Remember: Helpful Google Calendar hints for iOS poly peeps

Everyone lives and dies by their google calendar, when you’re polyamorous.

Recently, because of my new squeeze, MJ, I’ve been adjusting those pesky google calendar settings.

Wanted to write this down for you, dear reader, as well as myself for the future. Because I’m bound to forget this damn stupid thing again.

If, like me, you’re an apple person, and use iCal and iPhones, and iGetFrustrated when they don’t work seamlessly with your partner’s gCal:

These instructions tell you how to add a google calendar to the iCal on your mac:

https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/99358?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&oco=0

And THIS technote has the workaround for how to add them to your iPhone when the above instructions don’t do squat.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7647157

The crucial thing to remember is to add a new CalendarDAV account, using google.com as your server, and your regular credentials to log in.

You should probably ALSO remember that sharks are the best animals on the planet. That’s not technically helpful, it’s just true.

#gratitudeNow: Parts and pieces

So, I'm a busy guy.

It's a holiday weekend, and I was up at 5:30.  Partly that was because I couldn't stop thinking about some code I need to write today for Project Drummond, my side business.  Partly that was because I have been thinking about working with my illustrator Jenn in a whole new way.

So I got up, got showered, and headed down to the old home office to crank out some work.

The night before I had put my laptop atop my lap (funny how you can do that with it) and tinkered a bit with code while Missy, Rachel and I watched a movie.  When I hooked it back up to my monitor this morning, this bad thing happened.  Or rather, a good thing didn't happen.

My beloved Thunderbolt monitor wouldn't charge the laptop.

Well, crap.

So I asked Cousin Google what to do.  And tried many of the things they recommended, to no avail.  This potentially was going to eat my whole damn day.  Then I took a well informed guess, based on my research.

My magsafe adapter had gone bad.

My who-what-now?  

This thing.  It's a little magnetic adapter which connects the monitor cable to the laptop.  I ordered a new one for like $10, and was able to pick it up at a nearby store.  And when I brought it home, and swapped it out, and saw the sweet green light of functional charging.

Then I dug back into my list of many things.  Which included reading an amazing story written by a fellow author.  Negotiating some narration work for a new story.  Writing code.  And having an important phone call with partners.

And that's when I started to have this feeling: that much like that little magsafe adapter, I'm just this one little part of many vast, complex systems.

Which reminds me of a quote from one of my most favorite books, Cloud Atlas.

 “My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?”

It's good to be a drop.

#gratitudeNow: My brother

Spacey and I had the best phone call today.

It was a Thursday, and like pretty much every Thursday, we had a call on the books.  It's one of the ways in which we stay connected.

Anyhow, our phone call was so damn good.  I mean, they're always good, but this one was spectacular.  Besides planning out about 7 months worth of Big Little Podcast topics, we had this very substantive talk about relationships, about our own connection and how much we mean to one another, about healthy boundaries, communication, empathy, and self-love.

One of my favorite things about my brother is that he loves digging into the deep stuff like this with me.  We're like co-pilots of some spaceship that traverses the brain and the heart.

One of the things he told me is that while he considers me his poly partner, when he's explaining our relationship to vanilla folks he refers to me as his best friend.  Not surprisingly, I'm in complete agreement with him.  We're of one mind on it.  I see it just the same.

I'm so grateful for him.  He makes my life better each and every day.

#gratitudeNow:Garage to Garage

1 hour drive

over in moments

Last night I walked out of my office a little before 7pm, walked to the garage, and got in my car. Then I drove the hour or so between where I work and where I live, and pulled into my own garage at home.  It's a long commute.  But it went by like no time at all.

The reason for that is I was talking to Moliére.

We've been friends for years now.  I first met him through mutual friends of ours.  He knew of me through my work on the podcast, and asked some mutual friends of ours to introduce him to me.  I was up at their kinky bed & breakfast to teach a class.  He came to meet me beforehand, and we spent a long time together chatting and just getting to know one another.  I liked him enormously from the get-go.

That had to have been four or five years ago at this point.  

We're similar in many ways.  We're both techies, both love puns, have many of the same sensibilities for things in life.  We both have excellent taste in partners, too.  Did I mention he's my metamour?  Yep.

You know that song My Boyfriend's Girlfriend Isn't Me?  It's like that.  Oh you don't? Here.

So anyhow, back to Moliére.  We've been close for ages.  Our relationship, like all relationships, has had its ups and downs.  We've endured hardship, apart and together.  The part where we're metamours is relatively new, and it's not without adjustment.

That's not a bad thing though.  Last weekend we got together, just him and me, to talk about where we are, how we feel about one another, and to eat really good poké.  

We love one another, a whole lot.  We always have.  We're still figuring out all the various things we mean to one another.  It's a good thing.

So when I got in the car in the first garage, I decided to call him, just because I felt like chitchatting, spending time.  We joked around, talked about all sorts of stuff, laughed, did some insightful thinking about ageplay and porn, and just generally basked in the warmth of one another's company.

Before I knew it, I was in the second garage, the one in my house.  I really love him, and I'm so grateful he's in my life.

#gratitudeNow:Bionic Frubble

​So, if I haven't mentioned it before (I have), I'm not just a teensy bit polyamorous, I'm a whole lot poly. 

​What I mean by that is that I have a bunch of relationships in my life, of varying ages. I've been part of the Ghidrah for more than a decade, been married for almost that long, and have relationships that are deeply meaningful to me besides those, many of which go back for years.

Along the way I've learned some special guidelines and even new words that are useful in navigating the fulfilling but often complex life of being a polyamorist. ​

One of those is ​FRUBBLE​, a silly informal variant of ​​​COMPERSION.  ​That's the pleasure you get from when your partner is happy doing something that doesn't directly involve you. ​

​Another thing you learn when you are poly is to use tools, to help manage the finite resource of time, and facilitate communication, which are problems for ​everybody ​but most especially us non-monogamous folks.

Shared calendars are your friend. ​

I had this awesome frubble moment this morning because of another piece of tech, GeoZilla. ​

It's kind of like the Weasley Family Clock from Harry Potter, as a mobile app. ​

My girlfriend Squee, my wife Missy, and Squee's other partner Moliére (who is also one of my closest friends on earth, and whom I consider to be family)​, all use this thing.

Moliére is out in Chicago visiting Squee.  They're going kinky camping. This is a big deal, because their relationship is in this new hot phase, and there's a whole bunch of really great things going on that are good for them, and which in turn make me ecstatically happy. ​

Frubble.  It's awesome. ​

​Anyhow, I wasn't completely up on the details of when he was flying out. I didn't need to be, so no big deal. But when he landed this morning and checked in, I opened up GeoZilla, saw they were together, and instantly got this warm, schmoopy feeling of joy. 

Then I called them, and we talked all the way through my commute in this morning.​  And that might not have happened without us being bionically frubble assisted. 

Totally cool. ​