the Diva Platform

Your Pal, Jill is live and can be found at http://yourpaljill.blogspot.com.

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I realized that the last day of the year would be a good time to make one final post here.

One final post?!

Yes, I’ve decided to stop posting here at the Diva Platform.  Why?  Well, it’s time for a little change.  Blogs have evolved over the last few years, and I think the more successful blogs focus on some sort of topic–whether it’s cakes or beer or being a mom or secrets.  Unless you’re famous or were an early blogger who managed to gain a large readership just because you were first, it’s hard to find an audience when you’re just a random person writing about random things.

I, being a writer, want to find an audience.  I’ve been throwing random blogs at the interwebs for a few years now, and yet, my readership isn’t quite where I’d like it to be (”quite” being an understatement).  I’d like to shake things up and try something different and see if that doesn’t help my work find a new audience.

Therefore, I’ve decided to start a new blog, and although it will still be partly random and partly ranting, it will be in the form of letters.  Two of the categories on this blog that I love writing are the “Letters” and “Postcards from…”, so I’ve created a new blog called “Your Pal, Jill,” that launches tomorrow.  It will exclusively be letters and postcards.  If I write them to an actual person (say, Mariah Carey, whose letter will be forthcoming), I’ll send them out and see if I get any response.  If I do, I’ll post it.

It’ll be a fun, new project, and I’ll see where it takes me.  I still hope to publish five days a week, but be patient with me.  It may take me a little while to get into a groove.  If you have any tips that you think might be up my alley, feel free to send them to me.  If I get riled up enough, I’ll send out a letter!  E-mail, as always, is jilljaracz AT yahoo DOT com.

So what will happen to this site, especially since I have my resume on it?  Well, it will stay up for a while (read your archives while you can), and I’ll revamp it to be a little more professional.

Thanks for reading the Diva Platform for the last few years.  I hope you’ll join me at the new site!

When I was at Ulta on Sunday, I had a momentary lapse of judgment.  See, I was in a hurry, and didn’t want to deal with all the marketing spiels at the checkout counter.  Until the girl at the register asked if I wanted a couple months of In Style magazine for free. 

In a moment of weakness, I said yes.  Forget that I already subscribe to enough magazines.  Forget that I’m moving.  It was a magazine!  With a free subscription!

Ugh.

Now I’ll have to remember to cancel it….though maybe a year of In Style would be fun to get.  What do you think?

This evening I rolled into my apartment around 11:00 (bells, then derby, then derby meeting), glanced around and saw the hovel it’s become.  Newspaper stacked all over (I may have read the paper last week), papers piled around because it’s gotten so cold in the bedroom that I really can’t work in there until we put up the plastic (and even then…)–see, one would think our building with the radiator heat would be nice and toasty warm, but we live in a 7-floor building, and apparently, the boiler’s designed for a 4-story building.  Sure, some heat rises from other floors, and the radiators do spit out some heat, but it’s really not enough.  It’s definitely not the toasty warmth you find on the first few floors.  Those people are probably tooling around their apartments in shorts.  I’m supposed to be tooling around in shorts!  Instead I’m bundled up and have a cold nose.

So the place is a mess, I’m cold, and I’ve had a good deal of difficult work (including an article involving chemistry.  I am woefully weak on chemistry, even if it is in regards to cosmetic products).  I’m taking everything one chunk at a time, and I hope I can just get through until we go to Florida for the holidays.  And although I hate to say it, this blog may be a little weak over the next couple of days.

Which is sad really, because blogging?  I love blogging!

Well, my attempts at completing a fall reading list failed.  Out of five books I had on the list, I finished one (The Bourne Identity).  I quit another partway through (Ball Four).  And I’ve started a third (Nul Points).  Books four and five?  Might see the light of day.

What happened?  Well, more magazines seemed to happen. I was probably busier.  However, I did make time to read two books for my book club (City of Thieves and The Alchemist), and although neither was long, they did take time away from my personal list.

I also read a book the Doctor loaned me (Kathy Griffin’s book Official Book Club Selection), but the Doctor has a Kindle and bought the Kindle version of this book.

Which meant I had to borrow her entire Kindle.

If you may recall, the Boy is pretty adamant about not having a Kindle in the house, so I had to keep the Kindle pretty hush-hush, lest I incite some violence.  It stayed in my purse the entire time, so I only got to use it when I was commuting somewhere, and to my knowledge, the Boy never knew about it.  Until now, of course. But the Kindle is safely out of the house now.

What did I think of the whole Kindle experience?  Well, the Kindle is good for traveling.  It’s really light, and if you were going on a vacation, it’d be nice to take it instead of several books or travel guides.  It was also handy to read in a packed train, because I only needed one hand to “turn” the page.

However, I don’t think I’ll be rushing out to buy one anytime soon.  For starters, it took a long time to turn on (and by “long time,” I mean several seconds.  I could flip a book open and find my place quicker).  Then I noticed that even though this Kindle was pretty new, one of the “page forward” buttons was already starting to sink in a bit from use.  Does that break at some point because you’ve pressed it too much?  Although I liked the fact that you could turn a page forward with either hand, you could only flip backwards with the button on the left side (its counterpart on the right side of the device took you “home.”  I went “home” more often than I wanted to).  Also, pictures and captions rarely lined up on the same screen.  I’d see a picture, flip forward for the caption, then have to flip back to see who exactly was in the photo again.  That got old.

The biggest aspect I didn’t like though, was the fact that I never really understood where I was in the book.  Some coding I didn’t understand and a percentage figure run along the bottom of the screen, but it doesn’t really give you a sense of how much you’ve read.  I’m 41% in.  41% of what?  It’s different when you’re listening to a podcast on iTunes.  It tells you how long the show is, and you can figure out how much longer you have to go.  Being 76% of the way through a book of undetermined length doesn’t help me.  I never knew when I could expect to finish it.

Nope, fun gadgets or no, I think I’ll stick with my old-time paper books.  And my reading list?  Well, I’ll keep trying to whittle away on that.

Dear FedEx,

I understand that maybe you don’t hire the cream of the crop when it comes to drivers, or at this time of the year you’re hiring seasonal help and don’t have a wide pool to choose from, but is it too much to ask that your drivers understand a decent amount of English?

Let me explain.  Last week, I went to get a haircut, and the Boy stayed at home.  When I got back, I found a door tag from FedEx saying they’d tried to deliver a package, but nobody was at home.  They’d come back tomorrow, and I’d have to sign for the package live for security reasons. That was a bit odd, but maybe the Boy didn’t hear the phone ring from the lobby.  OK, whatever.  I’d be home all day the next day, so I’ll be there when the deliveryman comes again, right?

Wrong.  Yes, I was home all day, but the Boy found another door tag for me.  What gives?  When I tracked the package online, the notation was that I wasn’t home.  But I WAS home.  What happened?  Did our driver just not want to ring the bell?

Well, after two days and two door tags, the Boy and I figured out separately that our door buzzer system is broken.  Well, not broken, but the buzzer is tied to our phone line.  Recently, the phone company put another area code in Chicago and stipulated that no matter where you live in the city, you now have to dial a 1+area code before the number.  The buzzer hasn’t been updated to reflect this change, so if anyone tries to come over, they just get an error message from the phone company and can’t come up to our apartment.

Or in the case of your company, I get another note saying that I’m not home, and that the driver will make one final attempt at delivering my package, and if I’m not there, I have to go to Skokie to pick it up.  [You might not think this is a big deal, but for someone without a car, I do not really feel the need to make a probably 2+ hour trip to fetch my package, nor do I feel the need to pay for car sharing in order to get it a little quicker.]

So this past Friday, if you stopped by my building, you would have seen me hanging out in the lobby, waiting for the FedEx driver.  Oh, it wasn’t that long of a wait (even though it was warmer in the lobby than in my apartment, my computer battery did run out of juice, the lobby electric plugs didn’t work, and I was on deadline for an article), but it was still a bit of a pain.

When the driver showed up, he tried the buzzer again, and while the phone company recorded message saying the number was incorrect blared, I let the driver into the lobby and started explaining what the situation was.  I didn’t get too far because it was obvious that the driver could barely speak English (and my Spanish is non-existent) and it wouldn’t have made a difference.  If I hadn’t been there, I would’ve been stuck…and the same goes for the other person in the building who also had to sign for a package.

I was frustrated for two days because the online tracking note said I wasn’t home.  If the driver had been able to think out of the box (or whatever “box” in Spanish is), if he’d have jotted down, “Buzzer not working,” on the tag, I would’ve been in the lobby on Wednesday, which would’ve saved him from making an extra stop at my house. It’s not like this is an isolated incident either.  This sort of stuff is happening all over the city. I’m guessing your delivery attempt numbers are spiking because of it–and you don’t want the numbers to look bad, do you?

This whole experience was a little lesson in inefficiency, and I thought you might want to know that.  Even though the driver was nice and polite, his inefficient way of working really made for a poor customer experience.  I understand that people need jobs, but they also need to do their jobs well–or, if you’re concerned with being the best in your industry, providing service that’s beyond good.  Is FedEx satisfied with simply providing a basic service?  A service that can be beat?  I hadn’t thought you were that sort of company, but perhaps that’s just what you’ve become.

Your pal,

Jill

Part of the “fun” of the Thanksgiving Day Parade volunteer experience was supposed to be the goodie bag each volunteer received.  At Parade School, we were told that past gift bags had all sorts of stuff–things like Beanie Babies and t-shirts (to make up for the super large t-shirt we had to wear over our bulky coats…or for other volunteers who got loaner parade jackets).  I, who likes a good gift bag, got a little stoked–it wasn’t something I’d expected, since I felt like I should’ve thanked them for allowing me to handle a balloon.

I didn’t bother to look through my gift bag while I waited for the Boy to meet me after the parade, but I heard someone else ask if the goodie bag had gift cards in it this year.

Gift cards!

Still, I didn’t get my hopes up too much, and rightly so.  Gift/goodie bags have really gone south in the last year or so.  You usually get them for any sort of running race around here, and while in the past they’ve had things like full-sized energy bars and rice samples, and your race t-shirt, they’ve gone down to a bunch of fliers and a couple of sticks of gum.  Not that I do a race for a goodie bag, but still….I don’t really want a bag of fliers.  They aren’t really “goodies.”  I’d rather do without and be told that, well, in tough times cutbacks are necessary.  I’d get that.

So even though I’ve never done the Thanksgiving Day Parade before, after going through the gift bag, it seemed like it was another recessionary casualty.  Oh, the bags had a pen, a 4-pack of Frango mints, an ec0 tote bag, and a flashing reflector light.  And a massive stack of brochures, a couple of promotional refrigerator magnets, and coupons that involved having children in order to save the admission fee/get whatever discount the place was offering.  It wasn’t the treasure trove that had been alluded to.

And really, that’s OK.  Like I said, doing the parade was enough for me, and in tough times, maybe that’s all it should be–an opportunity to do something you normally wouldn’t.  I signed up for the parade to carry a balloon, not to get a gift bag.  I didn’t expect any sort of payment like that.  As a society, have we just started expecting something in return for any little effort we make?  If so, won’t we be sorely disappointed when cutbacks force us to trim our expectations?  Perhaps it’s time to go back to just having experiences without getting stuff in return.  Without the stuff, maybe we’ll be able to enjoy the experience a little bit more.

Oprah and I don’t hang out much anymore (and by “hang out,” I mean, “I tune in to her show”), so I don’t always know the hot topics.  However, I wandered over to her show about women around the world and had to share her video of her tour of a typical Danish home.  The house is pretty sparse–small, clean lines, not much clutter.  Oprah wandered around, marvelling at it all.  The fridge was one thing she noticed was pretty small.  I’ve lived in Europe a couple of times.  My current refrigerator seems mammoth to what I had in both of my European apartments.  It’s fairly small compared to fridges here.

It has to be unusual for Oprah to see the small stuff.  Sure, she has an apartment in Chicago, but (a) it’s probably big by apartment standards, and (b) she has other palatial estates around the country.  Oh, there are some Europeans who have pretty palatial estates too, but the regular folk have to fight over what little space is left.

This all made me think about McMansions.  Is that trend officially over?  Are people still buying humungous houses?  Granted, after living in a 1-BR for the last 8 years, I’d certainly like a little more space, but having way more space than I really need seems excessively wasteful.  In America, “excessively wasteful” seems to be our middle name.  Will we continue to be like this in the future?  Will things ever calm down to a point that we’re not all assuming that a large house is the answer to all our problems?

I consider myself a somewhat religious person.  I’m a Christian, but more Sunday mornings than not, you’ll find me snuggled in bed rather than going to church.  That’s more a fault of having to trek downtown, I think, because I really do love my church.  I just tend to shrug off going except when I have something to do.

One of the reasons my church is great is the pastoral staff.  I go to a Methodist church, so the preachers are itinerant (they move around the system).  Even though it’s kind of a shock to adjust to new pastors time and time again, I really have enjoyed all of the ones we’ve had in the years I’ve attended.  Our current head pastor is absolutely wonderful, and the last two times I’ve heard him speak (last Sunday at church and yesterday at a wake), I was reminded that I really do need to go to church more because how he interprets the scriptures really helps me make sense of the world and my religion and how to fit into both.

Last week at church he gave a sermon about the widow who gave her last coins to the church (Mark 12: 38-44).  For once this passage made sense to me.  Usually it’s in the context of, Look, this widow gave everything she had to the church.  You should give until it hurts as well.  However, if you look before and after that particular story, Jesus isn’t too thrilled that the church leaders take everything they can from the people.  In the sermon, the pastor said, we like you to give, but you really do need to take care of yourself first.  It doesn’t really help us if you give us everything you have and then need help.

Really?!  I could feel the guilt lift–I haven’t been giving much lately, and I’ve dreaded stewardship time, because with my random paychecks and the Boy being laid off, I just haven’t felt I could give as much as I “should” (and by “should,” I mean tithing).  Hearing that it’s OK not to give until it hurts made me feel better, and since the sermon was rooted in a lot of research, I could buy it.  It’s nice to hear a pastor say something like this–even though the church needs money, it’s nice of them to recognize and say it’s OK not to give if you really can’t afford to do so.

Fast forward a week, and our church family unexpectedly lost a member, the husband of a woman I play handbells with.  This was a total shock.  Sure, the man had muscular dystrophy and had been in a wheelchair pretty much all of his life, but all things considered, he wasn’t in bad health–or rather, there was nothing that would lead one to believe he’d die anytime soon.

I went to a prayer service held during his wake, and once again, the pastor did a phenomenal job.  He didn’t speak for very long, but he did say what we all felt–that it wasn’t fair that the man had had to be disabled, that it wasn’t fair for a wife to lose her husband at a relatively young age, that it wasn’t fair for a 13-year-old to lose her father.  Acknowledging that life is unfair, that death is unfair–that does so much more for the grieving process than some platitudes about the man going to a better place, God’s will, or something along those lines.

As I get older, I find I like the pastors who bullshit me less and less.  Someone who’s real, who gets life, and tries to interpret a roadmap for us helps me a lot more than reciting a whole bunch of Bible verses.  Since I went to a Christian school, I still have a fair amount of friends–or Facebook friends–who are quite religious and post a lot of Bible verses, thanks to God, or pleas to God in their status updates.  OK, if that gets you through, but somehow seeing those is a turn-off for me.  They sometimes ring hollow (really, did God drive you by that house you ended up buying?  Did God take away your sinus infection….which means He also gave it to you, so why be all thrilled?  God wants you to learn some sort of lesson, so He hasn’t made it possible for you to sell your house yet?) and make me feel less like wanting to be a Christian.  The constant spewing of Bible verses and praise just doesn’t do it for me.  Reasoned insight does–it’s just that reasoned insight is better said in more than 140 characters or a sound bite.

What does this all mean?  It means I’ll probably be setting my alarm for Sunday.  More reasoned insight into life would probably help me live a better one.  That would be good right about now.

Dear _________,

Do yourself a favor. Do the general public a favor.

Go away.

For some unknown reason, you became popular and now your mug graces a slew of magazine covers.  But why?  Because you need the attention?  It’s not like whatever you’re famous for is actually moving our culture forward in any way, and at this point you’re becoming more of a joke than a celebrity.

Please, for the love of God, slip quietly back into the masses of regular people from whence you came.  Then do something better with your life.

Your pal,

Jill

So, gang, who needs to receive this letter?  For starters, I’d nominate Jon Gosselin.  Granted, maybe I shouldn’t subscribe to the Us Weekly e-newsletter, which I rarely open, mind you, mostly because I don’t want to see stuff like a puffy guy doing yoga. I do, however, want to know who the kids are talking about these days, which is why I still get it.

Thankfully, Balloon Boy’s parents seem to be fading into the background again.  I’m hoping their 15 minutes went quickly, but just in case, I’d like to send them this note.  [And that link is to Wikipedia. This incident necessitates an article that long?  Really?]

But there have got to be other people who need a little reminder that they’re being stupid and narcissistic, right?  People that should become footnotes of pop culture?  Who are they?