Fun and Games Dept

Central Phila.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Earl and I have spent a wonderful weekend in the greater Philadelphia area. Last night we went to the Philadelphia Wings lacrosse game (they didn’t do as well as we’d like) and enjoyed the amenities of the “Victor’s Lounge” with Earl’s brother Dave and his friend John. The Wings didn’t win but the buffet and the whole lacrosse fan experience made up for it.

Today we kicked off the morning by stopping in to see Earl’s dad and his stepmother. Then we met up with Rick and Helen and headed for Atlantic City, where I quickly lost my shirt but Earl won a good chunk of change at three-card poker. He made up for everything I lost, everything we tapped the ATM for to play and then doubled it all! A good way to enjoy his birthday weekend (his birthday is tomorrow).

Tomorrow we are going to get up early and take the long way home. I wonder how many states we’ll pass through. 🙂

Earl and I are in our hotel room in Bucks County, Pa., just back from the Philadelphia Wings lacrosse game. Like a true married couple, we don’t have plans to go into center city tonight to hit the clubs or anything, we are sitting around in our jammies catching up on e-mail and ready to call it a night.

I wanted to share pictures from tonight’s game but I discovered that the batteries in my camera are dead, so I was unable to take any photos. A stop for AA batteries is in order for tomorrow! I want to have the camera ready for when we hit the jackpot at one of the Atlantic City casinos tomorrow.

Earl and I are meeting up with his brother and going to a Philadelphia Wings game tonight in, well, Philadelphia. It’s only the second lacrosse game I’ll have ever attended in my life. I’m thinking it’s going to be a good time.

The Molson Canadians I’ve already had tonight certainly won’t hurt matters much.

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.