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Wednesday, 10 October 2001 (tilt) 9:19pm Okay, so I'm not quite back up to speed yet. At 8:04pm local time across America, I imagine millions of mute buttons being pushed, and a collective cringe a few minutes later at the words "Theme By Diane Warren." barefoot is certain that Paramount will relent and change it to something a little less nauseating, displaying an optimism far surpasses mine. (While I'm at it, there wasn't nearly enough Hoshi in tonight's episode, but it was redeemed by hallucinogenics being a plot point.) Paramount doesn't really care what the fans think, just so long as we keep buying stuff. That's the business they're in. Like, not only did the price for Star Trek: The Experience at the Hilton go up five dollars (and we have the tickets from last year to prove it), they now have a scam where you can have a "free" picture taken against a wall which is purported to be a mock transporter chamber—the background is added in later, presumably—in exchange for signing up for a Trek-branded credit card. Otherwise, it costs $20. Um, no. Thanks anyway, guys. Again, an event I would normally go to but can't for various reasons seems to not be happening anyway. In this case, it's the TGSF mid-month thingy. There were no details given on the site nor on the (very low-traffic) email list, so I presume it was cancelled. My reason for not going involves getting zapped tomorrow morning and the three-and-a-half day growth I'm sporting. The hair has come back in remarkably quickly, which I'd like to think is a sign that it's in that stage where if you kill it it's less likely to come back. I have no idea if that's the case or not (and I doubt asking tomorrow would help), so I'm just going to pretend it is. Since I was in my version of boi mode at the airport on Friday morning, I went into the men's restroom. I got two doubletakes. I got the hint, and it was the last time I used a men's room on the trip, regardless of how I was dressed. I didn't get any more odd looks. Not regarding my gender appearance, anyway. A handy tip to air travelers these days: if they suggest getting to the airport two or three hours early, do it. Even though we'd packed the night before and were out of bed by 3:45am, and the drive to SFO is maybe 20 minutes early in the morning, we didn't get there and in line until 5:45 for a 7:15 flight. Whoops. The checkin lines were long. Which is nothing unusual, even if it did add to our anxiety. But that was nothing compared to the bitchslap of going through the security gate. I don't think I've ever been in one of those lines with more than a dozen people, and usually there isn't a line at all. This time...I have no idea how long it really was, but it was massive, and slow. We reached the front of the line with fifteen minutes to spare. They were having difficulty herding people through the ID and X-ray checkpoints. (As it happened, shortly before we got to the ID checkpoint, a very ratty man asked if he could cut ahead of us in line. Having just stood in said line for 40 minutes, I was not feeling at all generous. I told him he could stand behind us, provided he got permission from the people in front of whom he would be cutting. Considering what a pushover I can be, I'm rather proud of that.) After all that, through a series of events I couldn't quite follow, Maddy got through without having her ID checked. The "extraordinary new measures" to which SFO refers does not include, as near as I can tell, better paid or trained security personnel. It does include army men carrying machine guns. I wish I was making this up, but I'm not. Where we got nabbed, of course, was the metal detector. For me with the metal lace hooks of my buetz. When the alarm went off I was told to step forward to be patted down. So I stepped forward to where the guy was standing with the (ahem) wand. He motioned to me to step back. I explained that I'd been instructed to go forward. He just looked at me, smiling but uncomprehending. Apparently he didn't speak a word of English—or, if he did, he didn't know anything that would come in handy, sorta like how many fast food workers these days don't know much beyond "Do you want fries with that?" Now, I'm not an English chauvinist—I respect the hell out of multilingual people, and wish I had the discipline to learn other languages—but in as important a job as that, the ability to communicate in the dominant language must surely come in handy. Instead, the only real improvement to security is the guys with the guns, and frankly, I never feel safer around guns. (Guns!) Another lesson learned, I wore sandals (did I mention I recently found a pair of sandals that fit, were inexpensive and don't look half bad?) on the return trip and avoided the patdown. There were a couple uncomfortable moments, such as when the guard couldn't find the date on our ticket and implied that he might need to call over the men with the guns, or when the the flight was oversold and it looked like we would be bumped, but we made it home on time and in one piece. The middle part of the trip went better than the beginning and end, thankfully. We all know someone who's talked about having their wedding performed by Elvis in Vegas, but thanks to jonco and what I suspect may have been a spectacularly called bluff, I've witnessed one. Well, almost; Elvis didn't actually perform the teevee-length ceremony, but he opened it with a song then performed for an hour afterwards, so it was just as cool. The wedding was on Saturday afternoon; we had lunch with my mother and Tom earlier in the day, and after we got into town on Friday we hung out with my father. (I changed as soon we got to our motel.) Although going into both situations felt like fulfilling an obligation at first—who wants to hang out with their parents while on vacation?—I'm glad we did it. It was the first time either had seen me wearing a skirt and appearing genuinely femmey (though with no makeup on except foundation), if still casual, and I hoped it might lessen the shock of seeing me really dressed up at the wedding. I guess I wanted to make sure they knew that I knew what I was doing, that I understood casual as opposed to formal. If you follow what I mean. I apparently have a very strong anxiety about being taken seriously, especially when it comes to my family (maybe that's why part of me used to hope they'd just reject me outright, so I wouldn't have to worry about what they think, but they didn't, so I do); I didn't get a single snarky or disapproving comment from anyone. Not many positive comments, mind you, except from my dad's wife, who said she loved the dress I wore to the wedding (long black velvet with spaghetti straps and a slit down the left leg, which I used as an excuse to wear fishnets and heels—while it wasn't drag queeny, I'm still not sure I wasn't overdressed). I was taken in stride, and nobody showed the least bit of reluctance to be seen with me in public. And said public didn't seem to give two shits about me being among them, in or out of the restrooms. Of course, it's arguable how passing in Las Vegas translates into the real world, since the two have so little in common.... We did very little gambling, just a few quarters dropped here and there into video poker machines, and then mostly when we were waiting in the airport on Monday. We were much more interested in the arcades in casinos, mostly playing Carn Evil and Star Wars Trilogy Arcade. Believe me, they offered a much more satisfying ROI than gambling would have. |
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Tuesday, 9 October 2001 (conflagration) 9:41pm Because I'd had today off anyway, as did Maddy. So it's like I'm still on vaction. Neener. |
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Monday, 8 October 2001 (embers) 11:06pm I leave town for a few days and come back to find Afghanistan getting bombed. Just can't leave you people alone, can I? |
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Thursday, 4 October 2001 (the diamond sea) 5:52am Hoshi Sato may be my favorite Trek character since Ezri (not Jadzia) Dax. I'd go into more detail, but heaven forbid I sound like a geek. Hey, the barn door's fixed! We went to Dana and Costanza's last night to give them the keys (weekend catsitting) and to have dinner. Dana wasn't well, so we only accomplished the former, though we did visit for a while. After this month we may not see them for a long while.
In spite of the need to pack for this weekend, I'm going to Oakland to spend the
day with barefoot, whom we will also see irregularly at best after this month. A
bit more often, I suppose, since he's only moving to Los Angeles while Dana and
Costanza are Chicago-bound, not to mention the obligatory Fresno holiday trips,
but still, it kinda sucks. For me, anyway, which isn't important.
It probably got worse for him when I drove us to pick it up
and my radio was tuned to NPR. He's almost as much of a leftist as I am, but
he also enjoys his meat and baseball (I left at four because he was going to
watch Barry Bonds break some record or another) and has a much higher tolerance
for commercial radio than I do. The gender thing he could more or less understand,
but this...oh well. Dry run for dealing with my family this weekend, should any of
it come up.
I have a canker sore on my lower lip, which must mean I'm stressed. So nice of my body to remind me of these things. I wonder if part of that stress comes from the fact that I feel like my upper lip, no matter how closely I attempt to shave (and I'm limited by an intense desire not to cut myself), is dark with hair underneath the skin. You know, that big huge gigantic Tell. And by the end of the day, it's already grown out. I'd hoped I'd be able to go for a few months without getting zapped again, but now I'm not sure. Maybe (hopefully) he can squeeze me in next week. But the first step will be making it through this weekend, trying not to think about it. Which starts right about now. |
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Wednesday, 3 October 2001 (negation of the predicate) 5:12pm The survivors of the New Economy sometimes prevail: barefoot got the job. Yay. Of course, it sucks that good news for people close to me usually involves them moving away. When Orky moves away, arguably the catalyst for me coming to San Francisco in the first place (I hadn't even realized it was possible to go to film school in San Francisco until he did it, and the idea clicked in a big way), then we'll really be in trouble. My membership at the local gym is up for renewal. I've been nervous about it, not for financial reasons (well, not just) but because I figure I should also change my name with them. Problem is, usually when I'm there the staff member is a bit of the beefcaker. I feel like I get weird enough looks as it is without having to directly out myself to someone whose masculinity might be threatened. Since I'm chickenshit and all. I'd noticed that a woman tends to work weekday mornings, so after working out this morning I went back in later to pay and change my name. Unfortunately, I came in on the cusp of a shift change, and I ended up talking to a man. Oh well. Serves me right for trying to be evasive. I can't hide forever. Hell, I can't hide now, let alone forever. It went very smoothly, actually. He didn't so much as bat an eye when I told him my new name, and he even spelled it correctly on the new card. (Granted, he misspelled my last name. Somtimes I think I should just call myself Jane Smith.) He also pleased that I actually went to the trouble of renewing my membership a few days before it expired, which is more the conscientious than most of his customers. He then introduced himself as the owner of the gym—which, in my mind, explained why he was so gracious about it. The kids he hires might not care, but he knows better than to alienate a good customer. Hopefully that'll come in handy when someone objects to me using the women's restroom.
From there it was to the
AAA to get a Vegas map; on the way
in I realized that my card had expired, in spite of having sent in my dues a few months
back. It was determined that I was in fact up to date, and a new card would be issued.
(Oooh! This could be my most thrilling entry yet!) When asked if all my information
was still the same, I mentioned that I would be changing my name soon, but I wasn't
sure if they wanted the offical paperwork on that first. Apparently not—the deed
is done. Two in one day. I guess that qualifies as productive.
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Tuesday, 2 October 2001 (what the pillar of salt held up) 3:42pm I'm not superstitious, nor do I believe in omens, but I do think there's such a thing as horrendously bad timing. Driving to work on Friday morning, a pebble struck my windshield. The crack now extends halfway across the glass vertically. Fortunately, it hasn't grown horizontally. This is so very much not what I needed to contend with right now. I saw my voice therapist this morning. Although I still have a tendency to drop into the lower ranges now and again, she's really quite happy with my progress. She's even going to give me a set of keys to her office so I can use her now-functioning computer and its particular voice hard/software to practice when she's not in. A very generous offer, considering her hourly rate (not cheap) and the price of the equipment itself (in the four digit range). She said that she only extends the offer to roughly one client every six months, and only those she really trusts. Quite flattering, really. I'm not sure when I'm going to have time in the next couple weeks to take her up on it, but I'm going to try. At this point it feels like I owe it to her almost as much as to myself. I then went by the temp agency through which I got my icky BofA job in '97. I have no particular desire to wind up at a place like that, and indeed just going into the office brought back feelings I'd hoped to never feel again, but I can't let my pride get in the way. Of course, you can't just waltz into a place like that; they wouldn't even give me the paperwork to take home and bring back. All I could get was the card of the person I needed to talk to, who won't be in until tomorrow. For having just come from working on my voice, it certainly felt like it was all over the map. I'm sure I made for some whispered talk after I left.
And then it was on to the courthouse to get a necessary document which they hadn't bothered to give
me (or even tell me I needed) last time regarding my changing my name. It's amazing how painful
the process has been, and I haven't even filed anything yet. Seeing as how the initial filing fee
is $203, it's probably just as well—especially now that I'm considering going the much less
expensive (and less judicially invasive) method of a
common-law
name change. Maybe I can spend that $203 on my windshield.
After having been laid off in April and unable to find any work, barefoot spent most of last month in Los Angeles, doing contract stuff for Paramount on startrek.com and related sites. (Of which I was more than a little envious, I'll admit, even before I received my walking papers. It's working on Star Trek, however tangentially.) While he was down there one of the zillions of resumes he sent out finally got a bite, for a bank. Not his preferred place of employment, and it would require moving to L.A. permanently, but beggars and choosers. Besides, most of their friends are already down there, and Rox was actually looking forward to it. (Though we were happy to get the news that he had a job lined up, we were a little sad that they'd be leaving, particularly since Dana and Costanza are also moving away. This is what we get for being so choosey about our friends.) And then:
That may well be one of the most fucked up things I've heard in a long time.
Apparently they don't realize that during the height of the boom practically everybody
was doing it? Hell, I'd been told on at least one occasion that I shouldn't
stay in one place for too long, that it would suggest to potential future employers
that I lacked ambition. And now it seems that some employers don't trust ambition.
Fuck. This is just so not right...
Maddy asked me this evening if the temp agency was "the mirror place." Thankfully, it was not. I don't even remember the real name of it. "The mirror place" was one of the last temp agencies I applied at before I got the phone call which led me to Autodesk and steady employment for three and a half years; across from the waiting area was a tall mirror with a sign saying "Would you hire this person?" It's a cruel trick to play on someone in the already vulnerable position of looking for work, doubly so in my case. (Suffice it to say I had major issues my reflection back then.) The interview wasn't much better; my hair was at least two months overdue for a recoloring, including red chunks which had faded in the ugly way red chunks will, and the employee felt the need to point out how weird it looked. After going over my admittedly skimpy resume they said, "There's really not much to work with, is there?" Gee, thanks for pointing out how unhireable I am. I left feeling even lower than I'd been before, which I hadn't thought possible. It was easily the nadir of that particular jobsearch, not counting Mary's death soon thereafter—which, of course, occurred on the same day as me getting a decent job offer. (I'm fairly confident Oscar and Mina will make it through just fine, seeing has how neither of them have been puking up everything they eat.) In any event, Maddy has forbade me from returning to that particular agency. I think that's for the best. |
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