The Pink Cup

Bobbie1 Comment

Absolutely accurate and unedited couple of emails I sent on Wednesday. Not all work is work.

First: Titled, “Lost Cup”

Normally I eschew sending out emails that refer to lost articles/items. The ones about money always baffle me. Also, phones left in bathrooms? Not so much. However, this is not normal and neither is the lost article:

On Thursday last (30 December 2010) I left my pink cup and saucer (Starbucks, circa 1997) in the dishwasher here on the 11th floor. I freely admit being too lazy to walk over and retrieve it yesterday or Monday. But today when I looked in the dishwasher, and the cupboards around it, and the mailbox receptacle below the sink that serves as the ersatz lost and found/OMG you washed your personal cup in the Work Dishwasher and so we have relegated it here to punish you, it wasn’t there. 

Nor did it magically appear on my desk, or the 11th floor break room.

 So I ask, if anyone has seen the pink cup, and saucer (for they are a pair and really should be together, wherever they are) to please ask them to little “r” me. I want them to come home. And I promise to never ever wash them in the Work Dishwasher again.

Second: OMG FOUND! Lost Cup…

Special thanks to DG, who found my cup and sent it to the safekeeping of MMW, who appropriately kept it in a place of honor on her desk until I retrieved it, shamefacedly, while she was in a meeting.

Thank you all for your support.

The pink cup will remain in my office and is willing to take its picture with you in honor of its newfound celebrity status.

New Beginnings

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There are a *lot* of changes I have on the horizon this year, most of which I’m not going to go in to. This is good project management from a “managing up” perspective: if I don’t tell you exactly what I’m planning, you can’t snipe at me that I didn’t quite do what I said I was going to do when I change my way halfway through the year based on the newer data. But trust me, when we get to the end of the year, you’re totally going to be amazed at all of the changes.

Seriously, I don’t do that in my work life. In my work life, I typically have the goal-promising restraint of say, Superman, and the social skills of say, Batman, and the subtlety of say, the Thing. I have no idea if they all belong to DC comics or Marvel or if I’ve mixed superheroes who oughtn’t. That’s your job, I’m just metamorphizing here.

At any rate, many things planned! Many goals to achieve! They are not resolutions, though, because that would be stifling. One of them includes increased fitness and banishment of the three (3) lbs gained over the holidays. Please note I am not blaming my mother. This is not just because she reads my blog; this is because the actual weight gain was realized *after* Christmas and I can only assume we lay the blame squarely at Top Pot’s door. However, please do note that I was attending my gym spin classes 2x-3x per week and Group Cyntergy the other day of the week (so that’s 3-4 times per week, got me, kiddo?) that I was going regularly pre-Christmas.

Oh My Goodness, the Resoluters are in. Spin Class (Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday) and Group Cardio (weightlifting) Monday, and the Pool yesterday? All completely packed. The parking lot? Packed. The gym is full of Resoluters, and the office has a waiting group of people eager to sign over what amounts to four figures per year to attend. I do not blame them, I do the same thing. But I’ve been doing it longer, and somehow that entitles me to all of the self-satisfied snobbery a person can develop. I don’t mind Resoluters, per se. I mind that they all come at ONCE.

If you think about it, New Years Day is an abstract day. There is no logical reason (with exception of the break between December and January as provided by the Romans, who by the way went from 10 months to 12 by shoving in 2 more months (one for Julius and one for Augustus Caesars, guess which months those are?)). Most Asian cultures celebrate a different day for New Year, as did the Mayans and Aztecs. The fact that we choose Jan 1 is completely arbitrary; to my way of thinking we would be better off to choose December 21 or March 21 or June 21 or September 21 (and if you want to know why look up “solstice” and “equinox” — although to my way of thinking Dec 21 makes the most sense). However, I am not yet the Dictator and I do not get to choose, so stuck with January 1 am I.

It would be ever so much nicer, though, if we took the extra — call it 100? 200? — people who come in for the New Year, throughout the year. My spin class would go from say, 10-12 in December to 12-14 in January to 14-16 in February, etc. Not from 10-12 in December to 30-32 in January. That causes consternation, awkward bike positioning, and massive delays while we have the instructor take time to set up all the newbies properly on their bikes. Tuesday’s class started 10 minutes late courtesy of the new folks. Again, wouldn’t mind so much if they came early. Or spaced themselves out. But please, not all at once. I give it four more weeks before the real bleed off happens (I hope).

I am totally caffeinated by the way, and we will blame my new CoHort at work. His floor has no shiny coffee maker and so there is no decaf to be had.

Resolve

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I have no resolutions this year.

Available data indicates that I’m not terribly good at keeping them, and that the things that need to get done get done anyway. Ergo, no formal resolutions. There is the list, which is the same list I tackle every year. This year includes finally learning to drive a stick shift (lesson two is next Saturday) and learning to ski; there is also some plan to get my Spanish back in gear. Oh, and there’s the STP and apparently I’m back in a book club (thanks, Carla).

I have no problem with other people’s resolutions… save one. The gym resolution. Now, many folks resolve to get in shape in the new year. Some have attainable goals (I’m going to lose 10 pounds! 20! 30! in 2/4/6 months!). Some have wildly fantastic goals (I’m going to lose 50 pounds by April!). And one and all, they arrive at the gym on 2 January, clogging up my classes. For those of us who were there the day before Thanksgiving and on December 23rd, as well as December 27th, 28th, 29th, and 30th, the inevitable barrage of well-intentioned people into the gym class means that we have to get to each class extra extra early (example: proper etiquette is to arrive at spin class 5 or even 10 minutes early to get your bike, fill your water, acquire the appropriate towelage, figure out if you really want to be behind *that* person, if you really want to be in front of *that other* person, etc. In the Resoluter Month, you need to arrive 20 minutes early to do all that *and* navigate around the newbies).

I would wager that most of these folks are gone by the end of January — maybe February. So it’s a discomfort of short duration. I think I can get through that. And if that’s the most I have to complain about, well, then, my life’s pretty darned good.

Subject To Good Behavior

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Well, I’m back in the saddle again. I gained 4 pounds over the Holiday(s), and part of it was not going to the gym as often as One Should. So this week has been a week of going to the gym and eating Lean Cuisine for dinner, which is just about as enchanting as it sounds. Don’t get me wrong, a good point of spin class is that Instructor Deb (the former cheerleader) has some excellent tunes. A good point of weights class is they vary the routine so often you’re pretty much ready to switch up when they are.

Is it bad that I spent my entire hour of weightlifting class fantasizing (as my muscles burned and twitched and shook uncontrollably, especially toward the end) about what I would *eat for dinner*? Knowing that it would be a Lean Cuisine? I think so.

Something that I’ve learned: Lean Cuisines will warn you in very STERN TERMS that they should be cooked properly. The shrimp pasta one will insist you cook it until the shrimp reach 165 degrees. Tell me: do YOU stick a thermometer into your shrimp pasta when you cook it? I do not. I cooked it until those suckers were pinky orange. If I’m dead due to undercooked shrimp tomorrow, now you know why.

Something else that I’ve learned: the guy in the weightlifting class who has the most to prove will wimp out fastest. This is an hour of loading up a bar, lifting it above your head, doing deadlifts, doing lunges with it behind your neck, doing crunches with it above your head, etc. This is not a lightweight (no pun intended) class. So YOU, Mr. loaded your bar up to prove something, you really oughtn’t’ve, and when you give up on your overhead lifts (shoulders and biceps, yo!) instead of just downweighting, it’s very sad. For you. Also, don’t wear those shorts anymore. They’re too loose and when you lift your legs for bicycle crunches I know WAY too much about you.

More sad is that I’ve spent the night (not including a conference call) watching Food TV. That’s right: I worked out to the point of shaking, I ate my 300-calorie Lean Cuisine, and now I’m watching Guy Fieri stuff his face at multiple restaurants. Tonight’s theme is apparently Italian, and if you think that some parts of my brain are screaming at other parts of my brain in what we ought to do about that, you’re right.

I could spit, but it would just burn calories.

Holiday

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I am, perhaps regrettably to others, without the ability to take some things on faith. That is to say, I have faith in science. I have faith in the abilities of my brain. I have faith in the abilities of my son’s brain. I have faith that the sun will rise (and I equally have faith that I will not see it, for I live in Washington and here there is a permanent cloud layer from October to April).  “Faith” is defined in Merriam-Webster several ways, including: 1. allegiance or fidelity to a person or duty, 2. belief in God or religious doctrines/a firm belief in something in which there is no proof, and 3. something believed with an especially strong conviction.

So this post, then, is about that #2: firm belief in something in which there is no proof/belief in God/religious doctrines. Like most “simple” words (note: there are more definitions for small, “simple” words like “set” than there are for long, obnoxious ones like “onomatopoeia”. Check it out for yourself) this requires checking into what “proof” means, and that is defined in the MW as “the cogency of evidence that compels acceptance by the mind of a truth or a fact b : the process or an instance of establishing the validity of a statement especially by derivation from other statements in accordance with principles of reasoning”. Well that certainly clears things up.

What I am writing here is that I am devoid of the ability to believe in something that does not have a solid foundation of evidence or has not gone through a process to establish its validity. I believe the sun will rise tomorrow because it’s been doing it on this planet for some 5 billion years and I believe the science and the methods used to determine that. This does not mean that if Aliens blow up the Sun tonight I will have been wrong — that’s what’s called introducing new data and would require a new scientific review. Unfortunately, a small side effect of Aliens blowing up the Sun is we’d all kinda be dead.

I digress (always).

What I’m getting to is Why Then Does Bobbie Celebrate Christmas? (Bobbie, it should be noted, celebrates the following holidays in some form or fashion: New Years’, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick’s Day, 4th of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. Bobbie will gladly participate in your celebration of Hanukkah, Solstice, etc. Bobbie thankfully takes the day off presented at Presidents Day, Memorial Day, and Labor Day, and really and truly does reserve a moment of those days to thank those nameless (and named) who have served and sacrificed.  Bobbie does not acknowledge the existence of Valentines Day).

So if I have no faith, why celebrate a holiday *built on faith*. The very idea of it is a prophecy culminated in the birth  of a child to newlywed yet somehow chaste parents, and that child grew to be Jesus Christ, and he was nailed to a cross for living in what amounted to a non-free-speech state, and he purportedly rose 3 days later and thereby proved his status as the son of God (and also God and also the Holy Ghost). Schizophrenia jokes aside, this is not what I celebrate when I celebrate Christmas. I could start by pointing out the new spring lambs referenced in the Bible probably had no business being around December 25th at the time of birth and it’s far more likely he was born in Spring, but that would have messed up with that whole Catholic-Church-Taking-Other-Peoples-Holidays-For-Easier-Assimilation thing. I could also point out that the Romans kept meticulous tax records (our IRS has nothing on them from what I understand) and yet there is no Jesus or Yeshua etc. in the areas he was supposed to be at that time. Perhaps he was also got for tax evasion? At any rate, no I do not celebrate that Christmas. You are absolutely, totally, and completely welcome to. I personally like the way Churches get all dolled up for the occasion and actually liked going when I did.

I celebrate the one with Santa Claus. And Reindeer. And getting a large tree (fake or real, your choice) got up in the gaudiness apropos to a 1970’s disco dancer. I celebrate the making *and burning, occasionally* of cookies, of lax gym use, of exchanged fruitcakes and dubious stocking stuffers. I celebrate the silliness of a jogger in her Santa hat and sleigh bells on her shoes (hi, Christine!), of family photos posted in seriously cute sweaters, of Norskie brunches (hi, Mindi!) and a plethora of baked goods coming in to the office and into homes (hi, Jim!). I celebrate the lights people decorate their houses with, of two weeks off of school, and the casual observations of frenetic shoppers. I celebrate the adventures of new families (and growing families) as they navigate the season, baking and prepping for days of delicacies and fun (hi, Ali!). I celebrate your best friend calling to inquire if she can in fact get the missle-firing droid robot with extra death-kill stuff for your son, because she spoils him every year (hi, Candie!). I celebrate folks who have the sanity to leave and celebrate it somewhere else (hi, Cindi!) and folks who are willing to celebrate even though they swore, they absolutely swore, they would never do it again (hi Jeff!). I celebrate a time where you can ask your coworkers, family and friends to donate money or toys or food to complete strangers, and even if they have already done it, this season, they will do it again (hi, Expedia Stairing is Caring team, and your $3000+ raised for kids!!).

Most of all, though, I celebrate a time of year where it is *expected*, almost demanded, that you are a better person. This is the time of year that you at least have to pretend to be nice, to care about your fellow man, to do the Right Thing. You may do it all year round — or you may do it this once, as a sort of Red and Green Yom Kippur. But you do it, because it is What Is Done. For about two weeks every year, people, for the most part, are Who They Should Be. They may be crowded in elevators but they’re smiling, they may be racing through Target but they’re making way for others, they may be frustrated in the baking aisle but offering recipe tips.

I celebrate that. And maybe *that* is what others celebrate, and maybe not. What do you celebrate?

Pajama Party

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Today at work, I gathered the fruits of my labor. That labor was a hastily one-week planned pajama party.

OK, let me back up.

A week ago yesterday, I was severely inebriated. That’s ok, because I was severely inebriated with 2000 other people at the XS club at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas. It was fantastic — flowing booze, good music, yes I did find myself dancing on a table. The fact that I originally planned to come in, make a one-or-two drink round, and leave was lost halfway through drink one: some Work Fun events are more Work than Fun, this was not one of them. Everyone shucked off the stress of the previous days/weeks/months and kicked in to have fun.

So partway through the fun an idea that Alison* (person at work, not Ali of Doug and Ali) came up with: wouldn’t it be great to come to work in our PJ’s. I got sign off from the boss, and got sign off from a few other VP’s. And then continued to enjoy myself.

Hungover I flew home on Friday.

On Saturday I emailed a few more work folks to ensure we weren’t expecting clients on the Chosen Day.

On Sunday I emailed the last few people and got sign-off.

On Monday I emailed the entire floor and gave them the prospect: come to work in your jammies. Get a doughnut (From Top Pot — Thank You Top Pot!). Give a kid a gift from the HopeLink tree: the day after the company Holiday party.

Today we had twelve people bring in gifts, and another 20+ provide what amounted to substantial cash for kids who otherwise wouldn’t have got much of anything for the holiday. We had slightly more than that show up in jammies or sweats. And we left about a dozen doughnuts behind (apparently the excesses of last night got to some).  Next year: fewer doughnuts, and maybe adopt a family instead of kids off of the tree. Or maybe both. All I know is the planning will be better done than one-week and starting at a massive party.

It’s weird to come home and not have to change *out* of my clothes and *into* PJ’s.

The Venetian

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When travelling for work, you expect different things out of your hotel from what you would expect on a leisure trip. For example:  I want my work hotel to have high-speed, wifi internet. I want it to have an iron, and  aboard, without calling someone. I want it to have basic toiletries, I want it to have space to spread out. I want it to have wake up calls, a tv in the room, and access to coffee.

In a leisure room, I want luxury toiletries. I want an amazing view. I want the TV to have multiple channels, I want lots of extra pillows. I want an extra towel or two. I wouldn’t mind a sofa or sitting area.

Hello, Venetian: you have all of the above. Let’s start with the most awesome and relevant to the Bobbie: toiletries.

There are the basics: shampoo, conditioner, body lotion. Then there’s body wash. Oh and then there’s the amenities, which include Q-tips, a nail file, a cuticle pusher, and not only a shower cap but a SCRUNCHY to go with it.

A scrunchy. In a hotel. Wrapped in plastic. Like, “this is your scrunchy, you can use it, and if you don’t it remains in plastic, and don’t worry we have 80billion more in plastic just waiting”.

Then, there is the view: I can see the entire north end of Las Vegas. The Las Vegas Hilton, over the Wynn’s golf course, and up on to the mountains.

Then, there are the five (5) pillows that come on my bed. The sofa and separate sitting area. The three (3) flatscreen TV’s. There are the incredibly friendly and helpful hotel staff, there is the assiduous security, there is the overeager climate system (warning: if you want snow in your room, you can very nearly create it with  the air conditioning. If you want a sauna, you can do that too).

I really love this hotel.

I’m here in Vegas on work. This means each morning I get up no later than 7 — often earlier, if I want to work out in their gym*, which is just slightly smaller than my expensive fancy gym back home and just as well stocked — and I’m in their meeting rooms until 5 or 6. Then I’m eating in their restaurants, decompressing in their bars, and back to my room to sleep. The entire experience is one where the only thing that is taxed is my liver and my working brain. This is good.

But every thing reaches a point of excess where it’s just too much, and you want to go home: I’m not there with the Venetian. I’m kinda there with Vegas. As I haven’t spent much time outside of my hotel, this makes zero sense, I know. But after work and work and work, and party and party and party, I’m just a little vegas’d out. I should’ve ridden the bull at Gilly’s last night.

*Gym: comprehensive weight room. Several cardio bikes, several treadmills, several stair-steppers. Full set of cardio weightlifting machines. Yoga/Pilates room. Spin class. Spa.

Drive

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There is a really, really good short video on “Drive”, aka, what drives people. What makes them want to succeed. And things not to try in that venue.  You can get it here.

I have spent  the last two days in Vegas surrounding various concepts of “drive”. How to drive money. How to drive production. How to drive traffic. How to drive employees.  How to drive change, innovation, and how to drive drive itself. You name it, we have contingency plans to push it. We are a V8^2 machine, on racing fuel, listening to Metallica.

This evening’s party was at Gillys at Treasure Island. For those of you not familiar with Gilly’s it features bikini-and-chaps clad drink waitresses and a mechanical bull. And really, that about sums it up, doesn’t it?

Except yours truly decided to find something to do. Now when you’re at Work-Fun events, usually there’s a center of interest — sometimes it’s the “boss”, sometimes its the event itself, but this event was about release. And there was a mechanical bull.

I decided to work on my powers of persuasion. You see, I’m a geek. I was trained to ferret out information, issues, data, contingencies, anomalies. I was not trained to convince, addle, wheedle, or persuade. This is something that has, until recently, been merely a hobby.

I am proud to report I got someone up on the mechanical bull. The fact that he nearly broke his nose is not a point of pride… he is clearly more man than I … and I did NOT succeed in convincing my boss, my boss’ boss, or my boss’ boss’ bosses into doing it. Still: I got one up there.

After nearly two weeks straight of daily work, at 10-16 hour days, to get Plan out (and other initiatives), I find myself exhausted in Las Vegas. I have an incredible room — next post is a hotel review about The Venetian and It’s Inherent Awesomeness in One Thousand Words or Less — and supportive folks and I have no right to whine. I even have Discovery Channel on the telle.

And with that I’m going to it. It’s almost midnight, I have meetings in 8 hours. Whee!

Black Friday

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No, I didn’t go shopping. I worked. I worked yesterday too.

I’ll work tomorrow and Sunday. All of this is most unfortunate because I had a series of conference calls and email round-robins with folks as early as July, and yet no one figured out until about a week ago that *something* needed to be done, and apparently it’s me with a huge S on my chest, for “Super” or “Something” or “Silly”, because I’m doing it. By “it” I mean cramming about 7 days worth of work into a 3-day period.

In honor of this momentous occasion, and the fact that by virtue of working I completely missed the two things I was going to purchase on Black Friday (1, I’m in Arizona; 2, the online sales I was after were apparently on Eastern Standard Time and I just finished working for the day. It’s 11pm local), I give you optimism.

Or pessimism.

This all started with a fridge. I’m at my parents house in Scottsdale, Arizona, where they have two refrigerators. One in the kitchen, and one in an anteroom. This isn’t uncommon but what *is* is that both fridges are completely stocked. My mother could be Mormon if she wanted to be; the secondary fridge is stocked with flours and cereals and spare juice and all kinds of things. As we played Tetris to get the Thanksgiving leftovers put away, I remarked that most people’s fridges are only half-full.

Which started, in my head, all of the ways people look at things. I want you to know that between this and distributing a 10-figure sum I stayed up late last night with insomnia.

  • Optimist: the glass is half full.
  • Pessimist: the glass is half empty.
  • Realist: it’s a glass of water.
  • Engineer: the glass is too big for the water it contains.
  • Project Manager: we overspec’d the glass, just in case.
  • My counterpart in Europe: Over here, we say it differently, and we’ve been drinking longer.
  • My counterpart in Asia Pacific: Our glasses are a bit more engineered than yours, you may want to stick with yours.
  • QA Tester: hey, look, you told us to drink from it, but there is no use case for measuring how much water is in there.
  • UAT Tester: so, just the one glass, then?
  • End User: damn, it would’ve been great if the glass was pink.
  • Trader Joe’s Employee: you know, I have a glass just like this at home, and I like to fill it with…
  • My son’s Principal: I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the glass and its contents…
  • My son: well, you see, I tried to make the glass out of Legos, but it couldn’t hold enough water, which is why there’s only what you see there, and if IronMan/Tony Stark made it, it would have had this cool gun on it…
  • My stepmother: you should drink more water.
  • My mother: that glass should be filled with wine.
  • My dog: if the glass has water in it maybe she’ll go to the kitchen to put more water in it and bring me bacon.
  • My postmaster: Are you sure this is your glass? (In reference to the question marks I often get appearing on letters to not-necessarily-me-but-people-I-traffic-mail-for)
  • My stick-shift driving instructor: The important thing to note about the glass is how it sounds different as you drink from it.
  • My best friend: I’m with your mom on the wine thing.
  • My boyfriend: I’m with your best friend on that. Well, not *with* her, I mean honey, I’m really with you, and whatever you want is fine with me. It’s your glass and I support your choices.
  • My boss: Water, huh? You may want to switch that to coffee after this next meeting.
  • My skip level: Can I get a 3-or-4 slide deck, nothing big, with a complete analysis of the glass?
  • TSA Agent: put the glass on the belt, walk through here, and yes there may be less water by the time we’re done.
  • Alton Brown: Water is two hydrogens bonded to an oxygen at a 112 degree covalent bond angle, which explains why it boils/freezes/makes a good base/etc… blah blah blah science meets yummy food.
  • Virtuous Person at Work: is that all the water you’re drinking? I have this 128 ounce BHA free stainless bottle that I tote while riding the bus and bringing in my lunch when not riding my bike the 25 miles in.

and lastly, I give you my father:

  • Drink the goddamn glass of water already.

A Ballet of Another Sort

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I live on a 9% grade hill, which is nothing to sneeze at. I’ve biked up it, run up it, walked up it, sashayed, sauntered, and even, once, slunk up it. I can also drive up it, in the snow and ice, even.

Most unlike the unfortunate souls out there this evening.

It’s Snowpocalypse 2010 in Seattle and the Eastside, and here I am looking out my library picture window onto my main street. It’s a two lane road, with one going “up” and one going “down”, bike lanes on either side, generous sidewalk as well. It’s the main drag between the area arterial and most of the McMansions I live amongst.

You can tell who has AWD or knows how to drive in snow and ice: they go thundering on up (or down) the hill at the usual 25 (30, 35) mph. Then there are those who climb the hill…

…and brake. For no apparent reason.

Then they discover they can’t start again, and the melody of skidding, slipping tires fills the air. It’s not long before this is joined by the merry (!) honking of the horn of the person behind them who, instead of simply driving around them, also brakes. And is stuck.

Inevitably, one or more of the cars involved pull over in a sense of despair, put on their hazard lights, and trudge up the hill. A few are on their phones, making arrangements for someone to retrieve them (presumably) at the top of the hill. As they trudge off into the dark, I hear the familiar slithering sounds of the next round of tires.

The resultant detritus stands at six cars currently, 3 of which are minivans. As of this writing my driveway is not blocked but there are, of course, no guarantees.

Sigh. 7.