Birthday Bonanza part 2

So my company gave me a pretty nice birthday present – an 18% raise! In the past two years, I’ve had a 60% pay increase and making a figure I didn’t think was possible with a B.S. in Public Policy 2 years out of school. Woot! I actually have never asked for a raise or promotion – they give it to me, which I think is all the better as it does show they appreciate the 10 hour days I put in

They also threw me a little part at the corporate HQ, and they’re taking me out to dinner later tonight.

Oh, and they also told me there’s about a 70% chance I’m going to Vegas in June with a little company field trip. This is the second person whose told me about it (the first was the owner/CEO of the company) so I think the odds might be better than that. Vegas is like my Mecca – a place I’ve wanted to go to since I was 5 (gambling is my family sport) and never thought I’d be able to until late in life. I’m on cloud nine!!

Oiy vey I feel old.

So tomorrow, the 30th, is my birthday, and I’m turning the ripe old age of 26. Today, just five minutes ago, at work, I deemed one of the kids “Schwarzkopf” as his last name is Swarts. I’m big with nicknames at my center, as I am absolutley terrible with names.

The kids’ response: “Who’s Schwarzkopf?” Horrified, I posed the question back, and here are answers so far:
Joseph Stalin
Vladimir Putin
A Janitor
The guy from different strokes
Muralist
Leader of Nigera

The generation gap’s never felt so wide. Man I feel old!

Everyday UU

There’s a vocab source I use at work called Everyday Vocab, 7 words a day to build up your vocab within a calendar year. With words, definitions, exercises, and even quizzes.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had Everyday Unitarian (aside from the blog?) Seven things to do or ponder to make you into a good Unitarian within a calendar year. Ok, I know how creepy and Stepford sounding that is. But creepiness aside, 7 daily little things to do or think about or, heaven forbid memorize, that change each day to deepen our personal faith?

I can still be Unitarian and love facebook, starbucks, and birthday princesses

I can still be Unitarian and love facebook, starbucks, and birthday princesses – a minor critique of UU world cover article “Home grown Unitarian Universalism” by William Doherty
-or-
I can be a consumer and still have a soul

I finally had time to read this spring’s UU world Saturday night, on a flight from Dallas back home to Atlanta, another semi-monthly business trip. It was a pretty hectic trip as usual, although most of my thoughts were on the mess of a schedule that was waiting for me at the arrival gate. I finished up Runaway Jury for about the tenth time, and then saw the magazine waiting in my laptop bag. The cover article looked interesting, so after I read through some of the other articles (skimming over the just war article – I’m all sorts of peaced out for a while.) The writer, William Doherty, had good ideas near the end of the article and is right about a fair amount of points (and I appreciate that), but the article starts off with a premise I have issues with, and in fact, I think is telling of one of the biggest challenges Unitarians face: bringing our sometimes elitist faith into the 21st century.

“These three interrelated social pathologies of contemporary middle-class life – consumerism, time famine, and civic disengagements – are a real life curriculum, or anti-life curriculum, for our children. If we don’t find a way to counteract this curriculum, we will end up with feel-good faith formation that looks and sounds fine but lacks power and depth.”

By trying to remove your kids from pop culture and mainstream society, you will set their faith up for failure. The challenge of my generation, the “millenials” who are constantly busy and have been since we were born, is maintaining, no, adapting, our faith to fit our lifestyle. If we are taught that having deep Unitarian faith is only possible when we unplug from society and retreat back into the woods, then aside from feeling Unitarian guilt our faith will gradually disappear. We should be showing and teaching our children how to apply UUism to everyday life, and show them how they can see spirituality in the everyday – If our kids can see how they can find spirituality in Dance Dance Revolution, then our kids will grow up to maintain their faith as adults.

We can’t pretend we live in a world without pop culture and the evil “c” word of consumerism. I don’t think we can even try to set up our own little protective elitist bubble – no child wants to be the boy in the bubble. And even if we could – we shouldn’t.

One of the issues that faces our faith is what happens after someone walks into our church for the first time and bangs up against our elitism. And if you doubt UU elitism, this quote from the front-page article of our quarterly religious publication should quell some doubts – “Our me-first, materialistic, consumer culture.”

When we start our ritual criticism American society and consumerism, people, new and old alike, start to question what we’re all about. What’s the soul of Unitarian Universalsm? Is it rebellion against modern society? Is it anti-consumerism? Is it condemning our neighbor for having too many iPods? Is it peace at all costs? Is it some special interest or another?

Or is it love.

I’d rather be surrounded by the latter

And one final point:

“I’ve been working with parents to blow the whistle on one prominent example of consumer culture invading childhood: out-of-control children’s birthday parties…the frantic culture of busyness among adults and children also threatens the values of our tradition celebrates.”

That’s right, Ava (my niece), your Barbie blow out birthday is hereby banned. It doesn’t fit with my faith. On your upcoming sixth birthday, I think it would be better if we meditated on the meaning of cake. Let our chalice be your cake, and hey, it’s even got a candle!

Paying it forward from the back of the plane

Sittin on the back of the plane,
Watchin’ the sky roll by,
Wooooo,
Sittin on the back of plane,
Wastin’ tiiiiiiiimmmmee.

So today I chose to sit in the back of the plane – I didn’t really want to sit by anybody, so when I was checking in using one of those computer terminals, I swapped to the back. After killing an hour in the Atlanta airport, it was time to board.

There was another tall guy like me, but his ankle was in a cast. He was hanging out in the back of the plane, trying to get a seat change (so he could fit.) I ended up having the whole 3 set row to myself – score. Right before the flight took off, a flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder. I removed my headphones, and she asked if I would mind changing to another aisle seat around me, so the ankle guy could lie down and stretch out. Being the recipient of prior flight attendant induced seat changing in my favor, I said sure. I got myself resituated in the seat behind mine, and he was mightily appreciative.

As we were rolling out, the tall ankle guy passed a note to the cute guy across the aisle. Thinking I was about to see an in flight hookup, I read it. It told him that the lady behind him with curly hair and the lady next to him were friends, and inquired if he’d be willing to swap seats with curly so they could sit together. He knew, as I did, that they were friends – they walked in together and were ticked off they were separated. Cute guy nodded, got the attention of the lady behind him (and across the aisle from me) and offered to swap…and she was thrilled. They swapped, and the cute guy was back by my side.

In front of the curly lady there was a mom who had, I would guess, a three-year-old girl with pigtails who wasn’t thrilled at having to sit down for the flight. She started crying. I started blowing bubbles, which got the kids interest, but curly lady really got her to quiet down with a little hand game, and they played throughout the take off. This calmed her down, and we didn’t hear a peep out of her for the rest of the flight.

Later in the flight, there was a crying infant who came back with her really tall father. Pigtails looked up, astonished to see someone her size on the plane. She looked at the crying infant, and started to wave at the infant who stopped crying as pigtails stood up to get a better look at the infant. They were locked in a trance for a couple of minutes, before her father continued on his mission to the back of the plane. I didn’t hear that infant cry again for the rest of the flight either.

I don’t quite know if the chain of paying it forward continued from there – who would that little infant pass it to back in the front of the plane after all– but it was pretty neat to see the chain happen in front of my eyes. Pretty nice sight from 28-D

Mid level manager maddness

So I’m now a mid level manager for my company.  And here’s a question for empty space – why do I have to have hour long phone meetings, that always start an hour late, with people who I see at least once a week and talk to or email almost every day, just to recap everything I’ve already told them?

The Turd is Coming back to Texas

After being called a turd *sniffle* I’m going to tell everyone out there I go to Dallas once a month and Houston once a month, Thursday-Saturdays (with late Thursday or Friday nights free to do stuff.)  If anyone in those areas wants to meet up, shoot me an email or leave me a comment.

-Kinsi

Houston won me over

I had to go to Houston for the first time last month, and I hated it.  I went into a hostile situation where I was meeting 20 people for the first time, and having to tell 15 of them how they should be doing their job better…and those 15 were ticked off at the company for legitimate reasons. I got completely lost….which is something I did not expect to happen after I got my blackberry with the gps telenav system on it.  But even it was confused by Houston roads.  It wanted to send me on a toll road that only people with an “ez pass” could go on, and it wanted to send me on I-10, despite it being closed for construction.  I got lost trying to find a place for dinner one night, and it was all around a frustrating trip, although I did win over those 15 teachers by the end of the trip.

Needless to say, I was dreading having to go back to Houston this trip.  Especially since I had to wake up at 4am to make my flight.

I got to the airport, and my 7:00 flight had become a 9:00 flight.  So I could have slept in 2 more hours – argh!  The flight was bumpy as hell – we were landing in a fun little storm.  I got to Houston 3 hours before I had to do anything – so I went to a restaurant chain I discovered in Dallas – Bj’s Restaurant and Brewhouse.  The one in Houston was pretty out of the way, from everywhere I had to go, so it was perfect to kill some time.  When I got there, the hostess welcomed me back, as I had apparently come last week.  I told her I was from Atlanta – she looked skeptical.

I had 3 new people I was training, and one was getting on my nerves – when I was talking / giving instruction, he was doodling.  When it came time to apply what I was instructing, he didn’t know what to do (duh) so he asked a million questions I had already answered.  So I was pretty frustrated.  The rest of the day of observing went well, although by the time I was done and went to the hotel, it was 10:30.  4-10:30, a long day.  I went to the restaurant right by my hotel, the texas land and cattle restaurant.  And that;s were Houston started to redeem itself.

Last time, I ate at the same restaurant, same day, and pretty much the same time.  And I had the same waitress.  And when I was ordering, she broke out into a smile.  “I remember you!  You came in before.”  And this time I actually had.  She remembered my order.  It was nice – remembering the order of a random guy from a month ago (burger, well done, only ketchup.)

Friday started off with me forgetting the key to the center, and feeling like a dolt.  Luckily, someone else had a key.  I got pretty frustrated with the same trainee, and the day seemed to go by pretty slowly.  I ran to McDonalds for lunch.  See, in Georgia, the McDonalds large cups are made out of plastic.  In texas, they’re made out of Styrofoam.  So when I grabbed my full diet coke, my thumb sliced into the cup of diet coke, about a third of the way up from the bottom.  It was like a diet coke fountain, all over my food, tray, table, floor, my boots, etc.  Great lunch.  More training, then dinner.  I checked out a place online and it looked good, so I hopped in the car and made it there….only to find it was packed and a line out the door.  So I tried to get back to my hotel…and got lost for about 45 minutes.  Fun times.

Saturday, though, is what redeemed Houston.

It started off with one of the teachers there telling me I was “a really good manager.”  That’s the first time someone other than my boss even used the “m” word.  Then lunch.

I ate at the Salt Grass steakhouse in cinco ranch.  I, once again, had the same waiter as last time, and I was floored when he came to the table and said, ”I remember you!  You came in here a few weeks ago.  I remember you because I was having a bad day and I was really busy, and I remember thinking I was doing a bad job and you got terrible service.  But you were so nice and polite, and I wouldn’t have been.  So I wanted to say thank you.”  I was shocked.  And it made my week.

The lesson?  Be nice, even if you don’t really feel like it – you never know whose lives you might touch.

Why headphones were invented

Why do you think headphones were invented?

I think it’s so you can rock out to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack at your conservative workplace.