I am Jerry O'Connell's best friend...

...on TV.

Sort of.


You see, my real name is pretty uncommon. In fact I only know of two other instances of my first name being used. I'm sure there are hundreds of people with the same first name as me, but I only know two. One was a kid in a Hallmark store who's mother kept saying my name over and over, and I kept lookin over at her to see what she wanted but she was never facing me... So I started to move in her direction and as I rounded the display I spotted a little towheaded boy under the rack. 3 or 4 years old. I said hello to the woman and told her that the little boy's name was my name too. "It was his father's idea," she replied with just a hint of distain. Then she introduced me to the kid (the handshake got him to come out from under the rack) and I asked him if he liked his name. He kind of shrugged and looked at his shoes. I told him that he probably wouldn't like it now, but when he grows up he is really going to be glad he has a cool name. He kind of looked up at me sideways and smiled. Wonder if he remembers that.

My name was MY father's idea too. It comes from his youthful fascination with comic books... primarily one "dynamic duo." When/if I get a tattoo it will have my namesake's (copyrighted) symbol incorporated somehow.

The other instance is (or was) a cat named after me in a little Washington State town someplace. I used to be on a wacky morning radio show (have been on a couple actually) and one of our listeners named her tabby after me. Called in to let us know. I thought that was nice.

My first name IS a pretty common LAST name. In fact when I was in college, a member of our football team who's last name was the same as my first name was arrested for aggravated rape. The local paper's headline read: "'NAME' ARRESTED FOR RAPE" or something like that. I kept that page for a while, but have since realized that a headline like that just isn't ever going to be something I want framed.

So what does this all have to do Mr. Rebecca Romijn-Stamos (I know the Stamos is gone now, but it just rolls off the tongue so nicely that way)? Well. On Jerry's new ABC sitcom "Carpoolers," he plays Laird (the show is full of weird names) and Laird is best friends with a guy who has the same first name as me! It's spelled differently (WRONGLY in my opinion) but Jerry O'Connell must have said my name like a MILLION times last night during the show. It was so cool!


You have to understand that I'm the guy who can never find his name on those pre-printed souvenirs at the amusement park, who has to repeat his name 5 or 6 times to anyone who hasn't heard it before, who was mocked mercilessly (and prophetically as it turns out) because my name is easily twisted into a gay joke. My name is not a name that is heard in Prime Time on network television.

The show? I liked it. Last night's storyline revolved around Dentist Laird and his Mediator best friend who share office space near each other. I got a strong "Bob Newhart Show" vibe while watching. The one set in Chicago, not the one in Vermont. The office scenes were like "Bob Newhart 2.0" minus Marcia Wallace.

I've established an early crush on carpool newbie Dougie and am weirdly looking forward to more story lines with my namesake's son Marmaduke (yes Marmaduke) and his tighty whities. The fact that Bruce McCollough, the cute one from Kids in the Hall, is the creator, executive producer and writer (of this episode) makes Carpoolers all the better.

So yeah... me and Jerry (eat a sandwich Jer) are best buds now. At least for 22 minutes on Tuesday nights following Cavemen on ABC.

What's keeping me up at night?

Happy Holidays!

Yup... I am going to use the generic, much maligned, Happy Holidays because it is not yet Chanukah (12/15), Kwanzaa (12/26), Christmas (12/25), Winter Solstice (12/22) or any other holiday yet. I don't wish anyone "Happy Independence Day" the week prior to the 4th of July. I don't call friends and family to wish them Happy Birthday during the weeks leading up to their date of birth. I don't hide eggs starting in February so they will be ready to hunt by Easter. I do those things on dates that correspond to the events being acknowledged. So why would I say "Merry Christmas" to anyone when it ISN'T YET! I will wish you a Merry Christmas when the calendar says it is, MAYBE the day before.

That's one of the nuggets that have been running through my brain this week... I think that its the pressure to keep things organized this time of year. There are lots of dates to remember: parties, end of the year deadlines, a surprising number of meetings at work for some reason, the holidays themselves, three family birthdays. I can't think of any other reason that I have been keeping a list of the random worries and non sequiturs in my noggin. Mostly I am freaking out about gifts... I suck at picking out gifts and I hate to give gift cards. Luckily my list of recipients is fairly low and there is still lots of time, but it's definitely starting to press on me a little that I have only bought ONE gift, and it's a secondary thing, a stocking stuffer. I still have to come up with the "under the tree" gift.

So while that nagging issue is playing the loudest electric guitar version of Deck the Halls on the mainstage in my brian, there are several other acts that are also trying to draw a crowd to hear their acoustic carols on the smaller stages. The variety of stuff is pretty interesting:

- I want to go back to school and study architecture, or creative writing, or marketing.
- My laundry and closet doors are ugly.
- What will I make my guy for his present?
- "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" by Rufus Wainwright - on headphones: slightly slurred, melancholy, off key, layered, lush, awesome, awesome... why don't I like more of his stuff?
- Why can't I have two key cards to my building?
- Do subway designers have to take into account the wind pushed out of the tunnel ahead of a train coming into an underground station?
- Getting Christmas cards from friends and family makes me feel guilty that I don't send them.

It also dawned on me today that I have not turned on my TV in over 48 hours. Since Monday night I think. Not like me at all. I have been discovering and reading a lot of blogs though... a couple of them are blogs written by guys who are moving, or have recently moved or are just dealing with condo living and got me to thinking that the reason for this blog is to chronicle the experience of my first home ownership. Write about all the little stuff no one warned me about. Thing is I missed a lot of that good stuff by waiting till AFTER I moved in to start blogging... so starting tomorrow I'm going to take a look back at the process (trust me, it's WELL documented, you've never seen so much paperwork) before it gets too foggy.

Tomorrow: Flashback Friday - A tragic lot

My embarrasing hobby

There are three things that it's not easy for me to admit to people. It's not that any of these things are secrets, it's just that they are not things that people suspect about me. People are usually surprised to learn that I am gay for example... so offering up that info is sometimes awkward, depending on the situation. People also do not expect me to be an atheist. This one is more esoteric I think, but when the topic comes up (and in this political environment it does quite a bit) and I come out of the godless closet no one ever says, "Cool!" I usually get, "Really? No. Do you mean agnostic? Atheist? Really?" Frankly, it's been easier telling people I'm gay than it has been to tell people I am an atheist. No one ever gives me grief about being gay, but they definitely will make it a point to let me know they are praying for me if I tell em I have no doubt that there is no God. So those two seem like they'd be pretty big announcements to make, at least initially. But the one that I have the hardest time with, the one that people tend to not know how to react to, the one that I am actually a little embarrassed to admit, is that I am a sweeper.

I enter sweepstakes. Lots and lots of them. At any given time I have a list of well over 100 that I try to enter daily, and those are just the internet ones. I have a second list that usually hovers around 40 that require a postal entry, but I do not get to them as often as I should. At my peak, I was spending about 30 hours a week, organizing, finding and entering sweepstakes and it has paid off. I win stuff all the time. Good stuff. I won $1000 in Amex Gift cards from the local newspaper one year, a trip to LA to attend the MTV Movie Awards, my iPod, my iPod Shuffle, my Senseo coffee maker, a Sony PSP, $1000 in credit on eBay with which I bought my TiVo, my Mac Mini and a cool cellphone, a $500 Kroger supermarket gift card, my Treo 650, two digital cameras, several DVD's, many smaller gift cards ($10 gas cards, $25 master cards, $5 iTunes cards), almost ALL of my iTunes downloads have been free, tons of snapfish prints, a professional copier/scanner/fax thing and bottles and bottles and bottles of 2 liter Coke products. My most recent win worth mentioning is a years membership in NetFlix. Yes, I also win a bunch of crap, posters and coasters and flip flops and baseball caps and t-shirts and beer coozies... not to mention the SPAM all this entering has generated but that's what trash cans and free email accounts are for.

I got started in this hobby about 6 years ago when on a whim I entered a mail in sweepstakes to win round trip airline tickets anywhere in the continental US that US AIRWAYS flies. I leared of this sweeps from a button ad on planetout.com. I sent in maybe 3 or 4 entries and forgot about them... about 3 months later I got a registered letter saying I was a winner! I flew me and my boyfriend at the time to NYC for the day on his birthday with that win.

With all my success you'd think that my hobby would get better reviews, but most people thend to get this look of pity or bemusement on their face when my secret comes out. Before they hear about my winnings they look at me like they know that sweepstakes are a rip off and a con and that no one wins, but I just haven't figured it out yet, and they don't want to ruin my fun by telling me. They seem to steer the conversation towards the dark side by asking "what's the catch?" or "but you have to pay all those TAXES!" To which I explain that the taxes aren't all that bad, and if there are catches then it probably IS a scam (I have turned down sweepstakes prizes due to both of those issues). Even when I share my winnings with them, they seem to accept the gifts with skepticism and doubt.

By the way, if you would like to try your hand at sweeping I'd be happy to offer some specific tips, but in the meantime here are three basic things to remember to get you started:

1) READ THE OFFICIAL RULES - any legitimate sweepstakes will have them
2) NEVER PAY TO ENTER OR WIN - if it's legitimate no one will ask you to pay anything
3) BE PERSISTENT - enter as often as the rules allow and for as long as they allow

I've tried to pass on this hobby to friends, but they all loose interest quickly. One friend lasted 4 months and she did pretty well. Won a digital camera and a watch, but she grew weary of the daily grind and now only enters the big ones like the HGTV Dream Home. I have online friends who share my enthusiasm, and we swap tips and links and success stories that keep us motivated when the inevitable slumps hit. For the most part though it's a solitary hobby that I keep to myself until someone asks where I got my cool phone or how I afforded to get my brother a PSP for his birthday or where all those coupons for 2 liter Cokes came from. Then I sheepishly admit to being a sweeper and prepare to assure them that I'm not foolish or ignorant.

There will come a time when UPS will deliver a life changing sweepstakes prize to my door, money or a car or a 50 inch flat screen (THIS NEW CONDO could use all three) and on that day all the embarrassment will have been worth it. On that day I'll stop being a godless, homosexual, sweeper and become a godless, homosexual, WINNER!!!

Next time: why is my AC still on?

the train

The rough draft of this post is being thumbed on my Treo over the course of 3 trips as I ride to and from work on MARTA, Atlanta's transit system. MARTA's rail system is pretty basic, consisting of just two lines: east/west and north/south. They cross each other beneath downtown in a station called 5 Points (which has always bothered me because really its just 1 point. At MOST it could be called 4 Points if you consider that at maximum capacity 4 trains all moving in different directions COULD be in the station at one time. It's called 5 points because of it's proximity to an intersection of 5 streets, which I get, but the STATION, regardless of it's location was misnamed, IMO... Anyway) The rail component of MARTA is definitely the star, but the busses are the real hard workers. Thing is, no one wants to ride the bus. I don't blame 'em. MARTA busses are almost never on time and frequently take very circuitous routes to get where they are going. Having said all that...

When people complain to me about traffic or the price of gas, I very proudly mention that I usually take the train to work so I haven't really noticed. They tell me I’m lucky to live near a station, but I am NOT lucky, I am SMART! I CHOSE to live where I do so I could take advantage of what little mass transit the ATL has to offer. I picked THIS NEW CONDO partly because of it's easy access to Marta. Even when I didn’t live close to a station, I STILL found a way to use mass transit as often as possible.

I admit it's easier for me to make a choice like this because I DO live alone, and I DON’T have any kids and I DON’T want a yard, but there are still mass transit options for people who do. It might mean 20 more minutes travel time to get to work by bus and or train, but you can spend that time reading or playing a game on your phone or even BLOGGING (none of which I recommend while behind the wheel).

So what's more important to you? An extra 20 mins of sleep before you start your commute OR keeping one less car off the road? You can always take a nap, but how are you going to suck that exhaust BACK into your tailpipe?

Tomorrow: THIS NEW CONDO has a cash flow problem.

the blog

I waited till I was 38 to become a homeowner (technically this is my second foray into home ownership, but the first experience didn't really count, I'm sure that will come up in future posts). It's been an interesting process involving a lot of paperwork, many many trips to Target, some serious soul searching and the biggest checks I have ever written.

Frankly this blog is something for me to use to keep track of all the stuff that I'm trying to keep up with as I continue this process, but I think it could also be interesting to others who are considering buying a place or who are just moving into a place.

How much about myself and my address I want to reveal are issues I'm working on... so in the meantime here are some generic tidbits that will hopefully provide a base to build on:

Little about me: I'm a 38 year old guy living just outside Atlanta, GA. I'm 6 feet tall and carry about 20 extra lbs around. I am in year three of my relationship with my boyfriend who does not live with me. I work behind the scenes in broadcasting. My salary is in the mid 40's which is good for my line of work. I mention that because lets face it, the financial aspect of this process is of paramount importance. If I am going to write about what it's like for an individual to buy/own/maintain a home those reading need to know how deep the financial pool is.

Little about this new condo: It is, in fact, NEW. The building is still under construction as I write this. When I moved in there were only 13 other units occupied in the building and the units on the upper floors were still being sheet rocked. I'm the first person to live in this space which is a very new experience for me. It's a small (relatively), one bedroom unit at just over 780 square feet. It's on the 3rd floor of a 7 story building in what my friends tell me is a very "hip and trendy" area about 10 minutes away from downtown Atlanta, but outside the city limits. I paid around $170 for my space. This number is less than what the units of similar size go for in my building thanks to a program that my city has in place to make sure that people from all walks of life can live here... I'm sure that we'll talk about that program again in future posts. The unit has wood floors, 12 foot ceilings, granite counter tops, a small balcony, stainless steel appliances (my only upgrade) and travertine tile in the bathroom. Now that may sound like boasting, but that's what the place came with, and again, it's important to document some of the details if I'm going to have an honest dialogue about what it's like to live here. Frankly all that fancy stuff has made me more nervous than proud.

Why blog? It occurred to me that every day since I moved in something NEW has been added to this new condo. Sometimes it's a piece of furniture, sometimes it's a friend. Sometimes it's an annoyance, or a bill. Sometimes it's a new cleaning product. Usually though it's just an insight that I gain simply by being part of the process. At any rate, I thought that might be a cool point of view from which to keep a journal and so today:

THIS NEW CONDO has: a blog