Riverside Park is my go-to place normally but has been an essential destination over the past year. Spring has sprung a little later this year than usual, but, like everything else, even the seasons are teaching patience. Photo by Andrew Altenburg, 2021.

As I approach my one year anniversary of working from home, I thought I'd look back a little into what was going on a year ago - I'm cheating, slightly, by going back to the 19th as I thought it funny that I had gone on a site visit to The Edge with work colleagues. We had to sign a waiver that we would not post pics from the visit until after March 1st but by the time March 1st rolled around, I had much bigger fish to fry than posting pics from a site visit. (more on that in another entry). 

The place is gorgeous and a friend of mine now works there and posts pics daily, but this is my favorite shot. 

As a side note, when I looked into the folder with pics from Feb 19, 2020, I noticed this other pic I took of a design I whipped up for a possible branded face mask for in-person events. Ah, in-person events. I do miss them but we probably won't be getting back to them until 2022.  I think it was something that I came up with on a dept call as we were starting in earnest to take notice of Covid and the fallout of it. So, actually 2/19/20 is a good place to start as I think it begins the not so gradual build up to those very very dark days in March. 

Hope that you can take this journey with me - I hope to continue posting these as a way to try to continue to make sense of it. As, maybe we all are. 

So as it's already mid-February and supposed to be 50 degrees today here in NYC, and the amount of snow that we've had in New York has been roughly, about zero, I think all the signs point to winter being over. Yes, I know we technically have a few weeks left, but any snow we get will just go away immediately anyway. Bummer.

I love snow especially when I'm inside with my honey and we're watching the world get snowed under from our south facing bedroom windows so this winter has been kind of a bust for me but I suppose it's nice for us city dwellers not to have to deal with subway closures and slush... still, I miss it.  

I made this graphic up a few years ago and it came up in my 'memories' on the Facebook. I also wrote that the so-called snowpocalypse had turned out to be a kind of a bust. But I thought I would post the graphic anyway because I'm pretty proud of it and besides, who doesn't love a little Godzilla first thing in the morning? 

Nothing more to say at this time..  have a great day! 

Good morning and happy Saturday - hope that you had a great Valentine's Day - I spent part of yesterday braving Tiffany for a piece of Italian glass I've had my eye on for some time. I knew the Mister would love it (I wasn't wrong) so in I went. It actually was not as zooey as I thought it would be. I did have a "moment" while getting this shot of the Empire State Building built out of Tiffany blue boxes - my crazy fear of heights rears its head again.

There was a time, years and years ago, when I was in Trump Tower and nearly lost my footing and pitched over the edge. That it, by the way, a metaphor for how I feel about the last three years, but I generally try to eschew too much political talk on this blog. I mean, if you don't already know my political affiliation by me being a middle aged gay New Yorker, then nothing else I can say will help you figure that out. As usual, I'm against anything that will kill me, my family and/or the planet. 

As for the Vday itself, we had dinner at a little seafood restaurant in our 'hood - it was amazingly good and the meal was topped off by a complimentary slide of chocolate lava cake (they certainly knew their audience). I would tell you the name of it but I've learned my lesson - don't tell people about fabulous restaurants because then they'll go and it will be too crowded for us! LOL (I should add here, that this is more or less just 'snarky' as I don't think for a moment that me telling the name of this place on this blog will cause an avalanche of patrons to descend upon this place, but hey, you never know so I'm not taking any chances). :) 

Today, Saturday, it's a super cold day here in NYC so we spent the morning lazing around the apartment in jammies, making banana bread and sipping super incredibly strong Bustelo.... I would like to have used the cold as an excuse to just not go anywhere today, ah, but errands called as did an out of town friend who requested a dinner meet up, how can I say no? :)

But there are worse ways to spend a chilly Saturday afternoon than wrapped up in a blanket on the couch watching movies and occasionally dancing around the apartment to "Staying Alive" (BeeGees rule!)

Tomorrow, it's supposed to be summer (comparatively). Welcome to the new normal for climate: if you don't like the season you're currently experiencing, wait a few minutes. (see also being against things that will kill me, my family and/or the planet). 

Ok so if anyone who has never been to a gay bar has ever wondered what it's like, last Saturday night's episode of Saturday Night Live was, for me, like spending 90 minutes in the Boiler Room in the East Village - there was drag, shade, intelligent conversation, cute guys, some politics, a little game playing, some flirting (and some welcome objectification), and, as happens, philosophizing about the 'good old days' of New York. It seems that even when I've not lived in New York, conversation with my peeps invariably turns to 'well, things were better back then' (that "Old New York" sketch was sadly accurate, but hilarious).

I've also been to bars where they feature some twink performing something unintelligible but the middle aged gays like it because the performer is cute. This is sorta kinda how I feel about Justin Bieber but without the "the performer is cute" part (but I know plenty of guys that think that he's a hottie). My favorite line of the night came from the Facebook as one friend said "how did he go from looking like a 12 year old pretending to be an adult to a 47 year old drug dealer in just three years?" 

Anyway, Ru came to play and she succeeded.. go Ru! (Photo from NBC!)

It's Sunday, I'm about to go to the gym and then to the Apple store to manage my eighteen billion Apple devices (really, it's just my phone, my newer laptop and my older laptop and an external harddrive that isn't behaving right - all have one or more wackadoodle issues and I'm going in to see how I can resolve them all in short order) and then spend the afternoon cleaning the apartment that we live in that has gotten a bit ... casual (I think that's the nicest word I can think of) over the past couple weeks. 

But, while I'm doing all of that, ponder these things: 

When did New Yorkers decide it's OK to throw out decades of conventional behavior and walk on the left side of the sidewalk? It used to be tourists, now it's practically everyone. Walk on the right, and nobody runs into each other. Why is this hard to grasp? 

Does everyone switching sides on the sidewalk auger some kind of spiritual shift that's going on or are we, as I have often thought, simply living in a parallel universe since 2016? (I miss the universe that I used to live in where Hillary Clinton and Obama were considered awesome - I want to go back to that one and leave the one we're all stuck in... perhaps David Bowie is alive over there too... damn you, Hadron collider!). 

In the recent STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, Fran Drescher should have been one of the voices that Rey hears when she's down for the count -  "Raaaaaaaay... get up and get me and Mr. Sheffield some CAWWWWfeee"... that would revive her much faster than hearing Alec Guiness. :) 

I was born in 1964 and technically am a Boomer, I guess, although I've never identified with the Boomers much. Since the end of the Boomers and the start of Gen X are fuzzy (no two sources agree, naturally) I have found I tend to side more with Gen X. Douglas Coupland got it right. A recent Medium article gets it even right-er. The last sentence sums it up for me: "You can just go ahead and play Prince at all our funerals." True that. Because Prince was the personification of Gen X - the man who sung about being Gen X by never actually singing about Gen X. If you're Gen X, I think you'll get that. Also: other than the Coupland book, we've been largely ignored. We kind of like it that way mainly because we're used to it. 

Finally, Happy Palindrome day- 02/ 02 / 2020 - apparently this won't happen again for another hundred years. I'll be 155 then, nearly 156. I might not be in great shape at that point, but who knows? With enough cawwfee and a switch to another universe where humans live to be 500, I might just be getting started! 

Have a faboo Sunday and catch you back here tomorrow! 

P.S. the photo above has nothing to do with the blog - it's just a pic I snapped Friday night on my way home from work and I thought this blog was as good a time to post it as any. Enjoy, don't steal! I say this because someone on the Facebook snagged a pic I took of Radio City a few weeks ago and passed it off as his own. When I pointed out to him that he should give me credit, he claimed to not known that I was the photog. I don't sort of mind if it gets used, really, but just give me credit (and don't play dumb with me when you've had to go into Photoshop and edit out the watermark... sheesh!)

THING ONE: So far this morning I've purchased a dresser (long needed, much delayed, now finally obtained) from an old high school friend (who posted it on her FB account and I'm so grateful, it's exactly what I've been looking for). That may not seem like a big accomplishment, but it is. I bought my last dresser in January 2000 for $100 from a furniture shop in West Hollywood that was going out of business. I didn't intend on having it for 20 years but there you go. Sometimes that happens. A few years ago, during one apt re-org, the dresser had to be 'trimmed' to accommodate new placement between the radiator and a door in our tiny place thus making it the New York apartment equivalent of a car in the front yard on cinderblocks. I promised myself then that I would replace it soon.. that was about 6 years ago. Sigh. 

THING TWO: It's supposed to snow today but I've seen nothing yet on the UWS. I love snow and miss that it never really snows like it used to in NYC anymore. For those who complain about shoveling it - know that you are lucky enough to have luxury of seasons (and a home out from which you must shovel in the first place). I realize that for my Wisconsin and Minnesota friends, being bombarded by snowfall after snowfall can be tiring, but I invite you to look at how lucky you are! On the upside, the ivy we planted in our window boxes outside the window where I sit with my computer last summer is thriving. 

THING THREE: 6 years ago today I started the last six week cycle of my long running Bingo show. I was working a corporate events job at the time (as I am now) and couldn't put the time into Bingo as I had been able to do previously with other jobs that were less demanding. I revived it for a few weeks in the summer of 2015, but that was done by August. However, one slices the time away from it, I miss emceeing the show, raising funds for non-profits, and booking fabulous guests. 

And that's three things I'm thinking about today on the upper west side/New York. Hope your day is going well! 

This morning, as I raced across W. 51st Street, I passed by Radio City Music Hall, as I usually do every day from the 1 to my job at 51st/Park. There's always something interesting happening there - a few weeks ago I watched in horror as a crane lifted a half dozen follow spots into a dumpster (I kept thinking that they could have been donated to a high school or something.. sigh) and today, it was camels. 

I'm generally chugging along, listening full tilt to uplifting music (yes, a dance remix of "Sex and the City" counts) but this stopped me cold. How could it not? 

They bring in camels and other animals for the end of the show manger scene. When they call it a 'spectacular' they aren't kidding around.

And that was it. 

I wish I had a better story than that today, but I will end by saying that it's so easy to get lost in our devices, between checking the time, scrolling through music, updating social media, etc, that you really miss a lot if you don't look up once in awhile. As Ferris Bueller once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."