Beth's Contradictory Brain

Zach

YouTube just makes it too easy! I'm not sure how long I'll leave the video up on there, but for now - you can see The Kid's rather comic rendition of You Are My Sunshine.

16 Months

In 16 months I'll be 40. Sixteen seems like a big number. But not so much to me.

If I'm average, I'll have half of my life left. And not necessarily the better half. If I'm lucky, and if things like nanotechnology and all the medical discoveries about to be made on all those baby boomers pan out, I'm only 1/3 done with my life. Yes, 120 would be just fine with me. Because if I'm only 1/3 done, there might be less pressure. Pressure for what?

I wish I knew. I've spent my whole life feeling like I want to do something helpful. I want to make a difference in people's lives. When I was in my church going days it seemed simpler, but I can't say that I really felt I was making much difference. I've always believed making a difference can be as simple as smiling at strangers. But I've always wanted something just a little bigger.

Funny - sixteen years ago I graduated college with a sociology degree. Haven't done a thing with it.

Then twelve years ago I got certified to teach. One of my biggest disappointments is that I've never really taught. In one of my life's ironies - if I'd stayed put back where I grew up I almost certainly would have had a teaching job right after student teaching. Instead, I moved to Austin. That might have been one of the worst decisions I've made. Then again, maybe not. Hard to say.

I mostly know the life I want to have. A house, a kid, maybe a job I enjoy, maybe staying home with the kids, some good friends, some small part in the community I live in. I think all that would be enough. And it doesn't seem like any of it should be so hard to obtain.

Sixteen months. 40.

And back again

I made it back home with no travel hassles yesterday. I've never had to fly home for Thanksgiving before, so I was a little worried. But even flying out of DFW and into Pittsburgh yesterday, neither airport had that many people it.

Well, the rest of the stay at the folks' was decent. My zen kicked back in. I even went to the mall Saturday to get out of the house for a while. I thought I might pick up a new cell phone, but that didn't happen. Mine works just fine, but there's a crack next to the antennae.

I decided to check out a movie. I'd like to see Babel, but I thought it might be a little on the sad side. So, I decided to give The Fountain a try. I can not tell you how much it sucked. They've sold it as a love story through the ages. It is no such thing. It's a convoluted mess that barely makes sense. Bad, very bad. And it was dark and gloomy. Oh well.

Home

Ah, it's so good to be out of the house, and by myself! The kid went back to his mother's tonight, so it's a sad time at our house. This every other week stuff is bullshit, but not a thing I can do about it.

Anyway. I made the most of the time I had with him. Tuesday afternoon he and I went ice skating for several hours. He'd never been before, and he loved it! I got a little bit of video on the camera of him out on the ice - not holding the wall or anything, just staking away. He's so cute. Omg, he's got mad skills with the teenage girls. (He's 5!) He'd find one out on the ice while I was taking a break and skate up to her and grab her hand and usually the girl was nice and went a lap around the rink with him before I'd call him over and make him leave her alone. He'll walk up to any pretty girl and just throw his arms around her. It doesn't bode well for the future!

Wednesday we went to see Happy Feet. It sucked. Maybe some people think the animation is cool or something, but mostly I was bored. I realized watching it why I've always been such a big Pixar fan - they don't preach at me. Not that they don't have nice, happy messages, just they don't pound me over the head with the evilness of MAN.

Yesterday he insisted on going ice skating again. This time my brother and Mom tagged along. The Kid found a cute teenage girl who worked on the ice and followed her around most of the time. When I told him to let her work he explained that he was working with her - helping her. Yep.

Other than that we watched one of the Godzilla movies about five times in three days. He absolutely loves them! It was funny, he's been conviced that not only is Godzilla real - he's Godzilla. So the dvd had one of the "making of" features that we watched. Now that he's seen how they build the sets and blow everything up - he wants to build sets in the back yard!

What sucks so much about his mother having him every other week is that it really limits his participation in anything he enjoys - like sports. I'd love to see him get into community theater or something as well. But, hell, she won't even take him to school the weeks she has him, much less anything else.

Now it's two days with the folks, and after five days already I'm pretty burned out. I realized this trip that after 20 years I'm pretty done psychoanalyzing them - they are who they are and they certainly aren't going to change. All I an do is let it all slide like water off a duck!

The food has been great so far! Fantastic turkey and dressing. My chocolate pie came out better than ever. Mom made french toast this morning. Yum.

Hope you all had a great holiday!! I'll be back Monday.

Holiday Travels

I'm about to begin my day long trek to see the family. The weather is a little nicer this morning than I anticipated, which is a good thing. But there should be a few snow showers to drive thru today. For now that's still novel enough to be fun!

It's a two hour drive to the airport. I should get there a couple of hours early, then it's a 3 hour flight. Then... Whataburger!

A week is about four days longer than my normal stay, but it'll be nice to hang with The Kid, eat some good food, and generally spend time in civilization.

Nerdstar's got a couple more days of work before heading to Jersey, where there will be no good food or fun :-)

Update: I made it to the airport with a couple of hours to spare. The Pittsburgh airport is really, really quiet this afternoon - which is a good thing for me I guess. Thankfully, the airport has free wi-fi and I found a plug to plug in the laptop. Web surfing and iPod listening in an airport, twenty years ago I wouldn't have had any idea what those words meant. Hell, maybe even fifteen.

Shout Out

Nerdstar took her oath today to become a commissioned officer in the Army Reserves. Congratulations!!

It was a short, simple ceremony up at her office. There are lots of current and former military members where she works, so they helped her get this done.

It doesn't mean any immediate change for her, she still hasn't found a local unit to belong to, and after she finds that, she has to find an open slot to go to officer school in Arizona for a couple of months. She's got up to 3 years to get that done (I think).

It's still weird being a military wife!! I got to be there, but kinda had to keep it low key.

Spinning Wheels

I'm frustrated with life again. More specifically, with trying to find a job again. I feel like I spent a lot of time and engery this past year getting into phlebotomy so that when Nerdstar got a new job somewhere else, I'd be able to easily find a job as well. And I job that I really enjoy at that.

Well, so far no luck. I had a job interview last week at one of the two major hospitals. The lady said she was interviewing about 13 people for 2 positions. Dang. I haven't heard back and figure that's not a good thing.

It's like Nerdstar and I keep trying to change things up, to move on up, and it just doesn't happen.

I know. It's the holiday season and things are usually slower.

I'm just afraid that if too much time goes by, well, I don't have enough time "in job" to get another one later on.

Bleh.

Yummy

One week till Whataburger!!

Weekend

Before I get to the weekend...

what the hell kind of forcast is this? I've never heard anyone mention that there seems to be some sort of force field over this area of the country that forbids anyone seeing any sunshine except maybe once a week. Sigh.

It's been a decent weekend. Yesterday we went to see Stranger Than Fiction and both enjoyed it. It's a sweet little movie. It was slow in a few places, but that's ok on a rainy Saturday.

Other than that it's been a pretty slow weekend. After all the driving Friday it was nice to sleep late, hang out and relax. Well, Nerdstar needs the rest, me not so much.

Oh yeah. At the movie there were two young men sitting in front of us, I'd say around 18 to 20. Around half way through the movie I looked down and noticed they were holding hands. It was so cute! I mean, this is a pretty small town in a pretty butch area of the country. You could tell they were young and hopefully in love and trying to find their way.

Nerdstar's not familiar with being young and having to steal away to get "together" time when and where you can - but boy it sure brought back memories for me.

Exactly

Mark Steyn writes about the things that make me so worried about last week's election results.

Road Trippin

Nerdstar had the day off from work yesterday AND it was a nice, sunny day (the only one in the forcast for the next seven days) so we decided to head over to Pittsburgh for dinner. I also wanted to check out the drive over before having to drive to the airport next week.

It took us just over 2 hours to drive 80 miles. Huh? In Texas it takes an hour to drive 80 miles :-)

We found out just how out in the middle of nowhere we actually live. The drive was almost all two lane highways, and half of it was under construction - that's what really made the drive frustrating. At least the scenery around here is really nice. I'm already looking forward to many motorcycle rides in the spring and summer.

We live 26 miles away from the nearest major highway, and it's not always heading we were want to go.

I'm looking at a couple of altnernate routes for the drive to the airport next week. One involves driving the 26 miles out of the way to get to the real highway. The other is shorter and closer, but starts the first 1/3 of the trip off on more of those two lane highways.

Next time I/we have to fly, it just might be worth the extra cost to fly from our small town to Pittsburgh.

Oh yeah, dinner was good. We went to Station Square down on the river in downtown Pittsburgh. It was nice, but I think The West End in Dallas is a little more fun.

East Meets West

Breakfast at our house this mourning...

I had the typical scrambled eggs, toast and bacon.

Nerdstar had a package of Ramen into which she added an egg and a little bacon, and a side dish of some sushi she picked up the other day.

I should have taken pics!

??

I totally think Britney and Whitney should go on some massive tour together now that they've cut loose their drag down hubbies. I just can't figure out what the tour should be called...

any suggestions?

Bleh

The little day trip to DC wasn't really all that great.

Nerdstar and I are both terribly disappointed - we didn't even get a good meal out of the trip! Now, we both realize that food is much, much more important to us than to most people. We talk about restaurants and grocery stores in Austin as if we're talking about old friends we've left behind. But still...

The couple we tripped with are much younger than us, they're both in their very early 20s. And we're not sure the guy is all that nice to his g/f.

One of the more amusing/frustrating parts of the trip was the guy and his directions/driving. He was so stereotypical as to be amusing. But, the last part of our drive last night was in some pretty serious fog and he had me a little scared.

It was nice to be in a real, grown up city for a day. The main reason I tagged along yesterday was to get a feel for just how long the drive from here to DC would be and how often we'd feel like making it.

Nerdstar has a three day weekend this weekend, and I think the weather will improve, so hopefully we'll go find some good food!!

I wonder

Would Rosie have been so nice to the couple from Kentucky if they hadn't been so nice to the gay boys in the Race with them?? I doubt it. (I'm mostly referring to her giving them a trip on one of her cruises.)

Exactly

The Year of the Fag

A little advice. Please do NOT become activists. That's not your job. Your job is to entertain us and thankfully, you seem to understand this for the most part. You want to help out the gays? Win an Emmy. Get yourself on the cover of TV Guide or People (for something other than your sexuality). Walk on the red carpet with your boyfriend. Be really good at what you do, avoid scandals or embarrassments, do your best to live a happy, out life and you will have accomplished more for the gay community than any speechmaking or marching you could do. Just be happy, fulfilled and successful (however you define those terms) and future actor fags and singer fags and entertainer fags will never even think of trying to lie about who they are and attempt to fool the public. Just be fabulous.

Go read the whole thing. I couldn't agree more.

Also, how sweet is it that NPH plays one of the funniest, straightest men on tv?

Election Day

Oddly enough, Nerdstar and one of her co-workers have to head to DC today for work. Since it's just a there and back thing, his g/f and I are tagging along.

Because we just moved and aren't registered to vote here, we're not voting today. I'm just so happy that tomorrow the political ads and media guessing games are over!

Wrong Assumptions

It was a mostly dull weekend. Nerdstar had to go to Army drill Friday night, then all day Saturday and Sunday. So that meant we didn't really get to do anything fun. She still hasn't gotten word on when she can take her oath for her promotion, so we don't know if/when that will happen, or what will happen after that in her military career.

We experienced some sticker shock (for lack of a better term) when she got her first paycheck. When she agreed to take this job at a certain salary, we picked that salary partly because it seemed reasonable, and partly because we thought it would be a decent raise from her army pay. Well, what we didn't know is that apparently if Uncle Sam owns your ass, he doesn't take out very much in taxes. In the Army you get lots of pay "extras" like housing and such, that equals lots of money, that I'm not thinking gets taxes. So although I'm pretty sure her base pay is more, her takehome pay will now be substantially less due to taxes. That was incredibly depressing to realize.

Part of the reason we moved here was that life was supposed to be cheaper on a higher salary. Well, both rent and things like cable and utilities appear to be more than we were hoping, while take home pay is a lot less.

Couple all of that with the outlook for me getting a job is also a lot more grim than I anticipated and I've been rather depressed the past week or so.

But, that's how life is. If I know nothing else, I know that things will change again. Hopefully for the better.

Furry Visitors

We had our first little mouse in the house last night. We were about to get into our warm, comfy bed and had told Ramen to go to bed when we heard him scratching at his bed. Hmmm. So we turned the light back on and Nerdstar went to see what he was after - it was a cute little grey mouse! Yikes.

Now, down in Texas I was used to all sorts of things coming into the house, geckos, big roach like things, even a couple of snakes and a huge spider. But we've never had little furry things in the house before.

We think it's funny it was the dog and not one of the two cats who caught it. Although we're just thankful one of them did!

We finally got it away from Raman and gathered it up in a big towell and threw it outside. We both agreed that we could live with it if the pets kill the mice, but we couldn't kill them ourselves.

Crazy

It hasn't really been that long, but not having a job is already driving me crazy. I don't know why it's so hard to be unemployed. I think part of it is that I really thought I'd get a job fairly fast. Nope. I really, really want to stick with being a phlebotomist. I don't want to go back to doing some sort of office work - although I might find a job faster that way. The very idea crushes my soul. It sucks that I had just gotten into the groove of my last job. Bleh.

So cross your fingers and say your prayers that I find a job soon.