Weekend Update
Weather
The forecasted rain for Friday never really showed up.
All we received was some heavy mist that sort of made a mess of how the Prelude looks. It was more of an annoyance than anything else.
The plus side of the no rain was the courtyard was busy with smokers who were all covered up in long coats, thick sweaters, and long scarves.
Days
Friday was Day 15. There was no way that I could even consider ice cream on a damp, chilly day.
Courtyard Observations
Not too much to report for Friday, what with all the covering up in anticipation of rain and more foul weather. Obviously, Friday was not a day for good or bad tat viewings.
The most of the regular smokers were all out on Friday at one time or another or lots of times.
One woman was down five times between 8:30 AM when I arrived and 3:00 PM when I left to go to school. I guess she was not having a wonderful day. Maybe her supervisor was in a bad mood or just plain mean to her.
Donut Friday
Friday was Donut Friday at work.
I bring in donuts for the office on the first Friday of the month. I have been doing this since 1988. You can say it is habit forming.
I really enjoy a good fresh donut and would look like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man if I didn’t restrict my donut eating. Those of you needing a quick review of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man should rent and view the film GHOSTBUSTERS. He is in the final scenes, large and trying to be in charge.
Everyone enjoyed themselves. I felt sorry for those who were out ill on Friday since the donuts will not keep over the weekend. Well, technically, they will keep if you refrigerate them. They just tend to taste crummy even when they are reheated in the microwave oven in the staff room.
For the record, I had a chocolate covered twist bar. It was yummmmmmie.
Parking structure access cards
The company I am working for ordered me a parking structure access card since that is less expensive than validating my parking ticket every day. This is a nice gesture on their part.
The CEO’s assistant had been calling the parking card person for three days before she got any acknowledgement. Not very nice to ignore a reasonable and timely request.
The parking card lady showed in our offices on Thursday around 4:00 PM or close to that. She said she would bring my card over to me in the morning; that would be Friday morning. That struck me as being reasonable.
When the parking card lady had not shown up by 2:30 PM, I became concerned because I was leaving work in a half hour to go to school to meet with my professor. I ended up leaving without the car because I needed to get to school.
I suppose I should not criticize the parking card lady. She probably has lots to do and has a lot of things on her mind. When I met her on Thursday, she seemed like she was not paying full attention to my need for a parking card.
But, on the other hand, maybe I was expecting way too much from a woman who dyes her hair a sort of orange color and wears pick coats that are way too tight on her figure. It is not a good visual sight by any measure.
Job Searching and Interviewing
The recruiter called me this morning and explained my difficulty. The bank liked my background and experience. But, always the but, the bank felt I would not be happy in a position they was too low in the food chain for me. I have heard that comment before so I am not that bummed out by hearing it again.
The recruiter said she thinks the bank will call me sometime next year. They are growing and expanding. She thinks they will want to talk to me when they have a higher level position available. Naturally, there is no stated when this opportunity might occur.
I wonder if I will be available when the bank decides they need my skills.
On a different note, the recruiter said that she had another client in Long Beach that might want to talk to me. I said sure, go ahead and toss my resume into the ring and let’s see what develops. So much for recruiter loyalty to one client.
School
My meeting with my professor went very well on Friday. We had allotted an hour for the meeting and were finished in thirty minutes.
My prospectus presentation was approved although I have to make a final live presentation in two weeks. The professor wants the rest of the class to see what a good presentation looks like. I can do that for him since he helped me tighten up my dissertation topic and point out several short cuts that I could take in my research that will save me about four or five solid weekends of typing.
I somehow got involved with helping another student in the class. I think she is so far over her head that she can not see the surface of the water. The professor spent an hour with her and made little in the way of progress. I don’t think I was much help to her.
The problem, as I see it, is she doesn’t have a solid dissertation topic yet. She has an idea that she thinks is good but seems marginal at best. She seems bent on making her dissertation as hard as it possibly could be. Instead of conducting research on American companies, she wants to conduct the research on foreign companies.
The other big trouble is that she refuses to listen to others that have good suggestions including our professor.
She went on and on for about twenty minutes before class taking about her research plans. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her research plans were fatally flawed and would not work. You create your research device only after you have written the first three chapters of your dissertation. She has almost finished her survey form or so she told me.
I guess the one good thing for me is that I won’t be any more classes with her since I will be only doing writing work and dealing with my dissertation committee.
Friday Dinner
Doug and I went to Albertacos for dinner on Friday after school.
Oddly enough, Albertacos was almost overrun with high schoolers. Fortunately for us, Doug and I live in California where it is illegal to smoke in a public building. All of the under smokers were outside in the cool and mist, trying to act old, sophisticated, and mature. They failed badly on three counts.
Doug and I agreed upon the next Morton’s Dinner as December 17th. We plan to give Amy the server the Ethel M candy. I should point out that Ethel M chocolates are the Princess’ favorite brand.
I also got Amy something from Coach. It is colorful leather “A” and it comes with a clip so she could clip on her purse or backpack. The Princess has seen the Coach alphabet letters and thinks they are cute; that is encouraging for us. Doug and I decided to be low key because we don’t want to come across as being creepy or weird.
We talked about whether we should invite my friend Sharon or his friend Evelynn or both of them or none of them. We decided to just go by ourselves. I pointed out that we could invite Sharon and Evelynn to Morton’s for Douguary which is only two months away.
Anyway, getting back to dinner.
We had out usual, two No. 8’s with a medium drink. I had an extra carne asada taco because it was late and I had an early light lunch of only a salad. It was so good and filling. This is a stick to the ribs kind of meal that is perfect for Southern California winter-like weather.
The high schoolers added to the time it normally takes to get our food with their one drink or one taco orders. Most of the time, we are the only ones in Albertacos ordering around 9:00 PM. This meant that we finished dinner later than we usually do.
My drive home was sort of slow because of the weather. It is not safe to drive very fast on rain slick highways at night. It is all too easy to go out of control at high speed. That could be deadly. I ended up getting home a little after 11:00 PM.
Sharon
Sharon called me and left a message for me to call her on Friday.
I thought about calling her. But, I decided to wait until the morning. I know that Sharon is not a happy, fun to be with person when she is woken from a sound sleep. I figured she had been in bed and asleep for maybe an hour or more.
I also know that when Sharon calls me she usually wants to talk about something that affects her life and not necessarily me. I am a sounding board and advice giver. I like to think I am useful and helpful for Sharon but these phone calls can last an hour or more.
I didn’t feel all that helpful that late at night.
Sharon phoned on Saturday morning and we talked or rather I listened to her talk for almost an hour about how terrible things were for her at her job. She has an evil boss who makes the Wicked Witch of West look like a Sunday school teacher.
I have been doing my part by offering words of encouragement and forwarding her interesting jobs that she is well qualified for. Hopefully, Sharon will soon land a new job in a much nicer place.
The office is just this side of a slave galley because they let the workers go home while the slaves were chained to their oars. It sometimes resembles Fort Zinderneuf only without the Riffs, Sergeant Markov, the Vikings, and the dog [rent the film BEAU GESTE, the Gary Cooper version for an explanation].
Saturday Stuff
The phone call from Sharon was unexpected and threw me off my schedule of things to do on Saturday.
I had planned to do some shopping in the morning and get to the stores before the crowds showed up and sucked up all of the parking spots, even the bad ones far away from the mall building.
You can imagine how surprised I was when I pulled into the parking lot and found it less crowded than a normal Saturday morning. I was able to park close the building. Inside, I was able to scoot around and find everything I wanted to purchase in a matter of minutes. I even had a salesperson offer to walk me across the store to the department that I needed to go for my last purchase.
That is unheard of most of the time let alone on December 3rd.
I went to cash register anticipating a monstrous, spirit killing line of unhappy shoppers. But, boy was I ever surprised again. I walked through the cue ropes and was the first person in line and only had to wait a minute or so before I was in check out and on my way to the next stop.
My next stop was at my eyeglass store. One of the screws fell out of my favorite pair of glasses so I desperately needed to have them fixed so I could wear at work. I had a couple of minutes in a comfortable chair before the clerk fixed my glasses and realigned the frames for me.
On the road again, I was off to the next destination.
It was a great Southern California day to be out driving. It was a warm 73F/22C, cloudless day. Even the traffic was cooperating, the traffic moved along at freeway speeds with the only slowing coming at the exit.
The next store was less crowded than on a regular Saturday morning. I was in and out in almost a blink of your eye.
The last few stops were easy ones as well. There were no other cars at the drive through ATM so I had cash for the rest of the weekend and next week.
I dropped off a bunch of shirts at the cleaners. They will be finished on Monday and that is perfect timing for me as I only have three clean dress shirts left in the closet.
My last stop of the day was at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to pick up fresh tea leaves for the Princess and some coffee for her roommate. Then, it was home for lunch and some sports on television.
Army – Navy Football Game
Saturday was a very big day for college football [American football]. The only game that I wanted to see was the game between the Army and Navy service academies. I was an officer in the Navy so I think you can guess which service academy I was rooting for.
Saturday was the 106th Army – Navy football. I missed the first half but that was fine because the half time television replayed the highlights. It was a wonderful win for Navy. It was the fourth Navy victory in a row and that made it that much better for me.
This was almost end of the near perfect football season for me. Utah beat BYU again. Navy beat Army again and won the Commander in Chief’s trophy for the best service academy football team. Navy and Utah are both going to post season bowl games.
Life was good on Saturday for me.
Sunday Stuff
I did some laundry this morning and read the Sunday newspaper. That was not very exciting but something that needed to get done.
I managed to make it to the cinema today. I had planned to see two films, THE ICE HARVEST and AEON FLUX but they were not playing at the same cinemas. Oh well, bad luck with the scheduling I guess.
I ended up watching AEON FLUX. It reminded me a lot of THE ISLAND and GATACA. Although neither of those films had Charlize Theron prancing about in a skintight costume and that was time that was very well spent for me.
Doug said the film was based on a MTV cartoon series and that the film had been toned down somewhat to get the PG-rating instead of an R rating.
I think the film is a dull, plodding attempt at a science fiction action film. The action scenes looked sort of predictable and not that interesting to me. I think THE ISLAND did a better job. The fight scenes looked like they were edited by a group of high school video production students. I don’t know if this was the result of the rating requirement or a director who was in over her head with the complexities of CGI and blue screen work.
I was very happy that I only paid the senior citizen price and not the full fare. There are some valuable benefits to being older it seems and this was one of them. I wouldn’t recommend the film unless you see it at a cheaply priced matinee or better wait and catch it on a DVD where you can pause it from time to time so you, if you are a male like me, can enjoy the good parts.
Then, there is another sidebar to AEON FLUX. It was not made available to reviewers before it opened and that is almost a sure sign of a poor film. The initial weekend box office was just over $13 million; that means it has a long way to go cover the $60 million cost.
That was my weekend. I hope you week will be happy and productive.
Be well and stay happy.
The forecasted rain for Friday never really showed up.
All we received was some heavy mist that sort of made a mess of how the Prelude looks. It was more of an annoyance than anything else.
The plus side of the no rain was the courtyard was busy with smokers who were all covered up in long coats, thick sweaters, and long scarves.
Days
Friday was Day 15. There was no way that I could even consider ice cream on a damp, chilly day.
Courtyard Observations
Not too much to report for Friday, what with all the covering up in anticipation of rain and more foul weather. Obviously, Friday was not a day for good or bad tat viewings.
The most of the regular smokers were all out on Friday at one time or another or lots of times.
One woman was down five times between 8:30 AM when I arrived and 3:00 PM when I left to go to school. I guess she was not having a wonderful day. Maybe her supervisor was in a bad mood or just plain mean to her.
Donut Friday
Friday was Donut Friday at work.
I bring in donuts for the office on the first Friday of the month. I have been doing this since 1988. You can say it is habit forming.
I really enjoy a good fresh donut and would look like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man if I didn’t restrict my donut eating. Those of you needing a quick review of the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man should rent and view the film GHOSTBUSTERS. He is in the final scenes, large and trying to be in charge.
Everyone enjoyed themselves. I felt sorry for those who were out ill on Friday since the donuts will not keep over the weekend. Well, technically, they will keep if you refrigerate them. They just tend to taste crummy even when they are reheated in the microwave oven in the staff room.
For the record, I had a chocolate covered twist bar. It was yummmmmmie.
Parking structure access cards
The company I am working for ordered me a parking structure access card since that is less expensive than validating my parking ticket every day. This is a nice gesture on their part.
The CEO’s assistant had been calling the parking card person for three days before she got any acknowledgement. Not very nice to ignore a reasonable and timely request.
The parking card lady showed in our offices on Thursday around 4:00 PM or close to that. She said she would bring my card over to me in the morning; that would be Friday morning. That struck me as being reasonable.
When the parking card lady had not shown up by 2:30 PM, I became concerned because I was leaving work in a half hour to go to school to meet with my professor. I ended up leaving without the car because I needed to get to school.
I suppose I should not criticize the parking card lady. She probably has lots to do and has a lot of things on her mind. When I met her on Thursday, she seemed like she was not paying full attention to my need for a parking card.
But, on the other hand, maybe I was expecting way too much from a woman who dyes her hair a sort of orange color and wears pick coats that are way too tight on her figure. It is not a good visual sight by any measure.
Job Searching and Interviewing
The recruiter called me this morning and explained my difficulty. The bank liked my background and experience. But, always the but, the bank felt I would not be happy in a position they was too low in the food chain for me. I have heard that comment before so I am not that bummed out by hearing it again.
The recruiter said she thinks the bank will call me sometime next year. They are growing and expanding. She thinks they will want to talk to me when they have a higher level position available. Naturally, there is no stated when this opportunity might occur.
I wonder if I will be available when the bank decides they need my skills.
On a different note, the recruiter said that she had another client in Long Beach that might want to talk to me. I said sure, go ahead and toss my resume into the ring and let’s see what develops. So much for recruiter loyalty to one client.
School
My meeting with my professor went very well on Friday. We had allotted an hour for the meeting and were finished in thirty minutes.
My prospectus presentation was approved although I have to make a final live presentation in two weeks. The professor wants the rest of the class to see what a good presentation looks like. I can do that for him since he helped me tighten up my dissertation topic and point out several short cuts that I could take in my research that will save me about four or five solid weekends of typing.
I somehow got involved with helping another student in the class. I think she is so far over her head that she can not see the surface of the water. The professor spent an hour with her and made little in the way of progress. I don’t think I was much help to her.
The problem, as I see it, is she doesn’t have a solid dissertation topic yet. She has an idea that she thinks is good but seems marginal at best. She seems bent on making her dissertation as hard as it possibly could be. Instead of conducting research on American companies, she wants to conduct the research on foreign companies.
The other big trouble is that she refuses to listen to others that have good suggestions including our professor.
She went on and on for about twenty minutes before class taking about her research plans. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her research plans were fatally flawed and would not work. You create your research device only after you have written the first three chapters of your dissertation. She has almost finished her survey form or so she told me.
I guess the one good thing for me is that I won’t be any more classes with her since I will be only doing writing work and dealing with my dissertation committee.
Friday Dinner
Doug and I went to Albertacos for dinner on Friday after school.
Oddly enough, Albertacos was almost overrun with high schoolers. Fortunately for us, Doug and I live in California where it is illegal to smoke in a public building. All of the under smokers were outside in the cool and mist, trying to act old, sophisticated, and mature. They failed badly on three counts.
Doug and I agreed upon the next Morton’s Dinner as December 17th. We plan to give Amy the server the Ethel M candy. I should point out that Ethel M chocolates are the Princess’ favorite brand.
I also got Amy something from Coach. It is colorful leather “A” and it comes with a clip so she could clip on her purse or backpack. The Princess has seen the Coach alphabet letters and thinks they are cute; that is encouraging for us. Doug and I decided to be low key because we don’t want to come across as being creepy or weird.
We talked about whether we should invite my friend Sharon or his friend Evelynn or both of them or none of them. We decided to just go by ourselves. I pointed out that we could invite Sharon and Evelynn to Morton’s for Douguary which is only two months away.
Anyway, getting back to dinner.
We had out usual, two No. 8’s with a medium drink. I had an extra carne asada taco because it was late and I had an early light lunch of only a salad. It was so good and filling. This is a stick to the ribs kind of meal that is perfect for Southern California winter-like weather.
The high schoolers added to the time it normally takes to get our food with their one drink or one taco orders. Most of the time, we are the only ones in Albertacos ordering around 9:00 PM. This meant that we finished dinner later than we usually do.
My drive home was sort of slow because of the weather. It is not safe to drive very fast on rain slick highways at night. It is all too easy to go out of control at high speed. That could be deadly. I ended up getting home a little after 11:00 PM.
Sharon
Sharon called me and left a message for me to call her on Friday.
I thought about calling her. But, I decided to wait until the morning. I know that Sharon is not a happy, fun to be with person when she is woken from a sound sleep. I figured she had been in bed and asleep for maybe an hour or more.
I also know that when Sharon calls me she usually wants to talk about something that affects her life and not necessarily me. I am a sounding board and advice giver. I like to think I am useful and helpful for Sharon but these phone calls can last an hour or more.
I didn’t feel all that helpful that late at night.
Sharon phoned on Saturday morning and we talked or rather I listened to her talk for almost an hour about how terrible things were for her at her job. She has an evil boss who makes the Wicked Witch of West look like a Sunday school teacher.
I have been doing my part by offering words of encouragement and forwarding her interesting jobs that she is well qualified for. Hopefully, Sharon will soon land a new job in a much nicer place.
The office is just this side of a slave galley because they let the workers go home while the slaves were chained to their oars. It sometimes resembles Fort Zinderneuf only without the Riffs, Sergeant Markov, the Vikings, and the dog [rent the film BEAU GESTE, the Gary Cooper version for an explanation].
Saturday Stuff
The phone call from Sharon was unexpected and threw me off my schedule of things to do on Saturday.
I had planned to do some shopping in the morning and get to the stores before the crowds showed up and sucked up all of the parking spots, even the bad ones far away from the mall building.
You can imagine how surprised I was when I pulled into the parking lot and found it less crowded than a normal Saturday morning. I was able to park close the building. Inside, I was able to scoot around and find everything I wanted to purchase in a matter of minutes. I even had a salesperson offer to walk me across the store to the department that I needed to go for my last purchase.
That is unheard of most of the time let alone on December 3rd.
I went to cash register anticipating a monstrous, spirit killing line of unhappy shoppers. But, boy was I ever surprised again. I walked through the cue ropes and was the first person in line and only had to wait a minute or so before I was in check out and on my way to the next stop.
My next stop was at my eyeglass store. One of the screws fell out of my favorite pair of glasses so I desperately needed to have them fixed so I could wear at work. I had a couple of minutes in a comfortable chair before the clerk fixed my glasses and realigned the frames for me.
On the road again, I was off to the next destination.
It was a great Southern California day to be out driving. It was a warm 73F/22C, cloudless day. Even the traffic was cooperating, the traffic moved along at freeway speeds with the only slowing coming at the exit.
The next store was less crowded than on a regular Saturday morning. I was in and out in almost a blink of your eye.
The last few stops were easy ones as well. There were no other cars at the drive through ATM so I had cash for the rest of the weekend and next week.
I dropped off a bunch of shirts at the cleaners. They will be finished on Monday and that is perfect timing for me as I only have three clean dress shirts left in the closet.
My last stop of the day was at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to pick up fresh tea leaves for the Princess and some coffee for her roommate. Then, it was home for lunch and some sports on television.
Army – Navy Football Game
Saturday was a very big day for college football [American football]. The only game that I wanted to see was the game between the Army and Navy service academies. I was an officer in the Navy so I think you can guess which service academy I was rooting for.
Saturday was the 106th Army – Navy football. I missed the first half but that was fine because the half time television replayed the highlights. It was a wonderful win for Navy. It was the fourth Navy victory in a row and that made it that much better for me.
This was almost end of the near perfect football season for me. Utah beat BYU again. Navy beat Army again and won the Commander in Chief’s trophy for the best service academy football team. Navy and Utah are both going to post season bowl games.
Life was good on Saturday for me.
Sunday Stuff
I did some laundry this morning and read the Sunday newspaper. That was not very exciting but something that needed to get done.
I managed to make it to the cinema today. I had planned to see two films, THE ICE HARVEST and AEON FLUX but they were not playing at the same cinemas. Oh well, bad luck with the scheduling I guess.
I ended up watching AEON FLUX. It reminded me a lot of THE ISLAND and GATACA. Although neither of those films had Charlize Theron prancing about in a skintight costume and that was time that was very well spent for me.
Doug said the film was based on a MTV cartoon series and that the film had been toned down somewhat to get the PG-rating instead of an R rating.
I think the film is a dull, plodding attempt at a science fiction action film. The action scenes looked sort of predictable and not that interesting to me. I think THE ISLAND did a better job. The fight scenes looked like they were edited by a group of high school video production students. I don’t know if this was the result of the rating requirement or a director who was in over her head with the complexities of CGI and blue screen work.
I was very happy that I only paid the senior citizen price and not the full fare. There are some valuable benefits to being older it seems and this was one of them. I wouldn’t recommend the film unless you see it at a cheaply priced matinee or better wait and catch it on a DVD where you can pause it from time to time so you, if you are a male like me, can enjoy the good parts.
Then, there is another sidebar to AEON FLUX. It was not made available to reviewers before it opened and that is almost a sure sign of a poor film. The initial weekend box office was just over $13 million; that means it has a long way to go cover the $60 million cost.
That was my weekend. I hope you week will be happy and productive.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 8:09 PM
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