Whose Faulty Vision

3000!

This is my 3,000th post to this blog!

3,000 posts, more than 7 years. It’s really a fixture of my life. I’ve relied on it sometimes to vent my feelings, and it’s nice to have somewhere I can always go and ramble.

So here’s to 3,000 more.

Business Travel

Holy crap.

I’m going down to Atlanta tomorrow for two days of focus groups on the new account that I mentioned previously. That’s not a big deal.

But then, next week, I’m traveling for both accounts that I work on, as follows: Monday in Denver, Tuesday in Vancouver, Wednesday and Thursday in Orlando, and back to NYC Thursday night. I haven’t worked out the details yet, but I think I’m going to have to take a redeye from Vancouver to Orlando to make that possible, which I’m not at all looking forward to.

And then, the weekend after all of that crazy travel is Otherworld, so I’ll be in Connecticut for the weekend.

It’s going to be a crazy week.

Open letter to seemingly everybody who stops by my office

Please don’t touch my computer screen. You leave smeary fingerprints on it, and then stuff on my computer looks blurry until I clean it off. Do you do this on your own computer? If so, how do you put up with everything looking blurry?

Sorry, just had to get that off of my chest.

*Phew*

I finally had the “trust conversation” with Xena this morning, and it went well. She says that she’s never cheated on anyone, and her answers generally gave me reason to believe that I could trust her. I hope I will be able to trust her, and I hope that that trust will be warranted, but this is a step in the right direction, and I’m relieved and happy about that.

Sigh. I never used to worry about this. I used to naively assume that if she loves me, and we’re in a committed relationship, then I can trust her. I know better now, and I guess I’m better off knowing better, but I kind of miss that blissful ignorance.

Which isn’t to say that Xena and I are in a committed relationship yet. That requires another conversation that we haven’t had yet. But this lays the groundwork for that conversation, and I intend to have it before too much longer.

Feeling Good at My Job Again

Close to the end of the day on Wednesday, one of my department heads stuck his head into my office to ask if I’d be able to help out with a new business pitch. Like all new business pitches, it’s on a crazy timeline, and he needed me to organize some focus groups for today. We were just using company employees, so there was no recruiting problem, but I had to write a discussion guide, get together all of the necessary materials, arrange for video taping and moderate the groups.

Now, a couple of years ago, this would have intimidated and overwhelmed me, especially on such a short time scale. I wouldn’t have known where to start with the discussion guide, I would have been nervous about the moderating, and I undoubtedly would have forgotten some important steps of the process.

But none of that happened. I just finished with the groups, and they went great. Everything was in place, I moderated confidently and smoothly, and we got a lot of good material. And we had a cameraman who was really on the ball, so I’m sure that the videos will be good for the pitch.

So upshot is, I’m feeling good at what I do again. It feels nice.

Hat

The weather here in NYC has finally cooled off enough that I can comfortably wear my hat. Which is great–I love my hat. It’s a black fedora, sort of in the style if what Bogart used to wear, and it looks really cool.

Whenever I wear the hat, I get compliments from friends, coworkers, and random passers-by. (Yes, in NYC, the “don’t talk to me” city, random strangers will compliment me on my hat.) Which is gratifying, don’t get me wrong. But what I want isn’t so much compliments, but more to start a trend. My ideal reaction wouldn’t be “hey, that’s a cool hat,” it would be “hey, that’s a cool hat, I’m going to get one too.” And I never seem to get that second part. Oh well, I’ll go on trying.

Random Thought about the Current Financial Crisis

Why don’t disgraced bankers jump out of the windows of tall buildings anymore, like they did back in 1929?

The kids these days, no sense of tradition.