The Anniv Month is Here!

 Yeah, its been quite a while since this blog has moved.  Admittedly, blogging fell a bit out of fashion for me but there is a desire to find a way to make this specific blog active.  Rocky and I are nearing our 16th year together and today got me thinking about families.

Rocky's family has always been tremendously welcoming and kind whenever we visited them or joined them for a meal.  And likewise, ever since Rocky and I moved back to Paranaque to live with my mom in the familial compound, my mom has always made Rocky feel welcome and part of the family.  It even amazes me how the two can share moments even while I'm busy.  

But since gay couples don't have the option to get married in the Philippines, there's nothing existing that formally or traditionally declares you are now family members.  Our families have not "officially" met yet, despite our many happy years together.  I do get its not something easy for our parents despite how much they love us both.  In many ways, both are still finding their way.  And for that, we love them both.

We also have our chosen families.  Our collection of people from different walks of life whom we hold close in our hearts and always keep in our thoughts. When we can, are there to offer support, advice, assistance, and if need be, be critical and remind them when things need to chance.  And when necessary, they to the same for us.   We have lost some of them, but we hold them alive in our memories and our stories. 

I guess I just really wanted to say how full our life feels right now.  So full of love. Of wonder. And it just seems to constantly flow outwards.   I love you so much, Rocky.   I love the life we live together.  And I love the families we have surrounded ourselves with.

Fifteen Years Now

Today marks our 15th year of choosing to be together. 15 years of being baduy together. 15 years of facing everything together.

And 15 year of Pamilya Egg! It kinda blows the mind how Nico has been our number one supporter since Day One.

It still scares me a bit how in tune we are with one another. There's the cliche about being able to finish one another's sentences, and we've always had that. But our degree of connection has always involved a deeply intuitive understanding of what the other was thinking or feeling at any given moment. It's a strange emotional candor that we've never been able to turn off and over the years we've just learned to lean in and work with it. 

We're still very different people - discrete individuals. While we share a lot of the same hobbies, we still have some very distinct interests that we've learned to just support one another with. But despite that, I have never felt more in sync with anyone else in the way I do with Tobie and it's a truly special feeling. It still has its scary moments when things get intense, but on the whole, it has remained to be one of the strongest reminders that we should be together. 

In the end, we are together because we choose one another - that commitment remains. But at the same time, being together also just makes sense on so many levels it can feel a little crazy at times. But that's how we are and who we are as a couple, I guess. We're two unique people who took a while to find each other, but once we did we knew we could never let go. 

I love you, Tobie. Thank you for choosing me. Thank you for understanding me. Thank you for continuing to make every day memorable and special. I'm excited for all the new adventures we're still going to embark on in the many years to come. 

13 Years of I-Love-Yous

I thought I had already written this blog post but a quick check in the archives and even on my personal blog revealed zero posts precisely about this topic.

Tobie and I say "I love you" to one another a lot. Like a lot, a LOT. It's one of the first things we say upon waking and one of the last things we say before bed. It's practically a punctuation mark for non-existent sentences. Either of us can randomly call the other's attention just to say "I love you" and then we go back to work or whatever. We say it at the end of any phone call even if it was just to confirm a grocery item really quickly or before we part ways.

I'm the sort of person who doesn't see the point of celebrating monthsaries after your first few years together but I will never tire of telling Tobie "I love you" just about any chance I get. There are fractions of a moment that I worry that we say it too much and it might start to lose meaning. But then I just look over at Tobie and find that not saying "I love you" would be impossible. It's just something that we have to do.

Welcome to the 13th year of our different baduy moments like this. Every day includes some other reminder of why we're meant to be together and why this relationship is still one of the best things to happen to either of us. We've had our fair share of ups and downs and now we can also say that we helped each other survive a global pandemic. 

We're happily getting older together and yet unabashedly will also be the sort of couple who never stops saying I love you at random moments. And I have no intentions of stopping.

I love you, Tobie. Now and always.

Vlog Ep. 325: First Contact

Today's episode of #BaduyPride was all about our personal first contact stories with travel! It has certainly been a while since most of us have gone on longer trips and it's pretty fun to look back at our different firsts whether it's a trip with family or our first time to venture out of the country on our own.

I really feel that technology has made such a big difference to the way we travel and I can't quite imagine traveling without things like Google Maps, Google Translate, or even just organized public transportation systems. There are still a lot of adventures for all of us to experience and hopefully, this pandemic will inspire more of us to try to make first contact once we feel it's safe enough to do so. 

While we chose today's topic, we're always open to suggestions! If you have ideas for future video discussions, feel free to fill out this Google Form and your idea may be featured as the focus for an episode!

Vlog Ep. 324: The Star Trek Deck Building Game

After a short break, #BaduyPride was back with a new tabletop game episode. In honor of First Contact Day, we decided to talk about one of the Star Trek-related games in our collection - this being the Star Trek Deck Building Game. We only have the Original Series edition of the game thus far and maybe we'll get lucky and find the Next Generation episode eventually. This is one of those out-of-print franchise curiosities that we're lucky that Tobie was able to find for us.

While not the most polished deck building game around, it still has a charm of its own. It uses different production stills as card art and managed to capture pretty much every single TOS story to some degree. The weird conceits of the game where everyone is in charge of a starship and recruiting very diverse crews from the Starbase isn't the greatest, but it works well enough to keep things going. And still play the game from time to time regardless.

While we chose today's topic, we're always open to suggestions! If you have ideas for future video discussions, feel free to fill out this Google Form and your idea may be featured as the focus for an episode!