Clouds, the number 10, freaky bones and a little bit of red...

Another morning waking up way too early! No real reason, but I thought that I would use it to post again :) (Sorry!)

So what has been going on in my life? Well, lots!

I'll make a sandwich post- good, bad and then good :p

So, the first good, totally materialistic! Last week I got a new phone, my old one probably got dropped one to many times and the battery was shot. It went from two days life with some use to 6 hours with no use :O Not good...

And so when I heard that Huawei were releasing a new flagship I thought I would give it a try. They have done something different with the cameras in this phone - rather than one camera they have two. There is nothing special there - after all HTC and LG have done this before. However, Huawei don't have one high res, one low or one normal and one wide angle. No, they have one colour and one monochrome. This allows the phone to collect way more light for pictures as the monochrome sensor doesn't have the filter needed to collect colour information, depth information (as the sensors are a little apart it is slightly stereoscopic) and most importantly for me a dedicated monochrome camera - not simply a desaturated colour camera, but an actual monochrome one.

The pictures that the monochrome came makes are just truly amazing. I can't stop using it (and annoying other people who think that the world should have colour in it :p). The rest of the phone is also pretty great (if you can live with the Android skin, which so far I can), but I guess it is a sign of the times that I was totally in love with the phone and then realised that I had no actually used it to make a call! (I have since and can say that the call quality is better than anything I have used so far - both phone and speaker calls).

So, pictures!

The bad... Well, it seems I am going to have to go under the hospital again. When I was a child I had lots of operations for cysts etc in my hands (and have lots of others in my wrists, ankles, feet...). Over the last couple of years I have had pain in my thumb which has been getting steadily worse. I didn't do anything about it until now because a) I was afraid of what hey may have to do and b) I really didn't want to get it in the my transition (stupid, but there you go).

Anyway, I was referred to a specialist clinic by my GP and... It turns out that my body wanted to be special. Simply being transsexual was apparently not enough. No, it turns out that I probably have Oliers Syndrome. 1 in 100,000 and it means that I am prone to the cartilage cysts in my hands and feet that I had as a child and in my left hand they have come back. It also means that I have quite a deformed bone structure in my left hand:

Sorry - maybe there should have been a content warning there!

Anyway, I have to have a CT scan on my hand to make sure that the bone has not de-calcified to the point where it is going to be difficult to fix. After that the doctor will help me make a decision about doing something about it, or leaving it until the pain becomes too much to bear and then doing something. Not the news I wanted, but then again it could have been worse news. Watch this space...

So, the good! On Monday I celebrate 10 years working for the same company. Most of that time has been good, and due to vacations the celebration was held last week. Lots of posters around the building saying how long I have worked there and a lunch organised with very English sandwiches, cream and jam scones, brownies and cheesecake. Yum!

And parlour games, a speech, pressies (a Tardis teapot - awseome! - and a selection of English tea and shortbread buiscuits - again, yum!)

And a picture for our hall of shame - I am the last person to go on the wall downstairs, the next person will start a new wall of shame for those who have stayed too long :p.

A great lucch, and a reminder of why I have worked there for 10 years!

Right, I hear noises from a little man, and it's time to get ready to go and get my hair dyed red again :),  so I'll leave you now with the picture for the wall :)

I'll always have history

To be fair I think this post could end here - it kind of says everything that I am thinking right now :)

But, I'll go into details a little for you instead :)

Go back 12 months and I was really hoping, thinking that once I got the recovery of the operation out of the way that I would be able to just simply be me and go through life the best that I could.

This week I got the realisation that as I work with the same people as I did before I transitioned, and as I am open with them that this isn't going to happen. There needs to be a middle ground somewhere.

I am not an activist, I long for a quiet life where I can disappear into a corner. I have to say this is something that I am ashamed of - being very visible is an important thing, it's just something that I do not have in me. I'm not going to shout from the roof about my history no matter what.

But, I do not, and am not going to hide it either. If there is a reason to bring it up then I am going to being it up. Whether that is to do with the little guy for people who know us well. He is my son, when people ask how we got him, and we know them well enough they are going to be told - if we don't know them well enough then I guess I'll settle for the "it's complicated" answer :)

And... If I find myself stumbling on words, catching my sentences before I say them, and generally feeling uncomfortable and not able to join in a conversation for fear of outing myself then I am going to have to look at the situation and make a decision on what I do.

This is what happened this week - and was the impulse for the first post in three months (gulp!)

We are forming a new team in the office for project (which I am not allowed to talk about unfortunately...) and were discussing getting the team together and moving to our new team room. Someone suggested getting facilities to help move our desks and computers (the desks move as a couple of us have special electric standing desks - so when we move the desk has to move too).

When moving the computers came up we decided to as IT Services to give us a hand - there are a lot of cables, dual monitors and heavy workstation machines to move. And I had to catch myself. You see 5 years ago I could have picked up the work station and moved it anywhere in the building. Hormones have ad an impact on that, and so I very nearly outed myself by saying so. And after that was very guarded in what I was saying and kind of left the conversation a little bit. And felt very, very uncomfortable.

So, I asked the new guy for a walk - the sun was out and so a walk away from the office seemed inviting - so that I could tell him my history. We are going to be working closely over the next few months and I don't want to be catching my sentences again. On top of that, he seems reasonable so I was hoping that it would not be an issue.

Of course seems and is are two very different things and the nerves start straight away - once you say it you cannot undo it.

But... It went well, he thought it was great that it is possible for me to be myself and has been no different to me since I told him than before. Phew.

There was one very bad thing though - the sun, it disappeared at the farthest point from the office and we got wet in the rain!