HEY YOU!

You know how most commercials are really dumb but there’s the odd one that grabs your attention. I just saw this one. You should check out this web site http://endaids.ca/.

Every Six Seconds

Tell me Something I don't know.

Your Kissing Technique Is: Perfect

Your kissing technique is amazing - and you know it. You have the confidence to make the first move. And you always seem to know what kissing style is going to work best. Sometimes you're passionate, sometimes you're a tease. And you're always amazing!

Are You a Good Kisser?

I'm telling you, this cross of perfection gets difficult to bear sometimes. [sigh] Although I don't know why having good technique means I'm confident enough to make the first move.

EEEKS...

...it's been almost a week since I've posted. I thought about stealing ideas from other bloggers but I don't really feel like writing anything autobiographical at the moment. Sometimes (ok fine most of the time) writing is an effort for me (possibly related to some minor perfectionist tendencies that I may or may not have) and I've had to write a couple of cover letters and job search emails so my writing juices have been drained. I stress over what to say and how to say it so that the people I'm writing will want to hire me. I don't know why I worry so much. I mean who wouldn't want to hire me? LOL Just kidding. Plans are coming along for the move to Calgary. The car is going in Thursday for a check up and new tires. I've been collecting contacts and phone numbers so I can hit the ground running in the job hunt department. I didn't know I had so many relatives of relatives out west let alone ones in the financial industry. I might not even need the services of a head hunter. Once my CAA card comes in the mail I'll be hitting the road. I guess I should go and do some more packing.

My car in couple weeks (minus the leather seats)

Not much to report...

...just more of the same. Dad's back in Europe. He did find out while he was home that there is a position for him in the local office with his company when his contract finishes. Life is pretty much back to normal now that all the travel arrangements for my brother's wedding are over and my sister and her husband are getting used to having two kids around.
So now Mom has time to focus on helping me with my job search. Unfortunatly in my current financial situation I need their help to move. I want to move away for several reasons. One, to just get away from everything I've grown up with and become me and also for economic reasons. There just aren't that many entry level accounting positions in the maritimes. For me it's kind of a good thing that there aren't many jobs around here because it gives me an excuse to move. If I was just moving to get away from my parents and church then I don't think my parents would be willing to help out with the money. At first I was looking at Toronto. It's the financial capital of Canada so I should be able to find some sort of job. It also has a large gay community. Large enough that I should be able to find a niche that I fit into somewhere and given the numbers surely there would be at least one guy that I would be compatible with. My mother however was trying to sell me on Calgary. I wasn't to keen on Calgary because it's farther away from home. I'll have to fly home for Christmas as opposed to driving. I figured the job situation would be about the same as Toronto so why go farther away than I needed to. Another factor was I'm not sure what the situation is with the gay population. I would like to eventually meet someone for a longterm and possibly lifelong relationship (I know I know I'm young and naive) so I'd like to go somwhere where the odds of that happening are at least decent.
It's looking like Calgary is going to be the winner. After doing some reasearch on "certain" websites, I've decided that Clagary does have an adequate number of guys with potential after all. The job market also appears to be better than Toronto's. According to my cousin who is a nurse there, if you don't have a job within a week then you're just plain lazy. The skeptical side of me is suspicious that this is just in labour jobs but I'm hoping it's true for accounting jobs as well. I don't want to jinx it or anything but I'm hoping that within about a month I'll be packing my things and heading west. Wish me luck.

Mainstream Nonconformity and Lessons Learned

You Are 60% Normal

Otherwise known as the normal amount of normal You're like most people most of the time But you've got those quirks that make you endearing You're unique, yes... but not frighteningly so!

How Normal Are You?

Whew! That's a relief. I was hoping I wasn't going to have to change the name of this blog to just another bug.

A and I went to see Accepted on Friday night. It was pretty funny if you like teen movies. I do but some people act all artistically superior and only admit to liking epic motion pictures. I guess I just feel that each genre has it's place. As with most teen movies, this one had a moral. Learning doesn't have to take place within the confines of the traditional educational system that cares more about conformity and protocols. One thing that I've learned is that if you have to go pee after consuming a large volume of pop while you were enjoying your movie then you shouldn't wait until you get home to take care of the situation. I learned this lesson the hard way.

One evening not so long ago, I exited the theatre with the knowledge that my bladder had reached it's capacity. "I'll just wait 'till I get home," I thought to myself. This would prove not to be one of the best decisions I've made. During the 20 minute drive home the situation grew steadily worse. I was ready at a moments notice to pull off to the side. I live in a rural area so there would have been no problem finding a bush to hide behind. I kept going and my muscles kept tightening. By the time I reached home I was in considerable pain. I rushed to the bathroom eagerly anticipating the sweet relief that comes with emptying a full bladder. To my dismay the pain actually got worse. I'm not sure if the muscles had contracted for so long that they were cramped but they didn't seem to want to release. I haven't felt that much pain in a while. I had to sit down doubled over on the toilet. I just hope there was no permanent damage. Needless to say I've learned my lesson. Save yourself the trouble and take my advice on this one. If you need to go then go. Even if you don't like using the crowded public washrooms at the movie theatre.

Daydreams

I'm the type of person that needs to know how the story ends. Mom used to have to take my books away from me so I wouldn't stay up all night reading. If you want to make out, don't bother starting a movie because even if I've seen it before I need to watch the whole thing. Because I'm like this I don't like to get involved in too many TV shows. If I'm gonna watch a show I like to follow it so if I watched to many then I wouldn't have time for anything else (like reading your blogs). Well lately time is one thing I seem to have so I find myself watching more TV. One of our local stations has been showing reruns of Grey's Anatomy at noon. I didn't get into this show the first time around because I was already watching ER and House so I didn't think I needed another Hospital Drama in my line up. I like to stay well rounded that way. I'm really kind of liking it now though and I find myself crushing on Dr. George O'Malley (TR Knight).He has a gentleness and genuineness about him. And he's sexy too. In the boy next door way not the super stud way. Super studs intimidate me but I could picture curling up on the couch with TR and watching a movie. He also has a playful side. Of course it would never work. He's too famous. I can just picture the email I'd have to write before we went to the Emmys together. "Dear Freinds and Family: I thought I should write to tell you something before you read about it in People Magazine." Oh well. I've lived in my daydreams for this long, a few more days won't hurt.

Time Well Wasted

And now for some of Canada's favourite passtime, America Bashing. What can I say? It gets us through the winter months. If it's any comfort we make fun of ourselves just as much.



I'm not sure I can see this interview happening with an American President.



I also came across this take on all the spin off shows being done.



I hope this has been culturally enriching for you. Enjoy.

All hands on deck

My brother's fiance and her parents came for supper tonight. So in typical Mom fashion it was all hands on deck. Vacuum here. Sweep there. Take this pile to the basement. Put the laundry away. You get the idea. With my luck it's genetic so when I move out I'll have to have people over to force myself to clean the place. Supper was good. We had potatoes, beans, carrots, beats, and corn all from our garden and roast beef from the store. I managed to get the stains off my hands from pealing and slicing the beats. It reminded me of Macbeth.

Aside: Apparently Lady Macbeth says "Out, damn spot! Out, I say!" and not "Out out damn spot!" I always get mixed up between Hamlet and Macbeth so I googled the phrase "out out damn spot" (because that's what I and apparently many others thought it was) to see which play it was from. The third result was for one of Towleroad’s posts. I don't think I've read his blog before but I have seen his name in the comments sections of other blogs. I might check him out now after this episode of chance.

Anyhoo, for dessert we had blueberry shortcake. It wasn't a good year for strawberries and Mom had a bunch of blueberries so voila, blueberry shortcake. My future sister-in-law also brought a caremal almond cheese cake. Ugh! I was stuffed. I definitely need to modify some of my eating habits because one of these days my metabolism is going to decide it's had enough and dicide to retire.

Chickens and Eggs

My life’s in a bit of a rut lately. I don’t know if I’m just really good at making excuses but it seems like everything I need to do is subject to the chicken and the egg phenomenon. I graduated over a year ago now with my business degree and I still don’t have a full time job. I’ve had several temporary jobs but have been collecting unemployment since May. I decided that I need to move away. Going to a church that is like one big extended family (a large number of members actually are) in a smallish city is not exactly conducive to self exploration and discovery. You never know when you might bump into someone or who might see you going in where. There also aren’t a lot of entry level opportunities for recent accounting grads either so moving makes sense from a job point of view as well. This is where the chicken and the egg phenomenon comes into play. It seems no one wants to interview someone that isn’t local and I can’t afford to move somewhere if I don’t have a job. This phenomenon is even affecting my personal life. I’m kicking myself for telling my parents I’m gay. Stupid emotions! Stupid ex for breaking up with me! The plan was to wait until I was living on my own and economically independent. Why can’t I just stick to the plan! My parents aren’t about to send me off to a rehab camp or anything but they do think it’s a sin and expect me to change. They’ve made it clear that while they will always love me they cannot support me if I’m living a “sinful” “lifestyle”. Because it looks like I will need to move in order to get a job, I will need financial help from them and because I told them I was gay, I need to be careful what I say and do. So for now I am listening to what they have to say (we don’t really talk about it that often) and being open to the possibility that I am wrong. Deep down I’m pretty sure I’m not but I don’t think I’m just pretending for my parents when I say I’m open to the possibility. I think it would be pretty arrogant to just dismiss everything I’ve been taught my whole life without giving it some serious consideration. What makes me any smarter than prior generations. If I’m going to disagree with something I should at least know what I disagree with and why. It’s a lot to deal with since I’ve been going to that church since before I can remember. Anyways, it just seems like everything in my life is waiting on me getting a job. It’s not just the money. It’s the daily routine that I want as well. I want to start exercising and eating better but it’s hard when you don’t have a routine.

Speaking of chickens and eggs, I’m going tomorrow to pick up some chicks. Yes I’m still gay. I mean actual chicks. Ten brown egg layer chicks. So in about 6 months or so we’ll start getting more eggs than we know what to do with (picture buying a half dozen eggs every day of the week). I’ll be sure to keep an eye on them so that I don’t make the same mistake Brett did but I’m pretty sure they’re a sex-linked cross. (It has to do with poultry colour genetics. I’d go into it but you’re probably already bored.) Maybe I’ll borrow my mom’s camera so I can post some pictures. Then again maybe I won’t. We’ll see.

Entertainment?

Well I still haven’t received my “gay” card that everyone keeps talking about. Maybe I’m still on probation. I hope not because that means I might have to pretend to like this person’s performance (he was on America's got Talent).

I’m sorry but I just don’t think any amount of time in the village, strawberry daiquiris, or Golden Girls reruns will bring me to a point where I find this entertaining. Maybe entertaining in the laugh at you kind of way but I never feel comfortable laughing at people. I can’t watch American/Canadian Idol during the audition stage because I just feel too embarrassed for them. I know for a lot of people this is the best part but I just can’t put myself through that kind of torture. I have noticed that all these talent type shows tend to have a snarly judge that everyone loves to despise. (That’s a reference to the Veggie Tales Christmas special. I know you like them too so don't try to deny it.)

Anyways... I better go check the mail to see if my card came yet.

My Story (so far...)

My God! Why is life so difficult? I don’t usually take the Lord’s name in vain but for some reason the phrase has become part of the modern vernacular and I couldn’t think of a substitute phrase that conveyed the same emotion.

I just got off of MSN with my ex-boyfriend. Apparently he now thinks he made a huge mistake and never should have broken up with me. Why now? Why after I’m getting over him and starting to get on with my life does he spring this on me?

We met online and started emailing almost daily. I went to visit him (a 6 hour drive) over the Easter weekend and things grew from there. I went to visit him again after tax season ended (my job ended along with it) this time for a week. I met his parents and some more of his friends and everything seemed to be going fine. I started applying for jobs in the area. He lives in a rural area so there wasn’t very much in my field (accounting) but I ended up getting an interview with a call centre that registers domain names. I visited him again when I went for my interview and we talked about moving in together and futures and stuff like that. I know this seems fast and looking back I would agree but at the time it seemed right.

I was planning to meet him again in Halifax during the July long weekend to go to his brother and long term partner’s wedding (His brother and father are also gay). Then, about a week or so before the wedding it happened. We had chatted on MSN that morning like normal with no hints that anything was up and then that afternoon I was excited to see an email from him in my inbox. I started reading and my stomach dropped and my intestines turned to mush. I couldn’t believe what was happening. His reason for breaking up with me was basically that I wasn’t out to my family yet. He had this picture in his head of being best friends with his boyfriend’s parents and he just couldn’t see himself with me because I didn’t have the whole family in law package that he was looking for. Needless to say I was blindsided and crushed. I couldn’t eat properly for several days due to the feeling of nausea.

Side note: I tend to be slightly academic and curious by nature so I remember being intrigued by the way my body was responding in a physical way to emotional stress. I’ve never experienced that before. Hmm, interesting. Something to research later.

Anyways, where was I…

He insisted that he wasn’t trying to force me into coming out or anything and I believe him. That’s what I did anyways. I think I was upset enough that I wouldn’t have been able to keep it from my Mom anyways. There were no angry outbursts or anything just silence. Since then I have been asked to read some articles she found on line and read my bible and pray with the hope that I will change. I haven’t really talked much more with her about it. For now I’m trying to avoid the topic until I get a job and move out. Then they can deal with the facts or not. It won’t affect me as much but right now I’m financially dependant on them and they aren’t going to help me move to a new city if they think they’re sending my off to a life of sin.

Then this morning I see him come online on MSN and he messages me. He tells me he had had a good talk with his brother. I say “ok” and think to myself “this is leading to something because he never seemed to get along with his brother”. Then he says “I realize I made a huge mistake. I know it’s not your parents or siblings I’m falling in love with. It’s you.” “Wow! That’s unexpected” I replied. So now I don’t know what to think. I told him that I was unsure of how I felt about all this because I had spent the last couple of months convincing myself that we weren’t meant to be and also that I was through settling for dead end jobs and compromising my future for someone that might turn around and yank the whole thing out from under me. Why can’t I deal with one emotional battle at a time? Auhhhhggg! Now I have some soul searching to do.

Honey, I'm home

Well I survived Indiana. I think I ate too many grapes though based on the frequency of my visits to the little boy’s room today. I also remembered why I don’t like traveling with my Dad. Dad’s been working over seas for the last couple of years so we only see him at Christmas and a couple weeks in the summer. I ended up traveling home with my parents and they definitely do not have the same communication styles. At first I was somewhat sympathetic with Dad because Mom likes to be in control so she had researched our routes ahead of time. (I’m very much like my Mom so I know what she’s like. It’s not that we always have to be actively in control as long as we’re sure that the person that is in control knows what they’re doing. If not then we tend to take over.) Because of this Dad is happy to just let Mom do the navigating. The problem is instead of giving the next set of directions Mom waits until we’re right on top of our exit before saying take a right. Needless to say Dad was getting a little frustrated. Once we got Mom to start giving us Route #’s and street names ahead of time then it was time to start getting mad at Dad. It seemed like he had turned off his intelligence. I mean he’s traveled around the world on his own so one would think he could read signs. If you were to see a sign saying to go right to get to O’Hare Airport along with the route number that your wife had just given you, would you still get mad at her for not telling you whether to go left or right? And then he gets mad at Mom and me for getting mad at him for getting mad at us because we assumed that he could read the signs. I think you’re beginning to see my dilemma. Ugh! I was praying that my seat wasn’t next to theirs on the flight. I did manage to make it home in one piece and didn’t have any problems like on the way to Lafayette. I am still thinking half in French though. All of Air Canada’s announcements are in English and French and when you took French Immersion through Junior High and High School this tends to cause your inner dialogue to go back to bilingual.

Slight change in plans

I told you I was naive. This is my first time flying by air. I boarded my flight in Saint John this morning. Everything was great. I arrive in Montreal and things aren't so great. My flight to Toronto is delayed an hour. Ok well I was supposed to have about 2 hours to switch terminals and go through customs in Toronto so now I'll only have an hour. That should be enough time right? Maybe it was. I'll never know because we got delayed again after we were on the runway. Something about thunder storms yadda yadda yadda... When we arrived, the flight attendants told me there was a good chance my next flight would also be delayed because of the weather so I raced through the airport (it works in the movies) to the shuttle to the next terminal. That was a waste of effort. I get on the shuttle 2nd and while I'm catching my breath all the people that decided to walk proceed to get on the bus. Grrrr. Don't you people know I have a plane to catch?! At least the luggage handling was efficient. My suitcase was already there for me to pick up and go through customs. I never made it to customs though. I showed my boarding pass to one of the lovely ladies and she said "Oh, that flight already left. You'll have to go way down to the end of this very long corridor and you'll find the Air Canada reservaton phones. Next!" Ahh Crrrap! So now I'm sitting in the Park Plaza Hotel waiting for the next flight to Indianapolis in the morning. Fun times!

I'm leavin' on a jet plane...

I'm in the middle of packing. I leave tomorrow around lunch time for Lafayette, Indianna. Mom called today and said it was really hot there. Yea! I get to stand in a church in a three peice suit on Saturday! So tomorrow I lose my flying virginity. Should be interesting. I need to remeber to pick up a GQ or something for the flight. I think I saw Justin Timberlake on the cover in the grocery store.

I'm taking my laptop with me but I might not be able to post or check email till next week so I leave you something to think about. No it's not eye candy. I can't compete with Donnie so I won't even try. Instead I found these interesting takes on those posters they use to decorate offices at http://despair.com. Here's a couple of my favourites.

I really hope I don't end up at McDonald's the rest of my life.

Sometimes it's good to not be noticed.

The burdens I must bear.

In case I can't get online while I'm away have a great weekend everybody and happy New Brunswick day on Monday.

Odds and Ends

Not even a week yet and I'm already doing an odds and ends post. This can't be good. If I can just make it to 21 days. Apparently that's the magic number for forming a habit. So far I'm doing better at blogging than I've done at exercising. I exercise about once a month if that and it consists of about half a pilates routine. I guess I'll have to get more serious about it once my metabolism slows down a bit more. I just don't get the rush that some people talk about from exercising. I find it boring.

So as I mentioned earlier I'm baching it this week. I was getting tired of bbq'd sausages so I decided to switch it up tonight. I ended up doing spaghetti. That might sound more impressive than mac and cheese but it's not. It's actually easier. You still have to cook the pasta but instead of the butter/milk/cheese powder mess you just open a jar of pasta sauce and voila. Of course if Mom was here she would have made her own sauce from scratch. (Now that I think of it there's probably some in the freezer. Darn, too late now.)

Just before I go I wanted to complain about yahoo. I have yahoo.ca set as my home page. I'm used to glancing at certain places to see the current headlines or entertainment news. Well today they go and revamp the whole site (It might have been just the Canadian site but I'm not sure). It's bad enough that I now have to get used to looking in different sections but it also looks ugly. The icons are all boxy like an early edition of windows or something. I don't want to look at that every time I go online. Maybe it's just me but if you are going to revamp a site shouldn't you have everything ready to go before you go live? Half of the links weren't working. Of course this is just my business training talking (You know, the part about not ticking off the customer) maybe they do it differently in the techy world. I'll give it a day or two but I may be shopping around for a new home page.