Quigs’ Corner

Nowadays, a trip to the grocery store requires some additional things in the car: a cooler, cuz it’s so damned HOT outside and anything that is even remotely perishable will wilt and turn to mush in about 3.5 minutes and those omnipresent canvas bags that we’re all being shamed into using by our fellow shoppers. 

I don’t have a problem with the canvas bags - they are a good idea.  I can’t even tell you how many plastic bags I drop off at the Wal-Mart each month to recycle them, but I know it’s alot.  It’s just that I keep forgetting the canvas ones in my car! 

The canvas ones I’ve designated as my grocery bags (and have yet to see the inside of a market) are ones that I’ve resurrected from trade shows and other sales and marketing opportunities. 

When I’m in the store, I’ve kind of made it a hobby of mine to look at other’s bags to see where theirs are from and how they are designed.  Maybe I have bag envy.  Not sure.  I do see there are other geeks like me with computer brands on their bags, but what I really wonder about are those that bring in other grocery stores’ bags - is it legal and acceptable to bring in a Whole Foods bag into Market Street?  Even worse, can you mix and match several  stores bags on one trip?   And do you still get the nickel off for being environmentally conscience with a competitor’s bag (and for having a memory to drag ‘em in in the first place)?  I wonder what Ms. Manners would say?

The mysteries of life….

Well, Seminar season is here and is moving at full pace.  This is my third year working logistics.  It’s funny how your mind won’t let you remember pain - except for those hardest learned lessons you get when you’re a toddler like getting burned, or slamming your finger in a car door (note that I did learn both those lessons the hard way).  It’s not that the Seminar is physically painful - well, to some degree it is when I find my self at my desk for 14 hours - it’s demanding.  I’ve never been one to run away from hard work, though I’ll admit I’m not particularly fond of toilet cleaning duty, so working on this doesn’t scare me - it’s a challenge I welcome.  And a challenge it can be - we do this job in addition to our real jobs of taking care of customers that have paid a boatload of money for our products and services.  There’s a lot to handle and even more to juggle when planning the Seminar and that’s not even counting the curveballs you get - usually at the end!  It’s stressful, we work with people we haven’t worked with before and need to learn how they operate and we’re on a tight deadline and of course, budget.

When I described what my team does to a friend, she summed it up perfectly: it’s like planning a wedding.  She is so very right!  Now, when I go into my way-back machine with Mr. Peabody to when Mr. Q and I planned our wedding, we went through the exact same emotions, stress and anxiety.  I recall swearing I would never do it again (plan a wedding that is, not get married, though there have  been those moments…..). 

But, even though I said last year I wouldn’t do the Seminar again, here I am, working with my team, the other team leads, the hotel, all the time organizing, prepping, planning and making sure we’re prepared for anything.  Then, come August 24, we get to execute it for three and a half days all for our customers.  I anticipate on Wednesday afternoon, I will feel like I’ve been executed!  Despite all that, it adds a different dimension to my every day job, I get outside my comfort zone, I learn lots about the people I work with, and about me too, and I get to stand proud with my teammates when it’s all done to say we did this.  

So, if you don’t see any new postings as frequently as you’d like, or they don’t make sense, you’ll now understand why.   

It seems that summer has hit in North Central Texas.  We missed Dolly, and now we’re in a heat wave.  We haven’t had rain in weeks, and there’s none in sight.   I looks like it might cool down on Thursday though:

 Princeton, just north of us, has an extreme water ban and McKinney is giving out tickets for people that are watering on non-designated water days. I guess desperate times call for desperate measures?

So, if you are looking for me, I’ll be in the pool or sipping on a cool adult beverage.   

Part of being in a ‘global economy’ is the risk that other countries may not have the same set of standards as the U.S.  Think about what I’ve said for a minute, and take a guess on what country I may be speaking of.  Did you say China?  Good guess!

Today I spent time at Discount Tire, where I purchased the tires for the SUV last year, getting the valve stems replaced on all four tires.  It seems that the ones that they used (silly me thought they were part of the tire, not an additional part) were deemed defective, after an investigation into a crash in Florida that claimed a man’s life found that these things were prematurely deteriorating and caused a severe air leak that resulted in this horrible crash. 

So, this goes back to what I often say - ‘You get what you pay for’.  In this case, I paid for valve stems.  Probably the standard price that they’ve been charging people for years.  But, the tire companies decide to save money, like all of us, and they make a decision to buy these parts.  With this one decision, they’ve  had an effect on many things: they’ve taken at least one man’s life, cost thousands of people time while they wait for replacements to their tires as I did today, lost revenue while their techs replace these things free of charge, cost Americans jobs to the Chinese factories, contributed to the whole global warming thing by importing from China, and encouraged the Chinese to continue to put out crap products at wages that are one-tenth what a U.S. employee would make.  

Pet food, toothpaste, valve stems - who knows what else has been consumed by Americans that are tainted in some way.  I call upon the U.S. government to have standards for these things…we seem to have them for everything in the U.S., why not from China?  It seems that Bush is afraid of them, and won’t stand up to them. I’m not sure why, but as the largest economy in the world (at least for now), I would think the U.S. has the leverage to demand quality.  We don’t demand that they observe basic human rights, but at least we should be able to get reliable products and protect our own citizens.   

The annual Money Magazine ‘Best Places to Live’ list was released today, and my town, McKinney, TX was not only on the list, but in the top fifteen (at number fourteen)!  

Throughout my life, I’ve been fortunate enough to live in areas that others feel are worth of being on this esteemed list.  Portsmouth, NH has been on it several times, however not this year.  I suspect its high cost of living and housing has kept it off the list.  

I’ve been pretty lucky to have been able to live where others may consider ‘the best’. I hope that the city leaders of McKinney continue to do the good job they’ve done so far to manage the explosive growth here. 

The article on McKinney is here if you want to take a look. 

I get my share of emails I wished I hadn’t gotten, like all of us.  Today however, I got a link for a video that the sender told me I just had to see it, and I was going to love it.  Yeah right, I thought.  Well, guess what…I did see it and I did love it.  I’ll let you judge for yourself.  What a great gig this kid had, and we’re lucky enough to share in his experience. 

(If the video is choppy, hover over the video and click the HD button on the right to off) 

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.