Category: pondering

Oh yes indeed!

Another idea The Good Man had first, but wasn’t fast enough to capitalize on:

Shoes from a vending machine

To be fair, The Good Man’s idea was more along the lines of “you know, you should buy a bunch of cheap flip flops and leave them in all our cars….”

This after me whining, *again*, about aching feet.

I remember “back in the day” when I could wear bangin’ shoes all day long and not have trouble. Ah the continued joy of becoming a cranky old fart (it’s only getting better!).

I *totally* think that these Rollasole people could do a flip flop version too!

**this post brought to you by the girl who totally wanted to wear her Fat Babies under her wedding dress…but got veto’d down by the skinny harpies at the place who made the gown. Feh!

Inside the Blogger’s Head

: cue Inside the Actor’s Studio music :

We begin our interview with a series of questions first posed by Bernard Pivot. (Riffed off of a personality quiz called The Proust Questionnaire.)

Supposed to give insight into one’s personality and all that….

So here we go:

What is your favorite word?

Simpatico. You know it when you have it.

What is your least favorite word?

Any word spoken with a condescending intent.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Hearing a beautiful song, seeing a gorgeous sight (like an amazing painting), perfect lighting, something that is quite the pleasant surprise (like the discovery of apricots in my side yard), riding a horse, the laughter of any one of my godkids.

What turns you off?

People manifesting their deeply held insecurity on me. Shows up in lot of ways, none very fun.

What is your favorite curse word?

Just one? Man, my favorite curse word changes. Some days a good “oh balls!” will get it done. Sometimes an f-bomb is really necessary. Can I just say I love cursing, enjoy it immensely, and do my best to rein it in around my mother. Not always successfully.

What sound or noise do you love?

At AT&T Park, when the Giants win a game, they play the original Tony Bennett version of “I Left my Heart In San Francisco”. You’d think I would get tired of hearing it. I don’t.

Also, the sound of the garage door opening when my husband is coming home. Yippee!

What sound or noise do you hate?

Anything terribly high pitched. Like the backup sound on a garbage truck. It physically hurts.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Motivational speaker. I’m not kidding. I always wanted to travel around, giving presentations, getting people all fired up, helping them learn and change their lives. I absolutely adore giving presentations, especially when you have a great crowd eager to learn.

What profession would you not like to do?

Registered nurse. I am so much of an empath that I couldn’t get through the day. Human suffering just destroys me. Ok, animal suffering too, so this extends to vet techs as well.

I am way in awe of the people who do that work and do it well.

Whoa.

If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Good job, kid. You get an A+.

Now get over to the barn. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys are warming up. Plenty of cute cowboys to dance with. Oh, and they are serving homemade green chile chicken enchiladas for dinner.

And in heaven, calories don’t count.

From a salad to the wayback machine

In two easy steps.

Today, I was at my work’s cafeteria, and there I am, standing in line, waiting on the lady in front of me as she crafted her salad.

I personally think how someone makes their salad bar salad speaks volumes about personality, but that’s another study for another day.

This lady in front of me had taken a small container, and was packing, shoving, and cramming salad items in there.

I’ve noticed this a lot lately, not just at work. The general need to take an itty-bitty container. It’s a guilt thing. You convince yourself you are saving money and calories with a “small” salad, then you shove a “large” amount of salad in there.

We pay for salad by the pound, but whatever.

So while I watched this fabulous bit of engineering, I thought to myself, “Wow, this lady needs a geometry lesson.”

Which is really ironic for *me* to say.

Because I personally *suck* at geometry.

And why is that?

Come, step with me into the wayback machine.

: cue wavy lines and hazy focus :

The year was 1986…or maybe 1985…I can’t recall.

At that time, I was matriculating at good ol’ Del Norte High School. Yup.

That year, I was taking a geometry class that was going fairly well. I was learning, it was coming along, I was carrying a high B…until that fateful day.

Oh yes, that day…when our regular teacher introduced our (cue dramatic music…dun dun DUUUUUN):
Student Teacher.

But, not just any student teacher, no.

This gentleman was a student at UNM. But not just that…he was a basketball player.

Ok, now this goes back a lotta years. You have to be a Lobo fan or at least an Albuquerque resident from way back to remember these names…

This guy played under Gary Colson, who was the UNM savior after the misdeeds by our ol’ friend Stormin’ Norman Ellenberger.

(god, this is going back, NM style….bonus points if you ever ate or had a drink at Stormin’ Norman’s restaurant)

So, recovering from the scandal, UNM ended up having a *really* good team. The main players were pretty well known, kind of local celebrities.

There in my very classroom, next to my portly, middle-aged math teacher, stood none other than Alan Dolensky, UNM basketball player, that guy I saw on the news, Adonis.

Let’s be clear…in the vernacular…this guy was *foine* I’m not gonna lie to ya, I’d had a bit of a crush on him anyway, and then he shows up as my teacher.

All youthful, he had to be what? 20? 21? athletic, tall. Wow.

Well. It wasn’t long before that high B in geometry dipped to a low C.

I would *love* to blame the poor teaching skills of Mr. Dolensky (and did for many years), but that would be highly unfair.

I’ll just agree to two things…I *might* have been a bit….uh…distracted (c’mon, I had hormones!)….and I might also never have really owned a good math gene (much to the dismay of my engineer father).

So I spent a semester with languishing grades and an emphatic crush. Which *obviously* was never returned.

When report cards came out, I was *mad*.

My C got me flak from my folks, but it was enough to pass, and on I moved to the next course.

But…and I have to be honest, I have never really grasped the foundation of geometry, and it shows. I can’t mentally gauge spatial items very well. I am terrible at packing a full truck (thank GOD for The Good Man. He rocks this department!)

And the worst of it came when I had to take the Graduate Management Admission Test for graduate school. It was *heavily* weighted toward geometry (a fact I understand was later acknowledged and fixed…too late for me, however).

So, I’d done ok grade-wise in high school, but in college, I rocked the house. I got my undergrad with a *smokin’* GPA.

Desperate to get out of New Mexico, I appealed to my parents, who said they’d spring for in-state school. Out of state, I’d have to get a scholarship or a grant that would wave out of state tuition.

(Let me aside here to give it up for my parents paying for my edjumacation. I’m a lucky soul.)

Admission to a university is based on GPA and GMAT score.

So, obviously, a lot was riding on my GMAT score.

On which I scored terribly.

I mean, really, just above “who is this idiot?”

Undeterred and against the advice of the Dean of the Business College, I took the GMAT again. And scored even lower.

Still undeterred, I made an appeal to an out of state school, got a “provisional” admission based on my GPA and a good word from the president of NMSU, but “provisional” meant no scholarships, grants, or ability to wave out of state.

Deflated, I surrendered. Goddamn geometry.

I ended up staying on at New Mexico State to complete my MBA.

Which, honestly, in hindsight, has been fine. I really got a great education in Las Cruces and wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But I often wonder where I would have ended up if my schlumpy but effective math teacher had continued to educate me rather than that awfully distracting virile young man.

DAMN YOU ALAN DOLENSKY! : shakes fists :

There you go, from a salad to an angst.

By the by, I can manage to fit an appropriate amount of salad in a small container…and I can also park straight in a parking space…so I have that going for me.

In other news…I’m also hopeless at chemistry. In the course of my entire education, I was never once required to take a chem. class.

Isn’t THAT something.

Or not.

Oh well, back to my management job at a Fortune 500 company, because, you know, things turned out so poorly….:)

Photo by Khadejeh and found on Flickr.

I have a conflicted

This whole social networking thing, I’ve been reticent about it. Then on further examination, I acquiesced a bit.

But I have a reticent again.

As you may know, I’ve joined the folks who are using Twitter. Sure, yes, I tweet.

Banal stuff I tweet, I admit. But I enjoy the challenge of 140 characters. Plus it’s fun to see what other’s can cram into such a small space.

Often I read stuff on there makes me sigh and shake my head. Example: a local sports broadcaster takes to Twitter to describe the quality of his bowel movements. A regular man, seems to hit him daily about eleven a.m.

*sigh*

Then there’s some good stuff, too. Local SanFran author Christopher Moore has the best tweets of my follow list, bar none. Example: “Steve Jobs had liver transplant. Glad he finally acknowledged the value of cut and paste.”

So okay, there’s fun stuff out there, it’s not all bad. I rather enjoy tweeting, heck, as you know, I even recently participated in a twitter story writing contest. So I’m on board!

Only, this weekend, I might have hit a wall.

I follow Ann Curry on Twitter. She’s been Tweeting pretty hard about what’s going on in Iran. I personally have tried very hard to keep a distance from all that. It’s horrible, and my heart goes out to the victims and their families, but I have a neurotic worry gene (thanks, Mom) and if I let myself follow what’s happening, I will lose my grip.

So, yeah, I have been reading Ann’s tweets, even though I’m not sure this is the best way for the news to travel, I read them to keep up to speed, a little, on the progress.

That said, on Saturday, Ann tweeted quite a bit about the escalation of the protests in Iran. Scary stuff, here’s some examples:

“Credible source was eyewittness (sic) to pepper spraying of about 100 protestors #iranelection”

“Iran state tv claims explosion at tomb of revered Ayatollah Khomeini. Would incite anger against protesters. Is it true? #iranelection”

“More reports of police using tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands #iranelection”

Yikes. I was taking all of this in, feeling that familiar fear and dread…and then moved on to read more tweets on the same page by other twitter folks that I follow.

Here’s where my train derailed.

Along with scary stuff from Iran, here’s what else I found on the same page:

“just getting up, still drunk I think.” (from a local journalist for the SF Chronicle and a prolific author)

“Destroyed by dim sum and good friends.” (from the rather successful owner of a small business)

“I’m thinking of something like this for (my second house), so perhaps I’ll go to C&B and see how it looks in person. (furniture item, link redacted).” (from a blogger and editorial writer for one of Seattle’s independent newspapers).

So, look, I’m not following Buffy the Wonder Ditz on Twitter, I have thoughtfully chosen which tweets I see, but still, I was startled by the juxtaposition of the uses of Twitter.

Actually, The Good Man pointed it out as he read over my shoulder. I didn’t even see it. Perhaps I’m so twitterheaded it didn’t look strange.

I think Twitter can be used pretty well as a marketing tool. Heck, when I tweet a link to my blog, I can count on about 10 to 15 extra eyeballs that day. So that’s good, right? Blog traffic is really nice.

But is all this self-focused, self-absorbed social networking really meaningful? (asks the self-focused, self-absorbed blogger)

I don’t know, something changed for me on Saturday. I like Twitter, enjoy using it, but then think…what am I *doing*?!

I don’t have the answers, I’m really just talking it out here. But last week, I was kind of into Twitter and enjoying it. Now, I’m not so sure.

Anyhow…just some pondering for a Monday.

There’s an art to it

One of my coworkers, a friend, actually, has been on an epic year-long journey to launch a new, company wide system. This is huge stuff…stressful, hours of work, and it went live yesterday.

That meant he had to stay at work very, very late last night to see this thing through with all the IT folks. A long night.

Being the kind, supportive coworker that I am, on my way out the door at 5:00, I stopped by and said, “Hey, *you* have fun tonight! Me? In about a half an hour I’m going to be drinking Sangria over a really good dinner.”

My coworker looked up from his computer, and, peering over his glasses said, succinctly, “up yours,” then turned back to work.

You know, you don’t really hear a good “up yours” anymore these days.

In those two words, he told me off, steered clear of HR violations, and conveyed months of exhaustion.

Well done!

I think people have lost the talent of telling someone off. You get too many rambling diatribes (“you know what you are? You are a bunch of……”), too much eff word use (“effing muther effer eff eff eff”), too many attempts to make it into a deep insult (“yo mamma!”)….it’s all just unoriginal work.

I feel like the tell off is a lost art.

A clean, simple, well spoken “up yours!” conveys quite a bit.

As with many things, simplicity is elegant.