Wordless definitions: Indomitable

They say a picture can say a thousand words; this one says twenty:

"Screw you, motor-obsessed culture! I will run my errands on my bike even if you don't provide bike racks!"

Beat down by acronyms

I'm not going to be posting much over the next two weeks. Next week I'm going to be in Ft. Lauderdale at the AAU Taekwondo National Championships, trying not to vomit competing in sparring and forms with all the other ladies old enough to know better. I'll probably have internet access, but maybe not much free time, between the competing and coaching and cheering my teammates and moving hotels and lying by the pool. I will try to report results as I get them, though.

As for this week, I'm struggling to meet a deadline for a project, one completely different than what I'm used to doing. Give me a biography or a historical essay and I can bury myself in research and come up with something fairly literate. This time, though, I'm writing a biography of a company ... and it's a company that provides IT services, so I have absolutely no background on the subject. I know what VoIP means (voice over internet protocol, that Skype thing), but I keep having to look up dozens of other acronyms: SBX, SIP, LDAP, IVR, CPBA—the list goes on and on. What's worse, half the time I look up the acronym, change the letters into words, and still don't understand what the heck they're talking about.

So if there's nothing new here, it's because I'm either puzzling out acronyms or kicking my sparring bag, trying to be ready for the next two weeks. Hopefully when I return in July, I'll have my life back—unless my editor assigns me another company that loves acronyms.

Zap!

I had a couple of ideas for a blog entry today, and plenty of time to explore one of them, but then ... ZAP! My power went out at about 9:30 am today. And it wasn't just one circuit, but the whole house. I found a flashlight (first try, even) and trudged down to the basement: no breakers tripped. I couldn't tell whether my neighbors had power, as it was so sunny and nice out there didn't need to be lights on. (It turned out at least one was without power, I discovered later.)

I was perplexed. First, I was in the middle of making some goodies for a bake sale, but the oven shut off. I had just started to read my e-mail, but the computer shut off. The TV was on in the background (I like my morning weather), and it made that freaky whiny whirring noise it always makes when it shuts down unexpectedly. What was I going to do? I couldn't bake. I couldn't blog. I couldn't check e-mail. I couldn't work on my current chapter (no hard copy to know where I was). I was planning a trip to the store, so I wrestled with the garage door and managed to get the car out without being crushed. The power was still out when I got back, and that's when I realized it was a message from my next assignment: REVIEW THE RESEARCH!

So I started reading. The power came out around noon, and then it was time to finish baking, eat lunch, check the e-mail, and before I knew it, it was time to go out for the scheduled Humane Society TNR posting I agreed to do. I had planned to write a page, maybe even a couple today. Instead, I have renewed appreciation for the convenience of electricity. And another reminder I should insist that Boy carry a housekey, because he'd have trouble getting in the house without it if the power was out.

Sorry, Lions Fans!

[Takes Official NFL-Licensed Detroit Lions Paper Bag off head]

As I'm sure any of you NFL fans already know, this year my Detroit Lions did what many said could never be done: they finished the season winless, with a record of 0-16. They even made this monumental feat look easy. A couple of times they had a lead going into the fourth quarter, but each time they managed to screw something up and give the game away. Now, you may think this winless season is the fault of the players, the coaching staff (most of whom have been fired), and horrible management of the gladly-departed Matt Millen, but I'm here to confess: it's all my fault.

I wasn't always a Lions fan, of course. I loved Michigan football from the time I was a little girl, but I wasn't really aware of the NFL until 1977, the year I collected team pencils from the vending machine at my middle school. Through careful hoarding of quarters and shrewd trading, I managed to get all 28 teams, even the Baltimore Colts, Los Angeles Rams, St. Louis Cardinals, and Houston Oilers. (I'd hoped to show a picture of my pencils, but they're missing from my school treasures box. I wonder what they'd fetch on eBay.) I didn't really pay attention to the Lions until the 1980 season, when they started with four straight wins and a couple of the players recorded their own version of Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." Of course, the Lions were the ones who eventually bit the dust that season, missing the playoffs by virtue of tiebreaker. Still, they were on my radar, even though I didn't get much chance to watch them, not being the one in control of the clicker.

It was only in the 1990s that I became a faithful follower of the Lions. Even if the team was stinking up the field, you could always watch Barry Sanders, arguably the greatest running back ever. And actually, the 1990s were good for the Lions: they went to the playoffs six times, even though they only won a single playoff game (against the Cowboys, woo hoo!). But then I moved to London and lost track of the team. I ask you, is it coincidence or karma that the year after I left, Barry Sanders surprised the NFL by retiring early and immediately taking a vacation in London? Then, while I still wasn't paying attention, the owners hired a former sports announcer with no executive experience to run the team. Since I returned home in 2002, the Lions have punished me for my neglect by posting a record of 29-83, the worst in the league. It's like they're saying, "Oh, so now you're watching? Well, we'll only win one of every four games."

I'm not sure what I've done now, because owner William Clay Ford refuses to purge the management and seek the best in the NFL to take over the team, as Mike Illitch did with the Tigers after their record-setting 119-loss season in 2003. Three years later the Tigers were in the World Series; I doubt we'll see the Lions anywhere close to the Super Bowl in 2012. Maybe I should've bought a Ford Escape for my last car.

Whew. I'm glad I got that off my chest. Now, how long is it until Draft Day?*

*115 Days, 21 hours, and counting.

You can't go home again...

Okay, so occasionally I like to get paid for my writing. Money is nice, and even better is the sense that someone thinks what I produce is worth something. (Can you tell I've had a few rejections in the past month? Serendipity is so hard to achieve.) Anyway, I'd finished a couple of short biographies for my most regular employer and thought I'd get back to my novel, but I got an e-mail from a former co-worker. They'd turned up short-staffed for a project, and were looking for reliable freelancers to fill in, and would I be interested? It would be writing entries for a project I used to manage. Easy peasy! I used to turn those out in my sleep, practically, so I said lay some of those entries on me.

Well. Things have changed a bit since I first starting working in publishing, some 20 years ago. (20 years! Ack! I can't be that old!) My first year, we compiled entries by cutting and pasting the old ones on a blue sheet of paper and marking them up with updates. Occasionally we used the computer, but there were only three computers for more than 20 people, so we were big on typewriters and proofreaders' marks.

After a couple of years, we all got computers. As we got scanners, we phased out the blue sheets and compiled entries completely on the computer. Great! It's much easier to write an essay on a computer than on a typewriter, even with corrective tape. At first, we'd print out the entries and send them to the typesetter; then we discovered we could save money by sending them electronic files. We used a few codes to indicate italics and subheads, and it was easy to insert them using a find-and-replace program.

Now, by the time I left the company 10 years ago, they had discovered the joys of "leveraging data"—ie, reusing and repackaging it in various products. That meant getting stuff into a database. That meant standardizing formats between products, and giving every single bit of information a coded tag, so we knew what was a birthdate, what was an address, what was a career title, what was a book titles, and so on and so on and so on. When I left, I had actually moved out of the editorial side of the company into technical training, helping editors make the adjustment into using new programs and database structures.

Fun. So what does this have to do with me now? Well, 10 years ago we had freelancers compile the data, but the company did most of the coding. Today, the freelancers (ie, Me), do the coding, too. So in making a list of books, what used to be as simple as:

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed, Hamish Hamilton, 1994.
Tennyson's Gift, Hamish Hamilton, 1996.
Going Loco, Review, 1999.

now looks like this:

[bibcitation][bibcit.composed][title][emphasis n="1"]With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed,[/emphasis][/title] Hamish Hamilton (London, England), [pubdate][year year="1994"][/pubdate].[/bibcit.composed][/bibcitation]
[bibcitation][bibcit.composed][title][emphasis n="1"]Tennyson's Gift,[/emphasis][/title] Hamish Hamilton (London, England), [pubdate][year year="1996"][/pubdate].[/bibcit.composed][/bibcitation]
[bibcitation][bibcit.composed][title][emphasis n="1"]Going Loco,[/emphasis][/title] Review (London, England), [pubdate][year year="1999"][/pubdate].[/bibcit.composed][/bibcitation]

So much for doing these in my sleep, unless it's a state of unconsciousness brought about by continually banging my head on my desk. It might be a while before I get back to my novel.

Some brain required...

... and I was running low on brains yesterday. It should have been simple enough to assemble the new chair and ottoman I bought at Ikea yesterday. (It's purty, ain't it? And comfy.) Heck, there were only four steps. Only six pieces. Only 10 screws. But somehow it didn't turn out that way. I ended up muttering and cursing to myself, ready to strangle the cat if she jumped in the box one more time.

Now, in my defense, it had been a long day. I took Boy to school to pick up his schedule. This required turning in his emergency info, getting his school ID photo taken, paying a deposit for his books, getting his schedule, turning in his internet permission form, paying for his yearbook, paying for school lunch, and picking up his books. (All 15 pounds of them. And notice how much "paying" was involved?) Since he missed orientation, we also walked around the school: finding his locker and making sure the lock worked, locating all his classes, timing how long it took to get from one building to another because he has classes in two buildings. Then we did some school supply shopping, took in a funny movie (thank goodness), grabbed lunch, picked out the chair at IKEA, got his free ice cream, and finally made it home around 3:30.

Not so bad, right? But then I started assembling the ottoman and discovered that the finish I had picked out didn't match the table I already had. I could live with it (eww), or I could go back and exchange the chairs ... and I might as well get it over. So I carefully disassembled the ottoman, tried five times before getting it to fit back in the box, taped it back up, and headed back to Ikea. I sat in the return line for 15 minutes, then got the chair with the right finish. I headed home, realized I needed food for dinner, so I stopped to go shopping. Then I realized I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, but I had to go home to get the receipt.

I get home, put away the groceries, and by now it's after five. There was still half an hour before I had to run out for another errand, so I tried to start assembling the new chair, and couldn't figure out step one. There are two short screws, two washers, and two thingees I can't name that hold screws. But the picture doesn't show the washers in the first step, and I don't see where they go in steps 1-4, and all the other screws are in groups of four. What the ??? I look at helpful instructions, which show this:

Of course, they don't show any phone numbers for me to call. I don't feel like searching for the number, so I stomp around and grumble, stare at the instructions again, and generally feel like this:
Finally, I did what the picture said, and discovered the two extraneous washers actually appeared in step four, in such small pictures I didn't see them before. I got the chair assembled, the dry cleaning fetched, the errands run, and the dinner made. Then I collapsed in my new chair.

But I didn't get the blog updated. Or the latest chapter. I get enough frustration out of writing and the search for publishing that I didn't need any more for that day. Today will be better; a couple hours cuddling kittens at the Humane Society and all the frustration is gone, leaving me ready to write.