Wrapping Up Summer

The days are starting to get a little shorter and the back to school sales are on. Here in the Bay Area, the weather will be warm through the middle of October. Still, it is hard to believe that fall is almost here.

I tested the waters in June and July and took an online Political Science course through a local community college. I have to say, it was almost too easy and I got an A. My professor seemed to be distracted, disinterested, or possibly logging in from his vacation home in Tahiti and not having a good Internet connection. He ended up canceling one of the two research papers that were due for the course and most of the 4 quizzes throughout the course were the same questions in a different order. So I have signed up for two courses this semester and will see how things go. I only have one year of university study under my belt which I completed when I was 18. Back then, I was still so naive about so many things and I really needed to explore the world. I did the airline deal for ten years and did not have much time for studies between all of my jobs. Now that I am in one place and online education has made studying so easy and convenient, I am going to work on getting an undergraduate degree. After meeting with an official at the college, I was pleased to learn that most of my credits from Pitt will transfer and I can complete an associates degree within a year if I choose to. I have always been stubborn about getting a degree in part because most of the people I know who have degrees do not use them or end up in completely different fields than what they studied. It always seemed like a waste of money to me and a set of hoops that someone else wanted me to jump through. If I can do this part time though and not even have to pay for it, then why not? The PD just approved tuition reimbursement in our latest contract and that is icing on the cake. To be frank, I am stubborn about doing things unless there will be some tangible result. To get a degree just to get one has always seemed like a silly idea to me and I have prided myself on being able to do fine on my own without one. As I get older, it becomes more and more apparent how stubborn I am. The first step in recovery is admitting you have a problem, right?

I have not given up my goal of learning to fly helicopters either. I want to pay for my private license and training in cash and see how I like it. If I get hooked, then I will likely finance my commercial and instructor ratings and start flying and instructing on my days off to build up time.

Thanks to my DVR, my latest obsession is Anthony Bourdain No Reservations. He is quite obnoxious and thoroughly entertaining. I watched an episode he did in New York yesterday though and I felt slightly ill after watching all of the different foods he consumed during the show. He went from Russian cuisine to Japanese to French and a bunch of other stuff. The way the show is edited, you feel like he does this day after day. He also manages to stay really really thin. The presentation on most of the food is amazing. I will take a show like this versus something like Top Chef any day.

I just booked a trip to Hawaii in early December. I like to get away before the holidays and it is a great time to travel. I miss most of the work Christmas party drama and get a chance to get stuff done before the holidays. I am going to try to get down to L.A. for a few days too around that time. I have not been down there in a while and I need to catch up with some friends in the area.

Hope everyone has a great weekend. Cuidate.

I saw this quote the other day and I liked it immensely.

I have learned to live each day as it comes and not to borrow trouble by dreading tomorrow. It is the dark menace of the future that makes cowards of us. -Dorothy Dix

Have a great weekend all. Cuidate.

Readjusting to the Grind

So I seem to be stuck in vacation mode. I keep trying to post, but nothing seems to satisfy me.

I am back in Oakland. After leaving Pittsburgh, I spent about a week in Phoenix catching up with my friends there. I surprised my friend Christi and spent a couple of days with her. Then I caught up with Rich, Justin, and company on Saturday night. We grabbed some food and then headed out to Burn, the newest addition to Phoenix's gay scene. The evening continued to Charlie's and then back to Rich and Justin's house for a sunrise swim. The party never stops around those two. The following day, I headed over to Robert and Katrina's and spent my last few days hanging out with them. All of my friends are terrific and I am so blessed to have such wonderful people in my life. Needless to say, a lot of good food and alcohol was consumed on the Phoenix portion of my trip.

I headed home to the Bay Area late Tuesday and crashed. My friend Kellie had invited me up to Napa for the rest of the week with her and her boyfriend's family. I was still kind of tired from the trip, but how often does one get invited to hang out in Napa at a gorgeous pad? So Hector and I headed north on Wednesday and spent three glorious days in Wine Country. Kellie and I went wine tasting a couple of the days and did not accomplish much of anything. Her boyfriend Steve and his family are very nice and the house he rents each summer is gorgeous.




Friday night, I reluctantly headed home for an early Saturday morning overtime shift at the PD. My vacation was terrific. I packed a lot of stuff into the couple of weeks I was off and it was nice to take a break from work.

So Monday night, my first official day back from vacation. The tech people came in to upgrade our system in the early evening. As of 3 AM, it was still not fixed and we were creating these huge piles of stuff that needed to be entered. Welcome back indeed.

Cuidate.

Back in the Heat

So I survived the family reunion. I got to hang out with a good amount of family members and the next one is scheduled for two years away versus three in honor of my uncle's eightieth birthday. A big part of my apprehensiveness with the reunions is the fact that I have lived in a west coast liberal environment for so long and returning home brings back all of the rules and value system that I grew up with. Not a lot of my belief system today corresponds with the old. Still, each one ends up being a good time and my sister Kathy and I got to gab about Harry Potter. It is funny to watch everyone get older with each passing reunion. I am the youngest cousin of my generation and I will be turning thirty-four this year. Some of my cousin's children now have children and our family has four generations going strong. It is strange to watch your parents get older. Since I only have the opportunity to see my mom and dad once or twice a year, it seems that they age a bit between each visit. I cannot help, but think that I will be their age in another thirty years and how quickly time passes. Day to day life is so busy and time passes so quickly, it is an important reminder to try and enjoy each day and each moment for what it is.

So following the reunion, I traveled to Louisville, Kentucky and met up with a good friend of mine from high school. Her husband is a pastor of a small Christian church and they run the church together. They have recently completed an expansion of their church and Rhonda did the interior decor. It is very beautiful and they have put a lot of work into the project. We had lunch at a very nice cafe and then they took me on a great tour of the city. I had visited Louisville several times during my flight attendant days and was pleasantly surprised to remember some spots. We also got to see Churchill Downs, which was quite impressive. It was hard to believe, but I last saw Rhonda six years ago at our tenth high school reunion. I could not believe it had been that long. It was great to see her and George and I am so pleased we have remained friends over the last few years.

I drove to Dayton, Ohio and overnighted there. I spent the entire next day at the National Air Force Museum located adjacent to the Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The museum is spectacular, taking up four large aircraft hangers and it has the largest collection of aircraft I have ever seen. Everything from early Wright Brothers aircraft to the 707 Air Force One that carried President Kennedy's body back from Dallas to the prototype of the new F-22 Raptor fighter. I was not able to see everything and I could easily have spent two or three days there. There is so much to see and it is all beautifully displayed.






After spending the day at the museum, I proceeded east to Pittsburgh, PA. I spent a year attending the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) in 1993 and it was nice to get back and check things out. The campus has not changed all that much. There are a couple of new buildings and a new Athletic center, but everything else I remember is still very much there. I had worked for the admissions office as a tour guide and my tour around campus this trip brought back a lot of memories. One reflection I had was how much I have changed in the past fourteen years and how little thought I had given to where I would attend college. As I look at my life now, I am definitely a city person. Living in a rural environment or someplace where I cannot explore and discover new things consistently is murder for me. My borderline ADD kicks in and I get very bored very quickly. When I was researching schools, my top choices were the University of Iowa, Catholic University in D.C., and Pitt. Iowa? Yeah, I likely would have committed suicide attending there. D.C. is a great city and this probably would have been the best of the three, but Catholic is a small liberal arts school and I am not sure how successful I would be in that type of environment. I left Pitt because I felt like I was not accomplishing much and wasting money with no clear direction. I came home and threw myself into the travel business, which was a wise move. Once I eventually made it to the airlines, I truly got in touch with who I was as a gay man and what kind of a person I wanted to be as a global citizen. So the young man that I was fourteen years ago was strongly on my mind as I toured my former haunts.

I also drove around the city a bit, taking in the Strip district which has some small cafes, coffee shops, foreign grocery stores, etc. I headed to my airport hotel in the late afternoon and crashed out in anticipation of my morning flight the next day.

The current airport terminal that Pittsburgh uses opened while I was attending school there back in 1993. It still ranks as one of the best airports in the world in my book. It is exceptionally well designed and the airport has basically a full shopping mall and a variety of restaurants to choose from. From an aeriel view, the airside structure is built in a large X shape and the tram system drops you off in the center. This ingenious design ensures that no gate is too far away. Sadly, US Airways chose to shut down their hub their last year. Southwest and JetBlue have both moved in and I hope that another airline will move in with a strong presence to keep the airport and the local economy going. So I headed to the airport Thursday morning and headed to my gate after grabbing something to eat. As I headed to board my flight, I threw out the wrapper from my sandwich and my Invisalign trays along with it! Nice. I am on my ninth set out of eighteen, so that is not too bad. At least it took me six months to throw out a set. My dentist assures me I should have the new set next week.

I arrived in Phoenix and a 100-degree day. It is an unusual summer here because it is humid. People always talk about that dry heat that Phoenix is famous for. "Yeah, it may be 115 but it is a dry heat!" is what people always say here. Not this summer. My visit is a late birthday surprise for my friend Christi. She was sitting out on her balcony chatting away to me on my cell phone while I was frantically trying to get her attention from down below. Finally, in frustration I threw a penny up on her balcony to get her attention. It was a great moment. I had told her I was headed for New England, so she was not expecting to see me until November. I am spending the weekend here catching up with my posse of friends here - Rich, Christi, Kat. It is nice to be back out west and in familiar food territory. Jamba Juice, Rubio's Tacos, I am home!

Hope you all have a great weekend. Back in San Francisco Tuesday night. Cuidate.