Getaway gone bad.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008 at 5:23 pm (Hack for Hire, Writing by Ear, Youngest of Seven)
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Friday morning

  • Leave 2 hours later than planned due to teaming, pouring, buckets and buckets of torrential rain (after weeks of drought). No way to load the car (or get the almost-never-used-in-the-three-years-we’ve-owned-them bicycles up on the roof rack) without getting soaked.
  • Notice the practical, water-conserving rain barrel is overflowing (despite the overflow valve) and open the valve so it drains down the driveway instead of flooding the garage.
  • Load the car when rain reduces to a drizzle.
  • Drive 2 hours to Cook Forest in the same rainy drizzle.

Friday noon

  • “Arrive at destination.” So announces Thomas, our newly acquired British GPS navigator that I don’t like much because of his proclivity to send us down winding, 2-lane roads when there are perfectly good highways nearby.
  • Unload car and cooler, lamenting the state of the rental house (blast those Internet pictures). Pigs (not pit bulls) in lipstick come to mind.
  • Watch it rain for the rest of the day with family.

Saturday

  • Watch it rain all day with family.
  • Decide to take a drive in the rain.
  • Discover MARVELOUS BEST-EVER ICE CREAM at the little concessionnaire in the park.

Sunday noon

  • Sun at last! And record heat (mid-’80s). Decide to take almost-never-used-in-the-three-years-we’ve-owned-them bicycles to the park for a ride along the river.
  • Enjoy a lovely 3-mile ride.
  • Curse all things bicycle on the exhausting 3-mile ride back, especially manufacturer of expensive “made for women” bicycle seat akin to riding astride a balance beam.
  • Discover MARVELOUS BEST-EVER ICE CREAM place also makes the MOST INCREDIBLE CURLY FRIES YOU HAVE EVER EATEN. Top them off with another MARVELOUS BEST-EVER ICE CREAM cone to recover from 6-mile balance-beam ride.
  • See careless, inconsiderate jerks from New York park next to us at concessionnaire and think they ding our car door with theirs. Forget to check before they pull away.
  • Visit “rustic furniture” place and dream about owning a log cabin one day. Realize it’s a pipe dream because we’ll never be able to retire due to having to bail out irresponsible home-buyers, mortgagers, insurance companies, hurricane evacuation-refusers, and assorted other money-sucking leeches.

Sunday evening

  • Hunker down to watch nationally televised Steelers game. Notice the wind is really whipping outside, and wind warnings are crawling all over the bottom of the TV screen.
  • Endure blinking lights, intermittent TV outages. Dig through rental trying to find working flashlights (2) and candles (none).
  • Completely lose power at the end of the first quarter. Worry that you will also have no water because there is probably a well and pump.
  • Walk along the road and see neighbors. Hear that power is off all the way to Clarion (20 miles away).
  • Go to bed — nothing else to do.
  • Wake up at 2:30 a.m. when electricity (and all the lights) come back on.

Monday

  • Still no cable.
  • Notice considerable door ding from careless, inconsiderate jerks from New York. Realize it will cost at least $100 to fix their one second of “it’s all about me” carelessness.
  • Pack up and go, leaving sister, mom, and brother #1 behind. Drive home in beautiful, cool sunshine.
  • Discover minimal debris from storm. Start to water plants (not using the now-empty rain barrel), unpack, do laundry, clean up assorted cat puke.
  • Stop everything when power goes out at home for 1-1/2 hours.

Tuesday

  • Start working bright and early. Discover numerous e-mail requests for new projects and annoying rework of project drafted 5 weeks ago.
  • Discover through brother #2 that power is still out at my mother’s house since Sunday — literally only her house and about 5 others on the same line (the one where the power always goes out and nobody else’s does).
  • Lament loss of food in fridge and full-size upright freezer.
  • Discover when sister returns home with mother that brother #3 has redistributed most of the freezer food to neighbors and cousins.
  • Discover power company is estimating FRIDAY NIGHT before power is restored in her area. FIVE DAYS AFTER IT WENT OUT.
  • Curse power company.
  • Frantically keep working to make up for time lost and new projects requested while away.
  • Discover front tire almost flat. Fill it and drive an hour each way to pick up mother and bring her here.
  • See power crews working near her house as we pull away.
  • Sigh.

Wednesday

  • Lament no sign of power at mother’s yet. (Power crews must have been a cruel hoax.)
  • Raalize next much-anticipated getaway (aka vacation to North Carolina mountains) is only 2-1/2 weeks away.
  • Wonder if it’s even worth it.

No vacation goes unpunished.
              ~ Karl Hakkarainen

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Remembrance. Resilience.

Thursday, September 11, 2008 at 12:51 pm (Hack for Hire, Writing by Ear)
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This won’t be a long post. We all have our own thoughts and memories of that horrible, horrible day seven years ago. I captured mine in an essay shortly after to be sure I’d always remember.

What got me, though, was yesterday. Last night actually. A late-day e-mail from a client that resulted in him scheduling a meeting for today. For 10:00 a.m. Just about the time, seven years ago, when the world changed forever.

My first thought: I didn’t want to be on a conference call at this time. I wanted to be free to think about things.

But, duty called. The call went fine. It was nice to talk with my colleagues. I got my assignment. No one mentioned 9/11.

Even more striking: My clients are in New York City. Their company was in a building in the Trade Center complex seven years ago. Everyone had to evacuate that day, and the company soon relocated to a new office. I think their old building may have even been damaged so much it had to be torn down.

Yet, here we all were, seven years later. Having a meeting. Doing business. Making money. Living the free, capitalist, enterprising dream the terrorists wanted — and still want — so desperately to destroy.

Take that, you bastards.

They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.
                                                  ~ Laurence Binyon (quoted by Rudy Giuliani
                                      in his 9/11 tribute speech today)

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Talking by Ear

Sunday, May 25, 2008 at 7:52 am (Hack for Hire)
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Last week, wrapping up a conference call, I told the other meeting participants I would “ping” someone else after the meeting.

I immediately felt foolish.

Pinging someone is one of those biz buzzwords. Originally it was a technical computer term — to ping someone’s IP address to check an Internet connection. Now it’s a generic term for e-mailing or IMing or texting someone  — “I’ll ping Erika after the meeting and let her know what you need.”

I could have said, “I’ll e-mail Erika” or “I’ll call Erika,” or simply, “I’ll let Erika know.”

Instead, I pinged her.

I doubt the other guys gave it a second thought, but jargon is one of those things that writers are taught to be acutely aware of. Particularly with this client, who has a whole initiative around what they call “Straight Talk” and what has been around for years as the “Plain English” movement. Basically, it’s the idea that you simplify writing, removing complexity (like legalese — the party of the first part, and all that) and often meaningless jargon (business-speak — bandwidth, net-net) to write more clearly.

It’s true, particularly in Marketing, that you can do an awful lot of writing that says nothing (it’s a lot like blogging 🙂 ). Not doing it is hard because it forces you to think about what you really mean and demands a deeper understanding of the subject. Frequently, I don’t have that deep understanding — I just need to bang out something that sounds semi-intelligent and let the SMEs* sort it out. When they insert their knowledge, I can go back and “plain up” the language.

A few years ago, a game even sprung up to make fun of the way the business world talks (Meeting Bingo or Bullshit Bingo). You can be sure “ping” is on the newest release. And while I realize that much of this language is inappropriate for formal business writing, I think it’s very appropriate in informal, day-to-day speech. It’s part of the business culture, the lingua franca. Every profession has its way of talking, whether medical or construction or manufacturing or retail. (Or writing…*SMEs [smees] = subject matter experts. Writers have lingo too.) 

People talk to each other in terms they understand. In business, everyone knows what you mean by the bottom line, by scope creep, by taking something offline. It really was OK that I pinged someone, even though I felt hesitant because I’d never put it that way before. I just wanted to fit in (sniff) — and using the common language does that. It’s the verbal equivalent of Writing by Ear — Talking by Ear — saying what sounds and feels right for the audience and gets your point across.

In other (better) words: When in Rome…

After many years and many meetings, I’m comfortable in that business world. Where I feel totally out of my element is in the Web world — message boards, RSS feeds, custom CSS. I try to figure things out when I have questions on my blog by reading the FAQs on the WordPress site, and sometimes wish I could look puzzled, smile sheepishly, point to a map, and politely ask, “Do you speak English?” Same with the whole Texting-iPod-BlackBerry-Palm world.

I could use a tutor. I wonder if Rosetta Stone speaks ‘Net?

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
                                                                                     ~ Carl Sandburg

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