My Oyster

Thanks for the memories...

housefront2.JPG, originally uploaded by dcjay64.

And there are many.  Tonight is my last night here on Kenyon Street.  It has been an emotional few days (weeks?) getting ready to leave this home and everything in it - including the memories - and move to a new place to build a new home. 

Atul and Sean are probably the most frequent riders on my real estate emotional roller coaster.  This morning Atul and I did the final walk-through of the new place.  I started tearing up as soon as I walked into the place and told him I didn't want to move anymore.  He is good at what he does.  And a good friend.  I am still moving.  :-)  Sean bolstered me this afternoon and this evening - as I have been sitting here with no furniture but lots of emotions.

So I am leaving Kenyon Street after 7 very full years.  Much of my life has happened in this home.  I have changed a lot and a lot has changed around me.  I will always be thankful that I was able to share several years here with Suzanne (and later Grant) and Daryl and with visits by my parents and siblings and nieces and nephews and with celebrations and quiet reflective times with many good friends.

Thanks and good bye.

Hunks with my junk...

These two came to haul away the stuff in my house that I am not taking with me to the new place.  The stuff that I could not sell, that I could not give away.

They really were in college and they were both kinda hunky too.  I love truth in advertising. 

The company was started here in DC by a couple of local college students and has started to franchise nationally.  A portion of their revenue goes to scholarships.

I was actually quite pleased with their work - beyond the eye candy.  And the truck was so cute.   

The Namesake...

"The Namesake" movie poster, originally uploaded by knoopie.

Tonight Atul took me to see this movie at the E Street Cinemas.  We had been talking about playing hookey and going during the day for weeks now, but never got around to it.  Tonight we decided to just go.  The fact that he had already seen it twice was a good sign.

It is a beautiful movie.  The way it is shot.  The music.  The scenery.  Even the clothes and styles of the 70s.  It all creates a very warm and emotional backdrop for what is essentially a movie about family and heritage and creating your own way in life while remaining connected to those things that ultimately define you from birth. 

I think the fact that I have several good friends from India made it even more meaningful to me.  I am glad I saw it with Atul.  He was weepy through much of the movie.  I was too.  Not as much as him though.  :-)

Tonight I went to a reception of gay DC professionals who do international work of one sort or another.  It's called GATT.  It meets monthly.  I go when I am in town.  It's fun and good networking.

Tonight the guest speaker was Sunil Pant.  He is the founder of a gay human rights and HIV/AIDS organization in Nepal.  His organization is called the Blue Diamond Society.  He is in the U.S. to receive an award from the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and to spread the word about the horrible situation for gays in Nepal.

By any measure, life for gay men and lesbians in Nepal is not easy.  Sunil described the enormous social, religious, cultural, and legal challenges they are facing in Nepal.  Here in the US, we are fighting for non-discrimination and marriage rights.  In Nepal, they are fighting for their very existence and survival.  There is a good article in the current SF Weekly that gives even more detail.  It's pretty alarming.

Just last week, Sunil's group began a hugely important battle.  The Nepalese Supreme Court took the first step toward either legitimizing or criminalizing homosexuality by hearing a petition that seeks to ban the Blue Diamond Society.  This is a critical time for Sunil, the BDS, and gays in Nepal.

I am going to see if I can leverage my corporate gay & lesbian employee association to get them some assistance.  I think others at the reception tonight are doing the same. 

It's pretty amazing that I could walk 10 minutes from my house to a reception at a friends apartment and meet someone like Sunil and then find so many friend's and colleagues wanting to mobilize to help him.

DC is a cool place to be.

Does Velveeta EVER Go Bad?

This is me...and the entire contents of my kitchen cabinets and fridge in twelve trash bags.  A chef, clearly I am not.

 

None of the food was salvageable.  All of it was grossly past its expiration date.  Emphasis on gross.

 

For example.  Above we have a can of baking soda that expired in July...1995.  That is twelve years ago.   That means seven years ago when I packed it up to bring with me to this house from the old place, it was ALREADY FIVE YEARS past its expiration.

Below I am with a bottle of balsamic vinegar.  Notice that it is not exactly pouring out of the bottle into my mouth.  Apparently vinegar can turn to stone if aged properly.  I think there is a Aesop's Fable about that...not sure.

 

Sean, bless his heart, came over tonite to help me clean out the kitchen as I prepare to move 10 blocks east and south.  I am sure that picking through my expired food could not be the best offer of entertainment he had tonight.  but he was here.  and he brought dinner.  Chili Cheese Dogs.  Yum. 

Speaking of cheese...we stumbled across a log of Velveeta that was more than 2 years old.  Come on now - Velveeta goes bad?  Huh?  Isn't it all just chemicals?

Here is Sean claiming victory over the contents of my kitchen.

And here is where the story takes a scary turn.  There was NO WAY that this twelve bags of spoiled, past dated, out of fashion foodstuffs was gonna fit in my one trash bin for pick up tomorrow.  While Sean was on lookout, I surreptitiously borrowed space in the bins of several neighbors for my goodies. 

This is me skulking around with bags of bad food in the alley behind my house. Shhhhh...

Street Walkin' in DC...

I love springtime in Washington.  It makes me want to walk everywhere.  Washington is always a great walking city - the scale is perfect, the architecture uniformly interesting from neighborhood to neighborhood, there are tons of trees, there are tons of people.  All the ingredients for limitless engaging strolls.

But springtime is extra special.  The weather is so inviting that everyone seems to want to join me outdoors.   And I am (usually) happy to have them (mostly).  Today was the first really nice weekday after a long and odd and difficult winter.  I decided to leave my office promptly at 5pm and start walking.  And observing.  I wasn't alone and I wasn't disappointed.

I headed up 14th street on the way to Whole Foods and then the 17th Street gayborhood to meet Atul and do yet more real estate paperwork.  I passed this place.  I think I have passed it a million times over the past 15 years.  I have never gone in.  I often wonder what kinda business it does and who really goes there for "breakfast", "lunch", and "seafood".  Today I had to stop and look.  The two guys on the fire escape were having such a good time.  Drinking a beer and watching the world go by on 14th street.

Finally Springtime in Washington...

That was the temperature this afternoon - as captured by my dashboard on North Capitol street on the way to Vijay's bday party.  It was a beautiful weekend.

I got in a good ride this morning.  Here I am on my porch getting ready.  Mount Pleasant sits right on Rock Creek Park, so its easy to hop right onto the bike trails.  I actually had to remove some layers during the ride - it got so hot.

Not surprisingly for a warm Sunday morning, Rock Creek Park was a bit crowded, but beautiful still.

 

This is a nice old stone bridge in Rock Creek Park and the Mormon Tabernacle.  There are many sites in the Park.

The Pillowman...

pillowman150x150.jpg, originally uploaded by dcjay64.

Today Daryl and I saw this play at the Studio Theater.  It was disturbing.  Provocative.  Especially at the end of this week with so much violence in Virginia - not far from here in Washington.

The Pillowman is a play by Martin McDonagh. A drama, it tells the tale of Katurian, a fiction writer living in a police state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories, and their similarities to a number of bizarre incidents occurring in his town.

The play had its world premiere on November 13, 2003 at the Royal National Theatre, starring David Tennant as Katurian, the play's primary focus, Jim Broadbent as Tupolski his lead interrogator, Nigel Lindsay as Ariel, and Adam Godley as Michal. It received the 2004 Olivier Award and an Evening Standard Award nomination for Best New Play.  The Pillowman opened on Broadway on April 10, 2005 at the Booth Theatre to rave reviews. Starring Jeff Goldblum as Tupolski and Billy Crudup as Katurian.  The play concluded its Broadway run on September 18, 2005.

For me, the play was definitely interesting.  I didn't love it though.  I liked the concept - having the play focused around a writer and 10 of his stories in particular.  I don't think the gruesome nature of the stories, particularly this week, was what I disliked - even though I have a low threshhold for that kinda stuff.  I think my issues with the play were more technical.  The language to me seemed a bit forced.  The fact that the entire play was basically storytelling was also a bit difficult after > 2 hours.  The acting was...ok - but not great.

I am always glad to have gone though.  It's always a thought provoking and enjoyable experience - event when the performance is not my favorite.

Say it ain't so...

BT-sanjaya-featured-1977.jpg, originally uploaded by kevlar_soul.



This is my tribute to the man with the mane.

 

 

 

 

 

Incidence of Hate Crimes...

Incidence of Hate Crimes per 100K 1995-2005 narrowest, originally uploaded by gaycurmudgeon.

I was going to blog tonite about dinner with Atul and Sean - and American Idol.  However, I got this table today from my company's gay employees group.   I have been thinking about it all day.

The table was sent by a member of our gay employee's group because today there was a congressional hearing on Hate Crimes legislation.

My colleague (i don't actually know him - big company) commented that after digging into the hate crimes statistics recently he was amazed that there is even a debate on whether sexual orientation and gender identity should be added to the existing classes in Federal Hate Crimes law.

The table above is of the reporting rate for the top four sub-groups under the classes of race, religion, and sexual orientation.  These figures are derived from FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program statistics on hate crimes between 1995-2005.

He pointed out that averaged across the last decade, only Jewish people have a higher per capita reporting rate than GLB people.  It also worth noting that hate crimes based on gender identity are not tracked at all under the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990.

In the above table, GLB people are the only ones not protected under current Hate Crimes legislation.  Protecting GLBT people doesn't seem so unreasonable when looking at a decade worth of numbers, does it?

I am glad we have a Democratic Congress.  Now we need a Democratic President.  It matters.

Oh - and some pics of tonight's fun and gay dinner filled with love not hate and with plenty-o-viewing of Sanjaya and American Idol too!