A Room with a View

I was in Portland last week for a manufacturing conference, which was held at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.

My room was on the fourth floor and it did, indeed, have lovely (if somewhat distant and fog-shrouded) views of Portland Harbor.

One was somewhat distracted, however, by the view in the foreground of the second-floor roof.

Which was a regular hangout for, and covered with the waste of, those pestilential herring gulls.

A small drama has been playing out in Rockland recently between an old dingbat who insists on feeding gulls, her neighbors, and the city fathers.

Said dingbat doesn't just toss out the odd crumb every now and again.  No.  We're talking cases and cases of bread, daily, and a scrum of hundreds of aggressive, defecating, squawking, extremely large birds, which trash not just the dingbat's yard but the neighbors' yards, while the neighbors are trapped in their houses to avoid the noise and mess.

Cars and window screens end up covered in caustic bird droppings.  Feathers blanket patios.  Small children are carried away bodily.

The city fathers got involved after a series of complaints.  A new ordinance was written.  The intrepid code enforcement officer has been going deep undercover to ensure compliance.  The old lady still believes she is within her rights, so continues to feed the gulls.

Of course after years of daily feedings, the gulls are going to show up in her yard no matter what.  Like they stalk fishing boats knowing that old bait is going to be tossed out.  They've got used to humans making their wretched lives easier.

(Take this guy, for example.  One of many at my Portland aviary which dropped by to nab a drink from the condensation draining off the rooftop HVAC units.)

Now the city is threatening fines of $2,500 per day and the dingbat continues to insist that she has to feed the damn things because - this kills me - she says they don't have anywhere else to go.

To all Rockland herring gulls, if the Camden Street Terrace smorgasbord dries up on you, may I suggest the thriving urban environment (and progressive food scene) 80 miles to the south?

Three things I love about where I work

1.  I can wear jeans every day

2.  I can swear a lot

3.  The plastic poop war

Shade for sheep

Those are, indeed, what you think they are.

Beach umbrellas.  In a sheep pasture behind my office.

For shade, apparently.

And yes, in case you were wondering, the person who owns them has named every single one.

They're baaa-ack

Remember these guys?

Worked out great last year.  We're doing it again.  

Would you believe the couple who owns them has named every single one of them?  There are, like, two dozen of them.  Must be weird taking a packet out of the freezer that's marked "Q-Tip" or "Mr. Freckle."

Every workplace has one

In my previous post, as I was writing about how Himself's friend B is not a kook, I couldn't help but think of my colleague D.

My colleague D is whip smart, a talented engineer, and one of the nicest guys out there even though he can be a bit annoying in that oblivious Asperger's kind of way.

He is also a kook.

A card-carrying, tin-foil-helmet-wearing, ultra-paranoid, anti-government, gun-hoarding, gold-stockpiling kook. 

The most recent manifestation of this kookiness is the regular deliveries of entire pallets of surplus MREs which have started showing up on our loading dock.



This is one pallet of 48 cases of MREs which he has loaded into his truck.

That's 576 MREs and this is just one of the several pallets our long-suffering warehouse staff has received for him.

Seriously, hundreds upon hundreds of MREs? Someone would rather eat those than starve to death?

Himself has about 100 gallons of wine percolating in the basement.  There's a very old single-shot .22 rifle down there, too.  For my part, if society as we know it collapses, that's all I'll need.  That plus one bullet. 

Actually, I would just go live with B.

"Thank you for choosing Cape Air"

Earlier this week my colleague K and I visited our sister plant in Maryland and we left from Rockland, which is much more convenient, and often cheaper, than flying out of Portland.

Cape Air operates a few flights a day between Rockland and Boston on well-used nine-seater Cessna 402s.  Until quite recently the Knox Regional Airport was a double-wide trailer, with baggage claim being a wooden rack on the tarmac and the TSA staff doubling as ticket agents.  I'm not making that up. 

Flying with a tiny air service is a much more personal experience than the big commercial carriers. (Apart from the whole unpressurized and very cold cabin thing.)

"Welcome aboard!  My name is Skippy Junior, and I'll be your co-pilot in training today.  Don't worry, I may look like I'm nine years old but I have in fact been through flight school."

"Our little plane here is much older than I am, but perfectly safe - Cape Air hasn't had a crash since 2008.  Ah, you all accurately reported your body weight when you checked in, right?"

"Please note the emergency exits, any one of which you can reach out and touch, and up front here about six inches from your knees is a fire extinguisher in case we need it.  Buckle up, everyone!"

"And thank you for choosing Cape Air."

Because we have, like, so many other options when we fly out of Rockland.

For the record, Skippy Junior - like all the Cape Air pilots - did a fine job, and his landing was particularly skillful.  The aerial view of the coast is always breathtaking, both in daylight and in the dark when the lights of the coastal towns sparkle against the black water. 

The new Knox Regional Airport is very nice, too.  But I kind of miss the old double-wide.

"There's a WOMAN running this place?"

Rant alert.

Here's the thing about where I work:  almost all of the senior managers are women.  Not just women, but women who are now or have been, for most of their careers, working mothers.

Our plant is something of an anomaly in the giant Swiss company which owns us.  Not simply because of the noticeable dearth of females in leadership positions at other sites and at the top levels of the organization, but because our plant runs really, really, well.

Go figure.

Say what you like about gender equality, and a lot of us are married to men who would self-identify as progressive, even feminist, but the reality is that most working moms also manage the vast majority of the household responsibilities.  This means that even though we have achieved income parity with, and perhaps superiority to, our professionally high-functioning spouses, we are still the ones that leave work early to take the kids to the dentist and come home to help with homework, cook dinner, and scrub the toilets.

We're the ones who know what size jeans and shoes the kids wear and which socks came through the laundry last week without a mate.  We're the ones who know how much money is in the checking account and when the bills are due.  We have the family calendar in our head and we're the ones that schedule our workday around the piano lesson or ski team practice.  We're the ones who go to soccer games.  

We're the ones that plan the meals, grocery shop, and cook dinner every night.  We're the ones that do the Christmas shopping.  We're the ones who wash the clothes and dispense relationship advice and make sure the pets and children are all up to date on their shots.  We're the ones who divvy up the chores and make sure everyone does their bit.

We have our heads in the details.  We can juggle six things at once.  We not only know what needs to be done, we know how to do it... and we know how to delegate.  And we know how to address someone who isn't pulling his or her weight.  There's no ego involved.  We're just doing what we need to do.

This is what makes us able to run a successful business.

We're damned proud of it.

We interviewed a man a few weeks ago - I won't name names, because I don't in this blog, but he is a member of a prominent local family which owns a landscaping company and whose last name starts with F and rhymes with gnarly.

The guy was a knuckle-dragging misogynist.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

He could not get his brain around the fact that women were running the joint.  The rest of us could not get our brains around the concept that in the year of Our Lord two thousand almost twelve, a man would come into a job interview and in all seriousness say, "Let me get this straight - there's a woman running this place?  And a woman in charge of production?"

Women can vote, get advanced degrees, be personally and professionally successful, marry or not, have children or not, even own property in our own name.  But we still aren't president; we still don't earn the same dollar for the same work; and our success is marred by institutionalized paternalism and cultural chauvinism.

For all our gains, true equality has been far too slow in coming, and has even regressed in the past twenty years as we have, as a nation and as a gender, allowed the anti-feminist rhetoric of the Right to infect our values.  We've been lulled into thinking we have it good enough.  We've been brainwashed into believing that the veneer of political correctness - even as we sneer at it - has corrected discrimination when, in fact, it has merely concealed it.

We need to do better.  We need symbolic, meaningful and binding acknowledgement of a social and economic commitment to equality.  We need the ERA.

Mr. Rhymes-With-Gnarly did not get the job.

Dallas highlights

Let's see...  there was the big state fair, with the big-ass ferris wheel...

...and a big butter sculpture...

...and big helpings of fried okra...

...and a big scary talking cowboy statue...

...and big dances.

Then there was the Crow Collection of Asian Art.  Also big.

Big steaks and big plates of barbecue.

Yes, that's more fried okra.  Shut up.

Big jewelry.

Mostly big crosses.

Dealey Plaza, of course.  And the Sixth Floor Museum.

Helpful signage

Big conspiracy theories.

Colleague #2 spent quite a bit of time discussing the LBJ-was-behind-it one
with this guy who's written all about it.

Big buildings and big sky.

There were several big keynote speakers at the conference (I actually did cram in five days of work-related stuff).

That Temple Grandin, she hangs out with some pretty cool people.

I'm just sayin'.

 Oh, and there were some big baseball games going on, too. 

Now I am home, and this is what's happening this late October morning:

And so it begins.

Everything else here in Maine might be on a smaller scale, but we sure do know how to throw a big winter.

Superstitious bunk

I'm sitting in my hotel room on the 14th floor of the Sheraton in downtown Dallas. 

Except that I'm really on the 13th floor. 

What's up with that?  Why, in this enlightened age, do major high-end hotel chains insist on pretending the 13th floor doesn't exist?  Are we who are lodged here less likely to encounter bad luck simply because we're calling it the 14th floor?  Do they think we are idiots?

I want to write something very profound about this, but I have to go network in a minute, which requires lip gloss, a perma-grin and the ability to get middle-aged men to talk about themselves.  (Not difficult.)

Colleague #2 update:  This many manufacturing professionals in one place has almost certainly attracted the attention of al Qaeda.  Be vigilant.

Dallas, Day 1

So I'm here in Don't Tread On Me territory, with two colleagues, for a manufacturing conference. 

• Colleague #1:  Wow, is that a protest?
• Me:  Cool, it’s the Occupy movement! 
• Colleague #2:  Can’t be.  Those people in front are carrying American flags.
• Colleague #1:  I think I heard about this somewhere…  What’s it about, again?
• Me:  Kind of general fed-upness with corporate greed, joblessness, income inequality and the disappearing middle class…
• Colleague #2:  Yeah, they don’t really know themselves what it’s about.  All kinds of people just showing up.
• Me:  Yeah, even people who carry American flags and love their country.
• Colleague #2:  Well, I just think they should put some time in before they’re entitled to do that.
• Me:  But even the military’s not hiring now.
• Colleague #2:  I know, but those idiots don't have any idea what they're talking about.  Do you really think taxing the rich is a good idea? 

Isn't this brilliant?  First, you equate patriotism with capitalism so you can say that anyone who is anti-business is anti-American.  Once you have claimed this moral and economic high ground, you maintain that anyone else trying to stake it out is a misguided, directionless idiot.   And when the idiots reach critical mass and actually present a factual, coherent, reasoned argument against your oversimplified sound-bite opinions, you change the subject and throw in a little ad hominem attack. 

I'm in Texas.

At a manufacturing conference.

Going deep undercover for the next week.

Over and out.

Creative property management

The manufacturing facility where I toil in middle management sits on 27 acres of what used to be farmland.

We keep the grass around the building mowed, but that leaves about 25 acres untended except for the occasional brush-hogging to keep down the mouse, snake and coyote habitat.  (Not that I have anything against wildlife habitat, but two of the three aforementioned species have a habit of coming inside the building, which causes some people to scream and jump on top of furniture and that's just not a safe working environment.)

This year, however, I got a phone call from Farmer K who was looking for a place to graze his small flock of Katahdin sheep.  After getting the blessings of the city code enforcement officer and our corporate attorney (he just never knows what I'll be calling about next), and after my boss recovered from her fit of the vapors, we said sure.

So now we have these guys out back.

The pen is portable, so Farmer K comes every couple of days to move them to fresh grass.

After a couple of years of this the pasture will be restored, and then Farmer K can hay it if he chooses.

The land is being put to good use, my business is not paying to have it mowed, sheep spew less carbon than internal combustion engines, a local grower is getting his flock fattened for free, and it's doing wonders for employee morale.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Company Picnic

Maine is in the grips of that heatwave which is causing havoc along the east coast.  It rarely gets this hot here, and almost never this early, but here we are not even at the end of July and we're already gone two rounds with the sort of temperatures that leave the HVAC units at my office gasping for mercy.

The next time I hear "I just shoveled eight inches of global warming off my driveway" from some ffffidiot who can't comprehend the correlation between rising ocean temperatures and increased snowfall, I am going to smack him with my windshield scraper.

Anyhoo.  My company's annual summer picnic happened to take place this weekend, down at FunTown/SplashTown.  We were fortunate that it was held Saturday and not Friday, because Friday was even hotter and the entire city of Saco was blacked out, so the busload of kiddies from the local Y's day camp drove for two hours only to find the park closed, and on the way back one of the bus' tires exploded from the heat.

That was Friday.  Saturday it was merely 99 degrees.

It stands to reason that in the middle of a heat wave, if you live in a part of the country where no one's house is air conditioned, you go to the water. 

Or the water park. 

The place was mobbed.

I am of the opinion that had there been water parks in Dante's day and he had visited one on a peak summer weekend during a record-breaking heat wave, his imagination of the sixth circle of hell might have taken a slightly different tack.

Don't get me wrong.  It's a great place for kids.  In fact, Thing Two and the friend she brought along plunged enthusiastically into the throngs the second we were inside the gates (the inscription over which did indeed read "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate").  I have no pictures of them because we never saw them until it was time to leave; they tell us they had a perfectly wonderful, marvelous time. 

Introverted, fair-skinned grownups who aren't particularly enamored of crowds or rides and whose children are of an age where they filch the last $20 from your wallet and then happily abandon you so that you find yourself sweating in the sun for hours on industrial vinyl chaise lounge chairs where thousands of people have sweated before you...  yeah, not so much. 

I'm just sayin'.

Thought for the day

If one is walking by a co-worker's open office door and hears the words "cervix" and "pitocin," one should probably just keep walking.

The view from my office window

Actually it's the view from outside the window. 

Help...

Event Planning: A Titanic Party

I love my job.

Each January, the company throws a “Year Beginning Dinner.”   Roughly a hundred people need to be wined, dined, and, with luck, entertained. 

Our theme this year was Titanic. 

Though the event was geared for a large group, the ideas and activities could easily be scaled down for a dinner party or even an older child’s birthday party. 

Invitations & correspondence:

For this event I used primarily Legal Tender, Elephant, and Fairfax Station fonts (all free), which have a formal, early-20^th-century look.  Graphics of the White Star Line logos are widely available on line.  PaperDirect sells a nice heavy paper with a tear-off bottom which is perfect for RSVPs. 

Venue & Decor: 

The dinner was held at Amalfi on the Water, a fantastic restaurant which is literally at the ocean’s edge, so minimal decoration was required.  Nancy and her staff transformed the space into a first-class dining room – tables for ten with white tablecloths, low floral centerpieces (from Dean’s) and tea lights.  Dave created a wonderful ice sculpture of the ship’s stern as it plunged beneath the waves (shown here somewhat late in the evening, but you get the idea.  That's Nancy in the background.  That woman never quits).

Except for the nor’easter that blew itself silly until 4 p.m. the day of the event, the weather conditions closely replicated those of the night of April 14, 1912.  Can I take credit for that?

Menu: 

We didn’t attempt to recreate the final dinner on the Titanic, just let Dave do his thing.  There were five courses, each a delight.  I ate to my Spanx-imposed limit and beyond.


Course #3:  Haddock Chowder


Guests: 

Lots of people dressed the part – I counted two tuxedos, one velvet smoking jacket, a number of first-class ladies, a boiler stoker and a deck hand, among others. 

Activities:

“Become” an actual Titanic passenger.  Will you (and your family or traveling companions) survive the disaster?:  I provided a selection of passenger and crew identities, including biographical information, on a 4x6 cards.  Guests chose a card when they arrived.  At another place in the restaurant we stationed a corresponding (alphabetical) list of passengers with details about whether they survived (and, if so, how the rest of their lives turned out), so guests could find out if they were one of the lucky ones.

Notes:

·     Biographical information on Titanic passengers is available on the internet.  Pay attention to copyrights.

·     The master data was compiled in Excel and mail-merged into a Word template for 4x6 perforated postcards.

·     The survivor list was copied from Excel into a table in Word for easier formatting, then printed on 11x17 paper.

·     It was helpful to have more postcards than guests.

“Titanic Trivia” Scavenger Hunt:  This consisted of a page of trivia questions which could be answered by careful survey of the informational posters we had placed around the restaurant.  The winner got an iPad.

Notes: 

·     Posters were created in Publisher and printed in full color on 11x17” paper. 

·     The fonts were large enough and posters spaced so that people could read without crowding.

·     Copyrights again….

Party favors: 

I steered clear of the overpriced Titanic-specific stuff.  There are affordable and surprisingly nice nautical tchotchkes at http://www.handcraftednauticaldecor.com/.  At each place setting we put either a spyglass in a wooden and brass-inlaid box, a brass anchor paperweight, or a brass pocket compass. 

Everything else:

We hired a DJ for background music during cocktail hour and dinner, then we finished the evening with some serious dancing.  There were the customary speeches and few nice door prizes.  Taxi service was available at the end of the evening for anyone who shouldn’t drive.  We also make our corporate rate available to employees who wish to spend the night at a local hotel.

All in all, it was a very nice evening.

Food drive

The place where I work employs about 65 people.  In the way that is peculiar to Mainers, it seems that no matter how serious our internal squabbles (and we crank out some doozies), when it comes time to rally for something, we are unstoppable.

Every year this time we have a food drive for the local food pantry.  The combination of a good cause and a little healthy competition brings out the best in us, and we usually manage to come up with a little over a ton of food.

This year I threw out a challenge to my direct reports – I said whatever poundage of food they contributed, I would bring in double.

They’ve just given me their totals.  I think these people have it in for me.

It’s all right.  It’s for a good cause. 

And I will remember this when I do their performance evaluations next month.

Now I’m off to the grocery store.