teresa

I have a few ideas for blog posts (and have a few to make up to meet my personal quota) although rather than running them all together I think I will seperate them into topics. My first is an extension of something I am sure I have blogged about before which is the funny things that Elliott and I say to each other. The first time we realized it was with “I am just saying”. And I am pretty sure Krista and Joey use this same string as well. This is typically used while in an argument, when getting in the last word, or your side of the story. An effective way to append your side of the story is with “I am just saying”. To me it means, this is what I am saying, I believe it is right, I believe you are wrong, although I will let you continue to be wrong as long as you acknowledge what I am saying.
The other day though I discovered a new one which inspired Elliott to laugh out loud at me, effectively ruining our argument. I can’t now remember what we were arguing about. I think it was something to the effect of Elliott questioning (or at least that was my perspective) something I was doing and responded yes, “is that ok with you?” So “is that ok with you” has become an inside way to diffuse a situation. I think this a perfect way to go back to that teenage attitude of why are you intruding on my business and asking for approval when you know you neither need it or want it.
What are your funny sayings?

The last few weeks have been rather interesting. The day before leaving for our 1 year anniversary weekend I said out loud to my Vistage group what I had been working to internalize for awhile. And when I said it they looked at me like I was crazy. Why wasn’t I doing more to find answers, to take corrective action, to ensure the future of my job and even bigger the company? I have lots of reasons (maybe excuses) as to why and at this point those don’t matter.

I tried not to think much about it over the weekend although I did. And Elliott and I talked about what would happen if we lost our jobs. Or if one of us lost our job.  When we returned I eventually found out from my usual source that the straw holding the whole thing together was broken. At that point I understood that drastic measures would have to be taken, although at that time I still couldn’t understand how drastic.

It was not until the next week until we started to understand how drastic and even at that point the information we got was spotty and vague at best. I didn’t fight for a chance to stay and ‘they’ were not inspired to go out of their way to find a way for either of us to stay. I am still not sure why although I believe as many have told me already, it was just meant to be this way.

Elliott and I feel like we went out of our way to leave things as tidy as we could. We undid 2 years in about 3 days. We purged, recycled and organized. It may not have looked that organized although good luck finding someone else to work so hard to be let go without ever even really being told they were being let go. Unfortunately it was my source who provided the most honest, helpful and timely information, a list of “the survivors” via email on Tuesday (I think), Thursday would be the day. It turns out Wednesday should have been the day although hindsight is always better.  The news spread differently than ‘they’ had planned.

We unfortunately missed the farewell speech, which meant we were missing some closure. Although I think we also missed the tears. I think having information trickle in gave us the opportunity to absorb the idea. Not everyone else had that chance. One coworker who was also let go called crying to say goodbye. I joked later with one of “lucky” ones to stay to tell everyone else to please not call crying, she didn’t think it was funny. We have not yet hit a phase that has been sad enough to cry about the situation… at least about our situation. The saddest part is the number of people that were effected, and also the unraveling of years of work by the founders and others to build something they and we believed in, to have it come undone and so quickly.

I think the way to process with and deal with something like this is to look for the lessons learned. So far I have these. Involving families with business complicates everything. When times are good, it may not be an issue. Although when times are tough it may keep you from being flexible. Elliott and I hope not to work together when the next doors open, although there is chance we may not heed our own advice, who knows. For our family specifically I think we need a little more redundancy. Also I think the entanglement of the business owners and their personal finances significantly complicated the matter and I think made the company less nimble.  Also, don’t count on credit, in life or in business. Metrics are key, track leading indicators, have a strong grasp of the trends and respond accordingly. Have a nest egg to cover expenses when times are slow, so that you can stay in business comfortably and position yourself to be around for the upturn.  Those are the biggies for now.

So now I am working on my resume and my tan.  Working my network and looking for the answer to what I want to be when I grow up, or at least for the next chapter.  I don’t know if I ever would have left that company, although now given the chance to look for something new I chose to be grateful for the chance to relax, reevaluate, regroup.

I found this cleaning up some old folders.  I submitted it for a poetry contest at work a while back, I didn’t win.  Thought this would be a good place to capture it.

I wondered why, I wandered far

Then I stumbled on my car

I thought for a bit

Then opened it

And sat and slouched and sighed

I turned the key

Hopefully

It coughed and gasped then started

Is the only thing that rhymes farted?

Well that stinks

Off I went into the night

Like a solar landscape light

Strong at first

Yet undoubtfully cursed

To fade away

We celebrated our one year anniversary last weekend in Mendocino.  We are slowly ticking through the Bay Area Backroads deck of cards with things to do that we bought nearly 2 years ago when we moved here.  Mendocino is the New England of the West Coast, or that’s what they say at least.  The weather was perfect, overcast mostly, although not hot or not cold, just nice.  We had some beach time although not much, mostly we ate, took pictures, had massages, and ate more.

We found a really cool chapel (non denominational) in Sea Ranch on our drive up.  It was one of our best random finds yet.  These are my favorite parts of a trip particularly a road trip, spotting something from the road and checking it out rather than seeking out something you read about in a magazine or something, random finds are just almost always more rewarding.





Mendocino has lots of artists and art so we went to a gallery actually originally in search of a restroom although it turned out to be fun and they had lots of these tall back chairs.  We were going to take a picture of everyone we found although then our battery died and that idea lost steam.

I don’t know what got into us although on the trip we also took more pictures using the macro function than I think we realized.  We went to a botanical garden which is where most of that happened, if anyone ever wants a picture of a flower we have you covered.

Other than that we went to a lighthouse, had a great dinner, and we took the long way home – we love road trips.

On a side note, this weekend I am still recovering from our Monica Margarita evening Friday night.  Monica shared a margarita recipe with me forever ago that I had always wanted to try and we did Friday night.  Its equal parts limeade, corona and tequila or at least that’s how we made it.  I think there’s a chance its supposed to be one limeade, one limeade tin worth of tequila and then an entire corona, oh and ice.  Although we had to have half it for our little party so we did just one half tin of each, pretty yummy.

Oh and I got a new bathing suit this weekend which always inspires a diet, good thing we have 9 miles to log today!  Our last run was not very successful although I expect we will get all the way through nicely today.

Elliott ablidged and rather than going home after a great dinner last night, Friday night, we went to the new Buffalo Wild Wings in Dublin.  Let me say again though how great dinner was.  Elliott picked the place and he did a fab job finding just the perfect spot, over looking the bay on the Oakland side, and fit my craving for a burger and a beer.  It was a tad chilly although we had a nice dinner.  We siliently saluted the crewers if thats what you call them rowing in the bay as we relaxed our week away.

Then on the way home we decided why not extend the fun.  We went to Buffalo Wild Wings which was busier than an atm on pay day.  We were lucky to find a seat at the bar.  We ordered two cold ones and eventually I asked the guys next to us what the blue Electric Bingo Dauber type machines were that they had.  They said it was a trivia game and that we should play.  I quickly explained that I was terrible at trivia, I actually fundamentally hate Trivial Pursuit and would chose only to play the kiddie version if forced.  Eventually though we decided to play, I was inspired by Dave and Tank who continually placed in the top 5 on the reader board displayed above the bar.

I was unaware of this new bar trend, the company which provided the one we played was buzztime.  I sucked as expected and Elliott kicked butt, which figures.  Although it was fun.  We will difinetely go back and I think it would be fun to go with a group, so we will see if we can rally a few people to go with us, otherwise we will just make new friends if only temporarily like Dave, Tank, and King who sat on the other side of Elliott and killed it, she was the winner the game before we left.