Journal

Later at lunchtime, I went to put gas in the car. And you guessed it! The car spit it back at me. So I spent the afternoon reeking of petrol, still with two bright orange stains on my shirt. Oh well, it was nice to get Monday out of the way though.

Today I thought I was going to have another Monday. I was getting my keys out of my pocket as I was waiting for the elevator, and I notice I had gotten some sort of greasy black stuff on my knuckles. I look again, it’s on both hands! I still have no clue what I could have gotten into. It was just the usual morning routine: E-mail and breakfast, fold up the bed, iron a shirt and pants, shower, dress, put up the blinds, go to work. Yesterday I couldn’t stay clean between home and work, and today I didn’t even make it ten feet to the elevator!

That was still on my mind when I got to work. Then I saw a FedEx envelope waiting for me in my cubie. I double-checked the label, yep, it’s for me. But who has my address at work, and why would they send me anything there anyway?

I fired up the PC (NT takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R to boot) and found some scissors to cut open the Tyvek. (They don’t let me have my own because they’re sharp, pointy and shiny. J ) Inside was a baseball cap. The first thing I thought was, "Someone read about my sunburned scalp." Also inside was a card in a really nice envelope. Inside that, was a handwritten "Thank You" from the local rep for Learning Tree International.

If you remember back two weeks ago, Citibank had a training firm come in from California for five days to train the software developers on Visual Basic 5.0. They brought their own PCs, server and network, which didn’t work. I stayed late on Monday to get the network running for class on Tuesday. Turns out, Learning Tree International was the training firm.

Now, they didn’t have to send me a card or a gift. It was just part of my job. After all, we on the LAN Team and the Software Development Team report to the same boss, so it’s just taking care of your own. But it’s really nice to know there are still people out there who take a little extra time out for courtesy.

Wednesday April 15, 1998 9:30PM

As with every day, today had it’s plusses and minuses. On the minus side, it was in incredibly frustrating day at work. I wanted to deliver the software developers’ new PCs today through Friday. That’s not going to happen.

The problem is either with the original PC I configured for them, or with the imaging software we use to "clone" that PC six more times. It took me two full days to configure the first PC, and a few hours here and there to change some of the software loads because I didn’t quite understand how they wanted some of the development tools installed.

Yesterday the configuration was declared fit for public consumption, so I imaged it. Because they have so much stuff on there (1.7GB before adding in their data and SDKs,) it took about three hours to create the master image file. Just before I left the office last night, I started loading the image on two new PCs. This morning, those two PCs wouldn’t boot. To make a long story short, I spent 6½ hours today trying to figure out where the failure point was. The master PC works like a charm. I just can’t get a copy of it.

So at the end of this long and frustrating day, we decided I had to start all over again from scratch.

I’ll have to finish and post this later, (probably tomorrow,) because my "sister" Mark just called, and we’re going to check out DJ Damian at Muther’s.

Saturday April 18, 1998 1:00PM

Last night I actually timed the round trip to Muther’s. It wasn’t anything I set out to do.

Somewhere along the line I had pushed the Display button on the CD player so it was displaying the song’s elapsed time. As I was pulling out of the garage, I shoved a CD into the player. I pulled into Muther’s parking lot and shut the car off 1:42 later. Not bad, under two minutes, but I only hit one of the two lights on red.

On the way back, I hit both stoplights on red and arrived home registering 4:21 total, which also included the time it took to put on the seatbelt and adjust my butt in the seat. So 2:10 each way, average.

I can see it as one of the little factoids on CNN: "How long does it take Bruce to drive to his favorite gay bar?" Well if it ever does come up on Trivial Pursuit, the answer is two minutes, ten seconds.

Damn, I’m still whipped from the week. Met Mark out Wednesday night. He’d come from a birthday party. Vince was also there with his entourage. They all had come from Gay Bingo. Well we had a couple of cocktails and shot the shit.

DJ Damian was just as good as he was last Saturday. That man needs a better night. Like Friday Randy, (hint, hint.) He kept people on the floor the whole time I was there, and played like it was a packed house, when in fact I don’t think there were ever more than 30 or 40 people in the place at any given time.

As I had said about Wednesday,

Sunday April 18, 1998 2:30 AM

‘Kay, so since when have I been such a vicious queen? Well, actually, it takes a bit of doing, but it slips out if you’re not careful. J

Take tonight, ferinstance. Willie had stopped over earlier, (ostensibly for pizza.) We fucked like bunnies, and watched some VH-1, (Divas Live was excellent.) So when I arrived at Muther’s, I was feelin’ fine, and (still) feelin’ frisky. Having a wonderful night, laughing with Michael-the-ex until my abs hurt so bad I thought I’d require hospitalization.

The place was absolutely packed. At one point I said to a (cute, perhaps husband material) guy standing near me in the traffic pattern, "Don’t cha just feel like a pylon in the road race of life?" He laughed, and strangely, moved away. Oh fuck him, (why not?), but my needs had been satisfied earlier. J

And so, a couple of cocktails later:

Johnny and I had been talking and dissing the "girls" a while over by the DJ booth, (oh look, wall space!) Willie joined us, and talked turned to dates and dating. Johnny said, words to the effect of, "I haven’t had a date in so long I can’t remember what it feels like."

In case you need to buy a vowel, this is where the vicious queen in me comes out.

Now, I tried to suppress it. REALLY I DID! But out it came: "Well it starts with returning a fucking phone call." Well, she lit out of there like I’d set her pants ablaze! Hmmm, do I sense a bit of guilt here?

At this point, as the saying goes, I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind. Denied my right to a snappy (and equally vicious) come-back, I just hung out, enjoying the music.

Sorry this whole posting is so disjointed. I’ll fix it and explain tomorrow, (if I get around to it.)