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

I’m listening to the new Dixie Chicks album, Taking the Long Way this morning as I’m here at work. It’s a really great album. Of course I was influenced into buying it because of the Chick’s political statements, and sort of “voting” with my purchase, but it really is a worthy album that won’t get any attention or praise from the mainstream country crowd.

There’s a lot of themes about loss on this album, loss of friends and support that stem from the choices one’s made. Of course there are many parallels that one could see to the Chick’s current situation, and I guess that’s good, write what you know as they say. Still, nothing is “hit you over the head” autobiographical, no “Ballad of Natalie Maines” though there is a anti-war song. Certainly the sound is a little less country, and more in tune with a general audience, as they know they’ll have to get sales from a more diverse crowd than that of your redneck crowd.

I know the Houston and Dallas stations (mostly Clear Channel controlled) have refused to play any Dixie Chicks music, but leave it to Austin to buck the trend. Give ‘em a few years, when this administration goes away, and people will likely forget.

Yes, I do feel that Natalie Maines’ statement that she takes back any apologies not only is for her sensibilities, but also to sell records, as it’s getting less risky to criticize the president these days.

I wish they were playing Austin City Limits Festival this fall. I’m also listening to Gomez’s How We Operate, and they are playing ACL, so that makes me happy!

Otherwise, I’m thinking about the fact that this was my last week as a leaseholder for my apartment in Houston. Although I turned in my keys back in February, I still had an actual lease, and rent payments until this month. Now it seems more that I don’t have a home there anymore, but it still feels like home, even though I have a great home here in Dallas.

Last night I was getting gas and a guy came up to me and asked me for some change. Normally I don’t give these guys money. It’s more of a thing that I don’t trust panhandlers, and think that there’s better ways for these folks to get help than panhandling.

Now this guy did seem to have his family, and a truck that, from what he said, lost a fan belt, so it was a bit of a different situation. Still, it wasn’t until he said, “I’m from Houston, and we’re just trying to get home,” did I finally decide to give up the two dollars I had in my pocket.

Of course, I rarely carry more than a couple of dollars in my pocket anymore, as I’m a firm believer in the debit card, but that’s just a little tangent.

I guess I still try to keep in touch with Houston a little bit, checking the Chronicle’s online website for news more than I check for news about Dallas. Of course I need my Astros updates, and it doesn’t hurt that the Chron has all of their comics available on line (except for Sundays).

I still send emails back and forth with my friend Hans, just like I used to in my old job, but now he’s often telling me about what’s going on in the city, or with the fraternity. I tend to tell him of my troubles in playing softball. I also get a few emails from my old team, telling me who else has left, or that someone has been promoted to fill the loss. I also missed watching The Amazing Race with Jerry this year. Go hippies!

I need to get back there soon and go see an Astros game, but now I’ll have to get a hotel room, or go stay with my parent’s in Conroe. I guess the bonus there is that I would get to sleep on the bed that was in my apartment. The negative is that that mattress probably should have been thrown out five years ago.

Perhaps it would be a little different had I moved farther away, like Chicago or Seattle or Boston, where the culture is different, as well as the seasons and the stores and restaurants. Dallas is still Texas, and the differences are minor. Still, I guess the homesickness would be more magnified, but there may have been more excitement, too. Some days I feel I just moved down the street.

I guess I’m hoping to carry on TV night because it’s a great way to have friends around. I’ve noticed that most of the people we hang around with are people Chris or Matty introduced me to, and while that’s not a negative thing, it’s not like I’ve exactly been making my own connections here. Then again I was mostly a loaner in Houston, too, so I guess it is good to have some one to introduce me to people, as I won’t normally do it on my own.

It’s interesting having someone else at home with you all the time. After living on my own for a few years, it’s nice to have someone to talk to, but also you have to change your mindset where it’s not all about you. Sometimes I have to think, can I watch this program, since Chris wants to see it too, or should I drink the last of the milk since Chris will probably want some for his cereal.

I find I still think like a bachelor at times, though. I haven’t learned how to grocery shop for anyone but myself (well, the fact that we’ve been eating out a lot hasn’t helped), nor have I been able to work on doing the laundry together, worried that I’ll mess something of his up, or won’t know where to put something away. I still can’t fold socks like he does. Still, I often wait for him to come home to go out to eat, and I’d rather eat with him than eat alone.

I guess I just need to keep easing into my new situation. It’s very different from anything I’ve ever done, so it more a reaction to change that makes me think about the old apartment. I miss it because it was a really nice apartment, with a nice view and decent location. Luckily Chris’ house is also well located to about everything but our jobs. It’s been a while since I’ve had a commute like this! What a waste of time!

Well, times up here at the old factory, so I guess I’ll be heading back home to enjoy the Memorial Day weekend. Enough of this rumination! There’s a pool party going on this afternoon, so I need to get in a good state of mind. I also need to decide how willing I am to pull off my shirt today, as I have a large bruise on the side of my gut from a botched Byetta (medicine) injection from a few days ago. Not that I’m self conscious, or anything!

So I'm now sitting here in my new super cushy office chair from IKEA. Sure, we went out to look at desks, but I ended up with a chair. It's much better than the wooden chair I had back at the apartment, or the piano bench I've been typing away from for the last two weeks.

When we got to IKEA yesterday, we went all over the store, spending most of our time looking at desks, but not really fining anything we liked. I could use a new desk for the computer, one that fits this room along with another one for Chris. Yeah, I know, matching desks are so damn cute. Still, part of it is trying to match the dark wood of the lawyer's bookcase we got from pajamas_johnson a few weeks ago. We also found a little wire shelving system for Chris that was much less expensive than the Elpha ones at the Container Store. We're both in need of some closet organization now with the closer quarters.

As we got to the checkout at IKEA, we chose the line with the cute straight guy that we had seen earlier (he was holding hands with his girlfriend). Thank goodness we did, since the family in front of them decided that they needed three different credit cards and a couple hundred dollars in cash to pay for their six hundred dollar purchase. That transaction took something like fifteen minutes. Unfortunately we were already trapped in the lane and couldn't go to another. By the time we were up, Chris just put the whole thing on his card, rather than have me pay for my chair separately. Now I owe him the money.

This is just one of those little nuances that I'm having to learn how to work with. While it's no problem to repay him (except that I need to do it electronically or in cash, since I haven't found my checks yet), it's more of the little give and take. Since he bough groceries last night as well, I'm also trying to decide how much I owe him there, too.

I know it's trivial, but of the many things I've never really shared with another person, finances is definitely one of them. The closest I've come is a roommate or two, and after rent and utilities, our obligations to each other were over. Now I have to start working to budget with Chris, and do more than just pay for every other meal we eat out.

For one thing, home upgrades. I'm already wanting to help him (or maybe push him) into getting a better stove and eventually a bathtub that I can actually take a bath in and not be freezing cold as most of my body is out of the water. I know, again, nothing important, or things I must have to live, but certainly nice things that I'd like to have one day. The problem is how to save for it, and making sure there's communication between us to make sure it's something we both want.

Communication is different when your not just visiting, but actually live here. I want to help out, but I don't always know when Chris is wanting the bathroom cleaned, or the floors vacuumed. On the flip side, I wanted to see how he emptied and filled the dishwasher, so I'd know how to do it his way, but he had already done it before I knew.

I guess it goes down to TV as well, not expecting that Chris would want to watch a television show, like say, Smallville, I was halfway through it before I heard that he wanted to see it. I guess that's the bad thing about assuming all he's want to see is Lost and Battlestar Gallactica. Now I just need to make sure he knows if I'm watching something more than just a Pink Panther cartoon or something.

It's just the little things that come up as I'm trying to get to know the everyday Chris, and he gets to know me. It's nothing too serious, and just a few minutes ago we were all huggy in the bed. Still, he goes to bed earlier than I, so I ended up snuggling past his bedtime. Still, when he goes to bed, I can write, or catch up on things.

I also have to be up earlier than he does, so I'm still trying to sort out how I can be quiet in the morning, and not wake him up. It's not easy, as it takes about four or five slaps of the snooze bar before I wake up.

I'm also recovering from Friday's workout, then Saturday's softball practice that really took a toll on out-of-shape me. Still, I may be a little bit of a slugger, but one that can't field. We'll see. I'm not convinced yet that I want to be a regular player on the team. I also got way to distracted by the red-headed teammate taking off his shirt. I'm not sure my head is in the game.

I think I'm actually starting to realize just how big of a company I'm working for now. One thing was going with one of my classmates to watch him smoke. The smoking area is out on a loading dock that takes five minutes to walk through the twisting basement hallways to get to. The "pit" as it's been called is probably designed to be a deterrent to smokers, as it's far away from the ponds and landscaped areas or the lake that the majority of the building looks towards.

The building is large. Three wings, four stories each, and each wing is yards long with hundreds of cubicles. The building is built in a sort of Frank Lloyd Wright style that, low and long that seems to belie it's actual size. Still, the building houses over 3,000 workers. That's more workers than my last company had at their largest, and this represents only a fraction of my company's current workforce.

With this, the work gets broken up much, much more. Instead of workers being able to process many types of related items, here many people just work on one type of item. I worry a little about this, because it's easy to get bored with a job like that. Still, I plan to make it my business to move around and get to know as many sides of the business as I can here in the Dallas office. After a while, I'll have to decide whether management is my primary goal, or finding my way to a workgroup that fits my desires. We'll just have to see as I get to know more about it all.

Right now I'm just stuck in a far away training room that's named for a Texas lake. There's about 20 more rooms that are roughly similar, and about half of them have a class in them. Still, with all of this, I'm in a class that only tangentially has something to do with what my job assignment is. Everyone else in class is going to one group, but me. I'm learning how to process in the system, doing quite well, I may add, but my job is support after the work they will do, so I wonder where I'll start to get that information.

This company is so big, and works through so many people, that they have their own temporary agency. A few people in my class are moving from temp to full time. As I was looking at the company directory I noticed them, and all of the other people in my class are listed as Service Specialists. Apparently the temps are just Processors, while I've done something good to be assigned to a special group and be listed as a Senior Service Specialist. I guess I'll find out what the big differences are as I go along.

Having been a former trainer, I kind of get caught up in it, trying to share knowledge that sometimes relates, sometimes doesn't. I see that their training systems are still a bit primitive, and I want to work with them to fix that, but I'm in no way able to do that in my position. It's somewhat frustrating. I feel experienced, but not ready for this job at the same time.

I'll admit, it still feels strange, for one, to be in training again, but also not to be at the old workplace. I try to watch myself so I don't do a lot of "we did it this way" or such, but really, after being in management for a while got me away from the feeling of a workerbee. I feel I may chafe having to go back to productivity standards and being controlled where I had once controlled. There's definitely a culture change to be dealt with here.

Still, I drive to work both happy, and amazed, since I have yet to feel truly like I work and live here - that it's just a temporary life, and I'll return back to my old life soon. Luckily I've resisted contacting anyone back at AIM for not wanting to feel homesick for the way things used to be, in the little world we had there.

Well, I'm here. Thanks to Chris coming down and helping me get packed and brining things up to Dallas, my life is now officially changed. There's still a lingering presence in Houston, or i have to get the rest of the junk there into storage, but that may be a few weeks.

For now, and the foreseeable future, I'm a Dallasite, I live with Chris and I love him. it's going to be interesting getting to know how all of the new things in our lives work together, and learning when to give a little time and distance to one another when it's needed. Challenges, but good ones.

I start the new job in the morning. Many people expressed shock when I said I was going to be working at the new place with nothing but a weekend in between, but really, this was the new company's call, and I'm not in a position (yet) to fight that. It was part of the package that I've been wanting for so long, so I had to go with it. I think all of the new stuff will be exciting, though.

I guess I'm a little anxious. I could hardly sleep last night, in my old bed, with all the planning to do, the physical work in the rain this morning, and the looming challenges of the new job and life. hopefully I can sleep tonight, because I have a 25 mile commute in the morning.

For the last 3 years, each time I come into Dallas to see Chris, I would sing the TV theme to Dallas (you know, da-da, da-dah, da da da da dah duh...) when I saw the downtown skyline (which on I-45 appears right around the I-20 interchange south of town). this was usually alone in the car, and i was just happy to be close to my destination. I think I've retired that little habit tonight, especially as Sirius' "The Pulse" station played Howie Day's "Collide" - Chris' and my song. I think I've truly arrived home.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the song to the TV show Houston Knights.

It's the one, the only Screaming Amy, out at the happy hour that was held in the honor of my last day at work. About 25 people came to Berryhill in the beautiful weather to wish me off, oh, and to get drunk.

I'm in Chris' house today, almost my house too. I brought as much stuff as I could bring in my car this weekend, mostly clothes, and now I have a closet that's filling fast. Still, I think it's larger than the closet in my apartment, which is good, since a lot of stuff will be going in there until I can sort out things and find out what I can start putting where.

This morning, since this is a holiday for us financial folks - both for the old employer and the new, I've been taking the time to go over all of the new information about benefits and culture and rules for my new employer. There's little differences, as expected, but I suspect that the real culture shock will come when I have to start learning the new systems.

I've been filling out the forms online this morning, which is pretty cool. The new company is much bigger than the old, so they have greater resources to do things like forms online.

Two things I'm not liking, but it's the price you pay for taking a chance, I only get two weeks of vacation, I had gotten four at the old employer, partially because I'd been around more than five years. The other is that my 401(k) contributions won't get the match for a year. To me that's lost wages. Still, my average employment in a job is now five years, so I guess I'll be fine over time.

This leap has certainly started to develop several little fears. Certainly one is my being able to deliver to the new employer what I sold them. It's a step back, and I'll be taking more orders than giving them, and having to work with more goals that others create than creating my own. I just have to set my frame of mind back to learning instead of training and making sure I'm ready to work and motivated to succeed.

I'll be working in a part of the retirement business I've stayed away from for some time, so that will be an interesting change, but I'm dealing with clients again, and have to remember that, and focus on service, not my fellow reps.

Now at home, the apartment is in chaos, but it's a good chaos, but my worry there is that many of the things I need to be completed, like getting the storage unit with Dad, making sure we have the time to move all of the stuff in storage to it, and getting movers to move my stuff to that storage area. Pretty much all of the furniture goes there.

Of course, moving in is a concern, too. I've lived with a roommate before, but living with a partner is a different thing, since we are supposed to do things together. Sure, we'll both need our space sometimes, and it will be another learning process to read those times, and find where to go when it happens. I guess that we're kind of missing a step going directly from Long Distance Relationship Partners to Live-Together guys.

I know we had a little misunderstanding a week ago where I was talking about how to get out of my lease, which I can't, and he was wondering if I could transfer it to an apartment in Dallas. I thought that he was saying that I should get an apartment and not move in with him, and it put me into a funk, feeling that I wasn't wanted. I was wrong, though, and the next day we fixed it, and Chris said, hey, it's time to come home.

Luckily, Chris has been as welcoming as possible, and has listened to me rattle on and on about this moving thing. I guess when I really get into something, I want to try to jump on it and get everything set as soon as possible. We ran out to get closet organizer items so I'd have a place for my socks, but I've also been pushing on him to start looking at new desks for the office and trying to figure out how to get another towel hanger set up in his bathroom.

Luckily he's already started to set up the television for me with satellite service. He might be able to live without television, but I haven't gotten to that space yet. Heck Project Runway is on!

It's going to take some time before I can stop calling this Chris' house, and start to call it our home. Maybe when I help pay taxes on it, or when we can afford to replace the stove together. Maybe he'll let me hang up some of my photos and posters...but I need to be patient. I know I'm rushing this, and need to think about the long term. I'm here for the long haul. Maybe I should watch my lesbian tendency to instantly nest.

I'm trying to be careful not to throw too many changes towards Chris. He's already having his home invaded, and I wonder how some of my quirks will go over. Heck, I've never gotten into my usual morning routine, radio on with lfkbear's morning show while I'm in the shower, my rarely changing breakfast food (sausage biscuits with a glass of milk and a glass of grape juice), and trying to dress and read LJ at the same time. This after being woken up by U2 playing Even Better Than The Real Thing blaring out the clock radio's speakers.

Who knows - I'm sure it will take time for me to get used to him, too. I'm sure something's going to surprise me. As long as he's not a serial killer, I guess other things are negotiable, right?

Well, I have to get back to understanding how in the world the company's HMO works. I better be able to keep my doctor - heck, he's here in Dallas unlike my dentist, so one less thing to change, right?

Change is the keyword for 2006. Now I have to figure out what I can control and what I can let go, so I don't driving myself, and Chris, absolutely crazy.

The word got out among my team on Monday. Now they were nice and kept it amongst themselves for a few days, not telling me until I was asking for agenda items for Thursday's meeting where I was going to tell them. Melissa, the gal who's super scared of hurricanes, asked if I was going to have an announcement. I deflected by saying, "what announcement would that be?" she then wouldn't say much more.

When I did tell them, they all seemed to know it, but they were nice about it, though I could tell that they were worried about the future, and they have every right to be. With so much change, and the specter of outsourcing on their horizon, nothing is stable anymore. I told them that I'm trying to finish my projects as much as I can, but wouldn't be able to finish everything, so I'll try to dole out what I can.

The team wanted to take me to lunch because two of them will be on vacation this next week, so Friday was their last day with me. We went out to Double Daves for some pizza and talk. My new boss came as well, and so did a few of the team members I've had in the past who were with me on the 20 person team I had at one time. One of them, Morgan, a supervisor in his own right, joked that he would be taking over the team, but we all knew that there was a kernel of truth to it. he might get the gig, and that would be fine.

Every one had questions on who would take over, and I mentioned that I didn't know, but I'm hoping that they will pick John, the brightest of the current team members, to take over. My new boss said they haven't even talked about it yet, and that sounded par for the course to me. The team was concerned that I wouldn't be there to train someone, and I said that the company just doesn't move that fast, and the burden will be on them to make sure the team works and the new person understands what the team's special responsibilities are.

I worry about them. I guess I shouldn't, and move on, but this has been such a part of me.

By friday the entire office knew, and I got tons of questions of where I was going and what would I be doing. Almost every comment was followed by "are they hiring?" or "I hope to follow you out the door." No one seemed to have confidence in their future with the company. I guess this makes me feel better about leaving. I already know of another supervisor who's leaving so I guess 2006 will have as many people leave as last year did.

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On the homefront, I'm living with a lot of boxes, and I'm trying to get as many things ready to go out the door as I can. I still need to get the kitchen packed up, but I do have another week of living here to go. All the CDs are in boxes, as are the DVD's and the incredibly large amount of action figures I have. Things have been stuffed everywhere in my small apartment, so it takes time getting everything out of the nooks and crannies.

Last night, I had a rather good time going through all of the porn. Yep, all the published porn that's in the house. there are many, many magazines, most purchased between 1985 and 2001, before my internet connection caught up with my need for hunky images. Besides the large outlay of money that I lament on now, I noticed that the choices I made weren't always the best, as I tried to find my taste in men, and of course the availability to get good magazines.

As many of my bear friends would tell you, finally finding the late Bear Magazine was a godsend, though the early issues were kind of grungy. Still, I have plenty of issues of Advocate Men and Colt and other things, like the First Hand readers. When you're single and closeted, it was how you got by.

Now I hardly look at these things anymore, so I'm tossing a lot of it out. I'm keeping the Bear issues, since that's more of a collectors item for me, but a lot of other things - especially the issues where there was only one hot guy, they are not coming with me to Dallas. Unless someone wants them, And I guess you'll need to be local, the big trashbag of porn is going to make the apartment dumpster very, very gay for a couple of days.

Oh well, I have to go take some unneeded clothing over to Goodwill. Maybe I should take the trashbag of porn to the Salvation Army.