Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

On a regular basis, I have interaction with an individual who is so negative. I have listened to complaints, offered suggestions, and tried to smooth things over. At first I thought I was helping, but have come to realize that I’m not changing perceptions at all. This individual is going to have a “terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day” – no matter what I say or do. I’ll spare you the details.

I do think we are pretty much hard-wired to always want something more. I recall someone saying that being dissatisfied is actually a good thing, as otherwise, after we achieved our first big goal, we would sit back and say, “I got what I wanted. I don’t need to do anything more.” We would be in a self-satisfied plateau where we never looked for any improvement.

I guess we need to find a middle ground – everything isn’t perfect nor horrible. Yet, it takes no talent to find the negative. Finding the good – now that takes talent, and one that needs practice.

Welcome to my practice session.

I am grateful for Primary Sacrament Meeting programs. Look in the dictionary and you’ll find ours listed under perfection. It was amazing. Song leaders don’t come any better than Wendy Worley. Those kids just belted out every song. There was lots of variety – a mother and five year old son cello accompaniment. At other times, the singing was accompanied by wood blocks (for “I am a builder”), a flute, and the bells. It was so sweet.

I am grateful for members of the church. They are just wonderful people. They are fun to be with, uplifting, educated, loving, and good workers.

I love credit cards. I listen to people who say, “Rip them up. Pay for everything with cash.” BUT, I still love credit cards. You can check charges online, pay them off every week (which is what I choose to do), pay for online purchases, get cash advances while you are in Holland (and didn’t realize they don’t accept credit cards), let them go to bat for you if the computer you paid for by credit card never arrived, and get $500 a year in rewards (while not paying one cent in interest). I realize credit card companies are increasing their interest rate to ridiculous amounts, but since I never pay any interest, my love affair with credit cards is not affected.

I love sales. Smiths Marketplace is really making the game fun to play. They usually have 60% off clearance, regularly have megadeals (where you get five dollars off for every ten items you buy in special categories), give you a turkey for as little as $12 (regularly $25), and have $10 off if you spend $50. They make shopping fun. I went in Saturday knowing I wanted to buy a turkey, but needed as many other non-food items as I could find (to get my extra discount). I found nightlights (about time, don’t you think), slippers, little sacks for Christmas favors (we’re in charge of empty nesters), and even some of our favorite moisturizers. There is little joy in shopping, but they’ve found a way to make it enjoyable.

I love my bed. I’m not a great sleeper, but my bed is awesome. It is warm and comfortable. I just read the book The Glass Castle. (I need to make a disclaimer. There is more swearing than necessary and even an F-bomb, so be warned.) However, the book was such a wake up call. It is a story of a woman whose family was dysfunctional – living on the street, harvesting dinner from dumpsters. Yet, she loves her family. For a while they live in a tumble down house where their mattresses are cardboard. It makes you realize how great you have it – and especially makes you appreciate your bed.

I love my cell phone. AT&T needs to take some clues from Smiths Marketplace, as paying my AT&T bill is not fun at all, but I do love my cell phone. You can call anyone you want without paying a cent extra (as we have more minutes that I could possible use) and can summon help from a snow bank. What confidence as cell phone gives you! I forgot my cellphone when I took Grandma back home today and felt naked without it. (But, I didn’t get stopped, so no one knew.)

I love family – kids, grandkids, husband, parents, siblings, nieces, nephews, in-laws.

I love email. I love email. I LOVE EMAIL!!!!

Don't incite predatory instincts

At the university, I serve as an ombudsperson for tenure meetings. What is an ombudsperson, you ask?

Ombudspersons support effective communication, cooperation, equity, and civility in academic and work environments through coaching individuals, facilitating communication between persons and departments, mediation, providing information on university policy, and where needed, recommending appropriate institutional action or change.

But what I really do is listen to tenure meetings to insure policy is followed and the candidate is treated properly.

It is actually a great job, if you are a people watcher. You have no responsibility other than the obvious (and are supposed to say as little as possible), so you can just sit and observe - who speaks, how they make their points, the phraseology they use.

This week I heard a phrase that was so clever. A committee member was commenting on an opening paragraph to the self-assessment letter which read something like, "I have done such a great job that no one could think to deny me tenure." The candidate was advised to take a more modest approach so as not to "incite predatory instincts" of the higher ups. I thought it was a great line!

Are you smarter than a seventh grader...

As part of one of my grants, we had four area teachers come to campus for the summer to design instructional materials for their technology classes. We had a great time with them. One of the perks has been keeping in contact with them.

This week Megan (one of our RET teachers, who actually is Greg's age) asked me to come to her technology class and present an ILM to her seventh graders. We talked about graph coloring - a computer science abstraction for conflict resolution. (See csilm.usu.edu/Browse Resources/CSILM Activities/Graph Coloring). What darling kids! I had so much fun with them. Megan is an amazing teacher. It is great to watch her in action.

The challenge is this. Draw any kind of map that requires five colors to color such that areas which share a border (of more than one point) can't be the same color. After they had struggled a while, I told them that it was impossible. They would never be able to do it. Well, that didn't stop them. The whole hour I had kids handing me a map saying, "This one takes five colors. I know it does." Find a minimal coloring isn't always easy, so I would tell them, "I'm going to take home your map. If I can't color it in four colors, I'll come be a seventh grader and you can take my place teaching classes at the university - as you are obviously smarter than I am."

Wouldn't that be fun? I would love going back to the seventh grade for a week or so. Those were the good old days! I've often wished I could let someone take my place for a while.

My new favorite restaurant

We went out with friends for dinner tonight at the Texas Roadhouse. The mall parking lot has been crazy with cars ever since they opened. I could never figure out where all the people were as they surely couldn't all fit inside. All the tables were taken tonight, but arriving just before six, we had no wait at all. The food was great and reasonably priced. Yum!

Being special isn't all its cracked up to be...

They say tooth implants are successful 95 percent of the time. I'm so "special" that I fall into the 5% that doesn't work out. Infection takes over and contaminates the threads of the implant - making it impossible to get rid of.

I've had an implant for about five years (you can see I'm not good with dates). The last year or so I've noticed it was a bit sunken. Today was the day they went in to try to save it - cleaning it out and doing a bone graft. I would tell you the details, but Steve just turns green and walks away when I merely set the stage.

They tell you to stop them if it gets too painful. About half way through you realize they were just kidding. It is just going to hurt no matter how much anesthetic they give you.

I did get a great nap out of it once I got home. If its like the last oral surgery I had (a tissue graft to build up the gums), it is going to be a painful few weeks.

I always marvel that when things are going well, you don't even notice, but when something goes awry you can't believe how much pain it can cause. I guess you have to have bad health to appreciate how good you had it before.