Looks like Queen Beth got the telepathic message I was sending out in my last entry. Kudos, Beth Deth. I am now reminded of a little story. In September 2000, I was unfortunately placed in a desk adjacent to our former IT guy. He had recently been toppled from power unceremoniously and re-assigned to programming work, or some variation thereof. However, he was still in charge of a few notable tasks including email administration. I was priviledged to hear him rant and rave the day he tried to get Queen Beth the SMTP email address of her choice — bethdeth@[CompanyName].com. He espoused many IT related questions out loud as he was attempting the task, including, but not limited to, the following:

• Why does she need that?
• Is this some kind of goth thing?
• Do our clients want to work with someone named Death? (He was quickly corrected in this regard by nearby IT guy #2)
• Wouldn’t beth.deth or beth_deth be more appropriate?
• If we do this, isn’t everyone going to want an easy to remember email address?

So last Friday I flew back from Philadelphia after working a very long week completing some interesting tasks. The most challenging part of the day was how to move a large dog carrier, a 55 pound dog, my frickin’ enormous 70 pound suitcase, my CDs, a backpack and my body to the airport — without my car. That I left parked in a very nice angled parking spot near my apartment where it will hopefully remain until I return. Olde City Taxi arrived to help me out. The carrier fit into the trunk after dismantling. The suitcase sat in the front. Chew Chew and I sat in the backseat and enjoyed the ride. A stop at Cargo City, a cargo transport facility that Continental runs was made. Chew Chew was neatly packaged and shipped off to the cargo hold of my plane. I have far less anxiety about this now that its the second time I’ve done it. The taxi then took me to the airport where I had to wait about two hours while a stuck valve was repaired. Something about the valve and de-icing the wings. Sounds important, so we all waited. A few people bitched and moaned and uttered memorable phrases such as, ”I can’t believe they are making us wait like this,” ”Well, I never! Continental isn’t getting my business again!” and the annual favorite, ”Why couldn’t they have fixed it earlier?” The intelligence quotient of the general air travelling population is in no danger of changing, it seems. My dad, always the faithful picker upper, drove me and my travel posse home.


Upon my return, I was immediately required to install a long overdue light fixture over the sink. Oktober‘s graduation and reception was a mere 12 hours away and the gaping hole and wires hanging out of the ceiling were really detracting from the Cool Factor of the kitchen. After 15 minutes of breathing in blown insulation wool that dates back to 1978, I successfully conquered the installation and moved on to my next goal: sleeeeeeep.


I woke up the next morning at around 9:30 A.M. I did not have a car. The Mitsubishi had been stored at my secret storage (A.K.A. the Bat Cave), the Batmobile was in the Bat Shop, and the DeLorean… was not a viable transportation option since I would have to leave it parked on the street with full ”Back to the Future” regalia in clear visible site. More on that later. So, I called Mom and got a ride to the Batmobile. I payed for the brake and exhaust repairs and headed downtown. No sooner had I pulled onto 290 did I noticed a strange drag on the car. I was accelerating, but the car didn’t seem to gain much momentum. It wasn’t until I got off the freeway and pulled onto Smith Street downtown that I realized the right rear brake was… well… braking. Whether I wanted it to or not. I struggled to get to the corner of San Antonio and Texas street and parked. The right rear brake was steaming, screaming and seething. I began a short jog to Minute Maid Park, site of the UHD graduation ceremony. I called up my ”friends” at the Bat Shop and vented briefly. ”It’s covered under warranty — just bring it back.” Fine. I left after attending the ceremony for around 45 minutes. I managed to work in a combination of a nice loud whistle and a few unacknowledged attempts to get Oktober’s attention by yelling ”HEY!!!! HEYYYY!!!!!!” I returned the Batmobile with right rear caliper in shreds. They assured me I would only have to pay for whatever broke it. Riiight. What broke it the last time? Wouldn’t that have been a good place to start?
The graduation reception at the the house was a great success. I somehow held off on saying things like, ”Isn’t that light over the sink just awesome?”


Later that day, Oktober and her friend Steph somehow agreed to my suggestion that we see the latest Star Trek film ”Nemesis” and then top it off with a visit to Katz’ Deli. The movie was marginal at best. A few good ideas in there, but it seemed clunky and I didn’t really feel any tension over the drama. And really, the bad guy’s ship had some kind of super weapon on it that took over 8 minutes to deploy. What kind of idiot makes a weapon that takes 8 minutes to shoot? Picard even tried the old Auto Destruct card that I am sure we’re all tired of. Luckily, Auto Destruct was not available. Go figure. I saw Wil Wheaton in an unexpected couple of shots thinking he’d been cut out entirely. It’s the little things. Overall, I give the movie a C-. For 60 million dollars, you’d figure they could do more than design pretty sets.


That evening I got to briefly lament over the missed Christmas party that my company had thrown on the previous Thursday night. I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but I really wish I could have attended. I have never won any of the door prizes they give the attendees, so it wasn’t a matter of thinking I was going to miss out. It’s all about the people. Oh, and the open bar. That too. But especially the people. Uhhh. Yeah.


The last notable item this past week occurred on Monday night. I took the DeLorean to Best Buy and made my case to J.W. These initials belong to the nameless general manager. No one there knows exactly what J.W. stands for. After talking to him, I suspect it is something along the lines of Just Working or Joe Worker. He had such a textbook demeanor about himself that I almost felt like I was talking to an automated phone system. Monotone voice, robotic responses with just enough customer care words thrown in to make me feel special. I seriously doubt he was interested in my proposed DeLorean Appearance for Store Credit swap, but at least I made the effort. When I came out of the store, some of the employees that were either A) on break or B) pretending to be on break, were hanging all over the car and taking pictures. I opened the door. Oooo. Ahhhh. I turned on the time circuits. Ooo. Ahhh. I pulled out my recently acquired JVC videocamera — an exact duplicate of the one used by Marty in the mall scene — Oooo. Ahhh. Anyway, Back to the Future was released on DVD for this first time the next day. We’ll see who budges first. Okay, well, I guess they have to budge first. Whatever.