Last night we attended a charity gala. I wouldn't say we're exactly gallerinas, but this one was pretty fun. We got some "free" tickets because my dad had made a donation in honor of his late brother, so there was some obligation to go. Plus this is one of the charities I've worked with in my side gig and I know the founder well, so ... we put on suit jackets despite the 100+ temperatures and set out for a warehouse venue near the Galleria.

What was funny is that it was on some random street we've never heard of or seen, and yet just the night before we were like 3 doors down. We went and saw a traveling exhibit of the Trump Epstein Files Reading Room. They printed out all 3 million pages of redacted released files, and put them into volumes on rows and rows of book cases. We promptly started pulling books out and leafing through them looking for a previously unnoticed gold nugget. Some dude came up and said, "I don't think you're actually supposed to touch the books." Which then made us paranoid so we stopped. But it was called "reading room" so I don't get what the hell else you were supposed to do there. It ended up taking like 10 minutes to get thru and then we went to dinner.

Anyway, the gala was fun. It was very inspiring to be in a room full of people who care about other people when that seems to be in low supply these days. Some of the residents of the homeless shelter program even took the mic and spoke about their experiences, which was moving. I got a little emotional when one by one they said how terrible things had gotten that they googled for help and found this organization #1 in the list, because I'm the one that got that all set up and working. So that was cool to remember that things you've done previously can continue to have a ripple effect.

Great meal, good conversations, made a little donation in excess of what we do monthly (and doubled it using my employer), so all in all I'd say it was a wonderful evening.

This is kind of turning into a travel blog, but that's usually the only thing of note going on lately. I'll try to come up with a few different topics here after this. But, we just got back from New Orleans. It was technically my second time there, but first time since I started forming and retaining memories.

The main reason we decided to go now was for Ben's 40th birthday party, which happened to coincide with a big gay festival, Southern Decadence and some big late night party called the Horsemeat Disco. Getting to NOLA is beyond easy. We took Southwest out of Love because Daniel had a leftover flight credit from his short lived stint at the startup and we needed to use it or lose it. We normally will only fly American because we're holding onto gold status by our fingernails these days, but it made sense to this time not to. And boy does that eliminate a lot of stress. Love is down the street, we could practically walk there. And the flight was barely an hour long, so easy.

We really had a nice time in the city. The food is great everywhere we went. Great drinks, good nightlife. The night of Horsemeat Disco we took a little disco nap and made it out. We had purchased new clothes just for the event so we would be ever so slightly appropriately dressed. Turned out we were almost the only ones wearing clothes. Lots of butts hanging out everywhere. It was crowded. It was stinky. You could hardly move much less dance, could hardly talk. All in all, I'd have to say not my scene. But I did my best to hang and have a good time, mostly by imbibing.

The next day we went to the Southern Decadence parade. It was so hot. It was so crowded. It was impossible to do anything, so when our friend Ashley had to head for the airport to get back to her kids, we took it as an excuse to escort her back to our hotel where she'd stashed her bag and then we went to the pool. All in all, I'd have to say not my scene. My scene gets more and more specificity added to it every year. Luckily Daniel agrees.

Our last night we went out to dinner in the French Quarter, had a lovely meal, and then strolled down Bourbon Street on our way back to the hotel. At the end of the street a complete nut job had set up an amplifier with a microphone and had dip shits on either side holding big placard signs letting us all know that we were going to hell. When he saw Daniel and me, he singled us out and started harassing us. Daniel grabbed my hand and we told them to fuck off as we walked by. What a downer at the end of the trip.

It did get me thinking though. The analogous opposite of that just truly doesn't exist. Nobody ever sits outside of churches on Sunday morning with big signs saying "None of this is real!" or "You're all morons!" while someone screams at them in a microphone, "You're not going to heaven when you die dipshit!" So ... looking for volunteers for next Sunday. Let's liberate a few minds from the clutches of Idiocracy!

I'm cheating again and I'm going to backdate this blog. I used to just say sorry I am so late getting around to it, but these days I use my blog like a Time Hop, so I'd rather have a semi-accurate date on it depending on the story I'm telling. But I digress. We just got back from a long weekend in NYC.

We've struggled to find our place there. Different hotels, different neighborhoods, nothing ever really felt right. Well, folks, you'll be as thrilled to hear as I am thrilled to announce - we finally found our home away from home in New York. The Chelsea Hotel. It's this super old building with a rich and storied history of being a haven for artists and musicians. But it's been bought out and turned mostly into a high end hotel. I say mostly because some people still live there, so walking down the hall to our hotel room, we passed two residents' doors. I assume that is occasionally annoying but it probably also basically saved the building so take what you can get. There were three restaurants, and we tried two. Both were fab. And we'd go to the bar at night for courvoisier and freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

I'd never been to a Broadway show so Daniel got us tickets to two shows while we were there. One was Oh Mary! starring Meg Stalter. I love her to death and she did an amazing job, but ... eh. It was like bawdy and irreverent for the sake of it. I didn't really think it was that CLEVER or anything. Funny enough and we had a great time watching. But ... nothing like our second show Titanique - the telling of the story of the Titanic from Celine Dion's perspective. It was continuously riotously funny throughout with the best music and dancing. Loved it. Loved it.

What else? We went to the Met. Daniel had tried to gaslight me into believing I'd been to the Met before, but I definitely hadn't. Then we walked through Central Park and later on through Hudson River Park, and yowzah the eye candy. I definitely need to step it up or start taking peptides or something. We also saw Davbart and he and Colin took us out to a more traditional Chinese brunch that was completely chaos and then to the Tenement Museum which was super cool and I would def go back to that.

I don't know if New York changed, or if I changed, but I really enjoy it more now than when I was younger. I was even commenting that like nobody was rude the whole time. To us or otherwise. People on the subway said, "Pardon me," when it was their stop. Staff everywhere just super welcoming and friendly. Idk, it is just so enjoyable now where I didn't feel like that 20 years ago. The only thing I didn't like was that EVERY FUCKING ONE was playing Alicia Key's "New York" on repeat. Every store, every pedicab, everywhere you went, you'd sometimes even hear 2 or 3 renditions going on out of sync simultaneously. PEOPLE! There are SO MANY songs about New York. Mix it up!

Then whoosh, we were back home. A super fun little trip for no particular reason. And one we'll hopefully start to do with more regularity.

Well, I happened to notice that today marks exactly one year since my glorious return to SideshoViD.com. I just did a quick inventory and I made 38 posts in that year. That's actually a lot more than I was expecting. Though I have to say the addition of Instagram-like and Twitter-esque formats really helps boost those numbers. I wish I had thought of that back in 2002.

I came back from Spain, felt fine, went to work for a week, etc. Then Saturday afternoon I started to feel kind of shitty. I was sick right before Spain, so given how quickly I was feeling sick again, I decided to do what I never do and go straight to a doctor to get tested and find out what is ailing me. The doctor just called and said my test results were unusual, so it would be easier to explain over the phone (ALWAYS a good sign). I tested positive concurrently for 3 infections - a coronavirus (not COVID), an influenza bacteria (not the flu), and whooping cough? Fuck me. But the good news is a zpack will wipe out both bacteria at the same time, so I guess it's a good thing I went to the doctor straight away instead of waiting 3 weeks to see if it resolved on its own. Maybe I should do that every time I get sick. Is that what doctors are for?

In other news, I've been making minimal efforts to drink marginally less. One way I have done that occasionally is zebra striping. That's where you alternate one alcoholic drink, then one non alcoholic drink. The problem is, every non alcoholic drink sucks ass. They're just juice. Like, don't serve me a glass of juice and call it a MOCKTAIL. That is infuriating. So I went on a quest of my own to make a zero proof cocktail at home. Problem is, fake "liquors" are even worse. They're not even juice, they're just tea. Like literally a weak brewed spicy tea and they call it a whiskey replacement. It's insulting.

Well, folks, I am pleased to report I finally found a good one. I was talking through it with AI, because obviously, and I told it I wanted the bite, the flavor, the viscosity, the burn, the aroma, like everything. And it came up with 3 suggestions. We happened to be at Total Wine this weekend so I bought one of them. I told Daniel, "If this sucks, I'm giving up entirely." But it didn't suck. It's awesome. It's St. Agrestis Phony Negroni. And it pretty much tastes exactly like a real Negroni. Very satisfying and very reassuring that I should check out the other two AI suggestions and maybe get a repertoire going. We'll see, but I'll keep you all posted if I don't die first.

My hypochondria strikes again. Ever since the last ER scare, I just haven't been 100% satisfied that all systems are go. And you always hear about those people that have like a persistent problem and are told again and again and again that nothing is wrong, only to find out their own intuition was right and there's some huge devastating problem. I really don't like to think of this as a psychosis because I'm not completely obsessed, but when I sit at the computer on a Monday morning with my fingers on my pulse and count that every fourth beat of my heart is skipped, I get concerned. I could ignore it and see what happens or I could take advantage of my totally bomb health insurance while I've still got it and go get checked out. (Because my company is switching insurance providers, not because Obama is taking it away.)

So I scheduled an appointment that day for a stress test. And let me just tell you, it was awesome. Everyone should do it just for fun. Like I did. You go in and get hooked up to all the regular EKG stuff that I'm practically bored with these days. They take a bunch of baseline measurements and then you lay on a table and they get out the ultrasound machine to take a sonogram of your heart. I was able to lie on the table and watch each part of my heart expand and contract and could see each little valve flip open to let the blood through. They even used the same technology used in a doppler radar to measure the speed of the blood as it went through my heart. It was so damn cool. The guy even showed me my lungs and my liver and if I took a deep breath in, they would shift my heart over and throw it out of focus.

Then you run on a treadmill until you hit like 190 bpm on your heart rate. So I was truckin it up a steep incline. And as soon as you reach it, you jump on the table and take some more ultrasounds. Basically, no doctor has reviewed my results, but the technician said everything looked completely healthy and normal. I asked him about skipped beats and he told me something I had never known before. The heart isn't controlled by the brain. It's the only organ capable of producing its own contractions completely independently. So even though it should always work, occasionally it can screw up because of a million different reasons. He has a friend whose heart skips beats when she drinks orange juice. The body is a complicated machine. So if you heart messes up some how, it is capable of realizing this, and "skipping a beat" so that it can completely drain the blood out and start the process over. And sometimes this causes a large pause, and because of different pressures all around, it can cause discomfort or pain. And as long as every beat isn't a skipped beat over the course of an hour, there is no reason to be alarmed when it happens. Even though, for the record, this has been happening to me for a few hours at a time at least once a week. So I think it was okay to go get checked.

Anyway, it was flippin sweet and I encourage everyone to do it.

I think one of the easiest and most efficient methods I have for determining who my friends will be resides in the bathroom. If I meet someone new and go to use their bathroom and there is an empty beer can or bottle in the bathroom trashcan, it's a pretty sure bet that we're gonna get along finejustfine. I woke up this morning to find this Kerrs Lat can in my bathroom trashcan and it gave me a warm and fuzzy feeling because I wanted to be friends with myself. Even though, I have my suspicions that my most sabulous friend put it there instead of me. But still.

Last night I was layin around drinkin beer after a hard day at work. I had a case of Kerrs Lat and the History Channel and couldn't have been happier. Then I got a text message from my new friend who works at a bar near me. I'm avoiding names to protect the guilty. Only because I'm dying to tell you that I went to go keep him company while business was slow and started drinking. Brett Sabulous texted me shortly thereafter saying he was bored so he joined me. We sat and drank for a few hours, probably had a tab of around 70 dollars, and walked out without paying a dime. So fucking awesome. But I also didn't tip so I told my friend I'd buy him dinner next time he was around and hungry. Gotta love friends behind bars.

I was really drinking so much in an effort to produce a really raging headache so I could spend all day in bed in my newly darkened bedroom. It worked. And now, ladies and gentlement, I present to you, a new picture of my bedroom -- at 3 o'fuckin'clock in the damn afternoon. It is so awesome. Not exactly black, but close enough. It has been so nice -- dark and cool. I have my suspicions that this is going to save me a hell of a lot on air conditioning bills. But seriously, folks, I have a splitting headache. I gotta go back into my cave.

I've been putting off this blog because its going to be pretty long and I haven't really had the time to sit down and type it since I've been home. As you may know, I went home to Dallas this weekend. There's no need for pretense so we'll just jump right into the story. I got home on Friday evening and saw my mother briefly. My parents were going to Oktoberfest in Addison Friday evening and then leaving for my cousin's wedding in Denver, CO the next morning, so I really didn't get to see them. No bother though, it actually worked out better that way.

So Friday night I met up with Clay and we went to a housewarming party in Highland Park. It was the coolest house I've ever been in. It was three stories tall with four bathrooms, a huge backyard deck, beautifully decorated, a media room upstairs, and a room with some really expensive X-Men comics in it, which I appreciated. I got a little bit drunk, but we left early because we knew we were going to be getting up early on Saturday to go to Six Flags. And thats just what we did.

I woke up around 10 on Saturday and showered and got ready and Clay came and picked me up. We met up with 4 of his friends downtown and headed out to Six Flags. Has anybody been there recently? We got this thing called a Q-Bot which essentially allows you to wait in line electronically. It cost us like 60 bucks between the 6 of us, and you take this little thing around with you and you lock into rides. And it saves your spot and beeps you when its your turn to ride the ride. And then you just walk right up to the front and get on, while all the have-nots look on in disgust. It was SO fun! We got to ride every ride in the park without once waiting in line. Its actually genius on so many levels though, because if you're standing in a line for 2 hours, thats 2 hours that you're not spending money. The Q-Bot freed us up to walk around and buy shit all day long. I really only spent money on water the entire time, so I didn't lose too much. I did get my knife confiscated at the door though, that was pretty funny.

Anyway, then everyone was planning on going out, but I, naturally, had to go home and shower. I was exhausted by the time I was ready to head back to Dallas, but being the trooper I am, I managed somehow. I called up Ryan S■■■ to see if he was going out and he was, so instead of going back out with the group of new friends I'd just made, I called and left them a message saying maybe I'd see them out and went to Ryan's. Good thing I didn't rely on them, too, cause apparently they went home and fell asleep for the entire night. Anyway, Ryan and I got ready and picked up his friend David S■■■■■■ and went out downtown. We started out at JR's and the beers were not really making me feel well, so by the time we went into the Village, I was ready to just sit down. I was really falling asleep. So I did just that. I have no qualms, people probably just thought I was rolling to hard anyway. But I wasn't a total drag the whole night, I got up and danced a little bit although I didn't drink anymore. By the time we ended up at a late night restaurant watching these two scarf down chinese food, I was about to fall asleep on the table. We finally got back to Ryan's around 4 and I just crashed there because I was too tired to do anything else.

The next morning Ryan made some delicious pancakes, I borrowed a shirt (it says Texas is for Lovers and I liked it so much that Ryan gave it to me -- THANKS!), and we went back downtown for the parade. It was so much fun. We were catching beads and stuff. Ryan took an assload of pictures, but he took them with film (who does that). So as soon as he gets some scanned in, I can put them up here for you to enjoy. The parade was nuts, we ate some lunch. After the parade there was like a political rally and the people for Howard Dean were there. I got a button for my bag. It looks quite striking next to my peace propaganda. After that we took a nap and then I hit the road bound for College Station.

All in all it was one of the most fun weekends of my life. I really needed that. Thanks to everyone who was influential in making it happen. In other news, I pulled some handi-capable tickets to the game on Saturday against Pittsburg. Allison and I are going to be on the front row of the second deck for a game that is going to be televised on ABC. We want to wear T-shirts that spell something out, but so far all I can think of it either "GO" or "TX" or "AM". Any ideas? I'll tell you one thing though, it'll be nice to be sitting through all of those damn TV timeouts. I predict we will win 67 to 12.

And in international news, I've decided to leave the country. I'm not sure when, but lets just say ASAP. My new dream in life is to move to Germany and get a job writing technical documentation for German companies auf Englisch. I guess in reality it would be better if I could be a straight up translator, but I'm probably at least a year away from that. I used to be almost fluent, but not so much these days. Anyway, I think that's about enough blog for now, thank you for your patience, you have-nots. Laaaaaaaaaate.