ROAD TRIP. . . and CLASSES

Saturday I left late morning on a rather spontaneous 'road trip' to a birthday party.  One of the guys in our therapy support group on campus invited me to go with him to a friend's birthday party at Rockville, MD.

Sure!  Why not?  So we joined the south-bound traffic of the weekend vacationers/mall shoppers/ beach goers who all thought they would 'beat the rest of the rush'.  Of course we were all wrong.
Aside from a couple of slowdowns due to a couple accidents we moved right along. . .except as we approached and drove thru Maryland.  Apparently they are quite fond of toll boths as we passed thru and paid the toll four times. . .in the amount of I 95 passing along the Maryland shoreline.  Of course we had to pay the tunnel  toll for our passage under a portion of Chesapeake Bay.

Eventually we were on the beltline around DC heading to western Rockville, MD.  I learned an amazing bit of trivia:  there are more Asians than whites in Rockville!

We arrived a bit early for the 4 o'clock party but we weren't quite alone either.  Soon guests of all 'styles' began arriving.  Our host and birthday boy and his partner have a great variety of friends.
A number of them were younger [anywhere between 25 and 39 or so] Gasians [gay Asians] with their somewhat older Caucasian BFs/Partners.  Hard to tell the ages of Gasians anyway, as they remain younger-looking and cuter than their western counterparts.  I'd say a number of then looked to be my age.  One I thought was about my age was actually 39!  Keeeuuute.  hahahahaha

Nice guys and a good time with a great supper and even better birthday cake and ice cream.  I have a passion for ice cream which very often goes unsatisfied; occasionally I splurge.  ;-)

Lots of interesting conversations about all matters of consequence. . . .chatting about FOX's Beck huge " evangelical reclaim American honor to honor our fallen service personnel. . .with a few ideas stolen as cover-up for racism from Martin Luther King, Jr. . . .etc .etc. etc. .. " which we watched abit of on the suppertime TV news.  Then on to the party.  Rather mild and sedate. . . gratefully. . .and Ben and I hugged the birthdayboy "Good bye and thanks". . .and headed off to our friends home some miles away where we were guests overnight. 

I had a great night's sleep in a comfortable temperature controlled home. . .We all went out to breakfast and then head home, North, back to Campus.  We did manage to beat the going home traffic from all the East Coast malls, beaches and cassinos  and got back to campus at a very reasonable hour.

It was a fun, unexpected break.  Ben is a good travelling companion, and being in the same degree program in psychology, and long time members of our gay therapy/psych support group we had much to chatter about.  Made for a fast trip.

Today I met with Section 1 of the Intro Psych class I shall be working with this year.  The prof for whom I am TA and under whose supervision I work made the open intro to the psych program, explaining aims, goals, requirements, etc etc.  Then he introduced me as their instructor and work associate and turned it over to me to "pimp" the program and material we would be delving into this semester.  There are about 35-40 [I didn't count] young men and women signed up.  And fresh out of high school, man! do they kook young!  Did I look like them a few years back?  hahahaa  The two work sections I have are 2 among about 7 groups enrolled in the psych program as beginners.  The smaller groups works well for inter-personal growth and sharing.  Of course there are regular lectures for the  entire group.

So we are off.  I meet with the #2 group tomorrow.  Off n running. . .Yeeehaaaaaw.  And later this week I shall begin plans for heading home asap to "Cape Caaawwwddd and the Islands" for the long Labor Day weekend.

Caio, duuudes and duuudettes. . .

     justin