"It was only possible for me to do it," he said, "because it was necessary. I either had to write the book or be reduced to despair; it was the only means of saving me from nothingness, chaos and suicide ... And while writing it, there was no need for me to think at all of any other reader but myself, or at the most, here and there another close war comrade, and I certainly never thought then about the survivors, but always about those who fell in the war. While writing it, I was as if delirious or crazy, surrounded by three or four people with mutilated bodies — that is how the book was produced."
--Herman Hesse, The Journey To The East
Okay, it's not that bad. Yes, there are boxes all over my house, in various stages of full or being filled, with cute little number tags on them and colored dots denoting them as being from this room or that room. Yes, my laundry room in particular looks like a tornado hit it, ripped out roughly half the contents and messily deposited a bunch of them in my living room. Yes, it's New Years frick'n Eve and rather than tripping the light fantastic at some fabulous party somewhere on Dallas's West End or Preston Hollow, I'm, uh, sorting stuff. But it's not the end of the world. For one thing, I didn't trip the light fantastic in Preston Hollow even when I knew somebody who lived there, and for another thing, I don't think I ever knew anyone who lived there. (Sally was one zip code digit away from qualifying. Sorry, Sally.) For a third thing, I think I'm going to be out of here by some time in March, and it would behoove me to, you know, be packed sometime before then. But, for the record, I HATE PACKING. I'd rather be dragged naked through flaming walls of rabid rattlesnakes.
Fortunately, Joan and I are pretty good at this. Back in San Diego we had it practically down to a science. I think we moved at least three times before the Big Move to Texas, which was accomplished in under twenty-eight days (albeit with the help of professionals and a much better housing market). There was the Move Across the Landing, for which we hardly packed at all and just grabbed stuff as it looked grabbable. There was the Move from the Crummy Apartment on the Other Side of the Landing to the Swank Two-Bedroom Two-Bath Overlooking Balboa Park, which took place on Valentines Day, in the pouring rain, on the day that the gutter at the crummy apartment building decided to give up the ghost and fall onto the sidewalk outside our front door. Which meant, of course, that every time we went in or out we had to jump over this sluice of water, like Indiana Jones swinging on vines or something, and while Joan managed the last trip with a screaming (wet) cat in a carrier, I was sitting on the floor in the new place, waiting for the phone guy, wrapped in a blanket because I couldn't figure out how to turn on the frick'n heater.
Then there was the Move to the Newly Purchased Condo, about which I've blissfully forgotten nearly everything except that it took place during the Year of No Holidays. We helped our friend Beth move out of her apartment Halloween night, I forget what happened for Thanksgiving but it didn't get celebrated either, and then we moved into the condo over Christmas break, so it's not like either of us felt like hauling in a tree after all that. Then on New Years Eve we were broke, having put all our money into the condo, so we weren't out tripping the light fantastic at some fabulous party in La Jolla or--well, you get the idea.
And in 2004, we moved to Texas. Two women, two cats, three movers, fifty-five boxes of books, and something like five thousand dollars (I think). One of the movers stuck his foot through our ceiling, which was bad because we technically didn't own the condo anymore at that point. We ended up having to write a blank check and a letter of apology to the new owners before we booked out of the state as fast as possible at the end of the day. Drove through the night and made it as far as Phoenix by about 3 in the morning. For all we know, the process servers are still trying to find us. We're just glad no one got hurt.
So. We have a storage unit. We are filling boxes with stuff and placing them in the storage unit. As soon as we've stripped this place to its bare bones (which will hopefully not take too much longer), and done some minor repairs with the help of a nice carpenter and my next pay check, the house goes "live" on the market. And then--
Well, then we have to find a place to live. A daunting task indeed for the faint of heart and hairless of chest.
Monday, December 31, 2012
Monday, December 24, 2012
Bon Voyage
I hate it when the situation deteriorates before I even finish the blog post.
Because I had one, right, and it was a good one. I was going to call it "And This Just Keeps Getting Better And Better," and it was going to be all about the further adventures of Ernie in the dark realm known as The Crawlspace. Simply replacing all of the water pipes, you see, was not going to do the job. Nor was the final bill from ServPro (which still hasn't shown up; they said it would be $250 just to come out to the house, but absolutely not a thing more than that except "We'll bill your insurance company," which they can do all day long, but our insurance company isn't gonna pay them). No, we needed Ernie to locate the main sewer pipe and announce to us that We Had Another Problem. We needed him to run a little camera down said sewer pipe so we could see what the problem was. (I got the honor; Joan was at work.) Uponst seeing said problem, I was going to have apoplexy, or something, and upon hearing how much the problem was going to be to fix, I was going to have apoplexy again. Or maybe a stroke. But forget all that. Just never mind, sweep it all back under the rug (or into the Crawlspace), and we'll just start from right this very moment.
We're selling the house.
Yes, Problem and all. The Problem is going to set our price back a ways, and it's not worth what we paid for it back in '04 when we first ambled into Texas, and the odds of us getting any kind of profit out of it are just about zero, but that's okay. We're fine with it. We never set out to be real-estate magnates; we were just looking for a place to live. And now that our place to live is looking like a used car that's requiring half again of its value every year just to keep it running, it's time to find another place to live. (It's not really that bad. But it is a headache that I don't want. Nor does Joan. So:) Condo, subdivided house, apartment, whatever.
So we called up the realtor that helped us buy this place a little less than eight years ago, Her name is Sondra Patton and that is her real name. If you are ever of a mind to buy or sell property in the DFW area, most particularly Lakewood, you could do a lot worse than giving Ms. Patton a call. In addition to being really smart, knowledgeable and honest, she's also very nice. And, she can put up with, uh, me. I was not the easiest person to put up with during the Great House Hunt of 2004, no matter what anybody says. She came over with reams of paperwork and we started signing stuff. The listing goes "live" on January 1. Despite the ho-hum state of the Dallas house market, she thinks it'll sell pretty fast. So we have to find a place to live in a hurry.
After our vacation, that is. We're on an imaginary cruise on the S.S. Flamingo, with ports of call in Dallas, Fort Worth, Corsicana, Waxahatchie and maybe Austin. It's the last cruise for this ship before she's decommissioned, so it's become kind of historical. Ahoy, mateys, it's time for "It's a Wonderful Life," being broadcast on the widescreen on the Lido Deck. Merry Christmas, everybody.
Because I had one, right, and it was a good one. I was going to call it "And This Just Keeps Getting Better And Better," and it was going to be all about the further adventures of Ernie in the dark realm known as The Crawlspace. Simply replacing all of the water pipes, you see, was not going to do the job. Nor was the final bill from ServPro (which still hasn't shown up; they said it would be $250 just to come out to the house, but absolutely not a thing more than that except "We'll bill your insurance company," which they can do all day long, but our insurance company isn't gonna pay them). No, we needed Ernie to locate the main sewer pipe and announce to us that We Had Another Problem. We needed him to run a little camera down said sewer pipe so we could see what the problem was. (I got the honor; Joan was at work.) Uponst seeing said problem, I was going to have apoplexy, or something, and upon hearing how much the problem was going to be to fix, I was going to have apoplexy again. Or maybe a stroke. But forget all that. Just never mind, sweep it all back under the rug (or into the Crawlspace), and we'll just start from right this very moment.
We're selling the house.
Yes, Problem and all. The Problem is going to set our price back a ways, and it's not worth what we paid for it back in '04 when we first ambled into Texas, and the odds of us getting any kind of profit out of it are just about zero, but that's okay. We're fine with it. We never set out to be real-estate magnates; we were just looking for a place to live. And now that our place to live is looking like a used car that's requiring half again of its value every year just to keep it running, it's time to find another place to live. (It's not really that bad. But it is a headache that I don't want. Nor does Joan. So:) Condo, subdivided house, apartment, whatever.
So we called up the realtor that helped us buy this place a little less than eight years ago, Her name is Sondra Patton and that is her real name. If you are ever of a mind to buy or sell property in the DFW area, most particularly Lakewood, you could do a lot worse than giving Ms. Patton a call. In addition to being really smart, knowledgeable and honest, she's also very nice. And, she can put up with, uh, me. I was not the easiest person to put up with during the Great House Hunt of 2004, no matter what anybody says. She came over with reams of paperwork and we started signing stuff. The listing goes "live" on January 1. Despite the ho-hum state of the Dallas house market, she thinks it'll sell pretty fast. So we have to find a place to live in a hurry.
After our vacation, that is. We're on an imaginary cruise on the S.S. Flamingo, with ports of call in Dallas, Fort Worth, Corsicana, Waxahatchie and maybe Austin. It's the last cruise for this ship before she's decommissioned, so it's become kind of historical. Ahoy, mateys, it's time for "It's a Wonderful Life," being broadcast on the widescreen on the Lido Deck. Merry Christmas, everybody.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Mud, Sweat and Piers (and Beams)
It's a good thing I've been putting off writing the Christmas letter, because honestly, we just hadn't had near enough disasters yet. I mean, I know there was the transmission repair, and the roof repair, and the water heater thing, and the washing machine thing, and Joan's emergency oral surgery, and then the--the thing I can't remember; actually there may be more than one thing I can't remember. I mean it all ran together this year. So, anyway, I was about to write the Christmas letter and I was going to use the oral surgery as kind of the topper, the thing, the "hey, how do you like them apples," and then, out of nowhere, we started to hear this weird little hissing sound.
It started out kind of soft, so soft we might have been imagining it. It sounded a lot like the hose was on in the back yard, but it wasn't; I checked several times. Then it got a little louder, and it started to sound like a gas leak, only it couldn't be a gas leak because we'd smell it, wouldn't we? I mean, natural gas smells like rotten eggs that have been sitting around in a sea of farts for three or four days. Hard to ignore that kind of smell.
So if it wasn't natural gas, it had to be water, right? But where was it? No puddles of water anywhere in the house. No soft spots on the walls, no water oozing up through the floorboards. No idea. But it was getting louder. Call Ernie, the plumber. Like, immediately.
Ernie showed up an hour early, like he always does, startling heck out of Joan who wasn't quite awake yet. He went through the house, listening to everything, looking at everything, wanting to see everything that was hooked up to water. He agreed with us that nothing was running. He said he would have to go under the house.
Under the house. Oh God, I hate those words. I picture swarms of gigantic six-leggers waiting to pounce on innocent people like me. Even rats and snakes and spiders aren't as scary as the prospect of giant bugs. But I didn't have to go down there. Ernie had to go down there. Luckily, Ernie is not a very big guy, because the trap door that goes under the house is not very big. As it is, the door was underneath sheets and towels and a big plastic bin that was full of more sheets and towels. But, we got it all out of the way and opened the trap door. And then Ernie said, "You guys got a lake down there."
Yep. It's the Night of the Broken Pipe.
Ernie couldn't do anything until we got rid of the water, so we shut the water off and called ServPro. They showed up, ran gigantic blue anaconda snakes through the house and sucked out the water-and plenty of mud, too, and some stuff that made a creepy rattling sound that I decided I really didn't want to know about. (Rat bones? Giant six-leggers?) Insurance might or might not pay for this, oh joy, oh rapture.
Oh, and when I say insurance might or might not pay for this, I mean the suctioning-out of the water. Not the repair of the actual pipe. Since it didn't break inside the house and damage anything, we're S.O.L. on insurance coverage. Not that I'm complaining; I do have flood insurance, but I don't wanna actually use it. And I'm kinda fond of my laminate flooring and stuff. So, yeah, fine that we have a pier-and-beam foundation, and not a slab, and that the water stayed in the crawl space with the rat bones and the six-leggers.
Ernie was back the next day with a backhoe and several shovels. I got to miss this part because I was at work, but I was here today when the actual digging-up of the old pipe happened. Turned out, our old pipe was in such crummy shape that the only thing to do was to replace it all. If they just patched the leak, the water would have gone down the pipe and found another weak spot and we'd be back in this same quandary a week from now. How much does it cost to replace an entire small house worth of pipe, you ask. Uh, about three thousand seven hundred sixty dollars and fifty-eight cents. I have the number tattooed on my brain.
Mind you, while all this has been going on, we haven't had any water at the house. That's been all kinds of fun. Filling the commode from five-gallon buckets purchased at Home Depot, brushing our teeth with bottled water bought in flats from Kroger. We took showers at the gym. Yes, I know normal people would go stay at a hotel. But, we are not normal people, and see above re: three thousand seven hundred sixty dollars and fifty-eight cents. Merry Christmas to you, too.
So, anyway, if you were thinking of sending us anything for the upcoming Christian holiday, money would be great. As it is, I think we can pay Ernie but I'm not at all sure about ServPro. I got a Christmas bonus at work last week. It was a really nice one. It's gone. As for the rest--well, it's good to have friends.
In fact, it's so good to have friends that we're going to sell this house and move in with them, because it doesn't seem like we can't afford to maintain it anymore. The house, that is. Stay tuned.
It started out kind of soft, so soft we might have been imagining it. It sounded a lot like the hose was on in the back yard, but it wasn't; I checked several times. Then it got a little louder, and it started to sound like a gas leak, only it couldn't be a gas leak because we'd smell it, wouldn't we? I mean, natural gas smells like rotten eggs that have been sitting around in a sea of farts for three or four days. Hard to ignore that kind of smell.
So if it wasn't natural gas, it had to be water, right? But where was it? No puddles of water anywhere in the house. No soft spots on the walls, no water oozing up through the floorboards. No idea. But it was getting louder. Call Ernie, the plumber. Like, immediately.
Ernie showed up an hour early, like he always does, startling heck out of Joan who wasn't quite awake yet. He went through the house, listening to everything, looking at everything, wanting to see everything that was hooked up to water. He agreed with us that nothing was running. He said he would have to go under the house.
Under the house. Oh God, I hate those words. I picture swarms of gigantic six-leggers waiting to pounce on innocent people like me. Even rats and snakes and spiders aren't as scary as the prospect of giant bugs. But I didn't have to go down there. Ernie had to go down there. Luckily, Ernie is not a very big guy, because the trap door that goes under the house is not very big. As it is, the door was underneath sheets and towels and a big plastic bin that was full of more sheets and towels. But, we got it all out of the way and opened the trap door. And then Ernie said, "You guys got a lake down there."
Yep. It's the Night of the Broken Pipe.
Oh, and when I say insurance might or might not pay for this, I mean the suctioning-out of the water. Not the repair of the actual pipe. Since it didn't break inside the house and damage anything, we're S.O.L. on insurance coverage. Not that I'm complaining; I do have flood insurance, but I don't wanna actually use it. And I'm kinda fond of my laminate flooring and stuff. So, yeah, fine that we have a pier-and-beam foundation, and not a slab, and that the water stayed in the crawl space with the rat bones and the six-leggers.
Ernie was back the next day with a backhoe and several shovels. I got to miss this part because I was at work, but I was here today when the actual digging-up of the old pipe happened. Turned out, our old pipe was in such crummy shape that the only thing to do was to replace it all. If they just patched the leak, the water would have gone down the pipe and found another weak spot and we'd be back in this same quandary a week from now. How much does it cost to replace an entire small house worth of pipe, you ask. Uh, about three thousand seven hundred sixty dollars and fifty-eight cents. I have the number tattooed on my brain.
Mind you, while all this has been going on, we haven't had any water at the house. That's been all kinds of fun. Filling the commode from five-gallon buckets purchased at Home Depot, brushing our teeth with bottled water bought in flats from Kroger. We took showers at the gym. Yes, I know normal people would go stay at a hotel. But, we are not normal people, and see above re: three thousand seven hundred sixty dollars and fifty-eight cents. Merry Christmas to you, too.
So, anyway, if you were thinking of sending us anything for the upcoming Christian holiday, money would be great. As it is, I think we can pay Ernie but I'm not at all sure about ServPro. I got a Christmas bonus at work last week. It was a really nice one. It's gone. As for the rest--well, it's good to have friends.
In fact, it's so good to have friends that we're going to sell this house and move in with them, because it doesn't seem like we can't afford to maintain it anymore. The house, that is. Stay tuned.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
Paper Chasing
I hate to tell you guys this, but I never went to law school. (!) I know, right? You'd think, in this modern day and age, I'd have somehow coughed up the $90 grand (or taken out the student loans) and run the Paper Chase along with my 1,128,729 closest friends. But no. I went to paralegal school, which is like Law School Lite. It only takes a little less than a year instead of three, it's a lot cheaper, and they actually teach you stuff instead of playing hide the ball, which is, I gather, what they do in law school. (If you're a lawyer, and your paralegal can't find the ball, you are in serious trouble. Luckily, I'm so good at finding the ball that even my cat, who knocks hers under the door to the HVAC quite frequently, meows for me to come get it for her.)
There's a guy in my office who desperately wants to go to law school. He's actually been, but that was more than 10 years ago. He was accepted to Fairly Prestigious Institution and waitlisted for Really Prestigious Institution, which isn't a choice I'd want either. He wound up going to Fairly Prestigious Institution and lasted two semesters. Would it have gone better at Really Prestigious Institution? It's hard to say. He wants to go back and finish, but he's having trouble getting his LSAT score (that's Law School Admission Test for you non-legal people) up high enough. Having not-finished law school once, he's being treated like damaged goods--never mind that the goods are ten years older now and he's been a paralegal the whole time. Honestly, you want good prep for law school? Work as a paralegal for a while. There just ain't a better way to see how it all fits together.
Somehow, this has spurred me into an existential crisis. Not that I want to go to law school; no, I like what I do and I'm not in any hurry to do anything else. I like getting to go home at 5:30. Well, okay, more like quarter to six most nights, but still. Something about this whole conversation made me wonder what would have happened if I'd gone to law school right after college, as was the plan (it wasn't my plan, but that's another story). Where would I be today, and what would I be doing?
Surprisingly, the answer my brain comes up with is broke and dead.
Or maybe that's not so surprising. The lawyer who talked me out of going to law school (isn't that kind of like a monsignor talking an altar boy out of joining the priesthood?) told me I was far too interested in truth and justice to be an effective attorney. (He did say that. He really said that.) "You know what you'd do," he went on. "You'd take all those battered-women cases, and the people who got fired from their jobs for unjust reasons, and the women who can't get apartments because they have a kid with Down's. People who will never pay you and lawsuits that you'll never win. Or worse, you'll become a prosecutor, and you'll be fifty years old and still living with roommates because you can't afford your own place."
Well, okay, he said something like that. I have a good ear for dialogue, but it gets rusty over a twenty-three year time span. Still, you have to admit he was a pretty good judge of character. Most of that does sound like what I'd do. The "dead" part is a little harder to follow, but I crashed and burned pretty hard in 1999 and again in 2001, and I can't imagine I would've somehow not crashed and burned if I'd have been an attorney when all that was going on. (Although, I might have had better health insurance. Maybe.) I have a high-stress occupation as it is; if I were an attorney, it'd be even higher stress, and, well, yeah. I might very well be dead, having driven my Lincoln into the San Diego Bay over a motion denied or a restraining order that didn't do a damn bit of good.
Roland, the bad guy in Mindbender, says to Our Heroine at one point, "Surely you cannot mean to be a librarian for the rest of your life." (Yep, I've got a gun-toting action hero librarian. You tell me why it's not published yet.) She gets understandably annoyed and asks what's wrong with that, exactly. He tells her she has much greater potential, and as Linus of Peanuts would say, there's no heavier burden than a great potential. He is, of course, messing with her head, but the question is genuine and every now and then I have some stupid conversation with somebody that makes me ask it again. Surely you cannot mean to be a paralegal for the rest of your life. (No, only until about age 70, and then I thought I'd do some skydiving.) In all seriousness, though, what if I'm supposed to be doing something else? What if I'm floating around on a vast sea of untapped potential, in the paralegal lifeboat that I've somehow become deluded into thinking is a luxury yacht? Well, okay, I'm a practical person here, so let's say a 38-foot ocean-going small vessel with plenty of foul-weather gear. In short, what if I'm doing it all wrong, and ruining my life?
On the other hand, I am not a great believer in the ruinability of life. I am, after all, 43 years old, and I've had my share of ruin-your-life level tragedies. I've flunked out of music school, ditched not just a boyfriend but an entire gender, survived the suicide of someone I was crazy about, changed religions, changed political affiliations, changed hair lengths, changed favorite sports, got fat, went to Central America, had and lost a literary agent and watched a friend get her labia pierced. I have also, just incidentally, worked in a library, and before I got lured into the sordid world of things legal I was pretty sure I wanted to do that for the rest of my life, too.
But that darn sea of untapped potential. I dunno.
There's a guy in my office who desperately wants to go to law school. He's actually been, but that was more than 10 years ago. He was accepted to Fairly Prestigious Institution and waitlisted for Really Prestigious Institution, which isn't a choice I'd want either. He wound up going to Fairly Prestigious Institution and lasted two semesters. Would it have gone better at Really Prestigious Institution? It's hard to say. He wants to go back and finish, but he's having trouble getting his LSAT score (that's Law School Admission Test for you non-legal people) up high enough. Having not-finished law school once, he's being treated like damaged goods--never mind that the goods are ten years older now and he's been a paralegal the whole time. Honestly, you want good prep for law school? Work as a paralegal for a while. There just ain't a better way to see how it all fits together.
Somehow, this has spurred me into an existential crisis. Not that I want to go to law school; no, I like what I do and I'm not in any hurry to do anything else. I like getting to go home at 5:30. Well, okay, more like quarter to six most nights, but still. Something about this whole conversation made me wonder what would have happened if I'd gone to law school right after college, as was the plan (it wasn't my plan, but that's another story). Where would I be today, and what would I be doing?
Surprisingly, the answer my brain comes up with is broke and dead.
Or maybe that's not so surprising. The lawyer who talked me out of going to law school (isn't that kind of like a monsignor talking an altar boy out of joining the priesthood?) told me I was far too interested in truth and justice to be an effective attorney. (He did say that. He really said that.) "You know what you'd do," he went on. "You'd take all those battered-women cases, and the people who got fired from their jobs for unjust reasons, and the women who can't get apartments because they have a kid with Down's. People who will never pay you and lawsuits that you'll never win. Or worse, you'll become a prosecutor, and you'll be fifty years old and still living with roommates because you can't afford your own place."
Well, okay, he said something like that. I have a good ear for dialogue, but it gets rusty over a twenty-three year time span. Still, you have to admit he was a pretty good judge of character. Most of that does sound like what I'd do. The "dead" part is a little harder to follow, but I crashed and burned pretty hard in 1999 and again in 2001, and I can't imagine I would've somehow not crashed and burned if I'd have been an attorney when all that was going on. (Although, I might have had better health insurance. Maybe.) I have a high-stress occupation as it is; if I were an attorney, it'd be even higher stress, and, well, yeah. I might very well be dead, having driven my Lincoln into the San Diego Bay over a motion denied or a restraining order that didn't do a damn bit of good.
Roland, the bad guy in Mindbender, says to Our Heroine at one point, "Surely you cannot mean to be a librarian for the rest of your life." (Yep, I've got a gun-toting action hero librarian. You tell me why it's not published yet.) She gets understandably annoyed and asks what's wrong with that, exactly. He tells her she has much greater potential, and as Linus of Peanuts would say, there's no heavier burden than a great potential. He is, of course, messing with her head, but the question is genuine and every now and then I have some stupid conversation with somebody that makes me ask it again. Surely you cannot mean to be a paralegal for the rest of your life. (No, only until about age 70, and then I thought I'd do some skydiving.) In all seriousness, though, what if I'm supposed to be doing something else? What if I'm floating around on a vast sea of untapped potential, in the paralegal lifeboat that I've somehow become deluded into thinking is a luxury yacht? Well, okay, I'm a practical person here, so let's say a 38-foot ocean-going small vessel with plenty of foul-weather gear. In short, what if I'm doing it all wrong, and ruining my life?
On the other hand, I am not a great believer in the ruinability of life. I am, after all, 43 years old, and I've had my share of ruin-your-life level tragedies. I've flunked out of music school, ditched not just a boyfriend but an entire gender, survived the suicide of someone I was crazy about, changed religions, changed political affiliations, changed hair lengths, changed favorite sports, got fat, went to Central America, had and lost a literary agent and watched a friend get her labia pierced. I have also, just incidentally, worked in a library, and before I got lured into the sordid world of things legal I was pretty sure I wanted to do that for the rest of my life, too.
But that darn sea of untapped potential. I dunno.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
Gambling in Dallas II
"Your winnings, Sir."--Police Officer
"Thank you." - Louie
--Casablanca
Well, I thought this was a fairly easy one-off topic that I could explain and move on, but apparently 'tis not so. Just when the lottery drawing was over and I thought it was safe to get back in the (some other) pool, the gambling-at-work thing reared its ugly head again. I've become privy to some Inside Information about the looming Office Christmas Bash. I should say Holiday Bash because more than half the office doesn't celebrate Christmas, but never mind. The party's going to be "themed" this year. What theme, you ask. Need you ask? A casino theme, of course.
(That sound you heard was lots of Buddhists pounding their heads against walls. I spose some of them could have been Babtists, too.)
Look, people, there aren't too many things in Buddhism that are absolute no-nos. We only have five precepts, not ten commandments, and to be honest they're more like highly intelligent suggestions as opposed to mandates. The five things we're not supposed to do are killing, stealing, being sexually irresponsible (which has as many interpretations as there are human beings, but I just interpret it as, don't have sex with someone you don't love, and make sure they want to have sex with you, too), "false speech" (aka, lying) and drinking alcohol, which has been expanded in modern times to include other addictive substances.
Where does gambling fit in here, you ask. Well, a couple of places. Officially, it fits under No. 5, since gambling is an addictive behavior. However, there's also shades of it in No. 2 (irresponsibility with money, e.g., stealing). A couple of the many "long form" variations on the precepts mention gambling specifically. The Sigalovada Sutra also mentions gambling as one of the six actions that "dissipate virtue." If you really wanna read a dissertation on Precept No. 5 and why it covers gambling, go here and just keep scrolling down until your scroller gets sore. When the smoke clears and the dust settles, though, it still basically amounts to "Don't bet on the horses."
Now, the casino-theme party is probably not what Buddha had in mind at all. It's just for fun. No actual money is going to change hands, but if you scrolled down until your scroller got sore, you'll know that it's the act of placing the bet, not the eventual outcome, that's the problem. And so this Buddhist is wondering what in hell to do about this development; bail right after dinner (that is, eat and run) or just not show up at all.
Because, honestly, showing up at this thing and just not gambling is Not An Option. To a degree, one can hang out with friends at a bar and not drink; one just keeps one's cup full of something that's not alcoholic, like iced tea or diet Coke. One keeps one's voice at the same level as everyone else's (have you ever noticed how LOUD people get when they drink?) until one gets tired, and then one makes an excuse and leaves. But a casino theme party is a little different. You can't really walk around with chips in your hands and not play. Sooner or later people are going to notice, and they're going to ask you what's up, and you're going to be explaining yourself over and over again and I am just Not Up For That after the whole lottery thing. I'm just not. Can't do it. Sorry.
So again, the question becomes which is ruder, eating and running or just not showing up at all. It's kind of a command performance, so I'm leaning toward eating and running. I doubt anybody will miss me once the craps tables roll out. However, I'm open for your votes. I am not above getting a sudden cold the night of some important event that I'm Just Not Up For. Just because I haven't done it in like 20 years doesn't mean I don't remember how.
Yes, I realize that violates Precept No. 4. So sue me.
Thursday, November 29, 2012
Gambling in Dallas
"I am shocked! Shocked to discover that there is gambling going on in here!"
One really, really good reason that I should not gamble is that I'm superstitious. You wouldn't know it, because I keep it under wraps most of the time, but wake up that superstitious streak in my head and it won't shut up until I take an Ativan. One of the really good ways to wake it up is to indulge in a little gambling. My first thought, besides the one about how guilty I needed to feel about this gambling that I'd been forced into, was whether I'd jinxed the whole thing. Surely if I were in the office pool, the pool had no way of winning. My very presence would prevent it. Only by exiting the office pool could I help my colleagues win.
--Louie, Casablanca
So for about five minutes there, everybody in the country seemed to think they'd become multibajillionaires in one swell foop. Something called "Powerball," which I guess is kind of like Rollerball, except that after the match they're less inclined to kill you. The pot went up to like $600 million, which is almost enough for Romney to bet against Perry that one of them will change his mind about which two (three?) departments he's going to eliminate from the Cabinet after he loses the election. Then two people won it, and everybody else heaved a collective sigh and went back to whatever they were doing. Going to work, probably.
At my office, like lots of others, there was a Lottery Pool, which, I gather, works like this: Everybody tosses in a few bucks, somebody goes to buy tickets, and if, by that 154-in-600-million chance, somebody's ticket happens to win, everybody splits the pot 22 ways. I'm sure we could each manage on our $27,272,727.72, in between feeding Namibia for a year and buying 6 or 700 pairs of size-eight black high heeled shoes. But I found myself plunged into a Situation almost immediately. You see, the last time The Lottery got high enough for an Office Pool to be generated, I wasn't an Official Buddhist yet. I mean, I was walking around acting like one and so on, but I hadn't Taken The Vows, as it were. This time around, I had (have). And guess what one of those things is that Buddhists aren't supposed to do?
Yeah. Right up there with not drinking alcohol.
Mind you, Buddha didn't actually say, "Don't spend money on Powerball tickets; lots of poor people could use a good meal." The actual quote in the Dhammapada is something to do with not betting on horse races, which could very well be where "Don't bet on the horses" comes from. What did Buddha have against betting on horses, you may want to know. Well, from what I understand. it's a couple of things. First off, it's an addictive behavior. Bet on the horses once and you want to bet again, especially if you lose. No, really, it's more addictive if you lose. You want to get your money back and the best way possible is to--leave immediately and make prudent investments in the future. Well, maybe, but no one ever thinks of that. No, they think of betting on the next race to win back what they just lost. Obviously, this cycle could continue as long as you have money. I saw it on an episode of Intervention once.
Besides being addictive, gambling is a form of attachment to the material world that's pretty hard to ignore. If you're hoping to win money, you're grasping at money. Grasping is attachment. Attachment is one of the things that gets between you and serenity. Walking the Middle Way means neither grasping at things nor pushing them away. Kind of hard to do that when you're watching the races and yelling "Move your bloody ass!" at the white one with the black spot on his head.
So, okay. No gambling. Got it, never really liked it anyway, casinos worry me, all the flashing lights are disorienting and you can never find the damn ladies' room to save your life. The last time I was in one, which was a couple of months ago on my drive to Tulsa, I just went in to get lunch and spent most of the time I was in there worried that somebody would recognize me. (Nothing else was open. The whole town was essentially deserted. Except the casino. Go figure.) But then, this office pool thing. How was I going to gracefully bail out of the office pool?
Then I discovered that there was no bailing out. I'd already entered. The last time we had an office pool, we'd won the princely sum of $154. Not really enough to retire on, unless you live in Bangladesh and make shirts for Wal-Mart, but it was enough to buy another round of tickets for everybody. So there I was. Part of the office pool, whether I wanted to be or not.
One really, really good reason that I should not gamble is that I'm superstitious. You wouldn't know it, because I keep it under wraps most of the time, but wake up that superstitious streak in my head and it won't shut up until I take an Ativan. One of the really good ways to wake it up is to indulge in a little gambling. My first thought, besides the one about how guilty I needed to feel about this gambling that I'd been forced into, was whether I'd jinxed the whole thing. Surely if I were in the office pool, the pool had no way of winning. My very presence would prevent it. Only by exiting the office pool could I help my colleagues win.
And if that wasn't silly enough, I then began to wonder if instead, we would win, and winning would ruin everything. We'd all quit our jobs, burn through all the money on stupid frivolous things like sexually oriented T-shirts and Web episodes of Hell on Wheels and end up broke, destitute and lolling in a gutter somewhere. Worse, we wouldn't be a law firm anymore. We're a good little law firm. What would happen to our clients? What about all the justice we had yet to insist on, all the plaintiffs with multiple injuries that needed compensating? I mean, the implications were staggering. And, okay, I was staggering. I've had a stupid cold for like two weeks. It's affecting my balance a little.
Eventually, I calmed down, we didn't win the lottery and things went on as normal. Phew. That was close. I think we won eight bucks, which probably isn't enough for another office pool. But if the pool thing comes up again, I think I'll try to stay in the one where I get wet. Intentionally.
Friday, November 23, 2012
The Ballad Of The Shape Of Things
You guys, I am so sorry. Not only is this post a day late, it's a day late for last week. That's not like me. I'm usually spot-on, at Afrah every Thursday, hammering this sucker out over baba ganouj and pita bread with a lemonade and an occasional cup of gelato. November's brought a host of interesting goings-on, from a stupid back injury to a--common cold. Weird to call anything common that's so darn rare, at least for me. I don't get colds. Oh, I get a sinus infection that warps into double pneumonia, or viral bronchitis that lands me in bed for a week, but a cold? Pshaw. Never happens. Except that, at the moment, I have a cold.
Last Thursday, Joan and I had tickets to a play called MacHomer. Think Macbeth as done by the Simpsons. Macbeth happens to be my favorite play. To see it done as a one-man show by a guy who can convincingly imitate about 20 Simpsons characters is, well, special. We saw it before, several years ago, but the sound quality at the theater was so bad that we missed three-quarters of the jokes. So when we saw it was coming back around--and playing at the Winspear, which is an opera house and which Does Not Have Bad Sound--we got all excited. Thursday night, however, we made the mistake of meeting at home for dinner before the show. Halfway through dinner, we started looking at each other, and finally I said, "This isn't going to happen, is it?" and Joan said, "You mind if we lose the ticket money?" I said, "Of course I mind, but not enough to pile into the car and go down there." Joan said, "I want to have gone, but I don't want to go." Which was pretty much how I felt. So we ended up watching something on the History Channel, and I fell asleep on the couch. I do that. This is how you know you're an old married couple; you start deteriorating at the same speed.
My stupid back is a lot better, no thanks to the Chiropractor We Send All Our Clients To. Actually, there was nothing wrong with the chiropractor; it was her staff that was the problem. The first time I went down there, I was in her office for 2 1/2 hours. Of that time, about 15 minutes amounted to actual treatment. The rest amounted to being shown into this room and that room and long periods of being left unattended for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained. That was my first visit. My second visit only took an hour and a half, but in that time, my treatment plan changed from three to four visits over two weeks to twenty-one visits over three to four months. One of the minions tried to take me back for an X-ray that the doctor had already told me I didn't need, and when I tried to make her life easier by saying, "Look, I'll just refuse it, okay?" she said, "You can't do that."
(Um, I assure you that I can.)
But the topper was when a different minion took me into a treatment room for this electric-stim therapy that's kind of like a TENS unit on acid, I guess. My stupid back injury was kind of below my waist and just above my butt, so to get at it they kind of had to take my pants partway off. This woman hooked me up to this electro-zapper thingy, with my pants partway off, and left me there, again for the requisite 45 minutes. With two big Mexican (male) laborers in the same room. No, I am not kidding. I finally peeled the electrodes off and wriggled myself off the table (not without several muscle spasms) so that I could for Godsake get dressed. I mean, the Mexican laborers were polite and all that, and didn't stare, but for crying out loud, people. That was a little ridiculous. I don't wanna send my clients there anymore. (Chiropractic Doctors Clinic on Belt Line. You're welcome.)
So thus endeth my third bad experience with chiropractic. There will not be a fourth. It's been about a month since I got hurt and I'm mostly back to normal, with a little residual stiffness. My massage therapist, the endlessly talented Kellum, has been filling in for the auspices of modern medicine. I think that did just as well as chiropractic would have done. Probably better, since Kellum doesn't leave me lying places with my pants off. Bless his heart.
Okay, so I couldn't swim for about three weeks. Swimming made my back worse (probably the cold water; I'd just tense right up) but walking made it better, so I did a lot of walking. Result: Legs and lower back got stronger, but lost lots of muscle tone in my arms and shoulders. I'm back in the pool now and I get sore, people. It's a little embarrassing to crawl out of the pool after an hour and be barely able to lift my frick'n swim bag. I start lifting weights again on Sunday. Seriously, this needs to be fixed.
We spent Thanksgiving with good friends Tammy and Tracy and some other friends at their place in Oak Cliff. Everybody brought something so it was a pretty eclectic mix of food. Joan made Texas caviar, which is kind of a bean salad thingy with onions and Italian dressing, and cranberry sauce. (Not together.) The sweet potatoes were first rate, the stuffing was great, there were two kinds of bread pudding (I had a sliver of each, mainly as an excuse to put spray whipped cream on them--I love spray whipped cream) and, oh yeah, a turkey. I gave a slice of breast meat some courtesy nibbles. I have never been fond of turkey. I know this makes me a Philistine, but I'll survive somehow. We spent the evening telling silly animal stories (since most of their friends are zookeepers!) and being harassed by their three cats and a visiting dog. It was a great way to spend a holiday.
So now we're in the middle of the North Texas Mensa Regional Gathering, where we hang with the smart people and learn cool stuff about computer vision and Civil War diaries and play card games until three in the morning and other strange things. The programming is great, but the hotel--People, this hotel needed to be torn down two years ago. It's like the Dallas Shining. The towels are frayed, the air conditioner covers are cracked, there are mirrors missing in the washrooms and they've been replaced with boards, there are ceiling stains--it's pathetic, really. The whole place speaks of serious neglect, bad management and we-didn't-bother-to-do-a-site-inspection-before-we-signed-the-contract. I'd be embarrassed to book anyone there. I'm almost embarrassed to walk in there. (Night Hotel Dallas at 635 just past Josey Lane. You're welcome.)
And my NaNo novel? Oh, let's not talk about that. Suffice to say it kind of crashed and burned on me 16,000 words in. But that's actually okay, because I got an idea to do something else, and it's going to be fun. (As Lawrence of Arabia) The trick is not to mind that it hurts.
So, anyway, that's where things stand. I'm about to crawl into bed, soon to leap back up and go flying out to the Dallas Shining for Day 3 of the RG. We'll see how long I last before the murdered twin girls pop out of the hallway walls and say they want me to stay and play with them forever and ever and ever. Cheers, all.
Last Thursday, Joan and I had tickets to a play called MacHomer. Think Macbeth as done by the Simpsons. Macbeth happens to be my favorite play. To see it done as a one-man show by a guy who can convincingly imitate about 20 Simpsons characters is, well, special. We saw it before, several years ago, but the sound quality at the theater was so bad that we missed three-quarters of the jokes. So when we saw it was coming back around--and playing at the Winspear, which is an opera house and which Does Not Have Bad Sound--we got all excited. Thursday night, however, we made the mistake of meeting at home for dinner before the show. Halfway through dinner, we started looking at each other, and finally I said, "This isn't going to happen, is it?" and Joan said, "You mind if we lose the ticket money?" I said, "Of course I mind, but not enough to pile into the car and go down there." Joan said, "I want to have gone, but I don't want to go." Which was pretty much how I felt. So we ended up watching something on the History Channel, and I fell asleep on the couch. I do that. This is how you know you're an old married couple; you start deteriorating at the same speed.
My stupid back is a lot better, no thanks to the Chiropractor We Send All Our Clients To. Actually, there was nothing wrong with the chiropractor; it was her staff that was the problem. The first time I went down there, I was in her office for 2 1/2 hours. Of that time, about 15 minutes amounted to actual treatment. The rest amounted to being shown into this room and that room and long periods of being left unattended for reasons that were never satisfactorily explained. That was my first visit. My second visit only took an hour and a half, but in that time, my treatment plan changed from three to four visits over two weeks to twenty-one visits over three to four months. One of the minions tried to take me back for an X-ray that the doctor had already told me I didn't need, and when I tried to make her life easier by saying, "Look, I'll just refuse it, okay?" she said, "You can't do that."
(Um, I assure you that I can.)
But the topper was when a different minion took me into a treatment room for this electric-stim therapy that's kind of like a TENS unit on acid, I guess. My stupid back injury was kind of below my waist and just above my butt, so to get at it they kind of had to take my pants partway off. This woman hooked me up to this electro-zapper thingy, with my pants partway off, and left me there, again for the requisite 45 minutes. With two big Mexican (male) laborers in the same room. No, I am not kidding. I finally peeled the electrodes off and wriggled myself off the table (not without several muscle spasms) so that I could for Godsake get dressed. I mean, the Mexican laborers were polite and all that, and didn't stare, but for crying out loud, people. That was a little ridiculous. I don't wanna send my clients there anymore. (Chiropractic Doctors Clinic on Belt Line. You're welcome.)
So thus endeth my third bad experience with chiropractic. There will not be a fourth. It's been about a month since I got hurt and I'm mostly back to normal, with a little residual stiffness. My massage therapist, the endlessly talented Kellum, has been filling in for the auspices of modern medicine. I think that did just as well as chiropractic would have done. Probably better, since Kellum doesn't leave me lying places with my pants off. Bless his heart.
Okay, so I couldn't swim for about three weeks. Swimming made my back worse (probably the cold water; I'd just tense right up) but walking made it better, so I did a lot of walking. Result: Legs and lower back got stronger, but lost lots of muscle tone in my arms and shoulders. I'm back in the pool now and I get sore, people. It's a little embarrassing to crawl out of the pool after an hour and be barely able to lift my frick'n swim bag. I start lifting weights again on Sunday. Seriously, this needs to be fixed.
We spent Thanksgiving with good friends Tammy and Tracy and some other friends at their place in Oak Cliff. Everybody brought something so it was a pretty eclectic mix of food. Joan made Texas caviar, which is kind of a bean salad thingy with onions and Italian dressing, and cranberry sauce. (Not together.) The sweet potatoes were first rate, the stuffing was great, there were two kinds of bread pudding (I had a sliver of each, mainly as an excuse to put spray whipped cream on them--I love spray whipped cream) and, oh yeah, a turkey. I gave a slice of breast meat some courtesy nibbles. I have never been fond of turkey. I know this makes me a Philistine, but I'll survive somehow. We spent the evening telling silly animal stories (since most of their friends are zookeepers!) and being harassed by their three cats and a visiting dog. It was a great way to spend a holiday.
So now we're in the middle of the North Texas Mensa Regional Gathering, where we hang with the smart people and learn cool stuff about computer vision and Civil War diaries and play card games until three in the morning and other strange things. The programming is great, but the hotel--People, this hotel needed to be torn down two years ago. It's like the Dallas Shining. The towels are frayed, the air conditioner covers are cracked, there are mirrors missing in the washrooms and they've been replaced with boards, there are ceiling stains--it's pathetic, really. The whole place speaks of serious neglect, bad management and we-didn't-bother-to-do-a-site-inspection-before-we-signed-the-contract. I'd be embarrassed to book anyone there. I'm almost embarrassed to walk in there. (Night Hotel Dallas at 635 just past Josey Lane. You're welcome.)
And my NaNo novel? Oh, let's not talk about that. Suffice to say it kind of crashed and burned on me 16,000 words in. But that's actually okay, because I got an idea to do something else, and it's going to be fun. (As Lawrence of Arabia) The trick is not to mind that it hurts.
So, anyway, that's where things stand. I'm about to crawl into bed, soon to leap back up and go flying out to the Dallas Shining for Day 3 of the RG. We'll see how long I last before the murdered twin girls pop out of the hallway walls and say they want me to stay and play with them forever and ever and ever. Cheers, all.
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