Here’s an encouraging column from USA Today (which happens to mention World Vision’s gift catalog). It’s a conversation between conservative columnist Cal Thomas and liberal strategist Bob Beckel. It talks about the greed during this time of year to have more. This sentence sums it up, and I truly agree:

“We need to think differently this year, and every year, about what matters most in life. It isn’t a $500 PlayStation3, which will be outdated as soon as Sony can make a more advanced model. It is about investing in and changing another life for the better. That is truly a gift that will keep on giving.”

More snow! Newscasters have been predicting this batch of snow all day, saying it would arrive at 5. So by 4:30, I was looking out the window, hoping to see flakes. Around 10 p.m., I looked outside and was graciously rewarded with a beautiful scene. (I originally had the video embedded, but I was having some formatting problems, so you just have to click the link to access the video now.)

Maybe tomorrow will be a snow day at work. I woke up at 6 a.m. and called our office hotline to see if the office was closed, but it was still open. Yesterday, only half the employees made it in due to icy roads. Today at 2:45 p.m., an announcement was made over the intercom that we were again strongly encouraged to go home. Some woman with a New Jersey accent made the announcement, and then she said, “Someone is saying we need a translation,” so someone with a…um, West Coast (?) accent came on the microphone and repeated everything the first woman said.

Shortly after that, I found out there was a gas leak in the building and we all had to leave. On top of that, someone turned some of the lights out, making the whole situation more strange. I went to tell my co-workers about the gas leak. One woman said she thought it was just a strong smell from the bathroom. I told them I had thought maybe I did something in my cube, and my co-workers looked at me strangely. My new boss said, “So if I smell something now, I’ll think it’s Melody.”

More snow pics, one of our street, and the other of a statue outside of the office:

Here are two videos of the snow in our neighborhood!

New November pics are in the gallery now! (The new album is on the second page of the main page.)

How rich are you? >>  I’m loaded. It’s official. I’m the 120,539,131 richest person on earth!

A London-based company is using this income calculator to show us how rich we truly are and also to shed light on how poor the rest of the world really is—and how little we do about it. This is their point:

“We are obsessed with wealth. But we gauge how rich we are by looking upwards at those who have more than us. This makes us feel poor. We wanted to do something which would help people understand, in real terms, where they stand globally. And make us realise that in fact most of us (who are able to view this web page) are in the privileged minority. We want people to feel rich. And give some of their extra money to a worthwhile charity.”

Check it out!

Last night, I received a phone call from a friend who asked, “Are you enjoying the snow?”

“Snow?” I replied. “It’s not snowing here. Is it snowing where you are?”

“Yeah! It’s been snowing for a few hours!”

I ran to the door and looked outside. The grass was covered in snow, the cars along the street had a layer of snow on top of them. “It’s SNOWING, MATT!!!” I yelled into the apartment, as my friend on the phone started laughing. I was SO excited. Of course, I have seen snow before, but it has never fallen where I have lived. Those of you who have lived in snow before, this is probably not a big deal, esp. when it’s not to the point where the streets need to be shoveled. But it was still incredibly exhilerating for me. Keep in mind, I grew up where hail was fascinating. I remember standing in Christine’s garage (we were elementary-school aged) and putting a pot out to collect hail. Why? Who knows, but it was really cool. The last time I saw hail in Sacramento was when I was living there after Brazil, and I took a picture of my dad walking home after work with an umbrella, standing in pouring hail.

So yes, snow is so beautiful and fascinating to me. :)

We went out to dinner with Makeba and Aaron and sat in a little diner on Rainier Avenue, watching snow fall outside. It was almost surreal. The restaurant was warm and cozy, and outside, snow was falling, illuminated by the streetlight.

The only downside is that it is SO COLD outside and I have a feeling my wardrobe needs a little bulking up.

I took pics and will post them soon!

Those of you who grew up at SCBC in the days of the hand-written transparencies for Friday night Co-Koi and RA worship times will understand where the title of this blog entry originates. Ah, the good ol’ days.

Anyway, two days until Thanksgiving, and I have nothing but a spirit of thanksgiving…OK, maybe a tinge of sadness because I won’t be able to spend Thanksgiving with my family, but I’ll see them soon enough. I have expressed it many times before (here and in personal e-mails) that I have no regrets about moving here, and I am sooo thankful for everyone and everything God has brought into our lives because of this decision. It’s been a learning and growing experience, but most of all, it’s been a GREAT experience. (Or, following the theme of the ’90s, it has been a “groovy” experience, which I would have said back then.)

The hubster and I will be spending Thanksgiving in Portland, which I’m really looking forward to. Aside from possibly working out in the hotel gym and watching cable TV, I look forward to checking out all the cute neighborhoods and nature Portland has to offer. Aside from a brief stop here during our move, I haven’t been to Portland since I traveled there for work a couple of years back. All I remember was briefly going to Powell’s books, eating an elephant ear at the Saturday market, dining in the Pearl District, wine tasting with a view of Mt. Hood…oh, and trying to stash a bouquet of roses into my suitcase. (It was a welcome gift in my hotel room, since most of these famaliarization–aka fam–trips were chances for the local convention and visitors bureaus to kiss up to us. As a poor, recently graduated college student, I took advantage of any freebie offered to me!) Hhm…this reminds me of traveling to Fresno State with Hong and the rest of the CRC newspaper staff for a journalism conference. Hong and I picked roses from the school rose garden and then tried to dry them in our room so we could easily take them home.

Anyway, I digress. Portland shall be oh so fun. To prepare for the trip, I read through an old article about the city in one of my Sunset magazines. But during the process, I ended up flipping through a year’s worth of Sunset mags, recording each article topic, categorizing them as Travel, Home, Decor, Garden, Plants, or Food, noting the page number, and then creating a spreadsheet with all this information. What good is a magazine subscription if I can’t easily refer to this wealth of information easily, especially now that the topics will come in handy?? OK, so I’m a nerd, but who will be the one with all the handy dandy home-garden-travel info, eh??

Happy Thanksgiving to you all, whether you are near or far from your family, whether you are feasting on a meal of turkey and sticky rice with a family of 20 or eating a small ham with a family of 4.

Earlier this week, my boss announced she would be leaving our team to head up a team in another department. A woman from another department will be joining us as our boss. I was really bummed to hear the news. After all, I had never had such a caring, smart, competent boss before. I was actually unaccustomed to having a boss who could actually lead a group and have our respect. Is it really that hard to have a good boss, you ask? In my short career of seven years–yes.

Here’s a brief history of my experiences with incompetent bosses:

- At first glance, my boss seemed sharp and in control. Sure, she has to have some capabilities to be where she is, but as time went on, I found out she was a tad cuckoo. This was the boss who asked her office assistant to keep track of exactly when we arrived at the office, when we left, and who we went out to lunch with. If we wanted to go out to lunch with other colleagues, we’d stagger our exits, some of us sneaking out the back door. She also reprimanded the associate/managing editors for not doing our jobs well, although if we weren’t doing our jobs, how could three editors write/edit multiple stories for three magazines each month and get everything out on time? That boss ended up getting fired (or more precisely, “forced to leave”), so that ultimately explains who wasn’t doing their job well. I remember one time she scolded me for something, but then I heard from someone else that she later felt bad that she took her moodiness out on me when I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t get an apology from her, though.

My more immediate boss at that same job had an office so messy that, at one point, I was assigned to clean it up when he was traveling. The other editor and I were so scared we’d find some rotting food or a dead body under all his piles of newspapers and trash. His piles of mail would stack up so high that another time, our big boss (mentioned before) asked me to open the mail during my lunch break. The disorganization was just a reflection of his inability to keep track of what was going in the office.

- My first boss in LA has shown a history of driving her associate/assistant editors away. She frequently passed her workload onto me–but only at the last minute when she realized she forgot to do her assignment. She didn’t really know what is going on, and when she realized I was taking care of stuff, she would get jealous and controlling and accuse everyone of “keeping her in dark.” We always included her in e-mails, but she just chose not to reply to them because she was too busy looking on match.com ALL THE TIME. She was really two-faced and kissed up to other fake people who she would bad-mouth to me during other times. She would ask me to do things a certain way and then forget that she had done so–ultimately making things more confusing.

-My last boss in LA was rarely in the office, and when she was, she was always doing things other than working. She would often lie about excuses for not being in the office or leaving early. We knew they were excuses because we would overhear her on the phone, or she would slip and brag about something she did (like going to a concert the night before although she was supposedly “sick”). She rarely followed up on things that she said she would do, and deadlines were always tight because things sat in her inbox. She would lay down rules for our team and the next day break them. “Unreliable” would be the best word to describe her. However, she was probably the most competent out of all the bosses I had up until then, which is surprising. She wasn’t much help in terms of getting work done, but she was good at representing the magazine and doing all the public relations stuff.

I bring up all these bosses not to gripe about them yet again (although you can see I still hold some bitterness. hehe…), but I also bring them up to show the contrast between my previous bosses and my current (well, current for one more day) boss. During my review, she asked me to list things SHE could improve on. I had thought about that a lot, because I know she wanted constructive criticism. But I ended up telling her, “I thought about all the things I want in a boss: someone who knows what is going on; someone who cares about us as people and wants to build team unity; someone who believes in us and appreciates us; someone who is approachable. You have all these things, and I can’t think of anything else you need to work on.” OK, that may have sounded like I was kissing up, but seriously, after having so many bad bosses, I know what I don’t want–and my current boss is like finding gold in a pile of poo.

So if you are striving to become a boss, please do NOT be like any of my old bosses. Your team will just be miserable, and you’ll end up dealing with high turnover or unhappy, disloyal workers.

I know what you’re thinking…you’re thinking that I only am concerned about these global issues affecting people in poverty because I work at World Vision. I have to admit, I didn’t know much about what was going on worldwide except for very general issues. And now as I’m daily bombarded with stories and pictures of how people are suffering, I’ve been more motivated to play a role, even a small one. I’m glad I have a chance to be more informed about what goes on outside of my immediate circle, and if I can help and also tell other people what’s going on, then maybe it’s a good thing that I’ve started working here. It’s definitely opened my eyes and changed my attitude about many things.

The other day, I was talking more with the girl I met at the volunteer orientation at Union Gospel Mission. We were both saying how we don’t want to appear too well-off, we want to have a simple wardrobe, not live in a big house that makes us seem wealthy, etc. It was funny talking with her about it because it’s almost like we have this poor man complex where most people want to go the other way (dress nicely, live lavishly in a nice neighborhood, etc.). It would be really easy to go about our own convictions if we’re only hanging out with people with similiar ideas.

But for the most part, how many other people do we know who feel the same way? And how do we go out into the real world and not get sucked in by society’s desire for more? How do we ignore any stares at our clothes because we wore the same discounted clothes last week? How do we overlook the comments about living in a not-so-desirable neighborhood? What is the trick to living as we are convicted and not caring about what other people think?

As much as I resisted venturing into the digital world, having a digital camera has proven to be so convenient. Here are some pics from October…more on the gallery: