National Anthem w/hiccups

Posted by random olio

Sometimes you see something and it inspires you, makes you laugh, and leaves you in awe. I have always had something inside me that when something catches me as funny, I sometimes have a hard time not laughing. It does not matter the situation. I can be in a room where it is not funny (say a funeral, or very important meeting) and if what strikes me as funny hits me hard enough I will not be able to stop myself from laughing.

This boy from Australia is amazing. First, you could never get me in front of any amount of people to sing (let alone the National Anthem). To then start singing and have the hiccups throughout the entire song, I think if I was him I would have started laughing — which would have led to crying, and I probably would not have been able to finish. You’ll notice the players from both teams are chuckling as the camera pans across them a few times. Why is it that when things like this happen it is our nature to laugh? In this case, no one is laughing at Ethan, it is like getting the hiccups at the worst time is somehow hilarious deep inside.

I was left in awe as Ethan made it through completely composed. Way to go Ethan!

Has service died?

Posted by random olio

Frustrated. I work in a job that is one of service to others. I highly respect those companies and individuals that believe in service, and I get highly disappointed by those that do not honor service. I was raised in a way that living by principle matters. I take a strong stand for that principle. That means I might have a harder time letting a situation go if I feel that someone is taken advantage of or being mistreated.

My situation: I purchased a pair of eyeglasses at the outlet location of a local eyeglass store: Reynolds Optical. It is a great deal, a pair of frames and lenses for $150. Due to my crazy blind prescription, I always have to pay $100 to make the lens thinner. $250 is still a great deal. I think they can give these prices because the frames themselves are floor models from other locations. Fine with me – they can be cleaned, and I always check them for nicks or scratches. I was to receive them in two weeks. Two weeks go by and no phone call that they have arrived. We call, and find out they are there waiting. We pick them up and bring them home. The lenses are massive. I have never purchased a pair with such thick lenses.

I immediately think that they did not make them extra thin, and I paid an extra $100 for that. We take them back an hour later, and the guy says oh, I will send them back and they can put new lenses in. We later find out he is the owner’s kid. The guy agreed with us that they should be thinner. We wait 2 weeks, again no phone calls, we finally learn after multiple phone calls that the glasses are waiting. Bring them home and compare and again they look the same as the first round.

Chris takes them back and meets the owner. He tells Chris that the frames that were selected are not good for my prescription and they should never have been sent back. Chris lets him know that the guy never told us that, and that he is the one suggested that we send them back to be fixed. The owner says we do not do refunds, but I want your wife to be happy, and to have me come back in a pick new frames. We do. Same guy is working and he says yes I think that those frames will work. This time it should only take a week to fix. I receive a phone call a few days later that they are almost done and I owe them money. I lose it on the phone with her, telling her what a horrible experience it has been and I am not paying more money. If more money was needed it should have been agreed upon before work was ever done. I immediately call Chris and he calls the owner.

Owner and Chris get into yelling match on the phone. This is odd. Chris is patient, composed, and never yells. Does that tell you what a horrible man the owner is? Owner does not give in and unless I pay more money I will not have any pair of glasses at all. I am beyond angry. Remember, I am all about principle. How are these people even allowed to still be in business? We decide to pay the extra money and pick up the glasses knowing that we can be done with the situation, never go back there again, and share our experience online to protect others from being duped. Maybe the experience has tainted my brain, but I actually think the prescription in this new pair is not right. I’m wearing old glasses again until I can have my normal eye doctor look at them.

I then decide to read reviews on Reynolds online. There are quite a few of them. Merchant Circle, and City Search for a start. Here’s a recap and reasons why this was horrible service in more ways than one — plus I still do not know if I can wear the glasses:

Poor or lack of returned phone calls through the entire ordeal.
No service or help in the glasses selection process.
Clueless about how lenses should show up in frames. Son should never work in optical shop.
Owner gets involved, lies.
Owner yells at customer, demands more money after work was done.
Reynolds loses customer for good.

Bees do more than just sting

Posted by random olio

I am someone who spews a crazy number of analogies out of my mouth each day. Sometimes they are just all wrong, other times they are spot on, and then others just somewhere in between. In a meeting yesterday I somehow paralleled a situation with a project with the world without bees. How the heck do those compare?

Recently I read an article that shared if we let the bee population die off what it would do to the produce department in our grocery stores. See these images in this Huffington Post article. It reminds me of scenes from Flint, Michigan. Empty, non-existent. It is actually quite scary. I never knew how much we could be impacted by the lost number of bees.

Sure, bees can be annoying. In the summer, the patio at work where we often have meetings and eat outside is often swarming with bees. They literally land on your lunch and take a seat for a while. I think I even have a video on my iPhone of a bee eating bits of a piece of turkey on my salad. Maybe it was starving? I am glad my salad last summer potentially helped keep one more bee alive.

In all seriousness, bees are something we should dedicate more time to saving. Due to all the pesticides, chemicals, and crap we pour into the environment, they are disappearing faster than we can save them. While I do not know too much about the topic, it is one I want to continue to research. How naive I have been. Study up, otherwise your produce department might turn into a ghost town.

A few articles on the topic:

A World Without Bees

List of Foods We Will Lose if We Don’t Save the Bees

Your energy footprint

Posted by random olio

Maybe it was all those years I was a Girl Scout, or all the times I played in the back of the room during my brother’s Boy Scout meetings, or maybe all the Boy Scout camping trips I had to tag along on, but I have a strong inclination to leave a place better than I found it. Growing up I thought about it in the way of cleaning up after yourself, but over time that evolved to the energy you leave behind. I have frequently shared excerpts from the “Daily Om” newsletter I receive, and this one particularly resonated with me in regards to your energy footprint. It is from the Daily Om titled: “Blessing Space: Leaving a Positive Footprint.”

“Physical space acts like a sponge, absorbing the radiant of all who pass through it. And, more likely than not, the spaces we move through each day have seen many people come and go. We have no way of knowing whether the energy footprints left behind by those who preceded us will invigorate us or drain us. Yet we can control the energy footprint we leave behind for others. In blessing each space we enter, we orchestrate a subtle energy shift that affects not only our own experiences in that space but also the experiences of the individuals who will enter the space after us. While we may never see the effects our blessing has had, we can take comfort in the fact that we have provided grace for those that follow after us.”

Whether or not we leave a blessing matters, but so does what we leave behind. Toxic is the word I often use for certain people who suck the life out of a room, or the atmosphere. Their energy footprint drags you down, takes the life out of a situation, and often zap your energy. How we approach a situation, and how we manage our energy matters in every situation. There are times when I have to adjust the energy I exude because my intuition tells me that calmness and poise is more needed in the moment then my spewing energy. As the Daily Om states, we often never know how our energy affects the space, but we can know if we go into each moment being conscious of how best to handle the situation we are usually on the right track to bless rather than damage the energy flow.

Are you aware of what energy you bring to the moments of your day?

Is there always a silver lining?

Posted by random olio

Does everything have a silver lining? If you are a glass half full kind of person you might think that there is a silver lining in everything. Maybe it is all in how you approach a situation. You could have a frustrating experience with a friend or family member and choose to look at it for all the things that might be negative or wrong, or you can choose to look at it as an opportunity.

While we cannot change another person, and often we cannot change a situation, we can change how we look at the situation. Is it a moment to stand up for what you believe in? Is it now the time to say what you are really thinking? Or is it a time to stay quiet and let the other individual(s) work it out on their own? Maybe you are the type of person to always fix things for others, and maybe you have to take a break from that and let someone learn in their own way.

I think we can be in strange situations many times in our lives. Maybe we are stuck in a job we hate, or have struggled to tell a friend that we no longer want them in our life. Whatever the situation, the silver lining is often what we learn, and what we do not know. For example, you could hate your job, and struggle to understand why you keep interviewing but continue to not get the job. If that is your situation and you are reading this right now, you might say, “Tami you are crazy, there is no silver lining.” The silver lining is what you learn: more patience, persistence, perseverance, and maybe even the people skills to put yourself out there, to dig deep and fight for where you want to be. Not everything we do in life is easy.

Is it time to find the silver lining?