I’m not going to say that I’m astounded by this story in the WSJ, because I’m an adherent of H.L. Mencken’s dictum that nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Even, evidently, MBAs.
Fortunately, my employer has cancelled the company picnic this year, due to belt-tightening, so I don’t have to lay out a sartorial strategy. But I recall very well a former employer’s sales conference in Cyprus, where the event planners arranged all sorts of group water activities that required swimsuits (or else getting drenched in your civvies).
I went off to see the antiquities. Much preferable to viewing my Euro colleagues in the near-buff. & soaked.
As it was, they were plastered pretty much all the time. Which is probably the case at these company outings described by the Journal reporter.
At any rate, I offer it as something for you to take under consideration in your climb up the corporate ladder.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Dulce et decorum est
A letter to the Washington Post brought to the attention of the world Lt. Brian Bradshaw, who was killed in Afghanistan on 25 June. He was 25.
Bradshaw’s parents agreed to the publication of this letter, written by members of the Air National Guard transport crew who flew Bradshaw’s casket out of his deployment base to Bagram.
You can see a photo of Bradshaw at the Post’s Faces of the Fallen site. The Post does the best job of humanizing the Bush administration’s wars of any paper I know. Whenever they amass enough photos of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to fill a double full-page spread, they print them in the order of their deaths. (As the names appear on the Vietnam Memorial.)
I think they have enough to print every couple of months, sadly.
The description of Bradshaw’s final trip out of Afghanistan reminds me of a story in Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front. The essay is by a Marine colonel who accompanied the body of a 21-year-old Marine killed in Iraq home to his funeral in Wyoming.
It also makes me think of the funeral in the aptly-named town of Comfort, Tex., of Spec. James M. Kiehl, described by his aunt, Vicki Pierce.
You can see Kiehl’s Faces of the Fallen page here.
It’s fitting and proper to keep their faces in our thoughts.
Bradshaw’s parents agreed to the publication of this letter, written by members of the Air National Guard transport crew who flew Bradshaw’s casket out of his deployment base to Bagram.
You can see a photo of Bradshaw at the Post’s Faces of the Fallen site. The Post does the best job of humanizing the Bush administration’s wars of any paper I know. Whenever they amass enough photos of those killed in Iraq and Afghanistan to fill a double full-page spread, they print them in the order of their deaths. (As the names appear on the Vietnam Memorial.)
I think they have enough to print every couple of months, sadly.
The description of Bradshaw’s final trip out of Afghanistan reminds me of a story in Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan and the Home Front. The essay is by a Marine colonel who accompanied the body of a 21-year-old Marine killed in Iraq home to his funeral in Wyoming.
It also makes me think of the funeral in the aptly-named town of Comfort, Tex., of Spec. James M. Kiehl, described by his aunt, Vicki Pierce.
You can see Kiehl’s Faces of the Fallen page here.
It’s fitting and proper to keep their faces in our thoughts.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Liberté!
It’s been a harrowing six weeks, but I’m back to being a single-property owner. On the advice of my amazing real estate agent, I put my Virginia house on the market the first week of June, & we closed yesterday.
I can’t tell you what a relief it is—even having it rented for most of the past year, & even having allegedly professional property managers allegedly managing it, there’s always a strain to check on what’s really happening, rattle cages because they’ve messed up, worry about repairs, etc. I’m not good at being a nag & I especially don’t like being one to people whose job it is to manage all the bits & pieces.
It’s an odd market. As late as April my agent (Craig Lilly, of Prudential) was advising me that if I didn’t have to sell, I shouldn’t. I mean, a year ago Northern Virginia was the vortex of foreclosures & short sales. Even Fairfax County, the champ of inflated property assessments, devalued my house this year by about 30%.
But for some reason, in May, when I checked again, he told me that things seemed to be picking up & I decided to go ahead & see if I could sell. Initially we talked about a price in the low-$200s, but by the end of May he came back again & said that he thought that was too low, & we went for about $30K more. So that’s what we did.
&, blow me if I didn’t get an offer about two days after the sign went up on the property. Not full, but close; & of course that bloody "seller's subsidy" that benights the Virginia real estate market.
There was the usual back-&-forth on repairs & a serious glitch at the end when the electronic appraisals didn’t match the human one, & they had to be reconciled. But papers were signed yesterday & I don’t have to worry any more about two homeowners’ associations, the paint police, the Clampetts living across the way & the rest of that Old Dominion nonsense.
I have to say that I wouldn’t be a realtor for quids—Craig managed the sitting tenants, the contracts, the repair estimates & the repairs; all I had to do was sign about a gazillion papers & ask a few questions. It was as close to painless as you can get in anything involving real estate.
I do miss Virginia, & that house was really good to me. But since I’m in Pacific North-hell, I have to focus on here now. Perhaps it’s appropriate that it ended on Bastille Day.
& major props to Craig!
I can’t tell you what a relief it is—even having it rented for most of the past year, & even having allegedly professional property managers allegedly managing it, there’s always a strain to check on what’s really happening, rattle cages because they’ve messed up, worry about repairs, etc. I’m not good at being a nag & I especially don’t like being one to people whose job it is to manage all the bits & pieces.
It’s an odd market. As late as April my agent (Craig Lilly, of Prudential) was advising me that if I didn’t have to sell, I shouldn’t. I mean, a year ago Northern Virginia was the vortex of foreclosures & short sales. Even Fairfax County, the champ of inflated property assessments, devalued my house this year by about 30%.
But for some reason, in May, when I checked again, he told me that things seemed to be picking up & I decided to go ahead & see if I could sell. Initially we talked about a price in the low-$200s, but by the end of May he came back again & said that he thought that was too low, & we went for about $30K more. So that’s what we did.
&, blow me if I didn’t get an offer about two days after the sign went up on the property. Not full, but close; & of course that bloody "seller's subsidy" that benights the Virginia real estate market.
There was the usual back-&-forth on repairs & a serious glitch at the end when the electronic appraisals didn’t match the human one, & they had to be reconciled. But papers were signed yesterday & I don’t have to worry any more about two homeowners’ associations, the paint police, the Clampetts living across the way & the rest of that Old Dominion nonsense.
I have to say that I wouldn’t be a realtor for quids—Craig managed the sitting tenants, the contracts, the repair estimates & the repairs; all I had to do was sign about a gazillion papers & ask a few questions. It was as close to painless as you can get in anything involving real estate.
I do miss Virginia, & that house was really good to me. But since I’m in Pacific North-hell, I have to focus on here now. Perhaps it’s appropriate that it ended on Bastille Day.
& major props to Craig!
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Allons, enfants
Today is the 220th anniversary of the quintessential revolutionary statement, the storming of the Bastille. Really, unless you’re of the First or Second Estate, ya just gotta love the idea of the riff-raff of Paris rushing to a moldy old prison, releasing all the prisoners—all seven of them—& basically destroying the arch symbol of l’Ancien Régime.
Bugger the fact that none of the inmates was actually a, tu sais, political prisoner (unless you count “the accused conspirator, Tavernier”). Nothing but a few forgers, one aristo committed by his family (possibly for pecuniary reasons—the Bastille was good in that regard), another (a putative Englishman) & two lunatics.
Well, after all—we’re talking les Français, mes chers amis; symbolism is reality.
Anyhow, oubliez les Sans Culottes; this is an excuse to drink wine , eat snails in garlic butter & shout revolutionary slogans.
Vive la Révolution!
Bugger the fact that none of the inmates was actually a, tu sais, political prisoner (unless you count “the accused conspirator, Tavernier”). Nothing but a few forgers, one aristo committed by his family (possibly for pecuniary reasons—the Bastille was good in that regard), another (a putative Englishman) & two lunatics.
Well, after all—we’re talking les Français, mes chers amis; symbolism is reality.
Anyhow, oubliez les Sans Culottes; this is an excuse to drink wine , eat snails in garlic butter & shout revolutionary slogans.
Vive la Révolution!
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