Married In Ohio

We don’t often get a change to participate in our government but today is one of those days. Regardless of your choice, please make sure to vote today. What we do today (or did the last few weeks if you voted early) is going to have lasting repercussions. The United Sates is at a cross roads; and the choice we make will determine the direction of the country, and perhaps much of the free world. Remember, if you don’t vote, you don’t count.

P.S. We’ll be staying up late watching election results so we probably won’t post our Two for Tuesday post unti Wednesday.

Except for Tuesday I haven’t been home before 9:30 or later. So, we haven’t had as much time as usual to post. We plan still plan to publish a HNT post but it may be much later than we normally do.

California Girl and I got in the pool on Sunday, and, unlike the last time I wore it in the pool, my “new” wristwatch survived. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story, back in July, I got in the pool with my supposedly water resistant to 100 meter watch and woke up the next day with water inside the crystal. A lot of water. After many weeks and multiple attempts to repair it, I finally got a brand new watch. I was a bit concerned about getting it wet; but, I needed to make sure the replacement was watertight. And, even though I have bad luck, the odds of receiving two defective watches in a row are very small. So, after watching the Bengals blow it in overtime, California Girl and I got in the pool; possibly for the last time this summer.

Except for a watch, I don’t wear “man jewelry”. So it was frustrating to use my old Seiko after putting it away for what I thought was for good. Plus, even though it’s sappy, California Girl and I have had matching watches since we first got married. This is our third set. We’ve got a really nice set of timepieces picked out for when we’re finally able to live large. Until then, we’ll make do with our “Middle Range” set which still cost more money than we have ever spent on his and hers watches.

Guest_6737 asked in the shoutbox “You mentioned a swing club…can you tell us more of how this works and the actual dynamics of once inside the door”. We were going to answer this last weekend but were unable to post (or really do much of anything) without any electricity. What happens is different at every club and for every couple. Please keep in mind that this post is our perspective, and that we’ not professionally reviewers.

Firstly, I should mention that California Girl and I are more exhibitionists than swingers. We go to swing clubs to see and be seen; rather than engage in hard core sex with other couples. For us, it’s really about the ambience. Generally speaking, people are friendly and outgoing; although there are always some “wallflowers”. The dress ranges from casual to outfits that are too risqué for a club. As the evening goes on and people have been the rooms, you’re likely to see people who haven’t gotten back into all of their clothes. Like any regular party, there’s food, drink (strictly BYOB), music and dancing. Sometimes, there are games and contests to help break the ice; but, if not, the regulars do a pretty good job of it. Everyone is there to try and have a good time. People tend to circulate until they find someone interesting.

There is usually a donation at the door to help defray costs (the suggested amount varies depending on how elaborate of an evening is planned.) It may be different in other clubs; but we see people of all shapes, sizes, ages and colors. It’s a great atmosphere to put you in the mood and see what develops. But, you don’t have to do anything that you don’t want to do or makes you feel uncomfortable. Some people are comfortable getting started in the common areas; while others prefer the private rooms. We think it’s fun to have an audience so long as they don’t become too involved. People are usually polite; however, like anytime a large group of people get together there are going to be exceptions. If you’re really curious, we recommend that you visit a few clubs nearby. They’re more places than you think, even if you live in a conservative area.

It seems like such a simple thing until you don’t have any. As a result of the strong winds that we experienced here in Ohio on Sunday, we didn’t have any electric power from mid afternoon on Sunday until late Tuesday night. We consider ourselves fortunate to have since the utility companies are saying it may be as late as this weekend until power is restored to everyone. Except for losing a refrigerator worth of food and some frazzled nerves we are no worse for the wear. No trees fell on our house; and, amazingly, we didn’t lose any shingles so most of our “clean up” will be restricted to picking up debris that blew into the yard. Our house has many of windows, so there was plenty of light until the sun went down. And unlike many people, we had plenty of hot water. Plus, the weather has been very temperate so we didn’t need heat or air conditioning. So, California Girl and I spent a lot of time engaging in the #1 activity that people do when there’s a power outage.

We received a question in the Shoutbox asking why we haven’t used more of everyone’s suggestions. To be clear, we appreciate everyone taking the time to leave shouts and comments. Unfortunately, many of the ideas require a real live camera person whom we have yet to find; or, don’t allow for full participation for both of us. Not every suggestion falls into those categories. There have been some suggestions that we liked and want to do that we just haven’t got around to yet. We both enjoy having a blog. But real life happens too. And this has been the busiest summer we’ve had since we started blogging. We hope that things slow down soon. We could really, really use the break. Until then, thanks for your patience.

We just wanted to post a quick note to let everyone know that we are still alive and kicking. We’ve just been incredibly busy working, doing family things and getting The Boy ready to go off to college. Hopefully, things will slow down towards the end of the week and we’ll be able to catch up on everyone’s blog.

In case you were wondering, we decided to keep the Dell. The Boy has got almost everything that he needs/wants loaded on it. I just hope someone remembers to pack a network cable for his dorm room. We’re still deciding on what to do with the other one; but we’re leaning toward keeping it an let The Girl take it with her when she goes to college in a couple of years.

Update: Look for a new post or two later today (Thursday). School started this week for both children, so about the only thing we have been doing when we’ve been home is sleeping.

Update #2: We’ll be publishing a few backdated posts today. That’s not something that we usually do; but this bog is something of a dairy and, even though we have been offline, a lot of things have been happening.

I knew that it was only a matter of time; but whoever writes the spam robots had finally adapted to the anti-spam measures that I was using on the shoutbox. The funny thing is that I don’t allow URLs in shouts so there’s really no purpose. That’s the problem with spam. It causes aggravation for everyone even when the spammers are getting nothing out of it.

I know that there are online services that block spam; but I’ve never been comfortable sending comments and shouts that people have left for us off to a “big computer in the sky” to be checked. Maybe they delete them after they’ve been analyzed; but they’ve got to make a profit somehow so they must be doing something with all of the data they collect.

This site doesn’t have a written privacy policy; but, if it did, it would be simple. We don’t share information what we have with anyone. We don’t post the text of any emails that we receive (even if they are interesting). And we don’t reveal IP addresses. We do this for fun and would like for people to respect our privacy and anonymity. So we do our best to respect theirs.

I spent MUCH longer than expected upgrading to WordPress 2.6 so our Two For Tuesday post will not be available until sometime on Wednesday. California Girl and I really enjoy blogging; but the technical details can be a PIA sometimes. If you see anything broken, especially with comments or the shourbox, please let me know.

It was great being on vacation last week for the Fourth of July; but things have caught up with me this week. I wasn’t in for the night until 11:00 PM yesterday and it was after 10:00 PM today when California Girl and I started our photo session. And of course, I got caught in the rain when I went running. I love being on vacation. But I really pay for it the following week. I’m already looking at two more late nights. I just hope that things slow down by Friday.

Several things happening at work are causing me a lot of anxiety. They don’t affect California Girl or the kids so I shouldn’t be “worrying” about them; but, nonetheless, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about them. I work to live yet, sometimes, I find myself focusing on work-related things when I should not be.

I have not been spending much time in the blog world this week. I hope to catch up on things on Wednesday night when I get home before or after I publish our HNT post. We had a good photo session so we’ve got several photographs we think you will enjoy. We’ll have a Two for Tuesday Wednesday post in addition to our HNT post.