Christmas 2001 Newsletter

THE MANY MOODS OF ALEX
IRRITATED	EXCITED	SAD
SLEEPY	HUNGRY	CONTENT
CURIOUS	DAZED	HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

2001 started out with a black monolith in our back yard and--oh wait, never mind. It was actually a quiet year, for us at least. No end to the self-inflicted tribulations, of course, but either we're getting better at doing this stuff, or just not doing as much stuff.

My great-uncle, who passed away last year, had a '94 Buick with less than 5,000 miles. (He was 91-what do you expect?) Dawn's mom needed a new car so this was perfect except for one thing: the car was in Arizona and the mom was in Pennsylvania. The first step was to get the car out of Arizona, so in March we flew to Tucson and drove the car straight home via Four Corners. Now, any map will show you that Four Corners is well out of the way, and when Dawn finally saw a map she was pretty upset, especially since she had caught a cold and was feeling awful. The funniest part, though, was that we arrived at closing time, and so we almost drove fourteen hours out of our way to see nothing. Fortunately the man at the gate let us in and we drove fourteen hours out of our way to see a concrete block in the middle of the desert. Still, we got to see the petrified forest, the painted desert, Zion national monument, slept in a wig-wam motel on Route 66, and I have a photo of Dawn throwing up on the Four Corners monument. (On Monday, Dawn called her work to tell them she wasn't coming in because she was sick. She neglected to tell them she was in Utah.)

In June, Dawn's nephew visited from Ohio. It was the first time anybody had trusted us with their kid for more than a couple of hours. (Granted, he's 16 and a football player, but still.) We showed him what it was truly like to live in California: We put 1,000 miles on the convertible that week. We went to San Francisco and Sacramento, the Long Beach Aquarium and Dodger Stadium, and even took him to a Hitchcock film at one of the downtown movie palaces. The most excitement was when we went to the beach and, despite our warnings, he decided to go into the water. He didn't have his glasses on, of course, so when a dolphin passed about 10 feet from him, all he saw was a fin, and I think he set a new speed record getting back to land.

The day after he flew home, I was doing a little yardwork and decided to remove a limb from the walnut tree. That the limb cracked, the tree shook, and I fell off the ladder onto a brick path and fractured my collarbone shouldn't surprise anyone. That I was wearing only my bathrobe might. It certainly surprised the paramedics, the admitting nurse, and the ER doctor, who asked me, "Did you change before coming to the hospital?" When Dawn explained that I often do yardwork at two in the afternoon in nothing but my bathrobe, he nodded knowingly, but I'm sure I was the butt of a few jokes that week (pun intended).

In August, Dawn finally got a bite on all those resumes she'd been sending out (two, I think, but maybe it was three): A small firm just down the street was looking for a probate paralegal, and [remaining paragraph censored by Dawn, who will only say that she loves her new job and doesn't want me antagonizing her new co-workers.]

I started riding my bike to work, thanks in large part to a new asthma drug I was taking. I haven't lost any weight and I've almost been killed twice, but it's definitely worth it. Not to be outdone, Dawn joined a gym. She said it was for health reasons, but I think that with the new job, it's the first time in ten years she wasn't going to school at night or driving two hours to get home, and she just didn't know what to do with all that free time.

But the big news, of course, was the cruise. As I mentioned last year, my mother's side of the family hadn't gotten together since 1979 and it seemed high time for a family reunion. However, given my family's, shall we say, volatile nature, we wanted this to be somewhere where people could get away, so a small boat in the middle of the ocean seemed a natural choice. The logistics were an absolute nightmare: All cruises went from Miami in the winter and New York in the summer. My uncle in Atlanta wouldn't fly and it was too far to drive to either Miami or New York. However, in October, one of the cruise lines had a sailing out of Charleston, South Carolina. I flew to Atlanta and drove my aunt and uncle there; my brother and his family flew from San Francisco, and Dawn flew with my mother and sister from LA. Dawn's only condition, after she stopped saying "not in this lifetime," was that she didn't have to sit near my family (they all snore) so I booked her seat on the other side of the airplane. Of course, the airline - with one of those really consumer-friendly automation systems - found empty seats and so moved everyone together. Both ways.

Coincidentally, my cousin on my father's side was living in Charleston, so we spent two days and had a small family reunion with that side of the family, as well. She and her husband organized the cars, the meals, and the entertainment (okay, she was the entertainment). Everyone was still in high spirits when they dropped us off at the cruise terminal on Monday at 5:30pm.

Unfortunately, those spirits were long gone by the time we actually boarded the ship at midnight. This was post-9/11 so the port had increased security without increasing personnel or equipment, so they had to manually process 3,000 passengers, and all their luggage, with two x-ray machines.

The trip was, surprisingly, uneventful. Because of the cruise, we had to cancel our Halloween party for the first time in nine years, but Dawn and I still got to carve a pumpkin. (I thought it was a contest and I was trying hard to beat the eight-year olds carving with me, but it turned out that they just displayed all of them at the midnight buffet.) On Halloween we all wore our costumes to dinner - out of 3,000 people, we were the only ones in costume. It was supposed to be a Renaissance theme but, as my brother pointed out when he saw my outfit, there are a lot of interpretations of "Renaissance." (His exact words were, "What the hell is that, Italian Renaissance?")

After the cruise, I drove my aunt and uncle back to Atlanta and I had 12 hours before my flight to LA, so I decided to fix my uncle's computer. That we gave him his first computer a few years before was almost a joke - he was 72 and couldn't figure out a coffee maker. The first time he used the mouse, he picked it up and waved it in front of the monitor! I figured it was a lost cause until, one morning, I got an email from him! Then another. Then another. By noon I had to call and tell him to knock it off.

That was three years ago, and he was still running Windows 3.1 on a 486. Since it was now 2001, I figured I should at least upgrade him to Windows 95, so I took my mother's old computer, spent weeks making it idiot-proof, and shipped it to him. Needless to say, the postal service completely trashed it - I mean, "threw it off the truck, ran over it a couple of times, and then dragged it behind them for a couple of miles" trashed it. I had been up since 5am, driven the 6 hours to his place, was up all night fixing the computer, then drove two hours to the airport, and finally -- after 32 hours -- got some sleep on the plane. When I got home, I had an email from my uncle that read, "Next time, can I get a computer with only one previous owner?"

I told Dawn we'd do something with her family next year but she just said, "I'm not that stupid."

Finally, in November, we saw the Leonid meteor shower. If you'll recall, in 1999 we flew half-way across the world and took a cruise through the Canary Islands only to see…nothing. This year, the same pundits said not only was it going to be more spectacular, but prime viewing would be right in our own back yard. It was a Saturday night so we packed up the cooler, put on our warmest clothes, and drove up to the mountains. At midnight, we hadn't seen a thing, we were freezing cold, and there was talk (mostly from the passenger seat) of going home. Then, as if to start the show, a fireball streaked across the horizon. I put down the top on the convertible and we watched an amazing show of 30-40 meteors per minute for three hours, often seeing two or three simultaneously. It was the most spectacular display of celestial pyrotechnics I'd ever seen. (And likely will ever see - the next big show is slated for 2099.)

In the morning, after an hour and a half of sleep, we were driving home and I asked Dawn, "Want to go see the Doo Dah parade?" This is an annual parade in Pasadena that was designed to spoof the Rose Parade, and featured things like the BBQ Marching Grill (who push barbecues does the street), the kazoo marching band, the Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, The Invisible Man Marching Drill Team, etc. Dawn agreed so we picked up a friend and headed to Pasadena. We finally got home at 4pm, went straight to bed, and didn't wake up until 7am the next morning.

Next Spring, we're driving the Buick to Pennsylvania and do the Great American Road Trip. Imagine spending six hours in the car every day -- it will be just like commuting in Los Angeles.

Christmas 2000 newsletter

January - I got off to an early start on my Christmas letter this year--January 3rd, to be exact. Memories of last year’s letter are still haunting me--it was a six-week search for my artistic soul, punctuated by Dawn’s stinging critique: “There isn’t anything about me!”

Y2K did not get off to an auspicious start. We flew to Pennsylvania the day after Christmas; within two days everyone was in bed with a really nasty flu bug. We slept right through the Millennium celebrations. I hope all of those people protesting that 2001 is the real millennium will put on their own celebrations, but somehow I doubt it: People who let a little reason stand between themselves and a good party, probably didn’t want to party in the first place. Besides, half the world’s population goes by different calendars, on which 1/1/00 didn’t mean squat, but they still participated.

February - For Dawn’s birthday, she got a whole new front-end for her truck. Unfortunately, the old front-end was removed by someone making a left turn into her. Except for a nasty bruise and a sore back, she was fine, but the truck went to the shop for about a month. The other driver was a sixteen-year-old boy who got his license three months ago. Dawn called a tow truck; he called his mom.

March - In the last Christmas letter, I mentioned I was going to quit my job and go independent. Less than a week after I wrote that, another project came up at my company that was local and where I would have some management responsibilities, so I decided to stay. Big mistake. My boss and I had a difference of style--I thought she should help and support me, and she thought she should harass and insult me. After three weeks, I accidentally quit. I didn’t intend to, I only intended to get some support from her boss, but he thought he should harass and insult me as well. Fortunately, Dawn and I had saved up enough money so that I didn’t have to worry about being unemployed for a few weeks.

April - Dawn announced she was going to quit. Her boss has always been a yeller, but he never yelled at her. (And speaking from experience, you never yell at her.) Well, he yelled at her. So now Dawn and I were both imminently unemployed, and the savings were looking pretty slim. Still, there was enough there to sponsor a few weeks of carefree abandonment, so I proposed a road trip--we take the convertible, in the middle of spring, and head out to see the country. It’d be like “Travels with Charley,” except with showers and stuff. “Can’t,” was all Dawn said, “school.”

We did go visit my uncle in Lawrenceville, just outside of Atlanta, however. At 74, he still has the most important thing a man can have--his hair. (He may still have his wits, but nobody was really sure about those to begin with.) Still, since my mother got her hearing aids, he’s the only family member I can torment with impunity. (I was only distracted briefly when I crushed a seven-year-old child at a game of checkers one night.) In response to his bragging about Lawrenceville, a town straight out of the '50s, I made my aunt a T-shirt that said “Lawrenceville sucks!”

The most memorable moment was when we wandered into a church (it was the only thing open on Sunday) and he pretended to be blind, suddenly exclaimed he could see again, and yelled a few “Hallelujahs” before we were dragged out. He claimed he didn’t realize it was a Presbyterian church, that they should have marked the church more prominently, and he was considering suing them. This apparently distracted them from noticing the collection plate shoved under his shirt.

May - My bid for unemployment made a bizarre U-turn. The person who was supposed to replace me, quit. Since I didn’t have any jobs lined up at the time, I agreed to extend my last day for two weeks. They found someone else but he couldn’t start until the end of April, so again I agreed to stay. The client was grateful, but I really annoyed the payroll department. By that point I had a couple of good offers in the pipeline, so I wasn’t going to extend again. Then, quite unexpectedly, the client quit! That is, the guy who was leading the client team gave notice. His boss approached me and asked if I wanted the position.

This put me in quite a quandary because, for the six years I’d been consulting, the one thing you never did was go over to the client. I struggled with this for a week, telling myself that I hadn’t approached them, that I was going to quit anyway, etc. Dawn, ever the pragmatist, kept saying “It’s close to home, you don’t have to travel, it’s more money, you like the people, don’t be a schmo, etc.” My last day was on a Wednesday; I started my new job on Thursday--except I was sitting in the same chair at the same office on the same team doing the same thing. The only way I could think to demarcate the “old” Gregg from the “new” Gregg was to shave off my beard. Nobody noticed.

Dawn finished school, marking an end to her 12-year bachelor's degree. She'd been taking five classes while working full-time in a feverish attempt to graduate before her school lost its accreditation. She has been augmenting these classes with College-Level Exam Program (CLEP) tests, which her school accepts in lieu of actual courses. With almost no studying, she achieved passing scores in business management and social sciences. Unfortunately, she missed the history test by 2 points, so she has enrolled in a televideo course with the community college.

Dawn, having had one interview, apparently ran out of steam and stopped her job search. I’ve been trying to encourage her to go independent, and this seemed like an ideal opportunity. She just fixed me with that look--you know, clenched eyes, drawn mouth, furrowed brow--and said, “You have zero job security and zero benefits, and you want me to do the same?” “Yeah,” I said, then ran from the room before her fire-breath could overtake me.

I also visited my aunt and uncle in their new house. I still can't believe they gave a 74-year-old man a 30-year mortgage. He now lives in Carl, a place straight out of the '30s, and now agrees that Lawrenceville really did suck.

June - Dawn had a very important paper due in her history class, which was her final class required to receive her bachelor's degree. Now I won't say she procrastinated--in fact, she informed me in April that I would be writing this paper--but after a two-month standoff, I finally sat down to write the paper two days before it was due. The task was to compare and contrast viewpoints from two different history books, but instead I decided to do what I do best--lambaste both books. This was not dissimilar to the last paper Dawn asked me to write--a review of a musical performance conducted by one of her teachers. I think he was in tears by the end of the review. I don't know what grade this paper will get, but Dawn has already cancelled her graduation plans.

July - We lost our iguana this month. Literally. We reconstructed the crime scene but all we could find was one of the window screens was loose, where we assume she made her egress. We combed the neighborhood, put up fliers, looked high and low (mostly high), but to no avail. It was a quiet separation, because we are sure she will return.

Meanwhile, we had a roof guy, a gutter guy, a spa guy, a door guy, and a plaster guy all come out during the same month. Four years ago, we talked about replacing the roof, two years ago we needed to replace the roof, last year we resolved to replace the roof, and this year we finally had enough money saved to either go to Europe, or replace the roof. Luckily, there was a new shingle on the market that Dawn liked which was much cheaper than the faux wood shake we were going to use, so we had some extra money to play around the house. I found a used hot tub in the Penny Saver for under a grand (the cheapest new spa I'd found was $5,200!) which we bought immediately--even though we didn't have any place to put it at the time. (Let's just say that Dawn had to park her truck on the street for a month, and I was limping for about three days.) After the roof was done, it took the spa guy just three days to accomplish what I'd been waiting four and a half years for.

If you'll remember from Christmas '97, we bought a new set of sliding french doors to replace the crumbling french doors leading out to the spa, but decided not to install them until after the spa was in--which was before I could conceive it would take me four and a half years to get my hot tub. Also, if you'll remember from Christmas '98, we had replaced two doors with windows, but decided not to repair the plaster until the spa was in--which was also before I could conceive it would take me four and a half years to get my hot tub. Hence, the door guy and the plaster guy. The plaster guy ran the stucco right around the rim of the hot tub so you would never know it was just installed. (At least not until I whipped out the photo album.)

August -- Ever paint french doors? We painted two sets. The second set was an accident--we decided to replace one small piece of molding around the doors to the back deck, not realizing that to match the paint to the door, we'd have to repaint the entire door.

We also fixed the deck. When we bought the house, there was a huge pine tree growing through the deck, which was really cool. Unfortunately, the tree died and we had to cut it down, leaving a huge hole in our deck, which was not cool. After years of covering it up with boards, planters, chairs, and once just leaving it open with a roll of toilet paper beside it (that did *not* go over well), we finally replaced the boards. Which, of course, meant we had to paint the new boards, which meant we had to paint the rest of the deck to match, which meant that all the boards warped before we could nail them down. So with chisels, clamps, hammers, and some hefty brawn provided by yours truly, we straigtened the boards and screwed them in place. Let me tell you, Dawn's pretty scary with an electric screwdriver. I have the pictures to prove it.

We also had to paint the new deck around the spa, plus build some lattice to go around the bottom of the deck. Ever paint lattice? It's less fun than painting french doors. We got to try out our new table saw that we bought at a garage sale, which worked pretty well until we hit a staple in the lattice and it shot a glob of molten steel at warp 6 towards me. Dawn had to finish the job by herself; I was cowering in the corner.

We laid bricks along the entire west side of the house, which was also an accident. One of Dawn's co-workers announced he'd taken down a brick wall and was trying to get rid of 600 used bricks. (After Dawn had agreed to take them, he decided to charge us, but that's another story.) It took three trips, four weekends, and over 1,000 bricks to cover the area, but at least now, instead of completely neglecting the side of the house we never see, now we have to sweep it once a week.

And then we were done. We'd spent over $17,000. Dawn got a new roof, a new set of doors, a new deck, a ventilating skylight, four new dining room chairs, the back deck was fixed, the stucco was repaired, the side yard was paved, and the carpets were cleaned. But the only important thing to note was I GOT MY $%*^&(! HOT TUB!!!

September -- Amazingly, Dawn did graduate. But more amazingly, her mom came to visit, exactly as she'd promised twelve years ago when Dawn started taking classes. It was unfortunate that she couldn't meet Alex. We also had a heat spell that week, so I think Dawn's mom (who we were always bragging to about the weather and our iguana) was starting to wonder about us. We took her to the Huntington Library, the South Bay Botanical Gardens, the beach, and Disneyland. She was quite impressed with our freeway system.

Two days after Dawn's mom left, we got a call from our neighbor two doors down. He was having some trees cut back, and the workers found an iguana in the jacaranda--so they moved it to the magnolia tree and continued working. Fortunately they told him about it when he came home, and were able to go back up and capture her again. By the time I got there, Alex was in a pretty foul mood, but she quickly calmed down. The vet gave her a clean bill of health and so, after her two and half month adventure, she is back home, safe and sound. (Yes, we do know how lucky we are, thankyouverymuch.) We immediately called Dawn's mom to tell her the good news, but she didn't sound very excited. She suggested we get professional help.

October -- Several years ago, I'd salvaged an old 386 computer and given it to my uncle, assuming he’d never become computer literate enough to use it. He promptly started barraging us with e-mails. Unfortunately, Irving (as he named the computer) started crashing on a regular basis. When I visited, Irving behaved just fine, which led to speculation about Munchausen by proxy being applied to a computer, but in the end we decided to throw out the baby with the bath water, and start again. Rather than send him a new computer, I sent him my old computer, and got a new one. (Of course he doesn't know this yet…)

I also got DSL with the new computer. Which is to say, for six weeks the phone company told me I had DSL, but the computer just sat there like a stump. The first time I called the help desk I was put on hold for thirty minutes, then the tech told me to turn the computer off for five minutes and try again, and then hung up on me. When I called back, I got a much more helpful tech who asked me to verify the green light was on, and then transferred me to the advanced support department. In the first two days I spent 15 hours on the phone, 13 on hold, before Dawn announced she was taking over. I don’t know what she said to them, but she had a tech at our house that day! Unfortunately, they neglected to tell us they would have a tech out that day, so we found a note on our door that since we weren’t home, the problem must be resolved and he was going to close the case. After two more visits and six weeks of constant phone calls, Dawn finally got it working. This was quite a feat—of the other two people we know of that got DSL, one took three months and the other took six months! This explains the service manager’s comment, when Dawn asked about a refund, that he couldn’t do that because we “should have expected it to take two months to get it working.”

November - We went to New Orleans for Dawn's brother's wedding. We got the invitation in June, then didn't hear from them again until we arrived. He recommended a travel agent so I called her and, once I confirmed that she didn't know what she was talking about, I went on-line and researched the airlines, hotels, restaurants, car rentals, and city info on my own. Then, just to be polite, I had her make the reservations. Imagine my surprise, then, to find later (on my credit card bill) that she had charged me $40 for the "service"!

It rained all week, the wedding was a disaster, and because I was with three women we spent half our time shopping, but one thing salvaged this vacation: Preservation Hall. This place looked like a burned-out bomb shelter, but the music was just amazing, and at $5 for all the jazz and blues you could listen to, it couldn’t be beat. Dawn and I closed it down our last night, even snagging a couple of seats on the two small benches in the otherwise SRO crowd.

December – My great-uncle passed away. He was 90 years old and still had full use of his faculties, but he'd survived his wife by 12 years, had no children, and was a very lonely man. I keep thinking that there's nothing that prevents me from ending up in the same situation. But I'm still young; I'll worry about it in 40 years, when it's too late to do anything about it.

It also got me to thinking about my family. My family has never been close and, hopefully, never will be. (As George Burns said, happiness is a loving, close-knit family in another city.) But to get them together would be…disastrous. I think the government even keeps tabs on such things. Still, the thought kept rolling in my head, what if they were together but could get away from each other? Thus, I announced to Dawn that I was going to take my family on a cruise.

When she was revived, Dawn immediately nixed the idea on the grounds of cost, logistics, and common sense. I argued that a 3-day cruise wasn’t that expensive, and wasn’t that long. But, Dawn said, what about your uncle who won’t fly? I countered that Miama wasn’t that far from Atlanta and, both of us being quite ignorant of geography, she finally agreed. Unfortunately, a quick trip to the on-line atlas showed Miami was about 14 hours from Atlanta. Dawn nixed the idea again.

Some random musings at Yahoo! turned up a cruise that sailed out of South Carolina twice a year, when it was repositioning itself between New York and Miami. That was only a six-hour drive, so I was back in business. The spring sailing was already sold out, but I was able to book five cabins in October. I neglected to tell Dawn that it was a five-night cruise, however. I’m hoping she won’t read this.

Christmas '99 Newsletter

Are you still reading these??

1999 was a total loss. At least that's what I'm reporting to the IRS. I turned 30, Dawn's education went ballistic, my career gambit went up in flames, and we visited the Canary Islands. We could have done without any of it.

For some reason, people ask me why Dawn is still going to school, and the best answer I have is that she wants to. That is to say, I have no idea either. But she's been moving about two classes per semester towards a bachelor's degree and was about fifteen classes away from graduating when her school announced it was losing its accreditation next year. The options were fairly simple: Forget about the degree, transfer to the only other school in LA offering a degree in Legal Studies (about 60 miles away), or try to take fifteen classes in one year while working full-time. Dawn chose the latter.

Fortunately her company let her step back her hours, but unfortunately they forgot to step back her workload as well, so now she has to do 40 hours of work in 30 hours while taking five classes. So if you haven't heard from Dawn lately (or if you have heard from her and were wondering why she seemed manic-depressive), now you know.

Meanwhile, I've been busy grappling with my own future. Like most people, I didn't want to be a "suit" until I realized that was where the money was. So I was given a "manager" title and I offered advice, gave opinions, tried to act "managerly," but none of it was even remotely helpful or useful. Then one day, I got it: Self-actualization, understanding ourselves so we can leverage our strengths to become better. Not the "that which doesn't kill me makes me stronger" better, but the "I accomplished something worthwhile" better. Eastern religion meets Western capitalism; I loved it. My company thought self-actualization was something dirty, and I eventually quit.

I joined a company with the understanding that I would not have to travel, and spent the first six months in the Bay Area. While this was a fairly bleak time, one good thing came out of it: I got to know my brother. You hear stories about family members falling out, but I don’t think we never came together in the first place. If it weren’t for pictures, you'd never believe we grew up together. I hadn't even planned on telling him I'd be in the Bay Area, until my mother squealed. Mark's girlfriend, I'm sure, thought I was a nut, but her two kids liked me so it was okay. Dawn and I even made a special trip to see them when they moved to Sacramento.

In March I opened discussions with my old company. This may seem a little strange, but I still had credibility there, which was what I needed if I wanted a position of influence. In July I flew out to Chicago and spent the entire day talking with my would-be boss about the future, especially mine. I left with a verbal job offer but for various reasons I would not start until October. Meanwhile I was gainfully employed, although terminally bored, and I just treaded water for a few months. On the last day of September I called my new boss to formalize everything, only to find out he was quitting. I could have still come on board, but it was clear that would be a mistake, and I was, I realized, in exactly the same place I had been fifteen months ago.

That's not entirely true: I'd read several books which reinforced my beliefs on self-actualization, but left me in a conundrum: If I was going to utilize my strengths, I should be pursuing technical roles, even though I was more interested in management. After much soul-searching, I finally admitted the only reason I was working was for money, and that I'd finally come full-circle: All I wanted from my first job was a good paycheck, then I pursued all sorts of other intangibles: type of work, career opportunities, co-workers, company mission, etc. Now I'm back at the beginning, looking for a job that pays the most. Next year I will be pursuing independent consulting because, in addition to the money, there is often free time between projects which I hope to use to start some projects of my own. (There's a 200-year-old house in Pennsylvania with my name on it. I don't know where it got my name, but it's there nonetheless.)

Now I'm sure my revelation that I work for money won't become the 11th Commandment (although I’d nominate it for the Golden Rule), but I think it's easy to lose sight of such basics on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps it's because I've turned thirty, perhaps it's because my ex-girlfriend called out of the blue after eight years and said "I didn't ruin your life, did I?", or perhaps it's because I've just been bored, but I've become very moody and introspective lately. Life, I've realized, is on a need-to-know basis. So if you haven't heard from me lately (or if you have heard from me and were wondering why I seemed manic-depressive), now you know.

We went to the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco, which helped me to both appreciate America and revile Americans. The stated purpose for the trip was to see the Leonid meteor storm, but since we were cut off by cloud cover, I won't dwell on that. But the trip, my first abroad in ten years (ignoring a one-day stint in Ensenada), forced me to contemplate the nature of America. Especially in Morocco, where the standard of living was very low, it was very easy to look past the history and the culture and just think, "there, but for the grace of God, go I." Economists, politicians, and bigots could explain at length why these people are the way they are, but what it all comes down to was that they were born into these circumstances, and anybody else would be in the same predicament. Life really is a blind crap shoot.

And finally, this was almost the Christmas Letter that never was. I find I only appreciate two types of writing: emotional honesty, and cleverness. So I tried to be honest and witty; to share my thoughts and reveal my soul (except for all the twisted and perverted stuff, of course; this is a Christmas letter). After about twenty drafts I was miserable, despondent, and ready to scrap the whole thing. Fortunately my uncle set me straight when he said, "Quit grandstanding, you jackass. Don't compare yourself to the great writers, because you're never going to be one of them. Just be you, and screw 'em if they can't take a joke." Now that's what I appreciate--emotional honesty. He also said to forget about putting Alex on the Christmas card. Blaspheme.

So here’s hoping we all get it right in the next millennium. Or, at least, that our toasters are Y2K compliant.

Christmas '98 Newsletter

Dawn suggested I write the Christmas letter from Alex's point of view, but it came out something like this:

I don't know who you are, and I don't care. I've suffered from two low-grade infections this year, but otherwise I'm fine. I was locked in the guest room for two weeks during the height of summer--when I get most of my sun--and when they let me out I found a large hole in the ceiling above where I sleep. Given that an iguana's main predators (besides humans) are birds, this is my worst nightmare. Two weeks later they took out my tree, so now it's a 15-foot drop into a small pond surrounded by rocks. Somebody call the ASPCA, please.

While I thought this was appropriately self-involved, it was way too short...

The worst news, of course, was Dawn's father passed away; he'd been fighting cancer for over four years. He passed away on June 30; we were coming to visit on July 2. Dawn was really looking forward to seeing her dad again, but it was good that we'd already scheduled vacation time and so were able to stay with her mom for about 10 days. It was very hard to leave. I'm very glad Dawn went by herself one weekend in February to see her dad, but neither of us expected it to be the last time.

Dawn changed jobs in April, which I don't think anyone expected, least of all me. She received an offer from an exclusive law firm in Brentwood (former home of O.J. Simpson) as a family law paralegal. The good news is she only has to work 37 ½ hours per week; the bad news is she now spends an additional eight hours per week in traffic. She never understood why I was so temperamental when I got home; now she walks in the door and starts screaming at the wall, just like I used to do.

In June, our water heater started leaking. We discovered it in July. By then it had completely destroyed the floor of the water heater closet, and the mildew was unbearable! We still had our homeowner's warranty but, as the plumber was quick to point out, it only covered the water heater, not the incidental damage. Since we knew we had to take out the water heater if we ever wanted a door into the garage, we gave the plumber a large chunk of cash to replace the water heater and move it into the garage.

I changed jobs in September, which I don't think anyone expected, least of all me. I just got fed up with the politics and decided to go somewhere I could "lay low" for awhile. Of course it took me six months to get to that decision, but then I've never been one of those spur-of-the-moment, burn-your-bridges, get-some-emotional-satisfaction kind of guys.

I also bought a new car...well, new to me anyway. It's a Pontiac Sunfire convertible. My logic here was that I'm only going to be in Southern California for a limited time, so I'd better take advantage of the weather while I can. And what better way to appreciate Los Angeles than when I'm on the road for two+ hours every day? Dawn just said, "A new job, a convertible...aren't you a little young to be having a mid-life crisis?" I think it mollified her somewhat that the car was green and not red.

As chance dictated, the best time to quit my old job was at the end of August, but the best time to start my new job was mid-September, leaving two weeks of "forced leisure." We'd already been talking, on and off now for three years, of putting in a door to the garage, and these two weeks seemed an ideal time, so…we put in a skylight.

Not just any skylight, mind you, but a monster 4' x 4' skylight in a 6' x 8' hole in the ceiling, right above the atrium. The ficus tree we had planted two and a half years ago was barely hanging on--between Alex jumping on it, a major attack of scale and other insects, and the perpetual twilight on the northern side of the house, it was not happy. So Dawn somehow convinced me that putting in this huge skylight would save the tree. Two weeks after we finished the skylight, Dawn cut down the tree, telling me she wanted to replace it. Two weeks after that, she announced that she preferred the atrium without a tree. Personally, I feel used.

We also put in the door to the garage, "we" being John the neighbor, with me watching and occasionally taking pictures. (One day John almost fell off a ladder while cutting through the wall because I took a flash picture without warning, and he thought he had cut through an electrical circuit!) We were careful to keep the garage door shut in case any city inspectors wandered by. When we were finished, there was a spot about two square feet that did not have linoleum. I said it was good enough; Dawn overruled me. So I spent about six hours with a belt sander taking off the old linoleum, and one weekend we rolled new linoleum down. We also repainted the entire room to cover the new drywall, and replaced the light fixture which had gotten broken in the process. So ignoring for the moment the fact that Dawn got a completely new laundry room out of this, I would just like to gloat for one second and say, I GOT MY DOOR TO THE GARAGE!! Now, where's my hot tub?!

One of those days I had a few extra hours to kill, so I ripped up the front yard. Dawn, of course, was pissed, because she knew she would have to put it back together. I must say we did a great job--instead of the straight raised-brick borders, we now have a smooth curve of sunken bricks around the grass, surrounded by many different ferns, palms, and other plants. The best part is, Dawn no longer has to trim the lawn before cutting it. We also sank two hammock posts, his and hers, for when we finally find time to relax and enjoy our house. Next year, we're going to replace the roof. Dawn insists we're going to hire professionals, but I'm working on her…

(By the way, the day before we were scheduled to start all of this major work on the house, someone at my old company pointed out that I would not have health insurance during that time. Fortunately, I only needed a couple of band-aids. John, on the other hand, went through half a roll of gauze and three tubes of neosporin after he took out one finger with a utility knife, another finger with some diamond lath, and two fingers in a freak accident with a tape measure.)

I finally started my new job in September, spending the first two weeks in Massachusetts for "orientation." In seven years, Dawn and I had only been apart for a total of two weekends, and now I was gone for two weeks! We were both miserable but we expressed it in different ways--I stayed in my hotel room and sulked, while Dawn went shopping, to the movies, and visited friends. (That's not entirely true--the first few days I was in Boston I ate lobsters until I was sick, and then spent the rest of the time in my room. And when Dawn got home every night, she turned on every light in the house and slept on the couch.)

I grew a beard, my logic being that since I had a month off work (two weeks at home, two weeks in training) that I just might have a chance to grow a decent beard before I had to face people again. (Let's just say I'm "folically challenged.") It didn't work. I had to shave off the sides to keep from looking like a burn victim. Dawn just said, "A new job, a convertible, a beard...you are having a mid-life crisis!"

When I interviewed with the new company I told them I did not want to travel. When I started with the new company I told them I did not want to travel. Needless to say, my first assignment was travelling. I thought I was going to be in San Francisco, which was cool, but it turned out to be halfway to Sacramento, which is definitely not cool. It was relatively close to where my brother was staying, so I got to spend some time with him, his girlfriend, and her two kids. The therapist says I'm doing much better. I'm still stuck here, but I've been given a "tentative promise" (whatever that is) that I'll roll off by the end of December. Dawn has told me, in graphic detail, what she plans to do to my managers if they try to keep me here longer.

At the end of October, Dawn threw a birthday celebration for her truck--it turned one this year. Of course she cleverly disguised the party as our annual pumpkin-carving get-together, but I knew better. I think we had a record turnout for pumpkin carving, although we had one guest who boycotted the carving for humanitarian reasons.

For my birthday I asked for a leather jacket, my logic being--oh, who cares; nobody believes my logic anyway. Dawn bought one for me and announced, "Okay, that's it; your mid-life crisis is over. Get back to reality."

We let Alex watch "Jurassic Park" - big mistake! It took us nearly two weeks to get her to stop making "rap attacks." Now we've strictly curtailed her TV regimen, and you can bet she'll never see "Godzilla."

We made our annual pilgrimage to Tucson for this Thanksgiving. Since I've been spending so much time traveling, there was no way I was going to drive for twenty hours, so I booked a flight. (If I flew directly from San Francisco to Tucson, my company would have picked up the tab, but being a complete idiot, I flew home first.) Unfortunately everything was sold out and we ended up arriving at 6pm on Thanksgiving Day and leaving at noon Saturday. All things considered, though, it worked out quite well-- there was a police shootout at the LAX on Sunday evening. We love LA.

On a similar vein, this year we'll be flying out Christmas Eve to visit Dawn's mother; we should arrive at 10am Christmas day, assuming we don't hit any reindeer on the way. Then we're going to visit my uncle in Georgia for New Year's. Other travel destinations this year included our first cruise (a 3-day weekend cruise to Ensanada), Albuquerque for the annual balloon fiesta (I'm serious about going back in '99; anyone else who wants to go should let me know), and Yosemite. Travel plans for next year include (tentatively) Washington D.C., New York City, Dallas, and "someplace in Europe" for the Leonid meteor storm next November, which is supposed to be spectacular.