Saturdays at EnergySmart I am in charge of the entire D-Sales floor, covering the queues and making sure in general that things run smoothly.
 When they don't run smoothly is what I'd like to talk about in this note.
 Part of the job description is handling escalations. For those of you not in Sales or Customer Service, that means that someone with a major/minor beef with EnergySmart has called in, and the rep either blew it or the customer is a very short-tempered person. Regardless, he demands to talk to the Grand Poobah, Noble Lufkin, or High-ya Mukamuk immediately.
 Who, may you ask, is this grey eminence?
 Yours truly, that's who. My unfortunate lot is, depending on the customer, to flatter or flatten their expectations. This particular day, M. (one of my reps) had a customer call in about an inactive account. I initially refuse, since the matter was clearly one that did not fall within my jurisdiction.
 This customer…let us call him Herbert Loman. Mr. Loman calls back, and apparently has a short, nasty conversation with M. M. calls me.
 "Angelie…I have this customer and he's really mad. He wants to speak to a supervisor."
"Alright, M. Send him through to my line and I'll deal with it." Occasionally you need to break your own rules to prove that you're not afraid to deal with such things.
M. puts the customer through to my line...and this man proceeds to prove for once and all that my job is crazy sauce.
   "Yeah, so you're the <em>supervisor</em>? I need some action right away."
 I cut in with some customer-service patter. Always 1) empathize, 2) set expectations 3) Outline exactly what you're doing to help. Toss in some comments about how you are breaking and bending the rules because you're that awesome.
 Unfortunately for this man, my best just doesn't...cut it. He interrupts to say, "I would like to inform you that my <em>mother</em> is on a conference call with us."
 "Yes, sir." What the heck? Does he want momma to make me sorry?
"I mean," he continues, while I frantically check the notes for something useful that indicate this man is a psycho, " I had sweat running down my ass all last night and I was watching my fish die. How do you think that makes me feel?"
 "Sir, I am sorry. I am doing my best to help you, if you'll hold while I call the distributor..."
"'I'm sorry' just doesn't cut it. I want some action here! You call yourself a business."
  In another life where I didn't care about being fired, I would have pointed out that I don't call <em>myself</em> a business. Regardless, I go back to asking permission to place him on hold.
"I am working to fix your problem right now sir, hopefully the TDSP hasn't been knocked out..."
"My mother is on the line, I'll have you know! And I want to see something better than you trying to cover your ass..." He was cut off abruptly.
"Trey! TREY! That lady is trying to help you!"
"Ma, these people are terrible."
"Trey, you need to stop it. I'll take the kids till power gets put on but you need to calm down. It is none of this lady's fault and she's the first person to go out of her way to help you out with this."
  The woman stops tearing her son a new one, and I cut in to finish outlining my action plan, after which we hang up and I promise to call back as soon as I get confirmation from the TDSP.
   So many things about that encounter bewildered me; why did he have his mom on conference call, and why did he keep making a point of it? Did he want her to take over the call? Even more mystifying, she took my part when I was trying to placate him. I suppose my tone impressed her. Either way, I will say one thing: Thanks, Mrs. Loman. You are awesome, although I wish your son had better manners.

 I just got back from New Orleans!!!!!! 
   The city is made of awesome and seven spices of win.  I almost didn't come home. It has everything.
  The French (Have you ever met the French?)- I bought some Fleur-de-lys earrings and hung out in French Quarter for the Tomato Festival, the Seafood Festival and the Cajun Zydeco festival, which were going on simultaneously- a huge stretch of partying people.
The banana daiquiri ( I may have invented it too early)- And strawberry daiquiris. Woo-hoo!
Hoppin' good music (Remember when we had to hop? Hopping for our lives?) Zydeco. Gospel. Fun times.
         And furthermore, to borrow Coleridge: "Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs / Upon the slimy sea"- and DAY-UM, they taste delicious. Pics to follow, but to sum up in a few words: Fried Oyster Po' Boys. Shrimp wrapped in Bacon. And Bienets. A foodie's paradise for the sampling.
        As it happened, I was staying with my friend Kate and her family, sleeping on the couch of their shotgun house in Uptown. From there it is a few blocks to the St Charles streetcar line and only 1.50  (ticket plus transfer) to see the rest of the Big Easy. 
         Just as much fun and more personal was seeing Kate and her family, who I have not seen since 2006 and the reunion in Michigan. I got to play with her adorable boys, both blonde, blue-eyed little Frenchmen (Pascal and Guillaume). Other fun bits included meeting the rest of their parish after Mass, and just sitting and talking whilst eating cake and mascarpone in the kitchen.
     Now, it is true I had to drive seven hours there and another seven to get back. It is also true that I would do it again in a second, despite the undeniable fact that some parts of East Texas could have fit seamlessly into any horror movie about road-trips. I even stopped at a roadside station that MUST have been the location for filming Planet Terror. At one point all the bars on my phone were gone for about an hour, and I was two hours from a town in either direction. Scared me to death, so next time I'll fly. At least it's close. 
         And now my bed is calling me... Ciao!

Ah, poetry. It's not candy- more like a drug. A good poem will make you work to get that high from the reading. With that in mind, I'm re-reading Directive by Robert Frost. Grail-quest and American nostalgia in one tidy package. 

"I have kept hidden in the instep arch

Of an old cedar at the waterside

A broken drinking goblet like the Grail

Under a spell so the wrong ones can't find it,

So can't get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn't.

(I stole the goblet from the children's playhouse.)

Here are your waters and your watering place.

Drink and be whole again beyond confusion."
      
        Stuff like that is so awesome it really, really kicks my ass. I just love the final two lines, that Frost is playing off the idea (in the Arthurian legends) that there is a hidden Grail, and only those who are called by the Grail can seek it. My American Lit prof (an irish priest and unreconstructed Southerner) says it's the guiding image and chief prop of his life. The fact that he holds to it and even averrs that he once held it, during a High Mass in Spain, just proves how sincerely he believes in it. 
    As for me, I will be struggling with Henry James today, with the help of a lot of coffee. Ciao!

I sit regularly next to one girl in my Shake class, and we talk together a lot. This particular monday, I alluded to St. Valentine's Day, and asked if she was doing anything.
She gave me a half-defensive, half-triumphant look. "Oh. That's SAD Day. Single Awareness Day, for me and my roommate. We'll watch a movie and go out to the bar."
I smiled politely and told her it sounded really great. And maybe last year, I would have been tempted to a similar attitude.  Not anymore. 
    Many people I've known rabidly react against St. Valentine's Day, just because it's a day of openly acknowledging love. Most people don't feel loved enough, and they see it as a day that reminds them of that fact. Well, not if you view it as a day to celebrate love in all its forms- whether it's the hug your little brother gives you, your roommate making coffee in the morning, or someone who out of nowhere emails to ask you to be his valentine. If our profession is to be lovers, we'll be ill-prepared for that true-love relationship if we ignore and marginalize all the ways we can exercise that potential. On that note-
           Love is a many-splendoured thing.
         Love lifts us up where we belong.
Love is a rose, but you better not pick it; only grows when it's on the vine.
       
    Do you think that only applies to couples? HAH! Permit the wisdom of Lennon and McCartney to inform you otherwise:

Say the word and you'll be free
Say the word and be like me
Say the word I'm thinking of
Have you heard the word is love?
It's so fine, It's sunshine
It's the word, love
Now that I know what I feel must be right
I'm here to show everybody the light

Give the word a chance to say
That the word is just the way
It's the word I'm thinking of
And the only word is love. 

                   (lyrics from The Word by the Beatles)

There. Now, don't let the fakeness that permeates this kind of holiday eat at you. That's something you weren't made to suffer, so please enjoy the day in the name of the martyr who bore witness not to an earthly, erotic love, but to the awe-inspiring love of God for man.

Just got back from a trip to Barnes and Noble, and god-damn, there are a lot of books. The most pernicious ones in the lit, fantasy, mystery, and romance sections were all concerning my least-favorite of the Nosferati.
         
           The vampire. God-freaking-damn, how I hate them. I hate them with the fire of a thousand suns, with the venom of a snake-pit in an Indiana Jones movie, with all the invective of a Jerry Falwell tirade. They remind me of oregano. Know why?

   First, oregano smells weird. But second, I used to have a herb garden. It didn't matter what you planted in the spring, how many rows of thyme, plots of sage and cilantro. If there was one seed of oregano in the mix, then by mid-June there would be a giant oregano garden, with a few lesser plants scraping a thin existence in the middle. It's a bully among herbs. 

As vampires are bullies among the undead. They act pretty smug, considering that everything written about them gives me to understand that the so-called Dark Gift is a venereal disease with some unusual side-effects. Side-effects which are never the same from one book to another, and various ideas about their tolerance of sacred symbols connected with Catholicism.  Guess what? If you can be damned, salvation is also possible. Existence of the devil presupposes a God. So cut it out with the vampires who are like, "Oh, I'm damned and woe is me, I'm a dark creature but holy water has no effect, and see, I can touch this crucifix." 


And you don't need to be a vampire to cultivate that attitude of superiority towards the bourgeouis. Oscar Wilde had it. Charles Baudelaire had it, and he was a better writer, too. Whereas most vampire characters couldn't compose an epigram to save their pitiful, appetite-driven lives. Was Lord Byron a vampire? No, but I'm sure they read him for pointers on how to behave, a la Don Juan.

         And another thing about them- vampires are almost exclusively defined by their dietary habits. They share this dubious distinction with vegans/vegetarians. All three are incredibly boring and no fun at parties, because they will be at pains to remind you that they can't drink wine/ eat the taco dip / play poker. They suck, in a purely figurative sense. Suckity suck-suck suckity suck.  
       
        Finally, every vampire ever written is either extremely ashamed or extremely proud of his unique and oh-so-special status as damned. He will use this attitude to obtain sex. Bravo, vampires. That puts you on a level with most teenagers. But teenagers don't go in for the kinky, demeaning shit that makes your world go 'round, and that makes them better than you. 

The only vampires worth watching / reading were Dracula and The Hunger. 
That is all, done ranting, kthxbai.
 

I suppose it is. 
Anyway, this is the first page of the first chapter of my current piece of fiction: Voyage of the Thunder-child. It's a story of Romance, High Adventure, and Sentiment. 
       

Tee-hee. I will pretend this is a conversation I'm having with the Master...who stole my drink. He IS evil, after all.