What phrases drive you crazy at work?

I'm working on a project (more on that later) and I need to compile a list of all the terms you hate to hear in the workplace.

You know, things like:

1. Man hours
This is my all-time most-hated phrase ever! Sometimes I pipe up in a meeting and say, "Is everybody working on this project a man?"

People love that.

Why can't we just say "staff hours" and make everyone happy?

By everyone, I mean me.

2. Bodies
As in, "We need more bodies on this project." This term gives no respect to the people who will be working on the project. I mean, if all you need is bodies I'm sure there are plenty of unclaimed ones at the morgue.

What we need are engineers, we need soldiers, we need help, we need more resources.

We don't really need more bodies.

3. Please tell me what you would put here.
What are the phrases you hate to hear in the workplace? And what do you wish people would say instead?

You're also welcome to disagree with me about my pet peeve words. Leave a comment.

A billion channels and nothing's on

Sometimes I feel like the internet has a billion channels and nothing's on. But not lately. Lately I've been getting so much goodness from the internet.

So first I'd like to say thank you to the bloggers out there. You are the ones producing the interesting content out there.

Here are some of my favorites lately:

1. The Well Grounded Life

Lisa's mission is to "help busy moms take great care of themselves."

I know, she had you at hello, didn't she?

Here's the best part - Lisa is doing a free online seminar for busy moms. I've signed up and it would be so cool if some of you were there too. There are conference calls and stuff so we would actually get to talk to each other! I think! Let's all sign up and find out!

2. Sweet Lily Tutus

Cherimarie moved me to tears with this post. Why? Because we all have days like this when we realize how hard this parenting thing is. And how hard life can be sometimes. But few of us have the courage to write about it honestly the way Cherimarie did. I think we should do it more so we can encourage each other through the rough times.

BTW she wraps up the post with a note of gratitude. This is very typical of her.

3. Consulting Adult

This post cracked me up. Nancy is a former HR person and she makes the point that HR people aren't funny. Yet this post made me laugh so hard I cried.

Open Letter to my Wii Fit

Dear Wii Fit,

I think we should take a break. Lately I've been feeling smothered by you.

When I bought you and installed you in my living room I didn't think I was making a commitment to visit with you every day. In fact I'm sure that was never part of the setup or configuration. I did share some intimate details with you like my weight, my age and my fitness goals but we never agreed on how often I would visit you.

But somehow you had that expectation well-programmed onto your hard disk. You expected so much more than I could give and I couldn't find a user setting where I could re-set your expectation.

And now it's like every time I go to see you you say, "Oh! It's been a long time since I've seen you!"

A week is not a long time! You see me more than my own mom.

Let's not be bitter as we part ways. Let's focus on the good times we had together. Remember the time you told me my Wii fit age was 28? That was so sweet. Or the time you remembered my birthday.

Okay that was about it as far as happy memories with you.

Anyway, just remember - it's not me, it's you.

I'm keeping the cat.

- melanie

I am probably not Stage Mom Material

I don't like to blog about how great my kids are. I think they're great but I don't expect you guys to understand so I don't waste space on the internet trying.

But today I just have to. Because Audrey played the lead in a play called "鸡婆花" last week. I knew she was going to be in a play, I mean I'd been dragging her across town for rehearsals for a couple of weeks and all. And Buddy had told me she had a significant role.

But I didn't realize how big her role was, or how professional the play was, or how many people would be in the audience.

Until I was sitting in the audience watching my baby perform in front of 900 people, a packed theater. Singing and dancing and saying lots of words. In Chinese. And looking so incredibly cute. I snapped this picture with my iPhone so it doesn't give you the full effect, but if you squint your eyes you get the picture.

Please note my baby is standing on the stage all by herself! She was up there by herself talking to the audience. Of 900 people! Did I say that? It was 900 people.



I wanted to stand up and tell everyone in the theater that five years ago she couldn't say a word in Chinese. And here she was, performing in Chinese! And on top of remembering all her lines she remembered all her songs and dance moves too.

She had a mom in the play and it hurt me to hear her call, "Mommy!" and another woman comes dancing across the stage to hug her. I saw her Other Mom backstage and I shot her all kinds of nasty looks. But I don't think she noticed. Anyway I'm the one she spends Sundays and holidays with.

I am probably not Stage Mom Material.

I asked Audrey if she gets stage fright at all and she said she's usually a little bit nervous for the first few seconds on stage but then she's fine. This composure is going to serve her well no matter what she does in life, I think.

This is Audrey and me backstage after the play.



Alright, I will stop now. Thank you for tolerating this brief rant.

Happy Birthday White Chocolate!

I missed my friend Aaron's birthday last week. So I'm going to make up for it by wishing him a happy birthday on my blog.

Because don't you think there's an inverse correlation between the timeliness of birthday greetings and the public nature of the greetings?

Thank you, this is why I love you guys, because of your unwavering support.

When I look back on my long and illustrious career, the Years I Worked With Aaron stand out in two ways. They were the FUN years. And they were the low-stress years because I knew someone had my back.

First, let's start with fun. Once our co-worker Cindy took a group order for these frozen Chinese pork buns. When they arrived she sent an email to our team alias saying, "Your buns are in the freezer."

Aaron replied with, "I thought I felt cold."

And he used to call me a lot. That's normal, right? Except that he worked in the office next door to me. Yes, he would call me from 5 feet away. I could hear his voice through the wall. This from a man who runs marathons.

Aaron had my back. I was never late for meetings when Aaron was around because he would always always always come get me. When I was on vacation I knew Aaron would cover for me. There were so many times when he saved me, and when I thanked him he would just wink and say, "Hey, I got your back."

Do you have any idea how good it feels to know someone has your back? Studies show that it reduces your stress level by 65%.

Those would be my studies, thank you.

Does someone have your back at work? If not I encourage to go out and get someone's back. And let them know you're doing it. Let them know that from now on, you are looking out for them and will do your best to make sure no harm comes to them. They are naturally going to return the favor. And a virtuous cycle is born.

All thanks to Aaron.

Happy birthday White Chocolate!

How to Walk from Brazil to Vietnam in One Day

Saturday 10:00am - Grant and his cousin singing a little song before getting in the cab and heading to the Expo.

Six hours later, somewhere in the Pacific Islands -

The Expo is a distant cousin of the World's Fair - countries form around the world come together, erect immense structures called "pavilions" and promote how great they are.

I know, it is their loss that the Expo Committee rejected my application for their Chief Marketing Officer position.

The best thing about the Expo is that it shrinks the whole world down into one square mile. You can literally walk from Tunisia to Australia to Chile in one day. (See, now don't you think that sentence would have looked great in the brochures?)

The worst thing is the lines. The queues! Whatever you want to call them, they are ridiculous. You have to wait in line for at least 3 hours for any of the decent pavilions.

Alternatively, you can go to the pavilions that have a shorter queue, but there is a reason for those short queues. Because there is nothing interesting inside that pavilion.

Around 4:30pm we were walking past the Japan Pavilion. An Expo staff member told us the wait was 4.5 hours.

Four point five hours!

I said to Buddy, "If we get in line now, we'll get into the pavilion at ... 9:00 pm!"

Buddy said, "If we got in a plane now, we could get to Japan sooner than that!"

Which made us both laugh so hard we cried.

Seriously, we could have gotten to Japan sooner than we could have gotten into that pavilion. Who in their right mind would stand in the line?

Well, obviously about 4.5 hours worth of people.

My verdict on the Expo 2010 is that you should go if you're in the area but don't plan on going into the pavilions. Just walk around and take in the atmosphere and look at the pavilions from the outside.

And if you're taking young boys with you, bring along a couple of gurneys.

“I have a chicken eye on my foot”

Grant is wearing a band-aid on the bottom of his foot that has to be replaced twice a day. It's the weirdest-looking band-aid I've ever seen.

He said his tutor found something on his foot and thought it was probably a [something in Chinese that I don't understand].

Then Buddy took Grant to the doctor, who said it probably was [something I don't understand] and gave him the band-aids and said it would probably go away in a few days.

I asked Buddy for some details but he gave me the same story Grant had given me.

Normally I'm okay with not understanding all the Chinese words that my kids and husband throw into a conversation. But since this was a medical issue and I was so out of the loop, I did what any mom would do.

I broke down.

Today when I was changing Grant's band-aid for the fourth time because he keeps picking at it I said, “I don't understand why your tutor was looking at the bottom of your foot! And I don't understand what he thinks he's found. And I don't understand why the doctor couldn't confirm it, or why he would give you medication for something that doesn't have a confirmed diagnosis!”

Ever calm, Grant said, “Look, I'll tell you. I have a chicken eye on my foot.”

Oh thank you, that clears EVERYTHING up for me! My son has a chicken eye on his foot. Beautiful.

{Let's insert a pause here for me to regain my composure.}

{And to try to that image out of my head. I mean seriously, a chicken eye? That is so gross! Yet I wonder if Chinese people are grossed out when they hear our vocabulary like "shingles" and "Adam's apple" and kidney stone".}

After a few minutes of reverse engineering on google.com/translate, I figured out what Grant has on his foot is a corn and the band-aids are salicylic acid. And salicylic acid is a common, benign treatment and the corn probably will go away in a couple of days.

I still don't know why his tutor was looking at his foot though.

This guy broke my heart this morning

He had way too many boxes piled on his scooter and they had fallen off. He was sitting on the sidewalk next to his useless scooter and all the boxes with his head in his hands.

It almost made me cry just looking at him.

You guys know I have delusions of saving the world from the driver's seat of my Honda Odyssey so I decided to go check on him.

Learning from my recent misadventures in roadside assistance, I took a minute to prepare what I was going to say to him in Mandarin. I was quite proud of what I came up with.

I sat down next to him on the curb and said, "Hi there. I saw you from the road. You poor thing, you have so many boxes. Is someone coming to help you?"

"Yes," he said, pointing to his cell phone. And just at that moment his friend pulled up. "He's here now."

I realized that what I thought was a moment of total despair was actually just him, sitting on the sidewalk waiting for his friend to come and help him.

Someone had his back.

(And I can be a little dramatic sometimes. I admit that.)

Caution - Drive Safely

That's what this sign says.

I'm glad we were stopped at a redlight when Audrey and I spotted it because we both laughed until we cried.

Thank you, Tea Kettles

We're grateful to you, little tea kettles.

Grateful for all the piping hot tea that you supplied to us on frosty winter nights.

Grateful to you for warming our babies' baths night after night, and letting them splash with delight while all the day's soil and germs were gently washed away.

Grateful to you for the relaxing foot baths that we gave to our parents and grandparents, soothing them after a day of hard walking and working.

Grateful that you never needed repairs or new batteries or re-charging or polishing. Grateful that you were simple and reliable.

And now here you are with so many of your brothers and sisters and you're going on to your next life.

I'm not sure if the person who loaded you onto this truck was going for an artistic effect but I think you all look spectacular. So random and yet so uniform, so massive and yet so intricate.

Maybe in your next life you'll come back as a flagpole and you'll get to preside over something grand and important for decades to come.

Maybe you'll come back as a hubcap and you're going to see the whole country.

Maybe you'll be a Coke can and that might not be that interesting. Sorry if it does turn out that way.

But whatever it is, I wish you well. And thank you again for all you did for us.