Oh, my, Nora. So sorry.

Oh lord, Nora. Did something happen with the other offer?

Oh OUCH, Nora. That's painful.

My new unresponsive boss (apparently she's mad busy, but still--I've been "working" on her project for two weeks, and haven't spoken on the phone with her, and have gotten all of about three emails from her) has now replied "tentative" to the meeting request I sent her (my line manager is also kind of fed up and told me to do this) and said "Well, maybe but maybe I'll call you at 3pm eastern (1pm your time)" (no idea if that means noon here or 4pm there). ARGH. I need answers from her before I go traveling tomorrow.

Jesu Cristo, Nora. Not cool.

Saw this on twitter:

"Anybody seen my give a damn today?"

"I think I hid it next to all the fucks I give"

Oh lord, Nora. Did something happen with the other offer?

It is revised downward from the same people, after going in and getting an estimate on the exterior work that needs doing. Which the original price ($205K) was supposed to take into account, but whatever. Just get this house out of my life! I am nervous about what the bank will think about this, though.

Oh ugh, Nora. I'm so sorry.

Our security protocols here are so onerous that we aren't allowed to access any file-sharing sites of any type, even FTP sites owned by contractors. And our email maxes out at 5MB. As a result, it's ridiculously difficult to get files from outside entities, although I have some ability to send them.

I got so frustrated that I finally just submitted a trouble ticket, and someone called me this morning.

The answer to my question is: no, I will not be allowed to use someone else's FTP site, or file-sharing site, or a flash drive. Yes, the policy-makers know that at some point people won't be able to burn CDs to send us.

So ridiculous. I might be able to talk my local IT guys into setting up a very limited FTP site for me, if they're really nice. Argh.

Ah, well. What a mess.

Burrell - I checked my account and whoever used my credit card or replicated it or whatever the hell they did spent almost all of my money.

I can't do anything yet - but tomorrow when the post is concrete I can file some sort of dispute paperwork.

In the meantime, I am broke.

Before I did my tour on Saturday I went out to breakfast with Kim Cooper and her husband Richard (she's my co-editor, and they organize the tours) at the Los Angeles Athletic Club (old school!).

We met with John Buntin, author of L.A. Noir, Richard Meyer (son of former US Attorney under Nixon, Robert Meyer), and Officer Mike (an active Deputy Sheriff in L.A. County, and also a historian and archivist of the L.A. Sheriff's office).

erika you would have loved this conversation. You too, Jesse. Kim and Richard are putting on one of their quarterly salons at Musso and Frank (old Hollywood haunt), and Buntin will be the guest speaker. But he was there to interview and meet with Richard Meyer and talk about his Dad's career, and background on various shenanigans between the LAPD and the Sherriff's office and the Feds and the weird history overlapping law enforcement in SoCal.

Officer Mike had gone into the old Hall of Justice before it was renovated and taken material out of the Confidential Safe which had been there for 80 years! And he digitized it! All sorts of fascinating inside stuff. (I'll never be able to hear about the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion the same way anymore.)

Most fascinating were the accounts of the intelligence units for both the LAPD and Sheriff's office, which existed solely to dig up dirt. As Officer Mike noted, they had boxes and boxes of files that were never used for any prosecution. One of the main reasons for digging this stuff up was to blackmail city council members into funding things like the Sheriff's office new fleet of cars. That's just how shit worked back then. And probably now as well.

More inside info: Marilyn Monroe's house was completely wired and bugged. And not by the local law enforcement. So everything that happened in her house during the last months of her life are on tape somewhere.

There was also fascinating stuff about Nixon and Daniel Ellsworth and the Pentagon Papers (which I had not realized were downloaded through ARPNET, the precursor to the internet).

Sumi, that sucks. I hope your bank gets your money back to you quickly.

Nora, I'm sorry about the lower offer. Is the bank taking what they can get or are you going to owe them the remainder after the sale?