A step in the right direction

First, a story.  When we were getting married NG and I did the wedding protocol.  We sent out Save-the-dates and subsequently, wedding invites.  A particular person was dodgy on providing their address the first time I asked and I should have taken that as a hint.

Fast forward, on our wedding invite RSVP they wrote that not only couldn't they attend, they couldn't attend because they had a block party they had to be at.  As someone who has been accused of being tactless, not reading the room, social manners lite, etc, I fail to understand why people overshare shit like this.  What is the thought process?  why share that the most important day of my life gets trumped by a bouncy house and drunk neighbors!  And the kicker?  this asshat went through a wedding themself so they should know how precious each limited seat is.

Now to the present.  Another friend is getting married soon and we are invited to the wedding.  It's impractical to attend, especially since we have had plans to be in Chicago two weeks prior.  But there is also the "this friend has been on radio silence" for a bit factor.

Dark Icarus would look at it like, oh you reach out when you need something from me but have ignored my texts and messages.  But trying to be a better person Icarus is thinking that the right thing to do here is not hold a seat hostage until the last minute.   

So I declined the invite well in advance of the RSVP date.  

Did I mention its been one long week

This has been one long week.  I thought that when I started working from home 100% my running would increase.  Indeed, it has but not nearly as much as I assumed.

Usually, it's the weather.  With moose and squirrel taking so long to get ready in the morning,  I don't have the hour before work.  If it's a quiet day I can usually sneak out for a quick run between 830 and 900.  but lately, there has been one thing or another that prevents that.

sometimes I wait until my check-in call at 10 and then rationalize that I'll just go at lunch when the temperature has already climbed.  I've vowed to use the treadmill on really hot days but somehow I just seem to find ways to put it off until its too late to go for a run.

I'm still on a good pace this month, I've already run 24 miles, which is what I ran in all of July and there are still 14 days left in the month.  Of course, we are going to spend the next 5 in Michigan and although I'll pack running clothes, there is no guarantee it will work out.  Update:  did not run at all in Michigan.

I think I vowed not to count miles so much this year and even got off to a slow start with only 25 miles in Jan and Feb combined.  I ran 156 miles in the first six months.  I'm definitely on pace to beat that in the second half assuming inclement weather or injury doesn't impede me.

This has been one long week. A friend was supposed to come over tonight, cook us dinner, then head out to the Green Mill and stay at our place overnight instead of drive back to Hinsdale.  However, Nightingale thought it would be rude to wake them up early with our packing so I canceled.  A younger me would have felt guilty about the comment "we did already buy all the ingredients for dinner and hoping to crash at your place after the Green Mill, but understand that things come up."

But older more cynical me knows they are more disappointed about missing out on the Green Mill (or they may still go to the GM but have to drive back to the burbs late at night) than our company.  This dinner was promised to me back in 1999, another few months, years or never won't make a difference at this point.

Catch up post for posterity

Winter cold and snow don't bother me much although I enjoyed them more as a kid than as an adult.

However, when the temps are as cold as they have been this week as low as 10 and as high as only 20, then it gets beyond annoying.  It's too cold to be outside for very long even if you are bundled up.  God forbid I have to do something outside like minor work on a car.

Winter is a series of milestones, like a drunk walking home, lurching from parking meter to lamppost. I’m already seeing pitchers-and-catchers-report numbers here and there. In one month, I’ll start noticing that the days are in fact growing longer. Then snowstorms will give way to freezing rain, then the first false hope of an early spring, then spring itself.  -- Nancy Nall

We caught a lucky break that the snow melted over Christmas break and hasn't returned...yet.  That may change next week.  My mom earned another trip to the hospital because she had pneumonia.  So she got to spend the holidays in the ICU and is not sitting with an oxygen tank in our home.

Change the locks? I didn't

My former Condo Association President Kesha emailed me asking if I knew anything about the lockbox on the gate.  She had already asked me about my realtor removing the For Sale sign from the fence.  Realtors tend to leave their signs up as long as possible for advertising purposes. I sent a note to Gary and Marco asking them if they would like the sign back before it gets tossed in the trash which I understand they did, so if they had a lockbox they would have likely retrieved it as well.

So I sent a note to my contact at Chicago Apartment Finders and to My Former Property Manager just framing it as "hey I sold my condo so I don't care what you do but if that lock box costs what I think it does, you might want to come fetch it before the CA cuts it off the fence."  I of course used nicer language and emoticons.

My Former Property Manager, upon hearing the news that I sold the condo, congratulated me and said he would take care of the lockbox.  No acknowledgement that I managed to sell 1) without his special brand of help and 2) at a higher price than he believed I could achieve (I'm confident he looked it up as he knew my property had been listed and at what price).  

Note:  I wanted to post this Dilbert Cartoon which aptly describes Former Property Manager business model.  Alas there is no way to download it and the image-by-url feature is blocked for copyright purposes. 

I should point out that I am very lucky he was so recalcitrant in his stance in using an Exclusive Rental Agreement contract.  Had he offered an Non-Exclusive Agreement like Chicago Apartment Finders I probably would have just let him find me a new tenant and I'd still be a Reluctant Landlord right now. 

Former Property Manager said that the new owner would likely change the locks.  Well I certainly didn't.  I certainly intended to but that task slipped away from me, both in terms of cost and time.  And I suppose I was hedging my bets that since the former owners bought in Saganash they really didn't need anything from my bachelor pad.

This made my day

The following was in response to one of my comments on Eric Zorn's Change of Subject blog:

It was in response to GregJ comment which I cut and paste in my retort:

It made my day because while I've been reading Eric's blog for years, I'm not one of the established commenters and as such, I often feel like someone who has outgrown the kiddie table but is only reluctantly invited to eat with the grown ups and on a be seen and not heard basis.

Could have used this advice many years ago

I read through this Lifehacker piece the other day and I really wish I could email it back in time to my twentysomething self.  Which is why I will include some fun pictures of me grilling outside in the snow.

shoveled just enough to grill

My first "real-world" full time paying job after college was something we'll call Junior Paralegal (JRP).  It actually had a different name and a different idea at its inception but if you went to any law firm today and searched for the equivalent position, Jr Paralegal is what you would find.  Ironically, if any of those paralegals were reading this blog they would not for one minute connect JPR with the position they created that later morphed into more of a true Jr Paralegal description.

The backstory on this position was that the billable hour requirement for paralegals was increasing while at the same time the types of things they could "bill for" was undergoing stricter scrutiny.  In other words clients, rightfully so, didn't want to pay the paralegal rate for things that were considered administrative.  And also the paralegals didn't want to be the backup to the Docket department and run to court for late filings. 

The legal profession is very well institutionalised. Lawyers have logged hundreds of hours of learning before they are even allowed to practice. So lawyers enter the work force already being taught to sense and act (to follow a subliminal process) and most strongly believe that a professional should know how to execute there chosen profession. Process Management is not often well established in law firms, especially back in the Dark Ages of the late 20th Century. Therefore the idea of introducing a defined process naturally causes scepticism.

There go the calories i just burned shoveling

So the idea was that they needed JRP to handle the non-billable crap so that they would be free to do the more important billable items. It wasn't a bad idea. The flaw in the design was that they didn't really know what to do with JRP besides treating us like kids who were visiting their aunts and uncles at work for the afternoon. Also I believe one of the conditions was that JRP time could be billed if appropriate. This would later come back to bite the Senior Paralegals in the butt.

The workflow was basically standard stuff like Control Labeling, chron filing and going to court for late filings.  The other part was what would be referred to today as "one-offs."  In other words stuff that isn't describable in a standard manner because it doesn't come up too often and is often easier to do oneself than to take the time to show someone else.  Like maybe checking through a stack of forms to make sure Section 2 was completed a particular way.

Now your pool of candidates for JRP were recent college grads because this was an entry-level (barely) position that paid $17K a year.  Secretaries with a high school education were starting at $23,000.  This is a very good recipe for resentment.  Anywho, when you are getting paid the same whether you are doing something easy (control labeling) versus something hard (running to court for a last minute filing) the smart JRP will find ways to avoid court and milk the labeling.


"When you're just out of college, it's easy to get a big head about what you can do in the workplace"
yep.  Especially if you work with people with never went to college or never really experienced college.

"It might sound like simply "paying your dues," but it's easy to get a little full of yourself when you first start a job."

Yep.  The problem is my first job the paralegals were content with us "paying our dues" until the second coming.  They didn't have the luxury or the foresight of training us for situations before they became mission critical.

The only way you got to do anything substantive was when the shit hit the fan AND then it was "okay we're gonna ask you do something you've never done before and it has to be done right but no pressure."  Yeah we could have had you do it last week but we didn't trust you, didn't want to teach you, didn't want bother.

 In Corporate America the form of government is called Management. If you look closely at people who are succeeding, you'll notice they have something in common: they're fast learners and they're willing to adapt.

In all fairness, the culture was different then.  There was no mentoring, no shadowing and no desire to implement better work flow processes.  Also, I was definitely not the best JRP because I felt like if I have this education I should be using it better than just putting labels on paper.

Eventually the law firm decided that they should bill a certain amount of hours.  The same amount of hours as paralegals in fact.  We had no advocates, no one to say "well they are entry level people maybe we should have them only bill 900 instead of 1800 hours, see how it goes and build that up."
So once you made our job as hard as Sr Paralegals by telling us that we are essentially going to be doing the same type of work, there hierarchy kinda broke down.

In the world today, when I'm sending out an email or leveraging any technology to make my life easier, I often wonder how these Senior Paralegals would act today.  I should mention that they hated technology, especially the invisible electronic kind.  I remember once trying to teach Jane how to copy a file from a floppy disk to a computer and it was an epic fail.  I also remember that I was a bit of a brat and did not have 10% of the communication tools I have today.

My thoughts on the Presidential Election

In 2008 I was invited to attend the Obama rally in Grant Park by Katness.  Her husband wasn't interested in going to a crowded event and I was apparently the first person to respond to her email.  Though an Obama supporter, I wasn't so much into the politics and policies other than wanting an end to the madness that was the majority of the Naughties.  Mostly, it felt like something special was in the air, and I naturally wanted to be part of it.

That November was unseasonably warm and perfect weather for a rally in Grant Park.  I'm sure a lot of people felt it was Divine Intervention, or at least Celestial Approval of our country's first black president.  Facebook was still relatively new to those who weren't members because of their college .edu email address.  I could barely get a signal in the park because everyone was tweeting, posting and texting to anyone they could about this historic event.  I do recall the temperature seemed to suddenly drop and it went from a pleasant autumn evening to a cold November night, a foreshadowing of the next four years it now appears.

In the days after the election, many of my conservative republican friends, especially the subset that are close-minded bigots, spewed hatred about what a mistake we had made.  Apparently Obama became the first president to do so much damage with his presidential authority before even being sworn in, a constitutional technically my bigoted friends chose to ignore.

Four years later, the weather was not as pleasant and instead of an outdoor rally, the Victory Party was held indoors.  Nightingale and I stayed home although I think Katness and J were in the vicinity of McCormack Place if not actually there.  The one thing that is the same is the hysteria, the venom and the crazy from the close minded bigots.  My Facebook feed is about evenly divided by those who feel we made the right choice and those who feel that we are dead in the water.

The thing is, I'm certain that if Facebook had been around during the 2000 and even the 2004 elections, a younger even less mature Icarus would be posting similar things about Bush.  All the people who are bitching and whining about Obama today would have been cheering and jeering about Bush back then. 

Just because Bush and Obama won their elections doesn't imply either has a mandate. That those elections were so close relatively speaking just means they managed to get a few more votes than the other person.

What it really comes down to is our country is so divided right now and has been for so long.  Instead of figuring out how to solve problems and fix this country, each side is bent on making sure nothing happens that could be perceived as a victory for the other party.

We need to come together as a country and figure out how to fix things instead of tear it further apart.  We need to truly understand the meaning of the word compromise and accept that we won't get anything we want if we aren't willing to make some concessions for what we don't want.

I still speak Single, but I'm learning the Language of Couples



The plot relies on a lot of impossible coincidences

There's an old Star Trek episode (Mirror, Mirror) where a problem with the transporter puts some of the crew in a parallel world. In this parallel world the Federation was run by barbarians. Never mind that it was an impossible coincidence that the same set of enterprise crew would be beaming up from the same planet at the same time -- the episode made the point was that it was easier for civilized people to act barbaric than the other way around.

In a way that is true about Single and Coupled people. Couple People can usually separate for the evening and hang out with single people, but single people start to break out into hives when they are surrounded by couples for too long.  On the other hand, Coupled People usually have to check with each other about everything.  Maybe it is easier for Civilized and Barbarians to hang out together.

While I still speak Single, I'm transitioning into the World of Coupledome. Meanwhile some of my friends are making the reverse trip, going through divorce or breakup. One particular friend is Hanna.

When we met a decade ago at the No-Name Software Company, neither of us was married, but we were not part of the same world either. She had been dating forever the guy who would eventually become her husband. We got along well enough and have been friends ever since, but neither of us really understood the other's world.

Now our worlds are reversed. Soon she will be speaking Divorce, a cacophony of Jaded. Meanwhile, I'm well on my way to emersion in the language and customs of Coupledome.

When I was single, I had no trouble finding something to do most nights of the week, and more importantly, someone to do it with. Thursday was the new Friday and If you knew where to look, you could find a social event as early as Tuesday. Friday nights usually had many options and Saturday nights were often triple booked. But alas the loneliest night of the week was Sunday.

Sunday was reserved for people who had someone. It's not that i couldn't find anything to do, there was always church and usually a social afterwards. But it seemed like i had to put more effort into it.

Now it seems I've traded my Sundays for Fridays. I have someone to spend all my Sundays with but I do spend a lot of Fridays and Thursdays and other nights of the week without anything to do.   I'm a nurse's widow since Nightingale works the late shift.

Is that how they do it on your Planet?

So the following email arrived in my inbox the other morning:

Hey Icarus, you haven't responded to any of my invitations lately. Let me know if you want me to stop sending them to you. When you don't reply, it gives me the impression that you don't see any value in my invitations, and it that's true, then I'd rather save you the time and me the effort and just not include you on the distribution list.

My first thought was to send a response saying "I'm sorry you are such a complete doink and I need to lower my expectations regarding any future dealings with you accordingly."

Instead I took some time to Flip the Script and look at it from her point of view. Is it possible that I really did offend her? I did blatantly ignore the invitation and did not feel the need to send either a "thanks but not interested" or "would but I'm too busy" email? The wording of the invitations said to let this person know IF I was interested. My informal and totally unscientific survey (I asked two different people) shows that most people will assume if you don't answer an email, you either aren't interested or are too busy to partake of said activity anyway.

Personally, I don't like this approach and avoid it but IIFC I was legitimately busy around the time of said invitation.

But this is different. This "friend" (let's call her Monica) is notorious for:

• Internalizing everything,
• Conceding nothing, and
• Keeping meticulous score.

I forwarded Monica's email to some friends, a few who knew her and her little quirks, and a few who have never met her. The I-Never-Met-Monica camp told me to run, not walk away from her. They suspect that she has issues. If only it were that simple. Her Issues have Issues. And her Issue's Issue's have pets.

The friends we share in common invited me to the next Friends-of-Monica Support Group meeting. Essentially they pointed out that behavior that is quite acceptable in other friendships are not tolerated from her. If you don't respond to Monica immediately -- and if you could respond before she sends something out, that would be optimal -- she interprets it as you are holding out for a better offer.

What? And miss out on a chance to spend quality time with Ms "don't see any value in my invitations". But wait, the hits just keep on comin'. Our mutual friends went on to assure me that while they understand that everyone has other friends and difficult schedules and plans are sometimes very fluid, Monica doesn't see it that way. More Monicaisms:

If you have conflicting plans and can't make something she has suggested, let her know immediately;

She would prefer you provide the details of why you can't make it;

Saying you might be able to make it is permitted, but, it always makes Monica feel like you were holding out for a better offer.

So let's review:

• If Monica invites me to something, and I have definite plans, I have to tell her what I'm choosing over her. That will set her off.
• If I have tentative plans that might get canceled or postponed, I can say I might be able to make it, but that will also upset her.  

Seems like I'm caught between a rock and a social challenged friend.

 The really sad news is, we created this monster. All these years of taking the path of least resistance and not calling Monica out on her behavior has given her license to act the way she does.