I was in the kitchen doing the dishes.

“Aaron! There’s an injured bird on the sidewalk in front of the house!”

I quickly dried off my hands and rushed through the house out the front door. Sure enough, flopping rather pathetically on the sidewalk in front of our house was a tiny brown bird. Is his wing broken? Leg? My mind flashed through all those cartoons and PSA’s I saw as a child where the adult would show the kids how to make a splint out of popsicle sticks, bandage the bird up until its wing healed, and then set it free. Would I have to do that?

Show me more… »

Categories: Musings, Writing Pieces
2 Comments »

I never used to be a very confrontational person. In fact I think I would go out of my way to avoid it, walking in the metaphorical muddy gutter to skirt around an oncoming confrontation. I don’t know when this all changed, but at some point, after being walked on and taken advantage of enough times, I just don’t put up with shit anymore.

That said, I’ve just recently taken to standing up for myself against corporations. Corporations are very, very large (generally speaking), particularly the “international” variety. They’re usually pretty well-run but occasionally, as a consumer, you’ll get what’s known in business jargon as “the shaft.” When this happens, you can do one of two things: “sit there and take it,” or “bitch about it and get them to fix it.”

There are lots of ways for a corporation to shaft you; Simple and innocuous things like a food server at a chain screwing up your order (I have a hard time with that one still, because I did food service for five years — I guess I’m too nice there), to not having a rebate or mail-order honored. Within the past two years, I’ve had three separate occasions where I’ve gotten “the shaft,” complained about it, and gotten results — typically from their “customer service” (read: “customer wrangling”) department.

Defrauded by Don Pablo’s

Last year, for Mellukkah (the week-long holiday where we celebrate my wife’s Melishness), Satya, Melissa and I went down to Dayton, intending to go to Amar India (this awesome Indian restaurant down by the mall). It was Melissa’s favorite restaurant, and the location of where we had our first Valentine’s day together. Plus, Satya had never been there.

As luck would have it, it had been thunder-storming that day and the storm had knocked out the power for the entire commercial lot that the restaurant was part of. It was only about 6:00 or so, so we went over to a new bookstore that opened by the mall and waited. Melissa and I looked at some Bellydancing videos, some books, and some ethnic music CDs. We were there for a little over an hour or two, and Melissa was getting really hungry. I called Amar India again and they were still without power. We waited a little longer, then drove back over to the restaurant. No luck.

Disenchanted, we got back in the car and decided to drive back. Melissa was very sad that Mellukkah wasn’t going very well that day. We decided to eat at Don Pablo’s, which was up on Miller Lane in north Dayton. (For those of you who have ever been to Dayton, Miller Lane is that long strip of restaurants that is right there when you first get onto I-75 South from I-70. You would know it if you saw it.)

I had never eaten at Don Pablo’s before, but I like faux-mex and tex-mex food so I thought it sounded good. I think Melissa just really wanted a Margarita.

Over the next hour or so we ate. The conversation was good, the food was alright, but the service was really bad. We often had dry drink-glasses, Satya’s order was messed up, and our server rarely checked up on us. It was sub-par service.

We got the checks, I paid with my credit card and tipped 10%. Now, I normally tip 20%, give or take 1-2%. I’m pretty generous, especially if the server is good. I will only go down to 10% if the service is awful but they make an effort. At the time I write this, I have only ever given less than 10% once, and that was in a situation where the server was intentionally rude and ill-tempered towards us.

A week or two passed by, and I was going over our budget, reconciling our purchases with my own record. I do this every week or so, almost compulsively, so that I’m always in touch with how much money we have. It helps keep me from over-spending and it keeps me financially grounded in reality.

I looked at the online bank statement. For the line where it said “Don Pablo’s” the amount listed was $5 above what we had actually authorized. I immediately knew what happened: The server felt we didn’t give her enough for her “effort,” so she padded the tip in the computer, thinking we would never notice. I imagine I probably wasn’t the first time she’s done this. I’ve worked with people who have done that before. Truth is, most people DON’T notice.

But I was livid. There was some pride anger mixed in there - the “Fool me once” thing. I wasn’t going to be made a fool. This was a criminal act; She was STEALING from me. Whether or not she felt entitled to it was totally irrelevant. I found my receipt from that day, found the number for that specific restaurant and called them. I got a manager on the line and told them what happened. He flippantly responded that they don’t handle that in the store and that I would have to call corporate. He really didn’t seem to care that what his employee did was illegal. This enraged me even more.

I called the number he gave me, and I don’t remember what actually happened here, but I’m pretty sure the number didn’t work. It was some automated system and I couldn’t get a hold of the right people. I found Don Pablo’s corporate website, found the appropriate number I needed, and called it. I was greeted with a voice mailbox, but it was of a specific office, so I knew it would at least get heard by a person. After leaving my message, I hung up, wondering if anything would get done.

About a week went by before I heard anything back. Apparently the person’s office that I called was on vacation. It WAS July, after all. Finally she called back and I got to speak to a human about this. She was the Corporate Accounts manager, top-brass in the Don Pablo’s world. She authorized a refund for the amount and said she would speak with the restaurant directly about it.

A month or so later, we received a couple $10 gift certificates for Don Pablo’s. I think it was a “we have you on file as having put in a complaint, so we’re trying to woo you with free product” attempt. It felt somewhat insincere and a half-hearted attempt at appeasement. I wasn’t angry anymore, but I didn’t feel like the situation was truly resolved.

Melissa and I went back to Don Pablo’s and we used the gift certificates. The food was still just OK, but the service was a lot better. We tipped her 20%, as usual (on the original bill total, not on the adjusted-for-gift-certificate total).

In the end, and to this day, I still don’t feel they handled it very well. I really wasn’t so upset about the $5. It’s only $5. It was the principle of the whole thing. It doesn’t matter if it was $1 or $100; Someone was taking that which didn’t belong to them because they wrongly felt entitled to it. And that person’s manager, the person who is supposed to be the sane voice of reason amongst a bunch of irrational food-servers, didn’t really care. We haven’t been back there since.

Christmas with Airtran

This story begins with a little background. Airtran Airlines (based in Atlanta, GA) and Wendy’s (the international fast-food chain, founded by the late Dave Thomas) partnered up in 2005 with this scintillating offer: For every 8 Medium or Large drinks you purchase, you can mail them in for 1 Airtran credit. Airtran credits are typically acquired by making Airtran flights (a one-way flight = 1 Airtran credit), and can be traded in for amenities (”business class upgrades”) or free flights. It’s sort of like the “Frequent Flyer” programs of other airlines.

I did some calculations: It would take 8 credits to purchase a one-way flight. 8 drinks per credit comes out to 64 drinks altogether. If I wanted a round-trip flight, that would be 128 drinks. I got started right away. I started eating their more and getting drinks (obviously) at first. I got smart and started asking for an extra water or two in addition to my order. They gave them to me free for a while, then started charging me $0.25 apc thereafter. (Still not bad!) My friends, on my request, ate at Wendy’s and gave, or in some cases MAILED, me their cup-coupons.

Show me more… »

Categories: Humor, Writing Pieces
2 Comments »

When my wife and I were first dating, she told me that she was applying for a job in Kansas City, Missouri, to work for Hallmark, writing greeting cards. In a macho-macho-I-want-to-impress-you-so-you’ll-think-I’m-teh-hotnezz way, I wrote some Holiday Haiku. Here they are:

You burnt the rib roast
You slept with my brother twice
Merry Christmas whore

Kids dressed like O.J.
Blood everywhere you can see
Happy Halloween

Roadkill for dinner
Chocolate eggs for dessert
I ruined Easter

Those were from a while back. Here’s a recent one:

Diapers everywhere
You haven’t slept for two months
Happy Mother’s Day

Categories: Humor, Writing Pieces
1 Comment »

My grandfather just passed away at 1 am today, Feb 22nd. I guess we all kind of saw this coming — he had been fighting hard with pneumonia in the hospital. He just had a hip replacement about a month ago and things went fine — then out of the blue he had trouble breathing and had to go into the hospital. Things weren’t going well, then they changed his antibiotics and he improved a little. Then it just ended.

Even though part of me was preparing for this moment, the recent improvements kind of disarmed me a little, and I feel taken by surprise.
From my uncle, on Feb 20:

Aaron,

Aaparently, they had Dad off the vent today for an hour and a half!

This is good… he was conscious to a degree…. and free of the horrid/wonderful ventilator for a period.

Sad to hear they had to put it back in, but you can imagine how perky you’d be after what he’s been thru.

Best

John

Then this morning, only two days later:

Bad news.

Dad/Grandpa passed away a little past 1 AM tonight.

He had 83 good years, and was an integral part of a great family.

He’ll be missed.

More to follow.

John

Right now, I’m listening to Mozart’s Requiem in D Minor, which seems fitting considering Grampa’s love of classical music. He also really loved Swing and Jazz as well. When I was younger, he used to make me cassette mix tapes with swing and classical music on it. I liked a lot of it, but I don’t think I understood it as well as I do now. In retrospect I’m really glad that he introduced me to all of that. In the recent years, I had been the one giving him music — I introduced him to Diana Krall’s music a few years back, with her “Live in Paris” DVD (an excellent Jazz / R&B performance), and that’s kind of been our “inside thing” every Xmas. He and Grammy took our family to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular when I was younger; I remember that being a lot of fun.

When he was in the hospital, and still conscious, my Mom told me that he was really scared. I remember a time when I was young, probably younger than 10, and we were visiting Grammy and Gramp in NJ. I was in bed in the upstairs bedroom and I was scared of something or other — I got scared of the dark and had a lot nightmares back then. Product of an active imagination I suppose. I was calling out for my mom, which was almost a nightly routine when we were away from home. I heard someone coming up the stairs, and I saw Grampa come through the door. He sat down on the white woolen sheets next to me, his face partially illuminated, or perhaps silhouetted, by the nightlight in the corner. He asked me what was wrong and I told him the usual spiel about being afraid of the dark, monsters in the closet, etc etc. Instead of the usual “it’s going to be alright” mantra, or telling me a story, as Mom and Grammy both did, Grampa told me something very different. This is a paraphrazation of what he said:

Many years ago, when I was serving in World War II, they stationed me in an abandoned city in Germany. They wanted me to stake out this area to watch for returning German troops. All I had was a rifle and my backpack, and the entire town was deserted. At night it was cold and dark. It was scary and I was scared, but I did it because I had to do it. And I was fine, nothing happened to me.

The memory of that night is very fuzzy, but I’ve kept it with me ever since.
To hear that the man, who once helped me address my fears, was scared, practically broke me down. It’s hard to see someone you’ve always seen as so strong in a moment of weakness.

Grampa taught me many things, particularly with games. He taught me how to play Checkers, Chess, Poker, and many other card games. He used to record me on his reel-to-reel recorder and microphone, my catchphrase was “Gobblegobble fish sticks”. I have no idea what that means or where it came from, but I think there are still some reels with that on them. He was always so supportive of me, particularly with my musical ventures. He really loved Benny Goodman — when I was (forced to) take up Clarinet in elementary school, he sent me a lot of Benny Goodman tapes. Apparenly the clarinet I had (a Bb clarinet) was the same type Benny uses. When I eventually took up percussion in 6th grade (because that’s what I wanted), he sent me cassettes with Jean Croupa. He bought my first drum stool and a floor tom, and several practice books for both snare drum and drumset. He bought me a calculus tutorial book / video because I was having a tough time in Calc in college.

He used to send me letters and newsclippings all the time about stuff. Some of them I would read, but I remember when I was living at home I would get so many of them that they would often pile up on the bookshelves in my room. I think in the past few years, probably partly because of his depression, he hasn’t felt very useful. I understand how he could feel like that, having been there many times myself, but it was far from the truth. He was a role model for me (and others).

Last year the whole Westerdale clan (18 of us in all) went to Cancun for a Family vacation of sorts. They had a jazz band playing down at one of the restaurants in the resort, so Grampa and I went down there by ourselves and had dinner together and just talked. It was really great to just hang out with him.

At the very least, I can be happy that he got to meet my wife this past xmas, that I spoke to him nearly every week, and that I had 27 great years with him. I’ll miss you Grampa.

Categories: Friends, Family & Pets, Writing Pieces
6 Comments »

This was originally an essay I wrote for my Creative Nonfiction class last semester. I thought it was blog-worthy. Enjoy!

It had just started getting cold in the mornings. My windshields weren’t quite icing over yet, but the weather was definitely calling for more than just the navy blue shorts I was wearing. I put on Melissa’s black hoodie, which barely fit me, walked out to the front door and unlocked it. Peering outside, I saw that the grass was frosted at the tips.

Shit, I thought, I hope he’s ok.

Closing the front door, I walked back into the center of the house as Melissa came out of the bedroom, “Frank’s not out there.” My voice had a noticeable touch of concern in it. “Where is he?” was her reply, matching my worry. “I don’t know, I’ll go look around.”

Last night, when we returned from grocery shopping, Frank bolted outside. Our arms were full of groceries, so neither Melissa nor I were able to catch him in time; His lithe body took off right past us. “Frank! Frank!! Meeeeeeeoww?” I didn’t really think he could actually understand what I was saying, but it was always fun to entertain the notion that I could speak his language. He briefly glanced back at me for a moment, paused mid-step. Several feet from him, under Melissa’s car, I saw another cat – an alley cat. A cat from “the bad crowds.” Frank looked at me, then at the other cat, then at me again, then ran off, chasing the mystery cat.

I closed and locked the door, turning the porch light on. “Frank just ran off with another cat!” I exclaimed, somewhat exasperated. I explained to Melissa what I just saw. Her reply was something like “What an ass-cat!”

“Ass-cat” is an appellation he acquired months ago, after we had only had him for a couple weeks. I think it was Melissa that coined the term, although I don’t recall exactly what kind of Ass-cattery Frank had done to deserve it.

This wasn’t the first time Frank had run out of the house. The past two months Frank had been pretty regularly running around outside on his own, usually skulking around underneath the mangy hedges in our front yard. Sometimes he would run out at night, for who-knows-why, but after an hour or two we would hear the gentle pounding of Frank’s paws against the glass of our paned storm door. What was different about this time was that Frank didn’t come home at night. This was the first time that Frank had been out all night by himself, and it was pretty cold.

I put on my blue winter jacket and tied on my ratty old white Adidas’s, and went out the front door. Is this what it’s going to be like when our child is in its teen years? I thought, feeling a mixture of both fear and pre-emptive exhaustion. Melissa was due in late March, and we were both apprehensive, as most new parents are, about our abilities to parent properly. This whole ordeal was beginning to remind me of what it must have been like for my parents on those few occasions when I ran away from home, pissed off about something or other.

I couldn’t help but feel somewhat responsible for Frank running away. Maybe it’s because he’s been having a tough time adjusting to Bowie, our dog, who recently re-joined us. Maybe it’s because I only feed Frank three times a day, even though he meows for food all day long. Maybe it’s because I don’t pay enough attention to him. These thoughts raced through my head as I walked down the porch stairs.

I crouched down several feet from the stairs and peered back at the house, focusing my view under the mangy green hedges. It wasn’t too difficult to see under them since the foliage was so sparse. I hoped to see him huddled up under some leaves, or against the wall. No sign of him.

Did he run away? I wish he would understand! My mom had just told me over the phone last month that our childhood cat, Chip, was just recently hit by a car on the road at the end of their rural driveway. I got a little scared and my pace quickened.

As I rounded the corner of the house, heading towards the back, I began to think that maybe he was just in the backyard somewhere. I still saw the same vision, his huddled little tiger-cat body desperately pressed against something, and how grateful he would be that I found him and could take him back indoors. Man, it was cold out.

Looking into the backyard with a cursory glance, I didn’t see any sign of him but I did notice that the side door to the garage was open. The other day we had moved some things out of the house into the garage, and I remembered that I had forgotten to lock the regular door. Frank knew how doors work, and he has this bizarre curiosity about closed doors. If a door is wide open he will likely just pass it by, but if the door is closed, he’ll paw at the door until it opens on its own, or someone lets him in.

I pushed open the door and called out “Fraaaaaank?” It was more of a question really. “Fraaaaa-aaaaaaaank…” I didn’t see him, but it was dark in there. I glanced over at the garage door, and saw a pile of boxes and rubbish near it. I called out one more time, moving towards the heap. I half expected a homeless person to attack me at this point; Someone had opened the door last night, I was just hoping it was my cat.

I heard rustle near my feet, and then a jingle. Frank’s collar! I saw him sleepily saunter out from underneath some cardboard. He had been in here all night long. I felt relief wash the worry away. I squatted down and beckoned him to come towards me. There was no huddling, no shivering. He looked like he had just spent the night in a broom closet at the Hilton. I scooped him up and cradled him in my arms the way people do with cats. I couldn’t help but feel like I was picking up our future teenager from a holding cell at the police station after he got picked up for some kind of petty crime.

We walked back towards the house. As we got about halfway back to the front door, Frank started to fight me. Claws out and all. He didn’t want to go back inside! Come on, Frank. It’s really best for you to come back inside. I held onto him tightly, and continued to the front door. He got a couple scratches in on my chest, but we made it inside. Once indoors, I set him down on the floor and quickly shut the door. He paced away, as if nothing had happened, and even took a swipe at Bowie and gave him a dirty look.

What an ass-cat.

Categories: Writing Pieces, Ziggy aka Sullivan
1 Comment »

Last night we watched End of the Spear a movie that was part based-on-a-true-story, part prosetylization. I saw the trailer for it a month or so ago and thought it looked really cool… and then I saw it featured at Hobby Lobby and my first thought was “Oh great, another movie that will have forced acting and a poorly veiled religious agenda.” The movie, while marginally interesting, was exactly as I expected — almost painful at times. (Especially the analogies to cliched Christian epithets ["Waegongi has a son", "Walk waegongi's trail"])
However *AFTER* the movie, during the beginning of the credits, they showed the real people that were portrayed by actors during the movie (Micayune and Steve), as they are living today. There’s apparently a documentary being released in the near future about Micayune, Steve, and the other missionaries down in Ecuador and their life now. It looks *REALLY* interesting and I would *REALLY* like to see it. (Some highlights: Micayune goes to the supermarket, sees a moving sidewalk at an airport, sees Steve pay for groceries with a credit card. Simple things that are profound to third-world nations.)

But watching the primitive Waogani (I apologize if that is incorrect) made me think of a few things. Their lives were plagued by constant wars within their culture — the two tribes were constantly warring on each other, spearing one another, over and over. No one ever grew old enough to have grandchildren. Most of the Waogani would not expect to live into their middle ages.

This all seems really savage and primitive, but aren’t we, in our civilized world, still plagued with similar uncertainties? Melissa told me yesterday about a women who became snowbound in her car with her husband and two children (7 mos, 4 yrs). The husband went off on his own and has not been recovered yet, but she was able to keep the kids alive by breastfeeding them. Today I heard about the wife of someone who used to work here at the university; She had an aneurysm and died on the way to the hospital. Her 4 year old child was in the backseat and witnessed her death as her husband drove.

I’ve also been reading this book called “Chance Rules: an introduction to probability and statistics.” The title is pretty self-explanatory. Last night I read the chapter about death rates and risk assessment. They were comparing death by auto accident to death by plane crash — you are statistically much much more likely to DIE in an auto accident than you are in a plane crash. (Thousands of times more likely — it’s a really significant number) Yet people still would prefer to drive because they think it’s safer. I think it’s because they think they’re more in control of their own fate that way, so it seems less stressful. But really, the statistical deaths are more or less independent of the people involved. They are inevitable to happen.

It’s made me really aware of my own mortality, and being recently married, my family as well. There isn’t any sure fire way to ensure that my family will survive to be old, and that I will see my own grandchildren. It makes me think of sea turtles — they crawl onto shore, lay their eggs, and then crawl back out to sea. The turtlings (or whatever they’re called) hatch, and crawl out to sea — some of them make it but a lot of them get eaten by crabs, sea gulls, and other animals. In a way, all of us are sea turtles trying to make it out to our own old-ages, and some of us just randomly get picked off. That’s just how it happens. All you can really do is hope you aren’t a lucky winner, becoming another statistic.

Categories: Writing Pieces
No Comments »