Tuesday, November 20, 2012

icing on the cake

Indeed – very good things are happening for me lately. The board sent an email stating I now have full board approval for the changes I requested. It’s especially good news given that I’ve almost got enough participants to close my survey.



Just four more people need to complete a survey to reach the minimum number that enables me to move forward. There are 16 on the string – 25% need to follow through for me and I will call it DONE!! Well, perhaps I will call it done if Dr Chairman ever answers my email and approves closing the survey…and if 4 more will be so kind as to log in and answer the damn questions. Surely it’s not too much to ask, or is it?

In light of this recent approval and success, I’m feeling quite capable and competent with my research project. It’s an unusual thing for me to think things are going to turn out OK regarding anything in my life. With that in mind, I refuse to get too happy about it. It’s really not a good thing to be so pessimistic all the time, but this is me and the way I was made. I do wonder if there are more pessimists than optimists in our world, or if the numbers are about even?



The fact is, I oftentimes pretend to be optimistic even when I think failure is imminent and highly probable. Part of my job is helping people with problems on their PCs. Do you want somebody changing stuff on your PC who hasn’t a clue what he’s doing? Of course not. But I’m not going to add to the person’s distress by saying “Gee, I’ve never seen anything like this before and it’s probably dire, so just give me a few minutes to waste your time monkey around and see if anything I change helps or hurts.” Actually, most of the time I know what I’m doing, but it’s good to be able to act geekier and more optimistic than I am if the client is difficult (i.e. mouthy or just cranky) or what’s worse, thinks he knows more than me. Sometimes he does know more than me. :(



It’s a four-day weekend coming up for me – short work week. Hallelujah! We have people coming for dinner Saturday so I want to get our pigsty house cleaned up. It’ll be like shoveling snow in a blizzard with kids at home on break starting Wednesday. They’ll invite friends over to stay and no doubt there’ll be a pack of girls taking showers, cooking, and eating around the clock. It’s OK, someday I will miss having all that nonstop entertainment and activity in our house.



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