I’ve been watching a lot of football lately.  Keegan’s team plays every Friday night and sometimes on Saturday morning as well.  Unfortunately his team lost for the first time this past Friday, to Vernon Hills.  On Saturday his team played Vernon Hills again, and lost again, but it was great to watch the game because Keegan got to play for awhile and he got in at least one good tackle.  (The position he plays is defensive tackle.)  Yesterday afternoon while Michele and Brinley went to get groceries, I watched quite a bit of college football while Tristan and Cohen built a fort and played with knight costumes.  Those who know me well would understand how unusual it is for me to be watching football!  But you know what? I’m kinda getting into it.  I was thrilled that Illinois beat Penn State, but disappointed that Michigan State didn’t beat Wisconsin.

In other news, a good friend of mine lost her job Friday due at least in part to blogging at work.  She was apparently accused of writing negative things about her job and her co-workers, neither of which is true.  It really makes me wonder about the whole blogging at work thing.  Personally I do not have a problem with this at all, viewing it as something akin to using the telephone sometimes for a personal call, or writing a personal email while at work.  Of course, there is always the possibility for abuse, but then, there always has been.  By that I mean, the introduction of Internet access, blogs, or any other computer-related technology provided to staff did not usher in a new era of possibility for abuse or performance issues.  Think of the telephone.  Persons can abuse their telephone privileges as much or more than their Internet privileges, and the telephone predates computers and Internet access by a long shot.  What I’m trying to say is that there isn’t really anything new here, first of all; and second of all, abuse of work equipment — whether it is the telephone, the copier, or the company’s Internet access — is a performance issue.  If staff members aren’t getting work done in a reasonable amount of time, then their manager needs to look at how they are spending their time, including time spent talking on the telephone for personal reasons, or time spent browsing on the Internet, or time spent posting to a blog or commenting on other blogs.  And it is important to state that how they are spending their time in these ways is only part of the overall picture the manager needs to understand in order to figure out why staff members are not productive.  Put another way (and setting aside potential for really negative things, things that other staff might deem offensive), if my staff are getting their work done in a timely fashion or even ahead of schedule, I have no problem with them spending some work time doing personal stuff.  Folks, this is just common sense management practice.

It really galls me that so many corporations think they can truly control every aspect of what their employees do during a work day, particularly when it comes to computer and Internet use.  It galls me because as I’ve already tried to point out, this is a local, individual management issue.  But it galls me even more because work environments will never succeed in shutting down or blocking personal activity.  And I think it is extremely COUNTER productive for them to even try to do so.  This is particularly the case in this time of instant messaging, personal cell phones, email, blogs, and more.  I fully understand and support monitoring of personal activity when it becomes a performance issue, and the potential need for reprimands or other strictures for the few cases where this privilege is abused.  But even then, there needs to be a step by step process whereby a warning is issued and the staff member is given an opportunity to improve, followed by progressively stronger measures culminating, finally, with termination.

I don’t know the whole detail of my friend’s situation but I do know that her employer made claims about what she was doing and writing that were simply false, and it seems as if her dismissal came without prior warning.  This is the sign of extremely poor management.

Michele just IM’d me to tell me another funny anecdote from this afternoon.  Cohen was sitting by her while Tristan and Brinley were busy arguing loudly about something.  She remarked to him, “They’re crabby!”  His reply:  “They are fighting.  I wish I was in God’s world!”

You just gotta laugh…

I certainly can’t complain about the summertime weather; it’s been wonderfully mild, at least where I live.  I associate favorite foods with different seasons of the year.  Summer brings to mind fresh cantaloupe, watermelon, real tomatoes that come from the garden, and sweet corn.  Last night Michele made sweet corn for supper along with some fresh sliced tomatoes and Spanish rice.  She had just bought the vegetables at a nearby farmstand.  There are lots of them dotted around the countryside around us.  The corn was delicious.

The past few days have been a little rough because I haven’t been feeling well.  I’m better now.  Thankfully, Michele’s health has been pretty good for a while and we just hope it lasts.

It is crunch time for Michele and me in terms of deciding whether to push ahead with homeschooling for the little ones, especially Tristan.  And there seem to be more than the usual number of details to settle for Keegan for entering his sophomore year.  I just about choked when I learned that his school fees total about $500.

After reading it through a second time, Keegan lent me the last Harry Potter book to read shortly before noon yesterday.  I finished it at midnight last night.  I wasn’t sure, to be honest, whether I really wanted to read it or not.  It wasn’t because I was afraid Harry might end up dead, but more because I always hate to see the end of any good book series.  I needn’t have worried, though, because overall it was a very good and fitting end to the whole series.  I don’t have to worry any more that someone will spill the beans about critical plot details because I’ve read it all, and I enjoyed it.  In the last few chapters there were a few minor plot details that caused me to scratch my head but they didn’t matter.  One of the marks of a great book or book series is that you want to read it (or them) all over again, and that is certainly true of the Harry Potter books.  I want to go back and re-read them all, and also watch the movies once more.

Tristan looks quite different: his hair has been bleached a little bit (especially his eyebrows) by all of the time spent out in the sun, and he now has a tan and freckles on his face. We think he looks a lot like his cousin, Bjorn, just now. Shortly after getting home, he started complaining of a stomach ache and later in the evening, he threw up. He then fell asleep on my lap and hasn’t stirred all night long. (Yay! Maybe this trip finally cured him of his nighttime wakefulness!)

I went to bed really early last night so I woke up early this a.m. It was supposed to be a nice, quiet, “alone time” but that was quickly dispensed with by Brinley waking up within minutes, crying for me. She’s wide awake next to me right now, playing with her stuffed animals and other toys rather than going right back to sleep. I predict a crabby day ahead for her.

[tags]harry potter and the order of the phoenix, ratatouille, pixar[/tags]