Category Archives: Work. Life. Money.

Not Drunktastic

 

Sorry I’ve been off the grid the last few days. Work is getting busier by the week including new trips on the horizon (a return trip to Miami and a trip up to Toronto and Montreal). After the hustle of the last few weeks I was ready for a mini-road trip and headed down to Maryland where I met up with The Entreprenuer (TE) and The Attorney (TA). TE is a photography aficionado and TA is a “culture vulture” so we hit the Corcoran Musuem for the Annie Leibovitz exhibit: A Photographer’s Life.

The exhibit was really amazing. I loved her portraits of Jamie Foxx, Oprah, Colin Powell and a couple of shots of Serejevo and Rawanda the most. Wandering the museum with TE and TA was also a pleasure because we all felt comfortable going our own way so that we could linger where we wanted and get drawn into whatever compelled us. I loved how most of the photographs were black & white, but every now and then there’d be something in glorious color. Likewise most of the photographs were pretty large, but there were groupings of small prints that forced you to get intimate with the exhibit (wait, that didn’t come out right).  There was also an Ansel Adams exhibit in-house and that was interesting though I’m not a big fan of landscape photography.

We ended up acting a fool and having a good time which led us to drinks and bad, bad (but oooh so good) food at Gladys Knight’s Chicken and Waffles in DC and a late night, raucous showing of Tyler Perry’s new movie: Why Did I Get Married? Now if you’ve ever been to an African American film, at an African American theatre, with a packed African American audience, I don’t need to tell you what went down. Let’s just say that everybody had a good time and thought that the characters on the screen could hear their individual comments.

Sunday, TA insisted on watching Inside Washington so I mustered up the energy to hit the workout room and put in some time on the treadmill to combat the previous evening’s fried goodness and preempt the afternoon’s revelry.  TE picked us up and we headed out to Linganore Winery where we met up with The Politician (TP) for the Jazz and Wine festival. And by festival I mean hundreds of people, in camp chairs with coolers full of crackers, cheese, grapes and summer sausage. It was great to see a diverse crowd (ethnicity, age, families, LGBT, groups of friends, etc) and to relax in the sunshine on a near perfect day listening to the David Bach Consort and wondering when exactly we became our parents? Wait, we’re not our parent’s yet but these two are.

Despite the wonderful nectar available (I highly recommend the Skipjack, TE’s favorite and the Sangria, TA’s favorite) no one was “Drunktastic” at least not in our group. But there were a few others who may have been. To include the 3 women next to us who drank at least 5 bottles of wine, the old white dude who kept hitting on all the older black women, the barefoot hippie teenagers twirling and kicking up dust, and the saxonphone player who kept coming out into the crowd to check out women. I joked at one point that there was only two ways that the day could be better, and one of them actually came to fruition. And thats all I’m gonna say about that!

Wish You Were Here

  

hard rock hotel pool, originally uploaded by funchilde.

[1] Dear Hard Rock Hotel, I am enamored of your pool area. However, all of your waitstaff look like extras from a bad teen Disney movie. I am impressed with your level of open-mindedness. I’m not sure I would’ve hired the guy with the tattoos on his neck, arms and knuckles. I was however, mildly amused that his right-hand knuckles sported to word “lost” and those on his left hand “soul.” Truth in advertising never ceases to amaze me, tell “Dru” I said hi. You all do however, brew the best iced-tea ever.

[2] Dear Ford & Volvo motor company(ies), Thank you for throwing the best “Grown and Sexy” party I’ve been to ever. I thoroughly enjoyed the indoor/outdoor fabulousness of the Blue Martini lounge. Your choice of DJ was superb, a mix of old school hip hop and R&B including a “Tupac retrospective” and an “ode to Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall” album”-brilliant.

Also, your signature martini with the flashing blue “ice-cube”…lovely, in form and function. Thanks for the free drink tickets. We tipped Tiffany VERY well, considering we ate our weight in meatballs, german chocolate cake and had a “never ending” dirty martini (damn you Nate, Tammy & B!).

[3] Dear Shaquille O’Neal & Penny Hardaway, Thank you for gracing the Blue Martini lounge with your very tall presence. I’m just as glad as you are that everyone kept their cool, noone bothered you and that VIP was stocked with food to fill your ginormous bodies. I hope that you both avoid unwanted stalkers, paternity suits, STD’s and late night phone calls from all of the ladies throwing themselves at you. But you’re probably used to that by now.
[4] Corey Bayne Wowers (name changed to protect the guilty), Thank YOU for the most hilarious quotes of the week. You easily topped last year’s gems by being both endearingly ghetto-country fabulous and street-smart. My favorites (I swear this was from an actual conversation):

“I shoot good with a shotgun!”
“I swear, dude was fishin’ out the car window while we was ridin’ down the highway.”
“My wife is country, she can cook ANYTHING.”
“I don’t do violence against women, but a man…..he fair game.”
“I had to take off my clothes, so the cops couldn’t see me. It was night time.”
”With the right seasonings, alligator taste pretty much like chicken.”

[5] Stella, I don’t even know what to say. Pure foolishness and comedy. Thanks for dinner. You owed me after sticking me with that lunch check. Who orders a “triple” cocktail? You.

[6] Dear bed, I love you. I want to take you out behind a middle school and get you pregnant*.
*30 Rock Reference

[7] Denny’s we do not love you. Fortunately your more attractive cousin, IHOP, came to our rescue. Along with Tammy’s pleading and the best.cab driver.ever. I’m not sure that there’s anything better than french toast at 3am.

[8] Akil & Siddiq, how did you manage to escape my camera lens? And Siddiq, how many martinis did you have before you took this photo?

[9] Dear Reader, yes, yes in fact I DID get some work done!

PS: Happy Birthday DAD!!

To Whom It May Concern

  

Cabs, originally uploaded by shinya.

[1] Dear NY Taxi Cab Drivers, thanks for going on strike during Fashion Week. My 11pm ride on the 6 Train has scarred me for life. I am somewhat ashamed that I pretended to be asleep when the beggar came through the subway car asking for “anything…even a quarter.”

[1a] Dear Philly Taxi Cab Drivers, thank YOU for not going on strike until I left.

[2] Dear Douchebag in front of me on flight 1913, thanks for reclining your seat as far as you could so that I had the best view of your male pattern baldness, couldn’t reach my drink, or open my laptop. Charming.

[3] Dear Miami, please make every one of your residents re-take Driver’s Ed. I’m particularly concerned about their ability to “merge.”

[4] Dear Hampton Inn Manhattan. I love you. Thanks for the USA Today AND the Wall Street Journal. And Breakfast. I want to take you out behind a middle school and get you pregnant*.

[5] Dear Devil Toddler, aside from being the most unpleasant two year old I’ve ever met, I want to thank you for going after my glass of red wine, and flinging most of my delicious, delicious nectar on your grandmother during our flight. She was amused, I am not. You owe me $5.00.

*30 Rock reference

It looks like I’ll be adding Washington DC to that list of places I’ll be visiting this month too!

On The Road Again (4 Work)

[1]
Boston
Philly
New York
Miami
Orlando
Minneapolis

And that’s just THIS month! Fortunately I love what I do, so that makes it easy and I’ve been traveling my entire career except for the very first year, so now I know someone or someplace I love in almost every city I have to visit. Cool.

[2] On the up side I found out that Stella will be in Orlando so we’ll get to cut up in yet another state together. So much for sleep, credit limits, and a healthy diet. I don’t think we could possibly top last year’s shenanigans (sp?) in Atlanta and I’m too old to want to try.

[3] I actually used the phrase “I’m old enough to be your mama.” this past weekend. And it was true. I got carded buying some wine for an event and a 16 year old asked me if I was still in College or Grad School.

[4] Does anybody else love Hampton Inn hotels as much as I do? Probably not, but you should.

[5] Five things I can’t travel (4 work) without:

1. Delsey hardcase rolling suitcase in electric blue.
2. Mentha Lip Shine Lip Gloss
3. Sleep mask for trains/planes
4. iPod
5. A Book

What Five things must you have when you travel? Keep it clean folks!

Passion Vs. Talent

worknotice, originally uploaded by funchilde.

I can’t say I’ve had very many “deep” thoughts this summer. Recuperating from Semester at Sea and working three clients and studying the prior fall has rendered my desire to exert effort in pondering anything pretty close to nil. But recently I was leading a seminar session about career goals, and one of the attendees asked if you should follow your talent or your passion. This question has stuck with me for the last few weeks. I’m not pondering a career change personally, but it got me to thinking about hobbies, weaknesses, strengths and how we spend our time and money.

What are you passionate about? What are you talented at? What are your hobbies/activies that you spend your time/money on?

I think I am good at what I do, very good in fact, but I don’t possess the ego to believe that someone else out there can’t (and indeed probably is) doing what I do professionally, better. The fact that I have a passion for the intersection of business and education, the belief that I have a talent for interpersonal communication and motivation lead me to believe that it takes little effort for me to be very good at what I do, but someone who lacked those things could probably do them just as well with a lot more dedicated focus or energy.

I’m passionate about cooking for example, but I wouldn’t consider myself talented in that arena AT ALL. And I believe I’m a pretty good cook. I possess a talent for writing (perhaps a minor one, but you get the idea) but I don’t have a passion for writing in the way that someone driven to write a book or who dedicates a career to producing original fiction does. At the same time, I seriously believe that if I wanted to/set the goal to write a book/novel, that I could do it. And again, because I don’t have an ego about this sort of thing, I fully believe that you could too.

I believe what separates the very good/great from the merely good, is simply effort. I don’t put 110% into everything, or even most things now that I’m old enough to calculate (albeit subjective) return on investment of my time/money. But I quite simply belive that: There are thousands smarter than you, hundreds prettier than you, dozens upon dozens with more resources than you, but nobody can outwork you if it is something you really want.

In this way, passion vs. talent isn’t really the question, it is what is the role of effort in achieving greatness? I think most people haven’t figured out what they are passionate about and what they are talented at. And yes I believe you can be both passionate about and talented at the same thing: Tiger Woods (golf); Steve Jobs (technology); Alan Greenspan (Finance); Will Smith (entertainment); and the list goes on when you throw in the countless educators, lawyers, doctors, etc. I also believe that just as you can be passionate and low on talent (me and cooking), you can be talented and low performing, i.e. those with talent still have to practice their craft relentlessly in order to perform at a high level and not lose their ability. Thus, it really is effort that makes the difference between good and great.