I Only Drink to Make Other People More Sociable

Four nights of drinking seriously took its toll. Not just the drinking as I also smoke when I'm out like that. Went through three packs, which my lungs now inform me is excessive. I wasn't going to go out Saturday night but Zac harassed me via text and voice mail until I did. Almost didn't go out last night but it was the last day, I'd asked for a half-day off, everyone was going to be there, et cetera.

I didn't do any events this year… even skipped the parade. Mary said she'd catch me for a few things and John was doing a bunch, but I only went out for the dancing and drinking. No one that I was interested in was available. Had some randoms interested on each of the different nights yet didn't follow through on them. Did go home with Andrew last night since it was nice to have someone there without wanting to do anything.

Walking home from his place this morning I felt relieved that Pride was done with. Guess I've grown more jaded and less supportive over the years. Even going to bigger/different ones doesn't sound appealing. Was committed to going to Southern Decadence this year but even that makes me think “Meh” right now. Maybe a few days of good sleep will change my mind. *snicker*

How Many Books I Haven't Read

This meme is popping up everywhere and I felt like it was worthwhile to do. There's way too much Thomas Hardy on here for my comfort (I added strike-thru for books that I will never be read) but I was pleased to see a number I've never heard of. About to finish the original three of Brooks' Shannaras so I should work on some of these next.

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you LOVE.
4. Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Weak Legged Fox

While I was noticing and liking differences in the new Firefox, I'm back to 2.0.0.14 for a while. Using the Portable Apps distribution allows me to safely have both. Too many crashes though. It's probably the add-ons, but I cannot live without Adblock Plus. Patience.

Twenty-two Inch Pythons

Sometimes I'll take the Touch to the gym. It's nice to have the menu/display to pick play lists or specific tracks. I don't worry about a hard drive to jar and destroy, either. Yet the Shuffle looks all trendy when it accessibly clips to my sleeve. So I went the the accessory aisle at Target and picked up Belkin's Sport Armband.

Thankfully I tried it on at home first because it didn't work out. I was barely able to secure the Velcro binding in place. Then when I flexed, it popped off every time. I felt like such a stud going up to the Service Counter and telling the woman there that there was nothing wrong with the band, it simply wasn't big enough for me. *giggle*

Pure fantasy, of course. My arms have very poor definition and it's the fleshy parts that make the band snug to begin with. Will have to find one not tailor made for circuit boys and anorexics.

May Equality Live Long and Prosper

'Star Trek' star to marry partner
Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:26 PM ET

WEST HOLLYWOOD, California (AP) -- "Star Trek" star George Takai is ready to "live long and prosper" with his partner of 21 years.

Takai will marry 54-year-old Brad Altman on September 14th in Los Angeles.

The 71-year-old actor, known for his role as Sulu on the "Star Trek" sci-fi TV series, was the first to pay $70 for a marriage license in West Hollywood early Tuesday. The marriage license is good for 90 days.

Takai was jubilant, saying "it's going to be the only day like this in our lives and it is the only day like this in the history of America."

He told reporters and a swelling crowd outside the West Hollywood city auditorium "may equality live long and prosper."

The California Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage.

© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

So sweet it makes me wanna set phasers on Kill. *snicker*

I'm Just That Butch

Was happily typing away on the computer last night when I heard a loud pop then a small storm; scared the snake out of me. It sounded like it was coming from the toilet or behind the wall. It stoppped before I could pinpoint it. After a few minutes the storm resumed. It was actually the water running inside the tank. It was late and I obviously wasn't thinking when I lifted up the cover to see what was going on.



Not sure what that thing is actually called, but it jumped a few inches when I freed it, allowing water to spray everwhere. I let out a string of explitives while I bent over to turn the water off. Mopping up the bathroom tile… great way to end the evening.

I refilled the tank manually this morning so I could take care of business, but I was down in the office first thing. Pretty simple to fix but I wasn't going to be doing it. *smile*

Fight Back Against Activist Judges

I like how many of my friends are doing some of the same spying I've done for years. If nothing else it's amusing. The rest of the time it's great to be on the inside track. Like this eMail I got an hour ago from the wack jobs over at HumanEventsOnline.com that they forwarded for the National Organization for Marriage. It opened with:

STOP SAME-SEX MARRIAGE IN CALIFORNIA

We've succeeded in the first phase of the most critical battle in the nation over the future of marriage. On Monday, the Secretary of State of California certified that we had the signatures necessary to get the California Marriage Amendment on the ballot. Thanks to the efforts of everyone who prayed, donated, volunteered, circulated or signed the California Marriage Amendment petition, the voters of California will have the chance to overrule our Supreme Court and protect marriage in our state.

But now we face an epic and historic battle over the future of marriage. It will affect us all, whether or not we live in California. If we don't pass the California Marriage Amendment you can be sure that same-sex couples will travel to California from other states, return to their own states and sue to overturn their home states' marriage laws. California is a pathway to same-sex marriage around the country and is the epicenter of the fight over the future of marriage in this country. It's as simple as that.

I just have to laugh. Like a virus, the gay will spread if we don't stop it now now now! It's always the purveyors of “Christ-like love” that go marching down the hate-filled warpath.

It was a long message with all the usual fear-rattling, hate mongering, collection plate shtichk. I particularly like this part:

How will this impact you and your children and grandchildren?

We know from the experience of other states that if we don't overturn this decision, there will be attacks on our beliefs, our religious institutions, and our civil rights.

For example, Christian adoption agencies could be ordered by law to treat same-sex unions just the same as marriages; Christian charities and schools could face new attacks on their tax-exempt status, and other government penalties for deeply-held religious views.

Sound far-fetched? Alarmist? No, it's already happening--here in the United States.

That's right! Right here in these United States!! Those Activist Judges gunna get the gays some marriage licenses then put God's head on stick out on the White House lawn. It would be just horrible for children trapped in the foster care cycle to find a loving home. Christ would never approve. Conditional love for all!

*sigh*

Sparing a Dime

Got back from my volunteering so I'm in the usual funk. At least I haven't cried yet but I'll prolly get weepy after going over it all. Got slotted for what I now think is the most difficult position: doorman. Basically I keep a cheerful face as I greet each person in a line that run out to the street and along the sidewalk. I hand them a ticket that helps us keep a head count and socialize when the line gets backed up.

Most of the people were pleasant but I felt so affluently white. Fresh from the gym, I must have looked to them like some sort of part-time bleeding heart putting in my few hours a month for the dregs of humanity. Definitely feeling the guilt I suppose. I did fairly well partnered with the sweetest little woman Karen. There were one or two times I was a little worried about her so I had to puff up.

One man was a bit too drunk. Once he'd left, one of the managers came up to let me know he wasn't to be let back in and there was one guest who wasn't going to leave until he was gone. Kept an eye on him as he crossed the street. The blind man he had been harassing came up with nice hippie girl to escort them. I warned them where the drunk was. After ten minutes the drunk returned and, sure enough, when we opened the doors to let a few patrons leave, he made as if to come in.

I placed myself in the middle of the doors. After pushing Karen to the side, I placed my first in the center of his chest to stop his advance then told him we were closed for the evening. He looked at me directly and asked, “You're going to refuse me?” with a slight slur. I cocked my head with a less menacing smile to return his look while letting the question hang there for a moment. Then we both laughed as we took a step back and I told him to “Go ahead and sit back down out there.”

Was a very tense moment that Karen and I were quick to laugh off after closing the doors. I mentioned something about my two years of Karate in junior high. His shirt wasn't that concealing so I was pretty sure he didn't have any weapons within easy reach. I was fully ready for him to take a swing. It would have been interesting since I'm sure my reactions would have been a lot faster, but his arms and chest were as big as mine.

Anyway. It was an experience. I actually felt doubly bad because I wasn't “doing” anything. Karen and I had to stay up there even as people were cleaning up. While it was nice to have the appreciative comments on the way out, it was difficult to keep from sounding robotic when returning the “Have a good evening.”s.

Headed out a little before 7pm. I pulled out my $300 fuchsia RAZR to see if I had any new messages. Then I got into my $30k coupe to head home while my $500 iPod Touch pounded a Christopher Lawrence CD from my speakers. Got up to my $900/month apartment where I'd left the air conditioning on all day so it would be nice to come home to. Such extravagance that becomes blindingly apparent after watching 212 people come in off the street for dinner.

Some of these people are doing relatively well as I listened to them swap stories. Some are not. A host of smells passed by me, from the basic unwashed human flesh to hard alcohol sweat to mouthwash. There were many stressed veins and dark patches at the crook of the elbow. When I hear Compassionate Conservative line, which boils down to “Get a job.”, I have to shake my head. How can these people do that when they struggle for the basics on a daily basis?

I will be doing more volunteering with the partnered churches, but I'm going to have to find ways to do more.

How Cute!

Went up to Fudruckers for lunch with the coworkers. Could have sworn the cutest little guy at the register was checking me out. So when I went up I tried to be as cool as possible while ordering. He asked for my first name for the ticket. So in a snarky voice I purred, “Well, what is your first name?” He laughed as he told me, “Scott.” So I thanked him then handed over my signed receipt with a direct smile.

Sure enough, as I was getting my water he looked over at me three times. Then again when I was picking up my order. Would have waved on the way out but he was off stacking plates. Silly moments like this make all my flirting worthwhile. Of course, he was 19 at the most but I'll take whatever I get these days. Going to be 35 in two months. *sigh*

Been a While

Tim gave me a ride into work this morning—sorta novel. The plan is to sneak out a little early then he's going to pick me up. Hopefully we'll beat the weekend rush hour traffic; with so many people living across the border, it gets wild.

So we pull up to the front of my building and I lean in for a kiss when my boss walks right in front of the car. I laughed then said, “Oh look, my boss.” Tim wished me a good day at work after another quick peck.

My boss was holding the door open and said, “So… getting rides into work now, eh?” I was actually blushing, which he enjoyed pointing out. “Did you think I would be surprised?” he asked as we walked back into the department. Was hard to explain what I was feeling. Whatever it was, it did feel nice.