It's been almost a month since I updated this; you'd think I were losing interest or something. It's more the case that I have all these little things that happen that, when I think I should update my page, don't seem significant enough on their own to warrant a second glance, but taken as a whole represent a lot of activity that I should record somewhere.

My emotions about my job are steadily declining. This is mostly due to two major factors:

First, I have nothing to do all day in my cube. This leads me to feel as if I could be fired at any minute, the instant they realize that I contribute nothing to the company structure. They hired me en masse with a bunch of other people, half of whom they laid off when they realized that they had not enough work for us all. They still don't have enough work for us leftovers, but they don't want to get rid of us 'cause it'd be bad for publicity or something, so I still have my job, but it's only a matter of time before that stops.

Second, the bathroom situation is disintegrating even further. The legal department has ruled that even if I were to internally transfer to a division within the company at which nobody knew of my past, they would feel obligated and compelled to inform human resources of my situation and require me to avoid using the ladies' room until after I had finished my surgery. I consider this a gross invasion of my privacy and I'm trying to get a meeting set up with the legal department to express this to them direction instead of taking out my frustrations on HR, but in light of the other issue mentioned above, pushing my luck with trying to get equal recognition is only hastening my employment demise, so I'm trapped.

The only way I see out of this dual bind is to find another job, and I've been looking heavily for one, but as of yet I've met with remarkably little success. I have a résumé that screams out for an administration job, and I'm trying to get back into development because I don't enjoy being sysadmin work, but nobody wants to believe that I have any development skills because I haven't put them to use since I graduated, my Master's Degree notwithstanding.

So, for now, I've been advised by both of my mates to sit down, stay quiet and keep my muzzle shut about the bathroom issue, so that I can make a clean getaway into another position. I emailed the ACLU, though, a few days ago, and I'm interested in hearing what they have to say about the whole situation.

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Ryan just came through for a visit, and I always forget how much I miss being around some people until they're not there. I hadn't seen him in nearly six months, and the chance to cuddle with him, to talk with him, to share with him again was wonderful. We watched Being John Malkavich, and I had about the same response to it that I had to Blair Witch Project: it was artistic and technically superior, but not a film I would want to see twice. We ended up staying up for several hours after we'd planned on going to sleep that night, talking about the movie and then related threads in this huge webwork of connections until the sun was coming up and we were yawning every third word.

We watched I Married a Strange Person again, and I'm still in love with Bill Plympton's animation style. I wish I could find that on VHS; I refuse to buy a DVD player until I can get a PS2, 'cause there's no point in me paying for two separate units. I'm not enough of a videophile to care that there're artifacts or bad decoding or whatever it is that's the complaint of the week about why the PS2 is a bad unit to own; my eyesight is so bad I couldn't tell the difference between the digital and tape versions of Toy Story 2 that Jessie insisted were dramatically different in quality. Ryan's computer monitor made a nice substitute TV in the short-term, but I wouldn't want to try to do that too often.

Once again, I managed to miss seeing Network, which is a movie that Ryan's been trying to get me to watch for two years now and that I keep saying I'll see but that I never manage to remember to rent. I finally have a television on which I don't mind sitting down to watch movies, but I never think about going and renting any because I'm forever using it as a monitor to my PSX or Jessie's old Nintendo. I'd hook my Zircon Fairchild up to it, or go and get my Atari 400 back from my father if I thought I could get it back from him. I probably could; he never plays it any more anyway. At some point, I'm going to remember to see this film so I can tell Ryan what I think of it, and I just hope it's worth the hype and the two years of waiting. We differ so greatly on what makes a good movie that I'm almost afraid to see it and ruin the magic.

In the end, I'm so glad he stopped here on his way. It's always nice to have family around, and he's been close to me for a very long time. I'd be lying if I claimed I weren't interested in him, but he's taken and hopelessly homosexual, and thus I'm simply pleased to call him my brother.

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Speaking of visits, my old roommate from Australia, David Basden, came through here a few weeks ago. After having not seen him in over a year, I found out almost out of nowhere that he was going to be taking a round-the-world trip out of Australia to see the sites and wanted to stop by my apartment. I was pleasantly shocked and said yes almost instantly. Seeing him at the airport and the look of recognition and surprise on his face was worth everything.

It felt to good to be able to reconnect to a piece of my past that I'd thought I'd lost. The last time I'd seen him in person, I was still struggling to hold together the shreds of my identity as a male, to keep a relationship that I
had known for years was doomed to failure but was afraid to leave, to maintain the facade of nothing having changed in the last seven years. Being able to be myself and still have him recognize me for who I was, and who I wanted to be, was a wonderful experience.

There was some bitter in the sweet, but there always is at times like this and I don't regret any of it. I learned a lot about my ex-boyfriend that I wish I had had the courage to face years ago, but I'm glad I learned them. If you're reading this, I want you to know that I forgive you. I should have left you five years before I did, but I forgive you anyway.

It feels so good to be able to say that.