jessteronimo

Unfriendly

I was reminded today what happens when I start to think that people are basically good: They let me down. I hope I can remember that lesson for a bit longer this time.

I Haven't Got All Day

Remember that scene in Star Wars III where Han Solo is telling C3PO a list of things that need to be done? Each time he gives another order, he turns back away from the poor, bewildered android, and then he immediately thinks of something else and flips back around to give the new order. He does this three or four times, and it's all back-to-back, rapid-fire commands of not so very little things to get done. And then he says, "Hurry up, will ya? I haven't got all day!"

And in the movie Fugitive, Tommy Lee Jones is doing the same thing, listing off a bunch of big tasks that need to be done to find the fugitive (Harrison Ford) who dove off a dam to escape capture, one of which was getting the overflow water from the dam shut off. He finally takes a breath, and then he barks, "How come they haven't turned off the water yet?!"

And then there's a part in Real Genius where Val Kilmer is waiting for his co-star to finish doing a big task, and he's saying reassuring things like "Take your time" while he's completing a task of his own. But when he finishes his task moments later, he chastises, "What is taking so long?!"

Yeah, that's what my job feels like. My boss says four words: "Get the car fixed." And there goes half my day. And that'll be just one of the many things he tells me to do in that same conversation. The next day--or a half-hour later!--he'll have another list. I should just give up planning my own tasks. By the end of the day, I haven't hardly touched them anyway. But they're important too. And they're often the kinds of things I know he's going to ask for later, but I haven't been able to get to them because of the thousand other things I've got going on. Oh, and that's not counting the emergencies--like removing the vicious virus that's taken over someone's computer. And everything just keeps piling up until I feel hopelessly buried and unappreciated. No wonder my brain wants to explode. I need a real vacation.

Heated

Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, my brother's furnace started acting up. It eventually quit right about the time he was eating dinner with the family. They called their landlord in the apartment complex they were working in and explained that they had a one-year-old child and couldn't "tough it out" for a few days, as was suggested. Well, it took the landlord until the next day to find someone to go take a look at the furnace. My brother, his pregnant wife, and their one-year-old son spent the night in sleeping bags and blankets laid out in front of the OPEN OVEN acting as a heater!! Turns out that a tiny part on the furnace had failed; it took 5 minutes and $15 to fix. I wonder how much time and money it'll take to fix the lazy, insensitive landlord!!!

Cookoo for Sudoku

My best friend, Stacy, was the first to show me how to play Sudoku years ago. I have always had a talent for seeing patterns in things, a drive for problem solving, and of course it feeds my obsessive complusiveness. When I set up my homepage with iGoogle last year, I found a free game application and put the game on my homepage. Bad idea. It was so distracting that I had to take it off. And when I discovered an app for the Palm, I had to change the main screen of my company's emergency phone when I carried it so I wasn't continually presented the option/threat. I hadn't played the game in a while, having successfully hidden it from my notice. But recently I spent some time in hospital waiting rooms with my Grampa. In the days leading up to that event, I knew I'd have some down time, so I purchased a Sudoku puzzle book on a whim. Another bad idea. I happened across the book over the weekend, and it's all I did all weekend long. My fingers literally hurt from holding the pencil. And this week, I caved and put the app back on my iGoogle. Ugh. There needs to be a support group. So soon I'll be digging deep for the will power to expunge Sudoku from my life...once again. Maybe I'll swap it for Mountain Dew again. That was a fun addiction to fight...NOT. I need to find a healthy addiction, like yard work or genealogy or something else healthy, useful, and practical. Any ideas?

A Civilized and Quick Yet Thorough Ass-Kicking

A few years ago, I blogged about my daughter's chess skills. Tonight I was reminded of those skills when she obliterated me in mere moments. She was helping her sister kick my butt, so I got to hear it all play out in living color to the quick and brutal end--no question left that it might have just been luck. Have you seen the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer? (Everyone should see that movie, btw.) Tonight my daughter reminded me very much of the kid in that show. She spoke like they do in that movie: she talked about seeing many moves ahead in the game, about leading her opponent into traps (even when she spoke one aloud, I'd find myself walking into another one trying to avoid the spoken one), using language like "queen's knight to king's bishop 3" and "sacrifice your rook to queen your pawn," and she described chess rules I had never heard of. Ben and I just grinned at each other proudly throughout the whole game. In short, it was an amazingly satisfying ass kicking, every parent's dream!

Darwin Awards Candidate Citing

Today when I went to gas up my car, there was a ho-bait girl standing next to the gas pump chatting up some loser guy--and she was holding a lit cigarette in her hand! As cool as it looks on TV to see a gas pump explode, the survival of the fittest instincts in me kicked in, and I got in my car and left in a hurry. I figured I could watch the news if the place really did blow!

Jazzed

My boss surprised me with tickets to the Jazz v. Lakers NBA basketball game on Wednesday night, and I surprised my family with the news. I even got Ben to go. The seats were pretty bad--the very last row on the top bowl of the stadium but right in the center of the court. After a brief bout with vertigo, my kids didn't care where the seats were. They'd never been to anything like this event, and it was exciting for them to watch the crowd and the things that go on in a stadium during a live event that you don't see while watching the game on television. I hadn't realized how little they knew about the game, so I got to teach them the basic rules and explain things like three pointers and foul shots and switching sides at half time. I pointed out the team members who were Olympians and celebrity superstars, which the girls thought was cool and gave them bragging rights. They like the game, but mostly they loved the cheerleaders (male and female), the mascot, and the giant, remote-controlled blimp that hovered around the bowl. But shortly after half time, my girls shorted out. The experience had lost its novelty, they were tired and hungry, and bedtime was fast approaching. So we left and headed to Baskin Robbins and made it home in time to watch the last few minutes of the game on television. The Utah Jazz won! An absolutely perfect ending!

Robbed

I collected a large retainer from a new client first thing this morning, all in $20 bills. This made quite a stack of money. After I gave him the receipt and he left, I was walking back to my desk when one of the attorneys called me into his office to address a virus problem he was having with his computer. I had the money with me, and he picked up the stack and was commenting on how much money it was and the fact that it was all $20 bills, an unusual way to pay such a high fee. I got the virus scan running on his computer and went back to my desk to enter the client information into my computer. While I was there, the attorney asked for the file. So I got up and took the file into his office and went back to my desk. The deposit slip for the money was sitting on my desk, but the money was gone. I freaked out and started looking everywhere for it, thinking I must be going crazy. At first I thought maybe the attorney hadn't given me the money back, or I'd left it in his office. So he and I scoured his office, then the rest of the office, with rising panic as the minutes passed. We were both baffled. He mentioned that maybe he took it to the restroom with him accidentally (we were really grasping for possible locations by this point). So when he left to go to court, I went to the office next door to ask if anyone had seen anything.

Turns out that one of the guys, on his way to the restroom, had seen someone come out of our office's back door and hurry out the stairwell right across the hall; the timing was right. Dread sunk in. I felt sick. We hadn't yet had a client visit in the office, except the new client. He described the man, but it wasn't someone I recognized. So we pieced together that someone had entered the back door and had been hiding in the shadows of our library right next to my desk waiting for an opportunity. There were two paralegals sitting in their cubicles ten feet from my desk, but the back door is only used by employees on their way to the restrooms, so no one pays attention to that traffic. No more. It's permanently locked now.

I called the police, and an officer came over to take my statement. That was a surreal experience--almost as surreal as being robbed in the middle of a workday. I felt stupid. All the while I knew there was nothing he could do. I knew we'd never see that money again. And now I'm freaked out and super-cautious. We're taking other security measures. But I know that if someone wants to hurt you, they will find a way to do it. We'll just make it harder on them. And thank goodness that kharma doesn't let anyone get away with anything.

I really need things to get better. Now.

Disappointment

I relearned an old lesson recently--the hard way. Absolutely everyone you know will disappoint you sometime sooner or later. It's what you do after that time that shows who you are and what kind of relationship you'll have with that person in the future. Your move.

Big Bang

In addition to thieves, it appears that we have a vandal in our neighborhood. A couple of days ago, someone blew up our mailbox with a homemade pop bottle bomb. I don't know how we didn't hear it. The metal box was torn to shreds and smashed flat but still hanging from its base, and the ruined bomb was lying a feet few away. Ben called the police, and they said they had had a rash of vandalism in the area in the last few weeks and that they were increasing the patrol of the area. Yeah, right. I think that's just what they tell people to make them feel better, like the cops have everything under control. I've never seen a squad car on this road except the one time when there was a house fire down the street. We never had so much trouble when I lived in the industrial, lower-income portion of the valley. I got a quote from a security company to put in cameras, but it was ridiculously high. I guess we just have to be more alert and suspicious.