Unpatriotic Protest?

I guess it started with Colin Kirkpatrick.  Maybe it started earlier, but this is what brought it to my attention as well as the attention of most people I know.  You see, he wanted to protest.  He wanted to bring attention to something and he knew one of the best ways to get his message out to the most people was to do something shocking.  So he sat down during the national anthem.  After that game he said "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder".

Later he switched from sitting to kneeling during the national anthem.  As he put it, he did this to show respect to show more respect to former and current U.S. military members while still protesting during the anthem.  At the time that this was going on, I couldn't have really cared less.  I caught it on the news, and saw a reaction of protesting his protest, but I figured it would blow over soon enough.  But my God... this has become an epidemic.  People seem to be losing their minds at the mere act of protesting during the national anthem and even more athletes are joining in.  People are crying because he can't seem to get hired on as a quarterback and say it's because of his protest, but it's also spreading to fans and even students in school.

And I'm left over here wondering what all the fuss is over.

She set's me free

So over at D+X I have an ongoing thread that I titled my "Playlist Diary".  I share music there that touches me.  Sometimes it's just how it touches the 'me' that's Caitlyn over there, while other times it's music that touches 'me' as in the person writing those posts out.  And even then, sometimes that author 'me' is male and sometimes it's 'female'.

But the underlying current in that thread is that I"m sharing music.  I'll sometimes write out a scene with me in character, and sometimes explaining how that particular song is affecting me in real life.

So today after I wrote up the previous post about going to New Orleans I wasn't feeling particularly 'Caitlynesque'.  I've been thinking recently that I might be slipping out of her mentality, so I wasn't too surprised.  Instead of moping about it, I just continued to focus on New Orleans.  I went to youtube and watched videos about the plane I'm going to take (MD-88), about checking luggage in at the airport, about both Detroit's and New Orleans's airports, and then on to watching videos about New Orleans itself.  I started watching one that was in a Video Log (Vlog?) format and had a musical montage in the beginning with a song that I hadn't heard before.

At first, it was just one of those songs that I don't particularly like.  It's chill.  Chill music normally doesn't do anything for me.  I think slower songs are fine for that mood, or even more upbeat songs that are kept quiet enough to be background music.  But this one... well, it changed me.  It washed over me in a way that left me feeling very feminine.  I started hearing bits of the lyrics and one in particular caught my ear...

Vacation Time!

So I'm fast approaching my next Vacation.  I'm so thankful that traveling has become a big part of my life.  From quick two day trips around my home state (Detroit, K-Zoo, Grand Rapids...), to weekends in the Windy City, to drives down to Dallas, to big trips down to Mexico.  In fact, it's become such an every day part of my life that I've now started mentally breaking them up.  Only a few years ago I would have looked at three days in Chicago as a full fledged Vacation.  I mean, it involved everything a vacation would have, right?  Travel (car? plane? train?), hotel (downtown?  boutique? cheap?), and things to do (touristy trips to the Sears Tower? revisiting the old neighborhood? going to the Art Institute?).  Heck, Detroit was about the same thing except for the travel as a car was the only obvious choice.

But now?  Honestly, that's a weekend trip.  It's fun and I want to do it as often as possible, but that really doesn't require a lot of planning.  Trips like that could be done at the drop of a hat so long as I have the days off, and really I could get most Friday's and Monday's off around my weekend so it's not even that much trouble there.  It's just a matter of having a friend that wants to do it and the cash in the account.  Dallas is a bit more of a trip as it does require either a plane ride or an extra four days to drive it.  But that's visiting friends.  I get to hang out with their family, maybe go to a school performance, get kicked in the nuts repeatedly by their dog, BBQ, check out my buddy's new guns... it's hanging out on a slightly bigger scale because we live so far apart.  It's not a vacation.

It's a Man's World

This may sound a little funny coming from me, but hear me out.  Why the fuck do I get automatic respect and credibility simply because I'm a man.  This is primarily related to work, but I see it in many aspects of my life.

A big part of my sexual fantasies involve forced feminzation.  Now there is of course a lot of variation in that particular fetish, but for me a big part of it is a power transference.  I'm a 'big powerful man' and I'm reduced to a 'small weak woman'.  The classic 1950s housewife and/or the classic 1960s office secretary.

So on one level, I get it.  But that's at the childish, base, me-tarzan-you-jane, me-hunt-you-gather, type level.  It's the same level that's racist and homophobic and just ridiculous.  For a sexual fantasy, it's fine.  For reality it's just stupid.  How does this apply to work?  Simple.  Nurses with years and years of experience still look to me for help.  They look to me to lead.  They automatically and regularly defer to my 'expertise', which in reality is limited to the fact that I have a penis.

Seriously.

That didn't last long

So I think I've talked a bit about how I wish I could game more.  More often than not I go out and buy a new computer game, play it for a few days (maybe a week or so), and then drop it never to play it again.  I don't even play Team Fortress 2 all that much any more.

But even knowing that, I still go out and look for new games to play.  Sometimes I have a few hours to kill, sometimes I have read about or seen a new games.  Sometimes I just get an itch and get the newest biggest thing to hit the market.

So back in March of this year I bought Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands game.  My brother, my cousin, and I all played through Tom Clancy's the Division for awhile and enjoyed ourselves so this seemed like a no brainer.  I played it on and off for a few months and then maybe around June it started to have a problem.  I would be playing it for awhile (sometimes a few minutes, sometimes a few hours) and it would just lock up.  The screen would go black and the computer would completely lock up.  I could still hear the game through the speakers, but it was just the background sounds.  Even if this happened during a fire fight, I couldn't hear myself or the enemies.  So... an unusual type of crash.

A Friend Knows My Secret

There's no hiding the big reveal until the end in this post.  Last weekend I told a friend that a part of me is Caitlyn.

I didn't spill all the beans, but I told him enough of what's going on inside my head so that he knows I am at least partially female, and that part of me has a name and a personality all her own.

This is my friend A.  Not the A that lives down in Texas, but the A that lives closer to me (I really have to get a better way of shortening and obscuring the names of people I know).  Anyway, A and I went out to a local brew pub, shared some beers (very tasty beers) and some pizza, and then ended back at his place.  This is our normal weekend hanging out together. He generally works on Saturdays so I meet up with him after he's gotten out of work, we go eat and drink and chat, we walk around and chat, then end up back at his place and chat some more.  He drinks more than me, so more often than not he ends up quite inebriated and I end up frustrated as our talks break down after that.

A is one of my friends that I've considered telling about Caitlyn before.  He's a good man.  He's open and honest and open minded.  I had it in my head that I'd tell him this weekend, but I just didn't know how.  I mean, this isn't exactly a subject that you bring up out of nowhere, but at the same time it's not something that you just slide into a normal conversation either.  Talking about it at the brew pub wasn't really an option as I wanted it to be less public than that.

The 'NO' Man

It seems I have a new nickname at work.  A few nurses have been jokingly calling me this for awhile, but I actually heard our physician say this to me just a couple days ago.  I am evidently now known as...

The 'NO' Man.

I know from this and my blog that a 'NO' Man could be quite the funny.  But no, they don't know anything about Caitlyn or my femme proclivities.  No, what they're referring to is my capability to look a patient in the eye and simply tell him No.

Can I have some Tylenol?  No.  Can I have a bottom bunk detail?  No.  Can I have a base unit detail?  No.  Can I get some softer shoes?  No.  Can I see the doctor?  No.  Can I not be charged for this visit?  No.  Can I see a different nurse?  No.

No.

It's really quite simple to say, especially when it's not coming from a point of malice.  And I honestly don't work from a point of malice.  I don't want to hurt anybody or piss anybody off or not provide someone with medical care.  But I saw a facebook meme recently that seems to fit my work persona quite righteously:

I'm so sick of work

I think I might be having trouble at work.  I have a pretty good job with good benefits.  At my current level of experience I get 4.7 hours of annual leave and 4 hours of sick time each and every pay period.  So more or less, each month I get a day off of work if I'm sick or have other health concerns.

I put it that way because I can use 'sick time' for preplanned medical procedures.  I used sick time when I had my wisdom teeth pulled.  I used sick time when my mother had an procedure done at the hospital.  And of course there's the more often used... calling in sick to work (or as I use it, going home early because I'm sick).

Now I know everybody is an individual and comparing something like this to other coworkers isn't exactly a good idea.  But it's about all I have.  My coworkers have a LOT of sick time built up.  Enough so that when we're fully staffed and slow they'll use their sick time to go home early instead of their annual leave.  They do it regularly enough that our supervisor would ask 'OK, who has a headache?' instead of 'OK, who wants to go home?'.

Many of them also have long term disability and that comes in two price points.  You pay full price for it until you have 130 hours of sick time in the bank, then you get a steep discount.  If you never used sick time, that should take you about a year to build up.  Most of my coworkers have that steep discount as they've collected well over 130 hours of sick time.

So... I bought a dildo.

I thought long and hard (go ahead... laugh at the unintended double entendre) about where to post this.  The Masks blog or here.  I mean, is this Caitlyn or Calvin?  And I guess the best answer is that it's both.  And since I'm pulling 'Calvin' out of the 'Caitlyn' blog, I figure it should go over here.

But fair warning;  this is sexual and fetish and fantasy and open and honest.  I'm blushing right here and now just imagining what i'm going to be talking about and I'm only on the second paragraph.  I guess it doesn't help that I've already titled this post and I've already got that image of the woman in pink sunglasses (mask?) drooling on her dildo.  But anyway.... here it goes.

I posted earlier this month about a road trip I was going to take.  I took it, and it was just as fun and as relaxing as I was hoping for.  I didn't realize just how stressed out I was in just about every aspect of my life.   Work, Home, Friends, Family, Fantasy, Calvin, and Caitlyn.  I was stressed out and needed a break.  So the two days driving down was a good partial relaxation.  I felt the stress just melt away the two days I was with A and his family.  That left the two days driving back and that was... well, it was eye opening.

On The Road Again!

So I've found over the last few years that I really REALLY like traveling.  I mean I honest to god LOVE to travel.  Drive or fly, it doesn't really matter as they both have their own level of adventure.  I'm now constantly considering trips to make and/or thinking about my next vacation.

(Quick break here... I swear, the song that just came up on iTunes.... Radar Love by Golden Earring!)

Anywho, I like to travel.  Last year ended with a drive down to Dallas in early December.  This year began with a drive over to Detroit for the car show (North American International Auto Show).  I knew I was going to plan another few trips as well as some smaller side trips, but the long ones take planning.  Planning and Vacation time.  I've found out that it's actually quite rare for us to be fully staffed, so it can be hard to just 'take time off'.  It's not that the supervisor at work is mean and won't give it... but if we don't have another person to just cover my shift and they have to utilize overtime, it's a hard no. Thankfully between the Civil Service Commission and the Union, we have our twice annual vacation book.  In April and October we pass around a book and we get to lay claim to any days off we want.  Well... any days where someone more senior hasn't already laid claim (it goes around in order of seniority), and any days that you'll have enough vacation time for.