Almost Famous

These things write themselves now....

Ides of Snow Day

"It is getting dark and time he drew to a house,
But the blizzard blinds him to any house ahead.
The storm gets down his neck in any icy souse
That sucks his breath like a wicked cat in bed. "

Robert Frost (1874–1963), U.S. poet. “Willful Homing.”



There's something strange and wonderful about this 27th day of March.

It's strange, and I'm wonderful. (Yuck, yuck.)

After barely a flake of snow since Christmas and temperatures parked between 50 and 75 for weeks on end, the innocent Denverites had been lulled into giddy submission. No need to keep the freezer stocked with just-in-case-we're-snowed-in food. No need to count the potatoes, time the milk deliveries, or tune the snow blower. We were going to slide right into Easter without Winter.

Our household should have known better. Nothing brings on a good blizzard faster than Spring Break on the calendar. Shannon was home for it last week. No snow. That could mean only one thing.

We would have snow this week. Major league snow. Meredith is on Spring Break. And, it just wouldn't be like the previous six Spring Breaks in Highlands Ranch without the sight of deciduous trees in full flower, bowed by heavy, wet snow. That seemed to circulate repeatedly from the sky like a lake effect, without the lake.

I should be in the car, traveling to my new employer in the Denver Tech Center. But, we were sent home midday yesterday. The day started innocently enough. The signs and warnings were firing from every cylinder. But, I was in denial. Until an office President born and raised in Minnesota declared at 10 a.m. that he was going to close the office. That sounded serious. I thought he was joking.

It was. Serious. Not a joke. We forged ahead with our previously scheduled meeting. Within the space of the last half hour, the street conditions went from plausible to barely discernible. We could see it out the panels of glass in his 14th floor office. Still, I thought I would zip over to the grocery store, pick up a half dozen essentials, run back to the car, and speed to the house before conditions progressed to life-threatening.

Wrong again. Just the walk from the front door of our office tower to my car in the open parking lot -- couldn't have been more than 25 yards -- was a real-life comedy. I was coated in snow from head to toe while the inside of the car attained it's own fresh-powder dusting in the span of opening and closing the door.

Sideways snow. Horizontal, wind-whipped, cornflake-sized pieces of danger flew around with no strategic plan.

Ninety minutes, 1/8 of a tank of gas, and the view of three pile-up incidents later, I turned the final right from the neighborhood entrance for the house after the 12-mile journey. I knew what came next would present the greatest challenge of all.

Getting into the garage without hitting the dog.

I hit the button early. Right on cue, the door rolled up. She sprung from her house in the garage to see who was coming home. Meredith had brought her inside. Rightfully so.

In my little car, I must make the turn into and up the driveway in one, uninterrupted motion if I expect to land inside the garage. When there is already about a foot of snow on the driveway. I need for the dog to decide if she's going to venture out for a bathroom break or run back in horror to her house when she reaches the lip of the snow bank. I need for her to be clear of purpose, single-minded in her focus, and cognizant of the consequences should she elect to stand frozen in awe of the white wonder before her.

Nothing doing.

At the critical go/no-go moment in my trajectory, she decided not to decide. She was right in my line of sight when she finally decided that it was too cold, too wet, too snowy, and just too downright weird to do anything but stand right in my path with a look of "aren't you supposed to be at work" on her sweet doggy face.

I slammed on the brakes. That's when I know that one of only two things will happen next.

I'm going to slide down the hill into the street and take as many runs up the driveway as I need to get that car into it's side of the garage. Or, I'm going to leave the car in the driveway, parked at just the precise angle that no other car in the family will be able to get into the garage either. And, step into that foot of snow without boots, trudge through it with my three black bags in hand, leave all the wet clothes in the laundry room for another day. All while giving the dog that is already back in the doghouse a stern lecture about how she is really in the doghouse This Time.

It took seven runs up the hill. I was in the garage. I was in at the precise angle necessary to give the other car, behind me by mere minutes, the precise angle it needed for the driver to emerge without his door hitting my door.

All was right with the world. Sort of. The dog was in her house. Meredith was in her house. Mark was going to be in his house, God willing, in a few minutes.

On to the next question. Did we have internet?

Dueling laptops would be fired up, next to a fired-up fireplace.

Today, it's more of the same. The clock says I should be at the office by now.

I'm coming, I'm coming. The switchboard message said we're closed. But, we're not closed. We're just "working from home."

Easier commute this morning. Going to walk downstairs now and take my seat at the laptop table. With its 180 degree view of the Spring Blizzard of 2009.

Plain Vanilla

"You are very sweet and mellow. You are easy going and easy to like. You are drawn to those stronger personalities. You get along with powerful people.

"You are like a cupcake because you appeal to almost every type of person. You are friendly and accepting. You bring out other people's best qualities. "

CRD Results from "What Flavor Cupcake are You?" test on blogthings.com

White with fair skin. Yep, that's me all right. But, plain vanilla?

I don't think so, girlfriend.

Do the test lie? Well, I don't know how much of a test it is. But, I recently latched onto http://www.blogthings.com/ just in case my upcoming work responsibilities keep me from waxing eloquent here on When Pigs Fly. I thought it would give folks something to do while I'm doing whatever I'm doing.

But, this cupcake thing has me a bit concerned. Here I thought I was chocolate to the core; and, now, I find out I'm probably the flavor that is left behind in the box after everyone fights over the chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting and chocolate sprinkles.

I wouldn't have felt so bad if I had tested out as Red Velvet. Everybody's new favorite cupcake. New favorite friend. A bright red cake with a hint of light chocolate flavor and a cream cheese (cheesecake, anyone??) topper for good measure.

But, no. I'm vanilla. I'm thinking about retaking the test, but which answer would I change? Alas, I'm too honest -- too vanilla -- to cheat.

Not one to take this slight without a fight, I had to research the possible reasons why being vanilla could be something to which I might actually aspire. Let me count the ways.

1. Vanilla is derived from orchids.

YUM! I love orchids, especially white Phalaenopsis. Also known as butterfly orchids. I carried them at my wedding, my husband bought me a gorgeous print of them crafted on sculpted paper for an anniversary gift one year, I used to always have one in the bathroom in California, I've killed two of them since moving to Denver, and I broke my personal rule about no fake flowers when I finally relented on a silk version that won't mind the dry Colorado climate.

OK, so the butterfly orchid is NOT the source of vanilla. I can dream, can't I?!?

2. Vanilla is the second-most expensive spice after saffron.

Vanilla is labor-intensive. Is that the same as high-maintenance? I don't know, but I like being rare and expensive.

3. The flavor is "pure, spicy, and delicate" with a complex "floral aroma."

That doesn't sound common to me. OK, I'm good with "complex."

4. Old medical literature stated that vanilla was an aphrodisiac. No comment. When Pigs Fly is rated "G" for General audiences.

5. That same old literature said that vanilla was also a remedy for fevers.

Well, that can't be right. Everybody knows that the only prescription for fever is More Cowbell.

Mint Condition

" Subtraction? Oh, yes, ma'am, I can explain it. Subtraction is the awful feeling that you know less today than you did yesterday."

Patricia "Peppermint Patty" Reichart, November 13, 1978

I know, I know. I already did a note about a mint cupcake. It had a big swirl of creme de menthe Italian Meringue buttercream and an Andes mint on the top of a rich, complex chocolate cake.

This one is different. This one is more accessible. The only difference between this one and a plain, old chocolate cupcake with vanilla buttercream frosting is a tablespoon of peppermint extract and a bag of York Peppermint Patties.

This cupcake is more of a recession cupcake. Although, at 14o calories per peppermint patty, the addition of the York significantly ratchets up the total calorie consumption to a genuinely indulgent level.

We shall not care. We shall eat cake. And, we shall like it.

I don't have a recipe for you. But, you can tell by the picture that you don't need one. Unwrap half the number of peppermint patties as you expect to have cupcakes. Cut them in half. Put one half in the bottom of each cupcake cup. Cover the mint with your chocolate cupcake batter and bake.

When you are ready to top your cupcakes, make your regular vanilla buttercream frosting and add a tablespoon of real peppermint extract. Less if you don't want that frosty, Rocky Mountain crisp air afterbite. But enough to know that you put some in. After you top the chocolate cupcakes with the peppermint frosting, unwrap half the number of peppermint patties as you have cupcakes. Again. Cut them in half. Top each frosted cupcake with one half of a peppermint patty.

Eat. Inhale. Relax. Repeat.

Thin Air

"Trust is not a matter of technique, but of character. We are trusted because of our way of being, not because of our polished exteriors or our expertly crafted communications."

Marsha Sinetar, educator and author

In about eight hours, it would have been an entire week since I began holding my breath. Not that I had a good reason to do so, but I did it anyway. In the spirit of "it's-not-over-til-it's-over."

At 3 p.m. Mountain Time last Friday, I finished a phone call in the "C" terminal of Denver International Airport with the internal recruiter of the company I'm going to work for beginning March 15. He had expected to reach me before I got on the plane in Salt Lake City, but got my voicemail instead. I was already in the air. Trying not to worry about whether I would get a phone call on Friday or wait through the weekend to learn the results.

Because the company is so very large and conducts a business that involves the government sometimes, a chain-of-custody drug test is required.

That's not why I was holding my breath. The strongest pill I took this week was an Advil. In that way, this week was like any other.

But, the other requirement to confirm employment is a background check. Not a phone-your-reference-list background check. A systematic confirmation of everything I submitted in an electronic application form. And, maybe, stuff I didn't submit. By the largest database organization in the world. The kind that not only knows your mother's mother's maiden name, but also how much cash she kept in the cookie jar.

Not that I should have been holding my breath about that either. I didn't lie about anything on the application, and the truth I told didn't contain anything that would disqualify me.

But, just the idea that two hurdles must be crossed before I could officially consider myself an employee caused me to deeply inhale. And, hold it until 7 a.m. today, when I got a phone call that casually revealed that the background check was "confirmed."

That whooshing sound. That's me exhaling. I am officially employed.

Well, pending the drug test results.

Like I said, I am officially employed.

Finding My Inner Piglet

"When the ashes clear from this economic Armageddon, the leaders and organizations left standing will be the ones that stand for something. That have a clear purpose.

I’m sure of this because I worked with two CEO-founders who indeed stood for something: Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines (LUV) and Sam Walton of Wal-Mart (WMT). I worked with these iconic entrepreneurs on their companies’ advertising, marketing and internal culture. They taught me that performance is driven by the core purpose of an organization. This is true particularly when crisis is all around.

So what is purpose anyway? Purpose is the definitive difference you make in the marketplace and the world."

Roy Spence, Fortune, 2/18/09

I got what I wanted this week. I was offered the opportunity to join something really big. A big company. A big subject. A big group of amazing, professional, values-driven people. At a very big time in history.

I've never felt smaller.

For me, feeling small is a new sensation. My height has never earned me the "small" label. I can't think back far enough on my own to remember a time when I would have truly qualified as small. I was always kind of like a pony growing up. Mostly legs. A token bit of torso. Fortunately, a high-energy brain was attached to the end of all of it. And, a beating heart.

The brain is what earned me the opportunity to even be in the discussion about being big. But, that heart and the heart that is my heart got me the job.

I've learned about heart from my oldest daughter, now seven weeks from her 22nd birthday. 2009 will represent the first year since she was six years old that she will not be listed on somebody's soccer roster. Despite all of her best efforts, expectations, hard work, endless rehab, and long-term potential, career-ending injury overtook her last Fall. For the good of her overall well-being and the fruitful life that we hope lies ahead for her, she made the decision with her remarkable head coach and her equally-remarkable and compassionate surgeon that she must hang up the cleats. Not for the wearing of them as a coach or mentor, but as a competitive player. Something she's been for so long, she can't remember on her own when she wasn't that way.

She was like a pony growing up, too. The scenes of her galloping up and down the soccer field at an early age and scoring goals in bunches got her effectively booted out of the recreational league. We endured the glares of angry moms who thought the egalitarian AYSO games were about sharing the ball. Less about winning.

Turns out she was all about winning. All the time. She hated to lose more than she loved to win. Winning came easy. Winning was expected and became the norm. But, real life-learning came from both winning and losing.

Losing the ability to continue to compete on the field caused her to completely reevaluate what she wanted to do with her life off the field. And, she went after the subject with the same ferocity that vaulted her to national recognition in her sport by the age of 13.

Sometimes we spend so much time mourning what we have lost, we can't see what we might have gained in the process. I know that I have struggled with this challenge in recent months.

The only thing I can say with a certainty is that nothing on earth lasts. It's all fleeting. The good times never last. And, fortunately, the bad times generally don't last forever either. At least, not in their most dire, bottom-of-the-pit bad times form. You eventually come out of whatever you're in.

If you're paying attention, you know that you don't come out of the pit the same way you went into it.

As I plopped into the center seat closest to the front of the Southwest flight back to Denver from Salt Lake City yesterday, I thought that the resolution I had wanted for Friday, February 27, 2009 would not be forthcoming. I tried to make myself smaller in the seat so that the people who had fought for -- and won -- the right to the aisle and window seats wouldn't feel so cheated.

While my cell phone slept in the air, I was unaware that bigger and higher things than me were working on my behalf. Rapidly. Working an entire array of other phones. Lining up the pieces.

Making a big thing happen. Making it happen for little, 'ol me.

Time to Fly

"A silent pig digs the deepest root."

Lithuanian proverb

I don't know what that means. Seriously. I was just looking for something that had the word "silent" and the word "pig" in it. And, that's what I found.

When Pigs Fly went silent last week. About a quarter to the middle of last week. Somewhere between "Trojan Pig" and a phone call that will, hopefully, change my life.

Twas not for lack of porky subjects. I just wasn't in the mood to tell a story. I'm not in a mood to tell a story today either. But, I wanted to sign on today, just to sign off for the week. I have some things to do that don't require my undivided attention. But, I think I will pretend that undivided attention will effect a positive outcome.

I don't usually struggle with multitasking. But, I'm not going to take the chance that a whirling dervish is just as good as a stoic, with laser-focused attention to detail. Not this week. I'm looking to dig a deep root.

See you next week.