QOTD: "Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are." - Oscar Wilde
Reading: deciding what to start next
Listening to: nothing as it is way past my bedtime
Decluttering accomplishments: threw out a few old magazines
Sometimes I think that nothing much ever happens in my life. And then there are weeks like this.
The most dramatic event was coming within a minute or two of witnessing an armed robbery. That was early yesterday evening. I had walked up the street to Blockbuster Video to return one video and rent another (still using those freebie coupons). There was an annoyingly long line, which isn't horribly surprising at six p.m. on a Saturday. I crossed back to my side of the street, where there's a gas station / convenience store on the corner. I noticed two teenage boys running up the street and was a bit suspicious. But I just assumed that they'd gotten away with shoplifting. I stopped into the store to buy a soda and learned that these two kids had just held it up at gunpoint. Nobody was injured since the clerk had enough sense to turn over the register drawer when they shoved a gun in his face. The most shaken person was a young woman who witnessed the whole thing. I was slightly grateful for the inefficiency of Blockbuster as that meant I missed seeing the actual robbery. But it was still disturbing, especially since I still had to walk back up the street to get home, i.e. in the direction the robbers had run.
The irony is that I live in what is considered a reasonably good neighborhood. And I had spent the day in one of the most notoriously bad neighborhoods in L.A., namely Watts. This year's Southern California Storyswapping Festival had been there, hosted by the Griot Workshop. The event was pretty much the usual - a mixture of story swaps, workshops and concerts and a good opportunity to see people who don't live close enough to see often. After lunch we'd gone outside to see the dedication of a new mural at the Watts Labor Community Action Comittee building (which is where the festival was). I was struck by how few people were at the mural dedication, which I don't consider a good sign for attempts to build community. By the way, the building is a really interesting one, housing a small museum and various African-inspired architectural details. I do admit that I still felt uncomfortable about going to Watts, particularly so close to the ten year anniversary of the riots.
The other dramatic event of the week was Derek Lowe's no-hitter on Saturday. That's the first one at Fenway since 1965. Which prompts a big tip from the self-help book for people involved with Red Sox fans. While said fan is crowing over this, do not insist you have to go out and test the ground temperature to see if hell has frozen over. But still - Derek Lowe! Who'da thunk it?
The week had featured a trip up to Sunnyvale, which involved its own complications. We were booked on a four p.m. flight on United to San Jose. A flight attendant had bumped her head and they were unable to get a replacement, so the flight was cancelled. (This was one of the little regional jets, so there's only a single flight attendant.) They gave us a choice of a 5 p.m. on United to San Francisco or a 6:30 p.m. on American to San Jose. But it hadn't occurred to anyone that they might want to take the people who wanted the earlier flight first and, by the time we got to the podium, we ended up on a 5:30 flight to San Francisco instead. We managed to switch the rental car reservation successfully and it wasn't a big deal, but it was still a hassle. Luckily, there was little traffic on the 101. We rewarded ourselves with an excellent dinner at The Banana Leaf, a Malaysian restaurant in Milpitas that I like. (I did less well the next night, since I took my brother out to dinner. Elliot's favorite words in the English language are "all you can eat" and he chose a buffet place that was just OK.) And then our flight back was complicated because somehow American had canceled our reservations. There was no actual problem getting on the flight, but it was still annoying.
As for other news, my car did end up just needing a new battery. Although there was a five year warranty on the old one, the mechanic was surprised that it had lasted four and a half years. He said they usually die after about three.
And I had a job interview over the phone for the position I applied for in Washington. I can't really tell what my odds are of getting it, since a lot depends on who else applied. I also finally heard back regarding a previous position I had applied for. Which turned out exactly as I suspected - namely, that there wasn't a job after all. It isn't as if I'm in desparate need of a new job, so it's no big deal.
Today, I spent a few hours at the L.A. Times Festival of Books over at UCLA. I was remarkably restrained in shopping, ending up only with two books, both of which were things I had actually been looking for, and one audiotape to listen to the next time I have a long drive. I also added a lot to my bookmark collection. The main thing that kept my purchases in line, though, was the incredible crowds. I suppose it's a good thing that a book festival draws a lot of people, but I still think they should have gone either yesterday or later in the day so that I could browse in peace.
Finally, the celebrity death of the week is Ruth Handler, the inventor of Barbie. The little known tidbit that most intrigued me is that she later went on to form a company manufacturing breast prostheses. That's proof that life is more ironic than fiction.
Copyright 2002 Miriam H. Nadel