Fun and Games Dept

Earl and I are just back from my father’s house for Christmas dinner. We had an enjoyable time.

My father has two cats, both around 11 years old or so. They are sisters and as different as night and day. Pita is, well, a Pain In The Ass, but she means well and can be somewhat cordial when she’s not hissing at you. Cali on the other hand is on the shy side and while a part of her wants to be in your lap, the other part of her wants no part of anything human. She’s usually found under a piece of furniture or hiding in the sawdust in my father’s workshop. Perhaps she gets dizzy from the wallpaper.

I convinced Cali to make a rare appearance in a picture with me today. She was not amused.

Christmas Thrill., originally uploaded by iMachias.

Tom has apparently had his fill of Christmas treats for the day. He seems content to be backed up against the radiator sleeping instead of meowing out some ho ho ho.

It’s obvious when you’ve been married to someone for a long time. People say you start to look alike. Earl and I get mistaken for brothers from time to time (especially when we were both full-blown redheads) but this morning’s gift giving proved that we really do think alike.

We bought each other one stocking stuffer type gift: he gave me a package of muscle shirts, I gave him an Elton John concert DVD set.

We bought each other one electronic gift: he gave me a new iPhone 3G, I bought him a new Sony digital camera

We bought each other a Carhartt jacket.

And this one surprised us both: we bought each other new black motorcycle boots.

Our holidays are simple this year. Our big home feast was for the Winter Solstice. Last night we went to my aunt and uncle’s for dinner with that side of the family (including my Mom), which was quite enjoyable, and today we are heading up to my Dad’s for a little dinner.

It is snowing like crazy at the moment and the music is playing on the DirecTV.

One simple gesture made it the holidays for me this year. Earl and I haven’t done any decorating around the house this year; we haven’t really been feeling “it” and we’ve been very busy this season. I did take a few moments to decorate the pine tree in our lawn though because I could not let the season go without putting some sort of lights up, so I made the effort for that one tree out in the yard. Our neighbors apparently didn’t have the time or inclination to decorate this year either, but when Earl was getting the mail the other day, they stopped him (the first or second time that they’ve ever talked to us in five years) and thanked us for decorating that tree. They look out in the yard every night and admire my little Charlie Brown tree and it brings them great joy.

And the fact that they enjoy that tree so much fills me with the holiday spirit that I was missing this year.

Merry Christmas to all!

The snowfall has been impressive thus far, especially since today is officially the first day of winter in these parts. I cleaned out the driveway for the third time this weekend as Earl took a few photos.

We have about 12-18 inches of snow right now. Truth be known, I’d rather snow blow the driveway than mow the lawn.

I mentioned in an earlier post that Earl and I hiked across the construction zone at Carousel Center to get to and from the remote parking lots. The hike included throwing the gifts over a chain linked fence so that we could cut through this engineering wilderness.

Here’s a photo of the bags we were carrying as we made our hike.

*Notice Earl’s “Canada” sweatshirt. I purchased it for him in Charlottetown, PEI in the summer of 2007. A little, angry man came up to Earl in the mall yesterday and told him that “his country is a pipsqueak version of the United States”. He fled before I could throw the angry little troll over the railing. No one insults Canada around me.

Carousel Center in Syracuse has begun it’s long promised goal of becoming the largest shopping mall (amongst other grand things) in North America with it’s evolution to Destiny USA. Because of this evolution, about a third of the parking at Carousel is gone and being replaced by a building.

Like many of the folks in our area, Earl and I went to Carousel yesterday to finish up the bulk of our holiday shopping. Figuring I would never be able to get to the mall lots, I opted to park in one of their remote facilities that offered shuttle service to the mall. The lot was about a half mile away from the “regular” parking lots.

Great concept. Bad execution.

The wait for the average motorist to get into the perimeter of the mall was around 90 minutes yesterday. The entire parking lot, perimeter road and feeder roads were all at gridlock. No one was moving anywhere.

Including the shuttle buses.

So Earl and I did what many others did. We hiked through the snow from remote parking, weaved our way through stopped cars and crossed through a blocked off construction area to make our way to the mall. We even escaped the mayhem by cutting through a hole in the chain link fence. Though it was quite chilly we had a great sense of accomplishment.

The return trip was more interesting, because the hole in the fence wasn’t big enough for the our packages to fit through, so Earl threw the packages OVER the fence and I caught them on the other side. Once we made our way through the hole we then found ourselves locked into the construction area as the work had ended for the day, so we had to shimmy over another fence and slide down a tall jersey barrier that plopped us right into the middle of the perimeter road. Lucky for us traffic was at a stand-still (and the commute time had increased two two hours!)

Laverne and Shirley would have been proud.

So last night Earl and I hosted “Bear Night” at the local bar. We do this every couple of months in an effort to bring out the less than typical gay men out of the wood work and give them the opportunity to meet guys like themselves.

The festivities were quite enjoyable last night though it wasn’t quite as busy as the night we hosted in October. We still had around 100 pass through the door. Earl made some meatballs and other nibbles for the buffet. Our friend Marc, the owner of the bar, hired a DJ from out of town to mix it up a little bit. This surprises some with me being a DJ and all, but I’d rather be a host than DJ on these particular nights. While I love spinning the tunes (and can’t ever seem to stop wanting to do it), the DJ booth tends to isolate me from the rest of the crowd and I like to mingle with the natives when the opportunity arises.

The crowd was curiously mixed last night but still quite enjoyable. The only crisis was that a lesbian had become over zealous with her pool stick and sent the cue ball flying down the nearby basement stairs, where no one could then find the cue ball so we had to shut down the pool table.

We are planning another night in a couple of months.

So Earl and I spent last weekend in the oceanside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey. We were there for “Santa Saturday”, a day of leathermen and bears raising money for people living with AIDS and the aging. It was a good time, about 1000 people attended the event and we saw several familiar faces from Hillside Campground.

I had never been to Asbury Park before. Even though it was the end of November the ocean was still beautiful. There was little life along the boardwalk but we enjoyed the experience anyway. We stopped at the Paramount Theatre where we saw an a cappella choral group perform, they were magnificent and reminded me of my days in high school and college when I was in various a cappella choruses.

We stayed at the Berkeley Hotel, which is a beautiful hotel with affordable rooms. However, when we went to get into the Jeep to go out Saturday night we found the entire contents of the Jeep stacked on the driver’s seat and the GPS missing from the glove compartment. We had noticed a large number of cop cars earlier; apparently they knew what had happened or was going to happen. So we are out a GPS unit. As Earl said, “it was time to upgrade anyway.” The ones with the sticky fingers climbed in through one of the back windows of the soft top, it’s pretty easy to get into a Jeep. At least they didn’t smash the real windows or anything.

All in all it was a good weekend and a good chance for us to get away from the craziness of our schedules.

When Earl and I were in Buffalo a couple of weeks ago, our friend “Angry Alan” did a photo shoot with us. Angry Alan is a brilliant photographer currently studying at RIT.

Here is one of the shots. (The others are not really safe for work/relatives viewing).