Savvy Navigator’s fabulous college friend and fellow blogger, SuAnn Debbie (her blog is Blue Like the Sky), bestowed an “Your Blog is Fabulous” award and challenged SN to blog about 5 things he’s addicted to. While some gentle readers might be tempted to add otherwise inappropriate content to this list, here’s the for-now definitive Savvy-Navigator-Guilty-Pleasure inventory:

1. Real-time updates about friends via Twitter and the Facebook Status media - Savvy Navigator has always loved people’s stories, and loves the real-time updates of what his peeps are up to. A vehicle to know what folks are doing, and what’s important to them at any given moment, comprise Savvy Navigator’s newest addiction, acquired in 2008.

2. Being bossy – Yup. Having a cast on his leg for 6 weeks drove home the fact that Savvy Navigator has an insatiable need to control his immediate environment. And when others don’t always do things just the way he likes it, he can get bossy (and finds extreme pleasure in this, sometimes). The roots of this addiction probably result from having 5 younger siblings.

3. Exploring the world and sharing it with others – the best thing about the launch of Savvy Navigator Gay Tours is that SN now gets paid to travel the world and explore the latest and greatest and bring it all to others. Weather it’s a gay safari, fabulous food and wine in Cape Town, or anything else gay travel related, Savvy Navigator loves exploring it, and sharing it, as well.

4. Airline Porn – What can one say? Some favorites include Chris Sloan’s Airchive, AirFleets (yes, SN flew on N106US about 8 years before the Hudson RIver landing), FlightAware and the Great CIrcle Router. He can spend hours at a time perusing these sites and often uses them as references for his research. Mostly, however, they provide him with data to sustain his perpetual state of bossiness (see #2 above).

5. The Girls Next Door - Savvy Navigator became a huge fan of this E! show in its first season. He subsequently introduced it to the spousal unit, who also loved it, and recently cast ex-Hef girlfriend, Bridget, in his new Travel Channel series, Bridget’s Sexiest Beaches. Keep an eye out for it in March.

While this is by no means exhaustive or extensive, it certainly offers some insight as to what’s important.

Savvy Navigator just stumbled upon this interesting new volume of gay travel writing, Big Trips, More Good Gay Travel Writing. Edited by Raphael Kadushin, and a sequel to his earlier volume, Wonderlands, Good Gay Travel Writing, this compilation is a must-read for both the gay armchair, as well as the intrepid traveler.

All the stories are gripping and a fairly quick, easy read, but Savvy Navigator’s favorite story was Andrew Holleran’s account of Florida (a place SN loves to hate).

Book critic Amos Lassen sums it up nicely is his review:

“Kadushin brings together some of the A-list gay authors including Edmund White, Trebor Healey, Dale Peck and Brian Bouldrey. The book rests somewhere between memoir and travel fiction and each selection is a gem. The selections are straight forward and fascinating to read and are very different from each other. There is a great deal of literary talent in this volume and the places written about range from Corfu to Italy to Britain to America. Yet they all have one thing in common–a new kind of travel writing and a sense of love.”

For your next long-haul flight, beach vacation, or a good new-year’s-resolution read, grab yourself a copy of Big Trips. You won’t be disappointed.