Right? or Self-righteous?

I spent much of yesterday patting myself on the back for my restraint.  Despite perceived provocation, I did not interfere in the work or conversations of others more than once, and that was to factually state calendar information for next week.  I was a well behaved girl.  I wasn't even particularly upset with things that went on, even though I had my fingers slapped (figuratively) and my emails ignored.  I worked behind the scenes, I controlled my temper, and I made sure that my staff didn't get trapped into senseless tasks that could be completed more effectively and efficiently using automated tools.

But, this morning, as I was standing in the shower, I started to get angry.  Why should I let this other co-worker snap at me, ignore me, and direct my staff.  Why should I let this other co-worker dictate the terms of our engagement?  Why should I hold back for the good of the office when she gives inappropriate tasking to a staff member?  Why should I let her speak to me with anger on more than one occasion? 

I have only one recourse in the office, our mutual boss.  He is a terrific person, and I have found him to be a great boss, and manager, but he isn't perfect.  We none of us are.  In this instance, I believe he is focusing on peace rather than resolution.  I know he is tired.  I know he is stressed.  I know she dislikes working with me as much as I dislike working with her.  We probably both think the other one is useless, and stupid, and a waste of space on the project, but darn it all, I'm in the right!!!

Aren't I?

Racist remarks never have a place in today's society

When do you call someone out on a racist remark? 

I belong to a listserve for my community.  One of the more elderly members on the listserve, call her M, made a blatantly racist remark about a police officer in one of her posts.  I was offended by the comment, but chose not to call her on the post, because I did not want to draw attention to the slur, or perhaps embarrass her.  Others chose to challenge the woman directly.  M responded by stating that the officer had made an anti-semitic remark first, and this was her way of letting the community know. 

My belief is that two wrongs don't make a right.  I would like this whole issue to die a quiet death, and yet, part of me also wants to respond to M.  Since I am desperately trying not to respond on the listserve, here is my response.

There is never an excuse for making a racist comment, even if provoked.  If you feel that a police officer has responded inappropriately, then take it up with a supervisor.  We tend to be the public face of Judaism.  What an Orthodox Jew does or says, how an Orthodox Jew behaves, is very visible, if only because we choose to set ourselves apart somewhat by how we dress and where we live.  If we behave with kavod (honor) to all, then we can only hope they will reciprocate.  If some non-Jews choose to continue spouting racist beliefs, then I do not advocate turning the other cheek, but I also do not advocate fighting slur with slur.  There has to be a better, smarter, more halachic (according to Jewish law) way. 

If M felt the need to warn us of her experience, fine, but there was no need to include a racial slur in the warning.

Lamby surgery

Almost everyone has or had a favorite stuffed animal.  Each of my grown children has at least one that is near and dear to their hearts.  Both of my married children still have a stuffy sharing their marriage bed, although in my daughter's case it is not the stuffed dog of her birth, but a bear she acquired later in life -- again another story.

In all three cases, these toys were acquired at or near the time the child was born, and have traveled with them ever since, to sleepovers, to summer camp, to Israel, to college, to new apartments.  They are often the last thing packed and the first unpacked.  In the cases of the older two, the stuffed animals have weathered these travels well, but unfortunately, my youngest has a Fisher Price lamb that has not lasted as well.  Poor Lamby has had his ears and nose chewed, and his "fur" (actually flannel fabric) rubbed almost to nothing.  He has been stuffed, and re-stuffed, woven and rewoven, until it is hard to tell where the patches end and the original begins, and yet he still survives.

Once again, Lamby is "in the hospital."  This time he arrived in my care gently wrapped in a Burberry scarf.  Again, his fabric is worn and his stuffing is trying to escape.  Once again, I will painstakingly use a needle and thread to reweave the bare spots, this time with a perfect match in lace weight wool instead of the shiny, and not quite authentic Pearl Cotton I have used in the past.  I will re-stuff him and sew up his belly so no stitches show, and finish him in time for his "daddy" to take him back to New York and his apartment at college in Brooklyn.  I will turn him back to my son, sure in the knowledge that wherever he goes, Lamby goes, and if repairs are ever needed again, he will come back to my hands.

Perhaps some day Lamby will find himself a place of honor on a shelf, an honorable retirement, but until he does?  My needle and thread are always waiting.

Holidays that aren't

Federal holidays are a strange breed.  Especially if you work for (or with as is my case) the U.S. Federal government, there is a difference between the holiday and the celebration.  The obvious examples are some of our Monday holidays: Martin Luther King's Birthday in January, President's Day in February, Columbus Day in October.  All are celebrated on a Monday with rules as to which Monday, second Monday, Monday closest before, etc.  Some holidays are Mondays (Memorial Day and Labor Day) and some holidays are celebrated on the actual date: Independence Day on July 4th, Veteran's Day on November 11, Christmas Day on December 25, and New Year's Day on January 1.

But wait, what if you are a Monday to Friday employee and one of these "date" holidays falls on Saturday or Sunday?  Are you out of luck?  Of course not.  There are rules for that too.  A Saturday holiday gets you a day off on the previous Friday and a Sunday holiday gets you a day off on the following Monday.  A three-day weekend ensues.  Everyone is happy.  

Except if you are an observant Jew, and it is one of the winter holidays.  then, if the day falls on Saturday, as Christmas and New Years do this year, the holiday is a non-starter.  The Sabbath starts very early in the winter (4:30 or so).  By the time you have cooked or baked all the things you can't normally cook or bake because you go to work, there isn't much of the day left.  

I suppose if I had been motivated today, I could have got up and got moving, but somehow, all I managed to do was prepare for Shabbat, bake challah, make chicken soup, and write this blog post.  

Shabbat Shalom...

Not my holiday

If you have read even my few previous posts, you have probably realized that I don't celebrate Christmas.  No tree, no presents, no stockings, no Christmas dinner, no midnight mass, etc. etc.  In fact, I have never had most of these experiences, though once in the distant past I helped someone decorate a Christmas tree ...  It was on the stern of a sailboat, in October, and that's another story.

If you live in the United States, or Canada, or pretty much anywhere in the western world, Christmas is a big deal.  Even folks who don't celebrate the religious aspects celebrate the social ones, the tree, the gifts, the big guy in the red suit.  The excitement used to build around me in mid-December.  Lately it has been creeping backward, though creeping may be the wrong word, perhaps it should be dashing?  I have seen signs of coming Christmas as early as Halloween.  (Another holiday I don't celebrate, but again it's a different story.)

If you don't celebrate Christmas in the States, you often feel like you are on the outside looking in.  Everywhere you go there are trees, wreaths, carols, Christmas songs, Christmas episodes on TV, Christmas articles in the magazines, Christmas sales in the mall, Holiday (read Christmas) parties at work.  For the most part I don't mind, but some years are better than others.  Last year was a bad year.  I'm not sure why, but I can remember having that Bah Humbug feeling from the beginning of December.  This year, it's an about face.  I don't seem to mind at all.  Not the music, not the parties, not the good wishes.

I don't have an explanation for why this year the Christmas hype isn't bothering me, but I am going to enjoy the fact.  I don't much care (and certainly haven't explained why it's wrong) that someone says Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays.  I have even said MC first, instead of always being careful to say HH.  I am enjoying the decorations in the office instead of stressing, and I haven't made a point of explaining that I don't celebrate.

So Merry Christmas, or Happy Holidays.  This time you get to pick instead of me.

Quilts from November

One of the things I do in my CFT (copious free time) is make quilts.  Let us avoid the argument about whether someone who actually uses a machine is a "hand quilter" and the argument that if you don't do your own quilting you are 'only' a "piecer", I make quilts, large ones, small ones, and a few in-between. 

My first quilt was a quilt of Noah's ark for my nephew Noah when he was born.  I have no idea what happened to it.  I have no idea if it was even any good.  It was all machine applique.  Today my quilts are almost exclusively pieced, and lately I have been making (or at least thinking about making) quilts from my stash.  I have also been focusing on scrap quilts, quilts made using multiple fabrics in similar or disparate colorways to create the designs. 



Hodaya's quilt



In November I finished three quilts.  Two of them for babies, one for the wife of a co-worker.  I don't have a picture of the one for the co-worker, but it  was a yellow and purple quilt that started as a mystery (I didn't know what the pattern was until I was done), although I didn't actually finish it until I decided to give it to Leslyn.  The other two were for two relative (August) newborns.  Again, one was a quilt that I had started but never finished.  That is Hodaya's quilt.  The pattern involves creating small squares made up of two rectangles.  One rectangle is a scrap of color, the other is the background.  The squares were then combined randomly into a pattern and sewed together.  The entire project was quilted in a stairstep pattern. 



Alon's quilt

The last quilt of the month, actually the second that I finished, since he got it on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 2010 was a quilt for my first (and so far only) grandchild, my grandson Alon.  Alon's quilt started with fabric selection.  I didn't know when I started sewing, whether he was a boy or a girl.  I picked blues, aquas, greens, and yellows.  Then I found a lovely 'fishy' fabric in my stash and decided that would be the center of each block.  I fussy cut the squares so that each one had a fish in the center, and built the blocks around those squares.  The quilt is backed with cartoon cow fabric, also from my stash.  I probably purchased the fabric with Alon's father, my son in mind.  He does have a thing about cows.  While I am particularly happy with the way the quilt turned out, one of the things that I am really proud of is that not only did I quilt it myself, but I tied the quilting to the design.  I drew a stylized outline of a fish, and scattered the outline across the top of the quilt in various sizes.  After stitching the fish themselves, I filled in the rest of the quilt by echo quilting around the fish.  As each new outlined fish was reached it was absorbed into the echo, creating waves of quilty fish across the top. 



Backing fabric



Outline quilting of fish





Twas the night before Christmas - 2010

My son-in-law Mark frequently invites guests for Friday night (Sabbath dinner) and Saturday (Sabbath) lunch.  Occasionally he gets very creative with the theme and the content.  This is a recent invitation, with footnotes for those who may be confused by some of the lingo.

Twas the night before Christmas, which for Jews was just groovy

As their plans were for Chinese food and a movie.

But this year traditions would not work out right,

Because erev¹ Christmas was their shabbos² night.

Ta'am China³ would close, as would Ta'am China Two⁴.

Oh what were those poor frummy⁵ Jew-folk to do?

Some became verklempt⁶, with fear they were fraught,

And then Mark and Naomi came up with a thought.

Have homemade Chinese food for a shabbos dinner

A bit odd paired with challah, but still quite a winner.

And as for the movie, would that custom keep?

"It could," said the TV, "I've a timer for sleep."

And so happiness spread 'mongst the Camberville⁷ Jews,

Because this was an offer they could not refuse.

So as the goyim⁸ all toast to the birth of their Lord,

We can eat, watch a movie, or play games on a board.

1. Erev – Hebrew meaning evening.  In this usage it means the night before Christmas.
2. Shabbos – Yiddish for Sabbath.  Same as the Hebrew Shabbat, meaning Friday night to Saturday night.
3. Ta’am China is a kosher Chinese restaurant in the greater Boston area
4. Ta’am China Two is another kosher Chinese restaurant in the greater Boston area
5. Frummy – another Yiddish word, actually “frum,” meaning religious or observant
6. Verklempt – excellent Yiddish word that describes me lately, meaning ‘overcome with emotion’
7. Camberville – a combination of two Boston suburbs, Cambridge and Somerville
8. Goyim – non-Jews

Why do I not feel more gleeful?

My work nemesis messed up.

One of her chief responsibilities is to manage the contract schedule in MS Project. Originally it was all her responsibility, then I had some responsibilities for approval, but two weeks ago we want back to the original pattern, and she quickly consolidate the approval responsibilities. In addition she started "cleaning" the schedule. I know she was clearly warned that she needed to be careful when she was deleting items from the schedule not to break dependencies because that would change dates for remaining tasks. I know it because we share an office, and I heard the MS Project expert tell her.

Today I received a phone call from another senior member on the project, many of his dates are past due (tasks that weren't even on the radar last week) and other items that were 100% complete are now at 0%. Fortunately, we had a copy of the previous schedule. Low and behold, multiple line items with dependency relationships were deleted, breaking the remaining items.

So the question is, why don't I feel more excited. I am not entirely sure, but I suspect it is one of the following reasons, or maybe a bit of all of them:

• One more example of incompetence will be ignored
• Staff other than the culprit will be tasked with fixing the problem
• Staff other than the culprit will get blamed for the problem (possibly even not making the consequences clear?)
• Nothing will change as a result of the screw up - no consequences for the culprit
• The project suffered a setback and it will take time to recover - work time we don't have...

Work Frustrations

Earlier I puzzled about whether a blog required a theme. Certainly the most followed ones have a common thread. I had intended to focus on hobbies I have several of them and wanted to share what I was working on and where I was focused. However, it seems that blogging sometimes happens at work, and if it does happen at work it is a direct result of work frustruations. This post is no exception.

I am a government contractor and I recently transitioned from an old contract to a new one. I am still working in the same place, and for the same office, but for a variety of reasons, I now have a new employer. Also for a variety of reasons, the ostensible tasks have changed, although in reality I am still doing the same type of work I was doing before with some new work added.

This afternoon we had a two-hour meeting to discuss the new work, a series of case studies intended to create a longitudinal evaluation of project execution over the next five years. The Statement of Work (SOW) that served as the basis for the contract identified and described the case studies and the types of questions that they were intended to answer. The meeting was the first of many planned with the Federal customers and intended to receive their input on the execution of the case studies. Instead, the team was subjected to an extensive tirade by one of the Feds (the one responsible for drafting the SOW) on the importance of connecting all the case studies to National Benefits and focusing on the engineering and technological aspects of the project and whether those support National agendas.

The previous case studies were going to be challenging, but I believed we could execute them well. This assignment? Well is it really the responsibility of a team of contractors to determine if the Office has successfully met the National targets and provided benefits for taxpayer dollars. Seems to me that is the task of the Office, the Inspector General, and Congress. I don't want to touch the assignment with a ten-foot pole!

Snow, or Didn't I Learn My Lesson Last Year?

I have always liked snow. I like walking in it, watching it fall, not having to go to work because of it.... Shoveling it? Not so much, but even then, within reason, and as long as I can keep up with it, there is something pleasant in the mind-numbing action, within limits. Please note, if you have read other blog posts, this has nothing to do with the concept of White Christmas!

One of my good friends, and an amateur weather forecaster, blogged about snow this morning, and I have to admit, I am excited. Despite the snow event of last year (I refuse to use the derivative of armagedon) I am still excited. It may not come to fruition, but the idea of white stuff falling from the sky gave me a feeling of anticipation that nothing else can. You can see what he wrote, here.

Addiction

We sometimes joke about it, "Hi, my name is ..., and I'm a ... " but the truth is there are many kinds of addiction. Obviously the most damaging are to drugs and alcohol, but clearly nicotine is almost as bad, at least for your health. Most of us have an addiction, though some of us may not realize it. Shopping, reading, watching TV, the internet, any of these activities, when taken to excess could be identified as an addiction.

There are groups for various types of addiction, designed to help and support the addicts -- Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous. There are probably even more -- a simple web search would probably turn up many more. All are modeled on the original, AA, but each probably takes its own spin. However, I believe they all work on one basic premise, the addict must admit that they have a problem, and want to change.

I have an addiction. I am addicted to silly computer games. It is bad, a time sink of the worst order. I can play for hours. I play daily. My addiction interferes with my other hobbies, though not with eating or sleeping. I am a functioning addict, but an addict nevertheless. There, I have admitted it.

There is only one small problem... I don't intend to stop, and you can't make me, I need to go dig some squares on Treasure Madness....

Motivation

How do you motivate yourself? I am having a very hard time getting motivated to complete activities that aren't particularly interesting. I am reasonably good at starting tasks, not so good at finishing them. So how do you get motivated.

I have tried several options, primarily related to breaking projects into chunks and rewarding myself after completion of a chunk or a specific time interval, but I still have an incredible capacity for precrastination when the task in front of me is boring, or rote, or very detailed.

By the way, this blog post is an object example, I should be updating data...

Once I was a weaver

A long time ago, well over 20 years, I was a weaver. I learned to weave in high school, and received a loom as a high school graduation present. I used it until we had a house fire, and then I went on to other hobbies, but I used to love the rhythm of throwing the shuttle and beating the fabric. Dressing the loom? Not so much.

When my grandfather turned 90, my family threw a large party for him. I wanted to give him a special gift, and so I made him a hand woven tallit. I was very proud of that tallit, it was probably some of the most beautiful weaving I ever did. He used it regularly until he died at 95. When my parents called and asked if I would object if he was buried in it, I didn't think about it, I said yes.

Over the years I have occasionally regretted that decision. When each son had his bar mitzvah and more recently when my first grandson was born I thought how wonderful it might have been if they could use Joe Joe's tallit. I think that desire was partially influenced by the fact that I really didn't have an image of my grandfather with the tallit, and then, tonight, there it was, a picture of Joe, holding the tallit I made. It doesn't bring him back, and it doesn't bring back the tallit, but it helps.

I loved my grandfather. I have wonderful, if somewhat fuzzy memories, and now I have one more, clear and sharp. Joe Joe standing in his living room, holding the tallit I wove with my own hands. Thank you Barbara.

Frustration at work or humor at the expense of a co-worker

How bad is it that I am so frustrated with one of my coworkers that I am contemplating a bingo game based on her most annoying sayings. There are some that drive me totally bonkers, things like: Drink the Kool-aid; 6 pm headcount; and cool stuff, but the one that annoys me most is "flesh it out." Of course the fact that this sometimes is stated as "flush" rather than "flesh" may be part of it, but there has to be a more appropriate choice of words.

I'm not entirely sure why this particular choice of language irritates me so much. After all, a CEO at one of my former employers used to regularly say "bottoms up" instead of "bottom up" to describe an estimation process and there is the incredibly common "irregardless," but "flesh it out" is getting up there.

If you want to make sure that everyone understands that your goal is to provide additional details around an idea, then use "elaborate" it is an elegant and sophisticated word choice. If your intent is to break the idea into its component parts, then a one word solution would be "decompose." If that is too gruesome (it does have the "flesh" aspect built in) then use more than one word -- "increase the granularity."

An occasional "flesh out the details" is OK, but every other topic? not so much.

Break the glass? Mazel Tov!

Over the years I have attended dozens of Jewish weddings. They all have some things in common. The most ubiquitous is the breaking of a glass by the groom. Various reasons are attributed to breaking a glass, depending on level of religious observance. Whether the belief is that the glass is a reminder of the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem, or a reminder of the Holocaust, or a memorial to deceased relatives, or even that in every joyous event we should always remember sorrows from the past, the breaking of the glass symbolizes solemnity and sorrow. And then? Mazel Tov! We scream it out. We applaud. We cheer. The wedding ceremony is over and the party can begin. All downers forgotten, sing, dance, be merry, and celebrate the marriage.
I never thought long and hard about this juxtaposition, it was just the way things were, and yet, the irony was brought home to me this past week, when I realized that the order of the actions was not set in stone. In an Orthodox Jewish wedding, the order of events is Kiddushin, culminating in the giving of a ring (solemn); the reading of the marriage contract (solemn); and Nissuin, the recitation of seven blessings over a cup of wine (joyous). The breaking of the glass comes at the end of Nissuin (solemn).
On December 2, 2010 I attended a wedding in Jerusalem. It was a beautiful wedding, held outdoors, with the lights of the city twinkling behind the bride and groom as they stood under the chuppah. In contrast to other weddings I have attended, the breaking of the glass followed the giving of the ring and preceded the reading of the marriage contract. This served to keep the mood of the wedding solemn through the reading, and then slowly build to a joyous crescendo with the completion of the seven blessings and the shouts of Mazel Tov.
To my mind, the effect of this change meant that we still remembered the destruction of the Temple, but we avoided any possible implication that the breaking of the glass and the shouting of Mazel Tov were connected. While I can see the argument for one last reminder that we can't/shouldn't be fully joyous without a rebuilt Jerusalem, this order made sense to me. I believe it is an effective solution to an age old irony.