Glutton for Punishment.

Earl is out of town on business this evening, though just moments ago he surprised me by saying he was taking a late flight tonight instead of coming home tomorrow afternoon as originally scheduled. Naturally I’m delighted by this news. Unfortunately he isn’t arriving home early enough to join me for supper. I wasn’t really in the mood for popcorn and beer though I did briefly consider the temptation. In the mood for an internet cafe experience I ended up heading to our local Panera, where I have been irked on several occasions earlier this week.

I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.

The restaurant is packed to the gills with people this evening. There’s a wide selection of screaming kids, big haired women and hyper macho men that think talking as if they’re from Brooklyn makes them exceedingly sexy. What do I know, perhaps the big haired women like these guys. They’re not my cup of tea though.

The cutie bear that was working on his PowerBook this past Monday night in the corner is still there tonight, even though it appears that he changed his clothes. I am seriously considering taking a picture of him with the iPhone though I fear that may prove to cross some line that I’m vaguely aware of.

I did notice that the “courtesy” cups I mentioned from my last visit here at no longer available. So much for giving the customers a free cup of water. I guess the old adage of “You abuse it, you lose it” holds true in this case.

I have to admit that I love eavesdropping on the conversations around me. I guess that’s why I don’t have bionic hearing, I’d probably abuse the privilege. Since I have plain ol’ human hearing (that’s holding up quite well) I’m forced to limit my eavesdropping to the tables around me but the chats I’m hearing are quite interesting. I’m intrigued by the liberal use of the f-bomb at a table seemingly populated by a family. Now I use the word quite a bit in everyday conversation but these are going quite crazy with it. This is interesting to me because the family looks like the type that was offended by Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction that seriously fucked up broadcast television and radio.

The other thing I’m noticing with these conversations around me is the accent. Aside from the Brooklyn wannabes, there’s the overpowering flat “a” sound that’s quite common in this area (merry, mary and marry all sound the same here). I guess that’s to be expected, since I’m the native land of that sound, but there’s also quite a bit of what I call “fake Italian” going on, where they drop the trailing vowel off of every word that ends in a vowel. “Cannoli” becomes “canole”, “ricotta” becomes ricott, marinara becomes “mon-non” (both syllables rhyme with “on”) which I don’t find in Upstate New York outside of our immediate area. I’ve never been to Italy so maybe what I perceive to be “fake Italian” could be the real mccoy but I’ve never heard anyone portraying an Italian character on television speak this way.

I guess this Panera experience has moved up a notch from frustrated/irritated to perplexed. The feeling isn’t unpleasant.

8 November 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Official.

It’s officially snowing here in the Mohawk Valley. Nothing is sticking to the ground yet, but there’s flakes in the air. The higher hills have snow on them.

I’m officially iMachias all over, the last transition being made last night when Microsoft came out with the @live.com e-mail addresses. I don’t use the service, but I do use Live Messenger once in a while (to keep in touch with my family who also use it), and I didn’t want another @hotmail.com address on there. So imachias@live.com it is for Windows Messenger.

We officially did not make Rosie and Friends in NYC last night due to a last minute scheduling conflict. Earl is out of town for rest of the week and it would have made it quite difficult on both of us to try to squeeze in a quick trip to New York. The money for the tickets went to a good cause, so there’s no harm done.

I’m officially catching up on my homework and quite pleased with myself.

7 November 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 1

This Ain’t McDonalds.

Earl and I like to go out to supper after we do the voting thing. It’s become a tradition of sorts and we keep the dinner low key.

Tonight we went to the local Panera.

I’ve mentioned before that I find our Panera to be a little frustrating. Actually, I find the customers of the local Panera to be frustrating. True to form, the queue was 15-20 people deep and few knew what they were going to order before standing in front of the register with their mouth agape. Tonight’s featured question was “What’s gorgonzola cheese?”

Panera has been kind enough to put out “courtesy cups”, these little plastic cups for patrons to use for little sips of water. They’re smaller than those Dixie cups that used to be dispensed in the kitchen (and there’s no jokes along the side to read.) Many feel that these cups are for iced tea and pop, even if it involves 8, 9 or ten trips to the soda fountain to refill them due to the size of the cup.

I found this infuriating.

I also noticed that several people just left their garbage on the table instead of taking it to the trash bins as most of the other customers do. While we were waiting in line to order I glared at a woman who left her garbage spread out all over the table. She looked at me defiantly. I continued to glare and she softened her return stare. She didn’t do anything about the garbage but I made her feel sufficiently guilty. When another party left their garbage I proclaimed loudly, “Why don’t they just rip down the Panera sign and serve nothing but Happy Meals since everyone is intent on making this place a DUMP.” That garnered a few startled glances that made me feel quite proud of myself.

All in all the meal was enjoyable, the company was extraordinary (Earl is always a good date) but the clientele was frustrating. Earl says I can’t change the world but I’m going to keep on trying.

7 November 2007 by Why. 1

To Oprah. To Milk Duds.

Lately I’ve been inspired to pursue my long buried musical aspirations. Between the piano getting fixed up and the prompting from several that I should start singing again (outside of the shower), I’ve been timidly looking around for something fun to do to see if I can handle being on a stage again without dying of fright, whether it be community theatre, a gay men’s chorus or going somewhere for karaoke night (Guinness optional).

One of my favorite musicals of all time is “Rent”. I love each piece of the production and I often sing selected songs from the soundtrack during my commute to school. I occasionally amuse myself by watching local community groups perform songs from the show. Due to some of the content and lyrics of the music, “Rent” is not a show you often see performed by high school drama clubs. However, once in a while a rogue, daring music teacher will make the leap with interesting results. During my latest look through YouTube, I got a kick out of a change in lyrics to “La Vie Boheme”.

To hand-crafted beers made in local breweries
To yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese
To leather, to dildos, To curry Vindaloo
To Huevos Rancheros and Maya Angelou

became

To hand-crafted beers made in local breweries
To yoga, to yogurt, to rice and beans and cheese
To Oprah, to milk duds, To curry Vindaloo
To Huevos Rancheros and Maya Angelou

I’m curious if the script was changed before or after it was practiced in the high school auditorium. For some reason the change just cracks me up.

5 November 2007 by Ham. 2

Crazy.

Since all is right with the world (we’ve switched back to Standard Time, which puts the sun relatively close to where it should be) I was up bright and early before sunrise at 6:30. Some may scoff at my attempt to get up early but I feel that getting up at 6:30 is an accomplishment for this night owl. I had no choice in the matter, as I had a paw in my eye. It was time for tuna.

Anyway, not only am I up and about at this ungodly hour, I just realised that I have been cleaning my office/studio for the past thirty minutes. I’ve organised all my school papers and work from past semesters, I’ve thrown out hundreds of 3 1/2-inch floppy disks (I kept the 5 1/4-inch ones, just kidding they were the old 8-inch ones) and I think I might actually dust and vacuum the rooms in the basement tonight.

Let’s see if I can stay up beyond 7:00.

5 November 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 1

1313 Mockingbird Lane.

The neighbors down the street have augmented their now outdated Halloween display with various tacky Christmas monstrosities. They have snow globes, puffed up santas, twinkling lights of every color, dancing penguins and scary looking snowmen mixed in with the puffed ghouls, witches and goblins leftover from the last festive commercial venture. I decided that all this could mean only one thing: I needed to take down our cobwebs too.

I wish I could say the cobwebs were up to add to the Halloween atmosphere of the week but that would be a bit of a fib, since it would mean that I’ve been decorating for Halloween since June. I sort of think cobwebs add to the gaiety of watching the dust bunny races we have nightly in the “Great Room”. In fact, think that’s what makes the room great, built in dust bunny races. It’s better than that old television show Bowling For Dollars.

So, trying to avoid doing homework I decided to unbury the vacuum cleaner, dust it off and go for a spin around the house. I even swiffed before vacuuming for that extra touch.

I think it’s time for a party or two.

4 November 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Art.




No Technicolor.

Originally uploaded by iMachias.

Earl and I are in Albany tonight for the semi-monthly bear night. We’re both a little tired, as last night we went to my uncle’s retirement party and had an absolutely fantastic time. While it was mostly his co-workers at the party, my whole family got together to go as well and it was the first time in a long time that I was able to hang out with all my city cousins.

I’m a blessed bear to have such a rockin’ family. There’s not a bad one in the bunch.

Tonight we’re in Albany. We’ve installed ourselves at the hotel for the obligatory disco nap. We just got back from an art exhibit of bear art. Our friends Sean (from Sean and Jeffrey) and (Angry) Alan were both displaying their wonderous talent.

I’ll stick to stick figures and leave the serious stuff to the truly talented.

I’m thinking tonight is going to be a great night.

3 November 2007 by Flickr 0

The Weekend.

Last Friday when we were driving through Belfast I took the opportunity to listen to the BBC’s Radio One for the first time. I really like radio over in Europe (at least in the U.K. and Ireland), because the format seems to be considerably different (and much better) than what we have here in the States. There was more personality from the air talent and I find the music to be markedly better.

One of the songs I heard was “The Weekend” by Michael Gray. After a little bit of Googling I discovered that the track is a couple of years old but I still find it quite enjoyable.

If I were still in Top 40 radio, you’d hear this song A LOT on Wow-FM. Oh, I also really like the cinematography in this video. I’m not used to this much boobage, but the video is awesome.

1 November 2007 by DJ 1

Happy Halloween.

Halloween 1979.
My sister and I making Halloween candy bags, October 1979

So today is Halloween. I’m really not feeling the need to be someone else today so I don’t have a costume ready. Some will ask what I will wear if trick or treaters come knocking at the door. Earl and I have been together for 12 years. We’ve had one trick or treater in that entire time and it was the kid of one of Earl’s employees that was sucking up. The kid was imported from another town.

I was looking through old photos and found this picture of my sister and I stuffing Halloween candy bags. It’s from 1979. Notice I’m wearing Army fatigues back then as well. The quasi Dorothy Hammel haircut was so within regs. I don’t know why my sister is somewhat snarling. Perhaps she was trying to be spooky.

If I’m so inspired tonight perhaps Blue Marvel will make an appearance before November arrives.

31 October 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 1

Linguistics.

I have always been fascinated by the countless variants of the English language. I don’t know if it’s a latent actor hidden in my psyche somewhere or what, but whenever we travel I purposely focus on listening for differences in the speech patterns of the native and try to file that information away for future use.

That being said, I love the Irish accent, especially the speech patterns and sounds found in Dublin. Since our visit to Ireland I shall always enjoy a tomato (tah-mah-toe) instead of a toe-may-toe.

When I was in college the first time around I took a speech and theatre class in preparation for becoming a music teacher. I think it may have been one of the only classes I never missed because I was fascinated with the way my professor spoke. She was from Toronto and sounded a lot like the CBC’s Barbara Budd. It was fascinating that while Toronto was only a few hours away, her accent and turn of phrase was considerably different from my own, which was somewhat different from my native Western New York classmates. I think I picked up a few of that professor’s speech patterns and they’ve stuck with me over the years.

When Earl first introduced me to his family it was then that I realized that he spoke nothing like the rest of them. Since he’s a Philadelphia boy through and through it took me by surprise that he didn’t sound the part. He doesn’t drink “wooder” like his brothers and sisters did. Apparently he purposely shook off the accent when he left home. I think that’s cool.

There are many accents that sound somewhat offensive to me. I’ll reserve the list for myself so I don’t offend anyone that may be reading this, but there are some places in the United States that in my mind downright mangle our language. As I’ve met fellow bloggers face to face over the years, I’ve noticed that many of them don’t sound like the region they live in. Perhaps I’m not the only one that is conscious of my accent and always trying to improve upon it.

I do find some phrasing quite delightful, for example, there was a sweet cashier at a Chick-Fil-A in central Georgia who responded with “My pleasure” instead of the pedestrian “You’re Welcome” when I said thank you for the meal she had just handed me. I don’t know why I found that charming but it was nonetheless. When Earl and I were having our photos taken with tourists last week (when we were in our kilts), I asked one woman where in the midwest she was from and I was guessing Wisconsin. The “o”s and the “don’t you knows” gave it away. The northern midwest accent is another that I find cute. And I always enjoy speaking with Canadians regardless of the region they call home, since they seem to approach the English language in a less-lazy fashion that we do here in the States.

As I look over this blog entry, I realize that regardless of the accent I’m using I tend to babble a lot.

30 October 2007 by Geek 0

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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