Le StevieB

Birthdays for me have been a day to live if I was on another continent. This is one reason I drag my friends to the same restaurant every year. Every year on my big day I eat my birthday dinner at the same French restaurant in Denver, Colorado. The restaurant itself holds amazing memories going back to my childhood.

Back in the 80’s my family would drive by this Downtown restaurant. I would stare out of the car window and gaze at the building as if it were the Eiffel Tower itself. I would spend hours dreaming that Dack Rambo would fall in love with me and take me to this French Restaurant to express his undying love for me. What? I was twelve. And hopeless in love with Dack Rambo, or at least his jeans. In high school I would have to change buses near the corner where Le Central stands. During this time it wasn’t Dack Rambo but, Scott Bakula who would profess his undying love.

Today I turn forty, Dack Rambo has been dead since 1994, and Scott Bakula destroyed our love with Enterprise. But, the idea that I’m still here and can still dream of far off places and far off faces is still very much alive. The friends will gather around for my annual pilgrimage and together we will celebrate another year of us.

"Patience, Grasshopper"

I’m trying to be very Zen about the growing stack of boxes on the dining room table. The Femail Man came to drop a new one everyday for the last three days. They sit there, mocking me. They are soldiers awaiting the battle. A battle they will lose tomorrow. When their spilled guts will be my birthday presents. I can barely walk by them, unable to make it through the dining room without their low call. “Your birthday presents are right here! Trapped inside us!”


Torture. Tomorrow, will be my release.

The boxes arrive.

They get placed on the table.

Ripped open tomorrow.

My Personal Essay

I’m becoming a real college student. Well, returning to my old college ways. I completely forgot to do my homework, due tonight, until this morning. Read three chapters on “Writing a Personal Essay.”

Just look at that hat! Is
that not just the
sexiest looking thing.
Man, I love that hat.

I believe that learning how to write a personal essay will benefit me in some way… maybe it will help you stomach my blogging more than benefit me. Only time will tell. My path away form the corporate world, to its new degree and education will someday take me to the glamorous life of Forest Management. This requires a massive amount of science, once I've completed my last couple of classes in English. When I think about the amount of classes in ecosystems and natural science what motivates me, really, is the uniform. Is it wrong to pick a career based on a really cool hat?

I have a personal essay due on February 2nd, maybe I’ll write about how much I think US park rangers’ uniforms are amazingly cool. Keep me motivated. Or, maybe I should pull some obscure story form my past. I guess that’s the good thing about being a blogger, built in archives.

The Big 40

On this coming Saturday I will turn forty. I am honestly thinking nothing of it. Well, about the age thing anyway as I always revel in my birthday. For me it’s a day of luxury, to indulge in boisterous festivities.

Since this year the big day will fall on a Saturday, my adventurous day ‘bout town can be shared with friends. We will make the annual pilgrimage to my favorite Cajun style restaurant for breakfast, and then spend the day on a walking tour of museums in the city. I will be joined by friends and relatives on different stops along the way.

You are Sixteen, going on Forty...

Spend your birthday wandering around museums? Yeah, it’s crazy to think this, taking a perfectly good birthday and blowing it inside a stuffy museum. I would have thought this as well. I guess I’ll chalk this up to being forty. Isn’t this was old people do? When I was sixteen I wouldn’t have dreamed that I’d even make it to forty, much less spending it looking at art. It would be such a boring, un-cool way to waste your time. But then again at sixteen I spent my days lounging in the grass of Cheesman Park, eating nothing but gas station nachos. So really who was I to judge? Shut up, sixteen year old Steve!

My fortieth year will find me in a museum gift shop. This really is why I go to museums in the first place. You get to play with cool stuff in the gift store, and act like a sixteen year old.

Gymuary

We are past the mid-point of Gymuary. The newness of going to the gym has worn off and this week begins the tipping-point where it’s easy to teeter on dedication. The gym shoes may be forgotten in the trunk/boot of the car and instead of coming to the gym, something “more important” maybe thought up as an excuse to not put these new cross trainers on and hit the gym’s rubberized floor.

For the last three weeks the gym has be filled to the breaking point with new members. Whole new waves of preferred members start to stagger in right after January first. This group made New Year’s resolutions to dedicated their time to the gym and pump some iron. This is always done in the effort to start anew on a workout routine and finally get their bodies in shape. The gym calls these folks “preferred members” because they pay the joining fees, then after thirty days never come back to use the facilities. No surprise, the gym prefers it this way.

For three weeks dedication ran high. When a gentleman unracked one side of a bar throwing the bar and its remaining contents onto my foot, I commended his dedication. When pausing between sets on the Preacher Curl Bench and a guy stepped in front of me to toss an empty bar onto the very bench I was using, I applauded his commitment to showing up and swearing his allegiance to the gym. Everyone makes mistakes when starting on a new path, never let it sidetrack resolve.

This will be the week to test the metal. With loyalty wavering, will the gym shoes be left in the trunk of the car? Will Gymuary end and February find these devotees have moved to Preferred Membership, or will they join us? The few, the proud, the Dudes at the gym. I for one, implore you to pull the shoes out of the trunk, strap them on and hit the weights. Before you know it, the excuses will fade and your half-hearted New Year’s resolution will simply be a way of life.

Tina Louise will Never Forget Saab

Saab Automotive has declared bankruptcy. Those selfish Swedish jerks. What are upper-middle class gay Homos going to drive now?

There was a time when you would walk down Cedar Spring Avenue in Dallas, Texas and you would find the streets lined with Saab Convertibles. Row after row of boxy, vapor-locking convertibles. The running joke at that time was the easiest place to pick-up a sun tanned gay boy wasn’t the baths, but the Saab service waiting area.

My realization that there was a tendency for the Mo’s to drive this unique vehicle came after my first date of the third guy I dated upon moving to Dallas. As he pulled up I realized that he was sporting exactly the same car as the last blind date. And the same car, in a different color as the one before him. Like a gay boy’s Groundhog Day.

Strangely, the three Saab dates were as photocopied as their cars. On the last, I sat in the leather covered passenger seat trying to retain my ingénue aloofness as the early evening humidity enter-twined with gas fumes and circled around us. A quick joke about every gay man in Dallas having bleached blonde highlights to match their bright yellow Saabs was still lingering between the seats. To change the subject I ask about his hobbies, outside of highlighting his surfer blonde hair. His remark about loving Tina caught me with surprise.

As we turned onto the highway, I started to dissect his statement about Tina over and over in my head. I found myself turning into James Lipton, if he were to interview an actor in an open-top on a busy beltway. Why would this guy be so adamant over his love for Tina Louise? Sure we all loved her as Ginger on Gilligan’s Island, and when I adamantly agreed with how much joy Tiny had brought into my life, my date responded as if he’s found a kindred spirit. I just didn’t understand what this guy saw in an aging television actress.

After that date, I made a pack with myself to never date another guy who drove a Saab convertible. My third date in a new city and I was already judging men by the cars they drove. For quite a while I was hard on myself for being shallow, that not associating with Saab owners and Tina Louise fans was just me not opening my horizons. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that the date with the Saabs had taught me countless lessons. Less about the type of cars that people drive, and more about people who are desperately in love and hopelessly devoted to Tina Louise. And, yes. It was a full three years later that I learned that Tina was slang for crystal methamphetamine.

Working (or not) From Home

I believe that I need to be wholly done with working from home. No, not that my job is going anywhere, it’s just that I might just have reached the end of my rope with the “home office” thing. When the bosses announced that they were closing the company’s local office and setting everyone up to work from their homes, I applauded the decision. That was June. Now I find myself stir crazy to the point of missing cubicles and noisy office mates.

As an early birthday present I finally bought a web streaming DVD player. At the time of purchase I didn’t calculate how, given my personality, I might never leave the house again. The ability to access Netflix movies and TV shows, gives me the opportunity to watch every DVD on the planet without ever having to walk down the drive and retrieve discs from the mailbox. Other than the gym and Jack in the Box, I might cocoon myself into my own little world.

Since everyone has been speaking of Downton Abbey, I summoned up the first series on the shiny DVD machine. Dear God, it’s amazing. But, I now find that when I’m reformatting spreadsheets and calculating monthly reports, I’m beginning to think about how easy it would be to just walk down the hall, push play and watch another episode. I’ve started to think “I don’t need to go to the gym today. I worked out yesterday.” It’s quite possible that, given my druthers, I just wouldn’t leave the house. Aluminum foil over the windows and keep the streaming crack coming.

Did you know that Dominoes has an app for your iPhone? It’s very handy for shut-ins in need of home bound substance. By evening time, I am just wired enough from the liter of Diet Coke the Dominoes delivery guy brought with the cheesy goodness that anyone trying to formulate social interaction gets hit with a tidal wave of pent up frustration. The frustration that comes from being trapped inside all day wondering if the Younger Countess of Grantham will break the Estate.

Six months of working from home and I thought I had a routine. Work a little, go work out, maybe a run, then an early afternoon of TV before school. I think I need to change it up a little bit. Get more social interaction in my day; because I never realized that a day without face-to-face interaction was going to affect me in a way that was detrimental to... well anyone trying to speak to me.

Martin Luther King Day

Today we celebrate Martin Luther King Day here in the US.


Today is actually my favorite Federal Holiday. This is because of all the bank observed holidays on the calendar, MLK day is one that I can actually connect with. Maybe it’s just because Dr. King was more recent in our collective experience. His ideas and concepts were filmed; two clicks and you can hear his own voice echo through YouTube. You can see for yourself the pain and determination in his eyes. It’s more than just his life on film, it more likely the fact that he was the first man to stand in front of us as a country and state that we should judge ourselves on our character, not the color of our skin and mean this declaration.

It seems that my day will be quiet and peaceful; it makes me smile to see our local parade on the television. I can just sit back and enjoy the televised speeches. This hleps me remember that every year I would join in the parade in Civic Center Park, downtown Denver. They call it a “Marade” half march, half parade. This was never truer than the year that the Klan came to town.

There was a time when every elected official in this frontier town was a Klansman. The city was owned, stock and barrel by the KKK. On this most memorable MLK Day, I was amazed to see that from the 1930’s to the 1990’s we, as a people, had grown. The Klan attempted to demonstrate as the peaceful citizens gathered to celebrate Dr. King’s dream. What they didn’t realize was that the city itself gathered to make it clear that the white hooded hate mongers were not welcomed in our city.

As the demonstration progressed the police had to stop bussed in neo-Nazis from causing havoc. The tear gas clouds wafted through the park as riots were stopped. I attempted to make my way back to the front lines to take a stand, while the gas forced my eyes shut. Barely able to breathe from the fumes, I joined the hundreds of demonstrators as we linked arms and stood our ground. The KKK and neo-Nazis were not allowed to make any ground. On that day or any other.

Take some time today to watch some YouTube. Might I suggest this…

Road to the White House '12

On the main street of my town sits a diner. This diner is small breakfast themed Inn that decided to update its decor by installing flat panel televisions upon every wall. Apparently the televisions only receive sports and news channels. As I work from home, this diner has turned into my morning break room. A morning break room that is now only filled with politics.

As I sip on my coffee in a booth with a great view of the largest TV, I started to compose a blog post on how much I hate televised US politics. This is when I realized that being a blogger for more than four years; I could just go back and repost my incoherent rants about the campaigns in ’08. This is when I realized why I hate American politics so frickin much. The last election was filled with Democrats spewing forth campaign promises on how positive change is needed. The Republicans are now jack booting around tearing everything down. Everything in society is wrong or on the wrong path, we are doomed to failure unless Dominionism is installed.

I am a positive individual down to my core. The glass will always be half full to me, although I am far from having a Pollyannaish outlook. The tearing down and making examples of everything that is or might be considered wrong in this country only feeds fear. A fear that takes reason and locks it into an abandoned car’s trunk/boot somewhere in a  God forsaken junkyard.

My morning diner has turned into a battle ground for the dumbing down of America’s intellect and reasoning. I guess I should start taking a book with me to breakfast.

January

The first week in the New Year seems to bring a strange time. The holidays are over, and the wasted day of destroying the house in your hung-over attempt to un-decorate, has given you a home clean of glitter and sparkle. I am always happy that the trappings of the holiday have been swept away, giving back valuable floor space and clean counter tops. Life is suddenly is free of Christmas tree cookie jars and dead eyed Beefeater themed nut crackers.

For me, I am excited that the pomp and circumstance of the season is done. Pack away party going sweaters and back to business as usual. This feeling usually lasts just a couple of days. Then I realize that it’s just January, nothing special. If you happen to live in Denver, the weather seems to understand that the bland time of year is upon us and gives the city a week of amazing warm and sunny days. If you live in Denver and you’re gay, this invites you to spend time in Denver’s Cheesman Park.

Last week the temperatures just brushed seventy degrees. This gave a couple of sunny days for the sun to melt the remaining snow and ice from shady sections of Cheesman’s sidewalks. I took the hint along with countless others, to go and enjoy the park. For me it was my first run since before Christmas. My first run since Christmas cookies, Christmas ham, and sausage bread took priority over exercise. On a sunny running path, I started to burn it all off. The food and treats, the parties, the time spent on the couch watching Christmas in Connecticut all needed to burn off.

Sweaty and exhausted I did it, the first trip back to running in the park. With it being Denver and all, within forty-eight hours the temperature plummeted and the snow fell. We are back to snowy and cold winter weather. Somehow though, we were given a warm introduction to the New Year, with its four months of winter appetizer, and I’m ready to get back in the swing of things.

Back To School

The best part of turning forty in twenty-two days, yet being a college student, is that you can roll out of bed to go meet with your college advisor and still be the best dressed person in the school's administration office. Clearly, it was wear your dirty sweats to school day.

As I sat waiting to speak to an advisor, I realized that the sweatpants were all on incredibly hot lads also there to receive advisement. At this point I had to remind myself that the dudes in the dirty sweatpants were born well after Morrissey released his Viva Hate album. I have found that I can simple stop myself from cruising hot guys at school is to ask myself, would this muscled guy next to me been alive to purchase R.E.M’s Green album? No? Depeche Mode’s Violator? Uh-oh. How about Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral? Crap.

Okay, so maybe I should pay less attention to the male student body/bodies, and more time on my class schedule. This semester choosing my classes was a little more problematic than the fall semester. The class timing was off; the school’s gym closes at 6pm, the cafeteria stops serving pizza at 8pm. I clearly needed to find an English Literary class that fit between the gym and pizza before my last evening class. Feeling that I had my priorities in line I was disappointed to find that my plan wouldn’t work.

My visit to school today was to help me prepare for the Spring Semester. What I’ve learned is that I'm not going to get hot pizza between classes, I might be a pedophile, and to blend in avec les masse I need to stop washing my sweatpants. Oh, and neon colored high-tops. I need unnecessarily bright high-top shoes. Like I wore back when I bought Morrissey’s Viva hate album.

Resolutions 2012

I am a man of complete and sometimes all consuming ritual. I do seek out change in my world and I am always up for new adventures, yet when it comes to little daily tasks I grumble when my path is changed. Part of my ritual surrounding the New Year is making New Year’s Resolutions. I believe that most people half-heartedly say they make resolutions; however, commitment to these is as solid as my commitment to TCBY. I know it is supposedly better than ice cream, but four bucks a cup?

Here are my blogged resolutions from the last four years:

2008, 2009, 2010, 2011

I like to keep my resolutions attainable. Sure, saying that I’ll drive through Paris in a convertible is easy, yet will it happen in 2012? Most likely, no.

First on my list is to go to a diner named Pete’s Kitchen and have a Breakfast Burrito Supreme. For me, this symbolizes the essence of having a good time, stemming from my teens and twenties when I spent way too much time at this diner. It’s more of a reminder to stop and enjoy my life.

I am aware that making a yearly goal of eating a 1,900 calorie breakfast burrito isn’t the healthiest resolution to make; I also have my abs in mind when I resolve to make my Apollo’s Belt pop. You know, Apollo’s Belt, also known as the “Brad Pitt muscle.” Along with finishing my school year with high grades; I think that my resolve to my resolutions with propel me through 2012.

Let's Go 2012

I ushered in 2012 by sitting in a hot tub under the stars, high in the Rocky Mountains with several friendly and gracious bearded gentlemen.

Let's go!

I would urge anyone who gets invited to a New Year’s Eve party held in a mountain cabin far away from civilization to definitely accept the invitation and attend. Without the constant light pollution from the city the stars gleamed brightly, as if to show off their own fireworks to celebrate the coming of a new year. The stars shining upon the mountain snow, the chrome of the four wheel drives, and champagne bottles filled me with excitement for the New Year. 2012. Here we go.

I am incredibly ready to launch this year. Today, I’m almost chomping at the bit to return back to my routine. I understand that the time between Christmas and New Years is designed to be a time of relaxation and to enjoy time with friends, yet every year on this day I’m ready to return to the habitrail that is my daily rut. The traveling to see friends, the parties, and the time spent with family is a lot of energy expelled. Take New Year’s Day, after the evening spent hot tubbing, our group meets for a gestalt breakfast then sets out on an expedition through the hinterland to collect new retail items. Unsere kampf, or our master plan is to score incredibly cheap deals on holiday items. Items to pack up with the ribbon and décor to help kick off next year’s celebration.

With the New Year finding me in a mountain-side cabin, I believe I’m ready to jump back into my world. To take on 2012 with gusto and style. So, for me it’s back to work, back to school, and back to documenting my journey here.

The Tebow Beard

“Yer [sic] sporting a Tebow there!” Said the fifty year old man sporting the dice themed Hawaiian shirt behind me in line at the coffee counter.

The “high-roller” was pointing to my beard, sans a moustache. As I turned to the cashier and handed her my debit card “No! I’m Amish.” I said this in a huff; the gentlemen stammered not knowing what to say to someone of the Amish faith. Drinking Starbucks, in a gambling casino.


Being Amish, I don’t normally spend time in the casinos nestled in the Colorado Mountains. Years spent by multi-national gambling organizations, blasting away entire mountains, paving over an entire mountain valley to make a smooth foundation for massive hotels and restaurants, all to supply an endless supply of Hawaiian shirt clad gamblers a plush carpeted oases to spend their cash. They went through all that trouble, I should use it more.

 

I happened t be in this gaming temple because my Father is in town for the holiday. Although there are casinos in Boise, Idaho it’s nice to visit other casinos in your travels. For us it was how we spent our Boxing Day, two Sisters and the Dad. Out for a wacky time.



The Kitler!



I suggested the casino that had a Starbucks, because the only money I had planned to waste was on a Venti Caramel latte. This is when I ended up with a Tim Tebow beard. Great, the man that show-boats his direct line to Jesus Christ and Jesus’ apparent love of the Denver Broncos, now has usurped the Amish’s beard? Does he plan on destroying it for the world like Hitler and his cats? No one can sport a jaunty tiny stache without someone saying, “Ooooh, really? A Hitler?” Now if you choose to don a beard without the trouble of fur on your upper lip you’re going to be called a Tebower? Hand me a razor.



Christmas Evie

It's time for our annual message from Evie Harris.

Merry Christmas, Mary.

Ron Moore

This morning I got to the point where if one more person wished me a Merry Christmas I was going to force feed my garland down their throat. Then, out of the ether I received this comment on a blog post I did at Christmas time in ’08. It was about my memory of Ron Moore, a gentleman I dated back in the Middle Paleolithic period. Reading this comment and my post reset my mid-December priorities. Funny how that happens, just when you’re at your most cynical, memories of loved ones can slap perspective into your head.



Ron Moore



"Nice to read your memory of Ron Moore. I never met him, but he was an idol of mine way back in the 1970s, when nude photos had just become legal and legit. I had a bunch of his photos from Western Photography Guild, and I thought Ron was the handsomest man on the planet. What really wowed me, though, was his ease and comfort with his own body. He wasn't a pumped-up muscleman, thank God, but he had a beautiful natural physique that he was happy to share with the world, and he looked like a really nice guy. I still have the photos. I'd like to read more of your memories of Ron. Enjoy the holidays! "

You can read the post here.

RT

When two men decide to share their lives together they have to remember that when it’s all said and done, they are men. And men have needs.

Every gay couple must have “the talk” to discuss the level of boundaries that they are going to allow in the relationship. Whether they base their relationship on monogamy, some level of quiet openness, play only as a couple, or totally open. They say that “open” relationships take the most amount of trust and faith in the solidness of your partner and the foundation of the relationship. I believe that any level of spending your life with someone will take the same amount of trust.

I hesitate to refer to these differing types of relationships as layers, yet I believe that the next layer to relationships would be a Triad. Having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. Insert gay Mormon joke here.

I am not opposed to triads. Although I can barely remember one birthday card, and shopping for two Christmas presents might send me over the edge. Not to mention that I  already sleep on the edge of the mattress because of bossy dog that takes most of the bed's prime real-estate, I’m not sure how I feel about another person.

I’m rambling on about this because as of Friday night at 9:00 PM I was thrust unknowingly into a triad relationship. The new addition is a muscle brute named RT. The other half, my other half brought a 2012 Dodge Challenger Classic into our happy home.

How can I compete for attention?

Saturday early; I’m pulled from my book and coffee for a ride in RT. As we race endlessly up and down the empty streets in our fictional town, the “other half” says, “I so love you!” “Ah, I love you to.” I say as he strokes the six gear shift knob. “You do? You really love it as well?” He half-heartedly asks as he downshifts.

“Take me home.” I flatly respond.

Can three-way relationships really work? I ask, as my two other parts of my triad plan on discarding all Christmas storage to make more room in the garage for the love fest.

The Yellow Rose of Dickinson

I really didn’t sleep at all last night. I was up worrying about a blog bud and his choices. It’s funny how cyber-friends work. You chat on line, interact almost daily, yet you never really meet the person. When they go through a hard time you want to jump in and help, even if it’s just a hug or a smile. Then you remember that they live on the other side of the planet.

When my brain is squirming late at night, I fall back on an eternal question in life. “Have you noticed Emily Dickinson poems can be sung to ‘Yellow Rose of Texas’"?

I can spend hours pulling Emily Dickinson poems out from the recesses of my tiny monkey brain and getting them to fit to the tune of the old Texas hymn.


Here's some examples...

BECAUSE I could not stop for Death, He kindly stopped for me;
the carriage held but just ourselves and Immortality.

StevieB. On Ice

Yesterday morning I was psyched about getting to go for a run.


The morning temperature was in the teens, and I found the running paths were completely covered with ice and snow. This was like Christmas to me, I love being out in freezing weather. I layered up my gear and switched to the knobby running shoes for off road, inserted my ear buds under two layers of cap and ear protectors. I set out to run through the ice covered trees and the sound of crunching snow under my feet.

Halfway around the park I encountered an intersection that was a solid sheet of ice. I gingerly navigated the mirror-like ice while mumbling my mantra “walk like a penguin, walk like a penguin.” I’m not sure when or why I began chanting this mantra, it was eons ago. I started to laugh out loud as I realized my rant about penguins not having anything to do with Christmas, then there I was evoking their ice walking prowess to stop the inevitable fall.

My concentration broken, I started to slide. Like Bambi on ice really, my legs stretched out in my running spandex. Sliding completely across the intersection I hopped into the snow along the curb. I quickly looked around. Not a soul in sight. No one saw my amazing show of athleticism and dumb luck? Drat.

Feeling amazingly full of myself, I spent the day feeling superior to winter and anything is can throw at me. I then retold my running triumph story to a friend I ran into as I left watching a football game at our local bear bar. Upon showing off how cool I was, I turned and slipped upon the ice and clumped down to the pavement.

That’ll learn ya.

December 11

Thanks to Jerrod for this.

December 10

On the tenth day of December...

 

 

 

Photographer Jeff Sheng's amazing Don't Ask, Don't Tell

 

Jeff Sheng Photography

http://www.jeffsheng.com/

 

 

 

Where Y'all From? Bitch.

It’s time to open the little door mark “nine” on your advent calendars.

Yesterday was the last day of class before the holiday break. I feel relieved to have my tests done, yet strange to not have the structure of school. I’m not great with changes in my habitrail. I might go stir-crazy until spring class starts. All that time spent at my gay coffee house without chapters to read. Torture.

 'I'm from a place where
we don't end our
sentences with
prepositions."

For some odd reason my English classmates had started to bond in a way I’ve never seen before. Like a group trapped during jury duty, or exhibiting Stockholm Syndrome they started to form a unity. Last night my last final was a time of release; I was surprised to be met with Christmas cards and homemade cake from my fellow classmates.

The big haired gal with the obsession for acrylic sweaters wanted to have my Facebook contact. Really, you didn’t get my Designing Women- How to remember prepositions tool, yet you want to be friends on Facebook? I’m very sorry, if you never saw Designing Women, we can’t be friends.

Before the test began, the hugs came out. As if we survived weeks after crashing our plane in the Andes. Resisting the urge to demand that a classmate stop pressing her man made fibers against my person, I brushed off the Facebook requests to deflect onto the final. Still this was better than the 19 year old guy, for whom showering is a monthly option, showed up to my first class, declaring his drunkenness, and wanting to squeeze my arms, “hard and slow.”

I guess I underestimated the power of school stress and test anxiety. Or just crazy people.

Finally Steve

Today is finals day.



I have two papers due and several major tests to take. As you might guess I was up late studying last night.  I was up into the wee hours re-reading the implications of Martin Luther on the Scientific Revolution and his stance on intransitive verbs. Maybe the intransitive and transitive verbs are for my creative writing class. It’s all a blur.

Evil coffee maker, you want me to fail.
Don't you?

My focus on finals carried over to this morning when after starting the coffee and walking the dog, I was greeted by the entire pot of coffee flowing across the kitchen Pergo at me. I suspect that I did not put the coffee carafe in far enough letting the hot coffee flow in a title-wave towards my delicate constitution. This spurred my cleaning ritual to sanitize the entire kitchen. Seeing my mad cleaning spree the dog wanted to join in and helped by licking up a large amount of the coffee tidal pool. Completely buzzed on Hazelnut coffee, my Chinese Shar-pei is then ran around the house rearranging the furniture and asking me to take him for ice-cream. In his heavy Chinese accent.


My belly is now full of coffee, my kitchen is obscenely clean, the dog has fallen into a K-hole, and I’m ready to cram the founding of Britain’s constitutional monarchy into my small monkey brain. After I study that, I should really study up on subordinating conjunctions.

Obsessed with Scott From Obsessed: Still

I wrote a somewhat innocent blog post back on the 21 of July, 2009. This particular day I had watched the pilot for the TV show Obsessed on the A&E channel. The post was how I was obsessed with the first storyline, “Scott” an incredibility hunky germaphobe dealing with mysophobia, a pathological fear of contamination and germs, and how the phobia was overcome by therapy.

Observe the creature in its natural
environment. *

I was obsessed partly because of my own bizarre cleaning rituals that rule my life. It is completely fair to say that I was also enamored by the utter hotness of Scott. Who knew that two years later it would still be the third highest linked/Googled post on my blog? Hundreds of hits have turned it to the top Google result. This has supplied me with endless emails asking if I know anything more about this Scott guy.


I have received stolen snapshots of Scott shopping for produce, driving, and buy Apple products. It’s like he has turned into a gay Big Foot. Sightings from his natural environment, blurry photo evidence of vague existence. An urban legend for the muscle worship crowd.




It is kind of odd how stalkerish behavior works. Once a month I receive an email pleading to share any information I have, to swap photos and share details. Each time I respond with, “If the guy wanted to release information, I’m sure you’d be the first to know…” I receive some sort of response requesting that I keep them in the loop. Loop? There’s a loop?


So go forth hunky gay big foot! Be free to wander quietly in your natural habitat. Don’t let the muscle worship Queens hunt you down. Run free! 

*The above photo appears to be the property of Scott Barnes Photography. No infringement is intended. Please visit sbarnesphotography.com 

Flock Me

On the sixth day of December…

The temperature plummeted to negative ten last night. I figured that this would be the ideal environment to march through the wilderness and chop down a Christmas tree. Nothing will break my lack of Christmas spirit then relentlessly tracking down an innocent tree and cutting it down in its prime.

Okay… so the other half stopped me from pulling the axe out of the garage, and instead decided to go to a garden center. It was a real rustic garden center. A manly garden center. We marched up and down outside in -8 degree temperatures for like five minutes before we headed into the green house for hot chocolate and carolers. But, I drank my hot chocolate out of a butch paper cup.

I picked out a flocked tree. Yeah, I never thought I’d like a flocked tree, but I fell in love and I figured anything to help my bah-humbug mood as of late.

It’s pictured very naked. Since I have finals all this week the lights and shiny crap will have to wait until the weekend. All things considered I’m deeply in like with my tree. Flock me.

The Annual Christmas Rant

Ahh, December 5th. It’s time to gather around and listen to Uncle Steve’s annual Christmas rant…..

WHAT THE F*#K DO PENGUINS HAVE TO DO WITH CHRISTMAS!?!?

Have you seen the inflatable, glowing Christmas crap that everyone displays on their front lawns? Big billowing snowmen, elves, and insidiously happy penguins. Seriously, What the heck to penguins have to do with Christmas?

At night it’s quite a cute little scene. A winter wonderland all blown up and bopping around to the forced air whooshing up their butts. During the day it’s another story, driving through any upscale neighborhood it's a reenactment of Jim Jones goes to Christmas town. Dead, flat elves and snow people scatter the lawns like a mass suicide cult hit the North Pole. A massacre of merriment. One half-inflated penguin dragging its self off the lawn coughing out,  I only live in Antarctica and parts of South America why am I even here?

Aaaaaaaaaghh!”

Snow Running

December 4th. 

I discovered a new high last year. It was late in the season, so this year I get all winter to enjoy my new fetish. Running in snow and twenty degree temperatures.  

I finding it a great way to gently ease into December.  Since my running path takes me next to the Denver Botanic Gardens I can enjoy the twinkling lights in the snow... 

The bundling in layers; however,  I'm finding is problematic. Just when I have five layers of Under Armour on I usually discover I have to... go. That and I'm frightening the squirrels.

Snow

December 3rd

Snow has started to fall in its robust attempt to make December look like December. It did a good job.

Bah, Humbug!

December 2nd


I’ve always been gung-ho about Christmas. Way before Thanksgiving I’m warming up the staple gun, ready for the outside lights to be pulled from the garage and installed above the inflatable snowman on the front porch. Stopping myself from bugging everyone around me about when their trees are going to be installed in their living rooms.

This year I’m struggling. For the first time in a long time, I just don’t feel it. I guess it may have started around the time when I was mocked for wanting to go to our town’s annual Christmas Parade. My suggestion was met with ridicule. It opened my eyes to the folly of the season. Putting up outdoor lights really is a lot of work. An afternoon spent in the cold. Trees, wreaths, and scented candles just appear to be clutter.

I’m quite hoping that I’ll move past this never-before seen stage in my universe. I’m sure I will. Once again understand that standing in the cold is worth seeing Christmas lights. I just might go wander around the Christmas tree lot like Charlie Brown.

Perchance to Dream… of a Datsun

Is it December already? Time to start flapping open your advent calendars.


If I were a better blogger I’d start advent blogging, every day open another blog counting down to Christmas. Am I that dedicated? Let’s find out.

December first.

It appears that dreaming about Datsuns is all the rage, since Christopher over at his M. Monologues (NSFW) dreamed about me driving my old Datsun truck last night. I had a seemingly never-ending dream last night that I wanted to buy a 280ZX for my Christmas present this year.

In my dream I wanted to buy a Datsun 280Z as a project car. Desperate to buy this sports car I was traveling around looking a car after car to find the perfect one to restore. I hate dreams that make me work, I spent most of the dream agonizing over fuel-injection and whether I should go older and get a carbureted Z car. In the end I never did find my car, until the closing credits I was riding home for Christmas with the T-tops off and my beard blowing in the wind. Yeah, in my dream I had a long beard. Not symbolic at all.

In reality I do have an affair with this car. I just didn’t know how deep it ran. And although I won’t be getting a Z car for Christmas... this year.  I do have twenty-four more days to dream about what I do want.