Iced Decaf Coffee & SYTYCD

It was a pretty good day today.  I woke on a beautiful and quiet morning, had a breakfast of cereal and coffee, then commuted to work.  I spent the first two hours reviewing email for hidden requirements. Then, a four hour meeting cycle. Followed by a brief break for lunch, then another hour of work and a final hour of work, then home.

Here at home I had dinner (a chicken quesadilla) and am making an iced decaf coffee - all the while I am watching the SYTYCD episode that is dedicated to the amazing choreographer Mia Michael's. An outstanding episode and definitely it is going to be a keeper - that is, it is going to reside on my DVR until I get tired of watching it - over and over. SYTYCD is my favorite guilty pleasure.  It is an astounding show with some incredible talents in a world I know very little about - but am thoroughly enthralled by.

In the other parts of my life, things are going well enough.  T.R. is temporarily back home, so we've had some wonderful conversations and spent last night tumbling and stumbling. Mi Familia is still locked in their feud and the battle lines seemed to have temporarily hardened, but I am sure, in time, they will get over it.  There are wounds, but mostly wounds of pride.  I am starting to think that all families should go to counseling to learn how to communicate. In the case of my family, the root cause could have, perhaps, been avoided or minimized if both of the parties at the core of the fight had been able to communicate their wants and desires better.  But, both of them are strong willed and talked past each other.

Communication Dreams

I woke this morning from a dream about miscommunication. In the dream I had sent an email to a list of people. The purpose of the email was to call out my top ten watercolor paintings from the show I went to at the Triton Museum of Art over the weekend. The show that I had particularly gone to see was the 2008 Statewide Watercolor Competition exhibition.

http://www.tritonmuseum.org

If you click on the exhibitions page you can see the description of the exhibition, which was very impressive (especially since I have minimal painting talent and I know that watercolor can be a challenging medium to work in).

In the dream I had called out my top ten paintings from the exhibition. I had cc'ed multiple people with the list and got a somewhat irate response from one person, demanding to know why I had sent them a list of paintings I didn't like and what was I implying about their painting. I was puzzled in the dream so I looked at the email and saw that in the subject line I had written something like "Top Ten Reasons I Don't Like Watercolors" - when I meant to type "I Like".

Outside of the dream I have no idea if the person who responded to the dream email even paints - I don't recall them ever mentioning it. I woke from the dream with that sense of how easy it is to get our communications tangled with people.

But, outside of the dream I had an enjoyable Sunday evening. I had a very nice phone call with a friend and then spent the rest of the evening watching the Golden Globes. I have already written about Slumdog Millionaire a couple of times, so I was glad to see it win - well deserved for a spectacular film. After the awards show was over I curled up in bed and read a bit (Michael Crichton's "Next") and then drifted off to sleep.

After waking from the dream I sort of stumbled and bumped my way through the morning - banged into a couple of things, couldn't find a couple of things, got frustrated by a couple of things and then made it out the door. Fortunately the commute into the office was smooth. My calendar is relatively light today, so I am anticipating a nice Monday at work.