It’s been a few years since I’ve been this genuinely immersed into work, and I’ve been tapped out when it comes to discretionary creative blogging time. So, here’s a random fluttering of the last two weeks…
The weekend before last, the esteemed John Calnan mentioned he would be leading a ride attenuated to the slower among us. I’ve not done too many of the Cascade daily rides because they tend to run faster than the range given, but the opportunity to finally meet John was too good to pass up. They were a friendly bunch, though I need to bone up on my group riding in urban settings etiquette. More than once people signalled to avoid a pile of something (leaves, bumps, sticks) I’d ordinarily ride right through.
I spent the first few hours of Thanksgiving catching up on my work-email. As of Monday, my mailbox was down to 49 items. Later, I did the Strengths Finder exercise my manager gave me Wednesday. Intuitively, it makes more sense to leverage strengths than work on bolstering weaknesses, but I’m interested in seeing how this pans out. From a marketing perspective, it’s impressive how smoothly they charge for the service (through the purchase of a book), gather demographic information, and try to upsell you to their consluting services.
Thanksgiving was otherwise subdued, with no travel and a modest meal of turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, crudites, and pumpkin pie. As with previous years, my stuffing is 100% giblet free: stale bread, cut into cubes, chopped celery, chopped onion, and garlic. I have a theory that if we were meant to eat giblets, they wouldn’t come in a hermetically-sealed plastic pouch stuffed somewhere up the turkey’s butt with its frozen neck.
Friday, we took turns hitting various sales. I’m not nuts enough to get up and stand in line for a $10 mp3 player I don’t need, but being able to get the kids’art supplies at 50% off for everything sure seems worth it. Later on in the morning, I made a bold and daring investment in an entertainment centerpiece: a new TV. My current (now previous) set was a 20″, single-input, non-stereo, non-closed-captioned set built in August of 1990. I’ve listed it on the FreeCycle board, though so far nobody wants it, either. Its replacement is a Sony 27″ HD-ready CRT set with a gajillion connectors in the back. I took out the working dual cassette deck,
also apparently a FreeCycle untouchable, and rewired the entire stereo system so glorious sound is piped to and fro. We can now listen to all those Director commentaries and backward masking on DVDs. I don’t have any HD decoder capability, but dang the picture is beautiful. The Weather Channel has never looked so good in my living room.
All of the sports radio stations were buzzing about the genius of the Seahawks. Maybe I’m too mercurial of a fan, but I’m not ready to be totally disappointed just yet, especially since it didn’t seem that well-run. I admit it – I had my finger poised on the green “off” button, waiting for them to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Finally, four seconds left in regulation, the Giants set up for a field goal that woulda/shoulda ended it. But Feely missed and it goes into overtime. There was a momentary glimmer of optimism as the ‘Hawks get the ball to start, but it’s one, two, three, punt-o-rama. The Giants seem to move the ball down the field with ease, then as they get close, start to show signs that they will be the ones to frack it up. Doorbell rings, as my neighbor delivers some kind of cookie fund-raiser thing her kid was selling (just part of the underground parent economy). Feely misses again. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Finally, the Seahawks start moving the ball, as if they’re miffed that the Giants won’t accept the thrice-offered gift of victory.
Finally, congratulations to Woodstock for completing NaNoWriMo this year. Gratuitous Jane Austen quote:
“A person who can write a long letter with ease, cannot write ill.”
You can never be too careful with those deadly leaf piles!
By the way, “crudite”, is that a derivative of “crud”, or a devotee thereof?
Shhh! If I refered to them as anything but “crudites”, my kids’anti-vegetable defense gene might kick in and we’d only be feeding them pasta and cheese.
You have been busy! Thanks so much for the shout out. Now, the editing begins on last year’s NaNo book. ;-)
Have your kids never learned the joy of olive fingers? My cousins and I literally, still, end up with four on each hand. But then there was that year my cousin got the radish stuck in his nose…we just won’t go there.
I’ll be interested to see how the strengths thing turns out if you have time for posting that. I may have use soon (fingers crossed) for boosting my people management skills.
And for heaven’s sake…at least watch Lost or something on that new tv. The “island” is gorgeous on my circa 1998 TV; I can’t imagine it in HD-ish.
Woodstock, there is a legendary tale in my family wherein my stepdaughter placed a dried bean into the ear of her younger brother as a “hearing aid” (trip to doctor required for extraction). Given that, I have no trouble understanding the radish in the nose trick.
Jim, you really should spring for the full HDTV reception. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen Jean Enersen’s neck in high def. We went HD a year ago, and become engrossed in high def aquarium video that they show as filler on an HD channel.