General Humor

A teacher in my building died this week.

The students mostly found out either Thursday evening or Friday morning. They got the word mainly
from family members or peers, since our administrators decided not to make an official announcement.

Today was hard.

Fortunately, we already had a half-day scheduled to kick off President’s Day weekend.
I’m still grieving. He was a good man and a good teacher.

Today reminded me of old Ebenezer getting his ghostly visits. Ghosts from the past, present, and
future have visited my disheveled mind today.

Past

I was in tenth grade — about 15 or 16 years old — when I heard that my first high school art
teacher had died.

She had been one of my favorite teachers. Her dry observations about art, life, and teaching were
equal parts hilarious and insightful. She bore the stupidity of my classmates with many
longsuffering sighs, and she encouraged me to take advanced art, which was taught by her husband.

One day, on the way home from school, she had a stroke. Her car swerved and collided with other
vehicles. She was placed on life support while doctors tried to deal with the severe bleeding
inside her skull. Two weeks later, they pulled the plug.

Her husband — whose class I was taking at the time — was out for about eight or nine weeks.

Present

I don’t react immediately to tragic news. My tears flow when I witness other people’s reactions,
as though I need to empathize with others to express my own pain.

Students walk down the hall with tears streaming down their cheeks. They quietly sob in class.
They try to comfort their friends with inexperienced, ineffective pats and platitudes.

It’s all I can do to hold myself together, to act professional. I look at the grieving ones as
little as possible, trying to focus my attention on the students who were not in his class or who
are better at hiding their grief and shock.

It’s hard.

Future

Someday my time will end.

I hope that it will be many decades from now… my family tends to be long-lived, frequently
reaching the upper nineties while still sound in mind and body.

On the other hand, it may well happen during my teaching career. Looking at students’ faces today,
I know that I am seeing the same shock, the same grief that other teachers may see after I’ve lost
my sight forever.

As with Ebenezer and his final ghost, I see one possible future haunting the faces of my students
today. Like Ebenezer, I hope that this future does not arrive.

Like Ebenezer, all I can do is accept my own mortality and live my life as best I can.

Please

Please pray for the family, the friends, the co-workers, and — perhaps most of all — the students
of our departed teacher.

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YES!

Whether by nature or by nurture, none can say, but I grew up with a certain “can-do” attitude toward improvising.  Duct tape was and is my closest friend (other than my wife, of course).  Colored duct tape is the greatest thing since WD-40.

This made life as a bachelor… shall we say… “interesting.”

My completely imaginary attorney advises me to say something like “don’t try this at home.”  The realist in me leans more toward “it’s your own dang fault if things screw up, so don’t try it if you’re just gonna blame me later.”

Windows for Dummies

The front door of my old apartment, cursed be its walls, had a nice big window that was completely transparent.  No frosting, tinting, mirroring, or other modern inventions of the 18th century offered any privacy whatsoever.

Walmart bags, on the other hand, are translucent but not transparent at all.  Out came the scissors and the tape and with only an hour or two of painstaking work, I had frosted windows… the bachelor-pad way.

I can’t sew (slightly untrue, actually) and couldn’t afford curtains, but a shower rod and old linens served to improve my sense of privacy in the other windows.

Don’t ask me about the moth holes.  Don’t.  It’s embarrassing.

My Shelves Runneth Over

Weburbanist.com has featured bookshelves made from books.  “This is pretty awesome,” my wife says. I’m not impressed.  She should see the end tables and ottomans I’ve made by stacking up old copies of Reader’s Digest.

When my bookshelves overflowed, I ended up expanding them with empty Velveeta cheese boxes and worthless trading cards.

My ink-cartridge bookends, however, were less than successful.  Those bloomin’ things leak.

Aylad the Iron Chef

We were given an incredibly expensive electric mixer for a wedding gift.  Actually owning a mixer feels strange to me, since duct-taping a couple of plastic forks to a drill bit always worked well enough for me.

While other people my age were learning from Martha Stewart how to turn a DIY herb garden into a seven-course meal, I was learning (via Johnny Depp in Benny and Joon) how to make grilled cheese sandwiches on an ironing board.

With an iron.

Now we have a nifty little panini press (apparently “panini” is Italian for “ironed bread”) that by comparison makes my ironing board look like, well, like an old, crusty, cheese-flavored ironing board.

Of course, the panini press’s duties have now expanded to making quesadillas (Spanish for “ironed flatbread”) and smoothing the occasional wrinkled necktie.  I should have bought one of those years ago.

He: Why do you own seven colors of duct tape?
Me: Why wouldn’t I own seven colors of duct tape?

(Photo credit and license)

Shakespeare, sorta

I’m kind of drawing a blank on any interesting biographical bits to share about the Bard today.  There are lots of interesting factoids about him; I’m just not really in the “researching” state of mind at the moment, and nothing comes immediately to mind.

The Globe Theatre, where Shakespeare’s plays were famously performed, burned down as the result of a cannon misfire.  There, how’s that?

Meh… on to the weekly sonnet.

Sonnet 22

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time’s furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
      Presume not on th’ heart when mine is slain,
      Thou gav’st me thine not to give back again.

What I get out of it

Shakespeare is considering his increasing age as he writes this poem.  He could, at this point in his life, be feeling the ravages of time (or any other cliché you might care to use), but he refuses to be negative about his own lost youth.  He says that his mirror, or “glass,” won’t make him feel depressed about growing “old”… at least, not yet.

“So long” as the object of the poem has his or her “youth,” Shakespeare claims that he won’t feel old.  When “time’s furrows” appear on the young person’s face, on the other hand, the poet feels that “death” will bring an end to his “days.”

The poem’s metaphors get a little more complicated as Shakespeare explains that his own heart lives in the heart of the youngster to whom the poem is addressed, and the younger heart lives within Shakespeare’s “breast.”  The “beauty” that appears in the young man or woman’s face therefore is “raiment,” or clothing, for the poet’s heart.  “How,” we are asked, can Shakespeare “then be elder” than the youthful body which contains his heart?

I’m thinking that this might be one of the more tangled sonnets I’ve discussed here.  The tangling continues:  Shakespeare promises to be “wary” (cautious) with his own body - as cautious as a “tender nurse” is cautious with “her babe” — not to preserve his own life, but rather to protect the youngster’s heart beating in his chest.  Likewise, he would appreciate some care taken for his own heart.

To understand the last couplet, I admit, I sought help.  I wasn’t sure in what sense “presume” was being used.  It appears that after the tender expression of love Shakespeare offers in the first dozen lines, he throws in one brief admonition:  if my heart (in your body) is “slain,” don’t expect to get yours back.  You “gav’st me” your heart freely, and I don’t intend “to give [it] back again.”  This might, possibly, be just a hint of a threat… if your carelessness or infidelity breaks my heart, I can do as I please with the heart you have given me.

Is it relevant?

I don’t know the average ages of my readers, but even I (who am still young) have felt years younger while watching or interacting with a child.  Grandparents and parents often say that playing with children makes them feel young again.  Shakespeare is expressing similar sentiments to the object of his poem.

Once again, a sonnet which is usually labeled as a love poem could also represent an expression of familial love.  I’ve probably mentioned before that, whatever Shakespeare’s relationship with his wife, he apparently loved his children dearly.  The first dozen lines could be a way of letting his children know that they make him feel young again… and the closing couplet could be a warning that they’d better make the old man proud.

Or not.  It probably is a romantic poem.  It’s just fun, sometimes, to look for other applications.  Shakespeare was a complicated man, and I hate making assumptions about what he had in mind.

Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life. — Proverbs 4:23

(Photo credit and license)

Since blogging about communication skills and other self-help topics seems to be such a popular activity these days, I thought I’d try it for myself.  Enjoy these:

6 Steps to Becoming a Better Office Communicator

1.  Be discreet

When making a personal call on your office phone, never mention co-workers by name.  It’s rude.  Use non-specific pronouns, instead.

Example: “Yeah, he did it again.  No, really.  I’ll tell you about it later… he might be listening right now.”  …or…  “You won’t believe what I saw her doing when I walked into the office this morning.”

2.  Acknowledge prior relationships with clients.

When you know you’ve got a client meeting coming up, pretend to answer a call on your cell phone.  As you walk into the meeting room, make a comment to your fictional listener that indicates the value of your relationship with the client.  They will appreciate the personal recognition.

Example: “I have to go; I’m about to have a meeting with _________. (pause as if listening) (explosive laughter) Yes, that one!”

3.  Reach out to newcomers.

Nothing is more isolating than being a new employee in an established firm.  When someone new comes to your workplace, be sure to welcome them as a friend.

Example: “Hey, new guy, come be my lookout while I raid the manager’s supply cabinet.”  …or…  “So she’s your new supervisor?  Wow, I hope that goes well for you.  Feel free to come to me if you need to vent.”

4.  Respect your elders.

Older and more experienced employees in your office have a wealth of information to share with you.  At the same time, however, they may not be current in the cutting-edge pop culture that you might mention in conversation, and that might make them feel uncomfortable.  When chatting with someone at least a decade older than you, remember to explain references to recent (post-MTV) cultural phenomena.

Example: ”This day is so bad, it’s like a Seinfeld episode gone wrong.  Seinfeld, if you didn’t know, is a New York-based sitcom about the fictionalized life of its eponymous starring actor, Jerry Seinfeld, and a number of his friends and relatives.  It’s pretty funny.  You should try it.”

5.  Leave them wanting more.

Don’t dominate — and ultimately destroy — the conversation by spewing out every thought you have in your mind.  Leave some topics of discussion for later.  One especially effective way to do this is by approaching the conversation by saying, ”I have (X number) questions to ask you” or “I have (X number) things to tell you”… and then leave one unsaid.  For the rest of the day, they will glance at you with an expectant and slightly uncomfortable look on their faces, wondering whether they should ask.

Example:  See above.

There you go, that’s it.  I hope that these six steps will lead you toward more efficient communication in the workplace.  Please note that I am not responsible for problems caused by the application or misapplication of the above advice.  Have a happy Monday!

P.S. Thanks (and apologies) to DeepFriar and Havi Brooks for unwittingly planting the seeds of this post in my mind.  Go read their posts; you’ll probably enjoy them more than you did mine.

My fingers itch...

Good morning, everyone.

Good morning.

My name is Aylad MacOdys…

Hello, Aylad.

…and I’m a gamer.

Thank you, Aylad, for sharing.

It’s true, I am.  I’m not a “serious gamer” or a “hardcore gamer” or what-have-you, but I would definitely spend hours each day playing video games if I didn’t have other, more important things to do (and a sweet, beautiful wife who knows there are always more important things to do).

Gaming is not my only pastime, by any means.  I’m also a reader, and recently a blogger, and I enjoy web design, and I occasionally like to indulge a bit of creativity in less digital realms.

Sooner or later, however, “the itch” finds its way into my head, and once there, it grows.  And grows some more.  And spreads.  And soon, I am back in front of one electronic device or another, pressing buttons and waiting for the satisfaction of completed goals.

Don’t listen to people who say that gaming is addictive.  They don’t know what they’re talking about.  Cocaine is addictive.  Gaming is GAMING. (more…)