As I’ve mentioned previously, numbers sometimes leap out at me. (I think I might need a new category of posts, come to think of it.) Here are two recent ones:
1. In the vein of my “44444” odometer post, the other day I noted that in exactly three months, I drove 5,251 miles. That’s a lot of driving. For someone who until Sept. 1 had a two-mile commute to work, that’s an astronomical amount of driving. But I covered three states during that time, so that’s pretty cool. Also, it’s time for an oil change.
2. And, speaking of excessive, I vaguely remember the days when I was allotted 200 phone text messages a month and didn’t use them. Then I upgraded. Then a couple years ago I needed to up it a little more but my only choice was 1,500 texts a month. No way would I ever exceed that amount! Right? Well, um, uh, hm. Now take a look at last month’s total:
Yes, folks, that has become my new definition of “normal.”
In the summer of 1995, I went on a group camping trip to Medicine Lake. My mom wasn’t much of a camping fan, but I was always game, and a bunch of my youth group friends were going to be there. So when Rod and Margo Foster offered space in their camper, I was thrilled. I knew them pretty well by then, because they’d given me rides home from church choir practice, and were generally just really nice people.
A few months later, on Nov. 17, 1995, Deputy Rodney Alan Foster was on duty as a Siskiyou County Sheriff correctional officer. The jail had a hepatitis outbreak, and the rural community didn’t have a lot of medication, so he headed for the nearest city of Redding (then a population of probably no more than 50,000), a drive of about an hour and a half.
Around 6:15 p.m., Rod rounded a curve on Interstate 5 where a big rig truck had jack-knifed and flipped over. Rod was the first one on the scene, and he never had a chance. His county van was shoved under the big rig, and 30 more vehicles soon slammed into the wreckage.
Today marks 15 years since Rod Foster died. I was a teenager and had never before faced human loss. I have a vague memory of my mom hanging up the phone and breaking the news that he had died, but I don’t remember how I reacted or how I felt. Somewhere I might have a diary entry about it, but as I write this, my memory doesn’t resume until the day of the funeral.
It was held at a church in Yreka, and I remember the wood paneling and dim lighting. I remember parking, and walking in the church where law enforcement officers lined the walls. Later, we joined the funeral procession through town. As we wound through the cemetery our Ford Escort began overheating, as it always had, but we kept going. I remember the gray clouds, and the gun salute at the graveyard.
One week later, a few miles down the freeway from the scene of Rod’s death, seven people died in another wreck. Because of the higher death toll and the even closer proximity to Thanksgiving, that story made headlines throughout the state.
Rod’s death didn’t reach the headlines outside our community. But yesterday I was surprised to discover that his crash actually made news across the whole nation. One of the 17 people injured in the wreck was former Yankees player Don Larsen, who 39 years earlier had become the first and only baseball player to pitch a perfect no-hit game in a World Series, a record he still holds.
I have long since moved away from the town, and I haven’t talked to Rod’s widow in many years. But when I recently drove down that stretch of Interstate 5, I thought of Rod. I recalled the weeks and months after the crash, when the speed limit was drastically reduced from 65 mph to 45 mph. It was later revealed that the state had used inferior materials when resurfacing the roadway. The combination of the crumbling road surface and the sharp curves was deadly.
A couple years ago a newspaper editor wrote about driving that stretch of highway, wondering why the most sparsely populated part of California had the nicest freeway. I fired off a rather lengthy e-mail, telling him that it took multiple fatal crashes and a lawsuit by a fallen officer’s widow before the state actually fixed what had been a very badly surfaced road. I’m not a fan of frivolous lawsuits, but Rod’s family deserved the $1.5 million they were awarded – I remember how that road worsened in the summer preceding Rod’s death, and how we tried to dodge the ever-expanding potholes as the road literally crumbled. I’m glad state officials fixed the road well enough that, years later, it got the attention of a newspaper editor.
And that is why I like to think that Rod did not die in vain. His name is one of just many at the national law enforcement memorial in Washington D.C., and he wasn’t mentioned in the articles that updated the baseball star’s status. But Rod’s death helped force the state to admit their fault and work round the clock to fix their mistake as fast as possible. Perhaps this spared other families the feelings of loss and devastation.
Rod's name on the law enforcement memorial in Washington D.C., which I visited in 2005.
Names are etched on the wall that goes around the whole memorial.It actually takes a while to travel the whole walkway. Many names are etched there.Rod's gravestone at Evergreen Memorial Cemetery.
A few months ago I started using Foursquare for two reasons: I wanted to see what it was about, and I wanted to become the mayor of the jail. I met those goals within two days, since my job at the time had me at the police station every day. When I’m not annoyed at Foursquare’s GPS failures, I’m still using it for two other reasons: It’s a handy way to remember where I went, and I can get FREE STUFF!
Seriously, FREE STUFF! As in, chips and salsa from Chili’s restaurant! I grew up learning to pinch pennies. We had one winter where we lived on potatoes and oatmeal, and I still distinctly remember being 10 years old and it was a huge splurge to buy me two sundresses that were on sale for $5 each. Now, I balance cost-cutting measures with the fact that you only live once. If I want to go out to eat, I will. If my coffeemaker dies, as it did last week, I’ll spend a few more bucks to get one that I know will make me happy.
Anyway, a couple weeks ago I heard through Twitter that the Lodi Winegrape Commission was looking for Foursquare users to promote their First Sip wine event. So I got in touch with them, and it turned out that if I took fliers and posters to a bunch of businesses in Stockton, I could score two free tickets that would have cost $35 each. I was game, so I spent two hours and about two gallons of gas delivering the brochures. The marketing director could track me on Foursquare as I checked in at each business, which I think is a pretty cool use of Foursqure.
This weekend was the wine event. I took my friend Deanne, and we sweet-talked her fiance into being our designated driver. Drivers got free food at each stop, so we didn’t have to beg him too hard. About 30 wineries were participating and we couldn’t get to all of them, so I Photoshopped the event map, drawing a route that included wineries that had the most promising food options. Saturday we headed out, and we met the goal of wine before noon:
Five hours later, we’d tasted our way through Lodi. They were pouring quite generously, Lodi wine has about 14 percent alcohol, and I didn’t have enough to eat that day. So the evening became a blur… But here is the other way that Foursquare comes in handy. I did check in every place I went, so later I went back and looked: In five hours, we stopped at nine places, two of which were pouring from multiple wineries. Not bad for one day! Our last stop was at a sushi place where we got happy hour prices.
Conclusion: Foursquare has its uses, and hey, it’s free. Also, Lodi sure has a lot of wine.
Here are a few more pictures of the day:
They either gave out huge wine glasses or tiny water bottles.Winery meets cemetery, with fall colors -- aka, a perfect trifecta in my book.
Who parked my Lamborghini at this winery??Some crazy guy named Voodoo, Deanne the coolest chick ever, and me. OK, so the crazy guy was our awesome driver.
Remember last year, when much work stopped in the U.S. because there were live newscasts of a Colorado boy who had supposedly climbed into his family’s homemade helium balloon contraption and flown away? (Yep, I was one of those who got in trouble at work, even though I was actually supposed to keep up on news events as part of my job…) The boy’s family was distraught, military planes were scrambled to try to catch the balloon, and then it turned out the boy was actually hiding in the house.
So all was OK and the family started making the rounds on talk shows, as happens in these modern times. And then the boy outed his father on live TV by reminding him that it was a planned hoax in order to get on a reality show.
The parents got in trouble and had to do a little jail time and pay thousands of dollars for all the money wasted on the massive search/rescue. Eventually they faded out of the spotlight, though they did get their own Wikipedia page. What happened to them? Well, apparently the dad has come up with a new idea: a large, gawdy back scratcher that is permanently mounted to a wall for all to see.
The best part? He made a commercial (apparently after hyping himself up on what I guess to be 96 ounces of strong coffee) and posted it on YouTube.
The latest meme to sweep Twitter involves the hashtag “tweetyour16yearoldself.” If you have no idea what that sentence meant, here’s the translation: Post a tweet (140 characters or less) to yourself when you were 16. Some people instead posted a tweet that they would have posted at age 16.
Both resulted in some long walks down memory lane. I only have time to skim my Twitter friends list, but I saw some responses that made me think, “Awww, to be young again.” One friend mentioned a plaid hair scrunchie, which reminded me of the ones I used to make. Yes, I made a plaid one — and my nit-picky self made sure the pattern matched perfectly at the ends I sewed together. (And, wow, there’s a scrunchie.com website.)
Naturally, I loved the one another friend posted: “Honey, you’re gonna run a marathon someday.” I also liked, “Invest in Google.”
I posted, “He’s not worth it.” Needless to say, my teenage self wouldn’t have listened to my own advice. In fact, many years later, I’m still slow to take that advice. (At some point, he’s worth it, right? Right??)
If you could give your teenage self 140 characters of advice, what would you say? Would you tell her she’d one day laugh at that big hair? Would you advise him that Hammer pants are not cool? Would you get serious and say that loved ones won’t always be there?
So the San Francisco Giants won the World Series last night, and TV was full of funny quotes.
Take pitcher Tim Lincecum, for instance. He was holding the large series trophy when a TV reporter asked him a rather stupid question, “How does it look?” Lincecum, obviously not sure what that question was all about, replied, “Uh. Shiny.”
Now, to back up a bit, I’m a Chicago Cubs fan. Since they have been on a bit of a non-championship streak lately (har har), I root by geography, which means I cheer for the Giants and the Oakland A’s. In other words, I’m not quite a bandwagon fan, but considering I don’t pay a lot of attention during the earlier part of the baseball season, some might call me one. I’m OK with that. For the record, I’ve said for a long time that I’m sure I’d really get into baseball if I ever dated someone who also liked it, because I’d be interested by the stats and the numbers.
As in most recent years, I watched the World Series again this year (it doesn’t hurt that I’m working with someone who’s a big Giants fan). I have a bunch of friends who are fans, so it was all over Facebook and Twitter, and it was fun to see all the orange and black Giants colors just in time for Halloween. Now that they beat the Texas Rangers, I guess we’re all going to be subjected to red and green for the next two months.
To get back to quotes on silly TV, one not-quite-sober Giants fan was hollering joyfully in a San Francisco bar, where a reporter stuck a microphone in front of him. “I’ve been waiting 29 years for this, since 2002!” he shouted in glee.
And then, later in the night, a Bay Area reporter was outside the Civic Center in San Francisco, after the hubbub had died down. “I’m broadcasting live, where the fans were gathered earlier but now there is nothing but trash left,” he said — as a bunch of fans appeared in the background and began cheering.
This weekend I hit a Twitter milestone, though I’m not sure if I should feel sheepish or proud about it. Yes, folks, I reached my 10,000th tweet.
Does it help if that tweet was about a burnt bison out-running a grizzly bear? Seriously, those photos were pretty epic.
Twitter is such a weird phenomenon, and I think I like it because it’s short and to the point. You’re limited to 140 characters per tweet, which means you say something short, then you get back to skimming through other people’s posts. No wonder I spent a decade as a hard news reporter and found it to be so easy — write fast, move on.
Yes, you are looking at a doorknob. It’s my interior bathroom doorknob, to be precise. It’s a mix of gold and silver colors. That raised part in the center is only decorative, and the outside half of the knob is identical. It looks quite benign.
But it’s actually a villainous doorknob, full of evil plans. It sits there silently for months, plotting and scheming, waiting to catch me off guard, at a moment when I’m certainly not thinking about my bathroom doorknob.
That moment came Friday evening, when I’d had less than five hours of sleep, had been awake since 4 a.m., had driven 110 miles, and had been staring at a computer screen for a good chunk of the day. Oh, and on my way home I’d gone shopping (not my most favorite past-time) for a birthday present for a 1-year-old. In other words, when I went to open the bathroom door, I was quite confused when the oh-so-angelic doorknob didn’t turn.
I tried again. I turned (or tried to turn) it the other way. Then I recalled that my doorknob had pulled the same stunt a while back. I was quite shocked then to learn that my bathroom door actually locked, and then I promptly forgot that bit of trivia about my house — probably because I spent the summer battling black widows. At least this time, I knew I didn’t need to panic, since I’d clearly managed to free myself the last time I managed to get locked in my own bathroom.
Of course, it would have helped if I remembered HOW to unlock the door. I pulled, I pushed, I turned some more. Just when I was starting to worry, one of those methods worked. Now that I think about it, I’m still not sure how to unlock the door…
In typical Layla fashion, I promptly posted about it on both facebook and Twitter — might as well spread the humor at my own expense! The best response was from my friend Rick, who suggested I put a refrigerator in the bathroom for next time, adding, “Mmmmm. Toilet beer.” Perhaps he was referring to Bud Light?
It’s no secret to most of my friends that I am easily amused. This extends to numbers and patterns, which often drive me mildly nuts because I see them constantly. On long drives, I’ve been known to mentally calculate my miles per hour to the nearest hundredth, simply because I was bored. My days of grocery store work and crime/court work have made it that I see produce and criminal codes everywhere, too. We’ll get to 11:11 in another post on another day.
Anyway, the other day my car’s odometer hit a cool number. Since I’ve gotten better at thinking, “Oooh, photo opportunity, let me pull out my phone,” I documented it:
Aren’t you glad you spent the time reading this blog post?
I’ve followed the PostSecret blog for a long time, and a friend gave me one of the books a few years ago. So, when I heard the author (for lack of a better word to describe him) was speaking at the university 16 miles from my house, I was intrigued. But there was competition for tickets, and I don’t like dealing with that, and I figured I didn’t need to spend $10 on it. Then I got a last-minute offer of a free ticket, so I jumped at the opportunity and attended the event Saturday night.
If you don’t know about PostSecret, it started five years ago when a guy named Frank Warren got an idea for an art project. He printed up 3,000 postcards with his home address on them, then began asking random Washington D.C. strangers to write a secret on the card and mail it to him. It became an Internet sensation, and now he gets 1,000 postcards a week from around the globe. He’s also received secrets written on a potato, a bag of coffee, an In-N-Out bag (which he showed Saturday), and others. He just published his fifth book, a best-seller.
Warren is a great public speaker, and he had the right balance of humor and serious thought-provoking matters. For him, the biggest purpose of collecting secrets is to encourage people to let go of them. Plenty of the secrets are funny — he said “I pee in the shower” is the most common secret he receives — but many are from people who are dealing with awful things in life. If they can tell their awful secret, even anonymously, then maybe they will feel relief and be able to move on.
Of course, some people will probably move on for other reasons: At the end of Warren’s talk, he asked people to step forward to one of several microphones and share their own secrets. One girl brought down the house by admitting that, for revenge, she uses her roommate’s pasta strainer to sift poop out of her reptile’s cage. I have a feeling she’ll be moving on to another roommate because a confession like that won’t remain secret in today’s world full of social networking. But that’s probably best for both roommates, anyway.
Others shared about depression, and some started crying as they shared their dark secrets; audience members then started crying, too.
“The children almost broken by the world become the adults who will change it,” Warren said in his speech, and it stuck with me.
Much of the audience was made up of college students, and the first one who spoke publicly said that he makes it a point to say hi to as many people as possible, because when he was in high school he was the outcast nobody talked to. That young man didn’t let his experiences break him; instead he’s trying to change the world simply through kindness.
One PostSecret blog reader was inspired by a postcard to start a website that would reunite lost cameras with their owners. Now, dozens of people have found the pictures they thought were gone forever, thanks to I Found Your Camera. As I write this, the site has received 5.2 million hits.
The camera site and PostSecret started simply: Someone got an idea and decided to act on it. On the screen behind Warren, he displayed a simple question: “What’s Your Crazy Idea?” His own mother doesn’t like PostSecret (she called it “diabolical”) and, after glancing at his books in a bookstore, said she doesn’t want her own copies. But that didn’t stop Warren, and his idea has become a phenomenon. He has found something he truly enjoys doing, and he’s been rewarded: Warren has heard from people who, after seeing a secret on the website or sharing their own, decided to get help rather than committing suicide.
We all need to cling to our dreams, and take a chance by pursuing the ideas that come to us. After all, we might just stumble upon a way to help others.
Yes, folks, that has become my new definition of “normal.”
