My sister Beth's Baby Shower!

Me in CA, My Sister and Cousin in NH

My sister is pregnant and the baby is coming soon, at the beginning of April. Baby coming means baby shower! I am not big on baby showers. Any event where a large group of women gather is scary, and especially if they're all on maternal overdrive, with their hormones revved up about some baby stuff. I'll admit, my baby hormones are a lil revved up this time, but only because this baby has my genes. Normally, a baby is a baby. Just another person, a bit stupider than bigger people. My sister lives in NH so I wasn't going to fly all the way out there for her shower. If I were rich, I may have, if it were not the winter. But i'm not, and it is.  Our mother decided to be the one to plan the shower, and she was on it months and months ago. Then she had a good idea, why don't I come by skype? Hmm, I guess. As baby shower plans progressed, it became a brunch, starting at 11am at my sister and brother in law's house. Good idea..only that I live here, 3 hrs difference away. This thing was going to be at 8am on a saturday - yuk! I pointed out that it would do no good for me to sit there watching them eat, and got permission to come at 9 instead. So, i shopped. Baby stores, baby wrapping paper and card (both matching the wild animal theme of the party). I got the books my sister wanted from everyone for the baby (even though she doesn't read herself, i highly approve of her trying to instill a love of reading in my niece at an early age. EXACTLY what i would do!). I read the baby registries, and finally picked out a bathtub holder thing from there. I shipped the gifts I'd picked up here. I pondered over what to wear...something girly... Everything was set. The night before, the power went out in my parents house, right when my mother was going to cook everything, but it came back on late, and she stayed up late cooking, with the help of my aunt and cousin, who stayed over. In the morning, i was so exhausted by the early hour on the weekend, and the rain outside, that i fell back asleep after my alarm went off. OOPS! I ended up being a half hour late to my time, but I guess they were running late too. I ended up wearing a flowery purple shirt which i'd had for years and had never worn once, which ended up being a good choice, as purple seemed to be the color of the day. If you're ever invited to a shower, remember that. Everyone tends to wear purple. A shower over skype, especially when youre skyping with someone with a slow internet connection, is weird. My experience consisted of myself on my bed, watching a room full of women watch my sister unwrap things. Yes, to me, they were things, because I could never tell what they were. the picture was blurry, and time went oddly. One minute, my aunt would be on one side of the room, and the picture would flicker, and she'd be standing next to my sister. My sister was wearing a cardigan, picture flicker, and it was gone. I heard a TON of laughter, giggling, oohing and aahing, so it seems like they had fun. This was the first shower i'd been to that had no men at it (although i did see people like my brother in law, i think his dad, and my dad, walking around in the background) which seemed a bit weird to me. I know it's more of a traditional womany activity, but adding some testosterone helps temper it a bit, and gets you even more gifts. No matter, she got lots of presents anyway! Every once in a while, i'd make out someone saying my name, and i'd wave, or say hi. I did notice when she opened all of my presents. After a while, they finished opening gifts, and i started making my own breakfast, while they took some sort of test. Everyone was bent over pieces of paper and not talking. Or, i don't think they were talking. sound blanked out a lot over skype. After that, they all kinda forgot about me, and wandered around..i tried to get their attention to say i wanted to go, but couldn't, maybe no one could hear the laptop shouting at them LOL. So i closed the window and signed off. It was definitely amusing! I'm So glad i got to be a part of this important day for my sister. Sometimes it is weird being over on the other side of the country from my family. Especially as the baby Lana grows, it will be a bit sad to miss out on normal things like babysitting her, her birthdays, her school functions, etc. I envision that i'll be attending more events via skype, and maybe the connection will be a bit better.  I'll definitely be getting her on the camera for some one on one skype time so she knows who her auntie merredith is. The best part about attending by skype was, no travel time, and no helping with the cleanup! If you are someone who likes oohing and aahing over baby showers, check out the whole flickr album. My mother did an awesome job with the decorations, and the food looks good, especially my sister's friend Lisa's cupcakes, and my sister looked radiant. (Photos courtesy of Rebecca Ormonde, Susan Lloyd and Merredith Lloyd)

Happy Mom-To-Be

My sister and cousin

Lots of Presents!

Yummy Food!

Beth Opens a Book I Gave Her

Beth Opens a Baby Bath I Gave Her

Beth Opens a Shirt I Gave Her

Onesies, Shirt & Nursing Cover, all Cute & Wrapped

Beth Opens an Awesome Onesie I found

The Boys Relax while the Women Have the Shower

Life without Glasses

The other day when it was raining out but not pouring and I had to run to walgreens, I didn’t bring an umbrella, but took my glasses off. I have pretty poor eyesight when I don't wear my contacts or glasses. It's not even perfect WITH them, especially contacts. But off, the world becomes a blurry mass of colors and not completely formed shapes. I was thinking, hmm good thing I don't have to see like this all the time. But hey, what did people do when they DID have to see like that? What about before glasses were invented? People like me would probably just be considered blind, for all intents and purposes, right? What about even farther back in time, when people were in little hunting and gathering tribes, did blind/nearly blind people even survive? Are there blind animals that successfully live in the wild? I wonder. Of course I know, sadly, even now when we have such things as glasses and contacts, not everyone has money or access to get them. Some poor people could make do with glasses from the drugstore that sort of fit them, or old glasses donated. And some just live in a fuzzy world of running together colors. I just can't imagine..

11 Days Less Sugar Update - I'M STARVING!

This whole week I've been super busy at work, and feeling a bit under the weather, and thus have fallen even more behind on blog posts. I had a spare moment, and wanted to update everyone on the sugar experiment. For background information, read my blog here, and my best friend, who is the one whose experiment it really is's post here. My best friend is also my roommate and we tend to eat most of our meals together, so when he decided to give up sugar for 2 months, I kinda went along for the ride. I didn't really make any promises or huge effort. We started Tuesday of last week (not this Tuesday of this week) (and can I say, he hasn't cheated even once!) and I started out by continuing to eat craisins in my weekday lunch sandwiches and regular soymilk during work. I figured since I'm eating sugar from those 2 sources, and also since I was never a sugar addict like my friend in the first place, I wasn't really going to notice any difference. And it's true, all that first week, everything was normal for me. A little hard for only the facts that it took longer to go grocery shopping and read even more labels (I already read labels since I gave up hfcs & am allergic to some nuts), & it was harder to find something to put on our food at dinner. But while Tristan was going through his sugar withdrawal, I was totally fine. By the weekend, it got even a bit more annoying, since we couldn't order delivery (what delivery food has no sugar), and we often eat out, but now those options are severely limited. Otherwise, felt normal. Monday of this week, I was thinking maybe nothing will happen. I didn’t expect anything to happen. Then by Tuesday & especially by Wednesday, I got HUNGRY. By yesterday, I was RAVENOUS. The whole day. To my thinking, all I was doing was basically cutting out dessert, which due to roomie's sweet tooth, was most nights, but I suppose I'm also cutting out sugar in dinner, and whatever stuff over the weekend I would have had with sugar (I did have half a sugary juicebox). But why am I SO HUNGRY? I'm eating the same breakfast these workdays, the same lunch. But they no longer fill me up. Yesterday, by near the end of the workday, I was so starving I was feeling ill. It was pouring out so I wasn’t about to go searching places to buy a snack, so I ate more cereal/yogurt from breakfast. (don't worry, it is ezekiel 4:9 & plain yogurt - it has no sugar). But what is happening here? Is it the lack of calories that I would have consumed at night, building up on me? Or, am I not really hungry at all, and experiencing sugar cravings, even though I don't particuarly feel like eating anything sweet. I'm never usually a sweet craver. A lot of sugar has always made me pass out. If I don't eat enough non sugar food as a base I really literally just pass right out & have a headache when I wake up. So what could this lack of sugar possibly be doing to me? Has it made my metabolism faster? What is going on? If you have any thoughts, feel free to leave them. I'll update you with further developments as they happen!

Valentine's Day Musings...

It's valentine's day, so I wanted to write a valentine's day post. But then I realized I have very little to say about it…Yep, I'm single. I've only been coupled for one valentine's day, the other times I've even casually dated anyone, it never overlapped. It seems like a MILLION years ago. I told my boyfriend I didn’t want to make a big deal about it, and he knew that when I said stuff like that, I meant it (if someone says something like that to you, they probably DON’T mean it, so don't use this as a rule of thumb), and he agreed. Fancy places were going to be all extra expensive and crowded, so we ate at an indian food restaurant. I love indian food and dennis wasn't a big fan so I told him we didn’t have to go, but he said sure, so we went. It was good, but cold (no vestibule on the door in February in Boston BRR). And that was that. The most fanciest I've ever celebrated valentine's day is when I was a kid. They always had those parties at school, where we had to give a store valentine to everyone in class, which kinda defeated the purpose. And you have to write each person's name and it lasts forever. But there are cupcakes with candy red hearts on them, which I like. Valentine's day in first grade stands out, because I had the flu, but wanted to go to school anyway. I got as far as hanging up my coat in the coat room, before I threw up all over the floor and was sent back. After school, my teacher brought me all of the valentines that the kids made me, and one she made me. We were pretty close. I kept that little mouse valentine with the note and it's in my closet even now. I remember that my mother used to make her famous special occasion midnite cocoa cake into a heart. Just bake one layer in a square pan, and one in a round, then cut the round in half and paste them on each side to make a heart. They used to have things like you could buy carnations for the people you could like, in middle and maybe high school. I was pretty much an outcast, so the only one I got was from my mother. She didn’t know they weren't going to copy over the message, so I recognized her handwriting. If I'd actually had friends, that may have been embarrasing, but as it was, I appreciated the thought. This year, my only valentines were a note with some candy hearts from my manager at work, and a card with a pair of earrings from my parents. I never doubt that they love me!! So many people have such bad or even just detached relationships with their parents that I always feel super lucky that they love me and think of me as much as they do. So, in most ways, valentine's day ends up just being a day when I wear pink or red, and for the most part, I'm happy I don't have to be one of the people who jump through hoops to make this day romantic and sexi. There's about a 5% part of me that thinks it would be nice to be one of those couples, doing our special lovey coupley things. But 5% isn't bad... So enjoy your pink day!! Happy valentine's day!

Link to A Guy who Really Gave up Sugar Cold Turkey

My best friend, who I mentioned is a total sugar guy, & is giving up sugar for the next two months as an experiment (nudging me to cut my sugar myself) has written a blog entry about his first few days and what it's been like so far. I thought some of my readers might find it interesting, so I've linked it. Click here for his blog entry: Sugar Intervention.

Baby Shopping

It's been a while since I've written about my sister's baby. Yes, she's still pregnant. There's an 80something percent chance it's a girl, which I didn't really care either way if it was a boy or a girl anyway. Except I think that a girl is going to be more fun to shop for. I've never been a baby store/baby clothes sort of person. I know some women like to browse that stuff just cuz, but not me. Now that there's a baby on the way, I've been checking out some stores, & that's where I came to the conclusion that girls are more fun to shop for. Little boys like all sorts of cool things. You can get them the dinosaur things, the bug things, the truck things, the building and tool things. There are so many cute things that little boys can have. But little girls like and can have all those same things! I loved all that stuff myself! On top of that though, little girls can have princess outfits and tutus, dolls, cooking & shopping things, all sorts of other fun looking toys & outfits. Most of those are frowned upon as things for little boys. It's kind of a double standard, toy-wise. Little girls can wear any color. They can be tuff or girly. HOWEVER, I remember how much my brother liked playing with dolls, how he loved pink & purple houses, and flowers. If, in the event of the 15-20% chance that that baby comes out a boy, you know I'll be getting my nephew some fun dolls & shopping sets, just like I'll be shipping out some cars & legos to my niece. Either way, I hope this kid doesn't get spoiled!!

My First Kiss Went A Little Like This...what is normal?

My body pump class recently changed soundtracks, and one of the new songs is My First Kiss. Music and moving around always gets me thinking (well, I'm always thinking anyway), and I got to thinking about how since most of my life I've always been such an outsider, I never really experience the usual 'normal' things in life. It always seems like, on tv, movies, books, and even other people in real life, everyone always has these cutsey first kiss childhood sweetheart kind of things. Followed later by teenaged rights of passage type stories where they lose their virginity, usually again with someone they care about (or the town slut lol). I started out pretty normal…I had my first short term crush in first grade. I dreamed this boy Chad in our class was married to me, and when I woke up, I thought well it's a dream, it must mean it's going to come true (sometimes that happens, and I couldn't clarify the two at that time). So for a day, I had a big crush on this little boy. I let him have the best parts in our playground game (something about a story, on one of the jungle gyms). I was probably obnoxious. But then I realized I didn't really like him that way by the end of the day. LOL. My first longer term crush was that same year, a girl Jessica in the classroom next to us, which was a second grade classroom, so she was OLD and wise. I was so excited she noticed me. I forget what happened…she might have moved away over the summer or I'm not sure. But that's where normal development seemed to end. Over time, my few crushes were definitely not reciprocated. I was such an outsider when I moved in 3rd grade to NH, that I was thrown out of whack, and my first kiss was not until I was 21, at the very end of senior year of college. At my school we had something called Disorientation for seniors. Whereas freshmen went to orientation activities, we went to disorientation ones. The party boat we went on freshman year was repeated as a booze cruise senior year (although I didn’t drink) things like that. I had an apartment on campus in the seniors area, and that area sponsored a sort of block party. Our school was not known for having lots of parties, and I hadn't really been to any college parties that I stayed at for more than 30 min my whole college career. Most of my time was spent studying or working. There was alcohol, but I had only maybe a sip of my friend's drink…this was before I started drinking after college… I was already done with all my classes, finals, papers (I only had 3 classes last semester) and unlike some people who were still trying to finish up, I felt very free. Some random guy I'd never seen (hard, in my small school) actually paid attention to me. He asked me to dance. No one had ever asked me to dance before. I remember grinding with this random guy I didn’t know at this party. I remember dancing to that song Too Close. I remember thinking wow this is what people usually do I'm finally getting to do something I see on tv & etc. My first kiss was at a party at 21 with a guy I didn't know, who I don't now remember his name. It wasn't romantic, I didn’t know if I was doing it right, I didn’t particuarly like this guy, I wasn’t attracted to him, I just liked that someone finally paid attention to me. We ended up leaving and going to his place. From there, I got some more firsts, but no, I did not lose my virginity. He walked me back late that night…I had not had my keys on me because the party was literally in front of my front door. This was before cell phones. I think we left the back door unlocked. I woke up one of my roommates & told her all about it. She thought it was gross that I'd done so much with a stranger. She was proper and chaste with her boyfriend. I never talked to that guy again. My best friend thought it was great that I'd FINALLY gotten that out of the way. One of my other roommates spent the whole next day trying to figure out how I got a hicky. I felt really grown up. Like I'd finally passed a rite of passage. Yet sad. What kind of person has their first kiss so late, and with a stranger at a random party? That first kiss was followed by an unnumbered amount of drunken kisses and more at random clubs over the next couple of years. Hopefully one day there will be a last first kiss that will be more special. But really, does that whole ideal thing really happen? Is it just because I'm outside of normal, or is there really no cutsey romantic first kiss type thing that happens to most people? What about YOUR first kiss? Was it a little like this, or twist?

Taking a Sugar Break

A few people dislike sweets. A lot of people really LOVE sweets. I'm kind of in the middle. Even as a child, I've never been a fan of most candy. I'm more a fruit or chocolate dessert person. Growing up, I had an average amount of sweets, with my mother/myself/my sister baking us (usually from scratch) desserts usually on a weekend, and a sweet homemade family breakfast once a weekend. I was more prone to snack on something savory. Left to myself, I probably wouldn't eat too many sweets. But, then, there's my best friend. He isn't a candy person either, but he loves sugar. He pretty much has to have something sweet every day, so every couple of nights I'll hear, what's for dessert, do you want cake or brownies? How about pineapple upside down cake? Let's make cake with chocolate sauce! Yes, he gets cranky if he doesn't get his sugar. I'm not saying I'm complaining. When one of us makes those desserts, I'm usually right there with him, eating my fair share. On the weekend mornings, he makes us cream of wheat which has added sugar, brown sugar and fruit, and is really yummy. In the years my best friend has been my roommate, my sweet tooth has been artificially honed and turned up, even in the past year where we both gave up high fructose corn syrup and our sugary desserts &; snacks are now a lot healthier. But now, my best friend has said he wants to do an experiment where for almost 2 months, he gives up sugar. Yikes! So, I'm curious, what will happen? Will he turn into the incredible hulk and become really cranky the whole time? Will he give up? And what about me? In preparation for this experiment, we've been looking at the sugar content in foods we normally eat. It seems like, when we both got rid of high fructose corn syrup, we got rid of mostly anything that had sugar in it. The bread, the ketchup, all of that is sugar free. It's basically weekend breakfast, snacks, & dessert that will be the differences.   I'm not going to go out of my way to eat desserts and sugar now that he's not. I'm not going to bake a dessert that's just for me, and anyway, it's mean to have that lying around, tempting him. I'm not going to say I'm definitely giving up sugar altogether though either. This falls right into peeps season, and although I'm not a candy person, peeps are one of my favorite candies. I don't want to miss out on those. Overall, my sugar consumption will probably fall to about 90% of what it is normally. How will this affect me? Will I be less sweet (ie grumpier)? Will I lose weight? Will I get some abs? I'm curious. I have no goals in this whole thing. This is his experiment and I'm just following in the wake of it. It's not possible for me to "cheat." I have no need to lose weight, and it doesn't matter how I look in general because I have no one who cares about that.  I just wonder how it will make life at our apartment, and what will happen after the start of april, when this challenge ends. I guess we'll see…  I will be reporting back on this..
update: Check out my best friend's blog post about going cold turkey on sugar..just click here!

The First GLBT History Museum in the US Opens - And I was There!

Last month, the very first GLBT History Museum in all of the US (2nd in the world) opened just a ten minutes walk from my home. I attended the opening and wrote an article about it, which was posted today at outimpact.com. Go here to read my article on their site, & go here to see the flickr album I took of the opening and exhibits.

Snapshot! Random Photos for You

Here are random snapshot photos from December and January, which didn't fit into any other blogs. Nice, light, Friday viewing...

Tristan and Me at Industry Dec 2010 Ana Paula

Me and Louie at Industry Dec 2010 Ana Paula

Industry Dec 2010 Ana Paula

I found a crown in my cracker! Jan 2011

Me and Antonio at Wet & Wild Jan 2011

Me and Tristan at Poppers January 2011

Me, Tristan and Antonio at Badlands Jan 2011

Me, Tristan & Jay at Badlands Jan 2011

Me, Tristan & Jay at Badlands Jan 2011

Tristan and Me at Pornstar Jan 2011

Strangling Tristan at Pornstar Jan 2011

Photos by Louie Marco, Richard Henry Thomas, Merredith Lloyd, Marques Daniels & Jason Ladeira

'Like' Me on Facebook

I started a facebook page a while ago, then never kept up with it. I've recently gotten back with updating it, as well as adding a Tantalizing Tidbits Facebook Like Page thingie on the right side of the blog here. So, if you're on facebook, and you enjoy reading this blog, then go over to the right and 'like' us, or, you can just go to www.facebook.com/tantalizingtidbits.  Then tell your friends!

How Often do you Cut your Hair?

Going out the night of my haircut

On Saturday I finally got my hair cut after not cutting it since August. I've been letting it grow, so I have been trying to not cut it too much, but I do have really thick hair, and a lot of it, so it gets weighed down. As soon as she cut it and layered it a bit, I felt so much better!! But a good hair cut in san francisco is expensive. I thought about it, and people with really short hair, especially guys, have to get their hair cut about once a month or so, and that adds up really quickly. People with short hair can go longer, so even though the price tag might seem higher, it's actually lower, averaged out. But how often is the right frequency? My hair is now just at/over my shoulders. I asked a girl I know who has long hair, how often she cuts it, and she said once a year, or sometimes, twice. I'm curious as to all the people out there with long hair (well, and any other length too), how often do you cut your hair? I'm especially interested in people with thick hair, or a lot of heavy hair. Looking and feeling my hair all nice and cut and layered, I wonder why I let it go so many months (almost half a year!), and get so blah and heavy. I think it's partially laziness and also mostly cheapness, and a bit of ignorance at how often most people do it. My new stylist sent me home with a couple new bumble and bumble products to try, so we'll see how I look! Also, I know money is always a kind of no-no thing to discuss, but if you don't mind, how much do you pay for a haircut? If you do answer, say whether you live in a city or not. My old place was $65/70 I think, and the new place is $80.

Right after I got home from Haircut

Harper Regan Play

Thursday night I went to see the West Coast premiere of the play Harper Regan at SF Playhouse, and I got to Live Tweet it! The last time I did this was for Coraline a couple months ago, and I loved it, but I had a bit of an annoyance with my cell phone batteries draining from tweeting too much. This time, I thought, I'll bring my LAPTOP! I was already an old pro at this Playhouse Plugger thing, so this time, I didn't bother wondering what to wear, I just wore regular clothes. Once again, I did not prepare enough finding a restaurant to eat dinner at, and ended up at the same boring one I'd been to last time, across the street. Once again, the food was meh. I arrived and saw there were just two other Pluggers tweeting the play. I was smart, and grabbed a water bottle with a cover, instead of a glass of wine that I couldn't finish and might spill, like last time. I even got the latop set up with internet, although my backup plan was to plug the cell phone into the computer and charge it from the computer's batteries. Tweeting from the laptop was EVEN BETTER than the phone. It was easier to type, I could see better what the other tweeters were saying about the play, and I could go on other sites as well during the play. I loved it! It turned out that the night I went, it was still a preview night. The actual opening night was Saturday night, and is now playing until March 5th . Lots of time for you to go and see it! This play is set in England, and one 45 year old woman, Harper Regan, is having a midlife crisis. She hates her job, is having trouble at home, trouble relating to her 17 year old daughter, having money issues, and just feeling old. One major theme throughout the whole play is how people are old and never will have the chance to do this or that, which they always wanted to do. Her dad is very sick in the hospital, and even though her boss won't give her time off to go see him, she leaves anyway, without telling anyone. She's gone for two days, has some adventures, then comes home. I was expecting craziness, from the description, but really, she's not too crazy at all, except for one thing. The pacing of the story is a bit sedate. It's very wordy too. If you like smart plays with a lot of talking, this is for you. I'm more of an action person, so I did get restless in the over 2 hour play. One person did fall asleep. I don't think that's because it's a bad play, just that you have to really be into that type. My favorite thing about it was the sets. They did such a great job of making sets that really looked like where they were, yet held a continuity throughout the play at the same time. They changed sets super fast too! The acting was good, and believable. The play was a bit depressing. Everyone was so over their lives. 45 isn't THAT old that you should feel that you'll never get to do all these things you always wanted to. We have Harper whining about that all the time, and her mother lamenting about how old she is…it suddenly made me feel really young, and not wanting to ever get older. I think if I had been older, I may have identified better with the people in the play. I also totally did not understand the ending. It just..ended. Overall, it was a good, solid play, not exciting, but very smart and thoughtful. Check out what we three Playhouse Pluggers had to say througout the performance, then go check out the play in person!

@scottragle, @wishsison & @merrijane, and go to www.twitter.com/sfplayhouse to see what everyone wrote - it's way too much to copy out here!

Ticket and Program