Return of Random Wednesday!

Yeah....don't get all excited like I'm going to be doing this regularly, or anything....

• I think I can say this now:  I'm sick of Taylor Swift.  Actually, I was sick of her about a year and a half ago, but I never said anything because, gee, it's Taylor Swift and how bad could she possibly be?  Not to say that she's bad, I just stopped caring.  We have now progressed from "Don't Care" all the way to "For the love of God, please stop".
• It should also be mentioned, any time I am rolling my eyes about someone famous, that clearly I am not famous, or young and cute, or in any position to proclaim myself "better" than anyone who is famous, or talented, young and cute, or any combination of the three, but if you want to tell me to shut the hell up about it, save your breath.  I was a cynical harpie long before Taylor Swift was even born.
• For those of you following along on Twitter, yes, I mentioned Jack Benny with the assumption that people would actually know who that was.
• No, the fact that I'm old enough to know who Jack Benny is does not have anything to do with me being sick of Taylor Swift.  Does Taylor Swift know who Jack Benny is?  If she doesn't, can I hold that against her?
• I'm about to get cozy with my cable bill.  Hold me.
• Three weeks later, the so-called "Six Hour Afghan" is still not finished.  Can you say "Christmas Present"?  Don't worry, I'll pretend that was the plan all along.
• The woman in our office who likes to declare "Pot Luck" every third Wednesday must be stopped!!!  I barely get around to cooking for the people I'm actually related to, and I'm supposed to contribute to the office, too?
• On the other hand....YUM-O!  And thank you to all the people who like to show off their cooking skills at office potlucks...

No, Joe.

The "Mojo" and the "Nojo".

There is this guy in my company--soft spoken Texan--who likes to say that if you're being positive, that's your Mojo, and if you're being negative, that's "Nojo".

I like the sentiment.  In my life, having a positive outlook, or being proactive, or hell, even just being realistic and taking whatever steps are necessary to ensure a good ending in a bad situation, has been something for which I pride myself.  I prefer action to panic.  That's not to say that I never panic, it's just that I'd rather be in a situation where I could take an action to aid in a positive outcome than to sit around ringing my hands because someone else's actions were going to leave me completely screwed.

So we had a meeting...a meeting about the "Mojo" versus the "Nojo".  About how, instead of sitting around complaining, you should check yourself, and, try to contribute to the solution.

You wouldn't think something like that would cause any hardship, would you?  Some innocuous team-building C'mon-Get-Happy corporate workshop?  I didn't think so, either.

What occurred as a result of the Mojo v Nojo meeting was that now anytime anyone raises any kind of concern, legitimate or otherwise, they are being accused of having "Nojo".

Ha!

Oh....mah-gawd.  I feel like I work in the pages of Animal Farm.  Whatever you do, don't disagree, or the pigs that are more equal that others will Trotsky your ass right out of town....

Straight-Up Nostalgia

This past weekend, I took my almost-out-of-high-school child Out West to look at some of the colleges of my youth--places where the people who would become some of the most important people in my life got their college educations, and where I narrowly avoided getting a degree of my own.

 

If only I could be a student now, knowing what I know now, and not being the dumb-ass I was when I first went to college.  I'm not one to regret much, but the cavalier attitude I had toward college at the time I was enrolled was certainly worth the lament I'm feeling.  I'm a stupid-head.  I didn't do the school justice, and my daughters are far better prepared to be successful at it than I ever was.

 

But, what can I say?  I started a career, and that career was way more fun than school, so, what else is a 20 year old going to do?  Pretty easy to figure that out.

 

What was somewhat striking about roaming around my former campus in particular was that while I felt a great deal of familiarity with the real estate, I didn't have a lot of "I remember whens" that went along with the campus itself.  Our tour took us right past the dorm room that my (still) best friend and I shared 25 years ago, and while I remembered the number (230W Grantham Hall, MSUM), there weren't a lot of "Barb and I had such CRAZY times there" memories that popped into my head.  We just...lived there.  It was the place that I had to go back to after doing radio.  You go from being some oddly popular person that people liked and paid attention to, to just another anonymous student, failing out of Psychology class because you're stupid enough not to get out of bed on time.  

 

In reality, college was just a back-drop to me when I attended--at least everything after my freshman year, just when classes should have started to get interesting.  It was almost a hindrance to my "other" life.  Now after being out of that "other" life for ten years, I can say with some certainty that I should have paid more attention to school than to radio.  Oh well.  I'm not dead, yet, after all.

 

Now that I am smart and college makes perfect sense to me, I'd much rather being doing that than the thing I am doing right now.  I guess it's what happens to you when you get beyond a part of your life where everything is handed to you (spoiled) and into the part where it's all up to you.  My kids, for the most part, are already there!  Incredible.  I'll be sure to remind them of how awesome that it when they are groaning about repaying their student loans.