NYTV Blue

So, after months - nay, years! Of trying to get my friends to come along and be a part of a Scavenger Hunt in good ole New York City, I finally realized that they are just not the kind of people that would enjoy a scavenger hunt. Instead, we got some of Mi Cariño's friends together, and off we went to our very first hunt!

Now, yes, today was NYC Pride, but since we're not parade people and the fair part doesn't really change year after year, we were okay with doing something else instead. The Hunt's theme was TV. We began by meeting at a Bar near LES and coming up with a TV related name. Since points were given for having uniforms, we all dressed in blue colors and thus NYTV Blue was born. From there the teams walked around asking trivia questions of each other to try to come up with extra points. The task was to run around the city in a certain amount of hours, finding the clues given. Every member of the team had to be in the picture with the "hunted item."

Examples: Finding a cop, a cd of an American Idol winner, someone that dressed like Homer Simpson, a model, specific pubs, and much much more.

It. Was. A. Blast. And totally worth it. We ran all over the city, jumping on the subway, relying on our knowledge of trains, on our smart phones, on our wits, everyone contributing thoughts and ideas as to what to do next while enjoying doing crazy things all over the place to take a picture with some guy drinking a McDonald's Sweet Tea.

I hope we get to do this again sometime!

I don't wanna wait...

So, I'm cleaning this weekend.

Really, I'm just purging. Throwing things out. I had pre-orientation at school last Tuesday, and I'm as ready as I can be for the possibility of going to school again. It's not a sure thing. The one sure thing going on though, is that I hope to be all moved in with Mi Cariño by the end of the year. To do that, I need to start choosing what's coming with me.

It's very cathartic, this clearing of stuff. The Hard part has been trying to decide what to do with my comics - they're not super valuable, but it took me years and what I consider to be a lot of money to amass this number of issues. What to do with them? Right now I'm making a list.

The fun part is finding things from my teenage years. Like the scrapbook I made of Dawson's Creek stuff. Yup, you read that right: a scrapbook of Dawson's Creek stuff.

My love for Joey Potter knew no bounds. I think everyone should have the opportunity to find, when in their 30's, things that they did or thought about in their teens. Puts stuff in perspective, you know what I mean?

All them shades

I don't like reading things when they're popular. I admit, I'm a little bit of a snob. A lot of it, really, when it comes to certain things. I try not to be one when it comes to literature, because, hey! I'm the one that loves reading romance novels, so, why judge?

But I will judge the "Fifty Shades of Grey" Trilogy. I will judge it, thoroughly. I started reading that thing because everyone and their mother was reading it, and I didn't want to base my thoughts and judgement on somebody else's thoughts. And so, I purchased the first e-book, in the way soiling my sweet Santana with the contents of this... novel. After the first few chapters I couldn't take it, and I put the book away. Weeks went by. Finally, I decided to give it one more try, and so I trudged along and read it. I felt some braincells dying.

Then, a coworker of Mi Cariño gave me a copy of the last two e-books free, since there was no way I was going to pay for those things. And off I went, and off I read. I finally finished the third one today - a journey that began back in April 17.

Here's the thing: I read the Twilight series, Okay? No masterpiece, but the plot was interesting enough. That's all Twilight is: Plot. The characters are crap, the pacing is crap, the entire thing is crap. But it has one interesting plot. The Twilight series kept me sane back in 2008 when I was freaking out about moving to Ireland. The Shades of Grey "Series" most definitely burned some of my braincells. It just was crap. Everyone was interested in the series because of the sex, but by the end I was skipping the sex scenes in an attempt to bravely finish the thing.

I'm not going to say something new - everyone with brains that's reviewed these has said the same things. The only thing I'll add is that I'm just appalled that people are walking around thinking that this is Kink, that this is proper S&M. It's not. It's also not proper literature. I've read dollar romance novels that are much better than this thing. But I'm still glad I read it - I like that I can give you all these thoughts, and know them to be true, at least for me.

Queens Pride

This year, Mi Cariño and I decided that we would try to attend the "mini" prides that happen around the boroughs during the month of June, to make up for my missing last year's. The first Pride of the month is in Queens, so out we went!

It was a mixture of a day: a bit cloudy, a bit rainy, a bit sunny. Getting there wasn't too bad - Pride was in Jackson Heights, and we rode the R train. It's such an experience: Jackson Heights is such a Latino neighborhood, apparently unaccustomed to see "the gays" walking around. But walking around the gays did, and we mixed right in. As always, a lot of the stuff in the area catered mostly to men, but we were able to find some stuff that interested us, found out the names of possible clubs to go visit, and enjoyed the delicious food available. Really the only difference between this Pride and your regular NYC Street Fair was just the amount of men's chests one could see. We enjoyed having a delish Mozzarepa, corn on the cob, fresh watermelon, while listening to lovely music.

Goodbye Albuquerque

Recorded at a Navajo Middle School today. It was already after the last day of school so it was pretty empty. However, the welcome sign was pretty nice: (the middle one is in Navajo language.)

After we were done, we made our way to the ICE Caves. It took forever to get there, but we wanted to actually do something nature related. It is New Mexico after all. 

It's amazing, after a small hike down into this volcano pit, you have to make your way down by walking down these wooden steps. You don't believe it, but you're walking down the steps and it's your regular New Mexico 80 degree weather and then a certain number of steps down, it's like 30 degrees cold. 

The ice part of the Ice cave. Unfortunately, you can't walk on it anymore, which would've been amazing. 

The view from the bottom:

The view back on our drive back to Albuquerque proper. 

Tomorrow, we head back to New York. In my next supervision I will be announcing my acceptance to Silberman School of Social Work and providing my notice. Here goes nothing.