Salad Snob and Coming Out (again, and again)

So I just got back from Nof&ck. Yes, my favorite place. And to be honest, this was one of the most useless trips I've taken down there.

Anyways, one of the reasons I don't like Nof&ck is because the food is not great. I'm back on my Atkins diet (after a weekend of key lime pies and a MONSTER brownie sundae at the the local hipster hangout) so I'm working the salads. And on the Navy base, not so much. So I spend lunch at the Ruby Tuesday. Yes, I know. But it's close to the base and the food is slightly above marginal. The pickings are slim so you take what you can get. But here's the deal, the salads are okay, but would it kill you to mix the salad for me? After the nice salads at Cosi or Chop't, I kind of expect my salads to be pre-mixed. And it's not like I'm lazy. Well, kind of. The real issue is that when you've given me this beautiful salad with a stip of tomatoes, a strip of chicken, a strip of cheese, a strip of hard boiled eggs, etc across the bed of lettuce, it looks really pretty. But it's a pain to toss it myself. I end up getting a good portion of it on the table. You've got the big bowls back there to mix the salads, can't you do that for me?

Well enough of complaining about that.

So . . . . I had dinner with an old Navy friend of mine while I was in down there. And it's not like I ignore my old Navy friends, but most of them aren't in the area anymore so I haven't had a chance to tell them that I'm gay. And I did tell somone via email that I was gay and apparently you're not supposed to do that. It's not quite as bad as a text message breakup, but still. Anyways, it was great to see her and we started to catch up on our lives. And I knew the whole gay thing was going to come up. And when she mentioned going on chuch missions, I kind of winced inside. I'm like, this could be ugly.

And after giving her five minute highlights, she said, "So what's going on with you, who are you seeing, what's her name?"

And so I smiled a bit said, "His name . . . . . is X."

And she smiled in return and laughed a bit. She said she was cool with alternative lifestyles and kind of rambled on for a bit.

And while I am happy that my coming out isn't going to be an issue with our friendship, I've got to be honest and say the whole "alternative lifestyle" thing rubs me the wrong way. It kind implies choice. And being gay is definitely NOT a choice. But I think that mentality and the use of that phrase is kind of common among certain people of a certain age. So I just sort of bit my tongue and kep on with the conversation. I really appreciate her accepting me as I am and I didn't want to make a point out of it as I don't think she really has an issue with it.

Anyways, so the coming out process continues.

The Commonwealth of Cancer

First off I want to say that I'm NOT a DC snob. Yes, it's great, but I work in VA, I lived in VA for 4 years. There are some great areas in VA, especially NOVA. But . . . . . I joined the Manassas Mail Man (M3), SuperLawyer, and Museum Man (M2) at Freddies on Friday night for Kareoke night (the horror!). And it was fun ish. But I just haven't been in a bar that allows smoking in so long that the smoke just seemes to burn into my retinas. And after we left, I desperately wanted to take a shower. Like immediately!

Now I'm in No-fuck and at a crappy Radisson. In theory my room is a non-smoking room, but as soon as I walked into the room, I could tell that it used to be a smoking room. Sure they've used a thousand gallons of cleaner to remove the smell, but unless you've burned the inside of the room down to the wooden frame or steel girders, it's still going to smell. Like cigarrettes but with a weird cleanser smell on top of it. Ugh.

Tired from my 3+ hour drive, I didn't feel like getting in the car again for dinner. And the hotel is downtown No-fuck. But in like a scarey part of downtown. So it's not like I'm going to walk outside for dinner. So I went to the hotel pub. Which of course was full of smokers. I ordered my meal from the bar, but then found a seat as far away from the bar and the smokers as I could. Ugh, it's going to be a long week in No-fuck.