Things that might be decidedly odd…

Gay Microsoft Conspiracy

I’ve briefly joked in the past about a gay microsoft conspiracy. Well, today I discovered another piece of information in support of such a thing. This started out as a joke, but now I’m getting kind of scared because there are maybe too many coincidences. In addition to my peer mentor and the UNC alum recruiting put me in touch with when I was hired being gay, I found out today that my as-ap interviewer (the last person to interview me who made the ultimate decision to hire me, see this article for more info) is on a mailing list that serves only as a place for people to declare themselves out at work. You see, I was browsing through this list (which I’m a member of) today to see if anybody else I might know would be on the list when I ran across my as-ap’s name.

Let me reiterate that I did not in any way choose these people for these above roles. They just sort of came my way, which is what makes it a conspiracy. Of course, I don’t really think it is a conspiracy, but it is still a bit surprising.

More Memorial Day Weekend Activities

On Sunday, I actually spent several hours cleaning my apartment. I now officially have gotten rid of all my moving boxes. The little picking up and cleaning that’s left can all be done inside my apartment for the most part. Amazingly, I have a lot of empty space again, which means I can resume my hunt for furniture. After the cleaning spree, I went to Larry’s birthday party around 5ish. Around 9, the party was officially moved to the Cuff. Unfortunately, the Cuff was VERY crowded–too crowded really. After tiring of braving the crowd, a few of us headed over to Purr. Unbeknowst to me it was karaoke night. Actually it was coincidentally called “Larryoke” officially, although none of us were sure who the Larry in Larryoke was supposed to be. As you might expect, some of the acts were terrible while others were quite good. In particular, one woman that did Journey’s ‘Separate Ways’ was getting really into it. Larry, Don and Steve did Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’ which was quite entertaining.

Monday morning I got up early to go hiking with Don, Jay, Rex and this guy John who I hadn’t met before. We hiked partially up the back side of Mt. Index first to a waterfall then later to a mostly frozen over lake. I had some trouble getting up the mountain. I just felt weak going up and up. Maybe it’s because my sleep schedule and diet aren’t completely back to normal from Belize yet. Still, I made it the whole way. I took a lot of good pictures, which you can see here.

Big Saturday

My Saturday started off in a fairly lackluster manner. I got up early because I had gone to bed early the night before. Still, I laid in bed at around 8am trying to decide if I should go to Front Runners or not. Eventually, I decided I would go. After all, I was awake and hadn’t gone running in quite a while. As I stepped outside to go to my car, I realized it was raining but I persevered. After getting off the freeway onto 50th Street, I briefly decided I’d rather go back home since it was raining and since I was running late. Even though I was already in the turn lane to go back on to the freeway, I got out of it and back into the main traffic. It turned out that by the time I got to the park, it wasn’t raining very hard and I was right on time. After waiting around for a few minutes without mingling much (I get nervous in those kind of situations where I don’t really know anybody), I ran the 3 miles around the lake.

After cooling down for a bit by walking around, I sat down. I’m not exactly sure why I sat down instead of going to my car to go home or to Zoka’s. I guess I was hoping somebody would talk to me or that I’d get the gumption to talk to some random person. Eventually, I did start talking to some people before heading over to Zoka’s. Even at Zoka’s I found myself in the awkward position of there being nowhere to sit near the people I’d been talking to before. Fortunately, I eventually just took a seat across from somebody I didn’t know. We all started talking, so it worked out fine. I feel like I need to remind myself that these guys are obviously there to socialize and meet new people. Anybody can run by himself, but obviously guys don’t drive somewhere on a Saturday morning at 9am to be alone! After a while, Don showed up too.

We walked across the street to try some Cha Dao Tea samples. Apparently, one of the guys I was talking with, Ghim, started this tea company and is in the process of getting wider distribution for it. The tea was refreshing and the different flavors were interesting. From there, a group of us went over to a Taiwanese Restaurant for lunch. It was most definitely one of those hole in the wall, authentic sort of places. After stuffing myself, I went home to shower and change.

Most of us from lunch then went to see The Da Vinci Code downtown. First, I haven’t read the book. Yes, I know I never read fiction books, which makes me some sort of uneducated ignoramus. I’ve tried to enjoy reading fiction, but no matter how hard I try I don’t enjoy it. I used to pretend to like reading novels, but I gave that charade up a long time ago. Maybe I’m just not reading the right books. Anyhow, I liked the movie enough, but I thought it explained too much. Something would be insinuated and then it would be repeated in as obvious of a way as possible. Jay and I then went with Don to find him a new tanktop. Unfortunately, he had no luck finding what he was looking for. Don and I then went over to Terry’s to watch The Mirror Crack’d (an Agatha Christie mystery).

While there, I got a mysterious text message inviting me to Sugar and the Chapel. However, I didn’t recognize the phone number (something in 425) and it wasn’t programmed into my phone, so I’m not sure exactly who it was. Still, having still not completely recovered from screwing up my sleep patterns coming back from Belize (on Wed I got up at 4am PDT and went to bed almost exactly 24 hours later), I decided to head home and head to bed early.

Belize Pictures

Belize pictures are now up here, although I still need to finish the tagging and descriptions.

Back from Belize

I’m pretty tired after a long day of traveling, but I’m officially back in Seattle from my trip to Belize. I should be getting the pictures up soon.

Belize

I’ve been in Belize since last Wednesday morning. The flight and subsequent 4 hour bus ride here both went really well. We spent the first night in Punta Gorda, which with a 5000 population is the largest town in the southern part of Belize. On Thursday, we did a tour of a couple of the farms in the area. Friday was our first actual day of work. We cleared a field for tomato planting and then planted a bunch of coconuts around a soccer field in a different town. On Saturday and Sunday, we built three “rocket” stoves.

Yesterday we began digging a fishpond. Today was supposed to be the last day of work, but it rained extremely hard this morning for about 2 hour which washed out the road to the village we werer supposed to visit today. Instead, Jason, Paul and I setup some new computers in the SHI office in Punta Gorda (where I’m writing this entry). Tomorrow we head to Placencia for the beach before flying home on Thursday.

Another Busy Weekend

It’s been a pretty busy weekend for me.

On Saturday morning, Don and I went to Seattle Frontrunners. I’ve been meaning to go for a while, but it’s been hard for me to get motivated to get up at 8am on a Saturday. Frankly, I don’t usually even get up that early on weekdays for work. It was a nice run around Greenlake with some socializing afterwards though. From there, we headed over to a brunch at this guy Isaac’s place. After eating some good food, drinking mimosas and chatting for a while, we got cleaned up and I took a nap before going out to Redmond for the Frontrunner’s potluck. There again, I met some more people and talked to a few I had met earlier. Returning to Seattle, we checked out a party on Capitol Hill. It was an entertaining party, but by midnight the both of us were beat and headed our separate ways home. All in all, it was a whirlwind day with me being gone from my place from about 8:30am until midnight.

This morning, Jay, Don and I hiked Rattlesnake Ledge. It was a pretty easy hike, but the view from the top was pretty good especially with the weather being very clear today. Here’s a shot of part of the view:

The rest of the pictures are here.

The three of us then had lunch at this Irish pub on the ground floor of Don’s apartment building and also saw his piece of ground in the community garden across the street. From there, the three of us hit up REI where I bought a pair of microfiber pants (the kind that zip into shorts) for my trip to Belize (and future excursions). From there, we went to see the new Poseidon, which is the new Poseidon Adventure remake. Lots of water, lots of sparks, lots of people dying horrible deaths. The action was pretty much non-stop. The critics have panned the movie and I can generally see why. There’s not much storytelling going on, but it does have the action and special effects which is all I was expecting. On Tuesday, some of us are hoping to get together to watch the original 1972 version.

Speaking of Tuesday… My flight to Belize is later that night (red-eye). I still need to get organized and pack, but there’s still a couple days.

Shopping for Swimming

Now that it’s back to the work week not as much has been going on. Moreover, I’ve been busy at work lately trying to wrap up something I’ve been doing since late last week.

I’ve been meaning to buy a new pair of goggles for a while now. Today before I work I went over Sylvia’s Swimwear to see what they have. Despite it sounding like some sort of swimwear boutique for middle aged women, they actually had a good selection of competition suits and accessories like goggles. They had a whole box of goggles to try on for fit, which was nice. This time I bought just a normal pair of goggles (no prescription lenses). Of course whenever I buy goggles, I seem to end up buying a new suit as well. While they didn’t have what I wanted in stock, they were able to order it for a reasonable price.

After work, I managed to go swimming with Orcas again this evening. Because there’s a group of people all working out for 75 minutes, it encourages me to do a pretty serious workout (for me at least). I wore my new goggles with contacts. They actually worked very well–no leakage. Plus, with the contacts in I can see MUCH better than with the prescription goggles, which just come in whole diopters without any sort of astigmatism correction. Unfortunately, the goggles seemed to be too tight which made my face sore. I’m going to try a larger nose bridge next time to see if that helps.

Sunday Hike

This morning, I met up with Don for another weekend hike. Unfortunately, Jay (another guy from last week’s hike and also at the party Friday night) wasn’t feel well and couldn’t go. We went to a place called Wallace Falls. It’s a fairly easy hike that skirts three separate waterfalls. Additionally, there was a lot of water in the creek today, which made for pretty spectacular viewing.

Here’s me at the middle falls (I think):

The rest of the pictures are here.

Friday and Saturday

Lately my weekends have been much busier than usual. Fortunately, it’s been the good kind of busy–the kind of busy that involves me getting out of the house and interacting with other people.

On Thursday night I prepared enchilladas to bring to Don’s Cinco de Mayo party the next night. After getting home from work a bit later than I had hoped (happy hour at work + a late bus), I threw the enchilladas in the oven and got showered/dressed for the party. I got there around 9pm, which I think is even beyond ‘fashionably late’ being that it started at 7pm. Still, I ended up staying until the party was over.

Saturday afternoon, I changed the flat tire on my car before driving over to buy some new tires. Lately, my car has been pulling a lot to one side and I was worried I screwed up the alignment. However, as soon as I put the spare on, the car handled much more smoothly and without any pull. It all must have been due to the bad tire. With the four new tires, it drives much more smoothly than before and is probably safer too!

On Saturday evening, I went over to Terry’s (the guy who hosted the Dynasty viewing earlier in the week) to watch a movie called Our Sons. It’s a gay themed made for TV movie. Very TV movie at points, but I was still entertained. They’re a good group of guys to hang out with too. Since the movie night kicked off relatively early, some of us decided to go out being that it was Saturday night. This guy Drew and I hit up Sugar, which just opened officially on Friday. I’d heard about this bar from several different sources, so it seemed like the thing to check out. It was fairly fancy inside with shiny new furniture and what not. We got there fairly early when there weren’t too many people around, but it filled up as time went on. Cover was $10, which seemed a bit high for this place. I payed it since it’s the big opening weekend, but in the future I might have to pass for that much money. They had these (for lack of a better word) go-go boys wearing nothing but shoes, skimpy underwear and these (for lack of a better word) alcohol tool belts. Interesting, but there were also women (real ones) dancing on the bar who appeared to be paid by the bar itself. A bit odd, but again entertaining. After a bit much of the thumping bass, we headed over to Madison Pub, which is more “normal guys”/blue collar/rough trade. From there, Drew dropped me back off at my place and headed home. All in all, a nice night.