It’s Just Justin

Quickie Update

Just a little update, more later.

• Political Research paper proposal got highest possible grade
• Photography critique went really well
• Photography professor wants me to teach a 20-40 minute session on how I do my style of photography!
• Moved the aquarium so that it does not sit directly over about $4000 in Nikon camera bodies/lenses good idea right?
• Re-arranging things in the apartment, OCD is making me crazy!
• Continuing to workout, no weight loss but can tell I’m building muscle
• I have lots of class this weekend, 12.5 hours of it!
• Got a free Chipotle burrito the other day with Micheal, then felt sick all day haha.  Oh well, tasty enough that it was worth it.
• Geoffrey is coming into town, Hurray!  Can’t wait to see him.  He’ll be staying at my apartment and I’ll be retreating to the condo.
• Carrie is coming into town!  I hope we can get some time to play with cameras :-)
• Still waiting to get that new Epson Printer… Waiting to see if they replace the Epson Stylus Pro 3800 for a 3880 or a 3900 (I want vivid magenta and roll paper!!!)

So that’s a quick blast update, kinda like Blogography’s Bullet Sunday :)

Tags: Bullet, Carrie, Class, Food, Free, Geoffrey, Micheal, Photography, Quick, Update

Always Busy

It seems like every week I’m flying out somewhere or otherwise taking a trip out of town.

Texas, Birmingham, Chicago, Kansas City, Saint Louis, San Francisco… This Monday I’m flying out to Raleigh North Carolina and giving a presentation to the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission and then Ryan will join me in Texas to spend a long weekend with my grandmother and grandfather at their home there outside of Austin.

I am really excited/nervous about the trip to Texas.  This is the first time that I have really integrated a boyfriend in my family life.  I have always wanted to do so with my past boyfriends (namely, only, Landon and Geoffrey) but a mixture of my fear and my family’s obvious distaste for that quelched any chances of something like this.

However, my family seems to just love Ryan, a lot.  I mean, why not?  He’s smart, funny, loving, cute, incredibly diligent, charming and so kind.  He has helped me grow and feel comfortable in my skin.  He is such a light in my life and my family must see that.  He emails back and forth with my grandmother and my parents ask about him everytime we talk on the phone.  How great is that?

So anyways, going to be busy traveling but it will be a lot of fun and let’s be honest, getting out of Columbia is about the best thing one can do in the summer!

Tags: Family, Geoffrey, Kansas City, Landon, Love, North Carolina, Raleigh North Carolina, Ryan, Society and Culture, St. Louis, Travel, Work

Take to the Lake 2008

I’m here at the Lake of the Ozarks with my fraternity brothers. We have been having a great time just shooting the shit, drinking, getting kicked out of bars, waking up early, going onto the lake, getting breakfast, bitching about stuff, bathing in the sun, go-carting through the storms, bar-b-quing, drinking some more, try our vices and… sitting by the pool.

Oh and today Geoffrey and I went shopping at the outlet mall.  We went to J. Crew, Brooks Brothers, The Gap, Banana Republic, you know the usual gay shopping excursion suspects.  I didn’t get too much but Geoffrey got quite a bit at Ralph Lauren.  I just got one pair of khaki pants haha.

I wasn’t actually looking forward so much to going. I have a lot of stuff to get done in not a lot of time, school, work, scheduling classes, traveling for work and for fun, it’s just a busy time. But boy and I glad that I went.

Last night we went to Risky’s, did some fun karaoke, drank the first hour free… I guess that’s what probably lead to us getting kicked out. Oops.

Today was more civil. I’m sad that I’m leaving tomorrow but I guess all great things must end. Acacia is in a new generation and in all the changes I guess I lost what I had with these brothers. I hope to hang out with my alumni brothers more often, especially those that live in Columbia.

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Tags: Acacia, Brotherhood, Drinking, Fraternity, Fun, Geoffrey, Lake of the Ozarks, Mem, Mizzou, Retreat, Scandalous

Scouts Concert

Last night, after enjoying a meatless bar-b-que with Geoffrey I went off to The Blue Note to see Chase’s band, Scouts, play.

I hung around for the first band to play, headed by a feisty lesbian (broad assumption), they rocked pretty hard.  Not my particular style, but I did enjoy their sound.  I had not been to The Blue Note in a while so that was fun in itself.  Not many people were around for the first band, but as they left the stage and Scouts went on to setup, people starting coming in through the woodwork.

I watched them set up their stuff.  Glad I didn’t have to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

They were awesome, of course.  Just for who cares, my friend Chase is the guy directly above this picture.  It’s pretty cool, like three of the guys in the band all play percussion, keyboard and guitar.  Something like that.  I thought that was pretty awesome, but maybe that’s cause i don’t play any of those things…

I went upstairs to waste some time while their broke down their stuff and saw a sign for the women’s restroom and it totally reminded me of how Chase says “ladies”.  So… I took a picture of it.  Of course I did.

 

The concert was great, I look forward to hearing them play again, hopefully a longer set.  I’m also hoping to do some photography for them, just like some studio type work, but we’d need to find a cool set/place and I’d probably need to get some new strobes (read, an SB-800 or two) to do it properly.  Course, for that money, I could get an AlienBees strobe light setup which would kick 20 SB-800’s collective asses!

 

Tags: Chase, Concert, Fun, Geoffrey, Just My Music, Money, Photography, The Blue Note, The Scouts

Six Flags!

Tags: Duff's, Fun, Geoffrey, Jenny, Jeremy, Ryan, Six Flags, Trip

What Can Go Wrong…

Ryan and I had this plan.  The plan was that we would have a couple of friends join us to St. Louis where Six Flags was “celebrating” GLBT Day.  The idea was, two hotel rooms, one car, four friends driving, having drinks with mutual and new friends Saturday night, waking up Sunday and picking up Jenny and going to the park for a fun filled day of rides and expensive bottles of water.

Well damn!

My car broke down.  A recalled part landed my car in the shop.  Coincidentally, that recalled part cost me money to get fixed…

Ryan’s car was too small for four people and the air conditioner is on the fritz so we investigated a rental car.  Every dealer was sold out.

Jeremy’s cousin volunteered to drive us, quite nice of her.  A few problems there.  That made a total of five people driving up in a car made for four people.  Never mind picking up Jenny the next day, never mind that we wouldn’t have a way to see our friends for drinks that night.  Never mind that the other three in the car would be under 21 and thus unable to go out with us.

We get about ten miles outside of town when I get a phone call from my dad that he has managed to get us a rental car.  Our driver reluctantly turns the car around.  (Not so secretly, I was thankful to get out of the car.  Between the packed backseat to the driving skills of our 17 year old driver… I was ready to get the hell out of there).

The car rental place does indeed have a car for us.  It’s a 2008 Ford Mustang GT.

You’ve got to be kidding.

$75 a day, 14-20mpg and you have to be 25 to rent it.  I’m 23.  Reluctantly, again, our driver brings us back to the condo.  Ryan and I decide we will just take his mustang.  It was really the only choice.  So we go inside the condo to pick up a few things… and notice the fabulous trail of chocolate tracked in by my flip flops.

For real?  OMG.

We work hard to clean up the mess, it was actually a bit fun, thanks mostly to Ryan’s eternally positive attitude.

So we clean up the floor, pick up our things, get some gas, buy a few drinks and drive.  We have fun in the car because… well we always have fun together.  If left on an otherwise deserted island and given the option to bring one thing with me, it would be Ryan.

He makes me laugh, he makes me see the brighter side of things.  He makes me feel whole.

Ryan would bring hydrogen peroxide.  He isn’t as romantic as I am in times like these.  wink wink

We make it to the hotel, we get dinner, and ultimately decide that driving 40 minutes to meet our already partially drunk friends at a bar and then have to find our way home would be a bad idea.  Plus our other three people are under 21.

After about an hour of talking to each other about me allowing myself to be trampled on by my friends and my exes, we head downstairs to the bar.  Ryan charms the bartender, I drink my vodka and Sprite.  It was tasty.  We again, have a wonderful time together.

We wake up, head to Jenny’s, get lost… get lost some more.  Get bagels, cheat the system at Panera, get to Jenny’s, eat said bagels, meet her roommate, meet her roommate’s boyfriend and his friend, head to Six Flags.  We forget the camera.  Holy shit.

About the park later.

After the day at the park, we went back to Jenny’s, took a nap, took a shower, and headed out to see Geoffrey for dinner.  Got lost, then we got really lost.  Then we made it.

This weekend has convinced me that Ryan and I have to get a Garmin, or at the least, I’ll definitely have to get the new iPhone 3G with built in GPS.  Holy hell.

Tags: Car rental, Chadd, Driving, Ford Mustang, Geoffrey, Jenny, Jeremy, Six Flags, St. Louis, Transportation, Ugh, WTF?

Bill Clinton Visits MizzouRec

I met Beau and Chadd at the Hillary Clinton rally yesterday here at Mizzou. Hill’s wasn’t there but Bill went in her place. He gave a fantastic speech and just really sold Hillary. She’s got my vote come Super Tuesday!

It was is crazy to think that this guy lead us to America’s strongest years since I have been alive and that afterwards working for so many philanthropic groups.

I bumped into several friends at the even, Geoff, John, Chad… and I even saw Mark and his beau Sam.

After his wonderful speech, Bill greeted the crowd signing books and fliers and, well anything people could get autographed.

I actually got to shake his hand a few times and even got a hug! Yes, I got to hug Bill Clinton.

I can die happy now. ;-)

As we were leaving the event, KOMU took time to interview Chadd and Beau.

The full photostream is available here and a slide show with two hundred shots (I was fighting 1256 people and about 40 press…) can be viewed over here.

Tags: Awesome, Beau, Chadd, Clinton, Geoffrey, Mizzou, Politics

Forge and Whine

Last night Chadd, Beau, Justin and I went out to Forge and Vine here in Columbia. The last time I went there was with Geoff and let’s just say, we didn’t have the best experience.

Geoff and I went to F&V to try something different last spring. We intended to dine in, try out some wines and maybe write up a review on the place. When we arrived to F&V, the hostess insisted we sit upstairs, they had already shut down the dining room, more or less. This was at prime dining time mind you, so we went up the stairs (btw, large wood carved bears = no so classy, plastic fish and tackle on the walls = atrocious).

Our waitress upstairs was a bit of an idiot and a whole lot of bitchy. We had two gin and tonics and ended up leaving for Addison’s.

So last night I was actually going to eat there and hopefully have a better experience. I walk in with Chadd and Beau (Justin was coming later) and bump into, guess who, none other than Geoff! We hug, he forgets to introduce me to his new boyfriend and we talk about the last time we were there (here).

I order a martini as does Chadd, Beau gets a “top shelf” margarita. Our martinis come to us in stemless cosmo glasses (available from World Market for $7.95). While these might be cute and great for parties at home (don’t have to worry so much about them breaking or toppling over) at a restaurant I want real martini glasses with my real martini. You grasp these glasses with your hand which heats up your martini, so much for shaking that over ice…

So I have a tepid Cherry Tart Martini and Chadd has a cool Cosmopolitan. According to Beau, the only thing about his margarita that is top shelf is the price. In fact, he compared it to the $2.50 margaritas from El Maguay’s (just for $9.00).

So the drinks are not so great. My pasta was ok, the sauce was a bit heavy and the vegetables too few (especially since it was a vegetable dish…). At least our service was good, very cute waiter, though he could use some Invisiline… but that is neither here nor there.

Unfortunately, Geoff’s service wasn’t quite as pleasant. I guess the manager heard them complaining so much that he gave the entire table free dessert. Damn it(!), we should have complained some more!

Slightly ironic, we left The Forge and Vine for drinks at Addison’s where we payed half the price for twice the drink. Another notable tid bit, the entire time we were at F&V, we seemed to keep going back to talking about how good other places in town were, not a good sign haha.

Oh, and BTW, they advertise themselves as a wine bar with a huge wine selection. How about this one… When I asked about the wines, he said, “What color do you prefer?”. What color? WHAT COLOR?! Seriously, if this was a serious wine bar, the “color” of the wine would never have come up. You don’t call wines by their color, yes there are “White” wines and “Red” wines, but their are also “Rosé” and Porte and Zins… Are we supposed to call these “Pink”, “Dark” and… well WTF?  Zin’s come in several varieties.

Let’s not call wines by colors and maybe let’s have more than a few wines by the glass.  I don’t really consider it a wine bar or a restaurant with much of a wine selection if you must purchase the entire bottle.  That’s just lazy and cheap.

And for goodness sake… get that shit off your walls.

Tags: Beau, Chadd, Drinks, Food, Geoffrey, Out, Rant, Restaurant, Review, WTF?

What To Do…?

Let’s get a solid back story here before I continue with the current situation.

I moved back to Columbia and brainstormed with Jim this great idea that we could move in together in this three bedroom apartment off campus with his boyfriend David. I didn’t really know David but he seemed like a nice enough guy, plus he was from Texas so I liked him that much more

Things worked out just fine for a good while. I mean, I had to do most if not all of the cleaning and every once in a while David would drink too much and be a little annoying. Nothing really bothered me too much except that I never got to hang out with Jim.

When I first moved in, I was super busy with work, I had about 40 hours a week over at Starbucks on top of class work. When my eyes got fucked up, again, I had to cut my hours to around 12-20 per week and then further when I got sick from the other stuff.

At one point I was pretty damn sick, I even had to take a cab to the emergency room. This was followed by three surgeries and some annoying preparatory and recovery procedures. Throughout all of this I never asked for a ride or anything special, except one time I did ask Jim if he could bring me to the hospital for my surgery, unfortunately he had class and couldn’t, that’s fine, I understood completely and never asked again.

Right before David moved out to finish his graduate requirements in Houston, he had this big drunken fit. He called me an asshole and many other mean and untrue things. It seemed then that he thought I didn’t want him to be with Jim and that I wanted to be with Jim.

Oh yeah, Jim and I dated years ago, for a few months. It never progressed to anything as serious as Jim’s last two relationships and we had both moved on completely, absolutely completely.

Jim and David moved out completely last… Saturday. Jim had asked if I could get the cable box to Mediacom that Friday or Thursday if he didn’t make it in time. I let him know that I would try but my last two days, Monday and Tuesday, in Columbia were already packed with work during Mediacom’s hours of operation and errands I had to run to get my shit together with my new apartment, work and planning for the rest of the summer. On Tuesday I literally had every hours planned out with appointments, ask Kevin, Geoff, Curtis, Chadd, my family…

Furthermore, I had told Jim that he could take it back whenever he wanted as all of my television watching was now done with my AppleTV. I only watched regular television in my bedroom or otherwise basic cable broadcast, I didn’t use the cable box function, at all.

Tuesday night I got out of work at 12:30am (which is actually Wednesday morning of course) and Geoff was kind enough to pick me up at Columbia Autobody about 10 miles north of town around 1:00am and bring me home. I finished laundry, packed my stuff up and at 4:30 a bus picked me up to bring me to the Saint Louis Airport.

On Monday or perhaps early Tuesday, I told Jim that I might not be able to make it to Mediacom until I got back into town, which would be a Sunday, the 17th, Mediacom opens the next day, Monday. I won’t have my car until the afternoon on Monday and I work in the afternoon Monday so who knows when I will actually be able to pick up my car, probably Tuesday.

David sent me a text message tonight because he was mad that I didn’t make it to Mediacom.

I was immediately floored.  No one likes to get messages like that, especially when you feel that you are totally innocent of any wrongdoing.  Jim understood that I would try, but just as he had run out of time, I did not have the time.  I was stressed out about getting just my stuff done.  With a co-worker’s baby on the way, I had been given extra shifts, working as much as 14 hours a day on top of moving to my new place, planning and organizing trips to Austin, Houston, Indianapolis, Chicago, San Francisco and Santa Rosa, New York, Washington DC, Nashville and South Carolina.  Plus trying to figure out how I would pay for these trips and still afford to finish off my apartment.

Despite what some people think, I’m not rich and I don’t get everything I want from my parents.  If I can’t afford something right away, I save up my paychecks and wait until I can.  I’m very good at saving the money before products come out so I can get them as they arrive, such as the AppleTV and Airport Extreme and my iPods and such.

I called Jim to apologize if I had upset him and let him know that I would get it returned as soon as I could.  I also told him that David had sent me that really mean, unwarranted text message.  The phone service out here in the hill country isn’t so great and we got cut off twice, through kind words.  He apologized for David which isn’t something he should have done or had to do.  Jim had written me earlier saying if I could just get it done when I get back, OK.

Then I got another message from David.

It just never ends.  I’m not sure what to do.  Micheal told me to just ignore David and not respond to him, save the friendship I have with Jim and forget that David and I had ever had this one sided conversation.

I have never responded to David’s accusations, his quips and whips.  I have never voiced my opinions of David to Jim and have never actively done anything to David.  He has used my computer to log into his email on Gmail.  He has printed from my printer or at least taken ALL of the paper out of my printer four times, the last time being their last day in Columbia.  Nothing like pulling an all-nighter to find your printer out of paper right before you have to run to class and turn in your report.

This summer I have been really enjoying work.  I have been hanging out with great old friends and making new ones.  I have made more new friends this semester than I ever expected; Ryan, Beau, Scott, Chadd, Justin, Nick, Carrie, John, Justin, Justin, Michelle, Jessica2, Scott…

I’m going to be in Washington DC for some eleven days visiting Landon and experiencing the Fourth of July at our Capital.  I really hope to hang out with Jim while I’m there and to spend some time exploring the city with Geoff when he arrives later in the week.  I am going to have a blast hanging out with Landon and his friends and expect to share those experiences with Jim.  We have been great friends through so much for so long.  We have helped each other through heartbreak, through depression and through some soul searching.  We have shared so many wonderful experiences and have grown up together into completely different people than the ones we were when we first met in 2003.

I love you Jim.I don’t think I’m a loser.  I think I’m a really nice guy with a winner personality and lots of wonderful friends like many of you reading my blog right now.  I don’t think I would have you as friends if I were a “fucking prick” a “loser” an “asshole”.

Now that that is out of the way, I’m going to get some sleep.  I have a busy day ahead of myself.

Tags: Beau, Carrie, Chadd, David, Facebook, Geoffrey, Hate, Jerkface, Jim, John, Justin, Landon, Michelle, Money, Nick, Ryan, Sad, Scott, Ugh, WTF?

Now Time to Bitch

Ok, I gave you a somewhat muted post, now I just wanna get some shit out.

• Don’t tell me we are going to hang out and not call me back, much less hang out with me.
• Don’t tell me you don’t like something about me that was month, years ago and not present.  Why would I care now?  What does it matter?
• Don’t tell me you really like me and then blow me off, you obviously don’t really like me.
• Don’t tell me we should hang out and you miss being around me and then hang out with my roommate instead.
• Don’t act like I’m not in the same room as you.
• Don’t blame everything on your period.  A menstrual cycle is rough, sure, I’ll give you that, but it isn’t a month long and you can take a god-damned Mydol you know.
• Don’t tell me you find me attractive if you don’t.
• Don’t tell me to call you if you know you aren’t going to answer your phone.
• Don’t act like you want to date me and then go out with another guy.
• Don’t schedule me for only 15 hours a week and then complain about availability when there are people wanting hours and you just won’t give them to them.
• Don’t fucking wait for the light to turn yellow before driving through the intersection, you really slow down my day.
• Don’t ignore me.
• Don’t send me anymore credit card applications.  I have too many cards already.
• Don’t push me to drink alcohol.  It won’t make you more attractive.
• Don’t dance if you can’t.
• Don’t sing if you can’t, it isn’t even funny at this point.
• Don’t keep dating the same guy and then crying when he breaks up with you, again and again.
• Don’t judge me for the music I listen to.  If I cared what you thought, I’d ask.
• Don’t leave me annoying, long-winded voice messages.
• Don’t forget that we used to be best friends.
• Don’t forget that we used to be in love.
• Don’t think that this is referring to you.
• Don’t think this is about someone else, it isn’t.
• Don’t get drunk all the time.
• Don’t judge people so much, and no, you aren’t fat so stop acting like you are.
• Don’t be so dramatic, you aren’t that special and if you were, we’d have you admitted.
• Don’t fear love so fucking much, just let it happen.
• Don’t think you are better than me because you got a promotion.  That just means they sucked you in and you won’t ever make a solid living.
• Don’t forget that in five years I will be making triple what you make.
• Don’t let your thoughts invade mine, it gets me in a fit.
• Don’t throw basketballs at my car, it costs me a-fucking-lot of money to get that shit fixed.
• Don’t be such a whore, spreading your seed isn’t safe or wholesome.
• Don’t have such low self-esteem.
• Don’t think so highly of yourself, your ego is way outta control.
• Don’t act like you’re right when you aren’t, arguing isn’t fun, especially with you.
• Don’t punch through bathroom doors.
• Don’t drop out of my sublease, you bastard.
• Don’t stress me out so much, I get all weird and make posts like this.
• Don’t tell me you love me and then take it back the next day, that’s just trashy.
• Don’t be such a bitch to me
• Don’t manage a store if you can’t handle it.
• Don’t forget all the times I did something for you.
• Don’t forget my sacrifices.
• Don’t forget my mistakes, being here is one of them.

There, I feel a little better.

Tags: Bitch, David, Geoffrey, Jim, Kevin, Kristin, Landon, Matt, Patrick, Pissed, Starbucks, Vandalism, WTF?