09.17.10
NYC Apartment Living Room Redeux
Sep 2010, Apartment Living Room with new furniture and art
07.07.08
Render, dammit. Render!
Yeah…I’m not sure why the page isn’t loading correctly. It’s obviously nothing I’VE done so point the wagging fingers elsewhere. And I’m back in OmaHaHa so do the math.
UPDATE: Yeah…still not sure what it is except I truncated the tagline from “Bladerunner” and that seems to have mostly fixed the problem. Lucky ducky, no doubt.
06.24.08
Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom
I’m in Omaha, NE, for work this week and as this is my first stop ever in Nebraska, I’m happy to have some time to explore a bit. A quick review of the internets made it apparent the only place to stay was the old market area of town which is several blocks of old, renovated buildings turned into lofts, condo’s, restaurants, and shops. It’s all old brick streets and from the quick swoop through last night on our way to dinner, it seems pretty nice. I’m hoping to get out more this evening for another walk around.
On the way back from the client site last evening, one of my co-workers expressed surprise at how brown and washed out the city feels. I agreed though wasn’t too surprised, thinking that Omaha is exactly as I pictured it, neither good nor bad, just rather…beige. It’s not a large city by any stretch of the imagination and on the flight in yesterday morning, you could see the patchwork quilt of fields running right up to the very edge of the city. Not much suburbia around, that I can tell.
As this is the Omaha Rainbow Tour, celebrating Pride month, I hit two of the four listed gay bars last night, all of which are conveniently located close to the hotel. The Omaha Mining Co. which is billed as the leather bar was hosting just me and the bartender last night, neither of us wearing leather. I’ll have to give it a pass since it was Monday night and really, there isn’t a bar that can really come alive on a Monday. The Max, which is suppose to be the big dance club, was the second place I hit. It had a few people but it was honestly a throwback to the one gay bar in Dayton everyone went to back in my early 20′s; all gray walls and musty carpet with tinted black glass panels. The music was good, though..so there is that.
Overall, nice place to visit, but probably not moving here.
06.09.08
Where Do We Go From Here…
My time in Philadelphia is drawing to a close. After six weeks and two engagement extensions, we’re wrapping up the project and bugging out. My weeks have gone from reasonable hours to excessive, excessive to the point where my performance mentor has called twice to let me know I’m working at about 136% utilization. Supposedly there is some point when utilization hits a certain point and an email, I’m guessing, is generated so that the people who care are notified and can “reach out” as we say in consultant land. I appreciated the gesture, both times really, but honestly, you don’t think I don’t know that I’m working the kind of hours that equate into 136% utilization? I’m just saying.
But Philadelphia has been good. It’s a city I hadn’t spent much time in though honestly, I guess I could still say that since I haven’t hardly left the gayborhood except for a martini run at the Continental diner that one time. So for me, Philadelphia is the gayborhood and that’s OK. Good food, good architecture, good-looking menz, and street cruising. I’m even a regular at a bar and I haven’t ever had that, anywhere, not even (or, especially) in New York, where I’ve lived since 1996.
So I’m departing Philadelphia this week with another engagement under my belt, this one challenging and difficult in ways that I hadn’t expected, but better for it…always better for new experiences, pleasant or not. I’m NYC bound next week and slipping in a short 5K corporate run next Thursday then it’s off to my next assignment the week after which will carry me through until the end of July. I understand jealousy can greet me, even from the best of friends, because of my cosmopolitan consultanty life-style, getting to jet off to strange and exotic places, seeing and meeting new people. This of course is always the “one-after” engagement meaning the one after this next one coming up, which for me just happens to be in Omaha, Nebraska. I mean, Omaha, Nebraska in July…all of July. And me with my whole humidity issues and East Coast mentality; a recipe for disaster, I’d think. In preparation, I’ve shaved my head down to my buzz cut so I don’t have to deal with hair product and the perfect zshuzz of curls styled ever so carefully to look like they effortlessly fell that way out of the shower. As far as the East Coast mentality, I’m not sure you can even get a 136% utilization rate west of the Mississippi, even if you find that elusive 25th hour in the day. But I understand Omaha does have some gentlemanly pubs of a certain caliber and I was raised in farm country, after all, so I’m sure I’ll be able to slip in, under the radar, and figure it out.
05.28.08
Hrrrmmm….Batman
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.
05.23.08
The Staycation
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.
05.22.08
The Bronx Bombers
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.
05.16.08
Better Art
This is an amazing demonstration of how good art can be. It combines some of my favorite things about art: innovation, stop animation, and use of public spaces. I would have loved to watch this getting made.
05.15.08
The City of Brotherly Love
I’ve been traveling quite a bit for work lately…ranging from Michigan to San Francisco but have really been in Philadelphia for the most part. Strange that all the time we’ve been in New York, I’ve spent so little time in Philly but I’m finding the city fantastic. Of course I’m only seeing about a 12 square block part of the city and it just happens to be the gayborhood, but still, fantastic. Great restaurants, great buildings, and a great city just to walk around in. Even though my work hours are stretching into the ridiculous range each day, I’ve managed to end up at the local neighborhood waterhole for gentleman for a night-cap and meeting really nice people. Definitely a keeper city.
11.20.07
Transitions
So after 12 years of being at the same institution, I’ve finally embraced one of my biggest fears which is, for anyone who doesn’t know, taking risks. I went out and found a great new job and resigned from what has been my home for a long, long time. Change is hard and I’m not one to crawl out from under the warmth of a super security blanket, but it’s time to grow and try something new and risk failure but also risk actually making it work.
Being at an academic medical center for so long, I’ve grown accustomed to the environment, people, and how things operate so moving out into a for-profit industry is something completely new to me. Also, I’ll be traveling 4-5 days a week all over the US. That was really a big selling point for me as I’ve always had the wanderlust. So now I get to keep Jeff AND travel. I could be coming to a city near you! We’ll hang out and have drinks and you can discover that I’m much more boring then my blog would suggest.
So I’m in the final four weeks of my departure and the blog is back up and running. Yay me!