As 2004 began, my life was dire. I was still doing medical billing, still on the shitty phone bank having no-win conversations---the SAME no-win conversation---40 hours a week. I'd leave work and pace the parking lot ranting with frustration---that and fear of having to drive home. I'd get home, eat everything in sight and spend the evening in ( Read more... )

HWSNBN had a cyber-sex habit. He renewed acquaintences with some dame he used to know who'd lived in Melbourne and now lived in Ocala. He wanted to visit her and asked me to go with him. Nothing to hide, right? We met her at a local restaurant---so far, so good. After lunch, she wanted to show us where she lived, so we followed her out to the ( Read more... )

By now, I was starting to get more than a little disenchanted with the Camarilla, or at least our local chapter. For one thing, we kept getting out of town visitors who tended to monopolize the game. The one away game I ever went to, five of us drove up to Jacksonville (2+ hours each way), and before we could start LARPing, we had to get our ( Read more... )

There was a guy I'd met through the LARP---come to think of it, he was running the tabletop game where HWSNBN and I met---who first told me about a weekly discussion group that met at the local UU church. They were pagan-friendly, he said, and I'd given them a try. That was in early '99---I remember, because that year they had a Beltane event that ( Read more... )

I was in and out of temp jobs: taking floral orders around Valentine's Day and doing a few arrangements, working at Dysfunction Junction (Family owned, and the family in question, an older couple and their adult sons, could not speak three sentences to each other without it turning into a screaming row. Insanity.) I was there for five months, and I ( Read more... )

You may have noticed the lack of...shall we say, relationships? That's because, aside from my unrequited Thing for Dr Bizarre, there weren't any. There were a few incidents of being groped at various concerts, but nothing that lasted after the lights came up ( Read more... )

While I was working at the directory assistance job, I noticed a couple who also worked there. They were hard to miss---he was about 6'7" and she was maybe 5'2"---a real study in contrasts. I never approached them, just noticed them---then I ran into them at a LARP. And that's how I met Mb ( Read more... )

I've gotten to the point where I need to check my resume---when did I start at the directory assistance job? February of this year. Easy entrance exam---they only wanted 20 wpm and a spelling test. And it wasn't without advantages---we were able to set our schedules ahead 3 months at a time. I happily worked...10-6 or 11-7, depending. None of this ( Read more... )

We're back to Warren Beatty again...because if I hadn't been baby-sitting for BC's offspring, which entailed watching some Saturday morning cartoons...a lot of things would've been different.

The 'toon in question was X-Men. I knew almost nothing about the Marvelverse aside from Spiderman and Fantastic Four, which had been Saturday morning ( Read more... )

If I ever won the lottery, I'd probably take up attending college as a hobby. Humanities, History, Literature---any class I could write a term paper for was good; I made a small killing in Humanities, making and selling copies of my notes, and I wrote and sold a few term papers on the side ( Read more... )