When will tomorrow come?

Many of you may remember that at the end of the article I posted on Monday, I said I was going to get into the negative aspects of working at NDC "tomorrow." That was supposed to be Tuesday.

Some stuff has come up recently that I have to deal with and it takes away from the time that I use to write the blog. And I expect this situation to continue for awhile. So what this means is that I am taking an unexpected break from the blog.

In the meantime, I will leave you with a couple of images of spring. Here is a photo I took on the first day of spring, March 20th, five years ago:

This is where I used to work in Redwood City, CA. It's a shopping center in the Redwood Shores area, across the street from Electronic Arts. I have the same employer that I had then, but I transferred to a different location in Sunnyvale, CA. On March 20th of this year, I happened to be at the same location when Facebook showed me a memory from five years earlier. I took the opportunity to run outside and take a new photo:

You never know where your life is going to take you. Sometimes, it takes you forward. Other times, it takes you back. It's nice to go back every once in a while.

NDC: The Good

Despite the rough start working at NDC, I actually got to the point in which I was able to enjoy the work I did after a few months. The most positive aspect was that I no longer had an abusive boss to deal with. I was able to go weeks at a time without having any contact with my supervisor. I also found that the days were going by a lot more quickly and would typically end before I knew it.

I started appreciating the job for what it was. After I started qualifying for the bonuses, I was coming close to the money I was making at my previous job. I wasn't having to make a lot of sacrifices to stay at this job. I also enjoyed having two solid days off to do what I wanted, even if they weren't on the weekend. With my last job, I pretty much had to show up every single day to ensure that the tapes got loaded and were recording. This meant that if I wanted to go up to LA, I could do that without having to worry about getting back in time.

I found there were a lot of other nice things about working at NDC:

1. It could be a fun place to work. They were always planning all sorts of events that the Dispatch Agents could take part in. They had a pie-eating contest, a talent contest, company outings to local sporting events, etc. There was always something to look forward to.

2. Sometimes, they provided free food. They would occasionally come up with special lunches. They would have a pizza day, a taco day, an ice cream sundae bar, etc. They also provided donuts on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays. When I started working there and had Wednesdays and Thursdays off, it appeared that they had free donuts every day. But what I saw was leftovers from Saturday and Monday. I did wonder why the donuts didn't seem so fresh on Sunday and Tuesday.

3. The company provided benefits for full-time employees. This was the main reason I wanted to work here. I knew things were off with my health and wanted to make sure I could be taken care of in the event of another hernia or some other crisis. They provided medical, dental and vision benefits. I was also able to enroll in a retirement savings program. You could also accrue sick pay.

4. Reviews and raises were scheduled on a regular basis. After your first three months with the company, you received a review and an increase in your hourly wage. Another three months later, there was another review and increase. This pattern continued every six months afterward. Except for Inventory Auditors, Inc., I've never worked with any other company that did more than one increase a year.

5. You could volunteer to go home early. If call volume was low, the supervisors would run forecasts to see how many people could be sent home. Because low call volume affected the number of Revenue Units I could generate against the hours I was working, I always volunteered to go home early on Sundays. Working my scheduled hours would not have made up for losing anticipated bonuses.

6. You could clock in a few minutes late. Everyone was given a grace period with regards to clocking in for their shifts. You were not considered tardy unless you clocked in five minutes late or more. This helped me on a couple of occasions in which my alarm didn't go off. It generally took me 15 minutes to drive to work. If I woke up 10 minutes before my shift began and sped down the highway, I was able to make it just in the nick of time.

7. Perfect attendance was rewarded. If you went one calendar month with perfect attendance, you received one extra hour of vacation time. This was special vacation time. It could only be used if you requested it. You could use it to cover any time that you were permitted to leave early due to call volume. You could also accrue it and use it as extra vacation time. It wouldn't be taken away from you if you used up all your sick time (like regular vacation hours could be). Also, if you went three months in a row with perfect attendance, you got to get something for free from the NDC logo store. There was clothing, cups, water bottles, key chains and more. The one time I got this, I chose a blue denim shirt. The Casbah in San Diego used to have a MySpace page that featured a photo of me wearing that shirt. (Although I did look drunk in that photo. I don't know how that was possible because I don't consume alcohol.)

8. There were plenty of opportunities for advancement. NDC prided itself on promoting from within. Many of the people in executive positions in the company started out as Dispatch Agents. If there was an area you felt you would be good at, like supervising, managing, marketing, sales, Human Resources, etc., you could probably find what you were looking for and move up quickly.

For most of the time I was there, working at NDC was a positive experience. But there were a few things I didn't care much for, some of which is related to the list above. I'll cover that tomorrow.

So many bottles, so few pills

Sometimes, you wonder why over-the-counter medicine manufacturers bother with multi-packs.



I never did find a use for those other two bottles.

NDC: So many messages

As with any job, there's weird stuff that goes on. It wasn't supposed to be weird, but it was a bit of a challenge at NDC to send messages that clearly weren't intended for the expected purpose.

I had mentioned earlier how the pagers were used by a lot of well-known people in the entertainment and sports industries. By the time I started working there, it didn't happen so often. Or if it did, I was rarely aware I was sending a message to someone well-known. Every once in awhile, the caller would mention the name of the recipient. I recall the message was about the subscriber being behind on her account and her car was about to be repossessed. She mentioned the person's name in the message and then said, "Oh, wait. I shouldn't have said her name." I told her it didn't really matter. I assume that the celebrities started telling people who had their pager numbers not to mention who the messages were going to. This should have served as evidence that the alpha-numeric pager industry was starting to go into decline.

I was responsible for dispatching a lot of messages that pertained to many other industries, including financial, medical, maintenance, retail, delivery, oil, etc. Many were run of mill routine issues, but more often than not, callers would leave very personal messages intended for the recipients.

More often than you would believe, I would get callers leaving the following message: "Boo, this is Boo. I love you, Boo. Call me back. Love, Boo." That was SUCH a waste of Revenue Units. And I'll be the subscribers complained when their bills came back so high. And if these were pagers paid for by a company, administration did have access to the messages.

Every once in awhile, I would get a caller wanting to leave a very long-winded message for the subscriber. These messages were very personal and very long and generally detailed the ending of a relationship. They were so long, I would run out of room for all the words. I would inform the caller of this and they would say to send the message, but they wanted another message sent because they hadn't said all they wanted to. This would usually go on two more times. The maximum amount of messages we could send to a single recipient was four. If the caller still wanted to continue, we had to make them call back and get another Dispatch Agent. While I was taking these messages, all I could do was wonder why the caller couldn't just contact the recipient by phone and say all this. Did the subscriber decide they weren't going to talk on the phone anymore and this was going to be their primary means of communication for the rest of their lives? Did the subscriber feel the extra revenue units were worth making the caller mad at them? I never got answers to these questions, but I do know they probably did not have their pagers forever.

We would also get phone calls of a harassing nature. There was a Kaiser doctor's group in Florida. We would often get calls from a gang I call the "Kaiser Kids." It sounded like teenagers calling and pranking us. Someone would come on the line and ask if we had anyone who spoke a foreign language, like Italian or French. (We only had Spanish Dispatch Agents.) If no one spoke the language, they would offer to send a message in English. The message usually contained a profanity. Another agent once told me they had managed to get an Italian speaker on the line and it turned out the kids didn't really speak Italian. But this went on for the almost two years that I worked there. I tended to think of the Kaiser Kids as being like Beavis and Butthead. If you remember the episode in which they prank call a stranger named "Harry Butts," they keep calling him up for months. For them, the joke never got old. That was how it was for these kids.

Of course, there were the calls that were sexually harassing. For the most part, it was women who received them. I noticed that on a couple of accounts, after I read the greeting, whoever it was on the line would hang up. On Sundays, it would happen over and over again with the same account. I found out later that when the caller got a female, he would say perverted things. Since the subscriber's name was included in the greeting, we always knew when the harasser was calling. And we suspected that the caller was the subscriber himself.

Then there was the "Roadkill Caller." Some man would call up a specific account and start leaving the message if a female was on the line. The message said that he had a good time with the recipient. He recalled how they laughed when they had run over a squirrel and when she farted, it smelled good. I knew about the message because many of the female Dispatch Agents actually sent that message out. The subscriber was livid that she was receiving these messages. (However, I noticed she never changed her pager number.)

I myself did once receive a sexually harassing call from a male caller. It was a pager for a chiropractor's office. The caller started, "I have a bone. It goes up, but it won't go down. It's a boner!" GRRRR! I hung up on that guy.

I guess the worst thing about the harassers is that we couldn't do anything about them. We couldn't track them. We couldn't have them arrested. We couldn't make it impossible for them to call us up. We were at their mercy. But I can't tell you how much I would have loved to locate those Kaiser Kids and teach them a lesson, Harry Butts-style.

NDC: How it worked

So, how did NDC make money from messages being sent to alpha-numeric pagers? Enough money to pay around 1,500 Dispatch Agents and a hundred administrators? It's relatively simple. Subscribers had to pay a monthly rate for their pagers. Subscribers also had to pay extra for the pages they received.

I don't know for a fact, but I think each monthly subscription included a certain number of what were referred to as "Revenue Units." If you exceeded your allotment of Revenue Units for the month, you had to pay about 10 cents for each unit you went over your allotment. (Akin to going over on your data plan on your mobile phone.) On most pagers, each Revenue Unit was comprised of 20 characters. Since most pagers could hold 100 characters, it was possible for one message to take up five Revenue Units. If a page only contained 20 characters, that would be one Revenue Unit. If the page contained 21 characters, that was two Revenue Units. Since the bonuses were tied to the number of Revenue Units the agents produced each month, many would do what they could to pop the message into an extra Revenue Unit. Sometimes, this included double-spacing at the end of a sentence. Sometimes, it was fully spelling out words that could be abbreviated (like "meeting" instead of "MTG").

I mentioned in an earlier post that the service was notably used by people in the sports and entertainment industries. There were a lot of other businesses that used the pagers on a regular basis, like Wall Street firms, sanitation companies, delivery services, medical offices, maid services, etc. We served a variety of users.

But some pagers were clearly being used strictly for personal needs, many of them VERY personal needs (but there were certain words and phrases we were forbidden from using). As long as they were paying for those Revenue Units, it really didn't matter what the caller wanted sent out as long as we could rack up the fees.

Every once in a while, I would get a request to send out a message to an entire group of pagers. This meant I could really rack up the revenue units on just one call. It was nice to do something that would get me closer to making bonus each month.

If there were any complaints about people or companies feeling they were being overbilled for Revenue Units, we never heard about it. No one ever issued any memos about sticking to the mandatory abbreviations or anything. The company just seemed to be happy letting us run up those charges on the clients as we wished.

This is how we earned bonuses: Each Dispatch Agent had to generate a certain number of Revenue Units as compared to the number of hours that were worked each month. In addition, the Average Handle Time (AHT) had to be less than 40 seconds and Quality Assurance scores had to average above 90%. Also, you couldn't have any active written warnings on your record.

My AHT was less than 60 seconds per call during my first week. However, I found I improved to the expectation by the end of the month. It really didn't take long to adjust my speed. After awhile, I was handling close to 500 calls a day when I worked my Monday, Tuesday and Friday shifts. Saturdays were a little slower and Sundays were WAY slower.

I did not qualify for the bonus at first because one needs to have been working the full month. I didn't begin my shift until January 10th. But even if I did qualify, I wouldn't have had enough Revenue Units. I had to consider that first month a wash. But just as my onsite trainer predicted, I was able to meet all the goals for February and I continued to do so for the next six months. I never did make the "Top 10%" bonus. The main reason why was because I wasn't producing enough Revenue Units on Sundays. If I didn't work Sundays, I probably would have been able to make that extra bonus. But as I found out later, the "Top 10%" was not out of all the Dispatch Agents, it was only out of those who made bonus. So if only 150 agents made bonus, there were only 15 who got that extra bonus.

And I guess I should visit how the ladder for promotions was set up. The call center was broken up into various teams. Each team could have anywhere from 30 to 60 Dispatch Agents. Each team had a Supervisor. Each Supervisor had an assistant, referred to as a Lead Dispatch Agent, or LDA. Since most teams at the Chesapeake location had employees working all seven days a week, there would be a couple of days that the Supervisor wasn't there, but the LDA was, and vice versa. Usually, the Supervisor had the weekend off and the LDA had to work then. Above the Supervisors were the Call Center Managers. When I started work, there were three of them. Above the manager was the Director of Operations. After that, you get into Chief Operations Officer and Vice President territory.

So this serves as a breakdown of what kept NDC running. Tomorrow, I'll look at some of the more interesting aspects of the job.

NDC:The first day

I showed up for my first shift at NDC before 3:30am on January 10th, 2000. I was about 10 minutes early. I hadn't received my badge yet, but was able to get in by tailgating another employee. However, once I got in, I realized I left a lot of stuff I needed in the car. I went back out, but I wasn't lucky enough to catch an employee to tailgate with. There was a doorbell I was supposed to ring. It took about five minutes for someone to show up and let me in. I almost clocked in late.

I found a supervisor and told him it was my first day. His name was Mr. M. Even though he started his shift about the same time as me, he was not going to be my supervisor. My supervisor was Mr. O, who wouldn't be in until 7am. (And honestly, that did not make sense to me at the time. Why would they assign me to a supervisor I wouldn't see for nearly half my shift?).

Mr. M gave me my password so I could log in and start taking calls. He also gave me my break and lunch schedule. I was told I could sit at any open cubicle. I looked around for one with an ergonomic keyboard since Thoz had warned me about getting carpal tunnel syndrome. This was the first time I had worked with such a keyboard. It took a little getting used to. I logged in and the first thing I knew, I had a call on my screen. I quickly forgot everything I had learned in the previous week. It took me a moment to regain myself and figure out what to do. I was able to take the message and dispatch it. As soon as that call was over, I got another call and dispatched another message. They had a lot of people start their shifts at 3:30am because that's when calls from the East Coast started to roll in.

I basically did my job without interacting with anyone else there at the call center. It was so strange to be somewhere with about 200 people and no one to talk to. Looking at my break and lunch schedule, I found I didn't like how it was set up. I took my first break at 5:15am, my 30 minute lunch at 7:15am and my last break at 10:45am. This meant I had to work more than four hours after my lunch and two hours after my last break. I decided to skirt this a bit by taking those about seven minutes later than I was assigned. They'd already screwed me out of a decent shift, I wasn't going to let them do it to me with my break schedule. (However, having worked in supervisory positions in which I was in charge of overseeing breaks and lunches, I do understand why my schedule was set up like that. If everyone coming in at 3:30am takes their breaks and lunches at the same time, it messes up the call volume.)

One of the things I noticed later on during the day was that no lunch truck appeared here like it did at the Balboa Ave. location. There wasn't any room in the parking lot. At any rate, this wasn't going to do me any good since my lunch was scheduled for 7:15am. I doubt any food trucks would show up that early.

Sometime after my lunch, a man came to my cubicle. He was Filipino and appeared to be around 25 years old. He introduced himself as Mr. O, my supervisor. (I was 35 at the time.) He asked me to go with him. We went around the call center and he got two other agents in the same manner, a man and a woman. We went into a conference room. He brought us all together to present us with our new hire packets. The packets went into detail about the company policies, including attendance. Included in the packet was a special offer to join 24 Hr. Fitness. NDC would pay the initiation fee. I just had to pay the $19 a month membership fee. And if we stopped working for NDC, the membership would continue as long as we paid the monthly fee.

One of the bad things about NDC was that you had to be employed there full time for six months before you could start receiving benefits. You also had to work at least 1,000 hours before you could start having money taken out for a 401(k) retirement plan. I didn't like that I was going to have to wait so long for health insurance, but I figured it would be worth sticking it out.

Mr. O was my first real exposure to one particular aspect Filipino culture. Anytime we were talking about work-related issues, he would call me "sir." This was rather startling to me. (Even though I was 35, I still rarely had anyone address me like that.) I figured this was how they address all those they presumed were older than them. (In my future dealings with Filipinos, this actually turned out to be the case.) But I wasn't the only employee put off by it. A co-worker about my age complained about it. "I want to say, 'Quit calling me Sir! You're MY boss!'"

At 12pm, it was time for me to go home. I clocked out, left work, drove home and crashed. I didn't know if I would get used to this.

It turns out I would. The best thing about this is that after 18 years, I am still a member of 24 Hr. Fitness. And I still only pay $19 a month.

NDC: The Interview and Training Process

In December of 1999, Mr. N announced that News Monitoring Services was going to switch to a new monitoring software after the beginning of the new year. I didn't like the direction this was going and seriously contemplated going back to apply at NDC. When Mr. N yelled at me for not recording something after he had posted a notice on our intranet (which did not appear on my computer), I walked out the door and drove straight to NDC. They were in the middle of another job fair. There were about 30 people applying for jobs. I filled out the application and took the spelling test. When they announced the results, I was the only one who scored 100%. There were 10 people who didn't score the desired minimum of 80%, so they had to leave. I passed the typing test with 50 wpm. The minimal requirement was 20 wpm. There were about 5 people who didn't pass that. I always wondered what those people thought when they didn't pass. Did they get mad at themselves for not trying harder in school, or did they blame NDC for being too picky about who they hired?

I got called back for an interview. I was told that the job paid about $8 an hour. (That was $2.50 an hour less than I was currently making.) If I worked an early morning shift that started before 5am, I would get a $1 an hour differential The interviewer said there was also a bonus program for hitting certain performance goals. If I qualified for the bonus, I would get an extra $100 a month. And there was an additional bonus if you ranked among the top 10% of the agents, another $50 a month. And if you were the #1 productive agent for the month, you got a $500 bonus. This made the job more desirable.

They called me back to let me know they wanted to hire me. The woman I talked to said they had a shift working 4:30am to 1pm and I would get Fridays and Saturdays off. THAT SOUNDED GREAT! Then she said, "Wait, that shift's already filled up. I have a shift from 3:30am to 12pm with Wednesday and Thursday off. How about that?" That was a less desirable shift, but since it meant getting the extra $1 an hour, I took it.

I was told that my training would begin on Tuesday, January 4th, 2000. I would train for four hours a day for four days. At the end of the training, I would have to pass a test. If I passed, I would go through an evaluation on site before officially starting my shift. I felt good about starting the new year with a new job.

There were about 15 people in my training class. The instructor was a rather attractive woman a couple of years younger than me and made learning everything fun. The interesting part was when she had us each take live phone calls from actual callers who wanted to send out messages. Everyone who did this appeared to grasp the concept of what to do. She instructed us very well.

The training took place at the newer location on Balboa Ave. The call center was large and there was plenty of space for all the cubicles. They also had a nice lunch room with a ping-pong table. There were food trucks that came by on a regular basis. This looked like a really nice atmosphere in which to work.

After completing the class and passing the test, I was given a time to show up on Saturday to go through the final evaluation and the name of the person I was supposed to work with. This would be a four-hour session. I had to complete this in order to start working. If I didn't go through this, I would have to wait a few days for my next opportunity for onsite training. I wouldn't be able to start earning money until this final step was completed.

I showed up the next morning at NDC's original Chesapeake Drive location. (The Balboa Ave. call center was only open Monday through Friday.) I was completely unprepared for what I was about to see. It was all these cubicles in cramped spaces. With everyone talking at the same time, it was also very noisy. The lunch room was significantly smaller and just as cramped as the call center. Even worse was that it also had a ping-pong table that took up a lot of space. It was as if the agents who worked there complained that the new call center had a ping-pong table, so those in charge brought one over and stuck it there just to make them happy. If my friends were forced to work at this location, I suddenly understood their discontent.

After getting over the shock of the egregious bait and switch that had been pulled, I tried to find a supervisor to locate the woman I was supposed to complete my onsite training with. There was a woman at what appeared to be a supervisor station. (There were several such stations scattered throughout the call center among the cubicles.) She said she would try to locate the trainer. After about 15 minutes, she came back and said she didn't know where the agent was. However, she knew of another person who should be able to do the training with me.

She took me over to this man and asked if he could do the training. He seemed hesitant at first, but agreed to go ahead and do it. (As it turned out, my trainer called in sick. The man had a training scheduled for that afternoon, but I showed up 45 minutes after he started his shift. If he did two trainings, that would put him into overtime and NDC did not think much of overtime.) He started my training.

He had me take a few live calls and run through a few drills. He gave me a few tips on things I could improve. He said he was impressed with my performance and predicted that I would be making bonus during my first month of eligibility. He then took me over to the supervisor to report I had passed. The supervisor told me to show up for my first shift on Monday. I said I thought I would start Sunday, the next day. She said they don't start people on Sunday. That meant one less day I was going to be earning money. I wasn't too pleased about that. (We also found out that the person the trainer was supposed to work with that afternoon didn't pass the class, so he didn't have to worry about overtime or having to rush the training. If he had declined to train me, I would have had no way of making money for at least a couple of days.)

While I dreaded the idea that I had just committed to working here, it was definitely going to be better than going back to work for Mr. N.

One of the last things you want at the airport

Recently, my family decided to take a mini-vacation and flew down to San Diego. When we arrived at the gate, we saw these distinctive stains on a lot of the seats.



I wondered if all the stains were left by the same bird, or if there's an infestation that we can't see.

Job #18: NDC/Aradiant Era: 2000 - 2001

I had gotten fed up with my job at News Monitoring Services. The verbal abuse I suffered on a daily basis was no longer worth making a living watching TV. I felt like a comic book store employee (but with better pay). I was aware of the National Dispatch Center because Thoz had worked there.

One of the hot products in the latter years of the 1990s was the alpha-numeric pager. Users could receive short written messages on the devices. If someone wanted to send a message to someone with one of these pagers, they had to call NDC, speak to a Dispatch Agent, recite the message and have it sent out. Thoz told me exciting stories of messages that she sent out to celebrities who used them. She said that the pagers were mostly used by professional basketball players for their hookups. And every once in awhile, the celebrities who had the pagers would call in themselves to get their messages.

I got mad at Mr. N in 1998 and decided to try my luck there. Thoz said it was a decent place to work, but I ran the risk of getting carpal tunnel syndrome. I showed up at one of their job fairs, filled out an application and took their spelling and typing test. I passed both. They called me back for an interview. However, they paid significantly less than my current job and I didn't have a car to get to work. I would have had to take the bus, which took about 90 minutes to get there and 90 minutes to get back. It wasn't the right time for me.

(Additionally, Wiz and several of my friends had worked there at one point or another. None of them had nice things to say about it.)

A little background: NDC began as a startup in someone's garage. The demand for the alpha-numeric pagers quickly grew and the company had to expand into a facility in the Kearny Mesa area of San Diego. They set up a full-scale operations and call center on Chesapeake Drive. There were hundreds of cubicles spread across several rooms on the ground floor. After a couple more years, that still was not enough space for all the Dispatch Agents, so the company built a new building from the ground up to house an additional call center and administrative offices. This was located about a mile away. They incorporated other services, like voice mail transcriptions that would be sent out to the pagers. The company was one of San Diego's success stories.

After I was hired, they began a new product called Servistream, which provided operators who could help customers navigate their way through corporate websites. The Internet economy was booming and NDC was keeping on top of it. They were banking on Servistream being the main future of the company.

In 2001, the company changed its name from National Dispatch Center to Aradiant in an effort to increase its marketability as an all-encompassing company, not just one that sent out messages to pagers.

However, you're likely aware of the fate of alpha-numeric pagers and the Internet in 2001. As the popularity of texting through Blackberries and cell phones began to rise, business went downhill more swiftly than it went up. Aradiant never did recover.

I'll be sharing more of my experience with the company in posts to come.

Girlfriend #7: Jolz, The Last Part

At some point before the year 2000 ended, Jolz and I had ceased communicating with each other. I seem to recall her telling me that she and her current boyfriend were going to get married, so I knew I didn't need to be her friend anymore.

Over the next few years, I was able to track her on the Internet. I had found some photos of her, her husband and her sister Fand as they were part of some Star Trek fan group where everybody served as members of a "crew." (At least they didn't wear uniforms.) At the time, she looked like she was starting to gain the weight back.

I found her Facebook profile some time ago. She's still married to the same guy. Wedding photos that she posted showed that she had lost a lot of weight. However, she's had three kids since then and appears to be even heavier than when I first started dating her. She, her husband and their children appear to be very happy.

From what I can tell, she no longer works at the church in El Cajon. She may be involved in a couple of multi-level marketing plans. I have no idea what her husband does, but it looks like it's enough to support everyone.

Her sister Fand got married and had kids. Her brother Resd is a member of a cannabis organization. He appears to have gotten married and had kids. Her youngest sister Asd has a child and a significant other, but I can't tell if she's married. The weird thing is how much she resembles Jolz now. I thought one of the photos of her was Jolz taken a few years ago. The resemblance wasn't that obvious when she was ten years old. Their parents both appear to be living.

Before completely closing this chapter, I should point out that I did wonder for a few years if Jolz was going to be my final shot at someone I could get married to. I was 36 years old with no real prospects on the horizon. It was around this time that I knew that if I didn't meet the woman I was going to marry before I hit 40, it was never going to happen. This almost scared me more than the possibility of a lifetime with someone I didn't really care that much about in the first place.

But as we will eventually see (sometime in the future), that did not come to fruition.

Girlfriend #7: Jolz, Part 12

After Jolz and I parted ways, we continued to keep in contact with each other from time to time. I was kind of surprised she wanted to do that, considering how terribly I had treated her toward the end.

I wound up buying two tickets to see "Phantom of the Opera" in San Diego. I had hoped that I was going to be able to land a date. Fraz decided she didn't want to go because there was going to be violence. I'd asked another woman, Tez, to go and she agreed, but she backed out at virtually the last minute. That left me with one last resort: Jolz.

Jolz was excited about getting to go. However we both went into this knowing we were not going to get back together. It just wasn't going to happen. This was purely a date of convenience.

On our way to the theatre, she told me that she had decided to never have sex again until she was married. I didn't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult.

We had a good time at the performance. I started driving out of the Downtown area toward El Cajon. As I was passing through an intersection, I suddenly saw a flash of light. I realized that I had been caught by the newly installed traffic camera. This meant I was likely going to get a ticket. I dreaded going to the mailbox each day.

Three days later, I got the citation. It showed a picture of my car in the intersection, a close up of my license plate and a close up of me driving, with Jolz' face blocked out. Yep, I'd been caught. However, I'd seen on the news how someone was able to get his ticket dismissed using one of the traffic codes.

About a month later, I went to court to challenge the ticket. I felt like I was properly prepared and looked up the information in the vehicle code that was provided as a reference. I presented my case, but the judge ruled against my argument. This meant I had to pay a fine of $236. The "Phantom" tickets cost me $150. This meant I shelled out almost $400 for a date with someone I didn't really want to take out in the first place. It was prom all over again.

The funny thing about this was that at the trial, the prosecutor presented the full photo as evidence. I realized that this was the only time Jolz and I had our picture taken together. And I didn't get to keep the picture.

A few months later, I had moved into my own apartment. Jolz wanted to come by and see it. She came in and we talked for a bit. She had been fired from her job by her best friend. This meant that she lost her insurance and wasn't able to have the proper follow up appointments on her bariatric surgery. She hadn't lost that much weight since the last time I'd see her. She was working full time as a baby sitter at the church she attended. She had started to see someone. She didn't tell me much about him except his name and that he was closer to her age than I was.

Then something funny happened. She laid face down on my couch and asked me to give her a massage. This was something I would do from time to time when we were together. I recalled that almost every time I did this before, we wound up making love. I did not know where this was headed. Fortunately, it did not lead to us removing any clothing. I wondered if she thought that if something happened between us, she would know that this new boyfriend was not the one if I was able to seduce her from him. I clearly had no intention of taking this any further, so she left after a little bit.

A couple of weeks later, she called me up. She had just gotten into a fight with her family. She asked me if she could come live with me. This was very perplexing. I asked her if her boyfriend approved of this. "Oh, yeah! He's right here next to me!" I thought, "You have GOT to be kidding me!" I can only imagine what he was thinking, knowing that she was going to try to live with the last guy she'd had sex with. (And she did tell me that she told him she'd had sex with all her former boyfriends.) I asked her to find someone else to live with. I guess she wound up making up with her family.

And when you get right down to it, this was the problem I had with Jolz the whole time we were together. She simply did not know how to handle having a boyfriend. She didn't know how to make him feel like he's the only one that matters. She just couldn't act like the best place in the world was to be next to the one she loved. If she decided she didn't want to take part in a certain activity that he wanted to do, she would find a way out of it. I imagine all her boyfriends experienced this.

But this was no longer my problem. Tomorrow, I'll tell you how things turned out for her.

Girlfriend #7: Jolz, Part 11

Jolz decided it was time for her to "face the beast." I was able to get her to come to a barbecue with my female friend Fraz. Abed and his girlfriend Qued also came to the barbecue. Jolz remained mostly quiet during the gathering, but Qued showed some interest in Fraz' affiliation with the local alternative lifestyle publications. She seemed to be having a good time. After we left, Jolz said she didn't see what was so special about Fraz that commanded so much of my attention. Fraz later complained that Abed and I had brought along our "19-year-old girlfriends."

Another night, I visited Jolz while she was babysitting at a neighbor's house. Her sister Asd was there, but she was asleep. The baby was also asleep. Jolz and I started making out and began getting very passionate about it. Since I hadn't anticipated that we were going to be doing anything at a neighbor's house, I didn't bring any condoms with me. Jolz said she didn't care whether I used a condom. But I cared. I cared so much that we didn't make love that night. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that would be our last opportunity to be intimate.

Afterward, Jolz and I started treading into familiar territory. I started getting fed up with her flaking out of doing things together. She was always doing this on things I wanted to do. I would go along with the stuff she wanted, but when we made plans of my preference, she would come up with some excuse for not going. It all felt so lopsided.

I did something rather cruel. I found an "I miss you" greeting card. It featured a sad-looking panda on the front saying, "The only real problem with us being apart is..." When you opened the card, it showed the panda in the upper left-hand corner saying "...I'm here..." and a female panda in the lower right hand corner with the male panda continuing, "...and you're here!" I had just read an article about the concept of "one up," which compared a relationship to a couple on a seesaw. The one on the up part had all the control while the one down was doing everything they could to level out the seesaw (and perhaps, get to be the one up). So I drew a seesaw on the card with the male panda being the one up and the female being the one down. I surrounded the male panda with positive words and the female with issues that needed to be sorted out (none of which had to do with her being overweight). Early one Saturday morning, I left the card by the front door of her house. I knew I was going to be seeing her later that afternoon. I hoped it would spark a conversation. It did accomplish that. She really tore into me. I explained how hard she made it to want to be with her when she always canceled on the things I wanted to do. I felt like her issues were getting in the way of us having a really good relationship and reminded her that she was the one who wanted to get back together with me.

Jolz said we would still be together, but I knew we were close to the end. I know that about a week after that, we got into a big fight. It had nothing to do with the card, but everything to do with the issues I had brought up. I remember storming out of the house and trying to see how long we could go without talking to each other again.

And the exact same thing happened. I opened up the Penny Saver and saw a recognizably-worded ad in the personals. I called it up. Sure enough, it was Jolz. This time I left a message and said that I guess it was over.

A few days later, she called up and confirmed that it was indeed over. After a little discussion, we did the usual agreement to be friends. And we actually did that for a little bit.

More on that tomorrow.

Girlfriend #7: Jolz, Part 10 (Millennium Approaches)

Jolz and I decided we would ring in New Year 2000 together. Even though there were a large number of events planned around San Diego that night, she decided the best thing to do was stay at home. It turned out to be a wise decision. It rained that night in San Diego and the majority of affordable events were being held outdoors.

I spend most of the day leading up to midnight watching "ABC 2000." It was exciting to watch how the world was celebrating the New Year, the New Millennium. (Although I do recall a comedy bit in which Al Franken tried to explain to Peter Jennings that the new millennium didn't actually begin until 2001.)

Abed, Qued and I were watching at the time that Egypt rang in 2000. Abed said that if he had the money and could go anywhere for New Year's, he would have gone to see the pyramids. But we were dismayed that they kept showing shots of the crowd and not the pyramids.

There was also some concerns about the Y2K virus. I remember some people going all crazy because they thought everything electronic was going to shut down at midnight. I wasn't too concerned because it seemed that those in charge were taking action. I knew that my car would still run and that was all I worried about.

For the celebration at her house, Jolz bought me a "Tickle Tickle Wiggle Wiggle" stuffed toy from Walmart. If you pressed on its hand, a recording of a child's voice played: "10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Welcome to the year 2000!" And then it played "Auld Lang Syne." We played that every hour on the hour as the countdowns began on TV.

Then it was Pacific Standard Time's turn. We started the countdown on the toy. Jolz and I kissed at midnight. I left pretty soon after that. I still had work to do the next day.

Nothing extraordinary happened with Y2K. I noticed a few text glitches here and there on the Internet, but nothing major. I monitored one newscast in which a reporter went to an ATM after midnight, found her balance intact and that she was able to withdraw cash. However, she pointed out that this meant she wound up ringing in the New Year waiting outside a 7-Eleven. Yes, some people had it worse than we did.

For a few years after we finally broke up, I would call Jolz' phone on New Year's Eve. If she let it go to voice mail (my number was blocked), I played the "Tickle Tickle Wiggle Wiggle" toy for the message. I'm pretty certain she always knew it was me.

Girlfriend #7: Jolz, Part 9

I started becoming a little more involved in Jolz' life. Jolz did some occasional part-time work at the church she attended. She would babysit kids there. Close to Christmas 1999, she was getting a lot of this extra work because they were rehearsing for the annual Christmas pageant. Sometimes, her sister Fand would assist.

One night, Jolz had a class that she couldn't get out of. There was no one else available to do the babysitting, so she asked me to take her place. Fand was still going to be there, but there were regulations regarding how many people needed to be watching a certain number of kids at any moment. I didn't think it was going to be a big deal, so I agreed.

I thought I was just going to observe the kids and make sure no one got hurt. That didn't exactly happen. Among the children were infants. Fand took care of them, so I was expected to keep the toddlers entertained. There were about five that I had to keep an eye on. IT WAS FREAKING HECTIC!

Every time I got them each doing something, at least one of them would get bored and want to do something else. One of them, a girl, sort of kept bumping into things with her hands or arms. Every time she got a boo-boo, I would ask her if she wanted me to kiss it to make it feel better. She always said yes.

I was there for three hours. There were no casualties. I knew right away it was not something I could do for a living. I decided that I needed to see if I could get paid for that. I filled out a time card, included my personal information and signed it. I didn't know if they would be willing to pay me at least minimum wage. But I guess they thought I was worth it and cut me a check, although they didn't pay me like an employee or took taxes out. (I would almost count this as a separate job. But since I only worked there one night and made less than $50, I'm just going to count it as found money.)

Later, Fand told Jolz, "Fayd was SO cute with the kids! And this one girl had him wrapped around her finger. Anytime she got kind of hurt, he would kiss the part that got hurt and make it better." Jolz responded, "Stop! Stop! STOP! You're going to make me fall in love with him!" A few moments later, she would go "Okay, okay, tell me some more!"

Jolz and I attended the Christmas pageant at the church. I'm accustomed to the church Christmas programs that feature a story, whether it's a recreation of the Nativity or an original modern story that shows how much impact Christ has on our lives, even in these times of commercialization. And I guess the church had put on those programs before. But this one was just a bunch of musical numbers (Christian and secular) with no cohesive theme. It was a variety show.

The only major event I attended with Jolz before Christmas was an awards program at the community college she attended. They had some kind of photography exhibit in which the participants provided pictures from their family history to be displayed. This was a great idea, but they were handing out awards for the pictures. At first, I thought the awards were for those who took the pictures. But they weren't doing that at all. Awards were given to the people who simply submitted the photos, some of which they probably dug out of the bottom of their sock drawers. The people who took some of these photos were dead.

I didn't understand how the judging worked. There were several different categories. Jolz' submission (which didn't win an award) was in the "Compelling Stories" category. The photo was of some distant relative who moved away from her family, never to be heard from again. The last anyone knew, she had moved to San Francisco right before the 1906 earthquake. I noticed that in the same category was a photo that appeared to have been taken for the exhibit. It didn't win an award, either.

I don't know how often someone could take part in the contest, but I can imagine someone saying, "Come on! We've got to find another picture for next year!"

The next thing for me and Jolz was the biggest night of the century. Tune in tomorrow.

Girlfriend #7: Jolz, Part 8

A few months after we had broken up, I got a call from Jolz. This was the last thing I was expecting from her. She asked me to come out to a karaoke bar where her brother Resd was celebrating his birthday with family and friends. I was in the mood to do something different that night, so I agreed to meet her there.

At this time Abed's girlfriend Qued was living with us. I told them that I was going to go see Jolz that night and I was afraid that she was going to want us to get back together. I really didn't want to go and have to deal with that. I didn't want to hurt her and I was even more afraid that I would get back together with her because I really didn't have any better prospects.

I got over to the bar and found her. I was pleasantly surprised. She had lost at least 50 pounds since I last saw her. I hate to admit this, but she appeared WAY more attractive than when I last saw her. I was all, "Look at you!" She was glad to see my reaction and seemed really happy with how the bariatric surgery was turning out.

She admitted that the main reason she asked me to come was that she thought there was a possibility we could get back together. She said that she had been getting more attention from guys after losing a few pounds. But she felt like they were all being shallow because they didn't think much of her when she was heavier. She preferred to be with someone who seemed to like her for who she was and not how she looked.

The next thing I knew, we were embracing each other and kissing. I decided to just go with it. I couldn't believe I was doing this. And again, I knew it was not going to be forever. One of us was going to break the other's heart.

The first date we went on after getting back together was to see Teacher and her husband perform at Claire de Lune. After the performace, Teacher came up and gave me a hug, like she usually does when I'm at one of her performances. She remembered meeting Jolz before and briefly talked with us. Afterward, I asked Jolz if her bothered her that Teacher had hugged me. She said, "No, I know she's married... to someone I would swear is GAY!"

One funny thing is that we ended up going to see "The Blair Witch Project" at the $1 movie theatre in El Cajon. We went with her father. We didn't discuss THE ARGUMENT that led to us breaking up. She made no mention that she thought it was real and talked about it as fiction. I was rather relieved by this.

Early on, I brought up the topic about whether or not it was still going to be safe for us to make love after the six month restriction was over. She said, "Oh, I'm sorry. I lied to you about that. The doctor never said that. I was just afraid that something would happen and rip the stitches apart." In retrospect, I should have left her right there. I mean, I didn't have a problem not having sex if she was afraid like that. I just didn't like that she lied to me when she could have easily have told the truth. However, I knew this meant that we would get to make love a lot sooner than I expected.

She would come over to my house a couple of times a week. Sometimes we would go out, sometimes we would just stay at the apartment and do stuff. Sometimes, we would do that stuff when Abed and Qued were home. (We tried to be quiet.) She even spent a couple of nights over. It was rather nice.

But I wasn't really putting much effort into it. And I could feel she wasn't putting that much into it, either. We both just appeared to be biding our time.

A change in perspective

Tomorrow's post will detail how I got back together with Jolz, which was pretty much the last thing I expected out of this relationship. Today, I want to focus on a change that occurred in me as a result of being involved with someone who was considered obese.

I always felt like I had changed very little since I was 15 years old. I thought my outlook on life, my personality and the way in which I interacted with others remained the same as if I were an adolescent. Back then, I didn't view women as people to have sexual encounters with. Even after I'd had sexual encounters and actual sex with women, I still do not look at them that way. (This was one of my biggest fears about losing my virginity, that I would desire conquests with women I was attracted to.)

I used to think that I couldn't find excessively overweight women attractive. I was actually repulsed and if I got any indication that one had a crush on me, it really dampened my spirits to know that the only women who wanted to have anything to do with me were those I wanted nothing to do with. But after becoming involved with Jolz, I discovered that the weight issue no longer mattered. And it also didn't matter what other people thought if I was with an overweight woman. (I will admit that what other people thought would have really bothered me in high school.)

I first realized this a few weeks after breaking up with Jolz. There was a female singer/songwriter I'll refer to as Angeled. Fraz met Angeled when she was assigned to do a story on her. Angeled was a lesbian and performed mostly acoustic pop material, none of it focusing on her life as a lesbian. Her songs were mostly positive, spiritual and upbeat. Fraz talked about her being a "fat cow" and was concerned that Angeled was interested in her. Fraz liked her personally and enjoyed her music, but didn't see herself being with an overweight woman (although Fraz herself was mildly overweight).

Fraz and I went to a showcase at the Wikiup Cafe and ran into Angeled there. I hadn't seen her in awhile and was astonished at how GOOD she looked. She looked positively SLENDER! And I don't think she had lost any weight. It was just that she probably weighed 100 pounds less than Jolz and that was enough for my brain to react as if I was looking at someone much thinner than she actually was.

I recognized right away what was going on in my head. I was no longer going to have hangups about how much a woman weighed. In fact, if a woman called me and admitted she was overweight, I could tell her that one of my ex-girlfriends weighed more than 300 pounds and if she didn't weigh more than that, I wasn't going to see her as overweight. The only problem was that I would meet these women and they still didn't want to pursue a relationship with me.

The bad thing about this is that it also impacted how I view myself. I weigh 50 pounds more than I want to right now. When I look in the mirror, I don't see an overweight person (and the BMI scale says that I'm obese). When I look at myself in photos, then I do appear overweight. However, I view myself in the mirror more often than I see photos of myself. It's hard to tell which one is telling the truth to my brain.

And it wouldn't surprise me to find that this is how a lot of overweight people see themselves. If you don't see a problem when you look in the mirror, that means it doesn't exist. The truth is that it does exist, and one thing that can't be changed is the way people view others. They have to change that themselves, and not all of them will do it the way I did.

Driving Lessons

When Abed's father passed away, he didn't have much money to his name to leave behind. It was just a few thousand dollars. Abed's sister decided he could have that money and buy a car with it. However, Abed didn't have a drivers license. He was 25 years old and had never really driven before. By that point in my life, I'd been driving a car for ten years.

Fortunately, I was not tasked with teaching him how to drive. One of his father's friends took on that responsibility and let him borrow his car to get the license with. (I couldn't really teach him how to drive in my car because I drove a standard transmission. You cannot begin learning to drive a car on a stick and I wouldn't have wanted him to wreck my gears.)

Once he had gotten the basic stuff down, I would ride with him and observe his skills to give him a few tips. He was a very attentive driver and had full control of the car. However, we were driving Downtown and he blew right through a red light and I could see cars coming our direction. I screamed, "STTTTOOOOOOPPPPPPPP!"

After we crossed the intersection, he stopped. "DON'T YOU EVER DO THAT! I HATE IT WHEN PEOPLE SCREAM AT ME!" I yelled, "ABED! YOU RAN A RED LIGHT! CARS WERE COMING AT US! I THOUGHT WE WERE GOING TO DIE! YES, I'M GOING TO YELL IF I THINK I'M GOING TO DIE!" Abed didn't say anything after that. He continued driving.

The time came for Abed to take his driver's test. He had heard that it wasn't crowded at the DMV in El Cajon, so we decided to go there. I happened to need to renew my driver's license, so I thought I could take care of it while we were there. I had been to the Central San Diego DMV so many times before and there was always a line, so I was surprised to see how calm it was in El Cajon. I took a number and sat down. Within ten minutes, my number was called. As I went up to the window that called my number, a man attempted to cut in front of me and asked the clerk if he was open. The clerk saw me and told him that he needed to get a number and wait until called. I wonder how that guy would have handled being in the central DMV.

I got the renewal taken care of and got a photo taken. They gave me a paper copy of my license with my picture on it. For the first time, I felt like my photo made me look old, like I was no longer in my 20s.

Abed's sister and brother in law helped him pick out a used car. He was able to get insurance for it. He was good to go.

The next day, he was driving down the highway and got rear-ended. The car's frame was severely damaged, but Abed was still able to drive the car. The other driver was in the military and was in his sister's vehicle. He didn't know where his sister kept the insurance information. He provided his number to Abed and told him to call. But Abed couldn't get a hold of the guy at the number.

I asked Abed what type of insurance he got. He said he just got liability. I asked him if he paid an extra $20 a month for uninsured motorist insurance. He said he wasn't sure. I told him that if he had that, all he needed to provide to the insurance company was the license plate number of the car and they would take care of the rest.

It turned out, no, he only had liability and no way of getting hold of the other driver to make him pay for the damage to the car. Supposedly, the car was totaled, but he had no choice. He had to keep driving it.

Even though it was damaged, it still turned out to be a fairly dependable car. But Abed didn't want to venture too far from home.

Adventures at the Vet's Office

About six years ago, Ms. Ogolon brought a second cat into our home. However, Charlie turned out to be a very shy cat and didn't care much for being touched. She really didn't like being picked up. This is what happened to me the first time I took her to the veterinarian's:



It took about 15 minutes of chasing her around the house and being scratched and bitten before I was able to figure out how to get her in the carrier. But when we arrived, the vet's assistant was able to handle her and put her on the scale. Suddenly, she's a frightened little kitty:



Because she is an indoor cat, we just haven't bothered with taking her to the vet's in almost four years.

Experimental music at a closed bar

The day after the impromptu guerrilla acoustic experimental music demonstrations in Downtown San Diego, another event had been planned for the afternoon. Hird knew this guy who owned a bar in Lemon Grove. He'd had his liquor license temporarily suspended, but would allow the place to hold private gatherings and serve alcohol. (And I'm not completely certain this was 100% legal.) Hird invited all the participants of the demonstrations to come down, drink alcohol and play music for ourselves. Abed, Ferd, Marrad and Leaz all got to take part. I was going to bring my keyboard and play as well.

During the demonstrations the night before, a woman started observing the musicians. I don't remember her name, but I'll call her Trid. Trid took part in the demonstrations, banging on some of the percussion instruments that weren't being utilized at any given moment. Abed and Trid began talking and found they had a few things in common. They started liking each other.

Abed invited Trid to join us at the bar the next day. He told her to come by our apartment before we left. She showed up an hour before we had planned to leave. Before I loaded my keyboard in the car, she played it a little. I was surprised. She could actually play. Abed mentioned that Trid could sing as well. However, she wasn't very impressed with my Casio CZ5000.

We went to pick up Leaz. She brought her guitar. On the way over, Leaz complained that none of the other musicians wanted to join her in doing chants that she had made up. They all just wanted to play the instruments. She felt like she had been an unwanted presence and no one was taking her seriously as a contributing artist.

We found the bar and were able to go inside. Most of the other musicians were already there setting up their instruments. I set up my keyboard. There was no schedule for playing. Everyone just got up and played when they felt like it. I was still angry at everyone from the night before for blatantly disrespecting my work, so I didn't really feel like playing much. If Abed hadn't needed me to drive him there, I wouldn't have gone. I mostly stood around and drank soda. Abed would ask me to get up on stage every once in awhile. I joined in the improvisation, but I didn't feel like anyone actually cared if I played or not.

The real problem was that I had a deadline for getting out of there. I had to show up at work and load the videotapes to be recorded. I would have to be gone for an hour. However, we were supposed to be out of the bar in 30 minutes. This was just after Leaz had taken the stage to perform without the other musicians improvising. After she'd done a couple of songs, Abed told her that I was going to have to go and I was the only person driving them home. Leaz got upset. "Oh, that's just great, Abed! All the men get to play around and do what they want for four hours, but when a woman takes the stage, you have to shut her down!" Yeah, I knew how that felt without being a woman.

Leaz was all huffy on the drive back to her house. Abed, Trid and I drove to my workplace, where I changed the tapes, and then drove back to the apartment. We spent some time at the apartment before Trid had us drive her back to the place where she was staying.

Around 3am, the phone rang. I figured it was Trid wanting to talking to Abed "because I just wanted to hear the sound of your voice." I got mad because this happened about an hour and a half before I needed to wake up for work and I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to go back to sleep.

After I got to work, I called the voicemail, which Abed had already listened to. It turned out the call was from Abed's sister. Their father, who had been in hospice for the past week, passed away during the night. I immediately felt bad for getting angry.

After all the details and arrangement for his father got sorted out a few days later, Abed realized he hadn't heard anything from Trid. He asked me to drive by the place where we dropped her off that night. We didn't see her anywhere around there. Abed didn't try to get out and knock on the door. We just figured she'd disappeared, like several other women Abed had been involved with.

A couple of months later, I came home and found Trid talking with Abed in our living room. I didn't recognize her at first because she'd changed her hair color. I guess the reason why she vanished was that she'd gotten arrested on a prior warrant or something like that. I couldn't say I was surprised.

After a couple of minutes, I invited her to come into my room to check something out. It was my new keyboard and she was very excited by it. She started playing it and obviously enjoyed it more than the Casio.

But we never saw or heard from her again after that. Maybe that was a good thing.