Archive for October, 2007

Got Mud?

Author: Erika

Oct 21

Sir Wesley and I took our little protege to Beaver Lake on Sunday and it was a blast. We are working on exposing him to new places and things so that when we have to take him somewhere he isn’t so freaked out that he can’t function. We also want to give him lots of time to develop a love for the water so we figured we had better get cracking before all the lakes freeze.
We needn’t have worried though. As soon as Doc saw that there was a whole lake full of water just for him he ran full-speed and it was splish splash he’s definitely taking a bath later! He hasn’t worked up the courage to actually swim yet but he has gone out so deep that swimming’s not long in coming.
We let him off the leash while we were at the lake because the leash was totally cramping his style. My heart was in my throat the whole time because he’s never been off-leash in a public place before and I wasn’t confident we would be able to get him back if he chose to run off. He did really well though and played fetch in the water with various sundry sticks he found laying around. He was just such a joy to watch, though, because he was obviously having the time of his life. He would just randomly tear off down the shore for no reason and then run just as quickly back to us. He has shredded his apron strings, I’m afraid.
As you can see in the picture above, he found something in the mud. Something smelly, apparently. Something worth digging up. With his nose. It was worth his frightfully messy face to see him so happy, though. He gamboled and played in the water for ages. I wish there had been ducks there, I think he would have fainted from the joy of it.
Afterward, we attempted to dry him off by walking him around. That didn’t work, unfortunately. I’m not sure why this is but for some reason things don’t dry off well in the rain. Hmmm…The walk did make for a nice photo op, though.
After our little adventure we brought him home, bathed him, cleaned his ears, and then he passed out. It was glorious. I have not seen him this tuckered since he was a little baby puppy. We need to take him to the lake more often!

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Thought-Provoking and Funny

Author: Erika

Oct 19

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html

I just came across this article and I found it fascinating. Especially as the elections draw near I have found myself in need of a new perspective. This is an interesting one. It’s a long read but worth it. If you’ve got 7 minutes give it a whirl. At the worst you’ll be entertained and at the best you’ll be entertained and provoked (mentally, that is).

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The Mitchell Discotheque

Author: Erika

Oct 19

We made it through the storm just fine. Our house is intact, there are no felled trees in our yard, and our trash cans are safely tucked away in our garage (unlike my neighbor’s trash cans which blew clear over to the other side of the street. She’s still looking for the lid, which I found this morning. It was almost a block away!)

Wes was playing guitar with some friends last night (no, he has not joined a band. They are just a group of people who get together every now and then to play music. There’s a rapper involved. No, I don’t know why) so it was just me and the puppy.

I got home to find that there was no power. When I walked outside to let Doc out of his pen it was, well, let’s just say it was breezy. He was very excited and happy to see me and ran around sniffing and exploring and just being a happy puppy. There was a lot to explore as the wind had knocked every leaf tenacious enough to remain clinging to a tree onto our lawn. It looks like Wes mowed the lawn with leaves.

As we were walking back toward the house a really strong gust of wind came and frightened the crap out of my poor little puppy. He kept looking around like someone was touching him but he couldn’t figure out who and then just started pacing and looking at me in a very agitated fashion.

I just stood there and let him work it out. I was sorely tempted to skip his walk and whisk him into the warmth and safety of the house but I resisted said temptation because it wasn’t what was best for him. It’s important while he’s young to expose him to all the experiences that life has to offer, frights included. We want a bombproof dog who is calm and stable when he’s older which means that when he’s scared of something we just have to keep providing opportunities for him to get over his fear.

Eventually he noticed that when the wind blows the leaves blow with it and just like that he was over it. He chased the leaves and whenever he caught one he grasped it in his little paws and chewed on it until it was a pulpy lump and then moved on to another one. He was still a little skittish during our walk but we pushed through and made it home safely.

We spent a very pleasant evening together and when Wes came home we were both asleep. I’m a fatigue light-weight and if I have the option of going to bed at 8:30pm I will take it because man, if that sleep doesn’t feel good in the morning. I may be a fuddy-duddy, but I’m a well-rested fuddy-duddy.

When I woke up the wind was still blowing hard and there were sirens outside. It was a little jarring to hear that early in the morning. Then the power started doing weird things. It went off, then on, then off, then on, over and over for about 10 minutes. It was like our house was a giant strobe light. All it was missing was a sub-woofer as big as my head and some trashy Euro-Pop.

That’s the funny thing about living where we do. We live on a giant hill (affectionately known as “The Plateau”) and whenever the wind picks up the power goes out. You can pretty much count on it. We have oodles of candles available for just such occasions. The only thing you can do is light a candle or forty, keep a flashlight handy and hope the food in your refrigerator doesn’t go bad (again). You don’t realize how long it takes to build up and stock a respectable refrigerator full of condiments and food until it’s all gone bad and you have to start over again.

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It’s Blowin in The Wind

Author: Erika

Oct 18

According to the tiny man who lives in the dashboard of my car and speaks to me during my morning commute there is going to be a storm today. A moderately big ‘un. Winds up to 50 MPH this afternoon. Possible power outages. As a result of this onerous news I am having immense difficulty focusing at work.

I want so badly for the power to go out. Then I can go home, put on my fuzzy pants and Bobs and watch the weather. The power is still stubbornly on and likely won’t go out but I sit here and stare out my window anyway as all the pretty fall leaves blow on by.

Extreme weather makes me feel excited, on edge, there’s always a spike of adrenaline when I hear thunder, when the wind blows hard, or when the rain pours down so thick it almost looks like snow. I have a long-standing affection for extreme weather, it’s brings with it the sensation that danger is in the room, silent and refined, brushing past your arm while chills run up your neck.

I remember specifically one instance of being caught at the mercy of the elements. I was about 9 years old and my mother and I were on one of our very frequent hikes around Dana Point (a rocky little beach in California surrounded by eroded and sharp cliffs). We would ride our bikes there almost every weekend (a 50 mile ride!) and go hiking around the cliffs. Sometimes we found dead seals, other times, when the tide was low, we found secret beaches that were isolated and pristine (owing the fact that you had to endure a one-hour hike through the water and arrive at exactly low tide to find them), and we explored some of the many caves that dot the California coastline.

During one such routine hike, the weather went from blue skies to coastal storm very very quickly. We were about an hour away from the beach where we’d left our bikes (and phones/supplies/coats) and were approaching my favorite cave. The wind started blowing very hard and the waves started rising really quickly. The tide was coming in faster than we’d anticipated and dark clouds were blowing in across the water. After analyzing the situation my mother decided that it would be wise to continue hiking to the cave so that we could wait out the storm and be dry at the same time.

This cave was my favorite because it was a proper cave. It was large, had a pretty low ceiling (I was about 5 feet tall by then and there was a 2-foot clearance above my head), and there were two entrances, both facing the water, and both generally submerged most of the time. At low tide there was about a foot of water in the entrance of the cave and I think that you would have to swim into the cave at high tide.

Anyway, we made it to the cave, wet and cold, and sat down on the rocks and looked out to the ocean. Like I said, this cave was right on the water so it had a prime view of the open water. We sat there for what seems like a very short time but what must have been a long time because by the time the storm blew over it was dark outside.

I just remember feeling very small in that cave. The wind was blowing up choppy white peaks for as far as we could see and the waves were hitting the rocks so hard the spray made it all the way up to where we were sitting. I wasn’t scared, though, just excited. I felt like I’d been electrocuted. My skin tingled and I couldn’t sit still. I felt small not because I was small but because the world was so big.

I still feel small when the sky seems to open up. When the wind blows down trees, the rain floods the parking lot, or lighting and thunder both blind and deafen me I feel like I’m 9 again, marveling at how very big the world can be.

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I Heart Career Fairs

Author: Erika

Oct 17

Yesterday I had the rare pleasure of attending a career fair at a local university. Career fairs are something that I look forward to and one of the perks of being a recruiter. If you’ve never attended one, imagine a large room crammed with colorful booths, professional looking people scurrying around, and loads of free swag and candy.

We have a particularly impressive booth that is humongous and a gigantic pain to assemble. Every time I do it I swear it’s going to injure me. We offer chocolate candy (immense temptation right in front of my face) and sit and watch as students walk by.

It’s a lot of fun to observe people interacting at these things. There are three types of recruiters. There are the loud, aggressive, used-car-salesmen types who will collar students and browbeat them into handing over a resume and will not let anyone leave. These are the people who, as anyone walks by, will shout out “Hey! Are you looking for a job?”. Honestly, if students are walking around holding resumes and not looking for jobs, why are we here?

The other recruiters are the sullen, bored-looking dour recruiters who have plain booths, boring companies, redundant positions and they know it. No one stops by these booths (until the very end when students start getting desperate and start visiting every booth they haven’t gotten to yet) and the recruiters are usually so bored they pack up half an hour before then end of the career fair anyway.

The last type of recruiter is the confident and successful recruiter. This recruiter usually has a flashy booth display and represents a company that is doing well and offers good jobs. These people usually stand in their booth and look relaxed and friendly. They are welcoming but not desperate. These people are the competition.

We probably fall into this category, but so do about 30% of the other software companies present at the career fair. While we’re there we all perambulate around checking out the competition. Everyone does this. I make it a point to make note of every software recruiter, introduce myself and my company, and observe their displays and swag. It’s very competitive out there and it’s a lot less scary if my competition has a name and face.

It’s always fun about halfway through the career fair because the recruiters start to get restless and start mingling. It’s hard work standing there talking to people, shaking hands, and being professional and inviting so when we need a break we start chatting with one another. Often, this results in a kind of career incest wherein recruiters will start trying to recruit each other.

This is tacitly against the rules but it’s a pretty standard temptation at a career fair. All these companies, all these recruiters, all these open positions. You do the math. As you can see, there is a lot to watch at career fairs. Whether it’s the homeless guy walking around stuffing as many stress-squeezies as he can into his pockets, the anorexic blonde power-hungry recruiters salivating over the candy on your desk, or the completely hopeless freshman going from booth to booth and pretending to be professional while he’s sweating and fidgeting in his best suit, it’s almost always guaranteed that something interesting is happening.

Another guarantee of career fairs is that when I get home (always so late!) I will have no voice, sore feet, and a pounding headache. This time, however, I brought home presents so at least I have something besides resumes to show for my troubles. I brought Wes a pocket-sized-game-contraption from Microsoft, I brought Doc a bouncy-ball that lights up bright blue, and I brought myself a shirt that is packaged in plastic to look like a guitar (it’s from one of our competitors so I probably won’t be wearing it to work).

The problem I have is that when I see all these cool free things I have this irrational drive to claim one for myself. If it’s squishy, metal, a key-chain, a water bottle, a pen, a bouncy ball, a shirt, or a bag that says “Got Wood?” for some reason I feel like I need it. I always have to grab a hold of myself and remind myself that I don’t need that crap. I’ve noticed that the students who come to these things don’t have that sense yet. I bet their dorm rooms look pretty snazzy all kitted out in corporate kitsch.

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