For the Record

I ended my unofficial contest last week. No one correctly guessed either of my movie quotes (thus showing my geekiness), but I decided to reward the people who did respond to the threads with the promised writing projects. As soon as they get them to me. Caroline, I'm going to give yours my all, but I need to do some research first.

I Miss Keith Olbermann!

I've mentioned here a few times that I am a fan of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on MSNBC. I love the show, but it isn't the same without him, and it's been without him for a couple of weeks now. David Shuster had it for about a week, then Richard Wolfe. Lawrence O'Donnell's got it tonight, followed by a two-night run by former governor Howard Dean, then two more nights with Wolfe. KO's supposed to come back next week.

The man is entitled to take a vacation, I suppose, but look at all the news that he's missed: the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, the passing of Walter Cronkite, the Henry Lewis Gates incident, and now the resignation of Sarah Palin. I can snark on the news as well as anyone, but I miss hearing his voice.

Looking Forward

I am a geek, and I am unashamed. I like movies and video games especially, and the next six months to a year are going to be very exciting to fans of both. On the movie front, I really like the looks of

9
Sherlock Holmes
Iron Man 2
Tron Legacy

As for games, there are not one, but two Halo games coming out for the Xbox 360. What's really gotten my games nerves jangling is Mass Effect 2. Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBRo7JWy744

In a couple of the cutscenes, you can see a woman with short red hair. That's the default female version of Commander Shepard, and the character I usually play as.

The End of an Era

No, I'm not ending the blog or anything drastic like that. My employers have added Blogger to the list of banned websites, so I won't be blogging from work anymore. The bitch of it is, I can't protest, because they reserve the right to block anything that could potentially detract from work productivity, or interfere with guest service. I've never really seen myself as someone trying to get around on "The Man", but incidents like this rile up my rebellious side.

"I was not here. You did not see me."

That was me this morning. Each morning, the hotel sets out a nice little spread for breakfast, a mixture of the traditional "Continental" breakfast and a few hot items. Employees are not supposed to partake, but nearly everyone does. Normally if I'm going to do so, I grab mine before the bulk of our guests come down, so no one sees me getting the food, nor eating it. I was a little busy this morning, so I wasn't able to get any until there were a few people over there eating.

One of our frequent stay guests watched me this morning, and I looked over at him and said, deadpan, "I was not here. You did not see me."

He said, "Okay, but I did see that movie."

It's nice when someone gets my movie references.

Primetime: Family Secrets

I'm watching this program on ABC as I type this out. I met Chloe Prince at a Pink Essence Girls' Night Out last year, and I've been reading her blogs since then. I know this story, as much as anyone who on the outside can, but seeing it on TV is an emotional experience.

An Update on the Senate Thing

I read a headline a little while ago that the Senate have eliminated the F-22 funding provision from the defense bill. That was Obama's only excuse for not signing the bill with the hate crimes rider. Whip out that pen, my man. I didn't help get you elected for nothing.

No Takers?

Yesterday I posted a trivia question at the bottom of one of my posts. I offered a prize, then still to be determined, to the first person to correctly identify the source of the title of the post. It's from a movie quote, and I thought that there were enough movie geeks in my audience that someone would find it out.



Maybe I need to be more specific about the prize. Maybe no one's answered because no one wants the prize. You'd probably be a little more enthused if you knew what I was offering.



The winner gets to choose a topic for this blog. You answer my question, and I'll let you pick a topic. I haven't taken on a writing project from someone else since I left school, so this could be cool. I think I'll make this a running thing. If no one gets the original question, I'll post another later in the week, and we'll see what happens.

Neighbors

I had some trouble with my truck over the weekend. My battery was on its death-bed, and I needed a jump-start to get into work Friday night. One of my neighbors drafted another neighbor to help us out. Nate borrowed a "Jump Box" from a friend, and we were able to jump the truck each and every time we needed to go somewhere through Sunday morning. The last couple of runs, the truck almost died on the road, so we knew it was on its last legs. I talked to our father, and he said that he'd lend us the money to buy a new battery, which I would pay back later this week when I get paid. The only problem was, Dad wasn't going to be able to come up from NC until Tuesday, and we weren't sure the battery would hold out that long.

Our neighbor came to the rescue. He gave us the money, in cash, and told us to go get a battery. Now I owe him instead of Dad, but we won't have to wait for it.

That isn't all. Nate started back at work this past week, and I work nights, so I can't always watch my nephews like they should be watched. Our neighbors have agreed to watch the boys while Nate's working, so that A: they'll be taken care of, and B: I can rest.

This may not be news to anyone here, but it's been a long time since I lived anywhere where my neighbors behaved in a neighborly fashion.

A Day of Days

Friday night, on my way to work, I discovered that the battery in my truck is dying. I had to get a jump-start to get into work. I needed another to get home Saturday morning. I had agreed to help De and some other friends move some stuff for another friend, Maggie. De arrived literally seconds after I got home. My brother was headed out for the day, and the truck needed yet another jump, which De was happy to provide. I took a couple of minutes to change clothes and feed Spot, and I was back out the door.

I think we spent more time riding around than we actually did in the move. I live in Portsmouth, and we drove over to Norfolk to meet Nancy, who has assisted all of these moves with her Jeep and trailer. From there we went to Maggie's place, also in Norfolk. Maggie's moving into an RV, and her friend Martha graciously agreed to store all of Maggie's things that won't fit into her new home. Martha lives in Isle of Wight, aka, the Middle of frakking Nowhere.

In between stops on the move, we stopped for gas, and Maggie bought everyone snacks and/or beverages. She said that the least she could do was make us happy. I thought about what made me happy, and decided that I was happy with camaraderie. It sounds hokey, but I had a great time just being out doing something with my friends, and helping another friend, to boot. That's one of the best feelings, ever.

Like I said, the moving of stuff didn't take so long. We had lots of hands: De, Nancy, Becky, Becky's son Steve and me. By the time we were done, though, it was nearly 1300: bedtime for me if I haven't already crawled in. De insisted that Maggie treat us to lunch. We ate at a barbecue joint in nearby Smithfield. The food was good, but the place was short-staffed, and it took us a while to get in and out. On the way out, someone noticed the signs announcing the dress code. It listed a whole slue of prohibited items: white tee shirts, baggy pants, tank tops, du-rags. Basically, anything typically worn by the young urban crowd. It wasn't quite a "NO BLACKS" sign, but it might as well have been. I did say this was the sticks, but it's 2009, for frak's sake!

After lunch, it was back to Norfolk. I forgot to mention that in order to use Nancy's trailer, we had to unload a couch and a HUGE TV. I also forgot that Nancy has the cutest little dog, named "Poo". Poo looks like one of those Fu animals that one sees outside of Chinese temples, except that he's only about eight inches high. After we put the stuff back in the trailer, I had to play with Poo, if only for a minute. Then it was on home. De was nice enough to run me by the grocery store to get some cat food. I also discovered yesterday that De likes Firefly. I've been a Browncoat since the early days, and it's always nice to meet another fan. Before she took off, I loaned her my copy of Serenity.

I should have brought a camera. Poo looks like a photogenic dog. Out in "I Love White", there were lots of pretty hundred year-old houses. If I had managed to bring out the camera during the day, I'd probably have dragged in on to work with me. More about that later.

PS - I haven't sorted out what it will be, but I'll come up with a prize for the first of you lot to tell me which movie the title of this post came from.

Fug My Guest

Of all the nights to not bring a camera!

I've already spoken of all the sights I didn't get to photograph while I was gallivanting about Eastern Virginia, but nothing could have prepared me for the young lady who checked in a while ago.

She was wearing a pale pink minidress, slit down to there, and matching peeptoe slingbacks with four- or five-inch heels. Her manicure and pedicure were bright, almost neon green. Her jewelry was a mix of coordinated pink and green, with the exception of a large, hematite-finished necklace that clanked like a cowbell. The crowning touch to it all was her glittery PINK eyeshadow.

I wish I had brought my camera.

Due to some sort of technical hooha, this post appears prior to the post which refers to it.

Matthew Shepard Act Passes the Senate

As an amendment to a defense spending bill, no less.



It's been reported all over the webs, and especially in the trans blogosphere, so I'm sure you've read it already. I posted a message when the bill passed in the House of Representatives, so I felt obligated to say something when it was passed in the Senate as well. Now, on to the desk of the President.

I just read on Wikipedia that the bill may be struck down, because the main portion of the bill (the defense part) includes spending on F-22 jet fighters that the military doesn't want.

If it means getting hate crimes protection for gay and transgendered persons, I think we should take the extra F-22s. The military always buys extra airplanes, for attrition if nothing else. Maybe they should lift the tech embargo on the jets and sell them to Japan, or Israel, or anyone who has expressed an interest in them. I know a couple of museums who would LOVE to have a de-milled F-22. C'mon, Barack! I want my hate crimes protection.

Muppet Abuse

I like Lady Gaga. I do. She looks the way I wished I could back when I was doing drag shows. She wears costumes that are off the chain. I wish she would wear normal clothes when she was out in public, but then the editors of Go Fug Yourself would have less to go on about. Normally, I forgive her for what she wears in public, but I draw the line here.

She's wearing a miniskirt made from the head of Animal, the drummer from the Electric Mayhem. This is apparently fresh from the Fall 2009 collection of someone named Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. I wouldn't wear it, but I have more respect for puppets. Plus, I draw enough attention when I go out that I don't need everyone staring at my crotch.
Stop the insanity!

Not So Fast!

A week ago, I was all jazzed about the prospect of my brother going back to work. He started yesterday, and I am enthused. It's just that in the interval between then and now, I've had my plans disrupted by cold, harsh reality. I said I was hoping to have enough money to get my nails done last weekend. It didn't happen. I paid part of the rent, the past-due electric bill, and put two tires on the truck.

I broke down and gave myself another DIY manicure/pedicure. I used OPI Strawberry Margarita on my toes, and OPI Makes Men Blush on my fingers. Strawberry Margarita is really bright, eye-popping pink. Makes Men Blush looks a soft pink in the bottle, but it goes on very sheer. Looks good on me, though.

I'm getting off work in about twenty minutes, and I'm going to be off today and tomorrow. I'm trying to plan some sort of outing for myself for Wednesday, but Nate's gonna have the truck. I'll probably stroll through Olde Town and down to the Seawall again, but if it's not too hot, I'll go en femme.

Shoes!

It looks kind of haphazard, but I uploaded some photos to my Photobucket account, and up popped this app for posting a slideshow of them to my blog, et voila!

I tried to set up the photos in some sort of order. The first shows my flip-flops, then my flats and sneakers, pumps, other heels, and last my boots. The sad part is, once I put everything away, I realized that I left out a few pairs. Frak!

Yes, I am shoe queen. Every pair in these photos has been out of doors at least once, but some of them haven't been out since. When you have as many shoes as I have, and you're not living full-time femme, it's hard to wear more than a few of them multiple times. I live in flip-flops, so those have gotten the most usage, followed by my Skechers. I left out the shoes I wear for work, because they're the most masculine-looking shoes I own, and who wants to look at that stuff?

If I get to proceed with my on-the-job transition, that may change. Time will tell.

Edit: Since I posted this, I read the results of a little poll from the cover of USA Today. The question was "Who owns more shoes?", and it listed the averages for Americans. For the men: 7 pairs. For the women: 15 pairs. Hah! I got 'em both beat.

Things are looking up

Nate got an email from his boss at the tax service, and it looks like he's going back to work, startng Thursday. Hip, hip, huzzah!!! To celebrate, I think I'll get my nails done this week.

The Holidays, We Hates Them

Yesterday was the Fourth of July, or American Independence Day. It's one of the biggest holidays in the US, though most people seem to have forgotten what we're celebrating. This isn't going to be a rant about patriotic drivel, though. Y'all know me better than that.

Being a holiday weekend, the hotel was slam-full. That's good for business, but woeful wear-and-tear on the staff. We were host to two family reunions and a wedding party. Plus the GM's in-laws to-be were celebrating their patriarch's 85th birthday. Then there were all of the usual holiday vacationers.

I hate family reunions, at least with regard to how the attendees behave in a hotel environment. The larger of the two reunions accounted for half of our occupancy for this weekend, so the management/sales team made nice with them and gave them carte blanche to do all sorts of activities. Friday night, this included them hooking a karaoke machine to the lobby TV and caterwauling till 0130. If I ever have to listen to another teenage girl with a weak voice hack her way through an old Whitney Houston standard, I may kill myself. The same goes for Mariah Carey. The best performance all night was a little girl, maybe five years-old, who sang "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star". It was pitch-perfect. I'm not kidding.

Saturday night, they were not as raucous, but the last of them didn't leave the lobby until almost 0500, when the breakfast crew came in.

This weekend there were fireworks for Norfolk's Harborfest on Friday and Saturday night. They have another round planned for tonight. Last night, the turnout in Portsmouth was huge, and all of the outbound traffic after the show poured out from Downtown through my neighborhood. I left for work an additional twenty minutes early, and was still twenty minutes late, due to the additional traffic through my neighborhood. It took me almost an hour just to get from my apartment to the on-ramp for the Western Freeway, normally a trip of five to ten minutes.

So, yeah. I hate holidays.

Shopping, or a Lack Thereof

Have I ever mentioned how much I love to shop? It's true. It's one of the most girly things about me. Even a simple trip to WalMart to buy toilet paper can be complicated by a compulsion to wander through nearly every department to look at stuff.

I'm hurting. I've lamented here often about not having the money to get my usual manicure/pedicure, but it's more than that. Since Nate lost his job, I haven't had hardly any disposable income. Since I moved here from Charlotte, I've gotten accustomed (reluctantly) to having less money. I used to buy my clothes at Torrid and Lane Bryant. Last year I started shopping at Cato and Ross. Lately I've been looking at the emails from a place called Dots, which has lots of cool stuff, at prices similar to Cato. I haven't been able to go. I'd be happy with a few bucks to spend at the CHKD thrift or somewhere similar. I'm not too greedy.

Nate says he got an email from the tax service. They're supposedly going to call him back to work any day now. The call cannot come too soon.

Quick Movie Blurb

While I was off, Nate and I took the boys to see Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. There are those who will question the wisdom of taking two boys aged five and six to see a movie rated PG-13, but they saw the first one and suffered no ill effects.

I enjoyed the first movie. It had plenty of effects, but it also had a decent story, and characters with hearts and souls. This time around, there are even more effects, but the story and characters suffer for it. It's long too, at two hours and twenty minutes.

The original Transformers were introduced in this country right around the time that my parents told me I was too old to play with toys, but I still managed to get into them enough to know who all the characters are. Watching the "Constructicons" combine into a giant robot in this one gave me a little thrill. Jetfire is rendered as the SR-71 Blackbird which currently resides in the Udvar-Hazy Center outside DC. I got to see it in person in 2006.

One of my favorite sequences from the first film is the "Bring the rain" bit in Qatar with the A-10s and the Spooky gunship. There is a similar scene near the end of this one, but it's gratuitous by comparison. Michael Bay likes his toys, and this movie has plenty of them.

We got to see a matinee, so the trip didn't cost much, but my advice for this movie is wait for video.

I'm Out!

Please forgive me for not being around the last couple of days. I was anticipating having my DSL connected a couple of days ago, but it was not to be. Before I went off Tuesday morning, I sat down with my manager and let her know what I want to do, as far as transitioning on the job. I gave her the Cliff's Notes version of my life. I talked a little about wanting to transition, but told her that I wasn't planning on doing it tomorrow, or even next week. I just wanted her to know what was going on with me. I explained that under current law, there isn't any protection for trans workers, and that she could fire me then and there, if she wanted. She told me she wouldn't do that. Personally, she doesn't care how I dress, so long as I do my job well. She told me that she would talk to corporate and get back to me.