City officials and Vroman’s representatives had been having discussions about the bookstore’s possible expansion into Monrovia for months and had been close to an agreement, according to the city’s website.

“…While we were very close to reaching an agreement to purchase the newly renovated building at 601 S. Myrtle Avenue, the more recent economic conditions and variances have caused our Board of Directors to adopt a more conservative approach regarding expansion at this time,” Vroman’s president Joel Sheldon said in a statement.

The bookstore has not ruled out the possibility of coming to Monrovia in the future.

Which is too bad. A bookstore is the only thing that Olde Towne Monrovia really lacks.

On the up side: maybe this means the rumors about the old Crown City Brewery being the new tenant are true. That would be cool.

Perhaps the best part of biking to the store is that it feels more like a fun outing that it does an errand. It’s nice to know that TJ’s is within easy bike distance for small runs.

By way of brief product review, we use a pair of TransIt grocery bag panniers for the Dogwoods run:

They can hold our produce for the whole week and come with shoulder straps to make shopping with them easy. We even took them on a bike camp out with Fletcher’s scout troop, on which they very capably carried our sleeping bags and tent. Recommended.

What the? Oh, wait: we live in Los Angeles. It’s a film shoot.

Stephanie did a quick bit of sleuthing and found out that a show called “October Road” is shooting all over town this weekend. They’ll be down at the good old Aztec/Brass Elephant all day tomorrow.

The coolest thing? They made it snow. The whole block and all of the lawns along the street were covered with snow and the houses all had Christmas decorations up. It was pretty surreal. There was even a contraption up on a crane to make snow fall during the shoot. (I apologize for the horrible picture here.)

Here’s a better shot of the giant area lamps that they were using to light the entire block up:

There was a pretty good crowd doing more or less what I was doing: Watching the Hollywood people work and taking pictures. None (or very few) of the people in this shot were involved with the shoot. They were all just locals taking in the strangeness.

The only actor there whose name I recognized was Laura Prepon. She seemed nice enough, agreeing to take pictures with the people standing around when she was done working. I didn’t really want to wait around for that, so here’s a very blurry shot of a famous person.

Anyway, fun times in Monrovia, I guess. I’ve lived in and around LA for 13 years now and I’ve never really watched a film shoot happen. There sure is a lot of waiting about.

I’m just sayin’.

Thanks to the comment thread over at Eye Level Pasadena for pointing out the JPL Weather Station. No thanks to that rotten sun for cooking all of us over the last week.

The story started about three weeks ago when I ordered new checks. I had changed the address on the account some months ago and asked twice to confirm the address both on the account and on the checks. The current address is on the checks, and we’re sending them to your current address. Wells Fargo sent the checks to my old address, anyway. Thanks, guys. You’re great.

So now there’s a box of my checks sitting god knows where in Temple City. Wells Fargo graciously offered to put a 60 day stop payment on the whole box — an offer I took them up on — but after that: nada. Nothing they could do, the banker told me. They offered to switch me over to a new account, but that would mean that I would have to fiddle with my direct deposit and with the external accounts I have drafting directly out of my checking account. If I have to go to all of that trouble, why wouldn’t I just move to a bank that doesn’t send my checks to the wrong address?

The best part? At one point the banker tried to bust my chops for waiting as long as I did to ask about the checks. Hello? Would we be having this conversation in the first place if you didn’t send my checks to the wrong place?

For all you banks playing along at home, here’s what you’re supposed to do in a situation like this:

• Apologize. Up front. Don’t demand that the customer remember the name of the teller they spoke to before you admit that you screwed up.
• Put a permanent stop payment on the checks in question.
• Next day — and by next day, I don’t mean “third day” — a new box of checks to the customer in question.
• Apologize again. Seriously.
• Give the customer a tracking number for their checks. “It’ll get there in seven to 10 business days. Trust me.” doesn’t cut it.

So while I will graciously accept Wells Fargo’s tree-freaking-day air checks (The banker told me “next day” not once but twice while she was trying to make up for what she admitted to be their mistake. Thanks again!), I’m not staying with them any longer than I absolutely have to. If you love your bank, I’d love to hear why.

When I came home today, I found out that The Kid had drawn “family read-along” as his next book type in the MPL summer reading program. Stephanie and the kid were pitching me really hard for reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which, given my previous experience, I was skeptical of.

Stephanie has been telling us for years now how much fun reading Shakespeare aloud is. I trust her (and I was outvoted), so we gave it a shot.

It was great!

Getting in to the characters, doing the voices, and periodically getting quick story or history explainer from somebody who studied as much was a ton of fun. We read the first act tonight. Stephanie read Hippolyta, The Kid read Egeus and I read Theseus, and we divvied the rest of the parts up as we got to them. It was tremendous fun! It’s astounding to me that something I hated quite so much growing up quite be quite so much fun with the proper crowd and the proper attitude. I can’t wait to read the other four acts.

My only question at this point: is doing Bottom as William Shatner over the top? Perhaps so.

Vanilla edged out mint chip by one vote. (11 for vanilla, 10 for MC.) Rocky road an coffee brought up the end of the top nine (he was supposed to find the top eight, but there was a tie) with four votes. The Kid put together a much more complete report for school, learned about different ways to visualize data and how to use it to draw conclusions and make a point. I’m pretty happy that his class did the assignment.

I’m sorry it took me quite so long to get this posted. I burned the hell out of a couple of my fingers on Thursday morning, and it wasn’t until later on this weekend that I was able to type again. The lesson here was: don’t touch the engine of a lawn mower shortly after you’re done using it. Anyway, all’s better now. Stephanie took such good care of my fingers that it doesn’t look like the blisters are even going to break, which is braggable.

• peanut butter, i think i hate you…
• I’m tired of plain sandwiches and pasta salad
• PackMyLunchFilter!
• SalationSalvation from Super-Sizing!

Somebody please fill me in on what all this “below freezing” noise is about. I live in Southern California, in one of the valleys. It’s not supposed to get that cold.

I’m totally going to grill tomorrow night if it snows, by the way.

You say “NyQuil…”

I say “Bomb!”

Hoo boy. Good times.

8/17

I fill out the form on Speakeasy’s web site to move my service from my old home to my new home. Later on in the day I receive an “Out of Office AutoReply” from the person presumably responsible for setting up such a move. The response suggests that he’ll be back on the 23^rd

9/1

The first scheduled date for my install. At some point between 8:00am and 12:00pm they’ll be sending somebody over to hook me up. When this doesn’t happen, I go down to the coffee shop, check their on-line status form and discover that my install had been postponed. How I was supposed to know this while at home, without internet service, waiting for the installer is beyond me. It’s worth noting that Speakeasy never used the up-to-date contact phone number to call and let me know that the install was off.

The reason stated for the delay was “too many white spaces” in a form going between Covad — Speakeasy’s line provider — and Verizon. When I called in to see what was up, I was given a number for an “install coordinator” who would, I imagined, coordinate the install.

9/4

Install, part two. I go in to work and learn via Speakeasy’s on-line status form by the middle of the day that once again, and for the exact same reason — white space for Verizon — the install isn’t going to happen. It’s re-scheduled for Friday. Once again, no phone call from Speakeasy.

9/7

Third try, third cancel. Again I learn of this through the on-line form and not proactively from Speakeasy. I talk to somebody at Speakeasy who tells me that they finally cleared up the issue between their subcontractors and, honest, somebody will be by next Tuesday to get it installed.

9/12

There are two installs scheduled today. One is a regular phone line installed by Verizon. The other is the dedicated line for the DSL connection. (I didn’t have a land line at my old place, and for the sake of simplicity I elected to just move my service rather than move and change it.) At the end of the day there’s a note in the door from Verizon saying that the phone line is in and that Covad should have no trouble doing the work to get the DSL line in.

A quick trip to the coffee shop reveals that Speakeasy’s on-line status page hasn’t been updated. I call to find out what’s up, this time a little ticked, and am told that Verizon hadn’t gotten back to them and that they probably would first thing in the morning. They had better.

9/13

Sure enough, there’s an update around noon saying that the final install will be done on the 22^nd. That’s a full three weeks after it was supposed to be done, which is nuts, so I call in and ask if it couldn’t happen sooner. It turns out that they usually give their clients time to plan the install dates, which is why they pushed it so far out. I’m allotted an earlier time later on that week.

9/15

At home again doing the 8:00am – 12:00pm thing. At 11:30 the Covad guy shows up to work his magic, and within ten minutes he tells me that Verizon never did install the second line and that he can’t do his work.

Waltz. Tango. Foxtrot.

I call Speakeasy and get all manner of “we’ll open a ticket with Verizon.” We explore some other options and come up with 5-7 business days as being the earliest that they could get me up and running. In 5-7 business days, I could get less expensive yet higher-speed service from somebody who hadn’t been jerking me around for the last three weeks, so I tell them to cancel my service.

What happened?

Things like this happen all the time. You can’t hire any service without there being some sort of glitch. There are several things, however, that make this a fireable offense. First and most damning is that not once did Speakeasy call me to let me know that they weren’t going to do what they told me they were going to do and indeed what they had me agree to stay home from work to let them do. That’s crazy. They had a contact phone number. It was up to date. There was no reason for them not to use it. Missing a deadline is bad. Missing a deadline and wasting somebody’s time is awful. Shame on you, Speakeasy.

Next is that every time I talked to somebody at Speakeasy the attitude I got was “we’re sorry, but really it’s Covad/Verizon’s fault.” You know what? I don’t care if it’s Covad or Verizon’s fault. I’m not paying Covad or Verizon. I’m paying Speakeasy. If you’re screwing something up — and if subcontractors you’re paying are slipping, you are indeed screwing up — it’s your fault. Own up to it.

Finally was just the number of slipups. Any one of them I would have let slide, and indeed did let three blown deadlines go. All four of them together, on the other hand, are pretty hard to ignore. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me won’t be fooled any more than four times in total.

So now I’ve hired DSLExtreme for about the same price and double the speed. Their install estimate? 5-7 business days. But they’ve blown four fewer install dates than Speakeasy so far this year, so they get the nod.

Stephanie, The Kid and I got the keys to our new place today. (Photo Set) Needless to say, we’re both quite tickled about this. The house is in Monrovia, about three blocks from old town. We’re moving this weekend. Woo!

Easily the most amusing moment of the evening came when Lindsey and Alex were involved in a big pot. Alex had Lindsey — who did not want a call — covered. You can see the results of the hand below.

Lindsey, The Kid and I carved jack-o-lanterns (photo set) yesterday. It was great fun, and we got two rad jack-o-lanterns and a big bowl full of roasted pumpkin seeds out of the deal. Yay!