Wednesdays are paydays.

In my paystub today I discovered that I had been given my “merit increase” on the basis of my recent “excellent” review.

About what I expected.

Half the current national inflation rate.

One fourth the local inflation rate.

SOP here for the last 10+ years.

The increase (and then some) will be re-eaten by increased payroll deductions in the new year.

Same as it ever was.

Well, I guess it’s better than a kick in the pants.

Of course, that all depends on who is doing the kicking, …
… just how they are doing the kicking, …
… and just what we might mean by the term “kicking”.

… Not to mention whether we are wearing pants at the time.

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Whether or not you support capital punishment is not the question here.

Whether or not you think that what the man did was despicable and in human is not the question here.

The question is whether we should allow a foreign national, accused of a crime, access to his/her home nation’s consul - to which access we agreed in a ratified treaty many years ago - and by which many Americans, accused of crimes in other nations, have benefited.

It seems the Great State of Texas, who has brought us such notables as Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush, saw fit in its great wisdom to execute a Mexican national within the last day -*without* allowing him such access.

Oh, yes, I’ve heard the arguments: We cannot let another nation tell us what we can and cannot do. The man is a monster. It’s a matter of state’s rights over federal control. Etc.

But as a partner in a civil and civilized world within the community of nations, I think we should have done so.

It seems to me, more and more, that, contrary to our PR (”…and justice for all”), we are a nation with multiple tiers of justice: for the rich and powerful, for the poor and disenfranchised, for those who are outsiders. In this as in other things, we have turned a deaf ear to history. Rome ended up this way before her demise: one set of justice for rich Romans, another set for poor Romans, still another for non-Romans.

As will the injustice that we have done at Gitmo, this national arrogance and selective jurisprudence will come back to bite us in the ass - and bite us hard.

Although my heart will go out to those innocent pawns caught in such a web, I will turn a deaf ear to the politicians and other “paper patriots” who will whine and carry on at the first of our soldiers “unlawfully” detained and tortured by another nation or even the first drug dealer/murderer/whatever criminal arrested and kept in detention without access to the American consul. They will only be getting what they asked for.

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Not much happening around the Lake.

Work is quite busy.

Exchanged a couple of emails with NGiT. Right now our schedules are mutually exclusive. So it’s mostly plotting and scheming… which means I’m sitting *very* close to my desk.

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

It was an interesting weekend, including a mixture of ABBA and West Side Story.

After my bear encounters on Saturday, I returned home, put on my best butch, and installed the new kitchen ceiling light. It looks really nice.

This afternoon I was able to escape for the afternoon to go see Mamma Mia with TheOtherGroup. This is the group with whom I went mini-golfing two weeks ago. It was my first outing with them. Today was my second and interestingly none of the guys who went miniature golfing went today. It was an entirely different group of guys. They appear to be quite diverse in their activities and different ones attend different events. After the movie we went out to a restaurant for some good burgers and then one of them invited us to his home for some dessert and conversation.

That is the overview. Now for some interesting details.

For the movie we all filled in the last (top) row of the theatre. I enjoyed all the ABBA songs, but really felt like I wanted to get up and dance for a couple of the songs. I had to be content with my chair boogie. (I would go nuts whenever they were playing “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”) The plot was a little thin, but then I just took it to be an attempt at an entertaining way to celebrate the music of ABBA.

At the dinner I discovered that about half of the guys panned it. I checked my card to make sure I still had any points remaining.

During the dinner I was quizzed a bit about how I found out about the group. It morphed a bit into a discussion of TheGroup (the bunch I had been hanging out with) and why and how TheOtherGroup came to be. It was a very interesting discussion.

It turned the more interesting when we looked up to see a bunch of the guys from TheGroup waiting to be seated. It seems that they had been bowling (The second time in as many months that they have done so and did not inform me - one of the primary reasons I began to seek out and try TheOtherGroup.) I saw a couple of my friends from TheGroup and I smiled and waved at them, but one in particular had a look of utter surprise. Among both guys from both groups I observed other obviously awkward moments and exchanges.

I felt like the guy at the drug store trying to reconcile the Sharks and the Jets.

Other than those awkward moments I felt very much at ease among the guys in TheOtherGroup. I had a couple of very nice conversations with some of them. The home of the fellow to which we were invited for dessert (it was pie - as in apply and blueberry! so don’t go there! m’k?) was a small condo, but absolutely fabulous!!

I hope you all had a good weekend.

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

The last day or so I have been having encounters with bears (of the Family variety - or so I wish).

On Friday I had a call from one of our production departments at work for which I have developed an utility software application. It seems that the printer had jammed. My job does not include hardware support, but I do what I can so I went to the department to try to help out.

In this department there is a most delightful piece of bear eye candy. I think he may be a breeder, but I am not sure. While I was (unsuccessfully) trying to unjam the printer, he and a co-worker had a conversation related to my coming to their department to do work for them. The co-worker stated that it was because I wanted to get away from my desk. The bear said, no, it was because he had such nice legs. (He was wearing shorts, and, yes, he does. ) It caught me off guard and I did a spit-take and burst out laughing. I muttered under my breathe, “if only you knew!”

Today the eye candy was exquisite at the farmer’s market, the grocery story, and home improvement places. The heat and humidity must be driving the bears out of the woods.

We have been looking for a replacement to the kitchen ceiling light and we went from store to store this afternoon looking at what was available. I’m not sure I paid that much attention to the light fixtures. Our last stop was at a store of home improvement. While there I had to use the restroom. When I was heading back through the shopping area, a beautiful ursine species crossed my path. I could not help but follow him with my eyes, drool, and mutter appreciative comments. He was fine, and it was all okay. He did not hear me.

Unfortunately, I think his wife did!

LOL!

I did not see the woman trailing behind him. She gave me a dirty look as she passed by and caught my eye.

I think I need another night with NGiT.

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

(Stolen from Dr. Benton Quest)

The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they’ve printed below.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you read part of but never finished.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Strikethough those you hope to never read again, and sometimes wish you could un-read.

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Bible
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
Complete Works of Shakespeare (The Tempest, Measure for Measure, The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew, All’s Well That Ends Well, Twelfth Night / What You Will, Henry IV, part 1, Henry V, Richard III, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline)
Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch - George Eliot
Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Bleak House - Charles Dickens
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
Emma - Jane Austen
Persuasion - Jane Austen
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
Animal Farm - George Orwell
The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Dune - Frank Herbert
Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
On The Road - Jack Kerouac
Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
Dracula - Bram Stoker
The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
Ulysses - James Joyce
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
Germinal - Emile Zola
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
Possession - AS Byatt
A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
The Color Purple - Alice Walker
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
Charlotte’s Web - EB White
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Watership Down - Richard Adams
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
Hamlet - William Shakespeare
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Thanks Major Pride!

Lambda Lem

Go on! Make your own! You know you want to!

* * *
That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

Michaelangelo

It was a week ago this afternoon when it began.

A marvelous period of 24 hours in which someone touched my skin and my soul.

It went beyond “sex”. It was far more than that. It was about tenderness and human touch. Gentle caresses. Fingers stroking arms and backs and faces. Chests pressed against backs and thighs pressed against ham strings. Heads cradled on shoulders.

In my pre-programmer career my duties including “care-giving” to the aged and ill. Although raised in a relatively cold emotional “Prussian” culture, I quickly learned to overcome my reticence for the sake of those under my care. To touch was to heal despite my lack of medical degree, skill, or knowledge. We die for lack of warmth, in more ways than one.

Sometimes we get so used to what we have that we no longer notice or appreciate it. Many of my readers have partners and husbands with whom they have - or can have - or should have - human touch. Not sex. Touch.

Do you know what you have? Do you appreciate that wondrous gift that you receive and that you give?

I conclude each of my posts by “sending HUGS to all”. Perhaps its seems perfunctory, but I mean it.

To hug you is to touch you.

To touch you is to heal you.

…and to be healed.

[Update: I guess the boss must be anal about his videos. It seems to be disabled. perhaps you can view it here.]

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

No word yet on the economic impact of my review.

Just before vaca, I had noticed that the A/C in our van was not working. I dropped it off at the mechanic on Tuesday, figuring it just needed recharging. I live in a fantasy world. The evaporator was shot. The new part had to be ordered and is due in today. The early estimates are for $1400.

I am working on a software application for my employer that will be used in-house as well as by customers. For one feature I developed a graphic that was helpful initially to me for debugging, but may be included in the final product. (As with some other things I’ve done in the past, it was initially dismissed by the project managers until someone realized its potential. I’ve found that if I give enough of them enough time, someone just might think outside the box.)

…anyway… The graphic is a kind of a horizontal pictogram (bar chart using discrete images) in which each of the six possible horizontal groupings (rows) is a different color to assist in identification of function. I don’t know why, but I chose a color scheme of the following colors (from top to bottom): red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. I waiting to see if anyone notices and says anything. [*snicker*]

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!

I guess it is time for some follow-up and que pasa.

I am back at work now. Vaca is over. Uggh. Second day.

Speaking of work, I had my annual review today. The sit-down part. It was only four weeks overdue. That is actually fairly good. It usually takes longer. Generally speaking it was very good, although there was the usually game playing with numbers and ratings.

It will be a couple of days before I know how that affects my pocketbook. It really doesn’t matter because the standard for the last ten years around here is that “the Lord God giveth and the Lord God taketh away.” Twice what I will receive will be lost within a month or two when the new [increased] deductions are revealed. Same as it always was. Ce la vie!

* * *

I have been in email contact off and on with NGiT since Saturday. I learned yesterday that the resultant “economic pain” of the “tragedy” was worse than I expected. I feel very badly about that. I checked and crunched some numbers with a co-worker who knows more about these things than I do, and I guess my estimates were off.

I thank you all for your good wishes on my meeting with NGiT. He really is a super guy - in many, many ways! [*eg*] Seriously, he is! You who have been with me for a while know my situation. Well, NGiT has a similar situation on the other side of the house, so to speak. We mutually respect each other’s situation and challenges. I do not wish to upset his apple cart, nor he, mine. So what I am hoping is that I have found a great new friend with whom I can get together from time to time.

He is a fascinating man. His life-journey is filled with some interesting tales. He is a great listener, perhaps too great. I find myself prattling away. We share common interests in decor (although my home would deny it) and very common interests in music, especially classical music.

Our interests in - *a-hem* - other facets of life are, shall we say, very compatible and complementary. You could say that we fit together just fine.

In another universe, in another place and time, well,…

Right now, I simply rejoice that he has become a part of my life as a friend.

* * *

I took NGiT back to his home late Saturday afternoon. The house was so much colder and lonelier that night, but filled with good memories. I considered giving him a call on Sunday morning, but decided he had sacrificed enough of his weekend for me. He had work-related tasks he had to attend to.

I decided to use the occasion to visit a different church on Sunday morning. I stopped by one of the churches that had a stand at the local Pride festival the week before, an Episcopalian church. It was a very small congregation, but very friendly. Unfortunately there was a mix up in the rector’s schedule, so they were unable to celebrate the Eucharist.

In the afternoon I pulled “Latter Days” out of my collection of DVD’s and blubbered my way through it. Sorry guys, but the scene in which Christian returns the pocketwatch to Aaron’s mother sends me into sobs. I know, such a wus I am!

Well, that’s my update, for anyone who’s interested.

* * *

That’s a wrap.

Sending HUGS to all!