Bucheau

.(pending ability to post to LJ)

As I type this on November 5th, 2025, between 9am-11am (if I finish by then when it’s over and people return to the land of cubicles here on West End), there is an In-Person-only Quarterly Basic Science Administrative Staff Assembly hosted by our Dean and central School of Medicine Dean’s office inclusive of about 70-80 potential attendees, including myself.

I am purposefully, and what will likely be noticeably, not attending this session.  In a bit of unintended but timing-driven emphasis that I am on-site in our office complex is that with traffic, as I was getting onto the elevator on the 2nd floor around 8:30am from the connected parking garage, and twice as I went down the hallway on 5th floor towards my office, I passed by huddled, hurrying groups of my peers exiting towards this 9am meeting which is a fair walk across campus.  Simply to say, I had to say “hello” and wave at the waves of persons heading in the opposite direction who likely all assumed I was dropping stuff in my office and doing an about-face to join their journey.  Only my two staff members who happen to be working on-campus today are aware that I’m not going, because I gave them advance notice yesterday to avoid the awkwardness of them coming to my office doorway with assumptions per normal we’d be traveling as a group.

The thing is that I’m making a passive-aggressive sort of stand, an unvocalized complaint about the lack of what to me seems obviously inappropriate prior presentions in what had been originally billed as “mandatory” meetings.  However I have chosen to interpret these as non-mandatory (for my justification of not attending), partly because administrative staff across the School who have existing permission to always work remotely, including Dean’s office staff (one based in California, for instance) are NOT ever in attendance to this in-person-only meeting in past quarters.

The problem I actually began to compose about below back on 10/14/2024, the day after the first meeting I found uncomfortable and inappropriate as mandatory.   However, my seemingly-important position nowadays, I just never have time to finish an entry for LiveJournal (and still have issues accessing that now-Russian-owned website at which no one from the past really exists or monitors anymore…so truly a journal as it began back in 2000).

This was the first draft, unedited below (for pretend posterity), and I’ll pick up below that with thoughts since 2024….

<i> We had a quarterly Dean’s office mandatory half-day meeting yesterday, to be attended by all administrators in the Dean’s office, but also from the various departments and centers (so not lab folks).  These team-building things usually have one faculty member present a dumbed-down version of their scientific presentations they might do at seminars to give us a better sense of the research advancements and projects that our seemingly mundane office tasks help support to further inspire us that we are tangentially curing cancer or developing vaccines or find the cellular level issues leading to diseases or genetic anomalies.   Often to a presentation on literal team building, like presentations on productive and non-confrontational inter- and intra-work relationships, maybe a “game” that requires randomly assigned groups within the 80 or so attendees to solve some puzzle, and general discussions about upcoming institutional or school changes in policies or as with yesterday the new limitations of data storage.  Microsoft used to give universities unlimited storage on One-Drive and Teams when trying to encourage users to adopt, but now are starting to charge fees that become quite the huge bill when exponentially including all the administrative and research and student-generated data across the campus. </i>

The thing about my disinclination to attend these, my silly silent unspoken protest, is that at that during both that October, 2024 meeting and surprisingly but similarly pissing me off, at the random one on 02/12/2025 a few months later, there were what I considered to be “religious” presentations.  I’m certain the persons in the Dean’s office coordinating speakers didn’t think of either in that realm, but that to me is the problem:  These are set-up and managed by the Dean’s office assistant dean for HR, who herself and really amid her team of a half-dozen (or her bosses in the Dean’s office) should have such concepts clearly on her radar.

In that October, 2024 meeting, one of the speakers they had were two women who work for our university in the “wellness” area of HR, and one of them basically lead a discussion on the value of meditation to relieve stress BUT then the last 20 minutes of the presentation was essentially requiring everyone in the audience to be lead through steps to meditate in real-time, including the saying Ohmmmm or similar mantras, and closed it out by having everyone do those together and with increasing volume into a bit of a chorus of chant.  My boss’s boss, who happened to be sitting near me, said to the speaker during the Q&A how she felt “something”, felt moved by being a part of and surrounded by the sound of those voices Ohmmmm’ing in unison.  BTW, I just sat silently, watching the crowd and obvious discomfort of some (and enthusiastic embrace by others), and most in the crowd talked about how positive an experience.

Well, the fucking reason my boss’s boss felt moved is that this was basically like a version of shared prayer or hymnal singing in church…which, quite simply, is not an appropriate thing to present in a “mandatory” meeting at a non-religious university.

I think it is important to emphasize I do speak of this from a very-informed personal history.  During my teenage years, my mother veered away from our classic southern Baptist upbringing into studying eastern philosophies, including reincarnation, and truly in-depth studying (including leading classes) on Edgar Cayce’s writings, became herself a certified hypnotherapist, and both she and I had both meditation training including sessions that led through our past-lives regressions (in theory I was once a chariot racer, who injured my left side, and throughout subsequent lives, including this one, it’s tended to be my left side that has gotten injured: broken arm, major 10-speed bike crash with road-rash scars that still exist, on-and-on)  Though honestly, I don’t believe any of that-it’s my moreso my Mom’s religion…which is my point:  Yes, meditation can relieve stress, but for thousands of years its basis is born of religious practices.  I suspect that mass catholic prayers, or mass Islamic daily prayers, or fuck even speaking in tongues in some of our more rural Tennessee churches probably all relieve stress as well, and I suspect these HR persons would understand that generally to be inappropriate in a mandatory workplace meeting, but perhaps their ignorance about religions OTHER than Christianity caused them to think this mediation lesson didn’t have a religious aspect.

Simply, don’t assume I’ve some weird prejudice against meditation or people who practice it, but to expect an employment-based group to attend such a thing mandatorily is akin to having a minister come and preach to us for an hour.

Thing is, I’m wrong above about people in theory at least having an awareness not to present Christian-based themes in a mandatory employment meeting.  In the next quarter meeting in February, 2025..damned if they didn’t inadvertently do this sort of thing again. The guest speaker is not only an Assistant Dean in our school, she was the DEI assistant dean at the time of this presentation (though with changes to federal funding rules this year, her title and role have had to adjust).

Her presentation was meant to be about career growth and navigating confidence in those pursuits, but her “example” was deeply rooted in and constantly referencing her religious beliefs, her upbringing in the church and her continued intense involvement, and how she’s using those structures and lessons in being a single parent to her middle-school-aged son.  Other black professional women the crowd literally began to put on or evolve into their presumed Sunday-personalities with raised hands of support and somewhat whispers of “preach it” and this feed into the speaker leaning even more into that part of her talk.  I also found her to be rather condescending when she talked about her son wanting to pierce his ears, but that he didn’t understand that she was raising him right and was not willing to tolerate the types of body medication changes other less-informed parents might approve.  Really, given the diversity of our literal medical school with persons from around the world and certain many unfamiliar with the southern church childhood many of us experienced, I also felt her talk was non-inclusive because examples from church situations and lessons she’d assumed everyone understood were quite literally foreign.

And as a now-atheist, much of her talk was like nails on a chalkboard to me.

So, I didn’t attend today’s meeting…which people are now tricking back into my just-empty 5th floor of desks and sleeping computer screens.

TITLE:  Finger Puppets

I do drive into the office most every workday, though the majority of our administrative teams now work hybrid schedules – typically 2 days on campus and 3 days remotely.  For myself, I am such a creature of habit – and- still I suppose old school in that I really have trouble focusing or feeling involved with work functions when I’m at home on the computer.  I don’t have interruptions at home per se other than my one remaining 17-year-old cat periodically checking on me, given my wife is still off-schedule from normal life and often asleep during the daylight hours.

Also historically the nature of my own role as a supervisor (and having been around here since October 1998) being one of the human knowledge “assets” on campus that the chairpersons, center directors, faculty and also post docs and students would have me available to drop in my office unannounced for random questions or issues.  Particularly with discussions that are preferred to not be in writing, but rather a chance to get my opinions or insights into possible things faculty or chairs might be considering, but wanting to insure it’s legal or compliant (or often just my thoughts about how to navigate a difficult personnel or other crisis popping up during the day).  It is this aspect of my job that I do often say to people sincerely is why “officer” is part of my Administrative Officer job title, that I am the mental housing for guidelines and ongoing enforcer of compliance with federal and non-federal agencies that provide grant funding for our research projects, constantly preaching to labs about appropriate purchases and the philosophy behind that policing effort.

.

Thing is, for “administrative cost constraints” being implemented as a buffer against some of the lost federal funding and longer-term strategic planning, back in May our administrative departmental staff as well as our peer admin departments in other areas of the basic sciences were all moved into an existing literal office building just off campus (technically, though it touches and I do park the garage for the university basketball stadium).  For a quarter century I have worked in the literal office of the Biochemistry chairperson(s), seeing lab folks daily both in the suite but also just walking down the hallway past the floors and floors of lab space to go to the bathroom or meetings in conference rooms.  But basically it was decided our office space should be used for revenue-generating lab space, and since COVID apparently this multi-story office-only building has sat largely empty with an inability to rent it to outside companies given most commercial office space downtown is having trouble renting out these past few years.

This new set-up feels like something out of a generic movie.  Our entire 5th floor, like the other floors above and below us, are largely a plethora of literally hundreds of cubicles spreading across most of the middle and along the outer floor-to-ceiling windows, with supervisors like myself along the interior nucleus in a circled hub of out-facing office with a door and 3 small square windows.  With my door open (when I’m not in Teams on the phone or a meeting, so I don’t disturb cubicle dwellers just 3 feet outside my door) and my stacked windows along the upper side of the doorway, I have no view of outside, just of the tops or rows and rows of cubicles. 

Mostly now I feel about as disconnected from the work in the labs as I do when I’m at home…but again, creature of habit I’m still making the 1-1/2  hour to 2-hour trip each way every weekday, unless I need to work remotely for things like when the HVAC people come for check-ups at home every 6 months – that sort of thing.

I’m also surrounded by only administrators, most of whom are not on my team, though I know many of them in varying degrees from collaborating on grant applications or just admin meetings in basic sciences or campus-wide.  I also dislike, but am tolerating, that my boss (and her 3 peer bosses for the other admin teams) are just a few feet away.  Like literally when she was in a different departmental suite from my home in the biochemistry suite, MAYBE every few weeks I’d see her in  person, and certainly weekly via Teams, but now it’s every fucking day because she too prefers to work in the office.  Hell, now I’m having to make small talk with her an her peers daily, and although I’m well-like and respected, kinda feel like my every move and conversation is more under the lens than when I was previously within 30 feet of literal microscopes on benches.

But that’s not the point.  The point is that I’m still in often still and frequently frustrating traffic in both directions.    Generally speaking, I listen to NPR during the ~2 hours headed to work, and music CD’s on my way home.

But, one calming practice I’d developed in past years was to print pictures of women I followed and/or were fascinated with from my livejournal days, and to hang those pieces of paper off of my glove box or if cut small just atop part of my dashboard to the side of the speedometer.

It sincerely lowers my blood pressure and allows me moments of deep breath and sighs where normally persons breaching the breakdown lane to fly past those of us in lanes sitting still might send me mentally into a tirade.  Well, and getting stoned in advance in either direction, another of my daily rote pattern, doesn’t hurt.

But to absorb in those moments periodic glances at beauty of these women I adore just makes me smile, gives me comfort, allows me to disconnect from the chaos of humans all around.

Worrisome, though, the idea of having pieces of paper in my car, photos of other women, that my wife might randomly find (though she’s never in my car for any reason), having to explain it’s actually meaningless in reality, not some sought-after treasure, but moreso like looking at blooming flowering trees or an incredible sunset.  And, the world of that grouping and participation by folks in livejournal faded away as people aged and other websites became more prominent in the social media world…artists and models and persons scattering to the internet winds, and I didn’t really do that for a few years.  Well, probably not much since COVID had us all working remotely for a bit.

Then, randomly, listening to NPR in my car via my phone (my actual Mazda 2 radio died a few years back), there are periodic headline screens displayed while the live shows are playing and one of those random stories was about refurbished old hot-rod type cars and a community around that and it had a photo of a woman nearer my own age with numerous tattoos in a t-shirt and shorts.  It reminded me of my past side-glances while driving of these lovely tangent persons from my past, and how that had helped to calm me during rush hours.

So, in my aim email account, I drafted an email to myself and attached photos of more current women I follow on Tumblr, people I do not interact with intimately in conversations about life as I did in the livejournal world of my past, just women I find lovely and interesting and artistic.  One woman in particular looks so like one of my staff members that I’ve always found attractive (without ever being mentioned by me), that she serves as a daily posting reminder in Tumblr of the nature of my co-worker’s body likely appears sans clothing.  I can just click into that draft email and “preview’ the attachments to have any of the dozen  or so downloaded photos from their postings on my screen which is perched in a holder on my A/C vent just to the right of my steering wheel.

To avoid having my phone screen go to sleep, I will lightly move the usually zoomed version of the image every so slightly, having the woman shiver almost imperceptibly.  I do this so automatically while in the barely moving flow of traffic that it’s almost subconscious.

It occurred to me yesterday on the way home that not only is there some slight perceived pleasure in the aspect of just “touching” the person, that because of the types of photos I happened to pick from their galleries were mostly at least head-to-knees if not a full body shot.  Because of the zoomed nature, I also realized that in every case of every photo, my fingertip was consistently landing on or near their pussy, that basically I was turning them each into a finger puppet dancing at my will for my pleasure.

(parking here temporarily due to access issue into LiveJournal due to work firewalls)

I am unable to control, to navigate away from dreams of a sexual nature with unintended parties who in real life in almost no circumstances would be potential paths for us either, and certainly with aging I’m well aware that inklings co-workers of decades past might have randomly entertained about myself are barren and reasonably nonexistent in those who occupy my sleep surely purely as product of being so often, so consistently in my daily conversations, my daily vision, my daily laughter and shared workplace and work person obstacles and concerns and updates on families and friends. 

That has always been an issue in recent years with even the attempts at conscious fantasy:  I cannot help but consider mid-scenario the reality of inherent awkwardness and lack of future paths to develop anything sustaining amid the obvious parameters of everyone’s own personal lives and non-work intimate or circumstantial, existing relationships – lose my erection if you will plagued by my ability to imagine consequences and the same daily having to say “good morning” in natural passing of desks or offices or within meetings, with the knowledge this presumed thrill of a moment will become buried under the sad sighs of nothing that would be or worst, the ego crushing potential of that same understood guild of each party might not even generate a moment of passion with a price but perhaps a utter failure of performance in the moment where particularly the woman would have ventured down a hesitant spousal-relationship crushing path only to not even receive the reward of an orgasm amid unfamiliar thrusts.

My dreams, however, rarely halt in their path even though my own weight of societal and friendship concerns do still creep into moments within those moments within an fantasy some other part of my being has spun of chemicals in freeflow.

Stephanie has worked for me for 8 years now, having been promoted through two positions.  She is married, seemingly happily longer than my having known her, and is basically the age of my eldest daughter, >20 years my junior…though lusting persons in that neighborhood of distance is utterly common in my history it seems…though I do sincerely lust other women more akin to my own age as well.  She is slight of build, thin though strong, much like Donna or Beth or a myriad of others with whom I interacted in my own youth and up through the years.  Even though slight of bust, I’ve surely been caught in disparate moments periodically glancing down her blouse in moments of lean or noticing that gap at the crotch when she wears jeans on the last office day of the week, or contemplating those stick legs whenever she does very rarely don a dress.

Within last night’s slumber, we were in some work environment, but not our literal office at all.  There were many persons unknown to my real life milling about chaotically as can happen, but at some point Stephanie reached a moment of pause and told me she was going to go lie down for a bit, heading into the next room where there was a bed – very much unlike the actual suite in which I am now typing with her in the next office over having smiled and shared photos of four nieces from her two sisters that arrived in Christmas Cards this week and where she is crunching through the last minute chaos of this week (the university, including our offices, shuts down 12/22/23-1/1/24 for campus-wide Winter break…so lots of “must do this before everyone leaves” panic from our faculty).

Likely because in real life I’ve been in a very depressed state since a verbal confrontation with my wife last Friday, I have been uncommonly sleeping 10-12 hours a night and am still exhausted (which this is new to me as a condition, by the way), even in my dream I was still just exhausted and told her I’d be needing rest too.  When I entered the room a short moment later she was on her back with her knees in the air, just chilling and quiet.  Knowing it wasn’t allowed to share those sheets, I sat on the floor at the end of the bed on my folded legs in more a prayer stance and lay my upper body upon the covers bunched below her feet, sighing at how tired I was.  Not thinking about who she was to me, but in a human moment my hands reached up and ran along the back of her angled calves for a second, and then just held them gently, my hands still.  Realizing she’d not pulled away, without letting go, I raised myself up onto the bed, then let my fingertips brush along her torso as I eventually molded beside her, holding her and still just grazing my touch along her bare arms and shoulders.

Stephanie is now so efficient and well-knowledged in our field that she is often a resource for me even through I manage her, yet she still has some self-professed issue with seeming coarse or cutting in her emails when often she’s just so methodically that I think it comes across to others more as emotionless though accurate and really not-at-all intentionally abrasive…really she’s just too methodically and specific an has issue, really in conversations sometimes too, with people expecting her to be more light-hearted which I know to her seems unprofessional and unnecessary given we are all adults and just doing a job.  So most of the help she seeks from me in recent years is to have me sit beside her and read draft emails she’s written because she’s worried about how people might inaccurately misinterpret her requests or suggested edits.  Admittedly people in our world both internally on campus and also with federal agencies, is a patience-trying ordeal in that nowadays people really aren’t trained well at their own jobs and/or simply too lazy to look up the actual instructions or rules, so we both often find ourselves trying to nicely phrase, “Well that was idiotic – you should know better and have done this instead.”

My point relative to my dream is that when I am sitting beside her or when she’s in my office for a meeting or project, or just standing in our outer office suite talking with our suite mates, I am fascinated by her skin, in wonderment imagining the feel and the taste beneath my tongue, but mostly just I am so addicted to the multiple facets of beauty inherent in some women that I allow myself the ache of hunger pangs just to experience a few glances where I appear to be making eye contact but instead imbed in my memory the curve of a neck dropping down beneath unkissed earlobes.

And in this dream, nestled acceptingly beside her, that is the extent of my sexual assault, to kiss her, to touch her, to inhale her nearness.

I self-diagnose myself with addictive cravings for physical intimacy couched lacking other options in stolen images of those whose minds and conversations inundate my life, wantonness that will not cease ever controlling my daily stumble through this life, and a series of sensations that are now beyond my remaining wander’s potential of future experience.  My sustenance and my sentence is simply craving carved of memory and passing glimpse of beauty untouched.

(because I am unable to access LiveJournal at the moment, parking this here)

Odd house with trolley tracks running near the front porch, walking with someone who just vaguely disappeared from the random plot upon seeing you at a distance walking down the sidewalk with purpose towards me as I stood near the entrance of an unfamiliar house where I lived.

Not talking, just sitting on the couch beside me looking, digesting your face.  Then embracing at first with head butts and light brushes of our lips, my want to understand intent, then laying me against the couch on my side and you almost dancing with sway to become prone on your own back parallel to me.  And then the kissing – the immediate kissing.  And you stopping to say you wanted to brush your teeth, yet when you return you are nude and resume you place again with kissing now intensifying, and my suckling your farthest breast, and my fingertips combing and pressing through pubic hair on your mound, and the slippery slide of fingers spreading your lower lips and my blurted whisper against your ear as my wrist rhythm intensifies, “God how can I have missed you so much when we’ve never met?”

And not wanting that moment to end, but as with dreams it is impossible to control the oddity of flow so there is a knock at the door from the neighbor with her dog asking if I can babysit while they are on vacation, some unexpected echo from a meaningless work holiday party conversation with a co-worker about their trials attempting to travel and my own feed into that required party-oriented casual conversation with whomever as a leader discussing how my own eldest daughter in Arizona cannot visit this Christmas and will wait until Spring because the woman/service they use to attend their cats while they are in Tennessee or Ohio was already booked massively for those several weeks.

Yet in the dream when I turned back to you, wanting desperately to taste, to just feel the mask of your body against mine, you were dressed again and had your bag looped over your shoulder.    “At least let me walk  you to your car,” as I followed you onto the porch, though not the same porch as at the beginning of the dream.  You kissed my neck, nodded to the still lingering neighbor to denote the secret of your visit was now public on my block, and I shook my head with a lack of concern, and turned back to see you were gone.

I searched several utterly unfamiliar blocks of odd stores and thick sidewalk crowds and odd alleys with faded photos of clowns and was too lost to find my way home, so had no option but to keep searching pointlessly for you. Surely just because in the real world my mouth had become quite dry from the night’s breathing, my dream as I wandered because concentrated on something stuck in between two teeth that I would pull and pull, but which would not dislodge, and then began to stream out like a length of floss that would not end so I am wandering the street pulling and pulling with this trailing from my lips, when I realized it was a strand of your long, straight, greying hair and I turned to gather it up realizing it was the only thing I had left of you.

Sincerely I’m unsure how other men (and women, I suppose) process things in reality.  I know there was something once upon a time that men think of sex every short span of seconds, but I don’t really know if that’s true.  Or if it’s true anymore since apparently the younger generation of men (and women, perhaps) are having less sex and much later in life than my two generations ago.

But I also don’t know that it’s just a generational/sociological shift driven by technology and pandemic habits and gaming culture, but moreso that I’m just fucked up in that way.  I really do think about sex in often moments between or during any other task.

I cannot walk the several blocks from my work garage to my office without genuinely smiling when a woman in leggings (which apparently is standard/normal workplace attire particularly in the labs) is a few steps ahead of my pace because I will subtly stare and let the pleasure wash over me like a sigh because that wardrobe choice is essentially the exact lovely shape and motion I know that occur when this person is nude.  It’s like absorbing the beauty of currently flowering trees…just things of beauty in this world to contemplate without ever plucking a single petal in reality.

Sandi, a co-worker a few years older than myself I’ve written about a few years ago, a woman for whom I’ve subsequently twice provided reference checks as she’s changed jobs, the person who I helped with my chainsaw and truck to remove a few large trees that a tornado have swept aside in her yard (which pissed my wife off, because if I have time to do stuff I should have been doing it at our house).  Even while providing my labor and hauling services charitably for her catastrophe, I’m sure I wrote about how I contemplated sex and an affair, purely as fantasy mind you, about us both being sweaty from cutting and loading limbs and trunks and how slippery we could be against each other’s skin…nothing in reality from either of us and surely not on her radar at all.  But I could not help sideways glances down her cleavage or how it would fit to line up behind her when she’d bend over, to wonder at the taste of her worked-warmed skin beneath my tongue.

Honestly, just the sort of person not uncommon in my work history who leaned into learning and growing within my tangent flow of glue to this place that I’ve secretly imagined in other versions of reality flows towards alternate universe copulations.

One of our co-working friends in my area did share with me that Sandi had some medical issues some months back and I can’t remember if I emailed thoughts and well wishes then.  Today she randomly sent me this email at work:

“Hi Robert,

Happy Friday to you.  I have had you on my mind and just wanted to say hello.  I hope you and your family are doing well.  Brenda and I stay connected with each other.  Her and Marvene are planning to move to the country either to Sparta or somewhere in that area if they can find a house.  I moved to the country part of Gallatin back in 2021.  I really love it here.  I know your granddaughter is being spoiled by everyone. 

I will share with you that I had a stroke last year in November.  I’m doing much better but still in the recuperation stage.  I thank God it wasn’t severe.  I had some right sided weakness and some cognitive issues.  Physical, Occupational and Speech therapies worked wonders with all the symptoms.  As a result, I’m thinking about retiring at the end of January 2024.  Working on getting things lined up in the event I do retire. 

I miss talking with you, my mentor and friend.  Take care and have a great weekend. 

Thank You, Sandi

My point is, my brain’s internally spoken immediate reaction was:

“Send me nudes because I’m sure that body is still rocking and I’d love to see your beauty and want to consider how to help you ‘exercise’ those limbs, knowing you could still wear me out.”

….Instead, I replied at the safe surface level of things:

“Hello to you too, Sandi,

I’d heard from some other co-workers about your stroke, and you’ve been in my thoughts for healing, but I also know what a strong woman you are and anticipated you’d persevere and excel as you’ve done throughout your life.

I’ve wondered about how raising your grandson was going in the midst of this recovery, though time passes so quickly I’m sure he may be well into college at this point.  My granddaughter Chloe will be 4 years old in April and she’s certainly a “real person” now, carrying on conversations, beating me at Sorry and Candyland, and just a handful to manage.  Periodically I’ll babysit her on Sundays to give the parents a chance to shop or do things together, but they live in Shelbyville which is about an hour’s drive from my place in Murfreesboro, so it’s not really a situation where I can just drop by randomly…so I do wish I could see her more often.

I do hope life treats you and your family well, and they you are finding all the joy possible every day.

Take care,

Robert”

Even if in reality I’m less concerned about her full life, but rather that I cannot stop imagining her eyes if it but instead were me filling up her vagina with my thrust.

½ order of General Tsu’s Tofu with white rice and eggroll

4 spring roles

Steamed mixed veggies with white rice and garlic sauce

Four Season (shrimp, chicken, beef and roast pork) with white rice

Large side order of Sweet and Sour sauce.

Some people generate a fire hazard potential by not dumping the old sticks post dissipation – can you imagine the simple stupidity and laziness involved in such a mind as my own?

In other news, although we’ve not talked since I apparently pissed her off in a Zoom meeting in early summer 2021(?) when working remotely from home and saying I just didn’t have a comfortable space to speak with her freely while not in the office, I still have a recurring calendar reminder in Outlook of her:

Happy Birthday, Ms. Gray – I hope life is treating you grand.

Time does feel short now, the remaining steps to take upon this earth. Admittedly it may be decades yet, but that’s the thing – decades pass by so quickly in the nowadays. If I consider that I even last to be my father’s dying age of almost 84, that is less a span of time than when I started working here, quite nearly the time since I started using LiveJournal, pretty much how long since I first actually was self-inflictedly torn asunder by an understanding of another soul (or assumptive comprehension and desperate comprehension of things never to be) that provide tears and joys and wide-eyed realizations that even today bring ripples of fading smiles just to have been touched by life in contemplations unimagined.

But really there’s a difference that gives me reality checks that suggest such timeframes themselves are disparate, that my Dad care about being alive (even if he didn’t eat well nor exercise), a wish to not leave this earth that at least led him towards medical treatments and extending his breath to his body’s residual capacity. I, instead, don’t really care about my health and smoke dope daily (I know what residue I must clean from my pipes every few days, so I’m well aware of what is surely coating my lungs) and I drink wine most days and don’t monitor my eating habits with any purpose. And, honestly, Dad never had any sort of supervisory or really overtly stressful job whereas I fly head first into the abundance of idiocy and laziness at all levels internal and external to my job, so often fighting above my weight class politically that people on the opposing side often misunderstand my standing and role.

I re-watched the movie, Broadcast News, the other day and was reminded of the exchange between the network president and Holly Hunter’s character who is trying to convince him he’s making a bad decision where he says, “It must be nice to always believe you know better. To think you’re always the smartest person in the room”.

To which she replies, “No, It’s awful.”

I find myself measuring everything by the likely non-existence of anything in my nearing future. Of our four remaining cats, one is 16 and the 3 brothers are turning 13. Even with most of our indoor felines living to be 18 or 19, basically about the time I’m in theory at retirement age they’ll all be buried under flowering trees in the yard. My mother, herself 83, is still alert and active in her small world taking care of Bo, her elderly blind dog, but I’m unsure which will outlast which though I expect my cats to outlive them both.

The mechanics of going through all my Dad’s stuff, of parsing out what people wanted to keep and what mostly will be going into a yard sale(s) now that the weather is warmer, has really put a halt on my own interest in much of anything. I was putting photos my sister and I had duplicate copies made of generationally removed and expired relatives up that genetic chain, and what few mementos survived through my Dad but which have no interest to either of us, these people of the past who we never knew and whose lives are no mystery that intrigues me in the least. How soon I too shall fade into degrading digital images or collections of words and decaying painting and sketches that seemed meaningful to me in my moments, but which will realistically be fodder or eye-rolling-worth bits of data discarded with a sigh or laugh by a generation or two before become nothingness.

It was in this realm that, just for the lark and just to make myself smile, that last Friday I did what I’d not done for over a dusty decade, and printed off a photo to tape to my truck dash for the long traffic drive home, simply company to gaze upon and share thoughts within my head, a once-upon-a-reason to care that will too immediately cease to exist when my synapsis are done contemplating this place, with a passing thought that should be given no weight of reality, but simply hit me as something I would have quite enjoyed during this span of living. While barely doing school zone speed limits on the always-congested I-24 heading toward home for reasons that can only be summarized as habit, I spent my time not staring at bumpers stretching to the horizon, but instead an image that brings me calm and simple happiness. Regardless of beauty I might contemplate for my mental drive, unlike those riding along with the lord’s only son (that he knows of), the reality is Inertia and imagination are my co-pilots, so I had time to jot this down in my ever-present homemade pocket notepad balanced upon the steering wheel:

If nothing else, it would have been nice to briefly, glancingly, had my lips travel the stretch of that long, lovely neck.

Thing is, none of this is serious, is actuality, is anything more than a moment for an old man to smile just because sometimes it's nice to know minds exist that comprehend some sense of one's self, to sigh that such persons are more than over-contemplated imaginings that have no need be the literal path evolved. That's what artwork is, the thing it becomes to the artist even if the model shakes her head exhaling erasing sighs of understanding, the very treasure so horded, so redeeming, so simple and perfect as is.

I have an odd story to tell from last week, but as with many tales it requires some understanding of a few background and tangent bits of information to assemble the puzzle pieces.

Piece #1:

Most of the university administrators, like myself, use Microsoft Outlook as our work email client. Those few administrators (and preponderance of scientists) who have MACs typically use some other email client.

A subset of us who use Outlook also use Skype for Business. For those unfamiliar with Skype, it’s almost like the old Yahoo messenger or Instant Messenger programs, but ramped up a bit. It allows for (of course) sending chats which can include attaching files, and now that we’ve been working remotely we answer or generate our work telephone calls through that program…so when people call me I’m talking through my laptop, not a literal phone. You can of course create little groups and loads of other things, but for me as a manager one of the helpful aspects is that once people log into Skype there is a little round dot beside their name that turns green. If people are on a phone call or (it it’s set up to be interactive) when they are in Zoom, the dot turns red to indicate they are busy. If they are inactive for a period of time (not touching their mouse or keyboard) it may turn into a yellow dot (though this setting can be overridden to never appear “idle”). Or if they are not logged into Skype the little circle is hollow/blank, without color.

So, if you use Outlook and Skype and I am sending you an email, before I hit send I can immediately see if you are Active (green) or whatever status. On incoming emails from you I’d also see this color dot status, but also the profile photo you’ve uploaded in the “From” section of the email header.

Piece #2:

Timing matters here a bit, and this relates to the last journal entry I’d written (https://bucheau.livejournal.com/341549.html ), the thrust of which was this joke with the applicable work photographer that if I were to die suddenly the only decent picture of me is one he took for our website, that my family would likely grab that to post on my obituary page. What matters is that he took the newer pictures on Tuesday of last week, with my making the joke about an obituary photo a few days earlier on Thursday of the prior week.

Final Piece:

On Friday of last week, a few days after that Tuesday photography session, one of the weekly email newsletters from the university to all employees came out. These are .html type emails with little blipits from multiple announcements where you can click to go to another website with the full story. Typically I glance through these to see if anything of interest, and then delete if nothing worth my time.

Stephanie, one of my employees, emailed and subsequently called me on Friday about an hour after the email distribution to ask if I’d seen the article about Amber, and to see if I recognized the name. It had not caught my eye, but basically was informing the community that there would be an on-campus in-person grieving session open to the campus community that same day:

“ Amber, a staff member died suddenly on Monday, June 21, 2021. Amber’s family wishes to mourn privately and has requested that no flowers or donations be sent. She was a graduate of the University of Texas where she received her Doctor of Jurisprudence. Our beautiful Amber was born on October 25, 1974, in Fort Worth, Texas. She is survived by her husband, daughters, stepsons, stepdaughter, parents, sister, and stepsister. She’s more than loved… She’s forever loved. No services will be held to honor Amber’s wishes.”</i>

So she was only 41, and there’s no indication I can find of her cause of death beyond “died suddenly”.

Back to Stephanie’s email and call: So I did a quick search of my emails for this name and saw that we’ve corresponded on a grant based in her department that involves one of my departmental faculty members. I’m not sure I ever met her, just email and phone calls, but Stephanie had met her at some point when Stephanie was being considered for a position in that department a few years ago. Thing is, Stephanie wasn’t sure it was the same person. Our institution employs so many people that having the same name isn’t uncommon -for instance there’s another guy with my same name on campus who’s worked here 20 years, almost as long a myself, and we often get each other’s emails (and we’ve met just to meet a few times).

But there was no doubt it’s the same person: the work profile picture for Amber that came up in her “from” section when I searched my emails for her name is the exact same fucking photo that’s on the cremation obituary website announcement. Which means that Thursday, 4 days before she passed away I was joking with our work photographer about my family likely using my work photo if I were to die suddenly. She expires on Monday, which means on Tuesday when I was on campus getting my “new obituary” photo take that was likely the same day the family would have been providing a photo to the cremation facility for the website posting. Weird, right?

But that’s not the thing, here’s the thing: When I pointed out the “same picture” aspect to Stephanie, confirming it had to be the same person, her response was, “Well, I know, but why is she green?”

Pre-Obituary considerations

As part of a journal entry the other day I copy/pasted an interview for an upcoming article in an internal magazine published on our campus about grants manager.   The gentleman doing the interviews (with others, too) sent an email to us each asking if we could provide a photo to use in the article since most administrators are still working remotely.    Or if we were on campus he could come by to take a new one (in addition to being an author, he’s also into photography on the side).

I wrote Stephen back and jokingly told him something quite true. I don’t take selfies nor really any photos with my fliptop phone, and circumstantially even the rare times we have family gatherings, even pre-COVID and when we got together at Jordan’s house on Father’s day, no one really takes photos and certainly not of my individually.   So I don’t have any recent photos of myself, though I suppose if I develop dementia and wander off I don’t look that different than 20 years ago so I’m sure the family could hand the cops something to use.

More specifically, I told him literally the only “decent” professional photo I have which I use as my profile picture on LinkedIn, Zoom, etc was one he took in ~2013 for a department website organizational chart.  I further said he should be proud because if I got hit by a bus tomorrow and my family needed a picture for the obituary, they’d likely use that one he took almost a decade ago.

By happenstance I did need to work from the office on Tuesday (to hand out quarterly radiation badges to some lab members, and collect their old ones for analysis), so he said he would be happy to drop by and update my potential death notice photograph.

Really, just sharing because I don’t have many available to post as FYI or orientation for whomever might happen upon this journal nowadays.