Ponderings and Musings

It’s a whopping 37 degrees here in the beautiful area we call Upstate New York. Snow is forecasted for tonight. There’s a definite chill in the air and you can smell the impending flurries, almost as if Mother Nature is giving us a gentle warning.

For the life of me I can’t figure out why the air conditioner is still running full blast at work.

Now I don’t really mind the cold. I find it’s easier to warm up then it is to cool down. Just throw on another layer of clothes and voila, you’re warmer. It’s great to snuggle up to your lover when it’s chilly outside. But when it’s hot and humid, well, that’s another story.

I’ve often fantasized about visiting the north or south poles. I’d rather go to the North Pole and live there for a year, contributing to one of the handful of research stations. I bet the night sky (all 24 hours of it for approximately half the year) is absolutely breathtaking. I could maintain computer systems or be the base administrative assistant or heck, even dance on some tables for entertainment if they needed it, but I think it would be great to live at the North Pole for a year. I’d do the South Pole too, but I think I prefer the north. Less touristy and the toilets swirl the right way.

There’s a local restaurant that gives you a free meal if you get your picture taken somewhere famous whilst wearing one of their t-shirts. I tell Earl I’m going to get my picture up there someday while sitting on top of the North Pole, one foot in an American time zone and the other in a Russian time zone. My hands, open in a gesture of exuberance, would be in different days.

That would be a neat picture.

But for today I have to look presentable in casual business attire while sitting under an air conditioning vent, doing my best to keep warm without resorting to wearing my jacket, hat and gloves while sitting in my cubicle*. Of course the lack of beard is not helping. But I think I’m going to keep it off until the end of the year and then start a new beard on New Year’s Day.

I think the air conditioning at work is set to 60. Perhaps I need to set fire to my desk or something.

Here’s a link to a site about a guy living for a year at the North Pole.

* My cubicle isn’t really a cubicle, but rather 1/4 of a cubicle. I have a dividing wall and a desk with a little storage cubby thing above my desk. I have often remarked that it probably would have been easier just to go all the way and plop a discarded door on top of cinder blocks. This usually results in a glare from my supervisor.

So I’m back from my little three day road trip and have settled in for the night. Earl is still on his way home from Tampa. His flight was delayed a bit. He told me he would call me when he landed; I just tried to call his cell phone and got his voicemail. Perhaps he’s airborne.

I’ve just finished watching two consecutive episodes of Wonder Woman. They were both from the second season, when Lynda Carter’s hair was long, but the budget was big enough that they weren’t taking any “shortcuts” with stand-ins doing to the wonder spin and whatnot. These things are important. One recurring them I have noticed about Wonder Woman is that twins are considered evil. There are a number of episodes in that second season where the bad guy or gal is flanked by a set of female twins. Always female, always blonde, always identical twins. I’ve known a few sets of twins in my time and I don’t recall them both being evil at the same time. Mischievous perhaps, but never evil.

Tomorrow starts a week of on-call but I feel like I’m ready to take it on. I have some projects to do, including website work getting through all the photos I took on this trip. Plus I have two nights of school which always does wonders for breaking up the monotony of on-call with the added bonus of an education.

I chatted with my sister in Russia a little while ago. She told me that I can let the cat out of the bag. You see, Earl and I have been holding onto a little secret for the past six weeks or so – we’re going to be uncles. That’s right, my sister and her boyfriend are going to have a baby. She finally let my Mom know today and I am just thrilled for the both of them.

As Earl likes to say: “Life is good.”

I was sound asleep and I was hearing voices. Loud voices. Voices loud enough to wake me out of my peaceful slumber. So I got up and padded around the hotel room. As I got out of bed, the voices stopped. I figured they were part of some quickly fading dream that I didn’t remember and quickly dismissed the insignificant experience.

As I started readying myself for the day, I started hearing these voices again. I peeked out the peep hole in the hotel room door, no one was out there. I cracked open the door, taking great pains to not expose my current state of undress and took a cautious glance up and down the hotel corridor. No one in sight in either direction.

And then the voices started getting louder. And angrier. Somewhere in my head, two people were arguing. Oddly enough, the voices were female. I confirmed that the television was off. I put my ear up to the common walls with the other rooms, no sounds from there.

But the voices persisted. Loud, angry, non-English voices. Accusatory tone. Somewhat shrill. “Is this how one goes mad in a hotel room in Maryland?”, I pondered. Do I have some Exorcist thing going on?

And then it dawned on me, the voices were coming out of the vent in the bathroom. Apparently somewhere in the hotel, some surly guests or the housekeeping staff were having some hellacious cat fight. They were still yammering and almost hissing at each other.

And they were broadcasting it over the “bathroom p.a. system.”

I’ve installed a new commenting system on here so that I’m not bombarded with spam as I have been in the past. I’m not a huge fan of forcing readers to register in order to leave comments so that’s why I’m going with this new system.

In honor of the new commenting system, I’m inviting anyone that stops by to ask me *anything*. I’ve been commenting on other blogs about the merits of being an openly gay man and this is sort of a test to myself to see if I really am. So feel free to ask me anything. Anything at all.

I’ll answer all questions right here in the blog, for everyone else to see.

It’s a little after six in the morning and I’m fully showered, dressed and ready to kick off my day. I’m sitting here, in complete darkness save for the light from my computer, still a little dazed from the sound sleep I had last night and the ensuing dreams that accompanied it.

Earl is always amazed when I tell him about my dreams almost every morning. He’s surprised that I can remember most of my dreams. Is that normal? I remember my dreams from almost every night and every catnap I take. Some dreams are very vivid and memorable in their detail. On the other hand some are very foggy, almost as if I had watched the action through a thick haze or participated covered in molasses. Nevertheless, if I can’t remember the detail of the dream, I can remember the impression that it made upon me and how I felt or currently feel because of it.

I think dreaming is the main reason I love sleeping. For me it’s like going to a movie where I’m the star of an infinite number of shows and I have no idea what’s going to be playing on the big screen.

Goodness, I’m weird.

Every once in a while I’ll consider doing a podcast to accompany my little blog here. I have no idea what I would say, but I imagine that I’d get ranting about something and then go on and on about a myriad of topics until I ran out of hard drive space.

While thinking about this endeavor, I’ve been downloading podcasts from iTunes to see how others are doing it as well. Not to be snotty, but I haven’t been able to listen to a complete podcast yet. I find them boring and being an ex-radio person I find them technically frustrating.

For example, I listened to one podcast in which the person interviewed another person over the phone. He asked questions and laughed at the responses. They must have been uproarously funny because the host almost snorted Chrissy Snow style while talking about some random movie. Unfortunately, the listener couldn’t hear a word the person on the phone said. There wasn’t even any Charlie Brown’s teacher “wa wa wa wa wa wa” noise. There was a little bit of hiss that’s always present in a recording, but I’m pretty sure the host wasn’t laughing at the hiss.

I had no idea what was going on. So I deleted that podcast forever and always amen.

Cruising through the gay podcast section of iTunes I decided to try another. The host of that one sounded like he was a prescription away from a full blown cry as he apologized for being so depressing on his podcasts. Apparently this tearful soul was being upbeat this time around. A quick “delete” saved me from a call to Dial A Prayer.

I then decided that perhaps the gay podcast route wasn’t the way to go, perhaps I should focus on dance music or something. So I did a search and found a podcast like “Gay Bears Dance Music”. Perfect! There was some furfestival somewhere and the DJ was highlighting the music he played. Apparently it was held on another planet (or perhaps I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with dance music) because I could have swore that he was playing a mix of Yoko Ono and a really bad Bjork impersonator. That podcast gave me gas so I deleted that one as well.

I’m thinking I’m going to stick to the written word for now. I won’t do a podcast until I feel it’s perfect, and I’m not comfortable with the idea until I have the elements together to make my podcast pop. When I’m ready to go, I’ll let you know.

I feel like the day should be over already, but alas, it’s only lunch time. That’s not entirely a bad thing but with today being a U.S. holiday, work isn’t as busy as it usually is.

So it’s Monday. Earl and I had a fantastic weekend and I am eagerly looking forward to the next. Friday will be the 10th anniversary of the day I proposed, high upon a mountaintop in the Adirondacks back on October 13, 1996. To celebrate, we’ve both taken the day off from work and will probably go on a roadtrip, ending up in Buffalo, where we’ll spend the weekend so that we can hang with friends and I can DJ Saturday night.

There’s just those three pesky workdays that lie between here and there. It’s not depressing by any means, just a little frustrating. It boils down to the fact that I’m an “all fun and games” kind of guy.

Tom is playing his daily game of “shriek ’til you can’t shriek no more” to signify that it’s time for him to go outside/come inside/go outside/come inside/go outside. The weather is absolutely gorgeous and I fear that this is the last we’ll see of the nice weather for 2006. There’s been rumors of snow flakes in the air by the end of the week.

So of course we’re getting an estimate on getting central air installed tomorrow.

After a few run ins with some tasty BBQ this past weekend I’m back on the eating healthy track and I feel better for it. Let’s see how long this round lasts!

So I’ve got this vegetarian thing going on again. I know, it runs directly in conflict with my love for BBQ joints, but I figure we can still go to those places, I’ll just have to eat corn on the cob and whatnot.

I’ve been maintaining my weight pretty well since losing around 35 pounds at the beginning of the year, but there’s a magic number I want to hit before Thanksgiving and I am determined to do it. I probably could achieve it a little easier if I got my butt to the gym but with school, on-call and social obligations, I’m not up for working out at the gym at 2:30 in the morning. I hear the place is quite popular then, so who knows, it might be interesting, but I’m too lazy to do that.

To think that on several occasions in 1990 I set the alarm for 3 a.m. so I could go tanning!

With all the health conscious people and crazy diets floating around our fine nation these days, it’s not hard to fine something vegetarian at any given restaurant. “I’d like a Whopper without the Whop.” That usually goes over the BK drone’s head, so I end up saying “leave off the meat”. I know, I could opt for a BK Veggie Delight but it takes something like an act of congress and a bunch of glares and sighs to get one of those at the closest BK.

Now if Wegmans would locate a little closer to us so I could enjoy the “Nature’s Place” section, I’d be golden but for now I’m relegated to the local Hannafords. It could be worse. I could be limited to Price Chopper where they think vegetarian includes “Vegetarian Baked Beans with Bacon”. “Are these beans vegetarian?” “Yes, just as the sign says.”, replies the deli clerk. “Why is the bacon on there?”, to which she replied, “For flavor of course!”.

I think tonight I’m going to have a BBQ steak salad without the steak. It’s yummy.

Earl and I eat out quite a bit. Why? Because we’re lazy. We’ve worked all day. We’re not in the mood to cook. So we take the easy way out and we head to one of the local restaurants. It happens a couple of times a week.

Since we’re rather well versed in restaurantese, we’ve had the opportunity to see some very odd things in our travels. There was that time at Mc Donalds in Horseheads when two men dressed up like the Blue Brothers came walking out of the bathroom with toilet paper dragging from their feet. At that same visit, a woman stood her toddler up on the service counter, complete with saggy diaper, and told him to keep his clothes on. (Apparently the kid liked taking his clothes off in public. Perhaps he’ll be a congressman someday.)

Tonight we watched a similar scene.

We were seated at a table in this diner wannabe type place called Zebbs. The corner was occupied by three women, all around my age or so, and three children. The youngest, a girl, was seated in a high-chair behaving herself quite well. The two other children were boys, probably four or five years old. Though they weren’t twins, they were dressed alike with matching shirts. One had very thick glasses. He amused himself and those around him by jumping up and down on the booth seat shouting “I’m bad! I’m bad!”. Did Mother stop him from this outburst? Of course not. She pretty much ignored him and let him carry on.

He was the tame one.

When the server came out with their food, I breathed a sigh of relief since it was obvious that the kids would be occupied with their monster meals.

Wrong.

Boy number 2 proceeded to make like a plant and sit on the back of the booth, wedged where the two windows met to form the corner of the restaurant. He amused himself by flapping the vertical blinds back and forth. When that didn’t grab Mommy’s attention, he proceeded to jump ONTO THE TABLE.

This got Mom’s attention where she threatened him with a timeout and then proceeded to carry on her conversation, unphased by the fact that her child had practically walked across the dinner table. Afraid of this always scary threat of “timeout”, the kid jumped to the back of the booth where he made like a bat and sat upside down while enjoying his meal.

I have fairly accurate memories from when I was a child. On the rare instances we did eat out and actually sat in the restaurant (usually we sat in the car outside of Carrols or Red Barn), I don’t ever recall ever having to be told not to walk across the table. Especially while food was on it. Perhaps my mother will chime in and correct me on this, but I’m pretty confident that I didn’t do any acrobatics in a restaurant when I was a kid. If I had lept across the booth of a restaurant, she would have smacked me six ways to Sunday and I would have remembered.

I wonder what tonight’s terror is going to be like when he’s grown. Maybe I witnessed the making of the next flying Wallenda.

As I’m sitting here drinking another glass of iced tea, a few questions about beverages cross my mind.

1. How do they take the caffeine out of tea?
2. Can a person OD on iced tea?
3. Does diet soda damage your teeth like regular soda does? I mean, it doesn’t have sugar in it so it should be as bad, right?
4. How does adding chlorine to sugar make the sugar lose all its calories?
5. How come a combination of chlorine and sugar is safer for you than that old saccharrin? Why don’t we just regular soda with a Chlorox chaser?

I know, it sounds like I’m having a Jessica Simpson moment.