Category: Reflections

Tamika was interviewed by Chay Rao of the Gazette, a Maryland Community Newspaper. He wrote a very nice article about the team, I was impressed to see good journalism done for a Varsity Lacrosse game.

Rockville’s girls lacrosse team thought it had conquered the lapses that caused the inconsistency that plagued its early games. The Rams came out fast in their 12-7 win over Einstein Friday, scoring four goals in eight minutes to take an early lead.

They gave it right back, though, and went into halftime tied and looking at a talking to from their coach, Tamika Jancewicz.

‘‘We needed to get back to the fundamentals,” she said. ‘‘Pass the ball, move and catch. Get the ground balls.”

Read the rest here…

The Great Dissapator

Tamika has the incredible ability to take any frustration I have and completely dissolve it. I’m not entirely sure how, but she’ll say something softly and sweetly, gently listen to me, empathize, and even if it’s been boiling in me all day long, it’s gone within seconds.

I just discovered my boss Dinorah has the same ability. I got a chance to talk with her yesterday about my frustrations with being overloaded, and she very patiently listened to me, apologized for not helping me earlier, and worked with me to figure out ways to reduce the stress. Not only that, but she gave me control over more aspects of various jobs so I can adjust the workload myself.

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s incredible to have a boss that listens so intently to you and takes to heart everything you have to say.
Now, let me clarify; they both don’t just let me do as I wish. They tell me know when I’m being irrational, but because they listened, I trust everything they have to say.

That’s a skill I’ve got to learn at all costs.

No More Work

I feel as though I am idling.

I’ve run out of work to do.
Well, sort of. I just found out that the hours I’ve been working extra are in vain… April seems to be a popular month to take off, and since so many people are taking days off, I can’t.
So, all of the hours I’ve saved up will slowly fly out the window.

I’ve been working too much, it turns out. Clocking over 50 hours a week on occasion. We only have one car, and since Tamika’s games run late, I have to wait until she gets here.
So I do work.
And clock ridiculous amounts of time.

Dinorah, my boss, suggest just “clocking out”, and doing whatever I please once I reach a certain number of hours. Bring in Zerflin work, for example, and just work on that.
It’s tough, though, because since I’m sitting here, all of the account executives automatically think I’m free and give me the rush/late/procrastinated jobs.
So I do them.
And clock lots of hours.

It also appears to the account executives that I have super-humanly fast design skills too, because their works is being done early (since I stay late and get it done). Consequently; I get more work.

I’m not complaining, by the way, just narrating.

I was interviewed today by “Mixed Chicks Chat“, a “LIVE weekly podcast about being racially and culturally mixed”. They were looking for white fathers of racially mixed kids to be on their program, and because Nya definitely fit the category, I said sure.

My friend Ray Chung referred me to them. I thought the conversation, dealing with a lot of issues that don’t normally get talked about was very informative.

You can listen to the episode here.

You can check out their blog here.

You can listen to their other episodes here.

One small correction: In the interview I said Tamika’s family history was a little “messed up”. That’s not entirely true. While she nows absolutely nothing of her father’s extended family history, her mother’s family history has been meticulously mapped out by her cousin Ronald.

Had my first rough day at work today… and to be honest, it wasn’t the entire day. Just the last half.

I’d been assigned a pretty big task; to complete several large boards with pockets for an awards presentation. Every so often at Merrick Towle, we or our clients submit work to various award shows. Most often our clients do the “submitting”, but we put the materials together for the presentation. There were several components to this particular job; 3 Letramax Illustration boards mounted with images and pockets, 2 CDs with labels, and a set of inserts and a spine for a display book.

The worst of it is, I felt honored that my boss (Dinorah Coton) had trusted me with the job, so I tried really hard to pull it off. Kelli Mcnamara is one of the nicest Account Executives, and this was her job. She was extremely patient and forgiving too.

I’m not the best with comps and cutting stuff. I haven’t done any since college. But Dinorah and Patrick Physioc (her right hand man) have been very patient with me and have given me quite a number of jobs requiring comping to get me back in practice.
And to be honest, I’d been doing pretty well. I’d put together several brochures (we make mockups that look like the finished printed piece) and boards (mounted examples to show the client) and had done pretty well. Not perfect; I had to redo a WHOLE bunch of them… but once I figured out how it was done I was pretty good.

Not so with this project.

To begin with, the pockets were pretty complicated.
First, you start out with a the board.
You place whatever you want to put in the pocket (in my case, brochures) on the board exactly where you want it, and with a pencil you mark the bottom corners, giving about 1/16th of an inch of room (so it’s not too tight).
Then you measure a few inches up vertically from those marks and make two more marks. This will be the top of the pocket.
You then use these 4 marks to cut out a tab in the shape of the letter U, connecting the points with 3 cuts. This part is REALLY really hard, and is where I kept messing up. I’m so out of practice that every other cut I make isn’t as straight as the one before, and it takes maybe 6 or 7 cuts to get all the way through the Illustration board.
After that, you cut a piece of transparency plastic that is larger than your pocket, and lay it on the back of the board. Lifting up on the cut, you pry up the bottom of the tab, and slip the plastic inbetween the board and the tab. This way, from the front, it looks like you have filled up the U with the plastic.
The plastic on the back is then folded over in on itself, and you put tape down to cover the cracks.
You can then slide the material into the pocket on the front.

All in all, it doesn’t seem like much, but remember, I had to do three of them. At least, I was supposed to. Patrick ended up picking up each component of the project as I continually messed up.
After I got through the first (successful) pocket, it was so late in the day that Dinorah suggested Patrick doing the rest.
Then, as I worked on the book, nearly every linked image in it (about 80% of them) were missing; moved to different folders. So for each one, I had to search for them and link them back up in order to fix it. And I got so caught up in doing that, however, that I forgot to add three new pages that Kelli had asked me to put in. Once it was finally ready, the file was so bulky that it crashed my computer, and every other computer I tried to print it from.
Even the CD labels, something so simple, gave me trouble. For some reason I could not figure out how to get them to print correctly on the label sheets… and then when they finally did, the words didn’t fit on it, and Patrick had to re-do the whole thing.

I was very ashamed. Because of all this, we missed the courier and Dinorah had to hand deliver part of it.
I felt terrible about it.

Bob Henninger, our IT guru, swung by my desk as I was packing up, and I lamented my troubles to him.
“Well,” he growled, “Ya learned somthin’ NEW didn’t cha? That’s wot’s important…”
I nodded.
“Well then, ask Dinorah to give you more pocket boards.”
I looked up in surprise. “More.”
“@#$% yeah, more. Ya gotta get yer practice up. You wanna make her proud? Do more of it! Ev’rybody’s gonna hava rough day. You’ll be alright.”
I nodded.

Tamika cheered me up even more on the ride home.
I think I will ask for more…

Good morning, everyone!

My ride home from work the other morning was interesting.
For those of you who don’t live in the Maryland area, we got dumped on last week. About a half a foot of wet, sticky snow dropped on us, and by the time I got out of work at 6, it covered everything. Streetlights were out (though Merrick Towle still had power).
I heaved the snow off the car, and sloshed through the streets. It was dark out, but thick flakes still smashed themselves against the windshield. Everyone moved at a snails pace.

Once I got on 95, the speed picked up a bit… I was cruising along happily when all of a sudden the wipers stopped mid-stroke. Trucks whizzed by me, spraying slush all over the car. I hit my flashers and coasted to a stop on the side of the road.

Checking one’s wipers, on a 4-lane highway, in the middle of a storm during a traffic jam isn’t fun.
I cleared the chunks of snow that had slid down from my roof, and moved the wipers. They swung freely. As much as I had hoped that this was simply a blow fuse, I had a sneaking suspicion that the belt (hopefully the belt, and not a gear or something) had snapped.
I slid the chunks of snow that had cascaded off the roof off the windshield and got back in.

It was like driving with a frosted bathroom window as a windshield. I turned on the heat full blast in hopes of melting the snow. Rivulets of water poured down the window, occasionally providing momentary clarity. I bobbed my head around, trying to see as well as I could, and settled down into the slow lane. I must have looked like a nut, bobbing my head to Marketplace on NPR!

All of a sudden, some obnoxious individual in a truly massive GMC cuts off the person who was riding at a safe distance behind me. Within minutes, said individual decides that I am driving too slow (even though I both had someone in front of me AND we were keeping pace with traffic). In order to encourage me to drive faster, the fool decides it’s necessary to flash their hi-beams at me, momentarily blinding me.
I ignored them, and continued driving with a safe space in between me and the car in front of me.
The GMC’s engine roared, they turned on their hi-beams permanently, blew their horn, and crouched so close to my back bumper that I could no longer see their grill.

At this point, I had had quite enough. We were only going 20 miles an hour. There was no reason for this person to do this, and frankly, if they did something additionally stupid, they would hit me.
I quietly let my foot off he gas, pushed in the clutch, and slid the car into neutral.
I coasted. Slower, slower, slower… all the way to a complete stop, in the middle of the snow strewn 4-lane highway.
The GMC held down their horn in frustration, having no other choice but to stop with me.

Cars (including the poor bloke that the GMC had cut off) quickly passed us both, grinning and laughing at us.
After about 3 or 4 minutes of torturing the bully, I put myself back into gear and slowly started up again. They roared past the first chance they got, but I noticed they kept their distance from tailgating the other cars. 🙂

It’s about 1:30 AM, the day after Thanksgiving. I’m sitting at my parents-in-law’s (that sounds a wee bit weird) dining room table. It’s fiercely cold outside; the wind is beating against the western side of the house, sending needles of icy air into the back of my neck where the windowpane is.

Somewhere, huddled in their cars with the heaters on and trying to not freeze or succumb to carbon-monoxide poising, are hundreds and hundreds of people waiting for the 3am opening of stores to begin Black Friday shopping.
And I really can’t say too much about them, because Mrs. Pinkney is out there among them; camped outside of a Boscov’s.
I am glad I’m inside, though.
I don’t think the idea of Black Friday is going to last. I mean, I don’t think there are many in my generation that are going to continue the tradition. Not if they have a computer.
I’ve done the bulk of my shopping already, and gifts from as far as the UK and Australia are wrapped, padded, and marching along freight routes to my mailbox. I did pretty well too; I know no matter how early I could get up on a brisk Friday morning, I wouldn’t find the deals like the ones I already got. Black Friday is doomed.

Nya is fine, since I know all of you want to know. Almost a month old, she’s learning to drive me and her mother quite nuts; but so far it’s been nothing we can’t handle.
Not to say it hasn’t been tough; believe me. I am now convinced the only reason humans produce more offspring after their first is that there must be some sort of collective hypnotic amnesia that comes from a baby’s coo.
Nya is recognizing us even more than she did before… and my favourite part; I can make her laugh.
I tell you, it was a bit frustrating at first… if the child was changed, fed, and burped and STILL screaming, there really wasn’t anything I could do. That kind of helplessness I think has driven the both Tamika and I to close insanity.
And I consider myself pretty good with kids, too. Since I was a teenager, I always had a ball taking care kids. I had the robot game, the sound game, and fortunately had a kind of mischievous air that makes everything a forbidden adventure (even if it’s just cleaning the kitchen).
But this was different. Nothing I seemed to do affected the child. Nothing. I made funny faces. She screamed. I bonked myself on the head. She screamed. I made raspberries on her tummy. She screamed. There is nothing in the world that makes anyone feel more like dirt than the perceived scorn of a baby.

But now. Now, she knows who I am. She knows my voice, she smiles at me when I honk her nose, she likes it when I sing to her and read “Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel”, and she laughs a really squeaky barely-audible-laugh when I gasp as I change her daiper.
She still screams sometimes. But I love her.

Tamika is doing good too, because that’s your second question. She’s taken on a particularly tough toll with her body changing, her schedule messed up, and not being able to get enough sleep. But she’s been strong, and she’s working really hard. She’s going back to work pretty soon, and trying to prepare herself for that. I’ve been trying to just let her do whatever she wants, and not stay on my schedule. So, she’s been sleeping and eating whenever she wants.

-yawn-

That’s pretty much the update. The job has been awesome, and is still awesome. I’ll post some stuff that I’ve been working on with them later.

Gnight!