19 Ounce Pint

On a personal note - yesterday pretty much sucked. I am starting to have some conflicts between work and home, which resulted last night around 6:30 with me needing to be in 2 places at one time. Unfortunately, at the time that I am writing this, I am unable to do that thing that Hermione does in Harry Potter.

Whenever I get frustrated like this, there is a story I like to remember. Once upon a time, I worked for a chain of drinking establishments (which shall remain nameless). The company's Chief Operating Officer (COO) wanted to add some corporate level staff, but the CEO told him he could only add staff if he cut his beverage costs by 5%. In regards to suppliers and pricing, things were pretty much at a standstill, so it appeared there was not much to be done. Over the next few months, we noticed a trend which culminated in beverage costs reducing approximately 5% from where they started. At this time, the COO asked for his additional staff requests to be approved.

The COO finally explained how he lowered beverage costs 5%. He found a glass which held 19 ounces, but looked identical to a traditional 20 ounce imperial U.K. pint glass. Gradually over the course of these few months, he phased in these new glasses to all of our locations.

I will leave it to you to discuss the ethics of how this was handled, but the story always reminds me that for every problem, somewhere out there is an answer.

Refresher Strategy

As I have mentioned before, I usually attend a Refresher once per year - usually at the same time of year. This year, I will be attending at the end of June - roughly 2 months away.

I usually come back from a Refresher extremely fluent, as a result of monitoring and executing targets very well. As the year goes on, my fluency tends to decline a bit, as I do not execute my targets as well, nor do I monitor them as often as I should. However, I feel that at the end of every 1 year cycle, my overall fluency is much improved over the year before.

I am fortunate to not only be able to afford the costs of attending the Refresher every year, but to also have a very supportive spouse (Novelchick), who encourages me to do so. My plan has been to keep attending Refreshers every year until A) I am completely fluent through flawless execution and perfect monitoring of targets or B) Ross Barrett retires. I don't know which one will come first.

With that being said, I am trying to close out my "fluency year" on a strong note as I come down this last 2 month stretch. I am in the middle of a very busy time of year at work, so I get the opportunity to transfer with many different people on a daily basis. However, I need to do better job in incorporating some formal practice into my daily routine. That is my objective for the next 2 months.

3 Gifts

Like most people, I get caught up in the rush of day-to-day life, and forget how wonderful my life is and how incredibly fortunate I am. However, last Friday, I was quickly jolted back into reality.

That morning, I got a call from my "work wife" (who I worked with at a previous job). If you don't know what a work wife is, it is the phrase for that opposite sex co-worker you become good friends with. If you are really smart and wise (like me!), you allow your work wife to become friends with your real wife. For various reasons, I had lost touch with my work wife over the last few months, so I was a little surprised to hear from her. Though more surprised when she told me why she called.

She told me the week before, her husband had a massive heart attack at work and passed away that same afternoon. He was a fairly young man (mid 50's) and not in bad health.

Aside from the obvious feelings of sympathy for my friend and her loss, I was also shaken by another thought. My friend and her husband were married around the same time Novelchick and I were 6 years ago. I wonder if we knew beforehand, exactly how much time we have and when we would die, if we would live our life any differently. I know that if I had of known before our wedding that I would only have 6 years with Novelchick, I think I would have been a lot less inclined to engage in some of the truly stupid fights we have had over the years.

That being said, below is a list of the 3 gifts I thank God for every day of my life:

* Novelchick
* My 2-year old daughter
* My PFSP speech therapy

Quarterly Forecast time

I have not had a chance to post the past few days, in part because I have been tied up with a project at work. The project involved changing how my company performs it budgeting and forecasting process. Later this afternoon, I will be sending my newly-designed Excel budgeting template to our user group for them to complete.

Approximately 15 seconds after I hit the send button, I expect my phone to start ringing off of the hook. It will probably keep ringing until the deadline for the users to return the templates, at which time, it will be my turn to start calling people and inquire as to why they have not returned their submission. Thanks to our caller ID, I will mainly be leaving voicemail messages.

This is always a really good transfer opportunity for me. In addition, I really enjoy the truly idiotic questions I get from people. Last year, this guy (and not some newbie staff level person, but a VP-level employee) kept calling me and telling me he needed to see the "right numbers." My explanation to him that these were the same numbers we had filed with the SEC and had been audited by a Big 3 accounting firm, was not sufficient as he eventually went to the CFO demanding to be given the "right numbers" on which to base his budget. The CFO eventually told him to quit being a dumbass and give me a budget.

Goodbye Chef!

I could not let the untimely passing of our beloved Chef pass this past week without a mention. Goodbye Chef, may you rest in peace. Damn you, Super Adventure Club!

What does Chef's unfortunate demise have to do with stuttering. In the last scene of South Park, we see Chef resurrected as Darth Chef,


in an homage to the resurrection of Darth Vader, who of course, was voiced by the coolest stutterer of all time - Mr. James Earl Jones (who I hope is not a dumbass scientologist):

7 days and counting until opening day...

Last week I came home and found a wonderful package from DHL waiting for me. The package contained my Atlanta Braves tickets and parking passes for the year. As much as I love baseball and the Atlanta Braves, the best part is that I get to take my daughter to games with me.

Two years ago when my daughter was born, my lovely wife told me I could go to as many Braves games as I wanted to that year, if I took the little one with me. For almost every Friday home game that year, I packed up the little one (along with all of her various nesessary items), dressed her in Braves gear and headed off to Turner Field. Last year, she loved to watch all of the people, clap enthusiastically at every play and eat the baked beans at Pete and Skips Barbeque. Though I doubt she will ever enjoy the experience as much I have the last 2 years.

These have also been tremendous transfer opportunities for me, as well. Something about having her with me, attracts people to start conversations with me. Last year we went to a game that I did not have tickets for. While I was standing in line, this nice rural couple comes up to us and asked if we would like the 2 extra tickets they had available. I accepted and then realized the tickets were 9 rows behind home plate. I spent the game fielding questions from the couple about my daughter (yes, I was weary of a possible scam). Another game I had a pack of little girls sit themselves in the empty seats in front of us and alternate questions about my daughter with details of their lives (including a 3-inning explanation on how their father lost his job and they had to move in with their grandmother, but then their father got another job and they are celebrating by going to a Braves game that night and horseback riding tomorrow).

I have always had extra trouble being fluent in situations with a great deal of background noise - resturants, sporting events, Iron Maiden concerts, etc. However, situations like going to Braves games with my daughter have really pushed me to put extra effort into monitoring my targets.

I need a dog?

Earlier in the week, I received a chain of emails from a stuttering message board in response to a woman who had posted on the board an issue she had about her young son who stuttered. This is one of the responses she received:

Perhaps a dog would help. Stuttering comes from fear and anxiety and some of this is from the response stutters get as listeners get impatient. This causes a snowball effect. The best listener... One that never rushes you... Is a dog.

It never ceases to amaze me the depths of stupidity that some people are able to reach. Whenever we treat stuttering as anything less than a physiological disorder, we are making what is a difficult situation to begin with, that much more challenging. I understand that this happens because people want the easy answer. They want to explain that the stutterers disfluency is a direct result of some psychological shortcoming. That is the easy answer because it provides the easy solution - get a dog, stop being anxious, stop being fearful, etc. If you still stutter, it is your fault because you are not following these easy solutions.

This really hits home with me, as I grew up being told by a family member that my stuttering was a result of 1) something wrong that I did, 2) my punishment for a lack of respect I showed a family member, 3) a result of my self-centered nature, or 4) a combination of the above.

However, if you are smart enough to be reading my blog (and have made it to the 5th paragraph of this posting), then you are smart enough to realize what the truth is. Stuttering is a physiological disorder - all credible, unbiased research tells us that. However, it is a physiological disorder with no known cure. No magic pill to take, no needle injection, no device to plug into body parts, no ancient home remedies and no positive buzzwords we keep repeating to ourselves in order to keep us in denial have proven to be the cure.

Our best bet appears to be therapy with a qualified therapist. That is not the sexy, easy answer that people want to hear. The bottom line is, speech therapy is expensive, time consuming and very hard work. It is much easier to tell people to go get a dog.

I am getting down off of my soapbox now. Have a great Sunday!

New Laws for People who Stutter

Every fall, Minnesota State University, Mankato hosts the International Stuttering Awareness Day Online Conference. During last fall's conference, Dale Williams, a Professor and Fluency Clinic Director at Florida Atlantic University presented his New Laws for People who Stutter.

Read and enjoy!

Bob Love

In May, Novelchick, the little one and myself are going to Seattle for a vacation. Novelchick loves it there and I have never been, so when AirTran announced their new service there, I jumped at the opportunity to use my AirTran credits for some free flights.

The flagship Nordstrom's is in Seattle. This reminds me of the story about Bob Love. Bob Love was a basketball player for the Chicago Bulls in the 70's, who also happened to be a severe stutterer. He played his college ball for Southern University where he was a friend of my academic advisor (the wonderful Dr. Harold Joseph) at Clayton State University where I received my undergraduate degree in Accounting. This is where I first heard Bob Love's story.

Bob Love played with the Chicago Bulls in the 70's. He led the team in scoring 7 times, something of an accomplishment considering his teammates included Jerry Sloan, Norm Van Lier and Chet "the Jet" Walker. After a bad back forced him out of the NBA - an injury serious enough that doctors told him he might never walk again - his wife left him, saying as she walked out the door, that she "did not want to be married to a cripple and a stutterer." Though he recovered physically, he found few attractive job opportunities. He eventually landed a job as a busboy at Nordstrom's in Seattle. You can imagine what an embarrassing time in his life this was - from former NBA All-Star to a middle-age busboy. However he performed his busboy duties to the best of his abilities which attracted the attention of a Nordstrom executive, who offered to pay for Love to undergo speech therapy.

As time went on, Love was able to attain a great deal of fluency. Love became fluent enough that in the early 90's, the Chicago Bulls called and offered him the position of Director of Community Relations. In the years since then, he has become a very highly paid promotional speaker. The Bulls retired his jersey in 1994 (he is the second leading scored in their history - behind some Jordan guy) and Love got remarried in 1995 (during halftime of a Bulls - Spurs game).

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Every St. Patrick's Day, I am reminded of my favorite professional job. During the late 90's I was the Cash Manager for the Fado Irish Pub chain. In addition to working with a great group of people that made the job very fun, professionally, I was able to leave a very strong mark on the direction of the Company.

When I first came onboard, the Company had faced some challenging times in regards to having sufficient working capital to not only sustain operations of the current locations, but to expand, as had been the Company's original goal. I was able to identify and correct some inefficiencies in how the Company handled cash, in addition to developing a MS Excel-based model which very accurately forecasted our cash position. As a reward for solving this issue, I got plenty of free Harp to drink, many pats on the back, but the same mediocre salary, thus a time came when I decided to move on to higher paid/less rewarding and fun postions with other companies.

The other thing I recall when I think about that time in my life was how far my speech has come since then. Like most stutterers, I had serious issues with the telephone pre-therapy, but after going through therapy at the PFSP at the EVMS in Norfolk, VA, I became fairly comfortable making and receiving most phone calls. However, when I worked at Fado, I had a tremendous aversion to 2 things - calling pub managers and answering the main phone line for the corporate office (as everyone had to do in the small office setting). I don't know what it was about each situation, but I would do everything I could to avoid each one.

However, 6 years later, that seems so very strange to me that I would be in a postion that I would avoid such routine tasks. Hopefully, I can attribute this to the continued efforts that I have put into my speech therapy.