Sabbatical

I’ve been jobless for a whole week now. Several people have asked, what are you doing with yourself?? To be honest – I have no earthly idea, but I seem very, very busy. Here’s a sample of my activities:  

• Looking for shoes. Ever since I started wearing this damn boot – I’ve lost every single left-footed shoe I own.
• Bugging the crap outta Rita. "What are you doing now?" Working. "How about now?" Working.
• Not one single thing around the house. Sabbatical or no, the streak remains unbroken.
• I am going to need you people to step up your facebook activity since I am now checking it on the 8’s….[9:28, 9:38, 9:48…it makes me feel connected].
• My to-do list has gotten significantly less ambitious. I caught myself adding “Check voicemail” as a to-do item.
• Molly’s already charmed life has gotten about three walks a day better.
• I sent a birthday card on time for the first time in my life.
• I spent one regretful hour participating in an on-line discussion regarding the Titan’s best 3rd round draft pick. [It seemed important at the time.  BTW, it's clearly Zach Piller.]
• I suddenly have the attention span of a 3 year old. One airline reservation took me almost two hours to book yesterday…I looked up car deals and the weather and mapquested the location. These are things I usually do at the airport before the flight takes off (if I do them at all).

Good thing I am going to Vegas (for CPA continuing education) on Monday so I can be productive [if standing around a craps table losing money counts as being productive, that is].

Adams Ave.

I’ve lived here for a year and a half and I still have to use Mapquest to get to the grocery store. It’s high time I learn my neighborhood. So one of my sabbatical goals is to visit every establishment on the main drag that runs along our neighborhood. In a 3 mile stretch of Adams Avenue, you can pretty much go around the world [and in some cases…underworld]. Just for illustration, here are some of the targets on my Tour de Hood:

• Mama’s Roots – Traditional and Urban Magic. [Glad to see we can still go old school on our magic. Paging Harry Potter.]
• The Stuff Store [someone did NOT spend much time on their branding]
• Eritrean Community Center [can you still use the Community Center if you have ZERO idea where Eritria is??  Why do I anticipate problems trying to "pass" for Eritrean?]
• Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga [someone spent too much time on their branding. This combines ALL my favorite transactional events…pilgrimages of the heart, yoga…can’t wait.]
• The Martial Arts Gym [full contact spin class?]

We won’t even include the tattoo parlors since I visited most of them during the unfortunate belly ring incident>>  http://savemethecall.blogspot.com/2008/05/belly-ring.html

Rita already dropped out of this little game right after the trip to the Crown Jewelry and Loan [I LOVE pawn shops]. It’s early in the pursuit, however, and our addiction to $2 popsicles is already paying the rent at Viva Pop [3330 Adams Ave].

One thing I haven’t decided is whether I will just visit these places or do I need to actively engage/purchase/participate? Because while I will be happy to do business with the donut shop or $5 pizza places, it will be tougher to transact with the Philosophy Tree Metaphysical book store or the Cabrillo Academy of the Sword, Theatrical Sword Play [although I WOULD love a school sweatshirt.]

And for the first time ever – I did not make up a single name/location in this whole blog entry - these are all places within 3 miles of our house. My visit to the Cabrillo Academy of the Sword will undoubtedly be its own blog. I wonder if they do birthday parties…

Meanwhile, anyone interested in the AmVets Wednesday night bingo…let me know.

Das Boot

I have been hobbling around with a walking boot since Friday, which happened to be my last day of work. [I lose my job AND my ability to walk unencumbered all on the same day.] Turns out that my use of free time [a/k/a afternoons] over the past month spent training for the SD Half Marathon has resulted in a stress fracture. [Yep – I have been training for a half-marathon. Underemployment is always good for my fitness level. Remember when I had that Sarbanes Oxley “job”? Well…let’s just say it coincided with my marathon training.]

Anyway, despite playing every sport imaginable in my lifetime, I’ve never really had an injury before [primarily because I don’t try very hard], so I’m not sure what went wrong this time [first person that says “you’re getting old” gets a boot to the head]. I’m not even sure it’s a stress fracture cuz I haven’t been to the doctor [lest he tell me to stay off it or some other news I don’t want to hear.] Instead, I have borrowed a walking boot from Rita. [Self diagnosed and now self treated. Who are we kidding…I’ll never take a healthy step again.] My toes hang out a little on Rita’s boot, but I’m sure that’s not messing up any of the important tendons.

And I’m not going to say that Rita is accident prone – but she does have a FINE assortment of orthopedic equipment [elbow sling, left (and right) walking boot, knee brace…I think I will stop now before I have to borrow another one.]

So here I sit on my sabbatical supposed to be staying off my feet, just when I have no need to be at my desk all day. Fabulous.

Molly's Walk-Abouts

It was bound to happen and it did. After almost a year and a half, Molly finally figured out that there is unfettered access between her back yard playground and the front yard of freedom [she’s a blonde]. That there is nothing but her good behavior keeping her from hiking down the driveway and not looking back til she gets her fill of other dogs’ poop. That’s right..she spent 18 well-behaved months tooling around the back yard without ever exploring what lay on the other end of that driveway. Okay, okay, there was that one time she ran around to the front yard & got maced by the postman, but otherwise, she’s never even TRIED it. [Maybe THAT’s been the deterrent all this time?]

Whatever it was, the deterrent has expired – because Molly has recently taken to wee walk-abouts in the neighborhood. The first time she went out for a self-guided walk, she went unnoticed until the phone rang…"Ummm…hi…I have a white dog here with your number on her collar.” Da wha? You mean Molly isn’t in the back yard? [Mother of the year.] The second time we noticed she was gone, we found her collar in the living room while she was out-and-about naked as a jaybird. We spent 20 panicked minutes looking for her before we found her in front of the shitzou-owning neighbor’s big picture window. “Hey neighbor…sorry about your dog scratching the hell out of your window. Our dog doesn’t normally taunt like that.” [Lie]

Rita and I have begun spending part of every day frantically calling out to one another “Have you seen Molly? Where’s Molly? Do you have Molly??” [It’s a good thing her street in California doesn’t have as much traffic as Woodlawn Dr …she’d be a Molly pancake by now. This dog has NOT figured out that in dog vs. car….car wins.]

Which means it’s time for more yard art on Hilldale Road with our very own driveway fence:

[All my crap is keeping Rita from being able to park in the garage anyway…so what the heck.] We could have tried the electronic fence again [see post: http://savemethecall.blogspot.com/2008/11/invisible-fence-part-deux.html, ] but quite frankly, my nerves couldn’t take it. This is probably not the landscaping Rita imagined when she bought the house a couple of years ago, but that precious little white dog is sooooooo worth it, right honey??? Besides, the way I look at it is that it doesn’t keep Molly IN the yard as much as it keeps the skunk OUT of the yard. [Oh dear god, I hope.]

And that baby is secured! We were pretty doggone proud of the job we did bolting that thing into place…until the yard man arrived with his mower to do the back yard, that is.

The Capitol

While in D.C., my absolute favorite tour was the Capitol building. This tour is geared toward getting the maximum number of people through “The Capitol Experience” in the shortest amount of time. Did you know that the number of people touring the Capitol each day exceeds the original population of the 13 colonies? Okay…I made that up. But my tour group (who was totally impressed with this little funfact) doesn’t have to know that.

They maximize the tour by having the world’s best microphone set-up ever. Because every tour guide is given about 2 square feet in which to give their spiel, the tour-ees [that’s us] wear these headphones that are tuned to a frequency for only our tour guide’s microphone – so we could hear our docent Patty and not the other 57 tour guides in the rotunda. The applications for this are ENDLESS. I see Anne Louise standing in front of a whole class of headphone-wearing freshmen..getting in their HEADS. I am pretty sure my mom will be sporting at least the walkie-talkie version for Operation Garage Sale.

The set-up was pretty sophisticated stuff, which is why I was so surprised when the kid behind me lost his before we even got to the first stop on the tour. [Surprised it wasn’t me, that is.] Honest to god, we pull up in front of a bust of Lincoln and some sheepish father has to interrupt the tour guide – “ummmm, we seem to have lost a headset here, can he stand up front?” Old Patty wasn’t happy…"we’ve only walked through ONE room. How do you lose something on your head in less than 20 yards?” [Turns out Patty didn’t particularly like children or crowds…so as a docent in the Capitol, she was livin’ the dream.]

However, if you are going to be a walking transmitter…you need to remember that We. Can. Hear. Every. Word. You. Say. Patty kept forgetting she was mic’d as we walked from one chamber to the next. “Hey Marge – yeah, I don’t think half of em speak a word of English in my group.” “STEVE-O! Meet ya at Hawk & Dove after work for a brewskie?” I just wanted to say “We’re right here Patty, and those of us who can speak English are planning to meet you at the Hawk and Dove.”

Washington DC

The trip to Washington D.C. turned out GREAT. First of all, everything in D.C. is supersized. The Supreme Court building is the same size as my hometown. Honestly, those people on TV must be standing in front of a papier mache model of the Capitol building – because they would look like Honey I Shrunk the Kids in front of the real one.

A few highlights from my trip:

• The ticket thing didn’t turn out so badly after all. Apparently, the key to walking right into a tour in Washington D.C. is not having 35 kids in tow. ["Party of 2, no field trip? Come right in."]
• Visitors to D.C. are either 13 or 73, there is no in-between. Everyone between the ages of 20 and 30 works there (presumably controlling gazillion dollar budgets like twenty-year-olds were born to do).
• Apparently, zoning laws require ALL restaurant/bar/workplace TV’s to be tuned to CNN, MSNBC or Fox. Don’t you people know there is a game on???
• There is a monument every 20 feet in that city.  You have to be vigilant for monument fatigue…"Oh, it’s just the Korean War monument.” [It probably seemed like a pretty significant war to the guys who fought in it.]
• They really do have a museum or a monument to EVERYTHING in D.C.  I was fine to skip a few of the less popular ones:

1. The Summer School Museum [no thanks, once was enough]
2. Hall of Prohibition [sounds like a blast]
3. The Blonde-American Memorial [A hyphen + the word “American” =surefire monument]
4. The Dan Quayle Monumant to the Vice-Presidency [Speaking of Quayle, whatever happened to…]
5. Secret Service Anti-Insurgency Demonstration [oh wait….that wasn’t a re-enactment, that was DADT protestors getting too close to the White House.]

 My FAVORITE was the tour of the Capitol…but more on that tomorrow. 

Garage Sale

If any of you are talking to my mom, will you tell her I went back to work? Said another way, I think I am going to regret telling my mom about this little “sabbatical” that I start in May. I came to this conclusion when I talked to her last week and she told me my summer plans:

“Okay. I thought about it and I think I am going to have you and Anne Louise come down for a week and help me clean out the attic and the basement and have a garage sale.”

Whoooooaaaaaaaaaaa there, little lady….I will fly around the world to meet you in Ireland, but spend a Friday morning filling out a thousand 99 cent sale stickers?? Followed by the graceful schlep of my childhood Pizza Hut oven from the attic to the garage? [EZ Bake ovens weren’t for everyone] Seriously? Have you never met me? I moved my own stuff across the country to save cleaning out the basement. And why now? Stuff doesn’t even fall out of YOUR closets when you open them…what’s the rush?

At least ALL of us with the summer off are roped into invited to the festivities =) [smiley face rule, mom]. My school-teaching sister will be there despite a nagging manual-labor allergy of her own. My mother told her she could “supervise”. Ummmmm, supervise who?? Am I demoted before I even arrive? The Individual Contributor of the Garage Sale hierarchy? THAT sounds like maximum manual labor. And just wait til Rita reads this – I’m going to spend the summer being a garage sale bitch, aren’t I??? Waaaahhh

The Garage Sales pitch [get it] finished with mom’s enthusiastic proclamation that “your nephew can have all the proceeds”. Sorry little man, I am keeping every bit of the $1.75 per hour that I earn.