just spoke to a woman about seeing an apartment. even though i told her i'm presently making 40 grand a year and i manage two sprint stores that if i don't have a job before i move to buffalo then she won't show me anything.

'why don't you get yourself settled in buffalo first and then give me a call?'

explain to me why i would get 'settled' in buffalo in some apartment or another, and then prospect your shitty ass four hundred and fifty dollar a month apartment?

i stoutly informed her that

that whole conversation made me extremely pissed and dissapointed and nervous that i would not, in fact, find a job.

i'm excited as pie. blueberry pie maybe. or cherry. i love cherry pie. ala mode. or maybe half a slice of blueberry and half a slice of cherry with a big fat scoop of vanilla perched melty like all on top and in between the two.
okay yeah.. my point was....
oh yeah

i just made a double appointment to go check out a couple of apartments on monday.

first thing first we have 367 elmwood - elmwood village.

Then we have 950 Delaware (sheldon apartments) on the corner of hodge.

they are both run by esquare capital - which i hear is supposed to be a good/gay friendly company, yes? no?

anyway - so they are both about $665 a month.... which rather frightens the hell out of me - but they include heat... so what... would that be equivilant to a $600 a month apartment?

nerves abound folks, time is flyin and felly is still apartment and job less!

you know if i'm referring to myself in the 3rd person i must be going nuts.

in one week from now i'll be in buffalo checking out apartments. i told my mother this mornign that i was not in any way interested in staying with my grandparents. she gratefully understood.

anyone know of any campgrounds near buffalo that i can stay at?

i spent a good 5 hours sitting in the garage painting last night. i was listening to a harry potter book on tape to keep my mind from going nuts as i was doing some detail work on the branches of a tree. Could you imagine painting tree branches for 5 hours without developing an annoying eye twitch? yeah i guess i'm just floored that it happened.

also - i have decided that for my big going away bash i am getting a kareoke machine. because the idea of some of my friends getting smashed out of their mind and singing 'girls just wanna have fun' makes my stomach tingle with glee. or maybe thats just the pizza that i had for lunch.

okay i get to leave work in no more than 20 minutes.

OH WAIT! i have an amazing story that I have to pass along.


About 3 houses down and across the street live these group of weirdo hippies. i mean these guys even have one of those purple hippie vw busses! anyway the other night there was firetrucks heading out that way. i got very nervouse because this place is right across from the bed and breakfast that jess runs - and she would have had to be institutionalized if anything happened there.

so apparently this is what happened.....

their cat died. so they decided that, instead of burying the poor thing, they should cremate it. yes... they decided to cremate their own cat. So they had a memorial service and played guitars for the cat and sang like the hippies that they are.......but apparently they waited too long to cremate it - as in it had been dead for a few days and started to fill with decomposition gases. so they tossed the cat in a ditch and poured gasoline over it. when they threw the match at the gasoline soaked/gas filled dead kitty the sucker exploded. EXPLODING CAT! the explosion managed to ignite a nearby ranshackle shed and thus the fire department.

this story was related to jess by the guests at the bed and breakfast that sat there and watched the whole thing happen.

am i sure that i want to leave this town?

Due to some of the recent discussions of religion on the estrip, I have decided to write a bit about my own religious views.

I'll begin with something my mother once told me. It went something like
"I don't need a roof over my head to believe what I believe" in reference to going to church.

I grew up attending church. Or Sunday school at the very least. I have to confess that a great deal of my superficially religious nature had to do with the activities at the church, rather than the religion itself. My Sunday school teacher was a wealthy woman who used to set up an assortment of activities that peaked my interest. Picnics, trips to Darien Lake (what is that religious week that they have? Kingdom Bound?) We went to Toronto to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat.

It wasn't until about tenth grade when, in my social studies class, we started to study world religions from an educational position. It was at this point that I started listening. I started quietly questioning what they were teaching me.

Throughout the years I have become very interested in religion, but from a more open minded, historical and didactic point of view. I took a course in the Bible in college and got an A. I have probably watched every program that has ever been on the History channel about religion. But my curiosity has always been in the historical rather than the religious. To be precise, the evolution of religion to what it has become today, and the theories and gospels that have been dropped along the way.

I read in a book of fiction recently (one of the slew of post - DaVinci Code religious conspiracy theory books) something that I actually found as an interesting theory. At the risk of an argument, I will summarize.

The theory went as follows: Jesus was an ordinary man who had a religious inspiration about the way to live life. It was a beautiful and inspirational way to live without judgment of others, and love for one and all. When Jesus died, he was not resurrected to walk the earth in the flesh. The resurrection of Jesus was intended to develop into the rebirth of his principles into the traditions of his followers. It was the state of the world, and the requirement for a more authoritative message that prompted for the ascension of Jesus as the Son of God, in order to generate Christianity as force to challenge the pagan religion of the Romans as well as Judaism.

Now I'm not saying that this is in fact my belief, but I will say that this speculation touches me more than the contradictory and ever evolving verses of what has become the bible. The bible is an amazing volume of poignant and moral (and not so moral) stories that serve as a guideline for living a life of love and peace. But the idea of taking said Bible and following it as if it were law is quite absurd to me. I am very much in the conviction that religion is an individual experience, not one of sheep following sheep blindly without question.

Okay on that note I'm going to stop, as I could probably go on forever, and I've probably made enough enemies for the day.

first of all thanks paul again, as the restore key just kept me from being a very cranky dyke on Pride day!

the parade was today. but first.....
KITTEN!

cute as hell, I know. so anyway... on to the parade....

a truck (float) in our parade.


this was the grand marshal though i'm unsure as to who he is supposed to be.


I love these drummer women. they are an all female brazillian drummer group and they rule.


this is one of the hudson valley drag queen personalities. she is at all the gay events. i wish i cared enough to look up her name.

then after the parade came the festival in the park

i am not sure who these horses were but i loved them...


Char played later after we left.


this is qi. i wish i could describe qi, but there are no words that could possibly get you to truly wrap your mind around that which is qi. this picture, however, is probably the closest that i could put up here without legal implications. please take in the hair, the yell face, the half pointing finger and the starbucks cup of straight scotch. this is qi.

my drummer ladies played too!



which led to....


in new paltz, gay parades turn into hippie festivals...





lauren likes to dance too!


michael (one of our current fruits) came out of nowhere with a water bottle full of tanqueray and a splash of tonic.


got home and found our other fruit - steven, at home... steven doesn't do the pride thing.

so yeah those are a couple of our current fruits that we need replacing...


i'm doing something. or should be doing something now anyway.

After work yesterday Lauren and I drove up to Utica to see her ex boyfriend's art show.
Now I have to first of all admit that I don't like the guy. And it is not just because it is her ex boyfriend, but more so because he is a genius in most everything that he does and therefore tends to be extremely pretentious. Most of the time I want to punch the pompous little prick in the face. (I'm not violent; I just wish I were sometimes). Anyway, the kid has only been painting for about 10 months, and he already has an art show. He is exceptionally good and I have to admit that there was a green little monster inside me that I was having an internal debate with for a while.

So I have decided that this evening I will grab the paintbrush and canvas and let it go. I will paint with wide-open strokes, and not tiny tentative dabs. I have spoken it, and therefore it is so.

Last night, in the car on the way home, we were discussing Buffalo, and she said, "We are going to need a new cute gay boy. I need a cute gay boy in my life!".... Okay we are fag hags. Gay men = Less drama + more fashion than a lesbians.... Applications to be our gay boy will be posted in the weeks to come.

So I see from (e:metalpeter)'s pics that last night's party was quite the enjoyable one! the pictures really helped me get a better idea of what the estrippers are all about. Also to put names with faces - though i don't know 98 % of you still...hope to see many more pics from tonight's party! I'll be sitting in my garage painting whilst you all party on up!

My nephew is selling raffle tickets for the Ransomville fire department. Apparently there are about ten different grand prizes along the lines of a laptop, flat screen tv, dyson vacuum, a generator, power tools, etc. Also there is supposed to be a beer/wine tent. and other things. Well I guess that since a good deal of my family will probably be there for it and my parents should probably be in town for that - I might as well go. And then I realized that it was august 11th... the day before my birthday. Wow. Nothing like spending the day before my birthday at the firehall... reminds me of me of my entire youth - always there has to be a fire department event to go to.... God my life is exciting.

Ever walk around in a store and just have a striking urge to just stick your arm out and just knock everything on a shelf onto the floor? Not that I would ever do such a thing, but I still think about it and it makes me chuckle to myself a bit.

Last night I dreamt of our buffalo apartment. It was right on elmwood and it was lovely. I don't remember much about the actual apartment, except that we had a lovely brown and light blue living room (as seen @ pier one). I only remember that it was great, and I felt wonderful living there. I hope that is a sign of great things to come.

I can't think of all those things that I thought about posting previously. So I guess I'm done.

Hope you all have a great time tonight/tomorrow! And good luck to lilho's evening goals!

I just set my post its to go to my phone. how exciting... i feel as though somewhere along the line i have jumped into the age of technology.

So I am presently working a ten hour day in one of my stores. It is a slow store, so i usually spend the day bored/playing online. today i watched a movie online - Another Gay Movie which is a spoof on all the gay movies that are out there.

Wow there is a lot of gay sex in that movie.

So the funny thing is that here I am, watching gay sex movies at work.... and if my boss was here , he probably would just laugh at me.

The funny thing is that the owner of this company has another business. he runs this website: www.shevibe.com with his wife. so when i work in the poughkeepsie location, there is constantly shipments being delivered for his website.... and so when the owner (thor) calls me back and says 'hey your order is in' and then he waves a giant black dildo at me, i think to myself... wow... this is the greatest job ever...

if i were just reading this, i would probably be completely skeeved out by the idea of a boss waving a giant rubber dildo at their employees... but somehow here it just is hilariously the way it is...

anyway... i just thought there should be some type of indication of the fun environment in which i work..

I'm not used to working Mondays. One of my employees quit this weekend, bringing my hours up but totally screwing my schedule. Wednesday I work a ten hour shift and now Thursday will be at least 11.5 hours.

We have managed to schedule a date for our next visit to Buffalo. June 18th-20th. Basically will involve waking up at the ass crack of dawn and driving for 6 hours, then Job Hunting/Apartment hunting for both the rest of Monday, as well as all day Tuesday. We will be camping too.

Yesterday I also managed to schedule in the following events.
June 1 - Art Show in Utica
June 9 - Nick's Body Building competition in Poughkeepsie
June 18-20 - Buffalo
June 22 - Concert in NYC
June 28/29 - move out (TO WHERE???)
June 30-July 1 - Campout going away party @ Kim & Jean's
July 7-8 - "the Felly & Lauren are gone!" party @ 66 south
July 22-25 - Family 'get together' @ Bear Mountain State Park.


I also got completely overwhelmed by all that is to happen and how the hell to do it all.

I realized that we have no place to store our crap for the entire month of July (if we don't get an apartment right away July 1)

I realized that I may not be able to work in July if I have already given then a July 1 leaving date.

All this and Mel decided to spend a good hour asking me why I am wasting my time selling cell phones when I am such a talented videographer. All the reasons that I managed to give to her all ended up being a steaming pile of bullshit. What it all comes down to is basically a lack of confidence. Sometimes I know i'm an awesome videographer. I can't even watch a movie without picking it apart. Then when it comes down to actually trying to prove that, I just get afraid of putting myself out there. And then I say.... All I need is ten G's and i'd be fine... I would start my own business!
blah blah blah its all bullshit.

Really though. Lauren is going to be gone for the evening so I'll spend the night painting some delicious works of art for Jess. And avoid the thought of taking control of my life yet again!

We bought a tent.

which basically means that no matter what happens, we will never be completly homeless...

maybe that is a rather bleak way of looking at the future. But seriously, it will work out wonderfully in our travels to Buf to check out apartments. We can just camp there and make it a fun little getaway. But the screwed up part is that I have a crapload of relatives in the youngstown/lockport/wilson/ransomville area up north of Buffalo. Brothers, grandparents and aunts and uncles. But really the only place that we could really stay would be my grandparents house due to circumstance.

I love my grandparents. Really I do, but with my grandpap's recent decline and the stagnant emptiness/loneliness of that house when nobody else is there... well i just don't like staying there.

And I count myself so lucky, because my gripe with not wanting to stay there has nothing to do with the fact that I am in a lesbian relationship and would be bringing my girlfriend with me. The last time we were there, they absolutely loved lauren. I am so very lucky for such a wonderful and loving family.

Alas. I love tenting. And so it shall be.