade has sugar in it and we all know that sugar is the cocaine of the calories crowd.

So I’m stumped. I have no idea how to get motivated to eat healthy and to exercise. On the bright side, I’m typing this entry as I cool down from a 10 mile bike ride. It was kind of odd, my bike addressing me as a stranger in all, since we hadn’t seen each other in so long. But the ride was good.

I think I’ll have a Corona and chili cheese dog to celebrate.

28 May 2005 by Ponderings and Musings 0

About J.P.

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!

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