Work

For the last few months, I've been living in a little bit of a limbo work world. I'm going to be leaving in November and currently Laura and I are saving up for our wedding and the move. The two jobs that I do are the definition of unchallenging, but I'm making the right amount of money and I have insurance. My current work week is roughly 29 hours and I net the same amount of money that I made when I was working 40 hours a week at US Trust in Jersey City, though then I didn't get health insurance. I'm also making only slightly less than when I was working 60-80 hours a week for Transportation Alternatives, though I don't really count that job as "work".

As the wedding looms on the horizon, more and more potential costs rack up in my brain: car, honeymoon (?), last minute wedding costs, move, Cobra insurance etc. Laura and I are trying to save more and spend less, but it seems that I should probably get more work. I've got about a $100-$150 a week hole I'd like to fill in my income and the options aren't huge.

I've been toying with the option of doing food delivery int he neighborhood. I've talked to a lots of messengers who do it either to suppliment their income or have crossed over to just do that. There are some restaurants in the neighborhood that have a fleet comprised entirely of off-duty messengers who deliver food. It's the funniest thing to see hardcore messengers with plastic bags of food hanging off of the handlebars of their brakeless track bikes. Most of the hardcore guys that to it seem to use the money they make from that to travel locally, nationally and sometimes internationally to go to races.

Messsenger work has always been a kind of fallback punishment for me. I love the work, but I hate the work and so whenever I'm in need of a job, going back to messenger work is my selfmade ultimatum. I could always just call Breakaway, my old company and work part time, but it makes Laura crazy to think about it. Mid-town on a Friday is a meatgrinder and bad things can happen. Riding around the neighborhood it a little safer.

Though I do work as a messenger part time for my insurance and about 40% of my income, I think of myself as having hung up the mantle of messengerdom. A huge part of me is like "c'mon man, you're too old to be doing this kind of bullshit. Can't you find some kind of other work?" Another part of me tells me to just suck it the fuck up and just do it. I'm not proud, I'm not working that much and I could certainly use the money and free food. I am more that open to any suggestions for part time work, in the meantime, i'm going to make the rounds and see what I can rustle up.

Buying A Car

After nine years of toodling around the city on either public transportation or my bike, I've finally come to need a car. Laura and I are going to be moving of course and the rest of America does require a car. We're also going to be traveling around a bit this summer and fall, and with a dog in tow, it becomes a lot cheaper to actually own the car and pay for it now as opposed to renting one a couple of times this summer.

On the up and up, I just found out that I can apply for US Army car insurance on account of me once being an army brat. I find this mighty good news and rather funny. All I can remember of my father's army days is climbing in and out of a tank and spending a dusty afternoon watching a couple hundred paratroopers try to land on an X marked in the ground. That and the squat little three bedroom house we used to live in and the back yard I used to run around naked in. Apparently, we had very religious neighbors to the ajoining back yard and they put up a fence so that they wouldn't have to see my wanton 3-year old ass swishing around and shaking the figs out of our fig tree. If you bug my mom enough, she'll show you the pictures of it.

That image has little to do with me ditching my morals, going into debt just to jet around the highways, but it did make me chuckle to think back on. Though to think back on it, my second favorite thing to do in my back yard was to drive my three wheeler around. At least that stayed with me.

Photoblogging Of the Last Two Weeks

Hey All,
The last two weeks I went to my own (and John's) bachelor party and then John's wedding. Here's the pics.

My Brother and Chad


John all hung over


The Wedding Party


Laura in her lovely bridesmaids dress


I'm planning on borrowing that some rainy day


Me and the Beautiful Bride


Three Maids a' Dancing


All the Brooklyn People

The Gray Lady Has One Hell Of A Blog Post

Congrats polar bear man. Check it out

Easy As Pie

The clambake call turned out to be easy as hell. I thought it would be a day of unloadiing lots of heavy stuff from truck after truck, but it turned out to be a few loads of very light boxes full of set models. It was a lot of walking the room asking people if they wanted a ladder. There was supposed to be a storm to end all storms this afternoon so when Sam offered to end the call after 4 hours because we weren't needed, I leapt at it. I raced home as fast as I could, thinking that I was going to get royally pissed on and possibly electricuted on the 59th street bridge. When I got home, I found that Laura was sick as heck with the cold I gave her. I'm still a bit under as well. We've been watching movies all day since. I think I'm going to go for a little yoga before debauching myself thoroughly tomorrow for my post wedding bachelor party.

Clambake

Sam landed me a job this week helping set up a national MFA theatre designer showcase called "The Clambake". It was a hell of a lot of fun. Most of the people went to NYU tech track and had been doing this gig every year since 2001 or so. It was mostly lugging several carts of stuff out of several storage places inside of Lincoln Center and down the block to Fordham University. When we got there we spent the better part of the day fitting together a somewhat confounding assortment of iron tubes and rubber connectors. Lots of sassing and quipping and Sam sarcasiming everyone back to work. He had probably the best management comeback I've ever heard.

"Hey Sam, how did you get to be in charge of this?"

"Do you want my job?" (silence)

I did a lighting hang last Friday which was hilarious because I didn't remember how to do half the shit I was supposed to. Quick BFA readers, what is a two-fer? Yeah, I thought so.

Mike Green at Bike Blog did a freaking excellent job putting a video of the Bridge Battle II race I did the other day. He was smart enough to put a helmet cam on the 2nd and 3rd place finishers. Check it out here It's free to register and definitly worth it.

Brokeback Mountain

So Laura and I were the last people in the world to see "Brokeback Mountain." I thought that it was stunningly beautiful. It was one of those truly American stories that can only be told by people from Taiwon and Austrailia. I live by a bus stop and a busy avenue, so there's always background noise, but I have to say it was difficult to make out anything that anyone said. Not that it made any difference. I could have probably gotten everything that I needed to if this was an unsubtitled movie in another language. I Have barely a thing to add to the dialogue surrounding this movie that's new save for the fact that Dick Cheney, also from Wyoming, is only three or so years younger than these characters and, like Heath Ledger, talks out of the side of his mouth.

On a separate note, I would like to spend a sec recognizing the excellent posting that Ms. Ndgyoyen recently cooked up. The bit about smoking a pussy cigar with Desmond Tutu is too much.

Sucky Monday, But It Was Over Soon Enough

I was totally ready for it to be rainy and shitty yesterday for my Monday Morning Job. It was. This was, after all, remnants of the storm that ate Peabody Mass. I had rain gear, so it wasn't so bad, but it was bad. The biggest problem with delivering stuff on a rainy day is that when you get into buildings you feel like some kind of wetness leper. All of my magazines were bone dry before I took them out with my wet, wrinkly hands and gave them to people. At one buiding, I had to sign in and I grabbed the pen at the very top so that I wouldn't drip all over the guys pad. At the New York Observer, this one lady remarked that "It sure is wet today" I let her off the hook and told her that I was only an hour away from being done.

At my last stop, in the Trinity Building at 111 Broadway a buiding that requres that messengers hang around in the lobby, another messenger stepped out for a quick coffee while his person took her sweet time. She came down after a spell and was mightily pissed.

"Oh, it's great that he has the time to grab coffee, this was supposed to be picked up two hours ago." She then looked around and realized that the people in earshot were two messengers, a doorman, and me, wet as a sponge singing a Rufus Wainwright cover. Eventually, her guy came in and she was a little bit nicer.

"I know this isn't your fault, but can you make this a priority, it has to be there by noon." It was 11:45.

"Oh yeah, no problem" and he was off, presumably to take care of the 5 other jobs that were backed up because of the shit weather. All the time, I was aware of this tall, thin, white guy with a messenger bag checking out my bike. When I got out I found out that he was a German bike messenger in town for the week and he wanted to find out if there was a good bike shop to buy t-shirts. I directed him to Track Star and got onto the nearest subway home.

Home was good. I took off my chlothes, petted the dog and passed the fuck out.

In better News, I went and saw Julia's performance with Laura tonight. It was a new piece about the crappy apartments and sub-par hook-ups. I love her work; I laughed my ass off. Afterwards drinks at what was once The Cellar, where I used to work.

Best Saturday Ever

This Saturday was both Laura's bridal shower and the "Bridge Battle II" race. Friday night Laura and I had seen an assortment of films at the Bicycle Film Forum. There were a lot of short films including a film called "MASH San Francisco" that showed lots of guys bombing down city streets and crashing their track bikes into the pavement. It put the fear into me.

Saturday morning I was really starting to dread the race. I had that awful feeling in my gut and I was kinda sluggish and weak as I rode to the start on 23rd and the FDR. I had hoped that I could have done the race with Josh, but his bike was recently put to final rest after he was doored on Christopher street.

After a lot of poking around the FDR Park and the surrounding area, me and this guy who wanted me to call him Chino found the race organizers and we got our spoke cards. As a rule, Alleycats start about 45 minutes after they're supposed to, in this case it took about an hour and a half. As more people gathered, I got bored and passed the time looking at the course map, reading the New York Times and calling my brother to shoot the shit. This didn't do anything to calm my nerves and I resolved to myself that my only goal was to not get hurt and that I would drop out of the race at the first sign of trouble: a flat, a small tumble over a curb, the second I got lost etc.

The organizers had us move our bikes to three different spots before deciding on a place to lay our bikes down for a short Le Mans start. I was scared as hell that I would get a shot of adrenaline and do something stupid once the race started so I stood at the starting line and concentrated on my breath and heart rate. When it was time to go, everyone ran like crazy and roughly 70 people ran for their bikes and started pouring out onto the FDR and up to the 59th street bridge. There were at least 4 minor crashes that I saw out of the corner of my eye, including one guy from Boston clipping into a GMC Jimmy in the 30's. I was squarely in the middle of the pack and noticed that I was going at roughly commuter speed up 1st avenue. I resolved for the rest of the race to keep my straghtaway speed at at least 20 mph.

The pack thinned out considerably on the Queens side of the 59th street bridge as people went different ways and in different orders. People were further thinned into packs ass groups of people got stuck at lights. I dropped about four people at a light when I muscled my way across four lanes of traffic and hooked up with a group of 5 fast guys and one really fast girl on a road bike.

Here she is at the finish line with 2nd place finisher Ken:
I was able to hook up with different groups of people and drop others in traffic on my home turf in Greenpoint, but that girl on the road bike I just couldn't shake. For a while she had me on Grand Avenue, but then I caught her when a bus cut us off on Lorimer, then I thought I had her licked on Flushing near the Navy Yards until I started to run out of juice and she passed me, shot me a shit eating grin and said something that sounded like "ha haaa" (a la Nelson from The Simpsons).

Near the end I was starting to feel like a whipped dog. I hadn't drank any water since starting the race and I was worried about how in the hell I would get up the Manhattan Bridge and over to the finish line without dropping 10 places behind. I started up the bridge at 15 mph, dropping the pack of people that I had been riding with, including the girl and I drafted up the rest off the way behind this one Japanese messenger who I'd once spoken to a year ago. He was a lot smaller than me, so to successfully draft him I had to crouch really low. I had my manifest out before the checkpoint in the middle of the bridge, and I managed to shoot past him afterwards. As I was going down the brigde, I saw all of these other people from the race going the opposite way. I thought that they were all ahead of me and that when I got to the finish line at the Anthology Film Archive, that the organizers would send me back to the Manhattan bridge to get a second signature. That didn't seem like a lot of fun, but I bombed through Chinatown anyway, screaming unintelligable shit at crowds of people who were walking through my green lights and then finally going the wrong way up 2nd avenue to the finish line.

I gave my manifest to the guy at the table and found out that, no, I didn't have to go back and that I had come in in 16th place. Sixteen baby! For the next 5 minutes I was shell shocked, my body was floppy, I shouted when I meant to talk and I drank water like a camel. The girl came in a few minutes later and I she was the first place girl finisher. I beat the first girl, made me feel like a big man.

I stayed for another couple of hours, drank a lot of free red bull, ate a chocolate bar, read the rest of my NY Times and watched the various track events. At six, I went over to Brooklyn to the end of Laura's bridal shower and had an excellent time.

Slammed By The 3-Wheeler of The Law

This morning started pretty bad and got worse and worse. I woke up tired, which hardly ever happens to me, even at 5:00 in the morning. I was pretty pokey on the bridge and in a complete fluke, I ended up getting thwacked from behind by this guy that I always seen on the bridge and talk to at 5:20 every Monday morning. I thought that I had missed him until I paused before going through a red 1 block from the bridge and got thwacked from behind by a very solid left arm. He went down, I helped him get back up and it was no big deal. It was 99% his fault, but I felt pretty bad about it and ended up going up first avenue because I was embarrassed.

At 7:30, I started my delivery run and was still tired even though I had had another coffee. As I was going towards 8th avenue on 39th street (the wrong way), one of those three-wheeled traffic vehicles swirved towards me and the guy inside waved at me. Like a freaking idiot, I chose to ignore it and pedaled away. He caught me a block away after I decided not to go the wrong way on 41st because I thoght he had given up right as I got away.

"You're in a heap of trouble now! Gimme your ID...Now stand over there!

I stood where he told me and watched as he spent the next ten minutes writing, double checking and writing some more. I had roughly 45 pounds of envelopes in my bag going to everyone from Bob Herbert to Howard Stern and I was wondering just how fucked I was. If the bike got confiscated, I would be able to continue doing my deliveries, I would just have to lie to my boss and say that my frame had broken or something like that. I pictured myself trying to do the next weeks deliveries on Laura's 50cm bike with the seat all the way up. I thought about getting arrested. Each time I thought he was done, he would check his code book and start writing another ticket. My thoughts started wander after a bit as I took a closer look at this guys three-wheeled traffic car. The whole thing was just stamped sheet metal and shatter proof glass. This guy's bulletproof vest was the only thing keeping the steering column from going through his chest in an impact. A car of any size could kill this guy in a side impact and he had just chased me across four lanes of uptown traffic in the space of two blocks. I felt like a piece of shit.

In the end, I got four separate tickets, for going the wrong way, for disobeying a direct order, for not merging right (this I didn't actually do) and for not having a bell on my bike. I got a further verbal reprimand from him telling me that he was originally going to just give me a warning and that I had done a very stupid thing and had endangered both my life and his.

Then he left and I walked my bike to 40th street and then spent the rest of the morning following every...single...traffic...rule. If you subtract the 13 minutes I lost getting the ticket and another 10 doing a one time extra delivery for my boss, it tacked on roughly 35 minutes to my otherwise 3 hour route.

I've been pretty wary of the NYPD after some bad run-ins and after their behavior during the RNC. The NYPD had fire engines go through civic minded crowds of yielding Critical Mass riders only to swing them across the avenue and have the police arrest the people that had let them through. The people who got arrested were detained for more than the alotted time in holding pens that had chemical waste in them. Most people had to wait months to get their bikes back. I stillI depend very much on the cops though. If I get doored, I need them to process an accident report, if Laura had gotten the license number of that awful man in a minivan that hit her with his mirror I would have demanded that they arrest the guy for doing a hit and run.

The cop that got me this morning did everything by the book, he was pissed but not irrational and I have to say gave me exactly what I deserved. I got caught this time but I've eluded the cops on four other occasions that I will not go into for obvious reasons. It looks like I will be paying a total of $150 for these four tickets, which is pretty paltry considering the thousands and thousands of times I broke the law while working or commuting.

This has become a long an rambling post. To make up for it, I've searched Google Images to find you this picture of Captain Kangaroo as a reward for struggling with me. Thank you.

Cross-Trainer Season

Every year around this time, when the days get longer and the weather gets warmer, more and more people get on their bikes and ride around New York. Of them, there is a special subset who try to race me, they are the cross-trainters. The cross-trainers are the guys who have spent the winter in gyms lifting weights, running in place and sweating their asses off racing one another in spinning classes. When the weather gets warm enough, they get on their bikes and try to prove their mettle racing me through traffic, up bridges and through congested park drives.

They usually have enourmous arms, great tans and expensive bikes. One of these guys will see me in traffic, they'll chase me with a huge burst of energy sprint and will whizz past me. Then I'll follow them for about a block just to see if they have any technique whatsoever then I'll pass them. They'll get a little bit peeved, try to catch up, but then find out that maneuvering through New York City traffic and blowing red lights requires something greater than a 40 bpm resting heart rate and great deltoids.

Yes, I realize that this is silly, peurile, elitist behavior. Yes, I know that it cheapens me and denigrates my charachter to mention it in a forum as public as this, but god damn it's just so...much...fun!

Yesterday on the bridge I had a particularly good time. I was going from Manhattan to Brooklyn on the Williamsburg Bridge, passing people on the way up. This is not so much machismo as smart practice, since I have only one gear and if I lose momentum I'm screwed. I passed this big huge brute of a guy who could clearly bench my and his bodyweight combined. He had these ridiculously large calves that looked like ham hocks. After I passed him I heard him start breathing harder and out of the corner of my eye I saw his shadow lurking behind me. I sprinted the rest of the way up the bridge and started on the gradual descent near the middle of the bridge. As I got into the final ramp of the bridge, going 23mph, I again saw his shadow getting bigger, he had a lot more gravity on his side and he wanted to pass me bad before the bridge was over. I cranked it up to 32mph and made it off the bridge, he turned a different way and I never saw him again. Good times.

A Wonderful Day for Playing Hookey

It was looking like I'd be working an extra day at work this week due to an exceptionally large order that came in on the pipeline, but three days and 2875 coasters later, I was in a good enough place to either come in or not. Laura had the day off so I decided to forgo the money play hookey with her.

We slept in as long as the dogs would let us (we're dogsitting Milo) and then biked off to DUMBO, Red Hook and Prospect Park. Red Hook wasn't as interesting or up and coming as I thought it would be. It whole thing was just a fairy tale made up by Barbara Corcoran.

The ride ended at Pacifico, lots of guacamole, and a big ass burrito. After we got home we had some drinks at Pete's Candy Store with friends and got good and snackered. The next morning was an early one geting Laura off to Boston and it was grim.

Out Of The Saddle

the Monday Morning Job was pretty hellacious. Got about an hour into into it before the heavens opened up and I was caught with nothing more than shorts, an undershirt and a t-shirt. I thought that it would be a summer rain and that I wouldn't lose too much body heat, but I was wrong. Each time I stopped and went into a building I got a little bit colder. I finally broke down and bought a set of rain gear from Modells in Harold Square. It cost me $40. I've been holding off on getting freaking rain gear for a year and a half and all it was going to cost me this whole freaking time was forty measly bucks. I've done maybe 6 other rainy mornings and 4 snowy Monday mornings because I was too cheap to get some freaking rain gear.

In my experience, rainy days are best dealt with by going slow, keeping warm and not giving a fuck about anything but staying safe and healthy. When all was said and done, I lost a total of 10 minutes off of my average from the whole run. Oh yeah.

Shakespeare

Saw "The Taming of The Shrew" at the old alma mater last night. Josh told me about it and I talked Jessica into going with us. Outside the building we ran into Steve, my old acting teacher, former director and (n a separate story) former real estate client. We hugged, it was damned good to see him and he doesn't look a lick different. It was strange to walk into the Tisch building again, it's coming on five years in May and I basically spent my whole freaking life in that building for four years.

There were lots young actors hanging out in movement pants and tights. I felt old, really old. I ran into some familiar faces and there was the uncomfortable exchange of the ol' "what have you been doing" thing. It's unique among BFAs, you kind of sniff one anothers' butt to see who is and isn't working in theatre. I've been letting theatre go lately, but it hasn't been that easy. Something has felt missing. Every once an a while I'll look to the left of my TV and glance at my complete works of Shakespeare. Haven't cracked it yet, but now I think I shall. This past Thursday marked the bard's 442nd bithday (he also shares a birthday with Hitler, the 8th anniversary of the Columbine Massacre and the international day of smoking pot).

I have pretty strong opinions about how I see my Shakespeare. I can be a little bitch about it in fact. I dug on some of the performances, the woman who played Petrucio, two of the smaller ensemble actors were great. Steve did a grand job of setting the scene, breaking the fourth wall and some of the theatrical shit he did (difficult to write) were great. Hats off!

Some of the casting I wish was better, which made me do a kind of Fantasy Baseball Shakespeare. If he was 30 years younger and classically train Kris Kristofferson would have made one ass kicking Petruchio.


Afterwards, Josh and I rode like assholes back to Brooklyn. We passed some guy on the first major ramp of the bridge who slammed past us on the next incline. I made a feeble attempt to catch him again on the uphill, but I didn't have a damned thing.

There was a party at Andrew and TK's pad and Josh and I witnessed the last 10 minutes of a rousing game of asshole. TK, the asshole, had to let us in and Julia made everyone who pissed her off say something especially nice about her before drinking. Laura was in a fine mood and the night ended with an empty flask of whisky, a cold bike ride home and Laura showering with the Pig to clean him off.

DUMBO Scramble

A˜s part of my reolution to enjoy all the uniquely New York things before I leave, I went to DUMBO this Saturday to race. This was my fourth messenger race and each one has had its unique challenges. Unlike other races that I've done, I had no freaking clue where any of the stops were because I DON'T KNOW DUMBO! Neither did anyone else though, so that made it kind of interesting. It was a lot of follow the leader...on cobblestones. I'll break it down thusly:

Leading up:
The start was in Brooklyn Bridge Park, right on the water smack between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Lots and lots of people with all kinds of abilities some first timers, some people on cruisers, a couple of tall-bike Black Label types. I also got briefly interviewed by some lady doing a segment for HDNet. I registered, got my manifest, spoke-card and t-shirt and then spent the next 40 minutes puzzling over the manifest. I knew one of the addresses, only becuase it was in Manhattan. After futzing with a map that didn't show any of the streets I was looking for, I knew one other stop. I resolved then, like most people did, to find someone who actually did know what the hell they were doing.

The Start:
It was a 50 yard dash LeMans start. Most people had clipless pedal shes and messenger bags, which made a kind of clippity cloppity rustling sound as we all ran in a pack to our bikes. I got my bike and started pedaling like a motherfucker in the general direction of the first stop. Everyone in the lead pack had track bikes and were jumping up onto the sidewalks in order to avoid the cobblestones. I made the mistake a few times of trying to pass people by jumping off the sidewalk and powering through the cobbles. The cobbles in DUMBO are far worse than those in Soho. My balls are still jiggling.

I eventually found two guys to follow who seemed to know where they were going. We got lost a bunch of times, but I sure as hell wouldn't have been able to figure it out on my own. Both of the guys, Alex and Pablo had track bikes with no brakes they were, well...bold in intersections. The both had some pretty exceptional BO (I was no lilly myself) and when I drafted behind them I was in a slipstream of pure armpit. I was too tired not to.

The checkpoints were all different. One of them made us do 10 pushups (go man-tits go!) before they would sign our manifest another had us answer trivial pursuit questions, and yet another, situated at the top of an enourmously steep hill just had us give em' a high five.

Snafu:
On an uphill, some guy passed in between me and a row of parked cars. He got too close, thwacked me on my back with his shoulder and I went down going all of about 7 miles per hour. Scraped my palm, elbow and knee on the pavement, my jeans, only one day old, got ripped. The guy who thwacked me acknowleged he was at fault and apologized. Shit happens.

That was the second to last stop. I made up for lost time by screaming down the cobbles and passing all of the people who had passed me because of my fall and got back to Brooklyn Bridge Park. Once there, I turned in my manifest and was given a new one. I had just raced 12 ball-busting miles, both guys I was following were long gone and I my knee was starting to smart. I threw in the towel and biked back to Williamsburg to have beers with Laura and Kristine. It was a damned good time. Had I not been a little better this week about not drinking so much and exercising more, I would have actually finished the freaking race and enjoyed it a little better. Perhaps next week.

Sedar

Sedar fun at the place last night. Among other things, I learned that Charles Schwab is the new Manischewitz, you can never have too much booze in the house and that Pharoh was one prize dick. Laura cooked up an incredible assortment of food and even made a plague cake. I drank a ridculous amount of water before I went to sleep, a bunch more at 6:00 am when I needed like crazy to pee and and sweated out the better part of a magnum on my ride into work. Good times.

Hey Cutie, Be Careful

Just a slice outta my life:
I was doing a track stand at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Third halfway through blowing the red when I heard a woman say "hey cutie, be careful."

A bunch of things went off at once. Since marrying, I've gotten random vibe a couple of times and one woman actually tried to give me a paper with her name and number on it at a concert. This time however, it was a black woman in a Jeep Cherokee that was filled with her children, the oldest looking to be about 12.

I gave her a big smile, nodded and ambled my way through a gap in oncoming traffic.

After a long wait, the system works

After my Monday morning deliveries I like to do something productive so today the project was to get a social security card. After a 16 minute wait for an operator, the guy couldn't hear me, after a 20 minute security check, I was told to go to Brooklyn and after an additional 3 miles of biking and another 40 minute wait, I was able to plunk down my form and my drivers license and get an interim card. Easy as pie! In 7-10 days, I'll have another form of ID and be on my way to getting my Missouri drivers licence swapped over to NYC. Just in time to buy a van, load up my shit, and get outta town.

I'm back!

For a good long tiime I was leeching wifi signal from my neighbors. They either moved or put up a firewall and that, more than anything, was the reason I haven't been doing a damned thing on this here blog. NO MORE! I now have internet access in the apartment and way too much free time on my hands.

Last night Laura and I met up with Julia, Andrew, TK and Kiersten at a local gallery and checked out the sculpture du jour: Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug.


Laura and I both favored the fact that you can see the crowning head of her son. My personal complaint was that it just didn't look that much like her. I wouldn't have ever guessed it was her had I not been told. Whatever, I got a free PBR and I'm now some strange part of a small footnote in modern art history. Oh yeah, and you can buy it for $135,000.

From there we biked over the bridge to the east village to celebrate Wes' 27th b-day. All kinds of people were there and the bar had a great Reingold-and-a-shot-of-questionable-whisky for $5 special. The ride home was a lot of fun and Laura and I burned it up for the last half mile.

Dunno if you've ever done it, but if you have even on beer, bike hard and get off your bike, you will feel like a prize drunk. The all just metabolizes in your body and hits you when you stop. It's raining out and I plan on taking it easy today.

A Damed Good Time Was Had By All

The engagement/we actually got married party went off like a charm. Redd's was essentially ours, lots of people showed up. For those of you who missed it, there was skee-ball, drink specials and party favors (money for skee-ball, candy, pre-teen style Valentine's bracelets). Laura and my friends John and Noreen came down for the party and took us out to dinner beforehand. Here's some pics.

Andrew and TK


Here's me doing an impression of what I looked like later that night (I ate PFC, dropped a buiscut into water, don't recall if I ate it or not).


Luke and Julia


Laura and Josh


Laura playing Skee-Ball. No, that's not redeye, her eyes actually burned red with concentration each time she bowled.

Ahhh Marraige

If you haven't been living under a rock, Laura and I went down to the courthouse and got married. It was a lot easier than getting a drivers license renewed, but far more emotional. Our friend Kristine served as our witness. It was over so fast that there wasn't enough time to cry. I remember thinking as I walked out of 1 Centre Street "they want to keep gay people from doing THAT?" Laura surprised me with a room a the Millenium Hilton and we consumated our marriage to a bird's eye view of ground zero. It was beautiful.

Our engagement/we got technically married party is this Saturday at Red's in Williamsburg. It starts at 9:00 come on through.