@ the famous south beach

@ the famous south beach gay bar, palace!

mohitos and cigars @ an

mohitos and cigars @ an outdoor cafe in south beach... does it get any better?

eek! i'm in the land

eek! i'm in the land of the golden girls - no better way to start the holidays = )

plate #4

plate #4, "the lunch plate" - 9th floor

• black/green/kalamata olive chips with garlic and olive oil (super yummy)
• two more meringue cookies (so far my favorite today)
• a chocolate dipped marshmallow
• cinnamon sugar apple bread
• and a single tiny cherry tomato

i may be getting full...

plate #3

plate #3 from floors 8 and 10

• "scoops" tortilla chips
• cheese popcorn
• some cookie thing
• chocolate fountain!  but nothing to dip

i must say that the eighth floor wins the "dud award" so far for goodie day.  why?  they have very little food, no variety between sweet and salty, and a chocolate fountain with nothing to dip in it... oh, and the fountain is half way across the floor from the actual food room - bad planning eighth floor, bad planning.

plate #2

plate #2 from floors 9 and 10:

• pecan pie bar
• red and green gummy rings (i think they're lime and cherry)
• another meringue cookie
• peanut butter cup cookie
• peanut brittle
• ham/pickle dip and chips
• two spritz cookies

all IS goodie day - plate #1

the IS department at my company (which i'm asked not to mention online per company "social media" guidelines) has a food day every year in december.  imagine 450 people bringing in food to six different conference rooms for an entire day - it's overindulgent madness to a level that could only be found around the ever-so-christ-like holiday season.

but i digress...

it's barely 8:00 am and i've already consumed several pieces of hard candy, three or four pickle rolls, a meringue cookie, a caramel dipped marshmallow, some raspberry cookie thing, and a deviled egg.  plate number one down, about four more to go.

backlogged

uf-dah

just got back from a weekend w/ the folks down in nebraska and braved snow-mageddon on the way home.  the twin cities got about 20" of snow last weekend and the city is still at a standstill.  public schools are closed for the second day in a row and traffic is gridlocked.  walking to work is even a difficult task trying to navigate which sidewalks have been plowed, which ones require a hike over a five foot tall mountain of plowed snow, and which ones have black ice on them.  life is tough, i think i'll go on a cruise!

three days till miami and five till the sunny caribbean!  i hope to run into orlando bloom on the black pearl while we're cruisin around the caribbean... maybe he'll even force me to walk his plank  *smirk*

annual christmas rant

it's time again for my annual foray against all things christmas!

this year's rant begins at the polls where some 75% of people in the US say they identify as christian.  i find this number perplexing as i certainly do not see 75% of the people around me acting like they're christians... especially during their favorite [usurped] time of year: christmas.

according to christian's christmas songs, this is the season of peace on earth, goodwill toward men (i'm assuming they allow goodwill toward women now, too), that jesus is the reason for the season, and that in the midst of darkness there will be shining a new light.  yet i continue to see nothing but stress, frustration, disorder, anger, and underhanded attempts at childish stealing and line budging.  i hate to say, but i've been to several different malls for the requisite holiday shopping since thanksgiving and i've been cut off in traffic on the way there, cut off while walking through the mall, pushed aside in the aisles of stores, ignored when i help someone out with something, cut off while waiting in line to purchase items, and in general, haven't seen one adult actually smile.  based on the belief system of christianity and the number of people who claim they're christians, i have no choice but to conclude that i have been shopping at the malls where only non-christians shop.

if christians were living their bible/religion/holiday as they say they were, then i should be seeing smiles, less anger, more happiness, and at least SOME generosity during this time of year.  but every year, i see less and less of their "reason" and more and more of their "season."  

sit on my lap

i thought i was passing by santa on the street on the way into work this morning until we met eyes and  i did NOT see candy canes and gingerbread men in the returned sparkle but, rather, saw a plump old man with a beard that looked more like a leather daddy than a jolly ol' elf.

*shrug*

i shouldn't be surprised, guess i always figured santa to be a kinky old man...

giving thanks

i like thanksgiving a lot, well, at least i used to.  nah, i take it back, i still do, i just find myself getting more discouraged with it every year as it becomes the holiday that simply begins the holiday season (christmas season, to be exact, since most people like to reject the fact that there are several other holidays celebrated in the next six weeks).

i like thanksgiving because it's not a religious holiday, besides the fact that people typically say a prayer of thanks before their meal.  i like it because it's not as commercialized, besides on the food network.  and i like it because it brings loved ones together for the sole purpose of appreciating what they have in life and in each other rather than what's under the tree.

both john and i missed thanksgiving with our families this year since we both worked the day after and a trip to omaha or bemidji just wasn't logical.  we're also going to miss spending christmas with our families this year because we'll be on a caribbean cruise.  taking those two in mind, i have to say that the holiday i will miss the families the most on will be thanksgiving and not christmas.  mainly because i like to be thankful for my family and for my family-in-law without the overshadowing cloud of "jesus was born to die" bullshit that, itself, overshadows the original celebrations of the holiday by jews and pagans.  i like the traditional meal and i like the colors.

don't get me wrong, though, i LOVE the yule season - hell, our place is already decked-out with greens, but when it comes down to it, i appreciate thanksgiving because of it's modern purity.  i guess it's lucky to still be as pure as it is because of it's placement so close to the most commercialized holiday this planet has ever seen.

so with that i give thanks, for love, for family, for inner-peace, for friends, for snow and ice, for my husband and our life together, for a secure job, for a comfortable life, and for a holiday that is positioned so perfectly so as to force us to stop and be thankful before we begin to obsessively think about how to make others thankful.

why i'm not on facebook

the $64,000 question: why the hell am i not on facebook?

 

well, it started off as simply my way of saying, "fuck you" to social networking; i didn't want to be one of the millions who joined just because everyone else did.  this is a habit of mine in life: if everyone loves something then i'm less likely to see/do/drink/smoke/read/buy/lick/love it.  it's a silly thing, i know, but it's a part of who i am so i just don't fight it.

 

but then, over the years, i started seeing friends trickle away from my life one-by-one.  they stopped emailing me, stopped texting me, and i didn't received invites to parties anymore.  all-in-all, i started losing friends and i had no idea why.  it wasn't till i started having people ask why i wasn't at a party or at the bar or at a movie did i realize it was because those friends had swapped physical and traditional contact with other humans for the face-less social network called facebook. 

 

it was also around this time that i started noticing that when people ran into each other after not seeing each other for weeks/months/years, the first comment out of their mouths were, "are you on facebook?"  not, "how ARE you!?!?!"  or  "what have you been up to!?!?!?"  or  "let's get together!!!"  but, rather, "are you on facebook?"  for some, this was out of the mouths before the other person had a chance to fart.  most commonly, these conversations ended abruptly as the other person ran off to their more important task at hand.

 

what happened to the days of standing around in the condom aisle at target to catch up with that extra-special person you just ran into with whom a condom broke seven years ago?  laughing at the irony of running into them and wondering if you could give it another try for old times sake?

 

what happened to having conversations at parties that didn't revolve, almost entirely, around what so-n-so said on facebook the other day or how funny their status was or where they went to happy hour?

 

what happened to seeing some hot thing at the mall, sneaking into the nearest changing room, and getting it on - or sitting in the mall food court to laugh at people walking by.  now, people just flirt online (sometimes without even hooking up - what a waste) or they just spend hours on facebook looking at other people's pics, and then their friend's pics, and then their friend's friend's pics?

my husband just joined facebook a few weeks ago - he has caught up with some old friends and connected with existing ones, but i keep asking him - how deep are the actual conversations, if you can call them that at all?  sure, i over-the-shoulder facebook occasionally but i get sick of it and wander off within minutes.

my only question is, if you have 500 friends on facebook, how many of them are actual friends?  does knowing when someone went to target or the bathroom or to bed substantiate "friendship?"

green with envy

our season ticket package to the minnesota orchestra brought us to a most amazing evening with idina menzel on friday night.  we had perfect eighth-row center seats that granted us an intimate look at her gorgeous floor-length purple gown with a broach on the waist (accompanied by a dry cleaning pin that she futzed with the entire evening as it jabbed her side like a sword - i guess she knows how jebus felt now).  she also did the entire concert barefoot which left the concert feel even more intimate, almost like you were lounging in her living room with while she sang some tunes for you... with a full orchestra behind her.

she sang a diverse repertoire that highlited her days in rent and wicked as well as poker face from her recent stint on glee.  i loved that she had such an amazing mix of generational love in the room from the gen x'ers (rent) to the gen y'ers (wicked) and the millennials (glee).  each group got their ear-full of wonderful memories and more than their share of misty eyes - of course, though, the gen x'ers were the luckiest out of the bunch being able to fully appreciate her talent in all ranges of her career.

perhaps the most unexpected part of the evening was her gut-wrenching humor.  she told stories that made you want to shit your pants you were laughing so hard and her interaction with the sign language interpreter was priceless; complaining that the word 'bitch' deserved a better sign and wondering how he was going to sign 'breast feeding' and 'muffin' (yes, THAT kind of muffin).

there are lots of videos popping-up online of the performance, some good and some bad (none with as good of seats as we had) but they're a pretty good recap of the wonderful experience.

oh, and yes, she ended the concert, appropriately, with defying gravity  = )

married bliss

so, on to the "legally-married fag" part...

almost four years ago, now, i went to my apartment building's holiday party and got trashed beyond belief.  while there, some cute little thing, dressed all in black, swept past me and stole my heart - we married fifteen minutes later at city hall.

okay, not really - lol.  there WAS a party, and there WAS a man in black, and he WAS cute (is STILL cute...), and he DID sweep past me and my friend troy as we were drinking to the holidays - but he didn't steal my heart at that moment, as a matter of fact, all i really wanted to do at the moment was make out with him because he was so cute  = )  i got my wish by the end of the night but didn't get to get much closer to him because my friend troy swept in, himself, and stole him for himself with his greedy little hands.  

which, of course, didn't work because - duh - he was meant for ME!

fast forward almost a year after meeting this beautiful and fun man, john, and he and i decide to finally start dating; and then move in with each other nine months later; and then at a most unexpected moment in the middle of a friend's wedding reception, he leaned over and said, "will you marry me?"  i believe my response was something along the lines of, "huh?"  he repeated the question and i said, "for real?" and he said, "yeah, let's go to california and get married!"  (note - california still had legal same-sex marriage in 2008 before the nazi morman fucks stuck their pretentious noses in another state's business and scared the voters into overturning a perfectly harmless law).  we ran off to cali the last week of september, 2008 with four friends and got married!!!  for your voyeurs out there, here are pics of the wedding taken by our incredibly talented friend, ben  = )

the rest is history!  we just had our 4/3/2 anniversary on 25 september (4 years knowing each other, 3 years dating, and 2 years married) and things just keep getting better and better.  i guess i never really saw myself as the type to "settle down" but i have to say, i think i've settled into it quite well - life is good  = )

next installment: why the hell am i STILL not on facebook?

honesty, my biggest fault

i don't know when it started or why it started, but i have a tendency to be an open book with friends, family, and co-workers.  most recently (this morning), i was getting up from my desk to go to the bathroom when a co-worker said, "stop!  where are you going?"  to which i replied, "i'm going to go poop!"

*shrug*

i guess bodily functions just don't phase me...

sunday recap

well, we didn't end up getting drunk by 3pm  = (  we started drinking at 1pm but went so slowly that we really didn't feel anything till 4-ish.  but by then we were starting to get tired so we went from tipsy to tired... i just can't drink like i used to, getting old sucks.

thought of the day:  how does an adult male working in a fairly large company in a large metro area manage to smear his own crap on a toilet seat?

i leave you to discuss...

may i introduce you

i'd like you all to meet my husband:

me: i really like our new laundry detergent.

john: really?  why?

me: because it smells so good!

john: yeah, but is that because it has more chemicals in it?

me: no, it's biodegradable.

john: my shit is biodegradable, too, but it sure as hell doesn't smell good...

what can i say?  i married my best friend  = )

yep... your eyes aren't messing with you

i've made the official decision to start blogging again, why?  because i have too much to say and not enough people to say it to  = )

i got my master's degree, i got married, i went on another trip to europe, i had my 10-year anniversary at my company, i started teaching college classes on the side, and i'm STILL not on facebook - what can i say, it's been too long since i've blogged!

my pic-hosting site went under (dip-shits) so i've revampped my blog's face - enjoy!

i'm off to start making some bread and sit around home on a snowy november sunday.  my husband (WAY more on that to come) and i have made the very-adult decision to be drunk by 3pm, take a nap, and then get drunk again... life is good  = )

off to the bread and then more postings - i've missed this - yay!!!