Wordy Wednesday

Yesterday my day at work was consumed with meetings, something I compare to spending a day in the seventh level of hell.  I know meetings are an important management tool but they should be focused and limited to the subject at hand.  When meetings descend into “war stories” about anecdotal instances instead of real world problems I start to reach critical mass very quickly.  I did not have anything pressing to spend my time on other than the meetings but I’ve never suffered a waste of time gracefully.  My own personal rule for meetings is that they cannot last longer than one hour.  If it takes longer than an hour then you are trying to do too much with too many people in attendance.  This has been one of my biggest complaints about civilian life – no one seems to be able to run an efficient meeting.  There is always some oxygen thief who feels he should be heard on every point even if it is not relevant.  Yesterday I was considering the use of summary executions to get the meetings moving but my boss opined that was a little too extreme, although he did agree with the sentiment.  My son came to the rescue when I snuck out to have my weekly lunch with him near his office. It was a welcome dose of sanity in a day that needed it.  Last night was date night and my wife and I went to see The Words.  It was a light drama about an author who gains fame through stolen words and the confrontation he has with the original author.  The movie had a great cast lead by Bradley Cooper who was finally able to show some acting range.  He held his own with Jeremy Irons, no mean feat.  The plot was told as a story within a story within a story, if that makes any sense.  Dennis Quaid plays an older version of the author who tells a story of a young author (Cooper) who finds fame with a lost manuscript and is then confronted by Irons, the author who lost the work more than sixty years prior.  Irons then walks Cooper through his story in yet another flashback.  While this may sound profoundly confusing, it wasn’t, it worked.  I really liked this movie because it explored a couple of my favorite themes – the illusion of celebrity and the consequences with the loss of personal honor.  It also helped that Zoe Saldana was in it but there were no throw away parts in this movie, an adult movie that forces you to think without jamming it down your throat.  We saw the movie at the newly opened (cherished) theater because the big action movie that opened this week, In the Cold Light of Day, was not playing there.  This is the second week in a row (Lawless last week) that a movie I was planning on seeing did not play there.  Concern may be warranted but it caused me to see a movie that I probably wouldn’t have but enjoyed thoroughly.  Finally, because I know you were all wondering, the great paving controversy in front of the house has been resolved.  You’ll recall when we last left the ditch in front of my house was being filled with it’s third or fourth load of dirt.  They packed the dirt this time and I thought that was their latest attempt to keep the dirt in place for the next rain storm.  Apparently some engineer finally took at look at the slope (or they ran out of dirt) because I came home a couple nights ago to find it completely paved over.  The world can now rest, sanity has been restored.

The Packed Dirt

The Final Solution