The Trials and Tribulations of the not-so-New Bear Icon

✬One more day of work before Christmas tomorrow. My excessively grinch-y overseers are closing the office early, but instead of being nice and just giving us the time, they asked up to get up early and come in early so we can still work our full shift.

The company I work for has a similar demanding tone with little recognition for your effort that I experienced at Target many years ago. Thanks to lack of planning, we've been on "mandatory overtime" this entire year. Still, they refuse to bring in help, or acknowledge that the upturn in volume is anything more than an aberration.

Happily for us, we are so loved. My boss, who after several months still doesn't know what we do, came around with an envelope stating that it was a bonus for all of our overtime. I opened up the envelope and saw a laminated card with some words of thanks and blah-blah-blah, then signed by our Senior Vice President. I looked back in the envelope looking for a gift card or something...nothing. The card was it.

Makes you feel like the effort to go above and beyond is so worth it.

❆I have a couple of words to mention about James' (jamesbeary) funeral services. First thing, it was very, very cold last weekend. The graveside service was pretty miserable, both for the reason and the cold.

In a way I felt like more of a placeholder for all the others in the bear community who couldn't be there. In some ways i felt like I didn't know James all that well. Chris and I seemed to be there more for support for urso than anything else. There weren't a whole lot of bears at the ceremonies, and the service itself seemed to gloss over this part of James' life. Really, the only member's of James' family that really talked to us were his nephew, Eryk and his wife, who greeted us with "so you're the bears?" Eryk was the one who was emailing, IM'ing and texting people about James' passing, so he seemed to be the only one who knew the range of people who James had touched.

Only the couple of eulogies provided during the service seemed to capture a little about James. The nice-but-formal pastor seemed to be on autopilot for the service.

It was also interesting being in a room with so many deaf people. The hands and arms were gesturing wildly. Urso could pick up things here and there and Eryk could converse as well, but it was tough trying to mingle with the crowd when you can't say much. It made for an odd afternoon.

✯I've had a couple of nudges saying that I should post more, and I should post more of my political rants. Really, I keep up with politics, but man have I been burnt out on it. I may have to give a new opinion for the presidential race, but really, don't we just wish that it was time to just vote for 2008 and it it over now? Do we still have ten months to go?

❄Otherwise, it's a quiet Christmas here. Chris is busy cleaning the house while I've been extra lazy. We were trying to figure out what to do for christmas dinner between the two of us, and it pretty much comes down to the the fact that I really can't cook much. I really should learn to cook more than Rice-a-Roni. Though I do love Rice-a-Roni. Having shopped early and already given Chris his gift, there's really not much to be done, otherwise. If I could come up with some time off during the christmas season some year, perhaps we could plan to actually travel, but for now we'll just be at home.

Since I was way too lazy to get out Christmas cards this year, I'll just have to tell everyone here that I wish them a Happy Solstice (belated), Happy Haunukka (also belated), Merry Christmas, Meaningful Kwanzaa, and observant Hajj, and we'll see you around New Years.

☆Chris has already given me one gift. He got me a membership to LA Fitness. He's been motivated seeing as I've been going to the gym at work for the past year and a half, so now he's trying to get into it as well. We've gone together a few times, but I get to choose between our little gym at work and the new LA Fitness across from the Baptidome.

So far the eye-candy hasn't been all that, mainly because the LA Fitness location is new and doesn't have a lot of members. Personally I wish it would stay that way. Fewer people to see how winded I get doing laps in the pool (besides the fact that I'm in the pool in the first place). The nice thing about the gym is that it has more equipment than the gym at work.

❆Personally I'm ready to move on to 2008 and see if we can take a few more risks and make a few things happen. It is once again a time for change, especially in the work life. Heck, with less TV to watch, maybe I'll work harder on getting my resume into the right hands. Perhaps some good could come out of the writer's strike.

One of those odd bit of minutia that will get me thinking for a bit is car names. Several of them change over the years, but there's many that have stayed around. It seems that every year there's a Toyota Camry and Corolla and a Honda Accord. GM also likes to keep the names of the larger vehicles going, year after year, like the Chevy Malibu and the Pontiac Bonneville. Even Ford realized they had made a mistake by not continuing the familiar Taurus name when they introduced the Five Hundred. There will be a 2008 Taurus.

I'm sure that they create tons of marketing focus groups when they decide to name a new model, but the models that seem to get new names all the time are the low end, entry level cars. Gone are the Toyota Tercel, the Ford Fiesta, and the Dodge Omni. Heck, even the Ford Aspire - on my lists of worst names for a car, is gone.

The only consistent name I can think of is the Honda Civic. I had one 15 years ago, and the name was already old then. I'd also include the VW Golf, but they just recently changed back to the VW Rabbit.

Now we have the Nissan Versa, Ford Focus and the Toyota Yaris. Only one of these words is actually a word.

What happened to the Barracudas and Dusters and Le Mans? All good names. Certainly better than another car with some alpha-numeric combination.

Of course No one would return to the names Edsel, Pinto or Corvair (Unsafe at any speed) but certainly the VW Thing is a better name than Toureg. What happened to the Subaru Brat or the Dodge Hornet? I think those could be brought back as well. I think the GMC Jimmy should stay in mothballs, though.

Change might be good. Certainly changing from an infamous name is a good idea, like Ford's decision to drop the long standing Broncho name after the famous OJ Simpson drive down a freeway, but the replacement (as the TV show Arrested development notes) of the Ford Escape does leave you wondering what they were thinking.

Still, I'd love to have an convertible Edsel, probably because of the name - oh and the suggestive grillwork.

I have to go in to work today. I've been working a lot of Saturdays this year, but I get paid for it, so 4 overtime hours each week makes up for it. besides, Chris had to go into work too, so there's nothing going on at home. It's also raining. I have a stack of papers to be sent out on my desk that I wasn't able to get through this week, so that's my morning enjoyment. I may work out here too, before heading home Here's a couple of oddities at the Work Ranch right now.

When you build an office building in the middle of what used to be Ross Perot's pasture, you're bound to get a few critters now and again. Lately all the buzz has been about snakes found in the cafeteria. Hmm, let's think about it. On the third floor where i work we've had mice, so it's probably going to be the case that the cafeteria might also have some. A snake, looking for a meal would likely go where the mice would be...the cafeteria. If you don't want snakes, work on getting rid of the mice.

Of course you could also let the Bobcat that lives in the woods come in after the snakes. Do cats go after snakes? I don't know. or we can get one of the hawks in to catch the mice.

When they start building the new building out here, it will be interesting to see what critters get shaken up from that activity.

As far as humans go, there's this one lady that I've never worked with, but has an office on our floor. She's a Director - a manager of managers. I often see her going to get water at the water and Sonic ice dispenser (Sonic Ice is a sort of crushed ice that is in little rounded, tubular nuggets like they use at Sonic Drive Ins). She has short, spiky hair and always wears a pantsuit, much like Hillary Clinton does.

Unlike Hillary Clinton she doesn't look frumpy in her pantsuit. She looks like, especially when she's wearing white, Sigourney Weaver in the movie Jeffrey. If you've never seen Jeffery, give it 15 minutes and it will be on Logo. Every time i see her, I just want to yell "THAT"S DEBRA!"

♠The building at work has been open just a few years. Besides the odd fact that there are actual Longhorns out on the property, and ducks on the pond that I can see out of the window, one of the stranger things is the floor. The building is very tech friendly, so the floor is raised to allow for the cabling. There are small access doors all over the place. Stranger still is that the ventilation system is also in the floor, so at my desk, on the floor is a round port with holes and today since the air conditioning was turned on, there was a cool breeze blowing up from the floor. It's kind of strange feeling the breeze on the lower part of your elbow as you go to pick up the phone.

The building is also a showplace for indirect lighting. all of the florescent bulbs are pointing up to the ceiling, or concealed in little overhangs and alcoves. Still, this allows for the polished concrete floor in the bathroom to actually reflect which makes it easier to see if a stall is occupied from halfway across the room.

♣I went out to the batting cages tonight with some of the guys in the softball league, and was happy with my ability to make contact on most of the pitches. Really, it must be from watching all that baseball, since i certainly haven't played that much. It's actually making me excited about the season. I still have some reservations, like being somewhat scared of the ball, especially when catching it in the field, but i think I'll do ok if I can catch.

Chris was stuck in traffic, so I got to meet the other guys who were there. This is a bit of an accomplishment since I'm normally shy around new people, but heck, it was just softball, right? Of course the one I naturally gravitated to was the one who I was most attracted to, and he was nice, but as we were talking I found out something. On the gay softball team, he was the token straight. Suddenly it didn't bother me so much that he smoked, but it was a bit disappointing. Still, he was a nice guy. Unfortunately he plays for an opposing team.

♥I'd like to thanks who or whatever from saving me from the two motorcycle cops on 114 this morning as I was in a hurry to get to work.

♦So, Sirius Out Q will have their host, John McMullen, broadcasting his friday night show from the hospitality suite at TBRU. That ought to be something for you who are not coming to listen to, as that in the later hours could get really out of hand. Of course you won't be able to see it on the radio. They are also sending the overnight host, Jeremy Hovies. Too bad they aren't sending Larry (lfkbear) to make it a bear trifecta.

☣Despite reports, and dubious pictures to the contrary, my beard does not have anything living in it at this time, thank you.

➥Recent music purchases have been The Arctic Monkeys, The Magic Numbers and Morningwood, which thankfully keeps this from being three bands with "The" as part of their name. Each are enjoyable in their own way.

Well, the hours have already passed, and now it's officially after Schnitz's (alphaschnitz) birthday, so I'm a little late. I hope it was good, and he'll have moved into his new place soon.

I want to write something, I guess. I guess I'm posting in search of a topic, which is a bad place to be.

Well, there's a couple of nonsense trivia bits I can talk about. For one, i saw a map of all of the art on the university of Houston campus. While there's no real comparison between the UH campus, which looks as unplanned as most of the rest of Houston and Rice that took the actual effort to keep most of the buildings alike. You would never see a 60 year old tin shed on the rice campus.

Still, UH does go for some modern art on campus. One of the newer pieces, in front of the new school of music is some sort of bronze melting that's supposed to resemble a winged Nike but looks more like a chocolate easter bunny that has partially melted in the hot Texas sun. It's placed up high on a pedestal, but that just seems to make people want to dress it up even more. It's had band uniforms and dresses and other costumes from the near by theater.

There's also a statue in the Student Center that's a sort of crazed representation of a cougar (the UH mascot) attacking a pained Longhorn, and just about every other mascot of the old Southwest conference, including Horned Toads, Razorbacks, Owls, Ponies, Bears, and a little guy who I guess is an Aggie, or maybe a Red Raider. I'm not sure if I've ever seen anything more rah-rah on our normally apathetic campus.

Now, one of the newest installations on campus is a three story stainless steel blender. I guess it could be an hourglass of some sort, but really, it looks more like a blender, and probably is there to inspire smoothy purchases in the Rec. Center that it stands in front of.

One of the older ones is named Sandy in a Defined Space (or as we called it, Betty in a Box), and it's a raised box structure with a nude female figure sitting in to, with a leg stretched out of it. She's stuck at a normal person's reach, and she gets felt up often. You can tell because the patina has been worn down in certain areas. Sometimes she gets painted. Well parts of her.

Each new building on campus has to set aside one percent of it's budget to purchasing art. Sometimes it's good, often, it's just plain weird. The architecture building has two granite slabs that are carved into the shapes of couches. They aren't comfortable. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be art or a torture device.

Still, my favorite art pice at UH is an abstract metal set of boxes that sort of mess up your perspective. It's a forced perspective where it's not as deep as you would perceive looking at it. It was tough to draw in a art class I took one time. It's called Troika, but i have no idea why, since a Troika to me is a chariot that's propelled by three horses.

Occasionally I'll see a pice of art elsewhere. there's a couple of small pieces on the lawn outside the building I work at, but they are out dazzled by the light up deer that appear on the lawn each Christmas, but Houston isn't, as a whole, a big city for public art. It's a developer built city that doesn't think about devoting money for things like that.

Houston isn't a bad arts city, better than Dallas in ballet, theater, symphony, but there's never been a strong push for statues. In fact, I can't think of another statue besides the one in Herman park of a soldier (Sam Houston in this case), in the entire city. There's very little acknowledgments of wars in town, where others in the South would have Civil War heroes everywhere.

It's just not that kind of town. Trees, freeway overpasses, and buildings, little else.

❅Nothing much going on here, just working on the Holiday cards, trying to figure out how many I should send this year. thank goodness the postal rates don't go up until next year. Remember, the postal service says that you can send your letters to Santa, and your letters to God, to the same address.

❅Watched the end of the Amazing Race:Family Edition on Tuesday with Jerry (goofycubb). We both agreed that it was the worst season of the show, mostly because the challenges were lame, and they didn't go very far. Still, how can you beat Jerry cooking for you? I think we both agree that the best team of the three left, won.

In other reality shows, America's Next Top Model, I lost interest after Kim was kicked off and the Apprentice:Martha Stewart, please, how would these people ever get a corporate job? Thank goodness that there is Project Runway, and it's looking to be really good.

❅So President Bush said that he was responsible for the bad intelligence on WMD's. Really? Now you can say this because everyone else already knew it! I guess trying to show responsibility might be a way to get your poll ratings up, but since when has this president been interested in poll numbers? Someone's worried about his '06 coattails, and costing his party seats in Congress. It's also interesting to see him endorse Sen. McCain's torture bill, as he sees that it will likely pass. Wouldn't want to look like you're against this one, endorsing the use of torture.

Still, let's hear it for the Iraqis who went out to vote. Now maybe their new government will tell us to go home.

❅Hmm, Bill O'Reilly doesn't tell the whole truth? Unbeliveable!

❅Movies I want to see: Brokeback Mountain, Syriana, The Producers, Rumor Has It, the Matador. Movies I'm so-so on Narnia - LWW, I gave up reading the books when I was a kid, and King Kong - really, I never liked the story, and I'm not spending 3+ hours to watch the effects, no matter how good they are.

❅If they re-run it on Bravo, check out Celebrity Biographies: In Their Own Words. Comedians and such read excerpts from terrible autobiographies. It's terribly funny.

❅Hooray for Ford saying, you know, the gay buyer is important, and we're going to keep advertising in the Advocate and other gay media. If nothing else, don't give up those dollars! How many AFA members are going to buy a Jaguar, anyway?

❅We had a holiday lunch at a sort-of South American restaurant called Amazon (what a surprise). the conversation ranged from fraternity life to the fact that our company's new CEO is being paid £58 million. This is why so many people are being laid off, I'm sure. Still, once the S'mores platter with the sterno flame to roast marshmallows came, we didn't care much anymore.

It's almost the close of another World AIDS Day.

As I've mentioned before, I've only been lightly touched by the disease, possibly because of coming out so late, and just not having the circle of friends that others had during the most difficult years. Of course the disease hasn't passed, and while things are more bearable in North America, that's not saying that this disease is not still exacting a terrible price across the globe. Many places are still quiet about telling their citizens how to protect themselves, or even details about the disease. Now education might be more difficult as attention turns to the disease of the season. Last year SARS, this year Bird Flu, next year, who knows?

I have friends who are living with HIV, I have known one person who has died from AIDS-related complications, a drum major in college. I hope not to lose more. For their sake and ours, I hope there's a cure and a vaccine, soon.

Still, with all the extra news stories and the attention payed to AIDS, i heard something I didn't ever expect to hear. President bust actually used the word "gay". While he was mainly focusing on his continued abstinence program (I'll save judgement for now) he did pledge to expand AIDS programs here and abroad, and praised the gay community for their continued work in battling the disease. Heck, how could we not?

Still, it's the actually the fact he used the word "gay" and not the more approved homosexuals. He's stayed away from "gay", let alone "lesbian" for his entire two terms since the conservative crowd doesn't like "gay". It's perceived as being too accepting of homosexuality and that just can't happen.

Of course the President had trouble pronouncing "condom".

one more little tale, a personal one. In my short time out, There's been a minor AIDS scare or two, besides finding out about one partner's status a while after, there was also the odd call I got one evening.

Now I do try to take precautions, either through practice or through prophylactics, but you know I prefer the term "safer sex" because you never know. Still, when I got the call, I was in a bit of shock. This guy was telling me that he had reason to believe that he might have been exposed, and that I might have been as well.

After the initial shock, I thought about it, and realized that it wasn't anything to be too alarmed about because we were both responsible, and I knew this person was of good character. I declined to ask him why he felt he may have been exposed, since it really wasn't my business. I thought at least he was honest, compassionate and responsible for calling me, even though he was still waiting on test results.

In the end it was a false alarm. My regular test has come back negative, and in begin in contact with him, so did his. A relief for us both.

Still, sex is risky business, and should be thought of that way, but we must all balance our lives between what we must be responsible for in life, and enjoy the true pleasures.

Today, remember, prepare and fight, hopefully tomorrow we'll be able to live freely

✾So I'm watching last night's NBC disasterpiece The Poseidon Adventure. Because of a Texans game our NBC station delayed the game until after midnight. Let me tell you, this was not a movie they needed to remake.

Of course I could mention Steve Guttenberg and you already know how craptastic this was going to be, but unlike the original, they had to create a whole terrorist story with bombs and guns to make the ship flip over. Adam Baldwin (Jayne from Serenity) is the Homeland Security guy trying to chase them dow - obviously he fails. They also started giving people Love-Boat style backstories and a group of people on the mainland trying to rescue them. Don't they know we didn't need anything but their characters during the disaster? Because of all the extra stuff, it took them an hour to flip the boat over. As for the rescuers, who cares? Having the feeling that they may get to the top and find no-one was half of the suspense factor.

Of course, there is the problem that the initial ship rollover makes the movie, then after that, it's not all that exciting, you know it already, people get knocked off as they go, the bishop still tries to save them while having a lapse of faith (but not in this new movie), and eventually the fat lady swims. Heck, the Shelly Winters replacement doesn't even have a husband in this one...who will cry for her?

One thing I've got to know, Do they make ceilings strong enough to be walked on?

✾Over the weekend, my sister Laura came into town. It's been a few months, so it was good to see her. She had driven down from Baltimore, leaving Ed with friends in Dallas - and off to a hunting trip. Laura asked me to buy tickets for Harry Potter on Friday, and it was a full theater. Still, I'm totally crushing over Stanislav Yanevski as Viktor Krum. I wish he was going to be in the other movies. Very cute. I'm glad I googled him to find out that he's 21.

Laura and I ate...as usual most of my socializing involves food. Before the movie, we had dinner with Jerry (goofycubb) and Tim (timbrat). I didn't tell Laura that Tim, a friend from our old neighborhood, was going to be there, so she was surprised to see him. Otherwise, we had breakfast one morning with an architect friend of hers, and eventually had dinner with our parents...where I found that Mom wasn't told that Laura was coming in, or that she was staying with someone else. Laura needs to let me in on these things. I know she loves to keep Mom in the dark, but i can only do so much.

✾Are you all as sick of government sponsored torture, I mean government sponsored heavy interrogation as I am? Dick Cheney needs to go on a waterboard.

✾Thanksgiving will be in Dallas, not Las Vegas. Not a big deal, really, the tickets cost too much and both Chris and I got to feeling bad about charging Chris' parents a lot for it. Perhaps next year if we plan on it, we could go, but I'm not charging $1,000+ for that. I still want to go to Vegas just to see it, but it'll have to wait. As for Thanksgiving, anyone in Dallas that wants to come by, let us know.

✾And remember, if you lose your keys often, you may need to ask for this at christmas time.

So apparently McDonald's McRib sandwich is on it's "farewell tour".

What happened? Did McDonald's supply of the boneless whatever it is become extinct?

Coming home tonight after watching tonight's Amazing Race episode with Jerry (goofycubb), I decided to drive by to grab a picture of the flashing sign at Second Baptist Church. Unfortunately they had already changed it, so it appears that next weekend's sermon has something to do with Saul. Now, second Baptist is a mega-church here in Houston, one of several, and is much bigger than the First Baptist Church. Second has the big TV show and everything. Apparently last week's sermon was an interesting one, at least in my mind, as the other night the sign flashed with the message:

Back Door Secret To Success

It's good to see the abstenence-only programs are really working for them.