Black Friday.

So today is Black Friday. I think it’s called Black Friday because this is the day that the retailers fall back into the black on their All Important Ledger. Apparently they have been running in the red for the entire year up until today when they magically sell enough stuff to produce enough profit to fall back into the black. This pleases the Lord.

You can tell economic times are tough because the retailers are having to work extra hard at getting back into the black this year. Times are so tough for them that they decided to make Black Friday last more than 24 hours by starting up on Thursday night. That’s right, forget the time gathered around the post-dinner table engaging in discussion or a board game with the family, we are now suppose to bundle up and get ourselves to the Wal*mart before it’s Friday so we can get a head start on the deals that are arriving before Friday for Black Friday. Move. That. Money. Buy. That. Stuff.

I’m already entertaining requests from my fans as to what I want for Christmas. I haven’t really thought about it a great deal, though I think I may have suggested a few ideas to Earl over the past week. There is a rumor that I want an iPad2 and possibly an iPhone 4S, but there is a part of me that wants to go without getting a big ticket technology item for Christmas, just to say that I did it. Besides, everything I have works fine. My iPhone is able to distract me from real life without a problem and I can blog anywhere my heart desires with my first generation iPad. Ironically, I am using my MacBook Pro to blog during my lunch hour today, but that’s only because I left the bluetooth keyboard in the Jeep and that’s in getting serviced, so I’m driving the Durango and I wanted to be able to type on an actual keyboard instead of just a picture of one. I find it very hard to write blog entries on my iPad. I don’t think it would be an easier on my iPad2 since the pictures of the keyboard are identical. Damn me for learning to do something other than hunt and peck. What was I thinking?

When Earl and I dropped the Jeep off at the early-bird station at the dealership last night, we took the opportunity to swing through the Big Box Mecca to see what sort of lines were forming at the Big Box Stores. There was an encampment at Best Buy that went the entire length of that side of the shopping center. The line formed at the front entrance to Best Buy, at the end of the building, and snaked along the entire plaza beyond PetSmart, Salon Aida, some sort of dental clinic, a double-wide TJ Maxx and Michaels’. People were bundled up in their eskimo gear and sitting on lawn chairs. All to save $100 off one of two laptops (because there’s never more than that in stock) that’s probably going crap out and be so bogged down with “value added software” that you’ll want to chuck the thing out the window in a month anyway. The Wal*mart had setup some corrals out front but there wasn’t very many people to be seen.

This is what our Thanksgiving has come to, nothing more than a precursor to the more important Black Friday. It’s kind of sad.

I heard on the news this morning that one of the other Wal*mart Supercenters in the area (we have four within a 15 mile radius) had to summon the cops because of shoppers fighting over cell phones. There’s nothing that shares that Christian sentiment of “Merry Christmas” better than a good kick in the teeth.

Back to the gift idea requests I have been getting. I know that people want to give me a gift in the name of sharing a delight and the spirit of the season and that is very much appreciated. You know what I really want? A donation to the Ali Forney Center in New York. If you feel the need to give me something, give me a card with some nice words and a bottle of after shave or something. Don’t dazzle, just share.

If more people did that, I bet our hearts, instead of our wallets, would soar on Black Friday.

25 November 2011 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Thanks.

So today is still Thanksgiving (since this is my second post of the day) and I have to say that I can barely keep my eyes open due to the large amount of turkey that I consumed around two and a half hours ago. Curiously, I’m a little bit hungry and quite frankly I am counting the minutes until 5:30 p.m. (it is currently 5:01 p.m.), the official time of the Serving Of The Cheesecake™.

Earl asked what the trademark symbols are about. I think they add to the Levity™ of the blog entry. The only thing I have trademarked is the phrase “Always White Trash, Always“.

I jest.

Our Thanksgiving feast went something like this:

IMG 3309

Earl knows how to make a good turkey.

And then it was consumed in this fashion:

 

IMG 3327

The meal was preceded by a prayer. I know that some gay folks find this odd but while we don’t necessarily believe the teachings of a specific religion, I think it is safe to say that all of us have some sort of spiritual faith, and this was celebrated by a prayer, which is actually the second verse of “All Good Gifts” from the musical Godspell.

We thank thee then, oh Father,
For all things bright and good,
The seed time and the harvest,
Our life, our health, our food,
No gifts have we to offer,
For all thy love imparts,
But that which thou desirest,
Our humble, thankful hearts.

There wasn’t really that much discussion about what we are thankful for, other than the fact that we were able to celebrate this occasion together and that we are lucky to have such loving families, both as a chosen family unit and our families near and far.

I think that’s probably what I am most thankful for: family. I am lucky to have grown up in this life with a family that gets me and supports us. There are too many gay men and lesbians that are shunned by their biological family. I am so happy that we have experienced just the opposite.

Love is good, especially when it is shared.

 

24 November 2011 by Spiritual Stuff. 0

Big.

So today I am thankful for many things, with it being Thanksgiving here in the U.S. and all, and I’ll probably write a few blog entries (okay, possibly two) where I share what I am thankful about with those that stumble across this bloggy thing. This will make my mother happy, because she often shares what she is thankful about at Thanksgiving. In recent years, she has urged, actually insisted, no demanded, others to do the same during the Official Thanksgiving Dinner™ by not passing any food until someone said something that had some sort of meaning and another someone is sobbing in the mashed potatoes (or gravy, she’s not fussy) in an emotional turmoil because they have just shared what they are thankful about. My mother doesn’t just pull but she PULLS at heart strings.

I think I digressed.

Oh, and I sometimes write in an exaggerated manner and this could be one of those times, however, I most certainly assure you that yesterday’s blog entry was not written in an exaggerated manner and if I were to drive back to the hibachi grill right now, I would bet dollars to donuts (which I think has something to do with spending dough) that the woman is still banging on the ventilation hood and screaming for more sake.

Still digressing.

Oh, my mother is a lovely woman. I think of her as groovy. But not gravy. I’ll introduce you to her sometime, she’d like that.

Back to giving thanks. In a world where bigger is better, apparently, I am sometimes thankful that my grandmothers are not here to partake in the calamities of what we call the Present Time™ because quite frankly, I can’t see either grandmother trying to navigate themselves through a Wal*Mart (Always White Trash, Always). Grandma Country was a Pulaski Department Store kind of patron. The Pulaski Department Store was an establishment on one of the few corners “downtown” (I use that term loosely) in the lovely village of Pulaski, N.Y.1 that had everything you needed for your lovely country home. It was about 1/100th the size of a Wal*mart but I bet you could find anything there, just in a reasonable size. If she didn’t find it there, she’d make the trip to Watertown or Oswego and go to Westons or Woolworths, both big department stores for their time but mighty small in comparison. I guess she could have coped with a Wal*mart now that I think about it, but I don’t think she would have enjoyed the experience. She’d ask my grandfather for an assist. He’d yell and scare people. I like that approach.

Grandma City was about Ames (pronounced Ameses). Since she lived in the city she was more used to the larger department stores, but I don’t think she’d have an easy time navigating around Wal*mart. She found Wegmans to be big and that’s before Wegmans became big but they still sold things like shirts but they didn’t have a food court or anything. I mean, I could never see Gram hauling this thing back from the small Wegmans and having it sitting on the back of the sink in her kitchen:

Big

I mean, look at the size of this bottle of Ajax. This thing is huge. 33% More! Triple Action! The power of three! I feel Charmed!

Now I suspect that Scott purchased this during one of his clandestine trips to Wal*mart. We call these trips clandestine because he knows my feelings towards Wal*mart but he insists that there are things that he can’t get anywhere else so I look the other way when he breaks the house rule of going to Wal*mart without being inebriated. These trips usually take two people but one has to stay in the car unless the other is reduced to crawling. He usually goes under the cover of darkness.

When I see this bottle of Ajax on our sink back, I realize that Grandma City would have needed a bucket truck, or at the very least a small pickup truck or using one of the smaller cousins as some sort of winch, to pick up this bottle of dish detergent. And because she would never do such a think to one of her grandchildren nor does she know how to drive a bucket truck and it was Grandma Country that had access to the pickup truck, we would have ended up using paper plates for the Official Thanksgiving Dinner™, which would have been lovely in it’s own way but not really what we would have enjoyed though we would have smiled politely.

And for that, I am thankful that we all live in our own time, make the best of it and then move on to our great reward.

 

 

1 Pulaski is pronounced with the ‘ski’ like a ‘sky’ (“big blue sky!”) and not a ‘ski’, which is in Virginia.

24 November 2011 by Ponderings and Musings Spiritual Stuff. 3

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream.

So yesterday was Scott’s birthday. To celebrate, Earl and I thought we’d take him out to dinner as a family. We asked Scott where he’d like to go to dinner, he indicated that he would enjoy going to the Japanese Hibachi grille that we had been to before. We were all looking forward to it as it had been fun in the past. I made reservations for the four of us at 7.

We arrived right on time and the nice woman at the front desk took us to an empty hibachi grill table. These tables seat eight people and normally you share the space with another group. The seats are arranged in a horseshoe pattern around the grill where the hibachi chef/performer will come out and flip food around, ignite various objects on fire and squirt sake from a modified catsup bottle into your mouth from varying degrees of length from your body, the goal being that you need to see how much sake you can take without choking and passing out. It’s kind of like a porn video except with alcohol, so it’s more family friendly.

Good times.

We were seated less than 30 seconds and still getting our bearings when Jamie got up, asked us to order him a drink and then said he’d be back in time to eat. You see, he had a bit of a headache and the room was loud.

Okay, the room wasn’t loud. The room was an out of control scream fest. People were banging on the things. Sake was being squirted everywhere. Food was being set on fire. Shrimp was flying into hats and sides of beef were being flung about with martial art skill not seen since Kill Bill (either volume).

Now, here’s the rub. The hibachi grill is meant to be fun. That’s why they fling the food around, set things on fire and squirt sake into people’s mouths. It can get loud, during previous visits I think I may have cheered when I saw my dinner get thrown into the fedora of a grumpy patron on the other side of the room. But the people at the other grills weren’t yelling in excitement. They were bellowing. They were screaming like they had just been set free from parole. A woman, apparently upset that she wasn’t given a gong to bang on, stood on her chair and banged on the stainless steel of the hood over the grill. Others were banging plates together. I had never seen people act like this in a hibachi grill before. It was madness. It was mayhem. I’ve seen quieter explosions. Food fights aren’t this lively. People were just randomly screaming at the top of their lungs for no purpose other than to make noise. The person banging on the gong threw it on the floor to make extra noise. A woman howled like she had found the second Halloween of the year. It was nuts.

I politely beckoned to the woman at the front desk and asked to be relocated into the regular dining area of the restaurant, much to the relief of the rest of the family. I grabbed Jamie out of the lobby and told him that we were moving to a quieter area.

On our way to the new table I commented to the hostess that the room seemed very loud tonight. She was non-committal, “people always get excited at birthday celebration.” Apparently in this fine city of ours1, it is tradition to stand up on your chair, grab a spoon and start banging on the cooking appliances. I was non-committal when I replied, “people are nuts.” She giggled, geisha like.

We sat down and got ourselves arranged in front of our menus when the power flickered plenty of times. The screams from the hibachi grill room intensified as they sat in the dark. Apparently more things were set ablaze to light the room. The emergency lighting units made zappy, crackling noises and we continued with the progress of our meal as the lights went on and off in various areas of the restaurant.

The meal was delicious. The server apologized for the handwritten bill when it was time to pay. He added this little zinger to his apology: “Since we have problems with power, you must pay with cash.”

Fun!

In this world of big banking and technology wonder, we are encouraged to use debit cards and credit cards. While Earl and I carry a fair amount of cash on us, we are not in the habit of carrying enough cash for a dinner for four. We put the contents of our wallet together and came up with $75, $30 short and that’s not including tip.

“We don’t have enough cash and we’re not going to an ATM”, there’s not really an ATM nearby anyways and if we went, all four of us would go. (wink wink).

Now, back in the day before everything from toilets to toasters were computerized, you could call your credit card transactions in on the phone, talk to a woman who was downright miserable for having to be there and did not expect one deviation from her predetermined script and then find out if the credit card was good or not and then you would write the number down on the imprinted slip.

No imprinter.

Use a crayon.

No slip.

Write it on the handwritten bill that you apologized for.

See that wasn’t so hard, now you’ll get a tip.

Since there was uncertainty as to whether the credit transaction would go through or not, I screamed in the delight of possibly getting a free meal and grabbed the closest person that was drinking sake and used them to bang on the hood of the hibachi grill.

Okay, I didn’t do that but I thought about it, as I watched the emergency lights flash on and off and food get set ablaze.

1 Aside from being the location of our beautiful home and my wonderful family, I would rather live elsewhere.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:544,Johnstown,United States

23 November 2011 by Fun and Games Dept 3

Short.

So here in the United States it’s a short work week unless you’re unfortunately working for a money hungry retail establishment that lacks common sense. I was holding out hope that the Christmas decorations would not be installed in some of my favorite haunts until Friday, but the Dunkin’ Donuts I visit on a daily basis has officially decked the halls. The folks behind the counter still get my order without me actually asking for it, so they can be forgiven.

The short work week is not as short as it was prior to this job, because the company does not recognize Friday as a holiday. I kinda find this surprising, but when you’re working for a large corporation I guess anything goes. I am working on Friday. I hope to feel inspired while I’m doing it too. At the very least I hope I am able to catch up on things that have been falling to the wayside. I’d be much more productive if I could telecommute. Since all I do is work on a computer and engage in conference calls, telecommuting is certainly a viable option and one where I would actually be much more productive, but some don’t see it that way. Their loss.

So we are plugging along during this short work week and pretending that we are going to get things accomplished when in fact it’s quite impossible to do so because half the people are burning off PTO (Personal Time Off) that is set to expire by the end of the year. It’s also “Holy Week” in these parts; the name of the week has nothing to do with spirituality, but rather all of the holes that are being shot through things in the woods as deer season has officially opened. I like being in the woods at this time of year, but I don’t like the idea of shooting at an animal that can’t shoot back. Now if the deer were armed I would find that sporting. Conversely, if the human wrestled the deer to the ground, then that would be sporting as well. I like sports that are evenly matched, Sarah Palin’s hunting helicopter be damned. But, to each his own, I guess. At least there’s food on the table.

So while we are suppose to be focused and whatnot this week, all I can think about is pie, candied yams, homemade applesauce and cheesecake. Closing my eyes I can conjure up memories of the smells of Grandma Country’s house at Thanksgiving. I’m very lucky that many of those same smells, with their own spin of course, come from the kitchen on Thanksgiving right at home. I’m a lucky husband.

Of course, because it’s a short week, I close my eyes to conjure up these things in my head whilst sitting in front of the computer at work, doing my best to be productive. These things happen.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

22 November 2011 by Ponderings and Musings 0

Hiss.

It is interesting being owned by a cat that is 16 years old and nearly deaf. Now before I get started, whether he is deaf or not is up to debate, because some think he has perfected the art of selective hearing but I think he’s gone deaf. Being his servants, it is still up to us to meet his needs whether he can hear us or not. It’s not his problem, it’s ours.

The reason I think Tom is deaf is because I can now walk up to him while he is napping/adding an abundance of fur to the furniture and he will just stay there sleeping. His ears will not twitch in our direction, nor will he stir in any way. I’m careful not to startle him but touching him when he’s sleeping but I do check to make sure he is still breathing. I don’t use a mirror to do that.

I woke him up by touching him a while back and it was the first and only time that he jumped up on all fours and hissed at me. Tom isn’t much of a hisser, he’s more of a bully. Over the years we’ve had a few dogs as guests and he just kind of puffs up and then walks over to guest dog and swipes them in the nose. The few times a cat has been in his territory he has screamed like a banshee, but he’s not much of a hisser. When he did hiss at me, he then recognized me and started purring and rubbing against me. I took this as some sort of apology. We made up.

Speaking of screaming like a banshee, though he can’t hear he still makes his needs known through vocal communication. The cute meow has been replaced by a shriek at seemingly ear-rattling decibels, especially when heard at 4:30 in the morning. In an effort to keep the blog family friendly, I will not use the words I have heard from others in the house when hearing these screeches. Despite these noises, I refrain from spooking him through touch when he’s sleeping. If we need to relocate him because he is in an inconvenient location (I know, shame on the servants for finding the king in an inconvenient location), I usually stomp on the floor, banging my foot hard enough on the ground to create a small seismic event. He then awakes and looks off in a completely different direction. I bang the foot again and he swings around and sees what’s up.

The other day I reminded him that he has another 22 years to go if he wants to outlive the oldest cat on record. We call her the “siamese wench.” She lives in Australia, and while she seems quite sweet on her YouTube video (which I can’t find using the iPad app) but Tom has his eyes on the prize.

Actually, I think he couldn’t care less, because he went and added some fur to the couch.

20111121-185233.jpg

21 November 2011 by Ponderings and Musings 3

Commute.

A couple of photographs from the commute this morning. Here are a couple of shots from the Mindenville Rd. in the Town of Minden.  I mentioned before that I like the back roads.

Mindenville Rd 2

 

 

Mindenville Rd.

And to give you a hint of where we are.  A Google street view of the road in the summertime and a little map. Because I’m a geek like that.

Screen Shot 2011 11 18 at 9 07 28 PM

Screen Shot 2011 11 18 at 9 08 01 PM

 

 

18 November 2011 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Holiday.

Judging by the number of empty seats at the office today, along with the amount of snow that we have received over the past 24 hours, I think it’s safe to say that the holiday season has unofficially begun in these parts. A couple of folks at work have remarked that it feels like a Saturday in the office building. Their voices echoed when they said it. It was spooky.

I have to admit that I am looking forward to our Thanksgiving feast coming up on Thursday. Earl has alluded to the fact that he is going grocery shopping in preparation of it all this weekend and Scott has mentioned something about big pies. Possibly cheesecakes. Whatever they are, they’re good. Of this I am certain.

For the first time in a few years I don’t have the day after Thanksgiving off from work. I’m not one for holiday shopping and I’m really not a fan of crowds, so I can’t see me sitting outside of a Best Buy at 3:00 a.m. in the morning waiting for a deal on one lone television set anyways. I don’t even think we need a television. The Christmas lights will go up next weekend and I’m looking forward to that exercise.

I’m feeling the spirit, though, and it’s been a while since I’ve felt it. We are off to a good start.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

18 November 2011 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Ice.

As I was getting settled in for some alone time during my lunch hour, I noticed a slight “tinkling” sound coming from the roof of the Jeep. A quick inspection of the situation revealed that it was not a seagull peeing on the Jeep because I didn’t share a piece of my cookie but rather the sound of hail hitting the car.

In response to the presence of winter weather conditions, I did what anyone in this area would normally do. I promptly flailed my arms in the air. No one was around to hear my cries of “Help me! Help me!”. I then started the Jeep, put the defroster on “recirculate” so that no outside air could get into the vehicle. This was to make sure that I was able to fog the windows up as quickly as possible, as recirculating the same air over and over produces a better fog. Once the fogging was in progress, I jammed the Jeep into four-wheel drive, slammed the accelerator down as hard as I could and went running up the embankment of the adjacent parking lot. Coming down the other side of said embankment in second gear and with a loud thud and bouncing motion, I then popped it back into two-wheel drive and made like a mad man across the parking lot, ignoring any arrows, lines or vehicular or pedestrian motion in the lot. I then pulled up in front of Dollar Tree, with the obligatory right front tire up on the curb so that I could take up as much of the fire lane as possible, and then ran inside, huffing and panting about the ice. I grabbed a cart and with big swooping motions I was able to clear two shelves of bread and toilet paper into the cart. It was just a quick stop at the dairy section for six gallons of whole milk and four gallons of skim (I could mix the two later for 2%) and faster than Laverne and Shirley could get their Scooter Pies across the finish line, I made my wait through the checkstand and went outside, flinging everything from the cart helter skelter into the Jeep. I then got in, started it up and ignoring any traffic control devices that beckoned to the contrary, took off as quickly as possible for the closest hill where I could hide and write blog entries about how awful the weather is and come up with cute names like “Snowpacalypse”, “Snowvember”, “Snowcachoochoo” and “Snowmageddon”.

Then the ice turned to rain.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

17 November 2011 by Ponderings and Musings 4

About J.P.

Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.

Weird? Eccentric!

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