Tony Brewer

When I want to have a vacation that is chock full of “going and doing” instead of “lay back and relax” I try to head to the Orlando area.  I absolutely LOVE how many fun and exciting things that there are to do in the Orlando area!  I could easily live there for several years, on a hiatus where I didn’t have to work and just spend every day doing fun and awesome things!

I guess one reason that I love the Orlando area so much is that I really enjoy people watching when I go places.  So if I go to an amusement park, when I get tired from all of the walking I like to sit down on a bench with a cold beverage and a snack and just watch the people going by.  If I’m lucky I might even strike up an interesting conversation with someone who is doing the same thing. 

My brother Phil just came back from a Mardi Gras celebration in the Universal Studios Amusement Park in Orlando.  He said it was an awesome experience, and he certainly made me want to go there too!  I love Universal Studios anyway, I like going to the shows and to some extent I enjoy some of the rides.  I’m not a big thrill seeker, so I tend to avoid the thrill seeking rides like roller coasters.  But I do see lots of people do enjoy those rides, and when I go there I am more than happy to let the folks that I am with go on those rides while I sit and people watch!

Since Phil had so much fun doing the Mardi Gras celebrations at the Universal Studios, I am just going to have to try to go do their Mardi Gras next year.  I’ll be trying to buy Discount Universal Tickets online before I go, though.  Every dollar saved on the tickets is another dollar I can spend buying souvenirs!

There has always been a controversy surrounding whether being gay or straight as a lifestyle was a lifestyle “choice” or whether the sexual orientation was biological. I was interested this past week to be reading several articles regarding recent scientific evidence that supports that sexual orientation is a biological event. One such article was in Time.com, which talks about what the gay brain looks like. Another, similar article was in the US News and World Report.

My personal feelings have always been that it is nature, not nurture that determines sexual orientation. I wish that people would just “get over it” and treat gay people with the same respect that they treat straight people. I know that some of the larger objections have simply been that they take offense at those who go above board with public displays of affection, but to be fair, that offense is committed by a lot of straight people, too. I can hardly walk down the aisles of the local Wal-Mart without finding myself walking behind a straight couple where the man reaches behind the woman and pinches her butt. I find that very offensive!