i'm flying home....

I must admit that my expectations for Superman Returns was pretty low going into seeing the movie. I didn't see what the fuss over Mr. Routh was all about, and I was afraid it would just be a bad adaptation. Derek and I took one of his favorite old students (Ben W.) to see it last night. I have to say I had a really great time. The movie was extremely well done and I think it was one of the better superhero movies made in a while....and now I understand the fuss. Superman is quite hot/charming in this movie. Not to mention that Parker Posey is in the movie and that alone (most of the time) makes the movie worth going to see. She did not disappoint, her comic timing was right on point.

What made it even better was that we went to the IMAX theatre near our house and got to see about 4 of the scenes in 3D. Imagine Superman basically flying into your lap...not a bad way to spend an evening if you ask me.

the internet is for.....

Customer Service is not an easy job. I am well aware of this. I worked as a Customer Service rep for a check printing company for a total of about 4-5 months and promptly quit because of the rude people and lousy situations you get put into. HOWEVER, I think computer customer service people are, on the whole, the most unhelpful, unqualified people EVER. Allow me to set the scene.....

About two months ago my wireless internet connection started to go out. Since that time I have been back and forth with people from Dell and people from Verizon to fix the problem. Dell would tell me the router was fine and it was my connection and Verizon would tell me the router was the problem and my connection was fine. Back and forth I would speak to people from India to god knows where pushing every button on my computer to fix the problem. On more than one occasion after trying the same 5 steps over and over again (isn't doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result one of the definitions of IGNORANCE) I would get frustrated and just hang up on whoever I had that day and give up.

And finally last night....SALVATION....in the form of a lovely Dell representative named Kathryn. If I knew they would make it overseas I would bake something lovely and send a care package to her. Anyway, at first it seemed she would be unable to help because the router is over a year old and out of warrenty. However, she asked if we had purchased any other laptops or anything that were still in warrenty so I gave her the code from D's new laptop. (Wasn't that nice of her???) Once she was able to get in there, she took me through some initial steps and said that indeed the router was communicating and asked if I would mind her transferring me to Verizon so they could verify it was fine on there end. She said after I spoke with them, she would call me back in a hour or so to see if that had resolved the problem. I was like, wow, great, sure...pass me over. So she did and this other guy from Verizon (who was equally helpful) established a sharing session with my computer and started to work. Right as he was able to have it communicating hardwired (but not wireless yet), we got disconnected and everything fell apart. I called back to Dell got different lady who was useless and told her I wanted to talk to Kathryn again. As she put me on hold I got disconnected. I WAS SO CLOSE TO BEING RESOLVED, WHY IS IT GOING DOWN THE TOILET??? DO THE COMPUTER GODS HATE ME?? Frustrated I gave up and went to go watch Kathy G. on Tivo. All of the sudden my phone rings and my favorite Dell person Kathryn was on the phone asking if Verizon had fixed the problem. I explained the situation and she went to work. Within 10 minutes she had finished troubleshooting and everything was fixed. I am wireless again!!!!

Kudos to Kathryn for a job well done. I got her supervisors number and shall rain praise on her. Isn't it sad when we get so excited because someone does their job correctly for once????

last sunday in june....

I am well aware that the title is not the lyric from a musical, however it is the title of a play and that's good enough for me this morning.

Derek and I spent this weekend up in Maine with some friends of ours. Mark and Robert (gay neighbors) have a house up in York, ME and so we packed an overnight bag and drove up there on Saturday to get away and have a nice evening with friends. Tim (our doctor and marriage officiant) and Glen met us up there and the six of us spent the evening having cocktails, eating a great meal, and just chatting and enjoying the peacefulness of York. After almost 1 1/2 gallons of Vodka had been consumed we all decided to call it a night. We woke up the next morning and Robert fixed a great breakfast of bacon, eggs, and french toast which was a perfect end to the York weekend. What made it all the more better was that Marty (Tim and Glen's Golden Lab) came up for the weekend too! I got to play with a puppy all weekend long. It makes me want my puppy now!!! Finding an apartment in DC cannot come fast enough!

After we showered and got ready for the day, D and I decided to drive the 7 more miles up to Ogunquit for one last time before we move. We had lunch at Bessie's and then took a walk along the beach. (It was really overcast and a bit chilly, but it was still nice to get out in the sand and walk.) Before we left we picked up some salt water taffy that I will send to Mom and some goodies at the bakery in town for us.

The countdown begins before we head to DC....12 days to go....

say goodbye to the freaks....

The wheels are set in motion folks. After July 8th, I will no longer be living in MA. D and I sent out an evite today to tell people to stop by on July 4th from Noon to whenever to have a beer and say goodbye to all of our MA friends. So if you reading this and can make it, please do so! This is such a bittersweet time for us. We have made so many good friends here that we hate to say goodbye to, but are extremely excited about the new opportunities that await us in DC.

We are going down to DC June 30 - July 2 to visit and start looking around. We had already had this weekend down scheduled as a mini vacation for us, but now it will be a bit more serious as we pick up some of the local papers and begin scouting for a good apartment. If anybody knows of anything affordable, let us know!

tonight i gotta cut loose.....

I'll write more and give more details later, but I GOT THE JOB!!!! Starting July 10 I will be the new Assistant Manager for the Corporate Fund at The Kennedy Center!! Thanks all for listening to me stress and whine for the last few weeks!

.....

My anxiety is through the roof now. The Kennedy Center said they would be in touch "early" this week to let me know about the job. Now, the logical part of my brain knows that this is a very vague term that could mean through the rest of today and even part of tomorrow really, but my stomach and the other part of my brain is going nuts. I'm starting to debate whether this is actually going to work out the way I once thought. Maybe they have encountered a problem, or someone else sent in a resume that is a better fit than me.

I will be disappointed if this is true, especially after the recent conversations I have had with them, but at this point I just want to know. It's hard to focus on things when all I want is for the phone to ring. My stomach has been in knots for weeks now over this job situation and I just need some sort of resolution. If the answer is no, then let me cry and I'll get over it and move on to the next opportunity, but if it is meant to be, then call me and let me rejoice and actually enjoy eating a meal again!

Hope everyone is having a great week!

he wanted to say....

It never ceases to amaze me what a difference a few hours or a few days can make on someones life. This has been a whirlwind of a weekend and it doesn't really show any signs of slowing up anytime soon.

Friday afternoon marked a change in my family life. For years and years now, my father and sister have not known a lot about my personal life. They were not aware that I was gay and of course not aware that I am now married to Derek. There was so much I wanted to say to him to help him understand, but I knew it would be fruitless. It's just not something he or my sister will ever understand. I had not told them for a multitude of reasons. Mostly I guess because I knew it would hurt them and they would be disappointed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ashamed of who I am. I've spent 15 years of my life coming to grips with it and realizing that who I am is who I am. I can't change, nor do I want to. I'm proud of the man that I have become. I'm just sad that the rest of my family will never truly understand or accept me for who I am. I have no doubt they will always love me. If there is one thing my family is great at, it's letting each other know we love them, even if we don't agree. I guess that's so much better than many people have it, so for that I'm grateful.

Now while I am grateful that everything is finally out in the open, I am disturbed about how it all came about. I will be the first to admit that I should have told my father and sister a long time ago, but fear makes you hide things like that. However, I will never understand how a third party outside of my family feels it is okay to talk about my life to my family without speaking to me first. This all came to light because someone I knew from a long long time ago (when I used to go to church camp as a child) stumbled upon some stuff online about me. This person sends me a friendly email saying hello and a quick word or two as if nothing was wrong. And then a couple of weeks later, my Dad knows everything and even tells me it was through this certain site that things were found out. Did my father need to know? Absolutely. Should this guy have been the one to tell him? Absolutely NOT. At the very least, if he was so concerned he should have emailed or called me to talk about it. But even then, I don't really see how it is any of his business.

He proves one of my points about SOME, not all, of the people involved in the church. They will preach and be the most upstanding Christian and then will turn right around and do things behind your back in the name of "concern for my soul" and "God". That's disgusting to me. Don't use a God who loves as a way to cause problems in someone else's family and do things behind someone's back without speaking to them first. If my Bible memory serves, Jesus and his followers confronted people one on one. If they were concerned they talked to the person they were concerned about, not someone else. I believe if Jesus were alive today, and he was upset with something I was doing, he would come to me and only me....not my father.

I haven't really talked about that part of things yet, and just needed to get that off my chest.

And if that stress isn't enough, my car started having problems this morning. I think something is messed up with the brakes or something, but it wouldn't drive, felt like everything was locked up. I had to have it towed to a repair shop and now I am just waiting for someone from the shop to call and let me know what's wrong and how much it's going to cost to repair.

The Kennedy Center needs to call me with good news soon. I don't know how much more bad news I can take this week.

i just can't wait.....

Just a quick FYI....

My interview in DC with The Kennedy Center went really really well yesterday. I met with seven different people and was there for over 2 1/2 hours. I feel pretty confident that I did all I could possibly have done to secure the job. There were a lot of unique connections with the people there, so I think that may work in my favor, but who knows. I'm trying not to get over excited before I know anything. Now, we just wait....

to believe my own eyes...

In all the excitement and stress of the job situation, I completely forgot to write about the highlights (well one highlight) of my weekend. For any of you that know me at all, you know that all I have wanted for the past few years is a funny asian lesbian friend. (AKA Sandra Oh in Under The Tuscan Sun.) This weekend I had a chance to actually see Ms. Oh in person. I went to see her in a production called Satellites at The Public Theatre in NYC. The play was mediocre, but she was great. I got a brief glimpse of her later as she was leaving the theatre, but didn't want to intrude as she was with some friends. It was great though to actually see her on stage.

Now the next day was not so exciting for me, but of course D loved it. D is an aquantince of Deborah Gibson's because she worked at NSMT and they became friends. (Derek has liked her since he was like 11, so...) She was doing a show in Stamford, CT along with a great performer we know (Montego Glover). It was a bad show, but Derek made contact with her before the show and we went backstage to say hello to everyone after it was over. Much to Tonya's chagrin, I actually had to hug her before we left. While I don't think she is all that crazy talented, I will say that she was very nice to us.

Not a bad weekend all in all....

one....singular sensation....

So I have one interview down and one interview to go. I met with Blake West, Director of Development, at the MCC Theater this past Fri. MCC Theater is the place that is currently doing Some Girl(s) with Eric McCormack (Will and Grace) and Fran Drescher (The Nanny). The interview went really well I think. We spent an hour and a half in his office talking about my background/experience and then talking about the theatre as a whole and what he envisioned the position doing on a daily and long term basis. I admit I was not as enthusiastic about this job when I was going down on Fri., but after meeting with him I am confident that I would be happy there if the position in DC doesn't work out.

I just want this search to be over. Finding a new job and deciding which city to move to is way too stressful. My stomach has been in knots since last week. I just want to get there on Wed., do a great interview, get the job that week and beging making plans for the move. Let's work that out folks!

give me a bottle of bourbon and half a chicken and I'll conquer the world...

An update...

The interview with the Kennedy Center went really well. They offered to fly me down to DC to meet with them, so I am going down next Wed, June 7th. That sounds promising right?!?! They wouldn't pay over $400 to fly someone in for an interview if they weren't interested in them. At least that's what I'm going with. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy. I have higher hopes than I probably should that this is going to work out, but based on my conversation with them yesterday I think if I work at it, I have a shot at getting that job.

On a side note, as I was talking to them the guy from the MCC Theater in NYC left me a message and wanted to talk to me about the position they have there. So I called him back and we talked for about a half hour about the job, etc. He wants me to come down either this Fri or Mon to talk about it because he wants/needs to make a decision ASAP. I called him today and asked how rushed that timeframe was so I could make a decision before I go any further. He said he could give me a little time, so I am trying to find a way to get down there this weekend to meet with him. The job at the Kennedy Center is a better position, with better pay and more experience for me. I don't want to have to make a decision before I have the chance to really talk to them.

It's either feast or famine with my job hunt. Personally, I like the feast....