A tragedy of
errors
It was either a tragedy of errors or my bad karma that
struck me last night at my local Fatburger.
I had my Business Negotiation class last night and it went
very well. My students got very involved in a role playing negotiation
exercise. The instructor from the next classroom asked if they could be a bit
quieter.
When I left the school parking lot, it was 10:00 PM. I decided
to swing by Fatburger for my evening meal because I didn’t feel like cooking
around eleven when I got home and I had skipped my lunch because I went to
visit Molly the Stylist. I was tired and hungry.
Elsie, my favorite cook, wasn’t working last night.
The cook who was working took my order. I like to have my
hamburger chargrilled because I think it tastes better. My patty had been on
the chargrill for maybe three minutes before the cook noticed the chargrill was
turned off.
My French fries were cooked and ready to go home except
the burger was still cooking. The clerk gave my fries to another order. The Fatburger
cooks fries orders individually but didn’t put any more in the fryer for me.
Now, my burger was cooked but I was still waiting for my
fries.
My fries were cooked and in a rush to finish my order, the
cook crammed everything into the bag. I got home in time to not enjoy a cooling
hamburger that got crushed in the bag and an overstuffed bag of fries.
That was so not what I wanted to have happen.
Bad karma
The city of Redondo Beach has hired a crew to trim the
trees in the park next to my building. The crew took two weeks to finish the
project. Some days, the crew worked in the mornings and some days they worked
in the afternoon.
Chain saws and wood chippers just can never be quiet tools.
The work schedule sort of ruined my ability to sleep in
after a late night class. It also killed off my Thursday afternoon naps.
There was a bright side to the work. The trees were
thinned out and now the breeze hitting my flat is stronger.
The photo is of a tree that crew didn’t cut down. It looks
really sick to me. But, the crew did cut down a tree that had been dead for at least
three years. That dead tree won’t fall on my building so I guess that I shouldn’t
complain too much.
Driving with the
top down
I am still driving with the top down in the MINI.
At the end of October, I have driven for 25.5 hours with
the top down. I have driven for a total of 492.25 hours with the top down since
June, 2010. My total for 2012 is 198.0 hours. With the coming of what passes
for Winter in Southern California, I will be able to listen to the car radio
when I drive with the top up. That will be interesting.
Where have I been?
I have been here all along. I haven’t had any will to
write in the blog.
School was a distraction since I was teaching a full load
of five classes at two different campuses. Three of the classes were new ones
for me.
Last year, I decided to see if I could write a novel.
I did. I thought it was nice. Doug said I had too much
dialogue in it and it was too long. He was probably correct. I added more narrative
so there wasn’t as much dialogue. In doing so, the novel grew to Godzilla like proportions.
It went from just over three hundred pages to almost nine hundred pages. Clearly,
that was too much.
I split the one novel into three smaller ones.
Then, I wrote eight more novels, mostly between two
hundred and fifty to three hundred pages long.
If I added up all of my writings, I would have about five
megabytes of prose.
My plan now is to go back and add all of the background color
narrative parts that describe he characters’ surroundings and stuff. When I finish
that, I don’t know what I’ll do next. Maybe I can self-publish an e-book on
Amazon.com.
Be well and stay happy.
