Americana.

So I’m not sure how I feel about this restaurant. It’s called the “Heart Attack” and you can weigh yourself on the way in. The scale is huge with a large LED readout for everyone with an interest to gaze upon. If you weigh more than 350 lbs., you eat for free. There are signs talking about lobster and steak. I don’t know what the prices are for folks that weigh less than 350 lbs.

I’ve known plenty of folks weighing more than 350 lbs. over the years. I wonder how they would feel about the theming around this restaurant. I know that being that heavy increases health concerns, in many cases dramatically, but most folks of any size seem happy with their weight.

Honestly, the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw this restaurant was, “only in the good ol’ U.S. of A.”. We live in odd times.

Anniversary Gambling.

We were married in a legal ceremony 10 years ago this past Wednesday. We would have done it sooner but the government, and too many in the populace, felt the gays shouldn’t be legally married so while we’ve been together for over 25 years, as of this week we’ve been legally married for a decade.

We were married in a casino so it’s only fitting that we are celebrating a decade of legally wedded bliss in Las Vegas. My husband arranged this entire trip. We drove across the desert today and arrived in plenty of time for dinner. As of this writing, we have both doubled our daily allowance for gambling purposes. We are having fun and our inhibitions are loose. Make of that what you will.

I just know that I’m blissfully happy, both before this trip to Vegas and during this trip to Vegas. The rest of the family is home with Truman, and send their well wishes.

Legal Decade.

10 years ago today, my husband I were legally married at Turning Stone Casino and Resort in Verona, New York. The ceremony was attended by 75 of our family and friends. I still choke up when I think of the day, and I can’t believe we legally tied the knot 10 years ago.

25 years ago today, I got down on one knee on a mountain in The Adirondacks south of Inlet, New York and I proposed to Earl, in front of a group of spectators that happened to be hiking that day. We celebrated our commitment ceremony on December 26, 1996. It wouldn’t be until 2011 that New York State deemed us worthy of a legal marriage and we put the celebration together as quickly as possible.

It was wonderful.

Here’s a photo from our one year legal anniversary celebration back at Turning Stone Casino and Resort. We were seated at a table next to one of the Queer Eye guys from the original series. I don’t know what he does now.

I just know that I’m still blissfully in love and quite happy to be gay, because we get to celebrate lots of anniversaries.

Return To Service.

Our web host is still restoring servers across their platform, but our service (on server !) has been stable for the past 24 hours. Fingers crossed.

Interruptions.

Our web hosting company has been struggling with service for the past 48 hours. This is the fallout of a server migration that was suppose to take place in an eight-hour window on Saturday, Oct. 9. There has been little communication on the subject from the web hosting company, which is quite disappointing. If you’ve been stopping by and finding no traces of this site, my apologies, but fret not, I have no plans on discontinuing anything.

Thank you for your continued interest.

Remember When…

One of things I like about the Photos app on Mac and iOS is one can type the date into the search bar and see all the photos taken over the years on that date. I’m sure you can do this with Google Photos and the like, and it probably works better than the Apple counterpart (albeit with less privacy) so ultimately this practice is fun for the whole family.

I typed in today’s date and was reminded of a trip to Kansas City. My husband was there on business and I was working remotely (as a digital nomad) and discovering the convention area where we were staying. I didn’t remember much about this trip until I saw this photo pop-up; I stopped into a barbershop outside of Kansas City and got a shave from this barber who posed with me for a Yelp photo. I remember the barber, his name was Jarrit (with that distinct spelling). I also remember he didn’t cut me or slice my throat or anything.

Caturday.

Truman enjoys hanging out on my office window sill but only before 10 a.m. His routine can be as predictable as mine. We both enjoy the desert sun.

Speed.

With my new iPhone 13 Pro I’ve been excited to try out 5G from our cellular provider, who happens to be AT&T.

The 5G service from AT&T in Tucson is not good.

For a while I’ve been contemplating moving away from AT&T. The only reason we’re on AT&T is because it was bundled with our fiber connection at home when we lived in Chicago. Cellular service in the Windy City was decent but not great, and we’ve had the same experience here in Tucson. I’m convinced there are better options.

Mike suggested T-Mobile. He uses the T-Mobile network through Mint Mobile, but Mint doesn’t provide the option to tether a cellular-wired Apple Watch to your account, which is something I rely on a bit. So while looking around on the Internet I discovered that T-Mobile offers free 30 days of data service if you have a compatible device, which I do in the iPhone 13 Pro. So I have both my normal AT&T service and the T-Mobile free plan running on my phone.

The T-Mobile of 5G, thus far, has proven to be much more reliable that’s AT&T in the greater Tucson area. I did a speed check in the downtown area and was impressed with the results. Unfortunately, according to the coverage map, T-Mobile gets a little spotty outside of the Tucson and Phoenix metro areas. And with all the exploring we do out in the desert, this could prove to be an issue with us in the future.

I’m going to test the service on our drive to Las Vegas next weekend and see how it does.

Right Now.

Good morning, world! I just took the photo above by putting my iPhone against the glass of my office window and holding very still.

It looks to be a beautiful sunrise. In the distance I hear howls of excitement from coyotes.

Perhaps they’re celebrating the new day.

Here’s a photo I took 20 minutes ago from one of the windows in our stairwell. Some artifacts from the glass of the window pane showed up in this one.