Annoyance and Anticipation: Or, A New Job for Me!

I've been woefully neglectful of this blog - and if there's anyone reading out there, I do apologize for being so absent. I could chalk it up to the holidays, though I've done little more for the holidays than sit in a car or stuff some food in my face. I've hardly even done any real gift shopping yet. Part of that has been due to the fact my schedule for the last few months has been a series of trips, for work and for pleasure, and so getting through each trip has been, in and of itself, a bit of a mini-project, and the accumulation of each of those projects has left me feeling that Christmas and New Year are both much further away than the calendar now shows me they are.

But it's all been a good busy, and it's led me to a good place: a new job. A couple posts back, I said I'd gotten an interview with a new company, and lo and behold, this company has now hired me. I could not be more thrilled to have a new challenge ahead of me and to learn a lot of new things -- not the least of which will be how a different company works. I was fortunate or lucky enough that my new company seems to recognize both some instrinsic value in me as well as the promise of future things to come. They offered me more money than I make today (always a plus), they have hired me into a position in which I will have no direct management responsibilities (always an enormous plus), and they have talked both seriously and specifically about the various options they see ahead for me in their firm. Alas, they could not meet my current vacation benefit, but I have to remind myself that vacation from an enjoyable job/company may be less of a necessity than it has been from a hated job/company, and something like this should not have been considered a deal-breaker. So it wasn't, and I accepted, and as of today, I tendered my resignation from my company of the past 10 years.

While I did not expect the walls to come crumbling down or for executives who barely noticed I existed before to suddenly call me, pleading with me to stay, I expected a little more than I got today. While my team and colleagues have not yet been informed of my departure, several executives with whom I interact daily have. And I got bupkus. My direct boss has been nothing short of fantastic, and because she and I have a very solid relationship, I felt free to talk to her about my resignation before submitting it. She was effusive about how very valuable I was to my company, and how I needed to take this opportunity, this power, that comes with having an offer in hand and design the job of my dreams -- she felt certain I'd be in a very strong negotiating position to get it and if the response from my company was negative, I still had this exciting new offer elsewhere to pursue. I spent the weekend thinking about it all very deliberately. I even sketched out my "fantasy" job.

And I could not do it.

I just felt like one more pitch, towards executives I do not respect, for a product I only feel half-heartedly about, for a new opportunity that may be far worse than my current one, was beyond my ability. I just could not stomach the process to get it -- much less the job it might have ultimately led to in the end. In sorting through my thoughts with my husband one last time on Sunday night, I explained to him how conflicted things were in my head. I heard myself explaining that I had a great offer from a company that did not know me from any other stranger applying for a job there (though hopefully after 9 interviews with various staff, they do know me a bit) -- and they saw enough promise and value in me to offer me more, on several levels, than I currently have in my job. And yet I was considering possibly begging (it wouldn't have been begging, but I saw it in those terms) for something better than what I currently had. I would have to beg for the job, the salary, the title, and the authority that should all have come my way through years of hard work, dedication, loyalty, and commitment to a job that offered none of these things in return to me. Why could this new company see my value and yet the company I'd been working for for over 10 years not? Hearing that come out of my mouth, I knew my decision had been made.

And as I've lay in bed for the past two hours, unable to sleep and feeling somewhat deflated on what should have been a momentous day of new beginnings and possibilities for me, I had another thought. I've resigned. I'm moving on. I'm the one who comes out of this one better. And I won't let my old company, the one in which I stagnated, and felt stifled, and felt disrespected on a daily basis, have any sort of control over my emotions, my mood, or my health any more.

Just writing that sentence has made me sit taller in my chair, made my shoulders relax, and made my breathing a little more smooth. Yes, this is going to be a very good thing for me.

Personal Trainers; Or, How I Learned to Follow Orders to Save Myself

I did it.

I got off my ever-expanding ass and took some action. I joined a gym on Saturday and actually setup an appointment with a trainer on Sunday. And on Monday, I could hardly move.

Almost.

And while I do hurt like the dickens in places I'd long forgotten could move much less have moved, it's a good pain. It's that pain that comes from knowing I'm finally doing something to make myself healthier.

Even if it hurts. Oww.

Hillbillies and Rednecks; Or, Why Kentucky Does Not Suck

I am from this area. I'll just get that out there right away.

I was born in Northern Kentucky to parents who lived in Cincinnati. A fluke, I suppose, as they might just have been in Cincinnati at the moment my mother went into labor and - poof! - I would have been born a Cincinnatian. Shortly after my birth, we moved from Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky (Latonia, to be specific), and I spent the next 18 years of my life living in different parts of Northern Kentucky. And miracle of miracles, I think I turned out as an adult who is not toothless, shoeless, overall-clad, redneck, prone to outbursts of "Golly Gee!," cornhole-obssessed, nor married to a cousin.

So it annoys me like nothing else when people in Cincinnati talk about Kentucky like it's the hinterlands or like everyone in Kentucky is a stupid redneck and the whole state is some vast backwater that takes you hours and hours to get to from your precious homes in the vast Cincinnati metropolitan area. Kentucky is all of about 2 minutes from downtown Cincinnati (depending on which bridge you're crossing and how fast you're driving), so it's hardly any further than driving from downtown to any trendy neighborhood in the outlying areas like Oakley, Hyde Park, or Mt Adams.

The distance issue aside, what I find most frustrating when I hear people disparage Kentucky or Kentuckians is that it puts me in a position of suggesting Cincinnati is no better - or even worse in some ways. And I like Cincinnati. I live here, for Christ's sake, and I live downtown for the very reason that I care about and want to support the growth and expansion of this city.

I really want to understand why Cincinnatians think so little of Kentuckians. We're co-mingling all the time in this area because we're so close, and from my perspective, we're really pretty similar in most ways. Yet I saw comments online this week about the people in the Newport Kroger being dumb and toothless. Really? I wasn't there, so maybe there were some dumb and dentally-challenged people there. But it seems like when Cincinnatians have any interaction in Northern Kentucky, issues like this come out as supposedly pithy comments. Nevermind that maybe the grocery store is in a very economically depressed neighborhood and maybe some of the people in the grocery store can barely afford the groceries they're there to buy much less extensive dental care (I am taking this one example too far, and I will stop).

I've been lucky enough to travel a lot for my job over the years. I've been around this country many times over to places I'd never otherwise have known existed much less been able to visit. What I've seen is everywhere has its share of idiots, geniuses, hillbillies, cosmopolitans, and the people who fall somewhere in between each. And somehow most of these places are the richer for it...it's sad to me that Cincinnatians, for all their promise, don't seem to be so open-minded about their neighbors.

Anticipation and Annoyance; Or, Why Putting the Cart Ahead of the Horse is a Bad Idea

I need to be reined in.

I took the plunge and did submit my resume to one of my company's direct competitors. I reasoned that I was doing it mainly to see if I got any sort of response and also to give myself the peace of mind that should come from knowing there are options out there, I am not entirely trapped, and that it's conceivable some other company might find me worth hiring.

It also helps that at this particular competitor, I know at least two people (with whom I worked with previously when they were at my current company), and I suspected they'd both be willing to put in a good word or two on my behalf.

Nearly a week went by and....nothing. I was starting to get depressed that I couldn't even get hired to do essentially my own job. But lo and behold, I got an email --- an interview request! Granted, this is just the first interview. And I've hired enough people in my day to know this first interview is essentially the HR-screening interview. I won't likely be speaking to anyone except the recruiter, so I think it's a thumbs-up/thumbs-down meeting to see if I'm worth scheduling for an actual interview.

Nevertheless, I am now imagining the suit I will wear should I be flown in for an interview, the negotiations in which I angle for the extensive vacation I now earn, and the glorious joy I will feel turning in my resignation.

I need to cut it out.

Because I am so excited by the prospect of leaving that I am tuning out on my actual.current.job. That job that is currently paying the bills and generally providing food and shelter for my cats, my husband, and me. I was in a management meeting this morning and could barely summarize for you 5 things that were discussed. I was a little snappy with my boss (whom I do like but who does frustrate me). And I am generally not the friendliest of people with whom my colleagues can interact these days (this is probably not a significant change to them -- but still, not good).

So between now and Monday (when this call is now scheduled), I need to refocus on the job at hand and pretend like this call next week is nothing more than an initial chat with someone. But oh, the possibilities!

Perms; Or, Why I Should Not Be Allowed to Make Haircare Decisions

So I am not a vain person. But I do care enough that I am fairly diligent about my hair - I do always get it colored and highlighted (or else I'd have been a grey-haired 19 year old; I kid you not). And I take care of my hair, so it's generally pretty healthy. So I have healthy hair sitting on top of an entirely not healthy body, but so be it.

And while I have a lot of hair, it's very fine. To make matters worse, I am descended from a long line of women who seem to have a serious thinning problem at the front of their head (thanks mom and grandma!). The past couple of years have seen a few experiments in hairstyles to find various ways of masking this thinning, but essentially they've been variations on the same theme...that theme being some variant of the Jennifer Aniston "Rachel" cut...or that's at least what I see when I look in the mirror.

Or at least it used to be.

Because I had the brilliant idea to get a perm - lovely waves of full hair! Yes, a perm it would be! I decided to put away my Falco cassette and strip off my legwarmers for the night and actually get a permanant wave put in my hair (yes, I realize how very 80's this makes me - and not in the cool 80's way either). My hair stylist has been doing my hair for the past few years. And she's also a member of my family (by marriage, so...). Anyhow, so she did my color on a Monday and on the Thursday of that same week, she did my perm. Yes, dear readers, I was that stupid. And apparently so was a family member since she is the hair care professional and did not seem to register what a horrific mess two massive chemical processes would create of my hair when applied in such close proximity to one another. Once she started drying my hair after the perm rods were removed and the chemicals rinsed away, I knew something was not right. And I quickly realized something was very wrong. My hair was very wrong. And it was very fried, and it was very gnarly (and not in the cool gnarly way either), and I was not happy. In fact, I busted out with a "I HATE THIS! I HATE MY HAIR!" rather abruptly. She quickly whipped into action with a curling iron and much dexterity. It helped make the immediate mess slightly salvageable, but overall, it was a disaster. She even had to utter the phrase "Please do not cry" at least once, but maybe twice, and I soon thereafter spun into a whirling dervish in my head ("How can I leave here with my hair like this?" to "What in god's name will I do to fix this?" to "Is it a defensible action to kill a hair stylist for such an atrocity?").

The duration has been all-hair-all-the-time if you were to ask my husband, my mom, my sister, my BFF, or probably the dustbunnies collecting in my office. I had a couple of extremely non-helpful email exchanges with my family member who basically abdicated any responsibility in repairing my hair. I consulted with a new stylist. Her advice: do nothing. The hair is so damaged (or "singed" was the word she used repeatedly...lovely) that there's nothing to do at this point that might not cause further, and even worse, damage. Well, she did suggest some extensive overnight hair mask procedures, which after one night, have seemed to elicit some noticeable, however slight, improvement. So I will keep up her recommended hair regimen to see if my hair returns to some semblance of normalcy again. Who'd ever have thought I'd long for the days of my out-of-date, unflattering "Rachel" style. Oy!

Almost as frustrating as the hair itself has been my hair stylist's/family member's role in all of this. She is the professional after all, not me. Why did she not warn me about the potential damage of the two treatments? Why did she not accept some responsibility for correcting what was obviously a mess she (quite largely, in my opinion) contributed to? Why did she just not tell me no one gets perms anymore because they're bad for your hair, your self-esteem (when they go so awry), and probably the penguins in Antartica and the puppies in the pound. These things are evil!

So I promise this will be the last (public) tirade on the current, tragic state of my hair. But if you see a girl with a giant mop of frizzy, overprocessed, and over-chemically treated hair walk past you, send a kind thought her way and take pity on her frizz.

Mentoring; Or, Trying to do Something Good

So after groaning about how meaningless and unfulfilling my actual job is for years and years (I wish I was exaggerating), I'd given some thought to finding a volunteer opportunity that might help me feel like I was less of a waste of space. My thinking was if I found some great outlet to "do something good," then I could work my craptastical job in order to keep paying the bills, but I could have this other outlet to help me feel like I was contributing something back to the world.

One afternoon a few months back, I just happened to be reading http://www.nky.com/, which I typically do not read, since I live in Cincinnati and, like most Cincinnatians, I tend to tune out anything that happens south of the stadiums (not actually true, but I do think that's how most people in Cincinnati act - as if Northern Kentucky is the hinterland or at least someplace where people wander aimlessly and barefoot while eating road kill, drinking moonshine, and marrying their sister - but that's a topic for another post). However, on one particular day, I noticed a blurb on this website about an information session on mentoring programs in the Covington Public Schools. That was it - this was the volunteer opp I was waiting for!

So I trotted off to the information session - as did about 20 other retirees. While I was a little confounded to be the only under-40 in attendance, I still decided to submit my application. I've now gone through what I think has been a pretty impressive process of application, pre-mentoring education, and background checks aplenty. I am struck and saddened by the extent to which the school district has to screen its mentors - but it's a necessity, I am sure, and I would far prefer to spend my morning being interrogated, being fingerprinted, and giving people too much personal information than what the alternative might bring (really - my weight? - am I going to be disqualified for being too fat? Eegad.).

In any case, I have one last hurdle - an in-home visit and some final training before I am matched with a student. That will happen next week. I'm sure I'll chronicle my mentoring escapades here to some extent -- but I also wanted to do a quick plug for mentoring programs around the area. If the statistics I've seen in my trainings are any indication, we have a lot of kids in this area who really need the good influence, support, encouragement, and stability of a mentor in their lives. In some cases, it really could make the difference between life and death for some of these kids - and for others, it may just make their lives a little less painful.

I hope I live up to this.

Overkill; Or, Packing on the Pounds

So I had to go to the doctor yesterday to see if I was in the midst of having a stroke or some other serious vascular disturbance (several days of a seriously painful vein in my leg, random, and a pounding headache had me worried). Fortunately, my doctor thought it was nothing more than early-onset vericose veins (sexy!) and residual sinus headache from a sinus infection I didn't realize I had last week. Good news aside, that wasn't the big takeaway from the doctor visit....I had to get weighed while I was there.

And while it was not surprising that I gained some weight, the total amount of weight I had gained was stunning. I thought I might have gained 5-7 lbs...maybe. Nope. Maybe 10 lbs. Nope. Try 15 lbs since my last appointment in February! Holy moly! And this means I've gained a grand total of 20 lbs since my wedding last October. I gave myself a bit of a pass following our wedding since we had a long honeymoon planned in Hawaii, and by the time we got back, we were sliding right into Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then New Years. And somehow 10 months later, 20 lbs had found their way on my body (and I'm one of those lucky people who gain weight only in her midsection).

Ick.

And I am a lucky girl because my husband has not made a single comment about my ever-expanding girth. And when I've whined about it, he's only been supportive and said he'd go along with any food changes or exercise plans I wanted to work into my life. Nice. And yet I've done nothing.

What's a particularly cruel irony (and an obvious explanation for this little predicament I find myself in) is how very much I enjoy food. I read copious amounts of food blogs, restaurant reviews, chef memoirs, you name it. I love to eat out (and do so frequently). I really like to cook. I even have a food blog here in Cincinnati. But I need to make some changes. But I'm not interested in going on a strict diet, and I'm not interested in becoming a gym fanatic. But I have to do something. If nothing else, I have to stop the weight gain. And I need to be mindful that my weight, combined with my serious hatred of my job and the seemingly endless stress it causes, is going to lead me to some serious health crisis sooner than later. While I was driving to the doctor yesterday, I couldn't help but think I'm now only 5 years younger than my dad was when he dropped dead of a heart attack at 41. I really need to make some changes.

And the food and exercise is something I can try to make some inroads on immediately. I'm not going to go crazy or drive myself crazy, but I need to get a healthier perspective and act on it. And then I'm going to have to tackle this job drama and find something that doesn't counteract my efforts. Oy.

Decisions; Or, Why Taking Action Seems So Difficult

I'm mulling over the possibility of applying for a new job. It's not entirely "new" in the sense it would be radically different than what I do today. It actually seems like a scaled-down version of what I do today - just at a new company, with a tweaked set of responsibilities, all of which fall well within my comfort zone for a job. And while it's in the same industry as I'm currently in, it's not with a direct competitor either, so some of those angst-inducing issues are not present with this situation. (I've considered, in my more angry moments, applying for jobs at competitors' sites. Thus far, I've resisted.)

The one big change this new opportunity would present would be working in an office. I've worked remotely for over 6 years now, and while it can be extremely satisfying to roll out of bed and straight into your office or to be able to take off for an appointment without feeling like eyes are watching your every move, it can also be a drag. There are days when I do not speak to other people (rare, but they happen), there are days when I do not see another human being, and there are plenty of days when I do not leave my apartment - sometimes for days at a time (this becomes especially true in winter, worst of all). While for most people the routine of getting up each day, leaving the house, and commuting into the office is pure drudgery, I think it sounds nifty. And to be clear, I've worked in an office before - in fact, I was one of those people who followed just the routine I described, even having a 1+ hour, each way, commute through suburban Philadelphia...and I still preferred that to the routine I have today. When it all boils down to it, it's a lonely existence working remotely, and if you love what you do, the loneliness can be compensated by other more-liked aspects of the job. When you hate much of what you do, the loneliness of working remotely is compounded ten-fold.

I think because so many people in my company are now remote, we've lost the ability to communicate with one another like professionals should. Because it's so easy to zing someone, blast their idea, or be openly hostile with a disembodied voice on a conference line, people do it. With frequency. But what was odd is that normally when I had to go into our corporate offices (which I do every couple of months, usually for about a week at a time), civility would return and meetings would be productively antagonistic but still very much professional and conducted with the appropriate decorum. Not so last week when I was in the office --- my boss and I were ambushed utterly by two other vice presidents who had obviously conspired ahead of time to work out a plan of attack. So maybe it's not more fun to work with people instead of remotely. Hahah.

And maybe that's precisely my point, but I've been dressing it up and trotting it out as a remote work/office work strawman instead. Maybe I just have had enough of my company, the people I work with, and the political infighting that I'm quite sure is on the cusp of tearing my particular division apart. It's sad. I've worked in this division for 10 years. So much of my life, and much as I hate to admit it, my identity is tied into this job. But if last week is the start of a new epoch in my division, maybe trying to get out now is what I should focus my energy on.

Anyone find themselves in a similar situation? Other than telling myself the grass won't necessarily be any greener in another pasture (it'll just be a different shade of green, I am sure), I think maybe it's time for me to move on.

New Orleans Bound; Or, How Chunk Got Her Groove Back

We head to New Orleans tomorrow for a much needed long weekend of rest, relaxation, and serious eating and drinking...and listening to music, which is probably one of my favorite things in the world to do (especially after eating and drinking in New Orleans). I can hardly wait to get back to Preservation Hall and the countless other little spots where I will get my fill of blues (or try!).

In the meantime, enjoy your weeks/weekends, and hopefully my curmudgeon quotient will be down after this trip (probably not, but we can hope).

I Weep for the Future; Or, How I Think I Just Quit Facebook

I won't claim to be uninterested in politics. I won't even try to act like I'm apolitical. Ill informed on some topics, yes. But because of my job, my previous job, my ultimate job in the future, and just my natural interest in the subject matter, I do tend to keep up on matters related to education.

And if I see or hear one more person complain about Obama's welcome-back-to-school/take-ownership-of-your-own-educational-success speech that he will give on Tuesday, I think I might just flip my shit right on out.

And if as a parent you either too lazy, dumb, or uninterested to actually look into what the President's speech is going to cover, or read first-hand for yourself what these so-called socialist-leaning, Obama-deifying, cult-of-personality-laden accompanying lesson plans include, then you are not doing your job as a parent.

But what I am seeing left and right --- and even on Facebook, for God's sake --- are people ranting about this...and yet they rant based on what they heard on Fox News, or what they saw on some other half-truth website, or what their equally ignorant friend told them. Doesn't anyone actually go to the source for information anymore? When I first heard about this speech, I didn't go to CNN; I didn't go to Fox; I didn't go to Huffington Post....no, I actually went to http://www.whitehouse.gov/. Shocker! Who'd have thought one could actually read the lesson plans themselves, rather than hearing about their salacious, evil, turn-our-children-into-Commie-Pinkos-before-our-very-eyes content from some second-, third-, or fourth-hand source?

I keep wondering if these same people who are so outraged about Obama's speech and who are actually going to deny their children a day of school as a means of "protecting" them from this speech - do these same people feel that Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush were similarly fascist when they gave similar broadcasts during their presidencies? Did they compare Reagan and Bush to Kim Jung Il or Saddam Hussein? Unlikely.

And when people -- nay, parents -- are so quick to act on mis-/dis-information in relation to their children and want to wear that like some sort of badge on tv, in radio interviews, and on Facebook...I shudder to think about what ignorance they are actually espousing to their children about the matter. How about this? Even if you disagree, even if you hate Obama -- why not make this a "teachable moment" for kids? Talk about why Obama has the right to speak to school kids, or why (in your view) he should not, why everyone has the right in this country to speak their mind or give their opinion, and --- golly gee -- why kids might actually need to give some thought to taking some responsibility for ensuring their own educational success (the actual point to Obama's comments, after all). Rather than bury one's head in the sand and act like that addresses the problem - how about dealing with the problem in a way that might actually make a child think about these issues, their goverment, their education, and the role they play in all these things.

Rules to Live By; Or, How I'm Trying to Lower My Blood Pressure

So I was talking to one of my friends at work today. She works from home too, so sometimes we chat on the phone, which I think is my equivalent to catching up in the coffee room or chatting over the water cooler, which you lucky folks who actually work in offices get to do. Most days my only contact with another living being is when my cat comes to check on me (barrage of nasty emails all day long notwithstanding).

My friend is one of those people who just lets everything bother her and make her feel even worse about herself than she does anyway. It's sad, and I often try to give her pep talks; I'm usually wildly unsuccessful in my effort, but I think today I might have helped myself more than my friend, even if it was inadvertant.

After she went on a (rather lengthy) tirade about how the person who was meant to back her up while she took a vacation actually had the audacity to take a vacation day herself, thus foiling my friend's back up plan, I told her about two rules I was trying to make myself repeat about 437 times a day:

1) Not everyone thinks the way I do. And thusly, not everyone makes the same decisions I would make, nor do they react to things as I do or expect them to.

2) I should try to be less judgemental of people who do not think the way I do.

To most normal people in the world, these are probably the most obvious, "how could you have lived 36 years without already realizing this?", types of thought. But they are not obvious to me, and they seemed even less obvious to my friend.

I told her I was trying to become less judgemental and critical because I felt like being both was largely what makes my job so infinitely frustrating, annoying, and puke-inducing (and these would be the good days). And this week is an especially trying week to attempt this little experiment since I've had one long-time employee choose this week as her semi-annual functional-adult-who-morphs-into-petulant-and-passive aggressive-7-year-old for her latest meltdown. Yeah, lucky me.

And understand here I am normally Ms. Judgy McJudgerson; I have an opinion, a comment, or a criticism for almost everything I encounter. So this is not an easy task. I need moral support here, readers.

What other axiom should I add to my daily chant?

Bullshit - God Has Horns; Or, Why True Blood is the Best Thing on TV

Largely because "Bullshit - God has horns!" was actually a line from last night's show.

And also Lafayette delivering the line, "Jesus and me agree to see other people but that don't mean we don't talk every now and then." And Terry's "We will un-fuck this situation later on!"...oh wee, this show is fun.

This show is so made of win in about 50 different ways, the writing and the acting by an ensemble cast is just incredible, but I am clearly obssessed. Any other True Blood fans out there?

God Wants You to Know; Or, How FB Has Jumped the Shark

Ok, if God really wants me to know something, I sure as hell hope he picks a better vehicle to communicate with me than a daily posting on Facebook.

What is with all the hyper-religious schill on FB all of a sudden? I think in the past two months, either FB in general or my (long-lost, distant) friends from high school have become religious zealots.

Ick.

Lingering Numbness; Or, How Novacaine + Beer = Bad Idea

As is usual with me, I found myself getting upsold at the dentist recently. So after wasting one afternoon not getting the regular teeth cleaning I was scheduled to get, I got to waste another morning on a deep scale cleansing of my "near bone-loss levels" of "under the gum plaque buildup."

Now as someone who suffered the massive indignity of wearing braces in my thirties (cut to scene of Sara on a date with Merlot-stained formerly clear brackets...hello lovely!), I want to take care of my teeth, and so if my dentist told me he needed to scrape my teeth with a razor blade and charge me $500 for the pleasure, I'd probably do some mental gymnastics to think it was worth it since I'd already sunk so much time, money, and personal embarrassment into my teeth.

So they could only do 1/2 of my mouth at a time - and yesterday was the right side of my mouth. Four shots of novacaine later, I left the office looking and feeling sort stroke-victimish. And I mean no disrespect to anyone who has had or has had a loved one suffer a stroke - I know the horrors of this first-hand, and I am not making light of that condition. But when I tell you from my eyebrows to my neck were numb on the right side of my face....all day long...well, this was a weird situation.

I decided to stop feeling sorry for my numb face and agreed with my husband we'd still go to Trivia Night. Two beers later, and only slightly more feeling in my face than when I arrived, I had a bit of a headache on top of enormous jaw pain.

Drug and alcohol intake aside, we still managed to win Trivia Night!

ps - Despite our winning streak, we may opt out for a few weeks. We really don't want to become those asses who come each week to show off how geeky and useless their trivia knowledge is.

Revolving Doors; Or, How I Keep Losing Employees

I know the fact I have attrition on my team isn't going to require any sort of quantum leap in thinking since I've complained about my employees (mainly their ridiculous attitudes), our co-workers, and the general nimrodery of our workplace. But I lost another one today, and while it wasn't totally surprising, it's sort of rocked me a bit and I've been left wondering what it is I am doing to drive employees away.

I tend to be the sort of manager I think I'd want - I am utterly hands-off unless I really need to be in your business about something. And I think most of the team seems to thrive in that. But managing people, by definition, means you do occasionally have to get in their business and get into the details of how they're doing (or not doing) their jobs, how they're scheduling (or not scheduling) their time, and how they're making progress (or not making progress) towards hitting their utilization numbers (yes, we are a services organization, and so we actually have to record down to the .25 hour our billable time...and you start to understand the fun that is my job). I actually really quite passionately hate these aspects of my job. I hate being the process-Nazi who insists people follow rules, adhere to procedures, and fill out forms. I'm quite sure people probably call me "Lumberg" behind my back and think I get my jollies off of TPS reports. But if they don't follow these rules, then I can't do my job. And since I control a big pool of resources, there are all sorts of repurcussions to me not doing my job for a lot of people.

But I would be happiest if I could just go work in a little cubicle each day, be responsible for my own little piece of work, have no responsibility to or for anyone else, and promptly clock out at 5pm.

Or, you know what, I'd be happy if I had a job that had some semblance of meaning or value to the world and not just to the private equity firm that owns my company. I used to be a teacher...of literature...to students who actually cared about reading and what they thought about what they read and how it made them feel and how it opened them up to some new way of looking at the world or themselves. Those days feel like they were about a million lifetimes ago.

Now I'm just too busy trying to find replacements for the people on my team who leave and who I, quite possibly, have driven to do so.

Smells like Home; Or, How Scents Trigger Memory

My husband and I tend to be wine drinkers. He knows a lot about wine, but that's a story for another post. I glom onto his wine knowledge and derive the benefit of his study.

But lately life has been such that I am often in need of a drink to calm down, settle my nerves, forget about my day, what have you. Given that my husband does not always want to have a drink when I do, I suggested getting some box wine - that way I could partake as often as I wanted without the waste of opening a whole bottle if he wasn't drinking any. My husband picked out what he found to be the best respected box wine (I don't believe there was a long list here...but I give him credit for looking into this on my behalf).

That swill was undrinkable.

So apparently over the past couple of years my wine palate has developed enough that I can't drink the box wine anymore. I'm guessing I shouldn't even bother with Charles Shaw ever again. Mind you, these were my staples about 3 years ago, so it's not as if I've been some wine snob my entire legally-able-to-drink life. Hardly.

But I have so digressed.

After the box wine failure, my husband suggested I find a cocktail I like and just recreate that at home for nights when I want a drink. I'm a bit lazy when it comes to drink-fixing (not so when it comes to food fixing, paradoxically). So gin and tonic it was! I made one a short while ago and in lifting the drink to my lips, I was almost overcome with the scent of the sweet tonic, the tart lime, and the fizzy wonderfulness popping and crackling in front of me. But what hit me like a ton of bricks in that moment was the memory of the smell - a scent I smelled so often around an aunt who played a significant role in raising me. I can't say I saw her drink many gin and tonics in her day (though surely she must have); I just recall her sister drank them like water, and so whenever we were all together, my aunt made them, and she had the limes at the ready, and the smell, the smell - it was like I was 10 years old again, looking at my aunt and her sister and thinking how cool and sophisticated it must be to be able to drink such a drink and how much fun they seemed to have while drinking them....always laughing, forever smiling and giggling with one another.

Somehow my gin and tonic experience wasn't quite so exuberant as all that. But having the drink sure brought back a flood of happy memories about my aunt and my uncle who loved us so much. They're both gone now, and my life is less for it.

What scents trigger memories for you?

Ruminations on Blogging; Or, How I Screwed Up Facebook and Wound Up Here

I tend to be one of those people who simply must unload when I'm irritated by something (which, unfortunately for people who know me, tends to happen about 99 44/100th percent of the time). I generally avoid direct confrontation as much as possible - which is extremely difficult given I work with the largest group of nincompoops ever assembled in one company. So whenever I'm frustrated, I feel compelled to update my status on Facebook.

Sara is: wondering why English proves so challenging to native speakers.
Sara is: not suffering fools gladly.
Sara is: sitting at CVG about to get bumped from my flight.
Sara is: sitting in PHL waiting on a delayed US Airways flight. Quelle surprise.
Sara is: still not suffering fools gladly.

Just a few recent samples of FB statuses. Seeing the theme? Only there's a meta-theme to my theme. I actually can't say what I want to say in my status...because I was stupid enough to let work people friend me on FB. This was back in my early days of FB, back before everyone and his mom (literally) got on, so I didn't have a well thought out strategy on using the tool. And even my company has really gotten into FB...during our big annual user conference, there were fan pages and status updates and blast messages each and every day for the 5 days of the conference. Don't get me started (no really, don't, because they jumped right on Twitter too...and so that's forever ruined for me too).

Worse though - many people who actually work for me are friends with me on FB. So even though at least 5 times a day I am left, mouth hanging agape, wondering how some people could be both simultaneously utterly needy and entirely self-righteous, I sure can't comment about anything very directly on FB, or else I'd soon have a mutiny on my hands. And the icing on the cake was when one of my employees actually de-friended me when she was angry someone else in the department got the promotion she thought she deserved (despite being in her current position a whole 7 months...what was I saying about self-righteous? Oh, I digress...).

My point is this - I think I've utterly ruined FB for myself, and so I sit fairly dormant on it most days. I might put up a bland update like "Sara is going to dinner at Nicola's for Restaurant Week," or I become a fan of Domo-kun, or something equally titilating. But essentially, it's a useless tool for me because I can't really be me on there, and I actually wish I could exclude a huge part of my life from my profile. I've read about people who have a personal FB page and a professional FB page...but frankly, that seems like an awful lot of work, and I think I'm either FB lazy or disinterested or maybe both.

So a blog it is - and it will be here that I spout off about what I'm thinking, what may be causing the latest angst, or what I'm trying to do to work through any of it. But I'm curious if anyone else has sorted out this particular circumstance or if FB has become so passe as to not even bother worrying with it.

NB: I like FB mainly for one thing these days - all kinds of crazy updates and sneak peeks of True Blood. And I would fan that stuff to death on FB, except that it would make all of my employees think I'm some vampire-obssessed weirdo. Which I probably am. But they don't need to know that.

Sloth Love Chalk: Or, How to Win in Trivia without Really Trying

So I am not clever enough to come up with this name. There has to be a story.

The ever-present and (I predict) overused "we" that will find its way into this blog will refer to me and my husband. I am a middle-management wonk, alternating between hating and just mildly loathing my job, and I work from a home office (translation: I actually do work each and every day, though I do not actually get up, dress in nice business clothes, and go into an office like most normal adults...and yes, working from home has most definitely lost its novelty after doing it for over 6 years). My husband is a new lawyer still looking for a job. My cat is kind of crazy and fairly reclusive. But enough about us.

Given our current professional ennui (heh!), we look for various things to do at night that are neither extremely expensive nor that require a lot of effort. Trivia night it was since that amounts to walking about two blocks down the street from our apartment, plopping ourselves into a booth, and ordering some tasty drinks.

We've done the Trivia Night at Nicholson's before - we lost, and we hung our heads in shame because we fancy ourselves quite snappy people who know lots of useless information (and we've been banned from ever playing as a team in family Trivial Pursuit challenges since we so unmercilessly whipped every other team each time we've played). But we gave it another go tonight.

Who painted the Sistine Chapel? Please.
What state are you in when visiting Martha's Vineyard? Can we get some real questions here?
Who said "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!" in Apocalypse Now? Ok, now we're talking.
What is the deepest lake in Russia, which also happens to be the deepest lake in the world? Ruh roh.

We missed at least one gimme - Who starred opposite Audrey Heburn in Funny Face?...don't get me wrong. This was not a "gimme" to me because I am woefully ignorant about movies not made in the mid-80's. But my husband is a film connoisseur. The man went to film school at USC for Christ's sake, so he knows his stuff. But we blew that one.

So Nicholson's trivia night always has a "speed round" of music clips...this is totally where we lost it in our previous attempt. Tonight's music was focused on contemporary female singers.

But they always do a little break between the first 20 questions and the music round, and it was then that we needed to decide our team name before turning in our answers. My husband suggested "SlothLoveChalk" after about 20 minutes of looking stumped and/or constipated about coming up with some clever name for us. So I wrote "SlothLoveChalk" all over our forms thinking it was a weird name, but he suggested it, so I was going with it.

He jerked the paper from me and laughed uproariously - "Sloth Love Chunk! From The Goonies!"....uh gee, what was I saying about mid-80's movies? Hmmm..."So am I Chunk in this team?" I asked. A look of fear washed over him and he insisted not, but I was caught between thinking it was funny and thinking it was totally not funny, and the music round started.

And I rocked that music round! I got all 10 pop songstresses without even having to think about it. Give me some Pink, and some Sara Barielles, and some Fergie, and some Adelle, Duffy, and Leona Lewis. So thanks to me and my bubble-gum taste in music (apparently), we won Trivia Night!

And when the winning team was announced, our name echoed through Nicholson's repeatedly - "Sloth and Chunk won! Sloth and Chunk are tonight's winners!"

The sweet victory was made all the funnier with "Sloth and Chunk" being bellowed through the place, but somehow I still wished I'd left it as Sloth and Chalk.

Sloth Love Chunk

Feeling often dismayed about my life, disgusted with my job, or generally disgruntled about something, I figured I'd write about my life's adventures (or utter lack thereof). And off we go...