Sam’s Ministrations on Life

well, i am well aware that i am late on this one… but i just wanted to wish everyone that reads my blog a happy holidays. so here is a brief recap since the last time i wrote:

- Brokeback Mountain was very good and very sad… along the lines of all other tortured gay romances on film. i can honestly say that i was the singular straight woman in the whole theater… apparently it only opened in a few very gay-friendly districts around the country that first weekend, you know the Castro in San Fran… midtown in Atlanta. some of the reactions, like to the first love scene were those that could have only been experienced while in a theater of gay men. i also couldn’t here the last quarter of the movie over the surround sound sobbing that was going on.

- a la megan i began bellydancing classes. lots of fun. very strange instructor with an iranian/southern/southcentral LA type accent. she says fabulous a lot and insists that she is so fabulous she is often known to break mirorrs. a plus is that i get to where a sparkly sash made out of coins. anyone who knows me realizes that is right up my ally.

-i found out in work that whne i return i will probably be workinf on a nationwide think tank to make recommensdations about the future of the gulf coast… more on that to come later

- the kitties traveled home fine. although the bastard at hartsfield jackson yelled at me to hurry up and remove them from the carrier to walk thorugh the metal detector… and then he wouldn’t even take my ticket… i had to flop tedy onto lily.

-xmas was relaxing and i got a ton of good stuff… apparently there is some only child algorithim that the age x the distance in meteres squared from home divided by total time living away from family somehow equals more presents. i made out like a bandit… but i also gave well enough to require me to get another credit card. but heh, what’s your twentys without amassing debt you carry until your forties

-i packed up regina and sent her on her journey down to hotlanta where she will be waiting when i return. it will be so nice to ride again

- i got to see my bff Rosse and our friend josh. they are the first of many i am sure to start giving me dating advice… easy there folks, slow down, i’ve got time.

- other than that i have been watching loads of tv and sitting on my ass. i am all caught up with the price is right and i now know that no one is ever getting out of the basement on the young and the restless anytime soon (it’s grandmas “story”). i also watched Napoleon Dynamtie to get M and M off my back and failed to see the humor… althought i did discover where the vast amjority of their current sayings come from… and here i thought they had stopped quoting the simpsons and got some of their own.

that’s a brief recap… too bed now, i’ve got a busy day of nothing ahead of me tomorrow.

First… as many of you may have seen on the news today, ‘The Southeast is hit by its first ice storm’. When they say folks down here can’t drive on wet leaves… well, imagine ice. I stepped out this morning with a heavy fall jacket, gloves and a scarf and walked right straight into an apocalypse. Seriously, traffic everywhere, on the highways, main roads and even the side streets. Why is this you may ask? Well apparently Atlanta power lines can’t handle a bit of ice, so the traffic lights were out all over the city. This also produces a strange thing which is the level of Southern hospitality increases to fever pitch as a major three lane road actually stopped for me to cross the intersection. This leads me to believe that most of the accidents are probably caused by yankees and their aggressive driving style getting out in the middle of intersections and hitting each other, not Southerners. Everyone at the office was saying that we were really going to have to buckle down because it was going to be a frozen tundra like this all year. Hah, and I was worried I was adapting too quickly. I do fear that I will begin to miss snow quickly, as all they seem to get here are occasional patches of ice, and lots of rain.

Second… I cancelled all of my wedding vendors today. The good news is that if they can rebook the date I can get a credit. The bad news is that I get a several thousand dollar credit at places I can never use. Unless of course I throw myself a rather large party, or decide to eat catered food for a year… oh yeah and have some really amazing portraits taken of me and my cats. I also loved the fact that the dress place said they would have my dress on a mannequin the day I wanted to come pick it up… that way I suppose I can better envision what I would have looked like. I think I’ll be sending mom in for that one.

Third… so after much haggling and fighting for tickets it appears I will have my wonderful gay friends to go with to see Brokeback tomorrow. It was good we got the tickets ahead of time because, and I quote “Honey, the queers will be lined up all the way to Piedmont Park… this is like our Titanic”. I’ll give my review shortly.

Okay, so I’m slightly freaked out that random people I don’t know keep commenting on my posts. Stalkers? Perhaps. Good thing I’m a big burly black man named Sam with a black belt in karate and a very large gun under my bed… and in my kitchen.

So I guess lonliness is finally starting to hit me. All of my really good friends are shot half way across the country. I keep trying to muster people at work to do stuff, but keep getting the same reluctant reactions. “Oh, uh… some friends are coming in this weekend… and the next, and the next” OS it looks as though I will be going alone this weekend to watch two gay cowboys making out in a Midtown theater full of more gay men making out. Either that or I can go watch an entire movie based on Japanese culture being played by Chinese.

This whole big merger thing sucks because it really messed up the paycheck schedule and of course that means that conveniently we get the least amount of money right before xmas. Which thereby precipitates into me looking like a total cheapass with my friends for the first time in my life when i have a real job and could actually get them something decent. Now I will have to do something creative with pipecleaners and glitter.

I am gearing up for my vacation from xmas to New Years at home. Which also means that I am ramping down in my productivity at work. Oh well, no one is around anyway. I’m trying not to bother Lauren at work too much… although she is only four little numbers away… but she alwasy sounds so busy. God, it’s as if she were working or something. I’ll be spending New Years in Boston with Steph and Lauren… though we haven’t decided if we will go upscale… Young Business Professionals Black-Tie Gala, or go low-brow with a little Lua. Hopefully the New Year will bring lots of new and exciting possibilities for me. I guess it will for Megan’s sister. I’m sure the wedding will be fabulous and I can’t wait to see pictures.

Well, bedtime… I have to pretend I am working on design guidelines while I search the web for frivolous things on the sly… then go to lunch… then go pee… then fill in my calendar… then go get coffee… then fill out my timesheet… then go home. All in a hard days work.

So it is 11 on a Friday night. As you can see my social life is totally rocking in high gear. No, actually I just got home from work… ah the joy of being the only one who knows how to lay out the report that has to been on the airplane to Spain on Sunday. Oh well. Work is going decent. I’ve been pretty busy this week. It feels like xmas is coming way too quick. I don’t even have all my presents yet. We have our company party tomorrow night. There’s a White Elephant exchange. Apparently people bring everything from total crap to halfway decent stuff. I think I will bring partial crap. It’s supposed to be whatever is lying around the house. Well, I happen to have a rainbow feather boa lying around mine. Won’t those conservative rednecks love me now? I bought a sweet new Aquos TV 26”. I was getting tired of having to watch my Patriots in the mini version. I also got Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Hey, what do I have if not my ability to fantasize about Brad Pitt?

Funny thing: So there is this very shy Canadian girl that I work with. Well, I and two of the guys, and this girl were talking about what we want for Xmas. She listed off a sleeping bag, a sweater, and… a pocket rocket. You can imagine our shock and amusement when she said this. Apparently there is a slight discrepancy in cultures, because although both will keep you warm on a cold night they are very different things. Having the sick mind I do I assumed it was a “pleasurable” device… whereas apparently there is another version which is more in the shape of a portable Bunsen burner used for campfire cooking. I think the first still sounds more interesting… although not the most ordinary of Xmas presents.

Well back to my evening of riveting TV.

Happy Turkey Day everyone! I’m sitting here in Hermitage, PA, where I’ve gone over the river and through the woods and routed through Cincinnati to Grandmothers house I’ve come. We went to the mall for Black Friday… I’m sorry you had to work through that Lauren. Anyway, it was definitely an experience. Everyone was wearing fashions that either came from the 80s, or the trendsetters were sporting trends from 2 years ago. I did however get to see an entire mullet family, dad had a little business up front, but a whole lot of party in the back, mom had a more feathery style, and then the little boy and girl had a bowl cut working simultaneously with the mullet. Very impressive. Other notes on Western PA living. Are you all aware that Monday is a holiday… that is correct. It is the day when we all come together to celebrate the opening day of deer hunting season.

…Monday Night
I am sitting here in the airport in Charlotte waiting for my delayed flight to leave… there is little to no reason why we are sitting here other than that other screwed up flights are making us late. So I shall continue my story of western PA. So on the Monday holiday. My uncle was quite upset when he discovered that my junior-in-high school cousin would rather spend his day up in the ‘Media Room’ with a girl than waking at 4 in the morning to sit freezing one’s ass off in a deer stand waiting for just the right opportunity to gun down Bambi as he innocently munches grass in a meadow. Oh how will my cousin ever learn to fend for his family without the basic survival instincts of the hunter today? It seems like a truly fair fight when you have an arsenal of weapons with you at your disposal, including multiple rifles and bows and perhaps even a good flashlight for use at night to stun your victim and all they have is a pair of antlers. Enough about that… I wouldn’t want to lessen my uncle’s complete feeling of elation when he called his mommy on the first day of hunting season overjoyed at the fact that he killed himself a 13-point buck. It is what you think, the deer had thirteen points to his antler rack… granted even numbers would be the most obvious, but apparently this little guy grew up too close to some power lines. Anyway he drives up to grandma’s house on her suburban cul-de-sac with a 3 year old deer hanging off the back of his pick-up truck. With reluctance we raced out to oh and ah appropriately at the kill. He proudly exclaimed that it had already been weighed and gutted and that he was en route to show his wife and then straight off to the butchers and the taxidermist to get the head mounted. This is all being said as my dad, the former… or not-so-former hippy sadly pets the head of the dear and exclaimed that it seems a bit young to be robbed of its life essence. We were sworn to secrecy that we couldn’t tell my aunt about the deer so that he could be the first to spread the good news. I thought with some irony that nothing truly says romance, and touches a woman’s heart like a dead 13-point buck parked in the drive… perhaps they can even mount it above the bed. When romance is afoot they can string some lights on it and lay a gauzy read fabric over the rack.

Other notes on Western PA:
- the “freeway” is the two lane road that passes through town, and heavy traffic is a stream of 6 cars parked at a red light

- the big city… which no one dares venture to for its shear metropolis status… is Pittsburgh or Cleveland. All other major cities are strictly referre3d to as places where one’s relatives live, or an airport one flew through to get to an equally small city elsewhere in the country.

- the mall consists of a Sears, JCPenneys and an Auntie Anns

- Starbucks does not exist, and Chai Tea is for the adventurous

- the best Chinese food in town comes in the form of a buffet with 200 items plus and must include pizza, steak and cheese sticks

- Eagle scouts is a way of life

- SuperWalmart = progress

- society’s elite live on the hill in 300 thousand dollar homes with landscaping equaling topiaries, gazing balls and fountains with naked cherubs

- you know everyones business… and I mean everyone, neighbors, church members, the one homeless guy in town

- 4 wheeling is a way of life, second only to the hunting previously hinted at

All in all I believe that there is a “country” vein that runs from the pan-handle of Florida straight up to Lake Erie and nothing is safe in its path. Call is what you will, redneck, white trash, country, hillbilly… it exists and I have seen it.

… and lived to tell.