How geeky is to geeky?

Just cruised back to Wheatonville. Someone photoshopped Wil's latest pic. It would be an awesome t-shirt. I want one. WhatI want more than that is to go ahead and make the GMGoHO shirt that I had in my head a couple of weeks ago. I'd love to go all MW on it and maximize the crap out of what I am thinking. But Matt Beck's design is so simple and so dead on... i may have to remember KISS (Keep it simple stupid).

The technological age

How will I survive it? I don't really know what I am doing and it shows.
Did I mention that I have put profiles on-line? I don't know how that is going to work for me. I have gotten some good leads from one site. But I don't really know what I am doing. I can't even read myself right now to know if I've done something stupid.
UUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And the Beat Goes On and on and on and on and

Well, I have been outsted as the executor. I've been rather mute on the subject because quite simply, it's painful and it's family and it isn't for public consumption... but who reads this stuff anyway? So Here I go... no real specifics.

My brother is now in charge. And the bottom line is that I will walk away with barely enough to start over. I may have about 2000.00 more than what my last boyfriend weedeled out of me. Not enough to start my business, not enough to repay all my debts and loans and not enough to move if I were to do all of it at once. I will not have enough to be at the ground zero of the rest of my life. I will however have enough to remain in a personal and spiritual limbo for the rest of this physical life if I choose the wrong thing to spend my inheritence on. And that scares me like nothing ever has.

Do I invest in the debts or do I invest in the next phase of my life?

In the "debts" column, I eliminate the guilt and psuedo-looser status that I have given myself.
In the "next phase" column the investment will allow me the funding to start the stamp thing without going further into debt, will get me out of debt and will allow me all kinds of freedom that debtedness does not allow and the best part about investing in the future and investing in me is that my asset is undervalued enough to give me incredible returns (Orman).

No brainer isn't it? I should invest in the next phase of my life. Not only is that column longer, but the items in the column start me from a position of strength. If I invest only in column "A" I loose the "Looser" status only long enough to gain it back with the next hurdle someone designs to trip me as I jump. Column "B" eliminates the looser status in a permanent way that the first column could never do. So why am I toying with the idea that I should be safe and take Column "A"?

Because some sick part of me wants my brother's approval so badly that I am willing to let him dictate my future, because if i obey he might like me. Because if I yeild to what he percieves is his superior wisdom he will like me a little bit. And what is the first thing I tell people in a profile? "I am the captain of my own destiny... you will not commandeer my ship!" This would be the only time you can use Kirk's voice to read my words that I won't nerve pinch you to death, or want to shove Shatner out a hull breach. As Ireminded my friend Karen, and myself, family isn't anythicker than ones degree of jealousy. You only have to look to the first book of the Bible to know that I have a typical relationship with my brother and no matter how much I might love him, my love wouldn't stop him from bashing my head when he thinks no one is looking (Genesis: Cain & Abel).

I suffer from Waltonsesque dellusions. And I have forgotten one of the best lessons from Star Trek TNG character development: you can't pick the family you're born into but that's what adoption is for. Will's dad was rank, Jean-Luc's brother was a grumpy ass bastard (o.b.m.), Deanna's mom... well, 'nuf said, Worf's parents were nice but they weren't Klingon, Geordie had a happier life than most and that made him accept everyone (yea Geordie), Wesley's dad died, Beverly's mom died and she had no sisters, Data's dad was a wacko and his brother was a sadistic egomanic with homicidal and dictatorial tendencies plus Data lost a child. These people were as close to the ideal family as you could get and not be fascile about life. Nothing wrong with adoption. Blood is thicker than water because of it's chemical composition, not because it means more.

I told my brother that when I have my money I'm gone. Did I mean physically or did I mean that I would be dead to him? I don't know. Depends on what nanosecond of the day we're talking about. But, I have always adopted my friends as family. After the initial shock that I (and my sister) could thinck as much of "strangers" as we thought of our parents, my dad was pretty on board with the concept. He and his brothers were close and that wasn't entirely normal in his generation either. When he was dying and someone was willing to adopt me in spirit he felt he could let go. I was the second reason he hung on so long. (The other was that he wanted to live longer than Uncle Donald did). So now, add to column "B" autonomy.

And that makes me wonder... how will I choose?

Complete freedom isn't any more appealing than complete subjugation.

Ever have that feeling? Almost broke in two?

Rather than have all my dreams come true, I have had the nagging feeling that something at work is about to go horribly wrong. And that would revolve around our new twenty minutes a room limit. I can't hit it. Too many variables once you get to your floor. For instance: the number of guests who want to raid your cart because they have to get out and about and ran out of something; the guest who wants better directions somewhere than the front desk gave; the trash the guests put in with your dirty linens instead of leaving it in their rooms or bothering to find the garbage bag to put it in; the number of comforters that have to be changed because someone let their child/partner/grandchild/inner child eat chocolate on the bed; the number of amenities the guest has rearranged in their room between your visits; and the distance from your wing to the laundry room when your cart is too full of laundry and the houseman has called in sick. But my favorite are the over ripe diapers that the guest ditches on your cart so that the smell is in the hall way instead of in their room forcing you to make the extra trip to the dumpster to avoid hurling through the corridor while you work.

I can't tell guests to go ask the front desk. They don't put up with that. And 20 minute rooms means something gets missed. I don't like that. Guests don't like that. They don't come back. But if I have to loose this job because I can't hit twenty minutes and feel good about it then I am glad that I have had the last couple of days there. I got to spend the day pared with one of my favorite peeps... the little brother I never had. The kid is the most gregarious Capricorn I have ever met. He is a cusp baby, close enough to being an Aquarius that we get a long great. Almost everyone I work with is younger than me by enough that they could be my kid or my nieces and nephews if my siblings had started making families right after school like our classmates did. We laugh all the time, get our work done and we don't leave each other to flounder with all the rule changes that seem designed to get rid of us.

I have no delusions about my importance to any company. Between Suze Orman and John Tesh's Intelligence for Your Life segments, I'd be an idiot to think that my winning personality is going to save my ass from the fire when I slide off the spit. The bottom line is the only thing that matters in the biz world. And my bottom line is too expensive and threatens performance bonuses. I will be let go eventually. Maybe not this week. Maybe not next, but my butt is feeling toasty and Bev's reading indicates that there is a higher than 50% chance that my instinct is right.

On the happy side. I think that I have managed to make some pretty good friends and I have proven to myself that I can be socialized and not revert to trained monkey status no matter how tightly the screws are turned. And Bev indicated that the next six months would bring me in touch with all of my hopes and dreams. They won't all be fulfilled at once, but the opportunity to follow them will come like never have before. I don't know how. She only said to look for miracles in small things. And my adopted little brother is one of those small miracles. I certainly wouldn't have recognized him as such on the street.

This has been the hardest job I have ever had because of the physical stress that I have put on my body. But the reward has been a drop in pant size and a self confidence to blend in anywhere. Of course I laugh way too much while I am working with the kids... the same problem I encounter with my brother's kid in my brother's presence. But, as I pointed out to the kids, If you don't laugh you die. I'm not ready for that today. And I don't see a day coming soon when I will be. I am done wishing for death without ever having had the guts to live.

Now watch, God in his infinite humor will smack a BATA bus into me.

Beading Rainbow

I made a day trip to Honor and Beulah today. It is my yearly trip to C&M Rock Shop and the Beading Frenzy. I was hoping to find many wonderful tokens of mother Earth's appreciation to use in my Interchangeable Chokers. I found a ring setting and a few very nice stones. The selection was rather thin in the polished stones department. At only (price redacted) the make quite a nice impression. I usually choose stones that will allow me a lot of freedom in color matching. This usually means agates of some kind. I did find a gorgeous piece of tiger eye that had green blended into it. I didn't buy it because I knew I had nothing at home to match it in visual texture or colorization. All in all, I never feel like I've wasted a trip even if it is a short trip. Today I did. There was a huge bowl of peridot stones. Itty bitty little things. They weren't drilled. They were useless for jewellery. I was hoping to finally get to the Jack O'Neill inspired piece. Alas... not this year.

The Beading Frenzy was quite a nice surprise. They've moved buildings and the prices reflect that new additional overhead smell. But I found some really great pieces. First, the findings. There are great new clasp and string sets with magnetic closures. No way can hair get stuck in those(Big Grin) and they are lightweight with excellent tensile strength (Bigger Grin). And at (price redacted) they are a good deal for regular necklaces. I was hoping to find the same thing in anklet lengths. But I think that I will have to buy just the magnetic parts. The one kind that I did like a lot for it's ease of use has two holes to run the stringing material through. The larger hole is covered by the opposing magnet so that all you have to do is tie a knot in the string. Then you pull the string through to bury the knot inside the barrel of the clasp. Nice, uncomplicated and definitely not messy. I will most likely have to make another trip out there as I don't know that Nawbin carries either kind of finding. BF also had snakeskin something or other and I found something called denim coral. It is a fully saturated coral the color of jeans. Wow what a concept. It am thinking to do a seaside motif with them as I found seahorse charms. I know, very obvious. But what it not so obvious is the inspiration for the design floating behind my eyeballs.
One of the head pins had a flat spiral design that I thought would make a nice "Under the Sea" motif while I have the Greek pantheon in mind again (see Sherrilynn Kenyon's works). Unfortunately the gauge of the pin wouldn't allow me to string the denim coral on it. So I will have to buy a chasing hammer and make my own. Now the next question I have... did Fredo take Grampa's small anvil when he took the grinding wheel so that I couldn't sharpen the mower blades? Hmmmmmmmmmm...

Well, see ya next time.