Ponderings and Musings

Last night I did something I haven’t done in a really long time. I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper. I also wrote a letter to our local state Assemblywoman.

I’ve taken the approach that if we’re going to live here for a while, we might as well contribute to the area and make it a better place.

The reason for my two letters is related to my “road geek”-ness. An expressway was completed in our area a couple of years ago. This expressway connects the two cities and was long overdue. In addition, it passes by a decommissioned Air Force base that has been converted into a business and technology park. Local government is doing everything they can to attract businesses and industry back to our area.

When the expressway was built, it basically replaced a two-lane state route and retained the same route number. The area is also home to one of the shortest interstates in the country, which provides access from the Thruway to a busy interchange.

Businesses looking to build or relocate look at a map and look for good access. Seeing an interstate shield guarantees to the prospective builder that it would be locating on a “prime” roadway. This approach has been used in New York’s Southern Tier with the redesignation of NY Route 17 as Interstate 86.

I proposed that we redesignate our local expressway with the number from that short interstate route, Interstate 790.

To many, it’s not a big deal. But to key players in industry and technology, it could be a make or break proposition for locating to this area. Let’s see if my idea catches on.

New York State has such a bug up it’s butt. I mean really. I try hard to remain “Empire State Proud”, but sometimes it can be difficult.

There’s just so many things you *can’t* do in New York State under penalty of law.

Have you crossed into New York from another state recently? Get ready to read really quick if you do, because you’ll have to deal with the following restrictions posted on small road signs at the state line:

1. BUCKLE UP! – NEW YORK LAW – SEAT BELT USED REQUIRED.
Personally, I think a seat belt law is stupid. On the other hand, not wearing your seat belt is dumb too, but there shouldn’t be a law stating that I must wear my seat belt else I get stopped and ticketed. Common sense shouldn’t be legislated.

2. STATE LAW – USE OF HAND-HELD MOBILE PHONE BY DRIVER PROHIBITED.
Another dumb one. See a cop? Throw the cell phone on the seat next to you after a polite, “Please hold” and the charge can easily be avoided. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think people yakking on the cell phone while driving are among the dumbest people around, but again, don’t legislate common sense.

3. STATE SPEED LIMIT 55
Don’t even get me started on this. Yes, on rural freeways (we call them expressways), the speed limit is 65. But nobody drives 65, they drive 75-80 instead because the speed limit is posted too low. Then there’s four-lane divided highways with a cross street every 10 miles or so that are only at 55 MPH because there’s a cross street on there. Dumb. Respect the drivers with a sensible speed limit and the drivers will respect a sensible speed limit.

4. WINDSHIELD WIPERS USE REQUIRED WHEN LIGHTS ARE ON.
More common sense legislation. At least we haven’t adopted the dumb Pennsylvania law where you must turn your lights on in a work zone. That one really bugs me because I don’t see a need for it.

A couple of other chestnuts that really get me irked:
– The little flippy thing on a gas pump nozzle that holds the nozzle in the “on” position has been removed at many gas stations. Apparently there’s some law that says it’s illegal to have them. I don’t know how people survive in other states, what with getting doused with gas from other people at the filling station pulling a running gas nozzle out of their tank and wildly throwing gas all over the place. Having just returned from vacation, I can’t tell you how excited I was because I was able to fill my tank, wash my windshield and do a couple of laps around the Jeep yelling “neener, neener, neener” all at the same time just because I could.

– Taxes, taxes, taxes. The fine citizens of Oneida County, New York pay 8.5% sales tax on just about everything (except unprepared food) for the stellar weather, high gas prices and the right to drive slow. Our local power company merged with a big conglomerate and now we pay lots more for electricity. Nothing peps up the blood in the wintertime like a $550 per month lights and heating bill.

So why do we still live here? Well, Earl and I are working on that. In the meantime, I’ll bitch about it.

Do you want to hear something crazy? Let me tell you… I hate talking on the telephone. And I work in telecommunications.

Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

There’s just something about talking on the telephone that grates on my nerves. I don’t know if it’s the frustration I feel by not being able to see the face of the person I’m talking to or what, but I really don’t like the sound of the tinny voice on the other end of the receiver.

It’s not because they have a tinny voice, mind you, but the audio quality of a telephone conversation really bites. You’d think with all these leaps in technology over the past 100 years or so, we’d have progressed beyond the tin-can and a string sound that we still have today.

Analog, digital, wireless, landline, VoIP, they all sound the same to me. Like a two tin cans and a string.

Maybe I’m a little frustrated because I basically talk on the telephone for a living. Perhaps it’s because I’m asked unbelievable telephone troubleshooting questions at work. “I’d like to move my telephone to the other side of the room, could you let more wire through the wall?” “How do I press ‘0’ with a rotary phone?” “The power’s out, how come my cordless phone doesn’t work?” It goes on and on.

I seem to get into positions of employment that occasionally frustrate me. One job I worked as a radio commercial copy writer. I hate advertising. I despise it. But then a salesperson would jot three words of what the business is about and I was suppose to write 60 seconds of an exciting, engaging, commercial, “make it pop.” One guy handed me a piece of paper that said “memorials, President’s Day Sale.” What the hell was I suppose to do with that?

“This weekend we’re celebrating the birthdays of two fine presidents: Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. They’re both dead and gone, and you will be too someday, better put a downpayment on your headstone during their President’s Day Sale. With Prune Valley Memorials, your headstone will be stylin’ and will last longer than theirs ever did. Make a statement and make it pop when you’re six feet under.”

I do tacky well.

I’d continue this post, but I just got a, wait for it, phone call as I’m on call this week. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?

Usually when I sit down to write in my blog I start babbling on about one of the many thoughts that are roaming around my head at that particular moment. I like to think of my brain as a container of the organized chaos I call “my thoughts” and sitting down to blog is like plucking a floating piece of paper amongst a ticker-tape parade and writing a little story about it. But I’ve been thinking about this blog entry for a couple of days and I thought I’d see what happened if I tried to put it to words.

I’m not writing about anything earth shattering or wildly perverse or anything like that. I guess I’m just sort of babbling about how I blog and why I blog. I like to think of “Life is such a sweet insanity” as a snapshot of the real me, and as varied as my blog can be, I’m sure you’d be delighted to see how varied my moods and whatever else makes me tick can be.

I’ve been asked why I blog before, in fact, I was most recently asked when we were in Phoenix chatting with another gay couple at a dinner. I write in my blog for my own amusement. I like to make others chuckle and try to make strides to being a gay male Erma Bombeck when it comes to humor. I’m not wildly political, though certain topics do get me stirred up enough to bark out my feelings on the subject. Even though I’m a gay man, I’m not all that vocal about gay issues, though I am totally open about my sexual orientation. I like to think that by just being myself on my blog, I’m doing my own little gay activism but just being a guy that likes another guy and talks about our somewhat ho-hum adventures together.

When I first came out I was very preoccupied with “being gay”, making sure I had the right haircut, making sure I wore the right clothes, went to the best bars and parties and ate nothing but fu-fu food. This went on for a couple of years, but then I met a woman at work who worked with employees with AIDS at the second largest computer manufacturer at the time, Digital Equipment Corporation, and she said that being gay was only a big deal because the gay person made it a big deal. You know, I agreed with her and it was about then that I decided that being gay was no big deal at all and I was just going to be me.

Fast forward 20 years and here we are today. I don’t eat in the fu-fu restaurants unless I have to, as I’m more content to be slugging a brewski and eating me some barbecue. Why nibble on salmon when you can have a cheeseburger smothered in cheese, onions and bacon with a side of fries and ‘slaw? My clothes come from places like Gander Mountain, a myriad of online shops or horrors of horrors, from Target or K-mart. When it comes to political activism, well, I’m more involved with state transportation issues than with anything related to gay rights. I figure that I have been and always will be gay, no one is going to stop me from being me and I don’t care what others think about that. By the way, I will say that anyone thinking that a gay person made the choice to be gay is completely clueless on the issue – I knew when I was in first grade.

Does everything go in my blog? Not at all. While quite open about what I discuss here, there are things that I keep to myself. I learned back in the late 1980s that you don’t put anything in e-mail (and now on the internet) that you wouldn’t mind reading on the front page of the New York Times. Besides, if I meet a someone familiar with this blog in person, I want to have something to talk about instead of reciting old blog entries and trying to pass that off as conversation.

So there it is, I’ve rambled another lunch hour away on my blog. I hope you enjoyed that little piece of ticker tape.

Now that we’re back at home and getting ready to settle back into the routine, today was the perfect opportunity for some together time.

Being Mother’s Day and all, we got together with my Mom and my sister at the local casino for their big Mother’s Day brunch. It was a fancy affair in one of their ballrooms, with a couple hundred tables, tons of food and live entertainment singing brunchy type music. It was good to catch up with Mom and Jennifer; Mom was delighted with her gift from Earl and I, a Black Hills Gold lapel pin with a little rose on it. Sometimes it helps to travel while gift shopping. After brunch we all took turns at winning money on slots and/or table games, none of us had the opportunity to applaud.

After the casino, I drove up to my Dad’s house to pick up our son. My dad and Karen are off vacationing for the weekend, so I had the opportunity to play hide and seek with Tom without interrupting others. Cats have such an advantage when it comes to hiding, being able to fit under water heaters in the basement and all. He knew the sound of my footsteps and jetted for the cellar stairs as soon as he heard and saw me coming in the door. Nevertheless, I finally won the game and off in the Jeep we went. He didn’t complain nearly as much as on the ride up there, and he spared me from body fluid cleanup. I think he was secretly relieved to be heading home. Once he was through he door he started purring and hasn’t stopped since.

Tomorrow it’s back to work after two weeks of vacation. I have to admit that I’m kind of looking forward to the challenge with a clear head. I hope I can remember this relaxed state three hours into the workday tomorrow.

Tonight I made a decision in our bedroom and did a little rearranging. I moved the iHome alarm clock that Earl had bought me for Christmas off of my nightstand and into the Bear (Guest) Room. It has found a new home on that nightstand.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the gift. I love it. I can put my iPod in it and wake up to any track of the over 1500 songs on my iPod. For some reason it favors “Voices Carry” by ‘Til Tuesday. I think it’s an alphabetical thing. The problem with the iHome is that the display is just too damn bright.

Now I can sleep anytime, anywhere. I can announce to the world “I’m going to sleep” and be asleep within minutes. However, if the environment is too bright then my dreams seem all washed out. I swear I can see the shadow of Tom walking by my eyelids, much like someone walking behind a movie screen.

If the Blue Marvel suit last night didn’t tip you off, then I’ll just go ahead and say it. I’m odd.

I don’t know why alarm clock manufacturers have decided to abandon the good old red-LED lights on the early electronic alarm clocks and have opted to start using backlit LCD displays instead. The backlighting makes the display very bright. It makes me nervous. I don’t like the room to be lit up like Times Square. I never liked a nightlight as a kid and I certainly don’t like one as an adult. I feel like I’m getting a sunburn on my face. It allows me to things I shouldn’t see; mostly Tom’s activity in the middle of the night. He stands on Earl’s pillow and stares at him. He then bounds across the bed chasing my kicking feet and then bounces off my balls en route to the nightstand, where he installs himself to stare at me for a while.

It’s all very unnerving.

So my trusty old General Electric alarm clock from 1987 with it’s comforting red numbers has moved back onto the nightstand. I guess I’ll wake up to the sounds of the local NPR station.

At least I won’t be able to see what’s going on while I’m sleeping.

Tonight at the gym I tried to watch a little television as I was chugging away on the spazzmaster, the stationary bike and the treadmill. I watched a little bit of Jeopardy. It became abundantly clear that there was not a single gay micron among the three contestants as they all had dumb looks in their face when presented with the category “Broadway Musicals”. I mean, is it really difficult to say “What is South Pacific?” when presented with the clue “Bloody Mary lived on an island in this musical.”

After I rolled my eyes at Jeopardy I tuned into the mind numbing “Television’s Most Outrageous Moments”. Now there was a waste of electrons, but it did keep my attention for the entire half hour. I was considering flipping around the dial a little bit but that chance of crossing paths with American Idol made it too risky.

After “Outrageous”, I decided to throw caution to the wind and tune into “American Idol”. Instantly I had the feeling that the audience, the contestants and the three judges were saying “Isn’t this thing over yet?”. Ryan Seacrest was saying “Look at me, look at me, look at me” but with nary a trace of his vocal high register lest we think he’s anything less than Village People butch.

I started flipping around the dial again when I stumbled upon Paula Abdul sobbing into her drink about how wonderful the mediocre puppet of the moment on stage was. That sent me over to “Hope and Faith”. Commercial break, let’s AI again. It took approximately 10 seconds of Kellie Pickler’s amazingly out-of-tune performance of “Unchained Melody” to make me decide to flip back to “Hope and Faith” and to keep it there.

Luckily, I then heard “Love Come Down” by Evelyn ‘Champagne’ King come on the gym stereo system and well, the earbuds came off because after all, “Love Come Down” trumps all.

As long as it’s not sung by an AI puppet.

Adjusting back to a regular schedule is always a little difficult for me, especially on Mondays like today, when it’s a little gloomy outside and I’m working the 7 a.m. shift. But this morning I circumvented my morning crankiness by doing something a little different.

I took a 15 minute nap.

Ten minutes after getting out of bed.

I did quite a bit of web work last night until 11:30 or so before deciding I should get to sleep. I’m wired for nighttime and last night was no exception. I could have easily stayed up another three or four hours but I would have been nothing short of a mess today at work, so I decided I better get some sleep so I can at least feign productivity.

I really don’t like going to sleep when I’m not tired.

Nevertheless, I slept straight through the night, save for an incoherent discussion with Earl regarding the current time (this was around 3:30) and jolted away when the alarm rang at 5:30. When Tom hears that alarm ring, it becomes a no holds barred free-for-all, because as far as he’s concerned, I can hold it just a little longer and I don’t need to put any clothes on, he wants his kibble NOW. He barks more orders than an Army drill sergeant. So I went and blindly poured some cat food into his bowl, checked my e-mail and then decided I’d take a nap on the futon until 6:00.

I felt wonderful afterwards and the contentedness has carried with me throughout the day.

I think I’m going to start each sluggish day with a power nap. I highly recommend it.

One of my favorite television shows of all time is “Bewitched”. I’ve seen every episode of the classic series at least 20 times and can tell the difference between a complete episode, an early syndicated version, an 80s syndicated version or a TV Land edited version just by the flow of the scenes and the presence of key scripted lines. (Syndicated copies have lines and sometimes complete scenes edited out to make room for more commercials.)

As a Bewitched fanatic, I’ve done a lot of reading and collecting over the years of various Bewitched memorabilia. I hope to have the opportunity to visit the famous Stephens house on a Hollywood backlot in Burbank someday. I wish I had the opportunity to shake hands with Elizabeth Montgomery and the other players to thank them for their contribution to mainstream America.

It’s a fun show to watch.

While I’ve always been enchanted with the beautiful Elizabeth Montgomery, over the years I’ve come to appreciate the work ethic displayed by and later documented about the mysterious Agnes Moorehead. A character actor if there ever was one, Ms. Moorehead found no role too tough to tackle and she always put every ounce of her ability into the task, even if it was just a small part on “Love American Style”.

Her take on her craft was simple. “I love the illusion”, she would say with a big flamboyant wave of her arms. She believed that one should always work; be it good or bad, do it to the best of your ability and learn something from it and be a better person because of it.

I like to think that I’ve learned that myself over the years.

Tonight I watched a couple of episodes of Bewitched from the third season, “It’s Wishcraft” and “The Crone of Cawdor”, both stand-out episodes from a particularly strong time for the series. (Even at it’s worst, “Bewitched”, and most comedies of it’s time, far surpassed anything we see on television today). I couldn’t help but notice that Ms. Moorehead was always attentive and always playing Endora, even if she was in the background of a particular scene, far from the focus of the camera. She took her job seriously, she played it to the max and she did it well.

I think that’s a nice approach to have about work come tomorrow morning.

Rest in peace Elizabeth, Dick, Dick and Agnes. We miss you.

The productivity continued today, but thankfully nothing in the house exploded, leaked or gave off an odd odor. Today’s fun was limited to catching up on laundry, doing some needed household shopping and basically getting things around the house in order.

We did get to the gym yesterday after taking the past couple of days off. I relied on the iPod instead of the television for distraction from the workout – for some reason I was totally inspired by Dolly Parton’s version of “Peace Train.” I had to rememeber not to sing out loud.