Happy Halloween

It’s trick-or-treat time for the dog. This year Harley is going as a terrifying shark. Stay out of the treat isle.


Da-dum.

Da-dum.

Dum-dum-dum-dum

Daddduda!

Here is Harley’s costumes from years past:


 2010












2009



2008

Cuddle Buddies

This isn't my pic, but I love it.

Shar-Better

Apparently the dog is feeling better…

Panda and Bunny

The next episode from the ongoing saga of Panda and Bunny.  See the first episode here. 

Chicken Dog

A typical morning. Made coffee, then went for a morning walk around the neighborhood with the dog. It wasn’t until, back in the kitchen, I finished toasting English muffins I really woke up. Right about the time I placed the toaster into the refrigerator and the butter into the cabinet.

My last mid-term paper/test is today. The studying and memorizing hasn’t been that bad. What had really worried for the last month was my dog. Harley went to hop off the bed around a month ago; missing his landing did a belly roll and hurt his back. This started an un-ending cycle of pain pills, doggie downers, and expensive trips to the vet for a dog that couldn’t really walk. My Shar-pei had turned in to an un-moving bag of wrinkles.

Harley is no chicken.

About the time when the vet started talking about me giving him the financing for new graphite golf clubs, a Lesbian came to the rescue. She swore by doggie acupuncture and chiropractic. Half believing, yet willing to try anything to help my wrinkled dog, I made an appointment.

Harley stood there, looking like a pin cushion. Tiny needles covered his back and sides. He was completely un-aware as we shoved delicious treats at his face for a distraction. After the needles came doggie chiropractic. After the vet discovered two vertebras out of joint, she worked to correct the infrastructure. A couple of yelps and he was back to normal. This was a major load off my mind, because Harley the wonder dog has a Halloween costume to show off next week.

I’ve gotten back my dog, and today will mark the end of my mid-term exams. Just maybe my brain will return to its upright and locked position. But, if I keep putting the toaster into the fridge I could always go get acupuncture on my brain. It works wonders.

Lesbian Football

It was Lesbian Weekend here at the ol’ homestead.


Not the trans-gendered lesbians from last summer, new sporty models. As all lesbians meet online and carry on relationships between different states, this couple was no different. The professional opera singer lives here in Colorado. With her parents. The parents would not approve of the high school football coach she’s seeing not only not being male, but being a female. There’s also the fact that they would be “sharing a bed” in “sin.” This weekend was when the Coach came from Oklahoma for a conjugal visit.

We welcomed the Football Coach and the Opera Singer with open fay arms.

I never realized how much I love lesbian bars, and how much more I could learn about American football. Although, when I referred to it as “American” the Coach got a little possessive. On Saturday afternoon, sitting in the stands of a local school’s football game I learned more intricate nuances to the game then I thought possible.

I realized that female gay set have it all figured out. They don’t care when I point out that they’re using the wrong wine glass to drink their beer, they just want to order pizza for dinner, and they love “chillin” out to watch TV. How frickin awesome is that. Although, we did rent The Bridesmaids and they spent the whole weekend screaming, “It’s coming out of me like lava!”

Nevertheless, fun was had by all. Now I just have to figure out how to get coconut and tea tree oil body lotion out of 600 thread count sheets.

Desk Top Friday

Pac's Panda

Patrick over at Pac's Pad is under a massive amount of work stress this week. I thought I'd try to convey that amount by having a cuddly Panda dramatically interpret his last Blog post:

Running With the Dead

I really need to run more.


One of the best things about running is the ritual. I am a man powered by rituals. If I have the ability to incorporate a ritual, or Habitrail, into my life I’m more than happy to spend days memorizing and ingraining it into my small monkey brain.

My running habitrail is early Sunday morning, lapping around Cheesman Park. I’m amazed how beautiful and quiet the park is, I am always amazed how the trees are perfectly aligned even after their planting one hundred and twenty years ago.

Even after I participated in a Denver Ghost Tour, last Sunday, and was re-reminded of the close to two thousand bodies left over in this runner’s paradise. The perfectly aligned trees are from the city when they turned their largest cemetery into a beautiful park by removing headstones and planting grass seed. Very industrious.

As I strode down the paths of trees, I always find it the best part of my week. My ritual of running, in the park, with the trees and a thousand 1880’s prostitutes and cattle-thieves.

I do, however, love running so much that I want to do it more often, yet running on the streets of my small fictional town doesn’t have the same endorphin rush. The countless suburban streets, the development company so long out of business that even their signs advertising the luxury neighborhoods has long since fallen to the ground. The streets and cul-de-sacs without houses, just empty housing lots returning back to fields.

The clean, black asphalt is perfect to run on for miles. Without the worry of cars or… anything interfering with my runs, this may be the problem. Right out my front door and off to the maze of under-developed neighborhoods doesn’t have the correct ritual.

I do need to run more. I guess that part of the inconvenience of the twenty mile drive to the park with the trees and the one hundred and twenty year old dead prostitutes is the ritual.

Freezin' Steven

It was that time of year again. It seems that it comes faster every year.

The time, once a year, when I winterize the house. Not the whole weather strip, drain garden hoses, and other manly pursuits of home maintenance. More like pulling the light comforter off the bed and bringing out the heavy down comforter from its Space Bag induced summer casket.


See?  Doesn’t this guy look freezing?
He needs a down comforter.

Pulling out the heavy blankets means that I can finally crank open the bedroom window and slide under my over-sized down comfiness. I also did my annual trip to buy new pillows and new sheets to add to the comfort level.

Part of this tradition is wrapping the bedroom’s air vent in foil; this is to block the furnace from blasting heat into the bedroom. Making the bedroom as I sleep also suitable for preserving meat. I wonder if there’s a correlation?

This morning was the first, really chilled morning. The dog had reenacted his time in a German POW camp and tunneled his way down into the sub-layer of warmth. The Dupioni wafted as it half heartily covered the frost covered window.

 It was freezing.

During my thought process of how amazing sleeping in a cold room is, I always forget how frickin’ horrible it is to get out of bed and traverse the ten feet to the bathroom.

Study Aids

I have been spending every waking moment lately studying for mid-terms. “Wow, mid-terms already?” you ask. I know!

I am having, lately, a huge problem with my western religions Professor. Not the class, I’m getting along swimmingly with western theology, It’s the fact that he’s a sixty-four year old dick bag. Yesterday he was drinking a soda in class as he discussed the Cluniac reforms of the late 800’s. He sat his soda down in front of me and said, “don’t drink my soda, I have AIDS.” My reply was, “Wow. How 1980’s of you.” He stopped, realizing that I was not joining in the joke, “If you really do have the HIV virus, you must really already know that it’s not passed through saliva on soda straws, if you don’t and that was a insensitive joke from the 1980’s I don’t appreciate jokes that are based on ignorance.

He told me to lighten up.

I will. I’m going to ace his class then report his ass to the university. Not for his ignorance of HIV, but for the thousand other misogynistic and raciest, faith based garbage he’s spewing.

Maybe I should take a break from studying for mid-term exams. Just a little bit.

Marching on the Appian Way

When I lived in Dallas, I rented a house on Appian Way. It wasn’t the Appian Way, just a close reproduction, sans the whimsy.  It was a tiny stone house that backed up to a creek. It was amazingly quiet, as it was just me and my roommate.

I wasn’t ever formally introduced to my roommate, he was a shifty character. Mostly he would stand at the end of the hall, late at night. Tall, dark and translucent. Me being me, I decided that my black, shadowy friend, although he wouldn’t chip in a dime for rent, needed entertaining.

Sometimes I’d put on an impromptu play involving current events of the day. In some sort of way to translate the outside world to a shut-in, in song and dance. Sometimes I’d re-enact famous stage shows, just a little one man show for the purpose of humoring the un-quiet dead.

I handle stress in strange ways.

Mostly because I was such a bad singer, the ghost roommate would disappear and try to ignore me for another week. One night I was on stage, pulling out the stops in a marching band montage. I was hot that night, and I went for the big finale, I started into a marching kick routine to Don't Rain on My Parade not realizing that the dogs were also running from my general area. They were fine with the ghost, just terrified of me. This is when I slipped and fell onto the hardwood, slamming my right shoulder. As my shoulder hit I thought I saw stars, instead it was every light in the house flashing on all at once. I distinctly heard laughter coming from down the hall. Everyone is a critic.

The muscle in my right shoulder has never been the same, and as I tweaked it again yesterday at the gym, I thought back to my original injury. Oh, yeah. marching with spirits on the Appian Way.

Sometimes You're the Balloon...

I'm having one of those days...

Dining Room

It took the entire day. From 10a.m. to midnight, but I finally have my gay boy dream. A new dining room.


Around 10 in the morning we hitched up a U-Haul trailer and headed towards the blue and yellow of gay Mecca. IKEA. Home of flat packed fabulous.

Already aware exactly what we wanted, the plan was to get some breakfast at the IKEA KAFE, write down the numbers using their tiny golf pencils and load up the trailer of the couple of flat cardboard boxes. We would then whisk home for some hex key assembly so we could sit down for dinner on our new dining room table and six chairs, along with a sideboard to complement the look.

Plans are funny things. They’re so flexible some times. Did you know that IKEA has two-hundred, twenty-seven million dining room chairs to choose from? I did. So on during the very first trip I stated “Oh, cool! I love these chairs! Right here! These are the chairs we should get for our dining room?!” So, when we arrived in the dining room area of the store, freshly filled up on Swedish pancakes I knew the plan. Then, two hours later…. The homosexual life partner and I needed relationship counseling. That’s when we met Chrissie, the lesbian IKEA relationship counselor.

Chrissie helped us make healthy choices about our relationship. That coming to a 100% agreement on what type of chairs we want will never happen: that compromise is healthy. Chrissie taught us a lot that day. She taught me that when your partner is a complete wacked job and just can’t make a decision that maybe you should dump his ass in the department and go shop for while.

Every 15 minutes I would call him. At one point he had 10 dining room chairs lined up in the main isle and asked everyone that walked by, who appeared to have taste take a vote. My pick, won every time. After a long shopping spree on the lower floor I returned to find him with a total, final decision. Leather. It had taken four hours to decide, yet we were ready to leave. Then as we marched to the bins we pasted a vignette with my pick, the hive mind was changed.

After 5 ½ hours we loaded up the truck and headed home. Mexican food, a pizza and two trips to Homo Depot I had my new dining room. Around hour two the question was asked “why don’t we just go to Ethan Allen?” Now I know why we didn’t, if you work for something you appreciate it more.