Les Singes: The Life of Monkey Boy

Every Person Has Their Story

Well this time it seems official.  My nearly nine year run at my current company will come to a screeching halt May 7th, three days after my 37th birthday.  This was announced to me last Wednesday at the end of the day.  I had no clue it was in the works until my boss booked a One-on-One with me for the end of the day. Something felt off.  So much so that I IM'ed my coworker, stating how I suspicious I was about my meeting.

A similar situation was presented to me in January of 2009 where it was stated my current position would no longer exist after a given date.  In that case at the very last minute, after spending a week in limbo, I was offered an account manager position.  It was a challenging job with lots of new tricks for this old dog, but overall I liked the new challenges and enjoyed the different perspective.

So you may be asking, will I try to find something internal before May 7th?  Nope, I'm ready to move on and assess my career.  The job market is in much better standing than January of last year.  I will get severance and my vacation time paid out so I'm set for a few months.  Honestly, I think it will be a good thing and I'm not looking back.  I've had lukewarm work feelings since after this January's jury duty.  Work has been insanely busy the past year which has prevented me from taking care of myself.  Jury duty provided an opportunity to explore my own city during lunch.  It was fantastic playing tourist in my own town and had me craving a change of pace in my personal life.

Oddly enough, I did some chatting with the voices in my head last week.  I told myself it's time for Mr. Singe to be selfish again.  I haven't been taking care of myself as I should.  Now this can change.  I'm excited to get some house projects done.  I'm excited to get my ass back in shape again.  I'm excited to start anew.  I can do this.  I've got mad skills that are desirable and it's just about communicating the message to potential suitors.   This is the sort of thing that tests us a humans and I'm ready to succeed.  

It's Raining Wasps

A wasp in the basement last night.  Drips in the kitchen after an intense downpour a couple weeks ago. Water in the basement last fall.  Enormous icicles during the snowstorm of 2008.  Random centipedes and worms crawling across our basement carpet.

This all adds up to a new roof.  We bought our house in 2005 and upon inspection, we were told the roof had 3-5 more years of life maximum.  What our lame inspector meant to say is in three to five years the new carpet you put it may not absorb the water which will seep into your basement.  What the inspector also failed to do is recognize how bad the roof really was.  Why?  Well our inspector was too damn busy flirting with our real estate agent to do a thorough job.  The only thing he wanted to do was nail our neighbor/real estate agent.  

So now it's five years later and things are happening with the roof.  It's important that we replace our roof sooner than later.  What does a roof cost for a 1926 Tudor-style house?  It can set you back about 10-15k as I'm finding out thus far.  Not cheap by any means, however it has to get done because we have bare wood on our roof ridge.  It's not a good situation.   One of the roofing estimators told us the roof is easily ten years past its life expectancy.  I think this is akin to being a guy in his 30s with sideburns....oh wait. 

This will be the second largest home project we'll have "done" on the house since becoming its newest occupants.  The backyard remodel we did in 2006 wasn't cheap, but was very worth it.  We gained a lots of usable space, lush green grass, a nice deck, sprinkler system, cool new plants, outdoor lighting, and absolute adoration from our neighbors.  

What do you think a new roof will bring?  Will it make me as happy as a new backyard?  Will my harem expand?  Not likely.  It's my dream to see water going down the gutters and not down our walls.  It will provide comfort knowing I'm not touching the damn roof for another 40 years.  Every visitor to our house will become acquainted with the roof.  They will be quizzed about the color and the brand name.  Buckets of water will be thrown on the composite shingles to watch the liquid make its way calmly down the roof and directly into the gutters and downspouts.  Run your fingers our dual black shingles, we won't bite.  We're accepting donations!

La vita è bella

It's official, we are Italy bound in late June.  I haven't officially left the North American continent since 2004 so this is huge news.  I'm really excited to get out there and have a proper vacation.  

Yesterday I dropped my current passport in the mail and shipped it off to Pennsylvania.  I got that sucker in 2000 before my first European business trip at my previous job.  The business trip was crazy as we visited four paper mills in four countries; Russia, Poland, France, and Scotland.  I made a second business trip to Europe returning to the paper mill in France the spring of 2001.  Regardless, none of these trips were for personal pleasure.  

It wasn't until 2004 when we finally got to visit Europe on our terms.  We spent three glorious weeks in France with a very brief lunch visit to Italy.  In June, we'll spend 8 days in Italy near Genoa.  Before we land on European soil, we'll make a four day stopover in Chicago and spend a few days there.  We'll leave Baby Singe with her grandparents for a full week.  This is will be a our first extended trip without her.  We've spent a night here and there without Baby Singe, but this is a new ball game.  Hard to believe this is truly happening.  

The vacation couldn't come at a better time since work is crazy and we're about two years overdue for true time away from home.   I'm crossing my fingers no earthquakes will happen while I'm gone as was the case in 2001.  

Letting them Fly

I've had some thoughts on my mind about these topics in no specific order.

•  I do own a Toyota and think what's going on with the recall is shameful.  I think there's a media hungry for a takedown of Toyota.  This recall isn't a good thing, GM and Ford best keep their traps shut because neither has a stellar record in the recall world.  No product can be built to be 100% defect free.  Many companies have had similar struggles.  When Apple released their iPhones a few years back, there were folks asking for recalls.   Sadly recalls happen and sometimes there are very dire consequences.  I still love what my Toyota does for me.  
• Running, I'm doing the 8k Shamrock Run this weekend in Portland.  Bummed the family isn't coming along, but it will be a nice "girls weekend" for mom and daughter.  Baby Singe got the ball rolling by saying "I love you very much" to my wife Friday night.  It was the sweetest thing overheard in a couple days.
• A couple days ago my wife sang Tomorrow as our daughter drifted off to sleep, now that was damn sweet as well.  I could hear Mrs. Lessinges singing over the baby monitor and it made me swoon.
• No, I haven't seen Avatar yet and I'm really okay with it.  Word on the street is you must see it in the theatre to get the full effect of the movie.  I did see that Mel Gibson directed movie, Apocalypto, so I can assume the movie follows a similar storyline.  Don't mess with Mother Nature and respect the natives.  Great, I saved myself 162 minutes of wearing glasses on top of glasses.  I'm cool and all, but not cool enough to pull off that look.  
• Our neighbor's house has officially been on the market for a month now.  I've heard the real estate market is rebounding some, however there's no way their home would have lasted two weeks on the market in 2006.  If you want to live next door to me, you should consider making a bid on our neighbor's house.  Its fully fenced is ideal for your unruly child, dog, or spouse.  If you don't have any of those three, enjoy!
• I'm digging social media.  
• My most overused words continue to be "but", "just", "even", and "Facebook".  
• Finally, stop asking us.  Stop people, I don't want to address the second child question.  My wife and I have no plans now or in the immediate future to have a second child.  We have our hands full with one child.  Stop asking, stop asking over and over again.  There are certain people who love to ask me "when are you having another?" every time I see them.  It is a dangerous question to ask someone, even more so if you're a stranger.  I overheard the same woman referenced ask another woman about having a second.  Sadly, the woman with one child went into a long story about a previous miscarriage and difficulty with conception.  While I applaud MomofOne for being so upfront, I'm annoyed she even had to justify her response to MomofTwo.

The Virtue

I do, I do, I do. I do love blogging. This much I know is true. I think the community is fascinating, I enjoy reading people's posts, and the open dialogue blogging promotes. Recently a bunch of bloggers banded to together to pay a fellow blogger's unpaid vet bills. Where else do you find that?

While chatting with a blogger about her role in blogging, she states how it's hard to get much attention compared to bloggers who write about their children. (I'm sure I've understated her opinion greatly, but it was something along those lines) Personally, it got me thinking since I'm a parent and feel the opposite.

Initially blogging was a nice outlet as a new parent. I found other parent bloggers who shared similar stories about parenthood. Honestly though, I feel being a parent has stifled my creative juices. In the past I had so many fun and random things running through my head. I couldn't turn off all the craziness. After Baby Singe's arrival, I didn't want to maintain a blog entirely about my child. I told myself that couldn't and wouldn't happen.

Six months after her first cry, upon completion of nearly every post I stuck a checkmark in the Baby Singe category box. Twelve months later, not only were the majority of my posts baby centric, so were my Facebook Updates. My world is my daughter's. I figured I'd get my life back after a year or so. Two and half years have passed and I'm still struggling to regain a foothold of Me Time.

2009 was the perfect storm to kill my blogging activities. Hectic work life for my wife and I, parenting, lots of rain. I kid, but these are the excuses I've created in my head. Excuses, they are abundant these days. They've been very prevalent for the past three years and I'd like to bid them farewell.

I know life will never be the same as it was prior to August 5th, 2007. I'm not that naive guy who impregnated Kourtney Kardashian. I'm learning to be okay with this and adjust my expectations accordingly. Last year I faltered with some of my athletic endeavors and took it personally. I made excuses then and I've made them in this post. I will rid myself of the excuses and move forward. Parenting is a joy. Being a husband is a delcious treat too. Having great friends is also swell. Balancing it all is a challenging mofo.

Neighbours Worth Keeping

I'm moving on. I abruptly published part two of the previous post to get the damn jury duty case out of my mind.

These days I've been glued to the Winter Olympics taking place a couple hours north in Vancouver, Canada. It's fantastic to see Canada in the limelight. In the last twelve years of my life I've worked with Canadians on an almost daily basis. I enjoy seeing a modest country and its citizens embracing its world spotlight. I was truly moved by the opening ceremonies.

In 1986, Vancouver hosted the World's Fair. Remember those things? What happened to World Fairs anyways? They were big deals back in the day and it's what placed my hometown on the map. I'm sure it's a key reason my family left California in 1970, eight years after Seattle hosted its own World Fair in 1962 thus the existence of the swell Space Needle and monorail. 47 years later, Seattle has matured into a cosmopolitan city complete with light rail and a swanky downtown library.

Our family went north of the border to attend Expo 86. It was kind of a big deal since I got my first passport. We seldom did adventures as a family unit since seven kids don't travel well. It was really fun to explore the world in a Canadian city. Personally, it was like being in a dream. We watched fireworks, toured the fairgrounds, Vancouver, and sampled foods from all over the globe. I felt at home in the foreign land many like to mock.

A love affair with foreign languages was cemented and Canada was on my radar. I know I should be more productive during these two weeks, but Vancouver has a grip on me. Job well done Vancouver!

My Private Area (pt. 2)

For two solid weeks, we heard testimony from prosecution witnesses. The key witnesses for the prosecution were the two victims, the family friend who finally alerted the authorities back in October of 2008, and Seattle police officers.

The witnesses were interesting to say the least. One witness actually pointed directly at me when asked to point to the defendant in the courtroom. Yikes. Anyways, I felt awful for those forced to relive the awfulness of what happened. No details were spared for the most part.

After the police were alerted, a search warrant was issued for the defendant's apartment. A couple days after the warrant was obtained, the Seattle police had the defendant in custody.

It goes against human nature to not be able to react. Seated right next to the witnesses was possibly more difficult than watching the horrific videos. I wanted badly to comfort those in pain, especially when they had to sit there in tears during a sidebar.

As I said, we got testimony from the two victims, 3-4 family friends, and all the police involved with this search warrant. The cops were there to document the procedures used to handle evidence during the search of the defendant's apartment.

After a week of testimony, I didn't think the prosecution had swayed me much. The burden of proof was on the prosecution, but after four days of testimony... it was fairly inconclusive in my mind. There were some graphic Polaroid pictures, but they were not definitive proof of first degree rape of a child.

During some of the more difficult testimony of the first week, a high school class filed into the courtroom. The courts are open to the public and therefore many classes visit the court to see how the legal system functions. All the kids were about 15-17 years old, based on my best judgement. At first I thought it might be a prosecution stunt. After a few interruptions, the judge politely asked to either stop leaving the court or sit still. All of the students took that opportunity to leave the courtroom. I wish their teacher stuck their nose in the courtroom prior to them overhearing intimate details about blow jobs. It was most unfortunate.

Week two there were two full days of testimony with only one witness called by defense. After Tuesday's testimony you could feel a strong case was being made by the prosecution. Even though, after that day I was still up in the air about things. The detectives who witnessed opened many key pieces of evidence, but didn't show them to us until the following day.

At the end of Wednesday, my head was spinning. It was that day when we got our first glimpse into videos found by a Seattle Police computer forensics detective. He recovered files from the defendant's computers. The defendant stashed a CPU unit in each of his two cars at the apartment. I've never had a more awkward 15 minutes or so of my life. Sitting in the courtroom with 13 other jurors watching the defendant in the courtroom engaged in sexually explicit conduct with children. His voice was creepy and the things he muttered in the videos haven't escaped my head as fast as I'd like. There was no mistaking the fact that the man in the videos was definitely the man sitting on trial.

My Private Area (pt. 1)

A week ago we wrapped up deliberations on our two week long trial. To this day I still have some nightmares about the trial. If you're squeamish, this may not be the post for you.

Before any opening statements were read, I think it's important to let you know it took three solid days to pick a jury. Roughly 200 potential jurors were called into the courtroom and I ended up being one of the final fourteen, including two unknown alternates. Many jurors were dismissed because they said they'd have biases towards protecting children. The judge was careful to remind all jurors how the burden of proof in this trial is on the prosecution. The defense does not have to prove a single thing.

Prior to the opening statements, the judge read the alleged seven counts accused of the defendant. The defendant, a 44 year old male, entered a plea of "not guilty" on all seven counts listed below.

I. First degree rape of a child
II. Second degree rape of a child
III. Third degree rape of a child (victim #1)
IV. Third degree rape of a child (victim #2)
V. Third degree child molestation
VI. Sexual exploitation of a minor
VII Possessing depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct

Now that the jury was aware of the charges, it was time for the prosecution and defense to give their opening statements.

Prosecution opened by talking about the importance of being a parent and looking after your child. The prosecutor talks extensively about how victim #1, we'll call him RB, had very little family structure. His mom was a stripper and the dad left the house at an early age. Prosecution alleges the victim fell into the wrong crowd and didn't have any valid role models until he met the defendant at the age of 10. The defendant and the victim became instant friends, despite their age difference of nearly 25 years. Shortly after they met, the prosecution alleged an intimate relationship formed between the two males. We were first introduced to RB via a Polaroid photo shown to the jury. He appeared to be about 8-10 years old in the photo with a big toothy grin on his face. The prosecution concludes her opening remarks stating how the prosecution witnesses will corroborate the testimony given by the two victims and that the jury will find the defendant guilty on all seven counts.

Defense's opening arguments centered on police procedures the day the defendant was arrested. Their argument was that the Seattle Police detectives were quick to judge in this case and didn't do an adequate job gathering the evidence. They alleged that friends of the victim planted significant evidence in the defendant's apartment in the immediate days following the defendant's October 2008 arrest.

SIDEBAR: the defendant was arrested by Seattle Police after serving a search warrant on his apartment in late October of 2008. He has been in jail since October 2008 up to the time of the trial.[/SIDEBAR]

Defense alleges the character of the prosecution witnesses is questionable at best. They also allege the detective work to be shoddy and rushed.

The defendant was flanked on both sides by his attorneys. He will wear the same outfit every single day of the trial, a long sleeve button shirt. He's largely emotionless during the two weeks of testimony with a few key exceptions, keeping his hands hidden under the table. The accused appears to be in his 40s and has dark hair with grey streaks. His eyebrows are bushy and dark as well.

I was seated closest to the judge, about ten feet away in the front left row. The witness box was between me and the judge. Without any effort, I bumped feet with a couple of the witnesses. If I looked to my right, there was a Visio screen where we'd see much of the critical evidence and slightly to the right I could see the defendant. I studied his expressions extensively during the trial since I had an unobstructed line of sight. I carefully studied his reactions as we heard testimony, looked at pictures, watched video, etc.

We Have Our Jury

My eleven days of jury duty have been fulfilled. I did my civic duty and I couldn't be more happy to take part in a very important process. I'd love to share my experience and as much of the trial as I can recall, but we weren't allowed to take any notes from the trial with us.

I reported to jury duty on Wednesday January 6th. I got pre-selected for a jury, but I immediately knew specific details about the alleged crime. I asked to be removed from the trial since the case was conservatively expected to take two months. My company covers 15 days of jury duty, but not 40. The case was a murder trial for a restaurant shooting which happened in an adjacent neighborhood.

Thursday morning I filled out a questionnaire after getting assigned to a different criminal trial at the end of Wednesday. The questions were detailed and explicit. The questions asked if you'd be able to view sexually explicit videos of minors. I thought about the question for a bit and answered yes. The trial was expected to last two weeks, so I had the green light. That's a wrap for Thursday, January 7th.

Roughly 60 potential jurors funnel into the judge's courtroom Monday morning to begin the drawn out voir dire process. If you're not familiar with voir dire, it's when the prosecutor and defense attorney(s) ask questions of the jurors in attempt to reveal prejudices that may factor in the trial. It's a fascinating process in action. I will juror #89.

It's during this voir dire process where many potential jurors embellish to get out of serving jury duty. Due to the nature of the trial, we were asked if we had biases towards protecting kids. If a kid has a revelation that was sexual in nature, will we always believe what they say to be the truth? There was a great deal of discussion and about 10-15 jurors were dismissed by the judge based on the jurors admitted biases.

Other questions followed and somehow I was still there. I didn't believe I'd get seated in the jury box, but it happened. Now I was juror #6. The attorneys for both sides have 8 jurors they can remove for whatever reason. I got in the box with a few removals left. I was nervous as hell and amazingly nobody objected to my presence jury so I stayed.

I got on the jury and the following morning (Tuesday January 12th) we'd hear opening statements in the State of Washington vs. Russell Doe*. .... to be continued...

*named changed to protect the presumed innocent

Out of Office: Jury Duty

There are times when I don't feel I have much to share on this blog. Usually it's because I lead a boring life now that I'm a parent whose triathlon pursuits have passed me by.

For the next two weeks I will be a juror in a criminal trial. As a juror, the judge gave us instructions to avoid media and to not conduct "individual research". Of course this pertains to the trial at hand, but it's a good reason to avoid newspapers, websites, radio, etc.

You can bet I will have plenty of content because my first three days in court have been very eye-opening.

Favorite court/juror observations: 

Dude using BlackBerry during hearings, same guy's cellphone going off twice in courtroom during voir dire, sleeping on the floor in the juror waiting area, plenty of people making completely new friends based on jury duty.  It should be an educational two weeks.  More to come my good friends.