I hate to intervene, but....

I was part of my very first "intervention" today. It was a pretty weird, uncomfortable experience.

It all started with another very weird, uncomfortable experience. See, the agency where I work has, as part of its mission, an initiative to help provide job opportunities for people with disabilities. Sometimes it's physical, sometimes it's developmental. So, there's a lot of folks with special needs around the office, which keeps things interesting at times.

Last week, on my way to my car for lunch, one of these folks struck up a conversation with me. He's a nice kid, but a little out of touch with reality at times. He gets lonely and will follow people around work, make himself at home in their offices, "escort" ladies around the building... all very good-natured, of course. Those are his good days. On his bad days, he lives in his own little world.

But, as a lonely young fellow, he also isn't quite sure how to behave around women. He stands too close, and occasionally touches people inappropriately.

That sounds horrible, the way I say it. It's very harmless. He hasn't grabbed anyone in their "bathing suit area" or anything like that. He just gets too familiar at times.

Anyway, that's what he did to me last week. I won't go into details... it was harmless, but it also wasn't cool. And he knew it right away. He even said "I'm sorry I touched you inappropriately." (He's obviously been talked to about this before)

Sooo.... I told his caseworker, who told his mom, who told his boss... who decided we needed an intervention. So the three of us explained to this troubled young man that touching girls isn't cool... and that it could get him in a lot of trouble if he continues to behave like that.

The poor kid was terrified, and kept asking if he was losing his job. For what it's worth, he apologized again. I feel really badly for him. When people are nice to him, he thinks it's an open invitation... but when people are strict with him, he's terrified he'll be punished.

In a little over a year at this job, it's the first real "situation" I've had to deal with. It really makes me appreciate what we do.

Take a deep breath

Sigh.

The last few weeks have been insanely busy. Between preparing for the Festival of Trees, trying to find a dress and shoes to wear to our Gala (Failed miserably with the shoes. I have a blister on the top of one of my toes. How does that even happen?), catching up on a week's worth of work, attempting to figure out what kind of insane accounting system our folks used at checkout, and delivering expensive, fully-decorated trees, I'm pooped.

And guess what? Christmas is in less than two weeks and I have to start wrapping presents.

Fortunately, I always have a helper when it comes to wrapping:

Seriously. Could she be any cuter?

I've finished most of my shopping for my parents. I've barely started shopping for Cory.

I keep trying to fall back onto the fact that I paid for half of the suit that he bought to wear to our Gala... But I still have to get him something, and I'm kind of at a loss.

Maybe Zoe can think of something good. She seems to be more ready for Christmas than I am.

Festival of Trees

Christmas is weird in Florida. It's really hard to get into the Christmas spirit when it's 80 degrees outside-- and even in an unseasonably cool week like this one, it isn't exactly winter-like.

So, spending the last several days preparing for the Festival of Trees has been a little surreal. The interior of the art center looks like a winter wonderland... and outside, it's sunny and the only shade comes in the form of a palm tree.

Today, the decorators were all putting the finishing touches on their trees. I shot a little video with our crappy little camera... take a peek:

Here she comes, Miss MRSA

One of my co-workers has MRSA.
Problem is, none of us (including herself) found out she had MRSA until I'd spend the a good chunk of the day working at her computer. Her (probably) highly contagious computer. And scratched a bunch of mosquito bites after touching her (probably) higly contagious keyboard.
So that's fun, right?

Rocky Mountain High

The conference has been keeping me pretty busy, but I thought I could take a minute or two to post some photos from our resort. The first photo on the left is the view from the hotel room patio (where I'm currently sitting as I type this). That's Cheyenne Mountain-- The same mountain that holds NORAD's operations/command center. The entrance is on the other side of the mountain.

You also can't see it on either picture, but you can also see the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun from our resort. At night it looks like a tiny Christmas tree lit up about halfway up the mountain.
By the way, this second photo is the view from the aptly titled "mountain view" dining room.
Not too shabby, huh?

On The Road Again

It's been a long time since I've done any work-related travel. As a speech/debate coach, I used to travel nearly every weekend during the school year (mostly 5-6 hour drives), and flew a few times a year, either to tournaments or professional conferences. But once I started working in sports, those opportunities dwindled. Sure, I was driving around all the time to cover games, and occasionally, I'd have a long drive to a Super Bowl or to a college bowl game. But flying? TV stations are much too cheap to fly people anywhere. If you can't drive there in less than 16 hours, you're not going. They'll hire a freelancer to do it for you.

This afternoon, I leave for a conference in Colorado Springs. I'm kind of excited, because I've never been there before, but I'm also kind of anxious about it. I'll be spending a lot of time with some of my co-workers. They're people I like, but with whom I've never spent time with outside of work. I'm sure it'll be fine-- but I'll be spending about 10 hours in cars, airports, and airplanes with them today-- and that's a lot of facetime.

On the up-side, the resort where we're staying looks beautiful. Check it out here. Pretty fancy-schmancy, huh?

I just realized that I left my wireless card in my office-- so I don't know if I'll have much web access while I'm there (Do I want to pay outrageous resort fees just to be able to email?). Crap. I was about to promise pictures and random stories-- but now I'm not so sure. We'll see.

Open, Sesame!

One of our stores is celebrating a Grand Opening tomorrow-- so I've spent most of the last two days at the store, helping them set up, decorating for the Grand Opening, and just generally doing my P.R. thing.

It's been a little bizarre. See, despite the giant sign that says "Opening Soon" and another sign that says "Grand Opening, Friday July 18th," about 50 people have just randomly wandered into the store thinking that we're already open. The signs are big (24" x 36"). They're on the doors. And they're hard to miss.

Two people even had started shopping and had picked out some items before anyone even spotted them.

So, we whisk them out of the store quickly. Or at least try to. One of the aforementioned women wanted to keep shopping.

About half the people that have tried to walk in have a decent excuse-- the area where the store is located has a very high Hispanic population, and lots of people who don't read or speak English. I said the words "manana" and "nueve" many, many times today (my New Year's resolution was to learn Spanish. I haven't gotten very far).

The other half of the people who have walked in (and often, had to walk around ladders and other equipment to get inside) have no excuse. They're just idiots.

I guess, the good news is that we should have plenty of customers when the store opens tomorrow morning at nueve oh-clock!

Lordy, Lordy

For the last several years, I've worked in a very small, compartmentalized department at work. When I was teaching, I was part of a large department, but as forensics coach, my office was on the other end of campus, and I really only spent time with the other coach.

Working in television, I was part of a newsroom, but I was part of a two or three person sports department, usually located in a different area of the building than the newsroom.

Now, in my new world at the nonprofit, I'm once again part of a small three-person department. It's just me, the graphic artist, and the vice president of communication.

Honestly, it's one of my favorite parts of the job. I've become less and less social over the years, and it's nice to spend most of my time with the same three people.

Even better, We're all very close in age. Our graphic artist is about five months older than me, and our V.P. is only a year and a half older than me. Compare that to my last job, where our sports director was 10 years younger than me, and the other weekend anchor was about 15 years younger. Yikes.

It's really nice to work with people my own age. Sure, they both have kids and have different priorities in their lives, but we have a lot in common. Discovering gray hairs, for example. Or recently discovering that we can't bend over without making "argh" noises.

Well today, our V.P. turned 40. Our graphic artist gave her hell. The entire administrative headquarters was plastered with posters and flyers of our V.P. with the grim reaper. Black balloons filled her office. I tried to stay out of it as much as possible. After all, I hit the big four-oh in 17 months. I'd like it to pass without notice.

She took it very well. She called the posters "cute," laughed at her arrangement of black balloons, and dealt with the constant teasing about geritol, depends, and reading glasses. For what it's worth, she could probably pass for 30... which I'm sure helped, too.

Just the same, I checked a calendar the first chance I could. I turn 40 on a Sunday.

Whew.

Blogger's Block

It's funny-- during the week, I always think of things to blog about: Our first anniversary, Darren McCarty's return to the Red Wings, the absolute pain-in-the-arse that writing an annual report has become, seeing "Run, Fat Boy, Run," bad drivers, my trip to the world's largest trailer park... the list goes on and on.

Then, I have a little free time-- and I've lost my inspiration.

I did take a trip to the World's largest trailer park last week... it's actually just a mile from where I work. And while there are some "nice" manufactured homes in our area-- you won't find any of the nice ones there.

And here's what makes it particularly lovely. Because it's not close to any schools-- 1 in 10 residents of this happy little hamlet is a sex offender (I've actually heard that it's more than that... but I'm being generous).

Anyway, I had to take a trip out there for work this week. And my boss acted as if I was going into a war zone. "If you're not back in half an hour, you'd better call me."

Here's the funny thing. Nobody there was going to mess with me. For one thing... I only saw two cars crappier than mine... and neither of them were up on blocks.

Notes from a crappy blogger

Wow. I've been a really crappy blogger lately. Sorry about that. This 8-4:30 schedule is quite seriously kicking my a$$. I don't know how you "normal" people do it. I get home from work, eat dinner with Cory before he has to get back to work for the night shift, and all I want to do after that is take a nap.

Work, so far, has been fun. Most of my coworkers are pretty cool-- I go out to lunch with a group of them at least twice a week. It's fun to be part of a "group" for once. Working in sports always made me a bit of a loner. Sports departments are often crammed into a little office, far away from the rest of the newsroom. I actually know people who worked on a different floor than the rest of the news department. When everyone else was going to dinner together or ordering pizza in the newsroom, that's when I always had to go rushing out to shoot a game.

One of these days, I'll take a picture of my office. It's larger (and much nicer) than the one I had when I was teaching... though back then, I had a window. I guess technically, I have a window now, too... but it faces another office, so I'm not sure it counts. Oh well.

So, what was my point here? I'm not sure. I think I originally planned to write about what I've been doing at work, but I don't think you'd find the annual report to be very interesting.

You want interesting? How about this... I promise, the next time I log on, I'll write about our adventure at the "mullet toss." How's that for a tease???

Finding a Loophole

So, the IT policy at my new job prohibits us from looking at social websites while on the clock. MySpace, Facebook, YouTube... they're all off-limits. And while most companies have a similar policy, our workplace actually monitors web usage. At least somewhat.

I can live without MySpace... or Facebook... or YouTube. Really. I can. However, I don't have to, since one of my job responsibilities has been to create a MySpace page for our workplace.

It's still in the birthing process, but if you want to check it out, go for it.

Payday!

My first payday at the new job almost didn't happen.

I arrived at work, and one of my co-workers and I wandered over to the accounting department in search of our paychecks. And there wasn't a check for me. To make it worse, the payroll manager wasn't going to be in until the afternoon.

So I sent her a friendly little email, reminding her that my first day of work was February 18th and that I only had $19 in my checking account.

When I got to work, she looked on the HR report, and there I was, with my hire date and my first pay date all correct. So, she digs a little deeper. And discovers that my annual salary is listed as zero.

Oops.

She fixed it, cut me a manual check, and had it in my hands by 2:00 pm. I just deposited it into the ol' bank account. And I've staved off a lifetime of abject poverty for another two weeks.

Whew.

My First Funny Work Story

(Ok, so this story requires a little explanation for folks who don't live in this part of the country. Around here, if you want to be a member of a wholesale store, you have three choices. Of course, there's Sam's Club. Then there's Costco. And then, there's the unintentionally-humorously titled "BJ's.")

I'm sure this has probably happened somewhere that you work. Sometimes warehouse stores offer special deals for corporations. Someone from Costco, for example, sets up camp in your conference room, and offers employees discount memberships and renewals.

So, this morning at about 8:30, I'm at my desk, making my checklist for the day. There's a crackling on the loudspeaker, and a voice squawks out, "Good morning everyone. We have BJ's in the conference room for the next two hours!"

No, there wasn't a stampede of male employees towards the conference room, but our entire building did turn into a bunch of Beavis and Buttheads for the rest of the day.