tangentwoman

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Oh, John Edwards

Did you not say that your presidential campaign would be dependent on your wife's good health?

And, allowing the crasser side of my brain to take over for the moment, doesn't this give you a perfect out to excuse yourself now from a race you weren't going to win anyway, and now you're really not going to win, by the very fact that you're continuing it?

Wandering all alone, without food or toilet...

I could only think of the part of Meet the Parents when Mr. Jinx goes missing when I read this blurb of a story that will be in People magazine this week:

Lost in rugged woods for three days – and without his ADD medication – Boy Scout Michael Auberry, 12, survives on Pringles and water

Seriously? Seriously.

Yes, I am moderately impressed by a person who survives in the woods for three days (although I think Boy Scouts is supposed to teach survival skills and stuff -- it's not just about homosexuality being evil, right?), because I would most likely panic and keel over at the first sight of bear poop on the ground, or the sound of a branch snapping nearby. And if this kid survived without, I don't know, his heart medication, or anti-seizure medication, even asthma medication, I'm super-impressed, and want to read about how he managed to survive. But ADD? Not so much.

Sharico is 30, Birdy!

Happy birthday, Shari!

I met Shari at the end of junior year in high school, the night of the OJ Bronco chase. How'd we get so old so fast?!

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

Making nice

So, I pretty much got reamed out today at work for being overly pushy, and it made me want to kick and scream and throw stuff, and it put a big knot in my stomach to think that I'm being perceived negatively, even by someone who's pretty much just exercising petty tyranny. So I whined about it to two different people, explaining why I needed to be pushy, how much I hate being pushy, how important something really has to be for me actually to be pushy, and how offended I was at the implication that not only was I being pushy, but that I am pushy.

One of my sounding boards listened sympathetically and told me to blow it off, because that's just how this person is, and there's nothing I can do about it, and I should just let it go. And my second sounding board told me I should buy the offender/offended some chocolate as a peace offering, because I need to make nice and be on her good side moving forward.

I thought the chocolate would be going overboard, particularly because this person is certainly savvy enough to recognize a bribe a mile away, and likely to hate me even more for so blatantly trying to get back on her good side. But I took the spirit of that advice, and sent an apologetic email (resisting, mostly, the urge to plead my case and explain why I was right and she was wrong). And even though it seems like the right thing to have done -- I got a prompt reply saying it was all good -- I felt sort of icky sending it, because it was a teensy bit disingenuous. I still struggle a little with office politics, and the need to work the system and do what's needed to get along or get ahead.

I think I struggle for a couple of reasons. First, it's some resentment that not everyone can just do their job and act like grown-ups and treat everyone with some modicum of respect. And it seems wrong that those of us who play by the rules should have to bend over backwards to accommodate those who didn't quite learn anything in kindergarten. And, second -- and this was the one nagging at the back of my head today -- is a conversation I had when I got my new job within my organization, about six months ago. The conversation during which one of my co-workers suggested that I got promoted primarily because I play the game and I'd sold out, which she refuses to do, because she has too much integrity.

Which left me sort of speechless at the time, and I sort of wrote it off as sour grapes, but on some level, I am mindful of that. I don't think it's true, or fair. Yes, I've aligned myself with many of the right people at work; I'm friendly to and with people who are influential, but that's not actually by design. I just happen to like a lot of those people. So, when confronted today with the notion of getting on someone's good side simply because of what she can do for me, it felt all wrong.

But, still, the right thing to do. Maybe I'm selling out, and maybe I'm compromising my principles, but it seems like it's not the worst thing in the world to make nice for the sake of greater peace and harmony in the workplace.

Wednesday, March 07, 2007

A guest entry from my page-a-day calendar

I'm as much of a stickler for the rules as anyone, but on this one I agree that there need to be some exceptions:

ending a sentence with a preposition
The prohibition against ending a sentence with a preposition is a fine example of an artificial "rule" that ignores standard usage. The famous witticism usually attributed to Winston Churchill makes the point well: "This is the sort of English up with which I cannot put."

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Party tricks

This weekend, I went to a family birthday party for my nephew, who just turned four (it is so weird, by the way, that my oldest nephew is turning TEN this summer, and my youngest niece is rapidly approaching her second birthday. I am feeling super-old). Somehow, as the kids get older, they seem to be getting slightly more mellow, or maybe I'm just growing more accustomed to the chaos. But in any event, for the first time in a long time at a Tangent family gathering, I was able to have a handful of conversations with other grown-ups that were not interrupted by screaming, crying, and/or persistent shirt-tugging accompanied by a small voice repeating, "Mommy? Mommy? MOMMY!"

The other odd thing was that my oldest nephew was obsessed with his discovery that he could contort his body in a way that no grown-up can -- until my older sister proved him wrong, quite gleefully.

The idea is to stand up, hands clasped behind your back; then, without releasing your hands or sitting down, to move your hands down the back of your body until you can step through your hands. If you can get both feet through, you're successful.

I think our nephew's correct that most grown-ups can't do this; I think my sister has an incredibly narrow frame (I gave up in five seconds, after realizing there was no way I was making it over my hips), and unusually long, thin arms (monkey arms, she says), plus long fingers to boot.

But, please, give it a shot, and let me know if any of my post-adolescent readers can pull this off. Extra-credit if you can do it wearing dollar-store handcuffs (which my sister could not, and she's awfully bitter about it).

Knit one...

...and, that's it. We learn purling next week.

I finally started my knitting class last night, after having the first session canceled in September and having work conflicts when they rescheduled it in November. So I was extra-happy to show up last night and find six other women in the class and a goody bag filled with yarn, needles, and an incredibly unhelpful handout that ostensibly illustrated everything the beginner knitter needed to get started.

There were two of us duking it out for the worst-in-the-class distinction, but I think I pulled out a win by the end of the class, or certainly by the time I got home and managed to undo eight rows of knitting, leaving me with only about two and no idea how to get more started. I may be worse at knitting class than obedience training.

But, despite kind of sucking at it, I actually enjoyed the class, and I can see how people find knitting relaxing. I did not personally find it relaxing -- I found it terribly stressful -- but I can imagine that if one day I get the hang of it, I could fall into a rhythm that would lead me into a Zen-like state. Here's hoping!