The Universe: still sucking up

Okay, sooooooo......you know how I was railing against fate and karma and the universe and giving all of the above the proverbial “screw you” since it had collectively dished out nothing but bad luck to me for years? And how I noted rather sadly that I’m not the type of person who, for example, has jobs drop into my lap? Well, umm......a job basically just dropped into my lap.

You see, a friend of mine from Wharton, Scott Kosch, was thinking he might be in Chicago over the holidays on business, so he looked up people who live here and found me. And proceeded to read my blog, and discovered that damn, I’m still brilliantly funny. In fact, discovered that my little blog here has some of the best humor he’s seen since our days at Wharton, when the entire class was riveted to my weekly “Dear Mimi” column. (I’m paraphrasing here, slightly.) (Yes, I have an alter ego as Mimi, but we won’t get into that now.) (Hey, in the annals of Wharton history, it wasn’t even considered a BIG scandal.) (And the fact that a group of people formed a lynch mob/posse to discover who Mimi was, since I was anonymous, is really not relevant, since I think they were just in a bad mood in general.) (All the time.) (The Mimi column was totally separate from my other column, Recruiting Diaries, also written under a pseudonym – “Lurch B. Hind” – which prompted my friend Stacey to once inquire at dinner “Who the heck is this Lurch fellow? He must be some dour Eastern European, always complaining about something, some bit of bad luck.” Hmm, my Schleprockian patterns go back even further than I realized.)

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Scott. So we wind up chatting, and the next thing you know, poof, here I am, the VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at TwentyFour6, a lovely little start-up. As is typical with a start-up, one has to negotiate one’s compensation very carefully, and I am proud to note that I’ve not only secured Kona’s place as Number One Mascot, but I’ve also scored a new laptop bag. Sweet! See, that’s the kind of stuff they taught us at Wharton, in those Negotiations classes. Eye of the tiger, baby.

Now, I know what you’re all thinking – the questions practically write themselves: “But Miss Tasha, does this mean you’ve sold out to The Man? And what about your triathlon career? And being a role model for the little people?” To which I say, piffle. My triathlon goddess status will continue unabated - I’ve told the TF6 people that we alienate my fans only at great risk. And with them having already seen my powers for bringing the Universe to heel, I think they well understand who they’re dealing with here.

And I will note, again, that there’s apparently something to be said for dissing the Universe.

In other news, a note to dog owners, and I would think I would be stating the obvious here, but apparently not. Let’s say, you bring your dog to the dog park, where there are a bunch of pups frolicking around happily but for some reason when you get there, before you’re even in, they’re all going nuts barking at your dog, and vice versa. This isn’t typical, as the in-the-park dogs usually all cluster around the fence, eager to meet the “fresh meat” as I like to call it. So this might be clue #1 that things will not go well.

Then, when you bring your dog in and within a span of 5 minutes, said dog gets all snarly with a fuzzy little yellow dog playing with Kona’s squeaky ball, and then said dog goes from snarly to vicious and actually sinks its teeth into yellow dog’s leg, YOU, the dog’s owner, might want to step in. Instead of what actually happened, which is that little yellow dog was screaming in pain, the 2 20-something dog owners were standing there yelling “no! stop!”, Ron-the-older-dogwalker was doing something to try to get yellow dog away, and there I was, trying to pry your mean dog’s jaws away from yellow dog’s leg. What I really loved was that the first time I got your dog’s jaws opened after much struggle and yelled at you to grab your dog....you did nothing. So your dog clamped on yellow dog’s leg AGAIN. And again after I got those jaws opened, you stood there helplessly, so I had to pin your dog to the ground and pull it away, at which point you did manage to put the leash on.....but then held onto it so loosely that your dog was still lunging at yellow dog. And THEN, Ms. Turnip-for-Brains, you just stood there not saying a word while we were dealing with the chaos that ensued: Ron on the ground needing a nitroglycerin pill shoved in his mouth and later needing stitches for his torn up fingers, and little yellow dog with a bloody leg, limping. And then when we were figuring out that I would drive Ron home and the other girl would drive yellow dog & owner home, you walked away.

I’m still so flabbergasted by this whole episode that I don’t even know what my pearl of wisdom is. Don’t make total strangers have to step in to deal with your dog’s horrible behavior? Don’t be an asshat? Don’t show up at the dogpark again unless you want to find your dog’s leash “accidentally” wrapped around your neck? Pick one.

Oh, and mom, those thick mittens you got me for Christmas that serve the dual purpose of keeping my fingers toasty AND protected when a vicious dog chomps on them? Good call on that. Thanks....