MyTunes Monday: How the Heart Grows Wicked

40 Days & 40 Nights: 2012

Today is the first day of Lent. This means it's time to give something up until after Easter. While I'm not Catholic, I still do this every year. It's an idea that I was introduced to during high school when a friend of mine (who IS Catholic) mentioned it. I thought it was a cool idea. This year I'm giving up pretty much the same stuff that I gave up last year which also serves the function of helping me lose the weight I've gained in the last week or two:

-Pizza

-Sweets

-Fried foods

-Various other knick-knacks

These may seem like easy "sacrifices," but I'm constantly surrounded by temptation. Last year was successful so hopefully this year will be as well. I WILL get my abs back DAMMIT!!!

Winter Arrives, Another Team Member, & Other Ramblings

It's been a very mild winter with few exceptions. There was an abrupt interruption of that yesterday when we got 7 inches of snow. Being in the mountains, I guess it had to happen  sooner or later. I managed to get some pictures yesterday and today, which I'll be posting in the next few days. As I was taking some of these pictures, I was crossing the car park which I realized was a sheet of ice. Unfortunately, I realized this too late and proceeded to fall flat on my ass. I've been eating way too much later so there was plenty of cushioning and no harm done...except to my pride. Luckily, no one saw (unless they were inside where I couldn't see them, but whatever). The funny thing is that it's supposed to be in the 60's on Thursday and fairly mild between now and then, so this stuff shouldn't be around for very long. Just as well. I get tired of seeing it after day 3.

For those who haven't been paying attention, Team Gay has another open member (wow, that sounds suggestive). In the last week o two, Matt Bomer (from a show called White Collar, which you should be watching) officially came out. I say officially because I think his situation is one where people in the know pretty much knew. I mean seriously, he has a partner and three kids. That's hard to keep a complete secret. What I think is funny here is that a lot of (primarily) straight people are surprised by this whereas many (primarily) gay people (primarily men) had known for some time. I remember hearing about him possibly being gay no less than a year and a half ago. A girl I work with mentioned him coming out and I told her that I had known for a LOOOOOOONG time. He's in a film called Magic Mike about a bunch of male strippers which I guess I'm going to have to see.

And lastly, I think I'm coming down with something. I woke up this morning with a sore throat. It feels slightly better now (2 hours later) and I'm a little snotty, but that's probably because I was outside in the cold for a bit...twice. hopefully it doesn't get much worse. I've managed to go this far through the season without getting too sick. I'll try to get ahead of whatever this might be and mitigate the symptoms.

And with that, I think I'm all caught up since my last post.

MyTunes Monday: Inside of Love

I put this off by a day for obvious reasons. I hope everyone out there has someone to share the day with. Happy Valentines' Day to all!

Super Bowl XLVI

I don't remember Roman numerals so well, but that's supposed to be 46. Anyway, there are some thoughts that I had while watching this game. Here are the bullet points:

THE GAME

-Seriously? You start out with a safety? Fail Patriots. Epic fail.

-I heard a girl yell "Let's go Buffalo!" where I was watching and...I just felt bad for her.

-I know the puppy Bowl is adorable and all, but is there any commercial value to its existence? How many people actually watch that?

-They kept showing Super Bowl rings from years passed and they just looked tacky and pretentious.

-The Giants were so close to sacking Tom Brady SO many times. It's like they forgot one of the fundamental of defense: a little thing I like to call TACKLING!!! It's a wonder they actually won the game.

-While I watch the whole game, I feel that had I missed the first half, I wouldn't have missed that much. Indicative of this is the fact that the first half ended 10-9 Patriots. It was pretty much a barn-burner though.

HALFTIME

-In general, I don't like Super Bowl halftime shows. They're generally over-hyped and lame/boring.

-There were a bunch of artists that I just don't care about (or even know who they are).

-I felt like I was on an acid trip (not that I know what that actually feels like).

-I'm not much of a Madonna fan (I know, I'm a bad gay), but they did the one Madonna song I love: Like A Prayer. I guess part of the appeal has always been it pissed of the theocrats when it came out (probably still does), but even that aside, it's great. So is Vogue

COMMERCIALS

-This year's commercial had a record amount of gay. This is definitely not a complaint, just pointing that out.

-What was it with those Coke commercials and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony? Someone in their marketing department must be a band geek (P.S. band geeks are awesome).

-I'm a little short on this segment for 2 reasons. A) The general consensus is that this year's ads were...mediocre. Some were okay, other were just blah. None were awesome (although the best for me was the one where the dog was trying to lose weight, but that one turned weird at the end). B) I'm one of those strange people that watches the game for THE GAME.

For the record, I was gunning for a win by the Giants despite the can of whoop-ass they served Green Bay in the playoffs. What can I say, I was feeling magnanimous. However, I would have won regardless, since a Giants loss would have shut the mouth of one of my coworkers, who I have mentioned here before. But the Giants won it so good for the NFC. Meanwhile, this is how Patriots Tight End Rob Gronkowski dealt with his team's lose:

Gronkowski (left)

MyTunes Monday: Stuntman

One Year Ago Today...

A Banner Two Months

As you may or may not know, I have another blog, which is where most of my blogging time goes (you can find that blog HERE). I started a it a month or two after starting this one. It's very different from this one in that it isn't a personal blog, it's a political one. Most of what I talk about there is LGBT issues, as well as more generally political stuff (elections, the economy, and various other things). That one gets most of my attention because what I hope to do is parlay that into a career in politics, not necessarily a career in political blogging, but maybe something of a resume builder for some other job in the not-too-distant future.

I've been steadily chugging along with that blog, but the last two months have been really (and somewhat surprisingly) great. I went fro averaging around 1,000 page views to getting about 1,600 in December and over 2,500 in January. The work that I put into it - hours of combing through articles and media sites, tons of writing, and advertising through my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts - seems to be paying off somewhat.

I got an additional boost in page views today. I site that I visit on a regular basis, AfterElton.com, usually has a daily meme come out in the morning. Since the person behind it is on holiday this week, today's meme is more of a crowd-sourced deal where readers find stories to share with fellow readers. I took this opportunity to put up a couple of stories from my other blog and I have had a lot of people take a look. Hopefully I can translate that into longer-term viewership.

One thing I would like to see is more comments on that blog (and this one, hint hint ;). Feedback, so long as it is constructive, is a good thing. I would like to see what people who read these blogs have to say about the issues that are brought up. If I'm wrong (or right) about something, I'd like to know either way. So that's one of my goals: to get some more followers, comments, and viewers. Another mission for this month is to start a Facebook page for my other blog in service of those other goals. I should have done that ages ago, but it just hasn't happened yet. I think some increased exposure would be a good thing, especially when tackling issues where people may think that they're alone (i.e. bullying and such).

Other than that, I'm at a bit of a loose end in term of original content. This week I did a fair amount of writing, more so than I have done since I graduated university actually. I'm a little out of ideas, not to mention mentally drained. Usually writing opportunities just present themselves, which is what happened with a lot of this week's topics (i.e. reviewing January's advances in marriage equality).

That's pretty much all that was on my mind. If you made it to the end of this post, here is your reward: EYE CANDY!!!

Denver Broncos Wide Receiver Eric Decker