Ponderings and Musings

Earl and I are staying pretty much at home this weekend because of my work on-call schedule. It’s certainly a change of pace from the past two weekends, but we probably needed this time to catch up on some household chores.

I wish I could write about how productive I’ve been today getting the house clean, but I haven’t done much of that today. Surprisingly, work has kept me somewhat busy today which means a little comp time in a week or two which will be very nice.

Tonight we are going to a party at one of Earl’s co-worker’s house. Hopefully the on-call gods will be kind.

As I was heading for my car to escape for lunch, I noticed that the city DPW painted the traditional green line down the middle of the main street in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day and the big parade tomorrow.

The St. Patrick’s Day parade here is usually very interesting. Traditionally, Mother Nature blesses us with a last blast of winter so there’s often snow on the ground. Sometimes there’s a blizzard. In fact, Dolly Parton was once stranded in the downtown hotel after a performance the previous night and was unable to leave due to the blizzard hitting the area. Bored, she looked out her hotel window and saw the St. Patrick’s Day parade proceeding right through downtown. You could barely see the floats from all the snow, but there it was, your average parade in the middle of a snowstorm. Dolly relayed the experience to the rest of America on David Letterman the following Monday night.

Back in my radio days, the station I worked for made an appearance in the parade, reminding folks why our station was best. One year we tried to get fancy and hired a tractor trailer to provide the stage for our music, inviting listeners up on the bed of the trailer to dance along with the music. We set up the booth traditionally used when we were on location, which was unwieldy at best. (It wasn’t meant to be moving). The bed of the trailer was so icy that we had to form a human chain and hold on for our dear lives so that people wouldn’t be pitched off the back everytime the parade started moving. Since there were several youngsters aboard, the music director reminded us that we should watch our language. The truck took off and she punctuated the experience with a “holy fuckin’ shit” as she held on for dear life. After the initial shock we pummeled the crowd with tootsie rolls, lollipops and dum-dums, because nothing says “listen to the radio” better than a rock hard frozen tootsie roll.

The following year it was 75 degrees for a change and I convinced the new night jock, a handsome young man, to go shirtless to “tease the ladies”. Come to find out, he was too good at teasing the ladies and had to be fired when I found him more than just teasing the ladies in the studio during his air shift.

Ah, good times.

So tonight Earl and I are going to have swig of beer and eat something festive like cabbage to celebrate the holiday. We’ll skip the parade tomorrow since it’s no longer mandatory for us and because I’m on call.

I’m betting it’s going to be snowing.

Last night, Earl and I caught that new show on HBO, “Big Love”. It’s a drama that basically follows a non-traditional family, a husband (Bill Paxton) and his three (yes I said “three”) wives and children that live in a suburban Utah town. The husband owns a chain of hardware stores and is juggling the stress of his job, his family, his ailing father and paranoid mother and his business “financers”.

The show didn’t really grip me but I found the premise interesting. For the first time in a long while, there was something different on the television screen. I don’t think there’s been a television series with polygomy as the backdrop before. I didn’t find myself engaged by the show though.

While we were watching the program I kept asking Earl, “Are there really groups living in compounds like that in Utah?” and “Do people really live like that?”, as if he’s the expert on social habits in Utah. I’ve been fortunate enough to see many, many different living arrangements in my life but I’ve never been to a compound where all the women were married to one man. That’s a new one for me. Discussing the show with my co-worker today I was surprised that such a compound exists not too far from here. She mentioned that it’s populated by a “three old women” now and they give tours of the place. In fact, one of her college classes went there on a field trip.

I believe that love is love is love is love is love and that it takes many shapes and forms and works in an infinite number of ways. As I’ve grown older, I’ve found that what works for couple (or group) “A” doesn’t necessarily work for others. I’ve seen couples with multiple sex partners. I’ve seen couples that wouldn’t allow each other the luxury of even looking at another person in a romantic way. I’ve met couples that thrived on arguing to the point that they threw kitchen knives at each other when they fought. I once met a couple years ago where one locked the other up in a cage for the night. All of this is good, because it’s diversity in people that makes the world go ’round.

Earl and I added “Big Love” to the TiVo to-do list simply because it’s something different to watch. Will I go crazy with anticipation waiting for the next show? Probably not, I’m reserving that for “Medium” these days. But I think it’s great that another small niche of society gets a little air time.

Mother Nature has decided to bless us with some winter weather this week. Temperatures aren’t going to make it out of the 30s through the weekend and we are getting some snow, probably six more inches by midnight, adding to the six or seven inches already on the ground.

That means I have to run the snowblower tonight.

In typical fashion for this area, drivers have disregarded all rules of the road since there’s snow on the ground. I’ve commented before that there’s a general belief amongst the area’s citizens that parking lot lines dance and rearrange themselves under the cover of snow. Why park in neat rows with the other cars when you can parallel park between a Volkswagen and an H2 and take up three or four spots in the process? Then there’s the complete disregard for any sign or signal that may have a color to it – red, green, white, yellow, doesn’t matter, there’s snow on the ground! Nevermind that some drive the wrong way up the freeway, there’s snow on the ground!

I’m hoping that this is the last blast of winter for the season. Might as well go out with a bang.

Family and friends can attest to this; I’m a big dreamer. I believe there’s no limit to what one can accomplish, once you put your mind to it. For example, this past weekend Earl and I wanted to go for a ride. We ended up driving just shy of 1700 miles.

I’m a big daydreamer too. While I’m busy at work I usually multitask by thinking about my next big plan whilst going about the daily routine. There’s always things to think about; the next video I’m going to make, the next website I’m going to design, the next road trip that we’re going to take.

I’ve always been one to go after a vision. One of my earliest recollections is from first grade. Miss Kania (my teacher) told us about subways and how there’s trains underground in big cities that move people from place to place. We learned about subway construction and saw pictures of this marvelous mode of transportation. It looked easy. So imagine my father’s dismay when he came home and found his six year old son digging up the lawn with a shovel and a pitchfork so that he could build a subway. At the very least I would have a cave when I was done.

I don’t think the grass ever grew back in that part of the lawn.

When I was in my early 20s and sort of bored with the whole computer thing (mind you, this was 1990), I decided that I wanted to be on the radio. I’d always had an interest in the music charts, so it would be a snap, right? I had no experience in radio broadcasting. I never had any education in that area. But I made tapes, I bugged radio station program directors and I got a weekend gig. Eventually I moved on to another station and became program director. A dream realized.

One of the things that attracted me to Earl was that he thinks big. He’s not as much of a dreamer as I am, but when he wants something, he plans big and goes for the gold. He doesn’t want a couch, he wants to furnish the entire house with furniture. He doesn’t want to be plant manager, he wants to run the whole operation.

When you dream or think big, the whole world is at your fingertips. And what a pleasant place it can be.

Our weekend festivities gave me the needed kick in the backside to get my energy going and to be thinking productively. Work has been a little crazy this morning, with heavy rain and thunderstorms passing through the area (never a good mix with telephone lines) and tonight’s forecast promises more fun. And I’m on call.

For once in my career, I don’t really mind.

It’s because I feel good about what I do and I feel comfortable with myself these days. Before leaving for work this morning, I started the dishwasher and got a head start on the laundry. Usually the clothes would sit in the washing machine until I got home from work, but why put off what you can do during your lunch hour. As I type, the washer is humming along, accompanied by the tell-tale sounds of a load of jeans is in the dryer. (Somebody didn’t empty the change out of his pockets last night.) I even emptied the dishwasher so that we could start fresh tonight with the supper dishes.

All I’m missing is an apron.

For those calendar watchers may I point out that spring is a mere week away. For as long as I can remember, a local restaurant has featured the countdown to spring, beginning on New Year’s Day, on one of their signs. Every day one passes by and thinks, “65 days ’til spring”, “43 days ’til spring”, etc. We’re now in the single digits.

It’s an appropriate time to bloom I guess.

I’ve mentioned to Earl on a couple of occasions over the past month or two that I would like to play football with some other like minded guys sometime. I’ve mentioned that we need to go to a bigger city and get on a gay football team or something and just hang out and have some fun.

As a youngster I was always terrified of the sport, because after all, I was a ‘band fag’ and they don’t do sports. Finally, twenty-five years later, I feel secure enough with myself that I could play in a football game and actually know what’s going on and maybe get a little bit dirty and banged up blocking people. Earl says he throws a mean football and I’m anxious to have him show me his technique this spring.

I never would have imagined myself on a football field actually playing the game. Now I can’t wait for the opportunity!

I don’t know if the turn towards spring weather, the working out and eating healthy or what, but today I can best be described as being “chilled”. Things aren’t bothering me. The usual work-related pressures aren’t getting to me. People that usually annoying me beyond reason are not getting on my last nerve today.

It’s a refreshing change of pace.

Earl occasionally reminds me that this is the way I need to be about life all the time; I approach things with a “gloom or doom” attitude that brings my whole outlook on the human experience down. I need to look at the brighter side of life and I would find that things aren’t as bad as they seem.

For example, driving home for lunch I was stuck behind an oversized beat up Lincoln. It’s back end was nearly dragging on the pavement, the license plate was burned looking and crooked and ample amounts of smoke was coming out of the tailpipe and the windows from the driver and front seat passenger. They were driving at least 25 MPH below the speed limit. Due to the geometry of the road, I was unable to pass them, so I had to stay behind them in my sporty little rice-burner and try to avoid enhaling the smoke. Usually I would beat on the steering wheel, scream at them (even though they couldn’t hear me) until my face was red and tailgate them, doing my best to make them uncomfortable on the road. Did I do that? No, I patiently and calmly followed them at a reasonable distance behind them. Why the change in attitude? Quite frankly, the old behavior is not worth the time nor effort. They’re not going to change their ways, so why throw a hissy fit about it?

Because of this chilled attitude, I’m finding that I’m enjoying my lunch hour much more. I’m not losing patience with Tom as he plays the “in and out game” with the back patio door.

I hope I can keep this kicked back attitude up. I rather like it.

Upon getting settled in for Monday at work today, I was asked what I did this weekend. I responded that Earl and I jumped in the Jeep and went for a ride. When asked our final destination, I told them about our trip to Martinsburg, W. Va.

“Oh, do you know someone in Martinsburg?”

“Uh no.” (Come to find out we know someone that lives in that general vicinity but that’s another story).

“Then why did you go there?”

I really resisted the urge to say “because it’s there” and instead responded with the fact that it was near 50 degrees, the sun was shining brightly and there was no snow on the ground.

My co-workers shook their head in disbelief. “You drove seven hours in one direction for that?” The funny thing is Earl and I didn’t think twice about driving seven hours in one direction for unlimited ribs and a few beers at a chain restaurant called “Texas Steakhouse and Saloon”. Since I had a few beers at dinner on an empty stomach, that’s essentially all we ended up doing, though I had good intentions to do more after supper.

There’s just something about riding in a vehicle and exploring the countryside that is very, very appealing to me. I think some of it has to do with my childhood; my family would often go for a Sunday ride in our ’78 Impala and those rides hold very happy memories for me. When I was younger, we’d pile into the ’71 Heavy Chevy and make the 75-mile round trip trek to my grandparents “in the city”. My other grandparents seemed to be a happy couple, and they went for rides all the time, driving 100 miles in one direction for supper in an out of the way restaurant in Gouverneur (look at a map of New York, you’ll see how ‘out of the way’) and drove the country twice a year (“south” and “west” in February, “north” and “west” in September). I remember them holding hands at brunch almost up until the day my grandmother died.

When Earl and I got together for our first date, we spent that entire weekend together. On that Sunday long ago, we drove in my Hyundai Excel up into the mountains of Vermont, just simply talking and getting to know each other. I felt like I knew more about Earl that day than I knew about my first two boyfriends combined. I remember feeling so lucky on that day, having found someone that seemed to enjoy going for a ride as much as I did. And you know what? Even though that first ride together was just shy of 10 years ago, to this day Earl and I still discover more about each other and thrive on exploring the country side by side in the Jeep or whatever.

I could spend my life on the road and not complain about it. There is so much out there to discover and experience. And we are going to continue to experience all we can.

Chat.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

Lately I’ve been opening iChatAV while I’ve been on my computer, trying to step out from my own little private world and into the real world that actually exists. It’s unfortunate, but I have a huge list of people on my Buddy List and I don’t remember who 3/4 of them are. I don’t remember where I’ve met them and I sure as heck don’t remember what they look like. I suppose it could be considered rather embarassing. The trouble is I’ve migrated my buddy list from computer to computer and account to account since I was “djjp” on AOL back in 1991. Perhaps that’s why most of buddies come up with “account not found.”

There’s a smattering of family members on their as well and I’m finding myself preferring to keep in touch on instant messenger instead of letting my fingers do the walking on the telephone. It’s a little bit ironic, don’t you think, since I work for a telephone company and that industry contributes to our bread and butter. But I prefer chatting on a webcam instead of talking over the telephone. I’m very 21st century in that regard.

I also have a couple of friends that I chat with on a regular basis. (Hi there Terry!) Earl is a big fan of instant messenger but more of a Yahoo! type of guy, where I prefer iChatAV (which uses AOL). Then there’s my family members who decided to ignore the Apple-centric IT expert of the family and go with MSN. Granted, I have an MSN client on my PowerBook but it sure doesn’t support the stunning technicolor camera images from my iSight. Oh well. Someday the world will use one IM protocol and it’ll be a little bit easier to communicate with people.

So I’m trying to reach out to other bloggers and readers through instant messenger so I can get to know people better. Don’t be shy to say hi.