It's Quiet in Here

You know, it's strange how much quieter the house is with Christopher away on vacation. I'm sure that I'll get more used to it over the next couple of weeks, but on this - the second night without him around - it's still a bit strange.

Aoife, on the other hand, seems to be hearing more and more noises as we go along. Every time there's any noise outside in the direction of the kitchen and garage, she stops what she's doing to look up to see if Christopher is home. And, periodically, she does a circuit of the house to make sure everything is okay - and that she hasn't misplaced him in the office.

I suspect she'll begin to get used to Christopher not coming home in a few days. But I bet that she'll keep looking hopefully at the door when there's a chance he'll be there. Honestly, so will I, but she doesn't have the luxury of a calendar to count down the days 'til he gets home.

Just Plane Stalking

Yep. That's what I'm up to tonight: just plane stalking.

I'm sitting here on the couch trying to catch up on some of the things I haven't watched on TV, lately, and I've got the Delta airline website sitting in the corner of my screen. Every so often I click on that, open it up, and refresh it.

You see, Christopher left this afternoon for 2.5 weeks in France and Scotland. The official reason for the trip (at least the first week or so of it) is to celebrate a friend's 40th birthday in Scotland. The second week (or thereabouts) he's simply spending in Paris since if you're on that side of the world and have the vacation time to burn you really might as well. Right?

So I'm starting a 2.5-week-long stint as a "solo parent" for the pooch. And tonight is our first very-quiet-seeming night at home.

But, while we're on the couch, Christopher is winging his way eastward. And I'm following his progress on the "Flight Status" thing on Delta's website. Stalking his plane... sorta.

It was a bit strange, today. The weather was warm and sunny (another freakishly warm day, in fact), and I took a long lunchbreak to drive Christopher to the airport. About the time he was taking off, a cloudbank rolled in. The sunny warm day turned grey, damp, and windy. If it had happened in a movie, it would have been too cliche for words to have that weather change as the boyfriend left town.

And... so... now you know where I am, tonight. And I know where Christopher is, thanks to my plane stalking.

MNOp Monday

Christopher and I attempted to go to a movie about three times in the past four days. But we never quite made it. On the other hand, we did go to something kind of movie-related, yesterday. Well, sort of.

You see, yesterday we went to see "La Cenerentola" (aka "Cinderella") at the Minnesota Opera. The opera is by Rossini, not Rodgers and Hammerstein, and definitely not Disney. There are no mice. There's no pumpkin. There's not even a ball or a wicked stepmother. And, although some of the music is really catchy, I found myself kind of wanting to sing my own songs from time to time.

The production was nice. The sets were big, the costumes made sense. The voices were good. But... yeah... the direction seemed a little slow, and Christopher commented after the fact that there were some flubs in the musicality of the production. (Luckily, I don't know the show well enough to know that.)

I know that the Sunday matinee is never the strongest show of the week, but it just seemed to not live up to what I had hoped for. Instead of coming home and humming the overture, I came home and started singing songs from the Rodgers and Hammerstein show. That's probably not a great sign.

Back On Target - Not a Bulls-eye

Today, for the first time in months, I actually pulled out the Target ad from the newspaper and looked at it. Flipped all the way through it. Contemplated going to Target to buy a few things.

You see, when I decided that I wasn't going to shop at Target because of their sizable donation to MN Forward last summer, my decision was that I would stop shopping there until they either made a large donation to a gay-friendly candidate OR the election was over. The latter, of course, means that the money that they had spent in that one race would have run its course and - for better or worse - be "done."

Well, this being Minnesota, the gubernatorial race is going to be heading into a recount. But, since there aren't any ads or anything during a recount, that means that the money that Target gave, in essence to a single personally-incredibly-repulsive candidate, is now done. That donation no longer holds any sway in the political future of the state - or... by totally over-rationalized extension... my life as a gay man in the state. (The candidate, now in the recount, may still screw up my life in the future, but the advertising money won't.)

Interesting that, while I was making this decision today, I was flipping through the Minneapolis newspaper and found an article stating that - while Target says they didn't see any noticeable drop in revenues after the not-well-thought-out donation to MN Forward - they have suffered an eleven-percent drop among people who used to consider Target to be a highly moral/ethical company. Sure, many of those people may still like Target, but they no longer "like like" Target. I guess you could say that now people think of Target as being just a tad "off-target."

So... With the full realization that Target is neither the most culturally bankrupt of corporations, nor the least... I plan to start shopping there again in the near future. We'll see how it goes.

And I'll keep keeping an eye on the political donations of my favorite corporations in the future.

Lesson learned... hopefully on both sides.

I'm Alive and Kicking. Or at least Walking.

Sorry. I probably shouldn't have skipped posting the past couple of days after having been so depressed about how I was feeling on Wednesday.

The good news, though, is that I am feeling better today. I think that the antibiotics are working (along with the yogurt - which is supposed to help with digestion because the antibiotics are so strong that they can cause digestive issues because they also can kill off the "good" bacteria in your system). Okay, so Christopher and I have spent the past two nights at home instead of going to a movie we've been wanting to see - because I just haven't felt like going out.

And, tonight, Christopher is off to a wine and cheese night with friends which we've both been looking forward to. But, while he's off to that, I'm still at home where I just finished up working on an edit that needed to be done, and I hope to finish about three things, then go directly to bed. I *so* need to get some extra sleep. Especially since, at 7:38 this morning, the phone rang to tell us that the dryer Christopher had ordered on Monday was on its way over. No sleeping in on Saturday morning for us.

In fact, we followed up the installation of the new dryer with cleaning the basement (because it needed to be done, apparently), measuring the yard (a friend of ours is helping us design a landscaping plan), and taking the pooch to the vet to figure out why she's favoring her back left leg.

Figuring we'd have a relaxing afternoon, we came home for a bit, then headed to Costco and a luggage store (have I mentioned that Christopher is heading out of the country for 2.5 weeks starting this Wednesday?) before getting home. Where I sat back down to finish said edit ("said" in the first paragraph, above), and Christopher got ready to go out.

Now I'm going to finish this post, watch a little TV, turn back a few clocks, and head for bed.

Whiney Whednesday

[Let me start by saying I'm not going to whine about yesterday's elections. Instead I'm going to mention how proud I am of Christopher and our friend Kelly who both worked from (at least) 6am until 9pm to help the elections run smoothly. That's kinda cool, you know?]

What I am going to whine about is the fact that I've had sinus issues since last Friday/Saturday. At first, when I felt some pain in the rear of my jaw, I thought maybe I had just gotten some popcorn wedged back there. But the ache didn't go away when I brushed. I made it through the weekend, even though I didn't have my pseudophedrine with me, so I just popped ibuprofen and kept going.

Monday my lower jaw started to hurt a bit more, but I was back to my generic Sudafed and seemed to be doing okay. Yesterday was about the same, but I started to feel it in my upper jaw, as well. I decided that a night's dosage of meds would make the decision on whether or not I headed for the dentist, today. (If the sinus meds worked, then it wasn't a problem with my teeth. If they didn't, then I was going to check in with the dentist.)

Unfortunately (sort of - I like my dentist), the meds worked last night. And I was hoping that I'd be fine all day. But, during the day at work, I can't take a full dose of pseudophedrine because it makes me foggy. So about mid-afternoon I was having upper and lower jaw pain - and a mild earache, and then the area beneath my jawline started to hurt (all of this on the left side, only).

At about 6:35 this evening, I checked in at Urgent Care. About half an hour later I was on my way out the door - just too late to pick up my new prescription for antibiotics. So I've got one more day of dealing with the pain and annoyance using over-the-counter means, and tomorrow night I get to start on the antibiotics.

Here's hoping that curing the pain will also cure my whining. Even I'm getting tired of it.

Movie Monday is Pre-empted by "Get Moving Monday"

Tomorrow (Tuesday, November 2nd) is Election Day for pretty much all of us in the States.

So get moving and get out there and vote!