I’m back!

Well, remember me?

I’d been staring at my site for quite some time, dissatisfied at it and how I’ve neglected it. But I also didn’t want to go back to feeling a bit burdened by posting so much, often late at night, wrestling with this pretty bad program I bought which promised (ha!) to make editing one’s blog easier but which wound up making a terrible mess of things, and looking a bit silly with all the gratuitous male flesh. So expect my updates to be shorter and there to be less men involved. I won’t say none of them though – perish the thought!

When last I left you we were discussing the Real Housewives of New York and their disasterous trip to Marrakech. I think that was when the rot set in which led to half of the cast (including my favourite, Alex) being fired. We went through a full season of New Jersey with hot sexy Joe Gorga, and we’ve started in on Beverly Hills and Atlanta. I’m watching Beverly Hills but only fitfully. See, I got so many good books for Christmas or for myself that I find I don’t have a lot of desire to watch my DVR’d episodes. I will try to get caught up on Beverly Hills and I will possibly be more dilligent with Orange County, but I think I’ll give New York and Atlanta a (continuing) miss.

Since the summer when my last post was posted I’ve had a lot of good times. C and I went to beautiful Litchfield, SC, for a week of pool-lying-beside and couch-lazing-on and not much else. We really enjoyed it. If anyone wants I’ll post a picture of the house and such. In October we took another mini-break to Bethlehem, PA, and started on our Christmas shopping. (See, last year we did nothing at all for Christmas and we were both a little depressed so this year we put up a beautiful tree and lots of decorations and had family over and it was 100% better. And we had Bubble Lights!)

In November for my birthday we went to Tucson, AZ, to meet Ryan Hickmott whom some of you will know from an episode of Morgan Spurlock’s show 30 Days. To refresh your memory you can go check out the first post I made about him. We’ve gone from being Facebook friends to what I hope is ‘real’ friends; he has shared various very personal good news and bad times with me. It was really good to meet him and his lovely wife Angela. We went to Tombstone where I fired a pistol for the first time in my life. I thought it was great! We had dinner together – it was his anniversary weekend and we visited him at his home. We also enjoyed some of the sights of the Tuscon area and some great restaurants too. I’ll try to upload a few pics from it if anyone would care to see them.

So what’s on my mind now?

• The state of national and international affairs. Which basically suck. We’re all broke and going to China for money. Obama is looking less and less viable unless this recession ends and people can get back to work.
• My weight. Please see my other blog for more on that.

What’s on your mind?

Now the gentleman whose torso is above is model Michael Horta, an American who moved to Brazil when he was 11 years old. Here he is, head on. 

He knows what YOU want

 

Sure looks like he does!

More from Florida

First off, I have to apologize for not having written in quite some time. These last few weeks I’ve been dealing with quite a bit of information that has really knocked me sideways. I’ve gone from being excited to being fearful to being hopeless to being hopeful, sometimes in a single minute’s time. I will fill you all in quite soon on what it’s all about, but I have some off-line journaling to do beofre I can get things into a coherent and hopefully interesting form for publication to the masses (well, the two or three of you that still read this.)

Back to Florida

Well, we’re still in sunny Florida (in our story) and the second day of our trip has dawned. C & I left to get breakfast out, at a little restaurant mum and dad recommended. It was okay; I have to say that I do find myself getting more fond of grits. (Which, lets face it, are basically a loose pap, right?) After that we trotted off downtown to check out the galleries; we found some nice things but nothing that demanded we take it home. I really liked some of the paintings, but wasn’t so fond of the ‘giclée’ (aka a photograph printed on canvas). The gallery owner even said that the artist set the price for is paintings too high.

Came back to the condo and then went to lie by the pool. While there, I thought – I get it. I get why people retire there. You can go to the pool nearly every day. The gulf’s warm enough to swim in without ‘getting used’ to it. No shoveling snow. No dealing with icy roads. No slush. No leaves to rake up. And at least at the time we were there, we weren’t surrounded by “wrinklies;” at the pool dh and I were the oldest people around.

Of course, if I lived there I really couldn’t do what I did that day – lie two hours in the sun without sun block. I was peeling for two weeks. Because I’m…erm… taller than my hair, I peeled on my scalp too. That’d never happened to me before.

That night we went to dinner at a strange restaurant overlooking some sort of canal. The food was good though, but the ceilings were painted black which made the lights that hung from them very glaring and harsh. Also by the time we left we were the only people there, yet it wasn’t that late; about eight p.m.

No pictures from this day because, well, I don’t like having pictures of me at the pool!

The next day we had a late breakfast and drove back up to Tampa and caught the flight home. Here are some pictures of the Sunshine Skyway:

It looks scarier than it really is.

A Movie You Should See

Well, a few actually. The first is “Nine Queens” from Argentina. It’s a movie about con artists who try to swindle a stamp collector with some fake stamps. It stars Ricardo Darín and the very handsome Gastón Pauls. I recommend it; it is in Spanish but the subtitles make it easy to follow the somewhat complicated story.

You can give Gastón a click to see him get bigger…I really enjoyed how he played a tough guy with vulnerability, if you know what I mean. There was always a little boy inside the swindler, the schemer, so that you couldn’t really stay judgmental over him. There’s a surprise ending of course.

The next is also from Argentina: “XXY” about a child growing up as a girl but with an extra male chromosome. As she reaches puberty she and her family have to decide how to proceed; and of course it’s not an easy decision that’s foisted on them. I probably wouldn’t view this with young children.

Both these films were recommended to me by Maximiliano Palacio; if you follow the Real Housewives of New York, he was Kelly Bensimone’s date (you may remember the Countess’s tongue hanging out over him, or Brad, Jill’s ‘gay husband’ making a scene of himself). I ‘met’ Max on facebook and have chatted to him on the chat facility there. He’s totally charming and nice and I wish him well in his acting and modeling career.

Another film not to see with children at all is “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.” It will make you think and maybe change your ideas about abortion. If you don’t understand Romanian there are subtitles!

And now, some more eye candy for your delectation

The first piece of eye candy is the aforementioned Max, with the aforementioned Kelly at the Halloween party presumably after ‘the incident,’ and in a shot part of an ad campaign for Organica Boutique (which you can click to make him grow). Isn’t he handsome?

(You’ll have to take my word for it about how nice he is.)

Let’s Take a Break, Shall We?

Let’s take a break from all this introspection and all these deep thoughts. So, I hear you asking, what has AngloAm been up to recently?

After our vacation to South Carolina, the dh and I went to visit my mum and dad in Venice, Florida. We flew down from BWI to Tampa which was an interesting flight. There was a loud woman on board with her (rather cute) husband, but they weren’t seated together, so she spent quite some time ordering him to ask those around him to move and shift positions and put themselves out so she could sit near him, and hand off their quiet baby to him. We get to Tampa and it’s balls-hot. After the crispness of Maryland, it hit us like a hot wet blanket – FWOMP.

We got the rental car and drove off down to Venice and to mum and dad’s condo. I must say it was nicer than I thought it would be. It’s small, but not much smaller than my house, all on one floor with a garage, a lanai (covered porch) and a view over the pond where we saw an alligator swimming about:

The next day we took a trip around Venice, Nokomis and the cities’ beaches. Venice’s downtown is really nice; some of the main street is lined with palm trees and some with banyan trees. The shops aren’t too twee and anytime there’s an official city beach you know it’s a place for pleasant living. I must also admit that there weren’t as many geriatrics or facilities for geriatrics as I thought there would be. After seeing the main town we had lunch by the town canal and drove to some orange groves near a neighbourhood which was a bit less perfect and manicured than most of the condo and villa pool and golf course communities in town:

After the tour, and a trip up Casey Key where the rich and ostentatious live, dh and I went to Caspersen Beach. This by the way, was the very furthest south I’ve ever been so far. The water was incredible in the Gulf of Mexico – as warm as bath water. You didn’t have to ‘get used to it’ on getting in. And the waves were a lot less pound-y than on the Atlantic:

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The big draw, though, in the late afternoon, is sunset over the Gulf. It’s incredible:

What about the eye candy?

I guess if we’re getting back to normal, we’d better go all the way, and who better to go all the way with than our nearly forgotten Brazilian beach and pool boy, Bruno Schuind, here hopefully with some sun block on:

(Do you see a certain tendency in where the speedo’s going?)

Something Wrong…But Not With My Loyal Readers

It’s been a short strange trip since I last blogged but the time has really flown by and it’s just because of that that I’ve not been blogging more. My bad.

So wuzzup?

I started physical therapy on doctor’s orders on Friday. I was really nervous because it’s a stranger in very close proximity and I don’t normally like that. It’s also extra leave time to use. 😦 Anyway, the therapist Matt is very solemn seeming but also very cute (the picture doesn’t really do him justice).

When I started I didn’t think I really needed it as it wasn’t feeling so bad, and I told him so but he seemed to take it seriously. He did mention that it possibly was the great big painful stretch in the doctor’s office that did the trick. Apparently my tendon was very tight and even though it hurt like hell, the wrenching stretch may have really helped. Nice to know it wasn’t for nothing.

First Matt used ultrasound on me, which was pretty unremarkable; at first the probe seemed really hot but I soon got used to it. Then he switched to massaging my heel which you’d think would be nice but really wasn’t; it wasn’t objectionable, but rather ‘no big deal.’ Then he put a strap around my foot and had me pull it back flexing it as hard as possible; that wasn’t so easy towards the end as I had to pull and hold this strap harder and harder. Next he gave me a rubber band thing to use to flex my foot against to strengthen the heel and tendon. Then he had me do two stretches standing with instructions to do them at home as well (which I didn’t follow too well). Finally he put a big ice wrap on my feet and left me for ten minutes to chill down.

The weekend was lazy and we didn’t do too much. Ah well. Nice dinner with a friend on Friday, nice lunch on Saturday at a great Italian restaurant, and C cooked delicious bratwurst and fresh corn on the cob. Sunday we had ham steak for breakfast and went to my mum and dad’s house for dinner. We avoided most talk about politics.

Which have been very interesting of late. The rabble have their pitchforks out about the health care plan, whipped to a frenzy by the very people who hold them deepest in contempt and who don’t give two flying damns about them. My brother and I discussed how there seems to be something wrong with a lot of aspects of our culture. We agreed that there is something wrong with militias (whose membership is seemingly increasing), gun nuts, hero worship, false patriotism (by which I mean loyalty to the country rather than loyalty to its people), survivalists, hero worship, all things which seem to delight in force and violence and smugness/triumphantilism. It seems to me at least to be a lack not so much of compassion, but of humility. Some people seem to be their own Gods. A healthy, humble individualism is one thing, but one which requires not building oneself up but knocking others down is not helpful.

Now about that eye candy….

I’ll blog more this week but for now, let’s go back to our sexy lad, Bruno Schuind. Here he is enjoying some lovely chocolate ice cream (I think) and wrapped in some sort of strange material. Any idea what it is?

      

(Maybe he should take the pants off for closer inspection – what do you think?)

Week Weak

Well, it’s been a week or so since I last regaled you with my semi-organized thoughts and it’s been quite a week. Mostly ups, glad to report, but some downs, including one big one which is the reason I say weak.

Ups

We’ll start with the ups; celebrated my mum’s birthday with a lovely meal at my brother’s house seeing his exceptionally cute kids, Rowan and Remy. We had crab cakes, fresh corn and asparagus and a lovely carrot cake. Since mum and dad were a bit late, Marc and I had time to discuss things, including things from the past that he remembers and I don’t. I honestly don’t. Maybe I’m repressing these memories but it doesn’t feel like it. Would it?

The Friday before that C and I played hookey – the weather was extraordinarily nice – and went for the afternoon on a lovely drive in the Shenandoah National Park. Would you like pictures?

Downs

The big down is my darmed (damned) heel and foot (left). After the shot of cortisone from the doctor I really expected it would be all better and that I could go back to the gym toute de suite. Alas. It got a little better and then got worse. So today I went to the doctor and said “it’s worse.” (Well, what else, right?) He pokes and prods and stuff and decides it’s both bursitis and tendonitis. Yippee.

He has me get up on his exam table and prepare for another cortisone jab. Whee – relief is on the way! Alas. He trots back into the room with the golden news that he’s run out of cortisone. But he wants me to have physical therapy and it’s not killer so I’m to go to the physio and if it’s not better after two weeks of it, he’ll have me back in for a jab. So, not so bad. Alas.

As I’m coming down off the exam table, I go to step on the little step stool provided for the purpose. I put my left foot on it, but the ball of the foot, and the heel of the foot descends, stretching my achilles tendon. It fucking hurt. It hurt so bad. It felt like my tendon was being replaced by a cold river of pain flowing in waves down the back of my leg. I let out a rude word, see the previous sentence, and nearly passed out. OMG it was the worst pain I’ve felt in ages. Maybe ever. Except for a dry socket. I felt nauseated for about five minutes and really wanted to pass out.

Respect your tendons. Apparently all I’ve done is over-stretch it. If you rupture it, it’s comparable to being shot in the heel, and it doesn’t get better.

In any event, after assuring himself (me not so much) that I was ambulatory I was sent on my way. Walking to the car was not pleasant, getting into it was not pleasant, going to lunch was not pleasant, and walking from my car to my desk had me whimpering. (It didn’t help that it was 95 F and humid, and there I am limping along which is actually more tiring and sweat inducing than walking properly. Or so it seemed.)
It’s a little better now; I iced it well when I hobbled home and will do again just before bed.
A related down is that Pat Savage (the handsome kind sergeant at work) is back from his holiday to London and was eager to meet up with me to teach me how to use the frightening-looking type free weights at work. And not only because of that, or the fact that I keep gaining weight, but I miss the gym. Not at all only because of the EC, but because I miss the simplicity and honesty of the place, the leveling atmosphere, the community. Yes, it disrupted my evenings, and yes I would be a bit sore in the aftermath (nothing like this pain I’m in now though) but it was good, it was a good thing and I enjoyed it. And for the next three weeks at least I can’t go.

Or can I – I could go do upper body exercises, swim (ugh) and/or use my portable pedal thingy to work with my arms for (light) cardio. Who knows?

Edit / Update:  It feels a lot better today (8/12 or 12/8 depending on where you live).

A small down: I hear a rattle or squeak from the driver’s side front of the car. 😦

So, AngloAm, you’ve been mentioning this new obsession

Yes, and he’s not going to be to everyone’s taste but he is to mine. He’s the creator of FuckedCompany.com which chronicled the end of the dot com boom (and is really missed). He’s a talented entrepreneur, a great drummer (hard rock), has a killer sense of humor, great eyes, a devastating smile, and is all around a great guy. He’s known to many as ‘pud’ but his real name is Philip Kaplan and yes, he gracious gave me permission to highlight him.

Here he is and any comments about his resemblance to a certain rabbi will be received ironically. Click on him and he’ll grow like magic before your very eyes.

We’ll be swapping between Mr. Kaplan and Mr. Schiund….

(Down boys, he’s engaged to a very accomplished lady)

The Ages of Man (and Woman)

It’s strange. I was reading Richard Lawson’s hilarious recap of the latest episode of NYC Prep and he said something rather insightful (he nearly always does):

The funny, sad, wonderful, tough thing about youth is that it’s so many firsts. So much of everything is the first time. And it’s great, because you get to feel new every day! But it’s scary, because so much of the world seems to loom over you, to know so much more than you. And you wish yourself into the future, into that faraway time when you’re settled and able. How dumb that is. How dumb it is to not want the first blush forever.

And you know, that’s true. I remember a time when nearly everything, every new discovery about life beyond the confines of home, was something fresh and marvelous and new. And when everything new seemed to make me new, change me in all sorts of wonderful ways. I guess I thought life would always be like that, always full of new starts and restarts, fresh golden apple experience, the first kiss, the first time making love (amazing how sophisticated a fumble in a car made me feel), the first time interviewing for and getting a job, the first time attending a college class. Everything was effortlessly marvelous, as in full of marvels. When…

… you put your head on a pillow and felt like an entirely different being all of a sudden. Someone who knew something small, who’d found a golden kernel of knowledge and taken it, joyously.

But while recalling that time of continuous novelty, what I remember most is being just as ‘foolish’ as Lawson says youth are – I wanted to be settled and domesticated and safe. The thing is, now, at a certain age, I don’t feel wise or smart, even though I do feel settled. But here’s where I disagree with Mr. Lawson. I think the first blush forever would be too unsettled, too mentally tiring after awhile.

But then – maybe that’s because I can’t help seeing it from my current perspective. Maybe somehow how we see the world is how we need to, on some level, when it comes to this area. Or at least perhaps it could be. I’m older than 20, so to me it’s good, it’s a relief of that period (and there were travails – lack of money, lack of knowledge, lack of wisdom, needlessly making things tougher on my life than they had to be) are over. I didn’t know how to manage my money or my affairs, for example, whereas I do, a bit(!) now. I’ve got a man who loves me and whom I love, with no drama or foolishness, but with the contentment of knowing that we mean to be together forever. I remember wishing for that so badly.

And then I think ahead, say twenty years, and people that age seem contented with their time of life too, or at least the ones I know do. So I’m hoping that I will be too, then. I hope I remember not to forget what life is like at 20, or 40.

Yes, yes, but what’ve you been up to?

Well, the past week at work was quite good, I actually had something to do, which is easier than sitting around wondering if I’m wasting my life.
Medically (I hate that I have to have a paragraph for that) I’m not doing so well. I mentioned that I got a cortisone shot for my heel pain. So I couldn’t go to the gym all week. So I’m sure I’ve gained weight. Because I’ve oversnacked. And yesterday while walking around, I suddenly felt this horrible sharp pain in my hip whenever I started to take a step (stretched my leg out to do so).
Now the doc told me to stay away from the gym until my bursitis was ‘resolved’ which I take to mean ‘gone away.’ Not happened yet. He also told me to ice it every evening. Only did that twice so far. In other words, some of this is my fault. I was on a great trajectory say Wednesday, figuring I could go back to walking soon, but Thursday instead of getting a bit better like it had done very day, it got a bit worse. So I’m scared quite frankly – I didn’t get the relief that cortisone normally gives and I can’t have more until three months. I can’t stay away from the gym forever.
If anyone has any advice I’d be grateful.
It’s doubly important because this guy from work whom you see here, and whom I find very sexy, has agreed to teach me how to use the big scary weight machines at the gym. The drawback is that I have to be there at 0545 ready to go but it’ll make a man of me, or something. A sleepy man.
Yesterday the husband and I went down in Bob to Charlottesville, VA, specifically to a shop called Food of All Nations. Well, most nations, anyway. We wandered around–this is where I started getting the shooting pain in my hip. I have to say that I honestly believe that with a combination of Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck Foods), MOM’s Organic Market, and some ethnic stores (Italian, Korean/Asian, German, Afghan/Middle Eastern) and mail order, we can get everything from a lot closer than Charlottesville. Which is not to say I’m not glad that this store is so far away because they really do have things from all over. I bought some South African rusks, some English cheese and chocolate bars, they have Australian Vegemite, German ‘fitness bread‘ and other goodies from all over.
Today we did nothing. I watched a bit of the Real Housewives of Atlanta and am trying to decide if I’ll like the show enough to follow it.
To get to Charlottesville I had to put gas in the car, where I caught sight of this random studmuffin pumping away. Oh, I’m such a perve, aren’t I?
C planned the garden a bit more and wondered if he should water it. Our favourite man-candy Gilmar Rodrigues can also get creative with a garden hose and what has to be the most daring use of damp shorts I’ve ever seen (click on the smaller images to see the full breadth and length of his … creativity).

(I like a man who knows what to do with his hose)

Returns, Absences, and Changes

Well, as you can see the ‘weight loss’ page is back. Mainly shamefacedly because I wanted to publicize my losing this week. 🙂

In other developments, I’ve not got plantar fasciitis but a simple bursitis behind my heel. The doctor gave me an injection of cortisone and it will supposedly clear right up. Well, I hope so. At least I do feel some improvement already. He wants me to ice it every evening and lay off the walking until it is resolved (all cleared up, I guess).

Went to Panera in Laurel for lunch and ran into my mum and dad and it was really nice. I had a fairly sensible lunch too. Since I can’t walk I have to be extra careful about intake.

The other thing the doctor told me was that I am very very slightly anemic and he wants me to take a Vitamin B-12 supplement. My red blood cell count is 3.97 million/microliter, and it should be higher than 4.20. My hematocrit (the proportion of blood volume that is occupied by red blood cells) is 38.0%; should be 38.5% or higher. My MCH (mean corpuscular hemoglobin) is 33.6 picograms/cell; should be no more than 33.0 pg/cell. I am however, not iron-deficient, and he doesn’t seem to think any further intervention beyond 500 micrograms of B-12 is needed.

Other than that a good day, nothing much to report from work. I’m not sure but I’m guessing I didn’t get the job I interviewed for last week, but that’s okay. I know I did the best I knew how. On to researching other options, eh? I mean I’m so vital I was out until 12:30 and nobody even knew I wasn’t there (I called into my boss but she was out too). If I wasn’t so honest I could save a bit of leave time and say to disregard my phone message and that I had been there all along but that would be wrong.

Tonight I was facebooking with my facebook friend Reynaldo Gouws from South Africa. He has some  strong opinions on the place and all of them are based on facts. (He’s also a real gym bunny, click and see him grow, and a DJ, and an industrial psychologist.) He’s complaining that youtube where he posts his videos is restricting him and has cut way back on the views he gets. Please, if you have time, go and see his channel on youtube and discover his opinions. Even if you don’t like them you will have to admit that he backs them up and holds them sincerely.

Would anyone like the names of the other youtubers I subscribe to?

I’m going to try to get to bed early tonight. I’ll probably have nobody photographing me, unlike Mr. Rodrigues does (oh, and I’m tired of old Nick so I’ve changed the masthead a bit).

(Yes, those eyes are green)

Upsan Downs

Well, it’s been my share of both since we last met up, you the great Internet and me. Mostly down.

Friday (shall we start there?)

Friday was a strange day. It started off quite normal actually, even though I was a little bummed that we wouldn’t be meeting up with our friends for dinner. However. Halfway or so through the day I got this horrible feeling of sadness and … well … self-pity wash over me. My poor facebook and M&G Forum friend J.d.H. was the person on whom I fixated this feeling – he’s young, brainy, and really handsome, and I decided that he was “better” than me somehow. So I “defriended’ him on facebook and sat around feeling very gloomy with myself. I’m sure I was an utter pain to all around me. I did perk up when we went to my mum and dad’s house for our niece R’s birthday celebration.

But the main thing

But the main thing that bothered me was my horrible heel pain. See (yippee) my nasty stasis ulcer has all healed but now I have a more painful thing – what feels like plantar fasciitis in my left foot. What it means is that I can’t go four or five steps without shooting pains in my foot and the resultant change in my gait means my back and hip hurts on that side as well.

So Saturday I went to the gym, full of optimism and managed a measly, a pathetic, a shameful 15 minutes before I succumbed to pain. Then that evening we were scheduled to go to our friends over on Kent Island, to swim in their pool and to have one of their great dinners and hang out. But I bailed at the last minute because I frankly didn’t feel up to it; I was uncomfortable at the idea of being in such pain and thereby being a pain. Of course, I bailed after they’d set aside dinner for us all so I felt awful and the way I bailed made my friend think I was upset with her so I felt worse, and finally, near tears, called her up very late to make sure she knew I felt dreadful and that I hoped we’d be invited back. I fully understand it won’t be next weekend; she’s got a family barbecue and C & I want to get away for a drive.

That evening, I decided to watch the second disk of The Grafters and broke our expen$ive DVD player. I fell against it while the disk drawer was open and now it won’t switch DVDs or release them and so last night I felt lower than a ball of worm excrement.

Sunday

Today C and I have been very lazy but I needed the prolonged hugging. Tomorrow I will go to the doc’s about the fasciitis, and I need to do a few errands on the way back from the docs (a new lock for the gym, assuming I’m allowed back, gel inserts for my shoes). I expect I’ll be referred to a podiatrist again and I expect I’ll have to get a very painful cortisone jab into my heel and then get measured for orthotics. 😦

But I’m keeping my chin up

I’m hoping that tomorrow will be a better day and that Dr. A. will be able to tell me what’s wrong, what to do, and how he can stop the pain.

Listening to L’Aquila E Il Condor from the album “Stilelibero” by Eros Ramazzotti. And considering today’s Handsome Hunk of Home Improvement, Marc Bartolomeo. Italian, handsome, self-effacing, charming, and skilled with his hands, he’s an electrician and carpenter and model, he was on “In a Fix” (I repeat – that show was like soft-core porn for me) and now ‘Save My Bath” on HGTV. Mmmm he’s got lovely classic looks and he’s quite funny.

The first set of shots are kinda arty from his own website (click on the thumbnails to make Mr. B bigger):

Then there are the others on the web…like this NSFW one, infamous among Bartolomeo’s fans. 🙂 Or like this actually quite sweet one:

(Lucky bottle!)

Part II

So I shall pick up where I left off, you poor things.

What I would like to have studied

It was really hard for me to tell what I would like to have studied. My horizons weren’t really very wide at graduation from high school and as you can imagine, studying at an ed. center on base didn’t widen them much further. When I got back to the states, though, and started up at the University of Maryland, I had access to (a) advanced German, which was a lot of fun, (b) Italian, which I’d taught myself a bit of when I was in ninth grade, and (c) linguistics (only 101 level). And I was hooked. Hooked like a crack junkie under a bridge. I read way ahead of where I was supposed to be in all three classes. It was so cool. I felt like a kid in the candy store except all the candy in front of me was free and there was more round the back. Sadly, I felt I couldn’t switch majors being as I was a senior at that point, so I was stuck with the degree I’d earned.
Let’s see if you can guess the kinds of things I would have preferred to study. Three guesses, the first two don’t count.

What I would like to do

I really only have the contours; obviously I’d like to be able to be openly gay at work, and to use my not inconsiderable talent for languages, including my pretty good abilities in German. And to be able to keep my current lifestyle or at least not take too much of a hit(!). I have no idea what that would be but I’m sure it is out there somewhere. Oh and at least for the foreseeable future the job has to be in the Washington, DC area. That’s a lot of ‘must haves’ but I’d be willing to work at home part time to get my orthopedic walkers in the door. I guess at 43 you have to be willing, eh?

If you have any ideas I’d be grateful!

How I may be able to get there

I’m not sure. Have you any ideas? I do have one – a career counsellor. I mean it may be worth it, and I would think of the cost as an investment in my future and happiness. Trouble is, the only one I know of doesn’t have a web page (which these days is unique, to say the least). Do you know of any? Honest injun, I need to know. I will, I promise, have this one called by the end of the week (I feel some trepidation as you can imagine). And I may look around at any advice I can find about things to look for in hiring one and also for any other names there may be.

What I think may be holding me back

Normally I’d say my mum and dad, indirectly. See, as I said last time, I often felt not only that there was an easy way to do things, but also an ‘approved of’ way; a way that would please mummy and daddy (which, if I went down it, would make my life easier). I was talking to Alan about this and I remembered wanting to continue with violin (when I was but a young tyke) but mummy being convinced that playing the clarinet would be better (and something she’d prefer). So I went and did it. And yes, that’s holding me back a bit – but I’m less and less sure that all or even most of the blame should be laid at the door of mum and dad.

And this all came about last night. I had this dream where my mum and dad were absolutely torturing me. Dad was trying to kill me with a knife and mum was trying to lock me in the bathroom. Wow, right? Imagery. Suppressed memories? But also, the world as seen by a little kid. How close could that have been to an adult understanding of what my mum and dad were actually doing, and how close could that have been to an adult understanding of their motives and realities. All parents have to do things that strike their children as not just tough or firm but fair but “ruinous of life” “deserving of hatred,” and “murderous” even.

But honestly, my mum and dad never even came close to killing me. I mean, I dream about it, but can’t remember being spanked much. I figure that what I’m remembering is a child’s perception of what was going on. Not a grown-up discernment or judgement (objectively) or empathy to their childhoods and parental skill set (subjectively).

I know that if I went to my mum and dad and said “I’m staying in a job I don’t much like because I want to please you,” after the laughter died down they’d insist that they would want me to do nothing of the sort. And when I think about it that sounds like a monumental evasion of my own responsibility to myself. What’s in the past has passed; I can’t do anything about what opportunities were open to me at 16 or 17 or even 20, but I can stop paying such needless attention to not just real things from my childhood, but also imagined things. Things that probably didn’t even happen.

I mean, yes I may be scared of switching careers, but whose problem is that? Mine. It may be different from what mum and dad would have suggested but when I consider their perspective, or what may be their perspective, they were all about safety. Dad’s career choices were a proven route to security (not success, just security). We never wondered where our next meal would come from, in fact, we often knew when our next holiday would come from. We had a house and never lost it, we had a car at all times, colour television; if there were money worries we were insulated from them as kids. I do think they’d be unhappy if I were to have to move far from the general area, but is that ‘terrible’ or just ‘natural.’ Heck, I’d have mixed feelings about it.

And they, given their chaotic childhoods, had to have it always in mind, lurking in the background, that stability and security are far from guaranteed just because we want them badly to be.
So. What I thought was holding me back was them. What I think is holding me back is, ultimately, me. Phew. That was good to figure out.

Up to of late

Well, what has the AngloAmerican been up to of late? Not a lot since I last blogged, lo those few hours ago. I’ve baked two loaves of bread; here they are before and after going into the oven:

I’ve also been watching “Grafters” (a BBC miniseries from 1998) starring daddylicious (yet only a year older than me OMG) Robson Green. Part of the appeal is not just his rather dishy looks but also hearing Northern English accents (it’s grim oop north!) I remember hearing from my childhood. But the show’s really good – about two brothers, Geordies in London, trying to start a building business, and well worth you taking a lot. I know you can get it from Netflix.Curious about old Robson, born in 1964 in Hexham, Northumberland (Northumbria in new money)? Here’s a scene of his from his show Extreme Fishing, in which he seems to have lost some sort of bet to a bunch of rowdy Canadians.

(I am and remain, speechless at those Canucks’ luck)

It Has To Be a Joke

That’s what I thought this morning. See, I woke up, reached over to pick up my glasses, and felt then snap in my hand. The arm had broken. C and I searched everywhere for my old back ups – he doesn’t drive so without the specs, we’re stuck. No luck finding them (so I will be buying new ones soon) so I called work, canceled my appointment with my counsellor, and went with C to see if the opticians could help me. Ordinarily it would have been horrible enough but remember – we’re up against a time constraint. Crapola, right? Luckily the lab manager at “Furle Vision” had a temple and could replace it so all was well in the end. Mind you, I still couldn’t work up the guts to call JJ and tell him that despite his be-goatee’d magnificence I don’t want to be working for his youthful arrogance.

“Call mum and dad at home”

Is what I told the car’s bluetooth connection to see how my mum was doing and at least her pre-op appointment went well and she seems a bit more confident about the op. Great news!

The handsome hunks of home improvement

That’s the theme for now. I was watching, well, I was trapped the other day, held hostage against my will by HGTV or TLC or whatever channel’s tactic of starting the next show right on the heels of the one ending, watching all sorts of home improvement shows, lawn crashing and bashing, remodeling and renovating, and I thought – wow, there are some pretty handy bits of eye candy there and wow, that’d make a good theme, since pictures of the Swiss Mister are not thick on the ground. I worked out too that this theme would fit in well with the earlier pictures of Gilmar Rodrigues working so well with his tool.

Without further ado, then, here’s today’s installment of a handsome hunk of home improvement, Scott McGillivray from “Income Property” on HGTV. He specializes in helping home owners fantasize about hot hard hats, or fixing up their basements to lease out. Or both. I mean, really. He’s Canadian, and very very cute. Sadly, there aren’t that many shots of him but trust me on this one and check him out. Oh, and you should see what he can do to transform a basement into a very “des res.” I mean they are still basements, but they are basements you’d want to spend time in. And pay to do so! Other than the one from Sunday, I’ve only found two pictures of Scott, plus a video with clips from his show. It’s pretty amazing.

We can make it a twofer

It is Tuesday after all. Our next HHoHI is ‘life experience junkie” Evan Farmer, from While You Were Out and Freestyle. (Since cancelled.) Now let’s see, Evan’s studied architecture, was born in Ethiopia (well, in Asmara which is now the capital of Eritrea), starred in an MTV made-for-television movie (as a boy band heartthrob, of course), been in a real band in Russia, opened for Britney Houston, and acted in movies and on television (he was the young Number Two in the third Austin Powers movie).

A real talented guy and a heck of a lot of fun to watch, even if you didn’t find him incredibly charmingly attractive, as C and I did. He writes a great and fascinating blog. He sings like a young John Mellencamp, whom he completely doesn’t talk like. He is active in quite a bit of philanthropy, built his own plane which he then flew across the country. One one level it feels a bit sleazy using him just for eye candy; but what the heck. I do encourage you to go to his website and get to know him – he seems to be a pretty extraordinary guy.

Not to mention as cute as a particularly cute button (click the two smaller Evans to get bigger Evans):

And finally, here’s a video from 1997 when Mr. Farmer was a bartender in New York. One person on the YouTube page with this video said that the bar is a gay one; who knows?

And here is, building a plane and flying it cross country:

Now a quiz: Which blond built HHoHI was on While You Were Out with Mr. Farmer? He’ll be our next Handsome Hunk. Meanwhile, just so you don’t forget Mr. Beyeler, here he is showing excellent (useful) flexibility:

(That could be good for party tricks…or vice versa)