We are finally starting to approach spring up here in the northwoods.  The pot heads are coming out of the forest and visiting the store once again stinking up the place, and the roads are full of pot holes again too.  Life in Michigan: where tourists can pretty much count on losing an axle on the roads as soon as they cross the state line.  Speaking of traveling, I did finally take a vacation (after 6 months of constant work) and took a trip down to the corn fields of Iowa to meet my new niece Lucy.  It was nice to see that Sarah and Brian run a tight ship, emulating the fine examples of our parents.  Christopher has grown and is finally learning to speak using complete sentences, something that will always make him my favorite nephew (make sure you remind him of that) and Lucy was sporting a fine head of hair, clearly preparing to wear home made barrettes made of bright pink sequins for the annual family pictures.  It was nice to see them all and even help them to acquire new channels on their TV.

On my way home from Iowa I managed to spend $10 on tolls going through Chicagoland only to end up at Ikea to spend a paltry $35.  I had never been to an Ikea store before and I had planned on making some bigger purchases to help furnish my new house.  Once there, I decided that other things really needed to be accomplished prior to setting up a Swedish sweat lodge in my basement.  Really, I simply can’t have a country bumpkin, collection of random things going on.  I need more consistency than that so some planning is going to be in order.

I am enjoying my new 47″ TV that I purchased with my profit sharing bonus at work.  Of course everyone I know is simply amused that I refuse to get cable TV to go along with it, they all think that I’ve wasted my money because I can’t watch 600lb men behave like fools at national sporting events in 3D.  Little do they know that there is more to entertainment than learning how many feet there are in a yard.  Like, perhaps watching the latest episode of Glee.  Gavin the wonder dog has been having a good time exploring his new house and it has not taken him long to get quite comfortable wandering around outside, soon I’ll be able to fence him in and I won’t have to stand out there and watch him every time he needs to go out.

I won’t even go into all the drama lately at work.  Let’s just say I’m glad I’ve got my shit figured out since at least that means I’ll be able to keep my job.

So that’s about all I have to say for tonight.  We’ve sprung the clocks ahead by an hour this weekend and so my body still thinks it’s much earlier than it really is.  I must be off to bed if there is any hope of me waking up in the morning.

After reading the letter from the Alumni association, and learning about the bright future of the choir school, I have decided that it will be important to me to make a trip to New Jersey this summer to meet with my former boychoir classmates, camp cohorts, and the many, many staff and faculty that played such a big role not just in my own musical development but in my transition from a boy to a man.  One last meeting at the place we all called home, the place we ate, drank, and slept, the place where we learned how to be a world-class ensemble.  I know that I’m being melodramatic here but there is something very unique about Albemarle (the name given to the ABS campus).  The history of that house could tell thousands of stories, both good and bad, with the countless number of people who have lived and worked there.  It’s going to be a shame to lose such a wonderful place in the middle of Princeton but this move does not end the school, it doesn’t change their mission.

The mission of The American Boychoir is to sustain and move forward with a distinctively American voice the one-thousand-year-old boychoir school tradition. The American Boychoir is committed to being the finest choir of its kind in the nation and among the finest in the world. The American Boychoir achieves this each year by recruiting and training talented choristers from across the country.

The mission of The American Boychoir School is to combine the training program for mastery of choral music with a superior academic program in order to create a profoundly integrative educational experience which emphasizes creativity and such traditional values as self-discipline, self-reliance, hard work, teamwork and dedication to long-term goals.

It is a testimony to the vision of the institution’s founder, Herbert Huffman, that after sixty-nine years the objectives stated in the School’s original charter are as apt today as they were in 1937:

1. To build character in young boys and prepare them for good citizenship.
2. To provide an exceptional training program for musically talented boys, regardless of their religion, social background or financial circumstances.
3. To make this unique opportunity the motivation for general educational attainment.
4. To help enrich the cultural life of the nation and to produce a musical organization that is recognized throughout the country as the finest of its kind.

As today’s stewards of The American Boychoir School, the board, faculty, staff, parents and students affirm these objectives.

All of those things above remain intact and all of those currently working at the school fully support this mission and the boychoir’s continued success.  This move will enhance not just the vocal opportunities of the students but it will allow ABS to grow and prosper for decades to come.  All of us who have spent any amount of time at the school will cherish our memories of that old house, both the good memories and perhaps even the bad ones, and all of us recognize that in order to grow, we must be willing to let go of the past and embrace the future.  I will make it a point this summer to reconnect one last time with Albemarle (how I’m going to do it, I have no idea), and I will make it a point to hold on to my memories while embracing a bright future for the school.

Sarah is making her famous white chili recipie for dinner tonight.  That means the car ride tomorrow should be interesting.  Perhaps it will be nice enough to keep the windows down for a bit.  So for now, off to relax.

Just some statistics about this blog for you:

Visitors over the past year: 1681

Unique Visitors: 824

Average Visitors Per Day: 15

Returning Visitors each day: between 3-7

Obviously not a huge drain on bandwidth but some of you apparently find me at least interesting enough to read my writing.

SO, stay tuned, Like I said, I’ll be posting something here every day for the next 10 days or so.

This has been a long summer for me at work and not necessarily in a bad way.  I average about 50 hours a week or more if it’s needed during the summer months.  My selling season is from late April to late September.  I need to keep focused and I need to keep a fire under not just my own feet but my employees feet too during this short season.  If I don’t, I can’t reach my goals for my department.  This has been a good year for reaching my goals at work as it has been for the other departments as well.  We’ve all done better than expected and that keeps things going in the right direction.  That also means however that I have to consider the future.  The better I do year after year, the better I am expected to do the following year.  Keeping up that momentum is critical to my success both as a leader and manager but also for my own self fulfillment.  I’ve been able to score some important political points this year which allows me to get help when I need it and make decisions that impact both my career and the careers of my employees.  I have the freedom to make decisions and also the support to defend them.  That’s important in retail.  Fall will be a season of change for my department at work.  That’s all I can say here.

As the title of this post implies, I’ve been thinking about Mountains and Chasms lately.  And not because there are days when jumping off a mountain is appealing.  In a couple weeks, the folks and I are headed out west on a road trip of epic proportions.  Not only will we be driving 12 hours down to Iowa to visit Sarah, Brian and Christopher, we will then be driving another 12 hours west to Colorado for 4 days to see the Rocky Mountains at Rocky Mountain National Park.  I put emphasis on the driving 12 hours bit because thats the one part of the journey that I’m not looking forward too all that much.  Thats a LONG time to be in a car with anyone, especially when it involves driving through some of the most boring countryside on earth.  Alas, airplanes are expensive and we don’t yet have high speed rail in this country so I have no choice but to just suck it up and find something to do with my time in the car perhaps I’ll just sleep.

Anyhow, I’m very much looking forward to seeing Iowa again and even more I am looking forward to finally seeing the Rocky Mountains up close and personal.  I’ve flown over them many times but never had the chance to see them up close.  I am sure that I’ll be taking tons of pictures and I’ll upload them all to my photography web site.  We are staying in Estes Park which is right on the edge of the National Park and I’m praying that the weather is going to be cooperative.  As of right now, we are planning a day trip down the Trail Ridge Road which is the highest continuous highway in the country.  It crosses the Continental Divide and sweeps through some of the most impressive vistas you could find, all on a road with hairpin curves and steep grades.  I found out yesterday that sadly, much of that road has been under construction this summer so we may hit some delays along the way.  Doesn’t matter as I’m sure the view will take some of the stress out of that.  I’m still debating on paying for a photography tour.  I’ve found a few groups that offer “Photography Safari’s” through the park, going off road in Jeeps and back into the depths of the National Park.  Would cost me about $100 for a 4 hour excursion.  I’m not so sure I’d see anything on those however that we could not simply find on our own traveling in our own vehicle.  We’ll see.  I’ll post more once I figure out what I want to do.

So, stay tuned.  As we progress into fall and then into the long cold winter up here in the northwoods, I’m quite sure my writing will increase again.  I’ve been pretty quiet this summer on this blog.  Some of that is on purpose, some of it is because I work too much.  For now, I hope everyone is having a good Labor Day holiday.

Journey through Canyons from Metron on Vimeo.

For this post, I’m going to just let the pictures speak for themselves.  Click on over and enjoy.  If you have never been to this part of the country, you need to visit.

Not much other news right now.  This was a really busy weekend at work and I’m glad it’s over even though I don’t really have a day off here until I leave for the UP.  I have to work a half day tomorrow afternoon and then all day on Wednesday.  Somewhere in there I need to find time to pack and get ready to head out early on Thursday morning.

This afternoon, I’ve made a huge batch of chili and so now I’m off to enjoy a bowl of chili and maybe a movie on TV.  I’m just not much of a movie buff anymore, there are so few that I enjoy.  Anyhow, hope everyone is staying warm and enjoying the day.

It’s been a BUSY week for me.  Work has been a zoo but not exactly in the same way it has been most of the summer.  By zoo I mean that someone literally left the gate open at the zoo and untamed wild beasts have been shopping at the store this week!  One customer brought my assistant to tears this week, yelling at her for a problem he created, and yelling because when he discovered it he could not deal with that revelation.  I had another customer holler at me for having to come back and get more driveway sealer because what he got was too good and too thick and not like what he bought before even though what he got before was purchased at some other store in some other part of the state.  I had several other people in this week complaining that we are out of stock on SEASONAL items (stains, sealers etc.) and that I should have anticipated a shitty summer for doing outside projects and that 75% of the state has waited until the absolute last minute to do anything around their homes.  FUCK YOU, buy shit IN SEASON, you snooze you lose.  On top of the general jerks, it’s been beautiful outside now for the past 10 days and I’ve been stuck inside working my ass off.  Oh well, at least I can pay my bills…with the Michigan jobless rate above 12%, I can at least say I’m lucky to have an income.

Not too much else going on lately.  I am planning a trip to the Upper Peninsula with the folks in early October which will hopefully result in some good photography opportunities.  Right now, I don’t live any further from Lake Superior than I do from Grand Rapids (for the most part) and I’m sad that I’ve not bothered to just do a day trip up there.  If you like being out in the middle of fucking nowhere, the UP is certainly the place to do it.  I’ve been a little lax this year taking pictures.  Plenty of family pictures were taken and tons more pictures of Gavin, but I’ve not spent very much time in the woods this year like I’ve done in the past.  Most of that has to do with the fact that I live much further from nature now than I have in the past.  There are places to hike here in town but there are also lots of people, I can’t let Gavin off his lead, and I just don’t like being able to hear car horns and screaming children when I’m out hiking in the woods!  Oh well, at least I’m not sitting on my ass in front of the TV.  Anyhow, toodle for now.  Time to make dinner.

I had a great vacation.  I thought I would just re-cap for you here and post some pictures as well.  I’ve got them all up at leelanauphotography.com, just click the link for the full spread.  I started my vacation in Grand Rapids, MI with a visit to my long lost best friend Rachel.  She and I go WAY back and we were pretty much inseparable during all of high school and most of collage.  We were singing partners on a regular basis and spent a good deal of time performing and doing competitions for voice (which we always won).  Anyhow, she has had a pretty traumatic year, the details of which I won’t go into here.  She looks great, has 3 relatively good kids and a nice husband.  She’s also got a couple of wild dogs.  It was nice to spend some time with her and catch up and while we were at it, we went and saw the new Harry Potter film.  I’m a big fan of the Harry Potter series.

While in GR, I drove by the childhood home on Joslin and noticed that nothing had changed.  The neighborhood has really gone to hell though.  Houses down towards the end of the street are looking pretty run down, lawns are not kept up very well, and nobody was outside.  I am comparing this to my days on that street where there was always something going on, kids playing, someone mowing the grass, just people around.  Areas of GR have been hit pretty hard by this recession.  I looked through the papers and in many parts of the city there were homes selling at least $30-$50K less than they would have sold just 5 years ago.  My folks got out of there at just the right time.  They would never get the same price for their house on Joslin now.  The city is growing up, several new buildings downtown and the new highway (M-6) has created a huge boom in development out towards what used to be the edge of the suburbs.

From Grand Rapids, I then headed down to Chicago to stay with Angie and Cam.  Angie is someone else with whom I spent a great deal of my time, especially in High School.  She and I conveniently dated each other for most of high school to at least present to others that we weren’t both flaming queers.  I think even before we came out to each other we both knew we were gay.  It didn’t matter.  Angie was important to me not just becuase of our friendship but because she was a social animal and I wasn’t.  Through her, I was able to meet and become friends with all kinds of other people.  I was extremely shy socially and really I still am.  Regardless of what others might have thought of our relationship, I valued her friendship tremendously and I still do.

I had a great time in Chicago.  If there was one city in the country I would willingly choose to live, it would be Chicago.  It’s a huge city but it’s not obscene (like New York) and it has everything a huge city can offer.  One of the major things you’ll find in bigger cities is the real presence of a gay community.  There is an entire section of town that is considered a gay district, known as Boys Town.  Shops, bars, clubs, doctors, dentists, Realtors, you name it.  They are either gay owned or gay friendly, and they advertise it.  It stands to reason that in a big city, there would be a big gay population.  I like that because there are actually choices.  Up here in the north woods I don’t have any choices.  I’ve never felt any hostility towards gays up here but you would never know we even existed.  Choices for shopping, health services, and such are just much more limited for me up here and that is the biggest issue I have with living up here in the middle of nowhere.  The choices I have for dating are even pretty pathetic if they exist at all.  I used to joke with Jirar that all the gay folks up here are married and they all run the thousands of bed and breakfasts scattered all over the little villages.  There are no single gay men living up here…anyhow, that’s another blog post.

Angie and I went to the Lincoln Park zoo and had a nice time watching the monkeys.  We also visited Millennium Park which was awesome.  They have great gardens and sculptures and the park provides a great view of the city.  We went to Chinatown for lunch and I got to enjoy big city living for a few days.  I really do miss being that close to everything.

From Chicago, I headed over to Indianapolis to visit Jirar.  Despite our breakup, we have still managed to maintain a pretty good friendship with each other.  Both of us have been taking our time getting on with life and that seems to be working for us both right now.  I guess for me, it’s pretty hard to just quit talking to someone after spending that much time with them.  Obviously, I’d still like to be his husband but I won’t get into that here.  I got to Indie around noon and Jirar’s friend David came over and we hung out for a while at the house.  I’ve known David as long as I’ve known Jirar.  He and Jirar are best friends going back to when they were little kids.  Both are now working as flight attendants (a mutual dream for both of them).  We went out for dinner and then (being drunk enough by that point and not needing to drive since we could walk everywhere) decided to hit a gay club.  I won’t share the details of that experience here, needless to say, I’m too old for that sort of thing now.  I had a really good time but I could never do that sort of thing on a regular basis.  Wow.

On day 2, Jirar and I went to the Indianapolis Zoo.  Unlike the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago which is free, this one we had to pay to get in.  I had a good time but I was not very impressed overall with the zoo and I don’t think it was worth the $14 each that we had to pay to get in.  It was PACKED to the gill with kids (which is irritating to begin with…but it’s a zoo after all) and they had a very limited selection of animals.  The walk to the zoo however was great.  Indianapolis has a man-made canal that goes right through the city.  It is lined with expensive condos and all of the museums in the city are accessed from the walkways along the canal.  It was a beautiful day and I would love something like that up here in Traverse City.  People exercising, you can rent paddle boats and kayaks if you want (the canal runs about 4 miles I think which would be a good workout in a Kayak).

That night we had dinner at The Weber Grill in the downtown area and Jirar walked me around the circle area.  Apparently Indianapolis is called the Circle City because the city center is a giant monument that looks out to the Capitol building.  The city grows out in a circle from that point.  Anyhow, it was pretty cool to again walk around in a big city.

Day 3 was spent relaxing and having coffee at a little neighborhood coffee shop next to gay book store.  Jirar had to get up early on Saturday (as did I) so we just took it easy.

After a great week, it was time to head home and I did so on Saturday morning about 4am, in the pouring rain and thunder and lightning.  Thank GOD I had the GPS becuase I never would have found my way out of the city in the dark without it.  I drove 5 hours north to Birch Run, MI and decided to take in the Prime Outlet Mall.  I spent way too much money but I had never been there and I did need a few things after all.

So tomorrow I start back to the grind, back to work, back to issues with employees and customers.  You know, I really do like my job, it’s the people I hate (haha).