A co-worker informs me that a Santa Ana elementary school teacher has been charged with child endangerment for keeping a gun in her classroom.

“Well, that’s Santa Ana,” I say. “What do you expect from people? Not a day goes by that you can’t pick up an Orange County Register and read about a gang-related slaying in Santa Ana. If I were a teacher in Santa Ana, you best believe I’d be packing heat too. Thank god this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Irvine where I live.”

“There are Asian gangs in Irvine.”

“Asian gangs in Irvine?! What a racist you are. I’ve lived in Irvine for seven years and I’ve never seen or heard of any Asian gang activity. Unless studying for AP exams counts as a gang activity. Blowing their brains out with mathematical formulas . . .”

My son’s on spring break this week. Today he spent the day with a friend volunteering at the local Boys and Girls Club.

“I was watching kids for seven-and-a-half hours!” he says.

I say, “I’ve been watching a kid for 15 years.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a lot easier.”

My son made the honor roll his first semester in high school. I’m very proud of him. He’s in a competitive (translation: high percentage of Asian kids) high school and he’s taking honors classes, where every kid thinks they should get an A but there aren’t enough A’s to go around.

An email went out to parents listing the Honor Roll kids. There are a lot of kids on the Honor Roll at this school.

They should send out a list of the kids who didn’t make the Honor Roll. It wouldn’t be much longer and it would teach the kids a good lesson: Work hard or be humiliated.

Another idea: Only kids taking honors classes would be eligible for the Honor Roll. All other kids would be eligible for the “Honor” (insert finger-quotes here) Roll.

I walked into Starbucks at 5:30 this morning, ordered a drink . . . the Starbucks guy asked my name and wrote it on the cup, despite the fact that I was the only customer in the store.

Whether that would be considered a training success or failure depends on whether Starbucks trains its people to always ask for the customer’s name, or to use situational judgment.

I was hoping the barista would call my name when the drink was ready so I could do a comical “who, me?” take, but she just set it on the counter . . .

Headline from OCFamily.com:

TEEN PREGNANCY: What Parents Can Do to Prevent It

Don’t have sex with teenagers?

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if boxes, etc., sitting around the office are supposed to go out with the trash. In Southern California, you’ll often see BASURA written on these things because the probability that a Spanish-speaking person will be taking out the trash is high.

We couldn’t seem to get this box removed by writing BASURA on it, so one of our tech support people came up with this sign . . .

ANAHEIM — Authorities say a woman apparently jumped off an Anaheim freeway overpass Thursday and died. The Orange County Register reports that 50-year-old Sally Brown plunged to her death just after 11 a.m. from the East La Palma Avenue overpass onto the westbound 91 Freeway.

Ex-Blondie singer Deborah Harry, who played a solo show here in Orange County last night, is 62 years old . . .

I’m thankful that I have a job! A lot of people don’t!

I lost my last job a few months ago, along with 9,499 other people in the Orange County real estate/finance industry over the past year. We all got to compete against each other to find another one.

The Orange County Register ran a story yesterday on how some of these folks are doing . . .

Delia DeYulia, a grandmother, was recently forced to take her first retail job.

For the holiday shopping season, DeYulia, 53, is working part-time at Kohl’s, placing clothes on racks and cleaning dressing rooms. She resorted to taking the temporary work after not finding other employment. After 15 years with Fremont Investment and Loan, she lost her mortgage job in Anaheim Hills in March.

“I’m used to sitting in an office,” said DeYulia, who audited loans at Fremont, a firm from which she expected to retire. “Now, I’m on my feet all day. I’m carrying a lot of stuff and my body has to get used to it. It’s hard work for a minimum-wage job.”

The extra money will help pay the mortgage and car payment. Her husband can’t work because he’s disabled.

“I had always felt comfortable financially,” said the grandmother of two. “Now, I’m worried about the future.”

[Robert] Harrington, 31, of Tustin, was let go in September from Bankers Mortgage in Santa Ana. As its loan originator, he made about $75,000 last year. More than half of that was from commissions.

That’s why he thinks his best bet is to find a commission-based job at a luxury retailer or a store that sells big-ticket items.

So he has zeroed in on several shops at South Coast Plaza. He recently applied to Movado, Bloomingdale’s, Sony Style, Porsche Design and Allen Edmonds.

“I hope one of them calls me back this week,” he said.

He needs to help supplement the income from his wife, who is a waitress. They have a three-year-old son.

Corinna Vickers, 35, was let go a year ago from Secured Funding in Costa Mesa. Then two months ago, her husband Shad Vickers, 35, lost his job at Lending Tree in Irvine.

Combined, they had been making $200,000 a year.

Now they’re both unemployed and have been hunting for work to pay their bills and help them save for retirement and college tuitions for their four daughters. They have not had any luck and now the Vickers are both willing to take on holiday retail work.

Rhonda Struman of Laguna Niguel is not waiting around to get hired full time. Last month, she began working as a part-time salesperson at Nordstrom at The Shops at Mission Viejo. It pays $8 an hour. Before she was laid off in August from her underwriting position at Paul Financial in Irvine, she was making more than four times that hourly rate, or about $70,000 a year.

Her husband also got laid off from the mortgage industry. He was pulling in about $130,000 a year. Now, he’s working for $11 an hour at a Costco in San Juan Capistrano.

Because of their huge pay cuts, they’re having a hard time paying their $3,400 monthly mortgage. They sold off their boat to get rid of the monthly payments. They will soon sell their furniture.

“I cry all the time and I’m stressed all the time,” Rhonda Struman said.

By February, she and her husband will leave Orange County for Colorado to look for mortgage jobs or work that pays better than their current employers. They’ll rent out their Laguna Niguel house to help pay the mortgage and then rent in Colorado.

“We have no choice,” said Struman, who’s in her 40s. “There’s too much competition in Orange County. “There are too many people out of jobs” who are looking for new work.

Whew, tell me about it! I was this close to taking a job parking cars for $12 an hour . . .

Related Links

Nor does the immediate future look bright for the local real estate market. Here are some of this week’s headlines from the OC Register real estate blog:

• Calif. had biggest U.S. home-price drops in Sept.
• Fed sees ‘deepened’ housing downturn
• Equity’s gone for 35% of recent SoCal homebuyers
• Early Nov. O.C. home sales off 43.5%

The rising tide of the mortgage industry lifted some pretty spurious boats here in Orange County, so it’s fun now to watch the subprime sinkhole laying them low.

Example: John Lynch, the “surfing banker,” executive VP of Secured Funding Corp., specialists in home equity loans and second mortgages to people with bad credit.

I had this guy pegged as a moron years ago, around the same time OC Metro ran a fawning blowjob of a profile on him:

For the foreseeable future, he will continue as a master of both the surfboard and the boardroom — plus anything else that he decides to do.

— OC Metro, Jan. 8, 2004

Well, that was then and this is now:

The party is over in Orange County. These days, Secured Funding’s once-buzzing office building in Costa Mesa, near John Wayne Airport, is gutted.

The imprint of “Secured Funding” is all that remains of the corporate logo that once graced the outside of the two-story building. Above it is a “For Lease” sign advertising the 82,333-square-foot (7,649-square-meter) building.

— “Subprime Fiasco Exposes Manipulation by Mortgage Brokerages,” Bloomberg.com

Lynch was so, so chatty with the press in 2004. What does he have to say now?

Neither [Lorne] Lahodny nor his partner in Secured, John Lynch, responded to messages left by phone and in person at their offices.

Theres a new restaurant opening up in our local shopping center: Pastagina. What is that — pasta for women?

Even the logo is highly suggestive . . .

After three months on the dole, I got a job offer from the IT director of a local non-profit healthcare association here in Orange County. I start next week. As Gerald Ford used to say, “Our long national nightmare is over.”

It’s a small IT group — 8 people, including the director. I’ve got to admit I’m a little burned out on big corporate IT shops.

I got out of hands-on programming and into leadership roles because I thought I could do a better job than the people I saw doing it. I wanted to develop teams that got things done using their skills and their collective intelligence, but in practice, you typically get locked into some corporate process standard.

A process may be good for delivering consistent results, but they may not be consistently good results. Like at McDonald’s, every Big Mac is just like every other Big Mac because they have a process for making Big Macs. But is a Big Mac a high-quality dining experience? Not really . . .

A friend and former colleague, who was also recently let go by a local mortgage company, emails to say

I’m doing well… still spending a lot of time in Bakersfield, spending time with my parents. I’ve been looking for jobs, but haven’t applied for anything. I guess I actually need to apply.

She’s single, she can afford to be sanguine.

I was in contact with at least 100 companies in one way or another – sent a resume, called, phone interviews, in-person interviews – and got two job offers. So the upside with her approach is that I could have avoided 98 rejections.

Did I mention the job is with a healthcare organization? I was laid off from my last job, with a mortgage bank, when the mortgage industry tanked. Prior to that, I was laid off from a dot-com consulting company when that industry imploded.

I’ve got a knack for getting into industries at their absolute zenith, then riding them down the drain.

But healthcare — it’s recession-proof! You can’t say, “I’m going to put off getting critically ill until I have a better read on the economy.” Well, you can say it, but you can’t do it.

As you can see on this perimeter map of the Santiago Fire, the active fire line is now far enough east that my wife and I can clean the ashes and soot off our patio this morning without worrying about having a new load of ashes and soot dumped on it the next day. (We live in the small notch northeast of the now-decommissioned El Toro MCAS.)

I say to her, “They should find the guys who set the fire and make them clean up this mess.”

“Kill them!” she suggests.

“Couldn’t we make them clean up the mess and then kill them?”

Air quality and visibility were much worse today than yesterday. I don’t know if the winds shifted or if it just takes a day or so for all the ashes and soot to fall back to earth.

Proving that there’s a positive side to everything, the Santa Ana winds that have fanned these fires around Southern California also knocked down half the trees in our community, which will now have to be removed and replaced, so if you’re in the landscaping service business, this is a good time for you.

“Honey! Call Farmers and get a quote on
homeowners insurance - stat!”

My wife is in the insurance business. She’s received several calls over the past few days from people wanting to buy a homeowners policy. Ordinarily, she’d be happy to sell them one . . . the problem is that the houses are in zip codes that are currently on fire, and her company has suspended sales of homeowners insurance in those areas.

Here’s a tip, folks: The time to buy insurance is before your house is on fire.

As a result of the fires, particularly the one that burned across the northern border of Irvine, everything in the neighborhood is coated with either a thick layer of soot or a thin film of soot, depending on whether the object in question is outdoors or indoors.

As of this afternoon, the fires had shifted and were no longer considered a significant threat to Irvine homes.

Here’s a map of the areas affected so far. The fire started — or I should say “was started,” since it’s now believed to be an arson fire — in the area bounded by the top of the map, the 261 to the west, the 241 to the east, and Portola Parkway to the south.

Firefighters were able to stop the fire from crossing Portola, but it continued to burn east and is now bearing down on Foothill Ranch, the residential area in the lower right corner of the map . . .

Wildfires are burning all over Southern California, including one here in Irvine:

What they’re saying on the TV news is that firefighters are planning to make a stand at Portola Parkway and stop the fire there, which is good news because we live south of Portola. About 100 feet south, but it’s better than nothing.

Here are some blurry photos from our patio:

Another gem from the freshman football mailing list . . .

Of the four high schools here in Irvine, only one — Irvine High — has a stadium on campus. There’s a movement afoot, led by local attorney and parent Emmett Raitt, to build a second stadium.

Here’s an excerpt from Emmett’s email suggesting that parents write to the school board about this matter:

The reasons a second stadium are needed include the elimination of Thursday night games, which lowers student attendance at games; it will ease the overcrowding of the Irvine Stadium facility (and particularly the snack bar, a personal favorite of mine); and it will allow all schools to use District facilities for their graduations, which they do not now do.

Hmmm . . . I can’t see how increasing student attendance is going to ease overcrowding, nor do I think the fact that some local fatso thinks there are too many people ahead of him in the snack bar line justifies spending $10 million on a new stadium.

Now here’s the follow-up email that came out from Rick Curtis, the varsity football coach at my son’s school, Northwood High:

I just read where the Huntington Beach district is putting in 2 new stadiums at Huntington Beach HS (8.5 million) and at Westminster (7.5 million). All Capo Valley Unified high schools have stadiums and each have field turf and all weather tracks at their schools.

All Saddleback Valley high schools have stadiums, except El Toro High School. Each high school also has field turf and all weather tracks at their schools (including El Toro High School).

We need to get to the school board meetings and we need to get organized. . . . These are the people that we are competing against and we are way behind in providing state of the art facilities for our student athletes.

All the districts that he mentions in the email are good academically, but they’re not in the same class as the Irvine district, which is the crème de la crème.

So here’s a no-cost solution:

• If you want your kid to get a top-notch education, live in Irvine.
• If you want a quick hot dog while your kid runs around on field turf, move to Saddleback Valley.
• If you want a quick hot dog in a brand new stadium, move to Huntington Beach.
• If you want a quick hot dog and corrupt administrators (allegedly), move to Capo Valley.

Problem solved!

My son’s playing freshman football, pursuant to which I received the following email (names changed):

Fellow Freshman parents,

Zelda and I are disappointed with the poor quality of the duffle bags the boys purchased at the start of the season. Rocko’s bag is already ripping and the zippers are becoming non-functional. As a result, we intend to buy him a much higher quality, replacement bag made out of extra heavy duty material from a Montana vendor. My firm has purchased customized travel bags from this vendor before, and our clients/employees love them. We also intend to have the bag (which will be slightly larger to accommodate a football helmet) embroidered with the T-Wolf logo and his name. This is what the bag looks like, sans logo:

If ten or more families decide to buy such replacement bags, the cost will be $285 each plus tax and the cost of name embroidery (I don’t think the latter will amount to much, but I’m looking into it). If the order is for less than ten units, then there will be a modest charge for logo. Two families in addition to our has already asked to be included them in this order. You can visit the vendor’s website at http://www.redoxx.com/.

Please let me know as soon as conveniently possible (i.e., by the game this Saturday) if you would like to be included in the order. If so, kindly also respond back with the spelling of your son’s name to be embroidered on his bag.

Thanks.

Go Wolves, Beat University!

Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

In short, if you are experiencing similar problems, this would be a high quality replacement that should last for some time.

Yeah sure, I’m definitely up for spending $300 for a bag my son can stuff his football uniform into, particularly if your “firm” has a track record with the company.

I sent the following response:

I’ve never seen a decent bag for only $285. I’ve been looking at this one from On the Fly:

It’s a little pricey (around $12,000) but it’s made of black alligator leather and if you’re concerned about durability, it will withstand a charging rhino.

Don’t ask me how I know that.

Best regards,

Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding

I didn’t hear back from the original emailer, but I did get a response from a philanthropic but somewhat dim individual:

I hope that was a joke. If not I think you are getting carried away about a bag that the boys are going to drag around through the mud. If you have that much money to throw away maybe you should donate it to children who can’t afford equipment to even play sports.

Just a thought…

Oh dear, I guess I was a little too subtle . . .

Man died doing what he loved most

— Orange County Register

He loved being hit by trucks?