Temporarily Suspended

Chinooker is temporarily suspended, this is fitting considering I have moved out of the great Pacific northwest. Mid-March I moved to Yemen to teach english. Of course, I will continue to write about my life and experiences. Homosexuality is punishable by death in Yemen, so I have created a new blog that takes that into account: Mid Easy. Writing style will be the same and all that, but just more family friendly. Please be mindful of this when reading. Thanks, and sorry for the run-around. Once again, the link is http://mideasy.blogspot.com

little miss sunshine weekend

Friday afternoon at the bar with K8 and Brain suggests we go to the coast. A few hours later, after calling in to work, I'm in a '77 Westfalia named Sweet Pea with three other people, three dogs, no heat, and a forty, crossing the pass in the dark. We got to Lincoln City around one in the morning and all crashed after some popcorn.
Day two had a late start after bacon and cold showers. We drove up the coast, eating lunch at one of those places that have the giant anchor sticking out of the ground. Kicked it on the beach in Netarts with the dogs and then ran out of gas. So, we pushed the VW up a hill for two miles back into town and borrowed a jerry can. Snuck into PDX from the west side in the evening and ditched my Bend friends. I guess Brain, Cheese, and K8 broke the plumbing at her ex-'s house and then showed up late to get K8 and she didn't talk for the entire frigid ride back to Bend.
I bummed around PDX until Monday, saw a bunch of friends, drank a bunch of red beers. Monday afternoon Jane reluctantly let me take her car (probably would have been easier to pull her teeth) and Vassar drove me to Hood River.
Both Monday and Tuesday nights my coworkers got a house at Black Butte for a party, but my brother's Christmas present to the family was two nights at a rented house overlooking the Hood river. It was rad. Hood River is like Bend in that there's a large contingent of outdoor folk, what with being so close to mountains. Less rednecks than Bend, and the town is smaller, so more convenient. I drank a lot of brown ales with the family and caught a ride with the folks on Wednesday to Maupin. They were appalled that my plan to get back to Bend was hitching. Once they left me in Maupin, I stole a car. It sucks, so I made a video letter to Jane to thank her for letting me take Alice.

still no facial tattoos

At work, in order to get my two free guest lift tickets, I had to go through Orientation. One of my managers went with me and I jokingly called it Preference Training but he didn't seem to get it. Previously when a different manager was telling me that I needed to go to Orientation, I interrupted him to add diversity training to the list of descriptors he was making. He scoffed at my comment, insinuating (albeit correctly) that there isn't diversity on the mountain. Orientation was a pretty standard HR presentation to illustrate customer service and explaining the pay periods and then the harassment policy. There were provisions about discrimination upon race, national origin, gender (whatever that is), age, and disability. But not based on sexuality. Furthermore, Mt Bachelor retained the power to add or delete anything on their harassment policy. So is the mountain just adhering to the law? Does the legal lowest common denominator not include sexuality in the anti-discrimination policies? If it doesn't, does the mountain not care or has the need never arisen? I also found out that I can transfer my season pass to anybody, which I will do since I can't ski anymore. Spouses of employees get a season pass, kids too maybe. What of domestic partners? I like to imagine myself asking the HR person these questions, but I probably won't since I don't have a domestic partner and I don't feel discriminated against due to thick skin. Asking about these issues would probably just make me feel more out of place than I already do.

so free

So I'm working at Mt Bachelor, some, not as much as I would like, but enough. There's an employee bus which I ride there and back, and it's about a mile walk from my house. Yesterday, while walking home, I was hit by a car. This makes five times in two years, this is the third time walking in a crosswalk, the other two incidences being on bicycle. Everything's more or less alright, a little sore, but the impact really hit me this morning, reinforcing my feelings being a refugee. I leave home while it's still dark and come home just at dusk, and it's always cold, oftentimes with snow. This morning I limped the mile to the bus in the cold and the dark, went up to the mountain where the atmosphere was awful blizzard conditions, uncanny and eerie. I work with a bunch of idiots with soul patches that talk about their parole officers and how hungover they are. And then I rode the bus back to town and limped home in the cold and the dark.

i blog

Where have I been? Not on the internet apparently. Although my resolutions for the new year do not include blogging more, I'll try to keep this up better. That said, here's the hurry-scurry of life since my life since last seen in April.

Got a job baking cookies which ended in September under similar situations as the bagel job. I busted up my hand after a rafting trip and couldn't really perform my primary functions. My boss said, "so are you giving me your notice?"

"Are you firing me?"

"Are you giving me your notice?"

"Are you firing me?"

Spent the last week of September on a road trip with Aunt Carol, Uncle Doug and Aunt Joyce going to Glacier National Park and the eastern Rocky Mountain Front. Spent an odd week or two care-taking the ranch while the folks were vacationing on the moon or wherever. This time was alternated with time at the house in Portland and looking for jobs drinking. November I was hired at Macy's for seasonal floor staff, but couldn't stomach it and ended up ditching out. My paycheck was just over twenty dollars for the training and I'm glad I didn't stick around. Instead, I tucked tail and moved home just before Thanksgiving to work on the ranch and collect myself. A couple days after Christmas I got a job at Mt Bachelor and a place to live in Bend, where I am now.

About the time I started baking cookies I also began staffing open hours at the Q Center, and at the beginning of autumn was the first meeting of Q Theory, a community reading and discussion group of (not just) queer theory which failed by December due to lack of attendance, among other factors to be discussed later, mostly heartbreak and disenfranchisement.