We had to put my dog Billy to sleep two weeks ago on Tuesday, December 18. I haven’t been able to write about until now — and, really, I’m not able to write about it yet — but I wanted to mark his passing here before the year passed with him.

We had him for so long that I don’t know exactly how long it was. Billy was a part of our family for longer than Beth and I have been married. We got married in June of ’95 and I think he was still our “new” dog during the Northridge earthquake back in ’94, so he was with us for at least 14 years. That’s a long time no matter what species’ clock you’re using.

Billy was a really good boy, but he did have his idiosyncrasies. He was not a brave dog, for example. He may have been at one time, but the Northridge quake changed all that. That earthquake really did a number on him, totally scrambled his brains. Everything scared him after that. I can remember one time when a drawing Zoe had done at school that we had taped to the refrigerator came loose and slowly wafted to the floor like a leaf on the wind. That paper scared the ever-loving shit out of Billy and he ran as fast as he could to get away from it. Unfortunately, he was on the hardwood floor when this happened, so he ended up running in place like Scooby Doo, claws skittering on the floor as he scrambled madly away from the dangerous toddler crayon artwork, going nowhere fast.

He wasn’t terribly bright, either. He and Suki (another of our dogs) got out of the yard one day and disappeared for several hours. Suki finally showed up at dinnertime, but Billy didn’t come back. So I went out looking for him, riding my bike all through our neighborhood, certain that I was going to find his dead body in the gutter of one of the busy streets surrounding our neighborhood. When I didn’t find him I went to the local animal shelter to see if he was there. And sure enough, there he was, looking sheepish and forlorn and, yes, scared in one of the kennels there.

I didn’t take him home right away, though. You see, I had gotten Billy from the dog pound in the first place, so I sat down there on the ground outside his kennel and we had a little talk about where he wanted to live. I reminded him that I had rescued him from the pound once — and spent quite a bit of money doing so — and now here he was back at the pound again. So he had a decision to make: live with me, or keep coming back to the pound? Because him leaving my perfectly good home to come back to the dog pound made me wonder if he really wanted to stay with us. We sat there and I waited while he thought about it, and I guess he decided he wanted to come home with me because he gave me a Ha ha, really funny, make jokes while I’m in jail, can we just go home now? kind of look. So I bailed him out and took him home again.

Billy also had a particularly disgusting eating habit – his favorite bed-time snack was cat poop. Every night as we were closing the house up for the night, his last stop before lying down on the floor on my side of the bed was at the catbox, where he would root around looking for what we called “kitty truffles.” He’d clean the catbox for us, and then curl up next to the bed with kitty litter still stuck to his nose. He absolutely loved cat shit.

But Billy was getting really old, and the vet thought he probably had liver cancer, and he had really bad arthritis and was always in pain. By the end he’d gotten so bad that he could barely walk and he couldn’t stand up on his own at all. We have hardwood floors through about half the house and he simply could not navigate them at all — he’d slip and fall down and then couldn’t get up. We put carpet runners down to help him with the traction, but he needed our help getting up at the end — he’d just lie there and bark until someone came and picked him up, and then he’d totter off a few steps and fall down again half the time. He simply couldn’t get around on his own anymore, so we knew it was time.

Our vet agreed to come to the house so he wouldn’t have to go through the stress of going to the vet’s office — something that always gave him a lot of stress. We spent our last evening with him pampering him and loving him and cherishing our last moments with him, and we took the pictures below with him that night. When the vet came we all surrounded him and held him and petted him as he went to sleep for the last time. I think he felt safe and loved at the end. I hope he did.

His ashes came back from the pet crematory on Friday, so Billy’s home again. We miss him a lot.

I got “Merry Christmas”ed today — and not in a nice way. I was on the bike at the local mall, navigating my way through the maze of idiot drivers on my way out of the parking lot. As I approached an intersection of sorts where pedestrians were leaving the store and crossing in to the parking lot and cars entering the lot were trying to turn left down one of the parking lot lanes, there were a couple of guys directing traffic.

Unfortunately, they weren’t exactly working as a team.

As Parking Monkey #1 stopped traffic and motioned me to proceed forward, Parking Monkey #2 waved a car to go ahead and turn left — directly in my path. I stopped and waved the car through.

I said to PM1, “You guys need to get on the same page.”

PM1 ignores me, again stops traffic and waves me forward again, and this time PM2 waves a pedestrian across — directly in my path. I stopped and waved the pedestrian through. Then I just sat there until I had both PMs looking at me and said “Are you ready for me yet?”

PM1 waves me through, I start rolling, and — you guessed it — PM2 starts waving another left-turning car through. What an idiot. I gunned it and cut the car off, and as I passed PM2 I said “You need to pay attention to what he’s (PM1) doing.”

Both of them called after me in unison, “Merry Christmas, sir!!!” and it was pretty obvious that they were using it as a euphemism for “Fuck off, you asshole.”

Nice.

So with that in mind… Merry Christmas to all two or three of my readers. Watch out for parking monkeys in the new year.

The Writer’s Guild is on strike, as anyone who pays even passing attention to the entertainment industry knows. Being a (struggling) writer myself, I am 100% behind the WGA and I’d be on the picket line with them if I were a member. But being that I live here in L.A., I’m in an uncomfortable position.

On the one hand, I fully support the writers. On the other hand, though, quite a few of my friends work on several TV shows as cast or crew or drivers, and they’re going to be out of work when the town shuts down. Most of them can’t afford to be out of work.

On a related note, I can’t afford to be out of work. But I also don’t want to cross the WGA’s picket lines. That’s not going to be an issue for me most of the time, since I do most of my training at various business units not involved with production, but it will be an issue occasionally. Like tomorrow, when I’m scheduled to train on the studio’s lot, which is currently being picketed by 100+ writers.

I’ve worked it out with my boss, at least temporarily. A co-worker else is taking my classes on the lot for me tomorrow while I work back at the office, so I won’t have to cross the picket line. But the longer the strike goes on the more this is going to come up for me, and I think the more it comes up the less accomodating my boss is going to be. This is a very temporary solution, but at least it’s a solution for now.

Go, WGA.

Today is my birthday; I just turned 44. For my birthday, I have:

1) Been laid off from my job last Wednesday morning. I was given absolutely no notice that it was coming. And after being there for more than a year, I got quite the princely severance package: They paid me through the end of the pay period. Wow. Four whole days. And only part of the accrued PTO they owed me. And they made sure they dinged me for half a day of sick time for going home early on Monday. The management of that company most certainly are a class act.

2) A new motorcycle I don’t know how I’m going to pay for. I bought my new bike 10 days before I got laid off. The asshats in Item #1 all knew I was planning to buy this new motorcycle even as they knew they were planning to cut me loose. Nobody even hinted that this might not be the right time for me to be making major purchases. Nothin’ but class…

3) Absolutely no prospects for a new job and no idea when or where or how I’ll find a new one. What I do know is that I’m fucking sick to death of having to find a new fucking job every fucking year.

So happy fucking birthday to me. I’m not quite as bitter as I seem here, but I do definitely want The Universe to get the message loud and clear that It can kiss my hairy white ass.

And I’m turning comments off on this entry because I don’t want to hear it from any of you. You don’t have to kiss it, but I’d rather you didn’t send me any inspirational or sympathetic crap that I’ll feel duty-bound to respond to, either. Just hold those warm fuzzies in your heart — and keep them to yourself. Seriously, I mean it.

I went over to my old buddy Steve’s house yesterday to help him out with setting up his new podcast, The Membrane. It’s really good stuff, I recommend it highly. He only has one episode up so far, but it’s really well done and has that certain… Steve-ness about it that made Evaporation so great. This is going to be one to listen to, I guarantee.

Anyway, while I was over there, Steve played for me the sound file he’s been using as his email notification alert. He was over here at my house awhile back, recording interviews with me and Beth to use on The Membrane, and he got a little bit of me in the background while he was interviewing Beth, which is what he’s using for the email. I think email is not a happy thing for El Steve.

Check it out: Steve’s got mail.

My new superhero name is Justice Man, because I’ve been on jury duty for the past week, and every morning as I left for court Beth would tell me, “Have a nice day, honey. Do justice!” And justice I did. Because I am … Justice Man!!!

I reported for jury service last Monday, along with a couple hundred other jury pool losers. (Star sighting: Janel Moloney (Donna Moss) of West Wing was there too, only I don’t know if she was picked for a jury. She probably played her Hollywood Celeb card and skated.) Me and about 30 other schmoes were rounded up and sent to one of the courtrooms, and by the end of the day 12 of us were on the jury (I was #12) and the attorneys were already doing opening statements.

The case I was on was a civil matter in the L.A. Superior Court. The parties were a landlord and a doctor who was renting office space. The doctor owed a buttload of back rent, and when the landlord sued him for it the doctor counter-sued them for $1.5 million in lost profits, alleged that the deteriorating state of the building led to him losing patients and thus the lost profits.

The opening statements. Oy… One attorney’s opening statement was straight out of a David E. Kelly drama, citing Buffalo Springfield’s For What It’s Worth and telling us that “There’s something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear — but you’ll know exactly what it is after I present my case.” Talk about cheesy. I almost groaned listening to it. It was a harbinger of things to come.

We heard testimony from the doctor and the landlord and other witnesses for the rest of the week and the case boiled down to these points:

• The doctor owed a metric buttload of back rent: $50,000+
• The building was slightly better than a slum: frequently broken elevators, hot air conditioning and cold heating, smelly corridors, gross bathrooms, drug dealers and buyers in the lobby — basically, your basic South-Central L.A. medical center.
• Fewer and fewer patients came to the doctor’s office over the years — he claimed it was because of the elevators and air conditioning and general poor condition of the building.
• Because his patient base was dropping, the doctor was seeking more than $1.5 million in lost profits
• The doctor claimed he “wanted” to pay his rent but didn’t because A) he didn’t feel he was obligated to because his lease was with the previous landlord, and B) the building was falling apart.
• The doctor claimed he’d been slandered when the landlord told one of the doctor’s employees that “You people are liars and you don’t pay your bills.”

Both sides rested on Friday, gave their final arguments this morning, and then me and my fellow jurors deliberated for about four hours until we reached our verdict this afternoon. Unfortunately for the doctor, we didn’t go for his story.

• We didn’t think he’d been slandered because he is a liar and he didn’t pay his bills — especially his rent
• We felt he didn’t pay rent not because of the building but because he was a scumbag — he was already waaaaaaaay behind on his rent when the landlord he was suing bought the building
• We felt the landlord was trying to maintain the building, because they produced dozens of work orders and checks documenting repairs to the HVAC and elevators, while the doctor couldn’t produce a copy of even a single complaint about the state of the building — but he did have copies of several letters begging for more time to pay his back rent. In fact, we figured the landlord would have spent even more money on the building if the doctor had paid his rent, because then they’d have been able to afford even more repairs.
• We felt the doctor gave probably-credible evidence of a decline in his patient visits, but produced nothing to tie that to the condition of the building. He said it was because of the building but didn’t give us anything to prove it. If he had produced even one patient saying “I stopped seeing him because of that,” well, we might have given him some money. But he didn’t. So we were left to speculate about why he might have been losing patients. My pet theory was that it was because they were dying because they were his patients and that’s why they weren’t coming back.

When we had finally voted on each of the issues before us and voted against the doctor on all of them, that’s the first time I felt kind of bad for him. Up until then, watching him in court and listening to him on the witness stand, I didn’t think very highly of him. I didn’t find him credible, I thought he was shady, I thought he was a good example of a bad doctor… I just basically didn’t believe him and didn’t like him and didn’t think he deserved a thing. But after we had decided to give him absolutely nothing and make him pay his back rent besides… Well, that’s when I felt kind of bad for him.

He had gone through all the run-up to the trial, spent money on attorney fees and expert witnesses, and basically had a lot of time and money and energy invested in this case. If he won, he was going to get a big payoff — he’d be able to wipe out his $50,000 back rent debt without paying it, and get upwards of $1,000,000 besides. But we were slapping him in the face and saying “No, no, no, and no,” and making him pony up the $50,000 too. So I felt badly for him.

When we delivered our verdict in open court, I felt even worse. He looked more and more hang-dog as the clerk read each verdict, and his head hung lower and lower. I really felt bad for the guy — his lottery ticket was a loser, and now he was on the hook for a bunch of money. I keep thinking of how he must feel at this exact moment, as I’m writing these words, sitting in his home somewhere and trying to figure out what he’s going to do next. He’s probably considering bankruptcy now, probably feeling like he’s at the end of his rope.

It humanizes him for me and I feel badly for the guy. But I don’t regret my decision, not even a little bit. I know that my fellow jurors and I did the right thing.

It’s not easy being Justice Man.

Sigh… I’m back from vacation. Our oddessey of sun and sand and scuba and Caribbean delights and delayed airline flights ended when we landed at LAX at 1:00 a.m. this morning. I was in Curaçao exactly 24 hours ago, but now I’m hip deep in the sewage of work and I am totally out of vacation mode already. And to make matters worse, I’m flying to San Jose, CA tonight.

From Curaçao to San Jose in a day and a half with just 4 and a half hours of sleep in my own bed in between. Talk about vacation whiplash…

I just got some spam offering me generic Cialis and Viagra “SOFT”.

I’m confused. Doesn’t that defeat the purpose?

Greetings from Norcross, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, just 15 miles from the cradle of the birthplace of the finest restaurant in all the land. Waffle House got its start just 15 miles from here. I’m so close, I can almost feel the grease afterbirth dripping off of me.

I celebrated my first night here by pulling over at Unit 828 for a meal of a Texas Cheesesteak sandwich plate with the hashbrowns scattered, smothered, covered, and chunked. (I passed up the “topped” because, good as it is, I just don’t have that much antacid with me this trip.) It was goooood.

My hotel is… eh. They “upgraded” my room, which I guess means I got a fireplace that doesn’t work. I also got two double beds instead of the king I always ask for, and a room on the ground floor instead of on a high floor like I always ask for (the better for “view from here” pictures, my dear). But there are nine Waffle Houses in a three mile radius, so ain’t nothin’ botherin’ me.

Here’s the view:

And here’s the room:

You see the chair in front of the fireplace? That chair tried to kill me last night. It’s a La-Z-Boy type chair, and I’m all about chairs that recline and prop my feet up for me. I’m so all about them that I reclined this one allllll the way back while I was on the phone with Zoe last night, and about a half-second after I was marveling over how far back this particular chair let me recline, I realized that the stupid thing was tipping over and I was “reclining” even further and faster on a trajectory that was going to land me right on top of my big fat pumpkin head with my ass in the air and my feet against the wall behind me. Which is exactly what happened.

Who says business travel isn’t exciting?

The crack was delivered to the office today: Girl Scout Cookies. Evil in a box.

I ordered: Do-Si-Dos – 2 boxes, Trefoils – 2 boxes, Samoas – 1 box. And because I’m an idiot who can’t fill out order forms right and accidentally ordered Trefoils instead of the beloved Thin Mints, now I’m trying to buy 2 boxes of Thin Mints from a co-worker who managed to order them correctly and might be willing to make a profit on her deal.

Five boxes of Girl Scout cookies are on my desk. Two more boxes may join them soon.  A fresh pot of coffee is brewing in the kitchen. Let the gorging begin.