{"id":4015,"date":"2017-11-09T22:27:18","date_gmt":"2017-11-10T05:27:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nachzen.net\/?p=4015"},"modified":"2017-11-10T07:58:36","modified_gmt":"2017-11-10T14:58:36","slug":"john-gray-is-a-cold-blooded-manipulatist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/?p=4015","title":{"rendered":"John Gray is a cold-blooded manipulatist"},"content":{"rendered":"

It all started this morning.<\/p>\n

Our insurance, or Berck’s employer… someone.\u00a0 Wants us to get bloodwork done, and in exchange they will deposit some amount of money into our health savings account.\u00a0 Free money.\u00a0 The e-mail I got said it’s $75.\u00a0 Berck insists it’s a grand.\u00a0 All I know is that I had to either A) go to the doctor B) print out a voucher and go to LabCorp.\u00a0 LabCorp opens at 7:30.\u00a0 I was there at 7:25 this morning and was out at 7:45, plenty of time to get to work.<\/p>\n

But the lining came unzipped from my jacket and wouldn’t zip back in.\u00a0 I have a Chinese leather jacket.\u00a0 It so stinking cool.\u00a0 But none of the zippers work.\u00a0 The zippers are probably made out lead.\u00a0 I’ve already replaced the zipper in the front.\u00a0 I’m thinking I’ll need to replace the one for the lining.\u00a0 I sat on the floor in front of LabCorp for five minutes trying to zip it back up.<\/p>\n

I blame my jacket for the reason I forgot my bag at LabCorp this morning.<\/p>\n

Then one our firm’s three attorneys brought me coffee this morning.\u00a0 I’d already made myself a double espresso, but I drank it anyway.\u00a0 I love free coffee.\u00a0 I shouldn’t have drunk it.<\/p>\n

Daylight saving ended this weekend.\u00a0 That means I’m not getting up in the dark and am not in need as quite as much caffeine.\u00a0 Too much caffeine makes me agitated.\u00a0 Maybe that’s what made me so mad.<\/p>\n

Our receptionist has a great attitude.\u00a0 I mean, utterly fantastic.\u00a0 She’s very enthusiastic.<\/p>\n

And she has zero memory.\u00a0 I mean, less than a goldfish.\u00a0 I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no point in telling her anything.\u00a0 She’ll just forget it.\u00a0 I timed it once.\u00a0 45 minutes.\u00a0 Nothing.\u00a0 Deer in the headlights look.<\/p>\n

So asking her to remember something from Monday is a real stretch.\u00a0 My colleague Jane had told her then that, if an attorney isn’t available, tell a client calling, “He’s away from his desk.\u00a0 Can I transfer you his paralegal or take a message?”<\/p>\n

Instead, today she told a client of mine that one of my attorneys was with a client.<\/p>\n

Now this attorney she’s referring to only comes down to the Colorado Springs office once a week.\u00a0 Mostly, he works out of his Denver office.\u00a0 All my clients know this.\u00a0 And he wasn’t here today.\u00a0 The receptionist knew this.\u00a0 And she had no way of knowing whether he was seeing a client at his Denver office or not.\u00a0 And, apparently, for the life of her, she couldn’t remember to say, “He’s not at his desk.”<\/p>\n

I was agitated.\u00a0 I was FURIOUS.<\/p>\n

I didn’t say anything.\u00a0 I’ll talk to my boss tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Also, by now I realized I’d left my bag at LabCorp.\u00a0 Fortunately, with nothing perishable in it.\u00a0 Now I’ve got to get up early tomorrow too to pick it up on the way to work.<\/p>\n

It snowed Tuesday.\u00a0 Not enough to amount to much, but it meant one of us had to drive the Land Cruiser.\u00a0 The Land Cruiser’s name is Frances.\u00a0 I drove Frances to work because I had less far to drive than Berck.\u00a0 I drove her again yesterday for the same reason.\u00a0 I like driving Frances.\u00a0 She doesn’t drive herself.\u00a0 She requires planning ahead, strategy, tactics.\u00a0 But she’s alright.\u00a0 Here’s a picture of her.\u00a0 Isn’t she beautiful?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Something very sad happened September 15.\u00a0 We had left our WRX at our favorite Mexican restaurant overnight, and someone careened off the highway and smashed into it, totalling it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

So we bought me a new car. And the car we bought is a Ford Focus RS. Here’s a picture:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now, if you haven’t heard of the RS, you might be thinking, oh, a Focus, nice sensible car, good gas mileage.<\/p>\n

No.<\/p>\n

The “RS” is an extremely important distinction.\u00a0 The RS stands for “really super”.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 This is a RIDICULOUSLY fast car. It is so much fun to drive.<\/p>\n

So I got in the car tonight after work.\u00a0 Daylight saving has ended.\u00a0 The caffeine has worn off.\u00a0 And while driving Frances is fun, driving the RS is so stinking cool.\u00a0 I was in a great mood.\u00a0 There was a new episode of one of my favorite podcasts by one of my favorite radio producers from before there were podcasts.<\/p>\n

If you have 40 minutes of driving or otherwise, I highly recommend you listen to this episode of Heavyweight by Jonathan Goldstein<\/a>.\u00a0 I drove home weeping while listening to it.\u00a0 Also, I had the ability to go faster than anyone else, which is fantastic.<\/p>\n

Berck had stopped by Colorado Liquor Outlet on his way home for Family Card Weekend.\u00a0 I knew because I had created a calendar item for him, with two separate notifications, and I IMed him so that he would remember to go.\u00a0 If you have a Family Card, which are free but have to be acquired BEFORE the monthly Family Card Weekend, and you go to Colorado Liquor Outlet (not on the weekend, as you might think the from name of event) on the second Thursday of the month, you can get the cheapest prices on wine and liquor in the Pikes Peak area.<\/p>\n

So driving home, weeping and formerly agitated, I thought, I sure could use a drink and a neck rub.\u00a0 And here’s where John Gray comes in.<\/p>\n

As you may know, John Gray wrote an extremely popular book called Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus<\/em>.\u00a0 (Berck would like to let you know that this is not the major league pitcher, nor the black preacher, nor the English philosopher).\u00a0 I’m not sure how valuable this book might be to men, but I highly recommend that any woman in male\/female relationship read it.\u00a0 Here is an excellent example<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My favorite passage from the book is about how to get a man to do things you want him to do.\u00a0 Spoiler alert… here’s not how to: nag.<\/p>\n

It’s under a heading called, “How to ask for support and get it.”\u00a0 There are several steps.<\/p>\n

The first thing to do is to remember that, when you ask your man to do something, you can’t give him all the reasons why he should do it.\u00a0 That just starts an argument.\u00a0 First, John Gray says, you have to start asking him to do the little things he was going to do anyway and thanking him for doing them. It makes him feel like a knight in shining armour, a conquering hero.<\/p>\n

At some point you can work up to getting him to do anything you ask.\u00a0 So says John Gray.<\/p>\n

So I started thanking my man for the little things he did, hoping to work my way up to asking him to do anything.<\/p>\n

I’ve been on step 1 for the past 14 years.<\/p>\n

I thanked Berck for going to the liquor store.<\/p>\n

I had to make my own drink.<\/p>\n

I think I’ll go ask for\u00a0 a neck rub.\u00a0 Goodnight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It all started this morning. Our insurance, or Berck’s employer… someone.\u00a0 Wants us to get bloodwork done, and in exchange they will deposit some amount of money into our health savings account.\u00a0 Free money.\u00a0 The e-mail I got said it’s $75.\u00a0 Berck insists it’s a grand.\u00a0 All I know is that I had to either…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nonclassified-nonsense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4015"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4028,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4015\/revisions\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nachzen.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}