Things that might be decidedly odd…

Bay Area Bound

Later this afternoon, I’m flying down to San Francisco to hang out with Lisa, Jeff, Kendra, Jeremy and hopefully other friends of mine currently residing in the bay area. It should be a fun weekend. I’m going to try to take lots of pictures (and movies!) with my new 1GB memory card for my camera. I may even blog while I’m down there, but if not I’ll be back here on Monday for more posting.

Now to finish packing and getting to work in time for the 10:30am meeting I have scheduled today.

Piercing Stuff

When I had my prince albert originally over five years ago, I just planned to upsize until I felt I found a good size. I started at 12 then went up to 10 only a couple months later through a piercer in Nürnberg. There was actually a little bit of pain, probably because I didn’t wait long enough. After that I went up to 8 while visiting Cologne in January of 2002. Eight gauge seemed like a good size for a while and I’ve been there for over 4 years now. However, lately the idea popped back into my head to continue on up.

Yesterday after work, I decided to swing by Lucky Devil which is located over on 12th and Olive. The staff was very helpful and professional. In less than 15 minutes, I had upsized to a 4 gauge curved barbell, paid my bill and was out the door. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to go from 8 to 4 or if I’d have to be at 6 for a bit. The 6 gauge taper went in very easily and actually slipped out when the piercer went to unpack the 4 gauge taper. I felt some pressure with the 4, but no pain at all. So she put in the 4 gauge ring and everything has been painless and fine since.

It does feel heavier (in a good way though) and I’ll probably buy a circular barbell (maybe while I’m down in the bay area) at some point to have a change of jewelry.

Retro: Elementary School

With these retro entries, I figured I might as well start somewhere towards the beginning. At least the beginning of where I can actually remember things myself. My earliest memory is actually of my mother cutting my hair while I was screaming. Apparently, she accidentally cut my ear because I was flailing around too much. I guess it’s no surprise now that I haven’t paid for a haircut (or had somebody else give me one) since 1998.

Anyhow, let’s flash forward a couple years past that to my early school years. I hazily remember my first day of Kindergarten (it’s a German noun, so it must be capitalized). Mainly, I remember my parents (one, both, I’m not sure) walking me over there. It was very close to my house. Not even a block away really. My first school was Mattie Lou Maxwell Elementary in Anaheim, CA. I’m not sure exactly who Mattie Lou Maxwell was, but I imagine she was some local celebrity. I don’t remember a whole lot about Kindergarten really. I do remember getting in trouble once for talking in class (me? never!) and having to go and “talk to the brick wall” on the playground for some amount of time. I also remember my mother and my teacher telling me I couldn’t play with the girls anymore because I’d get made fun of as I got older. I dunno, I was never much into the games the boys played I guess. I even went to this girl’s (I think her name was Heidi) birthday party. I recall her parents having a cookoo clock, but not much else. I know I went to summer school after that year because I liked school so much. I distinctly remember my dad not understanding why I’d want to go to school in the summer. Eventually, I dropped out of summer school though probably because it was more fun to not be there. Or something like that.

Although I don’t remember it, I took the CTBS (California Test of Basic Skills) test in Kindergarten and apparently did well on it. Shortly after starting first grade, I had to visit the school psychologist to have my IQ tested. I only remember two things about the IQ test. She showed me a picture of something that sort of looked like a maze. I had to memorize it then match it to one of six (or so) on another piece of paper. She also showed me a picture containing a man wearing a hat and I had to figure out what was wrong with the picture (the man’s hat was flat while the shadow hat a divit or maybe it was the other way around). While all this was going on, the one kid (named Kevin–just like my brother) had been bullying me a lot at school. After I did well on the test my mom asked me if I wanted to go to a special school. I didn’t really care about the special school, but I said yes because I wanted to get away from the bully.

So a few weeks into first grade I switched to Walt Dinsey Elementary School (yes, that Walt Disney–I know it’s cheesy but this was in the town home to Disneyland) which had a GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program, where one class at each grade level was only “the smart kids”. Eventually, I did make some friends there. The names Abraham, Bart, Kevin (not the bully or my brother) and Brian (who I think I saw once at Cal but I’m not sure) come to mind. It’s interesting to look back on. Since I was in this special program, it was pretty much the same kids year after year in my class all the way through sixth grade. In particular, this guy Jeff Seifert and I were always in the same class. It caused all sorts of trouble because we were both “Jeff S.” One time, I remember I became “Jeff Sc.” and he was “Jeff Se.” Another year, I got to be “Jeff” and he had to be “Jeffrey”. I remember him being really unhappy about that. We were friends though and were in a bowling league (along with Kevin) for at least a couple years.

I didn’t like sports at all. Sometimes I’d do monkey bars and swings, but mostly I wandered around the field with (or without) my friends. I remember the duty aids didn’t like that we’d sit at the back fence of the field where they couldn’t really see us. Another random thing I remember about elementary school was this kid Nathan Serrata. We used to walk home together. He would always brag about his Playboy collection, getting sex lessons from the girl next door who was in high school and other such tall tales. It’s really funny to look back on now.

Over Easter break when I was in sixth grade, my family moved to San Clemente, which meant a new school in a new town for me. I didn’t take the transition particularly well at the time. I didn’t realize how good of friends I had until I moved away. The kids at the new school seemed to have more money, were cooler and generally less dorky than the kids at my old school. On top of all that, I was no longer at a magnet school which meant that I was repeating material I’d already learned at my previous school. It was boring and I was very miserable. I didn’t really make any friends and just walked around the (smaller) field all day. Some kids started calling me “Pacer” because I paced around the field all day. They weren’t really bullying me though. They just thought it was odd. I just never felt like I fit in there. The new school was called Ole Hanson Elementary, although I hear it’s been basically decomissioned now and is used for overflow for the neighboring high school and a charter school. Ole Hanson was the founder of San Clemente (also Twentynine Palms) and had been the mayor of Seattle from 1918 to 1919.

Interestingly, it was around this time that I started worrying that I might be gay, but honestly I had bigger problems like adolescence and the awkwardness of junior high to worry about too. To be continued…

Retroactive Blogging

Today nothing particularly exciting happened except that it’s really hot here right now (high 80s) and I have no A/C in my apartment. Not that I mind all that much since it’s at least a dry heat. Oh and I bought a new 1GB memory stick for my camera so that I can take more pictures and movies without having to worry about running out of space. But otherwise, it was a pretty standard day.

Erin’s comment the other day about me needing to blog more frequently really got me thinking. She mentioned that she keeps a list of topics to save for a rainy blog day. So I’ve decided I should start reminiscing–retroactively blogging if you will. A lot of people who read this blog and whom I’ve only known for a couple years know little about my past. There are some good stories in there and I’m going to recount them occasionally I’ve decided. I’ll be tagging such entries with the retro tag so that nobody gets too confused. The first one should be up next…

Saarland

I forgot to include in yesterday’s pride post the wackily amazing thing that happened to me during the parade. While handing out gum, I saw this guy wearing a black Saarland University t-shirt somewhere near the end of the parade on Denny. I have the same t-shirt in navy blue and I’ve never seen anybody else wear one–not even in Saarbruecken. So I was pretty surprised to see such a thing on the streets of Seattle. Unfortunately, I was passing out gum in the parade and didn’t have time to really chat with the guy, but I did run up to him and briefly explained that I have the same shirt and went to that school for two years. Then I ran off really before he could respond, but like I said I didn’t really have any time to be running into the crowd to talk to a random guy. Still, it was pretty cool. Maybe I’ll see him around again some time.

Seattle Pride Weekend, Day 4

Today was the official big pride day. I got up fairly early to go downtown for parade line up. I marched with GLEAM which was actually a lot of fun.

We were handing out Bazooka Joe gum and Xbox 360 t-shirts. Actually, the MSN butterfly was handing out t-shirts, while the rest of us were handing out gum. It was a very hot and sunny day for Seattle. It was probably mid-80s without a cloud in the sky, which is actually record breaking around here. I handed out a lot of gum, but it was actually a lot of fun. Plus, I think the people watching is actually better from inside the parade because I got to see all the spectators.

I took lots of pictures and two videos. One video is not worth posting (kinda boring), but the other is great. I only wish I had captured more footage. The librarians of the Seattle Public Library were in the parade pushing book carts in formations being called out by a guy with a bullhorn. It was pretty awesome. See it on YouTube here.

After the parade was over, I went up to the Seattle Center to eat my lunch and hang out at the Outventures table. Later, Ken and I went to check out the fountain. See in the middle of the area where the booths were there is a giant fountain. There was pounding dance music and hundreds of people (mostly shirtless gay men) dancing in the fountain.

I had Ken hold my camera and phone while I went into the fountain for a bit to get refreshed, but I didn’t have the time to go all out dancing there. While there, I also ran into this guy Nate I met online and then offline a while back. Last I spoke with him, he was moving back to Utah and I guess he’s actually leaving in a couple days. He seemed to be having a pretty good time in the fountain though in his last throws of Seattle.

As the festival wound down, we packed things up and headed over to the Cuff for their block party. I had two beers and a good time visiting with various people. After that, Shepherd, Don, two guys from Frontrunners and I went over to Elysian Brewery to grab a quick bite to eat. Now I’m home after a long but fun weekend of pride festivities.

All of the weekend’s pictures can be seen here.

Seattle Pride Weekend, Day 3

Today was the first big day of official pride activities. Considering I didn’t go to bed until around 3:30am or so the night before, I had to get up pretty early. I’d signed up to volunteer to work the GLEAM table up at Volunteer Park from 11-1. There was an all day music festival going on which GLEAM helped sponsor. When I got there, it was pretty vacant and most of the time was spent just getting everything setup.

I did catch a bit of the first musical act before walking down to the Seattle Center which was farther than I thought. It was a gorgeous day though as evidenced by this shot of Lake Union:

Upon arriving at the Seattle Center, I came in from the northwest side of things. There were all these families and whatnot at the carnival. At first I thought I was in the wrong place, but it turned out that there was just a ton of stuff going on at the Seattle Center which is a very large complex. Eventually I did find the Outventures booth. It was much more busy down there than up at the park. As you might imagine there were a lot of rainbow flags:

I stuck around until closing time (about 6pm) before grabbing a beer with Don and his friends. Eventually, we took the bus back to his place where we met John to go to a party up on Beacon Hill. We stuck around there for a while before leaving to catch the showing of Victor/Victoria outside at Volunteer Park. By the time we got there, the movie had already started, but it was still really close to the beginning. The movie was pretty entertaining and it was a nice night to be watching a movie outside on the lawn.

Now, I’m back home getting ready to go to bed. Tomorrow, I need to get up early to line up for the big parade through downtown. After the parade, there will be yet more dancing and drinking, so I should save my energy tonight.

Seattle Pride Weekend, Night 2

On Friday night, I went with Robert, Ken, Larry and some others to the Columbia City Theater to see the Columbia City Cabaret. It was a pretty entertaining show with a live klezmer band, a trapeze girl, Sylvia O’Stayformore (a great local drag queen) and various other entertaining sordid and non-sordid performances. From there, Robert and I went up to Madison Pub to grab a drink with a couple of his gay fratboy friends. I mean ‘fratboy’ in the most positive, non-sarcastic way possible. Seriously, they seemed like a good group of guys. Shortly after that, we met up with the rest of the crowd over at the Cuff for more dancing and drinks. Shepherd also met us there and the two of us were the last of the group to leave (probably around 2:30am). Shepherd had a few drinks, so I wanted to make sure he got home safe and all.

MyTube

I’m not sure why this didn’t occur to me earlier, but I finally got around to uploading some of the videos I’ve taken with my camera to YouTube. I haven’t taken a lot of video with my camera largely because I didn’t have anywhere to put the resulting files. However, that’s been remedied now. I’ve got a couple of good ones there now. Check it out here.

Seattle Pride Weekend, Night 1

Last night I guess I kicked off pride weekend here in Seattle with some friends. After getting together with some guys to watch TV at Don’s, we decided to head out to Purr. Unfortunately, our departure was delayed by porn. Not just any porn though. One member of our party (who shall remain nameless) swore that he recognized one of the (straight) guys on MTV Next (a silly dating show for those not keeping track) from some porn site. We then spent the better part of several minutes finding said guy and watching the preview videos. It was definitely him–the tattoos matched. And let me tell you this wasn’t the kind of porn with just one person in it if you get my drift. I wonder how the girl that took another date with him instead of $180+ would feel about that.

Eventually we did make it Purr, where eventually I met up with Shepherd and sort of with Michael and Laurie (they were more doing their own thing). After a couple drinks at Purr and lots of socializing, we went to R Place to see the amateur strip night which neither I nor Shepherd had witnessed before. The place was quite packed with people dancing and everything. The strip show was entertaining for sure and the winners got fairly big prizes ($200 for 1st, $100 for 2nd, $50 for third). Around 1am, I realized I should be getting home if I wanted to get into work at a decent hour today. There’s a long weekend ahead so I need to pace myself!