Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Bitter? Party of One?

Christina, standing in our kitchen talking about the joys of dating, says, "Yeah, but what if I started dating this guy and he ended up killing me??!"

She had gotten a little too involved in the Lacey Peterson story she watched the night before and imagined herself in a relationship with someone who could keep such a secret evil side hidden.

I thought over her concern for a second and then responded with a shrug of my shoulders, "True, but at least if he actually killed you, you'd get to be done with the whole situation."

My boy roommate Pierre had been listening to our girl banter and chimed in at this comment, laughing, "So those are really the options these days??!!"

We all laughed at the thought and I realized that Yes, I did just say -out loud- that dying is a viable alternative to dating. Oy.
art
artistic
athletic
awareness
balance
buddhism
coffee
communication
concerts
content
conversations
cycling
dancing
dream
energy
family
funny
giving
gratitude
holistic
honest
honesty
humor
independence
intellect
intellectual
job
laugh
libra
love
lovely
meditation
mellow
music
nature
positive
responsible
smart
strong
student
yoga.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

The real truth about cats and dogs

To my fellow females: we are cats in this analogy.
Guys, men, males... you get to be dogs.

Which is ironic since we're the bitches.


Follow me down this one.

I live with two cats (and their owners), Garcia and Hoki (those are the cats, not the owners). They have lived together for 4 months and still can not be in the same room at the same time without attacking each other after 20 minutes (again, clarifying I'm talking about the felines here).

A similar scene from dog world would play out much different. Dogs don't know what to make of each other right away, but after a couple sniffs the relationship-dynamic is set. And not only that, each dog understands the relationship and acts accordingly. Dogs figure out how to just -b-e- around each other and don't give it any more thought.

No over-thinking, no hurt feelings, no grudges, no passive aggression. Just two dawgs hanging out.

Cats sit all day planning attacks. They creep up on each other from behind and swat while no one is looking. They take over certain spots in the apartment and associate people with their territories, their people and their territory. They're competitive and conniving and let nothing go.

Raise your hand if that sounds familiar.

I've been living with this cat drama for these past 4 months. The cats' constant vindictive battles is so similar to the way we girls treat each other. We are competitive, mean to each other by default, are easily frustrated and don't deal with tough situations when they arise - instead we fester, make things worse than they need to be, and attack when it will hurt the most.

Why can't we all just get along?

This maybe explains why I gravitate toward living with guy roommates and mostly made friends with boys when I was a little kid. Guys are generally just -e-a-s-y- to be around and most importantly, it's easier to contain MY crazy when I'm the only one fighting for the top spot on the scratching post.

Meow.

Monday, February 16, 2009

My Twilight Is Showing

Those damn big black books. How did she do it? The author must have put subliminal crazy-making messages between her lines.
Four books about teen vampires sucked in generations of women (pun intended) and no one can explain it.

I'd heard all the drama about girls my age finishing "all four Twilight books faster than they've ever finished a book." I didn't give it another thought at the time. That much girl drama around something usually makes me turn the other way. But over Christmas at my mom's a couple months ago, I had nothing else to do... or read.

Christmas night I curiously picked up the first of the series, Twilight, after everyone had gone to bed. I finished the fourth and final book 7 days later. Each book is about 500 pages.

I couldn't have timed this quick but intense obsession better. I had the week after Christmas off, had my apartment to myself, nothing to do except drink tea and cuddle under blankets, and four all-consuming, totally addicting teenage vampire books to consume my every waking thought.

Someone once asked me, "So are you like, totally in love with Edward?" (The teenage heart throb, lovable but blood sucking vampire, for those of you who don't know). Laughing and shaking my head at what I was about to say (and mean!), I replied, "Oh of course, it's like you don't even have a choice. You just WILL be."


My friend Brittany came to visit during my week of obsession. The good thing was, she went through it too. I knew she'd seen the movie already so I wasn't going to suggest we go see it. Even though I really wanted to.

So I was suuuuuuper excited when she suggest we go see it.

The movie was not good, says the movie critic in me. The acting was poor and the fight scenes were so PG-13... you know, like it's rating.

But the teenage vampire in me would go see that movie again, no question.

Waiting for our table at dinner after the movie, Brittany and I saw an employee with a long blonde pony tail and both said - out loud - "Ohmigod, James!" James was the evil vampire - the bad guy. And of course, this evil vampire ended up being our server. If I remember correctly, I laughed my way through ordering an Iced Tea. The poor guy.

I've had quite a few conversations about this with other Vampire lovers (my age!). Friends outside the Twilight circle listen to our stories of ridiculous obsession... and we listen to ourselves... and everyone ends up laughing so hard their stomachs hurt. And no one can explain it.

I read once that Twilight was written for teen girls but has also attracted their moms... yeah and girls in their late 20s with nothing to do but lay on the couch and fantasize about the bad boy finally becoming the hero... just for us.

And well, maybe that explains it.


Thursday, February 12, 2009

A true love story



Ever since Emma could open her eyes and see her family, she's been head over heels for her big brother Aiden.

And she was not a happy baby either. But no matter what else was going wrong for her that moment, when Aiden came in to Emma's sight she would (and still does) just L-I-G-H-T up, her whole face becoming a smile.

If we wanted Emma to laugh for a picture, we'd have Aiden stand in front of her. Just his presence would do the trick. She was just tickled silly by every single thing he did.

And now that she's older and showing more of her adorable, silly, happy personality, her adoration for her brother is that much stronger.



My mom told me THE cutest story about this happy little loving relationship.

She was holding both her grand-babies on her lap the other day; Aiden didn't feel good and was tired and understandably a little grumpy. Emma was her bubbly, noisy, happy self, swinging her arms around like she does. One arm came SMACK down on Aiden's face and sad sick Aiden started crying in to Grandma's chest. Emma, caught totally off gaurd, took one look at her brother crying and it was like her little world came falling down. Her face turned into a big frown and crying with Aiden, nuzzled in to Grandma's chest if for no other reason than to be closer to him. She didn't know what happened but it didn't matter. He hero was sad and so nothing could be right.

Aiden's been mostly... indifferent about this new addition to his life. He secretly loves the way she loves him, but he's still a little unsure of how exactly she's going to fit in. It is the Aiden Show, after all. Has been running strong for almost 4 years now (wow).

I told my mom that if I were Aiden's little sister, I'd feel this way too. That kid always knows the fun game to play, the cool toys to play with, the right way to play with them, comes up with the best stories, and is everybody's little buddy.

Those two little people are amazing and I feel so blessed to get to claim even a tiny bit of who they are. Thank you sister and brother-in-law for them. Loving kids come from loving parents.

love. love. love.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

a Bridget Jones moment

Valentine's Day is Saturday. I've been single and fine with it for a whole year. I hope it can hold through the red pink heart fest this weekend.

I go in to the "holiday" promising myself not to feel bad about being single. I will. NOT. be. bitter.
I do not care about Valentine's day. Take away all the consumerism that's coating the day and it becomes just a regular old Saturday where it's no more shameful to make yourself dinner, do yoga in your living room, put on sweats, finish reading Blink and eat a Skinny Cow ice cream sandwich for dessert.

Who can I blame? TV?

I. am. single.
I. am. fine with that.

Don't get me wrong; it's not that I don't want a relationship. I'm not a bitter betty opposed to the idea of love and happiness with another person. But I know you can't control when and where you find that. So I don't try....

...ok, I try a little bit but I know that it is what it is. C'est la Vee day or not.

But I still hate Valentine's Day.


Sunday, February 8, 2009

Saturday, February 7, 2009

A tale to tell the grandkids

At our last few staff meetings, Tom (the Chief Executive Officer, aka The Boss) had acknowledged the state of the economy but reassured us that IPS, our little $9 million-a-year training company wasn't in harm's way.

He attributed that to being in the field of education (ish). When people lose their jobs, they start enrolling in school. But we're not exactly a "school."

It started one Tuesday morning. I got a text message from Lea saying "Cisco cut all training starting Feb 1." Kimm said "Now that is what a brick wall feels like."

Not two months before, IBM cancelled all training for all of 2009... all of it.

IBM was our number one revenue-generating account. Cisco, number 2. Google became our number one account in a matter of minutes.

We'd been on a roll at Google since June. Lots of classes, lots of interest, lots of movement, lots of progress. I started working on-site at Google just in time to catch the last of the glory days.

Aside from all the glorious excess, Google had never found use for order or procedure. Just hire amazingly talented and intelligent forward-thinking individuals, make billions of dollars and conduct business under a "do no evil" mantra with the pure goal of making information available... you'd have no reasons for rules either.

It made Google a very easy company to work with. We could do basically whatever we wanted, within reason of course. If there were employees who wanted a class, we could deliver a class and collect the cash.

Coming to the end of 2008, our Statement of Work for the on-site program needed to be re-approved. Right about the same time, Google's Executive Management Group decided to take a closer look at their bulging pocket books. They held up a giant STOP sign, bringing our fast-track 2 million dollar 2009 plans to a screeching halt.

The day Kimm and I got and delivered that message, you could feel the air sucked out of the office.

People started talking. Manager doors started to be closed more often than not. The new generation of IPSers started to get really nervous.

As I was leaving work that day, I went in Kimm's office and shut the door. "Uh Oh" she said.
"Yeah" I replied.

"So.. should I be worried about.. my job?" Kimm told me all she could - that she didn't know what the decisions were going to be, but that yes, cuts were going to be made. She encouraged me to take care of me before anything else and be prepared for anything. It became clear that she would soon be fighting for my job.

"Do you think this will happen after the Christmas party then?"
Kimm said, "No I think it will happen before." There were two days until the Christmas party.

The next day Tom scheduled a last minute "mandatory" staff meeting. At 3pm. We never have last minute all-hands meetings in the middle of the week. Something pivotal was about to happen.

There we all were, the IPS family sitting in our new conference room. Looking around the huge table, it was all friends, a few who felt like family, a few who were family. It was everyone who built IPS to what it had become in 2008. Rockstar professionals and people you just love to be around.

Tom didn't waste any time. He addressed the extreme position we now found ourselves in and said "Make no mistake, significant cuts will be made. Emphasis on significant." He talked about how hard it was going to be and how badly the management team didn't want to do what they had to do, but that announcements would be made the following day.

Everyone's eyes started turning bloodshot as Tom's voice started cracking. I looked at Lea to my right and mouthed the words "I don't want to be here." The sadness in the room was suffocating.

When one of the Executives could barely get his words out, I had no choice but to cover my face and let myself cry. Not because I might lose my job, but because the work life that I enjoyed was about to drastically change.... and no matter what, it was going to hurt.

Talking it through with my best friend Amy that night, we decided there were two ways I could look at the whole thing. Either I don't get laid off... and great. I'm still employed. Or I do get laid off... and a win again. I get unemployment and time to find a new, more rewarding job.

OR, I later thought... either way - I lose. Either I get in the unemployment line or I'm kept... left to save a sinking ship while some of my friends get thrown overboard. What's worse, to get out early? Or to stick around to fight harder with no guarantee you won't be thrown off next?

We waited all morning. No one was talking. No announcements were being made. Anyone who wasn't a manager was on the edge of their seat waiting to hear if they still had a job or not. Yet all the managers acted as if we were capable of talking about anything else.

Eventually all the fates were decided and the news delivered. A group of us went out to lunch, stood by the elevator identifying who was kept and who was let go. Nobody could decide who were the "lucky" ones.
.....................

It's now been a month since that first round of layoffs. It's been a difficult work environment. Looking around corporate America - everything is just... frozen. I really hope it thaws soon.

I still have a job and even though this ship is still sinking, I'm glad to be in a boat with the company and individuals that I am. I know some things are out of anyone's control, but I do feel safe here. For that I am grateful.

And even though it's grim everywhere you look, I still believe that something good is working on happening. This is the time to be most grateful, when you're not where you want to be and you don't see a way to get there. We'll get there people. Keep going.

Friday, February 6, 2009

She thinks...

"myspace is way better than facebook. facebook is too much like.... here is a bumper sticker, throw a sheep at somebody, new status: i'm going fishing, join the club: i have brown hair

myspace is like 'oh look, there is my friend from high school.... hi friend how are you?'"

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Let Obama Smoke

If the man has one vice, let him have it. If he needs to smoke a cigarette every now and then to deal with the stress of his new job (save the world), then damnit, let him have one.

Smoking is bad for the body, we get that. It possibly knocking years off his life, true. But he has a long time until that is an immediate threat. He seems active and healthy otherwise.

I don't know if he personally wants to quit, or if he just feels that he should set an example. Don't smoke, be healthy, don't do things that are unhealthy. But wouldn't a more real example be a human who isn't perfect? Someone who has a flaw and manages it.

Smoking tarnishes the shiny perfect vision people have of Barack. Well good! He's not shiny or perfect. He's a man. He's an elected official put in office because of his intelligence and ability to perform his duties (save the world).

I say Obama, if you have a bad day or an especially tense interview with Anderson Cooper, you go right ahead and smoke. Here, need a light?

....This goes for you too, Micheal Phelps.