Too hot for the hot seat

Day two of intensive training was pretty intense. The day included a lot of concepts and tools which will help us all to be more effective and more fulfilled in our jobs, for which I am grateful. I think that getting permission and explicit support to focus on personal and professional development at work is a gift and feel very lucky and glad to be doing this.

Perhaps the most intense part of the day was the portion where we gave each other direct feedback. It worked like this. We broke into two groups of about 15 people each and chairs were arranged in a U with one seat placed like half an umlaut over the U; this is the hot seat. One by one we each took our turn in the hot seat where we received exclusively "constructive" feedback. It might sound harsh, but I actually think this was the best way to get people to give enough real feedback in a short time. Without this structure you get so much positive padding up front that we would still be there and only about halfway through.

Nonetheless, it does make for a pretty pointed experience. I hope to never face a firing squad but I think I am now prepared for it. Especially if the firing squad starts by throwing marshmallows and teddy bears but then it turns out that they are full of spikes and broken glass. You see - the "no positive feedback" rule had the unintended consequence of pushing people to frame "corrective" feedback as part of something positive to soften it, but I found it more often had the opposite effect. For example, you would hear comments like "You're such a nice person...that you're actually a doormat and no one takes you seriously." Now they've gotten ick all over both the positive and the negative.

Tom made the good point, after the first few people had gone and some looked a little traumatized, that we shouldn't make the mistake of thinking that somehow saying this out loud makes it more real; people already think these things, this is just a chance for them to say them to you and give you a chance to do something about it.

My turn was actually not bad at all though not for a lack of participation. Everyone who went before me sat in the hot seat for a good 15 seconds of silence before anyone piped up with feedback, yet my buns were barely planted on the chair before several people were literally talking over each other to offer me feedback. I've decided to take that as a good thing.

Quite a pair

Saturday night Jamaica and Nelson had one of the best parties I've been to in a long, long time. It was a beer and cheese pairing party and everyone who went - we ended up at about 14 - brought a beer and cheese pairing that they thought would work well. We then went through each pairing at a time as a group and the person who brought it explained what it was, why they thought it would work well as a pairing, and then they offered a toast. Then each person would rate the pairing on a number of criteria and describe it in 1-3 words.

Eric and I brought two pairings between us: Dogfish Head 90 minute IPA and a raw-milk Comte, and Miller Lite and Easy Cheese. Had we known it was going to be competitive we might have made different choices, but they were both received very positively - in fact, the Easy Cheese was a big hit, and it really lit up the Miller Lite, too. And after the official tasting there was the obligatory squirting of the Easy Cheese directly into Justin's mouth which I can only imagine was more disgusting for him than it was for us.

The pairings were mostly wonderful and it was really fun to hear the thoughtful and often bizarre descriptions the group came up with (they were read anonymously after each pairing). I think my favorite of the evening was the description of the vegan Jalapeno Almond Cheese* with a Belgian raspberry beer: "monk f*ing a Mexican."

We didn't win the contest. We didn't even make it into the top three. (Justin, recovered from the Easy Cheese, won the top prize - a vintage large Dunkin Donuts thermos - with a chocolate porter and taleggio.) But it was still a fun evening and I might even admit to learning something about how to pair beer with food. I hope to do it again soon.


*this is San Francisco, so of course there was a vegan at the party and she brought vegan cheese for her pairing

King of California

Today is the beginning of a new era. Starting tonight, I will be sleeping in a larger, firmer and overwhelmingly more comfortable bed. After a Saturday afternoon of laying on mattresses up and down Van Ness Street*, a salesman wearing a watch with a ridiculously large face helped us make a significant investment in our non-waking hours. We decided to trade some non-sleepable real estate in the bedroom for additional sleepable real estate when we, yesterday, upgraded from an eight-year-old well-travelled and much-abused queen mattress to.....a California King. It was delivered today.

Today is also important because it is 108 days from today until I turn 31. This is a significant number in yoga tradition and so it seemed an appropriate day on which to both spend a Sunday at work where we are preparing to do a focused 100 day personal/professional development push and to launch a new era of rest. As a result of both, I can't wait to go to sleep tonight.

*the mattress district

No Longer A Virgin Virgin

Homeward bound, I arrived at the airport by 3pm for my 4:30 flight on United airlines. It being Friday, I was eager to get home to start the weekend, which I already knew would be cut short by an all day training for work on Sunday.

I was dismayed to discover when I went to print out my boarding pass that my flight was now delayed 3 hours. New estimated arrival time: 10pm Friday night. This would definitely make me late for the dinner reservation that Eric had made for us.

There were two other airlines flying to San Francisco at 4:30pm - Alaska and Virgin. Alaska was sold out. Virgin had seats and a very nice staff of people who were all really excited for me to be taking this flight. (There weren't many people at the airport.)

"This is your first time on Virgin?" each of them asked me at least once during the 15 minutes it took to issue my ticket.

Yes, I told them. This is my first time.

"You're gonna love it!" they enthused with one inflection or another depending on which part of the Caribbean they were from.

One woman (I think Jamaican) walked me through some of the things to look forward to.

"When you get on board you'll really like the mood lighting. It's very nice. And if you see someone you think is good-looking, you can send them a chat message from your seat to theirs. It's great. People have gotten married this way. You're going to love it."

Apparently, I was flying home in a 70s-themed singles party.

She was right - the swanky purple mood lighting was very nice. And even better, it got me home more or less on time for dinner. Thanks Virgin!

On the road again

I spent the day in the conference room of the future today. I don't think I'm allowed to talk about the kinds of things I saw there and I'd hate to accidentally share some highly confidential technology secret, like that in the future all the technology is powered by elves.

In other news, here's Crater Lake as seen from seat 14F on the 6am flight to Seattle today:

Shooting little puppies with a bb gun

As you probably guessed from the title of this post, I went to the dentist today. I am still incapable of going to the dentist without getting that song from Little Shop of Horrors the movie with I think Steve Martin playing the sado-dentist. My new dentist who I met for the first time today is, happily, the exact opposite of that except for that she is also a dentist.

I was very excited on this visit to receive a gold star from her - healthy teeth and gums, no cavities, no furrowed brow re: the merits of regular flossing. Is it weird that we get, nay - we expect - an evaluation from our dentists? Like getting graded, "How'd I do?" is always part of the dentist visit routine. Somehow with doctors it's different. They may have suggestions or recommendations, but we don't regularly get an explicit grade from our doctors*.

I think the other reason that that song was going through my head is Sunday afternoon in Nashville as Eric and his family and I were hanging out in the living room watching hockey, a rascally squirrel kept getting into the birdfeeder and finally Eric's dad got a bb gun from the garage and shot around the squirrel to encourage it to go eat the neighbor's birdseed instead. I mostly wasn't horrified.


*Hmm. I might inadvertently be revealing here that I haven't seen a doctor for a "check-up" in several years, possibly longer. It occurs to me that doctors probably do do this, just not when you only go to them for acute things like a hip x-ray or strep throat.

Meet the Parents II: A Visit to Tennessee

I'm swamped with work but wanted to share a few quick highlights from the weekend. Here they are in no particular order:

I got to see the most realistic fake deviled eggs ever. They were part of a faux feast set up at Belle Meade mansion, a historic plantation that we visited outside of Nashville. It was a fun tour led in tag team by a group of guides in period costume, at least one of which was detoxing from a narcotic of some sort.

I played the Wii for the first time. The first game was bowling against Eric and his sister Lisa. I got the hang of it quickly and demolished them both with a score of 153. Sadly, because I was playing as a guest instead of Mii, the score will not be saved to ensure that my glory live on and on. The beginner's luck wore off pretty quickly, though: I got wasted by Eric in tennis so badly it made everyone a little sad. I was waving that little remote around like I was shooing away a swarm of flies, and my Mii on the screen appeared to have an intense seizure every time the ball came to her side of the net. That didn't last long.

I got to hang out with dogs. Eric's sister Lisa and her husband Matt have two really great dogs: Rudy and Holly. Rudy is a miniature schnauzer who trots around in a cute, compact sort of way and tries to avoid getting abused by Holly, the airedale, who is in a spectacular frenzy about 85% of the time. She was fun to watch at the dog park, less fun jumping on us in bed in the morning (she is not a small dog). An un-highlight: Rudy puked on me. Boo Rudy. OK, you're forgiven.

And of course, spending time with Eric's family was great fun. We ate Mexican food, we walked around downtown Nashville trying on cowboy hats and boots, we sat on the back patio and watched the birds, we looked at baby pictures and a video that Eric shot and edited of the family's trip to Alaska when he was 17*, and we celebrated Eric's mother's birthday with her and her delicious cake.


*This may have been the highlight of the highlights. It includes Eric's parents squatting by the side of a river panning for gold, walking around on a glacier in crampons, a thoughtful camera pan of every bathroom used on the trip, and Eric dramatically recounting (with a funny accented drawl not at all like how he talks today) a near-death kayak mishap with his brother on a special kayaking trip the two of them took together.

Field trip II

When you get up at 4:25am it better be for a good reason. Today it was: Eric and I were Nashville-bound on a 6am flight connecting through Atlanta. In spite of possibly the most ridiculous airport security line I have ever seen - as close to "around the block" as an airport security line can get - we arrived in Nashville a mere 7 hours later. Lickety split.

It has been a great visit so far. When I tell you that "dessert" (after dinner at a local Mexican joint called Nacho's) was brownies and Old Style from a can in Eric's parents' living room, which could easily be in a Home and Garden magazine, you will know that I am telling the truth.

Field trip

Today I went to an organic dairy farm. This was a very cool thing to do on a Thursday morning and I think it even sort of counted as work.

It is set on a bunch of land overlooking some water:


One of my favorite parts was when they showed us the newborn calves. They keep the new babies in crates because, like small children, they are both extremely germy and extremely vulnerable to other babies' germs. I found them unbearably lovable and I named this one Bambi.


Bambi's next-box neighbor was also quite Bambi-like, so we'll call her Bambi II. Here's the inside of Bambi II's box.

At the end of the tour we got free ice cream. Yay.

Glimpse

List of things I have googled recently:

• how to sew a button
• basil gone to seed (image search)
• Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling
• Ode Magazine
• Anthem blue cross of california
• frogs
• seastar restaurant
• northstar
• memorial day date 2009
• triclosan safety
• blue and gold ferry
• weather santa cruz ca
• bloom energy group
  
• cranium categories
• ymca embarcadero class schedule
  
• deep red project manager
• epa mandatory reporting
• vegas deals
  

That's how you know it's really, really fresh

Chez Panisse is a local food institution in Berkeley to which I paid my first visit this lifetime last night. We went upstairs to the cafe, which is not quite as exclusive as the downstairs restaurant, but is still an extremely, extremely special place.

The special occasion was that I had clients in town for a meeting today who had made plans to go there and those plans then turned out to include me. Who am I to turn down such a generous invitation?

It was a fun, if lengthy, dinner with just a few small mishaps. For one, my salad came with a critter. Yup. It was one of those little black roly poly guys who turn into a ball when you poke them with your fork at a fancy restaurant. And because my instinct to be a good sport sometimes inappropriately trumps my instinct to not eat bugs, I quietly swept him underneath the bread plate and pretended everything was fine. The salad was delicious.

Another funny moment came with dessert. My colleague Amy is getting married in July and, perhaps because the group didn't have much besides work in common, we ended up talking quite a lot about her wedding planning. Our server, managing to be both extremely observant and also not, brought out a special dessert with a little "Congratulations!" card for the lucky couple - Amy and the random client guy sitting next to her.

Priceless.

Debate ensued as to which of them would have the trickier time telling the story to their actual significant other without provoking suspicion that they had done something to cause the confusion.

I was more worried about making sure my rhubarb cobbler was vermin-free.

Easter Funday

To celebrate Easter Sunday, Eric and I did a little mini-vacation-style outing to Angel Island and Tiburon. I feel confident this is how Jesus would have wanted us to spend the day.

We boarded the ferry to Angel Island with our bikes at 10:30am and had fun watching the birds fly along with the boat as we crossed the bay and docked at Ayala Cove on Angel Island. Angel Island is "the Ellis Island of the West" and still has the old immigration station buildings where they detained primarily Chinese and other "Asiatics" looking to make a new home in San Francisco. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 provided the grounds for refusing or delaying entry to these would-be immigrants, as did a variety of medical conditions including hookworm and "liver flukes" which sound funny but are probably not.

I feel compelled to mention here, against my better judgment, that literally everyone on Angel Island except for us was Asian. And most of them were Asian Asian, not Asian American. It was hard not to notice, especially given the immigration station and its history as the backdrop. And it got a little weird. For example, there were white boards as part of one of the exhibits that had writing all over them, mostly in Chinese. When I tried to write something in English the Chinese curator beelined over to me and was very clear through a tight smile that only comments in Chinese were permitted on the boards. I don't know why I feel like I shouldn't be saying this. I'll stop now.

After exploring the island by bike on the 5 mile perimeter road and by foot up to the 788 foot summit of Mt Livermore, we were ready for lunch. Rather than helping ourselves to the colorful Easter eggs that we came across while exploring one family's picnic area, we took the 2:20pm ferry over to Tiburon for fish sandwiches at Sam's, a restaurant on the dock complete with dive-bombing seagulls and opportunistic pigeons. What they did to that onion ring....man.

We finished lunch at 4:15pm just in time to go home for an afternoon nap and were discouraged to discover that the ferry departed at 4:10pm and then not again until 6:20pm. We made the best of it, though, laying in the grass along the water and watching people walk their dogs, children and elderly parents up and back. It was a fascinating parade of humanity: old folks sporting matching sweats, a fair-skinned blond woman in a light dress walked hand in hand with a swarthy coal-haired fellow dressed all in black, a mother and daughter who looked like the same person living 25 years apart sashayed by, and quite a few young humans flaunted their Easter finest.

Sitting there watching and listening* as people strolled by, I once again had the distinct and unexpected sensation that I was in another country or maybe several other countries: these passers-by were speaking Russian, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and something that sounded like Hungarian but who knows what it actually was. No English.

I guess the nice part about our unexpectedly international day in the Bay Area was that it made it feel more like a real vacation away from home. Which made getting home, finally, that much better, too.

*and judging

No use crying

I spilled half a gallon of milk on the kitchen floor this morning. I dropped it and then stood there mesmerized by the flow of milk out of the carton, onto the floor and under the stove. I just watched it for a few moments until finally snapping out of it and picking the carton up. I had to use a headlamp to make sure I'd gotten all of the milk from under the stove and I will definitely be having nightmares about what I saw down there. Innocence lost.

This is the third bad milk incident this week, which I hope means it is the final one. The tire chains in the trunk of the car pierced a hole in the milk that Eric bought at the grocery store on Sunday and it leaked all over. This was when we learned how much milk a paper shopping bag can hold before it becomes structurally unsound (answer: more than you would think).

Then Wednesday when I opened the milk container it released a bunch of pent up pressure, like a sharp exhale. One rule of thumb I take seriously is if there is ever a change in the pressure of a sealed container of food since you last opened it, it probably means something is living in there. I'm not interested in accidental probiotics. Better safe than sorry, I say. Since it was morning and we had no other milk, and I really don't like black coffee, I did the only obvious thing: vanilla ice cream in my coffee instead. Good, but probably best not to make a habit of it. Next thing you know I'll be regularly eating birthday cake for breakfast.

Ring of Fire

The San Francisco Giants took on the Milwaukee* Brewers at AT&T Park last night to open the 2009 baseball season. We could see the lights on at the stadium, which is about six blocks from our place with no tall obstructions in between.

We've missed those guys! When we lived over by the ballpark we always knew when it was game day** and would often pop over for just a few innings. (In fact, this past Saturday when we went to see a pre-season A's v SF game in Oakland was the first time we've watched more than three innings of a game. I attribute it to the beautiful sunny, warm day. I think three innings is the max you can do at AT&T field without risking frostbite.)

I don't know who won but I do know that when the game was over there were a series of explosions known as fireworks. (I had fallen asleep watching "Who Killed the Electric Car?" which I was watching in spite of my resistance to movies whose title is a question, with the exception of "Who's Harry Crumb?" which is awesome.)

The fireworks were amazing! It was one of the better, and longer, fireworks displays I have ever seen. It had the ones that explode and then after a beat all the little points of light go squiggly, it had big shimmery ones ("It's like fungus!" marveled Eric), it had ones that looked like Saturn and other ones that were multicolored balls. There was even a cube that might have been the Giants' logo, and there was a whole series of enormous smiley faces. I swear.

I like any fireworks show that can be fully appreciated from the comfort of one's own chocolate velvet couch and following which one can be sound asleep in bed within moments. And this should be the first of many this season. Go Giants!


Epilogue: Eric, fixated on the fireworks, moved his foot, which moved the laptop cord, which knocked his Strong Beer glass (and his heart) onto the floor and into at least 40 small pieces. He remains sad this morning.

*Mili-wa-kay
**The drunk people in the street were wearing Giants hats and shirts and there were more of them than normal.

Bounty hunter

Last night, dinner time: we put on headlamps, armed ourselves with harvest bowl and harvest scissors and headed up to the roof.

In a drizzling rain, I harvested one whole plant of buttercrunch lettuce which has been growing since February 9th in that box on our rooftop. It made for enough salad for two and was very fresh-tasting and delicious!

For his part, Eric harvested two small spinach plants which have also been growing since February 9th but not quite as happily: the plants were small and the leaves were as thick as a penny and sort of sour, not to mention the birds had been nibbling them. We sauteed the spinach leaves with a bit of olive oil and each had two bites of fresh spinach.

"It sort of tastes like eggs," commented Eric. It did!

For dessert, fruit from our local CSA fruit box, which in its newsletter yesterday announced that the "fruit-only" CSA box from them will soon include sustainable bison meat. Because people who sign up for a fruit-only box are actually hoping for meat.

Here's a daytime pre-harvest photo of the box in question:
(buttercrunch is the second box from the left in the near row; spinach is the far right box in the near row. see how puny it is?)

Gimme a break, gimme a break...

Yesterday morning in the shower I noticed Eric had bought himself some new soap: Zest. Immediately the old jingle ran playfully through my mind. "You're not fully clean unless your Zest-fully clean!"

This is not the only commercial jingle from my childhood taking up undue space in my brain. Remember the McDonald's "double double cheese cheese burger burger please please" commercial? Or the Big Red commercial with the song "Just kiss a little longer...hold tight a little longer...keep fresh breath a little longer...longer with Big Red!" And of course, "My Buddy, My Buddy, wherever I go, heeeee goes!" and the counterpart for Kid Sister.

Think of all the valuable mental real estate that is being consumed by these mindless consumeristic ditties! If I had enough brain space left over to consider how troubling it is that so much of my brain's space is taken up by 80's commercials I might really be concerned about it.

The fact that I still know all the words to songs like "We didn't light the fire" and "Ice ice baby" is unrelated.

Moss on Moss

We went to a few open houses in the neighborhood yesterday almost by accident. There was a listing at 37 Moss St and we just couldn't resist wandering over and having a look. According to the listing, it was a newly remodeled 2 bedroom apartment with lots of light. A more accurate description would be "nice kitchen with lots of closet space." It was adorably presented but it was eensy and the only windows opened onto an air shaft and cement wall. And did I mention that it is essentially in Crack Alley (which we currently live near but not in)? I suppose the upside is you wouldn't need to leave the comfort of your closet to get crack or whores - you could just yell out the window. And you can get all of this for the recently reduced price of $459K, plus HOA dues of $250 a month.

I wish I were joking.

Unmatched grace and elegance

I ride my bike to work every day. When it is nice, it is really, really nice: along the Embarcadero with beautiful views of the bridge and the water. And when it is nasty, it is really really nasty. The wind whips and howls especially fiercely along the waterfront and even in full body rain gear I still seem to end up soaked and with a line of grit from the street up my back courtesy of my back wheel.

Today it looks really, really nice but don't be fooled - it is like a sandstorm without the sand out there. Big winds coming from all directions. I discovered this repeatedly on my ride into the office today when the wind kept trying to throw me in front of cars.

Even on a non-windy day, the trickiest part of the ride is the home stretch which is a narrow wooden ramp up onto a raised deck and the front door. No big deal, usually, but it can feel a little precarious.

Today as I swooped around the corner and onto the ramp, there was a woman walking down it, as well. This is not usually the case. I slowed down and was about to hop off my bike to walk the rest of the way when a big gust of wind rushed over us and, at the same time, my heel got caught in the pedal on the side I was planning to dismount on. That was the same moment when she walked right between me and the railing. I wouldn't say I fell on her, but I definitely leaned heavily on her squashing her against the railing for a solid 25 seconds as I struggled to get my balance and she struggled to escape. My muttered apologies didn't seem to help. She ran away.

Lean into it

Last night at the YMCA I spent some time on the elliptical machine climbing abstract hills using both my arms and legs, as hill-climbing does.

The man next to me, who looked like he may have stepped out of a19th century wagon train onto the elliptical machine, was also on a whole body journey through an imaginary landscape. His was different from mine in that it involved grunting. Lots of it. Gutteral, at times gut-wrenching, grunts and even the occasional snort.

I hated it the whole time he was there next to me but then when he finished and left I kind of missed the icky entertainment he had provided and my remaining 7 minutes felt a little lonely.

Nothing to see here

I had dinner with an assortment of colleagues, clients and miscellaneous others last night at a tasty little Italian restaurant in Seattle called Café Lago.

We were jarred mid-meal from a rousing and topical discussion by the flashing red lights of a fire truck that appeared to be pulling right in the front door. It stopped short of coming all the way in, parking instead on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant where the lights persisted in their flashing the entire 30 minutes or so the truck remained there. Apparently a woman at a table near us was unwell and had fainted. This was explained to us discreetly by our waitress after she called 9-1-1. "I think it's just an intense food coma," she hypothesized.

Trying not to rubberneck lest I make a bad impression on my table full of work VIPs, I did manage to see a couple of medics come in with their bright yellow bags and their large boots. I then tried to stay focused on the conversation until it was clear from the expressions on my companions' faces that it was time to turn around again.

In addition to the fire truck that had arrived first on the scene, we now had two additional ambulances and another emergency vehicle. Slow night for emergencies in Seattle, I guess.

All of the members of the crews of all of these emergency vehicles piled into the restaurant, standing around and evidently hoping someone would pass them a slice of pizza or something.

At one point I counted nine paramedics all standing there watching one guy filling out paperwork on a clipboard. Meanwhile, the woman who had brought this group together is still lying on the floor receiving literally no attention whatsoever. This went on for easily 20 minutes. Then the whole group filed out and my eyes slowly adjusted to a world which is not flashing red.

The only comfort I take from this incident is that the woman must have been essentially fine, because otherwise there's no way they would have stayed so long. Right?