OTHER MONTHS BELOW

Looks like one more day of good weather before things cool off a bit. I've got an eye appointment this afternoon. I also need to drop off my rent check over in the Fillmore since I forgot to mail it last week and it's due today. Oops! Glad I remembered yesterday.

03/28/03: Friday, 9am -

Woohoo! Project Installed!

Steve got to my place around 10pm after his Astrology "class." We played a game of Scrabble, watched Seinfeld, then I went to bed. Steve's coming downtown today for Bear Lunch. After that, I'm going to go with him to his place. Tonight we're going to see the Silicon Valley Gay Men's Chorus perform in Mountain View. Not sure what we'll do with the rest of the weekend since the LS is no longer the place to be. The only thing planned is church on Sunday morning. Maybe we'll do some apartment hunting. :-)

03/27/03: Thursday, 9:15am - I went to the post office yesterday to check mail. I hadn't been there in a couple weeks. I got TWO St. Patrick's Day cards from the same "fan" in Pennsylvania. That still blows my mind that anyone would write to me. It's a cool thing and makes me all smiley.

I stopped at Ace Hardware at 14th & Market on the way home yesterday and picked up a plumber's snake. For $4.99 I may as have one on hand. Cheaper than a couple bottles of Drano. I got home and checked my tub. Still some water. I adjusted the drain stopper and the water drained. D'oh! In the newspaper several weeks ago, they had mentioned that some slow draining tubs are caused by buildup on the drain stopper (plunge type). I had removed mine, but saw no buildup, and the tub continued to drain slowly. After removing that, I just left it out until a couple days ago when I knew the plumber was coming over. I replaced it Tuesday night. It hit me last night that I experienced a total blonde moment. I had forgotten to check to see if the drain stopper was in the correct up/down position. It was set to stop the flow. And I had a clogged tub? Oops. What a fucking moron! Oh well, it helped me to get the plumber to prioritize my tub work first tomorrow, LOL. It was nice to get up and take a shower.

I headed out to the Lone Star at about 5:15pm. It was a nice day, and I walked there. I haven't walked there in so long. I got there and Danny informed me that the staff's Palm Springs trip was cancelled. I asked if he lost any shifts, but no. On Saturdays he'll alternate with Louie between working the front door and bartending. Guess that leaves Ed out of the picture. He did say that the bar on the back patio would no longer be staffed. Not sure what that does to other bartenders' shifts.

I asked Danny about using the upstairs room for meetings. He said that Mark had already called yesterday asking about it. Apparently upstairs is a separate address, so it wouldn't infringe on the downstairs capacity. I had emailed Mark earlier in the day to see if it was going to be at Paul's or still at the LS. I had also let him know that he had sent garbled text in his "critique" and needed to resend. No response. Paul had offered to let us use his place for last night's meeting, but Mark didn't even inform him until dinner that we'd be meeting at the LS and not at his place. Grrrrr. Do slap me if I ever show the same lack of courtesy.

I showed up at Don Ramon's shortly after 7pm to check on reservations. They had our table all ready for our 7:30pm dinner. Good. Now to just check off people. Bears arrived early as usual and hung out at the bar before getting seated. By the end of yesterday, 17 people said they were coming to dinner. Two were no-shows (bringing us down to the 15-person reservations I had made). Ken showed up, but left before dinner because he was exhausted from work, having gotten up at 4:15am. That left 14, but we had 22 for dinner. One person had RSVP'd late, and the other 8 showed up with no reservation whatsoever. Luckily, the restaurant was very accomodating, putting 18 at one table and 4 of us at a table nearby. Of those for which I didn't receive an RSVP, I was told by some that they indeed had contacted Drew or someone else had contacted Drew for them. I could only go by what Drew told me. Drew had asked Jeff to add me to the activities email distribution, but that never happened. It's ok. All's well that ends well.

A waiter spilled a margarita all over Mark and on Jeff Stiarwalt. Karma in action? At the end, the waiter brought me the bill. They had broken out the food and beverages separately, so it was fairly easy to tabulate the bill (glad I brought the calculator), asking those with drinks to pay extra for those. Payment for the bill came out pretty even. I made up a small difference, and things were smooth. I believe we got some comps due to the margarita incident. That reduced the bill for everyone. I think folks were pleased with dinner, with the exception of maybe Mark and Jeff, LOL. With the salt from the margarita on his jeans, I can just picture Jeff asking someone if they wanted a salty rim. ;-) When life gives you triple sec.....

Got to the Lone Star at 9pm for the meeting. Instead of going over the task spreadsheet to ask for comments, Mark only went over his critique list. He said it was comprehensive, but it did miss some stuff. Luckily I brought my own notes and the task list to review. I interjected lots of comments that were pretty well received. We tried to stay focused on this past year without brainstorming on ideas for next year. It was easy to get sidetracked that way, and I did my share of that. Some people were annoyed because it was getting late, but I didn't come up with the ridiculous 9pm meeting timeslot. I did question Mark about who made the comments that the decorations weren't "classy" enough. He admitted that those were comments in his own head. I see. So did everyone else. All in all, some good comments were stated. Mark's critique DID catch a lot of stuff, so it was a good thing to bounce off of it. Too bad a lot of people hadn't received a non-garbled critique ahead of time. Of course, the meeting was pretty pointless if they do the same thing as last year and refuse to acknowledge them when the next planning meetings start. Some of the ideas will be remembered, but a lot will be forgotten. Just a few more months before planning for next year...

The meeting finally ended about 10:45pm. Yep, missed the new South Park due to BOSF dinner and the IBR meeting. Grrrrr. I stayed at the bar for another 20 minutes to unwind from the meeting. I was bushed. I caught a cab and got home around 11:15pm. I called and talked with Steve for awhile. It'll be nice when he's just there at home waiting for me. :-)

I got to bed well after midnight. The 5am alarm came much too early. I debated going to the YMCA, but I was way too tired. I submitted my jobs for work and slept for another hour. I did do my abs tape this morning. Even though I've got this big ol' belly, the abs exercises do help my back. Maybe a few weekends without beerbusts will help drop some weight.

My jobs for work are done. My project is being re-installed tonight, and everything is set for it. All I have to do is wait and pray that it doesn't have any problems this time. If it's bad, they'll call me in the middle of the night. Otherwise, I'll just verify things early tomorrow morning around 5am. Keep your fingers crossed! Since I have no work immediately pending, I'll probably do some newsletter stuff and then head home early. After that freakin' late meeting last night, I need a nap!

03/26/03: Wednesday, 11:30am - I had emailed my apartment manager a week or so ago to complain about a slow draining tub and about the tub/shower diverter not working properly. The vendor called me on Monday to see about arranging a time to come over. "Anytime" was good for me, but he had to coordinate with two other tenants having work done. Yesterday morning after my shower, I notice that the tub doesn't drain AT ALL. I came home before lunch to see if the water drained, but it hadn't. Grrrrrrr. I bought some Drano Max "clog remover." I used the plunger (no luck), poured in the Drano, then caught the muni back downtown.

I met up with David for lunch. He's gotten a new job elsewhere starting in April. This job will pay more than the current job, and maybe a bit more than he had been earning at Schwab when he worked there. Woohoo! That man definitely deserves a good-paying job. We ate in Macy's basement. I got butternut squash soup and garlic mashed potatoes. Total comfort food. Some cute hairy guy eating near us kept looking over. Of course, I noticed because I kept looking at him, too. Do you like me? Circle one: YES or NO

My dreaded bi-weekly meeting with my boss was ok. I can't stand meeting with her, but it usually goes fine. I think she hates it as much as I do.

I picked up some more Drano on the way home. I got home, and the tub had only drained a bit. I poured in the other bottle of Drano, but that didn't seem to work. The maintenance guy called and I told him about the clog. He won't be there until Friday. GRRRRRRR.

Steve arrived shortly after I got home. He took a nap while I played on the computer. Peg called about 6pm. She was lost. She had taken the J Church train and got off at Safeway. I told her how to catch the subway to Castro from Church Station. She arrived around 6:30pm, and we left soon after that for dinner at "All Seasons Sushi." I just had the Tonkatsu, which was fine. My neighbor, Jack, was there. It seems he's there every single time we go. The waiter was especially friendly last night. I guess he recognizes us now that we go there more frequently. (Maybe just once or twice a month.)

Square dancing was good. I gave Richard a hug and Mario walked in and hugged him from behind for a nice sandwich. Mmmmm. (I had originally made the typo "sandwish," hehehe.) Didn't get many good vibes from Mario or Richard the rest of the night. Friendly, but a bit distant. (Although dancing in a square with Mario always is good for some hugs and squeezes.) We learned "Explode the Wave," "Trade the Wave," "Chase Right," and "(Anything) and Spread." I did all the new calls without a hitch. Watching the videos at home has helped. I remembered "Relay the Deucy" and "Teacup Chain" with no problem at all. I make a couple errors that were fixable, but I did much better than some other students, especially on the new calls. I continue to frighten and amuse the other dancers with my "Cut the Diamond." Not sure if it's too distracting to keep doing it so enthusiastically. Joe didn't show up. He wasn't there on Monday either. Hopefully he'll show up for club night tomorrow.

Got home and the tub was still clogged. I used a bucket to empty out all the water. I poured more Drano directly into the drain. It continued to do nothing. I left the bathroom window open and kept the door shut due to the fumes. I got up this morning, and the tub was still clogged. Maybe I'll see about getting my own plumbing snake today. I brought in my toiletries to take a shower at the YMCA. Not sure I want to do that tomorrow and Friday, though. Maybe this is a wake-up call to get my ass back on the treadmill. Today was not a treadmill day. Just shower/shave and a look at some really nice butts.

Got a 2pm group meeting this afternoon. Big woo. Fairly non-eventful work day.

I got an email from Drew with one more dinner RSVP, plus he said that Glover had mentioned something about being there, but he did not RSVP. Who knows how many others just "show up." I had to finalize the RSVP count with the restaurant yesterday, so we'll just see if we can accomodate others tonight. Grrrrr. Don Ramon's was just really "strict" when making group reservations. Glad I'm not in charge of this each month! I'd definitely end up picking something like "Firewood Cafe" or "Metreon Food Court" next time. Meanwhile, Drew forwards yet another "late RSVP" from Mark for someone else. Grrrrrr. Let them eat cake.

03/25/03: Tuesday, 9:30am - My Monday walk-thru meeting was fine. I didn't say a word. I just nodded at the appropriate times. Glad I could help, LOL.

I left work pretty early, checking in from home. I spent most of the afternoon on the computer and cleaning. I cleaned out the clutter from my computer "room." It's really just a small closet that I converted. I do need the closet space, but it fit so nicely as a spot for my computer, I just had to use it. The closet rod had been removed, so I replaced that. I went to Cliff's and got a 48"x10" "board" to put on top of the rod brackets. That new shelf fits computer paper nicely. I also took care of some other clutter. Like I said before, this place might actually be clutter-free by the time I end up moving, LOL.

Square dance class was ok. The lesbian couple was back, and they did ok. Dan was absent. Joe was gone. Don Queen didn't show up. He's usually there, and is such a good angel. Ron taught the class "Scoot Back," "Tag the Line," "Half Tag," and "Recycle." He still has most of the class messed up on "Slide Thru." He refuses to acknowledge its helpful styling or that is the same movement as "Star Thru." Not sure why he's so stubborn with that. You can tell it must be a call that he must screw up himself. Regardless, class was much better than last Monday, even though we had to "tag in" most of the night.

On the way to work this morning (ok yesterday morning, but I forgot to mention it), I saw two baby pigeons. I've read that the reason you usually don't see baby pigeons is because they remain high on building perches until adulthood, or something like that. These were at Collingwood & Market in that fenced off area at the old train entrance. There were on a "shelf" that was right under Market Street. These were making hideous cheeping noises as their mother was feeding them. It was odd to see these small pigeons, and due to their noise, I'm glad they're not seen often. (I think that was my first time to see baby pigeons.) Spring has sprung.

I forgot yesterday that it was Peg's birthday. She was working from home anyhow. I got her a belated birthday card this morning. I rarely give co-workers b-day cards, but since she's tagging along today for square dance class, it seemed like the thing to do.

Got all approvals now for my project but one. Hopefully that will come this morning. Oops. Just received an email that it was "rejected." I had to make one change to a referring ticket. Ok, the approval should come shortly.

Only 15 people have RSVP'd for dinner at Don Ramon's. Whew! That's a good thing. More than 20 and we'd have to use an abbreviated menu. Since the IBR meeting is piggy-backed onto it, I'm sure there are others who meant to RSVP. They'll just have to sit separately. Don Ramon's has been really non-customer friendly in regards to group reservations. Of the 15 people who RSPV'd, at least 5 of them were not on the IBR planning committee. Guess attendance at that will be slim. With a 9pm start time, what do you expect? I have lots of comments to make. I need to back Drew up on his Lurch comments, and I need to disagree with Mark's disdain for the table centerpieces. I thought they were imaginative, and low-key. Who needs something extravagant to distract from dinner and the contest? I have lots of other comments/suggestions, but Mark's email seems like he's already got into his head how wants things to be. Still, I have some great suggestions, so hopefully they won't fall on deaf ears. Based on last year's post-mortem meeting minutes not being published, I'm sure these will be forgotten as well and will have to be restated when we start planning for IBR 2004. Grrrr.

03/24/03: Monday, 9:30am - On Sunday, Steve had an Eckenkar workshop in the afternoon, so he left for home before I headed to church. Penny's sermon was good, as usual, leaving me with challenges. She asked how many people got angry this past week. Most hands went up. She pointed out that anger is good, as it shows that you care. Reaction to anger is what counts. You can be destructive, or you can face it and react in a positive manner. Hmmmm. Another of her quotes that she repeated from Thursday's service was "May your hope be as stubborn as a blade of grass poking up through a crack in the cement." Penny also mentioned that in times of uncertainty, it's good to be able to rely on certain traditions and values. She again asked people to think what there real values were. Being as shallow as I am, that's a toughie. Guess I should look deeper within....

Came home after church and played on the computer until 3pm. Then I headed out to Buca DiBeppo for the IBR Thank-you Dinner. I ran into Mark & Steve on the subway. Mark went on about stopping at the Lone Star on Saturday night and waiting 45 minutes to get in. Yeah, I know about the wait. I was there Saturday afternoon, as I had previously informed him via email.

Got to Buca and there were only a few people waiting at 3:30pm. Usually bears are pretty early. The reservations were for 3:45pm. It was such a sunny day and warm. Nice! Bears gathered slowly, but surely. I brought along Lynn's IBR contest photos for people to peruse while waiting. Cute Richard from square dancing showed up. He came up, said hello, and gave me a peck. That certainly made me smile. :-) He was there with his bf, Dave. They sat at the same booth as me. Birthday-boy Drew sat across from me. Greg & Jeff sat next to us. Richard and Dave sat next to them, and John Forrett and his bf (Pya?) sat next to them. Drew and I were the only non-partners at the table, so we just pretended we were. Drew makes me smile. He said that I was moving "to the dark side" by my disillusionment with being on the BOSF board, LOL.

During dinner, people joked somewhat about my being in American Bear. Dave's ears perked up. He mentioned that he was in issue #52. I wasn't familiar with his pics, so I went home and checked them out. Turns out that Jeff Glover had told me several months ago that someone he knew was going to have a photo shoot for the mag. I had previously emailed Dave to wish him luck and let him know my good experience with it.

After dinner, I went home via Muni. The one-car L was pretty full. At Civic Center, the two cute guys who were at the LS on Friday night boarded. They were across the crowded traincar, so I was able to ogle them from afar. ** sigh **

I got home at 6:55pm and found that I had forgotten my keys. Brad's light was on, so I buzzed him to let me into the building. Luckily, I know enough to hide a spare apartment key somewhere inside the building. I quickly changed clothes and headed to church. I hadn't been to an evening service in a long time. Church was quite full. The music really got me psyched. Much more upbeat than in the morning services. Penny delivered the same sermon, although it was more polished and edited differently. I needed that "second dose." Got home and talked to Steve on the phone. I mentioned about Richard's bf being in the magazine. Steve had been flirting with Richard at square dancing. He was happy that now he'll have something "in common" with Richard. (Both bf's being the mag.) As I've said before, Steve has gotten a lot more wind out of my being in the mag than I have, LOL. Another reason I love that man.

Got into work and saw that Datacom has approved my install. Just a few more approvals, and I'm set for Thursday installation. Things better go right this time! I've got a walk-thru meeting at 10am to review someone else's project. I'm totally lost on it, but I can sit through any meeting. I'm no longer bothered that I look stupid. There's something to be said about people having low expectations of you. It seems that you're then able to constantly surprise them.

03/23/03: Sunday, 9am- Missing Blog entries for a couple days takes it toll. Now let's see if I can remember Thursday through Saturday stuff...

Thursday was a very full day. Got up and went to work fairly early. I left for home around 11am to see Steve for a "nooner." A good time was had by all....

We went out to lunch at Sausage Factory. Then I went back to work for a few hours. Not fun stuff, but made progress on getting my project readied. I also spent some hours of the morning and afternoon getting my stats together for the IBR wrap-up meeting. Around 3pm, Mark sent out an email stating that the IBR wrap-up meeting was being post-poned from that night until 9pm on Wednesday due to the roving protests on the streets. Grrrrrr. Postponing a meeting that has been planned for a month sucks. Having any type of meeting at 9pm during the week is insane. I thought he was just high. I emailed him to voice my protest, but it fell on deaf ears. Easy enough for the unemployed to hold 9pm meetings. Grrrrrrr. On top of that, he's piggy-backed it onto the dinner night. Since we're already having a dinner on Sunday for IBR, I expected few people to show out at Don Ramon's. If over 20 people RSVP, it's going to be a hassle with the restaurant. That really screws me up. I'll just charge the $15 per person fee back to BOSF for any no-shows. I'm going strictly by RSVP's. If you're not on the list, you're not sitting with us. Hopefully that will include some of the people who have pissed me off.

Another series of BOSF transactions put me off this week. I got an email from Jeff, the BOSF secretary with the email subject "Your BOSF membership has lapsed." I hadn't even been notified it was time to renew. I started to reply with a scathing email, but then reread the letter. Within the letter, there was a phrase "or is about to lapse." That's quite a difference. I still replied that the form letter was poorly phrased and not very good PR. He just responded that he hadn't written the form letter. Oh brother. I am totally embarrassed that this happened in the name of BOSF. Almost as embarrassing as telling people to show up for a 9pm meeting.

It turns out that my membership was expiring on 3/31, so I was ok. However, Mark got an email, too. Seems his membership expired in January, but he hadn't been notified. For new board elections, you must be a member in "good standing" as of March 3rd. Mark brought that up and caused a great stir. Turns out that the bylaws state that you're only no longer a member if you haven't renewed within 30 days of being notified. It still caused me to rethink my position about running for board again. With the board doing these embarrassing things, I think my decision will be not to run. I fully intended to work on the board for two years (at least), but if I haven't been able to make an impact to prevent embarrassing actions, why bother. Not doing the newsletter, etc., will free up my time a lot.

Since we had no meeting on Thursday night, Steve wanted to attend the peace vigil at church. We first ate at Osaka. I had the dinner combo with Shu-Mai and Katsu. I'd never had Shu-Mai before. Yummy dumplings. I prefer them much better than the heavier Gyoza. Church was ok. Very interesting different prayers and poems read, including some Buddhist and Muslim prayers. I got a lot out of it and was glad to go. When we got out of church, the sky was full of helicopters and small airplanes. Seems they were filming protests at various intersections. We got home and turned on the TV, but not one damned station was playing local news, just national. Occasionally the national news would show SF footage. We were going to go to the Thursday night beerbust at the Lone Star, but Steve was put off by the helicopters. Grrrrrrr.

On Friday I finished getting my project ready and requested review. I then left for an 11am haircut. I just stayed home after that, checking in with work periodically. Steve decided to come back up later to go out to the Lone Star around 10pm. Around 11pm, the fire warden showed up. Since there were 60 people in the bar, we all had to evacuate and then only let in enough to meet the 49 person limit. Unbelievable. Several people just left in disgust. Steve wanted to stay, so we waited in line. Although several people had already entered, we were numbers 15 & 16. Huh? Oh, it was Special Ed who was doing the counting. Everyone knows that he can't count past 10. It seems that the 49 person max capacity is due to the fact that there is only one exit. No emergency exits anywhere. Grrrrrr. It appears that some disgruntled patron wrote to the fire department stating that there were 300 people in the bar last Friday. I was there last Friday, and due to the rain, there were probably less that 40 people there total. Grrrrrrrr. Good thing they didn't show up on a Sunday afternoon!

On Saturday, we went to the Cove for lunch before heading over to the LS for the beerbust to see if they'd still enforce the 49 person limit. Yep. And all beerbusts have been cancelled until further notice. Danny said it would be that way at least until after the staff's annual retreat in April. Kevin just had better cough up the money and figure out a place to put emergency exits. You can't just put one in the back leading to the hotel's parking lot because the doorway must exit to public property. Jim & Terry suggested that Kevin buy the empty garage directly in back of the LS. I'm all for expanding the place! If they keep the 49-person limit, they'll be out of business soon. Unbelievable. Only a few people were in line. Lots of regulars were probably at whatever party Donovan was having. Mark had mentioned a few times earlier in the week that he was going to Donovan's party. Since we weren't invited, I thought this was galling that he should mention it several times.

Steve and I just stayed out at the LS on Saturday for a few beers then headed home. We went to China Court to use Steve's $20 gift certificate, then just came home for a game of Scrabble.

03/20/03: Thursday, 9:30am - I left work fairly early yesterday after taking care of my project stuff. I got home and cleaned up a bit, taking care of some clutter. Peg mentioned the clutter when she was over. It always seems I have something "bigger" to work on, but getting rid of the clutter does make things better. I've still got lots to work on. Maybe by the time I move things will finally be in place, LOL.

Steve came over and took a short nap while I made dinner. Don't get excited. It was just pot pies, instant potatoes and salad. Practically Julia Child.

I convinced him to take the Muni to the Orpheum. He prefers to drive, but Muni is better. He's just afraid of germs. I took along some Purell anti-bacterial lotion for him. We saw the itProducers. The staging was nearly identical to the Brdway version. The guy who played Max was not that good. The guy who played Leo had hair resembling Gene Wilder, who played the role in the movie. He was pretty good. Ulla was played by the original actress who played in on Broadway. Leroy Reams play Roger Dupuis. He was excellent, especially in "Heil Myself." Having seen the show on Broadway, this production certainly didn't seem very fresh. It's a great show, and they did fine, but I didn't leave the theatre "all tingly" like I get from most stage productions.

Right before leaving for the theatre, we watched the news that "disarmament has begun." No surprise. The news footage of the same stationary cams was about as exciting as, well, as exciting as watching stationary cams. The interrupted my syndicated episode of Friends for that?

I got off Muni at Embarcadero station around 8am this morning. As I got off the escalator, I saw the riot police right there, and then saw the protestors about half a block away. Having seen this before, it seemed just a typical SF day. I love my City! Thank God for dissent.

I pray for a quick resolution with Iraq, but I know in my heart that this action will have long-lasting effects. It's obvious that Bush cannot see the longterm picture. He's pretty good on the shortterm one, though, which was obvious when I read in the paper this morning that Demos will now "tone-down" their presidential campaign. Oh great. Fits right into Cheney's (oops, Bush's) plan. Get a spine, Demos! There's enough bad Bush policy to point out without even mentioning foreign policy.

I read an article about Howard Dean being a good candidate for prez. As governor of Vermont, he's currently on the cover of The Advocate. I never read the mag, but I'll have to check out this article. Maybe there is a viable candidate out there. Most likely not, but one can hope.

03/19/03: Wednesday, 11:30am - Work yesterday was not good. I prepared everything for my boss for the emergency change meeting to fix the two mistakes for my installation. She refused to attend, instead having the entire project backed out. She didn't want to take the heat at the meeting. Now we'll install next week. Not very cost effective, as this keeps me busy for an entire week. I'm fine with not doing anything else, but I'm very frustrated at how things work here. I left work around 2:45pm. I was exhausted.

I had left work and totally forgot about Peggy coming to square dancing. Around 5pm she left me a message that she was heading to my house. Oops. She called again around 5:30pm and said she was on her way. I told her I had already eaten, so she stopped at Firewood and picked up something to eat at my place. I had done some cleaning before she got there and was pretty sweaty from doing dishes. My new place better have a dishwasher! I showered while she ate, so that kept the conversation to a minimum. Work was such a drag that I sure didn't want to talk about it.

We got to square dancing, and I was able to forget about work. We had enough for three squares most of the night. I was asked by several guys to be there partner. That always is a good thing. I didn't partner with Mario C., as I don't think I would focus. At one point, cute Mario from WSD was my partner, while Mario C. was my corner. I exclaimed, "A Mario sandwich!" Mario C. gave me great grips during the tips, and great hugs afterwards. He gives everyone great hugs, though. **sigh** Class was fantastic, not just cuz it had cute guys. Harlan is such a good caller. Everyone who attended Monday's class this week noted how much better it was last night. Funner and more energetic. We learned Ping Pong Circulate, Relay the Deucey, Extend, and Cut the Diamond. I had already learned Cut the Diamond last Thursday at club night, so I did it with great gusto. (The styling is to yell like you would for a karate chop.) I think I frightened several people, LOL! I made almost no mistakes all night, so my confidence level was high. Harlan's explanation of Ping Pong Circulate made it SO easy. I had watched it in the video, and they defined it more complicated than necessary. I was really worried about learning Relay the Deucey, because it seemed so difficult. We only learned it from a couple positions, but I did it right nearly every time. Harlan just has a great way of explaining things. His method is to teach the harder calls up front, so that you have more time to practice them throughout the class cycle. It's quite the different teaching order than Andy Shore does. For example, Andy doesn't teach Flip the Diamond until the 8th week. We learned that in week one. We learned 5 calls last week, 4 last night, and he's promised only 3 next week. Hopefully hard ones like Load the Boat or any of the "Spin Chain" moves. One thing I learned was that I dance with a "pushy bottom" mentality. I guess I like to lead, and as a "girl," that's not right. I'm so used to dancing on Monday night with poor dancers where I have to lead in order to make things flow. I'll try to remember to do a better job of following.

I got into work today to find that they didn't back out all of my install. One job still abended last night. Grrrrrr. The person it impacted was not upset when he found out that I was told not to do the emergency change yesterday. Well, not upset with me, hehe. There was a message stating that installs will be frozen for a few days once we go to war. That gives me even more time for my install. Kewl. I started off the day at work in an instant bad mood, but I'm doing better now that the backout has been completed this morning.

03/18/03: Tuesday, 11:30am - Got home yesterday and found my glasses. I was very tired, so I took out my contacts for a couple hours and rested. I watched a hokey square dance video. It did help explain some call definitions. I went to class and was instantly greeted by the stench of John's cologne. I had to go back outside for a few minutes. Class was just horrible. We never had enough people for more than one square. Tagging in just makes things worse. I'd rather sit out and do it all over. Everyone was screwing up, so it wasn't much fun. We were doing some moves as couples and moving on to work with new couples. I found that Carlos, who is taking class as a girl, was dancing in boy position with Matt (also girl position). I stopped the class to notify Ron. Carlos is having a hard enough time with class as it is. Learning "Slide Thru" in boy position is not going to help with learning his girl part. For part of the class, someone made John sit out. I'm guessing it was Ron. Guess Ron got tired of his screw-ups. I'll be happy to go to Plus class tonight where people aren't so clueless.

I got home, talked on the phone with Steve, and then fell asleep watching TV. I got up in the middle of the night to check on my install, but my DSL was down. I had forgotten that evil SBC was doing "maintenance" last night until 5:30am. I got no phone calls, so that seemed good. I logged on at 5:30am to find an email from Eric. They had called him due to one job abending. I had referenced an incorrect control card. Grrrrrrr. He was able to have them put in an override, so the jobs ended ok. That was the only error it appeared. Got into work and found that some other Schwab1 job abended. Apparently they neglected to mention that they use one of the programs in another job I didn't know about. Grrrrrr. I've prepared some fixes to these problems, but will have to attend an emergency install meeting today with my boss. Not a good thing.

I'm very jittery about this emergency meeting. Once I get past that, I think I'll be quite relieved. Life goes on....

03/17/03: St. Pat's Day!, 10am - After not blogging over the weekend, I've got my work cut out for trying to remember details. Grrrrrrr. :-P

Well, I had thought I'd be leaving work early on Friday. I did some last minute testing and found another JCL error around noon. I got it fixed, but it took 3 hours to get approvals. By then, it had missed the change management cut-off, so I was told they'd move the install date to Tuesday, not Monday. I said fine, and let them know the other two parts to move to Tuesday as well. I then emailed the client, my boss, etc., to notify them. Later, I got an email stating that they'd go ahead and escalate it for installing tonight. Had to re-notify the client, blah, blah, blah. Cross your fingers that tonight's install will go well. If not, I'm gonna be in deep shit.

I got home on Friday (ok, I did leave a bit early, but worked on the email statuses from home), played the piano some, then got a call from Steve. It was raining, and it was around dinner time. He decided to stay down there for the night. I used the evening to clean off the bookshelf in my living room. That had needed done for awhile. I have lots of little things like that which I should do more often.

Around 11pm, I headed out for the Lone Star. I hadn't been there for awhile by myself on a Friday night. With the on-and-off rain, it wasn't too busy. R was there by himself since A was out of town. He was really horny and did everything to try to get me to go home. He'd given me a great blowjob at a Bearhug party about a year ago, but I'd rather wait for A to return and do 'em together. Did I mention that A has black hair? ;-) Later, I chatted for awhile with J. His partner was out of town, too. Guess it must be the weekend for that. I've always found J attractive, with his salt & pepper hair and big brown eyes. He previously claimed that I shunned him at a Bearhug once, but I don't remember. He was telling me about his trip to Paris. One of the Steves from my FCD Plus class came up and talked to us, even amid us fondling each other. J told Steve that the only letter he had written was to his friend Mario C. Yep, the hottie from my Plus class. Turns out that Steve and Mario were once a couple, but are now just good friends. Hmmmm. Interesting. I ended up spending the night at J's place in Noe Valley. I can't remember the last time I went to a trick's house. More than a year ago. J is fun, plus a great cuddler. He made me coffee in the morning, then I headed back to my place. The 15-minute walk was refreshing.

Steve came up and we went to lunch at The Cove. A good Reuben sandwich and their great tomato soup. Mmmmm. It was BOSF doing the beerbust. Not too busy. I worked the front for awhile and sold a round of raffle tickets. Norberto is a new BOSF member who went on my Alcatraz trip during IBR. He's originally from Brasil and has been in SF just a few more months than me. He really enjoyed IBR and wants to do more bear things. He's a "closet bear" though, as his Brasilian friends are prejudiced against bears. Whatever. Larry was doing the first round of raffle tickets. He sold the first bunch to Norberto. I said I wanted Norberto to measure me. He had fun with that, and I got hard. :-P He ended up helping Larry to sell tickets for the rest of the round. Good, another person to help with raffle sales! David the nurse was there on Saturday. He talked to me for awhile. He is SO funny. I miss seeing him at Moby's.

I got up Sunday morning and went to get the newspaper. In the Travel section, they published my opinion in their "Two Cents" column. The questions was "Has the threat of war affected your travel plans?" My response was, 'No. I'm taking advantage of the cheaper airfares. "Increased" domestic security means now my biggest travel fear is having baggage handlers steal from my unlocked checked bags. Or that security will pick somebody cuter than me to frisk.' Unfortunately, the pic they took of me had hideous shadows that made me look like a racoon. Grrrrrrrr. I'll have to send them one of my own pics for next time.

At church I noticed some bearish guy sitting on the opposite aisle. After church, he came up to Steve and was talking to him for a bit. I just figured Steve had zoomed in on yet another man. Turns out that it was Michael, someone who's been reading my blog for awhile. He only knew Steve from my blog, LOL. Michael then came up to me, and I realized who it was. I had forgotten that he was coming to town this week. I hoped to talk with him more at the Sunday beerbust, but I didn't see him. :-( Steve made his yummy hamburgers for lunch before we headed to the beerbust. As soon as we walk in, Steve sees several guys who are "after him." I love having a popular bf. :-) Steve Kozmo was there and whispered to me, "So you're worried you won't get frisked?" Apparently I wasn't the only one to see my Two Cents reply in the paper. About a half a dozen other people mentioned it to me, even a person I didn't know. Jeff Glover called me a media whore. I had to correct him. I'm a whore, media or not!

Got home, made some hot dogs, played Scrabble, then went to bed. Got up this morning and couldn't find my glasses. I hate that. One day I'll go get that corrective surgery. Right after I win the lotto, I suppose. I made coffee for Steve. He woke up and did his puppy routine. He's so damned cute. Life is good.

03/14/03: TGIF!, 10am - I went and got my replacement badge yesterday then went to 120 Kearny to visit Jack in my old work area. We talked for awhile. I miss that. I don't chat like that with anyone over in this group. After that, I stopped at New Asian in the Galleria and got the combo plate with noodles, bbq pork and garlic chicken. I haven't splurged on so much food in awhile. Yum.

After lunch I came home. I tried to work on my shower knobs to see if I could improve the shower flow. The head to one of the screws was stripped, so I went down to Cliff's to get new screws. I literally bumped into hunky Jim B. there. Or vice versa. That always gives me a thrill. :-) Got my screws, then stopped at Cala for some soda. I saw Terry there. I used to see him every weekend when Todd worked at Moby's. Todd's quitting really changed my schedule! Jim B. showed up at Cala, too, and got in line behind me. I mentioned that he was following me, which was good because the next stop was my place. He laughed and said he had to go back to work, but one day we'd hook up. I just love those guys with twinkly eyes.

Got home and replaced the screws on the shower knobs. It improved the drip, but the shower flow hasn't improved. (Most of the hot water comes out the bottom spout, with the colder water coming out the shower head. This tends to burn your feet.) I'll have to contact Jeff to have the maintenance guy fix it.

Good thing I was home yesterday, as the Fed Ex guy came with a package. It was the square dance instructional videos I had ordered. I thought I had gotten DVD's, but these were tapes. Grrrrrr. DVD's would be much easier for selecting which calls to view. I went ahead and watched the Plus tape. It had straight couples, so it was pretty hokey with their color-coordinated outfits, poofy hair, and lack of "styling." Still, it did help understand some calls.

The temperature outside was pleasant, so I opened the kitchen window for most of the afternoon. Around 6pm I played the piano and sang for awhile. I didn't care that the window was open. Who's gonna hear? Maybe Brian smoking outside and briefly by those coming into the building. I played for about 45 minutes, which was good and relaxing.

It was so hot at square dancing on Tuesday that I decided to wear shorts last night to the FCD club night. Temps were moderate, and I always like to bare my legs, LOL. I left to go square dancing, and I noticed that the front door to the building was propped open. He was having another open house for the apartment upstairs from 6-8pm. Oh shit. Hope my piano playing and singing didn't square anyone away! :-)

The FCD club night was poorly attended yet again. Only 6 dancers, plus Ron. Still, it was a good night. He tried to teach me every single Plus call that you can do with four people. I think we did do them all, except we forgot to include "Trade the Wave." I did pretty good, although lots of calls I probably won't remember. No one could remember exact definitions for some of them, so that made it tougher to learn. At least I got some exposure. It'll make it that much easier when we go over it in class. If I were available for ECR next week, I'd try to join them. After next Tuesday's class, I should have learned almost all the calls that they've reviewed. Steve and I have tickets to go see The Producers next Wednesday, so going to ECR is out. Maybe I'll try ECR the following week. That is such a good club.

Got home and played online games for awhile. I finally started winning again at Solitaire. Unfortunately, that bumped up my skill level, so now I'll have tougher opponents. Grrrrrr. Steve arrived shortly after 11pm. He had a good time with Ann and Steve K. with the Astrologer. Apparently it was just the three of them learning "advanced" astrology. Whatever. After Seinfeld we played a game of Scrabble upon Steve's insistence.

Got up at 5am and submitted my jobs. I was able to follow asleep after that until 7am. Usually I just toss and turn. I got up and submitted the remaining jobs. I played on the computer, made coffee, and basically dawdled. Steve got up around 8am, and we sat drinking coffee and talking. We are really good for each other. I enjoy being together. I finally showered and left for work a little before 9am.

I got to work and transmitted my daily files. Only thing left was to make sure I got all the approvals for Monday's install. Well, all the approvals were there, so I guess I'm set! Now I just need to get through a nerve-wracking Monday night hoping everything goes right. Another project at work I'm monitoring is the Datacom v10 upgrade. I just have to make sure everyone in our group does the regression testing for the programs for which they are responsible. I got a note from Robb yesterday stating that his is done. That just left Rajit and Vivek, so I emailed them this morning. Rajit replied that he finished yesterday, and Vivek called and said he'd be done by next Friday, a full day before our 3/31 target deadline. Woohoo! I provided a status to Joyce, and she sent me kudos and copied Jim and Debra. Of course, I've done almost nothing on this project. I've just collected statuses and attended conference calls. Still, Debra said that this was the type of project that I needed in order to get promoted. Whatever. We'll see how that plays out.

Now that today's work goals are done, I'll probably head home early. Steve had to go home and do something with his taxes, and he won't be back until later this afternoon or evening. I'll probably stay around here and copy some more music for my sing-a-long songbooks. I went to go play something from Aida the other day before I realized my music was here at work. I at least need to wait until after lunch so I can get some clam chowder from the cafeteria. Fridays are a good thing....

It was so hot at square dancing on Tuesday that I decided to wear shorts to the FCD club night. The temp was warm enough outside for that, and it's always fun to bare my legs.

03/13/03: Thursday, 10am - My bad. I mentioned that I had emailed my VP about using the word "biannual" instead of semiannual. It turns out that they are synonyms. It is only sometimes that it means the same as "biennial" (once every two years). After I had emailed Jim, my VP, he emailed HR, and they pointed out the "real" definition to him. Unfortunately, my manager, Joyce, was the one who told me that HR ended up sending Jim the dictionary definition. I'm not too thrilled that my VP hasn't yet told me that I was wrong. He could have simply forwarded the email. Looking up "biweekly/monthly" today, I see that they mean every two weeks/months. OR, twice a week/month. No confusion there. Gotta love the English language. At least I learned something.

I got my project copied over to a new changeman package, and all approvals look like they'll be there in time. It did take most of yesterday, but at least it filled up my time. I left around 3:30pm and took the bus to the Lone Star. I had meant to talk to Gerry about hosting the beerbust on 5/29, but it slipped my mind until after he was gone. I ended up staying there through South Park, leaving at 7:30pm. Wow. I hadn't done that in awhile. Afternoon conversations had drifted to food and about My Place, so I was both hungry and horny. I walked to Burger King for dinner. Then I went to My Place, but I was just tired, not horny. I stayed for one beer at the bar. Saw Noel and Rich. I walked back toward the Lone Star, hoping to flag down a cab. One finally showed up after 20 minutes or so. I got home to find that West Wing was not on. Grrrrr. I called and chatted with Steve for a bit. I fell asleep watching TV.

This morning we get an email from the executive committee stating that they won't be making the annual employer contribution to our 401k. GRRRRRR. Gotta dislike a company who promises one thing and does another. Part of our business is 401k's, so this is just silly. And Chuck is a Bush supporter. Bastards.

Joyce had discussed the broad salary ranges for the few grade levels we have here. She emailed those today. Turns out I'm just shy of the middle. No worries about salary caps for awhile. I'd like a promotion for the vacation and bonus perks more than for more salary. Working for Debra doesn't motivate me much to work hard for it, though.

My id badge broke off of my id clip last month. No one ever mailed it in, so I have to go get my replacement today. Big excitement for the day. I'll probably go get my badge then leave. The rest of my approval stuff I can do from home.

03/12/03: Hump Day, 9:30am - Well, I botched my install yesterday. After a couple minor issues that I was able to fix, I found that I had made left off "=" within a couple components. JCL is so damned picky! Grrrrrrr. The only good thing is that I was able to catch it before they tried to run it at night. I had to back everything out and need to copy everything over and try to install next Monday. It certainly makes me look bad! Oh well. Nothing to lose sleep over.

I couldn't leave work until 5pm yesterday because I was waiting for Peggy. I was working on install problems until 4:30pm anyhow. Steve was late and didn't arrive to my place until around 6pm, so it worked out fine. I loathe long work days.

We had dinner at Firewood before going to square dance class. I tried one of the specials, "Pineapple Chicken." Sounds like a Chinese dish, but it was basically baked chicken with some pineapple. Not too special. I hate having to eat chicken with a knife and fork.

Lots of people showed up for square dance class. We always had 3 squares going. I was in shock to see this guy show up whom I totally lust. When we first saw each other at the Lone Star several months ago, he got up to leave and as he passed on the way out, we lipped locked for awhile without saying anything. His eyes are so damned sparkly. I've seen him out and about a couple times, but we've never spoken, just made flirty eye contact. He's the type that makes my knees buckle. I had to make sure I didn't dance in his square for awhile. I wouldn't be able to focus on dancing. At one point we danced in adjacent squares. We were next to each other once, and we kinda grabbed each other. During one break, he came up and introduced himself. Turns out that he has a name: Mario C. He's also a student, and just got done with FCD's Mainstream class. And he dances Boy. Woohoo. I'm looking forward to dancing with him. Other verbs come to mind as well. He was hugging on some other cute student, Richard G., whom I hadn't previously met. Double-0-Steven was shamelessly flirting with him during one of the breaks. In the last tip of the night, I did dance in the same square with Mario. He's got quite the grip....

Harlan basically went over the same dances as last week. I started off doing Teacup Chain pretty well, but I botched it after awhile. My brain gets tired I guess. For the last time we did Teacup Chain, I managed to do it correctly. Unfortunately, none of the other "girls" in my square got through it. It can be pretty confusing. Other than that, I danced just fine. Several people specifically asked to dance with me: Larry, Don, Rick, Joe, and Steve. About halfway through class, we heard some loud car stereo. Steve Cameron went out to tell them to keep it down. He ended up shutting the doors. Later we found out that it was some tweaker. The guy tried to leave, and he backed into Harlan's car, busting up some lights on the right front corner of the vehicle and some other minor-looking damage. Grrrrrrr. The guy was totally out of it. Due to that reason, Harlan called the cops, but they never showed up. He did exchange insurance info. It took about 30 minutes before Harlan was able to come back in and finish the class. Luckily, he had taught all the new stuff up front (he said that's how he does class), so we just missed out on a bit of floor time. No biggie. Poor Harlan!

After class, Steve offered to drive Peggy all the way downtown to her car. Grrrrr. That was nice, but he shouldn't set precedent like that. I tagged along, and we stopped at the Lone Star for one beer after dropping her off. Not too much exciting there. It's always good to see Steve working. Danny and Bobby were both there as well. They seemed in good spirits.

Got home, watched Seinfeld, then I went to bed. 5am comes too early. Got up, submitted my jobs for work, rested for about 30 minutes, then did some surfing. For square dancing, we had to put down our phone numbers. I memorized Mario's. I searched for his name on the internet, but didn't find anything. The only thing I found was his phone number listed with his address. Good to know that he lives in the Castro, too. :-) I'm content with just lusting after him. Making out with no talking. He did appear to be a good dancer, and he has a nice deep voice. ** sigh **

I ran into Chris Head and DAYvid on the Muni this morning. Living in SF you always run into people you know while out and about. In Kansas City, I'd go into work and come home and see Roy. It was a rarity to see anyone else that I knew for weeks on end. Here, it's a daily thing. It's just a matter of HOW many people you see. Yesterday I saw Marcus, Jim, James, and that guy who parks his motorcycle near Main & Market. I don't know his name or where I know him from, but he always knows my name. At least now I recognize him out and about. This morning I played "Shuttle Queen" and waited an extra 5 minutes for it. It was a full shuttle. A cute guy sat next to me and didn't worry about pushing his leg up against mine. We had our legs touching all the way until he got off at Powell Station. Touching is good. I LOVE my City. :-)

Work should be busy today. I have to copy over all of my backed-out project's components to a new ticket and seek approvals. This should take most of the day. Not rocket science, but lots of busy work.

03/11/03: Tuesday, 9am - There was an open house last evening at a studio apartment in my building. I wasn't sure which one it was, so when I saw Jeff out front putting up the "open house" sign, I opened my window to ask him. As I did, I knocked a glass jar out the window, which shattered right in front of him. Oops. He just laughed and said he'd sweep it up. I don't see him much, but he's always friendly for a straight boy. The available apartment was Michael's, the one over mine. I expected a similar layout to mine. Well, the kitchen and bathroom were identical in size, although his didn't have that damned set of cabinets in the middle, so it seemed larger. HOWEVER, his "living room" was half the size of mine. There was a loft there as well, but his ceilings are probably only 10 or 11 feet high, and the loft clearance looked like 3 feet. Way too cramped to sleep there. Mine has 4 feet clearance, which is fine. Since sleeping in the loft is not practical up there, the bed was in the living room. It was just a small twin bed or even narrower. About the size of my chaisse lounge. Of course, that made the living room even smaller. Apparently he has a small deck, which I didn't check out. Still, it's hard to fathom that the price is the same as mine. I didn't check out the view, but it's probably a bit better than mine. Also, I have the noise of the front steps. Then again, I'm on the main floor, so fewer steps to climb. Seeing his made me even more grateful for what I have. I have mixed feelings about moving into a new place with Steve.

Last night was my turn again to bring treats for square dancing and help put away equipment. It seems it's always the same 5-6 people who do their part in signing up. I'm going to check the list next time and find out who has not done any of that since we've started and bring it to Matt's attention. Funny how it's the bad dancers who are also bad at signing up. If you're going to partake in something, embrace it!

Ron taught "Slide Thru," "Walk and Dodge," and "Fold/Cross Fold." He confused everyone with his explanation of "Slide Thru," which is an easy call. He refused to let us do styling (which is minimal and makes the call easier). By the end of the evening, people were still confused. I suggested that it's like "Star Thru," which he said he was refusing to acknowledge. Both are gender-specific and have you turn the same way (boys right, girls left), just without the hand touch. I think his reasoning was that facing girls can do Slide Thru, but not Star Thru. Well, they turn the same way, so it's the same movement, duh! Whatever. [channelling Cartman: Whatever, whatever, I do what I want!] Hard to believe he won't mention the similarities of "Star Thru," yet he says "Trade By" is like "Dive Thru." The class also got off to a bad start during review. We were in Ocean Waves and he called "Square Thru." Easy enough to figure out. Wrong! 15 minutes later some losers still couldn't get it. They were probably still dizzy from John's cologne bath. They were equally confused at "Turn Thru." Alvin did make an announcement that the class should be done with Mainstream by the end of March. I don't believe it, but we'll see. Ron did make reference that he'd teach "Scoot Back" next week. That should confuse people. Mario showed up about halfway through class. He spoke a bit about going to convention and trying to get a van to carpool and an executive suite to share room costs. He also got choked up talking about how great it was to go to convention with his then-healthy partner, who is now deceased. Very touching. I'm quite excited about going.

I got home and signed onto m4m4sex for a bit. Not looking for anything, just checking who was online. Only one person emailed me (I really need to update that tired, old picture), but it was some guy for whom I lust. He is a big name in the community, so I was surprised he messaged me. We've talked a few times in person and emailed once over the past couple of months. Just "business" stuff with BOSF, etc. My immediate thought was that he didn't make the connection between my m4m4sex profile and who I am, but maybe he did. He did send some good pics last night. WOOF. And I did find out from his profile that he's a bottom. WOOF, WOOF, WOOF! I just kept the messages short. Maybe he was just being polite. I'm not exactly the "very hung, uncut" guy his profile seeks. Still, I'll have to molest him a bit the next time I see him.

My project is scheduled for installation tonight. Cross your fingers. I FINALLY received all my approvals, so it's just a matter of the installation and verification tomorrow. The bad part is that now I'll have to move back to some older projects that I hate. Grrrrr. Obviously no rush on them. That should give me some time during workhours to work on the next issue of the BOSF newsletter. This one is going to take a lot of work.

03/10/03: Monday, 11am - Steve didn't come over on Saturday until around 4:30pm. It gave me time to continue cleaning. Steve noticed right away, so I felt I made some progress. Played a game of Scrabble, then drove downtown for dinner. We ate at the Burma House. We'll have to eat there again. I really enjoyed the "Burma's Beef" and the rice dish that had cinnamon.

We got to the theatre at 7:15pm, and David and Tom were there on time. Dame Edna was good, although the newspaper review had revealed about a dozen of her jokes. I saw my CEO, Dave Pottruck, out in front of the theatre after the show. Glad to see that he attended. It looked like over half the crowd was gay.

We went to the LS afterwards for a bit, getting home around 2am. Pretty late! Slept ok, then got up and went to church. After that, we walked to Ti-cousz, a crepe place at 16th and Valencia, where we met Luis and Steve Kozmo for lunch. That was really good. Their crepes are made from buckwheat and are totally different from the ones you get at The Crepevine or The Crepery.

It was a sunny day, and we all walked back to my apartment so that Luis and Steve could get a "tour." Luckily I had cleaned on Saturday! Kozmo went home and we took Luis on a stroll up and down Castro Street. We saw that Don't Panic has closed. Grrrrr. Guess they panicked. That's where I did most of my local t-shirt shopping.

We dropped off Luis at his car on our way to the Lone Star beer bust. Had a good time there. Kissed some cute boy who was there with Pat. I talked with Mother for a bit about me hosting the Thursday night beerbust on May 29th to celebrate my 40th birthday (which is the 30th). I also asked about the LS banners they use to advertise various beers, etc. He said he normally throws them away, but would save me some to use for raffle prizes. He also said he'd make one up to mention my birthday beerbust. Cool. I need to remember to call him about it on Wednesday.

Steve's Fed Ex guy was at the LS, so they made out for awhile. We were both awake at 4am this morning and he told me they had done some dick fondling. Got me hard thinking about it. Sucking Steve off at 4am is always a good thing. Heck, sucking anyone off at any time is a good thing! Then he asks me to get him a muffin in the morning. LOL. I went to the store at 7am and got him a damned muffin. Actually, I enjoy doing things like that for him. He's always appreciative, which is so different than my last partner! I'm getting excited about moving in together. Looks like it may happen during May or June. I'll probably move in during May, and Steve will move in when he sells his home, hopefully in May. He expects that it will sell quickly, and he's probably right. It's a great house with gorgeous views. Too bad it's way too far away.

We had a 9am meeting this morning. Grrrrr. Our VP just presented information about changes to our performance review process. Nothing too dramatic. We're being reviewed twice a year, but his slide said "bi annual" instead of semi-annual. I emailed him afterwards to point it out. Turns out the slide was from "Corporate," so he said he'd notify them, too. At least it shows that I was paying attention! He was having problems working the power point. His admin assistant was there, and she couldn't figure it out either. Unbelievable. Seems like ppt would be a required skill for any admin asst. My manager finally stepped in to show them how to get to "slide show" view. Oh brother.

03/08/03: Saturday, 1pm - Yesterday was full of some last minute changes to my project. Eric, who had "absolutely no time" to help me the Scheduler changes earlier in the week, all of the sudden had lots of changes to make to the Scheduler entries I had. Of course, I'm glad that he said something so that we get this installed correctly. I actually think we're pretty much set, although I'm really fearing it'll be a bad install due to some minute detail I'm overlooking.

Got home and played a few "cash" games on the internet. All of a sudden, I'm not getting opponents. Turns out that I won so frequently that my skill level was moved to a higher level. Apparently few folks at that level play very often. No one played all night. Finally about an hour ago I got notification that someone had played and I won. It certainly makes the game less fun or addicting if no one is playing. I'm up about $50. I spent the evening checking out other games, to less success. I also did 4 loads of laundry. I was not feeling well, so I tossed out any notion of going out to the bar.

I fell asleep watching TV again. I had some weird dream about going to Germany with Steve, checking out a few cities. My family ended up in the dream, and I was desperately trying to get my uniform ready to check in to some Army assignment. I did not have my uniform on hand, so I wound up with some white dinner jacket, loud vest and bow tie, and gray slacks. Not sure if the dream was telling me I am totally unprepared for something in the most outrageous way, or what.

Just cleaning today. Went through lots of junk mail, cleaned off the counter (finally!), and am cleaning sink and tub. Lots left to do, but everything always seems better when the counter is cleared.

Steve is coming over this afternoon. We haven't played Scrabble here in eons. Or have had sex. Hopefully we'll have some of both today. Tonight we're going with David and Tom to go see Dame Edna. There's a Western Star dance tonight, but I neglected to put it on my calendar, so when David called, I told him I was free. Grrrrrr. I do wanna go with David (it was his birthday yesterday), but this would have been my first actual square dance. Oh well, there will be lots of others.

Back to cleaning!

03/07/03: Friday, 8:30am - I ended up working HARD past 3:30pm yesterday. Quite late for me. I ended up getting much accomplished, and it actually looks like I'll have things all approved in time for my project's 3/11 install. I'm kinda worried about there being some error in the JCL since there's so much of it and Eric had made so many mistakes. He did contact me yesterday morning about one error that I had made. It was in one of the last jobs, so hopefully that means he reviewed the rest of the JCL. Peggy did my peer review, and she's pretty picky, so hopefully all is swell. Just waiting on a couple of approvals.

Got home after 4pm and played a couple cash games online. I've made more money than I've put in, so that's a good thing. It looks like several of the game patterns repeat themselves. If I can document the patterns, winning most times should be a breeze. Making a few bucks helps justify the time wasting. Grrrrr. Not something I need! ;-)

Got an email from dacub Jeff about my entry yesterday about the guys giving me unsolicited "good mornings." He said that I had another "testosterone leak." LOL. It made me wonder, but my mind instead flashed back to those 70's commercials for teen fragrance "Charlie." I swear I don't wear fragrance. Honestly. (((((((((( Charlie! ))))))))))

Steve arrived about 5pm. He had a headache and took a short nap on the couch while I went to Cala for some sandwiches and chips before bingo. We ate, then I headed out a bit before 6pm for my volunteer duties setting up. There were plenty of volunteers, but it seemed to go really slowly. We had previously handed out daubers, door prize tickets, clipboards, and "trinkets" at the door. Now we set them all out on the tables or chairs. That takes a lot of extra time, but it makes it more efficient for getting people through the line. I went outside around 6:40pm to check the line. Steve was way back in the line, having arrived at 6:30pm (instead of before 6:15pm as I instructed). A couple of the Sisters were out there and told people in line way ahead of Steve that it was going to be sold out, and those from that point back would probably not get in. They sent away dozens of people. I knew that they would sandwich a few more people in. Still, Steve snuck in without getting a bingo card with the intent of just sharing one of mine. I went out again about 7:20pm, and there was no line. There were still lots of seats left (at least a couple dozen). Apparently the Sisters sent too many people away. Idiots.

Bingo was ok. It was "madhatter" night, and there were plenty of interesting hats. Sister Chastity Boner had on an ENORMOUS hat. I think I got a pic of it, which I'll try to post here later. Jim Berenstein was there and had brought along his mother, Rose. She won a prize hat for being the only person there over 80 years old. Sister Betty asked her if she knew what Jim had done in front of the bingo crowd at IBR. She said "went bare-assed." Too funny. Too true. Embarassing Jim further, one of the sisters brought out a photo album to show here with pics of his yummy ass exposed on stage. I still have the picture in my head of seeing him bent over with cheeks exposed. Can't to check them out for myself sometime! ;-)

Norris was there with his bf, with whom he's having a "monogamous relationship" (according to what Dennis told Rhoda). I hope the bf can see through him more clearly than I did. I don't see why someone who is monogamously-challenged insists on saying he's monogamous, when it's not true. (Oh, the lies we tell ourselves. Scary the ones we actually believe.) I saw Dennis in line and gave a cheery, "Hello Dennis, how are you?" I received a cold stare in reply. When they came in, they sat nearby at a table nearby. He eventually did speak to me to say "Excuse me" when he tried to maneuver those hips out of the aisle. I came back from intermission to see Double-0-Steven talking with him. I didn't go over to join the conversation. Steve told me that they had talked about our trip to Reno, and Dennis mentioned that he was getting a bonus and was planning to go there for a trip. I'm thinking about sending him an email to let him know his bonus should go to repay ME! I'm seeing Rhoda tomorrow night, so I'll ask about the bonus to see if it's true. I was under the impression that he'd be fired for incompetence.

During the 2nd half, I presented the Sisters with the $1,000 check from BOSF. I got through it, stammering a bit. Not entirely foolish looking, but somewhat. Sister Betty embellished on it and made it a good presentation. I was hoping Drew would be there to at least stand up there with me to hand over the check, but dang it if he didn't make it to bingo.

Bingo ran late, and I didn't get done with my volunteer cleanup duties until around 10pm. The number of chairs in the sanctuary was conspicuously fewer than usual. Oh well. I guess I'll see if they're back there on Sunday morning. Got home, watched some TV, then crashed around midnight.

I woke up at 6am this morning to find that the power was off. Guess that explains why the alarm didn't wake me up at 5am. Unable to log into work from home, I went ahead and got ready to go into work. Putting in contacts without any lights was quite the chore. Got here shortly after 7am. I got a call from Steve, and the power finally returned around 8:30am. Looks like my boss still needs to add some approvals. I need to transmit a few reports upon completion, coordinate a couple other items for my project, then I'll probably head out. Steve was going to stay up in the City, but he still has a sinus headache so is going home and will come back tomorrow. I need to take time to clean house anyway, and it's easier with him not there.

Missing the beerbusts last week due to Reno, I'm really anxious to hit the bar for awhile. Maybe I'll head out to the LS later tonight if I'm able to get in at least some minimal cleaning (saving the heavy duty stuff for Saturday).

03/06/03: Thursday, 1pm - Stopped after work yesterday and picked up the BOSF check from Mark for me to give to the Sisters at bingo. We chatted briefly about BOSF board stuff, various candidates that will be running, etc. The upcoming election and subsequent board assignments could be interesting.

Got home and did nothing productive. Signed up on Shockwave to play games for cash. Wasted time doing that. I really don't need any more time wasters. Grrrr. Fell asleep watching TV.

On my way to work this morning, I saw the long-haired guy in the yellow house come out and go to his car. (I was half a block away.) I believe he's straight, as I've seen a woman in the house. They just moved in last fall. They have a home office in the front by the bay window, and they have no window treatment, which looks nice. I always look in hoping to see their cat which often sits on the desk. Yesterday I looked up for the cat and saw the guy instead. He waved. This morning, although he was out to his car and we hadn't made eye contact at all, he yelled over "good morning" to me as I passed. Gotta like friendly neighbors. Going down the stairs to Muni, some bearded guy who seemed a bit rough around the edges (just left a trick's place?) turned around on the stairs to say good morning to me. Friendly morning, but seems odd that within minutes two separate guys with whom I didn't make eye contact (nor was in line-of-fire for eye contact) greeted me. Ah well. Don't question it. Just smile.

Went out this morning and got/sent a birthday card for David. I stopped at the post office to check my ever-empty post office box. Lo and behold I got a "fan" letter, complete with a few photos. That's letter #3. I believe I've had the p.o. box for about 10 months now, LOL.

Work is not going well today. This install is going to be the end of me. I did learn some stuff, so hopefully things will be kosher after today. I'm just feeling frustrated, anxious, and sick to my stomache. Guess I should wrap this up quickly and finish my project!

Tonight is bingo. I "get" to present the Sisters with a check from BOSF. Hopefully I won't stammer or do something stupid. It's not rocket science.

03/05/03: Wednesday, 9:30am - Got home yesterday to find mail from my landlord. Well, from Bob, the property manager. One item was my "refund" check for the interest on my security deposit. The other was some amendment to the rental agreement about mold and mildew. I'll have to reread that letter a couple of times. Something about drips, number of plants, etc. I do have a leaky faucet in my tub that just started recently. Annoying as hell. Guess I'd better have 'em fix it soon. Obviously I'll need to do some major cleaning before I let anyone come over to fix things. Sounds like a Saturday job! This will be my first weekend at home in 5 weeks.

Last night was the "Intro to Plus" square dance class. There were enough people for 3 squares. Paul and Rod from ECR showed up, and even Andy Shore, their caller! Since Andy is teaching them Plus down at ECR, maybe he was there to pick up some teaching pointers from Harlan, our teacher. Harlan is the one who taught Andy to square dance originally. ECR is three weeks into Plus, but Harlan taught new calls they hadn't learned yet. Out of 30 Plus calls/positions, Harlan taught us 7 of them. Whew! Busy night! It was great to dance with people who weren't idiots. What a difference! No John's or Joseph's or Merle's to mess things up. I'd guess those types of people never advance past Mainstream anyhow. We learned "Single Circle to a Wave," "Diamond position," "Diamond Circulate," "Flip the Diamond," "Acey Deucey," "Track 2," and "Teacup Chain." I think that people who already knew Plus were surprised that he taught us Teacup Chain, since it seems very complex. It took us a bit, but after 57 or so times doing it, I think I've got it. Well, we'll see if I remember it next week. It was a very productive evening, but I was worn out. Harlan is a very good teacher, but he sure worked us hard. I think he was impressed with how well we did.

I got home to find Steve there. He had gone to a lecture at the Planetarium with a friend, and came over afterwards. It was nice to have him there. My stomach was still bothering me from the night before. It hurt during square dancing. Steve had me take and Alka Seltzer, which helped some. My stomach still hurts today, though.

This morning I got to Castro Station and let four trains go by that had standing room only. I was busy reading the paper and wanted to get a seat. The fembot kept lying, saying "Castro Shuttle in three minutes." That bitch lies constantly! It probably took 12 minutes for it to arrive from the time she first said "three minutes.". I love the Castro Shuttle. First stop Castro, last stop Embarcadero. That means you always get a seat, and usually a couple seats to yourself. I saw Victor Pellegrini yesterday morning waiting for the shuttle. He admitted that he was also a "Shuttle Queen."

Waiting to cross Mission Street to go to Starbucks this morning, I watched four busses go by. They reminded me of whales swimming past. Obviously, I'm in need of more sleep....

03/04/03: Tuesday, 12:30pm - I was doing pretty good at staying awake yesterday until about 6pm. Then I got drowsy BIG time. I went to square dancing at 7pm and it took awhile to wake up and figure out what I was doing, LOL. The lesbian couple returned, so we did review most of the night. Ron taught a couple "new" calls for the class, "Cloverleaf," "Centers In/Out," and "Spin The Top." Again he tried to teach "Pass to the Center" using the "Dive Thru" definition, which just confused people. I can see that idea makes sense to a caller since he's just concerned with the ending position, but the dancers are not thinking about that. Not at this level, anyhow. Ron's review of "Cloverleaf" did help me, as I didn't realize you could only do it from the facing out position. All in all, I had a good time and tried to be a good "angel" to the lesbian couple. Old Man John is a different story. He causes Ron to stop calling a tip about half the time.

I got home and signed up Steve and I for the Peel-Off in Palm Springs weekend. Naked square dancing at the CCBC, May 2nd-4th. I got us suite #19 for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. We fly out early Friday afternoon (ditching work a bit early) and return early on Monday morning (arriving in time to get to work at a reasonable hour). I haven't been down to Palm Springs since last May, so I'm looking forward to it. Chuck & Steve from the Reno Fun Train will be there as well. Not sure if there's anyone else I know who will be going.

I ate some imitation crab for dinner last night. I've had a stomache since then. Grrrrrr.

I had a truncation presentation this morning at work. Opposed to what Steve thinks, this was NOT about circumcision. Just some field length standards at work. Yep, I'm a professional size queen. I guess that's why it's not an issue when I'm not at work. One of our "prizes" after the presentation is a large pencil that reads "Size Matters." Again, my idea. We got an award this past year for the presentation. No, wait. My BOSS got the award. Grrrrrrrrr. Anyhow, the presentation went just fine. Some people get stage fright, but this particular presentation is no biggie. (Again with the size. Sheesh.)

I see that the Today Sponge is back on the market. I don't attribute this to Seinfeld, but to SpongeBob SquarePants. Naturally.

03/03/03: Monday, 10am - Gotta love this date: 03/03/03.

The weekend was a full one. I went to bear lunch on Friday. Six of us were seated, when the table behind opened up with about a dozen seats together. Quite the rarity. We immediately grabbed those seats for any others joining us. Not sure the final count. 10-12, maybe. From there, I went home to get Steve and drive to the train station in Emeryville. We were the first in the group to get to Emeryville, but others sooned joined. A few of the same faces from last year, and a total of 30 guys going.

We had boarded the train, and there was no one else but our group in the car. The other half of our car would be filled by the "Martin" group, which would board in Martinez. We were told that they were a group of construction workers. Yeehaw! Before we had even left the station, Rob had whipped out his erect penis. I was hoping that would be a sign of a very fun trip.

We soon got under way. When we got to Martinez, we were surprised that the group of "construction workers" was actually a group of mostly women in their 50's. A few men near death, and just a couple guys in their thirties. Grrrrrr. So much for that fantasy.

My jello shots were quite popular again. Jim didn't bring jello shots this year, so my 100 had to suffice, but that was plenty. Last year, there were too many. We had people making special trips to our car to get the jello shots. One woman, Lynn, was quite fun. We saw her several times over the weekend. She's an event planner, and she said she'd like me to make jello shots for one of her events, LOL.

I had brought several different t-shirts for the weekend. Last year I changed t-shirts twice during the ride up. This year I changed 6 times, I think. Too many times, and it was just silly. I was plastered.

We got to Reno around 11:30pm. I was trashed. Steve was just tired. We checked in and Steve went to bed. I changed clothes and went out to Carl's, which was having "underwear night." Not having brought boxers with me, I had the cab driver take me to Walmart first. Got some SpongeBob boxers. I asked the cab driver, and he didn't mind me changing into them in the back seat. ;-) Got to Carl's, and about 6-8 from our group had shown up. Probably another dozen people there. Not too exciting. I caught a cab back with some of the guys, and then we went for food Cal-Neva around 3am. Service was horrendous. Some homeless guy tried to pose as the father of some minor's so that they could get alcohol. It made the manager all stressed out, and he screwed up our order. He ended up comping the meal for the 7 of us. :-)

Got to the room about 3:30am and crashed. Steve woke up around 9am and woke me up to make him coffee. Grrrrr. We had a good view from our room on the 20th floor. It was snowing, and it made for a pretty picture. I was totally hungover, though. I got up and ready, and we went downstairs around 10:45am. As soon as we did, Steve left to play Blackjack while I played slots. After much searching and frantic voicemails, we met up shortly after noon. We went to one of the restaurants in the hotel for lunch. After waiting 30 minutes, we finally got seated. Got our food in another 25 minutes. Grrrrr.

At 2pm, we headed out to the 1099 Club to meet up with some other guys from the train. We got there, and only a few of the guys were there. Steve still wasn't feeling well, and I thought dragging him there was a mistake. After awhile we went over to the bar and I started playing video poker. I was doing pretty good. Steve asked if he could trade seats and play for a bit on my money. On his second round, I talked him out of going for a flush for a chance for a royal flush. Good thing. He got it and hit the jackpot of $2000! Woohoo! We agreed to split it, which seems fair, although he mentions now and then that he "gave" me a $1000, LOL. Turns out that was the biggest win for anyone on the train over the weekend. Winning put Steve in a MUCH better mood. He had lost a few hundred dollars earlier in the day, so this righted things. Every time he started to whine later, I had to remind him that "winning" has TWO n's. ;-) Several more guys from our group had shown up, and we had a nice time there. Some of the guys knew the owner, so it was good for them to visit.

Got back to the hotel and gambled a bit more. Wound up about even. We went out for prime rib dinner with a few of the guys. After that, we gambled for a few hours. After that afternoon's win, I pretty much switched from regular slots to video poker. I was dead-tired, so I went to bed around 11pm.

I woke up on Sunday morning around 5am. The maid had neglected to leave more coffee. Grrrr. I put on some clothes and went down to gamble. I wound up the morning about a bit ahead. I got some lattes and danishes to take back to the room around 7:30am for Steve. I packed all my stuff and finished getting ready. I went downstairs to gamble while Steve got ready. I managed to remain ahead. Seems most people from the group were winning on Sunday morning, which was better than most did on Saturday. I went out to get some beer for the trip, then back up to the room to get Steve and checkout.

Checked out, then joined the group to walk over to the train station. It was chilly outside but the sun was shining brightly. When we got to the depot, I even took off my coat, as the sun was warm. The train was right on time, and everyone showed up for the train on time. (Except Jeff and Philip who were flying back.) The train ride back was pretty subdued. Little of the sexual rowdiness from the previous year. More of the other group was closer to the restrooms, so it was not so easy to be discreet. John was getting pretty plastered and whipped out his cock for some pics. That was about the excitement for the return trip. I did hear that some couple was trying to get our group thrown off the train for some reason. Turns out THEY are the ones who ended up getting thrown off at one of the stations, LOL. I was pretty oblivious to the whole matter.

There were some real cuties on our trip. Rob and Kendall our always fun. Chuck and Steve, too, and it turns out they are also square dancers. They plan to go to the Peel-Off in Palm Springs in May. Hopefully I can convince Steve to go as well. Bart had the dreamy black hair with a couple salt & pepper spots thrown in. Woof. Then there were Rich and Mark and Mike the cop. The trip is always nicer when the scenery is good....

Got back to SF and we gave Todd a ride home. I was pretty wasted and wanted to be dropped off at the Lone Star. Steve refused because he was "hungry." We dropped off Todd, and then went to my place to find no parking spots. Steve let me out with my bags while he went to find parking. I dropped off my stuff then headed up the hill to find Steve. He had parked illegally, and we argued about it for awhile. We decided to leave it there, then go get dinner. We got a slice from Escape from NY. Got home and a parking space had opened up right out front, so Steve moved the car. We watched some TV, but I fell asleep quite early.

I got up with the alarm at 5am this morning. I started the jobs for work, and then tried to fall back asleep. No luck. I felt rested, so I just got up. I uploaded the pics from the Reno trip, so at least I was productive. You can see them on my photos page. (Look in the right-hand column of the photos page for the 2003 trip pics.) I got into work before 7:30am. Got some problems worked out with my project already, so things are looking up.