The Big Meeting

So as you probably already know, the purpose of my trip to Denmark was work related.  I've been writing a document to help standardize all of the company's installation guides since the beginning of the year and this trip was my chance to present it to the rest of the Technical Communications (or TechCom) team.  Speaking of the team, let me introduce them:

Back row (L-R): Me, Brian, Dan (who is mostly hidden), and Steen.

Middle row (L-R): Henning, Joanna, Berit, and Marianne.

Front row (L-R): Irene, Ritt, Angela, and Mia.

Brian is from the UK and lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare.  Dan (which is not short for anything) and Steen are in an organization that builds and sails viking replica ships.  I didn't learn much about Henning, but he offered more helpful feedback than anyone else.  Joanna is from Poland and lives there with her German husband.  Berit has traveled all over the world and loves to talk about her experiences.  Marianne smokes electronic cigarettes (she and I didn't interact a lot, but she seemed nice enough).  Irene likes Danish-style licorice candy, which she claims is stronger than any other kind of licorice -- based on what she shared with the group, she may be right.  Ritt likes to go for runs on the beach with her husband when the weather permits.  Angela is from Italy and had the poorest English skills of anyone in the group, but she was the only one to point out to me that a dessert we were eating contained alcohol, which I really appreciated.  Mia, the manager that coordinated the meeting, told me that when she and her family visited the US a couple of years ago, they enjoyed the National Parks and "all the nature" more than anything else.

In addition to different personalities, everyone has different roles within the company --  I believe I'm the only one with a background in writing.  So when we went over the Installation Guide Standard, there were a lot of opinions about what to keep, what to remove, and what to change.  In fact, I was genuinely surprised the first time everyone agreed with what I had written and had no comments to make.  The document that I presented is only twenty pages long, but it took us over four hours to finish reviewing it.  One thing I can say for this team is that they're thorough.  I took meticulous notes and I'm in the process of editing the Standard to send out for everyone's approval.  Ultimately, most of the Standard survived without any change: I'd estimate that only about a third of the text will be changed from the first draft.

This was my first important meeting with people that do the same kind of work for Danfoss as I do and I think it went well.  While we took a long time to review what I had written, the impression I had was that everyone respected what I had done and was taking it seriously.  I felt intimidated when I found out that I was going to Denmark, but it all worked out as well and I'm really glad I got to go.

The Beginning ≠ the End

Fast and testimony meeting is always a bit of a gamble: an open mic with the invitation to come forward and share sometimes results in someone being inappropriate.  Sometimes the one being inappropriate is a child or a new member and sometimes its an "old-timer."

Yesterday, after the Bishop bore a lovely testimony, an older member of the ward -- "older" referring to both his physical age and the length of time he's been in the ward -- got up and scolded the congregation for not taking the gospel seriously.  At one point he even shouted into the microphone "DO NOT TAKE THE GOSPEL FOR GRANTED!"  I don't know what he's experienced that gives him this particular impression.  My immediate thought was "This is the wrong place for this sort of thing" (the first rule of technical writing is "write for your audience," which implies that you know your audience; he did not know his audience).  It was jarring and an inappropriate use of the mic and time.

Thankfully, the rest of the testimonies that followed were positive and uplifting.  Not only that, but the rest of the day was, too.  I not only finished my meetings at church, but I also went on exchanges with the missionary Elders and attended Stake Priesthood meeting.  I got in a lot of church, is what I'm saying.

While the day started off weird, I'm happy that I didn't allow it mar the rest of what turned out to be a very good day.

Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

I want you to do something for me.  Find a dollar bill, the denomination is unimportant.  Got it?  Okay, look at it with the portrait facing up.  Now, fold the bill in half so that the long edge is shortened.  Do that same fold again, so that the bill is its normal height but only a quarter its length.  Now look at the folded bill and imagine a brown wolf spider about that size, only the legs half off of the edges.  That's what I found in my apartment Monday morning.

[Pause for screaming and/or skin-crawling to subside]

I got up earlier than usual on Monday so I could go into the office and teleconference with the other technical writers in Denmark.  However, I was also expecting maintenance to come by to repair a busted closet, so I decided to tidy up a bit.  I'd kept my room mostly in order, but I had some jeans on the floor that I needed to fold and put in the dresser.  I picked up the jeans and saw the wolf spider on the floor.  I immediately dropped the clothes and shook my arms and legs -- not because I wanted to make sure I didn't have a spider on me, but because I had an extreme case of the willies.

I said a quick prayer and decided to suck it up with the hose of the vacuum.  Once the vacuum was set up, I attached the wand so I didn't have to get any closer than necessary.  I tried to suck the spider up, but it walked away a little, apparently only annoyed.  I was already feeling anxious, but after a failed attempt at eliminating my foe, my anxiety turned into panic.  The problem with finding arachnids on carpet is that it's really hard to smash them.  When I was in Oklahoma, Allison and I found two live scorpions in our apartment, both on the carpet.  I smashed the first with a hardcover textbook, but it took six or seven really hard whacks to kill it.  Allison sucked up the other one with the vacuum, which is probably why I thought to use that tactic again.  (In case you're wondering, I'll take scorpions over spiders any day.)

I said another prayer, this one while stuttering, and felt prompted to use the vacuum again, but this time I used the spinning brush.  The spider hadn't moved since the last attempt, but I was still freaking out.  I psyched myself up and quickly ran it over with the vacuum.  Well, I tried to run it over.  What ended up happening was I shoved the spider against the baseboard and smashed it.  Not what I was going for, but I'll take it.  However, the spider still wasn't dead!  I had busted it up pretty bad, but it was still trying to hobble away.  I switched back to the hose (and wand!) and sucked up the half-dead spider.  With the spider finally dispatched, I relaxed and let out a quick scream.

This was not the first spider I've found in my new apartment, but it is the first one that didn't spin a web.  Spiders with webs, while I don't like them, are pretty harmless.  And yes, I know that the only poisonous spider in Maryland, the black widow, spins a web.  I'm not talking about physically harmless but psychologically harmless.  If the spider is a spinner, it's going to hang out in the corner and leave me alone.  Wolf spiders don't spin and can get ridiculously big.  That makes it tough for a man who, for the most part, has conquered his arachnophobia.  I've called the apartment manager about the problem to see if we can figure something out because three-inch (plus!) long wolf spiders are not acceptable.

A Small Change

Hello, dear reader.  You may have noticed that you had to login in order to access the blog.  Unfortunately, I have to protect myself.

You see, divorce is a complicated mess of fighting and paranoia.  I don't think there's anything on this blog that can be used against me, but just in case, I'm making it private for now, as a precaution.

This blog is important to me and it's important to many of you, so I don't want to take it down, even temporarily, but I also don't want my words used against me.  So, here we are, requiring a login just to read about what weird song I like or what recipe I made.  Hopefully, this lockdown will only last a few weeks.

Lost Airtime

I suffer from a form of sleep apnea where my brain gets lazy and forgets to tell my body to breathe.  It's weird, since occasionally I'll wake up and realize that I need to inhale, but for the most part it just means that my sleep is not very restful.

In an attempt to sleep better, I recently tried listening to an audio-only hypnosis session.  I've tried being hypnotized in the past, but I've never been able to fully achieve "trance," but it's been a while so I thought I'd try again.  This time, I was able to become very relaxed and there were a few times that I nearly went under, but each time I stopped breathing.  Not breathing is distracting, to say the least, so I woke up enough to breathe, which prevented me from enjoying the full experience.  It was still relaxing and I easily fell asleep afterwards, but I was aware of what was going on the whole time.

As far as methods to sleep better go, hypnosis is probably a fine one, but only if you remember to breathe.

Cookie O'Lantern

When I added the chocolate chips to the pumpkin cookies, I wanted them to look like tiny pumpkins with faces carved into them, but because all the other ingredients dulled the bright orange of the pumpkin mash, they ended up looking more like disembodied snowman heads made out of human skin.

Happy Halloween!