Monthly Archives: May 2007

For years and years I answered the phone at the old office.

Someone phones and asks for the attorney, the attorney is not in, I convey this information and offer to take a message. Person leaves message. When available attorney checks messages and returns call.

These days I take fewer incoming calls but when I say the attorney is not in, virtually every caller asks: Is there any way I can get ahold of him?

Really? The type of law we practice very rarely involves emergency situations. Unless someone’s got a kidney on ice or a man with a hood is 60 seconds away from flipping the switch on the electric chair what’s wrong with leaving a message? And like I’m going to freely give out cell numbers anyway.

If he’s not in the office, it’s generally not because he’s sitting around somewhere watching sports or working on his tan. He’s on a plane, or in a meeting, or talking to clients who would like his attention right now.

One time someone phoned in a dither because she needed to order his lunch for a meeting later in the week. This gave me the opportunity to work out my secret inner hostility against lawyers by ordering the diet plate. “No, he doesn’t touch carbs. Green salad with lemon. Thanks!”

A couple of weeks ago we had an amazing thunder shower with deluge of hail. It was the kind of storm that everyone talked about for days.

For the past couple of years I’ve worked in a tall building on the 18th floor. I grew up in earthquake country so there’s a part of me that believes being in a tall building is wrong but I have to admit, I enjoy the view. My office faces north and I can see the river and lots of bridges and a preview of my commute home before I head out the door.

It was amazing to watch the storm move across the sky and the thunder and lightning felt like it was right above my head. From up here the hail looked like very heavy rain. From what I heard, people on the ground said it was pretty crazy. I’m not feeling particularly poetic at the moment so you’ll have to take my word for it, it was cool.

As a kid, thunder and lightning terrified me and this fear lasted long after I should have outgrown it. Once, in Orleans, there was a 10 star, theater in the round thunder and lightning extravaganza. I was in my twenties. While a part of me enjoyed the amazing scene, the rest of me was still that little kid with the trembling knees wishing it would all be over.

My boyfriend, thinking if I was better informed I’d be less afraid, asked me if I knew what thunder was. “Yes,” I said, and then realizing that I’d probably learned this from a cartoon or something I mumbled, “It’s when two clouds bump together.”

I’m not afraid anymore (we rarely get thunder showers) but if a flash and/or rumble wakes me in the middle of the night my heart will pound a little.

When I was little my Grandma and Grandpa had a record with a rain storm on it. I wish I could remember better because maybe there was music, too. But there was the sound of rain and then a rumble of thunder which would always make me shiver. And then at the end a long lonely whistle from a train.

Yay. One project off the list.

All the winter clothes and accessories have been moved to the back of the closet or stored in a plastic bin. I even found a winter hat that I misplaced back in January.

The summer stuff, what little there is, is clean and ironed. I do this thing where I think I will toss old cruddy stuff next year after I buy new stuff to replace it. Then next year rolls around and I don’t get around to replacing anything and I end up using the old stuff thinking it’s good enough and I’ll get around to buying new stuff later. Then at the end of the season I think, well, now I should buy cheap clearance stuff for next year since all this old stuff is way beyond its expiration date. But I never get around to it and end up getting by with the old stuff.

I like new things. I just hate shopping.

I also packed up some stuff to go to the donation bin. I have a hard time with this. Some stuff I hate to part with because it was a gift even if I don’t like it, it’s not my style or doesn’t fit me. Other stuff is in fine condition and it seems a shame to get rid of it but I don’t love it because it doesn’t feel good to wear it or whatever. Who can explain why you just don’t like certain clothes?

I saw this sticker on a car downtown on the day I was walking to the farmer’s market. Remember the day I was extra cranky?

It felt like a message for me.

I’d also like to report that I saw Mr. Heron again yesterday morning so either there are more than one flying around downtown or he forgot something and had to run back home to get it.

This is another good one I saw at the library this morning. I love the library. I returned a bunch of books that I didn’t even read or feel bad about. That’s my personal growth mission for the summer. Learning to put books back without guilt.

I finally started that closet organizing project that I’ve been talking about and I’ve done the part where I’ve taken a bunch of things out and placed them in strategic piles around the bed and floor so now I’ve got a giant mess. I knew it was a mistake to come here and just check my mail for a second and see what’s accumulated in the google-reader, and oh, how about a quick blog post and then check the bank balance and maybe take care of that gift I need to buy.

I’m leaving now.

When I’m extra hormonal (really, you didn’t notice the all-whine super cranky format of the last few days?) I become psychotic about personal space.

I’m a nut about personal space on a good day anyway but yesterday I went to the Farmer’s Market to get my sausage, I’ll have to take a picture of this sandwich one day because it’s the best food ever and I don’t love meat, and there was this mouth-breather in line behind me crowding my space. He was so close he could have dipped my hair in his coffee.

It was a nice day. This is a friendly town. In a normal world I would have struck up a conversation with the guy about the sunshine and long line and how life-changing these sausages are. Instead, I stood there grinding my teeth and thinking evil thoughts about his damp breath on my neck.

Oh well, I won’t bore you with the details but I think the mood will be changing here shortly and not a moment too soon.

I’ll end this on a more positive note. I’m no bird expert but there is what I believe is a Blue Heron that lives downtown. Who knows the habits of the heron, this isn’t the Discovery Channel, maybe there are more than one. But at least once or twice a week in the early morning I see it flying through downtown and sometimes it passes right by my window. I can’t possibly convey what an amazing sight it is to see this enormous bird float by so gracefully. Fabulous photo, not by me, here.

Today’s Dining In section features an article about Kool-Aid Pickles. I’ve never heard of such a thing. I didn’t even know they still made Kool-Aid. I’m sure my 9 year old self would love them but my old lady self is not so enthusiastic.

So, customer satisfaction surveys.

Really corporate world, you can extract valuable information from a series of questions with responses something like:

Totally Satisfied, Satisfied, Somewhat Satisfied, Unsatisfied, No Answer

(When they’re doing it over the phone it’s always fun to ask, what were the choices again?)

Toyota has a paper survey that’s 4 pages of those questions. I started to fill it out once and after 10 questions wrote in, “How valuable is my time and energy?”

And they never ask you anything useful or anything where you could explain an actual problem.

>Were you satisfied with the way you were greeted?

Unless they throw rocks at me, why wouldn’t I be satisfied? If they’re super busy and I have to wait, maybe I’m annoyed but what are they supposed to do? Be less busy?

For my stupid body work on my car I received *two* form thank you notes from Kadels (body work shop) and two customer service surveys, one from Kadels and one from Farmers (insurance). Are you kidding me?

How about instead of wasting all these resources on follow up, make my repair cost less? The only thing I was unsatisfied with was the cost. I had three separate incidents that needed repair, two were covered by insurance, one not. Miraculously, the one I paid out of pocket they decided after a review I needed to pay an extra $40. Really, it was worth everyone’s time and energy to squeeze another $40 out of me? That’s what I get for not taking their stupid rental car. And for being honest. Next time all the scrapes on the car can be from a hit and run.

I’ve noticed that when I get a car work done at the dealership, if there is the slightest blip in the transaction, maybe I have to wait too long, or there’s some disagreement about the repair, there’s never a customer service follow up. But when all goes well, they’re dying to know what I think.

About a month ago I fired up the Ann Taylor website on my lunch hour to look at some pants and it wouldn’t let me look unless I upgraded some plugin. I think if you’re going to use the Internet as a tool to sell your wares, you should cater to a wide range of technological capabilities. If I can’t look at pants on your website because I need a plugin, I’m not going to download the plugin, I’m going to go look at pants somewhere else.

I sent their customer service a quick note with my error message and browser info and that basic sentiment and I got this moronic response that basically indicated I was too stupid to use my browser and suggested I get help from my Internet Service Provider or my Systems Administrator.

I decided it wasn’t my job to teach Ms. Taylor about usability and that was that. The next day I find a customer service satisfaction follow up in my inbox. I ignored it. That afternoon, I received a follow up to my customer service follow up reminding me I could participate in their lame-brained survey. I think Ann needs a new consultant on her Internet strategy.

1. Locally grown, sustainable and organic.
I appreciate the principle, I totally support our local farmer’s market but we’re at a point where I’ve heard enough about the plucky couple who decided to spend year only eating what they could gather from within 5 miles of their home, Safeway excluded, and are now telling their story of courage and sacrifice but how great it was to save the world even though they were miserable and sucking on sticks for most of February.

2. Artisanal Anything. (Microsoft Turd doesn’t recognize artisanal. Hm.)
See above. I love the idea that people are taking the time to carefully make yummy foods from choice ingredients but every week the paper has an article about some plucky couple who gave up their 10 trillion dollar a year income to simplify their lives and now live in a rural area and work 12 gloriously gratifying hours a day on their honeybee farm carefully crafting heirloom Valencia-strawberry honey infused with Avignon amber thyme and Malasian treefrog peppercorns. Snore.

3. Recipes with Crostini
What’s crostini? A giant crouton? A piece of toast? It’s like something you put in the recipe to make it sound fancy, like chutney or chipotle before it was a flavor they even have at McDonalds. Likewise serving suggestions that include “crusty bread.” Let people decide for themselves what kind of bread (or as Steve would say, filler) to serve. Maybe they want uncrusty Wonderbread.

4. Shuttered
Saying that a closed business has been shuttered. Why not just say closed? It’s right up there with coffer for writing cliches that sound like fancier writing but are really still cliches.

I have been meaning to get over to Holiday’s for a Sunday yoga workshop for sometime now. I’ve only been there once in the past year.

I’m meeting a yoga buddy over there today. The workshop is from 12-3 which kind of dictates the entire day.

I did 45 minute gardner this morning and got the pumpkins in and while I was out there found a million other things to do but didn’t get far.

By the time I get home this afternoon it will be time to think about dinner. Jeez, the weekend always zips by so fast.

I was hoping I’d get to this before the race.

For reasons that I couldn’t begin to explain, I’ve suddenly become interested in horse racing.

Since today was Kentucky Derby 133 I had to bet on my first Derby.

I picked my horses last week and the person whose office is a mountain of paper offered to show me how to place the bet (which I kept referring to as voting) and we went to an off track betting place downtown.

This was among the most depressing places I’ve ever set foot in. The room was like the rec-room in a halfway house (I suppose you could argue that’s what it is) and a dozen or so, lived-hard type guys sat slack faced in front of a wall of TVs with cigarettes hanging out of their mouths. One of the guys was on oxygen.

They just remodeled this place. Apparently it was more depressing before.

There’s a bar adjacent that I did not see so maybe it’s fun in there. We found out you couldn’t place bets until Friday and I wasn’t going to be downtown on Friday so I would have to place the bet on my own. There’s a racetrack not far from our house.

This morning I almost talked myself out of going over there because I’m not the kind of person who gets in the car on a Saturday morning to go and place a bet. But I did anyway because I picked my horses and what if they won and I didn’t bet? And while I was over there, I could stop at Lowe’s and buy dirt and manure and mulch for the pumpkins.

I’ve only been to Portland Meadows one other time. It was May 1995 and my future husband took me to see the Grateful Dead. I think Chuck Berry also played. I remember weird people and being unbelievably hot. I’m sure my husband will come running upstairs with a disk after reading this post so we can re-live every moment.

This morning the scene at Portland Meadows wasn’t a whole lot different from the downtown betting place but for some reason it wasn’t depressing. I made my bet and then wandered around and checked everything out. Then I waited and watched another race on the wall of TVs. The average patron, at that point, was a man of advanced age wearing a sweatshirt and a trucker cap. The ratio of men to women was about 20 to 1. I don’t know what it was like this afternoon when they started running live races. But I want to find out.

I didn’t win any money but I had a great time watching. I’ll be back.