Dog Sitting

I'm dog sitting for friends this week. Two lonely, needy labradors and one indifferent cat. When asked I said, "Sure!" How hard could it be? I didn't have the kids this week and I was doing them a favor and the $300 they offered, sealed the deal.

Tonight I think I've been ripped off.

They are treating me like the substitute teacher. I just arrived at the house and the place is trashed. They've turned the cat's litter box over and scattered it all over. All of the garbage cans have been tossed about and there is a pile of very smelly poop. I think I can actually see the stink.

I cleaned, yelled, scrubbed, and cursed. I found the cat on top of the washing machine and she shook her head like she couldn't believe what I let those dogs get away with.

Right now it's 15 degrees outside and I've got all of the windows open so I can breathe without my shirt pulled over my nose.

I'll scrub the carpets tomorrow after I get control of my gag reflex. 5 more days.

Curmudgeon

I'm feeling curmudgeonly. And that's totally inappropriate for the holiday season. Maybe spending 13 Decembers in the shopping mall industry did it to me. Seeing the dark side of Christmas up close for so long can't be healthy.

But, I'm not really going to complain about Christmas. I'm going to complain about something much bigger and just get it out of my system. Because being a curmudgeon makes me feel old. Once you reach that point you are just a few years away from sitting on park benches and yelling at birds. So with a little help from Frank Schaeffer, a columnist I like, here goes...

There is a basic human moral code. The human race has a sense of right and wrong. Civilization created rules and laws around that sense of right and wrong. If everybody "followed their bliss" or "just do what feels good", there would be anarchy and society would collapse. It's a matter of the survival of the tribe. We need rules.

- What has led to the massive levels of fraud on Wall Street?
- Why are educational values sliding?
- Why are divorce rates so high across all demographics?
- Why are the majority of African-American children being raised by single parents?
- Why are the white, educated jerks who ran our economy into the mud taking bonuses?
- Why are rural kids killing themselves with methamphetamine addiction?
- Why did it become "okay" to torture prisoners?
- Why have the banks betrayed us?
- Why are there idiots collecting assault weapons?
- Why are we an obese nation who may well have shorter life spans than our parents?
- Why have we run up personal and national debt to the point that our currency is plunging?
- Why are we putting children on prescription drugs for disciplinary or behavioral problems?
- Why can't we keep our credit cards in our wallets and our zippers up?

Look for an answer and you'll see the left pointing right and the right pointing left. The left followed their bliss diminished the importance of morals. Drugs and sex were private matters that didn't hurt anybody and staying married for the sake of raising stable families was an old fashioned notion. On the right, and especially in the evangelical/fundamentalist community, people pick and choose among "God's Laws". The bible says that both pork and homosexuality are abominations...but bacon tastes so good we're going to let that one slide.

The left scream "Censorship" until anything is allowed on TV.
The right declared that the market is supreme and freedom equals consumerism.
On the left, the cry went up, it's my body I'll do what I want!
The right responded this is my stuff I'll do what I want!

When personal and public responsibility and taboos crumble the situation becomes toxic. Everyone is into what works for "me" but not what works for "us." Very few are willing to sacrifice. No one is allowed to judge anyone else's behavior. The result is a culture that drives whatever vehicles suits it and global warming be damned. The result is a culture in which divorce is easy and common despite unequivocal proof that the children of divorce bear lifelong scars.The result is raping the earth in the name of market oriented "freedom." The result is irresponsible men who father children they never see and irresponsible women who walk away from families.

The real problem is that we all lie to ourselves and pretend that our individual choices don't matter. We've pretend that society is exempt from the need for order, structure and moral taboos.Why are we ignoring the vast amounts paid the executive thieves running the hedge fund companies and banks. We are winking at the idiots in the entertainment industry who have sold us on the idea that following your lust is always a fine idea. People can't stop eating, won't save money and run up debts. These are not "private" choices. They are what ruin schools, make health care unaffordable , destroy the economy and create kids who barely can function.

We all pay. And we're all guilty if of nothing else, then just because we are silent. We've put at risk the most powerful country on earth and perhaps destroyed our future.

I hope for leaders that can call us back to our senses, coerce us into better behavior, preach, cajole, convince and -- if need be -- force us to look at what we've done to ourselves.

There. I feel better.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Office Christmas Party

I've heard that it is a bad year for the office holiday party. One source said that 65% of them had been cut nationwide. Aside from just cutting expenses, many companies feel that holiday parties are a little awkward when everyone is worried about lay-offs.

I wouldn't have minded if ours had been canceled, but we went ahead with it anyway. Only one person who had been cut last week actually showed up, so the awkwardness was kept to a minimum. But because I've never really developed the "mingling skill". Not knowing how to mingle is bad when you are in the business world since there a lot of functions (often attended by many important people) where mingling is expected. Golf and mingling should have been taught in business school. Small talk bores me anyway and I can’t see how I can just insert myself into a conversation already in flight without looking rude or looking like a stunned dork while I stand around waiting for an ‘in’ on the conversation.

But it's the greetings that really confuse me. I see my co-workers who barely nod greetings to each other everyday, all of a sudden hugging and kissing at the Christmas party. I'm all for hugging and kissing but I just can't bring myself to do it at the party. Should it be a lip kiss? Cheek kiss? Air kiss? Too confusing.

A couple of drinks may have helped the situation, but I was the designated driver for a group of five of us from Summit county. Another disadvantage to being the guy with the mini-van I suppose.

Over all it wasn't a bad evening. The food was good and it was nice to see everyone dressed up. I just need to learn to kiss my co-workers, I guess.

Lay-Offs

Lay-Offs are sweeping the country. Today's unemployment report says that the U.S. lost 540,000 jobs in November. I understand economics and I know why lay-offs happen. I even believe that it can be healthy for a company to go through it sometimes. No companies are immune...including my own. I knew it was a possibility but when it started, I was clueless.

On Wednesday, I talked to Joe in his office at 8:30. I had a follow up question at 10:30 and his office was dark. Jan was at the copier at 10:00 but had disappeared by noon. I saw Mike leaving work early at 1:15 and waved to him. I was like the clueless character in the summer camp horror movie who doesn't know that the campers are disappearing around him. I thought that the dark offices just meant that they were saving energy.

The CEO's email came at 4:00 and the SR.VP called a mandatory meeting at 4:30. We were all in the conference room scanning faces and trying to figure out who was missing. Joe, Jan, Mike, Rick, Simi, Anita, Brad, Kara. My division of 90 lost 18.

For some reason, 18 with names and faces seems like a much larger number than the 540,000 in the news. Why is that?

Pre-Obese?

That's what my recent company health screening said I was. The Body Mass Index (BMI) scale says that below 20 is under-weight. 20 to 25 is normal. 25 to 30 is pre-obese. And over 30 is obese. I was 25.2. They couldn't say "higher than normal" or "over-weight". Maybe they use the term pre-obese for the shock effect. If so, it's working.

Although I stay relatively active, I will admit that I currently weigh more than I ever have before. The scale this week says I am 193 pounds. I was 17 when I reached my current height of 5'10". At the time I was wrestling at 132lbs. A few years later I was running marathons at 153lbs. I got married at 160lbs. At 25, I started lifting weights and put on a little muscle and felt good at about 170lbs. That's where I should have stopped. But I've averaged about a pound a year ever since.

Pre-obese? Seriously?

I've decided I'm going to get back to about 175. I've made those goals before and I can drop 10 pounds relatively easy. I was 10 pounds lighter than this for my triathlon just 4 months ago. But keeping it off is always the hard part. Maybe writing it down publicly will help.

So here it is. I will weigh 175 pounds by May 30, 2009. That's just a loss 3 pounds a month. Should be a piece of cake...er...make that rice cake.

Weekend 10K

I ran a 10K on Saturday.

Although I used to run a lot of them, it's not something I do on my own anymore. Someone's got to make me do it now. This time it was Shunnie. She had never run one and decided she wanted to and recruited me and Christine to run with her. It's easy to commit when the race is 8 weeks away. I figured I'd run a couple of times the week before and muddle through on race day.

But Shunnie was as bad as my old coach and made us actually train for the race. After work I'd rather go home and eat icecream, but instead found myself running on mountain trails through the fall colors (and some snow). I trained better for this race than I did for my triathlon this summer. And I'll admit...it felt good.

But now the race is over (1:00:53 was my time) and winter is here. Will I keep it up and stay in shape???

Where's the icecream?

Brains Are Back

I've been trying to figure out the best way to describe why I'm so thrilled with the outcome or the election. So many reasons besides just the fact that my side won. Instead of writing my own thoughts on the subject, I found someone who perfectly captured what I'm feeling.

Here's an edited version of a Newsweek article by Michael Hirsh

Brains Are Back

For two days now, Americans have celebrated the idea that we may have finally atoned for our nation's original sin, slavery, along with its long legacy of racism. We can rejoice in the world's accolades over the election of a multicultural African-American to the presidency after nearly eight years of cringing in shame as the Bush administration methodically curdled our Constitutional values and sullied our global reputation as a beacon of hope. Every once in a while, it seems, we Americans do manage to live up to our ideals rather than betray them. Hooray!

I am just as happy as everyone else over all this global good feeling. But there's something else that I'm even happier about—positively giddy, in fact. And the effects of this change are likely to last a lot longer than the brief honeymoon Barack Obama will enjoy as a symbol of realized ideals. What Obama's election means, above all, is that brains are back. Sense and pragmatism and the idea of considering-all-the-options are back. Studying one's enemies and thinking through strategic problems are back. Cultural understanding is back. Yahooism and jingoism and junk science about global warming and shabby legal reasoning about torture are out. The national culture of flag-pin shallowness that guided our foreign policy is gone with the wind.

I'm under no illusion that Barack Obama will turn out to be perfect. He'll probably screw up some things, especially at first. The problems he faces–from the economic crisis to Iran's nuclear program–are just too hard. But, after eight years of a president who could barely form a coherent sentence, much less a strategic thought, we can finally go back to respecting logic and reason and studiousness under a president who doesn't seem to care much about what is "left," "right" or ideologically pure.

Or what he thinks God is saying to him. A guy who keeps religion in its proper place—in the pew. The politics represented by George W. Bush—the politics of ideological rigidity, religious zealotry and anti-intellectualism—"has for the moment played itself out," says presidential historian Robert Dallek.

From the very start of his campaign, Obama has given notice that whatever you might think about his policies, they will be well thought out and soberly considered, and that as president he will not be a slave to passion or impulse.How very presidential. And how very unusual.

One tragedy of the Bush administration is the amount of American brainpower and talent that went unused, the options that went unconsidered, because they were seen to lack ideological purity. That era is over as we confront a desperate landscape—a serious recession and two prolonged wars.

"I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face," Obama said in his acceptance speech in Chicago Tuesday night. If he holds to that pledge and nothing else, we'll be OK.

So anything seems possible now, even when it comes to the toughest issues. Victors, it is said, write the history. Obama is now about to write America's new history. Unless I mistake my man, its theme will be that reason and sense and that cardinal American virtue—pragmatism—are going to rule once again.

And that's really something to celebrate.