Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Birthday Greetings to Pookie Flip-A-Bird!!

You are a treasure and a gift to us all. I'm even willing to briefly bend teensy little c0piwrite lawz for twenty minutes or so to show the world (okay, all 16 of my subscribers) why.

love, You Mama




And for all you email subscribers, please go to the site www.pinkfluffyicing.blogspot.com to view the video. By the time it downloads from the link in your email, my "poor starving Canadian musical artists" Conscience will be throwing a major middle-of-the-grocery-aisle tantrum and I will already have removed it from the site. I'll try to sit on her head until you get a chance to see it, though.

Saturday, October 27, 2007

I Got The Big, Nasty, Loud Immigration Guy: Part Three of Three

Prologue To Our Story
I Got The Big, Nasty, Loud Immigration Guy: Part One of Three
I Got The Big, Nasty, Loud Immigration Guy: Part Two of Three

W15 booms, "Your appointment?"

Despite DA's fairly decent fluency in English, she has no idea what he has just asked. Mentally flailing wildly for a grip on the moment, she stands slack-jawed for three seconds, leans down and in to talk through blow-hole number two and asks, "Pardon?"

"Where's your appointment slip?"

Aha!! DA slides the "B 27" paper square through the divet at the bottom of the plexi-glass shield.

"What're you here for, today?"

Ignoring the implication that she's a Repeat Offender, DA slides her thin, carefully paper-clipped sheaf of documentation under the plexi-glass shield, squeaking, "I'm hoping you can help clarify my situation regarding my renewal application for a temporary employment authorization document card." [Yes, that's really what they call it: a "document card."]

"UH oh! Looks like somebody was DENIED her I-765! Let's see here..."

His stubby, nail-chewed finger the size of a Costco bratwurst traces line by line down the denial letter. Mutter, mutter, read, "... denied...," read, mutter, mutter, read, "... because the adjustment of status application has been approved." Dead stop. "Well, that's good news!"

Taking a deep breath, DA kow-tows respectfully towards the blow hole and says quietly, "Yes, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But it's been six weeks and we haven't heard anything at all about the approval, so my lawyer called and they told him the adjustment of status was still pending, but that I would have to come here to talk to an officer to figure out what happened with the I-765."

Further explanatory babble threatens to bubble forth, but some primitive survival instinct kicks in with a vigorous, "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL IMMIGRANTS EVERYWHERE, SHUT UP!" So DA stands, like a mutton that is led to slaughter, and like an old goat that is silent before its shearers, so she does not open her mouth. For once.

"I'm going to look up what's going on with your adjustment of status. What's your Alien number?" Read, mutter, type, type, type, read. Screen, paperwork, screen, screen, paperwork.

"Wait a minute!" He turns and makes the first eye contact of the appointment. "There's been an error!"

Biting back the painfully obvious response of "No shit, Sherlock!" and seven years worth of quietly composting immigration angst just waiting to be released in a vitriolic spew, DA responds in calm, dulcet tones, "I'm so relieved you see it that way."

W15, eyes widening with the exertion, contemplates the situation for about four seconds. Then, "I'm gonna write an eMale! I'm gonna write a NASTY eMale!"

And with that, Big, Nasty, Loud Immigration Guy has switched teams and is now Big, Nasty, and Loud on DA's behalf. He's working the INS from the Inside, and he's bringing to the task all the energy that 300 pounds of institutional self-loathing can muster. As W15 hunts and pecks angrily on his industrial-strength keyboard, the will of God has, once again, become apparent.

Bang, bang, bang. "... however, this decision was made in error...." Bang, bang, bang. "... and so please advise what course of action is now open to the applicant since this was an erroneous decision...."

DA, now ironically nervous for a new reason, leans in to the blow hole with one light-hearted, "... Ha, ha! Just don't piss anyone off!" "I won't piss anyone off," and then with one final flurry of keyboard accostation, he concludes with, "Both I and the applicant thank you for your help," and we're done.

"Come back in one week. Or two weeks. Come to see me. At this window. I work Monday, Tuesday and Friday. And I will tell you what they said."

Squelching the need for clarification (well, is it one or two weeks? And how does one play Immigrant Bingo to guarantee a return to Wicket 15?), DA bows to the plexi-glass and says, "Bless you. And thank you. See you soon."

9:13 a.m. DA leaves the San Jose Immigration Field Office and heads home to change her pants.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I don't know yet where this will land. I went back a week later to visit W15 and he had encouraging news: "They're working on it. I'll send another email to see where they are in the process. Come back in two weeks."

Meanwhile, I'll do what I always do, and stay tooned.



Tuesday, October 23, 2007

I Got The Big, Loud, Nasty Immigration Guy: Part Two

To catch up with our story thus far, please see: I Got The Big, Loud, Nasty Immigration Guy: Part One

8:29 a.m.: Doofus Applicant leaves car for the third time, having performed personal strip search for ALL electronic doo-dads (not taking any chances this time on another circuit since she was already getting blisters from the mornings' cardio workout in pumps) and returns to San Jose Immigration Field Office building. After only two attempts at passing through the security inspection area--think "airport security" only with way more sensitive screening devices, necessitating the removal of belt, bracelet, and watch, and then on round two, blistering pumps--she's finally IN. (Half dressed, but in.)

8:38 a.m.: DA gets to first window and is handed a small square piece of paper inscribed with "B 27" and told to wait until her number is called, "over there." "Over there" is a large room filled with rows of plastic chairs facing a rounded bay of 15 wickets. Three of the wickets have the blinds up and are occupied by officers. The drill is you wait until your Bingo Number is called and you're assigned a window. "Now serving A 17 at Window 13" comes floating through the air courtesy of a silken-voiced automated recording, done no doubt by the same sedated woman hiding in the GPS system in our car.

Wicket 6 is occupied by a man who is obviously Officer Paper Overload. He is cutting efficiently through file after bulging file but no Bingo Winner ever gets called to his window. One assumes he has the blinds open for the air circulation and the view of a waiting room half filled with terrified but legal--so far--vile foreigners.

Wicket 13 is inhabited by a small and inexhaustibly patient officerette. So far, it has taken her 17 minutes with the one quiet couple that have been with her since DA arrived in the building. All three huddle close, each on their respective sides, to the plexi-glass sheet that separates them. The plexi-glass partition comes with three small "talk holes," drilled in at just the perfect level for diminutive vile foreigners (standing) and teeny immigration officers (seated) to exchange pertinent information.

And then there is Wicket 15.

W15 is an obvious source of major concern for every sweaty soul seated in a plastic chair clutching a mangled passport and limp bingo number.

In the first place, W15 is big. Think Dallas Cowboys refrigerator styled line-backer with no neck.

And, he's fast. Compared to W13, he is just a-hurtling through vile foreigners at a ratio of about 5-to-1. You want an I-765? Boom! Do this and mail it there, now! And what's that? You lost your card? Zap!! This is good for three months.

And, he's loud. Okay, maybe he has to be loud because he's so big. The talk holes are level with his nipples and he isn't the type to bow his head and grovel, anyway. To make himself heard, he just booms out his questions which float easily over the plexi-glass, reverberate off the opposite wall and riff back across the room with enough velocity to make the one poor guy's toupe lift slightly. I'm sure this communication choice is advantageous for the officer's posture and neck health, but the upshot is that everyone in the room knows the bidness of every Bingo Victim of W15.

Big, loud and fast are all okay, but he also seems particularly testosterony. Boom! "If you don't send the form in by the three month window, don't come back here, looking for a new temporary one. We won't give you one." And... ZAP! "Listen!! Do you want the card or not? Are you saying I don't know my job? Just fill in the form, mail it, and wait. That's how it works."

8:51 a.m.: Doofas A is praying. "God, please don't give me W15. I need some help here. There's been a mistake. The Adjustment of Status has not been approved and they denied my I-765 on the basis of it having been approved and I don't know if this guy will get it, plus he's really big and loud and fast and cranky.... Your will be done, in Jesus' name, amen."

8:55 a.m.: God's will becomes apparent: "Now serving B 27 at Window 15." DA discreetly wets her pants, then approaches W15.

Stay tuned: Part Three coming soon to a screen near you.

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Happy Birthday, Emily Blue!

Em, I spent a lot of time thinking about you this week-end as I put this video together and thought about what it means for you to have been part of my life for 25 years now. I thought of ten thousand things I could write about how amazing you are and had great intentions of crafting the most eloquent birthday greeting yet in the history of mankind. But no matter how hard I try, I can't get the words to line up in actual sentences. And I think I have figured out why.

It's because those words know they're your words and are behaving accordingly. They know you'll take them as the essential building blocks of "the stuff of Emily" and you'll put them together in whatever way is fun, makes the most sense to you, and tastes good. Plus, you have the video if you need to see what they look like in action.

Here's your list of recalcitrant words:

Loyal brave integrity honorable alive compassionate athletic no-bull genuine gorgeous funny generous happy assertive spiritual smart tough authentic thoughtful rhythmical refreshing unique eloquent sassy dancin' queen protective fun beautiful adventurous creative edgy intuitive profound.

And best of all, ours.


Wednesday, October 17, 2007

I Got The Big, Nasty, Loud Immigration Guy: Part One of Three

It has taken me almost a full work week to recover enough to write this.

Monday, 7:48 a.m.: Applicant gets turned back from initial entry to the San Jose Immigration Field Office building and returns the three block walk to the car to put her cell phone in the trunk. Her error? Having taken at face value the sentence in the preparation document provided online: "No cell phones with cameras will be allowed in the building." New rule (no warning): no cell phones, period. Homeland security threat, apparently.

Monday, 7:56 a.m.: Applicant, a little sweaty from the jog back to the car, gets turned away from the door a second time. Her sin? Doofus Applicant thought she was setting up an appointment for October 15. However, she accidentally selected the October 22 box at the online "InfoPass" appointment setter-upper application now employed by the INS to make sure their vile foreigners show up in easily managed and appropriately spaced lots. This time it really was her error. But wait!

There's a guy who runs the coffee cart outside the building. In the entrepreneurial spirit upon which this Great Country was founded, he has also located a nearby electrical outlet, set up a laptop computer, and found a roaming internet connection. For a mere $5.50, he is willing to let the coffee stall mind itself and go online to see if he can re-book the "InfoPass" appointment on your behalf, real time, for that morning. (I was SO tempted to ask Mr. Heavily-Accented-Coffee/InfoPass Guy if he was a legal immigrant, but the irony of him NOT being so would have been just too much to bear.) Doofus App coughed up the cash and scored an appointment just 45 minutes in the future. But, given the dedication the INS has poured into properly pacing the whole icky immigrant flow (and who can blame them?), you can't get in the building any sooner than 15 minutes before your scheduled appointment. So, armed with the best coffee a split-focused coffee/internet service provider can provide and a Costco blueberry muffin as big as her head, courtesy of Mr. InfoPass and another $6.25, DA heads back to her car to read the paper and wait her turn.

Can you stand the tension? Stay tuned...

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Corporate Communicators and Their Posturing Blogs

The scales have dropped from my eyes.

I honestly thought David Murray, Steve Crescenzo, and the rest of the IABC/Ragan Rat Pack were natural literary curmudgeons. But when squeaky Canadian-clean Ron Shewchuk felt compelled to recant the tone of his comment on David's latest blog as not being edgy enough, I had a mother of an "aha!" moment.

And I quothe: "I just realized how f*%$!!g [spelled correctly, in full] boring my last post was. No readers of this blog deserve such grandfatherly schmaltz. I wish I were trying to quit smoking so I could have that David Murray edge! I promise I'll try to be more of an asshole in the future."

Ron felt he had let the team down.

Apparently, if your Corp Comm blog doesn't ring with the blood-letting parry and thrust of a Tasmanian devil in unsupervised heroin withdrawal, you owe your reading public an apology. This is because real CC bloggers are a cranky, clever, cynical lot with murky backgrounds, a palpable disdain for those less linguistically enlightened, and a free hand with an emancipated vocabulary of the kind that got their mouths washed out with soap when they were kids.

"Yes, I inhaled, dammit, and I'm proud of it! I don't need no stinkin' presidency, anyway. Presidencies are for mealymouthed ex-CEOs who couldn't communicate their way out of a paper bag.... They're just corporate boobs who rattle on about 'leveraging employee engagement to empower corporate stakeholders to hit challenges out of the park.' I wouldn't take the Presidency if you shoved it down my f*%$!!g throat."

The truth is, I've met some of these guys. To a person, at least in conference mode, they have been smart, encouraging, creative, and witty people who need to pay the mortgage and feed the pet Vietnamese pig, just like everybody else. They also leak empathy. Yes, they spew vociferous rants into the blogosphere about what noodle-headed language mashers they have for clients. But when they're in their street clothes, I have this growing suspicion that they actually enjoy helping the poor stock-option bloated executive blighters navigate the slings and arrows of outrageous corporate baffle-gab. I need to believe that deep in their darkened souls, they know that mocking the linguistically blind for their inability to see is just not cricket.

HA! You guys are so busted. You won't fool me any longer. Ron, being Canadian and unable to help being nice out loud, you're just the most transparent of the lot. The rest of you? Come out of the closet and be the sweet boys your mother still knows in her heart you are!

Or have I missed something?

Thursday, October 11, 2007

A New Way of Communicating... At Least, New To Me

I sing Broadway show-tunes in business meetings. I know how to spell in American Sign Language. I speak English, French "com un canard Canadien," Swahili, Lanark County, and fluent pig-Latin. I speak CEO, COO, CFO, CTO and CBC. I've tried every kind of communication there is, I think, except the following:
  • Ground-breaking front-lines war coverage journalism (or any other kind of actual journalism, for that matter, but let's not quibble)
  • Morse code
  • Semaphore (The only official "girl's only" club I ever joined was something called "Explorers" which I think was somehow affiliated with the United Church of Canada we attended in Ottawa. There may have been semaphore offered in the program, but I didn't stick around to find out. I only stayed long enough to participate in the Annual Mom's and Daughters Cherry Blossom Tea and then quit. Not enough action, and, no boys.)
  • Shadow puppetry
  • Interpretive dance (that time at the Digital Equipment "Circle of Champions" sales meeting in Hawaii in 1990 when I first heard and embraced M.C. Hammer as a social movement worthy of my support and nifty dance moves definitely does not count)
So I thought I'd try a new kind of communication, this one specifically designed to speak compassion-ease. Jon Talbert, the "Compassion Pastor" at Westgate Church, calls it "Shut Up and Show Up." Novel concept, and I'm always up for something new. So, I'm walking for AIDS on October 21 with our Beautiful Day team. And we need your money. Click and donate. And then tell all your friends.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Life in the Linguistic Lane



I have the immense and enviable privilege of owning articulate, intellectually sharp, computer-savvy, and culturally engaged parents. The more testosterone-ishly inclined of the pair in particular has--and shares, at the least provocation--vigorously defended views on issues of language and meaning. As a result of my "ceding the linguistic nation" posting of yesterday, he responded, "No, no, no - don't give up the fight or all will be lost. Not only is our language being lost through carelessness and laziness, but the world of email and text-messaging is contributing to the scourge with the advancing plague of initials and acronyms."

I thought his comments (above) and my response (below) qualify as fodder worthy of my PFIFB readership, bless all yer little heads. My returning comments to Wordsmith Pater:

Yes, linguistic purity (not to mention spelling convention) may be in jeopardy due to the increased use of initials- and acronyms-disguised-as-words. The medium itself is in large part responsible for, and I'm sure even encourages, the speed, immediacy, and accessibility-by-all-riff-raff who care to participate, not to mention the inconsequential nature of the messages themselves. (Dad, you'll enjoy this next bit.) How much of what navigates the ethernet--in email, Twitter, Facebook, and blogs without number--have the conversational equivalence of: "J'eat jet?" "No, dj'yew?" An old joke about an ancient medium (speech) but one that translates quite nicely into our current realities, me thinks. A big part of Life As It Has Been Known is composed of inanities of this ilk. We are a race of superficial linguistic linkages: "Hi there!' "How are you?" "Fine!"

Ring a bell?

One more comment, and then I'm done and heading to actual food on a plate (as opposed to pleasing yet empty calories in a nicely shaped glass). Without email, facebook (at least with my kids), blogs and/or text-messaging, would you and I even be having this conversation? And given how busy I am (always) and how ill you have been (lately), this conversation is pretty darned precious to me.

And dj'yew know what I'll get parental grief for, in all of the above? The word "owning."

HA!!! :) I do so.

Love youse, Ma-MEE and WP

kl

Monday, October 8, 2007

I Give Up: Facebook Grammar Wins

For those of you waiting to exhale, breathe out.

I'm staying in facebook, irregardless of what I seen yesterday with the "Gotten New Friends?" headline on the new application what my friend used. The battle is already lost. Neither I nor the actual grammarians of the world who might shiv a git about English grammar can do a dagnabbit thing aboudit.

I was walking back to the car from a brief zip into Trader Joe's today and walked alongside a group of lovely elderly ladies disembarking from an "Our Lady Of Fatima Villa" handi-bus. Said Blue Hair with matching blue polyester suit to Sweet Companion with the walker and almost no hair but spiffy in her burgundy pedal-pushers nonetheless, "... so, I said, okay, like, whatever...."

You could have knocked me over with a travel tube of denture cream.

Sunday, October 7, 2007

Facebook Grammar: I Was Okay Until I Hit "Gotten Some New Friends?"

I joined facebook about three weeks ago as an exploration exercise in new social media.

For the uninitiated among my vast readership, facebook is kind of like a communal online diary. It's a very cool human connection technology, right up there in scope of impact with the telegram and the middle finger salute in traffic. I love the broadcast, immediacy, and fluidity of the medium. I love the ability to both deliver and check in on the minutiae of daily life that at least gives the sense of close proximity with loved ones spread across, literally, the planet. The "status" option allows a person to give a one-line snapshot of what is the consuming thought of the moment, kind of like when you bump into a family member in front of the fridge and ask "What are you having for lunch?" and they respond, "Dunno... do you think this dim-sum from Saturday is still edible?"

It has been an addictive hoot. Not only did I get some swell comments from my kids: "Love that you're here... Now you can stalk me remotely" or "Hmmm... I'm not sure how I feel about you being on facebook! It's kind of like when I was in Grade 7 and found out you liked MC Hammer...." Apparently, they feel like it's a proactive collision of worlds, or in the words of my son, "Mom, if this were the fifties, it would be like you coming and sitting beside me in the malt shop." HA! So I started a group called "I Freaked Out My Kids By Joining Facebook." We're up to 8 members.

But aside from stalking my kids, I also found and re-connected with many dear Friends Of A Respectable Age. This is just a treat and a joy to hear what they are all up to. I've found that just because you lose sight doesn't mean you lose touch at the heart level. I'm delighted that Ellie is moving back to where she can keep daily contact with all her zany and marvelous sisters, and that George is running for Mayor of High Level. (I bet he's doing it on a dare.)

So, it's all good until I encounter an application on a friends' page called "Friends Block" that announces its benefit statement* in the following terms: "Gotten Some New Friends?"

And now I'm in my own collision of worlds. Knowing that I stand a slim to inconceivably non-existent margin of hope of influencing the grammatical sustainability of facebook, do I stay or leave? Stay tuned...

*Even in new social media, no one escapes the need to answer the question "So, why should I care about what you are offering?" Marketing is an ancient and honorable profession.

Friday, October 5, 2007

Where Is A Shut Up Pill When You Really Need One?

I wish there was a shut-up pill. Is that so much to ask? There are pills for every darned affliction you can think of, not to mention the "illnesses" I'm convinced pharmaceutical companies have crafted to boost sales. But for those poor souls who dominate every conversation that they find even remotely interesting because it's the only way they can think all the fun thoughts that demands to be processed and/or played with? Nada.

Trust me, this is no sniggering matter. (You don't even want to know what the spell checker wanted to change that word to.) It may come as a surprise to many to know that there are those among you who simply CAN'T THINK without the external loop that connects brain to mouth to ear to brain. Like, fer instance, me.

In a conversation, I often have no idea what I think about a topic until I hear it coming out of my mouth. And then, apparently, I speak with such declarative phrasing, vigor and volume that I delude my listeners (poor souls: where is the pill for them?) into thinking I have held this opinion for decades and am immovable on the subject. Don't even think about it. Quickly... someone change the subject, or give her a massive chunk of fresh toffee or pemmican to glue her jaws shut. Or just shoot her.

See? On all accounts, a shut-up pill would be a gesture of humanitarian generosity on the scale of the nose-hair trimmer. Honestly. That big. First, for those of us who would take the little white cup with the single red pill eagerly and with no complaining, we would bless you. What a relief it would be to go home at the end of a day of meetings/social events/book club dinners/community group nights, and not lie there and think "WHY? Why can't you just STFU and listen to the people you love and honestly do want to hear what they think?" It's a common complaint, I'm sure.

And is desiring a prophylactic babble inhibitor so trivial as to warrant an immediate and disdainful dismissal by People With Bigger Problems To Solve? Listen, burrito-imbibing socialites who fear an intestinal gas attack in public or during an intimate situation have pills they can take to pre-empt an unfortunately timed triple-flutter blast. They know it's a possibility, and one they'd rather avoid, so... insert a couple of Gas-Xs, add a chaser of H2O, tilt head, and... no problem. But for us gotta-think-outside-the-head victims? It's a case of medical/pharmaceutical industry bias: gas over gas-bag discrimination, plain and simple.

Boy, if I were still in Canada, I'd be writing a letter to the editor and signing it "Shocked and Appalled in Mississauga."

Thursday, October 4, 2007

Why Business People Speak Like Idiots

In the book Why Business People Speak Like Idiots (Fugere, Hardaway, and Warshawsky), I found a new way to unpack the acronym SCUBA: System to Clean Up Bogus Acronyms. This was an enjoyable and timely moment for me for three reasons.
  1. I had recently read a fun posting on a friend's blog where he comments on a news article about a virtual church. In the blog, he plays with a variety of possible acronyms that could be used for the virtual pastor of this virtual church, starting with Preacher EGHEAD (electronically generated, humanly engineered, adjustable device). In a follow-up posting, he mentions other possibilities: Post Mortal Shepherd (PMS), or maybe Automated Simulated Shepherd (first name, "Jack"). My favorite? Simulated Thing that Undermines People’s Intrinsic Design + Automated Preaching Entity (STUPID APE).
  2. I work in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry. Sitting in a meeting with the technical dudes at the office is the conversational equivalent of text messaging between two 12-year old girls: "At ICCAD, should our COO talk about our LCC and CAA tools? Or should he focus on RETs, like OPC and PSM?" omg*... k.w.e.
  3. It made me remember that I love to use self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.







*That's "goodness" in my lexicon.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007

New iMac, New Blahg, and One New Insight

Today iAm the proud owner of an iMac for which iBe most grateful. And a wee bit confused: how do you "select all" on a Mac, and what's the deal with the squeezy buttons on each side of the mouse? I'm sure I'll stumble on the answer to all these black box questions sooner or later. Actually, that's a PC-biased statement: they're more like "white monitor" questions now and I should take more care with my language. This is especially true now that Third Child is solidly embedded into the core of Apple. (HA! I should be shot, sometimes, and probably frequently.) BTW, his first question when he found out that the UPS stork had landed and we were unpacking and gluing together all the iBits and iPieces--okay, no glue and only 3 iBits and no iPieces--was "Has iT crashed yet?" hmmm....

So, now I have all this nifty new software, housed in a sleek mondo screen and connected to my brain by a midgy wee keyboard and freaky mouse. I'm told that somewhere there is a pre-installed menu, in a land far, far away and accessible no doubt by two roller-ball clicks and a double simu-side-squeeze on the weirdo mouse. This mythical menu theoretically contains access to a "websites for dummies" application that makes building or updating a website so easy you don't have to know anything at all in order to tell the world just that. If that's true, I'm going to re-visit the ol' www.kathyschmidt.com website and convert it to a blahg focusing on issues and topics specifically relating to communications: corporate, personal, inter-planetary... whatever. PFIFB will then revert to its roots as a sweet little home-spun blahg which focuses on issues and topics relating to nothing specific at all aside from my own random synapse connections spawned in hormonal rages or lack of sleep, punctuated by moments of lucid insights or profound spiritual slaps-upside-the-head. Let it be said you heard it here first: I'll be using the the Mac for more serious corporate reputation-enhancing material, and the PC for my wild-side: creative, experimental, self-revelatory (and probably rambling) personal drivel. Like this:

One of my more memorable (I took a picture so I would remember) take-ways from last week's "Corporate Communications and The Social Media Revolution*" was the realization that at most hotel catered continental breakfast offerings, the best part of the meal is the garnish. Tip To You: get there early before I scoop up all the fruit and all that's left is the colon-clogging carbo mountains of bagels and the plates filled with ribbons of some disgusting pink crap that I think was supposed to be strawberry cream cheese but looked like something that had waged a valiant war with bottles and bottles of Pepto Bismol on the intestinal distress front, but lost. I certainly wasn't going to be eating any of it this side of the Donner Pass.



*BTW, I've referenced the name of this event several times already in this blahg, and I think that's the first time I've actually got it right. See? The serious "get it right" Mac phenomenon is kicking in already!