Ponderings and Musings

It’s that week when we are stuck between Christmas and New Year’s Day. The gaiety of the season tries to hang on but come this weekend you’ll probably be sick of the holiday decorations. I love the spirit of the holidays but not the cleanup. Alas, it must be done.

Work has been oddly busy this week. This is usually a slow week at work and so the staffing is light. This makes for the rest of us to be busy.

Earl and I have been going from party to party having fun with family and friends and from mall to mall spending gift certificates and a whole lot more. I think we’re shopped out now.

I have discovered HD radio and am enjoying a LGBT oriented radio station hiding on 94.5-2. The name of the station is “Pride Radio” and they play a lot of dance music. I haven’t heard any air personalities yet. I think I like Proud-FM in Toronto better but this Pride Radio is an acceptable substitute.

I spun up my first dance mix CD in 364 days. This was the first time using the new equipment in the studio and I must say that I am fairly impressed with how far the technology has come along. I’m listening to the CD with perfectionist ears as we speak. I might actually share this one for the masses. Not bad for a first attempt with the new equipment.

I have written down a few goals for 2010. I’m not resolving to do anything this year but I have a few goals I’d like to attain. I think they’re reachable.

I was faced with one of the few moments of the year that strikes terror in my heart. Even though it’s the holidays and all that and we are constantly reminded that this is indeed the most wonderful time of the year, I was breaking out in a cold sweat. My hands were cold and clammy and my tongue had the dry numb feeling that precedes the possibility of becoming nauseated.

I was about to wrap Christmas gifts.

There is a persistent myth out there that says the gay men have been programmed with the “pretty gene”; we are everything that Martha Stewart aspires to be, we can make walls ‘pop’ with a splash of an obscurely named paint and we wrap our gifts to add “breathless” to the atmosphere of giddy when the giftee is presented with their gift.

I am happy if the scraps of wrapping paper selected are all the same pattern.

I can’t wrap gifts. I don’t care if it’s a Rubik’s cube without the packaging. I can not wrap anything with that oh so delicate paper that insists on ripping if you give it a little tug. My corners are exposed, my tape doesn’t stick and my shears don’t shear.

I’d have better luck going to Ms. DeFazio and Ms. Feeney at Bardwell’s Department Store.

Earl and Jamie went out shopping yesterday afternoon. Like an insane squirrel, I sought out my nuts, er packages, from their secret hiding places and assembled everything on the dining room table, where Earl had thoughtfully put several rolls of wrapping paper, scotch tape and a couple of pairs of scissors. The first thing to be wrapped was a shirt box. I carefully laid the box down on the pulled out paper and cut the appropriate size. I folded over and something on a corner ripped. I adjusted to hide the rip but to no avail, another corner ripped. I applied some tape to the ripped paper. I then tried to patch a piece of paper over the rip, hoping that the bear’s head matched the same of the bear on the original piece of paper but it didn’t look right. I then wrapped another piece of paper around the middle of it all, hoping that it would make some sort of makeshift bow.

It looked awful.

At least it didn’t have crumpled up paper to make a convenient carrying handle like I had last year.

When all was said and done there was barely any rolls of wrapping paper left and to compensate I just shoved the presents behind a big box I had had professionally wrapped while I was out shopping.

They might not look pretty, but at least the presents are full of loving intent.

With the holiday season in full swing it’s been all about the shopping. It seems like that’s what this time of merriment and wonder has really turned into, a big shopping fest where we get minute by minute reports of how the big chains are faring in these economic times as we buy more and more cheap junk made overseas in an effort to show our loved ones how much we care about them.

Shopping has become such a chore. Those of us on a modest budget used to have numerous choices for holiday shopping. Here in our small city we used to have two functional malls and several large shopping plazas to choose from with a selection of stores: Bradlees, Ames, Montgomery Ward, K-mart, Caldor, Steinbach; the list goes on and on.

Unfortunately one mall was replaced by a Super Wal*Mart (Always White Trash, Always) 10 years ago and since we now have four of these monstrosities within 20 miles of our house the rest of our choices are gone. Our discount choices have been whittled down to Wal*Mart, Target and K-mart, and I can’t even mention the local K-mart without laughing because the best thing that could happen to that store is a devestating fire, and it pains me to say that since I was practically raised a blue-light baby.

I think one of the reasons I get cranky about shopping this time of year is because what’s left of the shopping choices in this area are all crammed into big box plaza after big box plaza along a road aptly (and creatively) named “Commercial Drive”. Traffic flow is like molasses at best and quite frankly it’s a chore to get in and out of all the little parking lots they have thrown around the once farmland in a hapazard fashion. So today I decided to stick to a more rural locale and headed to a free-standing JC Penney that was built sometime in the 1960s. I haven’t been there in at least 10 years and quite frankly I had a wonderful experience! Not only has the store been updated and it’s easy to get in and out of the plaza it’s situation in, in the 20 minutes that I was there I was approached by three different sales clerks to see if I needed assistance with finding something AND the cash stands were in full use with clerks that were actually smiling! I felt like I had stepped back in time a little bit and it was a wonderful change of pace. I then decided to go to a local store that specializes in outdoor clothing and found the exact same experience there; they were friendly, helpful and while both stores were considerably busy, I didn’t feel rushed, shoved or in need of a firearm or cocktail.

I think I’m going to stick with the slower pace in the smaller city for future shopping adventures and what I can’t find there I’ll just order online and have it brought to me. I’m a much saner person that way.

I still miss Ames though.

After a week of on-call I feel like I can stop idling my life and am back in “drive” again. It is amazing what a full night’s sleep can do. I woke up this morning, for the early shift no less, feeling great; I feel centered, I feel rested and I feel like my brain has taken a big dump.

Yesterday I met up with our friend Greg for lunch in Danbury, Conn. It had been entirely too long since I’d seen him so I headed out to the Danbury Fair Mall to finish up the holiday shopping and meet up with him for lunch. We had mini-burgers – he had turkey and I had veggie. It seems like whenever we go to Ruby Tuesday together we have the mini-burgers. It was very good to see him. I took the scenic route home opting to come through the Catskills. I stopped for gas and a quick snack in Liberty. In a very rare occurrence I found myself disoriented and heading the wrong way on one of the back roads as I tried to get back to Route 17. I had to use the GPS in my iPhone to find my way back. I must be getting old.

While I was waiting in line at one of the stores yesterday a woman in front of me smacked another woman that decided she was too good to “form one line here” at the checkout stand. I thought it was rude of the woman to cut the line but I thought it was quite rude for the woman to smack her as well. Nobody was in the right on that one. I tweeted that I thought someone needed a good hit of myrrh. I thought that was humorous.

“I’m going shopping.”

The IM message was simple enough. Since I am working the later shift this week, Earl and Jamie would be out grocery shopping when I got home from work. We would cook supper when they got home and we’d be stocked up on food for the week.

I busied myself about the house when I got home; I put the cars away for the impending snowstorm and I installed the markers along the driveway so I knew where the driveway was suppose to be when I had to find it after the bout with snow. I finished up outside and came in; I was folding laundry when I glanced out the window.

In came the Durango. It was trailed by a 55 gallon drum of kitty litter which was lashed to the car by the hitch originally designed to drag a camper across the state. Miles of rolled up paper towels hung out one window and crates of canned vegetables hung out another. There was a soon-to-be illuminated santa perched atop the vehicle. It was doing it’s best imitation of Imogene Coca in a rainstorm in Phoenix, Arizona.

My god he’d gone to BJ’s.

BJ’s Wholesale Club is much like Costco or Sam’s Club. While we don’t have the two latter chains in this area, we do have one BJ’s where lettuce is bought by the acre and pop is purchased by the vat.

As I propped open the door and worriedly looked for another vehicle, perhaps a rented U-Haul, loaded with other items, Earl came bounding in carrying three cases of various DelMonte vegetables stacked atop a gallon container of M&Ms.

“I spent $500!”

Sweet Jesus. We’d have to add a room onto the house to store all the stuff that needed to be hauled in from the Durango. We needed a new room, stat.

As I tried to keep the cat from being buried and a pathway cleared to the bathroom, stack after stack of “deals too good to be true” were brought into our kitchen that already has cracked tiles on the floor. I thought for sure the rest of the tiles would give way, though I secretly smiled because then all the stuff would make it to the basement on it’s own.

We have canned vegetables, a wide assortment of meats, pounds of pistachios, hectares of pop-tarts and barrels of barbecue sauce.

I officially decree that we are now ready for that big snowstorm.

Yesterday was World AIDS Day. Many websites were themed in red to commemorate the day. I was on a road trip and did not have the chance to mark this site the same way. I am slightly disappointed with myself over this.

As my friend dave tweeted:

“On this Worlds AIDS day, take time to remember those who have left us, and those that are still here to keep up the fight”

I couldn’t say it any better.

I have my Lenovo PC themed in PRODUCT (RED). The theme is carried over from when I bought the special edition of Windows Vista Ultimate PRODUCT (RED) a couple of years ago. I remarked back then that I liked the fact that Microsoft had a special edition of Windows Vista Ultimate out at the time and that I also appreciated that Dell had special editions of select computers that were also part of the project.

I wish Apple would do the same with a Mac. I know they have a couple of iPods in PRODUCT (RED), but I think it would be much better if they did the same with a Mac.

The debate still lingers in my head a year later. If I’m going to make a statement with my computer, it should be something that I believe in and something for the greater good. I want to make my impression *that* way.

303.365, originally uploaded by iMachias.

Yesterday I received a small package in the mail. It was an ebay purchase as I had bought some classic Apple Computer stickers to add to my growing collection of all things Mac. There are four stickers in total.

I’m such a geek.

While I have a ton of the white Apple logo stickers around the house, as they come with just about every Apple product you purchase, these are the first of the older multi-colored logo. However, this is not the first time I have had a sticker like this.

In the summer of 1985 between my junior and senior years in high school I worked for the school district with a handful of other folks my age cleaning the school from top to bottom for the coming school year in the fall. It was one day that summer that we learned that one of my classmates had been killed. His name was Bobby. From what I remember he had passed out in the middle of the street, ironically between the volunteer ambulance corps and the local medical center, and had been fatally hit by a car. He had been drinking.

Back when I was in school students had the same locker from grade 7 through their senior year. I distinctly remember locker 710 (with the combination 48-4-42) being my home base at school for six years.

I was given the task of cleaning out Bobby’s locker so that it would be available for any new students joining us in the fall. Bobby came from a fairly well-off family and they had an Apple ][e. One of their Apple Computer stickers was in Bobby’s locker. Instead of peeling it off with the assigned sticker scraper, I carefully removed the sticker intact and transported it home, where I stuck it to my bedroom door. That sticker stayed on my door until the mid 1990s, when my folks removed it during some sort of remodeling project.

I haven’t thought about Bobby in years. We weren’t overly close in school but he was a nice enough guy with a wild streak and I thought he was good looking. He was one of the first in the class to sport a mustache. It’s funny that I didn’t remember any of this until my new stickers arrived yesterday.

I have been reading a discussion on Slashdot about the purpose of ‘Black Friday’. The discussion has migrated into the meaning of the holidays and the tendency for Americans to purchase stuff they don’t really want or need, all in the spirit of giving.

I kind of get that.

One of the contributors to the discussion suggested some gift ideas that I thought I would share here:

• Hire a Maid/House Cleaning service to give the house a good cleaning for your spouse, mother, or other special person

Hire someone to paint a room or fix something on the home of your loved one

• Commission the making of a crotcheted Blanket, Sweater, Afghan, from one of the many people in your local neighborhood who does such crafts
• Hire someone to “Detail” your loved ones car
• Hire someone to “Cater” your Holiday Dinner or Family Get together
• Buy your loved one a “subscription” to yard mainenance/landscaping service for one year
• Buy your father, brother, or other loved one a “Gift Card” for automobile maintenance at the local Mechanic and/or Car Dealer
• Buy locally hand-made furniture (from the Amish or other local providers), like a wooden rocking chair or dining room table, for your loved ones
• Hire someone to “prepare a vegetable garden” for your loved one (turn the soil, remove the weeds/roots etc, get it ready for planting in the spring and/or do the initial planting)