High School Gym Showers

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I was a shy nerd in high school (okay, I'm still a shy nerd,but not as bad as then). Anyway, as with many other shy, nonathletic nerds, my most dreaded class was gym, aka P.E. There were oh-so-many reasons to hate it. The picking of teams, the not being able to swim, and last but certainly not least, the showers. I actually know gay guys who said they loved the showers in high school gym class because they would check out other guys. I was terrified, and at the time I didn't even know why. I hadn't a clue that I might be gay.

Anyway, I found a number of creative ways to get out of gym and when possible I took a gym selection that didn't require lots of effort or team play, so I didn't sweat and didn't need to shower. Once in awhile though a sadistic gym teacher would make everyone shower. He would patrol the locker room and make sure everyone took a shower (I wonder now what was really up with that? Was he checking out teenage boys?)

My point being, when I saw this shower picture in the Washington Post today I felt myself flinch. This setup is even worse than the showers in my old high school! At least those showers were along the wall. Here you are all facing each other! Argh! (oh and the showers in the picture are not working, that's why they look so crappy; the story is about needed repairs at a D.C. school).

A bit ironic that now I teach classes at a health club, but I do like the fact that the showers are individual with curtains. I'm not as shy as some guys who do that routine where they wrap a towel around themselves before pulling down their shorts, but neither do I parade around like an exhibitionist...

Anyway, just had to share. Happy Thursday everyone!

Snicker

I just heard on NPR's Marketplace during their 'Letters' segment that someone wrote in to point out an error. Apparently one of their reporters had said that Al Gore had used Powerpoint to do his Inconvenient Truth presentation. The listener pointed out that, in fact, Al had used Apple's Keynote presentation software.

The Marketplace host said that, ironically, the reoprter who made that error was "the biggst Mac geek we know."

Oh, so liking Macs makes you a geek?

Although, they did fail to mention that Al is on the Apple Board of Directors...

You didn't ask...

But here it is anyway. This is James, the ex-Navy boy I mentioned earlier. Isn't he cute? This was taken at Rehoboth Beach several years ago. I haven't heard from him in awhile.

Hunting down this picture, I had to rifle through boxes and boxes of photos. Gawd I really need to organize these, put some of them into the albums I have, and get some scanned into iPhoto. What a project!

Just some of my trips:
• Me as a Con guest in Sweden
• Early ICE days and several GenCons
• Me and S. in Hawaii
• Me and S. in Vegas
• Greece & Turkey
• Caribbean Cruise and the "*'NSync tour 'nsanity"

Later stuff is mostly digital at least

You guys slay me

You comment on the hot Asian (courtesy of Once You Go Asian....) but no one says anything about my poor Navy ex-bf being tortured? Well, according the W it's probably not torture... and anything to get those gay terrorist American fighter pilots...

Maybe I'll post a shirtless picture of HIM (he's 1/2 Thai) and was pretty cute... not all ripped like handyboy below, however.

On to more mundane topics! I am so proud of myself that I dragged my ass out of bed at 5:15 this morning and went to the gym. No sign of Mysterious Asian Man, unfortunately. The drive into work this morning was hellish; I swear the traffic gets worse every day.

Anyway, went to a client, solved his Airport wireless network problem, he was happy.

Back at the office now, thinking about lunch!

Survivor

Spoiler after the picture of the hot Asian model pretending to be construction worker...
















I love Yul! He is so cute the way he says 'holy cow!' (and those abs) The Puka tribe won again, and Yul was sent to the exile island. BUT he found the immunity compass! The guy is brilliant. (and those pecs!)

Interrogation

I was responding to a post on pesky'apostrophe about this whole torture scandal, and I was reminded of what a guy I dated a few years ago who was in the Navy told me. I thought I'd post it here too:

He was a medical technician on an aircraft carrier and was having a secret affair with a (male) pilot on the ship (he said ‘they say there is no privacy, but you find secret places to get away and hide’). They found out about him, but not the identity of the pilot. He said they spent weeks trying to get him to tell, including making him stand in a tiny square for over 24 hours, not letting him go to the bathroom…

He said they didn’t care so much about kicking him out, but they wanted to nail the pilot. Sad, huh? He said he never told, and he was dishonorably discharged. This is what we do to our own sailors.

Robert Wone Mystery

Okay, call me morbid if you want, but something fishy is going on surrounding the tragic murder of Robert Wone. There has been no news for weeks, after the investigation of the scene (and all the strange contradictions therein) was completed; and the DNA tests should have been completed by now. But there has been nothing but silence for a month. Is it a dead-end? Could it really have been some intruder (or, more likely, a trick). Poor Mr. Wone, though, totally undeserving of something like this, and the apparent treatment after the stabbing. For those with the same morbid curiosity as me, all the details are being followed on this blog.

Latest Personality disorder test

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Schizoid Personality Disorder:	Low
Schizotypal Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Antisocial Personality Disorder:	Low
Borderline Personality Disorder:	Low
Histrionic Personality Disorder:	Low
Narcissistic Personality Disorder:	Moderate
Avoidant Personality Disorder:	Very High
Dependent Personality Disorder:	High
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder:	Low
-- Take the Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Info --

More Science fun from the WP

Two articles from the Science page, one about the face on Mars, debunking once and for all the silliness about it being a real face; and one about how being social can be tiring (tiresome?), and spending time in groups can make you need more sleep.

How Brain's 'Mirrors' Aid Our Social Understanding - washingtonpost.com

A fascinating article in today's Washington Post Science Section about how we read other people's body language and other cues, and empathize to the point of somewhere in our brain experiencing what we are seeing. It goes on about how we understand language and our environment. You may need to register; I can repost here if it's a pain.

On a related front, I need to do a secret diary entry. UPDATE: done!

Listless

Here is is Sunday afternoon and I have accomplished almost nothing this weekend. I blame Jake for introducing me to a new vice. Or rather, a new way to fuel an old vice... It will be all his fault if my place isn't clean for his visit.

R. has called several times over the weekend. Friday night, yesterday afternoon, today around 1. I haven't answered and he desn't leave a message. Talk about passive-aggressive. I just don't want to deal with him right now and all the baggage that I drag around every time I see him. Plus I just don't have time. I'm already feeling down and draggy enough without that drama.

At least it's turning dark and cloudy out and it's supposed to rain. It's almost 90°F outside but there is a front coming through and going to turn cooler again. Yay!.

Well I'm going to make a pot of coffee and get to work. And a little cleaning. Hopefully.

Friday Driving

I'm gonna put 60 miles on the car today, driving to a client, to the office, back to the client then home. That's a lot of driving for me. But hey what can you do? At least I'll have NPR to keep me company. (I really should give WETA some money this year, though I am still annoyed with them for killing virtually all of their classical music programming.) But I do want to burn a new CD for the car with all my favorite J-pop songs on it. If I listen to Shonen Heart many more times, I think I'll be able to do it karaoke like Shigeki!

I really need to get work done on my Shadow World module this weekend. I was up late last night chatting with Jake, and now all I really want to do is go home put on my jammies,* and crawl into bed. Enviroboi's friend Jake is coming to visit next weekend! We'll actually get to meet after all this chatting online. And if he doesn't find me completely horrid, we'll talk more about maybe going on a cruise in the spring.

*No I do not actually own or wear 'jammies'

Busy Day Off

Just got back from a breakfast meeting with C. Things are moving along towards my next possible life transition. I'm too old for this. Spin class this morning, all women, but for the first time I had more people than the Exercise Manager who teached teaches Tuesdays. Hah!

Got a lot to do today, an appt this afternoon.

Later!

Oooh!

An Anime/J-pop music server! Armitage's Dimension - Streaming Anime/J-Pop Radio

Busy Tuesday

Was at a client all day, then 'happy hour' schmoozing with the co-workers. It never ceases to amaze me how sloppy some people are with their computers. Crap everywhere on the desktop, hard disk full, 7,000 emails sitting in their in-box...

I'm sort of hoping that I just hang out in the office today.

Anyway, no one had a comment on my Sunday Post bitch about people who cheat in the grocery express lane?

And for your Anime-music entertainment:

Eureka Seven Themes, live versions sung by the groups at the Osaka Anime Festival last year (look at the huge mob!)

Shonen Heart. ('Young Boy's Heart') Home Made Kazoko do the second theme (the little one with the visor is cute!) Anyone know where I can find an English translation?


Flow by Days, the first theme song for Eureka Seven


Anyone know where I can get the mp3's of these? Thanks!

A Good day... after all

Wow, today started off so shitty.

I was actually really depressed about R. related stuff overnight, then the trauma of the $2100 car repair, then the HD on my iMac said it had issues.

•Honda paid all $2100
•My HD was repaired successfully (as a Mac tech now I am so paranoid about HD failures cause I see them all teh time and they are usually... messy. Yes I have a backup but still.)
• R, well, that's a work in progress.

I may live.

Honda Update

So I dropped off the car, and decided I would check the web just to see how often this A/C thing was happening, and found this thread on Edmunds.com. Seemed like a lot of people were having a similar problem, and many have the same model year as me (2002 CRV). AND a lot of them, with a little persistence, got Honda to pay the whole thing. (which smells a whole lot like 'it's a defect but we really don't want to admit it, so let's just take care of it for you...').

I was so excited/nervous I was shaking. (Hey, I don't know about you guys, but $2100 is a whole lot of money to me, especially since I'm still not back to working full-time).

So I called Honda, got a Case #, and emailed my service manager. He emailed back saying that he had actually already called Honda and gotten the parts ($1300) covered, but was going to try to get the rest covered.

WELL, as I was typing this, he called to say that yes, Honda would pay the whole thing!!!

Crappy Monday

Driving around with R. yesterday I heard a kind of disturbing sound under the hood, and soon after that it seemed like the air conditioning wasn't working. I was worried it was something serious so I took it in this morning. It's going to be serious on my wallet: the AC compressor basically blew up, and threw shrapnel into some hoses. $2100 to fix! So I'm having a sucky day today.

J-pop and Anime Intros

ESTJ

R. mentioned that they gave him a Meyers-Briggs during the thing in N.O., and he came up an ESTJ. I had said he was an ESTP, and I stick with that, though I can see where he maybe used to be an ESTJ, with all the tradition and religion.

I feel really weird after our get-together today. I guess I'm glad he called me and wanted to hang out with me, but still the whole thing left me feeling kind of empty. I have this desire to watch more Anime, what's that all about? I may buy chapters 1-6 of Eureka SeveN. Oh and I think the darn car blew a belt this afternoon, i heard this sound and the A/C stopped cooling, so I think I need to take it in tomorrow morning.

Weird Sunday Afternoon

Right after I posted the previous entry, guess who called? R. He's been in New Orleans all week. He was all hyper and said he was bored... long story. I went over, there was a variety of fun (that boy is a machine), then we watched Voyager while I helped him build a model of Voyager that I had laying around and had mentioned once, and he asked if he could have it. Talk about a geek-fest. It was fun, but he made a few odd comments in the course of the afternoon. Might post to the secret diary... not sure.

Sunny and Warm

The sun is out and it's like 80°F outside, but I'm huddling inside for now (I have to go grocery shopping soon, that will be enough).

The day started out weirdly enough with me lying semi-awake in bed as the sky slowly grew light. I'd finished with my orgy of Anime (including Trinity Blood, left) and by 5:00 am almost every channel was showing "Paid Programming" (what did they all show before they had "Paid Programming" anyway?). I had that weird pain in my chest again, but I'm beginning to think it's because of the way I lie on the bed kind of slumped on pillows, since I never get any kind of pain when I'm actually exerting myself, and all the heart-related tests I've taken show it's in fine shape except for the little valve thing.

Speaking of exertion, class was okay this morning, but as I finished getting dressed afterwards the gorgeous tall Asian guy was walking out of the locker room. I almost followed him into the workout area just to get a better look at him. Almost.

I went by Whole Foods afterwards for my usual sandwich and odd items, and I got in the '8 Items or less line' after carefully noting that I had five items. I noticed that both of the women in front of me had more than eight items. The front one had a couple of things, then like 12 cans of the same thing, which she no doubt thought classified as only one item. Even if the checker only had to scan once, she still had to handle and bag all of them. The woman directly in front of me had no such excuse, with 13-14 items. I was tempted to say something or start obviously counting her items but wimped out, opting instead to stare at them as hard as I could. Then, the checker (a nice Asian lady who I've seen many times) said as she checked out the items, "You know this lane is eight items or less" and pointed to the sign. These lanes are obviously different from the other ones: smaller and narrower. The woman pretended to look flustered and said "Oh, I'm sorry." And the checker said "You know people behind you in line are waiting." Go her!

Just as she was leaving I smiled at the checker and said "It's amazing how people can't seem to count to eight!" The checker looked at me and said "Oh they know! They do it on purpose." Then she went off about she didn't know what to do with those people because when she says something they sometimes complain about her to customer service. The nerve! If I were in customer service I'd say "Well, did you have more than eight items?"

I would not last long in customer service.

As I was walking to my car I saw three guys in the outdoor seating area, one white guy and two Asians. One of the Asians from the semi-rear angle looked like R. I had to force myself not to look back as I passed; I knew it wasn't him. Then driving home I saw this Asian guy and white guy get out of a car by the nearby school playground. THAT guy looked kind of like R., but he had a basketball and I was pretty sure R. didn't play basketball. Nevertheless I wrenched my head around to look at him again. I've got issues.

Toonami

Ugh, it's 4:30 am, and I've been awake for the last couple hours watching Anime. Trinity Blood, Bleach, and now Eureka Seven, the J-pop/hip-hop theme song of which is now completely stuck in my head. Something about Japanese boys rapping is so cute...

Here's the version of the song as the opening theme of Eureka Seven.

Lame

Had dinner with a friend/former co-worker, talked about a lot of things, how my mother was Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People; she was pretty appaled by my childhood. She asked about R.

Entry in the secret Diary.

10 mins into Survivor

Yul is actually really cute too, and very well-spoken. And damn look at that body.

Okay, halfway through now, and I have to admit I got a little choked up when the Asians won the challenge. They were really working together there at the end. Brad really is beautiful; he's mixed-race asian, Filipino and Hawaiian or something. Pretty obviously gay too, but not in a flaming way.

Ohgodohgodohgod

(SPOILER ALERT)

Blade! The evil hottie vampire (Marcus) is making undercover 'good vampire' Krista torture poor Shen! God I can't watch!!!

When they captured him they thought Blade was dead, and the evil blonde vamp bitch says to Shen "Your boyfriend is dead, so you'll have to do!"

Now Shen is about to escape (Krista slipped him a scalpel after trearing half his fingernails off, *shudder*) and outside the room the vampire bodyguard is saying "Blade's dead, and we got the little bitch of his." Could this get any more suggestive?

I was hoping for a tiny show of affection when Blade comes to get Shen but he puts a gun to his head and says "Are you turned?"

Blade does say "I thought you were dead."

TSA: Permitted and Prohibited Items

Such a fascinating list.

Knitting needles and pointy scissors are allowed. Mouthwash is not.

Fortunately eye drops and 'personal lubricants' up to 4 oz are also allowed! Fun!

Caffeinated

I'm on my 4th cup of strong coffee today, and should probably lay off for a bit. Had a pretty productive writing morning, with laundry, lunch and a couple quick errands to break it up--though I ran over some kind of iron cap in the road that is normally covering one of those little utility holes in the street but was instead flipped over with the kind of jaggy-looking underside sticking up; I was pissed about that and worried about damaging my tires. I might have swerved to avoid it, but it was raining out and the roads were slick.

Classes went okay this morning, pretty good group for abs. I'm hoping to have a big crowd again for tonight's class! This afternoon I hope to get some more writing done, then it's cleaning time. I need to get the kitchen and bathroom floors, and get all the junk in the second bedroom/office put away.

On a completely unrelated note, Arlington Comcast has done this weird thing with the channel lineup, moving the Sci-fi Channel from 62 to 51 (which was the Style Channel) and now 62 is some stupid sports channel. I went to the website, and supposedly 'Extended Basic' doesn't even get Sci-fi anymore (I get Digital HD, but I actually watch most of my TV on the small analog one in my bedroom; they are still sending out the analog signal as well). They monkey with minor channel changes from time to time, but TiVo usually picks up on it right away. So far they haven't. It's just a minor annoyance since I don't watch anything on Sci-fi anymore but the Stargates on Friday night, so I need to manually set the TiVo if it isn't corrected by then.

Oh and semi-related to that... I was telling S. (see date on Sunday) about my TiVo sound drop-out woes and he said "Oh I know what you mean, I've seen it too. I think that's actually crappy Comcast, not your TiVo." Well, that would sure explain a lot. So maybe I didn't need a new HD after all. Oh well, the new one is like 3x bigger than the old one so it's not a total waste. Glad I didn't buy a new TiVo.

On another unrelated note... it's 65°F outside, and has been all day. Whay does my A/C keep coming on to keep the temperature in here at 72°F? Do I and my electronics generate all that much heat?

Survivor

I'll watch as long as he's on.

Joseph-TV.com

Joseph has brought back The Mischievious Boys Videos! Including the one with Tommy in the bathtub! (insert girlish giggle here).

Oh on, not Shen!

Tomorrow night is the season finale of Blade. The last few episodes Shen has looked hotter and hotter. He's always in a tight wifebeater these days, showing off his pecs and great arms. And he's got a Mac G5 Tower and cinema display too! Shen's relationship with Blade has been slowly unfolding too, beyond the gay jokes and them engaging in other gentle mutual ribbing.

Before they showed the preview of the season finale last week, I was wondering what they would do for a big cliffhanger. Would the Vampires capture Shen, the one person that Blade seems to actually care about? Nah, that's way too Batman & Robin I thought.

Then they showed the preview. There was Shen, in his wifebeater, tied to a chair while the evil blonde female vampire was standing over him, taking out little tastes of his blood.

If they kill Shen, I'm not watchiing any more!

Tomorrow is a Rest Day II

Ugh, another long day, though nothing actually went wrong. I was sent off to a client to rebuild a guy's wrecked hard drive, so I spent all day reinstalling software, which means spending time on the phone with people like Adobe to get new validation codes...

Anyway, the joke of Tomorrow is a Rest Day (and actually I had the title wrong; the actual title of the episode is Thank god it's Friday... again which is even funnier in context) is that the bad of refugees of Farscape (including the delicious Ben Browder) visit this planet full of tanned, white haired people who slave in farms all day and party half the night. A few of the members of the group eat the food and become trippy-happy drugged like the others... every night the loudspeakers tell the workers what a good job they did and "Tomorrow is a rest day!" But they wake up the next day and don't remember what they were told and go back to slaving in the hot farms. And that night they are told... "Tomorrow is a rest day!"

'Tomorrow is a Rest Day'

That title above is actually the title of a Farscape episode; if you don't know the reference, the irony will of course be lost on you. I'f I'm bored later I'll explain it, though it looks like a busy day here at Mac Genius land.

Yesterday after spin class I called S. like we agreed, and met him at Dupont Circle, aka gay central. And yes, it still definitely is gay central, despite rumors of its demise at the pocketbooks of rich dual-income straight people who all thought Dupont was hip and trendy (well yes, it is) and bought up property there.

Anyway, we hung out at the Circle awhile and watched the boys go by holding hands; it was kind of cute. It's been a long time since I hung out in gayville.

Then we got some lunch and walked up to Meridian Hill Park, talked about Stargate and Charmed (we're both big fans, it turns out), then back to the Circle. So it was a nice if uneventful afternoon. I headed home around 6, watched some tv, went to bed early.

I miss the Mischievious Boys

Yeah they were just a fad, some silly lipsynching Asian guys from Sacramento of all places.

And it turned out that Joey (bald one on the left) was a minor porn star, but the other three all seem like nice guys (okay, so there's nothing really wrong with being a porn star, bu you know what I mean...). Tommy (the cute Vietnamese, next over, was a student, and David, the next one with the amazing pecs, is a schoolteacher (I exchanged emails with him and he is a really sweet guy) and Edward is a shy personal trainer (hey I am a shy spin instructor). They have all moved on but I still love watching these videos. I should try to get in touch with David and see how he is doing, he was facing that delicate situation of being not closeted but not hiding his orientation at work, which I think is very courageous. He said many of his students and fellow teachers (he teaches high school) know about his sexuality. I think we need more happy, well adjusted gay teachers to show that we are everywhere and just regular people.

A better day

The day is over, and as far as I know, nothing went horribly wrong. I am coming to understand what my new boss said in the interview about this job being 'a different kind of pressure.' I like all things Mac, and I love learning about them and all the stuff available for them, and sure I do enjoy problem-solving, but when you are at some client site and they are breathing down your neck wanting you to solve their mysterious crashing problem right now, it gets a little sketchy.

I was at the Apple Store yesterday to take in an iMac (for the second time) because it kept shutting down, and I idly asked Chris, one of the Mac Geniuses, who I had met on my previous visit (they are all so young! Sickening) when the new 24" iMac would be out (it premiered on the Apple web site that morning). He kind of rolled his eyes and said "That's a good question. Actually, I have been so busy today that I haven't even had a chance to go to the website and see the 24" iMac." Eeek, and at one point I had wanted ot be a Mac Genius. The Clarendon store always seems swamped.

But I digress. So as far as I know, things are ok with the clients, but over the last few weeks I have had several crises. None that I know of were my fault, but there were a couple of instances where I probably could have recovered better. Part of me feels like this is a learning period; I've only been on this job a little over a month, working 3 days a week, and just recently starting to go to clients, but I feel like the boss--and to some extent the other guys--are treating this like a sink-or-swim scenario. Already on several occasions I've provided information from my experience that they didn't know, so I feel like I deserve a little respect. Sure I ask them about things, but I think that's normal in any new job. And this is a big change for me; I was basically doing my previous job for almost ten years. Okay, I sound like I'm whining I'm sure, but several times over the last few weeks I've just felt overwhelmed. Navigating the maze of DC traffic, meeting and being nice to all these clients, problem-solving under pressure... a little voice has said "Bag it! It's not worth it! Quit and go with plan B!" But plan B is still in the planning stages. I might still go there in a few months. God I hate the driving.

On a happier note, another great Spin class! Almost full, several people came up afterwards to compliment me! I used the Sexyback mix again.

Goodbye again Dr. Jackson

Okay, but even I wasn't that broken up. It's gotten so derivative lately, and increasingly away from the Stargate to other stuff. And they just shamelessly rip off old Star Trek plots and terminology ('beaming', 'subspace') and the ships look too much like Galactica, and... well. Crichton/Aeryn Sun and Mitchell/Vala, much as I like them, was the final shark-jumping maneuver.

Beds

Anyone have any experience with the Sleep Number Bed?

My box spring is starting to creak more and more in a most annoying manner, and I think I actually got a too-firm mattress. R's sleep-number is nice. I'm always wary of products sold with infomercials (even though I want to trust the Bionic Woman).

Horrible Dreams

As regular Synaptic Discharge readers probably know, I don't usually sleep well on Wednesday nights, because I have to get up at 5 to go teach my 6:30 am spin class. The last few weeks haven't been as bad for some reason (only waking up a few times), but last night was a doozy. Perhaps because my schedule this morning was:

• get up (dress, have breakfast).
• load 2 iMac G5's, my laptop, an external HD, my gym bag, and my work clothes in my car.
• go to class, leaving my car parked on a street in Georgetown in the predawn darkness, loaded with about $6000.00 in hardware, not to mention the value of the clients software and files.
• Teach spin and abs.
• Go directly from the gym to the first client, fix her internet connection and some other stuff, drop off a new computer.
• Go to another client, drop off her computer (hopefully finally fixed at the Apple Store).
• Drive to the office.

So. I was really stressed about leaving all that stuff in my car during class, but my boss had agreed with the client that I meet her at her place before she left for work, so I didn't have time to go back home and get the equipment. Then I was stressed about getting her internet connection to work on her old OS 9 Mac (long story), getting done with her, the other Mac delivered, then to the office for a briefing on tomorrow's job, then back home to teach my 6:30 PM class... You get the idea. So I had some crazy nighmares.

1. Not surprisingly, I had a dream that my car was stolen from a parking garage. I don't know if you've ever come back to get your car that you left in a garage, and you were sure it was stolen, because it was gone from where you were sure it was parked... then you find out you're on the wrong floor or something. My sister might remember that one time after Van Halen... Anyway, that was basically just running around in a big garage ever more desperately looking for my car.

Then things got weird with TK's REM synaptic discharging...

2. I was on a sofa somewhere in a living room (in some ways it resembled the old house at 118 Stratford Court in Charlottesville, but nicer--some readers will remember that!). R. was sitting next to me, and I had my arm around him. Also on the sofa was another Asian guy... and at some points during the dream he was also R. He was not happy that I had my arm around R., and we were kind of snuggling. After a lot of discussion and argument (at times he was arguing with himself! He stormed out of the room, saying that it was disgusting that we were showing affection 'in public.'

3. Then things got different weird; I blame that episode of Xiaolin Showdown I watched before bed). R. and I were in this place that looked like a stereotypical Chinese palace/temple complex, with the roofs, large round doorways, the works. It was night, and the temple was under attack. R. and I were wearing karate outfits and defending against this horde: martial arts, fireball spells, katana, you name it. R. sort of became a cross between himself and Omi. God knows who I was supposed to be. That dream was almost fun in a way, except that as it went on, we became more and more overwhelmed, and it started to seem hopeless...

Oh and by the way, I'm at the office, everything went (seemingly) fine. So far.

Turn away from the TV...

I watched Katie Couric, and I was sorry. Then I read the review this morning about Rosie's premiere on The View. So, I TiVo'ed. It's good old non-crazy Rosie! And she runs rough-shod over the other three, including that old fossil Babwah. It's clear who's running the show now, and the first 15 minutes at least were very entertaining.

Of course if she pisses off the duchess too much, she could find herself out on her ample butt...

I won't argue with this:

Being an Atheist in America Isn't Easy

Not all that southern

Your Linguistic Profile:

40% General American English

20% Yankee

15% Dixie

15% Upper Midwestern

5% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

The entire 15% probably comes from "Y'all" which I now say all the time (better than the hideous 'y'uns' from Pittsburgh!)

Katie Couric:

Fashion disaster undead!

WTF? Sure I haven't watched the Today show in ages, so I'm not that up on what my fellow UVA alum looks like, but I've seen pictures. I admit I was curious to see how she did on her first CBS Evening News appearance.

What the F&@k!? First they put her in this white jacket that looks like it is 3 sizes too small and stretched across her hips and midsection, and they have her lounge outside the news desk. Then later, behind the desk she is sitting too high, so we still see the single giant button straining across her midsection, highlighting the massive black hourglass of her form... The whole time (all of maybe 4 minutes) I was watching, my gaze moved in stunned horror back and forth from this disastrous jacket to... her face.

Oh Katie, so formerly cute and perky, could you not have aged gracefully? I don't know if it is surgery or makeup or both, but your eyes seemed sunken in their sockets, your flesh stretched across bones like some hideous, flesh-toned Skeletor. Your smile a grimace, your eyebrows immobile.

Your mouth moved, yet I could not hear the words. The fluffy content of your newscast (huh? Was that Morgan Sperlock? Wait...) went unheard as I gaped silently in horror. Who let you get in front of a camera in that outfit? Who put all that crap on your face?

Sad.

Rain in the car and out

Driving to work today in the pouring rain, I was listening to (as usual) NPR Morning Edition. As this story about the good samaritan on China's Suicide Bridge unfolded, I felt myself getting choked up, and before long my eyes were tearing up. Just great: poor visibility from the rain, and from my contacts floating away.

I guess that's what NPR news is all about though, huh? How do they find these stories!?

Ever have that feeling...

... the day after you were up almost all night? Not hung-over (only had a couple of drinks) but fatigued, and feeling a little chilled. Everything seems a bit surreal (the grocery store definitely felt that way earlier today).

Anyway, that's how I'm feeling right now. I may have to put a sweatshirt on or something. Last night with L. was fun, though I was embarassed at how messy my place was when he came over I really wasn't planning on having him in. Really! Anyway we had a nice time I think, and I tried not to think of R. too much. At least L. likes to kiss, and is pretty good at it. He left at around 9:30 this morning. Now I'm just kind of knocking around the place, having late coffee and dreading tomorrow.

Suddenly

I have a date tonight.

And it's not with R. It's with one of those other perfectly nice (cute, asian) guys. We're gonna head to 1223 (?). It used to be the Lizard Lounge, a special holiday gay-night event only on Sundays before a Monday holiday. I had offered coffee tomorrow but he asked if I would go out tonight for a real drink. I was ambivalent because these things are always a huge loud mob scene. But then I saw that the guest DJ downstairs is none other than Hex Hector.

HH has done some great remixes of Whitney Houston, *N Sync, Deborah Cox... I reluctantly admitted my boyband/Diva thing to my date, and he told me that he also liked all of the above. Hm.

Well, we'll see. Now I need to go try to clean myself up. I'd rather just curl up under the comforter with R and watch Star Trek, but that's a dead end. And it's not like he's inviting me over tonight either.

Oops

While paging through (ahem) gay.com, I accidentally clicked on this link.

And yes, half the reason I go to this site now is to see if R. is there. Never seen him yet, but maybe he doesn't need to go here. Lexapro sure seems to be working for him, he's more self-confident than ever.

Ouch

Normally I detest the comic Prickly City; it has a conservative bent and frequently mocks liberals and democrats. Today, however, an (unusual) apolitical one kind of hit home.

Up Since 5

Would be nice if I actually did something useful with this time. I did finally catch up on Blade last night. I wish they'd explain more about Shen's backstory. This morning, some Avatar and coffee...

I'm so glad that we have an extra day this weekend; I've still got several things to get done... some easier than others.

Today's spin playlist.

Boys of Summer/Don Henley
Move Along/The All-American Rejects
Everytime We Touch (Radio Mix)/Cascada
Sexyback/Justin Timberlake
Yeah!/Usher
Listen To Your Heart (Hardbounze Single Edit)/D.H.T.
Slow/Kylie
We're All Alone/Newton
I'm a Slave 4 U/Britney Spears
Easy as Life (Mixshow Edit)/Deborah Cox
Every Time We Touch (Yanou's Candlelight Mix)/Cascada

I thought it made a good end-of-summer lineup, with the original Boys of Summer to start off with for warmup. And of course I love putting Justin and Britney together... feel the tension! Finally, yes I know I have Every Time We Touch on there twice. The first one is the up-tempo version, teh last, for cool-down, is the slow ballad version. In music terms, it's what we call a Reprise.

Everything is available on iTunes.

Bored

This is a diagram of power outages in Virginia I took a shot of this morning. It was a lot worse last night, lots of red. Fortunately I didn't lose power; I spent most of the evening in bed watching the five fan-favorite Stargate SG-1's.

Class went well this morning; maybe I'll post the mix list in a little bit. I don't feel up to it right now. I kind of feel like I'm adrift, personally, professionally, in every aspect of my life. I'm glad to be out of my old job, but I'm not very happy with this one either. I guess I'm just plain not very happy. I can fantasize about R. all I want, but practically, even if he was interested, I don't think it would ever work out in the long term. I don't exactly have the greatest relationship track record myself. And even as I pine away over R., there are two perfectly nice guys who want to actually date me, but I just don't seem to be able to take the initiative to call them back and actually set something up. It just seems like so much work.

Well, I'm gonna make some more coffee and try to do some writing.

Ernesto Bearing Down

Tropical Depression Ernesto ('depression,' how appropriate!) is upon us, with wind and rain (though not so much rain yet, maybe that gets heavier later). Got my errands done for the most part. Was thinking of a gym visit, but I think I'll skip it today.

Not feeling too much of the post-R. depression, though going back through the old diary last night did provide some sobering perspective.

Ohh, as I type, I'm looking out the window and the rain is getting heavier! The wind-driven rain from tropical storms alwas seems different than regular rain somehow.