Oops

Arghh! I accidently am following my own blog. I don't know how to stop following it, so I'm just gonna put this little note saying I am not egoistic, I am in fact quite incompetant. :P I went to the How to section and followed the directions, but that didn't work, so until I do figure it out, I'll just have to go on seeing what I have to say.

Goldman and Wolf

Happy beautiful day in April! The weather is just absolutely perfect here in the Bullseye of America. School is almost over for the kiddoes, and my son will be finishing up both elementary school and Cub Scouts this May. I've reached a good place with my work. I'm pretty comfortable with myself, even if I bemoan every once in a while. I've one little stitch right now.

Last Tuesday, like a sleeping Nordic god, Eyjafjallajokull erupted with a plume of ash and smoke that reached heights of 6 km, and stopped all air traffic to and from Northern Europe.

"So what?" I hear you say, and I noticed that you said it pretty non- caringly, I might add. "You live in Oklahoma, and the weather is 'absolutely perfect', dipshit."

Ok, so maybe you didn't call me dipshit, but at this point it still plays with my roundabout way of getting to a point.

This was also a week that my wife took a personal vacation to Paris.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh," I hear you realize, "ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. (dipshit)."

She was supposed to return Sunday day, but that was a no-go. CDG airport had cancelled all flights. So I spent the majority of my day on the phone with Expedia and Delta trying to figure out how to get her back so she could get to work on Tuesday. The best they could do was rebook her flight for this next Thursday (In two days at this writing.) at no extra cost. Once that was taken care of, I told her, "hey, go have fun. might as well." She got to stay in the hotel for the extra days. I called her work and told them what was going on. the only real expenses would be the extra hotel days and her daily expenses.

If you're gonna be stranded somewhere, it might as well be Paris.

So. In a way I got extra SL time. On the login page, if you have BG Images enabled, there will be a scene of a featured sim. Lately, being in the adventurous mood, I've been going to the first one that pops up, and I've landedin some pretty neat places. This particular night featured Ryu Valley, so I took it. I landed in a place where furries abound, in the Luskwood neighborhood. I'm not a furry, I'm a mythic, but it's not to far off, besides, when on an adventure, one must explore. So I did. I started out in the market place, of course. and as I waited for things to rez, I went to examine some of theitems for sale in Furryland as they finally came clear. One thing I noticed was a wolf avatar. It was well made, and there was a free Demo, so I took it and tried it on. I like they way it moved and I ran around the sim with it. even with the Blue word "demo" splashed on the side.

I ran around some more, and suddenly I spied something that made me stop and take notice. There was a volcano on the sim. I thought of my RL, and of the volcano in Iceland. I decided that if there were the old thematic gods of Greece, Rome, or Scandinavia, they would still exist and would probably want to be acknowledged, and so I made a little homage to Vulcan. Nothing grand, I must say. I bought the wolf avatar (which is even better than the demo, though a tad expensive, but an homage is an homage, is it not?) and I was a wolf for the rest of the evening. I growled and yipped and barked instead of talking. My friend MoRusty contacted me and I barked. He was a little confused, so I whined, and he decided to play along. I tpped him to the volcano and sat there staring at it and whining. I wanted him to understand my message, which was a pretty simple one: "My wife was stuck in Paris because of the volcano." MoRusty knew she was there, in a previous discussion, and the volcano was in the news, so I thought this would be pretty easy. I guessed wrong. he couldn't figure it out, as hard as he tried. So I tpped to an airport, (sorry can't remember which one right now) and tpped him there as well. I trotted about the hangar excitedly. Still he didn't quite get it. Then I tpped us to a sim called Paris 1900, which is actually a string of four sims, each with a Parisian name, and barked around underneath the Eiffel Tower (PS, I totally recommend these sims, they are very well made) until he gave up. I turned human again and explained what I had meant, and told himpoint blank what the message was. It seemed goldman's RPping was a little Rusty (This is a pun, btw.) and we spent the rest of the night talking about this n that.

It was a pretty good night. I hope Theresa is doing ok.

Shedding

Haven't been blogging much lately. Last one was in late January. None in February. Now we're well into March. Well, a while ago this would have bothered me, but it doesn't anymore. I've been busy, no bones about it. If you read my last blog (and can remember it), you'd know that I have been going through some changes in my little world. Have these changes settled now, and that's why I'm writing? Not really. It seems the only constant is change as someone well-known once said (sorry folks, not checking references on this blog. You want to know who said it, google it yourself)

It's not fun change for me. It's very difficult. It's like a snake shedding his skin. Very painful and irriating. Supposedly it will feel better once I'm done shedding, but I have not that kind of foresight.

I'm trying to hold onto my core, of what makes me me, of identifying what makes me happy or confident or positive, but that is difficult to do as well, sice those factors seem to be shifting as well. I used to love art, for example. I could name and date hundreds of different paintings, by title and by artist, by year and movement, by influences and successors, purpose, reason, necessity, contribution. I would sit and stare at one painting for hours at a time, transfixed and in bliss, over and over and over again.

Now, I imagine it, and think "meh". Its importance is lost on me. I cannot feel passion for the things I used to. But I really wish I did. It's almost paradoxical in that I really really really really really want to feel passion.

It's tied to joy, I know it. and joy is something else I feel I'm missing. No joy, no zest.

Ok, sounds like another downer post, right? Well, the weird part is that I don't really feel down. I'm not upset or depressed, which is good, I think. It feels that this is the right direction, like it's destined or something. and maybe it is. Despite this lack of passion, I'm actually pretty chipper most of the time. The trivial day-today stuff really doesn't get me down. I can have a crappy day at work or at homje, but after a few days, something goes right, and the crappiness passes. It's the long-haul stuff that usually gets at me. Some people have called it "mid-life crisis", and honestly, it does kinda look like that. Well, mid-life crisis sucks, but so does just about every stage of life as we're going through it.

I'm not an advocate of pre-destiny, nor am I an opponant to it. It might happen, pre-destiny, that is. How the hell am I supposed to know? What I do know about destiny is this: Things happen all the time. And those things that happen are effects of causes. What I do now will affect my future. What I did yesterday affects my today. And unless everything were to stop and never to start again, something will happen next. It's guaranteed. And that thing that will happen next was caused by something. It had to have been. Nothing just doesn't happen, without a context. And so it was destined to happen from previous actions, thus was pre-destined. Just because I don't know what is to happen doesn't mean it won't.

Ok, that's your prattle for the month. Enjoy it :)

Changes in work, changes in life.

What a week. I think this was maybe the hardest week I've gone through, at work and at home.



I work at a zoo, for those who don't know. I build exhibits, shipping crates, shift doors, tree stands, display cases, sign frames, and whatever else needs building. It's a pretty good job. I get to work with animal trainers and I get to know the animals on almost a personal level. I get to help develop educational exhibits on various biological topics, (loved doing the bioluminescence exhibit). Most everyone there are good to work with. I get some good benefits, health, dental, vision, good vacation time, after I passed my five years investiture, I get some nice money paid into my retirement fund. And I works side-by-side with a good staff. We have a graphics designer, a graphics printer, a sculptor/welder, and electronics guy (who is my best friend there) and me, the carpenter.

Those are the good things. The down sides include working with city government (Ssssslllllooooowwww------), and my supervisor. She's incompetent and a micromanager and feels she needs to get involved in every single detail of the zoo, even when they don't involve exhibits. She doesn't understand her place. And she makes it difficult for me and my co-staff to do our jobs, because she'd switch priorities at random times for what appears to be no reason, and would have to know the details of every single thing we do, even if the answers aren't possible to know. There are many other ways that she makes things difficult, which I can't go into at this time, because of time and computer memory constraints.

The economy of the whole country is a mess right now, and so is the economy of the city. In December, halfway through the fiscal year, the city was $10 million dollars in the hole. We just got a new mayor in November, the previous one spent money like it meant nothing, building a new city Hall, a new baseball stadium and a new events center. Then she made the choice to not run again. Bitch. So the new mayor looked at the budget when he got in and said "Holy shit! we have no money" We all knew it, even before he was elected, under the other mayor, we as workers had to encumber 8 furlough days to help with the budget. In December ALL spending froze. If I needed lumber or screws, Tough shit. Make do with what you have. The only spending that were not frozen was for animal care (food, medicine, etc) and public safety. Nice, eh?

the non=profit group that goes hand-in-hand with the zoo were raising funds to ship two giraffe cows from different parts of the country. Our previous giraffe cow died last summer from old age. The new ones arrived in late November. Wonderful for the zoo, good press, and hopes that the slough of animals that had died the previous year was to come to an end. We had already lost our Grizzly, our Polar Bear, two Alligators, a Kudu bull, a cheetah, and a matriarchal chimp. Our sharks were moved to a nearby aquarium so the tank could be rebuilt (not cheap) and so were our sea lions transported to another zoo so their exhibit could also be rebuilt. It was like death zoo. The planning for the shark tank didn't consider the lining, which would cost $25,000, and so that has been delayed, and by now the sharks had grown so large, they won't even fit in their tanks. The sea lion exhibit also met delays, and we might not even break ground for it until 2012, 5 years after the entire thing was supposed to be finished.

Our zoo director left in November, 2008. Better job in Hawaii. Operations Manager was interim director until a new one was hired in April. She had to learn the ropes of this new place, and had to deal with all this shit, on top of us in the exhibits department not being efficient due to our supervisor. Over the summer our department participated in dialogue seminars to try to help us iron out the difficulties. Didn't help much. We eventually got the attention of the union representative to talk to someone high up in HR to scrutinize our supervisor.

In November we got our giraffes. One arrived from California in good condition, the other came from Ohio. When she arrived, her neck seemed crooked. Our vet staff and Large Mammal curator and keepers examined her, provided muscle relaxers and did everything they could to comfort her, but her condition worsened until it deemed necessary that her have a surgery. She had a fracture in one of her neck vertebrae. During the procedure, she was given anesthesia. With smaller animals, this isn't usually a problem, but with large ungulates, there is a risk that the legs can give out when knocked out. And there are other risks too. Giraffes are such large animals that the right dosage is often hard to calculate. Too much and you risk putting her life, not enough and it won't be effective. I am not entirely sure what happened during the procedure, as the vet staff kept as much of it quiet as possible, but she didn't survive the anesthesia. She died.
Before Christmas, our area was threatened with a cold front coming from the south. It wound up being one of the widest temperature drops in the history of the area. All keepers took preventative measures to keep the barns warm. The temperature in giraffe barn is hard to regulate, being that it is 24 feet tall and very wide, but extra hay bales were brought in to block gaps in doors and leaks, extra propane heaters brought in. They did all they could. The building is over 25 years old, and there wasn't any money to build a new one soon. The other giraffe died from hypothermia, right around Christmas.

A terrible thing to happen. for sure. We lost two giraffes in as many months, and the press reported this and the locals began angrily questioning the zoo, stating that the zoo should be shut down, the keepers and Director should be fired (or worse!). There ought to be investigations! Someone should lose their job for this! It was vicious. There were investigations, and for both incidents, it was found that the zoo did everything they could. These things happen. Animals die all the time. It was just bad timing that these two giraffes died so close together and soon after their arrival.

Now, January of this year hit the city like a baseball bat. The mayor had a tough decision. paycuts or layoffs, throughout the city. The following couple weeks, there were countless meetings, negotiations, speculations and brouhaha. What came of all of it was layoffs. The City in total laid off 147 firefighters, 155 police officers, and 59 non-sworn employees, 10 of those from the zoo. My best friend from the zoo was laid off. Also, in our department, guess who? The woman who has driven our department to a screeching halt, has tarnished our name to the whole parks department, who has wasted precious time and money in misguided efforts, My supervisor was given the boot. I am not the kind of person to revel in other's misfortunes. It is not good news to lose your job. But I think, if anyone deserved it, it was her.

It will be a strange week at work this next one. The four of us will have to forge the way we do things, and we will also have to mourn the layoffs of all our friends who lost their jobs.

At home, things have not been well either. those who have been following my blog will know that about two years ago I came out of the closet to my wife of (now) ten and a half years. We decided the best thing for both of us is to separate and eventually divorce so that we both can move on. Neither of us relished the idea, because we do both love each other, but it is the right thing to do.
Last week, our son woke up at four o'clock throwing up. He had eaten too much junk food the previous day, he wasn't sick with a bug or anything. I spelpt through it, as I was dead tired from the happenings at work. When I did wake, I saw him sitting on the couch, pretty sad-looking. My wife had taken care of him overnight, I tried my best to help him, but every suggestion that I made, she took issue with. i got fed up with it and called her on it. We got into a major argument. Eventually we both realized that the argument wasn't about the care for our son, but it was that our progression seemed to be not progressing. We both calmed down about it. I went to work, but this was weighing so heavily my mind I could concentrate on work. I went home and allowed my wife to sleep. After she woke, we discussed things, and we decided that the first thing we should do is not sleep in the same room anymore. Eventually, I shall move out, to my home state, and begin life as a single man again, and she shall stay until the house is sold. When it does, then she will decide if she wants to move to near where I am, or if she will have explore other opportunities. Either way, life will not be the same.

I'm tired of writing this down. There is a lot more behind this, but I can only type so much without becoming exhausted and a little overwhelmed. If any of you readers have questions, I'll do my best to answer them. If you don't, that's fine too.

Have a good day.

Have You Seen This Hot Astrologer?

Sitting here in the taint between Christmas and New Years, feeling a little off in tha moment, but in general am doing fine. My Christmas was well, whatever, average, I suppose. I have this sense that the more Christmases I experience, the less spectacular they will be. The more you have, I think, the less you value, maybe. I don't know.

I have filled out the application for grad school, and I sent it in about a week ago. It's due by Jan 5, for the fall of 2010, which is now less than a year away. I filled out the application to the specific department, which isn't due until March, I just have to send it in, want to find out if they want it mailed or faxed. The next things to do are to work on my portfolio, and to apply for financial aid, and I can't apply for financial aid until February, because I need the year's tax forms, and those won't be ready until then. So, I guess the next thing for me to do is to hit the portfolio hard and heavy. I can do that, for sure.

I went to work today. This time of year is always strange for work. I worked four days the week before Christmas, took Friday off, so had a three day weekend, worked Mon and Tues last week and had Wed through Sun off, and today and tomorrow I work, and then I don't go in again until next Monday. Lots of time to goof off, eh? Or lots of time to get busy with things I need to do without work. I wonder which will win out? So I went to work today and was totally unproductive. Our department is under a spending freeze, so I can't get any wood, paint, hardware, anything until the City figures out how to balance the budget. It's very draining, emotionally wise, and ambitions are running low. Almost all my projects are frozen and will continue to be so for a while. It's a good reason to find other opportunities.

The whole day has been off. I feel like I'm straddling many different worlds, present work and future grad school, marriage and separation, Oklahoma and Minnesota, straight life and gay life. I'm not a new age-y person, but I found a horoscope that has proven to be pretty accurate about the goings-on of my life. It's called SoulgardenTV, and you can find it on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SoulGardenTV . It's friendly, palatable and relatable, not like Ms. Cleo with the fake Jamaican accent and the crystal ball hoohaw. Take it for what it presents itself to be. Plus the "Stand-up Astologer," Christopher Witecki, is so damn cute.
Anyway, when I'm not staring at him, I am actually listening to what he has to say , and this week is a week of major transformations of what we are to what we will become, and this odd feeling I am having is just a part of that. Even without this base, I can fall to my old standby, "This too, shall pass" and know that things will work themselves out. I just have to go through some lumpy times. And now I can do that while watching a babe.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

That feels weird, talking like that. Talking about cute guys like I did.. I feel like a perv. Well, no, I don't feel like a perv. I never talk like that, though. It doesn't feel natural. So now I go to my inner dialogue:

Me: What a hunk! omg, did I just say that?

Inner me: yeah. you just said that.

Me: That's wrong for me to talk like that.

Inner me: Why is it wrong?

Me: I don't know. It just doesn't feel right.

Inner me: do you think he's cute?

Me: Yeah

Inner me: So it's ok to express that.

Me: Well, alright, but it doesn't seem natural.

Inner me: Why not?

Me: Because I never have talked like that before.

Inner me: ...and that is because...

Me: because I was in the closet?

Inner me: and being in the closet caused you to do what?

Me: Suppress my desires.

Inner me: and because you suppress your desires, what happened?

Me: I didn't strive for my desires.

Inner me: and now you are...?

Me: ...regretting it.

pause

Me: but it still feels wrong. It objectifies him as eye candy, something to look at. Nothing more, and I don't do that to people. I know there is more to a person than the way he or she looks or appears.

Inner me: and by saying that you think he is cute, you think you are saying that he is only cute and nothing more?

Me: no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying..that his inner qualities are broader than his appearance.

I'm not a perv.

Inner me: do you want to have sex with him?

Me: I want to have sex with anyone.

Inner me: excuse me?

Ok, I think that's enough inner dialogue for right now.... Till next time!

Adding Apples

Woke up this morning andsaw the kids watching Saturday morning cartoons. Jack was eating cereal on a little tv table, and Lilly was upside down in the Lay-z-boy. I wiped some of the eye crust from my eyes and stumbled into the kitchen where I made some coffee, and loaded the dishwasher when I saw that Lilly's homework on the counter.

"Lilly, you were supposta do your homework yesterday!" I reminded her.

She bounced into the kitchen and said in her trademark fast speak "Ohyeah iforgottodothat." She gathered up the papers and went back to the tv room and started setting herself up.

After a few minutes she called out, "Daaaaaaad, I need your help!"

I looked over her shoulder and looked at the page of additions and subtractions she was working on. About 120 problems were lined out like an anal retentive's M&Ms on the sheet and she was right about in the middle of them. Simple problems of adding and subtracting single digit numbers.

"What's 6 take away 4?" she asked as she bounced up and down in the chair. She had written a 2 for the answer. "Is this right?"

I asked her if she was taught how to check her work by adding her answer with the bottom number to get the top number. She is more confident at adding than subtracting. "2 plus 4 is... 6!" she squealed and she waved her arms in the air. She almost stabbed me with her pencil.

"Yes," I smiled "that's how you check your work."

"Butsomeoftheseareaddingandsomearesubtractingandthey'reallmixedup,daddy"

"You know how to check your adding?" She nodded enthusiastically. "Do you need me to help you any more?" She shook here head without transisitioning and with just as much energy. "Okay, bobble-head, you're doing great!" She giggled to the pet name as I went back to the kitchen to finish the dishes.

With the coffee poured, the dishwasher on, the girls cratching her pencil on paper and cartoon voices emitting from the television, I went outside, I went outside for my morning smoke and I thought about that interaction with her. I'm no great mathematics theorist, like my brother is, but I like to play with ideas in my head. I started wondering about checking math. Isn't it interesting that the way you check Addition is the same way that you check Subtraction. Add the sum to the subtractor and you get the origin number in Subtraction. Minus the difference from the second second number to get the first number in Addition. Pretty easy stuff, really, for an adult. but the interesting part comes in when you try to do the checking with the opposite numbers. In Addition, you can sutract either either or the numbers from the sum to get the other number, but in Subtraction, this doesn't happen. This is easier to illustrate than to explain.

I'll use these simple problems: 4+5=9 and 8-6=2.

In checking addition, you can say either 9-4=5 or 9-5=4. Either way the sum is the same amount. In checking subtraction it doesn't work the same way. 2+6=8, which is correct checking, but 2+8 does not equal 8, it equals 10.

So that led me to this pondering: In Addition, does it really matter in what order the addition numbers are. 4+5=5+4=9, correct? Yes, of course it's correct. but are they the same numbers? is the 4 in the first equation the same as the 4 in the second equation? I say they are not. If you have 4 apple and your friend loans you 5 more apples, you are holding 9 apples. If you have 5 apples and your friend loans you 4 apples, you are holding 9 apples. but when it comes time to returning your apples to your friend, you have a real dilemma. do you give him 4 apples or 5 apples? Breaking it down to numbers, 4+5 does not equal 5+4, because what you start out with must be the same as you end with when checking. If you were holding 8 apples and you loaned 6 of them to your friend, you would be left hold 2 apples, and when your friend returned those to you, you would have 8 again, not 10.

Hmm. So what am I getting at? I'm not really sure. I guess what I'm saying is that by checking your addition it is important to know that the problem 4+5 is not the same as 5+4, even though the sums might both be 9, they are different 9s with different qualities. And THAT I think is what was interesting to me. That 9 does not always equal 9 fully. Each number has different qualities depending on its own unique history.

That's enough of that. Lilly came in wants a snack.

"What do you want for a snack, Lilly?"

She smiles and wiggles around "Can I have an apple, Daddy?"

"Absolutely"

"Can you cut it up?"

"ok"

She looks at me seriously. "Only cut it into six pieces this time, please, not eight like last time," is her explicit request.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I can't eat eight slices."

Post-partum

/me crashes on the couch, exhausted

Sunday was the end of the Make him Over Hunt 2, and I finished it at the eleventh hour. I had been dillying and dallying with this hunt over the past month, and in the last week, I crammed in finding as many of the symbols as I could. I turned the little eyeball off for everyone so I could streamline it as much as possible (apologies to anyone who was trying to reach me), and I ignored lucky chairs and other freebies. (well, I hit a few). I almost thought I wouldn't make it, but I did.

I have this love/hate relationship with these hunts, and I don't know why. I love the challenge and fun of finding something that has been so impishly and cleverly hidden, I love the banter on the group chat window, most of the stores are very nice, and besides, free shit! Not that I need more free stuff. My inventory has buckled and bloated over my personal limit of 2ok, like an over-yeasted bread roll and I decide to go on another treasure hunt? I must like banging my head against the wall searching through that stuff. But it's fun. The hate part I think is that it does take all my focus away from other things going on in SL, and now that I'm done, I'll have my share of post-partum set in, and I'll just wander about trying to think of how to occupy myself. Organize the treasures will of course be one thing to do, but otherwise? don't know.

I kinda miss the clubs, and I kinda miss the rpping in fantasy realms. I'll probably do that for a while. I don't see any hunts on the radar that really grab my attention, so I'll cool it with those. I still need to define myself, as to what the hell does it mean to be Leigh Eel. Leigh is an extension of my RL persona, (Real name Greg, btw, if anyone is interested) as is the case with most SLlers. Of course I missed Opacus, but I never put him off when he calls. He's the main reason for the dilly-dallying that I mentioned.

There was a party after the hunt, but it was Sunday morning, and I didn't really didn't intend to be online that morning. Was going to do a bunch of housework (God, the garage is such a pit) but my obsession overcame. What good is an obsession if it doesn't overcome? So after the hunt, I skipped the party, even though I would have liked to meet some of the guys who were also hunting, but well.. wait until MHOH3... (btw there is talks about a third one... if you are interested in getting some nice stuff, it'd be a good opportunity.)

Now, back to aimless wanderings...