Ponderings and Musings

I have discovered that having the radio on in the office is really distracting. Especially when the radio station in question is one of those annoying “lite” stations that thrive on the likes of Delilah at night and play boring, down-tempo tracks 75% of the time and then claim to be all fun because they play “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” every Friday at noon. Unfortunately I have no choice in the matter: the station is selected by someone else and is pumped in over the intercom speaker.

I think the fact that the sound is barely audible and coming from a very low-fidelity speaker is part of the reason that I find the noise to be so distracting. I can’t quite figure out what song is on unless I take time out of whatever I’m doing to actually listen to it and then it usually turns out to be a really crappy song. No offense to Elton John fans, but how many times can you listen to “Candle In The Wind” in a given week? Every morning between 8 and 9 they play a Sheena Easton song, yesterday it was “Morning Train”, this morning it was “Modern Girl”. I dare them to play “Sugar Walls” tomorrow. I’m betting it’ll be “For Your Eyes Only”.

So I have installed a program on my work computer that gives me a wide selection of background sounds to play at my desk. Today I have been lulled into relative peace with the sounds of “Rehobeth Beach”. It isn’t just the sound waves crashing against the shore but it’s actually the Atlantic crashing against Rehobeth Beach. Now mind you, I’ve never been to Rehobeth Beach so I can’t verify the authenticity of this claim, but nevertheless there it is and quite frankly, while it’s quite pleasing it doesn’t sound much different than the waves at say, Marblehead, Mass. or somewhere along the coast of Nova Scotia for that matter.

I am enjoying the distraction from the distraction of the radio though. I like to think that the Rehobeth Beach sounds actually kept me calm as a woman called in a with a trouble because she was unable to open an attachment on her e-mail from a Prince somewhere in the Middle East that promised her a huge sum of money if she told him where to deposit it. Apparently she thought that the attachment provided the proper forms and documentation and any guidance from me wasn’t going to help matters, she just wanted to open the attachment.

I told her to take her computer to a specialist.

I’m back. I haven’t written in my blog for nearly a week and a few people are concerned that I have vanished off the face of the earth.

Heh. I hear Mars is nice.

Last week I got hit with a 24 hour bug and spent most of Wednesday trying to sleep that off. Thursday I wasn’t in the mood to write anything and then I kept pretty busy this weekend so here we are at Monday.

I wish I could say I was in a great mood today to match the sunny weather, but neither my disposition nor the weather is sunny. I feel I match the gray of rainy skies well. Tomorrow will be another day, I guess.

I haven’t cranked on Daylight Saving Time yet this year but I can say without a trace of humour in my voice or on my face that I am not a fan of going to DST earlier like we have for the past couple of years. Has anyone besides me noticed how dark it is when the alarm goes off in the morning? The alarm did a little dance at 6:30 this morning and it was pitch black out. And I’m suppose to be happy and cheery when I get to work after stumbling in the dark as I crawl out of bed and then subsequently blinded by the light of the bathroom when I discover where I left the shower? Please. Just leave the clocks alone and as they were originally intended, with “noon” equaling where the sun is highest in the sky or a reasonable facsimile of this concept.

I should probably write with a touch of whimsy, as I have been told that I am too surly in my blog lately, but I can’t say that I feel whimsical. Perhaps when the sun comes out, I lose 20 pounds or so and when my skin clears up I will sound less surly behind the words but for now I wait for spring.

Not patiently, mind you, but nonetheless I wait.

ring, ring

Me (slightly irritated): “Hello?”

Woman (obviously uninterested and reading from a script): “May I speak to the person knowledgeable about your company’s telephone service?”

Me (snap!): “This is a residence on the do not call list. Since you obviously are ignorant and unemployable, may I also add that you work for a company that does not have balls as evidenced by your blocked caller ID. Go suck it.”

Happy Monday!

So as of this writing I am wrapping up my latest week of on-call. I will officially be off call in three hours and 48 minutes. My next round of on-call is in four weeks.

This has been one of the busier on calls I have ever had, and because of this my sleeping patterns have been completely out of whack. Friday and Saturday night my pager went off at seemingly random intervals. I would just start to fall back asleep and 20 minutes later the pager would ring again. This went on from around midnight on Friday until 0700 or so on Sunday.

I managed to take a good, solid nap Sunday afternoon and I think it’s because of this that I am wide awake at 0400. Of course, being Sunday night doesn’t help matters. I have never been able to sleep well on Sunday nights. I discovered that art back in high school when I would somewhat panic on how I was going to accomplish my homework during homeroom. (Homeroom went from 0800-0808). I always got my homework done adequately though.

Now I lie in bed on Sunday nights counting the hours until I have to get up for work. Very bizarre.

So here I am typing on the upstairs computer because I can’t fall asleep. I’ve read blogs, I’ve checked e-mail, I have even walked around the house in the dark.

I’ll probably be tired when it’s time for the alarm to go off.

So I know everyone is whipped up about gay marriage (amongst other things) these days and I honestly can’t imagine what all the hoopla is about. I mean, as a gay man that has been happily partnered for longer than most heterosexual marriages I know, I have to say that I don’t know why a certain segment of our society gets themselves all worked up over the word ‘marriage’. I’ll leave your imagination to ponder which segment I’m referring to when it comes to those getting worked up, but I will say this: as long as I am guaranteed the EXACT same rights as my heterosexual counterparts but still referred to as a “civil union” then I have no issues with nomenclature. Most look at it as that marriage is “better than” a civil union but I tend to spin it around and look at it the other way: I wasn’t forced to eat a stale cake, I didn’t have to dance for dollars and I didn’t have to do the hokey pokey. To me, civil union means the same thing as marriage without the organised religious influence.

While I certainly want and demand legal recognition of my partnership, I’m sure many gay men and lesbians will agree with me that there is at least one advantage to not being able to declare “married” on our federal tax return. Many gay men and lesbians are rather affluent and bring in a good amount of income. Let’s say Dirk makes $200,000 a year and his partner Bruce makes $100,000 a year. Together they make $300,000. Dirk and Bruce have been together a decade or so and dump all of their income into their jointly owned house, land and smattering of bank accounts. Because Dirk and Bruce are not legally married and there union is not recognised as valid by Ol’ Glory, they are not obligated to report their income as combined, therefore Dirk makes $200K in the eyes of Uncle Sam and Bruce makes $100K in the same way, easily skirting that coveted $250K limit where the taxes get really deep and the hands of Uncle Sam get really grabby. Granted, we miss several tax breaks for not being married but when you’re starting to throw around the big numbers I think this becomes negligible.

Now I realise that this is a consolation prize in the grand scheme of things and legal recognition is what most of us really want and to be honest I believe that if I’m not allowed to be legally partnered on the federal level to the person I love then I shouldn’t have to pay full taxes anyway, but there is a very small amount of smirkiness I feel knowing that I could be skirting a part of the tax code on THEIR technicality.

For the past several months I have been writing about other folks on the blog. Earl and I have built our own family and I thought it was time to share a little bit about it.

Greg and Dave are two very important men in our life. As our bond grows I realise that I would be a considerably different man today if they weren’t around. I believe that I contribute to their personal growth just as they contribute to mine. Our home is open to them whenever they need a port in the storm and we love them both. We have much in common with them and we visit often, both electronically and in person.

The youngest member of our family is Jamie. An aspiring photographer and artist, Jamie will most likely attend MVCC in the fall for their photography/design/art program. In doing so, he will live with us as he is originally from Buffalo. Jamie is a great guy and reminds me in ways of a certain young man I once knew who just needed a little guidance to achieve the dreams he had already formulated in his mind. Jamie joined us in Florida last February. It was then that I confirmed what I already thought: I like him a lot and mi casa su casa. I seem to have inherited a trait from my father for nicknaming things, as I call Jamie “Cubster”.

Being relatively private in our home life, I believe that Earl and I have made some very well thought out decisions in regards to our future. I’m writing this entry on an airplane and I’m finding myself a little choked up, because I feel like my heart sings with the additions to our life. I feel the most grounded I have been in a long time.

I was going to get out the MacBook and type a blog entry on there, but the woman next to me is so comfy spread out that I don’t want to infringe on her space. She is very nice and I’ve made her laugh a few times with my observations of other passengers.

The two holy terrors and their young kids on the last flight followed me onto this one. They are screaming and kicking my seat everytime they see a cloud. I think one of them is trying to open the window for some fresh air.

The flight attendant on this flight is Mary. She is very charming and let me have two snacks. I enjoyed my biscotti and peanuts. Mary smiles and talks slowly on the intercom. She offered to top off my drink. I think it’s important to know the names of people that are helpful and/or here for my safety. It makes everyone involved feel more relaxed and we would have an easier time communicating in a time of crisis. I like her, she seems good at her job.

This is the second of three flights today. The next flight is short as it’s from Dallas to Oklahoma City. It also the biggest plane I’ll be on for this trip and on AA instead of Delta. I have a soft spot for AA. Delta was out of control with chaos at the ticket counter in Syracuse and that whole ghost terminal concourse C thing they have going on in Cincinnati is a bit spooky but other than that they’re doing ok. I still have a soft spot for AA though.

Here’s a random shot up the aisle.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve flown alone. Not since my radio days have I been without Earl on a commercial flight. I’m in bachelor mode in a different place.

Sitting I’m front of me are two young women. One of them has never flown before. She has a very appreciable innocence about her that is refreshing.

I’ve been flying for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is flying with my grandfather and father in a Cessna 172. It was way before kindergarten. I recall puking all over the place and my mother later yelling holy hell because my father had cleaned up the plane but not me. That was the last time I was sick in an airplane.

Most of my favourite memories from growing up are aviation related. Whether it was dropping sandbags from a Piper J5A at the local airport in an effort to hit a target or just flying to another airport for Sunday breakfast with my dad, I have always been a pretty happy guy in the sky.

I often follow the forums on airliners.net and contribute photos to the plane database. I enjoy looking up the tailnumbers of planes in the public knowledgebase. I think my next career will be aviation related. Probably waving the big glow sticks. I wouldn’t want to be a commercial pilot, I’m more
interested in sticking to a Cessna. I’m thinking a Cessna 182.

There is one woman who tried to use the bathroom during takeoff now roaming the cabin despite the lights that say the contrary. Meagan, the flight attendant, is giving her the evil eye. I’d just giver her a stern warning and offer her the chance to get outside and push if she didn’t do as she as told.

Below is a picture of one of the Finger Lakes. I’m not sure which one it is.