Complimentary

One of my co-workers has this crazy theory (which for the record couldn't be more absurd): my curly hair days are days when I'm 'scary' and people shouldn't mess with me and that the days that I straighten my hair people can get away with pretty much anything because I will be 'nice'. I have already disproven his theory, most recently on Thursday when he kept stalling when we were picking up some items for our office lunch. It was a curly hair day, and he is still alive. The theory is bunk.

But I must say sometimes my niceness is tempted.

On Friday, I stopped by Costco after work to pick up some things and in the shampoo/lotion/razor aisle, I saw a woman inspecting a giant container of shampoo. I couldn't help myself and said, "I use that--it's actually pretty good.", at which point I realized she's staring at my head, with her mouth wide open. It seems seeing my hair in its naturally curly glory couldn't scare a woman more. She slowly put the shampoo down and started backing away from me.

Sadly, I think I will never be a good hair model.

Give Me Bullet Points

Since my promotion and subsequent greater interaction with my manager, I have realized there are a few 'work' issues that have bled into my non-work projects:

• My manager (lets call her Sherry) likes to get to the point. She is a no nonsense kind of woman with a wicked sense of humor. Hence, her email rule to all of us, "Give me bullet points". Considering how much I like words and enjoy using them to describe things, it has been a challenge. Rather, it was a challenge. I recently caught myself sending emails to my friends in bullet points.
• While it was quite obvious at the beginning that Sherry wasn't impressed by me (I think she implied said I was 'whiny'). I insisted that she had caught me at a bad time in my career where I had been misled and micromanaged to an inch of my sanity. A year later, I think we get along quite well. She actually complimented my performance in our staff meeting and to her superiors. She has given me confidence to speak my mind and express my opinions, even if the audience isn't exactly receptive. Which is great! I recently spoke up and said something in a non-work environment that caught ME off guard. Woo hoo for Sherry's mentoring skills.
• I am sorry to say, patience is not (and has tragically never been) one of my many virtues. It really makes me sad. Especially when I have to work with people who are not outwardly bothered by things. My last manager was the kind who would speak more calmly and slowly, which ended up sounding condescending and pissing people off more. Not Sherry. While she has a great sense of humor and admirable self-restraint, she also has a temper. She may tell me to calm down after an especially stressful conference call, but I know she understands and isn't holding my impatience against me. Of course, I've never seen her act unprofessionally--and I would like to think I haven't either (except when I have)--but we of short tempers recognize each other fairly easily and it is nice to be in the company of some who can generally handle her impatience well.
• And finally, after a week of dealing with unprofessional people, it is nice to hear your managers speaking well of your coping skills and general abilities.
  

See, bullet points can be fun. Or to the point.

A Friend in Need

My blogging friend whose words, humor and baby pictures I enjoy so much is sick. I will write more, but right now, I'm trying to think of something productive and non-stalkerish to help her.

Please pray for her and her family. And if you have any ideas of ways a fellow blogger can be helpful, please share.

An Ode to Unrequited Love

For B, who gets paid too much to just read my blog...

How I hate you and this pain you cause me.
I was living my life, content enough and you just had to come along.
Tantalizing me with the possibilities of what could be.
And with you, anything could be. You are perfect in every way, untainted by reality.

You will never fight or ignore me, I will always be perfection in your eyes (once you see me).
You will always remember those special days, and I'll always have time for you.
I will bask in your adoration, knowing that I will never falter.
To you I am perfect, and you are all I have ever wanted and never knew.
If only you could see me.
If only you were real.
If only you weren't potential.
If only I could ignore you and this pain you cause me.

But I can't.
And I won't.

I'll embrace every heart wrenching, stomach-churning, head-splitting thought of you,
And what we could be.
I'll close my eyes every night to dream you into reality,
and wake up mourning your departure.
I'll cry that I never had you; bemoan that you're not mine.
Your best is what I hate most, your weaknesses what I crave.
How could you not see what you conjured into being, without thinking of what would come next?

For you, my Unrequited Love, are what I had missed all along.
I will not cure this pain you have given me, for it is all I have
of the potential that will never be.
This, my dear, is perfection.

Senioritis

Remember your senior year in high school or your senior year in college? How you were just aching to be done with school and move on to bigger and better things? Completely oblivious to the fact that those were probably the most carefree days of your life? Or how you were just DONE with the school routine?

Yeah. That's where I am.

I finished college and said, I'd never go back to school again. I started researching graduate programs about four months after I graduated.

I was stuck in the middle of my graduate program that had mutated evolved into a long distance program and decided what I needed was a project management certificate. Why? Because I'm crazy like that and go through education withdrawals. So I started the Certificate program with my manager/company's blessing (also, with the promise that starting the classes would result in a promotion). The promotion took two years, three and a half different managers and a fit of disapproval by moi to accomplish. The classes in turn were occasionally canceled, not approved/paid for by my company and skipped because of other commitments.

As of last night, I have started my very last class. It will last five more weeks, and then I'm done. Until then, I will be slightly cranky every Tuesday night as I sit in class trying to bite my tongue and not tell a particular classmate that he is slightly insane.

And then, I'll be done and will never register for another class. Ever.

(Or until I hear of something else really, really tempting.)

Tales from the Blog

Since we have an idea how my Birthday Twin celebrated Boo Rooz, I thought I'd share stories from my exciting day.

Um, now that I think about it, it wasn't really exciting. Unless you consider working on client contracts and preparing reports until midnight exciting. No? Me neither. But I have a plan that I'm ten shades of excited about. While I failed to implement my brilliant plan on my birthday, my project did get started the weekend of my birthday (and that's close enough).

I have started a new blog, called Blog Me A Tale. There will be a monthly theme (this is Open Mic March) and you can write a story on that theme--however you interpret it. There is a larger project going on in the background, but for now I'm hoping people will participate and tell their stories. Let me know if you're interested in participating, and I'll send an invite and add you to the contributors. If you know of a blogger you'd like to see contribute, recommend them and I'll send an invite (and/or harass them until they write something to shut me up). The more the merrier. And if you don't want to write, comment. The comments will be an important part of the next steps of my plan.

Think of it as an extended, wordy birthday celebration.

The Nurooz Cometh

(Our Haft Seen Table, moments after Nurooz on March 19, 2008)

Above is my very hurried Haft Seen (Seven 'S's) Table. It is my favorite part of Nurooz. It is also usually well planned, considering one needs to allow beans/grains to sprout at least 10 days before the New Year. This requires one to keep track of time, monitor sprouts and have a couple of backups. I did none of these things this year, mostly because I realized Nurooz was approaching about three days before it arrived.

Allow me to rewind a little: I worked from home half of Wednesday, got my hair colored during my 'lunch' hour ran to the Persian store and purchased most of the necessary items for my Haft Seen Table. This is akin to trying to buy a Christmas tree and ornaments around 4pm on Christmas Eve. Which is why my sprouts and hyacinths are the Persian cousins of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree. And why I am missing three of my seven items. And why the apple is too big for the tiny bowls I usually use to decorate my table. My only joy in all of this? My perfect little gold fish. Especially since this is the first time M has allowed me to have gold fish in the last four years.

(Sidenote: He hates it when the fish die as soon as they get home--which is really sad--and as such wouldn't let me buy fish that would symbolize the brevity of life instead of longevity/fertility).

This year, partially due to work and partially due to M's work(I'm his little helper sometimes), I have been distracted. On the Wednesday of Nurooz, I came home after my frantic beauty/shopping excursion--with its many, many stops--and tried to do my Spring Cleaning (which in real Iranian homes is a month-long process almost regardless of the size or the average cleanliness of the house) in less than three hours. During that time, I also wanted to cook the traditional Nurooz dinner of herbed rice and fish, set the Nurooz table and respond to co-workers who suddenly remembered a laundry list of questions they needed answers to immediately. Needless to say, I barely finished a very superficial cleaning, spent almost two hours solving co-worker problems and was frantically assembling my table when the year changed.

Per our beliefs, the rest of the year follows the tone of what you were doing at the time of the year changing over. Which means, my year will be frantic. Hmm.

Finally, things started settling down--by which I mean so much time passed that I stopped feeling guilty for not sending Nurooz cards and making the traditional dinner three nights too late--and we decided to take a break from our working weekend to go to the beach. Just before we left, I changed the fish's water and fed them.

Now they're swimming in the big bowl in the sky. And my Haft Seen table is even sadder than it was this morning.