The rest of the story

As I boarded my flight back home from Houston to Little Rock through Dallas, there was a flight attendant greeting all of the passengers as we came aboard. Blonde and attractive, I immediately took notice of him and his silver ring and silver necklace.

I chose a spot somewhere in the middle of the plane in an aisle seat. After the plane taxied down the runway and got in the air, the flight attendants began asking folks for their drink orders. Although the cutie was not my flight attendant, he walked by my seat many times. Every time he did he would brush into me. The first couple of times I didn’t pay any attention. I mean the airplane was cramped and it was a full flight. But by the third or fourth time, I certainly did notice.

Hmmmm.

After we landed in Dallas, almost everyone deplaned as it was their destination. (Can you imagine that? No one wanted to fly to Little Rock, Arkansas.) Since there were only twenty some odd people left on the plane, I took a seat at the very front of the aircraft so I could be one of the first to hop off when we landed.

While waiting for the few passengers to get seated a guy sat beside me that was from Arkansas. He, cutie flight attendant and I were soon conversing. Long-winded Arkansas guy was telling cutie flight attendant all the fabulous things he could do in Little Rock that evening. (Yeah, right.) Cutie flight attendant cut him off at some point and said to me, “I really like your shoes.”

Hello!

The flight finally got underway and once again the flight attendants began serving drinks and peanuts. Since I was having to sit there and listen to long-winded Arkansas guy talk about his job, (Imaging technologies and services… sheesh.) I decided to have a little vodka and OJ to make it all a bit more bearable.

I ordered my drink and handed a flight attendant four bucks. She disappeared behind the divider and returned again with my four dollars. She then pointed behind the divider where cutie flight attendant was standing and said, “Your drink is on him.”

Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

The rest of the flight was uneventful, for the most part. I did learn that although cutie flight attendant called Phoenix home, he was actually from Canada. With the slight accent, I was thinking Minnesota or another northern state but Canada certainly fit. As I deplaned I did thank cutie flight attendant for the cocktail.

I retreived my luggage from the carousel, walked into the night and began the two hour journey home to Memphis. Alone I drove, thinking of my man at home and hoping he would be waiting up late for me.

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Thanks for all of the comments on the banner. Although I would like to take credit for it, Justin created it while I was in Houston. Yeah, he’s sweet and creative like that.

A whole year of this?

Today is my one year blogiversary. {Please, no gifts, just your kind words! } I was thinking it was sometime around the twentieth of January, but looking back in anticipation of the post I would make, I checked and it is today. My plan was to do a new template and have a really great post for the one year mark, but since it is today, I don’t have time for all of that.

So, I guess my blogiversary will be much like my first post a year ago. Quiet, not splashy and with little fanfare.

You’ll be seeing a lot of blogiversaries in the next month or so. Bitter Cup of Joe, Divas Never Die, It’s a Blog Eat Blog World, Mobius Flip, Rock, Paper, Scissors, Gun, Strange Shades of Grey, Weighing In Without The Cookies, The Yellow Dog Speaks and You Can’t Handle The Truthiness all will be one year old as well.

Looks like I’m in good company!

If you’d like to read my first post from a year ago, here it is: http://smokingfag.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_archive.html

It’s a little long, but it’s one of my favorite posts. It’s gone downhill from there!

Have a great day, as is the custom, I’m off to have a bloody mary!

Ringing in the New Year

I think I am fully recovered from the New Year’s Eve blowout-spectacular at our friend Lambeth’s home. We had way too much fun. It was a good group of longtime friends, and it is always the mix of people that makes or breaks a party as you well know. There were over one hundred pictures taken at the party, some in states of undress! Of course I won’t be posting them all, but here’s a few:

Our hostess with the mostest, Lambeth.

From left to right: Darren, Justin, me and Wanda.

Gene is the best friend a guy could have, I’ve known him for years.

The whole group, minus Patrick. L to R: Wade, me, Darren, Justin, Jeff, Michael, Trey, Eric, Gene, Some chick (a whole other story altogether…), Wanda and Lambeth.

Eric, Justin and Trey, Eric’s boyfriend.

I don’t know what I was pointing at. Maybe I was telling Patrick to go away with his camera.

I tried to make sure everyone got enough champange…

Patrick (the man behind the camera) and Lambeth.

Bedroom shenanigans. Justin is under the pile, holding up the champange bottle.

Eric & Trey and their New Year’s kiss.

Justin & Michael sneaking in a hug.

Another group picture.

And finally, the best New Year’s kiss ever.

Have a great week everyone!

Recap

I suppose in summing up the year 2006 for me, I could do it with one word: normalcy. I’m still in the same house with the same job, the same pets and the same SUV that can’t stay out of the effing shop. All of that and I’m still with the man I adore with and with whom the bonds of love and respect between us keep growing stronger daily.

There were a couple of changes: We changed the name of the company where I work, and I became a partner. (This, so far, has just been a lot of hard work: I have yet to realize any financial rewards.)

Oh yeah, and I was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. Lots of noteriety with that, for sure!

But by far the biggest change in my life is that I have so many new friends. That’s right, this blog has been such a blessing for me. I’ve met so many people that I consider friend. People that freely give their advice and wisdom. Folks that stop by just to say hi, or tell me that they care.

So, you truly have been the best thing to happen to me in the past year. Thank you for all of the comments, chats, emails, and Christmas cards. I’m looking forward to spending another year with you!

Tomorrow, I’ll be eating cabbage and black-eyed peas with hog jowls. I’ll tell you all about it!

But for now, be safe and have a great time tonight!

Christmas in pictures

I’m writing to you today from a rural area in West Tennessee. I’m visiting an aunt in Adamsville, a town one hundred miles east of Memphis.

I began my travels yesterday to be here for Christmas Eve. Elvis and I got approximately halfway here and my SUV’s engine began knocking. This, after I had just picked it up from the shop Friday after an extensive rebuild of the engine.

I turned around and went back home, just hoping that the engine would make it back. It did and I was ever so grateful since I had Elvis with me. It complicates matters when you have engine trouble and you have to worry about the safety of the bird.

So, I made plans to travel here this morning with my little brother and his girlfriend today. We’ve been here since half past nine. The smells from the kitchen are delightful: Turkey, dressing, (that’s stuffing to you Yanks) corn on the cob, beans and peas among many. Ah, the aromas of country food cooked with love. It brings back so many memories of Christmas past.

Justin is at home in Arkansas with his family, having his Christmas with them. Saturday, we had our exchange of presents and Christmas meal together with a couple of friends. Prime rib was served, you should have been there. Justin was finally able to unwrap his eagerly awaited present. I got him a widescreen monitor for his computer, something he’s been wanting for a while. He got me a faster wireless router for our system at home. I’ve been having some trouble with the old one.

Well, that’s about it from here. I’m just enjoying time with family, as is Justin. I’m looking forward to him getting back home tonight or in the morning.

And, I’m trying not to think of the problems with the SUV. I’ll deal with that tomorrow.

I took some pictures today, but everyone seemed a little camera shy so I couldn’t use the pictures of family because they would duck as I snapped the shutter, leaving nothing but a blur.

Pictures, beginning at the top: “Peanut”, mine and my brother’s pony, some of my aunt’s Christmas decorations, the old barn behind the house, Allan, the brother and “B.B.”, my aunt’s bird.

Oh, and Allan snapped a pic of me when I finally laid the camera down..

Staying close to home

As you can surmise by the map, I am a traveller.

Since I’ll be in Houston sometime next month, I’ll get to add Texas.

Lousy service in Metro Memphis

I borrowed the title of today’s post from Spider’s lesser known blog, only because it seems so fitting for this post.

Yesterday, after we laid a few people off in the office, my brother and I decided we’d have a beer after work, just to destressify. After a few beers and some chit-chat, I had to leave to pick up my clothes from the dry cleaner. Since they close at seven, I had to cut the after hours “meeting” short.

I proceeded to the dry cleaner which was across town and made it there with five minutes to spare. I tried the door. It was locked. The clock behind the desk showed that it was three minutes after seven. The lady that is always there would not look up to acknowledge me.

Did I mention that I’m a regular customer?

All of the clothes that I wear to work save the shirt and slacks that I wore that morning were there.

So, this morning, I had to go to the cleaner at seven in the morning so I could then go back home and get dressed. Yeah, I know, that’s totally effed up.

I decided to get there a few minutes before seven, when they are supposed to open. Lo and behold, the lady that closed the shop early the day before is seven minutes late opening the door by HER OWN CLOCK. (Of course, it was precisely seven on the dot for the rest of the world.)

This is not the first problem I’ve had there. They always say that you can pick up your clothes after five the next day when you bring your clothing in. Twice I have waited until after six, and only recieved meager apologies for my trouble.

I know what you’re thinking, after this latest fiasco I REALLY let her have it this morning and by all rights I should have. Well, either that or just burned the whole place down. But, dear friends, I did neither. I didn’t say anything to the lady at all.

Why? Because I was afraid if I began explaining how dissatisfied I was and how tired I was of planning my whole day around when to pick up my damned cleaning, I would completely lose my temper. I could feel it all pent up inside and like a volcano finally erupting after dormancy, I would have rained hot, molten, verbal lava all over her. Five years ago this would have happened. I would have had a complete meltdown. But, I suppose with a bit of maturity I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not worth it. I’ll probably go back in a week or two and explain why I’m using a different service now, but I’m pretty sure that today just wasn’t the day.

To my Memphis readers: Sparkle Cleaners on Poplar across from East High School is to be avoided.

Thanks to all who commented yesterday with their concern. These things just happen and it’s no one’s fault, but it still makes me feel crummy.

But hey, at least I still have a job.

Why Christmas still sucks

A few items off the top of my head:

- Today we had to inform all of the employees that there will be no Christmas bonuses this year.

- A friend called me yesterday to borrow a few hundred bucks until after Christmas.

- My SUV has been in the shop since September.

- I keep thinking of the Merle Haggard song, “If we make it through December”.

- I see I’m not the only one who has the blues this season. Gumby and Mo are having a rough time as well.

Six weird things about me

Lemuel at The Greedy Maelstrom tagged me for this meme. As the title suggests, I have to come up with six things about myself that might be considered weird. With Justin’s input, I was (barely) able to come up with six.

1.) I find a man in a cast sexy. I remember in fifth grade, there was a boy named Scott that broke his arm. He was the most athletic in our class, a little hunk in the making. Somehow the cast made him seem even more adorable, in a vulnerable kind of way. To this day, a cast is still a turn-on.

2.) Justin seems to find this humorous: Since I have wireless in the house, and a laptop, when I go to the bathroom I often times take the computer with me and check and respond to email. Personally, I just see it as a multi-tasking activity.

3.) From the time I was twelve until I was eighteen, I suffered from a kind of OCD. Whatever I read, whether it be books, magazines, billboards or even street signs, I would count the number of letters in my head. Even numbers were good, odd numbers bad. For example, if I were reading a sentence, if the sentence ended in even numbers that was a good sentence. If it ended and it was an odd number, that was bad, so I would count the number of letters in the next sentence and then add that number to the first sentence and so on until it were an even number and then that would be acceptable. This made crafting papers in high school very difficult, so I rarely did. To this day, when I’m terribly stressed, I find myself counting letters again and I have to make myself stop before it makes me even more anxious. When I was a teen-ager I was unable to control it, though…

4.) When I’m drinking beer, I will not finish off the last eighth of the bottle or can. The reason is that someone once told me that by the time you get down that far that all that is mostly left is your own saliva. Although I’m very careful with how I drink and do not necessarily believe this, the thought still sticks in my head all of these years later and I cannot bring myself to finish that last little bit.

5.) I love toes and feet as long as they are clean and well groomed. A guy in bare feet with some cute toes is awfully sexy.

6.) I rarely eat anything sweet such as candy or dessert. To finish a meal with some sweet dessert seems like a terrible assault to my tastebuds.

Seeing this meme and others like it this week has reminded me of the line by Truvy, played by Dolly Parton in Steel Magnolias: “There are some pretty sick tickets in this town!”.

I’m supposed to tag six people for this meme:

1.) Spider (The meme whore!)
2.) Matt
3.) Sorted
4.) Jake
5.) Vinnie
6.) Morgen

Just so you know, Justin was feeling better last night. His throat is still sore, but no fever.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I think mine is gonna suck, but I’ll tell you about that later…

Twenty-five things I believe

1. Most people are inherently good.

2. But, that certainly doesn’t mean everyone is.

3. Common sense should be more common.

4. Algebra (as I always suspected) is not useful in everyday life.

5. Being a friend is not always easy, but it usually has its rewards.

6. Sex cannot be the foundation of a good relationship.

7. More times than not, a person chooses to be republican for purely selfish motives.

8. Being incarcerated is far more frightening than any horror movie I’ve seen.

9. It’s easy to be a winner and devestating to lose.

10. Beer is an acquired taste.

11. Telephones are, for the most part, a nescessary evil.

12. Sometimes mommies and daddies do just go away.

13. I am mistrustful of anyone that reiterates over and over that they are a christian.

14. Money is not everything.

15. But I sure do try to keep it around.

16. I would be a vegetarian if I had to kill animals myself for food.

17. It is helpful in life to have some knowledge of auto mechanics.

18. Sometimes, it is true: S%*t happens.

19. Watching golf on television is less exciting than watching grass grow.

20. Ain’t is a word.

21. Working hard doesn’t always guarantee success.

22. Diagramming sentences, much like algebra, is pointless in everyday life.

23. “These are the days of miracles and wonders.”

24. Some stories are simply too sad to be told.

25. Spring is the most optimistic season.