A badly-timed cold, some expensive burgers, dancing, and Six Feet Under…

I have a dreadful cold. Not good timing for a 13.5-hour plane trip. Grrrrrr!


Robert came to town at about 5:30, and we had dinner at Red Robin, at my insistence, as I’ve been wanting to try their Banzai Burger ever since I ate there a couple of weeks ago with my work crowd.

It was very, very good, but when it was all said and done, we paid $25 for two hamburgers with fries, a soda and a water. Can’t help but think we could’ve had basically the same thing for about $6.00 at one of our favorite places, Chargill!


Dancing was okay tonight. I danced very little, as I didn’t want my knee hurting this close to my trip.

The after-dancing “theme” tonight was “Group Night”—consisting of the Gay Geek Gamers group and the Gay rugby team. Robert and I stayed for just about a half-hour after dancing stopped.


At home, before lights out, we watched the pilot episode of Six Feet Under. I’ve never seen this show, and when I had lunch wit Jay on Wednesday, we were talking about it. He told me that he was going to loan me his DVD collection of the entire run of the show.

He knows how much I like death and dying and said he just knew I’d love this show. The pilot episode was great, and I look forward to slowly watching the entire run of the show when I get back from China.

Last day of work this month, Deer Hunting w/Jesus & Robert & Katherine…

I wore shorts and a t-shirt to work today. Among other things, I created an announcement about my trip to the staff, which is now posted in the Staff News section of the Office of Information Technology home page: OIT staff member talks technical communication in China.


I picked up Katherine Chandler at the airport at around 6:30, and we went to Elmo’s Diner in Durham for dinner. I had quiche and she had a Greek Grilled Cheese sandwich, which she loved.

We met Robert at Manbites Dog Theater to see Deer Hunting with Jesus, which Katja was directing. It was a staged reading of an adaption of Joe Bageant‘s book Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War.

There was a scene about three-quarters of the way through that had the three of us in absolute stitches. We thoroughly enjoyed our evening.


I dropped off Katherine at my house, and ran down to Flex for just a little while. Joe didn’t go out tonight, and I spent most of the time talking with Steve Harris.

I wasn’t there more than an hour, leaving at just a little bit after midnight.


I hate how I’m consistently running about two days behind on my blog now. Gotta remedy that soon.

A Stan-level staff meeting, work turnover meeting, and the State Fair…

Good week for… Bad week for…
Health-food stores, after Italian researchers isolated an erection-inducing plant compound in a widely sold Chinese herb known as Horny Goat Weed. The compound, icariin, may be as effective as Viagra, researchers said. Biological warfare, after a West Virginia man was charged with battery on a police officer for passing gas in the direction of the cop who had pulled him over for drunken driving. A prosecutor later dropped the battery charge.

—From The Week Magazine 10/10/08—


Our manager worked from home today with a massive head cold, which I appreciated. I truly would not like to be on a plane for 13.5 hours with a cold.

We had a staff meeting today for everyone who works for my boss’s boss—so about three departments of 25 or 30 folks. I volunteered to take the meeting minutes.

In the afternoon, I met with my officemate and teammate, Rhonda, where I filled her in on the work I’ve been doing in case anything comes up while I’m gone that she might need to handle.


Our P2P delegation leader, Linda, asked me to update a table for her with everyone’s areas of expertise and personal goals for the trip, which will be used in our introductions.


After a lot of traffic drama for Joe, he and I took the bus from Hillsborough Street out to the State Fair.

Joe’s work gives their employees two free tickets to the fair each year, so we used those, and went there solely to eat. We did a good job at it, too.

With and alternating salty and sweet agenda, we started off with Polish Sausage gyros with grilled onions and peppers. We got some root beer at the A&W booth. Next was a funnel cake with powdered sugar and glazed apple chunks on it. On to salty—french fries with vinegar.

Our final, sweet, stop was in a tent-like area, where you got a big plastic bowl upon entering and the candy was $2.50 a pound. They had hundreds of tubs with hundreds of kinds of “penny candy,” several of which I haven’t seen since being a kid. We actually didn’t go too wild there, and walked out with just under two pounds worth.

On the way out, we were looking for the place to buy fudge, but we didn’t try real hard, and never found it. Having gotten totally disoriented walking around there and gorging ourselves, we had to ask a cop to direct us to the entrance we had come in through, as we had to return to that particular one to catch the bus back to Hillsborough Street by my work.


Joe came up and saw my office, where I checked the Method Road city bus to see if it was still running. It was about 9:45, and the last run was at 10:13, so I sent him on his way, and caught that one home.

Work stuff, an affirmation from our P2P leader, and a fun night of dancing…

I attended the OIT Web Team Meeting today, wrote an e-mail to Marc Hoit, our CIO, about his blog, and I responded to a director who is in a workgroup charged with creating “an ideal information technology or information services department at an Asian women’s university.” He wanted some input on what people thought would contribute to such an environment.

I worked on a bunch of Remedy tickets of folks who are participating in Drupal migration projects. I wrote an OIT News article about my China trip.

I provided Jude (my boss) and Stan (her boss) my China trip itinerary, with which they’ll determine how many, if any, days of my trip I can count as work days.


Over the past two days, I’ve created and managed a table to make sure that each day of our China trip is covered by a volunteer blogger. This resulted in an affirmation from our delegation leader:

Thanks so much, John!  You have truly been such a great support to me…  I am appreciative beyond measure…

Linda


Dancing was pretty fun tonight. A cute, fun guy named Tom was there, who turned out to be the partner of this other guy, whose name I don’t know, but who is there a lot with Joe and Jose.

Joe, Jose, and Rob were not in attendance tonight. Carl, Bill, Geromy, Michael, Rick, Rob, and of course, myself, were.

Carl taught Boot Scootin’ Boogie as Tom wanted to take a lesson, as well as this other guy named Scott, who was sitting talking to him most of the night.

Back to work, a class, scripts filled, a run to MBD, and a drink on the lanai…

I caught the 8:25 bus today, and Barry, one of my neighbors, and this other sort-of regular at our stop had a little chat. The lady works for the federal government, so was off yesterday for Columbus day. Barry works for the university, as do I, so both state employees, who did not have the day off yesterday. I took a sick day for my trip to Rhode Island.


Since today was the last day that I could adjust most of my benefits (tomorrow is 30 days since my start date), I updated my NC Flex benefits, the Health Care Flexible Spending Account to be exact, to defer $200 into it for calendar year 2008, since I paid a $20 co-pay for my Hep A shot visit, and I’m going to get about $185 in prescriptions filled tomorrow.


I was in a Drupal training class from 9:30-11:30. It was taught by Don, and there were about 15 people in it, including my team, and several of the liaisons representing teams who are about to move content into Drupal.

I grabbed two hot dogs for lunch at Coffee Haven. They were okay, but were those red, red hot dogs that “they love down here.” There was a time during which I wouldn’t touch them. Now, I only eat them if they’re the only kind available, or close by when I’m pressed for time, which was the case today.

I worked on the Drupal Inventory Worksheet, reviewed and commented on our CIO’s proposed Strategic Operating Plan.

The 6:00 bus didn’t arrive until 6:15. I was beginning to think I had missed it.

I got a funny birthday card from Suzanne in the mail today. At some point, probably after my China trip now, I’m going to capture all of my cards in an entry. I like doing that.

I checked in with mom and dad to let them know I had received their birthday call, and was in Coventry for Uncle Frank’s funeral. In her classic way, my mother said, “Yeah, I’ve been doing alright, considering my leg (the one she just had replacement surgery on again), and the car accident I was in a couple of weeks ago…”


I filled my car up tonight—making it to 3-weeks with one tank. For posterity, gas was $3.39 a gallon. Which reminds me, I saw it for $2.79 at a gas station in Rhode Island when I was there.

I stopped at K-Mart, where I ended up leaving my prescriptions to be filled over night.

Back at home, I addressed 50 envelopes for Manbites Dog, and then drove out to Durham and put them in the theater’s mailbox out front. I drove by Robert’s as the moon was full and beautiful, and I thought we might have a drink on “the lanai.”

He generously offered me some crackers with a cheddar cheese and roasted red pepper spread that was delicious, and some ginger ale. We sat on his deck long enough to gaze at the moon, have a sip of drink, and say we did.

Back home I tweeted this:

Back. Bonus: Visited Robert, got fed, had a “drink on the lanai under a full moon” and got a kiss goodnight. 🙂 SWEET!

Uncle Frank’s Memorial service, a lunch recption following, and my birthday…

Though my alarm was set for 9:00, I was up at 8:00 after about 10 hours sleep. Felt good.

Aunt Annette and I had coffee and cinnamon toast, while we talked about the updating of her will, which she wants to do soon. She expressed concern about not having a co-executor to name, and I told her she was welcome to list me as the co- or contingency executor, if she wanted to.

She seemed incredibly relieved and grateful.


Karen and Joe arrived at about 10:00, and the rest of the crowd trickled in between 10:45 and 11:15.

One family member, Gail, after saying she remembered me when “you were this high,” asked, “How old are you now?”

I wasn’t thinking and started to say 50, and then stammered, “Actually, 51, today. Today’s my birthday.”


Uncle Frank’s memorial service was in a little catholic chapel, and everyone—around 15 of us—sat, what reminded me of, on “the bride’s side.” That is to say, we were all on the left side of the church.

Ironically, in retrospect, the “guest of honor” was up on the altar on the other side of the church—the box, and small bag of cremains.


I had so many mixed emotions sitting through mass. It’s been forever and a day since I’ve been, and I’m pretty sure the last time I went was for the funeral of co-worker’s daughter ten years, if not more, ago. Some of my thoughts, not necessarily in the order I had them:

  1. I can’t believe I remember all of these responses… “Thanks be to God.” “And also with you.” “Through Him. With Him. And in Him. In the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is Yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever. Amen.”
  2. I’m surprised these people behind me know the words, too. I’m quite sure most of them do not attend mass regularly, if ever.
  3. What is it about humans that they would choose to return to a place, from which so much pain has emanated, for some “closure.” “The catholic church” was a huge reason that my aunt and uncle gave up their daughter for adoption. It’s never been kind or welcoming to me as a homo.
  4. Did he just say, “…our parishioner, Frank…”? He wasn’t a member of this church.
  5. I wonder if that priest has ever done or said anything inappropriate to that altar boy.
  6. That’s all that’s left of a life. That box and little bag over there.
  7. Should I take communion? The “rules” say I shouldn’t. Will there be so few people taking it that it’ll be embarrassing?
  8. Oh my. There are only kneelers on the first row. I wonder how many knees we’re going to hear creaking as everyone kneels, most of us all the way down to the floor.
  9. When the priest said, “Can I impose on someone to bring the gifts to the altar? My first thought was, “Oh no, they are not going to pass the basket.” and then “Do they mean move the cremains to the altar from that table?” then, “OH, he’s talking about the water, wine and bread for the transubstantiation!”

After mass, we caravaned to the Hong Kong Buffet, which was one of my uncle’s favorite restaurants, where our party of 13-15 enjoyed a nice meal over the course of an hour or so.


We had just about an hour back at the house, just the four of us: me, Aunt Annette, Karen, and Joe.

I said my goodbyes to Aunt Annette, and Karen and Joe graciously took me to the airport.

I carefully guarded three books that Karen gave me that my uncle (her father) had written for her, and which I’m going to try to put on DVD.


My flights back were uneventful, albeit unexpectedly crowded for a Monday night. Perhaps because it was Columbus Day, a holiday for many business travelers, who were perhaps doing their normal Sunday night travel on Monday night.


I’m fifty-fucking-one.

Flying up to Coventry and hanging out with Aunt Annette, Karen, and Joe…

I was up at 4:45, and at the airport by 5:45. I parked in Lot 3, the “Purple Lot,” and was in line at U.S. Airways by 6:00.

I had my laptop, a suit bag, and a small bag that I’d normally take as my carry on bag, but was checking today, since I had three items. I was absolutely annoyed that I had to pay $15 to check that little bag.

Retrieving my stuff at the end of the security conveyor belt, I had walked around to the other side, since it was so crowded and shit was spurting out and piling up at the end of the belt, but within about a minute, Brunhilda came toward me, “Sir, I need you to move back around to the other side.”

There, I put my suit bag on the stack of empty containers, while I gathered my shoes, laptop, and the gray bin with my wallet, cell phone, watch, and change in it. “Sir, I need you to move your bag off the empty bins.” (There were two piles of empty bins, and no one was trying to put an empty one back on either pile.)

I made a face, and grabbed my bag, and then she began to wheel that stack of empty bins, which was on a dolly, and she ran over my toe. She knew that I had just about had it with her by then, and she said, “Oh, excuse, me. I’m so sorry, sir,” and went around me.

On my way to my gate, I stopped for a bagel, where the cash register had just “gone down,” and where the two people working there were trying to manage math in their head, using English as a second language to boot.

Overall, not a great start to my day.


We had an uneventful, on-time departure for my RDU to LaGuardia flight. The plane was small—two seats on each side of the aisle. The guy next to me was hot, but slept the entire time.

I devised my Thursday and Friday blog entries en route, and listened to Eva Cassidy’s Songbird CD on my iPod Touch.

I had seat 7A on both of my flights today, and my gate out of LaGuardia was Gate 1, with a 45-minute layover. I started on my PowerPoint presentation for my China trip while I waited, and pretty much got the first five slides done.

The flight from LaGuardia to Providence was on a tiny plane, nine rows total, and propeller-driven. Of the 36 seats, only 13 were occupied, so we had plenty of room to spread out.


That flight arrived 30 minutes early in Providence, which I still can’t quite figure out. Something was wrong there. The flight time I had in my Palm Pilot was from 9:30-10:54, which is nearly an hour-and-a-half, but I’m quite sure the flight attendant (and later the pilot) said that it was a 45-minute flight. And then we landed so early, which was more in line with the 45-minute announced flight time, than the time I had in my records.  I checked my printed flight reservations and sure enough, it stated the flight time as one hour and 25 minutes.

I don’t know. Who cares. It’s said and done, and I arrived safely.


After retrieving my bag, I found Aunt Annette and Karen, and after tearful hello hugs, we headed back to Coventry.

Before we unloaded my stuff from the car, we walked across the street to Annette and Frank’s three-car garage, which Frank was going to make into a little retirement house for them, where Karen’s husband, Joe, has done a phenomenal job in going through.

My uncle had an incredible collection of all kinds of things for stone masonry and building. Piles of hammers, piles of chisels, piles of trowels, and piles of a lot of other such things. All kinds of leftover wood, wires, drills, saws, huge buckets of nails, screws, four or five gas containers, four tool boxes, and a huge stone cutting machine with diamond-edged blades on it.

Joe is such an incredibly nice guy and has been working over the last several weekends clearing out and straightening up the amazing collection of clutter that the place had become.

I took a compass that was laying on my uncle’s work table. It’s one of those old compasses that used to be used in math classes—V-shaped with a steel point on one end and a little pencil stuck in the other end.


I also took a key chain that says “Açores” on it, and has an eyeglasses screwdriver hanging on it. Both my uncle’s and my dad’s heritage is from the Azores Islands of Portugal.


After checking that out, Karen, Annette, and I came back across the street, where I unloaded my stuff, and the three of us enjoyed cocktails and some snacks.

Uncle Frank’s cremains were on the table, most of it in a good sized black box, and a little bit in a red draw-strung bag. The box was for Annette. The bag for Karen.

Around the next May timeframe two things will happen with them: (1) Most will be buried at a local cemetery, and (2) Karen and my aunt will go to Arizona, and spread a bit of them in the Grand Canyon.

Karen and Annette brought out a stuffed quahog with a birthday candle stuck in it for me, and I said before blowing out the candle, “To my favorite uncle in the whole world,” to which we all smiled through tears.

An hour or so later, Joe came back over, and we had Bacalhau—a delicious Portuguese cod fish dish that my aunt made, along with some mashed potatoes. Yum. Yum. Yum.

For dessert, we had some most delicious pistachio cake, made by Karen, also served with a birthday candle in it, and all of us sang happy birthday to me. 🙂


After that late lunch, we walked back across the street to see the work that Joe had done while the three of us were drinking and snacking earlier, and it was incredible how much he’d gotten done in that little bit of time!

We walked around the back of the place, and checked out the piles of stone back there, and talked about what the little house that my uncle had planned to build was going to look like. He had it all thought out, of course. Karen kept saying, “Every time I see this, it just breaks my heart. He had this all planned out, and it would have been done, too, if all of this hadn’t happened to him.”


Back at the house, we sat around the table upstairs, and Annette and Karen detailed the final week with my uncle. It was an incredibly taxing week on them, extremely painful for my uncle, and left him so sad in the end as Karen was the only child that visited him during his time in the nursing home and at home under Hospice care. Heartbreaking.

Later in the evening, Karen and Joe, especially Joe, told a lot of funny postal stories, most of them about dogs, as they both work for the U.S. Postal Service—Joe still a letter carrier, and Karen working in human resources now, but having been a carrier for eleven years.


Karen and Joe left at about 8:30, and by 9:00, Aunt Annette and I had both retired to our rooms.

I checked in with Robert by phone, finished this blog entry, and then worked for about an hour on my PowerPoint presentation for my China trip.

Manbites Dog board meeting, a birthday lunch, and finally installed year-old SW…

I went to bed way too late, and got up way too early.

I attended our Manbites Dog board meeting from 10:00-12:00, during which—after failing miserably at applying little stickies to invitations—I successfully, and in some cases quite beautifully, addressed a little over 100 invitations to our upcoming fundraiser on November 8, 2008.

Ed, with the patience of Job, ran the meeting while the rest of us gave our divided attention to making various contributions on the handmade invitations.


I picked up Robert at his new place, and after a short tour—it’s adorable! (much like himself)—we headed over to Symposium in the Durham Tobacco Warehouse area for my birthday lunch. Oh, before we left, he gave me the greatest card! It’s a picture of a fat lady on the front, with her mouth opened, and it says, “You’re not OLD until the fat lady SINGS.”

When you open it, this incredible operatic-sounding woman holds this outrageously long note—complete with a fabulous ending including a slight echo. I loved it.


Back in Raleigh, I had every intention of attending Chaotic Elections! A Mathematician Looks at Voting, for which I’d actually registered, but when my alarm went off after a one-hour nap, I turned it off, did a very quick calculation myself, and promptly went back to sleep.


I did two loads of laundry, during which I reviewed—and added comments to—Sarah’s proposal for our presentation at the 2009 STC Annual Conference in Atlanta next May. The submission deadline is 10/20/2008.

After that, I finally installed two software programs I bought in September of 2007. Yes, 2007, over a year ago—Microsoft Office 2007 and Adobe Acrobat Professional. I installed them on both my laptop and my PC.


I have to be at the airport for 6AM tomorrow. I set my alarm for 4:45 and hit the sack.

A Hep A shot, an HR meeting, and too late a night out…

I was up at oh-dark-hundred, and out to my doctor’s office in RTP for a 7:00 appointment with Amy Hird, my GP, who really is a P.A, and whom I absolutely love.

She ordered up my Hep A shot, which was actually administered by her nurse, and she wrote me prescriptions for Cipro, Nexium, and Lisinopril. She explained to me that cipro is not at all effective for your run-of-the-mill stomach virus—cramping, diarrhea, and such as that. It’s for serious bacterial infections—stomach cramping, bloody stools, fever, chills, and so on. I appreciated the distinction.

My blood pressure was most excellent today, 124/78, which was good news, as I haven’t checked it for a while.


I got home in time to catch the 8:25 bus to work, where it was a quiet day. I did get a news item written about yesterday’s expo, and passed it off to Jude for editing and publishing to the OIT website.

I had a 2:00 appointment with Rob Stevenson in benefits, and the fact that only three Wolfline buses were running today due to Fall break only complicated my getting around by a time factor.

I walked over to the Brooks Hall stop, which is over by the Bell Tower. Fortuitously, Holladay Hall is right next door to that, and I took advantage of the opportunity to stop in the Vice Provost of Diversity’s office to give Marcia Gumpertz a copy of my Will & Ned poster.

I had a list of nine questions for Rob, all of which he handled in one way or another. Two of them involved sending notes to other people, which he did on my behalf.

The two most important things covered were:

  1. Clarifying my potential retirement benefits with the State. Using the most conservative estimates in terms of pay increases, he estimated that if I retire in 10 years, at age 60, I will have a pension of about $707 a month and half-price medical benefits for life. That $707 would be enough to cover my mortgage payments, and hopefully the other half of the medical benefits I’d have to pay, depending of course on what kind of incredulous and unpredictable things happen to health care in this country between now and then, as well as how my general health fares.
  2. Clarified how leave accumulates, which was not good news. I was hoping it would be like it was at my previous employer, which was you could use whatever leave you are acquire over the year at any time in the calendar year, even if you haven’t yet earned it. Not so with the state. What’s bad news about that is that it means my planned February trip to visit Kevin and skiing in Whistler is out the window. I’ll only have one day of 2009 vacation earned by then. 🙁

From Rob’s office I walked up the street to catch the city bus back to my office, as it would have taken me right to my building, while with one of the three Wolfline buses that were running, I’d had to have walked a bit of way to get back.

A Wolfline bus came about five minutes after I got to the stop (it’s a shared stop), and I passed on it for the city bus, which I anticipated arriving in about five more minutes. Well about thirty minutes later it hadn’t arrived, and when the Wolfline bus came back around, I hopped on it.

Turns out the city bus switches in the afternoon from every half hour to every hour. Lesson learned.

Back at my office, I updated three Remedy (our customer work request system) tickets, since I’m going to be out on Monday.


I met Joe at Flex at about 9:45, where we played to free, but once again frustrating games of pool due to the crooked table.

We spent most of the night talking with Patrick and a friend of his named Ali who works with him. He’s married and calls himself straight, in spite of the fact that he had recently been [expletive deleted], and is in the process of leaving his second wife. Not to mention the little fact that he’s hanging out in gay bars.

Real fun guy, though, and we had a lot of laughs.

After drinking way too much, Patrick, Joe, and I ended up at Shanghai Express at around 2:00. There’s a Chinese guy that works there (You don’t say!), who’s always there when we come, and when I told him I was going to China in a couple of weeks, he just lit up, and then wouldn’t stop talking about the place. Cute.


Bus scrambling, the OIT Expo, a flu shot, and dinner to get China adapters/converters…

I had intended to catch the Wolfline bus to the Talley Student Center this morning, but remembered—fortunately before I waited at the bus stop—that it’s fall break and most of the NC State buses were not running today, including the one I would have taken.

The city bus I usually take to work—the Method Road bus—doesn’t go by the Student Center, so I quickly checked another city bus route—the Avent Ferry bus—and found that it had a stop practically at the steps of the student center. Sweet.


Today was the culmination of a lot of work that has been done in the almost month now that I’ve been working at NC State. Our organization is called the Office of Information Technology, and today we held OIT Expo ’08, where we had booths of a bunch of the services that our organization provides to the university, including those for faculty, staff, and students. We had tons of drawings for door prizes—two real nice ones that included a GPS system and a Sony digital camera. Unfortunately, the staff was not eligible to win those nice prizes. 🙁

I spent most of the day taking pictures of the event, and standing at booths whenever the booth owners had to step away, either to attend, or present at, one of the many workshops that went on throughout the day. From 11:30-12:30, I attended the keynote address by Dr. Marc Hoit, the recently hired, and first ever, vice chancellor for information technology and chief information officer.

I attended one workshop in the afternoon. It was on the features of Contribute, Adobe’s Web authoring, reviewing, and publishing tool.

At about 2:30, I slipped over to Campus Recreation, which is just across the street from the student center, and got my free flu shot. 


I met Steve H. at the Borough tonight for dinner and to get his adapters and converters for my China trip. Liz stopped by our alfresco table, and welcomed me back to the Borough and comped my bourbon and diet, which I very much appreciated.

I had their “Which Came First?” salad with balsamic vinegar, which I loved as much as the last time I had it, which was actually the first time I’d had it, too.

Which Came First?    $7.00
Marinated chicken, egg, tomato and red onion over mixed greens, served with a choice of dressing.


After dinner, Dave (singer of “Come Monday” at karaoke) joined us, with a friend of his named John, who was an absolute stitch. He was a real young kid (probably still is, it’s only been a day), and was talking about being in Spain with his parents, while his dad was there on a business trip.

“Yeah, their national team had just one some huge soccer final, and the people were going wild. They were all out in the streets and shit. And talking all that Spain shit. And they knew I was an America right away.”

I retorted, “Yeah, probably because of all of that American shit you were talkin’.”


I updated our People-to-People “Who’s Flying from Where” file, adding folks’ cell phone numbers.