NostraDNIS

Dear "Phil,"

While I appreciate your messages about the "huge opportunity" for me with Yahoo!, Google and Bing, can't your predictive dialer predict that no one will be in our office to answer your calls at 10:00 p.m. night after night?

Sincerely yours,

Sleeping in Suburbia

P.S. I have been channeling Miss Cleo lately and have some amazing insights for you including this: no one is interested. Give it a rest.

California Stars

Customer satisfaction survey data tabulation. Net promoter scores. Employee focus group facilitation. Screening job candidates. Travel. Email newsletters. Secondary industry research. Market size. Growth rates. Testimonial ad campaigns. Outbound telemarketing vendor sourcing. Competitive analysis. Expense reports. Financial trends across business units.

Not complaining. Just need a nap. And more hours in the day.

I'd like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of California stars
I'd like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of California stars

Not All Almas Mat(t)er

I got a call from my undergrad university last night and answered the phone with zero intention of giving. While I had heaps of fun there, I never learned much. (Note: Not pointing fingers at them, Lord knows.) Grad school was, thankfully, a completely different story.

The girl on the phone said to me, "We're really appreciative of any small amount that you can give and we're still grateful for the $10 you gave in 1990."

Holy crap! How embarrassing, right? A mere $10 over 20 years ago? What a cheapskate!

Oddly enough, I remember giving that year -- including exactly where I took the call. (I was standing at my kitchen sink in a red farmhouse that house I rented on Jefferson Road. Weird to remember that, right?) The guy who called told me that any amount would help offset the costs of great student events and cited a free Psychedelic Furs concert that I had attended. Ka-ching! We actually chatted about bands for awhile: for me, a winning strategy. In his case, it paid to do his homework (albeit a pittance).

Every telemarketing campaign should play off people's interests (e.g., music) or weaknesses (e.g., shame, lack of honor) this successfully. In my case, providing hard data and a timeline to show precisely how long it had been since my hard heart opened roughly one tenth of one percent and abruptly closed again.

I'm a rotter.

I just hope that overwhelmingly generous $50 given last night goes far over the next four score and twenty years . . .

Yeah for me!

Adorkable

Son #2 (squeezing his balding, stuffed monkey): You are soooooo adorable.

Son #1: More like "adorkable."

In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey . . .

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes

This week I went to Son #1's middle school for open house and hustled from class to class following his schedule and meeting his teachers. My the times they are a-changin'!

The teachers all wear mics around their necks and their voices are piped through speakers across the ceiling so that even when the teacher has his/her back to the classroom, for example while writing on the board, the sound is clearly audible. Nothing distracting.

And just when I thought the smart boards were cool, the kids now have handheld remotes by which they answer questions in class (like the audience voting in Who Wants to be a Millionaire) and the results can be displayed real-time via charts. Pop quizzes are automatically calculated and uploaded into the "infinite campus" where I can review my son's grades whenever I want: monthly, daily, minute-by-minute.

The teachers give out their cell phone numbers and students call or text them with questions. My teachers were never that accessible. And to the best of my knowledge, my teachers never had first names, did they? (Except the nuns: they never had last names.)

What else? The school is structured around a set of Core Values including kindness, respect, caring, integrity and justice. Not only are these values painted around the school, they're incorporated in the grading system. In gym, you don't have to be a super athlete to get an A. You have to try hard and behave in accordance with the value system. Pretty impressive.

Lastly, speaking of gym, it isn't just traditional sports like swimming, soccer and relay races. Last year, the kids staged a flash mob. What the ? We certainly never did that!

I have to say, I think Son #1 has found his element. The freedom to pursue what he wants and have fun. Pretty darned cool.

Strange fascination, fascinating me
Changes are taking the pace I'm going through

Dishap Defined

We've been playing this game in the evenings lately where I repeatedly throw an inflatable ball toward the back door and the kids try to block it from hitting. Or I throw it into the air and the kids have to dive for the couch and catch it before it lands. Except when we knock a lamp over or cause items to fall from the mantle, there are usually a few funny plays that make us laugh.

In the midst of the mayhem the other night, Son #2 said, "Stop laughing at my dishaps." We asked him, "What's a dishap?" and he responded, "It's a mishap and a disability."

Puhlease. The only person in our house with any physical limitations is me. Just ask the ceiling fan/light fixture how it felt after I smashed it to pieces with the Shake Weight. Maybe I should only be allowed to play outdoors. Better yet, maybe I should stick to reading books; leave the activities to the pros.

Steve Madden NFL

And now for a new addition to the list of things that I never thought I'd have to say:
"Don't chase your brother while he's wearing high heels."