doubting thom

Jeff (of tinmanic.com) notes that today is the anniversary of his first date with Matt. As I noted in my congratulatory comment, the two of them are terrific people individually, and terrifically suited to one another as well. Jeff writes:

I’ve never met anyone else with whom I’ve clicked so well. We don’t even need to be doing something exciting; even if it’s just an ordinary day, and I’m sitting on his couch reading the Sunday paper while he types away at his computer, it’s so comforting to be around him. We joke that we’re like an old Jewish couple, making sure each other’s stomachs are feeling alright, sometimes yawning too early on Saturday nights. We just mesh.

When commenting on his post, I didn’t want to shift the focus from them, but reading his words resonated so strongly with me that I wanted to follow up here. I could easily have written that quoted paragraph above, save perhaps the line about being “like an old Jewish couple,” though we absolutely note the same synchronicity of mind and soul implied by that comparison, and the same comfortable ease in the ways we live and relate with each other.

It’s uncanny, in fact, the way [my] Jeff and I so often will say the same thing at the same time (heh, I even read and replied to [the other] Jeff’s post just a few minutes after [my] Jeff did, which kind of coincidence isn’t uncommon for us), or react the same way or with the same reference to something we see or hear. It’s perhaps even more amazing given that the ubiquitous “they” would tell us that we’re at least a generation–perhaps two–apart, and shouldn’t be able to so readily communicate and understand one another. And yet I’ve rarely felt quite so connected at any single level–emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, physically–with my chronological peers, much less at all four of those levels as I do in my relationship with Jeff.

The other Jeff also noted his experience with a relationship truism, with which I also largely identify:

I’d always wanted a long-term relationship with someone, but I wasn’t expecting it to happen when it happened. I guess that’s how these things work: you never know when you’ll meet that person, or how.

I’ll take that one step further in my own case, though. Not only wasn’t I expecting a relationship when Jeff and I first started communicating on and through our blogs, nor expecting a relationship to happen at that time, I’d pretty much given up on expecting it ever to happen and, at a conscious level at least, even hoping for it. After a particularly unpleasant dating experience for a few months early in 2002, after cycles of decent-enough but ultimately dissatisfying and impermanent relationships alternating with months to years of solitude, I’d finally decided I might really be better off and happier alone, and was comfortable with that realization. My experience of the last year and a half, though, has shown me–happily–that I was wrong. Maybe I had to wait a particularly long time for the right man and the right relationship to come along, but he and it have been well worth the wait.

Last week was a doozy. It started on Monday with the terrible interview, and continued with some general ongoing uncertainty at work, with some of our contractors being let go while there are rumors that there could even be significant changes or even job losses on the government direct-hire side over the coming year (a civil service job is no longer the secure guarantee that has usually been presumed); two last-minute, short-deadline, but very high-profile projects at work; several skipped lunches yet longer workdays nevertheless; an ugly conflict between two of our staff that came to a fever pitch on Thursday for which I had to intervene, but which still is very tense; and an emotionally stressful week in any event, for its significance as the week in which my parents’ anniversary would have fallen just a few days before the one-year anniversary of my father’s untimely death October 3^rd last year.

Thank goodness for a relaxing weekend, in which Jeff and I spent some time in the kitchen, baking and cooking together, which turned out to be physically and emotionally very gratifying.

I had a job interview today with another agency. I was pretty confident walking in, not too nervous–generally a very competent and comfortable interviewee, I typically find it even easier and less stressful when, as in this case, I have the luxury of not strictly needing the job for which I’m interviewing–and thought I was well-qualified, an excellent fit, and reasonably prepared, albeit I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t spend the extra time in preparation this past weekend I might have, and that I had intended.

It was the worst interview performance of my entire life.

It wasn’t just bad, it was embarrassingly and stultifyingly bad. During the interview, I kept wondering if I should just apologize for wasting their time, bow out and cut all our losses. Afterward, I spent lunch and the subway ride back to work feeling genuinely sorry for the hour of their lives those four interviewers would never get back, and thinking wistfully of the two hours of annual leave I’d spent to cover the time away from the office.

On a personal level, I think they found me likable and engaging enough, and I quite liked them. And trying to be as objective as possible, I believe I’d be a really great fit for the position and for the organization, and that it would provide me a challenging learning experience for me and them a valuable addition to their team.

But I choked. I don’t think it was entirely my fault–the position description notes that the incumbent will be responsible primarily for expertise in high-level function X, in an office that also engages in separate (though highly interrelated, to be sure) high-level function Y, but practically their entire line of questioning went to my experience with, technical knowledge of, philosophy about, and recommendations for implementing Y instead of the expected X. I just wasn’t able to shift mental gears smoothly or quickly enough. The real tragedy is that while I know X inside and out, I’ve also had plenty of experience managing Y–as part of a specialized task force at another organization I co-authored a 20-chapter report about it some years ago, and have been responsible for developing and implementing Y at other organizations since. It’s not something I’ve done in the past two years in my current position, and I hadn’t expected it to dominate the questions, and I was about as far as possible from fresh or convincing. But I was aware from my research that Y was part of the office’s responsibilities more generally, so I definitely should have been better prepared to discuss it intelligently.

Who knows? Maybe it actually didn’t go as badly as I thought–years ago I had a day-long series of interviews at a company in Seattle, beginning at 7 in the morning on a spring day in which a freak East Coast Blizzard kept me grounded until very late, such that I arrived in Seattle and at my hotel at 4am (already 7am according to my internal clock). I was so numb I couldn’t even remember what I said or did that whole day, and collapsed at 4:30pm certain that the day had been an unmitigated disaster–then two days later they called and offered me the job (I didn’t accept it, for unrelated reasons).

And I was the first person interviewed for this new position–which at least lets me manufacture and maintain the comfortable fiction that on paper, at least, they had found me the best-qualified and wanted to schedule me first–so maybe time, conversations with subsequent candidates, and the natural defense mechanisms of the human mind will cause them to block out the more horrible aspects of today’s experience.

Otherwise I’ll have to change my name and enter a brand-new career field at the very bottom and preferably in another country, in order to avoid the shame and embarrassment of someday potentially running into one of these interviewers on a cross-agency task force or in a DC restaurant.

What is it with the influx of Christian-focused spam I’ve been seeing in my inbox recently? I’m getting flooded with information about Christian online dating services and Christian mortgage companies, among others. Today, for example, an email with the subject line “Jesus Loves You. Refinance Now” informs me that ChristianMortgageUSA.com, “Your Leading Advisor With Biblical Values” and “based on Christian lending principles” (pay no attention to the usurer behind the curtain), can show me “the Way!” (exclamation point theirs), while ChristianDebtSettlement.org uses images of a cross and an open bible as part of its promise to help me settle my debt for up to 70% less of what I owe–oh, and they like those exclamation points too–as there’s apparently nothing quite so Christian, after all, as trying to get out of paying people only 3 out of every 10 dollars I owe them. Well, at least it makes tithing much less onerous.

Some days the emails from these “Christian” sources is second in volume only to the porn spam (addendum: oh, and also subordinate to the pharmaceutical spams)–and no more welcome.

There’s apparently no movie, no matter how classic or celebrated, for which the experience of watching can’t be improved by doing so alfresco, in a park, in the company of a few dozen queens and their friends.

Last night, Jeff and I went to the Washington DC GLBT Center (actually, DC has no physical GLBT Center, but this organization is attempting to establish one) and One in Ten “Screen on Stead Park” outdoor screening (from a laptop and DVD player, projected onto a giant inflatable movie screen, which offers some pretty cool geek-appeal) of the newly digitally remastered The Wizard of Oz. As Jeff noted back in July, we went to a similar GLBT Center-sponsored screening of Sordid Lives.

Both experiences were a lot of fun–people bring picnic dinners and snacks, sit or lie together on blankets under the (admittedly faint and few) stars, relax and socialize together in an environment where you can hold hands or lean against your partner without concern, and feel relatively free to add some degree of audience participation in the form of shouted jokes and comments (though the latter less so last night than at the previous movie). Sordid Lives was an intentionally camp movie, with gay characters and subplots and seemingly aimed for gay audiences, but The Wizard of Oz, only incidentally and in its historical context largely from its association with Judy Garland a “gay” movie, nevertheless offered an abundance of opportunities for audience comments and laughter at unintentional double-entendres (or, as George Bush might say, “intennuendos”). The Tin Man and his need for repeated oilings was one source of amusement, as were the “sissy” comments and gestures of the Cowardly Line. One of the biggest laughs of the evening, unsurprisingly, was the Scarecrow’s comment that while one direction at the crossroads is “a very nice way” while the other is “pleasant,” “of course, people do go both ways.”

This was the Center’s last “Screen on Stead Park” event for the year, but they’ve promised monthly screenings next year from May through September. We had a lot of fun at both movies this year, and definitely are looking forward to future screenings. Jeff wasn’t even a fan of The Wizard of Oz from his earlier viewings, but quite enjoyed last night’s.

Just as I was starting to become bored with my springtime gaming addiction, City of Heroes, The Sims 2 was released about a week ago.

This remake of the best-selling PC game of all time, The Sims, offers pretty much the same gameplay as the original, with a few updates–Sims now age and eventually die, have overriding life aspirations to fulfill in addition to their ongoing needs, and can pass on their appearance and personality to their offspring through a simulated genetics. While I was hugely addicted to the original Sims for a long time, I’m not sure that these updates to the game will hold my attention for long. The ability to very specifically customize your Sims, though, is very nice, permitting an infinite customization of their appearance; you can tweak dozens of elements of their facial structure–overall shape, brow, nose, eyes, mouth, chin. With just a few minutes work, I even created passable representations of Jeff and me, and moved them into a gorgeous split-level lakeside modern home in the SimCity ‘burb of Pleasantview.

And that brings me to my favorite part of the original game–building and furnishing the Sims’ homes–which is where the new version really shines. The original game was very limited; homes could be one or two stories, and were quite constrained in architecture. In the new version, homes can have up to five levels, can be built into and on hilly terrain, and can utilize foundations and decks to build split-level structures and even sub-levels (I’ve modified one home, for example, to have a swimming pool in the basement). I’m populating one street of Pleasantview with a variety of modernist homes into which I’ve moved the Sims I’ve created–our sim doppelgangers live in one, the Cuirs (another gay couple, Tad and Chad) in another, and the LeFays (elf princess Morgana and her twin pointy-eared sons Kieran and Breandan) in a third.

It’s strange to watch Jeff’s and my little sim clones interact with one another; they continue to develop little idiosyncrasies and habits that are–at least for now–oddly engaging and even endearing. They’re very affectionate, and spoon when they’re sleeping; they’ve also, on their own, adopted the corresponding sides of the bed Jeff and I use in real life. Last night the two of them showed up at the Cuirs’ house to welcome them to the neighborhood, yet before long they ended up in a separate room talking to each other rather than interacting with their hosts, which hit eerily close to home.

What’s even odder, though, is when Jeff and I start adopting and imitating the habits of our virtual doubles. Sim-Thom has this habit of making the “How You Doin’?” double finger-pointing gesture whenever he walks by another Sim, and I’ve found myself mockingly adopting it on occasion at home. Life imitates art?

Arlington County has issued a press release entitled “Arlington Encourages 20 and 30-Somethings to Get Involved with Youth.”

ARLINGTON, VA. — Are you a 20/30-something looking for ways to get more involved in Arlington? To engage and inspire local youth? To participate in social and community activities that don’t require a commute to DC?
The Community Role Models’ Volunteer Forum on Youth Services is for you! Learn more about how to get involved as a mentor, a coach or a homework buddy. Get to know some of the local groups that are working with our youth to make Arlington the awesome community that it is. Get inspired and gain some new ideas on how YOU can make a difference.

On Sept. 29, come to the Arlington Central Library, 1015 N. Quincy St., at 7 p.m., and learn how to get involved. Representatives from local non-profits, service groups and youth-serving County programs will answer your questions and tell you more about their programs and services. All are welcome. …

Background

Since June 2003, a small task force of civic leaders, county staff and young adults has met regularly with County Board Member Walter Tejada to discuss and brainstorm ways to engage Arlington’s young adults in civic activities that provide healthy models for Arlington’s youth. During the County Board’s Jan. 1 organizational meeting, Tejada announced the Community Role Models (CRM) that is “aimed at engaging our young adults, 20- and 30- somethings in mentoring and other civic activities” as part of the Board’s 2004 civic engagement initiative.

At 42, apparently I’m no longer capable of “engaging and inspiring” the youth of the county while providing them a “healthy model.” Presumably, I’d just be bugging them to come and polish my walker or change the batteries in my hearing aid, or boring them with stories about life before the Internet.

While lately I haven’t been doing as much personal blogging here on elf-reflection, I’ve been doing a better job of continuing to post items to my quicklink blogs over at Dude, Check This Out! In addition to the two from which I include headlines on the elf-reflection home page–serendipity, my primary Dude blog [XML], and sputnik, which is focused on modern art, architecture and style [XML]–I have several others as well:

• Diversions: the games people play, linking to information about toys and games, with a specific focus on online games [XML];
• My Prius blog, with links to news articles about Toyota’s hybrid car [XML];
• Activism: left is right, my links to political articles and commentary [XML];
• Collage, about paper arts and crafts [XML]; and
• 1962: it was a very good year, a collection of links to web sites and articles about events from the year I was born [XML].

Back in March, I’d posted about other Thom Watsons I’d heard or learned about. On Monday I followed a link from one of the progressive political blogs I read to a blog I’d never before seen, by a Tom Watson (without the h) in New York. From his biographic information I discovered that he and I share a number of commonalities: both Ivy-educated (he at Columbia), both current or former dot-commers (he’s CIO for a philanthropic-based dotcom in New York), both with communications backgrounds evntually leading to IT careers, both bloggers, both tending left politically, etc.

He’s been blogging for a while, but I only just came across his site on Monday. Imagine my surprise, then, when today I received an email from him, apparently from his discovery of my 1962 blog to say hello, noting that he was another Tom Watson born in 1962, and pointing out the same common interests and backgrounds.

Sometimes it really is a Twilight Zone world. It’s one thing to recognize that given the world’s population, there are a lot of people that will have similar experiences, interests and backgrounds, and similarly that–especially in my case, given that neither “Thomas” nor “Watson” are uncommon–other people share your name, but it’s still a little eerie to discover that there’s at least one other person with the same name, born the same year, with roughly similar professional backgrounds, life experiences and philosophy.

He even has a Van Dyke. However, we’re not completely interchangeable: I don’t have the wife and three kids nor, as far as I know, does he have a boyfriend, so vive les differences

This morning the alarm clock woke me from a series of dreams I was having in which old classic TV shows were somehow skewed. I can’t recall the specifics of the other shows about which I was dreaming–I do remember that they included The Flintstones, which I think had some sort of Queer Eye crossover with Fred being made over by the Fab Five, and Bewitched, among others–but the last one I’d been dreaming of had featured Marlo Thomas as That Jeannie, with the independent, feminist-minded and sensibly dressed Jeannie Marie–who lived in a hatbox rather than a bottle–referring to Major Donald Nelson as “Mister” rather than “Master,” and refusing to use her powers to conjure up meals–with a “flip” of her hairdo–or blink the house clean.

I had dreamed a new theme song as well, though by the time the snooze button went off the second time, I could no longer recall the words to it.