But a good one all in all, but the conflagration of Valentine's Day, Chinese New Years, our church's Jazz Sunday, and the commissioning of all the folks going to Biloxi turned it very busy indeed. It didn't help that we'd been signed up for snacks for the coffee hour after church months ago, and then just a few weeks ago they found out that they really, really needed a liturgist for today so they asked me. I said yes.

There's this adage about giving a job you need to get done to a busy man.

( I guess it works. (Also cut for The Picture) )

When making onogiri it is better to follow Kyo-kun's example and just grab a handful of rice and mold, rather than succumbing to the temptation of using the plastic mold. The damned ball is impossible to get out of the mold, and you'll just have to do it by hand anyway. At least, then, getting the masago all over everything is kind of tasty.

Also... the Penzey's wasabi may be pale, but it's not any less powerful for its lack of color. Japanese blasting putty, indeed.

Art pens frustrate the hell out of you and you can't mix the colors the way you're used to with watercolors. But pen ink goes exactly where you put it, not everywhere there happens to be any hint of moisture. Sure, you're definitely a personality that enjoys the unpredictability of watercolors, but not everyone wants that on everything. Shunsui, on the other hand, is quite the treat in watercolor. Mmm... pink. *laughter*

Not everyone dreams in code. It is fine to accept the accolades of someone even if they didn't know it only took you half a day to do something they felt was impossible.

Writing for newspapers is surprisingly fun.

Don't let it surprise you that people are startled and surprised when you follow through, all the way through. It's not you.

It's oddly deflating to have someone come up to you and go. "Ooooo! What a wonderful skirt, where did you get it? I'd love to get one of those for my daughter!"

Am I dressing too young? Hmph.

It's oddly surprising and inflating to have a couple of the professional artists at the church ask me to go to a six hour workshop with a silk painter to create banners for the new sanctuary. They really want me to paint for them! Meep, though they did mention that they hadn't quite engineered how to hang them, yet. *grin* That certainly has changed my self-image...

... talking to Mom about the fact that they'd asked me was pretty cool, too. The workshop is during their visit here, and Mom saw it as an opportunity to have a bit more time with Jet. So that was good, too.

It's... weird.

About a year ago, when I did the manager's symposium here, part of the work was a 360, where you get people to comment on you and how you measure up against the qualities that the company wants in their managers. It was weird. I had my own idea of how I did on those things, which wasn't that was very good at most of them, but I tried to do them as often as I could.

When the feedback came back I was surprised. Then, when I took it to my local HR person for advise on how to address the parts I wasn't that strong in even on the feedback and she was flabbergasted. I then got a quick lesson on the usual distribution of things and I had to rethink a lot of things.

I don't really think that I have much integrity. Mostly, I think, because for some folks that word means "Being true to your own values and having your own rules that you always obey." I have no hard and fast rules other than "hurting people is usually bad", which is about as hard and fast as I can get along the lines of rules that I hear other people obeying. I had never thought that "if it doesn't work, figure out a way to get it to work" or "fixing the system for everyone is more valuable than any moral or 'should' I might have" or "every situation has more stories than there are people in it and all of them are needed to understand it" or "the world can be fixed, it's just going to cost me to fix it and I need to balance that" as rules...

The feedback from the 360 had me up in the 99th percentile on the integrity questions. My input was around the 55 percentile, my boss, who was the closest to me and dislikes absolutes, so he had me around 80, which was about as high as he goes. It was a weird blow to my self image in the opposite direction. No one sees me as I see me, they see me as something more.

The weird thing is that it shapes lots of things I do at work, now. People see me as having integrity so I try and act as if I do, the knowledge that people NOTICE when I do the right thing has been really powerful. The odd side benefit is that I actually feel happier with myself, now, too, as I'm acting towards my real values more. I do things now that I know would make the situations, systems, and organization better off, and while I count the costs to myself and make them up, I don't do it just because it rewards me directly, but the rewards to my self-esteem are surprising.

Maybe a different meaning for the phrase "positive feedback loop".

I tried the expectorant. I tried the drops. I tried the nasal stuff. In desperation I finally tried the asthma emergency inhaler, and that seemed to do something, but then I realized something else was going on.

Since the cold started with an eye infection I hadn't really been thinking of it as an upper respiratory tract infection. Plus, my nose was completely clear, so I never thought to use a decongestant, but I thought a bit around midnight when I was Still Awake and John had been snoring steadily for the last two hours, that I was getting some pretty severe post-nasal drip, so somewhere in there was generating something that was causing the coughs.

So I took two Pseudoephedrine HCL and felt the buzz and then, nearly instantaneously, was able to go to sleep because I stopped coughing, completely. Yeesh. Yay for really studying the cause and effect.

So I feel much better today. It didn't hurt to have the whole staff of senior directors (i.e. the peers of my boss) tell me and the team I'd worked with on this Really Huge Project tell us that we'd done an excellent, active job of managing the thing. Wow. I'm still flying and it's not just the Sudafed.

I have a really sleek bike jersey and spandex shorts for Bike to Work day today. *grin* Jet saw it this morning and said, "Wow, Mom, you look great! The pants are coool, Mom."

Definitely a better day. Thanks for all the support, I appreciated it, folks. Thanks.

My hands are changing. They're hardening, darkening and the ridges are roughing, the skin thickening where I've damaged the skin on shovels, knitting needles, and yarn. The nails aren't always coming entirely clean after digging in the compost and dirt of the garden, and one is split where I hit a rock.

I'm watching my hands in fascination as they take on their new identities. Becoming something different and noteworthy when I grasp the hand of a stranger in greeting. I can feel how soft most hands are, now, how they contrast with mine.

( Read more... )

... have to feel actually good about myself when a really smart lady that I really respect comes into my cubicle and squeals, "Oh my God, I am SOOOoooo excited about this opportunity to work for you!!"