Yeah, continuing in the vein of sparse entries... sorry 'bout that. Pretty soon I'll be back to having plenty of time to bore my half-dozen devoted readers with regularly updated trivialities.

In the mean time, a couple of quick items... just because I'm sick of seeing the name pop up in our "most popular search terms" list, I've gone back and edited the names in my entry about the V@n D@m child murder case.

I will say that I am very satisfied with the verdict handed out by the jury last week in this case, and I will feel justice has been done the day D@vid Westerf!eld is strapped to a gurney and pumped full of potassium chloride. How anyone - anyone - could look at all of the evidence and NOT think this bastard did exactly what he's been convicted of is beyond me... but apparently there are a core group of conspiracy hounds out there that are just certain the guy's been railroaded and that the parents are actually culpable in some fashion, despite so much as a shred of evidence to support their view (as opposed to, say, the girl's BLOOD in Westerf!eld's RV and on the clothes he was so desperate to get cleaned, her hair in his bedsheets, his erratic flight out of town that weekend, his prediliction for kiddie bondage porn... Hello???). These people are offended by the parents, so they are determined to judge them guilty for their child's death, even though the only way of supporting that conclusion involves a series of ridiculously weak assumptions (Dan!elle's hair and blood got into Westerf!ield's home because he was having an affair with her mother - yeah! And she killed the kid and framed him for it, knowing that he wouldn't disclose the affair even if he was facing the death penalty for a crime he didn't commit! Or wait - the dad killed her, then snuck out to his neighbor's home and planted his daughter's blood, prints and hair in DW's RV and on his clothes! The wily sod!) These people should be introduced to the principle of Occam's Razor... which per Merriam Webster can be interpreted as saying that "explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities." These folks can indulge in wild speculation all they like, but the available facts all point in a single direction... and thankfully, the jury agreed.

Anyway, in other news, my folks made it to my house just fine, of course. We've had a nice few days of visiting, shopping, horse racing (War Emblem, Schmar Emblem - that nag surely didn't live up to the hype in yesterday's race!), etc. I have high hopes that the rest of the visit, as well as their trip back, will be equally copacetic. And then I'm looking forward to a long period of down time this fall with nothing, just nothing, going on... =)

So my parents are driving from Oregon to San Diego for a visit. Why they chose to drive still kind of eludes me, but I admire their spunk. (Dad's nearly 70, though he doesn't look it). They made it all the way to Bakersfield, 3 hours north of here - but today they were facing the brutal traffic of L.A. Coming from Klamath Falls (population 45,000) "heavy traffic" to them is a 5-car line at the red light. The mass of cars and the typical aggressive California Method of driving makes them really tense when I drive them around here (and no, it's not my driving making them tense, thank you! I'm very gentle when they're in the car... well, as much as you can be on a busy highway if you don't want people flipping you off for being pokey).

So thinking of my tiny folks navigating the rush hour madness of smell-A today makes me twitchy... Especially since they have not called yet to tell me where they are or what their E.T.A. is. They talked to Bill last night, not me, so I didn't get to inundate them with the barrage of questions I had regarding their travel plans. They have a cell phone, but I don't have the number, and I strongly suspect that, conservative types that they are, they will not have kept it powered on anyway, not wanting to "waste the battery". So I'm in parental location blackout, and it's bugging the crap out of me. My folks are younger than their years and very capable of taking care of themselves... but I still can't shake visions of them, like, taking a wrong turn and getting lost out in the desert and dying of dehydration. That happened to an older couple not too far back. OK, so that couple was probably a good decade older than my folks are, and apparently not playing with a full deck to begin with, but still... I guess it's true that there comes a point in your relationship with your folks where you start to be the one getting all over-protective and fretting. Kind of a strange phenomenon, and not very fun.

Anyway, as an outlet to my angst, I sent Bill some haikus on the topic. They are as follows:

O, tiny parents,
Adrift on SoCal highways -
Avoid the desert!

Worries mount when folks
Are incommunicado -
Use that darned cell phone!

Amber Alert! Two
Wee folks lost in L.A.... Kids?
Well, no... just tourists...

But I'm sure they'll be juuuuuuuust fine. Right?

Sure!

Lordy, I have been busy as one beaver lately. My intent is to do an entry about the ASD show experience, but I just haven't had a chance to sit down and knock it out yet. So mostly, I'm just writing to say, "Sorry I haven't written!", and my grand plan is to catch up very soon…

This week, the visitations continue, but from an alternate perspective - people are coming to see us this round. Our friend Todd is staying with us tonight - he's in town for a job interview. My brother Thom is in town for a meeting and will hopefully swing by in the evening. Then, on Thursday, my parents are driving down to spend a few days. The Casa Del Rhodes door is a revolving one this week!

Happy news - Bill has been offered and accepted a permanent position at UCSD today - happy happy joy joy! It's so great to have it all settled. Yay for Wee!!

Press "1" for Satan
I cradle the phone receiver between my cheek and shoulder and stare out the window, suspended in aural purgatory. The lulling church-organ refrain of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" threatens to degrade my usual mid-afternoon energy deficit into a full-blown nod-off. My mouth tastes of old bad coffee, so I take a sip from the plastic Arrowhead bottle I've refilled with allegedly filtered water from the tiny spigot in the break room. The fact that this spigot tends to get crusted with mineral deposits makes me suspicious as to the actual amount of filtering taking place, but it still seems marginally better than tap water; the flat, tepid taste is my penance for forgetting to replenish the private stash I usually keep at my desk.

Outside, the grey haze of morning has finally burned off into a nice late-summer blue sky. There's a slight breeze, which I imagine is fresh and warm, although I wouldn't know since I haven't been outside since 8 a.m. In here, the air conditioning is cranking up for its afternoon rally, so that by quitting time the ambient temperature will be hovering right around meat-locker level. Rays of sunlight glance off the row of cheap import cars in the parking lot and, despite their tint and lack of recent washing, the office windows do little to keep the glare from lancing my protesting retinas. Dark splotches like sugar ants begin to march across my line of sight.

I wonder how many months' worth of time I've spent sitting on hold in my career to date. I figure it out. Average 3 minutes per session, 5 instances a day; 5 days a week, 52 weeks per year, 8 years as a buyer. 124,800 minutes. 2,080 hours. 87 days. About two and a half solid months' worth of cheesy droning hold music or overly chipper promotional spiels. Jumpin' Jesus. My call had better bloody well be important to them.

I hear faint sounds of pounded metal from the construction site behind our building. Suddenly, the construction industry sounds oddly appealing. The last scene of "Office Space" flashes into my mind. Work outside, make decent money, get some fresh air and exercise... and you never, ever have to listen to Musak. In the words of Peter Gibbons, "Fuckin' A."