exhilarations

Congratulations, C and C

2008-12-25T18:45:00.001-08:00

This was my first attempt at a wedding cake, and lest it elicit pity as a cake wreck, I will note that it was intentionally kitschy and enjoyed by only a tiny circle of family members who understood the significance of the two twitterpated crustaceans. (For a larger, formal affair, I'd have made an entire cast of crabs, plus an assembly of urchins, cuttlefish, and starfish...all the sea creatures that nuptial etiquette deems proper.)

At the groom's request, the cake was a simple family favorite consisting of a chocolate cake mix augmented with orange zest and semi-sweet chocolate chips, plus the juice of the aforementioned orange substituting for a portion of the water. The crabs' bodies were fashioned from sour-cream cookies and royal icing. The legs were shoestring licorice (the "peel and eat" variety); the claws halved fruit-slice candies; and the eyes tiny chocolate chips embedded in mini marshmallows. The top hat was a black gumdrop atop a circle of grape fruit leather and the veil a third of a small doily affixed with a few drops of light corn syrup and studded with a band of tiny white candies.

The cake itself was happily consumed, and the crabs were sent home with the bride and groom.

Usability Testing at the Holiday Buffet

2008-12-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, B. and I attended his company holiday party. Unlike the sit-down dinners of previous years, which were “black tie invited” and held in sparkling hotel ballrooms, this event was an economically appropriate low-key buffet held on-site at the eye clinic. The building’s five stories all open into a glass atrium, so tables were set up in the main lobby and in the sitting areas of three floors, and two serving areas were laid out on levels 1 and 2. The catering staff circulated with trays of hot chocolate and cider (no alcohol allowed on university premises) while a string quartet played carols that resonated cheerfully in the usually subdued space.

Even under the best of circumstances (e.g., the astonishing Whole Foods market in Cupertino, CA), I am leery of buffets and other public self-service food situations. This aversion only intensifies during cold and flu season, when the thought of touching common utensils while dipping into germ-infused chafing dishes fills me with icicles of dread. Not wanting to appear ungrateful, I’d mentally rehearsed the party scenario in advance, knowing I could select just a few “safe” items that could be picked over with a fork and, if necessary, rejected in favor of an indisputably hygienic bowl of soup or cereal at home afterwards.

Pre-dinner socializing brought us late to the buffet line, where I could immediately see that finding fare to suit my picky palate would be difficult. We briefly contemplated sneaking out the service entrance and heading for a nearby restaurant but concluded it would be rude to abandon B.’s coworkers without notice or explanation. As I contemplated how to best execute my emergency plan from the available offerings, however, I was suddenly distracted from concerns for my own plate when I observed how others were assembling theirs.

The Italian-themed offerings were laid out on a single, long table in the following sequence:

Dinner plates, modestly sized to limit overindulgence
Butter, not in familiar paper-clad pats but rather rounded—naked—into fancy spheres
Basket of bread rolls
Antipasti platter with assorted grilled vegetables
Giant bowl of salad (mixed greens, walnuts, and grapes pre-tossed with vinaigrette)
Chafing dish of three-cheese ravioli (unusually large and round for pasta pillows, which initially caused me to mistake them for eggplant Parmesan)
Chafing dish of beef and vegetable stew
Chafing dish of apple crumble
Giant bowl of chocolate pudding (mauve-colored instead of the familiar fudgy brown of Jell-O), flanked by a smaller bowl of white cream topping
Dessert plates

Each dish was identified by a placard, but the signage was rapidly being pushed aside, tipped over, and spilled on by the crush of hungry guests. Everyone was therefore left to intuitively navigate the offerings while being sidetracked by conversations or feeling pressured to avoid holding up the line. International attendees were further disadvantaged by the already unfamiliar nature of many American dishes. Oddly enough, the situation reminded me of a software testing scenario, and it soon became clear that this buffet had some usability problems.

The first issue was beginning with a condiment, particularly in an exotic form. In terms of workflow, one must have first have a roll to serve as the substrate for butter, so many people completely overlooked the little golden balls at first pass and had to circle back afterwards. Placing the bread basket first, and perhaps with customary rectangles of butter (even the pedestrian variety prepackaged with the “Real” seal) would likely have been a better option.

The next issue was the lack of a distinct transition between entrees and desserts, coupled with an implied requirement to obtain both simultaneously. With small plates already crowded with mains and sides, and with dessert plates hidden at the very end of the table, guests had no choice but to squeeze the apple crumble alongside their meat and veggies—provided that they even recognized the latter as a different type of offering. At previous parties, sweets had been given their own table in a completely different corner of the room, so guests could make a targeted visit to the dessert zone at their leisure and fill a clean plate with cookies, cakes, and pies. This same model could easily have been followed even in the smaller space.

The final issue was the sheer novelty of the pudding, particularly in its communal form. Most Americans know pudding as a single-serving lunchbox snack presented in a small cup and adorned with a puff of canned whipped cream, so it took a moment for the locals to recognize the scaled-up version. Far worse, a substantial portion of the international contingent at the party likely hadn’t been exposed to pudding at all, so it was excruciating yet perfectly understandable when many did what is normally done in the U.S. when one is faced with a plate of food and a giant bowl of creamy sauce: they ladled it over meat and salad. After witnessing at least two such “dressing” incidents, I couldn’t bear the thought of any more ruined holiday dinners, so I discretely pulled aside a member of the wait staff to beg for some sort of fix. I’m not sure whether anything was ultimately done, but again, a distinct dessert zone, coupled with pudding presented in individual-sized dishes and perhaps garnished with something overtly chocolate, could have averted this culinary tragedy.

The party was clearly a sincere gesture of appreciation for employees, and—despite the presentation gaffes--the food was perfectly fine. In the end, however, I merely nibbled at some salad and toyed with a disc of ravioli before coming home to the safety of Wheat Chex. I may never conquer my fear of the buffet, but perhaps I can help make it a more user-friendly experience for holiday revelers everywhere: "Now, bring us some figgy pudding"...just on its own plate, please.

Looking back, looking forward

2008-11-05T18:19:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago, we realized the dream of becoming homeowners. We’d spent several happy years in a small condominium—a newlyweds’ delight complete with a fireplace and a balcony overlooking duck ponds—but numerous weekend drives sighting real-estate signs had filled us with a longing that could be satisfied only with the purchase of a proper house and yard.

The opportunity presented itself quite unexpectedly when my dad called to report that he and my stepmother had decided to turn their annual fall vacation to the area around Grand Teton National Park into a permanent stay. They’d already made an offer on a property in Driggs, Idaho, making finding a buyer for their current home fairly urgent. A modest but distinctive Cape Cod bungalow in a respectable older neighborhood, the house would have no shortage of interested parties, but the thought of it leaving the family troubled me. It wasn’t my childhood home—Dad and K. had lived there for less than a decade themselves—but it was charming and unique, with a beautifully landscaped yard and an ancient garage adorned by K.’s own artwork. The prospect of buying it ourselves didn’t even occur to me at first, but after talking with B. and running the numbers, we discovered it would be doable, if a little tight on our limited budget.

I called Dad back with our proposal, and we were suddenly in the mode of washing windows, cleaning carpets, and buying floral arrangements to spruce up the condo and hoping our real-estate agent would soon entice someone into making an offer. A few weeks later, on Halloween morning, we were loading up the moving truck for a quick drive across town. With the exception of a decent bedroom suite—our first furnishings investment as a couple—our furniture looked unfamiliar and out of place in its new setting. The tiny couch seemed to cower in the vast expanse of the living room, while the overstuffed red futon embarrassed itself like a brash, overdressed partygoer in the TV room. The cheap plastic patio set would go unused until spring, and the otherwise lush yard lay dormant under a yellow mat of leaves. Still, it was all ours, and I relished standing in my new, curtainless kitchen, listening to the radio as I took the dishware out of its newspaper wrapping. That night, we ate pizza from paper plates and welcomed trick-or-treaters feeling like royalty receiving serfs at the castle.

Over the years, we’ve worked hard to maintain and improve our investment. We’ve added window coverings; excised tired carpeting; replaced a broken sewer line and crumbling driveway; introduced central air-conditioning; and painted and repainted decks and porches. We’ve given stark white walls a colorful latex makeover and slowly upgraded furnishings, retiring the red futon only just this year in favor of a more demure—and comfortable—love seat. We’ve collected acres’ worth of lawn clippings and leaves; harvested bushels of vegetables from the garden; and hosted several generations of birds at the feeders.

With the economy in shambles and countless families losing their jobs and homes, I’ve felt somewhat conflicted over celebrating the anniversary of my “American dream.” The outcome of the Presidential race has made me cautiously optimistic, however, and I sincerely hope that the promise of change will be made specific and real as the people of this country unite to invest in our collective homes and livelihoods. With luck, in another 10 years, the familiar chants of “Yes, we can,” will finally be transformed to “Yes, we did.”

Sorry

2008-02-24T06:28:00.001-08:00

In the winter of 1993, I was attending graduate school in Cheney, Washington, a small college town about 30 miles outside Spokane. Eastern Washington University is a modest urban oasis tucked in among fields of winter wheat, a wild bird refuge, and acres of forest. Many students and faculty make a daily commute from the city, so the local economy sustains only basic services: a bank; a post office; a handful of cheap restaurants; two grocery stores at a respectful distance on opposite ends of the main road.

I lived in the ground-floor apartment of a converted ’50s-era house not far from the campus football stadium. On a modest teaching assistant’s salary, I couldn’t afford a car, and the record cold and snowfall that season had resulted in large utility bills that further strained my finances. My desk was strategically positioned to require the use of only a single electric wall heater, and every night, dressed in sweats, socks, and a stocking cap, I huddled beneath a heap of blankets while a layer of ice slicked the tub in the thinly insulated bathroom. My diet consisted mostly of Top Ramen, which I relished for its cheapness as much as for its comforts of hot broth and carbohydrates.

One day in February, as I was making my usual walk between school and home, I noticed a strange dog—some kind of spaniel—nosing in a snowbank at the community park. There were no other people on the street, and I’d already mentally cataloged known dogs in my neighborhood so as not to be surprised during the occasional run or bicycle ride. An unattended spaniel does not inspire the same terror as a loose Rottweiler or pit bull, however, so I continued on until the dog suddenly looked up, caught sight of me, and came loping across the street in a raggedy blur of black and white.

After a brief adrenaline surge, I realized the dog was not going to attack; in fact, its behavior was more like that of an island castaway greeting a rescuer after months of isolation. It bowed and wriggled, dancing around me as its broad muddy feet scuffed a circle in the snow. Its eyes evoked every canine cliché—mourning, pleading, soulful—and instead of merely whimpering, it hummed like a Theremin. I patted its head tentatively with a gloved hand. The dog had no collar, but it didn’t look overly thin, and its coat, though fringed with beads of dirty ice, didn’t suggest a lifetime in the elements. I decided it must be someone’s pet, either lost or intentionally abandoned.

The sun was setting, and I was reluctant to leave the dog to the descending cold. I decided to take it home and call Animal Control, who could at least provide shelter for the night and check missing animal lists for a reported runaway. The dog required no coaxing to follow, and I kept glancing around as we walked, half expecting a frantic owner to drive up and accuse me of dognapping. There was no such intervention, however, and when we reached my apartment I quickly herded the dog down the driveway and back to my door, hoping the upstairs tenant—the landlord’s daughter—wouldn’t catch sight of my impending violation of the “no pets” policy.

I hadn’t considered how to keep the dog under control while I made my phone call. (This was, of course, still the age of wall-mounted phones.) My initial thought was to bring it inside and somehow confine it to the linoleum entryway by the kitchen, where I could at least mop up the inevitable paw prints. I decided against this idea after the dog came in and promptly added a puddle of urine to the cleanup list. Without a leash or even a length of cord to tether the dog to the outside railing, I thought that food might entice him to stay. Keeping one eye on the parking lot where the dog had wandered to explore the trash area, I checked my cupboards and pulled the only meat-containing item I could find: a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. Dumped cold into a plastic bowl, this was not particularly appealing to the dog, but it kept him engaged long enough for me to get Animal Control on its way.

After seeing the dog tucked safely into the caged transport compartment of the truck, I casually asked the Animal Control officer what would happen next. She explained that he’d be held for up to a week to see if an owner came to claim him; after that, he’d be available to adopt for maybe 10 more days; and after that, well…. Her voice trailed off, and she gave a weary shrug, as if too tired to conjure another of the many euphemisms she doubtlessly knew for “executed.”

I felt strangely anxious as I watched the truck drive off. Not an hour before, the dog had been free to chase squirrels and caper in the snow; then I had baited him with kind words and soup before surrendering him to canine prison and a possible death sentence. What if no one was looking for him? What if the shelter was already filled with winsome puppies or more popular breeds that would eclipse his chance of being adopted? What if his last two weeks on earth were spent alone and afraid in a concrete kennel?

Over the next week, I couldn’t stop thinking about the dog. I thought of him as I sweated before my Writing 101 students, wishing my leather jacket and combat boots were sufficient armor against self-mortification. I thought of him as I watched my peers go home to boyfriends or the occasional professor in chic Victorian flats in the city. I thought of him as I plinked talentlessly on my guitar while performing angst-filled meditations on the lyrics of cassette-tape inserts. I was exactly where I’d planned to be in my life; it just wasn’t working out the way I’d envisioned. I was lonely and discouraged and suddenly questioning my future, not to mention tired of being poor and cold.

Maybe the dog was a sign, I slowly realized: maybe we were soulmates, two disaffected creatures destined to find each other in the midst of this bleak northwest winter. I imagined coming home to the boundless joys of dog-love; taking walks together and looking perfectly matched in our black and white palettes; sleeping soundly for the first time in months, secure in the knowledge I had canine protection, or at least a reliable barking alarm system. I barely had enough money to care for myself, and my lease clearly specified no animals allowed, but I was convinced of my new mission: I needed to save that dog.

I called the animal shelter the next morning and found that the dog was still there, unclaimed, and that his adoption eligibility period had now begun. As for the lease issue, I’d decided I’d have to get the dog first and then beg forgiveness later, and I’d already prepared a compelling speech, along with a corresponding monetary incentive, to convince my landlord that this dog would be unfailingly quiet and tidy. My friend Leigh Ann, herself a dog owner, had a truck with a covered bed, and she’d volunteered to provide the necessary transportation as well as a leash and other hand-me-down dog supplies. I came prepared with a packet of jerky treats and a proper adoptive name: Telly, after the model of my black and white guitar.

The animal shelter was in a run-down section at the far east end of town, and though I’d never been there before, it was familiar in its cinder-block austerity and self-consciously clean smell. I tried to focus on the delight of my impending pet parenthood instead of the animal sounds that came from behind the doors that branched off the reception area. When I told the woman behind the counter who I was and what I wanted, I thought she’d praise my good-heartedness and tell me what a fine companion I’d picked out. Instead, she looked concerned and paged one of the technicians, who led me back to the kennels.

I’d expected to see Telly looking expectantly through his gate, or perhaps curled into a ball, tail over nose, until he saw me and jumped to his feet in ecstatic recognition. Instead, I found him in some sort of canine trance, pacing circles and figure eights and moaning like the disconsolate ghost of a dog. He stopped for a moment when he noticed us, and I asked to step inside the cage, which was strewn with feces and bits of kibble from his overturned food bowl. Telly sniffed my boots and edged close to my legs, and I couldn’t tell if he was trembling from excitement or agitation.

“There’s something seriously wrong with that dog,” the technician said. “He hasn’t settled down since he got here, and he keeps making that sound. And the mess? Normal dogs won’t do their business anywhere near where they eat, but he goes everywhere. Everywhere.”

“Maybe he’s just scared,” I offered, glancing around at the surrounding pens, where other dogs were crowding like gossipy neighbors watching a next-door emergency.

The technician gave me a skeptical look. “We think he might be retarded.”

Despite being dressed in puppy-print scrubs, she looked solemn and authoritative, and I suddenly felt foolish: How had I allowed myself to think this could possibly work? I was a poor, apartment-dwelling student with no time, space, or resources for a Lassie-caliber dog, let alone a special-needs one. I wasn’t a flannel-clad St. Francis or a grunge-girl Barbara Woodhouse—I was just a naïve do-gooder bearing Snausages, and I was going to have to admit I’d made a terrible mistake. I latched the gate behind me as Telly resumed his whirling. The woman at the front desk assured me it would be all right, this would be for the best, and I nodded as I set the jerky treats on the counter and walked quickly toward the exit.

Outside, Leigh Ann looked surprised as I emerged with the coiled-up leash. I told her the story, trying to make it sound funny and absurd, but I found myself choking back tears, overwhelmed by a sudden, overwhelming sense of disappointment and shame. Leigh Ann gave me an awkward hug before we climbed back into the truck. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m sorry.” I repeated those words in my head like a mantra as we drove home, looking silently out the window as the pale winter sun flashed white through the blackness of the trees.

Will work for Kona

2008-01-29T16:02:00.001-08:00

With news last week that the U.S. lost 17,000 jobs in January, I felt the first real pangs of employment anxiety since my company's mass layoffs in 2002. Despite a sincere effort to work hard, broaden my skill set, and become as indispensable as a tech writer cum analyst can be, I know no one can be truly immune to the disease of downsizing.

A simple chain of belt-tightening could easily put my job at risk: healthcare costs keep rising while reimbursement rates decline; hospitals have increasingly smaller budgets to invest in information technology; healthcare software vendors can't offset development costs with new sales; and suddenly user interface design and documentation become "luxuries" that can't be justified on the payroll. My only post-education work experience has been in the software industry, so finding new employment in the aftermath of a recession-driven layoff would mean competing with hordes of other displaced techies for positions whose sole purpose would be trying to justify their purpose. The desire for innovation and creativity would become reckless liabilities in a development culture driven by fear. Work itself would no longer be an intellectual challenge and social adventure but merely a means of satisfying a primal obsession with sustaining basic needs.

I was lucky to have entered the workforce in the early ‘90s, when the IT job market was as bottomless and varied as the free-soda fountains flowing in every break room of the day. With the economy now in turmoil and the once-luscious flood of jobs shrunk to a stagnating pool, how can we possibly hope to maximize the contributions of those just beginning their careers, secure the futures of those on the brink of retirement, and sustain those of us in between? The Presidential candidates are squinching in collective consternation on behalf of American workers, pledging “hope” and “change” and a return to prosperity. Herbert Hoover was famously (if erroneously) charged with promising “a chicken in every pot,” and to those of us wearily filling our travel mugs for yet another morning commute, the current rhetoric sounds like “gourmet coffee in every cup.” After 8 years in a Folger’s economy, we deserve a switch to Kona, or at least to Starbucks. I just hope someone can deliver.