First Day

Yesterday was my first day of work at my new job. If you've been paying attention over the last few weeks, you should be able to figure out what company I have joined. Needless to say, my brain was dead tired last night.

It's quite a change to go from having nothing to do to being inundated with information. It really feels good to have a purpose and a mission. Everyone is very nice, and I can tell they all have kind hearts. But then, that is what non-profit work is all about: it's looking beyond yourself to how you can help improve the life of someone else.

It's gonna be great.

Last weekend I flew home and visited my family, not really knowing when I would get another vacation to visit them anytime soon. They are very much my grounding force. And I figured I needed to give The BF a little break, because it has to be a tiring job keeping me entertained and centered. I marvel at his patience with me. Sometimes, I think I don't deserve any of them, yet I am grateful beyond measure to love them all.

Life is good again, folks. Very, very good.
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Customize Your Beer

It was only a matter of time that the whole selfish idea of mass-customization would leap from luggage tags and bank cards . . . to beer. Mmmmmmm . . . . sweet, sweet beer.

A Danish brewery, Tuborg, has joined the personalization-trend and launched a service called "Your Tuborg" (Din Tuborg), which invites people to customize the beer label when ordering a minimum of 30 bottles of Tuborg.

The beer and your own 'mate-impressing' label is delivered directly to your door within 4 weeks of placing an order.

Nice Christmas gift to send to your worst enemy. Or your Dad.

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Headin' Home

Since I am unemployed for the next 5 days, I am traveling back to Maryland today to see the folks and chill (literally) in the mountains for a bit. No place can refresh me like home.

Saying goodbye to the staff at AAM yesterday was interesting - and such a dichotomy from the last time I departed a job. When I worked at Empower back in DC, I loved the company, loved the people, and actually dreaded my impending last day of work, knowing it would be difficult and emotional. But then I had a heart attack 2 weeks before my last day, and just never went back to work again. I felt, in effect, robbed of the farewell party, the hugs, the laughter and the fond memories of the place and people I loved.

Yesterday was quite the opposite. I didn't like AAM, but I did like some of the people. For the most part, everyone was very complimentary and sweet to me. And when I thought about it, I realized that I probably will be a missed presence around the office because I was different: I talked to people outside my department, I didn't dress as conservatively as the other men, I laughed a lot and actually had a sense of humour. But most of all, I was true to myself. I must have added some element of fresh air to a somewhat stale environment. So for those reasons, I believe they will feel some sense of loss, even if it's a slight one.

Of course I will miss Amy and Melissa, my co-workers. But I also know I will see them socially and meet for lunch now and then. And I will miss talking to my boss, too. But even as I walked away from AAM, I could feel this heavy burden being lifted from my shoulders; this thing that seemed to have been dragging me down was no longer doing so. I felt free somehow.

And what better way to express my freedom than by jumping on a plane and taking off for a few days (remember, I was an english major - symbolism is very important to me). So I return home to charge my batteries and pretend that last year or so at AAM never happened. I will place myself back at my parents' house following my surgery in September '05, ready to move to Chicago to start a different chapter of my life with much to look forward to. Only this time I am happier, healthier, and certainly wiser.
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Last Day

Today is my last day at my job - the job I have loathed for oh these many months. What began as a promising career ended up becoming a year of wasted time. For the most part, I thought no one at my company even noticed I was there. So on the day I submitted my resignation (which was nothing like the last time I had done this), I began drafting an email (I called it my manifesto) about how, for the past year, AAM (my company) had left me to wither on a vine, giving me little or nothing to do, and practically demoting me while giving me constant praise and high reviews. The email would eventually be sent to my boss (the Marketing Manager), her boss (the Director of Marketing), and his boss (the president of the company). It went through some editing phases, but I was pretty sure the email was ready to be sent when my last day came.

And then last Friday happened. The president of my company invited me into his office and began our conversation with this:

"I have never had this conversation with anyone in my entire career, and I hope I never have to again."

With this, my mind raced. What could I have done, I thought. I don't do anything all day long so how could I have upset the president of the company? And then he continued:

"AAM really dropped the ball where you have been concerned for the past year", he said. "Promises were made when you were hired, and AAM did not fulfill those promises. Nor did we provide you with the tools to grow, prosper, or even nurture your abilities in any way. We failed you. And since my managers did not manage you well, and I clearly didn't manage my mangers well, I have failed you too. And for that, I am sorry."

Well, knock me over with a feather! This is a man who runs a $15.4 billion company. After a week he won't even see me again - ever. He didn't have to acknowledge me or even say good bye to me. But here he was delivering a mea culpa on behalf of his staff, his company, and himself -- and in a very humbling manner.

He asked for my suggestions as to how AAM could improve so that this type of thing does not happen again. And I used the opportunity to verbally share my email rather than send it later. I was glad I had everything fresh in my head - I must have looked so prepared for a meeting that was unscheduled. And since I had nothing to lose, I was very honest about my thoughts, my feelings, and my disappointments.

After a 20 minute conversation, John (the president) offered that he would provide a great reference for me, even if it's 10 years down the road. And he said that even though he was sure I was moving on to a better opportunity than what AAM had provided, I was welcome to come back to AAM and that they would "get it right the second time".

That felt really good. And I oddly felt vindicated even though I had done nothing wrong. But this isn't where I go soft and say that working here wasn't all that bad in retrospect - because it was bad. I've never felt so ignored in my life; it goes beyond not having things to do. And I am glad to be leaving today.

Next Wednesday I begin my new job and new life, and I phrase it that way because I think many changes will occur in my personal life as a result of this change in my professional life. And next Thursday, I will tell you all about it.
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Don't Axe, Don't Tell

Those crazy fellas over at Axe have done it again. First they make a scent that apparently drives straight women crazy, and now they make it look like that scent really works. Behold, the new bath towels from Axe.

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Back On iTrack

Last November, I was going for a run when I fumbled with my iPod, dropped it on the sidewalk and kicked it about 50 feet or so. Needless to say, it died. It was hard for me to keep up my cardio routine with no music, so The BF was kind enough to loan me his old mp3 player so that I could at least bear my 30 minutes on the elliptical.

But after a few times, I lost interest. It was music, but not my music. So since I never do anything half-assed, I just gave up the cardio altogether. Go me.

But this past week, I put myself back on track when I finally purchased a new iPod - this time the black 8g Nano. My old iPod was 20g and I only barely filled up half the space. So I condensed and edited, and realized that I didn't need one quite that large anymore ... the Nano would do just fine.

My only fear is how thin it is. I am likely ... make that very likely ... to snap it in two. Or break it in my pocket. Or sit on it. So I got the extended warranty. Let's hope I won't have to use it. But I must say, it makes all the difference while on the elliptical.

It's funny that this thing I swore I might never buy ended up being something I couldn't do without.
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Falsettos

My junior year in college, Ron, Kathy, Leigh, Ex#2 and I journeyed to NYC to see the Broadway production of Falsettos, a combination of the second and third installments in William Finn's "Marvin trilogy" (separately, In Trousers is the first, March of the Falsettos is second and Falsettoland is third). The stories surround the lead character, Marvin, a married man whose son is about to have his bar mitzvah in the early 1980's. And as Marvin's son is physically growing up, Marvin tells himself that it's time that he himself grows up emotionally and begins rediscovering his own sexuality.

Marvin:

• leaves his wife, Trina
• takes a male lover named Whizzer Brown,
• gets a psychiatrist (who eventually starts dating Trina),
• abandons Whizzer when Whizzer becomes sick with something that has yet to be given a name,
  
• reconciles with his son, Jason
  
• becomes friends with the lesbian couple from next door - one of whom is Whizzer's physician.

Whizzer eventually succumbs to the illness and Marvin is left wondering how he will continue with his own life. It's all very emotional and profound as it looks at the effect of one man's sexual identity on 6 other people.

In the theatre that night, I was sitting with my best friends and my boyfriend at the time. We were still kids ourselves, watching this man struggle to find his place in the world when the world didn't always seem to be a fair place. We knew all the songs, yet were still moved to tears watching the performance, holding hands. We got to meet the cast after the show, five college kids going ga-ga over a couple of Broadway stars. We were, as actress Barbara Walsh (Trina) dubbed us, "Falsettoheads" (she also took this picture - yeah, that's a younger me on the far left).

The show has stuck with me for many years. So about a week ago, I bought the CD again on Amazon and have been listening to it ever since. Even though the show is now a bit dated and anachronistic, some of the songs still resonate with me. This "mysterious gay disease" could now be anything that infects the body and mind of those we love, while we watch helplessly, unable to do anything but love them.

And most of the time, that has to be enough.
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Heathly Choice

Now and then, there is a commercial on television that really hocks me off. Currently, it's a commercial for Healthy Choice dinners. You've seen it:

A couple of camera-friendly chefs are in a modern home-like kitchen, jauntily tossing this herb and that spice into a dish. And I am fine with all that: they're cute, they like their jobs, they're creative, and Marcel is nowhere to be found. And then the part irritates me comes up - a line at the end of the commercial where they say that because of their constant strive to achieve a culinary and health-conscious menu, they have "added flavour to taste".

Add flavour to taste. Hmmm....

Exactly how does one do that . . . exactly?

How do you add something to itself? Adding flavour to taste is like adding ocean to the sea or chicken to poultry - it's the same damn thing. What the hell is Healthy Choice trying to tell me with this? If they want to say they put a lot of work into their meals, then just say that. Don't blow smoke up my ass by telling me something as inane as "adding flavour to taste" - which makes absolutely no sense to me.

Just for this, I'm going back to Lean Cuisine.
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Harder And Harder

When it's time for you to leave a job and move on to the next one, the in-between time can be agonizing. I feel like a lame-duck employee. No one is giving me any projects because they know I won't be around to finish them. And there are a few things I need to do, but I should probably wait until my replacement is hired so that I can show that person how to actually do these things, not just talk about them and say, "You'll know what I mean when you do it."

It's increasingly harder to get up at 5:30am everyday and trudge off to a job I am no longer interested in. If it wasn't for the few people that I actually like there, I would use the rest of my 6 allowable sick days (that's right, only 6 sick days. In Chicago. That's basically two winter colds. Cheap asses.) But my work ethic and sense of duty, no matter how tainted, keep me going. Plus I am being taken out to lunch practically every day by someone different. Yeah, my dance card is full.

A two-week notice is just too long. Another guy in my office quit the same day I did, but he's only working a one-week notice, not two. That's enough time for him to clean up his files and transfer his work to someone else. I doubt his replacement is hired while he is still employed here. Which calls to reason that my job will be taught to someone whether I am here or not. Two weeks is a generous amount of time to give to a company who didn't seem all that interested investing any time in me at all.

Right now, this job is just in the way of me getting on with my life. And it's getting harder and harder not to completely resent it.

(PS: the artwork is by artist Steve Huston. Click on the image to go to his site. I love his work.)

Walter Reed Hospital

Washington, DC seems to be all up in arms because its just been discovered that Walter Reed Army Hospital, located in the nation's Capitol, is a sub-par medical facility.

Like this is some big newsflash??

This is, like, the worst kept secret in DC. I'm not now nor have I ever been in the military and even I know that Walter Reed is a pig sty. This has been a well-known fact in DC for as long as I can remember. It's not like this is a revelation or that someone just happened to look at some chipping paint and said, "Gee, this place could use a good scrubbing."

If these lawmakers had been doing the right thing, they would have noticed what a dump this place was years ago. Elected officials in Congress, who authorize wars and then don't visit the hospitals to thank the men and women they send off to those wars, are spineless. Walter Reed has been falling apart for years. And all it would have taken was for one senator to make a trip to that facility to visit an 18 year-old boy who lost both of his legs or had his face blown off.

But no. They all just sit back and clutch the pearls wondering how such a deplorable place could exist for our "people in uniform". Shame on them . . .

. . . again!

Countdown

"Even though Exxon Mobil's profits declined by four percent during the last quarter of '06, they still set a yearly profit of $39.5 billion, which is an all-time record for any U.S. company."

--The Boston Globe, February 1, 2007

"When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are things to be ashamed of. When a country is ill governed, riches and honors are things to be ashamed of."

--Confucius, Chinese philosopher, 552 BCE

The countdown continues . . .
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Flute Boy

Turn on your speakers for this. I think this is amazing, 'cause I can't even walk and chew gum at the same time.

Kobayashi

Takeru "The Tsunami" Kobayashi is a 29 year-old Japanese competitive eater and a member of the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE). He holds the world record for hot dog eating as six-time consecutive champion of Nathan's Famous hot dog-eating competition. The record of 97 Krystals hamburgers was set by Kobayashi on October 28, 2006.

He is the top ranked eater in the world according to the IFOCE. He is the longest and current reigning world champion in competitive hot dog eating. And look at his abs!!!! How is this even possible???

Genetics can be a real beeyotch!
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Myocardial Infarction Infraction

I thought this story was heroic:

An 80 year-old woman sitting alone in her home watching the Super Bowl is assaulted by a stranger who tries to lead the woman to a bedroom. After some pretty quick thinking, she fakes a heart attack and tells her would-be rapist that her medicine is in the car in the garage. After they retrieve the meds, the assailant flees, only to be picked up near the house by a police officer on routine neighborhood patrol.

Go Grandma!

Meanwhile, in semi-related news, thousands of Chicago Bears Fans experienced authentic heart attacks at the outcome of Super Bowl XLI.
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Night Visitor

The other night, I was laying in bed. The bed is in the corner of the room. My head is on the same wall as the bedroom door, which leads out into the hallway. The door was open - all the way. The only light spilling in was from a night light the hallway. But it is a very dull light, as if the bulb was on its last few minutes of burning.

As I laid there, back against the wall, I suddenly saw the figure of a man quickly glide into my room. "Who the fuck is this?" I thought. He disappeared into the darkness, but I could hear him open a drawer and rattle around a bunch of objects, like in a utility drawer. The man closed the drawer and rushed back out of the room into the hallway. He remained darkened in what little amber light that was provided.

And I laid in fear.

Before I had time to think let alone move, he came back into the room and went back to the drawer. I heard all the objects, which sounded like metal, slide forward in the drawer as he pulled it open. And I wondered to myself, "does he know I am here? If I make a noise, will I startle him? What is he searching for?"

I couldn't see him in my room. But he was in there, rummaging around, looking for something in the pitch black space. He pushed the drawer closed again and I heard him heading back towards the door, which was about three feet from my head. As he approached the door, I (inadvertently?) made a small sound. It could have been a cough, or perhaps a gasp, but he heard it. And the man stopped at the doorway, startled.

He slowly turned in my direction, and noticed, for perhaps th first time, that someone was in the room with him. And also, for the first time, I saw what he has been rushing in and out of the room to retrieve - what he has been getting into the drawer for. The amber night light in the hallway shined on a knife blade he was holding in his hand.

He squinted at first trying to find me in the darkness. And when he finally made out my form, his eyes widened, and then squinted again. He turned in my direction, with the knife, and slowly walked toward me.

And then I woke up. And thus goes my dream cycle for the past two weeks or so. I think I need a change in my medication.
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Some Words From Dop's Dictionary

ASSHOLE: A person who does not shovel snow from the sidewalks in front of his dwelling and/or business.

DIPSHIT: A person who does a half-assed job of shoveling snow from the sidewalks in front of his dwelling and/or business.

There is no excuse for having uncleared sidewalks in the winter. Old? Hire someone. Work a lot? I've seen people shoveling at 11PM. Health problems? You all know my health situation and my ass is out there shoveling every time.

No excuses, Assholes and Dipshits!
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The Most Feared Man In America

At least he is to the lowest form of human being -- the child sexual predator. Chris Hansen has teamed with Perverted-Justice.com (also known as PeeJ), an organization dedicated to identifying adults willing to have chat room sexual encounters with minors. Taking it a step further, Hansen then confronts those men who physically show up at a determined location in order to have sex with an underage boy or girl.

Dateline NBC has been airing To Catch A Predator for a few years now. The shows both repulse and fascinate me. While I cannot understand the idea of having sex with someone who hasn't even begun puberty, I am curious to find out what drives these men (and it's always men on this show) to this desire.

Of course, most of the predators deny knowing the age of the person they are meeting, even though Hansen whips out copies of their Instant Message exchanges, and then uses the predators' own words against them. Almost all of the predators are repentant, and most say they visited the location just "to talk" - even though they show up with condoms, with lube, with alcohol, and, in one man's case, completely naked.

Some people argue that this show violates some kind of civil rights. Flashing these men's names and faces on television before they have been convicted of anything is supposed to be wrong, somehow. But the show is humane in its treatment of the predators. Hansen represents me - wanting to know what motivated these men to want to commit such an act.

Personally, I consider Hansen a hero. It can't be easy to stand in a kitchen or living room and try to have a mature conversation with a man who was seconds away from sexually abusing a child. But Hansen does so without judging (for the most part), and then steps aside to let the law do the right thing.
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In Other News

On the same day that Anna Nicole Smith died, a man in Chicago slipped on some ice on a CTA platform, fell onto the train tracks and was subsequently hit by a train and killed, thus closing the train line for several hours and delaying the commutes of thousands of people.

There was nothing on the Chicago news channels about this that night, because the focus was on the death of a woman who was famous for ... nothing.

Personally, I don't care if Anna Nicole Smith lived or died, or even how she died for that matter. But I do have some concern over the safety issues of a commuter train system that millions of people, including myself, use every day.

And so should the Chicago news channels.
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Altoids & Anti-Valentine's Day

Altoids fans will be pleased to learn that the company has launched several Altoids Curious and Original Chocolate Shoppes in the spirit of Valentine's Day. Actually, they're anti-Valentine's Day. Each of the three temporary "pop-up stores" is billing itself as a "sanctuary from all the romantic overtures" for the "lovesick, lovelorn and Cupid-wary."

The stores are located in Chicago (of course), Miami and New York, and each has free activities, such as "Therapeutic Crafts for the Broken-Hearted" and "Love Stinks" needlepoint kits. They also stock samples of Altoids' new Dark Chocolate Dipped Mints and are passing them out with free lattes. Chicagoist stopped by their local store and reported that it also stocked "cupcakes from Angel Food Bakery, anti-Valentine's Day cards and a variety of other Altoids and V-Day related schwag."

Everything in the stores, in case you haven't gotten the picture yet, is free, so it's definitely worth a stop by if you live in one of the three cities mentioned.

And if you do have a loved one with you today (like I do - hey hon!), then Happy Valentine's Day.

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Clearly, People Don't Listen

The other night I am sitting at home and my phone rings. I don't recognize the number (it's out in the suburbs) so I let it go to voicemail. By the way, my voicemail message - in my own kinda deep voice - is:

"Hello, this is Dop. I can't take your call right now, so please leave a message."

So about an hour later, I checked the message just in case it's from someone I might actually know. Here is the message that was left:

"Wanda, did you tape 'Criminal Minds'? Let me know..."

And here's the clincher:

"... it's Mom. Bye."

So I am thinking - either Mom is completely hard of hearing, or Wanda needs to lay off the cigarettes. Cause if Wanda actually sounds anything like me, she must have been smoking for say, oh, 50 years. And this isn't the first time something like this has happened.

I recently changed my cell number from the one I had back in DC for the last 6 years to one with a Chicago area code. And since then, all different kinds of people have been leaving messages for - well - all different kinds of people. Yet every person who leaves a message has to listen to me first. But still they leave messages for their friends, associates, or in Wanda's case, daughters.

Clearly, people just don't listen. Or aren't paying attention which is just as bad.