危機修行: Update

Yesterday was one of the stranger days of my life. Apparently there have been some acts of vandalism directed against some Chinese families in our neighborhood; my wife had warned me that stones were thrown at our house one day recently. Because of the impending slow-mo Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves in my office, and because of an impending meeting,



I was up rather early yesterday morning (though I'm often up that early to go to the gym), but without much sleep.

Anyway I saw what I convinced was the culprits' car, and the culprits therein, which made for a rather weird confrontation. When faced with having to defend my family, I have found that I can revert to some rather strange behavior. Seeing the apparent culprits, though completely unarmed, I stared at the idling vehicle and its occupants to try to remember all I could in case I had to describe it to the police. In so doing, I noticed one of the occupants of the car, with a closely shaved head, was staring at me. In response, I adopted the same expression and demeanor I had once appreciated on the face of a bodyguard sent by the mob to guard an exotic dancer at a friend's batchelor party many many years ago: an expression of almost joyful murderousness, a "go ahead, fuck with me" kind of face, all the while being hyper-mindful and keeping MU very close. Not that I could do anything but run if confronted, but I hadn't had much sleep and I didn't have my cell phone with me.

Apparently that is enough to scare off low-life wannabe skinheads in this part of town. Racist wankers. I had an uncle that worked for Bugsy Segal; I never knew this growing up, and only found out about it after he died. Which was too bad- if that meme had been gently propagated in my neighborhood when I was a kid perhaps the neighborhood bully wouldn't have tried something with my little brother, prompting an almost Shakespearian tale of revenge (note to self: must remove Tarantinoisms from my writing). But what the heck- it's apparently in my genes somewhere.


And that was just the beginning of my day.
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Yesterday I was able to infer that the folks who the cmpany I work for practice politics at a mulitdimensional byzantine level that some low level managers like the one to whom I report don't seem to begin to grasp, in my view. Which is probably too bad for them, because I understand what they're doing and why. I have to set up a meeting with the president of my outfit and say to him, "You sly dog, you!"

Finally, the day turned a 180 with a visit to my son's school. My son sat stood for 20 minutes showing us how he painted a picture. He definitely DOES NOT have attention deficit disorder. He put stuff away. He demonstrated some really cool abstract, purposeful thinking, and is learning to read and count. I did not give a microgram of feces over my current 会社の危機.

To top it all off, we went out for my wife's birthday to a local restaurant, Beaches.

What we didn't know is that the wait staff actually took my kid around, affording me about 20 mintues to actually talk with my dear wife.

Geez, how destiny changes with practice.