Apr 30 2012

Little of This, Little of That

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 10:20 pm

My chaotic schedule is calming down for a weeks here, so i can catch up on a few things, including telling you lovely readers about the minutia of my life.

Have you ever needed to print something in bulk? In the past i would get my documents ready, print them out, take them to Kinko’s or Office Depot, have a long conversation with the clerk there about what i wanted, leave my order there not quite sure what the end result will look like, and come back the next day to pick it up, with about a 50-50 shot of it not being right. I just found out that i can do it all myself online, on the Kinko’s/FedEx website. I uploaded my documents, customized the print options myself, placed the order. Done. Easy as pie. I love it. Thank you, internet.

Lance planted flowers while i was gone. They are lovely. Now, we don’t really do much gardening or anything, but he wanted to dig in the dirt and make something pretty for me to see when i got home. Mission accomplished, and i love them. So why is the nosy neighbor coming by today to laugh at him and tell him he did it wrong? It makes me upset/angry. Who asked you? Why do you have to make fun of something that gave someone else joy?

I’m finishing reading The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht. I randomly bought this at an airport a month or so ago. It is quite hard to describe, but i have loved it. To call it a story about death is entirely wrong, and yet it is. A beautiful story about searching for answers, and exploring the boundaries between myth and reality. Natalia Stefanovi is a doctor in an unnamed country that has been suffering the effects of a seemingly unending war for generations. Natalia struggles to care for orphans of the war while also trying to unravel the mystery of her recently-deceased grandfather’s past. Weaving through her story is the story of her grandfather’s youth in a village, where he befriended a young deaf-mute girl, abused by her husband. The deaf-mute girl somehow befriended a tiger that had escaped during bombings, and became known as the tiger’s wife. A third thread describes the myth of the deathless man, whom Natalia’s grandfather has encountered a handful of times in his life. The deathless man cannot die himself, but travels around collecting the souls of those who have died and helping them into the afterlife. Natalia has heard her grandfather’s stories and dismissed them as myth, until she encounters the deathless man himself.

Lance and i went with a team of friends to try to qualify for bridge nationals. Made it to the second day with no trouble, and somehow lost in the semifinals. Very close loss, which makes it even worse in a way, b/c you end up beating yourself up for every little thing, because any one decision would have made the difference between winning and losing. Boo. It still stings a bit.

Finally, here is one more picture from Disney, which shows just how terrifying the Tower of Terror was.

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Apr 28 2012

Grownups in Disney World

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 1:11 pm

Kerry and i took our last trip together almost exactly 10 years ago, when we went to New Orleans for a sort of bachelorette weekend. We decided it was high time we took another one, so we decided to go to Orlando a few days before my conference. This trip, there was a lot less drinking, but a lot more roller coasters. I learned that it was super fun to go to Disney as an adult! My last trip there was when i was 6 or 7, over a quarter-century ago.

We went to Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom. Kerry did a lot of research and somehow managed to make sure that we never waited in line. Ever. We essentially walked on to almost every ride. 90-minute waits? Not for us!

Some fun photos:

On the Rockin’ Roller Coaster, we conspired with two small girls to all have the same pose. The pose was their idea, by the way. The little sister got a little scared, we think, but we loved this shot.

The topiaries were amazing. I like this one with the storm clouds in the background.

Here i am wearing Mickey’s magician’s apprentice hat!

We have LOTS more pictures, too, maybe there will be more in future posts.

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Apr 26 2012

Conference Debrief

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 8:10 pm

The conference i went to for work this week is finally over! I’m so happy to be home and have this behind me. It went really well.

After 3 days of playing in Disney World with Kerry, i moved over to the conference hotel on Sunday. They got me into the hotel early, and i was able to practice my presentations some in the afternoon. Sunday evening, the demo floor was open and about a dozen of us from my division manned our booth. The demo floor was huge! This conference had 3400 attendees, with 300 of them being employees.

After a few hours on the demo floor, the opening session happened. Blah blah blah. At the end, there was “entertainment.” A group came out banging on garbage cans. Yes, garbage cans. No accompanying music, and i couldn’t really tell if there was a catchy beat from my spot in the back of the auditorium. Then they did some strange clogging/stepping thing. Then they came out with their garbage cans dressed up in some odd light machines, but this time they were accompanying really loud music, and you couldn’t hear the garbage cans being beat upon. It was odd. (I learned later that they are very similar to Stomp!, whom a lot of people actually like. But i thought it was very strange at the time.) But the night’s entertainment was salvaged when Peabo Bryson came out and sang two of his grammy-winning songs from Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin.

Monday was a long day in the demo booth. At the end of the day, i had my first “super demo” where i put on a microphone and did a demo about one way to use our software. The example i chose ended up not being a good choice as a single demo – it worked much better in the context of my larger presentation. The most unfortunate thing about that was that the big boss chose that presentation of mine to watch. I don’t think i was particularly impressive. And i was nervous. But it broke the ice.

For dinner that night, our whole group went out to eat, and i ended up seated across from the big boss and his wife. He terrifies me still and i had never met her, but i was trying my best. I decided to try to make fun of the garbage pail drummers from the night before, so i asked her “How did you like the garbage pail drummers?”

“Oh, i thought they were wonderful! They reminded me a lot of groups i have worked with in Africa.”

Without missing a beat, i said, “Oh yes, i thought they were very interesting. I had never seen anything like that before.” And now i am hoping fervently that she doesn’t know what the garbage pail kids are or have noticed that i have just changed course. I’m so fake. I never really recovered from that but dinner was tasty.

Tuesday i put in some time in the morning at the demo booth, then spent mid-day collecting myself for the hour-long presentation. I arrived an hour early, as required, and sat through the presentation before mine, which had about a dozen attendees. So i was pleasantly surprised to have 30-35 people waiting for me when i started, with another dozen or so trickling in after i began.

It went very well. I started off a bit boring with my three power point slides, but when i got into my examples, things livened up. I got them laughing a bit in my example dealing with the NC State Fair when i talked about deep-fried butter. My second example wasn’t funny, but was at least relevant to today’s current events as it was about US unemployment rates. My third example was where people really got engaged, as it was about baseball and whether fans in some cities are more loyal than others. Lots of audience participation in that one, as i asked for people to shout out their favorite teams and we would look at their data. After i wrapped up, i fielded about a dozen questions. And after i left the stage, i had six people come up to me at the front of the room and ask more specific questions. One guy followed me back down to the booth for a more detailed demo, and one of my attendees came by the booth 20 minutes later to follow up and ask another question.

All in all, i think it was great. I think the questions showed that people were engaged, and i was glad to elicit some laughs too. I think an hour long presentation should be at least somewhat entertaining when that’s all they are going to get from you.

Wednesday morning the booth was closed and i finally got to go to a few sessions and be a listener, and learned a few cool things.

Throughout the conference, i tweeted on behalf of the company twitter account, and wrote a blog post about questions i fielded at the booth.

It was a great experience as my first conference as a speaker. I learned a lot about how to take open-ended questions from customers at the booth and turn it into a story. I don’t think i’ll be volunteering for this again next year, but maybe in another 2-3 years.

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Apr 01 2012

I’ve Been Tagged

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 12:44 pm

I think this game is going around the blogosphere, and i thought it was fun reading Ann’s post so i’ll participate. Since the Somethings have sort of died, this will replace them this week.

The Rules

  1. Post these rules
  2. You must post 11 random things about yourself
  3. Answer the questions set for you in the post you were tagged in
  4. Create 11 new questions for your tagees to answer
  5. Tag them on Twitter, Facebook or your blog

11 Random Facts About Me

  1. I’m a nut for puzzle games. Sudoku and Trainyard come to mind immediately.
  2. My car is 11 years old and i hope to keep it 11 more years.
  3. If i don’t have at least one cup of coffee in the morning i get a headache.
  4. I sleep on the right side of the bed, if you’re looking at it.
  5. Snoozing is required in the morning, unless i’m nervous about having to be somewhere.
  6. I love to try things i’ve never done before.
  7. I was a band geek in high school and somewhat regret not continuing it in college.
  8. I can trace my genealogy back to John Alden and Priscilla Mullen of the Mayflower.
  9. I don’t like olives, but i do like dirty martinis.
  10. I don’t wear a lot of jewelry. I have a few items that are special to me, and i wear them because i like them, not because they accessorize my outfit in any way.
  11. I like movies that make me cry. Sometimes a girl needs a good cry.

11 Questions I was Asked to Answer

  1. What is your favorite movie?  Tough one, but i’ll say The Girl Next Door.
  2. If you could go back and give your 16 year old self one piece of advice, what would it be? Oh my, that’s tough. I’ll have to settle for a short list. Don’t quit the swim team, the cool kids won’t matter after high school so stop worrying about it, your parents and brothers will become some of your best friends even though it doesn’t seem like it now, stick up for your brothers more.
  3. Why do you blog? I started when i was trying to hold myself accountable when i began running. It turned into sharing my thoughts on various things. Lately i’ve neglected it, but i’d like to get back into it.
  4. What did you want to be when you grew up? Are you doing that? I wanted to be a lot of things, my earliest memories are of wanting to be a writer. Not doing that, though i do try to do it for fun through blogging and writing bridge columns.
  5. M&M’s – plain or peanut? Peanut!!
  6. What was your first car? 1979 Datsun pick-up truck. Boy was it a clunker. Great car, though, lots of personality. For example, it would backfire, loudly, whenever you turned it off. I got to school an hour early every day so there wouldn’t be many kids in the parking lot to hear it.
  7. What is your favorite Halloween costume you’ve ever worn?  You know, i can’t even remember any of my costumes except for the ghost made out of a sheet with two eye holes.
  8. What are your favorite blogs to read? Brazen Careerist and the blogs of friends and family.
  9. If you were to have a boy and a girl tomorrow, what would you name them? It would have to be Scarlet and Gray.
  10. What was your favorite class in college? Personal Finance. I know it sounds lame, but the teacher was really dynamic, irreverent and just plain good and i learned a lot of practical stuff.
  11. What celebrity do you think it would be fun to be friends with? Jon Stewart.

11 Questions for You to Answer

  1. What’s your earliest childhood memory?
  2. What place would you most like to visit?
  3. What’s the scariest thing you have ever done?
  4. When was the last time you got a giggle fit and what caused it?
  5. How many cars have you owned?
  6. Who were your childhood heroes?
  7. What was your favorite game as a child?
  8. What book have you read that had a profound impact on you?
  9. If you won the lottery, what’s the first thing you would do?
  10. Who was your favorite teacher and why?
  11. What is the thing you like best about yourself?

Now, I’m tagging:

Nathan at Nate’s Davar

Cindy at My $.02

Kerry at Kerry and Gabe (Ann tagged her too, but she can answer more questions)

Robert at Soaking Up The World

I’d also love to hear responses from anyone else who reads but doesn’t blog. Moms?

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Mar 14 2012

Keystone Moguls

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 8:06 am

Forgive me, i’ve just discovered videos and how i can upload them to YouTube, so here are two more. A comparison of what is, and what might be.

A short video of me doing a small mogul field. I’m slow, and clumsy in spots, certainly not impressive, but i managed not to fall!

Audrey on Moguls

And, to show you what it’s really supposed to look like, here’s my brother Nathan on the same slope.

Nathan on Moguls

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Mar 13 2012

Beautiful Breckenridge

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 11:44 am

Greetings from Breckenridge, Colorado! I am here with my wonderful parents, my two brothers and their better halves. (See Nathan’s two posts about how to refer to long-term committed partners.) The only person missing is Lance. He tried skiing once, but didn’t fall in love, so instead he is enjoying one of his passions – a week at spring training in Florida.

Most of us got here Friday night and started skiing on Saturday. Nathan & Heather then joined us on Sunday. So far, we’ve skied hard for three pretty full days.

The views are really beautiful here. We’ve had super weather – at around 40-45 degrees at the high points of the day, it is downright hot when you’re wearing all this cold weather gear.

Here we all are at the top of Keystone, which we visited on the 3rd day. Our lift passes give us access to three resorts in this area.

Everyone is a fairly experienced skier. We spent the first day getting our legs under us on mostly blue and green runs. (Green = easiest, Blue = Intermediate, Black = Difficult) Day 2 was mostly blue with a few black runs sprinkled in. Day 3 was a hard ski day, with lots of black runs and only a few blue.

Black runs vary in difficulty. The “easy” blacks are super steep. I can do those. The “hard” blacks have lots of moguls, and while i can sometimes traverse a mogul field, it is slow, inelegant and too much hard work. My dad and brothers make it look easy.

Dad was following everyone and videoing them as they skied down various slopes. Here, he manages to follow me down a black, which is no easy feat, given he’s got to hold two poles in one hand, a camcorder in the other, and keep the camcorder on me, while skiing down a steep and difficult black run. It was all i could do just to remain upright; i don’t know how he does it. Anyway, it’s probably not that interesting, but here is 2 minutes of me skiing, courtesy of Dad.

Audrey Skies Down Starfire

We’re having fun, but here on Day 4, we’ve decided to take a Recovery Morning. We’re all a little wiped out! We’ll ski this afternoon and the rest of the week.

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Mar 09 2012

Room, by Emma Donaghue

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 4:40 pm

What if your world was 11×11 square?

That’s the premise of Room, by Emma Donaghue. It is told from the perspective a 5-year old boy who was born into captivity. His mother was kidnapped from our modern society and locked up and raped for years. Jack was born into this environment, and has known nothing else.

The story was pretty fascinating. Morbid and dark, but also light-hearted and innocent, as only 5-year olds can be.

***Spoilers Below***

Jack refers to the chair as Chair, the rug as Rug, as if they were proper nouns. In his world, they are. Because there is only one Rug and only one Chair. He sleeps in Wardrobe, because Old Nick comes in the night, and Jack’s mom doesn’t want him to see Jack. He knows about him, of course, but it’s one of the few concessions she’s gotten from her captor.

Jack looks forward to the games they play all day, one of which is named Track, where they run in a semi-circle back and forth around the bed in order to get exercise. Another is named Scream, which only happens during the middle of the day on weekdays, where they stand on the table and scream as loud as they can at the tiny skylight. A third game is called numbers, where they call out numbers randomly and punch them into the keypad next to the door.

Jack thinks all these games are fun, but as a reader you see through the games and see a woman in captivity, holding things together for her son.

When Jack turns 5, his mom starts telling him truths that he never knew, such as the fact there are more Rugs and Chairs and people outside their small world. Jack, whose sense of reality is distorted to “us” and “people in TV” has a hard time absorbing this.

Now that Jack knows some truth, his mom comes up with a desparate plan to escape. They fake Jack’s death and smuggle him out inside of Rug, while she’s hysterically telling her captor to bury him somewhere outside of town. Miraculously, Jack performs wonderfully in his role as hero, managing to get the police to rescue his mother. The scene of the great escape is breathtaking and suspenseful and not very realistic but still superb.

Once free, Jack’s mother starts to crack up, and Jack has anxiety issues as his world is now bigger than he ever thought. His adjustment, and her readjustment, to the real world is painful to watch. But it is real.

One of my favorite characters is the step-grandfather, whom Jack’s mother has never even met until she escapes, but who treats Jack gently. He’s just super-good with kids, and does a great job with the challenging case of Jack, the boy who was born in a box.

This was a super-fast read. Definitely darker than your average book, but hard to put down. Seeing this experience through Jack’s eyes is a very unique writing perspective.

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Mar 01 2012

It’s a Beautiful Day

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 3:58 pm

What a gorgeous day here in North Carolina. March 1 is not supposed to be 75 degrees and sunny with a perfect breeze. And yet, here we are. Cue one of my favorite songs by U2.

Our big group went to lunch today, and there was a caravan of cars making the 20 minute drive. Windows down, chillin with the radio on, sun shining… I felt like i was in a verse of Hot Chelle Rae’s hit song. Like that.

My doctor told me i am Vitamin D deficient, and prescribed me a 6-week regimen of super-mega-doses to be taken once per week. I think the medical industry is on a vitamin D kick, b/c i know of another friend who got the same prescription, and we go to different doctors. My doc also told me that virtually everyone she sees is deficient. We just don’t get outside enough, and there’s no other good source of D other than the sun.

As an aside, isn’t it friggin’ COOL that our bodies respond to the sun chemically to produce vitamins? It’s the human version of photosynthesis. We actually NEED sunlight.

If every day was like today though, none of us would have any problems. Absolutely gorgeous.

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Feb 14 2012

Happenings and Want-To-Be-Doings

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 2:56 pm

Things i want to do but can’t find the time to get to:

  • Work on my 2011 photo album. Usually i have it ready by Christmas. Now it’s Valentine’s Day. What a great gift that would have been. Oops.
  • There are about 15 books on my want-to-read list. Between book club, self-improvement, and pleasure (sometimes they intersect, but sometimes not), i can’t get to them all.
  • Move the clean laundry out of the baskets where it is half-folded into the drawers/closets
  • Blog – this blog is so neglected.
  • Exercise – though i vow this will change and may re-look into Weight Watchers

Things that are making life feel chaotic:

  • I got elected president of my bridge club. It was a contentious election, and now feelings are hurt. No one wants to cooperate, answer emails or do their part to help transition roles.
  • We are also in a planning stage at work, which seems to mean that we have to figure out now what the entire year will look like.
  • A passive-aggressive dispute with someone at work who will not contact me directly, for some reason.
  • A bridge tournament this weekend and business in the evenings this week means very little time to catch up on anything.
  • General anxiety about a few other upcoming things.

Things that make it all worthwhile:

  • Getting postcards in the mail from Lance while he was at the Hilton Head tournament. Each postcard had a fun story from one of the bridge hands they played.
  • Valentine’s Day breakfast.
  • Bidding practice with Mom and watching her get everything right by the time it was over.
  • Getting to the end of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Fabulous game. It only took us 2.5 months of playing mostly on weekends.
  • Watching Nugent play at the dog park. Those dogs are all hysterical. It may be time to get another puppy.

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Feb 03 2012

Immersed in Culture

Category: Uncategorizedpodrey @ 6:35 pm

We have two coworkers from China visiting at work this week, and i’m their primary host. It’s been a whirlwind week, and while i personally haven’t gotten much done, it’s been rewarding to see them making connections with others.

One of our guests who i’ll call D has visited the US twice before, but the other is experiencing American culture for the first time. So far he’s taken everything in stride.

One of the topics that hasn’t yet run out of discussion points is how American and Chinese culture differ. Here are some things i have learned.

  • There is no drinking age in China. D was absolutely flabbergasted when i told him our drinking age was 21. He asked if you also had to be 21 to be in the military. When i said no, that’s only 18, he just shook his head in disbelief.
  • There is no blood-alcohol level in China that is allowed when driving. Any alcohol in your system will get you taken to jail. The US allows a blood alcohol content of .08%.
  • D noticed that in the cafeteria, everyone puts ice into their drinks all the time. This is not done in China. And in fact, beer is served warm or lukewarm as well. The thought of warm beer got a wrinkled nose from me, and he just laughed.
  • There was a dancing & karaoke night for our division earlier this week. A few people sang, but not many. D asked why not? I don’t know, i guess in general Americans are shy. He said that karaoke is extremely popular in China, and there would be a line for the karaoke machine. It’s so popular that many places charge money to those who want to sing.
  • Most families in China have one child. I asked how the government enforces that and learned that the second child has no right to public schooling or certain identification documents. Also there are fines. Wikipedia tells me that the rule actually does not apply to everyone, but D tells me most people abide by it anyway.
  • Children in Chinese families do not have such things as sleepovers. I had read some of this in Amy Chua’s book, but D reinforced it for me. He played the clarinet as a child, and practiced four hours per day.
  • Michael Jackson is very popular in China. At the dance party, D’s face lit up whenever one of his songs was played.
  • The city of Beijing has terrible air pollution and no blue sky.
  • D was amazed at how many people have cars. In China, a family may have at most one car, and only rich families have multiple cars. I told him i had a household of two people, and we each had our own car, and that this was normal in America.
  • The subways are very crowded. D rides the subway for a 90-minute commute to work each day. He says it is too crowded even to play a handheld game like a 3DS.
  • The NBA is very popular in China. They were surprised i knew nothing about the NBA. I told them a lot of people like college basketball but not the NBA, and their only response is “Why?” I couldn’t really answer it.
  • Despite working for a great software company and having good technical skills, D says he is not “middle class” for Beijing. Maybe for the overall China population, but Beijing is a very rich city, and only rich people live there. He lives way outside the city, and feels generally lower class when in Beijing. I told him that pretty much everyone in America thinks of themselves as middle class.
  • It is illegal to build anymore golf courses in China because of the land it requires to build one. And only very rich people play golf.
  • Chinese people do not like many sweets. Well, at least not the adults. We had cake one afternoon in a meeting. Fairly boring-but-decent cake. They could not eat it because it was so sweet to them.
  • Their impression is that Americans like candy and we are all very fat.

It was pretty fascinating to have them here and to learn from them. I was glad they were willing to talk about the differences in culture and were just as interested in American culture as i was in Chinese culture. I had been worried about offending them all week, but luckily that was not an issue with these two. I hope to get to visit them later this year and experience the culture myself.

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