I'm back baby!!

Wow!! I missed writing my blog for the last week. You'd think it would be a welcome reprieve, but it really isn't. I enjoy my time writing and as I've mentioned, it's a personal journal for me so writing is recording who and what I am at a daily level.

So what happened??

Well, first, last weekend, my buddy Don was in from L.A. for a street fair in my neighborhood and when he comes to town it's usually my one trip a year into a gay bar.

I'm secure enough with my masculinity to go to a gay bar, but it helps if I have at least one gal with me. In this case, I had three! It was kind of funny actually as there seemed to be a fairly large open area around us while the rest of the bar was wall-to-wall gay guys and gals. Don, if you couldn't tell, is on the left with Gina and MJ* next to him with LL on the far right. Don was recently on Late Night Liars (a game show) and he won something like $11,000!! That was 8 weeks ago and he hasn't gotten the check yet! Bastards.

Then my trip out east started with an early morning flight on Monday. LL and I were troopers and got to the airport early for our 7:50 flight. Everything went well and Joisey Ken picked us up at Laguardia before heading to his in-laws lake house on Lake Wallenpaupack.

One of our first stops, by chance, was this bagel shop to get a Taylor ham, egg and cheese on a bagel. They are sooooo good. I actually ate two of them that first day and then had another on Friday on the way back to the airport. Yum! For future reference, Jessie's is off of 87 near Sloatsburg on HWY 17 north of the Dunkin Donuts. They don't have their own bathroom, but that's ok.

Here's the highway sign for Lake Wallenpaupack. There's an interesting Wikipedia entry on the lake, so take a look.

Here's Joisey Ken with his daughter on his shoulders, Dawn his wife, Charlie their dog, LL and me. We're out on the deck to the house, which use to be a bed and breakfast and sleeps something like 15 people. In fact, after we left on Friday, they were having 12 other folks up for the weekend. It's a nice, quiet place for some R&R though we take the jet ski out and made some noise!

Time at the lake house is measured by meals and on Thursday I made these bad boyz. They looked awesome and tasted only ok. I really thought they would fall off the bone, but they weren't quite there. Not a bad second effort, but something wasn't right. Next time!!

There is always hijinx at the lake house as well. This bad boy that Ken is holding is a potato cannon. You stuff a potato in one end and put a little butane or something in the other end, close it and hit the igniter. It shoots the potato....geesh, well over 50 yards, so I'd say closer to 100 yards. Pretty crazy. Now to just find a practical application......

You may not be able to see them too well, but a doe and two fawns wandered through the grounds of the lake house. Very cute.

After two rounds of golf, one trip to the spa (for LL), some time on the jet ski, helping to unload and install one washing machine and way too much food being eaten, Joisey Ken dropped us off at Club Quarters near Radio City Music Hall where we spent the weekend in NYC. More on that tomorrow.