Ponderings and Musings

Today’s magic number is 10 percent. Back in the day they used to write “10 per cent”, with “per cent” as two separate words, because it really is just that if you think about it. 10 per cent means 10 per one hundred.

I wonder if they still write “per cent” in other English speaking countries. I’ll have to look into that when I finish this blog entry.

10 per cent. That’s the other shoe that dropped today. Yesterday it was a workforce reduction. For those that remain, it’s 10 per cent. Not a reduction in pay, mind you, but a reduction in the number of hours per week. And yes, I am paid an hourly rate (which is a very good thing when it comes to on-call!)

It’s not as bad as the rumour mill predicted. But then again, rumours are usually wildly inaccurate. So in that sense it could have been worse.

Am I happy about it? Nope. But it could have been worse.

We do what we have to do.

People all over the world are losing their jobs, their investments, their homes and the security of their future because of mistakes that have been made. A select number of greedy individuals have impacted the lives of millions. I believe the line from “Angels in America” is “Life will be unbearable for a long time before it becomes impossible”.

It’s a good thing I’m a survivor.

Well today has certainly been a Monday. While I am quite happy to be off-call (at least for the next two weeks), my glee of being off-call was deterred by what many of us are facing these days.

“Workforce Reduction”.

Many Americans (and people across the world, for the matter) are working for companies that are cutting back their workforce in these turbulent economic times. The company I work for is no different. There was hope that we could weather out the storm without layoffs but apparently those that make these decisions decided it couldn’t be helped, so today there were meetings with selected individuals, followed by empty boxes being filled, passwords being changed and a few tears flowing.

I did not get laid off. This was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak day.

Today I shook the hand of a man who had a technical prowess that I admired very much and then, along with my co-workers, wished him well as he made his way to exit the building. He was a good teacher. I hope I learned enough from him.

And the bumpy ride continues.

So it’s Friday and there is much rejoicing across the land. It is a nearly picture perfect day here in Central New York, it’s sunny, breezy and 61 degrees Fahrenheit. Naturally I am sitting indoors at a cubicle doing my best to be friendly on the phone helping customers with their technically related issues.

Technically I don’t offer much more than technical support. I thought it would be fun to write that sentence. I don’t know why.

I don’t have a lot on my plate for the weekend that lies ahead; Earl is out of town with his family and I am on call. I might make it to a birthday party for my nephew if the on call gods cooperate, but I won’t be able to determine that until the very last minute.

Looking over my blog I realised that I haven’t many entries this week. I think part of this can be due to my participation on Twitter and the like; when I am constantly updating tweets and such it seems redundant to type a longer entry here. Part of me wants to fight against this trend and sit back, think and ponder about my words and then write something that has some meaning and is longer than 140 characters. Twitter was fun, and still is for the most part, but now that it’s becoming as popular as AOL was in it’s day I’m starting to lose interest in the service.

And don’t even get me started on Facebook.  Love the concept, hate the new interface. It’s just the way it is.

I have been writing in this blog since August 2001. It is my intent to continue to do so, regardless of how many services try to sway me to their sexy alternatives.

So I am back from my very first chiropractor appointment. As I continue my quest for a healthy existence without artificial means, chiropractic care seemed like the next natural step along this path. Coupled with my meditation practice, exercise and my upcoming acupuncture appointment, I think I’ll feel 18 again come my 41st birthday.

The appointment went very well. I have had a tension headache for the past 36 hours or so. After an explanation as to what to expect and then my sharing as to where I was feeling out of whack, the chiropractor did a quick neck and back adjustment on me.

Headache gone.

My neck snap, cracked and popped like it has never done before. The doctor said “wow” in a deep voice on several occasions. “You have some really tense muscles in your back”, he said as he worked his way up and down my spine. “You should consider a deep tissue massage.”

w00t! I love those!

After throwing my head around and making a lot of noise with my neck, he adjusted my back a bit, making it crack where it has never cracked before. We then talked about what he felt was going on with my back and neck and he recommended a couple of visits in a couple of weeks. Now, several people have warned me about having to sign a contract to commit to a dozen or so chiropractic visits and then I would be going for the rest of my life after that. Here’s the thing. I was not pressured to sign anything, he gave me valid reasons as to why I should come back to his office for two visits in two weeks and then he talked about keeping my body tuned up afterwards. Our discussion was logical and made sense. I’ve done my reading. I feel very comfortable with this approach. I’m looking forward to my next visit.

And right now I feel absolutely amazing!

I have discovered that having the radio on in the office is really distracting. Especially when the radio station in question is one of those annoying “lite” stations that thrive on the likes of Delilah at night and play boring, down-tempo tracks 75% of the time and then claim to be all fun because they play “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” every Friday at noon. Unfortunately I have no choice in the matter: the station is selected by someone else and is pumped in over the intercom speaker.

I think the fact that the sound is barely audible and coming from a very low-fidelity speaker is part of the reason that I find the noise to be so distracting. I can’t quite figure out what song is on unless I take time out of whatever I’m doing to actually listen to it and then it usually turns out to be a really crappy song. No offense to Elton John fans, but how many times can you listen to “Candle In The Wind” in a given week? Every morning between 8 and 9 they play a Sheena Easton song, yesterday it was “Morning Train”, this morning it was “Modern Girl”. I dare them to play “Sugar Walls” tomorrow. I’m betting it’ll be “For Your Eyes Only”.

So I have installed a program on my work computer that gives me a wide selection of background sounds to play at my desk. Today I have been lulled into relative peace with the sounds of “Rehobeth Beach”. It isn’t just the sound waves crashing against the shore but it’s actually the Atlantic crashing against Rehobeth Beach. Now mind you, I’ve never been to Rehobeth Beach so I can’t verify the authenticity of this claim, but nevertheless there it is and quite frankly, while it’s quite pleasing it doesn’t sound much different than the waves at say, Marblehead, Mass. or somewhere along the coast of Nova Scotia for that matter.

I am enjoying the distraction from the distraction of the radio though. I like to think that the Rehobeth Beach sounds actually kept me calm as a woman called in a with a trouble because she was unable to open an attachment on her e-mail from a Prince somewhere in the Middle East that promised her a huge sum of money if she told him where to deposit it. Apparently she thought that the attachment provided the proper forms and documentation and any guidance from me wasn’t going to help matters, she just wanted to open the attachment.

I told her to take her computer to a specialist.

I’m back. I haven’t written in my blog for nearly a week and a few people are concerned that I have vanished off the face of the earth.

Heh. I hear Mars is nice.

Last week I got hit with a 24 hour bug and spent most of Wednesday trying to sleep that off. Thursday I wasn’t in the mood to write anything and then I kept pretty busy this weekend so here we are at Monday.

I wish I could say I was in a great mood today to match the sunny weather, but neither my disposition nor the weather is sunny. I feel I match the gray of rainy skies well. Tomorrow will be another day, I guess.

I haven’t cranked on Daylight Saving Time yet this year but I can say without a trace of humour in my voice or on my face that I am not a fan of going to DST earlier like we have for the past couple of years. Has anyone besides me noticed how dark it is when the alarm goes off in the morning? The alarm did a little dance at 6:30 this morning and it was pitch black out. And I’m suppose to be happy and cheery when I get to work after stumbling in the dark as I crawl out of bed and then subsequently blinded by the light of the bathroom when I discover where I left the shower? Please. Just leave the clocks alone and as they were originally intended, with “noon” equaling where the sun is highest in the sky or a reasonable facsimile of this concept.

I should probably write with a touch of whimsy, as I have been told that I am too surly in my blog lately, but I can’t say that I feel whimsical. Perhaps when the sun comes out, I lose 20 pounds or so and when my skin clears up I will sound less surly behind the words but for now I wait for spring.

Not patiently, mind you, but nonetheless I wait.

ring, ring

Me (slightly irritated): “Hello?”

Woman (obviously uninterested and reading from a script): “May I speak to the person knowledgeable about your company’s telephone service?”

Me (snap!): “This is a residence on the do not call list. Since you obviously are ignorant and unemployable, may I also add that you work for a company that does not have balls as evidenced by your blocked caller ID. Go suck it.”

Happy Monday!

So as of this writing I am wrapping up my latest week of on-call. I will officially be off call in three hours and 48 minutes. My next round of on-call is in four weeks.

This has been one of the busier on calls I have ever had, and because of this my sleeping patterns have been completely out of whack. Friday and Saturday night my pager went off at seemingly random intervals. I would just start to fall back asleep and 20 minutes later the pager would ring again. This went on from around midnight on Friday until 0700 or so on Sunday.

I managed to take a good, solid nap Sunday afternoon and I think it’s because of this that I am wide awake at 0400. Of course, being Sunday night doesn’t help matters. I have never been able to sleep well on Sunday nights. I discovered that art back in high school when I would somewhat panic on how I was going to accomplish my homework during homeroom. (Homeroom went from 0800-0808). I always got my homework done adequately though.

Now I lie in bed on Sunday nights counting the hours until I have to get up for work. Very bizarre.

So here I am typing on the upstairs computer because I can’t fall asleep. I’ve read blogs, I’ve checked e-mail, I have even walked around the house in the dark.

I’ll probably be tired when it’s time for the alarm to go off.

So I know everyone is whipped up about gay marriage (amongst other things) these days and I honestly can’t imagine what all the hoopla is about. I mean, as a gay man that has been happily partnered for longer than most heterosexual marriages I know, I have to say that I don’t know why a certain segment of our society gets themselves all worked up over the word ‘marriage’. I’ll leave your imagination to ponder which segment I’m referring to when it comes to those getting worked up, but I will say this: as long as I am guaranteed the EXACT same rights as my heterosexual counterparts but still referred to as a “civil union” then I have no issues with nomenclature. Most look at it as that marriage is “better than” a civil union but I tend to spin it around and look at it the other way: I wasn’t forced to eat a stale cake, I didn’t have to dance for dollars and I didn’t have to do the hokey pokey. To me, civil union means the same thing as marriage without the organised religious influence.

While I certainly want and demand legal recognition of my partnership, I’m sure many gay men and lesbians will agree with me that there is at least one advantage to not being able to declare “married” on our federal tax return. Many gay men and lesbians are rather affluent and bring in a good amount of income. Let’s say Dirk makes $200,000 a year and his partner Bruce makes $100,000 a year. Together they make $300,000. Dirk and Bruce have been together a decade or so and dump all of their income into their jointly owned house, land and smattering of bank accounts. Because Dirk and Bruce are not legally married and there union is not recognised as valid by Ol’ Glory, they are not obligated to report their income as combined, therefore Dirk makes $200K in the eyes of Uncle Sam and Bruce makes $100K in the same way, easily skirting that coveted $250K limit where the taxes get really deep and the hands of Uncle Sam get really grabby. Granted, we miss several tax breaks for not being married but when you’re starting to throw around the big numbers I think this becomes negligible.

Now I realise that this is a consolation prize in the grand scheme of things and legal recognition is what most of us really want and to be honest I believe that if I’m not allowed to be legally partnered on the federal level to the person I love then I shouldn’t have to pay full taxes anyway, but there is a very small amount of smirkiness I feel knowing that I could be skirting a part of the tax code on THEIR technicality.