Fun and Games Dept

Today while Earl and I were driving to his home turf outside of Philadelphia, I let him do the driving so I could play around with the GPS program on my PowerBook. I haven’t played around with this as much as I’d like to, but inspired by yesterday’s speed boost of my computer, I thought I’d give it another whirl and see what I could find out about our surroundings.

Click the image to enlarge.

For example, just south of Binghamton, N.Y., the New York-Pennsylvania state line is very, very close to the 42nd parallel. It’s literally inches from it. I’m wondering if the signs are actually off a little bit and when the state borders were negotiated if it really does follow the 42nd parallel.

I also found out that the “mountainous” area in New York’s Southern Tier isn’t really that mountainous at all but rather just a bunch of precocious hills, with the highest point on I-81 between Syracuse and Binghamton clocking in at around 1300 feet.

I’m looking forward to doing more of this investigative work as we get into traveling season this spring. I’m also going to have to look into this activity called geocaching. It sounds quite interesting.

“If we took a holiday…”

Earl and I are taking the day off from work and heading off to Albany this afternoon to do some shopping and hanging out in the city. “Yay to the tax return”, that’s my motto today!

When Earl takes a day off from work, he actually takes off the afternoon, so I’m going to do shopping warm ups to pick up his birthday gift and card as his birthday is Monday. I have no idea what I’m going to get him. I’m hoping for some inspiration once I walk around the mall a little bit.

Skyline Drive.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

With the warm spring-like weather, Earl and I decided that we needed a breath of fresh air today. So after work we jumped in the Jeep and drove to the highest point in this area, appropriately named Skyline Drive.

Fresh air is good for the soul.

It’s Friday! It’s Friday! Thank the Universe. I am so ready for the weekend.

Work is moving along at a nice clip, Earl and I are getting together with friends this weekend (I’ll be sure to take some pictures to share with the class) and then we’re getting together with my family next week because my sister will be back from Moscow for a few days.

As my lover says so well, “Life is good”.

Earl and I went to see the national tour of “Oklahoma!” at the local theatre tonight. We had been “Broadway Theatre League” members years ago but after a couple of years we dropped out and hadn’t been to a production in quite a while. I bought these tickets as a Christmas present for Earl, thinking we could make a date night of it, which we did and enjoyed very much.

It’s unfortunate that we didn’t really enjoy the performance.

Both Earl and I are very familiar with the show. My high school performed “Oklahoma!” when I was in 8th grade and though I was just an audience member for that production, I remember the energy radiating from the stage inspired me to become involved in local theatre and the following high school productions. Earl is very familiar with the movie version of “Oklahoma!”. I sang tracks from the score in a dinner theatre/ensemble type setting in college. A number of years ago we attended another high school production of the classic musical.

We both agreed that the high school productions we had seen in the past were better than the national tour version of the show tonight.

Tonight’s production just lacked energy. Period. The set was sparse. A stalk of corn, a windmill, an old woman and a butter churn was all that was on stage when the show opened. The backdrops were wrinkled. The lighting was not good, creating shadows where shadows should not be. The pacing was mind numbingly slow. The majority of the cast seemed like they were simply going through the motions. And the actor playing Curly sang through his nose. The show started at 8:00 p.m. on the dot. Intermission didn’t come along until 9:45 p.m. One and three quarter hours for the first act! There were some bright spots in the production; the actress playing Laurie had a beautiful voice and Gertie Cummings’ obnoxious laugh was played to the hilt. And luckily, there was a very handsome dancer on stage with a nice full beard who was wearing a pair of chaps and a cowboy hat (and some other clothes too). That held my attention during the crowd scenes.

Intermission finally rolled around and Earl and I did something we never had done before. We left before the second act. Sadly, we weren’t alone by a long shot, evidenced by the relatively large number of people that headed to their cars when we did. We went out and got a bite to eat.

We still had a nice time together. We were just disappointed in the show. Perhaps the second act surpassed the first in energy and pacing, but I somehow doubt it. Tonight was the second night of the two day run here; I had heard rumors that the review in the paper this morning was not good. Now I know why.

Earl and I decided to continue our relaxing trend this weekend and go out for a couple of drinks tonight. There’s only one gay bar in town, the one I used to DJ at a very long time ago, so that’s the place we went. Not much has changed. First Earl is still bartending, we recognize some of the guys from the days I worked there and the number of people in attendance has dwindled.

There were a bunch of the younger crowd there and I tried my best not to feel obsolete.

We did dance a little bit to Kelly Osbourne’s “One Word”. I still think it’s a great song and it seemed like the others on the dance floor seemed shocked that two bears were out there dancing to a somewhat current dance track.

Earl and I did strike up a conversation with a guy that was standing by himself in the corner. We made a quick friend in Ryan who lives way out in the country and rarely goes out. Turns out he grew up just down the street from where I grew up, he just did it 10 years later. Like everyone that grew up there, he’s pretty fine to look at. 🙂

After we said our good nights at the bar we stopped at the diner right around the corner from our house which is now, thank goodness, open 24 hours on the weekend. French toast with blueberry syrup is oh so bad for the healthy eating but oh so good at 3 a.m. on a Saturday night.

Since American Idol is back in full swing, I thought I’d celebrate by doing my own little audition right here on my blog. My apologies for it being audio only, but here I am singing The National Anthem. It’s recorded with no tricks, no filters and no special effects used at all. It’s as live as if I was singing sweet nothings into your ear.

Small wonder the teams left town permanently after I sang at their sporting events back in ’99.

With Earl out of town tonight I’m going to find myself with a little extra time on my hands. So I’ve decided that I need to plan out further details for our trip out west in May. We’ve finalized the route in that we actually know where we are going, now it’s getting the details of where we want to go and what we want to see that’s going to be a little bit of work.

We’re doing sort of a whirlwind tour in 11 days – driving to Phoenix, spending a few days there, then driving up to South Dakota to go to Mount Rushmore and then across I-90 to get back home. I’ll think all in all we’ll clock just under 8,000 miles.

I’m hoping to eat at local establishments, see some severe thunderstorms or maybe even a twister, meditate in the desert, do some videotaping so I have some cool shots for future video projects and add a few states to the shrinking list Earl and I have not visited yet.

We also plan to do the touristy stuff like visit sightseeing and whatnot. Isn’t the largest bale of twine in the world somewhere out in that neck of the woods?

I know to some it seems like we’re doing a lot of driving in a short amount of time. And we are. But who cares, life is too short to sit and dream about the things you could do. Instead you should just go ahead and do them.

Earl and I are in the process of planning this year’s vacations. Because of the way my work likes to schedule things, we’ve already planned our two vacations for the year. We have a five day weekend coming up in February and then a 12 day vacation in May. The February plans are falling apart all over the place, as we were planning on going to Disney but there’s no space at Mickey’s place the weekend we wanted to go. (Time to bank the time share points!)

Our May trip on the other hand, is coming together spectacularly well. We’re driving to Phoenix and back on a grand Jeep tour. I wonder who’s idea that was (as I bat my eyes innocently).

I’ve always wanted to drive across the country. While we’re not making it from coast to coast, we are driving across a substantial portion of the U.S. and back, and we’re going to barrell right through the “red” states with our blue state sensibilities in check and in practice. I’m looking forward to seeing the gradual change in terrain and accents and weather and all as we drive from Upstate N.Y. to Arizona and back.

Now the task at hand is to plan the activities for the trip. I want to drive on Route 66 a bit. I want to experience local diners and back roads. I wish I could be guaranteed a tornado while we drive through Oklahoma.

So much planning to do!

J.P. and his Mom.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I are celebrating our 9th anniversary of our commitment ceremony today. My mom offered her congratulations by taking us out to lunch and giving us a card and stuffed black bear for our bear collection.

She’s pretty neat.