Checking in...

Hi to anyone who still checks my blog! I haven't posted anything for so long....Got over the whole blog thiing, I guess, but kinda felt like giving the 2-cent update today.

I don't even know the last time I posted. Was it about my class reunion that happened last September?? That's pretty bad.

Not a whole lot has happened, I guess - Exciting, I know. Oh - I still go out w/ friends quite a bit, but I haven't slapped anyone or anything in a long time. Guess I'm getting older!

Well, actually - my Grandpa did pass away in February. He was 87. I don't really even know what he died of....just old, I guess. He was my Dad's dad. Come to think of it, I think maybe I did post about that before now....Oh well.

Went to NYC and Springfield, MA, back in March. Winona State was in the NCAA Division II Nat'l Men's Basketball Championship again. I flew to NY on Friday morning and took the subway to Rockefeller Center, where Meg works. We went to lunch and she had to go back to work for the afternoon, so I went to the Museum of Natural History. It was somewhat interesting, but frankly, I expected more of a well-known museum in NYC. Saw one corner of Central Park too (which I don't think I saw the first time I went to NY)... We went to eat at a place called Tortilla Flats that night (I think it was the Upper West Side, but not sure) and that was really good. Then on to a gay club somewhere by Time Square...I forget what it was called, but it was a trendy place. Then back to the Candle Bar (where Meg and I went during my first trip to NY) and it appeared that this establishment has since become a lesbian bar. Of course it didn't stop us from having our fill of cocktails.

Meg and I got up really early the next morning and took the subway back to Midtown where we rented a car for our trip to Springfield. The trip allowed me to add another state to my list of places visited: Connecticut. We ate a Dennys-type place, so that was about the extent of my time outside the car in CT.

Once in Springfield, we met up with my college friends Lee & Heather, who are now married and live in Nashua, NH. We walked to some bar where all the Winona State fans were supposed to be....and it was packed!! We sat and talked to two 20-year-olds who drove all night in the fan bus and were pretty shitfaced, but really funny. Lee bought their purple and silver beads for $20 -- they kept calling us "rich alumni." I think they thought we were pretty old! The game was really fun. Winona State played some college from North Carolina. We had a ton more fans there and the four of us sat in the student section -- fun!! WSU kids have much more school spirit than we ever had....And they have a bunch of special little cheers that they do during the game. It was funny.

Anyway, we were ahead the whole time and wound up losing during the last few seconds!! It was horrible....but, once back at a bar with all the other fans, we were soon back to having fun.

That night, I decided to check out one of the "special" bars near the one we four "old alumni" had just been partying. I met a local guy who told me I should go with him to the bar around the corner. I was still wearing my WSU shirt and bandana, so a guy in the alley (outside another bar) saw this and said, "Hey! Tough loss today, man....That sucks for Winona State!" Then he saw that I was walking toward the back entrance of the other gay bar and said, "Fucking faggot." I just told him to fuck off and kept walking. The local guy I went there with was mortified and said he'd never seen that happen in Springfield before....Whatever - it happens everywhere! It still kind of takes me aback...don't expect to hear that in 2007! Oh, and that other bar turned out to be really boring too. I took a cab back to the hotel. We drove back to NY the next day and I flew back home - it was a fun, but exhausting weekend!!

I started dating Matt over Memorial Day weekend and it's going well!! He's met almost all my friends and everyone really likes him. We've already been to a wedding together and my college friends' parents' cabin in Wisconsin! So, maybe soon my family can start to meet him...but, we'll see. That's kind of weird to me still.

Oh - Matt and I had a couple incidents of anti-gay stuff too, which is so weird. A couple weeks ago, we were just standing on a corner on the edge downtown Minneapolis waiting for a cab and this stupid Ford Explorer full of drunk guys sped by and one of them yelled "Faggots!!" out the window. In Minneapolis!! In 2007!! I yelled back to them, "Go back to Anoka, you redneck fuckers!!" (Anoka is an outer ring suburb)

THEN - When Matt and I were in Winona for a wedding a couple weekends ago, I accidentally booked a room in this ramshackle motel called The Sugar Loaf Motel (I thought I was booking at the HOTEL across the street). The owner was from India and wouldn't let us get a single bed room (cheaper) because we weren't "married couple." You better believe I started voicing my discontent over that...the wife then came out and was speaking Hindi (or something), but you could tell that she was telling him to not rent us the room. He kept saying, "Single room only for married couples..." I yelled, "We...ARE...a...couple...!!!!!!!" I could tell he was getting ready to ask us to leave (and hotel rooms in Winona all get booked during summer weekends due to it's scenic location on the Mississippi River = tourists), so I shut my mouth and signed the receipt.

Anyway - if you ever find yourself in Winona, MN, DO NOT stay at The Sugar Loaf Motel. You wouldn't want to anyway - it's pretty much a dump.

But the wedding was fun. It was my friend Alison's. She and I hung out A LOT and partied A LOT back in the late '90s!

So - yeah....That's pretty much it, I guess. The summer has been going by quickly and have had a lot of fun weekends.

Work is alright. Some days are good, most are okay and some suck. You know the drill.