Happy Anniversary! And So Much More!

On March 23rd DJ and I celebrated our 8th anniversary of our commitment ceremony. In September will be our 9th year together, but the 23rd was the day that we committed ourselves to one another in front of all our friends and family. I was going on 41 and he had just turned 21!! Wow he was young...

Anyway, 8 years later and so much has transpired since then. 8 different living locations, one hospital visit, diagnosed with diabetes, three grandkids, 4 jobs for myself, 6 for DJ, death of a grandparent, living with his mother, and now Adam's battle with Hodgkins. But through it all we have had each other. Yes, there were a few times we had some disagreements, and it has not always been a bed of roses, but over-all I think our relationship has been a very strong one from the beginning. Our mutual respect, love and passion for one another has survived all of those things, and the mis-steps... we have been able to work through them. So on to the next 8 and then the next 8 and so on.

Happy Anniversary DJ, I love you and thank you for loving me!

40 Toys ~ Spirograph

OMG!! Have you seen this yet? The online SPIROGRAPH!!

This toy filled hours of my young life. I was the Spirograph artist of my family. Mom would even post them on the fridge for all the world to see.

I had no idea however that I was playing with this:


Spirograph is a geometric drawing toy that produces mathematical curves of the variety technically known as hypotrochoids and epitrochoids. The term has also been used to describe a variety of software applications that display similar curves, and applied to the class of curves that can be produced with the drawing equipment (so in this sense it may be regarded as a synonym of hypotrochoid). The name is a registered trademark of Hasbro, Inc.

Spirograph was quite simple, it worked with a set of plastic gears and other shapes such as rings, triangles, or straight bars. There were several sizes of gears and shapes, and all edges had teeth to engage any other piece. For instance, smaller gears fit inside the larger rings, but also can engage the outside of the rings so that they rotate around the inside or along the outside edge of the rings.

To use it, a sheet of paper is placed on a heavy cardboard backing, and one of the plastic pieces is pinned to the paper and cardboard. Another plastic piece is placed so that its teeth engage with those of the pinned piece. For example, a ring may be pinned to the paper and a small gear placed inside the ring – the actual number of arrangements possible by combining different gears was, as a kid infinite. The point of a pen is placed in one of the holes in the moving piece. As the moving part is moved the pen traces out a curve.

The pen is used both to draw and provide locomotive force; some practice is required before Spirograph can be operated without disengaging the fixed and moving pieces. (That took me while...) More intricate and unusual-shaped patterns may be made through the use of both hands, one to draw and one to guide the pieces.

By playing this game as a kid I learned that math didn't suck. I always hated math, it was by far my worst subject. Yet, the gorgeous patterns you created were based on good old math. The fact fact that you could vary the size of your drawings by using different holes on the geared wheel was an almost transcendental bit of knowledge. You walked away realizing that math could be applied in ways that were pretty cool.

I started out with just the simple Spirograph game, but soon advanced to the SUPER-Spirograph in no time!

I wonder if Spirograph is still for sale, if not I can just play the online game.

40 Toys ~ Fisher Price People

I got the idea for this posting, (and hopefully some more in the future) from my blogging friend Steve over at Defying Despondency. He turned 40 and is looking back at 40 toys in those 40 years that made his life a little more exciting. As I read this posting I began to remember these certain toys that my brother and I would play for hours in the winter months. Well I played all year round, he would not be caught dead in the house playing games in the summer.


The toys were actually our youngest brothers, but we played with them more than what he did. It was my first introduction to playing "God" so to speak, and it also explains my fascination with WoW and SIMS today.


It was those cute little (first made of wood, then to plastic) Fisher Price People! OMG we would set up houses for them, use tonka cars for their modes of transportation, have weddings, funerals and even birthday parties for them. Families would all have names and they would some how always be related. The children would grow up, get married and have families of their own.


Now, remember there are almost five years between my brother and myself, so he would have been about 5 or 6 when we played this game. I would have been about ten or eleven. Hell, I remember playing this game when I was 13 or 14 even!


okay, that is too much information....

Flashback

Ocassionaly I like to retreat into my memory vault and share with you on my blog something of my past. It could be the recent past, or way back there in my vault behind the spider webs and huge trunks. It gives you, my readers (all three of you) a little insight on my reality.

But for today's FLASHBACK, we will go back into my childhood. Which was at least 10 years back. Remember that first crush? How it felt every time you saw that person and how you became all fidgety inside? That's where I'm going today, back in time to my first crush.

Now let me remind you that this was in the mid to late 60's and I lived in Middle America, and I didn't even know what the word gay meant at the time, but all I knew was that I felt funny every time I was around this guy. And it was a good funny. (if you know what I mean) It was also the first time I realized that I was different than most of the other boys I knew.

His name was Sam. He was in my class and sat over by the door, next to where the pencil sharpener was bolted to the wall. Sam was everything I wasn't in 3rd grade. Cute, popular, with blue eyes and blonde hair. At recess he could do it all, play baseball, tether ball, and boy could he swing on those monkey bars. Every time he would walk past me I felt a quiver run through me. At first I didn't know what it was, but then I realized that I was thinking about him at home, and even during Christmas break. Of course when people asked if I had a girlfriend I would say, "Yeah, her name is Sam, short for Samantha"

Yes, even in third grade there was denial. But Sam was the shit! I watched him, I fantasized about him. I wanted to BE him! As the years progressed and my yearnings for Sam increased I would take classes that I knew he would be in, just so I could see him. In ninth grade he actually joined choir and his position on the risers was RIGHT NEXT TO ME! I remember that he smelled so good. But Sam never gave me the time of day. Sometimes he'd say "hey" but most of the time he'd just grunt.

But as fate would have it, we moved away my sophomore year and I lost contact with Sam. Never acting out on my urges to seduce him. But then a few years ago...

I came across a newspaper article in the local paper. It was a story about a father of three boys that was active in little league and how he coached all three of his sons from little league into high school and now one of his sons was being drafted by a major league baseball team.

You guessed it! That dad was none other than my Sam. And down at the bottom of the article was a picture of my beloved Sam.

Time was not good to Sam. He lost his thick golden hair, and it was replaced by skin, he was bald. His blue eyes were covered by very thick glasses, and his beautiful athletic physique had been taken over by McDonald's. He looked as though he weighed a good 250 lbs. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not as shallow as all that, but this was my first crush. He was to stay young and beautiful for ever in my mind. But instead he aged like all of us.

And now, I look better than he does...
That's what he gets for never giving me the time of day back than.

Flashback #2

This month's Flashback is going WAY back. I mean way back to 1964. In 1964 I was only 4 years old, you do the math...Yes that's it 42 years ago. You get an A.

My family at the time consisted of myself, my mother and my father. My father during those years was not one that was ready to deal with responsibilities of being a father or a husband and was in and out of work. So for some reason, he decided to move to Texas. His brother was stationed there in Amarillo, Texas to be exact so we headed West.

Now you would think that only being 4 years old my recollection of our trip and time in Texas would be to say the least, very vague. Actually the opposite is true. I remember parts of it vividly.

1. The heat: It was always hot there. I can not remember any time there that I was not hot. We stayed with my uncle and his family (Three girls) and also my aunt and grandfather went with us. All of the girls were older than me but one who is my cousin Barb. She was barely a year old at the time. Now imagine a boy of 4 living in a home with 3 older girls who loved to antagonize little boys. To stay cool we would take showers. Myself and my aunt who was 13 at the time, and Barb's two older sisters who were 9 and 7. We would don our swimming attire and jump into the shower. Why we didn't have a wading pool like most people is beyond me.

2. The Spiders: Oh my God, they were HUGE. And of course being afraid of them my cousins and aunt would terrorize me with them. They even had me believing that the tumbleweeds (which were of mass quantities there)were huge giant boy eating spiders. This would cause me to go running and screaming from them to the nearest adult for protection.

3. Water Towers: Amarillo must have had an abundance of water (the daily showers) as there were many water towers around where we lived. But to me I thought (thanks to my cousins and aunt again) they were actually alien spaceships that kidnapped little boys for testing. So of course I rarely wanted to go outside.

4. The Red Dirt. This I remember more vividly than anything else. The color of the dirt was so different from what I was used to in Ohio. It was literally red. I know why now of course, but then I was told that Texas was closer to hell, and that when my cousins and Aunt were making mud pies and digging into the dirt they were actually digging to the devil so that he would come and take me to hell with him. Again I would go off screaming for my mother.

After that experience it is a wonder that I came out somewhat normal.
You wonder why my cousins and my aunt loved terrorizing me so?
Jealousy, pure jealousy!!

Flashback #1: A Memorial Day

It seems like I am always trying to find something to blog about and come up short on ideas or events in my life that are interesting enough. But as I think back to some of my past escapades I can think of a lot of things to write about. So for those of you that read my blog, on every last Thursday of the month I will post a FLASHBACK . A post about something that happened or something that I did in the recent past or in the not so recent past.

With the Memorial Day holiday coming up this weekend I thought I would share a flashback to a past Memorial Day. Complete with pictures and interesting side notes.

This flashback goes back just a few years to Memorial Day, 2000 . Veruca and Silver were still together, and I had not yet met DJ. At the time I had just moved in with Veruca and Silver at their condo and we were all working for a law firm downtown. They through an impromptu grill out and invited some co-workers. KareBear was there (prior to her marriage) , her friend T came along, Jodafina was also there with her room mate at the time. I do not recall her name but she made the movie Single White Female look tame!
But the best part of the day was the guy I invited. Sad to say he was straight (albeit somewhat curious) but very cute. And again my age is showing as I can not remember his name either. But not that it matters, as I have pictures (some of which I will not post...hehehe).

I invited him down to my room to show him some pictures on my computer. (really that was my intent!) He instead wanted something a little more than just looking at pictures. It may have been due to the fact that the pictures I was wanting to show him were mostly of scantly clad men, and he really wasn't interested. But he looked at them, at least for a while. But then he pulled out some 'tobacco" and proceeded to light one up right there in my bedroom. Aha! I thought, ...an opportunity! But unfortunately all I got was a peek. And another picture to add to my collection.

Let's just say that this Memorial Day was a little more memorable than most.