Stuffs and Things

So I think Fridays should be the days I talk about current events in my life. Also I will pick a picture of me to post every Friday. Some very current and some maybe not.

This weeks photo is me standing in the engine of an airplane. I picked this photo because I am cool enough to have stood in the engine of an airplane. Just look at that photo. Awesome.

This week I finished book 8 in Simon Green's Nightside series. They are Si-Fi Fantasy Noir not really mystery novels. They are all easy reads and nice sort of young adult to early adult books.

On next Wednesday my boyfriend will land in Chicago so that we can drive up to Wisconsin and meet half of my family and go to a wedding. This particular wedding is for a special friend of mine from junior high. She is the last girlfriend I had before coming out. It should be lovely and she has been a great friend to me over the years and the whole trip should be great. My boyfriend is acting like he is not nervous to meet my mother however every time I tell him I told her something in regards to his spectacular wonderfulness he sort of groans and mentions how high a bar I am setting. So now I am doing it on purpose. He has also given me permission to start calling him Marc in my blog. That is his real name even. What a great guy!

This week I worked with a crew where many of the lovely ladies are instrumental in the union committees. It's good to get a closer perspective to what these lovely gals have been up to. I'm so proud of all the work that is getting done there even if unions are not really my thing. I have a flair for efficiency and unions are the exact opposite. However, I am able to see a system that is failing to the employees, especially because I am one, and recognize why they are important. So you go girls!

In mentioning work I have made two resolutions involving work over the past two weeks. The first one is that when I am travelling for work but not actually working the flight I will no longer be travelling in uniform. I wear that same suit over and over and I am overtired with it. This is not common but it is allowed at my company so now I really feel like I am just getting paid to ride on planes. Yay! The second resolution is to pack as light as possible unless I am sure to be bringing back shopping conquests (not unheard of). It is so nice to carry light small luggage instead of lugging giant bags everywhere I go. I need to buy a little 18" roller and do away with my 22".

I also started the blog you are reading right now!

Have a nice weekend and come back Monday. No really. Come back. Read. Comment.

PSA for Creepy Gross Bugs

Bugs and I have an interesting relationship. I have no problem with bugs in general and for the most part leave them alone or remove them to the outside where they can live and be free. I do though take offense to bugs that touch me. The amount of offense is completely relative to the size and over all creepiness of the bug. Ants are very low on the offensiveness scale where as anything larger than a quarter or with more than 8 legs will probably end up crushed.

With that in mind I would like to share a story with the world.

Two weeks ago my heroic boyfriend and I were attending a destination wedding in Greece. I highly recommend to everyone that you visit the Greek islands sometime during the span of your life. I was looking for good descriptors for my feelings on the situation and settled on:



And that one is just one of literally hundreds of pictures and doesn't even have the landscape in it!

Well on the last morning of our stay I woke up at 4 AM. This is odd since I still had half an hour before my alarm was to bludgeon me into showering and getting dressed to fly away. My arm hurt. It hurt a lot. It hurt like someone had the ink cartridge of a cheap ballpoint pen that had been dipped (and magically mantained its shape) in hydrocloric acid and was pressing it into either my radius or ulna. I can't ever remember which is which.

So I went into the bathroom to look at my arm. It looked fine. In my tired state I went back and looked at where I had been sleeping. Nothing seemed out of place. Except my arm really hurt. Sigh. Back into the bathroom. I pinch the place on my arm that hurts. Two small blood spots form. Puncture wounds. OH. MY. GOD. SOMETHING IS IN THE BED.

I hurry back to the bed. My boyfriend has rolled to my side of the bed. Not Good.

"Sweetheart, I need you to get up"

"Huh?"

"Sweetheart something has bit or stung me and I need to find it and my arm really hurts."

He gets up and stands there as I proceed to rip the bed apart. I throw back the blanket. Nothing. Throw my pillow. Nothing. Pull back the sheet. Nothing. As I am attempting to look behind the headboard my boyfriend says,

"Maybe you are going crazy... oh wait, no!"

At which point I look back just in time to see an enormous centipede crawl out of my pillow case. I left the room and told my boyfriend to kill it. He is my hero by the way. The only pictures I have of all of this are what remained of that monster.



The beer can is there for size reference. I'm estimating about six inches long and over half an inch wide. It was not a good way to start the day to say the least. My boyfriend had to beat it repeatedly until it fell off the bed since the bed was not soft enough for the beating to do any real damage and then once it was on the floor managed to avenge my poor arm.

And the moral of the story direct from my boyfriend's telling of the story, "Screw with my boyfriend and get crushed."

This is a warning to all large and nasty bugs out there. Beware.

Musing 1

As I sit in my hotel room with an excessive amount of time to kill I have decided to write a blog. You can of course see this. I am thinking that because I spend lots of time in similar hotels looking out windows that if nothing else I can learn to type WHILE looking out the window. That is like a typing +5 skill. So let me begin.

Prelude:

I am 25. I believe Scandinavian/Anglo mutt classifies me as white though my boyfriend will likely protest and explain that white people burn and I tan. I am male and thus clearly homosexual. I live in Chicago and though I am told it is not actually called the windy city for reasons of air pressure systems we are quickly approaching the season where I will have to disagree. With all that in mind it may be better to get to know me through a series of stories.

Chapter 1:
(The Emergence of Vanity)

When I was around four maybe five my parents lived in a nice little neighborhood in Austin, Tx. We lived on one end of a cul-de-sac and on the opposite side lived a slightly older boy whose name I believe was Jeffrey. Jeffrey and I had a very straight forward friendship meaning I wanted to be his friend and play together and he wanted to see me cry. Everyday I would go over there and then during the course of playing he would say something mean to me and I would go home in tears. I think he told me once his family was moving to Alaska so I could never play with him EVER again. I am fairly certain they did not move to Alaska. Texans would not be able to drive in Alaska. Rumors of snow send Texans into a frenzy and they act like it is Armageddon. Anyway...

I was the rare child born with an extreme fear that I had ALREADY done something wrong and in order to convince me all anyone had to do was look at me funny and I would be standing in the corner in repentance. My parents loved this about me because discipline was fantastically simple to administer. Jeffrey loved this because he very often achieved his goal of basking in my tears. My parents did not understand why I continued going to Jeffery's house to play.

Then one day I came home smiling. My parents were vastly confused. This had never happened before. I had gone over to Jeffery's house to play Nintendo. I thought this was unimaginably cool since I had not yet acquired any sort of gaming system. Some while into playing Mario Jeffery decided his sharing ability had reached maximum share capacity and he took the controller back. I was used to this behavior but for some reason this day the creative problem solving juices in my head coagulated into a brand new solution:

Jeffrey does something mean.
James cries and runs home.
Nothing changes.
Repeat.

Why am I crying about this all the time? Wait... Why am I even here right now?

So I stood up and started to leave. Jeffery had not only not expected this but seemingly felt slighted. He began to get angry. I believe my response went something along the lines of, "If you are going to be bad I can play at home." Which I promptly did.

Now I love this story for two reasons. The first is because I seem like a really cool smart and well behaved child. The second is because my dad loves this story and loves to tell it to me and this is possibly the beginning of how I ended up so full of myself now. Man I was an awesome kid.