Last night I typed and typed and typed till my fingers bleed and then when I went to post & publish I was derailed by a Microsoft VB error. ARGH!! Death to the Microsoft power beast.
At least this will prevent me from being so redundant. The month of June in retrospect... Watch out for the ellipse, I think the error message I got last night implied my use of three-dot journalism was the culprit that undid me.
June is gay pride month, and as usual I was very proud. The first weekend was the FrontRunners Sacramento (http://www.frsac.org/) 10th anniversary celebration which I contributing on the organizing and setup committees and then spent the entire day participating in the events.
The following weekend was Lambda Freedom Fair (Sacramento pride festival) where I spent the entire day working the FrontRunners Sacramento booth and the Roseville/Greater Sacramento Area Hewlett-Packard Gay and Lesbian Employee Network booth. The following day and I am off to the Yolo County Pride Day (Davis, CA). Fortunately Davis is very low key and mostly lesbian so it is bring a picnic basket and a blanket and as my Southern friend Greg would say, let’s make company.
The next week I was off to Ft. Collins, CO to visit my brother Lester and his wife Terri who were celebrating the birth of their first child, my nephew Gavin. After doing an appropriate amount of diaper changing, feeding, burping and walking my new nephew I drove down to Denver to get in a run with the FrontRunners of Denver. Unfortunately none of the Denver Frontrunners showed up for the Saturday run, but a new to Denver gentleman from LA was there for his first run with the group as well. He decided against running in favor of the gym, but he pointed me to Cheeseman Park and gave me the approximate distance so I put in my mileage anyway. During the run I saw some tents up and figured they had to be related to Denver’s Pride festival, which was the following day. After my run I walked over and checked it out and found a gay volleyball tournament in action. This was definitely a queer venue as one of the teams was made up of guys wearing pink teddies. There were a couple of very handsome and well-designed bodies available for viewing as well. The first of three sunburns was the result.
The following day I did a 10-mile run with my brother in preparation for the Portland Marathon (http://www.portlandmarathon.org/) in October. Following the run and before my other brother and his family arrived, I scooted down to Denver for Pride Fest 2002. Not knowing anyone or being known by anyone made for a very low-key experience. The only people talking to me were the ones interested in meeting me, kind of a nice experience.
I returned to a four-day work week before HP closed all North America facilities for the first week of July to save costs. That weekend being the last weekend of June is San Francisco Pride. I had not planned on attending, but my friend Todd had acquired a room at the St. Francis on Union Square for a great deal over the internet. We were in the old building ninth floor corner room with a stupendous view (we were looking directly out at the Nautica billboard guy in his briefs) of Union Square. Since the Three Musketeers had to cancel the annual Santa Cruz “Wharf to Wharf” trip at the end of July I agreed to go to SF for Pride.
Friday evening Terry and I spent tooling around The Castro district with my friend Michael and had a very nice evening. The next day was the SF FrontRunners pride run followed by the gay rugby tournament sponsored by the young gay man who was killed on 9/11 in the Pennsylvania field when the passengers tried to retake the plane. Mark was a member of the SF Fog Rugby team that sponsored the international event (SF Fog were the eventual victors as well). This was sunburn number two. The Saturday before pride is “Pink Saturday” and the streets in The Castro are closed to automobile traffic and the boys come out in droves to drink, gawk, cruise and talk. It is a pretty good time for most.
Sunday is off course the parade and then the gathering in the civic center with all the vendors, clubs, organizations and entertainment. I loved Marcella Detroit’s (Shakespeare’s Sister) performance on the main stage. There were three dance venues so spent a little time dancing and drinking and eating and gawking and trying to sneak pictures of handsome men that I don’t have the courage to talk to. Of course, I flirted shamelessly with straight guys, felt up the arms, chest and necks. They like the attention and their girlfriends really seem to get off on the attention paid to their guys. Of course if you read the entry prior to this, you will see the result of all this fawning.
After pride I drove all the way to S. Lake Tahoe and spent the evening with my brother and his family. The next day I brought my niece, Samantha, (11 y.o.) and my nephew, Jeffrey, (8 y.o.) back to Sacramento for four days to re-stake my claim to favorite uncle status.
We spent our time at Sunsplash water park in Roseville, the arcade at Scandia, going to four movies, renting and playing Xbox games and getting them addicted to my favorite science fiction show, “Farscape”. We also managed to make Jeffrey’s special brownies (Cool Whip, sparkles, and candied cake decorations) while watching a video.
I returned the kids on the 4th of July and we spent the day in Tahoe with friends of theirs out on my brother’s boat and on the beach including a bbq/picnic followed by fireworks. Tahoe puts on one of the best fireworks displays in the country (casino money) especially considering the town has a year around population of only 25,000. They float a launch pad out in the lake to reduce the risk of fire danger. Two days earlier they had a forest fire ignited near the base of Heavenly Valley’s new gondola (cigarette thrown from the gondola is believe to be cause) that almost caused the fireworks to be cancelled. El Dorado County has a strict no fireworks policy due to extremely high fire danger. Due to the high traffic volume of boats on the lake we didn’t get home until midnight.
The following morning I drove back to Sactown and spent the next three days decompressing, cleaning the house, lying out at McKinley Park (sun burn number three) and working in the yard.
Now it is back to work with no relief in site and predicted 110 degrees by Wednesday. Ugh!
Up next, internet dating...
