Up Up and Away!

What a delightful weekend I've had! Went out to see my friends and had just a fantastic visit. The friend I was visiting, B, got married in SF last year. He and his partner, J, just celebrated their first anniversary as a married couple. The First Lady of the state called them at their reception to congratulate them for being the FIRST married couple in Wyoming! As far as they know they are the only one, to boot. Wyoming shortly thereafter made an effort to ban the recognition of gay marriages from other states but the measure fell flat. When B's mom wrote to the governor of the state to protest the bill the Governor let them know where he would be weighing in and said, "Say hi to B & J for me!" It was so cool.

B has been very ill and a couple of months ago was airlifted to SLC for emergency medical services. J was terrified that in Utah their marriage wouldn't be recognized and that he wouldn't be allowed to stay with B. B was given about a 15% chance to live and his family was all out of state and unable to get there immediately at the time. As it turned out J was treated with the utmost respect. The moment he arrived the primary doctor said, "I understand you're B's husband" and J was encouraged to stay with B throughout the crisis. His being a nurse was helpful too, but he said the warm welcome and level of respect he got in the heart of the Mormon empire was breathtaking! He also said that many of the people there expressed upset and anger at their church for it's heavy handed influence in the California decision to keep the restrictive definition of marriage in the constitutional language.

In the little town where they live in Wyoming they were also pleasantly surprised to be welcomed heartily by the old timers of the town and congratulated. I'm relieved to know that Wyoming is still very much the Equality State.

Just before I left for the trip I attended a luncheon at my new internship. It was primarily to send off the two exiting interns, but also to welcome the two new ones. I'm now very excited about starting! Everyone was really nice, and we had great discussions about our various dissertation topics. It looks like I'll be getting the 9 month DBT group assignment, which is more work intensive than the other option (long established transgender process group) but more practical for my particular focus. The other intern is not specifically forensic. It's not clear yet who will start in which rotation, but I did meet my future supervisor for the assessment rotation and she's stoked that I'm heavily into testing. I'm still bummed that the Administrative Segregation (Ad Seg) rotation is no longer on the table. The supervisor got some sort of a federal grant and had to devote all her time to that instead of supervising interns. Still I think this is going to be a great site!

On the 31st we two interns will ride up to the city where the university that runs the consortium resides. We're going to carpool with one of the exiting interns, so we'll get 5 hours during the round trip there and back to pick his brain. We interns have now officially been taking off the layoff list and our training director said she is reasonably assured that we WILL be paid. JOY! We're up to three days of furlough now though, and may get one more still. That will be a 20% pay cut, but still is a far cry better than no pay. My fellow intern and I agreed we'd just figure this was built in dissertation time...