Lucky Baldwin's 3-20-2007

Tonight I returned to Lucky Baldwin’s for the first time since I’ve been living back in Pasadena. Nicole and I have been wanting to go since we saw a documentary about Guinness on the Food Network. We didn’t do anything fun on St. Patrick’s Day, and all the pubs would have been too crowded to have gone anyway, so we had a St. Patrick’s Day today.

Almost as soon as we sat down the juke box started playing all the old college music that still seems reasonable to listen to while you’re in a pub. "Baby," I said to Nicole, "This song is ‘Stairway to Heaven’ by Led Zeppelin!" "Yes, baby, I know," said she. After that they played "All My Love" also by Led Zeppelin, then The Who, then Jimi Hendrix, etc., you can imagine. They even played Oasis.

Nicole had beef potato soup and chicken and vegetable pie for dinner. I had a full order of fish and chips. Nicole wondered why the Irish aren’t heavy folk if they like taters so much. I told her that it’s because we’ve never gotten enough taters to eat to grow heavy. Deprivation.

Across from Nicole’s seat there was a beer ad that featured a picture of a sheep that she liked. Of course there was a soccer game on the televisions up on the walls.

When we were ready to go home our barmaid took a picture of us and I took a picture of her. We’ll go again soon, and we’ll remember to dress more warmly, it’s as cold as the bloody U.K. in that pub.

John's Assistant Resigns

Well, she resigned in the same sense that Socrates committed suicide - it was one of the only two options given.

Of all the people working at this hospital, she was the only one who even resembled something remotely like a friend to me. It's therefore ironic that, though I wasn't her supervisor, if I had been her supervisor she would have been severely punished long ago.

Oh, she was rash. She was capricious. But if they had made me her supervisor, had allowed me to use my own punitive measures on her, she would still have a job today. And in fact, in the end she would have thanked me.

How did she get away with taking hour-long and ninety minute lunches *every day* when the limit is a half hour? Each day she would arrive at work roughly at 9 a.m. (meaning anywhere between 9:15 and 9:30), leave at 4:30 p.m., and in between do about fifteen minutes worth of actual work. In the meantime there was myspace browsing, e-mail, and chatting on the phone.

Yet she could have run the Media Center better than me if she wanted to. She was a wealth of knowledge regarding every aspect of the operation. If I ever had a question (and as long as she wasn't cranky) she would have the answer in a flash, or she knew where to get it.

Nobody at work is giving me any details about her departure of course, the rats. The word on the street, however, is that she took too many days off. That's like saying there were too many hungry Russians during the Siege of Leningrad. *Every week* I would be surprised if she worked three days out of the five. The last time she called in sick, before the heat came down, she phoned and said that she had a headache.

I'm going to miss the stories of Bellflower gangland mayhem. She was kept awake the other night by her boyfriend writhing in pain. He has chronic back problems as a result of being shot by one rival gang member and run over by another rival gang member. And what I want to know is, since he hasn't worked since November, who is going to feed his four kids (by a previous baby mama) and who will feed my former assistant's one kid (by a previous baby daddy)? And indeed, I did prefer hearing stories of the current boyfriend instead of answering the phone when her former boyfriend was making collect calls from L.A. County Lockdown to *the Media Center*.

I wish her all the luck in the world, and I hope she's not reading this, but I think what would be best is if she would just ask my advice for every decision that she makes for the rest of her life. Yet she's never asked my advice about anything, so I doubt that she'd start now.

The Gold Line and Grand Central Market

Here are some recent pictures from Saturday, Feb. 17. The Florendos graced Los Angeles with a rare visit. We met up at Amy and Gordon's place and then took the Gold Line downtown. This was Nicole's first ride on the Gold Line. It was Chinese New Year so we heard lots of firecrackers going off at the Chinatown Stop. At Union Station we took the Red Line to Pershing Square and walked to Grand Central Market for lunch.

It wasn't a long walk, but if Nicole and I look tired it's because we weren't expecting to do any downtown walking that morning. Nobody walks in L.A. Amy and Gordon's blithe and good natured young son Logan was fortunate to be shuttled around in a stroller.

Grand Central Market was lively, crowded, strange. I'd like to revisit again when I'll know what to expect. I remember griping dramatically to John about my job, I remember sawdust on the floor, I remember urban rustics snatching our chairs as soon as we stood up to leave. Food was pretty good, cheap. Outside I tried to take a picture of Nicole with the downtown skyscrapers towering above her, but it didn't turn out.

Side note: The unread e-mails in my inbox have risen past the 200 mark. I have 200 e-mails to sort through. O how the mighty have fallen. But imagine how impressive it will be to surmount this challenge.