When one gets tired, one can slip up....

 

I remember how Fran was when she told me about how she decided to come "out" to the world.  She couldn't keep her male and female persona separate enough to avoid having the wrong person see her in the wrong presentation.  Today, I made a smaller version of the same mistake.  Although my mistake is not "fatal" it is a potential problem, as I emailed some paperwork to my doctor's office from my "Marian" account.  This will likely cause a few questions if the receptionist asks the wrong questions.

However, I am not too worried about a worst case scenario.  It will only be a little bit of embarrassment at first, then life will go on.  But this makes me wonder how many of us let our guard down a bit too far when we are tired.  When I used to cruise with FCP, I'd occasionally slip up and use the wrong voice when tired or overly relaxed.  The wrong voice can spoil any presentation in less than a second.  So, sending an email from the wrong account is a relatively minor thing to let happen.  Doctors are supposed to keep secrets, and I expect that the people in his office can be trusted to do the same.

A quick note about someone convicted of a minor crime or two.

 

How many of you have listened to the "Alice's Restaurant Massacree?"  

Arlo Guthrie's most famous song was written about a real life incident in his life.  There was a real life Alice who ran a restaurant near Stockbridge, MA and there was an incident where Arlo did have to clean up a mess of garbage.  He did clean up the mess talked about in his tune.

Regarding his visit to Whitehall Street, less is known from other sources, save that the building still exists in mutilated form. Arlo Guthrie has stated that much of the film "Alice's Restaurant" is based on real events.  I can only imagine what he went through at that time in his life.

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Why do I bring this up?  Well, I have been listening to his tune on a regular basis while I do my work at the office.  The simple pace of the tune distracts me enough from what I'm doing to make doing my job more bearable.

So, if you want to deal with a highly repetitive task, I suggest finding a tune which matches the pace of the work you are doing, and then playing it in the background for a while.

This past heat wave was dengerous!

 

This will be a short post about two LONG days.

RQS and I had plans for Saturday,  First we'd get up, do some car shopping, buy a new fan, then go into NYC to see an Off Broadway play.  Well, we got up late, and proceeded over to Walmart to buy the fan.  And then we descended into the hell of 95° heat and high humidity....

My car has problems with hot weather and slow traffic.  We made the mistake of trying to drive to Pelham to catch a train into NYC from that station, as it has more service than the stations I usually travel from.  Well, After navigating around a few traffic jams and turning off the car to avoid overheating, we reached Palham station.  And then we found out that the train had lost power, and nothing was moving on the line.  So our next thought was to take the subway.  We put the kibosh on this option, as they were busing people between stations to accommodate construction work going on.  At this point, we abandoned thought of using our tickets, and decided to go out to eat in Westchester.

On our way up to Kalbi House (a Korean restaurant on Central Avenue), I called Vicki to suggest that we get together for coffee after our dinner.  Now that our plans were complete, we made it to dinner and spent too much for decent food.  (The food was good, but the tastes were not memorable.  Something was missing from all the dishes, and we couldn't put a handle on it.)  From there, we went to meet Vicki and the "fun" began.

Vicki and Sue got along well until Vicki got into dominant preacher mode.  At that point, she started rubbing me the wrong way.  Although I have issues with my weight, I don't need someone preaching to me what I must do to lose weight.  What works for her may not work for me.  This was the first time that I raised my voice with her, and hurt her feelings.  Although I won't go into the details, it took me a while talking with RQS to process what I felt at that time.

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The next day had us going back to RQS's place.  It was almost as hot as the day before, and we had to deal with even more traffic jams.  This time, I was breaking a few traffic laws to get the car moving and keep the temperature under control.  I was lucky to get the car over the Whitestone Bridge, where we stopped at a local fast food joint to cool off, and let the car cool off as well.

Luckily, we made it to RQS's place without incident, and I stayed there until sunset when it was "cooler" outside.  I then drove home, bypassing most of the traffic jams I might have hit, and made it home without incident.

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Next weekend, it will be Marian who meets RQS at the station.  Keep your fingers crossed that she reacts well to seeing me in this presentation.

I'm now a trusted traveler!

 

 
Today was a rare day that I took off from work because I needed a full day to take care of things.  My visit to Customs and Border Protection for my Trusted Traveler Number required me to be in Lower Manhattan at noon for a 30 minute "Interview".

Although this was a day I'd have rather spent in Marian mode, my interview required that I look like the name on my official documents AND my meeting with RQS could not have went well had I not been in Mario mode.  My worry - I wouldn't find a packing spot at the local train station.  But I needn't have worried.- the pandemic's effect at the local train station's parking lot made it very easy for me to get a decent parking spot.  Unfortunately, it cost me more to park the car than for a one way senior ticket to NYC.

I arrived at the Global Entry center (at the former Customs House) a few minutes early, and was impressed by how they left much of the structure alone in areas controlled by TSA/CBP.  When I reached the area for my interview, the interview area looked like it was designed for a modern building, yet fit perfectly in the space.  (DMV should only look this open and functional.)  The interviewer took my fingerprints (same equipment I used at the census) and asked me one question: "Do I still work at 'xxxx'?" and I answered yes.  That was it.  My number was activated, and I was free to meet RQS at Grand Central.

There is not much to say about the rest of the day, save that we went to a new "Lobster Truck" not affiliated with the brand we enjoy so much.  This was the biggest mistake of the day - the lobster roll was not satisfying, and both of us wanted to enjoy something else.  And that we did - we went to an ice cream shop where they had wine flavored ice cream....  YUM!

How many of you remember Screen Savers?

 

This is a quick entry regarding technology. 

Years ago, it was a big thing to have "Flying Toasters" for a screen saver.  The old vacuum tube monitors of the day needed tools such these to help prevent an image from getting burnt into the tube's phosphors when screens were in idle mode.  Sometimes they were fun to watch.  In the case of the "Opus and Bill" screen saver, it spoofed the Flying Toasters put out by a competitor's program.

Lately, I found the above mouse pad and it triggered fond memories of the era of the screen saver.  Too bad that most people now to put up static images when their machine is locked.  I miss the individuality some people showed with their screen savers....

Normalcy

 

What is normal?  For a trans person, it is being about living a normal life for the gender for which one identifies.  This means that after a period of transition, a trans person will live an uneventful life in issues of gender, save for those issues specific those people of that gender.

Once one has transitioned, all of the other issues in a person's life still go on.  The issue of gender dysphoria has been removed, but all other issues remain.  If one is prone to anger, one will still get angry quickly after transition. If one is warm and affectionate, this personality trait will still remain after one shifts to a new gender identity and presentation.  If one has family problems, they will still remain after transition.  In short, transition is not a be all and end all.

Why am I noting this?

For the past 15 months, I've been working at a job as Marian that I've grown to abhor.  It's not the job itself, but what I've let it do to my life.  I no longer have the energy to read in the way I once did.  I no longer have the time to prepare my own "healthy" meals.  And I no longer have the time to keep up with my friends.  This is not a normal I like to live.  Yet, it is the normal that many of us are forced to suffer for much of their lives.

Lately, I have identified a date for which I will be submitting my resignation, so that I have a chance of enjoying a summer spending time with RQS.  I will miss the extra money I get from working my job.  But I will be able to get back to a normal that I enjoyed more than the normal I have now....

By the time I got to try it on, it was sold out.

 

I was trying to find this dress at Lane Bryant, so that I could try it on and make a decision whether to buy it or not. Although the blue dress is in stock, the dress above is not.  This means that I may end up buying a different dress from Avenue in a similar color, or buy this dress in a different color.

It's just as well that they didn't have this dress in stock.  If it had been, I might have bought it on an impulse.  Over a quarter century since my late wife died, I understand the allure of shopping for new clothes.  It's fun to decorate yourself in new ways - something most men do not understand.  Although I can say no to most impulse purchases, there are a few items that shout "Buy Me!" that are very hard to resist.  And I've been lucky NOT to fall prey to too many of these purchase opportunities.

Given that my closets are overflowing with clothes, I think I got lucky in NOT being able to buy this dress....

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On other matters, the son of someone I know just earned his medical degree.  Congratulations!   Too bad that I will forever be on the outs with his mom.  Yet, when I was coming home from the store tonight, I asked myself - what did I like about this woman?  And the one answer that came up was that I thought that she accepted me as I am.  Yes, I ruined our friendship.  But in her angry attacks over the past 2 1/2 years, I found out what she really thought of me.  We didn't have that much in common.  But I liked her anyway.

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Going to Lane Bryant, I had an hour long chat with TCL.  Towards the end, I told her of a conversation I had with FH, documented in a prior entry.  TCL agrees with me about FH - and I didn't even tell TCL who I was talking about.  Sadly for FH, she will never understand why I didn't jump at the opportunity to be her "Plus 1" for a wedding she's attending next weekend.  I can't imagine having to get dressed up to go to a party where I know no one but my partner and put my relationship with RQS at risk.

Thinking of RQS, I mentioned our minor problems in Washington, DC.  TCL realized that we passed an early test of whether a relationship is good or not.  We were able to deal with a situation of moderate stress and work together well to resolve a problem.  I still keep my fingers crossed each time we may encounter another situation that could cause us some grief.  Hopefully, we'll keep passing these tests as time goes on....