Confused Much?

Monday night I got a text from a friend who I hadn't hung out with in a long time. She was inviting me out for a drink with her girlfriend. That's girlfriend, not girl friend. Yes they are gay. Since I hadn't hung out with either of them in a long time I was quick to say yes to going out for a beer. Then I found out they wanted me to meet them at a gay bar. I'm secure with myself so I still was up for it.

The bar isn't far from my place, so I meet the girls there. They've brought along a guy as well. He's a cool guy that's easy to get along with. Inside the bar, they've got the LOGO network on and it's playing a show that I can only describe as the drag queen version of American Idol. It was quite entertaining to watch. Anyways, we have a few beers, play some pool, sit on the back patio. We move around a lot since the place is practically empty.

A couple guys talk to our group since we now have 7 people there and there are only about 5 other people in the bar. While playing pool one guy starts to talk to me. Let's call him Jack. Jack starts asking me questions, making conversation. He asks where I'm from, how long have I lived in California, have I been to this bar before. All easy to answer questions. Then he asks if I'm new to the gay scene. I think I was a little confused as to what my answer should be. I thought he was asking if I had been to any gay bar before. I just responded that I had only come to the bar tonight because I was invited by my friends. We kept talking for about a minute after that and then he started to talking to someone else around us.

I never had a problem with Jack talking to me that night. I'm positive he was gay and I guess trying to see if I was too. Although I didn't realize this at the time. After we had talked, the guy that came with my friends walked by me asked how it went. He knew that I was straight, so I guess he was joking with me about my conversation with Jack. My roommate talked to her gay friend about the situation and found out that I unknowingly told Jack that I was gay and vulnerable. So apparently I'm a gay tease.

Just to recap my confusion: I'm a single guy who hasn't been on a date in months. I have guys who wink at me in the bathroom at work. And now I am a straight guy who likes to lead on gay guys. My head hurts.

Stuck Between a Rock and a Hard Place

It's an age old saying. When forced to make a tough decision people say they are "stuck between a rock and a hard place." It has probably applied to you at least once in your lifetime. Today it applies to me.

Sometimes life doesn't always go the way you planned. You make decisions based on the information that you have and hope for the best. But when things change, you have to change with them. Sometimes those changes are simple, and sometimes they aren't. I'm being vague for a reason. I know nobody reads my blog, but I'm still not about to drag anyone through the mud on here. All I will say is that a change happened today and it has me in the middle. The bad part is that I don't have a decision to make. I can't choose one option or the other. I have to take both. And to quote Swingers, "there's the rub."

Not to worry though. I'm adept at making adjustments and small changes to make things work. I have no problem adjusting to new situations and I'm sure that I'll be able to do just that with this situation. I'll make a couple calls, change a couple plans, and everything will be just fine. It helps that I don't plan too far in advance because it means that I have less changes to make. Life is so much easier and manageable when you're an optimist like me. =)

One Full Year

Hi again all! No, I didn't forget about this blog. Ok, maybe I did for a little while. But I'm back again.

November 8th just recently passed and that date holds special meaning for me. It's the one year anniversary of my good friends Jeff and Beth. I had a great time being a part of their wedding down in San Diego last year. We all had a lot of fun! I'm not sure what they did for their first anniversary but I did manage to send them my best wishes. I'm sure they had fun.

That date also marks the one year anniversary of me being single again. Bittersweet day don't you think? Since that day I've been working out and running on a regular basis. Being single gave me a lot of extra time and I've put it to good use. In that time I managed to work off most of my beer belly and I'm now able to run 4 miles without stopping at a pretty good pace. Losing 10 pounds in one year has got my weight down to a svelt 147! That's very close to what I weighed my senior year of high school which was over 10 years ago.

Speaking of one full year, 2009 is almost at an end. It's about time to start working on those new year's resolutions right? I had three resolutions that I made this year and I'm proud to say that 2 of the 3 will be completed.

1. Run a 5K

On December 5th I will be in Las Vegas for the Great Santa Run which is a 5K for charity. I was a part of this run a couple years back, but I didn't actually run the race. I jogged/walked with my mom, but had a great time. How could you not have fun when you're surrounded by close to 10,000 other people in santa suits? Visit http://www.lasvegassantarun.org/ for more info.

2. Move to the beach

This one is a partial completion. I am in the process of moving out with a few friends right now, but I don't think we are going to end up near the beach. The beach is expensive and pretty far from all of our jobs. I wouldn't mind the commute because you always get to come home to the beach! But I'm alone on this one. Oh well.

3. Get my CCNA certification

This is the one that isn't completed but I have started the process, finally! CCNA stands for Cisco Certified Network Associate. It's a certification that applies to working on Cisco networking equipment like switches and routers. I've bought a couple thick books that are guides to everything I need to learn to pass the test. I'm on chapter 5 of 36 total. I hope to have the certification by the end of next year.

How are you guys coming on your new year's resolutions? To be honest, I think this is the first year that I've actually worked on one of my resolutions. That's why I'm kinda proud of it and writing about it here in the blog. If you haven't started, the year isn't finished yet. Still a month and a half to get working. If you at least start one, it'll feel great I promise!

Staycation!

It's been another long time since I last posted anything here. This week I am on vacation. I'm not going anywhere, so it's a staycation. My goal for this week, to cure my boredom, is to take a lunch tour around Southern Cali. Yesterday it began and I wrote about it on my facebook page. Just thought I'd share it here now as well.

My SoCal lunch tour has begun. Today I woke up not really knowing where I wanted to go for lunch but for some reason prime rib popped into my mind. Not wanting to break the bank on the first day of my staycation I decided to go to the Carvery.

I head down to South Coast Plaza a little after lunch time and start wandering around the mall in search of some prime rib. I don't usually come to this mall and I'm starting to remember why. On my way to lunch I see the following stores: Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Coach, D&G, Versace, Cartier, and Prada. Needless to say, I don't stop in any stores while visiting for lunch.

Arriving at Lawry's Carvery, the restaurant is fairly empty. I order the Lawry's Prime Rib Original sandwich. It's 6 oz. of prime rib with au jus, horseradish and Carvery potato chips served on ciabatta bread. It was prepared very quickly. I didn't have to wait more than about 3 minutes. There's not much to say about the sandwich, it's pretty much amazing! The sandwich tasted great dipped in the au jus sauce or with a dab of horseradish. Even the chips were good with a little horseradish on them.

I finished my lunch faster than I had anticipated. But then again, it was prime rib and I'm not a vegetarian. I'd definitely recommend this place to anyone up for a good prime rib sandwich with a side of eye candy (you too girls, I saw a few metro looking guys there today). But I would suggest leaving your ATM and credit cards at home, just in case you decide to browse around the mall.

Post Vegas/Pre Vegas Part 1

This past weekend in Las Vegas was loads of fun! Friday morning I drove up with my neighbor who was visiting her pregnant friend. We made good time, getting into town in about 4 hours. I dropped my neighbor off with her gal pal and headed to my condo. Dropped off my brother's new wheels at our place in Henderson and made myself some lunch, then headed to the strip.

I met up with my friend and his family at the Miracle Mile shops. Some of them wanted to walk around and shop (lame!) so we headed back to the hotel room for a quick drink and to head down to the pool. After some sun and an AMF we decided to do a little gambling. With a new batch of AMFs quickly made up and a little food in our stomachs we headed to Planet Hollywood to play some video blackjack and wander around a bit. I lost $20 on blackjack and penny slots in about 15 mins so I decided to move on to Roulette. I played for about 15 or 20 mins and made my money back plus a little more. About $45 in all. Remember the $20 bet increments from the last post? Anyways, a win is a win.

We moved from there to staring at the girls in The Pleasure Pit, all very attractive. After a little bit of gawking we decided to play some poker. My favorite. Unfortunately, the cards were not very kind to me. I didn't win my first hand for over 2 hours! After that beat down we headed back to the hotel where my buddies girlfriend had finally arrived. She had to work, but flew in after a long day and was ready to party.

We ate some dino chicken nuggets (they are the best) had some redbull vodkas and a little Patron, then decided to walk towards the strip for a bit. We started walking at around 1:30 am. On our walk, we decided that a midnight swim in the 24 hour pool would be a more fun idea. We got changed and headed down to the pool with more redbull vodkas at 2:30am. The pool was surprisingly not empty. Plenty of people had the same idea that we did, and a few people partied too hard. We saw one person passed out on a pool chair. Drinking at the pool always leads to interesting times and tonight was no different. I ended up making $20 to swim naked across the entire pool and back. It was, by far, the most exciting way to earn a quick Jackson. My buddy and I convinced his gf to do it too. Since she had never been skinny dipping, we figured this was as good a time as any. Plus he said he would cover her $20 skinny dipping debt to me.

Saturday "morning" was spent down by the pool again for a couple hours. Really it was about 12:30pm when we finally got down there. My buddy and his gf had a wedding to go to, so I got changed and headed out to make a bet on the Preakness horse race. I had a couple exacta boxes and bet on three different longshots to win just for the hell of it. Nothing panned out for me, but I won some money back on a quarter wheel of fortune slot machine, so it was all good. After that I walked to MGM Grand and played some poker for a few hours. Got a couple beers and made a little money there too. Chilled in the pool for a while saturday night, no skinny dipping this time. Got back to the room around midnight and started watching Eagle Eye. A really entertaining movie that I should have watched sooner. My buddy also made some awesome cinnamon rolls. After two of them, I called it a night.

Sunday morning, my buddy and his family all took off at 5am. I slept in until 9. I checked out, packed up, and headed back to my condo to load up a couple things to take home. I thought about gambling at Green Valley Ranch, then I thought about laying out by our pool. I ended up staying home and playing some Rock Band for a couple hours before picking up my neighbor and driving home. Made pretty good time getting home and had a good chat with my neighbor. When I got home, I pretty much just relaxed and got ready for the new work week.

You may have noticed that the title says "Pre Vegas" as well as "Post Vegas." It's pre Vegas because I'm heading back out to Sin City again this weekend. I'm not taking friday off this time, but I do have the holiday on monday, so it will be another three day weekend in the desert for me! This time I'm heading out there for my brother's birthday so I'm sure we'll have plenty more to drink and loads of fun. I don't think I'll get my good steak, but I'm sure I'll have some other stories for you next week. See ya back here then.

Catching Up...

Last sunday we tried to go back to the Back Abbey for some awesome sounding burgers and of course more Belgian beer. Four of us went there the friday before and we all missed the fact that the Back Abbey is closed on sundays. BOOOO! We ended up walking down the street to Heroe's for some burgers instead. I was a little hung over from the night before so I didn't have any giant 33 oz beers, just an iced tea.

The day before I went to Newport Beach and checked out a bar with my friend called Mutt Lynch's. This place is right on the beach with people walking into the place in bikinis which is tormenting for a single guy. Mutt also has some great pizza and giant 32oz beers. We got there at about 5pm and my buddy was intent on getting me drunk for some reason. So we ordered a giant pepperoni pizza with had loads of cheese and layers of pepperonis. It was amazing. I also got a Newcastle (left).

Finished that beer and a couple slices of pizza and I went on to have two more giant beers (Fat Tire). Then I decided to slow it down a little so I had a regular size pint of Amstel Light. We started playing some pool as the night went on and the bar emptied out. I played some pool with a good looking girl and her mom and aunt. Interesting peeps. I won the game and she bought be a beer. So that was cool. Then they took off before Mutt Lynch's doesn't have any hard alcohol, just beer and wine. Somehow after all that beer I managed to not throw up on the ride home. Usually the car is my worst enemy after drinking. I'd highly recommend checking out Mutt Lynch's. And if you do, give me a call so I can come along as well.