Rhonda Bracey: At Random

My  work day started reasonably early, then I had a meeting at 9am with my immediate boss and the new graphic designer. At 11am it was show time! I did a dry run of the presentation I’m doing at the conference in Portland, OR, in two weeks.

There were 20+ in the room, almost all of whom were software developers. Only four were women, including me, and, as far as I know, only one of them was a developer. Software development is still very much a man’s game, at least when it’s associated with the mining industry…

My presentation went over well, which was good seeing as though I’d written it for quite a different audience. I got some insightful questions from the audience, and there were quite a few heads nodding in agreement at what I had to say during the presentation – even a few “See? I told you so” glances across the table. A few people came up to me afterwards or sent me an email saying how much they’d enjoyed it and how they’d got a lot out of it.

And I didn’t run over time, so that was good.

The rest of the day was work – the graphics designer and I spent some time discussing how we could help each other out, and I spent some time with one of the subject matter experts getting details for the Help I’m writing for one of their clients.

Very late in the day, a colleague popped by. She’s one of the top 20 road cyclists in the world and she’s just got back from NZ, and is off again in a few days to compete in Europe. Her goal is to get selected in the Australian team for the Beijing Olympics. Pretty cool!

Tomorrow is my last day in the Brisbane office – I leave on Friday for the US. It’s been good catching up with people whose voices I know and whose faces I rarely see, as well as meeting the new team members who’ve started since I was last here six months ago. And I think the new ones have appreciated putting the face to the name and voice too. I even had a short chat with the CEO, who used to be the big boss of the area I work in and who was responsible for my contract negotiations when I first started.

But I tell you what, I’m glad I work from home. Having to dress for the office every day is a pain!

Forwarded by another friend.

Imagine you’re at a party on the tenth floor. You’ve been drinking… (not that you would) and then you have to visit the bathroom. You open the door….

Now, remember, the floor is just a painted floor!

Kinda takes your breath away, doesn’t it?

Sent to me by a friend—thanks Whitney!

This is an actual letter from an Austin woman sent to American company Proctor and Gamble regarding their feminine products. She really gets rolling after the first paragraph. It’s PC Magazine’s 2007 editors’ choice for best webmail-award-winning letter.

Dear Mr. Thatcher,

I have been a loyal user of your ‘Always’ maxi pads for over 20 years and I appreciate many of their features. Why, without the LeakGuard Core or Dri-Weave absorbency, I’d probably never go horseback riding or salsa dancing, and I’d certainly steer clear of running up and down the beach in tight, white shorts. But my favorite feature has to be your revolutionary Flexi-Wings. Kudos on being the only company smart enough to realize how crucial it is that maxi pads be aerodynamic. I can’t tell you how safe and secure I feel each month knowing there’s a little F-16 in my pants.

Have you ever had a menstrual period, Mr. Thatcher? Ever suffered from the curse’? I’m guessing you haven’t. Well, my time of the month is starting right now. As I type, I can already feel hormonal forces violently surging through my body. Just a few minutes from now, my body will adjust and I’ll be transformed into what my husband likes to call ‘an inbred hillbilly with knife skills.’ Isn’t the human body amazing?

As Brand Manager in the Feminine-Hygiene Division, you’ve no doubt seen quite a bit of research on what exactly happens during your customers monthly visits from ‘Aunt Flo’. Therefore, you must know about the bloating, puffiness, and cramping we endure, and about our intense mood swings, crying jags, and out-of-control behavior. You surely realize it’s a tough time for most women. In fact, only last week, my friend Jennifer fought the violent urge to shove her boyfriend’s testicles into a George Foreman Grill just because he told her he thought Grey’s Anatomy was written by a bunch of drunken chimps, Crazy!

The point is, sir, you of all people must realize that America is just crawling with homicidal maniacs in Capri pants… Which brings me to the reason for my letter. Last month, while in the throes of cramping so painful I wanted to reach inside my body and yank out my uterus, I opened an Always maxi-pad, and there, printed on the adhesive backing, were these words: ‘Have a Happy Period.’

Are you f**king kidding me? What I mean is, does any part of your tiny middle-manager brain really think happiness – actual smiling, laughing happiness is possible during a menstrual period? Did anything mentioned above sound the least bit pleasurable? Well, did it, James? FYI, unless you’re some kind of sick S&M freak girl, there will never be anything ‘happy’ about a day in which you have to jack yourself up on Motrin and Kahlua and lock yourself in your house just so you don’t march down to the local Walgreen’s armed with a hunting rifle and a sketchy plan to end your life in a blaze of glory.

For the love of God, pull your head out, man! If you just have to slap a moronic message on a maxi pad, wouldn’t it make more sense to say something that’s actually pertinent, like ‘Put down the Hammer’ or ‘Vehicular Manslaughter is Wrong’, or are you just picking on us?

Sir, please inform your Accounting Department that, effective immediately, there will be an $8 drop in monthly profits, for I have chosen to take my maxi-pad business elsewhere. And though I will certainly miss your Flex-Wings, I will not for one minute miss your brand of condescending bullsh*t. And that’s a promise I will keep. Always.

Best,

Wendi Aarons
Austin , TX

Back in 2001 I met this lovely technical writer—Gretchen—at a conference in Chicago, and we got reacquainted at some later conferences. We keep in occasional contact and we read each other’s blogs to see what’s going on in our respective lives—hers in upstate New York, mine in Western Australia. Gretchen is a wonderful and eloquent writer, and her blog posts often make me smile. Many make me cry too—tears of joy and of sadness.

Well, she’s done herself proud! Gretchen is also the mother of a Marine serving in Iraq and recently she volunteered to speak at a very special and heartbreaking ceremony…

My words cannot adequately describe this event and its significance, so I’ll introduce Gretchen to you and ask you to read her own words:
http://www.gretchenstahlman.com/blog/2008/02/11/a-golden-moment/

And after you’ve read that, read about her random acts of kindness:
http://www.gretchenstahlman.com/blog/2008/02/05/kissed-by-a-vet/

I feel privileged to know such a kind and compassionate person. Thank you, Gretchen!

We travelled back to Perth last Thursday (Valentine’s Day) for a few days of work (for me) and a bit of time catching up with friends.

Thursday was travelling day, checking in to the accommodation, and getting my hair cut. We went to the Viet Royal in East Perth for dinner, which was just around the corner from where we were staying. The food was good but nothing startling. They were pretty full, and we were lucky to get a table seeing as though it was Valentine’s Day.

Friday I spent at my main client’s Perth office catching up with people and learning new stuff about one of the software products I write the user documentation for. Sad news—one of the main movers in the old company has been ‘relieved of his duties’. Such a shame. Brilliant brain, terrific worker, good guy. They’ll miss his talents for a while as he was the main driver for one of their new products.

My husband spent Friday with friends cruising the Swan Valley tasting wine, beer, chocolate and other goodies, eating at restaurants, and generally have a very relaxing day! Well, someone has to earn the money to pay for these pleasures…
Friday night we went with some friends to the Ten Ten Kitchen in East Victoria Park for one of their great meals. Usual fare: Satay Chicken, Beef Rendang, Salted Chilli Squid, Beef and Black Bean Sauce, Mongolian Lamb and Nasi Goreng. Yum. Yum. We really miss our friends—and the great Asian food we can’t get in Bridgetown. I can cook Asian, but it’s just not the same.

Saturday was spent at a Defensive Driver training course out in Wangara, paid for by my main client (they try to ‘keep’ their staff—and this is one way to do it!). We learnt a bit, but it was mostly reinforcement of driving practises we already did. The last part of the course was an on-road assessment with one of their trainers. My only fault was not looking over my shoulder to check the blind spot. otherwise, my husband and I both got a very good ‘grade’ on the assessment.

The course finished an hour or two earlier than we’d expected, so we headed over to Cannington to get some stuff from Dick Smith’s and to see if there were any decent movies on at Hoyts (we had two free vouchers that expired at the end of February). Nothing on. So we went to The Foundry pub and had a drink and a DELICIOUS gourmet pizza (roast chicken, pumpkin, pesto, chilli, ricotta cheese, capsicum) that was a wonderful combination of sweet, sour, hot and spicy. We gave the movie vouchers away to our waitress as she was very good and anticipated our needs as well as being just the right amount of friendly for a customer service person. After that we met my husband’s brother at his local pub, spent some time with him, then headed back to our accommodation from his place.

Sunday we headed home. There was LOTS of traffic on the Mandurah-Bunbury road heading back to Perth—and an exceptional number of expensive 4WDs (BMW, Volvo, Porsche, Lexus, Mercedes, etc.). I found out today that the Leeuwin Estate concert was on over the weekend, so that would account for them. And the country music festival was on at Boyup Brook too, so that accounts for the more scraggly and rural 4WDs with caravans, tents, and swags!

It was good to get home.

A few weeks ago I wrote about degrees of separation. This next tale is not only about degrees of separation but also coincidences and timing, and how small the world really is.

Let’s step back a few years… Some 30-something years ago I lived downstairs from a guy called A1. Some 20 years ago I shared a house in Perth with an American girl from Minnesota called K. K married A1, though I wasn’t responsible for introducing them to each other. In fact, A1 introduced me to K when she needed somewhere to live and I needed help with the mortgage repayments (back in the heady days of 17% interest rates!). K and A1 have had a couple of kids, still live in Perth, and K and I still get together on occasion for celebrating birthdays etc. though we see each other much less often now that I don’t live in Perth.

So, that sets the scene… Moving on… I have an uncle in the US who lives very close to Newport Beach. I usually spend a few days with him when I go to the US before moving on to wherever I need to be. In fact, I’ll be landing at his place early next month.

Yesterday, K calls me to say “Hi”. In the course of that conversation I find out that K is on her way to the US in March too… and that she’s going to spend time with her work colleague A2 (also from Australia [Tasmania?]) and his family—who live in Newport Beach! Then she tells me that she thinks her step-Mom lives close to there too, which she does.

So, what are the chances? K, A2, and I will all be travelling independently to the US in early March 2008, and all staying with our respective relatives who live within 2 miles of each other! There are some 300 million people in the US, and 30m just in California, plus some 21 million in Australia. But three of us from Australia (Perth, southwest WA, and Tasmania) have connections with three in the US who all live in the same place! How freaky is that?

As it happens, K is arriving 4 days after me and I’ll be almost in San Francisco by then, but it’s pretty freaky nonetheless.

Oh, and as an aside, K has a family vacation house on Lake Champlain in Vermont, where she lives some 6 miles from the only other person I know in Vermont (R)!  The only thing R and K have in common is me. I’m seeing R at the conference I’m attending in Portland, OR…

More Twilight Zone music…

On Sunday we drove over to Lake Towerinning to see our friends race their very fast speed boat. Normally, they’d race at Burswood in Perth, but each year the Speed Boat Association comes to Lake Towerinning (about an hour’s drive from us) and races on this big inland lake in the middle of the wheatbelt. We hadn’t seen our friends for a couple of months, so it was an opportunity to have a day out and say hello. Other than getting sunburnt (I was in the shade ALL day!) it was a pleasant—though hot—day.

One of the neat things that happens on the day is the use of these BIG farm tractors to put the boats into the water and pull them out again. The lake’s banks are very muddy and the lake’s quite shallow, so using a standard 4WD vehicle is a problem. And this year a plane turned up to join the action!

Here are some photos:

More photos… 

So far there aren’t a lot of houses built on the estate where we have our land. As a result, the function centre sits unused for a lot of the time.

One of the ladies—who’s in the process of building with her husband—has kicked off what we hope will become a regular gathering at the function centre. She realised that a lot of the women residents and landowners do some form of craft, so she’s scheduled three Saturday afternoons over the next three months for the ladies to get together and do their craft. The aim is to start forming a community. I think it’s just an excuse to meet each other and have a natter!

The men and children are invited to join us later in the day for a BBQ, tennis, billiards, cards, or whatever, but the afternoon belongs to the women.

The first craft afternoon starts today—in about 20 minutes in fact! My car is loaded with my sewing machine, some of my fabric stash, cutting board and tools, etc. I hope to make some more progress on the dragonfly quilt (more leaves, possibly tendrils), and if I get that done, then I’ve got fabric to cut for the next project whirling away in my head!

Here’s hoping the afternoon is a success. Those of us who do turn up will have a great time anyway!

Update: Three turned up… a spinner and two quilters. When husbands joined us for the BBQ, there were five. Still, it’s a start. It did clash with the date of the monthly garden group gathering, which meant that some who may have attended didn’t because they were off with the garden group, so our organiser may change the date. I can’t make the next one anyway as I’ll be away.

The things you learn… The other day I walked past the TV and heard someone say that the “V” in Morse code was the same as the opening bar in Beethoven’s 5th symphony! ta-ta-ta-daaaaa (dot, dot, dot, dash)

Well, who’da thought?? So I checked it out on the internet, and sure enough it’s correct. Seems it was used a lot in WWII after victory.

So why did this ‘fact’ take my attention? Well, V in Roman numerals is five, and Beethoven’s symphony is the fifth. And the Morse code sequence is the same as the opening bar of the 5th! I thought that was pretty clever. I’m assuming someone (Samuel Morse?) made a conscious decision to use that sequence. But if they didn’t, I’d call it a serendipitous moment!!