CSA selection, new roommate, and Mad Men

2008 will be my first CSA year. A CSA is community supported agriculture. You buy a share and this gets you produce, meat, or cheese from a local farm. Seems simple. Heck, my insurance company is even offering a rebate for joining one.
My issues:

• CSA selection - how do I pick one? I have the list, but it seems so random.
• Random vegetables - I admit, I am slightly daunted by 11 Frog's posts about root vegetables. I guess you just figure out what to do with parsnips or turnips. Someone else is going to have to take the beets though. they really piss me off with their whole red staining thing. Perhaps I can figure out how to make my own sugar from them. wouldn't that be nifty.
• Travel - I travel a lot. I need to figure out how to ensure that I can always pick these things up. R is moving in to my house. perhaps I can trade him veggies for picking up the CSA box.

oh, did I not tell you that R is moving in? yep. He is going back to school and I could certainly use a homemaker at home.

Which reminds me, anyone watching Mad Men on AMC? New show by producer of Sopranos. About a 1960 Madison Avenue Ad agency. Pretty good. Mostly just fascinating what it was like during that time period for these kinds of people.

Makes me a little sad that I can't get myself one of those Eastern European women that you can buy for 5,000 bucks and have myself a wife. Would be great to have a wife who called you to see if you wanted anything specific for dinner, had and raised the kids, cleaned the house, and excused you when you just wanted to put your feet up after a long day at work and delivered a martini to you.

R - if you read this: do you know how to make a good martini?

Piracy risk

Did you know that "Somalia is rated as the second most high risk country for piracy in the world after Indonesia. "?
Check out this article at BBC News.

I didn't know. Not that I was headed either place in a ship any time soon.
But in case you are, I wanted you to be safe.

Essay Tuesday - my favorite possession

Perhaps this essay should be hard. But for me it wasn't at all.

When the New Orleans hurricane happened and then again during the California fires I had absolutely no question about what I would take - my dogs.

I will not pick one of them as my single favorite possession. This is like asking parents to pick a favorite child.

Perhaps pets shouldn't count in this essay topic or as possessions. I am sure that Loud would rerank her favorite possession immediately if pets were considered. I don't care. I don't want any of my other stuff.

After writing this blog I wanted to cry with sadness that I don't get to spend more time with them and that I haven't seen them in over a week. The mention of tragedies where people lose their pets made me even sadder. This is why I don't run the dryer when the dogs are home but I am not, if there was a fire they would die. very sad thoughts.

I need to be a bit more lighthearted in this post, it shouldn't end on a sad note. So, I thought to myself, what possession besides the dogs elicits glee inside of me every time I use it or think about it...

my blue spatula.

This is what my spatula looks like, except that mine has this mysterious chip out of the flat end. I blame this chip on my brother, but no wrong doing has ever been proven.

This spatula is silicon, so you can use it in the frying pan without it melting. and it is perfectly sized. for everything.

thinking about this kitchen implement of mine makes me smile.

what my dogs do when I am not home

Last week I was working "lightly" as I tried to regain work related sanity. This meant I was home late into the morning or early (see the plumbing incident day).

I discovered something... right around 8am the dogs get up onto the furniture. At first I thought this was a one time thing. Deuce does this at night sometimes, but G doesn't usually do it. But then each day it recurred.

I wonder what they were thinking. Probably, that they would like me to leave for the day. They had a pretty cozy happy little scene as evidenced in the picture.

Sweater Thursday- unfortunate

I admit, I don't even have on a true sweater. It is a sweatshirt. from my mother's closet. But, this is all excusable. On Tuesday I was in a work meeting and got a call that my mother had fallen and broken her leg. augh! I immediately got on a flight to Kansas City. I have been here in KC (with no extra clothes besides Monday's dirty ones) since Tuesday. So, I tried to rock out a good Sweater Thursday photo, it does have a good scene...

You will be happy to know that this entire enterprise and the four pictures that I had to take to get a good one distracted my mother and made her laugh even though they were transitioning her to oral pain meds and she was in a lot of pain.

Sweater Thursday rocks.

dogs on my bed

For some reason I just don't have a lot to say. I will just post a series of photos of my adorable dogs as they make my bed and pillow hairy:

Essay of the week: Who are my people?

Funny that I use the phrase an awful lot: "these are not my people" or "these are my people", but when I thought about this essay (assigned by 11Frogs), I wasn't sure who my people were.

I told Rick about this essay and my contemplations: are my people like my family? my friends? just people I like to be around? the people I grew up around? the people I feel most comfortable to be around?

Rick's response was, of course, very sensible (the most annoying thing about him, in my opinion, is how consistently sensible he is) - it will be a higher level... if you take a look at all of those groups you will find consistencies and then there will be your people.

However, I started to write what each group was like and I got bored. so, let's just make this up:
My people are the people that I feel most comfortable around.
their characteristics:
1) did not got to Ivy League schools. in fact, in general they did not accomplish anything greater than what I have accomplished.
2) they embrace whatever they actually like to do - if it is watching NASCAR, if it is singing karaoke, whatever, they do it with gusto.
3) they have some sort of sense of place - where are we at, why am I here and what do I do to be a part of it.
4) they have a libertarian bent - don't tell me what to do

Another first today: Sweater Thursday

I am such a "nose my way into your friendship" sort of person. and here I go.

these guys do Sweater Thursdays: W, J, D

therefore, I now do it too.

when I first contemplated Sweater Thursdays I thought, this will be great.

more thinking and a hard look at my closet's sweater stock have downgraded this idea to just okay.

all of my sweaters are for work. and I work in Dayton, OH, so it means that over time they have converted me somehow, so all my business clothes look like I shop the Jacklyn Smith collection from K-MArt. gnrrr.

lots of black knits and black cardigans...

Delaying the inevitable, I picked a light colored sweater today - one of my most exciting - yellow and white argyle. close up so you can see the detail:

But, it seems to me that Sweater Thursdays should really be called - how many times in one morning can you use the timer feature on your camera? I took at least 12 pictures. I put together a montage of some of the best (or funniest): Deuce contributed as much as she could.

My first plumbing related incident

The start is a mystery, but it worsened quickly. Last night I heard a dripping sound coming from the toilet... it is near the window, and it was raining last night so I didn't think too much about it. But then this morning it had increased...it was a dripping and a spraying sound. turns out all was not well behind and under my toilet. I had a minor flood and there was a fine spray coming out of somewhere.

The problem was, I had to get to work. oh. so, I tried to turn off the water. This reveals some good and bad news:

Good news - I know EXACTLY where the turn off valve is for the toilet.

Bad news - it doesn't turn. even with the help of some pliers. or the other set of pliers. or a monkey wrench.

Bad news #2 - I don't know where the turn off valve is for the entire house.

Good news #2 - I do know where the water meter is, I know that this is where the water comes into the house.

Bad news #3 - the black knob right close to that water meter, it must do something useful. But one of those things is not opening and closing the water to the entire house (I don't know this at the time)

I closed black knob and hoped for the best as I had to go to work. I left Rick voicemail messages, that I like to think were two light hearted pleas for help only if he wanted to help, if not I would handle. This was before I went into the garage.

uh. lots of water. pouring down in two thin streams from cracks in the ceiling and onto my car. not auspicious at all was the one pouring down over the exposed lightbulb onto the car.

Well, I have windshield wipers and a drain in my garage floor, so I do what any girl late for her first meeting of the day does... I start up the car and go to work.

It turns out that you can't just pretend that the house will be fine when you come back. I realize this a couple hours later when I return home. and I have to pee. but I turned off the water to the house.

good news #4 - that black knob didn't turn off the water to the house, so I could pee.

bad news #4 - the water was still pouring out of this mysterious place from the bottom of the tank.

I decide to take matters into my own hands.

1) I must find the shut off valve. I trace pipes, I wander about in the basement looking high and low. ooo, there is a red valve above that black one. I turn it. and no water comes from the laundry sink. whoo hoo!

2) Must find source of leak. - I am a big girl with a big book called Reader's Digest Do-It-Yourself manual. and hot damn if it doesn't have a picture of my toilet's inner workings. Doesn't look like I can do much damage, so I get in there (after changing my clothes of course) and start unscrewing things. quickly I find the culprit:

This 3.5 inch doodad connects the water supply to the tank. the part up by the tank just decided last night that he would no longer prevent water from leaving. I can find no visible cause, so I can only assume that it was old age.

This leads me to one of my favorite places: Menards.

Also, this leads me to a somewhat disturbing realization - when talking to the man in plumbing supply at Menards, my voice is much younger and more high pitched than it would be at say a company meeting. hmph.

my replacement part costs: $3.84

I install once I get home in less time that it took me to turn the water back on. (old part on left, new part on the right - it is a bit longer, I had to coil it around)

not a single leak since then.

I am queen of the world!

Saint of the day

I borrowed a book of saints from the library. Why? I had read such a book once as a child and am still fascinated with the stories of the saints. I love the story of St. Christopher... and I just know that there are all sort of others that I can't recall.

hence borrowing this book.

I couldn't find the exact one I wanted, but this one is pretty fabulous. So good that I might buy a copy.

It is entitled: The Saint-a-day guide: a lighthearted but accurate (and not too irreverant) compendium.

It breaks them down by the day their feast is celebrated.

so, what is today's saint? Well, October 16 is a suprisingly popular saint feast day...

1) Saint Gall - fierce alpine hermit 635 - patron of birds - emblem: bear - hails from Swiss Alps --- the funny thing about Gall, no one knows why he is the bird patron, and he was real crotchedy and the Swiss hated him.

Gall isn't the funniest one that I have read, rather boring actually, so I started getting discouraged that this might not be the best topic for a blog post. But then:

2) Saint Gerard Majella -described as "woman friendly lay brother" 1755. - hmmm, sounds like it might be good. - turns out that Gerard was quite the momma's boy, and although the local order didn't want to accept him for priesthood because "he was tubercular and simpleminded" the leader and founder recognized something useful, Gerard performed miracles more than other people fetched water. The paragraph goes on about Gerard helping people and performing miracles, but then... oh yes, Gerard you bad boy: "Although he was a lay brother, not a priest, Gerard was the spiritual director to several communities of nuns. In 1754 an ex-novice, Neria Caggiano, accused Our Saint (the Patron of mothers!) of having taken scandalous liberties with her person in the course of his ministry. She was lying, of course."

Okay, sex scandals.. this is getting better.

3) Saint Hedwig - Pious Duchess 1243 - at 12 Hedwig got married to a Duke (Henry 1 the bearded), she bore him 6 children. This is a miracle in itself since she had quite an aversion to her husband and sex. She never spoke to him in private and convinced him of the sinfulness of intercourse during Lent, on all Sundays, all holy days and during her pregnancies. after 25 years of marriage she moves to a convent where "she distinquished herself by habitually kissing the seats of chairs, pews and stools. She also enjoyed washing the feet of the nuns, then drinking the dirty water. She herself, as she wandered the dukedone doing good deeds, never wore shoes, and her feet were a mess. Her estranged husband sent her a pair of shoes, commanding her never to appear in public withouth them. Thereafter clever Hedwig carried them everywhere under her arm. On her feast day it is traditional to bake Hedwig's bread. A loaf in the shape of a shoe."

hmmm. couple of things -a) should I be baking bread in the shape of a shoe? would it be sufficient to shape an omelet into shoe form? I might try. b) don't you wonder the story behind the scenes? why did she hate her husband and sex so much? was it really piousness or was it that he was terrible in bed? Did she tell all of her servants about how his do-hicky was mishapen? fun to ponder.

the fourth, and last, of the day is Saint Margaret Mary - she is the French nun to whom Christ exposed His Sacred Heart -1690

so, the story here is that when she was 7 she took a vow of chastity. but she later admits in her autobiography that she didn't know the meaning of vow or chastity... then she is planning on getting married when Christ appears and (quote from her book) "made her see He was the most handsome, the riches, the most powerful, the most perfect and accomplished of lovers" - uh, huh... so, she joins a convent. works there for a bit, but is clumsy and slow. then, Christ invites her out to dinner - in Saint John's place at the lord's side... (quote from this book) "then he continues to appear to her, invariably opening his shirt to expose a flaming, throbbing, crimson organ -His Sacred Heart". the other nuns don't really like this.

more of my thoughts: c) how could you not love a book that includes phrases like: expose a flaming, throbbing, crimson organ? d) the pictures of saints are funny too. e) www.catholic-forum.com has a great icon, a tiny picture of Jesus's face. makes me smile.

an example of how not to write a business email

Previous posts I have written give some instruction in the best way to respond to criticism in a business setting and the best way to deal with a call from your project lead. Today's post is the correct and incorrect usage of text fonts/caps/size in your business email.

an example from an email today:
Even suppressing the Bed swaps still makes the statistical data invalid because we will show a different pt in that bed and the second system MUST keep in sync with the first.

What it boils down to is that if they want to be able to keep statistical data from the
second system they CANNOT do bed swaps, and because the second system is facility wide (which I thought
the first system was also) hospital 5 CANNOT do bed swaps because hospitals 1-4 do want the
statistical data.

You will notice that the author feels free to use ALL CAPS when emphasizing her point. She does this in nearly all of her emails. It makes me what to write back to her: Debbie, THANK YOU for the clear emphasis in your EMAILS. Without your capitalizations I would NEVER know exactly where you wanted to put the STRESS in your sentences. YOUR emails always make me think of your face and the CRAZY way you wear your hair.
Thanks AGAIN.

My advice: if you are trying to get across the meaning of the words, just use words with the meaning you need. There aren't a lot of situations where words like "must" and "cannot" are misinterpreted. No need to underline, bold, or capitalize each letter. Use your mastery of different words to convey a stronger meaning if the word you are using isn't enough on it's own.
If you are trying to get across a feeling, then I suggest that you also examine why you need to convey a feeling in a business email and if that feeling should be coming across in a business communication. Perhaps you are a very bitchy person and you are trying to make the other people feel stupid, because that is what we are getting from it.

THANK you.

command center post

Despair: 10

Anger: 4, too tired to be angry

Drinking: negative 3, too tired to drink

Not a good day.

Hit a wall and snapped at a director.

Got three hugs. One from director I got pissy with. If you know her this is very wild.

Found out CIO is holding party for her staff on Friday, after all the Epic folks leave. Screw her. If she thinks that she can do this without us then she is sorely mistaken. Pisses me off.

Last night was bad too. Woke up obsessed with appointments converting to HOVs last night. Woke up again obsessing over some workqueue rules not working during the overnight batch jobs. Had to finally just turn on TV and watch some crazy ass stupid infomercials because I was near tears. When got in this morning – the workqueue rules didn’t work, and yes the division lead was still here with his list of converted contacts that cancelled themselves. Sigh.

Stress is finally getting to me. My fake smile has fangs. Or at least that is how it looked in the bathroom mirror after I cried in the handicapped staff for a bit today.

IM tells me to go home early and not take the dismal failure of my application personally. Well, he said I was doing an awesome job and it was actually going well and I should head home early since I was too stressed out.

Hope the director who I yelled at (it wasn’t yelling, I just sort of refused to explain a report to her for the fourth time) didn’t tell the other director who then told Brian that I was going insane.

Well, nearly the end of my day. Don’t call me, I will be staring blankly at wall, weeping, kicking bed, biting pillow, whining and taking a long bath. Order to be determined.

I come home tomorrow. Console me this weekend.

By giving me shots, setting up some flippy cup races and then following me around all night to ensure I don’t fall into Lake Superior.

this morning in the command center

Thought from a morning in the command center:

1)      Meetings are a good idea, until you have to actually go to them. Then you think they are the worst idea in the world.

2)      Yesterday my IM and I put mentos into diet coke to try out making a fountain. Then we watched a ridiculous you-tube video with over 15,000 mentos. This was one of those late in the day I need to release some laughter or I will blow up from stress –spontaneous silliness moments.

3)      I don’t know how to spell you-tube. I refuse to go to the internet to see.

4)      A consultant is shopping on line right now. Good use of money.

I don’t want to give my stats until the end of the day.

But I will tell you that last night was a bourbon on the rocks night, and it was perfect.

sanity check

Today: weary, but still sane.

 

Anger level: (1 xanax-10 spitting) – 4

 

Despair level: (1 prozac – 10 suicidal) – 6

 

Drinking index: (1 Miller Lite – 10 Gin Martinis) - 8

I did it.

Honestly, I moved my entire inbox over!  - I also deleted over 60 tasks that were overdue and am left with 0 emails in my in box and only 6 tasks.

 

I feel liberated. For now.

declaring email bankruptcy

That is right folks, my inbox is now chapter 11. I am taking the entire thing and moving it to an archive and cutting my losses.

 

At “cutover” time I had 303 unopened items, and 6483 items total going back to 10-31-2005. Something tells me that I am not going to get to figure out what the ADT transfer redesign was in October 2005… such is life.

 

I am also probably going to cut my losses on all tasks in outlook – all gone and only new stuff from here out.

 

If there are severe impacts to this (like I get fired for not doing something…) I will let you know.

Dispatches from a Go-Live - day 6 of being live

(my first post from my email – we will see how it turns out)

Good news and bad news:

Good news –

1) it is the weekend, so it is quiet (the command center is scary calm for 9am – all week there have been people everywhere, and frantic running about)

2) the CIO isn’t here asking me what she can do to help – umm, honestly, you aren’t going to be able to help work down the 137 security issues or the 206 ADT issues, and the best thing you can do right now is quit coming up to me every 15 minutes or so and asking what you can do. 

3) I have a tally going of my personal happiness distribution – thus far I have taken five people on the verge of tears, solved their problems personally, and then sent them out of the command center smiling and telling me Thank you so much! – also, they tell me that the distribution of happiness they can promise is 75 other users. So, I am doing well.

4) Thus far I haven’t killed anyone, and I think that most people who hated me still hate me, but I don’t think I have any new people that hate me.

5) there have been some great quotes – the CIO said in the shift turnover meeting: on Monday the wait time was so long we lost three patients in the waiting room.   – I said: Currently, it was decided before go live…  - the HIM AM said: (sitting with Director after he just gave the go ahead to run a utility to convert thousands of charts to a different numbering scheme) – oh, it is about to run, this is so scary! 

6) On Thursday and Friday the wait times in the main registration dept were below historical average, and they were down two registrars. Awesome.

7) I am actually holding up nicely, nothing after the little crying incident on that first 14-15 hour shift.

8) Coding is doing so well they are sending people home early – and they are on schedule thus far… this is unheard of in the HIM world.

 

Bad News –

1)      This is the 13^th day straight that I have been working on site.

2)      I am not done until next Thursday – which will then be 18 days straight of working on site.

3)      I can just feel it, the billing AM is going to blame their issues on me… we are working hard to clean up any errors, but I can still feel it looming.

 

I will keep you posted.

 

the post that tool me over an hour

that last post took me over an hour. so, you will forgive me if my posts are brief as this is my customer's go live (10-1-07) and we are still in frantic mode.

highlights thus far:

• hour long meetings where users "express their frustration" with me.
• smiling and helping people with crises for 12 hours each day.
• a 7 hour downtime that ended with the nurse in charge of the entire house, the registration director and me agreeing to Fuck the Census Reconciliation, let's just do it, and coming up 2 minutes later.
• starting to cry after the first 15 hour shift...in the command center.
• every printer in the entire 800 bed hospital - didn't work.
• every printed output in the entire 800 bed hospital - mapped to the wrong print type
• at least half of the users had security issues
• reg wait times - up from 12 minutes to a max of 90 minutes, and on average 35 minutes.
• users asking for me to attend meetings with them so they "have someone to tell them the truth".
• the director saying okay when users ask me to attend meetings instead of his team.
• no bed charges posting for the first two days
• something like 600 duplicate charts created.

let's just say it has been fun so far. It is crazy frustrating because we worked so hard before go-live just to get where we are and still it sucks. I can't imagine what it would look like if we hadn't tried at all. Well, I guess it could only get about 50% worse than it is right now, so... we could have just saved ourselves and spent 50% more time on the clean up, and far less time on the front end...

My Madeline Island Experience

There have been some good posts about the Madeline Island trip. 11 Frogs, Loud, and Joanna.


Here are my memories:
1) my dogs should come on more trips. They are FAR too cute to leave behind:

2) Deuce-ster!-what is the deal with the sand rolling?

3) Rick is way too nice to me.
4) if you go into a bar in Bayfield and their shot of the day is a Scotch Hop beware that the bartender DOES NOT like it if you laugh about the following exchange:
Lucia: what is in a Scotch Hop?
Bartender: scotch
Lucia: (chuckle) anything else?
Bartender: like what? (stern face)
Lucia: okay, what kind of scotch? (smiling)
Bartender: (holds up bottle, label towards herself)
Lucia: is that Passport?
Bartender: no. do you want the shots? (angry face)
Lucia: yes, we want five of them, I just wonder if that is Passport. (to my compatriots) that is what my grandmother drinks!
Bartender: (stops pouring) do you want them or not?
Lucia: yes.
Bartender: (turns bottle a bit)
Lucia: (laughs, turns to friends), that is clan McGregor, my grandma drinks that too!
Bartender: (stalks off ANGRY)

5) cheap scotch makes people cough and sputter.

6) Rick and I don't cough or sputter. possibly disturbing and I should revisit alcoholic quiz sometime.

7) I didn't take a lot of pictures of the food prep, but I did get a lot of shots of the fire prep.

8) Instead of showering, Whitney chose plunging himself into the frigid lake each day. Here are Whitney and Joanna on their way down to the lake for what I am sure they thought would be a leisurely dip.

They returned 10 minutes later.

9) Rick snorkeled a shipwreck off our beach. (he had a wet suit)

10) there are some tight runway walkers in our group. and one 70's styler.
11) everyone has a sign. Most people picked their own. Mine was chosen because others pointed and shouted that it was mine. I need to do some self evaluation as a result.



12) The Island is very, very, very proud of their museum and their restrooms. We visited both.

13) this barstool is funny.

14) Rick didn't spend all of that time driving around Wisconsin for nothing, he directed us to a kitchy diner where we all sat at the counter and a cheese factory where we got curds just an hour old ("they are little cheese ideas that haven't even figured out how to come together as cheese yet, they are so fresh" - quote from our car).

15) I was accompanied in the car by two dogs and one sleeping bear like man. and yet I didn't get lost or miss my turn at any time. can not be said for the cars with the three awake humans.
16) snoring was nicely not a problem
17) The cabin situation worked out pretty good, but I think that Renee should be moved out of the lesbian-goes to bed early cabin and into the party cabin on the next trip.
18) 80s trivia. poor idea with the trivia buff who was in his late teens/early 20s in the 80s versus the folks that were at most 12 in 1989. However, I did learn that the Tower commission (and congressman Tower) was the group that investigated the Iran Contra affair. I will never forget that.
19) the egg salad. It was different this time and while I only had a bite (by the ride home I didnt' really want to eat anything else for at least two weeks), it wasn't bad. just feisty.
20) best food was probably the apple cobbler. the real one, not the "hey we have too many apples, let's make ourselves something cobbler like with pancake mix, egg and syrup" also dodgy that we named the cobblers - Rich White kid cobbler, Inner City kid cobbler and Rural kid cobbler. I will let you work it out for yourself what was what.
21) Everyone got a meal. That was cool. except that some meal makers were mean to their partners - here I am thinking about how Whitney forced Joanna to grate down a million red potatoes.
22) I would bet we left a pesto stain in the refrigerator.
23) getting the dish duty on the very last meal - less than the ideal dish duty.
24) it only takes a rocket scientist and a project manager half a load of dishes to figure out that putting the components in the following order (from left to right on the counter) is completely wrong - dirty dishes on counter and stove, rinsing side of sink, washing side of sink, clean dishes in a rack.
25)we had a great time: