a few funnies and a lesson

This weekend the hockey gals and I head out to Strongsville, Ohio, for a tournament. I was checking out the tournament website and found that one of the teams is called the Florida Beaches. I kept wondering in my head why in the world a team would want to have such a stupid name. Beaches aren't ferocious...they don't DO anything... Finally I said the name out loud and realized why it was accepted as the name for a women's team. Call me Slow.

The second funny things is that I finally found that Disco yarn I had lost. Last night about about 11 I realized that I need to go into work on Sunday night, thus I will need my access card...and I haven't been able to find THAT for several weeks, either. Thus began my search through my bedroom, my home office space, my mail pile, and my purse. As I was searching for the card I ran across tons of other things I've been wondering about...a knitting gauge ruler...my savings account record book...some lip balm...and the yarn! In the end, both the yarn and the card were in the places I thought they would be, although I know I had looked in those places for those items several times before and couldn't locate them. Now I have more yarn and am happy. And I have my access card and can work late. Not exactly HAPPY, but useful.

This afternoon I went to the PhD thesis defense of a classmate named Mike. I was very struck when his advisor said that Mike always had an optimistic attitude throughout his graduate career. It didn't surprise me that Mike did this, since he's such a happy and upbeat person. But it's also because he is always a happy and upbeat person that I was so surprised - I would never have guessed that his work had been frustrating and fruitless until January of this year!! What a lesson for me... I often advise people with that old saying "attitude is everything," but I very infrequently heed my own advice. My current attitude at work is that it's never going to work and this is a stupid project and why can't I have picked an easier thing to study. Mike would look at the situation and say "Here's a problem. I need to work that out. Go." So...c'mon, Ruth -- GO!