Hello, Arcata

Graduating is great. I have a piece of paper that validates me as an adult. I also got to go on a trip; a return to a place I once called home: Arcata, CA.

I left the small city of hills and forest for Boise, ID to be with my now-husband Sam. As much as I love the City of Trees, leaving Arcata left a small hole in my heart. I've missed the giant trees and the salt in the air. Taking the ocean out of my life was difficult. So, graduation gift: travel to the coast.

So, my husband and I packed up the truck full of clothes and toys, gently shoved our two year old in his seat, and embarked on a projected 13 hour long road trip. A potty training 2 year old and 13 hours in the car? Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it?

(Spoiler: we were two hours off on our expected travel time. The trip, however, really was pretty darn great. On the road at 6:30 am and only a half an hour behind schedule.)

A fairly grueling 5.5 hours to Winnemucca, and we stopped for lunch. There's a lovely park by a museum that we've stopped at on road trips before the kid. We thought it would be a pretty good place to stop with. The park was empty when we arrived, but quickly populated by a family with a van and children of all ages and an old man with a dog and cigarettes. We ate our lunch accompanied by the perfume of nicotine and the screams of children other than our own, took the kid to the playground, loaded up, and got back on the road.

Next stop: Fernley, just before heading north again to Susanville. Jack-in-the-Box treated us fairly well with clean restrooms, hot food, and data service. We downloaded more music. The middle of nowhere had gotten awfully dull with only three play lists. There's the naivete of the modern world: you expect cell service and data, but, it just doesn't always happen.

More gas in Susanville, a quick stretch of the legs, and back on the road. It wasn't until here that the two year old started getting fed up with the drive. Toys and cows and nori snacks satiated him though. And we pushed on.

Subway in Redding and then back on the road. The husband had driven the entire time thus far. His shoulder was done for and his mind shot. I took the wheel to go up and over the last four hills.

Okay, they're not hills so much as they are mountains. An older, narrow mountain road with switchbacks and steep grades. I'd driven it countless times when I was younger and going to HSU. Day, night, sleet, snow, rain, and even sun. Never in a car as nice as my husband's Dodge Dakota. I had a '78 Volkswagon Westfalia (mine was brown and much more beat up) and an '87 Honda Civic when I drove the 299 before. Up and over Buckhorn, the biggest hill, and the dirt started to change a bit. It lost some of the red and started gaining the darker, more familiar color of Humboldt County. Whiskeytown is a slow drive. Though the miles are few, they last forever. Oregon Mountain is smaller and much more manageable than the notorious Buckhorn. And here the scent hit me. Pine resin started disappearing and the earth started taking over. I looked at my husband and said, "It smells like home."

Berry Summit is next to nothing. It's Lord Ellis that I hate. That last climb up is completed with a peak at the ocean and the full earth, ocean, and mold Humboldt County perfume, and followed by a slope down with switch back and hard turns that curve around the mountain every which way. A bit much for this coastal girl, but with a huge reward at the end. A place where limits are stretched and comfort is found. A place with fog-ripened tomatoes and home grown cheese around every corner. A place where the trees are taller than the sky and the people say hello.

Hello, Arcata. It's been a while.

Gamification

Gamification is all the rage. We all did it back in school. Teachers had giant plastic things they'd hang on a white board with pockets that held cards and we played Jeopardy! (or something like it) as a study aid. The entire class got involved all at once, we all helped each other out and reviewed material, and, somehow, it stuck a little bit better.

Now that I've grown up, not much has changed.

Okay, quite a bit has changed. I'm now the one charged with creating the game. And the object is no longer trying to get material to sink in for the purpose of passing a test. Most recently, it was all about highlighting how actions in business have direct consequences.

It all comes back to time entry. Time isn't entered, expenses aren't entered, but money still flows out the door and expenses have to be paid. I was charged with creating a game to show this. Enter 1,000 blank white cards. Or, as I like to call it, 10,000 blank white cards because we start out with all the blank white cards when starting a round of this game.

The last time I played this game was back in 2009. It was just a few nights before my wedding. And we had all had a bit too much tequila. The game was less focused on generating something fun to play later and more focused on stupid things you can get drunk people to do. Eventually, we all needed burritos and gave up on the game.

This gamification at the office would have to go much differently.

So, I went to my best friend, the spread sheet. I set up situations that let to consequences and rewards. A deck of 150 or so cards, a pile of fake money (yes, I cut out 1,000 fake $100 bills with a paper cutter on the weekend following the Fourth of July this year), and a few test plays later, and the game was born.

I have to admit, the game was a bit of a flop. It ran longer than I had wanted, and game play worked much different with a large group of people than it did for my husband and I. But, it all stuck. Money flew off the table on to the floor and was no longer available in the game. Actions had consequences, and my co-workers learned. I think. I hope.

More importantly, I learned. Test play has to happen with the number of people the game is intended for for it to work. Game play has to be let go and allowed to happen rather than discussing every point of the game itself. Sure, I'll try it again in a heart beat. I never knew the nerdy side of me that plays games might enjoy making one up from scratch. Next time, more play testing, and pre-made widgets.

Happy gaming!

Learning

It's kind if silly, but I feel I must start this by saying that I hate gerunds, or verbs made nouns by adding -ing to them. They always feel lost. Never-the-less, this post is indeed about learning. Not education, but learning.

Rather, he doesn't ever slow down until he's so tired he just has to stop. I'm constantly amazed by his energy levels. And he's not the first kid to have shown me energy output of epic proportions. What truly amazes me though is he never has this urge that many adults do; an urge to get away from everyone and everything for a while just for the purpose of resting. 

He's also always learning. Whether it's about how he can move and twist and run and climb or it's about the specific properties of chalk and what happen when it's thrown on the concrete with some amount of force, the gears in his head are always turning. Everything is till so new to him that even repeated experiences are learning experiences.

I imagine those gears don't stop when he goes to sleep either.

A while back, on a day when I was feeling particularly exhausted, a post from Ron Shaich, CEO and founder of Panera, popped up in my LinkedIn news feed. The title, If You're Learning, You'll Never Need to Recharge, was intriguing, and I needed a break for a minute. I put aside the numbers I was inputting in to a database and read the article. It was something of a life changing moment for me; one of those moments when everything just falls in to place. The title of the article says everything. The gist of it: he goes on to say that despite running around the country constantly, he doesn't ever feel the need to re-charge; to stop and escape from everything for a time. He suggests it's because he constantly learns new lessons and takes on new challenges.

I think he must have taken a lesson from a child.

I also think he's right.

I'm always happiest when I have a new puzzle in front of me, especially if it's a puzzle I've never solved before, but even if it's similar, but not a carbon-copy to, one that I've already mastered, I'm a pretty darn happy girl. Learning keeps me going. Trying more, better, bigger things recharges my batteries and keeps me doing what I love and what I have to do well.

Charge forth, I say, and take over the world one new challenge at a time. Do what I did yesterday, but do it better today. Do something new today, so that I can learn and do it better tomorrow. I can never know too much. 

What's for Dinner?

Tonight I was in the kitchen for the second night in a row. This is a rare treat I made a lovely alfredo sauce with Italian sausage from the Boise Coop. I added in a cheese rind for extra creaminess. The whole dinner cost maybe 10 bucks. And there's delicious delicious leftovers.

A note on cheese rinds: these little pieces of wonder are amazing. I find them in packs of two, usually from Parmesan, for about 2 bucks a bundle. Add them to cream sauces, soups, risotto, anything creamy and savory that needs to simmer on direct heat for a while, and your food immediately becomes richer, for almost no money.

On the menu this week:
Several stir frys, some vegetarian, some with leftover chicken (thank you Bountiful Baskets for the Asian veggie pack)
Skirt steak, probably with a chimichurri sauce
Salad before the husband goes to Kung Fu
Popcorn. With nutritional yeast. The husband is making it now.
Pineapple upside down cake for the little one's birthday.

Stats

I'm a writer, yes. I like to manipulate words. But, I also manipulate numbers. More often than not, I'm paid for my ability to manipulate numbers, not words. Thus, I find things like statics very interesting, and get distracted by them.

I have more Germans reading this than anyone else. Not that that says much as not very many people read this, and it doesn't help that I was on hiatus for two years. All of which are interesting, at least to me.

What will the stats look like tomorrow?

Who am I?

Graduation season has come and gone. Recent graduates either have jobs or have settled back in to their parents’ basements. Regardless, they’re ready to go out in to the real world.

This year, I’ve joined those graduates. After eleven long years, I’m fully validated as an individual ready to conquer life.

Stop. Look left. Look right. But there’s not a street to cross. There’s nothing there. There’s no cars, no trees, no dogs peeing on fire hydrants. Just two tunnels with big, open possibilities on either side. Or maybe they converge at the end.

I spent my eleven year long journey to holding a Bachelors of Arts in English developing an identity in offices across two states. The only time I didn’t hold a “real” job was my first semester as a college freshman. After that, it was classic skirts and pinstripe pants and cardigans and casual Fridays. It’s a life so many college graduates just can’t figure out how to slip in to after four years of pajamas and band t-shirts being acceptable every day. Not to mention the work ethic and inability to always just make it up later.

How, then, is it that I’m sitting here with a degree in my hand and yet I’m still lost? I have the validation from an institution coupled with the experience and work ethic of an accomplished professional. This should be easy, right?

Of course it’s not. It’s hard. And, it’s harder for me because I’ve spent the last eleven years developing two identities.

School let me develop one identity alongside a passion: reading and writing and writing about reading and writing. Classes taught me to develop characters on paper and analyze their actions to discover a deeper meaning about the world. It taught me why i comes before e except after c and the difference between using and not using the Oxford comma. I learned to navigate bureaucracy and to not stop asking for help until I received the help that I needed, not just the help others wanted to give. I learned perseverance and that work can indeed be fun.

But school wasn’t the only part of my eleven year long excursion to receiving a diploma. I worked the entire time to support myself and my family. I worked in a position completely unrelated to  my degree (accounting) and put numbers in columns and told people how much money to pay the government and when they needed to do it. I moved to the private sector and did the same thing, this time in my industry, at a bookstore, for a year and a half before being laid off. Six months later, I found myself once again keeping books, this time for an advertising agency in Nampa, Idaho.

But, while my job title has always indicated a deep level of familiarity with which numbers should go in which columns, my duties have always encompassed more. My attention to detail and my understanding of the English language has lead to me doing quite a bit of copyediting and even some copywriting. Everything from advertising copy and press releases to emails to the boss have been scrutinized by my eye for not just periods and commas but also for subtler meaning and understanding, and ensuring the message conveys the totality of the writer’s intent. I’ve spent hours preparing and executing trainings of all varieties, from learning a system and becoming an expert to sharing my knowledge and expertise with numbers and words and everything in between. I’ve done the mundane: answer phones and order supplies and make copies. I’ve done the complex: build and re-build manuals and instructions to stand the test of time.

My title, either work or school, doesn’t even begin to touch on my abilities.

I’ve one one battle: I’ve earned my degree. There’s pictures of it on the internet. Now, it’s time to win the next, and reconcile my two identities fully. Here I go.

What's for Dinner?

A few weeks ago I started posted what was for dinner on Thursday. Why Thursday? Mostly, it was because that night I had made ham pucks and Sam was really excited for them. Now, I figure, why not?

So, tonight is a night for leftovers. We've been eating some really great food all week, and now we need to re-eat some of it. It's hard to cook for two.

To quick-recap the meals we're noshing on: we've recently had a chili and corn bread, a cream of brocolli soup (broccoli +milk +seasoning +chicken stock +slow cooker = awesomeness), and chicken smothered in the last of the mole sauce I made a while ago.