An Important Lesson Brought to You By Google

I feel like blogging is a really great exercise for me. It is my therapy. It lets me practice my writing skills. It forces me to really take note of the things that are happening around me. Sometimes, blogging is like going to confession – admitting that I am not perfect leads to cleansing and forgiveness.

With that said, I’m ready to admit how scary of a person I can be. I'm doing it to come clean, but to also warn other people about a possibility you may not have thought of.

It is standard operating procedure (SOP) for me to Google people. This is particularly enlightening when people of interest have a unique name because usually a small number of highly relevant results displays. It makes me feel a bit creepy that I admit to doing this but
A) Lots of people do it (which doesn't make it right) but more importantly
B) I consider it a necessary safety precaution, especially in regard to meeting strangers.
It is definitely a relief when nothing bad comes out of a Google search.

I met a gentleman at work last week and due to his appearance and conversational skills, he immediately became a person of interest. His unusual last name made him a prime candidate for Googling.

I found the pretty standard links – honor roll in college, high school graduation announcement, etc. and then I found an amazing story. When this man was younger, he made headlines by saving the life of a young child. He was widely accepted as a hero and even received national attention. This is the most amazing piece of information I have ever uncovered about anyone I knew personally, using Google.

But I was immediately saddened because I didn’t get to hear the story for the first time from him. It would ruin the future “I wonder what it would be like to save someone’s life” conversation. I can hardly explain how sad I feel about knowing this extraordinary piece of information about this remarkable person.

I was thinking about my Google-regret because the other morning on the way to work, the stupid morning show that I sometimes listen to was taking a survey. They were asking people if 1) given the opportunity, would they view the footage of the sting ray barb killing Steve Irwin? and 2) what is the most disturbing video/picture/real-life scene they’ve ever seen? About half the people answered yes to 1) and people had lots of different suggestions for 2) – 9/11 footage, car accidents, suicides, beheadings in Iraq, etc. People kept saying the same thing about 2) though – knowing how affected they were by seeing what they saw, they’d never have chosen to view the disturbing images in the first place. I felt the same way about finding the amazing story. I actively sought it out, but wish I hadn’t found it.

The accidental lesson from all of this is that it’s good to know the bad things you might find out from Google but I never imagined how bad it would make me feel to find the good things about someone on Google. All you Google-stalkers out there – consider yourself warned.

What Remains...

I love washing my car by hand but due to weather conditions, stopped in November. Therefore, the Malibu has not been washed since then, and was sporting almost 4 months of road filth. I was getting annoyed and grossed out so I went through a drive-through car wash last week which really restored Mali back to glory. When I got home, I was admiring her cleanliness from all angles and was checking out her rear end. (Hmmm, that didn't sound so good...) On the bumper, unmistakably, was a large (6in x 4in) patch of paint from my garage – an embarrassing reminder of my garage door mishap from 2 weeks ago. My car was so dirty before that the beige paint on my black bumper was completely camouflaged when I checked for damage. The paint will come off the bumper fairly easily but I’m not sure if I’ve served my penance yet. I think I’m going to drive around awhile longer with the beige patch, a sort of scarlet letter for automotive stupidity.

I've noticed that in the aftermath of my reversing incident, I feel anxiety every time I have to put my car in reverse, especially while backing out of my garage.

Is it normal to be nervous while navigating around gas stations pumps?

Does anyone else expect their car to blow up when driving over the sparking ashes of the cigarette from the car in front of you?

The Green Couch at Work

I have had numerous discussions with males about the posh-ness of ladies’ rooms. I feel like I often must dispel rumors of big fluffy couches (hence, the “rest room”) and an abundance of luxuries. Such opulent ladies’ rooms only exist at fancy hotels and restaurants. Well, and at work.

I’m up around 6am each day for work and because I’m a big wus, it is killing me. (The 7:30am start time is not my choice.) My favorite part of my typical morning routine is when I sip 20oz of hot plain green tea from my favorite insulated stainless steel mug while driving to work. Consequently, around 9:30, I make my first trip to the ladies’ room. EVERY SINGLE DAY, I pass by this huge fluffy green couch in the ladies’ room at work. EVERY SINGLE DAY, there is nothing I want more than to pass out on it for awhile. EVERY SINGLE DAY, I lust and yearn and long for a couple minutes of quiet on that couch. But I just can’t bring myself to lay down at work. I think it’s mean that the couch is even in there, to tempt and mock the weary.

I also think the couch is beautiful. I secretly covet it for my house.

On a side note: The other morning I woke up and my radio station was telling me that a “Freezing Fog” advisory was n effect. I laid in bed and envisioned driving through solid suspended foggy ice cubes. Welcome to my world of cloudy thoughts when I’m in some sort of limbo between being awake and asleep.

Long Distance Chipotle Date - Save the Date!

I've discussed the possibility of doing a long-distance Chipotle date with friends from across the nation, so here's what I propose: this weekend, on Saturday 3/3 at approximately 3pm I am planning on eating some Chipotle. If you are planning on eating Chipotle too, or at anytime during the weekend really, let me know so that I can think about you while I shnarf down my burrito. To encourage burrito bonding behavior, I will post exactly what I ordered and which city I was in, and then you can let me know where and what you ordered too. If you tell me that you're going to have Chipotle and then you stand me up, I will be pissed. Just so you know.

"My Boys", Cleaning

I’ve found a new fictional hero in PJ, the lead character on the TBS show “My Boys.” She’s a sportswriter for the Chicago Cubs, lives in a beautiful apartment, plays poker with her group of guy friends and brother all the time, is pretty but not in a super gorgeous/sexy kind of way, and makes analogies about how her love life is like sports. TBS showed the entire first season during the Super Bowl and I recorded it. I finally got around to watching it this weekend and I’m addicted. I was sitting in my living room, laughing out loud. My favorite analogy so far is when she describes what a “Five-Tool” player in baseball (hits for power, hits for average, arm strength, speed, fielding skills). She then goes on to say that the guy she’s dating is a “Five-Tool” guy – smart, funny, attractive, wealthy, and good in bed. She has a girly female friend who is always trying to get her to be more feminine. She has a crush on one of her guy friends and he can’t stand that she makes him feel like the girl in the relationship. She pokes fun at girly girls. She drinks beer. She has a great heart. I want to be friends with PJ.

Ryry, I need you to continue work on “Life of E’s.” Now that I have my girly sports romantic comedy, I need a sharp edgy engineering comedy. I wonder if TLC or the Discovery Channel would consider showing a fictional show with an engineering background…

I did one of my favorite chores this weekend. I scrubbed my kitchen floor. (I’m not being sarcastic.) It was so dirty. The floor is white but with a light grey/brown speckled design that hides dirt pretty well. In the weeks (months?) between thorough cleanings, I maintain cleanliness using a hand held vacuum to pick up large particles and a damp rag to wipe up spills. When there is a certain amount of accumulation of dust, scuffs, and other nastiness, that’s when I know it’s time for a scrub down. I swept, then armed myself with the handheld vacuum, a spray bottle of water, a rag, and a box of baking soda. Sometimes I put knee pads on. I attacked the scuffs with baking soda and this weekend, I even needed a toothbrush to get the dirt out of the texture in the floor. When I was done, I had two filthy rags and a floor that looked sooooo pretty. I think the key to proper cleaning is having all the right weapons.

Along those same lines, Brian and Sarah took me out for Mexican for my birthday. We split a pitcher of Sangria. At the end of the night, I realized that the waiter had spilled a couple drops of sangria near the cuff of my cream pants. When I got home, I blotted the spots with cold water (useless) and then rubbed some Oxyclean into the spot. First, the spot turned turquoise, and then after about 20 minutes of cuff soaking in the sink, I came back and the spot was gone! Just like the commercials!

Baking soda also takes scratches out of appliances. I cleaned my stove, dishwasher, and clothes dryer too...

Chilled Nuts

I have remnants of prior health kicks haunting me in my pantry. There’s a random South Beach Diet food that remains uneaten from each time I try to start it again and then get sick of it. The Jello, pistachios, Healthy Choice soup, and couscous both taunt and haunt. I’m trying to pare down the contents of my pantry one item at a time so for the last week and a half, I’ve been working on a bag of stale pistachios. I swear, some of them are like, moldy. (Did you know nuts can get moldy?) I accidentally stumbled upon a way to make the stale nuts palatable this week when I packed my lunch and put my baggie of pistachios on top of my frozen soup. Chilling the nuts makes a big difference.

Super Bowl Commentary, a Week Later

A couple weeks ago, I read an article about how Miami is such a great city for the Super Bowl. South Beach has hot weather and sexy people and is a fun place to be. The article claimed that it was a far superior host to say, Detroit.

I love that it rained during the entire Super Bowl.

I’m genuinely happy for the Colts crew. They’ve been such a good team for so long and now they finally have their rings to prove that they are the best. They won the right way, with a mild-mannered coach who demands respect, and the most brilliant QB of all time. And you never hear about Colts getting arrested.

The only bad thing about the rain at the Super Bowl is that I feel like it subdued the celebration. I wanted to see pure joy in the eyes of Peyton Manning. I wanted to see big cheesey hugs with his wife and family. I wanted to see Archie Manning with a tear in his eyes. I wanted to see Marvin Harrison whoop it up. I wanted to see Tony Dungy and Peyton do a Winning-the-Super-Bowl dance. But I think there’s more to the dampened celebration than the rain.

I think that the years of unfulfilled expectations and disappointing playoff exits weighed so heavily on the Colts that once they finally achieved what everyone had been predicting for so many years, they felt mostly relief from fulfilling their destiny rather than joy from doing something uniquely great. That’s a dangerous frame of mind to be in.

I saw this before when I watched my younger brother Tim play high school baseball. His junior year, he was on a fabulously talented team with state championship expectations. They won a lot of games that season but every victory in the state tournament seemed expected. I never saw them get super excited about winning. Then in the state finals, an underdog team outplayed them and their season ended with a loss. I’m not sure if as a team, they ever really sat back to take the whole experience in. I still feel bad about that. My three other brothers all won state championships and I’m pretty sure they properly celebrated each milestone victory on the way to their state championships. In fact, last year I watched the highlight tape from Kevin’s senior year of football and they seemed to celebrate EVERYTHING. First down? Good block? Tied shoelaces? All cause for celebration.

Expectations are a funny thing. I have not yet perfected the art of having the right amount of expectations in life. Expectations too small? You never accomplish anything. Expectations too big? You go through life disappointed. Finding the balance between getting things done and letting disappointments roll of your back is my personal nirvana.

I’d like to come back to the topic of expectations again.

Rick Reilly in Sports Illustrated said something about people begging Lovie Smith for a “Rexorcism” (benching Rex Grossman because he played so bad for most of the season) and I laughed out loud.

Congratulations Indianapolis Colts! I hope I can get some of you on fantasy team next year!

"Oh no I DID int..."

In the movie Apollo 13, one of the guys in the control room says to Gene Kranz (Ed Harris) the director of NASA, “This could be the worst disaster NASA's ever faced.” To which Kranz replies, “With all due respect, sir, I believe this is gonna be our finest hour.” Sometimes disasters lead people to do things they didn’t think they could do. People are forced to be peak performers.

Last night, I did something that I am absolutely MORTIFIED to admit. I can make as many excuses as I want about WHY it happened but the bottom line is:

I tried to back out of my garage without opening my garage door first.

I was on my way to choir practice. I was carrying a bunch of stuff and for some reason, turned the light on in my garage instead of opening the garage door. I had like 5000 things on my mind, including how I had skipped my workout for the second day in a row and needed to make three phone calls during my 5-minute drive. I didn’t even want to go to choir (but we’re performing a new song before mass and 1) I need to feel well-rehearsed before a performance and 2) I acknowledge what it means to make a commitment to a group of people. It means that I show up even when I don’t particularly feel like it. People depend on me). Even before the incident, I was exhausted and stressed out beyond belief.

Luckily, my garage is not very long, so I only rolled for about a foot before hitting the door. And it’s not like I had my foot on the accelerator. I was absolutely riding the break. Boom! My jaw dropped and I sat for a moment in disbelief about what I had done, staring at the door in my rearview mirror thinking, “I can’t believe what I just did.” I pulled forward, got out of my car, and pushed the button to open the garage door. It went up about 2 inches before squealing angrily and ceasing, at which point I squealed angrily and tried not to throw a fit.

I turned off my car (didn’t want anyone to find me dead from carbon monoxide poisoning and realize that backing into the garage door lead to it. That would mean fulfilling my most feared and humiliating destiny: dying from a dual dose of stupidity). I surveyed the damage from inside the garage – nothing obviously broken on the door and nothing obviously broken on my car. I went out my front door and took a look at the damage to the garage door from the outside (side note: it was like 6ºF last night). There was a small crack in the door and it seemed to bow out a bit where I had hit it. So I kicked at where it was warped, which was kinda therapeutic. I went back inside my garage and pushed the button to see if my kicking had made any difference. It hadn’t.

That was the point that I panicked and cried. I called the phone number of the company that installed the garage door. It was 7:30 on a Wednesday night and their hours are 8-5. I called one of my handy guy friends who lives near by. He didn’t pick up. I panicked and cried some more. I tried to figure out how I was going to get the door up. It didn't appear as though I would be able to even manually open it and I probably would have to skip work to get it taken care of.

Then, I had a moment. I realized that no one was going to rescue me. I was going to have to take care of this one myself. I tried not to think about failure and instead focused on how I could make things right again. I took a deep breath, temporarily forgave myself, went back in the house and went online to Google “fix broken garage door” (a positive alternative to “what to do when you back into your garage door and break it.”) I read through one of the first sites and it encouraged me to do a thorough inspection of all the hinges, gaps, and the track. It gave me some ideas on problems to look for. Inspired, I bundled up, grabbed a wrench, a hammer, and a flashlight and headed back into the garage to inspect my door.

I have a two-car garage and I don’t park in the middle – I park to one side. I carefully inspected the side further from the damage and all the rollers were on the track, the track looked pretty straight, nothing popped out at me as being wrong. Then I carefully inspected the other side. I immediately saw that one of the rollers was off the track! I realized I wouldn’t be able to get the roller back on the track without the help of another body. I called a friend and as I was calling her, realized I probably could just ask a neighbor. (I wasn’t thinking very clearly.) My friend promised she would come over if I couldn’t find a neighbor.

I went and knocked on the door of the people across the street. The couple who lives there seems to be in their late 50s with adult children and the guy seems like he might be pretty handy. I recognized the husband when he opened the door and told him how embarrassed I was and I know how cold it is but would he please help? I explained the situation as he bundled up and I broke down in tears. "I'm just so tired and I can't believe I did this!" Smooth. But really, who can say no to a 20 something year old girl who’s crying?

So I showed him the problem and explained how I thought we should fix it. I proposed that I’d push the door in from the outside while he pops the roller in place in the track. Through my embarrassment, I tried to remain calm and confident but I didn’t really think we’d be able to make it happen. But by golly, he actually was able to pop the roller into the track! I pushed the open button and the door went up about half way before making the same angry squeal as before and stopping.

When I was little, there was a game in the newspaper every day which showed two nearly identical drawings except there would be 6 differences between the two. I liked that game and was pretty good at it. Channeling my inner 6 year old, I further inspected the good side of the garage door and then looked at the bad side and saw a discrepancy. There’s a flap connected to the handle for when you’re manually opening the door from the outside. On the good side, the flap was outside the track and on the bad side, the flap was inside the track. The door wouldn’t go up any further because the flap inside the track was caught in a divot on the track. I pointed this out to my neighbor and THIS IS THE BEST PART. The guy quickly says, “No, that’s not the problem.”

I thought to myself, “Now, I know I’m dumb enough to have backed into my garage door and you probably think I’m the biggest ditz ever, but I’m pretty sure I’m right about this.” I tried to be diplomatic, accepting that I could be wrong, and asked him if we could go back to his house to look at his garage door. We checked out his door and he realizes the error of his ways. We go back to my place and realize the flap is pretty far into the track and we’re both trying to figure out how we can like, shoehorn the flap out of the track. He picks up my wrench AND my hammer and starts banging and prying away and I’m like, “Argh! That’s my track! Stop!”

Now usually, “Pulling/pushing harder” is not the way to fix things. In fact, I broke a ceiling fan a couple years ago when I was trying to replace a light bulb and thought I just needed to “push harder.” (See The Idiot Tax) Throwing that rule to the wayside, I politely asked him to get out of my way. I grabbed the flap and pulled it as hard as I could. To my surprise, the flap popped out of the track!

I pushed the open button and the garage door opens like nothing ever happened! No squealing, no straining, just the smooth power of the motor. The bumpy track on the one side didn’t seem to phase my door. I rejoiced and gave my neighbor a huge hug. (I think I owe him some candy.)

After our success, I went to choir practice, about an hour late.

Words can’t explain how embarrassed I am about my mistake. Even though I created the disaster, I’m pretty sure I experienced some growth by making things right again. Last night, I was my hero. I used my skill set, faced an obstacle head on (after hitting an obstacle head on) and managed to rescue myself from the pits of despair. That’s quite an accomplishment for a Wednesday night.

More New Job Stuff

My new group members at my new job took me out for a birthday luncheon and I offered to drive. There were 5 of us to ride in my Malibu. I told them that even though Mali has 5 seatbelts, seating 5 adults is a bit of a stretch but nobody else wanted to drive. The best quote came when the three people in the back were trying to buckle their seatbelts (we’re all safety retraints engineers after all) and the girl is feeling around for the seatbelt and says, “What is that?” The guy sitting next to her said, “That’s not a seatbelt.” We all cracked up. Good times.

I’m playing with a new (to me) CAD software package at work called Solidworks. It’s pretty similar to ProE, which I learned at Case. I was going through the online tutorial and got to the “building assemblies” section. That is when you draw up a bunch of parts and then put them together in one file an organized fashion. “Putting them together in an organized fashion” is a process called “mating” in SW. And boy was I having a hard time mating. I finally had to ask the resident expert in SW over. I said, “Now, I don’t want to sound to forward, but I need you to teach me about mating.” Of course, he gave me a smart aleck response, “I’m not sure how the wife will feel about that…”

Brrrrr, It's Cold Out Here...

In honor of my birthday, some of my family members took me out for a meal and since I got to choose, I picked brunch at my favorite breakfast place. I had a delightful meal with delightful company and then happily pranced out to my car to find a not so delightful tow truck driver getting ready to tow my car. I had parked in a chiropractor’s office parking lot and even though the restaurant was just two doors down, they don’t share lots. I received no ticket – just a gruff, “You’re not supposed to park here! There are signs posted everywhere, dumbass!” Well, he didn’t say the dumbass part but I felt like he wanted to. And I felt like one. I called the chiropractor on Monday to complain but it turns out, he has Saturday office hours once a month so I didn’t really get to adequately bitch about it. I think I just don’t care anymore.

On the coldest day of the year, I woke up and there was a spider on the wall in my hallway. He was a pretty good-sized spider but not as big as Herman. (Herman was a huge spider - his body was about the side of my pinky up to the first knuckle - that Brian caught and fed dead flies to when we were little). I looked at him and felt pity and admiration at the same time. I was bundled up in fleece and had cranked up the thermostat. (And by “cranked up” I mean “increased the desired inside temperature from 66 to 67 but it never actually gets up to 67.”) That brilliant spider had found the warmest, most internal wall. I can’t stand killing bugs/spiders/other insects so usually I just put them out but it was so cold and he was so smart that I decided to let him stay. We would chill out together. Or I guess, try NOT to chill out. Later in the day, he was gone.

My two random thoughts: I am regularly sleeping through the night now (in case anyone was worried), and after extensive taste testing, Pop Secret Homestyle Butter is the best flavor of popcorn.