this stony planet

easter confession

2009-04-11T09:47:00.000-07:00

I love Jesus. I don't believe he ever existed, but I love him anyway.

uhhh, thanks?

2009-04-08T20:10:00.000-07:00

The guy who sold me beer at Freddie's today carded me, and when he looked at my I.D.he said "good job!"

What for?

"Well," he says, "I have to check everybody who looks under 27... And I'm pretty sure that was more than 27..."

Maybe 34 is more old-seeming than I realized...?

bus stop

2009-04-08T08:44:00.000-07:00

Remember how I used to post a thousand posts about "dragging myself to the bus everyday?" Well, now I can post all my most important thoughts and feelings from that very bus stop while I wait for the number 14 to come and get me.

Today I'm just noticing the spring air.

de ja books

2009-04-07T14:49:00.000-07:00

Last night I dreamed I was looking at my favorite shelf of books: the unsorted fiction shelf at the Hawthorne Powell's. When people bring books in to sell to Powell's, the books get dumped temporarily on a particular shelf and that's my favorite place to browse.

So I dreamed I was looking at that shelf and came across an anthology of obscure, Eastern European authors. I hadn't actually heard of these authors, but the book looked compelling enough so I bought it.

Today, walking to Freddie's for supplies, I stopped into Powell's to test the dream out for signs of reality. I did not find an anthology of obscure authors (unless you count the collection of PG Wodehouse I picked up for Mera), but I did have a weird experience.

Nearly all the books on the shelf were books I had owned in the past, books I'd read in college or two years ago, books I'd lost or loaned and forgotten or sold to Powell's myself at some point.

It kind of made my head swim a little and I wondered if I should buy some of them back, if I was being given a weird opportunity to reclaim or relive something.

In the end I didn't. But it was something to think about.

haiku

2009-04-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

So maybe I'll start posting lots of short but sweet little blackberry posts now that I've got the technology...

Short but sweet might be a challenge for me but I'll see what I can do. I like challenges... Most of the time...

new toy

2009-04-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

Now that I have a blackberry I can blog while I'm walking the dog and stuff. Do you think the dog will notice?

ok, ok, perhaps i was too hasty

2009-02-16T16:31:00.001-08:00

I just had one of those awkward moments that makes me think the African wasn't mentally ill after all (see previous post). I was walking the dog through the neighborhood and experienced anxiety because there was someone else walking down the sidewalk towards me.

You know how it is when you see someone coming from very far off -- you're too far off to acknowledge each other but you're too close to pretend you can't see each other. What do you do during those many awkward moments as you walk toward each other trying to figure out what to do?

What I did today was 1.) I hoped the dog would do something I could focus on to help me avoid any contact with the stranger coming down the sidewalk -- she didn't. 2.) I glanced at the woman walking towards me then looked away and pretended to be interested in the sound of children playing behind a fence across the street. Then 3.) When we were close enough to interact, I made a grimacy sort of smile and nodded stiffly. All the while I felt anxious.

Why??? Why so much anxiety?

I'd prefer to be more comfortable, to feel easier about just looking at strangers, smiling at them, saying hello. I don't know why there's so much anxiety in these little anonymous interactions. I don't feel quite as smug anymore as I did at the laundromat earlier. I feel bad for the African -- somebody should have warned you buddy. We Americans are *weird*

porcupine? well... yes

2009-02-16T15:17:00.000-08:00

First I'd like to say that a quick audit of my last several posts reveals at least one reference to "dragging" myself to work every day via the bus in almost EVERY FUCKING POST! Sorry, why didn't somebody say something?

In other news, I had the kind of encounter at the laundromat today that probably should have given me pause... but didn't. I had loaded up three washers (one double loader and two quardruple loaders... I know) and had settled myself onto a cold bench next to the breezey double doors to read my Russian sci-fi novel and wait for the washers to finish.

After a few minutes I noticed this guy edging his way subtly into my giant arc of personal space. He was pacing in front of me, each pass bringing him closer. I gave him a once over: middle-aged, black, flannel top, knit hat, mediocre. I looked back at my book.

After a few more passes, I could tell he wanted to say something but I couldn't imagine what. I studiously ignored him. Maybe that's what he wanted.

He finally started talking to me without really addressing me. I looked up and saw him looking at me and talking about how, here in America, people are like porcupines, they send out prickly, poisonous energy, they imagine that everyone is their enemy. He went on and on about this. He said he was from Africa, he kept talking about porcupine-people and didn't stop talking, about how it's confusing when someone behaves like a porcupine because you know you haven't done anything wrong. I just watched him and made faces that were meant to indicate that I was listening and at least mildly sympathetic. He said you should be aware of this procupine energy because it can hurt people. Then he said "food for thought" and turned back to his laundry.

Hm.

I looked back at my book with the growing feeling inside myself that I wanted to chuck a shoe at him. Listen buddy, you think you're the first person to say I'm like a porcupine? HA! I've heard that since I was 5!

Should I feel bad that some mentally ill African isn't getting his social needs met at an American laundromat? Come on, guy! You come from a collectivist culture into the most individualistic culture on the planet (at least that I, in my tiny-American mind, can imagine) and you expect to lecture people at the laundromat into being more friendly? Forget it.

I know I probably should've gotten softer-hearted after he dropped his wisdom on me, but I didn't. I felt some kind of pride-surge. Yes, I am a cold, porcupine American who doesn't smile and laugh with all the strangers at the laundromat. Sure, I talk to people there. When I need to. I politely ask if I can take the cart that stands near the guy folding clothes, I ask the lady on the bench if she minds if I sit next to her. I am a quiet, white woman living in a quiet, white city. I obey and enjoy (at least parts of) the social code I grew up with. What's so bad about that?

Lonely African man? I'm sorry I didn't brighten your day at the laundromat. You're in America now. You're gonna have to learn to meet your social needs in new and exciting ways. You just can't expect so much from strangers.

the devolution of internet expression

2009-02-08T10:27:00.000-08:00

In a word: Facebook.

Here's what life used to look like: I used to wake up around 8:30 or 9, make myself some coffee, and plop myself down at my desk with my feet up and the computer in my lap. First I'd check my sitemeter stats, then surf around some random, fluffy news sites, then I'd catch up with a few of my favorite blogs. And then, usually, I'd throw up a blog post of my own. Something would spark my interest in the fluffy news, or I'd wake up with some weird conundrum stewing in my mind. And I wrote about it. I didn't have to worry about dragging myself to work until the 3:00pm area. I truly lead a life of leisure.

Now here's what life looks like. I wake up around 7:30, drag myself to work by 9 most days (via the bus, which takes about 40 minutes one-way), I work until 5:30 or 6:30 depending on the day, I drag myself back home (via that same effin' bus) and get home around 7ish in the PM. At home I find my wife and my dog and any number of little chores that need attention. And it's winter right now, so it's dark. Maybe I do the dishes, throw some dinner together, drink a beer, drink another beer, drink maybe one or two more. Watch t.v. with the wife. Pass the iPhone back and forth with a game of scrabble on it's tiny little screen. Her mind is numb from work and school, my mind is numb from work and from missing the best part of my day, my morning.

Here's the internet part: I pick up her computer (b/c mine bascially doesn't work anymore) and check my email. Then I navigate directly to... Facebook. Because I can enjoy Facebook even in my mind-numbed state. Why? Because there are pictures! And very brief notes on my "wall." And cute little invitations to be a vampire or join the mafia or whatever. There are memes, just like in the blogosphere. But it's all so much easier. My status report is the most creative thing I write most days. Used to be ten page blog posts that possibly noone bothered to read entirely. Now it's generally one brief sentence, always with the same structure: "Dawn is..."

"Dawn is having a beer and playing scrabble with the wife."

"Dawn is wishing Barack would take off his shirt..."

"Dawn is thinking she caught that cold that's going around! OMG!"

I mean, jesus. This is what it's come to.

But I love my wife and I love my dog and I even love my job, most of the time. My only problem is the timing of everything. If I didn't have to work 40 hours a week, if I could go in to work at noon every day and still get off no later than 6? That would change everything.

But you guys are all probably tired of me whining about the same things over and over. If you were on Facebook you'd be able to get a much more palatable bite of me.

dear Sam

2009-01-22T08:26:00.000-08:00

(*click on Sam to link to the news if you aren't in Portland and don't know what I'm talking about.)

Oh dear. It's been a rough week. First of all, I'd like to start by saying Just Out can suck it. Whatever happened to solidarity, huh? The jerks.

Also I'd like to state for the record that Beau Breedlove is a hot beefy stud and I think every single Oregonian who sees his picture (with that charmingly receding hairline and that square jaw of his) probably gets a little warm feeling inside and things "well, of COURSE he slept with that guy! I'd like to sleep with that guy!" And with a name like Beau Breedlove... I mean, come on. We should all just be glad he's not a porn star. Because he could be.

But seriously Sam. What the fuck were you thinking? If you knew enough to know that they wouldn't believe "your version of the story" (i.e.: that you waited until Beau was legal before you pounded his sweet little behind), then you probably should've realized that waiting until he was 18 wasn't going to make one tiny bit of difference when the whole thing came to light. No, they probably don't believe you. My wife doesn't even believe you. I believe you, but that's hardly going to help.

Lying, of course, was an obvious instinct. I don't blame you. And christ, didn't we learn anything from Monica-gate? There are some questions we just shouldn't be asking and we shouldn't be expecting answers. Even a politician should be able to dip his stick here and there and (providing the receptacle had reached legal majority) John Q. Public should keep his nose out of it.

But we know that what SHOULD be isn't what is. You knew when that hot little stud-let began to oh-so-smoothly put the blast on you that this could only spell disaster. And that's why I believe "your version of the story." Because I feel I can relate. I can imagine the justifications that cruised through your mind as the temptation stood before you in all it's jailbait glory... "if I can just hang on a few more months it'll be mine! ALL MINE!!!"

Oh but even then you must have suspected that waiting wouldn't be enough. And it wasn't. And now you're all holed up at home and everybody's turning their backs on you, pretending to be outraged that you had the audacity to lie about your sex life. Give me a break. I'm sorry it's turning out this way, but I would like to give you a nice hard noogie for being so short-sighted. Though, no noogie from me could possibly compare to the beating you're probably giving yourself right now.

Oh Sam. Oh well.

things i never thought

2009-01-10T09:56:00.000-08:00

Today I find myself with a huge chunk of morning alone-time. Mera is doing a training today downtown and won't be back until after two, so for now it's just me and the dog and a house full of projects. (And coffee and books and computers and the bath tub too... it's not all chores.)

I've been a little depressed with things lately. Mostly my work, which I believe I was chastised for whining about not too long ago by at least one of my sweet, concerned readers. Well what are you gonna do? I'm experiencing a non-lethal malaise because I'm living in a system of drudgery in which you're lucky if you can choose where and how you do your drudging, but the standard terms include drudging 40 hours per week, from 9-ish to 5-ish.

I started reading this book called Growth of the Soil which I mentioned before... I haven't finished reading it yet because it seems I never have time really to read... and I started fantasizing that I was doing my drudging on a tiny farm nestled in some Northern European mountain, drudging with my hands in the dirt, drudging with my animals and building barns and things. I fantasized, but I still drag myself out of the bed every morning and take a TriMet bus downtown to work in an office with no window. At least I have an office.

My big dilemma last time (or the time before last?) was anxiety because I thought my boss was taking a new job and that I'd get stuck being boss. Poor me. Well, that didn't happen, someone else got the job she wanted and things have been settling back down from angsty to depressing. I need to get over it. I had a med change, my doc added Celexa to my Wellbutrin, but it made me grind my teeth and clench all the muscles in my head, neck and shoulders, so I stopped taking it. I don't need new meds anyway, I think I just need an attitude adjustment.

In better news, I've turned corners with Mera that I never thought I'd turn with anybody. Big example: we went down to the bank this week and opened a joint account. We combined our finances. I have always been opposed to this maneuver and have never even considered it with any other partner. Even when I was "married" to CB, we never discussed it at all. But everything is different with Mera. Everything.

The thing is, I make a lot more money than Mera and I decided very early in our relationship that I would do whatever I could to help make things easier for her while she's in grad school. Even before we lived together, I started picking up certain expenses and doing extra chores just to take some of the weight off her. Now that we're in the house together, I've taken on a larger and larger share of things (often to her great consternation) and she's been able to drop from two jobs down to one and work slightly less there as well.

The problem is that I started to identify a little too heavily with the role of the moneybags person who could swoop in and make grand offers. "Let me take you out tonight, baby!" "Let me buy the drinks!" This attitude of being super-flush even started spreading to other people, I found myself picking up the tab for my friend Leo who was unemployed and even her new girlfriend one night (who is NOT unemployed).

I ended up running out of money, dipping into my savings and freaking out a little. All because I got cavalier. I started out trying to help Mera and it turned into something entirely different. So it suddenly seemed like the only solution was to join our money and put us both on even an even footing. It's not MY money anymore, it's our money. It's no longer my role as Miss Moneybags to say "Baby, let me take you out tonight!" Now we'll decide together if we can afford to go out. Now she won't have to swallow her pride and ask for a loan when her tiny paychecks don't stretch far enough -- the money will be right there and it will be OURS, not mine.

When I used to think about joint finances, it seemed like a terrible idea. I can't even remember anymore what my reasons were, I just remember thinking it was out of the question. Now that Mera and I have joined ours... I don't know... it feels like the only right thing. I feel more bound to her than I did when we registered our domestic partnership: more bound and more secure. Seeing both our names on the new checks from the bank gave me a much greater sense of our status as a unit than even the partnership documents from the county.

It's pretty cool.

hibernation

2008-12-26T10:53:00.000-08:00

Today I dug my car out for the first time in about a week and a half. It wasn't so bad really, since it's starting to melt. I drove Mera to work and now I'm back at home, just me and the dog, until it's time to go back and pick Mera up at 3:30.

All this snow intensifies my desire to hibernate. I don't want to drag myself to the bus stop every day and work for 8.5 hours then drag myself back in the cold and the slush. I don't want to the snow to melt, I want it to keep snowing more and more and more. In fact, I don't even want the sun to shine, I want the clouds to blanket the sky so thickly the sun can barely squeak any light through.

All this snow makes me want to go live in Scandanavia. For Christmas, Mera bought me a book by Knut Hamsun called Growth of the Soil. Unfortunately, Knut Hamsun was a Nazi sympathizer, and that makes me sad inside. But he's a fantastic existentialist/pantheistic sort of writer and I really enjoy him a lot. Growth of the Soil is about a man who treks alone through a mountain pass in Norway and settles down to tame the land and make a little nook of comfort for himself well within the arctic circle.

I want to do that. But Mera and the dog can come too. And I'd like to make sure I had plenty of books and a wi-fi signal. I guess I could buy some really fancy satellite receiver for internet...? Or something. That would be pretty awesome.

In an effort to satisfy some small part of that urge to hibernate, I have taken off today and Monday. Add yesterday, which was Christmas, and that's five days off in a row. Bliss. I just wish it was still snowing.

snowed in!

2008-12-20T15:34:00.000-08:00

That's what I'm telling myself, even though I can get through the door and walk down to Freddie's for groceries. But being "snowed in" with the little lady is pretty awesome. It just keeps snowing and snowing and snowing and I know I will be quite depressed when it all melts off and goes away.

For now, though, we're taking advantage of our isolation by setting up shop to make spiced wine and cookies for Christmas presents. And lentil stew for us.

I am in heaven.

updates

2008-12-15T08:38:00.000-08:00

It snowed! Whenever the weather people call for snow here I never believe it will actually snow because I love it so much. Like I'll jynx it. But I didn't jynx it and it snowed most of the day yesterday. We got up, drank our tea and watched it out the windows awhile. Then Mera exhibited uncharacteristic enthusiasm about walking the dog, so we bundled up and took the little beast all the way over to Laurelhurst Park, which was even more gorgeous than usual. I took pictures, but we're having some technical difficulties for some reason with uploading them, so...

And we got a Christmas Tree! We drove up Division on Saturday because Mera saw a sign that said "Trees $15 and up." We found a really sweet, sort of short (5 feet?) kind of tree I wish I could remember the name because it is really precious. the kind where the branches all grow around the trunk in neat rings and it kind of smells like oranges. He told me the name but I forgot.

We are relatively poor right now, so we went and got most of our decorations at the Dollar Tree, including the best decoration I've ever seen: a pair of flat, round, pearly colored hanging dealies with a moose painted on each! A moose! Then we went to Fred Meyer's for everything we couldn't find at the Dollar Tree, inlcuding but not limited to: a tree stand, lights that won't burn the house down and a string of silver garland.

It looks awesome.

Now I'm sitting here at 8:48am Monday morning, wondering how I should get to work today. I called Trimet and they claim the 14 won't run down Hawthorne again for another hour. Should I try to drive...? I don't think so. I guess I'll just sit here and think about it some more.

calling in "gay" = brilliant!

2008-12-10T07:36:00.000-08:00

I swear to god I totally had this idea after the 2004 election! I said to anyone who would listen: "We should have a big, gay strike! All over the country, we should just *not* show up to work one day. Then they'd all see how important we are and how MANY we are! Then maybe they'd stop jerking us around!"

I was pretty riled up about it all. But instead of my big email manifesto that I was going to send to a million people and encourage them to send to a million more people, which was going to then spread on it's own momenutm around the whole country and maybe even the world... instead of all that, I just kinda grumbled and forgot about it. Because, deep down, I guess I'm just lazy.

But after Prop 8 passed in Cali, somebody else got the idea. Somebody with some gumption. And now, today, we're in the midst of the world's first Day Without a Gay! Has such a ring.

Gays and allies are being encouraged to call in "gay" to work today. It's being criticized all over the place for its lame name and for its perhaps foolish encouragment of blowing off work during a recession, but fuck those critics! And fuck that recession! Calling in gay is awesome!

Considering that most of the people I work with, including most of the upper management of my company, are ALL big old gay homosexuals, I think the gesture would be sort of moot. And it might utterly bring down the company. So we're probably all going to be at work today... but in my heart, I'll be calling in gay, and you should too!

kinda sad when you think about it

2008-12-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

Mera and I went down on Friday and registered our domestic partnership. First I figured out how to print out the form on 8 1/2 by 14 inch paper (required technology only available at work). Then we both took off work early Friday so we could go get the form notarized at Kinko's by a guy named Jeff. Mera took many pictures of Jeff with his stamp, Jeff signing the paper, me watching Jeff fill out the paper, and best of all, many pictures of all of us together, Mera's arm straining to reach far enough back with the camera to capture herself as well as the rest of us and the form.

After that we drove over to the Multnomah County building where more pictures were taken of: me opening the door of the building, me opening the door of the office where you register your marriages, domestic partnerships and tax stuff, the sign above the counter that says, among other things, domestic partnership registry, the man behind the inch-thick bullet-proof plexiglass holding up our signed, notarized declaration, and of course, more pictures of me and Mera taken by Mera stretching her arm waaaay out and aiming haphazardly, kissing me on the cheek, then me kissing her on the cheek, then her kissing me on the mouth and I was just, by that point, really uncomfortable having my picture taken so much in public and just ready to get in the car and go.

Saturday morning, as we sat on the couch with our tea, we heard the pitter-patter of little feet on the porch. Mera's brother Fr@nkie had come with her nephews to bring us a bouquet of flowers. I guess they're my nephews now too. And Fr@nkie's my brother-in-law. Anyway, Fr@nkie seemed somewhat scandalized when he asked if I'd called to tell my parents about my nuptials and I looked at him like he was crazy and shook my head. It's complicated.

It's all complicated. I'm just happy to have legal protections. I don't expect anybody in my family to be all that interested. Maybe I sell them short. Maybe they've given me plenty of reasons to sell them short. Maybe I just want to relax and know that Mera and I have some rights as regarding each other, that I can see her in the hospital, that we can make medical decisions for each other. But maybe I don't even feel comfortable with *that* because maybe it turns out I'm still not convinced another ballot initiative won't come along and take it away again.

So it's bittersweet, really.

(don't) talk to strangers

2008-12-03T18:20:00.000-08:00

Last week, walking home from the bus after work, these guys sitting on the sidewalk leaning against the side of Oasis Pizza called me a fuck face. "Yeah, keep walking fuck-face."

I tend to be a literalist. It can be a problem. So I'm immediately hung up on the "fuck-face" -- just... wow. Fuck-face. Who says that? And then there's the "yeah, keep walking" -- it's like some kind of threat/challenge, but... why? I'm walking home. Yes, I will keep walking. Thank you.

And then I just wondered what it was about me, personally, that inspired the "fuck-face." These were dirty street rats -- not kids and not the kind of crazy homeless people I work with. These are the semi-dangerous seeming, seemingly able-bodied adults (typically male) who hang around on Hawthorne vaguely drunk all the time, yelling at each other and being unsavory. I could picture them targetting some guy in a suit or a woman in expensive clothes... I don't know, I can see them going after "the man." But me? Am I "the man?" Maybe it was my cell phone.

I am simply puzzled by it all.

Then there's the guys I walked past last night who were sitting on their stoop drinking beer from bottles. One said "spare a cigarette?" These guys appeared to be sitting on their own apartment stoop, drinking bottled beer, yet trying to bum cigarettes off passers-by.

Now, I don't smoke so maybe I don't truly understand. But as I finished my walk home, I thought of the absurdity of asking for things from strangers. I imagined myself asking people walking past my house "hey, can you spare a candy bar?" "Pardon me, got any hamburgers?" "Excuse me, ma'am. Got five bucks?"

I feel uncomfortable just thinking about asking a stranger to give me something. I can't even imagine feeling the level of entitlement that must exist before I could just walk up to some stranger and ask them to give me something I had a hankering for. I can't begin to imagine.

and the anniversaries pile up

2008-12-02T19:20:00.000-08:00

December 2nd is a day I like to try and write about my brother Isaac who died on this day in 2001. Sometimes I forget. Today I'm remembering because I dreamed about him last night. I realized that I don't dream about him as much anymore and, after 7 years, a lot of my feelings about him are fading.

I don't think my *feelings* are fading, I just mean that something of my felt connection to him is fading. I used to think of him often and I had a strong sense of growing him up in my memory (he was only 20 when he died). In a way, he continued to grow and mature with me as I dragged his ghost through my own growth process.

Now he's dim and I haven't thought about him that way in a long time. He'd be 27, like his twin brother who just visited me in September. I can't picture him at 27, even though I've got a pretty good model in Al-x. I can't imagine what he'd be doing, or thinking. I guess it doesn't matter.

Now when I dream of him, more often than not, he appears as a kid. Usually around 10. Maybe that's the age I remember him inhabiting most clearly. Maybe my heart is more attached to him at that age. Sometimes in the dreams he's not sick, but usually he's sick or he's already dead even though he seems to be present and participating. There's always a time-limit, he's always expiring in one way or another. But the dreams aren't sad, they're usually sort of benign. And it's always nice to see him.

Last night he was sick in the dream. He was young, but Al-x was there and he wasn't, he was as old as he's supposed to be. Isaac was in bed and I knew he would die as though it had already happened a thousand times and nobody talked, everybody seemed heavy, but I felt light because I was aware that I had a tiny window of time with him that I thought I'd lost. Nobody else understood that fact. It was a good dream.

In other news, this is my three year bloggerversary! It feels very appropriate to be back now. :-)

ok nevermind, yay welcome back

2008-11-30T18:56:00.000-08:00

So I tried blogging somewhere else, but I lost steam. The how's and why's are not important, what's important is that I decided to start blogging here again. Here is where I feel most at home.

Today is my one-year anniversary with Mera (once known to this blog as Mahavira, but I'm tired of typing all that out). One year ago today, I was sitting at the Crow Bar sipping a shot of Jaegermeister with a Black Butte Porter back and waiting for the mysterious Mera to appear. It's been a whirlwind ever since.

We're marking the day with... well... basically nothing besides frequent reminders of our mutual love. Mera's in the midst of finals and has spent the bulk of the last several days sitting in her office laboring over papers and research. I've kinda just had the rest of the house to myself. I've done a lot of reading. And cleaning. And bathing. And thinking.

Details of these activities as follows:

I've been reading: Dostoevsky's "The Devils" (also translated as "The Possessed" and "Demons"). Dostoevsky is my homeboy. I've also been reading old copies of the New York Times book review that are kept (ahem) in the bathroom, and the latest edition of the Nation which I got for Mera but which she is too busy to read.

I've been cleaning: mostly dishes every few hours as they accumulate. And I took out the recycling.

I've been bathing: daily. Nice hot bath for at least an hour, just an excuse to read without interruption. No bubbles, in case you were wondering.

I've been thinking: about all sorts of stuff. I started out thinking about all the stressful things in my (mostly work) life and trying to figure out ways to restore some balance. Then I started thinking about how there were all these other, older versions of myself (the young poet, the lazy student, etc) who I kinda liked better than this person I'm becoming now. I was thinking yesterday about how fun my job used to be a couple years ago, when I worked swing shift or weekends (depending how far back we're talking) and I used to dress like a hobo and sit around at the desk playing the guitar and making inappropriate jokes. I was an overachieving slacker back then, intellectually ambitious (aspiring to and then attending law school), but reckless and lazy. It was fun.

Now I'm a manager and I'm afraid I may be on my way to be the top manager at my workplace. And that's a big deal. A big, scary deal. And even if I don't become the top manager (depends whether my boss gets the job she applied for) I'm still a different person: not dressing like a hobo, not sitting around with the guitar at the front desk, not making inappropriate jokes anymore to ANYbody. It's lame.

The lamest thing of all is that I've suddenly realized I'm on this weird track I'm afraid I'll never get off of. I started out with a committment to not living a mainstream life. Not dressing mainstream or shopping mainstream or working mainstream hours. I was a medium-strong anti-consumerist and I lived for a lot of years on a very little income. I worked weird hours and spent lots of time either reading and writing or drinking and playing pin-ball depending on which era we're talking about. Even after I graduated from law school, I couldn't bring myself to enter the ranks of the suit-wearing office people. I kept my easy job and everybody thought I was nuts.

But then all of a sudden out of the blue I take this day job, this managment job, and even though I'm still nowhere near the mainstream (I work in a program where the day's problems range from: person A set her shoes on fire by accident to person Z shat in the elevator to person Q tried to sell heroin to a staff-person she didn't recognize -- my version of "professional dress" involves jeans without holes and Doc Martens, etc, etc) -- I still feel like a sell-out.

Dolly Parton wasn't lying -- 9 to 5, what a way to make a living. It kinda sucks the life out of you. But anyway, it's a dumb thing to complain about. The rest of Dolly's song doesn't apply to me at all. I make decent money right now (way more by far than I've ever made before) and I've got a lot of freedom and I definitely have plenty of opportunity for upward growth. In fact, I feel propelled upward a little too fast at the moment. I just realized today that I can't complain because it's a good job and there have got to be other ways to improve my identity besides lounging around at work and being inappropriate.

I guess the ultimate conflict I have just identified is that I like to be lazy, I require a certain amount of laziness (which includes freedom and time) to be creative, but I don't have time right now to be lazy and I still want to be creative. I want to consume literature, follow the trail of my intellectual interests, write something other than a blog (and I can't even write a blog regularly these days!) -- but I can't do these things the way I used to try to do them. I used to have more time for laziness and thinking. Things could just fall together, inspiration could take me because I often didn't have anywhere else to be. Now I'll have to work harder for it, I guess. I'll have to figure out a way to do it without laziness. Or maybe I can figure out a way to be intentionally lazy...

something new, up and running

2008-11-23T12:46:00.001-08:00

Ok, if you're interested, I've opened up shop somewhere new. partlybroken.blogspot.com

Forgive me if I remain too lazy to type up the html to make that into a link. Maybe someday I'll be able to afford a better computer with a browser that isn't so antiquated.

adios amigos

2008-10-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

Something kinda weird happened recently: a colleage of mine go dooced. He was busted writing a blog about work. In an effort not to get dooced myself, I won't give any details about the circumstances, I'll just say that I was eventually asked to read a print-out of a significant portion of the blog and scrutinize it for breaches of confidentiality and other wrong-doings.

It was awkward to say the least and it made me think long and hard about the nature of blogging and my own experience as a blogger. This poor guy -- who definitely made mistakes, huge errors of judgment, major ethical lapses -- took at least minor pains to disguise his subject matter and I am sure it never in a million years occurred to him that a day would come when several of his colleagues (including bosses and human resources staff) would be sitting down to read copies of what is, essentially, his journal.

Obviously he posted it online and opened himself up to the possibility that other people, including people he knows, might see it. And obviously he got reckless, he didn't work hard enough to disguise people and situations. I'm not saying he's blameless. And less obvious to those who didn't read it, he definitely crossed the line in terms of breaching client *and* staff confidentiality, and he implicated himself regarding certain somewhat inappropriate relationships. He did slimy things....

But I couldn't help but feel embarassed for him as I read through all 34 humiliating pages. I also immediately felt embarassed for myself. He whined in his blog, he was self-important, he was obnoxious, he was petty, he exposed his most pathetic moments, his jealousies, his false hopes and inexplicable expectations. I wondered if my blog had been just as silly and self-involved, just as navel-gazingly awful.

Plenty of people have waxed philosophical on the subject of blogs and blogging, I don't feel compelled or even qualified to try to add anything new to that collection of opinion. I just want to say that I'm quitting for awhile. I've been on my way out for a long time, feeling less and less compelled to write or even pick up the computer. Over the few years I've been doing this, I've seen several bloggers go through the phase of quitting, the end-phase. I like to think I'll come out of it eventually and re-emerge with a tighter focus and more purpose. And I may not stop completely, I may continue to blog occasionally at Swell. At least Swell is *about* something and leaves slightly less room for shallow narcissism.

I have made many wonderful blog friends along the way and I want to thank all of you for reading and commenting and being so funny and interesting and inspiring on your own sites -- I won't name names in case I forget important people, but I'm sure you know who you are (Roro and Joolie, you both get props for being around longest, and of course SK, but you're hardly just a "blog friend" -- sorry to everyone else, I couldn't resist a nod to the old school).

It's funny. It was there from the very beginning, speaking of readers. Early on I started getting nasty comments from a reader-gone-bad named Rufus. He read for a few months then suddenly starting leaving me scathing comments about how shallow and asinine the blog was. I'd always get so ridiculously hurt by those comments, probably because I recognized them to be true. I defended the self-absorbed nature of the blog, I defended the value inherent in sharing our most personal experiences so we can all know each other as humans, fragile and fallible. But it takes a great deal of skill to maintain that openness and integrity in writing, and it is much easier to be lazy and let the blog become a place to vent and whine and, worst of all, write lots and lots of mediocre crap which doesn't really add anything of value to the world.

I guess I'd prefer to take a break until I can guarantee I'm at least trying to do it right.

thank you brad pitt

2008-09-17T18:47:00.002-07:00

For donating $100,000 to fight the anti-gay marriage ballot measure in California. You are a humanitarian and philanthropist, in addition to being hot and overly tabloided. I thank you from the bottom of my gay, engayged heart.

(See previous post for hints as to why I haven't bothered to offer you a link to the news story I just read about this.)

off the map

2008-09-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

Not that I've been posting consistently or anything... but I thought I'd share with you all that my brother is coming tomorrow and I probably won't be on again for eight days. Try to keep the grief and anguish in check, I'm sure you can keep an eye on Sarah Palin all by yourself while I'm gone.

I was thinking recently about writing a "what I did on my summer vacation" blog, but as I thought about it, I realized I haven't done anything. Sure, I took that kayaking trip, but you know about that already. And I moved across town into a lovely house with my girlfriend. I've mentioned that, I'm sure.

One thing I did this summer that I neglected to mention -- and this is a seriously egregious oversight -- I met Roro from Creampuff Revolution. (!!!) I think the biggest reason I didn't mention it is because I knew I'd feel compelled to provide a link if I mentioned her, and I don't know if I've shared this with you yet, but adding links in my archaic and otherwise shitty Safari browser is very complicated and involves cutting and pasting a bunch of html because Safari isn't fully supported by Blogger (or vice versa) and the handy publishing buttons simply don't exist in my world. And it sucks.

Sorry Roro, you do not deserve to be ignored just because I am too lazy to make a link. I lieu of a link in this post, let me please direct readers to the sidebar wherein you will find a preexisting link to Roro's fabulous site, Creampuff Revolution. If I ever spent more than five minutes on the computer anymore, I'm sure I would be reading it and laughing my ass off every day.

Anyway, Roro and her fabulous woman-friend came through Portland and stopped in for a bite of breakfast at my favorite breakfast joint, Gravy. It was lovely to meet her and I will tell you she is just as clever and witty and smart and awesome in person as she appears to be in her blog. My only regret is that EmmyLou wasn't with her, that would have absolutely rounded out the experience. But alas, it was great to meet Roro and Katr, despite the fact that I consistently gave them bad directions. They still somehow made it everywhere they needed to go and as far as I know they don't hate me.

Otherwise I've spent a lot of time sitting on my new front porch with Mahavira, whiling away the evenings and watching the crows in the tree across the street. The rest of the time I'm working. My boss has been on vacation for over a week now and she won't be back till next Monday, which means I've been in charge this whole time. Can I just tell you that it sucks to be in charge? Can I tell you that it's a big program with a lot to track and do? Can I tell you that I'm tired and I want to cry almost every day? Can I tell you that I'm not getting paid extra for all the extra work I'm doing, but whatever. At least I have my health.

Another thing I did this summer was go to a gay wedding. Maybe I wrote about it already? I don't know. As soon as Mahavira sends me the pictures she took I'll post one or two. I looked kinda hot, even though I had a miserable cold. The wedding was, in my opinion, overwrought, but it made me think a lot about the idea of marriage, gay marriage particularly and all the other things that go along with it. At some point after my bother leaves I hope to write a long little rumination on that subject, as my own impending nuptuals draw near.

For now, I need to go pick up the little lady in my new car. Oh that's right! I also got a new car this summer. After flippy-flopping between wanting a Forester, a Toyota Yaris, a Volvo (that was Mahavira's influence), and others, I ended up getting a 2002 Jetta with only 80,000 miles on it. I won't say how much it cost (a sum I believe was quite reasonable) but I will tell you that I ended up with a jaw-droppingly low interest rate: 4.4%. Can't beat that with a stick. Who says the economy's in trouble!?!?

Ok, off to pick up the little lady from work. See you on the other side...

i am so disappointed....

2008-09-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

All I can say is, I'm embarassed this comes as a disappointment and wasn't obvious from the beginning...

palin-watch 2008!!!

2008-09-12T18:26:00.000-07:00

All I can say is wow. I may as well vote for her.

will somebody please tell me what's so bad about intellectualism???

2008-09-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

I just listened to a disturbing little story on NPR about negative campaigning... by McDonald's... to sell coffee. Evidently, McDonald's is now hawking fancy coffee drinks and their new ad campaign features coffeeshop hipsters in Starbucksian settings discovering that McDonald's has fancy coffee and then, woo-hoo, CELEBRATING that they don't have to hang out in awful coffeeshops anymore listening to JAZZ! How terrible! I mean, really! JAZZ!

Someone in the advertising biz then came on and said "Wow, this is very much in the vein of Sarah Palin. She is really having her day!" Someone else then came along and referred to this campaign (and the McCain/Palin campaign) as exploiting the very popular "anti-intellectualism."

Now listen up people of America. I simply cannot tolerate another 8 years of anti-intellectual politics and attitude in this country. Just what the heck is wrong with intelligence? What is so effing terrible about knowing stuff you learned in books? And maybe applying it to real life situations every now and then?? Maybe if George W. Bush had ever bothered reading a book (besides selected exerpts from the Bible and My Pet Goat) we wouldn't be in the global shitter today.

Seriously, Sarah Palin is not a smart lady. I caught some of that Charlie Gibson interview: she's obviously been prepped, and she's not a completely inarticulate oaf like G.W., but she wasn't rockin' the brainswagon. She clearly didn't even understand some of the questions and she kept falling back on a trick I'm sure she was taught: if you're confused or flummoxed, just keep up with the attitude and keep repeating the name of your interviewer in a smart-ass, condescending tone. Underneath all that bravado, however, she was like a deer in headlights...

So what's my point? I don't have one, I'm just pissed to be sitting on the brink of another election where the lowest goddamn common denominator of willful ignorance is going to win out again. Fuck.

In other news, Cracker Jack prizes suck nowadays. The end.

confirmation!

2008-09-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

According to a very good source (one of my coworkers who moved to Portland from Alaska a few months ago), Sarah Palin is "a mean lady." My coworker, who will remain nameless, reports meeting Palin several times while working as a political intern (or something...), and states that Palin "has a chip on her shoulder" and "is super-quick to cut you down with the most sarcastic thing she can think of."

So, I guess she's a shoo-in.

palin = yikes

2008-09-05T11:13:00.001-07:00

Sure, she's pretty. But she looks like the kind of "sassy," entitled woman who wouldn't hesitate to humiliate a salesperson at the mall, or get in somebody's face at a PTA meeting... and not in a good way.

Just my thoughts on the matter... more to come, I'm sure.

sitting alone

2008-08-31T22:09:00.000-07:00

Long weekend in the house. So many projects but not getting much done. Mahavira had to go to a wedding shower Saturday, but she wanted me to be able to do some unpacking in "my room" upstairs, so she told the brides-to-be that I couldn't come along because I had a cold.

This morning I woke up with a cold.

I guess that's the way it works. I had a sore throat and I felt worn out all day. I'd planned on painting the living room today, but Mahavira wouldn't let me because of the fumes. Instead, I huffed and puffed and dragged several crates of books out of the basement and up to my room upstairs. Slowly but surely all the stuff I've had in storage in Mahavira's basement since May is making its way upstairs. I guess pretty soon I'll start taking things back down, like the ebb and flow of tide, all the extra stuff I don't really need up here will end up back down there.

I put out a lot of books today. I just put them up on shelves, I didn't bother to sort or organize them at all. It used to be one of my favorite things, organizing my books. Poetry here, sexual politics here, religion here, novels here. Now I don't care. Or I care in some distant part of myself, I notice everything's all mixed up and it bothers me just a little, but I don't do anything about it, I just keep sticking them up on shelves.

I guess I've moved too much. Evidence that I've moved too much: my mom called me yesterday because she has a package she wants to send me and she wanted to make sure I was still at the same address. In fact, I am *not* at the same address. I figured it out once a few years ago: over my whole life I had moved, on average, once every six months. I stayed at my last apartment for two whole years, which you'd think would stretch my average a little, but then I go and spend only two months living in Mahavira's studio apartment, and that rachets my average down again.

The theory is that I'll live in this house with Mahavira for a very long time. Years and years, maybe for the rest of my life. So that will definitely change my average. And I guess that's partly to blame for my disinterest in setting up my space: I've got plenty of time. No rush. My brother is coming to visit me again in a couple weeks, my only goal is to have the bed put together up there so he'll have a comfortable place to sleep.

Plants are also a priority, now that I live above-ground in a house with windows. My room upstairs has two little windows and two gorgeous skylights. I plan to exploit the light up there by filling the room with plants. So far there are three, but there's time.

Tomorrow I think we're going car shopping. I got approved for a loan and I think we're going to go look at cars tomorrow. I say "think" because I'm not sure if I'll wake up feeling worse or better, and if I feel worse we might just have a total repeat of today. I'm off tomorrow because it's a holiday and I get those off now that I'm salaried. It's weird. Anyway, I've got to get a new car because mine finally died. It pooped out while Mahavira was driving it on Thursday. I felt so bad about it because I insisted she drive my car instead of her truck. I was so sure it was in better shape than the truck, but I was wrong. Now it's parked somewhere off Belmont, I have no idea. Mahavira says it will start, I guess we'll try and go move it eventually.

Really I just feel like staring out the window and not doing anything. Being sick makes me feel lethargic and brain dead. I subscribed to the Sunday Times recently: I tried to read the paper it, but I could't concentrate long enough to finish any stories. Except I forced myself to read all about McCain's VP pick and then I forced myself to try and imagine who those so-called "swing" voters might be. I tried to imagine what kind of jobs they have, where they live, what their friends are like. It baffles me that there are people in this country who honestly don't know whether they prefer Obama or McCain. Seriously. Who are those people? I want to know.

Mahavira went to bed an hour ago. She's got cramps. She's tired. I've mostly been laying around all day and am the opposite of tired. I was trying to read Nausea, by Sartre, but it was boring me so I decided to write. Also, I think the dog has fleas. Other than that, things are good.

newsflash!!!es...

2008-08-20T00:48:00.000-07:00

1.) I don't think I like working 9 to 5.

2.) It's raining! In Portland! In August! WTF?

3.) I love the Sopranos. I'm ten years behind, I guess. Which more or less suits me. I've been watching Season One this week and... well... I don't know what I did before this show entered my life.

4.) My kayaking group is breaking up. Slowly but surely. Dye was the first one to break it off and she won't return my emails begging for the gossip. I blame the Screechy One, she who will not be named at this time...

5.) Mera gave me a ring made of 2,000 year old Roman glass and asked me to marry her. Isn't that sweet? We've been planning to get gay-hitched on our one-year anniversary for awhile and I knew she had the ring for me, she was just waiting for the right moment. The right moment came one night last week during our fighting spree. She said she wanted to give it to me while we were fighting to help us remember how much we love each other during the hard times. Now isn't that sweet?

6.) That's all. :-)

hey, remember me?

2008-08-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the disappearing act, I had no idea I'd go so long without an internet connection at the new house! Lord! It's like I'm in the stone ages over here!

Mahavira and I officially moved into the Hawthorne house two weeks ago and it's finally starting to look like a place where people live. It has taken forever to unpack and begin the settling process. I won't bore you with the details.

When we first got here I felt like I'd won the lottery. I spent two years living in a tiny basement, then I spent two months living with Ginger and Mahavira in a tiny studio over a loud pizza joint, I haven't had a yard or a porch or anything in so long, and suddenly I find myself in a gorgeous, three-bedroom Craftsman bungalow with a fully fenced back yard, a gated front porch and more room than I've had access to in YEARS.

The dog is unbelievably happy. Last night, when we got home from the grocery store, Mahavira cut up a hot-dog into a hundred pieces and chunked it all into the backyard. Ginger spent about an hour out there sniffing them all out. It was awesome.

Every night we sit on the porch and Mahavira smokes cigarettes and we watch a whole murder of crows congregate in a huge weeping willow across the street. Mahavira's friends next door always drop by for a few minutes. Other folks wander by, my friend Leo is becoming a regular. Life has suddenly gotten so much bigger and freer.

What's funny is that Mahavira and I have been fighting a lot more since we moved out of the apartment. Not bad fighting though, if you can believe that. Good fighting. Moving from the apartment into the house was a bigger step than we both realized. In some ways it was really easy for us to crash in the apartment together. The space had limitations and we knew that. It was like a two-month honeymoon, like we'd run away to some European city and shacked up in some cold-water flat, so drunk on our love we didn't care about other comforts.

Now that we're in the house, we're learning new things about each other. New insecurities are coming up and surprising us both. Also, according to Astrology Zone, there was some kind of uber-distressing planetary alingment happening during the first of the month that was going to cause major strife in our closest relationships... and we felt it.

But fighting is part of relationships and I think we fight pretty well. We apologize, we work on our shit, we love each other. It's really good. Tonight we're hanging out with Mahavira's dad. Mahavira is making hummus right now and in a few minutes we're walking over to Pastaworks on Hawthorne to get the stuff for antipasti: fancy cheeses, salami, heirloom tomatoes, basil and mozzarella. Making good food is our new project, now that we're in the Hawthorne house.

Life is really good here.

how life changes

2008-07-23T23:39:00.000-07:00

I was just thinking today about the slow but dramatic way life changes. It can sometimes be so subtle -- for example, I was talking today about SK (SK -- I was talking to the boss-lady, discussing your upcoming return to the states), and I had to stop and try to remember why I haven't been chatting with her on Skype anymore. I thought and thought and then realized that my work schedule changed back in March and suddenly we weren't online at the same time anymore. She's in London and the time zones are all weird, etc, etc, -- and I realized it's been *months* now since we've talked, and we used to talk every day!

In property law we learned about accretion and avulsion: the two ways that rivers change course. This matters in property law only when a property's boundaries are described in the deed in terms of the river. If the river creates one of the boundary lines on your property, what do you if the river changes course? Does your boundary line change with the river? That's where accretion and avulsion come in: if the river changes course slowly over a very long period of time, in other words, by accrection, then your property line changes with the river. However, if the river changes course suddenly and dramatically, like through an earthquake or flood (avulsion) then your property line remains in roughly the same place as the river used to be.

Not that property law matters, but life changes course in a similar fashion. Some changes occur slowly over time and some occur rapidly, almost violently.

I talked to my grandmother yesterday and it depressed me. I love her very much, I have been very close to her in my life, and she's quite old now. She just turned 90 this month. She didn't sound so good yesterday, she sounded all croaky and tired. My uncle, her son, who lives across the street from her and drives her to doctor's appointments and helps when things break or when the lawn needs mowed, is suddenly dying of lung cancer. She doesn't really know he's dying because nobody has told her the truth of how bad it is, but somewhere inside her she knows. She buried a husband, a grandson, two sisters, all her brothers, her parents, countless aunts, uncles, cousins, and now she looks forward to burying a son?

I imagine she's depressed. Talking to her depresses me. She tells me my dad is waiting to hear from me and I end up having dreams all night last night about my family. Strange dreams, not the kind I usually have about them. I dreamed I was at my own wedding, but I wasn't actually marrying anyone. My family was "throwing" me a wedding, in some big old Baptist church in the south, full of straight, white people all groomed appropriately, standing in this church watching some esoteric ceremony that was supposed to be for me. I was in the back, wearing my usual scrappy clothes, sporting my new tattoo, with my short hair. People were ignoring me, or criticizing my clothes. Everyone was judging me. And it was supposed to be *my* wedding! I felt naked and unwelcome.

I was telling Mahavira about this dream and then started telling her about some realities and realized the dream isn't that much worse than reality. It's so complicated. Families are complicated, being queer is complicated, being a *human* is complicated. Complicated and painful but also precious and amazing too. I guess I'm just having a lot of feelings about things right now. I go through long phases of keeping my head down and moving forward, then suddenly I'm stopped in my tracks and forced to look back at how far I've come and how much I've failed to notice along the way. Then I have to go through the process of having all the feelings I forgot to have, then I put my head back down and off I go again.

I guess that's the way life works. Maybe when we die it will all make more sense.

jealous????

2008-07-20T17:49:00.001-07:00

Check out my new hot boots! Mahavira and I spent a grand total of nearly $600 today on boots, shoes, one jacket and sushi. We went... kinda crazy. But these boots will last a lifetime, they're Fryes.

and now for... the REST of the story!

2008-07-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

**Yes, both my blogs have the same title today. Happy coincidence.**

While it is true that the five day kayaking trip was fun, I have to admit that there were significant portions of the experience that sucked.

I predicted, actually, that there would be conflict on this trip the likes of which our group had not yet seen. It was palpable the night before trip when we met at J's to load up the boats and gear so we could get a smooth start early the next morning. There was just something in the air, some tension, some snappishness.

I was standing off to the side watching the proceedings when my current favorite kayaking friend, Holly, came over to say hi. I made my prediction then that there would be major conflict on this trip. Holly's girlfriend Reg joined our little huddle and we all put bets on how long it would take for the conflict to erupt and who the major players would be.

Turns out none of us had it all right, but the basic idea was totally on target. K.O., the so-called "activities coordinator" of the group, became increasingly bossy and shrill as the trip wore on. There's no point in recreating all the annoying moments for you. Suffice it to say, most of us got really tired of being screamed at on the water for five days. Screaming at your adult friends is really unacceptable. You will find yourself alienated, and fast.

It wasn't just her, though. By the end of it, I was annoyed with almost every one of the women on the trip and I could not WAIT to get off the water and away from them. A few made it out unscathed. But the rest...?

So I think I'm ready to take a break from my kayaking group. The real hint from the universe came yesterday when my little pewter kayak fell off my keychain. The kayak was a gift from a member of the group to everyone and I immediately put it on my work keychain so I could always think of the good times while I was slaving away at my job. Yesterday I reached into my pocket to pull out my keys, and the little kayak fell off and clanged on the ground. I took that as a sign that it's time to take a break from my group.

I have loved those women like family, and I'm sure it isn't totally over, I just need some space. Maybe I can find some new friends who like to kayak...

there was more to the trip than that

2008-07-09T21:22:00.000-07:00

(Please note, I did not take this picture and that's a canoe, not a kayak you can see in the foreground, but this is a great example of what most of the trip looked like.)

I know I made the capsize sound totally dramatic and intense, and it was definitely intense in the moment. I had some major panic moments, especially in the very beginning when my hand kept slipping off the bottom of my boat and I couldn't catch my breath. But once I was standing on my feet with all my friends around me, the feeling of drama quickly passed.

I'm actually glad I capsized. It was a major learning experience. True: it's highly unlikley you'll capsize on the average, flat-water paddling adventure. But there are always those unpredictable little events that can take you by surprise. Now that I've done it, I'm not scared of it anymore. I know my life jacket will keep my head above water, I know I'll eventually manage to get to safety, I know I won't die from panic. Now I can use that experience to help make better choices about packing up my stuff (everything goes in dry-bags from now on) and outfitting myself (NO MORE COTTON! It takes forever to dry...).

I spent about 30 minutes recouperating on the rocky island before we loaded my boat back up and hit the water again. I definitely felt weird for a little while, but it passed pretty quickly and before I knew it we were making time down the Willamette. I think the first day was the most eventful. First, I capsized. Then I saw a dead guinea pig floating in the river. That was weird. Then we stopped in a tiny little town (Harrisburg?) and walked up from the waterfront park, past a Liquor and Antiques store to a mini-mart where we bought snacks and beer. Beer was an especially welcome treat that day.

Then we found this crazy place to camp. We had a vague outline of the spots we might try to camp, but we always knew we could pick and choose as we got to the end of each day. There are so many options along the river, not necessarily established campgrounds, just nice spots on publicly owned land. That first night we found this really strange spot that was already outfitted with a fire pit, a couple of tables, the metal framework for a gazebo and a bunch of firewood. The highlight of night one was catching one of the tables on fire. Twice. But that's a long story.

The rest of the trip got progressively harder. Waking up every day after a shitty night's sleep on the ground (despite two thermarests and a cozy sleeping bag) and hopping right back in the boat for 25-30 miles of paddling took its toll. Not to mention, the conditions got worse the further we went. The last couple of days of the trip were plagued by brutal headwinds. A headwind to a kayaker is like a really steep hill to a cyclist. You have to pump twice as hard to go half as fast and if you stop paddling for a second you get blown backwards. It sucks.

Despite the difficulties and the building exhaustion, the trip was really, really incredible. We made some very memorable stops along the way. We stopped on the fourth of July in Corvallis, which was right in the middle of a big Fourth festival, and wandered into town for a drink. My favorite kayaker of the moment, Holly, had been fantasizing all day about a martini and I'd been fantasizing about tequila shots, so you can imagine how bummed we were when we walked into the first open bar we found and realized they only served beer and wine. The rest of the crew were happy with that, but Holly and I put our heads together and decided to run off by ourselves to another bar down the street for our liquor fix.

And what a fix it was! It was happy hour, so our drinks were only $2.25 a piece. The bartender had to tell us four times that $4.50 was for BOTH drinks, not for each. It was such a good deal we each got two and then wandered back down to the other bar to help our friends kill a couple of pitchers of really good beer. Needless to say, by the time we left bar number two and headed down to Safeway for some more supplies, Holly and I were lit up like a couple of christmas trees and behaving just this side of embarrassing. It was really awesome.

The next day we stopped in Independence and ate the best food you could ever imagine. There's something really cool about paddling your boat for 4 hours, then pulling up at some landing in some small town and wandering up among all the normal people, carrying your life vest and your paddle so they don't get stolen off your boat. Everybody wants to know where you've been and where you're going and everybody is impressed with the dimensions of your journey.

It's also pretty amazing to be able to come off the water and walk into a restaurant and order a huge meal and eat every last scrap of it because your body is DYING for more calories because you're working so hard. That feels pretty good. I ate an entire half-pound hamburger at that restaurant in Independence and it was the best hamburger I've ever eaten in my life. I felt like Popeye eating a can of spinach, like my whole body was rejuvinating and my muscles were bulging with every bite.

Our stops in little towns were fun, but the bulk of the trip was obviously spent on the water paddling. For the most part it was a gorgeous paddle. We saw, as usual, tons and tons of birds. So many herons and osprey they almost got boring. We also saw several bald eagles, which are so stunning and relatively rare they could never get boring. We saw farm animals as well, a little herd of sheep grazing near the bank, and two big fat black cows laying right down by the water like two old ladies enjoying the evening together. They were the best. We also saw a deer or two and a nutria sitting on the riverbank. A nutria is a like a beaver with a rat-like tail rather than a flat beaver tail. That nutria was huge.

Of course, the most titillating thing I saw on the trip (as I mentioned on my other blog) was the people having sex. That was funny and unexpected. We were drifting down this quiet back channel past a private island when they slowly came into view. Actually, they were never totally in view, most of the action was obscured by a couple of lawn chairs, but I could see and hear enough to know what was going on. Good for them!

By the end of the trip, I was spent. I lagged far behind the crowd during the last two days and felt sore and exhausted. My arms were practically numb from the constant paddling and my back was killing me from sitting for so long in the same position. One-hundred-twenty miles is a long way to go in a kayak on a slow moving river. It was a challenge and I'm still wiped out, but I'm so glad I went and I'm already making plans for the next trip. It feels really good to take something like that on and see it through. Not to mention I've come home with a fabulous tan and muscles I didn't have before. That's got to count for something.

back, burnt and worn out

2008-07-08T17:28:00.000-07:00

Howdy peoples. Did you miss me? Probably not, considering how spotty my posting's been lately. You probably wouldn't have even known I was gone if I hadn't told you...

It was a pretty crazy adventure. One-hundred-twenty river miles in five days. The cumulative wear on the body was something I hadn't counted on. Each day, more tired, more sore. Each day, less enthusiastic. After five days on the water, several hours (8-ish) per day, I *still* feel like I'm moving, rocking slightly, forward and back, like everything in my periphery is sliding slowly past me. I'm getting a little seasick sitting still...

I capsized within an hour of getting on the water at the very start of the trip. We put in on the McKenzie just north of Eugene. The water was moving really fast and we knew it would dump us pretty quickly into the Willamette, which was our goal. We hadn't moved but about three miles when we hit a crazy mish-mash of intersecting waterways. A tributary was pouring into the McKenzie, which was also at that point splitting around an island. We tried to cut hard right and take the easier channel around the island, but we realized the danger too late to fight the current and we all ended up being swept backward into the swirling chop on the left.

At first it seemed fun and I laughed at our helplessness and sheer "WEEEEEEE!!!" factor of being zipped around so fast. I'm used to slow currents and meandering paddles, so this seemed exciting at first. We were all whipped this way and that by a million different eddies. I worked hard to get myself turned around and moving forward, a feat I accomplished just in time to see one of my compatriots being dragged viciously under a low hanging tree by the intense current.

She ducked and the tree raked over her head violently. It looked awful and I knew I was on the same path so I started negotiating my own approach. My plan was to reach up and grab the biggest branch, which I hoped to use to steer me slightly left of the snag. Unfortunately, a split second before I reached the tree, another eddy slammed into me and drove me with incredible force forward into the tree. The extra power ruined my plan and instead of steering myself around the snag I ended up spinning myself out of my boat.

I have flashes of awareness during the spill. My first thought, underwater and upside down, was "wow, so this is what it's like to flip." Then I briefly imagined reaching up to pull off my spray skirt, like I've seen in my kayaking safety videos, but of course I hadn't put on my spray skirt so I had nothing to pull off. Instead, I fell right out of the boat and started for the surface without any effort on my own part, almost as if the hand of god had reached down and grabbed me.

The second thought I had was "I hope there isn't a boat on top of me" as I started to surface. I was so relieved when my head popped out of the water and didn't slam into my upside down boat. Then there was a nice long stretch of time without thoughts. I couldn't breathe, I was choking and wheezing and my breath was hitching in my throat like when you sob and can't catch your breath.

In retrospect, I realize the water was so cold I couldn't draw air in at first. At the time, I wasn't really aware of the cold. I started to panic. I couldn't get a good grip on my boat and in my panic I tried to flip it over to either climb in it or to expose the deck rigging which I could have at least gotten my hands around. Unfortunately, I had a heavy cooler strapped on top of my boat, which caused my boat to keep spinning and to wind up back upside down.

My hands kept slipping off the bottom of my boat and I was totally freaking out. But then I became aware of all my friends in their boats nearby telling me I'd be ok, telling me to relax and breathe, telling me they were going to get me out, telling me I was fine. And you know, if you'd told me before I capsized that they'd react that way, I would have predicted that their reassurances would just get on my nerves. However, in reality, it was so helpful. Once I was able to hear them, I made myself relax a little and then I realized that my life vest was keeping my head above water, even though my grip on my boat wasn't strong, and I slowly started to realize I'd be ok.

It felt like a hundred hours, but pretty soon I drifted down towards an island and my feet started touching bottom. In minutes, I was standing on dry ground gathering my wits while my friends dumped the water out of my boat and tried to dry out my stuff. Miraculously I didn't lose anything, except one handkerchief and a couple bungee cords. My new perscription sunglasses stayed firmly attached to my face throughout. My hat fell off, but Kara spotted it and directed Dynette to grab it. My water bottle floated past me, but Maia grabbed it. Somehow or another I never let go of my paddle. And, last but not least, my bottle of Flonase found its way out of my pocket and tried to drift away, but I managed to grab it.

So I hit the shore with my paddle in one hand and a bottle of flonase in the other. And I think I was also a little bit in shock... but.... whatever...

Anyway, I'll tell you all about the rest of the trip tomorrow. Now I have to go drink beer and eat pizza with my girlfriend who missed me a lot...

More later...

gone daddy gone

2008-07-02T19:01:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to let you all know I'll be gone starting tomorrow morning until late Monday night. Nothing special really, just going on a five day kayak trip down the Willamette River from Eugene all the way to Portland. :-)

It's gonna be so awesome but I'm sure I'll miss Mahavira a LOT and I'll be very happy to come back to town.

See you next week.

feels like a lifetime... in a GOOD way

2008-06-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

Today is my and Mahavira's seven month anniversary. Seven short months ago we met up for drinks at the Crow Bar and we may as well have met down at the Church of Elvis and just tied the knot that night because that's what it's been like from day one.

I was just sitting here in the apartment alone, getting ready to go meet Mahavira downstairs for a drink after her very last swing shift at her second job (which she is quitting to work more hours at her first job), and I was thinking what a miracle it all is.

I mean, look at this apartment. It's TINY!! The only door that closes is the door to the bathroom -- otherwise, it's just an open space, a studio. The bed is in the middle of the living room, the kitchen is one foot away from the couch, there's no space for ANYTHING. And yet here we are, cohabitating in peace and happiness like we live in a mansion. We even have a DOG in here! A regular sized dog, not a little guy! It's a miracle. "A true blue spectacle," as SK would say...

Anyway, that's all. Happy anniversary M. Looking forward to many more.

book love

2008-06-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

A post over on SK's new(ish) site not waving but drowning has me thinking about the way some books read in childhood can really shape who you become. SK mentions a book I have not read, Phantom Tollbooth. Mine, without a doubt, would have to be My Side of the Mountain.

Subtitled "The classic story of wilderness survival," how could I go wrong? This is a story about a young boy who makes good on a promise to run away from home. He sets off to live alone on a tract of land in the Catskills (I think) that belongs to his uncle. He hollows out an enormous rotton tree to live in, he makes fishhooks from twigs, he captures a falcon and trains it. And the book includes diagrams of *everything*!

I loved this book so much. Next to my stepfather's boy scout handbook, this book sparked incredible fantasies of living alone in the wilderness. Before I even understood that there WAS a grid, I wanted to live OFF it. Not that I'm living off the grid now that I'm an adult and capable, but the longing to be alone in nature is still strong and images of the wilderness still comfort me and inform some of my most spiritual feelings.

Thanks for getting me thinking about this SK. And good luck with your recovery! Keep me updated on the progress as mango shrinks down to nothing!

this day was weird

2008-06-25T22:37:00.000-07:00

1.) My boss started our first private conversation of the day like this: "I have a major piss off with you." I think that was her flustered, angry way of pulling a punch that otherwise would've sounded like this: "I'm really pissed off at you." Her "major piss off" was not actually with me, it was with several different people and situations that weren't handy to yell at. I, however, was very handy to yell at and there you have it.

It could have been a lot worse, she was apologizing within two minutes, but not without rattling me for about two hours. I'm a delicate flower! Not to mention I'm a good worker who wants to do things right! The small part I played in her "major piss off" was only a result of my ignorance and not any kind of willful negligence. (How was I supposed to know there was a big paperwork rigamarole that had to be activated when a staff person came into contact with a client's blood??? Nobody ever told me that!)

My point is, I don't need to be shaken-up to get me to take something seriously. I only need to be told. Once. I *want* to do a good job, venting your frustration at me isn't required. I'm not insubordinate, I was just uneducated. This wouldn't be so annoying if my boss wasn't so utterly dependent on me for so many things. I'm her rock when she needs help with EVERYTHING. Getting yelled at by her is just lame.

But whatever, there's more...

2.) We got strong-armed by the cops because we have a confidentiality policy at work that extends to the police. If the cops come asking questions about our clients, we can't answer unless they have a warrant. Last week we had a situation at work that involved cops and a client, and we were sadly unable to provide the cops with any info. They came back today to press their case. I felt like I was being shaken down by some mafia tough guys. They likened our behavior to creating a "safe-haven" for our clients who can go out and commit crimes in the community then run back into our building and be protected by staff.

They actually hinted that if we didn't cooperate with them, they might not be so quick to respond to our calls when we need them. When we encouraged them to have their boss call our Quality Management people (who have a lawyer who tells us our legal responsibilities to our clients), the cops had the nerve to say "we want to keep it on this level, it only gets worse when you go to the high-ups." And at one point they said, "Look, if you need a warrant, we can get a warrant... but it's not good for anybody if we go that route..."

Really?? It's not good if we go the route that protects people's constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure? It's not right to make you do your job? What those cops were doing was so unethical and disgusting I wanted to scream, but instead my boss and I just stood there together, smiling and making nice with them so they'll keep showing up when we call them. Fuckers.

3.) On the bus home, I was really disturbed by the behavior of a young asshole sitting near me. He was 16ish and he got on with a bunch of his friends. He was obviously the comedian of the group, and he proceeded to make loud, obnoxious, offensive commentary about everything within his sight. I already have a low tolerance for loud, young people on the bus, but this kid was particularly awful. I don't care who you are, if "bitch" comes out of your mouth more than four times a minute, somebody needs to smack you in the face.

At one point he noticed a jogger out the window of the bus. Ironically, the jogger was my friend Mog. She jogged along side the bus, which happened to be pacing her in the slow traffic. The little fucker on the bus kept saying "run, bitch, run." Over and over. Finally, as the bus stopped and Mog ran by us again, the little fucker jumped up and opened the back door and yelled it again, loud, AT HER. "RUN BITCH RUN!"

Why is this ok? Why doesn't the bus driver throw his stupid ass off the bus? Why don't adults on the bus stand up to him, tell him his behavior isn't acceptable? Why do I have to sit there, turning my head away, hoping the little asshole doesn't decide to start up a commentary on ME next. Wouldn't be the first time I had to listen to some bullshit from some asshole sparked by my queerness, my gender ambiguity, my whatever. Where's the structure? Where's the fucking culture? Where's the community? Where's my fucking bear-mace?

4.) I was driving up Interstate after picking up some new allergy meds at Kaiser and I passed a new coffeeshop on Interstate and Shaver. A new coffeeshop named "Krakow."

What the fuck.

Krakow? "Hey guys, let's go grab a cup a joe down at Krakow!" I know there's probably a lot more to the Polish town of Krakow than its horrible holocaust legacy, but fuck! Name your coffeeshop Krakow??? What were you thinking??

That's all I've got.

wild, wild life

2008-06-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

Mahavira and I have been having quite the wild and crazy weekend. It all started Friday evening when we retired to the bench outside of Mississippi Pizza after work to enjoy a pitcher of Miller High Life (the Champagne of Beers) and the pleasure of each other's company.

Unfortunately, Mahavira was suffering bravely with a spasming psoas muscle and it eventually got the best of her. She'd been trying to pretend that it wasn't so bad, but after sitting out on the bench for 15 minutes, she couldn't pretend anymore. "Honey, I've gotta go in and lay down. This is killing me." We'd barely put a dent in the beer we were drinking and I was fumbling with the glasses as Mahavira tried to stand up.

She was shaky on her feet. She stood stiffly by the bench while I poured beer back into the pitcher and gathered up my jacket and her day bag. Suddenly she started to stumble a little and caught herself on the concrete wall behind the bench. The dog whined and I put my hand out to touch her back and check in with her. I knew she was in pain, but I had no idea how bad it really was.

Until she fainted.

It happened really fast and at first I thought she was just being dramatic. She crumbled into a little ball and ended up on the sidewalk in the fetal position. If I hadn't been standing behind her, she probably would've cracked her head on the concrete. I realized immediately that she hadn't just given up on staying verticle. Her eyes were closed and she didn't answer me. She was out for about ten seconds... which doesn't sound like much, but which feels like a fucking lifetime when you're wondering if your girlfriend is having a seizure or a stroke or a heart attack...

After those immeasurably long moments, her eyes flew open and she looked wildly all around her, terrified. I helped sit her up on some nearby steps and told her we were going to Kaiser. Then I ran off to dump the dog in the house, grab my bag and bring the car around. In the five minutes I was gone, Mahavira sat on the steps downstairs and tried to figure out how to stop me from taking her to the hospital.

Long, long, long story short, I got her in the car and all the way to the parking lot of the Kaiser Emergency Department, but she successfully convinced me that she did not need medical attention: she had heat exhaustion, pain, no food in her stomach, etc, etc, etc. She'd just fainted. She was fine. Etc, etc. So we came home and I've spent the weekend nursing her.

Once I got past the paralyzing fear that she was seriously ill, I have greatly enjoyed spending the weekend just hanging out in the apartment and taking care of my girlfriend. I cooked her great meals, made her tea, helped her get a bath, and just generally kept her company. She keeps telling me I should get out into the world, take a few hours to do something nice for myself, whatever, but I just haven't wanted to leave her.

And the best part is that, even though we've been in this tiny apartment together for nearly 48 hours straight, we're not getting on each other's nerves at all! It's kind of amazing. True love is a beautiful thing.

whoop-de-doo

2008-06-16T18:19:00.000-07:00

I guess a bunch of old gays got married in California today. If you'd told me ten years ago that this day would come and I wouldn't be all that excited, I would've thought you were crazy. But... you know... ho hum.

I read the little Yahoo headline about Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon getting hitched after 50+ years of togetherness... and good for them. Good for all those lucky gays who have gotten or will get hitched in California over the next few weeks. And good for US here in Oregon where we can get civilly united or domestically partnered or whatever it is we can do now.

I just think... well, two things. First I think "It's about fucking time and how about the rest of the country??" And I also think "...and for how long? Which ballot measure/constitutional amendment/unfavorable judicial opinion will come along and wipe this one out too?" Because the voters giveth and the voters taketh away. Or the firebrand, radical politicians giveth and the voters taketh away. Or the voters giveth and the conservative judicary taketh away. Whatever.

I think I was just too damaged by the 2004 elections. I watched this country re-elect Mr. Monkey Face and ban same sex marriage in a dozen states. I watched MYSELF and MY WIFE become public enemy number one, the same-sex couple who was threatening to ruin the fabric of western society and single-handedly demolish the totality of Judeo Christian values just by attempting to become legally responsible for each other's welfare. God forbid. God forbid we buy a truck together. God forbid we get a joint insurance policy. God forbid we take out a mortgage together. I can feel the foundations of American culture shaking beneath my feet just thinking about it.

So here we are four years later and suddenly we've got gay marriage in one more state and a black candidate for president and I just can't get my enthusiasm up to save my life. I want to buy an Obama "HOPE" sticker, I want to wear a button or a t-shirt or something. But the thought that he might NOT win... that he probably WON'T win... that we might still be just as stupid and short-sighted as we were four (and/or eight) years ago...

Maybe it's PTSD. I just can't let myself feel hopeful. And I'm too anxious to be excited for the gays in California. If they're still married in twelve months (and if we have a black president), THEN maybe I'll celebrate...

i live at mississippi pizza

2008-06-02T19:10:00.000-07:00

While I don't actually live INSIDE Mississippi Pizza, I do live ON TOP OF Mississippi Pizza, now that my move into Mahavira's apartment is complete, and it often feels like we are very close to the action indeed. There's live music downstairs pretty much every night of the week, which is less of a noise problem than you might think. The worst thing about it is all the goddamn pizza I eat. Just because it's there. And it's cheap. And it's so so easy.

It's actually kinda cool living on top of one of North Portland's most happenin' spots. By "most happenin'" I definitely don't mean "coolest." But there really is a lot happening down there. Most afternoons the place is awash in children, and their comfortably dressed, Portland yuppie parents, baby-dancing to the music and crying about pizza. Then, in the evenings, the other crowd of slightly younger Portland yuppies rolls in for whatever bluesy, folksy, mambo band happens to be on the roster.

I never, ever, EVER bother to check out the music, even though some of it might be good. Living on top of the place, and essentially treating it like my living room, gives me license to be 'cooler than thou' in regard to all the entertainment happening down there. Mahavira and I pop down there almost every night with the dog to sit at the picnic tables out front and drink cheap beer. The dog gets molested/adored by all the passers by and Mahavira and I sorta just tolerate the crowd of people on our "front porch."

This crowd includes several frequent flyer pan-handlers. First there's the one-legged lady in the wheelchair, she always wants change and isn't ashamed to tell you she's either going to buy beer or pot with it. Every now and then she wants a bus ticket. Then there's this other guy who usually just wants a cigarette. Then, finally, there's the singing-flower-guy who claims to be raising money for some men's shelter I've never heard of (and believe me, if it existed in Portland, I would have heard of it) -- he walks around selling handfuls of gorgeous flowers he has very obviously just stolen from people's yards, and he once sang a duet of "Suddenly" by Lionel Richie with Mahavira whose love of that song far surpasses her ability to sing it. He actually told her to sing quieter and let him finish... she pretended not to notice. And that is why I love her.

If you're wondering how I feel about losing my little apartment on the other side of MLK, I'll tell you: I feel fine about it. I finished up the move on Saturday and I feel a tremendous relief now that I'm not stretched between two places. About two weeks into my relationship with Mahavira it became clear that we would have to live together, there was just no way around it. And now, here we are, and even though we're in a tiny little spot, we're exactly where we're supposed to be and we're pretty happy about it all.

My love for Mahavira, and the dog of course, aside, it's also just really nice to be above-ground for a change. It's nice to have light coming in the windows, to have warmth, to have plants all over. It's also nice not to have rent. For some reason Mahavira is refusing to let me help with this month's rent. I do not understand her reasons, but I have come to accept it. Instead of paying rent -- and Mahavira doesn't know this yet -- I'm going to go down to Atlas Tattoo and pay the equivalent of my half of the rent to get her some store credit. She's been wanting a new tattoo and says she can't afford it right now. We'll see about that...

we're that kind of couple...

2008-05-27T00:27:00.001-07:00

deep thoughts... maybe too deep...

2008-05-27T00:06:00.000-07:00

Me -- "She was talking about Hindu prayers and chants, specifically about 'Om' -- which is maybe the only thing I believe in. You know, because 'Om' is the sacred sound of creation -- which makes sense, right, because it's like the big bang. I mean, the big bang had to make a noise right? The sacred sound of creation. Om."

Mahavira -- "Uh... I really just need to focus on grad school right now."

rains:pours

2008-05-18T22:52:00.001-07:00

Isn't it just typical that my posting slows to a crawl for months, then I post three things in the space of a couple of hours?

Anyway, check out this craziness. Some programmers somewhere created some kind of rudimentary artificial intelligence in a Second Life robot named Edd.

Bizarre.

my weekend adventure

2008-05-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Let me begin by explaining that the photos in this post will be completely random and interspersed throughout the story of the weekend. There will be no explanation other than this: these photos are pretty and were taken during our paddle today on the Salmon River. Enjoy the photos and the thrilling story I will weave in between them.

This weekend was "Reach the Beach" -- which is when crazy people (like some of my kayaking friends) hop on bicycles and ride all the way from Portland to Pacific City, which is about 100 miles away and through some mountains. My kayaking friends decided this would be the perfect opportunity to blend cycling (for some) and kayaking (for all). My job was to learn to drive a stick shift so I could take some of the boats and a bike rack down on Kara's truck. I said "OK!"

The drive down on Saturday went pretty well considering I've only driven a stick shift three times. The only hitch was when I backed into a brand new, shiny red, convertible Mustang in a K-Mart parking lot in Tualatin. The parking lot was practically empty and this jack-hole decided to tuck his tiny little sportscar right up behind my big, giant truck when he could've chosen five-hundred other spaces, all in the five minutes it took me to run into the store to pee. It only left a little scratch on his bumper, but I left a note anyway and we'll see if he calls and makes me pay for it.

The rest of the drive was fine and we ended up safe and happy in Neskowin where Wendy's brother has a gorgeous beach house which we were lucky enough to use. We settled everything in and headed off to Pacific City (not so far away) to wait for the cyclists to cross the finish line. It was a crazy big party, but serendipity has it's way and in all that huge crowd, we ended up sitting right in front of two of Mahavira's closest friends. Big party, small world.

After the cyclists arrived and drank beer and rested, we headed back to the beach house to make a big dinner and celebrate Dye's fortieth birthday. The ladies also engaged in a "make your favorite cocktail" party, but I stuck to beer just to make sure I didn't over do it. Cocktails have a way of sneaking up on me, and I didn't really want to wind up hungover during the big paddle. Beer makes me feel heavy and bloated, which works as a self-regulator on my intake. It's rare that I drink too much beer in one night, I'm usually only in danger when liquor is involved...

Because I was responsible, I was bright eyed and bushy tailed by the time we hit the water this morning. It was so fucking gorgeous, I can't even tell you. Hopefully the pictures capture at least a little of the magic. We paddled the mouth of the Salmon River, which dumps right into the ocean. We weren't really in the right kind of boats for surf riding, but we did paddle out towards the sea out of sheer curiosity. We even saw seals in the bay, which was awesome. They popped their cute little heads out of the water here and there to check us out. Oh, right, and we also saw a naked photo shoot (see previous post). That was unexpected. And pleasant. :-)

It all passed so fast and before I even knew what was happening we were heading back to Portland. A few of us stopped off at Spirit Mountain on the way home, just for the heck of it. My brief but harrowing trip to Vegas definitely killed any interest I ever had in casinos, but I did have fun watching my friends pop dollars into the slots. Holly kept winning six bucks here and four bucks there, all on dollar bets. In the end I think she left with a fourteen dollar profit, which is way more than I can say for myself in Vegas. I was lucky to get out of Vegas with my soul intact, much less with extra money...

We finally got back to Portland and I realized I couldn't find my car keys. Somewhere in the shuffle they went missing. I bet they're locked in the trunk, but for reasons too boring to go into, I can't get it all sorted out until tomorrow. No worries, though, my keys to Mahavira's apartment were still in my bag, so I'm here now, chilling out with Ginger on the awesome new couch, in front of a blasting fan, working on this post and waiting for my girlfriend to get off work. My life is good.

what a day to be a lesbian kayaker...

2008-05-18T20:49:00.001-07:00

This was the sight we saw while paddling the Salmon River at the coast today. Talk about the beauty of nature!

More on this weekend's adventure to come...

an "a" for effort...

2008-05-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

I went to one of those high schools that didn't give "F"s because they didn't want to stimgatize us as failures. We got "E"s... or, *someone* got "E"s, not me. "E" was the equivalent of "F" because "E" follows "D" in the alphabet. And I guess running the grades "A" through "D" and then jumping straight to "F" (for FAT FUCKING FAILURE) was kind of a slap in the face.

That is not what I meant to be writing about. I meant to be writing about how I'm trying to get better about writing more again. However, I'm awfully, awfully sleepy suddenly and am finding it hard to concentrate. I worked all day then went over to my apartment and did some packing and cleaning. I was over there for three hours and hardly accomplished anything, but I've given my landlords permission to show the apartment when I'm not around, so I felt it was my moral obligation to at least mop the kitchen and make sure all the naked pictures and sex toys were removed from view. I mean, it's the least I could do...

Now I'm back at Mahavira's, where I have been staying pretty much all the time for the past several weeks. Now that the weather is getting better and the light is lasting longer, I can hardly stand to spend five minutes in my little dungeon apartment. I have loved that place for two wonderful years, but the summers were always difficult. You may remember my annual, whiny rants about missing the heat and humidity of my homeland, so it will come as no surprise when I remind you that I hated being chilly throughout the summer in my subterranian hovel. I mean, christ, I shouldn't have to keep a down comforter on my bed year round, that's just wrong.

Here at Mahavira's it's quite warm already and the maximum temp didn't even hit 75 today. This promises a toasty summer, which will please me greatly. Call me crazy, I don't care, but if I'm not laying naked on top of the sheets sweating and panting all night long, I'm just not satisfied with summer. However, heat or no heat, here at Mahavira's there will definitely be nakedness, sweating and panting this summer, so I'm pretty sure I'll be satisfied no matter what...

lookin' good

2008-05-14T22:35:00.001-07:00

New haircut, new glasses, same awesome girlfriend.

pandora's box

2008-05-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

Have I written about Facebook before? Probably not. I know Roro's got her own feelings about social networking sites, and if I wasn't so lazy I'd actually offer you a link to one or two of her posts about such sites, but suffice it say there are posts out there to be found if you were to look...

Anyway, I think my brain is a little addled by the fog of dog-gas that has been filling the room for the past fifteen minutes. Jesus Christ, Ginger, first it was the "brown fountain" for three days and now the toxic fumes??? I thought dogs weren't supposed to get sick...?

Now where was I? Facebook. Mahavira talked me into signing up for a Facebook account because someone else talked her into doing it and she wanted to spread the love around a little. I've had a Myspace thingy for years, but don't do too much with it. All but one of my (very few) Myspace friends are people I know in real life (except you, SCG, you're the lucky exception to my 'only people I actually know' rule) whose pictures I often like to check out in the absence of real correspondence...

So this Facebook thing -- I signed up one night at Mahavira's urging while she was bored at work, and we proceeded to write Facebook messages back and forth for hours until the company's IT hall-monitor type software cut her off and gave her the old "You have exceeded your personal web usage quota" message. Bastards...

For about two days, my only Facebook friend was Mahavira. Suddenly I got a friend request from Shan, one of my closest friends from high school. Wow! I hadn't heard from her in about five years! Cool! And then I got a friend request from another high school friend. And then another. And then another. I'm getting friend requests from people I don't even remember from my high school, names that are only vaguely familiar, faces I don't recognize at all. What the fuck?

Now I have fifteen Facebook friends and eleven of them are from my high school. The strangest thing of all is seeing all these people as adults... as relatively normal looking, relatively liberal seeming, relatively kind and compassionate type adults. I remember high school as this awful gauntlet of people who were all cruel and judgmental and unpredictable and yucky. Now it turns out they're just regular people who probably wouldn't sneer at me walking down the hall or try to beat the shit out of each other. But... I guess that's what growing up does for you... hopefully...

Ok, I gotta go open some windows and light some incense, this is just ridiculous.

my office boyfriend

2008-05-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

I know that Jim is super cute and all. And of course you know I love Pam. But lately I'm finding Darryl to be especially appealing. Not sure what it is. I think it's his low tones and his dry humor. Fluffy fingers??? Hilarious.

don't wanna get dooced...

2008-05-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

Once again I'm killing the last ten minutes of my work day with a blog. Just waiting until I can leave for my bus and hoping the guys in IT have all gone home and stopped monitoring our computer footprint for now.

I feel like my life is very different now than it was six months ago, and even DIFFERENTER than it was a year ago. One major, but sorta mundane, change is that I'm hardly online anymore. At first I blamed that shift on my relationship with Mahavira. I had less empty time to kill and less reason to hop online. Then I started my sex blog and all that changed. I didn't have so much empty time, but I suddenly had plenty to write about.

Now I've come to realize that my renewed and ongoing lack of interest in the computer has much more to do with my new job. Now that I sit at a desk in front of a computer most of my work day, going home and sitting in front of a computer looks pretty dismal to me. For years I've heard this from friends, and now I know it's true! For some reason I never quite believed that's why they weren't returning my emails...

Fortunately my persistant yet cyclical urge to write is beginning to kick back in. I am prone to go through dormant phases, especially when life itself changes and becomes more compelling and exciting than usual. Like these past five months with Mahavira: every day was this new, awesome experience with her and I was too busy jumping in with both feet and living it to feel much need to reflect. Sure, there was the sex blog, but my energy for that petered out (no pun intended) pretty fast.

Now that things with Mahavira are moving to new levels, and now that her ongoing presence in my life isn't so brand new and shocking, I'm finally starting to relax a little and accumulate ideas of things to write about. The dormant phases are always a little depressing and scary: it's weird to feel a big blank where my imagination used to be. But it feels especially exciting when the creativity starts to creep back in.

Hopefully I can translate some of that creativity into more regular blog-posting so I don't lose my precious, precious readers who I love and adore so much...

catch up

2008-05-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

Stuck here at work for another ten minutes, I thought I’d catch up on some very important blogging. It’s not like I’ve got any actual work to do today. Don’t know if anyone’s been reading the papers here in Portland, but we’ve just spent the past week collectively shitting our pants and waiting to hear if our employer is going belly-up. “We” is me and Mahavira, who both work for the same agency at different sites. Even though I hate the thought of losing this new job I love so much, I don’t so much mind the prospect of huddling together in shared poverty with Mahavira. Either way we’ll be huddling together: as of June first we’ll be officially cohabitating. (!!!)

Anyway, the crisis at work seems to be at least temporarily averted and we all actually did get paid last week (which was literally up in the air until the very last minute). In the meantime, I hear my uncle’s got advanced lung cancer that’s already metastasized to lots of other parts and he’s probably only got months to live. I feel like I should send a card, but fuck. What should it say? “Hope your last days are at least comfortable, sorry you’re dying so young?” Or how 'bout the short but sweet “Sucks to be you?” Then there’s the practical “Didn’t we all tell you to quit smoking?” I doubt I’ll find any of these at the Hallmark store anyway.

In brighter news, I got a gorgeous new tattoo this weekend. I’ll take a picture and post it soon, but not right now because, as I mentioned, I’m blogging from work. And anyway, I need to go catch my bus so I better pack up and get myself ready to leave. More soon.

meat in a petri dish

2008-04-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

Call it: meatri, maybe. I'm listening to a radio program on the BBC about meat. They're interviewing a woman from PETA who is explaining that PETA is offering a one-million dollar prize to the first scientific team who can come up with a way to grow edible meat from animal stem cells. Gag. Sorry.

I didn't intend to write about that, but as my little lappy booted up and spent ten minutes "thinking" about opening up the blogger dashboard, I kept listening to that absurd show and had to mention it.

I wanted to write about something equally absurd: I am the on-call administrator at my work this week. This is one of those strange hallmarks of upward career movement. I have to keep my cell phone on high volume, twenty-four hours a day from 8am this morning until 8am next Monday just in case anyone at any of four residential sites has any questions, problems or meltdowns. Fabulous. And maybe, when they call me, I'll know what to tell them...

In other news, I went to a meeting at a mental hospital today to talk to several very angry people about why we aren't accepting one of their patients into our program. Wow. I can't give many details, but it certainly appears that working for long stretches in a mental hospital makes you just about as "mental" as your patients. I know, I'm one to talk considering where I work, but really. Those folks were just plain loony. More than loony. They also appeared to lack integrity. It would be generous to say they were out of touch with reality and probably more accurate to say they were lying. I think they would've said about anything to get us to accept this particularly inappropriate referral.

I mean... ok, I'll give a few details... I mean, come on. The dude threw something heavy out of a window awhile back trying to hit someone he was mad at. He narrowly missed. Not only did we have to pull this information bit by bit from a very reluctant nurse, she actually had the audacity to say, once the facts were on the table, "yeah, but that person moved out of the way, they were never in any danger." Um... bullshit.

It's moments like those when I'm glad I'm a lawyer in disguise. Because I've been trained to track details, to parse arguments and to focus on the things that are important when the opposition is throwing up dramatic smokescreens. Above all, I was trained to keep a clear head and think on my feet. These guys were so transparent today, it made my work easy. My work was easy anyway because, no matter how sharp my mind was today, I was the representative from my company with the least authority in that meeting, so I had to hold my tongue most of the time. But when I talked I said good stuff, I promise. And it felt good to leave knowing that not only were we right, but that we were behaving with integrity. Because -- I'm gonna drop a moral on you -- it doesn't matter if it turns out you were wrong or right, what really matters is that you did your best and you did it with integrity. Because everybody makes mistakes or bad judgment calls here and there, it's when you start lying and doing shit you *know* you shouldn't do that you get yourself into trouble. And that's the end of my little tale.

not even making excuses anymore

2008-04-20T21:49:00.001-07:00

I guess I'll be doing good anymore to post once every 7 to 10 days. But you know, that's better than nothing.

I love my new job. I had a minor breakdown last week when I'd basically convinced myself that I was going to be laid off. I'm not completely insane, I mean, my company is about to lay a bunch of people off and I had my reasons for suspecting that I have the least essential job in our program... but I guess that's not how they're going to decide who gets canned, and according to my boss (who got to see me actually cry at work, that's how freaked out I was) they're taking performance, education and longevity into consideration. So... the worst I could expect would be to be transfered to some different job in some other part of the agency... which I guess is better than being laid off... I guess.

So then I decided to buy a car. But I haven't done it yet. I just decided. A Subaru Forester. Blue.

Among other things, I stayed late one night last week calming down an irate client and heard one of the most interesting stories ever. First I should say that I'm in a big "Oz" phase right now. I'm currently on season three and am not ashamed to admit that I'm totally in it for the prison sex. It's hot. Guy on guy action couldn't be hotter than guy on guy prison action.

Anyway, this client is old and cranky and more or less demented. If you've ever worked with demented people, you know they get confused, they mix stuff up, they can be a little paranoid, and they're prone to hissy fits and belligerence. So this guy was having one of those sort of moments and I went down to take him aside and hear him out, mostly just to get him out of everyone else's hair. That's why they pay me the bucks. (And now, finally, when I say that it's not just a sad joke...)

So I took him off to an empty office and for about 40 minutes I let him rant and ramble about every awful thing that's been perpetrated against him since he moved into our building, ninety-percent of which was embellished or utterly fabricated. I've heard all this before from him, and I knew that if I could just wait him out without saying anything, he'd be fine. So I sat there. I went through the motions of "active listening" -- I nodded, encouraged him to continue, maintained an open posture. And I kept my mouth shut.

Finally, after 40 minutes, after following tangent after tangent, he got himself so off track he ended up reminescing about a date he had in 1977 with a woman who brought him into her house after their movie and dinner (for coffee) and then lifted her sweater ever so slowly, to which he replied "Well will you look at that." After that (and many other choice details I will not repeat), he told me she was bisexual and he recounted a conversation they had about going both ways.

Turns out, after fifteen years in San Quentin, this guy thought he was bisexual. Queer theory wasn't so sophisticated I guess, back in the day, and because he'd spent fifteen years having relations with men in prison, he assumed he had to be bi. So he asked this truly bisexual woman "Tell me, do you really like eating all that pussy?" And she answered, "You tell me? Did you really like eating all those peters?" And that's how he realized he wasn't bi. Because if he was really bi, he would've enjoyed it the way she enjoyed it.

There was a bit of a pause in the story, and then he explained it. He said, "You fall in love with parts of a person's personality. You care about them, and you want to comfort them. Well... in prison, there's only one way to comfort someone..." And he looked at me a long time and, of course, I knew exactly what he was talking about.

That was the most interesting conversation I have ever had at work and if you knew my workplace you'd know that's saying something. I swear to god, I love my job.

the other kind of paddle

2008-04-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

I went kayaking today and boy was it awesome! First sunny paddle of the season and now I'm red as a lobster, but I don't care. It was gorgeous. I'm only sorry Mahavira wasn't able to join me. Sadly, she had to write a paper and then work in the afternoon. Leaving her precious little self there in the bed this morning was hard, but the second I put my boat in the water I knew it was all worthwhile.

This was a stellar paddle for wildlife. We saw tons of turtles, red-tail hawks, herons, egrets, deer and a beaver. The beaver was by far the coolest -- it swam along in front of us for awhile then doubled back as we passed and swam back in the direction of a beaver lodge on the bank of the river. It was really cute. Seeing wildlife is one of the perks of paddling. So is the upper-body workout. My arms are sore and my shoulders are all knotty. Can't wait for Mahavira to get off work tonight and give me a rub down. :-) *That's* another perk of paddling. . . ;-)

baked

2008-04-06T18:18:00.000-07:00

Last night Mahavira and I had some culinary adventures of the herbal variety. These adventures involved simmering a particular green herb in margarine, straining out said green herb, and then using the now quite green margarine to make some, you guessed it, brownies. Medicinal brownies. Strong, medicinal brownies.

A smart person would have learned from her first experience with medicinal brownies last summer on the Waldo Lake camping trip (the trip where all my journal entries start out "OH MY GOD I'M SO HIGH, STOP EATING THOSE FUCKING BROWNIES!!!!") -- A smart person would have, for example, DECLINED to lick the batter. Or, if licking the batter was irresistable (and it was), then a smart person would have declined to eat a brownie once they were done. Because a smart person would have known that no good can come from double dosing on medicinal brownies.

No good at all.

Anyway, nearly 24 hours have passed since Mahavira dubiously handed me the bowl to lick and I think my feet are finally back on the ground. Whew. It's nice to be back.

so it goes

2008-03-31T20:26:00.000-07:00

So far I've had two full weeks on the new job and I can feel myself slowly and subtly changing. For one thing, I'm starting to get used to my new hours. After seven years of mostly swing shifts, working in the morning feels weird. But good. I don't necessarily love popping out of the bed so early, but having my evenings with Mahavira is fair trade. We have actually been cooking meals for each other, just like we planned. It's nice. And going to bed before 3am, which is also a treat.

My identity at work is changing too, which is fine. Necessary, I guess. I'm a manager now, or so my boss keeps telling me, and it's finally starting to sink in. I have been assigned two former peers to directly supervise and today I had my first slightly unpleasant supervisory interaction with one of them. Shmiel, my friend, my buddy who used to go out with me on Monday nights after work to Billy Ray's to play pin-ball and drink beer... I had to sit her down and tell her she was fucking something up. And I saw the curtain come down over her face and I thought "Wow. I feel like a dick." But that's life.

And we had a death at work. Last week one of our clients died. A client I kinda hated. At first I felt surprisingly gleeful about it. Seems like it's always the nice ones who die while the mean ones just linger on forever. It was nice to have a little balance on this one. Actually, it felt like an answered prayer. Mean and spiteful, a shit-stirrer -- two days after this person died, I pulled a stray paper from my pocket and saw notes I'd written to myself from earlier in the week, reminders to deal with several different problems this now-deceased person had caused. Now those problems have vanished.

My initial joy has been replaced with other feelings, however. Mostly I'm just amazed how fast the hole can close up around someone. The dead client's body was hardly out of the building before people were milling around like normal, like nothing had ever happened. No one even cried. In fact, people were immediately vying for some of the dead client's belongings, swearing they'd been given permission to borrow this or that, not seeming to care that their so-called friend was now dead. A week hasn't yet passed since that client died and you'd never, ever guess.

In a way it's reassuring. Life goes on, that's the beauty. But it's also a little depressing. Are we all so shallow and short-sighted that we really stop caring the moment someone disappears? If I died tomorrow, would the hole close that fast? Mostly I think of death as a natural passage, maybe a door to the next thing, maybe a peaceful end, whatever. I don't tend to fear it and I don't tend to worry about leaving a lasting impression, though this death did make me give it all a little more thought.

Strangely, though, the recent death that *really* moved me was the death of my mom's 14 year old dog Buddy. I just got a message from mom this evening describing his last days and explaining that she had a vet come out today to put him to sleep after a two-week illness. I cried and cried and still get teary thinking about him. So, I guess I'm not a complete monster.

Bye, Buddy. I'll miss you.

that's more like it

2008-03-31T20:13:00.000-07:00

I scored a "low" on my sex blog, but somehow I scored a medium on this one... Weird.

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Online Dating

one week down

2008-03-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

I finished my first week on the new job. I discovered one unexpected challenge this week: my boss is crazy. And not in a "you-so-crAYzeee" sort of fun way, but in a "you're-making-me-cry" sort of way. Which is a shame, because she was sort of my friend before and she was also already my boss and I didn't realize she was going to take off the mask (or the gloves, whichever metaphor your prefer) and let me have it the minute my status changed from counselor to manager. Goddamn.

And the weirdest thing: after spending about an hour in a skype chat with SK processing the whole thing, I drove over to Mahavira's to drop off the clean laundry, and there's my goddamn boss, walking down the sidewalk to pick up a pizza at the pizza joint underneath Mahavira's apartment! WTF? The universe is fucking with me again. Oh well.

i never thougth this day would come

2008-03-20T19:39:00.000-07:00

Today, South Park actually, finally grossed me out. I have seen some fucked up stuff on that show and I have always found it all to be funny. But today, a day that will live in my memory forever, it actually made me feel sick to my stomach, mildly depressed, and unable to finish watching.

What was so gross? Britney Spears blows off the top of her head with a shotgun, lives, and goes through the rest of the episode with nothing but a bottom jaw and a bloody cavity on top of her neck. When she talks (and sings) her exposed tongue flaps around a little. And the talking is obviously nothing more than gurgles.

I get it. I get that it is supposed to be a satire on her state of affairs: no matter how fucked up she gets, the media will still hound her, the public will still devour images of her destruction for their own entertainment, and the music industry will still exploit her "popularity" until she's no longer profitable. But fuck. That was just gross. Really, really gross. Like... super uber disgustingly gross.

Blech.

me, in a skewed, subjective nutshell

2008-03-18T21:44:00.001-07:00

can't... seem... to think...

2008-03-18T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at Mahavira's, watching her write a paper. I started a new job yesterday, at my old workplace, and nothing about it seems new except the hours. And the pay, which I haven't actually seen yet, but I know that suddenly each hour I spend there is worth about five dollars more than it was last week. Which is one hell of a raise.

So I started shopping just a tiny bit more lately. I went out and bought Mahavira a bunch of little presents to go in an Easter basket. But I forgot that Easter was this coming weekend, not last weekend, so I gave her the Easter basket early. I figured out my mistake before I gave it to her, but I just couldn't sit on the presents for one whole week. I didn't have the patience. I called it "Mahavira's pre-Easter, Palm Sunday, Easter Basket full of AWESOME!" I wrote that on a sign which I hung on the basket and then I left the basket on the bathroom counter for her to find after work. She was surprised.

The Easter basket I made contained: yellow plastic Easter "grass," three large Rice Crispy Treat bars (her favorite), one box of pink Peeps (for color), two different packets of incense, one pack of American Spirit yellows, one packet of rolling papers, one purple lighter, one standing wooden Ganesha figure, and one really cool silver ring from The Gold Door. She was really, really happy. She loves the ring. She loves the incense. She loves all of it. She loves me.

My new job requires me to wake up really early. Not REALLY early, but early for me. 7:30 most days, but 6:30 some days. And 6:30 is pretty early in my book. Today was a 6:30 day and I'm exhausted. I was going to make a curry, but I was tired. Instead I came over to Mahavira's and we walked down to Laughing Planet and I got a bowl called "Soylent Green." Mahavira, studying the menu, said "Zapatista Salad?!?! I will NOT get that on principal. That's like naming a dish the Holocaust Delight!" It was funny. And then we talked about hipsters and this new feather-earring fad that is beginning here in Portland. All in all it was a nice afternoon.

my shaky relationship with power

2008-03-14T12:11:00.000-07:00

I have written a bit here and there in my other blog about power in the context of sex, but now that I have a new job, I'm encountering power dynamics of a different variety.

For a very long time I have been a direct care worker in a social work milieu, making very little money. I realize that, over the years, I've come to consider *other* things to be compensation for my work to take the place of money. For example, the work I do gives me a warm feeling in my heart. I leave every day knowing I did at least *something* that was meaningful to someone. This work also gives me a lot of satisfaction. Not because I get a lot done, but because I know the job really well. I've been here seven years, I know the program like the back of my hand and my clinical skills, such as they are, are pretty decent. In short, I rock at my job and get a lot of my self-esteem from that fact.

Now I'm in a new position, a position of much more power but, ironically, a position that puts me in an even more tenuous relationship with the powers that be above me. Ie: Any fuck-ups I make will be much more serious now so I have to be trained, and I am starting to realize that I don't want to be trained. Obviously I might need actual training on procedures I've never done before, but I'm having a problem allowing myself to recieve training in the area of my judgment.

It is my opinion that my judgment is excellent. I know, that's a little inflated, but I can't help it. I love solving problems and applying all the otherwise useless skills I learned in law school (like how to suss out complicated issues and create balanced solutions that take many different viewpoints into consideration). I think I'm good at this stuff and I feel personally attacked (ok, just mildly irritated) when my boss steers me in a different direction or flat-out disagrees with my approach.

I am whining. I know this is not a real problem, this is the kind of problem a privileged white person in America has. So, to help me put it all in perspective, I have to remind myself that I'm actually being compensated with MONEY now. Lots more money than I made before. So my self-esteem and warm heart and all that can take a backseat for awhile. I'll remember the green while I'm taking the bitter medicine of criticism. Dammit all.

countdown...

2008-03-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

I start my new job next week, which means I'm counting down my last days of swing shift and I won't be sad when it's over. This is my last Monday night at work. Woo-hoo! Next Monday night I'll be all curled up with Mahavira, watching a movie and getting ready to go to sleep. Sounds a lot better than being here, cleaning the kitchen and getting ready to do the narc count...

I have to tell you, I'm definitely going out with a bang. Tonight has been peaceful (knock wood) but all last week was crazy. I had to call 911 every single night last week. Even the week before was crazy. I called 911 Wednesday night and Thursday night, and on Thursday we had emergency personnel out here three different times: one time for a fire alarm and two times for clients in medical emergencies. I was practically best friends with the EMTs by the end of the night.

All throughout those experiences, I kept imagining the things I would blog about, but it turns out there isn't much I can say about it. It's either confidential or it just wouldn't be that interesting. Which is sad. One thing I can say for sure: I hate clients with borderline personality disorder and if it was up to me, I'd ship them all off to some borderline leper colony somewhere where they could be alone together, creating dramas and manipulating each other till kingdom come.

And since I'm writing this on a work computer, I might end up in my own leper colony called the unemployment office... I guess I should quit while I'm ahead. Jack Bog warned me once not to get dooced. I should listen to my elders and watch my words.

anybody who tells you blogging isn't sheer narcissism...

2008-03-09T17:31:00.000-07:00

...is lying.

Thanks for visiting This Stony Planet, your one-stop-shop for top-notch navel gazing since 2005!

jealous?

2008-03-06T13:16:00.000-08:00

Don't be! You too can be among the awesome lesbian kayakers! Just take a look at the invitation below. If you're in the Portland area and you're even remotely interested in kayaking, come check out our season-kick-off social this weekend. This is NOT a paddle, people. It's a happy hour. Come prepared to drink some beer and talk about kayaking. Here's the invitation that ended up in Just Out and Craigslist and everywhere else. Come one, come all, and bring friends. It will rock.

It's kinda like Girl4Girl only a lot wetter,
and skip the dance shoes but grab a paddle!

Calling all Lesbian Kayakers
(and wannabe lesbian kayakers)

Please join us Saturday March 8th to
kick off the start of Kayak Season!!!!
Learn more about our upcoming paddle events.
We're rec and sea kayers. All levels welcome.

When: Saturday March 8, 4-6pm
(It's happy hour ;-)
Where: MacTarnahan's Taproom
2730 NW 31st, Portland Oregon, 97210
Telephone: (503) 228-5269
http://www.macsbeer.com/taproom.php

oh to be young and in love...

2008-03-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

Evidence of good times. Despite the fact that my workplace is driving me crazy, at least Mahavira is as lovely as ever and keeping me sane.

be prepared

2008-03-03T20:44:00.000-08:00

Even though I have been promoted to Program Supervisor and even though I am within two weeks of starting that job and leaving swing shift forever behind, the universe is not content to cut me some slack. I'm here at work, working one of my last 8 swing shifts, and one of the graveyard guys called in. We called all the on-callers, but no one wants to work. Do you know what that means? That means I'll be stuck here tonight. All night. All the way until 8 o'clock tomorrow morning.

I'm gonna go eat some Doritos and drink some more coffee. Gotta fuel up. Expect some long, weird, ramblings long about 2 or 3am. Should be interesting.

i finally got a piece of the pie...

2008-02-26T12:07:00.000-08:00

So, this promotion thing is slowly starting to sink in... I've been wanting this job for four months, doing it on a part-time, interim basis, basically auditioning for it since November, and I'm still in a daze about actually, finally getting it.

I spoke to my arch-nemisis, I mean, my competition just now on the phone (he called to get my permission, I mean, feedback before putting another filing cabinet in my new office) and we had our now-that-it's-finally-over conversation. He congratulated me and then started spilling about the reasons he was given for not getting it. They were good reasons. They were the same reasons *I* would have given if I hadn't hired him. But it was still a little weird. He was very gracious about the whole thing, whereas I imagined that I might've walked into the middle of my workplace and commited hari-kari if I hadn't gotten the job. Which might explain why I was so stressed out over the weekend.

Anyway, there are a couple of things that I can't quite get used to: for one thing, I won't be working swing shift anymore. I've worked swing shift for almost the entire 6.7 years that I've worked at this place. I won't quite know what to do with myself when I have evenings off. EVERY EVENING OFF. I can hardly even imagine it.

Another thing is the fact that I'll be supervising people. Not just people: I'll be supervising people who were my peers yesterday. People who are my friends. That could be weird. Not to mention I have no idea how to be a supervisor. I'm actually planning to go Powell's City of Books today before work to try and find some self-help book about being a boss. I definitely need some guidance there...

And finally, and possibly strangest, I can't get my mind around the pay raise I'll be getting. I will be earning over a third MORE than I made last year. Take a third of what I made last year, add it to what I made last year (plus a tiny bit more for good measure) and that's what I'll make this year. Needless to say, this will be significantly more money than I have ever made in my life and I may very well feel like a rich person, however erroneous that feeling will be...

I remember an experience I had many years ago in Ohio. I heard a woman I didn't know very well exclaim to her friends, after getting a raise and getting her first post-raise paycheck, "I paid ALL MY BILLS out of ONE PAYCHECK!" I had no idea what she even meant or why she was so excited until my savvy friend filled me in: she got paid twice a month, and her income was now so good that she could pay all her bills with one of her checks, leaving the second check of the month wide open. I was astounded.

That's how I feel now. I will be able to pay all my bills from one paycheck (more or less). I still can't get my mind around it. It feels like so much money to me, but if I put it in perspective I realize it only seems like a lot because I've been living on so little for so long. For example, it's half what my (five years YOUNGER) brother has been making as a computer programmer. And it's just a fraction of what Waspy is making at her big law firm. But still... wow... it just seems like a lot.

Anyway, I know it's supposed to be taboo to talk about money, but I think that's part of what's wrong with people in this country. We don't talk about it, about the disparities and the way your income, or lack thereof, gives you a completely different experience of life than a person whose income is higher or lower. What I take for granted making my old wage, somebody else has to struggle for and what I struggle for, somebody else takes for granted.

Oh whatever, I'm just rambling. I need to go eat some lunch and then start making a list of all the stuff I need to buy now that I'll actually have some funds rolling in. New glasses, new clothes for work, new shower curtain, new shoes...

good for me

2008-02-26T02:46:00.001-08:00

Turns out I got the awesome promotion I wanted. Yay. Yet, somehow, I still feel flat. Maybe it hasn't had time to sink in. We'll see how I feel tomorrow...

if i was weather, i'd STILL be gay!

2008-02-22T01:30:00.001-08:00

You Are a Rainbow

Breathtaking and rare

You are totally enchanting and intriguing

But you usually don't stick around long!

You are best known for: your beauty

Your dominant state: seducing

What Type of Weather Are You?

thank god my intuition is still intact

2008-02-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

Tonight I hung out with my friend Rose at the Amnesia Brewing Company on Mississippi. Mahavira and I keep driving past Amnesia on these gorgeous, springy days, jealous of all the people hanging out on the patio, enjoying the weather and drinking a nice afternoon beer. We're jealous because we always see this scene on days when we can't join in. Today, for example, we saw it as Mahavira drove me home on her way to work. Work sucks. Life would be so much better without work.

However, even though there was no fun for Mahavira today, at least *I* was free to ramble and roam. My friend Rose had already planted the seed that we might hang out on Sunday, so I called her when I got home and we made a plan. By 5:30, Rose was here to pick me up and by 6 we were both eating sausages and drinking dark beer. Yum.

It was right around the end of my medium-hot sausage with sauerkraut when my phone rang. I didn't recognize the number, but I recognized the area code as my dad's. My dad's whole family, actually, in North Georgia. Just so you know, I have an 89 year old grandmother who I love dearly, and whenever I get a random call from Georgia, I immediately assume the worst. I silenced the ring on my phone and told Rose my suspicions. "Dude," she said. "You should probably get that."

"No, dude," I replied, "I'm not going to find out that my grandmother is dead while I'm sitting here at this bar drinking a beer."

"Point taken."

So we kept drinking and talking and I noticed that the anxious, panicky feeling I usually get under these circumstances wasn't coming. I felt oddly calm. After about an hour my phone rang again, this time it was my grandmother's number. I could so clearly see the progression of events: my grandmother might have had a stroke or something, my family was all at the hospital and my dad borrowed a cell phone to call me and let me know. That would have been the unrecognized number. Then, maybe she died, maybe there were still family left at my grandmother's house, either way, somebody would be trying to reach me again from her phone to give me the news, to beg me to call, etc. I could see it all so plainly, yet the panic hadn't yet hit me and I silenced the call again and let it go to voicemail.

"Dude," said Rose, "I'm starting to get worried for you."

"Yeah. Thanks."

But I didn't feel worried. I don't know why. Pretty soon after that, Rose drove me home where I immediately checked my two voicemails and guess what! Nobody is dead, nobody is even ill! My dad and my grandmother had each tried to call me to see how my job interview went! Amazing. These people have never been even remotely in touch with the day-to-day issues of my life and I'd completely forgotten that they even *knew* I had an interview. How amazing. I'm still not sure why my dad called from an unrecognizeable number, but I guess time will tell.

I called my grandmother back immediately and heard all the family gossip, including information about my cousin's impending marriage. I have ten cousins and they are now almost all married. Even cousins way younger than me. I am now the absolute anomoly, holding down the queer fort with pride. Maybe me and Mahavira will get Civilly United, or whatever it is we can do now in Oregon. Either way, you can guarantee it won't involve sending wedding invitations to my cousins across the country. (I have my cousin's invitation on my desk right now, in fact, and can add it to the pile of weddings I have declined to attend over the years. Sorry, I'm boycotting straight marriages [no hard feelings, joolie]. Good luck and god bless.)

At least I know my psychic powers still work. Even though all the signs pointed to trouble, I knew in my heart of hearts that everything was ok. It was so nice to hear my grandmother's creaky little voice on the phone tonight, to hear her gossip about my cousins and laugh about her "evil" sense of humor. God I love that woman, and I am going to miss her when she's finally, actually gone.

the wheel in the sky keeps on turnin

2008-02-15T17:46:00.000-08:00

Do you love Journey? I know I do. I'm trying not to neglect this blog now that I have a totally awesome new sex blog. So I got on here to post, but all I can come up with to write about is a sort of stream of consciousness ramble beginning with the lyrics to the rad Journey song that happened to be in my mind at the time. And I ask myself why I don't have a bunch of Journey songs on my iPod right now.... and I remember the technical difficulties I've been having with my iPod and I shudder and I stop thinking about that for now.

I had a job interview today. I've been angling for this new position at my same place of employment ever since the position was vacated in November. I've been doing the job since then on a very-part-time, interim basis and have really enjoyed it, and now I'm finally in the running to actually get it for reals. The interview today went SMASHINGLY well, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I didn't bumble around and make a fool of myself and I felt that my interviewers were impressed with my enthusiasm and confidence (the kind of confidence that can only come after working at the same place for almost seven years and being utterly overqualified for the job...)

And I was pleasantly surprised when the compensation range was finally (FINALLY) disclosed to me. I might still be making peanuts, but there will be many more peanuts, and peanuts of a slightly higher quality. Maybe even organic peanuts. What I'm saying is, I'll be able to afford to pay the student loan people in March when they start asking for their goddamn money already.

Now I'm sitting here waiting for Mahavira to pick me up so we can go have drinks with her brother and sister-in-law. I am planning to make myself indespensable to Mahavira so that she can never leave me: one step is to ingratiate myself to her family. Wish me luck.

portland cool points

2008-02-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

I have graduated to the highest echelons of Portland hipster cool: I packed up all my dirty clothes into my paniers and rode my bike to the laundromat on Sunday. I have arrived. I am now too cool to talk to you. (And if you're not from Portland, you probably have no idea why this would be considered cool. You'll just have to trust me.)

(By the way, don't forget to go check out my cool new sex blog, Swell. Don't be shy, it won't bite.)

unveiling...

2008-02-10T15:39:00.000-08:00

Awhile back, perhaps last summer, Zuhn made a very good point over on her blog. She'd come to a point in her blogging life at which she felt compelled to start writing about subjects she didn't feel her regular readers could handle. Not that they couldn't *handle* these things exactly... but things she feared would put her regulars off a little. Personal stuff, sexual stuff, stuff she hadn't been writing about on her blog before.

Now I find myself in that exact position. I have been blogging for two years now and until this point I have never shared any details about my sex life. I've talked about my girlfriends, my break-ups, I've written very vaguely about certain sexual exploits, but I've always pretended to be a lady who doesn't tell. Well that's just ridiculous because I love to tell. I've just been refraining for *your* sake, dear reader. I was afraid I would freak you out. See how I take care of you?

But the truth is that I love sex and really love thinking and talking and writing about it. I think we'd all be a lot happier and healthier (sexually and otherwise) if we were free to share some of the more intimate details of things. And so I started another blog. I decided I'd introduce it here and let *you* decide if you want to go there.

It's not a porn blog and it's not particularly sexy so far. It's just me, writing about my own sexual exploration and the way my sexuality overlaps with politics and feminism and genderism and all sorts of weird stuff. In fact, there's only two posts so far, so it's a blog in its infancy. I invite you to come check it out, if you can stand to read intimate details about me, and if you get inspired I'd love it if you'd post comments about your own experiences.

So here it is, Swell. Come on over! I'd love to see you all there.

tenuous

2008-02-09T18:10:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in Mahavira's "living room" -- although Mahavira's house is almost as small as mine and the "living room" also contains the bed, which makes it more literally a "living room" as in "the room I mostly live in" -- anyway, what was I saying...?

Oh, right, I'm sitting in Mahavira's "living room" tapping into a very tenuous wi-fi signal that could disappear at any moment, which makes blogging a sort of tenuous enterprise altogether. And speaking of tenuous, the weather here today was UNBELIEVABLY awesome. (Tenuous because it won't last, duh.)

I had no idea how nice it was outside since Mahavira and I (as per usual) laid in bed drinking tea and chatting until 2pm. Naturally, as we prepared to leave the house, I got myself all bundled up for winter -- and lo and behold it was SPRING when we got outside. We had a long list of errands to run and the goal of (Mahavira) studying for FOUR hours today, which made it really, really difficult to walk past the Amnesia Brewing Company right down the street, where people were lounging around picnic tables on the patio, drinking really good beer and enjoying the unseasonably warm weather, without stopping in ourselves. Mahavira actually whined.

But we persevered and now it's 6:30 and we've picked up the truck, gone shopping at Fred Meyer and taken Ginger for a walk, yet Mahavira has barely studied 30 minutes, and her stated goal has been whittled and whittled and whittled some more. Now her goal is to study two hours tonight and two hours tomorrow before she goes to work. We'll see. Meanwhile, I'm just entertaining myself with my computer, which is pretty normal for me anyway...

update

2008-02-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

Hi kids. Thanks for all the comments and well-wishes. Thanks especially to someone called "Cookie" who says I'm her favorite blogger. That kinda thing really helps a girl's spirit.

Anyway, I'm feeling surprisingly better this evening. I wasn't able to work today, ended up sleeping many, many hours, which is a good thing. Finally, at 6-ish, Mahavira came over for a visit. I hadn't seen Mahavira since Monday morning, which is an absolutely unacceptable span of time apart. Fuck.

So Mahavira came over bringing all sorts of goodies which at first seemed sort of yucky, but pretty soon I realized how hungry I was and as soon as she left I tore open the bag of white cheddar Smartfood popcorn and started boiling water for the cup of Nile Spice lentil soup. Yum! All I've eaten in two days is a handful of stoneground wheat crackers and half a banana, so I was ready to chow down. Now I'm eating the Rice Crispy Treat bar she brought me and starting to feel much, much better.

So much better, in fact, that I'm planning to go sleep at Mahavira's tonight. I can't stand to spend one more night in my bed alone. I miss her! It sucks. Right now she's having cocktails with her best friend who she is constantly blowing off. She wanted to blow her off tonight when she learned I wasn't working, but I wouldn't let her. I don't want her getting in any more trouble with her closest friends. My presence in her life has caused her absence in the lives of a lot of other people. I feel sorta bad about it, but not bad enough to vacate entirely. I'll just try and keep some kind of balance in place.

Now I'm off to pack up and call a cab. My car is still broken and Mahavira is loaning her truck out tonight, so we're both carless. Taking a cab the twenty or so blocks to Mahavira's seems a little bit decadent, but I'm still too weak from my sickness to cycle down there and walking wouldn't be so fun either. So I'll just relax and let myself be a princess tonight. Because I've been sick...

my tempered and well reasoned feelings about some things

2008-02-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

Today was not so awesome. I had to be at work by 9am for a "town hall" meeting with the CEO. I work for a large, non-profit, mental health agency that has been recently maligned in one of the local newspapers. Not naming any names here, of course.

In addition to a print article riddled with misstated facts and total falsehoods, there was an online version of the story which featured about 300 (maybe 400, by last count) comments, most of which were NAAAASTY. Some claimed to be from disgruntled former staffers, disgruntled current staffers, and many just came from assholes with opinions.

Anyway, many of these comments were actually personally insulting to our CEO. Now, I'm no big fan of business, but I'm not an idiot either and our agency (as wonderful and non-profit as it is) is obviously a business, with an enormous budget and uncountable obligations to clients, insurance companies, and every effing branch of government, not to mention private funders and the community at large. And, I'm not ashamed to say it, I think our CEO is a good person doing a good job. There you go.

In response to the article, but mostly motivated by all the nasty comments that seem to have come from staff, the CEO decided to go to all the sites, one after the other, and hold "town halls" for people to come and ask questions, air grievances, and help her to set up the kind of atmosphere where people feel heard.

Listening to the comments and questions today, I can only say that the woman must have incredible patience. Some of those people were just plain retarded. I am obviously biased, here. Biased against ignorant, knee-jerk hippies who say stupid shit like "why did you have to close down Site X last month, why didn't you at least try to save it," or "why don't we put some effort into getting grants to run things?"

Hello, Ricky Retardo, WE'RE DOING THAT STUFF. You obviously aren't even aware that a portion of the work you do right here in this building is funded by an enormous United Way grant that your boss's boss managed to land. You want a union because you think the bosses are all pigs, but guess what? You don't work at Wal-Mart or Ford Fucking Motor Company, you work for a non-profit mental health agency during the last throes of the Bush Administration. Even if our bosses wanted to be pigs, guess what? THERE'S NOTHING IN THE TROUGH!

Good for you, though. Be an activist, that's great. But maybe go change something that needs changing. Or get some goddamn information before you walk into the meeting and make an ass out of yourself by forcing the fucking CEO (who is an awesome, no bull-shit, mental health warrior) talk you through the most basic shit that would be obvious to anyone who pulled her head out of the union's ass long enough to find out what's *actually* going on around her.

Oh but christ, don't get me started on the union...

Anyway, you should know, at the end of this little rant, that a lot of it is fueled by the fact that I'm SICK. The kind of sick that keeps you near the bathroom. The kind of sick where you have a headache but you can't take anything for it because you won't be able to keep the painkillers down. The kind of sick where you try to take your mind off the discomfort by watching Weeds on DVD, and even though it's an AWESOME show and Mary-Louise Parker is unbelievably hot, you still feel like shit. The kind of sick where you leave work early and have to cancel on your girlfriend whose dad you were supposed to meet tonight. The kind of sick where you cry a lot and lament the fact that you're a loner scorpio and your only real friend is in Africa for six months leaving no one for you to call and ask for a delivery of pepto bismal. (And when you mention pepto bismal to your girlfriend, who is getting ready to go out with her narcissistic dad who only visits once every several months, she tells you pepto is bad for you and won't help. BUT IT WILL HELP!!!)

Ok, now write sympathetic comments. That's what I love about blogging when I'm sick. The pity... I mean, the sympathy.

super duper tuesday

2008-02-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

As the year 2000 turned into 2001, I watched with bewilderment as the election debacle finally resolved itself in the worst possible way. When the dust cleared and George W. Bush was installed as president, I was disappointed (scared, annoyed, disgusted) but I looked forward with hope to 2004.

We all know what happened then. I don't know about you, but I sat at the E-room (Portland's only lesbian bar) and watched the depressing results roll in. Not only did George get reelected, but twelve states enacted anti-gay marriage legislation of some kind, including my own state, and my marriage to CB dissolved before our eyes.

Fun times. Ostensibly we all left the bar that night looking forward to 2008. Not me. Turns out, I have lost all faith in American politics. And now that John Edwards is out and only Hillary and Obama remain... come on. It's all over. As I've mentioned before, the best we can hope for at this point is John McCain. And, god-willing, I'll be happy to eat those words in November.

Anyhoo, the point is, who cares about so-called Super Tuesday? It's all the effing same. My co-worker Pat summed it up right after the New Hampshire primaries. We were talking about the possibilities and he said, "Yeah, you know, it'll probably end up being Bush again. They'll count all the votes and all of a sudden somebody will say 'It's George, he won,' and the Supreme Court will be like 'yeah, we don't really know how it happened, but we guess it's legal,' and that'll be it." I don't think this is a particularly unlikely scenerio.

life imitates art

2008-02-03T22:10:00.000-08:00

I recently read this book and its ending shocked me. Now I see this strikingly similar story and am left to shake my head and wonder what the fuck is wrong with the human animal...

how my weekend was shanghai-ed

2008-02-03T19:58:00.000-08:00

I'm taking the day off from socializing after a long social weekend. What's a "day off" look like, exactly? I spent the morning with Mahavira, I spent the afternoon shopping for bingo prizes with my friend Shmiel from work, who was kind enough to offer to drive me to the Dollar Tree since my car is broken, and I'll be spending my night (as in: bedtime) with Mahavira. So, this is no solitary retreat, but it is a solid six hours of nothing but my own company and the occasional text message from Mahavira.

I'm currently skipping this week's L Word party because I hung out last night with all those kayaking friends of mine and now I'm ready for some me-time. Mahavira, furthering her saintliness, accompanied me to a birthday dinner last night for Kara at House of Louie downtown. We were uncharacteristically late, having spent tons of time taking the goddamn foster dog to the vet for more tranquilizers. I hate that dog.

After the vet, we ran by It's My Pleasure (Portland's very awesome for-women-by-women sex-toy store) so Mahavira could spend the gift certificate I got her for x-mas and so I could pick up a birthday present for Kara. I was just going to get her a gift-certificate, but once I saw the plastic pee-standing-up device, I knew I had to get her one of those too. I couldn't resist. We're an outdoorsey bunch, but she takes the cake. I could think, off the top of my head, of about ten different situations she's in on a daily basis for which this pee device might come in handy. I'd love to post a picture of the kind I got Kara, but I can only find another cardboard kind online and I can't remember the name of the brand I got. Oh well. Just trust me. It was really cool.

The gift was a big hit and all the ladies had pee-device envy. I asked about getting some kind of bulk-rate discount, but the woman at the store told me I'd have to get about 25 before they'd cut me a deal, and I don't have that many friends. Oh well. I'll be getting myself one, eventually, but I waited. It'll give me a good excuse to go back to the sex-toy store (like anybody needs an excuse...)

After the mediocre chinese food at House of Louie, the birthday crowd wandered over to Hobo's to meet up with our Shanghai Tunnels tourguide. That was the big birthday surprise: a Portland Underground tour. For those of you unfamiliar with Portland's sordid history, our sweet little liberal utopia was once (in)famous for the practice of "Shanghai-ing" people -- in fact, Portland is where that term actually originated. From the mid 1800's to the 1940's, if you were an "able bodied" man who happend to get too drunk at any of the town's many saloons, you might find your drunk ass dropped through a trapdoor in the floor of the bar and put into a holding cell in Portland's vast underground network of tunnels and basement rooms, where you'd be kept in the dark for days until you were drugged again and carted off to the waterfront where you'd be sold to ship-captains, taken out to sea, and forced to work on the ship's crew for no pay. If you were lucky they dumped you off at the end of the voyage. If you were unlucky, they ran out of food on the trip and ate you.

The tour was an hour and a half long and can be summed up thusly: anticlimactic. Fun facts: in addition to having trap doors in the floor, those old saloons used to have tiled troughs running waist high along the front of their bars so that the men drinking at the bar (standing, b/c there weren't stools) could just whip it out and piss right there without having to leave the bar at all. Amazing. (Pee is an unintended theme tonight I guess...) And the worst Portland Shanghai-er (William Bunco Kelly) once sold a ship-captain thirty dead guys he'd found in the cellar of a funeral home who'd all died after drinking embalming fluid that they'd mistaken for whiskey. Woops. But kudos to Mr. Bunco Kelly for making lemonaid out of lemons. Not only did he sell the dead guys, he actually sold them for *more* than the going rate because he told the ship captain it took them that much more liquor to knock these bad-asses out. Wow. That's salesmanship.

Anyway, other than that, the tour was lame. While they've restored lots of the tunnels, the tunnels aren't even close to being connected anymore due to lots of modern construction and earthquake-proofing. The hour and a half long tour consisted of a *lot* of long speeches, full of 80% historical facts about the tunnels and 20% bullshit ghost stories to creep us out. Mahavira was thrilled at the possibility that she might have a brush with the paranormal ("Seeing a ghost will renew my faith in so many things," she kept saying) -- she lingered at the very back of the tour, insisting that any ghostly activity would be much more likely to happen to the person trailing behind.

Needless to say, she didn't have any brushes with anything besides boredom. We slowly made our way through three -- ONLY THREE -- underground rooms. We saw a holding cell where the men were kept while awaiting their sea-faring doom. We saw a pile of dusty cork-boots that were worn by loggers and had been found in the tunnels, evidence of Shanghai-ing, because the Shanghaiers would steal the boots of their victims then litter the tunnels with thick piles of broken glass to prevent escape. We saw a tiny, restored closet that had been used by "white slavers" to break the spirits of the women they'd kidnapped and intended to sell into sexual slavery. We saw a giant wooden, cigar store "indian," the purpose of which is too boring to relate. And finally, the climax was being encouraged to put our fingers through the actual bars in a window of another holding cell that the victims had put their fingers through oh-so-many years before. It might have been eerie if we hadn't, at that moment, been standing directly under the Boiler Room's karaoke bar, from which was wafting some pretty terrifying, butchered music. Yikes. That was probably the scariest part of the whole tour.

Not to be a total dick: the tours are run by a not-for-profit historical preservation society, staffed entirely by volunteers. I found it hard to begrudge my $13 admission fee when I considered that no one was getting rich off these lame tours. The money was all going to historical preservation efforts. I can appreciate that. And the tour guide did a great job with the dearth of good material she had to work with.

I was also planning to work my way further backward into the weekend and tell you about the post-holiday holiday party Mahavira and I went to for my work, but I'm getting sick of typing and need to go clean my house a little and do other cool me-time stuff before Mahavira gets here in two hours. Two hours! Woo-hoo! For some reason, the proximity of Mahavira makes me-time look dull and lonely by comparison...

america, meet your next president

2008-01-30T19:58:00.001-08:00

Maybe he'll pick Obama as his running mate...

inactive

2008-01-29T23:04:00.000-08:00

Today I accompanied my friend Leo on some errands before I went to work as an excuse to hang out with her one last time before she leaves for South Africa tomorrow morning. She'll be gone for six months and I'll miss her a lot.

Somewhere in the midst of all that, I filled out, wrapped up and mailed off my declaration of intention to drop to "inactive" status with the Oregon State Bar. I have been making the decision to do this in the back of my mind for over a week now and today, while Leo was sitting in my floor waiting for me to be ready to leave, I made it all happen on auto-pilot. I was hardly thinking as I filled out the form, wrote the check, and stuffed it all into an envelope.

This began as a cost-saving measure. If I remained "active," my bar dues (due Thursday) would be $400. Going inactive means my bar dues are only $110. (Notice they still want at least *some* of my money...) I didn't even realize inactivity was an option until I was perusing the bar website for pay-online options. Once I saw that I could reduce my cost, the wheels in the back of my mind started turning and suddenly today I found that the decision was somehow already made.

Now that this new reality is forming, I'm left to ponder the ramifications of what I've done. I wasn't practicing anyway. In fact, I actively sought NOT to practice. I'm trying to get a promotion at the non-law job I already have. I feel nauseated even thinking about being a lawyer. There was a very brief window last month when I thought I should probably start looking at lawyering, but that window closed and hasn't yet reopened.

In reality, getting reinstated won't be so hard if I decide I've made a big mistake. I'd pay a $400 reactivation fee. Steep, but the same as the bar dues I owed this month anyway. Right now I feel sort of numb about the whole thing, though I wonder how I'll feel on February 1 when the change takes effect. Will I feel like Superman after cashing-in his powers to be with Lois Lane? Or will I feel relieved of the burden of obligation that came along with my active status? Or will nothing change at all?

random

2008-01-29T02:12:00.000-08:00

This is something called the Beijing Watercube. It's for the Olympics. I don't really care about the Olympics, but I thought it was a really cool building, especially the nighttime pictures where it's all blue and glowy.

Anyway, I'm home alone, which is some kind of miracle, so I'm blogging. I had a lot of unpleasant shit happen at work tonight, but it's mostly boring, so I won't bother with any details. The only important thing for you to know is that Shmiel and I went out after work and drank at Billy Ray's and played Midieval Madness Pinball, which I love and in which I scored over 26 million points, which should have won me a free game, but didn't for some reason.

So here's my tirade of random. I had a relatively bad weekend, which is a shame but which, I suppose, is cosmically appropriate, since I've been having so many really, really good weekends, all in a row. I was in a funk, basically. I hit a minor dip in my mental health. But I was able to get my laundry done, which is good.

Last night I went to an "L Word" party and I realized that I don't really like that show very much anymore. I missed all (I mean every single episode) of season 4, and jumping into the third episode of season 5, I found that I could give a shit about any of it. And seriously? Jenny? Is directing a movie? And spitting her nicorette gum out everywhere? Please tell me somebody is going to show up in a few episodes and fucking kill her with a shotgun.

I also got into my first hot-tub last night. I mean: my first hot-tub since I was 12 and at my rich aunt Linda's house. It wasn't as awesome as I thought it would be. Sure, there was something really cool about being half-naked outside in the freezing cold, then hopping into a bubbling tub of piping hot water... but then... you know... now what? We just sit here? And I was having these weird bouyancy problems. My legs kept trying to float out from under me and pull my head under water (I think because my ass is so voluminous with the very buoyant substance known as fat) -- I couldn't just sit comfortably, I had to stay on guard constantly against being dragged under by the force of my powerful, powerful ass. This is a common problem for me... I'm always battling my powerful ass.

My new earrings are hurting a little. First of all, they required some stretching, especially in the left ear-hole which had been missing an earring of any kind for at least a week and had shrunk a bit. Also, the lovely spiral of the earrings, including a very pointy arc at each end, is very good at catching in every single thing on earth (including my scarf, the pillow, Mahavira's shirt, Mahavira's hair) -- basically anywhere I put my head, my earrings are sure to get hung. And that's especially annoying right now because the stretched part is still healing and it hurts.

Speaking of missing jewelry, I'd been wearing on my right thumb a really sweet little signet ring with a lovely cursive "M" etched into it (for Mahavira, duh) -- but now it's missing. I don't know when or how, all I know is it's not on my thumb anymore and I can't find it. I'm sad about it because I really enjoyed having a ring on my finger with an "M" to constantly remind me of Mahavira. Because I'm totally attached to her and it's probably creepy.

Anyway, speaking of sad, my dearest, oldest friend Leo (who I met in a mud-puddle in 1993, for you new-comers) is leaving in two days to spend six months in South Africa. I'm still not entirely sure how or why, but she's doing a volunteer gig in the Kruger National Park and I'll miss her a lot. She's going to come over tomorrow and drop off some clothes she wants me to donate to my workplace, and then I won't see her again until July. I'm sad about it.

There is a bag in my floor, red and black with white writing, that says on top "Do yoga" and on bottom "Jealousy works the opposite way you want it to." This is ironic, because this bag belongs to Mahavira and she's really jealous about all sorts of things all the time. It's almost comical. Mahavira having this bag is like my grandmother having a plaque on her wall that says "Why worry when you can pray?" Good question. Apparently my grandmother has a really good answer, because she worries and prays both like a fucking champ.

We're having a staff post-holiday holiday party this Friday with free food catered by a pharmaceutical company and I really wish I didn't have to go because it cuts into one of my two nights with Mahavira, but I *have* to go because I helped organize it. However, right now I hate the thought of it and wish I could just go bowling with Mahavira instead, which was our original plan before I remembered about the party.

I'm drunk(ish).

new stuff to make me happy

2008-01-27T17:45:00.000-08:00

I am now wearing one of these in each ear. Jealous? (Mine are a smaller gauge than this one though. Mine are just tens, but they're still totally hot.)

less is more

2008-01-25T15:43:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the new, shortened version of the blog-title. What do you think? I love to prune!

this will eventually gross you out

2008-01-24T23:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry for my internet absence lately. Remember November, aka: NaBloPoMo, when I posted something every single day? Wasn't that so fun?

But then I met Mahavira on November 30th and we've basically been on one, long date ever since. Which means I'm sadly neglecting this little digital outlet. Though I guess I haven't really *needed* an outlet for all my rantings and ravings since I met Mahavira. *She's* been my outlet.

Anyway, I'm finally home alone for the first time since last Sunday and here's my chance to write a little something about life and things. Oh! I know what to tell you! I can tell you about the grossest thing I have ever done in my whole life. Why? Because it happened at work tonight.

For those of you who don't already know, I work with homeless crazy people at a kinda shelter downtown. Anyway, it can be a pretty gross place and I have done many, many gross things since I have worked there (plunging toilets full of shit is one example, cleaning up vomit is another) -- but what I did tonight really takes the cake.

Basically, I helped a client cut a giant mat (matte?) of hair off her head. She's got OCD and goes through long phases (like years at a time) when she can't wash her hair, so she puts it up in a pony tail or braid, puts a hat over it, and leaves it. Years of friction, between the hat and the pillow, create this enormous matted knot of hair, sort of like a helmet, all over her head.

Because she's OCD, she can't just shave it all off and start over. No sirree, she has to try and "salvage" her hair. A few days ago she told me she'd been "working" on her hair (trying to untangle it) and had decided that some of the mat would have to be cut off. Tonight she enlisted me to help.

I gathered up some supplies (a comb, a pair of hair scissors, a stool for her to sit on, a garbage bag sliced open to use as an apron to shield her clothes) and we locked ourselves in the big bathroom on the first floor. She's had a knit hat over her hair for a long time, so I really had no idea what I'd find when she took that hat off. It was intense. What seemed small under the hat turned out to be huge. A huge, thick mat of hair.

The first thing I noticed, as she took off the various other hairbands in place under the hat, was a yellow crust in the top layers of the mat. I knew she'd been trying to work the tangles out and had mentioned using conditioner and detangler, so I just assumed that was the source of the yellow crust. I took some time sizing up the problem and, like a surgeon, I chose the best place to cut. I wrestled the scissors into place and started slicing my way through the matted hair and yellow crust. Eventually I pulled back a great flap of mat, revealing more stringy, tangled hair beneath.

I also revealed a great deal of yellow chunks and gobs. "Did you say you were using conditioner to detangle?" I asked her, poking at the gobs with the comb. "No," she said. "I should, but I haven't yet."

So. The yellow gobs were not conditioner. They could only be massive collections of head oil, solidified. They looked like the yellow globs of chicken fat that congeal after chicken grease has been allowed to cool. Her hair was full of these disgusting yellow gobs, hunks of head-fat, it makes my skin crawl just to think about it. Fuck. Solid gobs of head-fat. Solid, yellow globules of congealed head oil. How many different ways can I say it to make you understand how gross it was?

It could've been worse, I know. At least her head wasn't teeming with lice, that right there is a miracle. And, surprisingly, it didn't stink. It just had head-smell. Regular old head-smell. At least it wasn't sour or rotton smelling. I'm serious, if a rotton smell accompanied all that head-fat, I would have vomited on her as soon as the reality of it all hit me. That would have been the end of it.

As it was, I pulled it together and managed to detangle a huge amount of her massive knot. The head-fat never ceased to disgust me, though I admit it was sickly fascinating and I definitely anticipate having disturbing dreams about it when I finally get to sleep.

And, strange as it might sound, this is just one more reason I love my job. I get to be involved in the weirdest shit imagineable. And I get paid for it!

a really, really small world

2008-01-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

Remember Gully? Maybe not. I met Gully a week before my birthday, back in November. We danced, it was hot, we had a date a week later, and we had really, really hot sex. Like... unbelievable. Like... unprecedented. Because I am a lady, I have not shared the details of this exploit. However, I will say that I did something that night that I had never done before. Something of legend. Something I wasn't even sure was possible, something I'd only ever read about.

Of course, things with Gully didn't extend past that first hot date, a barrage of insane text messages and a few strange phone calls. Ultimately, I met Mahavira and started having even better mind-blowing sex (not to mention I fell crazy in love with her) and I ended up writing Gully a nice message explaining that I wasn't available anymore, yadda yadda, she gave me her blessings and that was that.

Well. Last night I went to a birthday party with Mahavira for one of her closest, oldest friends, G. At G's party were some of Mahavira's other old, close friends, Little C and her husband Little J. I ended up chatting in the kitchen with Little J, a wisp of a little balding gay-seeming man, and we discovered that we both work in mental health. I work for a big non-profit and he works for a nearby county.

"Oh!" I said, "I know one person who works for that county's mental health," thinking of Gully and thinking it would be so unlikely that of all the people who work for that county, this random guy might happen to know her. "Her name is Gully."

"Oh my god," he said (in very gay-seeming fashion) "She sits right across the hall from me! We went to a training in Salem together in November."

I couldn't believe it. Mahavira, standing nearby, started laughing. It was during that overnight training in Salem that Gully sent me the barrage of crazy, sexually explicit texts. I shook my head and said, "Well, if you noticed Gully sending a lot of texts during that training, they were to me."

Then his eyes got big as saucers and his mouth dropped open (yet another very gay gesture) and he said, "That was you??" Then, with dramatic approval and a huge grin, he said, "I heard you two had some fun..." By this point Mahavira was doubled over laughing and I realized that Gully had probably told this guy everything. My prowess had proceeded me. It was the highlight of the party.

just as i suspected...

2008-01-18T07:47:00.000-08:00

The kid who was eaten by the tiger had it coming.

what the people want

2008-01-15T11:53:00.000-08:00

I currently get an average of 74 hits a day on this website. Several of those hits come from people who are actually interested in reading the stuff I write, for whatever reason. A few more hits come from people searching for specific topics I've written about. Most recently I've been seeing a lot of searches for "frozen car door won't shut." That has been a long time favorite. I also get lots of hits for the movie "Shortbus," which makes me wish I'd written something more interesting about it than my "ohmygod this movie is so awesome" post.

Nevertheless, the reason my average is at 74 (and growing) instead of 25 (where it rested for a long, long time) is because I posted a picture of the 80's hair-band Poison. A picture very much like this one:

I don't know why, but that picture has drawn people to my site like flies to a pile of shit. I don't get it at all. But I enjoy the traffic and I certainly like to give the people what they want, so here's some more steaming hot pictures of Poison. (Notice the probably 10 year age difference between these two pictures doesn't really yield positive change for the fellows, though at least one of them wised up and got a hair cut. And jesus christ, Brett Michaels. You look like shit.)

Wow. Yuck.

Anyway, while I'm posting pictures of old hair-bands, why not throw in a couple of my favorite hair-band front-man: Jon Bon Jovi. First, here's one from back in the day:

And now...

Holy shit he's nearly naked!!! Why didn't *this* picture exist when I was 12 and had centerfolds from Bop magazine all over my walls...

help me understand something

2008-01-14T15:26:00.000-08:00

The first amendment of our constitution establishes the concept we know as "separation of church and state" -- which basically means that the government will not establish a state religion. This has been interpreted by the courts to mean that no government entity may take any action that appears to endorse or promote a particular religion, which means schools can't have prayers before football games, courthouses can't host christmas time manger-scenes, and federal buildings can't display the ten commandments (ignore for a moment that all these things continue to happen all over the country).

Under these circumstances, somebody please explain to me WHY it's ok that the people running for public office, specifically, the highest public office, are allowed -- are practically REQUIRED -- to flaunt their christian credentials in order to get themselves elected??? Why is that not categorically banned, in the same way I am categorically banned from talking about my own religious beliefs at work? Why doesn't that violate the constitution? How much closer to establishing a state religion can you get than having the people vying for the office of president crying to the rooftops that they're good christians and that their good christian beliefs will help them run the country even better than their opponents??? It hurts the brain...

Meanwhile, YAY, this is my thousandth blog post!!! I wish I could have some balloons or something, and some confetti...

bottom line, mahavira is a saint

2008-01-13T15:05:00.000-08:00

I know you're all on the edge of your seats, waiting to hear how my night with Mahavira's family went. I'll tell you, it went pretty well, but only because they're all really awesome and the human spirit is resilient. One tiny little exchange between me and my boss during the last half-hour of my work day on Friday threw a huge wrench into my self-esteem and set me up for potential failure, but I managed to pull myself together enough to successfully navigate my way through that first family meeting.

The details aren't important, all you need to know is that I was very mildly chastised by my boss at 5pm Friday, thirty minutes before I walked out the door to go to Mahavira's. And, it turns out, I have absolutely zero emotional tolerance for chastisement. I started an immediate downward spiral, which I then vented on Mahavira by *being* the thing that I hate: I "chastised" her, in my own way, by being sarcastic and condescending and it is a miracle that she didn't either 1.) slap me, or 2.) send me home before we ever even left for her brother's house. Sadly, I repeated the bad behavior again yesterday... more than once. Mahavira deserves a medal.

Anyway, after putting up with some of my shit (and very appropriately calling me on it), Mahavira bought me a beer at the Amnesia Brewing Company and we sat outside and drank and I started feeling slightly better, though I was beginning to have a lot of anxiety about meeting her family because I knew I was in a bad emotional space. Once my beer was gone, I had just enough liquid courage to get up and at least try to face the challenge.

It all turned out to be fine. Mahavira's sister-in-law Ivy had definitely acted unilaterally when she demanded we come over. Turns out, Mahavira's brother Billie was having his "dude night" -- where his nerdy male friends come over and play RPGs, this week it was Magic... or is it Magik? or Majik? The house was full of children, Mahavira's two beloved nephews and their cousins. I met children first, then Billie who was very sweet and warm and made sure we each had beers within moments of walking in the door. Then I met Shelle, married to Ivy's brother, who (I learned later) had only come over to check me out. Then I met Tom, one of the "dudes," a man Billie and Mahavira have known for about 20 years. Mahavira informed me on the way over that Tom was the most awesome, perfect man on the planet and that she'd run off with him in a hot minute if he'd leave his wife. Fabulous. He turned out to be cute, smart and really charming, and he went out of his way to be nice to me, which led me to approve of Mahavira's assessment. Finally Ivy surfaced from the kitchen bearing platters of sandwiches which she layed out all over the table and pretty soon the whole chaotic bunch had swarmed into chairs around the table and everyone was eating and talking and it was like business as usual, except that everyone was serruptitiously checking me out and assessing my quality as a potential partner for Mahavira.

Mahavira is an intensely big, powerful person with an enormous personality and, literally, a cult following, an entourage of hangers-on, a fan-club, so it was really interesting for me to see her in such a different role: the role of the little sister, the one getting lectured by her brother about finances, the one being cared for by a slew of middle-aged, middle-class parents of small children who seemed to see her as a gangly, awkward member of their own flock of dependants. And, after her childhood of parental neglect, I know she loves being cared for in this particular way. I watched her eat it up with a spoon. It was good.

That was basically it. The sandwiches were eaten, the men lumbered off to play their nerdy game, the children were stationed in front of a movie in the play room and the "girls" all went outside to sit around a fire in the chiminea and smoke and talk. Mahavira invited the ladies back to her place to smoke weed and in short order we were all relocated back into the familiarity of Mahavira's apartment. So far, my vetting by the family was very subtle. I hadn't yet been grilled (except for the one question Billie asked me: why aren't you practicing law? Good fucking question, Billie...) -- and it kept going like that for a long time. They all chatted and caught up and had a nice time, yet I knew Ivy and Shelle were keeping me in their periphery and taking notes.

Finally Ivy, slightly drunk and slightly high, declared, "Wait! I want to get to know Dawn!" She asked me a couple of questions (where are you from, how long have you been out here, what brought you, etc.) and I answered them eagerly. I love answering questions. But she soon got lost again in chatting with Shelle and before I knew it, I was falling asleep on the couch, wishing they would leave because I was so tired. Shelle, the sober one of the bunch, finally dragged Ivy out the door and I collapsed in a mute heap, the whole weight of the day finally crushing me. Mahavira thought I was mad at her because I curled into a fetal ball and stopped talking. I couldn't make her understand (because I couldn't make myself speak words out loud) that I was not mad at her at all, that I was just completely exhausted and emotionally spent.

We finally made it to the bed and woke around 4am (not unusual for us) and that was my first chance to apologize for disappearing into my fetal caccoon. Poor Mahavira thought I'd hated her family, hated meeting them, hated hanging out with Ivy and Shelle, etc, etc, etc, and it was all I could do to convince her that nothing could be further from the truth. I spent the rest of Saturday in a state of poor mental health, reliving my chastisement and self-flagellating, and occasionally alienating Mahavira by chastising *her* some more. I can be such an insufferable asshole sometimes. I spent the rest of my time apologizing.

Anyway, long story short, and as I said at the very beginning of this adventure: Mahavira is a fucking saint and she deserves nothing but good things in this world because she is nothing but good. After all that drama, all my difficulty and jerk-ness, she drove me all the way out to BEAVERTON (which is a suburb we both LOATHE) so that we could go COSMIC BOWLING with all my old-lady kayaking friends (which is my version of making her hang out with *my* family). She deserves more than a medal. She deserves a national holiday and a street named after her.

In closing, I love Mahavira, I enjoyed meeting her family and I am the luckiest person on the planet because Mahavira still loves me even after this weekend. The end.

look who's coming to dinner

2008-01-11T13:50:00.000-08:00

Seems Mahavira's over-involved brother and sister-in-law found out through the grapevine that Mahavira is "dating someone seriously." Mahavira got a stinky phone call from the sister-in-law demanding an audience with the new girlfriend, so it looks like I'll be on display for the family tonight. Should be interesting...

my assimilation is complete

2008-01-09T13:34:00.000-08:00

I used to look with smug disdain on the pod-people. They're everywhere, you can't throw a stick and miss hitting one. Especially on the bus. They've all got earbuds and they're all completely encapsulated, held within the caccoon of whatever music they've got pumping directly into their ear canals. I used to look at the pod-people and actually pity them, as I rode the monotonous bus routes over and over and watched them, so insulated from the world. I told myself that I was a better person because I remained in touch with my environment. I wasn't afraid to go bare-eared into the world, to hear all the ambiant noise that Portland has to offer. I felt tuned in and scoffed at them for tuning out.

Well... it is with some little hint of shame that I admit: I have become a pod-person. Mom sent me that iPod for christmas and my brother (god bless his little robot heart) managed to put some of my music on it, and now I can hardly stand to walk out my front door without those dreaded white cords trailing out of my ears. What has become of me???

I haven't used a portable music device in so many years I can't remember. I have much clearer memories of my very first walkman, I got it when I was 10, the year was 1984, and the music was Madonna, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Cindy Lauper, Huey Fucking Lewis and the News, the Cars, Duran Duran... I used to ride my bike around the neighborhood wearing my headphones, it didn't even have a tape-deck, I just listened to the radio: G105, the station out of Raleigh. I still listen to G105 when I'm in North Carolina, just to see, but I'm always a little sad (and even surprised) not to hear "Lucky Star" or "What's Love Got to Do With It?" They still play pop music, but pop music is shitty now.

Now I walk around with this tiny little thing in my pocket, nowhere near its storage capacity, and listen to the handful of albums I managed to get on. Today I listened to the Pixies while I rode the bus home from downtown, stopped at Whole Foods (nee Wild Oats) to get myself some food, then walked up the street to my house. I have to make myself take the buds out when I walk in my door. And I notice something surprising: my mental health improves as a direct result of exposure to music! I had no idea! I tap my foot, bounce my head, smile at the funny parts or the parts that make me feel nostalgic... I can hardly stop myself from singing along and am just waiting for the day when I'm tired, my defenses are down, or (god forbid) I've been drinking and find myself sitting on the bus singing quietly to myself without realizing. Because I know that day will come.

While I'm reminiscing, I remember the first time I learned that other people could actually hear me singing when I had my headphones on. I was 10, I was listening to my first walkman in my family's living room, and suddenly, through the thick wall of sound I heard my stepfather's voice: "Dawn. We can hear you." Suddenly, with great shame and embarassment, I realized I'd just been serenading the living room OUT LOUD. I guess some part of me knew that I was singing, but my own voice was swallowed by the music from the headphones and, not hearing myself, I just assumed no one else could hear me either. I was wrong.

Now I've got to get my operating system upgraded (don't even ask why that hasn't happened yet) so I can put more of my music on my little music machine. I need a wider selection to not sing along to on the bus. :-)

random thought generator

2008-01-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

With numbered bullets, my favorite:

1.) I have been reading a book called "Wonderful, Wonderful Times" by an Austrian author named Elfriede Jelinek. It is a bizarre, quirky novel about a group of disaffected, nihilist teenagers in Austria in the late fifties. One is the son of a slain communist agitator, one is the wealthy daughter of anonymously wealthy parents, and the other two are twins whose father had been an SS officer who still treasures his memories of killing people during the war. Perhaps you have guessed by now that the title is painfully sarcastic.

Anyway, I finally finished reading it last night at work and oh my god. Not since "Life of Pi" has the end of a novel left my mouth gaping open in shock. I could not believe how this story ended and I can't convey my surprise (or cause you to really care) because I don't want to spoil it if you decide to read it. It would be worth reading, because it's quirky and interesting, and the surprise ending is just a bizarre, macabre bonus. You'll have to find it at a library though, even Powell's City of Books doesn't carry her stuff.

2.) Thanks to everyone who posted supportive comments re: my trip to Vegas. After awhile I started to understand why it impacted me so strongly: see, Vegas is evil. Just as the air in Vegas has no moisture, the whole creature that is Vegas has no soul. And just as the dry air was sucking all the moisture out of my body during my stay there (I came back itching all over), the whole creature of Vegas was trying to suck my soul out (via my ATM card). And it was a terrible, terrible feeling.

Has anyone seen that awful David Lynch film "Mulholland Drive?" I don't think I'm twisted enough to really appreciate any of David Lynch's work, but I did watch "Mulholland Drive" a few years ago and I tried really hard to understand it. I never did quite get a grip on it, but several images stuck with me. Remember the monster that lives behind the diner? The monster that comes in the end and brings the tiny little people in the bag to drive the girl crazy? He was so scary and just knowing he lived in that town, right there behind the diner, waiting to do evil things for money, it was like he embodied the soulless evil of Los Angeles. I suspect there is a creature like that lurking around Vegas and just being near him for two days was enough to make me almost as crazy as that chick in the movie.

3.) But I'm feeling much better now.

4.) My friend Shmeel from work is coming over in an hour to try and fix my car. Yay! Cheaper than the shop, no towing necessary, and done by a friend. Hopefully it's really the alternator belt, like everyone thinks, and not something more complicated and expensive. Otherwise, I might just be learning how not to have a car at all...

5.) Speaking of cars, and I can't believe this is coming in as an afterthought but it's only because I was trying really hard not to mention Mahavira... One of Mahavira's friends, we'll call her Manne, was in a car wreck yesterday and the other driver died. Damn. Mahavira got a call from the very hysterical Manne just after she left my house, and Manne asked her to come to a certain location on Columbia Blvd, then she said "I killed somebody." Turns out, the accident wasn't Manne's fault at all, and all witnesses (including the dead guy's son, who was a passenger) agree to this. She was driving down the street and the other guy pulled out right in front of her, she had no time to avoid him. But that doesn't make her feel a whole lot better. She kept saying "I killed somebody" and Mahavira kept trying to reframe it: "You didn't kill anyone. You were involved in an accident and there was a fatality." Hopefully that will help.

6.) Now I'm going to go take a shower.

i apologize in advance

2008-01-06T19:57:00.000-08:00

...and I promise to stop posting about Mahavira. I know it's got to be annoying. I just can't help it. This is my favorite picture of her and I finally figured out how to steal it from her mother's website and post it here. Fuck. Ignore her cousin and focus only on her gorgeousity. Wow.

Ok, I'm making a New Year's resolution right now to start posting about OTHER STUFF. I promise.

relief

2008-01-06T17:40:00.000-08:00

Things are finally beginning to feel normal again. As normal as things can ever feel for me, I guess. I was feeling a bit spirally on Friday and considered cancelling on Mahavira and going home to mope alone. But I pushed through it. Walked up to Whole Foods after work to buy her three limes to garnish the bean and tortilla soup she made me, then I took a bus to her house.

Things had been difficult for us since I'd been back and I wasn't sure what the weekend would look like. Turned out, the weekend looked great. From the minute I walked into her apartment, everything was fine. All the pieces that had been churned up by my brother's visit somehow settled like snow in a globe. There we were, on the loveseat again, her feet across my lap, drinking a beer and talking talking talking and it was so good. The soup was fantastic and then we watched a documentary about Rwanda, all curled up together on the loveseat. Everything was peaceful in my heart and mind and body again.

Saturday was the first full day we ever spent together. It started like most of our truncated days start. We woke around eleven and Mahavira made us tea, which we drank (as usual) sitting up in bed. The bed is pushed into a corner against two walls. Mahavira leans against one wall and I lean against the other and our legs cross over each other. We drink our tea and talk for at least two hours. That's how Saturday started.

But Saturday couldn't stay so sublime because Mahavira's foster dog was sick and had to go to the vet. In fact, the dog woke us up every two hours throughout the night to go outside. Diarrhea and vomiting are no fun. We eventually dragged ourselves out of the cozy tea den and packed the dog off to a vet's office way out on 82nd. Three hours and $185 later we still weren't quite sure what was wrong with the dog, but we had some medicine for the symptoms and we hoped for the best.

By then we were starving since we hadn't eaten all day. Mahavira was dying to take me to Pepino's for a sweet tequila chicken burrito, which is in no way an authentic Mexican dish, but which is tasty nonetheless. We both ate way more than we should have, then we headed back to the apartment to try and force some medicine into the dog and to watch some more movies. When we finally went to bed at midnight, the dog hadn't had any episodes of gross expulsions in several hours and we crossed our fingers and hoped for a full night's sleep.

It was a miracle, but the dog didn't stir once through the night and we both slept like rocks. Hot sweaty rocks that were glued together all night and couldn't bear to be separated for even a second. And if *you're* now afflicted with diarrhea and vomiting from reading all this shit about my wonderful love affair with Mahavira, I really don't blame you. I'd probably be feeling pretty nauseated myself if I wasn't so busy swooning with bliss.

Actually, I'm busy babysitting the dog, who is quite the needy little monster. She has terrible separation anxiety and barks her head off if she's left alone, so Mahavira's been taking her everywhere for the past three months. Poor Mahavira. She's a saint. Patron Saint of needy dogs. Mahavira's working right now and I volunteered to keep the dog tonight since she's been sick and might've caused problems at Mahavira's workplace.

Turns out, most of her symptoms have disappeared (no bad stuff all day, yay) and she probably would've been fine with Mahavira. As it is, she's laying at my feet and whining for Mahavira every few minutes. It's kind of annoying. I mean, I miss Mahavira too, but I'm not *that* pathetic. I don't think...

lingering unease

2008-01-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

I think I was disproportionately traumatized by Vegas. Nothing particularly bad happened. I wasn't mugged or assaulted, I didn't get violently ill, I didn't get ahold of any bad drugs, I didn't get food poisoning from shrimp cocktails, I didn't get lice. Yet, I came back to Portland utterly shell=shocked and I still haven't recovered.

Part of my unease is probably to do with my brother. There were a couple of moments when he seemed as far away from me as a dust particle floating in a dark and lifeless part of the universe. I saw in him tiny hints of autism or Asperger's Syndrome -- a certain unrelatedness. And it made me cold. It reminded me of his cold, aloof father, my step-father, and I wondered if these disorders are genetic. Dave was actually the one to suggest the possibility that he has Asperger's. He was joking, but only half.

I love him and I felt an almost desolate feeling as I hugged him goodbye at the airport Tuesday afternoon, just an hour after we'd arrived from Vegas. He put his arms around me awkwardly, like a badly constructed cyborg, and was sure to hold me as far away from him as possible. Mahavira and I had strange, repeating, tedious arguments for the rest of the afternoon and again the next day. We still haven't settled back into our usual routine. I'm in a fog and am considering an increase in my daily dose of happy-pill. It's such a weird thing.

Why should two days in a miserable city throw me into such a tailspin? I feel like holing up in a quiet cabin somewhere in the woods for a weekend, just to think about everything. I'd like to walk in a hushed forest, breathe cold air and look at the trees. I think that would help.