Monthly Archives: June 2009

Balance: Life Activities

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My fellow blogger buddy, Tef, pointed out in a post on his blog on June 11 about how he is taking some time to do some things that he enjoys during a prolonged break, which he titled “recuperation.” He described that doing these things helps to bring balance to his life, and keeps him sane. He described content of my blog posts and stated that I have a balanced life. Thanks, man, what a compliment! I am honored, truly.

Sometimes I really wonder how balanced my life is. I presume it depends on how one defines “balance.”

If you define balance by looking at the variety of things that I do and the people with whom I interact, then I guess you can say that my life is fairly well-balanced.

I have a full-time management position with a well-respected non-profit organization based in Washington, DC. The work challenges me every day, and requires superb skills of balancing time and schedules, responsiveness to staff, and tedium with financial accounting. But I love it. Great place to work, great staff, terrific intellectual stimulation.

But wait… there’s more! My life outside of work is, um, “rather full.”

Being involved in my community as a civic leader has defined, at least for me, what “civic duty” means. It is not always fun. It sometimes is tedious and tiring. It has taught me how to remain calm and build consensus. Ultimately, this volunteer work makes our home, our community, and our state a better place to live, work, raise a family, and enjoy life.

Caring for seniors is a joy, not a responsibility. Sure, there are times I feel overwhelmed or stretched, but I look at it this way: isn’t it nice to be in demand? Tools and smiles are on the way….

Keeping up our home and the rental properties I own is a non-ending set of ongoing tasks. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed by that, too, but it all works out, eventually, even with competing demands for my time.

Blogging, maintaining my websites, reading (yes, I actually do read real books, at least one a week), playing political wonk, etc., etc., occupy a lot of my time as well. These activities also bring balance my life through diversity of activities.

Getting a chance to go swimming or for a long walk does not happen nearly as much as it should, but I enjoy those activities as well.

Writing letters to elected officials, public agencies, and private companies to lodge concerns, complaints, or suggest actions is something I do often. Call me “rent-a-kvetch,” where the rent is free for the satisfaction of resolving a pesky problem or advocating for a good idea.

In summary, I presume that one can say that my life is balanced, while others may say that it is out of control. However you measure it, I often think to myself (and discuss this with my partner and brother) that the activities I do are not to win affection nor to win titles or certificates of achievement, but rather to exercise what is to me a very spiritual thing: to provide service without expectation of reward or compensation. That’s my “life calling,” as taught to me by my parents, demonstrated to me by them and my mentors, supported by my partner, and carried out by me each day.

Life is short: show those you love that you love them, and remember to smile each time you do! … and tune in tomorrow to this same blog channel for the second in the series on balance: people!

You’re Talkin’ To the Wrong Guy

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On Saturday, I spent a good bit of time at the destination of a motorcycling fundraiser activity organized by my club. I rode my Harley there, and was dressed “traditional biker” — meaning I was wearing jeans, t-shirt, Chippewa Wildland Firefighter boots, and my leather vest with patches on it related to the club. I looked like any other biker/club member.

I guess because it looked like I knew what was going on or that I was in charge (I wasn’t, but perhaps at the time I may have been giving directions on setting up the grilling station), a visitor walked up to me with a buxom brunette. He said that he had opened a franchise of a restaurant in a local strip shopping center, and that on Monday nights at 8pm, he would be offering specials on wings and beer, served by fine young ladies like her (pointing to his companion.) He explained that he was trying to appeal to the biker market and wanted my club’s help in patronizing his establishment.

Okay, I can understand that. The economy still sucks and fewer people are eating out. He knows that a competitive restaurant that uses an owl symbol for a logo and the owl’s call in its name has a “bike night” every Thursday night, so he wants to get in on the action.

What he didn’t realize is that he was talking to a guy who doesn’t eat out, who doesn’t stay up late (defined as after 9pm), who doesn’t drink alcohol, who is gay, and who finds that owl place distasteful and won’t patronize it.

I tried to be nice, but when he persisted to ask if I personally would come to his “bike night” next Monday night, I first said, “well, no; it’s too late.” I explained that for me, 8pm is just too late. I also explained that appealing to responsible motorcyclists by offering reduced prices on beer is not such a good idea. A responsible biker will avoid drinking alcohol if he will be riding his bike, such as back home.

The franchise owner thought about it and said, “that makes sense. How about if I offer $2 pitchers of soft drinks and hot wings served by (the girl with him), would you come then?”

Ummm… no. I’m not really interested. As I said, I just don’t like to go out after work. And I can’t eat spicy food. It doesn’t agree with me. But that’s just me. My diet is strange.

But the guy persisted… “we really need your business, and you can have fun being entertained by (the buxom babe.)”

I finally had enough. I smiled at him and said, “look, I’m gay. I am really not interested.”

The franchise owner’s jaw dropped, but I have to give him credit for not saying something stupid. He just said, “well, can’t blame a guy for tryin’.” Good response! I told him that I appreciated what he was doing and although what he was promoting isn’t something that I was personally interested in, I would still be happy to let others in the club know about it. He said thanks and he and his companion went on their way.

Hmmm… this masculine gay man has done it again — broken stereotypes without even trying.

Life is short: be the man you are, and enjoy life!

Smilin’ Biker

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I am always a sucker for a smile on anyone, but especially my family and friends. Recently, I “accused” my buddy Clay of not smiling in a series of photos he had posted on the Internet. I have seen his smile before, so I kidded with him about being so serious.

The same day this email exchange was bantering back and forth between us and among some other buddies, I had to go on some quick visits to some of my senior buds after work. It was pleasant, so I used my Harley to go on these visits, dressed as shown. Quarterly estimated income tax payments are due soon, so it was time to help my friends make out the checks and get their respective payments in the mail to Uncle Sam and the state.

To each and every senior bud I visited, I shared a huge warm smile and a hug. One of them made me laugh by saying with a return grin, “I never saw anyone who was always so happy — and even when paying taxes, yet!”

When I got home from these visits, I asked my partner to take a picture of me. I especially wore a big smile. It was my intention to hold the photo to post for Clay sometime. But he beat me to it with a series of very nice photos, all of him with huge grins that he said that I inspired. Bless him.

I am glad that I coaxed a smile out of him. He is a warm, thoughtful, and humourous man who I am proud to call my “booted twin.” The smile I am wearing in this photo is for him, and for all others who I know and don’t know.

Remember what I quote often, by H. Jackson Brown: Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.

And here’s another one I recently found that I like:

A smile is the light in the window of your face that tells people you’re at home.

Childish Antics

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Every now-and-then, I like to put on a uniform. I am not a sworn peace officer, so I don’t wear such an outfit around my community. In the past, I may have worn it to a fetish event. Nowadays, I wear it at home sometimes and have fun with my partner.

Like all my other leather gear and uniforms, photos of me in this uniform are on my website. These pages on my website are mature. That is, they have been there for several years. So enter “CHP Uniform” into Google or any other search engine, and the page on my website comes up rather high in the rankings.

Trouble is, there are some people who stumble upon my page on my website and either don’t understand, or behave stupidly when they see it. For example, last week someone who frequents a forum having to do with handguns posting a link to the CHP Uniform page on my website. While he didn’t say much, the replies he got indicated to me that there remain a lot of very childish people who are active with these forums, and say all sorts of silly things.

Well, I have three responses to that:

1. Sticks-and-stones … just as I learned in grade school, this phrase still applies to adults who act as if they are still in grade school. Your names will not hurt me, and if you think you’re being funny, I feel very sorry for you. (One even ridiculed Diversity training — it’s obvious that such training does not work for some people.)

2. I am a confident, masculine gay man. Just as I wrote in a blog post last December, I still feel that confident and masculine gay men still scare straight men. They can’t figure us out, so they pick on us and say silly things because they lack self-confidence and are insecure.

3. I have temporarily relocated my CHP Uniform page on my website. I’ll wait until the kiddies who linked to it grow tired of not finding the page then I will bring it back to where it was.

Why people who are supposedly mature adults have to behave this way is beyond my comprehension. Oh well, I know the risks I take with such an active presence on the internet. I live with it and move on. Life is too short to let childish antics and name-calling bother me.

Home Renovation: Phase 1

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Renovation of the upstairs hallway in our home is under way. Nine days ago, my partner accidentally ruined the carpet that once covered the hallway wall-to-wall.

Rather that just replace the carpeting, which would be far too simple and not take enough time, we decided to install hardwood flooring instead.

Over the next few weeks, this will be our project. Before we began to work on the floor, my partner and I repainted the walls and baseboard. We did that last week. While I was away on travel last week, my partner (ever the perfectionist) repainted the walls two more times.

Yesterday, we tore up the old carpet and padding. We also worked carefully to remove old carpet tack strips that were against both walls. Then we pulled up staples that were embedded in the underlayment (plywood flooring underneath.)

The dark gray area on the right in this photo is an area that I had to float with a compound that brought the floor back to being level. Over time, that spot had developed a dip, so I fixed it before we put flooring back over it. I also carefully walked all over the hall to check for areas that squeaked. When I found a squeaky area, I screwed the flooring in that area onto the rafters underneath. The floor squeaketh no more.

We took the old carpet, padding, and other junk to the dump. That’s my partner’s rule: create debris, and get rid of it. Don’t let it stick around nor accumulate. When we got back, we cleaned the floor carefully, to prepare it for the next step: applying the engineered wood flooring product. Check back for another blog update soon on how we’re doing.

Life is short: wear your boots (while you work! I wore Chippewa Engineer Boots in the morning and Wesco Harness Boots in the afternoon.)

Grillin’ in Boots and Leather

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Here I am, grilling dinner out on our deck in boots and leather last evening. It was quite pleasant about dinnertime (6pm). Considering it had been raining for several days, it was especially nice to get outside to cook and eat dinner. The temperature was perfect for lightweight leather pants and a pair of patrol boots.

Funny, I spent most of the day yesterday grilling. Instead of leading a ride for my club (since I get lost in a paper bag), I went to the final destination in the morning and helped fellow club members prepare for and grill the dogs and burgers for the participants in the ride. I left in the early afternoon to get home in time to do some chores around our house.

I prepare a home-cooked dinner every night, since my partner and I prefer to eat at home. When it is not raining, I usually prepare our meals on the grill on the deck off the kitchen. I have gotten pretty good at grilling vegetables (peppers, carrots, potatoes, corn, squash and zucchini — all veggies my partner loves) in addition to various meats on the grill. Then we eat outside, talk about life, our plans and dreams, and watch the sun slowly sink behind the trees.

Life is short: wear your boots and leather!

Memories From More Retired Boots

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You are seeing the heel of a Corcoran Field Boot. I decided to put these boots on with a pair of tactical police pants last week to see how they went together. I had forgotten how comfortable these boots really were.

An hour later, my partner asked, “what are all those black things on the floor?” I looked, and notice that the heel on my left boot was crumbling apart. Day-yum!

I don’t quite know what it is, but this is the second pair of military boots I have owned that have had a rubber heel crumble. The first pair whose heels crumbled were Bates “Floataway” Patatrooper Parade Boots. Now these!

There is a type of rubber product between the heel plate and the bottom of the sole that apparently dried out and as soon as I put weight on it by walking, it just crumbed apart. So once again, I have another non-functionable pair of boots.

I spoke with a friend who is a cobbler, and he is familiar with the boot and this situation. He said that he could not resole the boots due to the way they are made, and advised to throw them away. Are you sure? Yep. Day-yum!

While I wore these Corcoran Field Boots on a number of skydives, these weren’t the boots I had on when I achieved my record, so they don’t have a particular significance other than being darned comfortable boots. Tell ‘ya the truth, much more comfortable than traditional Corcoran II jump boots.

My favorite memory while wearing this particular pair of boots is really a funny story. I was skydiving near Sacramento (California, USA) on a windy day. I was able to control my chute and land on dry land, but my fellow skydiving buddies landed in a rice paddy. I went to look for them and when I found them, they were sunk in muddy, wet goo and holding their arms high in the air. They were being held at gunpoint by a farmer. The farmer was from Vietnam, and must have had flashbacks at seeing guys in Camo landing by parachute on his land. We negotiated our way out of that situation, and laughed about it for years after.

These boots are gone, but not forgotten. I wonder now what other of my military boots are going to fall apart next….

Life is short: wear your boots (as long as the soles aren’t crumbling!)

Shooter Booted

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I got home from a conference I had been attending about an hour before my partner came home yesterday, so I thought I would try to update my website by taking some pictures of a pair of boots that I bought while on a business trip to Kansas City in early May.

Darn, though, it was raining. Oh well, the boots got a little wet on the outside, but withstood the rain just fine.

These are Boulet Shooter Boots. They are 18″ tall and are very comfortable. I posted a page about these boots here on my website.

Now, if I can only find the time to take pictures of another pair of Tony Lama cowboy boots I bought on that trip. Can’t do it when my partner is around as his list of “honey-do” projects is unending. Updating my website is never on his list, and I can’t manage to get anything else done when he’s on his mission with his lists. (smile).

However, this is the longest length of time between acquiring a new pair of boots and having time to take pictures and post them on my website that has passed since I created my website. Oh well, it will all get done, eventually.

Life is short: wear your boots!

Memorable Boots Retired

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These are my old Harley Harness boots. I have owned them for about 20 years. They were the most comfortable boots I had in my collection. I wore them as work boots.

My memories of these boots and what I was doing while wearing them include:

  • renovating most of my properties

  • building our house

  • mowing the lawn — about a zillion times

  • doing lots of dirty-work out in the yard

I was wearing these boots when I was replacing the wiring in my mother-in-law’s house on Memorial Day weekend. After a few hours, my left heel was aching. That was unusual. I took the boot off, and noticed a big hole in my sock and some blood on it. I discovered that I had worn the inside of the boot so far down that the nails that hold the heel onto the sole were poking out. The skin on the heel of my foot had been cut.

I changed boots, of course. No Bootman worth is salt would travel with only one pair of boots.

These old favorite boots are not possible to save. I tried putting in a gel insole, only to discover that the nails tore it up. I tried to hammer the nail heads back down, but couldn’t get a hammer inside the bottom of the boot (and believe me, I tried!)

I have to tell ‘ya, I am very unhappy to have to “retire” these boots. I can’t throw them away. I am thinking of bronzing them. These boots have been on my feet for some of the hardest work I have ever done. My fondest memories while wearing them is that I had them on most days when I was building our house. Another fond memory of when I had them on is when my partner carried me over the threshold into our house when we moved in.

My partner thinks I’m nuts to get all nostalgic over an old pair of boots. He told me just to throw them out. I can’t quite do that, so I’ve hidden them away… for now.

Life is short: wear your boots!

The Profound Effect of a Blog

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I am at a federal government training facility this week. The statue in this picture is here on campus. It is moving and inspirational.

I come here about twice a year to co-teach a course that I helped to write years ago, and have updated from time to time. It is a challenging and intellectually stimulating course, and fun to teach. I happen to be here this time to attend and speak at a national conference being held here. It’s enjoyable to come up here and see people (facility management and training course managers) I have known over many years.

As I was sitting with one of my colleagues during a bit of down time, he said that he had noticed a change in me that he liked. He said he noticed that change the last time he saw me (last fall), but didn’t say anything then. His comment was that I am clearly relaxed, happy, and seem to smile much more than ever. He said that I laugh often, and teach with renewed energy and passion. His question to me was, “what happened?”

Well, it’s like this. Five years ago I was in a job that once was enjoyable and fun, and made me feel highly productive and valued. I was generally a happy guy, but often I would let daily stresses show themselves by how I acted. I was sometimes short, sometimes pompous, sometimes “Mr.-know-it-all.”

Then things took a real bad turn for the worse due to a re-organization. 18 years of fun were destroyed in one horrible year of sadness. I had become the most miserable, unhappy person. I would come home from work and chop my partner’s head off with negative, angry retorts. I was very hard to be around. I left that job in the Fall of that year, and don’t regret it.

Then my uncle needed me. Over the course of the year after leaving that miserable job, I saw him through the winter of his life until his gentle and dignified passing, at home in familiar surroundings. I had begun to document how I was feeling in a diary of sorts. I would record how I was feeling, what I was thinking, and what I thought I wanted to be when I grew up. Assisting someone who was dying started a change in me. I stopped taking myself so seriously, and I began to celebrate the little things in life that make it grand.

Soon after my uncle died, I accepted an offer of a position at a well-respected non-profit organization in Washington, DC, and within a few years, was promoted to a management position. It’s a comfortable, supportive, and professional place to be. Good people help bring out the best in me.

I also converted that written diary to a blog. I began to document daily activities, thoughts, ideas, and my passionate interest in boots and leather, life as a masculine gay man, Harley rider, and my concern for seniors and their safety in order to continue to live independently, as I had enabled my uncle to do. I frequently write about my partner and his profound, important, and life-altering impact on my life and how it is so much better because of him.

Yes, I think often about what I will write on this blog. Usually, it is about joy, happiness, and smiles. Fun stuff, like riding my Harley, and interacting with family and friends.

I guess that’s it: my diary and then this blog have had a profound effect on my outlook on life. It causes me to think about what I want to say about myself to the world. So I say it, but more importantly, I act it. I am more relaxed. I look for ways to express joy and happiness. I poke fun at my own foibles and failures, ’cause I’m not perfect by any means. I no longer think I have the answers for everything. I love to learn. I love life.

I frequently say, “Life is short: show those you love that you love them” or “wear your boots and leather” or “be safe out there.” All these things… an effect of a blog, which has translated into daily life that is more rich and rewarding.

Sum it up by saying that it’s noticed by people with whom I work professionally, by my family, by my the man who means the world to me (my partner), by my friends, but most of all — and what’s most telling — is by people who did not know “the old me.” A conference attendee stopped me in the hallway last night and said, “That was a great presentation you gave. It inspired me in my work. You made (our profession) sound like fun! Thanks!”

Yep: Life is short — make it fun!