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.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Monday, January 16, 2012
Thursday, January 12, 2012
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
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.
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.
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, January 9, 2012
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.
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.
Friday, December 16, 2011
Tim Tebow
Jesus didn't have anything to say about homosexuality but he did have something to say about public prayer.
Matthew 6:1
"Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 6:5-6
"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
Matthew 6:1
"Beware of practicing your piety before men in order to be seen by them; for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
Matthew 6:5-6
"And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
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