Ponderings and Musings

Today’s kids have everything they can imagine and more. They come home from school, still dazzled by the PowerPoint presentations that have replaced the overhead slide projector and sit in front of their gaming console and play video games while chatting with their friends on their very own cell phone.

Back in my day (he says like a wise old sage after having a few beers), we kids had this after school:

I have spent the entire day sitting at the kitchen table studying. I’m starting to feel like I’m ahead of the college game again as last week it seems like all my instructors jolted awake and said “let them have homework”. I usually save Sunday nights for my Drafting class homework, but Earl and I got wrapped up in the Academy Awards so I ended up pushing it off until today.

By the way, did anyone else find the Academy Awards as boring as I did? I mean I loved sitting on the couch with Earl to my left and Tom on my lap and it was nice to see Jennifer Hudson win her award and I surely enjoyed seeing Melissa Etheridge win her award for her song in Vice President Al Gore’s documentary (which is recording on the TiVo as I type this), but on the whole I found the award ceremony relatively boring. The naked people behind the white screen making bird shadows and whatnot were sort of like fireworks, you “ooh” and “aah” the first time or two you see them then you start showing more interest in swatting bugs and such. While I was rather excited to have Ellen DeGeneres as the host I found her to be somewhat subdued and rather absent from large chunks of the show. I mean she didn’t do a poor job but I wasn’t dazzled like I thought I would be.

Earl is out of town until Friday night save for a cameo appearance tomorrow night before leaving again Wednesday morning. We’re having guests over this weekend so I’ll be busy sprucing up, plus I’m having dinner with our friend Eric on Wednesday so I won’t be a surly hermit or anything but gosh I think it’s going to be a long week.

To make my partner’s life of business travel a little bit easier, I offered to take his car to the grocery store today so I could fill the gas tank up on the way home. He cautioned me that perhaps I should get gas on the way to the market, because there was a chance that I wouldn’t have enough to make it all the way to the store. You see, he likes to live on the edge. I discovered very early in our relationship that he believed when the gas gauge was on “E”, the idiot light flashed a little gas pump and the warning chimes chimed, you easily had at least 100 miles worth of gas left in the tank. The vehicle you driving didn’t matter, you had 100 miles left if you were driving a Yugo, a Fiat, a tractor trailer or a tank.

So I stopped in to the local gas station to fill up the tank. Luckily, I made it without needing to coast. It was close though, because the gas station is over one mile away from our house. At the station I went through the usual routine: I pressed the “PAY OUTSIDE” key, swiped my card in a spastic, hurried manner hoping the reader wasn’t clogged with ice, punched my way through various menus including credit or debit, car wash or no, age, weight, zip code and sexual orientation.

After listening to the pump shake, rattle and roll as it presumably put a 89 octane Tiger in my tank, I put the nozzle back on the rack and waited for the next question. “RECEIPT? YES/NO”

I don’t know why I bother answering yes. We all know that nothing is going to print there at the pump. Do you know why? I’ll tell you why. The manager holds the secret key to the roll of paper in the pump and the manager is relaxing in Bermuda on stolen lottery money.

Why is the manager the only one that holds this magic key? Can someone please explain to me why the staff members of a convenience store are not allowed to change the paper in the gas tanks? They hold the key to the storage tanks of thousands of gallons of a highly explosive fluid but they are not allowed to change a 3/4-inch by 25 foot roll of receipt tape.

I find that baffling.

What makes the situation worse is that the manager never changes the paper on Friday, so by mid morning Saturday all of the pumps are out of paper and the Speedpass “Pay at the Pump” ain’t so speedy because you have to go into the store, stand in line behind the smelly woman that’s buying $200 worth of scratch of lottery tickets and four cartons of Pall Malls and then beg for your receipt.

Getting gas is such a gas.

I love watching and observing people. I find human beings so fascinating because no two people are alike. Everyone has their own way of doing things and it’s interesting to watch others go about their business.

One trend that I’ve observed with my return to college has taken place in the men’s room. The young guys don’t use the urinals. Instead, they opt to go into a stall and do their thing there. I’ll walk into one of the college bathrooms and there’ll be a line of men waiting for the stalls but rarely will someone be using the assortment of urinals lining the wall.

Why is this?

I’m no Jaime Sommers but I have decent hearing, so I can hear the guys unzipping and peeing. I don’t hear their pants hit the floor like they’re getting ready to squat or anything (and I’m certainly not watching) so it’s obvious that these guys are choosing to go behind closed doors to do the same thing I used to do against a tree in the front lawn (until my father taught me to use the back lawn).

I guess I’ve never been pee shy so that’s why I don’t understand. Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t enjoy public bathrooms by any stretch of the imagination. They’re usually frighteningly dirty and as a clueless gay man I’m always afraid that I’m unintentionally giving out some secret signal to some not-so-clueless gay man who thinks I’m stomping, coughing or waving an intended advance when in fact all I want to do is pee. When I walk into a men’s room at a rest area or whatever I’m always sure not to cough, not to clear my throat and to keep my junk squarely aimed at it’s target. I’m not sharing. Not there.

This streak of modesty among my fellow male students has piqued my curiousity though. What happened in my generation that is causing us to teach our offspring that peeing in a urinal is bad? Is it low self esteem? Were we too free in the 80s and now the pendulum is swinging back to some weird Victorian age when it comes to bathroom habits?

I find it very interesting.

One of the hardest things about a quick weekend getaway, aside from the aforementioned snow incident, is getting back into the groove Monday morning. Especially when the thermometer says it’s -11 degrees fahrenheit. There is something very comforting about being under ten pounds of blankets and twelve pounds of cat in bed. It’s hard to get the old body moving when you can hear the roof creaking under the strain of the cold outside.

Nevertheless, I dragged myself out of bed and got my day started rather early this morning. I was so elated with the fact that I was out of bed before 8 a.m. that I started supper in the crockpot and studied all morning for my latest “math for dummies” exam. I didn’t completely lose my mind however, there’s still dirty laundry to be washed.

That’s tonight’s fun.

All things work out well I guess, for the studying paid off and I did well on the latest exam. My self-pacing for this course has paid off and all I have left is the final exam. I was given the practice final today by the instructor, I might tackle the real mccoy on Wednesday. I have two chances to do well with it. I intend on doing exceptionally well.

Earl always commends me on my dedication to my studies. I sometimes wonder where I’d be today if I had the same sort of enthusiasm for learning back on my first go around at college.

Tonight’s class was canceled so I’ve been working on my homework tonight, trying to get it done before the latest installment of “Heroes”. After supper Earl and I watched this morning’s “The View” via TiVo; I guess I never realized that HRG (Mr. Bennet) is Jack Coleman, the second gay Stephen from “Dynasty.” When I saw him without his “Heroes” trademark glasses, Earl and I exclaimed in unison that he’s pretty hot. I have a new appreciation for HRG man.

Nothing strikes terror in one’s heart after a glorious weekend with your lover in New York than these two heinous words: “Welcome Home.”

I’ve often thought that there is just one good thing about living where we live and that’s the fact that it’s easier to go somewhere else. After a beautiful weekend in The Big Apple, we drove up our road to our driveway to find that we couldn’t find it. There was a wall of about 4 1/2 feet of snow where the driveway should have been. The only way I knew the location of the driveway was because the two five-foot high posts I had installed earlier this year had their very tops showing. So I did the sensible thing.

I tried to drive through the snow bank.

With the Malibu.

What an idiot.

Naturally I got far enough into the driveway that I was able to bury the front of the car and trap us inside because we couldn’t open the doors. Earl briefly yelled at me for putting on the brake as I tried to make the plunge, which invoked my super powers enough to be able to force the door open. I trudged up the driveway, which had almost a foot of snow in it, got myself in the garage and grabbed a shovel and trudged back. I then started digging the car out. Earl and I took turns digging and rocking the car. I finally got out the snowblower and was able to clean out around the car a little bit. Earl then pushed while I rocked and then we rolled.

An hour or so later the driveway was clean long enough for it to start snowing hard again. I don’t care what it looks like in the morning.

Our area has been on the national news quite a bit because of the weather. One thing they keep talking about is the community spirit where neighbor is helping neighbor with a glow usually found around a fireplace and several glasses of brandy. Not here. The neighbors watched from their snug little houses as Earl and I huffed and puffed to get the car out of the road (which was unsurprisingly busy with big SUVs being driven by women with big hair) and into the driveway. I no longer care if I have to fire up the snowblower at 4 a.m. Tomorrow morning as they look out the window I’ll just wave back.

Earl and I continued our work in the basement today. We are now getting his space ready so he can move his office down into the cellar. Then we won’t have to rely on instant messenger to communicate, as he’s currently upstairs in one of the spare bedrooms and I’m in the basement.

Such a technolife we lead.

No home improvement project is complete without a visit to Home Depot or Lowe’s so today we chose the former. When all is said and done I think I’ll be ready to wire the electric service for an entire house, as we were able to install two new receptacles, complete with surface wire molding and tie it into the house current in less than 30 minutes. They say opposites attract, and that must be true, because Earl and I have completely opposite ways of approaching a project, but after almost eleven years of doing this, we have a system that works for both of us.

One of the changes that came about was the relocation of my favorite clock from my school clock collection.

This clock is from my elementary school. Back in 2000 the school district replaced all the clocks by popping out the face, glass and hands and bolting a new clock on top of the wood casing. This clock had been removed for a remodeling project and wasn’t reinstalled, so they offered it to me when they found out I was a collector of these clocks. From what I’ve been able to find out, the clocks in my elementary school were custom designed for that school (there’s no documentation anywhere and this particular style clock hasn’t been found anywhere else to my knowledge) so this could be the last clock left completely intact. It’s rather loud when it advances, so those that sleep in the spare bedroom will be glad that it’s been moved to a new location.

We are traveling to the Big Apple next weekend, so the home improvement project will have to be on hold until after the flooring for the locker room/office arrives.

It always comes around these parts at this time of year. The snow keeps falling. The snowblower keeps blowing. And the natives get surly while they’re snug in their homes waiting for the sun to shine once again. We call it “cabin fever”.

Earl and I spent the day moving furniture and cleaning around the house. It hasn’t been the most exciting weekend we’ve had together, but at least it’s been productive. I’ve been out of work for 42 days so I thought I should unpack the box of my belongings from my old desk. Hence the photo of the very technical piece of telecommunications equipment pictured above. There is an antiquated piece of equipment called a “reflectometer” which was used to troubleshoot the telephone network. Back in my on call days we had a customer that would call us and tell us that we needed to use one of them on his phone lines. I would just agree with him and clock the overtime. When I mentioned at the office that I didn’t know what this customer was talking about, this was on my desk. It was a gift from a co-worker a couple of years ago. It was used to monitor how pissed I was becoming while providing technical support. It’s now part of my new office in our basement.

Perhaps I should shine it on the lawn and melt some of this snow.

Here in Upstate New York we have a car dealership that sort of exploded in the past ten years and has opened several mammoth dealerships all over the state. He carries every car brand imaginable this side of the AMC Pacer. I’m not going to name his dealership by name as I don’t want to lend a hand in free advertising on his behalf, but his trademark is that “it’s huge”, in the most gutteral, annoying, uneducated belch of words possible. He has pretty much become the Wal*mart of the auto dealer set.

He is as annoying as hell.

First of all, the public is constantly barraged with his image. Everywhere. There’s a huge billboard on Interstate 81 in Syracuse with the word “huge”, his ugly mug and his arms spread wide like some sort of manic bird. He has a clock up there and it’s never right. Since stationary images are never enough, Centro, the regional transportation agency, has sold advertising space to him. So naturally you would think that his picture is on the back and/or sides of the bus. Wrong. The buses are completely wrapped in his image, forcing riders that must ride the bus and care to look out the window to do so by gazing through his hairy nostril or around his hairy armpit. Those in the back look through his teeth.

It’s disgusting.

As I’ve mentioned countless times, I worked in radio for over a decade. I’ve always been a fan of radio. However, I will not listen to a station that runs his ads. I don’t care if they are playing a string of Kylie Minogue, Madonna and The Pet Shop Boys constantly, if you stop the music for one of his commercials, your station is promptly on the SL and it’s staying there until XM or Sirius falls out of orbit. Now he doesn’t buy one ad to run four or five times a day like most sane organizations. No. This guy purchases one or two 60 second slots per break (what we in the industry called stop sets) and then barks out his “huge” numerous times and talks to some announcer shill guy named Tom over the phone. Tom acts like he’s at the car lot and Billy is out finding new deals for his buyers. Cluephone boys, we know that Tom is in some cushy studio in Florida and Billy is actually at one of his many dealerships barking over a speakerphone, because we’ve also heard Tom on spots in New Orleans, Orlando and Atlanta and they weren’t with you Billy. How does that make you feel, knowing that Tom is chatting it up with other car dealers too? He’s a manwhore.

I have now come to the point where I will terrorize a driver with a car with the little license plate frame that tells the name of this dealership. It is beyond my comprehension why any self-respecting person would make the largest or second-largest purchase of their life with this idiot.

When Earl and I travel, I take a certain comfort in knowing that Auto Idiot #1 will be left behind and it’s safe to listen to the radio. But no, now he’s in Niagara Falls, he’s in Albany and god knows where else. I think the only way to escape him is to go to the other side of the Mississippi.

I wish someone would just tell this guy to shut up, pack up your money and get the hell away from us. We don’t find you cute. We don’t find you articulate. We don’t find you clever and we certainly don’t find you pretty.

Just go away. Please. Oh, the cluephone is ringing again. We know why you keep barking out “huge”. It’s to make up for the more important parts that aren’t so huge.

When Earl got home from work I announced to him that I hadn’t started supper but if he didn’t want to go out I could heat up some leftover goulash-bake type stuff that I made last night. It was long on noodles and short on sauce, but still acceptable.

His response was non-commital. At least no profanity was involved.

So we went out for dinner. We went to a restaurant that we hadn’t been to in about a year, it’s a local place called “Casa Too Mucha”. They serve Tex-Mex food with a dollop of Italian and Lenten Friday Fish Fry on the side to keep the natives here happy. We used to be regulars at the place; we’d walk in and the co-owner/hostess would beam at us, give us a hug and have us cut ahead of everyone else in line (declaring loudly that we had reservations when we really didn’t, she said we were a “standing”) so that we could sit in the (whispered) “special customer section” upstairs. Said special section was “kid free” by her choosing and had nice looking male servers. She knew how to keep her gays happy.

Unfortunately, during one visit we had a particularly bad experience with a lot of variables in one equation: we ran into an unpleasant acquaintenance who is still an ass, we had a server that completely bungled our order and to top it all off, the substitute hostess sat us downstairs amongst the common folk by jamming us in a corner. I don’t know what they do in the Catskills, but no one puts Baby in a corner.

So I had a silent hissy fit and placed the restaurant on the SL for a bit. Tonight I decided to forgive and forget and Earl responded with a “Thank God”. Being Wednesday the restaurant was relatively quiet with no need for the selected section upstairs and the pace was much more relaxed. The food was delicious and the smiles were once again beaming.

When the co-owner/hostess came over to visit us, she earned two huge points from me. First of all, she offered to make me strawberry shortcake for dessert because she remembered that I enjoyed that. Yay! Secondly and most importantly, she commented on my mustache and how it looks awesome and that I should “keep it forever”.

Now that’s the way to this bear’s good side.

Ironically, it’s the second comment I’ve received on my mustache today, the first being at school from a younger, full-bearded student who nodded in my direction as we passed in the hall, “Nice bars, dude.” He sounded genuine about it.

When I mentioned to Earl that I rather appreciated the attention I get about my mustache, regardless of whom it’s from, he said “I’ve been telling you that since the last time you wore a mustache like that, but you don’t listen to me.”

I’m listening, I’m listening!

Vanity 1 Humility 0