Better late than never. Again. (Labor dispute update)

Folks who know me, or regular readers of my journal, may remember my last update of my ongoing dispute with my former employer. To refamiliarize yourself with the details (or if you are a new reader) you could read my last entry on the subject.

So by last Tuesday there I was again, having received two late checks quite a while ago, and now by ex-boss was behind by another two checks. The last two checks he owes me, in fact. Just two more checks (and next year's tax forms, a situation I'm dreading) and I can be free and clear of my old job. But no checks! And no checks means no money, since I'm waaaaaaay off unemployment compensation by now. So I composed yet another letter to the DLSE complaining that I hadn't received my money for quite a while now and shouldn't I by now, and if so hasn't he defaulted on the agreement? Actually, I didn't compose it so much as cut-'n'-paste from the last three letter's I've written them which said pretty much the same thing.

("But Paul," you may ask, "why didn't you just call or email the DLSE?" What you may not know is that here in California, after the dot.com bubble burst, the DLSE was utterly swamped by claims from employees who claimed there old companies owed them more money. Each of the DLSE Deputy Labor Commissioners had, as of the time I originally went through their system several months ago, an average of 1200 cases per officer open on any given day. The poor people are completely swamped, and the system is overwhelmed. They don't accept phone calls. They don't accept emails. You can not walk into their office and request an audience, nor can you make an appointment for consultation. And I don't blame them, because if you could do any or all of these things, the poor officers would be totally buried under the weight of a clamoring public. So you can only communicate with them by writing or faxing a letter to them, and hope that they find time to give you a response.)

So anyway, I had my latest letter all printed out and ready to go, when lo and behold there was a knock on my door. 'Twas the postman, with a registered letter for me! It was a check, and it was even for the proper amount. The check was dated more than 30 days ago, which either means that my ex-boss back-dated the check to appear less culpable, or the poor DLSE folks just didn't have time to send it until now. Either way I was happily shocked. Money! I got some money!

He still owes me a check, of course. He should have sent it to the DLSE on the 25th of last month. Perhaps they even have it already, but haven't had time to send it. I've put my latest cut-n-paste-o-gram on hold; I'll give the DSLE a couple more weeks before I start complaining. Again.

Calzone night

Every month or so I go visit my friend Donna and her room mate Sandy (whom some of you have met at Gaskell's or FNW), and they make dinner for me. Well, actually, we've only done it twice now, but hopefully it will be a nice ongoing tradition. At some point it had come out that I'm an absolute sucker for calzone, so they announced that was what they'd make for me next, since Donna had some experience making very good gourmet pizza at home.

I ended up getting more involved in the process than I thought I would, since it turned out that even though Donna had seen calzone many times (and even used to eat regularly at Calzone's up in SF) she'd never actually eaten one. But she'd pulled a bunch of recipies off the Internet, and we bravely went shopping. The results were fabulous: 3 calzone each as big as a football it seemed, and they tasted amazingly good. And I did a lot of the cooking, which I really don't do very often.

(I just bet the first comment down below will be from zhaneel69. I've never cooked for her. She's made several fabulous meals for me. And I'm not even dating Donna. Zhan's gonna kill me. I promise baby! I'll really do something special in the kitchen for you soon!! I think you get my stir-fry. I wok a mean wok.)

So for interested parties here's the recipe we used.( Read more... )