Gift

Work has been NUTS since returning from my travels. I've already worked almost 25 hours this week and it's only Tuesday! I'm pretty pleased that I've managed to keep up with my post a day (ok, I've posted a couple things late, but I think that's STILL pretty good, all things considered!), even if I've not been able to offer anything too earth shatteringly amazing.

Anyway, the nutso week has been making me think . . .

Have you ever worked for a crappy boss? I've generally been pretty fortunate over all, but I have had a few who sometimes made me want to run screaming for the hills. By the same token, a great boss can make a crappy situation so much more bearable.

My job is pretty stressful, but when I think about the good luck in my life, my boss is pretty high on my list. After working for years for a woman who, despite being a decent human being, was a total micro-managing freak as a supervisor, I switched my current department a couple years ago. I've been amazed at how much happier it makes me to have a boss who stands back and lets me do my thing. It is so great to work for someone who is supportive and accessible when I need her, but trusts me enough to let me take ownership of my work.

If that isn't enough of a gift, she bought me an awesome Amazon gift certificate for Christmas. For the first time in ages, I am at a complete loss for what to buy myself, but I am sure I will find something fun.

10 Things that are good

Too tired to write a real post, so I shall make a list to remind myself of things that are good:

1. Lemon Coolers - I am SO excited that I found some at Safeway tonight. I haven't seen them in ages

2. Coming home after a week away

3. I Capture the Castle (both the book and the movie versions - completely charming)

4. Dogs - especially spoiled ones. They have so much more character!

5. New clothes

6. Libraries

7. New pajamas

8. Using the Wii to watch Netflix

9. Vacations (I need one NOW!)

10. Sam Cooke

Spellbound

Wilsonville in the Snow, originally uploaded by Martina.

On of my favorite things about the Academy of American Poets is that you can sign up with them for a Poem-A-Day email. I look forward to getting my email from them each day. It's a great way to find poetry that you have never read before. Today's poem was Emily Bronte's Spellbound, which I love for its quiet fortitude. Resolve is not about loudness but constancy. It always makes me think of how I felt when my father was dying. I was so tired, but could not leave him to go sleep myself for fear that he might die alone.

Reading it, I could almost convince myself that it was written as a reflection of my own feelings. But that's the beauty of poetry. Good poetry manages to somehow touch the eternal. It unlocks the gates of time, allowing a reader like me to share her own experiences of strife and grief with a woman who died over a hundred years before she was born. That is pretty powerful, when you think about it.

Spellbound
by Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow.
And the storm is fast descending,
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing dear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

A stinkweed by any other name . . .

If you want some good people watching, camp out in a hotel crammed full of loosely affiliated strangers brought together for a week long annual corporate meeting. Working in a position that touches the work lives of a few hundred employees, I know a LOT of my coworkers by name. I see them on reports, we correspond via email, we IM, we talk on the phone. Some of us are Facebook friends. Essentially, except for annual meetings like the one I've been attending this week, we do everything but meet each other in person.
I spend a lot of time at these meetings watching and scanning crowds for individuals I want to meet. It is interesting to see how people interact at these functions. Some are on the prowl for a hook-up, others only have eyes for people with fancy title. Some people are minglers, comfortably flitting from group to group. Others are more reserved, sticking like glue to the same little cluster of people every time I see them.
The latter are my people, the ones I get. I too am not a good mingler. I am friendly, but I'm also not good at approaching. I've never been comfortable breaking into an already established cluster of people. I take too long to come out of my shell to be good at schmoozing. My parents apparently had deficient schmoozing genes that skip a generation. So, I spend a lot of time talking to coworkers I already know, people who approach me or ones I have friendly relationships with and wanted to meet in person. I figure with them it's a pretty safe bet that their response will be "It's so nice to finally meet you!", so they're safe.
Sometimes people surprise me, like the guy who literally chased me down to hug me and tell me how awesome I was. I had no idea he felt that way. I saw him running toward me from far away, but assumed he was late for a meeting. There were also two upper management guys who yelled my name from across the hotel and came over to tell me how much they and their teams love me. I got a lot of that and it felt pretty good to see that I have a good reputation with my coworkers and that they think of me as someone who will fix things for them when they have a problem. Even our supreme overlord chatted me up for a bit and then made a point of acknowledging me (or high fiving me) whenever we ran into each other. I find this somewhat amusing. While I really do believe it was his way of being genuinely friendly, except for with my five year old nephew, I'm not a big high-fiver. Secret handshakes sure, but I'm not so much a high five kind of person.
The generally positive vibes I got from people made my experience with one of our regular overlords all the more surprising to me. We're not best friends or anything, but we've been on conference calls together and I work a lot of his employees. I'm not being arrogant when I say that I think he'd know my name. When I finally tracked him down and introduced myself to him on our final night there, he looked at me like "Who the fuck are you, and why do you dare approach me, worthless worm?", quickly inquired which office I work in, then turned his back to me and started up a conversation with someone else. Talk about awkward! I am no smooth operator, but even I was completely stunned at his lack of social grace. At first, I thought "Well, maybe he just doesn't recognize me. My voice isn't the loudest, maybe he just didn't hear the name right." The thing is, even if those things are true, that's no excuse for treating anyone like that.
I've had a few instances with people like him when I was younger and working as a nanny to put my way through college. There are always going to be those people who look right through you, if they decide you're not "important" enough to acknowledge, but I have never experienced it so openly in a professional environment, especially someone in a position and culture that's supposed to spout the "Every member of our team is important" line, even if they don't really mean it.
I've never understood why some people think a title or an financial statement renders them more worthwhile as a human being. A title may prove that you know your field, it may prove that you've worked hard and paid your dues, or sometimes even just that you know who to suck up to, but it says nothing (hear me, NOTHING) about your value as a human being. I'm not really hurt by his behavior. My job is my job and not my life, and I'd certainly never seek out someone that douchetastic as a friend. The funny thing is that I only introduced myself, because I thought it would be kind of rude of me to be there all week in the same building with him and not do it. I'm more bummed that an otherwise mostly positive trip ended with a reminder that mean people do indeed suck.
Ah well, at least is it all over now. I am exhausted by all the meeting support stuff, but I did get to spend time with some pretty cool people this week. More importantly, now I am home where my little dog will tear anyone who looks at me cross-eyed limb from limb. She would do it really slowly, because drawing and quartering is a slow process when you only weigh 10 lbs, but I know she's got my back!

Finally, what the world has been missing!

I am HOME (hurray and huzzah!), but too tired to post much. Trust me, you wouldn't enjoy anything I could come up wtih at this point more than this anyway...Josh Groban, I proclaim thee awesome!

Sound Advice

Sauvie Island 5, originally uploaded by Martina.

The picture is from last summer (I miss you summer! xxoo), the poem is one that comes to mind as I sit in meetings about aspirations and who we want to be as a company. Frankly, I'm more interested in who we want to be as human beings, so this keeps popping into my head as I'm doing sound checks, tracking down catering staff and feeling like one of a few non-schmoozing weirdos in a sea of schmoozers.

If


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;


If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;


If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";


If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!


~ Rudyard Kipling

New Year’s Meme

This year, I started the new year off with a trip. It's a work trip, but a trip nonetheless. Today, I escape the hotel to go to a super secret offsite meeting. I am not supposed to know where it is, but I do, and it's COOL! I can't post it here yet, just in case anyone I work with sees (doubtful, since none of them know about this blog, but it's not worth getting fired over, so I think I can keep my mouth shut a few more hours.) Knowing that it will be another late night with work to do when I return, I flagrantly pilfered the following meme from justabunchofsilliness.blogspot.com and filled it out before I left for my trip in case I didn't have time to write anything.

1. What did you do in 2010 that you'd never done before?
   I spent a month as a vegan. While I still eat the occasionally bit of animal (usually fish or poultry), I've not gone back to my old meat eating ways. I had feared that Houston would be all barbeque and beef products, but I've actually had a really easy time so far finding good veg options – an insanely HUGE pasta fresca (seriously, at my house one order would feed four people and that's saying a LOT, because we like our food!) and peach-blueberry crisp from Grand Lux Cafe last night and a roasted vegetable sandwich for lunch today.
   
2. Did you keep your new year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?


   I'd have to remember them to answer this, so there is a good chance the answer is no. I have set goals for the first quarter of the new year. Once that is over, I will set new ones.
   
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
   

   No, though I did know someone who was pregnant and had a miscarriage.
   

4. Did anyone close to you die?
   

   No, thankfully.
   

5. What countries did you visit?
   

   None. Except for work purposes, I barely left the county this year, let alone the country. This should probably be remedied!
   

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
   

   A real vacation.
   

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched in your memory, and why?
   

   My birthday was a perfect mix of friends, travel, peacocks, and free ice cream. Plus, it was a warm, sunny day in March, which is a rarity in this part of the world.
   

   The holidays this year were super fun. I loved introducing my nephew to Norad's Santa Tracker and Mungmas (aka Christmas, Part 2) was a blast. I now think it should always involve a Battle of Wits, Feat of Strength and Game of Chance as part of its traditional observance.
   

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
   

   I made some major changes to the way I eat – less processed food, very few animal products.
   

9. What was your biggest failure?
   

   I should have said "Yes" more and had more fun.
   

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
    

    Nothing serious, thankfully, but I've been like a walking disaster lately. In the past few days, I've fallen and gotten a bloody nose and cut a slice into the tip of my thumb.
    

11. What was the best thing you bought?
    

    My Droid. I debated for a long time about spending the money, but I've gotten a lot of use and enjoyment out of it.
    

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
    

    My adopted nephew and niece. One started Kindergarten and the other started college. Both are doing really well.
    

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
    

    It bummed me out that President Obama would speak out in support of Michael Vick, even if the call was never meant to be public. People who abuse animals disgust me. As far as I'm concerned, Vick's second chance is that he is not still in jail. It disappoints me that someone I supported would spend energy advocating for second chances for someone who would engage in the kind of abuses Vick did.
    

14. Where did most of your money go?
    

    Bills, groceries, household expenses, gas, presents for the boy. Okay, maybe clothes for me and some dinners out too.
    

15. What did you get really excited about?
    

    Starting to research my family history. Ancestry.com is nerdtastically addictive!
    

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
    

    As much as I love music, it's sad to say, but there is none in particular.
    

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
    

    Happier or sadder? Happier, my job hardly ever makes me cry anymore
    

    Thinner or fatter? Probably about the same
    

    Richer or poorer? Slightly richer, but not enough for it to make much difference.
    

18. What do you wish you'd done more of?
    

    Road trips, photography, writing, music, spending time with friends.
    

19. What do you wish you'd done less of?
    

    Work, worry
    

20. How did you spend Christmas?
    

    Christmas Eve was spent at church and visiting friends, Christmas Day was at home with friends, and then we had a separate (and best) Christmas celebration with other friends.
    

21. Did you fall in love in 2010?
    

    No, I gave up thinking so much about it. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, that's okay too. It's not something you can force.
    

22. What was your favorite TV program?
    

    Glee, So You Think You Can Dance, Conan, The Daily Show
    

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn't have this time last year?
    

    I might occasionally vent or joke, but I don't truly hate anyone. Hate is a waste of energy.
    

24. What was the best book you read?
    

    I can't think of a new one that particularly excited me. I did recently read and enjoy Wilkie Collins The Woman in White.
    

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
    

    More of a rediscovery – Jason Mraz.
    

26. What did you want and get?
    

    My mom is basically healthy after her pacemaker surgery.
    

27. What did you want and not get?
    

    To lose weight.
    

28. What was your favorite film this year?
    

    Not sure - I didn't see a lot of movies. Most of the ones I did see were with a kid, so the field is kind of limited. Maybe Burlesque. It was fun!
    

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
    

    I spent my plenty-ninth birthday having brunch with friends, then went on a mini-motor through Gorge and to Maryhill with other friends.
    

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
    

    Being home officed, spending more time on my personal life and less on my professional one.
    

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
    

    I don't think I had much of one. I don't typically look like a bum, but it was not an exciting year for fashion. 2011 looks much more promising.
    

32. What kept you sane?
    

    Pets, family, a sense of humor and reminding myself that most of the things we worry about really just little blips in the grand scheme of things.
    

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
    

    Johnny Depp, George Clooney, basically the old standbys.
    

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
    

    Healthcare, Don't Ask Don't Tell
    

35. Who did you miss?
    

    My dad
    

36. Who was the best new person you met?
    

    The new programmer at work. She rocked and made my job so much easier!
    

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010.
    

    I REALLY need to get out more. If you spend too much time working, your answers to New Year's Surveys are going to be BOR-ing!
    

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
    

    I've been to Nice and the Isle of Greece and I've sipped champagne on a yacht. I've moved like Harlowe in Monte Carlo and showed 'em what I've got. [shimmy goes here, if you're dancing while you read]. I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things that a woman ain't s'posed to see. I've been to paradise, but I've never been to me.
    

    
    

    (Ok, not really, but it's a lame question and the lyrics are so ridiculous, it would have been wrong not to use them!)