Ponderings and Musings

The company that hosts jpnearl.com must love me. I have been installing new features to the website that I’d like to start using soon (a new photo gallery system) but I keep crashing the server. I’m in Upstate New York, the server is in Pittsburgh. I keep sending them trouble tickets and they keep responding. They’re friendly enough though.

Hopefully tonight the dust will have settled enough that I can do a proper blog entry.

Earl and I made the trek to Albany yesterday to visit with our friends Sean and Jeffrey. Sean is the one I share a common ex with (from over 18 years ago, not that we are old or anything). He and his partner Jeffrey have been together for about as long as Earl and I have been. We ran into each other online a while back and decided that we needed to get together and just hang out.

Simply put, we had a smashingly great time. We arrived at their apartment a little after two, chatted, snacked and ate dinner, chatted some more and then all of a sudden it was after midnight. It was like we had known these guys forever. I’m looking forward to getting together with them again soon.

Living in a smaller city, I occasionally feel that Earl and I are out on some sort of gay fringe, because of the longetivity and honesty we have with our relationship. It frequently feels like others just don’t get us. Few believe that Earl and I have no secrets from one another. Many shake their heads when they see that we enjoy each other’s company all the time. I often feel like we’re too whacky for words for most. We’ve been together over 10 years yet it still feels like we’re on a honeymoon. It has never gotten old between us, the adventure has just begun. I sense the same with Sean and Jeffrey.

It’s fun to have others ride the rollercoaster with you from time to time.

After a night of rain, ice, sleet, wind, falling tree limbs and power brownouts, I stepped out onto the porch to get the mail and was welcomed with a glorious blue sky, bright sunshine and temperatures in the mid 40s.

I can see the pavement in the driveway!

More importantly, the birds are singing.

And so is my heart.

I’m ready for spring.

Before I get rolling on this blog entry, I’m going to say it right away so that I can continue with a clear conscience. I am using my Windows XP based HP notebook to write this blog entry.

Now I have a fully acceptable reason for jumping over to the Microsoft world. It’s really quite simple. I’ve run out of Apple Kool-Aid. Actually, I use this laptop for my school projects because in the engineering world it’s all about the Windows programs. I’ve tried to create some CAD drawings on Mac based software but quite frankly it was a pain in the butt. So when I was ready to start out on my school experience, we purchased this laptop and I’ve been using it as school has been chugging along. Today I did a bunch of web site editing on it and I must say it’s not half bad once you get back in the dark side frame of mind. I received an e-mail telling me that my complimentary upgrade to Windows Vista has been shipped so I’m actually looking forward to playing around with that.

Maybe it’s the weather that’s making me crazy.

The National Weather Service has issued another Winter Storm Warning for our area, this time with the promise of two or more inches of ice overnight.

Gee Beav, that’s swell.

To ready myself for the impending storm I went to the local dairy store to pick up some milk and bread because that’s what you do in times like these. I took the glass milk bottles along to return (no, there isn’t a cow in the store filling the bottles as they bring them in) and saw that there was one bottle of milk left on the shelf when I got to the store. There were two people headed for the dairy case, so I slugged the old man and tripped up the woman with the walker and got the last half gallon no-fat.

Calories always count, even during the impending second Ice Age.

Always looking to stay healthy I gulped down some leftover nachos for lunch today. Last night our friend Eric and I went to dinner. The appetizer (said nachos) was HUGE, so when the server offered to wrap them so we could bring them home I said sure. It’s a good thing Sean wasn’t along, I probably would have dumped them into the closest manpurse I could find if she hadn’t offered the doggy bag.

Today the instructors at school warned us that we’d probably lose power tonight so we should get our assignments done early. One of them then told us about the “Pandemic Flu Task Force” that has been active all week. They’ve come up with a contingency plan for when the students start dropping like flies from some variation of the Bird Flu. I guess I didn’t know that a Pandemic was coming, but then I refuse to be sick so there you are.

And if you’re wondering if I’m bat shit crazy because Earl has been out of town all week, let me answer that with an uninterruped “absolutely”.

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.