American Idol 1st Elimination

One of the advantages of having the flu and having sat at home for three days is that I've caught up on a lot of TV. And one of Wilbert's and my ADDICTIONS has started again: American Idol, broadcast every Friday on the U.K.'s ITV2. It made me think I might start adding my own personal commentary to the millions of other people who write about it every week online. I won't be as fanatical (or timely) about it as others, but it'll be my $.02 worth.

I really only have two things to say about the first live show:

1. Black girls threw down! Go, sisters! Damn! Blew the white girls out of the frickin' water (though Gina wasn't too bad)! Especially LaKisha at the end was da bomb! Girl, took some damn nerve to sing Jennifer Hudson's song the week of the Oscars, but you worked it out, dawg! These gals are definitely among my favorites to win. Stephanie, Melissa, Jordin and Sabrina were hot too. Nicole, girl, what was you thinking? Go back to being a white girl, it suits you better.

2. HOT IDOL BOYS ALERT!: Blake (love me some blond idol boy!) and Chris Richardson are HOT and sing pretty well too. Big Chris scored some points with the "Il Divo and Teletubbies" comment, referencing some of Simon's past successes, but not my type. And Phil worked it out on stage with his performance too, but I prefer guys with hair. :-)

BTW, Paul Kim wasn't that bad, and I don't think he deserved to go. I think that America has never really seen an Asian singer before, and it doesn't fit into the stereotypes they have of what a performer/entertainer should "look like". Just a theory.

Homophobia & the NBA

From CNN: "The NBA has banished Tim Hardaway from All-Star weekend because of his anti-gay remarks made after another former player came out. "I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I'm homophobic," he said during a radio interview. After the comments caused outrage, NBA commissioner David Stern on Thursday pulled the retired player from a series of All-Star public appearances."

Good to see the sports world dealing with its own homophobia as being unacceptable. Maybe there is hope for the human race after all.

I just hope there's no NBA PR guy who is telling Hardaway in the background, "Listen, this isn't a big deal... just wait for it to blow over and you'll be back again. We hate fags too." And the story is nowhere to be found on NBA.com.

Another Gratuitous Proud Uncle Photo

My niece is the blonde with the monkey in front. :-) Apparently at birthday parties in her area you have to take practically the whole class (girls only, of course!) out for some special activity. Monkey, Bear and Bunny Making 101 seemed to be the activity of choice here.

Happy (belated) Birthday, Mer, and have lots of fun at Disney World! Love, Uncle 'Ris & Uncle Wilbert

My sweetie is 40; our nieces turn 6!

Wilbert turned 40 today, so I made him breakfast in bed before getting about my work for the day. Then after work we went out for Japanese and had a nice quiet evening in Amsterdam. Happy birthday, sweetie! Today he's off to England for a quick business trip and some sightseeing, so I get to play bachelor for two days. That doesn't happen often; usually it's the other way around!

This past weekend, we had a lovely 6th birthday party for his niece, Isabel. A lovely family occasion. Here is the birthday girl with one of her gifts, sporting some couture provided by her uncles. :-) It's great being able to share Wilbert's family when mine is so far away.


Funny enough, my niece Merrick also had her birthday this week; they're only a week apart! Photos from her celebration below with her Auntie Lorie and Mom (my sister):

Home Sweet Home Part 59

Seems like I'm always coming home from somewhere, but it's always just as sweet! :-)

Had a great time in the U.S. (wonderful to see Mom & Dad - always have a great time when it's just the three of us - great to see Stacey and Jordan, hit some major clearance sales and did some potentially very good business), but I was chomping at the bit after a week to be back home with Wilbert and the kitty krew!

Above is a picture of the annual company party, which had a Arabian Nights theme this year, which we loosely followed. Others were far more fanatical in their approach, as is to be expected. :-)

Plan is to stay home until China next month. How else are we going to get this wedding planned!?!

Dad is too cool!

I'm in Des Moines visiting my folks on my way to a business meeting in Denver. In this picture, my dad is sporting his new coat, a present from my mom for his upcoming birthday. It is a Ralph Lauren parka with a coyote-fur hood. Pretty fancy. They bought it off of E-Bay. Goes to prove you can find anything there. Yesterday I found some great deals at Dillard's in Jordan Creek Town Center, West Des Moines' newest mall. Marked down 50%, and then another 40% discount on top of that. So I picked up a new $300 winter coat for about $90. Which is about 78 euros for a brand new brown leather coat. Love that. Today not feeling so hot, skipping the Super Bowl party to get some rest. Signed up for Vonage and got a Des Moines telephone number I can use in The Netherlands. How cool is that? So all you Yanks who haven't been calling me because you think it's too expensive... I am calling your bluff! :-)

January Update

It's been a busy month! Started out the New Year at home with Wilbert with a nice dinner, a glass of champagne in some beautiful, colorful new champagne glasses Wilbert's sister had given us for Christmas, and the usual 12 grapes (a Spanish tradition, for good luck of each of the two months of the new year). We went outside, chatted with our neighbors, and made it to bed pretty early.

Work has been busy because we're down one team member right now... hoping to hear tomorrow if a great lady from the U.S. will join us.

Started working out at the gym and was doing pretty well for a while, but about two weeks ago injured by back and ended up flat on my back for two days and in physical therapy. I will get back to it again next week... had pretty much just been walking... and will continue sticking to a balanced diet. My back (the middle part of it... not the lower, funnily enough) is getting slowly better.

Which is a good thing, because after a month of rest, it's back on the road again, and when it rains, it pours. First it was just going to be Denver, with a nice weekend stopover in Des Moines to visit my parents and friends. Then all of the sudden it was Des Moines, Denver and Ottawa. Now just the day before yesterday, Kiev, Ukraine, has been added to the list. There and back in 36 hours. This is the craziness of my life.

Wilbert and I had a great meeting at the hotel where we're holding our wedding party in The Netherlands on Friday night. Good progress on nailing down all the details. We're very happy with the place, the arrangements and the way we're being treated. We're looking forward to it. We're now reviewing the contract for the party in D.C., which, in typical U.S. fashion, is far more complex and legalistic. Now we need to get to work on the church ceremony. The minister in D.C. is being really lovely and flexible about how we put it together, and I got some great books in the U.S. and seen some great resources online, especially the from the denomination I grew up in, the UCC. They support gay marriage and have a Rite of Marriage ceremony that is gender neutral that we can use as the basis for our ceremony. We have also decided to abandon the idea of using the church's own music department because we are not happy with their attitude and lack of responsiveness. At the same time, the minister is really lovely and we are looking forward to working with her. We'll ask friends and family to provide the music as well as choosing some recorded music ourselves.

My in-laws are coming over this afternoon so we can ask them to be our witnesses at our Dutch wedding, just as we've asked my parents to be our best man and matron of honor in the U.S. Since neither set of parents will be at both weddings, it's a beautiful way to connect the two ceremonies together into one, beautiful whole.

So that's the update for now.

The reason for the season...

Safely home now after a relatively comfortable flight back from the U.S. INFINITE thanks to my sister for the gift of Ambien! Couldn't have had a better Christmas present! :-)

Well, despite all the ups and downs of the trip, my favorite part was getting to see my niece and how incredibly intelligent and grown up she's become. She's a little spitfire and despite all the whooping and hollering she does, I love her to death!

The flip side of the family coin...

No sooner did everything blow up than everything went back to normal again. It's very weird.

I was sitting around fuming and planning my revenge (as triple scorpios will tend to do), and my mother came up and did that thing only mothers can do and coaxed me from my fury.

And without a word, my sister and father dropped the whole subject and acted like nothing had ever happened. I think this is something that can only ever happen in a family.

On the one hand, this is a good thing, and we enjoyed the rest of our holidays. On the other hand, there's something inherently disingenuous and incomplete about the whole thing. Nothing has changed. We have not learned anything from one another. We haven't resolved anything. I have no faith that things will be any different the next time. The pattern is still the pattern.

I very much enjoyed the hospitality and generosity of my sister, brother-in-law who we stayed with, and also my brother and sister-in-law who served us a glorious Thanksgiving-like dinner one night. It was a far more relaxed Christmas than we have had in the past and took a lot of pressure off my mom, which was all good. But I still wonder if I'll ever come back for another Christmas without some additional reinforcement in the form of Wilbert. It is certainly nowhere near as fun without him! And that's something the whole family can agree on.

Ahhh. family for the holidays...

I'm in Boston with my family for Christmas. Every year, I spend all year over-romanticizing what it's going to be like and looking forward to it. And every year, about half-way through the thing, I have a blow-up, usually with my father or my sister, that has me calling the airlines to find out if I can go home early.

This year it took a whole three and a half days for the shit to hit the fan. It was the dumbest of things: my mom knocked on the bathroom door while I was using the toilet, then immediately opened it withiout waiting. I got really upset at this rude breach of protocol (she claims it was justified by just having seen my niece having left the same bathroom - typical, she sees the 5-year old but manages to completely miss her 400-pound son) and came out of the bathroom simply telling her: It's not KNOCK->OPEN, it's KNOCK->WAIT->OPEN.

Well, apparently this was perceived as distrubing the delicate peace in the household, which was not appreciated, and everyone decided to attack me. It was my fault for not locking the door (shutting it is apparently not enough in this house). I didn't need to be so rude and confrontational.

Then precisely at the moment I was trying to make peace with my mother (who was being the least confrontational about the whole thing), my sister jumps in again to let me know what a rude and worthless human being I am. I'm furious at her interruption and tell her to shut up and mind her own business, that I'm talking to my mother, but she wouldn't let me get a word in edge-wise. and the whole thing re-escalated again right at the point I was trying to difuse it.

It's so typical of my family to gang up on me like this, and I hate it. It doesn't happen anywhere else in my life... aren't families great? Mine goes from being fine to being a fucking lynch mob in 10 seconds flat. If they would just give me a few seconds to listen to me express my feelings before immediately ganging up on me and attacking me, it wouldn't happen. Maybe I do come out swinging and come on more aggressively than all the other superficial, fake, polite people in their perfect suburban lives, but if they haven't learned to deal with it after 38 years, then I guess there's no hope and I need to give up.

Here's what a typical conversation between my sister or father and I looks like:

Christopher: I am upset about... I am angry about... I feel hurt by... Why did you...?
Dad or Sister: You're wrong, it's your own fault, you are selfish/mean/wrong for thinking that.
Christopher: But...
Dad or Sister: No, you need to show some respect; don't speak to your mother that way; you're in my house and you won't talk to me like that, etc.
Christopher: I just wanted to...
Dad or Sister: Why are you so confrontational? Why can't you just drop it? Why do you have to keep pushing it?
Christopher: Sigh... I wish I'd bought a changeable airline ticket.

There was a perfect example of us having done things correctly and civily in an adult fashion yesterday (my father and I), for which I actually consciously thanked him and spoke to him about in detail... but apparently memories are short and old habits die hard. I am and always will be the family bad guy - the one with a big target painted on my forehead. I guess every family has one. But I am seriously contemplating resigning from that role for good.

Right now I'm still furious, hurt, and really resentful that these people have slam-dunked me back into the most miserable feelings of my youth. Historically I have always let things go and forgotten about it. I'm not so sure it's going to be as easy this time. I'm pretty sure this is the last Christmas I'll be spending with my family in the U.S. - it never lives up to my expectations. Starting next year, I think it's time to start spending it with my future husband and his family. I've missed him a lot and can't wait to get home.

Marcos in Holland

DSC00293, originally uploaded by Christo's POV.

One of my best friends from when I went to school in Spain in 1990-91 has been visiting this week for the first time, and today we went to Madurodam (www.madurodam.nl) in The Hague. It was fun, and Marcos got to show off what a big guy he is! He's headed back tomorrow, but we've had a fun time catching up and seeing Holland! Gracias por venir tio, y espero verte muy pronto aqui de vuelta o en nuestro querido Euskal Herria! :-)

Pa has the X Factor!

My father-in-law to be was on the final round of auditions for the TV series "The X Factor" in Holland last night. He's a "hero tenor" and his operatic skills were respectufully received by the jury but not appreciated enough to put him through to "boot camp". It was great to see him on TV!

And in other news...

After those last few little righteously indignant posts, I figured I would write about some slightly less political stuff.

Wilbert took me out to a gorgeous six-course dinner at Madam Cheung's in Hoorn as a present for my upcoming birthday. It's a pretty cool Asian fusion place we've been a few times before. We also decided to partake in the six-course wine arrangement they offered, and thought it would be best to stay overnight at the adjoining hotel. A good idea to avoid getting busted or in a wreck, but a bad idea because the room was cold, smokey, noisey and the matrass was too hard. I'm a spoiled bitch when it comes to hotel rooms, so needless ot say I was not impressed. The dinner, as well as Wilbert's generosity, however were both highly appreciated.

Guess what... I'm about to hit the road again!

This week off to NYC for a conference for work... may or may not have to give a speech - still unknown. Depends on whether my boss can make it or not. Am looking forward to also seeing some friends and family there... I know a surprisingly large number of people who have migrated to New York over time. Only one of them is actually a native New Yorker! Three of my cousins and their spouses (/to-be) will be meeting me for dinner one night, which will be fun, as I've never met their spouses before. One of them works for one of our favorite brands in NYC and is going to get us a 75% discount on a long shopping list of stuff for our bathroom. We're both over the moon, because the stuff is usually VERY expensive. I told her I haven't been this happy since a friend of mine at Microsoft got me a 90% discount on a whole list of software at the company store in Redmond! :-)

When I get back from NYC, Wilbert and I are getting officially engaged - a Dutch legal arrangement called "ondertrouw" that is essentially the same as applying for a marriage license up to a year ahead of the wedding. We've both got the day off to enjoy the special day. Work actually gives me the day off, so I'm lucky.

After that, one of the NYC cousins will actually be visiting here for a short while! I'm getting my fill of that part of the family this month (saw his step-father in Paris last week!).

Then off to London for not one but two conferences, with a nice weekend in-between to enjoy London at Christmastime. Hope to see a dear old friend there too.

Then back just in time to receive my best friend from Spain, who is visiting me for the first time in Holland.

Then off to Washington D.C. for the 65th (!) birthday of my dear friend Gail, before traveling to Boston for Christmas - the first Christmas I will have ever spent with my family outside of Iowa. We'll be at my sister's family's new house to take some of the pressure off my mom this year.

So keeping busy and hopefully healthy and happy! Wish me luck and I hope you have a great home stretch to the end of the year as well!

Joyous news of world peace!

They finally found something that would unite Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land!

Their mutual hatred of gays. Sigh.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1558015,00.html

What is this world coming to when the only thing that can bring people together is their rabid, irrational hatred of others? Sounds to me sort of what like Hitler did. How soon we forget.

And before you think I'm exaggerating, read the part of the article where ultra-orthodox Jewish clerics were placing death hexes on gays (they think they killed Arafat this way!) and offering $500 bounties per "dead fag".

Another reminder of why I love living in a country that is slightly more evolved (though certain immigrant groups here would like to change that).

Vatican Asks Israel To Nix Gay Pride Parade

The (v)atican continues to attack gays around the world whenever it can... by actively participating in politics. This time they've implored the Israeli government to cancel the long-awaited Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem because it would represent an insult to Christians, Jews and Muslims.

This bunch of old, self-hating queens in dresses needs to mind their own flippin' business and get about the business of helping the poor and ministering to people's spiritual needs instead of actively attacking us at every turn. On the heels of the resounding insult to basic human rights dealt to us by many U.S. states this week, this is all pretty depressing, and makes me VERY grateful that I live in a country with a lot more common sense and respect than (c)atholic leadership or American voters.

Do I sound hateful? Damn straight! Please tell me how else I'm supposed to feel about the cruelty of these people who continue to try to debase and degrade me and my peeps and rob us of our rights?

Paris & American Politics

Took a few days off to go to Paris to see my Uncle Fritz. Unfortunately didn't catch up with my Aunt Lou who was there for a biology conference. Always fun to see either or both of them... I'm very fond of them and their great to be with. Fritz and I just kicked around Paris all day and saw the sights and did some shopping. Was fun.

Am happy about the U.S. elections, but depressed at the seemingly universal success of anti-gay ballot initiatives. They won in every state but Arizona. The one in Virginia, my former state, is dangerously far reaching. It calls into serious question whether or not we will plan any of our wedding activities in that state when we get married in D.C. next year. We'd rather keep our money in D.C. or go to Maryland.

Here's hoping this is just a foreshadowing of greater things to come in 2008!

Bling in da house!

When I called at 4 p.m. this afternoon, they hadn't done anything at all with the plain gold bands yet, but they promised to do their best to have them ready. When we got there at 8:10, they still weren't ready, but by 8:45 p.m., 15 minutes after closing, they were finally ready! We each ceremonially paid for the other's ring, wrapped them up in a wooden and silk box, and came home, sat on the couch, unpacked them, and put them on each other. It's hard to tell from the picture, but Wilbert's (right) is white gold and mine (left) is yellow gold. They have two inset diamonds, represening us as individuals, and one large diamond in the gap, representing that together, we are greater than we are alone, and we complete each other. It was a beautiful night in our exciting adventure together. We'll use them as engagement rings (right hand) until the wedding, then have them polished, engraved with names and date, and made ready for the wedding next June. After the wedding, we'll wear them on our left hands in the tradition of Wilbert's catholic family. Ik hou van je lieverd, en ik ben hartstikke blij dat ik de rest van mijn leven met je door mag brengen!

Check out our wedding site!

www.schouten-rosebrook.com

Show me the bling, baby!

This is our current candidate for an engagement band. We wanted to go a bit blingey for the engagement ring and a lot more traditional with a gold wedding band. It was fun to go out and shop together for a ring on Friday. Wilbert's never worn one before, but he's being a big sweetheart and saying "I'll get used to it!". We liked this stainless steel jobbie from Humphrey in Austria, and thought the three diamonds were nice because the two inset ones represent us as individuals and the one in the gap represents the relationship. We're going to look around a bit more and make a decision soon.

And we found out we both have funny ring sizes, exactly 1 mm apart: 22 1/4 and 23 1/4.

SMALL update/announcement

Well my peeps have been getting restless for an update, so here we go...

Threw a kick-ass congress in Prague for work... record number of attendees and the best conference/event we've ever had, I believe. Great joint effort from my team.

Right after that was the industry's biggest trade show in Amsterdam... which meant coming back from Prague and going right to work over the weekend... took one day off, then took three days off this past week to recover.

Went to the eye doctor and found out that they've PROBABLY over-conservatively treated me with the laser, and I'm stuck with around -1.00 (average) in each eye, which means I will have to wear glasses. Fuck. And they'll re-laser me in a few months to try to get me to 0.00. Which really sucks. Oh well. At least the price included everything and I'm not paying more. And -1.00 is a HELL of a lot better than -7.00!

Oh, and Wilbert and I are getting married next year. :-) HE SAID YES to the question I asked him in the horse-drawn carriage in Central Park in New York on New Year's Day. He doesn't make decisions quickly, but he's taught me patience over the years, so it all worked out! :-) We'll look at doing a multi-national thing, with the civil marriage ceremony taking place in Holland, and a more spiritually oriented thing taking place in either Des Moines or Washington D.C. We'll see! So I get to spend the rest of my life with the most wonderful man in the world, and I'm very happy (and a little bit giddy) about the whole thing! :-) Ik hou van je, lieve poepie!