we're *that* kind of couple...

deep thoughts... maybe too deep...

Me -- "She was talking about Hindu prayers and chants, specifically about 'Om' -- which is maybe the only thing I believe in. You know, because 'Om' is the sacred sound of creation -- which makes sense, right, because it's like the big bang. I mean, the big bang had to make a noise right? The sacred sound of creation. Om."

Mahavira -- "Uh... I really just need to focus on grad school right now."

rains:pours

Isn't it just typical that my posting slows to a crawl for months, then I post three things in the space of a couple of hours?

Anyway, check out this craziness. Some programmers somewhere created some kind of rudimentary artificial intelligence in a Second Life robot named Edd.

Bizarre.

my weekend adventure

Let me begin by explaining that the photos in this post will be completely random and interspersed throughout the story of the weekend. There will be no explanation other than this: these photos are pretty and were taken during our paddle today on the Salmon River. Enjoy the photos and the thrilling story I will weave in between them.

This weekend was "Reach the Beach" -- which is when crazy people (like some of my kayaking friends) hop on bicycles and ride all the way from Portland to Pacific City, which is about 100 miles away and through some mountains. My kayaking friends decided this would be the perfect opportunity to blend cycling (for some) and kayaking (for all). My job was to learn to drive a stick shift so I could take some of the boats and a bike rack down on Kara's truck. I said "OK!"

The drive down on Saturday went pretty well considering I've only driven a stick shift three times. The only hitch was when I backed into a brand new, shiny red, convertible Mustang in a K-Mart parking lot in Tualatin. The parking lot was practically empty and this jack-hole decided to tuck his tiny little sportscar right up behind my big, giant truck when he could've chosen five-hundred other spaces, all in the five minutes it took me to run into the store to pee. It only left a little scratch on his bumper, but I left a note anyway and we'll see if he calls and makes me pay for it.

The rest of the drive was fine and we ended up safe and happy in Neskowin where Wendy's brother has a gorgeous beach house which we were lucky enough to use. We settled everything in and headed off to Pacific City (not so far away) to wait for the cyclists to cross the finish line. It was a crazy big party, but serendipity has it's way and in all that huge crowd, we ended up sitting right in front of two of Mahavira's closest friends. Big party, small world.

After the cyclists arrived and drank beer and rested, we headed back to the beach house to make a big dinner and celebrate Dye's fortieth birthday. The ladies also engaged in a "make your favorite cocktail" party, but I stuck to beer just to make sure I didn't over do it. Cocktails have a way of sneaking up on me, and I didn't really want to wind up hungover during the big paddle. Beer makes me feel heavy and bloated, which works as a self-regulator on my intake. It's rare that I drink too much beer in one night, I'm usually only in danger when liquor is involved...

Because I was responsible, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed by the time we hit the water this morning. It was so fucking gorgeous, I can't even tell you. Hopefully the pictures capture at least a little of the magic. We paddled the mouth of the Salmon River, which dumps right into the ocean. We weren't really in the right kind of boats for surf riding, but we did paddle out towards the sea out of sheer curiosity. We even saw seals in the bay, which was awesome. They popped their cute little heads out of the water here and there to check us out. Oh, right, and we also saw a naked photo shoot (see previous post). That was unexpected. And pleasant. :-)

It all passed so fast and before I even knew what was happening we were heading back to Portland. A few of us stopped off at Spirit Mountain on the way home, just for the heck of it. My brief but harrowing trip to Vegas definitely killed any interest I ever had in casinos, but I did have fun watching my friends pop dollars into the slots. Holly kept winning six bucks here and four bucks there, all on dollar bets. In the end I think she left with a fourteen dollar profit, which is way more than I can say for myself in Vegas. I was lucky to get out of Vegas with my soul intact, much less with extra money...

We finally got back to Portland and I realized I couldn't find my car keys. Somewhere in the shuffle they went missing. I bet they're locked in the trunk, but for reasons too boring to go into, I can't get it all sorted out until tomorrow. No worries, though, my keys to Mahavira's apartment were still in my bag, so I'm here now, chilling out with Ginger on the awesome new couch, in front of a blasting fan, working on this post and waiting for my girlfriend to get off work. My life is good.

what a day to be a lesbian kayaker...

This was the sight we saw while paddling the Salmon River at the coast today. Talk about the beauty of nature!

More on this weekend's adventure to come...

an "a" for effort...

I went to one of those high schools that didn't give "F"s because they didn't want to stimgatize us as failures. We got "E"s... or, *someone* got "E"s, not me. "E" was the equivalent of "F" because "E" follows "D" in the alphabet. And I guess running the grades "A" through "D" and then jumping straight to "F" (for FAT FUCKING FAILURE) was kind of a slap in the face.

That is not what I meant to be writing about. I meant to be writing about how I'm trying to get better about writing more again. However, I'm awfully, awfully sleepy suddenly and am finding it hard to concentrate. I worked all day then went over to my apartment and did some packing and cleaning. I was over there for three hours and hardly accomplished anything, but I've given my landlords permission to show the apartment when I'm not around, so I felt it was my moral obligation to at least mop the kitchen and make sure all the naked pictures and sex toys were removed from view. I mean, it's the least I could do...

Now I'm back at Mahavira's, where I have been staying pretty much all the time for the past several weeks. Now that the weather is getting better and the light is lasting longer, I can hardly stand to spend five minutes in my little dungeon apartment. I have loved that place for two wonderful years, but the summers were always difficult. You may remember my annual, whiny rants about missing the heat and humidity of my homeland, so it will come as no surprise when I remind you that I hated being chilly throughout the summer in my subterranian hovel. I mean, christ, I shouldn't have to keep a down comforter on my bed year round, that's just wrong.

Here at Mahavira's it's quite warm already and the maximum temp didn't even hit 75 today. This promises a toasty summer, which will please me greatly. Call me crazy, I don't care, but if I'm not laying naked on top of the sheets sweating and panting all night long, I'm just not satisfied with summer. However, heat or no heat, here at Mahavira's there will definitely be nakedness, sweating and panting this summer, so I'm pretty sure I'll be satisfied no matter what...

lookin' good

New haircut, new glasses, same awesome girlfriend.

pandora's box

Have I written about Facebook before? Probably not. I know Roro's got her own feelings about social networking sites, and if I wasn't so lazy I'd actually offer you a link to one or two of her posts about such sites, but suffice it say there are posts out there to be found if you were to look...

Anyway, I think my brain is a little addled by the fog of dog-gas that has been filling the room for the past fifteen minutes. Jesus Christ, Ginger, first it was the "brown fountain" for three days and now the toxic fumes??? I thought dogs weren't supposed to get sick...?

Now where was I? Facebook. Mahavira talked me into signing up for a Facebook account because someone else talked her into doing it and she wanted to spread the love around a little. I've had a Myspace thingy for years, but don't do too much with it. All but one of my (very few) Myspace friends are people I know in real life (except you, SCG, you're the lucky exception to my 'only people I actually know' rule) whose pictures I often like to check out in the absence of real correspondence...

So this Facebook thing -- I signed up one night at Mahavira's urging while she was bored at work, and we proceeded to write Facebook messages back and forth for hours until the company's IT hall-monitor type software cut her off and gave her the old "You have exceeded your personal web usage quota" message. Bastards...

For about two days, my only Facebook friend was Mahavira. Suddenly I got a friend request from Shan, one of my closest friends from high school. Wow! I hadn't heard from her in about five years! Cool! And then I got a friend request from another high school friend. And then another. And then another. I'm getting friend requests from people I don't even remember from my high school, names that are only vaguely familiar, faces I don't recognize at all. What the fuck?

Now I have fifteen Facebook friends and eleven of them are from my high school. The strangest thing of all is seeing all these people as adults... as relatively normal looking, relatively liberal seeming, relatively kind and compassionate type adults. I remember high school as this awful gauntlet of people who were all cruel and judgmental and unpredictable and yucky. Now it turns out they're just regular people who probably wouldn't sneer at me walking down the hall or try to beat the shit out of each other. But... I guess that's what growing up does for you... hopefully...

Ok, I gotta go open some windows and light some incense, this is just ridiculous.

my office boyfriend

I know that Jim is super cute and all. And of course you know I love Pam. But lately I'm finding Darryl to be especially appealing. Not sure what it is. I think it's his low tones and his dry humor. Fluffy fingers??? Hilarious.

don't wanna get dooced...

Once again I'm killing the last ten minutes of my work day with a blog. Just waiting until I can leave for my bus and hoping the guys in IT have all gone home and stopped monitoring our computer footprint for now.

I feel like my life is very different now than it was six months ago, and even DIFFERENTER than it was a year ago. One major, but sorta mundane, change is that I'm hardly online anymore. At first I blamed that shift on my relationship with Mahavira. I had less empty time to kill and less reason to hop online. Then I started my sex blog and all that changed. I didn't have so much empty time, but I suddenly had plenty to write about.

Now I've come to realize that my renewed and ongoing lack of interest in the computer has much more to do with my new job. Now that I sit at a desk in front of a computer most of my work day, going home and sitting in front of a computer looks pretty dismal to me. For years I've heard this from friends, and now I know it's true! For some reason I never quite believed that's why they weren't returning my emails...

Fortunately my persistant yet cyclical urge to write is beginning to kick back in. I am prone to go through dormant phases, especially when life itself changes and becomes more compelling and exciting than usual. Like these past five months with Mahavira: every day was this new, awesome experience with her and I was too busy jumping in with both feet and living it to feel much need to reflect. Sure, there was the sex blog, but my energy for that petered out (no pun intended) pretty fast.

Now that things with Mahavira are moving to new levels, and now that her ongoing presence in my life isn't so brand new and shocking, I'm finally starting to relax a little and accumulate ideas of things to write about. The dormant phases are always a little depressing and scary: it's weird to feel a big blank where my imagination used to be. But it feels especially exciting when the creativity starts to creep back in.

Hopefully I can translate some of that creativity into more regular blog-posting so I don't lose my precious, precious readers who I love and adore so much...

catch up

Stuck here at work for another ten minutes, I thought I’d catch up on some very important blogging. It’s not like I’ve got any actual work to do today. Don’t know if anyone’s been reading the papers here in Portland, but we’ve just spent the past week collectively shitting our pants and waiting to hear if our employer is going belly-up. “We” is me and Mahavira, who both work for the same agency at different sites. Even though I hate the thought of losing this new job I love so much, I don’t so much mind the prospect of huddling together in shared poverty with Mahavira. Either way we’ll be huddling together: as of June first we’ll be officially cohabitating. (!!!)

Anyway, the crisis at work seems to be at least temporarily averted and we all actually did get paid last week (which was literally up in the air until the very last minute). In the meantime, I hear my uncle’s got advanced lung cancer that’s already metastasized to lots of other parts and he’s probably only got months to live. I feel like I should send a card, but fuck. What should it say? “Hope your last days are at least comfortable, sorry you’re dying so young?” Or how 'bout the short but sweet “Sucks to be you?” Then there’s the practical “Didn’t we all tell you to quit smoking?” I doubt I’ll find any of these at the Hallmark store anyway.

In brighter news, I got a gorgeous new tattoo this weekend. I’ll take a picture and post it soon, but not right now because, as I mentioned, I’m blogging from work. And anyway, I need to go catch my bus so I better pack up and get myself ready to leave. More soon.