Dec 23, 2012- Hey We're Still Here

Yet another apocalypse has come and gone.  The Mayan Calendar will no longer be a concern.

I'm not so sure I'll be renewing my NRA membership when it comes up.  Their answer to school shootings is to post an armed guard at each and every school.

School budgets are cut to the bone now, so how many teachers will lose their jobs to make room for this armed guard job?  Making for bigger classes, and bigger body counts when the massacres do happen.  Because the armed guard will be part of the body count.  Anybody who's watched any action movie knows that the security guard always gets it.

As I understand it, Sandy Hook had a pretty good security system in place.  You had to be buzzed in.  I am pretty sure they did not buzz in a Bushmaster-toting guy with a ski mask.  He shot his way in.  Seems to me, the answer might be bullet proof glass or entry at a gated entrance.  But you can't really plan for every contingency and a motivated perpetrator will find a way around your best plans.

As for those calling for more gun laws, I think it is important to note all the guns used were legally purchased by the mother of the perpetrator.  Had she made use of a gun safe and trigger locks that were not accessible to her son, he would not have been able to use those guns.

My father used to own a .22 revolver but when I was born, he got rid of it.  There was always a .22 rifle and a shotgun in the house.  They were basic tools for varmint control on the farm and they were kept out of reach of us children and believe me, we knew better than to try to mess with them.  I never fired a gun until I was in ROTC in college and then it was only blanks.  I was in my 40's when I acquired my first gun.

In my state,  to buy a handgun, you get a permit to acquire from the county sheriff.  The first time I did it, it took about two weeks and the permit is good for one year.  The last time I got one prior to attending a gun show, I was able to get my second permit on the spot, because I had had one before.  As long as you aren't a felon or mentally ill or an alcoholic and maybe some other things I don't remember, you can buy a handgun here.

I don't own a gun safe and I've never bothered with the trigger locks that came on my newer guns but recent events make me think I should do that, even though I live alone.  If my guns were stolen in a burglary, they'd be a lot harder to use.

There Are None So Blind

A while back I dreamed that I went to a different eye doctor and he was able to completely correct my vision.

Last year, at my annual eye exam, my optometrist was doing the "which is better? One or Two?" thing but when he was doing my left eye, nothing looked good.  He shrugged, said something to the effect that it is what it is.  Macular degeneration was starting to take its toll.  Maybe my vision would fluctuate from day to day and I was having a bad day.  I was still having fairly frequent visits to the retinal specialist to monitor bleeding in my right eye.  The specter of disability can freak you the fuck out.

I started to read up a little more on myopic macular degeneration and how to test my eyes myself.  I started to eat a lot more spinach.  I started taking the Areds 2 formula vitamins.  I spent a lot of time closing one eye and seeing what the other eye could do.  I had triple vision in my left eye and mild double vision in my right eye.  Some days were better than others, focusing on the computer screen would be easy and I didn't have to squint to read the numbers on the screen.  I figured the multiple images were from the cataracts that are starting to form.  Apparently, being very myopic can make everything go wrong with your eyes, macular degeneration, retinal tears, cataracts and glaucoma.  Nobody's mentioned glaucoma yet for me.

I went back to the retinal specialist last week.  During the initial exam, the guy was able to make my left eye see things.  I was startled- there's only one thing there, instead of three!  He wasn't impressed and emphasized not squinting and rapidly deciding which was better.  He said both eyes could be corrected to 20/30.  So in a way, it was like the dream came true.

Then he dilated me, I got scanned and then I saw the retinal specialist.  He quickly looked around inside my eyeballs and was pleased to announce no bleeding and that I could "graduate".  I wouldn't have to come back unless there were problems.

So maybe the vitamins and the spinach have helped.  I'll keep up with them.  I am not so worried about being able to renew my drivers license next summer and do not feel as though I will be forced to retire early because of this.  I feel fortunate.

I Want My GPS to Cry and Beg

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Broken Tractor

I was driving my tractor up some steps when it died and began to hemorrhage fluids.  I walked back to where I had been and asked who works on tractors and was given the name of a business, I believe it was called San Man.  I found the business, but realized I couldn't give them the location of the tractor.  So I went back to find it and got totally lost.  I wandered through all kinds of buildings that were like mazes and never found the tractor again but met plenty of people who weren't happy to see me.

The tractor was green, like a John Deere, if that helps.

Check out my new ink!

First I was at work and a helicopter was flying really close to our windows.  Then the guy flying it smiled at me and just stepped out of it.  I freaked out and yelled to my boss that the helicopter was going to crash and she seemed amused.

Next there was something about being at church and I was changing clothes and I was not happy with how big my breasts were getting to be and definitely planning to have something done about it.  There were all these little kids and I got irritated with them and called one a "little blonde weirdo".  They were from a new family and were showing off the athletic skills of one of their toddlers.

"Just throw anything at him," they said.  "He'll catch it."  And he could.  There was a younger set of twins that  were kind of odd looking with lots of fresh stitching on their heads and faces.

I was on my way somewhere and ran into Doug from where I used to work and showed off my new tattoo.

Before I left for good, I had a conversation with a cat.  It was black and someone, probably those damn new kids had dyed its head yellow, and it's front torso red and it's hind quarters blue, like they were trying to make it look like Mr. Bill.  It seemed to not be that upset about it and told me to have a good trip.

Jennifer Livingston Is Smoking Hot Just The Way She Is

Jennifer Livingston is a news woman and a guy sent her an email that said stuff like "obesity is one of the worst choices a person can make" and how she should lose weight.  I think she should have just deleted the email and ignored him.  The very idea that someone would "choose" to be overweight is as stupid as the idea that one chooses to be gay.  And as the news is rehashing this, they refer to her being overweight and it just pisses me off.

We're not talking about a woman who has to have a wall knocked out so she can leave the house.  We are talking about a very attractive woman by any standard, as far as I am concerned.  All I could think about as I watched her video response to this douchebag was how smoking hot she is.  When she mentioned a husband, I thought what a lucky guy he is.

World is just messed up, giving a woman shit for not looking like Barbie.  Fuck you, world.  Eat shit and die.

It's OK.

I had a lot of errands to run this morning so my routine was all disrupted I guess and maybe my head wasn't where it should be.  I went to the post office and stood in line but it didn't take all that long and I could have stopped and picked up something to eat on the way to work but all I did was just get some gas.

It wasn't the station I usually go to and that couldn't have been the problem.  Getting gas is not a big deal.  You select your payment method, say yes or no to a receipt and maybe decline a car wash.  Let it fill, wash your windshield, put the nozzle back, put your cap back on and get your receipt.

For some reason I forgot the nozzle putting back part.

Some Mexican guys pulled up on the other side of my pump in a nice black Ford pickup and were talking back and forth in Spanish and I started to pull out and the one that was walking to the store pointed at me and said "Hey" and I realized what I was doing.  I stopped and sure enough, the nozzle was on the ground.  I thanked the man for flagging me down.  I talked about what a stupid thing it was I had done.

The man still at the pickup on the other side of the pump said "Ees OK."

I guess it could have been worse, I could have pulled away while it was still filling, the hose could have been yanked from the pump, etc.  The horror of the embarrassing, mistake in front of who knows how many witnesses was mitigated by the kind words of the man I didn't even see on the other side of the pump: "Ees OK."

Kindness is so humbling.  Makes you think to be kind to others, instead of doing or saying things that will make their day worse.  It's OK.

Gracias, amigo.

From now on, though, I'm standing right by the nozzle until it's done.  I'll wash the windshield after I put everything up.

Insomnia

When I lay on my back in bed, my breasts disappear.  I can lay in bed naked next to my girlfriend this way and not care much if she puts her hand there but she's somewhere else tonight.  I think about whether I'd be a good candidate for a keyhole procedure.  I think about how much I'm scared of doctors and try to forget it.  I put my hand on my flattened chest and wonder what the big deal about nipples is anyway, it doesn't do anything for me to have them touched.

If I had it done, no one would probably notice, most shirts I wear are loose, but it would probably be obvious if I wore a polo and I have a lot of those.  They hold up better than my button downs.  The button downs get worn more and washed more and wear out faster.  The polos usually are mixed fibers and wear like iron.

I try to remember the last time I was home visiting Dad.  Have I been home this year?  I try to remember the names of my step brothers and sisters kids.  I can remember the first borns and second borns but the genders and names of thirds are eluding me.  If they made me match the progeny to the parents, I'd probably fail.  Some of the little blonds may have gone brunette or ginger and I would mix them up.

I'm in bed for a change, because you are supposed to sleep better in bed with no television on.  I refuse to do the one thing that I know will zonk me out, get up, turn on the television and lay on the couch.  I've been getting so stiff lately, I might end up with back or neck pain if I don't stop it.  I can't be sleeping all that well on the couch.  But I sure ain't sleeping good tonight.

I try to think about things that will inspire me to masturbate, another thing that might induce sleep, but I keep going over the very unerotic topic of the names of the newest children.  Some of the names are weird, like they got them from bad Scrabble letters.  I can't make a word with these letters but this looks like a cute baby name.

I think about the name I might take should I transition.  Or even if I don't.  I've always hated my name.  I like Jim and Tom.  I like Gus, because of Lonesome Dove.  I like Zane and Jason and Justin and Miles.  I like manly, unambiguous names.  I wonder why so many trans men seem to go for variations of Aiden.  I wonder why I can't sleep, why my mind won't shut off.  I feel like I just had an energy shot and it's almost six in the morning and I last had one right before I started work at three in the afternoon the day before.  I don't have to get up early but I try to be up by 10:30 to have plenty of time to get ready for work and maybe do yard work or run an errand before commuting.

Sometimes the sleep deprivation elevates my mood.  I'm always happy to go to work these days.  I like my job a lot.  Yesterday there were four of us there at first, which isn't necessary, since there are only three stations.  I was hoping I'd get a chance to walk down to the guard shack and see inside it but there was a training video to watch.  When I was back in our room, the extra guy gives me his iPhone and has me play his racing game.  I drive three races.  I run off the track and hit other cars but I still win.  I'm uncomfortable playing it, since I am at work, but there's not much going on yet and soon the extra guy will leave and fortunately the boss doesn't see me playing the game.  I think how I ought to play Need For Speed with my steering wheel and pedals on my big screen TV.  But I haven't gamed much since I started dating again.

I don't think about the future.  I probably slept more than I thought and I don't feel that tired this morning.  There was some kind of dream about someone knocking at my door but I can't remember how it goes now.

current events- 9/11/12- it's not getting better

People love to get worked up.  They latch on to a theme for their life and choose a path and stuff happens.

Last night I was trying to catch up on the latest shit storm going down in Egypt and Libya and keep my girlfriend awake as she drove over night.  The last long distance girlfriend I had would hang up on me when she heard me playing games or watching videos during our hours long phone conversations.  This one is more tolerant.

I was trying to watch the clip from the inflammatory movie that was causing people to die and it wasn't interesting and seemed vaguely random and lame and she kept saying "What are you doing?" so I decided to watch it later but it was made "private" today.  Probably to keep other people from getting worked up.

Why did it seem like a good idea to head over to an embassy full of people who had nothing to do with making this movie?  I guess you had to be there.

In our country, we have free speech.  Anybody can say any damn stupid thing they want to.  And they do.  In other countries, not so much.  It is too bad they feel motivated to kill people over words.

My sympathy goes out to the innocent who were murdered in Libya.  When bad guys come, good guys need to grit their teeth and defend themselves.  This time, there were too many bad guys.

Nobody owes bad guys apologies.  Egypt should be apologizing to the US for the attack on our embassy.  Same for Libya.  Maybe we shouldn't have embassies in such lawless, uncivilized countries.  Because I see no reason to be diplomatic with people who can't be reasoned with.

Wednesday is my Saturday

That one time I peed in the men's restroom at work.

Too bad I didn't straighten my tie clip.

Kathy, I'm Lost

I said, though I knew she was sleeping.  I'm empty and aching and I don't know why.

Am I trans?  Is that the answer?  I've watched the journeys of trans men since I first heard about them, back in the days of Phil Donahue.  The phalloplasties sounded so horrific - I could never go through that.  I read about Billy Tipton, and wondered if I could pull that off- I got "sir-ed" sometimes.  I never believed I could have his courage.

I remember hearing about Brandon Teena, not far from where I was living at the time.  The danger was obvious to me.

With the internet, I have been amazed at the changes of the last few years.  Like how easy it has become to get testosterone legitimately.  The requirement to live as the new gender for two years seems to have disappeared and people seem to undertake transition on a whim.  One trans man said "I was a femme heterosexual woman."  This makes me have the reaction of "No!  You're Doing It Wrong!" I know it's not any of my business and I've learned to get over the trans men who don't behave to my standards of masculinity and sexual orientation.  Everyone gets to live their lives their own way.

So as of right now, I will remain here on the shore, while I watch the other guys sail away to the land of manhood.  They can keep the shots and the surgeries and the smelly men's restrooms.  If I don't want to put up with those things, then I guess I don't want it bad enough.  I admire them and respect them and pray for their safety.

But if I was ever in one of those magical wish-granting situations....

My New Favorite Artist

http://www.chenwenling.com/

http://sweet-station.com/blog/2011/09/chen-wenling/

http://beautifuldecay.com/2012/01/20/chen-wenling/


Someone shared the What You See Is Real sculpture on Facebook.  Of course in that maddening way people have on Facebook, they just share it without explaining what it is or where it came from, but Google was my friend or at least not an enemy.

This sculpture is by a Chinese artist named Chen Wenling.  He does these wild, gigantic full color bizarre sculptures.

What You See Is Real was more descriptively called The Amazing Bull Fart sculpture.  Bernie Madhoff is being squashed against a wall by a bull that is being propelled by a massive fart.  Bernie has his own horns and one of his shoes came off and is laying on the ground beneath them.  In China, one of these websites says, farting means bluffing.

I'm dying to know how and of what he makes these things and to have the other sculptures explained.  Like what's up with that fish woman?  What's going on with the shark biting the hippo that has an alligator in its mouth biting a guy and they're all hanging from ropes and the one with the shark, hippo and alligator laying there with blood pouring from their mouths- is that a sequel?

I'm also astonished that this is all coming from China.  His art screams freedom and that's not something I associated with China.  I have to majorly adjust my ideas about China.

http://www.chinaartnetworks.com/feature/wen16.shtml

Obamacare

I think the whole Tea Party movement is summed up nicely by the South Park Episode TMI.  I grew up with Midwestern white crackers and I know for a fact that the thing that bothers them most about Obama is he is black.  We had neighbors that wouldn't watch shows like Good Times or Moving on Up or Sanford and Sons because they had black people on them.  I pitied them.  Those were good shows.

I have always had health insurance.  I went through a period of unemployment for about three years and I kept myself insured.  So I don't see the big deal on the mandate.  I have always bought it, why shouldn't you?

My brother didn't have insurance when he crashed his motorcycle in June 2002.  Dad and I went to see him and he was unconscious with severe head injuries.  An attorney advised Dad that we couldn't be involved in his health car or the hospital would come after us.  The hospital wanted only one family member calling them about him, so Dad was designated to be that one.  So I would get the news from Dad.  There was no change, he had not woke up.

I decided to go to Florida to see my brother on my vacation in October.  My attorney said don't talk to anybody and don't sign anything.  Dad seemed a little surprised that I was going.

My brother was conscious but unable to speak because he still had one of those things in his throat for the ventilator.  He wasn't on a ventilator but they were administering some kind of therapeutic mist for the astounding amounts of snot coming out of his lungs.  He had a dent in his forehead from the skull fractures that had caved in after the swelling from his brain had gone down.  He couldn't move his legs.  He had no clue who I was.

One person who talked to me asked me if I wanted to take him home.  I frankly couldn't picture him traveling and said so as I eyed the shit bag hanging at the side of the bed.  I guess they can shove a hose up your ass and collect it that way.  When I see someone on a motorcycle, all I can think about is that bag of shit.

The shit bag wasn't the worst thing.  The worst thing was one day when I came in and there as a huge pile of snot on that thing in his throat.  I tried to pull it off with a kleenex but I was afraid I was going to pull it out of his throat because it was like a pile of glue.  Waves of nausea washed over me as I pulled on it and it wouldn't give.  

I didn't get it off and cut my visit short that day.

Mostly I talked to him and he would nod or shake his head to questions, but he didn't remember who I was. I tried to leave the television on shows I thought he liked.

So I left him there, alone, he was saying something but I'll never know what it was, since he couldn't speak with that thing in his throat.

The hospital kicked him to a nursing home and his heart stopped and the nursing home sent him back to the hospital.  This happened one more time and the hospital asked what we wanted to do.  We had a family conference call between my Dad, my cousin and me.

A Death Panel, if you please.

Did we want the hospital to keep bringing him back to life every time he coded?

I asked why not take that thing out of his throat and ask him what he wanted.  So we all agreed that none of us wanted to live that way and he should be allowed to die.

He died on November 11,  2002 at the age of 41.

So that is why you have insurance.  Because nobody is going to give up everything they have and ever will have to save you if you really fuck up bad.

Resisting Urges

I got a call from someone who dialed a wrong number.  What if I had played along?  Made plans with her or took an important message for someone else?  How much chaos would ensue in her life?  It could have been so much fun to confess to a torrid affair with her husband but what if she went home and shot him?

I think it's better to eschew evil.  The universe doesn't need any more random chaos.

I dreamed about some kind of prehistoric looking animal with a huge squarish head that was the size of a small pony but with a very thick body and giraffe style spots.  It did not have a long neck or very much of a neck at all.  It wanted me to pet it and I did.  I can't find any images that look remotely like it, so I must have made it up.

June 2012 is down the drain...

I had another car theft dream.  This time, both the Focus and the Mustang were gone.  Then my garage fell down.  I wasn't all that sad, I could rebuild a bigger, better garage.  I'd get a 2013 Focus ST and a new Mustang as well.  I was happier about the new Focus than the new Mustang, because I really wanted to hang on to that '08 for a while.  I guess I thought insurance would cover most of the cost of the new cars, because I sure couldn't afford two new cars and a new garage in real life.

Kreepy Kindle

Before I got a real Kindle, I read ebooks on my PC.  I bought that Take Me There book and put it on my Kindle to read at work.  I saw it archived on my PC and downloaded it, and the PC knew exactly how far I had read into it.  Can Big Brother see what I am reading?  Is he going to make a big deal of it when I am hauled away to the internment camps for gender treachery?  I wonder how well I am going to hold up under torture, not all that great I am guessing.

How Tough Can You Be If You Need These?

Saint Dominic

So I have this dream with a guy from astronomy club.  We're in something like a museum or learning center and he's done this bas relief sculpture that looks kind of Mayan, kind of new age.  It has two faces on it and some astronomical symbols.  He says he's broadcasting information about it at 1203 on the radio band for people to hear about it in the park.

A Hispanic man I don't know pipes up "That's Santo Domingo."

When I look up Santo Domingo, I find it is the name of several cities in the latin world.  Eventally, I come to Santo Domingo de Silas, who was apparently the first Saint Dominic, the patron saint of hopeful mothers and astronomers.

The second Saint Dominic of Osma went off in 1203 or 1204 to Denmark to help fetch a bride for Prince Ferdinand.  On the way, he found some Cathars and he might have sicced Pope Innocent the III on them, since they were heretics who let women be clergy.  I guess the first trip was to ask the princess if she wanted to marry their prince, and when they went back to Denmark the next year, she was dead.  (So sayeth Wikipedia.)

What the heck is the universe trying to tell me?  To go back to astronomy club?  To tell the guy from astronomy club about the dream?

Electric Fences

I think Pastor Worley's idea would make a great movie, like a queer District 9.  The religious hypocrites would raid the lesbian compound for those threesomes they are so hot for.  The closet cases would sneak into the homosexual compound for some down low action.  And babies would keep happening anyway because Mother Nature finds a way.

And when Pastor Worley wants in on the money from this blockbuster hit, he'd get the explanation that there is an idea well and then he'd be released into the woods on my vast estate to be hunted for sport.

Cue the banjo music and roll the credits.

This movie is not yet rated.

test of posting picture-

My God, is this real?

Whaddya want?

I am working on a new proximity crush (she called me "honey" and she has smiled at me) and I am again working on yet another life change ( mo' money, less back breaking) and I have gone off of DHEA after five weeks on it and having beer again after not drinking it for said about of time.  God, how I missed it.

I hoped the DHEA would help me recover from the more brutal days at work (it's like steroids, isn't it?) but I was so stiff and sore after the first day of work this week, all I wanted to do was sleep.  My week starts out hard and tapers off gradually.   When I go back from my "weekend", I'll go in for my "interview" and then things may change yet again.  I won't get to see my cute forklift driver anymore but I won't be so sore and tired.

When I do car karaoke on the way to or from work, I can hit all the low notes I couldn't before, so maybe the DHEA did that besides give me giant pores.

My supervisor complimented my boots and asked me what I was doing on my vacation and when I admitted it was car club related he said his significant other was into racing and wanted to come watch me.  So I have two or three brothers here and maybe a couple of sisters and life is freaking good.

Well, don't I feel stupid.

One should always carefully study dimly remembered Bible texts before ranting about them.

I got my copy of The Book of Genesis, Illustrated by Robert Crumb today.

Abram became Abraham after Ishmael was born and before Isaac was born.  I suppose I could have edited my post and redacted the error, assuming anyone had even seen it.

I also got my copy of Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel.  Whenever I order something from Amazon, I try to get it to the level where I get free shipping.  Because I am cheap.  I had saved the Genesis book for a very long time in my wish list, which anyone can see.  If there's something salacious I want, like an S&M book or movie or spanking novels, I don't put them in my wish list.  I can put them in my cart and then "save them to buy later" which is kind of a list of things I plan to get but just not right now.

I got a Kindle for reading at work at lunchtime.  Right now I'm reading the first book of the Marketplace series.  The nice thing about the Kindle is you can carry quite a library with you.  There's a lot of stuff you can get for free, like the Bible, poetry and classic literature.  But for graphic novels, like from Bechdel or Crumb, I think hardcovers are still the way to go.

Breastfeeding

I grew up on a farm and we had lots of cats.  They were good cats, that mostly fed themselves with hunting, not useless porch cats that get underfoot expecting you to feed them.  One day, a scrawny tomcat returned home, looking like he'd lost a fight.  I witnessed his mother greeting him on his return and she seemed happy to see him.

And over the next few days, she let him nurse her.

I was so impressed that his mother loved him that much.

I was kind of scared that my parents would kill me.  One of my earliest memories of Sunday school, in maybe first or second grade, was them telling us about Abraham and Isaac.  He was called Abram then and God told him to sacrifice Isaac to him.  So he gathers up Isaac and his sacrificing tools and goes off to do it.  His wife says "Where are you going with Isaac and those knives?"

"Oh, just for a walk."  He lied to his wife, because if he had told the truth, you can bet she'd have put a stop to it.

I remember we were told that Abraham loved God and this proved how much he loved Him.  I remember wondering "But what about loving your kids?"  I knew better that to speak up, because I was old enough to know what could get you slapped upside the head.

God didn't make Abram go through with it, provided a ram for the actual act and changed Abram's name to Abraham.  But Isaac got to live through being tied up and threatened with death.  A great religion was born.

I was not breastfed.  I guess it wasn't done in the 50's.

RIP Carroll Shelby

Carroll Shelby is dead.  I used to look at Shelby GT500's and at all the money I had and think "It's only money" but I never pulled the trigger.  And now, should I win the lottery and get one, I won't get his signature on the dash, like so many of my friends with those cars have.

That's what went through my mind when I heard he'd died.  I'll never get his autograph on one of his cars.

But if I win the lottery, the 2013 GT500 is still on the top of the list of cars I will get.

What's On My Mind Today

http://youtu.be/-bfA0Mh1CnQ

Maybe I should do an Amazing Atheist style video response to this post.

First of all:  how about some video of the dyno pull showing this massive horsepower.  You can afford the Corvette, you can afford to mod it.  You can afford to get it dynoed.

And you can afford to plunk down $20 at a track and do this there instead of endangering the public!  You get a swell piece of paper with loads of numbers on it showing how awesome you are and if you really are 1500 horses, they should all be white slips.  It's called put up or shut up.

Or Speed Week on the Bonneville Salt Flats.  Just not on the highway.

Or you could go to a road course.  You would be the jerk who does not pay attention to the blue flags when everybody piles up behind you in the twisties because all you can do is go in a straight line.  You pull way away on the straights, and then everyone who can drive piles up behind you on the curves.  On second thought, DON'T go to the road course.

I was amazed at how few comments addressed the issue of racing in public.  Maybe he does go to the track, maybe he kicked all their asses at Speed Week.  But if he had, I'm thinking he wouldn't be making videos of being on the highway.  Because I'm thinking if you compete at the dragstrip or learned the rules to drive on a road course, you would have got it out of your system and wouldn't do it on the highway.

Don't Be Stupid

I ain't much for this Twitter stuff.  But Christopher Gordon is following me.  I am pretty excited by this.  When I followed Kevin Smith, he didn't follow me.

So go back a bit, to where I am reading an article about Randall, of Honey Badger fame.  I don't watch much TV nowadays, but I do love YouTube.  It's great for people like me, with the attention span of a gnat.  I loved Honey Badger and Randall's other nature narrations.  Then, one day, Randall showed himself.  He looks like he fell out of the time machine from the 70's.  We were all shocked to see the longish hair and whiskers- that mustache/muttonchops sideburns thing some guys did back in the day.  Then he put up a really great video of him on a date.  With a woman.  It did not go well.  My favorite part was when they showed their feet, while the "kissing" was going on.  His boots were- well, lets just say they were not manly boots.  Her saddle shoes were more butch than his shoes and she was a smoking hot babe.

So the article I found via my friend Google was from the Wall Street Journal and it had links to Randall's twitter account and Christopher Gordon's twitter account.  Christopher is Randall's "assistant".  I decided to follow both of them.  I am going to go out on a limb here and say they are one and the same.  Has anyone seen them together?

Storm Dreams

I dreamed that there was a new TV show featuring genuine butches and femmes that featured soft core porn.

Then I was driving along some kind of construction site, backing my car along slowly as I looked it over. I was right along the edge of a gaping hole.  A woman who was bothered by my behavior asked me to leave.  As I drove off, it started to rain heavily and it appeared that I would have to drive down some stairs to get home.

It had really cut loose while I was at work, for a while we watched the rain as it was blasted horizontally by high winds.  But at home, 45 miles away, things looked fine, so it must have passed by or lost its force as it came through here.

Bloggity blog

Okay, so we're still in this new format, it doesn't look quite so loathsome today, yet, I haven't hit the end of the page and still using google chrome, so yeah, I guess it's better.

I transferred away from my old job with no commute and swell hours to commute for 45 minutes and not do what I was doing before to do new things.  The adjustment to the new things hasn't been without issues and I drink as much as ever, I suppose.  I come home and instead of eating a supper ( at one a.m.) I drink a few beers.  I drag out of bed after noon and eat some breakfast and go back to work.

But I did get my taxes done, finally.

Blogging in the new format

Well, ok, I guess it's not so bad.  I think.  Well, I'm not liking the way my text is not fully visible as I type it.

Tonight, I had a loader on some of my doors who was first described to me as "a child".  This is a grown man who had a backpack full of little action figures the last time I saw him in another area.  He was no where to be seen, so I couldn't give him the tie out times for the five loads for his doors.  I might have talked to the supervisor but he was no where to be seen, either.  I had three loads that needed to go right away, so I tied them out myself.  I also had two doors that were a son of a bitch to get down, but the other dock person helped me with those.

When I went to tie out a fourth load, the other loaders insisted I have ManChild paged.  I found the supervisor and he got the page done.  The supervisor hoped I would let him know about any late loads so he could get this guy.  Like I'd let a late load happen, that is on me.  ManChild ambles in, but had to be told twice which door needed to be tied out.  His girlfriend had come along, and when I wasn't telling ManChild which door to load or tie out, he stayed behind some equipment with her.

That nagging pain I had dreamed about is real, I feel it whenever I pull down hard on a tough trailer door, I don't know if it's a pulled muscle, a bad appendix or ovarian cancer.

Maybe I can reset these options to make this page look better.  As usual, change sucks.  Just let me see everything I type without it scrolling out of sight, for criminy's sake.

Dude Where's My Car

The neighbors rolled in around 2:30 am and proceeded to argue loudly in the driveway.  Didn't bother me much since it wasn't quite my bedtime yet, but good grief.  Why not fight indoors?

I forgot to set my alarm and didn't wake up until almost noon.  I dreamed my Focus was stolen.  I wandered about in a Maxfield Parrish looking landscape, someone had to have seen it, with it's large black fuzzy dice and skull seat covers and the large bright racing stickers I put on the rear windows to make it easier to spot in a dark parking lot.

Working on the Docks

The first time I met E, I was struggling with a really stubborn trailer door and she materialized at my side to help me pull it up.  She's a forklift driver but she got off and helped me pull it up by hand.  Sometimes those things are so stubborn, it actually takes a forklift to get them up.  The first few days on this job, I found many doors problematic.  But now, I guess I'm getting in shape, and I have figured out how to leverage or push and pull just right to get the job done.

Tonight there was some drama that started while I was at lunch.  Usually, our own guys back trailers up to the doors but sometimes OTR drivers do and they are required to come and and declare that they are chocked and pulled off after they are indeed chocked and pulled off.  Only then it is truly safe for a forklift driver to enter the trailer.  But apparently, a driver pulled off while E was in a trailer and K, another forklift operator witnessed this and she wanted to file a formal complaint against the driver.  The trailer shakes and it is creepy for the forklift driver.  And maybe not safe, should the trailer actually start to move, but one of my duties is to lock the trailer to the dock, so it can't be moved.  I was back from lunch when K asked for the paper work to file the complaint.  I found somebody to help me find the form and by the time I did, K wasn't around but E was and her attitude was it wasn't a big deal and she didn't want to get anybody in trouble.  So she said she'd take care of the paperwork (probably throw it away and tell K it was handled) and she warned my to watch myself around K.  I had already had that vibe although dealing with K was much better tonight that the previous night.  I may be working this area regularly, so this would probably be good to have rapport with all the forklift drivers.

Overtime can be had for the asking here but I simply lack the stamina to work more than 8 hours, 5 days a week.  Maybe if I could sleep 8 hours a night, I could go for 10 hour days and 12 hour days are for the young.  Forget 7 days a week.  Maybe once I have my taxes done and the grass isn't growing so much, I could contemplate signing up for the overtime list.  People who can handle 7 12 hour days bring in 6 figure incomes.  I'd be scared of getting so tired I'd end up getting hurt.

That's the plan for my "weekend", gotta get the taxes done NOW.

April Fools Day 2012- NASCAR at Martinsville

I clock in next to a break room that has a television and the NASCAR race at Martinsville was on TV.  Jimmie Johnson was in the lead and Jeff Gordon was in second.  I was hoping the race would end before I clocked in but there were enough cautions to slow things down.  Then there were three laps to go- and another caution.  I had to clock in and leave.

I found out after I got home that there had been a crash when they got going again and Jimmie and Jeff were involved.  I couldn't even find the crash on YouTube.  Just the footage of Ryan Newman winning.

That was one of the things I knew I'd be giving up in transferring to this job.  Besides not being able to participate in autocross anymore, I'd miss the races on the weekends on TV.  Unless I caught them before I clocked in while waiting in the break room.

Whenever I want you all I have to do is dream

Yesterday I slept way in.  I dreamed a lot.  I dreamed I was in pain, a nagging pain in my lower right side.  I wondered if I had appendicitis and was annoyed at the idea I might have to miss work.

I then dreamed that meteors filled the sky and ash covered the ground like snow.  I was at my aunt's house and tried to call mine to see if the phone lines were still working, if my house was still standing.  Emergency services answered and said I needed to stay off the phone to keep the lines clear.

The only thing I can remember from this morning is something about a dock plate.  Tomorrow I'll be putting them up and down again and things will be fine.

Cars I see on the way to work

I saw a MINI Cooper Coupe today, black body with white stripes and a white roof with black stripes.  I didn't get close enough to see if it was a Cooper S or not.  I know if I get a MINI, it will definitely be an S and I was kind of hoping to get the MINI roadster but it may be a bad idea to be planning for my next car when I may not be able to renew my driver's license.

Driving at night is not so bad yet.  I use the GPS to help me figure out where to turn in unfamiliar territory since I can't read street signs at night and not that well in the day either.  Sometimes I turn her on even when I know where I am going, and then go the opposite direction just to hear her voice, begging me to "turn around when possible".  

I think things are going ok at my new job.  I think people feel they are safe there, because it is so big, we won't be affected by closings.  But I look at the dilapidated equipment and the tiny contract facilities popping up here and there and I think there is writing on the wall.  I just hope my knees and back hold up until my minimum retirement age.  They won't have to give me an incentive to go.  Sometimes you hear people say they'll go if they are given money.  Dude, they give you money now, they shower you with it.  Bank it and brace yourself.

A Better Night- They Haven't Thrown Me In The Deep End Yet

My trainer tonight let me do everything, he has a different way that my previous trainer doesn't approve of, but his rationale made sense to me- why send out partially loaded trucks?

I do have one thing from the old job that I miss, from dealing with the public: those occasions when a BBW would come in sporting spectacular cleavage.  The last day I was there, this happened, and she had some ink that might have meant she was family, but I don't know if you can go by that really.  And she was probably half my age.  But it was nice to look at and think about putting my face there as I drift off to sleep at night...

I've gotten family vibes from several men I work with now but none from any women.  Everyone has been friendly and welcoming so far.  I have to work my day off tomorrow and that dang energy shot I had at lunch around 8 pm is still keeping me awake and it's almost 3 am now.  I should have been asleep an hour ago.

Changing Jobs After 50

I've had two days on my new job.  I went from being the smartest person in the building to the dumbest. This job has physical aspects, some trailer doors are bitches to open or close.  There are major safety aspects- a lapse in attention can get myself and someone else hurt or killed and I can get fired.

There hasn't been any book training, mostly I have watched her and then she watches me and corrects me when I mess up, which seems to be every time.  Once I think I know what's going on, some exception pops up- a detail gets changed and I'm lost again.  She assures me it will become second nature to me but all too often she is doing the work because when the time comes it has to be done NOW.  There are long periods of down time on the nights I have worked so far, and then up to three trucks can be ready to go at once.

I get home after midnight, and I'm tired, so it's a light snack an off to bed.  Without the after-work drinks, I can sleep through the night easily.  So there you go- alcohol, even just one drink- can disturb your sleep.  And I'm going to need rest to recover, my upper body is getting quite a workout- I will not be trying to do P90X any time soon.

At my new place they still do the vacation picks in March.  They were shocked to hear we could only pick three weeks total.  They said I'd still get mine that is already approved but I needed to bring in my signed slips.  Then I remembered I'd left them on my desk.  I pictured my boss, sweeping his arm over my desk, putting everything into the trash.  He's been doing that sort of thing, he cleaned out a file cabinet full of forms we still use and put them in the trash.  I ran over to work after breakfast and to my relief my folder was still there.  I grabbed it and left.  So I'll get a little Mustang time in April if the weather is nice and I'll get my track weekend in July unless something else hoses that again.  And if they aren't stingy with annual leave in this place, maybe I can get other track weekends in.

I am supposed to be able to use a bicycle in my job, so I can get to the dock doors quickly.  The procedure for getting a bike is murky- "Just take one with an empty basket.  Except that one by the break room, so-and-so is in there, so it's probably his bike.  Another time a guy took my bike and I had to yell at him, only our kind is supposed to use the bikes."

Great, I have no way of knowing if a bike is in use or if someone is using it is supposed to be using it.  But I'll probably get to yell at someone soon, I guess there are a few people around who like to try you.

So my immediate goal is to not do anything that can get me fired.  And be tough.

How Do I get one of those adult warning things?

There don't seem to be any Butch-Femme BDSM blogs so maybe it is up to me to start one.  Unless I just haven't looked hard enough.

I'll look some more.

Why Can't I Sleep?

Well, I am doing everything wrong as far as sleep hygiene is concerned.  I sleep on the couch in front of the TV too much.  It is aggravating how easy it seems to be to fall asleep during a very interesting, engaging show.  It only took me five or six tries to get through Bitten.  Then I was wide awake for The Boys Next Door.  It had this low budget look at first and then I said "Hey, isn't that Charlie Sheen?"  It sure enough was.  So now it's almost four in the morning and I still don't feel like sleeping so it's lucky it's my day off.  I need to get back into a routine where I wind down with some reading instead of conking out in front of the TV.

I got good news at work.  My last week there won't be so hellish, they are putting someone with me in the afternoon.  Low Man wanted to get breakfast pizza for her last day today and I offered to help pay for it, so she'll probably be calling to tell me how much it is.  Then I'll have to get up and get out to get that to her.  We heard that the guy who got to the new place before us loves it there.  I am looking forward to it.

Oh, Yes, Let Me See It! Except for that...

There ought to be some setting in a browser that I can bypass these "yes I am an adult- no I must leave right now" pages prior to viewing blogs or sites containing adult content.  Although there was that one time when I clicked on a link to a video at FetLife, thinking it was probably going to be about spanking and it wasn't.  And I couldn't turn it off fast enough.

Yeah, put me down for not being into that scat stuff.

what do they call those things, anyway?

You know those pictures people post on facebook that are just words or sayings?

I think I hate them.

Yes, I Am A Horrible Person Who WILL Betray You

So I'm working at my job at an undisclosed government office and there's a big long line and two of us are waiting on people.  Low Man is waiting on one of our favorite customers and I'm waiting on someone else.  Next in line is some guy who obviously will be a long time-consuming transaction.  He's lugged in a big Rubbermaid container and it is stacked full of stuff for us to do.

The race begins.  We both go slower, each of us trying not to be the one who gets him next.  Low Man's customer understands what is going on and is trying to help her go slower.  But I can talk and move quite slow myself.  I triumph, I swipe my customer's card (slowly) just after Low Man swipes hers.  I win and Low Man gets Mr. Shitloads Of Stuff Thats Going To Take a Lot of Time.  I feel kind of guilty about throwing Low Man under the bus.  But she gets through him and I clear out the rest of the line.

It's not like I made sure she had to wait on someone with body odor or some of our other unpleasant customers.  But it was interesting that we both thought the same thing when we saw him and tried the same strategy to avoid dealing with him.

Sometimes, in life, you gotta ask yourself- am I a pain in the ass?  And if I am, am I even sorry or is this a form of entertainment for me?

For some people, it's just something everyone has to get through for this special occasion.  For others, it is their way of life.

A Very Warm Day In January

We got into the 60's today.  If I wasn't working, I might have got the Mustang out.  My luck, it wouldn't have started.  But I was stuck at work on a Monday, that seemed not quite so busy, perhaps because people had better things to do on a nice day like this than come to where I work.

We got our safe replaced, we have two just like the broken one, and the drilling guy took the guts from the money safe and put it into the other safe.  I also overheard him apologizing to my coworker who is one of the finest men to have ever walked this earth.  I know he had been upset by this, he had said so and I know how something like that can eat at you when you are unfairly and unjustly accused of something.  His weekend was ruined but not being able to eat or sleep and he thought of it constantly.  I hope he feels better now.  I guess the boss went to bat for him, which makes me loathe the boss a lot less.

I still have no date for starting at the new job.  It has been two weeks since I officially said I'd go, although I decided three days before that.  It sounds like they are still half-heartedly trying to keep Low Man here, they told her the people at the new place would make her cry.  We were all "What the ?" on that one.

Saturday I rolled out of bed and got on the internet.  My home page is Google on the desktop and the Google doodle was something about the 125th anniversary of the world's largest snowflake.  Clicking on the doodle brought up an article about the doodle that had more to say about Google's new privacy policy than the giant snowflake, so on to the next result, which was a Wikipedia article about weather records.  It was heavily annotated with lots of footnotes and footnote 71 was for a book called The Handy Weather Answer Book, which I promptly ordered from Amazon from a seller in Wisconsin and the book arrived today.

I spent a while being annoyed on Saturday looking for pictures of record setting snowflakes and had to admit that in 1887, there weren't a lot of cameras around so it should be no surprise that no pictures were taken of the 15 inchers that fell on Ft. Keough in Montana, near Miles City, on January 28, 1887.

If 15 inch snowflakes fell today, there would be loads of YouTube videos of it and people would say moronic things in them and at least one would get songified and end up on my iPod the way the Bed Intruder Song the the Nascar Prayer Song did.

The Love That Dies Untold

The safe was finally opened today around 11:00 and other problems were solved throughout the day which seemed to get better and better and things looked awesome and hopeful.

While I was making some copies, I fiddled with The Book Of Answers.  We had played with this a few days ago.  It's a thick little orange book with Ouija symbols on it and you are supposed to hold it and ask your question and rifle the pages a few times and then open it up to a page and there's your answer.  I asked it if I was doing the right thing by transferring and if I should tell my Dad I am gay.  I got "Take More Time To Decide" for both questions.  Well, I had already decided to transfer and have never been anxious to have that conversation any way.  Some other questions brought nonsensical answers and I put it back in the copy room.

Today, I decided to ask if she ever loved me and if she loved me still.  A negative is what I need to hear, even if yes is the answer to the first question.  I know, it was probably a bad idea to ask both questions at once but I'm busy and just taking a moment while waiting for the copies and totally hadn't planned to play with the book again.  The book said "It Is Certain."  Which put me somewhere between "As If!" and "I Knew It!"

And for most of the day I was too busy for the fantasies of finally getting a look at those breasts, among other things.

Near the end of the day, we got word that we are bad people who break safes by using tools and shit.  One person, who is one of the finest men to ever walk this earth, was targeted in particular and he is justifiably outraged.   The safe was closed at night and wouldn't open the next day, end of story.  Nobody forced anything or worked at it with tools.  So a tough week ended on a very low note.

Please, give me my transfer.

between the longing for love and the struggle for the legal tender

The guy came back to day and over about six hours drilled less than an inch into the safe.  He'll be back tomorrow.

I can drink a lot of beer.

Another Day

As I walked in today, one of my co-workers told me we had a "little issue".

On Saturday, they couldn't open the little safe with our money in it.

So if you wanted to do business with us, it had to be credit, debit, check or exact change.

They couldn't get anybody to come out on Saturday to work on the safe and someone came and worked on it today.  I heard occasional drilling and sometimes banging.  He did not get it open and said he would be back tomorrow and spend the better part of tomorrow drilling on it.  I hope we can close the door on the big safe to muffle the sound.

On the brighter side, they might have another person lined up to come in, so they might not be delaying my transfer all that much now.  That would be so swell.

I have had my two beers tonight, and am trying to stop there.  Should one attend AA if they are merely troubled by the extent they turn to alcohol for comfort or wait until one gets DT's when they try to stop drinking?  I always said I'd rather die than go to one of those meetings and stand up and announce I am an alcoholic.  Because I don't think I am.

locked up

I dreamed I was thrown into jail, it was a small well lit cell.  Some latches on the window were pointed out to me and I was told to not try to escape.  Once I was left alone, I was so upset, I could barely breathe.  I can't remember now what I did to get put there.

I started a Lost marathon on Netflix.  The program listing says there are 100 episodes.  So when I realized I was well past 100 episodes I wondered why they didn't list the correct number of episodes?  I was really annoyed but not so much that I couldn't breathe.

A Public Service Announcement for the US Department of State

I've been watching Lost, sort of having a marathon and I became very concerned about something.  Claire's baby needs a proper birth certificate, or he will never be able to get a passport.  I haven't watched to the end of the show yet, so I don't know if Kate tried to take care of this when she was home with him, posing as his mother but probably not.

What he would need is a certificate or maybe it's an affidavit, concerning his birth abroad.  While it was Kate who delivered him, I would think it is reasonable to say Jack was the attending physician, even though he was busy trying amputate a dying man's leg while the birth was in progress.  Since the island isn't really associated with any country, I imagine baby Aaron is in for a tough time getting his identity papers together.  If his mom was Australian, I guess that would make him Australian, unless Kate could pass him off as her own and make him American.

Assuming he is going to be American, he could go to travel.state.gov and figure out what he needs to do, because that site is very user friendly.  I recall a public service announcement that showed Uncle Sam in a hot tub with a bunch of people and one of the things he told them was that if the needed a passport, they should go to travel.state.gov to see what they needed to do.

We had another bad afternoon and I told Low Man another thing we wouldn't have to deal with at our new jobs- children.  Where we are going there won't be any children.  We also think there probably won't be any cell phones allowed there, we didn't see anyone yakking on one while we were there.

My laptop was shut off when I got home, I think from overheating since I hadn't left it on the Belkin fan.  It was getting hot and shutting off when I watched YouTube and FetLife videos, but now it's may have shut off from just sitting there.  That would be a good excuse to get a new laptop, right?

Delays

My boss indicated it might take as long as a month for me to get out of here.  Low Man on the Totem Pole will probably get out sooner, leaving me in the situation I dread.

It's my opinion he is doing this to torture me, I think nothing would make him happier than to see me drop dead from a heart attack or have to be hauled away because of a nervous breakdown.

The elation I felt yesterday knowing I would be leaving soon has been replaced by the disappointment that it will not happen soon enough and what is left will be pretty bad.  I got an email that one of my help desk tickets was resolved.  There was a link in the email where you can go to a page if you need to reopen the ticket, but the page didn't work when I got there.  Because my issue was not resolved and I was not happy about this, since my customer was not happy I couldn't close out his business because of this.

Just when the system started to respond quickly to my input, someone would come back and interrupt me- I had to talk on the phone, or I had to go up front and by the time I got back, I'd be logged out and when I'd log back in, the system would respond very slowly or just randomly log me back out.


Kind of hard to be productive under those circumstances.


And most of this talking on the phone stuff is explaining State Department business.  I spend a lot of time explaining stuff to people about State Department policies and the State Department has a totally awesome web site that is very easy to use, navigate and search.  I am tired of being the State Department's bitch.  I am not a State Department employee and I do not appreciate their ever increasing fees and complexities in their rules.  That is another thing I won't have to deal with in the new job.

And up front, well, let's just don't talk about that.  Because that is why I have to leave.

But I can't resist finishing with the Stupid Person of the Day award, to the customer who asked us how to contact two of our competitors.  Could we give him their numbers?  No?  Well, where could he find those numbers?

I really got to get out of here.

Not Going to Miss That, Either

I decided to transfer to a large facility in a neighboring city.  I hadn't planned to announce it at work but pretty much as soon as I hit the door, people were saying things.  My boss had spilled the beans.  Thanks, boss.

I'll be trading a Monday-Friday daytime schedule for working 3:30-midnight with Tuesdays/Wednesdays off.  I'll be going from a two mile commute to a 40 mile one.

A coworker who is lower in seniority than me also wants to transfer and another co-worker told me she might be offered full time status after I left.  I sort of wondered if all this had been set up to get me to get out.  My paranoia kicked in.  Yup, a brilliant plan to get the fucking queer to leave.  Make her think the low man on the totem pole would leave and the queer would have to absorb all that work.

Well, yes, the absorbing-all-that-work scenario was on my mind.  And so what if it was all a ruse to get me to leave?  I am ready to go.  The duties I have here that are crushing my soul are nonexistent at the new place.  People my age, almost 55, seldom get what amounts to a fresh start.

When Low Man on The Totem Pole walked in, I told her maybe she didn't have to leave if she could make regular.  She laughed and said she didn't believe it, she was going away too, she thought she'd be better off at the new place.  And we went on to have one typical hellish day like we always do after a holiday weekend.

All through the day, every time something unpleasant happened, I'd just think "I won't miss this."  She was doing the same thing, as we compared notes together at the end of the day.

Now I just have to hope the boss doesn't mess up his part of the administrative things that will get me out of here.  I hope I get the date set so I can start counting down to the day I wait on that last customer and leave my uniform behind.

Find out where I've journeyed on the Map of Human Sexuality! Or get your own here!

Peeing on dead guys

So everyone is clutching their pearls over video released of Marines urinating on dead alleged Talibans.

I didn't set out to watch the video, golden showers aren't much my thing.  But as I read about the brouhaha, I recall a video I did see- the one where they sawed that one guy's head off with a knife.  The brutality of that man's death is the face of the enemy to me.

War is a nasty and brutal business.  We take our young men and train them to be nasty and brutal and then we are shocked when they are?  As far as I'm concerned, this was pretty tame.  Sure, it lacks class.  But I don't really know and can never comprehend what it is like for them over there.  And if a man can do something to keep himself sane and maybe come home with his mind intact and not cry in his sleep and wet his bed for the rest of his life, then it's fine with me.

That kid in the red coat

walks so slowly alone along my street about the same time I head to work.  I wonder if they dread school the way I did, except I didn't walk, I rode a bus and that had special horrors by itself.  They stopped and watched me bring my trash can up from the curb and I pretended not to notice that I was being watched.

Last night I got groceries and the hot wheels cars were full of my dream cars- the Boss Mustangs, the MINI Cooper and the Corvette Grand Sport.  I used to buy cars to donate to the cruise nights giveaways.  The same two kids were always there and always got them and I overheard one kid's dad say he had a thousand cars.  I have a Shelby Cobra hanging on the kitchen wall and have left it in it's package so far.  I am fighting the urge to buy the cars for myself.  My brother had them when we were kids, along with the orange track to run them on.  I stopped going to the cruise nights when my work schedule changed to where I was getting off work after the events started.

Friday night I am going to tag along with my co-worker who will probably be leaving.  She is being heavily courted by a large processing center and I am invited along to tour it.  I have been there for training sessions, back then they still did training.  There was a room next to the training room and it had a scale model of the processing center, showing all the conveyor belts and docks.  There were even little tractor trailers on the docks.  And yes, I did play with them.  I once had a nice little tractor trailer collection but e-bayed it away.

It will be interesting to see what is going on there and the lure of a job that doesn't involve dealing with the public is enticing.  We kept bringing up everything that wouldn't happen there.  It's getting built up into this wonderful utopia and part of me tells me it is a trick.  There is no totally awesome place to work, that place could be even a worse snake pit than the one we hope to leave.  And should the center be shut down for no good reason, as these things are wont to happen, well, Poof, There Goes Your Job.  Which I guess can happen anyway.  Heck, a change might be nice.  But it might be a bad idea to be commuting to a night job now.  If I can't get my license renewed in 2013 or if they restrict me to only driving in the daytime, that would be bad if I worked nights or had to drive 40 or 50 miles to my job.

Last night as I put the trash out, I looked up at the moon.  It was a smeary, doubled blur.  I hadn't had anything to drink, yet.  I had stopped off at the eye doctor at WalMart to ask if maybe they'd forgotten about ordering new contacts to maybe dial in some better vision for me.  But my feeling with dealing with the eye doctor and the retinal specialists is that they wish I'd go away, like same way I feel about the customers who come to me with problems that I can't fix.

I watched Office Space tonight, they talked about it at work and to my delight it was available to stream on Netflix.  I had never heard of it but it was awesome.

She's got her ticket, I think she's gonna use it

Totally got my help desk ticket number today and the very nice help desk man said no one else had reported my problem which totally makes me a special snowflake, right?  So I was going around singing "She's Got a Ticket" by Tracy Chapman unless I was singing "Love Will Keep Us Together", which is the song I sing when I do passports for families or married couples and put a sticky note on them asking the State Department to keep their applications together.

Unless love doesn't exist.  In that 1970's porno Emmanuelle, her heart is broken and she is told by some guy, her husband, I think, that love does not exist.  I was pretty horrified by that, but I thought it was probably true at the time and have pretty much believed it every since.

I'd fall in love on a regular basis, or get crushes, rather and excoriate myself for it over the years.

Yeah, she's hot.  But she's straight and married.  Just stop it already.  So I walked around with blinders on.  Don't look, you can't have it.  I didn't want a woman who looked like me.  I didn't always know the word for it, but what I wanted was a femme and I have been captivated by them my whole life.

So one breezes into my life in 2007.  It's because of work, so it's just another proximity crush and sometimes she came around when she didn't particularly have any real reason to be there and I realized one time that I had contentedly gazed into her cleavage the whole time she was there and hoped she hadn't noticed.  I was always happy to see her and I was afraid she knew it and was either revolted by it or maybe happy to take advantage of it if it made her work life easier.

One day she called and opened with "Have I told you how much I love you?"

My heart is a combination lock and she found the first number.

Click.

I believed she was teasing me, probably because of the cleavage-gazing and tried to dismiss my feelings.  She's only teasing.  She had a husband and children and she was a damn Bible thumping straight woman.  So stop it already.

A few days later, I became privy to information that the husband might be going away.  She could be free.  She could be mine.

Click.

I was in love.  Shit.  Stop it already.

I only saw her at work and I had no pretext to see her anywhere else.  I had to face reality, I had another crush that would pass in time, probably replaced by the next crush.  Stop it already.

Her divorce was going to be final in the summer of 2008, she told me so herself.  She had to stay in town for four more years until her youngest child was done with school.  I was thrilled with that knowledge.  But then she got a job somewhere else, so I didn't see her anymore.  Stop it.

I was closing down on a Saturday and a voice called my name through the dutch door.  I thought it was someone else but when I opened it, there she was.  I took her money for the after hours transaction and made a note so I could put the money in on Monday.

Before I closed the door, she said it.

"I miss you so much."

I think I said something lame like "I'll see you around."  But I am afraid the pain and confusion showed through on my face but I don't know what she meant and I didn't ask and I didn't know what to think and I definitely didn't do what I really wanted to do which is take her into my arms and kiss her really hard.  But I was at work and that's the kind of thing that can get you fired and I still liked my job, mostly, back then.

On that following Monday, I put the transaction in and put the receipt in the bottom of my drawer.  And there it stayed, my most shameful and embarrassing secret.

"There is no love, as true as the love that dies untold."

There is no love.

I told myself that this meant I needed to get out and meet people and I did.  I couldn't deny my needs and I discovered what a femme was and understood better what their power was and was pleasantly surprised to find there were women who were attracted to me although they were often in other states or even other countries.  So I bought plane tickets and crossed state lines and mostly disappointed them when I told them there was no such thing as love.

I saw her one time in a community theatre production and thought perhaps I was getting better because I was just as interested in the other women in the show, so perhaps her power was finally waning.  And I learned she had gotten remarried.  Shit.

A few months ago, I had a dream about her and in this dream she wasn't attractive any more and I wasn't in love, so I was finally free!  Hooray!

Then I went to another show.  I went on the last night and I got a seat front row, on the end.  I could see she was going to be in it, but so what.  I was not in love any more.  It would be fine.

When she first came out, the stage was dark.  She sat down on a chair on the edge of the stage, just a few feet away from me.  Even in the dark, I could see she still looked great.  And I again became just a pathetic old dyke coveting some guy's wife.

She called me at work the next week, to discuss an issue with a possible customer of hers or maybe mine and she was worried I might not know who she was, since she had remarried.  I told her I knew her new name from the show.

I didn't tell her how I had stalked her on Facebook and how my heart was twisted and broken beyond repair and how I envied her totally awesome husband.

Life went on and the receipt stayed in the bottom of the drawer along with my shameful and embarrassing secret and my summer romance went totally sideways because my heart is not just three sizes too small but totally missing, carried around in the purse of a woman who cares nothing for me or DOES SHE?!!  Did she see me sitting there in the dark, a few feet away, drinking her in?  Did she really need to call me that following week?

A few days ago I fished the receipt out of my drawer and laminated it.  I carry it around in my wallet, in my left hip pocket.  It's a picture that only I can see, of my most shameful and embarrassing secret, of a beautiful woman standing behind a dutch door, telling me she missed me.  A picture of a butch sitting in the dark, a few feet away from the most beautiful woman in the world.  The butch drinks her in and is lost forever.

Shooting holes in the bottom of the boat

It is against company policy for me to talk about my job with out first asking for permission from Headquarters first.  I know it applies to YouTube and Facebook but I am not so sure about blogs.  I used to have quite a lot of work related content on MySpace ('member MySpace?) and also here.  I got a feeling that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be so candid and deleted most of it long ago.  So I had silenced myself long before my company did anyway.  Mostly I just tried to give people advice on how best to make use of our sometimes complex services.

I am in a sinking ship and so many seem to be gleefully shooting holes in the bottom of the boat.  I give the saboteurs dirty looks and bail for all I'm worth.  It doesn't have to be this way and something will go away for no good reason.  We are drowning in a sea of lies.

Today was frustrating.  I wasn't able to get most of my work done because some kind of update had broken something I use.  A call to the help desk wasn't all that helpful.  He sent me some information that wasn't relevant to my problem but he also said he knew there were a lot of issues with the new release but my particular problem did not seem to be listed yet.  He also said he would not want my job today.  I couldn't believe I was the first one to report this and had actually expected to hear a recording say "If you are calling because line A42 is missing, please use ticket number blah blah blah" and was surprised I got a human being to talk to after not spending all that much time on hold.

I did not get a ticket number and was told to consult someone in my district.  My district person used Netmeeting to watch me try to do my work and agreed that I had a major issue and said I should go back to the help desk and demand a ticket number.  If they decline to give me a ticket number I am supposed to ask for their supervisor.

This put me behind and burdened other people since I wasn't able to help them and I left work late.  I'll call the help desk tomorrow.

But all in all, I can't be too unhappy.  At least no one tried to kill me today.  No one shoots at me or tries to stab me.  It's not so bad.