October 20, 2008

"You've got to be kidding!" . . . But I'm not . . . my new office

This is my cubicle. Note my "light stick" on the floor to the right of the photo. That's where I keep it until about 3:20pm, when the sun gets to my window. The wheeled "box" under the desk with the red cover is combination filing cabinet/guest chair. The photo on the whiteboard, to the left of the chair, is a photo of the office I was given when I was hired by Kennecott in 1989--on the 16th floor of the Kennecott Building, facing the Joseph Smith Building.

It's now about 3:20pm, and the sun is hitting my window--and my eyes and my computer screen. There's no opaque blind on the window, so I have to get out my light stick and hang my brown grocery sack on it. (By the way, what looks like a gumball machine is really an M&M dispenser.)

This is a better view of the light stick. On one of the four sides of the end stick are five teeny lights that go from bright, brighter, and brightest. I've never needed a light on my desk and have no expectation that I'll need to start now.

This is the view as I look straight ahead. These windows, which face northwest, don't have any outside window treatment that would reduce glare, any translucent shades, or any opaque shades. The people who sit at that end wear sunglasses. (And to quote Dave Barry, "I am not making this stuff up!")

This is the view from one end to the other of one side of one wing of the floor I'm on (the second floor). There is very little color. Visitors have described it as "cold" and "sterile". I say it has no beauty nor humanity. And the color white, like black, is a symbol of death and the absence of life.

Friday afternoon, October 17, when the sun came in my window, I found that one of the two hinges of my three-foot light stick was loose and wouldn't support the weight of my brown grocery bag. So I fished an 8.5x11-inch piece of paper out of my teeny waste basket (one size fits all here--everyone--from the president of Kennecott to me--has to have the same cubicle, the same chair, the same waste basket) and taped the ends to the ear pieces of my glasses to shade my eyes.

This is the "Beam Me Up, Scotty" telephone booth. Also known as Superman's telephone booth. If you want to have a private telephone conversation, you go into one of these.

See the three lights on the cylinder (in which are two or three small rooms, one of them being a "Beam Me Up, Scotty" telephone closet). There are lots of these lights around the floor. You'd think that the lights would be shining on art work. But you'd be wrong.

Here "I am a work of art". More of the lights with no art. I'm wearing the official red lanyard and ID badge. My neighbor, Penny Stratton, gave me a Disney "Queen of Hearts" (from Alice in Wonderland) pin. I wear it because I AM the queen--and I am in "Wonderland".

This is the lunch room. Are black and white appetizing colors? I don't eat in the lunch room. I take my lunch and a book to the "Beam me up, Scotty" telephone booth and close the door.

This is a glass wall between the cubicles and the restrooms. Someone ran into it. There is a lot of glass in the building that people might run into. So they say they're going to frost it. But until then this wall of glass has orange cones and Post-it Notes so people won't run into it.

This is more glass in the lobby--and more orange cones--and more Post-it Notes. The "tractor-seat" chairs are for visitors to sit in when they arrive--while they watch a safety-in-the-building video.

Here's a close-up of the tractor-seat. It doesn't look very comfortable.

These are great-looking chairs--but I don't think you can tell how low to the ground they are. The reception desk is at the top of the photo. And behind the brick wall is the glass staircase I'll show you later.

These are the waiting-room chairs on my floor (the second floor). Again, I don't think you can tell how low they are.

This is the glass staircase in back of the brick wall in the lobby. You can't see it but there's wire in the glass. When I first heard there was a glass staircase "in the lobby" (which it isn't exactly as I later found out), I imagined a beautiful, curved staircase instead of this "industrial" model. I e-mailed the Powers That Be and asked (1) if they'd considered that a woman wearing a dress couldn't use the staircase; (2) if they'd considered that someone with even a bit of acrophobia wouldn't want to use the staircase; (3) if they were going to wash it every day; and (4) if I would be cut if I fell on the staircase. Before I saw the staircase, I e-mailed again and suggested that they just put a sign in front that said, "Work of art - not a staircase--elevator to the left, actual staircase to the right". Someone else pointed out that if there were a fire and that staircase were used as an exit, someone with acrophobia might freeze on the way day and block the staircase to others. I think they're going to paint the underside of the glass black--after all they paid for a glass staircase--but I don't know whether they're going to do anything about the missing vertical pieces.

This is looking up at the staircase from the first floor.

This is taken from the fourth floor looking down through the landing.

This is the lobby floor--natural stone--and uneven. If you look carefully at the areas around the blue tape, you can see that it is uneven and a tripping hazard. They're going to have to plane the floor. Rio Tinto is very safety minded--I'm surprised this floor got past them.

I've mentioned that "evevators" is probably not the word they want, but I'm sure they have so many things to fix this is not at the top of their list.

This is a photo of the Regional Center--that's it's official name. On about 116th South and 4700 West.

This is a view looking to the south from the fourth floor.

This is looking east from the fourth floor. You can see the Oquirrh Temple at the top of the photo, just a little left of center.

September 11, 2008

See . . . I do work . . .



Here I am in my office in Magna. Great view. Can you see Antelope Island to the right of the center bar in the window? Dr. Keming Zhou, one of the managers for whom I am secretary, who took this photo, said that a messy desk is a sign of intelligence. I must be very intelligent. I'll be here until September 25. On September 29 I report to Daybreak at 114th South and 47th West. To a cubicle without dividing walls, facing the back of someone's head, or, if I turn to the right, the parking garage. They weren't going to give us waste baskets--they wanted us to take our trash to the recycling bins--but the hysterical laughter of employees forced them to rescind that edict. The new office is 10 miles further from home--one way.

September 9, 2008

Judge not unrighteously, that ye be not judged



I've rethought my August 31 judgment of this sunflower. I thought it was mostly show with little substance. But I erred. I was impatient. I assumed that, like the parent/grandparent sunflower, this sunflower would have only one flower. This sunflower has at least 11 flowers. Its beauty is equal to if not surpassing the one large sunflower. I compare the large sunflower to someone like Dr. Jonas Salk, the inventor of the polio vaccine. What Dr. Salk did was wonderful, but we only need one Dr. Salk. Most of us are like this sunflower--just as one of our acts cannot compare to Dr. Salk's polio vaccine, our accumulated daily deeds of kindness and selflessness can equal the result of Dr. Salk's important work and are just as important to those with whom we associate.

The Lord loves variety--in the animal kingdom, in the plant kingdom, in geography, in weather, and in people. He has blessed each of us with gifts to bless the lives of others--gifts that no one else has and no one else can bestow.

Hugh Nibley, in is book "Temple and Cosmos" (page 292), wrote: "The individuality of each star contributes to the whole of the night sky. Each has its particular part to play, and because of its uniqueness, makes a contribution of maximum value--which it couldn't do if it were just like every other star. Be a star! Don't be like anybody else. Be different. Then you can make a contribution. Otherwise, you just echo something; you're just a reflection."

So don't be jealous of others. Don't undervalue yourself. Rejoice in who you are--whether you are the large one-flower sunflower or the sunflower with a dozen smaller flowers.

September 8, 2008

President David O. McKay's son dies

President David O. McKay's penultimate ("second to the last"--one of my favorite words) surviving child, Edward Riggs McKay, passed away on September 5 at the age of 93. President McKay was the prophet of my youth. He died in 1970 at the age of 96, after serving as president of the Church for 19 years. When he died, there were almost 3 million members of the Church, and half of them had never known any other prophet.

September 6, 2008

A vote for the hyphen (-)

I had a hard time reading a headline in the Tribune this morning: "New Utah Law Enforcement Memorial". I read "New Utah Law" and wondered what the new Utah law was, and then I read "Enforcement Memorial" and couldn't quite make sense of that. Then I realized it should have read "New Utah Law-Enforcement Memorial".

Rio Tinto (parent company of Kennecott) has recently issued new "writing-style" guidelines. Of several edicts with which I cannot comply (because I'm a punctuation purist) is one to limit use of the hyphen. As I explained to the instructor and participants of the workshop delineating the new guidelines, "If you ask for a 'red hot momma', you may get a sunburned woman with children who's having hot flashes and not the 'red-hot momma' you were expecting".

My favorite book on the subject of punctuation is "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" by Lynne Truss. From that book, I learned that I love the Oxford comma ("peaches, pears, and apples" instead of "peaches, pears and apples") and that Mr and Mrs don't require a period. (Abbreviations where the last letter of the word and the last letter of the abbreviation are the same do not require a period, regardless of what Microsoft's spell check might say.)

Another grammar-type book that I love is "Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog", a hilarious history of diagramming.

August 31, 2008

2008 August 31 - Sunflower



Above is a "volunteer" sunflower, growing next to my driveway. The parent/grandparent sunflower was a "Mammoth" sunflower--as tall as this sunflower (about nine feet tall), but with a huge (about 18 inches across) flower (see flower below). My thought as I looked at this sunflower is that it's a lot of show (its height) and very little substance (the small flower compared to the height of the plant). Perhaps like our lives sometimes. We put a lot into our outward presentation, when we would do better to put that energy into the "fruit" of our labors.



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August 17, 2008

Toots Has A Blog

Jo Ellen has just set up a blog and will begin sharing her thoughts with us shortly.