The Giant Rat of Sumatra Coffee Co-op

I know I was going to stop naming my posts but this one just had to start somewhere. In the late 1970s I was convinced to start a coffee co-op for Starbucks coffee. It ran from 1978 to 1983. I bring this up because I am just a little nostalgic for the time when I was still an air-headed himbo; since the ex-Mrs.Grumpy left, the house was kind of stark - then she took V.I. (our kitty) and now the house is empty and kind of echo-y. No one stayed in my life longer than a year or two and when they left, I forgot them - adult attention deficit disorder can wreak havoc with friendships. When I ran the co-op people called me, wanted to get together, invited me to visit - all those social things. When people don't touch me, I forget them; you would not believe the number of partners who went away because I forgot them. I would take off to Montana for a couple weeks and when I came back, I would have forgotten them or I could not think of a reason to call, or it had been so long that I was too embarrassed to call.

Letting(?) her take the kitty without a fight seemed best for Kitty; cats are very conservative and do not like to do things for the first time. Once they have done something, then it is probably okay and they will do it again; so I did not want to let the ex take the cat until I could find a place to live that accepted cats then try and get Kitty to adjust to another new situation (I drove the ex to her home the other night and Kitty already forgot who I am and ran and hid in a box). VeeVee was a rescue kitty that we found in a PAWS cat outlet; she was almost completely shutdown, she did not even respond when we picked her up; she had been un-adopted for about 6 months from what they told us. Then things got weird for her when the ex told me she was leaving; got worse when she was gone. I just found where she was pooping; I was suspicious that in cleaning the litter box, it was all urine and only a little poop. I guess I should have looked more, she found a nice spot on a rug in a nice deep hidey-hole. It is petrified so god know how long it was there (Kitty has been gone for a week or 2 now so there may be more surprises in store for me). Kitty seemed to pee and poop in odd places at odd times. Sometimes she even peed behind the TV while we were watching. I think the ex had been building up to leaving and the cat picked up on the bad vibes - I didn't pick up on it, or actually I think I just glossed over all the signs that the ex was ready to leave.

I am listening to some Pink Floyd right now and that takes me back to my blissful himbo-hood. I saw my first concert in 1969 in San Diego CA; I was in the Marine Corps. Well, actually I was on my way out of the Corps. A Corps buddy and I rented a Carmen Ghia and drove route 66 from CA to Chicago in 1969 (I will tell that story sometime later). While we were on the way back, we were pulled over by the IHP - one thing lead to another and we were arrested escorted to the Great Lakes Brig then flown back to MCRD San Diego. We got separated, Mike (my buddy) was taken back to his/our company and he continued his career in the MC while I got side-tracked to Casual Company (yes, there is/was an Headquarters company named Casual Company where people whose MC career was on hold or ending) and eventually I was mustered out with an Honorable Discharge for medical reasons (another story for another day). While I was in C.C., I started doing acid and smoking pot; CC was for people getting in-service and pre-service use of drug discharges; at the time, you could almost get a discharge just by asking for one but it would have been either a General or an 'Other than hororable'(aka Undesirable). My first concert was Janis Joplin; I think I also saw Frank Zappa, and others that I no longer remember.

Well, more later

October 29, 2012

My ex has closed on her condo; she was able to cut $2k off the price because the water heater was 17 years old - kool, she just had a guy in to replace it for a cost of $1,000. It is a super efficient and earthquake proofed and it has already paid for itself!! She called to let me know she had to wait for the installation and might not make it 'home' - I said I would come by to get her if she wanted; on the way home, we were chatting and I missed a hitch in the road and hit a curb at about 30 and blew a tire. Heh,heh - what a bummer but I made sure to let her know there was 'no blame' it was just something that happened and not to worry or let it bother her, it did not bother me.

I have finished most of my ballot - I think I just have a couple odd technical votes to work out. So I guess I have almost done my duty, just need to get it into the mail. We here in Washington almost completely vote my mail. I miss the community of going to my polling place and chatting with neighbors but we don't have to deal with east coast anti-voter hysteria (okay, okay, Ohio is not east coast but all those states over there sort of blur together).

October 27,2012

Well, Mrs. Grumpy closed yesterday on her condo. We had breakfast this morning at the 4 Spoons, picked up some kitty litter, and went by the condo today. It is pretty nice - I am kind of jealous; it has 2 bedroom + a bonus room, a narrow deck that faces south so it will be pretty warm in the summer, has a fire-place yadda,yadda,yadda. The lease on our current apartment does not expire until February so she has plenty of time to get the place ready for her to move in. So, enough about that for now.

This is V.I. - she is our rescue kitty from PAWS KittyCity; we have had her for a couple of years now (yes, she does not look too happy in this picture - she is normally in a better mood but - who wants a vet poking and prodding them?). Since Mrs. Grumpy owns her place, I think it is best for VeeVee to go with her - probably permanently since just getting kitty healthy has been a work in progress and I don't want to upset her too much by moving her from here to there to another place - or, worse yet, try to share her back and forth. Kitty is kind of bi-polar in that sometimes she is very quiet and hides and at other times she is active and runs around. At her low times she will not come into the bedroom at night; on high times she sleeps on us - spends sometime purring on Mrs.'s hips and moves onto my chest to purr and get some petting. She loves her Greenies so were have (mostly) trained her to use the litter box - whenever we see her using it, we put some greenies down for her. Sometimes, she only goes into the box to move some litter around like she is doing something then hops out for her treat - that's okay with us as long as she does not pee or poo on the carpet.

I have worked the entire year so far - no furlough this year due to all the ID theft/fraudulent returns filed; Seattle was one of 2 sites in the US and we handled 80% of the nation's IDTheft calls. It has been pretty tough spending 8 hours a day trying to help people who have had a fraudulent return filed - way too many people depend on getting their tax refund to cover expenses and it takes about 204 days just for a caseworker to get assigned. And the people who perpetuate the fraud - it is a federal crime worth up to 5 years + up to $250,000 per incident and some of these people filed hundreds of returns. Plea deals can get the sentences reduced to 10 years or so. Penalties for purposeful tax fraud can be up to 75% of the amount received. And it goes on and on - there is a law moving through congress to add tax fraud to the list of offenses as a predicate for aggravated id theft that requires a minimum of 2-5 years mandatory sentencing guidelines. Since I am not legally trained do not hold me to any of the details since each case would be prosecuted on its own merits and plea deals save everyone time and money.

September 21, 2012

"It is better to go to the hospital to find out it is nothing than to stay home and die of diphtheria."

Advice to a friend last week while we were in Argentina - he had been suffering for 5 days and it was getting worse rather than better. We were in Argentina for 2 weeks of major beef fest! That is pretty much what tied us together as a group, we were the major partners in buying a cow each fall and parting it out. Mrs. Grumpy worked with the sick dude, the older couple were his girlfriend's parents. It was a really fun time but like all such vacations they end on an airplane which can only really, really suck - though on good days it just sucks.

Two days before we left for AR. Mrs. Grumpy declared that she was 50 (I knew that) and that she did not want to be 51 and still living with me (I should have known that but kept talking myself out of believing it). Kind of sucks too since we have been together for about 23 years. We both cried a bunch, promised we would stay friends, and she really did want me to go on this vacation (though I am not sure if it was my company or my share of the expenses that she wanted). Of course, the awkward part is we have a lease that does not run out until February but she is looking to buy a condo. Who knows how this will end. I am not really good at seeing how events will unfold until it actually happens but this does not really bode well. Since she she is the one who is breaking up and moving out, she says that she will continue to pay her share of the expenses until such time as....

For some reason, in the back of my mind I assumed that all the gay people knew all about each other and talked freely amongst themselves but 'Big Guy' asked us "what is with 'The Cop'? Is she/he in the process of changing genders?" she is just herself, I have no idea and would not ask her even if I was interested in the answer. Big Guy is in a 10 relationship and his partner is transitioning to womanhood - Big Guy is gay and proud and it sort of bothers him that when he is walking with his partner, he is considered straight; so I told him about Other Big Guy who has been married for 20 years and his wife is transitioning to man. Other Big Guy is absolutely straight but when he and his wife walk down the street everyone thinks he is gay. What do I know?? b-t-b I use 'Big Guy' for both because both are over 6'4", over 300 pounds and each can bench 400 pounds. Big Guy is able to use a concrete cutter on a wall - think about that for a minute, he can lift that big fucking gas-driven hunk of metal and cut a door-frame out of a concrete wall. Other Big Guy plays with boomerangs.

So there is a couple thousand dollars of electronics in the room - the only sound is of clicking keyboards and/or tippy-taps of smart phones as everyone but me is blogging about Argentina as it happens. Anyway, we came back the beginning of the week (yeah I am blogging about it but after not during).

The trip back was hell for me; I ran out of Vicodin a couple days before the trip home and it was really difficult to get NSAIDs out of the AR pharmacies so I ended up spending 24 hours with no pain-relievers. Now you have to realize that I have a problem with pain - I have peripheral neuropathy (translates as unexplained pain in my hands and feet - they kind of burn all the time), rheumatoid arthritis, and carpal tunnel - and, temporarily, tennis elbow) and so I was in pain for the entire trip and only fell asleep a couple times for about 2 or 3 hours. There was no distraction which is my usual way to combat the peripheral neuropathy. My doctor laughs and says that I have a prescription to play first person shooters for pain as needed.

June 12,2012

We have learned that a furlough is coming soon - at first, I thought it was this week but they have to give us at least 5 days notice. I was talking on the elevator with a couple of the managers and they said that the temp. seasonals (they are so temp that they do not get benefits) were kept on past their 'due date' and now get benefits; this is hint that there might not be much of a furlough. The rule for seasonals is that they have to be furloughed for at least one pay period each year or they become permanent (or some other harsh punishment). Yesterday, I had my 2 vacation requests okay-ed; 2 weeks in September so I can go to Argentina with beef crowd (we buy a cow every year and split the meat after it is butchered. Our farmer is a Mennonite from across the mountains gets them at 6 months and finishes them on grass. Anyway, we are 6 couples who are renting a 6 bedroom house for 2 weeks in Buenos Aires - should be fun. I am taking my birthday off + the rest of the week. They denied my request for the week of the 4th of July.

The issue with the furlough this year is that there has been so much ID theft (you know, where people buy ss#s and names so they can file a couple hundred return hoping that a couple get past the internal testing. Most of the returns are stopped from refunding out but it causes an immense burden on the real people who have to go through the process. It generally takes 120 days for the ID theft unit to send a letter of confirmation that they are indeed victims of ID theft and that we will watch their account for the next 3 years. We have no time frame for when the refund will come out - it could be 6-8 weeks, it could before Christmas, or you might get next years refund before this years. Some estimates are that there are of a million victims of ID theft this year. We are swamped; we log on in the morning and do support all da

June 2, 2012

Gender perceptions and sexual preferences have been on my mind lately. A friend of mine was griping the other day that people see him as a straight man because the love of his life has changed her gender. She was a guy when they fell in love and in the intervening years she decided to transgender (can that be used as a verb that way? Nope, I just found this blog/post). My friend still loves her but is a loud and proud gay so it kind of bothers him (on an intellectual level at least) that when people see them together, they see a heterosexual couple. A different friend had been married to his wife for 15 years when she decided that she was a man and started hormone therapy. They are still together; they both have beards and now when people see them walking down the street they think they are a gay couple. Oddly enough both of the 'husbands' are over 6 ft 6 in tall and weigh over 300 pounds, one can use a concrete cutter overhead and the other slams 350 pounds in the squat machine; one of the partners is trainer in a gym and the other is a network geek. The couples do not know each other - they are from different decades.

My first experience with a transsexual man was back in the 1970s. I played D&D with a pretty diverse crowd; we smoked a lot of dope, did some acid, and played D&D 2 times a week for hours on end. One of players was a woman who was a stripper down on First Avenue (across the street from the Pike Place Market). She called herself The Grey Mouser (we just called her Mouser). We assumed that she was a lesbian but when she and her partner came back from a cross-country trip in an huge old van they named Leviathan she started on her hormones and then he grew a beard. It took me a while to get the pronouns right. One friend kept kicking me under the table; I got fed up and yelled "Mouser has been a friend for 8 years, he understands that mistakes will be made". Pissed me off a bit - but I did eventually stop using feminine pronouns. He went in to get his driver's license renewed and the clerk looked at him and said "looks like someone made a mistake and checked female on your license; let me fix that for you" and he got his gender changed. Later he got married and move off into the country way south of town. When Mrs. Grumpy and I went off on her post-doc hot-time tour, spending about 7 years split between Tuscon and Raleigh (in a car with no a/c!). By the time we got back the 'tribe' had pretty much gone their separate ways. I did run into Mouser's ex-wife who complained about community property and how Mouser got half of everything without yadda, yadda, yadda.

You haven't played Dungeons And Dragons until you've played it high on acid.

April 27, 2012

I have given up on the 'cute' titles for my post - they make sense when I start but.... Oddly enough, the whole reason I started my blog never actually happened; as far as I can tell, no kidney stone (yay!). Work is a bitch - I have been on ID theft since the second week in January. The plan during the first week of Jan was that ID theft was such a 'harsh' duty, they would spread it out - instead of having a week of id theft each month, more people would be put on call and each person would only have id theft 1 day a week. That changed real fast; it is believed that there have been more than a half a million cases of ID theft this year alone. Compare that to approximately 400,000 cases from 2009 to 2011.

It is pretty intense having to help people through a pretty harrowing experience while keeping an eye on the clock - the tax payers tell me they waited almost an hour to get through; many hang up out of frustration. Worse yet, they put the phone down for a moment and I take the call and I have to disconnect if no one answers within a certain time frame. Once I walk them through getting their return filed and telling who else to contact to protect themselves, then I have to tell them it will be 90-120 days before the ID theft team contacts them - even worse, that is only informing the taxpayer that we have verified their identity - there is no time frame for the actual processing of the return which does not start until we verify the TP's id. There are people right now who are just getting their 2010 tax refunds.

Today, Friday my manager came by at 4:00 to tell us we can get off the id theft line for the rest of the day - I turn off my phone at 4:20 so "yippee!" I got 20 minutes of helping people pay their past due tax bill. I do what I can to help; I try to keep up-beat. I think that being a seasonal worker will keep me sane; my tour of duty ends June 15 - they can extend it but they have to furlough me for at least 14 day by the end of June to keep me in seasonal. They can call me back after that. Last year, I was called back for 6 weeks early September, then again at the beginning of December. Boom, it was January and my ToD began; they up-skilled me to ID theft during the first week and suddenly, here I am.

Thanks for letting me rant.

More distractions

I have not written much lately; mostly, because Deus Ex: Human Evolution is so much fun. I am working - I finally got my dream hours (8:00am to 4:30 pm) - I work out after work; I play a PBeM game (Olympia), try and keep up with the Liberal blogosphere, and play Deus Ex - I played the first 2 and loved them - it keeps me from many other things I could/should be doing.

Have you been paying attention to politics lately? What do you think of the Republican presidential candidates?
Boring! Not even worth laughing about right now. I wonder if the Republicans will end up actually having their convention and choosing someone who might actually have a chance to beat Obama - I don't think the conventions have actually had an impact on who the candidate is since the 1960s. This one could prove interesting. The other possibility is that one of the non-winners (normally, I would say 'losers' but....) will run as a 3rd party candidate who might peal away some independents from either side.

The Oscars are on and it is boring me; I sent off my turn to Olympia and can't make any more changes until some of my allies get back to me; I am at a Boss fight in DE:HE and the Boss is kicking my butt - he has this really bad-assed gun that I can barely avoid plus he is tossing gas grenades at me and he disappears and jumps over walls while I have had my 'upgrades' disabled, sigh!

BRB (I think I will read a couple more blogs /BRB

Well, I made it through all the blogs I wanted to read, the Oscars are over, I have been killed 4 or 5 times now and it is time for me to do my drugs for bed (the actual med.s I take aren't many - the most important is the Ambien generic)

Just died a couple more times and I am pretty adrenalled up so I had better sit here and calm down or i will never get to sleep. Next major purchase will be my passport - it is now about $150 to renew one.

Ah, well - time for bed and then another week of work.

The lost years

I think I know where it started; it was a comment made on the spur of the moment, trying to look cool. I have never been part of a group; I have ADD, sleep apnea, and insomnia - these have been with me for as long as I can remember. Heck, even in high school I played football for 4 years (lettered 3 of them) but I was not a jock - a buddy and I stole a box of Mars Bars (specifically because of their soft interior), a bunch of chocolate flavored x-lax, some Chicklets and some Chicklet-like laxatives; we carefully opened the Mars Bars on one end and pushed 4 squares of x-lax into each, swapped out the chicklets for the gum laxatives and gave them to the rest of the football team. I swear the sewage system overloaded; with the entire football team sitting on the toilet all night. We only wished we could have seen it. Of course, the payback was painful - in practice, the team tackled us constantly (and I was the center, heh - Jim Strickerts my friend, was a halfback).

Anyway, by the time I got to college I was lost; ADD does odd things, like if someone is not in my face I forget about them (really, I lost some friends both male and female because if I did not see them or they did not call me, I would forget about them), I slept all the time and just sort of wandered around campus in a daze. My final GPA was .69 and it was that high because I got "A"s sports classes like karate, and stuff. Anyway, I was in the locker room when I hear someone around the corner say that he had some pot for sale. To sound cool, I said "hey, if you have any extra, let me know". Next thing you know, I got a call from the guy, saying he had a bag of pot for me. He sold me a lid for $10.00 (this is back in the old days - 1967 - when pot was cheap and sold by the lid, the match-box, or the joint. So I started smoking pot. Then I joined the Marine Corps, think about that for a moment - ADD, insomnia, sleep apnea and weapons, lots and lots of weapons. I got to shoot M79 grenade launchers, toss grenades, shoot m60 machine guns, shoot marksman+ at the firing range but I could fall asleep with a DI's hand on my throat screaming at me to wake up. A buddy and I rented a car and took a trip to Chicago on Route 66 - the car was a Carmen Ghia.



We got caught, put in the Great Lakes brig and flown back to San Diego, my buddy went back to our company,but since we were separated and I was put into Headquarters Battalion and Casual company made up of Marines who were their way out for in-service/pre-service use of drugs. The corporal sold me my first LSD, the gunny sold me some pot, and a couple jar-heads kept saying "it smells like pot", "who's smoking pot" as a joke because they were sure no one would be dumb enough to smoke pot in the common room. I had to go up to the guys and offer them a toke if they would shut up - they were stunned and apologized for being stupid. Later that night while I was like really, really stoned on acid, the MPs came crashing into the barracks; after a bunch of shouting and hollering, the Sargent said "Look if you are going to smoke pot in here, please warn the firewatch so they don't keep making fire reports! Can I get a toke?"