9 to 5

I know that I'm not the only one out there, but I really am not a fan of the 9-5 work schedule. If I had my way there would be no such thing in the world of offices. The concept of everyone working basically the same hours doesn't work for anyone. That means if you need a doctors appointment, or need to have some work done at your house that you need to be around for you options consist of either taking time off of work to accomplish your tasks or trying to cramp it all into the weekends when few medical offices are open and the stores are crammed with people. The 9-5 slog also makes for worse traffic for everyone. Especially in a city with little transit, having 80% of the population on the roads at the same time makes little sense.

When you add into the mix families with children, you have an even bigger challenge of either having kids home alone while the parent's are still at work (since no K-12 school is in session beyond 5pm), having to pay for child care, or forced to only work part time at most in order to make sure that an adult is available for when the kids are out of school. There is no winning solution, other than perhaps changing the normal business hours. For me, my preferred schedule would to work only four days a week, but work 10 hour days - two on, one off, two on, two off, etc. I'm not one who likes routine, I hate being interrupted from my work flow for a meaningless mandatory 15 minute break, and I find I get the most done when there are not necessarily other people around. That schedule won't work too well in the future with kids, but if I shaved it down to 30-35 hours still only four days a week that would work.

Everyone on the roads at the same time means that everyone takes longer to get to their final destination, everyone wastes more fuel getting there, and everyone is crankier - which in turn makes you question why bother going through the routine at all. Some days there is nothing you can do to keep up, no matter what sort of job it is, while others you feel like you are just wasting your time (or the company's money) just waiting for the clock to say you can go. Sales, customer services, sanitation, health care, construction, gardening, you name it and the routine will not always serve you well. Mostly it just serves the almighty dollar.

I  remember hearing once the difference between East Coast and West Coast US work mentalities. East Coast: live to work. West Coast: work to live. I'd like to think that the West Coast mentality at least gives the option of escaping to a life where you don't need to work the standard schedule. These days of supposed economic leaness makes it even harder to escape. Employees who are underemployed can't look for something else because they are told that they should feel lucky that they even have a job. Employers are told they had better not hire more people or else they risk their profits. It's a no win cycle keeping both halves under-performing. What motivation is there to work hard and advance if companies are too timid to take risks with their profit margins, and what motivation is there to hire new talent if that talent is unwilling to risk moving up? Sometimes if feels as if the career path is more of a corn maze than a road map: you think you know where you are going until you get stuck in a dead end or in an endless loop. There is little help to get out of the maze if you don't know the right people, make the right connections. That's partly why the mentality in this country towards the poor is so horrid. We expect everyone to be  able to work hard and advance and if you fail at that its because you didn't try hard enough. Only we forget about how much networking is involved, how you need to know someone inside to even get an interview these days, and how the last hired is most often the first fired. There are many factors working against us and it takes more than your own bootstraps to keep afloat these days.

I suppose if we all just lived to work it wouldn't matter that we were caught in a maze of corporate bureaucracy. Maybe if we all were working at jobs that made us not mind the junk that comes with it - office politics, gossips, deadlines and surprise projects, we might then find that bridge in the middle that gives a vantage point, a place to regain your sense of direction.  All jobs are just another four letter word... the goal is to find something that elevates the experience above the mundane. I can't say that I've found that yet, but I'm relatively young still. I've got time to ride out this supposed recession. Lets just hope that is doesn't stunt my growth.

Let the Fall Duldrums Commence!

Let it be known - I hate fall. Really, honestly, in my eyes it is the season of death and decay. Living in the Pacific Northwest, I go from days of 14+ hours of sunshine to less than 8 in the dead of winter. I get to work before the sun is completely up and leave work well after it has set - and I only work the standard 8:30-5 schedule! At least with winter you have the holiday festivities of Christmas, Hannukah, New Year's, Valentines to living things up. Plus, the week before Christmas the days begin getting longer again.

My husband, on the other hand, loves fall. He loves the colors, the baseball, the crisp air. The darkness doesn't bother him. It never used to bother me either, until I moved south to where your day light hours don't vary throughout the year. Now that I've moved back it is all that I can seem to notice.

Autumn at Green Lake 2010

Yes, its the season of lots of delicious food (pies, roasts, apple cider and hot cocoa), but those inside tasties are just a distraction for the dreary gray world that is taking shape outside. It rains a lot, the storms seemingly getting worse and worse each year - or maybe I'm just getting more affected by it. We've spent many weekends trying to make me not loathe fall. Trips to the local pumpkin farms, trips the the arboretum to see the colors, trips to the store to get all bundled up and cozy. While mildly diverting, the distraction never lasts. I'm once again stuff with the heat slowly being sucked out of me day by day just as the sun is getting sucked out the the sky.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I am always cold, even in summer I keep a jacket handy and gloves nearby. Or maybe its the mold the sprouts on everything up here during our three damp monthes that wrecks havoc with my nose. Or maybe its all in my head - the diminishing sunlight bringing on the supposed Seasonal Affective Disorder that is much mocked up here. (Of course you're sad without the sun, suck it up like the rest of us!) I'd like to think that it's none of these more obvoius reasons, but just that out of the four seasons to choose from, I like this one the least. There's nothing wrong with not liking it, it's just that this happens to by the hubby's favorite season. This clash is where the problem lies. It's one of those things that doesn't bother you when you are just dating, but now that we're stuck with each other we must find a way to adapt. I try to be more chipper about the ever dying daylight. He tries to contain his enthusiasm to a managable level.

This year I'm trying to be more upbeat about it, but lets face it - Seattle is known for its horrible, soggy, cold fall and winter. This is the reason that people like to mock us for our rain and suicide rates. This is the season that drives people away from here. Having been born and raised here, I should be able to take it. I just miss those 70-80 degree autumns on particularly soggy days. At least there is always an excuse to get a new coat! Now if only I could find som golashes...

La Bandera de la Muerta

While in Spain I learned the stories of several Bandoleros, or Bandits, who are present in the 19th and early 20th centuries in primarily Andalucia. While they were usually men driven to crime be sheer poverty, they were also noblemen fleeing the law due to crimes of passion, such as the famous José Ulloa "El Tragabuches", who was a bull fighter, but after killing his wife and her lover turned to a life of crime as he saw no other option. There was the Jose Maria Hinojosa "El Tempranillo"(the Early Bird, so named because he began his life of crime at age 13), the most famous bandit, was known for daring daylight holdups which eventually led the King to grant him a royal pardon in exchange for him agreement to work for the state as the chief catcher of other bandoleros. The bandoleros were highwaymen, smugglers, robbers and contraband runners, so prevelant that the Civil Guard was formed to round them up.

Interest in the bandoleros became romantacized as time went on, with numerous books, movies, operas, even cartoons and comic books chronicling the life of these real life bandits. It became such a crazy that when english tourists would come to Andalucia to see the other sights (Sevilla, Cordoba, Granada), they would pay to get themselves "held up" by a bandolero and his gang. To me this sounds akin to going to Mexico right now and paying to get caught up in the drug cartel. There is even a hotel in Malaga Province that names its name after the Bandits, Hotel Bandolero, and they even have silvery statues of a bandolero and a maiden in their establishment.

Oddly enough, none of the men in our group had interest in seeing the bandolero museum, so the females went in and had a grand old time. It did get me thinking though: if we were in England and there was a Robin Hood Museum, the men would have gone. In the states if there was an Al Capone or Bonnie and Clyde museum they probably would have visited. Why do the spanish versions seem so much less manly? Could it be that they have be romanticised to the point of no longer being viewed as masculine?


Now, I have a pencant for visiting cheesy museums, and this one was actually very well done considering that there was not that much in the way of artifacts that could be put in such a museum. You had your usual wax figures portraying a scene, dioramas of the civil guard raiding a bandit hide out, reproduction weapons on display, and literally hundreds of books and graphic novels telling the tales. There was even a romanticized female bandit novel on display, La Bandera de la Muerta - the female bandit of death. The soundtrack was what you would expect, the haunting spanish guitar playing bits of Bizet's Carmen.


While I don't necessarily condone robbery and banditry, I do find it fascinating how with a little detachment from the situation something as brutish as being a bandit turns into a sex symbol, a persona to make the women swoon and the men want to either join them or hunt them down. I gues the girl always likes the idea of the bad boy, even if the reality is nothing that she would actually want.