Rain, Rain, Go Away

We've had an overabundance of rain here since the beginning of May. It has rained something like 20 out of the 31 days in May, and this is the rainiest June on record. It is supposed to rain for at least the next 7 days as well.

I fully support rain and all of it's political, emotional, and spiritual ideologies. I do not, however, support flooding, transportation debacles, and personal safety concerns arising from too much rain, something I shall now dub Over-Rain.

Yesterday afternoon, we had severe severe rain. It usually doesn't just lightly fall here in Texas. We get flash floods (gulley washers), severe thunderstorms, and all manner of nasty weather along with Over-Rain.

I had a heckuva time driving home the past several days from the Hotel where the training was taking place. I live next to downtown Dallas, so driving around this area is a congested maneuver at any time, but there were any manner of washed out vehicles and accidents alongn the route.

My biggest concern is for the 6 people from my training class who have been stranded in Dallas because their flights were cancelled. Fortunately, during the pre-training phone calls I had with people a couple of weeks ago, I gave people my cell phone number. I'm glad they had it handy. I first received a call last night from a person whose flight to Oklahoma City was cancelled, and we were able to work out his renting a car and driving home. Thank goodness he has a company purchasing card!

The second set of people to call are from the San Antonio area. Their flight had been cancelled, and they were standing in an extremely long line of people at the airport to see what their options were. While they were in line, I called my contact in Atlanta who booked all the travel arrangements for us for the training session, and talked through some options with her. She tried calling the hotel that we had used for the training session, and wasn't able to get through. I had an inkling that the hotel had lost power. A couple of hours later, the group of people called me back to say they were all 3 booked on a 7:05am flight out of Love Field...a totally different airport from DFW, and not at all close to each other. We talked through their options, and they decided to rent a car at DFW, drive to find a hotel near Love Field, and get a couple of rooms so they could get some rest before getting up god-awful early for their flight. I asked them to call me back when they landed in S.A., but I haven't heard from them yet. I'll try calling them in a little bit. I've been hearing planes flying overhead all morning, so flights are obviously leaving Love Field...I just don't know if S.A. is able to receive flights because the entirety of Texas is underwater. At least one of these 3 has a company purchasing card, so they won't have to pay out of pocket for the car rental or hotel. Whew!

And this morning I got a phone call from one of my fellow facilitators. He was back at the original hotel along with a participant whose flight we knew was cancelled yesterday afternoon. Being the problem solver that he is, he had worked with our contact to see about renting a car. But when he learned from both his wife and AAA that his drive back to Tampa, Florida would take him 20 hours because of flooding along the most direct route, he decided to stay another day in town and take another flight in the next couple of days. He also told me that the hotel's power was indeed out for several hours.

It must be so frustrating to be stranded in an unfamiliar city, and without your luggage no less, because they had all checked their luggage, and it is now 'somewhere', but not with them.

So, here in a bit I need to make some follow up phone calls with people to see how they are faring.

...and it just stopped raining here...for now...

I Was Brilliant

I truly was brilliant. I could feign modesty, but I try not to be a liar. So, I was awesome.

And I'm also excruciatingly tired.

So, goodnight.

Super Quick Post

I'm training a class of 24 General Managers and Store Managers for the next couple of days, and I've been working a lot leading up to this. This is why I haven't posted recently.

I've decided to go with these words for the exercise on Wednesday: conservative, marching band member, anti-war.

I'm already exhausted, but found a new and better way to organize my notes for my sessions, so my facilitation should go much smoother. Rockin'!

I have to be up in 6 hours, so g'night, all!

I Need Your Input

I have a training session coming up next week, and one of the sessions (yes, I refer to the whole session as a session, and each topic as a session in itself) I am facilitating is Diversity Awareness. One of the key learning points is on exploring stereotypes. I need to come up with three words or very short phrases that can have some strong stereotypes attached to them.

During this particular exercise, I will show the group of Managers one word at a time. After each word they are to immediately write down the first thought that comes to mind with regard to that word...no self-censoring allowed. Then I have the other facilitators collect those results and quickly flipchart them so everyone can see. The room is a 'safe room', and I really push the Managers to explore what they really think and feel about certain things, so I want brutally honest answers.

For example, with a room full of Managers, when the word "Tattoo" is revealed, the responses have included: freak, nutjob, cool, painful, inky, biker dude, expensive, stupid, artist, beautiful, and others.

So, I'm going to try out 3 words/phrases here, and I am asking you to let me know what the FIRST IMMEDIATE thought is that comes to mind. Don't self-censor, and please don't worry what I or anyone else might think of what you've said. I want gut-wrenchingly honest first thoughts here. You can even post as anonymous if you'd rather I not know who you are.

Ok, I'm going to put a few inches of space between each word so that you have to scroll down to see them one at a time. Got your pen/pencil ready?
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Nature lover

Thanks!

Quick Father's Day Book Recommendation

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Conn & Hal Iggulden

It's a bright red cloth covered book with an old-fashioned cover design.

Proceed immediately to your local bookstore and take a look at it.

Then buy it for the man in your life, or for yourself.

Go...now....do it....you know you have errands to run, anyway.

Super Sales Driving Shoes

Yes, they are definitely working...

And tomorrow I am wearing the blue, yellow, orange pair with some wild cotton argyle socks I bought this evening at Target.

Cats & Kangaroos

The top picture is of my Gracie kitty. She is deathly afraid of the camera--a true Scaredy Cat--so I have to sneak up on her while she is sleeping to snap a pic. She woke up during this one. She is lying on her 'bed' which consists of a catnip filled cat pad on top of an old folded up comforter.

The second picture is of a fluffy white kitty named Casper whose Mom is my very good friend. Casper has just dipped his paw into the remains of my spiced tea. Mmmmm, tasty.
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On to the Kangaroos part of things...

I should actually say KangaROOS, as I am speaking of the shoes here. I told my staff yesterday that I would wear fun power socks and wicked cool shoes to work for the rest of this week. I will post pics of my awesome shoes tomorrow.

My staff was very excited to see my bright orange socks and orange/lime green/yellow KangaROOS shoes today. I usually just wear sturdy work-appropriate black shoes to look professional. My shoes are super sales driving shoes, and so far they are earning their moniker. So I say pshaw to black shoes this week...my feet are going to see more green, pink, red, orange, blue, yellow, and lavendar than they ever have before!

Tomorrow I plan on wearing my pink and green argyle cotton socks with my HOT pink ROOS. Damn, that'll be some good sales driving power right there, yes ma'am it will.

And I also train 3 new GMs starting tomorrow. Oh how quickly they will learn of my ROOS obsession, my Stargate interest, and my adoration of my fishies in their aquarium.

FYI, KangaROOS can be found at zappos.com. I probably have 8 pairs or so, but I bought them 2 summers ago when they were just $29.95 per pair, no tax, no shipping. Now the prices are in the $50-70 range. Crazy!

You are the Lift Beneath My Feet

Above is a picture of a super monster lift as it was sitting in front of my store a couple of weeks ago. Mine is a two-floor building, with a massive staircase in the middle of both floors. The ceiling at its highest is 32 feet from the floor, and there are 18 powerful flood lights way up there. 18 powerful flood lights burn out sometimes, and the only way to change the bulbs is to get this super monster lift, with its 64 different maneuvering capabilities, into the store.

Three Fridays ago, the hourly workers of the subcontractor of the contractor of the etc., arrived at 8am, the lift was dropped off by a rental company they had contacted, and a team of people took 45 minutes to get it through the front doors. My staff had to offload all the books on all the front of store tables, move all the tables, and move all the other movable fixtures so that the super monster lift could move around to all the various positions in order to get at all the high ceiling lights.

After almost 4 hours (two hours of which we were actually open for business) the workers were changing some of the lower ceiling bulbs when I noticed the high ceiling lights were already blowing out. Ah, yes, something was quite familiar about this scene. I have, indeed, lived through this before. These are the same yahoos who replaced the burnt out bulbs with the wrong new bulbs twice before. Silly me, I thought that communicating everything about the right bulbs versus the wrong bulbs to the proper people in the proper channels would have ensured that this oh-so-repetitive wrong-bulb process would, I don't know, maybe NOT be repeated?

Long story short--Too Late--All the bulbs that were previously burned out now have NEW burned out bulbs. Voila! And it only took 4 hours and a completely disrupted store for this to happen.

I was able to help direct the super monster lift back out through the front doors in a mere 5 minutes. I kid you not when I say there was barely a centimeter of clearance on either side between the wheels and my doorframe. The lift is just that huge.

The guys parked the lift on the cement area in front of the store and promised me it would be picked up that day by the rental company. It sat there for 6 days, with the keys in it. Anyone wanna go for a ride? I don't even want to know what the bill for that rental was. 6 days of renting that thing. I'm glad I wasn't paying for it. I had to call my home office so they could call the contractor so they could call the rental company to come pick it up. Crazy round about way.

So, the store was disrupted, and a huge amount of extra work was undertaken by us, and it was all for naught. But wait, the best part is coming...

When the lighting guys were reparking the lift outside, they squashed a bicycle belonging to one of my employees. No one realized it until she was ready to leave at the end of her shift. I had this young lady take her bike to the bicycle repair shop just down the street where she received a repair estimate that was more than the modest amount she originally paid for the bike at Target. So, I did what any decent person would do...I drove her to the closest Target and bought her a new bike...on my company credit card, of course.

Since all that happened, the lighting contractor has sent me a check for the amount of the bike, my contacts at the home office assure me that all the bulbs and any damaged ballasts will be replaced soon, and my employee now parks her bike behind the store in the parking garage.

There is no moral here, there is no lesson. It's just something that happened, and all I could do was laugh about it. That beats getting angry about it, I suppose.

Day Trip to Lake Whitney State Park

I took a day trip to Lake Whitney State Park today. I picked up a friend this morning, and we drove the 90-ish miles to this place just West of Hillsboro, TX. I had been wanting to take a day trip for a while, as I can get antsy if I am in town for too long. Out amongst Nature, I can't hear the cars, the sirens, the noise of the city. It was a lovely trip.

We've had so much rain in the past 5 weeks that the wildflowers are still bountiful and vibrant, as evidenced by the above pictures. Never before having been to Lake Whitney, I packed some wading shoes and a change of clothes (because I always fall down at least once whilst wading), and I do so love to play in water. But the storm surges had their own agenda. The boat ramp to the lake was blocked off, as was one of the lower-lying campgrounds, and the 'beach' was under several feet of water. The tops of some picnic tables and charcoal grill stanchions were barely visible. Such things quickly persuaded us not to venture into the water.

Today is a very windy day, and there were actually breaking waves at the shoreline. Large birds of prey appeared to soar effortlessly on the strong winds while several deer crossed the road and studied me while I tried to snap their picture. I walked amongst those bright yellow flowers, and their pollen covered my pants legs. For a few moments I felt like a giant insect, helping to pollinate the vast fields of flowers.

I've decided to go camping at Lake Whitney some time this fall, when the weather is cooler and the lake level is a bit lower. I thoroughly enjoyed myself today, and I wouldn't mind repeating it.

Book Recommendation

Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart

I am handselling this one to dozens of people each month.

It is a true story of two college roommates from Iowa who spend the Summer of 1945 in Manhattan. They get jobs at Tiffany & Co. as the first female pages on the salesfloor where they see such stars of the era as Judy Garland, Vicente Minelli, and Marlene Dietrich. Through some familiy connections, a well-established couple take the two girls to some of the posh nightclubs of the time. The gentleman of the couple turns out to be the founder of the March of Dimes.

The two girls date a couple of Navy seamen during that Summer, and they are actually in Times Square when, on the huge marquee, it is shown that Truman announces Japan's surrender in WWII.

The author is a professional cellist who is now in her 80s. This is her first book, and it is absolutely delightful. It is a cute little hardcover for about $17.

Please check it out next time you're in your bookstore.