First, pics of Nichols-Nichols Land*, because I promised. From a distance, the house on the hill... First floor, flagstone floors... Going upstaris... Display case on the landing... Comtinuing upstairs... Upstairs living room... From the other side... Upstairs bathroom... Toilet, sink and shower, all separate... My room... Going up to the roof-deck cupola... Stained glass on the front outside of the cupola... Interior view down from the cupola... Stained glass skylight... Entering the roof-deck... The cupola from the roof... Parking area as seen from the roof... Following are several pics in an attempt to show a 360 degree panoramic view over the entire Tucson Valley and Foothills.. So, now you've seen the pics, you've seen part of why I was so excited to be moving in there again. I think I wrote this in a previous blog, I was the live-in nanny/babysitter for Cathy's little brother for about a year in my early 20s, before I got married. Anyway, a few days before I was to move in there, it became entirely unbearable to continue spending any more time around Heidi and Joe, so I called Peggy to ask if I could come over and hang out with her and Justin for the night, when I got there Justin very graciously offered to let me stay as long as needed which I gladly accepted, intending to stay for just a few days. Over those few days I had a lot of trouble trying to coordinate with Heidi to schedule time to retrieve the last of my stuff from the apartment. So finally I was able to, after a hellacious 2 days with no sleep and more drama than I usually care for. Also over those few days Justin suggested I move in with him and Peggy... splitting rent 3 ways was too attractive an idea to turn down, plus I love them both and have a lot of fun when I'm with them. (And I don't say that simply because I know they'll both read this :P) So, plans changed, I will no longer be living in the castle on the hill, but in a nice apartment with nice people in a nice area of town with no drugs and I couldn't be happier. :D Cheers! *Nichols-Nichols Land: So named because it was where a lot of guys in their late teens/early 20s with not much direction in life used to hang out. Cathy Nichols (my very close friend since high school) used to tell us we all had Peter Pan complexes and one time I responded with something like "Well, of course we do, we're in Nichol-Nichols Land", of course referencing Never-Never Land from the Peter Pan story. The name stuck and everyone started using it. :)

After I got the good news about a job the other day I was excited and wanted to tell my ex-wife about it for lots of reasons. Not least of which was that since I've been unemployed I haven't been able to help much financially with my daughter and I've felt guilty, like a deadbeat, so I wanted to tell her she could count on me more in that way in the near future. She was very happy for me, of course, but she told me instead of sending money to her, just contribute it to our daughter's college fund because she (my ex) is financially secure and doesn't need direct assistance from me. That led to us discussing other things about our daughter, how we both love her more than anything and how smart and sweet and generous and insightful she is. We also discussed living arrangements and how we both thought that if I move back to the area it would be best not to disturb our daughter's routine too much. So she'd stay living with her mom, but I can visit or take her out or have her spend the night whenever I want to. We also discussed opinions and approaches to other parenting issues... if things had worked out differently, we'd have been very compatible as parents in the long run. She's a great mom, the best I could ever hope for my child and she thinks I'm a great dad too. Not that I ever want to be in a romantic relationship with her again, but I still care for her very deeply and she for me, too. We took some time to talk about what was broken and what was right in our marriage. We cleared the air or buried the hatchet on a lot of old issues and reminisced about some good times. She told me about some of her doubts and insecurities that colored her life while we were married, and I told her about some of mine and some things that happened to me as a child that cast a dark unpleasant shadow over most of my life which I'd never revealed to her before. She asked me if, since we were sharing, there was anything else I wanted to talk about... I almost came out to her then, but it didn't feel like quite the right time. She probably already knows what I'm going to tell her because I said I did have something more to say, but not over the phone, I'd really rather do it in a more comfortable, personal, setting. I don't know though, maybe she thinks I'm getting married again or something. So, anyway, the next time I see her I will tell her I'm gay and we can discuss how and when to tell our daughter. We ended up talking for more than an hour. We came to a better understanding of each other than we'd ever had before in the 20 years+ we've known one another, and it feels great. It was the closure talk we were never able to have when we got divorced because there were too many raw emotions and hurt feelings at the time. But now, no hurt feelings, no anger, no stress, just 2 people who care for and want the best for each other and our daughter. :)

I'm still feeling a bit weepy, mostly from relief and hope. My friend Cathy called me this morning. It's always good to talk to her, for more that 20 years she's been my rock. And she really came through for me today. She asked me if 1) I had found a better place to live yet and 2) if I had a new job yet. I answered 'no' to both because I hadn't and she expressed again how worried for me she was because she knows how down I've been about those things and she knows how I tend to close myself off from the world, and do other stupid things, when I get too stressed with life. We chatted for a while longer then she said she had to call a few people and was gonna call me back later. When she called back she asked again if I wanted to rent a room in her mother's house because there are still a couple that aren't occupied, I told her I'd love to because I really need to get out. She gave me the names of the people who are renting the bottom floor of the house (her mother is on an extended humanitarian aid trip in Africa) and said they were looking for me to come by this afternoon to see if we'd get along. So I did, and they were great! Quite, calm, friendly and, thank goodness, no drugs. The house is amazing! 2 stories, and a deck on the roof with incredible views because it's the sole house on top of a hill that overlooks a very nice neighborhood in the Tucson foothills. It's so cool to watch all the fireworks displays around town on July 4th from the roof. I've lived there before in my early 20s when I was the live-in nanny/babysitter for Cathy's little brother, Miles, who was 7 at the time but is now 25 (geez, where does the time go?). I'll be able to move in on Wednesday or Thursday of this week and I'm really excited about it. Now I just have to figure out how to tell my current roommates that their lifestyle was really unhealthy for me and I'm not gonna be moving with them when they do. I hope they don't take it too hard, but it's the best thing for me mentally, emotionally and health wise. When I was driving home afterwords I called Cathy to tell her I think it'll work out. I was already feeling a lot of relief and less trapped when she told me she finally got through to her friend who runs the Pima County Democratic headquarters and told him a bit about my campaign and computer/software development experience and he's ready to give me a decently paying job! I just have to send him my resume so he has it on file, but the job is already mine! I'll probably start next week. I was able to hold it together for a few minutes, but I had to pull over because I was starting to sob and hyperventilate from all the good news and the relief I was feeling. Once I stopped, instead of going home I came straight to the library so I could touch up my resume and send it to him. I haven't felt this good about my hopes in about 10 years, since I got my last job 6 months after having been laid off when the dot-com bubble burst. I still have plans to go back to San Diego, even though I like it so much better here, because I miss my daughter terribly, but for now I'm not really thinking that far ahead, I'm just gonna be happy with whats coming in the immediate future. Cheers! :)

Sigh. On the roommate front things are looking grim. It's becoming more and more unpleasant and unhealthy to live where I am due to several things, including hard drug usage, unruly dogs, lack of cleanliness, loss of privacy, frequent fighting etc... I don't know where I'll go but I can't continue to live with my roommates. If I do I'll have a nervous breakdown within a few weeks. On another front, someone I once thought was a very close friend has essentially started ignoring me, except for the most meaningless crap, ever since I came out. I know it can make some people uncomfortable, but I really thought I could count on this person, if not for support, at least for conversation or communication. It just hurts to feel like I'm losing a friend, but it's not the first time I've been hurt by this friend so I think it's time to just give up and say goodbye. I don't wanna be hurt anymore. On a less unhappy note, my physical losses are now up to 50+ pounds and almost 7 inches from my waist since I moved back to Tucson. Now I think I need to start working out and put on some muscle weight because I'm at the point where I'm gonna start looking scrawny rather than thin and fit. I'm already thinner than I was when I was on the swim team in high school, so I need to bulk up a bit. But not like one of those gross bulging-muscly people, just to broaden my shoulders again and get some definition in my abs. :) Happy day!

So, you probably already know what I'm going to write about but some of you aren't on Facebook or Twitter. And I didn't really talk about it very much in either of those places. The other morning, about a week or so ago, I was kind of startled out of a dream about my ex-wife. In the dream she was trying to convince me that I wasn't bi and trying to seduce me. I really had no attraction to her at all, and she's a very beautiful woman. I don't know if that's what startled me but I woke up kind of surprised that I had been dreaming that. That lead me to think about other women I've been involved with or interested in and realized I felt nothing in the attraction department towards them either. And the same went for every other woman I could think of, even drop dead sexy famous ones like Eliza Dushku or Terry Farrell. That really surprised me, and left me wondering where it came from. It was bad timing because it was about 5 AM and I wanted to talk to someone, anyone, about it but everyone was asleep. I eventually fell back asleep and when I woke I admitted to myself that I'm gay So, remember when I said a few months back "I'm still totally into girls"? Well I'm not anymore! :) I'm still getting used to it, but it feels very right. I'm more relaxed and at peace with myself than I've been in, well, ever. And for some reason since then my self confidence had been at a high, which is quite unusual for me. I may seem gregarious and outgoing online but offline I usually hide in the corner whenever I'm not actively doing something. But now... I stood up to my dad and told him to stop taking advantage of me since he already owes me thousands of dollars, I told off my evil brother who wronged me greatly (not the usual sibling rivalry stuff) when I was a small child and cut all ties with him. Two things I was always afraid to do before. Over the past few days I've slowly been coming out to everyone who is important to me and even some who aren't. The only ones I haven't told yet are my ex-wife and daughter. I'm very nervous about doing that and I think I need to talk to other divorced parents who are gay for advice and reassurance before I do. My daughter is going to be 13 years old in a few months and that's a hard enough time in life as it is and I don't want to make it anymore difficult or confusing for her. Everyone I've told has been supportive and accepting, which had been wonderful. Someof them already suspected and 2 claimed to know. ;) The only negative so far has been that I had a first hand experience as a target of homophobia for the first time the other night... I was walking out of a gay bar near the U of A with some friends and some frat boys across the street started yelling at us and calling us names and throwing things at us. Nothing hit us, but still, it was kinda scary. I'm not in a relationship yet but I have some great gay friends who know what it's like to be new to being gay and are helping me meet people. :) I have more to say and talk about but I'm at the library which is closing in a few minutes so I'll sign off here. Cheers, everyone, and thanks for the love and support. It really means a lot to me. :) And one more time, just 'cause I like saying it: I'm gay :D

Drama, drama, drama. I have a place to live now. I'm moving in with my friends Heidi and Joe. Heidi is overcoming her heroin addiction, she hasn't used in 2 weeks and is doing well on her meds, and the constant smell of pot smoke isn't too terrible, it reminds me of college. :/ They have a couple of really sweet dogs who have already adopted me. :) There was the possibility of moving in with Peggy, which I would have preferred, but that didn't work out due to a potentially dangerous situation with her ex-boyfriend. He moved in with her about a month ago and as soon as she added him to the lease he went Jekyll/Hyde on her and started threatening and intimidating her. Several times over the past few weeks she's told me she's kicking him out and breaking it off, only to turn around the next day and tell me he's cutting back on the drugs and drinking and they talked it out and blah blah blah ... Over the past few days it's culminated in him refusing to sign a paper to remove him from the lease unless she pays him for the rent he paid for last month and the money he spent taking her out. He's left threatening messages on her voice mail and she's afraid to go home. I told her she should call the police but she's afraid of reprisals against her family and friends, which he's threatened, if she does. He got her fired from her job yesterday by showing up where she works and harassing her and the customers and other employees. They gave her the choice of quitting or being fired. But, plus side, he's the last drug dealer she'll ever date. I think people like him are the real problem with the pot trade. It's not the pot itself, which is less damaging than alcohol, but the criminals who are involved because it's not legal. I hate that he makes me feel all testosteroney and violent, I'm really a very gentle and mellow person but I feel like grinding his face into the asphalt. Which I could do if I had to because he's a very small man. So, anyway, she terminated her part of the lease and will be living with her sister until she gets a new job. And that's about it that's going on in my life. I'm going to the library tomorrow to get a book that my daughter wants me to read, The Hunger Games. I know nothing about it, but she insists that it very good. :)

It's been a while, so a little update: After close to 8 months of living with my dad in Tucson there are some changes on the way for me. My dad, due to financial and health concerns, is moving to San Antonio, Texas to live with my older sister at the end of this month. So, I need to find a new place to live. My sister offered to let me move in with her too but, much as I appreciate the offer, it's the wrong direction. My ultimate goal is to find a job that will let me move back to the San Diego area. I've loved being back in Tucson, and I hate California, but being away from my daughter hurts me physically. So until I can move back to California I'm not going further East. My unemployment insurance will allow me to afford a small cheap place or to be someone's roommate. Geez, what an adjustment it has been going from earning over $50,000 a year to living on what works out to less than $12,000 a year. I have a friend (Ms. Milky you may have read about in that DOTT post a few months back) who wants me to be her and her boyfriend's roommate but I don't think that would be a very good place for me to live. They're fun to hang out with sometimes, but they both smoke a lot of pot and she's addicted to heroin (starting on methadone in a few days) and I just don't think that's a good environment to be in. Plus, they remind me of my brother and sister-in-law. So, other than having no place to live this move will affect me in a few other ways. On the good side: 1) I love my dad but It's pretty f'ing demoralizing being a grown man and living with your parent(s). So, it'll be good to not be in that situation anymore. 2) I won't have to listen to my TV playing crappy old western shows anymore. On the bad side: 1) Since I'm not likely to find family to live with I'll probably have to end up paying higher rent. 2) I may not be able to afford to go to the Phoenix Comic-con in late May which I was really looking forward to. Wil Wheton, Felicia Day and James Marsters are all gonna be there. :( In other news, my daughter is spending her spring break in Washington D.C. for a school trip. This is the furthest she's ever been from home, and her first out of town trip without her mom or I. I'm kind of nervous for her, but she's having a great time and seeing lots of neat stuff. Her bag is almost already full with all the souvenirs she's bought for family and friends. She got me an FBI hat. :D So, other than that, things are going along as usual. Cheers.

When my dad was a kid he lived on a ranch with no indoor plumbing. Milking cows and collecting chicken eggs were part of his daily chores. The only electricity his family had was from a wind-powered generator which could power either a light bulb in the kitchen or the family radio. They didn't have a TV, but that was around the time functional TV broadcast systems were invented. His parents bought their first TV around the time he went off to college. My father got his first TV a few years later, after he was married, shortly before my evil brother was born in 1960. They had 2 channels. The internet was invented in 1969, shortly before I was born. At the time it was called ARPAnet and it linked Stanford and UCLA. When I was a kid of about 5 we got our first color TV, when I was 8 we got one with a remote. The remote was attached to the TV with a cord. We received 4 over-the-air channels: ABC (7), NBC (4), CBS (13) and PBS (5). I begged my parents to get cable so we could have 12 channels. They never did, they just told me to go do my chores, which included chopping firewood, picking strawberries and watering the fruit trees. When I was 10 I wrote my first computer program, when I was 12 we got our first computer, ostensibly for my parents' real-estate business, but it became my toy. It was HUGE, weighed 30+ pounds, had a green monochrome monitor that could display only text in only 1 size, 80 chars wide by 25 lines high, had no hard-drive and needed 3 floppy disks to run a bare-bones word processor. I loved it. Thus started my computer-nerdery. We finally got cable when we moved to Tucson when I was 16. I was overwhelmed with more than 20 channels! One of them, MTV, played music! It was mostly crappy music, but it was music. I bought my first TV in 1990, while away at college with money my grandparents gave me as a gift. Alas, no cable because I was a broke student, but I still got 7 over-the-air channels. I was strangely comforted by Bruce Springsteen's "57 Channels and Nothing On". Jump forward almost 20 years... I just effortlessly carried my laptop computer (which is wirelessly connected to the internet) into the living room, searched through the website listing the 400+ channels we now get to find when Buffy the Vampire Slayer is next airing on MTV, which no longer plays music, or Logo, which sometimes does play music. Huh. My dad's parents moved to Hobbs New Mexico when they were kids in horse-drawn covered-wagons. They both would have turned 102 this year. I loved them more than I can ever express, but they were racists and bigots 'til the days they died. They hardly ever watched TV at all, barely approved of the TV my dad watched, and would be shocked that a channel like Logo exists, much less that I watch anything on it. My dad still watches the same TV shows that were on when he got his first TV, and I watch hardly any TV at all because I'm still mostly a computer-nerd. Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes.

I want to get a new tattoo. I want something to pay tribute to my Joss Whedon obsession. I also want something showing my love for Futurama. Trouble is I want them in the same place, across the top of my chest. For the Whedon one I'm thinking of a nicely blended collage of some of the powerful women, looking all bad-ass with weapons: Buffy with the ax as seen at the end of the seasons 3-5 intro, Illyria with the 2 swords pointed at her as seen in Shells, River with the two axes as seen near the end of Serenity when the wall blows up behind her... and I'm not quite sure what for Faith. For Futurama I'm thinking of either something from one of the Alienese signs from the show or my own words in the Alienese alphabet. I also like the Futurama idea because I think strange symbols look cool. :) To incorporate both Whedon and Futurama I'm thinking of this: I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to decipher. (but if you ask nicely I'll give a hint) ;) Unfortunately it leaves out the bad-ass women. Also, I'm not entirely pleased with the look of it. Except for the swirly letters that look kinda like treble clef symbols. I love those. :D

I've been a member here since a little over 4 and a half years ago (according to my profile) and until 11 months ago I had fewer than 1000 posts. Over the past less than year I've made more than 9000 posts. That comes out to a bit more than 1 post per hour. Yikes. All thanks to my DOTT friends. Actually thanks to me interacting with my DOTT friends. Yay, what a fun almost year for the most part. So, yeah, this in my 10000th post. :) geeky math stuff now: 5^4 = 625 (incidentally, the number of profile views I've had). Translated to base 5 that would be 10000 2^4 = 16. Translated to base 2 (binary) that would be 10000 5^4 * 2^4 = 635 * 16 = 10000 = 10^4 (Including this, the number of posts I've made) No need to translate to base 10 because that's what we're all used to using.