April 20, 2006 :: Overload

I think I have finally found my breaking point. Between my car issues, school issues, family issues, job & career issues, personal issues, I'm a hot mess. Let me see if I can sort it all out.

The car: My beloved Prelude is in the shop, after my first at-fault accident... I fought a battle with the curb and lost. It was like Saddam's Republican Guard vs the U.S. 101st Airborne... it was a massacre. I broke the wheel, the axle, most of the steering assembly on that side, and my perfect record of no at-fault accidents. Car's been in the shop for two weeks now.. hopefully I get it back tomorrow. My insurance company pays for a loaner, which turned out to be a Honda Civic 4 door sedan. Suffice it to say, that car has absolutely zero social value... in fact, it turns out to be negative, I think. Whereas before, when I pulled up next to a pretty lady in another car, I might get a couple of glances, a stare, a wink, whatever. In the Civic, I get exactly half a glance, nothing more. I can't wait to be rid of it.

School: As some of you know, I'm working on my MBA at night. I take classes two nights a week. As demands on my time across the board have grown, I have been shirking and slacking on school stuff. Ordinarly, with individual assignments, I could BS and fudge and pull my way out... but these are team assignments, and team members do not show mercy the way professors do. I am sure my peer evaluations for this assignment due this week will suck. Oh well, we will all have to get over it.

Family: I have a family reunion coming up, as I mentioned before. It's my mom's side, and we haven't had one in 25 years, so there will be lots of catching up. I had booked my flight to leave today, and in fact I was going to leave today, but then I called my mom to find out why my brother (with whom I was sharing a hotel room) hadn't called me back in two days, and I discovered that the reunion is NEXT week. Suffice it to say, I'm glad I didn't get on the plane. With a little maneuvering with the customer service rep from AmericaWest.com, I was able to secure flights next week without any increase in fare, although they did charge me $100 to change the ticket. I feel like a complete idiot, but at least so far the only people that know is my mother, my manager & coworkers at work, and my teammates from class... ok that's pretty much everyone. Never mind all the issues I talked about in the last post that are still around.

Job & career: I don't want to say too much here, but I will say this: I was looking. Started looking in January. It is now April, and I am just now getting an offer. After all this effort with this firm, I think I have changed my mind... I no longer want to leave. I feel almost guilty about having gone this far through the process, but then, if they had made me an offer a month ago, I probably would have taken it. and now I'm not.

Also, I've been working on a proposal effort here at work. The way government contracting works, the government puts out a request for bids on a proposed statement of work, and then all the companies interested in competing for the work prepare proposals. These are massive documents, at least ours are... usually over 100 pages. They are also relatively short turnarounds, and they are the main element of work that escapes "core hours". So to sum that up, I've been under tremendous pressure to produce writing on a bunch of stuff I didn't really know and had to figure out, and I am forced to write at night and on the weekends. It sucks, but it's good for career development.

Personal issues: You know what, I don't think I even want to go here. But I'll just let you know I have some.

You know how when your blood pressure goes through the roof, you can feel it in your body? That's how I feel today. But since I've rebooked the ticket, and started trying to smooth things over with my classmates (since I'll actually be around for class tonight), I am starting to feel a little better. Maybe I even have time to grab some lunch before this 2pm meeting.

posted by Rainmayun at 12:43 PM -

April 17, 2006 :: Peer Angst

Lately, my Myspace friends list has been taking off. A lot of guys I went to college with have been popping up on Myspace, most of them people I haven't seen since graduation. (I am an alum of the nation's only all-black, all-male college.) Graduation was ten years ago, in fact, and I have a reunion coming up next month. And I'm "angsty", as Gecko would say.

It is nice to see how people have done. Some of my most humble classmates have come up nicely... law degrees, PhDs, nice jobs, married, kids. They are the picture of what upper middle class Black America wants to be. Which is great and all, for them, but it makes me pause.

Funny, most of them probably expected I would have my PhD by now, and I guess I was supposed to. I languished in misery and depression through 3 1/2 years of grad school, after which time I decided I couldn't take it anymore and quit (although not empty handed, I made them give me a MS on the way out as my "consolation prize"). From there, I have drifted around a bit, a few different jobs. The dotcom crash killed my earning potential for a while, to the point that I just this month made it back to where I was in 2001 before it all went down. Some abortive relationships, nothing to write home about. Relocated to DC on a calculated whim, back in school working on yet another degree. Although I am much more focused on what I want now than I was then, I feel like I am doing things I should have been doing 10 years ago, which puts me behind the game a bit.

I know these reunions are somewhat of a pissing contest, in terms of seeing who has amassed the most wealth, most prestigious job, etc., and I have absolutely no interest in that. I guess there are a few folks I wouldn't mind speaking to, but most of them I wouldn't care if I saw them or not, as I have nothing to say. Those people I held close remain as friends, and I don't need a reunion to talk to them. While I am sure my salary puts me in the upper half (maybe upper 25%), I don't really feel all that wealthy and accomplished, probably because I spend it all and then some. That goes back to that grasshopper/ant thing, I guess. Maybe I will bring pictures of my trips to Europe and show them off the way people show off pictures of their kids.

At any rate, that is a concern for next month. This week, I'll be off to Vegas for a family reunion on my mother's side. We haven't had a reunion since I was about 5, so it should be interesting. I am concerned, though, that I need to figure out my stock answers ahead of time, so that when all the older family members start grilling me about why am I not married, why haven't I produced offspring, why am I still in school, that I have something to tell them. Ohhh, I'm not looking forward to that part. Plus my uncle wants to continue the argument we had about whether or not I should buy a house now (I say no, he says yes) that we started at my mother's wedding last year. But it will be good to see family nonetheless.

Of course, none of these things constitutes a real vacation, and that is exactly what I need right about now. Somebody find me a week in a sunny place where I can relax, and a nice way to finance it (since I owe DC $500 for red-light and speeding camera tickets, and it's due next month because my car tags are about to expire, and I'm already paying for these two trips plus travel to a wedding next month, my travel budget is pretty much nonexistent) and I am there.

posted by Rainmayun at 5:44 PM -

April 12, 2006 :: Mental mashup

For those of you who don't already know, when I listen to the radio, I mostly listen to NPR. When I wake up in the morning, I usually switch my alarm to radio, and let that be my source of news in the morning.

The other day, I set my alarm directly to radio by accident. So when it went off in the morning, there was no buzzer, but the radio started directly. Without the buzzer, I didn't wake up... but apparently I could hear. I was still dreaming.

In my dream, I heard an NPR announcer say something like the following:

The White House announced today that George Bush is straight up on that kryptonite. White House press secretary Scott McClellan declined further comment.

posted by Rainmayun at 4:34 PM -

April 10, 2006 :: The pill and the question

Recently, a female friend of mine asked my opinion on a particular topic that was on her mind. She and her boyfriend had sat down and discussed options for contraception, and decided between the two of them that they would use birth control pills and nothing else. That is to say, she would take the pills and they would then go "bareback".

She wanted to know if I thought it was fair for her to ask him to split half of the cost of the pills. It's not as if it is an economic hardship for her, but it was "the principle" of the thing. She thought that, in order for them to be equally yoked, as it were, he should bear half the cost of the protection method they agreed on together, since he was enjoying (at least) half of the sex.

To her irritation and my complete lack of surprise, all of the men she had surveyed said the same thing - trying to split the cost of birth control pills was silly, especially since she didn't need the money, and the process didn't involve him, unless he needed to remind her. She hadn't, however, surveyed any women yet, and I thought their responses might be more interesting, so I suggested she ask some. The question, at least for her, has now become moot, so I'm turning to my blog readers (men and women), to hear what you have to say on the topic.

posted by Rainmayun at 7:24 AM -