Milestones

As of last Saturday I have officially been a homeowner for a full year. I closed my condo on March 24, 2006. As of yesterday I have been actually living in the condo for a year.

Additionally as of last October 22, 2006 I have worked at WPI for 5 years. On August 23, 2007 I will have lived in Worcester for 10 years.

It's amazing how major milestones seem to creep up on you.

Read More

Spring is in the air

It's not really here yet, but the weather is finally getting warmer and I've had the opportunity to leave my windows open today to get some fresh air into the condo.

I had a bit of a birthday bash yesterday and it was a lot of fun. It was great to see everyone including some old friends that I haven't seen in far too long.

Going backwards I've had a pretty good week. I watched "300" with some of the Crow brothers on Friday. I have to see it was far better than I expected it to be. It was a bit on the bloody side but it wasn't as gory or out of line as you'd think it would be with that much blood. The story was well done and the direction of the movie was fantastic. The pacing was very tight and it didn't feel nearly as long as it actually was.

Later that night I had dinner with Pace who made Cider Chicken with Mushroom sauce. It was fantastic. That, coupled with a very nice Chianti (no, Judd, there were no fava beans involved) made for a very nice evening with a friend.

Wednesday through Friday turned into an impromptu movie marathon with Pace. Wednesday we ended up going to Chili's for dinner and during discussion it came up that he'd never seen "Jeffrey" so I insisted he come over and watch it. The next night he came over and had me watch "A Dirty Shame" by John Waters. It was hilarious and fairly well done and there was just something surreal about seeing Selma Blair with watermellon sized breasts and big frizzy blond hair. Friday's movie of choice was "Camp" which is something anyone who's ever done theatre (musical or otherwise) can appreciate. We'll have to think up some additional movies to watch for D term.

Last Sunday I had dinner with Travis and Terence. It was nice to see them again. I made Linguine alla vodka and it was very good. I need to start cooking new things more often. I have found that I very much like to cook.

I definitely need a bit of a vacation. Maybe I'll take a week off in May. I've got 15.5 days left to take. A few long weekends in June, a week off in May or June. We'll see how it turns out. Maybe I'll even take some time in the late summer, go camping or hiking.

Read More

Ann Coulter has reached a new low...

and I really didn't think that was possible.

At the recent American Conservative Union’s Political Action Conference Coulter was speaking and used the term "faggot" to describe Democratic presidential nominee John Edwards. At the same conference last year she used a derogatory term for Arabs.

Before I continue here are some articles on this:
MSN: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17458248?GT1=9145
Advocate: http://www.advocate.com/news_detail_ektid42507.asp
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYFijV9pOsE

I can't believe that there are people who still listen to this woman. She is a pure hate-monger. Why she would make a joke about the recent situations with Tim Hardaway or Isaiah Washington. If she knew about the situations enough to make the crack that saying "faggot" requires you to go into rehab to spin your image then she should have known that it was also very derisive and inflammatory and that both instances caused great uproar around the country. How exactly does she thing that this kind of talk is acceptable?

Read More

A kiss is just a kiss...

It's funny how you browse the web and you read one article that takes you to another article which takes you to another article, which makes you read something which makes you think about this other thing and then so on. That's pretty much how my mind works in general, kind of a free-association montage. Anyone who's had a long conversation with me can attest to the fact that it can start somewhere and go just about anywhere before it's over and neither me or them will realize we've even left the main topic until much later.

It's in that regard that I was looking up an article, which reminded me of a show, which had someone who played in another show which remdinded me of another show and I decided to look up the actors and what they are playing now. In my travels I came upon a quote from Gale Harold who played Brian Kinney on Queer as Folk.

Over the years, as I've talked with people about being gay, once people get past the basic questions they start getting curious about the finer details. One question I get time and again is "What's the difference between kissing a guy and a girl?" Now, there is definitely a difference but it's never really been something I could define. It was more of a "je ne sais quoi" than anything else. Gale's bio had a quote from an interview he had with Flaunt magazine which answered that very same question. I read his answer and it just clicked that what he was saying was describing the "je ne sais quoi" that I couldn't quite place. And with no further ado...

"Kissing a man...it's more animalistic. There's a primal drive with men and you can feel that the second you start kissing. It's much more visceral than kissing a woman. Women take their time. There's more play. It's not a mad dash to get your rocks off. And kissing men who, even after they've shaved, have the roughest skin. I've got the worst fuckin' burns on my face."

Interesting the things you find on the web.

Read More

What's going on

Well it's been a while since the last time I updated. My sister is doing well and I hear that my neice is now 10 lbs. I'm not sure that I'm yet quite at the point of dealing with the fact that I'm an uncle.

I've gotten a temporary roommate so the pressure is off a bit. I still have to find someone starting in June. Hopefully I'll find someone that will stay for a while and that can put some stability back into my finances. Since I got a roommate I've followed through on finally getting my new dining room set. It'll be delivered on Tuesday. It's a counter-height, espresso finish table with 6 chairs. I could describe it further but I'll save you the additional 920 or so words.

Overall, life is going well. I had Travis and Terence up for dinner this evening and it was really nice to reconnect with friends I haven't seen in a while.

Work is going well. I'm still very busy with the new responsibilities but it's a lot of fun doing new things.

I did my taxes this weekend and hopefully I'll get the refund soon. One thing I want to do is buy a new bike and use it in the late spring through the fall to ride to work occasionally and to go biking on the weekends. Should be fun.

Read More

A day to dismember

So I finally took down my tree today. Since it was so big and now so dry and dead I decided not to bother trying to take it down whole and ended up cutting it into pieces so I can bag them and then dispose of them.

Last Thurdsay was the WPI IT Department's "Procrastinator's Holiday Party" which we ended up doing in January simply because people were far too busy to do it in December. It ended up being a smash hit and I got a lot of emails thanking me for hosting. It was a lot of fun and I'll probably end up offering up my place for next year as well. We'll just have to do it a bit sooner so my tree isn't practically dead for the party.

Read More

Cute baby

So I visited my sister and held the baby yesterday. She's so cute and adorable. I held her and she was small enough to hold in just one arm. It's so weird to have a niece. I'm not sure I'm quite ready to be an uncle. It just feels surreal.

Read More

It's official...

... I am now an uncle. Makayla Lee was born at 2:23 pm at Brockton Hospital today. 8 lbs and 18 inches. Mother, daughter and father are doing well. More information as I get it.

Read More

A whole lot goin on

Yeah, so the whole "everyone's getting married" thing still hasn't settled down much. I already have three scheduled for this year so far.

My brother's is in May and we're going to pick out Tuxes on Friday. The fun part is that we're going not just for sizing but to pick out the style and colors. As I've told my brother, this is one of the perks of having a gay brother; I get to help him make sure he looks good. I've also promised the fiancée that I'll make sure he looks good too. Now the big challenge is that my brother is not a dress up, formal clothes kind of guy. His idea of dressing up is a nice pair of courdoroy pants, a large sweater (which he looks like he's swimming in) and his t-shirt untucked underneath it. If you're lucky, he'll shave too. The thing is that I want my brother to look good since its his big day and I want him to hold his own against his beautiful bride-to-be, but at the same time I don't want him to look completely uncomfortable. My thought is that we'll go with something a bit edgy and modern for the tuxes. Very clean and simple looks. We'll see how it goes.

The next thing is that I get to help plan Cate's graduation party. You heard me right, Cate is gonna graduate this May. Maybe that's the reason for the odd weather. When Matt Crawford graduated it snowed in May. When Cate Carrigan graduates, it doesn't snow all winter? Hmm... I'll think on that. This should be fun. I'm meeting with her and Betty sometime in the next few weeks.

The final big thing is that one of my closest and dearest friends, Colin, is getting married in April. It should be a blast and I'm going down early to visit. Now I know I've mentioned he's getting married before but the new thing is that he's just asked me to be an usher, to which I couldn't be happier to say yes. Now a really fun trip is going to be even more fun and special.

As you can see I'm going to be in tuxes a lot this spring. Of course this means I have about 3 months to get in shape so I look good in said tuxes. Ahh, such work. :)

Read More

Now that was odd...

So the weirdest experience happened this morning. I was in bed and was in the process of waking up. I'd already hit snooze once so I was in that whole lightly sleeping stage. All of a sudden I heard a woman's voice very calmly and softly say "boo". It felt like someone had leaned over my ear and said it. It wasn't like someone trying to scare me, more like someone trying to wake me up. I woke up and there was no one in the room, nothing was out of place. It wasn't even the alarm since that went off about a minute later after I was wide awake. Also, this wasn't a dream since dreaming voices are kind of different. This one felt like I was actually hearing it. I could almost feel the breath on my ear. Very odd.

Read More