Halloween

last night seemed to be an excuse for girls who usually feel the need to be good to dress up and drink and use both as an excuse not to be.

this morning the girls in the coffee shop were incredibly hung over... amusingly so.

which reminded me of this failed attempt at self portraiture... trying to do 'tense, nervous headache'

ended up doing blurred, bat-winged, bingo caller

Feeling casual today

P1080951.JPG
Originally uploaded by stevenjude

So after a couple of days where I lost my sense of 'all is well with the world, offer things up to the universe and see where they settle' I'm back in a zen zone.

Work will happen with of without me. With me it will happen smoother and be a little better. Without me the ride may be more jarring and the end less shiny - but I've realized that what I am here is lubricant. And sure lube is important (ask any mechanic, or hooker) but ultimately you can run any planner through the grinder and grease the process with the resulting juices.

So that's my role here. To be juicier than the average planner... and last longer before I'm totally dry --- at which point they'll give me an office to make sure that the dust doesn't contaminate the fresh new fodder

I just booked

Inverted Vertigo
Originally uploaded by DanielKHC

I just booked

1. Scans at the hospital in New York for Nov 12 and 13

2. A ticket to Singapore for November 22nd - November 29th

Hurrah (and ouch!)

If I was Barack Obama

a million quid
Originally uploaded by just_john

If I was Barack Obama right now I'd not be taking interviews, not varying from my stump speech and not doing anything that could be seen as being a pre-emptive celebration of victory (remember Kinnock and the Labour party?)

He's ahead - there are six days to the election - and still he's making big, bold, KLF burning a million quid style gestures.

Last night saw him buying 30 minutes of airtime across 7 networks; 30 minutes! Sure it gave him the time to talk to the American people that the debates didn't allow. But to some it came across more as a display of "Look how much money we have" rather than a last chance for a more nuanced look at a new candidate.

McCain's response "He paid for that ad by breaking a promise" (the promise being to take public finance for his campaign - one that he broke as soon as he saw how much he could make privately)

It seems to me an unneccessarily big gesture. At a time when people are looking for excuses to knock big gestures. And when the conversation is about the media that was bought, rather than what was said in that media you know that something is wrong.

This made me smile for some reason

CSI: MIAMI
Originally uploaded by mercuryrising9572000

An Austrian woman accused of stalking "CSI: Miami" star David Caruso is being sought on an international arrest warrant, and officials said Tuesday she could be hiding in Mexico.

The woman allegedly sent more than 100 letters to the American actor, pursued him for an autograph and then sent death threats when he refused to "give her one" according to prosecutors in the Austrian province of Tyrol.

The woman -- identified only as being in her early 40s -- was charged with stalking and threatening to kill Caruso, but failed to show for her trial in July 2007 and again in April, Innsbruck Provincial Court spokesman Thomas Lechner said.

Judge Guenther Boehler has issued an international warrant for her arrest.

Austrian authorities said a 2007 letter allegedly written by the suspect and bearing a Miami postmark was discovered in Caruso's fan mail. It read, in part: "I will locate you and your ugly Latina tramp and kill you."

It is unclear if the Latina reference alluded to actress Alana De La Garza, who played Caruso's wife on the TV show until her character was killed.

A court-appointed psychiatrist testified that the suspect has a "profound personality disorder." If convicted, she faces up to three years in prison.

Take a deep breath

So - as I'm sure I've said here "The Naked Uganda Project" has been postponed due to the success of Jude's many job applications and academia's inability to give you reasonable lead times for interviews. December just isn't 'do-able' so we thought that we'd try to head out in March instead... we'll be 54 months into Winter by then and ready for the break.

But the aim of The Naked Uganda Project was to whip my ass into shape - or post my failure for all to see. The pics of me in Cyprus were shocking. I was flabby, I was soft and looking at the picture I was ashamed. So when we got back I vowed to hit the gym, watch what I eat, cut down to no more than a glass of wine a night (vs. 'well the bottle is almost empty now') and generally take more care of myself.

The bag has been mixed. The exercise wagon is something that I'm enjoying. The food wagon I fall off when people come to visit. So things are going slowly - but they're going - and that's a good thing.

To mark progress I've been taking a picture a week. From the same spot and in the same mirror. Vanity it is not - the pictures are ugly but serve as reminders of both how far I've come and how much further I have to go.

The stats are that I'm about 7lbs down, that I've taken four inches off my waist, added 1.5 inches to my arms and no longer have the knees of an elderly dowager.

So it's time to swallow hard and post the first picture. Not as a 'done' (this is far from being an 'after' pic... but as a public statement that the delay of the trip cannot now mean a dilution of effort. I'm gonna post a pic a month from here on out and I'm asking you - faithful blog reader and random person coming in look for post-op tranny news - to keep me honest. This is more than neighborhood watch. It's flab-watch. Less pleasant I agree, but then you're supposed to be my friends.

To Hell and back

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Originally uploaded by stevenjude

Hell, Michigan is a very small place. It's barely a place at all. More a couple of stores that banded together and asked "How do we attract people to the shores of out little lake here?"

The answer "Hell"

"Go to Hell"
"I've been to Hell and back today"
"I've seen Hell freeze over"

All things that you can say having visited, realized that it's crap and bought a mug to console yourself.

By all accounts bikers love it

"Let's meet in Hell"

But I have to say - once in Hell was enough for me