Month: February 2012

It Pays To Be Regular

~ riggledo ~ 3 Comments

… er– A Regular.

There’s a deli across the street from my office.  It doesn’t offer a whole lot of food, but what they do have is generally pretty good.  I’m actually more partial to them in the morning when I want breakfast.  They make croissant breakfast sandwiches and coffee drinks that are pretty tasty and only a little bit over-priced.  It’s a small location, however, and they can’t cook or bake things there, so all their bakery goods come from their sister location three blocks away where they do make everything fresh… as far as I know.

Because they don’t bake anything on site, there is a limited number of things, like for instance, the croissants.  If you don’t get there early enough, they run out and you either have to get something far more fattening, or you get nothing at all.

When I walked in at 9:40 this morning the platter in the display case which should hold the croissants was empty.  I was disappointed that I got there too late… again!  I was looking in the display case to see what else I would get and a gentleman walked in and stood behind me to wait his turn.  I turned to him and told him he could go ahead since I was still looking in the case and just as I turned away from him the cashier looked at me and said, “Ham, egg and cheese.  Right?”

I said, “Yes, but you don’t have any more croissants.”

She told me they had one last one, and then the person who prepares the food started assembling my sandwich.

The cashier turned to the gentleman I had waived pasted me, as he approached, and asked him for his order.  He said, “I’d like a ham, egg and cheese croissant, please?”

It pays to be a regular

Holy Hectic, Batman

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

What a day this has been.  After all those comments I made last week about not putting off the critiques until the last minute, I haven’t been able to get around to doing them until today, even though I got the samples earlier than last week.  And I’ve only been able to do one.  The other one I haven’t even cracked open yet.

I admit I’ve really been putting off doing it because it’s just so tough.  I want to be helpful, but fair, but honest, but constructive, but nice.  This does not come to me naturally, y’all! (I can’t believe I just used that word.)

I noticed last week that a lot of people did their critiques and comments electronically, using the review options (track changes and comments) in Microsoft Word and then printing out the hard copies for the writers.  The first of the two samples and the only one I’ve touched so far, the writer asked us to do it that way.  I’m not sure if that slowed me down or if it would have taken me a long time anyway, but it took me three and a half hours to do my critique and comments on an 18 page sample.  And that’s after having read the story last night.

There were a lot of technical problems with the story and some confusing points that slowed me down and I had to figure out how to comment on those in a positive and constructive way that still said, “You need to change these things.”  It’s not easy!

In addition to that, I had actual work to do today and errands to run at lunch, and blogs piling up in my reader and my own mental blocks against doing this in the first place, all standing in the way, holding me back.

I just don’t want to do them.  Not because I’m being lazy.  I just don’t want to tell people I don’t even know what I think of their writing…  but I want them to do it for me.  And I want them to like what I’ve done and have only great things to say (which is probably too much to expect) and I want them to be supportive and encouraging.  I don’t really believe in karma or good juju, or whatever.  I just don’t.  And yet, I do believe you get what you deserve.  You get what you give. (That’s different, right?)  So I’m doing the critiques and trying to be genuinely helpful in spite of my own insecurity and my fear of coming across more harshly than I mean to and hoping that they won’t, or that I won’t take it that way.

And so here we are on Tuesday night.  I’ve done one critique and have another one to go and yet, twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes from now, I will already be in the work shop, either listening to what they thought of my sample, or telling them what I thought of theirs, and I haven’t even started on the last sample, yet.

No pressure here…

Hands

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Tonight was my bi-weekly dinner with Lil’B.  When I picked him up, he was bundled up in more layers than I ever remember seeing him in; with a fleece hoodie over his shirt, a thick puffy vest over that and a knit cap on his head, he looked like a longshoremen on his way to the docks.  I was informed he had been sick and was still getting over it. He told me he didn’t go to school on Thursday and Friday while he was sick and I asked him what he did during that time.  He, of course said, “I don’t know.”  I asked him if he played video games and he said no. Then he told me that he watched movies.

I said, “That’s a good way to pass the time while you’re sick.  What did you watch?”

“On Thursday I watched Elmo in Grouchland,” he told me, ” and on Friday, I watched Rio.”  The boy has watched Rio a thousand times so I didn’t spend any energy on that, but I was amused because he watched Elmo.

I told him, “That sounds like fun! I really like Elmo.”

“Me too.”

We went to this little restaurant in Alameda, called The Red Onion (It claims to be “The Original The Red Onion”), which sadly didn’t turn out very well.  The food wasn’t too bad, but the service, location, service, ambiance, service, and prices… and service, were not great.  Plus they don’t take credit cards which I didn’t know until we were already seated and looking at the menu.  They take cash or ATM (with a $.75 service charge.)  That’s just ridiculous.  And Shifty.  Anyway, we had a lot of downtime while we were waiting for anyone to notice that we were in need of some sort of service or other.  (It happened multiple times.)

There was a plasma screen TV on the wall which was showing Space Jam and he was entranced.  This is the reason I enjoy hanging out with Lil’B.  I like kids movies and with him, I get to watch them.

Lil’B had spaghetti which, for a while, he was eating one noodle at a time, getting the end in his mouth and then slurping in Lady and the Tramp style.  I watched him do this a couple of times and chuckled.  I’m pretty sure that, as an adult influence, I was supposed to tell him to stop and eat the spaghetti properly, but, you know, I fail at adult influence…  At least I do when the kid is being funny.  The thing is though, as I watched him slurp the noodles, I also noticed that they were hitting the front of his hoodie.  There wasn’t nearly enough sauce on the noodles for my taste and the noodles were fairly clean, but I spoke up anyway, telling him that he was going to get his shirt dirty.

He put his fork down, picked up a napkin and looked down at his shirt front.  He couldn’t see any sauce, so he pulled the front of the vest apart more so he could get a better look.  Then he pulled the front of the hoodie, where the zipper was, apart so he could look at the metal.

And that’s when I saw it.  Something I hadn’t watched for.  Something I hadn’t anticipated, though, I should have because it was inevitable.  This little boy, who watched Elmo and Rio while he was sick and was so engrossed in Space Jam while we ate…  This little kid who still doesn’t ask for what he wants and just goes with the flow…  The spritely young thing that doesn’t even stand as tall as my chest…  Has grown up hands.  I don’t know when I last really paid attention to his hands, but I know they were tiny little things with bad hang nails and gnawed, ragged edges; scrawny, clumsy, short little things.  And now, his fingers are long and slender, controlled and strong. His hands are grown up hands and it seems like it happened over night.  It’s just one more sign that his “little boy” days are numbered and before long he’ll be a young man.  I can’t believe it!

Boring Report for Sunday

~ riggledo ~ 4 Comments

Today has been less productive than I had hoped, but it was a pretty good day, all the same. I had planned to go out and run some errands, do some housework and review the writing samples I have for this week. Instead, I never left the house and I watched entirely too much television. Can’t complain about that!

When I got up this morning, I fixed myself some breakfast and sat down in front of the television to eat and watch recorded shows from my DVR. After I ate, I played some Fish Wrangler, taking care of my daily tournaments and stuff, and I made the mistake of scrolling through my on-screen television guide to see what was on. When I got my new DirecTV service, they gave me three months of all the premium channels free. Of course I have to remember to cancel them later or they’ll charge me. I will definitely cancel them because I “never” watch premium channels, or even have a need/desire to watch them. Why would I need premium channels when I have this?

20120212-220715.jpg

But it just so happens that HBO Family was running all six of the Star Trek (original series) movies and I got sucked into them for a little while. I watched the second half of the first movie and then turned off the TV, but I realized I wasn’t really finished with the computer so I turned the TV back on and watched the second half of The Wrath of Khan and The Search for Spock. I set the DVR to record The Voyage Home because I really did have things to do.

I did put my laundry away, take a shower, and heat and eat left overs from last night’s dinner at Red Lobster. I watched The Voyage Home while I ate dinner and ironed some clothes. Now I need to read my samples, but it’s almost 10 o’clock and I need to turn on the Grammys so I will be up to date with the rest of the world tomorrow morning and before anybody can spoil the results (not that they’re that important).

Since I am one of the three people whose work is being critiqued this week, I only have two submissions to go through, so I’ll do one tomorrow and one on Tuesday. It’ll work out fine.

So there’s your boring report for this Sunday. Hope you had a more adventurous week-end than I did.

 

 

A Drop In – (In which I Parenthesis You To Death)

~ riggledo ~ 6 Comments

Oh hi!  I didn’t see you there!  I’m sorry, I don’t really have time to talk right now.

Okay, so, yeah, I’m cheating a little bit… again.  Or at least I feel like I am.  I really don’t have time to write a deep and meaningful post (or even a shallow and meaningful post).  Today is laundry day and I’m supposed to be getting ready to go to Michelle’s house.  She texted me a little bit ago and told me, “Stop playing games,” (I had just sent her my moves in Dice with Buddies – If you have an iProduct and you’re not playing Dice, you’re missing out.  It’s like Yahtzee, but on the phone and it’s fun, quick, mindless entertainment (in which I don’t routinely get my ass kicked.)) “and hurry up and get here so we can go to Red Lobster for dinner.”  (The girl is a sucker for Red Lobster.)

So, yeah.  I really shouldn’t be here right now, but I didn’t want the day to go by without a post (and I likely won’t be home before midnight in WordPresslandia – which is 11:00 my time).  (Did you know, I just learned a new rule about parentheses and periods?  Apparently, according to the Roget’s (I think I’m spelling that right) Writing Guide on my desk at work, the period goes inside the closing parenthesis if the entire sentence is in the parentheses and outside the closing parenthesis when only part of the sentence is inside the parentheses.  I always thought it was always supposed to be inside the closing parenthesis.  Go figure!) (I’m pretty sure I’m also breaking some rule about parentheses inside of parentheses, but whatever!)

Anyway.  Cheating.  Yeah.  I kind of am, because this is going to be one of the most pointless, long-winded, without saying anything, posts I’ve written in a while, but the thing is, how cool would it be if I could post a picture of my February calendar with all those little grey dots over each of the dates, like I did for January?  AND – and I”m not making any promises here – but how cool would it be if NEXT January, I can post twelve pictures of twelve little calendars with little grey dots on every one of them???  So since I didn’t have time (or inspiration) – (What’s with all the freakin’ parentheses, today?) to pre-write and schedule a post for today, while I’m not supposed to be on my computer, I had to stop in really quickly to tell you that I don’t have anything to say today…

Sorry to have wasted your time. 😉

Anyway, I have got a few things bubbling around in the back of my brain and so I’ve got things to write about in the coming days, but right now, unless I want to make THIS a habit, I’ve got to get a move on!

Talk to you later.  Thanks for stopping by!