Where's Waldo

Once again I am going to tease the general audience.

 How?

With a picture.

That's how.

Recently I posted how I attended a hockey game for my favorite NHL team.

This is the hometown team I grew up rooting for.

Well they are in the playoffs yet again.

Really it has been twenty-two years straight.

I know another big clue as to where I live but really, I had the name of the major city I live near and the arena printed on the ice in the last picture.

Google would have solved that riddle in a second.

Anyways we had such good seat this last time I managed to find an interesting picture.

Why is this one so interesting?

Other than a great action shot, it is the fact that yours truly is sitting in the stands in plan sight.

We even made the national broadcast.

How cool is that?

It was a lot of fun, a great game, but still I marvel at how normal life has become.

I truly am fortunate to being living my life as me.

P.S. I know once again teasing the audience. What can I say I value my privacy. There are people in the know who will be able to find me. As they have either met me or gotten to see more picture of me via email.

P.P.S. Also do not worry, I am working on the follow up post to my last story. I has a system upgrade and outage recently took up way too much time to resolve. I had to play catch up on other things first and get some much needed rest.

I'm All In: The Lost Scrolls Revisited

Now that I got you all caught up with the lost scrolls, I can tell you the next part of the story.

Since I now had Racer up to date on what was going on. We promised to speak again soon.

But that did not end up happening.

Not that we didn't talk.

Quite the contrary we did a lot. On the phone, IM and emails.

We were still IT engineers and we often share data. He also moved some of my personal services onto his hosting environment as I shut down my personal lab for the time being.

So there was plenty of chatter between us during my first year full time.

Yet we never had the chance to get together in person. I was busy, he was busy, I did not think he was blowing me off at all, it was just not working out.

Which brings up to early 2013.

He had an IT question for me about a platform I work heavily on. While chatting via IM about it he actually brought it up.

"Hey I haven't seen you in over a year?"

"You are right." As I realized this was, in fact, true.

"Can you go to dinner in the near future?"

I checked my schedule "Yes, I am busy this week but I am really free next week."

"Okay, perfect I have nothing next Tuesday. Let's go!!"

We chatted a bit more on logistics and venue. Settled on it quickly and that was that.

Tuesday came and we met. He arrived before I did as I had a longer drive. Plus it was starting to snow in the region(this was mid February).

I walked, shrugged off my jacket and sat down.

He looked dead at me and said "Holy F*#$!

Taken aback I questioned him.

"You look great!! I was not expecting this!"

"Really?"

Oh yeah, I had no idea what I was going to see, but damn. You look good and if did not know who you were I would not suspect. Wow!"

{It should be noted that I was not dressed in anything unusual. Simply a sweater and jeans tucked into knee boots. It was winter after all.}

I thanked him and asked him how his wife D was doing.

"Oh she is good, she wanted to come tonight but she had to help her mom tonight and with the snow coming probably won't make it."

I told him that was too bad and tell her I said hi.

Now I should note here that I knew both of them separately. I met her doing work for the company she was the office manager for and in charge of the IT consultants coming in. Her and I talked all the time I was there. Often if I need to kill and hour so I could head home rather than back to the office I would chat with her. We always got along.

As He and I worked together and when I was placed on a long term large project, He was the one who replaced me. Which is how they met. They did not start dating until about five years later and were married about two after that.

We ate dinner. Talked most of the night, enjoyed a frosty adult beverage or two. He asked a bunch more questions of me, we caught up on life and joked about a number of things.

It was a good a productive evening.

He promised to get together again soon...

...which did not take very long at all, within a few days he contacted me again wanting to setup another dinner. This time with his wife D.

It was my hunch there was some curiosity. It is to be expected at times.

So we setup a day the following week and I met the two of them for dinner.

Again I got a big hug from her as soon as I walked in.

Great dinner, good conversation it went amazingly well.

It got even better near the end when she asked me: "Do you still play poker?"

{back story here, Racer and I started playing poker with a group that was made up of people we worked with when he and I worked together. They wanted to learn how to play Texas Hold'em and so a monthly poker night was setup. Being a gamer of just about anything I was interested. Originally it was just guys only but on occasion it got opened up for wives and girlfriends. Me, being the gamer that I am loved it, even if the boys did get out of hand from time to time. I was used to it then and just stayed quite when things strayed too much.}

"I have not played in quite a few years."

"Would you be interested in a game once a month, our friend Tilt host a game these days and it is open to anyone."

I will use this poker term as a nickname since this man is a hardcore addict to the game.

"I would loved too!"

"Great we need more girls and you are an awesome player."

This was true, not to toot my own horn but after a few months of playing with those guys, learning the game and their tells. I started an impressive streak. In two and a half years I was finishing first or second most months. Even winning three times in a row. Only a few times did I ever go out early and even then I could usually outlast more then half the group and get close to earning money.

She informed me the next game was at the end of the week asked if I could go and I confirmed I could.

This brings me to the title of the story. I attend the poker game. There were three other girls there besides myself. Even though I didn't know most of the players or their tells I still managed to bust out Racer and two others, took more than a few pots of off Tilt, our host. Eventually placing third and winning eighty dollars.

Not too bad for a $20 buy in.

I had a blast, impressed the boys with how well I played, enough to get an invited back.

At the end of the night D and I were sitting on a couch chatting about things waiting for the boys to wrap things up. She looked at me and said "Oh hell, you are my kind of girl, give me your number we are so going out for drinks!"

Laughing I did just that and within a few days we settled on a place and a day to get together.

That brings me to the last part of this story.

To be continued....

The Lost Scrolls

I have a story to tell but I ran into a small issue.

I cannot find the prior post that I thought I had written about a friend of mine.

I found the original post where I had to talk with him early in my transition that produced some interesting comments.

Followed up by a conversation after he tried to offer me a position working for him.  Which caused more than a few sleepless nights.

Not because  I did not want or was not going to disclose to him. Rather it was the fact that I did not feel comfortable being a consultant on the road having to deal with clients, while transitioning.

I just did not feel I wanted to "explain" it to anymore more people than I had to.

That whole scenario was avoided when a large project that I had designed and got the chance to implement came to be.

Now I swear I wrote a post about the time I disclosed to him shortly before I went full time. For the life of me I cannot find it.

I looked through all my post archives. Scoured every post I had post or even written but not up on the site. I think I may have even burned out the search feature on my site.

I can recall writing it.

*sigh*

Where it went I have no idea.

I guess I need to explain.

No, there is too much let me sum up.

Racer(as I will call him as that is his hobby. Not kidding he has a heavily modified Mitsubishi Lancer Evo that he takes around the area for various weekend events and races in friendly competitions.) had long been wondering what was going on with me.

So shortly before I was going to start full time I finally managed to get our schedule so sync enough to have the "talk" with him.

I had to do it in his garage as he was in the process of changing out his racing seats for new ones. (There was some issue with how the others fit and they were causing him issues.)

Not a big deal as I know my way around things, granted i was not in charge of this, more I was just a glorified helper. Holding things in place, and tightening a nut or two. Generally being an extra set of hands.

This allowed for some extended time to talk about things. Which was funny because he actually guessed what I was going to tell him.

I kid you not.

I started my usual highly personal speech, digression for the time being would be appreciated, etc,. etc. Then, just before I got into the issue, he interrupted me.

"Can I take a guess at what this is?"

I was a little shocked but said "Sure."

"Okay, either you are getting a divorce or, and this is totally a wild ass guess, you are having a sex change."

I could not help but laugh, he was the only one ever to take a stab at it.

I explained to him that it was both. That my marriage long ago had failed but finances had force the delay of it happening. Also that the main reason I was there to talk to him was that yes indeed  was having a sex change.

(I found out that during the discussion that the day he told me I looked like a little boy he was already thinking I was looking more like a girl. Also that when I showed up on this day to tell he it was even more apparent. Which would be true as I was two months away from full time.)

I gave him the usual summary and a bit of data, then left the floor open for question. Which knowing him I would get a lot and I did.

Good questions, curiosity questions, even a few odd ones(that is just who he is).

I ended up being there for almost five hours as we talked about it, and all sorts of things that we had not caught up on in prior years. Also there were pauses as we worked on the car.

Still is was an incredible disclosure and in close competition with my disclosing to Professor in the best ones that I have had. For different reasons.

At the end he told me that while it would take a him a while to adjust to it that I would still be considered a friend. That as long as I was happy he had no issue with it. He understood the pursuit of personal happiness and the desire to be yourself.

He also stated that if work proved to be an issue that even if he could not hire me full time right then, he could offer me contract work for sure.

Which that I got a hug and said goodbye with the promise of getting together in the near future.

Which did not quite happen right away.

It ended up happening nearly eighteen months later...

...that brings me to the story I wanted to tell.