Apparently my credit card number decided to take a vacation in Rensselaer, New York and didn't bother to invite me!!

Yes, I have joined the ranks of those many Americans who have become the victims of credit fraud! On Monday, I went to use my WaMu/Chase credit/debit card at my local teryaki joint only to have it declined...five times. Needless to say, I was furious at the restaurant and/or WaMa/Chase for fucking up a simple credit transaction when I had at least $500 in my checking account so I stormed out of the restaurant and walked the 4 blocks to Fremont to check my balance at an ATM and to buy me some food for my lunch. Apparently, though, there's only ONE fucking ATM in Fremont and it's some rinky-dink Frontier Bank ATM and it wouldn't/couldn't give me an account balance. By this point I'm furious AND starving but I was also nervous about using my card because frankly it's embarassing to have your card declined in front of witnessess because no one ever believes you when you tell them that you really do have money in your account. In desperation, I grabbed a cheap sandwich at PCC and used the self-service check-out where I was successfully able to make a DEBIT card transaction. "Ah, hah!" I thought as I walked back to work, scarfing down my chicken salad sandwich, "So there ISN'T anything wrong with my card, it's the crappy credit card machine at the teryaki place!"

Still, I was uneasy about my card and bank account so as soon as I got back to work, I called the bank to get a balance...and, there was a mysterious pending charge on my account for $84.20. Now, I am not a fiscally responsible person; I have much debt and I haven't balanced my checking account in 25 years but I do have a pretty good memory and I generally know my aproximate bank balance at all times and I was having a hard time remembering having made any kind of transaction recently that was anywhere close to $84.20. I then went online to find out that I had apparently purchased $84.20 worth of wine and/or beer at a store called "Grapes & Grains"...in Rensselaer, NY a suburb of Albany. Needless to say I've never been to Rensselaer, NY so I immediately called WaMu/Chase to report the theft of my card number and to discover that they too had been alarmed by my apparent teleporting from Seattle to New York and back again last Friday, and had put a hold on my credit card, (but strangely enough, not on the debit part of my card, because it still worked). So, they cancelled my card, (which means I have to go a week without having a debit/credit card and quick access to my money) but I was relieved that the crooks had only gotten away with one transaction...or so I thought. On Wednesday, I stopped off at the Broadway WaMu on my way to work to deposit a SIFF paycheck and to withdraw $200 to last me for the week. The nice teller lady handed me my money and the receipt with my new balance on it...after my withdrawal I only had about $30 left in my account when I should have had around $300. I asked her to look at the account to see if there had been any new "funny" transactions...well, apparently after buying their weekend supply of beer/wine my thieves went to gas up their SUV because they used my card number to spend $200 at an Exxon gas station in Rensselaer. Also, there didn't seem to be anything going on with me getting back the money already stolen from me. But, the teller was very nice and got one of the desk people to help me and they called the Fraud Department for me and this time I think I actually got a customer service rep who knew what they were doing and they opened a file for me and gave me a case number and told me I should have the money back in my account within 5 business days, (it took less than one; I got my money back today), so I'm relatively happy and only put out that I have to wait until next week to get my new card.

Oh, and I have a strong suspicion that someone at Seattle Central stole my number. I belong to the gym there and they process the payment transactions like it was 1991. They take an IMPRINT of your card with all the info on it and it doesn't get run for several days and I'm assuming that that imprint is just sitting around in a box or drawer for days in plain site of the many dozens of student workers at the front desk. It's the only "odd" transaction I've made in months; 98% of my credit transactions are immediately swiped at the dozen or so businesses where I make my custom, (Safeway, Trader Joe's, the teryaki place, the cigarette store, Subway). So, if I decide to renew my gym membership at Central, I'm paying cash which means I'll have to to the fucking bursurs office to make my payment...(and apparently the bursur's office at Central also takes card imprints when you pay by card, which is ludicrous in this day and age for a state run institution).

And, I'm going to have to eat crow and take some candy to the nice ladies at my teryaki place...I wasn't verbally mean to them but I did angrily storm out of the restaurant like it was their fault and now I feel guilty that it came across that I blamed them and they ARE nice and make good, non-greasy teryaki which I'm eternally grateful for...

The Unexamined Life...

It occurred to me last night after meeting a cute, humpy Columbian, that the only men who seem to be attracted to me are either bisexual or foreign born...gay, American men; not so much.

To find a longterm mate, I may have to hang out at the overseas airline terminal, start cruising polyamorous groups, or move to South America or India...

Today in my Life: Benefits get Cut!

Because unemployment taxes have doubled in the last 6 months, my company had to cut all benefits except for health and dental insurance...

Yikes.

Sick...again, which explains my lack of posting...

I don't think this climate agrees with me...I've been sick constantly this winter...either that, or I'm getting old and failing at an alarmingly fast rate. I guess this means I should get myself a flu shot next fall and then it's a hop/skip/jump to the senior menu at Old Country Buffet...

The only good thing about being sick is that it gives you a logical excuse to:

1)be lazy

2)eat "bad" processed foods that you are normally too embarassed to buy...like SnackPack Chocolate Pudding and Hostess Ding-Dongs, which are delicious when you feel like shit.

Other than this, nothing new to report in gray, cold, damp Seattle.

Yes, I am bitter.

Poutine Hangover

I had dinner at Smith last night, and it was very tasty but I'm feeling the pain today. Poutine, beer and pulled pork sandwiches are not a healthy meal for an overweight, non-exercising fortysomething year old man. And, as always, I was annoyed that a simple pub grub type meal, for two, came to $42. The price you pay for hipness in Seattle is exorbitant. (OT: Blogger spellcheck didn't recognize the words "poutine" or "exorbitant"....they need to improve their dictionary.)

It was also an enjoyable people watching experience...there was a table of modestly drunken people that would periodically burst into karaoke moments with the jukebox, a couple of gays, one of whom looked like a yupped up, pumped up Andy Dick, (nerdy face and a major gym built body) and what looked like a middle aged MTF tranny trying to pick up a girl young enough to be her daughter...but I could be mistaken because I spent part of the weekend reading Jonathan Ames and his work and sex life are frequently obsessed with the transgendered so I might have trannies on the brain. And, the alleged trannie in question looked a bit like Germaine Greer...
I also rented the newest Futurama direct to video movie, (and like the preceeding 4, it just wasn't that good) and the last disc of Season 1 of Mad Men and I naturally had to watch all four episodes on the disc so I ended up staying up to 1.30 am and as a result, I'm not at my optimal freshness and perkiness.

Oh, and I ate some very rich chocolate cake at home as well last night, so technically I have a poutine/chocolate cake/Mad Men Marathon Hangover...

Irritating....

My weekend was sort of a bust...got very little accomplished, someone I consider a friend really pissed me off, and I pulled a muscle in my back and I'm in considerable discomfort this morning. I've messed up my back before; it tends to go out every two or three years in varying degrees of unpleasantness. This time, using a 1 to 10 scale, it's only about a 4 but I'm paranoid it's going to ratchet up to a 9 which is what happened to me the last time my back went out, three years ago. That's how I lost my job at the effin' Seattle Times...my back went out and I missed a couple days and they canned me because I had missed too much work and was still in my probationary period. (and those two days were the only days I had missed, and to My Worst Enemy, it wasn't for any other reasons; in fact, I had gotten a commendation from my boss a couple weeks before my back went out...)

Soooo, I'm now debating on whether or not I should go the doctor to see if we can do anything to prevent my back from getting worse; hopefully a steroid shot, and a bottle of muscle relaxants...

It was a good weekend...

1)Went out to dinner with friends on Saturday and ate at Senor Moose in Ballard, which is a brilliant Mexican restaurant on Leary across from the Olympic gym, then had drinks at Hattie's Hat. The food at Moose is not your typical burritos/tacos/enchilada fare; I had a dish with chicken livers, bacon and jalopenos that was out of this world...(yeah, and probably not the best thing to eat cholesterol-wise, but damn, it was good...)
2)I had some burning down the house sex and it had been awhile since that had happened...there's nothing better than sex with someone you have excellent sexual chemistry with...
3)And, most importantly, I finally got my McRib I've been fantasizing about ever since they started running the commercials a couple weeks ago. It was delicious, but I have to admit that it wasn't as great as I remembered it...maybe, they're using a different kind of "meat" or maybe I just have more sophisticated tastes now...

Sick.

The flu crap that's been going around has laid me low; I'm still working, 'cause of course, I don't get any paid sick days as a contract worker, but due to a lack of energy and the fact that I actually have to work on a big project, I'm not posting anything for awhile....I promise I'll make it up to the six or seven people who actually check this blog out...In the meantime, enjoy the news that McCain is currently less than 8 points ahead of Obama in McCain's home state of Arizona and in that reddest of Red States Mississippi, (which, to me, isn't that huge of a shock considering that nearly a third of Mississippi is African American....)

Old

It was my birthday Saturday. The wind was incredibly irritating; I finally ventured out of my house at about 4pm, walked a block and a half and was nearly blown over and immediately returned to the house. That futile excursion helped put me into a foul food, not much aided by dwelling on my advanced age and lack of life accomplishments. Fortunately, the wind died down by early evening and I was able to enjoy my evening out at Tango with friends/family and gorged myself on Queso Fundido and other Spanish nibbles. It was my second consecutive night of Hibernian treats; I went to Olivar, the new Spanish restaurant across from the Harvard Exit, on Friday night with my friends Lou and Barbara. The food there is quite good, and the prices aren't bad, (dinner for four, w/o wine was $120) but the acoustics are horrible; we sat next to a very loud table of four and had a difficult time listening to our own conversation. Oh, and the place is popular; they were able to squeeze us in at 8.30pm but only barely so apparently it's a place where it might be good to make reservations if you're going on a weekend.

The picture is a clue to my great age...among other things.

Ouch.

I went to my new doctor yesterday and really, really liked him so I'm happy that I think I've found a GP I can trust. And, happily, my blood pressure was decent and I've already got a few test results back and I'm pleased to report I'm still HiV negative. On the downside, my cholesterol wasn't very good which is troubling since my diet isn't that horrible so that basically means it's time to get off my fat ass and start exercising and losing some blubber. And I HATE exercising. Oh, and I got a long delayed tetanus shot and my arm still hurts like a motherfucker but at least I can rest assured that it's safe for me to play with rusty nails and jagged bits of old barbed wire.

Two things to note: My doctor is young and very cute which is a little disconcerting. Prostate exams are embarrassing and awful no matter what your sexual orientation is, (despite what gay porno films portray), but it seems less so if the doctor is older and/or not sexually attractive to you. When they're much younger than you are, and very attractive, it only makes you feel older and more unattractive. I almost wanted to apologize to him for subjecting him to my flabby rump. But then I remembered he's making huge amounts of money to look at people's asses all day, so I felt less sorry for him...plus, he gets to see quite a few cute asses as well, so it all balances out.

Also, he had a corner office/exam room on the 7th floor of a high rise building with huge windows and views of the city. He reassured me that the windows were mirror-tinted and that no one could see in, but I still felt better when he pulled the blinds. I'm not enough of an exhibitionist to truly enjoy exposing my bunghole to half of Seattle.

At least, not for free.

Elderly Marlboro Man threatens Strangeways with bodily harm...

I got on the #8 yesterday at about 5.10pm at Denny and Dexter just like I normally do 5 days a week. That bus is notorious for filling up and having to leave people behind at stops along Denny before hitting Capitol Hill and I was happy to snag one of the last seats on the bus, that parallel seat that faces the backdoor on the smaller buses. As soon as I take my seat I hear a masculine voice grumble something about gentlemen and seats. A moment later, the voice makes another louder comment and I realize it's coming from this tall, rangy old guy stanging in the back door well and glaring at all the men sitting down. He's probably about 60, lean and leathery and wearing a very nice leather Harley Davidson jacket. There's a clear outline of a Skoal can in his left rear pocket. We get to the next stop at Denny and Westlake and more people get on and more "ladies" are required to stand while the gentlemen remain seated and the Outraged Old Cowboy really starts going off: "Gawdamned sons of bitches won't give up their seats for a lady!", "What's the fuckin' world coming to when motherfuckers won't stand for a lady?" "It fuckin' makes me sick to see what the world is coming to!" and more of that ilk.

By now, I'm really irritated at this old shithead and glaring at him. He notices and immediately says to me, "Yeah, I'm talking to you!" And I responded with "Give it a rest!", so of course he goes off on me and the everyone on the bus immediately inches away, gasps or rolls their eyes. We bitch back and forth at each other and I ask him, "How gentlemanly is it to curse and say sonofabitch and motherfucker in front of ladies?", and he doesn't have much to say about that and begins threatening to "get off this motherfucking bus" and I reply, "That's a good idea." By the time we got to Denny and Stewart, the fucker was foaming at the mouth and threatening to pull me off the bus. He screams some more and gets off and I wish him a cheery good-bye and he pops his head back in to glare at me and repeat his threat to pull me off, and I just say, "Go for it, dude" but he declines to beat me to death in public and just stomps off muttering.

After he leaves, everyone breathes a sigh of relief and a few people make comments out loud about the situation and a few people look peeved at me for engaging with the nut but a few people seem admiring that I stood up to his crazy bullshit. After he'd left, I did comment that I'd gladly give up my seat to a pregnant woman or anyone old or disabled and who obviously needs a seat and a few men near me agreed but I have to be honest and say that the whole situation was unpleasant and unnecessary and I SHOULD have kept my mouth shut but sometimes you DO have to speak up. And there IS a tiny part of me that feels guilty about sitting when women are standing; I'm old enough to remember a time when "gentlemen" WERE supposed to give up their seat to a "lady" and I did have an old-fashioned, Midwestern upbringing but I also like to remember that women ARE equal to men which means they should get paid the same for the same job AND have to stand on the bus if there aren't enough seats.
And the whole elitist gentlemen/lady thing has always irritated the shit out of me. Class snobbery in British literature is amusing but in reality, it's just a bunch of reactionary, snobby bullshit. Manners and civility are important and frequently absent from everyday life, but many aspects of Victorian propriety are best left dead and buried.

Meanwhile, I have to worry about yet another Arch Enemy out to do me harm...

Cube Wars

While I was gone on my Magical Mystery Tour of Topeka, some co-workers/friends decided to redecorate my cubicle at work. I'm still deciding whether to be irritated or touched but regardless, my revenge will be cruel and merciless...


The Obama picture and the nerd/Stranger cover picture were already up there...my friends added the unicorns. There's about a dozen unicorns all told inhabiting every surface of my cube.

Kansas

I'm going there tomorrow morning for a long weekend to visit friends...it'll be nice to see them, but I'm guessing it will be exhausting; it's a "family" trip and will involve quality time with a very active 7 and 11 year old. I'm hoping to bring back lots of fascinating photos and if I'm lucky, I'll get some great shots of the lovely Westboro Church/Fred Phelps Clan out picketing on some streetcorner in Topeka, their homebase. I'm also looking forward to some good BBQ from my favorite place, Grover's and I'm planning on bringing back as many bottles as I can fit in my luggage.

I'm irritated by a couple things, though...To save money, I'm taking the bus to Sea-Tac and I have to leave at 4.15 in the fucking morning in order to make my 6.20 flight AND the weather is suppossed to be bleh in Kansas, wet and cool, while it's suppossed to be really nice in Seattle and probably the last decent weekend we'll have this summer...I am NOT a lucky person.

Also, I hate to fly AND I smoke so it should be a delightfully stressful trip. I have a two hour layover in Denver, on the way to Kansas City, so I'm hoping that's enough time for me to get outside of the terminal and have at least a couple smokes...otherwise, I'll have to run into a deserted airport restroom, and take three fast drags off a cigarette and blow the smoke into the toilet. Not very satisfying and liable to get me a ticket, or at the very least, a proposition from a Larry Craig type lurker...now, if it's a Daniel Craig type lurker, then I'm totally doing him in the stall.

That Awkward Moment...

I'm always a little hesitant about revealing anything too private on this blog; I'm notoriously close mouthed when it comes to my private life. I don't have problems with relating humorous little anecdotes about my day to day life, but I've never been comfortable with talking about feelings, emotions and the assorted gunky stuff that comprises one's life. However, in an effort to get away from my usual reportage of movies/porn stars/rants and raves, and since I'm in a sharing mood I've decided to spill some beans, (and honey, these are some JUICY-ASS beans!!) But first, I'll have to fill you in on a little backstory...

About a year and a half ago, I did one of those stupid, stupid things that everyone always warns you against; I fell in love with someone I worked with. And, no, it wasn't a "crush". I've had plenty of crushes, both platonic and lustful, with co-workers, classmates, neighbors and people I see on the bus everyday; who hasn't? As long as they don't turn into obsessions, crushes are healthy and normal. My feelings for "Mr X" went beyond that, and to cut a very long, complicated story short, Mr X wasn't available and so I kept my feelings to myself for several months. Naturally
the truth did eventually come out and things were soap operatic to the extreme for a week or so with revelations emerging from the both of us that would have easily served as a season long series of plot lines for a gay, x-rated version of Twin Peaks. Eventually, things settled down and we tried to be friends and it seemed to be going successfully for awhile, but not very surprisingly, we had a fight over something stupid and trivial and...he ended it. Obviously, it was his way to escape the situation and obviously it was healthier for me in the long run, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch for most of last summer. AND, to make matters worse, he only lives about 8 blocks from me, on the other side of 15th Street, so I spent the first several months after the "break-up" worrying/hoping that we'd eventually run into each other. Naturally, for awhile, I had fantasies that we'd run into each other in front of Walgreens or Jamjuree and our eyes would meet and he'd run into my arms and we'd kiss passionately, but even those fantasies dwindled away and I figured we'd just eventually run into each other and smile warmly to each other and move on. But, as the weeks and months passed, that didn't happen either and I started to wonder if he had moved away and began to feel relieved that our 15th Street reunion was apparently never meant to be...until Saturday.

Saturday afternoon it was decided at our apartment complex that we'd do some barbecuing in the courtyard. I needed to pick up a few things for dinner and some change to do laundry so I walked to Safeway. About 30 seconds after walking into the store, I saw HIM and his BF and I'm pretty sure they saw me, too. We pretended to not see each other and made an effort to grab our stuff and get out of the store as quickly as possible. After I got the hell out of the store with my groceries, I managed to hold it together long enough to not have a complete meltdown and made it home to have a very stiff gimlet and ponder what the fuck had just happened. It was so awkward and weird and unnerving to see him again, after a whole year of not seeing him, and yeah, I have to be honest and say that it did stir up some old emotions. What made the whole thing even odder, was that I really hadn't been thinking much about him for quite awhile but last week, someone I know saw a nekkid picture of Mr X on the Internet and showed it to me...I'd never seen a nude photo of him before, (I've seen TONS of the BF; you can't go two feet on the 'nets without seeing THAT leathery, over-priced, worn-out, old sausage...)and to be honest, it didn't do much for me. He has a great body, but he's not very comfortable with himself and takes an awkward picture...it was kind of an 'eh' moment for me which was sort of comforting for me to know that I was moving on...But then we ran into each other and I actually saw him, for a split second or two, and it made me realize that there is a little something there, a little piece of him, and his heart, and his eyes, and his hands, and the nape of his neck, that is still lurking around like a little toad in the primordial goo of my heart.

A trio of news announcements: 2 bad/1 good.

We had a small barbecue/party in our beloved courtyard on Saturday with about 25 people. It was suppossed to have included croquet, but we never got around to it. It was nice, but the evening was tempered by a series of announcements from friends we hadn't seen in awhile. Bombshell #1 came from a sapphic couple who told me upon arrival that they were breaking up, but amicably, or at least amicable enough to still live in the same house and come to the party together. It was a major bummer since they've been together a long time, (at least 11 years I think) and I like the both of them very much. It makes parties and get togethers so complicated when a couple you like breaks up and you have to continually worry about showing equal affection for both, (if you like both of them). The news didn't make me very happy.

Bombshell #2 came from my friends who had twins 15 months ago after years of trying to get pregnant and ultimately having to go the fertility specialist route in order to conceive. Well, as it frequently happens, they're pregnant AGAIN and due next May which means they'll have three children under the age of two! They weren't trying to get pregnant and not undergoing any sort of fertility treatments, so it was a bit of a surprise for them. It also means, they'll have to get a bigger house and will probably end up having to move from Wallingford to further afield in order to afford a larger house. Obviously, this is happy news but still pretty surprising. At this point in the evening, after all these bombshells had filtered throughout the party, (no one stood up and announced anything; it was all done relatively low-key), it was natural for several people to nervously joke, "uh-oh; what't the third bombshell going to be?" One person even worried that since we'd had a breakup and a birth, the only thing left, was DEATH! There was a lot of nervous tittering, but even people that aren't very superstitious tend to get creeped out by the possiblity of the theory of three things happening in a row. But, it was still a good party, mainly conversational in tone and most of the guests were gone by 10pm, (we started at 3pm) and the residents at my complex stayed up to midnight or so, chatting and drinking in the courtyard. (Note to Sawyer: thanks for the tequila, but it gave me a wicked headache the next day...)

Well, cut to the next day, (actually the next evening) and several of us who were at the party get an email from the expectant mom with the twins I mentioned in the above paragraph. Her husband's mom, Joyce, who many of us had met when she had visited them in the past, had just passed away in Reno from complications from emphysema.

Yeah, we were a little creeped about by the coincidence and those of us who had met Joyce were sad that she was gone. She was an interesting lady, to say the least. A tough Nevadan who had worked in "juvie" and at age 80 was still working part-time in a cocktail lounge in Winnemucca, she could be best described as an American original; one of those people that you'll never get out of your head. I only met her on a couple of occassions, but I immensely enjoyed our competitive Scrabble game and frequent smoke breaks together because you always got a fascinating running commentary on her sardonic views of the world told in a whisky and smoke tinged voice that would rank up there with Bea Arthur, Elaine Stritch and Marge Simpson's sisters, Patty and Selma. The last time I saw her in May, she chewed me out for not saying hello to her upon my arrival, but forgave me and we had a nice chat/ciggie break outside her grandson's first birthday party. When I remarked that her son's family would have to move soon due to their rapidly expanding family, she replied, "Yeah, they need to get out of this little crackerbox (or was it rattrap?) and find something bigger..."

My condolences to her family and a toast to Joyce Olay!

(The image is a painting called Triplet Redux and I found it at this website:
http://coverthatmother.blogspot.com/2008/04/triplet-on-etsys-prime-estate.html)

I went to Portland on Saturday...

...but, it wasn't much fun. I was recruited to chauffeur a friend and her mother who aren't comfortable with freeway driving who had some business to conduct in the Sellwood neighborhood. We ate at Denny's and McDonald's and the only other place we went to was Powell's City of Books...In theory, Powell's sounds great for a book lover, with that huge selection spread over a city block, but the reality is that it's just too fucking big and crowded with inane tourists mostly interested in browsing at cat books and Family Circus compilations and generally getting in your way. I did find some books I wanted, but frustrated by the crowds and long lines, I put the books back and fled...I only had enough time in Portland to once again admire their intelligent city planning and mass transit system and sadly compare it to Seattle's inadequate planning and design...

Yes, I live with my brother.

In a nutshell: Neither one of us can afford to live alone, at least in a reasonable neighborhood, (meaning Capitol Hill) and neither one of us have any desire to live in a cheap studio apartment in Lake City or Rainier Valley.

Answers to frequently asked, and rather annoying questions:

1)yes, we are both gay. Other interesting tidbit: on our paternal side there are 8 cousins. Out of the 8, at least 4 are known or strongly suspected of being gay/lesbian.

2)no, we do not, have not and will not be sexual with each other; we didn't even play 'Doctor' with each other as kids. (I played samesex 'Doctor' with three separate boys as a pre-pubescent. As far as I am aware, all three are currently heterosexual). The gay brothers/fathers/cousins scenario seems to be a fantasy of many gay men, one flamed by excessive reading of First Hand magazine and excessive viewing of certain, cretinous porn films. As for the dimwittted straights who entertain this notion, I think a lot of them assume that all gay men are amoral monsters out casually fucking any same sex thing that gets in their path, regardless of age or biological relation. And whenever morons have raised this question with us, to our face, our standard response is, "Do you have a sexual attraction towards YOUR siblings or other family members?" The vast majority of people indignantly say, "Of course not!" The ones that reply "yes, I have the hots for my brother/sister!" we immediately shun and spit upon. To sum this up in a word: EWWWWWWWWW!!!!

3)yes, it was supposed to be a temporary thing. We moved up here at the end of 2000 and shared a horrid place in Lynnwood for a year then began looking for individual places to live in the city. Not long after we started looking, my brother called me while I was at work. He'd been looking on the Hill for apartments and had discovered that La Ocho, (a pseudonym), the fabulous old apartment building that we both loved, had a for rent sign for a 2 bedroom apartment. We had both dreamed of living at La Ocho; it was everything we wanted in an apartment; it was old and charming and had a huge courtyard and hardwood floors and a balcony and you could paint the walls and it was on the Hill but not down by noisy, dirty Broadway and it reminded us both of Mrs Madrigal's house from Tales of the City. After talking it over, we decided to go for it and put in an application and since neither one of us could afford to live there alone, and neither one of us really knew anyone in Seattle to roommate with, we'd continue to be roommates for another year until one of us could afford to move out and the other one could afford to live there alone, or find a roommate or trap a husband. Well, that was almost 6 years ago. A month after moving in, Chris lost his job. He had another within a few weeks, but still, it put us behind. A year later, I lost my job and it took a couple months to get another. These and other sundry financial disasters, have kept us about a paycheck away from homelessness for the last 6 years. I suppose the smart thing to do, would be to move out of our rather expensive apartment and find something cheaper, but affordable, attractive and convenient apartments are impossible to come by and to be honest, I'd rather live with my brother, in an apartment I love, in a building I love, in a neighborhood I love, than have to live by myself in a shitty apartment in a shitty building in a shitty,distant neighborhood where'd I'd constantly be commuting to and from. We have to make choices in life, and seldom is the choice you make free from any problems, complications or contradictions...

4)yes, it does hinder our individual romantic lives. Neither one of us is very comfortable entertaining gentlemen callers in our house while the other brother is home. (for that matter, when I've lived with non-relatives as roommates, I didn't much enjoy hearing their cries of passion in the middle of the night, either. Sex moans from strangers and film performers are amusing and/or erotic. Sex moans from relatives/friends are ooky and disturbing...) We either arrange to have the house to ourselves for such entertaining or more commonly, spend the night at our gentlemen friend's homes.

5)on the plus side, when you live with relatives, there are few secrets, you share a common bond/upbringing, and there's probably fewer problems about stuff and space issues. If you suspect a roommate of swiping your best tie, or borrowing a dvd without asking or never buying any milk, then you have to decide the best way to bring up the problem to deal with the situation. With relatives, you just break into their room and steal your stuff back or yell at them, making sure to bring up similar incidents from your common history and/or vowing to tell all your friends their deepest/darkest secrets: "Hey asshat, quit swiping my clothes without permission or I'm telling everyone about how you got sent to juvie for burning down that church when you were 12!"

6)that being said, I think we both dream of the day that we will be free of the tyranny of each others most irritating habits, like leaving bawled up Kleenixs all over the place during allergy season, or putting ridiculously large pieces of bulky trash in the bathroom trashcan, (old jeans or big shoe boxes) instead of just taking them to the dumpster/recycling bin in the alley, or the diametrically opposed ways we each do dishes or the endless piling of books all over the house or the careless stacking of loose dvds/cds next to the dvd player or computer or the irritating habit of not cleaning the frother on the cappuchino machine, or....

Flaming.

Today is the one week anniversary of our kitchen fire. I was going to blog about it earlier in the week, but didn't get around to it. My dingbat brother wanted to fry up some catfish for supper, (yes, we are Midwestern gay hillbillies who enjoy fryin' up a mess of catfish...) so he started a skillet with oil in it, and because he likes to obsessively check his Bear411 account every 10 minutes, he ran upstairs to his computer. I was quietly sitting in the living room, cozily reading a book (all right, it was an old Entertainment Weekly), with a cat on my lap, (Jasper) when I heard a disturbing whooshing noise from the kitchen, and looked up to see that delightful pattern of dancing flames silhoutted on the dining room wall. I ran to the kitchen, screamed at my brother that we were aflame and began looking for a lid to smother the fire. I finally found one, but I didn't get it completely covered so the flames were still shooting up, and the smoke kept billowing. And since the stove is adjacent to our refrigerator, which, like many refrigerators, is a personal kiosk of memorablilia and coming events, is covered with a thousand magnets, photos, recipes, posters and random scraps of paper, it seemed apparent that the fridge would soon ignite. By then, my brother, the firestarter. was on the scene and immediately grabbed some flour that was sitting on the counter, (to bread the catfish) and threw a handful on the fire to smother the flame. Naturally, the flour containing starch, had the opposite effect and the fire flamed higher. At this point, I ran outside to find the fire extinguisher that's kept next to the mailboxes in our apartment complex, grabbed it and raced back inside. Meanwhile, the fire had started to melt the flimsy lid that was half on the fiery pan and my brother had armed himself with multiple oven mitts, and had found a sturdier lid. While, I was desperately trying to figure out how to work the extinguisher, Chris had cleared the sink of enough dirty dishes to have room to put the skillet. He grabbed the pan, got it to the sink and tried to put on the new lid. It took a few tries, and fortunately we DON'T have curtains on the window over the sink, (but the soap bottle and the Windex bottle NEXT to the sink, did start to melt), and finally managed to get the lid on and the fire smothered. It seemed like this went on for many minutes, but in reality, it was probably about two minutes tops, but it was long enough to fill the house with nasty, black smoke. Once we got all the fans going and the majority of the smoke cleared out, we realized that the kitchen was rather thickly coated with a layer of smokey, grey, greasy residue. Our ceiling, normally a chalky off-white, was now a determined shade of grey. And since we are gay packrats, there's tons of kitchenware, serving ware and home decor type shit on top of the kitchen cabinets and it was all filthy. Every square inch of the kitchen had to be scrubbed to remove that schmutz; we're still not done, to be honest.

And to think, I used to think it hilarious whenever one of my dumb Sims would catch the kitchen on fire, which they inevitably did at least once a week. (Though, it STILL is hilarious to make them pee their pants...)

The Office: the Strangeways Edition

My job and my office are sources of endless irritation today. Here's why:

1)We just got annoying news about the status of our contract. It's not done, but there will be hours cut which is obviously aggravating but even more so since the Powers That Be keep hiring NEW people for our project, when there is obviously not enough hours/money/work left on our p.o.

2)People who bring in HUGE amounts of food to eat at work and hog all the shelf space in the communal refrigerator deserve to be shot. I see people going into the kitchen with large, multiple shopping bags of bought in bulk food from Costco. THIS is currently hogging half the freezer of the refrigerator. It's a fucking
SIXTY COUNT box of fuckin' Eggos. Eating two a day, every weekday, it's going to take this hippopotamus fucking six weeks to empty this box, and it's doubtful that they'll actually eat Eggos everyday, so it's likely this fucker is going to be taking up space in the freezer until July.

My other pet peeve is people who put shit on top of the ice trays. Please do NOT put your Tupperware container or Lean Cuisine box on top of the ice that I consume. Your goddamn Tupperware or Lean Cuisine box might have sat on your dirty, germ covered kitchen counter at home and be contaminated with nasty bacteria from your feces crusted hands or your cat's bunghole.

3)There's several people here I find annoying, but the most recent addition to my list of People Who Need To Go Away, is this chubby, loud, brash, blond with goldfish eyes who has the knack of saying things outloud that are best left unsaid. I've only encountered her twice, but both times she managed to piss me off. Just now, I was outside smoking by myself on the far side of the building and not in the designated smoking area closer to the front door. The reasons I choose to do this, is because I LIKE to smoke alone and think about shit, AND the other people here who smoke are morons and I don't want to make small talk with them. This morning, the smoking area was occupied by this moronic couple, young, straight and really dumb and I particularly dislike the female, who's pushy and obnoxious and wears her hair in a very unbecoming pony tail. So, there I was in my OWN smoking section, when Chubby Blond Goldfish Eyed lady comes around the corner, on her way to her car in the back parking lot, and she is one of those people who HAS to chat with everyone she encounters. The first thing that pops out of her mouth: "Why are you smoking over here and not over with the others in the smoking section?" I desperately would have liked to snapped, "Are you writing a book, hippie?" but I refrained and made my slitty, evil cat eyed, annoyed look at her. If this bitch was a character in a mystery novel, she'd be bumped off by the end of the first chapter, the classic doofus character who really doesn't know anything but says the wrong thing outloud to a killer and subsequently gets offed because of their big mouth.

How I wish that real life was like an Agatha Christie novel.

Eric Clapton and me: separated at birth.

I've had people tell me this more than once, and i don't get it. I don't think we look anything alike. Maybe, it's the scruffy facial hair, glasses and similar coloring? But facially, we are nothing alike, and as far as I am aware, none of my kids has ever fallen out of a window...



I bring this up, because I was in the Starbucks next to Crate and Barrel at U-Village on Sunday, and I was checking out this very attractive, vaguely Middle Eastern/Israeli-ish, stud muffin who was in there with an older, frumpy, very northern European-y, ginger haired woman. They exited the store right after me, and after walking a couple feet, the woman playfully called out to me, "My brother thinks you look like Eric Clapton!" I turned around and said, "uh, thanks, i guess", and the brother looked a little embarassed and we both kind of blushed at each other and then MY brother came out of Crate and Barrel and the odd moment was over and we went our separate ways. It was very strange; did the guy make the comment to his sister cause he LIKED the way I looked, or was it just a casual comment that I looked like Clapton? But if it was a casual thing, why did the sister call out to me? It seemed like she was encouraging her brother to flirt, or was she just being a bitch? This guy's probably a lot like me; not good at flirting and not good at being able to determine if someone is interested in you or not. I'm lousy at it; I think I've gone on a couple of dates and not really realized they were dates until long after the fact! The whole thing was arousing and annoying and frustrating, because he really was cute!

Oh, and I didn't get the sister thing, 'cause they looked NOTHING alike. Someone had to be adopted there, or step siblings or pretend siblings or something. He was very dark and semitic looking and she looked very...Irish.

And as for the Clapton thing...it bugs me, 'cause I don't really like Eric Clapton and I don't think he's very attractive, but I guess there are WORSE people you could look like...