Merry Christmas!

It’s a celebration of the beginning of the fulfillment of God’s promise of saving us. That’s pretty cool. Thanks, God!

I’m just happy to be back home with family today, away from work. Good times.

I’m coming out for the LGBT community: A love letter from me

Go celebrate! I wouldn’t mind joining you!

Preface: This was something that had been stirring in my heart for the past couple weeks. I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but I felt that I needed to write this post… or at least put it out there. 

I am not actually gay. But having grown up in the Bay Area, having gay friends and really observing as an outsider, I wanted to share my thoughts on it. I haven’t been vocal about it in the past and part of it came because I wasn’t sure what to say. Now after some thinking, praying and reflection, I feel that at some level, I think I get it.  

I probably will get some negative responses to this and that’s fine with me. I might get positive ones too. This message comes from the heart and I write this out of love. 

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When I first even got a glimpse or an idea of what being gay might be, I was a kid. I didn’t know what it meant really. I just thought it was some kind of term you used to say someone was different. I distinctly remember calling Michael Jackson gay because he was different. I don’t think it was necessarily the fact that he was very pale and sounded like a woman to me, but I just felt that being gay just meant you were different. I might have used it as an insult like this as a kid, but I never really believed it. I had no problem with it, really. It didn’t affect me, so it wasn’t my problem.

That mentality has stuck with me my entire life. I didn’t see it affecting my life, so I didn’t really deal with it. (When Prop 8 came around, I didn’t speak out for or against it. I don’t even remember if I voted.) Despite the fact that I grew up in the Bay Area, went to school with gays, it never really meant anything to me. Maybe because I was used to it. Maybe because I was never scolded or told how to feel about it. It wasn’t my life, so I just let it be.

Happy birthday to my baby, Isabella

This was my baby right after I bought her.

On this day one year ago, I bought this car. I had to since some guy ran into my old one, destroying it.

I am still paying off for this car but for one year, I’ve had some good times in this baby.

I should have used my Sirius XM radio more when I could. That dent on the right wasn’t my fault. That squeaky sound I can’t figure out.

But I still love this car. Happy birthday!

I don’t know

On Thursday, my great grandmother passed away. This was not a surprise as she had been getting worse in health and the family was very aware of her close to death.

The fact that she was so old, it was hard for me to really know her. I would see her at family functions but because of the language barrier, communicating with her was hard. The different dialects just made it difficult.

It was amazing how long she lived for all these years and it sucks that I am here all by myself while my family is all together trying to get through this. I just don’t know what to do or how to react. I know it’s hitting the rest of my family hard and I will be back to the Bay for the funeral in a couple weeks. But right now, I just don’t know.

Thinking of Thanksgiving, we got it good

LOL turkey

This will be the first ever Thanksgiving for me where I won’t be with family. I have work today. But I think the fact that I am not with my family today is a good reminder of the things I am thankful for. I am not at home because of my job. This job is something that I should not have. So very few people in my line of work would be in this position.

But thank God that I got my 49ers gig out of college and three years of working my ass off got me here. Now I am doing something I am really good at and I am enjoying it.

It’s a tough thing too moving to LA not knowing anyone, but I have found a decent place to live and the surrounding is pretty nice. More importantly, a good church community. Things aren’t easy now, but I can’t complain. I got it good.

Recapping my weekend back in the Bay Area

Yeah, we fresh!

I love the Bay. It’s my home. It’s my upbringing. It’s what I am about. So this past weekend I was lucky enough to have some time off work and fly up back home. I had the entire trip planned surrounded by food and baseball.

Here’s a recap of all the fun that I had, including how I was able to meet up with a lot of really important peoples in my life.

FRIDAY: The journey to LAX was time consuming. I wasn’t going to drive to the airport and park my car there for three days. So instead, I decided to take public transportation. I had to walk up and down a hill for about a mile to get to the bus stop. I took the bus ($1.50) to the Union Station in downtown. There, I took the FlyAway bus directly to the airport ($7).

During the ride to the airport, I got a chance to really relax on the bus. It was like one of those vacation tour buses and it was comfortable. I even got a chance to read this very awesome article about Rick Ross in Rolling Stone magazine.

Tentative weekend schedule for my return to the Bay Area

I’m back!

I will be returning to the Bay Area this weekend because I miss home. But it won’t be a long stay and I will try to get as much done in that time. I’ll be in the East Bay the entire time and I wish I could see everyone. But since I know that won’t happen, I’ll just do the best I can.

If anyone wants to come by say hi, I’ll be around various places. Here’s my itinerary of my weekend.

What if I didn’t like sports — is there more to me?

https://twitter.com/#!/phutmasterflex/statuses/185327485490184192

That was my tweet after I woke up at 2AM to watch the A’s play their game in Japan. Man, am I crazy about sports or what? My sleep schedule is messed up because of this but I don’t regret it.

But recently, I started to wonder how much of me is about sports. My profession is about sports. Most of my expertise on things is sport. Heck, people always go to me about sports. I love it, but I wonder if it’s so much a part of me that I am viewed as only that.

This kind of thinking started when this past 49ers season started when I no longer started to see myself as a 49ers fan. I in fact was started to get disgusted with obsessive fans. These people make their lives surround around their team and it’s kind of hard to watch. Do people view me as that?

What’s coming up next in my life?

I'm going to two more concerts this month. One to see Chris Brown. The other to see The Game.

WOW. I cannot believe it’s already mid-October and there’s just a lot of stuff that’s on my plate… and I have to eat it all.

First, the fun stuff.

As you know, I just got back from the Lupe Fiasco concert last week. It was a great show and he did all the songs I liked… and more. This coming Saturday, I will get to see Chris Brown. I have been a Brown fan since Day 1. He makes great music and is a tremendous dancer. He is a great artist.

Of course, people want to remember him from his acts outside of his music. The Rihanna incident. The chair throwing incident. He’s a crazy guy. But I have always wanted to see him perform. I heard his concerts are wild, so let’s see how I handle all that.

Sweet day hanging out with the cousins in Santa Cruz

One of our many foodings.

This was the first time all of us as cousins hung out together doing something. It’s been something that was never gotten around to and since this was the perfect weekend to do so, we went over toe Santa Cruz.

Here are some photos of our adventure with pics of some of the food we ate.

We got to downtown Santa Cruz and had some really good sandwiches. They had this NY-style sandwich (coleslaw with turkey… I got it with honey mustard and ciabatta bread) and I was happy. We walked around downtown, then to the Boardwalk/beach. Total fun. Finished off with funnel cake (see above pic), garlic fries and San Jose pho. Such a great day to be with my cousins. I love em!