Life Is Such A Sweet Insanity.

Every once in a while I’ll consider doing a podcast to accompany my little blog here. I have no idea what I would say, but I imagine that I’d get ranting about something and then go on and on about a myriad of topics until I ran out of hard drive space.

While thinking about this endeavor, I’ve been downloading podcasts from iTunes to see how others are doing it as well. Not to be snotty, but I haven’t been able to listen to a complete podcast yet. I find them boring and being an ex-radio person I find them technically frustrating.

For example, I listened to one podcast in which the person interviewed another person over the phone. He asked questions and laughed at the responses. They must have been uproarously funny because the host almost snorted Chrissy Snow style while talking about some random movie. Unfortunately, the listener couldn’t hear a word the person on the phone said. There wasn’t even any Charlie Brown’s teacher “wa wa wa wa wa wa” noise. There was a little bit of hiss that’s always present in a recording, but I’m pretty sure the host wasn’t laughing at the hiss.

I had no idea what was going on. So I deleted that podcast forever and always amen.

Cruising through the gay podcast section of iTunes I decided to try another. The host of that one sounded like he was a prescription away from a full blown cry as he apologized for being so depressing on his podcasts. Apparently this tearful soul was being upbeat this time around. A quick “delete” saved me from a call to Dial A Prayer.

I then decided that perhaps the gay podcast route wasn’t the way to go, perhaps I should focus on dance music or something. So I did a search and found a podcast like “Gay Bears Dance Music”. Perfect! There was some furfestival somewhere and the DJ was highlighting the music he played. Apparently it was held on another planet (or perhaps I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing with dance music) because I could have swore that he was playing a mix of Yoko Ono and a really bad Bjork impersonator. That podcast gave me gas so I deleted that one as well.

I’m thinking I’m going to stick to the written word for now. I won’t do a podcast until I feel it’s perfect, and I’m not comfortable with the idea until I have the elements together to make my podcast pop. When I’m ready to go, I’ll let you know.

I feel like the day should be over already, but alas, it’s only lunch time. That’s not entirely a bad thing but with today being a U.S. holiday, work isn’t as busy as it usually is.

So it’s Monday. Earl and I had a fantastic weekend and I am eagerly looking forward to the next. Friday will be the 10th anniversary of the day I proposed, high upon a mountaintop in the Adirondacks back on October 13, 1996. To celebrate, we’ve both taken the day off from work and will probably go on a roadtrip, ending up in Buffalo, where we’ll spend the weekend so that we can hang with friends and I can DJ Saturday night.

There’s just those three pesky workdays that lie between here and there. It’s not depressing by any means, just a little frustrating. It boils down to the fact that I’m an “all fun and games” kind of guy.

Tom is playing his daily game of “shriek ’til you can’t shriek no more” to signify that it’s time for him to go outside/come inside/go outside/come inside/go outside. The weather is absolutely gorgeous and I fear that this is the last we’ll see of the nice weather for 2006. There’s been rumors of snow flakes in the air by the end of the week.

So of course we’re getting an estimate on getting central air installed tomorrow.

After a few run ins with some tasty BBQ this past weekend I’m back on the eating healthy track and I feel better for it. Let’s see how long this round lasts!

So I’ve got this vegetarian thing going on again. I know, it runs directly in conflict with my love for BBQ joints, but I figure we can still go to those places, I’ll just have to eat corn on the cob and whatnot.

I’ve been maintaining my weight pretty well since losing around 35 pounds at the beginning of the year, but there’s a magic number I want to hit before Thanksgiving and I am determined to do it. I probably could achieve it a little easier if I got my butt to the gym but with school, on-call and social obligations, I’m not up for working out at the gym at 2:30 in the morning. I hear the place is quite popular then, so who knows, it might be interesting, but I’m too lazy to do that.

To think that on several occasions in 1990 I set the alarm for 3 a.m. so I could go tanning!

With all the health conscious people and crazy diets floating around our fine nation these days, it’s not hard to fine something vegetarian at any given restaurant. “I’d like a Whopper without the Whop.” That usually goes over the BK drone’s head, so I end up saying “leave off the meat”. I know, I could opt for a BK Veggie Delight but it takes something like an act of congress and a bunch of glares and sighs to get one of those at the closest BK.

Now if Wegmans would locate a little closer to us so I could enjoy the “Nature’s Place” section, I’d be golden but for now I’m relegated to the local Hannafords. It could be worse. I could be limited to Price Chopper where they think vegetarian includes “Vegetarian Baked Beans with Bacon”. “Are these beans vegetarian?” “Yes, just as the sign says.”, replies the deli clerk. “Why is the bacon on there?”, to which she replied, “For flavor of course!”.

I think tonight I’m going to have a BBQ steak salad without the steak. It’s yummy.

Earl and I eat out quite a bit. Why? Because we’re lazy. We’ve worked all day. We’re not in the mood to cook. So we take the easy way out and we head to one of the local restaurants. It happens a couple of times a week.

Since we’re rather well versed in restaurantese, we’ve had the opportunity to see some very odd things in our travels. There was that time at Mc Donalds in Horseheads when two men dressed up like the Blue Brothers came walking out of the bathroom with toilet paper dragging from their feet. At that same visit, a woman stood her toddler up on the service counter, complete with saggy diaper, and told him to keep his clothes on. (Apparently the kid liked taking his clothes off in public. Perhaps he’ll be a congressman someday.)

Tonight we watched a similar scene.

We were seated at a table in this diner wannabe type place called Zebbs. The corner was occupied by three women, all around my age or so, and three children. The youngest, a girl, was seated in a high-chair behaving herself quite well. The two other children were boys, probably four or five years old. Though they weren’t twins, they were dressed alike with matching shirts. One had very thick glasses. He amused himself and those around him by jumping up and down on the booth seat shouting “I’m bad! I’m bad!”. Did Mother stop him from this outburst? Of course not. She pretty much ignored him and let him carry on.

He was the tame one.

When the server came out with their food, I breathed a sigh of relief since it was obvious that the kids would be occupied with their monster meals.

Wrong.

Boy number 2 proceeded to make like a plant and sit on the back of the booth, wedged where the two windows met to form the corner of the restaurant. He amused himself by flapping the vertical blinds back and forth. When that didn’t grab Mommy’s attention, he proceeded to jump ONTO THE TABLE.

This got Mom’s attention where she threatened him with a timeout and then proceeded to carry on her conversation, unphased by the fact that her child had practically walked across the dinner table. Afraid of this always scary threat of “timeout”, the kid jumped to the back of the booth where he made like a bat and sat upside down while enjoying his meal.

I have fairly accurate memories from when I was a child. On the rare instances we did eat out and actually sat in the restaurant (usually we sat in the car outside of Carrols or Red Barn), I don’t ever recall ever having to be told not to walk across the table. Especially while food was on it. Perhaps my mother will chime in and correct me on this, but I’m pretty confident that I didn’t do any acrobatics in a restaurant when I was a kid. If I had lept across the booth of a restaurant, she would have smacked me six ways to Sunday and I would have remembered.

I wonder what tonight’s terror is going to be like when he’s grown. Maybe I witnessed the making of the next flying Wallenda.