Lee Lee the Musical Bee

Heartbreaker

2012-01-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

The receptionist sauntered into my edit suite late yesterday afternoon and started straightening the pillows on the sofa. And in a completely nonchalant and unexcited fashion mentioned "That's so sad what happened to Derek today." Derek is the other editor at the place I'm working these days. I spun my chair around toward her and asked "What happened to Derek?"

"Oh you didn't hear?" she asked in a shocked tone.

"No, what happened?" I replied in a shocked tone.

"He's in a heart-attack induced coma."

I was floored. "What? When did this happen?"

I couldn't believe it. I had just had a conversation with Derek that morning. The strange thing was I didn't remember any commotion or stress like someone having a heart-attack at work. I thought "Why isn't everybody here freaking out like I am?"

"It happened this afternoon." she told me.

"Wait, where was he? At work?"

"No" she said "He must have been out at lunch and his son called and said he was in a coma because of a heart-attack."

I was in complete shock. The idea that it could happen to me made me forget all about work and think about my family, my friends, and the fact that I should probably change my diet. Eating those chocolate chip cookies they bring into edit suite every day can't be good for preventing cardiac arrest.

The receptionist probably didn't know what else to say, so she left the room. I needed more info so I walked into the producer's office to see what I could find out.

She was zoned out on her e-mail, but her long face confirmed what the receptionist said.

I asked "What's this that happened to Derek?"

The producer turned away from her computer and paused. "Oh did you hear?"

"Yeah, he had a heart-attack? He's in a coma? When did this happen?"

"No, it was his dad! Who told you it was Derek?"

"Diana told me." I felt totally stupid, but she was laughing at me, which felt kind of morbid because somebody was still in a coma even though it wasn't Derek.

"Oh wow. That's a relief" I said. Still felt morbid to be relieved that it was somebody other than Derek in a coma.

I walked out of the producer's office and went back to the edit suite. I was still a little shaken, but luckily there was a chocolate chip cookie there to calm my nerves. Yum.

Violent Femmes

2011-11-03T11:16:00.000-07:00

I finally found the scarf I've been looking for! What do you think of it?

Paranoid Android

2011-10-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

Remember the HP Touchpad? No? It was this lesson in how not to make a tablet, then it became a lesson in how to make a tablet. Or sell a tablet at least. But what kind of a lesson in business is "sell your stuff at below cost and sell a lot of your product"? Somebody hand me my MBA right now.

I got caught up in the HP Touchpad hoopla during the fire sale a couple months back. I mean who wouldn't want a tablet for 100 bucks? If for no other reason than to hand it to the kids and keep the iPad safe. I spent every available moment that weekend refreshing the HP store page, the Radio Shack page, searching the online forums to see where anybody scored one. No luck.

The word on many a website was that if you physically went into a Best Buy store as soon as the doors opened in the morning, you'd be able to get one. So I grabbed my coffee mug on a Sunday and drove to the Culver City Best Buy in the Culver City Center shopping center, which isn't in the center of Culver City.

There was already a line of about 12 dudes all looking desperate for some hundred dollar tablet love. Right at 10 am they opened the doors, and the male horde trudged over toward the computer area only to be met by the standard Best Buy-looking manager guy waving his hands furiously at us like he was about to be stampeded. "We're all out of stock of touchpads!" he stammered, probably hoping to avoid any confrontation. The horde let out a collective groan and did a 180 back toward the front door.

On my way out I saw another group of guys heading toward the door in a rush. I hollered "they're all out of Touchpads." Another collective groan from a few of them, while one smarmy fella with smartphone in hand glanced over at me and said "I'm buying one online!" grinning from ear to ear. Yeah. Sure you are.

A few thousand clicks later at home, I managed to track down one online store on Amazon that had them in stock. "In Stock" is what it said on the Amazon storefront of an unknown shop called OnSale. I immediately bought it. I felt like I won the lottery or something. But I won a stupid little obsolete tablet. Or so I thought.

Three days later I noticed that my credit card had still not been charged. And still no confirmation letter from OnSale. After a bit of research, it became clear that many online stores that had sold the Touchpad didn't have any stock to begin with. My Touchpad stock. I received an e-mail from Amazon later that day: "Greetings from Amazon.com, We're writing to inform you that your order from OnSale has been canceled because the item(s) you purchased were out of stock. Please return and place your order again at a later time."

I was livid. More than a hundred dollar tablet livid. Wait, but you said it was in stock! It said it right there on your page! I did what any normal, red blooded, easily-annoyed-at-customer-service consumer with too much time on their hands would do: I wrote a letter. A letter to Amazon. A letter to OnSale. When I discovered that the parent company of OnSale is indeed MacMall, I wrote a letter to them too. And when I eventually realized I was shouting at what amounted to a brick wall, some spurned Touchpad buyer on a random forum mentioned writing a letter to the Better Business Bureau. So I did. And then I let it all go.

No HP Touchpad, no big deal. It was over. It was over until about two weeks ago when my phone rang. A representative from OnSale was calling to ask if I wanted a Touchpad. I thought it must be a scam. The representative said that OnSale had received some Touchpad inventory and was offering them at the same price as before, but only to customers who had written the Better Business Bureau. Thanks BBB! To assure me that it wasn't a scam, the guy gave me his number and extension and told me to call him back. I quickly navigated to the OnSale page and looked up their contact info. Same number.

I called him back. I gave him my credit card info. I was getting a Touchpad. He said it would be shipped in 5 business days. 5 business days later I checked the status of my order. No shipping info on the OnSale site. I checked my credit card activity. No charge for a hundred dollar tablet. It wasn't looking good. A few days later I called OnSale.

The man on the phone with my order information said in robotic form-letter tone: "We regret to inform you that we cannot fulfill your order because we do not have the item in stock."
"Hold up" I said. "You mean to tell me you don't have my order in stock?"
"That's correct sir."
"Wait, your company called me. I didn't place an order out of the blue. Someone called me and told me they had it in stock."
"I'm sorry sir"
"Why would someone from your company call me to tell me they had it in stock if they didn't?"
"I don't know, sir" the employee said, then continued in his form-letter tone, "Perhaps it was in stock, and your credit card information did not go through and then it was sold out."
"But wouldn't somebody call me to get that straightened out before selling my item?" I asked.
It felt like I was part of an FAQ read through.

"I'm sorry sir, but what we can do is offer you a fifty dollar store credit."
"I highly doubt that I'll be buying anything from OnSale."
"I'm sorry sir, but we can offer you hundred dollar store credit."
He was starting to sound like a computer. A not so okay computer.
I upped the ante. "How about you give me a hundred and fifty dollar store credit?"
"Please hold sir while I check with my manager"
As I waited I wondered why I was wasting my phone minutes with this nonsense. He returned.
"Sir, my manager has authorized me to send you a one-hundred dollar check."
I almost laughed at the idea of it. "You mean to tell me you're going to send me a hundred dollars. I don't know why I would believe that you're actually going to follow through with that, but yeah sure why not."
"I will make sure to follow through and get the payment processed immediately."
We said our goodbyes and he thanked me for shopping with OnSale, nevermind the fact that I hadn't actually bought anything.

100 dollars. It's coming in the mail. I know it. I can feel it. There's probably a better chance of me putting a hundred dollars under my pillow at bedtime and waking up with an HP Touchpad in its place.

Booty in the Air

2011-09-22T10:13:00.000-07:00

2 outs bottom of the 9th inning. Full count. Pitcher Lee Lincecum wearing a Seattle Mariners hat readies to throw to Judah something-or-other from the Minnesota Twins. Lee winds up and throws a slider to Judah. Judah reaches the bat down and nails a line drive right into the crotch of the pitcher! Score! Lee collapses down to the ground in a groaning heap, as Judah takes his time trotting around the chalk-line drawn bases in the concrete, hands raised, singing "Booty in the Air! Booty in the Air!" Twins win, by a score of 1 nutsack nailing to 0. Shortly after the game, Lee announces his retirement from pitching. Not for lack of desire, but due to the increased likelihood of repetitive stress injury.

Outshined

2011-07-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

I love dogs. Always had dogs when I was growing up. I want a dog now, so my kiddies can experience life growing up with one. But two young children seems like enough on my plate and I don't need to add a backyard full of poop to pick up constantly. Instead I have a front yard full of poop to pick up from dogs who don't belong to me. Constantly. So much so that I've become Mrs. Kravitz peering out the windows keeping an eye out for dogs scuttling their way across my lawn.

A few weeks ago I spotted one such dog sniffing around on my block without an owner attached via leash. And as expected, this chihuahua arched its back in the "drop-a-deuce" position and laid down a log right on the patch of grass just this side of my property line. I slowly crept out the front door saying "here nice doggie" trying to coax it into my grasp so I could locate the address on his tag and deliver the package that rightfully belonged to the dog's owner.

The chihuahua started growling and backing away. I kept moving forward. A chihuahua bite wasn't going to stop me from nabbing the suspect who was most likely crapping on my lawn on a regular basis. Before I knew it I was in full jogging mode trying to grab the dog. We rounded the corner, and several neighbors from adjacent streets were staring at me as if I were insane. One guy yelled "Is that your dog?" And I yelled back "No!" The chihuahua darted into an intersection narrowly missing a car, or maybe it was the other way around.

Finally the dog scampered up the walkway to a house. There were more than a few piles of chihuahua-sized droppings in the yard, so I figured it had to be his abode. "Is this where you live?" I asked the dog, who had settled down enough for me to take a look at his collar, which was adorned with the Harley-Davidson logo. The front door of the house opened, and a guy walked out who thankfully didn't look anything like the stereotype of a Harley-Davidson rider.

"Oh thanks for bringing him back!" he said. I tried to appear level-headed and composed, which was next to impossible while panting heavily after chasing a chihuahua around the neighborhood. "You should probably keep your dog on a leash... because he ran out into traffic... and almost got hit by a car.... And he also took a crap... on my lawn." The guy's friendly tone disappeared in an instant. "And? What would you like me to do about it?" Blaming the victim, I see. I told him "I'd like you to clean it up". Seemed reasonable enough. But this guy obviously didn't like to pick up dog poop even in his own yard. I told him my address, said "thanks", and walked away.

I spent the next hour looking out my window waiting for the chihuahua owner to come and get his prize. No such luck. We had to go to a kid's birthday party, but when we came back, the poop had magically disappeared. I wondered if I was being too obsessive about dogs crapping on my lawn. That is, until Lily told me a story that she was outside and saw our neighbor come barging out his door yelling "HEY!" and startling some old ladies who had neglected to notice their dog pooping on his lawn. I guess if I'm not ready for to add a pet to the mix, I can always pretend that it was our dog decorating the yard.

Critters Buggin'

2011-06-16T15:30:00.000-07:00

Recently I was putting something away in the garage when I noticed that the little screen that covers the breezeway under my house was bent open. I didn't want some some vile varmint to crawl under my house and die, so I grabbed some wire screen that I had previously bought at The Home Depot to prevent that very possibility. I cut, twisted, pried, and finally inserted the screen into place over the old bent one. Not a perfect match, but it would do the job.

Later that night while I was retiring in the bedroom, I heard something outside that sounded like bending bending and creaking. "That little fucker" I muttered as I went to the sliding glass door to see what was undoing my fresh screen handiwork. Turned out the fucker wasn't that little. A huge raccoon, probably as wide as a pig, was pulling at the screen. I knocked loudly on the window and the raccoon startled and slowly turned to leave. I opened the door to hurry his ass up, but then I remembered those raccoons have claws and aren't afraid to use them.

The next day I remembered that the previous owners of our house had some sort of animal trap they'd left in the crawlspace. Despite the fact that the raccoon I saw was probably too wide to fit in this thing, I brought the trap over to where I'd seen the raccoon the night before. In the refrigerator there was some old marinara meat sauce that probably was beyond a date fit for human consumption. I grabbed the tupperware of the meat sauce and put inside the trap for the critter.

At around 1:10 am I was awoken in bed by the sound of a metal snap outside. I went back to sleep. About an hour later I was again awoken by a sound that I could only imagine as thin plastic tupperware being chewed into and broken. I put my pillow over my head and went back to sleep.

The next morning I grabbed the carafe of coffee, poured a cup and went outside to see what was in the trap. To my surprise it wasn't the raccoon. I don't know how I expected it to fit. It was a possum. Nice enough kid.

It hardly moved at all when I came over for a look, and it just seemed tired in general. I wasn't quite sure what the next step was, so I searched out my retired neighbor Jim who has a koi pond and therefore a raccoon problem.

Jim stands about 8 feet 11 inches and is never seen without a cigarette in hand. Jim leaned down and said "Won't take 'em" shaking his head slowly. "The city will only take a racoon, not a possum, and even then they'll charge ya for 'em. I have a guy takes 'em out to the Santa Monica mountains and sets 'em free for 75 bucks! Ya oughta let him loose." Jim took a drag on his cigarette and wandered back toward his house.

I made it back over to the trap and slowly opened one end. In retrospect I have no clue why I didn't wear gloves or try to protect myself from razor sharp teeth biting my fingers off. But the possum seemed too tired to put up much of a show of any kind. "You're free to go" I told the possum. But he didn't move. He just kind of hung there, maybe waiting for me to move away from his cage before he made a getaway attempt.

So I left for a little while and came back and he was still there, now sleeping. "You can go whenever you want" I said. "You have your walking papers." But he seemed content to stay a little longer. I opened up the other end of the trap so he could exit on either side. Still no movement. "I'm gonna leave now" I told the possum. "I hope you're gone when I come back."

Hours later I went back to look, and he had finally gone. Perhaps he needed to rest up before heading back to his burrow or whatever. I told my next door neighbors about the trapped possum, and showed them the pictures. Both husband and wife looked and said "Eww". When I mentioned that I had to let him go because the city doesn't take possums, my neighbor Kevin asked where I let him go. "I just opened the trap and let him leave." I said.
"In the backyard?" Kevin asked.
"Yep."
"Ewww" Kevin replied "Couldn't you have taken him to some wilderness or something? I don't want him coming back here."

Right. I set the trap out again that night hoping the possum would be dumb enough to go in again. Besides, he seemed to like it in there as long as there was food. But no luck. Fly on, possum. Fly on.

Word of Mouf

2011-04-28T11:19:00.000-07:00

Lily and I have a little deal going with one of our neighbors where we alternate babysitting each others kids so the other couple can go out and have some fun. Nice family. The mom is British, the dad is from Atlanta. And their three-year old boy Cy wisely decided at an early age that he'd be more popular with the ladies if he sported a British accent.

Last weekend it was our turn to babysit, so we had Cy hang out at our house so he could play with our kids and get all tired and stuff and go to sleep early. But first we had to get past the dinner hurdle. Cy's parents had brought his meal over in some tupperware, therefore his dinner was ready first. He pulled up a chair at the kiddie table and started to eat like a champion. Our kids watched an episode of Backyardigans while their dinner was prepared by mom. Cy glanced over at the TV between bites.

Cy is a big Lakers fan, so I asked him who his favorite player was. Thankfully he didn't say Kobe, but chose Shannon Brown instead. I asked him what he was eating, and he looked down and said "latkes and okra".

"Is that your favorite vegetable? Okra?" I asked. Cy looked me dead in the eye, and replied in his little British accent "I don't feel like talking right now" and moved his gaze toward the TV. I probably would have told me to shut the hell up too, but it sounded so much more proper when he said it.

Boys Don't Cry

2011-04-07T15:31:00.000-07:00

At the risk of having this space turn into a cemetery of inadvertent e-mails, here is another:

On Apr 7, 2011, at 10:18 AM, susan wrote:

Have to laugh at this. One of my claim reps and I were working late last nite and got to talking about our day. She had a really bad one and we got to talking about bible verses. Our favorites.

Told her mine: I can do all things thru christ who strengthens me.
Then she said hers was: Jesus Wept.
She said if he can cry so can I. Just hit me funny.

Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®

Hilarious.

Hey Ladies

2011-03-31T16:04:00.000-07:00

Recently I received yet another inadvertent e-mail to my inbox. The subject line was "Girls Night Out". The thread is below:

From: Debbie
Sent: Tue, March 29, 2011 12:02:17 PM
Subject: Girls Night Out

Hey Girls....we should try to do another girls night out. Jane has a new idea or we could go back to Broken Spoke . What do you think? Thursday??? Deb

On Mar 29, 2011, at 12:43 PM, Arline wrote:

I can’t go this Thursday, but I miss seeing everyone and want to get together later.

Arline

On Mar 29, 2011, at 12:49 PM, Lee Lee the Musical Bee wrote:

I'd love to go to girls night out, but I'm not a girl and I'm not Linda.
Please to update your address book por favor. Thanks!

And I thought that was the end of it. But it wasn't. The person who the mails were intended for then chimed in:

On Mar 29, 2011, at 1:01 PM, Linda wrote:

Shoot! I'll be out if town. Thanks for thinking if me.
Linda

On Mar 29, 2011, at 4:58 PM, Amalia wrote:

Debbie,

So nice to hear from you. I would love to go, just let me know where.
Look forward to seeing you all.

Amalia

Now fully aware that the ladies hadn't heard my request to take me off the thread, I tried a different angle:

On Mar 29, 2011, at 5:06 PM, Lee Lee the Musical Bee wrote:

Can we go here (*LLMB note: Hooters home page link) for Girls Night Out?

On Mar 29, 2011, at 5:47 PM, Linda wrote:

Ha, ha! That's good.

Girls. We need to remove that poor guy from this thread, ASAP.

Although, he sounds like fun!

And they proceeded to take me off the list, but Linda was kind enough to let me know that the link didn't offend anyone:

From: Linda
Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2011 5:52 PM
To: Elizabeth; Laura, Katie
Subject: Fwd: Girls Night Out

Here it is. Click on the "click" below. Funny as Hell.

From: Elizabeth
Date: March 29, 2011 5:55:29 PM
Subject: RE: Girls Night Out

That is hilarious. This is the only thing I've laughed about today -- this guy is the shit. I am going to start copying him on my emails.

And there it is. My attempt at averting inadvertent e-mails is averted.

King of the Beach

2011-01-27T07:31:00.000-08:00

Lily needed some time to work on her taxes, so I took the kids to the beach in beautiful Santa Monica, California. Got them all sunscreened up, grabbed the beach bag full of sand toys, and threw on my beach shoes - some ratty old Puma slip-ons that could pass for homeless person shoes but are perfect for the beach. Juggled the kiddies out the door and into the Passat and away we went.

Funny thing about a two year old kid is that she's old enough to walk, and she's small enough to carry, but she's getting too heavy to carry. And the little girl was not about to walk the length of the beach to get to the water. So I gather her up in my left arm while carrying the beach bag of sand toys and our lunch in the other. Luckily the boy is old enough now to carry some of the gear.

We lounged around a bit digging with the shovels and buckets. We played a little frisbee and threw the football around. We went down to the water and played the "run away from the water" game, and in doing so we managed to scoop up a live hermit crab. After all the excitement, we ate some lunch and by then it was almost nap time. Time to pack everything up and get back into the car.

Nobody wants to wear shoes once their feet have been in the water. And that included all three of us. So I threw our shoes on top of the sand toys in the beach bag. As we plodded our way through the sand toward the car, a chicken wing bone flew threw the air and landed on the sand in front of us near a garbage barrel. I looked to my right and saw a sporty guy standing amongst his reclining friends, and he was holding a chicken wing. He said "I didn't do it". I said "Busted. You're holding a chicken wing." We kept on walking, and I heard him yell in our direction "I put it in the trash!" I turned and yelled "I'm not the beach police."

After making it to the car in our allotted two hours parking I loaded the kids into their seats, and the gear into the trunk of the wagon. A car pulled up and waited for our spot. I dug through the bag and found only one of my shoes. I dug around some more. I looked in the front and rear seats. But I knew the shoe was on the beach. I yelled "I lost my shoe" to the lady waiting for our spot. She gave me a smile and moved on in her parking search. I sprinted back toward the beach.

I scanned our path as I ran along the beach. I spotted the shoe up ahead in the middle of a group of guys throwing a football around. And one of the guys was the chicken wing guy. One of them overthrew the football, and as one went to get it, another picked up the shoe and threw it at somebody else. It landed on the ground. I probably wouldn't want to catch that shoe either. I yelled "That's my shoe!" The guy who threw it said "sorry dude" as I picked it up and ran back toward the car. I turned and yelled "But that was a solid throw." Better than the chicken wing throw for sure.

Repeater

2010-10-07T07:31:00.000-07:00

Trader Joe's on a Monday morning. It's the best time to go. Nobody's there. Well, except for the staff and a few underemployed (a.k.a. freelance) folk like myself. Shelves are stocked, aisles are clear, it's time to get shoppin'!

I'm perusing the peaches when a Trader Joe's employee guy in Hawaiian shirt greets me by cheerily asking "Is there anything I can help you find today?" I smile back and say "Nope, I'm all good."

I make my way toward the bread past two moms with strollers speaking in French and I grab a loaf of white bread. As I pass the French moms, I grab some tortillas for my burgeoning quesadilla habit and I notice the jam. Which makes me remember that I don't need any jam. See I've got a subscription to this jam called INNA jam that's super tasty and it keeps coming in the mail, which is a very good thing. But the boy Judah tends to eat it all up if I don't have any substitute jam for his PB&J sandwiches. And the foodie in me doesn't believe that a four year old has the taste buds to appreciate such a culinary treat.

So I reached up and grabbed a jar of Trader Joe's raspberry jam - which is stacked on top of each other - in the process knocking about four other jars sideways and toppling off the shelf. I propped my burly-ass forearms sideways and prevented what could have been one of the biggest Monday morning Trader Joe's fruit jar disasters in the history of California. Maybe in the entire United States for that matter. The French moms gasped and stopped talking in French for a second, stopped talking altogether. Disaster averted, the TJ's employee who greeted me earlier came by and asked "Are you allright?" I replied with the calmness of Don Draper: "Nothing broken. It's my lucky day." To which the employee replied "Let's keep it that way". Which was said it in a friendly tone, not a snarky one as I've come to expect in my jaded little Los Angeles existence.

Moving down the grocery list, I meandered toward the cereal section and picked up some maple & brown sugar oatmeal for Judah. The same employee walked up to me and asked "Is there anything I can help you find today?" I smiled back and said "Nope, I'm all good." I wasn't sure if he was messing with me or not, because he had a perfectly straight face on. But I couldn't see how he could possibly mistake one of the maybe five customers in the store he'd asked that question already. Especially one who almost sent the entire jam section tumbling to the floor.

As I headed toward the meats, I could hear the employee in the next aisle asking the same question over and over. "Is there anything I can help you find today?" The voice came closer. I thought for sure he would pass me by this time. I mean, hell, I was wearing a somewhat distinctive hat and I was the jam disaster guy in his eyes. But here he came again, right up to me with a straight face asking "Is there anything I can help you find today?" I smiled back and said "Nope, I'm good."

I figured I'd change my reply next time to see if that jolted him out of his little loop, but I think by entering the frozen section I finally made it out of his sector. Can't wait for next Monday morning.

Piece of Mind

2010-09-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

For our recent vacation to New York, we had planned a visit to Mystic, CT. And because everyone from the East coast is always raving about how you can take a train here or there, take a train down to Philly, to DC, up to Boston, I looked into the cost of taking Amtrak. Soon thereafter I found myself reserving a rental car online. The price for the train was going to be a wash, but when it came down to the nitty-gritty of schlepping luggage and two kids and a stroller, we opted for the car.

I shopped around for the best rental price, and Hertz was it. Plus it was the closest walking distance to where we were staying in Park Slope in Brooklyn. So I hoofed it over there, and it was a fairly no-nonsense experience. Those New Yorkers know how to take care of business. The guy was talking so fast that he talked me into buying the infamous "Loss Damage Waiver" (aka LDW) which I NEVER opt in on.

If you're unfamiliar with renting cars from the major players, the LDW is basically coverage so that if anything happens to the vehicle - car stolen, wrecked, whatever - you don't worry about it. Your insurance doesn't even come into play. The Hertz man said (in New Yorker accent) "It's an extra 9 bucks a day, so it's like uh... 36 bucks for the rental. You want it?" Hmm. 36 bucks so I don't have to worry about anything that happens to this car and I don't have to deal with my insurance company? Done. Bye bye 36 bucks.

And soon I was driving out of their garage with a brand new Chevy HHR (or whatever it's called) which looks like a PT Cruiser but less flashy. 19 miles on the odometer. New car smell. All I cared about was getting the hell out of the city before traffic started piling up on the Friday before Labor Day weekend.

After pulling into a miracle of a parking spot right next to our friend's brownstone, I loaded up the car with luggage and family and away we went. A few hours later we were well on our way and driving directly into the remnants of Hurricane Earl, which had morphed into some nasty rain that made it difficult to see 50 feet ahead even with the wipers on full blast. Glad I bought that LDW.

The rain didn't last long, and we were able to enjoy plenty of sun and warm weather in Mystic. We even drove the HHR onto the ferry from Bridgeport to Port Jefferson in Long Island to see a friend from my high school days. And when that leg of the journey was done, yet another miracle of a parking spot appeared right next to our friend's brownstone, and I unloaded up the car with luggage and family and left it for the night.

Street cleaning was scheduled for the next morning, so I had to get the HHR on the road earlier than my rental return time. Lily was meeting a friend for breakfast, so she took Blaise with her and I took Judah with me to return the car. We were making great time, but as we were literally driving the last block to the Hertz rental location, traffic stopped. Gridlock like none I've seen even in Los Angeles. Nothing was moving. People were laying on their horns. Lights changed from green to red to green and back again. And we didn't move an inch.

I watched the minutes tick by, and I wondered if I was going to miss my return time. I couldn't really put the car in park and walk up to the place. And I sure as hell wasn't going to try my luck by driving around from the opposite direction. But if I was late on the return would they charge for an extra day on the car? And then I remembered the LDW. I already paid the 36 bucks, so why should I pay for another day of rental? I briefly considered parking the car nearby and telling Hertz it was stolen. I'd be in their office pointing at the LDW on my paperwork and walking out of there backwards saying "LDW, yo. Nahmean?"

Then traffic started moving again. And I discovered what the cause of the gridlock was: All the weekenders returning their Labor Day rental rides back to the motherland: The very same Hertz location I was trying to return the HHR to. The car in front of me was stopped in the driveway behind the last car that could fit into their crammed garage. A Hertz employee rushed out to greet me and told me to parallel park my car in front of the driveway. "You're the last car we're accepting right now" he said as he helped guide me into the spot.

I went in and finished up my paperwork and got the hell out of there. Cars lined up down the street. As I left, a renter was asking a Hertz employee "Where should I park the car?" and the Hertz employee replied "We're not accepting any cars right now". The renter shook his head then said "What exactly does that mean?" his voice turning to anger toward the end of his sentence. I wasn't about to stick around to find how that one turned out. It was hot. And humid. And I needed an iced coffee. I lifted Judah onto my shoulders and away we went.

Parental Discretion Iz Advised

2010-08-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

"What the fuck." Can't say that anymore. Not in front of the kids. I find myself saying "What the fffff" a lot these days. Catching my indiscretion before it has a chance to be completely enunciated. Or "That's bullshhhhhh" which enables me to express myself a little more but doesn't open the door to hearing a two year old repeat the word "bullshit" over and over.

I often wonder what other parents do to combat the uttering of swear words. But what I'm finding is that they don't try at all. Like recently we were at a brunch spot in Hollywood. Quiet little rustic joint tucked away off the busy streets. And like most parents, we arrived earlier than the sleepy hipster crowd because the kids rarely let us sleep in past 8 am on weekends.

We ask for a table at the far end of the restaurant, next to another family, maybe to help keep the kid noise contained to one side of their establishment. The family next to us has three kids ranging in age from around 4 to 9 years old. Their table is more lively than ours for that very reason. Our kids looked like silent little angels in comparison.

Lily and I were perusing the menu trying to figure out what Judah and Blaise would eat, when one of the younger kids at the table next to us fell over in her chair and started wailing. I quickly turned to see if the kid was pinned under the chair or something (she wasn't), and her mom snapped out of her very animated conversation, and after what seemed like slow-motion eternity, she turned toward the kid and shouted "WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!!!" Yeah. Yelled that before making any semblance of a move to pick up the child.

Eventually she did lift her child from the floor and give her a big hug, scolding the girl for playing around in the chair, but in a soft tone without any phrases like "Honey, why the fuck did you do that shit?" And later the mom apologized to Lily for swearing in front of the kids. Only to open up the four-letter vocabulary once again in her animated conversation with her adult friend.

Luckily I haven't heard Blase or Judah repeat the F-word since that day. But I have to wonder why I bother trying to clean up my language if the rest of the world isn't doing the same. What the fuck.

Losing My Religion

2010-07-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Sur La Table was calling my name. Not to buy new kitchen gear, but because Lily had taken possession of a mandoline purchased a year ago as a birthday present for a friend of mine. Last year I gave the mandoline to this friend (who shall remain unnamed), but in the drunken stupor that ensued that night, I wound up with the unwrapped mandoline at my house for the next 12 months. And Lily, seeing that the mandoline wasn't moving from its hiding place in the closet, decided to put it to good use, slicing all sorts of vegetables perfectly.

I wasn't about to call her out on it, especially with a mouth full of perfectly sliced vegetables. But I knew the mandoline had to be replaced and given to its rightful owner. Which is where the trip to Sur La Table comes in.

I walked into the store carrying the same shopping bag which held the same shredded birthday wrapping paper and a few spices we gave last year. I quickly found the mandoline section, and the identical make and model. I walked over to the cash register, where I was next in line. I waited.

As is the case with most every Sur La Table, the registers sit in an island in the middle of the store. On the other side of the island from where I was standing, I noticed a white woman wearing a white turban following her toddler around the island, probably to keep the child from breaking everything in sight.

Something metal fell and made a crashing sound. But it wasn't the child who caused the crash, it was a man who I assumed was her husband: A white male wearing a white turban. He sported a huge red beard that would put the ZZ Top guitarists to shame. And the guy was NFL lineman size, as in freakishly humongous.

The man slowly made his way around the island clumsily knocking things over. A can of spatulas here, a wooden bowl there. As he made his way toward me, he reached for a green plastic cutting board and knocked that to the floor. Seeing's how I'm closer to the ground than he was, I decided to pick it up for him. He said "thanks" and proceeded to stand in line as impossibly close to me without knocking me over.

As he turned and joked about something to his lady friend, I felt myself leaning away from him at what felt like a 45 degree angle. I thought "Why the hell am I leaning over like this" so I straightened myself up, holding my ground and waiting to be smacked in the head with the next thing he knocked over.

Finally it was my turn at the register, so I stepped up and handed over the mandoline and my credit card. "I don't need a bag" I told the cashier, hoping to get out of there possibly three seconds sooner. As I was being rung up, NFL lineman guy asked if he could put his stuff on the counter, and I said yes. He put a tiny cutting board and a whisk on the counter in front of me. I couldn't help but wonder why such a large person would need to set a couple tiny things down. Too heavy for him?

The cashier handed over the new mandoline and the receipt. As I walked out of the store, I heard the crash of yet another kitchen item being knocked over. Clumsy.

Time

2010-07-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

Running mundane errands like going into the bank makes me feel all old-timey and stuff. No direct or ATM deposits for this guy. Just walking up to the teller, handing over a check and getting a robotic human response and a receipt. That way I can rest assured my money isn't getting lost in some electronic garbage can.

But Chase Bank (my new bank that bought Washington Mutual which took over from Great Western which was the bank I went to when I closed my Washington Mutual account after I left the state of Washington) wanted to take this human interaction one step further.

I walked into a Santa Monica branch which is usually busy but was currently a ghost town. As in five tellers standing behind bulletproof glass with zero customers. I shoulda used my stopwatch to see how quickly I'd get out of there, because it might have broken a world record.

As I stood at the little island with the deposit slips, filling out a deposit slip, a man in a suit adorned with a piece of flair that read "Chase Bank" came up to me, said hello and asked if I was making a deposit. I looked up from my deposit slip and was about to say "uh, duh..." but instead told him that yeah I was about to make a deposit with these checks right here next to my deposit slip. Or something like that. He said "I'd be happy to help you with that, please come with me."

I have no recollection of why I didn't just say "No thanks" and walk up to the bulletproof glass and the tellers with nothing to do. Something about his spaced out gaze and his metered uneasy delivery was overriding my usually uncooperative nature.

This trip to his desk obviously wasn't going to put me in the Guinness Book of Fastest Checking Deposit World Records, but I went anyway. I sat down and handed him my deposit slip, check, and ID. Of course he didn't have any cash at his desk, so he had to have another employee fetch some. In the meantime, he asked me what I did for a living, which conveniently led us into a discussion of why I needed a business checking account.

Employee #2 came back and said "Here's your cash, sir" and set an envelope down on the desk. I continued telling employee #1 about why I didn't want or need a business checking account, but he interrupted me and asked "Aren't you going to count it? You should count it." His insistence made me nervous that there would be zero cash in there, so I opened it, and yes there was indeed the correct amount of money inside. But in 50s, not 20s like they do at the teller window. I knew it was a bad idea not to go to the teller. I told him "I really have to be getting back to work, so if you have any literature...."

A few more questions along the lines of "How much do you spend on groceries per month, how much on gas, how much on dining out, etc" and I knew the only way out was to politely leave. I told the employee "I have a meeting I have to get to, so if you have some literature, that would be great." He replied, "We can just do the application right now". He obviously had lost his mind somewhere, so I stood up from my seat and said "I really do have to get going now."

He pulled out a business checking pamphlet and his business card, which left a trail of white powder on his desk as he slid them across. We said our niceties, and as I left the bank, I deposited the pamphlet and his business card in the recycling bin. I saw a hand sanitizer dispenser and slathered some on. I pushed my way through the exit, leaving the tellers standing behind bulletproof glass still waiting for a customer. Perhaps I should reconsider depositing at the ATM.

Extra Width

2010-07-01T07:31:00.000-07:00

The day had arrived. The day that would be mixed with unbelievable giddiness and unfathomable oldness. The giddiness was heading out to Palm Springs for my birthday. The oldness would be traveling there driving a minivan. When you get old, you drive a minivan. Fortunately it was only a rental.

My oldest friend in the world (not old meaning age, but old meaning how long we've known each other - since we were 10), Rob, had arrived from New York a few days earlier. Now it was time to pick up a car that could fit the two kids, Lily, Rob, myself, plus the luggage. That's where the minivan comes in.

We had decided just the night before to rent a minivan. Lily wanted to skip the added expense of a rental car, but all of us couldn't fit in our Passat wagon with the child safety seats. So we made a plan to drive both the Passat and my Golf to the desert. It sounded like it could work. But there was also the possibility that one or both cars could break down in the desert, in weather forecast to be above 100 degrees. So I made a car rental reservation online, and we were all set.

At around 10 am, Rob, Judah and I drove the Golf to the car rental site to pick up our minivan. We didn't see any minivans in the lot. Only a few cargo vans. We went inside and I started the rental process with Brandé, handing over my driver's license and credit card. I started having visions of jumping into the swimming pool in Palm Springs. Brandé told me they didn't have any minivans.

This is the part of the story where, if I were Bruce Banner I'd be turning into The Hulk and smashing the crap out of the car rental place. Instead, I opted for questioning why they didn't call me, why they couldn't find a minivan by late morning, etc. Brandé asked if I could wait a few hours until they found one, and I told her to cancel the reservation.

She handed me back my cards, and then asked if I wanted the Escalade instead. Rob and I turned to look out the window and saw a huge black Cadillac Escalade being washed in the carport. "It's being washed now, but it'll be ready in a few minutes" Brandé told us. Rob and I chuckled. "Big Pimpin" said Rob. "It's the perfect birthday mobile, so what the hell, we'll take it" I said to Brandé.

Moments later we were standing around the Escalade going over every inch of the monstrosity looking for scratches and dings. Brandé changed from facilitator to hardened businesswoman in an instant. We knew that she wasn't going to let any scratches through when we got back, so we had to find as many as we could. If there were a magnifying glass there to scan the car, we'd use it. The scratches we did find turned out to be just smudges that would wipe off easily. And soon I was signing the papers to be responsible for the Escalade and driving off the lot.

As I turned onto my street, I noticed stares from the neighbors and got a few jabs about the ridiculous factor. We loaded up the rig and got onto the freeway. It was fun figuring out all the bells and whistles: the navigation system, the USB hookup for music, and the seats with air conditioning inside. It was a comfy ride, albeit a tad unwieldy.

When we arrived at the Viceroy Hotel in Palm Springs, handing keys over to a valet seemed a lot more dicey than usual. The act made me regret not paying for the loss/damage protection at the rental place. But each time we needed the car, the Escalade came back unblemished. I made sure to tip the valet well.

And after the birthday shenanigans were over and we arrived home safely from Palm Springs, we drove the Escalade and the Golf back to the car rental place. As I attempted to make the corner to enter the lot, another renter was driving out. The driver saw me and my huge car and drove very slowly and very closely to make it around the Escalade. "This is where the car gets dinged, right outside the rental joint" I thought. But the other car made it around. I carefully steered around the other cars and found a clearing for the behemoth. I put it in park and breathed a sigh of relief.

Brandé helped us again, and she thoroughly scanned the car for any new damage, but there was none. She asked if the trip was fun. She handed over the completed rental agreement and told me "Happy Birthday".

Hurt

2010-06-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

I remember my days as a lad, when I was young enough to act like a kid, yet big enough to inflict some real pain on my dad. Nothing too major, just jumping down onto him from the top of the sofa while he watched M.A.S.H. or some similar TV show. Paybacks are a bitch.

I should have seen it coming when my sister had her son Josh. When he was about 4 years old, we were sitting in a hammock and my nephew just wound up and clocked me right in the jaw. For no apparent reason.

And then when he was 7, he had one of those yo-yo type toys that isn't really a yo-yo, but it's more like elastic plastic in a string with a squishy thing on the end that looks like a mace. We were playing tug of war with the thing and I was holding the squishy mace end. Josh let go of the other end, the smaller end that goes around your finger, and it snapped back from at least 8 feet across the room directly into my eyeball. Ouch. I had to go to an opthamologist to make sure the blurryness would go away at some point.

And now that my own son is big enough to bring the pain, I'm getting doses of it all the time. He's been into doing some variant of the pro wrestler body slam, and he's into tackling me as soon as I walk in the door from work.

But usually the damage involves some type of swordplay. I bought him a toy lightsaber a while back. One that has sections that expand into full lightsaber glory, and then retracts for ease of using the force by some other means. I got clipped on more than one occasion as he flicked it forward to expand it. Needless to say, the lightsaber has spent many days on the shelf where the boy is unable to reach.

Judah got creative and found a cardboard tube from the middle of a gift wrap roll to use as a sword. I didn't see any harm in that, and getting hit by some cardboard was no big deal. He modified the ends of the cardboard sword with some medium-sized Legos, so it would have a flashy factor to it. I grabbed the lightsaber down from the shelf and we got into our stances, ready to duel. With one good clash of the swords, the Legos flew off the end of his sword, smacking me directly on the lips. Drew blood and everything. I'll never learn.

Paper Cuts

2010-06-03T07:31:00.000-07:00

My inner Martha Stewart got a chance to come out and play the other week when I attempted to build a satellite dish out of paper. The impetus for the arts and crafts session was to remedy my home wireless reception. Which was turning out to be not much reception at all.

Upon finding out that I'd somehow landed a project to be edited at home, I cleared out the storage room behind our garage to use as my studio. Bought shelves for the boxes that would need to move elsewhere. Bought some decent speakers, a desk and a chair. And because the garage isn't connected to the house, but is not too far away, I assumed that the wireless signal would have no problem reaching me back there. Wrong.

I spent a few days with erratic wifi signal before I started looking online for a solution. I didn't want to spend the money on a wifi booster, but even more I didn't want to deal with Best Buy or wait for a shipment, so I searched the internet until I found a homemade solution: A satellite dish made out of paper.

The website contained detailed instructions for printing the satellite pieces from your home printer, cutting on the lines and folding specific areas together, pasting some aluminum foil on the back, and dropping it onto the antenna of the router. Simple.

Except I neglected to read the part about printing it on card stock. So I thought of the next best thing and attempted to paste the pieces onto card stock. Nevermind the fact that I could have just printed it over again onto some card stock, my inertia was rolling too fast to do the sensible thing.

I got out the x-acto knife and cutting board and started cutting the cardstock along the lines of the paper. So far so good. Slice along this line, slice along that. Along one of the longer lines, the slicing was going pretty fast, and the knife ran off the cutting board, off the table, and into my leg. Stabbed me right in the upper thigh.

Because the kiddies and the wife were already asleep, I had to keep the pain noises to a minimum. And because of the ridiculousness of the situation - me sitting in the kitchen bleeding while executing an arts and crafts wifi satellite - I had to keep the laughing to a muffled chuckle. I found a bandage, and soon I found the wifi reception bars in my studio at full strength. Success.

Caught, Can We Get A Witness?

2010-05-27T07:31:00.000-07:00

Shabu-shabu night was finally here. Double date with a couple who were parents of a girl at Judah's preschool. We had plotted it out for over a month. After the trip to Mexico, after their trip to Virginia. After the Dino Fair. Then it would be our time to swish.

The new babysitter from down the block showed up early. The couple and their daughter showed up early. We practically raced each other driving to the Shabu Shabu place. And when we arrived, I realized that I had lost the race, but was pleasantly surprised to find that they had seated us at a quiet, private table. Perfect.

We enjoyed an actual real live adult conversation, without the interruptions of children crying, tantruming, etc. And of course with any good Japanese restaurant experience, we had our share of sake, and a couple large bottles of Sapporo. It kind of reminded us of life before parenthood. Except we had to get back to the sitter, because with three kids on her hands, I could only imagine the mess that might be waiting for us.

On our drive back we pulled up to a stoplight where probably six cars waited. One of those cars was black and white and had a strip of lights on the top. The police car was waiting in the left turn lane. We were situated in the middle lane. I glanced over to my right and noticed a woman in a sedan typing like mad on her Blackberry propped against the steering wheel. I wondered if it was an offense to be texting while stopped at a light. That couldn't really be considered texting while driving if the car isn't moving. Or could it?

I looked over to my left and saw that the officer in the passenger seat of the police car had noticed the texting action too. He rolled down his window and shined his flashlight past my car and into the woman's window. No response. The flickering light didn't divert her attention from the phone one bit. I looked back over to the officer. He tried more intently to get her attention, waving the flashlight back and forth. Nothing.

The light turned green. I began to pull forward, but the officer held his hand out to stop us from going. The police car rerouted into our lane, allowed the woman to go ahead of him, and they turned on the colored lights and pulled her over. I guess that answered my question about texting at a stoplight.

The Message

2010-05-20T07:31:00.000-07:00

Recently I went back to the old stomping grounds, my last place of full-time employment, to bid adieu to yet another former co-worker. I figured that because I didn't want to leave Lily with both kids while I drank beer and ate bbq, I'd take the boy with me. I picked him up from school and we drove to the office. First time back to the old workplace since getting handed my walking papers back in '08. I hardly know anyone there anymore.

My parking karma was functioning and I found a spot right across the street. But Judah wasn't ready to exit the car until "Bulls on Parade" was finished on the stereo. While we sat in the car, I noticed a former co-worker walking up the sidewalk. I rolled down the window and shouted "Linda!" She looked around and spotted us. She was headed to Ralphs to pick up some grub for the bbq, so I offered her a ride so she wouldn't have to carry all the bags back. She hopped in, and we drove around the corner to the market.

Once inside, Judah went nuts grabbing every goodie in sight and saying "I want this candy bar", "I want some ice cream", "I want this can of beans!" I told him we were getting hot dogs and burgers and that was it.

We searched high and low for the dogs, but none could be found. You'd think they'd be next to the burgers, but no dice. Finally we found them next to the over the counter drugs. Good place for them. A woman in a sun hat, not much older than 30 walked right up to us and said "Jesus is coming back! And we're making a video."

Linda, Judah and I turned back to decide what kinds of hot dogs to buy, and the woman kept on ranting. "He's coming for people like you. You'll see. We're making a video for people like you to see." We grabbed a pack of regular dogs and as we walked away, I turned to the Jesus lady and said "and I hope I get to edit the video!"

Seasick

2010-04-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Joyce and I left just enough time to drop off our rented VW bug near the Cozumel ferry station and catch the 7pm boat to Playa del Carmen. We had loaded all our luggage and food into the old bug, drove to the ferry terminal and dropped Joyce and the bags off, then I drove to the nearby car rental shop to return it. I walked back to meet Joyce. She was feeling peckish, so she went in search of nibbles while I stood watch over our pile of stuff.

One of the bags held our traditional mini-keg of Heineken, and we'd remembered to bring paper cups, so I poured myself a beer. I lit a Cohiba cigarillo. It started to rain again. The wind picked up. I glanced at the time and started to wonder if Joyce would make it back in time for the ferry. I poured myself another beer, and an elderly man riding a bike with a wooden homemade luggage cart pointed at it and said something in Spanish. I asked him "how much" in Spanish (one of the few Spanish words I can use with any sort of command) and he replied "only tips". Sold.

The man and I began loading the luggage and bags of food onto his cart. Joyce arrived just in time to start boarding the ferry. We walked past the gate, but the man on the bike had to go a separate path to get to the ferry. I wondered if we'd ever see our stuff again, but there he was waiting by the ferry to help unload our bags.

We took a seat near the front of the ferry. I poured another beer out of the Heinekeg for myself and one for Joyce. Shortly thereafter the ferry boat backed out of the terminal and headed west toward Playa del Carmen. And then the swaying started.

I don't get seasick. Never have. But this boat ride was the rockiest I've ever been on, so my stomach would be tested. Apparently the crew knew that too, because one of the crew members walked down the aisle to pass out barf bags. Not really walking down the aisle, more like being thrown from seat to seat in the aisle path while clutching the handles to stay upright.

It was insane. I could hear several people coughing up barf. Passengers were saying "woaaaaahhhaooohhh" as the ship surged over another huge wave. It started to smell like vomit. But the rolling didn't affect me. When the undulation died down enough, I poured myself another beer from the keg. Somehow, Joyce had the focus to be able to read a book.

I texted my friend Jesse to tell him how crazy the boat ride was. Jesse had originally told me about the ferry from Cozumel, and how the party doesn't have to stop when you get on the ferry. Clearly his party was a much different affair than mine.

The swaying started up again. Luckily I'd finished my beer. The rocking got worse. I could hear more people puking. The crew member lady was thrown in my direction and she offered me a barf bag. I took it. I started to understand how people could get seasick. But now I had more pressing matters to deal with. I had to pee.

Getting to the bathroom would be no easy task. I timed my movements to the lulls in the waves. I got up out of my seat, stood in the aisle holding the handgrips and steadied myself. I waited for another wave to go by. I lurched toward the restroom. There were seats across from the door to the restroom, so I took a seat. Or more like the boat sat my ass down with another sideways swerve.

After another wave, I got up and grabbed the handle to the restroom and opened it. A woman was inside, standing at the sink. I said "sorry" and slammed the door shut as another wave threw me back into the waiting seat. There was another restroom to the left of this one. A crew member was sitting in another waiting seat. He gestured with his arm toward the other restroom. "Would you like to use the restroom?" he asked. I laughed. I didn't have the composure to tell him "How the hell do you expect me to get over to that door right now?!?!??!!" I was too busy trying to counteract the forces of the sea.

At the best point in the wave, I stood up and reached for the door and opened it. Nobody inside this time. The next boat pitch threw me into the bathroom, slamming the door behind me and seating me onto the toilet. I briefly thought about standing up to pee, but I knew that wasn't going to be possible without pissing all over myself.

The bathroom visit completed, the boat jerked me back into my seat next to Joyce. I thought about filling another cup of beer, but my stomach told me that wasn't such a good idea. I gripped the barf bag tightly, hoping I wouldn't have to use it. And then we docked. Passengers couldn't get off the ferry fast enough. We exited the boat into more torrential rain. And to our delight, another man with a bike and a homemade luggage rack waited to carry our bags to the next hotel.

Round and Round

2010-04-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

Despite the torrential rain and forecast of thunder and lightning, Mexicana flight 345 to Cancun landed on time and without incident. And being the optimist that I am, I had left exactly 20 minutes breathing room between landing and takeoff for the last leg of my journey: Puddle-jumping to Cozumel on AeroMexico flight 9713 operated by Maya Air.

When I was originally scheduling flights, I imagined myself darting from the gate in Cancun to the puddle-jumper. I would only have a carry-on bag. And because I would have already flown from LAX to Mexico City, I would've gone through immigration. It would be a quick hop-skip-jump to the next gate. I mean really, how big could the Cancun airport be?

But when I reached the end of the jetway in Cancun, the airport personnel were leading us through a series of barriers to a shuttle in the rain. I briefly considered making a break for it, but seeing's how one of my travel companions had already been detained by the Policia Federal de Mexico and subsequently deported back to the U.S. of A., I stayed with the rest of the herd.

As soon as the shuttle doors opened, I speed-walked to the nearest info booth and said in my best broken Spanish "I'm missing my flight". The nice info people pointed me toward the airport security, where the guy asked for my passport. Flashing before my eyes were scenes from Midnight Express and visions of what my deported friend might have experienced, but the security guy calmly told me to go through the doors and to the left to get to the gates.

I started running toward an unknown destination. I was eventually re-routed back toward ticketing, where I squeezed past the line and up to an AeroMexico ticket agent. I showed her my printed receipt. She quickly looked up the flight on her screen, and then she told me that the flight was operated not by AeroMexico but Maya Air, and that I'd have to go to Terminal 3 instead of Terminal 2, where I was standing. She pointed toward the exits and instructed me to take a shuttle to the correct terminal.

Luckily the shuttle was waiting right outside. I hopped on board and asked the driver if he was going to Terminal 3 and he said "sí". The shuttle rambled around in reverse and slowly wound its way into traffic. The hope of making my flight was sinking. And it hit rock bottom when I arrived inside Terminal 3 and discovered that no flights from AeroMexico or Maya Air depart there. An airport employee instructed me to go to Terminal 1 by using the shuttle outside.

The same shuttle was outisde, so I hopped on. There are only 3 terminals at the Cancun airport, so logically the next one was Terminal 1. The shuttle rambled around in reverse and slowly wound its way into traffic. It drove around for a longer period of time than the last shuttle ride, which I assumed was because it had to start all over again by driving around from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1. I looked out the window and wondered how long the rain would last.

I got off the shuttle, went inside, and saw that we were again at Terminal 2. My flight was most certainly speeding down the runway by this point, so at least the need to rush was over. I got back on the shuttle and specifically asked the driver for Terminal 1. One other guy got on and asked for Terminal 1 as well, so I wondered if the shuttle only went to Terminal 1 when asked for.

The shuttle pulled up to Terminal 1, which was markedly less active than the other two. The other guy and I stepped down from the shuttle and wandered in a direction we assumed was correct, stepping over puddles the whole time. I found the sliding doors, which were stuck in the open position with a soaked piece of cardboard lying in the gap. I couldn't decide whether that was intended as a doormat or just a piece of wet cardboard.

Stepping into the terminal, I was greeted by a scene straight out of I Am Legend. It was dim and there was nobody in sight. The escalator wasn't moving. And it looked as if nobody had been in there in years. The other guy following me seemed to have the same reaction I did, because we both turned and got the hell out of there in a hurry. But we had a bit of a nervous laugh when we tried to make sense of the situation. We walked in the only logical direction, which was along the outside toward three men hanging out smoking.

As we approached the three men, all wearing yellow raincoats, one of them looked up and said something in the fastest Spanish I've ever heard. When he realized neither of us could comprehend what he said, he blurted out "Cozumel?" I knew I'd found my savior. I held up my damp ticket receipt and said "I missed my flight". He tossed his cigarette into a puddle and said "come with me".

We went inside and around a corner to what I assume was the offices of Maya Air. He went behind a desk and stood while typing something onto a laptop. "How many bags to check?" he asked. I pointed at my backpack and told him I didn't have anything to check. He finished his typing and said "We'll be boarding in about 5 minutes. Please have a seat over there."

I couldn't believe it. After all the terminal madness, I was getting on a flight straight away. I sat down opposite a man wearing a suit and reading a newspaper. A few minutes later, a hot young thing in flight gear asked me if I spoke Spanish. She led me and the other man through security, onto the soaked tarmac, and eventually to an airplane suited for 1973. The flight was quick, the view was decent, and we landed without too many bumps.

It was more sunny in Cozumel than it was in Cancun, which wasn't saying much. I wandered away from the airplane and searched for the nearest taxi to take me to the hotel. I rounded a corner and saw a few people cozying up to a mini-cart with a sign that said Margaritaville on it. It was then that I realized I was on vacation.

Always Something There to Remind Me (part 2)

2010-04-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

continued...

I raced over to the nearest Big 5 location, the Brentwood area, cursing every red light along the way. The clock was ticking louder and louder, because I knew that once the children went back outside to play, it was only a matter of time before some kid found my ring and there'd be no telling if they'd be telling.

I arrived at Big 5 and as I passed the cashier saying "can I help you?" I asked "where's the metal detectors". She pointed toward the back and I made a beeline to the goods. For some reason they were situated next to the guns. And nobody was behind the register where the guns and metal detectors were kept, so I briefly considered opening the gate to get to the other side of the counter and grab the metal detector.

It was a good thing I didn't because an employee arrived and opened the gate and it made a loud buzzing noise. I suppose to keep random people like myself from grabbing things like metal detectors or guns. I might as well have been jumping up and down pointing and saying " that one! that one", and the guy handed me the metal detector that happened to be on sale that week for 100 bucks. I practically ran to the front register to buy the thing, but as I made my way, I read on the box that the metal detector needed a 9V battery. Good thing I checked.

My memory of what a 9V battery was or looked like escaped me, but the Big 5 salesperson was on the case. He found the nearest battery display and found a 9V. Those are the batteries that have both the + and - on one end and gives a shock when you press it on your tongue. I brought the metal detector and the batteries to the register, handed over my credit card. I scanned the return policy sign to see if they didn't take metal detectors.

Soon I was out the door, into my car, and racing back to the preschool. But I pulled over after having a vision of getting to school, turning the metal detector on and it not working. I parked in some residential neighborhood in the northwest part of Santa Monica. The only people around were guys with lawnmowers and the elderly. I pulled the metal detector out of the box, half-assedly assembled it and ripped the 9V batteries out of the package.

Upon inserting the 9V into the designated slot in the metal detector, it wouldn't fit. I tried to cram it in more. Nope. I found some random plastic toy in my car to attempt to pry it in more. At that point I knew I'd break the damn thing, so I figured I'd just try to hold the battery in place with my vice-grip of a hand and see if it worked.

Out of the car flew me and my new metal detector. I stumbled over to the nearest lawn and threw my keys on the ground and turned on the metal detector. I didn't know what setting to choose, but I kept pushing buttons until it looked right. I passed the metal detector over the keys. "Beep!" said the detector, and that's all I needed to get back into the car and hurry to the preschool.

When I arrived at the school, I saw that the staff had arranged a bunch of orange safety cones at the perimeter of the sand area around the swings. Most, if not all of the kids were outside playing, but they were respecting the cone area and not playing by the swings. I carried the metal detector in through the gates and children immediately took notice. I mean, as a 3 to 5 year old, how could you not notice a strange contraption like that? So of course the kids started gathering around me, walking with me toward the swings.

And immediately the questions began: "Where did you get that?", "What is that thing?" "What are you gonna do with that?" "Why did you lose your ring?" I explained that it was a metal detector that I bought at the store, and I would use it to find in the sand the hunk of metal buried that was my wedding ring. As soon as I started waving the contraption around over the sand and it beeped a few times, even more children came by to find out what was going on.

A few of the kids started ignoring the safety cone perimeter for a closer look. It beeped so I put the detector down and dug around with my hands a bit only to find a penny. I waved the metal detector around some more and found more change. One of the teachers told the kids to keep their bodies away from the sand so I could search without interference. The children generally listened, but kids can only be expected to keep away from something as exciting as a metal detector for so long. And they started to dig around in the other corners of the sand area.

One kid grabbed a pint-sized plastic shovel and started digging, sending sand everywhere. The thought crossed my mind that sand flinging could potentially be flinging my ring in a direction that I'd already scanned with the detector. So I gently told the kid to scram.

After holding the 9V battery in place for a while, my hand started to feel the burn. I switched the hold of the detector to my other hand and arm. I must have passed over the same area at least 30 times. Things started looking bleak. It was approaching lunch time, and today was "hot lunch" day for the kids. So several of the parents were there to help out. And to witness the sand sweeper action. I received countless more questions from the parents like "What did you lose?" "How did it fall off your finger?" "Are you sure it didn't go over there?" I tried my best to be polite as I showed my re-enactment of the ring flying off my finger, and where the ring would have logically fallen off. The sun beating down on me in the sand area didn't help with the politeness part.

One parent named Basil, the father of a good friend of Judah, came by wearing a suit. He didn't ask questions. Maybe one of the other parents already filled him in. Or maybe he had been in the same situation. Whatever the case, he got down to the business of digging through sand without saying a word. Finally he asked if I had already scanned this area or that, and we narrowed the search down to only the area where the ring always fell off in my re-enactment. I found a metal spike like a nail in the sand, and I was glad that no kid had found it first.

A short while later his wife Jennifer came by and started digging as well. Luckily it wasn't a big week for the local cats to be pooping in the sand area. Jennifer asked if I had dug around by the poles at all. I told her that the metal detector would always beep around the poles, because they're metal, but I had dug around them anyway and didn't find anything. Basil grabbed a large plastic milk crate type container and started sifting sand. We did a few large crates full, and I was about ready to give up. I turned around and Jennifer had a huge smile on her face and she was holding my wedding ring .

I exclaimed "where was it?" and she said "Right here next to the pole". Of course. Exactly where the metal detector was beeping the most. I said a million thank you's, and informed the entire school that my ring was found by Jennifer. I showed them the ring to prove it.

The next day I went back to Big 5 and returned the metal detector without as much interrogation as I expected. I can only imagine that people who buy those things have a specific purpose, and once that purpose is completed, back goes the metal detector.

After that little exercise in sand digging, I decided to keep my wedding ring where it could always be found: Inside the confines of my home. In the ring's place on my finger, I'm considering a ring-sized tatoo that says "Lily". For sure that would never fly off.

Always Something There to Remind Me

2010-04-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

Possibly one of my biggest fears is losing my wedding ring. Not being eaten by a crocodile. Not falling from a skyscraper. But having the symbol of my marriage disappear from my sight, never to be found again. Lily doesn't inspire that fear. Yes, she'd be upset. She'd be more than upset, she'd be really pissed. But she'd forgive me at some point. But I don't think I'd ever forgive myself.

And I know that somewhere in the archives of Lee Lee the Musical Bee, I've written at least once about losing my wedding ring. And one would think that I'd be more careful. And from now on I'm going to be more careful. But in the meantime, I lost my wedding ring.

It was a slightly cool morning at the preschool swings in Santa Monica. Judah and I were doing the daily routine with the rest of his friends: Judah's dad pushes all his friends on the swings. I love it. I'm legendary in their minds. The boys see me and Judah enter through the gate, and they run toward the swings and wait for their turn for a "blast off". Which entails me pulling each of them in a swing back as high as I can, then pushing as hard as is considered safe. It usually sends them high enough to make them think they're going to be launched, but not really.

I'm pushing Judah and his friend Aris, and I've got them going in perfect alternating harmony. I push Aris with the left hand, and Judah on the right swings back in time for another push. As I'm doing this, the thought crosses my mind that my wedding ring is a little loose due to the shrinking of my flesh due to the cool weather, and I think I should probably take it off. But do I listen to this voice of reason? No.

It was getting close to the time when the kids need to get inside for school, and after one good push of Aris, I felt my ring fly off. I immediately stopped pushing the kids and said "nobody move". I did a quick scan of the area where it felt like it may have landed, but no dice. It's sand everywhere, and my ring is made of platinum, and rather heavy as far as rings go. So it could be mere centimeters below the surface of the sand, but out of sight.

I started digging around in the sand, and another dad came up and said "did you lose something?" I replied "my wedding ring". He didn't say anything, but he immediately started digging next to me because I'm pretty sure he knew the gravity of the situation. The school office manager came up and asked the same thing, and next thing you know there were three adults clawing around in the sand digging for treasure.

Luckily the kids had to go inside or it would have made the whole search a lot tougher. One by one the school staff came by asking "did you lose something?" to which I replied "my wedding ring" and they'd be speechless. After a while I started getting the next logical round of questions:

- "Did you see where it flew off?
- "Are you sure it's in the sand and it didn't fly off over there someplace?"
- "How did it fly off your finger?"

As much as one can expect, given the same line of questioning, my answers became more and more curt with every reply. I eventually had to call my work and tell them I lost my wedding ring in the sand at my kid's preschool, and I wouldn't be in until it was found. Luckily it was one of those days where I didn't need to be in first thing.

My digging dad compadre had to leave for work, and as he left he shot me a look that could only say "it was nice knowing you" or "you're a dead man walking" or something to that effect. And the staff person and I were left with those little plastic sand sifting toys that weren't going to do the trick. Finally someone came along and said "you know what might work? a metal detector!"

Because my ring is made of platinum, I wasn't even sure that would work, but the day was starting to get away from me. One of the teachers recommended I call a hardware store to see if I could rent one. I sat down in the teacher's lobby and started my online search on their iMac for nearby hardware stores. I called a few, and each one told me that they didn't rent metal detectors, nor did they know where to find one. I got so desperate that I even called Home Depot, but after the first round of getting shifted from department to department, I hung up.

I Googled "metal detector west los angeles" and found one place near UCLA that sold surveillance gear, so I called. The guy on the phone said that yes he had one, but he wasn't at the store currently. I looked at the clock, which read 10:15 or so, and he said "I might be able to get there around 11." I guess surveillance doesn't need to get going very early in the morning. He told me it would cost around 35 bucks to rent the metal detector for the day, plus deposit, but he wouldn't say what the deposit was. I didn't want to waste any more of my work day, so I decided to bail on the rental idea and just go ahead and buy a metal detector outright at Big 5 Sporting Goods.

to be continued...

Double Nickels on the Dime

2010-04-01T13:08:00.000-07:00

First a shout-out to Mr. Matthew Hegarty, who I met in AZ at Spring Training last week. He came over and asked if I was Lee Lee the Musical Bee, and said he reads the column regularly. I appreciate that, Mr. Hegarty, and it's nice to know that there are people I don't know out there tuning in each week. Makes it all worthwhile.

So on said Spring Training trip to AZ last weekend, we had a nearly unsurmountable task ahead of us: Driving the 400 miles or whatever from LA to Scottsdale to get there in time to see a baseball game. 400 miles. With kids. The online maps said it should take about 6.5 hours. I figured in the kids + my accelerated driving pace = 7.5.

We were making stellar time. We even stopped in the Palm Springs area for a bit of breakfast and to let the kids run around a bit. Driving about an hour out of Phoenix, it appeared that we'd prolly reach the stadium around 12:50. Just in time for the first pitch.

But no, that would be too perfect, now wouldn't it? I heard from the back seat "I have to go potty." Being in the western part of Arizona doesn't leave many restroom options, so I pulled off at the nearest exit to let the boy whiz on the side of the road. But no, that would be too quick and easy, now wouldn't it? He had to go #2. And that wasn't going to be possible on the side of the road.

We found some economy chain motel to stop at, and as I carried the boy in, the guy at the counter said "bathroom? to your left." I guess dad hurriedly carrying child is universal language for bathroom emergency. He took care of his business, and we also changed the baby girl's diaper. An efficient pitstop, but at that point I knew we were cutting it close.

I did what any man on a mission would do: I picked up the pace. Funny thing about AZ that they don't tell you in the visitor guide: There are "photo enforcement" stations all over the friggin' place. At least they have the courtesy to post warning signs before the cameras start snapping unwanted photos. Which is ridiculous, but I wish they'd do that for all speed traps. Like signs on the road saying "cops up ahead" would be great.

However if you miss the "photo enforcement" signs, then you're kinda busted the old fashioned way, without a courtesy notice to slow down. So I'm following this truck who's doing 75 in a 65, and I figure I'd do the same. I must have been distracted by some kid activities/nonsense in the back of the car, because I didn't see any sign but I did notice a couple of flashes go off next to some radar guns mounted on the side of the freeway. Great. I just hope it was for the truck and not me. Or if it was for me, I hope that my mug was obscured by the speeding truck.

At approximately 1:10 we drove up next to the stadium to find zero parking nearby. After driving around for what felt like an eternity, Lily was so kind as to take the wheel and use her parking karma to get us a spot nearby. In typical Angelino fashion, we walked through the ballpark turnstiles just in time for Inning 3. And there I met Mr. Hegarty, and was handed a cold beer by Mr. Alan Chimenti. Best Coors Light I've ever tasted.

Breakfast in America

2010-03-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I took the boy Judah up to the mountains for his first skiing lesson. Because he is a direct descendant of mine, of course he picked it up naturally and schussed past many a fallen skier. One of my many proud moments in fatherhood.

And because I wanted him to get a double dose of ski lessons, I made a plan for us to stay at the nearby cabin owned by our neighbor, so we wouldn't have to make the drive from LA twice. We had a fun time watching "The Jungle Book 2", making a fire in the fireplace, and generally chilling out after a long day on the slopes.

The next morning we lounged around in pajamas, but Judah was getting antsy to explore the outside of the cabin. The sliding glass door leading to the balcony was calling his name, and he was calling back by pounding on the glass. Not wanting to contain the lad any longer, or have him break the glass, I clicked the door lock and attempted to slide open the door. No go. It was being held shut by a security pin at the bottom of the door. I slid the pin up, slid the door open, and we walked out to the deck. I closed the door behind us to keep the heat where it belonged - inside.

Judah had a good time taking fallen branches and scraping chunks from the pile of snow on the balcony, then throwing said snow at his dad. It was sunny and probably 45 degrees, so it was bearable in our jammies. But I was running out of coffee and starting to get chilly, so I told Judah we better head back inside. I grabbed the sliding door and pulled on it, but it didn't budge. I pulled again. The door only moved a few centimeters and stopped. The pin. The pin at the bottom of the door fell into the hole when I closed it. Brilliant.

When I informed Judah of our situation, he basically ordered me to open the door. At least he appeared to think the situation wasn't as dire as I thought. I looked at him in his little Paul Frank pajamas and wondered how long it would be before he was crying because it was too cold. I tried a few times to pull the door open that few centimeters and poke a stick in the gap in hopes that I could lift the pin. But there was no way I could even see the pin.

I rocked the door back and forth a few times to see if the pin would lift up. I guess my brute strength got away from me, my attempts intensifying until finally the door made a pop sound and slid open. I grabbed Judah by the hand and went inside and closed the door. I looked down at the pin area and saw that the sheath holding the pin in place was bent all to hell. But lucky for me I'd brought my Leatherman along for the trip and I was able to bend it back into place. Good as new. Sorta. I put the cabin keys into one pocket and my phone into the other. Another one of my many proud moments in fatherhood.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

2010-03-18T07:31:00.000-07:00

It was a St. Patrick's Day party, one with adults drinking Guinness and kids drinking juice boxes. My kid ran over to me saying "Dada, dada! Let's play baseball!" He had a gray plastic kid-sized bat in one hand and a fluorescent green tennis ball in the other. I put down my bottle of beer and grabbed the ball from Judah. I threw a slow, underhand pitch to him and he hit it fairly well, knocking it to the tree on my left.

I threw it to Judah again and again, and his batting average was starting to blow my mind. Probably somewhere around .400. Not bad for a four-year-old who doesn't visit the batting cages very often, or at all. I thought it was time to stop when he hit the ball toward the windows of the garage and knocked over some decorative bamboo poles. But some of the other kids saw how much fun he was having, so they started to congregate next to him.

I told Judah we'd better put the baseball bat down so we don't break anything, but he wanted one more swing of the bat before handing it over to the others. I threw it to him and he hit the ball solidly and it nailed me right in the crotch. One other kid ran over yelling "My turn! my turn!" Yeah, right. Like I was gonna allow that to happen again. I was taking my ball and going home.

Wait a Minute, Mister Postman

2010-03-11T07:31:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago on a Saturday I was out running errands with the boy Judah. Most of the time that involves either going to the bank or going to the post office. Sometimes it's both.

I've got a stack of envelopes and I pull up to the drive-up mail deposit box and throw a bunch of envelopes into the slot. Easy enough. Then I run some other errands like buying coffee beans, and so on. Exciting stuff.

Then we drive to the bank and get out and walk over to the area where you fill out the deposit slips. I've got a few checks, so I start filling out the deposit slip, and then I notice that one of the larger checks is missing. And then it hits me: The check went into the mail slot with the rest of the envelopes.

By this time, it was getting close to Judah's soccer practice, and he loves his soccer practice. And after soccer practice the post office would surely be closing early for the weekend. So I called Lily to tell her that I dropped the check in the mailbox, and hopefully she'd be able to pick it up.

Out of the goodness of her heart, she went to the post office as soon as she could, with the baby girl in tow, and the nice people at the post office were so kind as to open the box up and find the check for us. Hooray!

That little lesson was short-lived because I did it again yesterday. At least this time I realized I dropped the check in the mailbox as soon as I drove off. I did a u-turn and pulled back into the green-strip 30 minute street parking area in front of the Culver City post office, after being yelled at by an elderly man getting out of his SUV that had a handicapped placard hanging from the rearview mirror.

Luckily the standard 20-person line wasn't happening, so I only had to wait through two people before it was my turn. I went up to the counter and told the dreadlocked postal worker that I accidentally dropped my check in the box outside. His already deadpan face went more deadpan as he swiveled his chair around without saying a word. He disappeared from sight for a bit and I wondered if he just decided to leave. I probably would if I were him. But he reappeared with the key and made his way from behind the counter to go outside.

As he walked by, the smell of pachouli invaded my nostrils. "Which one?" he asked. "The middle one" I replied. He opened the bottom of the box and pulled out a white bin that the mail falls into. I always imagined those mailboxes crammed full of mail, but this one wasn't even half full. Or was it half empty? Anyway, he started flipping through envelopes and I reached out to flip through some too. He stopped, looked me in the eye and said "You CAN'T touch the mail" in a very serious, commanding tone. I folded my hands behind my back, as if to show him I understood the seriousness.

It appeared that hunching over for 10 seconds and flipping through envelopes was hurting his back, because he muttered "I can't do this" and stormed back inside the post office. I followed, keeping my hands folded behind my back. He put the bin onto a table and started flipping through again. He muttered "gah, another bin" and went behind the counter to get another bin.

When he returned, he started tossing groups of envelopes into the 2nd bin. "Did the check have a stamp on it?" he asked. "No" I replied, thinking he meant "did you intend to mail this check?" He dumped more envelopes into the 2nd bin. "I'm only gonna look for envelopes without a stamp" he stated as I wondered how the hell he was going to see anything through the blur of envelopes descending before us.

I told him "Okay, it's around here, cuz those are my wife's stamps." And next to those was my check, which was stamped from the employer mailing it to me. I pointed at it, so's not to touch any mail. His face went even more deadpan. "So it DID have a stamp on it" he said as he handed me the check. He dumped the rest of the mail into the 2nd bin. "Thanks" I said while hurrying out of there in what was probably one notch below actual running.

If there's one lesson learned, a rule of thumb, that would be: Go to the bank first, then the mailbox.

Talk Talk

2010-03-04T07:31:00.000-08:00

A while back I was editing a music video for a new director. He wanted me to edit at his studio, so I'd go there at night after my day job. On a nightly basis I'd meet some random new person I hadn't met before, all of them young fashionable kids who seemed fresh out of art school. 25 years old, maybe 27 tops, but nobody appeared to be anywhere close to my age.

Then one night I went in and saw one guy sitting at a computer who looked like he could have been 60 years old. More telling than his age, he seemed out of place with his level of cleanliness. He was disheveled in a way that looked like he might not have showered in a week, and his clothes probably hadn't seen a washer in a while either. Luckily he didn't stink.

Being the polite and friendly guy I am, I went over and introduced myself. Mainly to find out what his role at the studio was, because my noodle was having a hard time making sense of his presence in the studio. He turned around and shook my hand (which I kept away from everything until I could get to some sanitizing gel) and he told me his deal.

He launched into stories about how he used to be into computers and how he had a real estate business, and that's when I noticed at least 3 of his front teeth were missing. I couldn't get a word in edgewise as he told me about his furniture making companies and how his wife left him and finally we got to the place I knew we were heading: He was homeless.

Apparently the director had just met him on the street that night, and the director hired him to make silkscreens and tatoo logos all over Venice. I figured I had enough info to make sense of the situation and to get back on track with trying to get work done. But the guy never took a pause long enough to escape politely. It's then that I put two and two together and figured the guy was probably a lot younger than he looked because he was a meth burnout.

Finally I was rescued by the director, who had been giving instructions to one of the art school graduates. He turned around and said "Hey could you guys keep the conversation down? I can't even hear what I'm saying here." Yeah. You guys. Plural. I don't think I'd voiced a single word since "Hi, I'm Lee". It was all meth beast from that point on.

I said "Excuse me, I think I better get to work" and I went upstairs. While I was editing, all I could hear was the homeless guy rattling on about this and that, and when somebody played a new wave tune from the 80s he said "Right on man, is that Pink Floyd or somethin?" The director shouted downstairs to the guy that he was going to have to stop talking or he'd be kicked out of the studio. He was booted shortly thereafter. Surprise surprise.

Gish

2010-02-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago at my last gig, I noticed that something was amiss in my little edit room. Generally I like to keep a tidy workspace. No extra clutter cluttering the room. No empty coffee mugs lying around. Pens and papers in their proper places. But on this day something didn't feel quite right.

I took a step back from the console and I finally saw the problem. There were two extra chairs in the room. Two extra chairs making my little edit room littler. So I did what any borderline obsessive compulsive editor would do: I walked out of the room and began searching for a place to put these extra chairs.

The answer lay right next door in the adjacent little edit room, which had only the editor's chair inside. Plenty of room to house the two extra chairs. So I rolled each chair into the other room. As I went to close the door, my attention was diverted from the closure of closing the door. My hand slipped off the door handle and into the area where the door latches into the doorframe. Bang. Ouch. My middle finger was smashed and gashed and immediately started bleeding profusely.

As I went searching for the medical cabinet, I couldn't help but think "Why did I do that? My room was fine with the extra chairs. I could have kept on working without this smashed bleeding finger which impedes using the tools I use for working. Why?" I found the healing gel and some bandages and kept the bleeding to a minimum.

In the following days, I made the extra effort to heal the wound as quickly as possible. I made sure to keep a fresh bandage and ointment on the finger at all times. And in a week, the finger was almost completely healed.

Did I learn to accept the fact that sometimes people leave their chairs and junk in my little edit room? Did I learn to accept clutter? Hell no. I learned that, with just the right amount of obsessiveness, I can do anything.

Rooster

2010-02-09T22:32:00.000-08:00

It was inevitable. Simply by having a goddamn e-mail address it was inevitable. I received some nude pictures via e-mail today. Nude pictures of some random person, inadvertently sent to my e-mail address. And it couldn't possibly be pictures of a nude hot woman. No. Women probably don't send nude pics nearly as often as men. It had to be pictures of a dude. And not just nude pictures of him. But up close and HELLO yes very very personal pictures of his junk. Rightfully so these pictures landed in the "Junk" mailbox.

I don't know why, but for some stupid reason I always need to know what the unread junk mailbox count is all about. Usually it's about choosing the right contractor to upgrade my house. Or it's spam for flowers this Valentine's Day. But today it was two innocent looking mails from what looked like a personal e-mail address.

I clicked on the first one and was exposed to two shirtless upper torso pics of a guy, photographed in a mirror, who looks like he's frequenting the clubs. I clicked on the second link and within less than a second it was HOLY CRAP RIP MY EYES OUT NOW!!!! This while I was at work, with no NSFW warning from this pornographer. Before that second deadly click, I vaguely remember having some thought shoot across my mind about "don't click on that second one". And then the ick bomb landed. I've heard of people sending nude pics, but for everyone's sake please verify the address first before hitting the send button. Can't we just get rid of e-mail altogether? Ick.

Word Up

2010-02-04T07:31:00.000-08:00

Lily sent me an e-mail the other day with the subject line: Note to self - Don't enter this film fest.

She found the following posting on a parents online forum in LA. Posted by the founder and producer of the film fest which shall remain unnamed, because... well, just because. And the film fest is here in LA, the capital of like all the movies in the entire universe!

The Microsoft Word program driving me crazy. It shows me a kind of q
looking character with an extra line every time I hit return.

I cannot figure out what to turn off to make it stop.

Please help.

What year is it? 1993? Yeah, Word has been making the "q looking thing" every time you hit return for decades now. And to make it go away you hit the very same "q looking" button on the toolbar to do what Microsoft calls "hide". No more wacky q thing everywhere. Or any of the other formatting that you may or may not want to see.

Thankfully most films don't have words on the screen. Or q-looking characters. Otherwise she might have a real problem getting films into her fest. Note to self: Don't enter that film fest.

I've Been Tired

2010-01-28T07:31:00.000-08:00

Every day we drag our asses out of bed for one reason or another. I do it because I need drag the boy Judah's ass out of bed for one reason only: to get his ass to preschool.

Part of getting him ready involves making him breakfast. In my half-awake stupor, the best thing is always pre-prepared food. I'm not talking microwaveable McMuffins or unhealthy junk like that. It's more like food that I can pull out of the fridge or cupboard, tear it open, and put it in front of the little tyke. Mainly it's yogurt squeezers and oatmeal. Those are pretty easy to make when your brain is only saturated with half a cup of coffee.

Grab tube o' yogurt from fridge. Tear open. Hand to child.

It's that simple. And the boy is cool with that for now. But just one yogurt squeezer isn't going to fuel his four-year-old activities until snack time at preschool. So I generally try to give him something else like a bowl of oatmeal to round out the half-asleep breakfast prep. And the oatmeal prep is just about as easy as the yogurt.

Grab packet 'o oatmeal from cupboard. Tear open. Pour into bowl. Add hot water. Stir and let cool. Hand bowl to child.

It's a few steps more complicated than the yogurt squeezer routine, but not much more complicated. Or so I thought. Last week during the oatmeal prep, I did the steps: Grab packet 'o oatmeal from cupboard. Tear open. Pour into trash can.

Wait, pour into trash can? Yep. Opened the packet of oatmeal and just poured it right into the trash can. Judah witnessed this and shouted "WHY DID YOU DO THAT?!?!?!?!!" Apparently he's a lot more awake than I am first thing in the morning. And a lot more hungry. I could only chuckle as I grabbed another packet of oatmeal to try again. Maybe I need a more simple breakfast routine.

Grind

2010-01-21T07:31:00.000-08:00

As has been well documented, I have a fairly decent coffee addiction. Luckily my current workplace has a coffee making system that requires no more than grabbing a filter, opening a packet of grounds, pouring grounds into filter, and pushing the "brew" button. Monkey push button.

I've made more than my fair share of coffee at the office. For some strange reason, almost every time I go to grab the steel pot of coffee, there's none left. I have no idea how an empty pot of coffee happens, because nobody in their right mind would ever walk away from the coffee machine empty handed.

The office coffee setup has two types of Starbucks packets:
1. Sumatra - a dark roast
2. House Blend - a medium roast
The steel pots even have velcro affixed little tags with the Starbucks logo that say "Sumatra" or "House Blend", so you know what kind of java to pour.

When I first started working at this office, I just grabbed whichever was available. But now that I'm off the cream and sugar, my taste buds are much more in tune with the differences between the two. I never realized how burnt and bitter the Sumatra tasted until I tried it black. The House Blend actually has a pleasant flavor, so I only drink that, and I avoid Sumatra like the plague. Even in the deepest darkest throes of the morning coffee jones, if only Sumatra is ready, I'll wait until I've had a chance to brew some House Blend.

This morning when I went to the office kitchen, I saw that the Sumatra pot was in the brewing station, not the warming station. Not a good sign for the likelihood of the House Blend availability. I picked up the pot and did a little swirling motion to feel if there was anything left, and I was in luck. As I was pouring the coffee of choice into my favorite black mug, a lady who was apparently in full coffee fix mode walked over toward the machine.

"Thank God for Sumatra." she proclaimed while staring blankly at the coffee machine.
I set down the House Blend pot and started walking back toward the edit room.
"Thank God for coffee" I replied as I brought the mug up to my lips to take a sip.
As I walked away, I heard her say "It's better than that weak House Blend shit that some people drink."

I didn't know what to make of that comment, but I chuckled as I took a sip and kept on walkin. I guess some people's brains don't turn on until they get their first cup o joe too. Just like mine.

Help!

2010-01-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

Guest writer Mrs. Linkey-Loo relayed a story this week too good to pass up:

Standing in line to buy Spring Training Tix:
Behind me was an old grouchy guy followed by a SF Police Captain and a Highway Patrol. A minute after 10am (tix went on sale at 10), a guy comes running up, panting,
"There's a guy down the block. I think he's hurt. He's laying face down on the sidewalk, not moving."
The officials just stand there.
Cop: "Is he homeless?"
Guy: "No, no - his definitely not homeless. His bike is on the ground, he looks hurt!"
CHP: Sure he's not homeless, huh?
Guy: "NO! NO! He needs help."
Then a woman runs up, sharing the same info. Finally the cop calls in for help. Neither of these guys was going to lose their place in line.

High Fidelity

2010-01-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

Ever since we got our HDTV for the living room about a year ago, I'd been jonesing for an HDTV in the bedroom. And to give myself a kick in the rear to get the TV purchase moving, I swapped out our SD bedroom cable box for an HD one. Months went by and I was still watching the HD to SD downconvert in the bedroom.

On a routine Costco mission, I spent more time in the TV section than usual, and I finally settled on a nice 26" Vizio box. I showed the missuz, and she didn't like it. What did I expect? She didn't think we needed another HDTV in the house. This coming from the person who gets to watch her Bravo network addiction in full SD glory on an HDTV, while my viewings of SportsCenter have dwindled to maybe an hour total a week.

But Lily eventually came around while we were still in the Costco, and she thought that the new, thinner Vizio LED 23" TV would be a welcome addition. Being the research freak I am, I couldn't bear to bite the $299 bullet without finding out every last detail of what this LED TV was made of.

Days later I still couldn't decide. Suddenly I remembered the HD LCD computer monitor that I had purchased a few months back for editing. It was HD. It had 1080p capability. And I'd only paid 150 bucks for it. I pulled it out of its hiding spot in the closet and hooked it up HDMI style, and bingo! Glorious High Definition Television in the bedroom! Needless to say that sucker stays fixed on pictures coming from ESPN.

But the sound. Oh the sound. That little computer monitor was never meant to pipe out decent audio, now was it. Besides that, I had no way of controlling the volume through the remote. That would be so pre-1980 to have to walk over three steps to the monitor to turn the sound up or down. Besides, I'd have to get off my lazy horizontal ass in the bed to do it as well. Time to research some speakers...

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-24T08:26:00.000-08:00

See you in 2010!

Break In Case of Anything

2009-12-17T07:31:00.000-08:00

Like every good citizen these days, I'm trying to be more earth friendly. And like every citizen who wants to stay healthy, I'm trying to get more vitamin C. These two worlds collided recently at work. The workplace where I was, uh, working had some little mini-cartons of orange juice. Funny thing about mini-cartons: There's no need to use anything but the carton to drink it. No straw is necessary. Sure, big cartons like milk cartons are for pouring into a glass unless you want to get the stink-eye from your wife as you put the milk carton up to your lips.

So I was dumbfounded when I found that these OJ mini-cartons at work had a mini-straw in a mini-plastic sheath glued to the side. Not too earth friendly if you ask me. The mini-carton was labeled "poke straw through side" or some shite like that. No way. I was out to prove that mini-carton mini-wrong by opening up the carton the way good citizens did before the advent of the mini-straw. Forget the fact that the straw had already done its earth damage by existing in the first place, I wasn't gonna use it. I figure I'd save it for somebody who might want to use it to snort drugs or something. Something the mini-straw was probably needed for more than drinking out of a mini-carton.

I started to rip open the front of the mini-carton just like you do any other carton, and here's how successful I was:

Yep. Not gonna pour OJ down the front of my shirt. Vitamin C: 1, Earth: 0.

LAX

2009-12-10T07:31:00.000-08:00

A few weeks back I took my first solo flight in quite some time. It's amazing how quickly you can get through check-in and security without having to wrangle kids. My flight was departing at 7:30 am, which meant I had to be ready to board by 7, which meant I should probably be arriving at the airport at 6. Which meant I'd be getting up before the crack of dawn.

So I prepped everything as best I could the night before and set everything by the door so I wouldn't be making a bunch of noise and waking up the baby Blaise. Being the obsessive traveler I am, it was a foolproof plan.

But I am a fool. After getting up and somehow ready to head out earlier than scheduled, I went to grab my keys. They weren't near the door. Not anywhere near the door. Soon I was tiptoeing around the bedroom with a mini Maglite searching through jackets and pants pockets hunting for keys. Clock ticking loudly. I must have gone back and forth through every room twice before noticing the keys hanging off the edge of a canvas Trader Joe's shopping bag that was hanging off the edge of a dining room chair.

Next I'm pulling my car into short-term parking at LAX near the US Airways terminal. I'm making note of what level the car is parked on, and I'm briskly walking across the skybridge over the LA airport traffic jam below. Security is fairly easy, seeing's how I have no kids to manage and I only have a carry-on bag and my backpack.

I wanted to get coffee, but I thought I'd better get some rest on the first leg of the flight. I estimated I'd get some shuteye, land, get up in the air again just in time for beverage service right before the caffeine withdrawal headache hit. Turns out the flight was so quick that I didn't have a chance to get any sleep.

And now I was in Las Vegas for 30 minutes before my next flight started boarding. So I did what any red-blooded American stuck in an airport in Las Vegas would do: gamble. Not that there's much action in the airport except slots, so I pulled out my wallet and found some singles.

I fed one into a slot machine. The machine spit the dollar out. I fed it back in. It spit it out. I grabbed a different dollar and fed it in. It spit the new dollar out. Since I wasn't getting any gambling done, I did my own mental gamble and thought "if this other machine doesn't take the dollar, then I'm done." I reached over to the next machine and fed it a dollar. It spit it out. Obviously somebody didn't want me gambling, so I took the hint and opted for some food instead. I grabbed some type of pocket pita thing and headed to the gate.

We got into the air and the caffeine withdrawal headache started to introduce itself. By the time beverage service made it to my seat, I had to ask for two cups of coffee. Who the hell could predict when they'd be back around? Knowing US Airways, probably never. The coffee was so bad that I had to break my streak of drinking coffee without cream and sugar. I downed both cups at just below scalding temperature strictly to kill the oncoming headache. Disaster averted.

I had planned to use some of the plane ride to work on a music video, so I pulled out my laptop and portable drive, inserted the earbuds and got down to business. 20 minutes into it, one of the male flight attendants came by and asked if I wanted another cup of coffee. I pulled out one of the earbuds and said "no thanks". As he turned to walk away, I thought I heard him say "Do you have enough stuff?" It's just a laptop and a mini-drive. Jeez.

We landed, I did the meet and greet, and before you know it I'm back on a plane to Los Angeles. This time the flight was completely full, as in zero seats available and I get seated next to a guy in the middle seat who doesn't fit in a middle seat. I bailed on the idea of doing anymore in-flight editing. A few cramped hours later I'm back on the ground in LA.

As I walked past security, I could see a skybridge to the parking garage, and a sign with an arrow pointing in that direction which said PARKING GARAGE. Sweet, I don't have to go all the way down and back up again, I can just go across. I was so sure it had to be a trick that I asked the security people "Can I really go straight across to the parking garage?" The security guards looked at each other, then both looked at the PARKING GARAGE sign, then back to me and nodded. Must be my lucky day.

Halfway across the parking garage, I noticed that I was walking toward a parking structure that wasn't the same one I drove into the day before. I turned around and walked back into the terminal, only now I had to go downstairs to get past security. And to be able to walk on the ground level to get to the right garage.

I got outside and saw the right garage and started walking towards it. And then I noticed that wasn't the right parking garage either. Suddenly I realized why I wasn't where I thought I should be. Because the outbound flight was on US Airways, and the return was Northwest. Completely different sides of the airport. Not just any airport. LAX.

And because it's LAX, getting from one side to the other ain't easy. I decided to take my chances and use a skybridge to the nearest parking structure and hope to be able cross the middle to my parking structure. One broken elevator and a flight of stairs later, I was able to cross a skybridge and I found out that no, you can't cross. You must go down from the skybridge to the ground and walk around no man's land, the section in the middle of LAX.

I felt like some sort of refugee with my rolling carry-on as limo after limo passed me. Remarkably I walked by two or three other people who appeared to be in the same boat as I was in, rolling their bag around searching this way and that to find out how to get back to their cars.

Things started looking familiar and I found the right parking garage. Because I was parked on a higher level, I pressed the up button on the elevator. Waited. Apparently it was broken. I took the stairs. Took them up a flight too far. Came back down and finally reached my car. I estimated that the whole excursion probably cost me an extra 10 parking bucks in foot travel time. I drove to the cashier. 60 dollars. Next time I'm taking the bus.

Skinny Puppy

2009-12-03T07:31:00.000-08:00

The hours to write this week's post have been whittled away by work. In the post's place, I offer up this very strange inadvertent e-mail I received during the past week. It involves ferrets, Shasta, and the name Lebowski.

Mr. Moustache

2009-11-19T07:31:00.000-08:00

I've sported a goatee for about eight years straight. Early stages included the moustache part that most men grow when they decide to grow a goatee. I liked the facial hair aspect, but the moustache was way too itchy, so I shaved the moustache off and kept the goatee. It's been that way for about eight years straight now.

Last year a co-worker of mine tipped me off to an event called "Movember". The idea behind Movember is that during the month of November, men grow a moustache to raise awareness for men's health issues. I thought it would be fun and for a good cause, so I let the moustache begin.

A few days later I saw a dad at Judah's school sporting a Fu Manchu. I asked if he was doing the Movember thing, and he said "Naw, it was for my Halloween costume, but I thought about doing the Movember thing." Even though he wears a suit and tie for work every day, I told him the 'stache looked awesome and he should keep it going. Later that week he still had the Fu Manchu. Movember, I realized, was more fun when when somebody you know was doing it too.

The dark side of Movember creeped up when I was reminded of the itchy aspect of having a moustache. I decided to shave of the vertical connectors between the moustache and the goatee in hopes that the itchyness would go away. It didn't. But it was suddenly looking a lot more like a full moustache, and I felt like Johnny Depp playing Captain Jack Sparrow channeling Keith Richards, minus the acting talent Johnny Depp has. And the good looks.

One night while reading a bedtime story to Judah about a shark with a false moustache, he looked over and started studying my face and said "are you growing a moustache?" I told him that it was only for a little while. He thought you could take off the moustache like the shark from his book. He pulled on it a little bit, then we went back to reading about the shark with the false moustache.

Lily came back from a weeklong business trip, and she asked if I was growing a moustache. Here I was thinking that I had already grown the moustache, but apparently not quite there yet according to the wifey. Or the kid. So I told her the deal about Movember and how it's for a good cause, yada yada yada. She said "I don't like it. Can you shave it off?" But Movember wasn't over yet. November wasn't over yet. But, but...

But here was my out. My perfect excuse to end the itchyness. Can't really have the wife's face gettin all scratched up every time I try to smooch on her, can I? If the missuz says it's gotta go, then it's gotta go. And now it's gone, and so is the itch. I shaved it while Lily and Judah were out to soccer practice, so they'd be surprised when they came back. That night while reading bedtime stories, Judah asked why I shaved my moustache. I told him that it was too itchy. Funny thing is, after Lily asked me to shave it, she hasn't said anything about it. I wonder if she noticed. Still waiting...

No Time This Time

2009-11-12T07:31:00.000-08:00

I've noticed a surge in the amount of inadvertent e-mails lately. So many that instead of just trashing them, I'm taking the time to write back to these folks and telling them "unintended recipient" or something along those lines, so the mailbox won't fill up so fast.

But yesterday the e-mailbox really got inundated with some seriously inadvertent e-mails. Within a span of 20 minutes, somebody named Leroy signed up for Cybererotica, RealNude GFs (whatever nudie thing GF means), Total DVD pass (family-oriented DVDs I'm guessing, based on the company these registration e-mails kept), and Raunchy GF (there's that GF thing again). The funny thing was that these registration e-mails were arriving at around 9 am. Bad case of Morning Wood? Maybe?

On the other end of the spectrum, somebody named Laura was supposed to receive this e-mail:

Hey Laura,
I haven't been on my other email, xocuppiecake21, in so long that I can't remember the password to log in! haha
So I just created this account, can you send the slides to this one? And I will be sending you my slides soon, I am just finishing up!
For the vocab. slides if you don't think some of the words are neccessary you can just delete them, but let me know cuz I'll take them out of the crossword puzzle.
And should I just print out like 30 copies of the puzzle or something cuz I think we were supposed to have her copy them in advance, but I just remembered that now
Thanks!!

xocuppiecake 21 is really jazzed about crossword puzzles I guess. Perhaps I'll hook Leroy and Laura up and see what kinds of crosswords they can come up with.

Date With Ikea

2009-11-05T07:31:00.000-08:00

With Judah's school closed and my freelance work flow screeching to an sudden halt, I decided to make use of our downtime by shopping for some furniture. And maybe chow down on some Swedish meatballs.

Geographically we live equal distances from two Ikeas, one in Burbank and one in Carson, so I let the traffic map be our guide. Yep, 405 North is a parking lot. Carson it is. A short while later we found ourselves in the Ikea cafeteria scarfing down a breakfast of scrambled eggs, potato wedges and the most thinly sliced bacon ever. Or maybe it was just me doing the scarfing. Judah was busy playing at some kid germ-catcher kiosk. Then it was off to the showroom.

I tried to restrain myself from buying a bunch of useless particle-board crap, but I quickly realized that was the whole reason I was inside an Ikea in the first place. We picked up a sturdy bed for Judah to replace that ridiculously expensive bed with ridiculously shabby construction that we had returned a while back.

And Lily wanted a small-ish cabinet thingy that could house some of the boxes of jewelry and trinkets that were amassing in our bedroom. I grabbed a bunch of other stuff along the way like a few lamps and a new nightstand for myself.

I always seem to forget about one major component of any trip to Ikea - the interactive part when you get home. The part where you, the consumer, get to assemble your furniture. The part where you spend a lot longer than you imagine it would take. Add to the mix a 3-year-old boy trying to hammer any piece he can get his hands on, plus a 1-year-old girl trying to eat those Ikea wooden plug connectors, and it takes that much longer to fend them off while trying to assemble your furniture. The kiddies won the battle, and I left the construction for another day. Or two. Or three.

Naturally, Lily's semi-constructed cabinet was scattered in pieces around our bedroom until I could gather some time without munchkins around to put the rest of it together. A few nights later I entered the room in the dark only to stub my toe on the cabinet skeleton. That was when I found the motivation needed to complete the job.

It was going rather quickly once I enlisted the help of my drill to drive in the screws. I even let Judah hammer in some of the connecting pieces. The only thing left to do was the bottom of one of the drawers. In my haste, I picked up the thin piece of wood/particle-board junk and wound up scraping my forehead with the corner. Ouch. Now I had a reminder (a huge band-aid across my forehead) to think twice about rushing off to Ikea. Except there's that EFFEKTIV storage combination I wanted to buy. And the Swedish meatballs I never got last time.

99 Problems

2009-10-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been using the iPhone instead of the old iPod to play music. It has a playlist that comes with iTunes that's called "Recently Added". It automatically includes whatever new music you've recently added (duh) to your music library.

And I have some new music that I want to listen to. So I go to that playlist on my phone and try to find the new music I want to listen to, and it's all jumbled! Not jumbled like gibberish that you can't read, but jumbled like the artists and songs appear to be in no discernable order. Not alphabetical by artist or song, not by date added, nuthin. Just a track here or there that has no rhyme or reason for being there, and no way to find the desired track other than scrolling through the entire list until that one comes up. It's annoying, but a minor annoyance at best.

My workaround had been to just go back and find the artist and the song I want and play it that way. That worked just fine. But being the dork that I am, I needed to find the answer to make the playlist sort correctly. And I found that answer on some random online forum. I also found that we iPhone/iPod users need a reality check for what's minor and what's devastating. The playlist thing? Probably wouldn't ever qualify as devastating. But reading some of these posts, you'd think the world was coming to an end, solely based on an incorrectly sorted song playlist. What the hell will happen to them if their hair got messed up by these gusty winds? Or god forbid a piece of debris flies into their eye. OMFG.

Moving Pictures

2009-10-22T07:31:00.000-07:00

As reported previously in this space, on our drive to preschool every morning I try to play new music for Judah. I believe I've uncovered the prog rocker in him, because from the moment I first played "Tom Sawyer" by Rush, that's all he wants to listen to. Like for weeks now, that's all he wants to listen to. I get in the car and pull out the iPod and say "What do you want to hear today?" and the answer from the back is "Rush". And by saying "Rush" he means "Tom Sawyer".

At the end of the song, I usually try to let it carry over into Red Barchetta. But we've never made it very far into the song before he tells me he wants to hear that last song again. I love hearing that very first sound in Tom Sawyer, but after a while of repeated listens it begins to lose its luster. So one day I decided to skip over Red Barchetta into YYZ. Now the boy rocks out in the back, literally rocking back and forth, fists pumping, copying his dad trying to air drum copy Neil Peart playing YYZ. Believe me, the translation ain't pretty, but it's cute to see the kid go off like that.

And because the repeated plays of Tom Sawyer followed by YYZ never ends in a way that coincides with our arrival at preschool, there's bound to be problems. The boy wants to hear Rush and he wants to hear an entire song. Stopping in the middle of YYZ would never do. It must resolve completely. But I've been fortunate enough to be able to reason with Judah and tell him that we'll pick it up where we left off. And he says it back to me in a very serious manner, telling me that tomorrow morning after brushing teeth and putting on sunscreen and putting on shoes and getting in the car, we'll listen to the rest of it.

So he trusts that I'll stand by my word. That is, trusted until yesterday when I got into the car and the iPod was out of juice. Lucky for me, Lily bought me one of those dock extra battery thingies where you plug it into the bottom of the iPod and it gives it new life. I plugged it into the iPod and a few seconds later the screen reappeared. I navigated to YYZ and pressed play. Judah immediately objected and stammered that it wasn't where we were supposed to be in the song. When the iPod runs out of juice, it also loses its bookmark, losing our place in the Rush tune. Judah let out a full on "noooooooooooooooooo" and started crying. That's the power of Rush.

Tight N' Shiny

2009-10-15T07:31:00.000-07:00

I let the dirt pile up on our cars for about a month. It was time for their bath. The last few trips to the local hand wash places weren't really doing the trick, so I took matters into my own hands. Problem was that Lee's car wash was always external only. So the insides of the cars were in serious need of a vacuum and a decent wipedown. In other words, time to get down to business.

The last few times I washed the cars, I let Judah in on the fun. He loved spraying the cars with the hose. But the last time he used more water spraying the driveway than the cars. So this time I waited until his nap to get started. I pulled both cars into the driveway and started spraying and sudsing up the vehicles. About mid-way through, I thought "I wonder if I'm gonna hear the obligatory crack where somebody asks if they should pull their car up next in line." And bingo, about 2 minutes later some passerby says "Should I pull my car up behind these? Heh heh!" I put on my best fake smile so's not to seem like a grump.

I brought out the dustbuster for some sand removal in the Passat. Judah likes to take his shoes off in the back seat every day after school, and the sand from the swing area gets deposited in the carpet. I have no idea how that swing area can have any sand left after every kid probably deposits the same amount of sand in the back seat of their car at the end of the day. There was so much sand cemented into the carpet that the dustbuster wasn't cuttin it, and I had to bring out the vacuum cleaner. I even Windexed the windows. I got so medieval on the cleaning detail that I used leather cleaner to try to remove some of the food smudges in the back seat.

At the end of it all, the clock showed four hours later. And Judah was up from his nap watching "The Tale of Despereaux". I did the math in my head of how much time the car wash took times the rate I normally get paid for work. Multiplied by the precious weekend time lost with my family, and it was definitely a losing venture for me to wash the cars. Three days later it rained for the first time in eight months. Point well taken.

Get Off My Cloud

2009-10-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

We've all heard the stereotype about LA people and their cars: They get in their cars just to drive to the house next door. I always thought that was bullshit, but I've discovered that it's true.

The street parking area directly in front of my house is somehow the most popular parking space on an otherwise vacant block. For instance, my old next-door-neighbor's daughter would always park in front of my house to go to their house. Which made no sense to me, until I noticed that her path was a tiny bit easier because she could make a beeline to their door instead of having to walk through grass and around a tree. One time Lily told me she overheard this neighbor loudly complain "Dammit! Somebody parked in my spot" when there was a car parked in front of his house. Funny, it seemed like his spot was actually the area in front of my house.

And when one of the guys directly across the street got a new girlfriend, her favorite parking spot was in front of my house too. The space in front of their house was always open. But it was probably easier to walk directly from the car door than to walk around the front or the back of the car.

She'd often spend the night at his house, because her car was in the spot on my side of the street at all times. One time she must have gone on vacation with the dude, because her car was parked in the same place for about a week. One more day would make a full week and I was about to call the city to have it towed, but that day the car disappeared. Soon thereafter the guy moved out, I assume to move in with her. At least the spot in front of my house was open again.

And then recently the remaining guy across the street decided that it was too much trouble to park in his driveway, or park in front of his house, or even bother to park in a way that doesn't block my driveway, and he did this with his SUV:

Makes perfect sense. No having to pull into his driveway, it's a direct route to his front door, and no having to walk around the tree. I sent him a little friendly e-mail with this photo attached and the subject line "What's wrong with this picture?" It also asked him to be thoughtful and mindful of the fact that Lily needs to use the driveway to unload the kids, groceries, etc. He replied and apologized and said it wouldn't happen again. Now his new roommate has discovered the convenience of parking in the spot in front of my house. I think I'm just gonna start setting out orange cones in the spot when I leave for work. Or maybe just park on my lawn.

Rotten Apple

2009-10-01T07:31:00.000-07:00

I've logged plenty of time waiting at the Genius Bar in The Apple Store. If you're a regular reader of this column, you already know about the hours logged. I wonder if, through osmosis, I've attained Genius level status myself. Well this trip to the Genius Bar (abbreviated as "GB" from here forward) is directly related to a trip I made a few months ago to the GB. That initial trip was made because our "Early 2005" model Power Mac G5 - you know, the temperature-flawed model with more fans than anything else - leaked its coolant and caused the fans to blare even louder than usual.

After doing a little online research, I found that this G5 coolant leak was more than just an isolated occurrence. It was widespread enough among G5 owners to warrant some peeved Apple devotees to start posting threats for a class action lawsuit. Needless to say, someone at Apple must have read the grumblings, because when the Genius at the GB first popped open the hood on the G5, they said they'd replace the innards at no charge to me. Even after being out of warranty. 2005 is a long time ago in computer years. My G5 was back and good as new in a few days. Or so I thought.

Lily informed me that last week the computer was starting to crash regularly and the fans on the G5 were on full blast before it would crash. It sounded strangely like the problem that was fixed months ago. And upon further review, fixed just out of the 90-day guarantee on those repairs. Blast. The thing I dreaded the most was lugging around the heavy and rather unwieldy CPU to the GB.

The only appointment I could get for the next day was at The Apple Store in Manhattan Beach (instead of my usual closest Santa Monica location), but I like Manhattan Beach so I clicked "Yes I'd like to wait around in the Apple Store for an hour at least so I can get some service on my broken Apple computer". To make things more convenient, the only time available was 10:30 am. That gave me just enough time to go in to work for about 45 minutes before I'd have to leave again to get on the 405.

The next morning I unplugged all the wires from the G5, hoisted it out of its resting spot and into my much more reliable car. On the drive to school, Judah ceaselessly asked questions about why the computer was in the car. Google Maps told me it would take around 20 minutes to get to Manhattan Beach. Figure in the suggested arrival time (10 minutes early for the appointment), and I was out the door of the edit suite at 10 am sharp. Because I'd had several cups of coffee, like I always do, I thought it would probably be a good idea to take a leak before heading out on my journey. But the bathroom at work was occupied, and I wasn't about to mess with the schedule-making gods at The Apple Store.

I arrived at the Manhattan Beach Village/Mall thing with a couple minutes to spare. As I lugged the CPU out of the car, I spotted three mentally-challenged men moseying toward the same mall door as I was. I turned on the jets as best I could to pass them, and I reached the door just ahead of them in time to press the wheelchair door button with my foot. One of them appeared to be amazed with my superpowers, and he smiled and elbowed one of his cohorts.

Some sort of field trip at The Apple Store was going on. One where the teenage students all had to wear yellow t-shirts while they watched somebody in a bright orange t-shirt setting type in iWeb. I was wearing a bright orange t-shirt that day. I hadn't been briefed on the color-coordination scheme, and I just hoped nobody in a yellow t-shirt would start asking me questions. Maybe the scowl on my face would do the trick. Another person in an orange t-shirt welcomed me to the GB waiting line and asked my name, if I had an appointment, my most hated thing about PCs and people who buy them, and multiple choice questions on why I thought Bill Gates is the antichrist.

As I waited in line, I looked up on the screens above the GB for my place in the queue. My name appeared second. Oh goodie. I wouldn't be waiting long this time. 20 minutes later I found myself on the verge of joining in on the rant of a guy whose iPhone wasn't turning on, and who didn't want to wait in line four hours for non-appointment customers. I briefly considered bolting to the nearest restroom. Finally Michael called my name.

I told him this has happened before, blah blah blah, and he did the required turning on of the computer, checking the crash report, and checking the repair history. Apparently he'd heard the online grumblings about the G5 coolant thingy too, because he was very apologetic and not all high-and-mighty as some Geniuses can be. He told me straight out that there'd be no charge for the repair, and he started filling out paperwork. Nature was calling rather loudly by this point. I asked Michael where the nearest bathroom was. He told me it was between Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel, wherever that was. I told him I'd be right back, but he said he was finished with the paperwork.

He handed me a sheet of paper to sign. I did the "gotta pee now" dance while he explained the terms of the agreement, like how my computer could be erased, I shoulda backed up, yada yada gotta go pee now dude SHUT THE HELL UP! I said thanks for the help and I practically sprinted out the door with my head on a swivel looking for Pottery Barn and Crate and Barrel and the space between them that held the key to an empty bladder. It was on my right, just past the group of women and their toddler kids who were about to be run over by a man ready to use the temporary insanity plea. I wove my way past them, hating all people who were stupid enough to have kids. The hallway did that Vertigo effect thing, but the men's restroom was in sight. I speed walked down to the end, briefly detoured by the hugest security guard I've ever seen. He took up at least 85% of the hallway.

I busted open the restroom door, greeted by a small room with four stalls: One was out of order with plastic draped over the urinal, the other three were in use by the three mentally-challenged men I went past on my way into the mall. Another man was already waiting, obviously in about the same pee-state I was, because he hopped around for a moment muttering something incoherent before bolting out the door. Not a good sign.

At least that meant my turn was next. And that turn was not coming quickly enough. One of the stalls kept flushing, and the sound of rushing water only made it that much worse. I tapdanced around and seriously considered using the sink as a urinal. Finally one of the guys started backing away from the urinal, and I was in there faster than he was probably comfortable with. I didn't care. I didn't have a care in the world.

The Battle of Los Angeles

2009-09-24T07:31:00.000-07:00

Sleeping's been getting better these days. Not great. Better. Better than the last 10 months of new baby-hood. And the reason it's been getting better isn't that the baby girl has been sleeping better (she hasn't), but because I'm sleeping in the office on an Aero Bed. Zzzs a plenty in the office. Far enough away to avoid hearing any 1am wakeups. Or 3 am. Or 5:30 am. Etc.

So you can imagine the wonderfully rested and refreshed state I'm in when when the soothing melodies of a harp recording emanate from my phone's alarm in the morning. Bliss. And you can also imagine the confusion, then irritation, followed by anger-ation when the very non-soothing sounds of something scratching on the roof woke me up yesterday before the harp alarm could gently lift me from my slumber.

I ripped the blankets away and stormed toward the nearest door. I took a few steps outside and scanned the roof edge. Nothing. I came back inside and headed directly for the patio door and went outside. I spotted the scratching culprit: A squirrel was gnawing on the gutters on the roof edge. When he saw me he stopped and froze, possibly thinking that if he stood still I wouldn't see him and he could get back to gutter gnawing. But I wasn't fooled. I picked up the nearest thing I could find that I could throw at him: An apple from our tree. Those apples are mealy and gross anyway. I chucked the apple at the squirrel and he ran to the other side of the roof.

A short walk around to the other side and I spotted him again, frozen in his stance. I picked up a small rock and threw it. He took off and vanished out of sight. The rock made a clinking sound wherever it tumbled down and eventually landed. Probably onto my neighbor's truck.

At least the gnawing was over, but I wouldn't be hearing the soothing sounds of the harp this morning. I made my way back onto the patio and reached for the door handle. Locked. Because I was standing there in only my boxer briefs, and the sun was already up, I thought it wasn't a good idea to hang out too long on the patio so the neighbors didn't get any funny ideas like I'm crazy and I like to throw apples at squirrels in my underwear for fun. The question was, do I knock on the window to our bedroom? That would surely wake up Lily and the baby. And that's not an option.

I went around to the side door and checked it. Open. Good thing I was in such a hurry to maim the gnawing creature that I didn't lock that first door. Disaster averted. Rumors in the neighborhood of Lee's strange behavior averted. Gotta remember to put on some clothes next time before throwing apples at squirrels.

Let Me Ride

2009-09-17T07:31:00.000-07:00

To this point in the boy Judah's life, the only wheeled mode of transportation he's had control over has been a tricycle. Sturdy, not too fast, easy for him to maneuver and control. Recently, on the second leg of our vacation, he got a taste of riding a big boy bike. It had training wheels, but he was able to sit up higher, go faster, and get the sensation of being slightly out of control again. And he loved it.

So when we got back home, Lily and I discussed fast-tracking the whole plan of getting him a big boy bike when he turned four. We searched online and found some decent bikes for kids in the 3-6 year range, but they were all fairly spendy for something he'd be destroying and growing out of soon. On a gift-buying excursion to Toys R Us, we made a detour to the bike section and had Judah try out a few. He liked one with Go Diego Go on it and the price was right, but we still weren't quite ready to pull the trigger on the purchase.

The following weekend, after a playdate at the beach in Santa Monica, Judah and I were driving home when I spotted a kid's bike just the right size for him at a yard sale. I pulled over and asked how much.
"10 dollars" the woman said.
"10 dollars?" I asked.
"10 dollars" she said holding up 10 fingers.
I got out of our car, unbuckled Judah and had him sit on the bike. Slightly big for him, and it didn't have training wheels, but I knew he'd grow into it.

"Do you want this bike?" I asked Judah.
"No" he said trying to get back into the car.
"Are you sure?" I asked.
Judah was already buckling himself into his child seat.
"It doesn't have training wheels" he replied. So cute.
"Aw, well we'll get training wheels for it!" I told him. I was obviously more excited about the bike than he was.
"Okay, I like that bike." he said.

I pulled out my wallet and looked inside. On first glance I could see I didn't have enough cash, and I counted. Nine bucks.
"I only have nine dollars" I said to the woman, holding my wallet open for her to see. "Will you take nine dollars?"
"Sure" she said and she took the money.
As I put the bike into my car, the woman said something in super-fast Spanish that I couldn't understand. The people with her laughed.

When we got home, Judah took a nap and I searched online for the best training wheels. The ones at REI seemed like they'd be sturdy, so I called to see if they had them in stock at the store in Santa Monica.

"Hi. I'm calling to see if you have kid's bike training wheels in stock" I asked over the phone.
"Kid's training wheels? Let me check. Can you hold?" said the REI salesperson.
"Thanks" I replied.
A few minutes passed, then somebody different picked up the line.
"Hi, what were you holding for?"
"Kid's bike training wheels" I said.
"Kid's training wheels? Let me check. Please hold" said the 2nd REI salesperson.

A few minutes passed, then the first REI person picked up the line.
"Hi, you were looking for kid's training wheels?"
"Yes" I said.
"Okay, I checked the computer and it says we should have some in stock but I'd have to transfer you to the bike department if you want them to see if we have any in store. Would you like me to transfer you?"
"That would be great" I replied.
"Okay, hold please" said the 1st REI salesperson.

A few minutes passed, then another different REI person picked up the line.
"Bike department"
"I wanted to see if you have kid's bike training wheels in stock" I said.
"Training wheels? Let me check. Please hold" said this different REI salesperson.
By this time Judah had woken up, and we decided to play some basketball in the driveway while the phone was on speaker.

More minutes passed, then another different REI person picked up the line.
"Hi, were you asking for kid's training wheels?"
"Yes" I said.
"Okay, I'll check. Please hold" said this REI salesperson.

(This is not an exaggeration or a stretching of the truth. If anything, more people than I'm writing about picked up and put me on hold. I can't help but think these REI kids were bored and wanted to mess with me. Or maybe there were actually 5 or 6 REI employees bumping into each other searching for training wheels in the bike department.)

Even more minutes passed, then some REI person picked up the line.
"Hi, you were the one asking about kid's training wheels?"
"Yes" I said.
"I looked for some, but we don't actually have any in the store. We usually have some, but if you want to come by in a few days we might have some. Or you could always order online."
"Thanks so much for checking" I said, and we said our goodbyes and got off the phone. Good thing I called in advance.

Judah and I drove to Toys R Us to buy training wheels. I grabbed the cheapo brand that I've seen on just about every other kid's bike, and we were about to make the most efficient toy store shopping excursion getaway in the history of children, when I was distracted by all the cool helmets for kids. In the middle of trying every single helmet on Judah's head, I noticed that there was a package of training wheels for sale that looked like a revolution in training wheel technology. They had a spring coil design that would ensure that the wheels give a little when the boy leaned one way or the other, supposedly enabling him to learn how to balance faster than regular training wheels. Slightly more expensive, but... sold.

We arrived home, and I made a beeline for the toolbox. I was determined to see the boy on the bike that afternoon. Apparently with all the new training wheel technology, they didn't make it any easier to install the damn things, but I succeeded in getting them on and soon Judah was pedaling his way around our neighborhood. It was tough to get him to put the bike away, but the upside of a big boy bike is that it makes him big boy tired, so he was feeling winded enough to save it for tomorrow.

The next day we went for a ride again, and I quickly realized I couldn't keep up unless I was on my bike too. This time a we ventured a little further out onto a bike path down Culver Blvd that's completely separated with a median from the cars whizzing by. I had one of those amazing fatherhood moments where I realize I'm witnessing something new and amazing with my son for the first time. We rode for a while. Judah and I laughed at the sight of each other riding on a bike. He chuckled and said "That's silly. My wheel is making a funny noise." I rode my bike up next to him to hear what he was talking about. As if on cue, his training wheel fell off and his bike and his body came crashing down onto the ground, only to be momentarily interrupted by his face hitting my handlebars on the way down.

Luckily he wasn't badly hurt, but I was sure he was going to cry his eyes out from the shock of the fall. But he got up like nothing happened. I saw that his left training wheel had fallen off. It was on the ground a few feet away. I tried to put it back on and realized a part was missing - the part that held the wheel on - probably from back when his wheel started making the silly noise. We walked our bikes back and forth looking for the missing piece, but we couldn't find it. We walked the bikes all the way home. I got out the toolbox again and took off the wheels and put them back into the packaging for a return.

The next day after work I walked up to the returns counter at Toys R Us. I said "I'd like to return this" and handed over the training wheel package and the receipt. The lady didn't say one word. Just reached into the register and gave me my money back. I headed straight for the cheapo training wheels and got the hell out of there.

Into the Drink

2009-09-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

One of the first tour stops on our three week vacation was the Russian River in Sonoma, CA. It's become something of an annual trip with friends of ours. We rent a house on the river and try to get our ya-ya's out as much as possible in one week's time. This year's house came with a canoe tethered to the dock, and that became our vehicle of choice during our time there.

Inevitably with all the consumption from keg plus the attempts to kill our canned beer supply, this would lead to a drunken attempt at late night canoeing for me and the two men on the trip, Aaron and Jesse. If you haven't been in a canoe lately, they're generally built for two people, as our canoe was. Because there was three of us, and because I was the lightest of the three, I would be sitting in the middle. And being more than a bit inebriated, I knew I should be seated in a throne fit for a king. Not sitting on the floor of the canoe where my ass might get wet, not sitting on a low stool, but sitting in one of those white plastic patio chairs with a proper back to it so I could recline whilst the others paddled me around.

We propped the chair into the middle of the canoe, Aaron climbed into the back of the canoe, I sat down in the patio chair, and Jesse climbed into the front. For some reason I had a paddle, and I actually made a half-assed-fully-drunk attempt at a row before we all decided that wasn't going to fly. I made an awkward maneuver to hand the paddle back to Aaron, and succeeded in handing it off only to have the weight shift in the canoe first to the right, then to the left and tipping the canoe over and dumping the three of us into the water. We hadn't made it more than 5 feet from the dock.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why the canoe capsized, but the three of us put together in that mental state didn't exactly equate to one rocket scientist. A higher center of gravity in a canoe isn't what the canoe inventors had in mind. But it was funny as hell and we laughed our asses off as we made our way back up to the house to change out of soaked clothes. And that was the end of that night.

The next morning I saw the contents of Aaron's wallet laid out on the dining room table to dry. I was relieved I didn't bring anything important down to the canoe. Or at least that's what I thought until that afternoon when I started looking for my asthma inhaler and I couldn't find it. The inability to find one's asthma inhaler always seems to trigger a minor asthma attack, or at least trick the mind into thinking it's happening. That's what happens to me at least. And it always leads to an obsessed search for it until it is found.

I vaguely recalled having the inhaler in the pocket of my jacket when the canoe capsized the night before. I could only imagine that it was at the bottom of the river. Less than 5 feet from the dock. I was going to have to dive for it, and probably cause an asthma attack in the process of holding my breath and gasping for air over and over when I came up for air. I could always buy a Primatene Mist inhaler at Safeway, but that always feels more cracked out than the prescription inhaler variety, so the diving drill seemed like the better option.

Judah's kid-sized swimming goggles came in handy for the diving experiment. Luckily it was a hot day, and I didn't mind diving in over and over. The only problem was that the water wasn't clear enough to see the bottom until I was about a foot away from it. I'd dive down, do a quick search around a small area, then I'd have to get back to the surface for a breath and another try. It must have been about 15 dives before Jesse had a brainstorm that it would be cool if we had a hose so that I could stay at the bottom and still get air from the surface.

Two minutes later I'm standing next to Jesse on the dock with the garden hose ready to jump in. We did a little breathing experiment on the dock, and it seemed like this was the ticket. I jumped in with the hose in my mouth only to realize seconds later that the volume of air coming in was much too small for anything but a panic reaction under the water. Two minutes later I'm reattaching the garden hose to its spout.

Because it was getting later and later on a Friday afternoon, one of the few remaining options for getting my inhaler back would be to call my doctor and have them call in a prescription to the local pharmacy. A few calls and I was in business. Judah and I drove down to the pharmacy, I handed over my ID, and the pharmacist said "they just called it in, it'll be ready in 15 minutes."

Judah and I walked over to Safeway to buy some Coca-Cola and kill some time. When we returned to the pharmacy, I showed my ID again, and the pharmacist told me that he couldn't fill the prescription because they didn't have the exact type of inhaler that the doctor's office had prescribed. I asked him if I could get something similar, and he said that they couldn't do that. He called Safeway to see if they had it, but they didn't. This is the point where David Banner usually turns into The Hulk and smashes everything in sight, but that never ever happens to me. A lightbulb went on over the Pharmacist's head and he realized that he had some special powers of his own, and he made a "special emergency" override and got me my medicine.

I went back to the river house with my new inhaler and a two-liter bottle of Coke. And a new puzzle for Judah to play with, which he figured out in about 5 minutes. That's the problem with puzzles: Once they're put together, the fun is over. I didn't use the new inhaler once on that trip. But the panic mode going on in the back of my mind was gone, and that's what having a security blanket is all about.

Vacation

2009-08-27T10:24:00.001-07:00

Lee Lee the Musical Bee is currently on vacation. Back next week. Or the week after at the latest! Thanks for reading!

Institutionalized

2009-08-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

It was late afternoon at the office and I suddenly started jonesing for a Coke. I hardly ever drink Coke, but when the urge comes on it must be quenched. Being that my current workplace is extremely health-conscious, there aren't as many vending machines as you find in most offices. And the stuff the company provides for employees to drink is either protein shakes, meal replacement shakes, or purified water. You won't find anything resembling a soft drink in the refrigerator.

The producer I work with had previously tipped me off to the fact that there was a secret vending machine somewhere in the building that had soft drinks as well as high-energy drinks and bottles of Starbucks Frappuccinos inside. But when she mentioned it I wasn't having a Coke jones, so I didn't follow up on it.

One time I was walking back from the coffee machine and the receptionist asked me if I knew where the vending machine was. I wondered why someone who's supposed to know where everything is would be asking a freelancer, who usually doesn't know where anything is. I told her I thought it was nearby, and I thought I'd tag along to see where the forbidden fruit was. And to my surprise it was just on the other side of the wall of my little edit room. How convenient.

But this vending machine didn't carry any Coke, only Pepsi. I don't go for Pepsi, so the bit of information about the location of the secret vending machine was useless. That is, until the Coke jones came on and I decided to cover the entire building until I found a vending machine that carried Coke. I succeeded by finding one on the 2nd floor, and the Coke jones was on in full effect.

I reached into my wallet for some singles, but only found 20s. The machine didn't take 20s, so I went to the receptionist to see if she had change, but she didn't. So I asked some of the other edit shmoes if they had change for a 20, and one did. Minus one buck. I figured the Coke jones was worth the extra buck, so I told him he owed me one.

I made a beeline for the Coke vending machine. I attempted to feed it a dollar bill, but it wouldn't take it. I tried a different, more crispy dollar. Still not taking it. I pressed several buttons several times trying to see if I needed to do something new, but it still wouldn't take the dollar. I had no coins, so I had no other options for forcing the machine to take my buck-fifty. "Awwwww" I said, and my own voice sounded much too eerily like Homer Simpson. The Coke jones intensified. I imagined myself hurrying down to my car and screeching out of the parking garage in order to get a fix.

But I had an idea: The vending machine next to the Coke machine, which carried chips and chocolate and sweets, could act as my dollar bill changer! As I fed my second dollar in, I suddenly suspected that I'd be forced into buying a chocolate bar because it wouldn't give me coins back. But it coughed up some coins and I was back in business. My mouth watered at the renewed possibility of sucking down a cold bottle of Coca-Cola.

I turned to the Coke machine and fed in a quarter. The machine made a unexpected "clink" noise. Not a good "clink" noise like it's accepting my money, but a bad "clink" noise like my coins were going straight into the coin return slot. And they were. I grabbed more coins and tried to insert them in every conceivable angle, hoping that one way would be the answer. But there was no answer. Only an unsatisfied Coke jones.

I took the elevator back up to the 3rd floor and shuffled over to the Pepsi vending machine, hoping that some soft drink delivery stocker guy mistakenly put a Coke bottle in there. No such luck. I asked several people if they knew of any other vending machines in the building. I asked until it dawned on me that I probably looked like a crazy person to these health fanatics who drink nothing of the Cola persuasion.

The jones for Coke was not going to be satisfied with Coke. And it wouldn't be satisfied with Pepsi, but it was the closest thing. I slid my 6 quarters into the machine, pushed the buttons, and down dropped a cold bottle of Pepsi. The compartment that slides open to get the goods had the warning sign "please open bottles slowly". I attempted what I thought qualified as slowly, but apparently my judgment of slowly was impaired by the Coke jones, and the bottle ended up foaming over just enough to mandate a trip to the kitchen for paper towels. As I stood in the kitchen, I had the idea that the Pepsi might taste more like Coke if I put it in a glass with some ice. Nope. Still tasted like Pepsi. But more like a flatter version of Pepsi.

I walked back to my little edit room with my flat Pepsi in a glass with ice. After sitting there for a bit loathing the taste of Pepsi, I noticed the cap of the bottle had some numbers on the underside, like a little game where you could win a prize. And I assumed that because I kind of lost by having to drink something that wasn't real Coca-Cola, my luck might be on the upswing.

So I went to the website on the bottlecap, and saw that I could possibly win a Rock Band videogame complete with guitar, drums, keyboards, and microphone. All this for a videogame system that I don't own. But hey, I knew I was going to win. I just had to. I punched in the code and hit the "Play" button.

A video screen with four dudes who looked like washed up rockers appeared. They all moved toward me and said in unison: "The universe is indifferent to your fate. YOU LOST!" Yep. That pretty much summed it up. All I wanted was a Coke.

The Going Gets Tough from the Getgo

2009-08-05T23:28:00.000-07:00

Following up some recent posts:

- After the fiasco at two AAA offices trying to get my car's registration renewed, I went to the local DMV to take care of it. Even with no appointment and a line winding around the corner, then entire process with waiting time took 20 minutes. Guess I'll be going back to the suddenly efficient DMV for all of my auto paperwork needs.

- The newly adjusted automatic timer lights in my room went out on me three times today.

- The kid who asked to copy my entire music library was fired last week. Apparently he was using the company card for some purchases for him and his girlfriend. I guess music wasn't the only thing he was stealing.

Up All Night

2009-07-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I got a cold dose of reality when Lily went on a trip for two days and left me in charge of both kids. I have a whole new level of appreciation for the daily juggling routines that single parents can pull off. Actually it wasn't insanely bad, but I certainly overestimated my ability to get the kids to bed.

We dropped Lily off at the airport, then we came home and ate dinner, which for those of us with teeth, consisted of a casserole that Lily (bless her heart) made the day before. It was quick and easy, as was Blaise's dinner: Baby food. Dinner was such a breeze that we had time to go outside and enjoy a nice summer evening chatting with the neighbors and their kids.

Soon it was time for the kiddies to go to bed, but Blaise didn't show any signs of tiredness: No yawning, no rubbing nose, no pulling ears. So I decided to let her join in on Judah's bedtime storytime. The stories went off without one peep from Blaise, but when it was lights out time for Judah, he wanted us to stay for a few minutes. I tried to tell him that I needed to put Blaise to bed, but he wasn't hearing that. He wanted us to stay, or there would be a whine-fest which would surely end in massive amounts of tears, and probably getting him all wired up and destroying any chance of chill time for dad.

He asked if Blaise could stay with him. Initially I thought it was a bad idea, but then I recalled that Lily and I were eventually going to try putting them in the same room at some point, so I thought "Why not? Why not start right now?" Judah can usually sleep through just about anything, which made it highly unlikely that he'd wake up in the middle of Blaise's routine 11 pm outburst. So I disassembled her playpen, which was in our bedroom, and moved it and reassembled it in Judah's bedroom. I put Blaise in there, and she cried for a minute, but then she crashed hard. So hard that the usual sounds that would wake her up, like talking or breathing within 5 feet of her, didn't wake her.

Judah seemed comforted by having his sister in the room next to him. I gave him his goodnight kiss, and a blow kiss, and about 500 I Love Yous and I left his room. Not a peep for 10 minutes. I peeked in and they were both sound asleep. Success. I went into the kitchen and made myself a Stoli Spritzer with a squeeze of lime, and went into the office to edit the latest and greatest Fever Ray music video.

Hours flew by. Not a sound from the kiddies. Then at 1 am all hell broke loose. Blaise cried out loudly and repeatedly, and by the time I made it to Judah's room, Judah was crying "DADDY!" Kind of like "What the hell were you thinking DADDY?!?!?!?!! GET HER OUT OF HERE NOW!!!!" I picked up Blaise and started to take her out of Judah's room, but that upset Judah something fierce. He cried like I was leaving him forever, with his sister in my arms. So I went back into his room and tried to get him to chill out, but crying was now in chain reaction mode between the two siblings. I gave up hope of getting back to the editing.

Finally I was struck by the brilliant idea of bringing the two of them to our bed to hopefully get something familiar going. What was familiar for Blaise was less familiar for Judah, so we had alternating crying going on for the next 5 hours. And when Blaise got hungry at 3 am, she realized that dad's chest isn't like mom's chest, and that wasn't going to suffice. At all. I think I got one consecutive hour of sleep that night.

Morning arrived and with daybreak came a reasonable excuse to down enough coffee to drown a horse. I was able to muster the energy to get myself and Judah dressed and ready for the drive to his school. After I dropped him off and was relieved of one child, I came back home and immediately moved Blaise's playpen back into our bedroom. The sleeping arrangement experimentation would have to wait. Blaise ate her breakfast and she landed in her nap easily. And so did I.

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

2009-07-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

The overhead lights in my current edit room are on a motion-sensor timer. The timer lasts for 15 minutes without motion in the room before it shuts the lights off. Which makes it kind of difficult to take 2 hour lunches, because anybody walking by would see that the lights are off, and that I haven't been a busy worker bee.

But besides keeping me from 2 hour lunches, the motion-sensor wasn't tuned very well. So I'd be sitting there working away like a busy bee, and apparently not moving very much while doing so, and the lights would turn off. This wouldn't be so much of a problem, because I work using a computer, and the screens are self-lit and not on any motion-sensor timer. But it was distracting to the point that it eventually became an annoyance.

I'd be sitting there working and the lights would turn off every 15 minutes or so, and I'd have to frantically wave something like my arms or a pad of paper in the air to get it to notice me. Hey, I'm still here! Not taking a 2 hour lunch! Please allow me to work in something other than darkness!

There were times that even the arm waving wouldn't do the trick, so I started throwing pens and the puck to my tablet stylus right at the sensor, until the puck landed in my eye.

Eventually the lights automatically switching off would motivate me to bring some tools from home to see if I could disconnect the motion-sensor box on the ceiling. I climbed on the desk and I got up there and unscrewed the little box only to imagine myself getting electrocuted by the obviously live wiring.

So I reconsidered, and while I was standing on the desk reconsidering, I saw the studio manager walk by my window and look in, but he kept walking by. The obvious answer finally motion-sensored the lightbulb in my head: Ask somebody in charge to tune the damn thing.

I did just that, and that afternoon a maintenance guy walked into my little edit room and said "You having a problem with the lights?" I told him what was up, and he adjusted it. Since then, the lights have only gone out on me once. Still haven't figured out how to manage the 2 hour lunch though. Damn.

Fine For Now

2009-07-16T00:22:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday I might have been having one of the best days a guy could probably have. Not really "the best", but having trucks from In-N-Out Burger come to your workplace and park there for hours giving free food out in the summer sunshine can certainly brighten up an otherwise dreary existence in an edit bay with no windows.

Mainly it was fun to just hang out with some other edit schmoes and talk about how awesome free In-N-Out was and to have lunch basking in the sunshine for a change. We liked it so much we made two lunches out of it: One at 11:30 am and one at 3 pm before the trucks pulled up stakes and hauled out of there.

To top it off, I drove down to one of my favorite coffee shops, Funnel Mill (home of the Kopi Luwak), to buy some quality beans for home consumption. And that's when I got the e-mail: Our friend Jenny contacted a group of friends from our San Francisco days to tell us that all-around quality man John Leoni a.k.a. "Johnny Cleveland" was no longer with us. Apparently he was riding his bike around his new home of Seattle when a car struck and killed him.

News of this tragic accident affected me much more profoundly than I'd expect, especially from someone I hadn't seen in years. But people like John are rare, and special. And in thinking about how rare and special he was, I realize that there are more rare and special people in my life that I should cherish before their time is up as well. So today please take a moment to think of the rare and special people in your life and cherish them. And cherish your own rare and special life too!

Rest in peace, Johnny

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/407843_obitleoni03.html

Nothing Done

2009-07-09T07:31:00.000-07:00

Sometime last week I glanced over my calendar and noticed that the car registration was due in a few days. Lily was so kind as to take care of what appeared to be the bulk of the heavy lifting: Getting the car smogged. Passed. Even got a discount for living nearby. The seemingly easy part was mine: Taking the paperwork to our friendly local AAA office to renew during my lunch break. I mean, why waste your life in the lines at the DMV when you can go to AAA and get it done lickety split?

I punched in the address for the Santa Monica office on my phone, and let the GPS take me there. I drove around the block and didn't see any AAA signage, so I assumed they were in some heavily populated office building, and I parked my car at a broken meter with a 99 cent store bag over it. Lucky me. I soon discovered that I wasn't so lucky, because I had incorrectly typed in the address to the building, so I was on the 2300 block instead of the 2700 block like I was supposed to be. I decided I'd do the un-LA thing and actually walk a few blocks instead of re-parking the car. Plus I didn't want to slap a gift-broken-meter in the mouth and forever ruin my parking karma.

Walking past McDonald's and Carls Jr, I was reminded that I hadn't eaten my lunch yet on my lunch break. Soon I arrived at a two-story building with lots of AAA signage on it, and I tried to walk in through the door facing the sidewalk. But I was greeted with a very-LA sign informing me that the only entrance is connected to the parking lot, where's there's lots of free parking for AAA patrons and no need for broken meters with 99 cent store bags over them. Lucky me. I walked in through the parking lot entrance and saw that there was no line. A woman waved me over to her station, and I told her I wanted to renew my registration. She informed me that the computers had been down since last Thursday (how the hell was I supposed to know that) and that I'd have to go to another office, which wasn't in walking distance from this office.

"Does that office have a parking lot?" I asked.
"Yes, there's underground parking" she replied.
"Are their computers up and running" I asked.
"Yes, they are." she replied.

I walked back to my car and past the fast-food joints again, which reminded me that my lunch hour was quickly evaporating. So when I got back to my car, I inhaled my lunch while listening to the radio of alternating stories about (a) Why the Dodgers will win the World Series this year, and (b) If recently murdered QB Steve McNair's character is ruined because he was still married and not divorced when he was found with the also-shot-to-death woman he was apparently dating. The entire time listening I regretted the fact that I should have asked the woman at AAA if the other office would be open during normal business hours.

I parked in the underground lot at AAA in West LA, and walking into this office I couldn't help but notice that there were about 10 times as many people waiting as the last office. But the line moved quickly and soon I was at the counter noticing the sign embedded in the counter that said "DMV CHARGES ARE CASH OR CHECK ONLY. NO CREDIT CARDS!" That's knowledge I could have used when I walked in. I recalled that I had about two bucks in cash in my wallet and I don't carry a checkbook anymore, but I decided to proceed anyway.

I told the AAA employee that I wanted to renew my vehicle, but I didn't have the proper forms, I only had the smog certification. She asked for the old registration, and I didn't have that either. But the smog form had the VIN on it, so we were good to go. The woman slid a clipboard with some paperwork across the desk, and she said "Our computers are halfway working today, so it might be a while." This news of course was not what I wanted to hear, and because I already spent a decent portion of my lunch hour going to the other AAA office, I wasn't about to wait to see how the computers fared. So I told her I'd just go to the DMV (How much worse could it be at the DMV?)

Muttering obscenities all the way to the car, I had about 5 minutes left in my lunch break. I wanted to get at least one thing completed during the errand run, so I drove toward the nearest branch of my bank to deposit a check. And as I turned the corner I couldn't help but notice the huge construction vehicle blocking and tearing up the entryway into the bank parking lot, and the construction worker holding a "slow" sign waving me down the street. The nearest street parking was probably the same length as my first walk from the broken meter to the first AAA building, so I decided to save it for another day. Besides, my lunch hour was up and I had to get some work done back at the office.

My work computer acted slow for the rest of the afternoon until finally the server crashed. Some days are more productive than others, I suppose. Lucky me.

Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie

2009-07-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

I was minding my own business in my little edit room when a knock came on the door. People don't usually knock on the door of my little edit room, they usually bust through in a way that startles me as if I were doing something wrong in there. I need a little rearview mirror so I can see who's coming through the door right when it happens. Not that it'll keep me from being startled, but at least I'll immediately know who's busting through.

"Come in" I said while turning my chair toward the door. The door opened slowly, so I was pretty sure it wasn't anyone whose job it was to move the edit forward. It was a kid. Not a kid like a little kid, but a kid like somebody more than 10 years younger than me who dressed younger than me. And his hair was styled in a faux-hawky way that clued me in to the fact that he wasn't management.

I stood up and said "Hi", and he said "Are you Lee?", and I said "Yes" and he said "Lee with the 70 gigabyte shared iTunes music library Lee?"

I didn't really know off the top of my head how many gigabytes my iTunes library was at the moment, but seeing's how I don't ever see any other iTunes music libraries on the network called "Lee", I said "Yes, I'm that Lee." I don't know what I expected from his visit, maybe a congratulatory handshake, maybe some bowing down to the stunning number of Slayer albums that I have, or hell, I had really no idea. Until I noticed he was carrying a portable hard drive.

"Do you mind if I have some of your music?" he asked.
"Sure" I said, taking the drive. "What do you want?"
"All of it" he said, with a silly grin like that wasn't a silly answer.
"Sure" I said. I plugged the drive into my computer.
He seemed to realize that he was asking for something different than say, borrowing my bike or grabbing a couple of potato chips from my lunch plate. "You didn't buy all that music, did you?"
"No" I replied, and then I realized that probably 90% of the digital music files I have in my collection I didn't pay for.

I dragged my music folder over to his portable hard drive and told him to come back in an hour. "Thanks bro" he said, and he left and closed the door. While the media was copying, I felt like someone was stealing from me, which is ridiculous, because I simply gave him what he asked for. And then I thought about all the artists whose music I had in my possession who probably feel like people are stealing from them, which is true.

I quickly rationalized away about 40% of the music in my library, because some of it I did pay for in the form of vinyl, tape, or CD at some point in the past. And then I rationalized the rest away, coming up with the idea that he listens to my music for free on the network anyway, so what's the diff with giving it to him straight, so he can listen to it at work when my computer isn't on.

The files finished copying, and I decided to take a walk and find the kid and give him the drive. Later that afternoon I connected to his shared music library, and there I saw all of "my" music. And then I saw the light: I don't have to carry around my own portable drive anymore. I can just listen to that kid's. Sharing ain't so bad after all.

In Da Club

2009-06-24T22:09:00.000-07:00

It's my birthday, I'm gonna party like it's my birthday.
I'm not posting this week cuz it's my birthday.

Homework

2009-06-18T07:35:00.000-07:00

Probably one of my favorite things to eat for breakfast is a plain bagel with lox. And the lox needs to have capers on top. Lots and lots of capers. Or it tastes like it's missing something. The problem with having lots and lots of capers on top of your lox on top of your plain bagel happens when you bite into it. The flat surface the capers were resting on experiences a mini-earthquake sending capers rolling down the loxscape and landing on the floor. The result is "lots and lots of capers" reduced to "a few scattered capers". Not as tasty for sure.

For years now I've tried to think of a way to keep the capers on the lox, and therefore on the bagel. Scotch tape? Pushpins? Glue? Not as tasty as the capers on their own. I've tried to push the capers down into the lox to keep them in place. I've tried taking gentler bites. But it always ended with capers on the floor instead of on my bagel where they can be gobbled up. I thought I'd surely be a rich man if I could invent a way to keep the capers in place. Or maybe not a rich man, because nobody cares enough to pay for something like a caper-on-lox adhesive. At least I'd be a happy man with a belly full of lots and lots of capers.

And because necessity is the mother of invention, I've finally discovered the trick to the caper caper. And it won't be sold in stores, because I'm so stoked to have found the answer that I'm giving it away for free. It's also free because there's nothing to pay for.

I pack a lunch every workday. One day last week we ran out of deli meats, but we had bagels and lox, so I decided to pack the ingredients for lunch at work. I sliced the bagel in half and put it in a tupperware container. I selected just the right amount of lox and put it in a tupperware container. I spooned out a hunk of cream cheese and put it in a tupperware container. I grabbed the skinny jar of capers and was about to put it into another tupperware container, but I remembered that I hate washing that pile of tupperware containers every night, so I thought I'd save one tupperware container and just put the capers in with the cream cheese.

Lunchtime rolled around, and I unpacked all the tupperware and began to assemble my lunch. When the bagel popped out of the toaster I put it on a plate and opened the tupperware container with the cream cheese and the capers. They were mixed to the point that it was no use trying to separate them, so I spread the cream cheese on the bagel with dots of capers here and there and everywhere. And I put the lox on top. Bingo! The capers were now held in place with cream cheese under a blanket of lox, so instead of capers rolling on the floor, they'd be in my belly where they belonged. Try it sometime. Bon appetit!

If Assholes Could Fly, This Place Would Be an Airport

2009-06-11T07:43:00.000-07:00

I came home from work the other night and Lily told me that her car wasn't in tip-top shape. As in the car was idling so low that she was worried that she and the kiddies wouldn't make it home. Can't have that. The Passat was due for a maintenance visit anyway, so I made an online appointment with the shop to give them a bunch of money. And to hopefully fix the problem.

The next morning I re-configured the kiddie seat contraptions between her car and mine, and I loaded Judah into the Passat to drive him to school. We had fun listening to Baba O'Riley three times, and I prayed that we'd arrive without a hitch. The school drop was quick, and I soon found myself waiting outside my car at the shop. I instructed the service guy to not only fix the problem, but also to perform the routine maintenance as well. I signed my name on the much-cheaper-than-final estimate and put the paperwork in my pocket.

This being a fancy shmancy dealership, they have the luxury of a shuttle that will take customers within a five mile radius of the shop. Shortly after the shuttle driver announced his departure, I piled into the back row of the minivan-sized shuttle. Two other passengers, a man and a woman - not connected in any way - sat in the middle row.

The driver asked each of us where we were headed, and we were on our way. He dropped the man in the middle row off first. "You can just pull over there by the FedEx truck in front of that parking structure on the left" the man told the driver. The FedEx truck was still maneuvering into a parking space, so the driver had to wait a bit before pulling into the parking entryway. I wondered why the guy didn't just get out on this side of the street, as it wasn't busy at all, and it forced the driver to make an awkward stop in front of a parking structure where other cars had to wait to get in. A few moments later, the driver was doing as instructed, blocking the entryway for several cars.

The man pulled open the sliding door and got out. He attempted to pull the door shut, but it was in some sort of open/stationary mode. The driver said "you have to pull it OUT". The man walked away backwards looking stunned, as if he were completely dumbfounded by the workings of doors in general. He kept walking and made no attempt to return to close the door. The three of us in the van all motioned toward the sliding door, only to be restrained by our seat belts.

"Thanks dude!" I yelled out the door as he walked away. "What a jerk!" the woman said loudly. "What a douche!" I retorted. "Douche. That's a good word" said the woman. I couldn't tell if she meant that was a good descriptor for him, or if I had in some way offended her. I opted for the former. I released myself from the bounds of my seat belt and closed the door.

The driver chose me to be the next dropoff, I assume because I was the loudest in my berating of the douche guy. Or maybe it was because the woman's stop was way further away. "You can just pull over next to that stop sign" I told him. He did, and I grabbed my backpack and the bag that contained at least six tupperware containers which collectively made up one of the most pathetic lunches in the history of the world, and I slid open the door. I hopped out.

I was determined not to pull the same bullshit as the douche guy, so I didn't let the door slide all the way to open/stationary mode. But the door started sliding back on me before I could get my backpack and lunch bag out. The door hit my arm, knocking my arm into my backpack and the backpack into the lunch bag, spilling three mini-sized tupperware containers onto the floor of the van. Maybe that douche guy knew something about sliding doors that I didn't. I quickly grabbed the containers, put them back in the bag, got my things out and slid the door closed. As I walked away, I can only imagine what the woman probably said: "What a douche."

Drop

2009-06-04T07:38:00.000-07:00

I have a bad habit of taking off my wedding ring and playing with it. Nothing fancy, just twirling it on my desk, spinning it around pens, pencils and the stylus for my tablet. Sometimes I take it off just because wearing it doesn't allow my fingers to fly when I'm working. I suppose I don't wear it all the time like some other married men do, mainly because of the composition of the ring. It's made out of platinum, which, if you've ever held a platinum ring, you understand how heavy it is. I now realize that was probably not the best idea for something I'm hoping to wear the rest of my life. At least it reminds me of the weight of my wedding vows.

The year that Lily and I got hitched, we traveled up to Seattle for Xmas. We went to the local mall to do some last minute Xmas shopping with my then-7-year-old nephew Josh. The three of us dashed in and out of many stores hunting for last-minute bargains. Josh and I horsed around wrestling and playing tag whilst finishing our shopping. Near the end of our trip, I realized that I didn't have my wedding ring on. Like I didn't leave it at home, I lost it in one of the stores we passed through in the mall.

I had to tell Lily, and thus receive the wrath of a newlywed woman whose eternal love represented in a platinum ring was now lost in a shopping mall. After transforming my head to a cartoon horse's ass, we backtracked through the mall. I retraced my steps in a near panic, fearing what further wrath there may be left inside of Lily if I didn't find the ring. I even went so far as to ask one of the teenage clerks at the Disney store if they had found a man's wedding ring. "You lost your WEDDING RING?!?!??!!!" he asked, clearly more informed about the gravity of the matter than I was. What a dumb question to ask of a horse's ass. Okay, I felt stupid. Yes, I lost it on purpose. Carry on.

Defeated and ready to take my lashings, we headed back to the car. I decided to look in one last place, the slot in the driver's side door where you put maps, chewing gum wrappers, etc. Bingo! It seemed the ring had fallen off when I removed my gloves and put them in that door slot. The ring was now back on my finger but it didn't matter. I got the tongue lashing anway.

Did I learn my lesson? Hell no. I still play with the ring like that never happened, although now I have tiny paranoias about dropping the ring down an elevator shaft, or down a grate on the sidewalk. So I make sure not to play with the ring while walking into or out of elevators, or while strolling by sidewalk grates, or in places such as those. But my desk at work seems like a perfectly safe place to spin the ring to my heart's content. That is, safe until yesterday.

I was seated at my desk doing the old "take the ring off and place it on the end of my nose" routine, when I dropped the ring. Strangely, I didn't hear the thud of platinum hitting rug. I thought it must have landed in my lap. I stood up. Nope. I looked in the crevices of my chair. No dice. I got that sinking feeling again. I felt around in my inside jacket pocket, the fold of my shirt where it hits my expanding beltline, and my pants pockets. No ring to be found. I turned the lights up all the way. Not a ring in sight.

I moved my chair out of its place, looked under the desk, turned over my keyboard, moved my laptop computer. No ring. I felt around in my pockets again and again. I briefly considered taking my clothes off, but then I had an inkling that my producer would walk in at the moment I was taking my pants off, and I reconsidered. I stood in the center of the room, lights blaring, and I knew the ring couldn't have just disappeared. But it didn't matter. I was gonna be in serious trouble if I didn't find that ring. Plus, what if I left for the evening and the janitors vacuumed it up? Then I'd never find it.

Unfortunately this was one of the days I didn't bring my pocket-sized Maglite with me. But luckily enough I have a little firewire drive that has a flashing blue light on the end of it. So I used the drive and its light to shine around under the desk where the overhead lights didn't reach. And in the darkest corner under the desk, behind the battery backup unit, laid my ring. I slid it on and went back to work. Did I learn my lesson? Probably not. You can't expect a guy to stop playing "take the ring off and place it on the end of my nose" can you?

Enjoy the Silence

2009-05-28T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Fat of the Land

2009-05-21T07:30:00.000-07:00

I hate to go on and on about my current workplace, but in my daily existence there I find more and more to go on and on about. Example:

The office is very health conscious, evidenced by the popularity of the workout facility in the center of the building, and by the existence of a beach volleyball court on the property. Breakfast is provided on Friday mornings, and the main feature of breakfast has been bagels and cream cheese. I'm told that a previous menu included bacon and eggs, but that was too unhealthy, so they opted for bagels and cream cheese. Now bagels are apparently the devil incarnate in carbs, so those are banished as well.

All that's left in the breakfast buffet now is salad, hummus, salsa and veggies such as mini-carrots, sliced green peppers, and uncooked cauliflower. Mmm. Can I have seconds? Oh, and scrambled egg whites. I can be spotted on Friday mornings shuffling away from the delectable bounty carrying a plate consisting only of a mountain of scrambled egg whites topped with salsa.

In the crusade to rid the workplace of the bad evil nasty carbohydrate, the powers that be also removed the packets of instant oatmeal. Apparently this was a popular item, because I overheard a different person whining about the lack of oats seemingly every time I went into the kitchen.

And it's not like I'm in the kitchen all day. During the course of a workday, I go into the kitchen to get exactly two cups of coffee, and milk for the cereal that I bring from home. But in these trips to the kitchen, on the day the oatmeal died, I heard several people mention that the oatmeal was gone forever. One track mind I guess.

One woman brought a packet from home, and as she prepared it, I listened to probably three different people at different times come by and say
"Where did you find that oatmeal?"
"Oh, I brought this from home."
"Aw."

With every passing vulture, her reply seemed to get more and more guarded, as if she was going to scald their faces with the hot water if they didn't back off immediately. Good thing I brought my cereal from home.

And to provide further closure on a pair of recent postings:

You Can't Always Get What You Want (May 7)
When the appliance repair guy re-sent the new part, I received the box and didn't open it for two weeks. When I finally opened it, it was the wrong part. They sent part #3, a much heavier, bigger component to the dishwasher door than the little jellybean-sized part #1A I requested. I e-mailed the guy about it, and he offered to send a refund. Maybe he's tired of the back and forth.

Thievery Corporation (April 23)
My stolen pen magically appeared back in my edit suite. The joy lasted about 2 days when the pen was stolen again.

Merry-Go-Round

2009-05-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

The ABC song blaring over the car stereo had grown old. So did B-I-N-G-O. As well as "Wheels on the Bus". And after we had burned many many miles listening to the entire Yo Gabba Gabba album, I knew it was time to break out some real music for Judah.

I began his musical journey in what seemed like a safe place for children: The Beatles. Not that I thought that their psychedelic era was appropriate for kids, but I just don't own any early-moptop-stage Beatles. Revolver seemed like a safe bet. Plus it has "Yellow Submarine" on it, and they already sing that song plenty at his preschool. But all we ended up listening to was the Yellow Submarine song, because toward the end of the song, I'd hear one word spoken from the back seat: "Again."

I moved on to Rubber Soul and discovered that Judah didn't like "Drive My Car" as much as I thought he would, and I was surprised that he liked "Michelle" more than expected. When we gave Sgt. Peppers a try, it fell flat on its face. For an album as catchy and colorful as that one, not one song was a winner in the boy's book.

The White Album fared much better, again proving that I have no idea what catches a three-year-old's fancy. I predicted "Rocky Raccoon" and "Bungalow Bill" would be hits, but he never asked for those, instead opting for "I'm So Tired" and "Julia". We oscillated between listening to "Yellow Submarine" and "Michelle" until I decided to try something else.

Next I thought I'd move onto something a bit more in line with my own musical tastes, that being Led Zeppelin. Judah showed me once more that I don't understand him, waving off my attempts at luring him into the Led Zep world with "Down By The Seaside". But once I played "Black Country Woman", there was the magic word again: "Again." By the time we made it to school that morning, he had found his sound, shouting "Louder" over and over while he nodded his head to "When the Levee Breaks". That's my boy.

That was about as far as I wanted to push the rock on him, but a few days later he was in the bathtub and I was singing the chorus to "Merry-Go-Round" from Motley Crue's first album. He asked "What's that song?", and being the repetitive chorus that it is, I sang it repeatedly, but he wanted to hear the actual song, not some lame dad singing it. I grabbed my phone and played the chorus section over the crappy speaker. "Again" he said, so I obliged. "Again".

The next morning in the car, as soon as we pulled out of the driveway he said "I wanna hear that Merry-Go-Round song again". So I played it for him and he said "louder". And when it was over he said "again". To date, the play count for Merry-Go-Round has now exceeded all other songs in my music library. Years from now, if I look in the rearview mirror and see Judah wearing a Motley Crue pentagram headband, I'll have nobody to blame but myself.

You Can't Always Get What You Want

2009-05-07T07:30:00.000-07:00

When I signed the towering stack of paperwork to enter into the realm of home ownership, I coincidentally left the comfy confines of irresponsibility. The thing I miss most about that world is being able to call the landlord when anything in the apartment was broken. The luxury item that I insisted on in both an apartment and now my home, was a dishwasher. And now my dishwasher was broken.

It wasn't anything major going bad like the plumbing, but the spring that holds the door shut had snapped. It's remarkable how much those springs do, because without them, the door feels like a lead weight coming down that will crash through the floor only to stop once it's reached the center of the earth. I put on my dishwasher repairman hat and did a little research. I mean, how hard can it be to replace a spring?

Several sites online had elaborate diagrams of every single piece that holds my dishwasher together. I found the correct spring (part 1 on diagram), compared sites for the lowest price, and I ordered. Several days later, I received an e-mail from the place I ordered which stated:

"Good Morning
During the process of your order we see that the item that you have purchased had a pricing error. The price has been adjusted. With your permission we can charge you the additional cost and proceed with the order. Or if wish to cancel the order at this point please respond to this email and inform that you wish to do so. I do apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your time."

I didn't feel good about these guys pulling a bait-and-switch on me, so I told them I'd like it for what they'd listed. They insisted on the price change, so I canceled my order. I went to the next vendor and bought the spring, and a few days later it arrived. I installed it easily, and we were back in dishwasher door weightlessness-world once again. All was good for about 3 days. And then Lily heard a snap while opening the dishwasher, and the door felt like a lead weight once more.

I checked the springs and they were both in good shape. It was now the little tiny jellybean-sized plastic linkage (part 1A on diagram) that had broken on one side. So back to the non-price-jacking vendor I go to buy two linkages, just in case another one broke. 5 days later a package arrives. Here's what the contents of the package looked like:

It's hard to imagine that somebody would actually package these two items together and not think they're not going to get a call back. One clearly looked used. Because of the nature of the part, it deals with springs and pressure, I couldn't trust that the part wasn't used to the extent that there wasn't already significant wear on it to the point that it would break prematurely.

So I wrote the vendor back and sent the pictures. The response was that I should trash the used part and they'd send me a new one immediately. Two days later they delivered on their promise. And now we're back in dishwasher door weightlessness-world once again. Pure bliss.

Dirt

2009-04-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

No declaration necessary, but I'm cuckoo for coffee. LOVE it. NEED it. I get headaches without it, and even if I didn't, I'd still drink it like a junkie uses heroin. Except I actually like the taste of coffee. Well I guess I have no idea what heroin tastes like, so I really don't know what I'm talking about.

The usual morning coffee routine consists of:
- setting up the coffee machine the night before, with grounds and water to brew at precisely 5 minutes before I step out of the shower
- grabbing a mug, putting sugar in, pouring coffee, adding milk
- downing the concoction, repeating until gone

I've been running that same program for years now. Except now that the morning routine includes getting the boy Judah out of bed, fed, dressed, and off to preschool, the coffee intake had to be adjusted. Two cups at home plus the one or two when I landed at the office wasn't jiving with my desire not to bug out too hard at work. So I limited the home coffee drinking to one cup, then one cup when I got to the office.

At my current gig, the worker bees are much more numerous than anywhere else I've worked. And the worker bees like to congregate in the kitchen. Navigating to the coffee is a little like getting into a subway car in The Big Apple during rush hour. There's a lot of "excuse me", "pardon me", and "comin through" goin on. Not so much that the workers want to get to the coffee, but to get to the juice bar, the refrigerator, and the sink. It's a gauntlet to run. I'm tempted to permanently relocate the coffee machine to an edge of the kitchen, but I can't imagine they'd appreciate that much coming from a freelancer. Plus the coffee rig is tethered to its spot by the water line.

And it seems like every time I manage to wrangle my way to the coffee, the carafe is empty. The carafes are metal, and heavy (heavy metal), so it feels like there's java in there at all times. But once your coffee pouring tilt gets beyond 90 degrees, you know you're shit outta luck. The coffee isn't difficult to make: You just grab a filter, open a metered packet out of the Starbucks pile and press the BREW button. I've done it enough in the past three weeks to know that it takes exactly five minutes to finish brewing, so I always set a timer to ensure that the rabid coffee drinkers don't empty out the pot before I get mine.

That's what I did this morning after I arrived at the office and discovered (the hard way) that I needed to make a fresh pot. I danced the coffee-making dance, sauntered back to my little edit bay and set the 5 minute timer. 5 minutes later, I walk out of my room and head for the kitchen.

As I approach the kitchen area, a business-suit wearing lady hurries past me and makes a beeline for the coffee. She grabs a cup and the carafe, and then her friend walks up and starts chatting her up. My caffeine addiction advised me to knock the carafe out of her hand and get what is rightfully mine, but my better judgment prevailed and I waited patiently.

She started to pour and the tilt was reaching 90 degrees. Coffee finally started pouring, but only reached about 1/4 mug capacity when the coffee ran out. What the hell happened to my coffee?!?!?!! Business suit lady continued chatting to her friend as she opened up the carafe and dumped into the sink what probably would have taken the edge off of my caffeine jones.

She chatted to her friend in what felt like slow-motion as she started the process of making the next pot, fumbling the packet, incapable of separating one filter from the rest. I envisioned knocking her out of the way to get the process going faster, but again, I can't imagine they'd appreciate that much coming from a freelancer.

I went back to my little edit bay and set the 5 minute timer. 5 minutes later, I'm drinking a cup that I thought should have tasted amazing, but instead it tasted like crap. Go figure.

Thievery Corporation

2009-04-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

I'm getting the lay of the land at my new workplace. Finding the mail room was the biggest piece of the puzzle, because that's where everything important is located. The printer, the pads of paper, the pens. I found some binders, but only those huge oversized binders that are so massive that you can't really put the thing anyplace without it seriously tanking the feng shui of any room.

But the best part was finding the shredder. Not only the shredder, but the locked garbage bin where you can just throw a bunch of documents in a slot to be shredded without actually dealing with the shredding part. I haven't had a shredder handy since my last full-time job. And those live checks I get every week from my credit card companies were piling up. Goodbye scary checks. Say hi to Mr. Shredder.

I felt pretty stocked as far as having pens and pads of paper around the edit suite to write down whatever the director had to say about the cut. Except that she kept stealing my pens. She has a tendency to watch the edit, then she'll have a flash of brilliance as to what the graphic should act like or look like, so she'll grab the nearest pen (mine) and sketch something out real quick. Which leads to her having to talk to the graphics guy, so she bolts out of the room. With my pen.

The pen theft was fine for the first time or two. Then, when I ran out of the company pens I had stocked my room with, I had to resort to grabbing a pen out of my backpack. Not that this pen was special or had any sentimental value, but it symbolized my personal property, and I wasn't going to allow my personal property to be stolen at work.

So the next time Ms. Director did the graphics-sketch-to-bolt-out-the-door hustle, she did so with my pen. I quickly spun around in my seat and said "could I have my pen back?" Apparently she had never been diagnosed with kleptomania, so she was taken by surprise that she would try to steal from me. She said sorry and gave me back my pen, then bolted out the door for a meeting with the graphics guy.

It dawned on me that the pen from my backpack wasn't going to last long unless I made some tactical maneuvers. So I quickly made my way down to the mail room. I grabbed as many pens as I could carry back to the edit suite and set them down in a place where the director couldn't see any of them. I took one of the pens and set it next to the pad of paper that she had scribbled her most recent graphic mockup. The next time she came by, it worked like a charm. After she left the room, I looked over at the pad. No more pen. I took another pen from my pile and placed it next to her scribble pad. The pen from my backpack was safe.

The pen disappearing act was working well through several director visits when the editor next door came by to talk about his most recent visit with the director. Apparently she was giving rapid-fire comments about his edit, but he couldn't take any notes because he didn't have a pen. He complained that she was walking out with his pens, just like she did with me. We laughed as we contemplated where all the pens go. Does she have a mountain of stolen pens on her desk? They have to wind up somewhere.

I told him about my little pen stockpiling routine, and he was convinced that was the way to go. He left, and soon after, the director walked in. We talked about the cut, she scribbled some graphic ideas, and I looked over and noticed that she was holding the pen from my backpack instead of the one I had positioned for her next thievery.

She told me she was going home for the day. She would have to put her dog to sleep that night, and she was gonna have to explain the whole thing to her kids, so she was leaving early. As she stood at the door saying "see you in the morning", I shot down the idea of asking for my pen back. A pen is a little insignificant compared to putting your dog down. I grabbed one of the stockpiled pens and got back to work.

Hundreds of Sparrows

2009-04-16T07:31:00.000-07:00

It was the middle of crunch time on the last day of editing when the phone rang. By looking at the phone number, I knew it was the people from my next gig. The gig that I didn't want, but the gig that I needed. "I have to take this call" I told the room full of clients as I walked out of the room. I didn't look back to see if it was okay that nobody was sitting in the editor's chair.

"Hello?" "Hi, Lee? This is Lisa." I already knew it was Lisa before I answered the call. "Oh hi Lisa, how's it going?" "Good. So we were wondering if you could come by and meet the director today." I knew she wasn't going to understand, much less hire me, if I said no. The gig started tomorrow. So I said "Sure. Can we meet at 1:30?" Lisa said yes and I was soon back in the editor's chair in crunch time.

The lunch menu soon landed in front of me. CPK. I quickly flashed forward in my mind to how I'd manage to fit a trip through a drive-through on my way back from meeting Lisa and the director. "I think I'm gonna have to step out for lunch today" I told the client services gal. "Are you sure?" she said as she took the menu away. "Thanks" I said, as I imagined how hungry I'd be after not making it through the drive-through. It just didn't feel right to order lunch, when I'd be leaving during crunch time. The coffee's for closers only.

The alarm on my phone went off at 1:12 pm. Just enough time to blast out of the parking lot in Culver City and onto the 10 freeway Westbound toward Santa Monica. I figured that the freeway was the best option, even though getting to the freeway would be the hard part. Merging onto any freeway in Los Angeles is tough, but the on-ramp at Robertson has to be one of the worst. You must start from a dead stop at a light, going uphill, and in a race against the car next to you to get a full car length ahead before the two lanes turn into one 50 feet ahead.

Once you've passed that test, you get to face the full-on Road Warrior treatment as you merge onto the 10 freeway with cars going at least mach 5, trying to fit into the blur before your on-ramp lane becomes an off-ramp lane about a quarter mile away.

On this day, the cars in the rightmost lane were ambling along at around 40 mph, making it even more difficult to merge, but I managed to pull it off. In my rearview mirror I saw a clearing all the way to the leftmost lane. Not a single car in sight. I pulled the advanced driver maneuver of going straight to the fast lane (the left one, not to be confused with any lane in Los Angeles) and I was almost there when I heard somebody lay on their horn from behind me. I looked in my rearview and there was a silver station wagon rapidly slowing down, I suppose to avoid being slammed into by yours truly. Where the hell did that car come from?

I had no clue, but I put my hand up to flash the "Sorry, I'm a dumbass" sign anyway. I accelerated so's not to get rammed, or shot, but mainly to get to this meeting. The left lane was clear sailing as I passed over the 405. I needed to get off at the Centinela exit, so I had to move fast.

I again checked my rearview, did the head check, and I didn't see a single car around. Turned on the right blinker and pulled the advanced driver maneuver of going straight to the exit lane, and I was almost there when I heard somebody lay on their horn from behind me. I looked in my rearview and there was a silver audi sedan rapidly slowing down, I suppose to avoid being slammed into by yours truly. Where the hell did that car come from?

I had no clue, but again I put my hand up to flash the "Sorry, I'm a dumbass" sign anyway. I accelerated so's not to get rammed, or shot, but mainly to get to the meeting. As I approached the exit, I noticed the silver wagon I almost ran off the road back there. It was quickly approaching in my rearview. And it appeared that the wagon was doing whatever it could to get off at the same exit I was. Oh shit, I thought. I was going to die.

My hopes of making it through the light at the end of the off ramp were dashed. I slowed to a stop, and the silver wagon pulled up behind me. I kept my eye on the rearview mirror, to see if I needed to make a break for it if the driver should exit his car with pistol in hand. But to my surprise, all I saw was the driver fluffing his hair in his own rearview mirror. Disaster averted.

I made my left turn and drove toward the meeting place. One last maneuver to make: A left turn on a blind corner that I knew well. It always pissed off the rest of the cars not making that left turn, especially ones behind the left turn car. I hoped for no oncoming traffic, but no dice. I waited, and I looked in my rearview once more. The silver wagon was gone. But the silver Audi sedan was fast approaching. Why the hell are these people following me? The Audi pulled around to my right, just inches from my car, honking the entire time. And the driver gave me the finger. I laughed. I love it when people flip me the bird.

Diary of a Madman

2009-04-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

Lately the little energy vampires (namely the kids named Judah and Blaise) have been draining the life blood out of us. Drained to the point that the only thing we can muster the strength for is TV. It got so bad this past Sunday that I think I watched every single episode of Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel. Really the only serious show that Lily and I can agree to spend time on is Big Love. It's a guilty pleasure for sure. We spend more time deriding the characters than talking about how good a given episode was.

Our brand spankin new Verizon FiOS HD service allows us to watch plenty of recorded shows on the DVR. And because the little energy vampires hadn't even allowed us to watch much Big Love lately, the season started piling up on the DVR. Which is nice if you want to spend an evening plowing through a few episodes. Not so nice when you discover that you didn't read the DVR manual very well, or at all, and because of that, a few episodes had been deleted by Anthony Bourdain's show, which is on for almost the entire day every Monday. Goddamn chefs, stealing my DVR bandwidth.

At the exact moment Lily and I realized that we, rather I (being the techy, man-person in the house), didn't set it to "don't delete, like EVAR" when we set up the Big Love series recording, I knew that it would be possible to watch the show on demand on the on demand channel. But upon further review, HBO doesn't show its shows on demand in glorious High Definition. That would never do.

So I pulled out my trusty iPhone and its trusty TV widget thingy and found out exactly when HBO would be re-airing the HD versions of the episodes that Anthony Bourdain so ruthlessly erased from my DVR. I set them to record, and I knew that before long I'd be back on top of the techy, man-person pedestal, triumphantly wielding the remote control.

And indeed there I was about a week later, basking in the glow of my lovely HDTV and its DVR which displayed our re-recorded lost episodes of Big Love. And this time I went through one by one and hit the "don't delete, like EVAR" button. That is, until I got a little too comfortable with the wielding remote control power thing, and I accidentally hit "delete" on one of my newly re-recorded episodes.

So I pulled out my trusty iPhone and its trusty TV widget thingy and found out exactly when HBO would be re-airing the HD versions of the episodes, and it basically said "you fool." NEVAR.

One Thing Leads to Another

2009-03-26T12:35:00.000-07:00

It had been dumping buckets of rain through the night, and now there was a river in the street in front of my house. Lily was taking Judah to a playdate with his two friends from school, Gus and Peter. A short while after she left, Lily called and told me the car died. Luckily she took my VW Golf instead of her VW Passat, because the Passat has the baby car seat in it while the Golf only has the kid seat. I quickly bundled up the little bundle of joy (that would be Blaise) and drove out into the rain.

The Golf was on the side of Manhattan Beach Blvd in Manhattan Beach. Lily waved at me as I drove by. I made a legal California U-turn and pulled up behind the Golf. Judah and Lily climbed into the Passat while I tried to see if the Golf would go. By my astonishment, the Golf started. I pushed down on the gas pedal and the car died. I turned the key and the car started again. This time I decided to just let the car move forward in idle mode, and off we went. At around 3 mph.

I turned the corner into some business park and looked for a place to park so that the AAA tow truck could get the car. Apparently the business park didn't want any random broken-down cars around, because not only were there NO PARKING signs everywhere, but a security cop lady drove up to me and said "You can't park around here." I told her that I understood that, but the car was about to die. She seemed resigned to the fact that the car would be towed soon enough anyway, so she drove off. About 10 seconds later the AAA guy showed up and checked out the car.

In my novice mechanic mind, I had pegged the thing as a blown spark plug, a distributor problem. The AAA guy asked "Did you drive the car through a puddle?" I told him that I wasn't the one driving the car when it died. He told me there was a good reputable mechanic in the area that he'd take the car to. But I wanted to try this little Swiss repair shop that was walking distance from my house, so asked him to tow it there instead. He hooked up the towing contraption and off we went.

As I drove the Passat following the tow truck and the Golf, I asked Lily "Soooo... did you happen to drive the car through any big puddles?" She said "Well, I did drive through this big one to make Judah laugh." Case solved. Judah really enjoyed watching daddy's car getting towed. We soon arrived at the Swiss repair shop, and they told me they'd call me when they had a diagnosis.

Late that afternoon I called the Swiss repair shop because it seemed too close to closing time for comfort. I figured they didn't get my number correctly. The mechanic told me they were still trying to sort it out, and they'd call me. About an hour later they called me and told me "I don't know what to tell you sir, but there's nothing wrong with the car. It runs fine." Wahoo! I walked over, picked up the car, and drove it home without repairing anything. Somebody up there must like me.

Bless You Boys

2009-03-19T08:10:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I went to two kids birthday parties. One in the late morning, one in the afternoon. I didn't really intend on going to the first one, but Judah saw the bouncer in the kid's front yard, and we couldn't resist. As soon as Judah and I arrived at the bouncer, the boy who lives in the house - Brian - hurried out to start the energy explosion inside the huge bouncing castle. Every poor soul who dared venture into the bouncer was met with grabbing, punching, and general pummeling at the hands of Judah and Brian. Boys will be boys.

After Judah grew tired of the kicking ass routine, we went to the backyard for some refreshment. Pizza, fried chicken and Capri Sun was the menu of the day. The boy had two slices of cheese pizza, I ate a slice of veggie and some fried chicken to make up for the veggie. We returned to the front yard for more bouncing, and because the ass-kicking contingent of Brian and Judah had gone out back, the bouncing castle was full of new kids. There was a kid of about 5 years inside wearing Detroit Tigers baseball gear. Navy blue Detroit Tigers baseball hat, navy blue Detroit Tigers t-shirt. No sooner did I notice him than I saw a toddler toddle out from behind the view of the bouncer wearing a navy blue Detroit Tigers t-shirt. No hat, just a bald toddler head. And right behind the bald toddler was who I assumed to be his dad, wearing, you guessed it... a navy blue Detroit Tigers t-shirt and a navy blue Detroit Tigers hat.

I made the huge assumption that this man must be the father of the kid inside the bouncer who was wearing the Detroit Tigers gear. Possibly? The dad and the toddler walked up to the man in charge of the party and started talking about what I can only imagine was Detroit Tigers related when up comes a woman in a navy blue Detroit Tigers t-shirt. I put two and two together and... I have no idea where I'm going with this. Just an odd observation, I suppose.

Ring My Bell

2009-03-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

We're hyper-aware of how much noise we make in our house. Mainly because to be unaware would mean waking baby Blaise, and thus, certain death of free time. So we try to keep the volume down to a minimum when Blaise is sleeping. Unfortunately the outside world isn't as concerned about noise or about waking babies. And because our house gets an inordinate amount of unannounced visitors, the doorbell rings an inordinate amount, which will almost certainly wake the baby. So Lily created a good old-fashioned warning sign (out of a blue post-it) to all who may think about ringing the doorbell: PLEASE DO NOT RING BELL, PLEASE KNOCK. BABY SLEEPING. Fair warning for those who might otherwise receive our wrath along with screaming baby wrath.

And the other day, I was on the verge of getting Blaise to sleep in my arms. Rocking her gently while doing the bounce, catching up on the latest in the Manny Ramirez saga (Should he take the $25 million? Should he wait for a better offer? If only I had those $25 million problems), when the doorbell rang. Blaise woke up and started crying. I had a sensation not unlike what The Incredible Hulk probably feels just before he turns green and explodes from whatever he's wearing into a pair of ripped blue jeans.

I decided to not answer the door in hopes that the violator of the doorbell rule would just go away. But nope, more doorbell ringing. Blaise and I went to the back part of the house - away from the incessant doorbell pressing - and let Lily get the door. It turned out to be her mom. She was bringing over some food for us. I couldn't be that mad about that, and Blaise went right back to sleep anyway. I put the baby down in her bed, and quietly left the room. I went back to the living room, and Lily's mom had already left. I told Lily that I was finished with the doorbell note experiment, and I was determined to disconnect the damn thing. Lily tried to stop me, but there was no stopping me at that point.

I grabbed a screwdriver and went at the doorbell button. I pulled it out of its housing to see if there was an easy way to disconnect and reconnect it, but it was just a mess of tangled wire. But in my rampage to get the doorbell disconnected, I accidentally rang the doorbell. And when I tried to put it all back, I rang the doorbell again. I went inside and Lily said "Blaise is crying". Great. If only I'd read the damn post-it.

You Look Marvelous

2009-02-26T06:24:00.000-08:00

One of the parents at Judah's preschool likes to greet me in a very strange way. She says "You look tiiiired". I always find it kind of strange when people say that to someone who isn't really a close friend. If a close friend told me that, I'd probably say "Yeah, no shit Sherlock, I've got an infant at home and a preschooler who wakes up crying at 2am every night." But because this is someone I barely know, I have to be civilized and show some restraint by saying something far less biting. Something like "oh well, ya know, the baby" and shrug it off. But yeah, I don't like the idea of looking like a worn-out shell of my former, more vibrant and energetic self.

The more I think about it, the more I can't really understand why someone would even venture to say "you look tired". It's akin to saying "you're looking old these days", or maybe "you're really looking like you're getting out of shape." Years ago, a co-worker once told me "You look tired", when it wasn't the day after one of my partying binges or a night after frolicking in my bachelorhood, so I thought I should be looking fairly bright-eyed. I took offense to the remark, so I said "thanks!" The co-worker was caught of guard and said "oh sorry, I didn't mean it like that." Which brings me back to the point. Why would anyone, unless you're good friends, make a remark that you look tired?

Lily told me that this parent at the preschool told her she looked tired too, and it started to become clear: That's this parent's way of connecting, of making conversation. Well the next morning, I ran into her and she said "you look tiiiired", and I did the same old "well... ho hum" routine. And she actually came back and told me that her daughter had been waking up in the middle of the night crying every night. And she said "See? I have the bags under my eyes now." I wasn't gonna say anything about the bags, but next time I see her I'll have to say "You look tiiiired" and see what she does. I'll probably get slapped.

I Fought the Law

2009-02-19T07:25:00.000-08:00

I'm convinced that living in a car town like Los Angeles, two things will happen to you eventually: 1. You'll be involved in a wreck. 2. You'll get a traffic ticket. During my first year here, I was able to get both of those eventualities out of the way. I neglected to consider the possibility of multiples of either. And now I've had the pleasure of getting more than one ticket.

You may or may not know this, depending on how well you paid attention to the written material for obtaining a driver's license, but those little double yellow lines on the road? Don't cross 'em. There are a few circumstances where you may cross them, but it's usually a good idea not to. Because you might pull the crossing of the double yellow line maneuver, and subsequently have officer friendly pull up next to you and tell you that he's pulling you over. Which is what happened to me back in December.

There are several websites out there that will help you fight all sorts of traffic tickets. Do not use this one. I did, and I paid my $25 donation so that I could receive "personal attention" to my case. All I got was repeated e-mailings from said website reminding me to pay my donation, or that my deadline was fast approaching, or e-mails that I sent to his address bouncing back to me. The deadline has passed and I'm still getting e-mails reminding me to pay. Sheesh.

The single most important bit of information that I was able to glean from the website (or any of the websites that I found on the subject) was that you should never ever just pay the fine. In California there's this little process called "Trial by Declaration" whereby you say you want such a trial, you submit a couple forms with maps if you choose, and you never have to step into a courtroom. You should always contest the ticket, even if it's something as simple as writing "NOT GUILTY" on a sheet of paper. By going down the Trial by Declaration path, you are forcing the officer who gave the ticket to write up their own recount of the events leading to the ticket. If they don't file a report, you win. Plain and simple. If they do file and you lose, you can always go to a regular trial. Or you can pay the fine and get a point on your driving record and pay higher car insurance bills, etc. But who wants to do that?

So I did the Trial by Declaration thing. I included a bunch of maps from different angles showing what went down. Still, I wasn't very optimistic that I'd win. A few weeks passed, and I was getting the feeling that my car insurance bill was about to get a lot more painful. I received a letter in the mail from the Los Angeles County Clerk, i.e. The Law, and I knew this was it. I tore open the letter while chanting "please be good news please be good news please be good news..." and I scanned the letter for the words. NOT GUILTY with a check box next to it. Yes! I jumped up and down with the letter in my hand chanting "NOT GUILTY! NOT GUILTY! NOT GUILTY!" Judah got up from eating lunch and pointed and laughed. Lily didn't know what to make of it. At the time you're reading this, I'm still jumping around in the entry way of my house chanting "NOT GUILTY! NOT GUILTY! NOT GUILTY!"

Blue Jean

2009-02-12T07:35:00.000-08:00

Recently I've noticed something going on with several pairs of my pants: The right leg knee area is getting worn much faster than the left. Lily pointed it out on my favorite pair of black pants. The area has a worn gray circle right below where my knee is. No such gray circle on the left. And then I noticed the same thing on a pair of what I like to call "leisure pants" that I wear around the house. Call them sweats if you want, but they're more styley than that. Anyway, the leisure pants have a hole in the right knee area where the black "non-leisure" pants are gray.

I finally figured out what was causing the extra wear: Every time I bend down to the boy's level to do whatever - help brush his teeth, put on his sunscreen, etc - I'm kneeling on that right knee. Now I'm trying my best to kneel on the left, but old habits die hard, so I figured it's time to buy a new pair of pants.

Lately I've been into buying proper trousers rather than going with jeans all the time. I especially like the "old man" style that's become more readily available through skater-wear shops like Volcom. The "old man" thing helps because I'm fitting that description more and more these days, plus when I get really old it won't look like I made some major wardrobe switch. But seeing's how my one and only pair of jeans sports a threadbare look in the ass section (not that the ladies probably mind that too much), I thought I'd try to replenish the jean supply. That supply being one pair.

So off to H&M I went and by the luck of the gods I was able to find a nice pair that looks sorta modern and actually fits. And when I arrived home, I found a box delivered on my doorstep with to: my name and from: the name of my best friend from high school. I opened the box and there was a card that said "Here are the new jeans I told you about at the reunion. Hope they fit!" I don't remember having any such conversation, but I also drank a reunion's worth of beers there, so there ya go. Lily demanded I try them on immediately, and they fit perfectly! Two pairs of jeans in one day. My right knee will never be the same again.

Blind

2009-01-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

I pride myself on being prepared. Prepared for the weather, prepared for when the baby's diaper blows out the side. Prepared for any foreseeable event when I travel. I have lists on the computer that remind me what to bring to be prepared, and I have post-it notes on the nightstand to remind me of things that didn't make it to the computer. When I travel I have almost no need for a flashlight, but I'll be damned if I'm leaving it at home. But in the event that I do leave it at home, that will be the one time the rental car breaks down in the dark in some sketchy area.

And because I pride myself on being prepared, you can imagine my surprise when I reached into my bag after making it through airport security at LAX, and I didn't have my glasses. Not sunglasses, not something I could just pick up at the grocery store, but my eyeglasses. It's not like I'm Mr. Magoo or anything, but no eyeglasses equals headaches, so it's more than a minor annoyance. I briefly considered having them shipped up to me, but then I briefly considered how smashed they'd be when they arrived.

The conclusion was to call my eye doctor's office, have them fax the prescription to me, then go down to the nearest LensCrafters and get the cheapest pair of glasses I could find. I called LensCrafters to make sure they'd be open after work, and I hopped on the bus down to the mall. I looked on the little mall map for LensCrafters and it said it was on level "M". Mezzanine, right. I go up to the Mezzanine level and there's no LensCrafters. I not-so-quickly discover that it's not the Mezzanine level, but the "Metro" level, which they mean as the basement level. Right.

Upon entering LensCrafters, I immediately head for the cheapo glasses. And the cheapo eyeglasses consisted of mainly Bill Lumbergh style glasses. I tried them on and almost laughed myself out of the store, but I opted for some Sarah Palin type glasses. I handed the glasses and my prescription to the nearest LensCrafters employee and we started filling out paperwork and taking eye and face readings for these cheapo glasses.

The employee takes my paperwork and goes to the room where they hammer out the prescription lenses, and comes back 30 seconds later. "The machine is broken. Would you like to come back tomorrow?" I'm about ready to start a riot and start clearing the walls of all the pretty little designer frames, but I tell him "Nah, I'll just go without. Thanks." I figured by the time I came back after work, I'm already halfway through my travels, so why bother paying for some lame frames? And now I've convinced myself of the bright side: At least I wouldn't be losing my glasses on this little trip.

The Mob Rules

2009-01-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

Being the good consumers that we are, Lily and I finally made a date with destiny and purchased a Costco membership. Really the reason we were there to buy in bulk was the party we were hosting at our house for Judah's birthday. The big 0-3! And 62 people had RSVP'd yes to our Evite, so we knew it was gonna be a rager.

So off to Costo were we to buy party platters, pastries, and paper towels. Among other things. And if you've never walked into a Costco, add it to your list of things to witness in life. It's insane. Huge numbers of people ambling around a huge warehouse with huge shopping carts, big enough for two kids to sit side-by-side in the kid seating part. It was only Thursday and it was so packed that it was hard to imagine what it would be like to go on a weekend when the regular folks aren't working. The place was so buzzing that there was barely enough room to maneuver the cart around without getting into a 20-cart pileup.

The packed atmosphere began to drive us mad after about 10 minutes. It seemed that no matter which way you turned your monstrous cart, there'd be somebody either barreling down the lane, or a cart in the middle of the aisle to go look at 1000 count bottles of Advil. I just wanted to pull over to get out from behind the "wheel", so to speak, and there's someone either staring at the warehouse ceiling standing in the place I want to pull into, or pushing their cart at a snail's pace while gabbing on the cell phone.

And then there's the samples. Costco likes to set up stations throughout the warehouse to cook up some vittles for the hungry shoppers to try out. Experienced Costco shoppers seem to know the drill and about how long things take to cook there, because it seemed that as soon as a dish popped onto a plate, five ravenous shoppers descended on the spot to gobble it up. I tried multiple times to get to the tamales, but I wasn't fast enough. Gotta go back more I guess. Or climb over people's carts like everyone else does.

As we meandered through picking up items for the party, it began to dawn on me how Costco really gets you. It's that EVERYTHING is there. You may go there to buy bulk food, but along the way you see a TV you like and think "yeah, I need one of those too", and you walk by a cross-training/treadmill-type machine and think "I'll pick that one up next time I'm here". You're at Costco, where everything is a little bit cheaper, so how could you go wrong?

We finally managed to get everything we needed for the party, and headed to the checkouts. The good thing is that Costco checkers are way more helpful than the ones at Trader Joe's. Don't get me started again. Costco likes to put your stuff in boxes instead of bags. I guess that's somehow better, but now we've got this influx of cardboard to deal with. The bulk goodies would hardly fit in the back of the wagon. As we left the equally insane parking lot, I couldn't help but wonder "is this the beginning of the end?" It might be, but I'm looking forward to that next grocery run so I can get the treadmill.

Baby Come Back

2008-12-04T07:32:00.001-08:00

Judah's preschool has asked that all parents pack a cloth napkin into the kids' lunches. Like 3 year olds are using napkins. Actually they use the napkins as a sort of tablecloth/mat area so they don't infringe on each others dining space at the kiddie tables. Still sounds crazy to me, but who am I to argue. And being that I'm packing Judah's lunch every morning, I'm using the only available cloth napkins to be found at our house - Lily's good ones. Lily doesn't like that.

So on my weekly pilgrimage to Target, I decided to buy some cloth napkins to be dedicated solely to Judah's lunchbox. Target didn't have much of a selection. Not much that fits into the "boyish but not branded by Disney/Pixar, Thomas the Train, or Spongebob" category. They had plain colors like green, red, and yellow. I opted for the green ones thinking that they'll hold up the longest over repeated food spillage. They came in packs of four, which works out great for the number of days in the school week. Laundry or dipping into the good napkin stash would be necessary.

Except that when I got home from Target and Lily inspected the new napkins, she noticed that there were only three in the pack. Damn! A return trip to return would be necessary. Which is what we did yesterday. Returning stuff at Target is never a big deal. The people working at the counter could care less why you're returning merchandise, so no need to make up any excuses, just show 'em the receipt and you're good. I had no need for an excuse, only that there were three napkins instead of four. As I stood in line, I contemplated the possibility that they might think I'm lying and I still have the fourth napkin at home. But why the hell would anyone make a return trip to Target and stand in the return line just for one napkin. I felt guilty of theft,nevertheless.

It was my turn to return merchandise, and Brendaisha would be assisting me. "Can I help the next guest?" she said with a blank stare that could only be achieved by burning countless hours of your life listening to return stories at Target in Los Angeles. I wondered why Brendaisha's mom couldn't have stopped at "Brenda". Why the "isha"? I'm sure her friends called her "Brenda" anyway.

"This pack is suppposed to have four and there were only three in there." I told Brendaisha holding my receipt out like it was a passport. Brendaisha (I'll stop with the "isha" from here on out if you can follow along) scanned the napkin package, then the receipt, and she asked if I wanted a refund or exchange. I asked for an exchange. I should have asked for the refund, because it would save me a trip back to Brenda. She told me I didn't have to wait in line next time.

After I walked to the napkin area and selected a pack that had four napkins, I went back to Brenda, who was blankly staring at a bearded man telling her some lengthy story about a Dirt Devil vacuum cleaner he wanted to return. She obviously didn't care, but it made me think that the guy had something to hide by telling a story instead of saying "it's broken" and leaving it at that.
The refund line had three ladies waiting, and they didn't look like they'd be too happy to see me jump to the front of the line. They just didn't know about the arrangment Brenda made with me. So I sidled up to the counter and didn't dare look in the ladies direction. I waited for the vacuum man to finish his story.

Another Target refund counter casualty walked over and opened up the register where I waited and told me "sorry, but you're standing at the register". Oh, my bad. I moved away from the register and lady #1 in line got down to business. Finally Brenda was ready and she took my new pack of napkins and the exchange receipt and sent me on my way. Except that we were buying some gift wrap and some gifts for Judah's birthday, so we still had to go through the regular checkout.

And when we were through the checkout, I got a coupon, as all Targets like to give out when you're leaving so you'll come back. But this coupon was for a free Choxie chocolate bar. Like free as in redeemable right now no purchase necessary. All that returning business made me hungry , so I asked the checkout gal about the coupon and she said "oh yeah, go ahead and get it" and she motioned toward the rack of candy right at the checkout.

I had no idea what a Choxie bar was or what one looked like, so I scanned the candy rack and finally found a group of Choxie dark chocolate espresso truffle bars. Two bucks. I grabbed one and handed the bar and my coupon to the checkout gal. She scanned them both and the word "VOID" appeared on the screen. She looked at the coupon and said "oh you have to buy three dollars worth of something to get it". She moved onto the next customer in line. I looked closely at the coupon and it said nothing about buying anything. It did however say "up to a $3 value", which meant that the $2 Choxie bar in my hand would fit the bill.

I went to the 6-item max express line to see if I'd get a different result. The lady in front of me clearly had at least 8 items, but I waited patiently for my turn. The Target employee scanned the Choxie bar and the coupon and the screen said "VOID". The employee turned to the manager standing next to her and said "it's not working". The manager said "punch in the code". The employee again scanned the code. Same result. The manager looked at the coupon and said to the employee "I think he has to buy something." I said "it says free and it's worth a three dollar value and the bar is only two bucks." No sooner did I finish that sentence than the manager held up the "shush" finger (performed by pointing the index finger skyward and moving the arm toward the intended recipient) and told me "we're trying to figure this out". They resorted to some sort of manual override, and I walked out of Target with my free Choxie bar.

On the ride home I ate two squares of the chocolate. Lily asked "was it worth it?" It was and it was delicious. Free is damned tasty.

That's Amore

2008-11-28T12:37:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I went to a friend of Judah's for a playdate. The playdate was for Judah not me, silly. It was a friend of his - named Alida - who attended the same daycare until just recently when they went to different preschools. The family is Italian. Not Italian-American, but actually from Italy until just a few years ago. Their English is very good. But their parents, who live in Italy and were nearing the end of their visit, don't speak English at all.

Judah and his friend played outside for a while, then inside when it got dark. It looked like it was about time to leave until Alida's mom told me she made dinner for Judah. I'm thinking "No dinner for me? Oh, I guess I'm getting fatter and fatter, so nevermind." Alida and Judah ate the most elaborate dinner I've seen for preschoolers as they watched Finding Nemo. Alida's dad and I talked shop. Soon after Judah's dinner was done, I was about to leave again when Alida's mom told me that dinner was ready. For me and the rest of the adults this time. So I guess I'm not getting that fatter after all.

We sat down at the table with the parents (not just the parents of the preschoolers, but the parents of the parents of the preschooler who lives there) and we had a lovely dinner that consisted mainly of conversation spoken in English. There were a few minutes of Italian for the Italian speakers, and I felt compelled to follow the flow of whoever was speaking even though I could barely understand more than a word here or there. Words like "vino" and "pasta".

After dinner I got Judah's shoes on and put on our jackets and started saying goodbye. In my vino dampened mind I decided that it would be clever to try to say "have a good journey" in Italian. Not that I knew how to say that, but I quickly recalled from some Berlitz French lessons somebody saying "Bonne Journée". And I thought, "it must be 'Bon Journo' in Italian, and I went with it. I leaned in to Alida's grandma's cheek to do the Euro double-kiss thing and she smiled and said "Arrivederci!" I said "bongiorno"! Only later that night did I realize I really said "hello". What a dumbass American I am.

Chocolate and Cheese

2008-11-13T07:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I walked in on Lily and Judah laughing in the living room. Lily saw me come in, she turned to Judah and said, "Tell daddy what you told me". And without hesitation, Judah looked at me and said "You're getting fatter and fatter". Oh, kids just say the darndest things, don't they? I mean, I KNOW I'm not fat. But then why would the boy say I'm getting fatter? And fatter?

I guess for starters, I haven't been to the gym in like, forever. And even when I was going on a regular basis, it was probably only twice a week at best. But I do try to watch what I eat. Except for lately with the whole "newborn/no sleep/gotta do whatever I can to stay sane including eat junk food" diet. Cookies and cream ice cream has been a favorite lately. And chocolate chip cookies. And leftover halloween candy. But I deserve it! I'm not getting a regular night's sleep!

Okay, so maybe there is a bit more pudge around my waist. And maybe my face. So I suppose that means hauling my fatter and fatter ass back to the gym where it belongs. Except according the the Alex Hauser rules of fitness, which clearly state that you work out hard and watch what you eat all year, but when the holidays roll around, forget about it. You slack off and eat whatever you damn well please. I know we're not actually at the beginning of the holidays yet, but who starts a workout regimen in November? Nobody, that's who. I'm gonna eat a bowl of cookies and cream ice cream right now just to prove it. I'll show that kid who's getting fatter. And fatter.

Blew

2008-11-06T09:54:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I was hangin out eating lunch with Judah after a morning of hangin out, and mom and the new baby girl were asleep in the bedroom. Judah seemed really tired, which is usually the case around lunchtime, because that's also right before naptime. He wanted to sit on my lap to eat lunch, which isn't the norm, but he's so darn cute and cuddly at this stage that I wasn't gonna argue. I tried to get him to eat more of his lunch, but he seemed too tired to go on, so I put him to bed for his nap.

Then I think I watched a little bit of some college football game that I have no connection to, because I really don't know what to do with myself when everyone else is asleep at my house. The next thing ya know Judah is screaming at the top of his lungs crying. I went to his room to see what was up. He had puked all over himself and some of his bed. The vomit was mostly the eggs from breakfast, and I was surprised that those bits weren't more digested by then. He had managed to keep most of his bed clean, instead sending the majority of it onto my pillow, which was left there from the morning cry session of "DAAAAAADDDDYYYYY" over and over, when I was too tired to do anything but grab my pillow and go to his room to quiet him down.

The funny thing about kids and puke is that they don't understand what's going on. I wonder if they think their insides are coming out. Being a college graduate and veteran of puking, I know very well the ins and outs of that exercise. But kids must think the world is coming to an end when they hurl. Judah evidently did. I got him cleaned up, then concentrated on getting the mess in his room cleaned up and everything into the laundry. Thank god we have our own washing machine.

Lily woke up with all the racket, and she came to the living room to help Judah settle down. After I got the laundry going, I decided to water all the plants, which Judah likes to help with. We watered a few of them, and he got distracted and started playing with his trucks or trains or something. I heard him make a weird sounding cough and I turned and asked "are you okay?" Which was followed by a quick blast of mostly watery puke from his mouth. Right onto the rug. Lily said "I think it was mostly water" nanoseconds before Judah let loose with another, bigger blast of puke that wasn't mostly water. I grabbed his hand to get him off the rug, but again, Judah must have thought the world was coming to an end because he was crying and not moving. Another blast of puke. I managed to grab him and get him to the toilet for the final purge.

I don't know why I expected him to be able to give me some sort of sign like "Hey dad, I'm about to throw up here. Get me to the nearest bathroom". No, preschoolers don't have that sense built up yet, like they will in high school or junior high or whenever the kids really start drinking these days. So I'm resigned to the randomness of it. At least with dogs, they make that stomach pumping noise before they let loose some dog vomit. Eww.

The Golden Age of Wireless

2008-10-02T07:20:00.000-07:00

My iPhone was stolen this week. Some people might think "Haha, stupid iPhone haver. Serves you right for havin' a stupid iPhone." Well, the joke's on me I guess. I won't get into the nitty gritty of how it happened, because that would make me seem like an even dumber stupid iPhone haver. But I would like to share what happened after the thievery.

After the requisite self-hatred for being a dumbshit who got his iPhone stolen, I started to piece together the things I probably SHOULD have done to protect myself. Oh, simple things like password protecting my phone. Or password protecting my SIM card. Or doing this or this or this.

But no, I thought that I would always have this phone and I never thought that anyone would ever steal it. But the funny thing about an iPhone is that it's a computer in your pocket. And that computer can be used to steal your identity and make your life a lot more complicated than it is right now. As I was lying in bed that night at 3 am wondering if somebody was coming to my house (because they had my address now) to steal more stuff, I considered that I should probably have locked the damn phone in the first place. I spent my afternoon changing all my passwords and deleting shit.

The next day I looked on my credit card's theft protection policy and saw that my phone was covered. Whew. But in order to get reimbursed, I'd have to file a police report. With the LAPD. Nice. I knew that would be pleasant, but necessary. So I made my way down to the police station closest to where the theft happened, and lucky for me, 2 hours free parking on the street outside. I walked in to see two men in blue staring at me, one of which looked like he had had about a dozen too many donuts. I walked toward him, as he was the guy directly in my path, and before I was two steps toward him he pointed his finger to the right, to a much younger much leaner cop. And that cop didn't seem too excited to be helping me.

I told him my story, and he stated "we're gonna have to list that as a 'lost' item because you didn't actually witness the theft". How many people actually see somebody steal their shit? Unless you're getting mugged, you're not seeing anything. So I told him that I called my phone and somebody answered, so I KNOW it was stolen. Apparently he thought that was good enough, cuz he changed the lost to stolen. I told him how AT&T wasn't gonna replace my phone with anything but a non-iPhone Nokia lame piece of shit for the low price of 50 bucks. At the end of the report, he told me his own story of how his iPhone had gotten water splashed on it in a scuffle, and AT&&T was ready to charge him full price to replace it. This for a guy who was Protectin' and Servin'. I told him they should give him a new phone for free. I walked out with copy of police report in hand.

And I went straight to the Apple Store in Century City to get a replacement. Now I couldn't just go without a phone for a while while my wife's in late/delivery stage of pregnancy, could I? I ordered basically the same thing as the first time. We were almost done with the transaction when the Apple sales rep told me it would be a $549 "upgrade" instead of the retail $299. That for being the asshole who had his phone stolen. Yeah, I wanted that to happen. After talking to two AT&T phone reps who toed the company line of screwing theft victims into paying more than full price, the Apple guy finally got his manager and got me the phone for the same price I paid pre-thievery. And the Apple Store guy told me how I could call AT&T with the SIM card nubmer and have them shut off the phone completely. I did that the next day.

Now all is back to the way it was before the theft. Except I'm down another $375 or so until the reimbursement arrives, if it arrives at all. And that shit is locked down tight. Takes me another 5 rings or so to unlock and answer the damn thing, but I'm not going through all that again.

Lovin' Every Minute of It

2008-09-18T08:21:00.000-07:00

When the company I work for moved offices, we were all pretty excited about being in a new and much more spacious space. Our old place was just unimpressive, and in the entertainment biz you gotta entertain by being impressive. And the new place is indeed impressive, as shown by our massively huge and successful first real party last Friday night. Not much elbow room on your way to the bar, which is usually my measuring stick of the popularity of a joint.

Anyway, back to the new space: The one major drawback of this new awesome office is that there's not much in the way of parking. There's enough for the clients, but not the employees, so us worker bees park in the Yahoo lot which is at best a 7 minute walk. In order to dramatically reduce the time of said walk, I bought a skateboard. Actually Judah convinced me to buy a skateboard in the Sports Authoritie when we were really there to buy him some shoes. He just wouldn't let it go, so I let my inner child do the decision making, and we walked out of there with a skateboard in a box. How un-punk.

Cutting to the chase of this story (cuz I like short blogs - and short songs):
I'm feeling pretty good about my skateboarding to and from the parking garage, in spite of the fact that I hadn't really ridden a skateboard in about 20 years. This good feeling vanishes shortly after getting on the board one morning and wiping out and transforming the heel of my left hand into road burn/hamburger with a swift and stinging wipeout. Gross enough that I wondered if it would ever go back to normal.

I wore a bandage on the hand for a couple weeks and it was starting to look presentable enough that I could lose the bandage. So I did. And a couple days later, I was pan frying pork chops on the stove and managed to spill some nice hot oil on the thumb and index finger of that same hand. The burning sensation lasted for 4 hours, even with repeated slatherings of aloe. The next day there was (and still is) a pretty massive blister covering the area between the joints in my index finger. I wanna pop it, but Lily won't let me. I'd take a picture, but I like you too much.

So today we had a little meeting at Judah's new preschool, and as usual, I'm either late or I'm stressing that I will be late, so I grab the trusty skateboard to speed to the parking garage. And as you might guess by where this is all heading, I managed to wipe out in the crosswalk and scraped the hell out of (you guessed it) my left hand. Looking good, kid. My left hand is disgusting. And I can't really feel the heel of my hand anymore. I mean I can feel it with my right index finger, but on my left hand it feels dead.

I get to the preschool meeting (10 minutes ahead of schedule) and make a beeline for the bathroom so I can wash the blood off, but it doesn't really come off because it's embedded into the scraped heel of my hand. But when I get into the meeting and as I'm sitting there listening to Judah's new teacher, I glance down at my scraped up left hand and think: "I love skateboarding."

Coda

2008-08-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

Time to go. I'm juggling way too many things right now to do any of them well.
It might be a hiatus, it might be the end. You could always subscribe to the mirror site, then if and when another LLMB pops up, it'll be delivered right to your mailbox. In the meantime, if you need an LLMB fix, the mirror site is probably the best way to read the archives. The TNSC site shows them in HTML. And who the hell wants to read HTML?

Thanks go out to the TNSC crew for allowing me to rant on a weekly basis. And thanks to any readers out there, for reading!

Ciao baby,
Brett Favre

Let's Go To Bed

2008-07-31T07:42:00.000-07:00

Child #2 is on the way. A girl this time. We're pretty stoked about the getting one of each kind thing. Lily is about 6.5 months along. I can't imagine what it's like to not only be carrying one child, as in pregnant, but to have to also deal with a toddler who's exploring his abilities to get into everything his parents don't want him to.

When Lily went in for a routine checkup last week, the docs put her on bed rest. The doc probably said something along the lines of "the stork will be arriving way ahead of schedule if you don't take it easy". So Lily got off her feet for a couple days, but not really. And then on her follow up to the routine checkup, the docs immediately admitted her to the hospital. Not so much that Lily or the baby wasn't doing well, but more as a precaution to the whole stork arriving too early thing.

When Lily called me to inform me that she had been admitted, I was in the middle of my yearly employee review, and my phone kept buzzing in my pocket. Not wanting to tarnish my reputation as a shining employee, I didn't answer the phone. But the second I got out and returned to my edit suite, the phone was ringing in there too. Our receptionist Gladys told me to call Lily immediately. I called, and Lily told me she was in the hospital. I achieved half-freakout mode and told her I'd be there right away.

Because this hospital is about 4 blocks from my work, I considered walking there. I also considered walking to our parking lot, which is about 2 blocks away, and driving. I opted for the walk. And good thing I did, because when I arrived at the street where the hospital is located, the entire street had been blocked off because a truck had flipped over moments before. Bad for the truck, but good for jaywalking.

And because I had never really been in this hospital before, it took me about an extra 30 minutes to find my way through the maze of hospital to the place where Lily was resting. She had a nice big room with a view of the Santa Monica mountains and palm trees. She was fine. The baby was fine. Just a precaution they said. But she'd be staying for a few days to monitor the situation.

Now Lily and unborn baby are home. And following doctors orders this time. I tell the story to most everyone I bump into, and everybody asks how Lily is doing. She's fine, I tell them. How's the baby? She's fine, I tell them. Nobody asks about me. I just run around doing everything Lily used to do, plus everything I used to do. Maybe if I'm lucky, Lily will let me curl up in bed beside her for some much needed rest.

Unknown Pleasures

2008-07-24T07:42:00.000-07:00

Like almost every other person in Los Angeles, on Saturday I went to Santa Monica for an event called Glow. Santa Monica isn't set up for that size of crowd. The city powers-that-be advertised Glow as an all-night event, from dusk til dawn, and it was touted as Burning Man in the city. But it lacked the art. And later it lacked the music.

I should have turned my car around when I saw traffic backing up from the 4th Street exit about a mile onto the 10. But no, I was positive my parking karma would come through. Nope. Not only were all the parking lots next to the Promenade full, the Santa Monica Police Department was busy putting up barricades everywhere, essentially turning the streets by the beach into one big evolving maze.

I brilliantly thought of parking at the Santa Monica Public Library, which was eight blocks from the pier. Apparently a lot of other people had this stroke of genius as well, because the only spots left were on P3, which was two floors down from street level. But getting to the event was easy enough. And when we arrived, we wondered what the big deal was. From the beach just north of the pier, the only glowing pieces to be seen were two 10-foot buoys floating about 40 feet from shore, and a misting device (about the size of a small house) that was lit up with different colored lights. Woo hoo.

There were plenty of people with glow sticks, and some with glowing light sabers, but not much else in the way of of anything worthy of calling an event "Glow". We hung out on the sand talking to friends we randomly came across until we all concluded that the event was a huge bust. At least Judah had fun running around on the sand.

When we made it back to the car, there was a line to get out of the garage. And Lily and I both had to pee. But we both agreed that we could hold it until we got home. We pulled out of our parking spot and got in line. And we moved about 1/2 a car length every 5 minutes. This, from 2 floors below street level. It was hot down on P3, and the exhaust from all the cars idling was choking us, so we had to roll our windows up. I remembered that I had forgot to bring my iPod, so I turned on the radio. Not much to hear but static when you're down two floors below street level in a concrete parking garage.

After about 30 minutes of sitting in the garage, I noticed that my gas meter was sitting on empty. And we still had one more floor to go. So I was forced to turn my engine on and off every time we moved up the exit line.

The highlight of the wait was witnessing a douchebag in a Mustang take the liberty of zooming past everyone in the wrong lane, going the wrong way. The highlight was 15 seconds after he zoomed past, when he was forced to go back down in reverse because some other suckers who were trying to park to see Glow were driving the right way in the right lane.

One hour after we began our journey from the center of the Earth, we arrived at the gate to pay. And there was only one gate in operation this night. 3 bucks flat rate parking. Just remember, next time you decide to go to ground zero for some event where all humanity will be in attendance:

- always keep a reasonable amount of fuel in your car
- bring your music
- go pee before you get in the car

Better yet, stay home. I know I will. Apparently the Santa Monica police department shut down the music at 2 am. Way to party til dawn Santa Monica.

Straight Outta Compton

2008-07-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

I recently completed traffic school for the moving violation I received a few months back: Running a red light on a left turn. I chose the (Compton-based) Internet Traffic School option, because then I could make a beeline straight to the test part and fly through it because I'm such a knowledgeable driver. No need to read through all that pesky study material.

But being the diligent student I've always been, I decided to skim through some of the study material. And some of it was not only informative, but very entertaining. Here's an excerpt:

"Many accidents happen because Driver #1 assumed Driver #2 in front of him was entering traffic, but Driver #2 either did not start or changed his mind after going a few feet, so Driver #1 wound up in his trunk."

Here's another:

"How can you avoid mental mistakes? It is really quite easy. In each of the examples above, one part of your mind, the adult part, was telling you the right course of action. But you were not listening to the adult part. You were listening to the child in you who wants a drink, who thinks it is exciting to race a train."

and another:

"Have you ever walked, gotten up in the middle of the night and stumbled around in a house or apartment? Sure. Everybody has. Usually you stumble over something that you forgot was on the floor, banging your shin. Ouch! Or you walk into a door that you forgot was closed. Double Ouch! Or worst of all, you stub your toe. Pain!"

After reading a few passages like these, I decided to go ahead to the test part. I took the test. Failed. Three times. The questions seemed mostly obvious, but there were a few that weren't, and a few more where the test had to be wrong. Seriously. Both Lily and I agreed that the question about "making a right turn and moving to the left side of your lane" to do it had to be incorrect.

So we checked on the California DMV website to see what the law says, and lo and behold, there were all the answers. Every single one. I mean, the wording of the questions were exactly the same as the ones on my Compton internet traffic school's site. Now, I've never been one to cheat, but when the answers aren't true, you have to resort to other options.

So if you're ever in internet traffic school, just go ahead and get your answers straight from the DMV. But it's probably best to not get a traffic ticket in the first place.

Holidays in the Sun

2008-07-10T07:31:00.000-07:00

Last Friday one thing that struck me as kind of odd was people wishing each other a "Happy Fourth of July!" Maybe that doesn't sound strange to you, but it made me wonder why we refer to the holiday as its date for only that holiday. We're celebrating Independence Day. But you don't hear people say "Happy Independence Day" do you?

Why don't we say "Happy 31st of December" when we're celebrating New Year's? Or "Happy Fourth Thursday in November" when we're talking about Thanksgiving? "Merry 25th of December!" The list goes on and on, but the Fourth of July is kind of screwed when it comes to referring to the cause behind the celebration.

People aren't gonna start saying "Happy Independence Day". We're Americans and we're too lazy to change now. But I bet if we called it something sexier, people would change. Possibly "Happy Fireworks Day!" or "Happy Explosion Day!" That oughta do the trick. Try it out next Independence Day. That would be the Fourth of July, in case you forget.

In a Big Country

2008-07-03T07:33:00.000-07:00

The latest from the inadvertent e-mail front:

Somebody named Larry Gardner from Alabama is apparently huge. Not huge like "blowin' up", but possibly about to blow up by ballooning to proportions not really meant for human beings. I know this because Larry was sent a few e-mails from King Size Direct concerning registering on their website and buying several items. King Size Direct's slogan is "More For Less In Big & Tall Sizes". I on the other hand am neither Big nor Tall, nor named Larry. We only seem to share the same spelling of our last name. Still, it's kind of interesting to see how the other half lives.

Larry bought three shirts and one pair of pants. The pants, colored "Stone", size 44 x 40 would almost fit two of me into them. The three shirts ranged from a 3XL Black Polo to a 2XL Dark Mauve Shirt and 2XL "Soft Yello" Shirt. This tapestry of colors at that size would probably form a nice quilt that would cover me comfortably, but I'm having trouble imagining what Larry must look like wearing "Soft Yello" or Dark Mauve shirts that would probably fit the likes of The Notorious B.I.G.

All in all, Larry spent $107.94 on an amount of fabric that would probably make an entirely new wardrobe for yours truly. Lily recently bought me one size S hoodie at Club Monaco for $120. Either good things come in small packages or I need to start shopping for bigger clothes.

Nevermind

2008-06-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

My phone stopped ringing this week. Literally. I was wondering why I was missing all these phone calls that went straight to voicemail, then somebody called when I had it on Loud + Vibrate mode. It only vibrated. So I asked Lily to give me a call, and there was the answer: no ringing whatsoever.

I should have seen it coming when I used my free Sprint ringer download to get "Smells Like Teen Spirit". They had 2 options for that song: The chorus or the beginning. I opted for the beginning. You know, it starts off sorta quiet, then the drums hit and the gates to grunge heaven are kicked wide open. It sounded like shit on my lame little phone's tiny speaker.

The ringing was pretty comical at first, and I usually let it ring through to the drums part just for a laugh. Then later it wasn't so funny anymore and I'd desperately try to silence the ringing before it got to the drums part. But of course there were times where I wasn't around my phone and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would go on endlessly until the call went to voicemail. That's probably what killed the ringing. Kurt Cobain destroying one more piece of equipment, blowing the tiny speaker on my lame little phone, from beyond the grave.

So I'm stuck with a phone that doesn't ring, but only vibrates. I missed a lot of calls this week, but I'll be damned if I'm buying a new phone right now. Anyone who saw my last cell phone knows the lengths I'll go before buying a new one. Besides, Steve Jobs has me by the balls until July 11th, when the new iPhone comes out. Hello.

Slim Shady

2008-06-19T07:49:00.000-07:00

My wife's name is Lily. With one "L". Sorta. Meaning one L in the middle. Not two Ls. Sorta. Not with two Ls in the middle. As in not LilLy. Seems to me the default way would be the one L up front and one L in the middle. Saves time and energy over dealing with that pesky third "L".

The Lilys that immediately come to mind have the two L spelling: Lily Munster. Lily Allen. Lily Tomlin. So why would anyone use the extra L? No freakin idea. Some people even do it when they see it written on paper or on a computer, and they STILL insist on spelling it Lilly. Seriously. Lily sent an e-mail to the parents at our son's school, and she signed it "Lily". Person replying to the e-mail? "Thanks Lilly". Eesh.

Another one that really bugs the shit out of me is some people's comprehension of our son's name: Judah. I'm talking to somebody and I say "well Judah did blah blah blah..." And they come back with "oh really? Judas did that?" Ahem. Yes, we deliberately named our son with a name most commonly remembered as being a betrayer. The betrayer of Jesus. Yeah. We liked the sound of Judas and we really hate Jesus! Why the fuck would we do that? So I have to correct those people every time that they insist on continuing to say "Judas" when they're referring to "Judah". But it doesn't stick. They won't register the name Judah, but they'll remember a silly name like Judas. I'll tell 'em "Yeah, I'm a huge Priest fan." Then I'll throw the horns and roll my eyes back in my head for good measure.

My name is pretty tough to screw up. You hear Lee and you can easily repeat it, and other than the girly ways of spelling it, it's not too tough to spell either. So maybe the real reason I get so miffed at people misunderstanding the names of my family goes back to my childhood. Back when people made fun of my name. The way mean kids do out on the playground, making hurtful rhymes with the name Lee. Yep, you guessed it: Lee Pee. At least the founders of TNSC were kind enough to make it "Bee" instead. Lee Lee the Musical Pee doesn't really have a nice ring to it. Or does it?

My War

2008-06-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

I was rolling out the trash bins last Thursday night, when I saw a little critter scamper out from where the trash bins regularly reside. Not a critter like a mammal-varmint-sized critter, but like an insect-sized critter. After rolling the trash, recycling, and yard waste bins to the curb, I went inside and grabbed my trusty humongous flashlight to inspect said critter. And the critter turned out to be a cockroach.

There aren't many things in this world that truly creep me out, but cockroaches are near the top of that short list. They have like creepy ways of looking at you and almost like a humanlike personality that way, and ick! That, and they scamper so quickly that they might just crawl up your leg and... oh man, that would be the grossest. And the fact that they were on my property just wasn't going to continue.

When we moved into our new place I noticed (with all the other crap the previous owners left behind in the garage) a can of roach killer. I remember thinking "Now why would they need this? There aren't any roaches around here." Wrong. I didn't see any roaches in broad daylight, nor did I see any in the house. But now that I saw one in the driveway in the dark, I knew there had to be zillions more. And upon further inspection of the driveway, I found at least 10 more.

It was time to test out the can of roach killer. Apparently this stuff kills with mint, not some nasty chemical, so it's safe to use around the boy. Not that I was gonna spray it within a 50 ft radius of him outside at all, but at least the label made me feel better about spraying the life out of the cockroaches. As an added bonus, the can said it leaves a fresh minty scent. What's not to like?

I went around spraying the critters, which only seemed to make them scamper around that much quicker. But the label said to soak them with the stuff, so I did. And they didn't scamper around so quickly and then they stopped scampering altogether. I left a trail of about 15 dead roaches in my wake. I waited until the next morning to clean up the trail of dead, so's the sun could dry up the mint spray.

The spray seemed to have put a serious dent in the roach population outside. But if I so much as see one of those things skittering across the floor inside my house, I'm going gunslinging with the spray on a nightly basis.

Magic Johnson

2008-06-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

I grew up hating the Los Angeles Lakers. HATING. Up there in the woods of the Pacific Northwest you rooted for the SuperSonics or you maybe liked the TrailBlazers. But you certainly didn't like the glamour boys from Hollywood. You HATED them. They were dominating our division and they were winning championships with flash and with a bunch of players everybody knew by name. We had guys that nobody knew, but they played with heart and the fans up there believed the Sonics could win it all. And they did. In 1979. Long, long long ago. So long ago that I was just a kid, and I didn't really follow sports and I didn't know that your city doesn't win NBA championships every year. Unless of course your city was Los Angeles.

Now that the road of life has driven me to Laker-land, I find my stance on that team softening. Call me a bandwagoner or whatever. I could really care less if it were the Lakers or Clippers winning a championship. With the exception of the aforementioned '79 Sonics team, I've never had the experience of:

A. A city that I currently live in win a pro championship
B. A team from a city where I previously lived and currently root for - win a pro championship

Maybe it doesn't matter. But it would be great to experience that once as an adult. So my hatred of the Lakers has waned just enough to root for them as they appear in the Finals this season. I rationalize it as not really wanting the Lakers to win, but the city that I currently reside in to win. Because I could give a shit about the Lakers. In fact, maybe it's my little way of putting a hex on them by rooting for them which, based on my track record, would actually cause them to lose. Go Lakers.

First In Flight

2008-05-29T07:05:00.000-07:00

My mom called last week to tell me that my first childhood friend had passed away. We didn't necessarily stay close after my family moved away, but we were lucky enough to cross paths from time to time as we became adults. One time getting reintroduced to each other in college by members of the University of Washington crew team who were looking for shrimpy guys like us to sit in the coxswain seat.

College was the last time I saw him. And seeing him in the obituary page in the hometown paper really made me look at my own mortality. He was born about 2 weeks before me. He had a daughter about the same age as my son. And my mom said that he was like a son to her. At least when we were around 5 years old. Rest in peace, buddy.

Hurts So Good

2008-05-22T00:03:00.000-07:00

You may or may not have had the luxury of hearing me tell the neverending story of my gum surgery. Either way, it's something you don't want to ever experience.

Thanks to my mom and dad, I have gums that don't seal to the teeth too well. So no matter how much I follow mom and dad's strict teachings to brush and floss every night, their genes don't allow me to adequately clean whatever gets way down in there and attacks the roots of my teeth.

And so I had to find this out from a periodontist 20 years after I left home for college. And this periodontist was required to surgically open up the gum tissue surrounding my molars, clean up the bad stuff, and sew up the gums tighter than mom and dad's DNA ever did.

The result has been laborious in terms of me not being able to chew food on whichever side of the mouth that the periodontist decided to work on this month. Two weeks ago it was the lower left quadrant. He took the stitches out last week and gave me an "A+" on my recovery so far.

In the past couple days I've been able to start chewing soft things like pasta on that side. But the thing that seems to be taking the longest to get over is the cold sensitivity. It ain't no joke. Try chewing on a piece of aluminum foil, and that begins to give you an idea of what I go through even when I drink water that's room temperature. But as I found out with LLMB Reader #1 this week, the one cold beverage that doesn't put the deep freeze on my teeth? You guessed it: A frosty beer. Must be the alcohol. So you know what I'll be drinking until this winter in my mouth is over. Let it snow.

Travelling Without Moving

2008-05-15T08:15:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I wrote about my TV. My lack of a TV. Well despite my efforts to remedy my lack of a TV, I continue to buy a TV on what seems like a bi-weekly basis. Artificially propping up the US economy is what I'm really doing.

After the whole Sears-returning-the-first-TV ordeal, I ordered a Philips TV from Dell. Two weeks ago in this space I described the liar Dell salesman. I canceled the order. I then ordered the same Philips TV, the one that's called the EcoTV because it uses far less power than regular TVs and enables me to hug a tree by sitting on my ass watching SportsCenter on a daily basis, from Amazon.

I didn't realize this before I bought this sorta big-ticket item from an online retailer, but Amazon actually farms out that type of order to a storefront who can take care of it directly after the money has been spent. Being that I was missing all this great HDTV resolution by having to cancel with liars at Dell, I paid extra for expedited shipping: 3x as much as regular shipping to get it in 3-5 days.

The storefront vendor is ANTOnline, based in Atlanta, GA. I get an e-mail from them updating me on where my TV is. The e-mail links to their website which says "Shipment moved from regional warehouse to local". Great. It's so close now I can smell the High-Definition.

But then a day later, the web message changes to "No information available at this time", and stays that way for the remainder of my 3-5 day expedited shipping process. 5 days turns into 6 and then the jig is up. I call ANTOnline and ask them what the holdup is. The nice lady on the phone tells me she'll find out and call me right back. And when she calls me right back, she tells me that they made an error, I needed to pay another $150 to ship this TV, they don't really have expedited shipping, and I'd receive it in another 7-10 days. After another round of customer service hold sessions, I cancel the order.

The next TV vendor turns out to be Buy.com. Buy.com is based just south of Los Angeles. Close enough to walk the TV over in a few days. I order the same Philips EcoTV, I check my shipping status online during the 5-7 day period, and the end of the 7 days comes and goes. And on day 8, the shipping message changes to "Estimated Delivery Date: May 23". I can only venture a guess what my e-mail asking why they say 5-7 days when they really mean 18 days will get. Canceled.

How to Disappear Completely

2008-05-08T11:20:00.000-07:00

Because I like to waste a lot of time managing my music in iTunes, I've found yet another way to focus even more of my attention on that application.
I wanted to listen to all the music I have at least once, so I created a smart playlist that holds every song whose playcount is zero. After the song is played, it then has a playcount of one, and it disappears out of the playlist.

Essentially this playlist left me with mostly songs that I really didn't care to listen to. And it turned out to be around 10 gigs worth of music. So it's been a grueling couple of weeks as I listen to the likes of Janet Jackson, The Dandy Warhols, and a metal band called My Dying Bride that co-worker-bee Brady likes to call "church-burners". And Johnny Cash pops up from beyond the grave in chunks of about 7 songs to not only sing in Folsom Prison, but also to take on covers of songs from bands like Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, and Depeche Mode.

But in listening to this Underplayedlist, how did I not ever listen a song on Kid A? And how the hell did I acquire every Squarepusher album? Anyhow, I've managed to get the list down to around 2 gigs, and under 400 songs left. But if I have to endure one more Elton John ballad, there won't be anything to read here next week.

Bad

2008-05-01T08:13:00.000-07:00

Last week was grueling. I spoke with around 12 customer service reps from Sears when I wanted to return the replacement for my TV of 10 years. The new TV had an amazing picture, but the vertical line running through the middle of the screen didn't look so great. In trying to get Sears to pick up this faulty set, they referred me to delivery, who referred me to the national customer service line, who forwarded me to repair, who sent me to delivery, who forwarded me to the store where I bought my TV, who told me to call delivery, who sent me back to the store. I went into the store with receipt in hand and the Sears employee told me I had to call delivery. He probably saw the steam starting to emanate from my ears, so he called delivery himself and told them to head over to my house to pick the damn thing up.

Later in the week I spent probably a total of 3 hours on the phone with Dell for the replacement for that replacement, after I found out the sales rep had lied to me about how long it would take to deliver the TV. He said it would be the next day. The e-mail said it wouldn't even be shipped for another three. I canceled on the sheer principle that I don't wanna give money to liars.

And the capper of this stellar week was FedEx on Friday. A director friend of mine was shipping a firewire drive that had footage for a music video. Unfortunately for me, the FedEx way is to try to deliver to workplaces before most workplaces are open. I tracked the package and found out that they attempted delivery at 7:40 am, but they would re-deliver by 3 pm. 3 pm comes and goes. No package. 4 pm comes and goes. I was losing a whole day of editing on a music vid that was due on Monday. Sweet. I called FedEx and discovered that the package was still sitting at the facility and there would be no other attempt to deliver that day. Needless to say, it was a fun conversation that ended in me putting on my FedEx hat and driving to the facility and wasting more time there while they attempted to locate the box. Then I got to work all weekend and avoid the nice weather everybody else enjoyed down here.

Not such a great week, eh? I thought so until the IT guy at my work came in with a cast on his right wrist & hand. He had just had surgery on his wrist the day before. Apparently he had to walk to his surgery appointment in the morning because his neighbor had his car towed for blocking his driveway. And he probably won't be getting his car back soon, because he has a bunch of unpaid parking tickets, and he'll have to part with a good chunk of his cash if he wants it back. Oh, and on the walk to his surgery appointment he stepped in dogshit and had brushed some on his pant leg while strolling. But he didn't notice the dogshit until he arrived at his doctor. I'm sure the surgery wasn't much fun either. In light of that, my week was a cakewalk.