Truly, this is how this week has felt to me – each day, I make my escape after getting held hostage in endless meetings where it is more therapy for the stressed than work session.  Yeah, I’m ready for this week to be done and over with.

The upsides?  It is fucking raining!  Yes, that IS an upside. I think you will hear more Oregonians right at this moment worshiping the rain than you will hear them complaining about it.  We have had our own drought here – though no one is calling it that, interestingly enough.  Everything is brown and dry. Fires are sparking up here and there.  And that is making the air filled with the lovely scent of burning wood.  (Translation: people with asthma and severe allergies are toast.)  While friend of mine in the midwest are commenting about the need to turn on the heat, I’ve got fans going 24×7 to keep the house cool because, it will be 90 this weekend….again. At least the rain will clear the air of the smoke and such – and hopefully bring relief – if not for a day.

Changing subjects, I am once again reminded of why there needs to posted elevator etiquette rules in my work building.  Good lord.  The main one being, if you are waiting for an elevator & it arrives, wait for the people to get off the elevator before you bum-rush your way onto the elevator.  My favorite is when that happens while I am holding a hot cup of coffee, and I’m trying to get off on my floor.  (wow, that kinda sounded dirty….anyway…)

Another rule I’d like to see posted? If you get on an elevator with many people & push a button for your floor, take notice of how many stops it will make before it gets to your floor.  Assume at least 1 of your elevator-mates will be exiting the elevator when it stops there – and GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!  At least once a day, I have to point out to the person who has decided the elevator is only there to serve them that they have to allow me to exit the elevator – so standing right in the entrance is not a way to facilitate that to happen.

Lastly, especially in our building, there should be a smoker’s only elevator.  As someone who is allergic to smoke & with the number of chain smokers we have employed here, I hate getting trapped on an elevator that stops of 6 floors before mine with someone who smells like they bathed in scent ‘o cigarette.  Ironically when I start sneezing, they look at me as though I’m typhoid Mary or something. No, Dude, just can’t handle the smoke you are radiating.

They vote for Scottish Independence today.  This will be interesting to see how it plays out. If they decide yes on independence, there will definitely be some economic consequences are major economic players have already weighed in on what they would do. Should be interesting to watch.

On another topic, I read a comment someone had made on Facebook today that I don’t disagree with but I think they are missing a point.  Yes, we are holding the NFL more accountable for how they handle abuse and other allegations against their players – holding them more accountable than Congress.  For me, however, it must start somewhere.  I don’t care where in the public eye it starts – start it.  Burying domestic violence charges so you can hold up someone as multi-million dollar football star and role model for the youth? Beyond fucked up.  And I think that last part is a great difference.  The Democratic or Republican parties are not holding up these people as role models, selling jerseys with their names on it for $100-$300 a pop, and sending them out into schools and youth organizations to inspire kids. The NFL players are commodities to this teams – they are traded and promoted and used to sell the sport, sell t-shirts and jerseys, and to sell tickets.  As a result, it is not unsurprising that the league and teams are not exactly benching their players and taking them out of line ups as the first course of action after accusations and charges have been brought up.  The NFL is a business who likely has finance people in the backroom crunching numbers assessing the impacts if they bench them vs keep them on the roster. Which will screw with their revenues less?

Cynical of me to write this? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Is it truth? Oh yeah.

Let me pull out the Portland Blazers from example.  15 years ago or so, we called them the Jail-Blazers because it seemed a player couldn’t be a player on the team unless they had some sort of outstanding charge they were fighting in court.  One the way back from a game in Seattle, three of the starters were pulled over for speeding – and were smoking pot too.  It was constant.

And instead of just dumping players to get a better team, they held on, got different coaches, hired assistant coaches who were pretty much assigned to babysit the younger players, and nothing changed.  In the end, the hit on the team revenue was too much – no one wanted to go to games. No one wanted to be a ticket holder.  And when they finally lost the right amount of money, they gutted the team. New players, new coaches, new front office. It’s taken them a bit to rebuild the trust in their fans, but they have – and are a much better team now.

It’s never a bad thing to clean house sometimes.

DJ has been having some interesting high school experiences that I think are mostly centered around guys who don’t know what to do with her.  Day 1 of school, she is in PE when two guys are going on and on about “belt testing”.  She finally asks what they are testing for.  They both puff up their feathers as they explain they are getting ready to test for their black belts – a fine honor.  She asks which martial art; they answer taekwondo, a fine martial art with a difficult black belt test.  She replies, “Yeah, the first black belt test is hard and stressful – lots of components, lots of unknown since it’s unlike any test for any other belt, but it gets easier.”  Both are confused and one finally asks a bit annoyed “how would you know?”  She smiles and says, “oh, I’m sorry – I’m a 2nd degree black belt in taekwondo.”  Feathers deflate – and annoyance and confusion turns to 20 questions about what they should worry about for the test.

Last week, she’s in PE – and they are doing a crap load of running.  She ends up running next to two guys who are talking.  The main talker of the two is going on and on about how much taekwondo sucks.  As he’s talking, he’s making comments that demonstrated that his knowledge of the sport is pretty fucking limited – add in the fact he was using japanese words for certain elements of taekwondo and she is pretty sure he’s ignorant too.  After this goes on for 5 minutes and he dug himself a nice hole, she interjects into their conversation with, “when did you stop doing taekwondo?”  He is taken back a bit – and admits he stopped when he neared his blue belt.  Her response is, “oh, that explains it.”  He bites and asks “explains what?”   She launches into how it explains his true ignorance as to how the belt progression goes, what you learn when and why, and how things work.  “How would YOU know,” he asked annoyed.  “Oh, I’m a 2nd degree blackbelt, and by the way, here are the Korean words you might want to learn so you sound less ignorant next time.”  The guy backpedaled a whole bunch – and turned beet red.

Then yesterday in her science class a guy was being a sexist pig.  He’s a sophomore who was not allowed to take a more advanced science class because “people hate him” but really, it’s clear he must have fucked up somewhere along the way.  Finally after not saying anything for a while, she grabbed her book back from him ( had borrowed it) and was like “God damn it, will you just shut the fuck up?!”  The guy chastised her for insulting him as a Catholic for using God’s name in vain.  DJ had a response, but walked away.  While recapping this incident on the train home with her friends, a male college student started laughing and was like, “ok, let me tell you what you need to do – next time he does that, look him dead in the eye and ask, ‘really? you have a boner, now?’ He’s a teenage boy, so no matter how much he denies it – the other boys won’t believe him – and all the girls will laugh at him – and he’ll shut up.”  DJ started laughing so hard she was almost crying.  Then she thanked the guy – told him she was all over that approach – and her friends both laughed and cringed knowing DJ is the person who would do it too.  Boy, are these guys in trouble.

Today, I’m sure this is how I will feel….