Pardon?

I forgot to mention...Sara, my ex-roomie, is back for a while. She’s out of school with the holiday break. It’s kinda good to have her here, but I’ve noticed the apartment is a little messier with her around.

Another busy day. I was up around 7am today and then off to work for a while. After that, I met up with some local friends to watch the final Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. It was pretty decent, although way too long. They also seemed to have more character development like the first one (unlike the second one) so I’ll have to say that I liked 1 and 3, and didn’t really care for 2. I was tearing up pretty bad near the end.

Dang hormones. :)

At the end of the movie though, they show a number of friends coming together after the great journey. It reminded me of the times I gather with my TS friends out here. At the end, they all say good bye and go their separate ways...which in a way brought back the memories of Courtney leaving after visiting me. They say the journey is the most exciting part...live it. When it comes time for all of us to go our separate ways I know I am going to feel pretty sad, but hopefully we’ll all be able to stay in contact with one another.

Right after that I headed up to the city to say hey to Claire again, who is one day shy of being 2 weeks post-op. I went in boy mode, and Claire said that Amy was over in boy mode as well, although she doesn’t really have a boy mode anymore. We chatted for a while then decided to get an early dinner since I’d skipped lunch, as had Amy.

During our walk to the restaurant and subsequent dinner, Claire seemed to have a whole new confidence about her. She looks great now, and I think she feels much more comfortable interacting with people who now see her as a woman. So cool. I can’t wait, and like I said before, this has really given me a lot more confidence in getting through the post-op stuff.

We decided to head over to the Union Square area to do a little last minute Christmas shopping as well as see if Tyler was around. We made it into the San Francisco Shopping Center and were walking around for a few minutes when Amy spots Tyler out of the blue. Because Tyler had never seen me in boy mode, I decided to pick on her just briefly. She was standing in line to order, and as I walked by her I made sure to just barely brush her...then said, “Oh, excuse me ma’am.” I stood there looking in the glass case, but I could tell she was glaring right at me. I just looked there for a few seconds, then walked back toward her and couldn’t help but smile then. She didn’t even recognize me until I said her name, but said later that she knew once I smiled. We shopped a little longer, sat with Tyler and Claire as they had some coffee, then walked back to Claire’s place. Along the way, Claire had to duck behind us as we walked past one of the coffee shops she’d regularly visited as a boy. She said she didn’t want any of them to see her now since they might recognize her. OK, so her full confidence isn’t quite there, but she’s definitely improved with the overall status of going wherever as Claire.

Tyler and I walked back to my car so that I could give her a ride home. As we did, we passed another transsexual walking the other way. I told Tyler “There goes one of the family” and that I spotted her half a block away, while she responded with “That’s a funny way to put it.” I wasn’t quite sure until I saw her Adam’s Apple as we walked past one another. Tyler said she noticed her from afar as well. It’s so wild that we can pick one another out just like that, but it wasn’t like she looked really bad or anything, I could just tell. I mean, her hair looked good, she wasn’t much taller than me, and she was fairly thin, but there was just something about her. And since I’m one myself, and have friends that are TS, I guess I just see whatever it is that is slightly different from a genetic girl.

After arriving home, I got in another run this week...finishing at about 10:15pm. I have got to get more exercising in over this break, which hopefully I’ll be able to do with a little more free time on my hands.

Oh, by the way, I bought one of those swimming nose plugs last week to simulate nose packing. I tried it on for a little while and I felt totally fine. I don’t know what the big difference between holding my nose and having it clapped off with a nose clamp is, but hopefully it will be a lot more like the nose clamp situation.