Archive of Marcia's Musings September 10-16, 2001Sunday, September 16, 2001
PM UpdateOh, well!!
I coulda swore I'd put something up here yesterday morning but, apparently, I did not. Sorry about that-- this is part of the "Small Stuff"
In an effort to, as Shelley Bowman puts it, return to the mundane, I went about my business of getting my nails refilled and my pedicure. According to Linda, there was a lot of stress and tension in my feet-- I don't doubt that after this week!! After I got home, Brian and I made yet another trip to Orchard Supply Hardware to pick up a front door mat and a grate for the fireplace and, on the way home, stopped off at Michael's so I could pick up a scissors for my Christmas crafts stuff-- I needed a VERY pointed scissors and we didn't have one at the house. Then, I tried to take my usual Saturday afternoon nap, not succeeding very well at it, I'm afraid.
After about an hour, I gave up and went out to work on my crafts a bit-- there's a lot to organizing stuff from the last year-- and then we went to dinner at Hunan Gourmet, our favorite Chinese restaurant. It was our date night last night so we watched a movie when we got home-- "Dune", one of Brian's favorites.
Other than that, nothing major has been happening around here-- it seems that television broadcasting is trying to get back to normal with a few exceptions and so, after our usual Costco and grocery store runs, I'll make a stop at the beauty supply and move on to working on my crafts stuff. I'm going to try to stay away from the television today, regardless of what they broadcast-- I'm definitely going into overdose mode.
Have a nice day and, assuming things get "exciting" around here, I'll be back later.
I should probably wait for Brian to tell you but, I can't wait! I'm too happy!! My in-laws are home!!!! Martha & Bob were stranded in Chicago on Tuesday and have been trying to find their way back ever since. Originally, their flights were rescheduled and rescheduled and rescheduled again to Tuesday of this week (yes, as in day-after-tomorrow). As a result of that, they gave up and rented a car to drive from Chicago to Oakland (roughly). Today, they arrived home and called us soon after their arrival-- thankfully!!
I have to admit that I sobbed-- I know my in-laws weren't in any danger and weren't anywhere near the actual problems that are happening on the east coast but, they weren't here. Here is where they belong and need to be in order for life to be "normal" for us, as much as it can be. Thank God that they returned to us safely, after driving across country to get here!!!
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My cousin, Barb, called today to confirm that she is still coming next month. I had called her and told her I wouldn't blame her if she canceled her trip. (The airlines are letting otherwise "non-refundable" tickets be refunded if people are too concerned about flying anywhere right now.) I'm glad she's still coming, too-- it'll be good to have that part of the family around here, too.
The day's activities were as mundane as could be-- trips to the grocery store, Costco and beauty supply. Not as mundane today was a conversation I had with the American Red Cross volunteer. If you have not done so already, please do so now-- if their internet connection is down, call!! It won't take long for them to come on the line and it is, of course, well worth the wait!
Saturday, September 15, 2001Missed it!
Friday, September 14, 2001
PM UpdateA Day of Mourning . . .
This is the "official" day-- seek solace as you choose whether by prayer or peaceful reflection. If today isn't all the time you need to mourn, take your time-- the rest of us will be here when you're finished, in our own various stages of recuperation and mourning, as well.
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Last Night's Dinner . . .. . . went well. Conversation flowed and the steaks were wonderful. Good company and good fun-- a refuge during a trying time, indeed.
No Bicycling this AM
I'm having a problem with my lungs-- I take in too much cold air in the morning when I'm riding and my lungs hurt as a result. This started yesterday so I'm going to go to the sporting goods store and see what they have in the way of face masks. If you have any ideas, let me know-- all suggestions are welcome.
Off to work and then another weekend is upon us. More welcome relief after this week.
I received several emails from people informing me about a united candle-lighting at 7pm. Of course, 7pm Pacific Time isn't the same as 7pm Eastern Time but, its the thought that counts-- United in spirit, across America. The candle, a citronella bucket really, is burning still and I hope it will remain so for some time. I tried to find a U.S. flag in any size tonight on my way home from work-- I'm seeing many of them on civilian vehicles as well police cars and fire trucks. I'd like to have one that we could put on the front of the house-- I'll keep looking and maybe we'll find one soonish.
Old Friends
A guy that I worked with at my last company wrote to me yesterday to check to see if we were okay. I hadn't heard from him since I left Spyrus but, one of the many positive things that have happened from this crisis is that many people are feeling the need to have contact with people they knew in the past-- to make sure that they are okay. John was a nice guy when I worked with him and he's still a nice guy even if he is addicted to the adrenalin rush of pre-IPO start-ups. He's at another one now, after leaving Spyrus a little over a year ago-- no thanks, I'll take the "security" of a public company any day!!
Flight Update
As many of you know, my niece Natali was here last weekend because she was leaving to go to Brazil this past Wednesday. Because of the events of Tuesday, that departure didn't happen and, as of this morning, her flight has been rescheduled to next Wednesday. In the interim, she's staying in LA with a friend and is safe and sound so that I don't have to worry about her anymore.
There's yet another reason to be grateful for the internet: Calls between the United States and Brazil are expensive so you only need to send one email from Brazil and copy the rest of the family on it and we all find out and stop worrying in one fell swoop which is gratifying, to say the least!
Distractions
I've noticed that I've been needing/wanting some distractions this week so I've started working on my Christmas crafts. Tonight, I've only started the process of organizing the after-season sale stuff that I bought last year. I've got two days to do it in so I'll have that organized by the end of the weekend-- or earlier if I'm lucky-- and I'll be able to start painting or putting things together soon after.
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Tomorrow is nail/pedicure day which I'm looking forward to greatly-- its been a hard week and I need a good foot massage. Anyway, no post tomorrow morning but I'll update you before our date tomorrow night. (Our date was switched from tonight because Brian was working on something when I got home from work.)Have a nice evening!
Thursday, September 13, 2001Moving On . . .
Its not easy but it is necessary. With an eye to the websites, television and newspaper stand, we are striving to move forward, ever fervent in our knowledge that this will be avenged.
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Yesterday, 16 cars passed me and today 17-- I had a ~10 year old girl that tried to keep up with me for awhile but she was working to do so. She also started playing games by riding on and off the sidewalk into the street in front of me-- that didn't happen for too long before I told her to knock it off and that was the last I saw of her. Funny how I'm not interested in playing games, on my bicycle at 6:15am, eh? Yeesh!! As I said to Brian, what mother is putting her child on the street, on a bicycle at that hour? I think that's child neglect if you ask me but . . .
Tonight, the director of my department at work (Joyce) is coming for dinner. She had wanted to attend the open house we had a few weeks ago but wasn't able to because of a friend ending up at the hospital. We then arranged for her to come over last weekend but her contractor caused her problems so that fell through-- yesterday, we finally firmed up tonight so . . . tonight she'll be coming over. While she is the director of my department, she is no longer my direct manager so there's no sucking up happening here, okay? Okay!!
More to come . . . have a good one, as best you can.
Wednesday, September 12, 2001
PM UpdateThoughts . . .
I went to work yesterday morning after Brian and I had watched about a half hour of television in the morning. I didn't want to go to work but I went-- the whole time I was there, I couldn't concentrate and felt a sense of panic. There was a television turned on in one of the conference rooms that we was available to watch. Watching it wasn't helping me though-- it was making the panic feeling rise. I don't know how to explain that but it made it worse to watch television at the office.
I'd been trying to call several people in the Atlanta office for about an hour-- I'd gotten through to one but he had something else happening and said he'd call back. Then, he didn't call back and he didn't call back. I called that same sales rep back and didn't get him on the phone so I tried the administrator's line-- no answer. I tried a sales manager's line-- no answer. I tried John's (the AVP for the Southeast region) office phone-- no answer. I couldn't figure out why no one was answering the phones in the office. At about 9:15, a thought occurred to me so I called John on his cell phone to confirm: The Atlanta office is in a high-rise office building (I don't remember how many stories but there were at least 50); their building had been evacuated.
At about 10:30, after talking with a couple of other negotiators, I came home from the office to work-- I had actually managed to edit one document and create another while at the office. I didn't send those documents out to anyone and, I'm glad I didn't-- it gives me time to check them over because I don't know what my thought process was capable of doing at the time that they were written.
Once home, I was alternating between working a document, my email and watching television-- from home, I didn't feel that same sense of panic. At about 11:30, our director emailed us to tell us to do whatever we wanted to do about staying at the office or going home-- she could completely understand about wanting to go home since she was going to stay to await news about a relative in New York. At that point, I shut down my computer and watched the news.
Once I watched the news for about an hour straight, I realized that there weren't going to be anymore planes crashing into buildings. There weren't any car bombs (this time) and the government was secure-- I had visions of several The Day After-type movies running through my head for awhile that gave me a massive amount of insecurity. After another hour of watching television, I was past whatever panic feelings I'd had and was reporting to Brian what was on the news when he called.
I know now that the feelings that I experienced were panic and shock-- it is traumatizing to see our country hit at its' very core. The trauma of knowing (or not knowing as the case may be for a few days) how many people were in the World Trade Center or the Pentagon or the airplanes that were Innocent and had been killed by that Evil. That Evil thought it had the right to do that killing. I am afraid that that kind of Evil is about to learn it doesn't have any rights-- at least, no rights to practice that kind of Evil in this Country. It is a lesson that our military is quite capable of teaching.
I am generally a pacifist in my politics-- I was opposed to the Vietnam War in high school and junior high school. I was not opposed to the Desert Storm action because it was intended to strike at another form of Evil. I do not take pleasure in knowing that any reaction or retaliation by the United States for these acts today may lead to an escalation of major proportions. But, I also do not take pleasure in doing nothing to avenge the deaths of the Innocent that were taken too early from their lives yesterday.
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Everyone has an opinion-- hopefully, its one that is developed independently without residual knowledge or input from others.
I realized this thought at about 8:20am and emailed Brian:
Bob Thompson & I agree on something-- really, REALLY scary concept. I just thought of that.
It may take me awhile to get used to that-- No, Bob, I still won't be voting for Harry Browne in three years!!
Work Was Strange
Many people are still in shock and disbelief-- every phone call today started out with an "Are you okay?" either stated or implied. For business people, in a cut-throat situation, the use of the mean negotiation tactics have been pulled back a bit.
Then, there is the case of the State employee (the state will remain unnamed to protect the ignorant) who demanded that something be overnighted to him. The phrase "Overnight me that package" implies that an airplane will be getting the envelope delivered to them and then, in turn, the airplane service will hand it over to the State employee. I called him and reminded him that there would be no overnight service for approximately three to five days. Since the deadline on the bid was tomorrow, we faxed it to him and would follow it up by mailing the bid by U.S.P.S. His reaction? "Oh, yeah, I forgot"-- some people, eh?
Remember the four hour surprise conference call I had in early August with a customer? Well, the attorney that I spent four hours on the phone with turned the project over to another attorney who was returning from maternity leave. She turned the project over but, apparently, decided that she couldn't share her notes so, we started over from square one with the new attorney today. I was not pleased as there were so many other things I could've been wasting my time on!!
Interesting . . .
I'm beginning to like Donald Rumsfeld. I've also begun to like George W. Bush's speech-writing staff. Let's hope he puts our tax money where his mouth has been going-- as my husband said, "George, show me that that dog can hunt!"
Today and tonight have been a time of thought and reflection and thoughtful reflection. Amazing the things you come up with when you stop your mind from racing over every day life like a steam roller, isn't it?
Have a thoughtful evening!
Tuesday, September 11, 2001
PM UpdateNo Big Plans
Late yesterday afternoon, the conference call that was scheduled for today was postponed-- can you tell how my week is going to go? There's an open question or two that we need to respond to before the call can happen. In addition to that, there's another deal that's been looming on the horizon for quite some time that has to have a document reviewed and, unfortunately, it involves the company whose contract documents are always crashing my work computer. As I type this, the last document sent to me by the customer is printing here at home since I don't have a problem running their documents from here. (We (Brian and I) have yet to figure out the cause of the problems in the communication or the documents but something's not right there.)
Today's my "Short Day" at work because I leave at 4:30 to go to Weight Watchers-- oh, yeah, I can hardly wait for that tonight, too. (NOT!!!!!) I've had a rough week here at the Bilbrey Belfry so I'm a little worried about "progress" having been made on my weight loss.
More to come-- have a nice day!
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What is there to say in this space? I am sickened, I am grief-stricken, I am concerned. There is nothing profound to say that hasn't already been said or will be said again and again by others over the next days and weeks.I feel grief for the thousands of families involved-- I'm not sure that I can imagine how many people are grieving. It seems like it is such a magnanimous number. Although I have lost loved ones in the past, I cannot begin to understand the sudden, unexpected, unexplained loss of a loved one which is the grief my fellow Americans are feeling tonight. My heart goes out to those that have lost people they loved whether in a plane or on the ground in burning buildings.
Everything I think to write seems so trivial-- I'll just close with this: Have a peaceful, prayerful evening.
Monday, September 10, 2001
PM UpdateAM Edition
As threatened last week, here I am with this morning's edition of my Musings. Let's see how this goes for the week, okay? The only day I see this as being a possible problem is Tuesday. Because I leave work early to go to Weight Watchers, I also leave for work early and therefore, don't ride my bike. I should have time to write a brief post, however, because while I get out of bed first, Brian takes his shower before me affording me the time to post. By the way, if you missed yesterday's brief morning post, it is here.
To start the day, I did my 6 mile bicycle ride this morning with sweatshirt and sweatpants and bicycle pants and t-shirt and gloves. My earlobes are cold but they are the only part of me that's cold. This is a Good Thing. Most of my route is four lanes plus a turn lane and fairly busy streets, at night, as a result. Today, I remembered to count after I'd already gone past the first mile but, all together guestimate that 32 cars passed me (cars going the same direction as me). On 6 miles of street, in the Silicon Valley, that is not very many cars so you can see, I am a lot safer and enjoy a more peaceful ride going that early in the morning. I think I'll keep this up although I'm a little concerned about the cold mornings that we get in December and January . . . nope, don't wanna think about that yet!!
Loose Ends
After I wrote checks for a couple of bills late yesterday morning and in an effort to give Brian some concentrated writing time, Natali and I left the house around 12 to go see what kind of trouble we could get into for a couple of hours. She had the really good idea to go to a movie instead of going to a mall (a much better idea, believe me!!) The first multi-theatre complex we went to (yes, sad but true: we had to go to two multi-plexes to find something worth watching!) had nothing of interest to either of us and the second wasn't a whole lot better.
The smell of popcorn lured us inside and, after buying a large popcorn and two sodas, we sat down to watch people. "People", in the setting of a movie theatre, can sometimes be more interesting than a lot of the movies that are being shown. Time passed quickly and since we had both a neh reaction to watching "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", we bought a couple of tickets and went inside to watch. If it weren't for Penelope Cruz's accent and eyelashes, I'm sure she'd be an unemployed waitress-- Yeesh!! YUCK!!!! Nicholas Cage, with a silly Italian accent that wasn't believable, was okay in this movie. It is possible, after an hour or so, to block the accent however and just hear his voice. That's much more favorable, let me tell ya.
Anyway, it wasn't great but it was okay-- the previews may have been the best part of the whole movie. Robert Redford has two new movies coming out: "Last Castle" and "Spy Games". "Last Castle" looks to be an extremely strong role for him while in "Spy Games", he has succombed to the Hollywood myth that doing a movie with Brad Pitt is box office banking. "Spy Games" looks okay but, from the preview, is geared toward the look, not the reality but the look, of Robert Redford "teaching" Brad Pitt the spy game and thus, a father/son resemblance is magically triggered. Don't know if that was the goal but it sure "looks" like it!!
Oh, well, enough of "Bilbrey's Movie Reviews". I have better ways to spend my day like . . . going to work. Oh, yeah-- have a great day!!
Well, this week has gotten off to a crawl at work!! The conference call that I was supposed to have today was postponed until Wednesday. I did get to argue with a lazy sales rep today though-- he doesn't want to HAVE to explain our software tohis customers so as a result, they're asking for stuff that they can't get-- easily-- but, if he would just do his job, it would simplify things. Yeesh!!! And for what they make for a living!! I ended up needing to work on an agreement for a company from home this afternoon. Every time I open this document at work, it crashes my computer which is, needless to say, not a Good Thing. I've been working on that and the document's Table of Contents which I believe to be the cause of the problem-- I think the formatting is causing some errors in my laptop.
Happy Anniversary!
Barbara and Bob Thompson are celebrating today: They've been married 18 years today!!!! Congratulations to both of you!!
New Book
I'm still reading The Book for Grammy this winter but for entertainment's purposes, I started reading Nicholas Evans' The Loop. I am finding it to be quite an enveloping book, bringing you into the story quickly, with the pace of the story moving along quickly. Speaking of Barbara, it is one of the books she has reviewed on her "Favorites" page.
Anyway, I've gotta get back to it-- I've still gotta get a bit of language worked into this document before I send it off to the customer.
Have a nice evening!
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