I left Missouri at 7:00 AM this morning. I got to Charleston, West Virginia at 4:00 PM this afternoon. I drove through Missouri, Illinios, Indiana, Kentucky, and finally West Virginia. I couldn't find a Marriott affiliated hotel so I couldn't get my family discount. I did find a AAA.com, the trip should have taken 8.5 hours. I made it in 9 hours. I guess the stopping to pee and get gas made up that 30 minutes.

I've had plenty of time to think about many things today. I re-hashed the Shawn story and decided to begin to put that out of my mind. Thanks for all the kind comments! My good friend David has called me each day to make sure I'm okay and surviving. He's such a great friend. So, instead I thought a lot about taking this trip by myself and what it's like to travel alone.

There are many benefits to traveling alone. Especially when it's a road trip. When you drive alone you can stop and go when you want. You don't have to stop when someone else needs to go to the bathroom. You can stop when you need to go. You can listen to any type of music you like and at any volume. You don't have to worry about someone complaining about the music. I was speeding down the highway today with Bette Midler blasting on the CD player. I didn't care if anyone knew it. I was singing at the top of my lungs. It's a good thing I was traveling alone. I'm a smoker but generally I don't smoke in my car but on long trips like this I let that rule go out the window with the smoke. Again, being alone, you don't have to worry about the smoke bothering the other person. I could fire a cig up anytime I wanted. You can also stop for the evening whenever you want. I drove between 8 and 9 hours each day and whenever I got too tired, I just decided to look for a hotel. I didn't have any reservations or anything. I just looked for one on the road. And I was the one who got to pick the hotel. No one else needed to persuade me to either get a cheaper hotel or a more expensive hotel. I got to make that decision. I also get to make the decision as to when to leave the next day. Traveling alone is great. No one to change my mind on any decisions.

The sad part about traveling alone is that you are traveling alone. 🙁

Some gay men appreciate hairy men. There was a time when a hairy chested man with facial hair was really hot. Porn was filled with hairy men. In recent years the trend has been to have hairless men or men with very little body hair. The trend might be changing back to hairy men.

MANSCAPING

Definition: The act of grooming, shaving or trimming hair on the male body. Derived from the word landscaping.

Examples: Mark has more hair on his back than on his head. He needs some serious manscaping.

You get to a certain age when you begin to have hair growing out of different parts of your body where it never previously grew. If you want to remain part of the gay community a bit of manscaping must be accomplished. Guys, you know of what I speak. You know you’ve been there. You’ve watched Queer Eye, you know it must be done. Once a month or so I need to spend some time doing just that, manscaping.

It starts on the top of your head. You must get a nice haircut. You must make sure the stylist trims those hairs that tend to roam down the back of your neck. The stylist must also pay attention to trim properly around the ears and keep those sideburns neat. A decent haircut is just the beginning.

You next move to the ears. Yes, the ears. Around the age of 40 you will begin to notice little hairs growing from your ears. Not only are they unsightly but they also tickle the inside of your ears and make you constantly scratch at the inside of your ears. There are several ways to deal with these little hairs. You can simple use a little trimmer and trim them. Or if you have excess amounts of hair, you can have them waxed. I’ve seen this on TV and it doesn’t look pleasant. One more way would be to pluck them with tweezers. This is my preferred method. I have just a few that stick out. Plucking them gives you that clean look and they won’t grow back for several weeks. Don’t just pluck the ones that are kind of on the inside, get all those little ones that grow along the edge of your ears. If they are light colored and fine like on a baby’s butt, you can leave them for the time being. But be warned, they will change color and grow. So keep an eye on the ear hair.

Move to the face at this point. Begin with the brow or as some men know it, the uni-brow. You know, that little space between your eyebrows that is supposed to be there. Again, this area can be dealt with different ways. Waxing hurts, shaving is never ending, but plucking is the best. Depending on how thick the forest is in this area of course. I prefer plucking. I only have a few trees growing in that area but they are as dark as the hair on my head and must be plucked to maintain the skin color that should be in that area of my face.

Next is the nose. Ouch! This is a very sensitive area. Some men tend to leave this area out of their manscaping regimen. But they must persevere and make this a regular part of their routine. Please men, it is absolutely disgusting to even attempt to kiss another man with hairs sticking out of his nose. Plucking this area works but causes much pain and tears. The easiest way to deal with this area is to get one of those nose/ear hair trimmers. This is a simple process. You simple turn it on, gently insert the trimming end of the device into each nostril and move it around until all the menacing follicles have been eradicated. Any remaining hairs can be plucked but be ready for some pain.

I won’t even go into shaving the face. There are many ways to shave the face. You already know what works best for you. Stick to that unless it’s not working. And if it’s not working, do some research and try something new. I prefer an electric razor. I know, this isn’t what the Queer Eye guys suggest. But it works best for me. I will continue to do it this way. I also keep my goatee trimmed. Sometimes I let it grow out a bit but for the most part I keep it trimmed. Yet another device you’ll need to buy of course.

There was a trend there for awhile (not sure if it’s still around) where lots of guys wanted smooth chests. There are lots of guys out there who like to shave their chests. Many of them are bodybuilders or wannabes. I, for one, don’t care to rub a guy’s chest and feel the stubble of a recently shaved chest. I’d prefer to either feel the hairy chest the way it was meant to be felt or to feel a naturally smooth chest. If I were you, I’d shy away from shaving this region of your body. Natural is always better on the chest.

Another area some gay men (and straight men these days) feel requires some maintenance is the nether regions, or pubic area. Some like to have their balls completely shaved and smooth. I for one will avoid this. Doing this a few times in your life and having to live with the re-growth is enough for me to abstain from doing that much in the future. However, a good trim of the longer areas is a must. Using your goatee trimmer will make this process easier. But please, use the guard. Trimmers such as this have been known to grab some sack skin and give it a good nick. Be careful.

Finally, we must address the issue of back hair. Don’t shake your head. You know there are many men out there who have at least some hair growing somewhere on their backs. I, for one, do have a few small patches of fine hair. Most guys have a patch growing right at the crack of their ass. That’s fine. I think most guys can deal with that. It’s when it grows up on the shoulders or all over the back that it gets to be a turn off (for me at least). There are those who like hairy guys and that’s fine. If that’s the case, feel free to skip this section. For those of you who are unfortunate enough to have this back hair problem there are ways of removing this distraction. You can shave it of course but then you’ll have to shave it forever. You can wax it. And that’s acceptable but you’ll have to do it again in several weeks. You can even use Nair for men. I’ve used this once before. Be careful. It burns if you leave it on too long. This lasts about as long as waxing. One expensive option is laser hair removal. This is permanent. This procedure is very expensive and takes more then a year of treatments every 12 weeks or so. But once it’s done, it’s gone. I will admit here that I’ve had the laser hair removal on my shoulders and it worked very nicely. I can count the number of hairs on my right hand that have grown back or were never zapped in the first place. If I was made of money, I’d have that patch near my ass crack done. I think most guys just accept the fact that they have hair growing on their backs and leave it alone unless they are related to gorillas. Then they do something about it.

I am confident that most gay men (and some straight men) go through just this type of routine. They may not admit it but they do. You can all relate I’m sure. And if you don’t follow a routine such as this, maybe you should, um’kay.

Last evening I went to the University of Virginia's information night about their Master's Programs. I was all nervous because I didn't know what to expect. I wasn't sure if I should dress up or not. I decided on my regular summer uniform; cargo shorts and a plaid shirt. The building is only about 10 minutes from where I live and that's with traffic. The bad part is it's right by a Metro station and the parking really sucks. I drove around for 10 minutes looking for parking because I didn't want to pay to park in the garage. I didn't think I'd be there long enough to waste $3.75 on parking. I was able to find a metered space on the street. I only had to feed it 75 cents. No problem. Walked over to the building, found the right room, signed in and sat down. I was the third person there. The others trickled in over the next 15 minutes or so. They had already placed all of the written materials on the tables so there wasn't anything to pick up. While waiting for it to begin, I read through the materials.

After reading the first flyer about what you would need to do to apply, I knew I would not be submitting an application. Maybe I'm too old or something but you have to jump through so many hoops. Take the GRE's (which scares me because I've always been awful at standardized tests), get two letters of recommendation, have every school that you've ever attended send them a transcript (I've taken numerous classes at other institutions but none towards a specific degree), fill out the three page application, write an essay, and submit several forms of identification showing that you actually do live in Virginia and you are a U.S. citizen. While I can easily do all these things, I'm just not sure I want to do all these things. Actually, it's the GRE's that scare me the most. I don't know that I have enough general knowledge in my brain to pass the test. I have no idea what is actually on the GRE's.

Besides my anxiety about jumping through all the hoops, there was one more piece of information I found out after the presentation had begun. The professor outlined the master's program I had selected (she used a prepared PowerPoint presentation that we could have just read for ourselves). Then she took questions. Luckily someone else asked the question I was going to ask. Turns out, if you don't have all your materials and application submitted before the first class begins, you may not be accepted to the program. Plus, this is a Cohort which means the classes are already scheduled and if you miss the first class it may not come around again for two years. And to top it off, the professor said they may not have another Cohort in two years when this one is finished, that they already have 15 students selected, and they are only accepting a total of 28. There were at least 30 people in the room with me. Many of whom I'm sure already had all the stuff in place to apply right now. Suffice it to say I was not too happy with the information I received last night. I was a bit discouraged.

I came home and read through the material some more and made a decision. IF another Cohort is offered in the fall of 2006, I will be ready to apply for that one. I will go ahead and take the GRE's. Once I pass those, I will work on the other paperwork to be submitted with the application. I will then have everything together and ready to submit for the next time around. Between now and then I plan to sign up for some of the courses that are part of the program. Once I'm in the program, I can transfer those classes in and won't have to take them again. Plus, I can use those classes for re-certification. So the plan right now IS to go to grad school but just not beginning this fall.

Today I participated in the Gay Bloggers Photo Project, A Minute In The Life. This project was Corin's idea (of thecorky.com). I thought it was a great idea. The idea was to have as many gay bloggers as possible take a photo at the exact same minute all over the world. It was decided that July 31, 2004 at 12:17 PM Eastern time (in different time zones all over the world of course) would be the exact minute the photos would be taken. Then each gay blogger would upload their photo to the Gay Bloggers Tribe on Tribe.net. As you can see from my photo (click to make it larger) I was creative with my entry. However, others who participated took pictures of themselves at that exact minute. There are photos from many states in the United States and there's even a photo from New Zealand. I just checked the site and there are several photos already uploaded. I can't wait to see all the other photos that will be uploaded today. Should be very cool to see.