Day 125 - The Evalution of the Mind through the Viewing of Cinematic Offerings

I rented Nine.

I'm watching Aliens instead.



Analyze away.

Day 122 - If I Had a Hammer

Do not make things hard when they can be simple.

BEHOLD! The beauty of double stick tape. Up yours, screws! I need not hardware!

Day 121 - People. I See People.

I talk to people all day long.

I e-mail, Tweet, phone, text, IM, Facebook and (my new talent) mind read.

So while I'm far from a self-imposed Antarctica-style isolation, at times I have to admit that my operate-from-homebase style leaves me a little deficient in vitamin face-to-face. Hence (man, I have been waiting for an opportunity to use "hence" for a looooooonnnnnnggg time now), when I am in group meetings (as in today's Austin American Marketing Association luncheon), I tend to act a little like an over-caffeinated Richard Simmons.

In a three-second span:

"What'syournameareyouexcitedtobehereI'mexcitedtobehereohthere'sRobindoyouknowher?Whatdidyou say?Oh!That'sshiny!"

Something to work on, for sure.

The real news: I got to dress up in big-girl clothes today (as opposed to clothes with elastic bands that double for work out duds or pjs) AND I still fit into them. GOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLL!

Day 119 - Pros and Cons

The good news: I've picked up some contracting work.
The bad news: It's 10 pm and I'm just now closing up some loose ends.

The good news: Paycheck.
The bad news: I'm sorta getting addicted to work again. And enjoying it.
The good news (reminder): Money, money, money, money. Moooonney. (Guess what song that is from. It'll take you two seconds.) 

The good news: I'm expanding my work experience.
The bad news: Working again, eh? How does that go now? Wait, wait - don't tell me. I'll figure it out.

The good news: I'm working from home.
The bad news: Showers are optional and I've been known to abuse this.

The good news: I'm on the agency side, which means I am learning a lot.
The bad news: I'm on the agency side, which means I now know that I was kind of a jerk to agencies I worked with in the past.

Belated apologies.

Day 118 - 37 Years and Counting

Birthday partial disclosure (courtesy of ol' Southern lady customs. It's true - they are harder to kill than tree roaches):

• Yes, it's my birthday. I'm one year older than I was last year.
  
• I'm only as old as I feel.
• A lady doesn't tell. 

Well folks, I'm not a lady (but I'm all woman.) Today I turned 37. And PS: It feels fabulous to break out of the age closet.

Somehow, along the way of life, it became bad taste to ask someone their age. And even worse taste to answer truthfully. People (oh, let's be honest, mostly women) were told to shut it, stay sly and avoid - at all costs - the age question. (Enter the coy dragon. Bruce Lee ain't got nothing on this.)

So why all the hubbub? Why the silent treatment? Why is there the distinct refusal to proudly fly your age flag?

Aside from vanity (hello Hollywood and 99% of the population - me included), the only answer I have is the fact that this notion of hiding is so ingrained that sometimes folks aren't sure how to react when you just tell them the truth. 

For example:

• Conversation 1:
• Colleague: How old are you today?
• Me: What? [In my defense, old habits are hard to shake.]
• Colleague: How old are you?
• Me: 37.
• Colleague: 37? Wow - I'm going to be 37 this year. [Then later:] I have one kid. We're working on another before my lady parts dry up.

• Conversation 2:
• Setting: Conference call, three people - one looking for personalized information to write down as part of a presentation.
• Person 1: Happy birthday, Melanie. How old are you today?
• Me: 37
• Person 2: Let's do degrees instead.
• Me: 37
• Person 2: Yes, 37 degrees.

I'm 37. And I'm ok with it. Here's a clip that celebrates the number 37. Be warned, if you aren't a Kevin Smith fan (and hence have an idea of what this clip is), you might be offended. Perhaps you should just Google it.

Video clip.

Day 113 - Freakout

I originally hail from the land of Houston, where tree roaches are often big enough to saddle up and ride to work. After a certain amount of time (in my estimation, usually 3 years), newly settled inhabitants get over initial freak-outs and condition themselves to a roach reaction I call "Hey and spray." (Hey, there's another one. Where's the Raid?) 

Having crested this tidal wave of horror-movie-sized invaders, I cockily thought nothing could phase me. Austin is a paradise in comparison to Houston. No influxes of flying tree roaches (they like to jump in people's hair),  just representation from the upper crust such as butterflies, dragon flies and birds.

But much like the empire, Austin struck back. I saw a scorpion* traipsing across my bedroom floor. 

Despite the smaller size (about as long as my dainty, dainty palm), my fight-or-flight instincts crushed in. If a bystander had been, er, bystanding, then he/she would have seen me:

1. Gasp
2. Freeze, then slowly shake from side to side
3. Stare, then cringe
4. Scan the room for objects of war
5. Frown guiltily and look for a cup or bowl or vessel to trap it in (so I could release it into the wilds)
6. Shake hands out of indecisiveness
7. Go ape-crap crazy on the poor thing with a slipper

Later, while telling this story to my good friend Julie, she informed me that the little ones can hardly sting and are pretty much harmless. You don't even feel it. Yes, I am more of a monster than the scorpion itself.

But to round out this story with a Brady Bunch moral, the experience reminded me of my initial reaction to unemployment. I spent roughly 9 months worrying about unemployment - from the moment my company's acquisition was announced (May 2009) to the acquisition close (July 2009) to the time I knew I would be laid off (January 21, 2010 if you're keeping count.) How many hunks of hair fell out during that time? How many panic attacks did I have? And come to find out that, much like my friendly scorpion, there wasn't much sting to the actual sting.*

* Sure it wasn't ideal. But what I imagined was far, far worse. 

Big Thank You - The 405 Club

If you are unemployed, there are a variety of treasures you can troll for information. But none are quite as informative or collaborative or stocked with as much expertise as the 405 Club. (Their name is a nod to the weekly amount of an unemployment check. Yes, we unemployeds live the good life. Gimmie my $405!)

They were kind enough to publish an interview with me about this blog, in which I rambled incoherently about life as the newest version of H1N1.

If you are unemployed, worried about being unemployed or interested in hiring folks or helping out, go visit their site. Now.

Day 111 - Snipers Aren't All Trained by the Government

America loves snipers. We love to see them on TV, hear about their mysterious exploits and how they save the day with one trigger pull.* If we can't have superheroes, then maybe we can have lone gunmen that (long-range) swagger into combat and save the day. 

To clarify, I'm talking about the government-certified ones - the ones that wear camouflage and (according to stereotype) are often quiet and very intense. 

But there lurks in our world the untrained, uncertified snipers as well. You may or may not know them, but they definitely know you. And they have the biggest, untempered mouths you have ever encountered. They could be colleagues, former employees, contacts, competitors - anyone.

Reputation slaughter is usually reserved for word of mouth or back alley slander. But a new website, Unvarnished, is taking this talk online, offering anyone the chance to review anyone - without vetting or accountability. It's online sniping, pure and simple. 

Imagine this: You finally get that interview for a dream position at a dream company that offers a dreamy salary. You ace it. The interviewer nearly asks you to marry him/her and have his/her workforce babies (e.g. create reports, projects, etc.) Blushing abounds! It closes with a reminder that there are a few due diligence points HR has to hopscotch through, but that should be no problem. You'll hear from them in a week.

Two weeks later: Crickets.

Three weeks later: You discover a very public bad review from a former employee that rampages on a bad business decision you made and its results for the company and direct reports. Is this a contributing factor to the Fort Knox-like wall of resistance you've encountered from your dreamy job crush? The review neglected to mention that there were contributing factors to that experience** - potentially senior leadership neglect or cut backs that forced hard decisions. Or maybe the former employee (let's name her Molly Jo because you'd probably be able to ID the culprit from his/her comments) was an underperformer that was let go or just plain vindictive? The point is two-fold: 1. There's no context to these comments and 2. Everyone likes to bitch.***

Now let's flip it: Say you did do an extremely horrible job and Molly Jo's public complaint is warranted. Does that mean you'll be haunted forever by a bad business decision from 10 years ago? Or 2 years ago? Don't you have the right to take the blame and explain?  

In the ideal world****, companies wouldn't let one or two bad reviews halt the hiring process (After all, do you get glowing reviews when you Google, say, BP?). They'd give the applicant an opportunity to discuss the content. Maybe they'd even dismiss the comments if they are attributed to anonymous sources or are blatantly baseless (as in you didn't even work at that company.)  (Heck, in an ideal world, all the reviews would be positive and you wouldn't even have to worry about this.)

But let's be honest: Even though the job market is opening up, there are still more baby birds than mama birds. It doesn't take much to derail your candidacy.*****  

******



* And before you can on your opinion horse and press the spurs to the belly, try to keep these statements in context. I'm talking from an entertainment perspective, not a "Gee, it's supergollywolly great to kill folks!Your turn, Timmy!"
** It's about context here, not side-stepping blame. I'm all about accountability.
*** Think about it - how many times have you taken to the net in anger as opposed to beneficence? Remember: Your Yelp entries don't lie.
**** I like this ideal world quite a bit and sincerely hope that it abuts our land every once in a while.
***** And I haven't even dug into the deliberate sabotage side. A rival person wants that dream job? A competitor wants to cause some corporate disruption? Egads. 
****** I also get that the website offers a certain amount of social democracy - an unfettered, 360 degree view of a professional. And this is all good and well as long as people remember to use this site for good, not evil (or at least unsubstantiated evil.) Unvarnished also allows you to buy your own account, therefore owning every review of you. However, you still cannot control the content.

Day 108 - Paycheck Whimsy

Things I'd like to do/get when I have a steady paycheck again.

• Get a laptop with more than 1 hour of battery life (Ok, that would take more than a couple paychecks.)
• Buy a $20 shirt without agonizing over the purchase
• Take a vacation - a true, hiding-in-the-woods-like-the-Unibomber vacation (but with electricity and without the bomb craze crap. I can also sacrifice phone reception.)
• Get the dog to training classes so she won't pull me down the stairs or bark at every child that walks by. (And yesterday she terrorized another woman simply by walking by her. 20 lbs., folks. 20 lbs. As my friend points out: That's small enough to kick if it attacks you.)
• Liposuction, liposuction, liposuction (It'd have to be a BIG paycheck, huh?)
• Replace my car's windshield. It's been sprouting a wicked awesome crack for about a year now - one that's only about 3 inches from the top. 
• Bask in the glory that is health insurance! (It's like a treasure bath but completely intangible and costs a lot more.)

For my Mom (OR - if you don't like it, you can suck it)

My Mom was always a sucker (like her daughters) for Cat Stevens (as we knew him. Now he is Yusuf Islam.) And she loved "Morning has Broken." (We actually used to sing it in church so to combine a church song with Cat Stevens? Well, that's a double chocolate, hot fudge and vanilla ice cream treat and the [formerly known as] Brenneman women are calling for the ice cream truck!)

So as an early Mother's Day present, here's Cat (as he was known when this was filmed) singing her favorite song.

Two notes:

1. You don't like this, as the title suggests, you can suck it. I have confidence that at least 50% of my 11 followers will tolerate this.
2. The amazingly talented keyboardist with the afro is mine. I saw you looking at him. Back off.

Day 106, er 107 (It is after midnight, after all) - Deadlines: Gone the Way of Units from the 80s?

As you can tell from the time stamp (or maybe you just don't give a damn, which is understandable), this post comes a little late in the evening for me. Normally my bedtime routine is wrap things up by 9, tuck myself into bed at 9:30 and then read until unconsciousness hits me (usually around 10.) And yet, here it is - after 1 a.m. and I'm still awake AND coherent. What gives?

It's simple. I'm being naughty and breaking my (very new) routine. (Hey - Austin immigration demands that new inhabitants fulfill at least 25 hours of live music viewing within a 2-yr time frame. I'm a little behind. Thus, the late night.)  Now that I have (somewhat) steady contract work, I've been cultivating a norm to help me acclimate to the world of 9 a.m. meetings and the unthinkable - (gasp) - deadlines. (I thought, during my disinvitation from full-time employment that deadlines would cycle out of fashion, as did Units did after the 80s, but I have no such luck.)

So my start of day shapes up into something like this:

5:30 - Alarm goes off
5:31 - *Snooze*
5:40 - Alarm goes off again
5:41 - *Snooze*
(Lather, rinse and repeat until 6ish. For the sake of this post, we'll go with 6:10 a.m.)
6:10 - Alarm (yet again)
6:10 (and 20 seconds) - Alright, alright ... I'm up.
6:20 - Alarm (yet yet again)
6:21 - Legs move from bed top to bed side. This is progress. It almost always means I'm up.
6:35 - Teeth brushed, face washed, vague idea of walking recaptured
6:40 - Dog gets first walk of the morning. Result: Much relieved (literally)
7:00 - Vitamins taken, first slug of coffee achieved, work can now commence. Wow - hello e-mail box. Does that much really happen overnight?
1:00 - Time for a jog. But I wait too long and it's too hot (90+ degrees and counting). Mostly I end up carrying the 20-lb dog while I lopsidedly trot like Quasimodo.
2:30 - Holy crap. Why do I feel so bad? Did I eat breakfast? Wait - did I eat lunch?
3:30 - I haven't showered yet today, have I? Hmmm ... do I have to go out into public today? No? Well, a shower can wait. Note to self: If home smells like "sweaty person" to visitors, must immediately take shower after jog.
3:35 - Back to work. Self-imposed deadlines are the hardest to break. (You ultimately look like a jackass if you do, especially if you've shared that information.)
6:00 - Wait. It's 6. Does that mean Miller Time? Not quite yet.
6:25 - Now?
6:45 - Cue the Fred Flintstone "end of day quarry horn." It's quitting time!
6:55 - Oh, one last thing.
7:30 - Have I really spent 12+ hours in front of a computer? Egads!

And then after much calamity, I'm back in bed at 9ish, muddled deep into a book and waiting for the alarm to go off at the (somewhat) break of dawn.

Day 105 - My Trunk the Floozie

During one of my latest visits home to Houston, I somehow ended up with an SAS shoebox of old perfume bottles - some still half-full. I'd like to say that it was a mysterious addition, that it just showed up in my trunk as if teleporting from a parallel universe or from forty years ago, but I have to admit I know exactly how the bugger got there.

My mother is seriously crafty. And I mean crafty like sly. Like super spy.

The perfume bottle shoebox originated from items my great-aunt owned before she passed away. We were all very close to her, so to part with any of her belongings unless absolutely necessary - well that was blasphemy.  And Aunt Ella would probably have descended from heaven and bitch-slapped us if we happened to part with the wrong item. She was the quintessential tough broad, er, lady who preferred direct communications and never hesitated to say what everyone else was thinking. This I loved about her. This I hated about her. (Case in point: On the day of my older sister's wedding, she eyeballed me in the bridesmaid dress and said, "It isn't healthy to fluctuate your weight like that." And no, it wasn't because I was too skinny. She had a point - I had ballooned but really? Really? This is the time to crack that out? This [albeit truthful] comment sparked the "Aunt Ella is a ****" skirmish which took roughly 8 months to [almost] fully subside.) 

So, thanks to this reverence for Aunt Ella, Mom ended up with a lot of odds and ends that we just weren't willing to let go of and that me and my sisters weren't willing to physically hold on to ourselves.

Then, last month, my sneaky mother began to strategically disseminate Aunt Ella goodies (oddly enough at the same time as she was cleaning out her attic and garage.) First, she picks her time. Then, she picks her victim, er, subject. Then, she executes perfectly on the plan.


The shoebox of old perfume bottles made its first appearance in ages at my older sister's house in April, when I happened to be in town for my niece's baptism. Right before we left for the ceremony, my mother waltzes in with boxes. She opens one of them with a flourish in front of my nephews, who having some Walters blood in them, are immediately interested in the bright, shiny objects within - in this case, beads and costume jewelry. Being pressed for time, the consensus became, "Let's take this all with us and we can look at it after the baptism." (There was an after-party at my younger sister's house. Woot!) A gleam arose in my mother's eyes - one that I was too rushed to notice. She scooped up *multiple* boxes and casually headed out the door (I told you she was crafty.) One trunk pop later and the rest is history.

The following week, as temperatures rose, I realized that my trunk suddenly smelled like a 50s strumpet hopped up on free Avon samples. This contributes to the overall skank appeal of my car: Filthy from pollen dust, needing a vacuum and with a caboose that reeks of Wind Song, Charisma, Youth Dew and White Ginger. (There is a bottle of Joy, but it's empty. Figures.) Somehow, in all the hubbub, the transition of my Aunt Ella's boxes did not progress any further than a deposit in my trunk - leaving Mom scott free of extras and me about 150 miles too far away to give them back (for now.) Well played, Mom. Well played.

Day 104 - What are We Bitching About? It's Not Like We're at 20%

The Wall Street Journal (and a million other news outlets) reports that the unemployment rate for Spain has soared to 20%.  And that this unemployment rate is the highest in the developed world. Imagine a country where 1 out of 5 people don't have a job. 

Oh wait. I think I can. I think - I AM.


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