Surreptitious Opinionation

Working 9-5 means that I don’t get livejournal. More than 50 entries to scan through when I get a chance to log on. It’s terrible. I don’t want to cut my subscriptions, but I do want to have a life outside work and lj. I demand compensation for this. Fortunately, I may be getting it at the end of june rather than mid-july. Unfortunately, I won’t know whether or not I will until it has passed the ‘mom mails scu a check for july rent’ deadline. Grrr.

But the things I want to do in Chicago include: game with & friends at least once or twice; go to gymnastics classes at one of two studios found on adult gymnastics; get into a regular gym habit, most likely at the Y near the whole foods, probably before work a few times per week. All of these cost $$. (admittedly vague) gaming plans cost metra fare money (and much time). The others have more obvious fees. All expenses for my plans to attend green tech u stuff, however, would be include in prepaid transit benefits.

Learning to juggle the various work trip expenses and the intricacies of their proposal, credit cards, cash advances, travel and lodging arrangements, etc, took most of today. I expect it will go smoothly. Current task for work is database recoding (well, spreadsheet revamping). Should be tedious, but not difficult.

So, lessee,

I’m scheduled to be out in DC next week. monday morning – wed afternoon. I may see how possible it is to fly out there saturday morning if interesting monsters are available for socializing.

Good news: It seems my first pay check will be direct deposited.
Bad news: It seems my first pay check will be arriving in mid-July.

Transit benefits were provided for the entire internship on the first day. I previously asked if we’d be getting fare cards, or checks or what. I assumed they didn’t trust us. But she said checks, and I assumed checks made out to the recipients of the transit benefits (ie, me). Wrong. They are form checks, sheet printed and perforated. When I explained that I had already purchased my transit foo, the nice hr lady recommended I sell the checks to friends who needed them (if you buy transit passes in chicago, could you help a brother out? $75 in checks of mixed denominations are available). Right, so, we don’t trust you, so we’ll give you these checks, then we’ll turn around in a heartbeat and recommend you resell them.

Crackheads. The lot of them.

Oh, and apparently, the very idea of some alternative keyboard layout nearly gave the IT lady an apoplectic fit. She was pretty clearly following the script and became lost the moment some item in her script failed. I did it quietly, didn’t make dvorak the default or anything. Hopefully they won’t notice.

The work itself seems like it may be of some interest. Will try to remember not to do at home. The cube farm effect isn’t quite as horrific as motorola’s was. I am reserving judgement, it’s only the first day. But I’m giving them the hairy eyeball.

How long does it typically take for a phone post to show up?

‘cept I’m not really that drunk. Even my light-weight-ness can take a margarita, two beers and a long island, over the course of 6 hours without missing the typos. And I have sobered up a bit. Still, I think I doubled my alcohol intake this year.

Okay, now on to the fun stuff. I saw and that was yay. I know it’s been months, though I do not recall how many, since last I saw him. He teased me over dinner, and it was good. I got to meet and his ability to keep the energy flowing impressed me. is as hot as his highly accurate pics, and has a gentle, friendly, wry sarcasm and aware detachment that has much to recommend him on top of his looks. He is much as his lj represents him. was not curmudgeonly at all, and had interesting stuff to share, though I do not regret my allocation of time, I wish I’d had more time to chat with him. made a very favorable impression of self-posession and friendliness. I hope I see more of him in my time in chicago. was friendly and fun despite his self consciousness. Alas, I spent next to no time talking with , , and ‘s roommate, but the more the merrier, & all that. =)

I was positively vibrating most of the evening. I climbed lamp posts, supported myself on parking meters, and danced to anything with a halfway reasonable beat. Cesar’s, then Roscoe’s, then Hydrate, and finally Berlin. I called it quits earlier than I optimally wanted to, but sleep schedules that bear some resemblance to something reasonable are quite worthwhile. I had a great time, lovely meeting you all, and thanks for the chicago welcome.

The Democrats in the senate do negotiate with terrorists. That’s the short of it. They’re willing to legitimize the threat to dismantle minority rights by buying it off, thereby neutering the protections. And the American people as a whole are more fond of the schoolyard bully than the bullied. A principled approach of “The Republicans have made heavy use of this tactic in the past and are now disarming it for their current political advantage. We think this is the wrong way to conduct the country’s business, and will not legitimize their terrorist threat to reshape the government at their whim by giving them what they want.” I could certainly see the senate Republicans removing the fillibuster for as long as they retain a majority, then on the eve of losing a majority switching the rules so that 80% (or some other ridiculous number) is required to a) break a fillibuster and b) change senate rules.

The sad thing is, I don’t think much better of the Democrats in terms of adhering to principle v chasing power. What they all seem to have missed is why the rules were put there in the first place. Riots in the street are never pretty. Fuck the two party system. If nobody has a majority, nobody runs the show alone. Proportional representation and instant run-off voting are where it should be at. And while we’re at it, why not a national referendum with a 2/3 threshold? And a pony. Definitely a pony.

So, tonight, I’m hanging out with , and several other lj homos, in a mexican w/tequilas, then drinking & dancing sort of plan. Then tomorrow it’s off to southern illinois, where I’ll be staying with some deeply catholic relatives until monday afternoon (fortunately also with wireless), with a big picnic/barbeque at lake ulrich on sunday (it’d fit right in with several minneapolis ‘lakes’ in terms of size).

Should be an adventure.

My new apartment is fabulous, and even has a huge mirror/medicine cabinet that faces the shower. So I will be seeing how I look naked on a daily basis. At present, this is showing me visibly how I’ve let myself go in the past year. It’s not dramatic, but when you have as little muscle as I do, it doesn’t take much to go from lean to out of shape. Fortunately, this also means that the trip back needn’t be dramatic either. It’s just extra incentive to find my way to the gym. =)

Pronto.

I love my new neighborhood. Any place that has 5 different languages on the restaurant signs is doing something right (english, spanish, arabic, korean (I think), and french). Also, this is the only part of town where I’ve seen the L running at street level, and I hadn’t seen it before today. Did I mention that the L is nearby, my apartment is fabulous, and the people I’m subleasing from are cool? Oh, and I beat them at a simpsons knock off of GTA which I’ve never played before. Yay. I also ate at ‘the best persian restaurant in chicago’ which is right around the corner. There is so very much right about this place.

Plus, they understand my needs for wireless, which I should be scamming from the tragic downstairs neighbors, but I can’t get the encryption passkey to work.

The tragic downstairs neighbor is another not-quite-ex-gay (my first experience with such being a date-with-some-surprises I had in pittsburgh, which started off badly and turned disastrous). He’s a sysadmin in a windows based *shudder* office which has “national” and “evangelical” in the title *double shudder*. He and his boyfriend have agreed not to “fool around”. He is in the closet at work. He is, of course, cute. And thinking about getting a master’s degree in comp sci. (Just say ‘no’).

Part of me wants to rescue him, equal parts lust and concern (as if I could, as if he would). Another part knows that he’s an adult, and thus free to fuck up his life any way he wants. Yet another part of me thinks that doing anything which could complicate a relationship which can sustain itself for over two years in the absence of sex is the approximate equivalent of trying to piss on the mona lisa. I don’t think the mona lisa is all that, but pretend I do. If anything, I’m oversexed, and under emotionally connected, maybe I can learn something valuable from them.

Enh, it’s compelling in that trainwreck sort of way, but they’re moving away into a condo in the middle of June anyway.

For those of you who’ve read octavia butler’s oankali series, I think of this as a view very similar to what the oankali had of humanity. For those of you who haven’t read it, I must strongly recommend correcting this error. =) Start with “dawn”. The oankali always made way more sense to me than the humans in that series.

The persian restaurant had phenomenal service and very tasty food, which combined with my eating speed to produce a bloated-feeling scu. Sadly, their vegetarian selection is lacking and their prices are high, so I shan’t be returning too often.

I think I’m going to like it here.

I will miss you.