Odds and ends

Work has been brutal the past few weeks and I can't remember the last day off I had. I actually got off work before 9pm tonight so figured I'd better post while I have a few minutes of free time.

There's been a lot going on lately that I've wanted to post on but I'll have to go with the short versions for now...

• The Angie Zapata murder trial started last week about 50 miles north of here. This one hits pretty close to home and I'll definitely be posting more about it when I have time.
• The governor of Texas is threatening to secede...I say we call his bluff.
• I recently bought a gun and applied for a concealed carry permit. I should have more to say on this one soon.
• Gay couples can't get married in San Francisco but can in Council Bluffs, Iowa. WTF?!?
• I had the best Beef Stroganoff *ever* last night at Red Square.

I think that's about it for now. I'm not sure when work is going to get sane again, but I'm hoping that happens by the end of this week. Until then, I'll probably be pretty light on posting anything new.

Tax day

It's after midnight, so it's officially Tax Day. Despite having filled out everything in my tax program, I haven't pressed the button to transmit it all to the IRS yet. I don't usually procrastinate so much on filing, but this year I've been hung up on a certain medical deduction. If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you'll know what I'm talking about.

The validity of my deduction is a big gray area as far as the IRS goes and is currently being litigated in federal court. The litigation has been going on for a few years without any ruling, which is kind of a bummer. I was really hoping to hear something before I had to file my taxes.

After I post this, I'm going to go ahead and send my stuff off. What do all of you think about GRS as a deduction based on medical necessity? Would you put in under the same category as purely cosmetic procedures (breast enhancement, face lifts), which aren't deductible, or under the category of covered procedures such as stomach stapling?

Working for (or at) the man

I overheard a couple of conversations during breaks yesterday that got me thinking about a little linguistic anomaly. In the first, I heard someone talking about how she worked for Marriott, the hotel that shares a courtyard with the building I work in. In the second, I heard someone say they worked at the Marriott.

One person was a uniformed hotel employee, the other was not. Can you guess which one said they work for Marriott?

I started thinking about whether I work for or at my company. My answer was that I tend to work for people...my current employer and the last few that came to mind. I wondered if working for or at a company had something to do with white collar vs. blue collar jobs. I asked a couple of people I work with to answer the question, "where do you work?," and they each said "for [my employer's name]."

The more I thought about it, the more I settled on the idea that you work at places which are typically thought of as locations - restaurants, stores, hotels, etc. I think you work for a company when the company isn't so associated with a particular location.

Anyhow, these are the types of thoughts that go through my head when I'm outside on a break. Yeah, I need to get a life. :)

Since I've been gone

Hey everyone. Well, it appears I've blog-faded yet again. It's kind of funny how these things sneak up on me...

Looking at my post queue on blogger.com, I have three posts that are saved as drafts. These are posts that I started writing but then thought it was better not to post those particular thoughts. Once I start censoring myself, it's usually downhill pretty quickly from there.

Around the same time as those posts, I was reminded by my boss that we shouldn't be blogging or having public myspace pages or any of that sort of thing. The company I work for is in a pretty sensitive industry and there are "activists" out there looking for any reason to nail us to the wall. I guess that a year or two ago a guy who was doing some consulting work for us got caught with a pretty ugly myspace page that ended up all over a few of these activist's blogs and resulted in us losing a contract.

For the past month or so, I've been thinking about how I want to deal with all of this. Should I pull my blog completely down? That was honestly what I was going to do until I remembered things like archive.org and Google's cache. The thing is, I've been outspoken on a number of topics all over the internet and that stuff is out there, like it or not.

I've done some searches on my name and this site doesn't come up in any of the first few pages, so at least I have a little anonymity there. I went in and changed my settings so that the blog doesn't show up in search results or the blogger directory. I'll probably switch my profile to private too. I'm really wishing I would've done like Waldo and Mickity and used some kind of pseudonym this whole time. I've worked in the online industry for the past 8 years...I should really know better.

For now I'm going to try to get back to regular blogging. Even though my employer probably wouldn't be very happy to find out I'm doing it, I think that any damaging info about me is already out there if someone chooses to engage in a little character assassination. If it starts getting a little too uncomfortable here, I'll shut this blog down and start up a completely anonymous one somewhere else. If that happens, send me an email and I'll let you know where I ended up.

In the meantime, thanks for sticking around and keeping up with what's going on in my life. :)

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.

No rest for the weary

I was looking forward to a fairly mellow week this week after all of the craziness of flooding and moving the past couple. Things were going good until Wednesday, when we found out that we (the company I work for) needed to be in the Philippines on Monday for yet another demo of the new system we're trying to sell them.

This news came out of the blue - we weren't planning on having to demo anything for at least another month. Needless to say, we had a ton of work to get done in a very short amount of time so my leisure week ended up turning into working until at least midnight the past couple of nights and pretty late tonight. Oh well, at least I have a job, right?

In some of my down time today, I came across this comic from xkcd which succinctly sums up a lot of what privilege is all about:

Time to go watch tonight's Battlestar Galactica. It seems like no one else is into this show but I have to say that the past two episodes have been some of the best television I've ever seen. All of you are really missing out.

I'm back

I think I already used that title before, but whatever.

I finally finished moving on Sunday and am officially done with that shit-hole apartment for good. Well, they still need to send me my security deposit...I hope there's no BS with that.

One side effect of the move is that I was without my home computer for the past week. I moved into the new place a week ago, but my computer and desk were still at the apartment since we ran out of time last Sunday with the trailer I rented. I do have a laptop, but I didn't really use it since I pretty much hate laptops in general.

I've been meaning to cut down on my internet time for a while and thought it would be a good experiment to go without for a week. Ok, going without isn't really accurate - I could still do some limited surfing at work and I have an iphone. But I honestly felt like a junky in withdrawal the first couple of days without the trusty desktop.

I'm not sure how long it will last, but my first two days with a functional PC in the house are going well. I've reduced my online time quite a bit and don't feel compelled to sit in front of my computer for hours on end when I get home anymore.

It's all a matter of priority now and I plan on keeping this blog near the top of that list, so regular posts should be on their way again. :)

Crappy apartment, part 2

Well, I guess I know why I didn't have any hot water this morning. I just got home and found all of my lights on, my furniture all over the place and fans everywhere. I guess my hot water heater blew up - AGAIN.

This is the third time they've been out here for the same thing in the year that I've lived here. Since my hot water's out, I also have no heat (see previous post about the wonderful heating system here).

To top it all off, I didn't get a phone call and they didn't leave a note so I'm just having to guess at what the problem is.

On a more personal note, I feel violated. Before I moved back to Colorado at the end of 2000, my house was robbed three times in a row. For years after that, I used to hold my breath when I came home that there wouldn't be any lights on that I didn't leave on, an open door, or some other tell-tale sign that someone had been in my home. When I walked in tonight and saw every single light in my place on and my stuff thrown about, it brought me immediately back to that place that I had almost put behind me.

It's almost 10:30 at night and I called emergency maintenance 15 minutes ago to find out what is going on but haven't heard anything back. I have no heat or hot water and am not sure if I should go stay in a hotel or what. I might take the day off tomorrow and try to get some big stuff (like my bed) moved to the new place so I don't have to stay here anymore. I really can't get out of this place soon enough.

Hot water

Have I mentioned lately just how much I hate the apartment I'm living in? I woke up this morning to find that I had NO hot water. Not that it ran out really quick, there just wasn't any when I turned on the shower.

It was really cold here yesterday and last night so I think my central heater has used up all of my hot water. I'm not positive on this one, but I believe the heater uses hot water from the water heater to heat the place. Anyhow, since my apartment doesn't seem to have any insulation, it's been on constantly for the past 24 hours.

Either that or the hot water heater just died. Whatever...I'm just glad I'm leaving in here in less than a week.

71,401

I just read that companies cut 71,400 jobs today. To put it in perspective - in one day, we lost almost 36% of the total jobs which have been cut since the beginning of the year (200,000). Compared with 2008, the year with the most jobs lost since 1945, we lost 2.5% of that total (2.8 million). Those are stunning losses, even after over a year of recession.

One of the casualties not counted in the numbers reported by the big companies today was my little brother. He sent me a text message this morning letting me know that he had been laid off. I already thought the company he worked for was despicable - they're the ones who fired me after I transitioned - but this really puts the icing on the cake.

My brother just had an appendectomy a little over a week ago and has a baby girl due in a few months. The timing really couldn't be much worse and the company definitely stuck it to him. They didn't give him any severance pay and his medical benefits end in less than a week.

If you're a web designer/developer in the Denver area, I'd recommend staying the hell away from SpireMedia. I've seen them do this time and again to their employees and it's just not worth working there.

If anyone is looking for a really talented interactive designer, please send me an email (there's a link on my profile). My brother is very good at what he does and is a great employee.

I hope everyone reading this had a better day than many in our country.

Movin' on up

I signed a new lease today on a house that's a bit closer to work than the apartment I'm in now. I put a deposit down on it back in the middle of December on the condition that they fix and clean up a bunch of things. The house had a lot of potential, but it was a wreck when I looked at it. Honestly, I couldn't believe they were showing a house in this condition to potential renters.

I was originally supposed to finalize everything and get the keys this past Monday after I returned from Cancun. I went by to do the walk-through and make sure they'd done everything they had agreed to, only to find that the place was still basically a wreck. They'd done a couple of the more major things, but that was it. The guy from the management company who was doing the walk-through with me said that the owner had told him that everything had been done. I think he was as disappointed in the situation as I was and told me he wouldn't blame me if I walked away from the deal.

I'd told him that I'd have to think about it and that I'd call him later. That bought me some time to do some quick searching online to see what else was out there right now. Even with the shape the place was in, it was still the best deal I could find for a house in that location with similar amenities. I called him back and told him that I could give the owners until Friday to finish what they'd originally agreed to do over a month ago. We spoke again later that day and he said the owner was also upset that everything wasn't done - he lives out of state and was told everything was good to go by whoever he has here - and would have everything finished by Wednesday.

When we did the walk-through today, all of the major problems had been fixed but the place still wasn't in the best shape. I told them I'd finish up with any cleaning/painting that needed to be done and took the keys. I really hope I'm not making a mistake with this place...so far the landlord's aren't exactly making me feel all that confident.

Renting a place is always a crap shoot, so I'll just hope for the best. At least with a house, I don't have to worry too much about the living habits of my neighbors. I'm *really* looking forward to that. It's funny - I lived in an apartment before I bought my previous house and after that apartment experience, vowed I would never share a wall/ceiling/floor with someone else again.

By the time I left that house, I had decided that I hated doing yard work and shoveling snow and an apartment seemed like a welcome relief. Plus, I'd have all the community stuff like a pool and exercise room. Of course, I never ended up using either.

So, here I am in a house again. Will I be pining for an apartment in another couple of years? Maybe I can find some neighborhood kid to come over and mow my lawn and shovel my driveway and break this vicious cycle where the grass is always greener somewhere else.

Friend demotion

I was visiting a friend's myspace page tonight and noticed that she'd increased her "top friends" to like the top 25 or 30 sometime in the past few months and guess who wasn't on that list? I can't say I was really surprised since she hasn't returned any voicemails or text messages I've sent in a while. No, I'm not some crazy stalker...I'm talking about texts like "Merry Xmas!" or the rare voicemail seeing how she's doing.

I'm almost never on myspace and don't really do anything with it so I'm not sure why I even care. Or why I did what I did after visiting her page...

I demoted her! She used to be in my top 8, but I removed her tonight into the general friend area where all the other losers go. Yes, I really am petty like that.

The sad part is, I'm sure I'll feel bad about this later and reconsider the demotion.

I'm back

I'm back from Cancun. It was really hot when I left so I came back wearing capris and flip-flops and worried that I'd freeze at least the bottom half of my body off. I shouldn't have worried though - it was a balmy 52 when we landed. Ok, that's 30 degrees colder than it was when I left Mexico, but still *really* nice for Denver this time of year. I guess we lucked out and missed all that cold weather that seems to be east of us. I just looked at the forecast and it's supposed to be in the mid to upper 60s this week. That should ease me back into things.

I'll post more about the trip tomorrow or sometime early this week. Tonight, I need to catch up on email and stuff and get some sleep.

Hasta la vista

I'm leaving for Cancun early tomorrow morning, so this will probably be my last post until I get back Sunday night. I'll try to get some nice pictures - I just can't promise any will have me in them. I've gained too much weight in the past couple of months to feel very good about any pictures I've seen of myself lately. Maybe someone will catch my "good" side...

They sent out a letter at work today letting us know that they're "postponing" any 401(k) matching for the foreseeable future. My company had a great match so it's quite a financial blow. There were other things in the letter as well about how we're doing financially. It sounds to me like they're setting the stage for some bigger layoffs if things don't get better in the next couple of months. I'm still feeling fairly secure about my job at this point, but I guess I'll keep my fingers crossed that things don't get any worse.

Craigslist personals

I'm feeling better today. Not 100% yet, but good enough to go into work. When I got in today, I found out that two more people came down with this bug and were out. We're dropping like flies!

I've rediscovered craigslist recently. I seem to end up there whenever I'm looking for something like a job or a new place to live. This time it was housing. Anyhow, I usually just stick to one of those categories and don't really look around in many other places. Probably because I know I'll get sucked in and end up spending money I don't have on something I don't need.

I went over and checked out the personals since they're free and you don't need to fill out a profile or give anyone your credit card to look. I guess you get what you pay for...

Here are a few gems from the Women4Women section. Note that they have sections specifically for "casual encounters" (read: sex), but these were in the relationship section:

anyone wanna come over and help me use this bottle in ways it was never meant to be used? very horny and looking for a beautiful girl to enjoy a night of kinky passion. plz send a recent pic. [included a picture of a girl sitting provocatively in front of what I believe was a beer bottle]

If I wanted a damn Man, I'd sleep with my damn Husband!

That was the whole post, no picture or anything else. WTF?

all i ask is that you be fuckin sexy, then lets talk : )
i get too many bad responses.
thanks hunny.
and yes thats me... send me a few pics, normal ones please. and ill do the same.

Again, her whole post. It also included a picture of a disembodied chest wearing only a bra. And she wonders why she gets "too many bad responses"?!?

Don't even get me started on the Men4Women category. If you ever forget what a penis looks like and want to be reminded, you can find plenty of pictures there. I suppose it's like spam - if people never responded to them, they wouldn't send them. I just wonder what kind of woman sees a post like:

Nice Bang For YOU! - m4w - 53 (Metro Denver)

Let's have some fun, write me back if interested! [followed by a rather hairy penis/torso pic]

...and goes running for the phone?

Oh well, it's cheap entertainment. :)

Quick update

I apologize for leaving everyone hanging on the job thing after my last post. I've been meaning to write about my new job and how I came about getting hired there since it's - at least to me - an interesting story. For now, I'll just say that I started the new job about a month ago, it's going great, and I'm very happy.

Honestly, the nature of the company I'm working for right now has left me in limbo as to how I should approach this blog in the future or whether or not I should do it at all. I've erred on the side of caution by not posting anything for the past month but I feel like I have a better idea now of what will be fine for posting and what wouldn't.

Thank you to everyone who is still hanging in there!