Another week in July

Had my first 4 day trip in a few years this week in what seems like a few years. It was nothing to write home about. The highlight was the bacon cheeseburger at the hotel bar in Toronto. Even the burger wasn't as good as I had remembered in the past. The trip did fall apart on day 3 though, when the powers that be stole our airplane and sent it somewhere else. So instead of four flights on Wed and another 4 on Thursday, we only flew 2 flights each day. Its nice when things work out like that!


Its the weekend and I'm enjoying a couple of days off to get things done around the house. I landed Thursday at 4pm and met P.D. for drinks at 5:30



then headed over to a birthday party for my friend Eddy at 7pm. An action packed evening!









We cocktailed on the roof of Jeff's place and I of course ate way too many nachos (and ended up with acid indigestion).

Friday morning I woke up and picked up Elsa for the weekend. We hit the cemetery with Frank and Auggie then stopped for coffee. She seems to enjoy staying with me now!

I spent the day at the Phillips Collection working on a marketing plans. Its a change of pace from serving coffee/tea/me!

Friday night I cooked dinner for my friend Scott - baked cod with curried peas. He was kind enough to help me put my new bar stools together, so now I can sit at the breakfast bar and eat!

Today was spent working on the curtains. I have all the hardware and hopefully I can get it installed tomorrow before I go to work.

I found a great art website this week: www.20x200.com
I ordered a few photos - check it out!

My first nudist weekend

So 2008 is all about doing new things and pushing boundries, right? So why not visit a nudist camp?
I had friends going for the weekend about 2 hours south of D.C. and decided to tag along, after finding out that I wouldn't have to camp in a tent (there was bedspace for 30 and everyone else popped tents in the yard). It was a very relaxing weekend - so much so that I took off my watch and never paid any attention to the clock. I went to bed Saturday evening at an earlyish hour, but the party at the pool kept me up, so I ended up having a midnight swim to "Midnight at the Oasis" until almost sunrise.
Everything has been wrapped up on the home front, and now I am left with hanging curtains. I'm leaving on a 4 day trip tomorrow to Columbus, Toronto and Minneapolis, so curtain hanging is going to have to wait until next weekend.
I dropped a 2 pound bag of M and M's in the car on the way down and they fell in my cocktail. Who knew that vodka eats the candy coating off of an M and M!

A sick week

I haven't been feeling well (in the head) and so decided to call in sick this week. Coincidentally, I have plenty of chores to do around the house - imagine that!

Saturday afternoon was spent at the latest Evolve Arts project opening. This show features a local photographer who lo and behold walks his dog Chelsea at the cemetery. I knew the dog's name -- just learned his at the opening. After the "official opening" we lounged around the back pool. Here are some photos from the afternoon.







Sunday - more ironing. But before that had a great walk at the cemetery with Elsa, my friend Scott and his German Shepard Cane. Then the ironing - 7 hours worth. But the curtains for the curtain wall are done!

Monday - Well since I wasn't at work I had time to paint. I woke up at 7am and had one wall coated in primer before the coffee was even ready. I was finished with the whole apartment by 7:30pm. Painting is fairly tedious but since I was painting the walls white (actually a color called winter snow) I didn't have to be as careful as if I were painting the walls green. And whats up with over 200 shades of "white"? It took me 30 minutes to cull through them!

I had planned in my head about 1 1/2 to two days to paint, so when I woke up this morning I was actually ahead of schedule. I went to Ikea to buy a large glass shelf unit. I lug the pieces home (2 boxes, 5 shelves and 3 posts) only to find out the posts are 1/2 inch too tall to fit under the bump-out along the wall that I want to place it. You might ask, did I bother to measure beforehand? Well... um, no.

So my friend Scott drove me out to Ikea in his SUV (horrible gas guzzler but love all the space in back!) to return the shelves and go to plan B. Plan B are 2 shelves, on upright and one on its side. Its not quite as exciting as what I had in mind, but on a bright note it as only 1/3 the price of plan A and much easier to put together.

So my new neighbor Kate has talked me into going to a neighborhood meet-n-great at the park down the block at 7am. Elsa and I are going bright and early to meet the neighbors!

Getting ready for the weekend....

So I went in for my regular volunteer day at The Phillips Collection this morning. I haven't been to the Phillips in over 2 months. Its just been difficult to deal with buying the condo, moving, decorating, etc., and volunteering at the same time. There are several exhibits going on simultaneously for the summer. My favorite one is "The Migration Series" by Jacob Lawrence, which is comprised of 60 panels that depict the African-American migration to the North at the beginning of the 20th century. The collection is split in 2, with MOMA owning the even number panels, and the Phillips owning the odd numbers. Here are some links to the exhibition:

http://www.youtube.com/v/5Ym3MiWjfp4
http://phillipscollection.org/

Cecilia and I had a "lunch meeting" (I love those!) to discuss what is going on this fall. I'm now going to beworking on of Gay/Lesbian (okay and the Bisexuals too) marketing, and will help with the Facebook page. So of course I had to join Facebook first - an hour later, I had a page done and several friends (and of course no work actually done). I feel very 2008! So if you're on Facebook look me up!

I have quite a to-do list this weekend. Elsa is staying with me tonight through Sunday, so I am putting house painting off until Sunday afternoon. I still have the 24 yards of fabric to stitchwitch, so that is tomorrow's task. I took some of the fabric to work with me this week, but both nights my layovers were cut short due to mechanical problems, so I only had time to sleep. After making the curtain panels and painting, I have shelving to put up. I figure I have enough to do to keep me busy all week!

It has finally become apparent to me that I am ready to change professions. I realized this when a) I found myself actually hating to be at work on Tuesday, and b) almost yelled at a crying four year old who was upset that she wasn't seated next to her mother. It has come to the point that the negatives of the job and industry are outweighing the positives. Lets face it, the airline industry isn't the best place to be right now, and there is no sign that anything will improve in the forseeable future. I am still years away from holding an international schedule, and lets face it, even though I get to go to some nice cities in the US, its not like I actually do anything but sit in the hotel room and sleep. On the positive note, I am employed and so can spend time figuring out what I want to do when I grow up. Any ideas from the audience??

July 4th Weekend, Part Deux

Fireworks were early this year at the beach thanks to mother nature. While Frank, John and the gang went to a party in Dewey, I was visiting friends from Norfolk who were at the beach for the week. I was sitting in my friends' living room munching on a burger when a call came out to hit the beach (thankfully we were one house off the boardwalk) as the fireworks had started. So off we all trudged to the beach (did I mention a mere 30 second walk) to watch the fireworks in the rain. I am used to the fireworks in DC which are quite grand. Rehoboth's display was quaint, but the added feature of being able to run one's toes through sand was something not possible in DC. Hell, I wouldn't walk around barefoot for that matter anywhere in DC! For a party where I assumed I would only know the hosts, there were actually a few people from Rehoboth who I have met on past trips to the beach.

Saturday was spent lounging about the house on the back porch (wake, eat, nap in that order) and then the 6 of us traipsed up to a pool party being thrown by an aquaintance of mine in DC. The margaritas were flowing and I bumped in to more guys I know from DC (seems like everyone was at the beach this weekend!). The rain rolled in again and we headed back home for yet another nap. Next stop was Aqua for happy hour and then La La Land for dinner. We opted for frozen custard on the boardwalk in lieu of $9 chocolate cake and then headed home.

Woke up Sunday and we took Augie to the beach for his morning romp, had breakfast and then I headed home to my own dog. Elsa was very happy to see me last night. We met up with an aquaintance of mine and his dog Cane and then I used my oven for the first time to make..... frozen pizza. It was a classy evening.



Today I putzed around the house in the morning doing laundry and whatnot, and am trying to decide if I should paint the walls of the apartment or not. The off-white/cream color bugs me a bit, especially since the floorboards, windows and doors are white. I may take some time off this week or next to do it. I feel a sudden "allergy attack" coming on!!!

Beach Weekend Part 1

Happy July 4th all. Greetings from the boardwalk in Rehoboth.

Had a fairly easy drive out to Rehoboth on Wednesday. I am staying with my friends Frank and John, who rent a house for the "season" every year by the beach. The drive wasn't too bad, except for the traffic on route 404 through a big construction zone. For those of you who don't live here, traffic to the beach all funnels over the Bay bridge (4 miles long and really, really tall) and then two-lane highways through Delaware, and so trying to time your drive is important. We had to ditch 404 and take lesser-known 16, which shaved 30 minutes probably off our trip, but I didn't get to stop at the Sonic in Bridgeville. Still, it made Frank happy, and since I was subjecting Frank to talk radio (The Hannity Show no less!) I figured a compromise was in order.


We went out for happy hour and stop by to see my friends Frank and Spencer, who are up here for the week from Norfolk. Then out to dinner and off to bed.

Didn't do too much on the 3rd, except lounge on the hammock all afternoon. This is the hammock view:


The canals feed into the marsh which feeds into a bay that goes to the ocean, so this marsh does eventually lead to the Atlantic. Its very quiet (you can hear the wind blow) and there are interesting marsh birds flying around. The beach place is a 1950s California - style bungalow. Lots of wood paneling and windows under the pitched roof.

We headed out for happy hour at Aqua around 6. Its amazing all the people from DC that you run into out here, like my friend Jeff


We ended up going to Dos Locos on the strip for margaritas and dinner (so so on both counts but the batter fried green beans were delish!).

Today I think I'm actually going to the movies and out to lunch (had my fill of beach sand over Memorial Day) and to see the fireworks tonight.

Hope everyone has a great 4th!

/>Gene and I got together yesterday to talk "soft furnishings" over lunch and followed up with a trip to IKEA. I found some curtains I liked at Crate and Barrel, but even on sale, I was looking at spending $400 for the curtain wall, so we decided to see if IKEA had anything similar at a lower price.

For those of you who haven't been to IKEA (is there anyone who hasn't been to IKEA??), they have ready-made curtains at more modest prices, and one section over they have a huge selection fabric by the yard. Its not quite as big as going to a regular fabric store, but you do get quite an eyeful. The fabric patterns tend towards Marrimekko-style patterns and not what Im looking for, but in a flash of inspiration, we found this blue on blue fabric and bought out the entire bolt! I'll let everyone be (hopefully pleasantly) surprised with what we're doing with it, but Gene has given me "homework" ala Trading Spaces and I think the results will look really nice!

Comcast showed up yesterday to hook me up to the rest of the world, and all by myself set up my home wireless network, complete with WPA security and a firewall and it didn't take me all that long. The instructions weren't too clear, but it seems to work okay. Comcast has a channel with nothing but old movies, and Elsa and I watched the original "Airport" last night. Bless her heart she wants to sit on the new couch with me, and as much as I want to curl up with her, I just can't handle all the dog hair on the new couch. She did hop up in bed with me this morning for a half hour (now I have black dog hair on gold sheets). I don't have curtains in the bedroom yet, so at 6am when the sun rises, so does she. I ought to experiment with eye shades for her. They work for me, so maybe they would let her sleep in??

Today's tasks include yet another run to the Salvation Army with things to drop off (books, bags, art and a filing cabinate) and then off to Crate and Barrel for a side table, the car wash and to Best Buy for a new camera. Then its off to the chiropractor and then the beach!