Time Travelers Wife...

Tonight, our Monday Movie Madness group (just me and Matt) went to see The Time Travelers Wife. It's pretty complicated to try to describe... but it's something like... he starts traveling through time back to this girl's life... at different ages... and they fall in love only to meet one day in normal time and get married and have a child, etc., but all the while, in present day, he's traveling back to see her at different ages, and sees parts of their lives together, but can't change any of it. That's all well and good... but the best part is when he travels back, which is totally out of the blue, out of his control, he disintegrates and his clothes fall to the ground... and he gets to the future or past totally buck nekkid, then has to scramble to find some clothes. Yum.

This is one of the nicest movies I've seen in a long time. It has just the right balance of great story writing, interesting and intriguing plot, great acting, believable love, good soundtrack... and his butt (no wiener shot though). I can't really say anything bad about it. It left me remembering those times in a relationship where you really can't wait to see someone. I'd give it 4.5 petunias.

Trailer-Trash Scourned

This is a picture of a my friend's trailer after his scourned lover took his mini-van upside of the trailer... about 8 times, ramming it head-on after a fight that they had (along with an obvious bad interaction of his bi-polar medicine and alcohol. Practically knocked it right off the blocks it was sitting on. He also managed to back into his car, someone else's truck and that someone else (who wasn't hurt). He then fled the scene and is now on the lamb. He is now wanted for attempted vehicular manslaughter for almost running the guy over as well as a bunch of other things.

A day in the life of a gay trailer park in West Virginia.

My Brother, The Ass...

On a hunch, because I know the inter-workings of a heroin addict's mind (or lack-thereof), I decided to go snooping around my brother's room last night when I suspected that he was on a drug run. I found these hypodermic needles hidden in the seat cushion of the chair in his room. He unzipped it and bore out a hole in the foam. He's like my dog when she would hide her bone in the corner of the room out in the open and then think it was hidden well. He'll never outsmart me. The little wax paper bags are what hold the heroin... they were crumbled up and throw in the only garbage can in the house, amongst what looked like the scraps of the makings of a pretty good omelet he had that morning.

He came home with a new stash getting ready to light up and was looking for his needles. HA HA... jokes on you... then I pulled up a minute later and caught him in the act with two of his teenage friends. When I called the police, the two 'friends' ran like nobody's business... when the police came, they searched my brother and found all his tools, needles, etc. on his person, even though he told them he didn't have anything in his pockets. They took him away, but he was out at two a.m. and called me to borrow money to stay in a hotel (since I closed all the windows and took his keys). I threw some stuff on the porch of his.

My brother is a pathological liar. I don't think he has a real grasp on what is the truth and what isn't, and although he has my Dad bamboozled, the rest of the world isn't that naive... if he only knew that. It's like living in an environment where you have to question every single detail... where you can't turn your back or let your guard down for a minute. I don't know what's worse... being on the phone with him listening to one of his schemes... or not hearing anything and knowing there's a scheme going on behind the scene. It's exhausting.

At least now I can clean the house and get it ready for sale. Not that I care where he goes (since he really needs to live on the street to get an idea of how good he actually had it)... but he is supposedly going to live with someone. He'll never change.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

Now that I finally got all the boxes put away and the table set up and some pictures hung... no one is coming to dinner... I don't want anyone messing it all up.

Good Grief, Charlie Brown

Beautiful Pre-Fall Day...

What a beautiful pre-Fall day... blue sky, great temperature... no humidity. It could stay like this all year long... that would be a Utopian. I took this picture a few years back at Raccoon State Park... it has 'end of season' written all over it. Tonight should be a nice sleeping night.

Final Destination 3-D

Last night we went to see Final Destination, in 3-D, no less. Let's just say they should have made the first one the final destination in the series. The first one was excellent... great premise, surprises, effects... the second one was the first one but no surprises and a tiring premise. This one had none of the previous except blood and guts flying at you in 3-D, which was awesome. I don't like horror movies that much, but it was very interesting to see it in 3-D. I found the story to be basically the same and very tired... and things happened coincidentally too purposeful. There was more of a presence of 'fate' as an antagonist in this one. The leading boy was cute. The rest of them were annoying and I couldn't wait for them to get decapitated or hit by a bus or a flying Nascar car. It did make me very cautious on the way home, thinking about all the ways I could be killed. I certainly didn't go through any yellow lights, make any right-on-reds and avoided buses like the plague.

After that, we went to a bar, of which I haven't been to in about a year. It was great to mingle amongst fellow gay Pittburghers... people who weren't wearing hay bales and leather apparatus and overalls, like down at camp. I was fortunate to have met a really nice guy (Mike)... we may have a date tomorrow.

For effects, I would give the movie 5 petunias, but for the rest of it, I would say one... and the cute leading boy's looks brought that up from a 1/2. So I would have to average it out at 3... and that's generous (I give Mike 5 petunias). The gist: don't make this your final destination on movie night.

Cash For Clunkers...

You hear a lot going on with the 'Cash For Clunkers' program... "was it a good idea?", "Is it really going to help?" "Blah blah blah fu7k Obama"... I went out looking for a work truck yesterday and went to a few dealerships. Each one had probably at least 30 clunkers sitting in their lot. I'm not sure what's going to happen to them... maybe they'll get smashed up... I guess that's the plan... but some of them looked like good work trucks. My pool is shrinking. I need a good gas-guzzling, emissions-emitting, ozone-disintegrating vehicle to haul trees around in. I'd have to make more trips to the composting site with a Prius.

The Tides of Change... Or Not

Welcome back, old friend...

... like clockwork with your pals, Fall and Winter

... you come back forcing a change

... bringing back longer periods of pitchblack and darker shadows

... numbness and coldness

... empty

... confining and enclosing

... swirling

... deadening of all that lives

... How long will you stay before it gets lighter, living, more hopeful and open and the blowing clutter is cleared away?

... Don't leave too soon though, for there's comfort in your enveloping hold over me

... you will always be a part of me.

This is a poem (?) I wrote a couple of years ago about depression while going through my whole Vegas catastrophe. I can feel winter coming. The days are getting shorter and darker. I'm winding up with landscaping and camp and when I'm not as busy any more, I fall into a state of apathy (like I'm supposed to be leaving today to go to Myrtle Beach and could care less, so I'm not going).

Last year, I didn't work through the winter and it wasn't good for me. Too much time to think about things and too much alone time. I'm lining up a job and have a few irons in the fire and hopefully that will keep me busy until Spring. I'm also trying to make decisions about things in my life that don't make me happy (like camp and massage) and continuing to get things accomplished. Being idle isn't good for me. Being an American Idol... that would be fun!!

Moving Forward...

This spot is my favorite view of Roseland and the surrounding area, but recently, this gas company shaved off one of the ridge tops to put a shale gas rig on it, and they are putting 2 or 3 more around, which means bright lights, construction vehicles, helicopters flying around and the drone of a rig pumping. So much for the view or the peace and quiet. A lot has changed for me at camp since I started going there a ten years ago. I used to tent... it was quiet... I would relax and enjoy myself and meet nice people sitting around a fire. Now, it's a job for me. I am pulled into the bullshit of what's going on with the staff because I work there. There's dinners for 15 to plan, what to wear out... who's with who... who's mad at who... grass to cut... decks to build... and somewhere in there is about 49 seconds of peace for me. I am miserable and exhausted before I even get there let alone after the weekend of working 10 hours or so. I don't enjoy it. And the whole time, I wander around wondering why I'm there. Yes the money is great, but sometimes it isn't the most important thing. I'm never home on the weekends, I never do anything socially here in Pittsburgh and it's all just leaving me feeling alone. Not to mention that if I do find someone, they're not going to be that thrilled that I'm down at camp for 25+ weekends of the year.

Right now, I'm not doing massages next year... or being a seasonal. It's 7 months away, so we'll see what happens.

500 Days of Summer

Tonight, our Monday night movie madness group went to see '500 Days of Summer'. Let's just say it would have been better if it was only about 76 days of summer... since the movie dragged on way too long... and the girl in the movie, named Summer, got on my nerves (played by Zooey somebody-or-other). Joseph Gordon-Hewitt was excellent. Here's the 3 days of Summer version... Boy is an idealistic romantic at heart. Boy meets girl who doesn't believe in love. Boy falls in love. Boy and girl have a good time for 300 +/- days, but girl won't put a label on their 'relationship'. Boy presses issue. Girl turns into a raging bitch and proceeds to stomp on the heart of boy. Boy falls into a shame spiral of depression. Girl.... (go see the movie).

I really enjoyed the premise of this movie, but it fell flat. As much as they rammed the relationship and the separate personalities of the two down your throat, I never really connected or felt anything. I actually connected with situations in my life, which is maybe what they wanted. I wanted boy to move on and girl to get hit by a bus. The movie itself was very clever, although trying to be a lot funnier than it really was, but they used a lot of interesting tactics to make it fresh, like using a narrator and some black and white footage and funny sequences. Point of movie: Just because you have something in common doesn't make you soul mates... and while you're trying to force the issue, your real soul mate may have just walked by and you were too busy being miserable to notice.


The acting was good... the premise was good... the presentation of the story was good... so I give it 3.5 petunias out of 5.

Happy Birthday...

Today is Matt's birthday... I think it's so cute when people say they're not affected by getting older... or their birthday coming... until you're older. Once you hit 40, it's a shame spiral from...

-Picking an outfit to wear out when you're young, depending on who you're trying to attract to attracting flies because you crapped in your Depends...
-Picking out a fast car to cruise town in, to picking your nose in the parking lot of the Dollar Store trying to find your car when you forgot where you parked it...
-Feuding with your family because they don't understand you... to watching Family Feud and not understanding it...

Anyway... keep telling yourself age doesn't matter, Matt... it will, and soon enough. Don't forget to take your Beano with your cake and warm milk... you know how gassy you get... and have your oxygen nearby when you blow the candles out... and try not to dislodge your teeth in the process.

Smile... you know you want to... how can you resist?

Kennywood's Not Open...

Tonight, a bunch of us were supposed to go to Kennywood... with Summer almost over and most of us at camp on the weekends, a nighttime jaunt made more sense... but with the looming rain, we had to cancel. I will miss...

- Kenny Kangaroo's wave...
- Putting trash in the lions mouth and hearing it roar in Kiddie Land...
- Hearing the Merry-go-round music and the sounds out of Noah's Ark...
- Corndogs, Potato Patch french fries, square icecream cones, cotton candy and drinking something out of a sippy cup...
- Making one of those pictures where you drip paint onto the spinning canvas, then getting splattered paint all over you as well...
- Playing skee-ball and winning something cheap and plastic...
- Watching people shit their pants as they swing through the air in that wire harness over the lake...
- Stepping in gum and over puke...
- The cries of the darling children who don't get their way...
- Getting crotch rub from wet clothes from the log jammer...
- Feeling like everything you touch is coated with germs...

Eww... yuck. (I can't wait until we reschedule... I wouldn't part with any of it... that's what makes it awesome!!)

Progress...

Today, despite the rain (torrential downpour, actually), my brother and I were able to get three very large trees cut down at the Marriott as part of the newly approved project. My cousin got a case of the Shingles (and I don't mean to put on his roof), which I hear is very painful... Not as painful as working with my brother in the rain though, I'm sure. It was actually kind of strange working with him... he used to work for a tree removal outfit a few years ago. It was amazing to see him notch out the tree and have it land where he was aiming, especially in a lot full of cars, surrounding trees and a light post... all of which I was hoping not to have to replace. With excessive diarrhea of the mouth, talking merely to hear his own voice and flow of bullshit, you can't help overlooking that he's quite intelligent... not smart enough to stay off drugs, Lord knows, but he is attending AA meetings now and is holding a job, so there's hope yet. He moves in with a friend of his on September 1st... into his first apartment ever in 44 years. Our little boy is growing up right before our eyes. I feel like one of those older parents who are afraid they are going to die before they see their kids attend first grade.

And while he was 30 feet up in the tree, all I could think about was all that he put me through over the last 20 years... that... and the $15k insurance policy I have on him where I'm the beneficiary... and the Dodge Ram Crew-cab 1500 with the Hemi engine that I would, respectfully, call "Dan".

New Boyfriend... New Mulch

It's always great when my friend gets a new boyfriend... I can stay in business, because the yard gets spruced up with mulch for the 'first time at the house' ceremony.

District 9

I'm not really a sci-fi person, but this movie was great. It reminded me of Battlestar Galactica (the TV series)... political message wrapped in a sci-fi skin.

Basically, the movie was about aliens that land here... their spaceship stalls overtop of Johanasburg, South Africa. The government took 1.8 million of them and put them into a shanty town concentration camp of sorts, put numbers on them and controlled them, not letting them out amongst the people. And all they wanted to do was go home. OK, maybe there's no 'basically' about this movie... it is a little complex... but the parallels to history of maybe the jews or blacks is uncanny... and that's where the message comes in. Between the government's non-value of their lives to corralling them like animals, forcing them to live in squalor to disecting them for information (again with the parallels), it gets ugly when they try to move them further out of the city to make the humans feel better. So they basically make them mad... and that's where the sequel comes in. In the lead role is a virtual unknown... what a fantastic job he does. If they gave awards to movies of this caliber (Independence Day, War of the Worlds, etc.)... this would win. Great acting, great computer-generated action sequences... blood and guts... ugly but endearing aliens... you can't help rooting for them. I'm looking forward to the sequel, which I'm sure is not far behind. And a franchise is born. I give this 4 petunias out of 5... I may have to pluck one from Julie and Julia... totally not in the same league.

Well, it's official... my vacation is over... know how I know? My bum is peeling. You never peel until you're back home.

I can't believe that it's the middle of August already. It would really suck to be a kid having to go back to school soon. It seems like it hardly got hot enough to be Summer. I was working at the Marriott today and heard the locusts in the bushes. I don't know if it's technically 'romantic'... but that's a word that I use to describe something that takes me back to a warm-fuzzy time

It was the locusts and the lightning bugs that were the two things about Summer that I remember... that and growing up in the deep South on Big Daddy's plantation as a proper southern belle... I remember Mammy would help me get into my outfit for the barbecues at Twelve Oaks where I would drink mint juleps with that awfully handsome Ashley Wilkes... err... oh, wait... that wasn't me... that was Miss Scarlett. Well, it wasn't that much different in Robinson... except we had hot dogs and Klondikes on our cedar red picnic table in the back yard. Fiddle-Dee-Dee (i.e. fuck).

I've Got Crabs... Crabgrass, That Is...

It's embarrassing for me, as a landscaper, to have my front yard (4' X 12') looking like a road-side truck stop where dogs pee. There are more weeds than grass, and when they put the bushes in and then the driveway, they never filled in the spaces they had to disrupt in the beautiful red mulch bed (don't get me started on the use of red mulch). And the landscaping company just comes in, week after week, plowing right over it. It's really crappy work. I know I can be particular about things, especially my field of work (which covers about every occupation), but considering what we are paying for rent and paying an additional $20/month for what they call a 'Monarch' fee (Monarch makes it sound so classy and beautiful) that includes landscaping... it should be illegal is what it should be. It was hard enough when it was just the red mulch I had to be embarrassed about... but you know how I can't stand weeds. I thought about putting sod down in only my yard and changing the mulch to a natural brown PA hardwood... but didn't think they would go for that kind of thing. Leave it to me to get evicted for making things beautious. There's a line from an old movie called 'Boys In The Band'... "Oh Mary, it takes a fairy to make something pretty".

Julie and Julia...

Last night, we went to see Julie and Julia. I wasn't in the mood for a movie where I had to think a lot, so this was perfect. It was thoroughly entertaining and insightful and I hadn't expected much, so it was a bonus that it was good. Since food isn't one of my big things, it didn't exactly motivate me to run out and buy her cookbook, but I did microwave a hotpocket when I got home, if that counts.

The movie actually runs two parts... how Julia Child became interested in cooking in the 40's and how she wrote her cookbook... and then some girl named Julie in 2002 in NYC who was inspired by Julia Child so she vowed to go through the whole cookbook in a year, one recipe a day, more or less. Not having any structure or follow-through in her life, she pushed to complete the task and blogged about it every day, which led to a book deal and, duh, a movie. There were many parallels in both of their lives. Amy Adams did an ok job... a little empty and whiny, but Meryl stole the show with her portrayal, full of bubbly zeal and vigor of the famous chef, including her accent. There were things that we did and didn't see... what we didn't see was more of Julia Child's alleged drinking (how she went from Le Cordon Bleu to Pabst Blue Ribbon) and more of how she got her own show, etc. What we did see (a lot of) was the boom mic... about 16 times. It got to the point that the audience would bust out laughing when it dangled down, it was that ridiculous. Occasionally in a movie, you'll see it. Or a Palm tree in set supposedly in Hoboken... but never do you see the mic 16 times. It's beyond comprehension how it slipped through.

With Meryl's acting (redeeming herself from that crap she put out with Mama Mia) and most of it set in Paris (it reminded me of when I parlayed through Paris when I was a little girl), I really liked it. It's really not worth 4 Petunias, but I will give them anyway, since most of the other crap movies out there aren't any better (and I had the Petunias leftover from a job).

Home Sweet... Home (Ugh)?

I arrived back in Pittsburgh just in time for the humid 90+ degrees that I left in Florida... except the ocean is replaced with the river and the palm trees with weeds. I was home less than 12 hours before I had to turn around and head to camp to do massages for the weekend. I'm starting a project at the Marriott this week and I have a few other projects to do. Meanwhile, I can't wait to get out of here again. I want to head down to Washington D.C. for a few days to stay with Elaine (she's doing a project there for the next 6 months)... then go down and see my friend Brad in Myrtle Beach... maybe after Labor Day. I got a taste of the drug called 'leisure'... I can work 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for months... then, give me a day off and I'm ruined.

Time Flies...

I've always been the type of person that loves to travel, but once gone from my surroundings, I tend to want to go back home after about 3 or 4 days. There used to be Shelby that I would miss, but now there isn't anybody that's going to jump up on my leg when I walk through the door. My Dad probably doesn't even know I left.. he probably thinks I've been in my room for ten days. And it's not like I always returned to some glamorous life either. Still, I am a creature of habit. I am at the Panera Bread... and I just got done eating the same exact lunch I have had the last 5 days.

Having said that, this trip has been very different. I think it's the only time I have ever relaxed in my life, and not given myself a guilt trip over it. I'm not ready to come home. Not that I'm going to have angst over it, but if I weren't living with my Dad right now, I would consider moving here, as I always have in the past. Despite being hot, people are more active here. There's nothing like running next to the beach to get your day started and everything is so beautiful. Even the street bums look great with a tan standing in front of a palm tree.

The grass may not be any greener here, but at least it's shaded by palm trees and blown by the ocean wind. I dread winter. I leave tomorrow, and I'm not happy about it... at all.

Farmer's Tan

I went back to the beach today... my farmer's tan is offially gone. In fact, any tan line I had is gone. I went to the nudie beach and probably caused third degree burns on my bum-bum. Very interesting situation, if you've never been there. Straights and gays and kids, oh my! You have to experience life. For not stepping foot in the ocean or sun or the pool for the first half of the trip, I am very tan now. ... I've had a few people speak to me in Spanish... like my name was Paco.

A Night Out...

I get a lot of feedback from my blog from my adoring fans... and the thing that I seem to get the most is that people can't believe that I do so much by myself... dinner... going to the movies... this trip. You would think that I just don't have anyone in my life that wants to do anything with me which, often, may be the case... but I choose to do things by myself for a few reasons:
1.) Several of my friends are high maintenance. I would say that you know who you are, but clearly you do not. Be wary of anyone who says they are low maintenance... they're high to think that they aren't high maintenance. Don't make me name names
2.) I am a pretty basic person. I only need my food to have a slight resemblance to what it should look like. Since I have served before, I have high expectations of the service but don't expect them to meet them, so I don't get upset like other's do. I don't send anything back. Eating isn't a dining experience for me. Nothing can ruin my dinner, except maybe if my Happy Meal is missing the toy.
3.) Traveling with someone, even someone you are close with, can be a bitch. I don't want to be on anyone's sleeping... menstrual... eating... or any other 'cycle'. And I don't want to see your tids and bits hanging out over bagels and eggs. I hate waiting for people and like not having to get a consensus from people who can't make up their minds.
4.) I get easily distracted in movies, so the less people the better. I have diverse taste in movies and never get to see what I want to see because I'm too busy seeing some talking dog movie or some A-list actor singing like a D-list singer.

I went to see Hurt Locker last night. It was about bomb specialists in the military in Iraq. Not only did you feel the tension and suspense every time they diffused a bomb, but also the mental state that they get into when they can't trust anyone and are under constant threat of being killed. The acting was great. And although there wasn't anything wrong with the movie and it was very entertaining, I still only give it 3.5 petunias out of 5, despite it's oscar rumblings.

Last week, I went to see Kathryn Heigl's new rom-com, The Ugly Truth. The ugly truth actually is that the movie sucked. As fabulous as she is (even in the LBD (little black dress), her blonde tress and smile couldn't carry off this movie. It was predictable and slightly annoying at times. There wasn't much chemistry between anyone. The highlight (other than her in the LBD) was seeing the romantic lead's ass (some no-name, although now famous for his ass). The star opposite her, Gerard Butler of Sparta fame, fell flat. I would still recommend seeing it... it was funny in spots... but don't expect too much. Coincidentally... 3.5 petunias.

A Little Touch of the 'Burgh

With a momentary loss of sanity, I was a little homesick last night after pondering life and what-not on the beach near dusk... so I went across the street to the Primanti Brothers... oceanside. It's really a mind fu@k to look out of the window with the logo on it and be looking into the ocean. Apparently one of the brothers headed south and this is the only one out of Pittsburgh. One bacon and cheese with no tomato or slaw later and I was fine. Definitely less expensive than a therapy session, but more fattening, for sure.

I'm at my wit's end with this laptop. I thought about donating it to a school.... a school of fish, that is, by throwing it right off one of the causeway bridges. Sometimes it lets me post a picture, sometimes not... sometimes it receives my mail, sometimes it only sends. I have a new one picked out... it's just whether I want to spend the money or not. I'd like to get a new laptop to replace this one and my home computer as well and just have one.

Today was a beach day. I went down towards Miami... the water was so blue-green and warm. Truly the best moments of the trip so far. I've always been a water person... I will probably go back tomorrow... the weather has been fantastic. There are a few movies I want to see... Harry Potter, Transformers and Hurt Locker... it's been too nice to be inside though. I'll have to wait until I get home where it's sure to be shitty weather all the time.

It's a Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood... Saturday

It's absolutely gorgeous outside today. Too bad I am nursing a hangover and missed most of it. I didn't eat much last night, so I guess it hit me hard and fast. I finally got out to grab some lunch and enjoy the weather. It was supposed to be a beach day. I layed out a bit yesterday and swam in the pool at the condo. Tomorrow will have to be the beach day and since I haven't even stuck my foot in the ocean yet, I guess it's time. It was actually a good exercise for me to be able to sit and do absolutely nothing but watch TV without giving myself a hard time about it. I have to learn to relax more. Problem is, if I give into it, I really fall into it and start to like it... and we all know that I don't have time for time.

I found out that the test to see if I have the Factor Five Leiden blood disorder is going to cost $400... and the DNA test is about $100... finding my real family is costing me too much.