Turkey at The Lou

So I drove in to St Louis on Wed after work and got in at around 9:30pm. Drove directly to James' because Dave was already downtown and wanted to meet up and go out that night. Hung out with James which was fun and later went to Culpeppers to grab something light to eat, we split a veggie burger :P After eating Dave was already at the Loading Zone so we walked over and met up with the rest of the crew. It was PACKED! Apparently the night before Thanksgiving is the most popular night to be out. Never knew that :) We went to Novaks after LZ and danced and had a really good time.


Family singing Xmas carols and playing musical instruments, hmm very very interesting...;)

The next day, barely getting much sleep I had to jump out of bed and into the shower. We had to be at church. Dave's Mom, Sherry, was the church organist and Dave was playing the trumpet. It was interesting and they played rather well. After church, we went over to Dave's Aunt Karen's house for Thanksgiving dinner. The food was good and the family was welcoming. We ate and drank so much we passed out in the guest room. It was a good time, it just got a little strange when everyone hung out in the family room playing musical instruments and singing christmas carols. We didn't do much after we left Aunt Karen's, we were supposed to go watch a movie but Dave was feeling cheap so we ended up at Emily's house watching a really stupid movie, Equilibrium starring Christian Bale and Taye Diggs.

We were planning this elaborate shopping schedule for Black Friday but decided to sleep in instead ;) We left the house at around 11 and got to Bestbuy and still managed to get most of what I was looking for. A 2GB memory stick for my cell phone for $40, MI:III $7.99 and My Bestfriend's Wedding for $2.99! Even at 11:30pm, Bestbuy was full of people and the lines were absolutely crazy. But it was kind of fun joining in with the all that craziness. John G came over to hang, we walked down to the Mississipi river and then went to have dinner at Maggiano's. That night we went out again to Freddie's, Novaks and JJ's. Met tall Chris, counselor Mark and Irish Barra for the first time, cool people.


Friday night having fun at Novaks and acting a fool

Saturday we didn't really do much in the morning. James dropped by on his way back from visitting his folks and we hung out a little. Dave went to hang with Em and I followed James and had dinner with Jerod, Ryan, Jason and James at Outback. After that we met up with the rest of the crew at LZ. Met Phd Craig. Was tired from the last two nights of partying but Jerod and James kept buying me shots and as I got more drunk the night got more fun :P After LZ, we went to Freddie's and then on to the Complex. It was one crazy crazy night and I had a lot of fun. Two people that were crazy flirting with me, Bill and Doug. We stayed at the Complex till closing and then went to Ryan's. We ate some trail mix and passed out for couple of hours. We then drove back to James and passed out there.


Completely passed out at Ryan's after partying at LZ, Freddie's and Complex.

The next morning, we went to Metropolitan Community Church. It was an interesting seeing so much family attending service. It's just good to see that there are services like this available in bigger cities. After church we had brunch at this really cool Mexican restaurant sitting outside in light sweaters! The weather all throughout Thanksgiving was absolutely marvelous. Went back to Dave's packed and left for Columbia. The traffic coming home was just horrible but made it back safely after a completely crazy, fun-filled Thanksgiving in StL.

Happy Turkey Day!

I know, I know...I've been really bad this month with keeping up with new posts. What can I say? I've been busy. I had an old friend, Joel, from Arizona visit and he stayed with me for a full week. He had to defend his thesis while I had the honour to spend a whole week entertaining him, fun! He didn't have a car so guess who had to chauffer him around town? It's all good though, not sure when I'll ever get to see him again. Then this past weekend, H2 came back to visit. It was just a weekend trip so I didn't get to see much of her but it was still good to see that she's doing well.

Also I've installed a little chat/scribble box on the right column, be sure to go check it out and leave me a note!

So tomorrow will be Thanksgiving! And it will be 33 days away from Christmas and 39 days before the year ends. Amazing. I will be spending this year's Thanksgiving with Dave's family in St Louis. It'll be my first Thanksgiving with them. The past four years I've celebrated Thanksgiving in KC but since H2 is no longer around I thought I'd make a little change to my yearly routine. But I will definitely miss the homemade turkey with a Malaysian twist, eating so much we can't move and then going out for a late night movie only to fall asleep in the theater, putting up the Xmas tree the next day with Tze and last but not least enjoying the very good Turkey leftover curry noodles. Ahhh....the memories :)

Anyway Happy Thanksgiving y'all and definitely eat till you drop!

Mid-term Elections 2006

Finally the elections are over! Hopefully we'll see less of those cheesy "...and I approve this message" ads. I have a feeling that we're not that lucky though, we'll probably be bombarded with the next Presidential ads soon.

Anyway I live in a "hot" state this election year, along with Montana and Virginia, that has gained attention from the national press. Missouri's Claire McCaskill (D) was going up against Jim Talent (R) and I must say this is definitely a good year for Democrats. I got a little worried before bed as Talent was leading but KC and StL's votes were not counted and those two cities pretty much carried McCaskill to her victory. Some of the bills that passed in Missouri were

• The Stem Cell research and
• Increase of minimum wage
• Tobacco tax was unfortunately shot down. I personally think they should tax the heck out of those things as it a) doesn't affect me and b) would probably encourage people to smoke less

This has been a great week for politics. I am overall happy with the results as that would be what I would have voted if I was allowed to. I'm also glad that the Democrats have taken control of both the House and the Senate! Another great news is that the first woman, Nancy Pelosi, will be Speaker of the House. This position is 3rd in line of Presidency so you can see that it's no small feat. To top it off, Nancy is an extreme liberal from San Francisco! So hopefully she'll bring better cause for gay rights. And one final victory (I should not celebrate on other people's misfortunes but this is one exception) is Rumsfeld resigned as Defense Secretary! He'll be replaced with ex CIA chief, Bob Gates. What I think really happened is that Bush had to do something as it was obvious the American people were dissatisfied with what was happening so Rumsfeld was a pawn in this game of approval ratings.

Anyway, enough about politics. What's been going on with me? Hmmm let's see, Dave came in to Columbia last Thursday for an interview. We went out to Soco Thursday night, nothing too eventful there. Now Friday was a little bizarre. I guess the stars and moons were aligned to create the perfect bitchfest. All three of us were major bitches but we soon realized it and dropped the attitude. We just stayed in and chilled at Justin's. I had Papa Murphy's pizza for the first time and watched two old and bizarre movies; Shine and Mummy Dearest. They were quite strange! Justin insisted we watch Mummy Dearest, apparently that and Steel Magnolia are like a rite of passage for gay men. I had never seen either up until recently and didn't think they were that great. Anyway Mummy Dearest was about the life of Joan Crawford. We all loved it when she'd yell "I'M DAMN MAD!!!" so now that's a phrase we'll be using among us ;)

So the next day, Dave planned on driving back to StL. I made a last minute decision to ride back with him and ride back with Carrie since she was already there. That night I met Jen and Grant Alter for the first time and James, Carrie, Brad, Dave and I had dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory. It was fun. We met up with Wes and we all went to Freddy's and I met up with Dwan. Later went to JJ's. Had a very interesting night overall*, I had dim sum with Dwan the next morning. I was so tired and sore* I pretty much slept all the way back while riding with Carrie. And that wraps up my weekend...

Side note: I finally got Halloween pictures from John G so I'll be posting that soon. They're GREAT!!