On decisionmaking...

Why do we make the decisions we do?

I've been wondering about that a lot this week, partially because I've been wearing ruts in memory lane for about 10 days.

You see, last weekend was my 25th college reunion!!!  And Jon and I made the trek back to Williamsburg, Virginia.  I was never very good at taking the advice that Steely Dan gave me, and I DID, after all, attend (and graduate from) the College of WIlliam and Mary in 1986.  

We had a total blast, wandering around the college and partying with friends in Colonial Williamsburg (a place I never had the disposable income to frequent back when I was a student) and kicking leaves and going to a late-night fireworks/open-bar/dinner/dance-party in the Sunken Gardens that was AWESOME!

As I was dancing to a WHOLE BUNCH of Michael Jackson cover tunes at said party, I suddenly remembered a time, 26 years earlier, when I was a student, living in one of the old dorms near to the Sunken Gardens.  

And the Homecoming alumni party was going on REALLY late, and I NEEDED TO STUDY.  Those old fogies just WOULDN'T STOP! I quite clearly remember thinking the words "old fogies."

Now I'm one of them.  Which you could think of as sobering, but I mainly think of as HILARIOUS!

Anyhow, there we were, hanging out in this beautiful place, and I was channelling the Talking Heads and asking,

"Well, how did I get here?"

It was quite a leap from a small mining town (mostly converted to tourism) in the Rockies to go to Tidewater, Virginia, a place I had NEVER BEEN.  So I got to thinking about it.  Why on earth did I end up there?

My EXCELLENT American History teacher, Mrs. Klusman, had gone to Williamsburg the summer I turned 16.  And she brought back all sorts of pictures and raved about how awesome it was...

But that wasn't really why.

Then, when I became a senior in high school, I was inundated with all sorts of promotional literature from colleges ALL OVER THE COUNTRY.  My PSAT scores were high, so everybody except the ATHLETIC places were trying to recruit me.  I had POUNDS AND POUNDS of promo packets from all shapes and sizes of places from all over the country.

Deciding among all that was a tough thing.  And Mr. Fowler, my high school counselor, was little to NO help.  He might have been okay as a football coach (although how would I know?  I only went to half of all the home games and that was only because I played in the band at the halftime show), but his counseling skills weren’t great in terms of helping you make a logical decision about college.

Mr. Fowler thought my scores were AWESOME.  And he really really pushed me attending Smith or Wellesley.  I don’t know why.  Maybe his wife had gone to one of the Seven Sisters or something.  So, okay, thanks to Mr. Fowler and generally being overwhelmed with all the information, I sent apps to Smith and Wellesley.

Which, incidentally, although I was accepted, were two schools that I COULD NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS HAVE AFFORDED.  But I didn’t really know that, at the time.

Add to that, the fact that, despite all my reading, I was a kid in a tiny Colorado town, and the only places outside Colorado that I’d ever been in my life, besides a few trips to Kansas and Wisconsin to visit family, was backpacking down the Paria Canyon.

And the Paria did not have an accredited college.

But I did kind of want to see something different.

So, in addition to expensive Smith & Wellesley, I also applied to the Colorado College, JUST IN CASE I won the Boettcher Scholarship, which provided a full ride to any school in Colorado (and I did not win the Boettcher).

To be honest, I also WANTED TO GET THE HELL OUT OF COLORADO.

So I applied to William and Mary, almost based on a whim.

The photo I included with this post is VERRRY similar to one that was in William and Mary’s promo pamphlet in 1981.  It was of one of the campus’ old brick buildings and a picket fence next to it.

I REALLY liked that photo. 

That’s why I picked William and Mary.

I remember that Mr. Fowler was less than impressed at first.

I had no idea at the time (and neither did he) that William and Mary was the second-oldest institution in the country, or that George Washington/Thomas Jefferson/etc. had all gone there.  I didn’t realize it was considered one of the best public schools in the country.

I DIDN’T EVEN KNOW IT WAS IN VIRGINIA UNTIL WE MADE THE PLANE RESERVATIONS TO FLY THERE WHEN I STARTED SCHOOL.   (The geography standards people would probably have a field day with that, but there IS a Williamsburg in West Virginia…)

I fell in love. Williamsburg was a great choice and William and Mary was a great match for me.  And I am still in love with the College and the colonial part of town and the wonderful professors and students I worked with!

(To be totally truthful, I sort of hate the New South crap on Richmond Road, where I worked at a sweatshop/pancake house full of ex-convicts the summer after I graduated and it gave me a new perspective on Southern living that was closer to “Deliverance” than I’d received from studying at William and Mary.  And a lot of writing material.  But that’s another story.)

And it all hinged on that one photo, which I can still see, clearly as ever, even through all the years and the many miles.

Decisionmaking…it’s funny!  The power of an image is IMPRESSIVE!

Happy Halloween!

Investments in business...

I've just been thinking about the whole rationale for why you invest in marketing and publicity and...well, anything related to your business. Hypothetically, you pay for things because they're SUPPOSED to strengthen your business, right?

Of course, this is no exact science, and that is PRECISELY what marketers and publicists and people who sell you advertising count on to keep their own businesses afloat.

For instance, years ago, when I published two children's picture books through Snowbound Press, I invested $12,000 on a publicist. He came highly recommended. He was very, very nice. And my good friend Lydia also spent a similar amount on him to promote HER children's book.

Unfortunately, publicists are not typically paid for productivity. They are paid up front, for their hypothetical connections (which may often be imaginary or inferior to your own connections, to be honest with you).

Nice and highly recommended though Adam was (and I don't think I'm letting the cat too far out of the bag with just a first name there), he GOT FEWER PRESS REVIEWS FOR MY BROTHER'S BOOK THAN I DID FOR MY BOOK WHEN I WAS HANDLING PUBLICITY OUT OF MY DUSTY, SPIDER-INFESTED BASEMENT ON AN UNPAID BASIS.

AND THIS WAS AT A TIME WHEN MY BROTHER WAS HEAD OF STORY ON A MAJOR DREAMWORKS ANIMATION RELEASE. Really. His name on the credits actually showed up BEFORE the movie. And they were in letters LARGE ENOUGH TO READ when you freeze the DVD. It was a big deal!

Whereas, when my book came out, I was famous for NOTHING other than a doctoral dissertation that was so esoteric even I have trouble remembering what it was about, and a bunch of research reports on standardized test validity and assessment systems that nobody bothered to read (OBVIOUSLY, or this No Child Left Behind garbage would not have been such a complete and utter flustercuck).

And I still got loads more press, awards, and sales for my book than the $12,000 guy did for my famous brother's book.

So.

Not a good business investment, that.

Of course, times change. Businesses change. And so what you invest in will change as well.

Now, with my new business, I am VERY happy, because I found something that really works.

The photo is representative of part of my job--getting good reference photos for the portraits. To a large extent, the quality of an animal's portrait is dependent on the quality of the photograph I base it on.

And I have been plagued with photography situations this past week involving squinty cats, bad light, an unfamiliar camera, dogs who WILL NOT PERK THEIR EARS UP, NO MATTER WHAT, and all sorts of twitchy animals who WILL JUST NOT LOOK AT ME BECAUSE I HAVE A CAMERA IN MY HAND.

But I found the RIGHT INVESTMENT TODAY!

Squeaky rubber chicken.

BEST. BUSINESS. INVESTMENT. EVER.

Happy Friday!

On the resilience of dogs...

This is Oreo.

He's a 4-year old purebred Cocker Spaniel, and I got to know him a little better because his owner, Melinda Elkind, won a free pet portrait of him in a drawing I sponsored over the summer.

So a few weeks ago, I traipsed over to Oreo and Melinda's house to take some photos for use in the painting.

Oreo is a very pleasant dog. He has good social skills. But he's not one of those dogs who immediately is ALL OVER YOU, giving you the hard-sell like he's Orphan Annie and you're a potential adoptive parent.

Maybe this doesn't happen to you, but it has happened to me MORE TIMES THAN I CAN COUNT. I'd go to a party, and usually there'd be a new baby there (to be fair, this happened MUCH MORE when I was a bit younger).

Now MOST women are very BABY-oriented, so they would get sucked into the baby's orbit like the additional moons and assorted space junk that get sucked into orbiting Jupiter.

I am not like most women that way.

Sure, I like babies as a rule, and I will politely admire them, because, generally, they're very cute. But PLEASE DO NOT ASK ME TO HOLD ONE. They seem very pink and fragile, I never quite know how to support their necks (which seem disconcertingly weak relative to their enormous HEADS), and they are nerve-wrackingly susceptible to irrational crying jags. Plus they are FULL of all sorts of liquids that are apt to come OUT at any time from a dizzying variety of bodily apertures, and these liquids are not the sorts of things I want on my clothes.

I am the person who zooms out of the swarm around the baby at the earliest possible opportunity, looking for the family dog or cat and/or the bar, not necessarily in that order.

And what would inevitably happen at that point is that the dog immediately would attach himself to me. I'd start to pet him, scratch him behind the ears, talk to him, etc. And then he WOULDN'T LET ME STOP. He'd try to crawl in my lap or show me the latest awesome trick he'd learned. And every time I'd try to rest my hand or wash my hand or deposit the dog hair in a wastebasket or go somewhere for a drink refresher or the bathroom, there he'd be, following me and begging for more attention.

So that was the long way of saying OREO IS NOT THAT KIND OF DOG.

Like I said, he was very polite to me, a relative stranger (although he does take his watchdog duties somewhat seriously), but he's clearly not interested in selling himself like those needier dogs. He was well-behaved; Melinda let him off-leash part of the time and he did not flip out and start running for miles, just because he COULD, like some other dogs I could mention. He was a good boy!

Then Melinda told me about his background.

You see, Oreo is a rescue dog. When Melinda got him, three years ago, he was a year old, and had spent most of his life in a crate. The woman who owned him did not know anything about dogs, and her two children basically spent their time POKING at him through the bars of the crate.

So he would snap at people.

And I can't blame him, really, given his life experience.

But apparently he had bitten TWO people and was scheduled to be put down. Melinda was one of his last chances. And she took him in.

It was not easy, I'm sure. She said that, when she first brought him home, he wanted to constantly be up on tables, coffee tables, chairs, etc. But once her husband established that HE was the top dog, Oreo fell into line. Sure, he still indulges in the occasional criminal act (usually involving a food theft of some kind) but he seems to be a lovely pet!

I came away rather amazed at his resilience. I would never have guessed that he didn't come from a stable home and happy puppyhood. But I am constantly horrified and amazed by the many idiotic and cruel ways in which people mistreat their companion animals. And I am always humbled by the incredible grace and resilience of many of those animals who bounce back and are again willing to offer people their love and trust.

We, as a species, could probably take a lesson from that.

I don't know that Oreo was ever technically in a shelter, but, thanks to the ASPCA, October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month! If you're in the market for an animal companion, please plan to adopt a shelter animal this month. There's more information at the ASPCA's website.

Think about it! You, like Melinda, will not only be getting a great companion, you'll be saving a life!

On civic responsibility...

I got this piece of mail a few weeks ago, notifying me that I MUST appear tomorrow at the courthouse for jury selection.

It makes it quite clear that, if I choose NOT to fulfill this civic responsibility, my alternative is to appear in a courtroom under quite a different set of circumstances. Or to pay all sorts of unspecified fines and fees.

Both of these alternatives are quite STICK-y.

I can handle a little bit of stick, you know? But generally, I appreciate there being some CARROT ALONG WITH IT.

This is ALL STICK. NO CARROT.

Well, to be fair, I guess I get DISCOUNTED PARKING in the parking structure downtown. But that, in my opinion, is not much of a carrot. It's more of a moldy old turnip, especially when paired with the added necessities of waking up 3 hours earlier than usual and driving downtown during RUSH HOUR and paying for parking in a PLACE I DON'T REALLY WANT TO BE ANYWAY.

But I guess I'm just pouting, because, after all, it's my opportunity to fulfill my responsibility as a citizen. Even though I'm self-employed, and, if you're self-employed in Colorado, "you must compensate yourself for the first three days." (The theory is that most trials only last three days; after that the state pays all jurors $50/day).

Compensating myself for the first three days of time spent hanging about with criminals and lawyers (which, mathematically speaking, are overlapping sets, a belief that...hmmm...JUST MIGHT exempt me from jury duty) is not much of a carrot in my book.

I understand civic responsibility. I really do. I vote. I try to stay REASONABLY well-informed on the issues, at least as much as one CAN, given how unreliable and biased almost ALL current "news" outlets are.

I even READ those multi-page blue booklets that come out in Colorado prior to every election, the ones that hypothetically summarize the pros and cons of each measure in exhaustive detail. Unfortunately, from years of being an expert researcher and policy advisor, I also know how BIASED those summaries are, and how much the devil is in the details of policy implementation. So I don't trust much of what I read.

But I do think the "corrections" system is grossly mis-named and based on arbitrary and dysfunctional laws. So I'm not sure that the greatest good here is for me to sit for three or more days on a criminal jury listening to arbitrarily selected bits of information so a group can come to a fairly arbitrary decision that will not, in all likelihood, rehabilitate the criminal or recompense the victim. Especially when, instead, I could be doing something CONSTRUCTIVE. Like painting peoples' pets and building my business.

But it's my civic duty to go along with it (as I have been reminded by the BIG STICK wielded by the state). So I will have to show up.

But honestly, ever since I have gotten this summons, whenever I think about it, NINETY-FIVE PERCENT OF MY ATTENTION IS IN HOW I CAN GET OUT OF IT.

I loved the way Tina Fey's Liz Lemon tried to get out of jury duty.

But that doesn't quite seem workable for me.

So I've got a different list. Along with possibly flogging my PhD. (somebody told me once that lawyers don't like people with advanced degrees), I'm thinking about talking about religion and my cynicism about politics and the justice system.

Princess Leia will be my last resort.

And, of course, I will SUCK IT UP if I HAVE to. But I'm really hoping that I won't actually be selected.

The last time I was summoned for jury duty (and dismissed), I was not painting puppies or writing kids' books; I was writing a series of very dark, macabre short stories.

This is a partial summary of a short story, the treatment of which I wrote WHILE I WAS IN THE COURTHOUSE WAITING ROOM,about a juror who avidly WANTED to do her civic duty (which, of course, demonstrated that she was not HUMAN, but instead was an odd life-force sucking vampire). After the first trial (which went very long and ended with violence and all 11 other members of the jury aging about 10 years in 2 weeks), this woman came out looking younger and plumper and sleeker. And then she kept coming back, with new IDs, serving on new juries, sucking out their life forces, and coming out younger and younger every time. I will spare you the ending (there was a bit of a twist) but it was NOT PRETTY AT ALL.

Maybe it will not be so bad. But does anybody else feel this way?

On going grey...

I've made a conscious decision to let my hair go grey. Or maybe it's just laziness. I can't be bothered with the whole time-suck of getting it dyed and then, from now until the END OF TIME, getting my roots touched up. Until I am a wizened little octogenarian with improbably red hair that goes EXTREMELY well with my liver spots and is fooling NOBODY...

Anyhow...

You can tell somewhat where the creeping greyness is at in that process from this photo--although it's not quite as noticeable as in some OTHER photos where I much more closely resemble Cruella DeVil. Or Pepe LePew.

If you squint your eyes a lot, the streaks at the front of my hair ALMOST look like they're blonde. But no, they're actually grey/white. I have hopes of someday having the Bonnie Raitt/Joe Perry slash of white in my hair (and the associated coolness), but with my luck, I will end up looking like a very aged mouse instead.

Yes, I HAVE DYED MY HAIR IN THE PAST. But the first time, I was 14 and succumbing to peer pressure. The second time I was in my early twenties and it was the 80s, and, while I have no excuses really for a bleached-blond top and dark sides, I would say that there were no excuses for a LOT of very public fashion experiments in the 80s.

Fingerless lace gloves.

Wham, the band

Boy George

Gaultier's pointy bra thingy that Madonna wore in concert

Giant linebacker shoulderpads...

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. My little hair-dying experiment was mild compared to some of THAT.

And the third time I went through dying my hair, I was in my thirties and had had the same style for YEARS and I felt sorry for my stylist, who was dying of boredom after about the tenth visit where I had her do the same trim on my plain brown hair. So, at her suggestion, I had her dye blond streaks just in the FRONT of my hair.

I ended up looking kind of like Rogue from the X-Men, if Rogue was a thirty-something policy analyst. As policy analyst hairstyles go, it was pretty edgy, but STILL...you had to keep going in and touching up the roots. Plus there were none of the Rogue-associated powers that I would have put to good use, like sucking the life force out of whatever idiotic politician I was working with at the time who was convinced that "No Child Left Behind" as written was a GOOD THING.

Rats.

So I let that grow out.

So I've been thinking about this recently, mainly because Jon and I went to a wedding and he had me help him put some "Touch of Grey" haircolor in his beard.

Just to be clear, I don't usually spend time thinking about my hair.

AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

But every once in awhile, society comes in and reminds me that, according to the media, I am just advertising my decrepitude by not going the dye route.

Like that ad for the same "Touch of Grey" haircolor--where you leave JUST a BIT of grey in. All these hunky forty-something guys with just a little bit of grey in their hair--the "Doctor Strange" amount of grey at the temples, say--cavort around doing active things! They're on the beach, with their surfboards, displaying their improbably buff bodies, then they're hiking a fourteener and then they're cracking open some cold brews with their pals. And their women--a whole bunch of equally buff, active chicks who like to apparently WATCH these guys surf and climb fourteeners and then drink beer with them. Or at least FETCH the beer.

And NONE OF THE WOMEN HAVE A SPECK OF GREY IN THEIR HAIR.

Just saying. Not sure if the women with all those partying dudes are supposed to be TROPHY WIVES or just THE MEN'S DAUGHTERS...or if they're forty-something women who dye their hair ALL THE WAY, the way maybe I should be doing.

And I caught a HILARIOUS Simpsons episode the other night, where Marge stops dying her hair. After a series of comments that I have often received ("Thank you for your bravery!") and others that I think might have been the subtext of comments I've received ("I hope I look as good as you when I give up!"), the clincher is given by Ralph Wiggum, who says,

"Grandma had hair like that when she went to sleep in her forever box!"

I could NOT stop laughing at that! And, even though Marge caved in and went back to the blue dye, this is what I have to say:

Helen Mirren

Richard Gere

Emmylou Harris

David Byrne

Jamie Lee Curtis

GEORGE CLOONEY...

NEED I SAY MORE?

About cats...

This is Goat.

She's about six months old and WHAT A CHARMER...

I was at the Rocky Mountain Feline Rescue's shelter two weeks ago when I met her. And her sister. And her other sister, whom I THINK got adopted that same afternoon.

It was EXTREMELY foolish of me to physically venture into the shelter because I have a very low resistance to the Kitten Time Warp. This is a condition where you lose the ENTIRE afternoon's productivity when you are in proximity to kittens, and apparently for me, prior exposure does not guarantee immunity. (See my post from June, titled Lost Time Phenomenon Explained, for more details.)

Not only that, but I nearly broke the overlords' first rule:

NO OTHER CATS IN THE HOUSE.

Goat and her sister Bellow were so CUTE though. And they were working HARD to close the deal with me. It was a close thing, let me tell you!

But the overlords would have been OUTRAGED. I would have PAID...

And my husband would have been none too happy, either. Because TWO CATS ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH, especially when one lap is not big enough for both of them.

So I left Goat and Bellow there, along with all the OTHER cats, and I dropped off my package and left.

Oh yeah. That package was why I was there. I donated a gift certificate for a portrait for the Rocky Mountain Feline Rescue's "Wine and Whiskers" silent auction/wine tasting event, which will be held tomorrow night, September 23, from 5 pm til 10 pm at the Molly Brown Summer House in Denver. Tickets are $40/person, which includes wine and hors d'oeuvres, and ticket proceeds and silent auction proceeds will benefit RMFR.

I could have EASILY mailed that package. But maybe I just needed a kitten fix.

So today I decided, instead of trolling the cat shelters, that I would look up some wacky cat "facts" on the Internet for my kitten fix.

And I found this amazing statistic at www.catscans.com:

A single pair of cats and their kittens can produce as many as 420,000 kittens in just 7 years.

Wow...them's some impressive numbers.

Also according to this site, more than 35,000 kittens are born in the U.S. each year!

After reading this, I was all impressed with the site, despite its lack of citations.! After all, it was on the InterWebs, right? It had to be correct!

Then I read another "fact" from the site:

25% of cat owners BLOW DRY THEIR CAT'S HAIR...AFTER A BATH.

Okay, I was with them until I got to the whole BATH part.

My cats have NEVER HAD A BATH IN THEIR LIVES.

I cannot even fathom the work that would go into getting them BATHED, but it would NOT be a pretty sight. There would be yowling and blood and screaming and it would probably look sort of like the scene where the crazy Brazilian doctor cut out the American blond girl's internal organs in "Turistas, Go Home." And splashing. Lots and lots of splashing.

And then, after all that, BLOW-DRYING?

I don't THINK SO.

By the time Smokey got to the stage where I should be blow-drying her, I would probably be in the emergency room, looking forward to taking another 10 days of antibiotics for cat-bite.

But I do know this.

There are far more cats and kittens out there than there are homes for them. Cats like Goat and Bellow and the others at the RMFR are the lucky ones. They're in a no-kill shelter, so the clock isn't ticking for them. But most cats aren't that lucky.

I'm a total advocate for no-kill shelters, but without a comprehensive spay/neuter program, there are STILL too many cats to go around. So, even though I don't REALLY trust the numbers on this site, I still agree that you should spay or neuter your cat!

But BATHING them? No WAY!

Early morning ramblings...

Holy cow. It is taking FOREVER to load this image.

Maybe it's because I'm on the road and off the mainland, sitting in the lobby of a Hawaiian hotel (the only place in the building that they have wi-fi and I CANNOT HANDLE THE WHOLE CABLE CONNECTION THING WITH MY MAC, which is all they have in-room).

Plus Jon's asleep upstairs. Did I mention it's 3 in the morning? Even though that's 7 AM in Colorado, it is PITCH BLACK here. And I very rarely SEE 7 AM in Colorado, anyway.

There's a surprising amount of activity here for 3 in the morning. I have already deflected one guy who came in off the street, looking for some action (although, as I would define it, I am not exactly looking actionable since I just rolled out of bed and threw on some clothes before I staggered down to the lobby. I still have those CRUSTY things in my eyes, for Pete's sakes).

And WHY am I here? TOO MUCH KONA LAVA JAVA ICE CREAM last night.

Jeez. I have NO caffeine tolerance. At least my PULSE is racing, even if the Internet connection is NOT.

I should probably apologize for the long hiatus between posts. Basically I have been travelling a ton. Last weekend was Vegas, for a wedding and I had a deep objection to paying Planet Hollywood an extra $14 a day for internet over their extravagant weekend room rates. Then it was immediately to Hawaii, where I have been on the running track at King Kamehameha School during EVERY SINGLE WAKING HOUR and sleeping the rest of the time. So I have been giving my cell phone a workout in terms of email retrieval.

And I just SUCK at typing with my thumbs.

Anyhow, since I finally HAVE access, I thought I'd post this beautiful image painted by my friend, Tabetha Landt-Hastings. I bought the piece, called "Red Rocks," almost two weeks ago--although I had been eying it for some time. And I finally thought, "Okay, I am going to go ahead and get it." It's an original oil painting, and I know folks have been looking at it in Tab's gallery for YEARS.

MWAHAHAHA, folks! It's MINE! All mine!

Although you can get prints if you like! Check out Tab's online store at:

http://tabetha-landthastings.artistwebsites.com/

Aloha for now!