http://app.sightspeed.com/vm/hnc5vnr41b84ckkn5kd4t9zhg99aq4ae/14z8/en_US/196/

Cranky and conferences.

SFGate: Daily Dish
Read the Mel Gibson story.
What's the matter, Mel, someone else exercises free speech and it violates your rights? You were criticized as anti-Semetic for the movie The Passion that you made, and it amounts to violating your rights? Is that really what you said? And you expect an apology? From who, now would that be. People who had the right to think and say what they thought against you and your film? Oh, that is because it hurt your feelings.
You can't really expect that no one would have not liked it, or thought you were too tough on the Jews. GROW UP, Dude!

It is awful that I feel such sorrow when watching a senseless movie. That the profound loss portrayed in this movie moved me makes me feel foolish.

I realize I am keeping many things inside me, and I am saddened when I think that I do not love. I remember feeling deep love and, at its loss, a pain that was unbearable. It is something that I have not found in a very long time, something I have not felt in a long time. I am afraid I will not feel it ever again. Not the joy and not the pain. That makes me so sad. I am empty, by design, and I look for fulfillment. I travel, I appreciate fine art. I love to share my experiences, but I only seek to fill that hole.

Business Trip:
Start Sept. 24, a Sunday. Because of the new restrictions on liquids on planes, I was at SMF at 2pm. My flight was at 3:55pm. Nothing unusual, no strangers. After renting the car at ONT, I got lost, again. Seems like I cannot get out of that airport without getting lost. I finally got to the hotel, had to wait while the US forest service fire guys checked in. They had been in the area fighting a local fire, probably the Pinnacles blaze http://www.latimes.com/news/local/state/la-me-iebriefs21.2sep21,1,5423594.story?coll=la-news-state&ctrack=1&cset=true

I don't mind waiting for them, they are heros who need their rest.

I went to dinner at Black Angus. I eat alone once in a while and I don't mind. Company is better, but on business, it is sometimes a necessity. Lots of couples, mostly older. One guy in particular looked funny in his short sleeve plaid cotton shirt, he was at least my age (50s) and he had an earing in his left ear, looked pirate-like. It just didn't fit, that is how I noticed it. There was a dad and daughter couple, reminded me of Naomi and her dad, only the daughter was all cute-girl dressed (a 'baby-doll' top, they look stupid, by the way) and dad was a tanned farmer. He had on clothes you know he wears every day, a style that suits his working man's life. Worn jeans, boots, a long sleeve shirt, papers and a pen in his shirt pocket, and a measuring tape in a worn leather holder on the belt. Oh, and a ball cap with a farm equipment name and that awful mesh material. It was red.

Life is the same all over, from San Bernardino to Sacramento. It is good to know that.

Things got ugly a few months after our dad died.

All of my siblings, except the baby of the family, were at the old house and we talked about who would be in charge of taking care of the ‘estate.’ We all agreed it would be me, I was local, I was the one everyone said they could trust, I’m the one with the stable job. I think they thought they could trust me because I had the most to lose if I cheated. The loss of my public safety job would be too big for me to cheat my siblings. I would not have cheated them anyway.

We had to find an attorney and chose the one who handled my dad’s portion of the divorce. We had to pick someone and we thought he might know some of my dad’s assets. Dad had records, but they weren’t extensive and trying to find everything isn’t easy. He had some life insurance, a beat up old truck and a car in terrible shape. Some stocks and investments in some kind of real estate holding companies (which were nearly worthless). He had the house. We thought he was the sole owner; on paper he was, but my brother made a claim that he had loaned dad money to buy out mom and Daniel claimed never to have been paid back. There was an agreement to sell him half the house.

Being the administrator of an estate, there was no will, I had a fudiciary repsonsibiliyty to guarantee such a claim had the proper backing. I had talked to Daniel about it, and suggested that perhaps the easiest way to settle this was to figure out how much each of the remaining of us kids would pony up to settle that score. I cannot remember how it -became a no-go; one or more felt like it wasn’t right or did not want to give Daniel money. No one knew of this agreement between dad and Daniel prior to this time.

It got ugly. Daniel claimed my sister Micki stole all the records from dad’s files, a claim she denies. She did take all the files because we needed to go through them, and I gave them to the attorney. No record of this promise to sell real estate was ever located. Daniel came up with a copy; it looked like a copy of a copy. He said the orginal was stolen. Micki said there never was such a document in the files, I went through them, the attorney went through them, I don’t believe the attorney had a reason to lie, Micki wouldn’t and neither would, or did, I.

Daniel convinced one of my sisters, Shannon, and my mother, who was at the time the legal guardian to my minor brother, to join him in a tort action to remove me as the administrator of the estate, have himself made the administrator, and obtain half of the house pursuant to the documents he had, the agreement to sell him half of the house. I did not just accept the document, on advice of the estate attorney and the advice of my other two sisters.

The bitterness results from the affidavits Daniel, my sister Shannon, and my mother swore to: that they had knowledge and could prove that I was cheating the estate and using funds from the estate for my personal gain.

How dare my mom claim that she wasn’t allowed to grieve for our father, whom she was divorced from, when he died in 1988. Its 2006, what 18 years have gone by and she carries resentment for … wait until you get this … me! Yes, she blames me! How do you figure? Here is the crooked logic; I was cold to her at my dad’s funeral. Let’s see, I had stopped being clingy to my mom years before, as I grew up and as a teenager just could not take care of being the mom of the family. She had checked out of being responsible and I took over when I was young, hey, someone had to do it and I didn’t know it wasn’t my job.

It was hard to hear her talk about the abusive man my dad was to her. Yes, I did witness family violence, or shall I say, the aftermath. Dad rarely got into it with her in front of us kids. He also never spoke badly about her, even when I lived with him. I didn’t ask, but he didn’t volunteer… not like our mom, boy did she blurt out whatever she felt had on her mind. She was abusive verbally to us kids, very much so. I understand she was frustrated. I can accept that, but it did not help my feelings about myself and my abiding insecurities.

Oh, back to the cold at the funeral thing. I remember thinking I did not want to comfort my mom. I guess because I never have understood how she could speak in such a hateful way about dad over many years – as if I was a confidant, or therapist who should hear these things. To think she was feeling grief for herself was foreign to me and I if I wanted comfort, I certainly did not expect to gain it from her. Instead, I remember thinking this and still do, I would find no comforting but instead would have to give it, as I have given so much all of my life with mom.

I once got hurt at work, had to go to the hospital after a high speed, high impact traffic collision in which I was rear-ended. The one thing I did not want was mom to know about it. I did not want her taking a trip to my house and ‘take care of me’ because I believe it would be me taking care of her. I was in barely in condition to take care of myself, let alone anyone else, emotionally or any other way.

So how does she figure I didn’t let her grieve when our dad died? She gives too much power over herself to others. That is the operative issue here, she gives power away in order to be powerless, thereby blaming others for … everything that goes wrong.

The Buzz: CHP pilot's mission: Fly chief to fundraiser - The Sacramento Bee

Pretty embarrasing, huh? It doesn't sound as bad as the rumors that were humming along on Friday, May 12th - those focused on how the commissioner missed work because his back (an old injury) was bugging him, yet he went to this screening of M.I.III, yet was too injured to attend the memorial at the CHP Academy for the 7 officers who lost their lives this past year in the line of duty. Now, if that were true, it is just plain disrespectful.