Judicial Caning

My newest skills acquisition project...

I don't have this completely figured out yet. If I take a step while swinging a 4ft judicial style cane with a 360 degree arc, that is a really, really hard stroke. I once hit my martial arts target with one of those--Dana heard it outside halfway to the mailboxes (a towel is a great sound muffler, I learned that day). I think it may be too hard to be realistic (unless the person in question is an uber-fit male ex-marine with a prison punishment fetish).

So I think it will go like this. I will practice the full stroke in the same spirit that my old martial arts instructor told us to practice both hard and easy stuff. Doing something at the high end of your ability makes the other stuff easy. I love it when a previously difficult skill turns into "effortless effort." Doing something challenging and mastering that really does the trick for the less difficult stuff. This is sort of the spanking equivalent of learning to break 5 boards (you have to be in really deep dog doo to have to use that much force in an actual fight but it is good to learn anyway).

But, in rl I think I am going to have to modify the stroke (no step, reduced arc, smaller cane, less force, etc). I already have a willing crash test dummy lined up for when I can go live. So my first session will definitely be an experiment erring on the side of caution. I am not far away from having this down--but a couple months of practice are still in order.

How a Technoretarded Spanko fixes a computer

I still can't believe it...

My computer started acting up a month ago or so by requiring more and more tries before it would successfully boot. We have been waiting on tax money to fix it, so we have been keeping it turned on to avoid a premature failure.

So today the tax money came in, and the monitor failed. Since the monitor failed we had to turn the machine off in the process of replacing it.

So we trotted down to Best Buy, got a new monitor, hooked it up--and could not boot after a dozen tries.

Now this week has sucked so far and this was the last straw for me so I sat staring at the TV while D tried to start the thing about a dozen times. He pointed out a clicking noise the machine was making before showing the blue screen of death.

It started to annoy me. Suddenly the idea popped in my head that maybe the CPU needed a spanking. No joke.

Actually I just wanted to shake things up in there because it suddenly occurred to me what the Dell dingbats probably did when they fixed it the last time. The sound has not been working (a loose audio card, maybe). Now the clicking and intermittent booting? Seems like they left a few screws loose to match the loose screws in their heads (Who, me? Have a grudge against Hell--er Dell. Nah!).

I figured rattling things around a bit when the clicking was happening might shake something into place long enough to boot the thing.

I was shocked as hell when it actually worked!

Damn.

I am fed up though. It is time I took a computer repair course (well once D gets employed). It is really getting under my skin that I have become so dependent on a piece of machinery that I can't make basic repairs to (besides component hookups and therapeutic spankings).

A quick whine

I *miss* the SL board, dammit.

I am hoping D gets a break soon on employment (he is following some promising leads). I wanna talk to my friends again!

I may end up breaking down and using some of that economic stimulus tax break $ on re-upping my membership. I am sure Tony and Eve can use it right about now.

What happened to the Domestic Discipline??

It's back.

It went away for a few months there because of stress. I had just gotten out of D back in September that he wanted a loose DD dynamic to our relationship. Nothing very stringent--it is just that there are a couple of good habits he wants to adopt.

Shortly after we started a DD plan the Economy struck, my job became a soap opera, and I got a bit depressed.

Well, the economy still stinks but we have gotten used to our new budget, the fellow causing the soap opera at work quit, and that ritual scene I participated in several weeks ago snapped me out of my funk. I've taken the necessary steps to stay out of the funk.

Which leads me to the little matter of D's wristwatch. Despite the small size of our condo we have 3 pieces of exercise equipment in one end of the living room. There is the NordicTrac and the Bow Flex that I use (along with a small collection of free weights) and then there is the stationary bike D is supposed to be using.

Now, I re-upped my exercise efforts as an antidote to the blues and was gratified over the last few days to see that D had his wristwatch on the "dashboard" part of the exercise bike. It was comforting. It meant he was working out and timing it. The man is very ritualistic with his stuff so I figured that watch was there with a purpose. I don't expect the man to turn into Charles Atlas--I just want him to maintain basic cardiovascular health.

Well, my exercise fantasy bubble got popped today when D asked me if I had seen his wristwatch. I told him it was on the exercise bike. He commented "Well that just shows how long it has been since I have used that watch!"

Ahem.

Once I collected my thoughts I told him that it was also an indicator of how long it had been since he had used that bike!

He had sworn up and down a few weeks ago that he could remember to exercise without the DD.

Apparently not.

So the DD is back. I told him it is back and to start using the thing 10 min a day, 5 days a week.

Later I playfully whacked him with a hairbrush. He lay on the bed and I dug out the 3 ft remains of a Singapore cane that I had broken months ago and whacked him with it about 10 times. I ended up with an instant contrite little boy--who seemed to listen more attentively when I told him the exercise is going to happen from now on.

It is going to happen from now on. And yeah, D just looked over my shoulder a minute ago to see what I am writing and winced.

TV spanking moment :-)

On the NBC Today show about 15 min ago:

Kathy Lee Gifford (in reference to Khloe Kardashian who was waiting for her interview) "I am going to spank her! I told her to dress appropriately! She is showing cleavage."

No, the spanking did not happen though Khloe immediately put her hand over her cleavage when this was said and then inquired about the spanking after the commercial break. Kathy stated she was not going to actually spank her.

I'll spank her.

Please???

LOL!

Damn (volunteerism)

A couple of very good folks who have been working as key volunteers for one of our BDSM orgs just resigned.

I have no idea what precipitated it. It is none of my business.

But this brings up some stuff that has really been bugging me for awhile.

First of all, I have a case of the guilts that I don't quite know how to resolve. A few years ago I volunteered for an org as the newsletter editor. I edited, printed, folded, stuffed, and drove across town to deliver an 8 page newsletter for 200 people by myself. After a year I was fried. I also *had* to quit too as I was purchasing a condo and quickly found out purchasing real estate is a temporary full time job in itself.

I have not volunteered in a significant, formal way since. I have put together several demos and presented them, so I am still serving the community to some extent. I suppose I underrate that effort--some of these demos require quite a bit of research. But I enjoy doing them so much...

Anyway, I digress. I keep feeling like I *should* hold one of these major positions (like the newsletter editor one). But--I can't bring myself to do it.

While I can chase off predators with no problem I have a *very* tough time drawing boundaries when assigned a volunteer task.

WRT to the newsletter-- it was amazing what people put me through. People who had, I think, graduated from H.S. swore up and down they could not write. Had I waited for someone to write something (I was supposed to be an *editor,* not a writer) I would have never filled up 8 pages. I don't know how many things I wrote for folks. I don't know how many times I had to guess at what a demo was about to do a write up because the instructor could not be reached and would not submit one. I don't know how many times I got called on the carpet for an inaccuracy after I had to beg for the information I got in the first place--and got it 2 days past my deadline. I don't know how many times I edited and put in articles less than one hour before I had to submit the newsletter to the printer to make my print delivery deadline.

The "coop de grass"--the thing that started me thinking about quitting, was when someone told me they wanted me to upgrade the newsletter and showed me glossy ones created by much larger dungeons which have an editing *team*.

So I quit (with three month's notice).

This is not peculiar to that club at all. From what I have heard this is a pretty typical volunteer experience.

The club, the people, the membership, whomever, takes advantage of the volunteers and wrings out their energy until they burn out and quit. Often when they quit they *quit*--as in drop out of the public scene for awhile. I was smart enough to toss in the towel before my resentment became entrenched.

And--the volunteers let it happen. I think it is a self selecting phenomenon. Those who tend to volunteer are those who tend to be the helping sort anyway (minus a person here and there who volunteer for the power and pass the real work onto others)--and often those are the folks who can be taken advantage of in fairly outrageous ways.

There is rarely any questioning of whether or not too much is being asked of the volunteer, whether or not they have a life, or kids, or a *gasp* job.

And the volunteer rarely mentions it.

Which sets up another dynamic--who wants to volunteer when they see the current volunteers living at the place and becoming more burned out? Not a good promotion for volunteering. I don't know about anyone else, but my job takes a lot of tiger out of me already. I don't have the energy to deal with the same crap as a volunteer.

Would it be possible to set up some sort of group ethic for this? I think the first myth that needs to go is the idea of a volunteer as a self sacrificing altruist who has no limits. The volunteer needs to let go of this as much as the organization does. It seems that it would not have been too much to ask that the person who wanted me to upgrade the newsletter would also inquire if I needed help to do that. It seemed he saw me doing a good job and wanted to see how much more he could wring out of me. And, I admit, it would not have been too much to ask that I tell this person that I would be happy to upgrade the newsletter as soon as I have a proper team to support me in creating the sort of publication the BOD wanted.

So what if the only volunteer who can be reached by phone says, "as a matter of fact I *can't* come out to unlock the dungeon right now. I am having dinner with my kids across town 40 miles away and I can't afford the gas to be doing this all the time." A class may be canceled--and a solution may be found to the ongoing access issue, finally.

Under this ethic (something that could be drafted, taught, and institutionalized by the right leaders, I am sure) nastiness and backbiting would not be an acceptable response for someone setting a reasonable limit. Telling a person that they need to host a party every month just because they pulled off one successful one would not happen. If it did the person being told to do this would feel safe to say no.

Seems we need to negotiate our volunteer relationships with the same care that we negotiate our scenes. We all have needs, limits that can be stretched, limits that are hard, and expectations. These scene negotiation skills *are* generalizable!

Self Promotion

If you were at last Saturday's party and wonder WTF I was doing--I finally posted about it on _The Islander_.

If you weren't at last Saturday's party--well this is one of those posts that made me create a second blog. Yep--you've been warned again.