Christine is an Avenger of Sexiness. Her Superpower is helping Hot Mamas grow their Confidence by rediscovering their Beauty. She lives in the Heights in Houston, Texas, works as a boudoir photographer, and writes about running a Business of Awesome. In her spare time, she loves to knit, especially when she travels. She & her husband Mike have a food blog at Spoon & Knife.
Or is it Sarah Lee? Oh well. If I could save images in my corrupted IE 5.5 browser, I would share with you some of the wonderful creations I made at Goodbye Kathie Lee! But I can’t – so instead you should make your own! [via CriticalMAS, found thanks to Mikey.]
I wrote Monday about the moral delimnia I had last Friday night. Yes, like a few people admitted, I had a moment where I thought to myself, “Keep it! Keep it!” But I knew I couldn’t do that. So I did the following:
1. Tried to call the phone number on the checks. It just rang, no answering machine, no voice mail.
2. Realized that there is a police sub-station across the street. Thinking I could just give it to them, I drove over there with it. It was closed. Several patrol cars parked out front, no one around.
3. There is a grocery store in the same shopping center that often has an HPD officer there – I’ll go and give it to them. Nope, only a rent-a-cop there, and he seemed sort of shady to me.
4. Went back to the office and called the HPD non-emergency number. Explained my situation. She tells me to “just hang on to it”; I tell her that I think the police should handle it and she asks if I want her to send a patrol car to me or if I want to drive it to a different sub-station. It’s late, I’m hungry, and I want to get home – so I’ll take it there myself.
5. Drive to what I think is the other sub-station. It’s a Harris County Sheriff’s office instead, and the doors are locked. Two men sitting inside, look up at me as if they have absolutely no interest in coming to open the door. I understand that they have the door locked because the place is in what Chelsey & I fondly refer to as “the hood” and it’s not a safe place to be, but … hello? Do I *look* like a criminal? One of the men finally opens the door, listens to my saga of finding the briefcase, and tells me to just hang on to it. They can’t take it because when I told him where I found it at he said, “that’s not us, that’s HPD.” Isn’t Houston part of Harris County? Why doesn’t this stuff overlap?
6. I decide to just take it home with me. It’s getting late, I’m tired and hungry, no one obviously wants to help me out. Both the police and the sheriff have told me to take it home. So I call Brian back at the office and ask him to make a sign for me (I don’t want to drive back there and make it myself) and post it on the door. Your basic average, “Hey, did you lose your laptop? Call this cell phone number” sign. Then I waited.
Who would have thought that trying to do the right thing would take so much effort? I just didn’t want the bag to be stolen by someone else. If I had left it there and it was stolen, I would have felt really bad knowing I could have prevented it.
Sunday at noon, the cell phone rang. It was the owner of the laptop. He was beyond thankful that I had picked it up for him. He thought he had left it in a co-worker’s truck. Turns out that they had been in Galveston on a boat all day, had a few beers, and when they got back to the office he had sat it on the ground and forgotten to pick it back up. He was the person I saw leaving the parking lot as I came out – so it had only been sitting there for a few minutes. Add to this the fact that the laptop itself was a replacement laptop, loaned to him because his regular one was stolen from a rental car two weeks ago. The check was also a replacement for the one stolen in the other laptop bag. He said the first thing he thought when he discovered his friend didn’t have his laptop was, “Oh no, this can’t be happening again…” When he got to the office he saw the sign and called. I offered to bring the bag to him after lunch, but he said to just hang on to it. We met up Monday morning and I was able to reunite him with the laptop. It was a very touching, happy reunion. He offered to take me to lunch and I told him he didn’t have to – I only did what I would have wanted someone to do for me. When I got back from lunch on Monday afternoon I found out that he had come back by the office and left an envelope for me with $30 and a note to go out to lunch – his treat. It was more then he needed to do, but I was grateful. Instead of lunch, I bought a copy of Amelie and the tickets to the movie last night. Both of which made me quite happy.
One of Michele’s posts (this one, to be exact) reminded me of something that happened many years ago. Back when I was a junior or senior in high school. One of my best guy friends set me up on a blind date. He went to one of the Catholic high schools here in Houston, and he thought he should set me up with one of his friends from school. I had met other friends of his, and they were generally pretty nice guys – so I agreed. I talked to the guy on the phone once or twice, then we went on the date. He showed up to pick me up, and he was cute. Quite a little hottie. I was so excited; cute guy, smart, funny, the date was looking pretty positive. We went off to dinner.
That was when it happened. I experienced a form of racism that I had personally never encountered before.
15 or 20 minutes in to the meal, he told me that he had reservations about going out with me because I was Catholic, but since I was of German decent and had blue eyes and blond hair*, I was obviously part of the Aryan race.
Yes, he based dating me on whether or not I was part of the Aryan race. I had no idea that there were people out there like that (I was 17 at the time, I was naive.) That pretty much put a damper on the rest of the evening because I am simply not a racist person. I’m not claiming to be perfect and I know I have had racist moments, but overall I’m not a racist. And I refused to date one – I don’t think I ever spoke to him again after that evening. And I gave David a piece of my mind for setting me up with someone like that. Oddly enough, he didn’t realize it would bother me. I guess he really didn’t know me that well after all.
* When I was younger my hair was blond. When I hit 20 and cut off the horrid perm I had, I discovered that my hair had become a medium brown. Now it’s about 50% gray too, if I dont’ color it.
Yesterday I begged for help so I could set up MySQL with MT, and several people came to the rescue. Kristine wrote very detailed instructions and I suggested to her that they needed to be posted at ScriptyGoddess because they were so good. Thanks to going to the movie, I didn’t get stuff set up last night, but I will be tonight. Look out Trackback, here I come!
Several people have left comments asking why they should go to MySQL. Normally, I’m a “if it isn’t broke don’t fix it” kind of gal, but if you’ve ever had your Berkely DB get corrupted it’s a very frustrating break. Ben from MovableType was able to help me recover everything, but it was still a headache. So that is why I’ve been waiting for the MySQL version of MT – it will be more stable. Also, you can do things like export your templates using MySQL and MT. (I’d link to the post on the MT forums about it, but they posts have all moved around!) As time goes on, I’m sure you will see even more cool things that you can do with MySQL. Meanwhile, I’m going for the stability.
My Mom called me yesterday afternoon to see if I wanted to go to “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (2002)” before it left the theater. With only two shows a day, I’m sure it will be out the door by Friday. I tried to read the book but could never get in to it so I figured the movie might be just the kick I needed. We got to the theater a little early and there were just a few people there – but but by the time the previews started the place was packed. Every seat taken almost, on the front row was empty. And … it was all women. There was one man in that entire theater. Poor guy.
The movie was great. Wonderful. Simply hysterical. I laughed. I cried. More than once. I truly enjoyed it. But most importantly, there were lessons to be learned. First I was thinking this was a lot about mothers and daughters, or parents and their children. Really it applies to everyone though – before you judge someone or hate someone for who they are today, remember that there is a lot more beneath the surface that made them in to that person. We are all a sum of our past experiences, and I think Sidda’s father might have had it right – focus on the good times, those will always help get you through.