It's so hard being beautiful

We've all meet or seen on T.V. people who complain about such things as "its so hard being pretty" or "having all this money is such a burden." I hate those people, you hate those people but I regret to say I have become one of those people. Rest assured I'm still as poor and ugly as ever but now I am awash in free time, a rare treasure for most.
Last Friday I finished teaching my last summer school course and its gonna be another couple weeks until the regular school year starts. For the first time in my life I have more free time on my hands than I know what to do with and its freakin me out man.
At my last school I never really had a long summer break. In collage I always had summer jobs. And before that my father always ensured that I never had a free moment on my hands, always ready to hand me a broom or a hammer.
To those who don't get as much vacation time as me it does sound petty but I can't help it. After I get done organizing and cleaning all of our few possessions in our apartment, which will be in about another hour or so I don't know what I'm gonna do.

Pride and Dance

A couple of weeks ago Kae and her fellow belly dancers rocked the opening of the 38th annual Gay Pride Parade. Before the beginning of the parade the Fat Chance dancers warmed up the crowd, garnering more than their fair share of attention.

Now that we have live in San Francisco for about a year we finally got to see the Pride Parade. Last year at this time we were so busy trying to find a place to live and means to feed ourselves that we missed out on a lot of the fun stuff that the city by the bay has to offer. Being that this was my first one I have to say the Pride parade was way more reserved than I was told it was. Granted there was the half naked guys in leather techno dancing on floats sponsored by companies like Wells Fargo and Blue Cross Blue Shield.

However the theme of this years parade was defiantly family and marriage. Throngs of happily recently married regular gay couples definitely out numbered guys like this. (I'm not saying that they aren't happily married)

Musseltov, congratulations and おめでとございます all the newly weds. And a big thanks to Dykes on Bikes for the kick ass T-shirt.

Bow Wow Wow Yippie Yo Yippie Yea

Summer vacation this year kicked off in a big way. Kelly (pictured) and I are now certified W.F.R's, pronounced "woofers" other wise known as wilderness first responders. "What does that mean?" you ask well I will tell you. After 10 days of intensive training at the University of Santa Cruz by the NOLS wilderness institute we are now chucked full of wilderness first aid knowledge, and now may be able to save your life if you happen to fall off a cliff while in the great outdoors, and we're near by. The best part of all is that it was paid for in full by our school; way to go Stanbridge Academy.

One of the great highlights of the course was the scenarios. In the scenarios one (or more) person is given a role to play, head wound injury, fractured ribs, etc.. In one scenario a small group that I was in was taken down in to a wooded gulch; there we were told that we were the crew of an X Prize competition space plane and that we crash landed. I was given the role of "guy who appears fine but really has a massive head injury." My goal was to try and fool the rescuers in to thinking I'm o.k and if my ruse was successful I was instructed to pass out, go unconscious and then vomit all over one of the rescuers. The instructor gave me a bag of coco powder to mix in my mouth to simulate the putrid spew.
Taking the role and making my own I summoned up my Texas roots, put on my best Texan accent and became Tex McCloud, billionaire, oil man, and funder of an X Prize space plane. At first I ran up a hill yelling at group of students playing rescuers, barking at them like a Drill Instructor I made them do what I said for a while, totally incorrect for this situation. Finally after a good 40 minutes I got a cursory exam. After I was released I stood around for a while, pretended to make some calls on my cell phones and then did a full on face dive in to some brush. Eyes closed with my cheeks full of fake vomit I eagerly anticipated my moment. As soon as my rescuer turned me over I projectile vomited all over his his face and pretended to be unconscious for the next hour. Side note all of the kids at my school go crazy when I tell them this story.
All and all pretty good course.

Stay tuned for part 2, somethin real special.

Still Alive

Well I´m back in Guatemala, a bit later than I planed but here none the less. I originally planned to only go scuba diving in Utila Honduras for only a day and a half, but I ended up staying over 3 days. The weather turned really bad on the main land and the only ferry off of the island could not dock. Long story short instead of just doing a few fun dives I got my advanced divers license, and spent a little more than I anticipated. Unfortunately now Tikal is to far to see in time, the original reason for coming to Guatemala will have to wait.
Right now I´m in the old capital city of Antigua and it is really nice, old Spanish mission style town, lots of markets, and surrounded by 3 volcanoes, not to bad.

I have to say it is nice being able to climb to the top of a Mayan Pyramid not as a sacrifice

One over night flight from San Francisco, one 6 hour bus ride to Honduras, and a whole lot a walkin later I came to the Mayan ruins located in the small Honduran city aptly named Copan Ruinas. The site was amazing.


The site is in a valley seemingly located just about 50 feet from the surface of the sun, it was hot as hell. This site is unique for the amount of carvings at the site, every where you walk you seem to trip over some ancient gliffs.

Tomorrow I catch a bus and a ferry to the island of Utila for some dirt cheep scuba diving.

Tooth brush check, bug spray check, 2 pairs of pants for 9 days check, now were did I put that charger.

I know when it comes to writing a blog my attempts have been sporadic at best. This blog has been like a time capsule of random events that happen every 3 or 4 or 5 months. Several years ago before moving to Japan I thought it would be a great idea to have a blog, let every one know about the awesome things that I would find in that distant, shadowed land. Soon I discovered that living in a foreign country is very different from just visiting one for a few weeks. Before I could even get my own Internet access I discovered that life as an expat in Japan is just about a boring and mundane as life was in the States, but at least the streets were cleaner, buses run on time, and you don't not have to worry about getting your car stolen. Do not get me wrong living in Japan was amazing and I did see breathtaking things there, namely Kae; the point is when you live some where you get so bogged down in the mundane that you feel that you do not really need to keep every one posted on such things as, today I bought laundry detergent, the Japanese bottles are so small.

Well I have never kept a journal in my life so far, so lets see how this goes.

The Wrong Stuff

You see that cool looking guy with the blue flight suit and the high speed gear strutting confidently, thats my cousin Michael. You see that smuck fumbling with his helmet as we prepare to take off, thats me. If you happen to live in the Austin metropolitan area don't worry Michael will be the one you see if your in trouble, he was just taking this guy along for the ride.
Over the Christmas holiday while visiting family out in Austin Texas cousin Michael a real life EMT on a life flight helicopter offered to take me up.
The coolness of riding in the back of a million dollar aircraft was preceded by about four hours of sitting around the EMT's waiting area for something bad to happen so I could go for a ride. Hour one passed, no car wrecks. Hour two passed no heart attacks in the city of Austin. Hour three arrived and we decided to order a pizza. This did however give us a chance to catch up, and when Michael was busy with "his job" Beka, Mat, Kae, and I sat around and watched the only channel that worked on the EMT's T.V, FOX News.
But finally we did take off, even got a pretty good shot of the Capital building