Table for Eight; Party of One

~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Saturday evening, I was invited to a dinner party at a friend’s house.  The friend is someone I met on Twitter.  I don’t even remember how, but that’s no surprise, because I can’t remember becoming friends with most of the people I’ve been friends with.  We were just strangers one minute and the next, as best I can remember, we were friends.  I tend not to remember or retain how it comes to be.  John is much the same.  I know I met him on Twitter, but who followed whom first, or how we became aware of each other, or how we went from being strangers who stalk follow each other on Twitter to two people who actually cared about what the other had to say, I do not recall.

Several months ago, John mentioned having me over to his house sometime, but it just never really came together.  Meanwhile, his company moved their offices from San Francisco to Downtown Oakland, just a few blocks from my office, and when we realized we were going to be in close proximity to each other we determined to meet for coffee.  Now I no longer consider John to be “this guy I follow on Twitter” but he is my friend.

A few weeks ago, John told me that he and his husband were having a dinner party on July 10th and that they would love to have me come over.  I was thrilled because I don’t spend a lot of time socializing and I really wanted to meet John’s dogs (and his husband – but mostly his dogs.)  🙂

When I first arrived at John’s house, a very boisterous black cat, sitting on top of a fence started talking to me and making his way to the ground and toward me.  “Hi!” I said to the kitty, “Are you the early warning system?”  I knew that John had two cats but I only knew what one of them looked like (’cause he looked like Mischa) so I thought maybe this was the other cat; it was not.  The cat walked right up to me,  I reached down and let it sniff at the back of my hand.  He took one whiff of my hand and ran away.  I guess he didn’t like smelling other kitties on me.

Walking into the house I was introduced to the rest of the guests and told “These are all of our dearest friends.”  I was very honored to be included in that gathering.  One of the couples hosted the hosts’ wedding, one of the other guests officiated over the ceremony and the other two were long time friends.  The company was great and I did my best to hold my own in conversation.

The food was fantastic!  John’s husband whose name also happens to be John is a wonderful cook and grill meister! We had kabobs and veggies, artichokes and for desert there was a delicious cake with berries.  They had the biggest bottle of Champagne I had ever seen and I resisted temptation for a while opting to drink only water instead, but eventually I caved in and had a glass of bubbly shortly before we sat down at the beautifully laid out table.  I saw Second John pull a bottle of Zinfandel from their wine cabinet and put it on the table.  Zinfandel, happens to be one of my favorite wines and I couldn’t resist having a small glass.  It was delightful.

The conversation over dinner was wonderful and I learned a lot about the history of this group I had been invited to be a part of, for the evening, and I was having a wonderful time.

Unfortunately, I do not know how many times my wine glass was refilled, I only know it was too many.  The next day, I knew I had overdone it and learned a valuable lesson.  But all in all, I had wonderful time.

Sunday, in addition to nursing my spinning head, I spent entirely too much time second guessing the previous evening.  There was somewhat of an age difference between me and the rest of the group which is relevant only in that they were all established and seemed to be secure in their lives.  All but one of the attendees were partnered up, and I don’t know if the one remaining person was single or if her significant other just wasn’t in attendance.  By the hazy light of the day Sunday, I worried that I had not fit in as well as I first thought.  I felt a little as though I’d been wearing my father’s clothes and sitting at the grown-ups table when really I belonged in overalls and sitting with the rest of the kids.  This is my own insecurity and in no way the result of how I was treated.  I even know that it’s probably inaccurate, but I couldn’t shake the sense.

Michelle once told me that women will sometimes leave something of theirs behind at a guy’s house so that they will have to be invited back.  Well, I swear I didn’t do it intentionally, but Sunday evening I got a direct message on Twitter from John letting me know that he had found my sunglasses.  Apparently, I left something behind, and now I have to be invited back…

This Doesn’t Even Scratch The Surface

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

It’s kind of amazing to me how some days I can sit here and stare at this screen, racking my brain for something to write about and come up with nothing, and then at other times, I’m so busy experiencing the things about which I would write that there’s no time get it on paper – or computer screen as the case may be.  Things have been kind of crazy the last several days for me.  I can hardly even believe that my last post was written twelve days ago.

Last Thursday, in a somewhat unexpected turn of events the verdict came down for Johannes Mehserle.  Unexpected only in that, due to multiple delays, illnesses, scheduled vacations, and three juror substitutions, the final jury deliberated for a total of only seven hours and then returned with a verdict of Involuntary Manslaughter.  I won’t spend a lot of time talking about this as I’m sure my view-point will be controversial and at the end of the day won’t make any difference anyway.  I’ll just say that I suppose this is probably the correct verdict even though I don’t feel very good about it.  I think what he did was absolutely “involuntary” as I do not believe that he intended to kill Oscar Grant.  On the other hand, he did kill Oscar Grant and I suppose something must be done about it.  My opinion is unlike many other people who were unhappy about the verdict, feeling like it was not severe enough to cover the events of that night.

When the press announced that the verdict was coming it didn’t take long for people to begin congregating in the streets near the courthouse for a “peaceful demonstration.”  As a precaution, my employer authorized the employees in the area to leave work and exit the immediate area for safety.  It was a wise decision, thought it didn’t end up being necessary.  The “peaceful demonstration” lasted until it began getting dark and then many of the demonstrators went home.  Once darkness fell however, those who remained, mostly anarchists, began stirring up trouble, first breaking the windows and through the security gate of a Foot Locker store before looting it and then rolling dumpsters in the streets to set fire to the contents.  Ultimately, they broke into several banks and retail outlets along Broadway, mostly looting the stores, merely for the sake of finding things to burn in the streets.

By the end of the night, the Police had arrested 78 people roughly 85% of whom were not even from Oakland.  More than half were not even from the Bay Area.  Sixteen percent of the people were not from California.  One of them wasn’t even from America.  He admitted he came from Canada, just to be part of the rioting and looting after the verdict was announced.

Once again, as a precaution, my employer made the determination not to reopen the buildings on Friday, just to be safe.  Thanks to our founding fathers, and the looters, I had a three-day work week last week.  Well, two and a half days.

It would be nice to believe that this is over now, but Mehserle has not yet been sentenced.  The Jury found him guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter “with a gun enhancement.”  This means that because a gun was used in the killing he could be given additional prison time.  Originally the sentencing was scheduled to take place on August 6th.  It was postponed to September first and then I heard rumor that Mehserle’s attorney was appealing the Gun Enhancement and that the outcome of that appeal will affect the sentence.  I have just read that the sentencing has now been scheduled for 8:30 AM on Friday, November 5th.  Assuming that’s not changed again, I expect I’ll be having a three-day weekend in early November.

I had the best of intentions how I was going to spend my unexpectedly free day off work, but after calling the hot line at 6:00 Friday morning and finding out the building was closed, I went back to sleep and didn’t get up until just before Noon.  When I got up, I fixed some lunch, and sat down to eat and watch a little television while I worked out my bills as well as my menu and grocery list for the week.  I can’t really even begin to explain how the day got away from me, but the next thing I knew it was 8 o’clock in the evening and I had not taken a shower, fixed dinner or left the house.  I took a quick shower and threw some clothes on before heading out to Target to do some of my shopping.

I had thought I might go to the grocery store next, but once I was finished shopping at Target, I decided to pick up some inevitably unhealthy fast food and head back home.  Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, the only Arby’s restaurant I’m aware of in the whole bay area, is right next to the Target I went to so I went through the driveway there and picked up an Arby-Q sandwich with Curly fries and a large Diet Coke.  I can not, however, go to an Arby’s restaurant and not get a Jamocha shake so I picked up one of those as well.  Thirteen hundred calories later I was on my way home.

Saturday, I got up fairly early (9:00-ish) and took about $40.00 worth of bottles and cans to the recycling center to trade in and then I went to Michael’s Craft store to exchange some Yarn I had bought.  I’m making a baby blanket and the yarn I bought was not as soft as I first thought it was and it tended to split when I was working with it.  What I exchanged it for is much better.

My next stop was a near-by mall where I was determined to buy some not terribly expensive dressy pants for work, and a not terribly expensive pair of black shoes for work.  I have two pair now, one of which is too dressy for regular wear; the other of which has soles that seem to be two different heights and when I stand or walk in them I am lopsided, which is not good for my knees or my hips.

I spent three or more hours at this mall, and walked from one end to the other, into every even remotely appropriate store and didn’t find anything that was right.  At my last stop, Sears which I saved for last because I was parked nearest there and because, well, it’s Sears, I found two pair of pants that I was happy with the fit.  They were$19.99 each so I could justify the expense, but they’re made by the same manufacturer who made most of the pants I’ve been wearing, which are now too big for me, but which I’m quite certain I only paid $12.00 a pair for, at Sears!  Inflation takes its toll again, but I had to find some pants.  Many of the pairs I have are just ridiculously too big on me now and I have to start working on trading them out gradually.  It’s an awesome problem to have, but it’s still a problem.

Three hours later, I left the mall having spent only $40.00 plus tax, and with two pair of pants, and no shoes.  At least, I’d racked up quite a few steps on my pedometer.  From there I went to the grocery store where I picked up my weekly produced and the few items I couldn’t get cheaper (or at all) at Target and headed back home.

And oh, my lovely reader, I have so much more to tell, but alas – yes, I said alas – it is 5:30 and I need to go home.  I’ll have to continue my harrowing (or is it boring) story in another post – hopefully tomorrow, but I make no promises.

Apparently I’m Now A Pundit

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

It was never my intention for this blog to become a place for political ravings or even social commentary on the world around me, but sometimes things drop into my lap that just blow me away and I can’t seem to help myself; I must comment.

Yesterday I posted the new story about the twenty million dollar settlement that was reached between the hopelessly, cripplingly broke state of California and the family of a woman who was the unfortunate victim of a deranged sexual molester after she was taken from her family at the age of 12 and held captive for 18 years by a man who was neither the owner of, nor an employee of the hopelessly, cripplingly broke state of California.

Not one hour after I posted that unsolicited rant to my blog, this came to my attention:

Now, I can understand the thinking behind lowering employees salaries, temporarily, in the midst of a budgetary crisis.  I know it would suck, a lot, to be one of those 200,000 workers whose salary was suddenly and without warning cut by more than 75%, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.  But get this, Governor Schwarzenegger isn’t just cutting people’s salaries to minimum wage; oh no, he’s cutting it to the Federal Minimum Wage.  The Federal Minimum Wage is $7.25 an hour.  In California, the state minimum wage is $8.00 an hour and there are many counties with a cost of living differential where the minimum wage is even higher.

This means that not only will we be paying our valuable state workers minimum wage, but we’ll be paying them even less money than the pimply faced teenagers sacking their groceries down at the Piggly Wiggly.  And if that weren’t insult enough, this news was announced on the same day that it was announced that the state is just going to hand over a $20,000,000 check to one individual who was victimized by one individual who was not acting on behalf of the state in any way!

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

I was going through my Twitter time line earlier today when I happened across a link to this story:

This young woman, as you can surmise from the brief article above was abducted years ago and held captive for 18 years before turning up last year.  She was held captive by this man and sexually abused many times resulting in two pregnancies.  It is, of course a terribly sad story.  But twenty million dollars?!?  From the state?!?  Seriously?!?  Come on!!!

In case no one has been paying attention, the state of California is B-R-O-K-E, broke!!! The state government is billions of dollars in the red!  Government workers are being laid off right and left!  You know, the people in those insignificant little jobs like POLICE & FIRE Departments.  Last year Governor Schwartzi-whatsit increased taxes all over the place on all kinds of things just to try to repair the government budgetary crisis.  I paid over $600.00 last year just to register my cars!  Granted I paid for my old car registration in June, just to turn around and trade it in for a new car in November, but still; $600.00!!!

And let us not forget where all this money the government doesn’t have comes from, shall we?  IT COMES FROM ME!!!  And all the people like me who are working hard just trying to scrape by on the meager salaries we earn.  And now some Yahoos in Sacramento thinks it’s justifiable to give $20 million of my hard-earned money to the family of this girl, just because she was abducted by a crazy, sexual predator?  The family somehow see’s this as justice?  Give me a break!!!

You want justice, do whatever you can to make sure the man who did this to your daughter is prosecuted and convicted and sent to prison.  That’s justice!  $20M of the taxpayers money to “compensate” you for what happened to your daughter?  How is that Justice?  Not only is it not justice for you and your family, but now you’re just as guilty of rape as he is!  You’re guilty of financially raping the decent, honest, tax paying citizens of your state!  Really!  Thanks a lot Dugard family!  Awesome!

My first job: The Little Shop of Horrors

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

I worked as a cashier in a hotel giftshop. I was 14 years old and working with a Work Permit at the same hotel that the rest of my family worked (not a family business.) My mother was the Hotel Manager's Secretary, my brother was the Meeting Services Supervisor and my sister was a waitress in the hotel restaurant. The hotel happened to be across the street from and owned by a "Christian owned and operated" University in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Sadly the group that ran the ministry proved, behind the scenes at least, not to be a particularly ethical group. One day, for reasons I never did understand, they "laid off" the entire management staff of the hotel and brought in new people. It was Nepotism at it's finest. They installed the husband of one of the brood as the manager of the hotel, though he had no experience whatsoever in managing a hotel. They kept my mother on board and she taught him everything she knew so that he could run the hotel and when he had a grasp on it all, they fired her without warning.

By that time, I was only working on weekends because school had started up again and when my mother told me they had fired her it wasn't long before I quit too. In retrospect, that wasn't the most mature thing for me to do, but working there at that point was rather awkward and I was young.