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Bay City Blues News
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| I grew up in New Jersey very close to New York City and moved to Portland, Oregon, my honey Tonya's home town, in March 2007. I find I like Portland very much and that people are wrong. It doesn't rain EVERY day.
I've been in numerous different businesses. I owned a dyehouse for years and had 7th Avenue garment center types as customers. I'm a non-practicing attorney. I ran a small trucking company. I was an option trader on the floor of the American Stock Exchange for around 8 years (with one year on the Philadelphia Stock Exchange). And yes that means I was one of the guys you see on TV running around screaming and wearing dorky jackets with badges on and carrying hand held computers and scraps of paper (they'll NEVER get rid of ALL the paper).
Now I co-own Bay City Blues, LLC with Tonya. Right now it's a phone sex company. But we're going to make it more than that. Tonya's an actor, and when I see her on stage I KNOW that it's a special and vitally important part of her life. So we're going to find a way to incorporate her performing talent (and yes she's very talented) into our business life as well. We're trying to build a life and lifestyle that's whole and complete and does not compartmentalize and separate business and friends and pleasure and money into all different spaces. So this business is a work in progress.
I am a widower. I met my late wife in late 1979 when I was in law school. I lived with her for seven years and then we got married. We were married for over 10 years, got divorced, and got remarried (took about a year). Lois was not well and our life was extremely difficult by the end. She suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder, and had the attendant problems of substance abuse and alcoholism. She committed suicide in September of 2004, and did it in a way meant to hurt those left and in a way that also showed the pain she was in.
It took me a while to deal with it at all successfully. I had the help of some very special friends and family, but most of all I had Tonya's help. Without the love and caring that is an essential and basic part of her, I don't know if I would have made it. I do know that I am extremely lucky to have her in my life, and that I give thanks to whatever power might be in the cosmos which brought us together.
I intend to grow. I intend to continue to become a better and more knowledgeable, honest, and caring person. I was not always so and I have plenty of situations now where I'm not. But with the life I've been lucky enough to find, and the love I now have, I expect to succeed. Welcome to everyone who finds us.
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| happy monday everybody.
this weekend a miracle occurred. i actually won the football contest again. this makes two wins in either two weeks or four years depending on your perspective.
once again the contest was not decided until the final game. indeed it wasn't decided until the last four minutes of the last game of the day. i like the way having the night game as the tiebreaker has made the last game so important and added some suspense and so i think i may keep it that way for a while.
i ended with 11 points out of 15 and was tied with a guy who still lives in Joisey. he had 46 points as the tiebreaker amount and i had 47, and i'm lucky that belicheck and his team had a stick up their ass after being busted for cheating (against the jets too. is that REALLY necessary??), otherwise they wouldn't have pushed for that last score. without that last touchdown the game ends with 45 total points and i don't win.
immediately behind us was Pamela's pal from Cali, who ended with 10 and would have been in the tiebreaker had the chargers actually played like the super bowl team people keep saying they are. after watching them last night i'm not so sure. and here's a little violin music for those sad souls who have LT on their fantasy teams. our Red Sox fan also had 10 points, and would be in much better shape if he had someone else choose the 1pm Eastern time games for him. he does GREAT in the later games but keeps missing too many early ones.
Three entrants were right behind them at 9. Take note that this shows seven entrants within two points of the lead this week. and all of them are callers. In an odd quirk, all those at nine points this week are from somewhere altogether too far north and cold. They include our Down East guy and two from Canada; the Duke of Windsor and our Cool Canadian. So enter. Don't let me win all the calls. Hehehe.
The season standing are similarly close. I've got 21 points, Joisey and the Red Sox each have 20, Pamela's pal has 19, and Melody has 18 and is the highest ranking operator. The Cool Canadian and the Downeaster (hmm. Downeasterner?) also have 18 and are right in the mix. At 17 points and 9th place we finally find Tonya, and rounding out the top ten is The Duke with 16. (i can't help it. i was like really proud of that Duke of Windsor thing. hehehe but there it is.) I'll get this upcoming week's games posted later today or tomorrow.
By the way, you should take a look at Tonya's web site (it's what I linked to above). it's a blog and she's been working on it and i think it's really neat the way she's taking to it. it's going to be a constant work in progress because...well her life is, so the blog setup works perfectly. i doubt you'll ever see it stay static for any amount of time. if you're interested in her, visit. and don't blame her for the basic template. i kind of chose it based on ease of installation and use, and as she gets better i very much doubt that she's going to stay with the design and layout.
we're probably driving the poor web designer crazy with our changes of mind and wait call this that and let me see this and no work on that first and...but as i told him, we just really DO want to get it right. i think there's going to be some extra attractions for everyone as we get things going. right now, if you look a little bit, you can see some excellent photos and some fascinating pages speculating on fate and destiny. But you have to LOOK for them. :-)
i've got this thing in my head that i better watch too. i really want a microphone setup here so we (we hahaha. oops sorry) can play with making mp3s or podcasts or streaming audio or something. i have no idea what we'd actually have the CONTENT be, mind you. i just like the gadgets involved. and something about the radio grabs me. probably comes from when i was a kid. i was the kid who carried the little transistor radio around. in the late 60's is when i was 10, 11, 12 years old, and i used to listen to WABC (i remember the first time i finally MET Cousin Brucie. it was at the AMEX and he was there for a charity fund raising thing and i was like a stuttering teenager meeting him. and then these 21 year old hot traders came up to me and asked me "Who is that guy anyway?" i told them but i don't think i got the true feeling across) and WMCA ("The Good Guys." that's where Harry Harrison was before he moved to WABC. if you don't know what i'm talking about it's only because i'm old. i even had one of those Good Guy sweatshirts with the early smiley faces). so i'm fascinated by the idea of us having some kind of web radio station even if it's only broadcasting sporadically. i did some research though, and you pretty much can't have music that's controlled by the big stupid record companies. they just make it too expensive and onerous. but they'll end up destroying themselves and the industry will change under their feet. it's what happens when you just ignore what your customers want. the customers find some other way to get it and some guy will find another way to deliver it to them.
ok i'm going to go see if there's other work that needs to be done. OH and the beer is getting close to bottling time. as of today it's been in the secondary fermenter for 10 days. i've been figuring on 14 days, though the fermentation (at a SERIOUSLY reduced rate) is still going on. i can see one or two bubbles a minute still. guess i'll learn about high gravity beers from this experience. and i'll also learn keep stirring and DON"T BURN THE SUGAR because it really sucks to clean it up.
later all.
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance
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| i'm posting them a bit late but i made them on time. though since i won last week i'm probably not scheduled to win for another four years now. in any event, my picks are:
indianapolis
green bay
cleveland
houston
new orleans
pittsburgh
jacksonville
san francisco
minneapolis
seattle
dallas
chicago
baltimore
denver
san diego 47 points total for the tiebreaker
i feel like i picked a lot of road teams and there must be something wrong with that. but there it is.
lot of entries this week too though i don't know what happened to our Bayou guy. oh well.
later.
howard
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| we've used lunarpages as a web host since we opened. four years next month. and i've got as fancy and complete a package as you can have without moving to a dedicated server. up until yesterday i would have told you they were terrific. but they managed to piss away 4 years of goodwill in one 30 hour period. i wouldn't have believed it to be possible. but it is. i doubt very much that i'll renew with them. there's a lot of quality web hosts around now and i don't intend to live through the nonsense they handed out over the last day and a half.
the site went down about 2:30/3:00 pm on Thursday. i called support shortly thereafter. i listened to a recording telling me there was a fire in their los angeles facility and then held on for 35 more minutes until i got what at first sounded like a real live person. later on i decided that all the lunarpages phone support people are actually bots and not real people at all. this first bot told me yes there was a fire and they were working on it and it would be back up soon.
the next morning (yesterday/Friday) it still wasn't up. Tonya called them early, waited (only 34 minutes this time hehehe. they appear to have a rule that you're not allowed to speak with support unless you wait at least half an hour), and finally got another support bot. this one gave her a useless story basically saying "oh it'll be back up soon." soon in lunarspeak means we have absolutely no idea and we're completely unconcerned that your business isn't operating properly.
while waiting she called the sales line at lunarbots and got a salesbot. this one was apparently set to "whine" and sympathized immensely and told her a sad story about a fried switch and all these different servers that were down and all the poor administrators who had been their working their poor little bot asses off all night long. He hoped it would be back up "soon" as well.
i came downstairs shortly thereafter and tried calling again. this time it took about 45 minutes to get a support bot. he told me about a migration from our server to another server since our server was "having problems." he told me the migration was "55% done." so i made the silly mistake of asking him when that meant it would be running and our site would be back up. "oh i have no estimated time." "OK. then when did the migration begin? and can't we just double the time and figure when we will be up?" "well my records say it began at 5:30am" "ok it's 10:30 now. that means it will be up in another 5 hours?" "oh no it doesn't work like that." "why not?" "well we have to restore it." "yes i know. and it's half done so if i double the time that means another five hours, right?" "i have no estimated time."
it's my fault for talking to bots. so i called sales. didn't get anyone but a machine that at least admitted to being a machine. i told it that i really wanted the unsales department because clearly being a customer for four years didn't count for anything. after all, lunarpages managed to have their own site going. this achieved precisely what i expected. nothing.
later on i called again. got another bot which claimed its name was Jeff though they don't seem to have programmed him with a last name. he had no information at all. and if he did, he was immediately deleting it from his bot memory. i said you lost all our data didn't you?. "oh no that couldn't happen." "why not?" "well if all the data was gone then the server would be running because it would be easy to restart." oh. "ok when do you expect it to be back up?" "i have no estimated time." sigh. "just take the stupid hard drive and put it in another computer, ok?" "oh it doesn't work that way." "ok let me get this all straight because i want it all for the court case." "what court case?" "the one i'm going to start on monday when i go to the attorney and sue lunarpages. now please get me a supervisor and go ask whoever programmed you to assign you a last name." "no supervisor is available." this is no surprise. why should there be a customer support supervisor around when all sorts of people have their sites down. obviously nobody would want to be at work THEN. silly me.
i hang up and we bitch to each other about these assholes for a while. then she gets a call and i decide to amuse myself and i call back yet again. wait the obligatory half hour, get a new bot. "we have no estimated time." ok well i'm not shocked by this answer at this point. but for some reason i'm in a better mood so i decide to play. "do you expect it to be back this year?" "i have no estimated time." "ok what about 2008?" "i'm sorry i have no estimated time." "well that's alright. what about 2010?" "i have no estimated time." now i don't know what they pay this guy but it isn't enough. he was terrific at his job. his job happens to be that he is supposed to be the world's most unhelpful support guy i guess. and he's great at it. meanwhile i have a web host which isn't prepared to tell me my site will be back in three years.
"ok give me a supervisor please." this brings on a 20 minute wait on hold. i then get a supervisor bot named "Peter." Peter is capable of saying "i have no estimated time" in response to absolutely any question you can come up with. obviously he's an upgraded model. he was programmed so effectively that he actually offered me a made up story. "if you really want an estimate of when your site will be back up i will give you one. however, it will be completely made up." oh. he tells me yet another cause of the problem. he tells me there was a power failure followed by a lack of turning on of the generators and requiring a reboot of all 2100 servers in this facility. however when OUR server was rebooted, it didn't "work correctly" and required a "migration" to a new server. by this point i had pictures in my head of refugee nude pictures trudging to a new computer and was having kind of a hard time keeping it together.
i then get a call from a 562 area code number, which is in the los angeles area (just like lunarbots). "Muhammed" is on the phone. he's calling me because "my supervisor told me to." i don't know if this is because i threatened a lawsuit or i annoyed the sales bot line or because i've now called innumerable times. "can you please submit a support ticket?" "well ok if you want one i will. but i've called lots of times and you're calling me back so obviously you already know the site is down. why do you need a support ticket?" "my supervisor told me to call you and ask you to make one. i could make one myself i guess." "why don't you go ask your supervisor which will get the site up faster." "ok good idea" "he says you should submit one." so i do, while he's on the phone. ok good he can see it. "why do you need one really?" "i don't think the technicians work on anything without it. you should do that instead of calling the support line." "don't they work on things when you call the support line?" "uh well uh no."
i also took the opportunity to point out to him that one of the support bots on the regular phone line had said "well we sent out a notification. didn't you get it?" now the answer is of course i didn't get it. the damn site is down. the server is down. that means THE MAIL IS DOWN TOO. "oh yeah. maybe you should get a yahoo or google mail." "i'll do that in case the next web host can't fix anything either. thanks. excellent idea." "you're welcome." sigh.
later i try support yet again. Muhammed had told me to keep an eye on my support ticket for a response. i did and kept getting neat responses. "Ticket submitted 1 hour 43 minutes ago. Awaiting Tech Reply." i gave up watching it at "Ticket submitted 3 hours and 56 minutes ago. Awaiting Tech Reply." didn't seem to be much point. the phone finally gets picked up. "i'm sorry i have no estimated time." ok fine. i got that already. but i got a call from Muhammed at this 562 number. silence. more silence. as far as i can tell, the mention of a 562 number indicates that the support bots need to contact the mother bot for new programming. not more helpful programming, mind you. merely new programming. after several moments of silence, the new programming showed up. "i don't know a Muhammed." marvelous. excellent work. i point out that Muhammed had mentioned that he wasn't familiar with a Jeff at the support line either. "oh yes there is a Jeff." well at least i got a positive response to SOMETHING. only took 24 hours and was completely useless, but at least it was positive. i asked this bot for its name also, and the programmers were ahead of me this time. this one even had a last name. i actually asked him because he gives me his first name and i say "Jeff didn't have a last name. Do you?" "yes i do." oh good. "ok can you tell it to me?" he does. if i were him i would have made it up.
i finally gave up and we went out to dinner and another fun stop on the way home and then just let it go. i checked and between me and others we have all the pictures so the hell with it. the web designer was working on changes. it's just the cosmos telling me to start over from scratch. we're getting there anyway. we're narrowing down what will be the top high quality girls to those it should be (the eagle eyed among you may notice a couple of operators that aren't here any longer), and we'll open up and give a large group of new girls a chance at a lower rate. btw that's how it's going to work. we'll have the very top level girls still here and set them up at the prices they should be billed at and the pay they deserve. then we'll put on a large amount of new girls who won't be given the same full complement of web tools that we have been giving to all girls previously. they will be billed at a lower rate. as those who are special show it and begin to stand out, we'll all learn which operators are special and act accordingly. i'm very excited about it and real anxious to get it going. but it's way worth waiting for gary to make the pages right. he's the BEST and he's the reason our website stuff rocks.
ok that's enough. i got my lunarpages rant out of my system and now i want to hang out and have coffee with my honey.
talk to you all later. and send in your football picks!!
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance
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| i'm cranky and completely scattered today. the last couple of days were tough days for both of us personally and Tonya thinks it's catching up to us today. she's probably right too. we dealt with it by just working straight through. i bet i spent close to 15 hours at the stupid computer yesterday.
at least i accomplished something. i have all the 2257 stuff completely organized in the new nifty program (i hate these stupid rules). i had everything before, but this will (supposedly) make it easier as we go forward with new content. and we have new content that we'd like to put up as the site redesign moves along. and all our content is now free. so if you're over 18 (or 21 if you live somewhere you need to be 21), visit us at Bay City Blues Phone Sex and peruse our collection of free sexy nude pictures. galleries no longer require passwords.
by the way, if you click on Tonya's name up above, you'll find it takes you to her new website. it's a wordpress blog. if you don't like the theme, blame me and not her. i just chose a theme that had a fair amount of things already built in so that it would be easier (a search function; rss feeds for items and comments; categories and archives showing easily; that type of thing). i expect you'll see plenty of changes happening to it in the near future. we've already placed the web designer on notice that we'll want some help from him. i think she deserves a custom theme. don't you? :-)
the beer has now been in the secondary fermenter for a week. i'm figuring on two weeks, so another week or so before we bottle. then i'm figuring on at least two weeks of warm conditioning followed by putting some beers in the refrigerator. with the high gravity beer i should probably leave them to cold condition for a couple of weeks too but i'm not waiting nearly that long to taste some. i won't plow through it all but i'm damned if i'm just waiting another month and a half before i even taste any. it will be all i can do to wait 3 weeks.
it's both tax time and find a new accountant time. i got a referral to a new accountant here and he's going to be perfect. that's because he's just like the old one and doesn't return calls. but eventually he will. instead i'm getting calls (even though i'm on the National Do Not Call Registry ) from some outfit calling themselves the committee to restore morals and values. i don't know who put them in charge of my morals and values but they can't have that right. only i am in charge of my own morals and values, in spite of the valiant efforts to the contrary by the government and the assholes who think that some deity put them directly in charge of my damn life.
i'm very proud of my honey. she just got her first voice over gig and i expect she'll start to get plenty more of them if she wants to. anyone who's spoken with her knows why she got it and that she'll get more. she's also been going to auditions and i'm sure she's going to be working on a production here soon.
what i personally feel like doing is playing pinball for the next three days and ignoring the entire world. unfortunately i don't think i can get away with it. i have two more girls to talk to directly about the changes (one who i'm starting to think is a fade), plus i'm getting restless about getting started with the website changes and putting new girls to work. hurry up and wait. at least i know gary's work is always worth waiting for.
i keep looking over at her working with wordpress and it's making me wonder if i shouldn't have gone with that instead of nucleus. but i don't feel like changing it now. if nothing else it'll force me to get better at stylesheets. and after looking at a zillion wordpress themes i had to go look up where the hell "lorem ipsum" came from and what it means. i actually found out, and in way more detail than anyone needs to know. i'll save it for a special.
ok at least i grabbed a chance to say hi to everyone. if you didn't join us for our football contest last week, please do so. the details are at www.baycityblues.com/promos.htm.
talk to you all soon. and with any luck i'll be in a better mood.
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance
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| Welcome to football season. First sunday of games and also the beginning of our Football Competition.
Tonya and I want to invite everyone to check it out and join us. You do need to have made a call within the last month in order to be eligible, but since we have terrific phone sex girls here, I'm certain that won't be a hardship on anyone.
Tonya helped me move the beer to the secondary fermenter on Friday. I didn't take a hydrometer reading then because it went so smoothly i didn't want to risk any sanitation problems. Plus it doesn't really matter what the specific gravity is now. It matters what it is in a couple of weeks when we get ready to bottle. I'll keep everyone up to date (even if you aren't interested).
She seems very happy now that she's able to take calls as Tonya. I'm very pleased with that any very proud of her. She's setting up the spreadsheet so that she can keep track of the games for the week. I entered but I never win these things. I'm a little surprised (though I guess I shouldn't be) by the several people who are NOT eligible (as they haven't made a call here within the last month) but who entered anyway. Sigh.
Work is moving along pretty well. The web designer and the telecom people are working and aware of what we want. The one thing that a lot of you will probably be interested in is the fact that once we're making changes, we're going to add some free pictures to the site. We have a lot of content and we think it's time to make some good use of it and share it with you.
I also can't help myself here. I've been reading a book on baseball statistics (sabermetrics) and no matter WHAT mathematical matrices you look at or advanced statistics you look at, Alex Rodriguez is not just one of the best ballplayers active today, but he's one of the best EVER. And the only reason Derek Jeter looks so good in the field is because his defensive range SUCKS and so plays that would be easy for a good fielding shortstop are exciting close plays for him. He can hit (though not as well as Rodriguez, but his fielding is easily in the bottom half of all shortstops). The book I've been reading (and, indeed, it made me subscribe to their website), is by the people from
I remembered to call my dad and say Happy Birthday. Actually all I got to do was tell his machine Happy Birthday, but the effect will end up close enough. He's 78 years old today and he's probably out running around with his girlfriend. I hope everyone joins me in wishing him a good one today.
Everybody have fun watching football today. I'll see you all later.
howard
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| is it only me who like suddenly had to go back to work with a vengeance? damn.
Tonya and i spent a bunch of time finalizing (hah) the outline of our web redesign and our new structure. we're very excited but just making the outline something we both felt good about was work in itself.
then there's a lot of design considerations. we spent quite a while with the designer (whom we are VERY lucky to know) and we think he's going to have some terrific stuff but that doesn't happen overnight. i have an appointment to spend some time with the telecommunications people tomorrow. i'll tell them what we want, they'll tell me what they can do, i'll have to go back to the designer....it will be worth it. but jeez it feels like i got yanked off the playground and sent back to school.
i'm moving all the 2257 stuff to a fancy program so that when the government finishes making (yet again) new rules i'm ready for them this time. you should read the new proposed regulations. they're actually proposing you put the full compliance statement on every page with a picture. among other things. i don't want to depress anyone by looking for a link. i got the link to the federal register from The Free Speech Coalition, which is a group that we're proud to be corporate members of. they do excellent and worthwhile work and help protect rights that all of us as Americans should make sure are defended. rights which a lot of Americans are, sadly, willing to both give up and take away from others all too easily.
i spent a tremendous amount of time trying to get the new computer set up to use. i just want to take a moment and thank microsoft and mr gates personally for windows vista. i think the idea of making an operating system that takes 2GB of ram just to run adequately and which is compatible with absolutely nothing is truly a work of inspired genius.
i also have to find a new piece of music for the myspace page. if you're reading this on myspace you'll know why. and speaking of myspace if the nice lady from fort lee high school class of altogether too damn long ago is reading this...i don't think i'm going to go to a reunion. though i encourage all others to do that kind of thing if they want.
what i am going to do is move that beer to the secondary fermenter soon. it's running now at about six bubbles a minute and has been in the primary for almost 9 days. i am SO in unfamiliar territory with a high gravity brew like this that i REALLY don't know when to move it. so i'm just going to do it soon because people talk about 7 days or so. though it seems off to me to move it while there's still any level of noticeable bubbling. just a gut feeling.
i have to go run errands soon so i'm just glad i got a chance to check in and i'll talk to everyone later.
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance
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| hi everyone and hope you're all having a good holiday weekend.
i've been in just an excellent mood it's so much fun seeing Tonya be able to take calls as herself and be so relaxed and happy with it. It's very cool and i'm sorry we didn't do it sooner.
i finally broke down and bought the new computer. i bought a hewlett packard. i owned one once a looooonnnng time ago and didn't have great luck with it. but i couldn't help myself with what they were offering. it's got a quad core q6600 and 3 gb of ram and i am tired of running a computer without enough power to keep several windows open and several apps running. and heaven forfend i would have tried to run two java apps at the same time on the old computer (like the chat room and my crossword puzzle). forget it. the old computer would just freeze up and stare at me like a confused cat.
and it didn't come with a lot of extra pieces i don't really want like the tv tuner and an expensive blu-ray player and other hardware i didn't want. that keeps it affordable. that and the 800 pieces of bloatware they put in that you have to spend a day taking out. setups for every online service that does anything. everything from isp's to guys who develop your photos to norton internet security...possibly the world's MOST bloated piece of software in the world. it's so overblown (and apparently "security suite" no longer even includes anti-spam software) that you can't just uninstall it from windows control panel. you actually have to download a special uninstaller to get rid of it. and even then there's a few empty folders left that you have to go in and get by hand.
it was worth it to get the extra power here though. and oooohhhh i wish we had gotten the belkin easy transfer cable when we bought tonya's computer. i transferred 5000 songs in about 30 minutes with the cable. we did tonya's music by burning untold amounts of cd's and importing the songs on each into her computer. one artist and folder at a time so they went to the right place. if you're moving from xp to vista DEFINITELY buy the cable. it's like $40 and soooooo worth it.
tomorrow afternoon will be seven days that the beer has been in the primary fermenter. i was planning/hoping to move it into the secondary fermenter tomorrow. i was pretty sure i would be able to, since the fermentation started very very quickly and was very vigorous for a day or a day and a half. the kreuzen (foam) rose and fell very quickly and i thought i wouldn't notice any continuing fermentation by now. but that isn't so. it's bubbling extremely slowly but it's definitely still making more than a couple of bubbles every minute. i think i'll let it sit another few days if i still see activity tomorrow. the initial fermentation (lag phase) was so fast that i was afraid it would stop and become a stuck fermentation. but it seems to still be going. slowly but still cooking. so we'll wait a little.
part of why i wanted to get it done has to do with the amount of work i'm putting in front of myself. i have price changes in mind (especially for Tonya), though it's possible that prices will change for both present and future operators (and maybe even in a couple of directions). i have to work with the telecom guy to see what i can set up.
i want to put new operators to work, and in some kind of serious numbers, too. this means (and it's overdue) that i have to find a way to put new people up more easily and more inexpensively. i'll probably have to have the web designer work with me and find a nice way to make one page per girl instead of two. perhaps the existing girls will retain two pages and new girls won't. (maybe there's a way to take more advantage of our city theme in doing so.) i'm also leaning away from having each girl with separate galleries. it may be time to have a section of free pictures and not have to build an entire new section each time a new girl comes to work with us.
i think it may be time to offer some more things as well. we have some excellent ideas. i don't want to give everything away before we can get things set up, but i'm excited about it and i think some of you are going to be real happy with some of the things we'll add (hell i guess some of you will be happy with free pics if we do that. hehehe).
i was going to go to sleep early tonight but that didn't work out as planned. first Tonya found a little time to spend with me (and you guys aren't making that easy LOL) and that got my chemicals all worked up and here i am typing at 2:45am. i never used to have trouble sleeping. now at least it's improving from a couple of years ago when i didn't sleep at all. now when i finally DO sleep, i'm actually sleeping pretty well. it's just that sometimes i don't fall asleep for...well for quite a while. like earlier in the week when i watched the lunar eclipse. it started at 1:51 am (here-pacific time) and reached totality at 2:52. (by the way i do hope those of you who could see it did. the moon was a fascinating shade of red and the total stage lasted over an hour and a half.) the newspaper wrote about it (a day later since it was so late/early that it missed that day's deadline) and they were talking about the people who set their alarm for early in the morning so they could get up and see it. and i'm going uh well uh not all of us needed an alarm. it was neat too because i could see it right from the terrace. indeed i could see it from the bedroom window. the entire eclipse.
anyway i'm glad i got a chance to catch up with everyone. i know i haven't written for a couple days but i'm so thrilled to have Tonya back home that any free time i had i just spent following her around. plus setting up the new computer and living through the traumatic experience of taking buffy to get spayed.
everyone call!!! hot phone girls everywhere you look!! especially behind that door over there. hehehe.
later all
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance
Read moreNucleus LiveJournal Plugin © Evgeny Lykhin | | comments: Leave a comment |
| hi everybody. i finally brewed the beer yesterday. and doing so was just about at the limits of my ability. maybe even a touch past it.
i broke the airlock when i took it out of the rubber stopper it had been in since the last batch. i didn't realize i'd broken it either so i tried to use it and i let extra sanitizer (which is what i put in the airlock) drip into the beer. i hope it doesn't add any off tastes to it.
this beer was very difficult for me anyway. first i had to steep the specialty malt (Cara-pils). i bought a drawstring bag to put it in and let it sit as i brought the water up to temperature. i figured oh let's buy a drawstring bag. so as soon as i go to use the drawstring it pulls through one end and there's NO way to get the string back from the other end. i ended up tying the string around the top of the bag. next i learned that i would have probably been better off with a fine mesh rather than the coarser one i apparently bought..it seemed to me that there were more solids leaving the bag and going into the water than i had expected. (and what a pain in the ass CLEANING the bag is when you're done).
i finally got it to a boil and then it was time for the malt. well that was no picnic either. it had dried malt extract as well as syrup so when i opened the bag of extract it went WHOOOSH and powder went everywhere. then between that and the candi sugar there was just a ton of sugar in there and it was very difficult to get the wort back up to boiling temperature. so i helped it along by putting a piece of tin foil over the top of the kettle to loosely cover it.
well as any home brewer besides me knows (and yeah i know now) this will encourage the wort to boil over. i caught it in time (i hope) and didn't make much of a mess there but had to play with the temperature and stand there watching. i also had hops going in for 60 minutes, 30 minutes, and the final 2 minutes. i used a nylon bag for each one (which at 59c each i'm just replacing. i wasn't cleaning those out too). the 60 and 30 minute hops were Styrian Goldings pellets. the recipe calls for 1 oz and 1 oz at 4.5% alpha acids. all well and good but i had Styrian Goldings at 7% so i had to sit and do math and play with the food scale to make sure i was in the right place.
when i finished with the 60 minutes of boil and was cooling the wort, i go to clean the kettle and find that (i guess during the part where it wanted to boil over) i burned some of the sugar. there are these black marks on the bottom of the vessel. i assume it's from the candi sugar though who knows. it wasn't a tremendous amount but enough that i can worry about burnt sugar taste too. and i started to clean it off and...well what a pain. i didn't have the patience and so i just ended up letting it soak in some hot water and cleaner and i'll finish it today.
while i'm cooling the wort, buffy the beer kitten comes over and helps me out by attacking the top of the plastic fermenter, which i had just finished both cleaning and sanitizing. this made both of us unhappy as i had to do it over and buffy had to spend some time in the other room so i could finish. i put the fermenter in an ice water bath to cool it but it melted the ice pretty quickly and cooled pretty slowly for my taste. i was careful with sanitation but the more time it takes the more risk there is. plus i'm sure i'm going to have chill haze with the length of time it took. next time i'm going to buy irish moss or something to use as a clarifying agent.
then i went to put in the airlock, and as i said way up above, pfft broken. this added extra sanitizer to the beer (yum) and to the entire kitchen as well. plus it cut my finger. so i got to spend what felt like forever cleaning up the sanitizer (i use Star-San. it worked well last time but, and trust me on this, it does NOT go well with a cut finger. being an acid sanitizer and all, you know? damn). i have the airlock in but it's only got air in it and no liquid. i'll go out this morning and buy a new airlock when the store opens. i'll need it right away because the fermentation started really well and strongly and i can see it already more than halfway up the airspace in the fermenter.
by the way i ended up giving up on the idea of making a yeast starter. it seemed to me not just a three day pain in the ass project, but also an invitation to sanitation problems. so i just bought a second pack of yeast and used two instead of one. i actually called the yeast manufacturer to ask if it would make a difference. (they're like sure great idea buy more yeast. hehehe.)
after correction for temperature the original gravity of the beer was 1.089. i expect the beer to end up at around 9% alcohol by volume based on that (though i haven't fermented a beer this high in gravity and wouldn't want to bet on anything yet). i ended up pitching the yeast at a little higher temperature than recommended also. i got the wort down to about 82 degrees and had to get set for our trivia contest so that was when it went in. by now i was annoyed enough with the procedure that i certainly aerated the sucker enough. took out some frustration there.
i'll keep you up to date. i expect about 7 days in the primary followed by about two weeks in the secondary fermenter. the recipe calls for a week in the bottle to carbonate followed by six weeks of cold conditioning (40 degrees---bottom of the refrigerator) followed by six weeks of warm conditioning (68-70 degrees). this seems funny to me as most of the recipes i've seen call for the warm conditioning first. plus some of the beer may condition that long but trust me i'll be drinking some of it before all that time passes.
i want tonya to come home. i've turned grumpy in the last couple of days and i can feel myself getting annoyed. at least i can spot it now when i start to feel like that and i can deal with it. it's a big improvement over letting it rule me. a BIG improvement.
ok i have a couple of things to do and a phone call to make but everyone have a great day. company is coming over tonight so i won't be at the keyboard ALL night. i haven't decided if having company over for dinner is going to make me feel better or worse yet. i just hope i don't annoy them with my mood.
later all.
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance | | comments: Leave a comment |
| i just can't. i flip through stations and it's on and i just stop and sit there until it's over.
and today i see it and turn it on just in time to hear coach say "Strap, God wants you on the court."
that's it. i'm hooked. then i just stare at it and float from quote to quote.
"And David put his hand in the bag and took out a stone and slung it. And it struck the Philistine on the head and he fell to the ground. Amen."
"I'll make it."
"I love you guys."
damn it's like being addicted.
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance | | comments: Leave a comment |
| actually i guess it should be belgian beer prologue. i went to the homebrewing store and bought the ingredients for the beer i wrote about earlier this month.
upon getting home i immediately followed the instructions i find everywhere, i.e., "Don't worry. Relax and have a homebrew." and now that i'm almost finished with the first one at least i'm able to settle down and type this (though not actually START the beer yet).
while i'm checking out i'm making small talk with the guy at the store and i mention how this is a step up for me and a more difficult beer than i've made so far. and he says well it's going to be a strong high gravity beer (which i knew) so you should make a yeast starter. there's a lot of sugars and you'll need a lot of yeast.
ooookay... so when i get home i look at the package (Wyeast 1388 Belgian Strong Golden Ale Yeast) and even though it's an activator package, which means it has yeast nutrients to help it start well, at the bottom on the back it says oh by the way this is fine unless of course you're brewing a strong high gravity beer in which case you probably want to make a starter.
fine. so i double check on their website. you don't need a starter with an activator pack. no sir. no way. not unless of course you're brewing a high gravity beer. So I check Charlie Papazian and John Palmer and their instructions are exactly the same. the activator packs are ok but a starter helps them. and of course if you're brewing a high gravity strong beer you want to make a starter. sigh. ok. next question was simple. how do i make a yeast starter?
well, with an activator package you activate it by doing the following: crush the nutrient package so the nutrients mix with the liquid yeast. put it somewhere it will warm to 80 degrees. wait a couple of days until the package has fully swollen. boil 1/2 cup of water and add 1/2 cup of dried malt extract. move that solution (wort) to a sanitized container. pitch the activated liquid yeast to it. aerate it well. let it sit in your warm 80 degree spot for a day or so. it should foam and show a white yeast layer on the bottom. pour off the excess liquid (beer). use the yeast slurry to pitch to your wort when brewing. and i guess you better be ready to brew when the yeast is.
so i'm going to have another of these homebrews in the fridge and think about where in this house it's 80 degrees.
later all.
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well today you get the travelogue.
I took a ride to Crater Lake on Wednesday and came home on Thursday. It's about 250 miles but takes close to five hours because it's at a very high elevation in the eastern Cascade Mountains. You have a couple (and only a couple) choices of how to get there. I drove down I-5 to Eugene and then got off on Rt. 58.
Route 58, within a very short amount of time, enters the Western Cascades and several different National Forests. I'm not entirely sure what the rationale is for breaking them up into different forests. I don't know if it's because of the geology of the area or because they were acquired from different sources or what. But they all border on each other and run into each other so I wondered. I could see that some of the forests had been harvested to a different extent than others (for example the Willamette National Forest, at least where I could see, had not been harvested as much as the Winema or the Deschutes National Forests). Some harvesting was still going on in all of them, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if it was at a "sustainable" level or not.
I hit pieces of those three on the way there. On the way back I came up Route 97 until Bend and then turned left (west) on Route 20. Going up to Bend is on the volcanic plateaus on the eastern side of the Cascades. The geology of the entire area is kind of interesting and so I bought a book and read a little about it.
There are two large plates moving against each other. This is, as most of us know, why there are earthquakes in the Western United States. But (and I'm simplyfing because it gets a little complicated for me), one plate, the Juan de Fuca plate, which is under the Pacific seafloor and NOT part of our continent, is younger and therefore denser, and thus slides underneath our North American plate.
This pushing and going underneath (subduction or something like that) is what causes there to be coastal mountain ranges such as there are in Oregon. Many of the coastal mountains in Oregon that are known are in Southern Oregon (The Klamath Mountains, for example), but there are mountains (though smaller than the Cascades) all along the Oregon coast. These shorter mountains are relatively easy to understand. They come from millions of years of the plates moving against each other. As the Pacific (Juan de Fuca) plate goes underneath ours, it scrapes up the sandy coastline above and pushes and pushes and this makes the smaller coastal mountain ranges.
If you look at a map of Oregon, you'll see that I-5 runs from North to South in an area between the coastal ranges and the Cascades. This is a valley (The Willamette Valley) that is about 60 to 70 miles wide in most places. Apparently this is normal when plates are acting as these two do, especially when they are also doing this at an angle (which they are). What happens is that starting about 60 or 70 miles past the subduction zone, the built up magma (it isn't lava until it comes out of a volcano), which is thought to be helping move the plate, and is coming from deeper in the earth, starts to force its way upward. This may be due to cracks in the plate, or to a simple minded guy like me, it may be that the magma has flowed to the end of the moving plate and now can rise and push the lighter parts of our crustal plate up and out of its way. It's heavier than the earth it's moving, but it's under a tremendous amount of heat and pressure and I believe that's why it rises. It's as if it's on top of a constant explosion under the earth's mantle.
The foothills rise relatively steeply on the drive. Several times my ears popped (though they popped easier and faster on the way down. I was driving faster too, though, so that might have something to do with it). I was on the cell phone with Tonya when I entered the Willamette National Forest, and as I passed the sign, the call dropped. There's very little cell coverage in these forests and mountains and what there is is exceptionally spotty. It's a lovely drive though. You occassionally have to deal with passing and slow trucks, but they have a fair amount of passing lanes and it isn't too bad.
On the way to Crater Lake, Tonya suggested that I stop and see a waterfall called Salt Creek Falls. I did and it was well worth it. Much easier to get to than many other falls in Oregon (some of which require real hikes to see), it was powerful and I even saw a rainbow (yes I know it isn't really a rainbow), which I tried to take a picture of. I'll put pictures of the falls and of Crater Lake below.
When you finally get to Crater Lake National Park (after going through a piece of one more forest, the Umpqua National Forest), you pay a $10 entry fee and then go to your lodging. One thing about this state. It's got a ton of trees. Anyway...lodging in the Park is either RV in a campground, camping out, staying in a very small and primitive motel, or staying in the Crater Lake Lodge. This is where I stayed. It was built in the early 1900s and recently renovated. It is not plush in the slightest, so don't expect it. Simple rooms with no phones and no TV. One restaurant at the Lodge (which is too small a restaurant, and therefore it can't handle all the people staying there), which serves three meals a day. They serve what in my opinion is very affected Northwest Pacific type meals of absurd mixtures of native and local foods which no real native from here would ever have eaten. You couldn't even get pancakes at breakfast without having them stuffed with huckleberries or marionberries or some other such thing.
The Lodge is at 7100 feet elevation, which is a good thing to remember before you start running around or taking long hikes or other strenuous activities. Now, while I wasn't thrilled with the Lodge or the room or the gift shop or the little cafeteria or the restaurant, the only word I can think anyone would come up with when they first see Crater Lake is "Wow." It is one of the most striking and beautiful and somehow serene sights I have ever seen. Again, I'll put pictures down below.
You remember how I mentioned that it's typical of subduction zones like the Oregon Coast to cause volcanos and mountains starting around 60 or 70 miles inland. These mountains (in Oregon, the Cascades), are usually much higher than those at the coast. The coastal mountains are merely formed by the pushing up of the coastal sands (again, excuse my extreme simplification). But the inland mountains are volcanic ranges and are much higher.
Crater Lake was formed by a volcanic explosion in one of these mountains. The mountain was (is?) Mt. Mazama, and it is estimated that it was approximately 12,000 feet high at the time of the eruption. The eruption happened around 7700 years ago. It was 40 times the size of the eruption at Mt. St. Helens in 1980 (that's not a typo. They claim it lowered the earth's temperature by at least a degree, and ash from it has been found, for example, in the appropriate age layers in Greenland).
When an eruption of this size happens, the top cone of the volcano blows off and away (indeed, often it weakens first, and this helps the eruption to occur there. The pressure of the magma finds the weaker spots). The rest of the cone collapses. In the case of Mt. Mazama, this left a relatively round crater (it is not a crater from an asteroid or meteor hit. Indeed, the right name for it is a 'caldera"). This caldera has a floor at approximately 4200 feet elevation. Then the lake there now formed completely from precipitation, almost all in the form of snow. It has no place where it drains off, though the lake's depth is limited by seepage into the rock below. The lake is the deepest in the United States and the seventh deepest in the world, and is 1,943 feet deep at its deepest point.
Should you still be wondering about the size of the volcanic eruption, note that this lake is over six miles wide at its widest, and just under five miles at its narrowest. The walls of the caldera, known as the rim, reach up as high as 8100 feet (approximately 2000 feet over the surface of the lake). A view of something like this would be enough, but Crater Lake has more.
It is an unbelievably gorgeous deep blue color. Apparently this comes because the lake is so pure. It is fed only by precipitation and not by any runoff from anywhere. And so it is one of the purest and clearest lakes in the world. It has regularly shown clarity to over 120 feet, and was once tested at a clarity level of 143 feet. This means you could SEE things that were 143 feet deep in the lake. Unbelievably clear and pure. Since there are almost no contaminants, the sunlight can penetrate deep into the water. When this happens, the water absorbs the longer wavelengths...red, orange, yellow, green...leaving only the deep blue...the shortest wavelengths...to scatter and come back up to the surface.
Trust me, words do not do it justice. It's difficult for me to imagine the prospectors who stumbled on this gorgeous mountain lake in the 1850's and what they must have thought.
I don't know what else to say, really. It's a worthwhile trip for anyone to make, mostly because I just don't know anything else like it. It isn't a plush trip and there isn't anything else there to see or do. But the lake is so awesome that I am exceptionally glad I went. The pictures were taken with my cell phone so I apologize. I did the best I could.
howard
Bay City Blues Phone Sex and Theater Of Deviance.
 | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Tonya's LiveJournal
Her eloquence did breathe away the curse:
She led him, like some midnight spirit nurse
Of happy changes in emphatic dreams,
Along a path between two little streams,
Guarding his forehead, with her round elbow,
From low-grown branches, and his footsteps slow
From stumbling over stumps and hillocks small;
Until they came to where these streamlets fall,
With mingled bubblings and a gentle rush,
Into a river, clear, brimful, and flush
With crystal mocking of the trees and sky.
John Keats
Bay City Blues and Theater Of Deviance. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| the whine has to do with American Express which is usually pretty good but man they're messing up big time with this stupid membership rewards and points thing they have.
ok everyone has cards that give points or miles. so on my personal card i've been accumulating lots of them for a while now without having cashed any in. i decided i'll use them for as much of the plane tickets as i could (for Donna and me to fly to NYC and home). Well my ticket worked ok but hers unfortunately did not. now i bought these tickets months ago. they tell me the way to do it is to log in to my Amex account on line, go to membership rewards, buy the tickets, cash in (redeem) the points. then they'll bill my card the full amount, redeem the points, and give me a credit for the full amount.
i called three times BEFORE doing it to make sure i was doing it correctly. i probably would have called only once but the first person just arrived from Calcutta that morning and was hearing his first English words ever when i spoke to him. so i called back and got a person who very cheerfully told me they weren't sure and had better check. the third time i got a person who was absolutely certain i was doing it correctly.
sigh.
i follow instructions. i get the plane tickets. my account gets billed for the full amount. and then NOTHING. no redeeming. no credit. no nothing. so i call. once. twice. three times may i have a supervisor please. oh dear membership rewards and statements and customer service are three different departments. as soon as we close American Express for an hour and have a full inter departmental meeting about your account, someone will call you back.
ok. so they have their meeting which developed into the need for an 'investigation' and then they call me back and say ok you're right you get a credit totalling $578.80. Good. they were nice enough to inform me that it wouldn't happen in a DAY or anything, but it would show up. well, about three days later it shows up on my online account. ok fine thank you. now i usually pay this account online since it's often a large bill and i don't want it disappearing in the mail or being one day late and incurring all sorts of penalties and such. so i log on to pay it the day it's due and guess what. the credit (more accurately, the THREE credits it took them to make the right amount) has disappeared. lovely.
so i make numerous phone calls to customer service and membership rewards and anyone else i can think of. i get oh that's the other department's fault. call them. no no they're wrong it's their fault call them. now this is a card i've had for over 20 years and i pay on time and i USE it. finally i lose my cool, get a supervisor, and tell them the hell with it it's a small price to pay for learning that from now on i should just use my other cards. i explain how nice bank of america has been (confused but nice) and i guess i'll just use THEIR card for the next 20 years instead. well this doesn't go over well with the supervisor on the other side of "your call may be recorded for quality assurance purposes." i suppose losing a 21 year old busy account is not considered a quality result. and to fix it guess what they're going to do. we'll have another investigation! oh goody.
this goes on for a while. now i've already flown to nyc and back and Tonya is coming home in 9 days (and 12 hours but who's counting?). and now i get a letter in the mail. just got it.
"This letter is in reference to your Membership Rewards (R) account.
We have reviewed your account and can confirm that a credit of $578.80 was issued from Membership Rewards and will appear on an upcoming statement.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. We value your Card Membership and thank you for your understanding in this matter."
uh
"an upcoming statement?" the letter is dated August 13. today is August 21. i paid the current bill on the due date (yesterday). well it definitely isn't in there. no credit. how about the next month which they show you ("current activity--purchases, adjustments, credits"). it isn't there either. as soon as it shows up i'll let you know. i wouldn't go holding my breath, however. and i am going to have to call them again though at this point it is the LAST thing i want to do. perhaps that's the plan. get people so disgusted that they just give up. i decline to give up on this one however. anyone who's bored is free to call American Express and tell them to give me my damn credit.
well that's the whine. the plan is that i'm going to run away for a day or so. i've always heard that Crater Lake is a really neat place to see. so i figured hell she's still away (and i checked. she doesn't want to go so i shouldn't wait), it's in Oregon, i'm in Oregon, perfect day trip. until i looked at the map and discovered it's a perfect TWO day trip since the ride is going to take approximately 4 hours and 45 minutes. i believe this assumes no gas stops, no eating, no pee stops, and i use a helicopter. well hell i'd like to see it anyway. so i book like the last room left at the lodge for tomorrow (wednesday) night.
i'm looking forward to it. i like car rides and Crater Lake looks really neat from the pictures. but it seems to me from what i've read that most people drive in, drive the "rim road" around the lake (a 33 mile loop. the lake is just over 6 miles wide at it's widest point), make a few stops at scenic overlooks, and then leave. this is what i would have done had it been ANY closer. i only would have needed a little bit. but this is just too much driving for one day. so i have to leave the insane cats here and leave food out (thus undoing all my pain in the ass work of separating them at feeding time...indeed, creating a feeding time since they were used to sort of grazing on their food throughout the day). plus i think once i get there i'm truly out of touch. i've read forget cell phones up there because they don't work. the room is one of those no smoking no television no telephone get yourself in touch with nature things. (it's Oregon. they do that crap here.) so i'll probably leave mid morning tomorrow and be home sometime thursday afternoon. if you're looking for me you can try the cell phone but my guess is that it won't work while i'm actually up there at the National Park.
and now the groan, which is brought to you by the bad pun department of Bay City Blues Phone Sex and contributing family members. Visit us, as we have much better phone sex than puns.
A thief in Paris planned to steal some paintings from the Louvre. After careful planning, he got past security, stole the paintings and made it safely to his van. However, he was captured only two blocks away when his van ran out of gas.
When asked how he could mastermind such a crime and then make such an obvious error, he replied, ''Monsieur, that is the reason I stole the paintings. I had no Monet to buy Degas to make the Van Gogh.''
(and you thought I didn't have De Gaulle to send this on to someone else.)
Well, I figured I had nothing Toulouse.
later.
howard | | comments: Leave a comment |
| i guess when you're in a sex business, even a phone sex business, certain things are going to catch your interest. i recently ran into the question "how many senses does a person have?"
well that seemed simple. five. smell, taste, touch, sight, hearing. the same five we all learned. but then i discovered that though we all might have learned it, it just isn't accurate. neurologists basically all agree that there are a minimum of nine. some of them, depending on their approach, think there are as many as 21.
the other four senses commonly accepted are:
Thermoception. This is the sense of heat or its absence.
Equilibrioception. This is the sense of balance (and is determined by fluid in the inner ear).
Nociception. This is the perception of pain. It's not analogous to 'touch,' as it can come from not just skin (where it has different sensors than touch anyway), but also from joints and organs.
Proprioception. This is body awareness and is easier demonstrated than described. It is the sense of knowing where one's body parts are without being able to see or feel them. A common example is having one close his or her eyes and shake a foot in the air. You still know where your foot is in relation to the rest of you even though you don't see or feel it.
Other suggested senses include thirst, hunger, depth perception, language perception, electricity, impending danger (consider the phrase "it made my hair stand on end." That's clearly a physical reaction). Synasthesia, the condition where different senses collide and cross so that a person with synasthesia may, for example, SEE music in different colors and not merely hear it, is another possible 'sense."
To me it's fascinating because while a lot of sex is in one's mind, a lot of it isn't. It's dependent on tactile and physical experiences...i.e. senses. And being aware of what senses can be reached and affected is crucial to the quality of one's sexual experiences.
Presented for your interest by Bay City Blues Phone Sex, where our phone sex girls are interested in all your senses.
I think I'll leave you with a joke today. With any luck, I'll manage to offend some people with it.
A fleeing Taliban, desperate for water, was plodding through the Afghanistan desert when he saw something far off in the distance. Hoping to find water, he hurried toward the object, only to find a little old Jewish man at a small stand selling ties.
The Taliban asked, "Do you have water?"
The Jewish man replied, "I have no water. Would you like to buy a tie? They are only $5."
The Taliban shouted, "Infidel Idiot! I do not need an overpriced tie. I need water! I should kill you, but I must find water first."
"OK," said the old Jewish man, "it does not matter that you do not want to buy a tie and that you hate me. I will show you that I am bigger than that. If you continue over that hill to the east for about two miles, you will find a lovely restaurant. It has all the ice cold water you need. Shalom."
Muttering, the Taliban staggered away over the hill.
Several hours later he staggered back.............................................
"Your fucking brother won't let me in without a tie."
later all
howard | | comments: Leave a comment |
| hi
i just found out that Tonya's going to be part of tonight's Fringe Club Variety Power Hour.
it's part of a series of podcasts where Fringe participants get to meet, talk, rejoice and commiserate (and drink too it sounds like) and share it with the web. i can't tell if tonight's is going to be streamed or (as it looks to me) that you have to wait until tomorrow for the podcast to be posted.
in any event check out the page and get to hear our sexy thespian.
howard | | comments: Leave a comment |
| just a couple of things today. mostly i just wanted to say hi.
i saw a movie yesterday that i was exceptionally impressed with. it's called "No End In Sight". it's a documentary about the war in Iraq and how we got to where we are today. i found it riveting and fascinating. but i do NOT want to preach to you about MY ideas or beliefs. i don't have the energy and people should make their own decisions anyway. but i STRONGLY recommend seeing this movie if it's playing anywhere near you. you can make up your own mind as to its points, validity, and so on.
just as an aside, it's an unrated movie. i don't know if they didn't submit it to the motion picture association of america or if they did and rejected their rating and whatever changes the mpaa suggested. (btw for an EXCELLENT look at the movie ratings system i suggest you see "This Film Is Not Yet Rated".) and since it's an unrated movie, most theater chains will NOT show it. so kudos to Regal Cinemas for showing it (and in a very nice theater too).
i may go out to the homebrewing store and buy the supplies for the next beer i want to brew. the recipe is on the entry of August 8th. then again i may just go get a bite to eat. grey and not so warm today (though i decided within a week of getting here that i can't let rain stop me from doing stuff or i'll NEVER do anything).
and if you're in or near New York City, don't forget to see "The Education of Rebecca". It's still got four performances to go and it's definitely worth your time.
charlie
The world's finest phone sex is at Bay City Blues Phone Sex. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| 17th today. less than two weeks until the famous and brilliantly talented Donna returns from her limited New York City engagement.
i'm a completely lazy slacker today i think. i don't feel like doing much of anything. the cats now officially hate me (though they're gonna be healthy). at least i don't hit them or crap like that. i can't get past this Michael Vick thing. i know guys fight dogs. i know they breed them to fight. but even those that aren't ok can be redeemed. you don't fuckin' torture and kill an animal. and i really don't get the stupidity he's showing now. everyone else involved with him has copped a plea. he's the only one hanging and the gov't is still offering him a deal (apparently it's on the table through today).
why the hell doesn't he grab it? especially when you're looking at a possible FIVE YEARS behind bars if you fight it PLUS they're threatening a RICO action against him (racketeering) which he'd probably LOSE since he really appears to have run gambling operations and crossed state lines and participated in interstate commerce while doing so. i know. it's the old lawyer in me coming out. but what does he give for a reason? or his attorneys and reps give for a reason since they seem to have managed to shut him up. he wants to know HOW LONG HIS NFL SUSPENSION WILL BE IF HE PLEADS. what the hell kind of idiocy is that? what's the DIFFERENCE if you might go away for five years. damn some people are dense.
I want to start brewing the other beer but like i said i think i'm too lazy. i'd have to go to the homebrewing store first too and the way i feel now that would probably be my big adventure for the day. and i have to go back and check the date on that chili cookoff i mentioned and find out what the rules are and such. OK it's on september 15 so i don't have to do anything about it today. i'd like to buy some Gebhardt's Chili Powder. I have never found it in any store and i think i'm going to have to order it if i really want it. but a lot of former championship recipes have used it. so i'd like to try it even if i end up thinking it's not for me. i'm pretty sure i wrote about my cincinnati chili recipe previously (if not and you want the world's finest recipe for cincinnati chili just write me. if you loved skyline and moved away you NEEEEED my recipe. hehehe).
but chili cookoffs are very orthodox in their rules. they don't have contests for cincinnati chili. they want red chili or texas red chili as a lot of people call it. and that means meat, sauce, and spices. period. no beans allowed either. and it might be surprising but almost all winners have used powdered spices just about exclusively. very few have any type of fresh peppers added. i admit i like to play with peppers. i like hot foods and i can eat pretty damn hot food. i introduced Donna to the extremely painful and fun line of Blair's Death Sauces. I like the Sudden Death myself.
Speaking of that, did you read about the chili pepper from northern India called Bhut Joloka (which translates as 'Ghost Chili)? it's now in the guiness book of world records and has been tested by New Mexico State University (which is into peppers apparently) at over a MILLION Scoville units. that's TWICE as much as a Red Savina Habanero, which is a pepper best handled with gloves and tongs. there's no way to use a pepper like that as anything but a food additive (and in TINY amounts). i can't see how you could take a bite of it. i'd both like to try it and i fear it all at the same time.
i also HAVE to seriously look for a computer. i do everything on a two year old sony vaio which has served me well but is way slow and the keys are fucking up (i dispatch guys and pray they have no 7's in their card number for example). i don't particularly feel like spending the money now but i don't see much choice. i may end up having a guy build it for me because i am having a bitch of a time finding the configuration i want. dell can build something close but i wasn't impressed with the last dell we had. although Donna says i was harsher than it deserved. maybe it's because i only heard about it when it fucked up. nonetheless i'm hesitant there. and i don't want one of these bundles from circuit city or comp usa where they have all the tv and other multimedia stuff. i want decent graphics a good monitor and tons of processing power and ram. my computer slows down when i have too many windows open and that's always now. i don't need it for gaming but i run numerous programs at once (the telecom system over the web. bookkeeping programs. flash stuff i'm checking all the time. java applets including the chat room. uploads downloads and well it's gotta be able to multitask without slowing to a crawl.
well i'm going to think about the computer and go do some of that slacking i told you about. visit us at Bay City Blues Phone Sex for the world's finest phone sex.
later all.
howard | | comments: Leave a comment |
| the title tells you why i'm bothering to write today because i sure as hell don't feel like it.
i'll get something down but i hope you aren't expecting hemingway or faulkner.
i guess the trip and a couple other things have all gotten together and attacked me today and i am just completely physically and mentally drained and ick.
the trip i guess could have done it all by itself. redeye supposed to leave friday night but leaves after midnight monday morning here. get to jfk approx 8:20 am. takes me an hour by cab to get to see Donna. i love her but right away we're rushed. just off the red eye and we have to squeeze in time because i had my dad and his girlfriend meet me for lunch. then i spent a few hours with my dad alone after lunch. this is all time when Donna is rehearsing. after all it's the day before opening. she had like five hours of rehearsing time.
then after that we get ready for dinner. we had been promising each other we'd go to Carmine's for dinner on Saturday night. and it was a lovely dinner but if you've ever been to Carmine's you probably already know two things. first, even though we went early, we had to wait. we got lucky and didn't wait very long, but still. (as Donna said, we were only a deuce. some of the tables had a dozen people.) the second thing you know is that it's no light and airy type meal. you go to Carmine's you EAT with a capital E. so we stagger back home reeling under like 20 pounds of lasagna and salad and giant garlic bread and wine and between us both being busy and now bloated, we both pass out.
next morning we have a little time but she's getting psyched for the show and then it's time for me to meet my brother and his wife and my nieces for brunch. way downtown nice place too expensive but pleasant. then i walk over to the village and it's getting kind of warm now. thank god it wasn't one of those 95 degree 95 percent humidity days but it was warm enough for me. and it's a longer walk than i had really thought about plus my feet decided that this would be a good weekend to fuck up so one has the calluses turning superhard and painful and the other decides to develop a lovely blister on the heel. (and no i didn't tell her. she's only finding that out when she reads this. she's got enough to deal with.)
i get over near the venue but i'm like two hours early now. but what am i gonna do? go 100 blocks back uptown and then turn right around and come back? plus my feet hurt. so i finally find a place that will serve coffee and leave me alone while i read the paper and do the puzzle (it's more...ahem...a drinking area).
i finish a couple coffees i do the puzzle i go outside for a cigarette and of course i run into Donna and the whole cast and crew waiting to go in. they're nervous enough without having to deal with me so no wonder. they let them go in pretty soon after though. then my dad and his girlfriend show up and say come over with us for a drink. Well at this point neither the idea of drinking nor the idea of my dad's girlfriend is in the slightest bit enticing. so i mumble something about oh i can't start drinking now and my dad uses all his available subtlety to say "well a lemonade then come on let's go." i somehow got out of it though i'm not really sure how. i think i kind of turned into my brother and just didn't move.
then other people start showing up and i spend some time being friendly and all. and waiting since for some absurd reason the fringe people won't give you your tickets until 15 minutes before the show. don't ask me why because i have no clue. finally it's showtime and we go downstairs and see the show and that's of course easily the best part of the weekend. (i wish you all could see her onstage. she glows. she belongs there and you can see it. i am so proud to be part of her life.)
it ends we go upstairs everyone fights over the one bathroom for a little while and now we're all outside and people are mumbling about being hungry. we had a reservation but it was still an hour away. and it was for 16 people (which by some unbelievable stroke of luck was the exact number that ended up showing up. incredible). we finally decide to go to the restaurant a little early. worked for the people who went since they're a good solid drinking crew and it gave them a chance to warm up. then dinner for hours with 16 people. it was very nice but i think you can imagine i'm starting to drag at this point. we go back to her sublet we're both exhausted and boom pass out again.
just before that my dad decides he'd like to see me again. after all i don't leave until monday afternoon. how about we do breakfast. Donna, in a spasm of...i have no idea...self hatred?...decides she'll go to breakfast with us also. ok with me though if it had been me i'd have been hiding under the bed. what time? i say 9am. silence. for my dad, this is like lunchtime. can't you make it earlier? sigh. 8:30. everyone grumbles. ok then the giant cat wakes me up the next morning (cats LOVE to walk on me when i'm asleep. they must get cat karma points or something). so hell i call him and we'll make it even earlier.
we go we come back and she and i start getting sad oh you're going back soon and such and so we get lovey but i'm so dragging at this point that i'm the world's worst lover. she responds completely appropriately by being delightful to me and then passing out again. and i don't blame her. after a while she gets up and puts on the worst movie ever made (no. i won't even give it a mention. it doesn't deserve it). while we get some combination of unhappy cause i had to leave, disgusted/laughing at the movie, and she has to start getting psyched for show number two, which is that night, while i'm getting ready to leave.
i leave and take the 2 subway to the A subway to the Howard Beach Station to the Air Train to Jet Blue at Terminal 6 at JFK. yeah it's about as much fun as it sounds. though it was only like an hour and a quarter or so and i wouldn't have done it any faster in a taxicab. I then get on the plane finally and it pushes off from the gate on time but then waits on line for 30 minutes or so. when it does finally take off (with me of course in a middle seat), it soon becomes one of the worst plane rides i've ever been on. i'm certain it isn't the worst (since i'll remember that one with loathing and horror for my entire life) but it's up there. indeed, it might have been number two. one of the highlights was as we passed near Minnesota bouncing up and down by hundreds of feet due to the fact that coming a little south didn't QUITE get us past the thunderstorm. this is being told to us by our captain, who actually left the cockpit to tell us this. it was very reassuring since he was possibly the most confident 16 year old boy i've ever seen. he'll probably be shaving any day. and no i don't know who or what was flying the plane. there was his second in command "Russ." that's all they called him. like four times. "Russ." don't know if he has any other names. never saw him either. maybe it's a name for the computer. like "Hal."
Then the plane after bouncing across the country finally gets here. i stumble out drive home take the garbage down and out take out the recycling feed the cats water the cats clean the litter box for the cats and call and wake Donna up so i can tell her to sleep well i'm here now. (she made me promise. otherwise yes i'd have waited). I pass out again. next morning i have to get up to take the older cat to the vet. where he does NOT want to go. meowed and whined and cowered and squealed until he actually gave himself a fever from getting so worked up. diagnosis is he is one completely healthy and way too fat cat.
see with buffy here, there's kitten chow out. and he's been chowing down the kitten chow which apparently has like ten times the calories of other cat food. oh. well what am i supposed to do? the answer is buy two different kinds of food and keep them separate and make one eat one and the other eat the other.
now i don't know if any of you have cats but our cats did NOT take well to this plan. buffy wanted the diet food because i gave it to Gollum. Gollum won't eat food while Buffy is eating because...i don't know why...it's a cat thing i guess. I finally had to take food in and out when they meowed and wanted to eat, and separate them into different rooms and then take the food away from each of them so they wouldn't eat the wrong one (though Gollum seems to get that I don't want him eating the kitty chow. not that he doesn't try a little but he gets it). I feel like the meanest person in the world. the vet said it's ok and you have to do something (Gollum weighs 13 pounds now. way too much), and that separating them while it's feeding time is ok and not leaving out much food to "graze" on is ok but it sure didn't make me feel ok. made me feel like the world's biggest meanie.
oh yeah and of course i had to find time to go to the store and buy diet cat food. which had the added benefit of making me feel like the last fat organic thing on the west coast. so i react in a perfectly absurd way and take myself out for chinese food for dinner. at a place that's close but Donna had warned me about. the warning went something like, "IT SUCKS IT SUCKS DON'T EVER GO THERE EVER EVER." i'm probably paraphrasing a little but not much. and unfortunately she was completely correct. and unfortunately it was possibly worse this morning than it was last night. so of course i got to spend one entirely unpleasant session on the phone with my dr this morning (wednesday morning. every week).
somewhere in between all this i had to lay down a few ground rules or at least repeat them in clear language because i've been a touch unhappy about a few things. and i had to deal with ads and such. along with a couple refunds for unconnected calls and approximately 200 pieces of spam.
worst of all now i'm home and there's two weeks left before Donna comes home and so on top of the rest of it i miss her.
i have to pay attention to work because...hell i don't even know why at this point. i got out to the bank and to buy alka seltzer today but i think that's about it for me. i am just completely ick.
as long as i'm around you should come visit us at Bay City Blues Phone Sex for hot phone sex. another obligation done. i'll be around. i'll be the one hiding in the corner.
howard | | comments: Leave a comment |
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