Catching up with my past

Yow. I hate falling off my LiveJournal wagon. Forgive me, Father; it's been more than a week since my last substantive entry.

Well, let's see if we can remember the high notes, at least.

Last week, one of my co-workers had tickets to see McCoy Tyner at Shriver Hall on the Johns Hopkins campus in Baltimore on Sunday, April 9. He couldn't use the tickets so he offered them to me. I wasn't familiar with the artist, but I readily accepted. I called Jeffrey and invited him to accompany me and he immediately agreed.

We met outside his apartment and walked up to Charles Village, where we had dinner at Rocky Run. I introduced him to the bar trivia system and won both of the games that we participated in. The food wasn't as good as I remember, but the company was excellent. After dinner, we wandered around the Johns Hopkins campus until it was time to be seated.

The performance was very engaging; I enjoyed it a great deal. But I was mostly struck by the transformation in his face as he completed each piece. While he was playing, his face was drawn, frozen. It was a mask of concentration. When he finished the piece and the audience began to applaud, a smile that was almost child-like bloomed across his face. It was a little stunning to see his obvious enjoyment at being able to perform. This is a guy who loves what he does.

The audience was very responsive. The woman who introduced him received several gusts of applause confirming her points, especially the one that called jazz "America's classical music." After the main program, the applause brought McCoy Tyner back on stage for two encores.

This was the first time that Jeffrey and I have gone out together, and I enjoyed sitting together arm in arm or with my hand on his thigh. After the concert, we walked back down to his apartment (after stopping by my place to pick up my meds for the evening) and watched a little Curb Your Enthusiasm and had cake and ice cream before going to bed.

It was a very wonderful evening.

More details

Last weekend, I made a pot roast and I saved some to make my mom's beef hash with. Initially, I had invited Jeffrey to share it with me for dinner during the week, but the amount didn't seem large enough to feed two people, so I withdrew the offer. I needn't have worried. I had forgotten how far this recipe stretches the meet and serving it over rice stretches it that much further. There was plenty of food for two people.

Instead, we had some excellent pulled pork that a friend of Jeffrey had given him. I think that was the night that we watched Crash which was an excellent film. I'm not surprised it won Best Picture.

I had told Jeffrey about deege's pressure cooker and I had shared one of my cookbooks with him, Recipes From an Ecological Kitchen, which focuses on using the pressure cooker. We both expressed amazement that a recipe could take so little time.

As a gift, Jeffrey went out and purchased a pressure cooker for me as a "friendship gift." Such a nice guy!

I'm house sitting for Jim through this Thursday. I'm taking care of his two cats, Leo and Dinah. Yesterday was the start of my gig, so Sunday was all about preparing for this week. I did laundry and made a double pot of chili for lunch this week. I also did most of my packing on Sunday so that I could spend the night with Jeffrey.

<3 O

Last night was the monthly heart circle. The talking stick goes around the circle three times.

The first time I held the stick, I spoke about my HIV. I spoke about how I recently changed my medications due to incipient lipodystrophy. I spoke about the follow-up with my doctor a month later and how the lab work confirmed that the new regimen seemed to be effective, keeping the viral load undetectable.

The second time I held the stick, I spoke about Jeffrey. I spoke about how I have never met a man who seems to be on the same wavelength on so many different questions. We both find it remarkable how similar our attitudes and beliefs are, despite our different backgrounds. We both agree that we like each other very much and enjoy our times together a great deal.

He seems as forthright as I try to be; he recently told me that he doesn't care if I continue to date other men. He just enjoys the time we spend together. This is precisely how I approach the other relationships I'm forming these days.

This was the first time I tried to articulate how I feel about Jeffrey and how I feel about our friendship. The next time I see him, I need to share these thoughts with him.

The third time I held the stick, I spoke some thoughts triggered by something another man had said. He mentioned one of his clients undergoing counseling for substance abuse who refused to let any of the staff into his thoughts. It seems to me that it's a great tragedy for someone to be utterly without the support of friends or family and forced to rely upon some outside agency for assistance. Ironically, I feel that it's that lack of support — that lack of connection — that prevents someone from learning how to be self-reliant.

Two new men joined the heart circle: Mickey and Rich. I was immediately intrigued by Mickey, and the feeling seemed to be mutual — when we exchanged hugs after the circle, Mickey and I also exchanged tongues and phone numbers. I'm hoping to see him tonight after work. :-)

Portable Play

I have a new toy.

Friday, March 31, my office mate and I browsed around the Bowie Town Center. He stopped in a video game store looking for an Xbox 360 and I amused myself with the Playstation Portable that was on display. I was intrigued, but I didn't buy it. Instead, I spent a little time reading about it on the internet after we returned to the office.

That evening, another coworker offered me a ride back to Baltimore. He occasionally has to pick up one of his children at Peabody. As we were driving along, I decided to give myself permission to go ahead and splurge. So I asked him to drop me off in the Inner Harbor, where Best Buy recently opened a store.

I marched into the store and collected a PSP, hard shell case, and two games — Lumines and Star Wars: Battlefront II. I was in and out in about twenty minutes.

I'm enthralled by the design of this little gizmo. I'm especially happy with the wireless networking and the built-in web browser. I discovered within hours that I can browse files that are stored on the memory stick, so I'm trying to code a program on my Macintosh that will output my address book into a collection of static pages that I can browse on the PSP. I've already designed the index interface. Now I have to dive back into AppleScript to figure out how to do the actual export. To that end, I'm studying similar scripts that I've found on the internet.

I'm also in the habit of browsing my news sites and saving the print pages to the PSP so that I can read the articles while I'm on the train. I've also downloaded H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man from project Gutenberg. When davidlevine announced that his story Tk'tk'tk had been published online, I grabbed that and stuck it on the PSP as well.

The drawings that Russell scanned and put on misterpiggy.com? I grabbed those and put them in the photo directory. I even experimented with sampling DVD video and playing it back on the PSP. I also upgraded the firmware and enabled WMA playback, although I don't intend to use it.

I really like this little guy.