woman's best friend

It was a beautifully clear night here last night, a million stars out, and just a bit cool but no need for a jacket yet. I pushed away from my desk after an evening of stewing about my just-not-happening data collection and the still-ignoring-me board who is causing me great delay and frustration. A walk was just what I needed to clear the cobwebs from my head. Gracie, of course, became ecstatic when I announced we were going for a walk. I ran upstairs for shoes and socks and she about knocked me over to get ahead of me on the stairs (it’s true, we Kentuckians rarely wear shoes unless we just have to). She whined, barked, jumped on and off the bed repeatedly, and chewed at my hands as I tried to put on shoes.


I didn’t buy a head halter, but I’m using a training lead which works like a choke chain. I’m using that and also putting her regular collar and leash on when we go for walks. When she gets too rambunctious, I hold a leash in each hand (like reins) and give her more choke. Last night, I only choked her at the very beginning and then once when she wanted to chase a motorcycle. The rest of the time, she was very civilized and we had a nice 40-minute walk. She is learning and perhaps we will soon be able to walk with just a normal good-dog leash.

Gracie



No matter how rotten my day has been, it’s wonderful to come home to a dog. She runs out to greet me (no matter the weather) and seems truly happy to see me come home. Nobody else gets even 1% as excited as Gracie when I pull into the driveway. The kids and husband seldom even look away from their cell phones or TV screens when I walk in, unless they’ve been waiting on me to come home to do something for them or with them. Sometimes a cat will greet me with a meow of aloof acknowledgement, but usually the motive is that he or she just wants to be fed.

My office plants are splendid. Plants don’t grow like this for me at home. It must be the large windows and morning sun they love so much. The only thing I like about working where I work is the great view of the woods out my windows, the walking trail around the small lake behind the building, and my plants. OK…some of the people are OK too. I’m not totally antisocial.



cubicle plants today



ever-blooming African Violet



deranged

I’m planning to use the MLQ-5X for my study. I’ve spent the entire evening trying to understand how the survey works exactly. It’s 45 questions….a lot of questions in comparison to the servant leader survey that only has 23 questions. Perhaps it’s because the MLQ-5X ranges multiple styles from transactional leader to transformational leader, whereas with the servant leader survey, the participant is tested to be/not be a servant leader.


Chatted with my sweet Sarah tonight :) She remarked that she thinks my little-girl pictures look like hers. I don’t see it, but I found one of her where she is early-two years old. Does this beautiful little girl look anything like me? Other than hair…I don’t see it. She is her father’s face to me.

Sarah, age 2+

Anyway….we are having a fence installed for Gracie next week…the underground electric sort where the dog wears a lovely shock collar and learns discipline the hard-core human way!  It makes me want to don black leather, hip boots, and whip something (no, not really) – only in my imagination!  Lot’s of things are much better left in one’s imagination.   

Speaking of black leather….I was a motorcycle mama for a while in my youth. Not a trashy one though. I was never tempted to get a tattoo…I don’t mind tattoos…I just don’t want one on me. Some are quite amazing though. I never went bra-less or smoked cigarettes (in public…wait maybe I did) or never-ever cussed somebody out in public. I had a black leather jacket (one of Woody’s old castoff’s). Leather is perfect because the dead bugs wipe off easier. I wore a helmet with a windshield – two reasons – I wear contacts and I don’t like bugs planting into my face. He had a Harley Sportster that would fly.

We had adventures on that bike. Woody’s rule – never go 20 miles without a pack of tools strapped onto the back. The engine vibrated miserably. Every time we stopped, he tightened bolts. Sometimes he stopped on purpose to tighten bolts. There was a covered bridge, perhaps the one over Cabin Creek in Mason County that was fairly high over a deep-wooded ravine. We would always take a break there. We’d sit out on the outside of the covered bridge, legs dangling off the concrete supports Stock Bower added when he restored the bridge…and drink some beers, he’d\we’d smoke, and take in the lush beauty of the place. Quiet, the rustle of deer, squirrels, woodpeckers, yeah…the good life! In hot, dry Augusts, lots of times there’d be snakes swimming across the creek all afternoon. Woody had a 22-semi automatic pistol. We would take turns shooting snakes. ooh, to think back about it….it seems so brutal. But it was exhilarating at the same time……UGH, I did that!!! I killed those poor snakes….and I hate snakes. I feel like that two-headed monster again.

Sarah gave me an interesting idea tonight!

Reflection

Today was what?


Episodic…that’s what it was!

Groan,

Into the Trench,

DIG!

Bleed.

Drain out.

Ecstacy!!!

POWER – breath it in…….

recharge….

So, yeah, that was today. And I can’t believe I just had a conversation with Gracie. Gracie has been giving me some defiant-dog tactics lately. She knows what no means, but by no means is she obedient. Well some of the time she is. She minded fairly well until the girls got home….and therein probably lies the problem. When I’m home with her, there’s not much action….just me sitting and working, very low noise. When the girls are here, there’s constant motion and noise. Probably keeps her wired up.

Gracie, asleep at the bone



The ecstacy today was getting feedback on last week’s paper. It’s pleasing to be praised.

I was proofing the one due tonight. For the first time (and hopefully this doesn’t jynx me) I feel confident it will pass muster. That was my last individual paper for the last course.

H-A-L-L-E-L-U-J-A-H    !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Balanced Scorecard

Holiday is over and I’m still standing (well…sitting really). The paper for tonight was a bear to write. I submitted it with 120 or so words over the minimum. This paper built onto last week’s paper. I looked ahead at what next weekend has in store…immediate disappointment. MORE of this case study. This week, I had to ID and discuss immediate issues for “the company” that’s hell-bent on lightening-speed global expansion. The prompt said to do all the most critical issues…I came up with infrastructure, project management, relationship management, security, change management, and performance measurement. There were so many more I wanted to include…but how much can one global manager handle (assuming I’m the manager). EEEEEK….did I really relegate our customers to second priority?? It’s my bias to ignore external customers…I’ve never interfaced with them in any of my positions in this field.


So Gracie was pretty much a bad dog today. I’ve been writing about balanced scorecards recently…they not only facilitate assessment, but they provide a platform for improvement (in case you were wondering). If I were to create one for Gracie, it would look like this.

Our puppy is nearly 6 months old now and becoming less fearful of new things.  She barks much more than she did at first.  She will make a fine watchdog; she barks when she hears cars and people coming in.  We're also working on teaching her not to nip us when she plays.  She has sharp teeth! 

So..I best hit the hay.  My alarm goes off in 5 hours....and then it starts all over again. 

Counting

Today is the 28^th day of having this mess going on with my face and I’m damn sick of it.  I’ve been hiding out as much as I can but Monday I’m going back to the office.  This morning I took Gracie to the vet.  I was grateful that nobody asked what the hell happened.  They probably assume I’m an unfortunate accident victim.  This is a picture I took yesterday. 

27th day of hell

Gracie got her second set of puppy shots today and they tested her for various parasites – she got a clean bill of health other than a few small spots of mange. The vet says this kind of mange is common on puppies and most of them are free of it by the time they’re a year old. For now, we do nothing. If it gets worse, we give her pills and if it goes away, hooray.

I have a big paper due and I’m having trouble getting into it because one of the mandatory items to be covered is not clearly defined and I can’t relate it to anything. What are (exactly) IST domains of management? To me, that means everything IST managers must manage. We are to analyze a case study scenario and relate all the problems we find to IST domains of management, database, networking, Web, programming, and all scopes of systems development. Perhaps if a problem doesn’t fit neatly into one of the other areas, I’ll just lump it into the catch-all domains of management.

Five more big individual papers, one more team paper, six reflection statements, 15 discussion questions, 34 reply posts, and one dissertation, and THEN….I’M DONE!!!! I’m getting close enough to almost see the finish line and now someone is acting all pissy about the time I’m spending and how the house has fallen to ruin. Maybe someone is just in a pissy mood because of shit going on in his life. If misery loves company, we should be a match made in heaven.

Face disgrace

I took another picture of my face yesterday, but I don’t want to post it. It’s too depressing. I look like an alligator who’s been blasted with a shot gun…sort of. Yesterday morning was the last dose of the flesh-eating chemical/drug. This morning I took a long warm shower and washed the last traces of the nasty, greasy stuff off my face as best I could – now it feels like if I smile my whole face would crack and shatter. Tomorrow I go back to the doctor and hopefully he will say I’m through and I pray he doesn’t want to touch anything on my face because if he does, it’ll probably hurt. Don’t touch! Back off, Jack! That would be fitting because his name really is Jack.


Our puppy is quickly growing; I’m lengthening her collar about every three days. She’s getting a bit more brave and troublesome. We have to gate her off or keep doors shut where there are plants, shoes, clothes, etc. She loves to chew and never mind that she has doggie toys to chew on, she loves nothing more than to grab one of the girls’ padded bras. It’s time for her next round of shots and I fear she’s probably got worms again. I won’t gross you out with the details, but her favorite food is not the puppy chow, but nasty stuff she finds in the woods. Here’s a photo of her being sweet and about the only time she is not getting into trouble:

Gracie



I took Gracie outside to “do her business” and discovered the apple tree had three squirrels in the top of it.  Two jumped to the ground and ran across the yard escaping up the maple tree.  The other held a large apple in his teeth by the stem, leapt over to the other apple tree (totally bare of apples), then over to the maple, then one more jump to the hickory.  He sat there looking down at me, then began munching his apple.  I ran for my camera and was able to grab a photo.  A few nights ago, I took Gracie out at night and heard a deer thrashing the limbs of the apple tree.  Then, thump, thump, thump of apples hitting the ground.  I assumed the deer shook all the apples out of the trees, but now I know squirrels take their fair share. 

Addition to the Family

Vacation is over for 2011 – our traditional excursion to Myrtle Beach and all the things we do down there every year. I leased a Verizon air card for the second week because the beach house has no reliable Internet service. Last year, the air card was great. This year, performance totally sucked. S-L-O-W. Too slow. I will blame slow Internet for why I got no work done on my dissertation – it was all I could do to finish class work on time.



I did do some fun things on vacation, but mostly it was work for me. Last year we went on a little tour of plantations and islands south of Myrtle, leaving out of Georgetown. That was so nice, so we did it again this year. We got to see lots dolphins this time which was kind of neat. It rained a lot the last week we were there, but the last two days, the ocean waves were much less crashing (not so much knock-you-around type waves). There were sand bars so we went way out away from the shore before the water got very deep – it was nice to just swim around and float. Jerry and I were out there and we think a dolphin or a large black fish sort of jumped up out of the water no more than 15 feet from us. We both saw it and looked at each other like, “WOW!! DID YOU SEE THAT?” We didn’t tell the girls about it – they certainly would have assumed it was a shark.


A little beach friend



So while I was down there, I did call speak to Dr. Barbuto to request permission to use his (and Dr. Wheeler’s) survey for servant leadership. He graciously gave me permission and sent me a release to use it. These gentlemen are currently at the U of Nebraska. I called Mindgarden and purchased the “starter kit” for using their MLQ – a survey for transformational leadership developed by Bernard Bass. The starter kit has a manual and a non-reproducible sample of the instrument. When I know how big my sample size has to be, then I’ll know how much $$$ it’s going to cost me to use it. Researchers get a break on the price, fortunately.

My class ended last night and there’s a week off now until the next one starts. THE LAST ONE!! When I complete that class, I’ll be Dr. Me, ABD. Not impressive, all but dissertation. I don’t want to be ABD, but it will be nice not having all that busy work interfering with the important work, and the busy work has made me much more capable of doing a decent job of the important work…let’s hope it was NOT all for nothing.

We were supposed to get a puppy yesterday but the owners decided to keep it. Today, I was determined to find a puppy, so Erin and I went out to the Boyd County Animal Shelter. So many beautiful puppies needing homes, it was hard to choose. We chose this one, and Erin named her Gracie.  The worker at the pound told us she was one of a large litter.  She was different from all the others - they all looked like schnauzers, whereas she looks a bit more like a German Shepherd.  All her siblings had been adopted out over a month ago.  She has spent most of her life in a cage so she was a bit nervous to see the outside world and ride in a car.  She seems smart and the kitties are getting to know her. 

Gracie, about 3.5 months old