Bower of Bliss

2005-10-08T09:15:00.000-04:00

I's Married Now!!

SK and I were among a handful of gay/lesbian couples to tie the proverbial knot on October 1st. Now that CT has passed the civil union law, we figured that we had waited long enough (14 years!!) and decided to do the deed right on the day.

It's been a very weird experience because as soon as the media got wind of what we were doing (thanks to giving our names to Love Makes a Family as media contacts), we were assaulted with phone calls. In one day, we were interviewed by the Associated Press, a couple of local newspapers, and were on the local NBC affiliate news last week. We were also interviewed by The Advocate to appear in the next issue, and at the town hall Saturday morning there was a reporter from NPR who interviewed us for the weekend edition of All Things Considered. By the time we were done with the NPR interview, I had really had it with all of the media attention and was really looking forward to slinking back into normalcy, and then during our reception Saturday night we got phone calls from CNN and yet another newspaper. We didn't return these calls. My days of being a media darling were short-lived and somewhat bitter.

The strangest thing about this has been that people at work have been telling me that they saw/heard/read about us in papers and radio programs that we never gave interviews to. We picked up a local weekly publication (Fairfield County Weekly) that had civil unions as the cover story, and I jokingly said, "Oh we'll probably be in this article as well," and sure enough, there was a quote from me, the same quote that everyone has been using!!

The reason we gave all of the interviews is because it is important for people to know that while this is still separate from marriage and hence not equal, I do appreciate the law and honor the fact that we were able to legally protect ourselves and our interests in the same way that married couples do.

We just can't count on that if we leave the state!

2005-06-24T15:45:00.000-04:00

This season of Six Feet Under just isn't doing it for me. The characters seem just very out of character, and not in a natural-course-of-growth way. Claire, who I always found beautiful, seems witchy and haggard, Nate is a pussy now, Ruth is just sad and pitiful, and not in the way she was sad and pitiful in the beginning, David is plastic, and normalct just doesn't work for Brenda. I know it's the last season and all, but I wish they would go out with more of a bang. The characters just don't seem believable anymore. And I can't believe they haven't done anything more with Nate's dead wife's brother-in-law's suicide.

Maybe I'm just bored with it. Maybe they wait so long between seasons that I just don't care anymore. Will I remember that Tony and Carmella are separated the next time the Sopranos comes on?

2005-06-23T17:12:00.000-04:00

Creepy

2005-06-22T16:35:00.000-04:00

Garden Blog

This year, we planted: two kinds of lettuce, two kinds of basil, red cabbage, pole beans, cucmbers, broccoli, eggplant, tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, 4 kinds of peppers, horseradish, more strawberries, mint, rosemary, cilantro and curly parsley.

What I learned from last year's garden: I planted the eggplant too late last year, tomatoes need a lot more room than I thought, cucumbers like to climb, I'll invariable end up with more lettuce and squash than two people can possibly eat, which leads to my favorite learned thing from last year's garden: a killer recipe for bread and butter zucchini pickles!! YUMBO!!

Last year we also planted acorn squash and cantaloupe. They were both a disaster. This year it's broccoli and more peppers instead.

2005-06-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

Since I have been forcing my students to blog in my classes now, I am sufficiently guilted in writing my own blog posts again. They have no idea what my non-school blog is, and hopefully they never will, but the guilt alone has brought me back. In my classes, I use the blogs as an exploration of public vs. private writing, how they are different, if there are different, and also as a way to get the students comfortable with a regular writing practice that may not necessarily be private.

I haven't been doing much of my own writing lately. I'm teaching on the night that my writer's group meets, so my weekly forced motivation has been taken away, and I just feel too burnt out, fat and lazy lately to do much of anything other than lounge about and garden. If only gardening were more aerobic! I guess I can start gardening at dusk and make swatting mosquitoes into a workout. But my night class ended this week, and I am determined to get back into my writing group. Unfortunately, my yoga teacher, whom I love and worship as a teacher, is moving to a different part of the state and won't be teaching my class anymore. I feel like I have dropped out of my own life for so long that everyone has been recast in more exciting roles.

2005-05-06T10:44:00.000-04:00

Things that have happened since my last blog post:

> I repainted the upstairs bathroom and discovered that the window is rotting out of the frame and needs to be replaced.

> I hired a shady contractor who did nothing and charged me $180 to incorrectly measure the window.

> I spent an hour and a half in Home Depot trying to figure out if I needed to order a custom-sized window to replace the one the contractor incorrectly measured.

> Magoo killed another chicken.

> Our friends had their first baby.

> SK had a colonoscopy and found out he doesn't have ass cancer.

> We saw Tori Amos (again).

> I drove by myself to and from Kennedy Airport for the first time.

> I didn't get lost or cry.

2005-03-04T15:40:00.000-05:00

What you are.

2005-02-26T11:36:00.000-05:00

Our house is finally back together! All ceiling and walls and painted up in splendor! WAHOO!!!

SK's house caught fire when he was a kid, and now that our house had flooded, I sleep easier at night. What are the chances that twice in a lifetime one's house will either burn down or flood?

It's like that scene from Garp when the plane flies into the house.

2005-02-23T16:56:00.000-05:00

We went to see The Gates over the weekend, and I have to say that I just don't get it. I mean, on an intellectual level I understand the man re-creating nature thing, and all that stuff, but as an art experience, it was pretty lame. Maybe it has to do with my frame of mind lately. SK and I have been living for 2 weeks out of our bedroom as they rebuild our lower level (see below for the story of our home disaster). We've literally been going stir crazy and we were really looking forward to getting outside and being in the park and experience some space. But of course, being Saturday, and being that the exhibit is only there until this weekend, the park was crawling with people. It was almost too difficult to experience the art because there were so many people that it was over stimulation. Plus I am crowd-claustrophobic, so it was not very pleasant. Perhaps that was the whole point. To put us in a public space with all of these people who were there for the singular purpose of the experience, albeit as bizarre as it was. They were pretty ugly, those gates.

We did see Mary Tyler Moore's hawk though. It was eating a dead pigeon.

2005-02-11T14:15:00.000-05:00

Watermelon Van Gogh

2005-02-11T09:29:00.000-05:00

Things that, so far, have been found in the ceiling by the plumber:
a box of dried up fire balls
a live banana clip for a rifle
electrical wiring connected to nothing
a small black tool box, empty

2005-02-11T09:23:00.000-05:00

Our house is being torn apart. It started the other morning when the ceiling started raining. Thanks to a burst pipe in the ceiling above the living room, the plumber is in the process of tearing our house apart. Not only does the entire ceiling have to come down to get to the pipes, but two walls as well as he is discovering lots of little surprises, such as a tennis-ball-size hole in the bathoom drainage pipe that surprisingly has nothing to do with the leak that started this whole disaster. You know it's bad when the plumber every ten minutes starts swearing and saying "No fucking way."

I'm dirty, I'm thirsty, and I want to cry.

Serenity now . . . serenity now . . .

2005-02-07T14:21:00.000-05:00

Last year, right around this time, I fell victim to two very strange "conditions." The first was a series of extremely painful hives that started on my palms. I woke one night with my hands literally burning and itchy, and it went away after a few minutes. The next morning, it happened again, and throughout the day it would periodically happen. My hands would start itching and then they would turn all red and blotchy and then they would start burning. By the end of the day, it was happening on the soles of my feet as well. Later that night, SK and I were watching TV and talking, and I went up to go to bed and looked in the mirror and I was COVERED with a rash, all over my face. I literally screamed and ran back downstairs, at which point SK started screaming because it literally popped out in the time it took me to walk upstairs. I took a bunch of benadryl, thinking I was having an allergic reaction, and told SK to rush me to the hospital if I stopped breathing during the night. The next morning, the rash was gone, but I was still having the hive thing. For the next week, they got so bad that there were points where I literally had to crawl around the house because the soles of my feet were so painful. It would pop out suddenly and last for about 15 minutes and then just disappear. Went to the doctor, who did blood tests, and basically had no explanation except stress. It eventually went away after I went to my reiki master, who worked her magic on me and banished the evil hives from my body. About a month later, I got a sore throat on one side of my neck, which traveled up into my ear and eventually started creeping up my scalp. Eventually my whole head on one side was sore, not a pain like a headhache, but a soreness like a bruise. It only hurt when I put pressure on the skin. Very bizarre. It was actually unpleasant to take a shower because every drop of water on my head was like poking a bruise. Again, back to the doctor, who gave me antibiotics and sent me on my way. A week later, nothing was getting better. Long story short, the pain remained for another 3 weeks. It got to the point where I couldn't tell if I was getting better or just accustomed to living with the pain. I went on three courses of antibiotics and steroids, each one stronger than the last until the last group was so strong that they literally got me high. The only explanation the doctor had was that my sinuses had gotten infected and swollen and were not draining the fluid that was accumulating in my head. That was so not an explanation I was willing to get behind, picturing all of those swollen-headed encephylitis babies, but it was better than brain cancer, I suppose. Eventually, this went away as well, but not after literally a month of uncertainty and the feeling that there was something seriously wrong with my brain.

So why am I telling all of this? Because my head is starting to feel that same numb/sore feeling that I had, and no amounts of tylenol are making it go away. So far, no hives though.

2005-01-26T16:48:00.000-05:00

I didn't think it was actually possible to make the swill-we-call-office-coffee any worse than it already tastes.

That is, until I used a packet of Splenda instead of sugar, just for the sheer hell of it.

The back of my throat feels like it is trying to peel away from itself. What kind of twisted mind tries to convince people that this shit actually is edible?

My apologies to the Splenda-converted. But this crap tastes like sugared feet.

2005-01-25T17:02:00.000-05:00

SK and I recently got TiVO, actually our cable company's version of TiVO, and I cannot express how lame regular TV seems to me now. I can leave the room at any point and either pause live TV or come back and rewind what I missed. Plus I can record things while I watch other channels and then watch these things at a later time and fast forward through the commercials at 5 times the speed of VCR fast forwarding. Did you know that you can watch a whole week's worth of Oprah in about an hour and half? Especially if you skip her interviews with media skanks like Amber Frey.

The downside is we spend all weekend watching things we never get to see during the week, mostly because things are on way past my early bedtime. But now, because of digital video recording, my new obsessions are: The Daily Show, Drawn Together, and Reno 911, and I think I may start recording 360 With Anderson Cooper.

2004-12-30T16:54:00.000-05:00

Before Tsunami

After Tsunami

2004-12-16T08:03:00.000-05:00

Jury duty is perhaps one of the most foul experiences I've ever had the pleasure of being a part of. I may as well have just opened my mouth and asked a room full of homeless people to spit down my throat. I went home after leaving court and wanted to give myself the Karen Silkwood wire brush scrubdown. Why do people who spew phlegm always want to sit next to me?

2004-12-15T19:06:00.000-05:00

pierced eyeglasses, a Christmahanukwanzaka gift for the body-modder who has everything.

2004-12-15T17:31:00.000-05:00

Sunday night we went to see the Pixies in NYC. Despite being extremely excited, I was a bit apprehensive because these were, after all, my idols for a significant portion of my formative years. There is no band I love more than the Pixies, and that includes Stereolab. I never saw them when they were still together. I remember passing up the chance to see them back when I was in college because, well I don't remember why, but I remember thinking back then that I would have another chance to see them. Who knew that chance would come almsot 20 years later! I almost wet my pants when I found out that they were reuniting for a tour, and I hurried online to get the tickets.

As a sign of how old I am getting, I purposely got balcony seats so I wouldn't have to stand up in general admission in get sucked into a mosh pit or something (which it turns out was never an issue as the crowd, being all old like me, was not interested in mosh pits).

After the first couple of songs, I was getting upset because they really sounded terrible at first. I was regretting getting the tickets as I had no desire to see my idols so terribly fallen, and old and fat and bald and sloth-like. I get enough of that from the mirror. Despite them looking like a bunch of high school teachers (Kim Deal in dockers and a v-neck sweater is still punk rock, I suppose) they kicked in after the first couple of songs and really put on a show I was glad to have waited droolingly for. I can die a happy man now, and take solace in the addage, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Pixies, you still rock my world. And I feel old even writing that.

2004-12-08T09:43:00.000-05:00

I am so tired today. Last night, SK and all three dogs were snoring at the same time. I almost had to go sleep on the couch. I'm a pretty heavy sleeper, and I just happened to wake up to pee, and once I was up I couldn't get back to sleep, listening to all four distinct wheezing sounds in harmony.

2004-11-27T13:43:00.000-05:00

This year, SweetieKins and I chose a family-free Thanksgiving, and it was one of the best ones I've ever had. We spent the day with friends, and aside from an exploding sink emergency, the day was completely relaxing and anxiety-free. Now, if I can only do the same for Christmas, I'll be a very happy person this winter.

2004-11-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

Not only have I not been writing on my blog, but I haven't even been reading all of my usual favorite blogs lately. I guess that is what happens when you go from a job with almost nothing to do to a job with too much to do. I don't miss the old job though.

I also feel like I haven't been paying much attention to the world around me lately. I used to be so up on the latest breaking news, and now all I can tell someone is that Sears is merging with KMart and some white people are getting married on some island somewhere with Matt Lauer and Katie Couric presiding over the ceremony, which I am sure is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.

I'm looking forward to the new year. A few years ago we had a party on New Year's Eve and everyone wrote down things they wanted to purge and then threw their pieces of paper into our chiminea to burn away the old baggage. If I am anywhere near fire this New Year's Eve, I will be burning all of my jobs until I get down to only one. After this semester, I will have only the one job, which is pretty much what is keeping a smile on my face at this moment: the thought that my life will be so much simpler and I will have more free time to spend at home come January.

2004-11-02T17:16:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I get a new country.

ihopeihopeihopeihopeihopeihope

2004-10-30T08:57:00.000-04:00

The virtual jack o' lantern.

2004-10-28T18:41:00.000-04:00

This blog has become a graveyard.

I can't believe that I haven't written on it in so long. I can't believe how busy I have been at the new job. I literally go nonstop all day long. SO different than before when I was sitting at a computer all day and writing and staring at a screen and being ignored.

I'm finally at a point in the new job that I can stop and breathe and read my email and start paying attention again to the things that are going on around me.

As busy as it is, I really love my new job. Unfortunately, I had to give up a really great teaching gig at another school starting next semester because I just can't be so busy in the future. This job is intense and I need the weekends to relax, and I have been teaching on the weekends at this school. I'm sad that I have to give it up, and I've met a lot of really awesome people there, but something had to go, and that was my only option at the moment. I envision a time when I go back there to teach. But I am really looking forward to starting the new year with only one job, not the 7 I usually have.

Yay for change!!!

2004-10-06T11:29:00.000-04:00

I'm going fucking blind from the flourescent light above my veal box at work. When the Weasel worked in the maturation pen next to me, we always kept this light off because it is so bright that it literally sucks the pigment from your skin and turns your retinas red. But ever since The Weas left, the guy who changes the paper in the copier and makes sure there is milk in the fridge for coffee has been instructed that this light must now remain on, and it is killing me. I'm literally sitting at my desk with a baseball cap on trying to shield my eyes from the brightness. Since it's my last week here at this job, I'm thinking they are passive-aggressively torturing me for only giving them one week's notice! If I were staying, I would have to say something about the light. But since I am not, I'm content to sit here and squint. It makes it that much easier to ignore these people who I don't even want to say goodbye to as I run for the door on Friday.

2004-10-06T11:13:00.000-04:00

Would You Say This Color Was Grape or Aubergine?

Our garden is finally settling in for its winter nap, which is unfortunate because there are still things growing in it, particularly our eggplants. We planted about 6 plants this spring, and they never really started growing until the end of the summer, at which point they started shooting up like crazy. Now the plants are chest high and producing tons of flowers, but just last night we had our first frost, which means all of the plants are going to be killed. We really only got like 2 eggplants out of the batch so far (and they were delicious!!) so I am thinking that next year we are going to have to start them early inside and then transplant them outside in order to reap their delicious bounty before first frost in October. Probably the same with our peppers, which yielded better than the eggplants but are still now flowering and trying to produce more peppers.

This was our first year with the veggie garden, and there were many lessons to be learned aside from the above mentioned ones. Next year we will not be planting acron squash or cantaloupe, and we definitely need to give everything just a little more room to spread out, especially the zukes and the yellow squash, which can really take over a small garden. And we had one cherry tomato plant that I swear produced thousands of cherry tomatoes. I've enever in my life seen a tomato plant grow to the size of a small tree!!

2004-10-01T15:38:00.000-04:00

I just quit my job, and I could not be more excited. Not because I hated my job, because I didn't, but because I am leaving to enter education full time (finally!) I've accepted the position as the chair of a computer and digital media curriculum at a local college. This is really big, like life-changing for me, and I am really excited to be doing this. It's weird because I have always been a writing and literature teacher, adjuncting my little butt off anywhere I could, but this opportunity was too good to pass up, and I have been working for years now as a tech writer for computers and the tech industry, which is how I am qualified in this subject area to oversee the department. I'll be overseeing both the curriculum and the faculty for this department, and will actually be doing very little teaching, if any at first. Which is fine with me because I need a break from the endless stacks of papers to grade. I still have adjuncting jobs through Christmas, and after that I will need to decide if I can handle the adjuncting with all of the responsibilities of this job, and I will continue to write my little butt off and meet with my writer's group. Now I will just have endless meetings to attend and endless paperwork to keep track of instead of endless papers to grade. This is going to be a good thing, though. The school is in the process of transitioning to a four-year school, something that will probably happen within the next five years, so I feel like I am getting in on the groundwork of something really big.

I haven't been blogging much lately because I have been completely stressed out and anxious for the last MONTH!! Yes, I started the process a month ago, met with a LOT of different people, was grilled and roasted by the faculty members who, I will be supervising, and then met with more people, and they finally were able to make me the offer today. I can finally relax and CELEBRATE. I feel like a whole new stage of my life has started, and it is hard NOT to be excited about that!

2004-10-01T10:11:00.000-04:00

I'm on the verge of something big. BIG!!! And yet I can't say anything yet. Hopefully later today I can make the announcement. It's been in development for over a month now. The universe has been trying to teach me a lesson in patience, but unfortunately I'm failing the lesson because I have been nothing but anxious and stressed out for a month now.

2004-09-29T11:44:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure why, but I get a lot of Spanish visitors to my blog, or at least they are coming here from Spanish Web sites. I find that odd. But nevertheless . . .

Gracias por visitar mi pagina de internet. Espero que difrutes tu estadia.

I hope I got that right. :o)

2004-09-27T14:50:00.000-04:00

Sarah Maclachlan's new video. Warms the cockles.

2004-09-21T10:00:00.000-04:00

Moo

I ate buffalo last night.

It was delicious.

2004-09-20T18:52:00.000-04:00

My mother just gave me my baby book, which is surprisingly devoid of very much information after the first few months, with only sporadic entries for things here and there. For example, she felt the need to record the fact that my favorite food when I was 2 was bread, and at the age of 3, I referred to myself as and answered to the name of Loverboy. Well, some things never change.

Buried in the box underneath the baby book was a pile of things she saved from when I was baby. There were cards, and the birth announcement, and a few things from when my brother was born which must have gotten mixed in. There were military medical records (I was born on an Air Force base) and little slips of paper in my mom's handwriting listing things she needed to ask the doctor about me (who knew she was worried about the direction my toes were turning!) But this is probably the earliest extant evidence of my mother being the unbelievable pack rat that is today, because in with all of this paper history were four or five handwritten receipts from a ladies apparel store, listing the maternity girdles and bras and bra pads and other leakage-absorbing undergarments that she purchased while pregnant with me. I can understand saving this for posterity, but why Why WHY give this to your adult son?

2004-09-15T19:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my birthday. I don't normally mind getting a little older because on most days I don't feel my age. On most days I don't feel like I ever made it our of my teens. I had my "Jesus" year a few years ago -- I was determined to make 33 a year of good things happening. Not because I believe in Jesus or anything but because it just felt symbolic, and 33 is an auspicious number in mythologies outside of Christianity. And it's never a bad time to decide that good things must start happening for you at any age. But this year I turned 35, effectively moving me from the 18-34, male, demographic into the 35-54, male, demographic. This is not a group that I feel a whole lot of association to. I'm too old to rave and too young for the early bird special.

2004-09-13T20:27:00.000-04:00

Polar Opposites

I teach two different classes on Saturday and Sunday mornings this semester. Lit on Saturday, Comp on Sunday. This past weekend I had the first class for each course, and the classes could not be more different. Saturday's class was big and boisterous and lively and talkative and enthusiastic. Sunday's class was small and quiet and, well, apathetic -- at least from where I was standing. I pulled out all my usual teacher first-day tricks (keep 'em laughing, scare them just a little, but make them feel safe and comfortable) and my Sunday class just wouldn't throw me a bone. It was like pulling teeth to get them to pronounce their last names correctly for me. I hope it's more a matter of them being scared and apprehensive than them being already bored and forever complacent. Maybe it's the class being on a Sunday. I've been doing Saturday classes for 4 semesters now, the same class, and it is always full and always amazing. In fact, people enroll in my class because other students tell them to (which probably explains the inordinate amount of Eaaster European students I always have from Bulgaria, Latvia, Slovakia and Lithuania). But do Sundays just feel differently to everyone? The minute I woke up Sunday morning I regretted accepting weekend classes on both days (officially, I will not have a whole day off from all jobs until Thanksgiving). I hope that I can stir these folks up into a writing frenzy every Sunday. If yesterday was any indication, keeping them from falling asleep may by my biggest challenge.

2004-09-13T19:23:00.000-04:00

The 10-year ban on assult weapons expires today, and the collective wisdom of our government didn't feel the need to extend the ban or even revisit the issue. No, the ban just runs out today, as if it never existed. Despite the fact that I hate guns and just the whole idea of guns, I'm not out to take away anyone's gun, especially the police, but in what possible scenario, other than wanting to wipe out a supermarket population or go into combat with the police, does a person need an automatic assault rifle? The NRA is really getting out of control with their lobbying to keep our nation so gun-riddled and scared. The Second Amendment guaranteed the right of a citizen to arm himself in case there was a need to form a militia and fight invaders (i.e., the British who, at the time, were feared for just this reason), not the right to stockpile weapons that could kill people at rapid rates. I'll never understand the gun culture, I guess. My brother owns guns because he hunts, or at least that is a way of justifying why he owns guns, and as much as I try to understand his life and why he does the things he does and not judge him for what he enjoys, I just don't see the pleasure in killing things. I'm not so naive that I don't know how that chicken got from the farm to my dinner plate, but I am quite sure that if I had to kill my dinner every night, I would go back to being vegetarian pretty damn quickly. I also know people who claim to have guns in their house, and I understand the desire to feel safe and to protect yours and your family, but what are we protecting ourselves from, other guns?

I don't know. I'm just babbling now. This bothers me. It bothers me that I live under a president who is cutting the budgets of the institutions that protect us, allowing more and more dangerous guns into society, and generally making more and more enemies in the world every day.

2004-09-10T09:39:00.000-04:00

The glory of war.

2004-09-08T18:35:00.000-04:00

There are some very interesting search terms that people are googling and following to my site. Two of my favorites so far are "porn bliss" and "rnc blogging fisting," and there have been any number of people finding my site based on my Pat Benatar post. This makes me want to plant odd phrases on my site just to see if people are googling them. Things like "hirsute midget chipmunk feeder" and "bulbous explosive udder dance party."

2004-09-08T18:14:00.000-04:00

I've got The Crud (otherwise known as a head cold). Does this explain the sparse blogging? No, but it should explain any nonsense I write over the next few days. Between the watermelon-head feeling of being sick, and all the generic sudafed I am pumped up on so that I can breathe, I feel like all the molecules in my body are trying to go in a million opposite directions.

2004-09-03T13:07:00.000-04:00

Welcome, Bally's, to my list of boycotted entities. For not allowing gay and lesbian families to benefit from your family discount; for all that you do to further discrimination and polarize my country; I honor you with my boycott.

2004-09-03T13:04:00.000-04:00

Who the hell is Rerun? I don't even remember this character. This just so totally supports my feelings lately of being a bit player in someone else's comedy of errors.

You are Rerun!

Which Peanuts Character are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

2004-09-02T18:19:00.000-04:00

The newest member of my blog roll: Head Rush. Visit it often and bask in the warmth of her pulsing neurons. Have you poked your medula oblongata today?

2004-09-02T18:10:00.000-04:00

What happened to the summer? My fall classes are about to start swirling around me, and I feel like I had no summer at all. Autumn is my favorite time of year (aside from having to rake leaves, and we have one monster of a leaf-dropper in our front yard) but for some reason I always feel like the summer is the time to get things done that I didn't do during the rest of the year. I don't know why I feel that way -- it's not like I have more free time in the summer, not when I am teaching summer classes. But change of season means new beginnings, so I must start thinking about what I can change for this season. My summer change was the goatee, which was not a crowd-pleaser and invariably became an itch magnet.

2004-08-30T20:56:00.000-04:00

You Will Not Take From My Culture and Leave Behind Your Injustice

I went to see Margaret Cho at The Apollo on Saturday night. Aside from being so funny that I was literally choking on my own spit, Cho is the only celebrity who stands up for gay and lesbian people as humans. She doesn't discriminate -- she stands up for all rights of all humans everywhere. She is also one of the most intelligent people who I have ever had the pleasure of sharing a room with. She is an important voice. She makes me want to love people.

I was going to blog about her show, which was completely political and completely hysterical, but instead I can't stop thinking about what happened to us after we left the show. The Apollo is in Harlem, and as the crowd was leaving en masse down the sidewalk toward the train station, we passed a bunch of guys standing on the side of the road basically shouting at whitey to get on back to our own neighborhoods. It was out in the middle of the sidewalk and there were hundreds of people around, but I couldn't help thinking that here we were leaving a show by a woman who does more in an hour to unite people of all colors and backgrounds and being harrassed for being "out of our element," and it made me so angry at Bush for setting an example in this world of division. How hard is it to go from hating Muslims on the other side of the world to hating people within your own neighborhood? These people didn't know me from a hole in the wall, and they were angry that I was invading their neighborhood because all that mattered was that I was "other" based solely on my skin. Maybe it was the site of so many white people in a group walking down the streets of Harlem at night. What happened to that sense of togetherness the whole country felt immediately after the towers fell? Bush has managed to piss even that away. The irony wasn't lost on me. I wonder how the Iraqis really feel with us in their neighborhoods destroying what little cultural and ecological stability they had. Bush is a divider. He lives in a vacuum and polarizes. He needs to be dethroned while the damage is still reparable.

2004-08-25T09:38:00.000-04:00

Boycott for Equality

I do love a boycott (see the sidebar). While me not supporting Coca Cola or some other nefarious multinational corporation (or even an entire state) I am sure is not affecting the world on a macroscosmic level, in the microcosm it does affect my life because it makes me more aware of the choices I make, especially where I spend my money, which is one of the few true powers that gay Americans have these days. We can choose where to spend our money.

October 8th is the Boycott for Equality. The organizers are asking gay Americans to do three things in order to show the country the power of our demographic:
1. Don't go to work
2. Don't buy ANYTHING on that day
3. Don't use a cell phone

This shouldn't be limited to gay people. If you support the equality of rights for all people, then this should be important to you.

2004-08-23T10:32:00.000-04:00

Get Back to Work!

The new rules governing overtime pay, courtesy of the Bush administration, take affect today.

Not that I get overtime pay, but if I once did, I fit into about three of the categories that make me ineligible.

2004-08-18T09:54:00.000-04:00

Top Down
We finally took the plunge and bought a new car. We were going to hold off until the spring, but then we got a letter from the VW dealer where we bought my GTI saying that we would get a special price on anything they had on the lot because we were preferred customers. Now, we aren't stupid. I knew this was just a marketing ploy to get us onto the lot, and it worked. But to my surprise, they actually did drop the price considerably. Again, not stupid, I know they would drop prices for anyone at this point to get rid of the 2004s. But the bottom line is that we got a good deal on a car that SweetieKins really wanted. Here is our new baby.

While I am not exactly excited to be saddled with a new car loan, I am actually relieved knowing that he is driving something reliable. The old Jetta, while it was a faithful and tireless friend, was starting to show her age and was heading into that stage where it becomes expensive to just keep it running. It was also heading into that stage where on any given day, 30 different things could go wrong under the hood, leaving him stranded somewhere and me with the inconvenience of having to go collect him. And believe me, with my schedule at the moment, it would have been an inconvenience. And all of this causes me anxiety, knowing that someone I love is out in the world in an increasingly unreliable vehicle. The money we spent is worth the peace of mind alone (and also the fact that now SK will stop incessantly talking about getting his convertible).

After we drove our new baby home, we celebrated her arrival by going out for Mexican food.

2004-08-16T18:36:00.000-04:00

I teach at a couple of different colleges in the beautiful state in which I live, and there are nights like tonight when I just love being a teacher in 2004. The Discovery Channel has a whole section of fun tools for teachers on its Web site, and I have been using their quiz creator in the custom classroom. The great thing about the online quizzes is that my students can take the quiz on the computer, and before they can even have time to shut down, i will have their graded exams emailed to me. It's a beautiful thing. The app lets you custom-make tests, and as long as the answers are multi-choice or T/F, the program will correct the exams for you. You can also make long and short answer quizzes, but unlike Accuplacer, which I still contend has some bizarre Satanical method of instantly grading an essay, the program will not grade these types of answers. I suppose the point of that method is that there is no paper exchanged, and the instructor will get the student's exam e-mailed right to them, and I suppose that this is a benefit for teachers who have Internet in their classrooms but may not necessarily have a network between all the students' computers. But using this tool and NOT having the quizzes graded for you is taking all of the fun out of this nifty utility. Besides, it is very easy to make a grammar exam all multi-choice and T/F.

My first real encounter with technology in the classroom, from the teacher side of the room, was a complete disaster. Maybe I'll save that story for another entry!! But since then, I have learned how to use technology to my advantage. The great thing about one of the schools at which I teach is that they market themselves as a technology school, and I have to say, that the technology they provide teachers is really outstanding. Every teacher has dedicated "private" space on the network. So I can do all my work, prep all my lessons and such, and store it all in my folder on the network. I can also make a public folder on the network that my students can access. Every classroom has a computer hooked up to a projector; the concept of the old plastic overhead is definitely on its way out. Right now, I can use a PowerPoint presentation to teach a lesson, then when I am done, I can drop the presentation into a shared folder so that my students can re-visit the PowerPoint on their own from any computer on campus. I also put all handouts into the folder, again so students can access them. You wouldn't believe the amount of hassle it has saved just in my not having to constantly carry things around. You lost your syllabus? Well, you can print out a new one, it's in my folder on the network!! The only drawback, and it is a huge one, is that teachers cannot access the network from off campus.

But my two favorite technology tools at the moment are the online quizzes and blogs. I got my students into blogging, and like anything you give in a classroom, there are those that latch onto it and impress you, there are those that do the bare minimum and secretly curse how much smarter they are than you, and there are those who just don't do it.

Oh, and for anyone interested, here's my exam: See if YOU could pass the grammar exam for my developmental writing class!

2004-08-13T14:31:00.000-04:00

I don’t know what to think about Jim McGreevey. I’m more annoyed by the fact that every newspaper headline screams “Gay Sex Scandal,” not just “Sex Scandal.” But papers need to sell, and gay is still scandalous, especially for men.

On one hand I think it does a good thing to let people know, yet again, that gay people are everywhere, whether they’ve self-identifed or not. And while I really have no use for the closet myself, and think it’s sad that people feel the need to hide out there, I don’t begrudge anyone the life they choose for themselves, as long as they are not hurting other people.

Only McGreevey is hurting other people. He’s sending the signal to everyone that there was something so shameful about his life that he had to hide it away. And that hurts me because I live under a president who is trying to legislate me into non-existence. I live in a society that doesn’t understand that calling someone a fag as a derogation is just as disgusting as calling someone a nigger, yet I hear it everywhere. I have to fight for things that other people take for granted because gayness is still scandalous; it dehumanizes because it’s easy to regard someone as “other” when society reinforces this.

I understand that 20 years ago, it was probably easier to just get married, and who knows what kind of arrangement McGreevey had with his wife, that’s no one’s business, but I can’t be proud of someone who is forced out of the closet, especially for reasons like these. I hope he can settle with his demons and see that there is nothing shameful about how he was born, but I’m not going to be his champion.

2004-08-12T11:02:00.000-04:00

I've always thought that humans were evolving toward something resembling cyborg, with all the plastic surgery and artifical parts, and then you read that someone has conjoined with a couch, setting the cyborg evolution back 100 years.

2004-08-11T19:34:00.000-04:00

I don't think it is possible to express my excitement. The Pixies are coming to New York.

One of my regrets in life is that I never saw them when they were together back in the late 80s. I had a chance once, and I don't remember why, but I didn't go, and soon after they broke up. I was crushed.

The Pixies moved me in a way that no other music did at the time. I remember when my friend in college went to Canada and brought home this bizarre-looking LP with a picture of a hairy-backed man that was recommended to him by the owner of an indie record store somewhere north. This was "Come on Pilgrim." I was mesmerized by the photo, and even more taken with the music. I played this album constantly. I taped this album and played it on my walkman as I walked around campus. I was never more than 3 feet from this album. They were like nothing I had ever heard before. It was like music made by the house band of Bedlam, and I couldn't get enough.

Over the years, as they released more albums, my love for them only grew. I can still put on any Pixies album and feel the energy and the urgency of the music. It penetrates down to my core.

There is no way I am missing this tour. Tickets go on sale tomorrow and I am so there. I saw Frank Black, solo, when he toured for his first solo album, and he sucked in a way that I never thought he could suck. I've read reviews of ther reunion tour, and they sound promising. So my question is, will my idols live up to the hype, and if they don't, will I be crushed like a schoolboy? Or will they be so fabulous that I'll cry like those Japanese girls always do over Michael Jackson?

2004-08-04T17:08:00.000-04:00

I love Bill Clinton. I saw a few minutes of his David Letterman appearance from the other night, and I would vote for this man again in a heartbeat. He didn't even say anything important -- he was shilling his book after all -- but damn did he look good, all tan with a pink tie (which I know was a shout out to his homo homies). Maybe it's a combination of feeling more secure under his presidency, or maybe it is because he looks like a god next to the Chimp in Chief. I can't even say that I was more finanacially secure under his presidency, because I wasn't. At this moment I have the most money saved, more stock options and the most easily liquidate-able assets I have ever had in my life, but I just don't feel secure. Maybe it's the specter of doom that hangs over my class status as a citizen in this country, maybe it's the constant threat of terrorist attacks. Maybe it's because our current president wouldn't even have enough charisma and brains to get an intern to her knees if he tried. The Weasel tried to convince me that we live in a different world since 9/11, and we can't assume that Clinton would have handled things any better than Bush or that the economy would be any better under him in the aftermath of the attack. Clinton was a leader. Things would have been a whole lot different if this happened on his watch.

Whatever the reason, I love Clinton, and I want him back. I wouldn't read his book, but I'd vote for him again! I'd even give him a good rogering if he would fix those giant bags under his eyes.

2004-07-29T14:03:00.000-04:00

Having Reason on Your Side

The American Psychological Association this week came out in support of gay marriage, saying that there is growing evidence acquired through their research that children are not pyschologically damaged by being raised by gay parents—which supports what anyone with half a brain already knows. Children want only two things: to feel loved and to feel safe. Everything else falls into place when you crerate that reality for a child. And the argument that gay parents will raise gay children is just ridiculous as the overwhelming majority of gay people in this world were raised by straight parents, so where is the logic in that?

Hopefully this will make big news.

2004-07-27T09:06:00.000-04:00

A Real Tough Cookie

We went to see Pat Benatar the other night. Now, I was never a big Pat Benatar fan, but SweetieKins was insane for her. He has all her LPs, and before Napster went all legal, he had me downloading all her songs to burn to CD one Saturday while he laid in bed with the flu. But our friend Hot Lunch hooked us up with free tickets, and who doesn't love free? The show was actually really good. Pat looked and sounded as good as ever, we had great seats right in front of the sound board. There were a couple of things that bothered me though, one being the fact that she referred to her old songs as "vintage." I don't really use that word a lot, but I am pretty sure it means something other than 20 years old. It just made me feel, well creeped out, and I'm not sure exactly why it creeped me out.

But the thing that bothered me the most was the fact that she didn't look anything like she does on her marketing stuff. If you look at her Web site, you get this image of her as still being the "vintage" rocker chick, and while she definitely rocked out at least in spirit, she came out on stage looking like Mr. Miyagi. No wild makeup, no crazy outfits, none of that attitude that she seems to be exuding on her Web site. I wasn't expecting her to come out looking like this anymore, I mean the woman is a mom after all, but the pageboy haircut just doesn't scream "Hell is for Children" to me.

2004-07-22T16:02:00.000-04:00

"We have come together with a unity of purpose because our nation demands it. September 11, 2001,was a day of unprecedented shock and suffering in the history of the United States. The nation was unprepared. How did this happen, and how can we avoid such tragedy again?"

The 9/11 Commission Report is released.

2004-07-21T18:20:00.000-04:00

The American Vote

Roughly half of American citizens vote in presidential elections. It’s a startling statistic. It’s an embarrassing number, especially for a country that takes such great pride in its freedoms and rights, and it is time that this number increases dramatically. November is coming quickly, and soon the media will whip itself into a frenzy covering the 2004 presidential campaign. It’s nothing unusual; it happens every four years. You can almost set your clocks by it. As soon as the leaves start to change, the mud slinging becomes just a bit more aggressive. And when that happens, you have a choice to make: will you be a part of the political process, or will you remain disinterested?

To me, it matters less whom you vote for than the fact that you actually go out and vote, though I really can't imagine how anyone with a brain would vote for Bush. But that fact is irrelevant to the greater issue, which is that too many Americans throw their votes—their voices—away instead of exercising their freedom to choose whom they want to represent them to the nation, to the world.

Consider the 2000 presidential election, when it all came down to Florida. The number of electoral votes coming out of Florida determined who won the election. Not counting overseas ballots, Bush won the electoral votes of the state of Florida by a margin of 229 votes, which tipped the scales in his favor, ostensibly winning him the election. No matter whom you voted for, no matter whom you supported, it was a close race. Imagine if less than 250 people, people who otherwise didn’t vote, decided to go out and vote for Gore. Imagine if less than 250 of the people who voted for Bush decided to stay home that day and not vote. The results could have tipped the scales.

Individual votes DO count. They count for sheer numbers, but they also count because by voting you are exercising your voice. You are making yourself heard

Imagine if you were told that if you didn’t vote in the 2004 presidential election, you would surrender that right for the 2008 election. This would be unacceptable to most people. After all, voting is a right, not an obligation, and assuming you haven’t broken any laws that disenfranchise you from the voting process, exercising the right not to vote goes hand-in-hand with the right to cast your ballot in November. But if having that right is so important to you, so important that you want to keep that right even if you don’t exercise it, then why isn’t it important enough to put it into action?

These are the people who are leading your country. The President appoints Supreme Court justices and cabinet members; influences public opinion; can polarize or unite a nation; declares war or negotiates peace. He (and hopefully one day, she) represents your country to the rest of the world. When the world likes or doesn’t like what the president does, it’s the country—it’s you—that is honored or blamed. And if that is reality, why aren’t you ensuring that the person with this responsibility is the person that you want to be in that position?

The right to vote is not a universal. There are countries where only certain members of society are given that right. There are countries where no one is given that right. Voting is so important to the idea of democracy that initially only land-owning white men in America where given that right. Do you know when the voting franchise was finally extended to include women? To include African-Americans? You might be surprised to find out. And when you do find out, ask yourself why this right has been guarded so closely for so long and has been held in such high esteem that those with the right wanted so desperately to keep it out of the reaches of others. It's like the marriage debate in our national dialogue now. Of course marriage is important and valuable. The fact that there are people trying so hard to keep it away from people who want it so much is all you need to consider.

Of course, voting is power, and your individual vote is a powerful tool. Don’t underestimate it. There is no greater service to the democratic process than exercising your right to vote. This year I am telling anyone who will listen why it is important to be a part of the vote. This year I am determined to change the minds of a few serial non-voters and give them the key to their own power.

If you are not already a registered voter, register now. Register today. Just go out and do it. It takes five minutes to fill out the form. Those five minutes will give you more power that a lot of people around the world don’t have and may never see in your lifetime.

So when this November comes, and the candidate you support doesn’t win, will it be because you didn’t cast your ballot or even register to vote? Or when your candidate wins the presidency, will it because you valued your ability to choose and helped to vote him into office?

2004-07-19T19:45:00.000-04:00

Ride That Horsey!
I walk into the chiropractor's office today and there were three kids in there waiting for their mom to get off "the rack." I smiled at them and sat down, which apparently was an open invitation to start a conversation with me. At first, I thought it was sweet that these kids were friendly and not afraid to talk to people, as they instantly grilled me about my name, my nickname, how many babies I have, and, strangely, where I work. I started getting a little suspicious, wondering if I was being monitored by the GOP. Then they all got up and like a little band of ninjas started doing kid karate on each other, bragging about how they all knew tae kwon do and loved to beat each other up. It quickly became apparent to me that these kids were totally starved for attention, and despite having each other to play with, they were probably bored with each other and were craving some sort of non-sibling stimulation. The inevitable result of their shogun kabuke theater was all three of them crying because the boy punched his sister in the stomach, which made them all start punching each other and calling each other asshole. I'm one of those people that isn't bothered by children swearing. They're just words after all. So I'm sitting there laughing, passive-aggressively egging them on as they beat each other to a pulp and curse like sailors. They all scrambled back to their seats when they heard the therapy room door open, probably expecting Momzilla to come stomping out, but it was just the chiro who had heard all the noise and came out to bring me into a different room. The kids really wanted to come in and watch her adjust me, which sort of creeped me out, and I declined, and by the time I came back out they had formed a triple decker horsey pyramid and were screaming at the little girl on the bottom that she was a bad horsey because she couldn't trot around the room with the two of them piled on her back. As I was leaving they all came running over to me, looking like they expected hugs or something, to which I quickly said goodbye and ran into the parking lot. This is what I get for showing up early to my appointment!

2004-07-12T18:42:00.000-04:00

I've been feeling completely disconnected and out of sorts lately, which would explain the recent sparse blogging. Between all of the craziness of finishing the floors and being quarantined to two rooms upstairs and eating take out for a week and then TWO rounds of housesitting these last two weeks, and waiting and stressing about the job I came so close to getting, I just feel like I have no sense of normalcy anymore. Even my job has been irregular. I have so much spyware piling up on my computer that i can't do my normal routines. The techies say they are working on the problem, but I think they are just making spyware angry because it is honestly worse since they started trying to fix it.

Anyways, I'm finally going home tonight, to a house put back together, to home-cooked meals, to my Sweetiekins and my much-missed water pillow. I'm housesitting again in a few weeks and I must remember to bring my water pillow. I've become so attached to it and I sleep like crap when I am forced to use community pillows.

2004-07-12T18:40:00.000-04:00

RIP Isabel Sanford.

You gave good Weezy.

2004-07-12T12:37:00.000-04:00

This is such a mind-boggling amount of money. I think Bush needs to start worrying about how much his local gas station rasied or lowered gas prices overnight while he slept to maybe come back to earth and gain a little perspective on what it is like to live in the world of the average-financed American.

See how fast those numbers are changing? Those are THOUSANDS of dollars a second folks. Wouldn't you prefer your money to actually be working FOR you?

2004-07-08T09:20:00.000-04:00

Which of the Humours are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

You are Sanguine. Warm, outgoing, and friendly, you are the life of the party. Your carefree nature can make you unpredictable and restless, however, and you tend to be disorganized, easily distracted, and even undependable. Passionate and hot-tempered, you have a lust for life in all its forms. Your creativity makes you a good starter but a poor finisher. Sanguines should look at careers in sales, acting, public speaking, and the medical profession.

Actually, sanguine is the temperament associated with the humour Blood. To be sanguine is to be confident and optimistic, and to have good coloring in the cheeks! It can also mean bloodthirsty, which I only am in my revenge fantasies.

The blood humour is also related to spring, the element air, and the liver, and according to Hippocrates, being sanguine makes you warm and moist, whatever that means.

More on temperaments here.

More on the four humours here.

2004-07-01T12:58:00.000-04:00

waiting . . . waiting . . . waiting . . . just waiting for the floors to dry and the phone to ring. This past weekend we refinished our hardwood floors and basically have been living out of the top floor of the house, waiting for the finish to cure so we can use the rooms again. I've also been waiting for the dreaded phone call from the school informing me if I got the job or not. As hard as I try not to think about it, the more I think about it. Plus being trapped in the top floor of the house is not making my vacation any more enjoyable. At this point I am going with the theory that no news is bad news and assuming I did not get the job. Tomorrow will be a week since the second, and very bizarre and not-at-all-encouraging, second interview, and they said they were deciding early this week. But I have to move forward that I made the top three out of probably hundreds of applicants, and I wowwed them enough to make it to the final round. And that DOES feel good because I know I am an awesome teacher, and the market is insanely competitive for teaching positions at the colleges, and if i don't get the job it's not because I didn't want it bad enough or hadn't prepared enough for the search committee. If I haven't got the job, I would just appreciate the dignity of a phone call so I can at least stop wondering, but they told me in the first round that it's more likely that I will just not hear from them, which is my signal that someone else got the job.

2004-06-23T19:01:00.000-04:00

I think I am going to start publicly shaming men who don't wash their hands in the restroom. Between my various jobs and all the different groups of people I interact with, I find myself in a lot of different bathrooms throughout the day, and it's disgusting how many men either just don't wash their hands or do the quick rinse and shake, as if running cold water over your hands for 3 seconds isn't actually spreading the germs. It's the worst at my full-time job, where these people I witness perpetrating this crime of sanitation are going to interact with me all day. If I have to be around these people, and they are not going to be embarrassed at not washing their hands, then I am going to start speaking up: Dude, wash your hands. No one wants your feces on his fingers.

2004-06-23T15:43:00.000-04:00

Words that make me cringe, just from the sound of them. In no particular order:
tampon
fudge
cud
fraternize
umpteenth
muncher
felch
crockery
fickle

And a few words and phrases I love:
fuck knuckle
the ham slam
cunty
bulbous
rutabega
ignominious
clack

2004-06-21T17:18:00.000-04:00

I spent the weekend being an outsider. I think it serves us well to every now and then experience life in the minority. Friday night we went to a birthday party for a woman that SweetieKins works with. She's Columbian, and the party was mostly family of her and her husband. There was music playing, which i assume was Columbian, and everyone (except us) was dancing these crazy salsas and merengues. it was very cool that they all knew how to dance like that, and you could tell the older people had been doing this for a lifetime. They kept trying to get us to get up and dance, but it was too intimidating, through probably the best opportunity to learn how to dance like that. On Sunday we went to a wedding. The bride is half Spanish, and there was a lot of Spanish music, to which her whole side of the family knew the words and the different dances that went with the songs. Again, it was interesting to watch from the fringes.

I'm glad that I have this kind of diversity in my life, that I am not so sheltered that I only hang around with people who are just like me, that somewhere in my life I realized the value of kicking it with the "other." Being a gay person in America definitely has its drawbacks, and for all the crap that we have to put up with on a daily basis, it's different than a racial otherness. Growing up white in America does lend itself to certain social provileges still, unfortunately, and it's good to be put on the outside every now and then, just as an observer, to see how similar we all are to each other.

2004-06-16T17:53:00.000-04:00

What Book Are You?

Turns out I'm a book I've never read. Is this one of those chick books?

You're Anne of Green Gables!

by L.M. Montgomery

Bright, chipper, vivid, but with the emotional fortitude of cottage cheese, you make quite an impression on everyone you meet. You're impulsive, rash, honest, and probably don't have a great relationship with your parents. People hurt your feelings constantly, but your brazen honestly doesn't exactly treat others with kid gloves. Ultimately, though, you win the hearts and minds of everyone that matters. You spell your name with an E and you want everyone to know about it.

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

2004-06-16T17:39:00.000-04:00

The annual Gay Pride parade in Manhattan is fast approaching. Every year we say that we are going to go, and every year something comes up and we end up not going. I've never actually been, and it's something that I want to go to at least once, to have the experience, to share in the community, to see what the big deal is about, to see some big wigs on parade. It's kind of like New Years Eve in Times Square, the 6th Avenue Halloween parade, Mardis Gras: it's something that you should do once to have the experience (and in the case of Times Square on New Years, only once), and once again something has come up this year. I took the week of the parade off from work to use the time to refinish the hardwood floors in our house. My plan was to start the process on Saturday and take however many days it takes, and leaving for the whole day on Sunday might throw the whole thing off. I can't spend any more than that week, and ideally I don't want to spend the entire week doing that, since my vacations are few and far between. This year I feel especially like we should go because of all that is happening in the country right now. It's important to have our numbers there and be an example to the bigots in this world. Deny us marriage if you must, motherfuckers, but we are not going to stop being who we are! This is a hugely important election year, at least for me in my years of eligibility as a voting citizen, and the heat is only going to get more intense as we get closer to November and Bush gets more and more nervous, doing what all frightened children do and attack those that they are afraid of. He should be afraid of me.

2004-06-14T19:35:00.000-04:00

People who have let their dreams die will try to keep you from reaching yours.

2004-06-14T17:36:00.000-04:00

I'm normally a pretty calm and relaxed person, but lately my body has been in mini revolution mode. I'm waiting to hear about a job that I am very much interested in, and the interview process has been long and challenging, and now all I can do is sit around and wait for the decisions to be made. As much as I am trying not to think about all that has been going on, my body is letting me know just how very stressed I am. My right eye has been twitching every ten minutes, a little muscle spasm in the lower lid. It's actually the whole right side of me in revolt. I have a weird soreness to my scalp and skin on the right side of my head and a swollen gland under my neck. I just went to the chiropractor for some rackin' and crackin', and the eye twitch has seemed to have subsided (for the moment), but I need to find a way to either accept the anxiety of the next few weeks or do something to get rid of it, because pretending I am not freaking out over this is making things much, much worse.

2004-06-12T09:49:00.000-04:00

I Always Thought I Was an Ernie . .

. . . but anonymous Internet quizzes don't lie.

Grover on Ecstasy

You're funny, you're loveable, you're entertaining,
you like to call yourself "Super
Grover!"--You're obviously on ecstasy.
But that's why we love you. Be careful, ok?

Which Sesame Street Muppet's Dark Secret Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

2004-06-09T10:59:00.000-04:00

Libations for Summer
Summer is here and nuthin’ says summer like delicious fruity sangria! A lot of people ask me for my sangria recipe because it’s just so damn good and the perfect drink to lounge around the pool with. I normally make red sangria but have been experimenting with success with white sangria as well. My advice is to make twice as much as you think you will need. I normally make more than I think I’ll need and end up running out faster than I imagine. People love them some sangria!!

Ingredients:

A big bottle of red/white wine. You can really use the cheap stuff for sangria. It would be foolish to ruin a great bottle of wine by adding all of the other ingredients. The fruit and other stuff will completely change the taste, so don’t be afraid of using the big cheap jugs o’ wine. I normally use a burgundy, but I also have used cabernets and merlots with success. Mixing different kinds is also not a problem. For white, I’ve used chardonnay or pinot grigio.
fruit: For red, I use lemons, limes and oranges. For white, I use apples, peaches, grapes and lemons.
triple sec or citrus-flavored vodka: I prefer the Triple sec, but have found that vodka works well in a pinch!
brandy
sugar
seltzer/club soda/sparkling water

In a big pitcher, slice the fruit into small pieces and add the red or white wine. Let the fruit soak in the wine overnight. The next day, add about 5 shots of the triple sec and five shots of the brandy. I either substitute the vodka for brandy for the white sangria only because it changes the color, or I will use a lot less, just a splash for taste. Add about five tablespoons of sugar. I normally dissolve the sugar in a little hot water first so it doesn’t settle at the bottom of the sangria. Taste. Adjust ingredients for taste. I honestly never actually measure anything, so these measurements are approximations! Keep iced/cold until serving.

I usually wait to add the seltzer until it is served as I like my sangria with a good amount of fizz. But if it is easier to mix it all together at once, then go crazy! I like to serve the sangria equal parts wine and seltzer, with a lot of ice and fresh cut up fruits.

Enjoy!! And make sure you invite me over to partake of the deliciousness!!

2004-06-02T18:42:00.000-04:00

The rabbit/deer/mole/fox/bug war is officially on!! Our garden went in this weekend, with gate and chicken wire protection, so just try and get my cabbage you little fuckers!!

I probably shouldn't throw down to the deer. I don't need them trying to jump our fence and collapsing the whole thing. I'm not a carpenter by any stretch of the imagination, so the garden fence I so unprofessionally put up could very likely come crashing down if a rabbit were to put a little shoulder to it.

I'll be looking into some natural organic critter repellents to keep the woodland creatures at bay. Being right on the edge of the woods I feel like we are now screaming "Give me your hungry and your furry, our feeding stations are open!"

2004-05-27T14:11:00.000-04:00

One person CAN make a difference

Last week I wrote about how I had gotten into an e-mail dialogue with the pastor of a Baptist church after I wrote to him expressing my concerns over one of those "save hetero marriage from the fags" banners hanging on the church lawn. We actually went back and forth a few times before I accepted that he was never going to do anything but spit Jesus and scripture back at me as the answer to all of my arguments that what he was doing was perpetuating bigotry and violence toward gay people. I also wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper expressing my outrage as a citizen that more people were not disturbed by this banner hanging in their community. Well, today I walked past the church, and the banner is gone! I don't know if I had anything to do with it, for the paper never actually printed my letter and the pastor was pretty adamant that he had righteousness on his side, but the banner is gone, so this is a banner day, then, for equality everywhere. Every day I come to understand more and more what the Dalai Lama meant when he said "Be the change you want to see in the world." I'll sleep tonight knowing that one person does make a difference.

2004-05-26T17:28:00.000-04:00

Annie Proulx wrote a story called Brokeback Mountain, about two cowboys who fall in love in Montana and how their love remained even after each man got married and led separate lives. It's a pretty sexy story. Ang Lee "won" the rights to turn it into a motion picture, and Jake Gyllenhall and Heath Ledger are to play the lead roles. Lee recently has gone on record that he will be cutting the sex scenes out the movie because he feels that the sight of two men herding sheep is sexier than actually watching them get it on. What the fuck? Is that supposed to NOT make gay-panicked Americans think of sex with sheep when they think of gay men? In his next movie, will he show Jennifer Connelly and Colin Farrell milking cows and slopping pigs together instead of male/female intimacy? I don't know if I am more outraged at his explanation or the fact that he is willing to destroy the integrity of the source story because he's afraid of making a movie that will challenge people's fears. But then again, look what he did to The Hulk. Does anyone in Hollywood have any integrity left?

2004-05-24T18:40:00.000-04:00

I heart Susan Sontag. And here is just one reason why. Regarding the Torture of Others The link requires NYTimes registration, but it is so worth it (and free) to read Sontag's essay on the Iraqi prisoner torture.

2004-05-24T18:35:00.000-04:00

My body aches from a weekend of cutting down trees and dragging giant stumps into the woods. Not an ache like I threw my back out and drying myself off after a shower is an ordeal, but an ache like I used my body for good things this weekend. I'm the first person to rally for a weekend spent on the couch watching movies and eating carbs, but there is something visceral and satisfying about making the earth bow to your demands. I used a chainsaw so much my whole body was still shaking two hours later. SweetieKins and I are actually starting to see our yard taking the shape that we imagine. And we've scouted out the primo spot for the pool, which if all goes well will be installed in a couple of years!

Splash!

2004-05-19T20:14:00.000-04:00

I've gotten myself into a very interesting debate with a pastor I've never met. I was walking past a Baptist church the other day and they had a banner outside heralding the defense of marriage. I actually walked up to the door and was going to shout SHAME at whoever was inside. In the house of the Lord, however, no one was home. I went back to work, found their web site, and wrote the pastor an e-mail telling him that he should be ashamed of himself for acting in this very un-Jesus like way, dividing and separating insteadof joining and loving, urging him to tear that disgusting banner down. To my surprise, he wrote back, and not to my surprise, he called me a sinner and threw Bible passages at me. I, of course, wrote back, throwing his Bible passages back at him and throwing in some more for good measure. I'm not really sure where this is all going. He's never going to change his mind. I'm just a sinner until I embrace Christ. But it feels good to call people out on their bigotry even if they don't see themselves as bigots. Maybe once this is over I'll post our dialogue, since I am saving all of the correspondence. I expect him to respond. You know these fundies just have to get all up in your pew and have the last word. Word!

2004-05-17T19:26:00.000-04:00

We are unofficially at war with the local town tax collector. The story is way too long to blog, but we basically owe 155 dollars to the town for a 6-year-old car tax bill. Because we are now property owners in a town we previously lived in then moved out of then returned to, they have found us, though we didn't even know we were being sought after all this time. The local town office admins exist on that level of hell right below DMV employees. And you can imagine how not happy that makes them. If you've ever had to "fight city hall," you know there is no winning (sorry Carol Brady, that shit just didn't happen!). While there may not be winning, there is something to be said for poking the monkey in the cage. I wonder how much 155 in pennies weighs? The guy said we can pay in cash, and pennies are cash.

2004-05-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

I finally put in the new mailbox yesterday, woohoo!! No more Christmas tree stand, although I must revel in my ingenuity in using the stand as a makeshift mailbox post. **patting myself on the back** It's like we have a whole new front yard. What a difference a little white post makes!

Yesterday was good day after a weekend from hell. Working in the yard was like an emotional bandaid for me. It felt good to reconnect to something real and tangible, something like dirt that doesn't try to shame you.

2004-05-07T15:05:00.000-04:00

Angela Rita

I love you for always holding my hand, for feeding me sometimes strange but always delicious food, for humming in the kitchen as you cooked, for singing along to my piano playing while I was still learning to play, for never playing favorites, for always smiling, for your mammoth jigsaw puzzles, your fridge that always had apple juice, your garden in Queens that always had basil, your insatiable appetite for bingo, for grabbing my hand as I walked past you and twirling me around in a dance, for your New York accent we all loved to tease, for hard bread and gravy, and the secret for keeping the bread from turning soggy, for insisting on displaying that picture of me with the perm, for Michigan rummy penny gambling, for making the world seem safe, for the sweetness nothing could taint.

Rest in peace. You’ve earned it.

2004-05-05T19:42:00.000-04:00

As if anyone needs another reason to hate Disney, they are trying to block Michael Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 911, from being released in the states. I feel like driving down there and grabbing that mouse by his little rodent balls and shoving him up George Bush's ass. At least then he'd have an easier time milking Bush's prostate.

I thought America meant freedom. I'm not so sure anymore.

2004-05-03T19:19:00.000-04:00

I still can not get over the amount of porn spam I get at work. It's not that it bothers me, in fact I don't see anything wrong with starting the day with an eye full of wang, but the overwhelming majority of the spam I get is nasty girlie porn with close ups of dripping orifices, and I am so not about the bisquit. And it's not like people at work haven't pointed out to our IT geeks that there is a LOT of porn getting through our filters. I was thinking this morning that all of this porn spam is targeted to straight men, as most porn in the world is, and that if there was suddenly a flood of guy-on-guy action coming into our e-mail inboxes that it would ostensibly be a priority to get rid of the spam, because that of course would be offensive, and what straight guy wants to look at rock hard wang? None that will admit it at least. But as long as there are dripping twats for the horn dogs to gawk at while they slowly hit that delete button, the porn will continue to flood in.

It's a conspiracy theory I am comfortable believing. And I'll stop complaining about the porn as soon as I get to see some dick dripping man eggs. Although I have to admit that I am oddly drawn to looking at the granny porn. Not in a sexual way, but in a train wreck, who-would-do-such-a-thing way.

2004-04-30T08:45:00.000-04:00

In honor of the last day of National Poetry Month, I'm posting one of my favorite poems, Leda and The Swan by W.B. Yeats. Revel in the beauty, fellow poetristas!!

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.

How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
How can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?

A shudder in the loins, engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?

2004-04-28T18:45:00.000-04:00

Got a dirty little secret that you just need to dish?

Tell everyone about it and get y'self a group hug.

2004-04-28T18:29:00.000-04:00

What is it with people with kids who think the whole world is responsible for raising them? Our town is in the middle of trying to pass its budget for next year. When we moved into our new house, we figured we should subscribe to the town's paper so we would be hip to all of the happenings in our town. It turns out that not a whole lot happens in our neck of Connecticut, except for a police blotter of a lot of drunk driving arrests on the main road that runs through town, and then there was the week that some giant sow was on the front page because she was down at the town green for all of the kids to come and pet. I think her name was Dolly. Most of the time I don't read the paper. We usually stockpile about 4 weeks' worth before SweetieKins decides that they need to be recycled, so he sits down on a Saturday and spends an hour combing through them for relevant info. He's pretty much interested in the same things I am, whether we know anyone in the police blotter, and what kind of zoning happenings are being bandied about among the townsfolk. The paper is pretty good at keeping track of things like the budget (proposed education cuts and an increase in high-tech equipment for the police who have to deal with all of the drunk drivers in our town) and any new construction proposals (we moved out into the psuedo country so that we would be away from but close to the bustle, and want to keep our burg on the sleepy side of the spectrum), but one thing he noticed with all of the recent budget votes is that all of the letters to the editor are about how the townsfolk are outraged that they cut millions of dollars from the school budget (while the superintendent makes more money that he should be making). As a member of society, I do want to live among people who are educated, I just don't feel I should have to pay for other people's children. If I were a town elder, i would pass a law that would let people stipulate where and how they want to use their tax money. Mine would go for roads and public service jobs, not for schools and senior centers and high-tech law enforcement equipment for a town with no real crime.

2004-04-21T17:38:00.000-04:00

I don't normally think of myself as getting older. I mean, I know I am, but it's not something that I think too much about. And when I do, I tend to find comfort in that I have learned a lot of things over the years, and I was a pretty foolish teenager, as most people are. I don't look at aging as necessarily a bad thing. I wouldn't mind having the body that I did when I was 19, or at the very least the spine of the boy I once was, but I would never trade back the knowledge I have acquired over the years. However: A coworker today was showing me an article she wrote, which involved some statistical information on a study. One of the demographic delineators was male, age 18-34. I realized that this September, i will be moving into a new demographic, 35-50. I will no longer be lumped in with the 18 year-olds. I'll be sharing space with the 50 year-olds. And while I may not want to be 18 again, I'm not so sure I am ready for 50!

2004-04-12T19:39:00.000-04:00

Which famous homosexual are you?

I'm Eleanor Roosevelt.

Which Famous Homosexual are you?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

A Roosevelt yourself, you married your fifth cousin Franklin; despite the obvious incestuous overtones, your six kids were happy and healthy.

When Franklin got elected, you became perhaps the most controversial first lady ever - you spoke out for the rights of women; for the rights of the poor; for world peace. You were even a member of a union while your husband was in office - and when he died, you were the head of the UN Commission on Human Rights.

All of which is pretty kick ass, but to top things off you had a hot and steamy relationship with the lesbian journalist Lorena Hickok, who was so madly in love with you that she halted her career for you. Unfortunately, you couldn't give up your public life that easily - leaving her heartbroken.

Bitch.

2004-04-12T19:30:00.000-04:00

Do you feel safe?

Because I don’t. It’s not even a matter of global safety, though I don’t feel safe on that level, with our president basically on a road to warring with every nation on the planet, but a matter of personal safety. I don’t feel proud to live in this country anymore. I was reading something the other day about the instances of gay-bashing being on the rise since the whole gay marriage debate was thrust into the public sphere with Bush’s anti-gay amendment. The man is just truly evil. I resent someone who has never met me calling me a sinner, especially when I don’t define sin in the same way. I don’t even think I would ever use the word sin in a conversation since I don’t buy into all that religious nonsense. There are good things that happen in this world, and bad things, but sin? I don’t know how anyone could be so morally righteous. But there was George Bush, standing in front of the country, calling me a sinner and basically giving people license to see me as a second-class citizen. I’m worthy of your pity, but I’m not worthy of your compassion. I’m worthy of your censure, yet I’m not worthy of your rights. I’m worthy of your judgment, and I’m not worthy of equal protection under the laws of our country. I’m worthy of paying your salary with my tax dollars, but I’m not worthy of getting the same benefits as a straight married couple who are also benefiting from my tax dollars.

Our president is a dangerous man. He believes jesus speaks directly to him, instructing how and why to run the country, the world. I don’t feel safe because our president is an arrogant fool and doesn’t understand the forest for the trees. He’s spent his entire life being sheltered and handed lofty positions by the people who surround and protect him. He doesn’t have a clue. He’s a man who can’t control his impulses, like alcohol, and therefore believes that everyone else needs to have their urges monitored and regulated. His agenda is to cater to the religious right, disregarding one of the fundamental tenets of our Constitution, separation of church and state.

Maybe I read too much, am on the Internet too much, watch too much news on television. Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but I feel like I spend most days waiting for the bottom to drop out of the economy, or something to be dropped from the sky into another building, or someone to show up on my lawn burning a cross.

Am I exaggerating? I wish it were that simple.

2004-04-08T15:30:00.000-04:00

The states in red are the ones I have personally visited. East coast, holla back, yo!!!

create your own personalized map of the USA
or write about it on the open travel guide

2004-04-08T11:14:00.000-04:00

Subservient Chicken. This is really freaky. He won't vacuum, but he will do the Macarena, have a pillow fight, moonwalk and try to fly. He'll even do a sun salute if you type in "yoga." If you really want to get creeped out, just type the word "camera" and don't blame me if you can't sleep tonight.

2004-04-01T10:51:00.000-05:00

Our new dog arrived the other day, which is part of the reason why I haven’t written in a while, just one more thing to contribute to the overwhelming busy-ness that I feel on a daily basis. But the new dog is pretty damn cute. And we needed a boy in our house. But now the balance of power has shifted. Dogs outnumber people (unless you discount Dax, who doesn’t think of herself as a dog).

We adopted Mr. Digby from a bizarre woman who acquired him from an actually crazy lady who used to keep him tied up to the coffee table all day. He doesn’t seem abused, maybe just a bit neglected. But supposedly Crazy Lady #1 surrendered her to Crazy Lady #2 because she had a stroke or died or something. I’m not sure exactly what the story is.

SweetieKins went to pick him up at the CL2’s house on Monday. He said the woman’s house is disgusting, very odiferous and rank, which could explain why Mr. Digby stinks the mighty dog-stink, or perhaps no one ever bathed him. His coat is very foul, you can just feel the grime on him even if you have lost your sense of smell and cannot smell him. But he just had the snip snip surgery last week and the vet said we can’t bathe him yet, the wound needs more time to heal. I feel bad for him because I want to bond with him and hold him and hug him, but every time I pick him up or pet him, I feel like I need to run to the sink and wash myself down.

But Senor Digby is adjusting well to his new home. The previous puppies alternate between pretending his isn’t there or sniffing him up and down trying to figure out what this tiny little thing is. I’m not sure if they have determined yet that he isn’t a new toy. This morning I took them all outside and in their excitement the older and larger dogs stepped all over Mr. D trying to get outside, but he didn’t seem to mind. He just goes with the flow. We haven’t had any accidents or puppy face-offs yet, and I’m hoping it continues that way. I was nervous about the new dog upsetting the precarious balance of our home, but I think Mr. Digby will just fold right in and as soon as he’s been bathed it’ll be like he’s been with us from the beginning.

Bonus: A Brief History of April Fool’s Day

2004-03-24T17:33:00.000-05:00

Why are all reality shows about straight people filled with drunken sluts? Not that there is anything wrong with being a drunken slut. I'm a reality TV junkie, but the fascination with people who are more fascinating than celebrites is starting to wane. The only reality shows I won't watch are the dating scenario shows, where the sole purpose of the show is to fabricate situations and throw a bunch of horned up guys and catty women together to duke it out till someone climbs to the top of the pile and the rest go home bloody. But even some of my favorite shows are turning into slutapalooza. I can barely watch The Real World anymore. I used to find the roomates at least mildly interesting, and there was always something about yourself that you could see in the lives of these people as they tried to negotiate the difficulty of being put into very un-real situations. But lately the shows are really only about how fast everyone can fuck everyone else, and the aftermath that follows from all the fucking around. Myabe I'm just getting older and that whole attitude is seeming tired to me. Watching other people about to fuck is really not all that interesting, especially when you don't get to see them actually fucking. You can't watch any reality shows anymore where there aren't at least one straight couple hooking up and breaking up all within the course of a few carefully edited weeks. Is this what most of America finds interesting? Or is it self-fulfilling? Because that is what is being broadcast, that is what becomes interesting? I know I can turn off the television, but I love my television too much to do that. And there are more interesting things on, I know, but I'm having a hard time breaking the reality TV addiction.

It's bad. I even watch American Idol. I refused to watch the first season because I honestly couldn't care less who the next corporate ass sucker is, and I still don't care, but SweetieKins and I started watching the second season, in the beginning when they have all the really bad singers on, and the next thing we knew we were sucked into the whole drama of the thing. And now we are just as sucked into this season's. I honestly don't care who wins this time either, but I did call and vote 5 times for my girl Jennifer Hudson last night because for some reason Simon's got it in for her and she is by far the most talented and most interesting of the bunch. I don't want to see her go home before the rest of the crap-hounds that are competing.

2004-03-22T18:31:00.000-05:00

Be the Change You Want to See in the World
Politics used to anger me. All the lies being thrown around from side to side, all the people who I thought were stupid for not wanting to vite for the candidate that I new was the right choice, all the tv commercials that were just wastes of money. But I'm not going to get angry anymore. I'm going to get involved.

I've always voted. I've voted in every presidential election since I have been legally able to. I vote because I want to voice my opinion, but I also vote because of the principle of it, because I can---and I understand that that is a freedom taken too lightly in this world, the ability to choose our own leaders. I even voted for Nader one year. I knew he wouldn't win, but I wanted to voice my opinion that this country desperately needs to break out of the two-party system that dominates politics. I vote because it's important. I vote because it's a fundamental right of being an American, and, as far as rights go, I've always believed you should use it or lose it (except for guns, I don't mind losing the right to own a gun).

Getting involved doesn't just mean voting in the presidential election though. Getting involved means voting for my town's budget, and voting for all the little elections that most people think don't matter. I know there are people who don't vote in the small elections. I was one of them. I didn't vote because I didn't know who was running or what their platforms were. But ignorance is not an excuse. Getting involved means finding out. These people are determining things about my life, albeit in small ways maybe, but I am beholding them with the power to make decisions on my behalf, about issues in the town I live in, and for that I will start paying attention and voting.

Getting involved means knowing the issues and making a stand for what you believe in. This year I am attending the RNC protests in NYC because I don't believe the GOP has any business gathering in a city known for diversity and progress (and if you don't know what any of those abbreviations stand for, you seriously need to get involved!). This year I am attending the gay rights rallies in my home state and in the states that are a reasonable driving distance. Because it's important. Because I have the freedom to peacefully gather and protest. Because my government is trying to legislate me into second class citizenship, and that is not okay with me.

And I'm not saying that politics will never make me angry again, because every time I see our president's face I'm angry that he stole the election and smiles about it. But at least now I am directing my anger into change.

Wanna know who your neighbors, friends and family are donating money to? Find out here: http://www.fundrace.org/neighbors.php

2004-03-17T19:12:00.000-05:00

Whitney Houston
Oh Whitney, child, it's finally caught up with you. Of course the whole world already knew what you didn't have the guts to admit. But I guess that is the double-edged sword of addiction. Everyone sees it but you. Yes, we saw it in that towel you carried around with you everywhere, wiping yourself down because even though you were standing perfectly still your heart was racing double time from all the uppers pumping through you. We saw it in all the crazy things you were doing, and crazy can't hide from the public. We saw it in your unfledging support of your man Bobby. The irony in having a voice that could move millions but not being able to give voice to your own needs. To be such a strong personality and such a strong stage presence but be weak when it comes to the mens, to let yourself get dragged down with your husband, a serial criminal and drug abuser himself. I wonder if you were like Tina Turner and Sid Vicious. Was it that stronger personality that first got you to snort that first line, that told you it was okay, that it would make you feel better? That the world would love you even more? Is Bobby your Nancy Spungeon? And why won't your publicist tell us what drug you are rehabbing from? We've known all along Whitney; if you're going to go clean then come clean and at least tell us what horse you were riding.

2004-03-16T18:08:00.000-05:00

It's snowing today. It's really snowing. We just noticed that the daffodils and tulips that we planted in the fall were starting to poke through the still-frozen ground. I hope they don't freeze to death now. I was excited to see them because our yard is overrun with moles and I was pretty convinced that the moles ate all of the bulbs that we planted in the fall. So now the frost will get what the moles haven't.

I'm pretty much done with winter. I've had my fill. I'm ready for spring and some warmer weather. I'll never be able to fix that mailbox.

2004-03-15T19:23:00.000-05:00

I get a LOT of porn e-mail spam at work. It's because my e-mail address is on the Web and spammers can send out spiders to crawl the Web and read e-mail addresses off of Web sites. The company I work for recently tried to filter out porn spam, which resulted in all of our e-mails getting lost, the good with the bad with the porny. They were subsequently able to furnish us all with the e-mail addresses and subject lines of the lost messages, so we could contact the senders to let them know that we didn't recieve that important e-mail they sent.

99% of mine were porn spam.

Because whatever they did didn't work the way it was supposed to, we went back to our old system of letting it all through. I'm quite sure that they are filtering a good portion of the spam already, and I would be getting a lot more if it weren't for the existing system, but it cannot be difficult to set the filters to reject messages with certain words. I am quite sure no one I conduct business with will ever be sending me an e-mail with the word fisting in the subject line. At least not in my present line of work.

So the porn continues to flow in. These are a few of my favorite subject lines from the past weekend:

OMG, I was tricked by a tranny
Black Booty Banging
Real Homeade Squirting Bloopers
Turn your spud into a stud
Cartoon Hentai Skanks are always sick in bed

2004-03-11T17:41:00.000-05:00

Driving to work this morning I saw a dog running alongside the road. He was wearing a collar. I could hear it jingling through the closed windows. I wondered where his owners were, and if they knew he was gone, and if so, were they missing him? I wondered if he was running away, or trying to run home.

Dogs are not the smartest animals when it comes to cars and roads. Last summer I hit a dog while driving to work early one Saturday morning. It popped out of nowhere, like a deer leaping from the woods it came out of a band of trees on the side of this back road and darted out into the street. For about 2 seconds it ran alongside my car, but I knew what was coming. I stepped on the brakes but I couldn’t come to a complete stop before the dog darted in front of my car. I wasn’t going very fast, but it was fast enough to launch the dog up into the air and send it rolling head over tail into someone’s front lawn, maybe even the house where it lived. My car finally stopped, but the dog never stopped moving. It eventually spun back up onto its legs and bolted into a field of weeds behind one of the house. I got out of the car but the dog was gone. I don’t think it was limping, but it happened so fast.

I called SweetieKins freaking out. I had hit a dog. I don’t even kill bugs. I pick spiders up and let them out into the backyard. And here I had not only hit the dog but I couldn’t even help it. I was mad at the family for letting their dog run wild. I was mad at the dog for not letting me help it. I was mad at myself for not moving fast enough.

I hope the dog is okay. I hope its family noticed it limping and took it to the vet. I hope I didn’t hurt it, just scare it. I hope I scared the family into taking better care of their pet. Every time I drive down that road I think of that dog at the spot where I hit it.

By the time I got to a place in the road where I could pull over this morning, I saw in my rearview mirror that the dog had veered off the road and was heading into a field. Safe passage little pooch. There’s a biscuit waiting somewhere for you.

2004-03-10T18:45:00.000-05:00

Slowing Down

Last night in yoga class I was reminded to appreciate the clarity of slow growth. A new student was lamenting to the teacher how he is becoming frustrated in the class, having been taking the class for several months and noticing how much more advanced some of the other students are. I understand the frustration -- I was there once myself, the inflexible guy in a room full of bodies of seeming rubber. I didn't hear the instructor's response, but as I was driving home I knew what she was saying to him.

Yoga is about the process, not the end result. And the yogic process is slow, glacially slow. I was this guy 10 years ago, when I first started practicing yoga, and I'm still 10 years away from a lot of the people in the class and at least 20 years away from the teacher in terms of ability. But I don't let that bother me. I could drive myself crazy trying to be the person across the room instead of recognizing that where I am is important for me to learn what I need to learn in this moment. Yoga is discovery, and like life, the deepest, most enduring lessons take time and carry both the price tag and reward of commitment. We can all benefit from accepting ourselves in the moment and welcoming the opportunity to change.

The century plant, an elderly couple walking hand-in-hand down the street, the Grand Canyon, homo sapiens, Mount Kilimanjaro, the Dead Sea, the sky.

Tonight I honor my teacher for showing me the grace in advancing slowly and learning to breathe through the challenges. I look forward to the future, and taking my time getting there.

2004-03-08T19:01:00.000-05:00

My husband (who shall heretofore be referred to as simply SweetieKins) and I have officially crossed over into white trashdom. Last week our mailbox fell down -- cracked at the base of the wooden post from years of rotting and fell over into the front yard. The mailman drove up, looked at the beaten up mailbox lying on the ground, and drove away. I think it's some kind of law that they are not supposed to leave mail in a box unless it is off the ground. I'm sure somewhere in the annals of post-office bylaws there is a formal written statement to this affect, but the post office people told my husband that they just won't leave the mail unless the box is off the ground.

We went a few days without mail delivery. Normally this wouldn't be such a big deal -- the mail to me is like the phone, unless I'm expecting something I have no use for it when it beckons. But the mail this week was different. We are waiting for several checks, our tax refunds and also a check from the sale of some stocks. So this was a bad week to not have mail. The post office will hold the mail for you for a few weeks (after that I am not sure what happens to it, maybe it gets sent to a dead letter office or finds its way back to its senders) so it wasn't like our checks were just going to disappear or go home with a post office worker. But having to drive across town and wait in line at the post office to get our mail was a pain. And I didn't even do it; that was SweetieKins' task.

I'm getting to the white trash part.

I finally had some time during daylight hours this past weekend to assess the damage and get over to a home depot and fix us up real nice with a new mailbox post. But we live in New England, and despite the apparent softness of the ground from all the late winter rain we have been having, the ground was just to frozen to dig more than a few inches. I couldn't even get the remains of the old post out to dig a new hole to put a new post in.

Realizing the futility of the task, I ended up in the garage looking around for a bucket or something that I could prop the old post up into just to get it standing, something temporary until the ground thawed enough, maybe a few weeks, until i could fix it the right way. Well, we had no buckets, nor anything shaped like a bucket.

But we did have something better. A Christmas tree stand. Now our mailbox sits at the end of our lawn proudly waiting for its first mail delivery. We even had some heavy wind that first night and in the morning it was still standing. I'm so proud I could have my picture made next to it.

The mailman was driving up the road the day I put our "tree" out at the curb. I stopped him and asked him if this would suffice until the ground softened. He assured me that as long as he could reach it from the car, it was fine with him.