Living the Dream… ish. – Page 3

Here We Go Again…

August 4, 2012 BobbieLeave a comment

Greetings from South Satellite at SeaTac! Yes, I’m actually writing BEFORE I get on the plane, which has no WiFi. More awesome is my pre-planning on this, so I am the smug owner of both the most recent issue of Discovery and the most recent issue of the Economist. That plus hopefully some decent sleep will aid in the 9 hour flight to Heathrow, and the 2 hours down to Rome.

The verdict on the back/neck was essentially I’ve got degeneration in a joint and in a disc — so, um, I’m old. And apparently we fight age with muscle relaxants (which suck, because if I take one, I have to plan on not doing anything for 12 hours), anti-inflammatories (which suck less but the digestive tract does not like), and lots of Physical Therapy (which sucks because it means the nice PT dude pokes all the owie spots and makes them more owie).

I know I promised more on the Legal Fun, but since it turns out getting a Summer Schedule in place ran a tab of about $850, I think it’s safe to say I’m still in it, and won’t be out of it for a while, so maybe those blog posts can come in October or November. Hey, just in time to scare people for Halloween!

At the rate time is flying, though, that’s not long. The major milestones of the summer are flying by, Kevin and Margaret got married, STP has come and gone, our Leadership Summit has passed (short: YAY US! And… there’s a lot more to do); there’s this trip and then the next trip (fun trip!) and then camp and back to school and PTA and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh.

Net-net (and I say that because it makes the Editor cringe, and that looks almost like a smile on his face, so it’s nearly the same thing) this has brought me to the Big Decision to… Not get chickens. I just added on a running routine (to replace the cycling one), a knitting class, I still have a quilt, and I keep having to remember that in about a month I’ll be back in school, too. I think chickens may drive me nuts, as fun as they sound. In a way this feels like giving up, or maybe it’s just streamlining. The male person is not secretly relieved.

So. If you’re in Seattle and you’ve got chickens, I’d like to come help out once in a while, and buy some eggs off of you. The same way I like to occasionally go to the dog park to pet the pups but do not foresee another puppy for some time (Bulimikitty, I’m looking at you).

With that I sign off… as the long metal tube of the jetway beckons to the OTHER long metal tube that will take me to Olympic-land, and then to the land of caprese and carbonara. I can’t complain, try as I might :).

Not So New Driver

May 12, 2012 BobbieLeave a comment

And now we come to the part of the flight where the soporific effect of the hum of the engines has caused me to sleep through the food service. Damn.

I write (again, without wireless, and again, at 35 thousand feet) en route to Montreal, a first for me. It’s for work (naturally) and it’s of short duration (I arrive 10:30pm local, am in the office all day tomorrow, and fly out the next morning), but it’s exciting nonetheless. Instead of being sandwiched between a large German and a larger Swede (as I was in my last flight), I’ve the enviable window seat and a surprising amount of leg room for economy. I have a 40 minute stop in Chicago, just long enough to change planes, so dinner will be elusive if present at all.

I haven’t written in this blog much, actually, since I started my current job. I’ve had jobs before where I thought I worked crazy hours, I thought I was busy, I thought I was stretched to my potential. It’s funny how, when you’re stretched that much farther, you look back at those previous thoughts and smirk at yourself. In this job, I’ve had to go to 11.

It’s not that my hours are so much more, really, or so much more crazy – I’ve managed to keep them “normal” for the most part with the sloppy excess in the wee early hours, the very late hours, or the weekends when needed. When you average 36 meetings weekly, you’re going to be working at weird times to clear out your email inbox. It’s that the expectation levels and the number of things to keep track of are exponential – I previously managed semi-high-profile projects within Business Development, and had no direct reports. I now manage a semi-high profile (or very high profile, depending on who you talk to) department of 105-135 people (depending on contingent staffing) and their output, with two consistent major initiatives and a few smaller ones. It’s people, it’s projects, it’s resources, it’s allocations, it’s budgeting, it’s analyzing, it’s justifying, it’s explaining –oh, it’s a lot of explaining.

When I got into the job I was underwater the first 90 days, just trying to keep afloat and get to know what this department was about, what was (and would be) expected of it, of me, and where does this particular cog fit in that particular mechanism. I didn’t spend much time getting to know my teams (beyond my direct reports) and it meant I had only a very superficial knowledge of what they could do. It was like renting a Porsche. I knew, I absolutely knew, it could do more and better and faster and impress the hell out of anyone; but I was a newbie driver, not checked out on paddle shifters, and I hadn’t read the owner’s manual. So it was a tedious 90 days for the folks on my team, patiently explaining to me the why’s of certain things, the how comes of others, and the limitations of yesteryear. A couple of times I put the gas pedal down way too hard, way too fast.

In the last 60 days, I’ve spent more time with people, and in the next 30 I’ll be spending even more. I’ve had a chance to take this Porsche out onto the track for a couple of initiatives and I have a *very* good idea of what it can do. I know, for example, that it can corner like it’s on rails, even though we’ve only been asked to turn sharply a couple of times and at a slightly slower speed. I know it can brake on a dime even though we’ve been given a longer roadway to do so. And when I look at the next 60, and 90, and 120 days, I know we’ll be set out to even more challenging tracks, and I know we can take the corners at full speed and I know we’ll be able to break to a full stop without engaging the airbags. The Porsche itself is not new and hasn’t changed – I got lucky and inherited a team of really fantastic professionals, who are passionate about their work and the quality of it – but I think their driver is improving. At least, I hope so.

Challenge

March 9, 2012 BobbieLeave a comment

There’s one of those uplifting sayings they put at the bottom of posters with kittens climbing trees or something, that says “Do Something That Scares You Every Day”. I think this is a bit extreme, I’m all for the good weekly or monthly scare. But essentially, this coupled with Nietzsche’s “That Which Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stronger” means essentially this: challenge, and your life will be richer thereby.

Challenge is scary. Challenge, by definition, is something that you have to extend yourself to meet, and the outcome is uncertain. Challenge can take many forms.

Maybe it’s a defiance to the status quo. Maybe it’s asking “why” in a culture that discourages it. Maybe it’s rocking the boat. Maybe it’s flying in the face of that which is expected of you. Challenge is scary to you, and to others, because challenge is change.

And people really don’t like change (usually).

And change does not have to be a bad thing.

There was a time when bathing was an annual event because in doing so you’d “catch your death of cold)(nevermind that by not bathing you were almost assured to get that death anyway). There was a time when your life, your path was determined from the time you were born and no manner of training or gumption could change your circumstance. There was a time when the world was flat, when the sun revolved around the earth, and when women and persons of color could not vote.

Sometimes it’s scary. And sometimes it won’t change the course of humanity, of governments, of cities, or even your whole life — maybe just the course of your day.

Lucille Ball once said she’d rather suck her gums by the fire in her old age regretting the things that she did, than the things that she didn’t. We should too.

A Hot Shower in My Future

February 11, 2012 BobbieLeave a comment

As per usual, the beginning of the year brought on new stuff and things: projects, drives, initiatives, etc. All of this translates to calendars that are triple-booked and a lot of that juggling we all euphemistically refer to as “work-life balance”. I have it… if only just. Outlook keeps me in line. When you have to put in a calendar event to clean the catbox, you’ve gone too far. We are not there. Yet.

Tomorrow I will be on my first real bike ride in about four months, courtesy of the weather, a new job, and enforced socialization. I had the bike checked out today (new tube, otherwise good to go) in hopes of a 30 mile ride tomorrow, the first Official Outdoor Training Ride of 2012… for the STP.

Yes, I know I signed up for it last year. Yes, I know I didn’t do it last year (thank you knees, you are not at all welcome). Fortunately, I’m back in training early enough and cognizant enough of my limitations, my next injection is well ahead of the actual ride date. My only limitation is time — time to train, time to have things to do OTHER than train (you know – Mom/Work/House/Social). It’s a familiar whine.

Being back in the bike shop brought all the old training home though — yes, there’s the Gu, the Sports Beans, the Cliff Bars. And yes, over there is the rear wheel fender I keep meaning to get, so I don’t have the telltale “brown stripe badge”. Over there is the GoreTex jacket I will absolutely, positively not spend $200 on, even though it is in my size and has an appealing lack of pink.

Years ago I was a diver — I still technically am, there’s no expiration date on your certification although I am personally in favor of the idea of recertification. I’ve seen enough people in the water who were first certified fifteen years ago, just got back in recently, and I know that they are a hazard to themselves and others. At any rate– when I was diving, the second best part to it — other than seeing the really cool stuff Puget Sound has to offer underwater — was the hot shower afterwards. After two dives, even in a drysuit, you are cold, you feel dirty, and your muscles hurt — not from the dive, but from wearing 70 pounds of gear down to and up from the water. Diving is not an elegant sport, but it is rewarding. I quit cold water diving due to arthritis and a blase feeling of having seen it all (and I know I’m wrong, so see “arthritis” as chief reason) but I will keep up with warm water diving for the joy of it.

So the secondary joy there was the hot shower, the washing of everything, the loose, cottony feel of your muscles when you were done. I am very much looking forward to that, post-ride, tomorrow. I am MORE looking forward to a time when 30 miles is again “a piddlin’ distance”.

I’ve done 160. Come July, I’ll have done 200.

Editing

October 6, 2011 BobbieLeave a comment

As part of that non-work, non-home, non-PTA poo I previously referenced, I’m knee-deep in documents: big documents, little documents, documents that climb on rocks. Documents that must be scanned, annotated, pdf’d, and emailed. As a result of this — which, I must note, has lasted four weeks now and shows zero signs of letting up — I have learned many things:

1. People who have presumably gone through enough college to acquire a JD are still susceptible to amazingly huge gaffes in grammar, logic, and facts. This is not my person, but someone else’s person, and the fact that this person makes as much as he does makes me weep for the MFA’s of the world. Those sorts of leaps of logic/creative spellings should reside firmly with unicorns, fairies, and unpronounceable pseudo-worlds.

2. My boyfriend’s bulimic cat can immediately sense these, and will puke in disgust (I’d totally join her, but the carpet cleaner couldn’t handle it).

3. The household HP Scanner will lovingly scan each document as an INDIVIDUAL jpeg, to be hand-converted to pdf, and oh you have to rotate them 180 degrees (sure, you could try to feed your documents 180 degrees differently — and discover the HP Scanner then becomes bulimic of its own accord).

4. There is no easy (read: free) software for annotation, so I must send my [descriptive noun redacted] a detailed, bulleted email about the scanned documents. She loves this (at slightly under $300 an hour), but it goes against my norm of power-point “SmartArt”, and I end up involuntarily twitching.

5. The household Scanner is not on the network (still), and so I must do the weird braille method of re-attaching its USB connection to the male person’s machine.

6. Waiting for the aforementioned household scanner will cause you to read your Facebook feed with more interest than you have had in a few weeks, and you will therefore discover Wil Wheaton Collating, making your mind both euphoric and in danger of its own personal Warp Core Breach.

7. All of those people? Who you kinda told but didn’t really about the poo, and the stress, and the non-eating-sleeping-and-general-bowel-dysfunction (oh, wait, TMI)? They totally meant it when they said they were pulling for you, as evidenced by the forty-two customized email messages through various media inquiring as to status of poo and whether poo was in fact, gone.

For the record:

The poo is kinda gone…the stench lingers… and after October 19th I’ll officially hope the fan has kicked in. Really could’ve used a courtesy flush, but it didn’t happen.

In other news, it’s 16 days to my birthday, can I get a pony?

Auspicious

October 5, 2011 BobbieLeave a comment

For an athiest (or really really militant agnostic), it’s hard not to be pleased with the universe when things go your way. Today was one of those days, and I took ridiculous delight in simple things: parking spot dead center in front of the grocery store, everything I bought managed to be on sale, someone came to retreive my cart just as I unloaded the last bag into the car, I had exactly the $7.10 cash in my purse that I needed to grab lunch. (I had to deal with some things today that meant I didn’t sleep much and couldn’t eat, so naturally once they were put to rest I was starving).

Naturally, I’m hoping the good luck will extend to just one more thing.

During the course of the day I was given 3 raffle tickets to win an iPod2. I think that would be pushing my luck, though 🙂

Home Improvement

September 19, 2011 Bobbie1 Comment

Editor’s note: I’m right now dealing with a bunch of poo on the non-work, non-house, non-man front, but I can’t/won’t really talk about it and it’s now in the hands of competent professionals and I’m sure it will all get sorted out. Like a pre-or-post trip cleaning frenzy, I’m focusing my post on something completely unrelated.

Choice. Choice will be the end of us.

When the Male Person and I first started cohabitating — 3.3 years after we started dating (there is a certain mathematical harmony in a lot of our relationship dates) — Everyone Was Wondering: what would be the first sign of conflict? The toothpaste tube? My habit of putting things away willy-nilly vs. his habit of specifically ordered piles? We had long since successfully negotiated the proper positioning of the toilet paper roll, but would it be household chores or division of labor to start the angst?

No angst. Not a bit. We see each other a bit more, and he eats better and I don’t have to take the waste bins out. The expected shortcomings of cohabitation — bulimic cat aside — aren’t.

That said, in light of our economic and real estate forecasts for the areas — do please believe me when I say there are hours of research and many convoluted spreadsheet calculations supporting these — we are staying in my 1800 square foot, 1970’s rambler. Instead of putting a huge amount of money towards a down payment on a larger and somewhat fancier house, we’ll be putting a slightly smaller amount on this house making it that much more comfortable. And therein lies the choice.

Specifically, choices like: Fully tiled shower or get a one-piece shower pan? Do we tile 2″ or 4″ or 6″ up around the vanity? How much is okay to spend on a dual-flush toilet in the aforementioned 1970’s rambler? How much black speckling is okay in what should be a mostly red glass shade for the mini pendant lamps over the bar? Is this particular semi-flush-mount ceiling lamp Harry Potter enough for the boy? How silent should a bathroom fan be? Cherry floors or dark walnut or ubiquitous beechy/piney wood floors? Boulders or cottage stone for the terraced area out front?

As you can see, these are *really nice* problems to have. They aren’t really PROBLEMS. But they do cause endless evaluation, decision, question, re-evaluation, and re-deciding as we go through the cost-benefit analysis against a five or ten-year plan.

Micorosoft did not have us in mind when they created Excel.

Burn, baby, Burn

September 7, 2011 Bobbie1 Comment

As per usual, I find myself horribly sunburnt. As per usual, my son is a light tan color.

This time we stayed at the Hyatt Grand Cypress, which is gorgeous and had more amenities than we could possibly use (climbing wall, full gym, golf, bikes, shuttle to the major parks). It had the Orlando-typical waterfall pools (complete with waterslide), great pool service (THANK YOU VONDA AND EDWARD!), and wonderful restaurants. (Note: when the chef comes out of the kitchen and hands your son a chef’s hat that he can keep and then talks cooking with you for like 15 minutes, you feel pretty awesome).

We spent three days at Magic Kingdom, including obligatory Pirate Adventure Makeup and 3 back-to-back turns on Space Mountain, and one day Harry Pottering at Universal. Note: I don’t care how bad you feel about whatever may be going on at work or in your personal life, it’s hard to not grin like an idiot after 3 rides on Space Mountain.

It was hard coming back home. It was very hard getting on the scale. :p

Braces at 37

August 27, 2011 Bobbie1 Comment

Editor’s note: I did not have braces as many did during high school (or junior high, or elementary school). Instead, I have been graced with them at 37 (nearly 38).

I sat in the office — this is just over a week ago — of my orthodontist with a mixture of excitement and resignation, which is a lot easier to pull off than it sounds. Excitement because I was going to get braces and finally see what the fuss was about, and it also presents an opportunity for colored bands to celebrate holidays. (October’s colors will be orange and black). Resigned because I knew that, aside from the opportunity to accessorize the little metal boxes, I’d be having said little metal boxes on my bottom teeth for about nine months.

The part that I didn’t realize until after they were cemented, one by one, to my lower teeth, is this: your mouth was not made for bits of metal to be hanging out there.

My first night I attempted to eat a salad and discovered you can’t really do that with braces, or at least not for the first week. The little metal bits rub the inside of your mouth in such a way as to give you a very good idea of what it’s like to chew on razor blades; now 8 days later the cuts and ulcerations are almost gone. They give you this little box of wax for you to attach to the exterior of your braces (to mollify your mouth, presumably) which makes you feel like a bulldog or some other jowly creature. My diet became pretty liquid, pretty fast.

Let the record state I’m not really complaining about that, because it totally went hand in hand with my recent weight loss, and I’m now ten pounds down (yeah!).

Other unforeseen things: I have acquired, if I do not take care to enunciate properly, a lisp. This was hammered home on Monday, day 4 of braces, where I had a presentation for several people who have “C” or “VP” in their titles. The job was to let them know about Really Cool Project # 432*, because yes in my job there are fully that many projects that are cool. It totally sucks the cool out of your project when you lisp, though.

Finally, there is the little matter of dental hygiene. I’m not suggesting I didn’t have it, but the short of it is with braces you pretty much need to brush your teeth after every food event, which, for a grazer like me, means you become one with your Sonicare.

Braces: mildly annoying, purportedly useful, and fascinating accessory.

*Really cool project #431 released on Wednesday. You can get special mobile-only deals on Hotels.com! 🙂