Strange Holiday

First time I've done the holidays solo. I liked it, although it was strange not having my niecelettes jumping up and down on my bed at 5 am to open presents. Did I say strange? I meant really, really great. LOL.

I painted. I finally finished my "Jerusalem" painting. Picture pending until there is sun again. I started a new one "Rio", which is an excercise in bright, intersecting circles and Swarovski crystals. Its got bling but so does the city of Rio. Its taking forever but I hope to finish it before I run off to Spain.

Cooking, of course. I finally made a Chicken Noodle Soup from scratch. Except it was more a chicken, turkey, collard green and egg noodle soup. Delicious and postable this week (hopefully, if work goes well)

I found out from my dad that my soon to be former bro-in-law is now back living with my sister. WTF? When did multiple affairs with multiple women spanning multiple years become a forgivable crime? How did we move from divorce court to "lets try to work this out"? LOL. Well, whatever, my sister can do whatever she feels is necessary but as for me and the bro-in-law its done.

No trust and no respect = no relationship. Its just that simple.

Clearly I made the right choice staying in Houston; I missed snow, delays in travel, being stuck in a suburban Cincinnati hell and a bro-in-law that I would have completely and intentionally disrespected in my subtle, overly-sympathetic way.

Investments

I was lucky enough to learn in my early teens that you never know who your friends are until you move away. Oh sure, you can have 1000's of people you like and consider "friends" but most will quickly fade after you move.

The New Yorker and I were discussing that just yesterday. He experienced it quite heavily when he left Dallas. I know I will too. I can almost predict the 2 out of hundreds that will make an effort to keep in touch. No reason to feel sad for the others; cameo appearances have their place in life and about 99% of the people you meet are just that. Know them, like them, move on but don't hold on.

Then the New Yorker described his first experience with what I can only call the low-rent, middle-manager technique. You are familiar with this technique too. This is when someone is upset with you but instead of communicating such in a direct, adult mannner (assuming the person is older than say, 13) they just say nothing. Then he went on to describe another experience with what I like to call the stern-mommy management style, where again, instead of communicating effectively the person just assumes a passive-aggressive, cold, disconnected disposition. Well I had to laugh. I forget that people like this exist. To me its just simple time management to let go of these people. Done. And really there isn't even a reason to be upset about it since there are billions of other people to meet.

Reflecting, its nice to be at a stage in life where you know where to make time investments and more importantly, where not to.

Once again, with feeling

Sister visit was a success, she totally enjoyed the downtown experience. We managed to sneak in visits to the Nasher Sculpture center, Dallas Museum of Art and the Crow Museum. Lucky for us they had blocked off the street in front of the Nasher for an Indian street fair. Great food, dancing and people inbetween art museums.

All weekend we developed this eating pattern: have a cocktail and an appetizer somwhere, walk and sight see for 2-3 hours, then stop again. Even today I find myself wanting a martini and calamari with roasted tomato dipping sauce about every 2-3 hours :)

In more trivial news, I have been on the warpath once again to get into the medical research arena. This time around there have been many more interviews - about 20 total with the mother of all cancer research centers coming up this week. I would expect by the end of May I will know where I'm going. If this all sounds familiar then you have been keeping up with me since my ill-fated experience with CDC in 2006-7.

So there are no surprises here is what my intuition is saying about destination probabilities: 10% Dallas, 10% Atlanta, 10% Los Angeles and 70% Houston.

Houston - G-d save me from humidity :)

Sister

Sister is coming in today for visit, sans kiddos. I think this is the second time shes been in Dallas during the, yikes, 16 years I've lived here. I wanted her to see my place downtown before I leave, since it is very her.

Oh, that reminds me. I will probably have to take a break from writing about the important things like food and movies and digress into the trivial so I can bring you up to date on new work things, moving, love life, etc.

I'll try to make it brief so we can get back to important matters. :)

Update

I've been interviewing like a madman lately, including revisting some positions I turned down in Feb. There are a whole new crop of potential cities. But instead of boring you with the blow-by-blow I will just post when I have decided when and where.

My new contract is fun, even without the flying around in the boss's plane. We are scheduled to do antoher longer flight this week if the weather holds out. The software we are developing is financial and tax based. It sounds boring but it isnt, and I have learned alot about how property is valued and why.

The packing is done except for what I need to live on until closing. Rented a storage unit and moved as much as I could in my little rollerskate on wheels. Movers will pick up the rest in a couple of weeks.

I have a schedule of people to stay with until I leave Dallas. It was wonderful how many people insisted that I stay with them when I told them I wasn't sure where I was going.

I had more paired electronic failure. Last month was the fridge/dryer, this month the PDA/phone. I didn't want to get both a new phone and a new PDA, so I just got one smart phone - a Crackberry Pearl.



If you're in the market, this one is great! I have been really happy so far. The setup and synch with Outlook took about 20 minutes; the most painless integration ever! I havent activated the web browsing yet, but I will very soon.



Made it out to see Fracture finally. I liked it, I give it an 8.0/10. It was slow in spots but overall a very good psychological thriller. Gosling and Hopkins should pair up more often, they play off each other very well.

Abilene

Boss Man and I are taking his plane out to Abilene today to do some business. Is it wrong for me to be more excited about the plane ride than the work? :)

Sold!

My townhome officially sold on Friday.

This is wonderful considering I got more than I wanted. This is a good year to get rid of property, since interest rates will likely rise next year. I was also becoming concerned about the horrendous glut of townhomes on the market and the rising foreclosure rates.

THe Highly Elusive Urban Tara had her graduation partay last night, it was a little too much fun. It was nice to meet all of her out of town crew, as well as the people that work for her. Her 100-lb puppy was very excited to have so many people around to pet him and feed him queso and chocolate macaroons. I wouldnt want to be around this morning to see how he reacted to all that.

I randomly stopped off at the Round Up afterwards, which probably wasnt such a good idea considering the 4 Alleve I just took, lol. Oh well, no time to worry about that, I have a Hotel Godess lunch party to go to. I hope she has her special Bloody Marys prepared.

Pinot Memories

I only have two moods, happy and mad-as-hell. Last night I was mad-as-hell. So I did what any sensible person would do, I drank a whole bottle of Pinot Noir. I tried to watch Off The Black but I fell asleep. On the floor. With my big headphones on. That was all fine but I looked funny with them on when I was jolted out of my deep sleep to answer the door at 8am. It was the guy from Home Depot in with my new fridge. I need to write things down, lol.

Atlanta called again today to try to spin doc me into taking their ridiculous offer. I cracked.

"Look, you can put a big ol' fluffy bonnet on crazy but its still going to be crazy".

I don't think they will call again.

Still

Interviewing.
Packing.
Showing the house.
Hurrying up and waiting for the government to put together my offer package.

I love being in suspended animation :)

No Explanation

Looks like I am consistent, again a 50% correct pick for the Oscars.

Please entertain yourself with this interesting Jason image while I am completing my final round of interviews.

Cheers, Jim

Where Was I Again?

Electrical Guy, Window Guy, and Virtual Tour Guy came and went this week. The virtual tour process is fun and I think I have extreme camera-envy of Virtual Tour Guy's equipment (camera, Scott, camera, lol). Virtual Tour Guy hands off the images to Realtor Girl today so we should list tomorrow. My worst fear is that will sell in one day and then I will have no place to live, lol.

I have boxes crammed into every available space in every clost, under the bed and in all my cabinets. The place still looks lived in but I think I'm about 60% packed. I need to start chucking out clothes by the ton; there are some seriously offensive International Male shirts that I will take to the dumpster tonight. I'll wear a hat. And sunglasses. The shame, lol.

Still interviewing. I did a stupid thing and uploaded myself onto Monster and Careerbuilder this week so that has opened up a Pandora's box of options, some are actually in Dallas. I wanted to cast a wider net in case the two I really want do not pan out. I have my final ATL and HOU interviews next week, so I should know where I'm going by mid-March.

I'm almost done with Medical Terminology class (self-paced), I decided to get that one off my task list before I move. Hebrew class is getting deep into vocab and grammar now, probably by the time I go to Israel in October I will be speaking like a two year old ;)

Another going away dinner tonight at a new-for-me Lebanese, followed by a going away movie-date with The Extrovert, so that should be eventful.

Sexuality

Sister has been going to progressive Unitarian church. The church has an interesting mix of people with large gay and lesbian following, some of whom have children. She's enjoyed the church so much that she decided to volunteer to teach classes for the kids. It started out mainly being classes centered around yoga, since she does that for a living. I thought that was interesting, teaching the physical and spiritual nature of yoga to 8-10 year olds. Not that they can grasp it fully, but at least the concepts will not be foreign to them later in life.

The minister at her church recently approached her to teach other courses. These courses are about sexuality. Sister has no hangups, so she decided she would. The first class was more of an introduction to body - the kids were taught the correct names of everything and what they are for. The theory here is that talking about it at this age will hopefully promote more honest discussion at home during those crazy teen years.

The follow-on class was about relationships and origin of babies - mommy-daddy, mommy-mommy and daddy-daddy combinations all had equal exposure. There was a recent development in the church of a mommy-daddy situation in which daddy came screaming out of the closet with a boa and new boyfriend, soooo, now its a mommy-daddy-and-well-built-well-dressed-uncle 3-way living situation. Sister isn't sure how to explain this kind of trinity to the 8-10 year old crowd, so it probably won't be included this go 'round.

The class she will be teaching next will be about masturbation. I'm not sure I'd want to explain that to a 10 year old. Still, I think its a good idea to get it out as a topic so its easier to talk about during those crazy teen years.

Since Sister creates her lectures at home its natural that her two girls have been indirect audience. And this has resulted in some interesting episodes.

Scene: Dining room, everyone is seated and eating. My 5 year old niece walks in naked stands before my sister.

Niece: Mommy, this is my vulva, only I can touch it.

Sister: Yes sweetie, that's exactly right, but that's a private thing, not a thing we share at the dinner table.

(We're hoping she stops this before high school)

This next one was my favorite, she had the right direction but there were some important details missing.

Niece's friend: I know where babies come from.

Niece: Where?

Niece's friend: The mommy goes into the bathroom and if her water breaks she'll have a baby, if it doesn't she'll have to adopt.

Update

Two offers in, waiting on one, the one I want, of course. Today's forecast about 90% chance of Atlanta with about 10% chance of Houston.

Today I replaced all of those funky Susan Goldstick cabinet pulls with some nice but way less expensive pulls from Home Depot. Wherever I go those pulls with go with me, I designed them and picked out every detail. I want them buried with me along with my warm Merrell slipper-shoes and my Morningstar Farms Tomato Basil Burgers, lol.

Tomorrow Handyman is coming to replace all the doorknobs (yep, those deco reproductions are coming with me too!), give the windows and storm doors a nice cleaning and fix a seal in my fridge that had a seizure over the weekend.

Virtual Tour Guy comes this week, then Realtor Girl will list probably at the end of the following week.

Mover Man Version 1 and 2 are coming to give estimates for both suspect cities on Friday.

Hebrew class is rolling along, we are learning vocabulary and sentence structure. What I found interesting this week is that my Russian is coming in very handy for Hebrew. It has a similar cadence and some of the consonant sound combinations are exactly the same. Who knew!

Medical Terminology is taking a little diversion into the Medical Record. Yes, that thing that health care people fill out everytime you step into a facility. Not just the structure but ALL the regulations surrounding such. Sheesh, no wonder hospitals are light years behind in their computer systems, they are drowning in a pool of their own paperwork. Insane.

Research Project - done!

Diploma - received! Its a lovely piece of $40,000 paper, really it is.

Parents - They are fine. Well, except when I talked to them tonight they were having Manwiches and Margaritas. If they move the washer and dryer on to the porch, my sister and I will be forced to exercise an intervention.

Update

Interviews continue to go well. It looks like either Atlanta, Houston, Austin or Las Vegas, although there have been some developments in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas as of this evening.

Medical Terminology class is going well, it continues to amaze me how you can have a huge medical vocab with just a few root words, prefixes and suffixes. Now I can read medical journal articles and actually know what they are talking about.

Hebrew class is wonderful. I can now read the following and make all the appropriate sounds come out of my mouth. Just don't ask me what it means, we don't start vocabulary until next week.



What is odd about Hebrew (aside from the different letters and reading right to left) is that the alphabet you learn in class is not not the alphabet used in newspapers and on the internet. Bascially they leave out the vowels in modern publication, which of course means you have to know the words and the context before you can make sense of anything. Nice. Anyway, I can recite that "Barooch atah" blessing thingy now, so let me know if you need me to bless something, lol ;)

Realtor Girl and I have a walk through this week, we discussed a price and did some initial paperwork - the townhouse goes on the market in March.

I managed to spend some time in Austin over the weekend so I'll blab about that later!

Back

Sorry, Ive been away in interview land again. I'll update soon!

Weekend, Week Ahead

Finally, after a week of gross winter precip there was a break in the weather. Good thing too since there were three parties I needed to make; two down and one to go today. I will upload pictures soon, I'm trying to break my posting with a week's lag habit.

This coming week will be a few interviews, hopefully finishing up my research project (due Jan 30) and starting my Medical Terminology and Hebrew classes.

Laugh At Yourself

My sister got me these cool Tibetan Prayer Flags for Christmas, I love them. I finally made some time to put them up. You are supposed to hang them outside to weather the elements. In time they will eventually wear away to shreds, at which point you hang another set on top of them. In Tibetan Buddhism this is symbolic of the the cycle of life.

While I was putting them up outside my neighbor, Hot Cop, stopped to ask about them. We were chatting about the flags but all the time he has this goofy grin on his face. I live in a neighborhood that is about half straight and half gay, so ordinarily when some man gives me that goofy grin I have a good idea what it means. But Hot Cop is straight, in theory, he did marry a girl last year, so I wasn't sure what it meant. Shrugging it off I just went about my list of things to do.

Later I discovered why he was giving me that goofy grin. And that would be because of the other present my sister got me - the complete set of travel-sized chakra face masks. If you buy into chakra cosmetics, you are supposed to line up the jars, each a different color, then the first color that comes to your mind is indicative of the chakra that is out of balance. Apply, leave on for 15 minutes and poof, you are in balance again.

So, I did that. My color was green - apparently meaning my heart chakra was out of whack. Well, I had to laugh out loud, I guess I forgot I had it on before I went outside to hang my prayer flags. I'm sure all the other neighbors got a good chuckle. I'll be looking for my bright green face on YouTube soon, at least I had a power drill and hammer with me at the time.

Sheesh, lol.

And on that note, everyone have a good weekend :)

Interlude

Interview in Houston today went well, so thats sort of good news - bad news. I like Houston as a city, particularly the people but the weather, yikes. Well, its all about the job, so we will see.

Still dont have pictures from the Grad party since I wasn't sober enough to operate a camera, hopefully the pic takers will send them tomorrow.

If you are on Beta Blogger (Ryan, Bunny Lynn) please be aware I (and other non beta-bloggers) are not able to leave named comments on your blog anymore.

Verification

Starting this morning I have a number of people coming into town to verify that I have indeed graduated. I think they are expecting me to do things with them. See you all next week.

Etcetera

School
Probability Theory, done. DNA Knot Topology, done. Well, almost done. Just one more 20-pg paper, a Spanish Oral (careful :) and Spanish final to go. I will be completely finished on Dec 15th. Yay, me.

Gay Men Rule
Over the past week I ran a little experiment. I asked 75 gay men one question. The question and the responses I will post to GMR soon. Ok, soon-ish.

In Defence of English Cookery
John, from over the pond in London, sent a good-natured objection to my post indicating that IMHO, England had no great national dishes. He sent several of his family recipies from the West region, one of which I will be trying tomorrow, Leek Pie. Thanks John!

Grad Party
Big Mike reminded me that my party is next weekend. I was sure it was 3 weeks away. While I certainly know which day of the week it is, I am never quite sure of the actual date. I'm ready, so ready. If you are coming, look forward to seeing you. If you arent, I'm sure to blog afterwards.

For those of you who asked about what gift to bring, well, nothing says love like cold, hard cash. Seriously though, none necessary, just enjoy and meet everyone else in my life.

Foodie Concerns
My sister and I cook Christmas dinner for my parents. From Thanksgiving on we pick out our menu for this year's gathering, which usually involves alot of experimenting for the first few weeks of Decemeber. Those experiements that succeed, I will try to post.

Mom Update
We were concerned that she might have to have yet another back surgery next year but the doc says no. Yay, mom.

Film
So many I've seen and would like to write about but alas, so little time. The "to write about" list.

• Water
  
• Rebel without A Cause
  
• Cat On A Hot Tin Roof
  
• Borat
  
• Cool Hand Luke
  
• Dangerous Beauty
  

Also, thanks to Tommy who recommended Hate Crime, its in my Q!

New Job Thing
I had 2 offers this week, one from Ft. Worth, the other from San Antonio. Both were under market by about 40% so I thanked them kindly and asked them to keep me in mind for more senior level positions (as it is obvious what they want is someone with no experience). Surely these people realize that everyone has access to salary.com, lol. Sheesh.


Home Depot Guy
He's doing very well in NYC. Loves his new job and being near family. He did however complain that there was noone to date in the city. Of course I find this amusing since he is 20-something, intelligent, witty, makes a good living and is very good looking. What I found out was that he is only attracted to blondes. Interesting, I never picked up on that before. He claims NYC is a city of dark, smoldering men, none of which he finds himself particularly attracted to. Poor thing, I feel a tear coming on. My mistake, it was just allergies.


Israeli Update
My cousin, who works for the Israeli Police, just send me a newspaper clipping showing herself and her team after arresting a ring of people defrauding the elderly of their social security payments. This comes on the heels of her shutting down the prostitution ring in her city. We are very proud of her, particularly considering the less than ideal surroundings in which she works.

Its kind of surreal for me to think that fraud and prostitution are happening in the Land Of G-d, but I suppose people are people regardless of geography.

Holiday Decorations
Since Big Mike reminded me it was December now, I will be doing my anual coffee table decorations. As you may recall from last year, the decorations are extremely elaborate so it takes me about 3 days to complete. I'll update you along the way.