Hiking, Frozen and Dinner with Friends

Today Thomas and I got up and headed to the NoHo Diner for some breakfast. After breakfast we went to Griffith Park to go on a hike. When we started it was around 65 degrees but 3 hours later the temperature was around 81 degrees. Neither of us really prepared well for this hike. Thomas forgot to bring shorts and hiking shoes and I managed to put on hiking boots but forgot to bring a hat and I really should have worn shorts... it was hot!!

It was a 2 hour hike up to the highest point in Griffith Park and an hour to get back down. It was a struggle at times but I forced myself to do it. I knew I had it in me but there were times I wanted to give up, turn around and head back down.

After the hike we headed over to The Habit (a hamburger joint) for lunch and we ran into Jes who was picking up food for herself and Dallas. I told her that once we were done eating we were going to watch Frozen as Thomas had not seen it and I wanted to share this awesome movie with him. She said she would be up for watching again so when we got back to my place she and Dallas joined us for the screening. Both Jes and I really resisted singing along with the songs.. it was tough and I think we both hummed and sung under our breaths but we managed not to ruin the experience for Thomas.

After Frozen I headed out to my friends John and Moises place for their annual 12 Days of Christmas Dinner. We use to have to closer to the 12th day of Christmas but with all our schedules it gets pushed further and further back each year. I have been coming to these dinners for years. Joining John and Moises were the regulars.. Tom, Ervin, Bruce and Martin. I've known these guys for years but I don't get to see that often.. I'm hoping now that I'm out of the boondocks that, that will change... I miss these guys.

It was a fantastic dinner, Moises is an amazing cook. We caught up on each others lives and it was a fun time. I had originally planned to stay only 2 hours because Thomas was back at my place alone watching TV but I was having such a great time 2 hours turned into 4 hours. But luckily for me Thomas had a great time watching TNG and other shows on Netflix.

Once I was back Thomas and I hung out a few more hours and watched TV before calling it a night.

Living Room and Birthday Boy Thomas

Today I finished setting up my living room. Other then the missing/broken plate everything is in it's place and I think it turned out fantastic. It has a very warm and inviting feeling. I love walking through the front door and being greeted by all this geekiness. Now it's time to move on to the other rooms.. one room at a time.

Got the first five volumes of Histories of Middle Earth in paperback. I got them off of Ebay as I want to delve deeper into the world of Middle Earth. I've read The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion and loved each and everyone one of those stories. I can't wait until I have some free time to jump into a world that I just adore.

Picked up my buddy Thomas from the Burbank airport today. He was flying in from Utah where he is working for a month stateside, he's original from Ireland. It's his birthday today and he wanted to spend it here in SoCal with me and our friends... yay!!!

I picked him up a little after noon and we came back to my place, where he was crashing. We watched the first two Felicia Day episodes of Supernatural as he had not seen them yet. After that we watched some TNG which it's been years since he had seen. We walked over to Chipotle for some lunch.

For dinner I made plans to celebrate his birthday with some friends at a local Pitfire Pizza. Joining us for this part of the birthday party was Robert, Jes, Dallas, Scott, Rupert, Doug and of course Thomas and myself for a total of 8 people. We had a blast, ate some good food and chatted for a few hours. After dinner we went down the street where another friend of ours was celebrating some good news. So we hung out with Adam, Andrew and Katie for about ten minutes before saying goodbye and heading back to my place. But before we got back to my place we stopped by Will to see if he wanted to join us as well. So he and Becca joined the party back at my place. Also Robert's girlfriend Cait arrived shortly after.

Since Thomas doesn't drink Jes suggested that we all do Birthday cake shots so after singing Happy Birthday and Thomas blowing out the candles I cut the cake into cubes and we all grabbed a piece by hand and shoved the entire thing into our mouth.. it was alot of fun.

I managed to cram 11 people in my living room and we all sat around my coffee table playing some Cards Against Humanity, which Thomas had never played. We played until around 12:30am when we called it a night and everyone headed home.

I was extremely happy that so many people were able to celebrate Thomas' birthday. It was a great night and I hope Thomas enjoyed himself... Happy Birthday Buddy!!!

3 Years...

Wow.. I just realized that it's been 3 year since Harry and I broke up.. the date just flew by... January 12th.

I can't believe it's been three years.. part of me thinks it feels like yesterday and the other part feels like it's been forever. Of course this break up was hard on me. We spent almost 8 years together. This was my one and only long term relationship. This was the guy I was going to grow old with. When you're with someone for that long you grow accustom to seeing them everyday, spending time with them 24/7 and then suddenly they're gone. It's as though a part of you has been removed. It takes time to adjust and learn to live without that part but in time you stop missing it and life moves on.

Since the break up I have only gone on one lunch date and that lead no where. I have had two sexual encounters (via craigslist) and they were more like heavy petting but I'm not that type of person to just sleep with someone just to sleep with them. There has to be meaning behind it. And these two experiences proved that to me.

I really don't miss the sex that much, but what I do miss is the companionship. Yes I have friends and some of them are extremely close to me but it's not the same. There is this intimacy that you have with your partner that you don't have with anyone else. A love you share that goes beyond friendship or family.

One big thing I miss about having a partner is cuddling, I'm a very tactile kind of person. I hug when I greet hello and say goodbye to friends. You can tell alot from a hug, I have some friends, when they hug, you can feel the love in their embrace and then there are others who feel as though they are just hugging out of courtesy... and I don't think any less of them as some people don't like to hug. But for me human touch is extremely important and I'm not talking about it in a sexual way. I'm talking about two people connecting with touch, there's an energy there that flows between them. I think I miss that the most.

Will I find my mister right, the man who will sweep me off my feet and spend our remaining years together.. I hope so. If you'd have asked me that question a month ago I would have said it's doubtful but recently a spark has reignited what I had thought was gone forever.... HOPE!!!

"Get Fit" Weeks 24 & 25

So I missed blogging about last weeks "Get Fit" so I decided to double up on this one. Nothing has really changed since my last blog post. I'm still in the middle of all this crazy moving stuff. I still don't have a refrigerator and that is making it very difficult to eat properly. I have done a bit of walking and running around the park, but no where near what I want to be doing.

If you recall I gained and then lost a few pounds during week 23 bringing me in at 196lbs. Well for week 24 I was gained a pound coming in at 197lbs and then lost that pound  during week 25. I am currently 196lbs again. I know these numbers don't really matter. I actually think I look thinner and have been building some muscle with all this moving the past month.

I'm hoping with things settling down here at my new apartment I can get back into some sort of routine. First and foremost I need to buy a refrigerator stat!!

Please Nominate Me For A Shorty Award

Nominations for the 6th Annual Shorty Awards are underway. If you don't  know what the Shorty Awards are... The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media, recognizing the people and organizations producing real-time short form content across Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube, Instagram, Vine, and the rest of the social Web. I'm trying to win "Best Podcaster"

Do you have that favorite podcast that you watch or listen to throughout the day? What takes an average podcast and moves itself higher than all the rest? Communication; some of the top podcasts today are taking to the little blue bird, facebook, and YouTube to talk to their fans, get feedback, and gather shoutouts. Nominate your favorite #Podcaster who has the best presence on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube

I tried several years ago to get my podcasts and myself nominated with no luck and I didn't intend to try this year but my buddy Doug nominated me and got the ball rolling. I notice that they actually have an official "Podcaster" category (use to be a write in only). When I checked it out and saw that the top person nominated in the "Podcaster" category only had 132 votes. I figured.. hey that should be easy to beat, I mean I have over 800 "friends" on Facebook and over 2500 twitter followers.. surely I can get the votes to be in the top 4 which then gets me to the final vote.

So far it's not going as planned, It only takes a few second to nominate me. First of all you need to have a twitter account. Then click on this link http://shortyawards.com/Geekyfanboy and I have made it super easy as all you have to do is finish this sentence "I nominate @Geekyfanboy for a Shorty Award in #podcaster because..." and hit tweet.. it's that simple.

I'd appreciate all the nominations I can get. Nominations for the Shorty Awards end on February 18th, 2014!

My Latest Babylon 5 Viewing

TV night finally continues after almost a month hiatus due to all this moving craziness. Tonight Robert and I continued with our Babylon 5 first time viewing. Tonight we watched Season three episodes 16, 17 & 18.

First up is S3 Ep16 "A War Without End" part 1: Ivanova gets a distress call from herself pleading for help as the Shadows destroy Babylon 5. It is dated eight days into the future. At the same time, on Minbar, Sinclair is given a nine-hundred-year-old letter from Valen, telling him that a drastic action must be taken to prevent that future. 

And then the second part, S3 Ep17 "A War Without End" part 2: While Sheridan is unstuck in time, seeing a glimpse of a future Centauri Prime in ruins, the others continue with their plan to take Babylon 4 back in time.

This is was one of the best two parters on B5 so far. So many amazing call backs to a season 1 episode. It was great seeing Sinclair again and what a twist with him turning himself from human to Mimbar and becoming Valen. And it explains why Delenn changed from Mimbar to human to balance out what he did. So much history about B4 and where it actually went. I can go on and on about these two episodes. Robert and I just kept looking at each other in amazement. I can't wait to go back and watch the episode from season one that involved B4.

This is one of the main reason why I love that this series had one main writer J. Michael Straczynski. He had this story planned out and you can tell through is storytelling. It was great seeing future Londo and G'Kar and watching Londo's vision play out and Vir taking the throne as predicted. I like that we find out that Delenn and Sheridan get together and actually have a son. As I said.. so much awesome in these episodes.

And the final episode of the night, S3 Ep18 "Walkabout": The new Vorlon Ambassador arrives, Sheridan decides it's time to test just how effective telepaths are against the Shadow ships, and Franklin is on walkabout in Downbelow and falls in love with a singer.

After the last two episodes this one had a lot to live up to and if I would have watched this by itself I would have said it was pretty good, but compared to the previous episodes it was just okay. I liked the doctor story, but it wasn't great, I even said to Robert before we started this.. I wonder where the doctor is and then we had him in this story. I actually liked the Shadow/telepaths storyline better and found that much more interesting. They are defiantly setting the board.. can't wait to see what happens next.

Netflix, Broken Plate and Frozen

I got an email from Netflix today requesting me to return and offering me a month of free service. Now that I have a fast internet speed I was happy to sign back up. I perused what they had and man am I screwed. So many TV series that I would love to see. I'm going to have to make a list and just start somewhere and make sure I don't spend days on end watching nothing but Netflix. 

I started putting pictures and collector plates up on my walls in my living room. I didn't want to use nails so I got those command damage free sticker things. They work for me about 50% of the time but this was not one of them. As I came back from lunch I opened the door and a few seconds later one of my Star Trek Hamilton Collection plates dropped to the floor and shattered.

I immediately went to each plate and put an actual nail in the wall to make sure this didn't happen again. This is the third of my collection plates that have been broken over the years. I quickly went to ebay and see if I could get a replacement plate and luckily I found one that was just under $20 with shipping. So I picked it out.

In Frozen news... I came across this awesome video that Disney did with the song "Let it Go" from Frozen. It's the scene but made up of 25 different languages. The song in English is beautiful but hearing it in 25 different languages is amazing. Check it out below:

Refrigerators, Siri and Getting Hit By A Car

Start my day with driving around to various stores checking out prices for a new refrigerator. I checked fridges out at Fry's, Home Depot, Lowes and Best Buy. I had forgotten how expensive refrigerators can be. Prices for a 14 to 16 cubic feet fridge range from $400 to $600. What makes this worse is that I have a large fridge that cost me over $1500 that is working perfectly fine but because I can't get it up to the apartment means I can't use it and must get rid of it.

I didn't purchase a fridge today as I had gotten several texts from friends who either have extra fridges or are thinking of swapping with me. So I'm currently on hold when it comes to buying a fridge.

While I was at Fry's I saw this automatic key making machine. I had never seen anything like this but it's crazy cool and fast. All you do is slip your key in the slot and the machine does the rest. And for $1.99 you have a brand new key. I got two sets made of my apartment keys, one for Lydia (my international roommate) and the other for my buddy Robert (just in case I die in my apartment).

After my refrigerator search I headed back home and continued my unpacking.

Just a side note.. I never knew you could change Siri's voice from female to male. So I changed mine to male. I also heard you can add an accent.. will have to look into that.

After my skype chat with Erik, I went for a walk to pick up some dinner. It's one thing I really love about living in this new apartment, that I'm able to walk to pretty much anywhere. While I was heading back home and about a block away I was hit by a car. What happen is I was crossing a street and I saw the VW bug coming down the street in the opposite direction. I got about 2/3's of the way into the street when all of sudden this guy decides to turn right... directly in front of me. He didn't slow down or anything. I looked directly into his face as he was about to hit me head on but he swerved and kind of fish tailed a little bit and the back end of his car smack into me knocking me to the ground.

It all happen so fast you really don't have time to think about anything. All I remember is that I was lying on the asphalt and thinking to myself.. I was just hit by a car. Of course the guy didn't stop and just continued down the road. I got to my feet and got out of the middle of the road before checking to see if I had any broken bones or scrapes of anything like that. I'm happy to report that there was nothing... I was lucky. If he would have hit me head on I don't think I would still be here as he was moving pretty fast when he took the corner. I'm lucky that he actually saw me at the last minute and swerved to avoid me and only got nicked by the back end of his car.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D Goodness

Nothing really new to blog about today.. I continue to unpack and organize my new apartment, it's a slow process but at least it's moving forward.

I had planned to start running around the park today but just wasn't feeling motivated. I know I need to get back into some sort of workout routine. And having this park right outside my front door I don't have an excuse not to get out there and at least walk around it.

I think the frustration of unpacking has really put me into a blah kind of mood lately. My only bright spots are my long talks with Erik everynight.

I did watch the latest two episodes of Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.  I had fallen behind because of the move and no cable. This series continue to impress, I know alot of people including some friends dislike this series and I honestly don't get it. I have loved every episode and the characters continue to grow on me. May and Coulson are still my favorites but I'm loving Simmons and Fitts and even warming up to Ward and Skye. And after this latest episode with the origin of Skye (well some of it), it really pushed her character up on my list of getting to know better. Can't wait to find out more about who and what she is. And of course we got some answers with the whole Coulson brought back to life thing. Not sure I 100% understand it or they gave us everything but I'm glad we're getting answers with new questions.

This series continues to be my favorite of the new TV season and I can't wait each week to see where it goes next.

Guest Room & Fantasy Animals

After breakfast I headed home and continued to work on unpacking boxes. My buddy Thomas is coming to stay with me this weekend so my priority was to get my guest bed built. Again like my master bed this should have been put together by two people but I struggled by myself and managed to only bust off one bolt but it's together and ready for guests.

While I was unpacking a large stack of my toy bins decided to rebel and fell on top of me. I was knocked to ground but other then a sore shoulder I was pretty much unscathed.

I came across a Facebook post about this adorable and realistic looking "fantasy" animals that this Russian woman is making and selling online. You can check out all of her animals HERE. Some of them are extremely cute and others not so much. The picture I posted here is one of my favorites. I'd love to order one but I heard they are extremely expensive and she is working on a huge amount of back orders already. Who know maybe someone will buy her out and start mass producing them and in turn lower the price and I can pick one up... here's hoping she "sells out". :)

Bad At Flirting

I went out to breakfast today to my local diner (Noho Diner). While I was there, there was this guy at the counter eating. I sat down at a small table to his right. I noticed him looking over at me and smiling several times. Was he flirting with me or just being nice since we both looked up at the same time and our eyes met. Of course I didn't smile back and instead sheepishly looked away like I didn't see him. This happens more often then not and It got me thinking.. I'm really bad a flirting or recognizing if I'm being flirted with.

But I think that it's difficult to flirt when you are gay. The majority of gay men aren't obvious, it's not like we have a symbol or a certain look that would signify that we are homosexuals, so you really don't know which guys are gay and which are straight. If I think a guy is flirting with me I ask myself are they flirting with me or just being nice "straight" guys, and the last thing you want to do is make a straight guy uncomfortable or a fool out of yourself or even worse yet get the crap beaten out of you for assuming.

This is probably why I don't really "pick up" anyone and tend to lean more towards online dating (when I dated). But I have been assured recently that I actually do know how to flirt, which made me happy to hear but I think that's mainly because I know the guy I'm flirting with is gay. But strangers that's a complete different story.