It's been a while since I've posted -

I've had Stevan (the dog groomer) AND Curtis staying with me this week. So, this means WAY sleep deprived. Curtis comes over around 11:00 or so and wants to play on the computer until 2:00; Stevan comes home around midnight or so and the dogs go absolutely haywire with both of them coming in. So, sleep doesn't occur until later, and, of course, when Curtis crawls into bed, that wakes me up as well.

All this and I'm not getting laid.

Tomorrow to San Antonio to help Richard's father sort out his trust and probate matters before he re-marries.

Beantown. At least this time we're staying in a hotel. Back on Saturday, so that weekend won't be a total loss.

Have to find out of Curtis is staying with me over the weekend or not. His new place isn't ready yet, so I offered to let him stay with me.

I'll think of something profound to write soon. Until then ..

Love, D -

Sunny Thursdays

Something's wrong with Ruby; while I know that she needs new tires, but driving her causes the whole front end to wobble, which seems odd. She has always had this little rumble and jolt thing in the left front brake, and I wonder if it has cut loose somehow.

Anyway.

I just likened the business that I'm in to trying to harrow a field using some teeth strung on a necklace.

Brrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

Another rude north wind has stepped into town today. Today was hectic, with lots of loan inquiries, things to be worked on, and a two hour meeting with Michael about the trend of things.

I'm so looking forward to the mental background improvement of having everything organized at home, that I can hardly wait for the end of the day!

Earlier today, I peeked into gay.com, and saw this guy -
Gay.com Personals

This is someone who could get me forgetting about Curtis.

The refreshment of garbage, the comfort of vinyl

Greg contacted me tonight. Ah, Greg. There was torture in the past, but what wonderful inspiration for a performance in a musical two years ago.

I spent part of tonight going through my two big, plastic file boxes and tossing old paperwork. Just for good measure, I went through my filing cabinet (now, just admit it, you immediately thought of a big, grey thing with four drawers and steel handles, rusting on the bottom, and jammed with old papers. Fie! A pox on you for imagining such a thing in MY casita!) and pulled out more old and useless paperwork. Now, I'm only one casual evening away from having all lof my papers filed in neat order. TWO big kitchen garbage bags of stuff to the trash tonight. I feel lighter already!

I may have the bed cleared off before Friday. In the guest room. My bed is cleared every night.

Sigh.

I've been listening to vinyl tonight. First were two lovely jazz albums, Cleo Lane, and then a montage of jazz singers - second was the 1977 smash album "Main Course" by the BeeGees, and now I'm listening to the sound track to "Electric Dreams," that crappy, sappy 1980s movie about a computer that takes over a guy's life. The title cut is AWESOME.

The rest of the album is crappy, though - just like the movie that spawned it.

It's so comforting to listen to vinyl. It's just so .. warm.

Yes, I know everyone and their dog has used that term to compare vinyl to CDs or other digital music, but .. it fits.

Get over it.

I'm going to be SO happy to have all this crap gone through and organized.

When Johnny died, I had quite an awakening about all this 'crap' that is so important in life. I realized that all that "stuff" he was so obsessed about was suddenly meaningless to anyone. It was just waste paper.

So, I've been going through all this stuff tonight, and tossing anything that I'm truly not going to use again, or won't be amused or happy to have saved a few years from now.

And enjoying the freedom of knowing that all this crap I've tossed out will NEVER again plague the back of my mind.

Once I'm done here, I'll be able to quickly and easily locate anything that I have kept in this apartment. Possibly for the first time since I started keeping records around 1981.

Now, I have more stuff to decide on before Friday - the big package of UPS shipper stuff, for instance. Am I really going to make a go of an eBay part time career? No, probably not. Should I keep all this stuff? No, probably not.

I have another big eBay garage sale coming up, though, so maybe I should hang on to it for a short while. My goal is to have all these dresser drawers emptied out - by the end of February.

And everything framed and up on the walls that's going.

I wish now that I had the speakers in this bedroom wired up. It would make listening to the stereo so much better in here.

Okay, time to empty the dogs and contemplate going to bed. Prayers to people in Mexico City and the surrounding areas -

And love to you, gentle readers..

Divo

Last night, I got up from bed (buzzing of the brain) and came in to write (what I thought was) a brilliant blog. Dashing, it was. I clicked "post and publish," and ..

the universe came to an end. My blog was lost. So, now I must try to re-create it. Can one ever re-create such a thing?

There were meanderings about my ongoing airport dream, about flying to Kuala Lumpur, about ....

Paradise lost.

Took some pictures of the apartment last night. I have eight more pictures on this roll to take, then I'll have the film developed.

Heard from Matthew yesterday; he's been fired, and has all the other concommitant 22 year old drama going on in his life. He still was open to having me take him someplace nice for dinner, and get him drunk on expensive booze.

Uh, no.

Trying to track down old friends today - and work on credit reports...

Hope you have a great day!

Oh, and James - thanks for bringing Vietnamese for lunch yesterday. Life has rather sucked lately, and that was a bright spot.

Apres moi, le deluge

Well, it's another day.

Just as I was starting to think that things couldn't turn around, they did. Anticipatorily, anyway.

But since human beings exist on hope, not reality, it's more important to have things LOOK like they're turning out than actually turning out.

Actually, I think I need to cook up a poem about what really drives people. That's something else on my list for tomorrow.

Curtis (as distinct from Kurtis) was supposed to come over tonight. He said that he was going to be partying at his house - I hope I talked him out of it.

When is enough ENOUGH?

Today's imponderable question is: When is it enough? How long do you beat your head against the wall before throwing in the towel and starting again somewhere else? Is a year enough? When do you become sure enough that you have tried it long enough that you don't question that you moved?

15 months ago, I was unemployed in the wake of psycho Judy and the business model that spent money but developed no sales. My law school friend Michael wanted me to work with him setting up a tax preparation and [maybe] mortgage office near my apartment. He would front the money to set it up, I'd provide all the labor. I would only be paid for what I produced - a percentage of the tax prep profits, and a percentage of income from mortgages. So, we've lurched along now, with a hand written agreement that is totally non-specific as to WHEN profits would be analyzed and paid, and I've worked my tail off, even though I've harbored a grudge since before I said yes over his comment "I want to harness your brain and make money off of it."

I said yes to his proposal not because I wanted to, or because I thought it was the best opportunity, but because, frankly gentle reader, there was NOTHING ELSE TO CHOOSE FROM.

And here I am.

The mortgage business is, as Michael calls it, a commodity. All things devolve eventually into a commodity. And in a commodity market, there is nothing to distinguish the product; the only way to make income is to enhance volume. Thus, in my business, there is nothing to distinguish a user from one to the next - their choice is frequently made on the basis of a personal feeling, or arbitrary matters.

In other words, in the mortgage business, I am not unique.

There are other issues - but, the bottom line is that I struggle to make a living every month, and I just feel that I'm too damned old to have to fight to survive every month.

However, what else can I do that will support me while I try to re-create myself into an emerging marketplace, rather than being a competitor in a commodity market?

The program into which I intend to place myself is one which is truly emerging. The doctoral degree programs have only existed a few years, and I would be one of a very small number of people who would be out consulting with such credentials. It will take me three years or so to finish, and so my life needs to support me and the tuition and expenses during that period.

Since my entry into adulthood, I've never really looked at myself, until today, as being on the wrong end of the market curve. When I went to law school, I was cresting a wave or law school enrollments that broke onto the shores of humanity in the United States, swamping everyone with a glut of lawyers, all looking for some way to scratch out a living.

I started bankruptcy law just at a time that it was becoming automated; just as I was getting known and very good at it, Windows versions of the software became readily available, and anyone with a couple hundred bucks and a law license could be a "bankrtupcy lawyer."

I went into the mortgage business at the tail end of a mortgage broker's being able to well and truly accomplish something for a client; now, anyone with perfect credit can get a loan over the internet with very little effort. Mortgage brokers will fairly soon go the way of the buggy whip -

Do I want to ride that wave down to its predictable end?

Clearly, not.

Once more, with feeling

Matthew cancelled today - I guess that was fine - it was much cheaper than actually driving over to pick him up, taking him somewhere for dinner, then getting involved in any way only THEN to be snaggled by the "maybe" monster.

The maybe monster is a device used by younger people to avoid making a commitment or a negative reply. "Will you go to the party with me?" "Probably."

"Probably" falls into the great Divo rule of "any answer other than yes is no." "Probably" is "no" with a knife.

"Probably" means "not yes, but I'll have you think yes while I see if something better than you and your idea comes along."

Matthew is a heavy user of "probably."

Today, I asked a friend of mine if he'd like to come to my cocktail party, and he answered "Probably - I'll write it down, and see if I can make it."

Turns out he's been sick. I probably shouldn't have accused him of spending too much time chasing youngsters.

He does, though.

Finally following advice -

Sometimes, it only takes a while.

Before 09/11/01, I finally got certified to lead Zenger Miller courses through Camber Corporation. Three weeks later, "they" blew up the World Trade Center, and .. well ..

That job really ended because Psycho Judy had blown through four years of development budget in just under two years - and brought in ONE contract for a single day's training of $800.

Did I mention that they paid out more than $800 to go down and deliver the training?

Anyway, I like the 09/11/01 excuse better - it sounds so .. community oriented.

After I got nuked over at Camber, I approached UH-CL, for whom I've been teaching since 1995, and I asked them if they would be interested in doing the Zenger Miller thing. After six months, and two meetings, they decided not to pursue it, and my boss over there told me to approach San Jacinto Junior College about it.

So, I put it off. For six months. Or better.

Today, after having one loan blow up and and a "friend" blow me off on an appraisal comment, I called.

They nearly hired me over the phone. So, I go tomorrow at 2:00 to meet with them.

She seemed to sound like they had a LOT of classes to teach. So, who gives a flip about whether the interest rates go up or down?

I should be starting this by the end of February.

Matthew, Chapter Two, Verse One

A lovely evening at Richard's again - it's cold here tonight!! 37F/2C! Brrrr!

Today was somewhat productive, and will be an early evening to bed. I got caught up on records filing, and am waffling on whether to put a light in my curio over the porcelain goddess, which will hold my airline glass.

Talked to Matthew today for a while. Last we exchanged messages, he said he thought it would be better if we were just friends.

Today, we seem to have had an about-face. He mentioned that he had been bored and lonely, and that I had "always shown him a good time."

So, the bottom line is that we're going to dinner tomorrow night, my anti-Y pledge notwithstanding.

I'll report in later.

Tonight's pearl of wisdom, from "Sex and the City." It goes - "There are three things that people in the city are always looking for: A job, an apartment and a man. Why is it that, when I have two of three that are fabulous, I define myself by my lack of the third?"

Amen, sister.

Joey the Satanic Flirt and the Purple Bedroom

It's nearly 4:30 today, and time to go home and see where things are. The guest room/den/room-E is finished in Polo blue and Polo minty green (colors that my extra-sized office at Big Nellie Mortgage was painted - they now have THREE people in there - imagine?) and we'll see how it looks like when I've shoved the furniture back in it.

I have to find someone unsuspecting to help me move furniture back IN to the room tonight, and help me move furniture from my bedroom OUT. This means that by tomorrow evening, the painting will be done, the house will be mine again and EVERYTHING will have been dusted, polished, cleaned under and behind, and so on.

Perhaps Curtis is available tonight.

Okay, it's time to stop pretending I'm a mortgage broker, and go home to walk the dogs. My friend Z tells me I'm ALWAYS walking the dogs.

I'm sure they don't think so.

Put a bunch of VHS tapes and books on Amazon last night, and they're flying off the shelves! I sold six tapes today and a book. Very exciting.

Hopefully, I can figure some other way to unload the detritus of overcollecting.

How many gasoline cans constitutes anal retentivity?
(the update to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin)

Yesterday was initially an exercise in frustration. Since New Year's, I have been running into roadblocks outside my control that have pushed closing dates back. In my reality, closing dates = income. About 1:30 in the afternoon, my friend James started calling me - he sounded tense. Seems that he had rented a U-Haul to move some furniture, and had run out of diesel.

Funny, but I had just that morning moved one of my red, plastic gasoline containers from the pantry (don't ask) to the bathroom cabinet (I said - don't ask.) I was delighted with James' need, because a.) it was a valid reason to leave the office, and b.) it gave me a reason to poison one of my gasoline containers with diesel, and thereby get rid of it, leaving me with one.

So, I dashed out of the office, ran home, grabbed one gasoline container from the bathroom (now, quit it. I can see you over there thinking about asking, and we covered that.) Popped into the car and drove over to the stranded James and his BF Bassem. As I was driving, I thought .. "Don't I have a gasoline can in the trunk of the car?"

Yes, I did. So, I had THREE gasoline containers -

Does that constitute anal retentivity, or just good planning?

My home is still all caterwampus (another technical term) as Joey the satanistic flirt paints. Gradually.

Today, he promises to be done with the living room, and that means I can put all of the furniture back in place. Once that's done, all of the furniture in the den/guest room gets moved so that they can paint THAT room.

Then, I have to buy paint for my bedroom and contemplate new bed linens.

I'd ask my boy Brian to help me pick out bed linens, but his tastes run to Nieman's and Frette.

Spent part of my last night looking at pictures of first class compartments on major international airlines. Woof! British Airways looks to be the most luxurious around. How can I find a job where all I have to do is fly around the world to places I haven't seen or love a lot in first class?

Time to make something happen in the laundry room. More as it happens.

Opus 2, Vol 12, Movement 29

Enteracte -

(Joey enters, stands quietly up right)

Day nine of my self-enforced "no Y Chromosome" campaign. Things have gone relatively well. Today, Sunday, I did not log onto gay.coma at all. My realtor called me at about 7:00 to ask where the heck I'd been all day - he stays logged in ALL day. Yesterday, I was on around 9:00 at night for 10 minutes, then logged off in disgust. Friday, I wasn't on at all.

Friday night, I intended to just watch DVDs and be quiet. Saturday, Stevan (the dog groomer) came over early, and we cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. Pulled everything away from the walls, cleaned behind, under and around, put away the Christmas stuff, threw out four boxes (he's an efficient packing machine) and I bagged up three big bags of clothes for the next garage sale. I also started through my picture/image collection, and re-framed a bunch of stuff. Today, I hung up most of my Continental Airlines stuff, and got the rest of my Lockheed Constellation stuff ready to take to the office. I still have about three Continental things that I need to frame, and then there are the two 20th Century posters, and the eight 20th Century magazine ads that need to be framed.

Been talking to Eric from LA (who really lives in Vancouver) about colors for the apartment, and he's got some great suggestions. I want to bring him down here to help me finish up my website work, and to .. heck .. I don't know .. hang out and drink.

So, yesterday and today were productive, even though the guest bed still looks like someone urped all over it.

Urped is a technical term for "vomited." It comes from the midwest.

Back to Joey. Isn't it nice that he's been sitting patiently in the background?

So, Joey was sent to me by Scott (aka Scotticia, aka Scooter butt) for some home improvement stuff. Now, I knew that Scott had been all a-twitter (another technical term) for Joey for months after having met him on AOL. However, I was not prepared for his demon sexiness when he arrived Friday night to "check out what I needed done."

Now, let me be clear - Joey is NOT flirtatious. But, it seems he's done a stint as a male dancer, and so he knows how to work the crowd. He wanted to jump right into the home improvement work, so Friday night, he wired up some halogen lights over my sofa table (bought them six months ago, never installed) and re-wired my home theater (running the wires behind the walls and so on; something I had wanted to have done for nearly five years.) The home theater now ROCKS it sounds so awesome.

Now, while doing this, he peeled out of his shirt, wearing only his white shiney Addidas warm-up pants, which revealed quite clearly that he was commando.

He asked for 1/4 down (which I gladly coughed up) and said he'd be back in about a week.

Now, he's calling several times a day, wanting to get started RIGHT NOW.

I need to schedule him to work when I'm at work, so that I don't have him naked in front of me. It would detract from the anti-Y campaign, totally. I'd start getting ideas, and then I'd develop expectations.

Which lead to cramps.

I have decided that this next year will be the year of the website. I'm going to re-do drdivo, my personal site, and I'm going to have my airline site launched (it will be nearly functional, but won't offer tickets or travel .. 'cause that would be bad. However, I do intend to create and market marked goods - like leather travel folios, luggage tags, etc.) So, I wrote to E tonight and asked him to come down. Then, I need to meet with David (the married - talk about distracting) and visit with him about the airline site.

So - time to try to watch "Enigma" again. It's billed as a "thriller" and it's really [so far] about as exciting as watching white paint dry. On a wall that was already white. In a place you don't own. Or care about.

Ciao!

Memories, Christmas memories -

I'm listening to an old LP of Christmas music - instrumentals - that my mother used to play all the time when we were little. The sound is so rich, and the popping and static reminds me of those holidays in the 1960s and 1970s when the snow was heavy, and thick, the colored christmas lights shone out from their nests of white, and it was toasty warm inside.

My mother and her sisters always put their all into the holidays - decorating, baking, selecting presents and wrapping them - now that I'm that age, I wonder how they did it all. They created a magical, special environment that gave meaning to the idea of Santa Claus and the human interaction that this time is supposed to bring us.

I have to fight to keep the house clean, and if it weren't for the internet, no one would get a present of any kind.

Sometimes, I think that we just lose the ability to experience that magic again, because of our age, and the pressing responsibilities that we have as adults.

But, four years ago, my sister and her girlfriend were able to re-create that magic when I spent Christmas at their home in Albany - so I know that it's possible.

This was one of the first holiday seasons where I didn't have huge emotional upheaval related to my family. For eleven years; from 1988 to 1991, I was PNG with most of my family. Before my mother went into a home, she and my sister were planning family events for Thanksgiving where I was excluded. My father would beg me to attend Christmas, and a few hours later his wife would call and say that they had no place to put me, they didn't have enough places at the table, they were going to one of his sister's homes and I knew that I wasn't going to be able to go there.

So, every holiday was a struggle from about October until today. I didn't spend Christmas with my family for years. Today, and earlier in the season, I was noticing that there was this huge absence of emotional stress around the holidays. It's just a big irritation in the middle of the work effort around the end of the year.

Tomorrow morning, most of the rest of the world and I go back to work.

My sister gave me a book that looks to be a HOOT - a novel about the life of the wicked witch of the west! She also gave me a switchplate cover that's pink with stars on it and says "Princess" - which will go on the wall next to the bedroom closet door tonight later. A new Star Trek key chain .. all amusing stuff.

I'm now listening to the Messiah. The sound of LPs is so rich, compared to CDs and other digitized forms.

Another Christmas past.

Back to reality.

The Ghosts of Christmas past ...

Merry Christmas from the Central Time Zone. It's been here about 20 minutes so far.

I just finished watching "All Over the Guy." Yes, again. I don't know why I so love that movie. I'll probably watch it again tomorrow at Kurtis and David's house.

Just before I left the office today, I stumbled across a picture on one of my favorite websites - airliner's net - I'll show it to you in a second. The first day I found airliners.net, I was up until 3:30 in the morning surfing through the thousands upon thousands of aircraft pictures.

Yes, I'm an airline geek. No, they haven't invented a 12 step group for that yet.

Anyway, this picture is of my favorite airplane (777) owned by my favorite airline (Continental) coming in to land in Houston/IAH on a gloomy fall day. This is about as Christmas-y as it gets here in the sub-tropics, but this shot captures everything I love about this town, that airline and airplanes in general in one dramatic, gorgeous shot.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=289493

Have I ever mentioned that my sister is just amazing? I emailed her on Thursday to tell her that I wasn't coming to Florida for Christmas, and she STILL got all of my presents to me yesterday even though she left Friday morning for Tampa. How did she do it?

Anyhow, I have some ghosts to purge about Christmas with my family, but it's late and I'm going to bed. The problem with taking part of a day off is that you have a chance to take a big nap, and then when it's past bedtime, you're not tired!

I'll conjure up some verbiage, and write more when I get up.

My entire blog - gone. Because of me trying to look at a webpage, which nuked me.

So, time to recreate.

Today, I was a productive boy. I pulled out about 1/4 of the hardcover books and re-arranged them, threw out a whole bag of old paper and crap, then, pulled the paperbacks out (which resided in a cabinet, all helter-skelter and impossible to sort through) and moved them. THEN, I pulled all the VHS out - I have TWICE as many as I thought, and I sorted them. Now, I have three stashes, each alphabetized - I need to have it down to TWO, but I need better storage for that to happen. Once done with that, I went through ALL the casette tapes, and tossed about 40, pulled out about 20 to sell on eBay (yes, more eBaying - I'm close to having a rating of 200.) All that remains now is to move more pictures around, have some things framed and hang THEM up, decide on paint colors in the living room and dining room .. figure out if I can put down wood floors .. re-hang a bunch of stuff in the laundry room .. go through the boxes in the bedroom closet, heave out another big batch of stuff and organize the stuff that remains into well-labeled boxes.

THEN ..

I won't have much left to do around here.

Except keep it all clean.

Tomorrow night, my buddy Curtis is coming over to have me look at some lease to own paperwork he just took out on a house in Magnolia (go to the end of the earth, turn left - watch for the drop off) - he started talking about home improvements, and all of the stuff that he planned on doing - and I [of course] asked whether he did that sort of work on the side.

And he does.

So, although he doesn't know it yet - he'll be looking at the damaged walls, where the speaker wire needs to be run, etc., etc.

I'm listening to a CD remix of dance songs from 1998 - that's when my friend Jeffrey and I used to be disco queens - I have SUCH a kick-ass stereo - it's not even breathing hard (my stereo is kicking out the tunes, and is pretty much filing its nails at the moment) - I have two speakers that I want hung in the den here so that I can play DJ while I play on the computer. I will have him do that too.

I hadn't talked to my sweet Owen ALL weekend until just about a half hour ago. He just got home from work (4 a.m. for him) and he's been talking to me. He's a hoot. And, he makes me feel good.

Nothing profound today - just been a busy boy. Have a WHOLE lot of work to get done this week at the office - so - have to get some sleep tonight!

Friday at 1500

Boy you can tell things are winding down. It was very, very busy this morning, but this afternoon has gotten very slow.

Looks to be a very quiet Friday night. No plans, except to have my head rotated after work. Have to put in some hours tomorrow doing legal work for Michael, as I haven't really had the time or attention to do any of that recently.

I think tonight I'll finish watching "Maltese Falcon" and "The Eyes of Tammy Faye." And do laundry, since it's overflowing the hamper.

I am officially no longer chasing, interviewing, looking for or communicating with "Y" chromosomes. It's a worthless pursuit, fraught with peril. It's expensive, not only in coin of the realm, but in emotional coin as well. I've wasted years of my life chasing boys, men, bois, married guys, straight guys .. it's a WASTE.

So - just like Jeffrey - I'm going sober.

Happy Holi-daze

The last Wednesday before Christmas - the last business Wednesday of the year, in fact.

I have a closing set for tomorrow, and the lender has been like a ghost ship. A client who has to close in a week who won't provide me with any documents. Another client who swears that she has given me the financial records I requested, and that I just lost them.

My friend Mikey just was whining that he's not featured heavily enough in my blog. So, everyone - please wave "hi" to Mikey - my friend who's online persona is "Cajuntxn." Mikey is one of my computer geek friends, who recently came over and rescued my home computer from a certain death. He is always after me to pimp him out with any young men that I can find, and loves to watch movies with me. He's a nifty guy, and has a heart as big as a Louisiana swamp, which constitutes most of the southern half of that state.

Owen was sick with the flu today, which required me to focus on work related tasks. Eric from Vancouver (E - is his official moniker) thinks that I'm "avoiding" something by finding Owen so appealing. I think everyone just needs to have a drink and sit down for a while.

My realtor "friend" today told me that he didn't think I actually worked. That is the general perception of realtors - that no one else in the transaction actually works. The people at title companies are working nights and weekends, the appraisers are overwhelmed, the insurance agents can't keep up, I wake up every night around 4:30 - worrying about deadlines and whether everything is handled - I just canceled my trip to be with family for Christmas -

But no, we none of us have anything to do with a file showing up at the closing table ready to close.

Just four more minutes, and I'm leaving - it's dark already.

Tonight, it looks like I get to have an evening of peace and quiet. Last night, spending a little time with Brian was very nice - he's such a wonderful man, and just getting really settled into a new world for himself. He adpated so quickly; I guess everyone does when faced with extreme change.

5:30 is upon me, so - until later!

A quick note -

Today was a HOOT. My sweet friend Owen from Poznan had me in stitches half the day; I'll have to write more about that when I have a little time.

Also talked to my friend in Frankfurt - the one who wants me to visit with him in January - he was saying that I didn't write about him quite enough, thank you very much. So, let me tell you more about Timmy. He's very sweet, he's a purser for a European airline, which means I get to chase him around looking for dirt about the airline biz, he's handsome, funny, flirtatious and he looks great naked, which is more than most guys in their late 30s can say.

He and his partner are traveling to the US in May, I think it is, and I've persuaded them (I think) to spend a number of days here at the Casita de Divo so that I can show them the local hospertality. This involves trips to the Galleria, to NASA, to Galveston (where visitors are uniformly horrified by the mud brown water and the general state of disrepair) and lots and lots of TexMex food.

I proposed to Owen today. He said yes, but I think he was mostly kidding.

Okay, I'm re-reading "Headwind" by John J. Nance, and I'm at a good part, so I'm going to publish, and go to bed earlier than last night.

Until the morrow ..

More thoughts on unrealistic expectations

Heard from PJ today again .. he was whining about the phone card that I had set up for him so he could call (not that he ever called ME with it, but he burned through thirty dollars worth) He wanted me to set it up for him again.

Uh, no. He offered to send me money to do it. I think I was acerbic.

Anyway, I was fiddling around, and realized that I had talked about Owen from Poznan several times, but didn't give you a look at him. He's really something.

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