"If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other." - Carl Schurz

"The saddest epitaph which can be carved in memory of a vanished liberty is that it was lost because its possessors failed to stretch forth a saving hand while yet there was time." - George Sutherland
"Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe." - Edmund Burke

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm going to try to decribe briefly the changes that have been happening in the past month or so.

Michael and I are no longer together. It's a really long story and I don't want to bore you with all the details and I feel a sense of obligation to protect Michael's privacy, so I'll just condense it. Keep in mind that this is my perspective and that he is likely to disagree with me on what really happened. From my point of view, Michael was upset that he couldn't get his way about something in our relationship so he threw a fit, tried to convince me that it was about something other than his desire to be in control, involved an innocent third party who wanted no part of it and tried to complicate my life in retaliation. I really feel that he betrayed me in the worst way and, in the process, guaranteed that I could never again have him in my life in any capacity. Anyway, his little stunt backfired and I have managed to stabilize the drama with the third party and remove Michael from the loop. She is free to continue her friendship with Michael, of course, but she has promised not to let him pump her for information.

I was very upset for a few days but my serenity returned more quickly than I could have anticipated. In fact, I had to wonder why it didn't hurt as long or as intensely as I should. Truthfully, the episode highlighted some things about his character that I had known on some level for a long time. For example, at different stages of our relationship, I found that he had lied to me about his age, his job, his education, his heritage and his economic background. To his credit, he came clean voluntarily about all these things, which couldn't have been easy. However, the fact that he felt he needed to lie about these things to begin with, none of which I would have cared about, shows that he lacked the scruples I wanted to believe he had. The moment I found out about the first lie and I chose to continue, I was no longer being true to myself, and for that I have nobody to blame but myself. I think this is why I found myself feeling liberated when it was over.

I know that my earlier posts portrayed a much rosier picture of our relationship. This is because a) I wanted to believe that things were good and b) you just don't broadcast your partner's faults to the world when you are trying to preserve and fortify your relationship. Even my closest friends didn't know about the pattern of lies until after the break-up. Perhaps if I had been more forthcoming, they would have encouraged me to move on much earlier.

The rest is almost all good news. I adopted a new cat named Gus. He's beautiful and wonderful. He and Sugarfoot are now partners in crime. I couldn't have asked for a smoother transition for Gus into his new home. He is happy and we (my roommate, the other animals and me) are all happy to have him.


I had my colonoscopy, upper endoscopy and two biopsies and the news is mixed. The good news is that there is no sign of infection or abnormal growth. The bad news is I have erosive esophagitis (no surprise there), a sliding hiatal hernia and what they are calling a non-specific ulcerative proctitis. Translation: they don't know what's causing it, but they know what's not causing it. The gastroenterologist is operating under the assumption that it's acute and will go away with medication and better diet. It hasn't so far. I have a follow-up appointment next week so we'll go from there.

I was passed over for the supervisor position. This is actually a good thing because now that I've had a taste of what it entails, I want nothing to do with it. The really good news is they have made an offer to a candidate who has accepted and will start in about two weeks. I know who it is and they are a good choice. I look forward to passing some of these duties back onto someone better equipped to handle them.

I started my first class for my Masters program this week. I have been reading like a maniac, not just for the daunting deadlines, but because I'm really interested in the material. Soon I will arrange my accomodations and transportation for the required week-long residency in Tucson. I'm really eager to tackle the material and get everything I can out of this course.

That's it for now. More soon.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

8 things = excuse to start blogging

I have a lot of stuff to blog about that has happened in the past month or so, but I will save it for another post.  Right now, I will respond to the meme that Grumpator has tagged me with to get me to blog again.


This meme asks the blogger, i.e., me, to list 8 random things about himself.  Here we go:

  1. I actually have very traditional ideas about marriage, in a sense.  I am 100% for legal marriage equality, of course, but beyond that my notions of wedlock are pretty conservative.  I think that marriage should, ideally, be permanent and monogamous.  Of course, there are times when divorce is warranted.  However, I think most divorces could be avoided if people actually got to know each other thoroughly before getting married and then didn't give up when things got challenging after getting married.
  2. I used to own a coffin.  How I ended up with the coffin is fairly inconsequential. However, how I got rid of it is much more interesting. I sold it to an acquaintance I had not seen for a number of years previous.  He offered to take it off my hands and I accepted his offer, not really having enough space for it anymore.  Later, I remembered how I had met him years earlier: we had met at a Halloween party where he was dressed as death.
  3. I am not usually squeamish about watching gory movies or surgical procedures on Discovery Health. One thing that I do get squeamish about, however, is feet. I cannot look at foot injuries of any kind. I think this is because my step-brother shot me in the foot with a BB gun when I was a kid.
  4. I share my birthday, August 30th, with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and John Peel.  I share it with many other celebrities but I feel a particular affinity for these two figures. Shelley because we both have unusual dreams and Peel because we share a passion for discovering new music.
  5. The first album I purchased with my own money was Cosmic Thing by The B-52's.
  6. My elementary school classified me as mentally retarded because I had severe speech and coordination problems and had lots of trouble socializing with peers. To this day, I don't know exactly why.  I was tested for autism but it was eliminated as a possible diagnosis. My mother told me many years later that I had been diagnosed with a form of epilepsy due to absence seizures, but she later denied ever saying it. I don't think I'll ever know the truth about my medical history.  In any case, I overcame most of these obstacles, though I'm still rather clumsy.
  7. I have a pronounced suprainiac fossa, a skull feature not generally found in modern humans. Homo neanderthalensis had suprainiac fossae but not as large as mine.  My Fossil Hominids professors were baffled by it.
  8. Every time I shave, I think about the episode of Diff'rent Strokes in which Arnold buys a defective toy train.  I have no idea how that association got started but it persists to this day.
I'm not tagging anyone because I don't know who's reading my blog anymore.  If you do read this, please feel free to continue the meme and send me a link.

I will have more later, I promise.