This week’s Writer’s Challenge from Mama Kat tickled my fancy with the topic:

2.)Describe the most destructive thing your pet has done.
(inspired via Twitter by @alisha41481 from A Day In The Life Of Okie Rednecks)

L and I have had three dogs so far in our married life: Sam, Beau, and Molly. All have been either adopted from animal shelters or given to us. And all have had their foibles and destructive moments.

Sam (short for Samantha) was the first, a pit bull mix we adopted as a very young pup from the city pound in Los Angeles. She was a tiny piteous creature who looked forlornly like she desperately needed us, so we adopted her. As she grew, she was not too destructive until she hit the doggie equivalent of teething. And then …

I came home from work one day to discover that her wooden dog house was gone – literally gone. All that was left was a couple of nails and a few splinters. She had gnawed it all to pieces, leaving nothing behind. We waited anxiously for Sam to get sick and die after consuming the dog house. We also bought a really tough plastic dog house that survived all further attempts at gnawing.

Not long after that, I came home to find all the rose bushes in the back yard were gone, thorns and all, right down to the root. Sam had gnawed/eaten them all. Not one of the finest moments in human-dog relations.

The piece de la resistance – the last act as the teething phase faded – was the attempt to install her own doggy door.  I came home to discover the a hole in the stucco beside the patio door. A certain dog had gnawed through the stucco, through the wire mesh, partway through the 2×4 framing the door, and then gotten distracted by the aluminum frame on the sliding glass door. The tooth marks were distinctive and pointed directly at the culprit – Sam.

That was fortunately the last time that the teething woes were to surface for Sam.

After the passing of Sam, we acquired our next miscreant – Beau (short for King Beauregard III). Beau was a Bassett Hound given to us when he was three. Beau was perhaps the dumbest but most devious dog we have ever owned. Beau was a closet chewer. You could be sitting at the table eating a family meal when a moment of silence would be filled with the distinctive sound of wood being munched. A quick look to the floor would show a Beau lying on the floor happily chewing on the legs of the chair. If you threw Beau off the couch, you could count on catching him calmly chewing on the fabric skirt later in the day. Slippers were never safe. Even shoe racks were an occasional target:

Fortunately, Beau turned into less of a chewer and more of a hoarder in his latter years:

After the passage of Beau, Molly came to live with us via the local Humane Society. Molly is a bit different in the mischief she gets into. Being a Border Collie mix, she is the most intelligent and most visual of all our dogs. She has an impish sense of humor and loves to play. If you have laundry sorted on the floor for washing, she will pick out a piece to come rub on your leg to see if you will play. Have anything that will roll with in her reach, she will get it and try to convince you to play, but if you won’t, she’ll throw and catch it all by herself. She always has the glint of fun and mischief in her eyes:

One like Molly shares with Beau – chewing on the kitchen table chairs. But unlike Beau, Molly is sneakier about it. You can be sitting there and in the sudden silent break you do not hear the distinctive chomping sounds of Beau. Instead you hear the wet sloppy mouthing and dainty nibbling of Molly, often times laying on her back so that the rungs to chew on require minimal work. And if you scold and ask her what she is doing, she just looks back at you as if to say, “I’m not the first to do this, so why the brouhaha?”

In any case, the end result is kitchen chairs with the distinctive doggie seal of approval:

I’ll leave you with that.

This week’s Writer’s Challenge from Mama Kat tickled my fancy with the topic:

3.) Tell a story about a moment in time when you were so happy you were you and not someone else in the room.
(inspired by Baby)

This tale harks back to a time more than a decade ago. One of my tasks as CTO of a certain company was to advise the CEO and Chairman of the Board, Mr. S, on the soundness of proposed technical acquisitions. Mr. S was a self made billionaire and had quite a few quirks and oddities. In addition, once he made up his mind, nothing on this earth was going to change it. (This is the same person I once accused of having “the brains of a kumquat” during a meeting.)

I had been tasked to look at a couple of possible acquisitions with related technologies in an emerging market. Company A was in Toronto and Company B was in St. Louis. So after visiting both companies and spending a few days going over their technologies, I came to the conclusion that the ideal would be to acquire both of them and combine their technologies. Company A had a more automated and user friendly approach to solving the problem; Company B had a much more complete solution but had almost no automation or end-user tools. Put the two together and one had a great solution that could capture what was then an exploding market. But knowing Mr. S and his strong belief in consulting rather than package solutions, the choice for him was going to be clear.

Sure enough, Mr. S decided that we would visit the St. Louis company and see if they were amenable to being acquired. (Given that the company was broke, there was little doubt in my mind that they wanted to see a cash infusion, the question was were they realistic as to amount and conditions.) We arrived at Company B and spent several hours in the general touchy-feely sizing up before getting down to work. A couple of offers and counter-offers were exchanged. Finally Mr. S pulled our VP and me out of the room for a heart to heart about the value we put on the technology.

So standing in the hall outside the meeting, I opined that I thought the base technology with the continued employment of a couple of key people was worth about $5 million and up to $8 million if all the current employees came along. The VP with us agreed and felt that joined with the consulting arm of the company, a couple of hundred million dollars a year of revenue could be generated. 

Mr. S said little, but we all walked back into the conference room interested in seeing what Mr. S. was going to do. On the other side of the table sat the three principals of Company B, all anxious and hopeful. The financial position of their company pointed to desperation.

Mr. S. took a piece of paper, wrote a number on it, and slid it face down across the table with the words “This is my number. What is your answer?”

The three guys from Company B huddled and then made a major mistake. They thought Mr. S was still open to negotiation and tried to come back with yet another counter-offer. Mr. S simply motioned to us to go and walked out of the room. My last view of the Company B guys was with the utter look of shock and devastation on their faces. It became complete as it sank in that Mr. S would not be saving the company and that they would be out of business by month’s end.

That was the moment that I was extremely happy to be me and not one of the three guys form Company B.

More fun from Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge.  This week I am writing about

but you should head over to Mama Kat’s to check out all the topics.

I have just one favorite Halloween costume, which is amazing for several reasons. By all logic it should have been one of my least favorite costumes and instead it is the one that sticks in my mind with the most emotional impact all these years later. The story begins …

It was Halloween and I was in the first grade. We were living in a small town in Nebraska, a town with a population of less than 350 including the dogs, pigs, and cats. That kind of a small town. But, being that small had its advantages. The only restaurant in town hosted an annual Halloween event, Hot Chocolate and Treats, on the eve of Halloween. Not only could a kid collect the loot from one place, drink hot cocoa, and see everyone’s costumes, there was a contest with actual prizes!

In anticipation of the evening, I worked hard on the costume of my dreams. I was fascinated by robots, so a robot I was to be. You’d be amazed what one can do with oodles of cardboard boxes, buttons, paint, tape and imagination. In my mind I pictured the costume as looking a bit like this picture, sans the cigar and engineering refinements.

I lacked the foresight to use flexible arms like the costume in the picture. I used two cardboard boxes on each arm, leaving me with almost no motion in the arms. The box on top of my head made sure I had no peripheral vision as well. (But it did hide my glasses!) So motion of any form was lacking in grace and flexibility.

On the eve of the contest i was excited. All my friends from school were there and we were all anxious to see what each others costumes were like. It was a period when cowboy costumes were all the rage, so there were a heck of a lot of cowboys present. Likewise princesses. Astronauts were still new in the pantheon of heroes; I don’t remember a single astronaut in the crowd.

After the excitement of collecting loot and the costume judging (I didn’t win), it was time to gather up a cup of hot chocolate and sit down at a booth to drink it. It was at that point it became clear that neither activity was going to be possible in my costume. In no way, shape, or form could I carry a cup of hot chocolate in costume without spilling it. And even if I could, there was no possibility of folding my boxed form into a booth. To make things even trickier, I had taped my costume on in a one way entry configuration. The only way to take it off meant it was off for good and that it was not an easy task to remove it.

I waffled about for a bit and finally decided that it was worth it to rip off the arms and torso so I could sit down and have that wonderfully aromatic hot chocolate. Did I mention that the diner was quite crowded with all of us munchkins running loose? Did I also mention that the diner used glass cups stacked high on trays for serving the cocoa? Have you figured out what happened next?

That’s right. Rip, wing, crash. Pretty much in that order and suddenly there were literally what seemed to me to be hundreds of broken cups all over the floor. You can see why I said that it defied all logic as to why I regarded this as my favorite costume. Most favorite costumes do not star in a disaster of such proportions.

But the chaos of the disaster was quickly forgotten because of the wonderful way the incident was handled by the restaurant owners (whose son was in my class and at the contest as well) and their staff. No recriminations, no scolding, no blame: only a kindly helping hand in removing the costume, getting me some coca, and getting me sat down. I often think back to that evening and have a wonderful warm glow because of the way the adults around me handled the situation. It makes me wonder what my memories and feelings would have been had the adults reacted in the fashion I see so often: with recrimination and blame.

So there you have it, my favorite costume. It is my favorite not because it was a great costume, not because I especially liked it, but because I have some really great memories of kindness associated with it.

P.S. For those who read yesterday’s post, I was almost right. It rained until about 2pm and then started snowing. It has been snowing off and on all night and is predicted to really kick in tomorrow with 50 mph winds. Nothing like early blizzard white-out conditions to make sure you think winter is really on its way.