Testing Blogging
Topic: Quirps1
Just a quick test to see how this works. Hopefully, This will be out there for everyone to see! I'm trying to get back to posting regularly. Be patient!

A New Job
Topic: Friends/Family
Well, I have a friend who started a new job this week. I'm looking forward to hearing how it went.

Starting a new job is a great time to change how your career-life is going. See, each time we start somewhere new, we come to the new place with all of the experiences we gained at our old job. But where you might have learned something that made you want to change your working style at the old job, it would have been hard to get your old co-workers to accept the "New You." At the new gig, no one knows the "Old You," so you can walk in with those "New You" ideas and put them into place from the first day.

Unfortunately, most of us reach back to our last "first day on the new job" experience as we work our new first day. And that means we set ourselves up for some of the same hassles we had last time.

To my friend I say: I hope you had a great first week. They are lucky to have you - make sure they treat you that way!

No Bush Bashing Here
Topic: Politics/Nation
I was talking to a friend this weekend, after seeing This Week with George S., and the graphic that I look for regarding the number of Americans who died in Iraq this week. The number was 30, with 22 of the names released. As I've mentioned previously, this weekly graphic gives me a quick, quantitative analysis of the week in terms of lives lost; sometimes (rarely) it is only one column. This week it was 3 columns, and they had to make the font small to get all of the names to fit.

Then, we all heard the news of the reservists who refused to go on a mission because they said it was a suicide mission, due to lack of protection and back up.

I have a real problem with us going to war in Iraq. When we asked for a definitive plan, with a budget and a timetable, Bush tossed WMD on the table as a trump card. America fell in line.

But there were no WMD. And no plan. And the cost!! - well, maybe that's why we couldn't do a budget before hand - because if we had known how much it would cost, in dollars or in lives, we might not have fell in line.

Many will say I'm Bush-bashing. But it wouldn't matter to me what your name is. If you took us to war, under fear of nuclear attack, and then it turned out we were not under nuclear threat at all, and young men and women are dieing for this b.s. every day - it doesn't matter who you are, or who is running against you - even Bozo.

Click over to Inspirational Quirps (see the link on the right) and vote in our poll - Bush vs. Bozo.

And tell us what you think.

Self Serving Self-deception
Topic: HIV/AIDS
I'm always amazed by our ability as human beings to set up ways of thinking about certain things so that we can live in a state of denial about things that we want to do -- whatever it is that we want to do! For me, this is one of them.

Any activity, whether performed solo or with a partner, that involves your sex organs - for those of us who don't know what those are, the short list includes (let's be entirely clear at this point):
your breasts or nipples, penis, vagina and anus - is SEX.

Since I love equations so much, let's break it down this way:

Activity + Sex Organs = Sexual Activity = SEX

Okay?

Now that we've established that, let's now talk about unsafe vs safer vs safe sex.

Unsafe sex is sexual activity without barrier protection. See, AIDS is not the only thing you can get from having sex; there are these other ailments called Sexual Transmitted Diseases or STDs. They include Syphillis, Gonorrhea, herpes, and hepatitis, to name a few. And although I was told about the fragility of the AIDS virus and how difficult it actually is to get it ("it doesn't survive outside of a body"), other STDs are often much more resilient - and once a body is infected with one of them, it is much more open to infection by the HIV virus - and HIV is much more readily shed by a body that has both HIV and other STDs, which just completes the deadly partnership.

Safer sex would include barrier protected (condom) sex - anthing that is intended to keep one person's bodily fluids from being passed into the other person's body. Safer sex might also include oral sex with some major caveats - open cuts or sores in your mouth severely lowers the "safety" factor, as well as timing (in terms of the monthly female menstrual cycle), what specific sexual acts are being performed (anal sex of any kind is higher risk) and the general health of both parties must also be included in determining when and where oral sex is safer.

Safe sex (unfortunately) is no sex. Everything else involves a certain amount of exposure. Exposure means you cannot be safe. Even having sex with someone who has been tested is not full-proof - test results have been known to be wrong.

I don't think there is anything wrong with taking risks in order to have a sexual life. I mean, it is part of being human - to have, acknowledge and satisfy our sex drives. But I think we should work hard, especially in this era of this deadly pandemic disease - AIDS - not to practice self-serving self deception about what we are doing.

For our children. For the next generation.

Ooooooh, that Tripod!
Topic: Corporate Info
Okay,

I love my Tripod account. I love being to easily have blogs, and my website, and file sharing, and my domain name - everything all in one place.

But I DO NOT LIKE THEIR CUSTOMER SERVICE POLICY. I understand. They probably aren't a very big company. (Being foreign owned, I haven't figured out how to get to that kind of information.) But there are times when a quick conversation would alleviate a lot of their "customers" angst.

Case in point - my websites nearly 2 weeks of down time this September/October.

All because (I think) I thought about changing a couple of my blogs appearance. I didn't complete the process - didn't even log out, I think, and a new page called index.blog was created - and it became the only thing you could see when you accessed my domain.

All kinds of e-mails and chats took place during that two weeks. Then, when my frustration reached its zenith, I posted this entry (insert link) on Inspirational Quirps. Then, after all was fixed (by me, with NO help from Tripod customer service) they sent me one last inane response. You actually have to see it to believe it - but it is worth sorting through the back and forth in order to learn one thing:

DOING THINGS VIA CHAT/E-MAIL LEAVES A RECORD OF YOUR INEPTNESS. AND IN THIS AGE OF BLOGS, THAT MEANS THE WORLD CAN KNOW, IN YOUR OWN WORDS, HOW BADLY YOU TREAT YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Check it out. Well worth the read.

Girlfriend at Work
Topic: Corporate Info
One of the most difficult things that women have to deal with in Corporate America is... men.

And the role of the assistant is a particularly dicey one.

Most people want an assistant to be their "friend." Most of the time, that's not appropriate, and will almost always lead to problems.

Everyone has different rules about how their personal relationships should go. For example, I'm not real uptight about people calling me back when I leave them a message. I just keep calling back, until I get them. Unfortunately, that means I'm also pretty relaxed about returning calls. And sometimes (on my home phone) I'm even relaxed about listening to my messages.

I'm sure this must make my friends and family crazy. In fact, just recently, my mother left messages with the building security where I live. "Tell her to call her mother, I haven't talked to her in much too long." (I'm sorry, Mom!)

Friendly happens much too quickly in most office environments. First, before we become friendly, let's establish a solid, respectful, professional relationship. After all, that's why we are in each other's lives. And professional courtesy is a great place for us to get to know each other's likes and dislikes, work methods and ethics, mood swings, etc. After all, we're both human. We probably will not get along famously everyday. But the relative safety and neutrality of a professional relationship is the right place to work out any rough spots between your style and mine.

What People Say When They Want to Break Up
I'll direct my friend to this entry, so anyone who has helpful advice to add, please do so. I think she could use all of our help.

See, I know this woman, I know the man, and I know the relationship. I believe that she is truly in love with him, and I believe that he cares for her, but he can be so self-protective, street tough and isolated that I'm not always convinced that he understands "love" the way that she does.

And all I can say to her is, you've been asking him to make it clear how he feels about you.

I think he did a pretty good job. I mean, he told you that he believes you are a disloyal, lying, scheming, manipulative b----, who isn't s------- his d--- enough.

He says he loves you, and "always" will, though I don't know why. But I'm not surprised that you don't think you are being treated like the loving lady you think you are. Not based on what his message said; not based on what seems to be his underlying feelings for you. Wow! From what he wrote, I wouldn't blame him for only wanting to be with you occassionally; in fact, I wonder why he wants to be with your sloppy a-- at all. His wife must truly be a prize!

He says he'll never leave you hangin' but he seems to be doing his very best right now to say all of the hurtful things people say when they want to speed a break up. Meaning, he won't leave you, but he's obviously very willing to say hurtful things to you to get him to leave him.

This relationship has never been easy on you. I don't think you deserve messages like this. I think you've been a wonderful mistress, even when I didn't think it was the smart thing for you to do. You never tried to cause any difficulty in his marriage; you've done everything you could to be supportive and loving and understanding. I think you more than lived up to the need to be respectful of how the conditions under which this man you fell in love with came into your life.

I'm sorry for your loss; please know that I'm here for you.

Let it go, let it go, let it go. He has.

Too Many Cooks - Using the Wrong Ingredients
Topic: Quirps1
Okay, here's a question. Why are people surprised when they get a messed up end-product after having had too many hands involved?

Here's an example: An attorney [Cook Number 1] is working on finalizing the changes to a legal document which must be sent out by the end of the day on Monday. His regular assistant [Cook Number 2] leaves around 5:30 p.m., having put in a long day on the project. The law firm has both a document processing department and reserve administrative assistance to assist in late night projects; a list is sent to document processing [Cook Number 3] so that an e-mail distribution list can be set up for the reserve assistant [Cook Number 4] to use later on that evening. The reserve assistant must catch a train at 8:00 p.m., and the project still is not complete, so another assistant [Cook Number 5] goes to the desk to make final changes to the document and send out the e-mail.

No one should be surprised to hear that the document did not get e-mailed to all of the right people. And that's without knowing that it turned out that there were two distribution lists; the one created that night, and one already maintained by the regular assistant. Both lists had almost the same name; one was called "ListName" and the other was called "ListName Distribution List."

But behind this nonsense, all of the cooks ended up creating a long, convoluted, crazy mess; the attorney, who was the one person involved throughout the entire crazy relay of the process is the one person no one will say has any responsibility; so the assistants were left, some pointing their fingers and others expressing their anger, trying to identify where the problem occurred.

Anger has no place in the workplace. At the very least, it's kind of like tears (and most other emotional responses) in a personal relationship: feelings serve the function that pain does to your body - let's you know when something needs to be acted upon. A friend wrote me "...Anger is personal, involves insults, etc...A person can be pleased or displeased about a project..." - but if they express anger, they've gone to a personal place, and it behooves them to have a good reason.

The only place anger might possibly be appropriate in this situation is at the attorney, and at the firm itself for having an extremely poor understanding of how you should structure a relay team work environment.

War is War
Topic: News/Events
So, I was talking to my guy LATE last night, trying to settle in for the evening, watching a repeat of the earlier news broadcast, and I was shocked and appalled to hear a report of the US intentions to track down and arrest this young cleric who is calling for the US to leave Iraq immediately.

Is it their intention to blame him for what happened in Falujah? I'm not sure. But I am amazed to see our government continue to throw gasoline on the fire instead of water (or even dirt).

12 soldiers killed today. 6 Iraqui cities erupted into violence. I wasn't surprised, were you? (Sad, but not surprised.)

We never had control of the country, but we rushed to say that "major conflict" was over, and now we're rushing to "turn Iraq back over to the Iraquis" by June 30th.

Too many more of our young people will die because we're trying to do things according to words and deadlines. But war is war. Once you decide to do it, you should do it right.

Men and Women
Topic: Self
So, I'm doing research, talking to people, gathering information about how people get along and communicate and interact and... flirt...

And one young man said that he doesn't think that there is anything wrong with flirting, but that he "knows how to behave" and "would not act on" the flirting.

I asked him if he flirts in front of his woman. He said "of course not," that "that would be rude."

After much additional conversation, he said that he should "not have to explain himself," (I think that was in response to me saying that if my guy thought that flirting was okay, I would want him to flirt in front of me, instead of having a different set of "okay" behavior when I'm around) that if his behavior matches what he has said about himself, that should be enough.

I don't think that it is "explaining" - it's being willing to be in full disclosure with your partner. Having a separate set of behavior when your partner is around allows things to happen - what starts as an innocent flirtation becomes a friend at work, becomes someone to talk to as my partner and I work through the next rough period in our relationship - and then there's the potential for a late night, a big fight, a couple of drinks, and the unpleasant but all too familiar phrase "it just happened."

There is no chance that I could ever just happen to do anything - I know it, and my guy knows it, because anytime I am attracted to another man, my sweetheart knows about it. The same thing is true from him to me. Both men and women respond to this idea with lots of speculation. But I believe that most men think like the young man I was talking to, that there is some level of engagement with other women that is acceptable, even if you are married, you just aren't supposed to do it around your woman; most women say "he better not tell me he's interested in someone else!" - so they seem to be in agreement.

But if this idea of "separate but faithful" worked, you wouldn't have so much extra-curricular activity going on in everybody's relationships. I close the door firmly on any possible affairs by talking about them before they even become a viable possibility - while the man in question is just attractive or handsome or sexy to me - I couldn't possibly take any steps down an extra-curricular path except by conscious decision, and additional disclosure to my guy - "This guy that I told you I'm attracted to, I'm going to start going to lunch with him, because I like talking to him. Now, nothing is going to happen, I just like him as a friend."

I know lots of you are saying that I'm crazy, and that this is b.s., but here's the challenge. Try it. Maybe not with your partner, but only with yourself. Write down those people that you meet and are attracted to when you first meet them, and keep track of where the relationships go. See if you don't look up in 6 months, or 6 years, having to make some decisions about how far things should go. Ask yourelf when it becomes awkward but necessary to talk to your partner about this person, is it more or less awkward than it would have been if you had told them about the attraction from the beginning?

'Nuff said.