In order to get up to date on the new Murphree baby’s name-sake, I’m reading the book “Kin of the Cannibals – The Story of John G Paton”.
I’m towards the end of the book when John marries his second wife, Margaret, and moves to a safer island in the New Hebrides, Aniwa.
I had this huge backflash of a story that I remember from when I was little. I believe it was on an Uncle Charlie record or Children’s Bible Hour or something. I can totally hear this story in my head as I’m reading it in the book.
John was building his mission home and some of the natives were helping him. While they were building, John ran out of a few of the supplies he needed and so he picked up a piece of wood and wrote a note on it. Then he called one of the natives who he was working with and gave him the piece of wood and told him that he needed him to bring the wood to his wife so she could send more supplies. The native asked him what he wanted to tell his wife but John said the wood would tell her what he needed. The man could not believe that John’s wife could know what John would want, but he took the wood and left for John’s current house.
As he walked, the native kept thinking “how can wood talk”. He could not figure how the wood would tell Margaret what she needed.
When he got to Margaret, he gave her the wood, she read what was written on it, and then collected all the things John needed and gave them to the man. He could not believe it! The wood had talked to John’s wife and had told her what John wanted!
He ran back to John with the items and asked him how the wood could talk!
John then told him how he had written words on the wood that Margaret read and then knew what John wanted. He ended up using it as an opportunity to tell the native how he could teach him to read his own words and then he could read a book from God and he could hear God talking from the book.
Its totally a cool story in the respect that I remember it so well from when I was younger – I can hear the “natives” voice and everything.
It’s a cool story – period!
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Calvin's Big Snowy Day
The great big snow that we had in IL a few weeks back -- we still had to brave the dog park -- it was the perfect time to strap on the ol' snowshoes and frolic!
Mr Calvin and his winter coat get quite hot so its nice to just take a break now and then!
No - Calvin did not shovel that sidewalk! But he did have fun chasing the shovel that did all the work!
The Ballad Of Bobby Joe Jimbob And The Nashville Airport
After getting in at 3 am on Friday from my southern snowy week, it was much appreciated that we had Monday, President's Day off! Hooray for Presidents! Big ones small ones short ones tall ones -- presidents rule! Literally!
Of course, Monday was packed trying to fit in everything that I couldn't after being gone the week - AND - I'm trying to prep for St Thomas! Yea! As soon as I get back this week, I'm leaving for Virgin Islands!
So, Tuesday was a bright start as I got locked on another plane at 7am. This one going to Nashville.
Nashville -- I love that place - NOT. I've spent way too much time there and at Opryland for sales meetings and trade shows and all kinds of other junk. Opryland Hotel -- my spine just shuddered. Any hotel that has to give you a map and a gps unit to find your room --- thats just not pleasurable. And the airport -- crazy! They have every single country western singer in existance giving some kind of airport message. "Hello, this is Daisy Rae Buttercup saying Ya'll come back now!" "Ye-haw - this is JoJo Billy Bob saying - watch your bags!" "Hey folks - this is Bobby Bob Bobberson - if you want directions to anywhere in Nashville, just ask our information desk down by the baggage claim" "Daisy Duke here - if you sneeze, make sure you cover your mouth and wash your hands!" (ok, it wasn't Daisy Duke that said it - but that is seriously one of their announcements!). Every 3 minutes, some twing twangy, double first named cowboy is giving us some kind of cliche information. Gotta love it! And cowboy boots -- all over!
So - after our breakfast meeting at Cracker Barrel :) Could that be any more stereotypical of the south???? I got dropped back off at the airport, just in time to jump on another plane that took me back to Chicago in order to get on another place to go to Minneapolis where I have to go back to finish up a project I'm working on. And here I sit, waiting for about an hour until my flight is ready. I could have jumped on an earlier flight possibly, but I just wanted a chance to sit for a few.
I actually have time right now to get in another post! Wow ! Two in one day let alone two in one week! Y'all sure are lucky! :)
The Week of the Freak Snow! Or - The Week That Made the South Stop! Or - GET ME OFF THIS PLANE!
Flying over NC - snow free! AND Hitting the coast of Tampa! 
Saying goodbye to the beach that looked attractive even in the 48 degree weather!
As I write this post, I’m sitting on the runway in Charlotte, NC. Sad to say, this is the 4th time I’ve been in this airport in the past week and a half. That’s just too crazy…. The weather here is BAD – in terms of a North Carolinian. Its snowing and there’s about an inch and a half on the ground and the whole city is all but shut down. They seem to be a little more savy than Atlanta who has 6 inches and is completely down for the count. The boards in CLT glowed red with flights cancelled that were going to or through Charlotte.
So, we sit on the runway waiting to be de-iced. And, as the pilot has said, as Charlotte is not as well-versed in the art of deicing, we are sitting behind a row of about 20 - 30 places waiting for the same procedure. The captain has called the left line, in a series of three deicing lines, our line and there are 10 planes ahead of us there. As we’re just sitting waiting, we’re allowed to use computers and phones and so I hear a chorus of “blah blah blahs” ringing around me as people who are surrounded by people chose to reach out to other people who are not present. Its chatter all over as we sit facing our impending doom of a slightly less than eternity wait. My dear dear friend, Kim has volunteered to pick me up from the airport as I’ll be missing the last train home. I’m hoping and praying its not too late that we get in. On top of that I have another 9:30 mission board meeting at the church that I’m already too tired to go to.
So, the Charlotte airport came about this week because I found out last minute, Monday to be exact, that I needed to fly down to Orlando for a meeting. I technically was supposed to be going to Oklahoma for a couple of accounts. I had my flight and so I was trying to cancel my flight home to Chicago on Friday and replace it with a flight to Orlando from OK on Thursday and then a return to Chicago on Friday. With the weather that cropped up at home on Monday, I just had a bad feeling so I ended up cancelling my flight to OK and booking a flight to Tampa on Wednesday, planning to stay by my friends Matt and Karlene and then drive over to Orlando on Thursday. It ended up working out way better and, in fact, the woman who was supposed to cancel my OK flight, didn’t do it and so it was naturally cancelled because of weather on Tuesday. If I had cancelled it, I would have lost $150 but because she made a mistake and didn’t cancel it the day before, I got my full fare back. That worked out nicely!
I got in to Tampa around 4 on Wednesday and headed over to Matt and Karlene’s. We had
dinner together and then Matt brought the three oldest boys to church for their kids’ program. Karlene and I got to hang out with the two little boys. She just had her 5th baby, Samuel, a few months ago. They all look very very much a like and area extremely adorable and pretty dog gone good for being – 5 boys. They’re all named Bible names for their first names and their middle names are after missionaries… Its kind of cool. I actually always remember Benjamin Eliot (Jim Eliot) and Jeremiah – Taylor??? (Hudson Taylor) but then I just lose it and can’t remember the other kids… Names like Jehoshaphat and Ebenezer and Goliath end up coming out. After I spend a few hours with them, I remember them again J The others are actually Elijah Carey (William Carey) and Isaac Judson (Adoniram Judson) and the newest one is Samuel Paton (John Paton). The 3 older boys all are taking violin or cello lessons and they all have these adorable little instruments. So cute! Karlene has always been a voracious reader and so she reads to the boys all the time. There is this one book that she reads that is written by a woman who lived in France during WWII and she and her family helped to hide Jews d
uring the war. My favorite story with the boys is this one time I came to visit and Karlene had warned me that the boys were on a pirate kick and were drawing pictures and acting like pirates. So, when I got to their house, they all greeted me with these pictures they had drawn for me and when Jeremiah pushed his picture up to me, I looked it and laughed “there’s those pirates that your mom warned me about!” Jeremiah looked at me quizzically and then said “those aren’t pirates … they’re Nazis…” They’re always coming out with some funny comment.
So – Orlando was a meeting with some region managers and then I had another in-service that I had to do with about 25 of their inside sales reps. I actually had about 90 minutes but I tried not to over load, or so I thought. I divided my session into two different presentations… pictures and everything! Granted, one never knows what they’re like when they’re actually teaching or lecturing. I think there are some people that know that they’re boring or poor at giving presentations. I’m not that person. I don’t know whether I’m terrible, but in my head, somewhere, I think that I’m
really good. The deep truth is, once I finish a presentation, I always know I’m not really good, but I hope I’m at least mediocre enough to be slightly informative. This session, I admit that at the second half, I saw about 3 sets of eyelids fluttering and even completely resting. But then, I did see others that were intently listening and taking notes. The one good thing I have going for me is, after all my education classes with Dr Jacquot – I do NOT say the word “UM”. No, I substitute phrases like “like I had said” (when I hadn’t actually said it before) and “what I was talking about” (when I haven’t talked about it before). Hey – no ones perfect! At least I know the problem I have – now I just need to fix it J
This is the other thing I hate when I do presentations. When I’m talking about something that I end up making a little funny joke about in order to make the subject more understandable and then I stand there and chuckle – and there are 25 people looking back at me with straight faces. Or, even worse, there are 23 faces looked back at me expressionless, but there are 2 that are doing that pitiful courtesy laugh because they’re just exceptionally nice people or – lets face it – they’re just brown-nosers…. J
So the captain just got on now, as we’ve been sitting motionless for the past 15 minutes, and he announced that “as you can tell, the deicing process is moving extremely slow and at this rate, we’ll be getting up to the head of the line by the spring thaw, so we won’t even need to be deiced”. This is not very promising….
So, we sit on the runway waiting to be de-iced. And, as the pilot has said, as Charlotte is not as well-versed in the art of deicing, we are sitting behind a row of about 20 - 30 places waiting for the same procedure. The captain has called the left line, in a series of three deicing lines, our line and there are 10 planes ahead of us there. As we’re just sitting waiting, we’re allowed to use computers and phones and so I hear a chorus of “blah blah blahs” ringing around me as people who are surrounded by people chose to reach out to other people who are not present. Its chatter all over as we sit facing our impending doom of a slightly less than eternity wait. My dear dear friend, Kim has volunteered to pick me up from the airport as I’ll be missing the last train home. I’m hoping and praying its not too late that we get in. On top of that I have another 9:30 mission board meeting at the church that I’m already too tired to go to.
So, the Charlotte airport came about this week because I found out last minute, Monday to be exact, that I needed to fly down to Orlando for a meeting. I technically was supposed to be going to Oklahoma for a couple of accounts. I had my flight and so I was trying to cancel my flight home to Chicago on Friday and replace it with a flight to Orlando from OK on Thursday and then a return to Chicago on Friday. With the weather that cropped up at home on Monday, I just had a bad feeling so I ended up cancelling my flight to OK and booking a flight to Tampa on Wednesday, planning to stay by my friends Matt and Karlene and then drive over to Orlando on Thursday. It ended up working out way better and, in fact, the woman who was supposed to cancel my OK flight, didn’t do it and so it was naturally cancelled because of weather on Tuesday. If I had cancelled it, I would have lost $150 but because she made a mistake and didn’t cancel it the day before, I got my full fare back. That worked out nicely!
I got in to Tampa around 4 on Wednesday and headed over to Matt and Karlene’s. We had
dinner together and then Matt brought the three oldest boys to church for their kids’ program. Karlene and I got to hang out with the two little boys. She just had her 5th baby, Samuel, a few months ago. They all look very very much a like and area extremely adorable and pretty dog gone good for being – 5 boys. They’re all named Bible names for their first names and their middle names are after missionaries… Its kind of cool. I actually always remember Benjamin Eliot (Jim Eliot) and Jeremiah – Taylor??? (Hudson Taylor) but then I just lose it and can’t remember the other kids… Names like Jehoshaphat and Ebenezer and Goliath end up coming out. After I spend a few hours with them, I remember them again J The others are actually Elijah Carey (William Carey) and Isaac Judson (Adoniram Judson) and the newest one is Samuel Paton (John Paton). The 3 older boys all are taking violin or cello lessons and they all have these adorable little instruments. So cute! Karlene has always been a voracious reader and so she reads to the boys all the time. There is this one book that she reads that is written by a woman who lived in France during WWII and she and her family helped to hide Jews d
uring the war. My favorite story with the boys is this one time I came to visit and Karlene had warned me that the boys were on a pirate kick and were drawing pictures and acting like pirates. So, when I got to their house, they all greeted me with these pictures they had drawn for me and when Jeremiah pushed his picture up to me, I looked it and laughed “there’s those pirates that your mom warned me about!” Jeremiah looked at me quizzically and then said “those aren’t pirates … they’re Nazis…” They’re always coming out with some funny comment.So – Orlando was a meeting with some region managers and then I had another in-service that I had to do with about 25 of their inside sales reps. I actually had about 90 minutes but I tried not to over load, or so I thought. I divided my session into two different presentations… pictures and everything! Granted, one never knows what they’re like when they’re actually teaching or lecturing. I think there are some people that know that they’re boring or poor at giving presentations. I’m not that person. I don’t know whether I’m terrible, but in my head, somewhere, I think that I’m
really good. The deep truth is, once I finish a presentation, I always know I’m not really good, but I hope I’m at least mediocre enough to be slightly informative. This session, I admit that at the second half, I saw about 3 sets of eyelids fluttering and even completely resting. But then, I did see others that were intently listening and taking notes. The one good thing I have going for me is, after all my education classes with Dr Jacquot – I do NOT say the word “UM”. No, I substitute phrases like “like I had said” (when I hadn’t actually said it before) and “what I was talking about” (when I haven’t talked about it before). Hey – no ones perfect! At least I know the problem I have – now I just need to fix it JThis is the other thing I hate when I do presentations. When I’m talking about something that I end up making a little funny joke about in order to make the subject more understandable and then I stand there and chuckle – and there are 25 people looking back at me with straight faces. Or, even worse, there are 23 faces looked back at me expressionless, but there are 2 that are doing that pitiful courtesy laugh because they’re just exceptionally nice people or – lets face it – they’re just brown-nosers…. J
So the captain just got on now, as we’ve been sitting motionless for the past 15 minutes, and he announced that “as you can tell, the deicing process is moving extremely slow and at this rate, we’ll be getting up to the head of the line by the spring thaw, so we won’t even need to be deiced”. This is not very promising….
We finally left, honestly, about 5 hours later... my battery had died :( What kept me sane was laughing at all the angry people who sat around me yelling out things about "I'll never fly US Air again!" and "I'm not going to come to the Charlotte airport"... and my favorite was the pretty, angry black woman who sat in a middle seat talking to herself quite loudly and making the people on either side of her look at her with fear. Finally, she said loudly "they CAN-NOT treat us this way!" and then she got up out of her seat (mind you, the captain had just gottten on and said to make sure we were sitting with our seat belts on because we may be taking off very quickly) and literally stomped up to the very front and the attendant who was in charge there. I heard a really hard hitting sound - on the wall that is - I think she slammed her fist into the wall of the place. Ok - that part didn't make me laugh at first because I got a little scared :) But, most of the comments kept me in check because I wanted to say "SERIOUSLY -- Do you think that US Air is the one to blame for a freak snowstorm in Charlotte when they haven't had snow in like 20 years! GET A LIFE!" I love the infrequent traveller!....
Saying goodbye to the beach that looked attractive even in the 48 degree weather!
Saying hello again to the Charlotte airport for the 4th time in a week and a half!
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Three Days In the South Is Like - Three Days In the South
This week - I flew into Charlotte, NC in order to drive to Greenville, SC to stay before I went to my meeting in Alpharetta, GA. I love the south! I had to get three of the top southern states into one trip!
On Wednesday morning I flew from Chicago to Charlotte, a great “little” airport. Its actually fairly large, but I love the lay out and everything it has to offer. From Jamba Juice to Tequ
ilas at Tequilera to good old southern BBQ – you can get it all in the Charlotte airport. Oh – the one thing that the Charlotte airport don’t have is Chick-Fil-A…. That just be wrong in the deep south!
So this is what makes me smile every time I first exit the plane at Charlotte. I love going into the washrooms just to see the smiling bathroom attendants! You got it! Every bathroom has this full stock of everything from lotion to mouthwash to tampons and there’s always a smiling southern woman to stock the supplies of cotton balls and q-tips and shoe polish and bbq sauce and grits… oops, that’s outside the bathroom….
Anyways – my first stop, as usual, this trip was the ladies room. As soon as I entered I was greeted by an elderly black woman (whatever if its not pc, but that’s what she was) was sang out “He—ll--o there sweetie! My name is Miss May and welcome to the Charlotte airport ladies room! “ There was another family of women that was following me in and so I quickly took a stall and just stood in there listening to her continue her song “I am here for you! I hope you will let me know if there is anything that you need! Are you staying in Charlotte? I hope you have a wonderful time! He—ll---o – my name is Miss May!” What I loved even more was listening to all the other polite, genteel southern ladies chirp back “W-ell! Hello Miss May! I am Helen! Thank you so much for welcoming me! This is a lovely bathroom!” Seriously! Those southern ladies are so pleasant and polite! It was the funniest thing and I just kind of hung out to listen to it for about 5 minutes until I figured my bladder would explode unless I did what I came in to do.
Verner was my bus driver to the rental car lot and he regaled me with tales of Charlotte and impending w
eather and then wonderfully told me that my car class was not available so I needed to either upgrade for free or take a smaller car at a price reduction. I chose the smaller Ford Focus and happily adjusted the seat and pushed on the Sirrius satellite radio that comes standard in almost every car now! I’m addicted to BBC1 at home (station 11 on Sirrius) and so its nice to travel and still get my station anywhere I go. “Its luvly” as my British friends would say.
It was hard not to bounce in my seat to the snappy music as I observed the temperature reader thing in the car panel progressively go up as I drove from Charlotte to Greenville. 53, 55, 56, 58, 60…. “It was luvly…” Especially after I had just flown in from the snowy, bleak cold of the Midwest. It was spring in the south! Well, at least for today!
I got to Greenville and stopped quickly at Wal-Mart (which was doing a blood drive and so they had a big "Blood Vessel" parked outside!) to pick up dinner for the evening as I was having the newphews, John and Joe, come to dinner at Aunt June’s house. I got their mom’s speciality – frozen Stouffers family size… and whipped together a slightly burnt devil’s food cake. (When asking my sister what the boys liked for
dessert, she went to the other phone she was holding where she was talking to my brother-in-law, and he relayed that Joe liked chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. When asking what the boys liked to drink, I was told “Joe likes Barqs root beer. Apparently Joe is the vociferous one and no one really knows what John is thinking… I took a gamble that he’d be good with the chcocalate cake, but something told me he’d like the orange crush – which he drank about 4 bottles of the 6 – good guess!).
The boys came over around 5 and brought their laundry and just hung around chatting and eating guac and chips until dinner was ready. We finished dinner off and wound up watching a disgusting episode of Man V Food on the Food Network – all of his greats like eating hot wings and 7 lbs of hamburger in 45 minutes…. It made us feel better about all the food we had just consumed as it was nowhere near his volume!
Remember the scope thing that I was talking about the other week – well, Thursday was d-day when I had to
present my in-service to a sales force of 45. I drove over to Alpharetta in the morning. Alphar
etta is about 10 miles outside of Atlanta in a pretty up and coming little area. The shopping and restaurants were all trendy looking southern boutiquey things and the houses were ginormous two stories with columns and huge, fenced in back yards that had hills leading down to some wooded creek. Kudsu sprang up in huge patched here and there and BMWs and Land Rover
s were in every drive way and at every traffic light. Ah – so south!
The Endo company I made my way to was actually in a strip, office plaza, but was a nice office with tons of jovial southern gentlemen all laughing and being southern boyish. The VP and the CFO greeted me and we chatted, discussing my recent trip from Greenville. Whereupon I learned that the CFO grew up in Greenville and one of his best friends started the MBA program at Bob Jones Un. Later, I asked my nephew, who is a business major, if he had heard of this man, who is still teaching at BJ – Joe said with an awed look on his face “Are you serious – he’s the most AMAZING teacher!”
Anyways – after chatting for a while, Will, VP and Mike, CFO led me to the room where the sales meeting was taking place and then chatted with me about a video series they were doing on line for their products. Will had mentioned in an e-mail the day before that he would like for me to do a video spot for their detergent. While we were standing there, Will said, “why don’t we just go and shoot the video now”…. And so proceeded the most horrific half and hour that I’ve ever spent. I told him I didn’t appear on film and that I was in the witness protection program. I told him that I really should leave right then because – I thought – I heard – my mother calling…. I tried everything, but they were determined that I would do wonderfully. And so – they stuck me at this desk with a bottle of detergent and primped and thought about and shuffled all types of props and microphones and all else around me and then, the sweet and patient woman who was filming, videoed me about 100 times as I stumbled through these little spots on the product – which we make – and which I completely forgot what it actually was or did. We’d have to stop every now and again so they could tell me “oh say this” or “oh, say that”. Yes, that’s correct – they would tell me things to say as I didn’t have a script – I was just supposed to talk about the product. It was horrible horrible! But the one up side was that when I got into the room full of sales reps, the presentation seemed like cake. I actually really like doing in-services on care and handling and products and all so I kind of had fun with it and hoped they enjoyed my talking as much as I enjoyed talking to them J
I hung around through another presentation and then chatted with Will and Mark a little more and then took off – well, got on the road. I had to drive 8 miles of “back roads” to get to 85 – this took me exactly an hour! But, I did get back to Greenville in time to meet Joe and Jon and a friend of theirs, as well as Aunt June, for dinner at Mimi’s Café right down the road
for Aunt June’s.
Friday morning, I was supposed to try and get to a hospital in the area but it didn’t work out so I got up early and went down the road to Starbucks to work for a few hours. I came back, picked up Aunt June and we went to Greer to try breakfast at Southern Thymes Restaurant – whereupon, we looked at the chintz curtains and the window and the old toothless men sipping coffee on mismatched vinyl chairs and decided to turn around and give Mimi’s some more business. We’re both sure that Southern Thymes probably had out of this work food that would make you tell numerous people later that day “I just had the BEST breakfast”…. But we couldn’t get past the ambiance – or lack thereof.
I spent a few hours over at my cousins before I headed back to Charlottte – and the wonderful bathrooms and bus drivers! I’ll say it again – I just LOVE the south! Oh – by the way – the temperature reading on the way back to the airport was now a dreary 38 – it wasn’t so bad leaving this way.
Oh – by the way – to counteract all the wonderful, goodness of the southerners. We got home to Chicago and because of weather we had to sit out on the runway for a while and wait for our gate – about 15 minutes to be exact. When we did get to “the gate”, it was actually just some stairs leading down. Because we were a smaller aircraft we were parked outside – about ½ mile for the door to the building. It was spitting rain and so most of us who had tagged bags taken at the door sat on the plane a little longer before going out to wait for our bags. Once we got out, the bags still weren’t there so we all kind of huddled in a little mass of about 9 men and 2 women. They finally got the bags out of the cargo hold and brought the cart around to us and, not kidding, the men just lurched forward, pushing past the two women who were standing there. The other woman just kind of looked over at me and I made a comment about “what gentlemen…” She finally got forward and I thought everyone had gone. So I finally stepped forward to reach for my bag on the cart and, not kidding again, this man bounded down the steps and jumped right in front of me and grabbed his bag. I just stepped back and threw my hands up in the air and wanted to yell – anyone else! Please is there any other man on this runway that would like to push me aside! I refrained myself though. And here’s the kicker – when I finally got in the long, snacking line to make out way, through the green outlined path which led from the plane to the building, the guy in front of me had THREE bags! He had a pretty big duffel bag that he was carrying on, plus another plane size suitcase, PLUS a computer bag swung over his shoulder…. AND… the computer bag said ARMY on it…. So – this Army guy not only cheated on his carry on bag allowance, but he also shoved in front of me to get his over stock of carry on bags. I thought they were taught better in the Army….
The moral of this story – I’m not sure if its that northern boys are rude compared to southern boys (I’ve got to presume since they came from Charlotte to Chicago that they’re northern) OR southern boys, once they leave their motherland, become just as rude as the northern boys (that’s if they were actually southern boys from Charlotte who are visiting the north). Either way – boys, remember that the girl you cut in front of is someone’s sister – mother – daughter – wife – granddaughter or some such thing and that if their brother – father – husband – grandfather or some such thing were there – they’d probably beat you up!
Greenville is the headquarters for BMW - which is
right down the road to from my Aunt,
The giant peach always marks my spot between Charlotte and Greenville!
On Wednesday morning I flew from Chicago to Charlotte, a great “little” airport. Its actually fairly large, but I love the lay out and everything it has to offer. From Jamba Juice to Tequ
ilas at Tequilera to good old southern BBQ – you can get it all in the Charlotte airport. Oh – the one thing that the Charlotte airport don’t have is Chick-Fil-A…. That just be wrong in the deep south!So this is what makes me smile every time I first exit the plane at Charlotte. I love going into the washrooms just to see the smiling bathroom attendants! You got it! Every bathroom has this full stock of everything from lotion to mouthwash to tampons and there’s always a smiling southern woman to stock the supplies of cotton balls and q-tips and shoe polish and bbq sauce and grits… oops, that’s outside the bathroom….
Anyways – my first stop, as usual, this trip was the ladies room. As soon as I entered I was greeted by an elderly black woman (whatever if its not pc, but that’s what she was) was sang out “He—ll--o there sweetie! My name is Miss May and welcome to the Charlotte airport ladies room! “ There was another family of women that was following me in and so I quickly took a stall and just stood in there listening to her continue her song “I am here for you! I hope you will let me know if there is anything that you need! Are you staying in Charlotte? I hope you have a wonderful time! He—ll---o – my name is Miss May!” What I loved even more was listening to all the other polite, genteel southern ladies chirp back “W-ell! Hello Miss May! I am Helen! Thank you so much for welcoming me! This is a lovely bathroom!” Seriously! Those southern ladies are so pleasant and polite! It was the funniest thing and I just kind of hung out to listen to it for about 5 minutes until I figured my bladder would explode unless I did what I came in to do.
Verner was my bus driver to the rental car lot and he regaled me with tales of Charlotte and impending w
eather and then wonderfully told me that my car class was not available so I needed to either upgrade for free or take a smaller car at a price reduction. I chose the smaller Ford Focus and happily adjusted the seat and pushed on the Sirrius satellite radio that comes standard in almost every car now! I’m addicted to BBC1 at home (station 11 on Sirrius) and so its nice to travel and still get my station anywhere I go. “Its luvly” as my British friends would say.It was hard not to bounce in my seat to the snappy music as I observed the temperature reader thing in the car panel progressively go up as I drove from Charlotte to Greenville. 53, 55, 56, 58, 60…. “It was luvly…” Especially after I had just flown in from the snowy, bleak cold of the Midwest. It was spring in the south! Well, at least for today!
I got to Greenville and stopped quickly at Wal-Mart (which was doing a blood drive and so they had a big "Blood Vessel" parked outside!) to pick up dinner for the evening as I was having the newphews, John and Joe, come to dinner at Aunt June’s house. I got their mom’s speciality – frozen Stouffers family size… and whipped together a slightly burnt devil’s food cake. (When asking my sister what the boys liked for
dessert, she went to the other phone she was holding where she was talking to my brother-in-law, and he relayed that Joe liked chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting. When asking what the boys liked to drink, I was told “Joe likes Barqs root beer. Apparently Joe is the vociferous one and no one really knows what John is thinking… I took a gamble that he’d be good with the chcocalate cake, but something told me he’d like the orange crush – which he drank about 4 bottles of the 6 – good guess!).The boys came over around 5 and brought their laundry and just hung around chatting and eating guac and chips until dinner was ready. We finished dinner off and wound up watching a disgusting episode of Man V Food on the Food Network – all of his greats like eating hot wings and 7 lbs of hamburger in 45 minutes…. It made us feel better about all the food we had just consumed as it was nowhere near his volume!
Remember the scope thing that I was talking about the other week – well, Thursday was d-day when I had to
present my in-service to a sales force of 45. I drove over to Alpharetta in the morning. Alphar
etta is about 10 miles outside of Atlanta in a pretty up and coming little area. The shopping and restaurants were all trendy looking southern boutiquey things and the houses were ginormous two stories with columns and huge, fenced in back yards that had hills leading down to some wooded creek. Kudsu sprang up in huge patched here and there and BMWs and Land Rover
s were in every drive way and at every traffic light. Ah – so south!
The Endo company I made my way to was actually in a strip, office plaza, but was a nice office with tons of jovial southern gentlemen all laughing and being southern boyish. The VP and the CFO greeted me and we chatted, discussing my recent trip from Greenville. Whereupon I learned that the CFO grew up in Greenville and one of his best friends started the MBA program at Bob Jones Un. Later, I asked my nephew, who is a business major, if he had heard of this man, who is still teaching at BJ – Joe said with an awed look on his face “Are you serious – he’s the most AMAZING teacher!”
Anyways – after chatting for a while, Will, VP and Mike, CFO led me to the room where the sales meeting was taking place and then chatted with me about a video series they were doing on line for their products. Will had mentioned in an e-mail the day before that he would like for me to do a video spot for their detergent. While we were standing there, Will said, “why don’t we just go and shoot the video now”…. And so proceeded the most horrific half and hour that I’ve ever spent. I told him I didn’t appear on film and that I was in the witness protection program. I told him that I really should leave right then because – I thought – I heard – my mother calling…. I tried everything, but they were determined that I would do wonderfully. And so – they stuck me at this desk with a bottle of detergent and primped and thought about and shuffled all types of props and microphones and all else around me and then, the sweet and patient woman who was filming, videoed me about 100 times as I stumbled through these little spots on the product – which we make – and which I completely forgot what it actually was or did. We’d have to stop every now and again so they could tell me “oh say this” or “oh, say that”. Yes, that’s correct – they would tell me things to say as I didn’t have a script – I was just supposed to talk about the product. It was horrible horrible! But the one up side was that when I got into the room full of sales reps, the presentation seemed like cake. I actually really like doing in-services on care and handling and products and all so I kind of had fun with it and hoped they enjoyed my talking as much as I enjoyed talking to them J
I hung around through another presentation and then chatted with Will and Mark a little more and then took off – well, got on the road. I had to drive 8 miles of “back roads” to get to 85 – this took me exactly an hour! But, I did get back to Greenville in time to meet Joe and Jon and a friend of theirs, as well as Aunt June, for dinner at Mimi’s Café right down the road
for Aunt June’s.Friday morning, I was supposed to try and get to a hospital in the area but it didn’t work out so I got up early and went down the road to Starbucks to work for a few hours. I came back, picked up Aunt June and we went to Greer to try breakfast at Southern Thymes Restaurant – whereupon, we looked at the chintz curtains and the window and the old toothless men sipping coffee on mismatched vinyl chairs and decided to turn around and give Mimi’s some more business. We’re both sure that Southern Thymes probably had out of this work food that would make you tell numerous people later that day “I just had the BEST breakfast”…. But we couldn’t get past the ambiance – or lack thereof.
I spent a few hours over at my cousins before I headed back to Charlottte – and the wonderful bathrooms and bus drivers! I’ll say it again – I just LOVE the south! Oh – by the way – the temperature reading on the way back to the airport was now a dreary 38 – it wasn’t so bad leaving this way.
Oh – by the way – to counteract all the wonderful, goodness of the southerners. We got home to Chicago and because of weather we had to sit out on the runway for a while and wait for our gate – about 15 minutes to be exact. When we did get to “the gate”, it was actually just some stairs leading down. Because we were a smaller aircraft we were parked outside – about ½ mile for the door to the building. It was spitting rain and so most of us who had tagged bags taken at the door sat on the plane a little longer before going out to wait for our bags. Once we got out, the bags still weren’t there so we all kind of huddled in a little mass of about 9 men and 2 women. They finally got the bags out of the cargo hold and brought the cart around to us and, not kidding, the men just lurched forward, pushing past the two women who were standing there. The other woman just kind of looked over at me and I made a comment about “what gentlemen…” She finally got forward and I thought everyone had gone. So I finally stepped forward to reach for my bag on the cart and, not kidding again, this man bounded down the steps and jumped right in front of me and grabbed his bag. I just stepped back and threw my hands up in the air and wanted to yell – anyone else! Please is there any other man on this runway that would like to push me aside! I refrained myself though. And here’s the kicker – when I finally got in the long, snacking line to make out way, through the green outlined path which led from the plane to the building, the guy in front of me had THREE bags! He had a pretty big duffel bag that he was carrying on, plus another plane size suitcase, PLUS a computer bag swung over his shoulder…. AND… the computer bag said ARMY on it…. So – this Army guy not only cheated on his carry on bag allowance, but he also shoved in front of me to get his over stock of carry on bags. I thought they were taught better in the Army….
The moral of this story – I’m not sure if its that northern boys are rude compared to southern boys (I’ve got to presume since they came from Charlotte to Chicago that they’re northern) OR southern boys, once they leave their motherland, become just as rude as the northern boys (that’s if they were actually southern boys from Charlotte who are visiting the north). Either way – boys, remember that the girl you cut in front of is someone’s sister – mother – daughter – wife – granddaughter or some such thing and that if their brother – father – husband – grandfather or some such thing were there – they’d probably beat you up!
Greenville is the headquarters for BMW - which is
right down the road to from my Aunt,
The giant peach always marks my spot between Charlotte and Greenville!
Today Was Voting
Tuesday was voting day, which I was home for.
I find it quite amusing all of the candidate posters that are placed all over. They're only allowed up to a certain point though and then it just stops. Some of the names I look at on the way in and think "who the heck is that...." I know the major ones, but I have to admit, the other smaller offices I haven't always paid attention to. So - when I get in and get to one of the minor offices, sometimes I do remember a name that I saw on a posterboard outside the voting office. I guess that $5 they spent putting their campaign signs ups paid off with my vote!
Monday, February 1, 2010
ATC in Haiti
So this is pretty cool...The picture is Darlene and Kelsey and me. Darlene is married to Ted (Kelsey's dad). Ted works for ATC at O'hare. Ted was rasied on the mission field in Haiti and speaks fluent Creole. So, the ATC knows about Ted and they asked him to go to Haiti for 3 -4 weeks to work with all of the charity and assistance aircraft that are coming into Haiti. I think its such an awesome opportunity for him to not only help out with this horrible situation, but also to get to connect with the Haitian people again and to share hope with them, especially at this time. I'm sure he's excited to be "home" for while and I'm sure he'll be working long hours so pray for him and the family if you think of it.
Also - for those who know Darlene - she had a CT scan a few weeks ago and she appears to be cancer free at this moment. Although, the medications that she's had to take have kind of messed with her and so now she doesn't have total feeling in her feet or her hands. Its hard for her to walk and to write and such. Pray that she would continue to get the feeling back.
You can't keep her down, though, she's been going to the gym regularly and she told me that she gets on the treadmill for almost an hour and does the bike too. She's totally the most amazing woman I've met - two summers ago - before she found she had cancer - she was annoyed with this tree in her front yard and so one day she took their chainsaw and cut it down. A long time ago when their power boat that they use for water skiing had engine troubles, they didn't have money to fix it, but Dar was determined to get out there on the skis. SO - she researched the engine and found what she thought was the problem - she bought the part, took the engine apart, fixed it, and then hitched the boat up and went over to the lake to ski. I'm sure she'll be back up on the ski again this summer! You can't keep her down!
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