Hello, corner of unambiguous gay stereotypes!

Dear Pete:

My BOOT EDGE EDGE T-shirt and I reached 14 people (16 if you count the couple I ran into again after my turnaround) this morning, so we have achieved critical voter mass, at least in the 6:00 am CEMAR Trail demographic. There is still work to be done, but I am exhausted and my T-shirt is clinging to me like a drowning Titanic victim and I need to shower and get on with my day.

I ran my same three-mile route as always, but this time my watch registered me at 3.05 miles—no doubt because for once I wasn’t running at the speed of light (so people could read my shirt) and my watch could actually keep up with me. Science is amazing.

More things I found in my storage unit yesterday

• Clear salt and pepper shakers shaped like cats that I got as a housewarming gift when I bought my first house in 1993
• A teacup from my grandmother’s Blue Willow china
• Chinese-inspired objets d’art are called chinoiserie
• You’re welcome
• An Army rubber ducky that I got from my friend Mike who's a kick-ass Army veteran
• A plaque I bought at the Museu Picasso in Barcelona with a shimmery sky-blue frame that has never gone with anything in any house I’ve ever owned
• Picasso is tacky and his stupid “art” will never catch on
• Loser
• An authentic finger bowl or flower vase or vomit bucket or who knows what the hell it’s for that I rescued when I survived the Titanic sinking
• Or maybe it’s just a reproduction that I bought at a Titanic exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
• At my age, my memory is shot so its provenance is now lost to the ages
• So shut up
• A French sign about reading on the toilet that I bought at a Euro-charming little shop in Montmartre high above Paris
• A Norwegian kitchen witch that I cross-stitched and framed at Skogfjorden language camp in 1983
• Shut up
• It’s totally not gay
• So shut up
• A stone coaster printed with a vintage Eiffel Tower print
• Though it’s neither real stone nor authentic vintage
• But I like it so shut up

The RMS Titanic hit an iceberg and started sinking 107 years ago today, at almost exactly the time I’m posting this

I’ve had a lifelong fascination with the tragedy—mostly from the perspective of wanting to know what it was like to be on such a grand ship ... and then to have it slowly, terrifyingly disappear under my feet. I’ve recorded the sinking as an annual event on my google calendar so I get a pop-up reminder every year to take a moment to think about the people who died and the horrors they and the survivors endured.

I just saw a matinee of the incredible musical Come From Away, which tells the story of the small town in Newfoundland that almost doubled in size for a week when American airspace was closed on 9/11 and flights from all over the world were diverted there. Now every flight out of NYC was canceled tonight due to weather, and I’m stranded here until Tuesday. But I’m safe. And I’ve found that these two events have subtly enriched whatever emotional connection I’ve given myself to the Titanic passengers and crew I technically know nothing about but still mourn.

Don’t wait for tragedy. Don’t wait for averted tragedy. Take a moment every day to be thankful for the people you love in your life.

Happy #Hallowmeme!

Since my countdown to tonight got off and I forget what I’ve already posted, I’m just gonnna unleash a memevalanche of all the weird Halloween stuff I’ve compulsively collected on my phone, which should be scary in itself. Boo!

It’s amazing how many of these custom-molded bad boys a fella can accumulate in less than a year

Also: Titanic coasters! For drinks on ice!

Oh, I am TOTALLY an Arthur

(Plus I totally made this meme. Send it forth into the world if you wish.)

And so it’s here: the last night of my 40s

I feel like that ominous, grainy photo of the Titanic sailing away from the White Star Dock in Southampton that’s always accompanied by a caption saying something about it being the last time the ship would ever see land. I was born at 6:30 am, so when I close my eyes tonight it will be the last time I see my bedroom as a 49-year-old because by the time I wake up I’ll be 50.

Turning 50 is bugging me WAY beyond the expected complaints of a certain age milestone making someone feel old. I know I’m not the only person to turn 50 or to feel profoundly older because of it ... and I’m certainly not the first person to complain about it. But 50 brings with it a mathematical sense of mortality that even 49 didn’t: I’m well over halfway done living my life. But I don’t feel like I’ve even STARTED living it by most measures. There’s so much about living that I worry I haven’t even started thinking about, much less doing ... even though I’ve consciously and purposefully been living by the motto “someday just began”—meaning someday is here, so stop putting things off (like tattooing “someday just began” inside your arm where you can easily see it) until some far-off-procrastination someday—for well over two decades.

So in that spirit—and flying in the face of the defeated spirit of the 50-year-old man I desperately don’t want to be—I’ve mapped out a pretty rigorous Summer Of Running Away From Being 50 that includes multiple vacations to favorite destinations including New York City and Washington, D.C., and multiple races including two half marathons, the second of which winds through the parks of my beloved Walt Disney World in November.

So tomorrow’s my new someday. The beginning of my sixth decade. The dawn of my summer-long celebration of that milestone. The onyourmarksgetsetGO! of my sprint toward everything that awaits me between here and 60.

And the moment I wake up tomorrow, it’s only just begun.

#HowToTurn50

Let’s not kid ourselves, people

In a weekend filled with epic events and Herculean accomplishments, the most important milestone for the record books is the harmonic convergence of my mom finding some sweet replica Titanic stoneware she’d bought me 18 months ago and forgotten to give me AND me finally finding a Lilliputian plate stand small enough to hold the Lilliputian Wedgewood plate I’d bought at an estate sale almost three years ago. But time has a way of catching up with all knickknacks, and now my little family of historic dustables is finally assembled and artfully displayed and ready to represent my taste and personality and did I mention exquisite taste on the world stage.

Too soon?