Stacy Randolph : personal

The karma of scoffing

srandolph — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 22:12:00 GMT

Today, I had a two hour training presentation to give on the MSFT campus. It’s a beautiful day here in the Seattle area: blue sky, bright sun, a bit breezy. So, I wore my new green short sleeved blouse that I bought this winter dreaming of the day I could wear a nice blouse instead of a double layered sweater. Today was the day, the first of the season of bare arms.

I pull into the MS parking lot and I see my client pull in at the same time as me. We both get out of our cars and say our greetings. As we’re walking towards the building we need to be at, we were both surprised to see a gal wearing a surgical type mask. You know, one of those that you wear if you are afraid of catching airborne diseases. Or perhaps you’ve been on a first class train in Peru travelling from Puno to Cusco, where I once saw a family wearing their masks and scoffed at their germophobia…only to wake up to cha-cha-cha the very same evening. Anyway, we’re walking along and chatting about how our first thought was that she has the swine flu and at that very instant….a bird defecated on me! A full on splat. All over my nice new blouse, bare arm, pants and brand new purse. Just before a big meeting where I was the presenter!!

I cleaned up and the training went fine, but today, I’m grateful that: A) nothing landed in my hair and B) I didn’t have my mouth open.

Moral of the story…do NOT scoff at people wearing surgical masks!!! The karma bank will issue a deduction.

Never give friends a key to your house

srandolph — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:33:37 GMT

Imagine my surprise as I returned home to a jungle themed bon voyage party the weekend before my Peru adventure:

With masks...

A monkey mother...

The monster mash?

A cake...

And...a house decorated with monkeys and snakes. . .

7 days 'til Peru: waiting for grapes

srandolph — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 17:36:59 GMT

I'm in the last week's countdown until I leave for Peru. This means getting and organizing all the 'stuff' I'll need for living out of a suitcase for 21 days in a variety of climates and altitudes. It also means making sure my yard is in tip top shape because by the time I get back it will be October, officially fall weather, and it's cold working outside.

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of my grapes. What if they don't ripen before I leave? Oh, the tragedy!

This year produced 4 times the amount of grapes as last year and I didn't cut any of them back in a greedy attempt to harvest as many grapes as possible. Now, I'm thinking that perhaps that too many grape bunches don't allow the vine to put enough energy into ripening all of them. We had some great warm, sunny summer weather although the last month has been colder and wet. But last year was so wonderful! I had about ten sweet ripe bunches of grapes to eat, make grape juice with and share with friends. I thought that it would just be better this year!

Well, we'll see what happens. I might get wild and crazy and cut some back or just have patience and let my house sitter note if and when they ripen (and if they do ripen, she'll get to eat all the grapes, no fair!!).

Hey, today is Earth Day! How's this for a good idea: unplug your X-box when not in play

srandolph — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 04:53:30 GMT

Left plugged in all day, every day of the year, a game console uses twice as much energy as the TV it is hooked up to. Leaving a game console plugged in all year is equivalent to having over 200 cell phone chargers left in the wall!

How about something easy for Earth Day--unplugging your game console when not in play? I did. My Wii goes dark unless I am playing it. I have to admit that this started because my Wii glowed eerily at night, like a blue Cylon. I just don't trust toasters. But I'm happy to reap the energy rewards!

Consumer electronics are the biggest user of electricity in the home, and game consoles are often the biggest offenders. Unplug unused electronics save $256 per household per year! [source]

Mouse woes delight

srandolph — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 02:16:31 GMT

I have some strangers living with me. Well, they don't live with me, they live about 5 feet from my house in my hot tub decking. I generally wouldn't mind, however, they smell, break down my hot tub with their little gnawing teeth and keep having babies. That's just rude behavior.

Mice just don't scare me, I don't scream like a girl when I see them or anything. I have a soft heart and wrestled with the thought of killing them...although I knew I'd have to deal with them one way or another. You'd think that my cat would help me out here, but she doesn't like to deal with things like mice or flies. I would say she's tenderhearted like me, but she devours spiders like crunchy afternoon snacks...and well, she is a cat and they do like to hunt. So, I think she's just elitist and that this a job more suited for outdoor toms.

So, I got some bait (after 4 agonizing trips to home improvement stores to find the most humane bait) and set out to put it in the bait box, but the box that Terminix left me last year apparently requires PhD to open it. Or a key. That's what I found out after calling them, anyway.

Well, so in making the call to Terminix to figure out how to open the box and they convinced me that they would be better equipped to deal with this problem than me--plus they will inspect all the spaces around the house that mice might have broken into. I have to say that it didn't take much to convince me that red-blooded hands look better on someone else. What can I say? I live in a paradox of eco-thinking and luxury-protecting. I'm not proud of it and quite honestly, this ties my human guilt muscle into knots.

On to the delight part. . .

So, I told Terminix that I would be interested in their service if they could tell me when the soonest that someone could come out--because I wanted to get this done ASAP. The gal I spoke to told me that she needed to check on the technician's calendar and that she would call me back in 5-10 minutes. I received a call about 5 minutes later that the other gal who runs the technician's calendar was out to lunch, but that she'd give me another call in 20 minutes or so. She called me back shortly and we got everything setup for a technician to come out on Monday. Easy schmeezy.

Here's what delighted me about this experience:

The gal at Terminix didn't have the answer for me. But, she promised to have an answer for me within a timeframe and her attitude was one of urgency. She understood that my time is important and that made it okay that she didn't know.
When the Terminix gal couldn't get the answer in the timeframe she promised, she let me know. This told me that she cared about my expectations.
Because I had confidence that she was working on it, it was not painful to wait for an answer. I had confidence because she communicated with me.
And ultimately, I have to admit that I have major relief in not having to kill whiskered things myself. That's my own thing and I'm paying a good amount of money to live in the illusion that it's not me who's harming furry creatures. Terminix knows this and so do I--and we're both okay with that.

The Terminix gal knows how to serve people. DELIGHTFUL!

The hot tub hotel