05.29.08
Posted in Too Much TV at 5:04 pm by Beau
“…Of course. You’re the guy who is always wherever women gather or try to be alone. You want to eat with us when we’re dining in hotels. You want to know if the book we’re reading is any good or if you can keep us company on the plane. And I want to thank you, Ray Don, on behalf of all the women in the world, for your unfailing attention and concern. But read my lips and remember, as hard as it is to believe, sometimes we like talking just to each other, and sometimes we like just being alone.” – Julia Sugarbaker, Designing Women
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Posted in Home Life, The days at 3:27 pm by Beau
Just because this is where I am today.
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05.28.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:56 pm by Beau
There is something off about the new Batman costume in the forthcoming Batman: Dark Knight movie. Maybe it’s just reading too many comics (well come on now, of course it is!), but the whole neck piece isn’t working for me at all. I like my necks thick and meaty, flowing into some humpy lats. This costume just doesn’t look like that..and the cape looks almost like a different color. I’m starting to feel queazy about the movie already.
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Posted in City Life, The days at 10:35 am by Beau
I found the local gentleman’s hang out in the gayborhood here in Philly early on in this engagement and now manage to head down for a late evening cocktail a few evenings each week. Though shy, I’ve managed to engage the bartenders so I know know their names and they know mine and know that I like my Sapphire gin and tonic with extra limes. It’s all rather sedate but it’s a nice end to long days and it beats watching reruns of shows I could give a fig about in a lonely, sterile hotel room and pretend that somehow that is considered living.
Now that I have a regular presence, some of the locals are becoming familiar to me and I can watch them pass through, sit at their regular seats, drink their drinks and then head home, much the way I do. I get some stares and I’m never sure if it’s disdain for being an outsider or hunger for the smell of new meat. I smile through it all and engage in friendly conversation when the occasion strikes which suits me just fine. Nothing too heavy and my ring usually ends any conversations of indelicate offers before they begin.
Last night, a gentleman sat down next to me and I could smell his stale cigarette breath a mile off. He was sort of mussed about all over and I took it to mean he was probably on his regular bender. We chit-chatted a bit and he reference my ring and asked how long I’d been with my partner. After I told him thirteen years, I asked him whether he was with anyone to which he paused, smiled, and then told me it was complicated.
I was of two minds about this answer. Of course anything can be complicated but really, the question is pretty simple. I didn’t want to know any details about open relationships or crumbling circumstances or any of the drama that can liein between. I just wanted a frame of reference. But he sort of left it at ‘complicated’ and we talked a bit about the historic Philadelphia neighborhoods and blue-bloods and how New York is different but sometimes the same. We filled up minutes where I tickled the ice cubes in my empty glass until he finally circled back to his ‘complicated’ relationship. The ‘complicated’ part is apparently a wife and three kids at home in the Philadelphia suburbs who don’t know that when he’s out at a ‘meeting’ for work, it usually hooking up with guys who don’t care that he’s unavailable to them for a long-term or emotional relationship because he’s in love with his wife.
I guess I’m never too surprised about these things and while the justifications of his bisexuality really just cloud the deceit, I’m also not one to get militant or indignant about how stupid the whole thing is. I live by the “who am I to judge” motto, especially after a 12-hour day and a gin and tonic. So he prattled on and on, looking for some kind of something from me and really, all I could muster is a, “wow, that must be challenging” which is Grade A consultant speak for “Mary, pleeeeease.” Then he got it and left and I got back to my quiet chilling out with my empty, uncomplicated glass and thankful for it.
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05.27.08
Posted in Being Better, Home Life, The days, The garden, Word for the day, art, traveling for work at 8:12 am by Beau
I spent the weekend on my knees getting dirty. That can be taken anyway anyone sees fit and it would be true…or true enough, as it were.
Mark my words that come mid-August, it is best believed there will be some exhausted rantings about how fucking stupid it was to put out 20 Kirby cucumber plants, all for the love of pickles. I’ve warned Jeff already that him crying and whining about spending most of the weekends in August and part of September in the kitchen, over a hot stove sterilizing jars and boiling pickling brine will fall on very deaf ears. I just grow ‘em and do what I’m told. Seriously, mark it on your calendars.
The first summer naps of which I’m so fond was had on Sunday. Jeff’s mom spent the weekend with us and while we’d planned to do some shoping on Sunday and catch the new Indiana Jones flick, but by our 2pm departure, all three of us were cast in what probably looked like a fine funeral repose. All of us stretched out on the big new Pottery Barn couch/sectional thing we bought for the new screened in deck, snoozing away. I love the fact that I roused myself in the middle of it to find I’d stuffed my hand down Jeff’s pants right next to his mom. That’s how we roll with Charlotte. I would say this was a vast improvement over my normal routine where I’ve stuffed my hands so far into my armpits and clamped down with such force as to render both hands numb from a lack of circulation. At least in Jeff’s pants, I still had sensations…both in my hands and my pants.
So things grow. I put in a ton of periennials that I’d been meaning to do, trying to make the back flower bed off our porch into a butterfly and humming bird garden. Lots of cone flowers and black-eyed susans with a smattering of some different daisy varieties and a returning bed of bright red pom-pom’ed Mondara. I’m fearful that there is no good design in how I planted things but I think as long as they grow I’m content. I’m trying to slowly but surely kill my constant need for good design in everything because it renders me completely incapable of moving forward on any project.
I spent some time this weekend staring at the pig mural I painted on the side of our workshop. I’d link to the picture but it has once again escaped me to actually put the picture on some accessible media I could actually use. The closest I have is the pre-picture so imaginations will have to be used. I have visions and have actually researched on how to silk screen using a home-grown system. I think the mural would make a fine and spiffy t-shirt. Fine and Spiffy being my current direction in personal growth and flair.
Now I’m on that Tuesday-Feels-Like-Monday-After-A-Holiday schedule, riding the train back down to Philadelphia for work. All of which is still Fine and Spiffy with me, dirty or not.
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05.23.08
Posted in Being Better at 4:15 pm by Beau
Last year in an expanding search to get myself somewhat organized at work, I happened up Total Workday Control and have been foisting it off on anyone willing to listen. It uses MS Outlook (don’t be a hater! Some of us have to use what our employers tell us) to work the Get Things Done work philosophy. I had to do a fair bit of reading to find out all the skinny but of course that led to finding a huge community of organizers and work people who live and breathe this shit. So I gave Total Workday Control a whirl and I have to say, for me (and remember, I’m a simpleton), it’s a very good thing. I manage to keep my inbox completely empty each day, I have a better handle on all my tasts and responsibilities, and my overwhelming since of impending doom from forgetting something important has disappeared. It’s a process, of course, and it takes some constant, gentle attention, especially for me who’s nature state is to be porky, slothful, and day-dreaming, but it’s working out just peachy. If you need a helpful system, give it a look-see.
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Posted in Home Life, Uncategorized at 4:04 pm by Beau
Pleasently, I happened upon the word, staycation, today on Urban Dictionary. As its defined, a staycation is a vacation spent at one’s home. Holy shit but that’s what we’ve been doing for years. Who needs to go anywhere but home to tend to growing grass and fertile garden soil. I know I’ve been looking forward to this long holiday weekend for a while because I love a good staycation. Of course, for us, it’s a gaystaycation, but that’s just splitting hairs.
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Posted in City Life, traveling for work at 3:53 pm by Beau
The interesting thing I’ve noticed about Philadelphia, and maybe it’s true about any bigger city where more time is spent then just a day or short weekend, is that the guys around where I’m working are completely hot. Of course I’m situated in the gayborhood so that might have something to do with it, but overall, even my straight, female peers are noticing.
“These boys have their fashion on,” said my favorite one.
So eye-candy is a great, unrealized perk of this job. I have to say that getting cruised repeated is a nice ego stroke and something I’m not used to. Even today in line at Cosi for lunch, this hot cub was standing beside me and gave me the look over and smiled, to which I smiled back because I’m making a conscious effort to bury the shy, low self-esteem dorkus deep and far away. It’s even more remarkable because I, against my better judgement, shaved off my continuing attempt at facial hair before the client thing at Yankee Stadium a few days back. Without that slight shading along my jaw line, I feel like I have a Hutt waddle and a triple chin. I actually might but I still got cruised so yay me.
So luckily, our project is going to stretch into mid-June so I have a few more weeks to enjoy the city. I’m currently facinated with Matthew Izzo’s designer boutique which has some great stuff as well as a progressive hair salon in the back which gave me a great cut yesterday. He’s a total snack so it’s nice to go in and browse low cut jeans that I can’t get my fat ass into and see him hanging out in his own shop. The team is also currently working our way through some pretty great restraunts around Center City and Old City. I’m telling you, Philadelphia has it happening right now.
Of course my belief in the balance of all things leads me to believe that I’ll be cast out to some remote subburb of some no-name place for the next six months and all the good vibes from Philadelphia will dry up. But it’s only a short train ride from NYC so I can always find my way back.
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05.22.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:50 am by Beau
I was invited to attend my first Yankee’s game this week by a client which I would consider one of the perks of this job. For me, finally getting to see the Yankee’s play at Yankee Stadium in New York has been on my list of New York things to do forever that I just never got around to…which says more about me listening to Jeff then I care to admit.
Even though we were up in the client’s cushy, well-fooded and beveraged executive box rather than down in the regular seats with the real fans, it was still a spectacular event and the Yankee’s ended up putting the beat down on the Orioles, 8-0. Doubly special was the fact that this is the last season for the current Yankee’s Stadium which is being torn down as soon as the new stadium, being built right next to it, is finished up.
And…not only am I not a base ball fan, I know nothing about the game but it was still a blast.
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05.19.08
Posted in Being Better, The Blog at 2:40 pm by Beau
Michael looks exactly like Lee Pace (from “The Fall” and “Pushing Daisies“). That is all.
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