Gecko Bloggle

Sorry about last night’s cryptic and depressing post.  Had to process a little before I could express it at all.

Quick Version: Someone “found” Arwen’s wallet and cel phone last night, and figured they were going to get rich quick by returning it.  I’m not rich.  If I’m feeling played, the game is over.

Long Version: Arwen was out at a board thing, and I was expecting her to head home around 9.  9:05, phone rang, her cel.  Not-Arwen on the phone said she’d found Arwen’s wallet and phone, and that she was going to head downtown and we could come pick it up (we used to live downtown, and the address on the photo ID would show us being there still.)  Told her we were nearby, and that I could get into a car and come down there, and that I’d pay for a cab downtown for her or something, and then there was a pause.

A long pause.

“This phone’s worth a lot, y’know.  And all this ID would cost hundreds of dollars to replace.  Most people wouldn’t do this.  I could have just kept this.”

My alarm bells went off, and I wondered where Arwen really was – was she okay, had she been mugged and left in an alley somewhere by one of this person’s “friends.”

I ended up waking the kids and hauling them in the car to the Marine Skytrain station literally five minutes later, and getting into a shouting match with an addict who was convinced that she was owed $100 or more for not stealing the phone and wallet she “found on a side street.”  I gave her the $20 I had in my wallet, and after some more guilt-laden back and forth about how most people wouldn’t have called, I finally just said

“Actually lots of people would call.  Lots of people do, and when they do, they don’t ask for MORE money right away – they know they did a good thing today, and they’re happy with whatever they might get.  Look, here’s what’s going to happen, I’m going to take my wife’s phone and wallet back, and you’re going to take this $20 and we’re done.  That’s it, there’s no more money.”

“But I could sell that phone for-”

I took the wallet and phone out of her hands.

“I make a phone call, and this goes from ‘returning a wallet’ to theft and possession of stolen goods.  You want more money, and I don’t have it.  Sorry, but we’re done here.”

“Phone your wife, and see if she has any-”

I held up Arwen’s phone.  “And how am I going to do THAT?”

“Well, she’s probably home by now.”

Again, alarm bells went off in my head “Why would you think that?  If you know where she is, you’d better say so right now.  If not, I’m taking my kids home.  This is over.”

She followed me back to the car, yelling at me that she had “nothing” and that the $20 I had given her was “useless.”  Her friends had left her at the station, and what was she supposed to do now with only $20?

As I closed the door to the car, and the kids in the back seat were panicking, she yelled “I know where you live.  I know where you fuckin’ LIVE.”

I pulled out my Blackberry, and snapped a picture of her, and turned it around to show her, and said “and if anything happens to my house or my family, I’ve got your photo here, and the police and I will come looking for you.  Now get away from the car.”

A bus honked at her as she ran back toward the station, and I did a U-turn towards home.

We arrived at the house to see Arwen opening the front door and then being baffled as to why I was pulling the kids in PJs and jackets out of the back seat.

After explaining to our 8yo that “it was the drugs wanting more drugs” and settling them back to bed, I checked front and back yards, and stood quietly in the shadows near the house, watching.

I know that she probably did NOT have the address of our place (unlikely she would have written it down if she’d found it in the wallet, and as I said before, the address on Arwen’s BCID is two houses ago), but was still freaked out that she and some friends would come do something, and that feeling hasn’t gone away yet.  It’s ugly to think about how that went down, and I keep thinking about how it would have gone if there hadn’t been that pause.  If there hadn’t been the “y’know…” moment in that initial phone conversation.

I would have given more money, maybe even that magical $100, and would have felt really good giving it to someone with so little, even if they were going to spend it in some alarming way.  I would have been happy to give it, but it felt like a shakedown, and it felt wrong.

On the phone tonight, my mom (who’s taught in prisons) suggested that it’s common for “found” items to fence their way up to people who don’t set off the alarms quite so easily, usually women, but then those people have to pay first and then “upsell” whoever they’re giving the stuff back to.  So maybe she’d already given someone money for the stuff.  Maybe she was now out of pocket because she’s paid someone else who’d convinced her the cel and wallet were worth “a lot of money.”

I’m not feeling great about it, and I’m feeling bad I subjected my kids to that.

Not sure I had another option that I would have felt any better about.

Work’s work.  Didn’t ride today. Probably won’t tomorrow.  Ugly thing happened tonight around a lost wallet and someone wanting more $$$ than I was willing to part with.  Feeling defensive.  Feeling tired.  Feeling done with Tuesday.

Which is too bad, ’cause Conan has some awesome guests tonight.

Also, the podcast is eating all our traffic again (by way of China), so if we disappear, that’ll be why, but we’ll be back shortly after that.

G’nite.

Nice relaxing day today.  Slept in a little (but was woken by a dream in which I was stuck in a mall in Chilliwack, trying to get breakfast before the commute to work, and watching it get later and later – I actually woke up at 9-ish, but was upset becaue it was “almost Noon” in dreamtime), hung out at home while Arwen and the kids went to Quaker Meeting.  I put on some Radio Paradise  and started tidying.  For some reason, housework *requires* streaming audio for me.  I think somehow I make the computer turn into an audio system, and then it ceases to be something that can take me away from doing stuff (like chores).

Arwen went out driving with her mom, the kids and I just hung out together.  Them playing with Lego, watching a movie (Planet B-Boy), and listening to a whole bunch of music.  Like me, they have music running, and it sets the mood, and they just ignore it but are put in a groove.

I’ve got tomorrow off, and Arwen and I are going to go goof off while the kids are at school.  I’m pretty sure this is the first time we’ve done this since Tate started at school.  Need more sleep tonight, should head off soon.

Oh crap, Zoolander’s on.  Don’t think I’ve seen the first 3rd of this movie since the first time I saw it.  Must ignore.  Silly movie.

Oh hi.

Just got in the door from an afternoon at Arwen’s mom’s place, and we’re sitting here in utter silence.  The kids are asleep, the cat is ignoring us, and the late night planes haven’t started coming in yet (their takeoffs and landings are actually pretty spectacular in the summer, when they really get going.  This picture is day 13 of Movember (couple more pictures and a donation link are somewhere on this page under Mo’10).

Made a mistake while at Beth’s today.  Got on a scale.  Been a long time since I got on a scale.  Creeping up higher than it was last time I was on one.  Of course, I’d spent the afternoon and evening putting away a few pounds of food, I’m sure, but still.  Woof.  Gotta lay off the takeout/mall food when at work, and not just for financial reasons.  Been looking at the daily photos I’ve been taking this month to mark my moustache, and it’s been somewhat alarming to see how blotchy my skin is.  I know it’s bad lighting, with a flash, *right* before going to be, so how shiny am I think I’m supposed to look, really, but still.

Actually, most of it’s probably just the picture flip thing.  I think I’ve talked about this before, that most people don’t like photos of themselves because their face is on backwards from what they see in the mirror a few times a day.    Maybe I’ll try that again, and you tell me which looks like me to you.

Camera 1

Camera 2

wow.  I bet the formatting on that’s going to be atrocious.

So yeah, ate a bunch of food, and then we decorated these cool little sugar skull things Beth bought and filled.  Pictures will be in the post once I figure out how to get my text where I want it.  Nope, I give up.  Went to the Farmer’s Market (Farmers?) at Nat Bailey stadium today, which was at least as big at the Summer market at Mole Hill, minus all the shitty “Oh hi, yes, lovely day, blessed to be living here, yes, management and board are causing us to move out, yeah, no sure, we love it” politics we used to have to deal with while downtown.

Bought some of the black bean homous from the bean guy (yay!) and the boys got actual real honest to goodness maple syrup on snow (okay, crushed ice stuff) on a stick.  It was extremely messy by the time our two monsters go through it, but they certainly seemed to enjoy it.  That reminds me, there should be a single maple leave thingie in a bag somewhere, ’cause I bought three of those, and Arwen and I only had one each.

Later, maybe.

Yeah, so last night was an odd experience for me.  Don’t know if it was caffeine overload, caffeine withdrawal, or good old fashioned physical exhaustion, but holy WOW was I uncomfortable in my own body right before crashing out to bed.  Just everything hurt, and itched, and was generally wound up.  I slept like a log last night, crashed on the couch for another hour this morning, and fell asleep in a chair at Beth’s (woke myself up with my own snoring, and then did some dishes).  Why is it always so much easier to do dishes at someone else’s house?

Here’s some sugar skulls.

"Despite what Amanda said, the icing was quite tasty" - Ripley, 8

I’ve got one in there around the 8 O’clock area.  I’m sure CakeWrecks looks forward to me following my bliss as an icing piper.

That’s it for tonight from me, gentle readers.  On the “but am I dying?” front, my finger seems to be getting better, though it still looks scary as heck.  I think the top and bottom layers have fused together again at the nailbed, and I try to ignore that I have a slightly frost-bitten feeling at the tip of my finger.

Give it six months, and it’ll be fine, I’m sure, but I might use crazy-glue as a temporary fill in the meantime (if I could figure out some way to do it, I’d probably include a zip-tie (zap strap? what’re those things called?)

My buddy who was in Malibu until about three weeks ago might be going back again next week, at least until we figure out how best to use him.  $Foundation purchased $Company1 back in Jan/Feb, and he doesn’t see where his Art Direction and storytelling is going to come in when it comes to a 2d-to-3d film conversion company.  I know the feeling, since I’m the IT manager, and don’t know where I fit in with a 90% Mac office right now.  Not my forte, y’know? (Didn’t I say that yesterday, too?)

Nice thing about visiting with Arwen’s family is that her sister’s partner is this very low-key, grounded, softspoken person who doesn’t seem the type, but has been talking about learning to spin, and bringing up bands (artists?) like eDIT and Burial.  I would LOVE to go to a club night somewhere playing something like that.  Maybe it’s more that I wish *I* could do that, so I instead want to help anyone else who’s interested in doing it.  Maybe it’s because I think if THEY can do it, that means maybe *I* could do it too.

Alsoplusand… if you want to hear the first overseas podcast we did since Jonny Vancouver went to China (of all the unmitigated GALL), please visit http://www.geckotemple.com/podcast and enjoy my utterly blown-out microphone (tip: don’t use Skype, and then record it if you’re also participating, ’cause I think it somehow managed to record me at DOUBLE the input, or something – you’ll see what I mean the second you hit play on episode 36).

Oh, and if you’re on Twitter, come follow me in my grumblings about BCTransit, and weather, and you kids get offa my lawn. @zenrender

Nightie night, folks.

If I type sixteen more words, I’ll hit an even thousand.  Cool huh? Yep.

My muscles are all freaky and weird tonight. I can’t seem to relax, and yet I’m tired and want to curl up and be cozy, but then I get all wiggedy.

Can’t sit still for long enough to write a proper post, so if you’re sitting somewhere warm and cozy, and feeling your muscles relax from a long week…

…good. Glad you’re there. I hope to be soon, too.

(this doesn’t count as a blog post, does it?)

Naaaaah…

Posting this from RockMelt (which is an interesting spin on Chrome, embedding Facebook and Twitter into either side of the browser window).  Okay, no, it WAS being written in RockMelt, but then I bailed on it ’cause the screen framing didn’t wrap properly on my tiny 1024×768 screen, which meant the word “embedding” scrolled off into nowheresville while typing that first sentence.

I have terrible handwriting, but maybe I’d do it more often if I had one of LifeHacker’s freakishly nice pens.  Especially the Namiki ones, from the Chinkin line.

Tomorrow’s Friday, and since I’ve been riding every other day this week, I should ride to/from work, but not if it’s gonna be cold, and it has been *cold* lately.  Not exploding coffee cup weather, but cold enough to make you not want to go work out in it.  The two rides I’ve done this week on the new bike have been good (considering I’ve been off my bike for a month or more).  Wanna see?  Of course you do!  I’ve been using a free Blackberry app called Endomondo which tracks traveling workouts via GPS.  It even tells you over the headphones every kilometer: “Six keelahmeeterrs in ayiteen minutes. Last laptime 3 minutes 22 seconds.”

It also shows GoogleMashed maps with elevation, which is pretty damned cool (if a little creepy, considering I didn’t log into the site as myself to see the information under that link).

In the process of the work I do, I occasionally go looking for people online, and one of the odd things I’ve noticed is that any public running event (SunRun, marathon, triathlon) will publish your name and placing online after the event (it’s in the newspaper, too.)  Doesn’t give you much information, but it does give you a year and a city if you’re tracking someone who’s ghosted on your for a bit.  (Do I even want to tell the story of the con artist in Montreal who I managed to get an alarming amount of data about, up to and including freakin’ ultrasounds of his unborn third child?)

That was a particularly freaky amount of tracking I did.  My accounting manager at the time said “That’s hilarious – don’t do that with me.”

Some Google-Fu and some nice lateral thinking can get you an alarming amount of information on a group of people who don’t lock down their privacy settings on things like Flickr.

It’s Midnight, so I’m a hit Publish, take a picture of the straggly-looking stache, put that in the Mo’10 page, and then head to bed.  (Oh crap, Conan’s on already, I’m toast).

Stood at the cenotaph in downtown Vancouver today while the planes did their flyby and the 21-gun salute was performed with artillery, and it rained and a bajillion kids in uniforms were quiet and strong and trained.  Lots of fresh-faced Asian (and SouthEast Asian) kids there.  Sorta made me proud that Canada has enough of a mixed culture that our population on the street is reflected in the cadets.  Or maybe that’s a bad sign.  Not sure.

But thanks to all those who were once (or currently) somewhere really really far from home, in a place where maybe there’s not a lot of hope (or security), and that the people that sent you there bring you home safe and sane.

Only have a half hour to drop this in, so I’ll just get in there.

Ten Days - It's there, it's just fleshtoned.

I finally dug into trying to clean up the podcast we did in October (I think it was) and see if I could do anything about a microphone blowout I was creating.  Turned out “okay,” but that’s about it, sadly.  I mean, Skype worked for recording and stuff, and we did pretty well at ignoring that we weren’t in the same room for the first time in 35 shows, but the recording of our TalkyBits were pretty rough.

And now, because Arwen’s out, I’m watching Walking Dead.  Pretty darned good.

Rode my bike to/from work today.  S’cold out there, lemme just say.  Good ride though.  Bad music picked.  Gotta be more conscious about the music I have with me to ride.  Bad music (or at least low-tempo music) is totally counter-productive to fast hill climbing.

Well, I’m sure this show’s going to get much much grosser in the near future, but I’m also enjoying the Stand-like vibe of “everyone’s gone.”  For now, this is pretty good.

Ooh, actually, I need to go watch this.

Had a brainfart this evening, and went to FoxBird instead of Firefox.  http://www.foxbird.com/ is what would probably happen if I tried to write html on my own in notepad.  Not my forte, is what I’m saying.

(and spoiler alert, PAGE FIVE is not nearly as exciting as you might have hoped)

Had lunch with a Film School Makeup Artist/prof today, and we stopped in a LondonDrugs on the way back to her work, and there was this dismissive guy in the IT department (he was very busy doing something, probably checking Facebook) and when we walked out of the department, FSMA said

• “He had the most beautiful eyelashes,”
• “Really?  I hadn’t noticed.”
• “Yes, it makes me want to put makeup on him.”
• “Heh, oh yeah?”
• “Yes, often, when I stare at guys, it’s usually ’cause I want to put makeup on them and dress them up as women.  Either that, or vampires and werewolves.”

and with that, she won the conversation.  I know some weird people, in the best way possible.

Might have been a minor earthquake tonight.  A bump, if you will.  Something rattled in the kitchen, and when we walked in there to see what it was, there were weird little lights flickering occasionally around the kitchen.  Dunno.  The FBI must’ve been signaling Arwen to pick up her latest mission briefing.

I’ve talked about mirrors before somewhere on this blog, so we both stood there for a bit and looked around, trying to figure out what the reflection this was.  No candidates.  Not even the kid across the street playing with his laser pointer off our above-the-mantlepiece mirror (again).

But then I had the heebie jeebies for a while (is that something-ist, that term? I’ll have to go look it up), and I kept playing with it by going and standing in the heart of the downstairs axis (bottom of the stairs, between bathroom, office, bedroom, and dining room) and turning slowly, trying to catch whatever the red light source could be.  Checking the angles, you know?

Standing in the dark in your own house, looking for the source of something you’re not seeing any more is a great way to get a little adrenaline rush, lemme just say.  You can hear the blood rushing in your ears, it kicks in so high.

There’s a term for being hyper aware of where your body is in a given space, which doesn’t mean you’re a ninja or anything, but does mean you can reach behind you and grab that thing that was on the table behind you that you saw when you walked into the room (without doing that grasping “rawr I’m an octopus” thing with your hand.)  I forget the word for it, but I’m glad people think about this stuff.

What’s the word for remembering that there’s a field of study, but almost NEVER remember any other details about the study?  I do know it almost always makes me feel like people I’m talking to must think I’m just making shit up on the spot.

Too cold to ride my bike today (sideways rain plus less than 10 degrees = no riding new bike).  Maybe tomorrow.  Want to get out there and ride.

On the way home from school today, our youngest asked Arwen if maybe I was hurt.  Not like bloody finger hurt, but “like growing pains” hurt.  That kid’s got the shinnin’ I tell ya.  Just hooks a line to people like a phone call.  (He was wrong about the pains, but I am stiff today, which is not something he would have known – it’s not like I was limping around the house).

Okay, I’m sorta cheating by posting this tonight, but I’m hitting publish and calling it a day anyway…

Well, day one on the new bike, and I didn’t die.  Been too long (like, maybe a month?) and it’s DARK out there during the ride home.  Only gonna get worse from here on in.  I have about a bajillion lights all over my rig, and when I came up behind someone on a dark street, all I could see was the reflective pants cuff thing.  And of course, no helmet.  Right.  Good.  Of course, he probably thought I was an idiot for having two lights on my helmet, (wait: THREE!) two on my handlebars, one on the back of my rack, AND little orange lights in my wheels.

Aside from being seizure inducing, I was also pretty fast, if I do say so myself.

I’m writing tonight’s post after doing some work, which is “okay,” ’cause it was stuff needed for tomorrow, and I didn’t get to all of it during the day.  Had lunch with Nilo at the Curry Express across the street.  Weird to be back here again.  After being at Blackbox with him all those years ago, it’s like revisiting your high school or something.  So what do you do after lunch with one of the creative folks that made Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (and a million other crazy-famous things you’ve seen)?  You go shoe shopping, of course.

My. Head. Hurts.  I think I need more water, but parts of me are certainly saying “no more water – enough already.”  Maybe I need to eat something salty to soak up the water?  That’s how it works, right?  Pretzels?  Cheezies?  No?  Darn.

Check out the Mo’10 link at the top of this blog, and if you’ve got the financial means, please donate to help with cancer research.  Mmkay?  Kaythanks.

And now, I’m going to let my netbook reboot, ’cause I’m tired of typing on it anyway.

This week: Writing (maybe), Cycling (for sure), Vague Work News, and of course, Photos of the ‘Stache.  OH, and I have to edit our first Skyped podcast, which is going to be painful, ’cause I think I managed to make myself INSANELY LOUD in the recording of the show.  Whooooooops.