No emoticon exists for the mood in which I find myself today. Perhaps that's a good thing; it forces me to express it longhand rather than try to use a cute shortcut. I had intended to do so anyway, but rather than try to encapsulate anything I can simply write it out in full and analyze it once it's recorded. I tend to do better on second or third review of my ideas anyway. I'm an excellent writer, but a lousy orator.

Friday ended up being a pseudo-quasi-semi-half day, insofar as we got our first good snowfall of the year and it left approximately four inches on Pottstown's streets. Now, to people in New England, four inches of snow probably doesn't sound like much, but there are several factors in this that make it a lot more than it seems:

• I've had a lot of accidents due to inclement weather. I've actually totaled one car because of black ice and seriously banged up another. I've also wrecked a car due to heavy rain and had multiple spin-outs in one night because of light snowfall. I'm not exactly what I would call a good bad-weather driver, so I wasn't exactly eager to go take the Escape Vessel out for a spin.
• Pottstown doesn't plow its surface streets. I've heard reports from a number of people that once on the major roadways, everything was "fine" aside from the occasional gust or drift, but looking at the ground from my bedroom window on Friday morning, there would have been no way to tell that. Seriously, it looked from my vantage point as if nothing had been done at all to deal with the snow that had accumulated overnight, and more was on its way down.


• I'm from Texas. Having lived in Pennsylvana for five years now, and having spent at least two years out of the country, I'm not exactly the most Texan of Texans, but the truth is that all my training in motor-vehicle operation came at a time when a dusting was enough to shut down the city and ice was something you put in your tea. I really still have no good idea how to drive in snow, even though I'm learning.

All these factors combined, I worked from home on Friday, and while I got a heck of a lot done as far as actual productive work goes, I felt the whole day as if I weren't really "at work." I was busy checking email every fifteen
minutes, monitoring servers, checking on production, and making sure things ran as they were supposed to run, but at no point did I ever really feel like I was doing the daily grind. It felt like a day off, and it was a wondrous and beautiful thing. If I thought I could get it, I'd ask for more days like that, and I'd make having a day out of the office every week a condition for my continued employment.

Having Friday feel like such a relaxing day made Saturday feel like a Sunday, and somehow I got it under my skin that it was Sunday, even though it wasn't and I knew it wasn't. It was... very odd. All I can really say for sure about Saturday is that I spent the day thinking what a drag work the next day would be, only to remember that I had another day off and I could enjoy myself. It was an incredible sensation, one I highly recommend if you can trick your brain into producing that sensation.

Saturday also produced another feeling, one I don't endorse quite so strongly but still feel was beneficial. I got a royal burr under my tail to go clean. Somehow I decided I'd gotten sick of the dishes in the kitchen sitting dirty, and half of my clothes in piles in the floor in our room, so I announced to Jessie that she had the option of picking one of the two chores, dishes or laundry, and that I would do the other, but that I wasn't doing both and I wanted them both done by Sunday night. She looked at me as if I'd been replaced with a Pod Person, but she picked dishes and that left me with laundry to tackle on Sunday. I actually found myself looking forward to doing laundry the next day. It's creepy in hindsight, but at the time all I could feel was determined and pleased.

Of course, we weren't the only ones busy on Sunday. Kitana moved out last night.

Many years ago, I had a plan. I wanted to take people who were down on their luck into my house, give them a chance to get their lives back in order, and eventually see them move out into the world on their own and know that they would themselves spread the wealth. I never dreamed of making the world at large a better place, but I knew, I knew that I could make a difference in the life of one person at a time. I could improve one person's life, and that person could then go on and improve things for someone else while I helped a third, and like an empathic Fibonacci expansion, my efforts could have a tangible impact on the world.

Last night, for the first time, it worked.

About two months ago, Kitana said to me that she hated to drop a bombshell on me, but it looked like a friend of hers was in need of some help; he was on the verge of losing his living space, and he needed somewhere to go. She had offered to put a roof over his head while he got his life back in order, but that meant getting her own place. She also asked if we'd be alright with Stranger living with us for a few weeks while she found an apartment, but that as soon as she could, they'd be moving into an apartment. It took longer than just a few weeks, but it did finally happen, and last night she packed almost all of the last of her belongings into her car and headed out to her new living quarters with her new roommate in tow. All she left was one load of laundry and a trash can she couldn't fit in her trunk.

Someone to whom I extended my hand arrived, got a job, got ahead on her bills, heard of another friend in need, moved out into her own place, and extended her own hand out in turn.

If it never goes any further than that, if it never happens again, I can die knowing I did something right. I believed in this model of kindness, and it happened. Words cannot adequately express how I feel about this situation right now. I feel... I feel vindicated, even though no-one ever nay-sayed me.

Thank you, Kitana. Thank you for moving in, and thank you for moving out. 

---

In other news, I have a new project site on which I'm working: False Positive Productions.

So far, we only have the one design, but I hope over time to expand this. My intent with every image, every product, is to subvert the language by which people frame the debate over contentious issues such as same-sex marriage, freedom of religion, the war in Iraq, stem-cell research and the like. It is my goal to take back the power to define the terms of the dicussion from those who have usurped it in the name of their regressive social and technological agenda.

I know the site is rather bare-boned right now, but I'm going to be working with Jessie in the near future to turn it into something more professional. I'm really not the visual artist. I can do ideas, but she's the layout and design whiz. She actually made the images herself; I just came up with the general idea. I personally love the way they turned out, and I can't wait to talk her into making more like them.

I don't like how high the prices are, but I'm bound by the limitations of the company underneath. The shirt itself is USD 9.90. Each design, front and back, was USD 4.50. That brings the base price of the shirt, absent any profit, to USD 18.90. The triple-extra-large shirts add three dollars to the base price, but in every instance my "profit" is USD 1.10. I'm really not out to gouge anyone, seriously. If I could sell it cheaper and make anything for it, I would.

I'm tired of just sitting on the sidelines talking about what I can do for the larger community to make the world better. I want to start doing something about it. I want to start getting the words out into the hands of the people at large to combat the mindset perpetuated by the conservative and autocratic pundits who are trying not only to frame the debate on their terms, but to prevent the discussion from even happening on any terms other than their own.

To everyone reading this, I encourage you not only to check in with False Positive Productions regularly for new products and to tell others who might be interested in owning such a shirt, but to create your own site. Be your own media machine. Figure out what you want to say and how you want to say it, and then get your message out there. If you want to write, write. If you want to draw, draw. If you want to be political, campaign. Don't be a passive consumer. Be an interactive contributor.

This is your world too. 

I think today's a personal record: I spent over eight-hundred dollars at the mall and didn't come home with anything.

First, I went to Sears and bought a dishwasher. I promised Jessie that I would buy one as one of the highest priority items after I started getting paychecks from my new job, and Friday marked the depositing of my second
paycheck, so it was time to buy one. I'd originally intended to get one from Best Buy, but we need a hookup installed before we can get a dishwasher, and Best Buy's technicians don't do hookups. All of their policies are geared towards replacing an existing unit, not putting in a new one where none was before, so they couldn't help us. Sears' sales reps claimed that they could do the hookup installation as well as the dishwasher installation, but that would be extra on top of what we'd already paid. They also said, however, that if we chose to cancel the installation we would get a full and instant refund on the dishwasher purchase itself. Thus, I felt safe in dropping
five-hundred-forty-three dollars and change on a tall-tub Kenmore with a three-year full warranty, delivery and installation.

Always get the warranty. I cannot stress this enough. When it breaks—and it will break—the warranty will save you. If you get the warranty, it may not break. If you do not, it almost certainly will. If you don't get it, and it breaks, you will wish you'd had it. 

After that, I wandered through Wilson's Leather and found a leather trenchcoat that I really, really liked. It's a men's coat, which annoys me mildly, but they will not make a women's leather trench that fits me right. I can guarantee it. So, a men's coat it is. They had two styles, one with a removable liner and one without. Each was on sale, from $350 to $250, or $425 to $270. They had the ones with removable liners up to large, and those without up to extra-large, but none in XL with a removable liner, so I asked the clerk if they carried such a thing. He checked with his manager, who informed him—and me—that they did make them, but that they were
out and likely wouldn't get any more considering the season and the fact that they hadn't sold the ones they had. I asked the clerk to call around for me, and after four tries he found a store that had the one that I wanted in the
size I needed, and they even deliver! So, I paid an extra five dollars to have it delivered, and I'll have a new coat in two or three days.

The only real problem with all of this is the sense that being as in debt as I am, these kinds of expenditures are... not frivolous, but ill-conceived. Poorly planned. I have more important uses of my money, going to things like debt repayment and savings in case I lose my job again and retirement funds so I can quit my job one day. These kinds of expenses, especially the trench coat, really make me feel like I could've done something better with the money.

All that said, though, I recognize that the quality of life is as important as the quantity, and right now these are things that will greatly improve the quality of my life. I have wanted a trenchcoat for years, and having found one that fits that was on sale makes me incredibly happy. Plus, I needed a new coat; the one that I've got really doesn't serve as a useful winter jacket, even if I did wear it as such. As for the dishwasher... it's a luxury, I admit, but one that I really think we could use at this point. Jessie's getting sick of doing the dishes, and with her arthritis, she just has trouble keeping on top of them. I could do them, but I get so little time in the evenings to just relax because of my commute that I really have no desire to spend my time working on more chores. Keeping up with laundry and cooking is enough for me.

Plus, it feels good to spend money like this, in a roundabout fashion. If I'm well-off enough to buy these kinds of things, I'm well-off enough to help people again. I may have to watch when and how, but I can do so and not
suffer for it. I like being able to do that. Plus, even little things like not having stacks of dirty dishes on the kitchen counter will make me feel better about my house, and that's important to me.

One thing I'd love to do is schedule a refinance on my house. I know I just bought it, but I'd love to be able to roll my standing credit card debt—or even just a chunk of it—into my mortgage payment to lower my bills. Right now I'm dropping $600 a month on one credit card, and then balance-transferring $400 off of the other onto it. It's taking down my debts, but not nearly as fast as I'd like. I could do more, but I need to rebalance my budget again and actually see what things cost me before I tweak anything else.

I'm also looking forward to upping my spending on my retirement account, but for now that's just waiting on my dividends to roll over into more stock. There's a critical mass I'm hoping to achieve, of every dividend payment I
receive earning me enough to buy more stock, but until my dividends reach a certain level, I'd be paying too high a percentage of my expenditures on commissions to make that viable. It'll be a while before I'm at that level,
but once I'm there, things should snowball nicely. 

I can do anything I want, if only I have the patience and focus. 

Okay, now that I'm almost two weeks into my job, I figure it's time to talk a bit about what I actually do now. I work for T-Mobile in their Application Support department, which means that when software breaks, it's my job to fix it, or at least to look at it and figure out why, then report my findings to my superiors. I don't actually write code on the job, but I do wade hip-deep in Oracle, SAP, and real-time production and supply chain issues, so I'm still furthering my job skills.

The curious thing about my office is that there's no HR department in my building. None. Anything human-resources or benefits-related has to go to Atlanta or Seattle to one of the home offices. So, the first day I arrived, I filled out all my paperwork on-site with my team lead as witness, then overnighted it all to Atlanta to the IT HR office. The woman with whom I spoke on the phone said that I should have an employee number by Thursday at
the latest, and that I could start filling out benefits paperwork as soon as one was assigned.

I finally got my employee number on Wednesday. My paperwork literally went missing for four days. They couldn't find the overnight envelope from DHL. Just when it seemed that I would have to redo everything and fax it directly to Seattle, though, they found the originals and spared me the need. It served as a delay, but nothing critical. 

I'm slowly pulling myself up to speed with everything I need to know at my new position, but there's a lot to learn. My team lead suggested that there was a six-month learning curve before I'd be out of the hand-holding stages. Six months. That's a heck of an investment. I don't think I've ever worked at a company that had such a long lead-in before being utterly production-worthy. I'm a little humbled, and a little nervous, but I think I'll do fine.

Most of my days so far have consisted of paperwork, reading documentation, and sitting in on meetings over the phone. I'm the only person in my department in my office; everyone else is down in Georgia. At some point, there'll be a counterpart to my position in Denver, but right now I'm serving both facilities, one remotely. This means most days I never see my boss, and I hear from my team lead on the phone every few hours to see how I'm doing. Mostly how I'm doing is "swamped with paper." I'm sure it will all make more sense once I have logins to the system and I can start actually going through the QA environment, testing things and seeing how they work instead of just reading about how they're supposed to work. For now, I'm sort of just treading mental water.

Come to think of it, I don't think I've worked at a company with an honest, genuine quality assurance environment for testing in three years. Scary.

Even better than the work, though, are the benefits. They covered Jessie. No questions. It was anti-climactic. When the website kicked back my request to have Jessie covered as my wife, I called the internal help desk
expecting to have to kick and scream and make ugly noises at people, but the rep on the other end said, "Oh, yeah, that's not really bug, but the website's just not coded to handle your situation. Print the form and fax it, then call the benefits rep and explain what's up. Here's her name and number."

All of my righteous indignation melted instantly.

I called the benefits rep, expecting a little more hassle, but then found out that I wasn't the first person at the company to deal with a legally-married same-sex spouse incurred through sex change. Blink. I'm not special! I could cry!

Actually, I am special: I'm the first new hire at the company bringing this problem in from outside. She said "email me—if you're comfortable doing so—an explanation of why she's your wife and not just your girlfriend, and I'll stick it in your file and then when they audit and see it, they'll just ignore it and go away." I did so, and an hour later, she wrote me back saying we were confirmed in the benefits plan under "Employee + Spouse".

I think I'm going to like it here. 

---

As of today, I'm restarting the Weight Chart. A few days ago, I started a new diet plan. Still doing the low-carb thing; that seems to help, though of course at this point it's nearly impossible to tell what works and what doesn't. However, I remember reading somewhere once that it's better for the metabolism to take in five or six smaller meals a day, rather than three or two larger ones. So, combining A with B, I've been breaking my daily food intake out to five smaller meals scattered throughout the day:

• Breakfast at 06h30 when I get up, usually eggs and yoghurt.
• Brunch at 10h00, lunch meat and veggies.
• Lunch at 13h30, more lunch meat, more veggies.
• Tea at 17h00, even more lunch meat and possibly a pudding cup or some beets if I feel fancy
• Supper at 20h30, something I cook at home.

If each mini-meal—I prefer to think of them as "mealettes"—is around 250 calories, then my daily intake is
1250, or about five-eighths what I should be eating to maintain minimum weight.

So goeth the theory, anyway.

So far, it seems to be working. Only time will tell if I can keep this up for long; most people don't eat this way, and I'm scheduled to go out of town for a week on a business trip where food-prep will be dificult. Still, I'm seeing some movement on the scale and my hunger hasn't been an issue, so something's going right.

I want to be thin; now I have to want it enough.