And no one's gonna save you

A Halloween driving experience...

It is Halloween night, a little bit after 8:00. Darkness has fallen--which has not yet stopped trick-or-treating in my neighborhood. I have just made a quick stop at home; hurried due to the lack of candy in my place and the proximity of a group of 5-7 kids rushing to an across-the-street neighbor with a couple of escorting parents trailing behind.

I am driving down the 6-lane road near my house, headed back to a nearby mall to redeem a $10-off coupon on a shirt I found about an hour earlier (i.e. I'd gone home to get the coupon so I could head back to the store and have it applied to the purchase). My car is in the right-most of the three lanes of traffic, approaching a red light where three cars are already waiting in the lane I'm currently in. As I'm a good distance from the back of the closest car, as well as the intersection itself, I decide to move to the middle lane. I apply my turn signal and move over.

As I get a bit closer to the light, and have just come up next to the first of the cars, I spot two gentlemen (using that term lightly) jaywalking across the street. Now the fun: as I pass, one (and possible both) begin to yell at me to watch out for them. They are not in the lane of traffic I'm in--they are actually just entering the lane to the left of where I am. The front man is actually dark-skinned and wearing all black clothing; while the second is in dark (blue?) jeans and a white t-shirt--the latter is much easier to see than his buddy who is doing a good job blending into the night. They are also about 100 feet away from a crosswalk (at the light I've come to a stop at).

I have passed by them fine, and with a good clearance distance. They did need to pause their illicit street crossing, but they have made it to the sidewalk. And both have already flipped "the bird" at me, which I catch in my rearview mirror while sitting at the light. Also, before I leave the light, I hear the guy in the white t-shirt continuing to berate me from the sidewalk where they are walking forward toward (tah-dah!) the crosswalk.

The light changes to green and I get to drive off and leave them behind, before I'm compelled to teach them about how not to be a jaywalking idiot....

Was this a trick? Or a treat?


Cause it's a thriller
Thriller night
An no one's gonna save you
From the beast about to strike

Come Mr. DJ, song 'pon de replay; (Mr. DJ won't you turn the music up)

Following up on my calls from last Friday, I called Wells Fargo today to check and see if the payment I put in the mail last Wednesday (11/21) had been received. It has not. This has me a little concerned: it should not take more than a week for mail to get to Los Angeles from here in Fort Lauderdale.

In talking to the WF rep on the phone, he somewhat indicated that the payment may have been received in L.A. and then forwarded to South Carolina.... Now, I sent the payment in the self-addressed envelope included with my paperwork, which had an address in L.A. I am a bit concerned about this, as the letter accompanying this already-addressed envelope says to mail payments to an address in South Carolina.

So--based on today's call--apparently the envelope didn't have the correct address on it; rather the address in South Carolina listed in the paperwork is the right one. Ah fun.


In other news, my nights this week have been rather occupied:

• Monday night had a staff meeting (after hours: oh joy);
• Tuesday was dinner for a friend who's about to move to South Africa;
• last night (Wednesday) I was supposed to go see the new Michael Jackson movie This Is It, but plans fell through. Instead, I ended up watching the Russian movie Day Watch (which I enjoyed--it's actually the sequel to Night Watch, which I watched over the weekend and very much enjoyed).
• tonight, I ended up working late, then called WF, and have just purchased the book Night Watch (upon which the aforementioned movies are based). The cool part about my book purchase: I paid $4.23 for the $15 book, via a combination of a 40% off coupon and a $5 reward (thank you Borders Rewards).
• tomorrow night is when my trip to see This Is It has been rescheduled.

So, all-in-all, a busy week of nights.


Let the bass in the speakers, run through your sneakers
Move both your feet, and rock to the beat

How long has this been going on?

Ever wonder if the right hand talks to the left hand at some larger corporations? I had an incident today which made me think they weren't talking to each other at Wells Fargo.

Yesterday while eating my lunch, I got a call. As I was eating I didn't answer it, nor did they leave a message. However, once I'd finished eating, I called the number back: it was a collections call from WF. They called because the last payment I made on my mortgage was $300/so less than my normal monthly payment; and as such, my file was entering into loss mitigation.

Why did I pay $300 less? Because I'm in the trial period for my Making Home Affordable qualifying, and the paperwork for that says to pay the amount listed. This is what I've done. Unfortunately, I am the one that got to tell this part of WF that I'm in said-program, and that yes, there was a reason the payment was less.

After work, I decided to call one of the two numbers I have for WF related to my refinancing--the collection call didn't come from one of these two. The rep on the phone said I should pay the missing amount; that it would not effect my qualifying. He also suggested doing a check over the phone, rather than mailing in my check--the two payments options I have. I then asked him why I couldn't pay online, to which he responded that the system is not set up this way (which is strange, since to date, I've paid all my payments through my bank online, and isn't a check by phone basically the same thing?--but I'm following instructions of the paperwork). In any case, as I wasn't able to scope my bank account records while on the phone as I wasn't home--and I'm not terribly fond of paying over the phone in the manner--I declined to do a check over the phone then and postponed it to after I could get home and check on things (I also didn't have my checking account # handy).

So later last night, after I got home, I found my paperwork related to the MHA program. It says:

"If the trial period payments are made in amounts different from the amount stated your loan may not be modified." (their underlining)

So, I called the other WF number I have, to check on whether/not I should pay--and potentially do the phone pay for both the October & November differentials (as I sent in Nov's payment earlier in the week). The rep on the phone this time told me to not pay the missing amount... ahh, the fun.

So, I've decided to not pay the difference--per the mailed instructions I've received. And I'll check back next week sometime to see if they've gotten the new payment.


Kiss me once, then once more
What a dunce I was before
What a break, for heaven's sake
How long has this been going on?

I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha

The great achievement is to lose one's reason for no reason...

from Book 1, Chapter XXV of Don Quixote
(translation by Edith Grossman)

The above is a quote from Don Quixote, which I read yesterday on my flight back from Grand Rapids. The sentences around it are:
"Therein lies the virtue," responded Don Quixote, "and the excellence of my enterprise, for a knight errant deserves neither glory nor thanks if he goes mad for no reason. The great achievement is to lose one's reason for no reason, and to let my lady know that if I can do this without cause, what should I not do if there were cause?

A different translation--by Charles Jarvis--of the same passage is:
"There lies the point," answered Don Quixote, "and in this consists the refinement of my plan. A knight-errant who runs mad with just cause deserves no thanks; but to do so without reason is the point--giving my lady to understand what I should perform in the wet if I do this in the dry.

I like the former better....


I am I, Don Quixote, the Lord of La Mancha
My destiny calls and I go
And the wild winds of fortune, shall carry me onward
Oh whithersoever they blow

When I grow up...

A brief post today, of a recent Mother Goose & Grimm strip, as I head to GRR for a clinic in the Grand Rapids, Michigan, this weekend (I'm looking forward to cold weather). Enjoy.


When I grow up I'll be stable
When I grow up I'll turn the tables

We all laugh and we cry, don't we?

FREE DRAMA

the banner says. Centered, and in big, all-caps lettering on the sign's top line. Black lettering on grayish-white plastic.

Well, actually, it's

FREE DRAMA | FREE DRAMA

as there are two signs next to each other, draped across the curving form of a hot-air-balloon-shaped inflatable, the same height and yellow as a school bus. It was just blown-up about two blocks down the road from my office, tethered against natural breezes and the traffic-induced drafts from the 5-lane road off which it sits.

Both signs' second and third lines match:

FREE DRAMA

SUNDAY – THURSDAY
(and two times)

Friday and Saturday are free of "Free Drama": a welcomed 2-day break--although not completely effective amidst all the other drama that seems to enact itself on a daily basis in South Florida. The two days off appear well timed for the church on whose property the balloon sits.

But the question remains: is the church's message a philosophical statement, or simply just an ad for a play?


Just one psychological drama after another
You are guilty, and how you ever entered into this life
God only knows, the infinite complexities of love

Vous asseoir à ma table...

I'm in a local sandwich shop. It's after I've ordered my food but before it has arrived, and I'm sitting at a table reading Don Quixote while awaiting my sandwich. The table I'm at is the closest to the cash register where one orders, and has 4 individual seats at it--3 of which are empty.

I am in the midst of reading my book, looking down at it, when I hear a nearby chair move. I look up to find that a woman has sat down at the table I'm at--my table--across from me--not directly across, but across and over. She has not said hello, nor does she even talk or acknowledge I'm there. I presume she has chosen the seat as it's the closest to the register, and the group she's come in with (what looks like her 3 daughters and a granddaughter) are at the register ordering. The daughters also order for her.

Now, there is another table equally close to the register as the one "we" are now sitting at, that no one is at. It is piled high with recently delivered Frito-Lay boxes, making eating at it impossible (and likewise seeing around it). But, like the table I'm at, there are empty chairs at it--4 actually: one more than mine. As my interloper's silence continues, I wonder why she has not chosen one of those chairs, if all she wants to do is sit (and not stand while ordering). Why the social order/protocol breech of sitting at a table where someone is that you don't know? Particularly when all the other tables in the place are empty?

The strangeness continues as one of the daughters and the granddaughter sit down at the table behind me. This is further compounded when the first part of their (to-go) order arrives, and the other two daughters take seats at the table behind me, leaving grandma with me and in our silence.

The situation continues until the other half of their order arrives, and they leave... with grandma getting up without so much as a goodbye and with her leaving the chair pushed out from the table where she had moved it to sit down.


Allez venez Milord
Vous asseoir à ma table

It seems like everywhere I go The more I see the less I know

Things that have come to my attention this week since my return:

• Michael Franti & Spearhead's Say Hey (I Love You), the video for which was filmed/is set in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• Coincidentally, Rio was elected to host the 2016 Olympics on Friday. Interestingly the IOC mentioned wanting to recognize South America, even though for IOC-sport related purpose, South America is part of "the Americas" (and not a separately-recognized entity from North America). (The IOC also picked last week to relaunch its website, moving everything from where it could be found to someplace "easier" to find it... course one now has to find it again. As I haven't located the announcement on its website, no link is here.)
• and an interesting observation/quote:
  

  "To think, in non-Olympic years, swimming is normally as visible to the American public as Pluto."
  (FINA--the international federation that oversees swimming--decided to re-post the USA Today article that had this.)
  

Which reminds me, TIME had an article on Rio a week/so ago about the city's 2016 bid (entitled "Can Brazil's Rio Handle the 2016 Summer Olympics?"), connecting it to its 2007 hosting of the Pan American Games....


I say hey... I'll be goin' today
But I'll be back from around the way

Let me hear you sing once more, like you did before; Sing a new song Chiquitita

ABBA's Chiquitita was stuck in my head (or, rather, 2 lines of it) as I awaited my delayed departure from the Houston airport today. This caused me to listen to it a few times while awaiting the flight and reading my current book, Muriel Barbery's The Elegance of the Hedgehog. (Though the two quotes below are actually from the parts I read after getting on the plane and while seated in the exit row on said delayed flight back to Fort Lauderdale.)

First, a haiku (with it's syllable count presumably lost when translated from the original French into English) from the book:

Who presumes
To make honey
Without sharing the bee's fate?

Second, a passage (from p.192):

....And secondly, a teenager who pretends to be an adult is still a teenager. If you imagine that getting high at a party and sleeping around is going to propel you into a state of full adulthood, that's like thinking that dressing up as an Indian is going to make you an Indian. And thirdly, it's a really weird way of looking at life to want to become an adult by imitating everything that is most catastrophic about adulthood...

And with that, and the fact that my plane came in an hour late and I've only got a wee bit more to read in the book, I will leave you for tonight.


Chiquitita, you and I know...
How the heartaches come and they go, and the scars they're leaving...
You'll be dancing once again, and the pain will end...

I have a dream, a song to sing

Greetings from San Antonio, where I am now after a very early wake-up and flight this morning (and thank you Heidi for the 5 a.m. ride to the airport). I am back in SA so quickly after my visit just a month ago, due to one of my friend's getting married tomorrow. As an added bonus, it appears I also will get to drag take my mom to see the musical Mamma Mia!, which happens to be in town this week.

This should help get out of my head the musical's "book-end" song (at the beginning and end), I Have a Dream, which has been stuck there since a friend of mine used the line in an email the other day. That, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech. But I must get ready for dinner at Pappasito's... and then on to the theater!


If you see the wonder, of a fairy tale
You can take the future, even if you fail