Thunder of Wade

I was running at full speed today – work, meetings, supervising students, working on reports, email – non-stop. Even lunch was a hurried affair, but not so quick that I would fail to notice my flash drive had slipped out of my pocket at burger king. I figured I had knocked it out of my pocket when shoving napkins in – except it was suddenly on the ground at my feet in the parking lot. Followed by a tube of chap-stick that slid through the hole in my pocket and down my leg to my feet.

I grumbled, transferred everything to another pocket and was on my way.

The hole, however, was matched by one in my tire. I found that when I left work and got the Low Pressure warning when I started the car. I took my new tire gauge to the tire that had problems before and sure enough it was very low.

And that would be because of the screw embedded in it. It was holding enough air to get me to the tire store where they charged me an arm and a leg to replace the tire.

I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a couple of things and nearly got run over in the parking lot by a guy who – when I shook my head and waved him off – gestured wildly and shouted profanities at me from the safety of his truck.

And the day just got to me. They usually don’t – things don’t happen to me and when they do I don’t let them become a pattern of bad things in a day. They are just things and there are video games to be played.

But today felt like the holes were not just in my pants and tires – they were in me and the fun had just drained away.

Except.

When I first learned how to make origami butterflies, I stopped by my friend Sue’s office. From a simple square of paper – because I always have paper – I quickly folded a butterfly while she watched. I gave it to her and wished her a good day as I headed off to start my own day.

She told me a few days later that she’d had it sitting by her phone and it had made her smile every time she looked at it through a very difficult week.

Which, in turn made me smile.

So, I decided that would be my going away present for her retirement. I found a shadowbox in white and made a collection of butterflies, then mounted them with pins. I used all kinds of paper with the silliest latin-sounding names and the end result looked like something a lepidopterist would envy. I signed the back, wrapped it up, and waited for just the right time to give it to her.

Today, Sue stopped by the office to visit our new space and get the tour. As she was getting ready to go, I gave her the present – complete with a card wishing her a Happy/Merry “Retire-u-mas”.

She opened it up – and promptly burst into tears.

Happy tears. 🙂 I gave her a big hug and then another hug when one wasn’t quite enough.

And that was what was important about the day. Not the hole in my pants or in my tire. Not the terrible meetings and frantic emails. Not the jerk in the parking lot. Not just being so dang tired.

I spread some joy today. Just some flat out joy. I gave my friend a meaningful gift that touched her heart and made her day.

I’m going to miss her when she retires and leaves UA – we’re all going to be a little less without her sunshine.

But, on this cold winter day, some butterflies took off and flew. Can’t ask for more than that.

Went to dinner with some friends of ours – and their Excitable Little Dude. While waiting for the food, we did some origami and talked about video games. He was nearly beside himself to get to talk to a grown up who understood – and was fluent – in his language of giant fighting robots and explosions.

I didn’t get to talk much to the adults, but that was okay – he was certainly entertaining.

At the end of the evening, when we were at their vehicle, he realized that it was time to go.

And he had so much more to tell me.

The conversation went into overdrive has he tried to recount all of his best Gundam battles and adventures. At the last moment, he switched over to Minecraft.

As he was being literally pulled into the truck by harried parents he grabbed hold of the door frame to tell me one last thing.

“One time. In Minecraft. I set the whole world on fire!”

And with that final pronouncement and a somewhat maniacal grin on his face, he relinquished his grip and allowed himself to be pulled into the truck. And off they went.
Yeah, I get that a lot. 🙂

I was playing a video game last evening at Jim’s house and he handed me his iPad to take one of those facebook/internet personality quizzes. This one was based on picking a color from a list of options for each question.

I paused the game, ran through it, and waited for the results. It ended up saying that I was awesome and that everyone should aspire to be like me. Or something like that – I may have paraphrased that a bit.

I turned to Jim and – fishing for a compliment – asked, “So, do think that was accurate?”

Not missing a beat he replied, “Would you like to take it again?”

I laughed so hard I snorted.

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I decided to upgrade my phone recently and decided today would be the day. So, over the past few days I had been exporting and deleting my photos and removing apps. I even cleaned up my old phone and found the original case.

Took it into the store and got a great deal on a new phone – went from a Galaxy S3 to an S6. Which is a bit like going from the NCC 1701 (from the rebooted move, let’s be fair) to the NCC 1701-D.

I got a wireless charging station, screen protector, and a case for free and saved a bit on my monthly bill.

The only problem was how long it took. It took a while to move over the photos – apparently, I hadn’t actually deleted them from the super secret recycle bin. And then the text messages…

Apparently, I had accumulated 9,000 text messages.

Yeah.

We all know I’m kinda wordy and I had had the phone a while, but sheesh – 9,000?

The clerk suggested I go get a snack and come back in a half-hour. I got a cookie and green tea from Panara bread and spent 5 minutes in Rue 21/Rue Guy before deciding again that I’m too old and uncool to shop there – then went back to pick up my phone.

Today has been re-setting up the phone and installing apps. It’s a cool phone and I’m happy with the purchase.

And those 2 hours being off-line?

[shudder]

I got invited to Jim’s brother’s house for thanksgiving. We got there a little late and pretty much as soon as we walked in the door, his brother was handing me a giant fork and a craving knife – and aiming me at the turkey.

Now, I don’t know if this was some kind of Guest of Honor thing or if I’ve somehow convinced his brother that I know everything, but putting me in charge of carving the turkey is a terrible, terrible idea. My knowledge was limited to about a 30 second video of a professional chef that I watched two days ago. Also, I like my fruits and veggies raw and meats heavily processed. I know, intellectually, that turkey doesn’t start as thinly sliced deli meat, but I’m just not equipped to carve it myself.

At least I didn’t have to kill it.

So, I dug in there and started working over that turkey. To my astonishment, I sort of got the job done. There was turkey to eat along with the rest of the side dishes and no one went away hungry or complained about my ineptitude. Huh.
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After lunch, Jim’s nephew wanted my help in installing mods for Minecraft. These are independently written programs that extend the gameplay of the core game and can do things like add in more textures to the blocks or new gear and weapons. It took a little bit, but I figured out what files we needed and where they needed to go. It worked and he was super excited.

On the one hand, it was pretty cool to figure out how it all worked and get things going – and he was, as I mentioned, super excited. And I mean SUPER EXCITED!!!!!!

On the other… teaching a Minecraft addict how to install mods is a lot like saying to cocaine addict, “Hey, have you considered trying crack?”

He spent much of the rest of the afternoon blowing up villagers with a 5 story tall mecha-suit. His sister and I played card games – my experience with the games was a pretty even match for her ruthlessness.

She’s 10.

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Jim decided that he wanted to go to Home Depot today for Black Friday to get a couple of mirrors for his living room. I figured I would go along since I wanted to pick up a couple of….wait….

Why is so dang cold in here? I’m sorry, but I just realized that my thermostat knows it’s Friday and I should be at work right now. BRB…

…anyway… Right – extension cords.

We figured, “It’s Home Depot – how bad could it be?”

Sigh.

The line waiting to get in was stretched the length of the building. We got there just before 6 and went to the back of the line and waited a few minutes before we were led – like cattle, perhaps – into the welcoming arms of commercialism and home improvement.

There were clerks at the door who provided wildly vague or inaccurate directions to anyone that asked. And despite them, we eventually found the mirrors. Jim picked out two and stayed put while I went after cords. We met up and went through the self check-out with very little delay.

I guess I expected the worst, but it’s a huge store and once people got inside they just kinda spread out. No fist fights over 50% off grills or throw-downs in kitchen tile.

Kinda anti-climactic, actually.

I got stopped at a sobriety checkpoint last night. We were on our way back from picking up Jim’s traditional thanksgiving parade Krispy Kreams and suddenly there were orange barrels everywhere and only one lane was open. I figured it was just more random road work, but Jim pointed out all the police and we realized what was really going on.

I slowed to a stop and waited my turn – then pulled up to one of the officers and rolled down my window.

He greeted us and shown a flashlight into the car. He then said, “I see you’re with the red cross,” (because of my red cross blood donor jacket) and I politely corrected him and said I was just a frequent donor. I could have let it ride, but if he’d quizzed me I was hosed.

He asked for my license and I got that out and handed it to him. A quick look and he handed it back – then said it was clear that neither of had been drinking because couldn’t smell any alcohol in the car.

The officer then sent us on our way and I merged into traffic and drove off.

Now, here are my problems with all of this:

1. What are the odds that someone who has been drinking – at 7 o’clock in the evening – will be driving down that road? There were plenty of opportunities to turn down another street before that checkpoint and their success rate must be terrible.

2. The assumption is that I had been drinking. Why check my car otherwise? If the assumption – innocent until proven guilty here – is that I’m not drinking, then why stop us? Why stop anyone? I wasn’t doing anything wrong other than driving down that particular stretch of road at that time.

3. If I had been drinking, was the flashlight check around my car going to reveal an open container? How screwed up do you have to be to not hide that? Seriously.

4. He didn’t smell alcohol so we were free to go. I might have been high as a freaking kite on all kinds of other crap, but his nose was the key and we “smelled” okay.

In the grand scheme of things, this wasn’t a huge deal and didn’t take a huge amount of time.

But:

1. Was this the best use of the half dozen officers (and the additional crew to set up the barrels and signs) time? If there was anything better and more productive they could have been doing – why weren’t they doing that?

2. What is the success rate of such a checkpoint? It must be astonishingly low.  Was it just for the illusion of safety? (“We’re keeping drunk drivers off the road!”)

3. Is this even freaking legal? There’s no way there’s any kind of probable cause to even stop me and ask for my ID – just for being out driving.

As we drove off, Jim said we should have offered them some doughnuts – though I doubt they would have appreciated the humor in that. As I was writing this I realized I could have done the “These are not the droids you are looking for” hand wave – but they might not have enjoyed the stormtrooper comparison.

So, I’m cranky about this, but in the grand scheme I don’t really have a good reason, I guess.

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I watched about 7 minutes of the Macy’s parade this morning. Right up until a cloyingly earnest child actress gushed about playing such “a legendary role” and how it’s been her lifelong dream (she’s 8) to see the Macy’s parade in person. Between that and Al Roker, I knew I was’t going to last long and wisely found other things to do with my time. There was just a little bit too much, “I’M SO EXCITED TO BE HERE BECAUSE I’M SO EXCITED TO BE HERE!” and “I’m smiling so hard my face hurts!”

Yeah, I’m a cynic.  Not much of a fan of the holidays – other than Halloween – but I’m dang good at buying or making presents for people.   So, I’m about 75% Grinch, I think.

There are a couple of gaps in the switchboard coverage schedule and when the first one happened we panicked a bit. Well, I panicked.

We called around to try and find the former supervisor to no avail and finally I just sat down, put on the headset, hoped I understood the controls – and took the calls.

And I rocked.

I was polite, friendly, helpful, and emphatic. One of my co-workers stepped in to help too and between the two of us we had it covered.

The next time we had a gap, I brought along my laptop and kept going with my regular job.

The most interesting bit? How gratifying it was.

All day long I’m confronted with huge problems: systems down, sites needing work, training issues, etc. But these were small problems – someone needs transcripts, another has an admissions question, or wants to talk to a specific person.

Those small problems were no less important than my website work, but were so quickly solvable. Even the people that were upset were okay once I just listened. And cared – if only for a moment.

I had been dreading covered that switchboard again – but no longer. It had been my first campus job waaaay back in the day and I’m enjoying the challenge of solving all those small problems again.

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Our group has card access to our new office – but not to the building. It’s usually open by the time we get into the office, but it will be a problem during the off hours if we need access.

So, when we got an email from the Lock Shop telling us our keys would be ready for pick-up in one hour… we waited an hour and then rushed over there. Or ambled. I would have rushed, but my natural walking speed is much faster than my coworkers.

Except the keys we got didn’t work in any door in the building.

We checked.

Back to the Lock shop for new keys and these now opened the door to the office complex.

The same door that our keycards will already open.

As far as the building – nope, still no keys for that.

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My family celebrated an early thanksgiving this weekend. We went down Friday night after work, then stayed the night and spent the day with my folks and my sister and her family. My nieces were fun and the food was good – and we played some seriously cut-throat games of “No Thanks” and “Qwirkle”. I lost terribly at the first, but I’m all over those brightly colored shapes and patterns of Qwirkle.

Yes, I’m a toddler.

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We drove back this morning after breakfast and I spent the afternoon working on Christmas presents for friends and family. There was a lot of paper and glue flying around – and I finished a really amazing gift that I’ll post pictures of once I actually give it.

I’m glad origami was a hobby that stuck with me. It’s kind of amazing to take a simple piece of paper and transform it. And then combine those shapes into new ideas with another fold, a print on paper, or just a different perspective.

Still got more work to do, but I’ll have plenty of time over the thanksgiving break to work on these.

I did a little yardwork over the weekend. My goal is to be slightly better than one neighbor and slightly worse than the other. Somewhere between, “Wow, that yard looks amazing!” and “Well, at least he’s trying,”

Took me a couple of hours to get to that sweet spot on Sunday. Raked leaves, cut down some plants, and put away the patio furniture. I would have helped the neighbor, but he didn’t get started until I was already down and heading for the shower.

The only downside was that I’d recently hit my bad elbow on a towel rack and the movement of the rake fired up some weird and painful nerves in my arm. I worked around it, but it was a little rough.

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If anyone heard a loud crash recently near my house, that would have been the sound of my printer being tossed out the second story window. Okay, maybe not, but I seriously considered it.

I freaking hate printers. I don’t print that often and when I do it’s always a hassle. The most recent affront has been every other line not quite printing. I think I could actually format my way around that, but instead I’m just going to run through the rest of the diagnostics that seem designed to waste ink. My printing project is a small bit of text, but it seems determined to be a big deal.

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Today was the big office move. We got started a little after 7 and went at it pretty solid until a break for lunch at 11. I helped my boss move his stuff and mine, then loaded up my car for one last trip to get the rest of my stuff. One of my co-workers moved his stuff and the three of us were settled in by the afternoon. My other co-worker will join us tomorrow as soon as his new office is cleared.

It was a lot of work – even though we didn’t have to move much furniture. I’ve got my standing desk going and I think the new space is going to work out well.

Tomorrow we’ll get our students set up and I’ll be taking over the student switchboard. And I’ll need to get caught up from my downtime before my computer was up and running.

I think this is a good move, but it will be weird for a bit. And I’m wondering how long it will take me to remember to go to the new building in the morning.

My vehicle registration isn’t due until January, but I got the notice about it along with the eCheck reminder and decided to go ahead and get those taken care of. I started off with an oil change since I was due, then over to the eCheck station. Things went okay – except when they wouldn’t touch the hood to open it to check on the liters for the engine size. Since I don’t know that off the top of my head, I had to open the hood for them – some kind of weird rule – and then handed off the paperwork and went to wait.

The test was nearly done when the three employees closed the door on me – in the waiting area – and stood outside in a conferenced discussion.

After a few minutes, they came back in and the printer fired up a PASS. No idea what it was about, maybe they just like to mess with every 5th person that is certain to pass the test.

The next day, with all the paperwork ready, I head over to the BMV. I went right after work and there was no line. I was in and out of there with my sticker in about 5 minutes.

I’ve heard horror stories about the BMV – in fact, there was one going on in the line next to mine. And they all amount to about the same thing:

People not having their shit together.

Seriously, none of this is that complicated. The person in the line next to mine was trying to get their car registered for the first time – without the title or the memorandum title. Why would you even try that?

Ugh.

So, I was on my way in record time and got my sticker put on that evening. One less thing to worry about when the cold and snow hit.

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Our department at work – already having switched divisions – is now physically moving across campus. I’ve been busily packing up my office, my former colleague’s office, the student assistant areas, and the books/cables/software/lamps/etc. for the rest of office.

It’s weird. I’ve worked in this building nearly my entire time here and now I’m heading back to the building where I started as a student assistant. Different job, different responsibilities, and I’m certainly a different person – but if I was the kind of person that believed in omens, I think I’ve be nervous at the “full circle-ness of things”.

I’m also going to be taking on a new supervisory role and it’s not exactly a well-oiled machine that I’m stepping into. Actually gave me a little trouble sleeping last night.

So, surrounded by boxes here and planning the “GREAT SHUTTING DOWN” for later this afternoon – which is more about unplugging things and packing them up, though the shutting down is clearly step one.

After I get some snacks. Man, I’ve got the munchies something fierce. And this right after lunch, too. The swim must have taken a lot out of me.
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Also?  This is post number 1,200.   Dang, I’m verbose or something.