House Hunting...

Saturday, we met with our friend John, The Real Estate Agent. After going over the normal formalities and basically scaring the living crap out of me, we sat down to look through some houses to go check out. I hate this process. There never seems to be the perfect one. I found something wrong with all of them. Not small things, but big enough things to cause me to not want to live there at all. I know it was our first 5 hours of house hunting, but it was frustrating.

One of the new constructions, I fell in love with. It was listed initially at 350K and the price is now 189K due to the fabulous market the country is in. Quite a bargin, except for the fact that it's a townhome and Steven's really wanting a home with a yard for Max and possibly another dog some day. Max probably does need a playmate. I guess I don't think about Max as much when deciding on a home for myself. I know a dog and owner will adapt to whatever type of living situation they're put in. When you live in an apartment, condo or townhome, you learn to walk your dog more, take them to the park and doggie day care on a consistant basis. Sure, when you have a yard you can let them run around and take care of all the exercise themselves.

I don't know. I'm not in the mood to buy a place and turn around in 3-5 years to sell it for a profit and then do this whole process of house hunting all over again. I'd rather be terrorized by a scary clown and we know how much I love clowns. The thoughts of putting so much time and effort into remodeling and upgrading over the years only to sell it doesn't appeal to me either. I'm too old for this shit. Many people love this sort of thing, but I hate it with a passion. It causes tiny panic attacks, frustration and way too much analyzing and thinking on my part. It's tiring.

It's such a huge decision and it scares me to death.

Social Networking Hell

I'm sitting here while Steven fervishly works on his project for work. I have to say that I'll be happy when this project is completed and done. First off, our office area of the loft will look normal again. You all know how much I can't stand it when things are not organized. Secondly, I won't be sitting here on the computer for 4 hours a night killing brain cells while he works. Ah, the sacrifices we make.

I keep playing around with Blogger, Facebook and well, Twitter. Tweaking things constantly. Putting up stupid status updates. At least I'm not one of those status updaters who tells you he's awake, he's eating, he's going to bed, he had a great bowel movement, etc.

Although, twitter just confuses the hell out of me. I update both through ping.fm to make it easier, but honestly can't figure out the reasons or purpose for twitter. Just the fact that I need to keep up with what the hip and trendy kids are doing these days. I use to swear up and down that I would never join any sort of social networking site and before you know it I'm on all of them, including LinkedIn. Here I was quitting blogging because I felt I had nothing to say and now I'm on more sites then I should be. Who really needs to know my every thought and my every move?

When the hell did I all the sudden have something to say?

San Francisco Trip

Two weeks ago, Steven and I got the chance to spend four days in San Francisco, enjoying the city, eating amazing food, seeing all the sights we could possibly cram in and then got to experience my first San Francisco Pride. The first three days we rode my first trolley car, went sigtseeing and saw the Golden Gate Bridge, Presidio, Haight Ashbury, North Beach, Alamo Sqauare with the Painted Ladies, quickly through China Town, Fishermans Warf, Castro, gawked at the sea lions, saw Beach Blanket Babylon (which was amazing!) and the Civic Center. I know I have forgotten a few things.

Sunday was spent at Pride. Half a million people. Not quite the same as our little Dallas Pride. Didn't see much of the parade, but ran into Victor, Tony and their son Bruno and hung out with them, checking out all the booths and eating way too much food.

I won't bore you with all the details, other then the last thing we did was to sit on the beach at Fisherman's Warf and watched the sun go down behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Romantic, huh?

I froze my ass off. This Texan isn't use to that sort of weather.

Check out all the pictures here.

Had to have one of the obligatory "in front of the bridge" shots.

The fog would NEVER leave enough to get a clear shot.
One of our favorite parts of the city, Palace of Fine Arts.
I swear Steven's favorite part of the trip is seeing the sea lions.
Ok, walking in this city is hell. Loved Lombard Street though.
Went to Winchester Mystery House our first day when we landed in San Jose. House built by a crazy woman. Creepy, but very interesting. Like a big dollhouse.
Our favorite picture. We had to print of tons of copies for family already.

Why I'm back, I have no idea....

I had a feeling I would be coming back. I didn't know how long of a break I was going to take, but deep down in my heart I knew I would be back to blogging. I think I just needed a break from all the crap. In many ways the last year or so has been rough, mixed with so many incredible things as well. But it had gotten to the point where I felt like I couldn't express what was on my mind freely. My blog had always been a place where I could bitch, complain, vent, share, ask for help. I couldn't do any of that anymore. I felt that too many people in my life read my blog or could stumble across it and might not like what I had to say. I felt censored.

I don't have those feelings anymore. At all, so beware. So many of those people are out of my life now. If they were to stumble across the blog and read it, I really wouldn't care.

The past year and a half has been an amazing year. I'm in a relationship that truly makes me happy, where I feel like I'm an equal. I have someone who's in my life on a daily basis and who truly loves me and I him. We have so many things in common, including Art and our obsession with all things Disney. I mean, there's a reason for spending the rest of your life with someone if I ever heard of one.

I'm not discounting my previous relationship. It was a wonderful 4 years. I wouldn't trade it for anything. He provided some wonderful times and experiences that I'll never forget. We were just two very different people who wanted different things. We both made mistakes, myself more so. In the end, it worked out the best for both parties. I would have loved for us to have stayed close, but his friends and current lover prevent that from happening. Childishness, drama and backstabbing are things that I do not deal with and will avoid at all cost. Life's too short to deal with all that shit.

My social life has changed drastically. I was a social butterfly, with tons of friends, going out and doing things constantly. Now, we're homebodies and how quickly people drop you to the wayside when that happens. It's not like we don't like to go out, enjoy dinners, drinks or movies with friends. We do. Luckily, we still have our best friend couple, Brandon and Dusty with whom we love dearly. We don't see one another as much as we both would like, but we try at least and do get to see one another once in a while. Hopefully, that will continue to grow.

Other friends in our life such as the ones we made through The Ranch are pretty much gone. We don't keep in contact. Hell, the last time we were there it was as if we were total strangers. That part of our life is gone and we're ok with that. It's in the past and I have a feeling that we probably will never go back. What would be the reason? Even many of the friends I had from my previous relationship that we hung out with here in town have disappeared as well. Moved on. I guess I would say that true friends are the ones that have stuck around. True friends are the ones you see and hear from and the ones who want to spend time with you. There are very few now. How can you go from tons of friends down to ones you can count on one hand?

This past year has been an eyeopener regarding all of that. At times we feel like outcasts. At the age of 43, there are times where it feels like Highschool all over again. I'll admit, it hurts. Nothing is worse then sitting at home, hearing and reading about friends out having a good time.

I guess it's time to move on from them and start to cultivate new friendships. Kind of what starting this blog up again is about.

I missed it, missed my blog friends.

I'm back everyone.

Hmmm.........

Should I start blogging again? I keep getting the itch and thinking of things to say or pictures to post.

Who knows. Facebook and Twitter keep me busy.

Decisions, decisions.........

A Bittersweet Ending

I think the time has finally come, although I've been dreading it for quite some time. My blog has run it's course.

I started blogging back in September of 2003. There was such a smaller group of people blogging and things like MySpace didn't exist. It felt special and quite unique to be sharing your life with the rest of the world for anyone to read.

It didn't take long before I was making friends. I was visiting bloggers all over the country as well as opening up my home to other bloggers as well. What started out as a trip to NYC to visit some bloggers, turned into GB:NYC1, 2, 3, 4 and I think 5 was the latest installment of the infamous blogger hook up, which I wasn't able to attend. Hopefully, they'll accept me as a non-blogger attendee some day.

I remember the first few times I would run into people who would recognize me and get all excited. There was the one time a stalker/fan came up to me in a bar and was gushing about meeting a Dallas Celebrity. I had to laugh. I'm far from it. I think that being recognized when out on the town in other cities or in Dallas was the coolest feeling at the time.

I shared everything, good and bad. Some who have stuck around from the beginning, watched me battle with being single, to meeting someone and being with them for four years, go through a tough break up only to find myself back to being happy again in a wonderful relationship with someone I love. Many of you have stuck by the entire time and I thank you for that.

The days of 400-500 hits a day is down to less then 100. I know that interest is diminishing with my readers and interest in finding something to write about has done the same for me. I feel as if I have nothing to say anymore worth putting in print.

For those who want to keep in touch, you can always find me on Facebook. Click the link on the left hand side. I use it to keep in touch with friends, family and other bloggers. I post the occasional picture, video or comment. It's become my lazy way of sort of blogging but not really.

I honestly can't believe how tough it is for me to say goodbye. Tougher then I thought.

Maybe I'll just say, See you later. Come say Hi to me over on Facebook or shoot me an email once in a while to catch up. You know I'll be checking out some of y'alls blogs from time to time to make sure you're staying out of trouble.

Who knows. Maybe I'll even come back some day.

Until then, see you later.

Finally doing some more drawing

First some good news. Mom is doing much better. She's at home with her husband and every day she sounds much better. It's going to take about 2 months though for her to get back to normal. You just don't bounce back from pneumonia at the age of 80 years old.

Thanks to everyones thoughts and prayers.

I finally dug out some paper and did a figure study. I was worried that I was going to be really rusty, but I guess it's like riding a bike. You never really forget. I don't have access to any live male or female nudes, so I'm going to have to search for artist photographs and create some figure studies from those.

It's better then not doing anything at all.