We had a nice lobster feast tonight. We looked far and wide for the best lobster restaurant in Toronto, and we found it! I got a 1.25 lb lobster, and lobster bisque; very tasty! I definitely prefer sushi to lobster though. I don’t think I’ll be going to eat any more lobster in the near future though. I enjoyed it, but not enough to justify paying 35 bucks for it. 35 bucks will buy me a sushi feast that would make my taste bugs sing in a complex harmony!
We have a member’s area CMS being installed tomorrow morning to try out to see how well it works for us. If the tests go well, which I hope they do, we’ll buy the software and we’ll be in good shape to get the conversion from a manually run site to an automated site done. That is very exciting to me!
Now, it’s off to pee, and await lovely e-mails.
Ξ May 28th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ General, Porn Notes |
We had a head shave photo shoot planned for this Saturday with a woman in the Toronto area, and when I wrote to let her know that we’d arrived in town and we hoped she was still available and interested, I got a terse one word reply, “no”, and then she logged off.
Most likely she (he?) was a faker, someone who writes because they like to talk about their fetish and get off on that rather than actually wanting to follow through. Many times they are men that pretend to be women, so they can get their fetish talk indulged. Either way, it is vastly annoying.
Thankfully we have to be in the area for Katt’s lap band procedure anyways, so it’s not like we made the trip just for that one thing. We did, however, arrive 10 days earlier than we needed to to accomondate the shoot. We’re booked in the RV park until Thursday… maybe we can get out and go travelling until the week before Katt’s procedure, and do our sight seeing in Toronto then. -ponder-
We need bald models in a big way right now. Any volunteers???
Ξ May 26th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ Travel Diary |
I took the van into a wash station the other day to get all the bug splatter washed off from our trip across the prairies. I rejected the idea of washing it myself due to the lack of do it yourself wash stations and the sheer amount of work involved in scraping the muck off. At the start of the washing process I overheard one of the washers say, “Megadeth!”. So, verily, on this day, our RV is now called Gaia Megadeth! Well, ok, not. But it was still funny.
We’re in the Toronto area now and we’ll be in the area for at least 3 weeks. We’re going to do the tourist thing for a few weeks, and then Katt has her surgery, and after that we’ll probably go on the move again once she is recovered enough to travel.
Back to bugs. I have decided that mosquitos need to be exterminated. Mosquito-cide! Vast projects should be undertaken to rid the earth of this horrible parasite. Can you tell I hate mosquitos? Sault Ste Marie was the worst for mosquitos. If I opened the door to the RV, 20-30 mosquitos would get in the door. If I took Iggy and Bella for a walk, they would be swarmed with so many mosquitos that they’d forget about needing to go to the bathroom and run like hell back home! Vile little creatures. I really have this thing about non consensual blood taking. It’s not so bad where we’re staying now. There are still a lot of them, but I can go outside and come back in and only a few will have bitten me or found their way indoors. Nasty VILE creatures.
The RV is holding together really well. Other than the initial work I had done when we bought it (tune up, tires) and the few things the dealership fixed at their expense (2 water leaks), we haven’t had to invest any more money into it. It is time for an oil change and tire rotation, but thats not super pricey. I occasionally wish we’d gone for the bigger unit, but the minor inconvenience of having less space inside the van is outweighed by the fact that we can bring this vehicle downtown with no problem and find parking at most places without a major hassle.
I’m also really stoked that gas hasn’t been as big an expense as I’d anticipated. The tune up brought our gas mileage from a horrid 9mpg to an average of 13mpg. Gas prices have also been lower than expected so we’ve saved a least 20% based on my initial expectations. Which is good since we’ve been paying for campground space instead of parking free somewhere. Convenience costs!
Here is a photo of a mountain in the Icefields from when we drove over the rockies earlier in the month. I’ve got photos of Dinosaur bones from our trip to Drumheller’s museum too, but they didn;t turn out as well as expected. Click to enlarge.
I’ve discovered two amazing TV shows in the last few weeks. Dead Like Me and How I Met Your Mother. Both are right up my alley; the dark humour in DLM is awesome, and the geeky relationship humour kicks ass in HIMYM. Strangely enough, I identify with the main character in HIMYM a fair bit. When I was 18-20 I was like him. I wanted to fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after. Like I said in my last post, I’m a romantic mushbucket. Lucky for me, I met the woman of my dreams (and I mean literally the woman of my dreams) when I was 20.
It’s funny; I grew up wanting a simple life, and I ended up living a life I’d never even imagined. While my life has been rather more complicated, it’s been infinitely more interesting than I could have imagined. I know every detail of the last 14 years intimately, but it sometimes doesn’t seem entirely real.
I can still remember the very young and untried young man I used to be. I always was very optimistic and tended to look on the bright side of things. I saw the world in my own, very romantic and idealized, way and I felt that other people were as bright and optimistic as me.
I’ve led a very lucky life. I can’t say that all of it has been easy, because it hasn’t all been easy. I’ve made a few really stupid mistakes. I’ve recovered from a few stupid mistakes. I’ve lived a life filled with intense moments of drama, stress, and loss, and I’ve lived a life filled with moments of intense love, purpose, and fufillment.
I’ve seen the horror that is the DTES of Vancouver. Whatever people tell you, it is horrifying, not just because there are people who shoot drugs (and occasionally each other), but because after a while you get used to seeing people sleeping on the street, shooting heroin, smoking crack, and beating the shit out of each other. It becomes normal. Shit like that should never -ever- be considered normal. Compassion and empathy should never be reserved just for family, friends, and peers and nobody should be left all alone in the night.
I’ve been numb for a very long time and once you’ve been numb long enough your forget to have compassion even for yourself. Isn’t it sad that the world generally seems to make people numb, crazy, or somehow completely oblivious to anything outside their sphere of awareness?
Books, TV shows, and movies, strangely enough, remind me to let my breath out once in a while. They give me a safe place to express emotion.
I wanted to use this trip across Canada as a fresh start for myself so I could break some ingrained patterns and habits. I want to wake up every day feeling excited about what is coming next. Every day I wake up grumpy and out of sorts. I am tired of waking up and wanting just to go back to sleep again. I want to become a nicer and better person. I don’t want to stand alone in a crowd anymore. I want to make friends with people that don’t mind that I get tongue tied from time to time and that I don’t always make sense. I want to be able to communicate more effectively my limits and desires around intimate friendships. I want to be able to make it through a single day without swearing profusely because I’m stressed out. I’m tired of being stressed out! My life is good. I shouldn’t have many reasons to be stressing, but amany days the knot in my throat is still there. I’m tired of my deodorant working for 20 hours less than the 24 hours it promises!
There is a lot of time to think while we’re travelling. There is no TV to distract me. We drive for up to 8 hours a day some days and there’s loads of time for reflection. Being stuck with my thoughts isn’t always so comfortable. I will ocasionally start thinking about something stressful and I have to remind myself not to get into a circular train of thought. I consciously refocus my mind on something else.
Every day when I wake up I try to stretch out my body and breath the clean, fresh, air and bring myself into awareness with a positive thought. Every day I see my angel sleeping across from me and that is the best happy thought that I have.
You know, I don’t use the term ‘polyamorous’ to describe myself anymore; I think I mentioned that not too long ago. The youthful ideals I had around that have shifted into a different reality. We both say we’re in an open marriage, though in practice neither of us really have much of a sex drive anyways, so the point is kind of moot. I’m just not able to go there right now on an emotional level. I’ve got too much stuff to work on inside myself before that even becomes a possibility.
The whole goal of this trip is to work on connecting with myself so I can better connect with others. I don’t mean sexually… get your mind out of the gutter (ptttthhhht). I simply mean that I would like to be able to develop some friendships that have no overt sexual tensions or expectations, and if they do, to be able to clearly state my limitations. I also want to learn to become less self critical. I am my own worst enemy, if truth be told.
I don’t know what I want from the rest of my life right now. I know some things… I want property so we can rescue animals. I want to live a meaningful life where I feel I’m contributing to the world in some small way. I want my angel to be next to me until we’re wrnkled old prunes. And I want my life to be filled with friendship and laughter. Could I also say that I want George Bush to be impeached and jailed as a war criminal? Just figured I’d put that out to the universe.
The clock says it’s almost 4am. My body doesn’t believe it; it’s still on Vancouver time. Thankfully, we are parked for a few days so I can sleep in until the dogs wake me up to go outside. After driving over 1200 km in 2 days we decided it was time for a rest. We’re in a nice campground, although it has way too many mosquitos, and we’ve got a full hookup (with power, water, sewer, wi fi, and cable) so we’re going to take advantage of it tomorrow.
Okay. Off with me, hopefully to dream of life a it should be.
I bought The Princess Bride on DVD a few weeks ago and we finally got around to watching it tonight. It is one of my very favorite movies. The book rocks just as much as the movie, btw. Over the years I’ve probably watched it two o three dozen times and I never get tired of it. It’s as close to a perfect story as I’ve seen, at least from my point of view.
I am an idealist at heart. I believe that true love is the greatest force in existence, and I believe that true love conquers all. I’m a hopeless romantic. It’s just a heart warming movie.
I thought about watching it because we saw the pilot episode of Dead Like Me a few days ago and it also had Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Montoya) in it. We’re going to buy Dead Like Me on DVD. The pilot rocked. Only two seasons were produced, but it looks awesome.
Anyhoo.
We’re in Ontario now. The trip is going a little faster than planned, but it’s ending up being a good thing. We’ll need to be in Toronto by the first of June, so we can do some exploring before hand along the way.
I haven’t felt like saying much in my journal lately. I’m basically keeping it as a log of things I’m doing rather than things I’m feeling. I’m having a hard time writing about anything of consequence, so for now I’ll just go with the flow. It’s funny, I have a compulsion to write here, but when I take the time to actually put ‘pen to paper’ so to speak, the words throttle themselves in my proverbial throat.
So what gets written will have to do.
Ξ May 21st, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ General |
Your results:
You are Qui-Gon Jinn
| Qui-Gon Jinn |
|
78% |
| Obi-Wan Kenobi |
|
76% |
| Mace Windu |
|
73% |
| Lando Calrissian |
|
66% |
| Chewbacca |
|
65% |
| Yoda |
|
59% |
| Han Solo |
|
59% |
| Luke Skywalker |
|
57% |
| R2-D2 |
|
55% |
| Princess Leia |
|
53% |
|
Overall, you’re a pretty well balanced person.
But maybe you focus a little too
much on the here and now.
Think about the future before its too late.
 |
(This list displays the top 10 results out of a possible 21 characters)
Click here to take the “Which Star Wars character are you?” quiz…
Ξ May 18th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ General |
We are in lovely Saskatchewan today, just outside of Indian Head. We spent last weekend in Edmonton visiting friends, then we drove to Drumheller on Tuesday, saw the Royal Tyrell (Dinosaur) museum on Wednesday, drove to Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Wednesday night, and today we drove to Indian Head.
The trip has been a blast so far. My only, very minor, complaint has been the very abundant and hungry mosquito population on the Prairies eating me alive. The dogs are also enjoying the trip. Iggy still wants to go out and mark every tree, bush, and post he sees. By the time we get across the country he’ll have marked most major stops along Route 1. Silly dog.
We have been quite busy working, as well. Curvosity is really growing so we’ve been spending lots of time promoting it and making it *sweet*. The curvosity girls are awesome as well. It’s been a real pleasure working with them!
I was hoping my diet would improve during the trip, but my hopes haven’t yet been realized. I’m not eating as much, but I’m still eating crap! We filled the van with tasty, healthy, food yesterday, so here’s to trying!
And somehow I seem to have gotten a tiny scratch on my LCD screen. Grrrrrr. I am not scratchtacular. Dammit.
We are camped in Revelstoke tonight; we splurged and are staying at an RV site. We stayed at White Lake provincial park yesterday, which is close to Salmon Arm. All in all the trip is off to a nice start. We had a few unexpected detours off of the trans Canada highway, once due to a semi clipping a hydro line, and the other due to road work. The detours were nice though. The scenery was lovely.
We haven’t decided where we’re going to go tomorrow. We may end up in Golden, or we might just bite the bullet and head over the rockies. We’re almost out of BC and we’re only on the second day of our trip! We still have 4 more weeks before we need to be back east!
I’ve found a paysite CMS that we’ll be purchasing and using to manage our paysites. The main feature we’re interested in is the automatic updates. We would be able to schedule updates months and years in advance. It would make it a lot easier for us while we’re travelling. It will take quite a while to organize though once it is installed. I’ll need to transfer all the existing content over to it first and then we can go live with it. How quickly that happens depends on how often we have internet access and for how long at a sitting.
We are still looking for people to photograph while we are travelling. We’ll be travelling east towards Golden, then into the rockies and up and then over into Edmonton over the next week. Ping us if you might be interested!
Ξ May 4th, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ General, Travel Diary |
The hectic week is over. Today was probably my least and most favorite day of any day in the last week. I had 4 fillings done today, for which I am both happy that I had it done and not happy that my jaw aches as much as it does. I also went and spoke to an investment advisor and we chose an investment fund that suited Katt and my needs. That was exciting AND nerve wracking. It’s exciting because we could make money so we can purchase another home some day, and it’s scary because we could lose all of our investment. The fund has never performed negatively, and routinely makes 20-30% per year for its investors so I am very optimistic. Our investment advisor will switch our investment to a lower risk category if he feels the market will tank. I really hope it does well. It’s nerve wracking!
So the week has wound down and we’re relaxing tonight and tomorrow. We are going to get some air vent covers for the van, so we can drive with the vents open and keep them open when it rains, tomorrow. We’re also going to install our lock box tomorrow as well.
On Saturday our trip winds up and we’re on our way east. It’s very exciting!
I’m all out of words for tonight. I’m still really tired from all the rushing around, and i’m very much looking forward to getting our trip started!
Ξ May 3rd, 2006 | → Comments Off | ∇ General, Travel Diary |
To much relief, I was able to get our ‘home’ in to be serviced today to deal with the leaking issue. It turns out it was a split pipe that leads to and from the grey water tank. It still took 3.5 hours to fix because the pipe was crammed into a little 4 inch by 6 inch space, but at least it’s done. I hope nothing else goes rong before (or after) we start driving east on Saturday!
Our ‘home’ is all tuned up, fixed up, and packed up, and we’re ready to go! It’s very very exciting!
The last think I’m doing service wise to the coach is sterilizing the fresh water tank with a bleach solution. After it has been allowed to sit overnight I will flush it out, then fill the tank with a vinegar solution and let that sit for a few hours, then I’ll flush that out. After that I can refill the tank and the water will be drinkable. Right now we can’t drink the water from the tank because it tastes super gross. When we leave tomorrow the tank will be perfect!
Not much news on the porn front. Overall business has slowed down from this time last year. Bald Beauties is not performing as well, but Curvosity has picked up a bit of the slack. Dark Nursery is also not doing as well, since we haven’t been able to make as much new content. We’re also dealing with a low exchange rate, which also really hurts us. Thankfully there are lots of plans and new ideas we’re exploring and so far they’re working out really well. I love the fact that the industry constantly evolves. It keeps us challenged and entertained.
Off to walk my dog, who is whining piteously at me at the camper door!
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