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Hello I'm Rich Brown and this is my personal website and blog. I'm just your simple, average, down to earth, professional, out gay man and aspiring circuit boy, living in Phoenix, Arizona with a few things to say while trying to find my place among all the scary, conservative, religious nuts in this sick and twisted world.
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Monday, December 27, 2004 |
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It's Going, Going, Going, Gone
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@HOME. Well that's pretty much it. The holidays have come and gone. Justin and I had a really nice and quiet Christmas. We opened presents on Christmas Eve, had some champagne and wine and that was about it. Christmas was also pretty quiet since we didn't have any friends or family around this year. We both spent they day playing games and enjoying the day off. Justin's family got in last night and will be here until Friday morning. Justin and I both have Friday off as well. We don't really have any plans for NYE as of yet. We've gotten a few offers, but haven't decided what we are going to do. Originally we were considering going out of town but with the dogs that's not going to happen this time. I'll be glad when everything is done for this year and we can start on next year. We have quite a bit of work to do on the house and I'm anxious to get started.
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Wednesday, December 22, 2004 |
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What Am I Afraid Of?
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@HOME. I went out to lunch this afternoon with Joey and John. We had an interesting conversation regarding being a gay couple and showing public affection. I explained to them that I had a really difficult time adjusting to Justin wanting to hold hands and walk down the street. Even though we were living in San Francisco, I was still quite uncomfortable about it and it took me a long time to work through that issue. Joey asked me if we held hands here in Phoenix to which I instantly replied "Oh God No!" They both asked me why and I said that I just didn't feel comfortable with it. I said that I even move away from the window in the house if it's open and Justin tries to kiss me. Joey and John both said that they used to hold hands and walk down the street with their boyfriends. I don't know why it bothers me so much. I guess I'm always afraid of what other people will think or say. I know that's probably not a very productive behavior, but it's my life and I really don't know if I will ever get over that. Joey said that in his opinion that if people didn't like it they didn't have to look. I guess that's just the way I should think of it as well.
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My Yearly Holiday Letter
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Every year I write a holiday letter which I send out to all of my friends and family. I've decided to post the letter here this year even though I know it's a little long for an entry. Enjoy!
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Happy Holidays 2004
First things first, I’d like to wish all of my friends and family a very warm, safe and joyous holiday season. As always, you are all in my thoughts at this time of year.
Justin and I are doing very well, this December marks four years together for us. We’re both still working for Bank of America, Justin as a Loan Officer for the Consumer Real Estate division and I as a Software Engineer for the Credit Card Operations division. In February, Justin’s team will be relocating from an office just up the street from our house over to my campus in Central Phoenix. We’re looking forward to being able to carpool and have the occasional lunch together.
This year was the first full year in our house and brought with it the reality of how truly time consuming and expensive it is to own your own home. We don’t regret any of our decisions and are very happy with both our house and our neighborhood. We started this year off with the removal of some old wallpaper, the painting of several rooms and the repair of a few broken sprinkler lines. We’re far from being done but I’m very proud of all the work we been able to complete. We have plans next year to finish the rest of the rooms and hopefully replace all the carpet with wood flooring. It has really started to feel very much like our home now.
Berg, our white German Shepherd puppy, is getting so big. He’s going to be 2 years old in May and is now pushing 90 pounds at his last weigh in. Berg can almost put his paws on my shoulders when he jumps up to say hello. He’s such a sweet and gentle dog, and really enjoys all of the affection he gets.
My Mom was out in April to visit for two weeks. This was her first visit since we bought the house and picked up Berg. She really enjoyed helping us around the house and spending time with Berg. They even shared a bag of potato chips together; it was truly a bonding experience for them both.
In July, Justin and I trekked back to San Francisco and the Bay Area for 10 days. We spent 5 days in the city with our friends Philip and Bernard and then went down to Salinas to spend 5 days with Justin’s family. It was a nice trip for us and got us out of the summer heat of Phoenix.
We also took a few short trips this year as well. In February we spent a few days with Justin’s parents in Las Vegas. In October we drove out to Los Angeles and then down to San Diego to spend a few days with Justin’s sister Sarah, whose husband Jed is stationed at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. In November, we took a road trip with Mark and Andrea to Los Angeles and up to San Francisco. It was a very long drive, 19 hours up and 12 hours back, but we all had a great time for the 4 days we spent together.
My Mom was back out for a week during Thanksgiving and Justin’s Parents and Brother, Ryan, will be coming out to stay with us for the week after Christmas. It’s been great that we can spend the holidays together with our families this year.
On a more solemn note, this year has seen the passing of my Aunt Marcella Brown, my Grandmother Marie Brown and also the passing of my Uncle’s Father, Mr. Watterson, a good friend to all our families. As this holiday draws near they will all be missed and in our fondest memories.
This time of years always reminds us that we’ve grown a little older, a little busier and have settled very comfortably into the lives, new circles of friends, and families we’ve created for ourselves. But as I suspect, in the back of all our minds is the desire to maintain that fragile thread of the distant family tie and old friendships that still bring smiles and memories of times past spent together.
I know I don’t speak too many of you as often as I’d like, and as the years pass us by, the times when we see each other become even less frequent. Time constraints and personal commitments don’t usually lend well to keeping in touch or corresponding but deep down I know that the memories always persist and will bind us together over time and across the miles.
With this New Year coming up I would like to challenge and encourage each of you to take hold of the present, reach a little into the past and remember those people in your lives that will always hold a special place in your heart. Please make an effort to contact an old friend, and also take the time to sit and listen to a story from an elderly family member. Both represent our past, our history and small part of each of us which are unfortunately lost forever when gone. Life is just too short for us not to embrace these small opportunities.
Wherever this letter may find you, in a far away place, or with friends and family, please be safe and have a wonderful holiday. I wish all of you my best wishes and very prosperous New Year! Cheers! RichLabels: Holidays
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Almost Done With This Week!
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@WORK. I'm so glad this is going to be a short week. I'm really tired and I really want to be done with work for a few days. It's been a hectic month with us trying to get everything ready for our party last weekend. Now that the party is over I feel like we can finally rest a little bit.
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Monday, December 20, 2004 |
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Another Day Another Dollar
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@WORK. I'm just biding my time until I can get out of here this afternoon. It's been a rather mellow day in the office and hopefully it's not going to be a jam packed week since it's the holiday and almost everyone is out. I've be slacking a little on my writing as well. It was a busy weekend with our holiday party, so I'll try and update more tonight.
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Monday, December 13, 2004 |
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Monday Afternoon At Work
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@WORK. So I intended to start writing this morning but got tied up in unexpected meetings, so I'm not getting around to it until now. It was a rather uneventful weekend overall. Friday night was spent with me making dinner and then just hanging out at home. I stayed up late because I had some development work to do on one our websites. Justin had to work on Saturday morning for a few hours and I was up after only a few hours of sleep because we had the garage door repairman show up early to fix the door. Justin and I spend most of Saturday afternoon finishing up some web and graphics work. Mark came over and the three of us went to dinner and the movies to see Ocean's 12. The movie was good, but I enjoyed the first one better. After we got home on Saturday night I ended up staying up most of the night doing the last little bit of web work that had to be done. I slept in on Sunday and in the afternoon we went shopping to pick up most of the things for our party next weekend.
Sunday was my 4 year anniversary with Justin and he was so sweet, he got me a card, 2 cd's and some candy on his way home from work on Saturday. Because I've been so busy with work the previous few weeks I didn't have a chance to get out and get anything for him yet. I'll just have to surprise him. It was really sweet of him though.
I'm so ready to go home right now. I'm tired and I don't feel like being here. I need to get to the gym but I've been so tired and burnt out from work lately that I just haven't had the time or the motivation. I keep telling myself I'm going to go and then once I get home I end up getting stuck doing more work. I hate how quickely the evenings pass by during the week. It just seems like I don't have enough time in the day to do everything I need to get done.
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Monday, December 06, 2004 |
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A Quiet Day
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@HOME. It was a rather quiet day today. I didn't have many distractions at work so I was able to get a great deal accomlished. The day went by really fast and now it's almost 9 p.m. Justin and I went over to the mall tonight to grab a quick bite since neither one of us really felt like cooking anything. Well not too much to report so I'm going to make this a short one. Cheers.
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Sunday, December 05, 2004 |
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Winding Down the Weekend
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@HOME. Well here it is Sunday night already and once again I'm asking myself where the weekend has gone. I have to be up early and back to work tomorrow morning. The weekends always seem too short and pass by too fast these days. It rained here all day again today. It was nice yesterday but I'm getting annoyed with it today. Although we need the rain here I'm tired of cleaning up Berg's footprints on the kitchen floor. I didn't really do much at all today. Got up this morning to a foul smell throughout the house. I guess it turns out that the turkey I gave Berg yesterday for dinner didn't do too well in this stomach. He decided to have a few accidents while we were sleeping. I felt bad for him because I could tell he wasn't feeling good. So that was basically our morning. Justin and I had to run over to Marks to pick up the steam cleaner they borrowed from us a few weeks ago. The rest of the day was just spend taking care of some computer housecleaning and backups.
I've also been playing around with Community Server from Telligent Systems, Inc. It's only a beta release but it's going to be a full blown Forum, Blog and Gallery open source .NET application. I installed on my development server here to do some testing and it looks very promising. They aren't supposed to come out with a full release until the end of the year, so I'm going to wait before I start using it. It's it's only a beta release there are still too many bugs for me to use it as a production version at this point.
I think it's going to be a busy week at work and I have a few deadlines I have to meet. I also have some other web development work for JMRA that I have to get started on. I think it's really going to prove to be a busy month. Justin and I have to do some shopping for our holiday party on the 18th. Unfortunatly I think much of our guest list is not going to be able to attend as they will be out of town. We were going to change the party but either weekend dosen't seem to work for one set of friends or the other. Oh well maybe next year.
Justin and I have been trying to decide when and where to take our vacation next year. We are already pretty much committed to going back to Philadelphia and helping to move my Mother out here in the fall but we were planning on trying to get to Europe next year. We were supposed to go to London this past October, but postponed that trip and just went to San Diego for a few days instead since we had so much going on this year. I'm still debating on if I want to go back to London, Switzerland, or Germany. The other option would be to try a different country altogether like Italy or France, however since I only speak English and German, I'm still a bit hesitant to venture too far from my comfort zone. I think that perhaps just going back to London for a few weeks would be the best trip for us. As much as I really want to go back to Germany, I don't want to spend our time traveling around the countryside and I'm not sure how comfortable Justin would be since he dosen't speak German.
Anyway I'm just rambling with my thoughts here. I think I'm going to head to bed for now. Cheers!Labels: Travel
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Saturday, December 04, 2004 |
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Home From Shopping
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 @HOME. Justin and I just got back from dinner and running some errands. We spent most of the day cleaning up the house and catching up on laundry. We were both in the mood for a burger this evening so we headed back down to Red Robin. I love that place ... they have great burgers. After dinner we had to go back to Circuit City and switch out the Spiderman movie we just bought because I accidently picked up the full screen version and we have been sticking to the wide screen versions for the movies we buy. I also wanted to pick up some more blank DVD's so that we could back up some of our personal files. We headed over to the Chandler Mall so that Justin could get a new battery in his watch. That took about 2 minutes and we've been putting it off for a few weeks now. The mall was pretty crowded with shoppers and everyone trying to get their Christmas shopping early.
It was a really nice day out today. Believe it or not it was raining all day. When I say nice, I guess I should say nice for us in Phoenix since we don't get very much rain. When we were walking around tonight, the chilly, damp air made me feel like we were back in San Francisco. It was a nice change from the usually weather.
I was just going throught some pictures I took last week. Here is a really cute picture of Justin from Thanksgiving day sitting on the couch. I'm off to catch up on some tv viewing. Cheers.Labels: Holidays, Justin Chanley
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Thursday, December 02, 2004 |
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Another Test
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@HOME. I'm going to test this one more time and then go eat. I'm tired of sitting on this damn computer all day long.
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Problems with Blogger
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@HOME. I'm really pissed off right now. Blogger is fucked up. They aren't appending a file extention to any of my archives so when I upgraded my server to Windows 2003 this weekend the page links are now broken. I've submitted a support request to the developers at Blogger to fix the problem. I noticed that everyone on blogspot.com seems to have the file extensions, however because I'm hosting it myself the extensions are missing. I think I might just ditch Blogger soon and go with DotText. I'm off to eat dinner.
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