Reunion

So, I'm on this email list for current and former airborne Spanish linguists. Waldo mentioned it a couple of months ago on her blog.

The group has a reunion every year in different places with significance to that community and this year it will be in Omaha. I've never really considered going to one of these, but this year they're dedicating a memorial to a friend who was killed in action just over 6 years ago. Between the memorial dedication, getting to see my old workplace (it's not just a place you can walk into and visit), seeing the inside of one of the planes I used to fly on, and seeing some old friends, I'm seriously considering going this year.

Anyhow, the complication, as always, is my transition. I've seen a few of the people I was in the military with since I've transitioned but haven't seen the majority of the people who would be attending the reunion. The people I've met don't seem to have issues with it but I'm not sure I can say the same thing about the wider group.

I'm pretty sure most of the people I knew back then already know my story, so it won't really be much of a surprise. It's just a really tight-knit group (and somewhat small) so it will be hard to fade into the background if I'm not feeling all that comfortable. I've been surprised by the generally good reaction I've gotten from the people I've told or the stories I've heard through the grapevine about other people finding out. But this is a group of retired and active duty conservative military types.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to do yet. A big part of me wants to just go and deal with whatever BS I happen to encounter, if any. There have been a number of similar situations in the past couple of years (see my post about Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family) that I thought would go much worse than they did, so I'm not sure I need to psyche myself out of this one just for fear of what may happen. For whatever reason though, this one seems scarier.

Thanks W!

Thanks to our recently retired president's failed economic policies, the company I work for had to resort to drastic measures today to try and stay in business for a little while longer. They called everyone into a meeting first thing this morning to announce that, starting Monday, they would be cutting everyone's pay by 20% across the board. The sad thing is, that was good news compared to how things could have gone. I just feel lucky to still have a job.

To make matters just slightly worse, I was on the phone with my parents tonight talking about all of this when my dad snarkily mentioned that Colorado just passed a "card carry" bill that makes it easier to unionize and that perhaps that would be my salvation. Is there a reason why he felt the need to inject politics into a conversation like that? Perhaps I'm guilty of the same thing with this post; then again I'm not speaking to my daughter who just lost a fifth of her pay and is feeling pretty shitty about the world.

Anyone who still wants to claim that the republican party is pro-business must be mentally challenged. If you can look around at the ruin of 8 years of Bush rule and feel good about republican economic policy, there's probably no hope that you'll ever view our world in a rational way.

Friends

I'm feeling kind of bummed out right now. I'm a week late for a hormone shot, so that might have something to do with it...

The past few days have been quiet around here. Too quiet. No one has called or emailed or stopped by to see how I'm doing in quite a while now and it's getting to me tonight. I'm starting to wonder if I never made the effort to get in touch with anyone, how long it would take certain people to even notice.

I'm not sure I'm trying to blame anyone here and say that they aren't good friends...things are just feeling a little too one-sided these days in pretty much every relationship in my life. I've always kept in touch with people and maybe everyone's just come to expect that I'll be calling sometime soon so they don't ever add it to their mental to-do list.

I don't like feeling this way though. I'm not the type of person who keeps score on how many times I've gotten in touch with someone vs. how many times they've reached out to me. I call people when I feel like talking to them, that's it.

I think I'm just worried about ending up as one of those people who slips in the shower and no one realizes I'm dead for a month. I suppose if I'm dead it really doesn't matter, but it still bugs me.

If you're reading this, I'm likely not talking about you. The people I have in mind are people who I'm pretty sure either don't know I have a blog or have forgotten that I do. I just needed to vent a little and the people I'd usually call up and do that with are a little too close to the situation.

Mouse nightmare

Last night I had a nightmare that there were mice running up and down the walls of my bedroom. Actually, I'm not sure I should really call it a nightmare since I wasn't terrified by what I saw but it was still disturbing, nonetheless.

This evening, I was sitting in my garage smoking when a mouse came running in my direction from somewhere under my car. When I jumped out of the way, it bolted another direction into a maze of boxes stacked in the garage.

Now I'm wondering whether or not my nightmare was actually a nightmare or something I saw in a sleepy haze and remembered as a dream. I'm guessing it was some mixture of both since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have the amount of mice on my walls that I remember from the nightmare yet I can't think of any other reason - other than having seen a mouse in my room - that I would've had that dream.

To be sure, I haven't seen a rodent of any sort in any place I've lived since I was in Omaha and had a cat that would kill mice and bring their headless carcasses into the living room for me to see. It's just not something that's been a part of my regular tenant experience up until now.

To make matters worse, the door between my garage and the rest of the house doesn't latch when I close it. On days when there's a decent breeze, the door blows open and it was open tonight when I came home. Easy access for the mice.

I dropped off my rent check yesterday at the management company and asked why they hadn't been out here yet to fix any of the things that were supposed to be fixed before I moved in. I let them off the hook with a few things - like the door not staying shut - with the promise that it would be taken care of within a week. It has been a month and half now and they haven't done one thing they promised. The maintenance coordinator said she'd have someone out right away, but as of 8:30pm when I'm writing this, I haven't heard anything.

To anyone who might know about these things: Do I have any sort of recourse for them not fixing things in an appropriate amount of time? I told them they had until the 15th before I had the work done myself and billed them for it. I'm not really sure what to do, other than that.

Paint in the ass

I've spent the past two weekends painting the great room in the house I just moved into. I hate to admit it, but I've never painted any of the places I've lived in...ever. I guess I hadn't considered that I was maybe biting off more than I could chew by starting with such a large room.

The main reason I decided to paint - and start with this particular room - was that the owners had randomly painted in certain areas all over to cover up imperfections before I moved in. While I think they used the original paint color (the cans are in the basement), they didn't account for any fading that occurred over the years since it had last been painted. Suffice it to say, their touch up job looked like crap.

Anyhow, I had no idea it would take this long to paint the room. Besides just being a giant room, I have curved walls and other neat architectural details to deal with (25 foot ceilings in some areas). I really love those details but it sure makes painting a pain in the ass. I don't think it helps that I chose a darker color and have had to apply more than one coat in areas to completely cover the walls.

If I thought virtual clutter was enough to drive me batty, living in a painting project in-progress has definitely put me there.