Halloween Bat Baby

Too cute not to share, here's a pic of my nephew Gavin (a.k.a. Bat Baby) in his first Halloween costume.

Trick or treating - same rules apply

Beauty the wonder dog and I walked around the neighborhood this evening. We left the condo early but the time change with winter's approach meant it was dark and chilly, the perfect night for trick-or-treating. For some reason I expected the process would be done differently. Portland is quite large compared to the 12,000 people that comprised the town I grew up in. Surprisingly, in a comforting way, the same rules apply. Dark houses that appeared empty and lacked carved pumpkin adornments weren't participating in the dispersment of candy, while lit houses elaborately decorated with faux cobwebs eagerly awaited the knock at the door. Parents and children of all ages could be seen traveling from house to house, bags stuffed with corn syrup and chocolate concoctions knocking against their legs. Mixed with the crunch of dried leaves as we traipsed along, was the click of the door latch, the inward swoosh as the door opened, the chorus of "Trick or treat!" shouted by the kids, the mumbled "You're welcome," as the candy was distributed into the waiting receptacles, and the high-pitched, laced with excitement "Thank you!", followed by the pounding of little feet down the steps and onto the sidewalk that would lead them to the next Halloween adventure.

When I was younger the trick-or-treating my siblings and I did was completed in the one block of our neighborhood. Since many of the houses were where our friends lived, we could count on hitting them more than once to help boost our candy take for the night. I can remember, as we grew older, learning of one neighborhood in particular where the houses gave out full-sized candy bars. That was a good year. The process was always the same, get dressed, go trick-or-treating, return home, assess the candy haul. This was done by dumping all of the candy in the bag/bucket/etc. onto the living room floor. I would separate each type of candy into piles - separate but equal piles, except for the candy that I didn't like (e.g., Mounds, Almond Joy, Mr. Goodbar) which I would try to trade with my younger brother and sister or pawn off on my dad. So next year, we're definitely going to have to consider dressing up, even if our costumes end up being something lame like college students, because getting free candy from strangers is awesome.

55 days until Christmas

A new month, a new banner. And it should be noted by all of you folks celebrating Christmas that there are just 55 days left until Christmas and a short 54 shopping days to get all of those presents bought, wrapped, and placed under the tree or otherwise delivered to the recipients. And now, introducing the November banner featuring Darr and Beauty the wonder dog.

Happy Halloween!

The Departed

Darr and I caught this movie last night and it is excellent. Nicholson is hilarious and scary, Marky Mark has the worst hair ever, Damon is at his sleazy best, and DiCaprio is awesome (you'll totally forget his performance in Titanic - which works to your advantage if you're a person who hates that movie). It's an impressive display of mafia testosterone, definitely one for the dvd library.

Vacation books

These are the books I read on vacation:

Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
Getting Stoned with Savages
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

We liked the Gregory Maquire books so much we bought two more of them at Costco the other day (Son of a Witch and Mirror Mirror). We also got The Sea (winner of the Man Booker Prize), Running with Scissors (the movie opens this weekend), An Inconvenient Truth, and America (The Book) Teacher's Edition: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction, which promises to be another favorite at la maison de Gilroy Glynn. Now I want to go to Powells and do some more novel shopping. I fear I've got book fever.

A package arrives

"The Tivo is here. The Tivo is here."

Sirius - Howard Stern Free Trial

Sirius and Howard Stern are running a two-day free trial promo of their latest service - Sirius internet radio. Gone are the days when you are stuck in your cube in the middle of a metal fortress (i.e., the office) unable to get the satellite feed without buying a second (or third) radio for your desk. Now, you can log on to Sirious and hear all Howard, all the time. It's fabulous! Tomorrow they are doing a roast for Gary - don't miss it. Because they actually have free speech over there, you can bet the commentators will have more to say than just teeth and monkey jokes. Click here to register and listen to good adult entertainment, Robospanker and all.

Why I'll be out of style for a while

Yeah, it can be argued I am never really fashionable. But now that skinny jeans are on their way back into the stores, I will definitely be unfashionable for the foreseeable future. I am in the process of buying enough boot cut jeans to weather the skinny jean storm. Want to know why? Because skinny jeans suck for anyone who is over a size 2, and even some of those skinny ladies can't pull them off. Skinny jeans just aren't made for people that have things like thighs and hips. Check out the following photo. The lady on the left is wearing the dreadful skinny jeans. Even though she is clearly thin, the jeans make her hips look particularly humungous because the cut drives the eye from the smallest to largest area. The girl on the right has got on the comfortable boot cut. The semi-tight on the upper leg, widened at the bottom pant leg jean elongates the leg and minimizes, rather than maximizes, the hips and thighs region. Still don't see it? Try looking at the photo while allowing your eyes to go a wee bit blurry. Boot cut girl is in proportion while the only thing you see on skinny jeans lady are the hips and thighs. And she's skinny. Put those jeans on someone who actually has hips and thighs and you're in for a world of hurt. So yeah, I won't be buying those jeans, unless I suddenly drop into the Karen Carpenter weight zone.

How I'm voting in the general election: Part 2

Answer: Democrat.

How I'm voting in the general election: Part 1

I received the first of two voters' pamphlets in the mail the other day and tonight Darr and I went through and it and discussed the measures. Darr isn't a citizen so he can't vote but I appreciate hearing his opinions when it comes to these things. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. Here's how I'm voting. I'm open to debate if anyone takes issue with how I'm choosing to spend my valuable votes.

Ballot Title
39 (government buying private land to convey to another private party) - Yes
40 (judges elected by district) - No
41 (income tax deduction) - No
42 (insurance companies using credit scores to determine rates) - Yes
43 (minor needs parental consent for abortion) - No
44 (prescription drug company) - No
45 (term limits) - No
46 (laws regarding campaign finance) - No
47 (campaign finance) - No
48 (limit for state spending) - No

A win for the little guy

I submitted my first wage claim earlier this year when an ex-employer refused to correct a mistake on my paycheck. I had gone home sick one day and instead of paying me for the missed time using accrued sick time, they paid me out of my accrued vacation account. (At this company they didn't combine sick and vacation time.) I e-mailed my superior to ask him to fix this and received a reply that he had considered my request for sick leave benefits for the afternoon of <insert date here> and had determined that "it would not be granted". Um, what? Isn't that why we have sick time? I had over 20 hours of sick time available, more than enough to pay me for the four hours I missed when I went home early because I was feeling ill. So I thought about it and began to wonder if what had happened was correct. And that's when I consulted BOLI - the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries.

Now you might be thinking, why not just let it go? I did consider this option. But it seemed grossly unfair to me that a decision like this could be made. Surprisingly enough as I never get fired up about anything <insert sarcasm here>, I got fired up about this. I gathered my information and submitted a formal complaint with BOLI. Months passed and I began to suspect that my complaint was either never received at their offices or the investigation was concluded in the company's favor. Imagine my surprise when a few days ago I received a check in the mail.

Now I don't know what to do with the check. There is a small part of me that wants to send it directly back to the company with a note attached stating: "It was never about the money." And then there is the part of me that likes to shop and wants to use the money to buy a new pair of shoes.

Score:
Corporate America 0
Little Guy 1

I'm Jamaican?

You know that old SNL skit where they make fun of Jamaicans having multiple jobs? Yeah, that's me. I currently have two contract jobs (one requiring 40 hours per week, the other 20), one weekly retail job (4 hours per week), and one side job acting as a web coordinator (approximately 2 hours per week). 62 hours per week isn't all that bad, until you factor in drive time and general household upkeep. As a result, I find I'm somewhat cranky and have a strong yearning for some serious me time, which I will get plenty of next month when Darr travels to San Jose and Japan for work. While he's gone, I can add care for Beaut the wonder dog to my list of duties. Who needs to sleep anyway?

Sifting through memories

Darr, Beauty the wonder dog, and I went over to Darr's dad's house last night for dinner and to help sift through and select pictures for a slideshow that we're creating for David's service next weekend. It's sort of weird that so many of the photos they have remind me of similar photos my own family has of us kids growing up. I guess I expected there would be some drastically different look because they are from another country. Turns out growing up in downtown Canada isn't all that different from growing up in the states. Although they moved down here when David was ten so a good portion of their childhood was spent here. Anyway, here's a pic of Dave with his big brother Darren.

Thanks

We want to thank everyone for the phone calls, e-mails, flowers, and notes of condolence received over the past week. We expect Life at the condo to return to normal soon.

News

Darr's brother David passed away early Saturday morning. He contracted a rare infection known as necrotizing fasciitis caused by the streptococcus bacteria. I had to look this up to better understand what it means. Wikipedia explains necrotizing fasciitis as follows:

Necrotizing fasciitis...commonly known as "flesh-eating bacteria", is a rare infection of the deeper layers of skin and subcutaneous tissues...The bacteria do not actually eat the tissue. They cause the destruction of skin and muscle by releasing toxins...Patients with necrotizing fasciitis typically have a fever and appear very ill. More severe cases progress within hours...This disease is one of the fastest-spreading infections known. Even with top-notch care today, the prognosis can be bleak, with a mortality rate of around 20 percent.

The Centers for Disease Control(CDC) reports there are approximately 9,400 cases of group A streptococcal disease per year, and that 600 of those are necrotizing fasciitis.

Darr and his dad were about an hour east of Vancouver, B.C., on their way to visit relatives in Kelowna, Canada, (it's Canada's Thanksgiving weekend) Friday evening when I received the call from Darr's mom that Dave was in the hospital. They immediately turned around and headed to the hospital. We later learned that a call had been placed to 9-1-1 when a passerby noticed Dave was unconscious on a bench somewhere in the city. He regained consciousness at the hospital long enough to give the nurses his mom's phone number. When Darr and Jim arrived the prognosis was not good. Doctors performed two surgeries over the course of several hours but Dave was too unstable to be moved from the operating room to ICU for some time. He did not regain consciousness. I made arrangements with my brother to come and get Beauty and left Portland around 11:30pm. Dave died shortly before I arrived at the hospital around 4am. He was 31 years old.

A service for Dave will be held in two weeks.

Monthly banner

If you haven't started your Christmas shopping, now would be a good time to do so. We've already hit October kids. The leaves are turning color, it's getting dark earlier, and there is a nip in the air that promises a winter filled with snow sports.

A shot upon entering

Darr and I attended a party over in Oregon City (thank Sharon and Richard!) and learned a great way to kick off a party - require all who enter to take an initial shot. With booze lined up on top of the kitchen cabinets and along the kitchen counter, we certainly had a fine selection to choose from. (We went with DeKuyper's Pucker Island Blue Schnapps. Yum.) I lost count after awhile, which could account for the near puking-in-the-Cooper incident on our way home. (Note to self - When you've lost count of your drinks, you've drunk too much.) I'm proud to say any vomit that was making its way up never made its way out. <insert gag reflex here> Sick.

We had a fabulous time and hope we did nothing to embarrass ourselves to the extent we are never invited back. I even made friends with our host's cats who I know only as "the lover" and "psycho cat". A weird moment came when I recognized one of the partygoers as a guy we had interviewed at my last job. Even more strange, we discovered in the midst of conversation that his wife works with Darr's best friend's dad at Tektronix. How crazy is that?! The world can feel surprisingly small sometimes.