Category: Just Because

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It Is Like Riding a Bicycle!

Ben and I are hooked on home improvement shows. You name it, we've probably watched it at least once. We have dreams of someday buying the place we're renting from our landlords—as ridiculous as that sounds—and we've lived here long enough that we've come up with some ideas about what we'd do to the place if we owned it and had a large, untapped bank account.

There don't appear to be any glaring structural issues other than one long crack that runs through the concrete floor in the den. The bigger issue is the age of the house (built 1948) and all that date implies: knob and tube wiring, lead paint, asbestos-laden plaster, ancient plumbing lines, and asbestos insulation in the roof are the four that immediately come to mind—all of which would require a complete gutting-to-the-studs to (as Mike Holmes would say)—make it right.

Then there is the physical layout of the house. That is where the fun really starts. We've got so many ideas floating around that I knew I had to get them down in architectural form—even if nothing ever comes of it. (It's important to dream, after all.)

So I fired up AutoCAD and began the task of drawing our little house as it is and how we'd like it to be. Yeah, I'm a little rusty at it, and the latest version of the program does some things quite differently from how I remember it working back in the day, but on the whole I haven't forgotten nearly as much as I thought I had. Of course I haven't gotten into the really technical stuff like dimensioning and cross-hatching and whatnot, and I need to wipe some cobwebs from my basic architectural construction knowledge, but I'm sure it will all come back. If not, I still have my AutoCAD "bible" from years ago that got me out of many a "How do I?" jam even then.

And y'know, it feels damn good to be doing something creative. I didn't realize how much I missed that.

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Mark All As Read

My normal weekday morning routine consists of getting up at 6, letting the dogs out while I dispense their food, and then sit down for about ten minutes to skim my newsfeed before Ben's first alarm goes off, signaling that it's time for me to get in the shower. After I'm showered and dressed, I make my breakfast and then return to the news feed for the next half hour or so while I'm eating before I head off to work.

I wasn't much of a news junkie prior to moving to San Francisco in the 80s. It was there that I developed the habit of reading The San Francisco Chronicle during lunch, concentrating on the local news because I wanted to learn as much about my newly adopted city as possible (and of course, to see the daily Bloom County).

Of course, with 9/11, I—like the rest of the country—was glued to my television every waking moment as the story unfolded. As I recall, it was around this same time that I started reading more news online, and ended up with a list of sites I visited every morning to get my daily fix. It wasn't until I met Ben many years later that I learned about News Readers (R.I.P. Google Reader) and I was able to consolidate everything into one convenient package.

Just as the internet diversified, so have my online interests, prompting me to sort my feeds into various groups: Audio Equipment, Blogs, Politics, Tech, Picture Blogs, and of course Menz.

This morning upon my initial perusal of the Politics group and as I read the headlines, I thought, "Nope. Not today Satan. Not today," and immediately marked all as read. I don't need my entire day colored by news of hateful people doing hateful things.

Don't get me wrong; I adore Joe.My.God. and Towleroad. But frankly, if it weren't for them I probably would never have heard of people and organizations like Brian Fisher, Todd Starnes, Mat Staver, "One Million" Moms, The Alliance for Defending Freedom, or the rest of the circus sideshow of right wing lunatics salivating over the thought of imposing a christian theocracy upon these still (the last time I looked) secular United States—because frankly those individuals and groups aren't as important as they think they are.

So today my plan is just to keep knocking down the Politics folder as read without actually reading anything in it every time something appears and see if it improves my overall mood any…

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He Spoke French to the Counterman

December1, 1940. Schrafft's, 625 Madison Avenue, NewYork

"Patrick and I just stuffed ourselves at Schrafft's. Do you know what your silly nephew did? He spoke French to the counterman. Imagine anybody speaking French to a counterman at Schrafft's. Show-off."

If you don't know where that quote came from, please just turn in your gay card and your copy of the Gay Agenda immediately.