UPDATE - This Isn't The Make a Wish Foundation

So it took two more months before people finally got fed up with his condition...

If you're joining the party late, one of the rowers I coach is fighting Parkinson's Disease. I feel awful because I totally admire his effort and dedication to keep exercising to do anything he can to slow the advancement of his condition. But watching him day-by-day has become exhausting and frustrating. He is incapable of squaring his blade (the part of the oar that enters the water - must be vertical to push water during a stroke) and doesn't have the muscle control to lower the blade into the water (instead just lightly dipping a couple inches of the blade in, and pulling it about 6 inches toward himself).

So two months after I first posted about this, the club has decided he's a liability. I had to meet with two members of our board this morning to discuss how to tell him he can no longer row. We've decided to take the "safety" approach in that it is too dangerous to have someone that big, who can't help lift, carry, or properly row the boat, and that it affects the rest of his boat too dramatically to be 100 percent safe.

Hopefully he's more aware of how far advanced his condition is, than I think he is. I feel awful every practice letting him slide with excuses about how the shoes don't fit, or the boat is rigged improperly, but its better to let him save face than to constantly yell at him to get his oar deeper or come farther up the slide, when he quite clearly can't.

We're going to try to allow him to save face, by offering him a lifetime membership to the club, and some sort of honorary status for his time served on the board in the past. Hopefully, this will all go smoothly, but I confess that I really don't want the responsibility of telling someone they just can't do something they love anymore...

My Life History is Apparently NSFW

So I've refrained from writing about my new job here so far.

Several reasons I guess, when you've had as tough a time keeping one as I've had, you don't want to jinx it. But the first three months have gone fairly well, and I enjoy myself more often than not.

But something happened yesterday I need to vent about, even though its only tangentially related to work...

My boss and I have mutual acquaintances. We're both part of a large social network here in the city based around intramural sports, and as a result we knew many of the same people, even before I met for my first interview. I didn't realize we had those connections until after the interview though, when I was trying to figure out why his name sounded so familiar.

Apparently when he was informed of our mutual connections (I thought it was fair to warn him at interview 2 so he'd have all the background), he gave serious thought to passing on me because of the potential social dangers. Fortunately, my resume/interviews/dazzling smile must have won him over, because here I am.

Apparently some time in the last 3 months, he was at a sports-related social event with our mutual friends, one of whom is a past girlfriend of mine. For reasons that I cannot begin to fathom, she chose to tell him about our romantic history, including the detail that I was her first.

Yes, she told my boss I took her V card...

He informed me of this last night when we were working late on a project, and to distract ourselves we were discussing how she tends to overshare information. I knew she did that, but I figured she had enough self-control to think, maybe PRSlave's boss doesn't need to know about his sex life... apparently I was wrong.

Needless to say I've been stunned all day. Trying to decide the right response. Do I confront her and tell her how unacceptable that is? Do I let it go, knowing that she's an oversharer and that she has a particular issue staying quiet about me (she thinks I'm still the one, even though I've told her I'm not)?

I Love DC Sometimes

There's a FedEx truck parked in front of my office building.

It has three parking tickets on the windshield...