Getting lit

Contrary to what you may have been brought up to believe, it's what's on the outside that counts. At least when it comes to landscape lighting.

If you've been following this blog for any amount of time—and if you have, you might want to look into a Netflix subscription—you already know we went through a rather substantial remodel a couple years ago. If you'd care to refresh your memory about it, especially the parts where strangers marched through my house starting at sunrise, giant dumpsters blocked the street and the word "budget" lost all meaning, you can read up on it here, here and here.

While many great things came out of the remodel, like our new whisper-quiet Bosch dishwasher, a master bathroom that can accommodate (or is that a-commode-date?) more than one person at a time, about 50 sq. ft. more of living room and a bitchin' kitchen, one thing we unintentionally lost was our exterior lighting.

Since we were putting in a new electrical panel and circuit breakers, upping the amps (not that having circuits blow every time three appliances ran at the same time for 20 years wasn't fun) and rewiring the electrical, we also upgraded the outdoor lighting transformer. The one we had was over 20 years old, and the hamsters and hand crank that ran it were both getting worn out. So hello to a brand new, digital whammy-jammy transformer that immediately blew out the line to our existing exterior lights.

Even though we didn't let the fact we had no budget for many things during the process stop us, we literally had no budget left to fix the exterior lights. So for the past couple years, the only outside lights on the house have come from the inside. We do have plenty of overly sensitive sensor lights around, so if you come near the place they light up like Bret Kavanaugh at a frat party. But they're just a poor substitute for attractive, illuminating exterior light that increases the value of the house, says, "Hey, I see you out there." and makes the neighbors oooh and aaahhh at the place as they take their evening drives.

Right now I'm researching what seems like thousands of new fixtures on hundreds of web pages while our incredible electricians from the remodel are in standby mode. Hopefully I'll be able to flip the switch on the job soon.

I don't expect my house will look like the one in the top picture when it's done. But I'm hoping it'll at least look better than this one.

Footing the bill

Yesterday it was my gums. Today it's my feet. I'm falling apart from head to toe.

And because I feel I don't share enough personal information, the kind you really don't want to know, the kind you'd subtly back away from someone if they were telling it to you at a party, I'm going to share some now.

So the thing is for years, I've had neuropathy in my feet. It means they feel slightly numb a lot of the time, and cold as well although not to the touch. No you can't touch them. The easiest way to explain it is to think of it like the plastic covering on copper wire. It starts to fray a bit and reduces the ability to conduct impulses.

Impulse control has always been a problem of mine.

There are a lot of vitamins that claim to restore nerve function, and I'm taking them all. I also get acupuncture for it, which helps by taking the focus away from my feet and putting it on the needles being stuck in me. I have a sneaking suspicion my acupuncturist was a voodoo doll maker in a former life. Maybe in his current one.

Recently I found out about a neuropathy treatment called Neurogenx. It's an FDA-approved treatment which sends electrical impulses through pads attached to my feet and legs to the nerves, and is supposed to eventually restore a significant portion of their conductivity.

Every session, and there are three a week for eight weeks, they hook up pads to my feet and legs and run electricity through them for 40 minutes while I tell Alexa which Springsteen songs I want to listen to (for those of you keeping score, the correct answer is all of them). Right now I'm on treatment six, so we'll see where it goes. Even if it knocks the neuropathy back 20% it'll have been worth it.

And speaking of worth it, of course this revolutionary, neuropathy-curin', patient-pleasin', feeling restorin', FDA-approved treatment isn't covered by insurance—it's all out-of-pocket.

I charge the treatment, the treatment charges me. It's the circle of life.

I'll keep you updated on my progress. I'm keeping my expectations low and my hopes high. After all, I can't keep rescheduling that Riverdance audition forever.

Gum surgery

So this is going to be a quick post tonight. Not for the usual reasons (laziness, lack of discipline, dead battery), but because my mouth is sore and I'm tired.

Obviously from the photo this is a post about gum surgery. I can hear your question from here: "What do achingly cute German Shepherd puppies have to do with gum surgery?" Exactly. My first move when looking for a picture for this post was to go to the Google and search gum surgery.

Take it from me—like the surgery itself, that's something you don't want to do.

A couple visits back, my dentist noticed a small lesion on my lower gum behind my front teeth. Small though it was, they thought it would be a good idea to get it biopsied to make sure it was nothing to worry about. They also think it's a good idea to floss everyday. I'm not going to tell them how well I follow that advice.

Then on my last visit, it had gotten slightly larger. So this morning, at 8 a.m., the periodontist cut it out and sent it on its way. And really, is there a better way to start the day?

The good news is he's done this procedure a million times and seen a lot of these. Once he got it out and had a good gander, he assured me it's definitely nothing to worry about - and the pathology report will just be confirmation of that.

Meanwhile, I'm a little sore, but nothing that Tylenol can't handle. Ironically, for the next couple days I'm also on the same diet my daughter was when she had her tonsils out last month. Being the good patient I am, I'm following those instructions to the letter.

For dinner tonight I had two vanilla milkshakes from In-N-Out. Doctor's orders.

Hospital sushi

When my daughter was out here last month on her Christmas break from school in Iowa (don't get me started), she didn't do a lot of the usual things you'd expect students on break to do.

She didn't go to movies every night.

She didn't party with her friends at every chance.

She didn't go with her BFF's to Disneyland and stay until closing time, or until (SPOILER ALERT) Mickey and the other cast members take their heads off, hang up the costumes and head out to their second job. I'm sorry you had to hear it this way.

She didn't do any of that. Instead, she had her tonsils out.

Now, of course she could've had them taken out by someone in Iowa. But before you accuse me of being an overly protective, elitist west coast dad who thinks Iowa doctors—as educated, experienced, compassionate and stellar though they may be—just aren't good enough for his daughter, allow me to do it for you. You're absolutely right. (Full disclosure: it was an Iowa ENT who looked down her throat and said, "Oh yeah, it's your tonsils. They have to come out.")

So six days after she got home, her mom and I were in the Outpatient Surgery Center waiting room at Long Beach Memorial, biding our time until she came out of recovery. I'd like to mention her surgery was performed by our ENT, who also happens to have been Chairman of the Division of Head and Neck Surgery at Long Beach Memorial from 2008-2013, and is currently Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Long Beach Memorial and oversees all surgical divisions at the medical center.

I'm just sayin'.

Anyway, somewhere just shy of the halfway mark of the 8 hours we spent there, the wife and I were feeling a bit famished. But we weren't about to leave the premises in case the doctor wanted to talk to us, or they needed me to scrub in on an emergency surgery (I didn't go to medical school, but I did see 8 seasons of Grey's Anatomy).

So I made a run downstairs to the basement where the hospital cafeteria is, along with the morgue. Coincidence? I think not.

It was pretty much like every institutional cafeteria you've ever seen. But what caught my eye was the pre-packaged sushi. As you might know by now, sushi's one of my favorite credit card torching, bank account-draining meals. However the idea of hospital sushi was only slightly more appealing than gas station or car wash sushi. The good news was if it made me sick, I wouldn't have far to go for help.

I decided to go for it, but to also hedge my intestinal bet by buying a chicken salad sandwich along with it. As I think back on it now,I should have probably given more thought to the age of all that mayonnaise in the chicken salad.

When I got back to to the surgery center waiting room and started eating, I was spotted on a security camera, and the lunch police nurse was in front of me in a nanosecond letting me know there was no eating there as a courtesy to patients who weren't allowed to eat at least 12 hours before their surgeries. Like that was my fault.

But since my daughter was under the knife, er, laser, I didn't want to rock the boat. I decided to obey their rule. And by obey, I mean break it.

Since it was late in the day when I got back with the food, the only people in the waiting room were families of patients who'd already gone in. There was no one left for my eating to offend. I was still scared of Nurse Ratched, who was now sitting at her desk. So being the brave rule breaker I am, I put the sushi container in my wife's purse and snuck bites out of it when she wasn't looking.

Driving home after her surgery, my daughter wanted to stop at In-N-Out for a milkshake, one of the few things she was allowed to have for the next couple of weeks.

If I'd known we were going to do that, I definitely would've thrown the sushi back.

Don't ask: Borrowing my phone charger

What's better than one sequel to a popular series of blogposts? Several sequels. Which makes today your lucky day as yet one more post gets added to my outrageously successful Don't Ask series.

I assume you're already familiar with the classics (and if you're not, don't burst my bubble - just let me think you are): Don't Ask: Watching Your Stuff, Don't Ask: Working the Weekend, Don't Ask: Loaning You Money, Don't Ask: Writing a Letter For You, Don't Ask: Sharing a Hotel Room, Don't Ask: Picking Up at the Airport, and the perennial Don't Ask: Moving - one of the most popular and requested of all.

While several other series remain dormant on this blog, like Guilty Pleasures, Things I Was Wrong About, The Luckiest Actor Alive and Why I Love Costco, this particular series continues to flourish thanks to the fact there's just no end to the things I refuse to do.

Tonight's entry is Don't Ask: Borrowing my phone charger. Here's the thing: phone chargers used to be expensive, especially if you were buying them at the Apple store. So most people just have the one that comes with the phone, and stays at home. They either charge the phone overnight and hope it lasts, or depend on the kindness of others to loan them their chargers at work.

My charger-loaning kindness is at 0%.

Instead of absconding with my charger—and making me hunt you down to get it back—there's no reason you can't have a backup charger all your own to keep with you at all times. They sell them everywhere. From the checkout counter at CVS (next to the nail clippers) to the checkout line at Nordstrom Rack (next to the hair ties).

They come in all colors, lengths and not only do they improve how long your battery lasts, they also improve how long our friendship will last. Win-win.

Don't get me wrong: next time the battery icon in the upper right of your home screen is in the red, by all means do the sensible thing and ask if you can borrow someone's charger.

Just don't ask me.

Throwing in the towel

There are a few things you should know about me if you don’t already. First is this: I don’t like what I don’t like, and I like what I like. (Chandler impression): Could it BE any simpler? I’m not complicated. At least not that way.

Next, and I think my current wife and every girlfriend I’ve ever had will back me up on this, I’m a catch. Especially when it comes to household chores like laundry and doing the dishes. You know, the ones everyone tries to avoid. While others are looking for an excuse not to, I charge head-first towards the dryer or the sink, ready to get the job done.

I’m the first responder of household chores.

Finally, in case you haven’t noticed, my personality might be best described as slightly compulsive. Exhibit A: Breaking Bad. Exhibits B, C and D: Springsteen, “my high school girlfriend” jokes, craps tables at the Venetian.

It’s no secret when I find something I like, I tend to go overboard with it. Which brings me to the Stonewall Kitchen dishtowels you see here. I love 'em.

Because one of the things on the long list of things I can’t stand is dishes in the sink—other things include paper straws, toilet paper from Trader Joe’s and whiny creative directors who haven't learned how to put the fun in dysfunctional—I wind up doing the dishes almost every night. And while a lot of that's just rinsing and putting them in our fabulous, whisper-quiet Bosch dishwasher, there’s also a considerable amount of hand-washing ones my wife calls "How many times do I have to say it—that cannot go in the dishwasher." To dry those, I can’t use just any dishtowel.

I need one that’s properly weighted. Thick enough to absorb, but not get water-logged. Not overdesigned with birds or flowers. One that retains its soft-to-the-touch feel before, during and after I'm done.

Stonewall Kitchen is that dishtowel.

I know what you're thinking: "Jeff's going on and on about a stupid dishtowel. He must be trying to get a bunch of them free from Stonewall Kitchen."

Frankly, I'm completely insulted you'd even entertain the idea that I'd stoop so low and be so obvious about doing something like that.

And I'll let you know when they get here.

Firing squad

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you get fired in advertising, all it means is you showed up one day.

Jobs in the ad biz hinge on a number of factors, and often job performance is the least of them. How you get along with A) the creative director B) the client C) the clients' wife D) creative services or any number of other individuals can affect how long your shelf life is at an agency. Decisions that determine your fate at an agency are almost always entirely out of your hands, and can be made based on campaigns you've sold (or not sold), the shirt you're wearing (or not wearing) that day or the color of your eyes. The tag line for this blog says "We didn't invent random." Ad agencies did.

Like many people who make ads that make America buy, I've been laid off a few times in my career (pausing until giggling fit is over for using the word "career"). And I can tell you from experience, it takes a village. It's not as straightforward as it once was. No one says, "You're fired! Collect your things and get out!"

Well, they say the second part, but now they say it in accordance with state labor laws.

Here's an example. I'm not going to name the agency I was working for, Y&R, but I was let go after almost three years there. I'd originally been brought in as a freelancer, but the creative director and I hit it off and he decided he wanted me to stick around. So he offered me more work and less money, and I said, "Where do I sign?"

Fast forward a few years later. I'm in a meeting in Versailles, which was the agency's big conference room. For some reason, ad agencies love to name their conference rooms after cities. Or cars. Or explorers. Or movie characters. We take our creativity where we can find it. I worked at this one shop that just had numbers for their conference rooms. It was a nice change of pace.

Where was I? Oh yeah.

As I'm in this meeting, my creative director pokes his head in the door and says, "Hey Jeff, can I talk to you for a minute?" This is how it always begins.

I walk out of the room with him, and while we're walking he's making uncomfortable small talk about the meeting he pulled me out of. I notice we're going upstairs towards HR. When I ask what's up, he says to the office of the head of HR.

Alright, so I know what's coming, and I said, "Are you kidding me?" To which he said, "It's out of my hands. There was nothing I could do." To which I said, "Really? I thought you were the boss. How about you let me speak to the person in charge?"

I was pissed.

In the office, he sat uncomfortably to the side, not making eye contact - as they always do - while the head of HR told me I was being let go, gave me an end date, paperwork, blah blah blah. I learned shortly thereafter I was one of five people let go that day. I'm sure it was out of their boss' hands as well.

I came back the next day and spoke to both of them about getting more severance. My boss said nothing, and the head of HR said no. But this story does have a happy ending.

Some time later, that head of HR got let go - ironic ain't it? I was talking to a mutual friend, and come to find out the former head of HR had wanted her to ask me if I'd write some copy for a website she was setting up for her post-agency life.

I'm nothing if not a giver, so after a nanosecond of thought, I told my friend I'd like her to relay my two-word answer to the former HR head verbatim.

Since this is a family blog, I won't repeat them here. But they were exactly the two words you think they were.