July started with a bang even though we didn't get to see much of the fireworks in NY since we traveled to Montreal for The International Association of Gay/Lesbian Country Western Dance Clubs Conference. There, we learned a lot about each other, got to spend some time with Tommy Sciacca, enjoyed Montreal and discovered Jazzy Jeff. We also celebrated our first anniversary with Ipads, and concert tickets to Madonna (Sept) and Well Strung (Oct.). While in Montreal, James made a connection with Lisa, which he hopes to find ways to leverage her school work with his, thus making him more attentive to his projects.
Later in the month we did some more traveling as Chris's birthday is on July 17th. We drove to NC and rediscovered a connection between ourselves. We also worked on building bridges between us as well as with various family members. We ate breakfast at Cracker and Barrel and talked about the confederate flag and swastikas.
There, we connected with Arinn, Mom and Dad more...James worked on some speech class presentations which worked out ok.
In between all this, we purchased 28 lessons with Arthur Murray Dance Studios in White Plains where we later encountered a "we need to dance with the ladies' first" type of microaggression.
We did more work on moving forward with the new apartment and settled in with an appraisal at the end of the month. We also learned that my credit report indicates months of unpaid mortgage, so the mortgage will only be under Jeff.
We worked on a budget for the future and started to work on saving and using that budget now to see how the budget will play out.
Throughout the month, we learned to balance helping Ken Mauricio move to NY, meet Rich Bretan, and get settled into his apartment. We are hoping he will also work on buying the car soon. He borrowed it for the weekend we went to NC, which caused us to have a little fight over the mis communication about it.
I started cooking more in the home. One week, I made lots of Chinese food with the sausages. Another week, I cooked the curried potato dish from the vegan book and this week, I cooked some pasta and some Chinese vegan food.
We saw a movie this month - Self/less.
I learned about up speak and creaky voice and Jeff taught me about a discrimination term "disparate impact, which means that the law protects minorities and that any policies should not have an adverse impact on people in those groups.
