This is where I bitch.

I was thrilled to hear that Wausau Wisconsin might actually be having a Gay Pride parade this year. I've never heard of one being in central or northern Wisconsin in a smaller city like that. An anti-gay blog posted links to the mayor's email, and all of the council members so that their followers could email them and tell them not to support it. I grabbed them all and thanked and congratulated them for their support. *grin*

I almost posted on the blog a thank you for providing the emails so I could support it. But I decided I didn't want to deal with the comments, hate and wank.


Here is my email and the addresses, if anyone else wants to support it as well:

I heard about the possible Gay Pride event coming to Wausau and couldn't be happier to hear that a city in Northern Wisconsin is moving towards a more open and accepting attidute.

Thank you for your support on this event, you are showing how city leaders should act. Support of ALL of your residents should be your top priority.

Great Job!

Jason Kivela
(originally from Brantwood, WI)


emails (which were on the city's public page, so I have no qualms sharing them):
mayor@mail.ci.wausau.wi.us; bill.nagle@ci.wausau.wi.us; romey.wagner@ci.wausau.wi.us; Dave.Nutting@ci.wausau.wi.us; jimbrezinski@charter.net; garygisselman@yahoo.com; keene.winters@ci.wausau.wi.us; lisa.rasmussen2@ci.wausau.wi.us; Karen.Kellbach@ci.wausau.wi.us; david.oberbeck@ci.wausau.wi.us; sherry.abitz@co.marathon.wi.us; Robert.Mielke@ci.wausau.wi.us

Softball is going well. Last week we lost pretty badly, but that team had a lot, A LOT, of really good hitters. 70% of the team could hit the ball to the fence. And since a decent amount of our players are new, that lead to large gap in our score. But in general we had a good time.

Last night we actually won. Last season we only won one game and that was by forfit. We have a pretty strong in field now. The outfield needs a bit of work, developing skills, but we were short a few people last night too. I pitched well and had some good hits. The team in general seems a lot of fun, both the people we already knew and the new ones. I think it will be a fun season.

I did hurt my leg a bit. I had pulled my left calf on Sunday at volleyball. And then sprinting around bases made it worse. My entire calf feels bruised.

I finished Glimpses, the Nightrunner shorts by Lynn Flewelling today. I picked it up with birthday money. It was good. Nice back story insights to the characters. I've been wanting it for a while now, happy I picked it up. And the preview of the next book was exciting, looks like it's less "one of the two boys gets kidnapped," and more like the stories about them I like.

rating: A

I also picked up the Supernatual Anime series. 21 episodes! I've watched the first one. It seems to be mostly rewrites of season 1 and 2 episodes, with some new ones as well. I wish Jensen had voiced Dean for all of it, but it was good. And having Dean doing the leg-guitar pose from Eye of the Tiger as the closing screen was great. I'm looking forward to the rest of them. I'll post another review about that at the end.

We are caught up with American Horror Story. It's pretty good. Not too gory, which I don't like. Zachery Quitino is pretty awesome as a bitchy queen. We've also started Grimm and Once Upon a Time. We'll have to see if we keep with Grimm, need more episodes to tell. Once Upon a Time is engaging.

Yesterday was a good day. BFF Becky came into town with family, and after ditching them we did some shopping down on State Street and had a nice lunch at Mermaid Cafe. Then we hit the Charter Center Stage concert (I feel like a tool promoting them, oh well). The concert was free, at the island at the Alliant Energy Center. We saw the opener band, Sunderland, some local kids who won the Charter battle of the bands. They were fine, but like 12--one looked like a Weasley cousin. Then I went to pick up Paul from after he got out of work, grabbed exarian and we rejoined Becky to see Fritz and the Tantrums (the band Becky was most interested in). We had missed Plain White T's. Last was Panic! At the Disco. They were great, good show. It rained a bit, was cold and windy, but fun. Then we had a late night dinner at Glass Nickel.

It was great seeing Becky, we don't hang out enough.

Later today is volleyball, looking forward to it, being feeling very sluggish lately.

Congrats to Zachary Quinto for coming out, though I guess the article will be out next week. All the cool Sci-fi actors are gay these days. :)

Watching Star Trek reboot in honor of the announcement.

BIG NEWS!

Sean Maher (i.e Dr. Simon Tam) came out as gay today.

http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/09/26/firefly-playboy-club-actor-sean-maher-comes-out-ga/

I'm not sure how I feel about this. Excited but a bit... snubbed? No, not sunubbed, not mad/upset/angry at all, more... shocked. I've been reading his tweets about his children for a long time now, but it never occurred to me that he never mentioned a wife. I'm looking forward to finding out who his partner is.

It has been a long day.

(We might get TMI here, you've been warned.)

On Monday I had a sore on my nose where my glasses rest. This happens, so I ignore it. Yesterday my face gets kind of sore and my teeth become really sensitive. The sore on my nose starts to discarge a bit of fluid. After talking with Paul we decide I should have it looked at. So I plan to call the doctor today. This morning I wake up with the entire left side of my face swollen. I look like I've had a stroke. My eye is kind of swollen shut as well as my lip, making it look droopy. I decide to call in to work, saying I'll be late. I head off to urgent care. It doesn't open until 9. What part of "urgent" means "opens at 9am"? So I go into work for an hour, since I'm up and about anyway and then go back to the clinic. Turn out I have shingles. So I'm semi contagious, so I can't go into work the rest of the week. But with one coworker working off site at a conference, I can't in good conscious leave all of my work and the one who is gone to the one guy left. No one is the cruel. Plus I don't have any sick time yet. So I worked remotely, dialing in via VPN and talking to people on my cell phone. It was slow, but I got things done. And I'll do that tomorrow. I should be fine by Monday. However, this dose mean that I can't go to Milwaukee with exarian for the beer fest on Saturday. Which blows.

On good news, our NOH8 photos have been posted! So I have a new default icon. I decided to retire the cabana boy I've had since I joined LJ.

Here is my NOH8 pic.

Here is one of Paul and I.

And here is me this morning, swollen and sad looking.

I took the day off and we went to Milwaukee for the NOH8 photo shoot. Got there around 3:45, got our temp tattoos, was done by 5. We each got a solo and then had one taken together. he takes like 10-15 pictures and they will pick the one they make all pretty. Paul had a plan for his pose, but once you get up there the photographer just tells you what to do, and you do it. It was fun though. Our photos will be online and available for us in like 8 weeks. I'll post the link and then turn mine into an avatar for things. Not sure which icon to ditch here though.

After we stopped by Becky and Drew's for a short visit and then watched Tangled with Jess and Lari. Cute movie, awesome chameleon. Tomorrow is Blythe's WoW grillout, we'll show up and be confused by the WoW talk.

I hope things went smoothly at work today, I'd hate to have either of my coworkers have to deal with any of my barely understood clients.

July 4th ended up being a fun day. We slept in, I got up 8ish to feed and walk the puppy, and then went back to sleep until 11. Paul slept until 1, and I got caught up on email, blogs and RSS. Around 3 we drove to Wisconsin Dells and took the Original Dells Ducks tour, which I had always wanted to do. The Ducks are amphibious eight wheeled vehicles, and the tour goes through some small canyons and down the Wisconsin river for a bit. The commentary by the tour guide / driver was pretty amusing too. It was a bit pricey, but fun. Then we went to downtown Wis. Dells for smoothies and shakes and then headed home. We considered doing the zip line tour, which looked fun, but was almost $90 a person, and thus more expensive than we wanted.

After we got back into town (it's like a 30-45 minute drive) we met up with exarian at the East side Great Dane for drinks and dinner and watch between 3 and 4 different local firework shows. The bar is on the top of a high hill that lets you overlook the entire city of Madison. It was great chatting with her again, been too long.

After that we probably should have gone home, but we were enjoying our time together, so Paul suggested we head to Club 5 for a benefit drag show. However after we got there we realized it was actually the previous night, so instead we stopped at the Shamrock for a few drinks. We were out a bit later than I'd have liked, but it's not a big deal, I survived.

Nice day, good to spend time doing something fun with my BF, rather than just day to day things.

The weekend was nice. Drove up Friday with my cousin Nate and his GF Courtney. Saturday was pretty low key, saw mom, dad, and grandma, cleaned for the party a bit, feel asleep on the boat for two hours and got sun burnt. Sunday we helped set up for the party, greeted guests and family as they arrived and then spent a lot of time playing with Jack. He loved the gifts we got him. He figured out the matching games we got him pretty fast and then spent the day walking around with the two dinosaurs under each arm telling people he has "A brontosaurus and a 'ceritops from uncle Jason". Yeah, he's 2 and knows his dinosaurs, he rocks.

I'm hoping to get up there at least one or two times before Laura and co. head off to their next destination. Then we will see them out in Montana and for a weekend when they come to Madison to visit.

Softball went OK. I'm still walking too many people when I pitch, I need to find the time to practice. Next week Jess will try pitching and give me the first chance in like four years to play somewhere else on the field.

Super busy at work. Getting "interesting" juggling work and all of this eBook research and set up.

We got to see Scott Pilgrim last night. Loved it. It was cute and funny and had tons of smart little jokes and geek nods. I'm not sure why people didn't like it, probably too geeky for them. I really loved Wallace, the gay roommate. He was just a normal guy who likes other guys. No flaming, bitchiness or being a queen. Just a sarcastic gay guy slight focused on sex. Sounds like a lot of the people I hang out with.

Watching this clip of an interview with Chris Colfer made me realize something. It is very hypocritical for any politician or public speaker to make a video or support the It Get's Better campaign, when they vote against gay marriage and gay rights. Because isn't denying a group of people the same rights given to the majority of the populace basically a form of bullying? It's just bullying with the support of the governmental process behind it.

(I know the clip has nothing really to do with that campaign, it just started the thought.)