Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

I had something to mention that seemed too short for its own entry. So I tossed it into an editor window, to add similar short things to later. Uhhh, then a couple of those quickie comments got me thinking too much and wound up being long ... but I kind of like the flow as it is, so I'm going to go ahead and post it this way.

I was startled earlier when I noticed that I was typing in rythym to the tune playing on my CD player at the time(Boiled In Lead's recording of "Fisher's Hornpipe" on Old Lead), and realizing that it must be an especially potent tune (or a particularly bouncy rendition thereof), since I don't usually do that.

Quote of the Day: metaphorge wrote I have so many irons in the fire it feels like I'm playing Foosball.

According to the television weather report, the high temperature for the day just ended was lower than the "normal" low temperature for this date. (Isn't "normal" supposed to be a range, not a specific value?) The forecast for tonight is for 260K (10F) here in Baltimore and 255K (0F) in the suburbs. Brrrr. My house is inexplicably warm though -- I haven't changed the thermostat (which is set to 50F because it's mis-calibrated and that usually turns out to mean about 58F), but the 2nd floor is at 293K (68F) and the ground floor is non-frosty. It's usually more like 288K on the 2nd floor. The house doesn't get colder in cold weather, it just burns oil faster (though I didn't expect it to get warmer either). It took a month and a half to go through the first tankful of oil this Winter, and I'm already halfway through the second tankful ten days later. Ouch. I don't mind the cold too much as long as I have someplace warm-ish to retreat to on occasion ... but the expense really hurts.

I don't really need to supply the Celsius temperatures for the preceeding paragraph, do I? After all, the Kelvin->Celsius conversion is a straight subtraction. (I hope most of you already knew that.) I already feel that I'm coddling some of my readers by supplying the Fahrenheit version. (Besides, don't the temperatures sound much warmer in Kelvins?)

Hmm. I was offered firewood a couple of months ago, but the contractor still isn't getting back to me with an estimate for re-lining the chimney and un-blocking the fireplace. (Hey, anybody got good, reasonably-priced folks they can recommend for such work in Baltimore?)

I got an answer to my question about the unusually short contrails at sunset: low humidity.

Speaking of low humidity, I'm finding it much easier to breath (and nosebleeds far less likely) if I dump a couple of gallons of water into the air in my house every day or two. (Big old pasta pot filled with water on the stove, wee splash of anise or vanilla extract and/or half a handful of lavender so that it makes the house smell nice at the same time as it improves my respiratory health, top it up whenever I go downstairs so that it never boils dry, turn it off when my nose feels okay -- that's usually about two gallons, I think (though I guess I should actually measure it sometime). I think of it as "dumping" the water into the air, it just falls up slowly instead of down quickly.) There's also a small pan of water sitting on top of the space heater in the front bedroom (one of those free-standing oil-filled radiator-style electric heaters). That doubles as a chemistry experiment because it grows crystals from the dissolved solids in city water. Mostly white stuff that I figure is probably calcium (that I haven't tested yet, so that's just a guess), and some rust (possibly from my own pipes) which has now stained the white stuff brownish-orange.

That is, the crystals were white until sometime last year, when I started collecting the initial spurt of orange water that comes out for the first one to two seconds that I run the tap in the bathtub to use for that pan. That quickly turned the whole mess orange, but lately I've been seeing fresh growth of white along the rim of the pan while the sides and bottom remain orangeish-brown. Unfortunately I bumped into it in November and turned two seasons' worth of crystals into powder. I'm fascinated by the way most of the formation is above the high-water-mark.

I stumbled into queerchoice by following a link I found in rampling's journal which I started reading to learn more about Rampling after seeing a post in the "friends of" page for the genderqueer community. I fell into a discussion from September 2002, which I figure most of the participants have nearly forgotten about by now, but I tossed in a couple of comments anyhow (and got a response). One person made a comment about not understanding monosexual orientation, "just the way [monosexuals] claim not to understand bi/multisexuals", and it occurred to me that I don't really understand the whole monosexual thing even though I am one. Bisexuality makes sense to me; the fact that I'm only attracted to women is just one of those "that's how the world is" things -- it's familiar, but not really something I understand. Similarly, on the whole "is being gay/bi a choice" thing, I'm willing to accept that maybe it is for some people, but if I had a choice, I'd be bi, and I'm not. Well, back when I was thinking about this a lot more because the the concept of bisexuality was relatively new to me (I'd just met my first openly-bi friends -- this would've been about 23 years ago), that's what I would have chosen. Since then I've stopped really caring much, 'cause there doesn't seem to be much point to worrying about it or spending a lot of time thinking about it after having figured out that my orientation is "attracted to women". So if someone had offered me a magical transformation to bisexuality just before I went off to college, I probably would've taken it, but if someone offered me that now, I'd probably just shrug and say, "whatever".

Hmm. In case anyone's wondering (I'm sure it's obvious to many of you) why I phrased my orientation as "attracted to women", it's because whether that translates to "gay" or "het" depends on what I am, and I am transgendered (currently identifying as intergendered). I actually do think of myself as heterosexual because, although I don't consistently (or even often) think of myself as male, I do think of myself as "perceived as male". Which means my attraction to women would be perceived as het (ignoring for the moment the group of lesbian friends who got together several years ago and presented me with a button that says, "honorary lesbian", which I consider quite an honor -- it reflects how I often feel, but there are enough slightly-creepy guys out there proclaiming themselves to be "male lesbians" that I dared not say aloud that I felt like that until women with proper credentials said they accepted me as one). But at the same time, how I see myself fluctuates -- male, female, mostly-female, in-between, both, neither (usually a bad sign indicating severe stress), and sometimes just "unspecified Glenn-gendered" (with thanks to the first friend who said that was the gender she saw me as and put the idea in my head) -- and I know that there are a few people out there (God bless them) who also think of me as female (despite the beard), in-between, or both male and female simultaneously. Sometimes my attraction to and interaction with the women I love "feels like heterosexuality" ... and other times it "feels lesbian" ... and sometimes I'm not paying attention to that kind of detail and just enjoy the moment, of course. If I ever shave the beard and try to pass -- basically if I ever transition, my orientation would not change but the label for it would -- from het to lesbian. And for many transgendered and intergendered people the "lazy choice" of label isn't as obvious as it is for me. (If being het means that one is attracted to members of the "opposite" sex, then what is the opposite of someone who's in between male and female?)

So the whole gay<->het single-axis model of orientation (as typified by the Kinsey scale) doesn't seem like a very good model to me. I prefer a two-axis model (attraction to women on one axis, attraction to men on the other), which is still inadequate to model reality (how do you graph someone who is specifically attracted to transgendered people?) but much more useful than the Kinsey scale and similar conceptualizations. At least with my two-dimensional orientation graph, we have a place to put folks who are asexual in terms of orientation, in addition to not having to figure out what the opposite of "both" is.

Hmm. Somebody posted a link to the "What Venomous Egg-Laying Mammal Are You" personality test. Somehow, I think I've got a pretty good idea what it's going to say... I am definitely amused by the idea.