Mindful Digressions

Out damn spot

“I want to show you something,” my wife said as she grabbed my hand and literally pulled me into the bathroom.  She positioned me so that I was standing right in front of the toilet.  “Look,” she said, more than a hint of irritation in her voice and her arms extended toward the toilet.

I looked down at the toilet.  It looked just as it always looks.  Even the toilet seat and cover were in the down position.  I knew my wife was trying to communicate something important to me but I had no idea what it was.  “What?” I asked.

“Are you kidding me?  Look closely,” she commanded, sounding totally exasperated.  I bent down a little closer toward the toilet and peered intently at the porcelain fixture.  After a few seconds I straightened up, shook my head, shrugged my shoulders, and put on my very best quizzical expression.

“Omigod!”  She was clearly infuriated.  “There, on the floor: yellow spots,” she said, pointing to the white tiles directly in front of the toilet.  Then, pointing to the area where the top of the toilet base and the tank meet, she growled, “There, behind the toilet seat: yellow spots!

She yanked open a cabinet door beneath the sink, pulled out a sponge, dampened it with water, squeezed it, and handed it to me.  “Since you are apparently incapable of peeing into the toilet, the least you can do is clean up those pee drops you leave all around the toilet.”  I dutifully swabbed the sponge around the base of the toilet and behind the toilet seat, cleaning up those pesky yellow spots that were virtually invisible to my naked eyes.

Okay, here’s the deal, ladies

The reality is that men and women pee differently.  Women pee while sitting down on the toilet seat.  It’s a virtual can’t miss situation.  And then, when finished, women tidy up by dabbing themselves with a piece of toilet paper to absorb any residual liquid that might still be lingering.  Neat, clean, and easy.

Men, on the other hand, pee standing up.  That means that there is a distance of at least two feet between, you know, that body part from which the pee emanates, and the rim of the toilet bowl.

The fact that the strength, speed, and arc of the stream all vary significantly during the course of leak-taking requires continuously having to make aiming adjustments throughout the process.  It’s like a friggin’ physics lab exam every time we gotta pee.

Then there’s the splash-back problem.  Imagine trying to fill a bucket from a garden hose when you’re holding the garden hose two or three feet from the bucket.  Guess what?  Some water is going to splash out of the bucket onto the ground.  It’s unavoidable.

Then there are those occasions, thankfully rare, when we experience the dreaded split stream.  When that happens, all bets are off.  Aim left?  Aim right?  Doesn’t matter.  The only way to deal with split stream is to use a funnel!

And by the way, men don’t use toilet paper to sop up residual pee at the end of the process.  Oh no.  We have to shake and jiggle our “thing” to make sure every last drop has been expelled.  After all, we don’t want any drops to dribble out after we stuff ourselves back into our pants.

Go, once again, to that garden hose analogy.  Just try shaking and jiggling the hose, even while standing right over the bucket, and not have any drops of water miss the bucket entirely.  Impossible.

So don’t pull a Lady Macbeth on your husbands, boyfriends, fathers, sons, and uncles.  Don’t obsess about those damn [yellow] spots you may happen to find on or around the toilet.  Seriously, given the challenging physics of peeing that we men have to deal with, we’re doing the best we can.

I felt the earth move...twice

It was around 2:45 p.m. local time.  I was walking out of my office at home when the sliding door that separates it from the hallway started to rattle.  I looked around for our cat, Colbert, because the rattling sound was similar to the sound it makes when he rubs up against the partially open sliding door.  Only this time it was more like he had run, full-force, into the door.  But Colbert was nowhere in sight.

“Did you feel that?” I heard our son call out.  “It was an earthquake.”

This was the first time that I have actually felt a quake since we took up residence in San Francisco.  There have been others, I’ve been told, but either I slept through them or they were virtually imperceptible.

Later that same day...

It was around 8:15 p.m. local time.  My wife and I were sitting on the couch watching some TV drama that we had recorded on our DVR when the sofa suddenly started to vigorously vibrate.  The shimmying lasted for only a few seconds, but the whole building shook, as if some large truck had rammed into it from the street below.

My wife and I looked at each other with wide eyes.  I yelled out to our son, who was at the back of the condo in his bedroom.  “Did you feel that?  It was another earthquake,” I definitively declared, now that I’m experienced at detecting such things.

The good news is that there was no damage to anything inside our condo.  The same can't be said, however, for a couple of cars that were parked beneath a tree branch that was apparently felled by the shaking earth beneath it.

Ah, so this is what it’s like to live in San Francisco!  Or wait.  Maybe it’s just the beginning of the end.

The end of times is near...again...probably

This will be my last blog posting.  Why?  Well, according to Oakland minister, American Christian radio host, and president of Family Radio, Harold Camping, Friday, October 21st is probably the end of times.

As a regular reader of this blog, you may recall that Old Weird Harold had previously predicted that the end of life as we know it was supposed to take place earlier this year, on May 21st.  When that didn’t happen, a “flabbergasted” Camping claimed that a math error had caused him to be off by five months.

Guess what, folks.  Five months have elapsed and Judgment Day is now scheduled for this Friday.  Are you ready to Rapture?

“I do believe we’re getting very near the very end,” Camping said in a pre-recorded podcast posted on his Family Radio website.  “October 21, that’s coming very shortly, that looks like it will be, at this point, it will be the final end of everything.”

Having “learned that there’s a lot of things we didn’t have quite right” the last time he predicted the end of days, Camping is now fairly confident that this time he has it nailed.

However, you needn’t worry too much about it.  Camping says that “probably there will be no pain suffered by anyone because of their rebellion against God.”  Probably no pain and suffering.  Yeah, that’s what my dentist always says when he’s about to stick that sharp, pointy, metal implement of dental torture into my gums.

But I digress.  Camping believes the end of everything is going to come very, very quietly this Friday.  “I really am beginning to think, as I’ve restudied these matters, that there’s going to be no big display of any kind,” he said.

Still, my friends, you need to get your shit together and be prepared to go, um, wherever one is supposed to go at the end of days in relative peace and quiet.  No big deal.  No catastrophic calamities.  Just a nice, peaceful end of life as we know it.

So, as I said, if Camping got his math right this time around, this will be my last post on this blog.  If not, see you next time.

Rick Perry’s burning bush

I saw a blurb in the San Francisco Chronicle last week about how a “tearful” Anita Perry, in a speech in South Carolina at North Greenville University, complained that she and her husband, GOP hopeful Rick Perry, have been “brutalized” by fellow Republicans and the news media.  Hey, this is politics, lady.  You wanna play, you gotta pay.

Perry’s wife grumbled that he is being persecuted because he is a Christian.  Anita apparently believes that her husband is the “only true conservative” in the race and that his decision to join the GOP race was a calling from God.  Others, she said, “may feel like God called them too. But I truly feel like we are here for that purpose.”

Anita said Perry received a sign from God.  It was, she said, not unlike the “burning bush” that Moses encountered back in the day.  According to the bible (which we all know to be factually and historically accurate), Moses saw a bush that was on fire yet not consumed by the flames, and was thereupon directed by God to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt.  

Perry’s apparent burning bush-like experience was interpreted to be God’s way of telling him to lead Americans out of what “true conservatives” perceive to be this country’s financial and moral bankruptcy (and, worse, a Democrat in the White House).  I guess none of the other wannabes saw any visions of burning bushes...or admitted it if they did.

“It’s been a rough month,” Anita whined.  Perry has been “brutalized and beaten up and chewed up in the press” during the campaign.  But the Texas governor’s wife puts the blame for the brutalization not only on the media but on “our opponents, and our own party.”  Oh, the petty jealousies these political contests conjure up.

Of course, the loyal wife wouldn’t think of blaming her husband’s poor debate performances or intense scrutiny of his record on immigration, jobs, and other policy issues as the cause for his dramatic decline since first entering the race as the far right’s latest savior.

Oh no, it’s not Rick’s fault.  He’s the victim of persecution because he’s Christian.

Jeez, if Rick Perry feels persecuted, imagine how Mitt Romney must feel.  Robert Jeffress, pastor of Dallas’ First Baptist Church, said that Romney is not a Christian because “a Mormon isn’t a Christian.”  Pastor Jeffress claims that “Mormonism is not Christianity,” and charged that “Romney belongs not to a church, but to a cult.”  Oh snap!

Well, at least Pastor Jeffress described Romney as a “good moral person” even though he’s not a Christian.  That’s something, right?  Is a “good moral person” who is “not a Christian” eligible for salvation?

Perry is being persecuted because he is a Christian, and Romney is being persecuted because he’s not a Christian.  Seriously, you just can’t make this shit up.

I'm a friggin' Rock Star

Yes it has to be said.  I am a friggin’ rock star.

Wait!  Now that I have your attention, let me assure you that I’m not obnoxiously full of myself nor am I an over-the-top egomaniac.  Allow me to put my claim of rock stardom into context.

My self-assessed “rock star” status is rather narrowly defined.  In my job as a Business Consultant, when I go out to meet with prospective clients, I am often called upon to make presentations and conduct demos of our software solutions.  And you know what?  I’m good at it.  Nay, I’m great at it.  I am articulate, enthusiastic, persuasive, witty, confident, and engaging.  I hit a home run virtually every time I step up to bat.

Last week, though, I had a truly humbling experience.  I attended an internal training session for a new product launch.  It was essentially a week-long boot camp for the sales team.  We were bombarded by details about the new product.  Details about the technology, about the capabilities, features, and functionality, and about how to position it against the competition in the marketplace.  It was a long and grueling week that culminated in the need to be “certified” to present this new offering to prospective clients.

The certification consisted of making a formal presentation about the new system in front of a panel of judges comprised of senior leaders from the sales organization.  On the day before the certification, we were provided with a PowerPoint deck and an outline of key points we were expected to drive home in the certification presentation.

We were instructed to learn the presentation and internalize the key points.  Each of us who would be going through the certification process was told to “make it your own,” and to pepper the presentation with “compelling stories or anecdotes” that would draw in and engage the audience.

We would be individually evaluated on both content and presence.  Did we cover all of the key selling points and market differentiators?  Did we present the information in a compelling way?  Did we speak at an effective pace, pause appropriately, engage the listeners, and sound confident.  Were we persuasive?

No biggie, right?.  I’ll shine.  I can do presentations like this blindfolded and with one hand tied behind my back.  Because when it comes to making presentations like this, I’m a friggin’ rock star.

So why the hell was I so freaked out?

I gave that question a lot of thought while pacing back and forth in my hotel room the night before the certification.  I had crafted my script and was practicing it over and over again until I had it down cold.  But my stomach was tied up in knots.  I was all sweaty and was feeling like I was going to throw up.  WFT?

And then I had an epiphany.  When I give presentations to prospective clients, I am da man.  I am the subject matter expert.  No one in the room knows more about the topic at hand than I do.  No question can be asked that I can’t handle.  I am the learned professor engaging his engrossed students.  I am the master of my domain.  I am a goddam virtuoso!

But this audience would be different.  These were people from within my own company, people who knew as much about the subject matter as I did...maybe more.  People who legitimately are sales rock stars...and not just inside their own heads, like me.  They would be there not to learn from me, but to judge me, evaluate me, critique me.  I won’t have the advantage of being the most knowledgeable person in the room.

And so I continued to pace, continued to practice, continued to sweat and feel nauseous.  I got a lousy night’s sleep.  I woke up with a palpable sense of dread in the pit of my stomach, a fear that something awful would happen when it was my turn to step up to the plate.

Would I forget my talk track?  Would I pass out?  Would I heave all over the panel of judges?  Would I wet myself or lose control of my bowels?  Would I go down swinging instead of hitting it out of the park?

Yeah, I know.  Enough with the baseball analogies.

My certification wasn’t scheduled until mid-morning.  I had to force myself to have something to eat for breakfast.  Then I had to sit through two “general sessions” before my turn to present came up.  I can’t remember a thing that was presented at those general sessions; I was sitting there stressing about my upcoming certification.

Finally it came time for me to perform.  I felt like I was on American Idol, the three judges sitting there in front of me, just like Randy, Paula, and Simon.  Waiting, watching, judging.  Knees weak and stomach knotted, I stood up, cleared my throat, took a deep breath, and began my presentation.

Nailed it!

I’m such a friggin’ rock star.  I’m going to Hollywood!

Phish tale

The e-mail from Amazon read, “We perform routine reviews of orders to protect our customers.  During one of these reviews we discovered that an account was opened with a card used by you on another account.”

Actually, that was a rather awkwardly worded sentence.  The card was not used by me on another account.  It was used by someone other than me to open an Amazon account using the same credit card number associated with my account.

Yeah, I get the point, Amazon, but, seriously, you should have someone who knows how to properly construct sentences review your e-mail templates before you send them out.

But I digress.  “For your reference,” the e-mail continued, “the card in question is a MasterCard which ends ****.”  (What?  You think I’m going to tell you what the card actually ends in?)  “As it appears the card was used without your authorization, we have closed this new account and cancelled (sic) any outstanding orders.”

Great!  My credit card has been compromised.  What crappy news to get just two days after being devastated by the Red Sox elimination from post-season play.

I immediately called Amazon to confirm that this was a legitimate e-mail sent from them and not from some Russian hacker on a phishing expedition looking for my password.  Yes, it was legitimate.

Then I logged on to the Citibank (issuer of the MasterCard) website to check recent transactions, but nothing unusual showed up.  So I called and learned that there were, in fact, several “pending” charges from the night before for transactions on two retail websites (in addition to the one on Amazon).  I knew that I hadn’t made those online purchases, so I checked with my wife and son, and neither had they.  Shit!

The bogus transactions amounted to just under $250, but I wasn’t about to take any chances that other phony purchases might be charged to the card.  “Shut it down,” I ordered the customer service representative.

Done!  My account was immediately closed and I was assured that I would not be responsible for the illegitimate charges.  I would be receiving replacement MasterCards delivered by UPS the next day.

On-time delivery to the wrong address

It turns out that my replacement cards were, in fact, delivered by UPS the next day.  Unfortunately, despite my very specific instructions to send the cards to our place in San Francisco, where we happen to be residing now, they were delivered to our house in Worcester.

I called Citibank again and patiently explained that having the replacement credit cards overnighted to us in Worcester when we are physically in San Francisco doesn’t help at all.  I was assured that a brand new set of cards would be overnighted, and this time they would definitely be shipped to our San Francisco address.

In the meantime, our daughter, who still lives in Worcester, stops by our house periodically to check up on the place and, while there, sorts through the piles of junk mail to see if anything important (i.e., bills) is there.  When she saw that the replacement credit cards had been delivered, being the responsible, diligient person that she is, she took the cards to the local post office and had them overnighted to our condo.

Actually, it’s a good thing she did.  The cards she overnighted did, in fact, arrive the next day; the new replacement cards that the guy from Citibank said would be overnighted via UPS did not.  That was not because UPS didn’t deliver, but because Citibank didn’t send them!  Yikes!

So we finally have the “temporary” replacement credit cards, which are good through the end of the the month.  The “permanent” replacement cards should be delivered by US mail, hopefully to our San Francisco address, within the next 7 to 10 business days.

At least that’s what the third Citibank customer service representative I spoke with since Friday told me.  We shall see.  I wrote down his name and badge number in case there is yet another SNAFU.

Ah, the joys/hassles of being bi-coastal.