Failure to Deliver

In the past two days, I have faced two dissappointments by a company not delivering what I paid for. The first incident was when I came home from work expecting to find my new computer chips on the stoop of my rear door as my UPS tracking report indicated. But when I searched the back door and then around the entire house the package was nowhere to be found. I then questioned my roommate and landlord to see if they have seen my package worth $250 that UPS just left sitting outside my house. So I called them up and they are going to have to do an investigation and maybe I'll get my package in a couple of weeks.

The second incident was last night as we went to Midway airport for our annual new years weekend trip to Boston. After entering the airport we noticed that our flight was three hours delayed, then four hours delayed, then five hours delayed and then cancelled. We had the option to fly standby and compete against everyone on our scheduled flight to get there. But instead we did what all winners do: give up and go home.

Both incidents were just really dissappointing. I think what really makes these let-downs dissappointing was the excitement that built up as the dates approached only to come home empty handed.

Rumors

How rumors get started always seems like a mystery, but usually it is not. Someone just says something. For example someone may say that a coworker (lets call him Russ) went to magic camp when he was gone from work for a couple of days. A comment like that would spread like wildfire through a place such as my working environment. These people are worse than school girls. One comment is made and within ten minutes everyone is in on the joke. And although rumors can really screw someone over (as it will tomorrow), it doesn't seem so bad when you know that the other person would do the same thing to you.

Sinking In

I find it very interesting that when you are learning something new, time off really helps you understand it better. You can push your brain to the limit focusing on your new material and just get overloaded. But then after you take some time off and you come back to it your understanding is remarkably higher. I guess your brain just needs time to process information in the background while your attention is focused on something else. Perhaps sleeping on something really works.

Tis the season...

to get fat! Ah the holidays. The time of year when food and drink are plenty and we all seem to lose all sense of self control and indulge ourselves in eating binges. We eat and drink, all the while justifying our weight gain with the typical, "Oh well, it's the holdays." Personally I have put on 10 pounds in the past month, even before the holidays started. I am dreading to see how fat I get come the January. At least I can take comfort in the fact that I will have a New Years resolution, which seldom makes it past the first thirdy days of the new year.

Present Inequalities

Christmas is the time for giving. *As long as the person your are giving to spent the same amount of money on your present as you did theirs. It seems this is the case quite often, but it really shouldn't be. Some say that it is the thought that counts and that is probably true. But if someone gives us an expensive gift it can be hard for us to accept it graciously, despite the fact a gracious acceptance is all the giver really wants in return. Instead givers may get the disappointing, "this is too much." This seemingly common response I do not fully understand. Everyone likes getting stuff, but when we do get gifts we can feel some sort of inferiority if we did not respond in kind. Perhaps expensive gift giving is subconsciously interpreted as some sort of status ranking, when most of the time it is just an attempt by one person to make another person happy. Everyone wants to be the good giving person, but if no one will be a good recipient then giving loses all of its value.

Best Week Ever

This has been my best week ever. Along with being a coverboy (see Local Celebrity) and getting bathroom privileges (see I Have Arrived...) and getting offically promoted, my bonus amount was twice what I thought it may be. Some people say that money doesn't really make you happy, but it sure seem to help. And the near future looks even brighter. I do not have a full week of work for about a month. After this weekend I am leaving the city on trips to St. Louis for Christmas and Boston for New Years the next two weekends. I hope that this streak keeps up for a little while longer.

I Have Arrived...

How do you know when you have made it to the big time? The obvious answer is where you go to take a crap. Since I have officially achieved my promotion I get executive bathroom privileges. Unlike the old bathroom I used to use this one has several spoils. The first thing that you notice when you walk in is the tile work. The walls and floor are covered with decorative colored tiles unlike the plain white tiles in my old bathroom. Instead of plain white sinks this bathroom has a marble facade. Very fancy. The second thing that you notice is the presence of mouthwash by the sink. Not only is there mouthwash but there are two different flavors of mouthwash. Unfortunately as I approached the stall, I didn't notice any improvements. I was half expecting a heated pads on the toliet seats. And this bathroom still had the same old crappy toliet paper. But I did have my option of hot and cold for the sink water, unlike only having lukewarm water available in the old bathroom. I probably do not deserve the executive bathroom privileges since I have little idea of how to do my new job, but I guess it doesn't seem that strange when you consider that Sadaam had a golden toliet.

Local Celebrity

For this week and this week only I am a local celebrity. You can see me in action at a newstands across the city. What can I say, they like to put the beautiful people on the cover. I don't think that anyone would notice that it is me, unless prehaps I pose. I am probably just more aware of this particular newspaper but I am seeing it a lot more than I can every remember. But it's kind of cool to think that there are thousands of pictures of me circulating all over the city.

Only in Dreams

So much of my thought over the last couple of weeks has been my work that I have started to put my dream on the backburner. But if I have learned one lesson tonight it is that you should never forget about your dream. The promise of money and grandure can make you lose focus temporarly, but once you get a reminder of what you really want your life to be you eyes are opened again. I had a moment like that tonight. After a streneous day of working I had to sit in a classroom and take a test on facts that I only need to know for about three days. By the time that I was walking to my first Chicago Beer Society meeting, I had a pounding stress headache. Since I spend all day watching people treat each other like crap, I got worried that the people at this meeting would reject me or treat me how I see people treat each other every day. But once I got there and identified the brewers I realized how kindly they treat each other. I even got to meet a celebrity in the brewing world, Randy Mosher. On a completely unrealated subject, kind of regret how unimpressed I seem around people that I find highly impressive. In this instance one of the higher ups in the society told me that Randy would have really like to try one of my experiemental brews that I brought along with me. But by that time he had left. I will regret it until next month when I get the chance to offer him experimental brew again. But back to my main point. My dream got a big boost when I had a guy who wrote an article in a beer magazine say that my experimental beer was pretty good and that I need to keep the recipe. I recieved a great deal of confidence when someone else told me that one of my beers was the best of all of the beers they tasted at the event. Then I started to think about how I could become one of these people that cared about more than taking someone else's money and do something that really made people happy, instead of my current path which is to treat people like they are nothing more that an opprotunity to expoit for money. As long as I am able to stay the course and remember where I want to end up I think that I will be okay. But if I get lost in the thought of taking the safe route (which don't get me wrong would lead to a pretty good life - financially at least) my life will not be nearly as fulfilling.

Transition Phase

With my promotion at work has come a lenghty transition phase which is beginning to wrap up. One of the biggest challenges with transition phases is that your tasks change so rapidly that it keeps you on you toes for quite some time. From jumping through hoops to doing some serious growth, transition phases have a little bit of everything and seem to endure much longer than you think they will. Training a repalcement has been challenging and a little frightening. I found that letting go of your old tasks is harder than I would have thought. You want them done right but know that the new person needs to learn how to do them. I know this and tried quite hard to allow them to learn by doing but I often find myself fighting a desire to just do it myself as it seems easier at the time. And then there is learning your new job. New challenges are shaking up my life at work and also seem to carry over to my thoughts in my off time. I generally try to avoid thinking about work while I am at home, but since I have been learning my new job, I find my brain working to solve work problems when I least expect (and sometimes desire) it. Then there is all the crap that you have to do that muddles the important tasks. I had to recall my work and residential histroy for the last ten years. To frame how ridiculous this was for me, I had to put my elementry school on an application. Then there is a qualifying exam that I have to take tomorrow. I had a review session today to prepare for what would be on the test. This was a major hoop to jump through. Not only did the teacher essentially tell us what the questions were on the test, but he also gave us some answers directly because the answers for the test were wrong since the test has not been updated for about a decade. Apparently no one cares enough about this test to even make sure that the answer key is current. The strangest thing about transition phases is you have this major shake-up from your routine that challenges, scares, and annoys you only to eventually come out with a new routine on the other side. I continuously find it really interesting how essential routine is to everything we do (See 'Programmed Responses')

A Monday and Then Some

What makes a Monday worse? Ah here is an idea. How about the train stop feet from your house closing the exact same weekend that the weather turns miserable for the winter. Adding the extra freezing cold walk (which quickly became a run) to start off my week made this particular Monday that much worse. Perhaps it won't seem that bad when I freeze my ass off every single morning all winter.

What the Hell?

Last night I caught part of VH-1's "Big in '06" and witnessed Paris Hilton accept an award for Big Outlaw. The reason that she recieved this award was for her recent arrest for drunk driving. I don't know if I can live contently in a country where people get awards for driving drunk.

Toys on a Plane

For our flight home from Thanksgiving in Florida we flew USA 3000. Upon waiting for boarding my travel companion made a comment about how stupid this little dog was inside a suitcase. It got a lot more stupid when we all boarded. The damn thing sounded like a squeaky toy as it yelped for the entire flight. The entire time I was thinking about what I would say if I actually confronted the owner. After two and a half hours of squeaking we landed and headed to pick up our luggage. As we waited I saw the little dog and its inconsiderate owner. I thought about saying something until I say another little dog, and then another. Apparently there had been at least three of these little stupids dogs contained in suitcases aboard. I don't know what the rules are for carrying on dogs, but I think that they should certainly be changed.

Shamu

During our Thanksgiving trip to Flordia we made our way to Sea World and of course if you go to Sea World you must see the Shamu show. Or so I thought. I remember when the Shamu show used to be about education and having a little kid feed the whale. This is not what we found. Instead we found a choreographed musical where the whales had a supporting role. The trainers had some good monologues about how the two species yerned to come together to share cultures. Personally I think that they just like the fish the trainers feed them. Also the kid who would normally feed the whale got a free five dollar whale tail mediallion and didn't even interact with the whales. Lastly I learned a killer whale dance that the crowd participated in. Overall the show went from being cute and informative to just plain laughable.

While we were sitting out on the beach in Flordia we noticed a school of dolphins swimming within a couple hundred feet of the shoreline. We really enjoyed seeing them in their natural habitat. They seemed very playful and free. Upon attempting to communicate with the whales using the dance we learned at Sea World we were horribly unsucessful. If only we had some fish.

Then a couple days later I read about and incident in the San Diego Sea World where one of the killer whales attacked it's trainer. It pulled the trainer underwater for several minutes at a time. I suppose that the killer whale was just trying to share its culture with us. More likely the trainer didn't give it enough fish. If only he had given it more fish.