Vocabulary Lessons

So, today, I'm working from home. My wife volunteered at girl 1's school this morning, which left me with girl 2. Having much to do for work, I hunkered down in front of my monitor after I set up girl 2 with as much "Clifford the Big Red Dog" as she could handle. Apparently, it wasn't interesting enough. A few minutes later, she came bounding over to my (off-limits) area. "Daddy, I want see pictures!"

"Do you, now. And what do you want to see pictures of?"

"ME!"

I took a few seconds to soak this in and stifle a percolating laughter. After I got myself under control, I said, "Honey, can you say, 'narcissist'?"

"yessehseh"

"Okay, watch daddy. 'nar'..."

"Nawww ..."

"...cis..."

"sisssss"

"sist."

She said that one pretty well. So then we tried saying it altogether.

"Narcissist!"

"Nawsehseh!!!"

I couldn't keep it in any longer. The laughter bubbled over, and girl two just giggled and giggled.

"Sweetie, daddy loves you."

"Yessehseh!!"

"Yes, sweetie. Still want to see some of your pictures?"

"YAH!!!!"

"Okay."

That lasted all of 4 seconds before she decided to go check out Clifford again.

What a doll.

Fear and Panic in the Air

So, this morning, I've been working on this bug-reporting process document. Earlier, I met with one of our our project managers so he and I could go over the steps and verify them as accurate. I drafted up a document and sent it out for review.

A couple of hours went by. I've been working on some other projects, catching up on email ... regular work stuff. All of a sudden, I got a skype message from my team lead. "Hey, could you come in here?" He was in one of the conference rooms.

I don't have a logical explanation for it, but my immediate reaction was one of sheer fretting and dread. I honestly expected to go in there and face some kind of consequence for something I wasn't even aware that I had done. I felt like the proverbial lamb being led to slaughter. Not helping things is the fact that the conference room is glass all around, allowing me to see straight to my lead for about the last 25-30 feet. On the table with him was a pink sheet.

Come to find out, all the worry and panic was for naught; he only wanted to go over the draft I had sent him, the comments for which were mostly complimentary. The rest were comments phrased like, "Here's where I can see this being improved. What do you think?"

I guess it's just conditioning. In my last job, I very rarely ever heard anything of a positive nature from anyone--management, team members, peers ... anything that was discussed was always of a negative nature. Having been on the inside and now able to look in from the outside, it's an incredibly un-positive environment. Granted, I had one lead who went out of his way to be complimentary, but I sometimes wonder how much of that was genuine and how much of it was smoke being blown where smoke doesn't belong.

So now I'm in this great, positive environment, where there's an atmosphere of total open communication and unity. I guess I'm still not used to it. At my old place, it seemed like it was "every man for himself," as it were. On all levels: internal, external, contractors, government ... there just wasn't the feeling of one-ness, even though everyone's goal was to "support the war fighter."

I guess it's still gonna take some time to get used to being complimented for my work. It's definitely a good feeling, and I'm sure I'll get used to it eventually ... it'd just be nice to get to that feeling without the preceding fear and panic as to why I'm being called into an impromptu, one-on-one meeting.

The Legacy of Happiness

On Monday, I took the new highway for the first time, both to work and home. It didn't really shave anything off the morning commute, but the ride home took less than 40 minutes. That's a full half hour off my afternoon commute! My gas mileage is already thanking me. No standing on the highway, no bumper-to-bumper traffic ... nothing buy smooth sailing. It's great.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Hell Hath No Fury ...

When you're told that your child's school starts on 2 September, and you buy her new clothes that she may only wear when school starts, and you buy her pencils, crayons, glue, paper, and all the other accoutrement that come with going to pre-school, and you get her dressed and ready to go, AND you get to the school and try walking her to class, AND THEN you find out that--no--school doesn't start until the 4th, be prepared for the fall-out.

Such was the predicament for my sweet wife today. We've been telling girl 1 for weeks that today was the day she'd get to go back to school and see her old friends. Today was a gargantuan disappointment, and she let weef know just how disappointed she was. I can summarize in 3 words: it wasn't pretty.

Girl 1 likes to learn. She studies bugs and plays with them like they're regular toys. This presents a problem when they're playing in the back yard; we have a known problem with black widows that no amount of spraying or bug bombing seems to quell. So basically, we told her that spiders are OFF-LIMITS. She may play with box elder bugs, potato bugs, ants, or pretty much anything else she finds in the back yard EXCEPT SPIDERS. To her credit, she's done remarkably well. Anyway, so she has this penchant and passion for learning. Telling her that school was going to have to wait 2 more days was the equivalent of telling the female population between 9 and 22 in early 60s England that the Beatles wouldn't be performing tonight--they'd be performing on Thursday night.

Woman scorned? Try a 4-year old. Yikes.