Life Is Good

I'm at Delta -- essentially, a BDSM summer camp. i'll be here until Tuesday morning.

This is my seventh time attending Delta, but my first time attending by myself. i usually accompany Master, but, because of everything that's going on in His life right now, He decided to skip Delta this year.

It's a little different by myself. i don't have my role as Master's boy to fall back on, and i have to make more of an effort to schedule time to play with the other guys. In the past, if i got a couple of floggings and spent the east of the time attending Master, i considered that a good weekend, but i believe that Master would be disappointed if i didn't make more of an effort. i know that i would be disappointed in myself if i spent all of my time in the cabin.

i got started a little later than i intended. i woke up, did some reading and played some games, then got out to take the train to the airport and pick up my rental car. i came back home, hung out a little more, then packed and got on the road. It was a pretty laid-back morning.

i arrived at Delta around 3:30 or 4:00 and registered. i was greeted by several guys that i know from previous years, and i immediately started putting dates on my dance card. i had to explain to a few guys why Master wouldn't be here this year.

i found my cabin and unpacked. i made my bed and laid down on it for a few minutes. Apparently, i know most of the guys in my cabin, so that's nice.

i decided that tonight was going to be a rest day for me, so i grabbed my tablet and headed to the lower dungeon to do some sketching. i've never sat and sketched a scene before, so i thought that i would give it a try. In fact, i've been planning to do this for a few weeks.

Of my three sketches, i'm pretty pleased with one of them, of a guy on a St. Andrew's Cross, getting flogged. i think i did a good job getting the shape of his body right. The other two aren't that great, although one of them is good enough to show to Master -- it's a sketch of a guy tied to a bondage table. The top wrapped a lot of rope on the bottom's neck, so that it formed a kind of brace. The bottom's head seemed completely immobilized.

My first scene is tomorrow morning after breakfast -- Master Thomas is going to flog me. Then i have some ass play in the afternoon, then my first volunteer shift in the evening. I'll be driving the Delta taxi around for five hours. Naked. ;-)

On Friday, my office hosted a troop of Girl Scouts. We gave them a little taste of video game programming, art, and design using Scratch, a web-based development environment targeted at children.

These things are always a bit of controlled chaos. For instance, we split the girls up into four teams, each of which shared a workstation. We started with our artists giving them some guidance on how we create art assets for our games, then we imported their creations into the Scratch environment. We had up to three girls at each computer, accompanied by an artist, all working at once. It was very busy!

When it game time to start programming, one team had already started working, and another team was still wrapping up their art. We had originally planned to have me direct everybody through an exercise, but i just printed out my cheat sheet and gave a copy to each of the developer coaches and told them to go at their own pace.

It all worked out fine; it always does. This is the second such visit the current team has hosted, but we did six days of class visits in April, before we lost several of our team and hired new people. So we've got a bit of experience now.

Then i joined Master at the HRC building in DC, which was hosting a film presented by Reel Affirmations, Desert Migration. The film portrays thirteen men who, dying from HIV / AIDS, moved to Palm Springs, California to die, only to survive, thanks to the new drugs that became available in the mid-90's. After the film, there was a panel, which included the director.

It was an interesting film. It was the same struggle, reflected through thirteen different lives. i had forgotten about viatical settlements, where a terminal patient would sell their life insurance policy for a lump sum and sign the death benefit over to the company who purchased it from them. The company would continue making the insurance payments and collect when the patient died. One of the panelists made this choice, and whoever bought it is still making the payments, checking in from time to time to see if he's died yet.

There is a lot of attention paid to people who have survived long-term with HIV infection, that they watched their friends die in horrific numbers. One of the questions posed to the panelists made everybody remember that the people who didn't become infected also went through the same experience.

The youngest of the men in the film was just ten years older than me. i could have been one of them, except that i got my diagnosis in 2003, and there were already effect treatments. Since then, the treatments have only gotten better.

The film was interesting, and provided food for thought, but it didn't really have a strong emotional impact. i was pleased to see the names of a couple of my square dancing friends listed in the credits.

i've definitely got Imposter's Syndrome.

In the past six months or so, i've been promoted to Head of Development. i received a ten percent raised immediately, and then the boss wasn't satisfied with how much she was paying me, so she told me to come up with a new number. i sweated that for a bit, and my dad died during the same time frame, but we eventually settled on another twenty percent.

i've got four developers and two high-school interns (one of which is as good as a full-time developer) that report to me, and i'm not coding anymore. Oh, i try to keep up with the tools, but i'm constantly pulled away to other tasks. This morning, i spent about an hour discussing how we're going to reorganize our shared file structure. :-/

It feels like the developers are doing all of the work, and my input is best reserved for questions of design -- user interface and interaction.

We decided to switch from using Objective-C to Swift for iOS development, but that was after my promotion, so i haven't had much time to learn Swift, and i certainly don't have a chance to practice on a current project, so i can't be a resource there.

In addition, we've decided to broaden our platforms to include web apps, which can play on desktop browsers, mobile browsers and -- most importantly -- Chromebooks. (Many school systems use Chromebooks, and the iOS app store is a hurdle to others.) My web programming experience is about six years old at this point, although i'm doing better than i am with Swift.

i saw something recently that presented Impostor Syndrome as a Venn diagram with two areas. The first area was "making it look easy" and the second area was "discounting it's value". The overlap was labelled, "Impostor Syndrome".

Importantly, nobody seems to have any criticisms about my work. i've asked the boss if she had any, and she had none. Dayle actually told me that i'm making it look easy. The developers that report to me don't seem to have any issues, and the work is getting done.

There are days when i'm busy -- when i leave the office thinking, "that was a good day". Then there are days when i wonder how i'm contributing. It's likely that i just need more time to acclimate to my new role. Already, things that i was hesitant about are becoming more comfortable, like conducting job interviews.

At any rate, my job doesn't seem to be at risk anytime soon. The last Head of Development set the bar very low. i'd have to screw up quite a bit to lose this position. i'm sure i'll get more comfortable with things. After all, i'm certainly not the first person to feel this way.

My housewarming party went off without a hitch. i may have over-prepared, but i don't really think so. Almost all of the food i put out was eaten. A lot of the leftovers were brought by my friends.

It was a slow start. i announced that i would begin receiving visitors at 11 A.M. The first guest didn't arrive until about 12:30. i took the time to just rest and relax. i expected that my condo would be mobbed, so i resolved to enjoy the quiet while i still could.

And it was mobbed, indeed. Master and i counted about thirty-five guests, and most of them were present for two or three hours in the early afternoon. Somehow, they all managed to fit. i'm not sure how. :-)

Most of the guests were either friends from the leather community or the gay square dancing community. Notable exceptions were Grant and Thunder Bear, who were guests of Russell. (i actually had two exes present, and they were speaking together at one point.)

It was a little bit of a strain to have so many people crammed into my condo. It seemed suddenly smaller. i socialized when i wasn't busy setting out more food, but it was impossible to have any sort of a substantive conversation.

Everybody agreed that my condo was very nice. i allowed that i may have expressed a tiny bit of the gay decorating gene; everything seems very pleasing to my eye, and i got compliments from several people.

At one point, as Doug and Tod were arriving, i met them in the hallway outside my condo and joked, "there are too many people in there! Let's go somewhere!" But it was already past the peak -- people were lining up to say their goodbyes.

Afterward, i managed to clean up almost everything. i left a few things in the sink while the dishwasher ran. i could have washed them by hand, but i really didn't have the energy.

Today, i washed a window. The windows in my condo are huge. Seriously, they're each as big as a handicapped-accessible doorway. Plus, they have storm windows. So, they aren't very easy to clean. My condo overlooks Charles Street, and it was unoccupied for at least a year, so there was a lot of street grime caked on the windows.

Master has been cleaning the windows, as well as other projects, while i've been working, but i washed the last one so that i could get some practice in. Master got the basic techniques worked out, then He advised me on the process. My only contribution was the use of the scrubbing bubbles spray to work at the caked grime. :-)

After i cleaned the window (leaving the storm windows for later), we went to Baltimore's Harbor East to watch Spectre at the Landmark theater. i'm an easy customer -- a movie just has to keep me entertained for a couple of hours, and Spectre delivered on that. After the movie, we picked up some groceries and returned home.

I started a pot of chicken stock and got to work on the storm windows, which went a lot easier than the main window. The main window doesn't come out of the frame, so to clean the outside of the glass, you have to hang out the window and be careful that you don't fall. It works the abdominal muscles in a way that i'm not really used to. :-)

Oh, i also finished re-glueing the veneer on my dining table. In the apartment, it sat directly in front of the radiator, and the heat caused the glue to weaken and the veneer to curl. So now that's all done.

i stored the chicken stock for a fish stew tomorrow evening, did a little laundry, and then went out to dinner with Russell. He got a chance to see the progress at the condo, but the last big change is tomorrow: my new couch arrives! The couch i've wanted for over a decade! Yay!

This next week is going to be taken up with preparations for my house-warming party on Saturday. We'll see how that goes. i'm not really used to entertaining, but i'm sure i can develop the skill set.

Another good day.

It's been a good day, so far.

Master has a client this morning, who will be arriving at 10 am. So breakfast was to be at 8 am.

I set my alarm for 7 am. When it went off, I immediately set a timer for fifteen more minutes. I don't remember turning off the timer, but when I next looked at the time, it was 7:41 am.

But I managed to get breakfast ready in fifteen minutes. Coffee, eggs, toast, sautéed spinach with onion and tomato. I forgot pepper on Master's eggs. And I've just realized that, last night, Master instructed me to prepare only a single egg. Other than those two little oversights, breakfast was good. I even brought out a comforter to wrap around Master's legs.

When Master came out of His bedroom, He requested coffee. I was pleased that His coffee was already on His tray. I often forget something, and not something minor and easily correctable, like adding pepper. Sometimes, I forget Master's coffee, for instance. While juggling the things that have to be done for breakfast, it's easy for me to overlook something.

After we ate breakfast, I cleared the dishes and started removing my things from Master's massage studio. That's where I usually spread out. The unfolded laundry went to Master's bedroom. The folded laundry was put away. My shoes and boots were put away. The sheets and comforters were removed from the boy bed and it was folded up into the couch. My jacket was hung in the coat closet, and my other clothes were taken to Master's bedroom. I set out the space heater.

Then I brushed me teeth, washed the breakfast dishes and bagged up some of the stuff to be recycled. I folded the laundry I had taken to Master's bedroom and put it away.

What I'm trying to convey is that I was focused. Deadlines do that to me. I knew what to do and what order to do it in. I was very pleased with myself.

Yesterday seems so far away, as often happens when you've had a busy day.

Woke up at the hotel. Check out was at 11 am, so I had plenty of time to shower and such and then go out for the complimentary breakfast. I settled for a fresh, cinnamon waffle with butter and syrup. And a sausage link. I love those serve-yourself waffle makers in the hotels. :-)

Packed up my stuff and my groceries (I had originally decided to leave them in the car -- free refrigeration! -- but realized that I didn't want my eggs to freeze) and loaded everything back into the car. I had about three hours before Chaz was scheduled to arrive at the house.

So I went shopping. I backtracked along the highway to hit a store that sells Western wear and horse gear. Then I stopped at another, more touristy, store and wandered around there for a while. After killing time, I met Chaz at the house.

It's a nice house. Four bedrooms, each with its own full bathroom. Large living room, equipped kitchen, pool table, hot tub. Convenient to the Wisp Resort.

There was a mix-up with our plans to go snow tubing in the afternoon. Chaz's original email indicated that he would be going at 2 pm and that anybody who wanted to accompany him should notify him before February 22 so he could make the reservations. I missed that boat, but I was able to make a last-minute reservation yesterday morning.

But Chaz hadn't made any reservations, because nobody had confirmed with him. So I had a reservation, but nobody else did. After a few hours, we had settled on going at 6 pm. I felt lucky that the resort was willing to move my reservation.

Chaz went out shopping. Frank arrived. Jeremy arrived. Lazy afternoon, some of it spent in the hot tub.

Snow tubing was a lot of fun! Exhilarating! There was a lot of people initially, but the 6 pm - 8 pm block is the last snow tubing of the evening, and the crowds dissipated fairly quickly.

Back to the house, then out for dinner at a local restaurant. Then back to the house for more hot tubbing. Then round after round of trash-talkin' Uno.

Good times.

I made it home safely last night, but it without some drama along the way.

I was the first person off the plane at BWI. I strode through the terminal and quickly made my way out to the street. After a few minutes, the shuttle bus to the Amtrak station arrived and I boarded it.

The first clue that something was wrong was almost immediately after I stepped off the plane. My new Bluetooth headphones cut out. Well, they were brand-new, so perhaps the batteries hadn't been fully charged, so I resolved to troubleshoot once I had a moment.

So, once I was seated on the bus, I started checking things over. The headphones switched on, and I could tell that the noise cancellation was working. It wouldn't make music when I pressed the integrated play button, so I reached into my bag for my iPad -- which wasn't there. Of course, I left it on the plane. :-(

The bus hadn't pulled away yet, so I got off and rushed into the station. My plane was scheduled to continue to New York, so time was of the essence. The staff at the Southwest baggage desk were able to call back to the gate, and the crew there found it on the plane and said they old hold it for me.

So I had to go back through ticketing for a special "gate pass" and then back through security and back to the gate. After standing in line behind the other customers, my iPad and I were reunited.

All of this took an hour, but I made it home okay and just in time for my dinner with Russell. I started crashing as we finished, so the rest of the evening was low-key: listening to music and playing games. There was a bit where I was dancing around the apartment, listening to dance music with my new headphones and enjoying the feeling of my solid steel butt plug. :-)

My plane arrived thirty minutes early, so I met my parents just as they were arriving. We went out for lunch and then to the mall so that I could buy new shoes. My old pair were pretty threadbare. I also picked up a couple of t-shirts and some fleece pajama bottoms.

I haven't been to Jacksonville in years (I'm a bad son), and it's been even longer since I've driven anywhere in the city, but I could recognize a lot of things. There were a few memories.

This time, my parents are noticeably older. Daddy recently had all of his teeth removed, and he's still getting used to his false teeth. I remember him when he was younger, and that's what I still see, but if I stop and really look, I see an old man. It's the same with Mama.

I didn't sleep very well last night, so I had a nap when we got home. They have three cats, and I woke up to find Miss Kitty on the bed with me. Sparkle was the next to approach me, and Sassy let me pet her by the end of the night, which impressed my parents. Sassy is the skittish one, apparently.

We went out to dinner with two of my parents' square and round dancing friends, Iben and Anna. Very lovely people.

According to my mom's new truck, the temperature was 54 degrees today. The forecast tomorrow is in the 70's. I'm loving this. :-)

I'm flying to Florida tomorrow morning. My flight leaves at 8:35 am, or close to it, so I'm going to wake up at 5:00 am to brave the cold temperature to get to the airport with some time to spare.

My parents don't know that I'm kinky, nor do they know that I'm wearing Master's collar. I don't plan on sharing this with them, so I asked Master if He would remove His collar this morning before I left.

It felt really weird to be holding it in my hands. I think I've been wearing it 24/7 for the past three years, ever since I decided that I didn't really need to exercise my privilege to remove it before arriving at the office. And nobody at the office ever made a comment about the obvious steel-ring chain under my shirt.

I didn't think about Master's collar all day, until I got home to my cozy, warm (!) apartment. I often reach up to touch the lock on Master's collar when I'm reading or watching something, so it was a slight shock to reach up and find it missing!

I asked Master to remove it this morning, because although I was certain I knew where my copy of the key was, I didn't want to risk not being able to remove it. But the key was right where I put it, and so I'm wearing Master's collar again. I'll remove it as the plane touches down in Jacksonville tomorrow morning.

It's surprising how comforting it is to reach up and find it around my neck again. :-)