Free Pass

The boyfriend and I managed to escape to the mountains for the weekend, but not without Work trying to big-foot all over our plans.

I had uploaded what I thought to be my last job for the week around 4pm on Friday.  I received a curt "thanks" from the boss and as far as I knew I was done.  According to our wildly inaccurate company calendar, my next deadline wasn't until Tuesday and that job was already nearly finished.  So off to the mountains we went.

Because I'm a masochist, I checked my email Saturday morning.  The panic had started about 8pm Friday night.  There were emails from 8pm, 10, 10:10, 10:35, 11:01, 11:37, 4am(!), 6:15, 8:13, and 8:55.  Each marked urgent with a cute little red exclamation point.  It appears no one had bothered to look at anything I'd submitted all week until sometime Friday night and now there were emergency revisions, reorganizations and "re-thinks".  There were also two new jobs that had somehow mysteriously "fallen through the cracks" and yet were still due Monday.

Now, my usual response would have been to fire off an email reminding everyone that I don't in fact operate a fucking drive-up window and operators are not standing by to take your call.  But I have learned from past mistakes, so I did the prudent thing... nothing.

I figured a little fear would be character building for everyone involved, so I waited.  After 12 hours of radio silence (and a couple of cocktails) I finally responded.  I politely apologized for the delay in my response.  More in sorrow than in anger I mentioned that perhaps if someone had bothered to give me a heads up DURING NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS, I might be in a position to be helpful.  Bt they didn't, so I wasn't.

Now, the truth of the matter is that I know how these people operate.  I had actually anticipated this and loaded up the laptop with all the current work.  I could have easily accommodated everyone at the expense of my precious little free time in the mountains.  But I chose not to.  Partially, because I find the casual disregard for what I do offensive.  But more importantly, there was a greater goal...

Avoiding the Monday strategy meeting.

The Monday strategy meeting is a weekly Bataan Death March.  And I'm not referring to the two-hour gridlock I'd suffer through to get there.  The Monday strategy meeting is a joyless endurance event, a time suck of epic proportions.

It wasn't always so.

Once upon a time these were referred to as Creative Meetings.  A chance to get together and talk about the work and ideas and inspirations.  And they rarely lasted more than an hour.  But then the marketing people took over and anything creative was kicked to the curb.  "Marketing" was invented for people who wanted to work in advertising but had no talent or creativity.  Marketing people are perhaps the least imaginative people on the planet.

Marketing meetings are evidently judged by their length, and anything under three hours is considered a failure.  And what do you fill three hours with?

Bullshit.

Marketing bullshit.

Three hours talking about "leverage","social engagement" and "digital integration".  "Viability" and "benchmarking" and "brand extension".  Things need to be "customer centric" and "game changing".  They need to be "organic" and "trending" and... just fucking shoot me.  What does any of it mean?  Beats the hell out of me - it might as well be a three hour lecture in Klingon.

I want to make a set of Marketing bingo cards....

"Shifting the Paradigm?"  Check.

"Crowd sourcing?"  Check.

"Value added?"  Check

"Synergy?"  Check

"Granular?"  Check... BINGO!

"Synergy" is so common, that would have to be the free space.

Every few weeks a new buzzword arrives on the scene to captivate the marketing people like shiny keys dangled over a baby.  Lately it seems to be "siloed", something to do with "vertical integration".  Like a silo.  Or something.

At any rate,  by leaving all these last minute "emergencies" unfulfilled over the weekend, the magic email came from the boss around 8:30 last night...

"I think it would be best if you just skip the meeting tomorrow.  There's too much work due to have you wasting time driving in."

As the marketing folks always say, it's "win-win".

Where There's Smoke

Our condo here in Tinytown came with one unexpected bonus, the view.

Not of any scenery, but of the hot fireman who lives two doors down.

He appears to be in his early 30's and is built like a Greek god and has a penchant for working on his car with his shirt off.  In short shorts.

So you can imagine my distress when a "For Sale" sign appeared outside his condo yesterday.

That makes four immediate neighbors that have either moved, are moving or have signaled their intentions to move in only four months.

Do they know something we don't know?

School Daze

Today is the first day of Summer School.  And I'm terrified.

I'm only teaching one class this summer, a course in computer illustration.  I've never taught it before, but since I consider computer illustration my forté, I was thrilled to be asked.

Specifically the class is an introductory course in the Adobe software "Illustrator" and since I've used this software every day for nearly 20 years, I assumed it would be a snap.  But about two weeks ago something dawned on me...  I've never had any formal training in using it, I'm completely self-taught.

See, here's the thing.  I graduated college before the Dawn of the Computer Age.  I always considered that a blessing since my school days were spent contemplating design theory and creativity and not glued to a monitor trying to learn every new flash-in-the-pan computer program.  It wasn't until the mid-90's that the ad and design industry switched to digital.  I walked into my office one Monday morning to discover my drafting table had been set horizontal and plopped in the center of it was a Mac.  I didn't even know how to turn it on.  Calling the IT department wasn't an option since there wasn't one.  In fact, the term "IT" was still a few years off in the future.

Luckily, all that early software was fairly rudimentary and after about a week of trial and error I finally figured it out well enough to get done what needed to be done.  Every year after came the release of the next, new version, each time with considerably more bells and whistles.  I mastered the functions I needed, but it's safe to say the program does  a hell of a lot more than I'm aware of.  The once elegantly simple interface now looks like the flight deck of a 747.  And I'm expected to teach it.

No problem, I thought, I'll just skim through the text book for the class.  And that's when I learned that this quarter is the first in which the school is being thrown into the deep end of... eLearning.

It sounds creepy and it is.  It's all... V  I  R  T  U  A  L.

There is no text book.

Instead there's a... portal.  An "ePortal".

It's a website where instead of text, there are "webinars".  Hours and hours (and hours) of webinars.  And for the past two weeks I've been slogging through all of them.  And after watching hours and hours (and hours) of instructional video, one thing has become abundantly clear...  I am eFucked.

Class starts at 4:00.  Can't wait.

Legends Of The Fall

Yesterday morning the alarm went of at 5:30, as it does every morning.

I hit the snooze button for the boyfriend, as I do every morning.

I got up to go downstairs and make coffee, as I do every morning.

And then I fell down the stairs.

Which is not something that happens every morning.

Now, I'll be the first to tell you I'm less than graceful.  On more than one occasion, I've been called a klutz.  But this was decidedly not my fault.  The light in the stairwell doesn't work and the carpet on the stairs is cheap and old.  In the darkness I misplaced my foot and my heel hit the worn edge of the top step and shot out from under me.  My foot skimmed over the next couple of steps, the matted synthetic carpet acting as a greased skid, and down I went.  I'm surprised the horrible carpet didn't catch fire from the friction.  In hindsight, I probably would've been better off if I'd let go of the handrail and let gravity take it's course, but in the split second I first felt myself falling I executed a Vulcan death grip on the rail which accomplished nothing more than snapping my arm back into a direction it was never intended to go.  And ultimately it was for naught, since all it did was delay the inevitable for a nanosecond.

I tumbled halfway down the stairs.  I would have gone all the way down but the stairs switch back so I ended up in a ball on the landing.  I was stunned, to say the least, and in a lot of pain.  At some point on the way down I had bounced off my left shoulder, elbow and knee.  My right shoulder, on the arm that had held onto the rail, felt like it had been dislocated.

I assumed the noise would have waken everyone up; it sounded as if someone had dumped a bag of bowling balls down the stairs.  And if that didn't do it, surely my moaning and wailing would.  I anxiously looked to the top of the stairs expecting to see the shocked faces of the dogs and the boyfriend.

Nada.

In the silence I could make out my older dog snoring.

I flashed on the "I've fallen and I can't get up" commercial.  I took a moment to collect myself and assess the situation.  Although everything was throbbing nothing appeared to be broken.  I gently got up and slowly made my way down the remainder of the stairs.  I was heading to the kitchen when I started feeling light headed.  I could feel the blood drain out of my face as I broke out in a cold sweat.  I knew this feeling - this is how I felt several years ago when I broke my leg. I detoured to the couch before I passed out.  On second thought, it did now appear that I had actually dislocated my shoulder.  I sat on the couch for a couple of minutes wondering what I should do when suddenly I felt my shoulder snap back into place.  Voila!  Really?  That's how it works?  Within a minute or so, I felt fine.  Banged up, but fine.  I limped to the kitchen and put the coffee on.

As I hobbled back up the stairs, the snooze alarm went off and boyfriend was pulling himself out of bed.

"Everything OK?" he asked, obviously seeing I was still in some distress.

"Everything's fine" I said.  "Coffee's on and I fell down the stairs."

Later that day, In the mail I received my complimentary AARP card.

Is this really how it's going to be?

I have glimpsed the future, and it looks very painful.

It’s The Water. And So Much More.

It seems impolite to even mention it, being newcomers and all, but...

the water here stinks.

And I mean... stinks.

I first noticed it days after we moved in when I did a load of laundry. As I pulled the clothes out of the washer to transfer them into the dryer, I held them close and smelled... industrial solvents.  That's the closest analogy I could come to.  I washed the clothes again and when I pulled them out, same thing.

I assumed a cigarette lighter had been left in a pocket and broken, spilling butane into the wash water, an occupational hazard of being a smoker.  A few dozen fabric sheets would solve the problem and I left it that.

And then, a few weeks later, we opted to replace the cheap rental shower head in the master bathroom with something a bit more deluxe, something with actual settings.  One of which was "mist".

Dear God.  It turned the shower into a gas chamber.  Seriously, a minute more and the coroner would have been involved.  I had to open all the windows to air the house out.

I haven't a clue what the issue is.  I grew up only a few miles from here and don't remember any water issues.  Then again, my folks are life-long soft water enthusiasts, so maybe there's something to be said for filtering your water through 500 pounds of salt.

The Glorious Fourth

The 4th of July proved to be an amazing day.  We packed up the dogs and schlepped over to my folks house to spend the day.  Years ago my hometown banned "safe & sane" fireworks after one too many houses burned to the ground, but to make up for the loss they started putting on a huge fireworks display at my old high school stadium and according to my mother, we would have a perfect view from the backyard.

We went over early in the morning and my mother and boyfriend spent the day cooking.  He really is the daughter she wished she had and while they were busy in the kitchen I hung out with my father.  Later in the afternoon, the day took a turn for the worse with arrival of my Wingnut sister and her husband.

There really is no punch bowl they won't piss in.  It doesn't matter what the topic of conversation is it's only a matter of time before one of them twists it into a rant about "socialism" and "tyranny".  I swear my sister has Republican Tourettes.  Small talk about baking suddenly veered right and she started sputtering about "Obamacare".  Some conspiracy theory about "the fine print" which according to her was going to enslave us all and make the Baby Jesus cry.  Or something.  I left the room.

Later, her husband decided to share the collected wisdom of Glenn Beck with me.

"Did you know" he said, "that America has the longest continual form of government in the history of mankind?"

Huh?

What about the British monarchy? I asked.

That didn't count, he said, because there were a lot of different kings and queens so it wasn't technically "continuous".  WTF?  Unless we are unknowingly being governed by the desiccated corpse of George Washington, the same could be said of us.  Of course, that would be applying logic and in their alternate Wingnut reality, logic is a liberal conspiracy.

What about the Roman Empire?  The Ming Dynasty?  The Pharaohs?  He dismissed them all with the wave of his hand.  "They don't count."

So... by moving the goalposts and excluding every civilization OTHER than America, America WINS!!!  USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

They left at dusk, and not a moment too soon.  They must have had a Tea Party rally to attend.  Or maybe there's a curfew at the insane asylum.

The boyfriend and I settled into the Adirondack chairs in the backyard as darkness fell, waiting for the fireworks to begin.  As sort of a pre-show the lawless neighbors on the next block shot off some illegal, yet beautiful aerials.  Someone had obviously been shopping in Mexico.

Around 9:00 we saw the fringes of some fireworks on the horizon, just over the fence.  My heart sank... this was it?  Not much more than a vague glow in the sky?  I went inside where my parents were doing the dishes, seemingly unconcerned about the fireworks.

"We can see something on the horizon, but it isn't much.  I thought you said you could see fireworks from the backyard?" I said.

"Just wait" said my mother.

I went back outside and joined the boyfriend.  There were more bursts of color in the distance but nothing to write home about.  I turned to the boyfriend and said "This sucks.  Maybe we should just head home."  He kind of nodded and we started making the moves to leave when my parents walked out.

"I told you just to wait" said my mom and as if on cue and enormous firework burst overhead, followed by a BOOM that set off every car alarm in the neighborhood.  Then another and another and another.  They were so big it seemed like they were directly overhead.  For twenty minutes we were treated to one of the best fireworks shows I've ever seen.  The dogs weren't too happy.  We had placed them inside to protect their ears but still they howled in a panic.  But I loved every minute of it.  It was the perfect end to a nearly perfect day.

And as usual, mom was right.  "Just wait."

Time Well Spent

Yesterday was the very first day of my new pseudo-job.  Although for the most part I'll be allowed to work from home, it has been requested that I come in every Monday for the weekly staff meeting.  And it was especially important yesterday as it was the official launch day of the new improved company 2.0.

It took almost two hours to get there.

The meeting was 45 minutes long.

It took an hour and a half to get home.

And the cheerful traffic reporter informed me that it was my lucky day because the traffic was "holiday light".

Is she fucking nuts?

I never thought in a million years I'd say this but I almost, almost found myself missing living in Hooterville.  There, the only time I ever saw a traffic jam was when someone lost a bale of hay on the highway.  Then again, the flashbacks returned and suddenly the gridlock didn't seem that bad.

My father was regaling me with tales of the Red Cars.  Back when they moved to California in the 50's you could go from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara by streetcar.  But then the powers-that-be decided that streetcars were passé and the future was to be filled with freeways.  So the tracks were all ripped up and paved over and here we are, moving at 4 miles per hour on the 405.

Sometimes the future aint what it's cracked up to be.