Category Archives: Personal Bits

Just things from my personal life

What Dreams May Not Come

Distractions, Personal Bits

Usually, a few weeks before a big vacation that involves an airport, I start having nightmares about flying. I can calm myself enough to get on a plane sober (or Gravol-ed out) but I can’t seem to shut off my sub-conscious fears, and they burble up from my inner id pit.

We’re 17 days away from vacation, less than three weeks. As of yet, nothing, thankfully. But last night was pretty close:

I’m walking through the halls of the Battlestar called Galactia and it’s festooned with images from the movie The Watchmen. I’m getting more upset because I know I’ve missed half the Battlestar series and the new, updated “Trekkie Toddlers”, Star Trek (joke supplied by CB). What this had to do with Dr Manhattan, I have no clue.

Suddenly the ship lurches and I know we’re going down. Now, I know that “down” is pretty relative to a near by astral body, would probably take a long time to actually happen depending on the angle of re-entry and the Battlestar is a massive ship, but in my dream, instantly the ship was replaced with an aluminum skinned death tube. Hey… it’s a dream.

I woke before anything else can happen. I’m hoping that the lateness in my nightmares will not be concentrated as we get closer to our departure.

The Early Gays

Distractions, Personal Bits

These last few Sundays, Sharkboy and I have been getting up at 6am, log our body stats (after a cleansing, lightening poo) with the Wii Fit and then hoof it over to the gym for Aquafit. Yes, we’re the only two gays at the Y at that time, most being still in bed after a night of smart cocktails and masculine fursuits at various bars and such. It’s another world, people. The class is nearly full and sign up is a must (last week I put down “Carlos” and “Rolando” as our names and got called out for it). Granted it’s not Woodys on a Friday night, the average age before we arrive is around 65, but we did manage to chat up a couple nice people, including a 50 year old woman with a sleeve tattoo. At 50 yrs old, I hope my back looks as good as her arm! The bitter queen in me has to mention here that a couple participants look like they’ve walked off the set of District 9 (I know. I’m not Olympic material myself, but I love making Sharkboy laugh with that analogy).

A few weeks back we got up early on a Saturday, made it to St Lawrence Market for some Canadian bacon sarnies at 7am and hopped on our bikes to the island. By 10:30am we were done and waited at the Hanlan’s Point ferry dock to go back home. When the skip arrived, wave upon wave of homosexuals disembarked, each giving us the “Where the hell are YOU two going? The party is on the nude beach!” eye. It was slightly embarrassing but yet felt good to be apart from that crowd. Not that I’m putting down a nice gay day at the beach, but I felt kind of justified for all my gay bar work in the late 90s: I could now look upon that constant party mentality and think it “quaint”.

I admit that we’re early risers. I’ve been getting up at 530am for the last couple months to accommodate my gym time before work, which means we’re in bed well before 10pm. If we’re out on the town, we’re yawning at 11pm and making sheepish excuses to go home. Yes it cuts into our social life sometimes but we can’t seem to help it. We’re both the kind of person who feels like the day is half done at 10am.

I guess we’re ripe to join a sports group or some early morning knitting club or something. I’d be all for a gay men’s Farmers Market Shopping Club. Imagine the looks we’d get just from our cloth bags!

Flu Crazy

Distractions, Personal Bits

I’m just one stomach flu away from my goal weight.

– Emily, The Devil Wears Prada

With the world going sick with Swine Flu, I managed to catch a nasty stomach bug on the weekend that laid me up for 24hrs.

When I say “catch” I mean eat 2 week old left overs in the fridge. I reap what I sew.

It’s funny, I’ve had food poisoning a few times in my life, twice so bad I wound up in the hospital. I always feel sorrow when I see a shark gutted open and a license plate falls out from their gut – not because of the humility of your stomach contents being paraded openly on PBS, but because my eating habits mirrored that poor shark’s. CHOMP!

Tuesday was a fog. I couldn’t think straight. I see today that I completed a few web corrections yesterday and haven’t had a screamy email saying I fucked up. My head was pounding and though I’ve never had a migraine, I could feel every pulse throb behind my ears.

“Is it the Swine Flu?” SharkBoy asked, hoping for workplace bragging rights.

All I could manage last night was a 1/2 cup of pasta (“Now I know you are sick!” says SharkBoy) and 4 large glasses of water. The evening was spent brainlessly watching The Karate Kid.

At night, in bed, I had chills and finally peace. I dreamed I was eating a huge fried egg sandwich with a stranger who hated everything.

The Secret (For CB)

Personal Bits

Lean in close, cb. Here is the secret to my 20lbs in two months! Ready?

  • Eat vegetables.
  • Go to the gym 4 times a week and while you are there, do at least an hour of cardio.
  • Go out and get yourself a book about nutrition. Not a fad diet book, but a serious book about how to eat right
  • Have your doctor tell you you’re going to lose a foot to Diabetes if you don’t change your lazy fuck ways. Have him threaten one last chance to change or be medicated for the rest of your life.
  • Watch as the guy who runs the laundromat near your house suddenly re-appears after a few weeks disappearance, with a leg missing.
  • Go swimsuit shopping in the most snooty gay store in the village. Try on something “outside your box”. Give yourself a full 60 seconds in the mirror while the precious shop queen troll is yelling “Is everything alright in there?!” on the other side of the curtain, for the entire shop to hear.
  • Look at the photos of the blogs of the guys you’ll be meeting at Gay Days at Disney
  • Watch in horror as someone cruises your husband as you walk together down the street, like an Italian construction worker walking the Red Light District in Amsterdam, and gives you the briefest of acknowledgment. Hello! Wedding bands!

In all seriousness, you have to motivate yourself. Tough love works on me sometimes. However, I’ve seen pics of you and I think you’re not overweight. I hear the internet removes 10lbs though.

New Camera

Distractions, Hobbies, Personal Bits, Queer stuff

IMG_0024Last Saturday I finally got an offer on my Casio camera and started into the fun process of weeding through online consumer sites that offer comprehensive and unbiased product comments ( here ends the seething sarcasm). “Camera good, wish touch screen!” Seriously, were these people sleeping through grade 10 English?*

I head off to BestBuy (I know… I know…) and had 4 staff standing around me at once not looking me in the eye. You know the eye, the one that says “I have a question…?” but is met with personal conversations between the floor staff, awkward maneuvering out of my field of vision and outright ignorance to my plea. In the end we went over to Blacks across the street where one of my compadres managed to rip the security lock off a display camera, setting off an alarm. As dutiful white boys we were, we stood there and waited for a staff person to come and shut it off. And waited. And waited. To the point where the alarm started to die and croak. We just left, off to Henrys where I was ready to drop my $279 (plus SD card and taxes) for a Canon SD780 SI. Until I found out that Henry’s flagship store isn’t open on Sunday. Huh? Oh well, Downtown Camera’s doors were wide open and I didn’t mind paying $10 more for the convenience. They were extremely helpful and knowledgeable about their product and bent over backwards to find a battery and a SD card so I could test the camera indoors. From now on, I’ll do all my demo testing at big box stores and then head over to specialty stores for my final sale.

SkyLine

It’s toted as Canon’s smallest, but no where near as small as the old Casio. It looks a lot like SharkBoy’s camera but with more beveled edges. It has all the familiar feel of my old A640 but without the big hard-to-move scene selector knob on top. Poof! Gone.

Prince Charles Gargoyle

They’ve moved around some items in the menu system due to the new AutoScene function – no more flicking through menu options to find the Macro or Fireworks options, the sensors see it and then set it up with one press of the shutter button.

It shoots “HD” as well, which means video at 1280×720 at 30fps with HDMI output (720p). Now I need to get a mini-HDMI cable and try it. You think with all the new doodleydoos for video they’d have autofocus during recording. For now, here’s a vid for you. Be sure to click on the HD button in the controls:


*I know… I’m one to talk. But come on…

Fat Jewelery

Personal Bits

I tried to rip SharkBoy’s underwear this morning. Not “off”, just rip it so he’d stop wearing gitch with holes in it (godforbidhe’dbeinanaccident!!) We wrassled and screamed like teen girls at a Zack Efron mall appearance.

In the ensuing struggle, my wedding ring flew off. I have lost that much weight.

The Lesson: First for Everything

Personal Bits

Two upper middle class, housework-shunning, career women sit down to lunch, order martinis and the topic of their children come up. A common complaint is discovered and a plan is hatched.

When I was 13 (ish), my mother announced I would be going out on a date. Imagine the internal spit take that generated. My mother… the matchmaker! I was appalled for a moment at the thought of her talking about my inability to socialize with strangers. And my social ineptitude… Wait… What? With a girl?

Holyshitwaitaminnit… A date with a girl??! Would I have to kiss her?

At this time I had already had sex with a man. I knew it was right, my hard wired brain was just doing what it was genetically told to do. But somewhere in my chest, a voice said “Oh fuck it! Give it a whirl!” So when you hear earfucks saying “Gay is learned!” or “Gay can be behaviorally eradicated from your system!” punch those fuckers in the nuts for me. It makes me physically ill to think that people can “cure” you by rote (or disfiguring electroshock). I digress. I decided to give it a whirl, despite the huge fear that was in my goolies.

She was my age and slightly gangly and while she was not the most popular girl in school, she was smart. Near genius smart for her age. I was more intimidated by that, than her sex. My mom stood just outside of earshot (which, by the way is physically impossible) while I made the call:

“Hello Dorcas…?”

Let’s stop right there. I am sure the reason Dorcas was so intelligent and wise beyond her years was purely based on the need to constantly explain to people her name was not a vehicle for child-like slurs. Get it out of your system now, I’m sure she had heard them all well before she was 5 years old in numerous playground and recess gatherings. Dork Ass; Door Knob; Dork Face; Dumb Ass etc. Years after our date, I had seen her verbally rip the skin off of some drunk fucker who called her out about her name, during a illegal teen drinking party. While her words were venomous, her eyes were dead set and almost blasé. She had her name defense response honed to an art.

Of course, her name was the first thing we talked about on our date. I thought I asked politely but my question still riled her. “It’s from the bible,” she told me, “Not that I’m religious or read it at all.” We then tore into how embarrassing our mothers were: from naming conventions to matchmaking. We were friends then.

But throughout the evening there was a voice in my head. “You gonna kiss her when this is over?”

I admit that the night was a blur. I do know we went to Star Wars. I do remember her telling me that hand holding was not required. I do remember at the end of the evening, after walking her home, standing at her door, (thankfully without any parent in view – we lived in an age when 13 year olds could walk the streets unattended) we did kiss. I think I kissed her teeth.

We became friends after that. Like “holy Christ we will never, EVER talk of this again” kind of friends. When Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back came out, we went on another “date” much to the amazement of our parents. I remember my Mom reeling like being hit by a slap when I mentioned Dorcas and I were going out on another date, three years after the last. We laughed hysterically at the end of the evening when I kissed her hand.

Two upper middle class, housework-shunning, career women sit down to lunch, order martinis and awkwardly avoid talk of their children.