Off-Target Tuesday

Someone at work, today, was talking about going to buy a coffee maker. She was saying she might go to Target, and I said that I hadn't been to Target in over a month.

She asked why, and I explained that I hadn't been there ever since I heard they had donated $150,000 to MN Forward - who sent money to Tom Emmer, who is running for governor in Minnesota while saying that the group of musicians who sing about wanting to round up and kill all the gays are a "nice bunch of boys." (Okay. I didn't say all that. I abbreviated it down to "I've been boycotting them since last month when I found out who they were donating money to.")

Her response was "I don't pay any attention to who donates to whom. After a while you wouldn't shop anywhere. And I love Target." I didn't really know what to say. I said that I figure we all choose our battles, and that as much as I like Target I wasn't going back there any time soon - at the very least not until the November general election.

If you haven't been paying attention, or if you missed my original post last month (it's here), here's the basic scoop and update:

1) In late July, it was publicized that Target, Best Buy, Polaris, and a few other companies had donated to a political action committee called "MN Forward." MN Forward's only real politician was Republican Tom Emmer, who had a band perform at one of his fundraisers. The band is vocal about the fact that they think all the gays should be rounded up and killed. When Emmer was asked about that, he said "They're a bunch of really nice guys."

2) When all of this hit the news, Target's CEO (who has also made personal donations to the same causes) took a bunch of heat and eventually released an apology - of sorts. In essence, what he said was "I'm sorry you were offended." He never said he was sorry he did what he did. Or that he could see how donating to MN Forward's agenda might go against all of the gay-friendly things Target usually does.

3) The head of the HRC (Human Rights Campaign) met with the folks at Target, who said they wanted to know what they could do to try to make things better - including making a matching donation to a gay-friendly candidate. After multiple meetings, where the folks from the HRC thought they were doing well at making their point, Target suddenly pulled out. Apparently Target decided that the firestorm of publicity was done, and they didn't need to worry about making good any more.

So... Now it's been a little over a month since I've been to Target. I've been spending my money other places. I'm sure my spending isn't even a drop in the bucket which Target would notice, but I'm not going back until after the election, when what they paid their money for comes to its end, one way or another.

We all pick our fights. I guess this one is one of mine.

Paper Cut

I was entirely planning to sit down and talk to you about the amazing weekend Christopher and I had.

I was going to include a story about the guy at the front desk of the Westin who congratulated us on our five years together and commented that he and his boyfriend had just celebrated their second - and how happy he was for us.

I was going to mention the quiet time when we almost had the pool and whirlpool all to ourselves, and the view from the Banker's Boardroom on the 10th floor which we both snuck into, just because.

I wanted to tell you about the great dinner at Murray's, where the waitress brought us a fudg-y cake with a candle in it to celebrate our five years, and Christopher actually made sure that we got our picture taken.

And I was even going to throw in the fact that we capped off the weekend at home with TV and a delivery pizza, which gave the whole weekend a nice tie-in to the first night Christopher and I met.

But, you see, as I was tossing yesterday's newspaper into the recycling this morning, I got a paper cut. And it's been driving me crazy all day. It's right inside the second knuckle on my left pointer finger. Which means that any typing I do I feel it. At work today, when I decided to be good and use some Purell on my hands after sneezing, I got alcohol in that cut. Yowch. It wasn't quite as bad when I got fresh tomato juice in it at dinner time (while making a fresh tomato BLT with one of the two solitary tomatoes from my huge tomato plant), but it still made itself known.

And now, tonight, as I sat down to write all about the weekend, my blasted paper cut was once again stretching and flexing and distracting me in all the wrong ways.

Somehow I suspect there's a metaphor in there just waiting to happen.

Let's Sing a Song of Five

I won't be online much this weekend, because Christopher and I are going to be "running away" for the night to celebrate the fact that we met five years ago, today.

That was a Sunday night, and we met at my place for pizza and beer (I ordered the pizza, he brought the beer), and movies on the couch. It was actually a really relaxing first date, all things considered. And before the evening was out, I was pretty sure I was hooked. (Don't tell Christopher, but I was probably hooked when I first saw his brown eyes through the glass front door of my apartment building.)

Tonight we're going to go a little more high-end, though. We're going to do one of our hotel nights out, with dinner at a spiffy restaurant. But, honestly, I don't know that anything will ever live up to that first night.

I also don't think much can live up to videos celebrating the number five as much as this one I found online. Please click here and enjoy.

The Evening After the Day After the Night After

I have developed a bad habit of checking my work email in the evening (or on weekends) to, basically, find out what it is that I'm getting myself into the next day.

Yesterday I did just that at about 8 o'clock, and then headed for bed around 10:30. The problem is that, this time, instead of just the usual "this has shipped" or "I want to order books" emails, I had... well... this (fair warning, it's not for the faint of heart):

"I don't know what you'retalking about. F*ck your records. The book is hardcover and is 6x9. I want everybody to get together and fix this shit before 10:00am permanently, and the printer to send me the proofs within 24 hours."

Which got me thinking that I might have done something really wrong at some point and not known what that was. And, after also finding another follow-up email to that one, I started seriously questioning what I had or hadn't done.

I decided around 10:30 to give up on that, though, and headed for bed. And I eventually fell sound asleep. Until 2:47am, when I woke up and lay in bed for about a half hour desperately trying to get back to sleep and stop worrying about the emails from work.

I woke up this morning at about 6am, still wondering about that stuff. I almost came up with a solution in the shower, and then headed for work, where I spent the first 20 minutes or so of the day putting together a response to the above-mentioned total git of an author I was going to have to deal with.

And, after I vetted my response through one or two people, I only had to wait about an hour before getting a reply back. After all of last night's vitriol, this morning I got "Thank you for taking care of it."

So... Adrenaline spent after dealing with the lack of sleep and all, I faded pretty massively by around 3:30 this afternoon. By 5pm when I was headed away from work to go to a Happy Hour for a friend who just got a new job, I was on enough of a second wind to get an Amaretto Sour and actually enjoy it.

Which brings us to now. Hanging out with Christopher and watching stuff on the TiVo (which, yes, we've gotten rather accustomed to). I suspect it will be a rather early evening - I hope it will also be a rather long, all-sleep night.

And I can guarantee that I'm not going to check my work email. (If for no other reason that I think Christopher might hurt me if I do...)

I am not a Lego!

At work, today, I got into a conversation about relationships and, sort of, life.

I was talking to a co-worker about her month-old relationship, and how the first time she introduced the new guy to her parents... well... it went a little less well than hoped.

And, at one point, I made the cliche comment that "Rome wasn't built in a day." But, trying to lighten the mood, I followed up with "...although, if you built it out of Legos, you might be able to do the highlights in a day or two."

The person I was chatting with replied "I am not a Lego!"

Thinking about it throughout the course of the day, I have to admit that I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I mean... I guess it's bad if you feel like you're always stuck in a little square box, but it's kind of wonderful to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

Although, I think I may be overthinking the original conversation.

Beards

There was a time (let's call it the 80s, 90s, and 00s) when most people did not have facial hair. During that time, I frequently had some form of whiskerage. Most of my adult life, I've had a goatee, or a full beard, or sideburns, or at least an on-going five o'clock shadow (which I actually take about 2 days to really produce).

And I like my facial hair, and I like that Christopher has a beard, too. I think it looks really good on him. And, for quite a while, we were the only two people in our social group who had any whiskers to speak of.

But, lately, I've been noticing more and more people with full beards. And, oddly enough, it seems to be mainly guys in their 20s. Lots of them with painstakingly mussed hair and full beards. On some of them it looks pretty good. But, on some of them... well...

You know how some people really shouldn't try to follow fashion? Like the woman with the great curves who tries to wear skinny jeans. Or the guy with just the start of a beer gut who wants to wear an "athletic cut" shirt and it pulls taut in all the wrong places? A decent number of these recent beard aficionados seem to fall into that same type of category.

Face it, there are a lot of guys with patchy facial hair. And some of those beards look kind of mangy (in the worst sense). But, still, they're doing it for "the fashion." Do they not realize that even Brad Pitt looked pretty horrible in his latest beard-carnation?

But, in the meantime, I'm going to keep my goatee and my three-day-old five o'clock shadow. And I'll hope that one day these 20-somethings will look in the mirror and decide it's time to thin the herd. Or, in some cases, shave it.

(On the other hand, don't get me started about shaving below the neck... that's a whole different topic...)

One-Handed Post

Did you know it's hard to work on the computer with one hand scratching a "loaner" dog?

Well, it is.