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Other recommended blogs: Amy, Calpernia, Claire, Gwen, Kara, Reise, W3bgrl-Auntie Solder.
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Friday, 2002.11.01:
So I didn't say what actually happened back on last Thursday night. A friend of Steven's, Lea, came over and took a tour of the house. She was all "ooo!" and "aah!". Anyways, while she was going through the tour she stops at my room to check it all out. We're chatting for about a half minute and she starts scanning around ... and looking at my closet area. As she's looking around she says, "is that your underwear??? ... oh." After that momentary puzzled pause she goes back to talking.
Now what is problematic about that is that since I'm in the process of configuring my room there are boxes literally everywhere. Many of my boxes are the clear plastic 2-quart storage boxes that you'd find at Targét or Walmart. I keep my underwear in boxes like that. And since I've integrated my Girl Laundry and Guy Laundry, my underwear box has both types in it. It just so happened that that box was on the top of a stack of other boxes I was about to file away into the closet, and it was facing Lea with the girl undies directly in her line of sight. Oops.
I don't think she knows but I think she suspects something is going on. She's not a dumb girl by any means and it was just her reaction to that was puzzling. Add to that when we were all out as a group on Friday she and I were chatting away while the other guys in the group (one of them who is lusting over her) hardly said a word. I thought I detected a sort of subtone in her voice which was probing me to find out how effeminate I am. But we won't know for sure.
The only serious clue that she knows something is amiss is that she asked Steven when they were driving late Friday alone: "Is _______ (Boy Name) gay?" Steven said something about me not being gay I think. He had also answered another odd question she had asked about if I had been still dating my old girlfriend, Kristina. He said at the time that I didn't see her often; Lea might have been assuming that if I was still with Kristina that I might have some of her clothes still with me.
I don't know. It's all weird. Lea will probably find out in short order.
Saturday, 2002.11.02:
Busted! Well, it looks like Seth's fiancée, Kelly, is going to also find out about me soon. Both Seth and Steven were asleep when around 10a the doorbell rang. I was half-conscious and so I stumbled downstairs and peered the through the peephole. I momentarily gasped. On the other side was Kelly! I thought for a second and figured it was a no-win situation. I couldn't go and wake Seth up because that would take too long. So I had to let Kelly in.
I opened the door, said "good morning", and she came in. I walked away and she closed the door behind her. She followed me upstairs to Seth's room. Right behind me. Getting a full view of my light blue PJs with little yellow and purple stars on them. Which no self-respecting guy would be caught dead in.
I rolled back into bed in my room and I hear her go into Seth's room and wake him up. They talk for a while. I try to doze off when all of the sudden I start hearing: "aw, his pajamas are so cuuuuutte!!!" I cringed and buried myself deeper into the layers of sheets and blankets. Steven woke up to the commotion and he joined in the insidious little chant: "aren't ______'s (Boy Name) PJs so cuuuute!!" Ugh!
This went on all morning with them intermittently mocking me about my PJs---which are obviously very feminine. Kelly probably think's I'm gay. Whatever. But I guess she'll have to be told at some point soon because if she ever decides to take a shower she'll probably notice my razor in the tub. Which, I might add, is the same brand that she uses: Venus. (BTW: I really like the grip on that thing.)
Later in the day I was feeling tired but good enough to go over and see Jen. So she and I bummed around, me searching for a new set of bathmats and contours. It wasn't all that exciting but during the course of the visit we got a chance to vent, whine, babble. This is really cool: it's rare when I've found another T* in my peer group that has similar outlooks on life and similar friends. She wonders why we've become good friends relatively quickly. I think it's just due to the fact that we both understand the other's lifestyles (for lack of a better word) pretty well. I've met plenty of people who just aren't a good fit, if you know what I mean. There's a couple of other T*s I know but they are pretty far away, one a couple of states away and the other about a 1/3rd around the world.
I am a pretty friendly person but I don't make a lot of good friends. Part of this is probably my own self-consciousness, part my attitudes towards everything, and part age. Making T* friends is even rarer because the pool of available people is pretty small to begin with. Then to find peers and similar living situations is even harder.
Sunday, 2002.11.03:
Lazy day. I need to go shopping for a few more supplies, sort my laundry, and really try to move the large furniture in my room. If I don't then it'll be hellish to try to live daily around here. I need stability of some sort and me not tripping over boxes and piles of clothing would be a plus.
I spoke to Seth earlier this morning about doing chore rotation, especially cleaning the bathroom. I'm typically the one who does all of the cleaning but I think it's time that Seth and Steven start taking on responsibilities. I think they need to learn how to do it otherwise their health and general cleanliness will suffer. Plus, there's a certain amount of pride I think they should have in their home.
Why should I be forcing them to do these things? Why should I have any input into their lives? Why is it my mission to get these guys to be a little more conscious about their environment?
Part of it is because it's a mutual living situation and I would like to see that the value of the home be maintained. It will be a pigsty and in complete dilapidation if they don't make it a habit to maintain it. A house is so different than an apartment because you have to clean things up yourself. There is a whole set of upkeep to be done that just doesn't get done on its own.
Another part of it is to get them to think about other people. It means giving up a little more of your own time and energy to make our living unit work together. It is also good preparation for when they have kids on their own. And kids have so much more maintenance required than homes...
It's sort of fun making people do double-takes. I was at a department store getting some supplies for the kitchen and at the checkout I say "hi" to the clerk and she smiles. I'm wearing mostly denim, nothing special. I even say to her "credit card please" and I swipe. She asks to see the card so I hand it to her. She takes the card in her hands and all of the sudden takes about a half step backward. "Oh! I thought you were a girl!", she exclaims. I'm like, "I guess I can see how that happens." I was pretty surprised myself because I was, IMO, clearly in Guy Mode. It must be the hair.
Oh, BTW, I still have e-mail I haven't responded to that's dated October 19. Sorry! We're still resolving connectivity issues from home and I have almost no time to answer e-mail from work. About the only thing I can really do is blog because I write most of the things when I'm offline. Hopefully this week I'll get full Internet access back.
Monday, 2002.11.04:
<whining_zone>
It's Monday. Bad things almost never used to hit me on Mondays. Now I'm beginning to wonder if there is a secret über being that's just toying with my life. "Hm, Amber's not stressed enough. Let's do give her some of this! Muahahahaa!!!"
So I get to work early and I open up my e-mail. I am reading through it when I see this message which basically says: "Meeting at 10:00a. Sorry for the short notice." That's 5 minutes from now?! Ugh. I'm glad I was by myself in the conference room with everyone else on a phone bridge. I had a Polycom microphone which had a mute button on it. Good thing too because if I didn't mute myself so often they would have heard me intoning a series of expletives.
Later on I go back to my desk and I'm reading my e-mail a bit further and a new message pops into my In Box. It almost literally says: "We have the consultant tomorrow. I'll forward the e-mail (itinerary). Sorry for the late notice." I open up the companion e-mail and it lays out a set of all-day meetings between now and the end of the week. My schedule just went from being very flexible to being completely blocked off. Worse yet, I'm going to be one of the only people attending this meeting because others can't make it.
</whining_zone>
Boy, that felt better. I think my manager understands the frustratingly comical nature of my job. On the one hand I'm grateful I do have a job. However, it's wearing me down. My ex even said to me yesterday over dinner: "wow, I've never seen you vent like this before. Are you ... PMSing?" We both got a good laugh out of that one.
Tuesday, 2002.11.05:
My bedroom is almost reconfigured. (I know, "reconfigured" is such a nerdy term.) It's amazing how little space that I have, really. I'm glad that my roomies are nice enough to let me have one of the extra hallway closets. At least there I can store all my bath and bedding supplies. I used to store that stuff in my closet but I don't have that luxury anymore. And so I'm trying to annex a little space here and there. I think I'll be able to fit most of my stuff into my room once I get some of the shelves set up.
I have these really neat racks that snap together. Basically they are interlocking wire mesh panels. They're great for college and for wanderers like me. In fact, they constitute almost all of my furniture, save for my bed, desk, and filing cabinet. These metal panels are relatively lightweight, pretty strong, and very space efficient when disassembled. I think I have probably a couple hundred panels and can build massive wire structures out of them. Inside I found ways of securing additional panels horizontally and vertically to create shoe racks, filing spaces, CD racks, video tape racks, etc. So every time I need to move the racks they can be compacted in a few hours and set up in a couple hours more. Thus I can fit almost any size room with almost any size stuff.
My secondary storage unit choice are Rubbermaid home organizers. Actually, I use the simplest of the simple: clear boxes. When neatly labeled on the outside you can stack these little bad boys up to about 5' before you start to run into problems of stacks toppling over. I'm not a true packrat, but darned close.
I was searching through boxes of old pictures looking for some other stuff when I chanced upon a few photos of old friends, some very very close. Trips to Mexico, Walt Disney World, Canada. Those were some good memories. It makes me wonder if all this transition business is worth it considering I may not be able to have those experiences again, even if I pass well. I've weighed the tradeoffs between trying to go back and have "normal" relationships with me trying to do what I think is in my heart and it's a real tug of war. I hope I'm doing the right thing now. I think I am.
If you're ever in a Chinese restaurant (not one of the Westernized ones but a more traditional one) and someone asks you if you want the stinky tofu, just say no! I was having a warm bowl of soup with Seth when wafting through the air was this rancid odor. At first I thought it was a heavy smoker or someone chewing tobacco. But, we both realized to our horror that it was indeed stinky tofu. We both kind of looked at each other and the next words out of our mouths were: "You done?" "Yeah, we're out of here."
Someone please explain to me how you can eat something so completely wrong. I think it's one of the most hideous things ever to be consumed by humans. Seth commented, "there are worse-smelling things out there, you know." "Yeah, donkey ass," I smirked. Come to think of it, donkey ass may not be so bad compared to this...
Steven has way too much testosterone. We're watching the opening credits of Smallville and he started drooling when Kristin Kreuk appeared on the screen. "Ohhhh... *wipe mouth* I want her." I was like, c'mon! He tilted his head back to look at me and said, "hey, you'd like to be her right?" I chortled, paused, and then fired back, "let's put it this way: I want her body but you want to be in her body." He gurgled with thoughts of Kristin: "ooohhhhh..."
Wednesday, 2002.11.06:
Very weird dream. For some reason I went to a reunion of some sort where I saw my old high school buddies. I was in Guy Mode. I approached one of them who I haven't seen in years and he was gabbing away with some other friends---girls I might add. I said "hello" and he turned around towards me and we started chatting. The first thing I noticed about him was that he had his old shoulder length hair back, but something was odd. It had a slight wave to it and he had ... bangs? (He had long hair a few times back in high school but never bangs.) I went up to him and said "hey, how are you doing? What's with the hair?". I batted his bangs for a second and he kind of did this eye roll. Some other girls we knew came up to us and he was ecstatic to see them. They too made some comments about his hair and then they said, "wow, it's almost like you're full-time!" He then emoted this response in a really effeminate way, "oh, I know!" Something was strange about his voice too, come to think of it. It was a bit higher, lighter, feminine-like but not gay. I sort of stopped and stared at him---he noticed. Then he turned back towards me and prompted, "so, how are you doing?" I paused and thought for a half second and then said the only thing I could think of: "would you believe I'm sort of part-time?" He stopped and was like, "you ... don't ... mean ...?" It was like the realization that both of us were in transition hit him. He didn't get a chance to say anything else because about that time some other high school buddies approached from my rear side, one of them slapped me on the chest with a backhand. I sort of staggered left while saying "ow!!!" My other newly-discovered transgendered friend gazed down at my chest and "his" index finger pointed there too. "You're not growing ...?" I nodded shyly.
The rest of the dream was kind of stopped because my alarm went off. I thought this to be a very weird dream because I've never quite had one like this before. Yes, now I share it with you.
Went to lunch and actually saw one of my old support group members at a restaurant. She was eating lunch by herself and reading a newspaper. Being in Boy Mode and her not actually looking at me I didn't want to actually say, "hey, how are you doing?" Not only would she not recognize me but my colleague was with me at the time. (I haven't told my colleague about me.) I figured it was better not to say anything.
My colleague, however, said to me as we left the restaurant: "hey, did you see that large woman back there? You think she's a transsexual?" I said something about "oh I don't know, there's lots of strange people around here." Our conversation then went on about the Rocky Horror Picture Show and how Tim Curry played the "sweet transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania".
Thursday, 2002.11.07:
That was fun. I called up the sperm bank today to confirm some of my information and to check on when I might be receiving my next bill. So when calling in I decided to switch to Girl Voice. I started of by saying that I was a patient of the bank and wanted to update my contact information. The woman who answered asked if I was receiving donor sperm and I said that, no, it was my own sperm. She proceeded to ask me if it was my partner's sperm and I figured at this point she had no clue why a woman would be calling in. So I said plainly, "no, I'm a transgendered individual and I've stored my own sperm". She reacted with a, "oh, well that explains it." I just thought you'd get a little smile out of this too.
Friday, 2002.11.08:
Lazy day. Rainy day. Gloomy day. My kind of day.
I've always loved the rain. Don't ask me why, but I just do. It has been raining pretty good outside today. Right now the streets are slick and the cars near the house whoosh by. It's a soothing sound. Did I mention I love rain?
My roommate told me something disconcerting just a few minutes ago: "hey, your boobs are showing." I looked at him funny, then down at myself, then cocked my head sort of sideways. Damn. He's right. And this is one of my favorite baggy sweatshirts. No kidding. It's roomy and comfy and I guess it's going to be migrated to a section of my closet which I think I might designate as a no-go zone. That is I can't wear those things if I plan to keep hiding myself. And this is what gets me: I'm only 4 months into HRT and I don't think I should be having noticeable growth yet. (Not that I'm complaining that much.) That would explain why at the grocery store today this older guy in line helps me put my items on the conveyor belt. I didn't know what really to do about that so I just smiled and let him unload my basket. I kinda figured that if I said "hey, yo, thanks dude" in my usual Guy Voice that it would just make things weirder. I'm glad the guy left before I pulled out my ID for the cashier who carded me---I bought some wine.
I tried to get onto the TSVoice chat that happens every Friday. My schedule usually doesn't line up and tonight it really didn't. In between being late to the voice chat to having to go to dinner to having visitors over tonight, I think I got about 5 minutes of conversation in total. I probably made a ruckus with the side conversation. If you've never seen the client we use it has a voice component that works a lot like a walkie talkie and an IRC-like chat window. I was chatting because there were a couple of people doing voice. So while they're talking messages were flying by.
Saturday, 2002.11.09:
There's just something about freshly cut hair. I don't have a hairstyle yet, really. I just lop off the bottom end of the hair when it gets a little long for my taste. I have some friends (some of which who are probably reading this right now) who have amazingly long hair. I mean, this is the kind of length that requires you to bundle it in a certain way when going to sleep otherwise you'll either be pinned or gagged by the mass of hair. It's beautiful, true, but I don't think I could devote the time to that kind of maintenance to it. My preference right now is boringly straight hair all about the same length about 3" past the shoulders. It's girly, warm, and doesn't take forever to dry---unless you consider 10 minutes to be forever. Sure, it does require a lot more care and attention, but it gets a lot more attention.
I went to get it all cut earlier this week and the woman who cut
it said,
"wow, you have really good hair. You condition it?"
To which I replied,
"yup, every other day."
I just grab a huge gop of conditioner and work it in during the
shower. Then my secret: leave it be for the remainder of the
shower. Yup. I go about doing whatever else I need to do and
the last thing before stepping out of the shower is then to
wash out the conditioner. I figure that gives the conditioner
about 5-10 minutes to really do its magic. I've been doing this
ever since I started growing my hair in 2000 and after the shower
you can just feel how slick and shiny it is. Sometimes I can
pull a fine-tooth comb through my wet hair, though I know that's
not a good idea. I suppose if you don't have straight hair
you'll have to experiment on your own to figure out what works
best for you.I never get to read e-mail anymore! I've been so busy setting things up (e.g. moving boxes, making shelves, cleaning) that I haven't had time to get into my e-mail boxes. It's amazing because the first few days of this I was going through serious e-mail withdrawal. Now, I'm getting used to seeing 60+ messages in my In Box every time I log in. It's sort of bad because Yahoo Mail only gives you 6 MB of storage to begin with, and however they store the mail takes up a lot more room. Oh well, I'm not going to complain too much because it's free---rather, "ad supported". Thank goodness for broadband otherwise it would take forever to even load a single message. I can't wait until every person can get connectivity of a minimum of 1.5 Mbps.
I feel like such a technological dolt now. I used to know what was going on in the PC world and now I have no clue. I didn't even know that ATI was coming out with a raging new video card next year---I'm probably going to need serious power like that if I'm going to be playing Doom III. I was talking with some guy friends yesterday and just in the context of the conversation it felt weird. Not only do I not know computers now, but I almost felt like they were talking down to me with the subtext of "oh, you don't know anything about computers so I'm not going to waste my time on you." This never would have happened before, or at least not without them explaining things to me. It's a very subtle kind of shift that I'm feeling. I think it may be heavily based on my shifting attitudes towards computers, that I want to "get the job done" not worry about how cool my equipment is that gets the job done.
Actually the fact is that 90% of my computing these days is in the forms of communication, not entertainment. Really! I spend the majority of my time doing e-mail, web sites, and documentation. Even on the job, where I'm supposed to be learning bad-ass Enterprise Java skillz, I spend the majority of my time doing notes, presentations, planning. Maybe this is just an evolution of my personality.
I recently saw Bowling for Columbine. I really liked that movie and Michael Moore's take on the whole subject. I don't think this movie is for everyone so I'm not going to recommend it---you can look at the trailer and maybe some reviews and make up your own mind. I felt the movie had some very heavy biases and misrepresentations, but the overall point was well-articulated. Gun possession and control is such a complex topic that I don't see how anyone can explore it in just 2 hours. But for the slice which was presented I thought it got across facts and emotions very well. Like Steven Snyder on RottenTomatoes.com said: "It is a film that will have people walking out halfway through, will encourage others to stand up and applaud, and will, undoubtedly, leave both camps engaged in a ferocious debate for years to come." Agreed.
Oh, also a new Ramble is out. I'm not happy about that.
Sunday, 2002.11.10:
Six hours of sleep is all I could handle. I got up around 9:00a in the morning and Rambled some more and crafted a pretty long letter. I was relatively pleased with it but felt that maybe I should wait before sending it and see if other people had opinions. I called a couple of people and posted a note on the Gender Peace message boards. Until late into the day I was fielding calls and answering private messages. I'm very thankful to have a bunch of good souls out there who can bring me back to sanity and offer perspectives on how to approach this problem with the parents. (Thank you!!!) The main points people brought out were: 1) letter was too strongly worded, 2) try focusing more on emotions than facts and figures, 3) discuss the parent-child relationship and expectations, and 4) slow down and wait until Monday night to send it.
Monday, 2002.11.11:
Took a measurement around my ribcage. Hm. Something's happening. I rechecked and the under-the-bust measurement was 29.5". The over-the-bust loose measurement was 36". Scary. Very very scary. Let me reiterate some facts: 0.1mg/day estradiol patch for 4.5 months, 150mg/day spironolactone for 7.5 months. Granted, before HRT I had enough pectoral muscle to probably almost fill an AA, but bras were definitely loose. Nowadays an A works just fine. Scary.
And I feel so outdated. Let's put it this way: I don't keep up with technology news. When I last bought my computer I don't recall there being any talk about northbridge and southbridge chipsets in 1996. I'm sort of in desperate need to replace my ailing Pentium Pro 200 MHz computer. Since 1999 I've been using corporate laptops to do everything so my PPro has just been a huge paperweight. My friends are trying to educate me on what I've not paid attention to these past few years.
Tuesday, 2002.11.12:
I've seriously decided to hold off on sending that letter because I want time to rework it. The general feedback was that it was too strongly worded and that I should play the empathy card. I can probably do that but it'll take a few more days. Besides, Mom and Dad's birthdays are just around the corner (and so is Thanksgiving) so maybe it's best not to rock the boat. I think my intention was to keep the conversation with them going at a steady pace so that we're not finding ourselves in next year and not knowing what I'm going to do. I think with the rate my body is changing that it'll be more difficult next year to hide these changes.
Decided to download PHP! Yup. Got the binaries and the Windows-based instruction manual. Read through about 1/3rd of it. Just like all programming languages, you just have to learn the basics of syntax. Really, programming languages have evolved slowly and especially with scripting languages they all seem to be the same to me now. Like, pick up one of the O'Reilly Nutshell books and you learn in a very short amount of time most of what you need to know to debug a program, and with a little effort you learn the commonly-used functions. PHP looks fairly simple and I've already formed my opinion of the language: PHP makes adding a little dynamic-ness to HTML pages easy and provides you a simple yet powerful set of functions. However, if you plan to have lots of reusable components and have a page generated very dynamically based on user input, application state, user preferences, and database information, you're probably better off going with Perl which is much more flexible and much more mature. Besides, I'm a Perl junkie having been laying code in it since about 1996. I have so many libraries and tricks that I've learned that I can write an application from scratch in days without really having to plan it out. Did I mention I'm a total geek?
All I have to do is install the PHP module into my local Apache installation and I'm all set to go. It should be easy from the config instructions in the help manual. If I can get this site (AWZ) relocated somewhere else where it supports PHP I might rewrite the whole thing to take advantage of it. I want to add a whole host of things to my pages---you probably won't appreciate them much but I will have a much easier time updating all the HTMLs!
Wednesday, 2002.11.13:
Ugh. Stayed up until 2:35a. But got PHP working on Win2K. Yay! I'll probably rewrite a few other auxiliary pages to use it---but these have nothing to do with AWZ so you'll not see them. A small victory before I head off to sleep...
Went looking for some computer parts. Looks like it'll cost me around $1,800 for it, not including the monitor and the software. I want a flat panel, and I want to buy WinXP plus MS Office Pro. That's mega money. I gotta figure out what I can skimp on in order to save $$$.
Thursday, 2002.11.14:
This is so not funny. I went to go get a box from my closet and when I pulled it out I saw a pin loosely dangling from the shelf in the back. Upon further inspection there was now a hole in the wall. Where the pin came from. Because the pin fell out. Or rather, the pin was forced out because of the sheer weight of the boxes on the shelving! Basically, I just found out that my shelving can't hold anything heavy! No! Then where am I going to put all my stuff? I was so hoping to use my closet! Now I'm thinking I'm going to have to redesign how clothes are stored in my closet to minimize the room they take up. The I might be able to get away with putting the stuff that was on the closet shelving into other shelves. I've had a string of disasters with this room. In some ways I'm fed up with it already.
Friday, 2002.11.15:
Went to a store to get replacement parts for the rack in my closet. But the store didn't have it! Ugh! They had lots of racks but it was a different system so I need to go to another couple of stores that I think have the parts. Unfortunately that'll have to wait until tomorrow and I've got to clean up a lot of crap.
I went out last night and took out lots of stuff from my closet in a fury to try to find something to wear. (So my room is already littered with boxes that can no longer be stored in the closet, and now those boxes have clothes on top of them.) What I found was that I really do have nothing to wear! Fortunately Jen and Sarah saved the day. What's even more unexpected is how they did it. I brought over some clothes and they said that it was a no-go. I was already downtrodden about not having anything to wear and now I was being reduced further. But through their creativeness we did find something. A long skirt and a cute silk top did the trick. A little makeup and heels completed the picture.
Now, here's what blew me away. None of the clothes I was wearing were mine and yet we managed to find things that worked. And the shoes? Well, hehe, that's an interesting story. Sarah (a GG, BTW), knew of my lack of fashion sense and brought over some of her shoes. She's about my height and I thought she wore something in the 7s (I'm in the 8s), but no she really does have some in the 8s and 9s. So here I was in Jen's borrowed clothes and wearing Sarah's shoes. Yup. Both of us have wide feet and what do you know? They fit. I was actually able to get into someone else's shoes. This may not sound like a big thing to you but you have to understand that I have big feet for my height and I never thought a GG would be relatively close to my general body size. Scary, eh?
Actually, looking at me in some of my own clothes these days I am taken aback by how much HRT has helped out. I still know my body has a long ways to go, but my guy jeans are fitting weird and women's tops actually contour quite well. I still have wide shoulders and I know HRT isn't going to change that. I can only hope that a bunch of the muscle and other padding on my arms thins out so it doesn't look as bulky.
Back to the night on the town mentioned above. Jen thought this was a typical girls night out---it was a group of 4 of us girls, 2 GGs and 2 TSs. But, this was something more to me. I'm not sure what really put it beyond the typical nights where we've been out. I think it's because it's about the closest semblance to a normal night out where everyone was pretty femmed up. It just had a different aura about it. It's hard to say. I just felt like I was in the right place at the right time. (Actually, the timing of the night was very FUBARed but that's another story.)
I would go further to say that Jen and Sarah popped into my life at the right time. I think it's rare that you meet people who understand you and what you're going through, especially when it comes to this whole transitioning bit. They are so warm and real I sometimes wonder what I would have done without them. Sure, I would have had still been able to transition fine, but feel so much more enriched by having been around them. There's so many things that would have taken me forever to find out that they've been able to show/tell me. I found out that I'm not so alone in how I view life. They've helped me up when I was pretty distraught. I'm babbling, I know. As I put it to Jen one day (which she still doesn't believe me), it's like I have incurred a sort of debt against her that I find hard to repay---those were actually her words describing another situation. She's made transition so much more colorful and fun, even though she pushes me a little too fast sometimes. There's just some times where you unexpectedly run into some cool people and something magical happens.
Saturday, 2002.11.16:
I am so screwed. I went to a birthday party tonight and I brought along my camera. Looking back at some of the recorded video my voice is totally losing its tenor. I can't tell if it's a result of HRT or voice training. Anyways, it was fun to be with friends. I'd write more but I'm too tired. We capped off the night by watching the extended Lord of the Rings DVD and so I'm beat.
Sunday, 2002.11.17:
Dinner with the parents. Even though there is quite a bit of turmoil going on these days it's still nice to know that we can sit down and have a civilized meal together. On tonight's menu was pasta. I had some penne with salmon chunks. Mmmmm... Very tasty. Mom had some chicken marsala, and Dad some kind of linguine with I-don't-know-what.
Screwed up my closet big time. Disasters with me usually don't happen from a single point of failure. No, no, I have to cross different pieces of information to yield the most disastrous results. And the result of this one? There are 1/4" holes in my closet walls that go into the studs, about 3 dozen nail holes, copious graphite markings, scratches, and tiny pieces of sheet rock on the ground. I'll update you more after I go and whimper some more and cry out for help.
Monday, 2002.11.18:
I think Jen, Sarah, and I have officially coined a new word:
Ambernalogy: (am-ber-nah-lo-gee) n. Amberalogies. 1. The overuse of obtuse (often humorous) analogies applied to real-world situations.
Tuesday, 2002.11.19:
2-friggin-30 in the morning. 2:30a!!! That's when news reports said the Leonid meteor shower would peak. So, last night at about 11:15p driving home I called up Holden and asked:
Me: Hey.So around 2:00a in the morning I picked him up and we found a place above the city to camp out. It was very early in the morning and very cold. I'm glad I had prepped myself with copious lip balm and had been carrying a scarf otherwise I would have frozen. Having long hair definitely kept my neck and ears warm. Holden had sandals on---he sort of got frostbite.
Him: Hey.
Wanna do something stupid at 2:30 in the morning?
Yeah, why not.
You know what I'm talking about right? Leonids?
Yeah. I was thinking about it too.
Cool. I'll drive by your place. Oh, BTW, you're not going to be freaked out if I turn up in semi-girl mode?
Nah.
I thought there would have been more Leonids flying around but it was very difficult to see all but the very bright ones. There was a full moon out and in the top picture you can't see it but it's much higher in the sky. The moonlight apparently obscured a lot of the view for many people.
A few cars apparently found our viewing spot too and you can see their headlight/taillight trails on the bottom picture. We saw quite a few go by. The more impressive ones were like a dying firecracker, only that there was a shimmering trail of fine dust behind them. We maybe saw one every minute or two.
I'm glad I woke up that early to see this, though I would have appreciated a more impressive show. Ah, well, real life can't be the way we like it, can it?
Konami's DDRMAX Dance Dance Revolution has entered my home. I was over at a store and saw a big TV with a dance controller set up. Usually I play a round or two just for the heck of it. But something was different this time around. I looked at the screen and the arrows flying by were a little different. I looked at the game box next on display and it was indeed not the old Dance Dance Revolution Konamix but DDRMAX! About time!
I hadn't been following the game releases but one day hoped that the Japanese DDRMAX PS2 version would be released in America. Well, I got my wish. The only sticky point: $39.95. I'm supposed to be conserving money. But somehow I rationalized that if I play a few games each morning then I'll quickly make up the cost of having played at the arcades. Granted, the arcades have DDRMAX2 and nice metal pads, but I can't go to the arcades in my jammies, can I? So, I caved and bought it.
I have to say that the opinions on the DDR Freak site were true: it looks beautiful at 60 fps and the freeze arrows are a welcome change. I have a simple 27" TV and a home stereo with accompanying 10" subwoofer. It's just about the perfect size for a home with relatively thin walls and small rooms.
What's my fascination with this game? (Considering I've bought 2 of the DDR series and have played various Japanese versions.) It's a fun thing to do with friends or not. It gets you off your butt. It has pretty good music. You can pick it up and play just about any time of the day too. I dance around the kitchen when waiting for food anyways, and so at least now when I'm bored I have the option to do something physical without leaving the house.
BTW: for all those that have sent e-mail, I'm catching up on some of the mail! I'm only about 1.5 weeks behind. I've been pretty busy and also Yahoo mail has been giving me weird errors making reading a chore.
Wednesday, 2002.11.20:
I got a software environment on my computer reconfigured and it's working better than it was before. It makes me happy when my technology works with me. *happy dance*
And, you want to see something funny? I recently synced my Palm Pilot (which I haven't done forever) and immediately on launching the Palm Desktop software my screen was littered with hundreds of windows for all the events that were past due:
It's a really good thing that there is a "Close All" button otherwise I'd be madly clicking away at all the windows!
Thursday, 2002.11.21:
Ended up working from home today because of a few flukes which started back at 9:30a. I won't go into details about this ... but ... I would like to offer you my pathetic eating schedule today. I put this out for you to read because I found it absolutely pitiful. Between 9:00a and 7:00p I ingested in this order:
- 2 spironolactone tablets
- a slice of leftover pizza
- a breadstick
- a glass of chocolate milk
- a cup of Yoplait yogurt
- a handful of grapes
- a handful of Kettle chips
- 3 small chunks of cheese (mmm...cheese...)
- a crispy dill pickle
- a chunk of beef jerky
- 2 handfuls of Grape-Nuts
A friend nagged me today about not returning e-mail. Oops. I'm still about 1.5 weeks behind. Sad but true.
Friday, 2002.11.22:
Working on a utility to generate web-based photo albums. I have so many pictures from my digicam that I need to find a way to organize them visually and annotate them. So, I'm going to try to use my mad Perl skillz to hack together a couple of scripts. I'd serve it up from a database but these are things I want to be able to load onto a CD-ROM and give to someone...
Finally got that shelf repaired thanks to Jen---who definitely knows more about home construction than I. It's so nice to have my room back to myself. This past week I've been shuffling piles of clothes and boxes around because they couldn't be stored anywhere outside of my room. And now they're hanging neatly on the walls. I only regret that I won't be able to paint the interiors as to hide the ugly spackling, but maybe I'll paint them when I eventually move out.
You know that photo over the city that's above? It is now my desktop background image. For some reason it's a calming photo and after I changed my Windows color scheme to have a slight bluish tint it really changes the ambiance of using my computer.
What's strange is I'm around my laptop a lot of the time these days but I'm doing mostly documentation. I rarely read e-mail unless it's from work because there's just so much going on.
...
In true blogger fashion I wandered across something which I just found to be hilarious. I'm reading Rolling Stone's November 14th issue and they've got this article on Christina...err, 'scuse me, Xtina Aguilera. Part of the text is about her body piercings and on page 55 they've got the Xtina "Piercing Road Map". It showcases 9 of 11 said piercings on a drawn version of Xtina. Muahahahaha... If I ever get piercings I can't really see going beyond ears and maybe one nostril. But 11?!! I've long held that the human body is not meant to be Swiss cheese.
Saturday, 2002.11.23:
I really now appreciate Microsoft's Office clip art collections online. In just a matter of minutes I was able to search through a gallery of hundreds of images and download the ones I wanted to my PowerPoint gallery. Very cool. Very quick.
Screwed up bigtime. Deleted my friend's city on Animal Crossing. Months of gametime vanished in a split second. And all because I didn't stop to ask for instructions. Well, I had the gist of what was to be done but had forgotten details. I'm pretty bummed that I irrevocably wiped out some of his hard work. I could have waited until he was free to help guide me through the menu system (because it was in Japanese and I don't quite read that much Japanese). But he was busy and I was impatient. Oops.
The guys and I had hot pot again tonight and it was hot. I have most certainly lost any resistance to spicy foods since my college days. That's really sad because I love spicy foods! But my digestive tract does not.
Sunday, 2002.11.24:
Spent a little more time cleaning up my room and visiting my parents. Nothing big. I'm looking forward to the weekend where I can have 4 days off. I have a couple of books I want to read but haven't been able to make the time because of other stuff going on.
Weighed myself in as usual: 127.5 lbs. Up about 0.5 lbs from last week, but still below my old weight of about 132 lbs. I know my diet sucks. I have been chugging soda and eating fatty foods, but it's out of convenience. I really have to get back to exercising.
Monday, 2002.11.25:
You gotta love this: I'm drinking a Barq's root beer right now. You know that soda is bad for you. Heck this can says it has 160 calories. But, printed quite boldly are the words "low sodium" right above the nutrition label. As if saying that actually makes the soda any more healthy. It still has 45g of sugars and plenty of caffeine.
Tuesday, 2002.11.26:
Oh, and thanks to some very creative wording from a friend now Kelly (Seth's fiancée who's spending more time around us) is probably going to find out what's going on in my life. It was a conversation where people were asking if we'd be free tonight to eat dinner together. Steve-o makes a blunder by asking me if I'd "be out with my girls"---implying that I had a set of girlfriends on the side. Immediately Kelly looks at me with this "oh ho ho!" look on her face and I'm starting to roll my eyes. We all should just tell Kel because she's around us so much. But, the problem is Seth doesn't want her quite to know yet---there's a bunch of reasons. I agree with him, but it's getting harder!
Wednesday, 2002.11.27:
Oh this sucks! I caught my reflection in a window as I walked towards it: proportionally wide shoulders and narrow hips. *sigh* It just made me feel ugly right there. I recall reading somewhere on Kate's site about her complaining about "broad shoulders and narrow hips." Now I'm thinking: gee, I guess I'm going to get read. Well, maybe. Maybe not. I mean, most of the time I don't seem to have a problem. I guess it's going to come down to something that Sarah said: "it's all attitude." Sure.
I shouldn't be complaining. Really. I've got a lot of cards stacked in my favor. It's just, well, when I catch a glimpse of something I don't like and then I think back to comments (e.g. my Mom saying: "let's just say you're not the most beautiful girl") and it just gets to me.
Oh, if you're wondering whatever was the outcome of that letter that I was writing, well I never sent it. I decided that it would be best to at least get through Thanksgiving first. Both my parents have birthdays around this time so it's hard to really bring tough conversations up, and being so close to Christmas that only makes it worse. I know there is never a good time to talk about issues but I think most people would agree that we shouldn't be having arguments on people's birthdays or holidays.
Thursday, 2002.11.28:
Hihi! Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Everything for this entry is in a Rambling.
Friday, 2002.11.29:
I never got any sleep today. A store was having a large sale in my area and my roommate was going to drop by to check it out very very early in the morning. I figured that I might be a good idea to check out computer prices (as I am in the middle of building my own computer). Little did we know that hundreds (dare I say a few thousand?) people descended on the store we went to. I was in the store by 7:10a, in the checkout line by 7:40a, and finally reached the cashier's counter around 11:45a. Isn't that insane? 4 hours in line?!
It was not worth the wait. Granted, it is the biggest shopping day of the year over here---people buy their gifts now so they can be shipped before Christmas. I suppose people wanted to snap up all the free stuff. I only picked up a hard drive and McAfee (which was free). Now I have rebate forms to file. Yay.
Anyhow, I don't see it as the store's fault for so many people coming in---isn't that usually a good sign of business? But they could have coordinated it so much better. I've been involved with a number of conventions where I've done crowd control and they could easily have used help orchestrating this here. It was not acceptable that some people got into a circular checkout line encircling several sections of the store.
Later that night I reflected on it a little thinking how they could have made everyone's experience a little bit better. But not for long because we had a video gaming session.
Saturday, 2002.11.30:
Spent a good part of the day researching computers. My old computer is a 200 MHz Pentium Pro. It was one of the best computers at the time when I got it in 1996. I had cutting-edge Pentium Pro technology, 64 MB of RAM (most of my friends had 8 or 16), a SoundBlaster AWE 32, and a Diamond graphics card (since 3D accelerators were not even on the market yet). Oh, I had a 17" monitor that cost me $650, a little bit more than the processor which was like $625. It ran all my programs so well and it held its ground for a long time. But it's time to change.
I thought of going with a packaged system but friends have been egging me on to build my own system. I didn't want the hassle and I wanted to get a completely integrated and tested solution. But, I caved. And I've done a bit of research. I'm not going top-of-the-line because I can't afford it. I want to keep the computer and monitor under $2,000. And I think I have found a very agreeable solution:
This price is a good one from what I've seen and it leaves me enough leftover moolah to get a decent 17" LCD screen. I have no desk room so I really want to get a flatpanel. My requirements there are that it should have relatively little trailing and good color reproduction.
part name cost notes Processor Athlon XP 2200+ $163 Not that fast but not that pokey. It'll do my word processing, graphics editing, and maybe some gaming just fine. Mainboard ASUSTek A7N8X $141 Integrated I/O, Dolby decoded 5.1 surround sound, and a bunch of other goodies. Memory Corsair PC3200CL2 512MB $196 I'll start with 512 MB and maybe go up to 1 GB later. Video Radeon 9500 Pro ~$199 A very full-featured graphics card pushing performance even above nVidia's Ti4400, for under $200. I'd get the 9700 Pro but the difference doesn't look like it's that much for the lower resolutions that I'll be playing with. CD-RW Yamaha CRW-F1 $129 Neato CD-RW. I think this one can imprint designs on burned CDs. Storage Western Digital 80 GB 8 MB buffer $99 Case Impression IM-21 $49 Power Supply Antec True380 380W $58 Apparently it tops out way above 380W. Total $1,122 Includes estimated tax.
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Entries may show the mood for the day. From best to worst moods here's the list:
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Abysmal
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