It's time for Christmas break

I thought I was building up a full head of steam as I was starting to enter the era in which I lived in San Diego. However, it is the holiday season and I guess I'm fortunate that I decided to finish up this chapter of my life even though I had to deal with Thanksgiving a week and a half ago.

With all the anticipated time-consuming activities coming up for the next few weeks, I will be taking a break from writing the blog. However, this is a good time for you to catch up on the almost 500 articles I have written since beginning of the blog more than two years ago. At this point, we are more than halfway through my life. I guess that means I have at least another 400 articles to write before I catch up with my present.

After that, it will be Phase 2 of the blog, in which I'll detail all of my celebrity encounters. When I get to that point, I'll only be contributing one article a weeks. That means I shouldn't have to take breaks like this.

So in the meantime, I wish everyone stress-free holidays. Please do not pay for stress.

(By the way, this is the Christmas tree from my house this year.)

Wrapping up my time in Denver

Well, I did this after I chronicled my experience with living in Clovis, so I thought I'd do the same in celebration of the time I spent in Denver.



My only problem is that I don't have a good video to share for when I leave San Diego.

A not-so-unexpected visit

Driving back to Artesia during my move from Denver to San Diego, I had stopped and spent the night at my Grandma Bend's. I got up the next morning on 10/30/91 and inspected the inside of the U-Haul. Everything was still fastened in place. I didn't have all my belongings out of the specially-marked boxes and scattered all over the place. I didn't have any more mountains to drive through so I wasn't going to have to worry about the Pinto becoming unhitched and smashing into something.

I decided to drive to Artesia by way of Clovis. I visited my old workplace at KZZO-FM. However, there was no one there that I used to work with, so I went down to Portales and saw Grandma Ogolon. I also visited the campus of ENMU, where I went to college. Nothing much had changed. All I had left to do was go to Roswell and see Chez.

I had called Chez a few days ahead and told her I was going to come down. She told me that the 30th was her due date, so there was a possibility that she wasn't going to be home. I did not try to call her before I left Ft. Sumner to see if she was there. I just wanted to show up at her house and see if, by chance, she hadn't given birth yet.

I arrived at her home and knocked on the door. She actually answered it. Yep, she was definitely pregnant. She didn't seem too happy to see me. We did talk, but she seemed a little irritated that I was there. I asked her if I could get her anything. A smile slowly formed on her face as she said she wanted ice cream and Dr. Pepper. I walked over to Allsup's to get some. I came back. I don't think she thought I was actually going to get it.

Her sister Pid came home from school. She also made herself a Dr. Pepper float. The whole time, Chez just seemed to be patronizing me. I guess she was dreading what was about to happen and probably felt like I was partly to blame for her situation. We didn't get to act like boyfriend/girlfriend. She just was not in the mood for that.

The rest of the time I spent trying to get a photo of her. She held a newspaper in front of her face and would peek out to see if I'd put the camera away. I got three photos. She completely covered her face in one of them. But I managed to snap her giving me the evil eye twice. This is one of those photos:

The other photo gave a clearer picture of her eyeball, but I will only post photos in which you cannot distinctly make out facial features (as I have done in other photos I've posted of Chez).

I decided it was time to leave so I could see my parents in Artesia. I asked Chez if I could give her a hug before I left. She said I could, but she wasn't going to get out of the chair. I kneeled, gave her a quick hug and left. I drove off and wondered if I would ever get to see her again.

A week after I had moved out to San Diego, I called Chez to see how she was doing. It turned out she went into labor about six hours after I'd left. She said that when she started getting the contractions, her father made her start washing the dishes, saying it would help speed up the delivery. I guess it worked, because she gave birth about an hour and a half after she arrived at the hospital, on 10/31/91. She had a boy and named him Joad.

I asked her for a photo of the baby. She said she couldn't afford enough photos from the portrait session to give me one. I told her I would send her $10 to get a larger package if she would send me one. She agreed and I mailed her the money, along with the one clear photo I got of her while she was pregnant. I did get the photo of her and Joad that I asked for.

Even though she was really mad at me for trying to take her picture, she later showed off that photo to everyone, bragging that had been taken the night she gave birth. One of her friends said she didn't realize she had gotten that big.

As you might expect, my epic tale with Chez does not end here. There will be more in the future.

Ready to Move to San Diego

After I had received confirmation that I was going to be the Assistant Manager at the new movie theatre that Landmark was going to open in San Diego, I had to start preparing for my move. Fortunately, I had about a month to prepare everything. I started putting all my stuff in boxes and made arrangements to rent a U-Haul truck and a tow bar so I could take the 1978 Ford Pinto home with me. I literally had not been able to drive that for months and Dad was going to get me a different car that I could drive out to San Diego.

One of the things I had to force myself to do was to stop caring about what was going to happen at the Mayan Theatre after I left. That was very hard. My heart had been in that place for almost two years and I had to keep reminding myself that I was going to have to let it go and that it was my choice. One of the things I was going to miss out on was the disaster that would ensue if the theatre had gotten a liquor license. I don't think that ever happened, but I knew I no longer had to worry about that.

One of the things that made it easy on me was that Landmark had agreed to pay for my moving expenses. While they paid for the woman who had been selected as House Manager to fly out a few weeks early and locate an apartment, they would pay for my moving van, hotel stays, gas and two weeks at a residential motel. But I had to put everything on my credit card and send them the receipts. I wasn't looking forward to that, because I had just recently gotten a loan to cover my legal fines, fees and outstanding balance on my credit card. I did not want to get in the habit of running that card back up again.

A little going away party was thrown for me at the Mayan Theatre. It was actually touching because the Manager who had hired me, Mr. R, didn't get any kind of send off when he went to Palo Alto. (This was odd, because he was rather popular with the employees.)

I spent the next day packing the rest of my things in boxes. I had to figure out what I could take and what I would put in storage in Artesia. I marked the outside of the boxes "Leave" and "Take." Then, I had to get the U-Haul truck. I had wanted as small a truck as possible because I didn't have a lot of things to transport, but I was forced to rent a 14' truck because that was the smallest one that could tow a vehicle. When I drove the U-Haul home, I found it was nice to be behind the wheel of a vehicle again. The only catch was that I had to drive to a different U-Haul store to pick up the tow bar. Even though I had reserved it weeks in advance, the store I rented the truck from didn't have any available.

This was supposed to be the way things were going to go: Rid was going to come over that night and help me load up the truck and attach the Pinto to the tow bar. I absolutely needed help with that second part. He planned to spend the night and we were going to go to an exhibitor screening of "The Addams Family" the next morning. He had been looking forward to that film because he was a big fan of the TV series. After that, I would be on my way.

However, Rid never showed up. I tried calling several times, but he never picked up his phone. I waited until 8pm before I decided that I was going to have to load everything up myself. It was cold outside and there was snow on the ground. I had to make several trips back and forth. I was able to strap my more valuable possessions to the side of the truck. There was a lot of floor space left over after I loaded everything except my bed.

Because it was cold, I had to keep getting up in the middle of the night and starting the truck. I wanted to make sure I was going to be able to leave the next day and I didn't want any vital parts freezing up on me.

I got up the next morning and took the bus over to the Cherry Creek Mall, where the screening was taking place. Usually with exhibitor screenings, only theatre management is allowed to attend. However, the invitation for "The Addams Family" had no restrictions, so we invited all the employees from Landmark to attend. This was good as it would be the last time I would see most of them. We all had a good time. At the theatre, I asked Mr. M to come help me attach the Pinto to the U-Haul.

We got back to the apartment. When we got there, no one was parked in front of the apartment, so I was able to move the Pinto back into a position in which we would be able to easily set up the tow bar. I had to move it back by using the battery and the starter to engage the engine. After it moved back, I got ready to move the U-Haul out in front. Just then, the car parked in front of mine started moving his vehicle back. We waved our arms when we saw him coming our way and asked him to move back so I could park the U-Haul in front of my car. He looked a little ticked off, but relented.

We read the instructions and successfully attached the Pinto and tow bar to the rear of the U-Haul. I said my goodbye to Mr. M and he went on his way. I still had to finish cleaning my apartment and have the apartment manager do a walk-through. He didn't note any major issues and thought I would be getting the majority of my deposit back. However, I didn't get all of it because they charged me for parking, which I had previously opted out of. They never did send the money they owed me, but I figured that since I didn't pay any deposit to start with, I shouldn't be complaining.

But I was still fuming over Rid not showing up or even bothering to call. I mean, I had helped him move at least twice. On top of that, I went to help him out when he was getting evicted a few months earlier. (Because of an incident involving the police and someone else getting arrested, he didn't get evicted.) I felt like he didn't really value our friendship if he wasn't willing to return the favor this one time, the last time we would be seeing each other for a while.

As a result, I wound up not talking to him for the next eight months. I was that angry. The weird thing was that he had three major life changes during that time. I'll be writing about those sometime in the future.

I wrote earlier about how I had to deal with amajor snow storm hot on my heels as I was leaving Colorado. Driving that truck was a very nerve-wracking experience. one of the hardest parts was that I couldn't always tell whether the Pinto was still attached to the truck. Anytime I turned a curve, I would look in my rear view mirror. This got more difficult as it got darker and I was driving through Raton Pass. Miraculously, I never lost the car. I was also nervous about the larger items breaking free from their straps and wreaking havoc while I was trying to keep it under 60 on the highway. I was thankful the truck had an automatic transmission.

I made it down to Ft. Sumner and spent the night at Grandma Bend's. But I still had a full day ahead as I headed toward Artesia the next day, stopping to see someone special. More on that tomorrow.

My Summer Job

This doesn't go on my job counter because it wasn't really a job. It was the 40 hours of community service I was sentenced to a few months earlier.

I had to go to the courthouse in Golden to get my community service assignment. The counselor asked me if I had any non-profit organization in mind to work for. I didn't, so he offered me two locations. One was in assisting the security department for some organization. The other was working at Value Village, the thrift store for ARC. The counselor told me that there would be some light janitorial duties at the security position, so I chose the thrift store. I knew that even though that accident was my fault, there was NO WAY I was going to spend 40 hours cleaning toilets.

The thrift store was very liberal about its community service program. You could come in and leave when you wanted. I had planned to try to get it all over and done with during a two week period during the summer. However, when I first arrived, the woman I encountered. said I didn't have the proper paperwork. I told the woman they were supposed to have it, but she said I was supposed to get it and bring it. I called later and talked to the other guy in charge of the community service. He said they had my paperwork. All I needed to do was show up.

I was kind of mad about how I was treated that first time. (And I found out later that I could have done my service with the Denver International Film Society, which I had frequent contact with at the Mayan Theatre.) I decided to just spread out the 40 hours over several Saturdays.

I arrived and they had me working a kind of assembly line. The regular workers would put donated merchandise on a table and we were supposed to sort it out. There were about 10 people working in the back for community service. I talked to one couple who had been sentenced to 100 hours. They had less than three weeks to complete it. And I thought I was procrastinating.

It was interesting to see how everyone worked at a snail's pace while doing the sorting. Seriously, they were slower than some of the cashiers I've seen working at Walmart. But when I watched the regular employees do the sorting, they were lickety-split fast at folding the clothes and putting them on the hangers. They could do 10 pairs of pants in the time it took a community service person to do one. Sometimes, it seemed like the regular employees were a little irritated at our presence. We likely slowed down their productivity and they were the ones who got yelled at by the supervisors because of it.

The first thing I noticed after I had completed my first day's work was that they had padded my hours. I only worked six hours that day, but the person in charge wrote down eight. I guess they have so much work that needs to be done that they want to encourage the community service people to keep returning.

The third time I went in, the maintenance guy said I would be working with him. It was cold and rainy that morning and he had me outside pulling up weeds with my bare hands. Really? Then he had me go into the bathroom and clean the sink. (He did not make me scrub the toilet.) And we did some other maintenance stuff. After two hours, I got fed up and went home, even though that meant I would have to spend one extra day to complete my time.

I never got put on maintenance again. The next to last time that I showed up, they had me helping at the front of the sorting line. I put clothes on one side and general merchandise on the other. I was actually having a good time doing this. I was getting along really well with the regular employees. I accidentally hit one of the women in the head with a lampshade. She was shocked because she heard it go crunch and she actually thought that was the sound of her skull fracturing. She laughed when she realized that all that had happened was that we had dented the lampshade.

She told me I worked a lot harder than most of the other community service people. I made a comment to her that I needed to keep in mind that, while I only had to spend 40 hours of my life doing this work, she had to do this 40 hours each week.

I wound up with 1.75 hours left to go on my community service. I walked in one morning, did the full 105 minutes and told the guy in charge I was going. "You're leaving already?" "I'm finished. That's the end of my community service." He signed my paperwork and I was done with my obligation to the justice system.

I have never had to do community service again since. But if I do, I'll be sure to try to get into another thrift store.