Ponderings and Musings

And the good times keep comin’! This week it’s all about the intermediate algebra, as I have two major tests, four homework assignments, a paper and a final all due before July 6. My desk is cluttered with scraps of paper with algebraic equations and my head is cluttered with variables dancing and passing like strangers in the night. I have noticed that my professor and the text book are both obsessed with mixing 20% acid solution with 60% acid solution to come up with 45% acid solution in varying amounts using various methods.

I don’t think I’ve ever mixed acid before.

The bright side of the week is the morning weather has been absolutely perfect for cycling. I’ve been getting myself up out of bed early enough to enjoy breakfast with Earl and then jumping on the bike for an hour or so. I’m loving the bike riding again and that’s keeping my head clear and my anxiety of acid solutions low.

Time to go study!

Earl and I made what is becoming a somewhat yearly trek to my alma mater for the annual “Alumni Banquet”. This gathering is a tradition at my high school; alumni gather for a banquet and typical assembly afterwards, where we honor the current graduates and hand out almost $10,000 in scholarships. Tonight’s banquet was the 118th. The oldest alumni in attendance had graduated in 1933.

My father is currently the president of the Alumni Association. This is his first year in the role. He’s going to do it for one more year and he hinted that I should take over the duties after he’s through. Apparently no one else wants the job.

I did take the opportunity to stand up and make an announcement about my efforts getting the Alumni Marching Band together for the parade in August. It’s coming together slowly but surely. Several people are excited about the venture, so I’m glad there’s some interest out there.

I had the opportunity to visit with one of my favorite teachers from high school. Miss Chontosh (though that’s not her name anymore) joined the faculty as an 8th grade math teacher when I was in 8th grade. Today she’s the department head for the math department. I told her about my current intermediate algebra challenges in college and she told me I’d do fine. I also snuck a peek in the gymansium for the first time since graduating in 1986. It looks the same aside from a paint job or four.

It was good to walk through the old halls and reminisce a little bit.

It’s been a year and a half since we welcomed my grandmother’s piano into our home. Even though the piano sits proudly in our front room, the “formal” living room, and is rightfully our piano, in my mind it shall always be my grandmother’s piano. I believe my grandfather bought it for her new back in 1949. When I sit on the bench, I can still smell the scent inherent to the instrument. I can still hear my grandmother playing her favorite song, “My Melody of Love”, made famous by Bobby Vinton.

I have played the piano on very few occasions since it’s come into our home. It didn’t survive the transport as well as I had hoped; several keys ended up in the “down” position and it hadn’t been tuned in at least two decades. But the keys that worked sounded strong and overall the piano is in otherwise great shape, so Earl and I decided it deserved a little TLC.

The kind man from Stage Music made two visits this week. On Tuesday morning he spent two hours assessing what needed to be done and he also brought the piano back to pitch (it was considerably flat). It turns out that there had been quite the family of mice living in the piano at one time, and they had snacked on the felt pads that raise the keys to their proper position. So Mr. Stage Music came back today and replaced all the felt and tweaked the pitch to perfection. To test the piano, Mr. Stage Music played a melody of lounge favorites. I noticed that he gave the piano the firm touch that it requires to make beautiful music. I’ve always been rather timid when playing this piano. This was a result of my playing the piano when I was in elementary school. I was having a loud, boisterous, joyful time with my sister, when grandpa came over and in his stern, rather bull-hornish voice proclaimed, “Do you know what refrain means?” We suspected it meant “stop and move your fingers”, as the lid to the keys was brought to a close.

We used a timid touch when we played the piano after that encounter. Thank goodness Mom and Dad babysat a piano for 20 years so that we had something to bang on.

So now my grandmother’s piano is back in her beautiful glory. I’ve never had an official piano lesson (thank god… we won’t mention the town minister that gave piano lessons only to ‘special young boys’), aside from the piano classes I didn’t finish at SUNY Fredonia. But I can plunk out a few tunes like a drunken fool from time to time, even though I can’t separate my left hand from my right hand and I don’t use the correct fingerings. See if you can identify the two songs I’m trying to play here.

It’s never good to see “You have one voicemail” on the cell phone after math class. Those who would call me know that I’m in school and would usually call me after school, plus I don’t think there’s that many people that would call me anyway, so seeing that I received a voicemail while I was sitting in class gave me an eerie feeling.

It was Earl. He fell asleep while driving on the Thruway today, with the cruise control on, and was awakened by the sound of his car sideswiping a guardrail at 72 MPH.

He’s not hurt and the car has an interesting pattern scraped down the entire length of it but it’s perfectly driveable. It just looks a little ghetto or white trashy right now.

My partner never gets enough sleep and he didn’t eat breakfast this morning. Instead of scolding him, well, maybe I scolded him just a little bit once I knew he was o.k., I told him that I’ll be joining him for a bowl of Cheerios and a glass of juice every morning.

I’ll even be chipper when I do it. Anything to avoid voicemail messages like that.

I’ve often complained about the conduct of the general public at the large movie multiplexes. People chat and send text messages on their very bright cell phones, have discussions as if they were sitting in their own living room and in general show a basic disregard for the others around them that are trying to enjoy the movie.

Luckily, there’s two solutions to this problem. The first involves waiting for movies to come out on DVD. With much of the junk that Hollywood serves up unapologetically cold these days, this is usually not a problem, however, there are movies that sometimes you just can’t wait for. Which brings us to our second solution, and that’s the local drive-in theatre.

We are fortunate to have a drive-in theatre within 10 miles of our house. “The West Rome Drive-In” has been serving our community since 1951 and is still packed on summer nights. During the daytime hours on the weekend, the drive-in doubles as a flea market. The sound system was upgraded a couple of years ago. They occasionally repaint the screens. The concession stand is delightfully dirty.

There’s nothing like sitting in the comfort of your own vehicle with the one you love watching a great movie being piped in over your car stereo system in glorious Dolby digital.

By the way, I really enjoyed “Fantastic Four”. I found it to be far superior to Spiderman 3. Get to a drive-in this summer!

When I was a wee lad I was very active in the musical programs in my high school. (A gay teenager, active in the music programs, go figure!) I was in the concert and marching bands playing tuba, I participated in all the choruses I could singing baritone and I was in the yearly high school musicals. I even ventured out on a limb once or twice and participated in community theatre as well.

My high school band director was a notorious perfectionist. An amazing musician, he demanded the best performance possible from all his students and had no qualms with dismissing those that weren’t making the grade. He was fair but very demanding. I had the utmost respect for him and looking back I guess I learned a great deal from him, which shaped my personal demand of perfection when it comes to performing. I think that’s why I’m so critical of today’s vocalists and I can’t watch American Idol anymore, audiences are all too eager to give standing ovations to mediocrity these days.

On the flip side of the high school music program, we had three different vocal directors during my school years. I found one to be considerably more demanding than the other two and I think she made a considerable impression on me in the perfection department as well. She didn’t believe in putting mics on us when we were on stage, we were to fill the auditorium with our voice and sing to the back wall. A tank of a woman, she also had no problem telling you when you weren’t fitting the bill. I’ll never forget the time that she told me to “butch it up and walk like a man” in 10th grade during a rehearsal as a knight in “Camelot”. Mortified, to this day I still suck in my gut and square my shoulders when I walk.

I’ve been doing some random searches of high school and college stage performances on YouTube, more specifically “Godspell”, “Fame” and “Pippin”. Wow, there’s a lot of crap being performed on stage these days and yet audiences are going wild. Now I’m not saying that what I sing or play is the bees knees of high school performances. I was never destined for Broadway. While my hearing is pitch perfect and I can sing a song in the proper key without a pitch pipe or accompaniment, I know my limitations and accept them and that’s why I often choose not to perform when prompted by family members. If I can’t make it perfect, I’m not going to do it.

I am quite content on my educational path to a civil engineering degree and have no desire to teach music on a regular basis (been there, done that, no thanks), however, I can’t help but think that there must be way for me to contribute to the musical arts in the community. The Alumni Band (up to 20 members so far!) is one step in that direction. But looking at these performances on the internet, I think I’m alarmed that what could be excellent performers are instead floundering performers that have no sense of the time signature of a piece while they bounce around the melody doing idiotic “runs” that would make Randy Jackson swoon and Paula Abdul giddy. I think it was Barbra Streisand that told Rosie O’Donnell, as Rosie was blaring out a tune like a fog horn, that “less is more” when it comes to singing a song.

Where am I going with this thought? I have no idea. I do know that when I performed “We Beseech Thee” from Godspell for an audition at SUNY Fredonia in 1987, it was much better than this (he says, with a smug look on his face).

Perhaps when I go for a community theatre gig, someone can post my performance on YouTube so I can inspire someone else’s blog entry and critique.

Earl and I have lived together for nearly 11 years. In that time we have had two beds. The first bed was Earl’s queen sized bed from his wild days, a hand-me down from his oldest sister. While quite functional, we opted to buy a new bed when we moved into the new house in 2003 and did the proper thing with the old bed, we gave it to his brother Rick. When we spend the night visiting his family, we usually stay with Rick and Helen and sleep in our old bed. My butt still fits and my leg surrounds the springs like it was yesterday.

It’s familiar and comfy.

When we first slept on the new, king sized bed, it felt foreign. It wasn’t all worked in like a hotel bed, it was shiny and firm and new and felt like we were sleeping on something that bent our backs in the wrong direction. After a few weeks and a few rides on the bed, it finally felt familiar.

This feeling didn’t last as long as I thought a new bed should.

I’ve played by the rules. Every three months I turn, rotate, flip, spindle and attempt not to mutilate the mattress as directed by the wise sage at Raymour and Flanigan. Sometimes I achieve this feat alone. Do you know how hard it is to turn, rotate, flip, spindle and attempt to to mutilate a king sized mattress alone? It’s a daring feat, what with the threat of the mattress falling out the window, scaring the cat and/or falling on me while I plea “help me, help me” in a pitiful voice. But the wise sage said you had to do this to the mattress, so I did.

When you look at a picture of Earl and I, you may notice that while we were are two bear sized guys, I’m a little smaller than he is. Can someone please explain to me why I have the bigger, deeper crevice in the mattress? Regardless of which way the mattress has been turned, rotated, flipped, spindled and hopefully not mutilated, there I am lying approximately one foot average sea level lower than Earl.

I have affectionately named this crevice “The Ditch”.

“Sweetheart, it’s time to get up!”, comes the voice from above, as he peers down into the ditch prompting the serfs out of slumber. “The cat says it’s time for tuna.”

I tell the cat to “go tell it on the mountain.” I have noticed that while Earl does have a smaller version of The Ditch on his side of the bed, mine is deeper and stretches from sea to shining sea. I like to think that the cat sleeps on the Continental Divide between us.

Truth be told, I guess I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I can’t think of the last time that I was up at 4:30 in the morning and not growling at people. Here I am, wide awake and actually making myself a “to-do” list for the day. I have included the obligatory nap for 2:30 this afternoon so I can be refreshed for a rousing episode of “Leave It to Beaver” on TV Land.

My sleeping habits have been oscillating back and forth between “sloth” and “zombie” for the past couple of weeks. Usually I try to be in bed by 11 and up by eight, but when we went camping a couple of weeks ago I stayed up until two or so and then slept in until ten. This seemed to work reasonably well, but it’s not something that I can do during the week as I would then miss my college classes.

Sunday night I went to bed at two and was up by nine, even though there were several attempts from a certain cat to get me up way before then. “Thou shall get a paw in the eye and claws across the beard until thou serves tuna.”

On the other hand, last night I went to bed at ten and was up by 4:30 this morning, as I was awoken by the delivery of a very large aircraft to the local airliner maintenance center. So much for noise abatement. Last night’s turning in early was entirely due to my recent attempt at eating healthy, as I was so hungry I was ready to gnaw on my desk so I thought I should either go to sleep or eat a half gallon of ice cream.

So now I’m patiently waiting for Earl to get up in an hour so I can rip the sheets out from under him and start the ritual I call “giddy with laundry”.

They’ll be done just in time for my mid afternoon nap.

So it was 2 a.m. and I was surfing from page to page on the internet, undoubtedly trying to catch up on important topics in world news or looking for creative porn or something of that sort. It was then that I I came across a parenting forum where they were discussing how to determine if their pre-adolescent child (in this instance, a boy) was gay. Now that I think back on the it, it kind of makes me wonder what my google search query was. Anyways, this handful of mothers and few interested fathers were discussing telltale signs as to their elementary school child’s impending sexual orientation.

I find these discussions relatively humorous. Let me preface this by saying that I fully believe that one is born attracted to one sex or the other, or in some instances to both, and that it’s not a conscious decision we make when our hormones surge during our teens. Show me someone that “decided” to be gay and I’ll show you an idiot with a low self-esteem and a non-existent ego. Maybe that’s a little harsh, but I truly believe there are a very few out there that “decided to be gay”. We’re wired the way that we’re wired and that’s all there is to it. Because of our resulting natural predisposition, I believe for some that genes and other DNA circuitry are programmed to care about certain things such as shopping or colors more than other things such as mowing the lawns or playing with toy soldiers. Thinking about a recent theme weekend at a gay campground, perhaps that last example isn’t such a good one.

Anyway, the forum members were mentioning that this concerned parent should watch for the stereotypical telltale signs: the boy wanting to grow his hair long or wanting to play with Barbie dolls or showing no interest in trucks. I find these barometers to be rather unwieldy in today’s environment. First of all, since the metrosexual movement is still somewhat present it’s difficult to tell ascertain the sexuality of a youngster by things such as long hair, earrings in the wrong ears and whatnot. Hell, there’s angry, straight gang members acting all tough like and running around with eyebrows stylized like a 1920s movie starlet and in pink shirts with popped collars. What’s long hair going to prove? I think parents would be relieved if their child wanted just their ear pierced, what with all the piercings one encounters today. This isn’t going to tell the parent anything.

I guess it was easier for my parents’ generation; in many instances they simply hiked up the pants leg of their youngster and if their little boy had black and blue marks on his shin then odds were they were gay, because the black and blue marks were undoubtedly from secret attempts to spin from Diana Prince to Wonder Woman and the resulting banging into the coffee table.

One ‘knowledgeable’ person suggested that if the little boy was interested in cats instead of dogs then he was going to grow up to be a ‘flamer’, as he so eloquently described it. Wrongo. If the boy likes cats then he’s going to be straight because only lesbians like cats and lesbians like girls.

Duh.

Another suggested an interest in comic books would indicate that he’s not gay. Apparently straight-destined boys want to Superman or Batman. Hello, wrong again. I loved comic books and when as a kid I had to settle for being “Robin” when in fact I wanted to enchant “Oh Zephyr Winds which blow on high, lift me now so I can fly” but not wear a skirt. Just because the youngster is pulling a Superman doesn’t mean he wouldn’t rather be Catwoman.

I had to stop reading the discussion when a woman suggested that she have the boy look at his shoe and if he turns his foot one way he’s gay and if he turns it the other he’s straight.

Perhaps a Rockettes kick would have been the indicator.

Who in their right mind brings the camera while grocery shopping?