Chapter 9: You Are Certifiably Insane!

January 15, 2001, Chicago, Illinois

🎤 Steve

“You’re working today?” Kara asked at breakfast on Monday morning.

“Yes. This is one of the optional NIKA holidays which you can use for one of your three floating days. The others are Columbus Day and the major religious holidays besides Christmas, which is fairly secular for many people anyway. Cindi told me Clark was working today because he thinks he honors King more by working than by taking a day off. Most of the staff elect to work today and use their days for Good Friday, Easter Monday, or Jewish, Muslim, Shinto, or Hindu holidays. And we don’t ask about faith, obviously; it’s on the honor system, but, frankly, it doesn’t matter to me if they just want that day off.”

“I like the idea of getting your birthday off!” Jessica said.

I chuckled, “A benefit of which I am not permitted to avail myself due to popular demand! And Penny doesn’t because she’s Penny.”

“I HEARD THAT!” Penny exclaimed, coming into the kitchen.

“Dad loves you!” Birgit declared.

“Of course he does!” Penny declared.

“I didn’t realize you were working today,” I said.

“I’m not. I just walked over with Amber - she’s hanging with the Girl Gang today. Andy is going skating with the guys and your sister is taking Stephen so Terry and I can have a day together.”

“Doing what?” Birgit smirked.

“Wouldn’t YOU like to know?” Penny replied.

“They did THAT all night last night,” Amber declared, rolling her eyes for effect. “I had to put in my earplugs so I could sleep!”

“That is NOT true, you stinker, and you know it!” Penny objected.

“No, but it was funny!” Amber smirked. “Are you done with breakfast, Birgit?”

“Yes. Let’s go!”

She, Stephie, and Ashley left the kitchen with Amber, and Penny left to go back home.

“She’s turning into a real terror, just like Birgit!” Kara said.

“I think she’s had a bit of help in knowing what to say to Penny,” Jessica replied, looking at me.

“Don’t look at me!” I protested. “I didn’t say a WORD to Amber!”

“MC or Suzanne?” Jessica asked.

“Guilty!” Suzanne replied. “Though I might have had some encouragement!”

“Aha!” Jessica exclaimed. “It WAS you, Tiger!”

“I answered truthfully!” I chuckled. “But you have to admit, it’s sweet seeing Penny get a taste of her own medicine.”

“The phone calls from the school ought to be interesting!” Kara said, laughing softly.

“So true,” Jessica agreed, shaking her head. “I have charts to dictate and review. I’ll do those while Steve works.”

“I have quizzes to grade,” Kara said. “Steve, can you bring the fifty-five gallon drum of red ink from the shed?”

“That bad?” I asked.

“Christmas break always seems to erase everything I taught first semester! But it does tell me who’ll make it and who won’t. The first two quizzes of the second semester are close to one hundred percent accurate in their prediction - score at least 85% on both quizzes and they end up graduating with their degree in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering. Score less than 75% on both, and they end up in liberal arts or they drop out. Fortunately, in my graduate polymers course I only have truly serious students.”

“As is fitting for the Polymer Princess!” I declared. “How are your new med students, Jess?”

“Somebody loves me because they’re both serious, dedicated, and smart. In fact, the entire class of twelve on this rotation seem to be a cut above. Not sure how that happened!”

“You need to get onto the committee that does the interviews, but I guess there’s no way because your dad is on the committee.”

“Exactly. But I do get my say for the Match because we interview potential trauma Residents as a team of Attendings, and the results are combined by a formula, so one individual doesn’t have control. Only Department Heads get a personal vote, which is weighted more, but not enough to override the Attendings if they really don’t like a candidate.”

“How many ER Residents do you get this year?”

“Six. We really need eight, but you know how THAT goes.”

“Your government at work!” I said, shaking my head. “Anyway, what are we doing this afternoon?”

“How about a movie?” Kara asked. “Miss Congeniality has four good cast members, and the reviews are above average.”

“Who?” Jessica asked.

“Sandra Bullock, Michael Caine, Candice Bergen, and William Shatner.”

“You had me until Shatner,” I replied flatly.

“OK, so THREE good cast members!” Kara corrected herself.

“I’m going to get to work so we can make the matinée,” I said. “That will get us back in time for me to make it to the dojo on time.”

I kissed my wives and Suzanne, then went to my study to work. I was working on performance issues with the encrypted database. They weren’t showstoppers, but Terry had asked me to see if I could find any additional optimizations.

By 11:00am, I’d found a pair of loops I could optimize which in my basic testing improved performance by about five percent, which was about a quarter of what we needed. There was one major module which I hadn’t reviewed, but I doubted I could find sufficient optimization there. When I was in the office on Tuesday, I’d need to sit down with Sam and Julia and discuss possible changes to the design.

Kara, Jessica, and I had a quick lunch, then headed to the theater to see Miss Congeniality. The movie was average, but Sandra Bullock and Michael Caine did excellent jobs, and there was plenty of humor which was actually funny. When the movie let out, we left the theater immediately, and arrived home just in time for me to head to the dojo for the afterschool class.

Ninety minutes later I walked back into the house and Jessica handed me an envelope from the Cook Country Clerk of Courts which had arrived on Saturday, and somehow nobody had taken from the mailbox.

“Seriously,” I chuckled. “A jury summons?”

“Why are you laughing, Tiger?”

“What sane prosecutor would put ME on a jury?”

“Are there any sane prosecutors?” Kara asked.

“You have a point, but even an insane prosecutor isn’t going to put me on a jury! All this will do is waste a day while I’m questioned and excused. The government will challenge me for cause, and that will likely succeed because there’s a good chance I either will know the defense attorney or the firm will be one of our clients. And if the judge doesn’t allow that challenge for some reason, which I can’t imagine what it might be, then the government will use one of their peremptory challenges to get rid of me.”

“You don’t have every firm in Chicago as a client!” Jessica protested.

“No, but enough to make it likely. Heck, being Melanie’s former boyfriend might be enough! Or my friendships with the JAG lawyers. Or my involvement in the Littleton case. Or the Spurgeon case. And if for some reason THOSE don’t work, our family relationships, the Rap Sessions, and my postings on the internet would be enough to get me disqualified! The problem is that the questionnaire they included with the summons only asks me to confirm my name, address, and gender, and then asks for race, age, employer, occupation, and marital status.”

“When do you have to report?”

“February 26th, and I have to report each morning for that entire week, assuming I’m not selected for a jury or completely dismissed before then.”

“You don’t think there’s any way you’ll be selected?”

“Not a snowball’s chance in Hades.”

January 16, 2001, Chicago, Illinois

“I still can’t believe you decided the entire development staff should take the afternoon off to see a movie!” Terry declared as we walked into the theater.

“It’s a team-building event and according to the reviews, Antitrust is a subversive movie that is pro ‘open source’ and anti-Microsoft! What more could you ask for?”

“One that wasn’t panned by the critics,” Penny added.

“And one that isn’t going to make us put our faces in our palms at the messed up technology!” Sam said from behind us.

“They consulted with Linux advocates, including John Hall, executive director of Linux International, and others contributed as well. Miguel de Icaza, the guy who created the Gnome desktop project has a cameo and Gnome is featured heavily.”

“May I remind you about ‘It’s a Unix system! I know this!‘, Hackers, The Net, and Independence Day?”

“Yeah, but we all agreed that given that back then Macs couldn’t really talk to anything other than Macs, it wasn’t surprising they could talk to the alien mothership! Remember the hoops we had to jump through to make Dante’s Mac talk to the Windows network?”

“Ugh!” Julia groaned. “Don’t remind me of that kludge!”

“Hey, that was a masterpiece Greg helped put together!” I protested. “It worked when everyone said it was impossible!”

“You left out Wargames, Julia,” Jody added.

“What?” I chuckled, “Military mainframes don’t call kids with Altair systems? And dumb terminals don’t update when disconnected?”

“Among other things!” Jody said, shaking her head. “At least with Trek they made an effort. And tablet computers are coming. Give it ten years, maximum, before there’s a truly useful general purpose computer in tablet form. The Newton was ahead of its time, and the Palm Pilot isn’t really a fully-functional general purpose computer.”

“Can you imagine trying to run Windows on something like that?” Penny asked. “Battery life would be like five minutes!”

The theater manager checked in our group and we made our way to the theater where we all took our seats, with Eve and Liz sitting to my left and right, despite not being part of the development team. The movie was actually worse than the critics had said, though there were a few great gag lines for nerds like the development team.

Milo: Doesn’t Bill Gates have something like that?
Gary: Bill Who? His is primitive.

Inspector: Dust the colon and the backslash key! Only geeks use those keys.

“OK, that was REALLY bad,” Dave, who had taken the afternoon off from IIT to attend with us, said as we left the theater.

“Oh, come on,” I chuckled. “You know every single person on the team loved the anti-Bill Gates, anti-Microsoft theme of the movie!”

“They certainly did try to make Gary Winston look and sound like Bill Gates,” Sam agreed. “And the house was obviously meant to be Gates’ house.”

“They sure got the ‘pre-announce’ to kill the competition tactic right,” Tasha said.

“I liked the non-routable network for the satellites,” Brenda said. “I mean, OK, good idea, but then you’d only be able to access the control software via the same ten-dot network, or via a VPN. They sort of glossed over that. But they actually were using real commands, at real prompts, so props for that. And for the Gnome screens, and the HTML code that looked reasonably accurate.”

The development team, plus the few others, headed back to NIKA, as did Dave, who came to talk to me.

“Do I talk to you or your sister about our arrangement?”

“She’s fully up to speed and Terry is on-board, as is Mario, so you should just work out the final details with Stephanie and your wife.”

“Are you doing OK?”

“Yes. I can’t change anything before I go up to Mayo next month, but I believe Mary will loosen up the reins a bit and I’ll be back in the office a bit more, though probably after my karate master’s trip to Japan because I’ll be covering for him in March while he’s gone.”

“That’s good. Julia says you’re as productive as always.”

“I try,” I replied with a smile. “I think this is actually tougher on Penny than on me.”

“I know I’ve said it before, but you two have the strangest relationship.”

“Right,” I chuckled. “Because all of my OTHER relationships are normal!”

Dave laughed, “True! It’s just that you and Penny, well, people would think...”

“Yes, they would, but it’s also the case that except for those kisses on the cheek and the odd dance at parties, Penny and I have had no physical interaction from the day she turned sixteen. She elected to come to work for us rather than be my lover.”

“You know my take, so I won’t rehash it. And I think the situation has changed over the last few years.”

“It has. Bob is relatively happy, which should tell you that things are operating more along the lines you felt they should.”

“OK. I’ll go see your sister now and get things moving.”

“Thanks, Dave. I’m glad you’re coming back.”

“Me, too.”

“Oh, and Dave?”

“Yes?”

“Your years of service include the time you were teaching, and you’ll be granted shares to make up for the ones you missed.”

“You are certifiably insane!”

“You aren’t the first one to notice!”

January 17, 2001, Chicago, Illinois

On Wednesday evening, the blackbelts gathered at the house for our monthly dinner. The group had grown, and besides Sensei Jim and me, it now included Jolene, Therese, Will, Kara, Hannah, Darla, Miyu, Jacqui, and Marcia, as well as Molly and Ted from the dojo in Racine. As was usual for these meals, Birgit acted as hostess, enlisting help from Jesse and Stephie.

“I want to convey the plans for March,” Sensei Jim said once we’d begun eating. “I’m leaving on March 2nd and I’ll return on the 17th. I’ll be back at the dojo on the 19th. As we discussed, Steve will be acting «Shihan» and will have full authority over the dojo, per «Shihan» Hideki. He’ll rearrange his work schedule to cover the noon and afterschool classes. Will and Therese will cover evening classes, though «Shihan» Steve will likely attend some of those nights.

“Other than that, everything will continue as it has with Therese being responsible for competition and Steve representing us at the ISKC meetings. We do have one important topic to discuss tonight, and that is what to do about «karateka» who for good reason, aren’t able to participate on Saturday mornings. In this case, it’s specifically a young man whose religious observation of the Sabbath preclude him being at the dojo on Saturdays. Steve has worked with him in the afterschool class for the past few weeks.”

“He’s nearly ready for 3rd kyu,” I said. “He’s fully aware of the issue and understands the limitations, and is dedicated to his training. It’s my opinion, subject to Will’s agreement, that it would be counter to the most basic principles of Shōtōkan to refuse him advancement because of his spiritual needs and practice.”

“I can’t imagine saying ‘no’ to someone simply because they can’t show up on Saturdays,” Will said. “Sensei Jim, I assume you’ve advanced him as you normally do for students prior to 3rd kyu?”

“Yes. I’ve awarded his belts at the afterschool class, rather than on Saturdays. That was my old practice before we developed the Black Belt Council, and given the special circumstances, I felt it was appropriate.”

“How would that work if he couldn’t teach on Saturdays?” Hannah asked. “I’m not objecting, mind you, just curious.”

“We can easily assemble the necessary instructors to supervise and grade him during the week,” I said. “And as far as I’m aware, there’s nothing which would preclude him from these monthly meals.”

“How old is he?” Will asked.

“Twelve,” Sensei Jim replied. “Given his progress, I’d expect him to be ready to test for 1st Dan when he’s about sixteen. He has a strictly pacifist ethical system, so he won’t spar in competition. That means there’s no real reason to delay his promotion.”

“I agree with Sensei Steve, «Shihan». Our advice to you is identical.”

Sensei Jim nodded, “Good. Then Steve will make the arrangements for testing Rick for 3rd kyu in March. Steve, want to take us through issue number two?”

I chuckled, “And the opposite - a pair of orange belts who were good students, but they turned fifteen and suddenly developed what you’ve heard me call attitudus teenagicus. It’s a pair of young women who are close friends, and after giving it some thought, I think they need a female mentor. The problem, of course, is that they attend the mid-afternoon class and don’t come on Saturdays. I’d be reticent to try to get them to attend on Saturdays right now because they already don’t care and that would make them not care even more. That said, according to Sensei Jim they were very good students for the eight months before they turned fifteen.”

“Boy crazy!” Miyu said with a smirk. “I might know a bit about that! My class schedule would let me be at the dojo for the afternoon class, if you want, «Shihan».”

“That might do the trick,” I replied. “You can relate.”

“Gee, thanks!” she said with a silly smile. “But you’re right. I’ll show up on Friday, you can introduce me, and I’ll see if I can help.”

“Thank you,” Sensei Jim said. “And now, Darla, you have the floor.”

“Thanks, Sensei,” she replied. “I’m getting married in June!”

Everyone congratulated her. I noticed, then, she was wearing a ring. We removed all our jewelry when we were at the dojo, so I wasn’t surprised I hadn’t seen it. That said, the announcement didn’t come out of left field, as she’d been dating her now fiancé for three years. What came next, though, was.

“I also need to tell you that John’s company offered him a promotion. It’s a general manager position in their German subsidiary, which means we’ll be moving to Germany right after the wedding, and we’ll be gone for at least three years. Sensei Jim talked to Sensei François in Paris, and they found a Shōtōkan dojo in Munich, which is where we’ll be living.”

“Where’s the wedding going to be?” Kara asked.

“Welcome to World War III,” she sighed. “My mom is insisting it be at the Bible church I attended growing up back in Texas. My parents moved back about three years ago when Dad’s job sent him back to Dallas. I don’t really go to church much, and neither does John, but his parents do, and want us to marry in a Catholic church. Our parents got into it during the Christmas holidays when we announced our engagement at a dinner we arranged so they could meet. After that, John and I decided on a civil ceremony, and BOTH sets of parents lost it.”