Category Archives: Human Nature

How my Post a Day during October got derailed – and other stuff

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I haven’t posted in a few days because a neighbor yelled at my wife for no reason at all. No reason at all. And I walked across the street to find out what it was all about.

That’s it, the reason I missed posts. Simple, but not.

It was the neighbor who who allegedly showed a gun to my other neighbor’s gardener over a week ago. And after the “conversation” I had with him this week, I’ve spent the last two days researching fences and security cameras, catching up on missed work and writing a blog post detailing what happened with this neighbor that I’m not sure I should publish. The situation may have a “legal” future to it.

I may be overstating it, but I’m cautious and it’s unpredictable what will happen next. I don’t want to be water-boarded by a lawyer about a blog post I wrote.

Creative Commons: Photo by Nadia Prigoda

Oh, and we may move out of the neighborhood.

I’m tired of brown lawns, tilting picket fences with peeling paint and cars parked on lawns. If we go a mile south, the neighborhood has driveways filled with cars with paint on them, and gardeners who know the difference between a weed and plant.

I’ll stop here tonight and think about the unpublished post and whether it should go live on the Internet.

****

In other news, I went to my three-month clinic appointment this week. It was okay. My PFTs are holding since the last hospitalization. That’s the good news. However, they are still down from the major bout of flu earlier in the year. I’m not sure they’ll ever rebound now that six months have passed. That is life with CF. We’ll see. I’m putting on a happy face I’ll wear during Halloween.

Regarding the clot in my neck, we may pull the port during my next hospitalization. ARGH

I finally get a port after all of these years of PICCs because I’m going to prison every three months and then I stay out for over six and don’t use it. And a clot develops next to the place it burrows into my neck. Worst of all, I can’t do a Rambo and cut it out of my own chest because the clot would come lose and hurt or kill me.

Add “self-removal of a port” to the list of things to avoid in life.

Once the clot is gone, or covered by cells, and not a threat to take a road-trip south to my heart, we can pull the port and I can go back to midlines. We’ll see. The future is murky and unpredictable, as always.

Murky and unpredictable and full of M&Ms and sushi and my daughter’s book reports and black and white labradors and helping my wife manage the stress of living with me and tiny moments that feel large.

And standing fast when someone crosses the line in the sand.

“Sweat the Details” or “Done Is Better Than Perfect”?

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The downside of performing the same job for over 10 years has been experiencing a revolving door of supervisors and managers. The range has been wide, from “great leaders” to “I’d rather swallow my iPad before I work another day for this moron.” Oh, and knowing more about the work than they do.

These are my new work pants and shoes. Trust me when I say I thank my lucky stars every day and wish all of life's good parts could last forever.

The true challenge is staying up with the various, and sometimes contradictory, team-building ideas, motivational techniques, and management styles the new managers bring with them.

Just a few years ago we lived something close to the Facebook saying: Done is better than perfect. And we churned out substandard work. Lots of it.

Yes, a large number of projects were checked off as complete, but we always felt dirty and embarrassed because our names were associated with the work, and the results lived on long after the managers had left the building.

Then a new management team would arrive and review what was done and say, “we can do better than this, people. It’s a good thing we’re here to save you.” But then they would fall victim to the “more is better” rule of the 2000s and we’d explain to the next group of managers that followed them why it was what it was.

And change was always promised, but not delivered, in the game we played to keep our jobs: Quantity is easier to measure than quality.

And then Steve Jobs up and died and now we worship his 10 commandments and the popular, Sweat the Details, which may be the most amusing of all, as volume hasn’t changed. Now we sweat the details on certain projects, with certain being the key word.

It doesn’t say “sweat some details,” which made my wife wonder if sweating all details is healthy. She thinks it should read “sweat the important details.” I agree because I always agree with my wife and I really do agree with her this time.

It’s an odd contradiction of the workplace, these “mantras du jour” that keep us on track and motivated.

I do, however, look at a another of Jobs’s rules and dream to adopt it: Kill a 1,000 Projects. Now Sweat the Details makes more sense to me. It’s easier to sweat the details on 10 projects than 1,000.

And yet, when you have a boatload of projects on your to-do list, and half the time you need to complete them, apply the Facebook mantra and you may live longer.

You know the economy is bad when . . .

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. . . your eye doctor works two jobs to make ends meet.

I went to the eye doctor today for my annual appointment. I’m not sure how the conversation about the economy started – it wasn’t me, I swear – but man o man did I get an earful – or eyeful?

Turns out she is working two jobs: her regular practice and at another company giving eye exams. Okay, so it’s not as sad as if she were serving cocktails at night in a club called Retina Scan, but she is the first doctor I know moonlighting to pay the bills. And despite her husband working, there isn’t enough to pay the bills and save.

I see all. And your office is a mess by the way.

I got the full scoop of what it costs to go to medical school for Ophthalmology – mucho dinero. And how long it takes to pay off a student loan – mucho años. And how much interest there is on a student load – mas dinero. (She’s bilingual.)

I’m sure she gets paid some minimal amount per visit and has to churn through patient after patient to make ends meet. The conversation made me start to worry that she wasn’t paying attention to my eye exam and might miss something important, like how stunning my blue eyes are (my opinion, not hers). And I fully expected, based on my past experience with doctors, to have some rare eye problem to add to my list of ailments.

But not today. The health Gods looked down upon me and decided not to make by eyes turn bright purple or swell to the size of cantaloupes or shoot flames and burn off my eyebrows. Today, they gave me a pass.

What did hit me is that there are people in the 99% percent I never expected to be there – first timers when it comes to feeling like they are barely making ends meet, which makes me wonder how my parents ever made ends meet when only one of them was in the workforce? And why are two incomes today not bringing in moola by the boatload?

If only I had the vision to understand it. 🙂

How men treat my wife when I’m not around

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My wife pulled into a gas station talking on the vehicle’s hands-free phone system. She parked at the far pump, turned off the engine, and transferred the call to her handset. She had just come from the hospital where her mother had spent the night with chest pains and was talking to her sister about how they would support her in her golden years.

What if I showed up in dressed like the Captain and delivered some bone crunching pain?

The gas station wasn’t crowded and a man in his 40s driving a red BMW convertible pulled up behind her. While she was on the phone in the car, the man came over and looked in the driver’s side window and gave her a disapproving look. She got out and pumped her gas and spoke on the phone while Mr. Bimmer gave her more of the looks you’d expect from someone with the job of policing the use of cellular phones in a restricted area.

He finished pumping his gas, got back in his BMW, backed up and as he drove away in the safety and comfort of the Bimmer’s leather cockpit, he yelled, “get off the f***ing phone” and continued driving. If only my wife ran as fast as the Flash and carried a machete.

Now wherever my wife and I drive in the general area where we live, I look for this man. And whenever I see a red 3-series BMW convertible, I ask my wife “Is that the guy?”

And one day she is going to say “yes, that’s the guy” and I’m going to etch, “She’s off the phone, knucklehead,” on the hood of his car.

This story is one of dozens my wife has of angry men who feel compelled to unleash some of that anger on my wife .

There was the aging rock star at the grocery store who used his cart to block her from passing in the aisles and laughed about it as he followed her around the store, and the grocery worker who gave her a hard time about getting past him while he was stocking shelves, and numerous other guys flipping her off while driving when they were the one in the wrong.

And there are the men in cars who expose themselves to her when she runs in the morning, which is an odd but true fact of L.A. that there are naked guys driving around in the wee hours of the morning enjoying the feel of cloth seats on their bare bottoms.

This is my favorite cereal. Oddly, I couldn’t find it on the General Mills web site. Are they not proud of creating and selling the world’s greatest cereal? Or, it is really bad for me, which may explain a lot?

And they’re all on my list. And one day, I’m going to find them and hope it’s in the last hours of my life and I can use the gun I finally broke down and bought to shoot them in the knee caps, an injury they’ll remember every time they take a step for the rest of their lives.

My wife once asked: “why doesn’t this stuff happen when you’re around?”

Hmm, let me guess. It doesn’t because these guys wouldn’t say anything like that with another man around.

One day, I dream I will be with her at the grocery store – though I hate going there – and I’ll be out of sight when some a-hole blocks her way with a shopping cart in the cereal aisle. And I will walk around and witness it.

And you, my dear friends, will get to see the black & white security-camera footage on youtube.com with the title, “Man forced to eat 5 boxes of Captain Crunch in grocery store brawl.”

And to think he ate them box and all without the aid of milk. Amazing.

Are people in Los Angeles getting angrier? (A non-political post for Margie)

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One of my neighbors “displayed” his gun to another neighbor’s gardener the other day. I was on a conference call and missed the fun that ensued when my two neighbors got into a heated argument about it (my wife’s description, as she caught the last two minutes). It’s a good thing I missed it because I would have called the police. When a gun comes out, that’s process step 1 for me.

If cannons, not guns, were legal, we'd have a fewer killings and more people going to chiropractors instead of prison

Today I saw the good neighbor, who is a friend and the one who didn’t brandish a gun in the light of day, and he filled me in.

Turns out his large tree overhangs Dirty Harry’s property. And as an act of kindness, his gardener went to the front door of Mr. Harry to ask permission to move something on the property to access the tree and to make sure his cars weren’t damaged from falling debris. But no one answered the door.

When the gardener tried again, he was confronted by Mr. Harry who had a shotgun or machine gun – some kind of big gun. Then the argument started about it not being a polite gesture to greet a gardener with a weapon of death instead of a rake or hoe.

Now I know most of my neighbors probably own guns. This is Los Angeles where it’s almost mandatory, though I’ve managed to resist the impulse, thinking that I’d probably use it on myself in those dark moments of blood clots and hemoptysis. But here’s a neighbor who feels like we’re living on the open range and he’s protecting his property from cattle rustlers.

What do I do? Or don’t do?

This is the kind of photograph that lures people to California. It's all Hollywood magic. The bird is fake and the beach is a painted backdrop.

Move? I don’t know, but it was the first thought that crossed my mind.

It does make me wonder if my unscientific theory that people are growing angrier is true.

I don’t have any facts to back this up.

It’s the feeling I get when I see how people treat each other in public, how they drive, how certain neighbors could give a flying fudge bar if they return a “hello” while I’m walking in the neighborhood – to the point I feel like flipping them the bird when I see them – a pre-emptive strike – which would illicit a response from them or a comment like, “you’re the worst neighbor ever and I wish you’d f’ing move.” Hello to you, too, neighbor, glad you finally acknowledged my presence. 

I experience this hostility in the way men treat my wife when I’m not with her (another post coming soon).

I wonder if this city is suffering from traumatic or post-traumatic stress syndrome. We’re going through our days carrying so much stress and tension that we’re ready to snap at anyone, and are too burned out to be courteous.

It’s a just a hunch, but I feel it in my bones.

Unemployment is high in California; illegal drugs are popular; foreclosures with For Sale signs in the front yard and near-foreclosures with brown lawns, broken picket fences and half-finished additions lace neighborhoods. Do these daily images impact our sub-conscious?

Worry. Overrated and un-fun. (Creative Commons: Photo by Steve Snodgrass)

And then there is the constant worry we’re not working hard enough at our jobs and could be laid off at anytime to save the company money. And we’re working longer hours to make up for the whole “do more with less” mentality of companies during the recession. And there are the bills.

If we lose our jobs, where would we be? Brandishing a gun at a hard-working gardener? Walking into a beauty salon in Seal Beach to kill eight innocent people in an unspeakable, tragic act of violence?

I don’t know anymore. The older I get, the less I know.

Maybe I should have taken the advice of the first bumper sticker I saw when I moved to L.A.: Welcome to California, now go home. 

Occupy Wall Street and the lesson I learned from Stella Liebeck

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Do you remember the case of the woman who spilled hot McDonald’s coffee in her lap and was awarded close to 3 million dollars by a jury?

What do you remember about it?

Do you remember everyone talking about what a scam it was and how this was the shining example of tort reform and legal system abuse?

I thought that to be accurate because everything I saw or heard about it backed up that opinion. Major media even reported on it but with incorrect facts.

This movie is an eye-opener, but also one that shows how the deck is stacked against us. http://hotcoffeethemovie.com/

Then I started watching the documentary Hot Coffee, a must-see, which reviews and analyzes the facts of the case. The key word here being “facts.”

Remember, truth does not equal fact. And in this case there is what people perceive to be the “truth” and there are the facts.

Some of the facts: Stella Liebeck, 79, wasn’t driving the car – she was in the passenger seat, parked, when she opened the lid of her coffee and spilled it in her lap, suffering burns so severe that even I, a long-time guest of hospitals, couldn’t look at them when I replayed the segment on HBO GO. Burns so severe Mrs. Liebeck needed skin grafts.

How could I have been so wrong? How could I have joked that the case represented the evils of large jury awards?

And it made me wonder what else I think I know now to be “true,” but is not “factual.”

And the movie in its entirety reminded me that there is a large group of powerful people, media outlet owners, businesses, organizations, and the government officials they promote and purchase, who will stop at nothing to strip away the rights of the common man and woman in this country while they tap our wallets and fatten theirs.

I know I may sound like a conspiracy nut, but if it feels like it’s harder to get by these days because we’re paying for more of everything and wondering why our taxes don’t cover the expenses of this country. Well, it’s not our imagination. Big business continues to manipulate the system to pay less.

These powerful people have done a masterful job of imposing their will on us while we work our asses off to earn a living because companies won’t hire more people, telling us we have to “do more with less” during these tough times. And we do it because we have no choice. There are fewer jobs, which helps keep productivity high.

And that’s why the Occupy Wall Street movement is so important. It’s not about money, it’s about exposing corrupt power – the powerful who set a direction for the country that favors the rich and big business.

But the power-hungry have pushed people too far, grabbed too much of the pie and imposed their will to the point we finally looked up from our iPads to realize we had fewer rights than we did yesterday and the truth they promised was best for us, was not best for us. It was best for them.

Which brings me back to Liebeck v. McDonalds Restaurants. How is it possible any of us condemned and made fun of a 79-year-old woman with disfiguring burns and backed a large corporation that heated its coffee water to 180 to 190 degrees and could have settled for pennies before going to trial?

Was it by accident that the facts of the case got twisted and communicated to portray an elderly woman as the villain and a corporation as the victim? Or was there a greater force at work dropping incorrect facts in the wind?

It makes me wonder what other truths are getting distorted in this country by those in power and those who control the media.

I’ll remember the lesson I learned from the case of Stella Liebeck when I hear and read the truth the rich and powerful feed us as to why they are the victims, and how unions and the poor, the tired, the hungry and the sick are really at fault.

My good deed – or the bad deed I didn’t do

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My wife and I went to a charity event tonight, which included a silent auction. I don’t buy very much, but I like pumping up the prices on undervalued items, and sometimes winning one.

As the clock ticked down on the auction and people stood guard, protecting potential purchases like vultures guarding their meal, I noticed a neighbor hovering over a bid sheet for two tickets to an upcoming concert.

Bid on this and I'll tear the flesh from your bones. Creative Commons: Photo by Kevin Walsh

Now she and her husband and I had a difference of opinion a few years ago involving money and their not wanting to do the neighborly thing and pay for half of a repair. And though we speak to each other, no one is going to the other’s house for dinner, dessert and a game of strip Uno.

Here was my chance for mischief and mayhem and a little neighborly payback.

The concert tickets she wanted were at $150 and I could tell she was excited about her chances of winning them.

I spent 10 minutes thinking about what to do, fighting back my inner desire to walk over and bid up the tickets by at least $100. Or, bid it up by $200 and make her outbid me or walk away angry, leaving me with the tickets to use or sell, and a $350 tax deduction.

How high would I go just to mess with them?

But I didn’t. I did a good deed (my definition), and gave her a pass by not bumping up the tickets.

She and her husband will never know I tossed them a bone of kindness and let them go to the concert for the low, low price of $150, which is a better experience than going when the tickets cost you $255 or $355, or more, because your asshole neighbor bid up the price.

It was a hard decision not to start a bidding game of chicken, with the winner being me and the charity. But I’m getting soft and doughy in the head as I get older.

I haven’t even felt like arguing with people online these days. Very odd. Have I lost my edge?

I try to do the right thing each day – say the right thing – and be a good person. But it’s not easy. Sometimes I’d just like to let it rip – unleash the conflict hounds – feel fearless, and not be satisfied with the taste of shit.

I should be deported

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Creative Commons: zazor

I’m feeling un-American today because I don’t believe in unlimited and unchecked capitalism.

I fully expect the government will break down my door at any moment and deport me to Mexico, Canada or Australia, the latter being warmer and my first choice. Australia has a beautiful ocean to swim in, though it’s filled with American-eating sharks and Californian-hating jellyfish.

But every location has something that will kill you. We have gangs, wildfires, bad drivers and earthquakes here in L.A.

I don’t believe when banks and other financial institutions gamble their customers’ money on risky schemes – so complicated that their top executives can’t explain them – the government should bail them out – an action some might call temporary (and convenient) socialism.

I also don’t believe these executives should avoid jail time for shady investment and loan practices and for robbing us of our tax dollars.

Hold it, now I’m confused. Does that make me a capitalist and true American because I’ll let the free market play out? Businesses that go broke, like Bank of America, would fail?

Can I stay in the USA now?

Hold on, Unknown Idiot, here’s an even more confusing thought: How can anyone hate the government and love capitalism when they’re almost the same these days?

Democrats and Republicans continue to strip mine regulations to encourage capitalism at any cost – don’t forget what allowed banks to go to Vegas with your money. But the icing on the money cake is that many of the banking and Wall St. scoundrels are working in the Obama administration right now or are still in congress.

I feel like a man alone rowing his boat in the middle of an ocean full of dollar-worshipping hogs.

I don’t believe companies will do the right thing with zero regulation. Most of them will always choose profit at any cost over the welfare of their human capital and health of U.S citizens (fracking anyone?). And I understand that’s blasphemy to point out. (Fox says not to mention my respect for unions right now.)

But here’s the real reason I’ll be deported to a shark-infested beach in the South Pacific Ocean: I suck at getting rich.

Despite our income being in the top 5 percent of earners, I have failed at every attempt to get rich.

Creative Commons: AKphotos

You see, anyone can become a millionaire in this country, they say, especially millionaires who started with a million dollars.

And though I feel like I’ve worked hard and invested, and my wife and I have been frugal by not buying many new clothes, or living in a large house beyond our means, or freeing our kitchen of its shabby Home Depot cabinets and crumbling grout, I am a failure at getting rich.

And that’s not to be tolerated in this country where anyone can be part of the elite one percent of earners if they work hard. It bothers me every day of my life and I feel like a loser.

I should tattoo a big “$” and “L” on my forehead.

Or I could paint “I sold my Apple stock at $40” on my chest and ask Congress if they’d let me have a do-over. Something tells me that’s not going to happen.

Immigration Department, I’m ready. Come get me. Take me away. Feed me to the jellyfish down under. At least, they’re transparent.

******

[Here’s a great movie on the subject discussed: Inside Job, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inside_Job_(film)%5D

[A great essay on one percenters in NYC. Long but great. http://www.truth-out.org/reign-one-percenters/1317665855]

What’s the right thing to do when old friends resurface?

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This photo has nothing to do with this post. I'm tired and accidentally hit Publish. I like this photo because it looks like Cali is an android dog and ready to shoot her laser eyes. That's the best I have tonight. Why did I sign up for post a day 2011?

Everything happens in threes doesn’t it? Even when friends pop up after disappearing for a decade. For me, three did just this recently, in the span of a couple of months.

Before I married my wife, while I was in college, I rented a room from a very nice, highly intelligent woman who didn’t like living alone. We were friends and then I moved in. When I got hitched, I moved out, of course. And I haven’t spoked to her in . . . 11 years?

I picked up a message on our machine six weeks ago. So, I called her and we had a great conversation. She was glad I was still alive and surprised to find out we had a daughter and that I had something to do with it. Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?

So, we ended the conversation with her promising to call me back in a few weeks after she returned from a business trip to New York, and we’d all get together and she’d meet my daughter.

I haven’t heard back. I guess I satisfied her curiosity that I was still alive. Yes, even I’m surprised I’m alive but I’m not going to call her. It was clear she would contact me.

Experience grade: C-

A woman I worked with years ago – 10, 11 years ago – emailed me and said she’d be in town and asked if she could buy me dinner. Sure, though I hesitated because it meant leaving the house and wearing normal business clothes. But as it got closer, I looked forward to it.

We met for dinner. And it was nice. She’s doing work for the company I work for and I provided her with three pages of notes of ideas. And we relived war stories when we were on the road doing events and the long days standing on our feet.

Experience grade: A

My wife handed me a lime green envelope Monday. A male friend I haven’t seen for about, yes, wait for it, 10 or 11 years, sent me a snail-mail card with his contact information. And inside it he included a photo of an attractive asian woman standing next to him in a casino. I had to open it away from my wife’s curious eyes to make sure it wasn’t something R rated. It wasn’t.

So, what do I do? Do I contact my old friend? I like him. But he kind of disappeared. Why did he pop up now? Curiosity about what?

There are times when I search old friends online, which I did over the years for the friend who mailed me. However, I didn’t reach out to him. And I don’t know if I will now. It’s hard enough to see the friends we have.

I haven’t replied and I’m not sure I will.

Experience grade: TBD

Autumn stumps me

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I’m not sure why autumn doesn’t like me. It’s been a trend for many years for it to kick my ass up and down and back again.

This is not Los Angeles in Autumn, which is palm trees and cement. (SXC license)

All three of my embolizations have been in the fall, including one in Germany thanks to hemoptysis over the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve mentioned this before, but I never get tired of telling it just because I survived to live another day.

Even without bleeding in the fall, it’s the season when I’ve experienced the most hospitalizations. I don’t really understand it and my feeble brain has never been able to decode it. I go into the hospital during autumn and usually stay out until I catch the Flu in March.

This year, I’m doing my best to load up on broccoli, wasabi, vitamin C, which I got out of the habit of using in high doses, and vitamin D. I would start taking curcumin root, but with the Lovenox shots, I read it might increase the chance of bleeding, though I may risk it.

I feel like an ex-con who doesn’t want to go back to prison. The thought of it makes me ill.

I should start a pool with donations going to the CF Foundation and have my friends bet on the day I go in. Just by writing this, I have tempted the CF gods to punish me.

My insider advice to any pool players: take tomorrow, Friday. The CF gods are a vindictive and angry bunch.