May 2003 Archives

Well, after months of revisiting the idea, I've finally taken the plunge and, like Gene, Jeff, Vernon and even, unbelievable as it seems to me, Faustus, have bought a TiVo. Yesterday I left work, picked up Alex's lab test results from the vet to take with us to his specialist appointment on Monday, pulled into my parking space at home, and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to head back out to Best Buy. Half an hour later I was heading home with a new DirecTV tuner that includes a built-in TiVo recorder.

This is a little odd, from two almost opposing perspectives. On the one hand, I've always considered myself an early adopter of technologies, but haven't bought a DVR despite a couple of years of thinking about it. At six years old I asked my parents to have Santa bring me a calculator for Christmas; when told that because of the expense (yes, this was before the time that calculators might be part of a kid's meal from a fast food chain, back when calculators cost Real Money) it would be my only gift from Santa that year, I agreed and was content with that. My calculator, a big bulky thing, could only add, subtract, multiply, divide, compute percentages and square roots, and change sign--it didn't even have a memory--but I nearly wore it out.

Over the years my early tech purchases have included a Sony stereo Betamax VCR; three Palm Pilot models and two Handspring Visors; four different Macs, three PCs and a laptop; a CD jukebox; a DVD carousel; wireless networking; a widescreen TV; and a Dolby Digital DirecTV receiver, among many, many others. I was one of Verizon's (then BellAtlantic) first subscribers to DSL several years ago. More recently, though, I seem to be taking a more wait-and-see approach; I have yet to buy an MP3 player, for example, or satellite radio, or--until yesterday--a DVR.

On the other hand, I've taken almost a perverse pride, and have exhibited even some smugness on occasion, about my sparse TV-watching habits and my anti-television sentiments; between Thanksgiving and February, I'd used my television for broadcast video--I do frequently listen to the digital audio channels, and I also use the television in conjuction with the DVD player to watch movies--only three or four times. Since then, I've had it on only an additional handful of times.

But I knew that there was quality programming--ok, and some eye candy and video junkfood--that I might watch, if I could do it when and how I wanted, which has been the appeal of TiVo to me. I also like the integrated DirecTV/TiVo receiver, which allows me to record two programs at once, or record one while using the recorder functions--pause, instant replay--for watching another in real time. Also, the integrated receiver means that the satellite signal--which is digital--is transferred directly to the digital recorder; using a standalone TiVo or ReplayTV would mean that the satellite signal would have to be converted to analog first and then back to digital, and some comments I'd read online suggested that there was a noticeable diminution of quality with that set-up.

My worst fears may have been realized, though. Only installed yesterday evening, it's already downloaded several weeks of its program guide, and even has recorded a number of hours of programming overnight and this morning. So here I am at 2:00 on a Saturday afternoon, still in my underwear, checking out the interesting things it's suggesting and automatically recording for me, and watching some of the things I specifically asked it to capture for me--the interesting Bravo series about how a new Cirque du Soleil show comes to be, for example, the last two seasons of Will & Grace that I'd given up along with the rest of television, and possibly way too many animated series--Family Guy, Daria, X-Men: Evolution, and TechTV's Anime Unleashed.

And, thanks to Schwans and Internet porn, I don't even have to leave my house for food or sex any more. If I had a telecommuting job, I might never have to live my home until I died; wonder when the home self-cremation kits will hit the market?

While I'm on the topic of rain, over the long weekend, I rented and watched Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding, a richly colored, evocatively joyful, well-scored (by Mychael Danna), wonderful film. Admittedly, my appreciation of it certainly wasn't hurt by the several very yummy men in the film--like Parvin Darbas as the intended groom in the eponymous wedding, and Randeep Hooda as the recently-returned student from Sydney. While I have very eclectic and fairly catholic tastes in men, I often find Indian men (and other similarly dark and/or swarthy types--Mediterranean, Arabic and Semitic) particularly attractive. Maybe I should go husband-hunting in Delhi.

Then, on Tuesday, co-workers Tatiana and Tim and I had lunch at Matuba's. On the way there, I told them about the movies I'd rented and watched, and Tim shared that he'd also enjoyed Monsoon Wedding, was now watching another Indian film--Lagaan--he'd just rented, and had put together a CD mix with music from Monsoon and some Bollywood sources. This morning I came back from a series of meetings to find a copy of the CD on my chair, and I've been sitting here tonight listening to it, and enjoying it very much.

Yesterday marked a full month without a clear, sunny day in the DC Metro area. According to Virginia state climatologist Pat Michaels, as interviewed in the Washington Post, Monday, April 28, "was the last day during which an observer could stand anywhere in this region and see blue skies with less than 30 percent cloud cover." May typically offers an average of seven clear days and highs of 75 degrees; this May has seen zero clear days and average highs of 68 degrees. The average year sees 36 clear days by May 28; this year we've had 17. Rain is falling outside my window right now, and cloudy skies and rain continue in the forecast for the next nine days.

Psychiatrist and Georgetown professor Norman Rosenthal, who first researched Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) twenty years ago, noted that the prolonged gray weather can create a situation where "[t]here's a lack of energy, a lack of get-up-and-go, and we have a tendency to oversleep, overeat on sweets and starches. People withdraw from friends and family and have difficulty concentrating." So that's why I've been so asocial and unproductive. Uh-huh... yeah... and we went in for the weapons of mass destruction.

And it seems to be the topic of conversation everywhere. In every meeting I attended at work today, people talked about the rain, the clouds, and how tired of it they all are.

Personally, I like rain. And I love the cooler temperatures they've brought; sleeping at night with my windows and balcony door open is a delight, as the smell of rain and the tang of ozone and the crisp breezes ease my sleep. Even so, I'm so very ready for a change... I feel like I'm growing moss.

The other ubiquity in my life this month is the word schadenfreude. Not having noticed it used particularly frequently before, I first recently noticed it in a commentary by Michael Kinsley (washingtonpost.com) and then cropping up more and more after William Bennett's gambling habit was reported upon at the beginning of May.

Yesterday, there it was again in one of the books I'm currently reading, Candace Bushnell's 4 Blondes, and today my boss used it in referring to some interdepartmental relationships and issues.

So a Google News search on the term just now turned up eight pages of results, including a number of articles continuing to use it in reference to those who reported about Bennett's habit, but also in reference to media baron Conrad Black in today's The Scotsman, the Bush Administration's Iraq policy in today's (Maryland) SunSpot.net, yesterday's Boston Globe piece on the Jayson Blair scandal, and even the amusingly vilified U.K. entry in the Eurovision Song Contest (Helsingin Sanomat).

There are even at least a couple of blogs named Schadenfreude: one and two. So... is taking delight in the misfortune of others just part of the human condition, or can we blame it on the rain?

Last night, I logged back into There for the first time in several weeks. That sabbatical hadn't been intentional so much as just incidental, but it still lasted longer than I expected or even realized. Roger and Lee hadn't been pressuring me to come join them, and I hadn't heard from Matt at all, so I just didn't really give it much thought. But yesterday There released a new beta version, so the process of downloading the new installer and reading the release notes put it back in my consciousness, and Roger did make a specific comment that he hoped he'd see me in There.

We had fun exploring some of the new functionality and some of the new areas. And when Matt showed up, I was flooded with warm feelings; until that moment, I hadn't realized how much I'd missed not seeing him regularly for several weeks. Later, near midnight, Roger went off to give a tour to a newbie--someone he knew from TSO--and that gave me an opportunity to suggest to Matt that I call him on the phone so that we could chat for "a few minutes" before I went to bed.

As usual when I'm on the phone with him, time flew by, and it was 63 minutes later before I looked at the clock again and realized that it was after 1 am and that I really did need to get to bed. Matt and I are so sympatico in many of our beliefs--particularly our political leanings and current frustrations. Emotionally, intellectually and philosophically, at least, we seem to fit so well. I keep suggesting that he plan a trip to DC, and he keeps agreeing that he'd like to, but we always fail to make specific plans. Perhaps there's a level at which we're afraid to move this relationship more concretely into the physical plane. Admittedly, I'd hate to jeopardize the easy, comfortable, non-judgmental, no-pressure friendship we currently have, but at the same time I wouldn't mind exploring whether it might be possible to have that and more, inasmuch as might be possible in a long-distance context.

Sunday's issue of The [San Jose] Mercury News included a positive piece about the more recent practice of many colleges and universities to reach out to prospective queer students, "signaling... that they have gay-friendly campuses." Stanford , for example, distributed a CD highlighting the university's gay and lesbian resources to everyone it admitted this year; this fall, it also will launch a database of gay-friendly staff and faculty. Berkeley offers a web site listing all students, staff, instructors and alumni who are openly queer. And a Massachusetts college fair for gay youth pulled in 95 universities, more than twice the number of the previous year--on the flip side, a few colleges asked to be removed from the mailing list for the event, and one school was reported to have sent back something "negative."

I have to admit that my own experience even twenty-some years ago was really quite positive, at least once I got to college. Given that consciously I identified through high school as asexual--since I didn't feel secure enough to come out there and then--knowing about the presence or absence of Harvard's gay and lesbian groups and other resources probably wouldn't have made a difference to my having chosen to matriculate there. But the fact that it did have a fairly strong gay and lesbian presence, fairly easily available resources, and that it was a liberal environment more generally made my coming-out process once there a smooth, comfortable, and largely angst-free experience. I was also fortunate to have allied myself--unconsciously--with what turned out to be a group within the Glee Club--which I had joined--comprised largely of gay men. My very first exposure to out gay men was in the context, then, of a group with which I already had bonded, and which I saw was appreciated, respected and admired no less than any of the rest of the organization.

After seeing this first on boing boing a few days ago and then again today at Neil Gaiman's journal, I have to pass it on. The pictures and the Japanglish are priceless, as are the happy, dancing cartoon cats--especially in comparison to the sullen, almost incredulous look on the faces of the real cats. Of course, Alex would quickly relieve me of a quantity of blood if I tried to dress him in any of these outfits.

The Anne of Green Gables costume especially cracks me up.

And remember:

1.You need to dress a cat. And you will say to a cat together with a family. "It has changed just for a moment". [ "it being very dear" or ] You will pass pleasant one time.

2. If a family and a cat become fortunate, you will take a commemorative photo! Therefore, please photo your cat lovelily with much trouble.

3. If it finishes taking a photograph, you will make it remove clothes from a cat immediately. You will say then, without forgetting the language of gratitude to a cat...

The lethargy that had gripped me the rest of the long weekend seems to have finally worn off. I was up until 3:00 last night watching the I Love the 80s specials on VH-1. There was even a segment on Member's Only jackets, of which I'd owned and been proud of several--give me a break, even the celebrities on the show were admitting to having owned Member's Only wear--but which I'd forgotten all about until watching the special. The shows also brought back a lot of other memories from high school and college. Then today my dad called and chatted with me, and my nephew got on the line to talk to me afterwards--he told me that he'd been looking at my senior high school year book, from 1980. So I pulled it out this afternoon and was looking through it, laughing and reminiscing.

So here for your amusement are two pictures of me from 1980. Yes, I had big 80s new wave hair--my dad's mother used to manage to inadvertently and simultaneously insult me, my sister and my female cousins by telling us, in effect, "what a shame it is that Tommy got the pretty curly girly hair and the girls got long ugly straight hair." In the photo to the left, captured in my valedictory vestments at graduation (and the big hair is showing its unmanageable curliness in the humidity of the Virginia summer; my college graduation pix show much the same in the humidity of a rainy June day in Boston, which is why now I keep my hair relatively short), the caption reads, in part, that I am "expressing [my] real emotion for the camera." What a gay pose! Fortunately, the picture of me wearing a white pinstripe polyester leisure suit as part of our senior skits is much too small to scan very well.

After dad and Matt and I chatted, the phone rang again and it was my cousin Allyson. She and I talked for a while, and then I tried to call my grandfather--my father said he'd been asking about me, and dad asked me to give him a call. I let the phone ring ten times, but no one picked up. I answered a couple of emails from friends I'd been neglecting, though I still need to reply to some responses I've received recently to my Match.com and PlanetOut personals.

I also dropped the Star Trek movie back off at the video store, and picked up Spirited Away, which is the movie I'd most wanted to get when I walked over there on Saturday, but all copies of which were rented out at the time. I've already watched it this afternoon, and it was so totally awesome (ok, yes, I've probably OD'ed on the 80s today); I definitely want to get that DVD for my collection.

I also got two loads of laundry washed, dried and folded, and read half of Candace Bushnell's 4 Blondes. And Roger and I made plans to spend some time together online later tonight. So while it's been a somewhat lazy weekend, I did get a few necessary things accomplished, while managing to relax quite a bit and catch up on some movies and reading at the same time.

And another holiday weekend begins to come to a close. Fortunately, with Independence Day coming on a Friday this year, it means there will be another long weekend not too far away.

It's been a mostly grey, somewhat gloomy day starting off what promises to be a mostly grey, rather gloomy weekend. The pool at my condo building officially opened today but even if I were the swimming pool type (I don't think I've been in the pool here in at least two years), it was too cool and soggy to spend any time down there today. And since the bedroom windows and the balcony all overlook the pool, I get to enjoy those rare occasions when there actually are cute guys down there, without actually having to leave the comfort of my air-conditioning.

Unlike the bulk of D.C.'s queers, who have headed to Rehoboth for the Memorial Day weekend start of the beach season, or even Gene, who has been spending the day cleaning, or Jeff, who has been cooking and who is also preparing to spend part of the weekend in New York, though, I am being an unindustrious, antisocial slob this weekend.

On the way home last night, I stopped by the grocery store and stocked up on $100 worth of frozen dinners, snack foods, and Diet Dr. Pepper. This afternoon I walked to the library to return the four books I read last week, and to pick up four more, along with this week's Blade and three CDs, including the soundtrack to Jekyll & Hyde, which seems to be a favorite of Roger's. Then I walked to the Video Warehouse on Glebe, where I bought a previously viewed copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and checked out four other movies: Star Trek: Nemesis, the obligatory science-fiction fluff, which I just finished watching; Monsoon Wedding, the obligatory foreign wedding comedy; Kissing Jessica Stein, the obligatory queer film; and Y Tu Mam� Tambi�n , which has been on my to-watch list for a long time.

So I guess I'll be parked in front of the telly, the stereo and/or the PC most of the long weekend.

Tuesday night, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia attended a dinner in honor of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, The Advocate reported yesterday. The dinner was hosted by the Urban Family Council, which has sued to stop the city of Philadelphia from registering same-sex "life partners."

Federal judges are barred from raising money for political, civic or charitable organizations, or permitting the use of the prestige of their office for that purpose; the Urban Family Council says that the $150-per-plate dinner was not a fundraiser, and that the ticket price would only cover the cost of the banquet. The Advocate notes that the event, for which about 125 guests were expected, was closed to reporters.

The council's founder, William Devlin, was quoted:

We just thought, what better way to honor Cardinal Bevilacqua than to have a sitting Supreme Court justice up to speak? It's nice to be able to say you have a friend like Justice Scalia.

Indeed. Especially when, as in this case, that "friend" just happens to have heard and presumably soon will be issuing a ruling on the challenge to Texas's sodomy laws for same-sex couples. Sounds like a conflict of interest to me; but what can we really expect from one of the five that handed the unelected Bush the U.S. presidency?

And you may remember Cardinal Bevilacqua--whom the Justice was honoring on Tuesday--from his statement in April, 2002 calling homosexuality "an aberration [and] a moral evil," and confirming that the Philadelphia archdiocese screens seminary applicants for homosexuality because "we feel a person who is homosexual-oriented is not a suitable candidate for the priesthood even if he had never committed any homosexual act."

Ok, so it's bad enough that I--an intelligent, gainfully employed, reasonably attractive gay man--live alone with my cat. To add injury to insult, I'm now supposed to simultaneously hold said cat still, tilt its head up, get one of its eyes open and keep it open, and squeeze a half-inch bead of antibiotic ointment onto the surface of said eye? A cat that still has every single one of its claws?

I really should've gone for the pet rock.

I called Alex's vet this afternoon to see if she had the results of his lab work. I also told her that the ophthalmologist hadn't been able to offer me an appointment until three weeks from now; she suggested another I could call. That second ophthalmologist only comes to the local animal hospital on Mondays, and since this coming Monday is a holiday, would be able to see Alex at the earliest on the following Monday, June 2, a week and a half earlier than the first. I asked the vet if she thought that was ok, and she said that barring any changes in Alex for the worst, that it would be fine to wait until the 2nd. So we have an appointment in Alexandria that afternoon.

Alex tested negative for feline AIDS and leukemia. The cytology report for the sample the doctor tried to aspirate from the lump under his tail was non-diagnostic, which means either that it's along the lines of a lipoma--a benign fatty tumor--or of a sort that couldn't be adequately sampled. His total white cell count was normal, but there was a slight hyperglobulinemia (5.5, where the normal range is 2.3-5.3); an elevated globulin level can be a sign of FIP (feline infectious peritonitis), which often does include ocular problems, including glaucoma, and which is incurable and routinely considered fatal, usually within a few months. Given that we think that the eye problem might be a year or more in the making, though, the vet and I agreed that a diagnosis of FIP is unlikely and certainly premature at this point.

So for now I continue to use the ointment on his eye twice daily, to guard against infection, and we'll wait until Alex has seen the specialist before the vet makes any specific diagnosis or treatment recommendations.

Sitting here listening to the CDs in the BOCA--Best of College A Cappella (shouldn't it be BOCAC, though?)--Box set that just arrived today. I ordered it a few days ago after coming across a reference to some humorous a capella pieces and the resultant trip down memory lane to my own college glee club and a capella days (interestingly, right about the same time as Jeff's entry about his college theatre group).

A quick search with Gr*kster this weekend even turned up a recording (which I already own on vinyl, so it's not like I was stealing it) of the Franz Biebl Ave Maria from one of the concerts during my own Glee Club days. Ah, the Harvard Glee Club, that all-male chorus, seemingly at least 25 percent gay, that eased my coming out--publicly first announced at a college choral convention in New Orleans right after Mardi Gras--my freshman year. In fact, I had my first sexual experience with one of the graduate students in the chorus; the smell of Camels still can take me back to riding in his car one crisp autumn Cambridge night, inhaling the stale cigarette aroma permeating his sweater as I leaned against him while he drove us back to his place. Mmmmm.

In addition to the Glee Club my freshman and sophomore years, I sang with the mixed-sex Collegium Musicum my senior year, with a barbershop quartet throughout, and with a close harmony group. And a small group of us used to gather and sing in the North House stairwells, for the great acoustics; we jokingly called ourselves Escalatum Musicum (yes, I know that the Latin for stairwell really is scalae, but escalatum just had the right pidgin-Latin ring to it).

There are some great tracks on these CDs, including some fantastic and well-arranged renditions, among many others, of Madonna's "Ray of Light," Loreena McKennit's "Mummer's Dance" (who'd have thought you could do such a credible a capella job on a richly orchestrated piece like that?), ABBA's "Dancing Queen" (the first 45 I bought as a teenager, along with Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" and Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love"--how could my parents not have known I was gay?), and the song that always makes me cry, and which I played over and over when JJ and I broke up a dozen years ago, Bonnie Raitt's "I Can't Make You Love Me."

I miss singing.

Alex and I saw the vet this morning. A different doctor was on duty today than the one who treated him for a respiratory infection several years ago; both are women, and both have a terrific tableside manner. I was surprised at just how well Alex behaved, given the many more indignities and needle pricks he had to endure this time around, and given how frightening it must be for him to be at the vet's. The only time I really heard him in more serious emotional distress was when they took him out of the examining room, where I was able to be with him, to another room to draw blood and try to shave some fur off his neck to examine a small bump there. I could hear him yowling then, and the doctor told me later it was before they'd even stuck him; that it was just the process of trying to get him to lift his neck to be shaved. I've always noticed that he doesn't particularly like having his neck stroked, something that other cats of my acquaintance have almost universally enjoyed.

An hour later and $370 poorer, I really didn't know much more than when we went in. The doctor believes that Alex probably has lost all or nearly all of his vision in the one eye, and she agrees that it might be glaucoma but isn't sure, and since she doesn't know what the underlying factor might be--there was never any trauma to the eye that I observed--we have to try to figure out if there's something more serious going on that might endanger the other eye or his life. She drew blood to test for feline AIDS, leukemia and other cancers, and she hopes to have the test results sometime tomorrow. She also looked at the little bump on his neck that I had at first taken to be a tick, and then thought was just a scab; she thinks it's actually a tumor of some sort, and because it's pigmented, this worries her. It's too small for her to aspirate or biopsy, so she wants to have it removed, but she's going to wait until we find out what else might be needed, so if we have to do any surgery(ies), we can do it all at once. She also found a lump at his tail, that she thinks might just be a fatty cyst, but she aspirated it and will get a cytology report on it. She gave me ointment to put in his eye twice a day, and I also have to make an appointment with a veterinary ophthalmologist, who is down in Springfield--Alex is unhappy enough in his carrier the two blocks to the vet; I'm not looking forward to driving with him the half-hour to Springfield. It's also very interesting to me that I have to take him there, given that one of my dreams last night had my car breaking down in Springfield.

So... until the specialist sees him and the bloodwork is back, I don't know what will be needed next, but we're there may be surgery needed--and probably expenses in the four-figure range, given it was nearly $400 just for the initial examination and laboratory work today--for several things: the eye, the small tumor on the neck, and the cyst on his rump. I'm already feeling a ton of guilt about not having taken him in sooner or more regularly, and now I've got a bunch of other emotion building up... it's like there's a floodgate holding it in check right now, but I can feel it back there. I'm tasting some acid in the back of my throat, too, so it appears that the stress is bringing back some of the reflux.

But there's also a detachment, to some degree. After all the things my family has been through in the past two years--dad's kidney disease and coming very close to death, my cousin's addiction to pain killers, my aunt's divorce, my sister and brother-in-law's car accident, my grandmother's continuing decline into Alzheimer's, and my 10-month unemployment--I feel, not numb, precisely, but inured to the less pleasant events in my life. The worst thing, perhaps, is that I sometimes find myself no longer waiting for or expecting positive change (though, to be fair, there have been some positive moments, especially dad getting a kidney two weeks before I was scheduled to donate one of mine). A string of tails in a series of coin flips might seem odd, but of course it's no more or less likely than any other set of results. My infinite number of monkeys just seems to be churning out Sylvia Plath instead of Shakespeare these days.

I remembered two dreams this morning. In one of them, Roger and I found a way into the past, and we were visiting the Wild West. Roger won $3022 in a poker game in the saloon, and we were trying to decide what to do with it, whether to spend it there or bring it back with us to the present. We were walking down the street, and the town had just opened a bank, and simultaneously light bulbs (like in There) appeared over both our heads. We went in, opened an account, and deposited the money, realizing that by the time we got back to the present, the compound interest would have made us millionaires.

Sheldon and Lisa were there, too. There was a danceroom at the saloon/bordello, and when we stopped by there to get some punch, Sheldon was dancing with a tall, stunning, red-headed transvestite.

In the second dream, I was somewhere down near Springfield, and my car broke down. My cell phone wasn't charged, so I began walking, and came upon a shopping center. It was a rainy night, and the stores were closed, but I found a custodial area where some homeless man had made a bed, and he invited me to charge my phone in the electrical outlet there. While I was doing so, I heard lots of crowd noises--applause and yelling--so I went to see what was going on. It was a political rally, and Tom DeLay (though in the dream the posters all said Tom Daschle, but that was just a ruse) had announced his candidacy for the presidency, and he was delivering a rousing anti-gay speech, to massive cheers.

Alex, my nine-year-old Maine Coon kitty--the one whose breed's name got me in trouble with the match.com automatic profile police, and who's been with me for four years--has one eye whose pupil hasn't contracted or dilated properly for several years. Until now, it hadn't seemed to cause him any pain or any problems; given his continued sureness at jumping and catching, it didn't even seem to impair his vision.

On Sunday, though, he kept that eye mostly shut, but I thought he was just developing a cold; in fact, he sneezed a few times, and the eye was running a little. So I didn't worry about it at the time. When I came home from work today, though, he was opening it normally, so I was able to see that the eye isn't reflecting normally and is looking slightly hazy. There also is what appears to be some blood pooled behind the cornea, so I called his veterinarian up the street. They're booked solid the rest of the evening, but told me that if I think it's an emergency or if he's behaving abnormally I can take him to the hospital; otherwise, they can see him tomorrow morning. I went ahead and made the appointment for tomorrow, and I'm watching him this evening to see if he appears to have any pain or discomfort. Right now he doesn't seem to be in distress at all--he ate his dinner normally, and was just as interested in playing as usual--but it's clear that something is terribly wrong with the eye. I'm guessing from the symptoms that he has glaucoma, and he probably already has lost vision in that eye.

And I feel guilty as hell. Here's a shameful truth--I'm a lousy guardian. While Alex doesn't lack for regular food and water, daily affection and attention, and clean litter, I've been extremely remiss about regular checkups and preventative care. Frankly, while I take better care of him than of myself, that's not saying much.

And I have no idea at this point what to expect now. Given that he doesn't seem to be experiencing pain, they may not have to surgically remove the eye, even if the retina has indeed been irreversibly damaged to the point of blindness. If it hasn't progressed that far, then it may be controllable--though glaucoma's not curable--with medication or surgery.

Well, I should know more tomorrow. And this morning I thought things were bad because I still had a nail in my tire (which I did get fixed, at least, on the way to work) and a car about whose major, expensive repair work I've continued to procrastinate. Now I also have a kitty who may be very sick, who is nearly totally dependent on me, but whom I've largely taken for granted and whose medical care I've sometimes irresponsibly neglected.

At least I know that I should never have children, in case my level of parenting ability turned out to be no higher than my self-help or pet-care skills.

Conscious self	Overall self

Take Free Enneagram Test

OK. This seems to be the meme of the week among several of the blogs I read regularly (including Just As I Thought and Digital Flotsam. I've been using the Enneagram as a tool for personal development for a number of years, and had posted my results on the personality page of my web site. But I decided to take it again using this online test to see if the results were consistent, and just for the hell of it. The 4w5 seems to be spot on, and that's the result I've gotten each time I've taken the test in other forms. The idea of a "mean type," though, seems unique to this particular test and theorist, and is not as aptly descriptive as my main type; it seems clear, though, that I'm definitely a four.

Throughout the day I kept remembering one odd detail from a dream I had last night: Dubya had proclaimed himself emperor of America, and one of his first decrees was to outlaw all cocktails, especially Cosmopolitans. In the new Bushist Empire, only wimpy Amurrican beer was to be sold, and homosexuals and Sarah Jessica Parker were being rounded up and incarcerated in martini-free camps.

And then this evening, I serendipitously stumbled across this [source: whitehouse.org]. "He volunteered for A BEER RUN. He ended up RUNNING THE WORLD."

Disclaimer: All the characters and events portrayed in my life may as well be fictional, and any resemblance to real life, people or incidents would be less coincidental than just unusually lucky for a change.

There's an interesting article in the "Fashion & Style" section of today's New York Times about the issue I'd recently discussed here, the chance of someone you know--family, friends, lovers, co-workers, employers--discovering your blog and the things you've written about them therein. In addition to the perils of losing friends or scandalizing your parents--mine would probably be mortified by the sexual history implied by my purity score--one blogger interviewed suggests that she even was fired by an employer for having written about her job.

The most notable part of the article, though, from my perspective, was the description of a new social anxiety among non-bloggers: the fear of being "blogged." One blogger interviewed describes it as "personal etiquette meets journalistic rules. If you have a friend who's a blogger you have to say, 'This is not for blogging.' It's the blogging equivalent of 'This is off the record.'" Another uses pseudonyms for his friends in order to avoid crossing "the line between simple harmless betrayal of trust and nasty actionable libel."

This brings up an intriguing dilemma, though. If your friends, family and co-workers don't know that you blog, is it incumbent upon you to tell them, so that they have the opportunity to keep some things off the record? Do we all need to get the blog equivalent of press passes and credentials, or wear funny hats with BLOGGER on the front? And do pseudonyms really get you off the hook, or just add a mild level of security by obscurity by making it less likely that a friend will find themselves in your blog by googling their name? On occasion, I've used pseudonyms, but in general their use as a way to protect your friends seems a little ingenuous; while it might protect their privacy, to some degree, they're still likely to recognize themselves, unless the hyperbole is so extreme that its really just fiction anyway.

And I hadn't given much thought yet to what happens if I were to start dating someone now that I'm blogging. But then, I don't regularly give much thought to other events on that end of the asymptotic curve, either.

Today's been a quiet day, spent entirely at home. I haven't even changed out of the t-shirt and lounge pants I put on when I first got up--not all that long ago. Last night I was in one of my sleepless moods, so I stayed up until 6am, and then slept in until around 2pm this afternoon.

Roger and Raymond aren't home this weekend. They got an invitation from a guy we met in TSO and later in There to come spend the weekend with him and his partner in Long Beach, and were going to be spending the day today in Disneyland. Even though Roger lives in Tucson, we're usually in daily contact, especially in the evenings and on the weekends when I can have Yahoo! Messenger online. So it's especially quiet today with him out of cyber-touch and busy with new friends.

I've been working on computer stuff, making some tweaks to the journal code so that it would validate for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and consolidating all the little style bits and pieces into the main style sheet which I then also validated.

I've also been doing some Photoshopping today, churning out some additional buttons for my site to accompany the ones I've taken from Steal These Buttons!. I've submitted five or six of the new ones I created today to that site.

I spent some time reading most of my regular progressive news sources, but all the current political news is so damn depressing, and I don't have any novel spin to offer, so I'll leave that today for the other bloggers who continue to do it justice.

Tomorrow I have conflicting potluck dinner engagements at the UU church. The covenant group year is coming to a close, so all the covenant groups are getting together for a potluck, and to find out what the discussion series overriding and individual topics will be for next year. But at the same time, we're graduating our two 8th-grade sex-ed classes. I hadn't realized until yesterday that the graduation was this weekend, since we still have another week of class after this one, but apparently since next weekend is Memorial Day weekend (already?!), the coordinator thought it would be better to have graduation tomorrow evening. So I'm not sure what I'll do, since I'm a covenant group leader as well as an instructor for the class. Since both dinners are physically at the church, I may just bop back and forth between the two events. At the same time, I find myself not really wanting to do either one--blasted disaffection! cursed ennui!

I got a fairly decent night's sleep, especially compared to the previous night, and was up and getting ready for work even a little early. I remember having some interesting dreams, including one where the world was being threatened by some interdimensional baddies, and I had to climb to the top of a mountain to gather the pieces to find the egg-shaped marble-in-appearance key to a machine--which ended up looking like one of Dr. Robotnik's vehicles from one of the early Sonic games--in order to erase the universe so it could restart and recreate itself from scratch (I'm not sure now why that seemed like such a good way to deal with the bad guys; seems kind of like throwing out the planet with the bath water).

The day went downhill from there.

It was raining steadily, and I'd left my big umbrella at the office; all I had was a small, collapsible one. And since I hadn't yet taken care of getting the nail out of the tire and the tire patched, I couldn't risk taking the car out and having it go flat in the rain during rush hour. So despite the raincoat and the duck shoes, the bottom 8 inches of my trousers were soaked through: 2-1/2 hours later, they're still mildly damp. Of course, it's my own fault for not getting the tire patched this entire week. While the weather was pleasant, the nail in the tire provided a good incentive for me to walk every day; but today, of course, I'm sorry I procrastinated.

Once here at work, I discovered that the network for the multimedia labs was on the fritz. The lab manager is still working on it, but hasn't yet been able to figure out what's wrong. Needless to say, there are lots of folk who aren't happy about this.

I'm also the Acting Manager for the department today, in my boss's absence. I was supposed to go to Main State to attend a presentation between 10 and 11:30, but given that the network was down, that I have to do the department's weekly reports, and that there were supposed to be four others going to the presentation, I thought it might be best for me to stay here. It turns out that two of the five already had dropped out by yesterday, and one of the remaining three was stuck in traffic this morning and hadn't made it in by the time the shuttle bus was leaving, so my withdrawal left just one person to go and take notes. I'm told that he wasn't very happy about this. But I've been the one to go to this group's presentations, on my own, every other time, even though it's not part of my official duties. And I haven't minded going and taking notes for everyone else, but it pisses me off that just once when someone else is asked to go, he grumbles about it.

So, it's only 11am and the bulk of the day still lies ahead. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the rest of the day goes, if not better, at least no worse.

Last night, I updated my match.com profile with some new photos and tried to make a couple of minor edits to the text (I have no idea why I'm wasting time on this... I met a few nice guys through match.com and planetout.com, including Terry, whom I dated for about a year, but mostly it's been a bust). The photos all were approved and uploaded to the profile. But the edits to the profile itself keep causing the following email to be automatically generated by match.com:

Thank you for submitting your profile for posting with our service. Unfortunately, we are unable to approve and post it because a portion of your essay information violates our Terms of Use. Match.com does not allow it's [sic]members to post sexually explicit language, racial slurs, vulgarity or any other derogatory language in a member profile.

Please take a moment to revise your information to meet our Terms of Use standards, and re-submit your profile. If after a second review, you feel that your essays are acceptable, please contact us at: customercare@match.com

First of all, they really should fix that ungrammatical "it's" where "its" is needed in the second sentence before telling me that my profile has a problem. </catty class= "gratuitous">

But for the life of me, I cannot figure out what in my profile violates their TOS. At first I thought maybe it was just the fact that I used the phrases "sex ed" and "sexual orientation," but after removing both of those, the profile still is flagged by their automatic software for some reason.

So here's what my profile says. If their software rejected profiles for being overly verbose, dull or unappealing, well, ok, then I could see getting my wrist slapped, but what about this is even remotely "sexually explicit," a "racial slur," "vulgar" or "derogatory"?

Describing myself

I grew up in a small rural, conservative town in the mountains of southwestern Virginia, where I fit in so badly that I suspected I must have been either adopted, switched at birth, a changeling, or an alien. My mom assures me I was neither adopted nor switched; the jury may still be out on the rest.

I spent seven years studying and then working in Boston, and came to the DC area expecting to stay "a year, maybe two"--however, in that "where did the time go?" kind of way, it's turned into 16. I do like living here now, and the (sub)urban life suits me, but I sometimes miss the woods and great starry night skies of home. Previously a dot-com CTO, I now work for the federal government. I'm also involved in anti-oppression and other volunteer work; I'm particularly active in my local liberal progressive Unitarian-Universalist Church.

Personality measures: INFP, Enneagram 4 with a 5 wing.
Pet: A Maine Coon cat named Alexander Graham Bell-the-cat.
Hobbies/Interests/Fun : Dancing (club, contra, square, 2-step; would love to find someone to partner for Latin or ballroom lessons); computer games; the Internet/blogosphere; theme parks; renaissance fairs; reading, music and the arts.
Books: Fantasy, sf, medieval mysteries, magical realism, cosmology, creative physics, metaphysics, children's books.
Music: Especially Folk, Celtic, progressive and alternative.
TV/Radio: HGTV, TLC, BBC-A, Six Feet Under, Food Network, NPR.
Film: Independent films, black comedies, animation, sf.
Food: Spicy cuisines, especially Thai, Vietnamese and Korean; Italian (can't get enough garlic or calimari); sushi and sashimi; Diet Dr. Pepper or Vanilla Coke; dulce de leche or other caramel/toffee ice cream (or the only decent thing Safeway makes, Athens Baklavar Bazaar: honey ice cream with baklava bits); popcorn.

Describing my ideal match

My ideal? Hard to pin down, especially physically. Each man I've been attracted to, infatuated with, or even in love with has looked quite different from the others. Though I can't quantify my ideal, I guess I can at least qualify it in some ways, though, particularly regarding intellectual, spiritual and emotional traits. For example, I prefer men who are very comfortable with their orientation and fairly if not completely out, who can be comfortable spending time with my family or accompanying me to a business function; who appreciate cuddling, kissing, hugging; with a certain twinkle in the eye and a warm, ready smile; who are curious, creative, thoughtful and intelligent (and I don't equate this with "educated"; the latter isn't per se important to me), caring and playful; spiritual though not necessarily, and usually not conventionally, religious. I'm not looking for someone to take care of, or to take care of me; rather, I look for mutuality in my relationships.

Upon re-reading it, the only word I can see now that looks like it might set off an unintelligent/non-contextual language filter is "coon" in the phrase "Maine Coon cat." I'm going to try to remove that and see if the posting goes through.

[Update: 23:09 - Well, I haven't gotten any email this time, so that does seem to have been the problem. I had written to them several times earlier asking why the profile was being rejected by their system, and the humans there couldn't tell me. So if you're going to put a profile on match.com, don't mention a fetish for coon-skin caps, or talk about your pet raccoon or your Maine Coon.]

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff made an off-hand reference to Sirius satellite radio, specifically their 24/7 gay programming stream, OutQ.

So over the past few days, I've been listening to OutQ via the Internet stream from Sirius's web site. I like the idea, and really wanted to like the programming, but I've been pretty lukewarm on the execution and content of the all-talk format.

I certainly don't think of myself as at all prudish, and I don't mind the frank discussion of sex on the Derek & Romaine show (in fact, I find it very refreshing), for example, but I am frustrated by the almost single-mindedness of that show's focus on sex; the frequent posturing of the hosts and some callers; what seems to me a bias towards casual sex and lots of it, and toward those with strong libidos over those whose sex drives are less strong; and a 20-something POV that occasionally seems to be surprised that those of us much over 30 even exist or have anything of value to contribute. Last night, I started to get so angry listening to it--and as it seems meant to be entertaining and fun, rather than particularly thought- or emotion-provoking, I finally realized it would be best for me just to turn it off and listen to something else.

I recognize that what I perceive as biases, though, may very well be just from the way the show sometimes has pushed some of my particular buttons--sour grapes, perhaps.

I stayed home from work today. I was feeling a little sick last night, and then had slept really very poorly, so I was exhausted this morning when the alarm went off. I thought that if I got a couple of hours of extra sleep, I might feel up to going in around noon or so, and at least work half a day, but I didn't even end up waking back up until after 1:00, so I went ahead and called it a day.

Unfortunately, I don't feel that I got anything accomplished around here, either, besides a fair amount of reading (the pleasure reading while eating my late lunch was nice, but checking all of my preferred news resources just continues to depress me. I'm back in one of my "I want to live in Amsterdam or Canada" moods again). By the time 5:00 rolled around and I realized I'd have been coming home at that point anyway, the day felt like it had been practically a waste. And, although the extra rest probably was good for me, it's only 8:00 now and I'm already feeling exhausted again, and despite being home all day this is the first posting I've made to the journal today.

Tomorrow night into Friday morning there will be a total lunar eclipse, the first such visible in North America in more than three years. Space.com has the minute-by-minute details.

For those of us in EDT, we'll be able to see the entire eclipse--assuming that the weather cooperates, which is unlikely here in the DC area with the chance of rain 90% tomorrow night--with the moon first entering the Earth's penumbra at 9:05 pm; the eclipse reaching totality between 11:14 pm and 12:07 am (Friday); and the eclipse ending at 2:15 am. The western half of the U.S. will only see the eclipse already in progress at moon rise. [Global Map showing what percentage of eclipse will be visible by location]

This is a detail from a mural (clicking will pop up a larger detail, though still not the entire mural) on the Columbia Pike branch of the Arlington Country Library and Career Center, which I pass by on my way walking to and from work. Lately I've been carrying my camera with me and noticing more of what's around me, and the other afternoon I really paid attention to the mural for the first time. And of course my mind started to fall right into the gutter; I keep getting the mental image of Woody Harrelson in The Cowboy Way, when he comes out of the house naked holding his cowboy hat over his crotch; then, when told to put his hands up, and does, the hat stays put.

I went into the kitchen at 8:00 to start dinner, and decided to have a grilled cheese sandwich and french (ever the traitor) fries. So I turned the oven to 450° and came back to the computer while waiting for it (the oven, not the computer) to pre-heat. A while later I returned to the kitchen to discover that the oven was still cold (though, interestingly, the computer was quite warm): while I had set the one dial to the correct temperature, I had not remembered to turn the other to the "bake" setting.

After trying again, the oven did pre-heat, and when the french fries were about five minutes away from being ready, I put a slice of sandwich bread on the Sunbeam grill, added some sharp cheddar cheese, topped it off with another slice of bread, closed the grill top, and dialed the timer to five minutes. When I returned five minutes later, however, the sandwich was cold. While I had correctly dialed the timer, I had failed to plug the grill into the electrical outlet.

It's a wonder I don't forget to keep breathing.

The Chortler offers a summary of top stories from today's New York Times, as told "by the latest addition to our staff, Jayson Blair."

From the National desk:

Bush Flies Air Force One By Himself
President George W. Bush flew Air Force One over to Iraq by himself to deliver three separate aid missions. Yeah, that's right, I saw it myself, dude, with my own eyes.

Very funny, from the paper that brought you today's news translated into Canadian, the Bush dictionary, and "How to Hide a Vice President," among many others.

We're in the process of hiring two people for our web development team through our contractor, and today I had three interviews scheduled with folks whose resumes they've sent over. The first showed up almost 30 minutes late, having gotten lost on the way. The second called to cancel five minutes before his interview was scheduled to begin. The third never made it at all: half an hour into the scheduled time, we got a phone call that he had mistakenly gone to the contractor's corporate office rather than here. Now, that is potentially an understandable confusion, since the work site and corporate headquarters are two separate locations in the same town--but apparently he arrived there late, too. On two earlier occasions this year, when hiring new administrative assistants (and these were government positions rather than contract), we had similar numbers of no-shows or those who would arrive significantly late.

When hiring in the past, I'd had the occasional no-show, but generally people arrived early or on time. Is this spate of thoughtlessness and carelessness I've recently observed a new norm? Given the state of the economy, I assumed--mistakenly, it appears--a relatively higher level of professionalism and respect among candidates competing for too few jobs.

I know that there are aspects of business time expectations that I've rebelled or chafed against myself in the past, but it seems like a no-brainer that you want to be at your interview on time.

It is interesting how my perception of what constitutes appropriate and professional behavior concerning time and timeliness has changed as I've moved up the corporate ladder. I'm more strict than I used to be, certainly, and I do notice when employees seem to be abusing the clock, though I like to think that I'm more flexible than rigid for rigidity's sake.

I had a supervisor many years ago who fell into the latter category. I had been working with her for a while, and not only was always on time at first, but frequently worked through lunch and invariably stayed late a minimum of two to three hours every day. Then one day the bus schedules changed, and my bus-to-subway route could either get me to work five minutes late, or twenty minutes early. Because I was working late every day, because I had a relatively long commute at the time and because I'm more of an afternoon/evening person than a morning person, I started coming in five minutes late, and I explained to her why. She elected to see it, however, as "a mark of disrespect for her personally" and she told me that she wanted me there at 9:00 precisely, that she would rather have me on time and leave on time than to make up the lost five minutes later in the day.

So, because of this level of inflexibility--and it wasn't a job where I was on the phones, or dealing with clients at 9:00--she got precisely what she said she wanted, and not a jot more. I started taking the early bus, sitting in a coffeeshop until 9, and then leaving precisely at 5. By being unwilling to even discuss compromise, or offer any reasons other than "because I'm the boss and I said so," she lost my respect, my willingness to go to bat for her, and an average of 10-15 hours of additional productivity from me each week.

As I noted, though, this was a long time ago, and I do understand her position slightly better now, though I believe I strive for a greater degree of flexibility and discussion when dealing with my own staff.

For those who don't know--though even those not specifically familiar with its origin probably understand "Bizarro World" in its context within contemporary vernacular--in DC Comics' Superman title, Bizarro was an imperfect--and near-opposite--duplicate of Superman. Eventually Bizarro Superman relocated to a cube-shaped planet--Bizarro World--where a population of bizarre-looking Bizarro Superman and Bizarro Lois Lane clones lived in a deliberate attempt to refute everything of Earth: on Bizarro World, everyone speaks ungrammatically, and the Bizarro code states that:

Us do opposite of all Earthly things!
Us hate beauty!
Us love ugliness!
Is big crime to make anything perfect on BIZARRO WORLD!

But given today's news that Dubya and Blair have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize [Reuters] for their war in Iraq, I'm wondering if I've somehow been transported to a real Bizarro World.

Jan Simonsen, described as "a right-wing independent in Norway's parliament," nominated Bush and Blair, stating: "Sometimes it's necessary to use a small and effective war to prevent a much more dangerous war in the future. If nobody acted then Saddam Hussein could have produced weapons of mass destruction and, in five or 10 years, could have used them against Israel."

Could have produced... COULD HAVE PRODUCED?! I thought the whole reason we were given for going in was because Dubya told us Saddam already had them. (Not that anyone buys that any more, nor seems to care that we were lied to. And it doesn't matter that the war was "successful" anyway, it still remains that we were taken into it under false pretense--the weapons were never really the issue; we were lied to and continue to be lied to by Dubya.)

Ya know, though... in five or 10 years, Canada could produce weapons of mass destruction... or England... or <gasp> the FRENCH! Better invade 'em all now!

Me am Bizarro Dubya. Me do opposite of all intelligent, logical things.
Us hate freedom!
Us love threats and fear!
War am peace!
Free speech am treason!
Restraint on liberty am Patriot Act!
Saddam am bin Laden!
Looting am protection!
Anniversary of 9/11 am opprtunity for Republican campaign stunt!
69,000 lost jobs every month am fiscal conservatism!
No weapons of mass destruction am reason for war!
Us give tax benefits to rich people; us make middle-class people pay more in taxes!
Us put money in worker pockets when them lose pay when me use factory for photo op!
Ship turnaround and come home slower so us fly jet to get to it quicker for campaign stunt!

Bizarro Thom am happy and proud to live in country of insanity, suspicion and broken promises.

But regular Thom is weeping in frustration and despair at his country's loss of decency, perspective and integrity.

I did spend some time on the phone with my mother yesterday, for Mother's Day. I had sent flowers last week, which she got on Friday. I knew they'd be at church, and probably would go out for lunch afterwards (the extended family--mom and dad; sister, brother-in-law and their kids; dad's sister and brother-in-law; my cousins and their families--go out for lunch every Sunday after church, something they've done almost every week since I can remember), so I didn't bother trying to reach them until afternoon. I reached the answering machine the first time I called, so I waited and then tried again around 3:30. Dad picked up the phone then, and he and I chatted a bit; he'd been at my sister's, where the rest of the family still were, but had walked back home to pick up his DVD player so that he could show off the DVDs he'd recently burned from his old home movies on videotape (he'd been researching DVD burners for a while, and a couple of weeks ago bought a new computer with a burner).

<aside title= "background">
I grew up in a small mostly rural Virginia county, the entire population of which is about 13,000 now, with another 6,000 in the nearby city of Covington. Growing up, our only neighbors were family: my mother's parents lived next door, just through the woods; my grandmother's sister lived at the top of the hill; her brother-in-law ran the general store next to her house; and my great-grandmother lived in the big house on the other side of the main road. One of my dad's sisters and her family lived just a mile and a half away, in the same house in which she and dad had grown up. Dad's mother and stepfather lived just a few miles away, and his oldest sister lived next door to them.

My closest--practically my only--friends were my cousins. Not only did we see each other every day--we attended the same school and the same church--our families even took vacations at the same time and at the same place, a tradition that still continues to this day, just with more people as my generation (and now the next, with my oldest cousin's oldest daughter just having given birth) has its own children.

Before my dad's mother died, the Sunday tradition was to attend church together, go out for lunch together, then return home to change clothes, after which we'd all regroup at Nana's house later for dinner and more family time. More recently, my sister has taken on Nana's role, and she has the entire family over to her house on Sunday afternoons. This was where everyone was when I called to wish my mom a happy Mother's Day.

My sister and her family, by the way, now live in a house they built in the field behind my grandparents, and they and my parents together bought my great-aunt's house at the top of the hill; my sister hopes that her sons will stay in that little enclave as well. My oldest cousin and his wife built a house next door to my aunt--his mother--and their 20-something son still lives with them; my next oldest cousin, who was my best friend growing up, at 41 still lives with her parents. Only my youngest cousin and I moved away, me originally to Boston and then to DC, he first to Charlottesville, then to DC, but more recently to San Francisco after he got married.
</aside>

I called and my sister answered and, after the traditional exchange of teasing, she announced the call, also traditionally, from "the prodigal." My mother came to the phone, and we tried to chat, though it was extremely difficult to hear through the noise of twenty-odd (in both meanings), very loud people holding what sounded like 20-factorial simultaneous conversations. This aspect of my family tends to put some of my friends and boyfriends off-kilter; if you're not used to large, loud family gatherings, it can be very difficult to learn how to attend to the multitasked conversations that take place all at one time, all in one room. And the two boyfriends of which my family have most approved have been those who have been the most comfortable and adaptable in that one regard. Interestingly, those were also two of my relationships of the longest duration--though that's rather like praising one mayfly for living two days.

Mom and Dad filled me in on the latest news. Dad's eldest sister, Shirley, is home from the hospital now, though her situation isn't particularly hopeful; her heart tissue, apparently, is so badly deteriorated that the doctors don't believe surgery would be successful. Shannon--my oldest cousin's oldest child--just had a baby. Matthew, my sister's oldest boy, went to his junior prom this past weekend. Mom and Dad were hit by a deer on the way home from church last week, and now have car repairs of their own facing them. My cousin Charles and his wife Jennifer--Shirley's son and daughter-in-law--are expecting their second child, due in September. The county has been plagued by an unprecedented string of break-ins and burglaries. And Dad is enjoying the afore-mentioned recently purchased new computer and DVD burner.

Finally, my nephew Matthew took the phone to ask me "a favor." He wanted to know if he could come up and stay with me one weekend this summer; I said of course. I've tried to get him to come up and stay with me on his own before, but we've never been able to work that out.

Then he told me why he's planning to come up to DC this summer: there's a Republican teen convention, and he considers himself--at 16--to be a young Republican.

<heavy sigh />

It wasn't too many years ago that his mother, father and I all thought he might be gay, and here he is quite happily and comfortably dating girls and styling himself a Republican. What was I to do? Of course, I took a page from my hero Ron Santorum and told him that I had no problem with him, only with his Republican activities. <grin />

<aside title= "diversity">
My parents lived and grew up in a 1950s world that truly seems to have mirrored the world of 1950s television shows--Father Knows Best, Donna Reed, Leave it to Beaver, etc. My parents were practically child-hood sweethearts; at 12, my mother stated that my father, who was then 17, was the man she was going to marry. Virgins at their wedding, and naive enough about birth control that I was conceived on the honeymoon, they're still each other's best friends. I never met a child of divorce until I was a freshman in college; and the only divorced person in my family when I was a child was my grandfather's sister, who had moved to Washington, DC, "the big city" four hours away by car.

But my generation and the next have grown up in a different world certainly, and have brought that new world squarely to the doorstep of my parents, aunts and uncles, and grandparents. My mother's sister, whom I place in my own generation rather than my mother's since she was 12 years younger than my mother and only 7 years older than me, is on her third marriage; one cousin is on her second. Another cousin--from the one Catholic branch in a family of Protestants--married a Jewish woman. The cousin-once-removed--the one I noted above who just had a baby girl--is unmarried, and the father of her child is a black man. And I, of course, am the openly gay pink sheep of the family.

And now my nephew proclaims himself a Republican, so I guess there's some diversity in the family even I would prefer to do without.
</aside>

The weekend went by too quickly, and not particularly enjoyably. Saturday, as I'd already noted, I was at the office from 8 to 3, overseeing a server move. Even though I wasn't actually doing the work, but was just there as a supervisor, I returned home inordinately exhausted, and ended up napping a couple of hours in the late afternoon. I never used to nap, but lately I find myself feeling like I need one almost every weekend. Is it just an affect of aging?

Yesterday, I got up early again, in case I got called back into the office for any problems (the staff were supposed to call me Saturday night to let me know their progress, but hadn't). Even though there wouldn't be much I could personally do to help, I stressed out all day about what was going on, but didn't have any way to reach them to check without physically coming back to the office. I hadn't yet gotten the tire patched from the bolt or nail that I picked up on Friday evening, so I couldn't drive over, and I didn't particularly feel like walking. It turns out that they did run into some snags, and were here long hours, but things were back up and running this morning, only about 45 minutes later than usual.

Roger had asked that I make some time to spend online with him on Sunday, assuming that I wasn't at work, and I had agreed that I would try. But by the time Sunday rolled around, I was feeling too tired and asocial; I also developed another one of my bad headaches around 3 or so, not as bad as the migraines I had during college but still greatly affecting my ability to concentrate and my mood, and not responsive to any analgesic. I ended up just resting most of the day, and didn't even get around to playing online or posting in the journal. By the time I finished dinner, all I could manage to do was type a quick apology to Roger in Yahoo! Chat and crawl onto the futon, where I rested fitfully for a few hours before managing to get up, brush my teeth and fall into bed, where the headache continued to wake me several times until about 3am, after which it finally abated and I slept until the alarm went off at 7.

So, even though I got a fair amount of sleep yesterday and last night, it must not have been particularly restful, as I'm still feeling rather zoned out today at work.

Today I took part in The May Day Project, an event in which the participants were to document one day in their life--Saturday, May 10--with photographs taken throughout the day.

The thumbnails link to the full-size photos.

0050: Bed. Alex waits for me.

0744: Wakeup. The snooze alarm already has gone off three times. Yes, it's Saturday, but I have to be at work today to oversee a server move.

0814: Car. There's something in the rear passenger tire. Looks like I'll be walking to the office instead of driving over. In the rain.

0839: Office. Arriving at the Visitor's Center in order to sign in with security. The black band at the top of the photo is my umbrella.

0847: Server. These are the servers that need to be disassembled, moved to another location, reassembled and hooked back up. I'm here just to oversee the process.

0859: Breakfast. The cafeteria's not open on Saturday, and I didn't eat before I left home. The vending machine supplied the Diet Dr. Pepper and the animal crackers. Yum.

1033: Email. Sitting at my desk reading email and catching up on blogs while the contractors work on the server.

1318: To lunch. We're leaving the parking lot, heading out to go get some lunch.

1358: Lunch. Just finishing my really wonderful meal at El Paso Cafe on Pershing, just off Glebe.

1505: Leaving. I finally realized that I don't really need to be present, since there are other government employees there in the server room to supervise the contractors. Walking home in the rain, I decide to stop by the library.

1522: Library. Stacks in the Columbia Pike branch of the Arlington County library system.

1552: Home. As I open the door to my condo, Alex runs out into the hallway and rolls on the floor, as he always does.

1712: Naptime. For some reason, I'm exhausted, even though I didn't do the hard work today. I lie on the futon in the computer room and settle in for a nap. I had thought about going to see the taping this evening of This American Life, but I haven't eaten dinner, I'm tired, and I have to get up early again tomorrow.

1856: Suppertime. Well, suppertime for Alex, anyway. I open a pouch of Whiskas. Yum.

2015: Dinner. Now I'm ready to eat. A Lean Pocket, frozen corn (I've added some spices and cilantro), some grapes, and the ubiquitous Diet Dr. Pepper. Caffeine-free this time, for variety. And served in an ever-so-tasteful Max Headroom plastic cup (yes, I swear I really am a gay man, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding).

2119: Ripping. Over the past few days I've been ripping all my CDs to my hard drive in preparation for buying an MP3 player for when I walk to and from work.

2209: Blogging. I'm responding to a comment in my journal from Jeff over at Rebel Prince.

2400: Just under the wire. Midnight, the end of this day and of this May Day event, and I'm brushing my teeth.

hear the clip

Transcript follows:

I mean, even my car tires get screwed more often than I do. ba da bing.

Apparently, though, it's all that yummy self-loving and the webcam days of my youth... ok, and the naked gay squaredancing (no, I'm not kidding) and associated hot tubbing didn't help my score either.

Was taking this, apparently, even as Gene was posting his results; I also came across it today on digital flotsam as well as earlier this week in The Ferrett's LiveJournal (turns out that the Ferrett, the perpetrator of this version of the Purity Test, is a friend of my friend Sheldon).

Ok. It's been a rough week, work-wise, and tonight and the weekend weren't looking particularly promising either. The planned upgrades to the multimedia labs ran into a number of snags and required a lot more time and effort than we expected. The number of projects I'm being asked to do just keeps mounting, but the constant interruptions by staff wanting answers to questions or decisions made for them--combined with the fact that we're short two people in the main office and I seem to be the one who most often ends up getting stuck answering the phones and dealing with walk-in clients when the administrative assistant goes to lunch or on errands--leaves me feeling like I'm just spinning my wheels, and accomplishing little.

Normally I wouldn't have to work evenings or weekends--one nice tradeoff for the relatively poor civil servant's salary--but because one of my responsibilities is the oversight of the multimedia training labs, it's almost impossible to be permitted to schedule any necessary maintenance activities during hours that the students are on site. So, in order to move our audio and video servers from within the labs, where we've been maintaining and servicing them, to the IT's central server room, where there will be better security and cleaner power, among other benefits, we had to schedule time over the weekend to do so.

We had planned to start this evening, and brought in the consultant who originally installed and still services the lab equipment. We've been planning this for months (it's been rescheduled multiple times for various reasons). We worked with the IT staff to draw up schematics, to make room for our racks, to add additional power, etc. We asked them for information--and went back several times to clarify--about the connections (and therefore the cables and connectors we would need) in the new server room as opposed to those in the current server location. We got the information in writing.

The consultant arrived, and we took him down to the server room; he discovered right away that the type of connector they'd told us we needed, and that we'd asked him to bring, was not, in fact, what was being used. So we're paying big bucks to fly this guy in, to pay for the cabling and labor, and our IT department has given us the wrong information.

So the consultant and my lab manager found a place in Gaithersburg that had the cables and that was still open at 5:00 on Friday evening (and they were about to close). We charged the cables to the credit card, and they said they'd leave them in a box outside the store; so the two of them are driving to Gaithersburg, during rush hour, to pick up the cables. There was no point in me sticking around, so I came on home and gave them instructions to call me there when they're on their way back.

Halfway home I started hearing a sound from outside the car: one of those kind of rhythmic sounds you hear when a tire is flat or going flat or has something hitting it, or when you're driving on a grooved road, with that telling periodicity of the sound. I pulled the car over, got out and casually examined all the tires, which seemed fine. I got back in the car, and drove home, continuing to hear that sound, but not experiencing any other symptoms.

In the garage at home, I took another look at the tires and they still all seemed fine. Then I noticed a protrusion from the treads of the right rear passenger side tire; it looked less like a nail than like a large nut and bolt, the bottom of the nut being flush with the tire's surface, with the rest of it extending maybe a quarter of an inch above the tire. The tire still wasn't visibly going flat, but from the size of the nut it seems pretty clear that there's a pretty large metallic object penetrating the tire.

I just do not have the energy to deal with a flat tire right now. The rain has stopped for now, but the forecast is for continued rain and thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. And to add insult to injury, this is the one tire still remaining from the original four when I got the car new five years ago; I've already had to replace the other three after two punctures and a blowout. Of course it couldn't have been one of those three to get punctured; after all, they're still under warranty from NTB. No, my fucking negative karma requires that the most expensive, least convenient possibility hold sway. I am the avatar of Bad Luck Schleprock, a Bussard collector of antiluck particles, a Charlie Brown clotheslined by Lucy and her football of life--hopefully and stupidly continuing to think that this time she'll hold that ball steady, and I'll give it a good kick. Yet here I am, flat on my back again.

And I'd been having a couple of really good weeks. Now, though, I'm starting to see flashes in my inner peripheral vision of a nascent apathetic depression.

Geez.... what a whiner.