One advantage to being literally the only person in the office is being able to sing Abba at the top of my lungs.

It's true, Amy is gearing up to move to my neck of the woods. While I know it's not for everyone (yes, yes, it's crowded and expensive) I can't imagine living anywhere else. People don't give a crap what you do, and there's practically no weather. Lately I've come to see that I despise weather, living where it's 70 and sunny almost every day is my idea of heaven, even if my neighbors are only 10 feet away at the farthest.

I can't wait for our big road trip. If all goes well, I leave for lovely Columbus Ohio in 2 weeks, where Amy will pick me up, then it's me, her, the open road, her lovely New Beetle and all the Waffle Houses we can find. That is, if Mr. Hot Shit™ will put us up for a night on the way.

Bon voyage, self!

In case you don't know what day it is, it's Saturday and I'm trying to make a redesign come together but it seems that I've stared at the screen for too long and all code comes together in one big jumble. Stubbornly, I keep thinking that if I stare at it long enough it will magically make sense, and/or work.

In other news, I finally got a haircut today. Pictures forthcoming, but Ellie managed to break my webcam so it could take some time.

I had no idea that my favorite t-shirt creator, Paul Frank had a spiffy website, but yes, in fact he does! Link courtesy of megnut

I've entered a state of perma-stress, which brings with it the fabulous experience of a constant headache and being so tired that I almost fell asleep in the bathroom. Things should be more relaxed after the weekend, I hope.

Saw a dog running loose this morning, and reminded of a woman I know who passed a dog running loose, then came back later to find it had been killed by a passing car, I stopped to help. I keep a leash in my car for just these occasions (the last time, I had Alice and Ellie with me, so I took Al off the leash and put her leash on the loose dog, then spent the entire time I was on the phone with animal control going 'Alice! Get back here!). As I was trying to get this very sweet but untrained dog to come to me, the door of a nearby house opened and a flock of dirty-ass children peeked out. Turned out it was their dog but the kids had no concept that a dog shouldn't be in the road, shut the door in my face.

Chances are, I scared the crap out of these kids, and in the end, it's all about the dog, who made it inside. But I wish people knew how to say thanks.

We watched 48 Hours last night, a rarity since I love those kind of shows and Andrea's not a big fan. Watching the really really huge people on the show inspired us to get up and work out. I wonder if I should have taped it so we can watch it to get inspired in the future. Today I'm a bit sore but glad that we started going to the gym again.

Went to my favorite Korean BBQ last night for dinner. It was crowded so we had to share a 6 seater table with a guy who worked there. I have never heard someone chew as loudly as this guy did. It was unreal, we kept trying not to laugh or stare but since he was a mere 2 seats away, the challenge was great. After he left, 2 other guys who did not work there sat down and didn't say one word the entire time except to order. A surreal meal.

The overused, oft-quotedWuName generator is still fabulous. Ellie's name is Sabre-Toothed Portillo, International Cow or Slumbering Pierrot, depending on what we decide her last name is, mine, Andrea's or a bastardization of the two.

Which leads me to the real question... When we have a child, what will the child's last name be? Even in the exciting world of straight people it's not as obvious as it used to be but for us, it's even less obvious. I like my last name, but people always get it wrong. Andrea's last name is short, hard to mess up. Most likely we'd combine them but use Andrea's fabulously short name as a matter of daily life.

What if the Smurfs was all one big joke, that the word Smurfy was actually a stand-in for the word shit. All of a sudden, it's 'have a shitty day' and 'oohh, that's shitty' and the writers are laughing their asses off. Because shit is more than just feces, it's everything.

I admit it, I'm totally addicted to Survivor. I rush home each Wednesday to see what I've missed. My only question is, what the hell kind of name is Rattana? Why not bamboo-ee or tapioca-aah?

Started watching Big Brother last night (thanks to the miracle of replaytv, we watched it later). I don't think I like it. The house kinda sucks and since they can't really leave or have contact with the outside world, it gets old pretty quickly. Cool concept, but MTV has the formula down with the Real World, which made me laugh my ass off last night when Melissa got all kinds of drunk and danced around in her undies all by her little self, to her own music inside her head. Not that I've ever done that. At least not in my undies.

To all my dear friends and loved ones currently struggling with life-altering choices, I can only say follow your bliss.

I totally understand that shit happens, that traffic around here sucks in the morning. But that doesn't stop me from being frustrated that I got up early to get here early for a meeting and the people I was meeting with couldn't make it.

The craziest place that I interviewed with, Buyersedge, is now officially out of business. Their assets were bought, but not the company. Looks like I made the right choice in not working there.

I just got the best spam email header yet: STOP CHEATING, GET MATE THAT LOVES ONLY YOU.

Gayle had some really interesting things to say about Wenchlogs take on self-mutilation. This is a sticky (no pun intended) issue for me, having lightly flirted with this as a teenager (nothing serious, it was all about getting attention) and more importantly, having deeply loved someone who couldn't stop doing this to herself. Like any addiction, my ex would feel it calling to her, she couldn't stop it until she'd cut herself, then she'd feel better, somehow whole again. There was a whole ritual attached to it, it could take hours and she was a pro at not leaving scars.

All of us have little secret things that make us happy and unique. I listen to Hanson and pick my nose, and while I respect everyone's right to have these hidden pleasures, I don't think I can wrap my head around cutting and the motivations behind it. Whether it's classified as an illness, an addiction, whatever, all I know is that for my ex, it was a hidden pleasure, that in it's own way, made her happy when nothing else could. And that pleasure scared me.

I just took a good look at part of my HTML code and asked myself, 'self, what the fuck were you thinking?' I don't know, but I stopped thinking it and removed the offending tags.

"Oh you can tell by the way I roll a joint, I'm a ladies man"
--Wyclef Jean

Amy found this really interesting discussion/rant about gay marriage. It's true, being gay isn't the same as being straight, otherwise, why would it have a name? Andrea and I have talked about getting "married" or having some kind of ceremony to make us more official but I've always balked at this. Not because I don't love her through and through, because I most certainly do, but because there's no point.

We're not afforded any of the luxuries that straight married couples get automatically and I think the bottom line is, I don't really want to know who in either of our families would decide not to attend. It's easier to pretend that they either don't exist or just don't have the time to respond to my letters, even though they used to, faithfully, before they found out I was gay.

For me, there's no point in opening the discussion. To those people, I'm already a memory, why push the issue? I'd rather they remain in their ignorant bliss and I don't open up a world of hurt.

People will say I should push the envelope, that I should go out on a limb and open those discussions, but to those people I say 'pish! posh!' I push the envelope every day by being open about who I am and who I love with people who's opinions matter a lot more than my asshole relatives. You just can't change everyone's mind, no matter how much you want to or how hard you're willing to try.

This article me so sad. Watching whatever's happening to beyond is like watching an old friend die, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Of course I hope they turn it around, but at this point it seems like a miracle is necessary for that.

But hey, miracles happen every day.

I'm proud to report that the group I occasionally drive dogs for is getting a little press: GROUPS ORGANIZE TO GET DOGS OUT OF POUNDS, OUT OF L.A..

Fun and fistfights in Reno
Our trip to Reno was pretty eventful. The Spirit of the Dance pretty much sucked. I couldn't stop laughing when they'd try to have some sort of plot. Please, just dance, don't talk and for pete's sake, don't sing! All the men were paired off with women doing these couple-esque moves, but the guys were so gay that it wasn't believeable at all. I nearly lost it when the cast came out in bright yellow cowboy hats and proceeded to square dance. I was so stunned that I couldn't laugh I just made that face.

Saturday, we were about to head home when we went for another quick money-losing extravaganza in the casino. I was down quite a bit at this point and worrying how I'd get to payday with my remaining cash but bet $20 anyway. There I am, playing away, when I bet 3 quarters instead of my usual 1 and wa-la! I won 600 quarters!!

While I was waiting for my booty to register, this woman sat down next to me, put some money in the machine, and left. I assumed that she'd worked through her money but then Andrea sat there and said 'ooh, look, there's money in this machine!' I told her that it was bad karma to play it, but hey free money is free money. So she started playing and was losing nicely until the woman came back about 10 minutes later. This woman had fully expected all of her money to be there when she came back. Hello lady, it's a casino. Loose money is loose money and stops being yours when you leave it unattended. Of course, had she said to me 'I'm going to pee, can you keep an eye on my money?' I would have gladly done so. But I assumed that she wasn't coming back.

So....the woman, Andrea, and I have words about this. I'm trying to explain it to her, that she left her money and shouldn't expect it back. Andrea cashed out the remaining $3.50 that was in the machine and gave that to her but that wasn't enough. The woman kept yelling and finally called Andrea an asshole (as if that would get her $$ back).

Meanwhile, my big victory is dampened, but the change lady finally arrived to pay me off. We walk away and the woman's short ass husband follows us and does this kung-fu kind of move where it looks like he's trying to hit Andrea. But he was so short that it was just funny, I was trying not to laugh when he stepped it up and kung-fu'ed again, his big square glasses still making him a sad caricature of Bruce Lee. We walked away with Mr. KungFuManChu still fuming.

Guilt overcame Andrea and she wanted to give the money back, so we head back to the scene of the crime to make amends (even though the woman was a moron to leave her money there). Mr. KungFuManChu sees us coming and assumes that we want to hit Mrs. KungFuManChu, so he starts shoving Andrea and swinging wildly again, only this time it's not funny.

We eventually gave the woman her money back and I told her several times that Mr. KungFuManChu was out of line and could easily go to jail for his escapades. Then the woman tried to bond with Andrea since her son in law is Chinese too. Andrea was not in the mood for national pride and we got the hell out of there.

Lesson learned: if there's money in a machine when you arrive, cash it out and either leave with it or put it aside for at least 15 minutes. No 77 quarters are worth what we went through.