AtomicMrX

Friday at work I was working away like usual and Kim (not their real names) tells Sarah that “Tom said that my stuffed Halloween spider is so gay!”. Sarah replies with “Yea, well Tom is gay!” - followed by chuckles and laughter by all parties overhearing the conversation (except for me). These are co-workers with the ages of: 20, 23, 43, and overhearing it - 50. So we are not talking about teenagers here.

I was suddenly filled with feelings of disrespect, unwanted, unsafe, and anger. I am not completely out at work but I think everyone “knows” but just chooses to “over look it.” Now I don’t know what to do or say. I remembered seeing some videos on this exact topic and I can’t remember what they said in response. So I become 10 years old and pretend I didn’t hear it and say nothing… letting the homophobic remarks appear acceptable.

Here are the 30 second TV Ads:

Here is the Ad campaign web site: ThinkB4YouSpeak. Here is the New York Times article A Push to Curb the Casual Use of Ugly Phrases. Finally, here is the GLSEN and Ad Council Launch First Campaign to Address Anti-Gay Language Among Teens.

So, my Friday ended early with me taking a half day of vacation so I could escape what I had experienced at work because I couldn’t come up with the words to address the situation properly. Hopefully next time (sad to say there will be a next time), I will handle the problem better.

I took a long nap with Jaki when I got home and she put me in my happy place but not quite. I’m non-confrontational by nature so I hope I will be able to stand up for myself (and others in the department - I’m not the only Gay in the village at work) when this all rolls around again.

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The song by Quivver “Space Manoeuvres Part 3 (Breaks Mix)” has been played on XMRadio’s “The System” channel and I love it. I had a horrible time finding it online to buy. I finally emailed the DJ on The System and he directed me to a web site that offered the song on Amazon for .99! Sold! You can buy it here if you like it!

The song has voice samples taken from the movie Dark City (1998). I love the movie! I’ve watched it a bunch of times and it never gets old.

One of the reasons I think it was difficult to find the darn song is “Quivver” is an alias of the musician. Apparently John Graham uses a bunch of different “names” based on the project he is working on. Quivver was one of them. Also the name of the song is misspelled (apparently on purpose) making it a challenge too.

Work was a little scary today. They began laying people off work. I have escaped the wrath so far but I have a feeling they will have another go at it later. It was really sad to see someone “walked” out of the building at the drop of a hat.

On Tuesday this past week, a sales woman from AT&T U-verse came to the door. Since we don’t get many people coming to the house and ringing the door bell - it makes me jump out of my skin when the door bell goes off unexpectedly. Geesh! I told the sales woman that I would have to get with my room mate before doing anything and she agreed to come back on Wednesday night to see my answer. We went for it! We only have Comcast as an option for TV & Internet. They have no competitors in our area offering internet access. We could get a dish but it doesn’t have internet. We have been paying $137.00 a month for basic digital channels (no sports channels or movies), internet access at 6 Mbps and only 1 DVR box. With U-verse we will have 3 DVR boxes that can record up to 4 channels at one time and exact same channel listings and internet for $104.00! We will be saving $30 a month which may not be much for some folks but will greatly help me out! We have until November 17th to get all the shows that are stored on the current DVR box off onto DVDs. That will be a fun time! Shannon records everything!

It was a great day Sunday to work in the yard. Shannon mowed while I broke sticks into small 1 foot lengths (so they will fit into our cast iron Chiminea to burn them). Jaki enjoyed being outside so much and ate up the sun as much as possible. She was very exhausted later that evening and into the next morning. She was definitely walking like an “old lady” the next morning after she ate her food.

Shannon wrapped the garden “cross” with red Christmas lights so it’s ready for winter to hit. I still have to clean out the gutters and then put the blue “old time” Christmas lights up onto the gutters around the house. I’m kind of procrastinating on that job!

It was great to do stuff around the yard instead of running around town like I usually do on Shannon’s day off.

Enjoy the pictures! They are located under Photos (across the top of the web site) click on Fall Garden.

Well, I haven’t written on the blog in a few weeks because there was a lot of stuff going on and I wanted to wait for it to be over so I could just write about it once.

First our washer died - in mid wash of course. Shannon was doing his laundry (I know - shocking that he got around to it - he has a tendency to wait well past when he should be doing it) and the washer was full of water and went into the spin/drain cycle when it decided not to drain out the washer and just plain died. So Shannon left the items in the full of water washer and there they sat till we got a new washer which arrived yesterday (Saturday). Yep that is right - they stuff in the washer sat for two weeks! Ugh, boy did it stink. Shannon should have taken them out of the washer when it broke and “finished” them up in the bath tub then put them in the dryer. Oh well, that’s ADD for ya. I ended up doing them in a laundry load for him.

He was just going to leave the clothes in the washer untill the repair guy came (one week after it broke) but the washer was un-repairable. Actually it could have been repaired but it would have cost $700. A new washer is far less! Shannon went shopping for a new washer that same day the repair guy was at the house (Monday). He bought a new washer for around $500 (a Whirlpool) but it would not be delivered until the next Saturday (yesterday).

Our floor drain next to the washer has been flooding and creating a nice pool of black gunk about 4 to 6 foot in diameter each time the washer would go into the drain cycle. So since we got a new washer and had cleaned the floor under the old one and around the drain - I called Roto-rooter and had them fix the floor drain so it would stop flooding. We apparently need to do some preventative maintenance so it will not happen again. So I bought their jug of stuff to pour down the kitchen drain once a month to help eat all the black gunk out of the pipes and keep the water flowing. Roto-rooter cost $200. Ouch!

I was so happy to get my laundry done yesterday and not have the floor puddle up with nasty water. And while I was doing the laundry I put together the heavy duty plastic shelving I purchased on Friday for the basement. We seriously need to get stuff up off the floor and onto shelving to save some space and clean up the basement. I bought 5 shelving units that consists of five shelves each. I put them all together but made them into “four” shelf units which made an extra shelving unit out of the unused shelves. So I bought 5 and ended up with 6 shelving units!

Today I want to start going through the mess in the basement and getting them organized up onto the shelving units. I’m going to take before and after pictures of the basement. It is really scary looking right now. Everything is piled up on the floor to waist height and there is a ton of junk that could just be thrown away!

Shannon was going through a stack of folded clothes in the basement and stumbled accross an all black wooly worm. He initially thought it was a gigantic spider because the wooly worm was curled up and about the size of a half dollar coin. That would be a big spider, but this was a curled up and very much alive wooly worm. He put it in a plastic container and set it on the kitchen table so I could see it the next day. When I got up in the morning it was there on the kitchen table in a nice little plastic container with lots of air holes in it. But when I got home from work it was not in it’s nice little container. I thought Shannon had put it outside but later saw it on the kitchen floor making a get a way in slow motion. So I took two envelopes and made a little scoop to pick the little guy up and placed him in the garden under a protective covering of a plant so a bird wouldn’t get him.

He looked like this picture I found on the web except our little guy was ALL black - no brown. Shannon said that the colorings on him indicate a very wet, cold, bad winter. Oh goody!