Stuck…

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Maggie and Winston are two of the great joys of my life. With a few exceptions they’ve been around longer than most of the people I know and frankly I’d rather spend time hanging out with them than most two legged critters. For all the medical bills, late night trips to 1931518_140947123584_1995326_nemergency vets, special foods, and number of times I’ve nearly killed myself stepping barefoot on a toy or pile of sick in the middle of the night, I can’t imagine a time when there won’t be dogs in my home.

With as much affection and regard as I hold for these noble animals, it’s helpful to be reminded from time to time that while dogs can give us the impression of being surprisingly smart and adaptive, they can also be incredibly stupid creatures. Take for instance, my Maggie – the sweetest, most gently disposed Labrador God ever put on this green earth. Since she was a puppy she’s had an innate ability to almost predict my thoughts – which way I’m going to turn, what room I’m headed to, or when dinner is about to be served. This morning, though, I woke up to find she has chewed through my comforter at some point in the night and somehow managed to get her head stuck in the resulting hole. I wish I had the wherewithal at 5AM to snap a picture because it was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever actually seen in person… a 50 pound lab wearing what amounted to a queen sized barber’s cape with a tell-tale look of guilt on her fuzzy little face.

This can only mean at some point in the early hours of the morning, the thought that this was a good idea when through her baseball sized brain. Apparently she’s not as good at independent decision-making as I’d been giving her credit for being. Instead, it just makes me wonder what else she’s up to while I’m catching a few hours of shuteye. Then again, it’s probably one of those things I’m better off not knowing.

Disregarded…

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I’m fairly sure that somewhere we are enjoined to maintain Sunday as a day of rest. And while I’m sure that’s a fine theory, it adds up to 1/7 of the week where I’m not getting a damned thing done and that plan just isn’t going to hold water. So yes, as we speak I’m blatantly disregarding the command of having a “day of rest.” There’s laundry to do, floors to scrub, a bathroom in desperate need of cleaning, shrubbery that needs cutting back, a dog in need of a bath, and at least two more meals that are going to have to be cooked. That’s just the top few items on the list.

As great as a day of rest every week sounds, it’s just not going to happen. If I’m lucky, I’ll carve out a few days for that a couple of times a year, but getting there once a week is a pipe dream if I’ve ever heard one. There’s no way around my Sundays being filled with ticking things off the long list of shit I didn’t get to in the previous six days. For some reason, I don’t think that breaking a sweat on the sabbath is going to be the sin that pushes me over the edge. Just between you and me, it’s probably not even in the list of top ten sins I’ve committed this week so I’ve got that going for me.

So if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to quit pecking at the keyboard and get a few more things done this morning.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Landlording. It’s one of those things that seems like a much better idea before you actually do it. There are those occasional times when everything is good – the rent is paid on time, nothing breaks, and for at least one month you can show a positive cash flow. Then there are all the other times – when you’re replacing a stove, having the whole place painted, fixing problems that people cause because they don’t give a damn since it’s not really “theirs.” Worse, you’ll catch those months when you’re between tenants and every nickel being spend is being taken out of hide. You’re doing all that in the hopes of making it livable as quickly as possible so the cycle can start over and there can be more repairs, more late rent, and more trouble all over again. Let the record show that I’m throughly looking forward to the day I can get out of the landlording business almost as much as I’m looking forward to the day I can get out of the being a tenant business.

2. Permission to speak freely. Jeffreytharp.com has been, is now, and will always be a place that reveres the basic principles of freedom of speech. Since turning the switch on this site, I’ve never had to drop the ban hammer on anyone. I hope that I’m never given cause to do so. With that being said, I’m starting to hear the barest rumble of a rumor that has the potential to curtail what I am at liberty to post and discuss here with you. Whatever comes, you have my personal promise that I will continue to use this site to advocate those issues about which I feel strongly, to discuss the day to day stupidity of life, and yes, even to provide commentary on those things that others wish would just be left alone. I don’t come here looking for a fight, but if one finds me here I suppose I’ll have no choice but to close with, engage, and decisively defeat the threat. Easier said than done, I’d imagine, but still worth doing.

3. Always needing a third thing. It’s not OCD, but having a third annoyance for the week always feels like it round out the post. Sometimes, though, I don’t have a third thing so much as I have a dozen small things that individually wouldn’t rate a mention. That doesn’t make for great reading and it makes for even worse writing, so I’m making an executive decision to skip the third thing tonight. So there.

Not a fan…

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It was hard to miss the “breaking news” today that the US Patent Office vacated multiple trademarks owned by the historic Washington football franchise. I’m not a fan of the Washington Redskins. In fact I can’t remember the last time I watched a football game from Washington-Redskins-Logostart to finish. It was probably sometime in the 90s. Fortunately, this post is only tangentially related to football because it provides the backdrop for the point I really want to make tonight.

There are a lot of appeals between now and anything that might resemble a name change for the team, but if I were Dan Snyder, I’m pretty sure my plan of attack might go something like this: 1) Halt the sale of all items bearing the Redskins team logo; 2) Discontinue all team related activities – shuttering their training facility, FedEx Field, and offices; 3) Inform the NFL of my intention to sit out the 2014 season rather than being forced by the mob to do business as “Generic Washington, DC Football Franchise.” But then again, I’m the kind of guy who will cheerfully slice off my nose to spite my face.

Look, if you’re offended by the use of the name Redskins, then by all means avail yourself of the opportunity to not purchase a ticket. Show up at the stadium on game day with your protest sign. Send a letter. Do whatever it is you feel you need to do to make your voice heard… but in my final analysis, I get a cold chill every time some random agency of government is allowed to tell us what words are offensive, unacceptable, or otherwise “not nice.” I don’t want government within a country mile of making decisions about what words any one of us can or can’t use, from team owners to town drunks. Words are just words. They’re not imbued with any magical meaning or significance until we chose to give them that meaning.

I have a hunch that if Redskins was really an “offensive” term, we wouldn’t need government to save us from it. It would be reflected by the thousands of empty seats at every home game when when fans were too mortified to show up. I’m not sure when we came up with this idea that we should be able to get through life without ever being offended or having our little feelings hurt, but for my money it’s done us more harm than good.

For the first (and probably last) time in my life, I say this without a hint of sarcasm: Hail to the Redskins!

Bleed a little longer…

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Two days into the week, it looks like it’s going to be another exercise in triage – in trying to figure out which high priority item is going to bleed to death if I don’t tend to it immediately and which I can put off to let bleed a little longer. It’s a hell of a way to try to get things done and nearly impossible if any of what you’re trying to accomplish requires deep thought and analysis. Thank God nothing I deal with ever needs any of that. You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes while I wrote that last bit.

Due in part to to what feels like the never ending variations on a hiring freeze, our preternatural ability to reorganize ourselves every six months, decisions (or lack thereof) made by high management, and people moving on to better opportunities, we’re at least three hands shy of where we should be. That doesn’t sound like a lot except it roughly translates to 1/4 of the total number of people who should be working in my office. Add into that mix the normal and customary sick days, vacation days, and alternative work schedule days off, it means as often as not we’re operating half staffed or less. Some days it’s much, much less.

Whether echelons higher than reality want to accept or admit it, it creates an environment where even if good work were encouraged, it would be nearly impossible to achieve. I won’t speak for anyone other than myself, but just now it feels like any day that doesn’t end in taking water over the transom was a good one. Running flat out just to avoid sliding backwards is a lot of things, but it’s not a recipe for encouraging or enabling anyone to do their best work. It’s a recipe for struggling to stave off disaster just enough to get through the day. When that’s what passes for a win, we’re all in trouble.

For Official Use Only…

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131186317From time to time I like to offer up helpful tips about life in the modern American workplace. I consider it kind of a public service. Hopefully it’s just one of the many topics here that people find useful or at least vaguely entertaining.

Tonight’s tip goes out to all those office drones who are walking around with a “For Official Use Only” credit card in their wallet. For most of us, you can count on one hand the number of times in a year (or in a career) when you’ll actually need to use that card. What you might not notice is how much that FOUO BigBank Mastercard looks nearly identical to the personal BigBank Mastercard that you’ve also been carrying around for years.

In fact, until you get an email from your boss wondering why there’s a $500 deposit charged on your official credit card, you probably won’t even notice that you’ve slipped the wrong one in your wallet and used it to book the hotel for your upcoming vacation. In case there’s any confusion, even I can’t manage to spin that one into the “official business” category.

I’m sure I’ll spend a big hunk of the next few days trying to get that straightened out and back onto my own card where I thought it was all along. Just when I think I’ve done every stupid thing a career bureaucrat can do, I run out and set the bar just a little bit higher for myself.

The more you know…

Life with dogs…

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Aside from the occasional inconvenience, I like life with dogs. Fiercely loyal, always happy to see you, undemanding, and absolutely non-presumptuous, dogs never pretend to be anything other than what they are. To me that feels like a big part of their charm. Say what you want about dogs, but unlike most of the people you’ll run into, a dog will never disappoint you. Oh they’ll break your heart sure enough, but they’ll never disappoint you.

Now as much as I’m a fan of life with dogs, that doesn’t mean it’s without it’s occasional quirky unpleasantness. Early in their lives, I set the precedent of going out myself whenever they needed to go out. The result, five or six years later, is that even though I no longer need to go outside every hour or two, they’ll sit on the other side of the door and wait for me to come out before heading off the deck. While I’m writing this, they want to be outside but they’re making due by laying in front of the door watching the coming and going of the neighborhood. This, in turn, leads to its own issues.

Winston is mercifully happy just keeping an eye on what passes by. Maggie on the other hand sees it, barks at it, and wants to chase it. It doesn’t matter if its a neighbor, someone riding a bike, a car turning, a bird, a leaf blowing past, the flag catching the breeze, or absolutely nothing at all. She likes her presence to be known even by things that aren’t actually there. It’s well and good. She’s being a dog and I love her for that. Still, it would be nice if we could go more than 45 seconds without her letting out a howl that makes me jump out of my skin.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Using your outdoor voice. There’s a time and a place for the outdoor voice. When you’re sitting at your desk, in an office, with 8 other people in earshot is not the time to decide to communicate with one another by having a 20 minute conversation from one side of the room to the others. Life in cubicle hell is bad enough without trying to block out three simultaneous cross-room conversations. I realize it’s terribly inconvenient, but maybe get up, walk the dozen or so steps, and have your chat face to face instead of favoring us all with every detail at 103 decibels. As a rule, your colleagues shouldn’t be able to hear your conversation when they’ve got their ear buds turned up to ten with Van Halen’s classic guitar riffs beaming directly into their brain.

2. Illegal immigration. I’m all for having some kind of sensible immigration reform in this country. However, while Congress flails around with that issue, I’m more interested in seeing if we can stem the flow of people illegally crossing the border from Mexico into the US. Call me crazy, but I think the first step to reforming the immigration process in this country is to make it a hell of a lot harder to just wander across the border and a hell of a lot easier to send people back from whence they came if they do show up here illegally. I have no earthly idea why we’ve collectively decided that enforcing the laws on the books falls into the too hard to do category, but until we figure out a way to actually enforce the laws on the books, I have no idea why we’d bother passing any new ones that are just as likely to be ignored.

3. Iraq. The allies poured out a decade of blood and treasure to liberate, defend, equip, train, and support a government that looks like it will collapse at any moment. I dearly wish I could wake up in the morning to find a Patton or a MacArthur or a LeMay had risen from the dead to take command of CENTCOM. Instead, I fear I’ll wake up in the morning to find the mission failed while we were all busy wringing our hands.

Mexican standoff…

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I might not be quite fanatical about lawn care, but it’s a pretty close run thing. In fact, “not fanatical” might just be a matter of degree, but compared to one of my two neighbors, I’m downright lax with my mowing and trimming routine. Normally that’s not much of a problem because the other neighbor lives somewhere on the other end of the mowing spectrum. Over there, they live by the once-a-month-is-good-enough standard. Sure, it’s bothersome, but I’m slowly learning to live with the things I can’t control. That’s not really the point, though.

The point, unfortunately, is that mine is now the neighborhood yard most in need of a good going over. While I’d very much like to take care of that problem, my John Deere is currently rated as out of service and unable to perform its primary mission. Loosely translated, after replacing the fuel filter, spark plug, and checking the fuel lines, I can’t keep the damned thing running for more than 45 seconds and even then it’s working at about 10% power. That means the yard is coming up on two weeks un-mowed and it’s starting to make me twitchy. The fact that it’s rained off and on every other hour for the last three days isn’t helping matters at all.

The fine people from the local Deere dealer are coming out on Friday to give it a diagnosis and attempt a repair on site. If that doesn’t go as planned, they’ll haul it away and bring it back up to operating standard at the shop. Of course if that happens, there’s no way of knowing when I’ll get my green machine back in service. That puts me in an awkward position of either a) accepting that the grass is going to be a foot tall or worse before I can do anything about it or b) ask the neighbor who actually takes meticulous care of his yard if I can borrow his tractor for an afternoon.

They’re both equally unappealing options. The former because it is an open admission of defeat and the latter because I’m completely uncomfortable borrowing a piece of equipment from the guy whose garage and workshop are cleaner than the kitchens in most commercial restaurants. It seems I’m in a Mexican standoff with myself. If things aren’t up and running on Friday, there’s not much chance of it ending well.