Bertha

Anectode Seen on Pandagon

General Comments Off

Sep 082010

From the “If It Ain’t True, It Should Be” file, as seen on pandagon.net:

Back in 1985, I was flying back from London to Newark when one of the engines had a problem and the plane had to return to Gatwick. We had a choice of hotel or voucher, I chose a voucher because I was staying with friends—who had taken vacation the day I left. So, I didn’t get much sleep and arrived home 24 hours late.

I rolled through a stop line in the Newark airport parking lot, and was pulled over by a port authority cop. He asked for license and registration. I handed over the license looked for the registration. He went to write two tickets, one for failure to stop, and one for failure to present registration. When he came back I had the registration in hand. He refused to take it, saying I had to show it to a judge. I refused to accept the ticket, so he wrote me up for resisting arrest, at which point, I said, “You’re a cock-sucking mother-fucker.” At that point, we went to the Newark municipal court.

The cop told his story, and I told mine. (Keep in mind, this is a judge who is usually adjudicating serious felonies, not traffic offenses.) The judge said, under NJ law, you can present the registration at any time during the stop, and dismissed that ticket. He then said that under New Jersey law, it is not illegal to resist an illegal arrest, and dismissed that. Then he said, “Under the circumstances in question, the defendant’s description of the police officer in question was accurate.” I was given $10 for court costs and all was dismissed.

Putting Kids to Work

Breeder's Corner, General Comments Off

Sep 062010

The Artist didn’t do well his second semester in college.

He’s not the most forthcoming individual, but over the course of time we managed to glean that he wasn’t sure if architecture was the career he really wanted. He isn’t sure what he wants to do—he’s expressed interest in graphic arts, or astronomy.

Personally, I think he wouldn’t enjoy astronomy; I don’t think he realizes how much math is involved. Math is not his strong subject.

As the fall semester approached, his father suggested he sign up for three or four 100-level classes in subjects he thought looked interesting. That way he could get an idea of what they involved, and which one he might actually enjoy doing.

The Artist hemmed and hawed, and procrastinated, and by the time he got around to signing up for classes they were all full. He was waitlisted for every single one of them, and none opened up. With the economy in the toilet many people are going back to college, and the 100-level classes in particular fill up fast.

So he spent a few weeks flopping around the house. He slept all day, and stayed up all night playing video games. I would ask him to do something to help out, like mow the grass, and it wouldn’t be done when I got home.

Eventually Alpha Geek and I laid it out for him. “When you’re a child,” we told him, “we’re both legally and morally obligated to provide you with food, and shelter, and basic necessities. Now that you’re an adult, we don’t have to give you these things. We’re willing to support you while you’re in school, but we’re not willing to support you so you can sleep all day and play computer games all night.”

Of course, he’d heard all this before. But now I brought out my little spreadsheet—an estimation of The Artist’s share of our living expenses. I used averages of our expenses over the last year, divided by three, just to give me some sort of number to work with. Alpha Geek said I was much nicer than he would have been—he would have used the going market rate for renting out a room.

But our purpose wasn’t to tell The Artist that was how much rent he owed us. Instead we used it to figure how much work he’d need to do around the house to earn his keep. Alpha Geek made up a time sheet for him to keep track of what he does and how many hours he spends doing it. I wrote out a list of general maintenance chores, just to get him started with ideas of things to do. And we agreed that if he does work over his weekly minimum, we’ll pay him.

We set all that up a couple of weeks ago. Frankly The Artist seems to like it. He’s got a clear understanding of what we want from him, he feels like he’s contributing to the household, and he gets a little spending money each week to boot. Our yard hasn’t looked this well-kept in years, and it’s nice coming home and finding someone else has unloaded the dishwasher. He’s even vacuumed once or twice.

Meanwhile, The Artist has been asking when registration for spring classes starts. He was pretty disappointed to have missed it this semester, but I think now he’s got a better understanding of why I was pushing him to get on the ball and sign up early.

Office Drama!

General Comments Off

Sep 012010

A new year is starting in churchland. The preschool classes are starting up again, the fall classes and activities are getting back into gear, the Wednesday night suppers will begin in a couple of weeks, students are signing up for the music lessons. And a whole new crop of people are rotating into the stewardship committee—the church equivalent to a board of a directors.

Both the people who oversee me are being replaced. Our new finance officer is the sort who jumps in and takes charge. She’s got a copy of the financial reports from the last stewardship meeting, and she e-mailed me a long list of questions about them. I spent last week, off and on, researching answers to those questions—I only started a month or so ago myself, so I’m still learning what went on before I got here. Many of them I had to ask Cricket about.

I didn’t mind it a bit; part of my job is, after all, explaining the financial reports. And answering all her questions gave me a better understanding of how everything was set up. Before I left Friday I e-mailed her with responses to all her questions. I expected I would hear about several of them again; they involve budget overruns that are going to merit some investigation.

And I did; Monday morning I got another e-mail from her, asking if she could come by on Thursday so we could go through the bills and insurance policies together. This time she copied the office manager, the associate pastor, and the new church treasurer on the e-mail.

Well. I’ve got nothing to hide in my office (other than confidential information about staff and church members), and normally I’d just remind her that I can’t stay past 1:00 on Thursdays because I have a class at two. But as I mentioned before, the new year is starting in churchland, and this week we’re swamped in the office. All those classes and programs and events require registration and records and bookkeeping of their various fees and tuitions. The end of the month brings its own set of tasks that must be attended to, including the newsletter that typically takes us a day or two to put together.

I didn’t have to say anything, though, because the next e-mail in my box was from the church treasurer. His opinion was that they should look over the questions and my answers at the next committee meeting, and put their heads together as a group before we start digging through the old bills.

After that I just sat back and watched the e-mails go by. There were only a couple more exchanges, and nobody got shrill or testy, but she was unmistakably frustrated at being balked in this manner. The last one I saw yesterday was from the treasurer, saying we had enough to do in the office and repeating his stance that further investigation could wait until the next committee meeting.

Today the office manager and I got another e-mail, just a brief, polite note that she wanted to make sure it was still okay to come by on Thursday. I observed that she did not copy the associate pastor or the treasurer this time.

Finally I got into the discussion again. I told her this week really won’t be good for the kind of intensive research we’ll need to do (particularly if she wants to go over the insurance policies), because of the aforementioned swampitude. I pointed out that we’re going to have to consult Cricket, and Cricket will be charging for her time, so we want to make the most of it and not try to do this when we’re distracted by other issues. And I offered to scan in the bills for some of the items in question so I could e-mail them to anyone who wanted to pore over them in detail. I also reinstated the associate pastor and the treasurer to the recipient list.

About an hour later the new treasurer phoned. “That was a good response!” he exclaimed.

“Wasn’t that diplomatic?” I replied. “I put a lot of thought into that one.”

We chatted a bit, he asked if I could send him a couple of reports, and we hung up.

It will be interesting to see what’s in my inbox tomorrow. I’m just way more entertained by this whole thing than I should be; I can’t wait to meet this lady.

Older Entries Newer Entries