Workers of the world, avoid second-hand smoke!

Back in CA after five days in Las Vegas attending the union conference. Four days / nights in Vegas is too long. Our conference was held in the basement of Circus Circus. I found the juxtapositions a little jarring. Step out of the room where we're talking about the scourge of "plantation capitalism*" and the need to organize for living wages and health care etc etc, and you are assaulted by stale smoke and the clamor of slot machines. I guess the NOLSW Local 2320 honchos feel that Vegas draws more potential conference attendees than it repels, and in fact nearly all of the hotel workers in Vegas are unionized so at least we could feel assured that our stay at the Circus would not exploit our sisters and brothers in labor. Compared to the newer end of the strip, I have to say that the Circus was a relatively peaceful haven, or at least a less oppressive hell.


*A good example of plantation capitalism would be Wal-Mart.

conquering trailer phobia

I'm feeling so much better -- except for that I was awake between 3 and 5:30 a.m. last night, and thinking about cheese didn't really help. Not the miracle solution I had hoped for.

We finished that movie and the trailer housing thing didn't cause any more palpitations. Instead I was able to focus on what the story was actually about. The main character chooses not to tell anyone she is dying yet makes tapes for everyone to listen to after she's gone, instructing them on how she wants them to feel. Celia and I agreed that we were not comfortable with that approach. Though it seemed to give her freedom in some ways I pointed out that Mr. Rogers has addressed the subject of disclosure in his song, "I Like to Be Told." Enough said.

I swam a few laps this morning--and experienced something that might almost be rhythm. Not a rhythm I could completely fall into and maintain for more than about two minutes, but I think I could be making progress. I haven't been swimming since I last mentioned it a month ago, but maybe that has actually helped me since I haven't been practicing my bad form all that time.

cheese therapy

We started to watch a movie last night called "My Life Without Me," about a 23-year-old mother of 2 who lives in a trailer with her underemployed boyfriend, works as a janitor, and finds out that she has some kind of horrible aggressive cancer. Which then (according to the Netflix summary) prompts her to start really living and doing all those things she always wanted to do. The movie has Deborah Harry in it and seemed like it should be good, if heavy in some ways, but I couldn't watch it past the first 10 or 15 minutes. It wasn't the cancer issue that really stressed me out (though it's a plenty scary subject), but rather the family of 4 living in a tiny trailer...in my brain, their intake was on my desk and somehow I had to help them with their lack of functional plumbing and heating facilities or denial of Medi-Cal coverage.

Then later when I was trying to fall asleep I couldn't make my brain stop thinking about clients--real ones, not fictional movie characters--in that whirling, pointless fashion as it does sometimes when I'm trying to sleep. It occurred to me, why don't I try to fixate my brain on something else, something soothing yet complex and visceral enough to engage with, and somehow I started thinking about cheese.

I first thought about camembert and all my experiences of it, about the rind and how it looks powdery on the outside; how some people don't like the rind but I do, as long as there is enough middle remaining to go with the rind; how we had camembert sandwiches when I was in France, how I used to buy it in little round wooden containers when I lived in Strasbourg...then I thought of the big blocks of orange cheddar we always had when I was growing up, and I thought about eating gouda (the kind that came in red wax, and tasted slightly waxy) and summer sausage while hiking with my dad.

You can really go deep with cheese. I started feeling calmer immediately. After thinking about camembert for awhile, I decided to try to think of types of cheese for every letter of the alphabet. Had to skip "A" because I couldn't think of an A-cheese. Of course when I told Celia about this today, she replied, "Asiago." As if she'd been thinking about it ahead of time. Now, "American" comes to mind as well. It would be hypocritical of me to exclude it after all those family car trips with our Kraft Singles and some various cans of squeezy cheese I may have once purchased and consumed as an adult.

I don't remember getting past Havarti before I dozed off, so I was spared the dilemma of whether or not to include "Velveeta."

It's a three-day weekend and with just a little more time between me and my most recent work day, I think I can try again with that movie. The other DVD we just received from Netflix, "NFL Greatest Follies," might be a good chaser.

'cause the darkest hour...is just before dawn

In this case the great Mama Cass (http://www.casselliot.com/) was clearly referring to any time I would actually be able to run outside in the morning before work. Has it always been that dark at 6:45 a.m. in January? What is this, freakin' Alaska or something?

I have been running on a treadmill (at the gym) a couple times during the week, and in the park on the weekends when it's not pouring rain and one has time to wait until the sun rises. I wouldn't characterize the training as intense, but I feel like it's an improvement over this time last year and the year before. Come February 11 and the 4-mile "Run Valentine Run" (benefiting Legal Services of Northern California) I will be trained better than for the last two years' events, after which I always said, Dang, I did OK at this, but if I'd TRAINED, I'd be kicking serious BUTT. So, a warning to all those butts about to be kicked. Gently.

On the subject of weekends: this coming one is 3 days long and I'm going to stay home and bake bread (maybe) and work on my essay for the ABA e-journal that has the carrot of much prize money dangling before it. 600 words on My Life in the Law, How I Been Changed, and so forth. It was smart of the ABA to limit it to 600 words. Even at 600 words, the prize of $5000 only amounts to $8.30 per word. This may sound like a pretty decent rate but I'm hoping it's still too cheap for the vast majority of attorneys who do not work for legal aid and thus the pool of contestants will be reduced.

My Life in the Law is proportionally a bit short compared to My Life. Yet, it has revealed much to me. Not much that I was really thrilled to find out, but if you're in the business of getting some real revelation it tends to be short on pleasantries. Not devoid of, but short. I don't want anyone reading this who may be considering a legal career to let it change his / her mind. It's just that the magic process of drawing things to us that we need to learn about, when we can't seem to recall having signed up for that particular class, but now that you mention it, yes it was a prerequisite we should have finished a long time ago.

other people's puppies

Here is a little dog that looks so cute and fluffy, you just have to wonder what kind of terrifying alien creature she transforms into if fed after midnight. I met her this weekend, however, and if she's not a genuine terrestrial canine species, her perfomance was utterly convincing. She loves to chew on things that are normally not considered edible and hasn't decided whether she really likes going outside to pee. Can't blame her, it's been raining almost continuously since she arrived at my friend Lisa's house a week and a half ago. I'm sure the pup will be fully housetrained in no time, probably well before she comes to visit at Auntie Em & Celia's house. If not, maybe some dog pee would help neutralize the cat pee in our living room. I've heard from people who have first-hand experience that it doesn't usually work that way, but I bet it would work almost as well as some of the pet odor removing products on the market.

Speaking of products on the market, I was at the medical clinic on Friday and saw a little anonymous photocopied clipping on the bulletin board re: Airborne. Not very positive. Said each tablet contains 1g of Vitamin C and if you take as many as suggested on the box, you are overdosing and could give yourself kidney stones. Hmm, common cold vs. kidney stones...I don't know, it's a toss up. I also think that everything I was taking to fight off the viruses was starting to attack the ol' stomach lining. Either that, or stomach pain was a symptom of the bug itself. I was up at 3:30 a.m. Saturday morning ransacking our condo for Tums. Couldn't find any, finally resorted to 1/4 tsp of baking soda in about a cup of water (whatever it said on the baking soda box). Not tasty but I felt better instantly. It made me think of my great-grandma Winnie. Once when I was about ten, I was staying at her house and had an upset stomach, and she tried to convince me that I should drink baking soda solution, and I flatly refused. I was afraid it would taste so bad I would gag on it which seemed to defeat the whole purpose of stomach-settling. Saturday afternoon I restocked the Tums supply but haven't needed more than one since then. Feelin' fine. Ready to start up work again tomorrow. Legal Services has a benefit 4-mile run in mid-February so it's time to crack down on the training again. I have dreams of placing in my age group and for the last two years of running the event I have thought, hey, if I had actually trained for this....

fighting the wee beasties

I feared that I was for sure getting sick yesterday, and I don't think it was just an allergic reaction to going back to work after a 5-day weekend. Aching all over, upset tummy, scratchy throat, chills.... Celia has been taking "Airborne" for the past week feeling like she was coming down with something, and my littlest nephew up at the Westport house for the family Christmas rendezvous pretty much barfed his way through the holidays. (Actually the story is more rich and complex than that but I'll gloss over it on the side of protecting his dignity). I do not hold him nor his parents, nor Celia, responsible for anything that may now be trying to infect me; there have been plenty o' germs to go around and allegedly his G.I. complaints were a side effect of an ear infection and the candy-pink antibiotic liquid he had to take. I remember taking that stuff when I was little. Not too bad as far as medicine goes but it has that distinctive smell. Amoxycillin in pill form has the same smell.

So I started taking Airborne yesterday too, along with aspirin every 4 - 6 hours, and I'm hanging in there. Didn't feel great today but good enough to go to work again and keep forging ahead with the end of the year completion of forms and tying of loose ends. I was somewhat skeptical of Airborne, "DEVELOPED BY A SCHOOL TEACHER TIRED OF GETTING SICK IN THE CLASSROOM!" but watching / listening to the effervescent tablet dissolve is strangely soothing in itself. Meaning absolutely no disrespect to school teachers. We should never let ourselves be foolishly limited by whatever training and professional credentials we actually have. For all I know, that school teacher could have studied Chinese herbal medicine in addition to obtaining the teaching credential. Mostly I hope that the school teacher has seen some of the profits on all those attractively packaged fizzy tablets over the past year. The RiteAid on the corner keeps selling out of them.

Meanwhile the creeks are rising. Celia said that Sycamore Pool was over its banks yesterday and some of the park benches in Annie's Glen are surrounded by water. Fortunately either nature or some surprisingly farsighted and intelligent human design set it up so that, barring inland hurricane or tsunami, the creek near us floods into the park, not into the nearby condos and houses. I love it when good planning actually happens.

one for the people

I know the readership of my blog cannot be characterized as vast, but I know it is of the highest quality and I don't want to lose y'all. Thanks for sticking through some of the dry spells.

I jogged about 30 minutes in the park this morning, out to the landmark known in our household as "The Bathroom Bridge" and back, not because it is hygenically unsound in any way but because there is actually a very clean and well lighted restroom there. I had packed my gym bag to head to the gym since it's been raining the last few days but decided I was leaving too late for a worthwhile gym experience, and the weather was cloudy but stable. I went outside wearing my fleece everything and decided it would be too warm so I stripped down to t-shirt and shorts. An older neighbor in the complex was out with her terrier in the parking lot. She was wearing a knit hat and scarf and winter coat. She looked at me with the greatest concern and said, "Where is your jacket?" as if I didn't have a jacket and she was going to go find me one on the spot. I said, "When I run, I get too hot" and she seemed to accept this response.

I'm glad I remembered that little interaction because later in the day I was stuck on the phone with a client who has no plausible defense to her eviction that I can find, trying to level with her and give her the realistic if not so cheerful options, and after awhile you'd think from listening to her that I was her soon to be ex-landlord, or worse. Sort of like trying to help a wasp fly out the window when it's determined that it wants to stay inside. Actually that's not a very good analogy since people generally do better inside than wasps, but hopefully you get the point.

pool, cool, yule

Since Celia became employed her workouts have shifted to a time when, if I can get out of bed timely enough, I can actually go with her. The first week or so of this phenomenon I was not timely. However the good influence is taking root. We went to the gym this morning. Celia gets on a LifeCycle and pretty much stays there for 45 minutes; I have a sort of gym A.D.D. or perhaps a more positive characterization is that I am a beautiful, beautiful butterfly. I rode a LifeCycle for five minutes to warm up, then I sat in the spa for additional warm up, then I swam 450 yards in the pool. The spa phase was utterly necessary because man, it was freakin' cold outside. I am happy with the swim though, not having done any swimming since whenever I last mentioned it here, which I think was a long time ago. I think when the Tri training group starts again in the spring I should be in much better swimming form than I was a year ago. As a result I may feel more inclined to attend the group swimming workouts.

Because of the cold air there was plenty of steam rising from the pool this morning...when I did a lap of kicking on my back, it was like flying through clouds...except I was kicking, which sort of ruined the effect. How was Superman supposed to have generated his forward momentum, anyway? I never actually considered that before. If anyone knows of an explanation, however far-fetched, I would be comforted to hear it. My previously suspended disbelief needs a little prop.

the radio

Woke up to "Happy Xmas (War is Over)" this morning. It's the 25th anniversary of the death of John Lennon which was one of my formative experiences. Well, maybe formative is too strong a word, but it had a big impact. The strange phenonmenon of grieving someone you never met and were possibily unlikely ever to meet, even briefly. It meant a lot to me that no one tried to talk me out of how sad I was about losing one of my beloved Beatles, and in such a horribly unfair way.

I have two unemployment benefit appeal hearings today, back to back, for the parents of 5 kids. They are Hmong and half of the reason they left their good paying jobs in Southern California was to fulfill cultural duties in Northern California. I've heard that UIB hearings aren't generally too tough but since I've never done one, it seems more natural to freak myself out with anxiety about it. I need to get to work a little early this a.m. to finish up some declarations, put nice tabs on my paperwork, and so forth. I guess one difficulty with my job is that I still travel back and forth a lot between feeling like I sort of know what I'm doing, and realizing my deep and abiding cluelessless. I wish we had some kind of manual on how to conduct a successful UIB appeal. I wish I had a few more sworn declarations and bits of evidence. On the other hand, each hearing is slotted for about half an hour which would suggest that this is not a class action lawsuit against WalMart.

Maybe it will be ok. I just want these folks to get their money. I think the reason they don't have it was basically a communication problem when they applied four months ago. I think they may be able to give the appearance of speaking and understanding English somewhat better than they actually do. We'll have an interpreter at the hearing.

So I'd better get to work then.

the streets of sacramento...

....are flat & wide. I didn't keep very good track of what my individual time was in the relay today but I think I did a respectable job of holding up my end, especially since I had made no prior assurances express or implied. I had the thrill of crossing the finish line of a marathon under a timer that said 3:45-something. Several of the other women from Chico (on my team and other teams) mentioned they felt guilty breezing past the poor souls who were actually running the whole distance. I searched my conscience and found that I didn't feel guilty at all. Who blackmailed those people into running 26.2 miles? Who chased after them with a red-hot poker? Meaning no disrespect, and certainly no lack of empathy. However, barring accidents, running is a pastime in which you are a willing participant in any suffering you experience, and the suffering of 5.7 miles was so small compared to what I've experienced with 26.2 that it felt a little like happiness.

I wonder if I will ever decide to run another full marathon. I think I could be faster now if I trained consistently. But I've been having trouble remembering what is / was the point of running that distance. Just because some Greek did it and then died shortly afterwards. Oooh, how compelling! At least Philippides ran to get somewhere he actually needed to go.

Then there are Ultras, like the American River 50 miler, or the Western States 100. The idea of running that far has its charms, but I think it would entail more devotion to suffering than I currently have. Surely there are other compulsive behaviors disguised as heroic achievement that I could engage in with less stress to the knee joints.

where's emily?

Most recently, truckin' along through the Sierras in a blizzard, if 20 mph and second gear for 3-4 hours can be called "truckin'." Celia noted that on the bright side, we fared a lot better than the Donner party. True. Slid around a little but stayed on the road. I learned how to attach and remove snow chains. I was taught growing up that snow chains are for people from California who don't know how to drive in the snow. It wasn't so much that I don't know how to drive in the snow (though I've had fewer opportunities since moving to CA), but that my vehicle apparently has the traction of a hockey puck. It's probably good to spend more time reviewing the weather in advance of a drive through the mountains after Thanksgiving.
We were returning from a holiday visit to our friends Wendy and Betsy in Flagstaff, AZ, where it was stunningly clear (though cold) during most of our visit.

It was an excellent visit even though I was way out of my league in the card games: they play a solitaire-like game called "Nerts" that reminds me a lot of "Flinch" except that playing Flinch with Grandma years ago I seem to remember winning now and then. Go figure. Walking in a big open park in Flagstaff we saw a tarantula. Unfortunately I didn't think to take a picture of it. Sometimes a thing will grab your attention in such a way that you don't step back and record it. I wasn't walking along thinking, what should I take a picture of? I was a little bit tempted to touch the tarantula, as I am always tempted to try to catch a (nonpoisonous) snake, frog, or lizard I encounter. The spider had such an interesting furry texture. At the same time, however, it was a very spidery spider and missing my cats was ultimately insufficient reason to try to befriend a wild tarantula. Wendy and Betsy have a dog and two cats so I shifted my affection for the animal kingdom to them instead.

Prior to the Thanksgiving trip I was invited to be on a relay team in the Sacramento International Marathon on Dec. 4. All the fun of participation but only a 5-mile run to the finish. Couldn't say no to that. I am trying to get the most out of the marathon experience by avoiding excess preparation. Hopefully I'll get at least one run in between now and the event so that I can remind myself that I know how.

revise this!

I'm trying to enjoy my paid holiday today with at least some mindfulness of why it's a holiday. I noticed that the president was giving a speech on the TVs at the gym (mercifully without sound) so I later looked up the text of his speech. Since he didn't write it anyway, why suffer through watching and listening to him deliver it?

The brief discourse on Muslim doctrine against taking human life was good, but it's always tricky to know how to apply those scriptural prohibitions on killing. Moses and Mohammed were perhaps a bit rushed in their taking of the dictation because God must have told them something more about the exceptions to the rule that you and I of the general populace don't really grasp. Otherwise, so many "men of prayer" who have weapons at their command would behave much differently.

The speech also reached brilliant new heights of logical fallacy with the comment that we weren't in Iraq on 9/11, therefore our being in Iraq now isn't a contributing factor to ongoing terrorism by Muslim extremists. I think he meant that those extremists will find any excuse to blow people up, it doesn't make any difference what Islamic nation(s) we occupy. Sort of like saying that the fire was already burning good 'n hot before we came by and tossed on another log or two, maybe some gasoline and a few old tires for good measure. I'm confused about how terrorism clearly thrived without us invading Iraq, yet now Iraq is THE front in our war on terrorism. I surely don't want to be irresponsible in my rewriting of history but I'm not sure which version of history I'm not supposed to revise. I think this is precisely the effect that was intended. Bravo, speechwriters.

I almost feel like it's less and less worth the effort to rant about this guy (the president, I mean). Slightly more than half of the polled citizenry now believe that he's full of shit. History is going through a big rewrite all over the place in the minds of the formerly duped. I learned in years of English classes that revision is good, but then I went to public school way before No Child Left Behind so I probably was allowed to spend too much time lazily entertaining ideas and reading subversive literature rather than drilling for standardized tests.

But, back to what I was going to say before I began to exercise my wonderful freedom to criticize. I have been reading stories of soldiers returned from Iraq. Even if, for the sake of argument, our leaders were honest with us and fighting there was actually something that would lead to less terrorism around the world, I don't understand how the people in charge worked out the math. We have a running death toll (at least of American soldiers) but it's much harder to pin down the numbers of wounded bodies and minds and families. I just want a leader with a little more empathy, who is capable of understanding suffering. We have such big brains, surely we could figure out a way to make the world safer and happier without wreaking devastation on so many men and women and families.

got jobs?

Celia does. Two of 'em. They are each checking in at around 15 hrs / week, but hopefully they will provide added sustenance to C's mind and shine to future resumes even if her bank account isn't likely to grow fat. One of the jobs even required an art degree! Thank you to everyone to may have sent prayers and / or specific or general good intent in our direction. It's been a long year or so of job hunting.

I delivered my first Power Point presentation last night, on the subject of Nonprofit Incorporation. I had inserted some clip art on a couple slides, and then thought I made the picture transparent so the text would show through. Didn't quite translate that way after I'd already burned it to a CD and had to rush off to the meeting. I think my Power Point is haunted by something that mysteriously removes objects I know I've pasted in, and makes the transparent clip art solid. Either that or I'm doing something wrong.

strength lies in nights of peaceful slumber

I dreamed that my last blog posting degenerated into random key strikes. Oh, it looks like that really happened. Well then. I realize not everyone might have been interested in joining me on that trip. However, I had a wonderfully refreshing night's sleep of sufficient length and consistency. Can't remember the last time I woke up feeling that rested. Hooray for drugs (in context and all that).

By way of brief explanation...the bit about crossing the snow field was a description of the Blogger page where I initially type these postings. It is a white rectangle and the typing fills it in from the top, like slowly approaching a wall made of little black words. Maybe I'll work on the piece and send it to Sanofi-Aventis in case they'd like to publish some Ambien art on their website (in exchange for valuable consideration, of course).

Ran the Almond Bowl 6-miler this morning in a satisfactory 0:51:00. Satisfactory considering I haven't run 6 miles in a long time. In the past when I have done 10Ks after purposely training for them, I don't think my times have been any faster than that. Maybe the correct interpretation of this phenomenon is that I'm generally stronger now at 33 than I was at 27 so I can run faster even if I'm feeling undertrained. Or maybe the tri-training has stuck with me even through the past few weeks of inconsistency.

Only nine more hours until bedtime. Suddenly it feels like a little Christmas that happens every day around 9:30 pm.

training? what training?

Hmm, seems I'm signed up for a 6 mile run tomorrow. Can't remember the last time I ran 6 miles. I have this idea though that if I just take it easy I'll be able to finish eventually.

I did go to the gym once this week. Treadmills really mess with your head. All sense of speed and distance is altered. The good thing about the treadmill is I can bring my iPod. The TV screens above the treadmills play CNN and Fox "news," all dramatically improved with a soundtrack of ABBA.

Celia returned from NYC this week to great acclaim. She has started working at a local attorney's office (not mine) and has learned how to operate a dictaphone. I didn't know such devices were still in usage. Seems like the dictating end would be quite an acquired skill itself. This guy must really hate typing. A friend of Celia's sometimes records audio blogs which are really cool, but not anything like dictation because you have to put in all the punctuation and occasionally spell names or strange words. I have received feedback that my written blog voice is really different from my speaking voice. Probably because I write in whole paragraphs of multiple sentences. If I mumble on the screen or the page, you can go back and read what it was I tried to say. I'm not a really glib, off the cuff chatty kinda gal. Not at all like the PA at Immediate Care clinic last night where I dropped in for some help with my unwanted head bumps. I'll try not to go into great detail but if you're clinically curious, just google "sebaceous cyst" -- and welcome to my world. Fortunately they've been in places where only my hairdresser notices them. But after awhile they start really annoying me and I get kind of fixated on them, sort of like the heart beating in Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart." Anyway the PA was really friendly and not at all fluttered by someone walking in at 9:30 at night for help with head bumps. He chatted away all the while performing the excision about his previous career as a firefighter, and how the weird disturbing things always seemed to happen to him. He also, before the night was out, wrote me a prescription for Ambien. Having been sleeping rather less than well for awhile, decided to give them a try. Hesitant though I've been to jump on the pharmacy sleep choo choo. Might be all I write for now because I took an Ambien10 about 30 minutes ago and the words on the screen are forming 3D structures that turn and ambi-dance.

the post is a wall above a field of snow, a long field you've crossed with snowshoes and fluffy dogs


you get closer to the wall foteh opost you see it reisign up before you will you ge t voer tehe wall:


far away in teh stno veid ith swjoi biesjo wlsigei fhieoz;jf wigsokceijfoa;vm siefw giwoslkd gheivnsl

ok, this is the part where I should be actually falling asleep rather than experiencing the wakefull free-associative typing. Hard when they keep moving my letters.

Good night ladies, sweet ladies, good night.

"She was fed up"

Good NY Times piece on Rosa Parks. Didn't find out until just now, having been at a 3-day Legal Services staff conference that was held at a place a bit off the beaten path. The timing is personally significant, however. On Monday, our keynote speaker was Eva Paterson from the Equal Justice Society, who talked about the need to speak openly about race in our country, get it back on the table, and not let the far right continue to advance its bullshit agenda that we're living in a "colorblind society" now and discrimination is a thing of the past. (Those are my words, not exactly Ms. Paterson's.) Sorry, if anyone from the Federalist Society or the Heritage Foundation happens to be reading this, but the data just doesn't bear out the colorblind theory. Probably because you made it up.

I have a little story about Rosa Parks. When I was at BYU in 1992 or thereabouts, she came to campus to address the students. Whoever was in charge of the event apparently really misjudged the kind of reception Ms. Parks would receive. They booked her into some little lecture hall. The building has faded from my memory but I think it was one of the newer buildings at the time. Students filled the lecture hall to its standing capacity, filled the halls and rooms surrounding the lecture hall, and overflowed to the outside of the building itself. The powers-that-were had to scramble around to set up TV screens so that more of the multitude eager to see Ms. Parks and hear her words could do so. I couldn't even get into one of the overflow classrooms.

Still can't help but wonder (as did many at the time), what the hell were the planners thinking? Am I wrong to wonder if somebody in some BYU admin office thought that some old black woman who rode a bus home from work 40+ years previously couldn't be much of a draw? That a group of predominantly white Mormon college students wouldn't care about or want to connect with the civil rights movement? What did it do for them? Do they even ride buses?

The glass half full version of the story is, of course, that despite any reason or lack thereof for poor choice of venue, so many of us showed up that the building wouldn't hold us. That means that it wasn't just the liberal BYU fringes coming out of the woodwork. Some Young Republicans must have been there too.

The parallel universe fantasy version of the story, as I would like to have seen it happen, is that Rosa Parks was booked for a devotional address in the Marriott Center during the special Tuesday time when no classes were held, and everyone was instructed to go and witness a living example of that great-things-accomplished-by-small-&-simple-means concept they may have read about in a book. The whole town of Provo and perhaps even bits of Springville, Orem and American Fork showed up as well, if only for the novelty of it, and re-runs of the devotional were played on KBYU Channel 11 so people all over Utah saw Rosa Parks at the pulpit for years afterwards.

It's been awhile since I thought about Rosa Parks. She was tired and fed up and did something unexpected, and the effects traveled in time and space all the way to Provo which is definitely in a galaxy far, far away.

Anyone else out there feeling a little tired and fed up? How's this for a statistic: for every $1 of direct spending in the federal budget, our government shells out $642 (yes, that's six HUNDRED forty two) in tax benefits. Now that's a healthy welfare program. I'm not saying all those tax breaks should go away; some of them are available to poorer people in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit, some of them promote homeownership, etc. which is great and I hope to cash in on that eventually, but mostly our government operates as a mutual aid society for rich people. Speaking of whom, here's another statistic: the wealthiest 1% of US families hold about 33% of the nation's wealth. The next 9% owns another third, and the rest of us (90%) own a third. Of course when you think about how things are going up there on Walton Mountain these days, it's shocking that the top 1% has only a paltry third of all the wealth. Surely they can do better than that. Please, the Waltons need you to help them own the whole world! Call the IRS and your state franchise tax board and ask them if you can just pay your taxes to Wal-Mart this year: cut out the middlemen, have smaller government just like folks want. Whether you shop there or not, you basically owe your soul to the company store, so why not get real about it?

the "ammond" bowl

There is a local / regional pronunciation of the particular tree nut commonly referred to as the "All-mond" in which the "A" sounds like the "A" in Amtrak and the L is completely silent. Ammonds.

There is also a local footrace event on November 6. Haven't decided whether to go for the 6-mile gusto or stick with 3. Running has started feeling pretty good again. Ran in the park Tuesday and Thursday this week, and had quick visits to the gym on Monday and Wednesday. I have rediscovered the long lost "Joy of the Stairmaster, or How to Make 15 Minutes Seem Like an Hour". Actually, with some good tunes it's not too bad. I ran on a treadmill on Monday but that takes more concentration as to where ones feet happen to land (no, I didn't fall off, but I almost tripped when I kicked the plastic housing toward the front of the machine).

We're going to a wedding in the Bay Area tomorrow, and then Monday I'm off for an all-staff retreat (held in a convent in the Santa Cruz Mountains) for 3 days. Bringing guitar for the full Julie Andrews effect. On the day I get back, Celia is flying out to NYC for 6 days with her friend (and benefactor) Mary Patterson. She's making a list of all the places she'd like to visit and starting to pack her bag. I think maybe she's a little bit excited about the trip.

energy shortage

Ok, I finished Claire's bike yesterday (at least I got to a place where all the parts appeared to be working, and I had to give it back to her). She may or may not be glad that she fell into the hands of up-and-coming bike nerds. Lesser friends might not have helped convince her that she needed a new(er) saddle and a rack for the back of her car. However, she now has a pretty cool bike and appears from this photo to be happy with it.

There was something magical about taking it down from the stand when everything was put back together; it had been a collection of parts for the past week and suddenly it turned into a bike with attitude. (I found the tassels on a bargain table at the UCD Bike Barn on Thursday, couldn't resist them.) I told Claire I had become a little attached to her bike but she says I can come visit it.

The next bike project is assisting Celia in changing out her flat handlebars to dropbars on her Bianchi touring / roadbike. This will involve installing new brakes and bar-end shifters and wrapping the handlebars with cork tape. Ce bought all the stuff from Rivendell (link forthcoming). The dropbars are more convenient for attaching handlebar bags and assorted touring doodads, and they give you more possible hand positions to avoid fatigue.

And speaking of fatigue, I am tired. I didn't exercise much at all last week, felt kind of overwhelmed at work (let's say 7.5 on a 1 - 10 overwhelm scale), and didn't sleep well for a few days. I think I need a new goal. I'd like to do more long bike rides and practice hill climbing, and I'd like to keep up the swimming. Being a bike mechanic is good for my mind but doesn't raise the heart rate much.

sweet skills

One of my friends from law school recently bought a bike at the annual UC Davis Bike Barn auction. They gather up all the bikes left out in the rain, much like the cake of which Donna Summer sang, on the campus over the previous year, and then sell 'em cheap. My friend mentioned that she thought she'd need a new chain, and one of the shifters didn't work. I eagerly volunteered to work on it so we brought it home with us on Sunday. I began to realize that this particular bike might, also like the cake in the song that "took so long to bake," be a bigger project than I thought. However, I'm totally fixated with the project and enjoying it immensely, and I'm gaining valuable skills in case I need to get an extra part time job or the lawyer thing doesn't work out.

I noticed I have a work style that sometimes is problematic for both bike repair and lawyering. I have a hard time choosing what to do first and staying on it until it's done and I can move to the next thing. I get distracted by new tasks, especially if one or two of them reach a place where they're stuck, and end up with a lot of parts (or papers) spread everywhere. However, it makes the effort of eventually imposing order on the chaos feel very impressive and rewarding. I think it may also impede my forward progress a bit. Some of this is the result of people calling me with worse, more urgent problems than the one I was previously working on. I can't use that excuse with the bike though. I'm happy to report that at least I finished putting the headset back together with fresh grease yesterday and it's now smooth as the sweet green icing that flowed down on that cake left out in the rain. Everything else (and I mean everything) is a work in progress.

Maybe I'll try to go to work early and tidy up my desk in the morning if I can step away from the bike. I wish it wasn't so dark at night; I've had some trouble sleeping this week and it would be nice to be out there tinkering away. I need to go to the bike shop again tomorrow and purchase some extra ball bearings that seem to have snuck away in the process of working on the hubs.

[editorial note: at first I debated whether I should leave the Napoleon Dynamite reference in the title of this post when all of the other references are to Donna Summer but then I realized that since the movie, like the song, deals briefly with the subject of cake, it all made sense after all.]

winning friends & being popular

I agreed to make a comment at the planning commission meeting last night. I get nervous about doing things like that but I know it's supposed to be good for me; also I was the only one from our office who could go. When I observe the citizenry who stand up to give their $0.02 about whatever it is I feel silly for being scared; some people are innately more able to vocalize their ranting and not worried about being completely one-sided. Sometimes I wonder if I would be a better judge than lawyer. (Hey, why not shoot for the top...I hear the Supreme Court is having open auditions. Maybe I could get nominated on the basis of my singing voice. I guess you have to know the right people though, who thankfully I don't.) Maybe I'm a little averse to taking sides in a really vocal way, right from the start of an argument, because I don't like to be wrong.

So part of why this public comment was a good exercise for me is because it gave me the opportunity to say things that potentially angered a complete stranger and convinced him that Legal Services is out to make life difficult for innocent, taxpaying businessmen. I didn't engage in a personal attack, I just said Mr. So&So ought not be able to benefit from failing to comply with state mobilehome park closure / change of use laws. Having heard his rant for the hour previous (WHY they let him carry on that long, I don't know) I gathered he had a different take on the issue. Poor guy was planning eventually to get rid of the trailers and build apartments there, but before he could obey the laws, everybody just up and moved out of his park! Imagine that.

The story is a little more complicated, of course. I sat there thinking, ok, what if he really acted in good faith and was just in a tough spot, what with the state coming in and finding that most of the residents' trailers were out of compliance, and threatening to pull his operating permit? Then I thought, well, it's up to the commission to decide what to do with his story, and maybe there are other versions of the story they should hear, even if we don't know which version(s) are the Real story.
My story was that he wanted to change uses all along and that he paid people small varying sums of cash to leave the park (which is true) when he could just as easily have paid them small sums to bring more of their trailers into compliance. Since he said how he thought they were mostly good folks (who mostly spoke Spanish). He was SUPPOSED to give them a year's advanced notice and invite them to a public meeting where the city council would decide what kind of relocation benefits he was supposed to provided them. Instead, he just told them that the park was closing and they would need to look for a new place to live. Then he wonders why they all moved away?

The best and worst part of the meeting was that the Planning Commission was not very sympathetic with this guy, and stuck him dead-last on the agenda. He got up to the podium around 8:30 or so. At 10:00 they finally told him he'd said all he could say, several times over. Then I got to stand up. I was a little past my prime by that point in terms of being tired, starved, and annoyed, and I don't know if I was coherent. But at least I got on the record. I couldn't stick around long after my speech so I don't know what they finally decided (if anything). Didn't really want an opportunity to chat with the park owner either so I picked up my chicken legs and left. If I find out what happened, I'll let you know.

NOTE ON TRIATHLON RESULTS: the split times are out. I'll put in a new link to them ASAP, meanwhile if you follow the link in the last post you might be able to find them.