Mishaps and other haps

I am looking forward to taking a couple of days of vacation this week. I have three weeks of time available that I can use right now, but I’m hoping to carry over as much of it as I am allowed (about half) to 2009 so that I can use it for our wedding/honeymoon, plus any of the planning/organizing/arranging that goes along with those events.

I’ve also scheduled to have the entire week of Christmas off this year– and I have a few other “spare” days in reserve in case there’s a weather emergency (like that blizzard we had around Feb. 6th this year), or if I really need a day off.

Michael probably won’t have vacation time for a year once he starts a new job (but hopefully he will have some in time for our wedding). Therefore, I want to spend a little vacation time with him now while I can.

I am kicking back and catching up on tons of Order of the Stick.  Rich Burlew is sooo funny (and I have been sooo negligent about keeping up with web comics) …

After a year of eating meat (following four years of being an ovo-lacto vegetarian), I went in for a physical and had my cholesterol levels checked this week. Interestingly, my scores were *lower* than they were while I was vegetarian. I didn’t think I had been eating particularly well lately or getting as much exercise as I should, but my total cholesterol had dropped from 140 to 125. My HDL is just about optimal for a woman of my age and LDL and triglycerides are both very low.

But I was curious and poked around the internet a little to read up on low cholesterol. It may be associated with low serotonin levels, according to specialists at the Mayo Clinic, so I guess that’s something to be aware of … and could explain some of the moods I have had in recent months. Hm, good to be reminded that there can be biological causes for things that seem to have no other reasonable explanation. I’ll have to remember that the next time I’m having trouble explaining my feelings.

1) To Heather and Michael, who are the happy parents of a new baby girl!

2) To Betsy, who was sworn in as a card-carrying attorney!

Congratulations!

“if you leave it behind, it will just depress the rest of them” — Mirrormask

I took a class on “Creativity and Innovative Effectiveness” last week, taught by one of the best instructors in our Education department. He brought a stack of books to class that he finds useful for encouraging lateral thinking and creativity, particularly in the workplace environment.

One of these was Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace by Gordon MacKenzie, who once held the title “Creative Paradox” at Hallmark Cards. I had not heard of this book before last Tuesday, but I picked it up from the library today. It came highly recommended. I opened it to a random spot and this is what it said there:

When you come into an organization, you bring with you an arcane potency, which stems, in part, from your uniqueness. That, in turn, is rooted in a complex mosaic of personal history that is original, unfathomable, inimitable. There has never been anyone quite like you, and there never will be. Consequently, you can contribute something to an endeavor that nobody else can. There is a power in your uniqueness- an inexplicable, unmeasurable power … a magic.

But if you are hypnotized by an organization’s culture, you become separated from your personal magic and cannot tap it to help achieve the goals of the organization. In losing connection with your one-of-a-kind magic, you are reduced to nothing more than part of the headcount. Deep inside the Hairball.

I think some of you might enjoy reading this book, or parts of it. I am planning to.

Monday morning I had to drive into the small, semi-rural town of Verona to have blood drawn. I had been fasting since the evening before, so I stopped for breakfast before heading back to work. It was a bright, sunny morning and I stopped at McDonald’s in Verona on my way back to Madison.

McDonald’s is where senior citizens gather in the morning and evening to socialize. It is cheap, predictable, and ubiquitous. There is a discount on coffee.

A group of old men– farmers, I thought– were sitting around watching the news, laughing, and talking about the weather.

On the fringes of this group, I felt like I was having an experience that was universal and familiar. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it if I were a teenager in Florida, but it was exactly like unmemorable, everyday events fifteen or twenty years ago.

For a moment, I felt like I had traveled very far and come full circle. You have to leave one place and go somewhere else to know what is different and what is the same– and there are always some things that are the same, so matter where you are. I felt a secure fit with the world at that place and time.

My heart goes out to a co-worker who is losing her job because her medical disability leave extended beyond the twelve weeks of FMLA coverage.  Private corporations should be taken to task when they make decisions like this.  For shame!

In reading up on the Americans with Disabilities Act today, I was sad to note that it seems to have only two areas of coverage:

1) Ensuring that workplaces/businesses/business practices are designed with the disabled in mind (accommodation).

2) Preventing discrimination in the hiring process.

What about individuals who develop a disability while working or whose disability becomes worse while they are employed?  What if their recovery takes longer than the allotted twelve weeks (per year) that their job may be protected by the Family and Medical Leave Act?

I hope that there is something I am misunderstanding about the provisions of these acts.  I feel that if my co-worker had realized that she might lose her job, the decision that she made about having surgery for a worsening medical condition would have been even more carefully considered.  It’s sad that people have to choose between their health and their income in situations like this.

The native plants we picked up at the Arboretum’s sale last year are coming back out! The wild strawberry has spread and hopefully will have some flowers and fruit this year. It was a single, bedraggled little plant when I brought it home last year and I wasn’t sure it was going to make it. I guess all of the coffee ground compost I carted out to the front yard last summer was good for it.

Mountain mint and blue aster are also coming up in the spots where they were planted last year. I especially love the mountain mint plant because its leaves smell so wonderful.

In addition to the prolific onion chives planted around the deck by the previous owners, the garlic chives we had in the garden are coming back up! I guess we should plant the rest of our herbs and tomatoes around the chives. I am thinking big red, flavorful tomatoes (any suggestions for great varieties?), maybe some cherry tomatoes, cilantro, and basil plants are going to be our seedling additions this year.

We had a lot of fun gardening last year and a fair amount of produce, so I am excited about getting started in a couple of weeks.

Happy Earth Day!

Am I so wrong for liking Murderface best? I stated that I did and Michael said he wasn’t surprised. He has been recording Metalocalypse and Family Guy, as well as Scrubs, The Closer, and Suze Orman … a range of programs encompassing the tastes of more than one person, you might say …

Breakfast marathon was accomplished with a vengeance today. I am still working on the Sachertorte from Sucre. It is very chocolatey. I cannot taste the apricot jam between the layers. That is my only regret about breakfast.

We started with macaroons at Marigold Kitchen. I cannot imagine breakfast at Marigold without starting with a macaroon. It’s possible that there are better macaroons on the planet, but I am a little doubtful. There was a slight pause before our breakfast sandwiches came out. I left one bite of sandwich on my plate, but that was all. Whenever I started to suspect that I had a huge mouthful of fried egg, the boursin sauce kicked in. I think that the boursin and bacon really make the sandwich, but the tomato adds flavor and I guess the sourdough bread is just the right texture so that it sogs a little on the inside of the sandwich, but stays nice and firm, almost the texture of an english muffin, on the outside.

Then we went to Cafe Soleil, the morning side of L’Etoile. Michael had a plain croissant there and I had pain au chocolat. We washed it down with a couple of cups of coffee and rolled out on our merry way.

We continued on to Sucre, where we wisely ordered all items TO GO:

Noir de chocolat for Michael

Sachertorte for me

Opera Tortes to deliver to Terry and carry home to Alice

Terry’s condo is just a couple of doors down from Sucre, so we stopped by his place for a while. I took a picture of the dalek on his desk.

Back at home, we have some cleaning to do. When we turned on the oven to bake pizzas and brownies yesterday, clouds of smoke wafted out, a clear sign that it needs a good scrub.

I bought a new camera this morning (great deal on Woot.com), so that should be in my possession in a few days. The couple of photos I have squished into this post were taken with my phone. For recent online shopping, I also recommend onlineshoes.com. I am currently fascinated with their huge selection.

I recently joined the social networking behemoth that is Facebook.

Since doing so, I have enjoyed some rounds of Scrabulous with friends and have reconnected a little with some cousins, a college roommate, and a few other people that I don’t see much or haven’t communicated with in a while. Here’s my pattern of usage so far: some weeks I log on and pay a lot of attention to it and some weeks I neglect it for days. I’m still new to Facebook, so I’m still getting familiar with its functions and searching around for registered friends and family.

I emailed one of my long distance friends from high school to tell her that she should register and let other high school friends she’s in contact with know about it. It seems like a great way of spreading information about reunions and events, as well as keeping track of what’s going on with everybody between reunions. Granted, I am a bit late to this idea of keeping track of people, as I did not attend my tenth-year high school reunion and I have been negligent about collecting contact information. Email did not really blossom for non-techie users until I was in college, so there was no initial exchange of email addresses prior to graduation or anything like that. Excuses, excuses …

My friend seemed more of the opinion that Facebook is an internet fad. I think it’s useful and that social networking is an important development, but (after a conversation with Theta the other day) I realize there are some potential pitfalls and caveats to be identified. Moreover, I wonder if Facebook and its ilk will be self-sustaining or if it will eventually be a service (or offer services) that members have to pay for.

Stepping out to the larger question of the significance of internet “fads”, I have been amazed by how quickly pop culture replicates and changes when so many people have access to the same sites and sources. I caught an example on South Park the other week that really floored me (a spoof of a You Tube video) and it dawned on me that a large percentage of Americans and some portion of the international population are rapidly and daily sharing the same media intake (whatever the content may be) and maybe for the first time ever, control of this media is *not entirely* in the hands of giant media corporations.

That seems significant to me. It doesn’t really matter what apps come and go. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Facebook or My Space or some other similar tool for networking. Online social networking is a trend that is becoming a way of life for a lot of people.

I guess my point is that it’s not jelly bracelets … but I guess jelly bracelets just didn’t have much to offer consumers besides wrist/arm ornamentation.