Daft Musings

As previous posts have shown, I have a psychologically tortured relationship with Costco. I loathe the conceit that everything there is a bargain, but for the exact same commercial goods found elsewhere, they are often cheaper than Amazon. Their dairy prices compete with those at Smart & Final, so I will buy milk and eggs there, but be thoroughly chagrined when I discover that in one particular weeks, say, the eggs were actually cheaper at Smart & Final where I didn’t have to suffer the indignity of door nazis. Peter and I will insouciantly stroll around, sneering at the punters navigating their giant douchebag carts (or, more subtly said, GDCs), trying to ignore the fact that we’re at Costco, too, and, ooo, isn’t that a great deal on some entertainment DVDs….

Well, it was time to get Neil an eye exam (after 3 years) and new glasses. I had booked an eye exam at a respectable discount optometrist, Site for Sore Eyes, when Peter reminded me that Costco sold glasses, too, and they were highly rated by Consumer Reports. I dragged Neil to the Costco optometrist, who could easily provide the exam for a little bit less than it would cost at Site for Sore Eyes. So Neil got his eye exam while I gawped at the super packs of whole trout and avoided the GDCs rushing into the sample food tables.

The exam was fine, as far as these things go. The optometrist was crammed in a tiny, stuffy room, but we got Neil’s eye prescription, which we could take anywhere. I foolishly and naively took it to the eyeglasses section in Costco. Neil, who shares our family disdain for Costco, begged me not to make him wear Costco glasses. Besides, he liked the frames he had already, so all we needed were new lenses. I had run out of my cash because unlike the typical Costco customer, I don’t carry huge wads of cash with me, and I leave my checks at home where I use them to pay off my bills. But since we wouldn’t be getting the lenses right now, I could pay when I picked them up, right?

Trying to get Costco glasses was the Costco experience I remember. The checkout lines have actually not been too bad lately, though I do notice that if there’s any chance of getting through in less than 5 minutes, a manager will run up and close down lines. But to get glasses, I had to take a number, and stand around with the many other fools who thought this was a good idea for some reason. We waited and waited and waited, until finally, 45 minutes later, we sat down and asked what it would cost to get new lenses for Neil’s glasses. It’s hard for any American to be as snotty as a Soviet shopgirl (and no, not even the DMV gets close), but this clerk made an effort. It would take 2 weeks to get the new lenses; it would be $49 plus $18 for our temerity not to get Costco frames, and if I didn’t pony up the cash right now, it was a no go. It was a no go. We left.

I found out I could get new lenses for Neil’s glasses for as little as $30 online, but that became moot when Neil lost (or misplaced) the glasses, no doubt partially due to the trauma of the full-on Costco experience. Peter’s a big believer in just getting things done, so on Sunday night we headed over to Site for Sore Eyes to get Neil new glasses with lenses. Unfortunately, Site for Sore Eyes was closed, but Lenscrafters, in the mall across the street was still open, and with current specials was reasonably enough priced for us to shop there. Neil found some great Ralph Lauren glasses, and by the next morning, they had lenses cut and set in for him. I don’t know why people were raving about Costco glasses–they weren’t considerably less expensive, and the 45 minute wait (which would be undoubtedly be repeated for pick up) plus having to wait another 2 weeks for lenses which other stores can make in an hour or less is odious.

So Neil didn’t get Costco glasses (and the optometrist is officially Costco-independent). I believe we all have more dignity as a result.

The economy may be slow, but there’s one place that’s going strong with near-unlimited demand: Comic Con 2011. I knew it was already going to be off the hook when I was in the office a few weeks ago and got a call from an anxious would-be Comic Con 2011 attendee. It was the day the Comic Con site opened for online purchasing of badges (in effect, tickets) to its show, then still a good 8 months in the future.

I told him we were ComicBase, not Comic Con, but he explained to me their site had gone down, and he was wondering if we, as regular exhibitors, had any kind of in with the organization to help him buy a badge.Certainly, I thought to myself, it shouldn’t be that hard to get a badge 8 months in advance. While I was on the phone with him, I checked out the Comic Con site myself and was thoroughly surprised to see the 4-day badges had sold out in July at the 2010 Con. And due to massive demand for the remaining badges (which might only give access for a day or two), Comic Con had had to shut down its purchasing site until further notice. It was a revelation to me, and unfortunately, all I’d be able to do is get him in touch with exhibitor services–who’d just put him on a long wait list for a booth he didn’t need. Since some badges are still available, I assume he eventually got in, but I can’t help but wish he and those like him had had a shot at the 4-day passes, without the worry about whether he’d be able to see the show at all. I remember watching agog last year as the badges sold out 5 months in advance of the show.

We had our own moment of panic last night. Getting a hotel room within San Diego during Comic Con has become increasingly difficult, and I still wax nostalgic about the far gone years, when one could get a hotel room within a mile of the convention center without having to join in a frenzied panic on the day reservations open. The Con has made it somewhat easier for exhibitors (who need to be at the booth before the show opens and remain there until after the close) by letting them list their top ten choices in a lottery in advance. This year, the lottery was supposed to open on December 7, but just as it was about to, Peter received a note letting him know the system was still down, and to hold tight until he received further notice.

Further notice never really came, unless you count the email Peter received late last night that the lottery was closing that very night, and Comic Con couldn’t help but notice we’d yet to put down any choices. If we didn’t have them in my midnight, we’d have no other chances to book a room until March. It put the adrenaline into what had been an otherwise rather calm day. I rushed to put in our top ten choices, but accidentally put down one less room than we needed. As it was, we had no confirmation and no way to go back and correct it, so I had to go back in and enter another request, which means we’ll get no rooms, not enough rooms, or too many rooms. We won’t know until February, when we may or may not be able to fix it. And even that doesn’t guarantee you the number of beds you need. Last year, Joe and Carl called me upon arrival telling me that the twin (2-bed, 2-people) room we’d book the November before, had only one bed in it. Despite our reservation request, the hotel had only received a Priceline-type reservation calling for a room, number of beds not specified, and booked our guys into a single room instead. Peter sweet-talked the hotel manager into switching our staff to a 2-bed room, but I’m sure we weren’t the only people encountering that surprise.

But given that enthusiastic fans can’t even get a 4-day pass, I’m up and awake at 5 am, with the horrible fear that we may only get our number 10 choice–a hotel six miles away in Hotel Circle, or worse yet, no hotel at all, due to every room we wanted being booked out before the travel agent even looks at our requests. I’m not even going to Comic Con—I checked out on it at my last con in 2008, when I had the most minimal of responsibilities, and only went into the convention hall for a few hours at the beginning or end of the show. And Peter and Neil are, if anything, more enthusiastic and jazzed about Comic Con. Despite its nuisances, it is also a pop culture phenomenon, with massive multi-media theme-park-like ever-changing promotions for upcoming movies like a Harold & Kumar pavilion, a Tron experience, and Thor himself. It’s filled with celebrities, and passionate fans cleverly dressed up as their favorite characters. And there’s always a new surprise, like last years David Hasselhoff bus coming down the street, led by Knight Riders and flanked by beer maids and Baywatch-type beach babes. Peter (as well as Neil) would think nothing about getting up at 5 am to battle gnarly traffic for an hour and a half to get to the convention hall in time to chat with others like him until 8 pm, spend 2 or 3 hours hunting down an available meal within the throng of other out-of-towners, and crash at midnight or 1 am, to get up the next day and do it all over again for 5 straight days. But it’s not worth it for me,and just the thought of it makes me hope he–and the rest of the staff– do get a hotel within walking distance so that those who do need to collapse in a pool of exhaustion may do so easily. I guess we’ll know where we’re at (and where we’re not) 2 months from now….

Last year, Peter surprised me as we ventured out to get our new Christmas tree with the suggestion that we get a fake one instead. He’d bought a fake one the year before for his office, so that the janitor wouldn’t suffer additional work in constantly vacuuming up fallen pine needles.

I had had a long aversion to fake Christmas trees, dating back to the time my mother bought a fake Christmas tree for our home in the early 1980s. It was, without dispute, awful. Sure, it didn’t need water, drip needles, or need to be cut up for disposal. But it was also made of an awful cheap plastic, colored an obviously fake green. Any “needles” close to the Christmas tree lights we had (which, were back in that day, little colored light bulbs) melted, making a permanent green smear on the bulbs. I can’t remember clearly, but I think it smelled funny, too–certainly not like pine.

I think even my thrifty mother hated that tree enough to throw it out and get a real one the next year, because I remember those smeared bulbs on a real tree. And from then on, only a real tree, even if it could only be a small one, such as the miniature tree I bought at Woolworth’s one year, would do.

There’s no denying that the real thing has its problems, though. We’ve spent hours of our lives hunting through Christmas tree lots and once or twice, in a Christmas tree farm, for just the right tree with well-spaced branches and just the right height–followed by the annual discussion of whether to pay a third more for that perfect tree, or settle for one of a different type. Then, there’s the challenge of getting it in, which requires additonal sawing, and setting it up straight. Peter bought a special Christmas tree stand with an inner stand which could be rotated and adjusted for just this reason. There’s also the sad spectre of waste, as you know the tree was cut down just for a month, after which it gets turned into wood chips, which may or may not actually be needed by any one. And then there’s the pine needles, which we often found ourselves vacuuming out of crevices and corners into February. Oh, and not to forget the tragedy of the overflowing water bowl, which once ruined some books beneath the tree wrapped up and meant to give as presents; and its counterpart, the brown-bef0re-its-time dead tree.

Nonetheless, I was still fairly dubious about being a fake tree family, but Peter invited me to just examine the trees which were on sale at Target; if I was still opposed, we’d follow tradition and find a real tree for the season.

As it turns out, the fake trees weren’t bad, not bad at all. The models we choose from had fake bristles, but these seemed to be made of a fire-resistant paper, and looked passably real. You could get trees with lights installed on them already, sparing you from stringing new ones on–or adding to your own lights. Each had its own stable stand, so there’d never be any issue with standing it up straight, much less in a bowl of water.

We bought one, and I was won over. It assembled easily (and packed away pretty well afterwards). Assuming we use it for the next few years, it will be cheaper than getting a fresh Christmas tree each year, and we don’t have to march around a lot in cold weather having to chose and wonder what we passed up each year. And I no longer have to worry about putting wrapped books on the floor near the tree, or clean up the trail of pine needles into and out of the house, and around the tree. The only issue with it is storage, but somehow we managed to haul it into the attic last year, and I suspect we can do the same this year.

And so I have become one of those fake tree people I used to look down upon–but they’re come a long way since they had “needles” that melted.

Here is Neil’s recreation of the Battle of the Crater, or as the Confederacy might have called it, the Great Turkey Shoot

I’m not an economist, but the Fed’s recent decision to unleash (that, virtually print) more U.S. dollars into the world economy–termed qualitative easing 2, or QE2 for short– really caused me to fret. Now, the idea, as far as I understand it, is that we need more inflation in order to have an full economic recovery, with jobs for people, and easy credit to let the people buy the expensive homes, cars, vacations, and restaurant dinners they haven’t been buying. So we’re all in agreement that QE2 is supposed to cause inflation, and when things are expected to cost more in the future, people will buy now. There’s disagreement whether we currently have deflation, and that this is the cause of all our woes; or whether we already have inflation in commodities (like food and gasoline), even as our houses are worth less and wages are stagnant.

But I don’t think QE2 will make any difference, though it may well inflate the cost of commodities. I’ve experienced two gung-ho economic periods, and both of them were driven by speculation. The first was the dot.com boom. Having dutifully studied the general rules of stock investment, I puzzled and puzzled about how companies with virtually no income could grow in worth so quickly and spectacularly–until a friend who’d once been a day trader tipped me off that it was speculation, and engaging in this market was not for the long-term investor. While I never put my money into a dot.com, I did managed to pull plenty out of them–there was a cornucopia of demand for writers to create content for the web sites, and even more for anyone who took a few hours to learn then-still-rudimentary HTML. Oh, and all the free drinks I wanted, thanks to the many open bar parties every dot.com hosted for the sake of mindshare, and to poach HTML writers from one another.

More recently, there was the housing boom, during which anyone could “buy” a house, or borrow money on a house, no questions asked. Peter and I were pretty amazed when we were able to take out a line of credit on our house in order to start a new business, and the bank barely seemed to blink. It was even more shocking a few years later, when we were able to extend the credit without any trouble at all, despite our income being less than stellar at the moment (see start-up business). I swear, that time, they never even sent an assessor to even look at the house to make sure it was still intact! However, you can stay it helped the economy–thanks to that easy funding, Peter rented an office, hired staffers, bought new business equipment, and took more business trips.

Unfortunately, not everyone was as conscientious as Peter and I are about paying back the money which had just been handed to them blindly. One set of neighbors quickly stopped making payments on the house they’d bought at a record price (a price which helped us claim additional credit so easily.) It still helped the economy though, if not the bank. With the savings on 9 months of rent, they bought a new SUV and took a vacation to Puerto Rico. Next door, a family of renters found out their landlord had defaulted on the house they were in–but then, he had an extra $2500 a month, no expenses, to spend on whatever he wanted, including a few intial months of payment on more rental houses.

Thanks to happy happy lenderman the banks got burned, and they’re plenty twitchy as a result. You can give them infinity money now, but they still won’t loan it to anyone they’re not absolutely positively, completely sure will pay back every penny and who already has the net worth of the loan in other assets which could be seized in an emergency. In my opinion, I don’t object to this principle–after all, lenders ought to loan out money with the expectation of getting it back with interest. Stricter standards might have caused us to be turned down for an extension on our line of credit in 2007, which might have meant we’d have one less person on staff earlier and thus, slower progress; but we’d also have been able to avoid laying off an employee (and paying the state fine as a result) when they abruptly shut down the credit in 2008, and we’d have a bit less debt now.

Nonetheless, I was surprised to see how strict the bankers have become. Even when we bought our house, our current pay stubs (from the day jobs Peter and I each had), our credit, and enough money to put 20% down got us approved quickly. Now we’re seeing if we can refinance to take advantage of the low interest rates (also driven by the Fed), and the lenders want to see two years of tax returns, complete with financial details of our businesses, confirmation of how much money we have in the bank, the value of our retirement accounts, the value of our cars, a current evaluation of our house, and not to mention, good credit. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ask for statements of character from three religious leaders, and my willingness, on a scale of 1 to 10, to sell one of my kidneys should I be unable to pay my debts. To boot, as soon as QE2 went into effect on Friday, I was on the phone with a lender, who was himself surprised to see the rates had just jumped up, and he had an e-mail telling him they were about to take another jump up in 75 minutes. I think one of the ideas of QE2 was that banks would lower their lending rate, because they’d be jonesing to make more money on all that money. But actually banks are now more motivated to keep their money, rather than loan it out. No banker wants to be holding a 4.75% loan when inflation hits 11%.

The obvious result of this is that there will continue to be less lending, or at least lending at higher rates. This means less people applying for loans, and of those applying, less gettng a loan. If there aren’t a lot of people competing for houses, there’s no reason for the prices of houses to rise. The real estate boom funded a lot of jobs, from the most obvious, like real estate agents, to less obvious, like start-up employees. Beyond that, businesses would rather not hire anyone unless they absolutely need them right now, either. Planned inflation is the last thing you want when you’re bringing on a new employee. As prices rise, the employee is understandably going to want more money, and even they don’t, their benefits and perks will cost more. And due to other factors (not QE2), businesses still don’t know how much that employee is also going to cost in the form of additional paperwork and taxes. As we found out the hard way, laying off even one employee is costly in California–doing so more than doubled the unemployment insurance we have to pay to the state, and they will continue to collect at that rate until all the money the laid-off employee collected is paid off. It seems like an odd form of insurance–I’d much much rather have kept her on for quarter-time, and helped her find a new great job. She could have collected the money directly, without having to deal with a bureaucracy, and we wouldn’t be paying it off slowly, interminably, to a state agency, which we thought had already been collecting money for this.

There is one path to inflation, thanks to a deflated dollar. QE2 may raise the price of goods manufactured abroad–or not. More dollars theoretically means one dollar is worth less than it used to be; but then, so many currencies are pegged to the dollar, they simply set their virtual printing presses into overdrive themselves.

So if we do get inflation, we’ll get stagflation with continuing high unemployment and high interest rates. This led to price controls which led to shortages, another form of misery. If we don’t get inflation, it’ll be because the banks are scared to let it go because they think there’s not money to be made with that money, or they need it to further pay off the many defaults they financed. And that doesn’t move things forward either.

As I said, I’m not an economist. But I’ve seen booms, and I’ve read about bad busts, and given what I see going on with lending these days, I don’t think QE2 is a good thing at all.

Peter’s been jonesing for a break from his consulting gig, which was recently extended for another 6 months; Kelly had a school break at the beginning of November; and Neil’s Legoland comp tickets were about to expire. So, we booked several nights at an inexpensive motel in Anaheim and planned on seeing 3 amusement parks in 3 days, an experience that turned out to be both fun and poignantly nostalgic.

We started with Knott’s Berry Farm, a place I hadn’t been to since the early 80s, then in the prime of my So-Cal living, teen-amusement-park-loving years. I remember it as a low key amusement park with some great rollercoasters (not as many as Magic Mountain, but also having much shorter lines.) A lot can change in 25 years, but Knott’s Berry Farm has remained true to its character–though it added an entire Camp Snoopy section which we all loved.

Since she was a baby, Kelly has had a beloved Snoopy blanket, and we love getting her Snoopy themed things (such as the two Snoopy dolls she already owns, and a Snoopy shirt Shiaw-Ling gave her.) Many of the rides had a Peanuts tie-in such as a huge Snoopy bounce house, or the kiddie car ride Kelly and Neil went on together.

Neil’s favorite was the sidewinder rollercoaster, an unusual design which spun us around while we were rocketing down the curves. And in the older kids’ section of the park, the coasters were still awesome. Peter got me to go on the Rip Curl ride, which mostly just shook and spun us upside down. I was the only member of my family brave enough to go on the Accelerator, which was like being shot out of a cannon onto a track going straight up–but was just a regular coaster afterwards. Kelly was just an inch too short to go on the Pony Express, so Neil got to ride twice. And my past favorite, the Ghost Rider, a gargantuan wooden rollercoaster, is still my favorite ride today. It’s long enough with plenty of curves and adventure that you feel you got a good ride in exchange for your waiting time.

Neil is currently obsessed with puzzles, so he actually enjoyed the strip-mall like stores part of the park, especially a puzzles and games store, where he bought himself an optical puzzle.

Peter’s camera card gave out, so after our day at the park, we went to the nearest Fry’s, which had a Roman theme, though the red canopy entrance and somewhat cheesy decor has Peter calling it the “Italian restaurant Fry’s.”

The next day, we walked over to Disneyland. I have to confess, from my So Cal years, I can often be jaded about Disneyland, even with young children in tow, who show it to you in a new way. I’m the tedious person who can still remember having tickets, and the difference between E-, D-, C-, B-, and A- ticket rides. In fact, I can still tell you which letters most rides had. And I loathe the long lines, even with the Fast Pass system, which is terrific. The last time we went to Disneyland, it was so crowded, the park closed, and there were even lines for the rest rooms.

But Disneyland more than made up for it this year. Our timing couldn’t have been better. We’d barely waited for any ride at Knott’s Berry Farm, but it was almost as good as Disneyland. Get this: we only waited for 20 minutes to get onto Space Mountain. That’s a miracle, and a fraction of the time I have ever had to wait for it, ever. We waited even less for other rides in the park, and Peter finally got to go on the Matterhorn ride, which he’s never done in his life. And even I was dazzled and impressed by the update to the Haunted Mansion. As the crotchedly old-timer, I have to hate updates. What’s up with the Johnny Depp dolls in the Pirates of the Carribbean? Did you have to push the movie tie-in so hard? How come the Swiss Family Treehouse, one thing I remember from my first trip to Disneyland when I was 5, is now the Tarzan house? Well, the new haunted mansion is really cool, cartoony and clever.

Peter and I were trapped inside and almost eaten by a huge toothy wreath. Hey, even the Nemo update to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was neat, though I recognized the Captain Nemo story frame beneath it.

We still have a picture of Neil hugging Pooh at his first trip to Disneyland when he was three, so I insisted the kids pose with Pooh this time, too:

At some point, I’ll locate that old picture and probably get all weepy about how my children are growing up so fast. Neil bought himself a Disney Rubik’s cube.

If the Pooh moment hadn’t been a clear enough point to highlight the fact that my children are getting older, Legoland really drove it home. We’ve been going there every year since Neil was 3. He’s 13 now, and too big and old to go on some of the rides he used to be too small to go on way back when. Miniland, a marvel when we first saw it, is now aging, with some of the buildings showing heavy UV aging, and some down to be rebuilt. This time, Neil took Kelly in hand, almost showing her his park, as if he were passing it on to her. He insisted she drive correctly so she could deserve her Legoland driver’s license. And he bought a Hello Kitty rubik’s cube, less for the design, than for its size and smooth sliding action.

And guess who hangs out at Legoland before the Christmas season gets completely underway and he’s swamped?

Santa! I wanted to ask if I was on his nice list, but I didn’t want to be like one of those creepy celebrity stalkers, you know.

While we were at the ancient Rome/Italian restaurant Fry’s, I found out there was an Alice in Wonderland Fry’s which we could visit on our way up, and you know we had to see it:

It was one of the best-themed stores I’ve seen, complete with a hidden Cheshire cat you need to hunt a little to find, but the management asked me not to take any more pictures, so if you want to see it, you’ll have to go to Woodland Hills yourself.

All in all, the best amusement park weekend I’ve had, though I realize the time I have to do this with my children is rapidly fleeting away.

The day after labor day, Peter and I awoke to a rude surprise. Peter stepped outside to go off to his consulting job at 5 am (both of have learned to start early and work long on consulting gigs), only to find out his car had been stolen–right out of our own driveway.

To say we were miserable was an understatement. That day, we were already scheduled to go talk to the oral surgeon who’d botched Neil’s surgery, and who turned out to be an ass. And we’d spend a hard weekend, moving all our furniture and most of our possessions out and then back in to our home as new carpeting was laid. Peter had ended it replacing some rotten parts of our deck, and he’d been beyond exhausted that Monday night. As a result, he left his spare set of keys, hidden beneath some debris in his car.

We’ve lived in our current neighborhood for more than 15 years, and until 2009 it was completely crime free. But in early 2009, things changed. One day in February that year, I went out to my car and found someone had riffled through it and taken the GPS unit I kept there. Peter chided me because I don’t always lock my doors, but a few months later, his car window was smashed in and his GPS unit was stolen. This was both while our cars were in driveway. We were quite creeped out, but we weren’t the only victims.

This year, a couple reported someone had riffled through their car in the middle of the night and stolen an iPod and the face to their radio. And these were only those who bothered to inform the rest of the neighborhood. And then, that Labor Day night, our thief went on an all-out spree. Besides stealing Peter’s car, he also got into a neighbor’s car and stole her purse. The fact that it was even out in her car shows you how normally quiet our neighborhood is. It put a shock through our area, as we speculated who this scumbag could be. Was he within our midst? Was it a downtown gang targeting us? The San Jose police officer who’d taken our report suspected it was a teen joyride, and the car could be found within 24-48 hours. But the time passed, and the car was not found.

We mourned. Peter unhappily drove the rental car our insurance generously paid for. He didn’t want to replace the PT Cruiser. We’d taken our cross-country trip in it successfully. It could both haul a ton of stuff, and look stylish. Yet we couldn’t buy another PT Cruiser to replace the new one, both because Chrysler is discontinuing them, and because we’re fairly offended they took government money. We were also looking at thousands for Neil’s surgery, so having to put out thousands more was hard to take.

Eventually, in the end, Peter found that Ford (the one American car company which opted not to suck American taxpayers dry) had an intriguing new SYNC technology in their cars, which really is really cool, but more on that later. After 3 weeks had passed, our insurance company paid him for the stolen Cruiser, and he bought a Ford Escape, which actually turned out to be a better car, even though we were out thousands more. We, and the neighbors, assumed our PT Cruiser had been chopped into many little pieces, and the scumbag thief was happily wallowing in his ill-gotten gains. Oh, how I wanted a face to that thief!

And then, late last night, almost two months after the theft, I returned from the Boy Scout parents’ committee meeting to find Peter in a joyful mood. “They found my car!” he said. A police officer had spotted the car, with just a dealer plate on one side, and a plate which said it belonged on a Honda on the other, at a Safeway near our house. Thinking it to be somewhat odd, he decided to run the VIN, and found out it was Peter’s car. At the moment he’d called Peter, he’d had it staked out, waiting for the car thief to return.

And return he did! Peter dashed off to meet the police officer and confirm the skeezy white guy with the key to the car was no one Peter knew, much less anyone he’d ever given permission to make off with the PT Cruiser. He had to meet back up with me, so I could give him a ride back in order to pick up the car and bring it home. We had effusive thanks for the San Jose police, who are, honestly, always very good at their job.

I won’t publish the skeezebag thief’s name until he’s convicted but good (s0mething we have both vowed to make sure happens). So for now, I will call him Mr. Skeezebag. Mr. Skeezebag had been busy pimping Peter’s car, undoubtedly using money he’d gotten by illegal means, such as the copies of checks he had lying in the car. The truck was almost filled with huge speakers, and he’d upgraded the stereo. He’d also gotten rid of Peter’s GPS unit, and replaced it with a more upscale Garmin unit, itself probably the gain of his noctural theft prowlings. The car was full of gear for further car stereo pimpitude, as well as a lot of trash, receipts, and a whole bunch of stinking clothes. For unknown reasons, he’d thrown away the head rests to the two front seats, and everything Peter had once kept in his glove compartment, such as a really nice flashlight, as well as the car manual and registration.

In this internet age, it wasn’t hard to find out more about Mr. Skeezebag: we had his name, and Peter had seen his face. His Facebook feed showed lots of pictures clearly taken from within Peter’s Cruiser, dating back to early September. Despite being a very trashed-looking 27-year-old, he has/had an incredibly stupid 19-year-old girlfriend, who I know is flat-chested, thanks to a tag for 34A bra I found left behind in the car, and whose own profile picture shows her sitting in the Cruiser. I know at least one thing they did in the Cruiser, which is smoke heavily, because it reeks. He claims to be a construction foreman, so the company for which he claims to work will soon be getting an interesting inquiry.

Sorting through all that was left behind was another rich source of clues. A check-cashing company asked him for reimbursement on two dodgy-looking checks they’d cashed for him, which had been returned. Despite being from two different people, they both had similar feminine handwriting. Neither was a check from the account of my neighbor who’d had her purse stolen, but Mr. Skeezebag was probably breaking in to cars in many San Jose neighborhoods. He had kept one receipt of Peter’s, which had been in the car on the night of the theft–one for a rifle. Now whether he kept it as a warning to himself not to drive near the shooter’s house in his stolen car, or as a new idiotic plot to break in and try to steal it, we don’t know, but it’s creepy either way. He had a change of address confirmation, showing he’d moved here from Fresno, California’s scum city. Sorry, Fresno people, but every time I go to your town, it sucks, and Mr. Skeezebag supports that argument in his very person.

I told all the neighbors about Mr. Skeezebag. We’re still speculating on how he came to target our neighborhood. Did that careless construction company send its future felon on a project in our area? Was his skanky girlfriend one of the girls at the halfway house down the street, which is typically harmless, but which we all still view with suspicion?

In any case, Mr. Skeezebag should soon have a felony record, which should throw a real wrench into his thieving career, at least for a while. The insurance company, which now actually owns the car, is sending a tow truck tomorrow, and asked me to leave everything in (though I took Peter’s receipt and the likely-forged checks). And so, our PT Cruiser will be gone once more. And hopefully, with Mr. Skeezebag captured, my neighborhood will no longer be victimized by some scumbag with little sense and less morals trespassing into our property and stealing.

I have been at war with fiend squirrel for almost two years now. Each year, I plant a summer garden, eagerly looking forward to the fresh tomatoes and pumpkins I’ll have come late summer. And every year, as I go out to pick the tomatoes, I find little bite marks, left by my nemesis. Last fall, I made the mistake of storing my ripened pumpkins on the back deck–until one day, Kelly jumped up and yelled, “get away, squirrel!” By the time she’d raised the alarm, fiend squirrel had chewed big holes into two of my finest pumpkins. And later that fall, he managed to crawl into my garage, where I was storing some flour and chew into that.

As I saw him scamper along the top of the fence, I swore to myself that I would someday catch that squirrel, and when I did, I would eat him, thus annihilating my enemy. But Loretta, who had a fiend squirrel of her own, and a boyfriend with an aversion to killing animals, called me on this vow when she captured her enemy in a humane trap. She offered her fiend to me, so I could kill, skin, and roast him as fine practice for the day I would do it with my own enemy. Sadly, the thought of killing a quite-possibly-rabid rodent with long teeth intimidated me, and I had second thoughts about noshing on a probably-diseased corpse, even if I did roast it beyond well done. And so both her fiend and mine lived on through the winter.

This year, fiend squirrel escalated the war. I had bought some seeds and carefully placed them in some peat moss for sprouting. None of them sprouted–because fiend squirrel found the peat moss, and dug up and ate my seeds. Wallowing in my hatred of fiend squirrel, I had to buy more expensive pre-sprouted plants at a nursery. Meanwhile, pumpkin seeds which fiend squirrel had dropped while fleeing from Kelly sprouted in all sorts of awkward places, such as a half-broken planter next to the pool. And, yes, as soon as my tomatoes and cucumbers ripened, I found fiend squirrels characteristic bite marks in them.

And then fiend squirrel did the final insult and moved himself into my home. He found a way into the attic. When he interrupted my sleep, I ran up to turn on the attic light and yell. This technique, quite effective in Soviet prisons and elsewhere, dissuaded the field for only a few days–whereupon he moved on top of my home office. As I worked away, I heard an incessant scritch, scritch, scritch, with drove me mad. I bought rat poison, which fiend squirrel snacked on like it was fine food, with no apparent ill effect.

So I went back to the hardware store and asked for help. I got some notorious advice from a fellow squirrel-hater. He told me to buy some bird seed, which squirrels love, and some dry plaster of paris, and then to spread out the bird seed in a tray and coat it with the dry plaster of paris. It might take a few days, but fiend squirrel would be gone from the attic. “It’ll stop him right up,” his colleague said. And we all laughed evilly at the new plot.

Peter was highly skeptical, but it didn’t cost much to try. And sure and enough, less than 2 days later the scritch-scritch is gone. Peter thinks it may have been due more to the fact that he was playing a video game, and the constant sound of gunfire inspired fiend squirrel to evacuate. But in either case, I’m happy. For now, at least, fiend squirrel is gone.

I decided to vote early this year. I wanted to get it over with, as politicians, pundits, and sadly, even friends, are getting shriller and openly adamant about this mid-term election. This way, when I’m pushed, I can just say I already voted, and there’s no “October surprise” that’s going to effect what I did now.

But I didn’t feel any better for having voted early. Peter and I found the county registrar of voters, an intimidating-looking building on the northeast side of San Jose, where we could vote early in person. We filled in short paper forms, and received the 3 page double-sided ballot for our area, together with voting instructions, and went to the little stand-up desks, exactly the same as we’ll have them in our local voting place, to place our votes. Like an absentee ballot (which this effectively is), we had to place our ballots in an envelope and sign it.

I have no doubt my vote will be counted. Already I saw two long tables with people carefully cutting open the sealed absentee ballots and laying them flat in the right position in order to be fed into ballot readers on November 2. These are the results which will show up as early returns, no sooner than 8 pm (when ballot stations close, so early results can’t skew voting.)

But I became even more nervous about the possibility of voter fraud. I’m already not too keen on the fact that you can (and nay, are almost encouraged to) vote without any ID, beyond a signature. I asked if my name would still appear on the roster at my local precinct on election day, and it will. Now, it’s illegal for me (or worse, a Carolyn impersonator) to go over that day and fill out another ballot series, but as far as I can tell, there’s no safeguards against it. And if so, which ballot would they eliminate?

Another scary thing was the fact that you are required to sign the envelope with your early vote–maybe. The fact is, someone else can sign in your place, stating you’re too feeble to sign your own name. If you’re that feeble, they’re also filling in your vote for you, and I’m not comfortable with that, either.

It was terribly clear that our voting system depends heavily on trust. And while I trust my friends to vote just once, I’m not so sure there aren’t a lot of other people who place multiple votes, given how very easy it is to do, and the fact that some people are so fired up they believe the means of breaking voting laws justifies the end of having their favored candidate in office, or their precious cause to pass. And so I didn’t feel better about having gotten the vote over with; the voting is far from over, and I’m just one of the schmucks who actually followed the rules.

My mathematics- and puzzle-loving son Neil was looking forward to the Martin Gardner Celebration of Mind, a posthumous Gathering-for-Gardner-like event held worldwide for what would have been Gardner’s 96th birthday. Our local event was at Stanford, and as seems to be a personal pattern of mine, the first thing I did was find a party with free booze.

Neil and I tried to find the event in relation to the math building, and when Neil saw a party-like gathering of many adults, we went towards them. It turned out to be the Stanford Homecoming Reunion, and what a fine shindig that looked to be. As we walked through it, I asked one of the many unoccupied bartenders if this event was open bar. Why, yes, it was! But we were late and Neil was in a hurry, so this time I had to leave the Stanford alumni to tackle their alcoholic stash alone.

Peter had tasked me with a sole mission: find Don Knuth, who Bill Gosper had told us would be there, and get his autograph on a volume of the Art of Programming, and a picture of him with Neil. I was prepared, and as we walked into the Hewlett Teaching Center, I saw a man who looked like pictures I’ve seen of Don Knuth, talking to someone else right by the sign-up table. I prodded Neil to ask the Don Knuth lookalike if he was really Don Knuth, but we were both worried he might simply be one of many Don Knuth doppelgängers around the Stanford campus, who might be irate at being mistaken for Don Knuth. So we went to the actual event room, which turned out to be a big auditorium.

We had just missed the first presenter, a disappointment for Neil. But the next speaker was Scott Kim, another one of Neil’s heroes, this one who had not gone to G4G9. Kim proceeded to puzzle everyone, on purpose. The Don Knuth doppelgänger walked in, now with a name tag identifying himself as….Don Knuth. Curses! I watched him as he walked around the auditorium to a seat in a front. I kept an eye on him, mentally promising myself that if he attempted to escape the auditorium, I would follow him out, Neil in tow, no matter who the speaker was.

There was no break between presenters, and after Scott Kim introduced his son and took a seat, I watched him, too. But he, being Scott Kim, either vanished, or more likely, transformed to go incognito through the rest of the event. As we listened to Stanford statistics professor Susan Holmes describe how she used Martin Gardner’s books to teach students in France, MIT, and Stanford, I realized I didn’t have a pen at hand with which Don Knuth could sign. That would be a stalker fail, so I excused myself from Neil and went back to my car to get a pen, as well as a notebook on which I could take notes.

When I got back, Don Knuth was speaking about his meeting with Martin Gardner. And then we had a break, whereupon I grabbed Neil and we ran down the stairs to Knuth–who was by then talking to another academic. They had a lot to talk about. Didn’t they know I was a stalker? Or maybe they did! But finally Neil got his chance to meet Knuth, who signed The Art of Programming Volume 1 for Neil, and posed for this picture:

And then Knuth did a marvelous thing and encouraged Neil to work on his writing as much as his math, so that he, too, might become someone like Martin Gardner–encouraging and empowering everyone, not just fellow math lovers. Whereupon another illustrious math person I’m too daft to know encouraged Neil to get back to post blog entries regularly. I already think Neil’s a terrific writer, but it’s wonderful to have people other than his mom notice and encourage him with it.

The short break ended, and Neil and I took closer seats for the next portion of the event, an episode from the documentary series The Nature of Things about Martin Gardner. Then we saw Cliff Stoll,  the author of a book I read and enjoyed many years ago. As it turns out, Stoll left behind the world of computer counter-espionage more than 15 years ago and turned to making Klein bottles.

Stoll was quirky, enthusiastic and funny. You would never expect Klein bottles to be as entertaining as they are, when presented as a product by Stoll, who not only makes and sells Klein bottles, but also klein glasses and klein hats as well. You don’t know it, but you need a Klein bottle or Klein-bottle-like product in your life, especially if you love theoretical mathematics.

The event ended, or rather, it turned into what I had anticipated it to be in the first place: a general mingling of those who enjoy Martin Gardneresque things. Neil finally had a chance to talk to his mentor, Bill Gosper, about the project he’d just finished: a program for calculating the continued fractions of Pi. I spoke to Stoll, who told me he’d deliberately taken a turn not be stereotyped forever as the counter-cyberspy, no matter how cool that had been. I sensed he’s not going to be the Klein bottle guy for the rest of his life either, but I have no idea what turn he’ll take next. I thanked Stan Isaacs for putting together the event and asked him about the Martin Gardner archive he’s putting together at Stanford. While Neil hobnobbed with his friends, I hung out. There were several people from the Stanford math circle who’d come, including this boy, who had a go at all the puzzles awaiting solution:

I’d accomplished my stalking, Neil had announced his success, and we headed home. I hope the Stanford alumni had a good enough time at their party, too.