General Update, Reporting For Duty.

So my laptop, which is ten years old and should probably be turned into compost anyway, is stuck in something called an "automatic repair loop."  You turn it on and it tells you that it can't open Windows (which you need to do anything, even send a tweet) because of some error and it's executing an automatic repair.  Then this other screen opens and says, "Automatic repair failed.  Please choose an option."  No matter which option you choose (and I've tried them all, several times each),  it fails to open Windows again and takes you back to the automatic repair screen. After which it takes you back to the screen of options and...yeah.

I have tried a number of things to solve this problem, including calling tech support, which I never thought of before.  The only thing I haven't tried out of the many brilliant suggestions I've been handed is downloading Windows onto a flash drive and plunking the flash drive onto one of my USB ports and booting it up that way.  I haven't tried it because a.  it costs money to download Windows onto a flash drive and b. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work anyway.  I think that last Windows 10 update just fried the poor little circuits on Scott.  (My laptop's name is Scott.  Oh, don't laugh.  Everybody calls their laptop something, usually something like, "You stupid son of a--.")  And, frankly, at the age of ten, Scott really needed replacing anyway.

Now, don't you worry about my data.  It's all on Carbonite, so when I do get a new laptop (and it ain't gonna be this month) I can just download the whole shebang and everything will be Just LIke It Was.  And, in a twist of irony, my Work in Progress is on Google Drive, so I can get to it from anywhere.  That wasn't my doing.  I was working on a program called Scrivener, which is from Zimbabwe, I think.  (No, I never knew Africa was a hotbed of clever software programs either.)  Listen, if you write anything of any length, you really owe it to yourself to check out Scrivener.  I won't go into all the nifty features, but there's a lot of them, and they are nifty.  And one of them is that you can work from a tablet, or even a phone, if you want, by uploading your WIP to Google Drive and connecting it to an app called JotterPad.  Which is how I happen to be at the public library, little lines of text appearing on the bottom of my tablet screen as I type away with this cute little Bluetooth keyboard that was probably the best twenty bucks I ever spent.  It even lights up in your choice of green, orange, pink or purple.  

So I am technologically stunted, but I am not technologically bereft.  And you wanna talk about your first world problems?  Imagine striking up a conversation with a guy who, say, just escaped Nicaragua with his life, and all you've got to say is how much it sucks you're reduced to a tablet and a little Bluetooth keyboard.  This actually happened to me once, sort of.  I was in college, studying for an exam, and I made the mistake of lamenting to my neighbor how I was never going to pass this test,.  She proceeded to tell me that she was from Northern Ireland.  Her brother was in the IRA.  Her other brother was a Black and Tan.  Her dad was refusing to speak to either brother, her mother kept trying to get everyone to all get along again, and she left the country and came to the United States to go to college and get away from all the fighting.  And there I sat with my test notes, feeling wholly inadequate.

(I passed the test, by the way.)

So when last we left this sordid saga, I had just turned 50, been without power for three days, and been very very very sick.  You'll be happy to know I'm finally off antibiotics (I took them for just over six weeks).  And since my leg didn't immediately puff up to a huge size, I think I am out of the woods.  I am now wearing compression stockings, and will probably have to wear them forever.   Once I got used to them, I actually kind of liked them, though I don't like the price ($40 per pair on Amazon, the cheapest place I've found them) or the fact that they basically come in two colors, black and white.  While all that was going on, I missed a week of work.  That was better than it could have been; the specialist wanted me to miss three weeks of work.  Anyway, there is still some fallout but I'm sweeping it up and putting it into the little container with the trefoil marking as best I can.

My idiot neighbor, so called because he is an idiot, came over to our place and offered to cut our trees back (the ones along his property line) for a small fee.  I said no.  I have seen this guy with a chainsaw and I would not at all be surprised if he accidentally cut off his own arm or something and then sued me for damages.  I hired an actual tree guy, one with employees and workers comp insurance and son on,  who came to the house, did an assessment and knocked on my neighbor's door to find out when would be a good time for him to come onto the property and cut the trees back.  My neighbor wouldn't let him in and apparently spent the whole of the five-minute conversation complaining about me.  And didn't give him a time to come back and cut the trees.  So there the matter stands. For someone who wnts the trees cut back, he's not doing anything to make it happen faster.

(By the way, in Dallas, as I imagine in most cities, if there are branches of someone else's tree overhanging your property, you are entitled to cut them back, and it's not considered trespassing to do so.  So my idiot neighbor could cut them back any time he wanted to.  Apparently he only wants to if it involves me paying him.  Which I'm not gonna do, see above re insurance and lawsuits.)    

In about two weeks I'm going to Austin for a CLE conference, and Joan is coming with me.  I usually come back from these things all fired up and ready to restructure the entire office according to the guideliens of whomever spoke last at the conference.  So that should be fun, for me as well as my office mates.  My boss took a personal leave and will be gone probably to close to the end of the year, which has been interesting.  A contract attorney is coming in to cover starting next week, which meant I got to write up synopses of all our cases so he would be able to see very quickly what's going on.  I had to write these synopses without being even slightly snarky or telling jokes, which was really annoying.  But anyway, it's done, it's a three-day weekend and so far I've slept through most of it.

All right, I'm going to go binge watch season 3 of The Good Place with Joan.   Happy Labor Day, everybody!

Weirdest Birthday Ever

 

This all started a few days before my birthday, actually, on a Sunday, when Dallas was hit with a thing called a microburst.  (See picture, which was in the Washington Post, so it is probably legit.)  Apparently these things sometimes get spun out of thunderstorms, and they're made when air that's rapidly rising (because it's hot) reaches a peak where it can't rise anymore and starts to fall in a hurry.  The resulting downdraft is strong enough to bring down commercial aircraft, and cause all kinds of havoc on the ground.  60-75 mph winds are not uncommon.  (That's just below the level of a small tornado.)  Trees get knocked over, roof tiles get pulled off, huge pieces of hail fall from the sky and can break windows, and anyway, it's not a lot of fun if you're underneath it.

We were underneath it. 

So there it is, two o'clock on a Sunday and we're staring out the window as bushes and trees whip around, telephone wires sway back and forth and look like they're about to snap, and rain pours out of a sky that was perfectly dry about half an hour before.  Thunder, lightning, zapping transformers, the whole nine yards.  Then half an hour later, it was gone.  The sun came back out.  The wind died down to nothing. 

None of our trees were damaged, though the neighbors down the street weren't so lucky.  No hail damage to the car.  No roof tiles missing.  But the power was out. 

Way back in 2010, this sort of thing happened during an ice storm in February.  The power was out for four days.  The ambient temperature in the house never went above 61 degrees, and that was with a fire going the whole time.  So since then, every time the power goes out, I get the heebie jeebies.  Like it might not come back on for days.

Which it didn't. 

After the first day, when our local power company began borrowing trucks and crews from Alabama and Mississippi and it became rather obvious we were in for another long outage, I packed Joan off to stay with friends who had power.  Joan sleeps with a CPAP machine and really likes air conditioning, so this seemed like a good idea.  I stayed at the house with the cats.  Luckily, the weather was not bad; I think the hottest it got was 85 degrees.  And the cats loved it because AAAAAAAALL the windows were open.  Cats love open windows for virtual bird stalking. 

So I went back and forth to work, charged my cell phone at the office, sent a smiling bow to the former homeowner who decided that gas hot water heaters were a good thing, and taught myself how to make coffee with water boiled on a gas stove.  (I really need a French press.  Just for emergencies.)  And every day I'd come home to see if the porch light was on or not.  It was not.

The third day, which was my birthday, the power company finally updated its map to say that our neighborhood should have power back.  I went over to the house at noontime and this wasn't the case.  I called their hotline and told them the power still wasn't back on, and they said "hmmm" a couple of times and told me to give it another hour.

That night, when I went home, the porch light was on.  YAAAAAY!!  So I closed all the windows and turned on the A/C and drove down to Duncanville to pick up Joan, and at 8:00 on my birthday we pulled into the driveway of an air conditioned house with the porch lights on.  And there was much rejoicing.

Then I got sick. 

It started when I got out of the pool one day.  I felt cold and shaky.  The water was a little colder than usual, but I thought a hot shower would fix me right up.  It didn't.  Then I thought maybe my blood glucose was crashing (which happens) and a little Gatorade would fix me right up.  It didn't.  I spent that whole day wrapped in blankets, trying to stay warm.  Joan was convinced I had a fever, but we couldn't find a frick'n thermometer to check.

Oh, and my leg hurt.  Which was odd. 

So the next day I called in sick to work and went to see the doc.  I told her I had a fever of unknown origin and for some reason my leg hurt.  She checked the nose and the ears and the throat (the usual suspects).  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Then she looked at my leg.  She told me I had cellulitis.  (Actually, based on the symptoms, I probably had septicemia by that point, but on with the story.)  She drew on my leg with a Sharpie marker to delineate the infection, which took up most of my right calf.  She  prescribed a lot of antibiotics and told me to stay in bed with the leg elevated.

Which I did, and so went Monday and Tuesday.  During this time I had basically no appetite, which was a problem because these antibiotics have to be taken with food.  Two or three bites was all I could manage, so I ended up going back to my Old Reliable, ice cream.  Which didn't improve my appetite at all, but I could get a few more bites down because it's easy to eat. 

On Tuesday my fever broke, which was good, but by Wednesday, it was becoming apparent that the antibiotic wasn't working, or wasn't working very well, anyway.  So back to the doc we went.  The doc prescribed me another antibiotic to be taken with the first antibiotic.  One of these suckers had to be taken twice a day.  The other one had to be taken three times a day, but not at the same time as the first one.  And they all had to be taken with food.  See above re: no appetite. I ended up having to get up at three in the morning to get in the third dose.  So it was get up, make a piece of toast, eat the toast, or as much of it as I could stomach, sit upright for fifteen minutes per the label on the bottle, then get back into bed, elevate the leg and try to get back to sleep. Fun times.

Oh, and my leg hurt.  Like, a lot.  The only way I could be at all comfortable was to lie on my back with my leg elevated.  Going from lying down to standing up was about an 8 on the pain scale, standing for any length of time was about a 7, and sitting down (unless my leg was braced up on something) was about a 5.  The doc prescribed Meloxicam, which I took with Advil, which you shouldn't do because potential liver damage, but hey, my liver has basically nothing to do most of the time, so I figured why not let it have a little fun. 

By Thursday morning I was convinced I was on my way to the hospital for some IV antibiotics because my calf was still amazingly swollen and looked like raw hamburger.  So convinced was I that I packed a bag.  We went to the doc yet again, and she switched me to a third antibiotic, which fortunately meant I got to stop the other two.  No more three a.m. toast.  And, fortunately, no hospital.  I only dodged that because the infection hadn't spread beyond the Sharpie marker line.  But that was a relief.  Hospitals are no fun on the weekends. 

I missed a week of work and I'm not sure what the situation is with my time off and so on just yet.  I  am back at work now, trying to catch up and at the same time not really having the energy to stay late.  I am still in a fair amount of pain, still limping around and popping Meloxicam and rubbing aloe vera cream into my still red and angry-looking leg.  But the leg has gone back to its regular size, which is good. and it doesn't look like raw hamburger anymore, which is also good.  I am still taking antibiotics and will be for a while yet. 

So how did all this happen, you ask.  Well, according to the doc, it was a "classic spider bite pattern."  In other words, a spider bit me, I didn't notice, the bite got infected and then things got out of hand.  But it could have been anything.  I could have scratched my leg against something that had germs on it.  It could have been a mosquito bite, too, that I scratched open and I had germs on my fingernails (bad news; we all have germs on our fingernails).  So we don't really know.  However, if you get a scratch that breaks the skin, especially if you get it outside, it is always, always a good idea to clean it out with peroxide and maybe put a little bit of antibiotic ointment on it, just in case.  Oh, and if you're out with a spider, and the spider says "Let's stop for a bite," just say no.

Anyway, I turned fifty.  Cheers! 

How Not To Have A Sore Back at 6 AM

Well, in case you missed it, I bought a mattress.  In retrospect, it wasn't quite the huge cavalcade of ridiculousness that it seemed at the time. It was only a small tsunami of ridiculousness.  But it was still pretty ridiculous.  I think buying a used car was actually easier, and that's not even taking into account the fact that I have incredible luck with buying used cars.  ( Take, for example, the '79 Datsun; purchased at 150k miles, drove it for 100k more, no major repairs apart from replacing the clutch, though the ceiling eventually fell on me.) You might check out Consumer Reports and read a few articles and check a few Web sites to buy a used car.  You can fricking read BOOKS about how to buy mattresses.  And even then, you still don't know everything you need to know, such as how not to end up paying almost twice as much as you set out to do.

See, I wanted a Purple mattress.  If you go to Purple's Web site, you'll find it's nice and informative and explains everything you need to know.  Also, Purple's mattresses are purple.  Purple is my favorite color.  So it would have been totally and completely awesome to have a Purple mattress.  It would have even come with free purple sheets.

But here was the problem, as well as the problem with online mattress purchases generally.  Purple is not a "traditional" mattress.  It's not designed to be placed on a box springs.  It's designed to be placed on a single hard surface, like a flat bed with no box springs.  The kind you get at Ikea.  So in order to get a new mattress, I would have had to get an entirely new bed.

Now, I wasn't really down on that concept.  The current bed I've had for a very long time.  I won it in the divorce, actually, and the divorce was one of those things that happened in the Time Before Joan (TM).  Seeing as Joan and I just celebrated our 20th anniversary, you do the math. I've had this bed for a very long time.  Besides, Ikea beds aren't very expensive.  You can get one delivered and set up for about $400.00.  But this is where the logistics began to get difficult.

See, in order to get a new bed, I would have to get rid of the old bed.  So someone would have to come help me take it apart, carry the pieces outside, and put it out for the bulky trash guys.  Which meant it could only be done during one week of the month, in case nobody adopted it and it was actually still there by the time the bulky trash guys showed up.  (Not likely in our neighborhood; everything even slightly valuable or practical disappears almost as soon as you put it out there, except for that fucking combination printer/scanner/fax that we had for a while, and I can only assume that our neighbors heard me yelling at it.  Hell, they heard me yelling at it in Indonesia.)

Okay, so let's say we got the bed successfully out of the house.  Now, the removal of the bed from the house had to be timed just so, so that the bed from Ikea showed up on the same day or at the very latest, the next day.  And then the guys who were going to put it together would need to show up, and they would have to have no problems whatsoever with their cute little Allen wrenches and the many parts.  If there was a delay of a day or two, I would have to find somewhere else to sleep.  And then, even when all that was done, there was the question of when the new mattress would be delivered.  If it showed up a few days early, where would we put it?  If it showed up a few days late, would I be sleeping on the couch?

Seriously, this was starting to give me a headache.  In desperation I wrote to our friend Suzy, who is much better about logistics than I am.  And true to form, she laid out an exacting, six or seven point plan about how to get the new bed and mattress into the house without having to sleep on the couch and suchlike and so forth.  (Thanks, Suzy!)  The only problem was, I kept putting off the actual doing of the steps.

I think it was Joan who finally suggested maybe I was having trouble letting go of the old bed (it is a nice bed), and that maybe I should consider just getting a traditional mattress and box springs set and just have them delivered and forget about it, already.  And that's what I finally did.  I drove out to Nebraska Furniture Mart (which is a lot like Ikea, only without the Allen wrenches) and picked one of the mattresses that I'd deemed a suitable substitute for the Purple mattress.  It happened to be on sale.  I had it delivered.  The nice folks at NFM hauled away the old mattress and box springs, and suddenly I had a new mattress.

I woke up the next morning at 6 A.M. and lo and behold, my back didn't hurt.  That's the first time that's happened in, oh, about two years.

So I have a new mattress.  I'm not used to it yet.  Oh, it's fine to sleep on, but I sit down on the bed very tentatively so as not to disturb it.  It's a hybrid mattress, part springs and part supportive foam, so I kind of sink down into it, which is actually really nice.  But I'm like almost afraid to put weight on it.  What if it starts to sag?  Oh, it has a nice ten year warranty and all that, but still, you never know...

Braaaaaaaains

So last week I participated in a "sleep study" to find out whether or not I have sleep apnea, which is something you don't want to have.  A "sleep study" is where creepy people file into your bedroom (by way of overhead cameras) and watch you sleep to see what you're doing.  Well, there were no actual people; there was instead an apparatus that I strapped to myself and which measured my heart rate and breathing and things of that nature.  There was a little clampy thing on my finger to take my oxygen saturation, and I presume one of these little gizmos told them how long I was asleep and how often I woke up.  I'm not really complaining, by the way, about the apparatus.  When Joan had a sleep study there actually were people watching, which, again, is pretty creepy.  Having to sleep with an apparatus really wasn't so bad.  Not even the cats seemed to mind.

And what should happen, in the next few days, is my doc will look at the results and tell me if I need a CPAP machine or not.  If I do, Joan and I will be like the CPAP twins or something, dozing away in matching masks and making noises like Darth Vader.  If not, then I'm off the hook, at least for now.  (And what I actually expect to happen?  I expect to be told I have sleep apnea, but it's not bad enough to warrant treatment.  That's how it seems to go with me on any number of issues.)  

For this privilege I am shelling out some $275, which, again, I'm not complaining about.  When actual people watch you it costs more like $400. I guess you have to buy the people watching a pizza, or something?

Anyway.  This whole episode got me to thinking about brains, and how they work, and what happens when they don't work the way they should.  When you're asleep, for example, your brain is off, or it's supposed to be.  If it doesn't shut down the way it's supposed to, it can stay connected enough to your body that you get up and sleepwalk around like a zombie, acting out your dreams.  If you have anxiety disorder, all the fight or flight neurons that should be nice and quiet when everything's fine keep firing anyway, making you feel like the floor is about to collapse or a plane is going to fall on your head or something like that.  (I have anxiety disorder.)  If the parts of your brain that process sound start telling you that somebody's talking to you when no one is, you will hear voices that sound like real voices.  And so on and suchlike.

Also, when people have something truly shitty happen in their lives, like being hit by a car or being in a plane crash (and surviving, obviously) or losing a loved one to a tragic accident, particularly if it happens right in front of them, they can get a thing we call PTSD.  Humans have undoubtedly been suffering from this malady for thousands of years, but we didn't give it a name until World War I, when soldiers began experiencing something they called "shell shock."  The mistaken impression was that the shells exploding all around them caused the disease, instead of the conditions that the soldiers were fighting under during World War I.  (And if you ever want to listen to a truly great podcast about trench warfare during World War I, look no farther than Dan Carlin's "Blueprint for Armageddon," which is available here.)  What they didn't know then was that, when truly shitty things happen to you, you can have actual measurable changes in your brain, which causes it to process information differently and results in hallucinations, flashbacks, unreasonable fear, panic, ritualized behavior and all other manner of unpleasant goings-on.

Brains, by the way, are great things.  When they're working the way they're supposed to, life hums along pretty well.  When they stop working the way they're supposed to, hoo boy.

What I'm wondering, though, is if smaller traumas and goings-on cause smaller versions of PTSD.  I'm wondering, particularly, if excessive stress at work can cause a milder form of PTSD.  I had this one job where stuff happened that I'm still not over, if one does in fact get over these things versus just learning how to live with them, or around them.  

Ah, and here we get to a thorny problem that inevitably comes up in a blog post like this; What I Can Say And What I Can't Say.  I can't tell you much about my current job, for example, because confidentiality and ethics and besides, somebody might figure out it's me and point me out to my boss and they'd find that one blog post that I did about Donald Trump and they'd have to fire me or something.  (Well, probably not over Donald Trump; we are pretty much on the same side where that goes.)  And I'm not sure how much I can tell you about my past jobs.  Because, again, confidentiality and ethics and so on and suchlike.

There is one place in particular that was so bad I'm embarrassed to admit I ever worked there,  So I just don't.  Admit it, I mean.  And I don't mean the working conditions were bad, though they were, and I don't mean the pay wasn't very good either, though it wasn't.  I mean what went on there was bad. Very bad.  Almost the apotheosis of all possible badness.  If you wanted to look up "bad" in the dictionary...

Well, anyway, it was kind of traumatic.  It was quite a few years ago and I still cringe that I didn't turn around and walk out the door five minutes into my first day, when I started figuring out how bad it actually was.  And I did have nightmares and flashbacks and so on, though not really any hallucinations, unless you count the one about the giant purple dinosaur that apparently shilled for a kid's show, and somebody told me that was real, though I still have my doubts.

So I'm wondering: Is there therapy for working people who get badly rattled by something that happened at the office but can't tell anybody about it?  I bet they have this figured out at the CIA.  Of course, the CIA probably has on-call therapists on duty 24/7.  I dunno about you, but when people start yelling at each other and calling each other names, I look for a nice desk to hide under.  I am not a big fan of screaming fights.

I'm also not a big fan of pretending everything's normal and carrying on once it's all over.  I mean, look, I grew up in a Lutheran household, okay?  And when I took my vows to become a Buddhist I solemnly promised that if I ever said "Everything's fine" even one more time, I'd be washing my mouth out with--nag champa incense, or something. 

Is this normal?  I mean, does this sort of thing happen in offices?  I know it sometimes happens in households, though not my household.  And hospitals.  In fact, doctors are kind of known for ranting and raving.  I've worked in law firms for a long time and law firms are pretty volatile places, all in all.  I've seen yelling matches break out before.  In fact, one time I saw a guy throw a Bible at another guy and say--oh, wait.  I can't tell you about that. 

I guess if I just knew that human beings sometimes behave this way in situations that aren't law offices, I'd feel better.  I mean, they say that lawyers are human beings, but I don't know. 

(Update!  I just got the results from my sleep study.  I have mild sleep apnea but not bad enough to warrant treatment.  I'm not making this up.)

Gone But Not Forgotten

Boy, when you miss two whole months of regularly scheduled blog posts, you by God better have something pretty spectacular to make up the gap, or else your ever-patient audience will, I dunno, drive past your house and throw tomatoes at you.  I don't spose I can claim exemption because I have a trial coming up in three weeks, can I?  To say nothing of flying out to Phoenix for my Dad's 80th birthday party and related festivities?

Well, I hope so. Flying, for me, is not easy and not cheap.   When Joan comes with me, it's even more not-easy and not-cheap. But we did it, and at least the flying part was surprisingly smooth.  Going through an airport with a wheelchair assistant is MUCH easier than going through an airport in real time.  I'd have paid a lot for that service but I didn't have to, it was free.  (Minus tips.) In case I haven't said anything on here about how much I love Southwest Airlines, I love Southwest Airlines.  If I had to fly any other airline I don't think I'd ever leave the state.

 And the festivities were good, too. There were something like 40 people there, including my dad's 2 surviving brothers. (Uncle Jonny died some years ago but I'm sure he was there in spirit.)

My dad (left) and his two remaining brothers.

No gifts were requested but people brought some great cards.  Here, blow this one up on your monitor so you can see all the fine print.

And a great time was had by all.  I'm really glad we got to go. Hopefully the next trip to Phoenix will be sooner than later. 

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the Methodist Church decided last week to firmly lock down their current ban on gay and lesbian pastors, as well as a ban on affirming same-sex marriages (which are legal in all 50 states).  Which, as they're a religious body, is their business, I guess, but what a slap in the face to ten percent of their potential converts, to say nothing of those who are already hanging out in their buildings.  I'd wager they already have gay pastors, many of whom may even be married to a member of the opposite sex.  And I'm sure those pastors, and maybe others, may have blessed same-sex unions, whether in the church or outside.  My pastor did, when Joan and I got married, before the Lutheran Church had codified its Official Position (and before it was legal, even in California, which should tell you how long ago this was).  And so on this finest of fine days, I bring you the story of Why Jen No Longer Runs With a Lutheran Street Gang.  And you should feel honored.  I don't tell this story to just anybody, you know.

I grew up in the Lutheran Church.  It was a weird way to grow up. I lived in Utah in the early 70s, when it was about 90% Mormon, and that made me an oppressed minority, of a sort.  If we'd have stayed in Utah, I probably would have been fairly devout, except that I didn't believe in God.  When I was a kid I made many attempts to force myself to believe in the Big Guy, and managed only to get myself confused, or wind up with a headache if I tried it long enough. And I eventually figured out that it is not possible to force yourself to believe a thing.  "You can't pray a lie," as Mark Twain famously said.

I had, of course, several Bad Experiences With Religion.  I could give you the details, but they're really not that important.  So when I got to be a teenager, I quit going to church.  This occasioned World War Three, which lasted from approximately the time I turned sixteen until I moved out of the house, by which time all participants were thoroughly tired of it anyway.  (That's the way the next war will end, folks.  He who gets tired and goes home first loses.)   Then I grew the rest of the way up, graduated from college, moved to California, and lived a perfectly fine nontheistic life until I ran into this total stranger in a used bookstore and started what seemed like an innocuous conversation.

Considering it was a pivotal moment, it's amazing that I remember so little about it.  It had something to do with a book, and whether or not I had read it, and a rather astute comment about literature in general that made me raise my eyebrows and pay attention to this guy.  I asked him what he did for a living, thinking he must be a professor or something, and he told me he was a Lutheran pastor.  I mean what are the odds.  A person could almost believe a twist of fate along those lines was occasioned by a Supreme Being.  Almost.  But not if you were me.

Being a sport, however, I thought I'd check out this guy's church, First Lutheran Church in San Diego, California.  As it turned out, they fed meals to the homeless, and they had an acupuncturist come in and treat people for free, and once in a while they were able to do the same with a doctor, and they had a charitable organization that was doing political stuff to address the problem of homelessness in San Diego, and oh yeah, they had this church over there, too, and if you wanted to come in on a Sunday you could hear some good music and maybe learn something.

So I started hanging around with this crowd.  I mean, why not.  I still didn't believe in God, but I think I faked it fairly well. I sang in the choir, joined in the occasional Bible study (and always managed to turn the conversation around to ancient UFOs), became one of those ladies with the clipboards who are in charge of this and that.  (Warning:  If you ever go visit a church, for ANY REASON, do NOT let anyone hand you a clipboard.  Ever.  Not even if they say, "Here, hold onto this for a second.")  And while all this was going on, I met and married Joan, gay marriage became legal in San Francisco for ten minutes, Clinton became President, "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow" was back in the charts some 20 years after it came out, the Y2K bug came and went, and it was an interesting time to be alive, okay?  Oh, and the Westboro Babtist Church came and picketed us one day.  Which was kind of cool.  You're nobody until you've been picketed by the Westboro Babtist Church.

This brings us up to 2002, approximately, which was the year of the big Lutheran synod convention.  One of the matters on the agenda was whether gay people could be pastors.  Officially, there wasn't a position on that yet.  There were stipulations that a pastor should be either married, or celibate, but the issue of gayness hadn't been discussed.  The church was already more or less fine having gay members, the pastor officiated at Joan's and my wedding, certain congregations were calling themselves "Reconciled in Christ" and were actively welcoming gay people, and it really didn't seem like that big a deal to go a step farther and say, sure, gay people can be pastors.

Well, you can probably guess what happened.  Roughly the same thing that happened at the Methodist convention, only different. It was a close vote, but that doesn't really matter a whole lot.  And suddenly I was out in the cold; not because I didn't believe in God (again, I was faking it pretty well), but because I didn't have the right gonads to be married to Joan.

I mean, okay.  It was about whether or not a person could be a pastor, and I didn't want to be a pastor, so what was the big deal?  Well, for one thing, I had wanted to be a pastor at one  time. (Probably because my first crush, at the tender age of eleven or so, was a pastor.)  For another, the Church was taking a group of people, arbitrarily selected, and saying, "Nope. You're not good enough."  And when a person looks at the history of the Church, you'll find that they did this very thing over and over again.  I mean, examples abound, and most often they involve, "Can black people be accepted as _____ in the church?  Can women?  Can Nova Scotian emigres who hop backward on one foot under a full moon every January?"  And the answer, while it might eventually become Yes, always started out as No.

 By the way, by the Church I don't just mean the Lutheran Church.  I mean the entire body of Christianity, from the few folks who survived the fall of the Roman Empire to the massive quantity of professed Christians we have today.  And upon looking at this stuff, and the Great Universal No, I realized I just flat out couldn't stand under that banner anymore.  Ever. At all.  For any reason.

I always felt like I more or less got cheated out of Christianity.  After all, the Lutheran Church reversed itself on the issue of gay pastors in 2009, and everything has evidently been chummy since.  But I was gone by then.

There is a happy ending here.  There are twists and turns through Paganism and Unitarian Universalism before I fetched up against a group of Viet Namese Buddhists who cared not one hang if you were gay, straight, black, pink, North, South, Nova Scotian or even ugly as long as you could meditate for twenty minutes at a time.  Or, for that matter, if you believe in God; belief in a supreme being is not a big tenet of Buddhism.  And I like being a Buddhist, but I sort of miss being a Lutheran.  The way you might miss a certain color that's on every wall of your house, and then you move to a new house where the walls are a different color, and you suddenly realize that the first color is gone and you can't get it back.  It was my church too, people.

Well, I guess the Methodists will carry on, or else split up into more than one church. I only know one Methodist pastor (Hi, Charles!) and practically no Methodist devotees, so I don't really know how things are shaking out.  I expect many people will leave.  I expect some people, thanking God (so to speak) that SOMEbody is standing up for "traditional values" (which are neither traditional, nor values), will come back, or join for the first time. But one thing is for sure; the question will keep coming up, because love wins. Maybe not every day and maybe not every time, but love does win.

It didn't win today, though. And that's just sad.

The Contents of a Fed Ex Package

I left work with a Fed Ex package tonight.  I often leave work with a Fed Ex package, or with certified letters, or other things that need to go places.  Sometimes it's because something absolutely, positively has to be someplace overnight.  Other times it's because somebody's been procrastinating and the same letter that could have been sent for a 47-cent stamp is now costing $35.50.  I won't say which was the case this time, but that's because I'm such a nice person that I wouldn't accuse any of my cow orkers of procrastinating.

Anyway, I should probably mind running errands for the office after work, but I don't.  There's something kind of nifty about leaving work with a Fed Ex package.  It's that combination of white, purple and orange that says to the outside world, "Look!  I'm doing something important!  Something so critically important that it calls for a Fed Ex package!"  Which is great for the ego, especially when you've been having a string of days when you feel like you're the least important person on the planet.  Now, the Dalai Lama would argue with me about this, but there are days when I'm convinced nobody would ever miss me if I were to suddenly disappear.  If, however, I were carrying a Fed Ex package at the time I vanished into thin air, a huge multinational corporation would pull out all the stops to find me (even in thin air) and bring me and the package back to terra firma.  To do anything less would just be un-Fed Exy.

One time I had a package to be delivered to a town in Australia, and Fed Ex called me to confirm the address because they couldn't find the one I gave them on a map.  (This was before Google Earth, you understand.)  I called the client to double check.  He started laughing and asked me if I'd ever  been to Little Town, Australia.  I said no.  He said that this town had one north and south road that crossed over one east and west road, and where the two roads crossed each other, was the place the package was going.  They couldn't have missed it if they tried.  But of course they called to confirm.  Of course they did, because that's just what Fed Ex does. Fed Ex packages are important.  

(Incidentally, I'm at Afrah, the World's Greatest Mediterranean Restaurant, eating some of the Best Pita Bread on Earth and typing this.   And darned if two Buddhist monks and a nun didn't just walk in and sit down.  Does anybody know if I'm supposed to go over there and bow?  Or do I get to mind my own business?  Maybe they didn't see me.  I am, after all, hiding behind my 8 inch by 4 inch tablet.  I am practically invisible.)

Anyway, a new year has started up.  We're about 16 days into it here, and it doesn't seem too bad so far.  I started out the year getting a new cell phone after mine became possessed by the Devil and started randomly doing things I had not asked it to do.  Demonic possession of small electronics is not something to be encouraged.  So I got a new cell phone.  And while we were in the cell phone store, picking out the best cheap knockoff  my money could buy, I ran into something that I wish I'd never met, because now I want one.  The Samsung Galaxy Tab S4.

Seriously, have you seen this thing?  It's like a tablet combined with a laptop and a dash of a cell phone thrown in.  It has the Microsoft software suite, the Android applications and more features than you can shake a stick at.  Unlike my current tablet, which you have to have Wi-Fi to operate, it's always on, just like a cell phone.  You can use it at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, if they have cell service there.

I need a new laptop.  I've needed a new laptop for ages.  So, why not just forego the laptop and get the tablet instead?  I mean, the thing has the Microsoft suite, right?  Well, there's the $700 price tag, for one thing.  I can get a good used laptop for around $250.  But a used laptop isn't sleek.  It doesn't have chrome trim and megapixel display and a camera.  This tablet is sleek.  It's like a Ferrari.  A laptop--any laptop--is a Toyota Corolla in comparison.

(Don't get me wrong.  I love my Corolla.  But it's hard to pick up girls driving around in a Corolla.  At least I think that is the problem.)

Oh, I'm probably not going to get the Galaxy Tab S4.  I still need a mattress, for one thing, and once I get one of those (this weekend, back.  I swear,) I won't be able to part with the funds.  But it would be really cool to have one of these suckers.  So if any of y'all made a New Year's resolution to give overpriced gifts to total strangers for no apparent reason, that's Galaxy S4.  Through T-Mobile.

One more piece of news:  My novel writing class is starting up again next Friday.  This is pretty cool, because for a while there the novel writing class was the only thing in my life that was going well.  Matters have since improved, but I'm still excited about the novel writing class.  I seem to need other writers to bounce off of and trade stories of Galaxy S4 lust.  Cheers!

Deviled Eggs and Water Polo

We made it!  Two posts during the month of November!  Well, they were two posts that were pretty far apart, but at least there are two posts.  I really will get up to a weekly blog post, here.  I did it in 2008 and I can do it again, even if I am ten years older, heavily medicated and no longer possessed of so many quick ideas to go off on a rant about.  By the way, speaking of time passing us by, it's now officially Cold in North Texas, except on days when it's Unseasonably Warm.  Like yesterday, for example, it got to 70.  Tonight it will be below freezing.  Which night does Grayson the Cat decide to run out the front door and gallivant through the bushes?  Yeah.  And there I am, crawling after him, without a coat, while Joan yells from the doorway, "He went that way!  No, the other that way!  You're getting colder!  Warmer!  No, not that kind of warmer..." 

Anyway, we caught him and hustled him back inside.  Now he's chasing a wad of paper across the floor, periodically picking it up with his mouth and carrying it off as prey.  They told us this guy was two years old when we picked him out, but I swear he was only a year and a few months, because he's still filling out and he's got a serious case of kittenager.  Any day now he's going to ask when he can borrow the car.

Last Saturday, I got up at about five in the morning to drag myself down to the pool, as usual.  (Well, somewhat usual.  Sometimes I sleep late and don't get there 'til seven.) I drove over to SMU's new pool, which is awe-inspiring and 18 feet deep, too, and much to my surprise, the building was locked up and nobody was there.  This wasn't because all the sane people stayed home, either.  I got on my cell phone, checked the Web site, and discovered that practice was canceled because of a water polo tournament.  A water polo tournament.  Just imagine.  I have always wanted to try water polo.  The only thing that holds me back is that I don't own any of those rare swimming horses. 

So I turned around and went back to my car, where I faced a dilemma.  As long as I was heading down to the pool and it was less than forty degrees out, I'd taken with me about twenty deviled eggs.  Yes, I frequently travel with deviled eggs.  Seriously, though, the eggs were left over from Joan's pre-Thanksgiving work potluck. My office often lets training classes use its conference rooms on Saturdays, so I'd had the idea that after practice I'd drive over to the office and drop off the deviled eggs for the lucky trainees, whomever they were.  But I didn't know what to do first; drive up to J.J. Pearce High School, which also has an early swim practice on Saturday, and drop off the eggs on the way?  Or forget about the eggs, go home like a normal person, and go back to bed?

I decided to get on Twitter and take a poll, as seen on the right of the screen here.  I actually got one response.  So I headed up to J.J. Pearce High School, planning to stop at my office and hand out free eggs.  Because why not.  But just as I pulled into the parking lot, I got this urgent text message from my boss, asking me to head over to the office and do something important.

Well, what a marvelous coincidence that I was already at the office.  I got out, eggs in tow, and went over to the main gate.  Here I ran into my second dilemma of the morning:  My code wouldn't work when I punched it in. So I texted my boss back:

Which she did.  But it didn't work any better than mine had. 

This building - Maybe I should explain about this building.  First of all, there isn't a ground floor.  Where the ground floor should be is a parking garage secured with two gates.  Outside the parking garage is a door secured with a number pad, which is supposed to open when you punch in the code.  But no matter which number code I punched in, mine or hers, the number pad just danced around and laughed at me. 

At about this point I was getting pretty annoyed.  My boss asked me if there wasn't a gate around the back of the parking lot.  Which there was, and I'd forgotten all about it.  So I headed over there to check it out.

 At this point I could just imagine what the security footage must look like.  Frame after frame of absolutely nothing and then suddenly I show up, checking doors, rattling gates, yanking on uncooperative padlocks.  Could the Richardson police be far behind?  This would be fun to explain.  "No, Officer, of course I work here.  Would I be trying to break into a law firm less than a mile from the police department if I didn't work here?  I mean, I may be crazy but I'm not stupid..."







My boss thinks of trying to open one of the front gates, which might get me inside enough to try the security codes on the back stairs door.  And if that works, I can scoot up two stories to where my desk is, print the letter and all will be grand.  However, neither one of us has the code to the padlock on the front gate.  So while I bumble around, my boss starts texting everyone in the office who might have a code to the front gate. 

And then she finds somebody.  And I dial in the code.  And...

So into the building I go.  Up a flight of stairs.  Stop to pant for breath on the landing because these are pretty steep stairs and my knee's been complaining for a couple of days.  Up another flight of stairs.  Punch in my code at the door panel at the top of the stairs and...click.  I'm in!

I get on my computer.  I find the letter, fix it, print it out, make some envelopes to mail it.  And then there's the problem of who's going to sign the letter.  Finally I decide to just turn to forgery, since burglary's not exactly working out for me. 

So I leave the deviled eggs (remember the eggs?  I bet you guys forgot all about the eggs, didn't you?)  on the receptionist's desk, where anybody who comes in will basically be forced to see them.  And I take my letter and I open the door to the back stairs.  The way this whole morning has been going, I wouldn't have been at all surprised to run right into my boss's boss, or one of the partners, for one of those moments where we both go "AAAAAIGH!!" and scare the living cr@p out of each other.  But that doesn't happen.  It's 7:15 in the morning.  Nobody's due for another hour at least. 

And then it occurs to me that my boss never once asked me what in the name of all things holy I was doing outside the office at 6:30 on a Saturday morning with a passel of deviled eggs.  I mean, that's kind of a pertinent question, don't you think?  But it never happened.  Maybe she thinks I travel the world and hand out free eggs at odd locations. 

Well, anyway, that's the story of Jen and the water polo tournament and the deviled eggs.  Y'all have a nice day, now.