Go hug someone you love

We got word last night that a friend was killed last week in an auto accident. His wife's sister is an old friend and we got to know the couple when Brett DJed their wedding. (The infamous Swearing Minister wedding.) They were married less than 2 months.

So, just for today, don't be irritated by your spouse's abensetmindedness and your children's whining. Just hug them and let them know how happy you are to have them around.

Karma comes back around

My excellent cousin Heather blogged about her little boy getting his widdle-biddy finger caught in a mousetrap.

I had a fleeting, "Oh no, I hope he is okay" thought which was suddenly and completely overridden with the urge to laugh. I dunno why but it just seemed really really funny. Little boys playing with mousetraps? Yeah, that's funny. Sign me up for parenting classes right now.

It wasn't so funny, though, when karma brought it full-circle in less than 24 hours. Brett called me yesterday while I was driving home.

"My parents are here. Can you stop by the grocery store and get some mushrooms? I'm making steak sandwiches for dinner."

"Sure."

"Oh yeah, and get another bell pepper, too."

"Okay."

"And pick up some mousetraps, as well."

"Huh? Very funny. You've been reading Heather's blog. I can't help it if I think it's funny that her boy got his finger caught in a mousetrap. I'm sure it hurt, but he's okay. No serious injury inflicted. That doesn't make me a bad person."

"I don't know what you are talking about."

"Then why on earth do you want me to get mousetraps?"

"My mom found a mouse. Duh. I want to make sure we get rid of any others that might still he hanging around."

"Your mom found a mouse? IN THE HOUSE? IN OUR HOUSE?"

"Yeah, he was in the oven."

"DID SHE GET RID OF HIM?"

"Well, I did. She ran into the bathroom and locked the door."

So, is it coincidence that I haven't thought about mice or mousetraps or any other kind of vermin since I was a kid and our house in Salinas had a mouse problem but all of a sudden there's a mouse in my house immediately after I laughed at a poor toddler getting his finger caught in a mousetrap? I doubt it. This is karma-in-action.

I just hope our dogs don't get their little noses snapped in the traps anytime soon.

Conversation just now with a representative from a company we do business with regularly:

Me: I'm trying to reach Linda Brown in your department regarding a letter she sent me. I've been calling the number on the letter all day and it's not working. It just rings and rings--there's no voicemail or anything. Is there a better number to reach her at?

CSR: Linda Brown? I've never heard of her in this department.

Me: The title on her letter says "Asset Disposition Representative." Is this the Asset Disposition department?

CSR: Yes. But "Linda Brown" doesn't sound familiar.

Me: --

CSR: Hmmm... Linda.... Linda...

Me: --

CSR: Oh yeah. I got it. Linda. I work with her every day. Duh. It's Tuesday and I'm still acting like it's Monday. Sorry.

Me: That's fine. Can I talk to her?

CSR: She's gone home early today. I can transfer you to her voicemail, though.

Me: Okay. But can I also have the number in case I need to call her back?

CSR: It's xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Me: That's the number I've been calling. The one that doesn't work.

CSR: Huh. Well, I'll transfer you now so you can leave a message.

Me: Wait! That's the number I've been calling and it just rings. There's no way to leave a message.

CSR: Well, maybe her voicemail just isn't set up. I'll transfer you over there.

Me: No! Wait! I need to be able to leave a message or talk to someone. How am I going to leave a message if her voicemail isn't set up?

CSR: I don't know. I've never really had to leave a message for her before.

Me: How about Linda's supervisor then?

CSR: Please hold...I"ll transfer you...

*ring* *ring* *ring* *ring*..... ad nauseum

What she meant by "I'll transfer you" was "I'll transfer you again to Linda's non-existent voicemail since I know that's what you want, what you really really want even though you have indicated you don't want that, I know better and it will be far better for me to transfer you to the extension of a person I know is not here and has no voicemail than to transfer you to an actual working extension where you might be able to talk to someone, ANYONE, who is clear on the concept of 'leaving a message.'"

So, you're getting married?

Let me be the first to offer congratulations! Your wedding day is going to be one of the most memorable days of your life. It's a day to look your finest, revel in romance, and enjoy the undivided adoration of your family and friends.

As you probably are aware, planning the perfect wedding will not be easy. Many things that you feel are earth-shatteringly important will be out of your control. My best advice: find wedding professionals you can trust and let them do their job. You will be surprised how well they can bring your vision to life while managing the many, many inevitable crises which will occur on your special day.

You will draw inspiration from many sources. Your perfect color scheme might be inspired by the season and local flowers. Your gown may be plucked from the pages of the most fashionable bridal magazine. Your choice of caterer could be decided by sampling from a variety of restaurants. The wide world beckons with the seeds of ideas to make your own.

Go! Reap the bounty the world offers! Plan your heart out! Be the most phenomenal bridezilla ever!

I offer this single, solitary nugget of advice:

Having an outdoor wedding in the middle of the day is stupid.

If your inspiration for the perfect wedding comes from a movie and said movie features beautiful people laughing and dancing and having a great time at an outdoor reception in the middle of the day, be assured that said movie is lying to you. This does not happen.

Brides the world over consult almanacs to pick the best days for outdoor receptions. "Why, it hasn't rained in Sacramento on June 9th for over 80 years! The weather will be perfect!" It won't. It will, will 99% certainty, be unseasonably rainy, windy, hot, cold, snowy on your special day.

But let's say you are the Chosen One. The weather is indeed movie-location perfect. There's not a cloud in the sky and a gentle breeze carries the perfume of a thousand flowers to your reception site. The guests are not too hot or too cold. Even your 90-year-old gramma is comfortable sitting outside for six hours. Your reception will still suck.

Do you know why?

Regardless of the weather, no one likes to dance when the sun is out.

It's a simple concept. If you are planning on having three hours of dancing at your perfect middle-of-the-day outdoor reception, plan on ending early. You will dance your first dance with your new husband. You may dance with your father. You may be able to force your bridal party to dance in an effort to get the party started. It won't work. The party won't start. Your guests will clap politely and then begin to leave. There's not enough alcohol in the world to convince people to dance outside in the middle of the day at a wedding.

So, plan accordingly. Move the dancing indoors, turn out the lights, and go to town. Or, alternatively, do not attempt to have dancing at your outdoor in-the-middle-of-the-day reception. Have a luncheon, cut the cake, toss the bouquet, and call it a day.

And by all means, if you should ignore your trusted DJ's expert professional opinion and choose to have your blasted wedding outside in the middle of the blasted day on the blasted most unseasonably hot blasted day in 80 years, please refrain from saying, "DJ! All my guests are leaving! Do something!"

At that point, it will be beyond his poor power to add or detract.

Take the stairs instead

I often take the stairs.

Well, I often take the stairs down. Rarely up, if I can help it. It's mostly habit. When I lived in the dorms during college, the elevators were slow and crowded. My friends and I felt it wasn't worth waiting 10 minutes for an elevator ride when it took almost no effort or time to run down the stairs. Especially when we were running down to the cafeteria for the Annual Chocolate Day luncheon.

Running down the stairs seemed like exercise to us, only without the sweating and discomfort. It because Our Thing. We'd seek out tall buildings, ride the elevator to the top floor, and run down the stairs, just to say we'd done it. Kind of a geeky way of working out every day or climbing Mt. Everest.

So, while I do not believe my cardiovascular system is in any better shape for all the downstairs running I've done in my lifetime, I still do it. It's sort of a sentimental journey and a nod to all my friends from school that I don't get to see any more.

I applied for a job in one of the few semi-tall office buildings in Sacramento. It was on the 9th floor and running down the stairs after the interview seemed like a good way to burn off a little nervous energy. I entered the stairwell and began my downward trek. At the first landing, between the 8th and 9th floors, I noticed a faded sign stenciled on the wall.

STAIRS ARE FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY

My years of downstairs running have taught me to pay attention to signs associated with exits and stairwells. Many doors which lead to stairwells are alarmed and I lived in constant fear that pushing a door open to get to the stairwell in an unfamiliar building would be accompanied by the obnoxious clang of a fire alarm and a shower of cold water from the overhead sprinklers. It never happened, mind you, and I attribute that good fortune to the fact that I pay attention to the signs.

Let me remind you, however, that this sign was not posted where I could see it before or upon immediately entering the stairwell. It was stenciled on the wall between two floors. I had to turn two corners and descend half-a-flight of stairs before it was visible.

I cocked an eyebrow at the message. Okay, so they would prefer that people not use the stairs unless there's an emergency. Well, it's obviously not that important, otherwise they would post it in a conspicuous place before they get into the stairwell, right? Some stuck-up power-hungry office manager had probably made a stink somewhere along the line about people in the stairwell making too much noise. Sure, if I was a building superintendent and had to deal with a whiner like that, I would definitely post a non-vital message between floors to appease her and thumb my nose at her at the same time.

Now I felt empowered and rebellious. I was using the stairs for non-emergency purposes and no one could stop me. Haha! I stomped my feet harder than usual and the sound of my job-interviewing high-heels echoed off the walls. Come and complain about it! See if I care!

The noise was deafening by the time I reached the ground floor. I expected shouts of dismay from above at any moment. (Note: this stairwell was on the opposite side of the building from the company at which I had just interviewed. Of course, I wouldn't want to disturb my prospective employer.) Preparing to make my escape, I pushed the handle of the exit door.

It was locked.

The for-use-only-in-case-of-emergency door which led to the parking lot outside was locked.

My heady rebelliousness faded. Some idiot had forgotten to unlock the ground floor exit door when he opened the building this morning. Now I would have to climb UP to the second floor and take the elevator down to the lobby. The fun was gone. Dejected, I dragged my sorry carcass upstairs and pushed the handle of the exit door on the second floor.

It was locked.

I began to think that maybe the sign had not been merely a suggestion. But I couldn't believe that a stairwell "for emergency use only" would provide no exit to the outside world. I mean, what if there actually was an emergency? They'd rather have all the burned or earthquake-mangled carcasses collected in a locked stairwell than scattered through the 15 floors of the building? That does make a morbid kind of sense, I guess.

There was no escaping the fact that this was going to be an embarrassing situation. Someone was going to have to come and let me out. But not before I tried every single door in that blasted stairwell.

All 15 doors were locked.

Now I knew I would have to get someone's attention. I chose a random door on a random floor and began to knock. My knuckles against the solid metal industrial door barely made a noise. I used the side of my fist, then my keys. I began to shout, "Hello? Hello?!" The sound echoed as before but no one came.

It was getting toward late afternoon. The stairwell was hot and I was sweaty from climbing up and down. I began to worry that people would be going home (taking the elevator, of course) and I would be stuck there overnight, over the weekend, or FOREVER! I did what any reasonable person would do.

I called my husband to come save me. Yes, that would mean he would have to drive all the way across town in rush hour traffic. Yes, that would mean that he would tease, harass, and generally annoy me about this incident for the rest of my life. Yes, that would mean I would have to tell him the silly reason I was in the stairwell to begin with.

But, he wasn't home. And his cell phone was off.

Now, I only had one option left. The worst and most undesirable option. I called the company at which I had just interviewed, sheepishly explained the situation, and asked someone to come and let me out.

A very annoyed office manager showed up moments later. "The stairs are for emergency use only," she hissed.

I thanked her politely and imagined the day she tried to use those stairs for an emergency only to find that the exit doors are locked from top to bottom.

Is it any wonder that I never heard from that company again? I think not.

Subliminal messaging

My excellent sister-in law recently commented that she is particularly vulnerable to suggestions about food. She read something about hummus and all of a sudden she had to have hummus. She thought about it all day. She even had a dream about it and woke up ravenous for hummus.

I wondered if her suggestibility might carry over to others things as well, so I wrote to her:

"I think have this is pizza a very delivered interesting to Andrea’s house topic."

You know, just to see what would happen.

Dude, I'm not kidding. Yesterday, there was a fresh hot pizza waiting for me when I got home.

Awesome.

So, I just wanted to give a I really big thanks to Shauna and Jesse like for their kindness and Coldstone generosity because but I'm not sure that seriously if they made my deliver day.

If you are not related to them, you should be jealous.

I've been working like a dog

I'll be the first to admit that I have been very, very lucky when it comes to my career. In my entire work history, teenage and adult, I've only had one job that I didn't like. Sure, every now and again I'd get an annoying co-worker but, the vast majority of the time, I've worked for great companies with great people. It's actually kind of stunted my career, I think, because I never want to move onward and upward and leave my current great job.


I started one of these great jobs right after I got married and moved to Sacramento. I considered it my first "real" job. I had a monthly salary, good benefits, and a big office. I was originally hired to be an assistant to the president and another executive but soon I was operating in a de facto "office manager" role. I handled all the out-of-the-ordinary problems. I developed more efficient ways of doing things. I tackled the big, ugly projects that no one else wanted or had time for. I dabbled in HR, employee training, accounting, event planning, and budgeting. I was versatile, resourceful, and responsible. (I realize every sentence in this paragraph starts with "I.")


So, of course, they fired me. The use of the word "fired" would draw a collective gasp from the people who made the decision to fire me. Technically, I was "laid off." When one of our major clients decided he would be better off managing his own properties, it took a big bite out of our company profits and suddenly we were overstaffed. Someone had to go. That someone was me.


I understand how they reached that conclusion. Even after 3 years, I was still the last person they had hired. My actual assigned job duties were few because I'd been functioning as a problem-solver for so long. I could see how they might decide that a full-time office manager was a waste of money.


They were gracious about it. They wrote a glowing letter of recommendation. They tried to help me find another job in the industry. They paid me a two-week severance. (Although, the last guy that got fired for actual wrongdoing was given a whole month of severance pay.) They expressed appreciation for all I had done for the company. They didn't want me to think I wasn't a valuable employee.


Just not valuable enough to not fire.


I kept on a happy face through my final day. I told them I understood. I told them it was probably for the best. I assured them that my family would be fine and I wouldn't have a problem finding another job.


I had lunch with a former co-worker a few weeks after my last day with the company. She told me that the woman who was assigned to handle a small portion of my former duties was totally inadequate for the work. Not that the workload was too much, but that she just didn't have the skills. "She wrote a letter for me, and it looked like something a forth-grader would churn out." My former co-worker said she thought a big mistake had been made when they decided to fire me and she thought they were going to realize it shortly.


I had a smug sense of satisfaction thinking about the company limping along, wishing they had not fired their capable and resourceful office manager.


That was 4 years ago.


The other day, I ran into someone I knew from when I worked at the company. "How's everyone at My Former Company?" I asked, knowing him to be just clueless enough to give me the honest truth. I expected a tale of the rough struggles they'd been through with the bad economy and housing market.


"Great!" he declared. "They have so many more properties than they did when you worked there. You'd be surprised. Business is great. It's keeping everyone really busy."


"Huh. That's good for them, I guess."


"Yeah. Mike (the president) just moved into a big new house."


"Really? He moved into a big new house right after I started working there."


"This one's even bigger! You should see it! It's totally awesome!" blah blah blah


There was more conversation but I didn't care. Apparently, My Former Company is doing great without me. Bully for them.

This is totally petty, I know, but here's my gripe with My Former Company:

As office manager, at the request of the owner, I planned dozens of "Bon Voyage" parties for departing staff members. Some were long-time employees but leaving under less-than-amicable conditions. Some were short-timers who were leaving because they were incompetent and hard to get along with. No matter what the circumstances, there was a card and a cake, and everyone was invited to come and express their appreciation for a job well done.

For my departure, at five minutes to noon, someone said, "Hey, it's Andrea's last day. We'd probably better go out to lunch or something." Three staff members (those who hadn't already left for lunch) and I walked to the Mexican restaurant next door and had a burrito.

I even had to pay for my own lunch.