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{ Monthly Archives } August 2005

I need a new job!

My angst-ridden post yesterday really highlighted to me that my midlife crisis continues: I’m quite successful at what I do and am fairly well-known in my field (an IT specialization), but I think that I’m bored with what I’m doing. This entire contract negotiation process was so indicative of what I waste too much time on with the type of clients that I deal with, and I just want to do something different. Something with a lot less lawyers, accountants and large businesses. Something that makes me feel like I’m making a difference, and doing something productive most days.

Occasionally, I think of my programming days fondly: I could brush up my skills and get back into that although I have always looked down my nose at people who are “still programming” at 45. Maybe I need to lose that snotty attitude and just do it, although it would mean taking an 80% pay cut on an hourly basis, although presumably with a lot less unbillable time spent on bullshit. I know a lot of small businesses that need a better web presence and better internal IT, and could likely help out with a lot of that. Not a lot of money in that, but it would be satisfying in its own way.

I’ve also been spending some time mentoring small businesses, and really enjoy that. I have the sense that I’m helping them to avoid some of the early pitfalls in a startup (having done three myself), and helping them to focus their ideas into a cohesive business plan that they can act upon. Of course, they rarely have any money to spend so are happy to get this advice for free, but wouldn’t pay for it — I wouldn’t have at that point in a startup, even though I understand the value in it now.

Part of me feels like I have one more startup left in me, if I could find the right partners and the right ideas, or even be dropped into a company that needs more experienced leadership at a first-round financing stage. I know my strengths and my limitations in this arena: I’ve been from zero to second-round financing, and I’ve built a company organically (without financing) to 40 people. I had a tremendous amount of fun — and stress — in doing that, and it made me want to go to work each day. I don’t feel like that now.

2005 08 25 business Comments (1)

Multi-tasking

My life has become increasingly multi-tasking, mostly due to me allowing it to be interrupt-driven, and not distinguishing between the urgent and the important. An example: since I am dedicated to my electric toothbrush and go for the full two-minute cycle, I keep a supply of magazines close to the sink so that I can browse an article while I brush — otherwise the amount of time seems interminable. Today, however, I found myself sitting on the toilet while brushing my teeth and reading a magazine, which struck me as just a bit too much multi-tasking. Okay, I have a busy day today, but is it so busy that I need to do three things at once? And although all of these are somewhat mechanical tasks that don’t need a lot of attention, what other tasks am I combining where things are not getting done right because of it?

The funny thing was that when I was making tea immediately after that, I had a litany of things running through my head that I “needed” to do and I was desparate not to forget them. None of them were important: one was writing this post, which I would have eventually remembered to do anyway; one was adding a forgotten tag/link to a post that I did on my business blog earlier today; one was entering something into my food journal that I had missed recording yeseterday.

I have become a slave to the urgent, to the thing that shouts the loudest and interrupts my day. I even cause my own interruptions, primarily through the over-frequent checking of Bloglines for new posts on the 100+ blogs that I monitor. More than half of those blogs are business-related and feed into my work, and a quarter of them are news feeds since I don’t read paper newspapers, so they are relevant information; the problem is that I choose to access the feed reader many, many times during the day instead of just checking it a couple of times. I’ve just downloaded iPodder and am tracking five podcast feeds, too, although find myself without uninterrupted time to listen to them. And let’s not even discuss email, where I have both always-on DSL in my home office plus my beloved Crackberry.

This whole thing, I believe, is due to me losing my passion for my work. When I am doing what I love, I’m so focussed that I forget to eat and sleep, much less check my email or read blogs.

2005 08 24 business Comments (0)

Introversion or secret TV addiction?

I’ve stopped worrying about why Damir does some things, and just accepted the fact that he’s way more introverted than me, and comes from a much different culture. Today, for example, I have a (male) friend visiting from out of town, and we’re meeting for dinner. I said to Damir, “Hey, I’m going to meet my friend for Indian at 6, come and join us, you’ll really like him.” He declined, saying that he’s busy working. I think that it’s more complex than that, and imagined any combination of the following reasons:

  • He’s totally stressed about finishing this project and wants to just focus on that.
  • He thinks that he’d be bored listening to my friend and I reminice and look at pictures of my friend’s kid.
  • He’s trying to be polite by letting my friend and I have some time alone to catch up.
  • He doesn’t want to eat Indian food since it gave him the runs once.
  • Since he’s working on his laptop at my place, rather than his own place, he’s just waiting for me to leave so that he can raid the cupboards for my stash of almonds and fine Shiraz, and watch reruns of CSI on SpikeTV.
  • It’s raining and he doesn’t want to get wet.
  • He’s being excessively introverted today and doesn’t want to meet anyone new.

I’m betting that I’ll come home to find him in front of the TV with a glass of wine and an empty almond container.

2005 08 19 friends Comments (0)

TTC poetry

I was on the subway a few days ago and noticed one of the poetry posters that they regularly feaure. This immediately burned images on my brain, and I could smell dead leaves as if it were winter already. I quickly jotted it down in my Blackberry for later consumption, but missed the name of the poet, unfortunately.

The Hold UpStripped of leaves,
surprised –
the trees
scrape the grey winter sky
with veined brittle arms.
2005 08 17 toronto Comments (0)

Vegging out in Toronto

I work at sticking to macrobiotic and mostly vegetarian fare ever since an overindulgent month vacationing in Europe last year had me reassess my eating habits. Luckily, it’s easy to eat vegetarian, even vegan, very well in Toronto, and it’s also easy to find vegetarian places where your carnivorous friends won’t even notice that there’s no meat on the menu. To help out in this area, Now Magazine’s current issue has a cover story on Toronto’s top vegetarian restaurants, and I’ve been salivating over the list. Taking a look at the story on their top pick, the Live Organic Food Bar, which just opened last week, I even want to try “raw California-style vegan” if it’s anywhere nearly as good as it sounds.

Now’s number three pick, Fressen, is right around the corner from me in Queen West. It’s a full-service restaurant serving dinner, plus a great brunch on weekends. It’s all vegetarian, in fact I think that everything on the menu is vegan, but nothing that your non-vegetarian friends would find too weird. At brunch recently, we all started with a fresh juice (mine was beets, carrots, ginger and lemon, a favourite combination that I make at home). I had scrambled tofu (okay, your non-vegetarian friends might turn up their noses at the sound of it, but it’s a good textural equivalent of scrambled eggs and was nicely spiced so they probably couldn’t tell the difference) served with a huge plate of other goodies: black beans on a crisp tortilla shell, a squash-stuffed tomato, some salsas on the side, a few slices of really wonderful bread and roasted potatoes. My companions both had a spiced Moroccan stew of chickpeas and other veggies, served with a mound of brown and wild rice. Everything was fresh, tasty and well-prepared. Portions were generous and prices were reasonable. To top it off, the decor is lovely: dried grape vines (I think) are entwined around the exposed duct work on the ceiling, then trailed down to planter boxes to give the appearance of being seated under a canopy of trees.

It doesn’t make Now’s list, but another place that I love is Fresh, a self-serve, eat-in or take-out vegetarian hang-out serving only the daytime crowd until 6 p.m. They serve up some very tasty rice bowls such as the Powerhouse: avocado, chick peas, grilled tofu steaks, toasted nuts and seeds, sunflower and buckwheat sprouts, tomato and red onion with spicy tahini sauce on brown basmati rice. Excellent salads, sandwiches and wraps too, and since they started out primarily as a juice bar, they also have some great juices that give me inspiration when I juice at home. They’re a bit more down-market and edgy than Fressen — more skateboards and goth here — and have a great little patio in the front where you can watch the strange goings-on of Queen West while you eat.

2005 08 16 food & wine Comments (0)

Macrobiotics and health

I had a great comment from Marston on my last post on macrobiotics. I completely agree that it’s tough to explain macrobiotics to people, although I find that talking about whole grains usually triggers something since that’s so high profile in food marketing these days. Usually I describe it as whole grains, no processed flours or sugars, very little animal protein, no dairy or eggs and lots of fresh vegetables.

I also found his comment about requiring less diabetes medication to be interesting as well. I have two Type II diabetics in my family, and one controls it completely through diet, the other eats whatever he wants and has to take medication, so diet can have a definite effect. Eating whole grains gives you a more consistent blood sugar level throughout the day, which is probably a key factor. I know that it has a huge impact on energy levels for me: where I used to require coffee to get through the afternoon slump, if I eat whole oats for breakfast, I have a consistent energy level all day. Also, the macrobiotic bias against nightshades (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, eggplant) helped another family member with great relief from her osteoarthritis symptoms, although she hasn’t stuck to the rest of the macrobiotic diet.

I kept a journal for a while after I started on macrobiotics but stopped back in the spring; I’ve just started doing it again to track what I eat and when I eat it against things like energy level, motivation (I work from home, so need a lot of that some days) and general well-being. Yesterday for lunch, for example, I had cold spicy soba noodles with a sauce of soy sauce, vinegars (red wine and rice), garlic, tahini and a bit of hot sauce, plus a green salad; for dinner, I had wheatberry salad. Today I’ve had whole oats for breakfast and will finish off the wheatberry salad for lunch, then will probably prepare a bit of fish and salad or a vegetable curry for dinner. I tend to use more spices than is advised in most macrobiotic references, but I love spicy food so have to indulge once in a while.

2005 08 16 health Comments (0)

The joy of new customers

I spent 30 minutes on the phone this morning with a new customer — actually a new contact at an existing, happy customer — who seems to be the alpha-male sort that needs to make vendors and consultants cringe at his feet and kiss his ass before he will listen to them (and then probably has no respect for us because we kissed his ass). I was hired by another part of the organization to create something on the topic of X; he’s the stated expert on X, so insisted on being involved so that we wouldn’t screw up the strategy that he’s creating for the company. Great, happy to have his input. But then I spent half of the phone call apologizing: first, because he misunderstood something that I said about the project and went off on a rant about a particular point of view that had nothing to do with what I said, and second, because I said the word “message” instead of “strategy” when I spoke about getting the word out about X. He threatened to go to the president and have our project cancelled because our material about X was wrong, at which point I challenged him by asking how he could do that when he hadn’t even seen our material.

At the end of it all, he was fine with what I’m doing, I think that he just had to make me understand who’s boss. A tedious exercise, all in all, and one that makes me glad that I bill by the hour.

2005 08 15 business Comments (0)

The Rocky Horror Show, live

Friday night found me at something considerably lower-brow than the Cirque du Soleil’s presentation of Corteo that I attended the night before: a live stage production of the Rocky Horror Show (apparently, it’s only called the Rocky Horror Picture Show in the film version). It’s playing at Stage West, a dinner theatre in the suburbs of Toronto, and continues until mid-September. A bit of a strange venue for Rocky Horror: Stage West is usually filled with suburban types who don’t want to drive into the city for theatre and are happy to see an older or “revival” production with actors who aren’t exactly top tier (I realize how snobby that sounds, but I live right at the edge of the true theatre district downtown, which comes third only to London and New York’s theatre districts). Even stranger was Friday night’s performance, which was performed at midnight and encouraged the audience to attend in costume, unlike the other performances in the run.

As a bit of back story, I was introduced to RHPS over 25 years ago, as a first-year university student, by my new friends living in the same dormitory residence. Many of them were veteran RHPS attendees, with costumes and all the props (toast, newspaper, lighter, confetti), so I was in good hands for my first time. Many of us imbibed in mind-altering substances before the show began; in fact, I had to go back and see it a second time to check if the colours were really that bright or if it was just the hallucinations (a bit of each). It took me two days to get the computer punch-card chips that everyone used as confetti out of my hair, and I’ve never really recovered from the sight of one friend in full Frank-N-Furter attire. I saw the show several times over the next ten years, usually the midnight show at the now-defunct Roxy movie theatre in Toronto, and heard the music countless times.

Back to the present, six of us (including one person who was at my original RHPS viewing 25 years ago) headed out to the ‘burbs to attend the show with a bunch of other early-middle-aged nostalgics, preceded by dinner and a costume contest. The audience variety was astounding: at a table near us was (as expected) a divine gentleman in fishnets, a leather Merry Widow, high heels, full makeup, wig and a dead ringer of Tim Curry’s original strut. On the other side (completely unexpected) was a suburban matron in a white skirt and sweater set, pearls, with her blonde hair perfectly coiffed as if she were at an afternoon tea party in Rosedale. Somehow, she was considerably more unsettling than any of the Riff Raffs, Magentas, Columbias or Franks in the audience.

Many of the audience sang along (as did I), and some knew the talk-back lines that have become familiar at any Rocky Horror performance, live or film. Then, in that moment during Over at the Frankenstein Place when lighters snapped into action all over the theatre, I was completely transported back to 1979. As nostalgia goes, this was top-notch.

2005 08 14 culture Comments (0)

Salad days

Hot and humid is the catchphrase for summer in Toronto, and with weather in the 30’s, my culinary thoughts turn to salads. I love pretty much any type of salad as long as it’s interesting — no boring iceberg lettuce with hothouse tomatoes, please. For example, lunch a few days ago was organic greens tossed with pumpkin seeds (pepitas) and lightly dressed with my favourite blend of balsamic vinegar, extra-virgin olive oil and Dijon, then adorned with avocado slices, bean salad and a bit of poached salmon.

Marinated salads are a particular favourite of mine: yesterday’s was thinly-sliced cucumber and fennel bulb (anise), with a bit of sliced celery, some flat-leaf Italian parsley and chopped fresh chives from my window garden. It would have been improved by the addition of a thinly-sliced red onion, but I was making do with what was already in the fridge. I dressed all of this with red wine vinegar and (unseasoned) rice vinegar, a dash of sesame oil, salt and pepper, covered it and refrigerated for a few hours. Great as a salad or as a garnish for cold meats.

Today’s special is wheatberry salad, a universal hit with my vegetarian and non-vegetarian friends alike. Wheatberries are a great source of protein, and their chewy texture and nutty taste makes them a natural for salads. The wheatberries needs to be soaked overnight, then simmered for about 45 minutes until they are softened but still chewy, but after that it’s just a matter of tossing in the rest of the ingredients, and letting it rest for a few hours. Once I’ve cooked and rinsed the wheatberries, I toss in dried cranberries, chopped fresh basil leaves, chopped almonds or Brazil nuts, and raw pumpkin seeds. This is really pretty variable; in fact, today I’ve made it with chopped dried apricots and mint instead of the cranberries and basil, and in the past, I’ve made it with cashew nuts instead of almonds, although they tend to get a bit soggy after a few hours. The dressing is dead simple and oil-free: three parts freshly-squeezed lime juice to one part Dijon mustard and one part honey, plus sea salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste. It will last for several days in the fridge, so I’ll be enjoying it all week if the hot weather continues.

Although the original recipe that I derived this from had some measurements, I always just wing it: I use as many wheatberries as can comfortably soak in a medium-sized mixing bowl, then I mix in the other ingredients until it looks like a reasonable mix of grains and other stuff. It’s really a matter of personal taste, and you can add more or less of any particular ingredient. Toss with enough dressing to lightly coat the ingredients, and let it rest for a couple of hours for the flavours to mix. Enjoy!

2005 08 14 food & wine Comments (0)

Car-less again

I waved bye-bye to one of the really silly trappings of my early mid-life crisis last week: my Honda S2000 roadster. It was a ton of fun for the five years that I’ve had it, but ever since I moved back to Toronto from the U.S. three years ago, I’ve realized that I don’t need a car. Before I moved south, I went without a car for five years, and only bought one because it’s impossible to live in southern California without one. Since I was about to turn 40 at the time, had just left my husband and closed down my business, buying a convertible seemed to be the way to go on the path to full-blown mid-life crisis.

It’s actually a relief to have it out of the garage. It was getting to the point where I would take it out for a drive every two weeks just to keep the battery charged: living close to Kensington Market and Chinatown, I buy most of my groceries on foot; there’s lots of restaurants, shops and theatres nearby; and my only Toronto-based client in the past year was located in the financial district, a 15-minute walk away. I got a nice big cheque from the buyer (a 25-year-old who is apparently having a great time with it, although he pays more for car insurance in a year than I spent in the past three years), and I’ll get half a year’s insurance money back, so have plenty to top up my RSP for this year and put towards the new condo that I’m looking for. As an added bonus, when Damir comes over, he can now park in my parking spot instead of having to forage for parking on the street, or park in one of the visitor spots where he’s restricted to seven nights per month.

I don’t really miss it from a practical standpoint, since I can easily find someone to drive me to Costco or Business Depot the few times that I want to go (or just rent a car from the Budget agency a few blocks away). Emotionally, however, I had a brief twinge last night when we were driving home from an outing with friends at around 2am: it was a beautiful summer night, warm and a bit humid, and it was exactly the sort of night where I liked to put the top down and cruise along with the wind in my hair, singing along to the tunes on the CD.

2005 08 13 off topic Comments (0)