Flip Out

So today, concerned friends and family advised me not to work overtime. Things are sliding by, like my health and clean clothes.
I arrived at work just after 8 am, and when I tried to leave at 7:45 pm, I was told to wait and help with something.
I kind of freaked out today. Not only do I have piles of work but at one point I had 6 separate people standing at my desk asking for something RIGHT NOW. My first thought was "Can't these people see each other?" Maybe they had all turned visible only to me. Then I said "You all have to go away" which caused them all to still look at me and not move. So I said, loudly, "GO!" and then had to spend the next 3 hours apologizing. Good day.

My mortgage is being reviewed by an underwriter. What if it goes through? Yikes.

So now it's 8:30. I just got home. I have to do laundry, clean my place and have a bath. I haven't had time to eat anything today so I might do that too. Up at 6:30 tomorrow and out by 7 for a very special, very stressful, all day meeting.

Will being in the funny farm effect my mortgage application?

Are you ready?

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has a site where you can figure out all about your mortgage with various quizes here. Fun!

While preparing to do this quiz, I decided to go to Macs for a Slushee. People who work at 9 pm on Saturday nights, there's usually a reason:
- the man was 3 days older than kerosene
- he spoke no English
- his face had 1,000 boils
- he watched me as if I was on fire, never diverting his eyes
- when I paid in cash for my $2 purchase he got confused

Anyway, back to my new stressor. If I think about it, I suppose I'm most worried about getting in trouble for past financial digressions and not having enough money. It's irrational, but there's a part of me that feels like I'll be saving for this thing until I can pay in cash outright, then they'll say "We'll think about it." There's secondary worries that I'll never get to travel again or that I'll hate my neighbours or they'll hate me and the condo board will throw me out. Interestingly, the fact that I won't be able to make the payments causes me no stress whatsoever.

OK, the quiz.

Well, the quiz was stupid. I went on my bank's website and actually applied for the mortgage in the time it took to do the quiz. I really want to see what they say, if they say no what advice they have. Save more money? Pay off your credit card? Trying moving to Guatemala? Actually that last one is advice friends and family have given me.

So I applied for a bi weekly non-accelerated mortgage with $10k down, $145,000 and payments of $414 every two weeks. We'll see what happens.

I'm stressed. Maybe I can go shopping.

Why RuPaul's Drag Race is the BEST show currently on TV

And the fact that Cazwell will be on the season finale:


The nightmares continue.
Last night's was a bit complicated which is strange as my dreams are usually very literal. I was living in a place with a mortgage and had a party and the place got trashed, like beyond repair. This trend could stop.

Nightmare and sick

I've had a couple nightmares in the last few days, which is strange as I don't remember having any previously in my adult life. They're pretty straight-forward.
The first happened last week. I worked for about 18 hours on Saturday and then had a very stressful long week and I had a dream I was still working at this company I worked for about 5 years ago. It was such an awful job and I felt so helpless there. There was a constant energy of demoralization, I hated it and when I finally was let go I was unable to work for about a year I was so burnt out.
When I was working so many hours that Saturday, all the women went home around dinner time and all the guys stayed until about midnight. I remember asking myself why the women went home, you had already made the commitment to come to work and after 8 hours they paid double time so why leave? And I took these thoughts with me and promised to give some thoughts to a work life balance. I believe I worked at least 3 hours overtime every day for the last two weeks but I still haven't seen a cent of all the money that's going to come in. My retro pay is $1,300, it has to be reviewed by hand and I should get it before Mar 27 and my income tax was flagged. I submitted more information and am waiting to hear back. All the other stuff, no word yet. My February overtime will pay out in June at this rate, HR is overworked so they're being incredibly mean. Let's say I send an email asking when my overtime will be processed, they'll write back, copy my boss, and copy my bosses boss and say "We're too busy to answer these questions". They're a delight.

The second dream was that my savings account was empty and I hadn't saved any money. This has been a constant worry for me with all this money (supposedly) coming in. For the last while I've been diverting all my money to travel. This month my student loans were finally paid off and next week I pay off the dentist. I had a few hundred extra dollars this month which has been really rare for me, I usually always have to divert it to travel. So I bought some new shoes and a sweater and a book for my cruise roommate on gay cruising and a DVD and now I don't have that extra money. It worries me that I could nickel and dime it all away and perhaps this nightmare will help focus me on the right track?
My problem is I get money and then because my credit card is at such a high interest rate, I always think I should pay that off first. But then I have all the money available again right away and I'll buy concert tickets or other things and poof, it's gone again. I have a savings account at like 2% interest so it seems crazy to throw money in there but the advantage is I have to plan a day in advance for withdrawals from that account. What I'm going to try to do for the short term is throw the money in the savings account until it equals the balance on my credit card, then pay it off and reduce the limit. Maybe the nightmare will fuel that hope.

Anyway, the World Baseball Classic concluded Wednesday in Toronto. Well, at least as far as I'm concerned. I got to Wednesday's game late due to TTC trouble, Ted Lilly was pitching:

And I decided to sneak down and get a few shots of him on the mound. Of course they pulled him in the 3rd inning for some reason and I missed him completely. D'oh!
I did get a couple good shots of Braves catcher Brian McCann:

Notice the ball entering the glove:

And then even he got pulled in the 4th so I took off in the 5th. I asked someone the next day who won but I don't remember now.

Friday my throat hurt and Saturday I woke up with a cold. I had committed to going to a concert at 1 pm so I went anyway. There was a time in my life where I'd have a few drinks on a Friday night and then always blow off plans for Saturdays so I have this determination to not cancel things now. I was sick but I went to the Peachcake concert. The lead singer was insane, literally swinging from the rafters:

And had a whole bag of props:

The crowd was very eclectic:

And at one point I was offer the chance to dance under a sheet with a bunch of 16 year olds:

But being sick I sat that one out.
Today I've been really sick with a cold so I just stayed in bed all day watching the Amazing Race and venturing out once for cough medicine and orange juice.
I get very bored being housebound and I could call in sick to work tomorrow but there's been something I've been working on for 2 weeks that has me very frustrated and there's supposed to be a final meeting to resolve it tomorrow so my plan is to at least show up for that and take it from there. All our meeting rooms are booked tomorrow which always means running around for me making sure computers are working, phones are available, travel is booked, etc. and an Ontario wide staff meeting the week after means I'll be crazy busy again. Plus I'll be interviewing my assistant and, like, my usual job. They say my acting pay for this job I've been doing since September may be coming through in April. So quickly??? Wow!
I'm told things will get better in mid-April at work. Only a month away. Can I hold on til then?

The Trial of the Century

Testimony in the trial of the century is expected to conclude tomorrow. As it features several juicy gay stories the mainstream press has of course ignored it. But in the interests of information, and cool juicy details, I wanted to do a quick recap here.

This really all began with gay porn actor Brent Corrigan, real name Sean Lockheart. He filmed several videos for a company called Cobra Video, and then later revealed he was underage at the time of filming. This was huge as at the time of his admission he was debateably the biggest star in the industry. This was definatley the biggest admission of it's kind since Traci Lords revealed she was underage in the 1980's.

Immediately after revealing his true age, Corrigan was sued by Cobra Video for $1 million for "trademark violations, cybersquatting, breach of contract, and other disputes". The suit also claimed overship of his stage name, Brent Corrigan.

Around this time, an aquaintance of Corrigan's, Harlow Cuadra, contacted Corrigan about the two of them making a film together. At the time Corrigan was embroiled in legal battles and although extremley popular, not able to film content. This created a vaccum in the industry and led Cuadra to his "million dollar" idea. The only question was how to get Corrigan out of his contract and legal troubles.

On January 24, 2007, Brian Kocis, owner of Corba Video, was found murdered in his home. He was stabbed 28 times and his home was set on fire to hide the murder. Cuadra and his then boyfriend Joseph Kerekes admit to being in the home on the day in question and Kerekes has already plead guily to the murder.

Police later approached Corrigan and he wore a wire tap to a meeting with Cuadra where Cuadra referred to the murder several times.

Testimony from Cuadra concluded today. If found guilty, the prosecutor in the case is seeking the death penalty.

Corrigan heading into the court room to give testimony against Cuadra.


Corrigan, from his website.


Corrigan and Cuadra.


Corrigan and Cuadra


Cuadra, left and former boyfriend Kerekes, right.


An article on today's testimony by Cuadra is here.
An EXTREMELY detailed account of the case is available here.
This story is begging to be the gay network Logo's "Movie of the Week."

The World Has Finally Changed.

After photos appeared on Votefortheworst.com of American Idol contest Adam Lambert kissing another man (below) I was kind of scared to read the comments section.
I remember when Clay Aiken was on American Idol six years ago and there was a LOT of anti-gay comments and denials that he could be gay. It was sad, and as I read them, I remember thinking "How is this the new millennium?" I believe I have done another post previously on message boards, called something like "Come so far, got so far to go."

So how encouraging to read about this new gay "scandal" and see five pages with nothing but positive comments.
Is this a new era?

Comments below.

• Everyone knows he's gay already. No biggie.......I vote by who I think is the most talented, and who I'd buy the album. Adam totally has my votes.
• Awesome. Totally awesome. I can't wait to see all the fantards and frauen spontaneously implode by this like they did with Clay Aiken.
• Fucking beautiful. I logged onto D-Listed this morning before here, and as soon as I saw the first picture I knew just who it was! D-Listed linked here and hahahaha was I happy to see this on the front page. I totally don't hate Adam anymore.
• hmmmm...those pictures are hot! Vaginas are exploding everywhere today.
• What does it matter if he is gay or not, who cares really? If he is so what if not, so what the dude can sing and that is what he is being judged on and voted for, singing.
• What a hot slut. Who cares, the dude is hawt and has a great voice.
• There's 49 photos on his Tribe page. No females. Do the math. But what self-respecting queen would be seen with that travesty of a manicure?

World Baseball Classic

Today was the first game of the 2009 World Baseball Classic at Rogers Centre. It was the most anticipated game, Canada vs. USA.
I was excited to get to use my new camera. Now I was VERY far away so some of these pictures are miracle shots. I still can't get clear faces, either because I was just too far or I couldn't hold the camera still enough.
Either way I think these shots are pretty good.
Ted Lilly was there, but didn't pitch yet:


Chipper Jones was also there:

This was my view:

Row 1 but partly obstructed by a large flag thing!
I was happy Brian McCann was catching. Here's a cool action shot:

And here he is hitting a home run:

Loads of people were out there cheering for Canada, to no avail of course:

Afterward we had about 3 hours to kill until the next game so Joe and I walked in the rain, lots of rain, to Chinatown and I bought new shoes. I got these shoes just before I went on the cruise and they already have a hole in the sole, my foot was soaked.
Game 2 I have no photos of as it was Italy vs. Venezuela and I didn't know any players. The best part was when Italy hit a double and I yelled out "That's a spicy meatball!" in my best Italian accent. Joe pretended he didn't know me and I laughed for about half an hour. I'm laughing still.

Scott Nevins - Recessionista

Great show I went to last night. I recorded it and emailed it to Scott who wrote back a few times. Brief clip (hopefully) below. I've been having trouble uploading it here.

Perfection

I'm into this new blog called Sissydude. Some cool stuff below.

I also love the idea of people's random photos being cool, there should be an art exhibit with this stuff.