October 24, 2001
Dear Everyone:
Well, most of the training is over with, and I’m not on my way to “Grapevine”… yet. Last week, the Fearless Leader of the Move-Add-Change (MAC) Project was making noises about him and me driving to “Grapevine” “sometime next week” to help a Move Coordinator get a bunch of Move Packets created in this new system that I’m administrating. Since Monday and Tuesday were devoted to training in Company Park, that would have meant driving to “Grapevine” today.
Luckily, I was able to schedule some time this morning with the Customer Support person from the vendor (the one who did the actual training here and in “Hobby”). This gave Fearless Leader an excuse to join in on our meeting. He’s real big on joining in on meetings. Also conference calls. I suspect it gives him the illusion that he’s actually doing something.
There’s still a lot of “hurry up and wait” involved in this project. I don’t think Fearless Leader is much into waiting. All the road blocks that come up any time you’re starting up an enterprise this big (52,000 people, for gosh sake) are creating frustrations. In fact, the big frustrations are beginning to eat the littler frustrations. Also, calls from other frustrated folks who are in too much of a hurry to “run” before they know how to “walk”. They, in turn, are getting calls from people wanting to know, “Are we there yet?”
Take a break, people.
So, if I do end up going to “Grapevine”, it will probably be some time next week. Hey, what could be scarier than spending Halloween in “Grapevine”?
Speaking of scary, “Jeannie” and I did finally get out to a movie, the first in over a month. From Hell stars Johnny Depp as a Sherlock Holmes-like detective trying to catch the elusive Jack the Ripper. Based on a “graphic novel”, it covers much the same ground as Murder by Decree. Everything is a cover-up designed to make it look like a serial killer is “just” bumping off prostitutes instead of witnesses.
Directed by a pair of twins known as “the Hughes Brothers”, it does a remarkable job of making you glad you didn’t live in the Victorian Era, particularly if you were less than well off. You can almost smell Whitechapel. Graphic violence, yes, but less than you would expect to see in a typical teenage slasher movie.
Depp, who’s looking down the barrel of the Big Four-Oh, gives as good a performance as he’s ever done. As does Heather Graham as Mary Kelly, one of Jack’s victims. There’s also some social commentary as Victorian England is shown in all its caste-system glory. (“No Englishman could possibly have done this. It must have been a foreigner.” “How unfortunate that the middle classes receive education and get ideas above their station.”)
This movie isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea. But for Halloween, it’s a darn sight better than last year’s House on Haunted Hill. “To each his own,” said the lady as she kissed the cow. But then, cows are trendy.
Love, as always,
Pete
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