Well, apparently I did NOT have an original thought on this topic.
How many times have you heard the saying that “there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’?” More than enough, I’m sure. It hints that we should all be selflessly working together to achieve our organizational goals, a thing that totally goes against the annoying American worship of independence, yee haw.
I admit that I have always wanted to be a member of a team. Gosh, if only I wasn’t small, chubby, and extremely slow, I could have even been on a sports team at some point in my life. But, though I was very accurate at kicking and throwing a football, girls couldn’t play on those teams (and my distance sucked). As a young adult, I was politely asked to stop participating on my husband’s volleyball team, because they were actually competitive. Sigh.
Hiya hiya (a brand of knitting needles), everyone. I’ve been trying to write this all day, but I can’t complain, because my lunch hour, when I often write, was pleasantly filled with a nice conversation and lunch with my friend Melissa. We had one of our usual hour-long regurgitation of the highs and lows of our lives since we last saw each other, which was way more fun than sitting at my desk typing!
Harvey supervises the painting of our giant wooden Hermann house.
Yesterday was an equally full day. Kathleen and Chris made it to Cameron Saturday evening, so we set out to do on Sunday all the things we’d originally planned to do over the whole Thanksgiving week. Not everything got done, but we sure did a LOT. We’re really grateful to Chris for how hard he worked.
It’s starting to take shape!
Saturday we started out working on our float the the Cameron Christmas Parade. The good news is that we already have a truck and a trailer, so yay. And another good thing is that a marvelous invention, the battery-operated Christmas light, has enabled us to light the float without putting a big ole generator on the back of the pickup.
Apparently the DOG tradition is “Thankstuffing” according to the Bark Box people, who sent us a nice stuffed turkey toy for Vlassic to destroy.
Admittedly, I am one of those people really uncomfortable with the traditional US Thanksgiving origin story, especially since I have ancestors who were there on both sides of that particular piece of history. Probably most of us who are descended from the early settlers in the US are like that, since the settlers and the people who were already there seemed to hook up a lot when they weren’t attacking each other. As with most historical eras, I have a feeling that there were people who were good to each other and those who were not. Anyway…
The cactus in the kitchen window also wants to celebrate. Ooh, Aah.
…what I do like about Thanksgiving is the idea of an entire day to remember to be thankful for the abundance you have, your family, and your friends. That’s what I celebrate every year…that and delicious food, especially my oyster cornbread dressing and my orange/ginger cranberry sauce. I could probably get through the day with just those and a baked sweet potato.
What in the world would lead me to say this? Well, things have just been a bit…unbalanced this week. I’ve felt a little “off” all week, and have done some really goofy things that aren’t like me.
This is the can of delicious water that didn’t want to go in my mouth.
The biggest example is suddenly forgetting how to drink a beverage. I was sitting in my living room, watching television or reading, and I was really thirsty for that cold, fresh lemon-flavored water I’d gotten out of the refrigerator. So, while still focused on my other task, I picked it up and briskly poured it into my lap.
That certainly surprised the dog. But, really, I forgot how to put a drink to my lips? It’s like my body had a glitch. Of course, once that happened, I’ve been alert to any other motor-skills issues, so when I trip and almost fall on a tiny raised part of a sidewalk, drop what I’m carrying, etc., I think, “Oh no, I’m getting some disease.”
Vlassic took to his (my) bed to recover from my oddness.
I’m still at the annual Master Naturalist conference, and enjoyed getting recognized for achieving 250 volunteer hours so far. That does pale in comparison to the dude who achieved 10,000 hours. But I’m proud I got so much done in just two years.
I did this. So did a lot of other people!
I’m also proud of myself for signing up for a few of the more administrative sessions today. I did one on doing social media for your group and another on leading effective meetings. The networking in both was great, and much of what I learned will help with my other jobs, since they also involve social media and leading meetings.
This book was my door prize. It’s much smaller than it appears to be. There is loads of info in it, though.
The tidbits on dealing with folks who disrupt meetings and in how to actually get things done in meetings were invaluable.
Naturally I got books. I’m me. One is on things that are invading Texas and the other is on things that are in danger of disappearing.
I am sharing a book review I wrote for Hermit Haus Redevelopment, because I think some of my readers here would also enjoy it.
The little book I read is called Going Tiny: Failure + Opportunity in the Future of Affordable Housing It’s written by a guy named Davis Richardson, who is apparently the age of my youngest son. But, he’s more ambitious or more lucky. Anyway, his age is a real advantage in this book, and his perspective is just what I needed as I looked for books that gave honest assessments of how tiny homes REALLY would work in communities.
I don’t usually write the same thing in my work and personal blog. This time, yes. Why not?
I really enjoyed this charming and idea-packed little book!
If you are a professional book person, you have to ignore some of the obvious signs of self publishing, like random blank spreads in the middle of chapters, and headings even on the first blank page. I also get a little irritated trying to make out the legends on his illustrations, which are in his charming but hard-to-read handwriting. Really, though, you should focus on Richardson’s words, instead, which are written in a colloquial Millennial style that I enjoyed.
Richardson is an architecture student who decided to build a tiny house on a whim, and learned a lot of lessons about building them and (more important to me) what you can DO with them the hard way, by his own experience. Lucky for us Hermits, he did all his learning in Austin, so the examples he gives actually apply to us. What a handy coincidence!
My friends, my colleagues, and I have a rousing good time whenever one of us is stumped by a spelling, grammar, or punctuation rule. (Have I mentioned before that I am an editor/tech writer by day?) The amount of gusto with which we throw ourselves into figuring out the right answer has got to look funny to passersby at work (luckily at home no one can see us).
Recently, there have been a few capitalization questions that have come up, mostly because we are revising some old content and adding new headings. Every once in a while something looks “funny” to one of us.
Even coffee doesn’t help you sometimes.
Luckily, we solved most of the first mysteries by going to our preferred style guides. Microsoft disagreed with Chicago Manual of Style on hyphenated words in sentence case, but since we are a software company, Microsoft won.
Thus, Hyphenated-Word Capitalization Looks Like This
I hate to disappoint the readership, but today didn’t have much to it worth writing about, other than getting my neck looked at after the little accident, and some water droplets finally falling out of the sky. Both of those are good things, of course.
A giant bra in the sky from yesterday.
My thoughts on endless delays. But isn’t the avocado shirt from Target cute?
I spent most of the day sitting at my desk, back at work, dutifully doing the needful, and waiting for the results of a meeting. Finally, I asked that guy that sits next to me when the meeting was, and he admitted he was too chickensh** to tell me it had gotten postponed. I got a wry laugh out of that, I guess. Then I took a walk, like the consummate professional I am, followed by more needful doing.
I did get yet another new work laptop, because the previous new laptop would not display my third monitor, over-heated a lot, and kept refusing to come back after it went to “sleep.” I know I’m hard on displays, since each of my offices has a slightly different configuration, so that part didn’t surprise me. So far, the new one is churning along just fine, and I did get a cool screen background.
There are like 80 of these different color splotch backgrounds that rotate. Nice. New laptop at right. Tangle of wires at center.
Yep, that’s it. Highlight of my day, some blobs and some raindrops.
September 11 is never easy, anyway. As always, I will send out peaceful thoughts to whoever will accept them. Peace to you, readers. Remember those you love, and let them know.
Greetings from my sick room. I’ve been sleeping off the medication I got when my coworker Maggie guided me to the ER, because I got all disoriented and weird at my 10 am meeting.
Huh?
It just wasn’t a good morning. I was very happy to get to work without incident, because I was still exhausted from the weekend. I was almost to my exit when eek! A large piece of something…perhaps fiberboard, came out of the sky over the truck in front of me. No time to react, I just watched it smash down on the hood of my car. It then flew off, and I hope didn’t hit any other car!
*We were only calling it poop coffee or butt coffee as we laughed our way through our beverages…
The thing is, I always tell people I’m willing to try any food, at least once. So, when my colleague Chriztine decided she was interested in trying the coffee pictured at right, I (and two other coworkers) just had to say, “Yes.”
What does that mean, “zero contact with the animals?” Well, this is that coffee that’s passed through the digestive tract of the civet cat, which you may have heard of (many people think it goes through monkeys, but no). The sustainable part is important, because the poor little animals were being mistreated to get them to poop out enough beans to meet demand. We didn’t want anything to do with that!
So, according to the story on the bag, this is the nice version of the kipi luwak coffee.
Gimme some coffee. And don’t call me a weasel!
As a naturalist, I feel compelled to let you know that the civet is actually not a cat, and is more closely related to our friends, the mongoose family. I found this out in an article from Singapore, which informed me that “the special taste of these coffee is due to the fermentation process when the civets digest the beans.” MMMMM. Also I learned that this kind of coffee is called “weasel coffee” in Vietnam.
So, did I drink it?
First we spent a long time grinding the beans, during which time coworker Jen frequently reminded us that the roasting process will have killed off any germs or wee beasties living on the coffee. Whew.
You can tell they’re looking forward to this.
And then we poured hot water in and watched it drip. Was it chocolatey like Dipu thought? Were the beans old, like Jen thought? Were we all laughing too loud, like I thought?
Ready to give it a try. Note beautiful staging of coffee-making equipment.
Next, we all had to pose with our cups ready. And then we drank it. Guess what? It tasted very much like a cup of coffee. We didn’t detect any excessive smoothness or other fermentation results.
Yep. That’s coffee, all right.
But, since it was the most expensive cup of coffee any of us had ever imbibed, you can bet we all finished it. (Thanks, Chriztine.) We tried to get more people to drink it, but most flat-out refused, even when I politely stuck the cup under their noses and demanded, “Wanna smell my poop coffee?” So hilarious.
Rob painfully tastes the coffee. The new guy behind him got a good chuckle out of us. He was getting “pod coffee,” as we call the product from that machine (some like it; some don’t).
Rob here tried a tiny bit and said he did NOT like it. That will save him the investment of buying more if he did like it!
The best part of the day was making all the jokes and laughing away some of the work stress. I will say that I’m glad the only coffee I brought home was some medium-roast blends to drink in the mornings at the Bobcat Lair. No more poop coffee.
By the way, we have civets in Texas (ring-tail cats). Wonder what happens when they eat mequite beans?
The Hermits' Rest 