What a week it has been. I think I need a vacation.
Wait, I just got back from vacation!
Admission.
I can’t remember if I have admitted this before here on my blog and quite frankly I’m too lazy to do a search on past entries, but today I found myself daydreaming at my desk at work about a dream I had long, long ago when I was a teenager.
I wanted to be a backup singer for The Human League.
That’s right, I once dreamed of being a touring backup singer in The Human League, probably best known for one of the definitive songs from the 1980s, “Don’t You Want Me” and a whole slew of other tracks here in the U.S. including “(Keep Feeling) Fascination” and “Human”.
In 1984 I purchased a Yorx Stereo (complete with recordable 8-track) at the local Ames. One of my very first purchases with my own money, my Yorx stereo had a turntable, the aforementioned 8-track, a radio and a cassette deck in it. It even had detachable speakers that could sit on a bookcase.
That Yorx Stereo played every Human League 12-inch single I had in my library (which was each title released to date) and it played each album over and over again as I studied and learned each lyric, each version of every single and the smattering of harmonies found on their records.
Why The Human League, you ask? Well, there are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, if I don’t squeeze my balls hard I sing baritone and I tend to linger more in the bass range. Some find this surprising. I have only sang tenor on a few occasions when singing in part of a group and that’s where the uncomfortable ball squeezing has had to come into play. The lead singer of The Human League, Phil Oakey, sings comfortably in my range, something that was a rarity in the days of Duran Duran and the likes of Boy George (and especially today!). The only other singer that I could really sing with in the pop world was Pete Burns from Dead or Alive, and while I loved their music, I KNEW I could not get away doing the Pete Burns thing in the small farm town in Central New York I grew up with. At least The Human League was relatively popular and yet they were eccentric enough to stand out in the crowd. Plus, all of their music was electronically derived. THAT was wicked cool to me, being a gadget geek and all. In addition, The Human League had a very “80s” look to them. I knew I couldn’t pull off Phil’s lopsided haircut but I could wear the slightly daring style that they did and not get beat up in school. (Funny that I didn’t get my first leather pants for another 20 years or so).
So yes, back in the day I had dreams of singing backup vocals for The Human League in concert. They came to our area back in the late 1990s during a rewind tour with Howard Jones and Culture Club. Working in radio at the time, I tried to pull some strings to get backstage and meet them but they had no interest in meeting anyone. Honestly, my hopes were dashed and I childishly punished them by pulling their catalog from the music rotation at the station for a while. While I knew I wouldn’t be able perform with them, I thought it might be whimsical to share my dreams with them before or after their performance, but no, it was not meant to be.
The Human League still performs live from time to time. Perhaps I’ll catch them at a future gig and share my little daydream with them. After all, these are The Things That Dreams Are Made Of.
In honour of my remembrance of this little daydream, I share one of their tracks. This is the single that preceded “Don’t You Want Me”, it’s “Love Action (I Believe In Love)”, also from the ‘Dare’ album. This track is actually part of a longer instrumental called “Hard Times”, which wasn’t released in the U.S. until later in 1983 on the Fascination! EP.
Distraction.
Talking or texting on a cell phone is a risky proposition, no matter how you go about doing it. Whilst I try really hard to mind my mobile manners while in a public setting, I have to admit that I am guilty of texting or talking while behind the wheel.
I have decided to stop this practice, effective immediately.
No longer will I hear the frightened murmurs of my passengers. I will now set an example for others by doing the responsible thing.
The decision has been spurred by this article that recently appeared in the New York Times. I find it interesting that politics are playing into whether or not the public should be informed about the dangers about distracted driving.
Here’s the link to the article.
For your reading pleasure, here’s a snippet of the article:
But such an ambitious study never happened. And the researchers’ agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, decided not to make public hundreds of pages of research and warnings about the use of phones by drivers — in part, officials say, because of concerns about angering Congress.
Day.
Today has been one of those days that I attribute to a “learning experience”. I might go so far as to say a “challenging learning experience.”
Work was a little rocky. I was very verbal about a few of the interactions at work which ended up in a private meeting with my supervisor, which when all is said and done, I really needed to have. I went in angry as a hornet, I came out feeling much better.
A very dear friend is hurting today and I have been trying to be there for him; his pain is our pain here at The Manor. Sometimes it’s hard to hug a loved one over IM.
On call has been moderately busy this evening. I decided to take matter into my own hands and instead of speculating as to whether a customer’s location lost power (resulting in loss of phone and internet service), I just drove my ass down there to discover that my hunch was correct, the power was out. It made my on-call existence that much easier and I think the customer appreciated it.
I haven’t been on-call in eight weeks. I’m only on-call until Monday 8 a.m. and then I am off-call for another four weeks. I should probably stop being cranky about and just get on with it. Everyone involved would probably be happier.
Step.
I was reading a blog entry on the first moon walk. The author included this line:
Some people say that September 11, 2001 was the moment America best defined itself. I respectfully disagree. On the evening of July 20, 1969 we defined ourselves not by our fear of what could happen, but our dreams of what would happen, if we only dared to dream.
That is one of the best things I have read in a very long time.
Home.
It’s almost time for bed. Earl has already hit the hay as he is getting up at 5:45 tomorrow. Jamie is in bed as well because, well, Jamie went to bed. He has meetings at school tomorrow in preparation of the upcoming semester. I am finishing up a few things before calling it a night. My MacBook Pro behaved somewhat poorly when it came to networking while we were on vacation. I have wiped it out and reloaded everything from scratch. It’s taking a while to do this. It should be fully functional 24 hours from now.
Earl and I drove around 2,455 miles during our eight day journey. We enjoyed every moment of our much needed vacation and we feel rejuvenated and re-energized. I hope the feeling lasts.
St. Louis, Missouri is amazing place. I dislike it when folks on either coast refer to that area of the United States as the “flyover states” or the “flyover cities”. St. Louis and her midwestern cities are just important to the fabric of the U.S. as the bigger cities on the coasts. I mentioned on my Twitter feed throughout the week that St. Louis jumped a few notches on my “list”. I was referring to a list of potential places to live someday in the future. The climate, location and amenities of St. Louis make it a very desirable place to live in my book. It’s exact placement on my list deserves a separate blog entry someday, once I have had the opportunity to compare and contrast a bit with the others on my list. And yes, I do keep track of the pros and cons in a little file on the server. I’m just like that.
Tom was very happy to be home after I picked him up from Dad and Karen’s. He complained about the ride home for the duration of the entire trip, but once he checked out his native territory he started purring and immediately got back into his routine. He’s pretty flexible for a 14 year old cat.
Tomorrow starts a week of on-call duties. For the first time in a long time, I don’t find that to be too disturbing. I’m ready to handle it.
Ohio.
Today has been all about driving. Earl and I left St. Louis at 10 a.m. CDT, drove through downtown and then it became all about Interstate 70 as we crossed Illinois, Indiana and half of Ohio before turning north along Interstate 71. After 9 1/2 hours of driving, we have settled on Cleveland for our stay for the night. We have about six hours of driving left. We should be home at a decent time tomorrow.
My mind wandered a bit as we drove merrily along and I have to say that I’m the most relaxed I’ve been in a very long time. It’s a great feeling.
Earl and I just had dinner at the bar in the lobby, we might go out for a drink before calling it a night.
Depart.
Earl and I are packing up our little one week home here in St. Louis and getting ready to head back east. We have a long drive ahead of us and who knows what adventure we’ll find on the road. We are always looking for adventure.
Today is my sister’s birthday. She has been and always will be one of my best friends. I am proud to be her big brother. To celebrate I share a picture from our childhood days. It’s one of my favorites of us.
Dragonfly.
Earl and I went to the Missouri Botanical Gardens for most of the day today. We took a ton of pictures, in fact Earl took so many that he drained the battery on his camera, and I’m going to try to post them on Flickr1 when I get a few moments.
Instead of just snapping photos randomly and hoping for something amazing, I concentrated on what I was trying to capture and how I wanted it to look in a photo that will be around forever. This dragonfly photo is an example of me messing around in this manner. I already know a number of ways I could have improved this photo (especially if I was carrying a camera with a viewfinder) but I thought it was a pretty good start.
A dragonfly at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. July 17 ’09.
We never made it to Branson, Mo. contrary to the suggestion to do so from our friend Shirley; when we went to dinner with Leigh last night she told us that Branson isn’t the most gay-friendly place in the world, so we decided to skip it, what with us being gay and all.
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that during a drive from Toronto to the 1000 Islands (on my way home) along Southern Ontario that I had some sort of settling of the way I feel about things, almost like a reboot of attitude. When I’m driving is when I do my best thinking. I’m now realizing that this reboot was only partially complete, as the rest of this nebulous, indescribable alignment of my outlook on life has finally clicked into place during this vacation.
And we still have two days of driving left to get home!
J.P. and Earl, still very happy after all these years. July 17 ’09.
1 I actually ended up posting the photos on my MobileMe account. You can take a peek at them here. These are the photos that Earl and I both took.
St. Louis Zoo.
Today Earl and I went to the St. Louis Zoo. The weather was perfect and the zoo is quite nice. I have been to zoos that are kind of dingy and I’ve been to zoos that have been spectacular. I would say this rates on the higher end. The animals look happy, their environment is reasonable, there seemed to be ample opportunities for education and all in all I would rate the experience and 8 out of 10. I highly recommend visiting the zoo when you’re in St. Louis.
I took a TON of pictures at the zoo and posted them on my Flickr account.
For dinner we met up with Earl’s friend Leigh. They haven’t seen each other in 14 years or so and she is from the BJP era so it was really nice to meet her. We had a great time at dinner at an Irish pub called McGurk’s. Great food and great conversation.
Earl and I are feeling adventurous this evening, we might go out for a night on the town and see what a Thursday night is all about in these parts.
