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Today's revelation: when you're sitting in a largely empty restaurant having breakfast, it is extremely annoying when the proprietors insist on playing a Jim Croce album over the PA system. I'd have been okay with one or two songs- "Operator," maybe -- but not an entire album of obscurities, followed by a James Taylor album. It doesn't make your pancakes slide down easier, that much is certain. Just sayin'.

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Today, I was here (First Energy Park, Lakewood, New Jersey, home of the South Atlantic League Class A Lakewood Blue Claws, a Phillies affiliate):

They even let me in to take a few pictures:

Look! My old employer has an ad!:

There's something lovely about a ballpark, even in the rain:

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Nine hours. Nine freakin' hours. We spent nine hours on a plane today. It was supposed to take six hours, tops, but it took nine hours, and that doesn't count the part where we woke up at 3 am Eastern, dragged our asses over to Newark Airport, found Budget's return area devoid of baggage carts, assistance, and people, as well as receipts when we went to the counter, lugged the bags up to the train platform and discovered that it was "maintenance time," meaning that we'd have to change trains at Terminal A. Then came weather, international flight connection delays, a busted valve, and heavy traffic on the runway.

This was not our day.

But, then, it IS in reality a good day, because we're back. Nice trip, great to see everyone, but L.A. is home, and it's nice to be here, in our own bed, back to semi-normal. And speaking of our own bed... excuse me. (That east-to-west jet lag is kicking in right... about... now.)

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I'm still operating at the zero-sleep level. We've been back for a day and I'm still lagging. Blame this culprit:

Ella the World's Most Famous Cat has been meowing nonstop since we returned. These aren't just small, natural meows;, no, these are intense, loud, attention-must-be-paid meows. She meows when we don't pay attention to her, and she meows when we do. If there aren't any crunchy treats out for her, she meows. If there are plenty of treats (crab flavored, of course), she meows. When we're sleeping, she meows. If we go to the bathroom and close the door, she stands right outside and intensely meows. If we open the door, she walks in and meows. She meowed all night, then followed me to the office and meowed all morning, taking a few minutes' break, then meowed when I went out to run, meowed at lunch, meowed until I opened the window so she could sit in it, meowed while sitting there, and meowed when I opened the laundry closet door. Oh, and she screeched at a cat who happened to stray into our driveway.

She also discovered something that could cause me a great deal of distress: turns out that my legs feel exactly the same to lay upon as Fran's. Ella sleeps on Fran's legs, a twelve pound, circulation-blocking weight planted firmly atop her shins every night. Last night, Ella found my legs to be the perfect resting place where she could relax between meows. It took a lot of effort to dislodge her from that spot, whereupon she decided that my face would be an adequate substitute.

So it hasn't been a restful return to California. I know, everybody writes about their cats as if they're all amazing, as if everything a cat does is a first, unique, never before experienced. I know other cats display separation anxiety and all the other symptoms expressed herein. All I'm saying is that I have a plausible explanation for my lack of coherence right now, and she's small, fuzzy, and noisy as hell. And adorable, too, which is one reason why she'll get to stick around, meows and all. I'm a sucker for adorable,

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We knew we wouldn't be back home from our trip in time to defrost a turkey (or get a fresh one) and do all the sides, but we didn't want to go to a restaurant -- we'd done that before, and didn't like it. It's a weird atmosphere to be at holiday dinner with strangers and without football. Worst: no leftovers. So, this year, we let someone else do the cooking, namely the Marie Callender's over on Western.

This is the part where I tell you what a disaster it all turned out to be, how the order was botched and the food was bad and the meal was ruined, except that none of that is remotely true. The meal was excellent. The turkey was huge and will provide great leftovers. The potatoes and yams were addictive, the cornbread and stuffing wonderful, and the apple pie approached carb overload, but in the best way. Best of all, the cleanup was easy, allowing me to be back on the couch for more football and a little college hoops (Nova!) in minutes. Apart from some faulty heating directions (too short), everything was perfect.

And that raises the question of why we didn't do this before. We -- and by that I mean Fran -- have been assembling and cooking Thanksgiving dinner ourselves for most of the last twenty years, and it's messy and a ton of work and no cheaper than getting it from Marie's, and even the leftovers were about the same in volume either way. What were we thinking? This restaurant thing, this letting-someone-else-do-it thing, well, I could get used to it.

For what am I thankful this year? For a capitalist system that encourages businesses to let you pay for them to do your dirty work. Oh, and family and friends and good health and all that stuff, too.

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Five minutes on hold.

"Daily Breeze, may I help you?"

"Yeah, good morning. My paper didn't come yesterday. I'm at (address redacted) and the Thursday paper just showed up today, over 24 hours late."

"Yeah?"

(Yeah? What kind of response was that from a customer service rep?)

"Um... yeah. I'm not happy."

"Well, I see your complaint didn't come in until this morning."

"Your offices were closed early yesterday. I called and left a message and asked someone to call me back today. Nobody called."

(impatiently) "It was a holiday. We had holiday hours."

"I did call. I could only leave a message"

"But you got your paper."

"Yeah, over a day late. That's useless."

"Doyouwantaweek'scredit?"

"What?"

"Week'scredit. Thankyo..."

Click. (She hung up.)

You would assume that a business on shaky ground like a newspaper would want its front-line representatives to at least take a stab at being understanding and helpful. You'd think they wouldn't want customers informing advertisers that their Black Friday "doorbuster" ads didn't reach some customers until AFTER the early sales were over. You'd think they wouldn't have their carriers drop letters at customers' doorsteps telling them that because the paper is also now distributing the Wall Street Journal locally, he can't guarantee that the paper will be delivered by 7:30 am as previously offered. You'd think that the folks at MediaNews would want to do whatever is possible to guarantee that a paid-up subscription customer of twelve years' standing doesn't get hung up upon by a customer service rep. You'd be wrong.

Thanks for the free week. That may not be enough to keep me subscribing.

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It was the first thing I heard when I turned the radio on this morning -- my usual first choice was in syndicated programming, but I happened to turn to an all-news station and they were reporting that Malibu was on fire again, first 100 acres, then 300, and soon over 1,500 acres and growing. I went for a run shortly therafter and took some crappy cameraphone pictures along the way:

And on TV:

Once again, the first impulse is to engage in a little fingerpointing and a little schadenfreude -- what ARE those people building houses out there for? -- but that doesn't wash. Fires can happen anywhere, and you can't help it when weather and wind conditions pick up the flames and carry them into your yard. And if someone discards a cigarette butt or carelessly starts a bonfire or, worse, deliberately sets a fire knowing it will burn people's homes down, that's not the homeowners' fault. We who live in Southern California also know that this can happen to us as well -- no matter where in this region you live, you're one flame away from disaster. Are we all supposed to move away? To where? To hurricane country? To blizzard country? To tornado country? I grew up in a flood plain and lived in a particularly flood-prone area of Bucks County along the Delaware River, which ended up submerged a few years after we left. That's no good, either. Are we all supposed to move to, I don't know, Idaho?

So far, 35 homes have been destroyed, but our friends in that area seem to be OK. I hope it remains so. And as long as it's something that can happen to us, I can't look at the situation with anything but sadness.

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