I've listened to "Don't Let the Sun Go Down On Me" so many times that my brain finally realized how much awesomer this song is with the homonymous title. Because...losing everything is like The Son going down on me?

I always knew I loved that song!



Hey, odd things make me happy sometimes. :)

My driver's license and library card have mysteriously disappeared. They were in my pocket, and now they aren't. I think they fell out. I don't know where. My bank card is not missing; it's right here. The BMV is closed till Tuesday, so I'll have to wait till then to replace the license.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about the library card. Someone could go check out a zillion books and never return them!

You know what always kinda freaks me out? Like a lot more than it should? When I am about to start telling a story about my life, and then I realize that I can't tell the story because half the people in the room don't know that I'm trans. So if I want to tell this story and have it make any sense, I have to explain my whole life story, and once I start doing that, we're on a whole different subject and nobody's going to pay attention to the story I actually wanted to tell, because half the people in the room are processing the new information and half the people have tuned out because they already know I'm trans and don't care. And I don't know if the new people even know what "transgender" means, so am I going to have to also explain THAT? I don't want to have to explain shit all the time. But the alternative is having nobody know me, because nobody just "figures it out". The gender that I am doesn't exist, so nobody looks at me and sees it and gets it, no matter how I dress, no matter what I look like, no matter how my presentation changes. What I look like and who I am are never going to match. Some people have genders and bodies that match when they're born and keep on matching their whole lives.

Some people have genders and bodies that don't match, but with some work they can get them to match, at least get them to match close enough that they feel okay about it most of the time. And then there are people like me, people whose genders don't match ANY body that exists somehow, and sometimes I don't know how we make it through the day.

Happy new year! My car battery decided to ring in the new year by crapping out on me. My friend took a look, gave the car a good enough jump to get me home, and told me to make sure I didn't turn the car off between their place and mine because the likelihood of it starting up again was...not so high.

I had a feeling something more was up than just the lights. I figured it was just that I'm overdue for an oil change. Which I still am, and am still going to have to pay for, too, on top of the battery. Fortunately my friend can fix it and won't charge me for that, but I still need to buy the battery.

Still, I am glad that (a) I have a car (b) I got paid today so I can pay for the battery tomorrow (c) I have friends (d) I got home safely.

The party was fun. Except the part where they forgot to not spray Lysol while I'm there, which VERY quickly resulted in my body freaking out. My sinuses are no longer burning, thank god, but the headache set in pretty quickly. I'll sleep it off. I'll be fine.

I like Rock Band.

2009 is almost over. Leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember! Then you can re-post this if you want to, and see how many people leave a memory about you.

I am trying to figure out what to do with my life!
At least, what to do with my life after July.

I just realized, with a tinge of dismay, that I'm now too old to do City Year. Ever. I'm looking into AmeriCorps programs that I could do next year, if I decide to do a second AmeriCorps year, if I decide to not stay in Indy...and straight up, City Year is officially not on my options list. Their max age is 24. I'm 24 now. I won't be next year. I'm too old.

I just don't know what I want to do. I mean, I know at least a fair number of things that I could potentially do, but I am not feeling a strong pull toward any one in particular.

I'm not really upset about City Year, per se. I wasn't thinking THAT seriously about it that I'm super-disappointed that I'll never get to do it. It's just weird to realize that I'm too old to do something like that.

elainegrey shared this story from Rev. Alderman's blog: http://www.revama.blogspot.com/ . As the story has been passed on, various editors have degendered the characters and chosen to spell out the word "shit" rather then bleeping it out (that was me).

On Christmas Eve a parent puts in one child’s stocking a fine gold watch, and into the other's, a pile of horse manure. The next morning, the first child comes to the parent and says glumly, “I just don’t know what I’ll do with this watch. It’s so fragile. It could break.” The other runs around gleefully and says, “Look everybody! Santa left me a pony, if only I can find it!”

While I don't want to disparage a nice gift, I hope I can see the pony in a pile of shit. How do you think you do on this?


Here's how I think on this!

My first reaction was that I am totally the kid running around looking for a pony in a pile of shit. Even if I didn't really want a pony. Even if I'm in a tiny apartment in the inner city and there really better not be a pony hiding somewhere. Even if I'm making a huge shit mess of the place while looking for the friggin' pony and everybody's laughing at me. I'm not giving up till I find my damn pony! THEN I'll figure out what to do with it.

Then I realized that I'm kinda the first kid, too. Someone gives me something which to most people is of obvious value, and I freak. What the hell is this? What do I do with it? Is it going to break? Is it going to hurt? Do I really want it? Will I ever use it? Do I deserve it? Is the person giving it to me expecting something from me?

So okay, I'm a freak. :-P




Come on, thefuckingweather. 33 high? You can do better than that! I need to be outside to clean out my car!

This year, my big December holiday was Laundry Day!

I celebrated Laundry Day by doing an epic FOUR LOADS of laundry. 2 full loads of clothes, plus a few extras that I threw in with my bedsheets, and then a fourth load for my dishrags. Now I have clean EVERYTHING!!

Many people who celebrated Christmas yesterday wished me a Merry Christmas. So I wished them a Happy Laundry Day!

apollotiger, who is one of the wiser people I have ever known, wished me a Happy Laundry Day. So I wished him a Merry Christmas.

May all your laundry be soft, warm, clean, and cozy this season!




My Tarot reading gift exchange is still open! Let me know if you're interested!

It's really cold
I don't like cold
I feel like whining a lot but I have nobody to whine to.

Several lights have gone out on my car and I need to get them fixed. I really suck at owning a car. I was freaking out about this for [insert amount of time], and then I posted about it on Facebook, and lo and behold I had no idea but one of my local friends knows how to fix shit on cars used to work at AutoZone and she's going to help me out.

So I don't have to whine about that anymore, hopefully.

I talked to my mom today. I kinda feel like I need some sort of plan, but I don't feel drawn to any particular plan. But as I listened to myself talk to my mom, all I could think was that I want to sing and that I miss my family. I don't know if I actually miss my family, or if I miss the idea of believing that I have a family, but there's something I need that I'm not getting and there are holes in me where my family isn't, and I know there are holes in her where our family isn't, too. I don't know if we can fill those holes for each other, and I don't know that it's healthy for us to try, but I know what it's like for her to have them and she knows what it's like for me to have them, because they're the same holes, the same shape, the same missing pieces.

She's not pushing me to do anything now. We just...had a good conversation about things I like (singing, being nice to people, saving the world) and things I hate (school, being dependent on other people, violating my ethics to survive). She wants to be my mom. I want her to be my mom so freaking bad I can't stand it. I want a lot of things that aren't good for me.

I'm having mad mad gender issues right now and the last thing in the world I need is my mom all up in my head when I'm having crazy gender shit.

I'm mainly stressing out because I'm nearly halfway through my AmeriCorps year and I have NO IDEA what I'm doing next. You'd think I'd know by now that whatever is supposed to happen next WILL HAPPEN, regardless of whether I freak about it until it happens or not, but somehow I never seem to figure that one out.

We just got this message, about my friend whom I posted about the other day:

"[He] is ending his time in his body. Multiple organs are
beginning to fail, and his body is telling us what his voice can not.
It is time to let him go. We will be removing the paralytic drug that
has been allowing the ventilator to be working at such a high pressure,
then removing the ventilator a bit later. Given the condition of his
lungs, he will probably not last long. The medical staff will be
administering whatever drugs are necessary for his comfort.

Please hold [him] in the Light during this time of transition.

Thank you for your love and support. I hope the holiday finds you with
laughter and joy regardless.

peace and blessings,
[his son]"


I can't really think of words. I'm sad. It feels like every month someone else I love dies, which I guess is just how things are when one loves so many people.

This video is so awesome that I transcribed it! So if your physical or technological capabilities prevent you from hearing the video, click the LJ cut to read what this guy has to say about telling people to have a "happy holiday".



( transcribed! )

Apparently the iBook only works on alternate days!

aredridel is burning me the start-up disks for both machines. Ah, the adventures of underground computer (re)use (or is that (ab)use?).

It's freaking COLD in my apartment, and I am again finding myself tempted to go on a massive throw-out-all-my-worldly-possessions spree. There's a LOT of crap in here that I don't need and I reckon nobody else does, either.

There's something in my head I need to run away from, but I can't run from my head.

Vegetarian
I vent a rage.
A great vein
Eat vinegar.
Rage via 'net
Eat in grave.
A vegan rite
Irate vegan

Vegetarians =
Vegan satire
I avenge rats
Vegans are it!
Eat vegan sir.

December 25th is a day which has no religious or cultural significance to me. I did not grow up celebrating Christmas, any more than I grew up celebrating zillions of other holidays which exist throughout the world and simply do not reflect anything which is pertinent to my religious beliefs. Last year, I was actively practicing Christianity and I even tried to celebrate Christmas, but ultimately it wasn't a particularly meaningful experience. My religious beliefs are not centered around Jesus Christ. Celebrating his birth is not religiously meaningful to me.

I didn't realize this, but apparently many Jewish families also celebrate Christmas when they're done celebrating Hanukkah. I've now realized this, because when I tell people that I don't celebrate Christmas and that my family did not celebrate it or even really acknowledge it in any way when I was growing up, I get Really Weird Looks. At first I thought everyone was just completely nuts...why would my JEWISH FAMILY celebrate CHRISTMAS? Well, apparently other Jews do that. They celebrate Hanukkah because they're Jews, and they celebrate Christmas because "everyone" celebrates Christmas.

Well, that's really weird to me! In my family, Jews do not celebrate Christmas. We don't celebrate Canada Day, either, because we're not Canadians! Do others from the US celebrate Canada Day? We don't! And we don't celebrate Christmas, because we're Jews!

I also don't really LIKE Christmas. It's basically all the things I didn't like about Hanukkah (coercive gift exchange, drama, , and none of the things I did like, plus a bunch of annoying songs and crowded parking lots. And on top of that, "everyone" celebrates it. So everyone is home with their families doing family things, and I'm not, because (a) my family isn't really my family that way right now, and (b) even if they were, WE DON'T CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS!

Like, seriously, I'm not trying to protest Christmas or anything. I respect that other people celebrate it, though I don't think it should be mandatory to take the day off from work. It just feels like a big party that everyone else is invited to and I'm not on the guest list, but I don't exactly have anything better to do that day either.

The iBook is magically working just fine now. I have no idea what happened.

I'm praying tonight for a dear Quaker friend who is seriously ill. He has leukemia and is now hospitalized with H1N1 and pneumonia. According to the email, he was found in his home, "alone, delirious, without nourishment for some days, dehydrated and desperately ill" by members of his Meeting, who grew concerned when he had not been answering phone calls. He has been in ICU for several weeks and the most recent email from his Meeting says that his condition is deteriorating. Please, please pray for this beautiful, gentle, loving, kind man in North Carolina and his family.

Yeah, there goes ANOTHER computer. The iBook just kicked the bucket.

It had been running slow for a few weeks, but it didn't bother to tell me what was wrong or that it was terminal. I don't actually know WHAT happened, but I do know that I can't afford to fix it. There's no warranty on this sucker. The place I bought it from screwed me on that one, but there's nothing can be done about it now. I took a gamble on a used machine and I knew within a month that I had lost that gamble, but that's just how shit blows. Now I have a dead hunk of plastic.

Fortunately (I guess) I have a backup machine, since blacklightning handed me down this clunker a couple months ago. It's not a bad computer...no worse than any of my others, I suppose. Its battery is dead and I cannot for the life of me get the wireless to work, so now I'm going to have to go out and buy the longest ethernet cable ever if I want to use the computer in my back room instead of sitting here next to the router in the front room where my bed isn't.

Other downfalls of this new machine include that it's clearly NOT a Mac; it's a Dell Inspiron 8130. And, you know, it doesn't have the entire last year of my documents and music on it. But at this point, I've gotten used to the fact that nothing I "save" on a computer is ever really "safe", since every computer I ever go near is guaranteed to meet an untimely demise. I'm amazed, frankly, that the iBook lasted a whole year. Maybe if I ever get a new computer, I'll get in the habit of backing up files that I care about.

I'm maybe kinda in shock right now? I dunno, I always kinda zen out when this happens. I mean, I can't believe that this happens often enough that I have a thing that I know I "always do" when it happens, but right now I'm looking at a blue screen of doom that tells me, sure enough, another dead computer. Honestly though, it's a little anti-climactic this time since I happen to have a backup computer on hand, so I don't even get to take a vacation from the internet while I figure out what to do about the broken computer. Maybe I need to just take a vacation from the internet anyway, instead of waiting for an act of Computergod, but you know how it is. Not likely.

Part of me really wishes I could afford a new computer, like an actual new computer with all its working parts and an actual warranty to go with it. Can't afford it. Really, really can't afford it. So I guess I'll just have to see how long this pain-in-the-ass machine lasts.

"Oliver Alligator,

May your holidays be merry and bright!

Everyone else's card wishes them happy and peaceful, but in addition to that I hope that yours are purple, passionate, vibrant, ecstatic, flamboyant, fabulous, colorful, epic, and cunt-tastic.

And I hope you get a dick in a box."

*giggle*

This is primarily posted for solestria's benefit: http://www.thefuckingweather.com/

This is really weird and I'm not sure I can explain it very well but I'm going to try?

So, in high school, there were three a cappella groups. There was an all-girls group, an all-guys group, and a mixed group. My first, and only, opportunity to audition was at the end of my first year of high school, because (as many of you know) I basically stopped going to high school midway through my second year (and that's a story for a different day).

I went back and forth about which group to audition with for months. I hadn't figured out anything about my gender yet. This was when I was about 14; I still didn't even really know what "gay" meant, and had never heard of anybody being transgender or genderqueer or anything remotely like that. I knew that I had a much better shot at getting into the all-girls group. Several of the girls in the group had been asking me if I were auditioning for their group. They had about 4 or 5 open spots to fill, so my odds were much higher. The mixed group only had room for two girls.

I couldn't explain it at the time but something just didn't feel right to me about auditioning for the all-girls group. I just couldn't do it. I had no idea it had anything to do with the gender. I didn't get that until several years later. I just couldn't do it.

The way the auditions worked was, a group of students made up of members of each of the three groups listened to the auditions of anyone who wanted to be in the a cappella groups, and they decided who got in, but you had to pick only one group that you were auditioning for. If you didn't get into that one, you didn't get in at all. You couldn't say "I'd be happy to be in either group". You had to pick one.

So I picked the mixed group.

The next day they had the audition results posted. I sat in the lobby all day waiting for that list to go up, and sure enough, there were two girls' names on the list for the mixed group, and I wasn't one of them.

I honestly can't think of a more crushing moment in my entire life. And I've had some pretty fucked up moments. At the time, I didn't even know that I would never get another shot at this. Just the idea of having to wait a whole 'nother year to audition, a whole year that I wasn't going to get to sing in an a cappella group at all, when I had been waiting my whole life to do it...it was seriously devastating to 14-year-old me. I never got over that one.

A couple months later, I was talking to one of the girls in the all-girls group. She kept asking me why I hadn't auditioned for that group. "None of us could understand it! You knew you were going to get in if you auditioned with us, didn't you?" It turned out that when the students met to discuss who would get in to each group, I was #3 on the list for the girls they wanted for the mixed group. Which didn't help me one bit when there were only two spots.

This was ten years ago, now, and it's in the dark pit in the back of my mind where pretty much my whole life from age 10-18 lives, but every so often I start needing to stay up late at night and watch a cappella groups on YouTube and every time I do this I soon start having the gender nightmares, and I only just now put two and two together.

I don't know if I'll ever have another opportunity like that. I don't know if I'll ever feel complete if I don't.

Dear Sleeptime,

Is there any chance I could be NOT having the gender nightmares again? Or ever? I don't really need that shit, do I?

Peace,
Oliver Danni

I don't even really want to talk about it, though I probably should. I just want to not sleep.

They're made out of Meat!
a humorous short story by Terry Bisson that was nominated for the 1991 Nebula award.

'Tis the season for Tarot readings!

Well, actually, 'tis always the season for Tarot readings. ;-)

This year I would like to have an open Tarot reading gift exchange! I will accept pretty much any gift you wish to offer in exchange for Tarot readings. Here are some things I particularly want:

-new Tarot decks
-vegan treats
-donations (any amount) to the Oliver's 2010 Travel Fund
-donations (any amount) to Farm Sanctuary
-handmade items (YES, PLEASE KNIT ME THINGS! I've turned down knitted items in the past, but NOW I WANT THEM so please knit me things and I will love them. Hats, scarves, mittens, pillows, bags, cuddly toys...BRING IT ON.)
-tea mugs (my dishwasher killed many tea mugs this year and now I have only 2!)

If you have something else to offer, let me know...no matter how silly you think it is, if you feel it will be of similar to me as a Tarot reading will be to you, it's perfect. :)

Fuck You And Your Fucking Thesis: Why I Will Not Participate In Trans Studies by tagonist

I almost didn't even know it was Hanukkah. I'm not surprised that nobody I'm related to called me to wish me a happy Hanukkah. I'm not sure when my family stopped celebrating holidays, but at some point, there was just nothing to celebrate anymore. We stopped caring.

I didn't stop caring, but I'm not really part of the family anyway.

I guess I'm just kinda feeling sad about it this year because, at least last year when I was doing the Christian thing I had a holiday to celebrate and people to celebrate it with, but Christmas is totally meaningless to me really. People who grew up celebrating Christmas have that tradition in their heritage, so they can celebrate it as a secular holiday and have that be meaningful to their families, but I have no such tradition, so there's nothing for me to celebrate. Also, I don't have a family, so there's nobody for me to celebrate nothing with. And, seriously, there are no Jews out here. It would be nearly as weird for me to be like "hey guys, let's celebrate Hanukkah!" as it is for me to go to someone's Christmas thing as if it were my holiday.

I mean, I could celebrate any holiday that I want, but nothing I could do would fill the void that I need filled by a holiday celebration.

Happy Hanukkah, though.

DILEMMA.

I am researching condoms -- specifically vegan condoms. There is a brand, Glyde, which is available in the United States. I would love to work on making these more available to condom users. So I'm thinking about this, and I keep having the the thought that in order to responsibly recommend that people use this product, I need to actually test it myself.

And that makes me feel a little weird about how I go around promoting condom use and safer sex all the time. I mean, I totally believe in condom use and safer sex and no WAY am I going to stop going around promoting it! I just feel weird being someone who does a lot of talking about condoms and safe sex when I don't even have sex. How could I possibly even really know what I'm talking about?

Clothing and fashion are completely incomprehensible to me.
I don't get it anymore than I get why people judge other people's bodies. Seriously, why?
I dunno, maybe I'd understand it better if I could ever find clothes that (a) fit (b) look good (c) feel good and (d) don't cost a lot of money.
Maybe not. I just don't get it.

THIS ONE WAS NOT AWESOME.

froghugger and I were at Stir Crazy eating our delicious stir fries and chattering away when one of the waiters came up to our table. He was not our waiter, but he came over and leaned against the side of our booth to talk to us. He appeared to be about my age.

"So...I gotta ask ya, dude. Why is your hair that color?"
I get this kind of question a lot, as it is fairly common amongst Things Which Actually Happen To Me Because I Have Purple Hair, and as usual I gave him a big grin and said "It's my favorite color!"
He got a funny look. "Oh. I um...I mean, it looks great! You, uh...how long's it been like that?"
"About five years," I said, still not catching on. I'm slow sometimes. Seriously.
"Yeah! Oh, uh, well. We were all just wondering, you know, why you'd do that to your hair."
Do that to my hair?! You all were wondering?!
Yeah, then I got it, and I was so discombobulated by the realization that he was not telling me he thought my hair was awesome that I missed all the rest of what he said. There was something about "...if you lost a bet or something" in there. But eventually he went back to "But, it looks great! Really! I really, um, like it!" and I just sat there like, yeah, okay dude, go back to work now so I can fall over laughing into my stir fry.

froghugger and I had to review what actually transpired in that conversation several times before I was entirely convinced that a waiter at Stir Crazy had just come over to our table because his waiter buddies had dared him to come find out if the guy with purple hair had lost a bet.

This could have actually been really embarrassing if it weren't so fucking hilarious and awesome.

I am making plans to visit New York from Feb 10-18. Whose couches am I crashing on? I'm in Peekskill with my Quakers from the 12-15th, but outside of the weekend I am free and want to see YOU. I will NOT be bringing the car this time, so please be accessible by public transportation or have a vehicle of your own!

(THIS POST IS IN NO WAY RELATED TO THE PREVIOUS POST. I am NOT MOVING BACK TO NEW YORK. I am VISITING. Just in case anybody was confused. If I move anywhere, it will NOT BE NEW YORK! The only reason I'm coming to New York at all is because the Quakers are making me do it, and I figure if I'm coming I better visit my friends while I'm there, because it's not likely to happen again anytime soon!)

If I were to move somewhere, where would you recommend that I move to, and why?

Yesterday, my AmeriCorps team was working at an event at the Statehouse promoting the new "One Test Two Lives" initiative to include HIV tests as part of routine prenatal care. We were asked to go upstairs and offer invitations to the event to the Important Government People, and told that we would find their offices on the third floor.

We got up to the third floor and found nobody up there except a lone state trooper behind a desk. He eyed us suspiciously. My teammate explained what we were there for and asked if the representatives' offices were on this floor. The state trooper told him that they were not. "Really?" asked my teammate.

Mr. State Trooper stood up and came around from behind the desk. "What? You think I'm lyin' to you??" he said, pretending to be pissed off. "You think I'm kiddin'??" We assured him that we believed him. This was clearly the most excitement he would see all day.

He took a pace around the five of us standing in front of his desk, ending up standing just behind me. I turned a little bit so I could at least see him in my periphery, since large state troopers standing behind me makes me just a little nervous. As I turned, he put his hand on my shoulder, which made me MORE than a little nervous, so I turned my head to look right at him REALLY fast.

"I like your hair!" he said. Then he rubbed my head.

Whee! Now I can check "get my head rubbed by a state trooper" off my bucket list!

Today is World AIDS Day.

Every day is world AIDS day until the virus is eradicated, but today is the day we are invited to collectively commemorate the global epidemic.

Nobody deserves HIV and nobody should be getting infected anymore. Do you know how to prevent the spread of HIV? If not, educate yourself. Educate your friends. Educate your community.

HIV can be spread by any form of sexual intercourse where a penis enters an orifice (mouth, anus, or vagina). You can reduce your risk by getting tested with your sexual partners -- if neither of you is infected, you cannot transmit HIV. You can reduce your risk by using condoms. Many clinics and community centers offer condoms for free. If you do not know where to get free condoms in your community, ask around. If there are no free condoms in your community, RAISE HELL UNTIL THERE ARE. Unprotected sexual activity is THE MOST COMMON way that HIV is spread. Make sure that you know how to use the condom correctly. Make sure your friends know how to use condoms correctly. Even if you never have sex, I guarantee that you know someone who does, and you could save their life by making sure they know how to use a condom.

HIV can be spread any time you inject a substance with a needle which has been used by another person -- regardless of what substance you were injecting. The needle is what spreads the virus, not the substance in the needle. The needle does not care if you are injecting street drugs or something your doctor prescribed. You can get HIV just as easily by sharing a needle for your gender hormones or insulin as you can by sharing a needle to get high. If you inject drugs or medication for any reason, DO NOT SHARE NEEDLES. If you absolutely must share needles, here is how to clean them. (I am alarmed that I could not find better instructions than that after 20 minutes of Googling, and will be rectifying this situation as soon as possible.) You can prevent the spread of HIV by making sure your friends know that sharing needles is ALWAYS an HIV transmission risk, regardless of what substance is being injected.

HIV can be transmitted to an infant, but this can easily be prevented! Medical advances have reduced the transmission rate from a pregnant individual to their child to less than 1% if proper care is received. If you are pregnant, you can protect your child by getting tested for HIV as early in your pregnancy is possible. If your pregnancy resulted from penis-in-vagina intercourse, there is also a chance you may have been exposed to HIV!

This prevention message is brought to you by your friendly neighborhood purple-headed HIV/AIDS prevention activist. You can protect yourself! You can protect your friends!

Dear brain,

Okay, I know you're excited about work! That's great! But, trust me, if you keep me awake all night because you're so excited about work that you have to tell me all your great ideas about what we should do at work this week, you will NOT be excited about work for very long. Come on now. We were doing so well with this sleep thing for a few days. Let's keep it up, okay? Sleep is good for you. Really.

Love,
Oliver Danni

I've officially been vegan for 7 years today.

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm thankful for so much today. :)

This is up there with the dancing kid at K-Mart.

I'm at the gas station, pumping gas.
A nicely dressed African-American man, maybe in his 30's, walks out of the convenience store. He nods at me. I nod at him.
"Purple hair!" he said, pointing.
"Yup!" I reply, smiling.
Then he starts singing. "Purple haaaaiiiiiir! Purple haiiiiiir! It's right over theeeeere, that purple haiiiiiir!"
I grin at him, trying not to laugh my ass off. He walks over to his car, which is parked at the pump behind the one I'm standing at. I resume paying attention to nothing.
Then I see him lean toward me, around the side of the pump. "Hey, what's your name?"
"Oliver."
"Oliver, eh? Did you just get back from New York?"
Huh? I don't know this guy, and I don't have New York plates anymore, so there's no way he knows I grew up in New York. "Uh...I live here," I said.
"Oh, okay. Never mind, you don't get it. Well, are you a follower of Jesus Christ, Oliver?"
"He's a pretty cool dude! I like him quite a bit," I said.
"A 'cool dude', huh? You know, he's not all fun and games, our Lord and Savior. He can be pretty mean when he wants to be!"
Nuh-uh! I dunno where he's going with this, but I know where I'm going with it. "Huh, Jesus is mean? Where in the Bible do you see him being mean to someone?"
"Oh, all over! You don't wanna mess with him when he gets mad! He gets real mean!"
"That's interesting. I admit I haven't memorized the whole Bible, but I've never read about Jesus being mean. Jesus was well-known for going around being incredibly compassionate and generous to everyone."
"...but he's JESUS! He's MIGHTY AND POWERFUL!"
"Yeah, he is very powerful. The power he has is that he LOVES everybody. LOVE is the power."
"...yeah. Love is the power."
"You don't have to be mean to anyone to be powerful."
He looks at me thoughtfully. "Love conquers a multitude of sins."
I nod. "That's why I like the dude."
He gives me a suspicious look. "Do you even go to church?" Ohhhh, I know that look. That's the "but you're a freak with purple hair!" look!
"Yes, I do," I said. "Do you?"
"Yeah..."
"Well, just remember that Jesus's power is about love, not being mean. If you read your Bible carefully, I think that's what you'll find in there."
He looked a little disoriented. But he was smiling again. "Thanks, Oliver. Have a happy holiday and God bless."
"You too my friend. Jesus loves you!"

He then got in his car and drove away.

I busted my ass at work yesterday emailing about 400 people from our volunteer database who have applied to be volunteers but have either not yet been contacted at all, or have not yet been enrolled in our new volunteer training.

I woke up this morning with an inbox full of "Yes, please let me know what I need to do to be of service to your organization!" emails to follow up on.

I LOVE VOLUNTEERS!

I LOVE MY JOB!

I'm not feeling well today so I will be working from home. I think I just ate something that disagreed with me, and I'm sure I'll be fine tomorrow, but given that my stomach's upset and it could theoretically be a virus, I better stay home. I have plenty of work to do!

It is 11:47 and I am about to go to sleep.
I am so grateful that I have a job which I'm excited to get up early for.
Tomorrow we start Messiah rehearsals, and one of my teammates is going to come sing with us!
Thursday is Thanksgiving, my 7-year veganniversary. I'll be celebrating with my new vegan friends.

I have a lot to be thankful for!

:)