Working Stiff

This was supposed to be a blog about Orange County living but it turns out there is precious little Orange County living going on because my temporary part-time job has completely eaten my life.  And yesterday I just about reached my breaking point.

My boss is utterly convinced that everything I do I can do off a laptop, and technically, he's right.  In practice however, it's nearly impossible for countless reasons.  Let's start with the obvious:  at home my monitor is 30 inches, my laptop is only 13.  Once I open any of the software I normally use, there are so many palettes and control panels taking up real estate that I'm left with a work area smaller than my phone.  Now, I'll admit that our months living here in Tinytown have taught me how to work creatively in small spaces, but this is beyond my abilities.  I've repeatedly pointed this and other complications out to the boss, who could give a shit.  He still expects me in the office every Monday for our pointless staff meetings.

The meeting is at 11am, so to make it on-time I need to leave by 9:30 at the very latest.  Knowing there were various projects out in various stages of the approval process, around 8:30 I sent out an email to everyone ( we'll use marketing bullshit and refer to them as "stakeholders" ) explaining that I would be leaving in an hour and if anything needed revisions they should speak now or forever hold their peace.  Or at least hold their peace until later that afternoon.

I heard nothing from no one.

At 9:30 I left for L.A.

At 10am, somewhere near Norwalk, my cell phone rang.

There were revisions.

Many revisions.

Due by 11am.

"Do you have the files with you?" my boss asked.

Even if I did, which I didn't, how exactly did he think I would accomplish this while driving  on the fucking 105?

"Do you want me to turn around?" I offered.  I wasn't yet even halfway into the office.

"No" he said.  "We'll sort it out when you get here."

I arrived at the office at 10:55.

I poked my head into the boss's office to say hello and he returned the favor by saying...

"You need to turn around and go back."

Didn't even stay long enough to get one of the complimentary danish.

I finally got home around 1:15

Nearly four hours wasted, half the day gone.

This morning I'm looking for a new job.

Circle Jerk

 
Un.  Fucking.  Believable.

I have glimpsed our digital "New Media" future and all I can say is... we're screwed.

I drove in for the corporate wankfest, a brisk 90 minute ride.  Each way.  The meeting itself lasted 55 minutes, which was about 50 too long. I was introduced to our new Holding Company Overlords.  They all seemed pleasant enough in a fake, insincere way.  They all talked in big, booming marketing voices, the type of voice that will fill a room, brimming with self-confidence, a voice that says to the world you're not to be trusted.

There were about 15 of us total and we made our way to the glass enclosed conference room.  Everyone took their places around the round conference table with their laptops perched in front of them.  I, wisely, had left the laptop at home, working instead off my new iPad.  Had I brought my laptop in, I would be expected to work and I had no intention of doing that.

The laptop screens formed a circular wall around the table, which everyone hid behind.  It looked more like Mission Control, and in a way it was because while we wouldn't be launching a man to the moon, we would be launching a viral campaign for a snack food.  More on that later.

The oddest thing about the meeting was that no matter who was speaking, no one ever made eye contact.  Everyone just sat intently gazing at their computers.  What they were looking at or what they were doing I couldn't say.  I was taking notes on mine, or at least I was at first, but after about 20 minutes I found myself composing a suicide note.

We quickly dispensed with Old Business, or at least I think we did; I really wasn't paying too close attention.  Then came New Business.... a new client, a snack food.  At this point the floor was seized by Brian, a Marketing VP from New York.  Brian is a dick.

The goal, he informed us, was to launch a viral campaign for this new snack food.  In particular, he said, the client had asked us to reference work that had been done for one of the competitors.  At that point he pulled up the website of the agency that had created the original viral videos on the massive conference room flatscreen and for the first time, everyone looked up from their laptops.

We then proceeded to spin through half a dozen short videos.  They were obviously lavishly produced, yet done in that fake amateurish way.  Market research has shown that people distrust slickly produced videos, but tend to be more open to work that looks "authentic", so now most agency work is done in a practiced "fake authentic" style.  Did I mention all the videos involved a puppet?  Can't leave that out.

I thought all the videos were stupid but the rest of the room seemed captivated. Once we were done with the screening Brian moved to front of the room and proudly announced that the entire series had been done for under $500,000!  Imagine that!  Half a million dollars!  With a puppet!  Brian dramatically ended his presentation by noting that after the videos aired, the competing snack food registered 20,000 additional "likes" on their Facebook page!

Let me see... 20,000 people in a country of 400,000,000... It would appear this brilliant viral video campaign reached about .00005% of the population.  And they're the type of people who hang out on the Facebook page for a snack food.  Money well spent!

There was more, much more, but I simply can't go on.  Just typing this out, I've lost the will to live.  Maybe one day I'll write about the asinine ideas that were bandied about, ideas so stupid they make LOL cats seem like the height of urban sophistication.

Perhaps the worst part about the meeting was news of the next one.  Monday.

looks like I might get to finish that suicide note after all.

Hell: The PowerPoint

How ever did this Grand Republic survive for nearly two hundred years without Middle Management? Surely that has to rank with the building of the pyramids and the carvings on Easter Island as one of the great mysteries of life.  To think there was even a functioning economy without PowerPoint... Boggles the mind.

Even today, the world's last Superpower seems to get along just fine with only one Vice President. That's just crazy talk!

We have 12!

And that's just in Marketing!

And I get to meet them all tomorrow, as our Benevolent Overlords have flown in for a "Meet 'n Greet"...

..."Dog and Pony Show"...

..."Bread and Circuses"...

Choose your metaphor.  Whatever it is, I'm driving in for it, like it or not.

You have to forgive my child-like wonderment of the ways of corporate America.  I come from the Entertainment Industry, which operates more like a whorehouse.  Deals are made with a handshake and a drinking binge, and there's no misunderstanding that can't be smoothed over with hookers and blow.  Especially if you work for Disney.

So this should prove to be interesting.  And informative.

And everyone who knows me knows I live to learn!

To Have And To Hold

147.

That's how many e-mails I received yesterday from work.

Let's assume I spend one minute reading and responding to each e-mail.  It's a rough average; some were simply ignored while others required lengthy replies, even more time-consuming if you factor in having to edit out all the F-bombs before hitting "send".  That's over two hours spent on fucking e-mail!

How the hell did it get to this?

Well...

Two years ago I was desperate for work and a former colleague put me in touch with a friend who needed some help.  He owned a "new media" company.  What is that?  I still ask that question today.  "New Media" evidently means whatever you need it mean to at any given moment.  We were introduced through e-mail and never actually met.  In fact it would be months before we even spoke on the phone.  The projects were sporadic at first and all over the map, but by the summer of 2011 business had picked up to the point that he was my main client, accounting for half of my billings and most of my time.  Last December we finally met for the first time at the company Christmas party.  The company was all of five people.

At the time we were still living in exile and I was desperate to find a way to move back into civilization and thought that at the rate the company was moving this could turn into a real, full-time job.  As late as last January my client disabused me of that idea; he said it would be at least another year before they could consider hiring someone full-time.  Two weeks later, the boyfriend landed the job in Orange County, and since I work virtually we made the move.  I continued to work for my client from our new home base in the OC.

But then in February, the client got "the call".

Here's the thing:  most  people aren't aware of this, but every ad agency, PR firm or "new media" company of any note is owned by one of four mammoth, global Holding Companies.  Two are based in New York, one in Paris and the last in Dublin.  They own... EVERYTHING.  Once a company, of any size, through reputation or work, lands on the radar of one of these companies, it will get "the call".

Basically, they make you an offer you can't refuse.  They offer to buy your company at an exorbitant price making you set for life.  Not only will they buy your company for millions of dollars, they will pump untold riches into it.  I know this from experience from my last agency.  Once the owners of that company received "the call", the company went from 30 people to 140, we moved into swanky new offices and I got a 30% raise.  What's not to love?

At any rate, my client received "the call" in February and the first week in April I was summoned to a meeting in his office.  I didn't even know he had an office.  And that's when I first learned he had been bought.

He offerend me a full-time position, which was thoughtful.  It actually paid less than I was billing him at the time, which was not.  The Holding Company was insisting that he take up residence in an office building they own in Westwood where they warehouse all their acquisitions.  So not only was he offering me a cut in pay, he was insisting on four hours of gridlock a day to boot.  I politely declined.

Ultimately, we hashed out a temporary deal where I'm not an "official" employee and can still work from home and keep my other work and teaching commitments and I only occasionally have to schlep into the office.

The big difference now is that we are but a tiny cog in a global machine.  Our global overlords own 330 companies and have 66,000 employees.  66,001 if you include me.  And I'm not so sure I want to be included.  They way our benevolent rulers have structured the company, we are now a "subsidiary" of one of their other companies in Milwaukee, while at the same time we are "partners" with a firm in New York.  Suddenly I don't have one temperamental client to answer to, I have 20.  And they LOVE to chime in with -email.  About everything.

I know it's selfish, but I'm sitting here hoping for some sort of electro-magnetic pulse or solar flare or anything to knock out the e-mail.  Just for a little bit, just so I can get some work done.

It's only 11am and I'm already up to 62.

And So It Goes

No good deed goes unpunished and no good time doesn't get immediately swamped by bad news.  Or so it's seemed these past four years.

No sooner had I posted about out wonderful, magical day at the beach than we got word that the boyfriend's father had suffered a heart attack.  He's scheduled for quadruple bypass surgery later in the week and we've been scrambling to make arrangements to send the boyfriend east for a week, maybe more.

Luckily we'd had some money saved up.

Sadly, it had been set aside to do something special for our tenth anniversary in September.

...To The Sea

I hadn't seen the ocean in three years.

That was kind of a big deal to me since for all of my adult life, the beach had been therapy. I'd always lived a short distance away and for most of the 90's I lived in Venice Beach, just feet from the sand.  Whenever life or work or love became stressful or overwhelming, I just headed to the beach and watched the sun set or moon rise and all seemed right with the world.

But for nearly three years, we lived in exile hours from the coast.  A few times, in the evening out walking the dogs, a breeze would blow in from the west and I could swear I could smell the salt air, but it was only an illusion and as soon as I realized it I sunk into deep funk.

We've been back near the beach now for nearly four months and I'd yet to see the ocean again.  I had mentioned that last week to the boyfriend and had forgotten about it.

We had decided to stay in town for the weekend and the boyfriend and I had some errands to run.  It was edging up on 11am and I suggested we stop somewhere for breakfast since we were out.  He turned to me and said "we are" and he hopped on the freeway headed west.

We ended up in Sunset Beach which is where the boyfriend had grown up.  It was one of the first sunny days at the coast and we rolled down the windows and opened the sun roof and drank in the sea air and the beautiful day.  He seemed excited to point out all his old haunts and we made our way to the Pantry for brunch.

Afterwards we just aimlessly cruised around.  Sunset Beach, Surfside, Seal beach, into Long Beach.  At one point the boyfriend turned to me and said "let's go to the beach".  I looked at him and said "we already are" and he looked back at me and said "no, REALLY go to the beach... go in the water, lay in the sand."

That sounded crazy.

So I agreed.

We weren't really dressed for it so we stopped at a small surf shop and picked up a couple of cheap towels and trunks.  We drove back to his old neighborhood and parked not far from his old house and walked the half a block to the beach.

We planted our towels and crashed on the sand.  We'd both grown pale over the past many months and the sun felt good.  It was so relaxing to just stare out to sea, watch the seagulls dart and dive, the pelicans slowly cruising up the coast, the waves slowly rolling in.  And then it came time to check out the surf.

What most people don't seem to realize is the the Pacific Ocean is very large... and very cold.  The water temperature usually lags the air temps by several months and I know from my years in Venice that the warmest water was usually in late September and early October.  Dive in in June or July and you were in for a rude surprise.  So I approached the waves with a certain amount of trepidation and was genuinely surprised to discover the water was actually totally bearable.

So there we were like a couple of kids, diving through the waves, drifting aimlessly, bobbing and floating between the swells.  It was bliss.  We must have been in the water an hour before we finally decided to get out.

We dried off in the sun and eventually decided to head home; we'd left the dogs alone far longer than we had planned.  We stopped for frozen yogurt on PCH and then reluctantly jumped back on the freeway.  As we drove along "Unchained Melody" came on the radio...

"Lonely rivers flow
To the sea, to the seaTo the open arms of the sea..."
It was the perfect day.

Lizardmania

It's not like we didn't have lizards at our house in LA, but back then the dogs paid them no mind.  Things are different here in the OC and I think we can chalk it up to one thing...

Detachable tails.

The dogs discovered that neat little trick on Easter Sunday.  A lizard had unwittingly wandered onto our tiny back patio and caught the attention of the dogs.  It tried to beat a hasty retreat but the dogs nearly caught it and that's when it pulled the rip cord and left it's squirming back end twisting in it's tracks as a diversion.  The dogs found that delightful.

Things haven't been the same ever since, especially with my little girl.  She has lizard on the brain.  They're smart, those dogs.  They seem to instinctively know that the lizards only come out mid-day, so the morning and evening walks are pretty sedate.  The lunchtime walk is another matter entirely.

One o'clock is the lizard witching hour.  If perhaps I'm preoccupied with work and not watching the clock, my little one will let me know it's time by frantically climbing up my leg with a manic look in her eyes.  I saddle them up and then we're off to the races.

I politely refer to my little girl as "big boned."  She's a bit on the husky side and not known for her speed.  On the morning and evening walks, she dawdles, she sniffs, she oftentimes ends up being dragged just to keep the show moving.

On the Lizardwalk, however, she turns into a pit bull.

She moves like a jackrabbit.  She remembers every single spot she has ever encountered a lizard and we visit them all like the Stations of the Cross.  She's discovered the advantage of the element of surprise, so she launches herself into the shrubs without looking.  She knows by now that the lizards like to hang out near the fences and walls, so she pounces around corners in "shock and awe".

Yesterday we hit paydirt.

We hadn't even gone 50 feet and they had already treed two fairly large lizards and now they were possessed.  They looked rabid.  Their leashes were snapped to full length and they were practically pulling my arms our of their sockets.  Now they were dragging me, zigging and zagging through the complex to all the known spots.  And then we got to the pool deck and my little girl took a flying leap at a bush near the gate, a known lizard hangout.  There was immediate pandemonium from inside the bush but I couldn't make out what was going on when suddenly the biggest rat shot out the side and rocketed across the pool deck so fast it almost fell into the pool.

The dogs have never encountered a rat.  And they wanted more.

If I thought the dogs were manic before, I hadn't seen anything yet.  The rest of the walk was a harrowing experience.  The dogs thought they saw rats everywhere and were diving into every random shrub.  Much time was spent untangling leashes from branches and as we mercifully approached the house, my little girl made one last attack, flinging herself into a juniper bush.  Jackpot!  Out flew the most frightened looking squirrel I've ever seen.  My daughter took off after it it, the leash unspooling like the fishing line in "Jaws".  When it reached the end, it snapped.

The squirrel escaped into a tree.  This time.

I picked up a new leash on the way home from school last night.  My daughter is sitting her beside me as I type this.

Watching.

She knows it's almost time.

Those Who Can't, Teach

Week two of school.

I think we can all agree week one was a disaster, so there's nowhere to go but up.

It wasn't just that it was my first time teaching the class and I was more than a little nervous.  Or that it turned out I wasn't nearly as prepared as I thought I was.  Or the computer and software glitches.  It was also that it was an incredibly hot and humid day and the air conditioning failed.  I was already sweating from the nerves and the lack of AC turned it into a major flop sweat, which may have gone unnoticed if I hadn't been wearing a black shirt.  I looked like a child molester.

The only saving grace was that my students are new.  It was only their second class of their first quarter so they really don't have anything to compare me to.  Yet.  Plus, they seemed a little overwhelmed by the start of school and the computers, so most of the fuck-ups appeared to go over their heads.  So, it will probably be a couple of weeks before they realize what a shitty teacher I am.

Time to up my game.

Just One Of Those Days

Haircut Time Machine

After the economic crash and the exile that followed, a decent haircut became a luxury I just couldn't afford.  I was resigned to a lifetime of Supercuts, and in Hooterville I counted myself lucky to escape without a mullet.

Even after the move to OC, things were still unsettled enough that paying more than $15 for a haircut seemed decadent.  And it just so happened there was a Supercuts around the corner.

It's run by an imposing Persian woman.  She speaks slowly in a low, husky voice and definitely gives off the vibe that the salon is really nothing more than a cover for something more nefarious.  She employs four other stylists, all Persian, and it's evidently company policy that at any given time, at least three of them are on a break.

The first time I went in it was mid day and empty.  All five of them were slumped in their barber chairs slowly munching on snacks and lazily leafing through gossip magazines.  It looked like a herd of cows.  For several long seconds everyone ignored me.  Finally the owner looked up and said "it will be about ten minutes."

OK.

So I sat there for ten minutes watching them all chew their cud and flip their pages.  At the ten minute mark, the owner looked at her watch and barked something in Farsi to one of the other stylists who stood up, tossed her magazine to the side and yelled to no one in particular, "NEXT!"

Don's ask me why, but I went back a month later.

This time, the waiting area held about 10 people yet despite the crowd, three of the stylists were "on break" in their chairs.  The owner came over to me to take my name and once again said "it will be about ten minutes."   I doubted that, but I didn't really feel I had any options, so I took my seat.  I could tell immediately that the other people waiting were getting restless and agitated.  At one point a waiting mom charged up to the front desk and started to loudly complain.

"You said it would be ten minutes and we've been here AN HOUR!"

The owner came back up to the desk and sorta, kinda apologized.  "Please, I am so sorry.  It will just be about ten minutes..."

That seemed to be the breaking point and suddenly the waiting area erupted in disgust.  As everyone started arguing I quietly slunk out the door.

So what to do.

A few days later I was driving by a local strip mall and I saw it, a blunt, dull sign saying "The Haircut".

How bad could it be?

Walking through the doors was like passing through a time portal which transported you back nearly 30 years to 1984.  It was "Morning in America" again.  It was magical.

The floor was a dizzying checkerboard of black and white tiles.  The surfaces were all polished chrome and lacquered black and Fleck-Tone paint.  Classic 80's wallpaper - silver and black with geometric shapes in turquoise and hot pink.  Lining the walls were fading Patrick Nadel prints.  You could practically hear the Duran Duran...

"Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand
Just like that river twisting through a dusty land..."

Was the haircut any good?  That's kind of beside the point.  You don't go to "The Haircut" for the haircut, you go for the magic.

To relive your youth.

To escape to a simpler time.

For ten minutes.

Fifteen if you a get a shampoo.

"Oh Rio, Rio dance across the Rio Grande..."

Free Pass

The boyfriend and I managed to escape to the mountains for the weekend, but not without Work trying to big-foot all over our plans.

I had uploaded what I thought to be my last job for the week around 4pm on Friday.  I received a curt "thanks" from the boss and as far as I knew I was done.  According to our wildly inaccurate company calendar, my next deadline wasn't until Tuesday and that job was already nearly finished.  So off to the mountains we went.

Because I'm a masochist, I checked my email Saturday morning.  The panic had started about 8pm Friday night.  There were emails from 8pm, 10, 10:10, 10:35, 11:01, 11:37, 4am(!), 6:15, 8:13, and 8:55.  Each marked urgent with a cute little red exclamation point.  It appears no one had bothered to look at anything I'd submitted all week until sometime Friday night and now there were emergency revisions, reorganizations and "re-thinks".  There were also two new jobs that had somehow mysteriously "fallen through the cracks" and yet were still due Monday.

Now, my usual response would have been to fire off an email reminding everyone that I don't in fact operate a fucking drive-up window and operators are not standing by to take your call.  But I have learned from past mistakes, so I did the prudent thing... nothing.

I figured a little fear would be character building for everyone involved, so I waited.  After 12 hours of radio silence (and a couple of cocktails) I finally responded.  I politely apologized for the delay in my response.  More in sorrow than in anger I mentioned that perhaps if someone had bothered to give me a heads up DURING NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS, I might be in a position to be helpful.  Bt they didn't, so I wasn't.

Now, the truth of the matter is that I know how these people operate.  I had actually anticipated this and loaded up the laptop with all the current work.  I could have easily accommodated everyone at the expense of my precious little free time in the mountains.  But I chose not to.  Partially, because I find the casual disregard for what I do offensive.  But more importantly, there was a greater goal...

Avoiding the Monday strategy meeting.

The Monday strategy meeting is a weekly Bataan Death March.  And I'm not referring to the two-hour gridlock I'd suffer through to get there.  The Monday strategy meeting is a joyless endurance event, a time suck of epic proportions.

It wasn't always so.

Once upon a time these were referred to as Creative Meetings.  A chance to get together and talk about the work and ideas and inspirations.  And they rarely lasted more than an hour.  But then the marketing people took over and anything creative was kicked to the curb.  "Marketing" was invented for people who wanted to work in advertising but had no talent or creativity.  Marketing people are perhaps the least imaginative people on the planet.

Marketing meetings are evidently judged by their length, and anything under three hours is considered a failure.  And what do you fill three hours with?

Bullshit.

Marketing bullshit.

Three hours talking about "leverage","social engagement" and "digital integration".  "Viability" and "benchmarking" and "brand extension".  Things need to be "customer centric" and "game changing".  They need to be "organic" and "trending" and... just fucking shoot me.  What does any of it mean?  Beats the hell out of me - it might as well be a three hour lecture in Klingon.

I want to make a set of Marketing bingo cards....

"Shifting the Paradigm?"  Check.

"Crowd sourcing?"  Check.

"Value added?"  Check

"Synergy?"  Check

"Granular?"  Check... BINGO!

"Synergy" is so common, that would have to be the free space.

Every few weeks a new buzzword arrives on the scene to captivate the marketing people like shiny keys dangled over a baby.  Lately it seems to be "siloed", something to do with "vertical integration".  Like a silo.  Or something.

At any rate,  by leaving all these last minute "emergencies" unfulfilled over the weekend, the magic email came from the boss around 8:30 last night...

"I think it would be best if you just skip the meeting tomorrow.  There's too much work due to have you wasting time driving in."

As the marketing folks always say, it's "win-win".

Where There's Smoke

Our condo here in Tinytown came with one unexpected bonus, the view.

Not of any scenery, but of the hot fireman who lives two doors down.

He appears to be in his early 30's and is built like a Greek god and has a penchant for working on his car with his shirt off.  In short shorts.

So you can imagine my distress when a "For Sale" sign appeared outside his condo yesterday.

That makes four immediate neighbors that have either moved, are moving or have signaled their intentions to move in only four months.

Do they know something we don't know?

School Daze

Today is the first day of Summer School.  And I'm terrified.

I'm only teaching one class this summer, a course in computer illustration.  I've never taught it before, but since I consider computer illustration my forté, I was thrilled to be asked.

Specifically the class is an introductory course in the Adobe software "Illustrator" and since I've used this software every day for nearly 20 years, I assumed it would be a snap.  But about two weeks ago something dawned on me...  I've never had any formal training in using it, I'm completely self-taught.

See, here's the thing.  I graduated college before the Dawn of the Computer Age.  I always considered that a blessing since my school days were spent contemplating design theory and creativity and not glued to a monitor trying to learn every new flash-in-the-pan computer program.  It wasn't until the mid-90's that the ad and design industry switched to digital.  I walked into my office one Monday morning to discover my drafting table had been set horizontal and plopped in the center of it was a Mac.  I didn't even know how to turn it on.  Calling the IT department wasn't an option since there wasn't one.  In fact, the term "IT" was still a few years off in the future.

Luckily, all that early software was fairly rudimentary and after about a week of trial and error I finally figured it out well enough to get done what needed to be done.  Every year after came the release of the next, new version, each time with considerably more bells and whistles.  I mastered the functions I needed, but it's safe to say the program does  a hell of a lot more than I'm aware of.  The once elegantly simple interface now looks like the flight deck of a 747.  And I'm expected to teach it.

No problem, I thought, I'll just skim through the text book for the class.  And that's when I learned that this quarter is the first in which the school is being thrown into the deep end of... eLearning.

It sounds creepy and it is.  It's all... V  I  R  T  U  A  L.

There is no text book.

Instead there's a... portal.  An "ePortal".

It's a website where instead of text, there are "webinars".  Hours and hours (and hours) of webinars.  And for the past two weeks I've been slogging through all of them.  And after watching hours and hours (and hours) of instructional video, one thing has become abundantly clear...  I am eFucked.

Class starts at 4:00.  Can't wait.

Legends Of The Fall

Yesterday morning the alarm went of at 5:30, as it does every morning.

I hit the snooze button for the boyfriend, as I do every morning.

I got up to go downstairs and make coffee, as I do every morning.

And then I fell down the stairs.

Which is not something that happens every morning.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you I'm less than graceful.  On more than one occasion, I've been called a klutz.  But this was decidedly not my fault.  The light in the stairwell doesn't work and the carpet on the stairs is cheap and old.  In the darkness I misplaced my foot and my heel hit the worn edge of the top step and shot out from under me.  My foot skimmed over the next couple of steps, the matted synthetic carpet acting as a greased skid, and down I went.  I'm surprised the horrible carpet didn't catch fire from the friction.  In hindsight, I probably would've been better off if I'd let go of the handrail and let gravity take it's course, but in the split second I first felt myself falling I executed a Vulcan death grip on the rail which accomplished nothing more than snapping my arm back into a direction it was never intended to go.  And ultimately it was for naught, since all it did was delay the inevitable for a nanosecond.

I tumbled halfway down the stairs.  I would have gone all the way down but the stairs switch back so I ended up in a ball on the landing.  I was stunned, to say the least, and in a lot of pain.  At some point on the way down I had bounced off my left shoulder, elbow and knee.  My right shoulder, on the arm that had held onto the rail, felt like it had been dislocated.

I assumed the noise would have waken everyone up; it sounded as if someone had dumped a bag of bowling balls down the stairs.  And if that didn't do it, surely my moaning and wailing would.  I anxiously looked to the top of the stairs expecting to see the shocked faces of the dogs and the boyfriend.

Nada.

In the silence I could make out my older dog snoring.

I flashed on the "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercial.  I took a moment to collect myself and assess the situation.  Although everything was throbbing nothing appeared to be broken.  I gently got up and slowly made my way down the remainder of the stairs.  I was heading to the kitchen when I started feeling light headed.  I could feel the blood drain out of my face as I broke out in a cold sweat.  I knew this feeling - this is how I felt several years ago when I broke my leg. I detoured to the couch before I passed out.  On second thought, it did now appear that I had actually dislocated my shoulder.  I sat on the couch for a couple of minutes wondering what I should do when suddenly I felt my shoulder snap back into place.  Voila!  Really?  That's how it works?  Within a minute or so, I felt fine.  Banged up, but fine.  I limped to the kitchen and put the coffee on.

As I hobbled back up the stairs, the snooze alarm went off and boyfriend was pulling himself out of bed.

"Everything OK?" he asked, obviously seeing I was still in some distress.

"Everything's fine" I said.  "Coffee's on and I fell down the stairs."

Later that day, In the mail I received my complimentary AARP card.

Is this really how it's going to be?

I have glimpsed the future, and it looks very painful.

It’s The Water. And So Much More.

It seems impolite to even mention it, being newcomers and all, but...

the water here stinks.

And I mean... stinks.

I first noticed it days after we moved in when I did a load of laundry. As I pulled the clothes out of the washer to transfer them into the dryer, I held them close and smelled... industrial solvents.  That's the closest analogy I could come to.  I washed the clothes again and when I pulled them out, same thing.

I assumed a cigarette lighter had been left in a pocket and broken, spilling butane into the wash water, an occupational hazard of being a smoker.  A few dozen fabric sheets would solve the problem and I left it that.

And then, a few weeks later, we opted to replace the cheap rental shower head in the master bathroom with something a bit more deluxe, something with actual settings.  One of which was "mist".

Dear God.  It turned the shower into a gas chamber.  Seriously, a minute more and the coroner would have been involved.  I had to open all the windows to air the house out.

I haven't a clue what the issue is.  I grew up only a few miles from here and don't remember any water issues.  Then again, my folks are life-long soft water enthusiasts, so maybe there's something to be said for filtering your water through 500 pounds of salt.

The Glorious Fourth

The 4th of July proved to be an amazing day.  We packed up the dogs and schlepped over to my folks house to spend the day.  Years ago my hometown banned "safe & sane" fireworks after one too many houses burned to the ground, but to make up for the loss they started putting on a huge fireworks display at my old high school stadium and according to my mother, we would have a perfect view from the backyard.

We went over early in the morning and my mother and boyfriend spent the day cooking.  He really is the daughter she wished she had and while they were busy in the kitchen I hung out with my father.  Later in the afternoon, the day took a turn for the worse with arrival of my Wingnut sister and her husband.

There really is no punch bowl they won't piss in.  It doesn't matter what the topic of conversation is it's only a matter of time before one of them twists it into a rant about "socialism" and "tyranny".  I swear my sister has Republican Tourettes.  Small talk about baking suddenly veered right and she started sputtering about "Obamacare".  Some conspiracy theory about "the fine print" which according to her was going to enslave us all and make the Baby Jesus cry.  Or something.  I left the room.

Later, her husband decided to share the collected wisdom of Glenn Beck with me.

"Did you know" he said, "that America has the longest continual form of government in the history of mankind?"

Huh?

What about the British monarchy? I asked.

That didn't count, he said, because there were a lot of different kings and queens so it wasn't technically "continuous".  WTF?  Unless we are unknowingly being governed by the desiccated corpse of George Washington, the same could be said of us.  Of course, that would be applying logic and in their alternate Wingnut reality, logic is a liberal conspiracy.

What about the Roman Empire?  The Ming Dynasty?  The Pharaohs?  He dismissed them all with the wave of his hand.  "They don't count."

So... by moving the goalposts and excluding every civilization OTHER than America, America WINS!!!  USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

They left at dusk, and not a moment too soon.  They must have had a Tea Party rally to attend.  Or maybe there's a curfew at the insane asylum.

The boyfriend and I settled into the Adirondack chairs in the backyard as darkness fell, waiting for the fireworks to begin.  As sort of a pre-show the lawless neighbors on the next block shot off some illegal, yet beautiful aerials.  Someone had obviously been shopping in Mexico.

Around 9:00 we saw the fringes of some fireworks on the horizon, just over the fence.  My heart sank... this was it?  Not much more than a vague glow in the sky?  I went inside where my parents were doing the dishes, seemingly unconcerned about the fireworks.

"We can see something on the horizon, but it isn't much.  I thought you said you could see fireworks from the backyard?" I said.

"Just wait" said my mother.

I went back outside and joined the boyfriend.  There were more bursts of color in the distance but nothing to write home about.  I turned to the boyfriend and said "This sucks.  Maybe we should just head home."  He kind of nodded and we started making the moves to leave when my parents walked out.

"I told you just to wait" said my mom and as if on cue and enormous firework burst overhead, followed by a BOOM that set off every car alarm in the neighborhood.  Then another and another and another.  They were so big it seemed like they were directly overhead.  For twenty minutes we were treated to one of the best fireworks shows I've ever seen.  The dogs weren't too happy.  We had placed them inside to protect their ears but still they howled in a panic.  But I loved every minute of it.  It was the perfect end to a nearly perfect day.

And as usual, mom was right.  "Just wait."

Time Well Spent

Yesterday was the very first day of my new pseudo-job.  Although for the most part I'll be allowed to work from home, it has been requested that I come in every Monday for the weekly staff meeting.  And it was especially important yesterday as it was the official launch day of the new improved company 2.0.

It took almost two hours to get there.

The meeting was 45 minutes long.

It took an hour and a half to get home.

And the cheerful traffic reporter informed me that it was my lucky day because the traffic was "holiday light".

Is she fucking nuts?

I never thought in a million years I'd say this but I almost, almost found myself missing living in Hooterville.  There, the only time I ever saw a traffic jam was when someone lost a bale of hay on the highway.  Then again, the flashbacks returned and suddenly the gridlock didn't seem that bad.

My father was regaling me with tales of the Red Cars.  Back when they moved to California in the 50's you could go from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara by streetcar.  But then the powers-that-be decided that streetcars were passé and the future was to be filled with freeways.  So the tracks were all ripped up and paved over and here we are, moving at 4 miles per hour on the 405.

Sometimes the future aint what it's cracked up to be.