Two-Day Work-Week

Let's just called today Thursday. With the Thanksgiving holiday break coming up later this week, I only have to work two days this week. Tomorrow night, I'm driving down to Lexington to fly to Tampa with Matt for the break. His mom is a snowbird who spends her winters in Clearwater, so we're going down to spend a few days with her, enjoy the warm weather, and get in some serious beach time.

This past weekend was a really excellent one. My parents drove up to Lexington to have lunch with Matt and me and to meet him for the first time. Also, Matt has had some serious remodelling going on in his kitchen, and it's all starting to finally come close to an end. We spent the weekend setting it up, shopping, and settling into the "new and improved" part of the house.

On Friday evening, we checked out the Lexington Gallery Hop, looking for some new artwork for the kitchen. Even though it was nice to be out and about, we didn't really find much except for mediocre oil paintings of bowls of fruit and dilapidated barns and scary, post-apocalyptic modern art. Nothing even remotely came close to what we envisioned for the space, so I guess the search continues.

On Saturday afternoon, we met my parents at TGI Fridays (instead of Ruby Tuesdays because, evidently, my mom doesn't know the difference between the two), and Matt got to finally meet the both of them. It was a really comfortable, casual get-together, and I couldn't have imagined a better first-meeting. They both really warmed up to him very quickly, and Matt played the role of adorable, lovable, endearing son-in-law with Oscar-caliber abilities. They obviously liked him a lot and will soon grow to love him just like I do. I'm so happy that they got to meet him and that they've come so far that they can treat him just like they would if were straight and bringing home a girl for them to meet. Who would've thought that possible with them just four or five years ago?

Matt had speakers installed in the ceiling (and in the living room and on the back deck), so on Saturday afternoon, we took on the daunting task of getting the speaker wires hooked up to the receiver, and THEN wirelessly connecting his Macbook up to the system so that we could listen to iTunes music. I know nothing about Macs or audio systems, but everything went pretty flawlessly. By using the Mac Airport Express, it was as simple as plugging it in -- the laptop picked up the signal and we just had to hit play in iTunes to hear the music through the overhead speakers. After that I copied over my 2000+ song library since he had a total of eight CDs loaded onto his laptop. We spent the better part of the night just sitting at the bar enjoying the fruits of our labor listening to the good tunage.

Sunday was all about being really lazy and relaxed -- good practice for the upcoming trip to Florida. We barely got out of our pajamas all day, watching Steel Magnolias and the first disc of Mad Men, Season 1 (I'm interested, but not hooked yet). I've been staying later and later on Sunday nights before heading back to Cincinnati, rolling in last night just before midnight. At this rate, before long, I'll be getting up at 4:30 a.m. to drive to work on Monday mornings from Lexington. That's just craziness.

Back from the Grave

Hey Y'all. I still don't have a good explanation for the lack of posting over the past few months. Maybe I should just give it up altogether; I'll figure out what do with it by the end of the year. However, if you're still curious about what's going on, here's an update of what's happened over the last couple months.

School -- The school year is in full swing and already a quarter of the way finished. I'm still not thrilled with my current place of employment for lots of reasons, but I'm slogging through it somehow and will continue to look for other options when the spring rolls around. I had such a smart and fun group of seniors last year that this clan is inevitably a disappointment of sorts, but they're really not bad kids -- well, with the exception a few shitheads.

Mi Novio -- The fairytale with Matt is still going strong and continues to amaze me everyday. It's like we all have the ideal concept of what we want, but never really feel like we're going to find it. We accept that we're probably going to have to settle to some degree. But this guy is exactly what I've always wanted and more -- NO SETTLING REQUIRED!!! I didn't ever dream it could be this good. So, yeah, things are amazing on that front. =)

Volleyball -- Yes, I'm still an addict, but it's finally starting to pay off, that is if winning TWO gold medals for 1st Place finishes makes it worth it. I played with my Cleveland Synergy Invaders in the Indianapolis Circle City Fest at the beginning of October and the Cincinnati Queen City Classic over Halloween weekend, and we won BOTH tournaments. With all of my softball and volleyball tournaments that I've played in over the last several years, I've had lots of 2nds and 3rds, but now I've got two championships in a row!

Halloween -- The high gay holiday was one for the record books this year. Matt is one of the hosts of Night of Mischief, a ridiculous, over-the-top, crazy Halloween party in Lexington. I'm talking like 400-500 people show up for this thing. It was a hectic weekend as I had to play volleyball in Cincinnati all day on Saturday, drive to Lexington for the party on Saturday night, then be back in Cincinnati at 8:30 on Sunday morning, after getting three hours sleep! It was all worth it though, as this was probably one of the most fun parties that I've ever been to. After much deliberation, Matt and I decided to be Children of the 80s with me in my Karate Kid t-shirt (which I plan on wearing until its threadbare) and him in his Han Solo t-shirt. I think everyone liked our shorts better than our t-shirts though.

Stay tuned. I'll try harder to keep the posts coming!

Back to School

School starts again on Wednesday, so maybe I'll get better at posting more frequently. I'm not going to make any promises though. I don't know what's gotten into me, but I just haven't felt like doing this much anymore. I'm sorry. I wish that weren't the case, but it's the truth. I'm hoping that changes.

Everything is still going REALLY well with Matt (the handsome man from Lexington). Perhaps that's part of the reason I haven't been blogging more. I've been a little busy! ;-)

A Sorta Fairytale...

So here's the story of a young man who was having a pretty rough summer. Things just weren't working out the way he had planned, and life just wasn't feeling too enjoyable. He decided the best thing to do would be to get away for a few days and escape to the remote little neck of the woods where he grew up and spend a few days visiting his parents. Getting away from everything just seemed like the best way to cope for the moment.

However, life took a strange and unexpected turn of events. He began randomly chatting with a handsome fellow that he had added as a friend on Facebook about a month earlier (simply because the guy caught his eye; he didn't know him from Adam). This fellow just happened to live in Lexington, not too far from where our friend would be visiting with his parents. And wouldn't you know the two of them decided to meet in person as the one was passing through Lexington on this way to his parents' house.

The two of them hit it off instantly, and the assumedly brief meeting turned into a two and a half day visit. Our friend had to return to Cincinnati for a few days, but the two stayed in touch with lots of text messages and phone calls until he was able to return a few days later, this time staying Wednesday through Monday.

Our friend is back in the Bluegrass now visiting with his sister who is in town from Texas and celebrating his parents' birthdays, but he's managed to sneak away to Lexington a couple times, as he can't seem to get enough of the fellow. Things seem to be going very, very well...

***********

Okay, so I don't like blogging about boys... at least not until I know that it's something solid (and if you've been paying attention, there hasn't been anything "solid" in over a year). Maybe putting it in third person helps a little...

This is all very, very unexpected, but as they say, you find it when you're not looking for it. It feels really good, and I'm having a great time getting to know the "fellow." Let's see where it goes -- somewhere really good, I suspect...

Update Overload

So, I haven't been blogging much this summer -- mostly because there hasn't been a lot going on, but also because I've been keeping to myself for the most part, aside from playing sports, of course. However, I've turned over a new leaf so to speak, and things are definitely looking up, so here's an update on all that you've been missing:

**It's been an amazing summer for softball. My Cincinnati team is 13-1 (I think... maybe just 12-1) and we've had a great time playing together this season. I'm so happy I switched over to play with them. We've even got to beat up on my old team twice -- most recently on Tuesday night, when we beat them 26-8 as I went 4-4 with a homerun and a hard grounder that beamed my ex in the head (thankfully, he was okay, so I can joke about it here). I don't really have any hard feelings toward them, but it's always nice to come out on top with a friendly rivalry.

My Columbus QBar team is also doing really well. We are 12-4-1 with only one week of play left. One is the magic number for us to clench first place for the regular season, so we really need to win our next game. We had a chance yesterday, but blew it, dropping both our games.

My friend Rick picked up a lot of the better players from the Cincinnati gay league and entered us into a straight league on Monday nights, so now I'm playing softball three nights a week. We're 1-1 so far and having a fun time playing in the new league.

***Sand volleyball just really isn't my thing. I'd much rather play indoor any day, but at least it gives me the chance to get some touches during the summer. I'm playing threes with Gary and Jim on Wednesday night and we're doing well at 11-4 so far. We play the first place team this week, so we'll see how that goes.

***Things didn't work out so well for me to move to Columbus this summer. There were only a handful of job openings that popped up, and none of those turned out to work out for me. I only had until July 11th to cancel my contract here in Cincinnati, and I didn't want to transplant myself up there without a job lined up, so the job search is pretty much over. I could ask to be let out of my contract if I did find something between now and the start of school, but I think it's best if I just concentrate on reestablishing myself here. I was really bummed at first at the move not working out because I had really set myself on the idea, but my perspective is evolving, and it's looking like everything might work out just fine anyway. I might even say that maybe Columbus didn't work out for a reason if I believed in such things.

I suppose that's about it. Besides job hunting and playing softball, I really haven't done much of anything this summer. I have been hitting the gym almost every day, and I've started focusing more on weight training. The results are already starting to show (a little -- you have to look closely), but I'm actually enjoying it somewhat. We'll see where it all goes.

Still Around...

Yes, I'm still alive. Once the school year ended, I kind of subconsciously decided to take a break from the blogosphere. For the past month, I haven't written any or even read any of my regular bloggy friends' posts. But I feel ready to get back in the game, so expect regular posts to show up. You haven't really missed out on much. It doesn't seem like much has happened. I've been a total bum lately, but I needed it. Now I'm just bored, so I should have plenty of time to blog.

School's Out for Summer

Cue Alice Cooper...

Monday was my last day of school until August. I've spent the week sleeping in, catching up on errands and chores, and... well, not much else. The end of the school year is always such a relief, but now that it's here, I'm like, what do I do with all this free time?

I had planned to spend a good part of the week at my friends' pool, but the weather didn't cooperate too much.

I suppose the highlight of the week was the clash of the two undefeated teams at softball on Tuesday. It was my new Broadway Monkeys team versus my old Knox Jocks team. It was quite possibly the ugliest game we played all year, and I think we had more errors than runs, but somehow we came out on top 15-13. Monkeys extend their streak to 8-0!

Let's see, Wednesday was totally forgettable.

Thursday was a drag too, until I had dinner and watched Gran Torino with Dan. Excellent movie -- go rent it if you haven't seen it yet.

And that's about it... I'm still waiting to hear something from Columbus. I'm hoping that will happen soon. I only have until July 11th to cancel my contract here in Cincinnati.

This is Pride Weekend here in Cincinnati. That should be fun and give me something to do.

Yeah, I really am going to have to find some stuff to occupy my time this summer. Any ideas?

Whirlwind of a Week

The last few days have been really hectic and busy, and I've got a couple more crazy ones ahead before I get a breather. The end of the school year is always a little crazy, especially since I'm trying to pack up and sort through my room with hopes that I'll be moving a lot of my stuff north to Columbus here soon.

Saturday night I caught up with a lot of friends that I hadn't seen in a while at my friend Scott's housewarming party. He just recently bought a home out in the Anderson 'burbs. It's a beautiful house that he pretty much had redone from top to bottom with mostly new everything, and it turned out amazing. There was a nice group of about 20 people there that hung out for the evening and we had a great time despite the hail and tornado warnings.

I had to scrape myself out of bed early on Sunday morning with only about four hours sleep to head to Columbus for the day. I had a nice breakfast at First Watch with my friend Robert before heading over to Berliner for a day of softball. Our first game was against the other QBar sponsored team, The Homewreckers, who we really wanted to beat, as they ended our winning streak two weeks prior. Thankfully, we did just that and quite handily too. I hit my 3rd(?) homerun of the season (mind you, when I say homerun, I just mean that I hit it over their heads or in the gap and run really fast -- I don't put them over the fence). The second game was against Otero's, who we thought would be a much easier game, but they led most of the time and had a one run lead going into the 7th inning. That's when we decided to bust it open and scored six runs, pulling it out in the end. Afterwards, we made the requisite QBar and Score visits before I sadly had to head home to Cincinnati.

Yesterday began the last week of students at school, and last night was graduation at the Cintas Center on Xavier's campus. This was my fourth year of reading names from the stage, which I simultaneously love and hate. It's really nice to be there on the stage and read the names of my graduating seniors, watching them smile as they walk by. At the same time, being on stage in front of 4,000 people isn't really my thing. Everything went off without a hitch, and it was a happy night. It kind of makes me feel like a proud father (or big brother maybe) to see all of my "kids" on their special night.

Now, I just have to get through the rest of this week, and then come back on Monday for the last teacher work day. Tonight is a softball double header and tomorrow night starts sand volleyball (I think). Busy, busy!

NAGVA Nationals

The inaugural season of my volleyball addiction has now come to a close. I've been playing volleyball for about five years now, but this was the first year that I made my way through the NAGVA tournament circuit (don't read into that too much; I was a very good boy). Dealing with being single over the past year (one year this month!) has been a challenge, and it seems that my most reliable coping mechanism was just staying busy, mostly with volleyball. I suppose there are worse ways to fill that void, eh? So I made started with the Cincinnati tournament in the fall and moved onto New Orleans, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, New York, Cleveland, and ended it all with NAGVA Nationals in Chicago this past weekend.



I drove up on Thursday morning and arrived at my friend Jeff's mid-afternoon. Jeff is a good friend who was lucky enough to get transferred to Chicago from Cincinnati almost four years ago, and he was a lifesaver for me this weekend because staying with him not only saved me hundreds of dollars, but he was considerate enough to have an apartment just one block from where my teammates were staying and eight blocks from the tournament. On Thursday evening we headed out to the registration party and then took off for Boystown with the requisite stop at Roscoe's before ending the evening at Cocktail. A mini-highlight of the evening was the celebrity sighting of Mario Cantone, the actor who plays Anthony on the Sex and the City series. Not a huge deal, but just one of those things that don't seem to happen in Cincinnati.



The tournament started on Friday afternoon, and, boy, did it start out rough. We went 0-8 in our first round of pool play, which is exactly what I didn't expect to happen. It's not that we played terrible, but we just didn't seem to be able to get our heads out of our asses. We actually had the lead at some point during a majority of the sets, but we just couldn't finish it. To be fair, two of the three top finishers in the tournament were in that first pool, but that's still no excuse. Our stellar performance gave us the #34 seed out of 35 going into Saturday.




I think we were all too deflated to go out on Friday night so we just stayed in Mike and Bob's hotel room and drowned our sorrows with vodka and microwave popcorn.


Saturday was a big turnaround as we went 6-2 in day two of pool play, including a defeat of the #1 team from Friday. Our combined record of the two days was still only 6-10, which gave us the #24 seed going into bracket play. We had to play our first round on Saturday afternoon against the #9 seed New York High Class (who went on to finish 2nd in the tournament). We played them really close, but they pulled it out in the 3rd set, winning 16-14. That loss meant we were done for Saturday and would start out Sunday trying to dig our way out of the loser's bracket.



Coincidentally, Memorial Day weekend in Chicago is also IML (International Mr. Leather), and a couple of my teammates decided to initiate me into the world of leather by taking me to Touche and Jackhammer on Saturday night. They both had harnesses and had brought along a leather vest for me to wear. I'll just say that it was definitely an experience -- a mixture of hot/sexy, gross/ugly, and weird/silly. Sorry, no pictures of that evening are available -- thankfully!


Sunday morning started with a win over Minneapolis 4Play before losing to New York Kinky Sets (who we had defeated the day before) and bowing out of the tournament rather ungracefully -- not that we were bad sports, but we were very disappointed that we didn't do better. Baltimore Disturbia (with their four BB players) went on to win the B division.



Even though we didn't have a very successful tournament (we finished tied for 17th), it was still one of the most fun weekends I've had in a long time. My Cleveland Synergy Invaders is such an amazing team to play with -- not only are they all strong players who help make me better, but they're an incredibly cool group of guys too. I heard Doug is retiring on us, so hopefully that's a vicious rumor. We'll definitely miss Ms. Jackson (Tom) who's been bumped up to BB -- maybe the rest of us will get to join him there soon. This was my first NAGVA Nationals, and I can't wait until the next one in Portland, Oregon for 2010. Hell, I can't wait until next season -- only a little over three months until Labor of Love in Columbus over Labor Day weekend!

Two Years Running...

Tuesday afternoon at our school's academic awards ceremony, I was honored for the second year in a row as the "Most Influential Teacher" by the graduating seniors. Sometimes being a teacher means that the "thank yous" and "good jobs" are few and far between. And we all know that doing a exceptional job as a teacher doesn't mean a bigger paycheck or any promotions like you find in other careers. Of course, those things are nice and I wish being a teacher was more like other jobs, but it's kudos like this that really do make me forget that stuff, at least for a little while. I sincerely love my job, and I really enjoy my relationships with my students. It's very rewarding to know that they see that and like me too. =)

Going for the hat trick next year! (Oh wait, hopefully I'll be teaching somewhere else...)