Journal

Anyway, work went pretty well today. Still finding my way around, but for the most part things went well. There’s lots of cute guys there, and quite a few that set off the ol’ gaydar. J And this building’s even nicer than the one I worked in last. The cubicles are smaller, but the windows and atrium let in so much light it’s like being outdoors.

Which was a good thing today. And this weekend for that matter. Cloudy-town has been blessed with three whole days of sunshine!

The downside is that this morning when they took the picture for the security badge, my PhotoGrays hadn’t lightened up yet. So they took it without my glasses. Yuk! As you may recall, I can’t see from one end of a dick to the other without my glasses. So this is the first time in maybe thirty years I’ve seen myself without them. Well, ya just kinda get used to it, so what a shock. It’s like part of my face had been amputated. Thank heavens I only have to look at that badge for a few months!

It got well into the 40s today. I went out for lunch, just for the drive. I was late leaving for lunch, (I hate to leave in the middle of a job,) so I couldn’t get back into the data center for my jacket, (my security badge isn’t programmed yet.) Didn’t worry about it. Didn’t even try. Shirtsleeves in February! Not bad at all. Popped open the sunroof, cranked the tunes, and enjoyed.

Made me wish I still had my lawnchair in the trunk.

Over the weekend I napped in the sun both afternoons. Well it was indoors, but it sure felt nice. After dozing in the reading chair on Saturday, I felt is was better for my back if I just lie on the floor Sunday. Just like the beach, without all that pesky sand getting in everywhere! J

Friday night at Muther’s, it was the most crowded I’d ever seen the joint. Packed shoulder-to-shoulder and asshole-to-bellybutton. (Cool, bellybutton is in Word’s dictionary!) Took me easily 10 minutes to get from the door to the coat-check. Then, as I took off my jacket, it was swept "downstream" towards the tea-room! Thank heavens the music was hot. It kept people on the dance floor and out of the throngs around the bar.

Poor Randy and Cheryl (the bartenders) couldn’t keep up with the orders, so people started ordering two at a time just so they wouldn’t have to wait for their next one! Both Vince-the-ex and Michael-the-ex were there. I never saw ‘em. Johnny and I did manage to find each other. Amazingly just after we each got there.

But I’ll tell ya, I was beat. Still getting over the absence of sleep on Tuesday night. J No nap Wednesday and those grueling sessions writing on Wednesday and Thursday night. And starting work again Thursday. Well it all added up and dead on my feet by last call. I apologized to Johnny and came home to bed.

I was still so tired on Saturday, (even after napping in the sun,) that I didn’t go out. I went to bed at 9:30 and slept ‘til 10:00 Sunday morning. Some party animal!

I did ask Johnny how his friend Rob made out at The Forum on Tuesday. Turns out Rob was so tanked, he didn’t remember much past 12:30 or so. Seemed okay to me when we left at closing time. Long Island Iced Teas sure do strange things to people. So we’ll never know how he made out with those three guys hitting on him.

Well, past my bedtime. Lesse if uploading is as slow as downloading tonight.

I had a couple of good sized downloads to do, drivers for a PC at work, so I waited and did them this morning before I went to work.

Nice sunrise this morning. Cirrus clouds feathering in. Nice textures, wonderful colors. The clouds stayed like that, thin and wispy, all day. Made a nice sunset too. I can’t believe the weather we’ve had lately! I wonder what price we’ll pay, and when.

Anyway, I had a subject to write about tonight, but I got sidetracked with e-mail and bunch of other stuff. It can wait. Nothing earth shattering.

So last night, to pass the time while pages loaded incredibly slowly, I gave Vince-the-ex a call to see how his weekend went. You can tell why we were together so long. We were each online, and talking on the phone, and although he doesn’t have The Ultimate Fag Phone yet, I’m sure he was wearing his headset too.

Anyway, during the course of the conversation, he said there was a personals ad I might be interested in on Gay Rochester Online, and that I really should check it out. I was chatting with a guy on Gay.Net and figured I’d check it our later. I forgot.

So I cruised over there tonight, and guess what? Not only is my site featured on the Main Page, but in the listing on the links page, they gave me a four (out of four) triangle rating! "Great design, content rich" were the comments. (I’m blushing!) Cool. My first published review.

I never did get to the personal ads page. And I’m sure the neighbors were wondering what all the commotion was about.

Yeah, yeah , yeah, I swore off writing after the bar. Bite me. Didn’t find a Valentine out tonight. Shit, the bars were dead! Oh, well.

Willie-my-fuck-buddy called just before I posted the earlier entry. Said he didn’t want to eat at home alone tonight. So we went to Basha. Fine Mediterranean eatery across from the auto club.

He’s all discombobulated (wow, Word’s spell-check knows that word!) because he has to find a job, or at least get an offer by April 1^st or he has to go back to Nicaragua. So he tells me about the prospects. A high-tech firm in Silicon Valley, another in Reston, Virginia, and a third in NYC which is offering up to US$100K per year! And he’s not sure what to do. He only wants to work in this country for another year or so. Shit. I wish I had that trouble!

Anyway, we came back to my place and had hot monkey love for a couple of hours, showered, and I took him home and went to Muther’s. I probably oughtta change the sheets before I go to bed. I didn’t necessarily need to find a Valentine after that. So I just hung out and shot the breeze with folks I know.

It was "Night-of-the-Living-Exes." Both Vince-the-ex and Michael-the-ex were there. From his reports, Vince is fending off teens and twenty-somethings with a stick. We had a nice chat though. Then he headed off to Club Marcella with his AOL buddies.

Michael on the other hand reported that he got bashed last weekend in his own apartment! I was stunned! He met a guy last Friday, took him home, and after a few minutes there, the guy proceeds to beat the shit out of him! I really feel for him. I got bashed over twenty years ago, and I still remember every milli-second of it.

So Michael, being Michael, never called the cops, never called the bar where he met the guy, nothing. He figures it’s somehow his fault. The poor guy. If only he had some self-esteem. He was still bruised. I could tell. And who knows how long, if ever, the psychological wounds will take to heal. Man, where do these weirdos come from?

After that, I spied Johnny. I related to him my disappointment in not hearing from him all week after calling every day. He said he was "really busy" all week. I said you can’t be too busy to call my machine and say, "Gee I’m snowed this week, but I wanted to return your call." Left it at that. Later, when I was leaving Muther’s, he wished me Happy Valentine’s Day. Yeah, send me a card.

Spent the balance of the night shootin’ the shit with Jeff, cook and webmaster for Muther’s. Eventually my bladder reached full capacity, and given the line at Muther’s. I got my coat and went over to Club Porkette, excuse me, Club Marcella.

It’s changed hands, and décor over the past twenty years, but it’s still the same old Jim’s as when I worked there. The tea-room’s in the same place, albiet cleaner, and Porkette, er, Marcella, now has drag-queens tending bar instead of cute guys. Life goes on. Took a leak, had one cocktail and headed next door for last call.

Tara was just as dead as Muther’s and Porkette’s, (excuse me, Marcella’s.) But I ran into Michael D (Miss Vicki) and his husband Terry. (I think I told you there are far too many Michaels and Terrys in my life.) Anyway, Michael D has given up his quest for diamonds in favor of a new garage roof. The payoff is that he still doesn’t drive! That’s life in the suburbs for ya!

The e-mail brought a big surprise this morning. There was a note from a guy who claimed to have been the first guy I’d ever had sex with. I was stunned! Most of the details were right, so I sent him a note with more of the details, his full name and who he worked for at the time. Turns out, he’s the guy!

He must have an incredible memory to remember a one-night-stand from 22 years ago. For me it’s a little easier because it was my first time, and I don’t think anyone forgets that. I’ve been intending to write about it as one of my stories for the Past page. Now it seems kinda awkward considering he reads the site. Maybe we’ll collaborate on it.

Otherwise, not much to report today. I’ve spent the past two days reworking the entire site. Over 18 hours all together. Several people have reported difficulties in navigating the site, so I spent all day yesterday revamping the navigation. Every single page was changed. Now it’s a lot closer to what I originally had in mind, and it incorporates those suggestions.

The site’s been getting about 30 hits a day lately, with no reports of problems or errors. So I decided that I’d drop the beta-testing and start publicizing the site. I redid the page header and footer. I screwed up the header once and had to start over.

I’ve submitted the site to four of the gay web rings. Now the four Ringmasters have to tour the site and approve it before officially adding me to their rings. The nice thing about the rings is that the four together represent links to over 500 other personal sites, and by extension, over 500 links back to this one. You can cruise from one site to the next on any given ring, and eventually wind up back here. And I never have to test and maintain any links except for the ones that are actually on my page. Cool, huh?

Each of the rings I’ve applied to are for personal, non-commercial, non-pornographic sites. This one fits that broad category. They each have their own different spin on things.

QueerRing is the oldest of the rings with the most sites, over 300. From their welcome screen: "This ring, started in March 1976, is made up of the homopages of lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgendered all over the net. The purpose of the ring is to link our queer pages and make it easy to travel through our cyber community."

Out and Proud! is described as "A ring for openly gay people, their coming out pages, and resources."

The Gay Ring is one of the newer rings. All they ask for membership is no commercial or pornographic content.

Many readers will recognize Hunkhunter’s Haunts as one of the larger adult-content links pages on the ‘net. Responding to requests, they’ve recently created a ring, Hunkhunter’s Haunts Webring, specifically for personal pages without an erotic gallery.

I had to get down and dirty with HTML to add the code for the rings. One of the nice things about FrontPage is that you can work in the "Normal" view, which looks like the real page, or you can work in the HTML view, which is the raw code. I found that if I leave the cursor on something in Normal view and then switch over to HTML view, the code for the spot where I left the cursor is highlighted. That made it a lot easier to insert and edit the code for the rings.