Category Archives: Randomness

Humor, Randomness

Quick! To the Queermobile!

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Queermobile

Friday night, I took Becky back to her place after spending a few hours running around town with her and watching a movie at my place. As we were driving, I noticed that my brake light kept coming on. Being a bit concerned, I called my favorite mechanic Saturday morning. He informed me that it sounded like I was losing brake fluid, especially considering my answers to his questions ruled out the other possiblities. Unfortunately, he also informed me that he wouldn’t be able to get to my car until Monday, but I was free to drop it off and leave it there, just in case he found some free time this weekend.

As I didn’t want to have to take extra time on Monday to get my car there, I agreed to drop it off Saturday morning. However, I decided I still needed a car, so I picked up the phone a second time and called Enterprise. They indicated they had a car available and I could have it through Tuesday. So when I dropped my car off at the garage, I walked the two blocks over to Enterprise’s Henrietta office and filled out the paperwork to get my rental car.

As the woman who was taking care of me went to get keys, she asked her coworker what midsized cars they had available. He told her the PT Cruiser would be the best bet. Now I have to admit, I think PT Cruisers are ugly cars, but I’m not inclined to be too picky when it comes to a rental car. After all, I only have to drive it for a few days.

Apparently, I was completely oblivious (probabl due to the list of items running through my head that I really should’ve been doing at that exact moment rather than worrying about transportation), because I never noticed the color of my new rental car when I got into it and drove it off the lot. It wasn’t until I got back to my townhouse, gathered up the stuff I needed for the day, and walked back out to the car before I realized that it was this incredibly light shade of lavendar. I looked at it and started laughing. The only thing I could think to say was, “Well, I guess I don’t have to worry about anyone assuming I’m straight for the nex few days.” I also wondered if the people at Enterprise gave me this car because I happened to be wearing my “2QT2BSTR8 shirt at the time.”

I have to admit that as Saturday progressed, the car actually grew on me. I’ve affectionally named it “The Queermobile,” much to friends’ amusement. I’ve especially fallen in love with the color. I’m actually considering saving up my money and finding a body shop that can paint my car that same color, or at least something close.

Isn’t it strange the things I find amusing?

Randomness

A good evening

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Tonight is one of those strange nights where my mood is undefinable. I’m sitting here at Equal Grounds again. It’s becoming my favorite post-meditation spot for Tuesday nights. I like being able to run over here and cap off my night with a nice snack, a good drink, and a pleasant atmosphere to seek out my muse in.

Before meditation, I managed to sneak in a forty five minute nap. I ran over to the POC immediately after work, eating a bite of supper on the drive. Once there, I let myself in, locked the doors, and camped out on one of the couches. I meant it to only be a twenty minute nap, but when I finally decided to get up and check the time, it was ten of seven. What’s more, Terry had just gotten there. I’m not sure how long Rob had been sitting outside, but he said hi to Terry as she approached from down the hallway.

Terry led the four of us in a nice meditation, incorporating both colors and the ocean waves. It was a nice experience, and I found myself flowing into the appropriate state of consciousness rather quickly. I did end up coming out of my meditative state a bit before the others, though. So I had to wait for the meditation to conclude. Then we sat around talking for a bit before we locked up.

I’m going to miss the space the POC has. Our lease is up as of Saturday, and we will have to look for other places to hold our events. I will especially miss that ability to get there early and either take a nap or work on my writing. The space has been good to us, but the money just isn’t there to keep it right now. So we’ll make do with what we have.

The music playing here today is rather jazzy. It’s pretty good, though not entirely my style. However, I will admit that it doesn’t keep my head from bobbing every now and then. Nor does it prevent my fingers from trying to type to a rhythm that compliments the percussion track of the current song. In many ways, it’s quite amusing.

Daily Life, Randomness, Work

A sure sign I’ve grown old.

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I’m sure I commented earlier on the youth of some of the people working for my current customer. I think I’ve even mentioned that I think they have a lot of co-ops from RIT working for them. Well, today, I think I met the youngest one of them all. Well, it’d be more accurate to say I saw him, as he was sitting in a meeting and I was passing by the conference room. I’m pretty sure he’s a co-op. But now, I find myself wondering if they take co-ops that are still in high school. He looked that young.

He had to be a college kid, and at least a junior at that. But man, he didn’t look it. That or everyone’s starting to look that young to me because I’m getting so old. I really may need that cane after all.

Going Out, Randomness, Work

Just a ramble about the day

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I had a rather long day at work. I ended up working a ten hour shift, which is an hour longer than the shift I worked on Tuesday. But I needed to work that many hours to get my time in on a particular project. I believe I mentioned earlier that I was working on-site for Customer A and at my own company’s office for Customer B. Well, in theory, I’m now assigned to Customer A full time.

However, Customer B still needs some of my time. That project took longer than expected, and we’re still doing testing. As the only software engineer on the project, they need my support. So in addition to working a full week at Customer A’s site, I’m trying to come in to our office for a few hours a week to support the work on Customer B’s stuff. I put in two and a half hours total over Tuesday and Wednesday morning. As I had things to do that evening, I didn’t put in a full eight hours at Customer A’s site those days. So today was the day to make up the difference.

As a reward to myself for working so hard this week, I decided to come directly over here to Equal Grounds again after work. I decided to give their black bean wrap a try for dinner. It’s actually pretty good. So here I sit, munching on a wrap and nachos and washing it all down with an iced tea. It’s practically a perfect evening, especially when you consider that an episode of Law & Order is on the television, which is about fifteen feet or so directly ahead of me. So while I’m doing my writing, I also get treated to a great show. Of course, I’ve already seen this episode, but there aren’t many I haven’t seen already. I used to be a Law & Order fanatic.

Oh, back on the work topic (sort of), let me just say that I’m amazed by the incredible number of good looking guys that work for Customer A. Of course, most of them also seem to be incredibly young. I’m beginning to wonder if they hire 85% or better of their employees directly out of RIT. And actually, I know that at least two of the guys working on my team are co-ops from there. It’s just crazy.

Not that I’d chase any of them. That would be a nightmare waiting to happen. Besides, I’ve decided I’d rather be the one being chased. 😉

Randomness

Week in review

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This past week was pretty uneventful, really. Well, up until Wednesday, at least. Wednesday, we got a pretty good storm that came through the area. The good news is that we didn’t get anything near the 20+ inches they were originally predicting on Tuesday. The bad news is that this meant that I didn’t get a snow day off from work. So that meant driving on messy roads with snow still falling from the sky. Granted, it was still better than back when I lived in Pennsylvania and drove all the way to Ithaca and back each day for work.

The only down side to the experience was that Wednesday was my day to be split between projects. That meant that when I got up in the morning, I had to clean my car off to drive to the customer’s site, only to clean my car off again at lunch time to drive over to my own office and finish out the day there. When I cleaned off my car in the evening night to drive home, I decided that was the last time, stocked up on anything I possibly thought I could need before morning, and locked myself in my house for the night. It was actually quite relieving.

Of course, when I came home, I noticed some kids climbing a snow bank accross the parking lot from my home. They appeared to be having a good time. It gave me quite the smile, and made me think of my nieces and nephews down in Mississippi. Poor Liam is begging for snow, it seems. So I called my sister and jokingly told her she needed to bring the kids up here for some winter play. She laughed and told me in no uncertain terms that I can’t even mention the idea to Liam or he’d be all packed.

In other news, I have a coffee date tomorrow. I won’t say much about it other than that I’m quite excited about it.

Friends, Going Out, Health, Movies, Randomness

Great Day Yesterday

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I spent most of yesterday with Becky. We had a pretty good time. The day started with me going to the one office she works out of for a massage. I didn’t have anything in particular I wanted her to work on, so she basically did a full body massage. In practice, though, she spent most of the time on my legs.

She yelled at me during this part of the massage. I was having trouble relaxing my legs. Particularly, when she would go to move my legs, I’d move them for her. Apparently, that makes certain part of the massage process difficult to do effectively. I don’t know why it was such an issue for me. Probably because I have control issues, anyway.

Once the massage was over, I got dressed and we ran some errands together. Becky had to go to the printer to get flyers printed and get new business cards created. I ended up helping her with figuring out some of the details of her business cards — such as what color paper to use and the font to use for her name. Once we were done there, we swung by my bank so I could deposit a cashier’s check. You see, over Thanksgiving break, I decided to close out my savings account at the bank near my parents’ home. Because of the amount, I had them give me a cashiers check rather than giving me the balance in cash. So now that’s in my checkign account up here. Which is good, because I needed money to pay rent and a couple bills.

Once the errands were done, we decided to go catch a movie. After looking over our options, we finally decided to see “Deja Vu.” Personally, I thought it was a pretty good movie, though I found some annoying inconsistencies in the underlying concept. (Warning: Stop here if you don’t want any spoilers.) The big problem is they never made up their mind whether they wanted past events to be unchangeable with a single, permanent timeline or whether they would allow changes to the past to spawn alternate timelines. As a result, they ended up alternating between the two scenarios based on what was convenient for the plot. The end result was that they created a alternate timeline in the end, but allowed things that should have been only in the alternate timeline (such as finding the ATF agent’s fingerprints in the victim’s home) appearing in teh original timeline anyway. So it got messy. But other than that, it was a good movie. And Denzel Washinton was as great as ever when it came to playing his part.

After the movie, Becky and I went to check out Red Robin, which just opened here in the past couple of weeks. It was a pretty nice experience, though it’s quite obvious that they’re not kidding about their reputation of being a “Burger and Spirits” establishment. They’re just about the only things on the menu. But the BBQ burger I had was excellent and the desert was practically orgasmic, though entirely too big. Fortunately, Becky was there to help me eat it all. And of course, there were plenty of cute guys to check out.

All in all, I felt it was a delightful day.

Family, Friends, Going Out, Health, Personal Development, Randomness, Work

Bits and Bobs

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The last couple of weeks have been more or less uneventful. Well, as long as you disregard the funeral I attended for a cousin. His battle with Parkinson’s finally took a turn for the worse. It was a pretty good service and well attended. I particularly appreciated the number of firemen who came to the event. Not that this is entirely surprising. The fire department was a big part of Tim’s life. Even after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, he spent as much time as he could at the fire house, doing whatever jobs he could manage. The head of the department commented at the funeral that he was going to have to find four new volunteers to replace Tim.

My sister and her kids are in the area. She decided to make the drive up from Mississippi for the funeral. Her husband told her she had to stay for at least a week, though. So she’s here until Monday. I plan on running down to my parents’ house tomorrow and spending the day with her and the kids. It should be fun.

I think the lack of employment is starting to get to me on some level. So next week, I’ll have to start getting more serious about the search for a job. I had really hoped one of the opportunities Rick and Kevin had found would pan out, but that doesn’t appear to be the case. So it’s time for me to get off my duff and take matters into my own hands again. The only down side to that is that I probably won’t find something temporary. I really wanted that because I wanted to eventually go back to the company that moved me into this area.

I’ve started walking again. I haven’t decided if I’m doing it to “lose weight’ (probably not), exercise (again, not necessarily), or just for the fun of it (I’m leaning towards this answer). It’s gotten me out of the house a bit more and that’s been well worth it. I’m rediscovering that I really do like doing things like that.

I’ve also gone on a couple outtings with Becky, which is always nice. A couple Thursdays ago, we went to a local coffee shop. I had a delicious drink consisting of hot apple cider, caramel, and whipped cream. Then we just sat and talked. It was pleasant. And I got to check out a couple cute guys, which is always a plus.

Friends, Going Out, Randomness, Religion, Witchcraft

Rochester Pagan Pride 2006

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Saturday, I spent the day at the Rochester Pagan Pride Festival. I had an absolutely wonderful time, and look forward to going again in the future.

Most of the day, I spent hanging out with Wendy and her friends. She was kind enough to let me put out a few fliers for the POC on her table. Quite a few people ended up taking them. With any luck, that means we’ll see some new faces real soon.

I didn’t attend many workshops, as I was having too much fun talking with friends and what-not. The one that I did manage to attend was the Crystal Singing Bowl meditation, led by the good folks from Singing Bowl Expressions. I’ve been to one of the monthly meditations that Dawn and Jeff hold at Psychic’s Thyme before. While I certainly enjoyed my experience there, it paled in comparison to the demonstration at Pride this year. This workshop involved ten different bowls, each vibrating at their own frequency. While I was not one of the many people who immediately found themselves out of their body, I could certainly feel my own energy channels responding to the experience. I also remember opening my eyes a couple of times and realizing I couldn’t focus my vision. It was an incredibly rewarding experience.

I also got a book on Pagan ethics that Patricia Telesco recently wrote under another pen name. As Ms. Telesco was one of the invited speakers at the festival (and I bought the book directly from her), I had the chance to discuss it with her. I told her about my desire to do some research and planning over the next year and put together a local workshop on Pagan ethics. She was quite happy about the idea and encouraged me. I also shared with her about my blog entry concerning the line in the Charge of the Goddess that declares “all acts of love and pleasure” to be rites of the Goddess. She paid me a rather high compliment in regards to how I approached that line and the sentences surrounding it. It was rather encouraging.

I think the person who impressed me most at the festival, however, was someone I never actually got the opportunity to speak to. That’s the young man, Adam, who stood about ten to fifteen feet from the entrance to the festival, handing out Christian tracts to anyone who would take them. According to one of the organizers I spoke with later, Adam is a regular “attendee” of Rochester Pagan Pride. And I think he deserves a great deal of credit for the level of respect he showed. Despite Adam’s obvious disagreement with the religious views of most of the festival goers and his desire to “save” us, he was able to offer his message in a rather unobtrusive way. He was alwas polite when people refused his tracts (strangely, he never actually offered me one) and never attempted to start an argument. I can totally respect the way he chose to demonstrate his convictions.

In a mostly unrelated topic, I’d just like to say that my friend, Becky, also thinks that the guy who waited on me at the sub shop we bought lunch at was interested in me. I’m not sure I agree with her, but it was kind of nice to entertain the notion. I just wish that if he really were interested in me, he’d have said something.

Meta-Blogging, Randomness, Work

Returning from the dark

I realize it’s been a while since I posted anything. To be honest, life has been a bit crazy, recently. My project at work has hit a critical point, and I’ve been putting a lot of time and energy into sorting through some difficulties we’re having. In fact, in about half an hour, I need to leave to spend a few hours at work this morning. Yes, I have to go into work on a Saturday. But I refuse to pity myself over this.

Needless to say, by the time I get home, I just don’t have the mental capacity or motivation to sit down and write. I certainly don’t have the capacity to write something interesting or witty, which is something I still feel I need to work towards whenever I write. I hate to feel like I’m writing something that no one — not even me — will ever want to read.

However, my life hasn’t been devoid of all things non-work. I did manage to get a few odds and ends done around here. This past Wednesday, I took a two hour class in bead-making. The class used Italian glass and a propane-oxygen torch. Amazingly, I made it through both hours without burning myself a single time. Being the clumsy person I am, that’s saying something. It was an interesting experience, and I think I kind of like bead-making. The instructor was quite pleased with many of us. She said that some of us (including me, apparently) were already showing a certain level of control in the process (learning where to hold the bead in relation to the flame so that the glass is malleable but not flowing uncontrollably is a bit of a trick) that usually takes several hours of practice to develop. This afternoon, I’m going back to the studio to pick up my beads. I’m anxious to see how they turned out. Maybe I’ll even post pictures.

I enjoyed the experience enough that I’m seriously considering signing up for the next class and participating in a few of the “Open Torch” classes. Open torch is actually more of a lab where you get three hours with a torch to work on your own at your own pace. These sessions are good for experimenting more and improving technique. Also, my mother’s interesting in giving it a try, so I’ll probably end up taking the intro course with her again in a couple months.

I also had a bit of a personal conquest here on my MT blog. I have MT configured on this site so that I can set up blogs on multiple subdomains. This means that the CGI scripts are set up in the main domain. Well, due to Internet Explorer’s attempts at security, the Typekey comment validation system wasn’t quite work right. Basically, people could sign in with their Typekey account, but the comment page would never show them as logged in. All SixApart offers as a solution for this problem is instructions on how to set up IE to get around the problem.

Now, I’m a stickler about certain things. I’m strongly opposed to the idea of asking readers to adjust their web browser’s settings — especially their security settings — to make my web page work correctly. So I did a bit of research, studied the MT code, and found a workable hack to fix the problem on my end. So now, if you’re using IE and choose to use Typekey to comment, everything works beautifully.

As an aside, I highly recommend using typekey. For starters, it’s free. Also, by using it, I can make you a “known good commenter,” which means that your comments will never end up in the junk comment bin by mistake. (So far, I’ve never had that problem, but I’ve heard of other MT users finding “real” comments in the junk filter enough to be concerned about it.) Plus there’s also the handy fact that if you use Typekey, I can actually view all of your comments on a single page. I like that kind of functionality.

So that’s my life in a nutshell. Maybe I’ll have more to write later this weekend. After all, I am going to a psychic faire this afternoon (weather permitting).