Gauging Status

I've had a slew of car problems lately.  I won't list them all, I'll just say it's bordering on ridiculous.  When I got home from work tonight, my wife said my car (her van is in the shop) came close to overheating today.  I sighed a mighty sigh and went to check it out.  The radiator was full, so I took the car for a drive to see what would happen.  The needle on the temperature gauge settled into the middle of the normal range and stayed there.  It was fine.

My wife didn't believe that, so we went for a short drive together.  Almost immediately she pointed to the gauge and said, "See, the needle is going all the way up to the "L" in Normal."

She was pointing to the oil pressure gauge!!!  The oil pressure was in the higher range of normal, which is good.

The temperature gauge also has "normal" written on it, with a "C" on the left and an "H" on the right.

I guess it goes without saying that it's important to be sure what you're looking at before drawing any conclusions--and making me sigh in that "oh no, not again!" way.  ;P

Appreciate: An Action Verb

My blogfriend Roma once challenged me to write a post about pronouns and I responded.  The post was  silly, but I had fun writing it.  Today I want to write about verbs...certain verbs.

"Appreciate" is one of them--it's a transitive verb.  And if I remember correctly (I did accounting homework during English class, so I could easily be wrong), a transitive verb is an action verb.  But how often have you heard someone say things like "I appreciate your help."; "I respect your work.'"; or even "I love you" and then thought (or perhaps said), "yeah, sure you do!"???  It happens when one of those action verbs sounds like just a word.

It's possible the person meant what they said, but was distracted by the 12,000 things going on in his/her life.  "Isn't it enough that I said it???"  Sometimes it is.  But not always and actions speak louder than words.

Sometimes it's important to show it.  It can be as simple as how you treat the person, writing a thank you note, buying someone lunch or a giving them a bonus.  LOL, sorry, thinking about work for a second there--because work is what inspired this post.

I've been doing 3 jobs for nearly 10.5 months.  During the first 9 months, our organization's director often said, "Rick, I really apreciate what you're doing."  At first that was nice.  Over time it started to bother me.  At the 6 month mark I asked him to stop because it seemed he was taking the work for granted.  There's a long story behind that, but I'll just say that even monkeys object to unequal treatment (unlike the monkeys, I didn't throw anything).  He resigned at the end of June and, to his credit, he included me among only 5 people (out of 1,800 in our org.) that he thanked.

Since our new director started 6 weeks ago, she has put me in for a temporary promotion, a bonus, and as of next Monday, a permanent promotion.  I joked that if it was possible for me to work harder, I would.  She laughed and suggested I take some time off instead.  After having stayed in jobs for an average of 3 years up until now, I think I may have found a home.  We'll see--in about 3 years!   :)


PS - I need to do better at showing appreciation myself and letting my friends know I'm thinking of them.  The holiday cards I meant to send out last year are still sitting in a drawer.  I'm not even sure which one.  On the bright side, I'm one step ahead for the 2012 holidays (assuming I can find the cards).  lol

And they called it puppy love...

My dad never said it, but it was clear he viewed childhood as bootcamp for life.  The only way to become good at something is to experience it.  He helped me to experience plenty.  But this post isn't about that.  It's about two of my teenage relationships...which were good practice for my adult relationships--in case I ever have any.  lol

I shared the story about my first girlfriend--she was cheating on her real BF with me, I got angry, and got even.  I learned a good lesson from that (I'll never do that again--try to get even).  And I learned one good lesson from the next two.

The 2nd GF was a nice girl, a little silly--a typical 15 year-old.  We talked between classes and occasionally held hands (pretty racy stuff).  She asked to see a picture of me as a little boy.  The ONLY picture I had was my little profile picture--and I only had ONE of those (I didn't know my parents had others).  She "awww'd" appropriately and asked if she could have it.  I thought to myself, "We'll probably break up before the end of the school year, but I'm pretty sure I'm still going to want that picture."  So I said no.  Like any good teenage girl, she was offended.  She broke up with me the next day--but at least I still had my picture!!!  I'll get to the lesson later.

I found the next GF pretty quickly--we had 4 classes together.  There was more talking between classes (she loved to talk) and less hand holding than with #2.  It was getting close to the end of the school year and the girl asked what I would be wearing to the 9th grade dance.  I hadn't asked her yet, but she assumed I would.  I found I didn't care for that.  I told her I hadn't decided whether I was going or not.  She got very pushy about it.  The more she pushed, the longer I decided to wait before asking her.  Finally her nagging got to be too much and I broke up with her.

Yikes, as I'm writing this, for the first time, I see that both girls wanted something from me I wasn't willing to give them (at least not on their terms).  Hmmm, but that's not the lesson.  The lesson was realizing that aside from them being cute/popular, there wasn't really anything I liked about them.  ("Tryin' to lose the awkward teenage blues" maybe?) I was wasting my time and theirs.  Especially mine. :)  That's okay for teenagers--it was a learning experience. 

PS - Another good lesson was learning to say "no" in a relationship.  Oh, and I learned that a girl who never stops talking is not for me.  Apparently I learned more than just one lesson from those experiences.  Also, not surprisingly, I find that "pushy" still makes me dig in my heels.  I don't want to, I just HAVE to!!!  :P

Up-cycling???

We had a jar of bread and butter pickles in our refrigerator.  One evening last week I ate the last one in the jar, rinsed it out, and set it aside to go into our recycling bin.

Tonight I drank ice water out of a glass that has, "Best if used by Dec 2012" written on the side!?!

My wife likes drinking out of Mason jars.  It reminds her of childhood visits to family in the VA/TN mountains.

But pickle jars???

Oh well, I'm pretty sure my parent's juice glasses were cream cheese spread jars or jelly jars or something like that. It's a normal thing to do, right???

Blogging Three Years?

I posted my first real blog entry on August 1, 2009.  I jumped into blogging by sharing a story about what had to be the dumbest thing I ever did.  Young and dumb...a bad combination. :)

How did it get to be August 1st already?

For that matter, how did it get to be 2012???