Breezewood, Pa.




Blogging in Breezewood.

Originally uploaded by macwarriorny.

So I’m on my little road trip after leaving Earl in Philadelphia this morning. Yesterday we got up early (what happened to sleeping in on the weekends?) and headed to Earl’s dad’s for a visit. It was all good; we caught up on family activities and what not and then headed over to Earl’s stepbrother Rick’s house to watch the Eagles game and hang out with them. Rick made a great meatloaf in the crockpot, Helen whipped up the mashed potatoes and we all had a great supper together. For dessert we headed over to their new Cold Stone Creamery. Wow! They give really big portions there. I couldn’t even begin to polish it off, since I’m not a huge fan of ice cream, but I made a reasonable effort.

This morning Earl and I picked up some items he needed for work and then I got him settled in his hotel room, where his boss and co-worker were meeting him for a customer meeting in Wilmington, Del. Earl’s now in full travel mode, from Philly he flies to Burlington, Vt. tomorrow then he drives home on Wednesday. I’ll be meeting him in Albany so he can drop off the rental car he’ll have. Lots of driving!

Since Earl was out of town and I had some vacation time to burn, I decided that the Acura needed to go on it’s first long road trip. After leaving Earl in Philly, I headed south on I-95 and drove all the way down to Washington, D.C. Well, actually around it, on the Beltway. I then picked up I-66 and drove across the top of Virginia. It’s been a long while since I’ve been through there and I find the scenery quite nice. The scenery was also quite nice in the traffic jam I sat in around Manassas. Eye candy galore though a little on the yuppy side for my tastes. Enjoyable, nonetheless.

After I-66 I took I-81 up to Hagerstown, Md. and jumped on I-70 west. I figured I’d drive up through Central Pa. tomorrow and get home in the early afternoon. If you ever drive on I-70 in this area, you’ll find the odd experience of I-70 not quite making it’s connection to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It actually misses the junction by about a mile or so, forcing you to travel through Breezewood, Pa.

Now this is an experience. I feel like I’m in the middle of nowhere, yet it’s lit up with neon like Las Vegas. There’s more neon here than one can ever imagine. Big signs for fireworks, travel plazas, Wendy’s and assorted gift shops and other odds and ends. Always a sucker for tacky, I decided to stay at the Holiday Inn Express here in Breezewood. It’s 7:46 p.m. and I have no idea what I’m going to do for the rest of the night.

But it’s an interesting adventure.

Tomorrow before heading home I think I’m going to check out one of the abandoned tunnels on the Pa. Turnpike. I even remembered my flashlight!

3 October 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 0

The Interview Game, My Turn Again.

A new blog buddy, Jay, asked me some questions for the interview game. Here’s my answers!

1. What would you say is the greatest purpose your blog serves in your own life? And what is the longest you’ve gone without writing an entry in your blog?
I actually have no idea why I write in my blog. I think it fills a need of my somewhat eccentric personality, sort of an extension of my tendency to live life “out loud”. Back in the early days of my blog (2001-2002 or so), I’d only write once every couple of weeks, then it was once a week. For the past year or so I’ve written daily or somewhat close to that.

2. How did you and Earl meet?
Earl spotted me in a local bar where I was the disc-jockey. Someone approached him asked him what he was “into”, he pointed to me and said “that”. I spotted him as soon as he walked in the door (being in an elevated DJ booth was always so advantageous!), I walked up to him and said “how you doing?”, smiling, and he blushed and left. A couple of months later he walked in and I tried the same old routine again and I didn’t frighten him this time, he hung around and we got to know each other really quick. I honestly have to say that Earl is the only person that I fell in love with at first sight, though I didn’t tell him for quite a few months; he seemed so skiddish. 🙂

3. Who is on your “list?” As in the lists of famous people that couples jokingly negotiate with one another, giving their partner permission to sleep with if, in some impossible circumstance, the opportunity presented itself. (If you don’t have one, who would be on the list if you did have one?)
We’ve talked about the list before and I’ve thrown around a few names… Bruce Willis is a biggie, Stephen Cafferty from “Longtime Companion” is one, Pernell Roberts back in his Bonzana days would have been a big Bonanza for me.

4. If you divided your average vacation into a pie chart, what activity would have the biggest slice?
I love road trips, so driving would probably take up the biggest slice. Aside from that, just relaxing somewhere scenic would come in a close second.

5. What do you want to be doing in 10 years?
Enjoying life as much as or even more than I am right now. Career wise, if I’m not still at my present job, I’d like to be self employed with our own Bed and Breakfast or Diner.

2 October 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 1

Dance Dance Dance.

I have to make a confession. During the past year or two, Paul Oakenfeld’s remix of Elvis Presley’s “Rubberneckin'” has torn up dance floors across the country and probably half of Europe. I must admit though that I really don’t care for that version of the song. Confessing this may cost me a gay point or two, but I have to finally come clean on this.

I really like the original version from 1972. My mother had the album with this song and I used to crank it up on her GE “Wildcat” record player. This record player was a birthday gift from my grandmother and was your typical early 70s high fidelity unit. The turntable folded up into the speakers to form a convenient carrying case. It could be loaded with as many as six albums at once so you could program your party music ahead of time. It had the adapter for 45s so you didn’t have to put that little yellow adapter in the middle to play your singles.

It was wicked cool. And it played “Rubberneckin'”. A lot.

I remember dancing like a fool in my first grade classroom, having brought the record to show and tell. My teacher, Miss Kania, found my fondness for the track amusing and she told me that she liked the song very much. Now that I think about it, I usually monopolized the record player in first grade during the play time before school actually started, when kids were arriving for the day. I’d play favorites for the class including “Free To Be You And Me” from that Marlo Thomas record, some Three Dog Night song that I would occasionally liven up by playing it at 78 RPM and of course “Rubberneckin'” would round out the set. Then the bell would ring and we’d have to sit at our desks ready to learn how to spell or do math. How I was preparing for the impending disco era!

I found Elvis’s original “Rubberneckin'” on iTunes today. I danced like a fool once again.

1 October 2005 by DJ 0

Giddy.

My thoughts for the day, packaged up nicely in song lyrics.

If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world?
There’s nothing to it

1 October 2005 by Spiritual Stuff. 0

The Interview Game, One More Round.

O.k., now it’s my turn to ask Jay his questions:

1. How long have you lived in New York?
2. PC or Mac?
3. When looking at other guys, what’s the first thing you notice about them?
4. You can only watch three hours of television for the entire week including any “recreational viewing”. What do you watch?
5. How much coffee does it take before you’re licking the ceiling from a wicked buzz?

1 October 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 2

Candy Store.

On call officially ended this morning at 8 a.m. I have a week of freedom before jumping into the fun once again.

Earl’s work plans have changed and he no longer needs a lift to Wilmington, Del. on Monday.

I have a four day weekend ahead of me as I am taking vacation days on Monday and Tuesday because I need to use them before the end of the year.

I am feeling much better thanks to the modern miracle “Z-Pak”, a fun antibiotic that has chased everything bad out of my body without changing the color of my urine to magenta.

I’m going to take a quick nap after work until Earl gets home and then it’s officially the weekend. Baseball cap, jeans, t-shirt and boots time.

I feel like a kid that’s getting ready to be turned loose in a candy store.

30 September 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 1

Dedication.

I am typing this entry at work. Yes, it is 11:01 p.m. Eastern Time as I’m doing it. Our little network monitoring system here at work decided it wanted to go on strike and stop monitoring our customers’ systems. Figures. It runs on Windows.

I am probably going get a nice butt-kissing award for this, but I really don’t mind coming into the office at night if the situation warrants it. It gets my geek juices flowing. It lessens the stress of trying to do my work from home over a crappy VPN (connecting to my work computer) connection. And I like my job very much, which is a bonus.

Plus, I’ve got that ‘love to drive at night’ thing going on.

So I sit, wait and watch the network monitoring system for a little bit to make sure that’s its working properly before going home to get back in bed. While I’m here, I might as well make use of the really fast internet connection we have; there’s no one looking right now.

Sometimes its fun to work for the phone company that also owns an internet ISP!

29 September 2005 by Geek 0

The Interview Game, My Turn.

Here’s my questions for my blog friend Terry as part of The Interview Game.

1. You’re locked in an elevator that happens to have a DVD player and television in it. You can zap up one movie to watch. What movie is it?
2. You’ve mentioned on your blog that you lost your virginity relatively young with another guy. Have you ever had sex with a woman?
3. What’s the top 3 played songs on your iPod as of today?
4. Has anyone on the street ever recognized you from your blog or website?
5. Was the last male cashier you encountered while shopping hot?

Want to play?
The Official Interview Games Rules:
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying, “interview me”.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each persons will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

29 September 2005 by Fun and Games Dept 2

What About The Schnozz?

Well I finally got to the doctor’s to find out what was going on with my sinuses. During the night the bridge of my nose had swollen up more, giving me a rugged look that looked somewhat flattering but not at all natural. Enough was enough.

He thumped my chest, pumped my glands and stuck a light up my nose. Yep, it was a sinus infection alright, but it didn’t go beyond that, my chest, etc. sounded clear. Yay! Being allergic to penicillin AND the sulfa drugs, he gave me an antibiotic called the “Z-Pak” which you take for just five days, apparently giving whatever shouldn’t be in your body a one-two punch. I also received a prescription of Allegra-D. I took both at lunch time and surprisingly the Allegra-D doesn’t make me mean. I’ll have to save a couple of these puppies for later.

Having used my lunch hour to go to the doctor, I settled back my desk to eat a turkey sandwich I had brought along. My friend Shirley offered a bowl of her homemade chicken soup to go along with the sandwich since I wasn’t feeling well and the soup should really hit the spot. It did as intended, along with a chocolate chip cookie from the batch my friend Mike had brought yesterday when he had heard I wasn’t feeling well. It’s nice to have thoughtful friends.

So now I feel tons better already and am looking forward to seeing my old nose again.

29 September 2005 by Ponderings and Musings 0

The Interview Game.

My blog friend Terry has been getting in on this blog tag thingee that’s been going around on the internet. Here’s how it works:

The Official Interview Games Rules:
1. If you want to participate, leave a comment below saying, “interview me”.
2. I will respond by asking you five questions – each persons will be different.
3. You will update your journal/blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview others in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

I volunteered with an “interview me!” in his comments section today, simply because it looked like fun AND I’ve been working on coming out of my shell a little more this year and this seemed to be a wonderful vehicle on my journey of enlightenment.

Here’s my five questions from Terry.
1. We have been talking for ages now… but how did you first find my blog?
I wish I could remember how I found your blog, but for the life of me I don’t remember how I stumbled upon it. I think it had something to do with googling gay PowerBook users. I liked your style, I liked your blog and I found you very cute, so I stuck around.

2. How old were you when you lost your virginity?
Ah, it seems like yesterday. Actually, it was my second semester of college in March 1987. I was 18 years old at the time.

3. Top, Bottom or Versatile?
O.k. now I’m blushing. I guess “mostly top” would mean “versatile”.

4. You are being shipped to a deserted island for 3 months and you are only allowed to bring one CD. No iPod, no mix-tape, no mix-CD. One original CD. What CD would that be?
“While The Eagle Sleeps” by Alice Gomez, Madalyn Blanchett & Marilyn Rife. It’s Native American Flute Music that I often use to meditate and relax to.

5. When was the last time you said “thank you”?
Just a short while ago I thanked Earl for bringing home some Vicks Vaporub to help combat the congestion in my sinuses. I make a point of saying thank you to all that are deserving, people need to be more polite and I like to try to set a good example.

Anyone want to play?

28 September 2005 by Ponderings and Musings 1

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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