This Week: blaming the new girl & other unsightly blemishes

Last Sunday I shopped gluten-free for the first time.
Okay, so some malt-o-meal found its way in my cart, but besides that...
A few weeks ago my sister Tana found out that she's allergic to wheat, dairy, soy and eggs...all of which are seemingly essential to the American diet. That news should be enough to knock a girl straight into a food deprivation depression, but Tana has taken the news with joy. She's just happy she can take actions against the previously unexplained illnesses she's had over the last few years.
The additional (not-so) good news is that it's genetic. And Tana has encouraged her whole family to get tested.
I've been having some unexplainable health problems, most notably acne (at the tender age of 27).
So I decided to change my diet for awhile until I can get tested.
But the thought of life without pizza, lattes, and ice cream seems tasteless & dismal.

On Wednesday, despite the battle waged for my attention between the Democratic debates and Larry King's interview of the El Dorado wives, I stopped my treadmill workout 25 minutes early because I could not run from my mind...
the mind that kept reminding me that earlier that day I did one of the worst things one can do to a new hire.
I've been training the girl who's going to work full-time in the position for which I've been freelancing. I gave her a simple task, to pdf files and put them in a folder that the big boss in California could access. Then I sent Big Boss the file path via e-mail. Ten minutes later I got a phone call from Big Boss. She wanted to go over the files while she was on the phone with me. She began to look at the first document and said, "OH, the leaf group needs to be removed from this one..."
"We removed that yesterday," I responded, "I don't know why it's on there...unless we pdfed the wrong file. I guess I didn't see which ones NEW GIRL put in your file. We'll change that."
"OH, and you didn't change this group either..."
"That's really strange...we changed it...I'll take a look."
It turns out Big Boss was looking in the wrong file folder, one different than the path I had sent her. So Big Boss was at fault, and I blamed New Girl. I feel like such a coward.

I have been amazed at character flaws that can surface when I'm put in a new or challenging situation...things that if gone untested may have remained unnoticed and ugly. This week I also saw myself pointing out to New Girl what documents I designed and that I was the one who did the main illustration for the boards.
"See how talented I am, New Girl?" I said (but in a slightly subtler way).
Do I have issues or what?

If any of you have any more issues you'd like to point out to me, fill free to leave them in the comments section. I might as well get hit with the frying pan a few more times while I'm still dizzy.

teeks returns from italy.

To all those who have been sitting in suspense since November over my internship decision...I deeply apologize for making you wait.

Teeks is back from Italy.

The internship was all wrong. I felt it in my bones and my pocketbook.

I've been waiting to update this blog with a new name and direction, but it turns out it's taking me a while to find my personal new direction, not just for this blog.

There is a lot going on in this head of mine.

I came back to Portland, OR, at the beginning of January. Since then I've been doing some soul searching....walking on the beach and journaling.
(you know, the stuff you're supposed to do when soul searching)

So please resume your patience with me and return to my blog in a few weeks. By then I will be able to talk about some of this soul searching in retrospect.

decision time

hiya. 2 months of silence...yes, I know. I have good reason for it, and that reason is "thesis." It's over now...only a few loose ends to tie up before I graduate on December 14th. However, in the next 16 hours I need to decide whether I am going to take an internship that would keep me in Milan for another year. The internship is with the company with whom I did my thesis. I knew this internship was a possibility, but I was thinking it would be 3-6 months. Nope, it's a year-long commitment. So any prayers would be appreciated. Much love and more details soon.

grazie mille, amici.

ladies and gents of my circle,
Many of you know I've been struggling with my thesis. I hit a rough patch a couple weeks ago and progress has been slow since. For all ya'll who've been praying and thinking of me, thanks so much. I had a really good day of designing today, and I feel like I'm truly back in the game. Only 2 more months until it's due...and 2 more months until I graduate.
I'm taking bids for where I'll end up...highest bidder get a TQ in their city! Or maybe we'll just see how the job search goes...
much love,
TQ

about time, teeks.

After 9 months in Italy I finally found a church.
Wait, that statement is inaccurate...
I actually found the church online only days after arriving in Milan,
BUT
my initial infamiliarity with the city +
a detour to a nearby church I did not like (see posting: Special Music) +
project busyness resulting in substituting church with podcast sermons =
the excuses for my 9-month delay.
Oddly enough, I met a girl who's originally from Omaha, Nebraska, and graduated from Millard West (Timberlakers, she knows Emily Krogh and Chuck Mullikin) and went to college at Iowa State (SMR people, she knows Melinda Feldkamp-Tweedt). Miniature world.

Below: No longer my church.

In every tree I see stick men.

One thing about project research is I often run onto things that are completely useless for my project yet incredibly useful for the part of me that needs to laugh.
From 1978 Girl Guides (Scouts) Annual:






Of course may favorites are the eccentric dancers.
So many ideas...so little time.

they are the champions, my friend.

“Let’s get ice cream,” Alessia said one night while we were roaming around in Bodrum, Turkey. The food in my stomach from dinner had started to move a bit, making room for ice cream, so I said, “Sure.” We walked down to the nearest ice cream parlor, bought a couple cones of our favorite flavors, and started to walk down the street again. Alessia took two licks of her ice cream and looked at the cone with the same sour look she gives a lot of foods.
To tell you the truth, I had predicted that face the moment she brought up the idea of ice cream.
"This is horrible." she said.
“Alessia, you come from the country with the best ice cream in the world. This is what ice cream tastes like in the rest of the world.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, this is pretty typical.”

Even though my taste buds have become accustomed to Italian gelati (there are two places less than a 3 minute walk from my apartment), I can still appreciate just about anything that falls under the category of ice cream.

It’s the same thing with other things too. I wanted to visit Ephesus in Turkey. It was a day trip from Bodrum and was relatively cheap. Alessia went last year so she said she didn’t want to go again.
“It’s not much to see."

“Well, I’m pretty sure I still want to see it. I've never seen anything like it.”

"Yeah, you're probably right. You should see it. It's hard for me because there are better ruins in Italy."

What is it like to be a person who grew up in a country with so much history and “the best” of everything? What is it like for these things, that are so breathtaking for the rest of the world, to become normal? Does it make it difficult to appreciate anything that’s not as superior?

My friend Roberto grew up in Rome. His university was less than a minute from the steps of the Parthenon. He used to sit and eat his lunch on the fountain facing the Parthenon.

As I examined the interior of the Parthenon for the first time, I asked Roberto, “What’s it like to grow up with THIS in YOUR city?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, “I’ve never known anything else.”
(Here's where it'd be cool to say that he has an odd obsession with parking garages and fabricated homes, that he's most-impressed by those things, but to my knowledge, he doesn't.)

---
Alessia said she doesn’t understand why a lot of restaurants abroad, as in outside of Italy, don’t know how to make a good pasta.
“Pasta is so simple,” she says.

“It IS so simple, “ I think, “How can restaurants screw it up? Silly restaurants.”

Of course, I don’t recall ever eating a bad pasta in a restaurant...
She goes on to describe to me the process of making a good pasta.

“Have I ever made pasta for you?” she asks.

“No.”

At this point I recall having made it for her while we were working on a project together. I also recall her plate not being empty at the end of the meal. I just thought she wasn't hungry.

“Well, I need to make pasta for you,” she says.

But then I wonder if I will even be able to tell the difference between her pasta and something inferior (like mine), but I honestly don’t think my taste buds are sophisticated enough to know if she uses table salt or rock salt.
(cause she says it makes a difference.)

And that's actually okay with me.