3D Movies

Going back and forth yesterday on what movie to watch. Really wanted to see Benjamin Buttons, but almost 3 hours of melancholy just didn't sound real appealing. Then I saw my local theater has 3D movies, so there ya' go!

Bolt in 3D was a fun movie. The story was good, simple and entertaining. The effects were good, not the over the top, cross-eyed type the first generation used.

Plus the shorts leading into the movie were also in 3D, so it was a regular cartoon fest for a good 20 minutes before the movie. There might have been a trailer in there.

If you haven't been to a 3D movie lately, you are missing a lot of fun.

Merry Christmas!

Recipe: Caramel Coffee

Mix in the left cup, pour over ice. No sugar allowed.

License Plate Upholstery

Christmas Cards

Yes, I am really late this year in getting my Christmas cards into the mail. Hopefully they will arrive in time.

I suspect that many people did not get my new address. I posted it here, but didn't quite "spell it out" The street number is pictured here and its on Apache. I also find that my list of addresses is lacking somewhat, since I would have liked to send a card to Peter with an I, except the only thing known is that he lives in Florida. Or Michigan. Or someplace.


Here is this years card, and stamp. I think the stamp kinda fits my mood this year.

Leaves

Clouds

The Rally

The rally was much larger than I expected, though truth be told I had no idea how many people were expected to show. The estimates were around 1,400 people. This apparently was at least the same in all the other 49 state capitals on the same day. A site JoinTheImpact got things started and it took off from there in just 4 days!

I forgot my camera, but luckily A Captured Image's photos are available at Flickr, including this one with some of the many, many signs.



We gathered at the legislative building and had several speakers. The rain held out until the politician (who was it?) and then it opened up the skies. He stayed on with his speech, the rain let up and we marched around the capital and protested in front of the governors mansion.

This was the first real protest march I've been in. I did march on washington back in the 90's but that was more of a huge festival. This was local and did one thing, protest. The organizers were Wes Elliot and Tom Greene. I know of Wes through his monthly gay happy hours around town, but Tom is new to me. I suspect however that this isn't the last time we see him.

There was one identifiably feature about all of the people gathered. They were all people of pallor. When I first noticed that I took a good look around and found only one black man. I can't say that I was looking for latinos but I don't remember any. Mostly it was youth or middle class.

There were no counter protests, I guess they didn't have time to organize. Or, since all the ones we seem to get are from out of state, they had others capitals to pick from. As we rounded the capital building a white bus with darkened glass went past. How they got around with the snarled traffic I have no idea, but when we came to it again several black men were jeering out the back windows. Wes stood opposite and kept everybody moving along.

Afterwards I was supposed to meet with the ski group. But along with forgetting my camera I also forgot my wallet. So I popped home, picked them up and went back. They were meeting in the Flying Saucer, but when I spent 15 minutes at the bar trying to get his attention I finally gave up and went to the Burrough instead. This was at least an hour after the march had ended. Wes & Tom both were there along with a couple of friends / organizers getting a burger. No big party, no huge todo, they were decompressing before heading on...who knows maybe there was a party waiting for them elsewhere.

A week ago nobody was even talking about protests, and in just a few days all 50 capitals. Not too bad!

Rally to Protest Prop 8

It looks like there are going to be a few protests across the country this weekend in protest to proposition 8 that passed in California. As a matter of fact, a few rally just in my neck of the woods itself.

There are two rallies, one at Duke University in Durham and another on the Capital Steps in Raleigh. I'm going to the political one in Raleigh. The dates for them are:

• Captial Rally: Saturday 11/15, 1:30 to 3:00 p.m.
  NC Capital Building, One East Edenton Street, Raleigh, NC
  
• Equality Conference on Saturday at Duke
  

The Equality Conference is something already planned with several speakers at symposiums I guess. It just seems that the Capital one will have a lot more energy. Plus I don't think the University folks are really me.

Have you ever watched Queer as Folk? In season two or three there was the lesbian and gay center that really did not like Brian. They were the folks that did good thing in the commmunity. Thats just it, all good. Thats what the conference feels like. I'll join Brian and his buddies in the state capital.

This looks like the real rally across the country. Winston-Salem is getting something started. Charlotte, well....they do their own thing, not part of the state really. Initial rally attempts to rise up against the Mormon Church fizzled, thank god. We're not at war with holy people even if they are with us sometimes. I'm a karma kind of guy, it just fits.

I'll try to take pictures.

Hiking Hanging Rock Park

Sunday was a day trip out to Hanging Rock State Park, just outside of Danbury, NC. It was quite a day, and I was whooped at the end, but it felt good. We came away mostly uninjured, one person came close to knee problems, another just got beat down. But the rest of us, 15 total, came through fine.

Here are a few pictures from the hike (larger resolutions on clicks). We did around 10 miles with ascents of 650' to 750'. The weather was nice though, getting to around 60 and mostly sunny. But let me tell you that it got cold when we made it to the watch tower and a cloud wafted by along with a breeze!

This is the valley looking north westerly. Off in the distance is Pilot Mountain, which for you Griffith folks you may have heard of as Mount Pilot

One of the several rock cliffs we scaled

Lunch time

The lookout tower, our final destination and the stone steps leading up to the lookout tower. We ended up only going down the steps since we came around the back way. Walking down steps is harder than you think, especially these ones....

This is most of our group, and as you can see most of the leaves are off the trees. I was hoping to catch the fall foilage but it peaked last week, dangit!

It was a fun day, and quite tiring. I can promise that dinner last night tasted especially good!

Birthday Party

Went to a birthday party for Anthony last night. It was a fun evening, reminding me of what it's like to go out and enjoy myself.

Anthony has a beautiful apartment near Cameron Village. The rooms were all huge and his taste in decorating is interesting and delightful. It was almost a museum air in the decor, which made perfect for mingling.

The outdoor patio was 3 floors high, and the popping of the beer and the cap bouncing around on the pavement were perfect mood setters. There was plenty of drink and smoke going around out there. It was quite festive.

The mix was eclectic. There was the woman from downstairs who had the most wonderful idea, setting aside a day of the week for just reading. The guy who was making up some of the most ingenious crap and the ghoul who egged him on. Then there was the 20 year old who decided he wanted to explore being gay, with some of the funniest things coming out of his mouth as he flirted with the hostmaker guy.

Yep, it was a fun evening.

The Other State of Mind

It's been an interesting several weeks since I last wrote something. And that was kinda bland and boring if I remember correctly.

It's not that I've not been doing stuff. I just haven't taken the time to write about it. For instance, we had our local gay pride parade end of last month. North Carolina (meaning the state, sans Charlotte) has the festival in late September. The first year they did it, something like 14 or 15 years ago in July, people passed out from the heat. So it's a nice end of summer festival. I was in the parade this year.

And last week was spent in Minneapolis. It was a week in training, but I've not been there since I was 21 years old. As a matter of fact, the diary entry took place on the eve of my leaving that fantastic city. Back then I was temp duty 6 months there, far from base. I explored Hennepin back then and all of it's dens of iniquity. I tried to do that this time, but everything moved 5 or 6 blocks east. The Eagle was fun, especially playing bingo on Thursday.

Then there is the study I volunteered for at UNC. It's an alcohol cessation study of a couple of drugs. It's double blind so I have no idea if I have the real drugs or a couple of placebos. Maybe the counseling is helping too, since it's been 3 weeks since I ventured into an adult beverage. Pretty good since it's probably never been more than 2 day ever since Minneapolis or a short bit afterward.

The old house is still out there. What are the chances it's going to sell quickly in this market? Winter is looking like a good time for some fix'it chores. That damn pool needs a new liner. The deck needs painting. But already got the roof and carpet replaced.

With my nights suddenly free, there's lots of time for activities in the evenings. I've joined a gym and manage to fit it in on 3-4 nights a week. Other nights I figure out something to do. Tonight it was a visit to the bookstore, and as soon as I find a nice coffee shop nearby I'll go there sometimes. I'm kinda setting up an alternating mind/body schedule. Tonight I enjoyed reading some of Hawkings theories on the universe. And now I'm blogging.

Did I mention that I've been nicotine free for over 2 years now? Minnesota state law doesn't allow smoking indoors, including in bars. I had been there four days and six bars or grills before discovering that. How awesome is that?!?!

I think I am making great progresss at putting myself into the other state of mind ... of health and happinesss.

NC Parks Survey

The North Carolina Parks and Recreation department has a survey posted asking for input as they make plans for the coming years. It's a short survey and takes only 15 minutes or so to complete. I voted for more land acquisition plus improvements to existing parks.

The survey can be found here.....

Over the past couple of years I've become a big fan of the hiking and biking trails in the area. It started when I joined the Triangle Hiking and Outdoor Group (THOG) at Meetup.com.

I love to go hiking, and the rougher the better. Well, I say that knowing that I've not really done too many of the advanced hikes. And bike riding has also become a favorite pasttime. I've done several hundred miles of country road riding, plus the greenways here in town. A couple weeks ago I went to Crabtree trails for some mountain biking and that was fun (and I'll be going back soon!)

Next summer, I think it might be time to explore more rugged terrains, plus maybe some campovers. That will give me the opportunity to sleep under the stars.

Halloween Masks

This is a very strange political season this year. I really do not know what to make of it. I think both candidates need to make some hard selling for me, cuz neither is worth the trip to the ballot.

But today I was walking around the fabric store and came across a rack of masks for halloween. The choices were - Bush, - McCain, - Hillary and - Britanny.

But no Obama.

I can only imagine why. If I were a conspiracy theorist (or ideologist) I'm sure I could come up with at least one really good one.

Do those masks even exist? But I'm too lazy to google that...

Hanna

Hurricane Hanna was pretty much a non-event for Raleigh. She didn't do any real damage, though a bunch of folks in New Hanover had power outages. I did not catch the injury counts directly from the storm.

It was in nearing full swing when I got up on Saturday morning. Just before noon it passed over and we were on the wayward side of the storm. About that time crabtree creek was peaking, so I decided to go take a couple pictures.

This is the greenway next to the creek. The inset shows what it looked like once the creek was back in it's shores (as always, hi-res pictures on a photo click). And yes, that is a Biscuitville restraurant in the background. Not a bad breakfast place for less than 5 bucks.

One thing I wished I had photo'd were the bare new car lots. The lots are on either side of the creek along Wake Forest. If the creek had come up another 3 feet after it's already rising 13 feet, it would have breached it's outer banks and flooded the lot. If that had happened, we'd have a bunch of New Orleans Specials next week.

After seeing that water level, I can easily see why the greenway has so much right-of-way through the city. It runs alongside a major rainwater drainage channel.

I took the post-storm picture while taking the pup on an adventure this morning. We stopped at the bear rock cafe for the first time, I got a coffee and newspaper and we sat in the shade and watched sunday morning get started. Such a huge contrast to yesterday morning. I think we'll repeat this morning in the future.

On the final stretch of our adventure, we scaled the big new embankment from the widening project and walked along the ridge at the top. It's actually pretty far up from the road, and steep. There is a private gravel driveway going into those trees up that hill ... tiz strange. But note to me, hiking boots next hurricane.

And for those Durham ladies, wazzup? under the bridge and go left.