I cast my ballot in early voting for the Presidential primary election. We waited in line about an hour to vote - and J. (bless his heart) waited with me - he couldn't vote today because he will be a volunteer working the caucus on Saturday.
I haven't waited in line to vote for decades. And there were no voter booths. Not much 'private' about it. It's a paper ballot where you black in an oval for your 1st, 2nd, 3rd choices (required) and your 4th and 5th as well if you'd like (those are optional). The ballot is then handed to a person with an i-Pad and they enter information into the voter system. Then you hand your completed ballot to another person (after the iPad person has finished what they do with it) and this last person hand writes your ballot control numbers into a ledger.
Then you finally put your paper ballot in a cardboard ballot box. (I haven't had to put a vote into a cardboard box since high school. Or maybe even 8th grade - student body elections.)
It's a mystery of a process but we'll figure it out. And J. is super excited - he had a two hour conference call training this evening and has to report at 8:30AM on Saturday (and the caucus doesn't start until 11AM).
On Sunday, I drove to Auburn, CA and spent a lovely few hours with my friend C. . We talked non-stop and when we realized it was 1PM and we'd been there since 10AM, we were both shocked. Time always flies when we're catching up - and this was our first in person visit since J. and I moved to Nevada. The drive was beautiful - crystal clear skies, snow on the ground and mountains but nothing on the roads. Made it easily in 2 hours and we both pulled into the restaurant parking lot at the exact same time! It was a really fun day and mini road trip.
The house has the first coat of stucco outside and the HVAC crew was there today installing the unit. Drywall is installed - they will use the heater (once installed) to warm the house before they start taping and mudding the drywall.
We're trying to figure out the color we want for the front door. We don't actually have samples of the outdoor colors we've chosen so it makes it pretty hard to figure out what to choose for the door. There are some pretty strange color combos on the existing golf course houses....the house we used for our outdoor color scheme has a pinkish-salmonish door which looks awful (to me). So I know we're not doing that.
H.'s car repair is in process. We authorized some expense for them to check and flush the transmission and a few other minor things (inside air filters, for example). They expect to be finished later this week. H. has been borrowing the cars of his roommates, walking, biking and taking Lyft on occasion if his shift starts super early, ends super late or if there's super bad weather.
B. texted me at 10:15 PM last night 'you still up?'. I replied yes and we 'chatted' via Messenger for quite a while. He's had a hard day at work and needed to talk through some things - overthinking his Myers Briggs profile and questioning a lot of things about himself. I remember how Myers Briggs makes your weaknesses seem defining. He hadn't just taken it - I think he revisited it after the day he'd had with all sorts of situations that were hard. He truly deals with a lot of things that are so out of the ordinary - the type of work he's doing - supervising groups and making sure people do what is expected, the way it needs to be done, in a huge bureaucracy with all sorts of nuances and layers.
H.'s car repair is in process. We authorized some expense for them to check and flush the transmission and a few other minor things (inside air filters, for example). They expect to be finished later this week. H. has been borrowing the cars of his roommates, walking, biking and taking Lyft on occasion if his shift starts super early, ends super late or if there's super bad weather.
B. texted me at 10:15 PM last night 'you still up?'. I replied yes and we 'chatted' via Messenger for quite a while. He's had a hard day at work and needed to talk through some things - overthinking his Myers Briggs profile and questioning a lot of things about himself. I remember how Myers Briggs makes your weaknesses seem defining. He hadn't just taken it - I think he revisited it after the day he'd had with all sorts of situations that were hard. He truly deals with a lot of things that are so out of the ordinary - the type of work he's doing - supervising groups and making sure people do what is expected, the way it needs to be done, in a huge bureaucracy with all sorts of nuances and layers.
Keeping people safe is the highest priority of any job - right? He's got a lot of challenging things coming up and I'm really so proud of how he's thinking things through. I told him 'the fact that you're thinking about today's events in combination with revisiting a test you took years ago to try to figure out what you could re-tool about the day - that says a lot'.
One of the things I always got positive feedback on from various bosses was my ability to 'self-correct'. When I was letting my ego overshadow what I knew to be the right thing to do - or while I was struggling to figure something out, I'd listen to advice given and then I'd fix it. Or I'd fix it on my own sans advice. B. said 'the personality type I am is the same one as Gordon Ramsey'. I said 'but Gordon Ramsey is an ass, B. - you aren't. Gordon Ramsey is all ego and would never even consider using a tool like Myers Briggs to figure out how to be a better leader'.
Leadership is hard. Leading and managing people is very hard. Hopefully, you keep learning and keep improving - and I'm sure B. will.
As we wound down the conversation, he said 'on a lighter note, when I move to recruiting I'll have 30 days leave before I report - how does a family trip to Disneyland sound?' I said 'sounds great! Start saving money!'. He said "I could cover the room for me and H.' I said we'd have to see if H. could come - airfare and time off makes him getting there super expensive. But we'll see. J. and I have actually been talking about Disneyland.
We're watching "The Outsider" on HBO. It's a Steven King story which by definition makes it creepy. But it is a really great series. J. is previewing the episodes for me so I don't have to fret through each one - suspense filled and a bit creepy.
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