At least I'm making some progress. I didn't wait another six months to post like last time.
What's been happening? OK. I'll do it in the order of when the events occurred:
1. I served on Jury Duty for three weeks (September 11th-14th, 18th-21st, and 26th -29th). I would like to say that it was an interesting trial, but I've already promised to be honest when I made entries here. It was a civil trial, more accurately a combination contract violation/intellectual theft/sexual harrasment case. For the first two charges, the Plaintiff charged the Defendant with violating her contract with his company, Ken Clark International (a job-hunting company) as well as stealing his client database to start up a company of her own. The Defendant filed a countersuit claiming that the Plaintiff created a hostile work environment that made it impossible for her to work there and she was mistreated because she was a woman. The jury, that consisted of me and 7 women, found in favor of the Plaintiff regarding contract violation. The Defendent did business with a client that had a history of doing business with the Plaintiff's company that extended over three years and didn't ask his permission to do business with the Defendent while she was under a three-month restrictive covenant not to compete with "KCI"). Since the client would have more than likely did business with another company (KCI advertised themselves as a Retained-Search company, meaning that they would charge the client a fee regardless of whether or not someone was hired as a result of any searches), we didn't award any damages to the Plaintiff. The remaining two charges were dropped due to lack of evidence. No hard-drive forensics were entered into evidence (only a copy of the file by a witness for the Plaintiff) and only two women who worked with the Defendent claimed that she specifically was harrassed by the Plaintiff due to her gender. If anyone asked who won the case, I said "The attorneys! They raked in HUGE billable hours for this case!"
2. I've recently lost a friend to The Grim Reaper: Starlog Magazine's Senior Correspondent Steve Swires. I'll avoid saying the smaltzy things that most people say at eulogies and say that my sometimes foil/sometimes compadre was one of the most challenging and fascinating people I've had the occassional pleasure to know.
I met him 20 years ago in Manhattan, NY. I was a volunteer staffer and guest escort for a convention organization called Spirit of Light, who sponsored a convention tour that was called "The Pertwee Tour without Pertwee!" The original Guest of Honor, Jon Pertwee, contracted hepatitis in New Zealand while eating a bad batch of snails, so he was too ill to travel to The States. His friend and Who rival, Patrick Troughton, filled in for him and the Chief Organizer, Ralph Scianno, contacted other actors for the line-up that included Paul Darrow from "Blake's 7," Star Trek's Jimmy Doohan and Caroline Munro, Stella Star from "Starcrash!" My mission, which I chose to accept, was to drive to New York and pick up Caroline and a "writer-friend" of hers, who was going to serve as her on-stage moderator and interviewer on the convention tour. It might have been the excitment of playing chauffer to one of the most beautiful ladies on this planet that prevented me from inquiring about this unusual arrangement, but when I arrived, the "friend" sat shot-gun while Caroline sat in the backseat. I tried not to be insulted by this at the time, but I was able to deduce why this happened after meeting them and driving them to The Trenton War Memorial Building: Caroline was unusually shy and Steve had a very forceful personality that could either "put some people off" or draw them into an endless number of stimulating conversations with him! Fortunately for everyone involved, I was in the latter category. Not only did I lose my fear of a return trip filled with awkward silence, it was the most pleasant drive I've experienced since I put the downpayment on the car I drove at the time. Steve and I talked like long-lost brothers sharing one pop culture reference after another ("Soupy Sales and Friends" among others) when I wasn't enjoying anecdotes of interviews he's had with actors, writers, directors and producers from Hollywood and Europe, including several that Caroline knew personally! I felt like a convention audience of one!
When the tour moved on, I established an unusual friendship with Steve that included two-to-four-times-a-year get-togethers at various sf/fantasy/media conventions (the latest being Chiller Theatre in Secaucus, NJ), updates on his long-distance telephone interviews to the West Coast and "across the pond" as well as the latest gossip on several beatiful actresses, of casual acquantance, who confided in him when they discussed their "questionable" life-choices (I'd name names, but I don't want to risk any lawsuits). He also managed to inadvertently help me face my fears of driving from Trenton, NJ to Brooklyn, NY and back (arrived at lunchtime, returned at midnight) so that I can pick up several VHS tapes & DVDs that I've purchased with him when he made discount orders online and he had an annoying habit of borrowing numerous VHS tapes, DVDs and books from me (and his other friends) and holding on to them for years! I've never written a list for them because I trusted that he'd return them when I saw him again at the next convention that we attended. Leave it to him to prove me wrong by dying unexpectedly!
A virtual neighbor of Steve's, who contacted him 4-5 times a week to run errands for him and Irving, Steve's 98-year-old father, had the unenviable task of burying them both this month (Irving died 10 days after Steve due to various injuries and surgical complications). When he's able to regain access to the Swires' house, he'll gather all of the books, tapes & DVDs and arrange to sell the "unclaimed items" at a later Chiller Theatre Convention.
3. Starting September 18th, I officially started teaching The Basic Tax Course for...oh hell, I'll have to give them more free advertising...H&R Block! It's an 11-week 66-hour training seminar on preparing consumer tax returns that the company encounters between January and April as well as "off-season" for the lucky few preparers that take care of them. I've completed my fifth week and I can honestly say that this was more of a challenge than I would have ever expected. Not only are the students struggling with the massive information that I'm trying to convey to them, I'm struggling to come up with ways to help them learn to "think like a tax professional" instead of a typical layman who's overwhelmed with the ever-changing Tax Laws, prompting 60-70% of the population to have their taxes prepared by people like...us. At least the more experienced instructors have complimented me by adopting some of my "radical" ideas into their teaching curiculum like a chart that I designed so that the students will know where income sources, deductions, credits and other increments are placed on a 1040 Tax Form and a Schedule A. If only I could have more time to do a thorough review of the NJ1040 and supporting forms for New Jersey. Maybe I'll do better during the remaining 6 weeks of classes that we'll have before and after Thanksgiving week.
I'll comment on my movie-going experiences on a later posting. It's getting late and I have some serious homework to do! Oh yeah! I'm also taking a course in preparing Partnership Tax Returns! What's "spare time?"
Watch your step going down the stairs and drive safely. The weather report says rain and lower temperatures, so I wouldn't rule out dangerous roads.
Good night.
