Category Archives: Going Out

Friends, Going Out

Great Party

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I had the most excellent time last night. My friends Michele and Belinda were invited by the Western New York Paranormal Society to come to their Christmas party. Well, Belinda was unable to go due to a previous engagement, so Michele wrote the hostess back and asked if she could bring me instead. After all, who wants to go to a party alone — especially one where you don’t necessarily know the majority of the attendees? Sarah said that was okay — in fact, she said all three of us could have come if we wanted to. So I went through my wardrobe, picked out something tastefull, bought and wrapped a small gift for the gift exchange, and headed to Michele’s house. From there, we hopped in her car to go to the party.

The party was absolutely spectacular. It was a great mix of friendly people, with personalities ranging from quiet and reserved to “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe he just said that!” I recognized a good number of faces from psychic fairs that I’ve attended with Michele (or helped with, in the case of the one sponsored by the Pagan Outreach Center, though the only person at the party I’d ever been formally intoduced to before was Ralph. But even having been involved in some of the same events (the paranormal group gets a vendor booth at many psychic fairs and similar events) made the situation somewhat more comfortable.

The gift exchange was quite a lively event, especially once a trio of people kept “fighting” over two sets of holiday candy dishes. I ended up coming home with a coin purse shaped like a stocking, which was rather amusing. And food and drink flowed freely the entire night. It was nice to be able to meet and talk with many more like-minded people for the night.

Michele and I ended up leaving at about quarter of midnight, as we were both starting to get a bit tired. I had to find a quiet place about an hour prior to that just to refocus my energies and strengthen my shields. While fun, parties like that tend to be hell on you when you’re empathic. Trying not to get bowled over by the mental and emotional state of at least twenty people congregated in a relatively small space can be quite a challenge. But let me tell you, if they were having another party tonight and saw fit to invite me again, I’d be in the car before they finished telling me I was invited.

Friends, Going Out, Health, Movies, Randomness

Great Day Yesterday

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I spent most of yesterday with Becky. We had a pretty good time. The day started with me going to the one office she works out of for a massage. I didn’t have anything in particular I wanted her to work on, so she basically did a full body massage. In practice, though, she spent most of the time on my legs.

She yelled at me during this part of the massage. I was having trouble relaxing my legs. Particularly, when she would go to move my legs, I’d move them for her. Apparently, that makes certain part of the massage process difficult to do effectively. I don’t know why it was such an issue for me. Probably because I have control issues, anyway.

Once the massage was over, I got dressed and we ran some errands together. Becky had to go to the printer to get flyers printed and get new business cards created. I ended up helping her with figuring out some of the details of her business cards — such as what color paper to use and the font to use for her name. Once we were done there, we swung by my bank so I could deposit a cashier’s check. You see, over Thanksgiving break, I decided to close out my savings account at the bank near my parents’ home. Because of the amount, I had them give me a cashiers check rather than giving me the balance in cash. So now that’s in my checkign account up here. Which is good, because I needed money to pay rent and a couple bills.

Once the errands were done, we decided to go catch a movie. After looking over our options, we finally decided to see “Deja Vu.” Personally, I thought it was a pretty good movie, though I found some annoying inconsistencies in the underlying concept. (Warning: Stop here if you don’t want any spoilers.) The big problem is they never made up their mind whether they wanted past events to be unchangeable with a single, permanent timeline or whether they would allow changes to the past to spawn alternate timelines. As a result, they ended up alternating between the two scenarios based on what was convenient for the plot. The end result was that they created a alternate timeline in the end, but allowed things that should have been only in the alternate timeline (such as finding the ATF agent’s fingerprints in the victim’s home) appearing in teh original timeline anyway. So it got messy. But other than that, it was a good movie. And Denzel Washinton was as great as ever when it came to playing his part.

After the movie, Becky and I went to check out Red Robin, which just opened here in the past couple of weeks. It was a pretty nice experience, though it’s quite obvious that they’re not kidding about their reputation of being a “Burger and Spirits” establishment. They’re just about the only things on the menu. But the BBQ burger I had was excellent and the desert was practically orgasmic, though entirely too big. Fortunately, Becky was there to help me eat it all. And of course, there were plenty of cute guys to check out.

All in all, I felt it was a delightful day.

Family, Friends, Going Out, Health, Personal Development, Randomness, Work

Bits and Bobs

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The last couple of weeks have been more or less uneventful. Well, as long as you disregard the funeral I attended for a cousin. His battle with Parkinson’s finally took a turn for the worse. It was a pretty good service and well attended. I particularly appreciated the number of firemen who came to the event. Not that this is entirely surprising. The fire department was a big part of Tim’s life. Even after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he spent as much time as he could at the fire house, doing whatever jobs he could manage. The head of the department commented at the funeral that he was going to have to find four new volunteers to replace Tim.

My sister and her kids are in the area. She decided to make the drive up from Mississippi for the funeral. Her husband told her she had to stay for at least a week, though. So she’s here until Monday. I plan on running down to my parents’ house tomorrow and spending the day with her and the kids. It should be fun.

I think the lack of employment is starting to get to me on some level. So next week, I’ll have to start getting more serious about the search for a job. I had really hoped one of the opportunities Rick and Kevin had found would pan out, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. So it’s time for me to get off my duff and take matters into my own hands again. The only down side to that is that I probably won’t find something temporary. I really wanted that because I wanted to eventually go back to the company that moved me into this area.

I’ve started walking again. I haven’t decided if I’m doing it to “lose weight’ (probably not), exercise (again, not necessarily), or just for the fun of it (I’m leaning towards this answer). It’s gotten me out of the house a bit more and that’s been well worth it. I’m rediscovering that I really do like doing things like that.

I’ve also gone on a couple outtings with Becky, which is always nice. A couple Thursdays ago, we went to a local coffee shop. I had a delicious drink consisting of hot apple cider, caramel, and whipped cream. Then we just sat and talked. It was pleasant. And I got to check out a couple cute guys, which is always a plus.

Friends, Going Out, Randomness, Religion, Witchcraft

Rochester Pagan Pride 2006

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Saturday, I spent the day at the Rochester Pagan Pride Festival. I had an absolutely wonderful time, and look forward to going again in the future.

Most of the day, I spent hanging out with Wendy and her friends. She was kind enough to let me put out a few fliers for the POC on her table. Quite a few people ended up taking them. With any luck, that means we’ll see some new faces real soon.

I didn’t attend many workshops, as I was having too much fun talking with friends and what-not. The one that I did manage to attend was the Crystal Singing Bowl meditation, led by the good folks from Singing Bowl Expressions. I’ve been to one of the monthly meditations that Dawn and Jeff hold at Psychic’s Thyme before. While I certainly enjoyed my experience there, it paled in comparison to the demonstration at Pride this year. This workshop involved ten different bowls, each vibrating at their own frequency. While I was not one of the many people who immediately found themselves out of their body, I could certainly feel my own energy channels responding to the experience. I also remember opening my eyes a couple of times and realizing I couldn’t focus my vision. It was an incredibly rewarding experience.

I also got a book on Pagan ethics that Patricia Telesco recently wrote under another pen name. As Ms. Telesco was one of the invited speakers at the festival (and I bought the book directly from her), I had the chance to discuss it with her. I told her about my desire to do some research and planning over the next year and put together a local workshop on Pagan ethics. She was quite happy about the idea and encouraged me. I also shared with her about my blog entry concerning the line in the Charge of the Goddess that declares “all acts of love and pleasure” to be rites of the Goddess. She paid me a rather high compliment in regards to how I approached that line and the sentences surrounding it. It was rather encouraging.

I think the person who impressed me most at the festival, however, was someone I never actually got the opportunity to speak to. That’s the young man, Adam, who stood about ten to fifteen feet from the entrance to the festival, handing out Christian tracts to anyone who would take them. According to one of the organizers I spoke with later, Adam is a regular “attendee” of Rochester Pagan Pride. And I think he deserves a great deal of credit for the level of respect he showed. Despite Adam’s obvious disagreement with the religious views of most of the festival goers and his desire to “save” us, he was able to offer his message in a rather unobtrusive way. He was alwas polite when people refused his tracts (strangely, he never actually offered me one) and never attempted to start an argument. I can totally respect the way he chose to demonstrate his convictions.

In a mostly unrelated topic, I’d just like to say that my friend, Becky, also thinks that the guy who waited on me at the sub shop we bought lunch at was interested in me. I’m not sure I agree with her, but it was kind of nice to entertain the notion. I just wish that if he really were interested in me, he’d have said something.

Going Out, Health, Introspection, Personal Development

Life changes

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Over the weekend, I’ve decided that it’s time to slowly institute some changes in my life. I’d love to say that I’m going to do them all, and that’s my eventual desire, but I don’t want to set up a goal I find I’m unable (or unwilling) to keep, only berate myself for the failure. So I think I’m going to make this a long term list of things I plan to accomplish over the next several months. Some of them may happen overnight, others may take a while. And some may be “hit or miss” in that I do them for a while, but then slack off. In that case, I’m giving myself permission ahead of time to accept it when it happens and just eventually start back up again.

First, I’ve decided I need to put some effort into decorating my house. I’ve already started by putting out my singing bowl and getting a bear figurine for the end table in the living room. And I have a plaque to hang by the door that says “Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much.” I’ll also have to figure out where I want to hang my picture of Icarus, and work on getting other items.

You see, I’m terrible at house-keeping. The living room is a complete mess, the kitchen table is all cluttered up (though it’s a lot better now that I spent twenty minutes going through a lot of the clutter, tossing junk, and finding homes for some of the important stuff), and the carpet is in desparate need of vacuuming. I think the reason for this is that I don’t think of this house as a home yet, so I don’t treat it like my home. (I’d never be this messy in someone else’s home, so why would I treat my own home like this?) So I think I need to invest a little time and effort into making the place look and feel like a home, my home. Hopefully, once I put the effort into it, I’ll take more pride in it, and keep it a bit tidier.

The next thing I want to do is to spend more time out of the house on a regular basis. I’ve slowly been withdrawing into solitude, and that’s not good. Last month, I realized that working on the POC was consuming too much of my time, so I backed off so I could have a life. Well, now it’s time to have more of a life. I’ve spent all of last week and some of today out and about and it’s done wonders for my state of mind, I think.

This is going to be hard for me to keep up with, though. It’s going to be a mental juggling act for a while. After all, I’ll still be going out on my own. And that means that there’ll come a point were I’ll start to wonder why I’m bothering. After all, what difference does it make whether I go out or stay in if I’m still on my own either way? But the going out is good. And it leaves open at least the possibility of interraction.

As an aside, I have noticed I’ve been a bit more social when in public recently. For example, while I was at Eastview Mall yesterday, I found myself walking behind this family. The little girl, about four or five I think, was pestering her mother, saying she wanted something. The mother turned to the little girl and said blatantly, “And I want a million dollars. Are you going to give it to me?” The little girl ran ahead (to bug her father I think) and I walked up next to the woman, smiled, and said, “I really loved your response,” and we both laughed at that. I don’t think I’ve ever done anything like that. Between that and making more eye contact (like turning around and saying “thank you” or “you too” to a store clerk when they wish me a good day as I’m leaving rather than just mumbling it as I continue out the door), I think I’m starting to make progress in being more socially engaging. Hopefully, this is a good sign that continues to develop into a lasting change.

I’m also working on getting more physical activity in throughout the week. My original goal (as of two weeks ago) was to go to the fitness center they just added to my apartment complex three times a week. I didn’t meet that goal last week and probably won’t this week. But considering the amount of time I was on the my feet at the zoo, in the malls, walking around downtown State College, walking along the Susquehanna River, and checking out Highland Park, I just don’t feel it’s been necessary. I’ve had plenty of physical activity.

One thing that’s conspicuously absent from my list of goals is losing weight. Sure, that’s something I want to do at some point. But I feel it needs to wait. I need to learn to like myself how I am now, I think. I need to allow myself to feel and be attractive at my current size. Once I do that, I think I’ll have an easier time at setting, meeting, and maintaining weight loss goals. I think I’m currently sabotaging any such attempts with the belief that I’m not and can’t be attractive. And by association, I think that means I subconsciously can’t be thinner, because that would mean I’d also be good looking, which just can’t happen. So I need to work on the mental block where I am now before I can effectively seek to change that part of myself. (Gee, I hope that makes sense to someone else.)

The next six months should be interesting.

Going Out

Fun at the Zoo

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Saturday, I decided to go to the Seneca Park Zoo after doing a bit of shopping for things needed at the POC. It’s something I’ve been talking about doing “when it got warmer,” so I decided it was time to quit talking and just do it. I have to admit that i would’ve preferred to have gone whe there was someone to go with. But reason convinced me that waiting for an undetermined period of time — after all, I’m not sure when anyone would be available to go — was not the route to go. So I grabbed my wallet and ran off. And overall, I had a pretty good time.

I think one of my favorite parts was the polar bear exhibit. This is mainly because one of the polar bears decided to sun himself right out in the middle of the exhibit, giving everyone the perfect view of him. What a beautiful creature! I had to chuckle at the little boy beside me who asked his parents if the polar bear could come over by the fence we were standing at. The little tyke wasn’t old enough to understand that if the polar bear could do that, he’d probably be snack (or the appetizer for me, the main course). Of course, as tempted a I was, I didn’t try to explain this to the youngster. I figured I didn’t need his parents getting mad at me for traumatizing their child.

I also enjoyed watching the sea lions. I don’t think I’ve ever seen sea lions swimming so close. They have the exhibit set up so that you can go into this viewing area that is under the level of the water, wich is quite nice. What really surprised me is when the sea lion came swimming right towards me. If the glass wall hadn’t been there, I swear he would’ve crashed right into me. Of course, that would’ve also meant I would’ve been underwater and having trouble not breathing, but that’s besides the point. But I think the thing that really amazed me about this was that this entire time, the darn sea lion was upside down! He was swimming on his back. I never knew they did that. It was fascinating to watch.

Of course, like a dummy, I forgot to grab my camera. So I don’t have any incredible pictures. This is a shame, since the darn thing was actually in my car the whole time. I’ll have to go back again some day soon and remember my camera this time.