Sales

I for one like Budweiser, or at least I did before I lost my taste for alcohol. These days I drink a shot of cheap white wine in a full glass of water. I used to drink micro-brews but it gave me terrible gas (blue smoke paint peelers, as an acquaintance in Phoenix termed it).

There was a parable circulating back in the 90's, maybe in the 80's, that said if you wanted to succeed in business, you had to be like a duck: all calm and serenity above the water (where it shows), but paddling furiously beneath the surface. I thought it was a stupid idea. I still think it is a stupid idea, but now I am beginning to understand.

Communicating with people can be difficult and time consuming, especially if they are you superiors. If people think their status is higher than yours, then they don't have to listen to you, you have to listen to them. They may want to tell you a long story, or just deliver terse comments. If they are polite, they may listen to you for a short while, or they may ignore you completely. They are not going to sit patiently while you go on and on about something that bores them, and anything you say will be boring because you are not as important as they are.

So if you are trying to get your superiors to do something, like approve your project, it is going to be very time consuming and tedious on your part. You will have to listen to them drone on as long as they like, and pitch your project whenever you get a chance. If their status, real or imagined, is much higher than yours, you will get maybe a minute to speak for every hour you spend with them. So if may take weeks to get your idea across, and then it will probably get rejected because of something their girlfriend/boyfriend said over the weekend.

Roman, Saturday

Anne and I took Roman for a ride in the van today. All that fuss about technique for loading him in the car was for naught. They got Elfinish (a 95 pound Ethiopian woman) to help me, and she had never loaded anybody into a car before. It was a bit of a struggle, but we managed. Using the van made it a little easier because there was room for her inside so she could pull while I pushed. Drove over to Cornelius, checked the house, picked up the trash in the yard (there are always a few small pieces of trash in the yard. The wind blows it in), picked up his mail, his address books and a pair of shoes. Stopped by two foster care houses. The woman at one of the houses came out and talked to him. Took him to Burger King for a Whopper Junior. He called Uncle Lee from the parking lot using Anne's cell phone (free long distance). He looked up the number in his address book and I dialed it. Took him back to Rehab.

I stopped by rehab on Thursday and talked to the occupational therapist about Roman. She said he was the most motivated she had seen. The have a set of parallel bars, like railings, about 12 feet long. She said he had managed to walk the length three times, which is a big improvement for him.

He is still a long way from living on his own, but he might be walking again in a few months.

If I had known back in July what I know now, I would have voted against using a general anesthetic when they tried to relocate his hip joint.

He has a roommate who has the same doctor (Kuklinski). This guy is wearing this frame on his shoulders that holds his head in place. He told me today that they are planing on fusing 6 (or was it 8?) vertebrae. He was supposed to have an operation yesterday, but they postponed it two weeks. Too much risk of loss of life. He is much younger that Dad, might be 60 something.