So, Sam is now gone. He left yesterday afternoon and headed off to a buddy in L.A. where he thought he could find some better oppurtunities. Alas, that is what he told me. It was obvious his presence was causing a lot of tension here and it was written on the wall that it was time to leave. I’m not sure if I contributed to anything in his life this time around… time will tell. I just called him and wanted tomake sure he was okay.

The butthead got food poisoning on the way home by eating crappy sushi from Panda Express. Uhm “Panda Express”… whichis Chinese food …the Chinese hate the Japanese so … HELLO!!!

ANyway, there was a point where I felt a void in the universe. At least there was one thing Sam had brought with him, a stronger sense of the spirit. Although he mayhave drifted from some of his religious convictions, he always had a strong spiritual aire around him that is grossly absent here in Vegas.

ANyway, for Asolfo and I … he was more relaxed and cheerful. Glad for that!!!! XO

Well, after all this stuff from yesterday… Same tells me he is leaving to go back to O.C. tomorrow becasue some oppurtunities have opened up. I wanted to help him get moving in a positive direction, but I don;t know if I achieved any of that. I thought I was being a good friend, but I amy have been something else?

enabler? betrayer? mother hen? definitely, a buffer…

I was always between Sam and Adolfo. But, I still had to keep peace in the house. I did my best and now that he is going I have my office back in the 2nd bedroom.

Other good news, I found a couple guys I want to use in some art I am putting together who will be models for me in some photos. I need models of a certain nature. So far I found two perfect peeps. S

Last night Adolfo had some words for me regarding our house-mate. aka the squatter… aka the platipus…. aka Sam.

I made a written agreement with Sam the day he arrived specifying some ‘expectations’ to the conditions of his stay because he needs to really be on track toward getting a job and getting his life in order. Meanwhile you have to consider that for the better of the last four years he has been homebound and helping to take care of his neices; not to mention hopped-up on drugs and living like a minor league vampire. Nanny care with a Meth-Pipe… it is a modern world, huh?

Well, his life was coming to a cross roads and he finally got away from his guy Dan he was involved with that was poison… so I opened the door for him to come stay with me in LV and try building a new path for himself.

This page of the story began last October when he came and stayed for 2 or 3 months and accomplished nothing. I bought him a ticket home and off he went with a mission to recoved his personal computer and settle some issues. But, his departue left me feeling very sour about our relationship. Here I bought him this ticket, spend $ to go get him in L.A. in the first place, fed him and housed him for a long time, and not even a thank you out of it.

I have to say we did have a conversation that touched me in the first visit that galvanized my wilingness to support him in his mission to change his life. Yet the departure and conversations since have made me wonder ‘how big of a sucker am I?’????

The fore mentioned agreement has been broken on every level so far. When I confronted Sam about the issues UP TO that point I ended up feeling like that bad guy. Sam can talk. Sam can deliver the emotion and the tragedy of his life right on queue. It almost comes across as too contrived because it goes from 0 to 100 in seconds. He can be quite the cameleon.

Which begs the question, ‘Am I being conned?’ Is it alright that I can question a friend’s commitment to the “mission” and to find out if I am being suckered into supporting someone whose intentions are really being masked with a deluded sense of ‘deserving’? I’m at a loss of words sometimes….

In the agreeement I laid out a lot including giving Sam 60 days to pull it together. I sat him down at the table and went over it in detail expressing limits and tolerences for his stay. Yet, the 60 days was clearly expressed. This was the beginning of January, so as you can see we are half-way through the process so I talked to him again this morning.

In the last 30 days he has broken the agreement in several ways:

• Do not download any software onto my PC without my approval // Well, that did not work.
• Do not hook up your PC to my network (in house) until I say because I need the PC for school work // again, he did it anyway. Now, my PC is completely dead. It may have been that that power supply died like he said, but odly enough it stopped working while he was using it. I just finished doing a bunch of mainteneace on it and had it wokring as well as it could (old old machine) – asn any Micron PC could run.
• DO not bring strangers into the house // well, that was a new low. On adolfo’s day off (while he was out shopping) Sam brought someone in and was fornicating. Adolfo came home and well they were in the bedroom, I came home later and now we had a full apartment! Sam wanders out with some story of how this guy is a part of his Theology Group on-line. Well, my Theory is he picked this clown up on Craig’s List for a quick fuck. AND!!!! This guy worked at the Wynn where Adolfo works and he recognized him.

Well, Sam and I had an argument after I found out that MY PC was dead and I ended up feeling like the bad guy in the end. Adolfo told me that he really lost respect for me during that conversation (that he wittnessed) because of the way I caved. I was so mad at Sam and he pushed back at me so hard that I was ready to throw him out that night. Along came the tears and the words how I was the only person he could trust anymore… I am a sucker.

In the past, I have made a lot fo bad cedisions. You might never believe this, but I can be incredibly naive. I also believe I have a bullshit detector that is very accurate, but a conviction that has been shaken a couple of times that really knockes the legs out from under it.

A month into this process Sam has had 1 interview at my job and little else. He smokes like crazy and hangs out like a vampire. Although I duscssed all these things with him this morning, I am still left wondering what to do.

I told Sam today he had to be out by the end of the month one way or another. He has to show a greater commitment to finding a job. Although Adolfo has been somewhat unreasonable on occasion, he is also right and whatever is going on this HIS intuition I have to pay attention to as well.

“Bro’s Before Ho’s”…. ha ha ha … well, I always said I would support a FRIEND before anything a boyfriend had to say, because one always lasts longer than the other. I have 6 years with Adolfo under my belt. I have known Sam for 8 or 9 years. My trust is all of this is shaken and I am seriously over stressed about all of it. It’s got to change.

It feels like life has been very topsy turvey. I complained about Adolfo grinding my balls to dust recently, but I also decided I am the cause of some of my own troubles. I’d like to start putting some of the broken elements of my house together… and will.

Between dieting, finding my focus for my own health, and this relationship I feel like it’s just gone out of balance. I work out, but it’s not enough. I try watching my food in take, but I find myself loosing that battle as well.

Today I saw my reflection in a mirror and saw some pics Adolfo took at Christmas time and can;t see from inside how big I have managed to get compared to where I was when I lived in Boston. After leaving Boston I packed it on.

Well, Adolfo has been cool today and he gets so pissed off. I’m no angel, but damn. I was pissed with him the last two days because he was pissed off at me. oi… vicious circle.

Recently there has been a lot to feel “out of sorts” for because I am feeling the pressure of how I managed to set up my life. I am literally sick because of it. I also feel like it’s all sorta spinning around me with all the pushing and pulling.

Adolfo is dragging me over the broken glass over Sam being at the house. When he is unhappy, he makes me pay for it, and I am so tired of the battle. I mean really, how do I turn my back on someone who is asking for help. Someone who needs help. Someone I have known for a lot of years. Adolfo would have me turn my back on freinds and although people HAVE to walk on their own two feet I know I have be there for a freind when they need me.

On the other hand, Sam has really pissed me off a few times. I asked him not to do a few things and he went right against me. I asked him if he repected me and I never got a direct answer.

So I have to question Sam’s sincerity and his honesty with me. There are times when I feel manipulated and although I have a lingering doubtr in the back of my head I go along with what he says or does. From conveneinient headaches to whatever… he seems to be spending very little time actually looking for work.

Last night I was working on my resume and updating my Jobster account, my Monster account, and general resume and I had this idea that I had managed to spend more time that evening looking for work than he in the last two weeks.

None the less, he had 60 days from his arrival to get a job and get money together for a place of his own. I reiterated that this weekend and reminded him 2 weeks have already gone by. As much as I care about Sam, he needs to go. Or… Adolfo does? Ugh!!!

I have to say that Sam has a sense of humor that I really get, even though sometimes I think he is coming in out of left field. At least we laugh.

There was a point between the last time he was here and his recent arrival where I really started looking at the people I was inviting into my life and trying to fiture out WHO belonged there… versus WHO I was holding on to. I find it hard to trust my own feelings sometimes and doubt them because I have made some bad choices in the past.

Odly enough, leaving Brian when I did, still makes me wonder if I did the right thing???? I might be looking at that situation as one of my biggest regrets. Same with Adolfo, if I leave him now will I be alone for the rest of my life. If I am, does it matter?

After work I met Adolfo at Kaizan, whcih is a Sushi place I like a lot. It’s across the street from the Hard Rock Casino down on Paradise and tases fantastic. I really dig it!

You may have read my previous entry wherein I said Adolfo was possesed. He wanted to talk to me about all that; no he had not read the blog at all. He knew I was upset with him and talked to me on his own. He was merely demonstrating his concerns and all.

Dinner was awesome. I ate plenty of sushi and tried one I never had before. Yummers!

In the coming days we’re expecting visitors and Adolfo is a stress case. He’s moody and not being very nice…. I hate when he gets this way. It makes me so mad because he thinks he knows what is in my dead in regards to one of the visitors…

This weekend my step sis Chris is due in on her way home across country from Florida. When I text her last night she was having drinks in New Orleans. She is due in Sunday or Monday.

Next week we might see the return of Sam???? He went to L.A. to accomplish something (?) and is tired of life there and is ready. Gues who he’s biting my ass over???? Anyway, he’ll get over it.

Mom is coming next week for a visit. The newly retired Sallie is coming to Sam’s Town to gamble that retirement away… or hit it big…. not sure which. I would rather she hit it big and felt generouus about it.

Anyway… how do you like the whole new look????? Let me know!

For 3 days prior to today I have been in hell… serving on Jury duty. Banded with a group of people with a variety of domonating personalities… we left as a hung jury. Almost no-one was willing to budge on their position and in the end I think we looked like a bunch of fools.

The judge was Sally Roehler (something like that) and after jury selection she made a couple comments that tarnished the whole mess… 1. If you make a decision stick to it and do not let anyone sway your inidividual belief, and 2. She estimated this case would be finished in a day, or day in a half….

NOT

The case was this LOSER named Jerome Zemke who was shop lifting at the Rebel Gas Station at Koval and Tropicana. This is a station I pass all the time. Well, he was caught stealing and pulled a knife on the clerks subsequently cutting one of them (scratches but none the less).

We were given the video from inside the store from 4 cameras, holes in the shirt, the knife and a lot of photos.

1. the knife never appeared in any of the videos, just the reaction of the victims and the other customers in the store which was ambiguous to me.

2. the shirt had so much damage in it that it was hard to see that the knife did any damage to it, most of it was worn out….

3. they kept calling this knife a butcher knife, but it was a cheap ass carving knife; it had no fingerprints on it and a partial print that could not be attributed to any of the people involved that was found thrown in the bushes…

4. only wittnesses were 2 victims, and 3 cops…. VICTIM #1: filipino guy who had a hard time with english, but he was very believable and repsonded well to questioning. VICTIM #2 was a total slacker who looked like a fool, he was the one who got jabbed with the knife once in the hand and cut (scratched) across the abdomen. COP#1: Italian Hottie who was a good wittness but he knew almost nothing except he was the one who took the defendant into custody. COP #2: Nice looking black dude but he was a bit foolish because he collected the evidence and gave it all back before it was cataogued except for the knife. CSI EXPERT: Pics of the knife and fingerprinting…. she was a dope. She certainly was no Marge Helgenberger…

Well, 1/3 of the people that were there had a hard time putting the knife in the vitim’s hands, 1/3 could go either way, 1/3 said there was a knife and wanted the guy executed (practically, I am exagerrating). But consider the harshest charge was Attempted Murder with a Deadly Weapon, Burglary, Robbery, and Assualt; all of which with the Deadly Weapon part became something much worse.

As mentioned before, no one would come to a single conclusion. Personal convictions became road blocks. Interresting that the 2 black guys on the case were steadfast against the use of the knife in the commision of the crime????? The old white dudes (me excluded thank you!) were steadfast that he did use the knife. There was definitely bias that people could not come to a middle conclusion with; the burglary and robbery were both felonies.

The judge took us into the court room and told us things we could not know before, that there was a wittness who could not be there that saw the defendant throw the knife. That the defendant had a LONG ASS record of crime in Minnessota!!!!!

He was a shitty guy.

I know he was a shitty guy. White boy, German decendant, looked hispanic (actually) and had gangster tattoos over his stomach, too.

A new trial starts this coming Monday. However, on the way out the defense attourney and the orisecuting attourney were down to talk to all of us and it was fascinating. They were like buddies and helping each other out in the court room. Hell, maybe while waiting they were braiding each other’s hair????? But, they were so very nice!

3 DAYS OF FUCKING SHIT!!!!! BUT!!!!! I found a silver lining. One of the jury panel was a hot paramedic who sat next to me. He would stretch and I could see his tant stomach…. oh yum.

Today is my birthday and so far this year is turning out to be one of change. The things I am used to seem different and I feel it inside as well as out. I have been joking around saying that I am turning 36 because the idea of turning 42 is giving me chest pains. Age is not my freind.

The plusses of it all: Adolfo and I seems tobe doing better and better but that is not without its sacrifices; not all that bad though. Too intimate even for the diary… sufice tosay it’s all normal stuff that happens as a relationship progresses.

ANYWAY… now school is starting again in just over a week and I have been a victim of a really bad haircut yesterday!!! I decided I was going to get a new, edgier look, and went to the barber I have been going to for a while. Well, we were talking so much he was not paying attention and literally shaved the wrong part down to nothing and left me with stubble….. oh hell. So, I said buzz the best thinking I would get something more “military” looking than what I wanted; but I got death-camp survivor hair cut. Ugh!

The camera is no where tobe found right now so you’ll have to wait for a piccy.

One of my regrets for the year is how far freinds of mine have drifted. My schedule with school has out greater space between me and people. On the other hand there are people I have been holding on to in my heart that seem to have forgotten me and I feel a great sadness in myheart for it.

When I chose a person as my FRIEND (there is a special sereies of definitions for this word to me), that person is literally carved into my heart. Mikey, Ed, Woody… the tops of the chart who are living (some passed on) who are living their lives and have apparently moved on and forgot me.

There is a class of friends who came into my life and had that status in my heart, but I feel betrayed by them. A lot of my freinds have betrayed my trust and love and I feel pain in my heart each time I think of them; but no names on this list.

I have some freinds that are freinds, but nothing close. They aren’t people I have attached myself very strongly to though I really like them, they have not grafted themselves into my heart.

other freinds are more aquaintences than anything else, but I still enjoy spending time with them.

How does all this fit together? Why am I thinking about this so much? Well, I am thinking it is time to let go of some and move forward with others. Odd that some of the people I value most are seriously geographically distanced…. if that works it’s because of minimal expectations (???) or something like that.

Chippy called me with my Christmas gift. He told me from the heart that he valued my freindship and I really felt very good about that… it was one of the best gifts. He mayhave been drunk? …but it was still very nice.

Another long babbling entry. Thanks for reading if anyone still is????

xo