The price of freedom June 13, 2012

It’s my third day of freedom from the shackles that were (& I suppose still are) the Microsoft Office Team (specifically my immediate team, the “WHOMP,” team, a moniker given to us my our illustrious TOOL of a manager—who describes himself as a “Bon Vivant” on LinkedIn—and one I never bothered to find out what it meant.).

I cannot express the feeling of relief in my chest. The loosening of the gray phlegmatic 1s and 0s that comprise all computer work. Although I had a good, solid 10+ years at Microsoft (a company name I believe I dared not mention—until now) on this blog, this diary of sorts, this way of making myself believe I can still write full sentences that do not include the terms “click” or “menu” or “properties”.

I should have left April 19th, 2011, when a marketing wonk (whom I’d never met) named Craig Kerwien snidely informed me—while wearing his $200+ Microsoft Marketing Puffy Jacket (that group’s Christmas presents the previous year; our team group got….oh right: nothing) pilgrim-toed shoes, and thinning gelled hair—in a meeting that my job for the past 9.5 years, the Microsoft Crabby Office Lady, a force unto herself with more than 1 million followers, was being killed off because 1) Absolutely no one (well, on the marketing team, he said, which of course is all that counts) uses the word “crabby” anymore; 2) The Crabby Office Lady did NOT make the company any money (“good will does not translate into dollars” he smirked); and 3) ….I don’t think there was a third reason. By then I was thinking that it was my birthday and had just received a not-so-good phone call from. Y gynecologist regarding a biopsy.

Yeah, it was a great day.

My manager didn’t warn me about this impending cut (he wasn’t even on the Microsoft grounds that day—I’ve never even met the tool). His fathead (& I do mean that literally and if you know who he is you’ll know it’s true) didn’t warn me; and the two managers above him, the people who sanctioned Crabby in 2002 didn’t warn me.

But I did get this: An editor on our team was in the meeting and she took me to her office, closed the door, lowered her voice, and veritably cupped her hands around her mouth as she whispered to me that she hadn’t personally heard anything of my impending firing but that she knew Amazon was hiring. Classy, girl named after a spiky, thorny holiday plant that never flowers; classy. Hope it made you feel strong at a time when you probably knew that your time as head blog honcho was about to be pulled out from under you. I’d hoped for more from you. But hey, click File > Info > Embed in Memory.

I had a few weeks to wrap up Crabby’s story and pack her off (which I did…to her own desert island where she enjoyed being the Cougar she always was inside). And then I was assigned to writing Outlook help topics for the next version of Office coming out (oops…can’t tell ya when that is though I know you’re dying to upgrade from what…2003?), with a guy who’d been writing Outlook Help topics since 2003. Can you imagine? He was one really crabby guy and left to work at—oh yeah! AMAZON!—a couple weeks before my departure. Then I wrote Word topics until just last week.

Without giving too much away, I went from writing what I and millions other computer users considered useful, fun, humorous, and thoughtful content to writing things like…

…wait for it…

“Print multiple copies of a document.”

Yep, when you have to look that up in Help when you upgrade to the next version of Word about 7 years from now, you’ll see my fingerprints all over that sucker. It took weeks, I tell you, WEEKS of research to get that one down. And the art! My god! The training I had to endure! The feeling of inadequacy!

Truth be told, my fourth grader was sitting next to me as I was looking over the final version of it to make sure it was technically and grammatically correct…not to mention in the right tone and employing just the right amount of empathy toward a frustrated user who had to look up this complicated topic… (And for those of you in the know, I will not use the “v” word since Microsoft has no doubt copyrighted it and I’d probably be in some sort of legal trouble for using it even though we ALL KNOW I started that revolution in February 2002.)

Anyway, my 9-year-old said to me, “Is that a joke? Is that your job now? To write down things that we learned in first grade?”

I felt so proud.

(Yes, Bian, there is a Bill Gates, and he’d be mortified to know that the company he started was paying me a six figure salary to do the job anyone with a sixth grade —of perhaps first grade—education could do while skipping rope.)

But then again, I never did get a puffy jacket so I guess it all balanced out.

Goodbye Crabby—you’ll always be a part of me.

— Crabby columns
— Blog
— Crabby on 9News
— Crabby’s book
— Podcast
— Crabby photos (? Hm. Not sure about some of those…)

And that is the end of THAT era. Onto better, more useful things that make me embarrassed in front of my daughter!!!

—annik

Maybe now…maybe never June 2, 2012

So many links and comics and comments and web sites…yet so little time (and legal back-up). In the next week (hopefully not more than that) we’ll see how this goes.

In the meantime, if you’re an Annik /Crabby Office Lady fan and a beleiver in prayer (I’ve even been doing the Sh’ma — מַע יִשְׂרָאֵל‎; –for G-d’s sake), maybe you could shoot a litle prayer His/Her/Its way for her (or if not for her, for her chiuld/dog.rats)? ANd if you’re MS, maybe a prayer for them, although I doubt 100K will break their bank (and piggyish it indeed is).

For now, this

Happy Birthday Ry May 16, 2012

May 16,1996…

…to July 26, 2010

When “No Soliciting” signs aren’t effective

I answered the door a few days ago to two middle-aged, sweating men in suits. (Romney impersonators for hire, I wondered?) They were Jehovah’s Witnesses. My first time—no kidding. I had been wondering if “Jehovah’s Witness” was a euphemism for something else, like “roofing company who wants to give a ‘free estimate'”.

But no, there they were, wanting to talk about, well, I’m not sure. See, the thing is, I answered the door with one of our rats on my shoulder, her nearly hairless tail slowly slinking across my neck. I pointed out the mezuzah, and just as they were starting to say that they spoke to people of all faiths, the rat, Remi, shifted slightly —maybe to get a better look.

All it took was for one of their gazes to graze slightly below my eyes and to my shoulder and they were OFF like a flash! Like the Red Sea parting! Like Jesus hightailing home to Dad just in time for Easter! Like…like they’d seen a rat on a jewess’s shoulder!

(I am VERY excited about roofing season…)

The death of the orange sweater May 10, 2012

I have (had) these two friends–a couple–that I’d known for about 6 years. We’d become pretty close and they’d become close with my kid. We’d been there for each other through some rough times: family deaths, job losses, illness, pet deaths, childlessness issues.

Then, all of a sudden, last December, they stopped talking to me. Both of them. The last time I saw them was at one of their birthday parties. I brought wine, a gift, and even took off my the sweater I’d worn and gave it to the hostess when I was leaving because she loved it so much. (Needless to say, I said it wasn’t a favorite of mine anyway–which was completely untrue–but I figured that after what she’d been through this year, it was just a simple  token of my love and friendship for her.

I’m an idiot.

Then one day, I send an email inviting the two of them to a glass blowing experience–on me, of course–as well as updates on the family, asking about the now orange-sweatered gal and her grieving process (her dad just died and boy did we try to be there for her and her partner…AND their dog). I immediately received this curt reply:

“Thanks for the invite, but no can do.  Super busy right now.”

(I keep these sorts of things in case I forget who these people are or forget why it is we dropped out of each others’ lives.)

I wrote back and asked if that was all I was worth, a 12-word response without even signing her name.

No response. From her or her partner–who isn’t much of a writer/speller/reader anyway and yet still makes whopping boatloads of money doing…not quite sure, actually, but makes sure that YOU know that SHE makes the sort of money she does. You know, a typical come-from-no-money to now having money story and behavior that I’ve always let slide. (MEEEEOWWWW! Annik!)

And it’s 6 months later. Not even a call on my birthday.

Here’s the irony of this — and it is thick: My daughter is going through, with many of the 4th and 5th grade girls, daily dramas about who is friends with whom and who is being mean and who is gossiping and how the younger friends from last year’s class just don’t understand that when you’re in a different grade and a different class  you still love them but can’t always be or play with them because you’re trying to cultivate new friends too, people with whom you spend all day…and so on and so forth. Bian and I have many sit-down chats about how it’s important to TALK about what is going on so that it doesn’t fester and you don’t lose friends over things that maybe aren’t weren’t losing them over. That sometimes it’s scary to confront someone because maybe they’d said something hurtful. I try to teach Bian to not say a lot of “you”s when talking to this person; make it more about how SHE is feeling and not what the other person did or did not do.

And yet two 40-something women can’t even do that. And even if they tried now, it’s too late. I mean 6 months? Really? What could I possibly have done between the time we had a great birthday party to that weak response to my generous offer?

Of course I’ll always be somewhat curious, but I’ve let it go because life is short and people are weird and insecure (insecure is the key word here with that one) and I need to let my daughter understand that things like this happen. Even when we never find out why.

So it’s like mourning a death of two friends.

But more than that…

I want my orange sweater back!

 

Anna Quindlen on her 50s

First lines of her new book Lots of Candles and Plenty of Cake:

” It’s odd when I think of the arc of my life – from child to young woman to aging adult. First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again.”

I think I am starting to get that. I remember who I was as a kid–I remember beign my most powerfulas a kid at age 11-12, before puberty came on. And then I didn’t know who I was. And yes, like Anna, I created someone I thought I wanted to be–should be, tried to be. And now that I’m inching toward 50, I think I’m back to feeling powerful about the real me, about who I am. I’m certainly not 11 or 12 again, but I am feeling powerful about what I want to say and how I want to say it.

This week’s “events” have certainly crystallized that. And while they’ve casued several sleepless nights, filled with dark thoughts and anxeity-driven roanings about the house, I can’t help but feel there is someting more in motin here and if I follow it, it’ll follow me.

I wonder if a fellow columnist like Anna Quindlen would dain to talk to me about this. Maybe I should just read her book.

THis is entirely surprising to me.

Grammar drives me crazy… March 16, 2012

But this in particular:

I hear people talk–on the radio, on TV, on the streets, even at work–who are (I’ve, in the recent past assumed–maybe correctly, maybe not) obviously not particularly educated,  and who don’t spend their time reading, much less writing or considering grammar (just conjecture, of course). This is the one that keeps throwing itself on my mercy

People say (in various contexts)

• “What he must have WENT through…”

To me that sounds wrong. Just WRONG. I’m not a grammarian so I don’t know the rule for this, but to me, what sounds right is

• “What he must have GONE through…”

I’m using this example because I just heard one of the lawyers on NPR–not sure he was  for the defense (Dharun Ravi who was found guilty of a hate crime, among other things) or the prosecution (for that sweet, gay, violin-playing, bridge-jumping-to his death Tyler Clementi) say “What he must’ve went though” and I thought to myself, “Hm. Self. THis guy is a LAWYER and you aren’t. Maybe it’s YOU who is sounding like an uneducated, McDonald’s-eatin’-3x-a-week-Jersey-Shore-fan. Oof. That’d be bad. I’d better check my resume.

Am I wrong?  Could it be? After all these years of trying to write correctly and working with great editors and copy editors? (Note that at this moment, my job entails NOT having real editors or even copy editors–RAMONA WE MISS YOU– just…well I can’t say or I’d get into trouble and I need this job, as dull and boring and mind/soul numbing as it is. Maybe another time when I’ve moved on (and boy, that time is coming–offers have started to pour, oddly enough; unfortunately they’re in Seattle, Austin, Singapore…). Another topic for another day (and maybe in another location–maybe another continent).

So, what say you, blog readers? I’m going to post my question to Grammar Girl and see what she has to say –if she hasn’t already addressed this. If she has, I’ll post it here. For the 5 of you. Haha.

– Annik (aka Queen Shannikwa, aka Crabby, aka Mommy, aka The Older Human Who Gives Us 4-Month-old-Rats Fatty Sunflower Seeds during the day).

C’mon: Talk to me. Anna? Fran? you’re two fo the smartest people I know. Ask Ryan Warner (whom we met Monday –he’s dreamy, gay, not gay). What’s  his take on “went” and “gone”

Okay, it’s the weekend, Bian has a  friend over and we’re all making pizza and watching Ponyo. So I’m gone for the weekend. Or…I went. Or I done gone and went. Or I done went and am gone. Huh. English is tricky. I do both Iyengar and Bikram Yoga so I’m pretty sure Sanskrit is trickier.

Meeting the voice of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me March 12, 2012

We just met Carl Kasell today (& Ryan Warner whom I used to not like so much on the air but took a u-turn on that a couple of years ago). If you don’t know who Ryan is, well, okay—I’ve a feeling that maybe one day you will. That boy is going places. He makes what seems to be, at first listen, boring topics–fracking, beetles, Hickenlooper’s budget–and makes them interesting and accessible. That is some feat, Ryan. And we have friends in common– the “Frannas”–and he was as cute and professional and amazing as can be. He is someone I’d like to know.

But back to dreamy Carl. That almost-78-year-old has skin like a 25-year-old…and I told him so. (I hope he didn’t think I was flirting with him. That’s kinda skeezie.) But if you don’t know who CARL KASELL is, well, I think y’all need some educatin’ (he’s originally from North Carolina). He was charming and adorable and took a photo with us and  told ME PERSONALLY a story about how his dad told him to keep working into old age. AND I wrote a limerick for him . (Those of you who DO know who Carl is will understand this limerick):

Limerick for Carl Kasell:

For 5 years I have been my most scheming,
I’ve been clever, yet humble, not screaming,
Is it just not my fate
To get on Wait Wait
Must I go to my grave still teeming?

Yet perhaps you can offer a tip…
Just a whisper, a slip of the lip…
No one need know,
How I got on the show,
Or why the Kasell I continue to worship.

Then again I suppose this is crass,
And illustrates my chutzpah and sass,
But hey, it can’t hurt
To try to subvert
The rules from the very top brass.

With utmost respect and regard,

Annik Stahl, Denver, Colorado

—   Avid NPR and “Wait Wait” listener (and of course, Carl Kasell fan) and personal trainer of a budding NPR fan.

Denver, Colorado

— 720.352.7639 (just in case—from these words to God’s ears— a producer from Wait Wait wanted to call…)

I wonder if he liked it. I wonder if I’ll get on the show. I wonder if I’m Pollyanna. AND in case you’re a fan of the show, Carl told us that he individualizes each and every winner’s message that he makes on his or her home answering machine. My God! The possibilities! Limericaks! Singing! Yiddish! Cursing! The people who don’t win on that show sound so blase about it; I’d frankly die if I didn’t win  and threaten to …

Well never mind. This is the web and I’d better be, uh, nice. I mean, it’s not North Korea, but still. Did you read this story about a guy on Facebook who wrote some nasty things about his wife–he called her “evil and vindictive”– on Facebook and was ordered by the judge to APOLOGIZE or go to jail??! Has anyone heard of First Amendment Rights? WTF?

(I’d call my blog WTF? if there weren’t already a show called that. )

 

P.S. Neither Carl nor Ryan asked me what I did for a living. I cold have told them I hada Master’s in Journalism and that I was the former- (said with clenched teeth) Microsoft Crabby Offfice Lady. I guess I just let my limerick speak for itself.

Quote of the week January 27, 2012

“Here are grunnions at their best.” — The late James Beard

Title of this blog? January 20, 2012

No one has ever asked me why I named this blog what I did: My Life as the Crab. I wonder why not. Not “a” crab but “THE Crab.”

Maybe clicking on the image will give you a clue…