Derby Fever

So I've been wanting to attend a Roller Derby bout for a few years now but never got around to it and I think it used to be held OTP which is out of the question no matter how much I want to go see girls kick each other's asses while speed skating around in a circle.

My yearning returned full force when the Atlanta Rollergirls were in the parade this weekend at the IP Fest. So after checking out their website I've found out that we have 4 teams here in Atlanta; The Denim Demons, Apocalypstix, Sake Tuyas and the Toxic Shocks, who I desperately hope kick butt b/c I've decided by name alone they're "my team". Those 4 teams play each other every 2nd Saturday of the month and sometimes there are out-of-town teams as well.

Due to K's b-day party we can't go in May and even though MC said April was a bit premature for commitments I want to go ahead and plan to go in June.

You need to buy advance tickets so those of you who already know you're in let me know because I'm getting mine SOON.

Details are as follows:

June 14th (5pm)

$13 bucks for 2 bouts

ITP- its now on Ponce at the Shrine Center and haven't you always wondered what was up in the Shrine Center anyway?

Free Parking

Event is BYOB and apparently people tailgate beforehand...again I ask myself why I haven't been before...

Who's in?

I know what I want for Christmas

I had no idea these things existed but if they start making a combo teen/squirrel-be-gone I'm going to need one immediately.

Toot, Toot

It is a long southern tradition for woman to make delicious fare and then to make apologies for its appearance or taste. Normally I follow this tradition to a tee, as I, too, feel the need for total perfection in my kitchen and its output. When I signed up to make Angie and Jon's wedding and groom's cakes I expected to be doing a lot of apologizing...and I expected to have legitimate reasons for doing so.

For those of you like me who have never constructed a wedding cake it not only requires more baking than you can imagine (9 hours!!) but it is actually quite the architectural feat setting it up. So I'm bucking the tradition and tooting my own horn this time because I have to say I'm pretty proud of how both cakes turned out.

Jon's Groom's Cake "Dig"...complete with mini dinosaur bones...toot, toot.

No Marriage is complete without a trip to the Clermont

Angie's bachelorette was this Saturday. After bbq and then darts we headed to the most sacred of Atlanta landmarks...The Clermont Lounge.

Maybe it is the PBR in a can, the feeling that if you touch anything you will walk out with crabs, a bathroom that will test your ability to hold your bladder beyond your wildest dreams or the strippers who are either over 65, weigh over 250lbs or have track marks up and down their arms...there is just something magical about the Clermont that cements your relationship and makes you all the more grateful for your pending marriage.

Bellsouth, Cingular, AT&T...idiots no matter what they call themselves

So I have spent 4, count them 4, hours on the internet and phone today attempting to get my crackberry to receive emails again. 4 hours wasted talking to some moron named "Craig" whose final answer to me was that their server was down and he had no ETA on when it would be back up and maybe, just maybe, that was why I wasn't getting my emails.

I used to handle our business account with AT&T and have to say this is not the first time they have sucked hours out of my life and unfortunately I am confident it will not be the last.

Usually I stand against violence...

I am a bit of a freak about tomatoes. Plucking them from my grandmother's garden, as a child I would literally eat them like an apple. You could not leave my grandmother's house without taking a grocery sack full so when not there I had to look no further than my own kitchen window sill to find a delicious homegrown tomato.

For people who didn't have this luxury I'm sure they would be fine with tomatoes purchased at a grocery store. They may even rave about those bought at the Farmer's Market. But, rest assured nothing compares to tomatoes grown at home, even those that say "vine ripened". I've bought them all and I can say with confidence that they're all crap.

I hate these tomatoes so much that I choose not to eat them at all than be subjected to their inferiority. Sure I'll eat tomatoes at restaurants. There is even a seafood place in Florida that has the closest I've ever tasted to homegrown...but again, just not quite there.

Last year I begged the BFF to grow tomatoes. After much persuading he did grow some and had quite the harvest, so I hear. Although I did pluck a few of his sweet cherry tomatoes the neighbors made off with the real loot before I even had one!

This year I'm taking it into my own hands and although I had to plant it in a pot to place on my back porch, the only place I get sun, I have planted a tomato plant. A German Beauty Heirloom tomato to be exact.

You may have noticed the snake curled around my little German beauty...it is actually a cobra.

I put this guy there under the advise of the BFF to ward off the squirrels. Our oak tree is currently home to over 10 squirrel nests and who knows how many of the wretched little creatures who's seemingly only purpose in life is to dig up my plants.

For a few weeks my little cobra soldier has done the job. It is the first time I have ever planted anything that I didn't come to find dug up by those rats in cute costumes.

Last week I came out to find a pansy in a neighboring pot completely dug out. Now they had dug in the pansies back when I planted them months ago. But after finding that I did not actually use pecans as fertilizer they had moved on. Why now? Could they truly be so cunning to actually test the cobra, which I move daily to keep up the life-like effect?!?

The answer is YES. The next day they had dug in the tomato pot. My once terrifying cobra was found tossed about and lying belly up...defeated.

I found a couple of days ago that I now have flowers on my tomato plant. I'm no horticulturist but I believe those small blooms will eventually become the delicious tomatoes I so desire. And I'll be damned if the squirrel army is going to deny me of the summer joy I miss so much.

I need a plan and fast. Currently I'm toying with electric wire, rat poison, an air pistol or a fake owl. All of which the wife is adamantly against. For now I just try to run them down in my car.

I may have lost this one battle but the war will rage on and to the victor will go the spoils...the sweet, sweet, sun-ripened spoils.

Day One...

First day of unemployment…from the looks of the list I created for myself I have to say I’m thinking office work, although mentally taxing, may be a little less physically demanding.

BTW-Going to the grocery store on Monday mornings is a whole different experience than going on the weekend with the rest of the world. I didn't curse under my breath at one person! Incredible.

Still relevant today...

Okay, so I was cleaning out files on my work laptop and found the blog below. I am guessing I typed it to post of Myspace but it never happened...better late than never I guess.

I don’t believe there is any real shock value in the fact that I believe that the right to wed should be one afforded to all consenting adults who wish to commit their lives to one another inclusive of all the legal rights and protections that come along with it.

It enrages me to no limit that I am treated as a second class citizen and that my marriage to my Wife is used as a scare tactic to get uneducated yokels out of their caves and into the voting booths to cast their ballot for whatever hate-monger is running for office.

So with that out there, time to blog what I came to blog about…

A while back some friends and I were out to dinner. One friend had the revelation that the Wife and I were the only married homos she knew. She and I started discussing why that was. I had quite a few cocktails that evening and can’t remember what we came up with but I’ve not stopped thinking about this since then.

I know other married gay couples, and when I say married I mean they held a ceremony committing themselves to one another in front of witnesses and their respective Gods. Some ceremonies were small others were on a grander scale, hell I’ll even count the one who didn’t really have an actually ceremony but in a private moment exchanged words of commitments and rings and had a surprise party afterwards to celebrate. So that makes 4 couples counting us. 4 out of all of our friends, their friends, their friends’ friends, etc. 4 out of every single homo I know.

Why is that? I know plenty of committed couples, too many to even count. So why is it that so few of them are married? I recently heard about another long term couple’s relationship biting the dust. 7 years together and it has ended. It makes me sad for them on so many levels. It seems I’ve witnessed a lot of these sorts of break-ups over the past couple of years. Couples with anywhere from 2 to 7 years together ending their relationships and moving on.

99% of them cohabitated and lived their life as a married couple but in reality none of them were married. Don’t get me wrong, they had deep commitments and ones that I respected and thought were life-long, but none of them took that final step.

When one of the couples went their separate ways one of our mutual (and straight) friends asked me if I thought it ended because they weren’t married. “Don’t you think that kind of commitment keeps people together?” I couldn’t help but think yes.

I do believe that marriage is a commitment stronger than any other in this world. It is the start of a family even if that family never grows any larger. Is there a social unit stronger than the family?

Look, I know marriages end. I know that the society in which we live in thinks it okay to turn marriage into a game show where two total strangers tie the knot. I also know a lot of people marry someone because it is expected of them by their family or social circle. But lets face it, for gay couples it is different. We get married in spite of what our families or our society says. We have those ceremonies even if only one freaking state out of 50 will legally recognize it.

Now granted, I’ve only been married a couple of years but I can tell you that after living with this woman for 6 years that the past 2 have by far been the best. Not because we’ve gotten along any better or seen eye to eye more often. If anything, picking out wedding pictures and paying for them can take you to whole new levels of frustration.

The reason these years have been better has been because we are married. Because we are a family and we now have a tie that binds us to one another through the wonderful, the trying and the seemingly impossible.

The morning after our wedding a woman told me “You’re going to love marriage, it’s just a great place to be.” I just hope for all my gay friends that they don’t give up on the dream of getting married, of taking that final step and getting to that truly amazing place that marriage takes you.

I would like to say that since writing this we now know one more married couple and have 2 sets of gay friends that are engaged and are planning a ceremony...things are looking up. Or maybe I just need to be more patient.

8 days and counting

8 more days left of my hellish job...looking forward to catching up on life.

Still selling lemons to Pepsi...

So the wife had another meeting today and it looks like we are stuck with a January departure. There is a slim chance that they could need her bean counting skills before then but as we've had the rug jerked out from under us before, we're not getting our hopes up.

4 more weeks of employment...so in a month I should be blogging quite regularly.