We at Transcending Boundaries are pleased to announce that our 2009 conference was a resounding success, and planning for TBC 2010 is underway. The Transcending Boundaries Conference focuses on the bisexual/pansexual, trans/genderqueer, intersex and polyamorous communities, as well as others who don't fit society's either/or labels.

Our first planning meeting takes place Wednesday, January 20th at 7 pm in Wethersfield, CT. Anyone interested in helping to plan the conference is welcome to attend; please RSVP to transcendingboundaries@gmail.com for directions. If you're interested in helping but cannot attend the meeting, please contact us as well and let us know your interest. Remember, TBC is a community-based and volunteer-run conference - we need help from all corners of the queer community to make 2010 happen!

Also keep your eyes peeled for more Transcending Boundaries activities besides conference planning! We have a new Board of Directors hoping to bring some of that conference energy back into the community at large.

Hope to see you there!

Courtesy of lil_laurel, via email:

I forgot to post about this at the time, so I'm correcting that oversight now. Last semester, I had three classes. In my program, a class is four credits, and full time is ten, or eight if you have a TA/RA. At the beginning of the semester, I didn't have an assistantship, so I had to do a two-credit independent study.

I've posted a 3.53 so far, with one incomplete still to go. Considering it is my first semester of grad school, plus everything else that happened, I am satisfied with this performance. That being said, I expect to do better in the spring, since I'll be taking classes I want to take rather than ones I must take. I intentionally took both of the classes I had to take as part of my program in order to get them out of the way. I knew they didn't interest me much, but the sooner I got them done, the better. For the rest of my time in the program, I can take more or less whatever I want, so long as I continue to make satisfactory progress. Not a bad way to be.

One of the many small tasks I had to do over break (this one so small it didn't even make the to-do list I posted) was go through my old textbooks and list them for sale on Half.com. I've been doing this off and on for a few years, with mixed results. But I am always surprised at how quickly it works.

I listed 15 books this afternoon. Some of them are old and out-of-date texts, others much more recent. Five of them have already sold. So now I have an errand to run tomorrow. :-)

Look everyone! A post! A short one, but a post nonetheless! And it wasn't a wrap-up of anything, or a meme, or a fun video! Just an everyday piece of life kinda post! This resolution thing really works! :-)

I made a bunch of resolutions for 2009. Time to evaluate them and make some new ones.

For reference: 2009 Resolutions.

Success:

I graduated from UMass and got into grad school. Not without some drama, but I did it.

Finally made it to the CTRF! :-)

I presented at Wicked last year, which I'm going to count as completing the "new presentation" resolution.

I'm still on staff for Programming at Arisia. That was an easy one.

Went to Arisia, Lunacon, Wicked Faire and Pi-con. Even without TBC, I achieved that one.

Definitely helped Aimee to achieve her business related goals this year.

I also think I was the best partner and housemate I could be. I hope they agree with me. :-)


Partial Success:

Unpacking all of our boxes from the 2008 move didn't happen because we moved again in 2009. Only upstairs, but still. And a great deal of progress has been made unpacking and organizing, but we've got work still to do. So that's a partial in my book.

Only visited five new county highpoints. 50% scores as a partial. Less would have been a failure.

Aimee is closer to my total number of geocaching finds, but we could have done better. And I also found a few without her. So that's a partial.

I now drink a lot more coffee than I used to. But only partially.

I think I was supportive of Vicki while she had her volunteer job. So we'll call it a partial.

Does grad school count as a creative outlet? Kinda, so a partial!

We all rejoined WW, but only last month, so supporting my partners in their WW goals scores a partial to my mind.


Failure:

I didn't climb even one 4k peak. We did one just a hair under 4k, and with the lookout tower we got over, but technicalities don't count. And even if it did, one is not two. At best, a partial. But not really.

Didn't make it to a new state highpoint, or an overnight backpacking trip.

Didn't finish the highpoints of MA. Three left...

My BMI flirted with 25, but I never got under it.

Not even close to clearing out all the geocaches in a 10 mile radius from home.

Made no substantial progress on either my financial issues or the name change.



Thoughts and musings:

This has been another eventful year. I can honestly say it has been one of the most difficult of my entire life. In no particular order:

Grad school turned out to be a lot harder than I expected. Lessons learned, but at a price.

We moved for the second time in two years, and for me it was the third. Again, it was only up a floor, but moving is never easy.

A lot of my stress was based on waiting for things to happen. Acceptance to grad school, trying to get an assistantship, that sort of thing. I never knew that being patient could be so difficult and stressful. I'm a patient person in general, but I had a hard time with it nonetheless.

My father became very ill and eventually passed away.

My own health hasn't been the best either. I think I had hamthrax this past spring, which knocked me on my ass for two weeks. My foot injury (plantar facsitis) had a large negative impact as well. I might not have been able to hike even if I'd had the time.

UMass screwed me hard last spring. I'm still burned out from all the effort and stress of trying desperately to graduate this past summer. I did it, but it cost me dearly.

TBC and WMPE ate a lot of my spoons. Some of it good, some not so much.

Since June, I've felt like there was always something I had to be doing instead of the things I wanted to be doing. Admittedly, some of the thing I had to do were by my own choices, but my batteries feel very low because I did not get enough recharge time doing the things I wanted to do. Does that make sense to anyone other than me?

Not everything was bad or hard. New friends have again come into my life (thinking specifically of four people), which is always a good thing. Two friends moved away, which is sad, but hopefully they won't pass out of my life completely. I did get into grad school, and I really did graduate from UMass, even if the clusterfuck at the end stole all of the joy out of it for me. TBC was a complete success by every possible measurement.

On a personal level, things are going well. My Princess and I passed the year-and-a-day mark for our first Contract, so we reevaluated it, made some changes, and signed a new one for seven years. What can I say, we're traditional like that. The four of us continue to grow closer, and we function very well together as a unit.

And we got a puppy. :-)

Resolutions for 2010:

Climb a 4k peak
Finish the highpoints of MA
Visit one new state highpoint
Visit at least two more highpoints of VT
Help Aimee get to 1000 geocache finds
Find a geocache in at least one new state
Apply to at least one academic conference
Choose my Master's fields
Buy the books for my Master's fields
Read at least 1/3 of the books for my fields
Reach my 10% WW goal
Go to the gym or use our treadmill at least once per week
Read 25 books for pleasure
Continue to transition to coffee
Help Michy, Aimee and Ian meet their WW goals.
Help Aimee and Ian meet their business goals.
Be the best partner and housemate I can be.
Make progress with the legacy of my financial past.
Make progress on legally changing my name.
Make at least one real LJ post per week.
Make at least one real blog post to the new blog (details forthcoming!)

Lots of us do this one every year. Presenting the first line of my first non-Twitter/meme/video post of each month in the last year:

January: Pretty spiffy, and since these are the grades that all of the grad programs I will be applying to will weigh the most, I couldn't have done much better.

February: I Twittered the crap out of this game as I was watching, and hopefully LoudTwitter won't hiccup and all of it will make it to my LJ soonish.

March: The Program Schedule for Lunacon is out.

April: Because I know a lot of you on my F-list, male and female, will appreciate this, I present for your enjoyment Dressed to Kilt, a yearly fashion event in New York City.

May: Photographer Jason Hawkes has been carrying his camera aboard helicopters around the world, hanging out the doorway and capturing landscapes, most somehow affected by humans, in brilliant photographs.

June: I don't recognize half the models/actresses, some of these shots are only just barely "50's pin-up style", but I don't particularly care.

July: Springfield locals might be familiar with "Six Flags Superman", an adult Hispanic male (that I believe to be developmentally disabled to some degree, but cannot verify) that can often be spotted at Six Flags walking around in his Superman costume.

August: Since all the cool kids already did this, I guess I'm late to the party.

September: For mostly unbeknownst reasons, I woke up at 5:30 at the instance of nature and was unable to get back to sleep.

October: pinksbrat just texted me some fantastic news.

November: Remember, remember, the 5th of November

December: The last few weeks I've been updating folks on my Dad's status via Twitter and Facebook.

It is obvious to me (like it wasn't before) that I did not update here nearly as often as I could have or should have. So one of my resolutions for 2010 is to post to my LJ more often. Posts with substance to go along with fun or interesting links I stumble across. A real 2009 wrap-up post is coming. Why the delay, you ask? The usual, of course. Crazy busy. But for good reasons for a change.

Catch-up posts continue with ****drumroll**** November! ( Words Under Here )

We're rolling along. December is next, then a year-end retrospective thingy, complete with a review of last year's resolutions and new ones for 2010.

Now that life is calming down a bit, I can get back to the recap posts I still want to complete before the end of the year. Since that is Thursday, I'd best get to it. ( Stuff under here )

Again, I am skipping the mundane stuff. TBC meetings up the ying-yang, classes, schoolwork, etc. If it wasn't interesting enough to write about then, I ain't gonna do so now.

Next up: November...

This article should be required reading for anyone that has a stake in the growing threat of global warming. It should also be read by anyone that has questions about how the global balance of power is shifting.

Talk amongst yourselves...

I have a lot of thoughts running around my head tonight. It's too soon to write them all down. In brief, the ceremony was as good as these things ever are, we were blessed with decent weather for this time of year, I gave a short and apparently well-received eulogy that I don't remember, and I was OK until I actually saw him.

My plans for the rest of the weekend have changed somewhat again. We sat tonight for an hour or so, but as expected, no one came. Jewish or not, it's still Christmas Eve. I will not be back here Saturday night. They'll be sitting shiva from 7 to 9 that night, and it just didn't make sense to drive longer than that to join them. If we had someone to watch Tyson for us, that would be different. But we don't, so I'll skip Saturday night. Instead, I'll be back Sunday afternoon, from 2 to 6pm. Again, if you need directions or anything, call or email me.

To everyone that expressed sympathy to me, I really appreciate it. My inbox runneth over with LJ and FB comments, and even a private email or two for good measure. Thank you all from my heart to yours.

Happy Holidays, my friends, whichever ones you celebrate.