Not Another Year in Review Blog!

In with the new and out with the old (or so they say).

Today your humble blogger took down his old 2011 Group of Seven kitchen calendar.  And began glancing through its pages…

January 2011 marked a change for the Gay Groom when he decided to continue blogging about non-wedding/marriage related topics.  In trying to decide what to write about (no easy feat, let me tell ya), he considered a la Julie and Julia, to work his way through The Gay Joy of Sex:  The New Joy of Gay Sex Project

In mid January I had a physical.  This I do nearly every year except this time I, now being over forty, had my first prostate exam and dispel the myth that all gay men would find this a thrill:   Let’s Get (a) Physical.

Also in January I flirted with death when I discovered I had an allergy to aspirin and landed in the hospital.  Of course I took time out to take a photo of myself in the ER.  The lengths your humble blogger goes through for his readers! At the end of the month I turned 43.  This lead me to ask Am I a Daddy Now?

For Valentine’s Day in February, the Husband and I celebrated in our usual romantic fashion:  My Big Gay Valentine’s Day.  To continue the theme of love and sex in the dreary month February, The Gay Groom looked at (from afar, mind you, I’m married) the popularity of two ‘dating’ iPhone apps, Grindr and Scruff:    The Gay Groom is Wired.

On St. Patrick’s Day your humble blogger discovering his Irish roots, green beer, the Shamrock Shake and peeing green:  Kiss Me I’m 37.5% Irish.  Also in March we lost Elizabeth Taylor: Star, Legend and Gay Icon which was shocking since I was starting to think she would never die (like Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontain)but life goes on.  And Liz would have wanted it that way.  And at the end of March the husband and I fled the rotten weather and headed to sunny and very warm Palm Springs:  Palm Springs Holiday Photos.

Of course the big news in April (to most but not to me) was the wedding of Prince William to Kate whats-her-face.  I didn’t watch it and tried to avoid it but still this didn’t stop me from having an opinion about it:  William and Kate: Thank Christ that’s All Over.  In May we were told by some crack-pot that the Rapture was going to occur.  As you recall, his stupid followers sold their homes and waited for the angels to sweep them up to heaven.  Shockingly, this didn’t happen.  Being brought up Baptist, your humble blogger gave a primer for all those who were wondering what exactly this “Rapture” is: A Rapture Primer (For those About To Be Left Behind). 

I received a lot of hate mail for my Rapture blog to which I can only reply with 1 Thessalonians 4:11:  “Mind your own business.”

In June The Gay Groom got the skinny on nude beaches in Toronto: It’s So Hot the Toronto Island Ferry Took Off His Slip and celebrated when Marriage Equality came to New York State .  On June 16^th I again celebrated the great literary “holy day”:  Happy Bloomsday.

July in Toronto was glorious! And all your humble blogger’s hard work paid off when he ran in the Pride and Remembrance 5K on July 2:  So I Ran This 5K Today…

At the end of July the Husband and I flew to New York City for the long weekend (New York city Photo Blog) and I risked scorn and horrified indignation when I tried out suggested fee museums to see if one could really get into The Metropolitan and Frick for a penny (spoiler – I did!):   Testing Out Suggested Fee Museums in New York.

September was a rough month for the Gay Groom as he went under the knife for sinus surgery (and also had his very first Percocet):   The Gay Groom Goes Under the Knife.  After a few weeks of recuperation, I was able to volunteer again at the Toronto AIDS walk at the end of the month:  AIDS Walk for Life Toronto, 2011.

In October we celebrated our second wedding anniversary and then headed to San Diego for an all-gay Atlantis Mexican Riviera Cruise.  It was a wild week on the seas (or as wild as a married man gets… which of course means eating a lot):    Our Big Gay Cruise.   I also scoped the ship to see what affluent gay men at vacation are reading these days:  Big Gay Vacation Reads.   At the end of the month Halloween came on schedule and we celebrated in Toronto’s gay village (as gays know how to celebrate Halloween):  Pride Lite (Halloween on Church Street).

November saw your humble blogger lose his laptop (blue screen of death) and was laptopless (is that a word?) until I was – though I’m not exactly sure how – able to fix the computer myself the last week in December using Google search for help:  The Cerulean Screen of Death.    Then to make matters worse in November, I was called for jury duty.  Ever write a blog on an iPhone? It takes a long long time:  From Jury Room Purgatory. 

In December I wrote a series of blogs on Christmas in the 1970s.  I looked at the Sears Christmas Wishbook in a different (erotic) way (Taking Another Look at the Sears Christmas Wish Book (My First Book of Gay Erotica) and the worst gift a little gay boy like myself ever received, ice skates!  The Worst Christmas Gift Ever.

And here we are about to start it all again.

So from me, The Gay Groom, to you and yours I wish you very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!  Now let’s get started.

Jeffrey, the Gay Groom.

The Worst Christmas Gift EVER

The Gay Groom at age three on his backyard rink

Continuing with my “Christmas in the 70s” series, I look back gifts.  Not the gifts I wanted and received like my pogo stick, the soundtrack album to The Sound of Music or my Stretch Armstrong (or even the ones I really wanted but couldn’t mention like an Easy Bake Oven), but the one I received almost every Christmas and never ever wanted.

Hockey skates.

With visions of NHL hockey contracts dancing in his head, each winter my father would stand out back of our house in the freezing cold and flood our lawn with a garden hose to make my older brothers and me a backyard skating rink.

My dear old dad wanted your humble blogger to be a great hockey player.  He had me on ice-skates before I was two years old.  The logic being, I suppose, that the earlier I was on the ice then the better skater I would become.

Sadly, for him, this was not to be the case.

Unlike my older brothers, I hated hockey. I hated the cold. I hated the big heavy uniform.  I hated the big smelly bag you carried the hockey accouterments in.  And I especially hated how hockey skates hurt my feet.  I told my dad that skating for long periods hurt my chest (my asthma not yet being diagnosed) but any protestations I made were dismissed by my father with a shake of his head as he would put those damned skates on my feet at the kitchen table each evening and then have me skate in circles around that backyard ice rink.

“You just need more practice,” he would say as he shoved me out into the cold.

On Saturday nights, he would have me sit in front of our huge Zenith color television and watch “Hockey Night in Canada.”  The little Gay Groom did not like watching hockey anymore than I liked playing it.  The games seemed to go on forever and I never really cared who won or lost.  To pass the time as they skated up and down and up and down and up… I would critique the colors of their uniforms:  loved the purple and gold Kings, hated the brown, yellow and orange Canucks, and decided that the Whalers needed a splash of crimson.

I would wait patiently for the end of the game when the camera would move into the locker-room and someone would put a microphone in the face of a half-naked husky hockey player with a bare chests and long sweaty hair.

In those days your humble blogger really dug those Montreal Canadians with their French accents.  Actually, your humble blogger still does.

When I was seven, the time came for me to join the city boy’s hockey league, just as my brothers had, where I played on a team called the Cardinals.

“Shouldn’t cardinals be in red?” I asked my dad when I saw my green uniform for the first time.

“Stop worrying so much about color,” he said.

And I was hopeless on the ice.  I tripped.  I fell over.  I slid on my face.  And at times I simply gave up and lay on my back staring up at the lights on the ceiling as others skated around me.  The lights are pretty from down here, I thought.

“Get up!” my father yelled from the stands. “For Christ’s sake, skate!”

I didn’t feel like it.

After a few games, I was not put on the ice much and spent most of the game sitting on the bench with Tommy Young who was also a terrible skater (and who, incidentally, I would run into at a gay bar a few years later) and discuss important things like Tiger Beat magazine.  Warming the bench with Tommy was fine by me.

(I should mention at this point that many gay men are great athletes and, particularly, great hockey players… and the Gay Groom’s own rottenness at hockey should be in no way seen as stereotypical of all gay boys.  There are excellent gay hockey players out there – I am just not one of them.)

On the drive home from the neighborhood hockey rink after a Cardinal’s game my dad was always quiet.  He was never one to mask his disappointment well and would look shell shocked as he drove (rather like he did years later when I told him why my roommate and I had rented an apartment with only one bedroom).

“But he was on skates before he was two,” he would say quietly say to himself.

When we got home he would make me put my skates back on and skate circles around the backyard rink in the dark.

“You need more practice,” he said.

One night after he made me go out in the backyard to skate circles I waited until I saw him looking out the kitchen window at me.   Then I stretched out my arms wide at my sides and, in the best Dorothy Hamill imitation my lousy skating skills could muster, I started to do big flamboyant figure eights on the ice.  As my father’s eyes narrowed I even managed to throw in a few tiny little jumps without falling.  The final spin never materialized properly but I still finished with a defiant “TA DA!”

It worked.  He flew outside in a rage running over the ice in his stocking feet and pulling me by the shoulder, threw me through the back door.

My dad never made another backyard ice rink.

And as for your humble blogger’s first and only year playing hockey with The Cardinals?  Now the only reminder I have of that unhappy winter is my team photo.

TA DA!

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

Worst Hockey Player Ever?

Taking Another Look at the Sears Christmas Wish Book (My First Book of Gay Erotica)

Continuing with The Gay Groom’s look at Christmas in the 70s.  I thought I would take a second look at the Sears Wish Book…

Long before the Internet put countless images of beautiful men in various stages of undress at our fingertips with the simple click of a mouse, we young gay boys had to be much more creative in our search for homoerotic visual stimulation.  For me, like many gay men my age, my first secret peek of what lay behind the silver zipper of a pair of man’s slacks was found in the Sears Catalog.

In these semiannual catalogs from the late 70s and early 80s, handsome sexy men with wide chests and chiseled V-shaped torsos would stand close together in intimate twosomes and threesomes smiling or laughing in their underpants, while, if one looked closely, a hand or elbows would wander seductively to the shoulder of the other men standing beside them.

These men seemed to be saying to me: “It’s fun to stand around with other men without your pants on.”

And it looked like an awful lot of fun to me.

A Sears catalog underwear page

I loved looking at men in their underpants.  Their packages, although looking somewhat confined and constricted in their white briefs (I suppose as not to offend the housewives who were buying underpants for their husbands), did provide a little gay boy like me the hint that something exciting and was hidden beneath the bulges of those white, yellow, green, blue or even leopard and python print undies (it was the 70s).

To the young Gay Groom, it seemed that in these little catalog photos, I was seeing a snapshot of a steamy sensual moment that was occurring either just after the instant when these men had stood together naked – or the second just before they were about to strip down entirely.  Though I was unsure what they would do when they did rip off those colourful shorts in wonderful grinning unison – I do know that I really wanted to watch them do – whatever it was they did.  The Sears catalog was my first book of gay erotica.

Sexy 70s undies

Early each autumn, Sears would deliver their annual Christmas Wish Book to our door.  The Sears Wish Book was a beautiful and magical glossy catalog full of Christmas gift ideas for mom, grandpa and aunt Doris and then the last half of the catalog was devoted to toys – lots and lots of toys (Stretch Armstrong, Dancerella, Ants In The Pants or Hugo – Man Of A Thousand Faces).  But for me, the little gay boy, I would turn to the pages that contained the photos of men in their Christmas robes, plaid flannel pajamas and long winter underwear.

Sears Wish Book

Alone on the sofa, pretending to be looking at GI Joe With The Kung Fu Grip, I would instead moon over these attractive half-naked men.  Then, with my overactive (and underdeveloped) writer’s imagination, I would create an entire back-story for each of the good-looking men in the photographs.  In my invented story, I would tell myself that these three men (I would name them something like Bob, Tom, and Sebastian) were spending Christmas together because Tom had been thrown out on Christmas Eve by his shrewish and clinging wife, Helga.  Fortunately, Bob and his roommate Sebastian were happy to share their home with their buddy for the holiday.  I could tell by the wide grins on their faces that these men liked being together a lot.

Christmas robes

I imagined that in their fluffy velour robes, these three attractive men would enjoy Christmas morning together without women, drinking hot chocolate out of big red mugs, opening Christmas presents, patting each other on the back, laughing, joking, and trying on all the different colored long underwear in the Sears Wish Book catalog for one another in front of the tree:

“How do I look in these blue drawers, Bob?”

“You look really good, Tom – but you better take em off and try on these red ones!”

“Here, let me help you out of those, Sebastian!”

“Oops, my velour robe fell open!”

“Hey, whatcha got going on under that nightshirt?”

Sears Nightshirts

I didn’t know what “Perma-Prest” flannel was – but it sounded sexy.

It was these men of the Sears Wish Book, standing together by a fireplace or in a decorated paneled living room on Christmas morning, which gave me the impression that (somewhere) there were men living happily together – sleeping together, getting up together, dressing together, eating together, celebrating holidays together – and I wanted to be one of those happy men when I grew up.

So, I guess there must have been some magic in that old Sears Wish Book, because eventually I did.

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

Season’s Greetings, 1970s Coca-Cola Style

As we get closer to Christmas your humble blogger finds himself, from time to time, strolling down a gingerbread scented Memory Lane where The Carpenters Christmas album plays and I unwrap Lite Brite and Stretch Armstrong on a shag carpet in the rec room.

Yes, I’m remembering Christmas in the 70s.

For the next few weeks The Gay Groom will be looking back at Christmas in the 1970s with a series of blogs.  This week I was thinking of a wonderful old television commercial that ran every Christmas throughout the seventies (and into the eighties). The commercial begins with one bright candle shining through the darkness as a choir begins to sing.  Next, we see a happy, overly hopeful-looking girl holding a white candle and singing:

I’d like to buy the world a home

And furnish it with love

Grow apple trees and honey bees

And snow white turtle doves…

Suddenly, young men and women of all different races, creeds, colors (and fashions) surround the young girl and join in singing the song.  Finally, as the camera pulls back, we see that the candles being held create the image of a huge human Christmas tree (the original commercial would end with the words: “Season’s Greetings from your bottler of Coca-Cola”).

Apparently, world peace was possible – if we would just buy each other a Coke.

Leaving issues of marketing, consumption and commercialism aside for the moment, for me, that shining Coca-Cola Christmas tree made up of beautiful young people (I suppose there is no ugly people in the Coca-Cola Utopia) was an iconic image of Christmas.  And that sappy song can still cause a lump in my throat (also try and put aside for the moment how most of the girls in the commercial seem to resemble Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Louise Van Houten).

But there was something so sweet and innocent about this idea that generosity (and soda, apple trees, honey bees et al) could bring people together in harmony – and, being a young idealist gay boy, I believed it.  For in that Coca-Cola tree I saw the white guy in football jerseys sitting beside the Asian in a kimono who is sitting beside the Native American in beads and braided hair (OK, try and put aside the stereotypes presented in the commercial as well).

And being a little gay boy in the 70s, I did have my favourites – just take a look at the handsome blonde guy wearing the cowboy hat.  I really wanted to share a Coke with him.

So was this commercial just another example of a silly 70s naivety?  Perhaps.  But, I think the idea was (and still is) admirable.

Seasons Greetings from me (and your bottler of Coca-Cola).

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

Xmas 1972: Jeffrey, The Gay Groom, as a little fella. That cardboard Santa Claus behind me is actually a Coca-Cola display ad my father 'found' someplace.

Enough Already with the Christmas Tipping!

Your humble blogger isn’t cheap.

He will gladly add 20% to his bill at a restaurant (even for mediocre service), let his cabbie keep the change of a ten-dollar bill for a seven-dollar ride, and throws his change in the tip jar at Startucks when getting a chai latte.

Now I don’t want to be a Scrooge and I hate to complain, but come December I seem to be tipping everyone and their brother.

Just who am I tipping?  I’m glad you asked…

First there is the Cleaning Lady:  The usual tip (or so I was told years ago) is an extra week’s salary on her last cleaning day before Christmas.  It is not, apparently,  appropriate to give one’s cleaning lady a gift of say, towels or fancy olive oil.  Cold hard cash is what is expected and it’s what I fork over.  Though it is the one day of the year when their work seems to be lacking.  You know you will be re-cleaning the toilet in the guest bathroom before your guest pop by Christmas Eve.  “Ah well”, you say as you dig in your pocket, “it’s Christmas”.

Condo concierge:  This is the cheerful guy that sits behind the desk in the lobby of the condo.  Tipping him costs me either a very good bottle of scotch or champagne every year.  Keeping the concierge happy at Christmas means that guests to your condo will be sent up quickly and you will know right when the package from Amazon arrives. A happy concierge will also unlock the security door when he sees you arrive with six shopping bags (and getting to your keys is difficult).  Your humble blogger forgot to tip the concierge once and paid for it the entire year with the cold shoulder whenever I arrived with armfuls of groceries.

Condo security:  Not to be confused with the concierge, security needs to be tipped as well.  We have about four full-time guys on staff at our condo (I think I can name one of them) plus a bunch of part-time weekend guys.  We are asked to contribute to a Christmas fund that is distributed in some way that, I suppose, is fair.  The suggested donation is 100 dollars.  If you don’t want to find your belongings gone when you get home from Palm Springs in February, tip security.

The Paperboy:  Though have you noticed delivering newpapers really isn’t done by ‘boys’ anymore?  It is now some guy in his 40s who I never see or hear from until a week before Christmas when I get a Christmas card inside my newspaper telling me his name, how great it was to delivery papers to me all year and that tips can be left at the concierge.

Personal Trainer: The 100 dollars an hour you’re shelling out for this torture isn’t enough during the holiday season.  Biff, Steve or Rocko will be expecting a tip after your last workout before Christmas.  Anything less than a hundred dollars and you will be paying with an extra two hundred crunches at the gym on December 27.

Getting your hair cut for Christmas?  Then many of you know you will be tipping nearly everyone in the salon.  You will have to tip your hairdresser, plus the shampoo girl, the girl behind the counter… and it’s double since it’s Christmas.

Did I forget anybody?  If I did I’m sure I’ll pay for it come January.

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

World AIDS Day, 2011

Here in Toronto the CN Tower will be lit red again for World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day.

World AIDS day was created to raise awareness of the ongoing crisis of HIV/AIDS and remember those who have lost the battle with the disease and support those who are living with it.  More than 25 million people between 1981 and 2007 have died from the virus, making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history.

To commemorate World AIDS Day, I thought I would repost the piece I wrote on the Toronto AIDS Walk from back in September.

For more information on World AIDS Day and HIV/AIDS, have a look at their website here:  World AIDS Day Website

The Scotiabank AIDS Walk For Life Toronto was held on Sunday September 25, 2011.

Again this year your humble blogger volunteered with the Finance Group and worked selling drink tickets again (pop/water $2.00, beer $5.00, premium beer/wine $6.00).

Which is an odd job choice for me since I’m so bad at math.

Still, it was great to see so many friends and Gay Groom readers drop by to say ‘hi’… actually, the fact that it was the only place that they could get a beer may have had something to do with why so many of you came by…

But I’m glad you did!

The walk was again a success and we surpassed last year’s total raising a grand total of $430,000.  Which is great since this year it was in direct competition with Toronto’s “Word on the Street”, the huge book festival just a few blocks away.

“Over 1,100 registered walkers and 350 volunteers helped make this year a great success under sunny skies in downtown Toronto,” said Hamal Docter, Co-Chair of the Scotiabank AIDS Walk for Life Toronto. “It was great to see a broad representation of Toronto – people of all walks of life and backgrounds – at this year’s event coming together to support ACT’s incredible work.”

Funds raised will support a range of activities at ACT, including health promotion and HIV prevention programs, as well as support services for people living with, affected by and at risk for HIV/AIDS.  The Walk not only raises funds, but awareness about HIV/AIDS.  And, sadly, we still need AIDS awareness.

In Toronto:

• 1 in 3 new HIV diagnoses are among youth under 30
• 1 in 5 gay men live with HIV
• 1 in 5 new HIV diagnoses are among women

Donations are still being accepted at www.aidswalktoronto.ca.

And a special thanks to whomever it was I must have shortchanged since my cash box was a couple of bucks more than it should have been at the end of the day.

Ah well… all for a good cause.

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

Behind the ticket counter - Jeffrey volunteering at the AIDS Walk.

Running a Half-Marathon for Multiple Myeloma

Today your humble blogger signed up to run a half-marathon.

Has he lost his mind?

Perhaps, but it’s for a good cause.  He will be raising funds for Multiple Myeloma research.  You can be forgiven it you don’t know what Multiple Myeloma (MM) is.

Back in 2010 I had never heard of MM either.

Multiple Myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells, is the 2nd most common blood cancer after Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Each year 2100 new patients in Canada are diagnosed with this treatable, but incurable, disease.

In 2010 my father was one of them.

MM is an ugly disease.  There is no part of the body that isn’t ravished by it; bones, kidneys, eyes, brain, spine… so I think that the struggle of running 13+ miles is nothing compared to the struggle my father is going through.

I did a 5K for MM last year but this is my first half-marathon.  In fact, I’ve never run more than a 10K race.  And I’m not currently in what you may call “tip top shape”.  To start, the Gay Groom hasn’t actually run at all since his sinus surgery back in September… I’m more “tip over shape”.

So this should be interesting.

Even more interesting is that I signed up the Husband to run along with me (without actually telling him).  I suppose I’ll have to break the news to him soon.  I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.

I hope.

I will be blogging about my progress and I get closer to the run date of May 06, 2012.  Anyone who wants to sponsor me for my run can do so here:

“Jeff’s Half Marathon Page“

So any advice on training for a half-marathon from other runners?  I’ll also be on RunKeeper app for those wanting to join me there.

Jeffrey after a 5K, July 2011

In other news

Your humble blogger is still without his laptop.

Regular readers will know of the Cerulean Screen of Death he had last week.  Well I did go speak to the folks at Best Buy’s Geek Squad and they quoted me a few hundred dollars to fix my problem.  Final cost would depend if it’s a hard drive or operating system problem.  Seemed excessive so I packed up my busted laptop and left.

I’ll have to wait.

Contrary to popular belief, bloggers do not make millions of dollars.  Even the author of a popular blog like The Gay Groom.  So your humble blogger will just have to see if getting his old 2006 laptop fixed is the most economical way of handling the problem (whatever the hell it is).  Perhaps I should just wait and buy a new laptop.

I need a grant.

In the meantime, my writing (and blogging) is occurring a little more sporadically.  Hopefully I will be back to 100% by the new year (and who knows, maybe I will find a nifty new laptop under our tree on Xmas morning).

And remember there is a “Donate” button to your right if you want to help a blogger out.

Speaking of Xmas

We received our first Xmas card this week.  Perhaps I should have waited for a few more before deciding to string them on the wall?

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

The First Xmas Card of 2011

From Jury Room Purgatory

This is the first blog written entirely on my iPhone using the WordPress app. That is because your humble blogger has nothing else to do.

I was chosen for jury duty.

Jury duty, I’ve decided, is like winning a lottery. A Shirley Jackson lottery, that is.

So starting Monday I have been stuck in a room with 300 others folks (I’m told a cross-section of Torontonians. If this is true this city is in trouble). That is I’m stuck in a room once I get through the metal detectors and x-ray machine checking out the inside of the egg salad sandwich I had in my bag for lunch that are positioned at the entrance of the Superior Court. It sometimes has a longer line than the airport.

Christ, this is the pits!

Days run from 8:30am until 4:30pm. During that time you sit and wait to be called to the trial room. There you will either be chosen or sent back to the jury room and placed back in the pool. If one is never called he or she is done Friday. If he or she is chosen they are here for the duration.

Or so they told us day one when we watched a video entitled ‘Jury Duty and You’. Can I also mention that the jury folk in that video looked just a little too thrilled to be there. Actors. No one in my room looked anything other than put upon.

And after three long days, no one in the jury room has been called. It must be a slow trial week. And all 300 of us (those who didn’t get out of jury duty with some sob story or doctor’s note) sit and wait.

And wait…

Some read. This appears to be the most popular way to kill time. Internet surfing, sleeping, texting, knitting and addressing Xmas cards were also popular.

And at least one of us is writing a blog.

So tell me, has anyone else ever do their civic duty (forced or not) in jury duty purgatory?  Tips for passing the time?

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

* Update: After three days they dismissed the entire jury room. Apparently this lack of trials needing jury folk ‘happens from time to time’. On the bright side I’m exempt from jury duty for three years. Hey, I’ll take it!

The Cerulean Screen of Death

Your humble blogger has been humbled even more.

Sadly, his old Dell Inspiron 6400(a gift from the Husband back in 2006 when yours truly finished his MA) dropped dead on me.

I got the ‘blue sceen of death’.

Now I had heard about the blue screen of death but had never actually seen it until yesterday.  Which may seem as as I have been using computers for quite some time (regular readers will remember that The Gay Groom was once a computer consultant). Though I would have preferred if our introduction could have been postponed even longer.

What a drag.

So now I’ll have to take it in to be doctored.  Which doesn’t really intrigue me since the hard drive is full of downloaded videos from Falcon Studios.  No, not really… well maybe a few.

Actually, “Unmountable Boot Volume” sounds like one of their titles.

But I digress.

So I’m currently unable to get to the book I have been editing.  To do my editing I’m required to use the Husband’s old (really old.. like from 1999) desktop that keeps telling me I’m using up too much memory.

It appears (as told to me by my Twitter pals) that I need to use the CD with the operating system to boot the computer and then do a chckdsk or something like that.  Sounds simple enough.  But who keeps their operating system CDs from five years ago?  Not me, apparently.

When did I become such a techophebe?

Hopefully I’ll be back up and running soon.  But there is not real rush as your humble blogger’s presence has been requested this Monday at the criminal court house for – good lord – jury duty.  So I may be busy for a few weeks.

When it rains…

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom

For Remembrance Day: A Blog For My Dad (a UN Peacekeeper)

Today is Remembrance Day in Canada and Veterans Day in the United States.

To commemorate, I am reposting a blog about my dad, a UN Peacekeeper in the Canadian Army.

A few months ago my father gave me a box of his old Kodak Kodachrome slides.

He had sent away to Montreal for the camera while he was a UN Peacekeeper in the Congo back in the early ‘60s.  Among the slides (that included photos of your humble bogger being held up at the maternity window the day he was born, assorted good and bad Christmases through the sixties and seventies, those miserable family vacations etc.) were the photos he took during his time in the Congo.

When I was young my father liked to haul out the slides a couple of time a year (often much to your humble blogger’s chagrin).  And it was when he started clicking the Congo slides through the projector that the rest of my family and I would usually hit bathroom.

I’m afraid we weren’t too interested at the time.

But last year, after I had scanned the old slides (and uploaded them to Facebook to embarrass family members with their ridiculous 1973 fashion choices) I was surfing through CNN and discovered that they were requesting photos from people who had been in Africa during the time of independence.

I have some of those, I thought.

So I uploaded them to CNN and a few days later the CNN London office called me to ask if it would be possible to speak to my father.  My Dad agreed and after his 15 minute phone interview they posted the story their website (I even got a shout out in the piece as well!).

CNN also asked my father if they could do an on-air interview.

Unfortunately he said no.

For twenty years I couldn’t stop him from talking about the Congo… and now he clams up?  It may have been my only way of meeting Anderson Cooper!  And to be honest, I would have like to have had a record of his memories of the Congo as well.

My Dad marching in the Remembrance Day Parade

Anyway, here is the link to CNN spot on my Dad, and UN Peacekeeper:

My Dad on CNN

Jeffrey, The Gay Groom