Saint Patty's Day

Hello, I'm writing from bed on my phone, not from my laptop, or desktop compter, both of which are 5 ft away. I've been in bed all day, it's 4:27pm now, I awoke at 1:40pm. I drank a bit yesterday, and during the middle of the night I had to throw up, there was an empty nalgene on the floor, it's not empty anymore. I didn't feel sick or hung over, maybe a little quesy, but I did feel like staying in bed and napping. It's been wonderful, I rarely sleep in this late, and even more rarely do I go back to bed after waking up. But thanks to St Pattys Day, my bed has been a devine retreat. Around 4, I was tired of my stomach feeling quesy so I had some Ginger Ale, and finally took my green medicine, my stomach felt better instantly, and everything was pleasing.

So St Pattys Day, is on Tuesday but yesterday was the closest Saturday so the celebrations and festivities took place yesterday. My Saturday started like most others, I awoke, read the news, caught up on some rss feeds, facebook, and twitter, and played some games, all on my iPhone. Then Brian texted me, wondering if I wanted to go to the St. Pattys parade. I did, so I got outta bed, and got a beer. Then I took a shower, got ready, and bee came over. Had another beer, and took two for the parade. The parade was decent, and i took some pictures of the festivities and wierdo's, by mostly of the wierdo's. After the parade we went to Sobelmann's cause Bee had never been, and their burgers are amazing. We had two beers with our burgers and then they gave us two free beers because they had us move tables. Then bee went to go work out, and went home and relaxed and tried to sober up for the evening. Bee came back over when he was do e and we went to the liquor store to get some Irish Whiskey and Ginger Ale. We drank a few of those, then met up with John at Mo's for a bit, then went to Fat Abbey to met up with Christian, Angie, and her friends, and to have delicous Belgian beer. They had Delirium Noel on tap, and this proved to be a great end to the night and sufficiently put me over the edge. And I'm really tired of typing in the iPhone now so . . . The End

Integrity

The other day we had our Annual Company Meeting. We had this off-site at a Marriott, and it began at 8 am. Right off the bat I was running late, but eventually started the 45 minute commute with my breakfast: two Heineken and a bowl of green. It was a delightful drive and I eventually arrived 15 min late, stood in the back of the room, smiling, taking photos of the event.

Around lunch time we took a break to have some sandwiches provided by the Marriott that were utterly disgusting. They just randomly handed out the sandwiches, so whichever one you got you were stuck with. I was stuck with a raw roast beef sandwich, on day (or two day) old wheat bread, two small thin strips of heavily-marbled red raw roast beef, the core of iceberg lettuce, and a soup ladle sized scoop of mayonnaise. The sandwich was also server with a pickle (which was good), and a mustard potato salad(which was bad). Needless to say it was horrible and I was still hungry. So I decided to leave to go out to get lunch, even though no one else left, I wasn’t too worried and didn’t think anyone would notice my absence. I went to Arby’s to replace the taste of the disgusting roast beef with delicious roast beef. On the way back my dessert was another bowl of green.

I got back to the hotel about 10 min after the meeting had resumed, happy as could be, grinning from ear to ear. But my boss was in the hall waiting for me when I returned, he was upset and embarrassed because they had been looking for me because they were handing out the employee awards and I was supposed to be taking pictures of this. But even worse, they had called out my name to come up and receive an award I won. Once back in the big meeting room, the owner and president, who were giving out the awards, noticed I had returned and called me up to the front to receive the award.

The awards are voted on by fellow employees and then the executive team meet and decide which of those employees nominated should receive an award. There are 6 different awards; for Collaboration, Continuous Learning, Courage, Fun, Integrity, and Quality.

I won the award for Integrity, the description of which is –

Candidates must demonstrate a commitment to ******** by consistently showing business excellence, while maintaining the highest standards of business ethics and portraying respectful, responsible behaviors and attitudes while making positive and sincere choices on the path to integrity.

Here’s another definition of integrity - comprises perceived consistency of actions, values, methods, measures and principles. Integrity may be seen as the quality of having a sense of honesty and truthfulness in regard to the motivations for one's actions. The term hypocrisy is used in contrast to integrity for asserting that one part of a value system is demonstrably at odds with another, and to demand that the parties holding apparently conflicting values account for the discrepancy or change their beliefs to improve internal consistency.

A pretty sweet award, made all the more special given the circumstances, and the fact that my work self is in some ways far different than my true self. It makes me proud that I can be who I am and enjoy what I like, yet still be able to go to work and act in a professional and ethical manner and make others believe that is truly who I am.