November 2007 Archives
Just before choir rehearsal this week, a woman in the choir got mugged right outside the church where we rehearse. I mostly told the story over at Metroblogging already.
I was already inside at another rehearsal while this was going on outside. There's nothing anyone could have done differently. Well, okay, the piece of shit that mugged her could have not done that. But she couldn't have done anything. I couldn't have done anything. I could not have made different choices that would have allowed me to prevent that.
I feel guilty for feeling relieved that it wasn't me.
I felt terrible that I made Missy park at the far end of the church parking lot anticipating being able to get out more quickly after rehearsal, and than ran to the door because it was cold, leaving her behind to grab her stuff out of the car. What if he had been parked on the street or hiding behind a tree, just across the sidewalk from the less-well-lit end of the parking lot where we parked?
I imagined what I might do if it had been me. Part of me thinks that because I'm black that makes me less of a target. Like a brotha would cut me some slack. Or like I could have talked him out of it. Or like being black makes me somehow come off as Less Safe to Fuck With. I've never had anything really bad happen to me. That's probably really naive. The one time my car was broken into, it was parked in the backyard at my parents' house.
It wasn't even me, and I feel violated and somehow responsible.
My good friend Mel of Emtwo Web Studios was having a holiday blog design giveaway and my name came out of the hat! Actually, that looks like a basket.
I've kicked around the idea of getting a real professional to spiff up the joint for years. Except I was hung up on wanting to play around with it myself and see what I could learn just by tinkering. I'm completely over that now. I don't have the time nor the inclination. Also, I'm on a fresh MT install with default templates. My backend is pretty clean and I'm not worried about having screwed something up making it difficult for someone else to poke around in.
So Mel's gonna make it purty for me. I cannot recommend her enough for all your web design and development needs.
In related news, I'm clearly getting old/becoming a Luddite. Fudging with blog templates scares the heck out of me. I don't even know anything about having a data plan for my phone (or rather, the new one I'm going to get) and am dreading heading to the Verizon store for help with that.
...consisted entirely of a trip to the liquor store at about 3pm and a trip to Target at about 8:30pm. Both completely uneventful.
Everyone's been talking about this Beaujolais Nouveau and I was a little stir crazy after sitting around in PJs half the day. Hence the trip to the liquor store. I'm not entirely familiar with my new neighborhood, but I found it easily enough. Seems like everything around here is pretty much in one of three or four places -- by the mall (that's Eden Prairie Center, not the Mall of America) or in one of a few different strips. EPC is the center of gravity here. The city of Eden Prairie is notoriously difficult to navigate, as it is not at all layed out in a simple grid-like fashion. The roads all have really similar names and most of them are circular and turn into another and back into themselves with no notice or warning. So if you get anywhere near the mall, chances are you will keep driving around and around it until you gather up a super burst of energy and shoot off your orbit.
We saw this here plunger at Target (we were not shopping for plungers) and my question to you is what do you think the handle of that plunger looks like? I think that plunger looks like the perfect joint xmas gift for Ang and Jeremy.
Apparently folks were camped out on Thanksgiving Black Friday Eve and lined up at EPC when it opened at 1am. Ridiculous.
I have managed to reduce my holiday shopping to the bare bones. Oh, okay, and we went on a Kohl's shopping spree last weekend. So my need to shop is pretty much non-existent.
My need to unpack boxes, however, is pressing. As this is a leisurely weekend, I've been leisurely about getting to it, choosing to copy all my CDs to my computer and catch up on podcasts instead. Until this morning when Missy assigned me the task of unpacking just one box. Just one. She's been out for about 45 minutes and here I sit in front of my laptop. As soon as I finish this, I swear I'm going downstairs. Seriously. Here I go.
I used to read voraciously as a kid. I'd stay up until the wee hours with a flashlight and read. And then I got to high school and got busy. And then I got to college and stayed busy. And then I graduated and partied and watched more tv. And then came my ridiculous internet habit. So my attention span's a little shot, and I just don't take the time offline like I used to.
After the success of the October Cut the Fluff Challenge, we decided to continue on. Our November challenge has been to read from a non-internet source for no less than 30 minutes a day. I biffed on it right away, on or about November 3rd. I didn't make the time, and I just couldn't stay awake at the end of the day. We've made it every other day, though.
A few months ago, Missy handed me The Golden Compass
So my daemon is Erasmus the spider. "Solitary, shy, spontaneous, humble, and fickle." You can tell me if I selected the right form (and transform it if I chose wrong). 11 days left before it takes its final form! You can find out your daemon as well.
I mostly hate seeing movies. Most mainstream movies these days are so bad. But I would really like to see The Golden Compass movie when it comes out.on December 7. I think Nicole Kidman is a fantastic choice to play Mrs. Coulter. Missy and I have been going back and forth on what we imagined her golden monkey daemon looked like.
So anyway, it's fun to read again. And I like taking that time right before bed. We've stayed up later than we wanted to getting our reading in a number of times, so I can't imagine we'd stick to it every day, but I intend to keep it up as much as I can. I hope I don't ruin it by picking a crappy book. I have this thing about having to finish a book once I start it. If I hate the book, it sits there and I won't let myself start another until it's done. So not a lot of reading gets done. Apparently I have to try harder and pick better books.
It occurred to me the other day that I have written my last check to my landlord. By the time my lease is up, I'll have stayed in this place for two years, which is longer than I've lived anywhere since my parents' house.
I really thought that I would be staying in that apartment until either I bought myself some property or moved out of town all together. I went through a whole room-by-room furniture planning process. I got as far as outfitting my dining room/office. I bought a real couch.
But, you know, meh. Things change. I wasn't expecting to stay in the Twin Cities for 8 years (off and on). I certainly wasn't planning to spend the rest of my life here. Which could very well happen. Couldn't say for 100% certain, but I'd be okay with that.
I'm pulling up these roots that I thought I had planted, but yet I have deeper roots than I thought I did. Funny how that works, eh?
We placed a big ol' order at Stash Tea and it arrived on Thursday! We usually have tea together every night, but we haven't as much lately between being busy and not having much left to choose from.
Never thought I'd be a tea drinker. Didn't know jack about loose tea. Had no idea what sorts of flavors there were. Wasn't willing to spend $5 on a box of stuff I might not like. Now I enjoy it immensely. I strongly prefer honey to sugar or sweeteners. And I enjoy sitting down in the evening with the tea and the laptop and the Missy and the big chair and the quiet.
Mmmm... tea....
The gravity of all I have to do at work really hit me. The limited number of hours in the day really hit me. I have so much going on outside of work that it makes it tough to stay late at work to get stuff done.
This is a good problem to have, I suppose. I've not really had this problem since college.
So I was flustered over a project at work. I thought that by being late with my report, I was going to cause some other things to be late which would not make one of our customers very happy (nor our Operations group).
So there's that. Wednesdays are also choir rehearsal night. Normally, on Wednesdays, Missy and I each leave work and meet at the apartment. We go to Jakeeno's for dinner with a bunch of other choir folks, go to rehearsal, and then stay Wednesday night at the apartment.
I had planned to take my lunch hour yesterday to go home and pack for the night. Turns out lunch was provided for me. And I was still super busy, so as the hours rolled by, I was finding I couldn't finish what I needed to at work and go back to the house to pack up and leave the 'burbs early enough to make it into the city.
Our plan for the evening was already off because I had the Flak Radio party to go to and Missy had to stay late at school for conferences.
So I'm flipping out because I just do not have time to do everything that needs to be done. I have two problems. One is the problem of getting everything done and being where I need to be. The other is the problem of my mental state. I was so agitated. You know how you get that spinny, whirly, "my brain is in a blender and I simply cannot think straight right now" mental vibrate-y feeling? Yeah.
I emailed Missy asking if we could come back to the house after rehearsal instead of staying at the apartment. That way I wouldn't have to worry about finding time to pack beforehand.
Later in the day I found out that the deadline for this report I was working on had actually already passed. I still had to finish it asap, of course. But the removal of that artificial stressor made a huge difference and I was able to focus and get it done. So funny how the stress causes all this noise in your head that keeps you from being able to do thing you're trying to do. Not funny ha-ha, but there is that hysterical "I'm laughing to keep from crying" ha-ha.
Here comes the point.
While it was logistically more convenient in the short term (i.e., late afternoon/early evening) to plan to stay at the house and less so in the long term (i.e., late evening, post-rehearsal), the real driving factor for my wanting to stay at the house was because after all that I really needed to be comfortable at the end of the day. I needed to just chill the fuck out and put comfy pants on and snuggle with my girl.
We have still been using the apartment quite a bit. But I only really like doing that when we have places to go. Those places are usually in the city, so it's nice and convenient and all. If we have nothing planned, I'd just as soon stay at the house. Especially now that it's getting cold and staying home probably also means staying inside.
The apartment is the place to do. The house is the place to be.
The apartment has less stuff in it. The house has more of my stuff in it. Although I've learned over the last several months I really do not give a shit about the stuff. I really don't. All I need or want is Missy.
(Okay, I know a while back I went on a diatribe about balance. Balance is still important. I'm doing pretty well in the balance department. If you don't have balance and an internally driven sense of happiness, a partner is not going to give it to you. But I'll add that the right partner can make your already great life even better (and the wrong partner can make it worse).)
Missy bought the house, but we haven't spent a night apart since moving in. The house feels like ours. The house feels like home. The apartment feels like mine, and I'm ready for it to go away.
I didn't keep up with weekly updates, but there's not much to be shared on a weekly basis except for the photos (the last of which I'll upload tonight) (uh, maybe tomorrow).
It ended up being not that difficult at all. Selecting things was the easy part. We could probably keep going for a bit. The hard part is actually getting the stuff out of the house. This is why we still had all this stuff to begin with.
Anything that could be thrown away has already been thrown away. I think, actually, there wasn't much stuff to go in the garbage.
The dilemma we had was with stuff that is in really good shape and worth some dollars. So we decided on the following:
1. Clothing items will be taken first to a consignment store. Whatever doesn't get taken there goes to Goodwill. Neither of us has ever consigned anything before, so we're kind of nervous about this step. But will clean our stuff up and go to the store and see what happens. We're going to do one last closet purge and go to the consignment store (then directly to Goodwill) next weekend.
2. Anything that we can't bear to just give away is going to one of those stores where they put stuff up on eBay for you. Sure, we could lower the margins doing it ourselves, but (again) clearly we've been insufficiently motived thus far to do it ourselves. I figure their listing expertise will probably earn it enough to make up for the cost of paying them to list it in the first place. The little bit that we might get is better than the nothing at all we get for letting it sit in the basement or garage. We're going to the eBay store this weekend.
Kind of funny story. So all our stuff is piled up in a corner, either at the apartment or at the house. Missy's folks were at the house for dinner yesterday, and her mom made a comment about how nice this salad bowl is. "Missy, don't you just love it?" No question as to why it was sitting on the floor in the living room. Fortunately, her dad was carrying on a conversation of his own (with himself, I think) about the VCR ("Is that a Panasonic?"), so any (non-)responses to her mom were lost.
Speaking of the apartment, one more month until I cut that fluff. Yay! I had hoped to be all moved out by now. Hoping to do some major packing/moving this weekend, so we can schedule friends to move the furniture the weekend before Thanksgiving. I wanted to hire someone to clean it for me before the end of November when I turn in the keys. If that doesn't pan out, we'll still have Thanksgiving weekend to get it cleaned up.
I had thought we'd have weaned ourselves off using the apartment by now, but that hasn't happened at all. We stay on weekends, because we have things going on in town on weekends. And we spend Wednesday nights after choir. That's okay, though. It'll work itself out. I think we could get by just fine in there with nothing but the bed and internet access. Once the bed comes out, we'll have no choice.
I'm taking this Dale Carnegie class. I did not want to take it. At all. My employer all but made me take it.
I'm very surprised to find that I am not hating it. I wouldn't go quite so far as to say that I'm enjoying it, but I'm not minding it.
So I have this class on Thursday nights. It's a pretty big class and it's 3.5 hours long. We all give speeches every week. They only last 2 minutes. We might give more than one. At least one will be in front of the whole class of 35-40 people. It was way freaky at first, but people are really into it now.
Today's topic was pep-talks and enthusiasm. A month ago in class we gave a small group presentation on something we were going to commit to being more enthusiastic about and today we reported back on that.
But first.
We started class today talking about giving and receiving compliments. The giver picks a trait/accomplishment/whatever and gives evidence. The receiver has to also look the giver in the eye and thank them. So we went around in small groups giving compliments to each person and practicing receiving them.
I was pleased and a little surprised by two things.
One was how well we've gotten to know something about everyone in the class and how easy it was to pick something to compliment each person in my group on and give specific evidence.
The other was the sorts of things people complimented me on and how what other people perceive to be my strengths are not always what I think of as my strengths, even though clearly I project these things. And I got something different from every person. (You know how some people are kind of unidimensional and get the same feedback from everyone? I would have been disappointed to hear the same thing from everyone.)
The whole group talked about it after the exercise, and a common sentiment was that it felt really good to give the compliment. I didn't bring it up, but it's interesting how selfish it is in a way. Giving a compliment makes you feel good. It makes you feel good because the other person feels good. But you certainly get something out of it.
Then I had a realization. If that person doesn't graciously and sincerely accept that compliment -- especially if they actually try to downplay it -- you don't get as much out of it. And you're probably less likely to give it.
So after we collected our compliments, we took three and wrote them down on a card.
That's the set up.
The format for full group speeches is that one person is at the front of the room, and two people sit in ready chairs off to the side. The person at the front can't start until both ready chairs are full.
This time, the ready chairs were at the back of the room. Our instructor, Dan, gave a pep talk to each person in which he yelled "If you act enthusiastic you will be enthusiastic!" a lot. You had to demonstrate some enthusiasm before he would stop. Yell back, jump around, whatnot. You had to announce your three strengths that you were previously complimented on, and the rest of the room whooped and cheered.
Then you went up to the front of the room and gave your 2 minute speech about what you committed to being enthusiastic about.
Naturally, everyone was pretty jazzed and pumped and clearly genuinely enthusiastic about their topics.
(As everyone gets more comfortable speaking and gets a better feel for how long 2 minutes less, folks are less and less prepared before class for their speeches, but that's okay. It's less about the actual content and more the style and philosophy.)
We've done exercises on energy before, but this was a little different, and the concept of the pep talk was key.
I had another realization.
There are two parts to the pep talk. One is the energy. If someone is crazy brimming with energy, their energy will rub off on you. That's a given. But in a pep talk, you have to have that positive feedback, those sincere compliments, to give a person confidence. Because that confidence is self-motivation, and when you put that together with the raw energy, it compounds the effect. A good pep talk has to have both parts.
Coaches giving pre-game speeches comes to mind, but that's an obvious example. Can you translate that to the workplace or another setting?
Takeaways!
1. I need to graciously accept compliments.
2. When I'm in the position to give a pep talk, I have to be both affirming and energetic.
