Spin Cycle.

I am seriously considering asking for another washer and dryer for our home. And quite frankly, I find the thought ridiculous. It’s not that I have some sort of weird laundromat fetish (though I do find experiences at the laundromat oddly enjoyable) it’s just that I want to get the task done as quickly as possible.  I don’t know how large families keep up with laundry. Hell, I don’t know how couples with a kid or two keep up with laundry. I can’t keep up with laundry and there’s only two of us. It’s a good thing Tom wears his fur coat 24/7.

Earl and I are going to a business gathering tonight. We need to look presentable so that means I can’t just throw on a pair of baggy shorts and a t-shirt as I’ve become accustomed to since becoming a college student. I need to look nice and Earl likes to do the same. This event, coupled with our recent camping excursion, has resulted in my being handed the task of making sure the laundry is caught up.

I still live by the “empty washer and dryer by the end of Sunday night” rule, however, this week I achieved the goal by not doing any laundry. Running around the Mulberry Bush dictates that we should do our wash on Monday so that’s what I did. Except that I lost interest after the first load and a half. I think I was distracted by “Leave It To Beaver” being moved to another time slot on TV Land. Perhaps it was an engaging chat on insant messenger. Whatever the reason, Earl and I were knee-high in dirty clothes in the laundry room and Earl gave me “the look”.  I hate it when he gives me “The Look”, which is not to be confused with “The Look of Love” or even “The Look of Lust”. This was “The Look of Laundry”, which is almost as deadly as “The Look Of You Spent Money Again”.

One of the issues I have with laundry is that we both have closets full of clothes but Earl has elected to limit his wardrobe to two pairs of work pants, two pairs of jeans and a smattering of shirts. Since 2+2=4 (thanks college math!) and there’s seven days in the week, and probably many more ensemble changes, this means that I could theoretically run overtime on keeping up with the wash.

I’d continue this entry but the dryer just played it’s annoying buzz to let me know it’s time to get hustling with the laundry.

5 June 2007 by Ponderings and Musings 2

Oldies.

I was just able to import all of my old blogger blog entries from July 2002 to May 2005 into the current incarnation of “Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity”. Looking back over these moldy oldies makes me realize a couple of things:

  1. I babble on and on about the same things.
  2. I’m constantly looking to improve myself.
  3. I’m sort of eccentric in an odd way.

Now I just need to figure out how to get that first year’s worth of manual journal entries into the software. Maybe I’ll save that task for the next rainy day.

4 June 2007 by Geek 0

Stick To The Schedule.

When I became a full-time college student, I assumed responsibility for the upkeep of our merry little household. This involves cooking, cleaning, keeping up with the laundry and most importantly, enjoying television programming while doing the aforementioned chores.

My channel of choice is TV Land with occasional romps with Lifetime. Completely bored with what modern television has to offer, I feel much better when I escape in the likes of Mayfield, Hooterville and Vitavitavegamin.

I usually start the day off with back to back episodes of the “Golden Girls”, for if I was not to do this I would definitely lose major gay points. From there I spin the dial to channel 301 which is TV Land. At the beginning of my college career this landed me in the middle of the adventures of Wally and the Beav, but this past month it skewed me into farm country with Green Acres. I’ve since learned that TV Land likes to rearrange the schedule willy-nilly for today when I was hoping for a serving of hotscakes I ended up with a beautiful Pernell Roberts in Bonanza.

Now, I’m not one to complain about major beefcake such as Mr. Roberts, however, it’s hard to listen to the wisdom of Lorne Greene when you’re in the mood for the insanity of Hooterville. I ended up spinning again and landing on Frasier, which I never quite ‘got’. Frustrated with the lack of Arnold the Pig and non-plussed by the humor of Frasier, I opted to pop in my Isis DVD.

I wish TV Land would just stick with the program. It’d make us classic television viewers less cranky.

4 June 2007 by Everyone's A Critic. 0

Camping Recap.

Rest Area.

Well Earl and I are back from our first camping weekend of the season at Hillside. This weekend’s theme was “Bears In The Woods 1”. We’ll be back for the sequels this season.

We survived the planned power outage just fine by groping our way through the woods with wild abandon. The relative lack of light actually made the campground feel a little more “tribal” which I find to be a good thing when you’re camping in the woods.

The weather was picture perfect for most of the weekend. Today was the only day of rain, when Mother Nature made her presence known with an impressive thunderstorm. Earl and I had the camper packed up in just in time; we were able to keep everything relatively dry. We have our set up and knock down procedures down to a science.

Last night we had dinner with 1st Earl and our friends on “Utica Way”. There’s not a lot of people from my “past” that I would give the time of day to, let alone sit down and break bread with, but we enjoyed dinner with 1st Earl. He’s a good guy, plus he makes a fierce Chicken Marsala.

Our friends Sean and Jeffrey are no longer “Hillside virgins” and seemed to have had a delightful time. Sean can rip up a dance floor like few I’ve seen before. We made a lot of new friends (hi guys!) this weekend and hung out with old friends (hi guys!) as well. It was good to be back in the groove again.

3 June 2007 by Gayish. 0

Ugh.

A couple of days ago our webhosting company had some issues with the server our site resides on. This prevented our blogs from working for a bit. Before I determined that the issue was on their end and not related to something that I had done, I had tinkered with our blog databases a little bit hoping to magically resolve an issue.

Earl tried to blog today and announced that he still couldn’t get into his blog, though I could get into mine. That’s when I figured out that I had magically wiped our Earl’s blog.

Boy these college students that try to fix computer problems suck.

So now I have a support ticket into our webhosting company to see if they can restore Earl’s blog database. He’s taking it in good stride and will continue blogging regardless. He says that I will be “the victim” in his next blog entry.

3 June 2007 by Flickr 0

Dark.

Earl and I are installed on site 70 for our first weekend at Hillside Campground in northern Pennsylvania. We always enjoy our Hillside experiences and this weekend is no exception. Earl is currently in the master suite (the larger bed of the camper) taking his first of several naps today as we were up rather late last night. I have no internet access so I’m typing this entry with the intent to upload it a little later once I’m in wi-fi range. I think we’re in one of the few sites in the campground that doesn’t have internet access. Maybe I’ll sit at someone’s picnic table in a little bit and borrow a little bit of their broadband.

One of the interesting aspects of this weekend is that the local power company is turning off power to all of Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania tonight at 10 p.m. for a “major upgrade”. The power is scheduled to be off until 6 a.m. tomorrow morning. Since this is a gay campground, this power interruption poses a problem as there will be no juice to run the disco at the rec hall tonight. One musn’t fear, however, because the owners have contracted out for a generator to run the sound equipment. People will be stumbling around in the middle of the woods in pitch blackness and peeing on random trees as there will be no lights or running water but by god we’ll still have the disco. We do have our priorities around here.

Our friends Sean and Jeffrey from Albany are here with their friends Don and George, so the six of us hung out together last night at the bonfire. Good times were had by all. It’s Sean and Jeffrey’s first time at Hillside. We’ve already planned on having them join us later in the season as we’ve scheduled several visits for this summer. They’re good guys and we don’t see them nearly enough, which is usually the case for us since we rarely see Steve and Tim in Buffalo these days as well.

We’ve been invited to a cocktail party scheduled for this evening hosted by our online friends Brad and Brian from New Jersey and then we’re having supper with 1st Earl.

Such the social butterflies. Even in the dark.

2 June 2007 by Fun and Games Dept 6

Saranac Thursday.

Saranac

Last night Earl and I went to the first night of a summer tradition, “Saranac Thursday.” Many upstate New York cities have social gatherings on Thursday night; Syracuse has something at Clinton Square, Buffalo has something on Main Street, here in Utica it’s at the local brewery.

Saranac Thursday attracts a thousand people or so for cheap beer, food and live music. It gives us a chance to hang out with good friends and to see people from different parts of our life (old jobs, new jobs, school, servers at restaurants, etc.) all in one place. I was never one for Saranac Thursday a couple of years ago, now I look forward to it. It runs every Thursday night from 4:00 to 8:00 starting the first Thursday after Memorial Day. If you’re still in the mood to party afterwards, there’s a good variety of clubs to choose from on neighboring Varick Street.

1 June 2007 by Fun and Games Dept 0

Getting It.

Shortly after starting my job at the telephone company back in 2004, I mentioned that when one starts on a new challenge, there comes a moment when you finally “get it”: a time in which the scales tip in your favor; a moment when all the puzzle pieces that have been floating around in chaos come together to make some sort of picture. It’s when everything starts making sense.

As a full-time college student at nearly 39 years old, I’ve quickly learned that I have a lot of cobwebs in my brain. After successfully completing my first semester this past spring and currently in one intermediate algebra class for the summer, I’m holding my own but I always feel like I’m sort of hanging on by my fingertips. It had been 20 years since I had last done any sort of studying, and I was really never that serious about the practice to begin with. I guess I had forgotten how to study.

This week has been a turning point for me. I’m finally feeling like I have a grasp as to what’s going on and what’s required to really make the grade. While I’ve enjoyed the school experience a lot, now I’m really enthusiastic about my decision to go back to school.

Tuesday night I spent a couple of hours working on algebra problems for the two homework assignments we have due next week.

Bertha is driving a Yugo southbound on the Northway at 65 MPH. Maureen is driving a Honda northbound on the Thruway at 70 MPH. Bertha is in Plattsburgh, Maureen is in Kingston, 302 miles away. Both left at the same time. At what time will they meet at the New Baltimore Service Area to share a Cheddar Melt at the McDonalds?

Since the homework isn’t due until this coming Monday, many of my classmates haven’t or hadn’t completed the work yet. We had a quiz on Wednesday to make sure we were grasping what we needed to know to successfully continue the course. To prepare, I just did my homework early. Two birds, one stone. It turns out that the quiz problems were identical to the homework problems, just with different numbers.

So now I feel like I’m getting it. And my quiz score validated that point. Maybe I’m just paranoid and should just settle down a little bit.

By the way, the answer to the problem above is “undefined.” McDonalds hasn’t served a Cheddar Melt in these parts in years.

31 May 2007 by College Kid. 3

Cheesy.

Earl and I made a quick trip to the market yesterday so that we wouldn’t totally starve to death during this short work week. One of the items that I discovered for the first time is from Doritos: “Doritos Natural: White Nacho Cheese”. We found these in the “Nature’s Place” department at the store.

Oh My God.

Ever since discovering Doritos when I was a small child I have been addicted to them. I know that they’re not good for you and I’m not sure that the “Natural” version is all that better but my goodness this new flavor is absolutely delightful, as in “I wonder if Earl will mind if I ate the whole bag” delightful. I’ve grabbed a chip here and there throughout the afternoon, trying to put their existence in the kitchen out of my head, but I can hear them yelling my name.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the bag was empty when Earl gets home from work.

Another delightful treat I rediscovered this weekend was “cheese in a can”. Joe.My.God. brought “cheese in a can” to the GB:NYC4 festivities on Saturday (he wanted to trash up the atmosphere a little bit). I had a fleeting thought that having cheese in a can at a party would beckon a tornado but the twister never came. Everyone else was squirting the cheese onto crackers in a polite manner so that’s what I ended up doing as well, but I really wanted to squirt the can directly in my mouth, however I thought that may have been a little rude.

As that song says, “Go crazy with the Cheez Whiz”, but we were in public and all.

29 May 2007 by Food. 5

RIP Charles.

The delightful Charles Nelson Reilly passed away on Friday from complications from pneumonia. He was 76 years old.

Mr. Reilly was a Tony winning actor, director and drama teacher. Aside from his probably most famous appearances on the game show Match Game, Charles also appeared in countless movies, children’s shows and Broadway performances.

Here you can enjoy one of his finer moments on “Match Game”.

RIP Charles.

28 May 2007 by Spiritual Stuff. 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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