A long, stressful day
Dec. 18th, 2003 01:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jayIt has been a long, tiring day... no further news on my father, or his scheduled surgery tomorrow. Pat is still sick, the kids have been acting out (David got a negative citation for provoking a school lunchroom fight) and I'm feeling the pressure to make everything work and nurture everyone. Although right now, I could use some nurturing... a backrub, a kiss on the forehead, a cuddle, someone to buy me lunch... but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. But I got a package in the mail from geekchick! (grin)
No one pushed on me at work... well, JL did once, but backed away after I snapped back. CS was actually understanding and gave me a hug. I finished her slides during this morning's meeting, then went to JL's review of CSC's study proposal and tried to not fall asleep. I jumped out of my chair, began pacing, and finally came up with a different means of giving our feedback to them on their proposal. I wound up looking sharp, rather than a deadbeat who hadn't finished his own document review. Whew.
Then I decided to skip lunch and stop by an onsite blood drive instead. My blood pressure was surprisingly normal. And in addition to the usual screening tests (HIV, HepA,B,C, syphilis, HTLV I/II ) Stanford now has begun screening its donations for West Nile disease. Not that that's a problem for me, any more than the others, but I thought it was interesting. They gave me my 2-gallon award -- a mug -- although I'm actually over 5 gallons donated, lifetime (1-1/2 gal. in Georgia, 2+ gal. with the San Jose Red Cross when they used to do the blood drives, and more recently Stanford).
Stopping by my office, I printed copies of my slides, and then went back to the design review. They'd finished the prior talk early and were waiting for me... other than going over the allotted hour, it went well. I was cracking jokes and keeping most of the audience engaged through relatively dry material, then handed it over tohopeforyou for her section... it was evident that she had given the issues careful thought, as she handled audience questions easily. On a bet (I owe her lunch, now) she wore one of those funny purple pointy hats (see princeofwands's userpic for an example) from The Observatory during her talk. Then turned the tables by suggesting that I do likewise when I returned to stage (the audience gleefully pinned me... hopeforyou now owes *me* something for being a good sport ;-). So I wore the silly purple hat through the remaining 30 minutes, in front of my boss, various external guests, the review panellists, etc. But it loosened the tone at the end of a long two-day meeting... CS loved it.
And more importantly, CS likedhopeforyou's talk, so she needn't worry anymore about being in that doghouse (elk carcass?).
Then... I rushed off to my church, in time to see David and Kevin in the annual Christmas pageant. The kids were adorable in their costumes.
Here's a photo in the sanctuary of shepherd David (red headdress) leading his "sheep" (mostly toddlers) down the aisle:
And Kevin, as the "king" on the right:
After a parish dinner, I took the kids home and went to my weekly skating lessons. Apart from nice endorphins and stress relief, I learned four new moves :-). The past couple of weeks, I've had good coaches and my body has been cooperative. Two-footed spins from a standing start (dizzy!), spirals on left and right outside edges (head down, skate on one foot, other lifted to horizontal, sort of gliding), and forward T-stops (blade down crosswise in front, hard to keep from catching it and flipping over forwards) were the new maneuvers. That's the closest to flying that I got on the day of the Wright's 100th anniversary ;-).
geekchick! (grin)No one pushed on me at work... well, JL did once, but backed away after I snapped back. CS was actually understanding and gave me a hug. I finished her slides during this morning's meeting, then went to JL's review of CSC's study proposal and tried to not fall asleep. I jumped out of my chair, began pacing, and finally came up with a different means of giving our feedback to them on their proposal. I wound up looking sharp, rather than a deadbeat who hadn't finished his own document review. Whew.
Then I decided to skip lunch and stop by an onsite blood drive instead. My blood pressure was surprisingly normal. And in addition to the usual screening tests (HIV, HepA,B,C, syphilis, HTLV I/II ) Stanford now has begun screening its donations for West Nile disease. Not that that's a problem for me, any more than the others, but I thought it was interesting. They gave me my 2-gallon award -- a mug -- although I'm actually over 5 gallons donated, lifetime (1-1/2 gal. in Georgia, 2+ gal. with the San Jose Red Cross when they used to do the blood drives, and more recently Stanford).
Stopping by my office, I printed copies of my slides, and then went back to the design review. They'd finished the prior talk early and were waiting for me... other than going over the allotted hour, it went well. I was cracking jokes and keeping most of the audience engaged through relatively dry material, then handed it over to
hopeforyou for her section... it was evident that she had given the issues careful thought, as she handled audience questions easily. On a bet (I owe her lunch, now) she wore one of those funny purple pointy hats (see princeofwands's userpic for an example) from The Observatory during her talk. Then turned the tables by suggesting that I do likewise when I returned to stage (the audience gleefully pinned me... hopeforyou now owes *me* something for being a good sport ;-). So I wore the silly purple hat through the remaining 30 minutes, in front of my boss, various external guests, the review panellists, etc. But it loosened the tone at the end of a long two-day meeting... CS loved it. And more importantly, CS liked
hopeforyou's talk, so she needn't worry anymore about being in that doghouse (elk carcass?). Then... I rushed off to my church, in time to see David and Kevin in the annual Christmas pageant. The kids were adorable in their costumes.
Here's a photo in the sanctuary of shepherd David (red headdress) leading his "sheep" (mostly toddlers) down the aisle:
And Kevin, as the "king" on the right:
After a parish dinner, I took the kids home and went to my weekly skating lessons. Apart from nice endorphins and stress relief, I learned four new moves :-). The past couple of weeks, I've had good coaches and my body has been cooperative. Two-footed spins from a standing start (dizzy!), spirals on left and right outside edges (head down, skate on one foot, other lifted to horizontal, sort of gliding), and forward T-stops (blade down crosswise in front, hard to keep from catching it and flipping over forwards) were the new maneuvers. That's the closest to flying that I got on the day of the Wright's 100th anniversary ;-).
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Date: 2003-12-18 09:31 am (UTC)Sounds like whatever was making her grumpy has gone away?
I wound up looking sharp, rather than a deadbeat who hadn't finished his own document review. Whew.
That's good news. I'm glad to hear you got something positive out of the morning; you sounded harried and overwhelmed. "Billy, it's time to drink from...the fire hose!!!!"
it was evident that she had given the issues careful thought, as she handled audience questions easily. On a bet (I owe her lunch, now) she wore one of those funny purple pointy hats (see princeofwands's userpic for an example) from The Observatory during her talk. Then turned the tables by suggesting that I do likewise when I returned to stage (the audience gleefully pinned me... hopeforyou now owes *me* something for being a good sport ;-).
I thought about this whole mission simulation a lot during the past two months. I'm still thinking about it, even though the PDR just ended and I can take a deep breath and relax for a moment. This tells me that...more important than what anyone else thinks about my performance at work, I'm finding something interesting in it and am sticking with it. It's good to have my focus back.
I owe you something, eh? I was prepared (or not, really, but) to do the entire presentation on my own, and MB was willing to take on the Exec/MiNi portion after I volunteered to do the whole thing. I was sweating there for a while...but I think now either way it would have worked out fine in the end.
What do you think is proper recompense? Dinner and some wine? Or dessert at Zucca's? Been a while since we've been there.