Ponderings and Musings

I’m not a fan of being labeled. I don’t like being perceived to act in an expected manner. I believe that labels restrict us and establish a possibly unwarranted expectation for our behavior. One of the reasons that I dropped out of the semi-finals for becoming a Big Brother contestant was because they were clearly trying to herd me into being the “gay one”. Since this was relatively early in the Big Brother history, a man by the name of Bunky had established the gay baseline for behavior on Big Brother (he cried a lot) and that didn’t really appeal to me. I don’t want people to think I’m going to be an emotional wreck just because I’m gay. I’d rather people find out why I’m an emotional wreck without figuring any labels into the equation; that’s when they’ll find that I’m more eccentric than an emotional wreck.

Over the past month or so I have stopped eating meat for the most part. I have had a meatball or a piece of pepperoni here and there but other than that, I have enjoyed a pretty much meat-free diet. I have also stopped drinking milk, instead opting for rice milk with my morning cereal. I have done this before but back then I always called myself a vegetarian. Now I didn’t go running into a steakhouse screaming “murder!” with a look of indignation on my face back when I was labeling myself a vegetarian. I wasn’t militant but when offered a piece of meat I would say, “No thank you, I’m a vegetarian.” I labeled myself. And that made me kind of militant about it not eating meat, even though I didn’t think I was being overly militant. So now, when offered a meat dish of some sort, I simply say, “No thank you.” And that’s that. If pressed for a reason, I would simply say, “it looks delicious, but I’m just not in the mood for (insert offered dish here) today. Thank you, though.” I don’t want to be known as a vegetarian. I don’t feel the need to proclaim being a vegetarian and I don’t want the label applied to my permanent file. It’s bad enough that my penicillin allergy is on that permanent file because that shows the world that I have a weakness and I don’t like that sort of thing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with calling yourself a vegetarian and if that blows your skirt up in a pleasant way then I am all for blowing your skirt up, but it’s just not my thing. It’s kind of like “gay marriage”. I like it better when it’s called “marriage”. I have been accused of being homophobic about myself because I don’t go running through the mall screaming “I’m gay!” (the neon light of my personality does that for me anyways) but I believe we should respect one another enough to the point of respecting the labels (or lack thereof) that we choose to identify with. Do I identify as a “gay”? Of course I do, but I don’t want to be singled down to being “the gay one”. If you want to get on a really bad side of me, mention my sexual orientation when introducing me to someone. At least one person in attendance is going to be mightily embarrassed and I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that it’s not going to be me. It’s not that I’m not proud, it’s just that I have bigger things to be proud about.

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So today I am off from work because I worked over the weekend, per my once-a-quarter responsibilities of on-call at work. I have to admit that I prefer this way to enjoy a Monday instead of getting back into the weekly work routine, but I don’t know that I enjoy working over the weekend to achieve this type of Monday. Nevertheless, I will enjoy it for what it is. The next time I’m on the on-call is in mid June. I can’t complain about that!

I am currently in the northern New York village of Lowville, sitting in a Wal-mart parking lot eating a Subway sandwich. I’m taking a break from my little project of the day. I am attempting to drive what used to be NY Route 12 before it was upgraded to a more prominent road in the mid 20th century (I think some time in the early 1960s, but I’m not certain on that). There are a couple of reasons that I am doing this but the primary force behind this is that I’m just a geek, especially when it comes to roads. I’ll be writing a separate blog entry about my findings of the original Route 12 once I get my facts straight and am able to look at some satellite imagery to confirm my findings today. So far I have driven through a couple of villages (Port Leyden, Lyons Falls) that I had never been to before, even though they’re less than an hour away from our home. They’re small and what I would call “industrial quaint”.

I have always enjoyed two others villages along Route 12, the Village of Boonville in Oneida County and the Village of Lowville in Lewis County. Boonville is home of the Oneida County Fair each year and still has a quaint business area that appears to still be doing well. I have family that lives near Lowville, which is a cool little village supported by the agricultural goings-on around it. I enjoy the rural charm of this area; there’s no freeway exit leading to the village because there’s no freeway within 30 miles of this place. Lowville is home to the largest wind farm in New York State, Maple Ridge Wind Farm. That’s the wind farm that my favorite road to drive in the summer, NY Route 177, passes through. Lowville is also home to one of a half dozen men I call mustache heroes, a well liked veterinarian named Dr. Peter Ostrum. I saw his picture on television once and his mustache made an impression on me. Google his name to find out why he’s the “most famous man in Lowville”.

Tomorrow my schedule is back on track and your Tuesday is my Tuesday. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my Sunday, which is your Monday, with a nice Sunday drive.

I’m sitting on the back patio at home enjoying the abnormally warm and sunny weather today. It’s been like this since our return from Florida. It feels like we brought the good weather along for a ride when we made that trek home last weekend but I know that they enjoyed the nice weather up here while we were gone too.

I’m home today because this is my weekend to work. This change in schedule happens every 13 weeks. Once you get beyond the fact that you have to work for the weekend the gig isn’t that bad. I have been in worse situations.

When I usually get a day off during the week I take the opportunity to go on some sort of road trip. I have a couple of favorite destinations in the Empire State that I like to visit on these day long trips; the Southern Tier and the North Country are both favorite areas of the state for me, but today I decided to stay at home since we had driven so much during vacation. Plus, my commute clocks in at 1 1/4 hours in each direction, so sometimes it’s good to skip putting extra wear and tear on my Jeep and on my body. To celebrate staying home, I babied the Jeep with an oil change and tire rotation (we both purred when the work was completed) and I have been doing geek things here on the back patio.

A little black and white bird keeps flying to the shruberry closest to the table and gives me a glance. I think he or she is trying to decide whether I’m harmless or not before hopping up to the adjacent bird feeder. Scott filled the bird feeder just before leaving for his latest tour of flying and they have already made a good dent in it. It’ll be ready for filling again when he gets back next week.

Earl has been out of town on business since yesterday morning but I received a SigAlert that he will be coming home tonight. That always makes my day better.

As I sit here and enjoy the backyard, I am noticing that the trees are starting to show signs of spring. The maples are starting to show the beginnings of the Leaves of 2012 and the evergreen trees are showing new growth. I think everything may be a week or two ahead of schedule, but I don’t think it’s something to complain about. I can’t remember having such a beautiful March in recent memory. Whatever is causing it (the natural cycle of things, HAARP, Global Climate Change, whatever), it sure is making this part of the country a little more enjoyable. Let’s hope we don’t boil away this summer though.

With my on-call I am working Friday-Sunday and then I have Monday off, where I then resume a normal work week next Tuesday. I’m thinking I might stay local again next Monday and, if the weather is still cooperative, plant a couple of trees in the side yard. Earl and I have talked about planting two trees in memory of our fathers; this might be a good opportunity.

It’s amazing how much one can enjoy life when they find enjoyment in their surroundings. I should remember to do this more often instead of running around trying to find it.

I seemed to have developed some sort of sniffly bug over the past 48 hours or so. The sniffles started on Sunday night when I went to bed. I got little sleep that night and had the sniffles and sneezes in full effect all day on Monday. This made returning to work after a week and a day vacation that much more pleasant. This morning I woke up congested but feeling better. As I write this during my lunch hour, I am feeling a marked improvement in my condition, though the congestion is still lingering around.

On a conference call today, it was mentioned that one of the intended participants couldn’t join us because, like me, they were on vacation last week and then had contracted some sort of bug and was at home sick this week.

That kind of sucks.

During the conversation a couple of people mentioned that these sorts of colds happen when one lets go of the stress that’s been building for a while. Your body has some sort of reaction to not being so tense all the time and all the bad stuff leaves by way of a grand sort of cold. I kind of think that’s what happened to me during our vacation. My work is relatively stressful, mainly of my own design due to the goals I set for myself along my career, and when I had the chance to relax last week at the House of the Mouse I took advantage of it. Subsequently, my body is purging all the bad stuff that’s built up and that’s why I appear to be getting over a 48 hour bug of some sort. This is just speculation, but I have a hunch that this is what’s going on.

And none of it’s a bad thing. It’s annoying to have the sniffles, but it’s not entirely bad.

My spirits are still good and I’m still feeling relatively relaxed so in the long run it’s all good. Less stress is always good.

In 1997 I attended my first radio convention. Orchestrated by a trade magazine called “Gavin”, I flew to New Orleans to hob knob with others in the radio and records industry and to check out a few new acts. It was at this Gavin Convention that I got to hang out with France Joli (best known for the disco hit “Come To Me”) and a Canadian group called Temperance, who did a remake of the Alphaville 80s hit, “Forever Young”. We were also to meet a new group called the Spice Girls, but they weren’t feeling the whole convention thing and they never showed up for their appearance.

There was a big cocktail party during the convention where anyone that was anyone would undoubtedly be in attendance at and I found this to be rather exciting. Coming from a market that could be best described as “midget”, I was fascinated with the special effects and the costumes and the atmosphere of the whole ghastly like encounter. There was a lot of fog, it was rather dark, Pat Boone was running around in a leather jacket and a bad wig and people were doing the Kathy Griffin-say-hello-to-no-one routine. I was asked on a couple of occasions if I had passed by N’dea Davenport or if I had engaged in any conversation with Stacy Ferguson from Wild Orchard (she’s now known as Fergie)¹. The answer to both questions was ‘yes’. N’dea was quite nice but Stacy was kind of doing her own thing but she seemed nice as well. I had a very good conversation with a head of lettuce which was actually a human head dressed up as a head of lettuce sticking up through a table. No photos allowed. The lettuce will wilt.

Finding myself in a conversational vacuum of undoubtedly my own creation, I wandered over to a table that had a bunch of wooden slabs with little pastries on them. Though it was a darker corner of the whole affair, I could make out the round bits of this and that that were being presented and I took a couple, put them on a plate and started munching on them. Expecting a confectionary delight in my mouth, I was a little surprised at what I tasted. I was must have had a weird look on my face as my friend Lynda came over to make sure I was doing ok talking to heads of lettuce and the like.

“Are you having a good time?”, she asked in her southern drawl.

“I am. I can’t believe this party!”

“Oh, they convention parties are always like this. You’ll find out”, she replied with a big smile. The radio station had just been given “reporting status”, which meant that the industry cared what we played. It was something no one had thought we would achieve and being a reporting station made us very popular with the record companies.

“So much fog and lighting and lettuce heads!” I must have sounded like a country bumpkin fresh out of the cabbage patch.

“No expense when it comes to reporting stations, darlin'”.

“I’m a little concerned about these pastries, though. I think they’re bad or something. They taste like fish.”

“Honey, that’s not a cookie, it’s sushi!”

I was eating sushi and I didn’t even know it. I had never had sushi before. I thought I was nibbling at a Lorna Doone or something. The little old program director from Upstate New York couldn’t tell the difference between raw fish and a cookie.

“That’s alright, darlin'”, Lynda quickly interjected, always trying to keep me feeling at ease, “we won’t tell anyone you thought the sushi was a cookie.”

And she never did.

But it got me hooked on sushi. Imagine my delight this afternoon when Earl came home with some sushi for dinner.

Now if I could only have a Lorna Doone for dessert.

¹ Listen to me throwing around names from my radio days.

It is 55F in Central New York today. The snow is melting rapidly and the sunshine is shining brightly. Today is the cooler of the next few days, tomorrow it’s suppose to reach 60 and for that there is much rejoicing. Tomorrow night Earl, Jamie and I leave for the House of the Mouse, with our actual stay starting Saturday until the following Friday.

Life is so very good.

As the sun beams into the Jeep as I write this, I can’t help but wonder why we try to kickstart our healthy living habits and the like with the onset of the New Year, when we should be doing it at spring time. I don’t know about any of my gentle readers, but I don’t really like the idea of trying to lose weight when the snow is (theoretically) piling up outside, daylight is at a minimum and it’s very, very cold out. Trying to shed a few pounds by hitting a gym in the dead of winter is crazy. Now is the time that I want to start being healthy again. With the onset of this spring like weather, now is the time that I want to get the extraneous details of my life that I have been ignoring back in order. With the impending rebirth of life after a (theoretically) long, hard winter, now is the time that I feel like really living again.

I think part of this has to do with suffering from the winter blahs. I try so hard to not get feeling glum in the winter time, and while the winter season is in progress, I think I’m doing an ok job at keeping a chipper spirit around but then a day like today comes around and I realize that I was feeling the same sort of seasonal depression that I feel every year. No matter how much I bathe myself in natural light or down Vitamin D tablets, I just don’t feel overly enthusiastic in the winter time. Spring rolls around and then I feel enthusiasm again. I’m thinking that I’m going to try to hit the gym at Disney a couple of times. I’m going to walk more than I need to. I’m going to limit my popcorn intake to “occasional” and I’m going to make sure that I make smart choices when choosing from the delights flashing on the overhead menu. It’ll be a challenge, but it’s something that I think I can do and I feel enthusiasm about taking this approach to the vacation.

When we get back from vacation, Daylight Saving Time will be in full swing (though I despise the practice of moving the clocks around very much) and I will be able to ride my bike after work again. I haven’t done that as much as I’d like to since starting my current job a few years ago, I’m going to make that change this year.

I just heard the ghost of Michael Jackson whisper “Make that change” in my head and it was really creepy.

I’m 43 years old so I’m a realist about what I can obtain health wise, but on the other hand, I’m only 43 years old. And I’m going to start a Spring Resolution right now to enjoy life to the fullest, feeling the best I can by doing the things I want to do to make it all happen.

I think Spring Resolutions are the ticket for me in the future. Let’s see how this first attempt at it goes.

And as a quick sidebar on the resolution thing – still not buying the latest incarnation of the iPad, no matter what they announce today, unless it comes with a daily full body massage.

My mind is churning through the typical Monday mush and I can not find the means to write a coherent blog entry today, so we’ll go with a picture of some pretty clouds. I took this picture on Saturday.

The jet black hair betrayed the age shown by the rest of her outward appearance. She had leaped out of the passenger side of an old Mercury that was parked right next to the front door of my favorite Dunkin Donuts. In fairness, the Mercury sagged more than she did, but I think they both wore garments of wood grain.

The Mercury was parked in a spot that was traditionally reserved for foot traffic, but in a snowstorm such as this, anything goes. She was just getting to the counter as I came up behind her to wait in line for my turn to place an order. I could already see my iced tea being assembled by the very capable counter people.

“I’ll have six dozen donuts, mixed”, the woman with the jet black hair barked out. I realize that I say “barked out” a lot on my blog, but she didn’t have a quiet voice nor did she have a pleasant voice. Barking something out is how I hear a lot of people place orders in establishments such as Dunkin’ Donuts. To me it sounds something like the canine variety of sounds typically heard when dogs are gossiping with one another. Barking is not a condemnation, it just appropriately describes how I hear this woman in wood grain.

“SIX dozen?” the girl at the register asked.

“Yes, six.”

“Oh, having a party tonight?” Pleasant conversation is always a good path to take when trying to have a pleasant retail experience.

“No”, she said. “My husband and I are worried about the snow storm tonight and we want to make sure that we’re stocked up.”

Apparently someone had already purchased all the loaves of bread and gallons of milk at the nearby Mini-Mart.

“They say this storm could last through tomorrow.”

I stifled a knowing laugh. People think I’m critical of the folks that live in these parts. I’ve been accused of being downright ridiculous. But this blog entry was just writing itself.

“Make one of the dozen all jelly!” Ok, the bark was replaced by a bit of a squeal with that one. Delight should always be recognized.

“Is today a cookie day?” My iced tea was ready and I was being herded over to another register while the six dozen donuts were being assembled.

“Not today”, I replied. “I have cookies at home.”

We’re ready for the storm.