July 2016

The sky is gray. 

Testing photo uploads. Cooking on a block of salt. 

I was in the local Subway picking up a sandwich for lunch because I’m a lazy person, especially on Friday. There was a woman with a two-ish year old toddler either running around smashing bags of chips or attached to her hip because he didn’t want to smash potato chips anymore. He wanted a bag of Doritos with his lunch but the mother told him he was going to have a cookie, because it was obvious to everyone that the child definitely needed more sugar, especially in the dose of a huge cookie from Subway.

The woman paid and started getting settled at her table when she bleated out, from one side of the restaurant to the other, “Where do I find the milk?” She yelled this on a couple of occasions because the cashier, working behind the counter and getting customers through the line in an expedient fashion, didn’t realize that the question was posed for him. Eventually her question was heard and she was directed to the cooler in another corner of the restaurant where it was easy to see a wide selection of milk, bottled soft drinks and the like. She didn’t say thank you.

She ordered a large cup and was making her way to the self-service fountain when I was up there putting ice in my cup for a refreshing glass of iced tea.  I backed away because the chip smasher followed her up there and I didn’t want to spill or drop my meal before getting the heck out of that restaurant.  She stopped in front of the napkins and straws and took two pills while her child pulled at her pants.

“Mommy is taking two Ibuprophen”, she said to the toddler. Apparently he knows what Iburprophen is, or at the very least there’s a lot of pain relievers used in his household.

“You’re driving me insane and a pain in the ass, but I love you.”

This kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I get that even the best behaved kids can be holy terrors at times, and while this toddler was irritating me, I didn’t find his behavior to be too far out of bounds for a young lad his age. Yes, he needed some discipline but that comes with the territory of being a parent. And while I have never. been a parent, I can say that I’m pretty sure I would never call a young child “a pain in the ass” to his face. Maybe at the end of the day when I’m hiding in my bedroom after bedtime or something, but not directly to the kid in a crowded restaurant. Especially with a bullhorn voice like she had.

When my sister and I were kids, around this time of year we would occasionally be bratty to my Mom and she’d say, “I don’t like you right now but I’ll always love you.”

It’s no wonder that passive-aggressive behavior is a particular pet peeve of mine. Or maybe I’m just the sensitive sort that needs to rail it in a notch.

My point of this musing is that no one knows what a youngster or toddler is going to remember as they make their way through life. At nearly 48 years old I can easily remember events from before I was two years old. Some things stick. Words help mold the individual.

We should choose our words wisely. Even in the most stressful of times.

I spent Tuesday until tonight working in the Upstate New York city of Rochester. This was the opportunity to meet my new boss and work with some of the teammates I hadn’t seen in a while. It was a productive time and I’m excited about the new challenges that lie ahead for me on my career track. In that respect my life is good.

I checked into the hotel after work on Tuesday and had a pleasant night’s sleep in the Radisson. The hotel in downtown Rochester looked quite tired but folks seemed pleasant enough and the room had a Sleep Number bed so I figured it couldn’t be all bad. I was feeling rested when I left for work Wednesday morning.  When I returned after a team dinner Wednesday night, I discovered the key card no longer opened my door. A security guard was walking by at the time and offered to let me in. I found it odd that he didn’t ask me for any sort of identification, he just unlocked the door and in I went.

The room had not been touched by housekeeping. Several of my drawers were ajar. I went down to the lobby to get new keys since the old ones no longer worked. When I came back I entered the room and called Earl to catch him up on the day. It was then that I discovered that a couple of items were missing from my room.

My 2013 15-inch MacBook Pro (personal one) had been removed from my Army Ruck Sack.

My USB multi-device charger was no longer plugged into the nightstand lamp and all four cables were missing.

The Apple Watch case that contained my black leather watch strap was gone.

I dialed up “Find My iPhone” on my iPhone, which can also find my Mac and iPads, and the MacBook Pro was powered down. I sent a command to lock and erase as soon as it was powered up.

I reported the missing items to the front desk. I was told that when I checked in on Tuesday the clerk hadn’t done it properly and they thought the room was empty. They had charged me a “no show fee”. I told them that I spent a wonderful night on the Sleep Number bed and that the clerk had made a big deal about that bed Tuesday at check-in. Because the room showed empty, they gave the room to someone else while I was at work. Apparently that person entered the room, saw that it was occupied and went back down to the lobby to request another room.

Apparently they took a long, hard look at the stuff in my room and decided to let their fingers do the walking.

I reported the incident to security, who asked me a bunch of questions and began an investigation. I advised that we should call the police and he didn’t really seem super motivated to do so, so I did myself.  Three hours later the Rochester Police came in and I filed a report. They gave me a case number and left the lobby to go talk to security.

As of this moment my laptop has not been powered on or had already been erased. I’m not too worried about my data because I’m a bit fanatical about passwords and encryption and the like. Everything is backed up at home so I’m not worried that I lost anything.

I’m just pissed.

I received a call today from the head of security at the hotel that the laptop had still not been recovered but they had turned a claim into their insurance company. I hope to hear from them within the next day or so. I will hound them in unbelievable ways if I don’t hear from them by Monday.

When I was speaking with the police officer he indicated that they have been called to the hotel “too often” over the past several months. This did not feel encouraging, though I have to admit that the police officer was very nice, very thorough and very professional. I still have a lot of respect for the police.

So I’m without a laptop for a little while. It’s time to really get to know this iPad Pro I’ve been carrying about for the past couple of month.

I’m still pissed, though.

I’m working in an office today. Recent organizational changes at work have found me a new boss. He’s relatively close to my home office this week so I traveled to western New York to meet with him and a couple of my team mates. I still have a great gig and I am still quite content. 

When I travel to Greenville, S.C. for work I sometimes have a hard time working in a cubicle with typical office chatter in progress around me. The office here in Rochester is fairly quiet; I can hear only occasional conversation and other ambient noises that reveal the fact that I am not working my home office. However, there are is one noise that I’m finding distracting and that’s the clop-clop-clopping of flip flops. Someone in the office has been walking around with very loose fitting sandals of some sort.

When it comes to your typical corporate settings, I tend to be on the conservative type. When I worked at the radio station in the mid 1990s, I would wear shorts because it was a Fun! Radio Station Atmosphere! with plenty of Frivolity! But as I moved to a more corporate environment, I found myself sticking to the tried and true khakis and a collared shirt; usually button down but sometimes a polo shirt. Dressing this way just put me into the mood to work.

Now, when Earl and I go out to a restaurant or something in the summertime, I’ve been known to wear my sandals with my khaki pants and rest of my business casual attire. But I can’t bring myself to wear sandals or flip flops to the office, especially when they’re loud and clopping sounding.

The company does have a Friday casual attire policy that includes shorts during the summertime, but I can’t bring myself to go to an office in shorts and sandals or the like. I just wouldn’t feel like working or be in the mindset to make the sorts of decisions and the like that I do on a daily basis. Casual attire at work feels scruffy to me.

One other trend I’ve noticed a little bit is businessmen (think lawyers or stock brokers or something) in three piece suits but with an unshaven face. They don’t have a beard, they don’t have trimmed up stubble, they just didn’t shave. As an apparently conservative thinking gay man, I don’t think I would be as comfortable giving my millions to a stock broker that can’t find time to shave. If said handler of my millions wants to grow a beard, I’m sure he can do it on vacation.  If you can’t get out of my bed in time to shave before work then how do I know you’re not going to be lax about selling or buying stock on my behalf?

As I plow my way through my late 40s it’s becoming quite apparent that I’m turning to one of the older, conservative types. Now get off my lawn.

I’ve been having a little bit of writers’ block lately. Over the past couple of days I’ve sat down on several occasions to write a blog entry but I start overthinking the topic; what I have formulated in my head doesn’t seem really important enough for public consumption. It’s rare for me to worry about such a thing, but I think recent events in our world has kind of skewed my perception of my place in the world or something.

***

The Orlando shootings last month really rocked my world. I haven’t really been a gay pride gay for a number of years; there’s a certain amount of outrageousness to me that I don’t really find appealing. As I get older my Myers Briggs INFJ tendencies seem to be getting stronger; crowds just don’t do it for me anymore. But with the Orlando shooting, I have found myself a little bit bolder about speaking my mind and just being who I am. I still didn’t feel the need to attend a Pride event but I’m a happy, if somewhat atypical gay man.

***

My friend Jeff likes to use the word “Prideful” a lot. The word was not really part of my lexicon before I met him. He lives in North Carolina and it seems to be a popular word down there. The drawl is optional. We got into a discussion about prideful tendencies lately. I think he was surprised when I remarked that many of the gay men that choose to have these big, voluminous beards seem quite prideful to me. I likened the beards to peacock feathers and the men strutting around like they’re quite the pretty piece as they make their way through a crowd. I made these comments from experience; when I had the larger beard (in ginger no less), I know that I was quite peacocky about it. Now I’m not saying that I set the tempo when it comes to beards and peacocks, but I know a prideful strut when I see it and there’s too much of that in the world. What many of these men need (and please let me be clear that I’m not speaking about ALL the men with huge beards) is a shave and a good dose of humility.

***

My love-hate relationship with Facebook continues. I went and followed some political comments from “friends” and sat back and wondered why I’m friends with these people in the first place. I’m so tired of reading about why the other candidate is wrong. I want to read about why their candidate is the right candidate. We need more positivity in the United States. That’s probably one of the biggest problem we have in the States right now.

Facebook has that Passive-Aggressive feature where you can remain friends with an individual but not see their posts anymore. I say screw that. Piss me off enough times and I’ll just unfriend them. I still maintain my steadfast rule that if you promote a Kardashian in any way, you’re off my list, no matter the social network, social settings or place setting at dinner, for that matter. The same rule applies to game requests on Facebook.

***

Earl and I have continued our binge watching of “Scandal”. We are currently three-quarters of the way through Season 3 and I can say, without a trace of hesitation in my voice, that this series has turned into a typical Shonda Rimes serial where there’s more Shock! Awe! and OMG You Won’t Believe This! moments than entirely possible in any sort of reality based universe. “Scandal” jumped the shark midway through Season 3. People are killing other people. Teeth are being pulled. Men are licking women’s faces. A prisoner is eating her own wrist. Blood is being thrown about. Screaming. Twists. Turns. The Shock and Awe is non stop. We are continuing through Season 3 and then going to decide if we want to continue the series. It showed such promise when we watched the first and most of the second season, but with the third season it’s just gone completely off the rails. In reality, Season 6 starts sometime this fall, we are now not so sure that we are going to try to binge our way to catch up in time for the latest season premiere.