of sailboats and Dolly Parton: a week well spent.

I've been pulled away from the computer this week for a little much needed respite, and am slowly picking it back up again.

The first of the week I spent sailing from Portsmouth, NH to Woods Hole, MA on a 134-foot steel brigantine. A friend of mine wisely spent his time after college working on tall ships rather than sitting in an office and from time to time finds himself close enough for us to hang out for a bit. The boat he is on now is used for sailing instruction/research and they were going to have a kid-free boat for the sail and he called and asked if I wanted to escape the city for a little bit, which of course I did. There is just something really beautiful about being on a boat and far enough out at sea that you can't see land. It felt so strange to relax and not worry about where I needed to go or what I needed to do or who I needed to call. The city makes such demands constantly but the ocean drowns such concerns and affords a few moments of peace. I suddenly find myself considering a career change.

Upon arriving back, I got a call from a friend telling me that he suddenly found himself with 4 free tickets to the Dolly Parton show at Radio City Music Hall and that one of them had my name on it! Starting a week with sailing and ending it seeing Dolly in concert is about the best week I can imagine, so I jumped at the opportunity and headed off with what seemed to be most of New York's homo population toward the show. We went and saw her in Philidelphia last fall, but this was a whole new ballgame. Dolly seems to attract wildly disparate demographics, and last year most of her gay urbanite fan base went to see her at a show in NJ, so we found ourselves sticking out in a sea of insanely overweight suburban/rural rednecks. Living in NYC, what passes as overweight becomes skewed. We are a city of skinny people and fat dogs. When everyone walks everywhere, no one can really get that fat. I had forgotten that outside of the city, most people don't walk everywhere and the average size at that concert was somewhat overwhelming to me. I am running off on a tangent and won't go further into this rant, but the point is that the crowd was different. I hadn't thought the Philly crowd was particularly subdued or unresponsive, but compared to how the NYC crowd reacated, they might as well have been dead.

Perhaps I will write more about Dolly later, but this is more just a catch-up post to get me back to blogging. I have been away from computers and current events for a full week for the first time in quite a while and I am slowly getting back into my routine.