So he took it to Han’s, the Chinese-run cleaners in the shopping center adjacent to the franchise cleaners.

I waited weeks to pick up that sweater and when I finally did, Mr. Han made a huge deal out of the fact that this was our first time doing business. “You’ll be very happy with this,” he told me and made me promise to come back. I said I would.

That was in March and since I lost my job in late May, I haven’t had occasion to take anything to the cleaners until now, just a few days before a job interview, when I found that my black jacket needed cleaning.

I drove up to Han’s.  When I walked in, a bell rang. Nobody was in front, but I heard someone in the back. Soon out came Mr. Han, grinning hugely, glasses perched low on his nose. “Hello, how are you?” he asked. “This your first time here?”

“Second,” I said, holding up two fingers in a lame attempt to head off any misunderstanding.

“Are you in the computer?”

“I don’t know … it was months ago.”

“Phone number?”

“Um,” I said, thinking maybe Clay’s number would be the one, “Try 862 …”

He waved that away and said, “Last name?”  VanderVelde is a name that people can’t even seem to understand in Lansing, so I didn’t hold much hope for any recognition with a non-native English speaker.  Gamely, I spelled it to him.

A record apparently came up on the screen. “Not since 1997!” he announced.

“Oh, no. That’s not me.”

“Twelve years! You came once – twelve years ago!”

“What is the first name you have there?” I asked.

He didn’t answer.  “What is the address?”

I told him. He keyed it in and read something different from the screen. “No, that’s not me,” I said, thinking the mystery solved. But he persisted.

I’m not sure exactly what he said next, but the gist of it was this: So what if he took my order now? What if I didn’t come back another time? Should he waste time putting my name in the computer now for just one visit? Look at these people! Just one visit in twelve years! And you haven’t been here in months! Why not?

Desperate, I threw out the only thing I had:  “I have been out of work for months and haven’t had any use for dry cleaning,” I said. “I have a job interview on Monday, and I need this jacket cleaned.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Han. “I tell you what. You put your name and phone number here.” He drew two X’s on a piece of carbon receipt paper. “Then if you come back again, I’ll put you in the computer.” He beamed and slid the paper across the counter to me. He seemed satisfied with these terms.

I printed my name and phone on the slip and passed it back to him, along with the jacket.

He was smiling again. “When you want this?

“Saturday?” I ventured. He wrote the day and time on the slip of paper and handed it to me.  I thanked him and left.

Saturday afternoon  I took a short break from a client project and remembered my dry cleaning. “Will you pul-eeze go pick up my jacket for me?” I asked Clay, whining just a little. “I’m sooo busy. The reality of course was that I had neither the energy nor the will to face Mr. Han.  So Clay, nice guy that he is, did me the favor, saved me the hassle.

Odd as it may seem, Mr. Han’s approach to customer service works for him. In spite of his making much over when or whether I’d been there before,  he did  say that I would be happy with his work, and I was. But I also noticed something else :  Mr Han knows his customers by name. He is attentive. He does quality work and is adamant that customers know and appreciate it. He demands your return, literally and figuratively. There’s  an easy familiarity there that’s only achieved  when there’s respect and trust on both sides of the counter.  You don’t get that kind of service just anywhere. And when you find it, you keep going back.

2000 Mercury Sable SE. A nice find.

I began my new car search looking at Jettas and yes, more Malibus.

I ended with this. Nice car, good value – a nice all-around find.

My wrecked car

Well, I’ve detailed every other car catastrophe we’ve had these past few years, including Susan’s romp through the trees on Grand River Dr., Meagan’s I-96 rollover on the way to the Grand Haven Beach and the burning of the minivan in  a downtown parking lot.

So I can’t miss writing up the most recent incident as well.

I had a meeting at a client’s office on Tuesday afternoon and was on my way home.  The day was very warm and as I turned onto our street all I could think about was how I couldn’t wait to change into my shorts and tank. Almost there, I thought, as I flicked  on the blinker and slowed down for the left turn into my driveway.

Suddenly, BAM!  I heard a loud noise from behind me and the car and I slid violently forward.  “Damn, now I”m past the driveway!” I thought before the realization struck that I’d been hit.  I looked up into the rear view and saw the big grey Ford truck that had been behind me since before we turned onto my street.  Then driver climbed out of the truck and made his way to my car. I was in a daze and angry beyond words,  so I tried to ignore him as approached the closed window, asking, “Are you OK?”

“Nooo!” I wailed, then realizing I couldn’t really ignore him or what had happened, I opened the door and climbed out of the car.

He was driving a company truck and was on the job. He said he was looking for an address on my street and had looked down at a piece of paper. When he looked up, I was stopped and well, by the time he saw that, it was too late.

The rest is history and not really worth recounting. The insurance company says the car is totaled, which we suspected. I believe I’m getting a far amount for it – close to what I paid for it, amazingly.

So now I am poring over  Craig’s List looking for a suitable used car for myself. Not too old, not too many miles, under $4,000, if that’s even possible.  Do you know of anything available around Grand Rapids? Let me know!

The fury of thunderstorms. Our road and yard are flooded.

I considered skipping tomorrow, but (Westminster  Winds conductor) Lee is conducting while Helen is out, and – added bonus – we’re being accompanied by strings. This is always a treat because the players will mostly be church members who play in the Grand Rapids Symphony.

So … how to practice and learn this music? I searched it on YouTube, found a suitable performance and sang along, music in front of me (much to the dismay of my son and husband – oh well.)

Among the many high school perfomances – and a heroic performance from a Latin country with 4 singers and 4 string players – I found this from a CityMusic Cleveland  performance that I thought was very good, if about 4 times faster than seems to be the generally accepted interpretation. I like it.

After playing this over and over  – and stumbling through some of the Latin, which I know I won’t have to sing as fast as this – I think I’m ready for the morning.  Take a listen – it’s really beautiful (and I can’t believe I’ve never been exposed to it before this). I hope one day I get a chance to sing Schubert’s entire mass.

1. No matter how clueless your boss is; no matter how much she “doesn’t get it,” she holds your career in her hands. Everything you do on the job is for her, under her direction; Everything you are, she has allowed or paved the way for. To think otherwise is silly, immature and naiive.
2. You can do nothing by yourself. Collaboration and teamwork are not just essential, they are mandatory for getting things done.  Team players get rewarded; solo efforts rarely do
3. No matter what you’re doing, make sure your boss knows about it. You never want her to be surprised by anything she hears or sees with regard to you or your work. What she doesn’t know may not hurt her ( or subsequently, you), but on the other hand, she also can’t promote or reward you for things she doesn’t know about.
4. If you get called out on a mistake, own it, even if you don’t think you were in the wrong. Don’t make excuses – it makes you look  ill prepared, whiny. Do make the extra effort to get it right the next time
5. Always answer email from your boss
6. Never argue with your boss. See #1
7. Despite your smarts and education, there are people around you who are smarter and who know more.  A LOT more. Open your ears and especially  your mind to listen and learn.
8. Don’t know the answer?  Do the research, find it. Wrong answer: I don’t know. Right answer: I don’t know, but I’ll find out and get back to you.
9. Don’t bring a problem to the boss unless you also bring at least one suggestion for solving it.
10. Come early. Stay late.

I’m getting email from your blog

i think i might have not changed over the address when I transferred it

You’ll recall that Josh hosts my blog and awhile back we had some difficulties with a WordPress upgrade (my fault) and so he had to do an entirely new install … and apparently he left his own email address for communications from the blog and he is getting my – you guessed it – comment spam.

Yes, because I haven’t worked at bringing traffic here yet (and apparently Google image search – the source of most of my traffic of late – is still going to the Typepad domain) all I get on this blog is comment spam. Which of course never goes live, but alas bots apparently don’t know when a blog has moderated comments.

“Do you have the plug-in activated to catch spam?” is the next thing he asks me.

Ugh – no, I don’t. I know Askimet is supposed to be a good spam catcher, but I always was stymied by this ‘key’ that it wanted in order to be activated. I tell Josh so. And he offers to do it. “It’s easy,” he says as he is requesting the key to be sent to my email.

“Thanks,” I tell him. “It seems that the older I get, the stupider I get.”

“WordPress,” I muse, “far from opening up new horizons, has been the definer of my limits.”

“Haha,” he types.

Then, “That makes me kinda sad.”

“Me too.” says I.

Continuing ….

The subject was (roughly) quality assessment. Specifically the group of six women and me was brainstorming goals for year one in an ambitious five-year plan to put the university in a position to apply for a national quality award.

I brought nothing to the discussion, but far from that being intimidating, it was refreshing to listen to these very smart women and watch how their minds worked: an expert in research and analysis, an assessment expert , a corporate trainer, two academic program development experts and one with  long experience in IT and manufacturing processes. The talk was of process and program auditing, metrics and performance indicators; goals and gap analysis; leadership and training. It was far removed from my every day, and I was challenged to stay with it, to attempt understanding.

I was there in a communications capacity, and I know that reading, discussion and more exposure to the subject will render me almost conversant and at least knowledgeable enough to plan and execute internal communications as needed. But for today, I felt satisfied enough just to listen and learn from six very smart women. And  to discover at the end of the meeting that I had the same four goals listed in my scribbly notes as those recapped by the leader.

I also have written and mostly abandoned or deleted several Blogger blogs, the best of which remains collecting dust at coit avenue. I stopped writing there after the last Michigan gubernatorial election, when our blogging efforts earned the Michigan Liberal blogging contingent an invitation to tea at the Guv’s mansion (I think it’s OK to tell about it now. The Governor was cool and she didn’t try to coerce us into writing anything in particular, I promise.) Part of my leaving that one behind also had to do with my taking a job at a private university – ’nuff said.

Although my reading tells me now that blogs have been around since about 1998 or so, I know I was among the first wave of bloggers who began writing about the time that funny word ‘weblog’ or ‘blog’ started to make its way into our vocabulary – which coincided with the arrival of easy-to-use blogging platforms, such as Blogger and Typepad. In other words, I’d blogged for a long time … right up until the advent of Facebook-for-Everyone and, of course my favorite social phenomenon, Twitter.

And that’s when my blogging tapered off to near nothingness.

I have brought this up before, I think. And I’ve pointed to the usual reasons – I spend too much time reading and playing on Facebook; I say everything I want to say in 140 character bursts all day (not!) and have nothing left for blogging; and my favorite – my new job exhausts me with long days and besides offers me little blogging fodder after you set aside all the confidential information I deal with daily as a communications director.

The real truth is harder to face, but here it is: I feel I have nothing to say. Seriously! I follow people on Twitter and Facebook who are experts in their fields – hell, my field! No thought in my head is new, different or interesting – nothing is something any one of them has not already thought about, turned over and inside out, re-examined or proclaimed the final word on. And I don’t just read what they have to say – I chat with or otherwise interact with them, hear them at conferences and webinars, go to meetups and tweetups and, well,  I just feel I have nothing to add to the conversations.

True. Where once was an almost daily blogger is now someone struck dumb. And I don’t like it one bit.

And so, determined to get my writing mojo back, I googled ‘need a blog topic’ tonight and, besides finding – once again – Chris Brogan’s wonderful 100 topics, I landed on Monica O’Brien’s site (don’t I follow her on Twitter? I used to), where she says I don’t need one particular blogging topic. Which, yeah, I know, and that wasn’t particularly the advice I was looking for. Still I did come across this bit:

“Write about what you are learning.”

Because, of course, we are always learning. And if I’m just learning about something, well, readers will forgive me if I don’t seem like an expert, right? Sounds good to me. As a writer, I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before! It’s perfect.

So here goes – my newest blogging effort. Musings about what I am learning. You’re welcome to read along.
*Yes, I know the blog is still there at TypePad. But it won’t be as soon as I get all the photos moved over here.