Category Archives: Uncategorized

Purging time capsules

15 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

I had a general idea of what I was dealing with, but a box labeled, “home office,” or “kitchen” didn’t tell me much. Every time I sliced through the clear packing tape at the top of each box I was always surprised by what I found inside.

There were a lot of boxes to unpack and here it is, five months later, and I’m still unpacking. The move to Texas happened fast. I didn’t have time to purge and declutter before things got boxed up. In fact, I didn’t even box them up myself. A moving company moved us and was responsible for all of our packing–hence the mystery–so not only did I not thin out everything as things were packed, I honestly didn’t know what was in each box.

There’s help for this, I’m sure.

For some reason I hang on to a lot. Not exactly like a hoarder with rats running around and a stack of plastic florist card holder sticks and Cool Whip containers, but I hang on to every ticket stub for events I’ve attended, Playbills for every show I’ve seen, every Christmas card and Birthday card received, and notes from people. I’ve also hung on to interesting articles I’ve found. Most of what I’ve collected over the years I put into binders to form a visual journal of each year. Some people call this scrapbooking, but mine don’t look like scrapbooks. They’re just organized in binders like what a historian would keep. Yet here I was, facing all the accumulation of what I had been hanging on to–including the binders, but mostly files upon files of random things I had collected.

At least I was somewhat neat and organized about it. I had labeled manila files that helped me organize all the things that didn’t make it into the yearly binders–things clear back from high school. I had files labeled–

  • Every wedding announcement I had ever received
  • Emails I had printed out that contained bon mots and clever exchanges between co-workers that I thought were funny enough to file away and keep.
  • An entire file about Barbie. These were mostly cartoons and clever things written about the Barbie doll. Not sure why I had kept these and filed them away, but apparently I had enough of them that on one rainy day I must have sat on my bed in my apartment and created a folder for them.
  • There were folders for articles about The Cure (yes, the band–I was kind of obsessed) and a whole collection of stuff on the musician, George Michael. I was a member of the fan club during my twenties.
  • There were coins from a variety of European countries before there was the Euro

And then after I had peeled away layers of manila folders, underneath I found this:

Woody Allen Mia Farro Soon-Yi

I had been a long-time fan of Woody Allen so when the news of his relationship with Mia Farrows’ daughter, Soon-Yi exploded I was immersed in it all. I had collected everything in print on the news about the subject during a time long before social media and even before the Internet had matured enough to serve as a news source.

So here I was, faced with all these memories and I had to decide. Do I keep or throw away? On one hand, they are memories and they are about who I am as a person., which is exactly the reason I had kept them in the first place. But then on the other hand, it totally didn’t make sense to keep them. I didn’t have room for them in my house, and let’s be honest. I didn’t have room for them in my life any longer.

Then it occurred to me. This is exactly that moment this collection of memories was designed for. It’s as if they were all sealed up in a large metal box with a date on the outside that said, “Don’t open until 2015.” This was my time capsule.

As I approached each box and each folder inside, I spread the contents on my bed and spent time with them. I looked through everything and then I dumped everything. (Well, most everything. I actually discovered some important documents in the process–like an excerpt from a grandparent’s journal.)

I read every email that was printed out and laughed when I re-read the exchange with my friend Joe as we both secretly vied for the attention of a handsome co-worker, Trevin, and then they all went into the trash. I looked through each of the wedding invitations I received and fondly remembered the connections I had with the sender and then into the trash they went. I smiled as I leafed through the George Michael Fan Club material, remembering the evenings I would put his Listen Without Prejudice Volume I CD on repeat and write in my journal. Yes, all my George Michael dreams went into the trash as well.

These were a time capsule that I had put together in my twenties that were a definition of who I was at the time and here it is twenty or so years later to discover that, while they are wired into my DNA, they aren’t who I am anymore. They were certainly seeds that grew into who I am now, but I’m not a seed anymore. I’m a tree now.

Purging and decluttering is an emotional exercise. It wasn’t until I realized that I’m not that twenty something person any longer that I could let it all go. During the unpacking I gave myself my moments of reliving exactly what was intended when my twenty something self put these things in a manila folder—to remember and look fondly on those times, but move forward.

Now, on to my closet. I’ve got some unfinished business there too.

 

Thank you, Utah.

22 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by in Trips, Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

IMG_3747

I drove across the border from Utah into Colorado unceremoniously. I half expected a big sign pleading, “Hey Lisa, we’ve had 19 wonderful years in Utah. Please turn around and come back” as if, like a desperate lover, trying to make one last attempt to change my mind about leaving.

It’s not you, Utah. It’s me. Things change, but I still love you.

You throw your hat in the ring and BOOM! You actually land that promotion you applied for at work. High fives with the husband and then you realize–

We’re moving. The kind of moving where you have to move your house, leave your friends, leave your hair stylist/frizz tamer/color wizard/therapist. Leave your favorite restaurants, your class at the gym (even though you’ve been on the back row for years), and leave the brilliant it-just-makes-sense street system, laid out like missile coordinates.

I thought I would be crying as I drove with the majestic snow-covered Wasatch Mountains in my rear-view mirror. I wouldn’t have them any longer to keep me humble and remind me that I’m small and the rest of the world is bigger than me. They’ve been my companion of 19 years in the arid high desert and even though I don’t ski I will miss them something awful.

Utah is plagued with a misunderstood reputation. Of the nearly two decades I spent there, I rarely saw a polygamist and had probably the most diverse set of friends I’d ever had–representing different lifestyles, races and religion. It’s not to say that Utah didn’t have room to grow and mature. When I arrived fresh from California I was accustomed to eating alone in a restaurant. The first time I asked for a Table for One in Utah the hostess froze, not knowing what to do with me. I thought she was going to offer me a consoling hug and whisper in my ear, “It’s okay, honey. I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”

Now I can easily go into a restaurant alone or even see a movie alone and everyone else seems to be okay with that. Time changes perspectives, and while Utah isn’t a big coastal metropolis like New York City, LA, Seattle or San Francisco, it’s been growing up.

Utah has been a growing experience for me. It’s an interesting clash of cultures when people who feel more sophisticated than a city come to town. I was one of those. I probably spent my first year with a lot of eye rolls. “Geez,” I would say to myself. “They call this sourdough bread?” I thought I was too sophisticated and polished for Utah. Little did I know it would polish me.

I eventually found that I could spend years trying to prove (to no one, really) how much more awesome I was than Utah or I could fall madly, deeply in love with the state. And that’s what happened.Log Haven

I got married here and we celebrated our new life together with friends and family in a tucked-away historical restaurant in the nearby mountains. I didn’t find my husband here (I had to go to Scotland for that), but we dated long distance for two years and when he’d come to town he took my hand and dragged me to the obvious wonders I was ignoring–Zion National Park, Bryce National Park, Arches National Park, Canyonlands National Park and Antelope Island. All in my own backyard, but I was blind to them all because I had been so concerned about what was different from where I had been before.

Bryce Canyon

Utah is different. But so is every place else when you really think about it. And I’m not just talking about the geology or terrain. People will be different, customs will be different, and the DMV will be different. But that’s okay. We all can’t be the same, otherwise, there’s no reason to travel to different places. What made Utah different made me different than I was before I landed there. It made me lose the chip on my shoulder and helped me understand that while my viewpoint is different than some in Utah I had value and perspective to offer. I didn’t argue, I discussed. I quit rolling my eyes and started seeing. I found other voices like mine and we shared. And I also found a sameness I didn’t think I’d find.

Actor Ty Burrell (of TV sitcom Modern Family) and his wife call Salt Lake home and expressed exactly what I’m trying to say here, when he wrote in Huffington Post, “We didn’t realize the incredible impact that having the differing viewpoints of both the religious and secular populations of Utah would have on us. So many cities are actually mono-cultures and Salt Lake has an inherent diversity that’s not always apparent.”

You see, this mix and diversity is so delicious. And most people don’t even see it.

Utah was the third state I spent significant time. I grew up in Oregon, then spent almost 10 years in the San Francisco Bay Area in my 20s, then settled in Utah. Now I’m moving to the south to Austin, Texas, which seems to be a conglomerate of all those places I lived previously.

Already I’ve found Austin to be very different. For the life of me I can’t tell how to get around on the street system here and I miss the mountains of Utah that always helped me know how to navigate direction. Some here call themselves hippies and others call themselves very conservative. But everyone calls me ma’am and says “howdy.” I like all of that.

Though it hurts to break up, Utah, please know that you will always be in my heart. Thank you for 19 wonderful years.

Wasatch Mountains

 

 

Let’s talk about that vacation you’re not taking

08 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , ,

IMG_0355

Yes, all that paid vacation time you’re getting and not using. It’s piled up like a stack of unread newspapers (remember those?), and now it’s December and there’s no way—at least in your mind—that you’ll be able to take the time away from the office.

Stop that. Stop it right now.

I’m the poster child for vacations. Last year I used up all of my paid time off (PTO) offered by my employer and even took five days of unpaid vacation. Yes, I have direct reports and yes, I have a great deal of responsibility at the office, but I still take the time to get away to unplug from work and point my brain in a different direction. Studies have documented that when we take time away from the office we are much more creative people in problem solving and, quite frankly, better at our jobs. According to the study by Scientific American:

“Why giving our brains a break now and then is so important has become increasingly clear in a diverse collection of new studies investigating: the habits of office workers and the daily routines of extraordinary musicians and athletes; the benefits of vacation, meditation and time spent in parks, gardens and other peaceful outdoor spaces; and how napping, unwinding while awake and perhaps the mere act of blinking can sharpen the mind.”

If I feel like I’m going to die on vacation then I’m not thinking about the office

It’s true. As an avid global birder and scuba diver I tend to choose adventurous vacations where my mind is focused on things completely unrelated to work–things like staying alive. I’m the type that if I sit on a beach my mind will wander right back to work issues, but if I’m trudging in the rain on a boardwalk over swamps in the Amazon with anaconda lurking in the waters then I channel my energy and focus on making sure I live.

Of course, that’s extreme and a bit of humor to make my point, but it’s important to disengage from the office whether it’s to connect with your family, clear your mind or to simply stay alive. For the same reason that we look to hire people who are well-rounded and have a broad scope of experiences, we should look to make sure employees are continually engaging in things outside of the office and beyond the scroll of emails in their inbox.

It’s part of your total compensation package

I know many who freelance or work as contractors or consultants and they don’t get “paid vacation.” They would love it if someone was depositing a paycheck into their bank account while they hiked the Andes, went on a cruise through the Panama Canal or visited Pompeii. But you? You who draws a salary and was rewarded weeks of vacation has decided to not use it? You may have even negotiated more paid vacation as part of your offer, which makes not using it even more baffling. By not taking vacation you’ve essentially turned into a volunteer for your organization. Just think of it this way: Rather than volunteering to build water wells in Africa for a week, you’re showing up at the office to answer email and attend meetings.

The office doesn’t need you that much

I get it. You think you’re indispensable. It’s okay to feel that way. In fact, I realize that the higher one goes up the chain in the organization it does, indeed, become more and more difficult to take vacation, especially in very large organizations. You’re a “work martyr” and according to the Travel Effect website, the U.S. Travel Association’s research-driven initiative that researches the positive effects of taking earned time off, you’re not gaining anything by being the good soldier.  In fact, Travel Effect’s article titled, All Work, No Pay: The Impact of Forfeited Time Off the author references a new study by Oxford Economics, which states,

“…there is no link between putting in more time at the office and getting a pay raise or bonus. In fact, employees who left 11-15 days of PTO unused last year are actually less likely (6.5% less likely) to have received a raise or bonus in the past three years than those who used all of their PTO.

“The only thing employees gain by being tied to the office is stress. There was a clear correlation between those who have more unused PTO days and those who reported feeling “very” or “extremely” stressed at work, particularly for those employees who leave more than 11 days unused. “

It’s about planning and imagination

The people I see take vacation are those who plan. If you don’t plan for a trip or vacation you won’t likely take it and then you find yourself at the end of the year holding weeks of PTO, which you either walk away from or you end up taking time off to stay at home and end up working anyway.

The other factor in making sure you take your PTO is to be imaginative. This means do something. Don’t just hang out at home. I see this happen too much–a person decides to just take the week off with really no plans at all and then he ends up at the office. “Oh, I was just too busy so I moved my time off to next month,” he says, and you know what? He never takes the time. Or worse, I’ve seen people schedule time and then say, “Hey, text me or call me if you have any problems,” and then they find themselves attending conference calls and checking their emails every day.”

Whether it’s around your children’s school breaks, or a spouse’s schedule, or just your own desires, plan your time off. Don’t just schedule what days you’ll be out but what you will be doing. Be imaginative. I’ve been known to plan my next vacation while I’m on vacation. Always have plans in the queue. It’s a cliché, but create a bucket list and don’t let anything stop you from achieving it. If you can’t afford to travel away, staying at home is fine, but just don’t tell people in the office you’ll be around. Take notes from Alastair Humphreys’ book, Microadventures, which includes inspiration and ideas for adventures that are short, cheap and take you out of your comfort zone—and more importantly—out of the office.

So do it. Take your vacation. Make plans for 2015 and make them stick. See the world, not your office. Take a break from email. Spend time with loved ones. Recharge. You will have stress in your life, no doubt, but it’s not sustainable without a break. Find a purpose that’s more than your work and take that PTO and focus on that, and as a result you’ll see your contributions at work explode with richness and purpose.

“To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.” 
― James Thurber (from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)

Reaching for words

07 Sunday Sep 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

IMG_5529

It was a rookie mistake. I had no idea that workshopping a very sad personal story would turn out to be such a bad idea. And by “bad idea” I mean there were tears in the workshop. Not from readers, but from me. This workshop was part of the Book Passage Travel Writing and Photography Conference I attended in Corte Madera, California last month and I was all prepared to be encouraged and motivated and receive really inspiring directional feedback. I wasn’t expecting the tissue box to be passed my way.

Workshopping an essay is not for the timid, and while no one would describe me as timid (ever), I hadn’t workshopped any of my writing since I took Creative Writing in college. All those creative juices I thought I was squeezing back in college almost immediately turned into lackluster business writing of emails and PowerPoints over the course of the last 25 years. No one that I know even writes documents in business anymore. We write in 24 pt. font on slides with bullet points where punctuation is optional. There’s no time to workshop a piece at the office and why would we? Most of the time we’re up at midnight throwing together the presentation that was due a few hours earlier and, to be frank, no one cares about the prose. I wish they did, though. I miss striving to write great prose.

GEMO or “good enough, move on” is the mantra, because there’s another assignment brewing. There’s no feedback of a written piece. No one in business brings together a group of people, sitting in a circle to make comments like, “But we want to know more about how you’re feeling—what did you think when you were told to lead the annual United Way fundraising campaign? Can you dig deeper?”

So that’s why I started writing about stuff I care about

It was just three years ago I decided that if I didn’t have an outlet for creative writing I would likely explode into a million tiny pieces. The emails and PowerPoints were never going to help me reach the Self Actualization pinnacle of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, so I opened up a WordPress account and started blogging. Blogs are “rough,” and a bit off the cuff and I could write on my own schedule, which is generally late at night after a long day at the office, or on the weekend while a pile of laundry goes unfolded, and dishes sit in the sink. And I admit it: there’s so much satisfaction with putting words down and hitting Publish.

There. Done. Move on.

I move fast. It’s how I’m wired—I’m impatient with the world and impatient with words. Feedback on my blog? Oh, I’d love it. Really. But I don’t elicit it. That would require time. And waiting. And the responsibility to dig deep. At least I’m one notch better than business writing, but not much, which is why I really needed feedback.

How I ended up workshopping. And crying.

You can’t be in management in business without learning to give feedback and get feedback, which means I have pretty thick skin. So, the desire for feedback led me to the workshop at the Book Passage Travel Writing and Photography Conference. There were seven other brave souls who labored over their own pieces we eventually dissected along with our faculty leader/moderator over three mornings. The feedback was always constructive and gentle and every single piece of advice I received was perfect in making my essay better.

I just didn’t realize that it would, well, make me cry.

The essay recalled the events of finding out my friend’s death the morning after I had exchanged “I love yous” with a man I was rendezvousing with in romantic Bath, England. Revisiting this lovely/awful mashup rubbed me raw like Meryl Streep’s character in Silkwood where she is getting sprayed down with fire hose force while someone is coarsely scrubbing down her skin in the shower after she had been contaminated by radiation. That kind of raw. When you’re that exposed and tender with emotion someone could have suggested that I should have used a different font for my essay and I would have sobbed.

I always want my travel essays to take the reader back and really be there in the location, but I forgot that it takes me there too. It broke my heart all over again, which is probably why I never went that deep in the first place. At first I was okay when the instructor began to talk about what he liked and then questions from the group arose as to why I didn’t write more about the details of my relationship with my friend, how much I knew about her illness and what she knew about this man I was meeting in England. Water in my eyes filled up the more everyone probed about my friend. Was I having a tree allergy, perhaps? Sure, that was it.

The woman to my left saw the puddles of water in my eyes and said, “Can I give you a hug?” and that’s all it took to release the dam holding back my tears. I lowered my head as if to pray and covered my eyes under my glasses, thinking no one could see me cry. Horrified to think that they all thought I was upset over the feedback I stuttered out, “I’m sorry. It’s not the feedback. It’s not the feedback. It’s all great. I just didn’t expect this.”

I had no intention of diving too deep into this mashup of romantic love bursting at the seams with the excruciating pain of the death of my best friend. I lived it once already, wrote about it two years ago and just figured I’d make it better in this workshop. No big deal, right? I supposed I would just casually snorkel near the surface and keep it safe. I didn’t know I’d be strapping on the tank and going deep below the surface to see what was in each cavern or see new creatures and coral I couldn’t see from the top.

Sometimes you need help to reach

Helping you get there—to get deep—is what workshopping groups are supposed to do (and what mine did for me last month at the conference). Each member of our group provided me an outside viewpoint that woke me to new words I couldn’t get to before. For me, reaching for words alone is like sticking my arm in a hole in the ground that’s only three-inches deeper than the length of my arm and my fingers are wriggling and stretching to try to pick up words lying there like a pile of plastic red, blue and yellow Pick Up Monkeys I played with as a kid—monkeys with their arms curved like hooks so they can link one to another in a long monkey chain. But my arm isn’t long enough and I can’t reach the monkeys. I know they’re there but they’re just out of reach. If I could just get one of them I could grab the rest of the pile. So I lie there on the ground with my arm stretched out as long as I can muster and wriggle and wriggle my fingers in hopes of grasping a word that will link to another and another in a long chain. I usually give up and just move on. But a workshopping group doesn’t let you  move on.

Words are often unreachable and for me, it takes others to help me reach a little further even if it’s painful. That’s the joy of workshopping—you get to where you need to be, even if it does make you cry a little. Just because time has passed doesn’t make visiting the past any easier. Getting to the right words takes time, patience, a long arm, some great folks to provide feedback to point you in the right direction, and maybe some tissues.

But next year I’m not going to make such a rookie mistake. Maybe I’ll save the deeply emotional pieces for one-on-one feedback, so if I cry it won’t feel the need to be so apologetic about my tears.

I think next time I’ll just bring an essay about birds.

Do you ever struggle for words when you write? How do you break through that? And have you ever workshopped a piece that brought you to tears? (Because if you have, that would make me feel a whole lot better.)

 

Musical Tales

25 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

 

lroum

The interview recording studio at Classical 89.

Of course I’m not going to pass up an invitation to be interviewed on our local classical music station and talk about my favorite classical pieces, so when they asked I jumped at the chance. And when they invited my husband to be interviewed as well, I didn’t have to do much arm twisting there. We’re both classical music nerds, I’m afraid.

Classical 89 in Provo, Utah is our favorite radio station. It’s what I wake up to every morning at 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. (in case I missed that first alarm.) The publicly-funded radio station invites listeners to become part of Friday Favorites and share with interviewer, Mark Wait, their favorite piece of music and why and so I didn’t hesitate when they invited me via Facebook.

Easy peasy, I thought at first. I love music, especially the classical stuff. But then I had to narrow it down to just two. Not so easy peasy. Yet, I did find my top two that I shared with Classical 89’s listeners and I thought I’d share it with you too. Plus you get to hear what we sound like and I promise you, we’re not classical music snobs.

Bolero

Listen to my interview as I explain why I’m so in love with this piece. We talk a little about jazz and I confessed that it took me awhile to appreciate Miles Davis, but I do now and in a very big way. I want you all to know that.

So back to Ravel. If there ever was a soundtrack for my romance with my husband it’s this piece and I explain it in the interview below. (Click on the play button next in the black bar below and you’ll hear the 2 1/2 minute interview.)

 

So, the Bolero masterpiece is 15 minutes long and there are always the snickers from those who’ve seen the movie 10, but you must go and give it a play. Especially the version by Cincinnati Symphony and Orchestra. I have not heard another recording as stirring as that one.

Gymnopédie

There is something a little jazzy about Erik Satie’s Gymnopédies.  They’re jazzy because Satie took the melodies and stretched them out into what seems like the atmosphere and then they come back to you contained as a unit. It’s all so indicative of the impressionistic movement going on at that time. I’m rather fond of Gymnopédie 1, particularly the Claude Debussy orchestration, which doesn’t lose its simplicity going from Satie’s original piano work to orchestration.

When I contacted Classical 89’s studio to get a copy of my interview they couldn’t find it. (I know! Bummer!) Somehow it may have gotten deleted, so I’ll tell you here my Satie story. As you recall from the interview above about Bolero, I had met my husband online and we were corresponding long distance from two continents. We would see each other about every six weeks and during one of our rendezvous he suggested we go on a road trip. As I was putting my bags in the back seat of his car I noticed a plastic shoe box full of CDs and right there on the top was an Erik Satie album.

“I’m going to marry that man,” I thought to myself.

Rhapsody in Blue

There was a bit of a squabble between Steve and I as to who was going to use Rhapsody in Blue in the interviews. It’s one of my favorites, but Steve called “dibs” on it and so I let him have it to share in his interview. (Besides, I had so much trouble narrowing down my own choices.) Steve talks a little about jazz and Woody Allen, which continues to endear me to my husband. Here is Steve’s interview (Click on the play button in the black bar. The interview is just shy of a minute)

 

Ride of the Valkyries

I have a love/hate relationship with Ride of the Valkyries. It’s so not the piece of music I want to hear before 10:00 a.m.  (Remember, my alarm is set to Classical 89 and there’s been twice that they’ve played Ride of the Valkyries right as the wake-to-music alarm went off. Jolting, I tell ya.) I think Steve loves this piece because he loves war movies. And he’s right, as he and the interviewer explain in the recording below—it was so fitting for the movie Apocalypse Now. I’ve always wondered how Wagner felt about that. (Click on the play button in the black bar. The interview is only 2 mins 2 seconds.)

 

Is there a piece of music that you just adore? Tell me in the comments below.

Kind of almost sort of dying.

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 10 Comments

A clear day of Alberta Canada. Not this flight.

I was listening to the soundtrack of Love in the Time of Cholera when I heard the pilot come on the intercom. I pulled back my turquoise Beats by Dr. Dre headphones off one ear, enough to hear the pilot say something about a serious storm we’re heading into and to make sure we stayed seated and had our seat belts buckled. I honestly couldn’t understand much more than that, but this wasn’t just the ho-hum stay-in-your-seats-while-we-head-into-a-little-system instruction. This pilot seemed a little more parental with a dash of “or else you may die” tone.

I’ve never heard that tone come from the cockpit before.

The guy in the middle seat next to me asked me to open the shade on the window just as I was lifting it.

“Whoa,” he said. I don’t know much about clouds, but these looked dark. Heavy. Ugly.

“Yeah,” I responded as though I knew what I was talking about.

Back to Shakira lamenting in her sad, sad way on the soundtrack. The music feels gloomy, but it’s a pretty kind of gloom and that’s why I like the soundtrack. It helps to relax me on flights because I hate flying. I have my go-to music whenever I fly, which is this soundtrack and the soundtrack from Pride and Prejudice—the Kiera Knightly one. I also go to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis if I remember to download it from the cloud before I travel, but I mostly forget to do that.

Speaking of clouds

The first series of bumps came and I almost grabbed the leg of middle-seat guy because that’s what I do when I fly with my husband—I grab his leg and dig hard into his quadricep, leaving finger impressions if there’s even the slightest bump or shift. I think he hates that but probably not more than I hate turbulence.

The bumping was turning more into a roller coaster ride and the plane wasn’t just going up and down but left and right. Oh please, oh please, oh please, don’t let this plane break in two.

I won’t lie. A few expletives left my mouth. There’d be jerks (forward and backward, then left and right) and then there’d be a sudden jolt that would make me catch my breath (followed by a whispered expletive), like someone had just sneaked up on me. This went on for a good 10 minutes and then we dropped.

A LOT!

Down, down, down the plane dropped. Not nose first or like a dive, but a drop like the floor just dropped from beneath our feet. We were falling from the sky.

Falling

from

the

sky.

Drinks were flying in the air—not just off tables but up and over rows into people’s laps behind them. There was a chorus of WHOA! from the plane and then…

…laughter?

Yes, children were laughing. We had a plane full of children on their way to Orlando and they were giggling and laughing through it all. Their amusement park vacation has begun.

Not for me.

I’m thinking, This is how I’m going. Yet, the children’s laughter actually calmed me. If I’m going to die I think hearing children laugh with utter joy is the way to go. My eyes were watery, but I didn’t cry. The kids helped me get a grip on my emotions and kept me from completely losing it.

Is this how the last seconds go? I’m not sure.

There was not a flash of my life before my eyes. I wasn’t thinking about anyone (I should have) except, Crap, I’m going to die right now. Right over some random place. 

There were more bumps and jolts and a female voice comes on the intercom. “Parents. Keep. Your. Children. Secured. In. Their. Seats!”

And then I felt the plane get ahold of itself. We were flying smoothly again. Our brief moment of terror had ended.

A kid laughs and demands, “Do it again!”

No, let’s not.

But I wasn’t going to die. Not this time.

On being a writer at the 2002 Winter Olympics

08 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

When I moved to Salt Lake City in 1996 I had one thing in mind: Be part of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Look, I’m not a skier. In fact, I kind of hate winter, but when I watched on TV the Olympics in Albertville, France and then Lillehammer, Norway I fell in love with the Winter Games, even more so than the Summer Games. Perhaps it’s the cozy scenes they show with the snow flakes falling as if choreographed, or the layers of furry clothes everyone is wearing. Might even be the nordic sweaters, because I think they’re kind of cool. Or maybe it’s because I love what I can’t do. It’s rather dreamy to watch people do something you can’t possibly do yourself, like ice dancing swizzles, or zig zagging down a mountain on skis, or sporting a speed skating unitard. Nope, can’t do that one at all.

But I can write. So when a friend told me about a job opening for the Main Operations Center as a writer I couldn’t pass it up. It was a part-time contract position and something I could do just during the few weeks of the Olympics. That meant I still had my day job, which required leaving the office around 4:00, catching the light rail to the Olympics Headquarters and working a night shift. (Two shifts were actually all-night shifts.)

Skier, I am not. Writer, yes.

But I wasn’t going to limit myself to just working behind the scenes. I already had purchased tickets a year in advance, so I needed to squeeze in being a spectator as well as meet up with out-of-town friends. It’s no surprise that I got very little sleep for the two weeks I was working.

Like any writer, I kept a journal during my two weeks and as the Sochi Olympics are just getting started, I’ve been going down memory lane. Here are excerpts from my experience:

February 10, 2002

I’m really enjoying my gig with Olympic Radio.  I’m working in what’s called the MOC (Main Operations Center) in the headquarters downtown and it is definitely the nerve center of everything that’s going on.  Of course, you know I’m eating that up, as I like to know EVERYthing that’s going on and always want to be one of the first to know.

Also eating up all the Krispy Kreme donuts they keep bringing in for us. Someone please put a stop to that. Please

Warming up with friends on Main Street in Park City at the 2002 Olympics.

Warming up with friends on Main Street in Park City at the 2002 Olympics.

February 10, 2002

Oh, my favorite thing to do is to talk to people who are visiting.  This is very exciting for a lot of people.  They’ve been saving their money a long time to come and visit.  For some reason, wearing the uniform makes me more gregarious and makes me want to talk to our guests.  I truly feel like I’m a hostess and this is my dinner party and I want to make sure everyone has a great time.

Look at me! I'm doing the Skeleton!

Look at me! I’m doing the Skeleton! Not really. Right outside the Main Operations Center was a business that photoshops your face on an athlete. So yes, now I’m a winter sports athlete. Ha!

February 12

Okay, the hot thing in town is the USA Team’s blue beret.  I have been on a mad search for it and people are cleaning it off the shelves.  Went to the SLOS (Salt Lake Olympic Square) Superstore on my lunch today and the berets were nowhere to be found. Then I found the store, Roots (the Canadian manufacturer of the USA Team uniforms), and there was a run on them there too.  They said they can’t keep them on their shelves.

Not yet giving up.

Look! We got our berets!

Look! We got our berets!

February 14

I finished my first all-night shift.  Not too bad.  I came home from work yesterday and took a 2-hr. nap.  Was hoping it would end up longer, but that didn’t happen.  But I felt refreshed nonetheless.  I then went to work at the MOC at 11pm and finished 5 a.m. this morning.  I then went straight to the gym and made the 6 a.m. yoga class after about 10 mins. on the treadmill.  Now I’m ready to eat a little breakfast and then go to bed.  I have the day off.

February 25

It’s odd that it’s all over now.  I mean, I’ve been waiting for the Olympics to happen before I even moved here.  I think SLC really surprised itself that it could be pulled off.  And I think people on the outside were really surprised too.  Hopefully a lot of people’s misconceptions have been corrected.  I’ve heard nothing but positive things about the party we put on.  Sure there were judging scandals, and countries getting their feelings hurt, and people having medals yanked for doping, but I think we can all feel a little relieved that the guests enjoyed themselves in SLC.

So I proved that I can still write with only 3 hours of sleep a night. Would I do it again? Even with the lack of sleep? Yes, without hesitation. I may not be athletic but I can spit out words for spectators like no one’s business. And hey, maybe I will have another chance at it, as I believe Salt Lake is bidding again.

I'm all ready for the 2014 games with my new Team USA hat. Go team!

I’m all ready for the 2014 games with my new Team USA hat. Go team!

2014 Resolutions: Ditch the yearly thing and go monthly

31 Tuesday Dec 2013

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Here we go again. Another year.

Two years ago I mapped out for you my sure-fire way to not just set goals but achieve them. How do I know it works? Well, for starters it’s my own little algorithm of sorts that helped me settle down and find my husband.

Yes, really! I was alone and despondent and quite tired of the loser blind dates, the failed attempts at trying to meet someone and not having anyone to drop me off at the airport. (Do you know what a drag it is to always be begging for a ride to the airport?) And then I did my chart map / goal thing. And it totally worked, because this happened:

A New Year's Resolution led to this.

Not bad for a New Year’s Resolution, eh?

So, let’s mix it up a bit, shall we?

This year, though, I’m doing things different. I’m not bagging the chart map / goal thing, because it does have great value. But what I’m going to do is have monthly goals in 2014.

Why do it monthly? Well, look, if you’re like me, you’re über busy and life is different month to month. I travel a lot for work and I travel a lot in my personal life. That kind of turns things upside down at certain times of the year. For instance, take weight loss or staying fit. I need a different approach when I’m traveling—maybe it’s just to maintain during those times. Or for Pete’s sake, when on vacay I need to be okay about eating ice cream, you know?

Goats Milk Ice Cream

Because if it’s Goat’s milk ice cream you gotta have it.

Plus, what might seem like a worthy goal in January may not be as valuable of a focus come August. Maybe I find myself a little sweary in July (probably because it’s #$%&! hot here in Utah around that time) and so I’ll set a resolution or goal for the next month to zip it.

It just seems like a month-to-month method is achievable and will garner more success than dragging out the pain my goals all year, which eventually become abandoned by June. (Wait, who am I kidding? Probably February.)

Let’s get started with January

Okay, so here’s what I’m doing for January. A shopping fast.

Not shop fast, as in be speedy about buying oodles of clothes, but do without shopping for a whole month.

Grocery shopping is okay. Or if I need deodorant or hair product, but that’s pretty much it. I’ve actually done this before—last October, in fact. Not a single one on my staff at work thought I could do it, so they each put money into a pool and if I succeeded (total honor system, you know), the money was donated to our United Way drive that was going on at the time.

And you know what, guys? I totally did it. And the community benefitted.

But I need to do it again, mostly because this last month I went a little crazy with the shopping (the holidays, duh) and to be honest, I felt like I learned a lesson last October that needs to be re-learned: I found that I actually didn’t need a lot of stuff. I didn’t need that skirt or that scarf or those shoes I was looking at. I had plenty of stuff already in my closet.

So doing it again is a great way to start off the year and I know I can do it because it is doable. So no more trips to Nordstrom, shopping on QVC, or even online shopping. Sorry all you merchants, I’ll be back in February, okay?

When it gets closer to February I’ll let you know what February’s goal will be. As for this last day before January you must know that I went shopping today in my last few hours because I needed a fancy dress for a work celebration meeting in January and I knew I couldn’t shop after today, and I couldn’t decide between the short skirt or the long skirt so I got both.

Oh geez. I do need help.

Long skirt fancy

Long skirt fancy

Short skirt fancy

Short skirt fancy

I’m not done here

So two questions I have for you. Short skirt or long skirt? And how are you tackling New Year’s Resolutions in 2014 or do you just skip it altogether? (I guess that was three questions.)

Jamming Sydney into five days

03 Sunday Nov 2013

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , ,

I only had five days for a trip to Australia.  I know, crazy right? But it’s all the vacation time I had stored up at work. Plus, it makes me sound so spontaneous, which I’m totally not.

After recovering from my stupidity in not knowing one needed a travel visa to get to Australia, and watching all sorts of Australia-related movies on my flight over (including Cry in the Dark a.k.a THE DINGO ATE MY BAAHHBEE!) I met my mother at the Sydney airport where we caught our taxi to our hotel in The Rocks neighborhood in Sydney.

Day 1: Hanging out at The Rocks

Surprisingly, the Holiday Inn at The Rocks is a fantastic find. You get these views from the rooftop:

Sydney Harbor Bridge as seen from the rooftop of the Holiday Inn.

Sydney Harbour Bridge as seen from the rooftop of the Holiday Inn.

Sydney Opera House gives crazy poses in the morning from the Holiday Inn rooftop.

Sydney Opera House gives crazy poses in the morning from the Holiday Inn rooftop.

The hotel is also nearby this great aptly-named restaurant, which we visited more than once:

The Rocks Cafe in The Rocks 'hood in Sydney.

The Rocks Cafe in The Rocks ‘hood in Sydney.

But it was mostly so we could eat this chocolate merengue thing. (Confession: on more than one night.)

This chocolate merengue torte from The Rocks Cafe has some sort of addicted substance in it, I'm certain.

This chocolate merengue torte from The Rocks Cafe has some sort of addicted substance in it, I’m certain.

From our pad in The Rocks we also could spot people who were actually climbing on top of the Harbour Bridge. Mom and I tossed around the idea of doing the Harbour Bridge walk/climb thing and it boiled down to the fact that the idea of it freaked out both of us. It was less dangerous to go back the The Rocks Cafe and eat more of that chocolate merengue thing. Totally safe.

Walking on the Sydney Harbour Bridge

Really? Walking over the bridge? Who does that?

 

Day 2: Don’t judge me

Now before you get all judgey about Double Decker busses let me remind you that the best travel advice anyone has ever given me (which, of course, does not include that valuable piece of information about getting a travel visa to Australia), has been to take the Double Decker bus when visiting a city. Your tickets are generally good for 48 hours and you can get on and off at your leisure. Mostly, though, it gives you a good overview of the city, which is terrific news to me because I suck at reading a map.

Yes. I have no pride. I'm aboard the Double Decker bus in Sydney.

Yes. I have no pride. I’m aboard the Double Decker bus in Sydney.

Had we not taken the Double Decker bus we wouldn’t have stumbled upon the most gorgeous shopping mall on the planet: The Queen Victoria Building, a.k.a. QVB. (Why? Because clearly I hadn’t read my travel guide before I went and would have missed it altogether.) So here we hopped off the bus.

Besides the idea of shopping, I was drooling over the Victorian Romanesque style and all the stained glass windows and the light, bright interior. Didn’t buy anything, though. I mean, look at me in the picture above. I didn’t look so approachable. I looked more like I was getting ready to go camping, so I kept a low profile. Everyone else seemed much more fancy than I, which is generally the case when I travel. I’m not a fancy traveler.

The beautiful glass dome at the Queen Victoria Building. I think I hurt my neck because I was looking up at it so much.

The beautiful glass dome at the Queen Victoria Building. I think I hurt my neck because I was looking up at it so much.

The QVB otally looks like a museum and not a shopping mall.

The QVB totally looks like a museum and not a shopping mall.

Shops at the QVB. See, kinda fancy.

Shops at the QVB. See, kinda fancy.

I also noticed the signs around Sydney. Some had a certain poetic wit about them…

I love rhymes.

I love rhymes.

While others seemed just a bit judgey…

What did heels and stilettos ever do to them?

What did heels and stilettos ever do to them?

 

Day 3: Manly and Darling

Since I was reading my guide as we go I noticed there were several mentions of Manly Beach, so we took the ferry, which was so convenient since the ferries were only a short walk from where we were staying. (See? Our lodging location at The Rocks was totally the best place to stay.)

I loved Manly Beach. Having grown up in Oregon my family always took trips to the beach and I fell in love with the constant rhythm of the waves coming in. So here I was in the Southern Hemisphere and the waves were doing the same thing. There were also new birds for me to see and I knew husband, Steve, would be envious.

Yeah, I could totally do that. Show off.

Yeah, I could totally do that. Show off.

Mom totally chilling at Manly Beach.

Mom totally chilling at Manly Beach.

After our jaunt to Manly Beach we headed over to Darling Harbour and watched the Hubble movie in 3D on the IMAX screen, wandered around the shops, loaded up on chocolates at the Lindt chocolate store (natch) and had a very nice dinner at a lovely restaurant called Ice Cube, though they brought the shrimp out with eyes and everything. New country, new experiences, no?

Now I know why it's nice to have your shrimp all prepped for you before they bring it out to your table. It was a teaching moment.

Now I know why it’s nice to have your shrimp all prepped for you before they bring it out to your table. It was a teaching moment.

Trying to darling.

Trying to look darling. (Oh yeah, and see that bag of Lindt chocolates? Not sure how many actually made it home.)

 Day 4: Field trip

Any number of tour companies will offer you a day trip to the Blue Mountains. We chose basically by looking at brochures to see which one didn’t make us get up too crazy early and would get us back in time so we could visit The Rocks Cafe and stuff more of the chocolate merengue torte into our mouths.

On the way to the mountains we stopped at a zoo and saw Australian wildlife, including this cute fella:

Koala Bear

Awfully cute, but I think those claws of his are kind of scary.

And then we stopped at some random park where a fella attempted to teach us how to throw a boomerang, but neither my mom nor I could do it. It’s actually harder than you think, and since neither of us are very athletic we completely failed at it. There was a nine-year-old who did it, though. Show off.

Aww, a rainbow at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains.

Aww, a rainbow at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains.

 

Day 5: Zoo

Last day and we actually had no idea what to do. Yeah, really. We’re in Sydney and mom isn’t really much of a museum person and I wasn’t really wanting to make this a shopping vacation, so we got on a ferry and headed over to the Taronga Zoo.

Aww, how cute! Giraffes with Sydney skyline in the background.

Aww, how cute! Giraffes with Sydney skyline in the background. (Yeah, I know. Giraffes aren’t Australian.)

There's nothing Australian here. Just a couple of cute Meerkats.

There’s nothing Australian here. Just a couple of cute Meerkats.

The best view of the Sydney skyline is from Taronga Zoo. Totally.

The best view of the Sydney skyline is from Taronga Zoo. Totally.

And then when we got back to The Rocks neighborhood that evening we had some more of that chocolate merengue torte. Duh.

Don't judge.

Chocolate merengue crack.