A Room With a View

1) With Raymond
2) With Marcello
3) With Kelly
4) With Jorge, Amy, Mary, and Kirt (and Legally Blonde on the TV)
5) With Paul (and in the background you can see Jose. And even though he’s probably not, it looks like he’s picking his nose which really makes me laugh).

Saturday is always a work day for me.  But it feels like a half day since I’m finished at 1.  After that, I was off to Tempe for the Great Arizona Beer Festival.  This is the second time I’ve gone.  Basically, if you cough up a Ulysses S Grant (or if I’d bought my tickets in advance online, two Andrew Jackson’s) you get almost unlimited tasting of microbrews from 2 to 6 while enjoying beautiful Arizona weather.  This year it was a bit smaller than last, but still fun.  Good beer.  And though you may be tired of hearing about Raymond leaving, this was one of the last chances to do something with him.  He leaves Friday.  Two years ago he went with our friend Marcos.  That year Marcos feel over the fence into the VIP area.  When they told me that story, I decided I needed to go next time.  And now it’s a two year tradition.  Sadly, no one toppled over any fences.  Besides the beer, a lot of tall, good looking guys.  Most gay guys I meet are like 5′7″ to my 6′4″ (or so it seems).  I guess to be straight, you’ve got to be tall.  And I had my fingers crossed that since these guys were willing to experiment with different beers they might apply that to other areas of their life.  Kidding!

Later that night I headed to Kobalt to see players from the softball teams I cheer for, the Phoenix Phire and Phoenix Phusion, perform in drag as a fundraiser.  So crazy, but fun to watch.  I stayed for just a bit, then headed over to Charlie’s for dancing.  No Jose.  Haven’t seen him for two weeks and I’m loving it.

Sunday was a quiet morning reading “Lean Mean Thirteen” by Janet Evanovich while sitting in the sun at Starbucks.  Aaaahhhh.  Then some chores around my house.  Some online chatting.  A great nap.  Then to Charlie’s for afternoon tea.  Once again, Raymond’s last Sunday at Charlie’s.  I finally picked up my Blonde Voyage pics and showed them to everyone.  I’ll be uploading them soon.  Petey was excited because he had sprayed his hair blonde and I was the only one who had taken his picture.  He kept taking the picture and showing it to everyone.  I finally just gave it to him.  We all stayed much later than usual.  I finally met up with this guy John that I’ve been chatting/texting with constantly.  I introduced Raymond to this guy Pim who is also Dutch.  They hit it off (I guess that’s my going away present).  A bunch of us went out to dinner at Fez.  Then it was home to start sleeping for a busy day at work.

I finally have some pics from the party courtesy of my friend John.  I’m going to do posts over several days.
Today, you get the guest of honor…Raymond.
He got a goddess wig and wrapped himself in the Dutch flag.  At a party where the guests bar hopped around town in a stretched Hummer, he won the nickname “Beer Goggles”–notice what he has in his hand.  The blonde in the background also happens to be Raymond’s ex-Jim.
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But what a great party!

My friend Raymond is moving back to Holland.  He has lived in the US for a number of years on work visas.  But after he went home for Christmas, he decided it was time to move back.

His roommate Ed came up with the idea for a blonde party, where everyone has to come as a blonde.  Any excuse for a wig, I suppose.  I titled it Blonde Voyage.  House and backyard were decorated with pink, black, and orange balloons, curlers, combs, and brushes, dolls and pregnancy tests.

I was worried that a lot of people were going to show up without being a blonde, but everyone participated.  And the variety of wigs were incredible. I sill have to get the pictures developed and scanned onto a disk–so stay tuned!