News from the Great Beyond

New Word Blog Post: Walking on Water

I'm being "green" and recycling today - isn't green a lovely color?

Actually, when I was looking this past week at my topic scriptures for today's post on the Word shared blog, I realized that I could not possibly improve on what I'd already written about Matthew 14:22-36, the passage where Jesus, followed by Peter, walk on the water. 

The post I made in March of 2004 was pulled from the notes I took during a sermon by a guest speaker who really impressed me, and I still can't think of anything better to say about that passage, so I plagiarized from myself to share for today's devotional.

Thankfully for the "lazy writer" syndrome, I don't believe I have any other posts in my archives that would work for the purpose... or at least, if I do, I don't remember them, which means I won't go poking around through the archives for them when the time comes. I can't promise I won't find a poem or two (or a related story post) to link there when relevant, but that's a different story altogether. ;-)

So for those who haven't already poked around in my "Best of Beyond" sidebar featured posts, or for those who want to join a fresh discussion with the Word blog readers...

Click here for Day #22 - Walking on Water

News from the Great Beyond Time Capsule

For those of you who have been following my blog for a long time -- well, thank you.  You're either related to me, or a bit nuts, but thank you.

But what I was going to say was, if you've been around this site through the years, you've likely seen a number of my site designs.  I'm no professional web designer, but I've taken pride in creating the site banners and choosing the formatting options Typepad allows me with each new look.  Well, except for one, which was Hubby-head's, but he did a great job on that one.

In preparation for rolling out my newest creation in a couple of weeks (or when I can no longer stand the wait), I thought I'd share some screenshots of the various looks this blog has sported over the nearly eight years since my first post on March 1, 2004.

New Word Blog Post: It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To

My weekly post is up at the Word shared blog, this week entitled "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To"... 

Click through to read my thoughts about Job 17-19, including how much of Job's speeches read like a giant pity party... one of Job's clueless friends unwittingly provides an excellent customer service smackdown... and as a bonus, if the title doesn't get a song stuck in your head, the ending almost certainly will.

Take your pick of one of these variations:

 

Have a great week! More to come!

Everything That's On My Mind... Hot Tea and Honey Edition

As the great Charlie Peacock once sang, "Oh, I've got to say everything that's on my mind / I cannot keep it bottled up inside of me..."

I'm sitting here with a mug of chai laced with honey, fighting the inevitable case of winter bronchitis.  A ten hour day of sitting near sick coworkers, and voila!  The cough is developing.  Mucinex and Theraflu got me through last winter, and I suspect I may need to make a restocking run over the weekend.

Weekend.  Normally, this is Sunday, Monday and Tuesday for me, working my 4/10's shift.  Alas, right now is our busiest time of year, and mandatory overtime is in effect to the tune of 5 hours a week.  As I cannot fathom the thought of voluntarily working over 10 hours in a day (tried it once, and eleven was just. too. much.), this means one of my normally brain-dead refuse-to-leave-the-house days is marred by a trip to the office to put in something resembling an effort to be friendly and helpful.  Bah humbug.  This coming week, I'll be working 8 hours on the official company holiday Monday, then 10 hours Wednesday, 6 hours Thursday, 10 hours Friday and Saturday. 

Oh wait, that only adds up to 44.  I'm missing an overtime hour.

OH WELL!

Work is... work. There are days that, no matter what my friend and coworker believes, I struggle to make it sound like I enjoy the job.  I was a theatre minor in college, you know.  I do have a bit of a talent for acting. 

Then there are days when I actually do kind of like it -- believe it or not, these are not always the easy days where everyone is nice.  Sometimes the really difficult calls are an opportunity to prove just how awesome you really are.  I wear my Superman t-shirt, and leap tall customer service hurdles in a single bound.

Take this past Wednesday for instance.

One thing I've learned working for a mail order pharmacy is that insurance plans that require mail order for maintenance medications tend to make people angry.  Mail order required plan, plus a procrastinating customer, stir in a little attitude and sense of entitlement (and a nagging wife in the background who must add her two cents), and you've got a recipe for a difficult call.

Add in a fresh-out-of-training customer service rep's oversight, a doctor's office who does not respond promptly to pharmacy requests, a past due balance for an order the customer denies ever receiving from five months ago (despite UPS package tracking showing it was signed for), and life-or-death liver transplant meds, and you've just enabled EXPERT MODE.

One split order, two mail order overrides, a courtesy credit for the allegedly lost package, a coaching request e-mail for the newbie, and a heck of a lot of apologies later, I handed off the reasonably mollified caller to our specialty pharmacy to deal with an order they were trying to finish up, took a deep breath, and with a huge grin announced to my coworkers around me, "I WIN."

You've gotta take your victories where you can find them.

I've found myself searching for those little victories quite a lot lately, especially where writing is concerned.  After my last posts here on NftGB and on the Word shared blog, I spent an enormous chunk of the day on Sunday and Monday obsessively checking site stats and waiting for comments.

In between refreshes on my Typepad and WordPress dashboards, I did a little playing around with graphics for forum signatures on one of the sites I frequent, and after uploading a couple of new sig prospects for people to review, I spent an inordinate amount of time watching for replies and staring at the "times viewed" counter. It was really quite pathetic.

So I came up with a new banner and color scheme for this site, yet again, and am trying to force myself to wait until February to enable it, just on principle.

Now that she's blogging, I wonder if my mom is experiencing this deep and abiding need for feedback.  I'll say one thing, her second-ever post was a doozy!  She appears to have slipped right into the conversational voice of a good blogger and storyteller.  And what a story.

When my dad was diagnosed with his brain tumor, I was 1500 miles away, and deeply embroiled in the hectic preparations for my wedding that was coming up in six weeks.  I heard and saw only bits and pieces of what he and Mom were going through, and comprehended even less.  It's hard to really fathom that kind of suffering and grief until you've walked through your own... but even if you haven't, Mom's post will inspire you.  Give it a read, see for yourself.

New Word Blog Post: Trust Me. I Know What I'm Doing.

Just a note to let you know that my second post of the year is up at the Christ Community Church blog, and it's all about the trust issues.  That, and a healthy dose of goofiness inspired by imagining a modern vernacular conversation with Abraham and Abimelech.  You'll just have to see it to understand:

Click here to check out my post on Word.

Speaking of the church blog, I just have to spend a minute here and brag on my mom.  This past Thursday was her first ever venture into blogging, and she did a great job.  Check out her thoughts on God's covenant with Abram from Genesis 15, and more, here.

I got a sneak peek tonight at her post for this week, and it's just awesome.  I think she's getting used to this writing thing... I'll be sure to link her day #12 reflections when they're posted, because you won't want to miss this one.

Stay tuned for at least one more post here this week.  Meanwhile, play nice, and don't put your feet on the furniture.  I'll be watching!

New Word Blog Post: God of the Beginning

Happy New Year to my friends, family, and random strangers who run across me in a Google search for complaints about being non-confrontational or having a high forehead!  My introductory post is up at Word, the shared blog for Christ Community Church's Bible-in-a-Year readthrough. 

I'm one of seven bloggers - including my mom - who will be posting weekly.  My day is Sunday, which I suspect was intentional to force me to be the first to publish.  For some reason, having my ramblings out here in public for the last eight years or so makes me appear to be a veteran blogger, and they thought I'd have an idea of what to do so everyone else could follow my lead.  Hah! 

Well, I've known how to ramble un-self-consciously for an audience since my college improv comedy days, and was trained by our "To Tell a Joke" improv game that it's sometimes necessary to be the first to volunteer to jump out there and say something - anything, no matter how stupid - to give others time to come up with something better.  The director would ask the audience for suggestions (a profession) we would use within a preset joke framework (ten thousand "whatevers" walk into a bar...) and take turns coming up with impromptu puns based on the audience feedback.  Usually, the volunteer "sacrifice" would step out immediately and speak slowly, at length, making very little sense, and face the befuddlement and groans of the audience with good grace while the other troupe members racked up idea after idea for actual "good" jokes. 

Yeah, they might say I'm a "hard act to follow", but in my mind, I'm the "sacrifice" to give them time to come up with a better plan.

I debated for a while whether to cross-post my submissions in their entirety here on NFTGB, but ultimately decided I'd rather direct the traffic, and the comments, to that site - the more the merrier over there for the readthrough.  So, head on over to Word for my thoughts on Genesis chapters 1-3 and Matthew chapter 1... and on behalf of the blog-reading community, get some discussion started while you're at it.

Click here for "God of the Beginning"

A Little Redecorating

Thought I'd give the blog a facelift for the new year - with what my resolution to write more (and my commitment to post weekly on the CCC-SI "Word" blog, then at least share a link here), we wouldn't want it to start looking dusty around the place.

The banner graphic is newly created, but loosely based on the New Year's theme I used here on the site back in 2005.  What? 2005?  Really?  Yes, time has flown.  Here's a snapshot of what it looked like back then. 

And since I was being all graphic-designishly creative, I was poking around in my archived files and found a folder full of forum signatures I'd created for myself and my friends on my World of Warcraft guild forums.  I've created a new photo album and uploaded the majority of them here just for grins.  For those of you who played in the past (or still play), enjoy this walk down memory lane.

Tomorrow, be on the lookout for the first of my weekly group blog posts.  I'll likely just link to it here with a short excerpt, to direct more traffic to the main blog.

Musings... on Writing Discipline

Oh hi, it's me again... remember, the one who promised back in August that I'd be posting more often?  Yeah, we can see how well that worked.  Promises, promises, eh?

I will say that despite not posting about it, I did work on transcribing more of my poetry to the blog site - I finished all the more recent poetry collection (although I still have to work on getting the songs typed up, and finish the original, older collection while I'm at it).  And then... life happened.

I had a wedding to attend in early September, with bridesmaid duties... and right before I left, I was presented with a can't-miss opportunity at work to assist with our next new hire training class and coordinate their on-the-job training.  This caused my work schedule to shift for 7 weeks, starting the day after I returned from my week long bridesmaid-vacation, and suddenly I no longer had my 3-day weekends to designate a spare day for creativity.  And once I'm out of the habit, it's deadly hard to get me back into it, so going back to my usual work schedule in November, nothing got written.  Discipline has never been my strong suit, apparently.

I have, however, been reading a lot about writing - especially Twitter updates and blog posts from one of my favorite authors, James Scott Bell.  And reading about writing makes me want to write more, I just need something to force me to get started, and keep going.

Enter my mom's church, and their 2012 theme, "Do the Word".  As part of their "Bible-in-a-year" reading plan, there will be daily devotionals on their new church blog, and yours truly has been designated as one of the 7 regular blog contributors.   In fact, I will be writing every Sunday.  Hey wait a minute, New Year's Day is a Sunday this year... You mean I'll be the first one up?  No pressure there, folks!

As a side note, my mom will be one of the featured bloggers as well.  She would never describe herself as such, but my mother is a scholar - I expect some fantastic insights from her, especially regarding the Old Testament readings.

In any event, I'll link to the weekly "Do the Word" posts here as well as on Facebook.  Having a regular audience depending on me for the church blog will keep me accountable to write at least that on a weekly basis, and I refuse to promise too much for additional writing (especially coinsidering how busy work is likely to get after the new year), but once I'm in the groove, you may see more.

Your Yearly Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer Recap

... as you might expect, given my history these last few years!  Let's jump right in, shall we?

 

December 1: Your mission, should you choose to accept it... Listen to this acappella rendition of We Three Kings and tell me, does this not remind you of the Mission Impossible theme at the beginning? Srsly cool, Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer to kick off December 2011!

 

December 2: It's true! I couldn't find a live performance or even a good fan video for this one... but after hearing it on my Pandora holiday station a few times, it's stuck with me enough to make it Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer for today.

 

 

December 3: I've said it before, and I'll say it again... It's just not Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer without a couple of songs by Celtic Woman - and here's the first for this year. Gorgeous.

 

December 4: Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer for this chilly Sunday is a song that has good memories for me. This one's dedicated to Rachel - miss singing with you sis! :)

 

December 5: Happy Monday all! It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas 'round here - winter weather advisory was in effect for Phoenix this morning, with snow in the foothills and higher elevation spots... Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer is just right for my mood today!

 

Looking at the past...

As promised last week, I've spent some time toiling away, transcribing more of my past collections of poetry, songs, and miscellaneous bits of creativity.  There's much more to go, but I've made a few observations.

First, some of what I wrote when I was in high school and college was rather profound.  Some of it was utter drivel.  I have been making a huge effort not to censor myself as I retype, preferring to keep things as they were in all their naivete and melodrama, but man.  It's an effort indeed.

If I could go back in time to my teens-and-twenties self and give myself a few pieces of advice, first and foremost would be that guy is not worth the drama you're putting yourself through.  Although in retrospect, my tendency toward melancholy, melodrama and unrequited love did prompt me to write prolifically at times, so perhaps that's not the foremost piece of advice I'd give after all.

OK, truthfully, the most important piece of advice would be don't stop writing.  Happy, sad, or apathetic; head-over-heels infatuated, infuriated, or awed... Every little thing that used to make me write at some point stopped being so important to put into words.  That, I regret.  I got out of the habit of writing, and of sharing that writing with others, and it's a tough thing to get the words flowing again.

So I'm still working at it.  Nothing "new" to share at this point, but I've plugged away this week at adding more to my Open the Window, Let in the Rain collection, mostly working from the later end of the table of contents back toward my older, stupider self.  I've also put up an index page for what was going to be my second collection of poetry, songs, and creative bits - I started gathering them around 1998 or so, intending to pull them into a cohesive collection and make copies for distribution to friends and family (much as I did with the first one), but I got sidetracked in the process and never finished.  How appropriate, for a collection entitled "Unfinished Business." 

From that index page you can link to the dedications - I've actually edited that a bit from the printed version I had lying around, and will probably edit some more... as well as the songs index and the poetry index.  The poetry index includes links to the more recent poems I've published on the blog, within the original blog posts, so you'll see some explanations, dedications and comments already there from years past.  Older poems will be published on individual pages like I've done with the older collection and linked to the titles you see there. 

The songs index currently has only two items available to view, and both of those are special requests from my mom:  Breathe, and Given.  I think I may be missing one or two from that list, which I'll have to go back and add as I find them.   While I'm busily paving the road to Hell, I might add that someday I hope to get some help from a good musician or two, record these babies, and add the recorded version for posterity.  Perhaps I'll YouTube 'em. 

But these are pipe dreams for a different day, and I have promises to keep (I won't forget to work on the new stuff, Dave!), and laundry to do before I sleep.  Literally - the bedding is in the washing machine even as we speak!

Return of the Muse (or some such)...

Well hello there, friends, family, and random strangers who leave tangentially related spam comments on random old blog posts!   'Tis me again, your humble procrastinator.

So... those of you who are Facebook friends have a decent idea of how life's going for me lately.  Working 4 ten hour days, spending at least two days of my three day weekends trying to recuperate from the daily hell that is customer service...  Reading voraciously as usual, and having little mental energy to write anything myself.  This is why I'm such a delinquent blogger - my job may actually provide me with fascinating stories to tell, but it normally sucks the energy out of me to tell them.

In any event, this is not a "oh hey, how about this jerk I talked to the other day" post.  This is an announcement that will hopefully help to keep me accountable to a plan I recently made, thanks to the encouragement of a new friend, acquired across the world through the random connections one makes through social media.  Yes Dr. Dave, this means you!

As posted oh... about ten months ago (how does time fly this fast?  seriously!)... I've got the germ of an interesting story brewing in my head, and actually made a decent start on writing it.   And now I have a commitment to working on it, at least enough to make some progress by the end of August (August?  Wasn't it just March like, yesterday?).  Watch this space for public humiliation, or updates of various writerly sorts... I'm trying to force myself to write something, anything, regularly, and will post when I can just to keep the words flowing.

And to prime the creative pump a bit, I have started retyping some of my old poetry collection, that was previously posted on my Geocities website.  (Yes.  Geocities.  Old school.... or just old.  Whatever.)  You can find the title page here, and links from there to what I've gotten done.  I've chosen a few of my favorites to start with, some random examples from different time frames, and one special request from my mom.  More to come in the future from that collection (check back every so often, I probalby won't post new links every time I add to it)... I'll also be putting up a second collection of my newer ramblings and whatnot, including lyrics to several songs that I'm actually rather proud of (but still need to make decent recordings of), and quite a few poems that already appear on the blog in my Creative Offerings category archive.

My plan is to spend a chunk of either Monday or Tuesday every week on creative writing activities, and posting updates that are fit for public consumption.  Of course, we all know about the best laid plans of mice and men, and the paving material for the proverbial road to Hell...  but as long as it lasts, I hope you enjoy the ride along with me.

A bit belated...

... but in case you were waiting for it, here for your reminiscing and/or viewing pleasure is the 2010 collection of Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer!

December 1: For my long-term blog and FB friends, you know what December means... newer friends, time to experience it! It's time for Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer! December 1 is the first day of Hanukkah, so I thought I'd share something a little... different. You don't often find someone playing one of these:

December 2: Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer for December 2nd - because Celtic Woman is just amazing with Christmas carols :)

December 3:  And now for something completely different.... Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer for December 3:  Pomplamoose.  Aww yeah.

December 4: Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer today, courtesy of Cherry Caid... Simply lovely.

December 5: Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer - two-for-one special! :)

December 6: Your ultra-cool Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer....  In the holiday mood yet?

December 7: I think I'm having flashbacks... Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer for December 7, boy-band style:

December 8: Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer today... Impressive fiddlin' from a talented family.

December 9: Your Daily Dose of YouTube Holiday Cheer for December 9:  pretty and slightly quirky... this could describe the video, the song, or many other things for that matter.

December 10: Your Daily Dose of Socially Conscious YouTube Holiday Cheer, courtesy of U2.

 

Sung to the tune of "What Have I Done to Deserve This"

Subtitled "I don't know who peed in your Cheerios this morning, lady, but it wasn't me"...

Today's Customer Service Nightmare brought to you by the Pet Shop Boys - goooo 80's flashback!

Now that this is firmly implanted in your brain, let me tell you about ANGRY WOMAN, who spoke to me this afternoon for a mercifully brief, albeit excruciating, time.

In the course of a phone call to place a refill order, I am required to ask an average of 10-12 questions. Some of them, if the customer has played nice with the phone system, I am able to skip.  Some questions are a result of the way I choose to go about placing an order, but most are required for verification purposes, either to comply with HIPAA privacy laws, or for our own procedures to make sure we've got the correct address, phone number, and credit card info for our customers.

ANGRY WOMAN did not want to answer questions.  ANGRY WOMAN wanted me to do things in her way, in her time frame, and was already apparently in a snit when I answered her call.

First question:  "Can I have your name please?"  Normally this elicits the customer's first and last name - other reps phrase it as "Can I have your first and last name please?", which I suppose could cut down on the additional questions later... but then, when I have someone calling from another department within the company, or from a pharmacy or a doctor's office, I don't always need their full name.    ANGRY WOMAN gave me her first name, and then very curtly stated she wanted a refill order.  I could already tell that she was going to be difficult.

Second question:  "Can I have your ID number please?"   ANGRY WOMAN rattled off the 9 digit ID so quickly I was barely able to follow it - thankfully, I managed to get it right the first time so as to save myself from being berated at this point.  That came later.

Third and fourth questions: "And your last name and date of birth, please?"  These are things I have to verify for privacy purposes.  Most people are understanding about this.  ANGRY WOMAN does not care about HIPAA and her internal pressure is clearly building.

The Customer is Always Right...

... even when he's clearly lying through his teeth.

Ahh, customer service... the job where on a daily basis you walk a fine line between doing your stated job purpose (serving the customer) and acting in the best interest of your employer.

My final call of the day today was from a gentleman who was very confident in his rightness as the consumer, very matter of fact, and very infuriating in his conviction that I could do nothing to change the outcome that he was aiming for.

At the outset of the call he made it clear that he was in the car on his cell phone - he travels "all the time" - and he was "far too busy" to deal with these petty matters like following up on orders he placed and never paid for.    He was looking at a statement we'd sent him for a past due balance.  He informed me that he never received the order in question.  I pulled up his order history and was immediately dumbstruck.

The order (for diabetic test strips) was placed on May 27th.  This was his first, and only, order with us.  The code on the order in our system indicated that it was originated by a call to us asking us to contact his doctor's office for his prescription.  The order was shipped on June 2nd by first class mail.  The amount due on the order was $130.00.  And the customer insisted that he never received the order.

Since the order was from almost 5 months ago, I expected there would have been a history of at least a handful of phone calls logged from him asking about order status, or responding to previously mailed statements (which would have been sent once per month since the order was shipped).

Nope.  This man called us once on May 27th, and has not bothered to contact us again until today, when he decided to deal with the letter we sent him threatening to send him to collections for the past due balance on his account.

Musings.... On Writing

A couple of weeks ago I woke up sometime before my alarm went off, in the dark with very little sense of what time it was but a sense of urgency clinging to what remained of a dream.  As I tried to drift back to sleep, a single line popped into my head, as if my subconscious was writing a story in my sleep, and it stuck with me.  I posted it on my Facebook wall when I got home that evening, so I wouldn't allow myself to forget it for future use.

"At the end, I was left with just this: Elizabeth dead, and myself out of time to mourn her."

That was all I had, but posting it on Facebook cemented my intention to turn it into something more, especially with comments from friends and family.  Mom asked me about it a few days ago, and I told her I was still mulling it over in my head.  I was slightly afraid that "mulling it over" would be as far as I would ever get, to be honest.

Yesterday I was even thinking about writing this post with a different focus - talking about the difficulty for someone as indecisive as I can be to take just a nugget of a thought and flesh it out into a full story.  

Take my sentence there, for example.  It contained the germ of a story, to be sure, but so many decisions to be made about what it meant.  Obviously it is being told in the first person viewpoint, so one has to determine who "I" am:  male or female?  I have doubts about my ability to write a convincing story from a male viewpoint... but for a while there the story seemed it may demand a male point of view.  Older than the author, or younger? 

And who is Elizabeth to the storyteller?  Wife?  Lover?  Sister?  Mother?  Daughter?  Best friend?  Colleague?  

How did she die?  Car accident? Cancer? Shot by an outlaw of some sort? Peacefully in her sleep at the age of eighty-something?

Even with all those decisions made, arbitrarily, I was going to have to come up with a reason why the storyteller would be out of time to mourn her, and those options seemed to lead me into the realm of a plot that would challenge my ability to write believably.

The results of all these decisions would have a huge impact on what kind of story it would wind up being... I mean, consider the difference between these:  An elderly man on his deathbed recalling his memories and regrets while mourning the passing of his wife of 60 years....  And a secret agent who had (perhaps unwisely) become very close to his or her informant before she was murdered by government assassins and is now running for his or her life.  Both of those stories could contain the line I came up with in my sleep, to very different effect indeed.

And then, while I was coming up with potential examples of the different stories these decisions could lead to, the perfect solution hit me.