methodwriter85

He did. I think the whole issue was a lot messier than an affair, and he was given the choice to just come out and resign or get the full-on impeachment process. But yeah, I think in 2014 it's possible that a governor of a large state (well, for me, New Jersey is pretty large since it has like 9 million people) could remain in power and be openly gay.

I got arrogant because I had been successful and applauded in grad school, and I had done pretty well with the other museums I've been working with. I didn't come in with the attitude of "I'm starting completely over here so I need to prove myself" but "I've proven myself and you guys are thrilled to have me." It was a humiliating experience to learn otherwise, but I'm getting past it. I think the biggest hurt in all of this was learning that my supervisor did NOT think I had done a great job. I had really thought we were bonded over all the conversations we had about our lives. She had just lost a friend and I am still dealing with the loss of my own back in November, and we'd talk about our families and the issues we were having with them. She brought a LOT of her personal issues into the workplace, and that was pretty inappropriate on her part. I really did see/think of her as a friend. And then on reflection, I realized that should not have happened at all. She was there to be my boss, not my buddy, and lines got blurred that shouldn't have been. It's nice for them to be friendly, but she also needed to be direct and honest about what I was lacking in my work. I've had supervisors sit me down and say, "Alright, this is something you need to do to be better at your job", and I took what they did and I like to think I got better. Complaining to the director about your intern while being nice to said intern's face does not get better results. I needed her to tell me directly what I could do better, not for us to have conversations about her friends who got arrested during Senior Week at Ocean City or about her road-trip plans for the fall.

Thanks for the responses, everyone. I went ahead and got through the humiliation of turning back in my state I.D., badges, uniforms, and signing my exit papers. It was difficult and upsetting, but also pretty illuminating as I tried to put into words what failed about this internship- on my side as well as on my supervisor's side. It seems as if there are two guys that I can be- there's the responsible one that developed in grad school, through four successful internships, and can be pretty respectful. Then there's the old self-destructive one- the one that drives everyone crazy, gets lazy and self-indulgent, and projects an air of unfounded arrogance. Apparently that guy showed up instead, and I have to live with the fact that I alienated a whole hell lot of people who will never give me another chance because I didn't bring the first guy to the game. My main lessons here seem to be... 1. It's not my job to critique/comment on other people's work or offer them unsolicited advice, especially as the low-man on the totem pole. Only do it if I'm asked, and in all honestly, have done the legwork to warrant it. (Like when I trained people to clean the dining hall because I'd been there an entire school year, and being allowed to train volunteers at this small museum I work at because I've been there for over a year.) 2. Don't assume you're doing a great job because your supervisor hasn't directly criticized you. Also do not complain, either vocally or facially, about the tasks they have you doing. 3. Do not ever, under any circumstances, treat a supervisor like a friend. This is where I felt like, although I failed, there was some fail on their side as well. My supervisor and I were close in ages, and upon reflection, I think this made it harder to keep a proper supervisor/intern relationship. She shared and confided in me a lot of personal information/stories about herself, and set a tone where I felt like that was okay for me to do that myself. I thought back to the other supervisors I had, and I honestly can't tell you anything about them aside maybe where they went to school, their work history, and if they were married, dating, or not. That's about it. This was different, and upon reflection, it wasn't appropriate to know a lot of personal things about my supervisor. It created a feeling that we were friends rather than someone I was working under. So yeah, those are my lessons that I'll take in moving forward. I feel crummy but I'll be better, and I've already gotten past the hardest part.

There have been long-standing rumors that Troy Aikman is gay/bisexual, but of course he still hasn't come out yet despite the fact that he's been out of the game for over 15 years. I know he's not obligated to come out, but god, if he did, can you imagine what it'd be like to have someone who was one of the most successful quarterbacks with one of the most successful teams come out? When Esera came out, I remember him appearing on Oprah and showing off his partner and kids in some family photographs. Of course, in Zach's case, he already has the image of gay men raising kids in families together, although to be honest...the Brad/Robbie/Jeanine example didn't end up well. Wowzer. It worked in the beginning because Darius was the easy, no problem child, but when it got to the final stretch with their last two...geez. (Although it apparently didn't work out for Esera, either.) I think for me, the big jaw-dropping come out story wasn't in sports but came a few years later in 2004, when Jim McGreevy the New Jersey governor announced he was a "gay American" in his resignation speech.

Chapter 43 -When Matt leaves the note with the ring for Wade. "Someday, Somehow" by Ryan Adams

Well, my internship with the state park did not work out. I'm pretty shocked and sad about it. Long story short, they felt like a particular incident showed that I had not gotten over my behavior problems from a decade ago, and given that I had a lot of baggage with them from that time period, they did not feel like I was a fit with them. I was given a second chance and I blew it. It sucks and I'm pretty angry at myself. I know I'll move on- I closed a door with ever working with the state park system in Delaware, apparently, but it's not the end of my career. I might really want to start thinking long and hard about staying in the state of Delaware, however. Right now my immediate course of action is to just go ahead and start increasing my volunteer hours at another museum I work at (thank god I didn't actually leave the place), do some soul-searching about why this internship did not work out like the previous 3 I've worked in, and get back on the horse and try again. Luckily I've got this side job cleaning apartment buildings a couple weekends a month so I'm not completely at 0. Ugh. I guess I just have to remember that this was a learning experience, even though it wasn't in the way I wanted it to be.

Now it's 14.1 million views. Damn, that trailer's taking off. I haven't seen this since The Fault in Our Stars, a (vastly) better romance. I don't think authors get royalties off the movie adaptions- I think they get one big lump upfront sum. Still, E.L. James has made a shitload of money off of such a horrible book.

The trailer now has 12.1 million views.

Alright. What about Addison? (Which inexplicably became a popular girl's name in the 2000's, peaking in 2007, despite the fact that the name means Son of Adam.) It would have been on the ascent in 2003, and probably seemed edgy and cool. Maddy and Addy. Come on, that's cute! Or Tiffany can name a daughter Isabella, and then cringe in embarrassment 5 years later when Twilight hits. Extra points if it's twins, one's a boy, and she names him Jacob or Edward. It's just funny to me that names like Isabella, Sophia, Ava and the like are so hot right now, while the names I grew up hearing so much- Jessica, Ashley, and Heather- all seemed to be fading out. When's the last time you've met a little toddler girl named Jessica or Heather? As a comparison...top baby names of the 1980's vs. top baby names of the 2000's The top 10 for baby boys barely changed, while Elizabeth, and Ashley are the only two who stayed in the top 10.

Alright, I don't know if we'll ever see Ryan again, but Jonathan Kent from Smallville as Ryan's racist father? John Schneider is a born-again Christian type and apparently has said some homophobic stuff, so I thought he fit. At the same time, he's also a pleasantly good-looking 50-something "Dad" type who can pull off the smarmy attitude, which is also how I picture Ryan's dad. I kind of figured Ryan's dad was older than his mother, who was kind of picked up as young trophy and then discarded when she wasn't.

Oooh, if we're talking period hotties... The Abercrombie Carlson Twins God, they were SOOOOO hot.

Oh, right. Man, Billy's been dead for like 22 CAP years at this point.

I just realized that for a soap opera, we really haven't run into any identical twins that I can think of. Or even fraternal ones. Which is funny, because twins aren't even that rare. I knew at least four pairs of twins in high school.

Well, it depends on if you take the material seriously, or you're reading it with an "it's so bad it's good" mindset. I purely read it for the LOL's. I know people who watched Twilight purely to make fun of it.

So I'm not alone in thinking that Christian in the trailer sounds a lot like Edward, then? I thought it was hysterical that there was a character named Jose, Anastacia's swarthy dark-haired hot friend who is a rival for her affections. Gee, I wonder who E.L. based him off of.

Wow, I'm sure at 51 Mark must LOVE getting compared to elderly residents in a nursing home. Seriously though, age really is sometimes just a number. Dylan McDermott from American Horrory Story is in his 50's and he's smoking hot:

See, the thing is, I like Jamie Dornan from his short stint on Once Upon A Time, and I've liked Dakota Johnson from the small supporting roles she's played, so I wonder if they both have it in them to elevate the shitty material into something good. I doubt it will happen, but it's possible.

I think JJ can work as a guest POV who comes in every once in awhile, but at this point, JJ's too isolated and immature to work as a main narrator. I'm thinking we'll probably follow JJ when he gets to the 2005-2006 skating season.

I loved reading the 50 Shades of Grey book and laugh my ass off at it (it's so bad it's good), so I'm interested in seeing whether or not they can make a legitimate movie out of it. Is it just me or does Christian's line delivery sound incredibly similar to Edward Cullen's in the first Twilight movie? I kept expecting him to say, "I feel...very...protective...of...you." Which makes sense, because 50 Shades of Grey had it's origins as a Twilight erotic fanfiction, until it got so popular that she decided to publish it and had to change the names to avoid getting sued by Stephanie Meyer.

*deflates* Fine. No GED then. We'll just pretend that JJ eventually plans on taking that California. (I checked Massachusetts and they're apparently a GED state.) I'm just really curious. It's not really something I can see Mark covering because JJ's a pretty peripheral character as it is, but I'm curious to see if JJ's attitude has evolved from where it was when he was in 9th grade(and under the thrall of his coach) and didn't think he needed school because he'd be on the cover of a Wheaties box by the age of 20. Like maybe JJ is actually interested in things like writing and history or something. Or if JJ is still pretty apathetic about school and education because he's pinning everything on that Olympic Gold Medal. (Which we know he'll never get.)

JP is 66 in CAP world time. He's an academic. Most of them hang on until at least a few years past age 65. I had a professor that was a Korean War veteran, and this was in 2006 so he had to be at least in his very late 60's. Although with JP's plans for Claremont Tech, I can see him getting really into that and probably spending more time in Claremont after his retirement. He'll probably live a long life into his 80's like Tonto did, who had her own purpose such as making sure the next generation of Hayes boys didn't self-destruct like Jeff did.

So I posed this question to Mark, and he wasn't really sure, so I thought I'd pose this to you guys...since JJ is getting homeschooled by a tutor, how exactly does JJ get evaluated to see what grade level he's completed? How is he considered "graduated"? How is this different from what happens with a GED? Because I kind of figured that homeschool kids took some kind of standardized test similar to a GED (if not the GED) as their means of passing a grade or something. Mark's been telling me that GED's would have a stigma with the family, but I can't really see it being THAT much of an issue with the family, as long as JJ's proving he had the equivalent of a high school education. There are quite a few actors and actresses that did the GED path and it doesn't seem like something that would be unheard of for their socioeconomic circles, especially when it comes to the Hollywood kids that they probably hung out with. We do know that JJ has a tutor, but it doesn't seem like he's been enrolled in school since the 9th grade, so he'd have to be entirely homeschooled for most of his high school experience. It doesn't seem like JJ's enrolled in school and then using his tutor for the months that he has to take off.

I guess I mean JJ doesn't need to be around his family the bulk of his time the way Will needs to. To paraphrase what you said to me once, JJ could be content with once-a-month visits with his family and feel okay. I don't think that'd be enough for either Will or Darius- I'd be shocked if either moves out of California. I guess you could say JJ does need his family, but he doesn't need the constant communication and presence of them. I can also see JJ being willing to make and create his own support and family system, as like a home away from home. I always thought that could be a really good thing for JJ, to at some point in his life build a really tight group of friends that serve as a secondary family to him, and one where he doesn't have to deal with Will being the Golden Child that everyone fawns over and he has to jump up and down to get attention from. That's a pretty good difference between Will/Darius and JJ. Will can put in the work for things he wants to do, and we've seen him having a narrow-minded focus (re: the emancipation), but he generally prefers to keep his life balanced. He could sacrifice things to get what he wants if he was pushed to. JJ, meanwhile, has pretty much sacrificed a lot of stuff in order to make it to the senior level figure skating level that he's at right now. As for real life taking place...interestingly enough, a lot of JJ's athlete contemporaries haven't quite let go yet even though it's probably advisable they should. Evan Lysacek is trying to get back into competing. Michael Phelps is returning to competition even though he retired. And Jeremy Abbott is kinda heming and hawing, even though it really would make sense that he retire now because the Socchi Olympics pretty much proved that guy is never getting an individual Olympic medal because he's too much of a headcase.* I think it's the Brett Favre effect- you don't really want to let go of the sport and the adulation that goes with it, even though your time really has passed. In any event, I do think it'll be interesting to see how JJ handles his 20's and the waning of his career, and how he'd handle not being Jeremy Schluter the Skater. In any event...the pursuit of happiness is a path everyone deserves...but come on. This is CAP. We can't have everybody constantly happy or it'd be a boring story. I think Brad is pretty much destined for a life of trainwrecks punctuated every once in awhile with happy breaks. *"Headcase", best known for describing crazy people, is used by those who follow skating to describe skaters who are very inconsistent and who often tend to completely give up on a program after one mistake. Basically, they're known as a choke artist who crumbles under the pressure. Jeremy Abbott has the reputation of being one for international competitions, even though he's good at national comps.

The thing that you've set up about JJ, and has been pretty consistent, is that he's not really a homebody, "attached to family" type. Whereas family is HUGE for people like Will and Darius, it's not really that way for JJ. It could change, but I kind of think that if 9/11 didn't turn JJ into a type who was all about family like his brothers, nothing will. I can see JJ being pretty content to roam around the world, meeting new people and experiencing new things, and never really setting up "home" with any particular person. I can see it being pretty important to both Darius and Will for them to meet the person they can envision themselves setting up a family and home with, but never really for JJ. I can also see JJ being pretty gun-shy about the idea of settling down into a happy monogamous relationship that's marriage or the equivalent, considering that both Brad/Robbie and Jeanine/Tiffany fell apart pretty spectacularly when he was 13 and 14 years old. Aside from that, his career choice doesn't really lend itself well to having a happy, monogamous relationship considering the extensive amount of training and traveling he has to do.

Chapter 41 -When Matt tells Wade about his kinky sex room in the Chicago apartment that he made for them, and the two have some fun. "Down to U" by Ja Rule ft. Ashanti, Charli Baltimore, and Vita I got this off of the August 3, 2002 Top 10 Billboard chart. Interestingly enough, there were only 2 non-hip/hop songs in the Top 10 for that week- "Complicated" by Avril Lavigne, and "Hero" by Chad Kroeger, best known for Nickelback. Really does match up to my memory of the time of hip-hop being a hard thing to escape from if you were trying to listen to Top 40 radio. -When Matt and Alex have dirty, dirty sex with absolutely no emotional attachment. "My Neck, My Back" (Lick It) by Khia (NSFW) Damn, this decade had some really nasty as hell tunes. LOL. You can't deny that it fits, though.