Yesterday, while in the course of doing my job, I had occasion to personally speak with:
1 Romanian
1 Swede
2 Spaniards
3 Brits
1 Australian
1 Italian
Numerous Americans
And 1 former NFL football player (Packers and Redskins)
All of this happened before lunchtime.
Gee. This job is kind of fun!
(The long distance bill from my desk phone will be quite something to behold)
With a win over Atlanta, my boys are headed to the National League Championship Series! They don't win pretty, but they manage to win.
Hand me a glass of champagne and two Prilosec! My tummy isn't ready to face Philly!
In searching for something to entice The Muse to put down her bons bons and get off her settee, I like to search around for pages offering help to flagging bloggers.
Just about every page I visit suggests creating posts with lists.
I see it all over: "list posts are very popular!"
Grover in just a towel is super hawt! And a little furry.
A Sesame Street take on the Old Spice commercials:
It may be time for Primal Scream therapy.
As a long-suffering San Francisco Giants fan, it's hard to wrap my tiny mind around my Giants being back in the post season.
The last time I watched my team in the post season, it was 2003 and Pudge Rodriguez (then with the Marlins) was counting coup over the body of JT Snow, laid flat across home plate, the last out of the fifth game of the first round.
It aches.
The year before that, in 2002, I watched my team go to the seventh game of the World Series...and lose.
That's more of a soul searing pain.
So while I'm very happy my lowly Giants have made it to the postseason once more, it's not without some trepidation on my part.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Fool me three times? Welcome to Giants fandom. Here's your orange gear and your Costco pack of Prilosec.
This one is going to burn.
Last night was Game 1 against the Atlanta Braves, our old nemesis. The Giants history with the Braves is deep. Bobby Cox, in his retirement year, still has plenty in the tank and a good bullpen. Even plagued by injuries, the Braves are a team to be taken seriously.
At 6:37pm, The Good Man and I turned on the radio, dug into our positions on the couch, and held on for dear life while Tim Lincecum (nicknamed The Freak) blithely struck out 14 hitters and the Giants won the game 1-0.
Aaaaaaaaaaaagh!
Whew. Good. Ok. Got that pent up energy out.
Now. On to Game 2.
May this delicious agony last a very long time.
AP Photo by Ben Margot, from ESPN.com
This post is not only about fandom, it also fulfills a Theme Thursday challenge.
Not gonna explain why.
Just going to say this photograph made me well up.
Miss you, my Fair New Mexico
(Photo by Dean Hanson of the Albuquerque Journal)
Photo source: Albuquerque Journal
I guess my insightful marbles and rubber chicken post yesterday tapped out The Muse.
I'm at another lean spell on blog topics. So you know what that means!
Imagination Prompt roulette!
A spin of the wheel and away we go!!
Your present job makes you...
Able to pay the rent and buy groceries and every once in a while, a stupidly expensive bauble.
One food you would never give up is...
What?!? Give up a food?!? : looks around suspiciously :
Never! You can't take me and my twinkies alive!
Nothing matters...
You're telling me.
(I don't make these up...they come straight off the prompt)
I remember when...
...my dad used to start a sentence with "I remember when..." and then I'd turn up the television just a little bit louder.
Why do you feel like you do right now?
A carefully managed concoction of sugar, fat, salt, and vodka. Lots and lots of vodka.
What's the coolest piece of technology you work or play with?
I work for the most austere tech company in the world. We don't make cool. We make reliable.
So that lets out the work part of the question.
Play with? Well, the husband has an iPad which is VERY cool. When he got that, I got his MacBook Air. I know the technology is a couple years old but I'm deeply enamored of this little thin machine. It's beautiful and reliable and it makes the PC on my workdesk look like a hunchback.
What's the last piece of art you made?
Ok, now we're in my wheelhouse!
I think it was the three small canvases that I turned in for the Brooklyn Art House Co-Op project. I mailed those out on Sept 1.
That's a LOOONG dry spell of not creating any art.
I'd better get on that.
High school reminds you of...
Horrible dark things I shant share here.
I generalize about _____ because...
... _____ is so specific.
Why now?
Because I'm booked later.
Could you stay in bed all day and think?
Yes. I could also stay in bed all day and not think if anyone is looking for that talent.
Today when I put on my pants, I...
Double checked I'd zipped my fly. Otherwise it's too drafty.
Money is _____ and here's why
Wait. I thought _____ was specific. Now it's specifically money?
I have the golden touch!
Woo hoo!
I'm off to go spend my _____ all around town.
And there we have it.
Thanks for tuning in through the latest edition of Writer's Block!
Woooo!
There they are! In my hand!
Oooh how I love marbles. I was in a Diddams party store today and I generally revert to about ten years old when I get in that store.
Sensory overload!
It was the bin of marbles that really did me in. That's grade school, baybee! We used to have mad marble competitions on the playground.
Damnit, I sucked at sports but I was GOOD at marbles.
I remember winning a very big and very pretty shooting marble from a bully of a boy. He was SO ticked off at me.
What did I do? I giggled, dropped the marble in my pocket, and walked away.
That's how I roll (pun TOTALLY intended!).
Ain't nothing better than a big bin of marbles.
Unless, of course, it's a big bin of rubber chickens!
(All photos taken with my iPhone)
Yesterday I talked about being nice to yourself by packing a good lunch, if packing a lunch for work is the kind of thing you do.
Today I thought I'd take it a step further and talk about a guy where I work who has taken this self-care thing to a whole new level.
I've encountered this gentleman, an older fellow, small, slight, and very nice, several times in the hallways and break room. What's unique about this man is that every week he brings a half gallon of ice cream to work.
Not just any sort of ice cream, but a half gallon of Baskin Robbins. The good stuff.
He brings in a variety of flavors. One week it was mint chip, another it was strawberry. There has been rocky road, plain ol' chocolate, and a cherry concoction that looked yummy.
Every afternoon around 3:00, you'll find him in the break room scooping out a small bowl of ice cream. He has a ceramic bowl and a real spoon and he serves up a nice treat for himself. I can tell he really enjoys it.
There is almost a ritualistic quality to this process of scooping out, consuming and later cleaning the dishes.
I gotta say, I have mad respect for the guy.
Personally, all will power goes out the door for me when in the presence of ice cream, so I couldn't make a half gallon last all week. I'd be eating the entire container on Monday and crying my eyes out feeling fat Tuesday through Friday.
But I respect that he can limit himself to a small bowl and can *really* enjoy that bowl once a day.
There's something so right about living that way.
Last night, before going to bed, I took some extra time to prepare a batch of my delicious chicken salad.
I took care to make it a good batch, filled with perfectly grilled chicken, not too much mayo and my secret ingredients that make it, in my opinion, the best chicken salad ever.
Then, when the batch was made, taste tested and found to be perfect, I loaded it up into a container.
I packed that container along with an already packed container of soup, a bag of my favorite chips, and a bit of cough syrup into a small shopping bag.
This little bag of goodness was meant to go to work with me Monday morning.
I'm not trying to save money, although packing my lunch meets that goal.
What I AM trying to do is take good care of myself.
How many people think they *should* take their lunch to work, then pack a dried up lunch meat sandwich, a mealy apple and a bag of pretzels?
Or, even worse, they toss a Healthy Choice frozen entrée into their work bag and think that will satisfy them for the afternoon.
No.
I approach packing my lunch with all the care a doting mother would shower upon her cherished child.
It's like a love letter from Sunday Night Me to Monday Morning Me. A gift. A bit of home to remind me that even though I must work in a standard gray cubicle farm, I'm still an individual. I’m different.
I matter enough to have Sunday Night Me go to the effort to make something nice and not just something slapped together.
I actually look forward to my lunch today. I'm not looking for ways to get out of eating what's in the office fridge. Nope, I can hardly wait until noon.
And I'll eat my meal prepared with love and I will feel loved and I will know that I did a very good thing for myself.
Heck, caught up in the swell, I almost want to write myself a note to surprise me at the bottom of the lunch bag.
"Have a good day, dear. Someone at home loves you."
From the Blog of Unnecessary Quotes
All the more funny because all my New Mexico folks know that Clines Corners is definitely NOT worth stopping for.
Unless you have to pee
or
you've been driving that vast wasteland up highway 285 from Roswell and you just HAVE to see another human being to assure yourself that other humans still exist in the world.
But other than that.....
It's been a while since I had a fabulous news story about another Notable New Mexican.
From The Smoking Gun:
"The New Mexico man who earlier this year mistakenly defecated in a stranger’s car--believing it was his girlfriend’s vehicle--has cut a plea deal sparing him jail time."
This after he threw a cinder block through the glass door where she works.
Yeah.
The article goes on to state that this charming gent has since enlisted in the Army.
Oh how you vex me.
Sure, so the boss of my boss says...."Karen, put together a couple slides on [insert name of project here]."
And because I am that kind of employee, I say, "Yes boss!"
Then I when the boss is out of earshot, I sigh. Deeply. Loudly.
Then I make motions not unlike a cat would when being shoved into a mailbox.
Then I open up a blank PowerPoint screen with the company approved slide template.
And I sigh again.
It mocks me. The blank slide mocks me.
The company approved slide template has a graphic and logo running down the left side and the bottom of each page.
This takes up valuable real estate on every slide.
In this already limited space further limited by the corporate branding, I've been asked, essentially, to describe the d'être for my department.
My powerful team and successful program that was a decade in the making by my very talented predecessor.
I'm to boil that down to a few salient bullet points, format them in the corporate way and in corporate colors.
I have to make all the bullet symbols line up. And the font on every page should match in typeface and size. If I put in a table of numbers, all the numbers should line up like obedient school children.
I haven't even BEGUN to discuss "transitions" where you have your text come swooping in or looping out or emerging from thin air. I hate transitions. I really, really hate them.
I'm not *good* at PowerPoint. There are some people in this world who can make magic happen with the PowerPoint software. Unfortunately I am not one of these people.
One would think with my creative mind that I'd be all up and over PowerPoint. Nope. See, the times when I've gotten clever in the ol' PowerPoint, I've received dismissive looks and suggestions for edits. My sense of humor doesn't really translate to the rigid slide format produced by the PowerPoint software.
No. Must maintain a professional attitude. Must use a tool with SO many moving parts it could make the Pope cuss (you suppose they use PowerPoint at the Vatican?).
Must do a good job on this as I'm only sixty days into this new job. Must help them continue to think I was worth hiring.
Must make PowerPoint magic.
Oh and did I mention...this all must be done by Monday?
I was shocked earlier today to hear the news that Stephen J. Cannell, prolific television series creator and author, has passed away from cancer.
Last year I had the chance to meet Mr. Cannell at book signing for his Shane Scully novel, "On The Grind".
That day at my local library, I was feeling especially low about my prospects as a writer.
After a fantastic talk with details about his journey from being a dyslexic child to creator of such shows as The Rockford Files, 21 Jump Street, and The A-Team, I wanted to ask Mr. Cannell if he had any suggestions for a better way to query agents with my own writing.
I waited until the entire line had gotten their autographs and no one waited to distract, then I walked up to Mr. Cannell, a Hollywood legend by anyone's standards, and I boldly asked him my question.
What followed was not just an answer, but an almost thirty minute long conversation in which Mr. Cannell was supportive, asked questions, gave advice, mentored, guided and encouraged me.
At the end of the conversation, when his handlers were pushing him out the door, he took out a piece of paper and wrote down a phone number. He told me to call his office to schedule a continuation to the conversation.
I was beyond geeked out that he would be so generous. I tried calling and spoke with his admin several times, but given Mr. Cannell's crazy hectic schedule, I was never able to speak with him again. No matter, the thirty minutes he spent with me will resonate forever.
Today I'm a bit saddened as I say goodbye to an intensely creative and prolific man who is, in many ways, both hero and mentor to me.
The best way I can honor him is to just keep writing.
