I had a woman travel all the way from Nevada just to meet me this morning.
The funny thing is, this isn’t the first time in my life that has happened. Hello, wife o’ mine! But it is the first time somebody has done so for professional reasons.
And I may be playing fast and loose with the facts here. Tanya’s a vendor, an ad salesperson for a South Dakota radio station I occasionally do business with. She works remotely from Mesquite, NV. And, okay, she didn’t fly all the way out here just to meet with me. Technically, she’s got other business to conduct in town. But she did say, “After our last conversation, I knew I had to meet this Mark guy in person!”
I love it when my reputation precedes me.
What happened was, back in May, Tanya reached out to me via email, trying to sell me an ad package. I asked for more info, decided it wasn’t something I felt we should support, and gave her the brushoff.
How rude of me, huh?
When she didn’t hear back from me after a few days, she followed up. Thanks, but no thanks, I told her. Not interested.
Ever the persistent one, she pressed on. CenturyCo has been doing this little promotion longer than I’ve been here (15+ years), she wrote. What can I do to keep you on board?
Now, you can’t just give me of all people an opening like that.
Send bagels? I shot back.
How about pizza since it’s almost lunchtime? she replied.
By now I was feeling guilty for turning her down, and after digging a little deeper, learned she was right: we had run a series of radio ads in the past. So, I capitulated, told her we’d go ahead and do them again this year, and that was the end of that.
Or so I thought.
Half an hour later I was home on my lunch break, halfway through a sandwich, when my phone rang. It was my boss, which is very unusual. I figured something terrible had happened at work (maybe the office had burned down, or worse, the copier had suffered the Mother of All Paper Jams), so I snatched up the phone.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“There’s a delivery guy here from Piesano’s, dropping off five pizzas in your name,” D. said. “And they’re paid in full.”
Well, didn’t I feel foolish! I figured Tanya was kidding about the pizza. Hell, five large pies from Piesano’s cost more than the ad package I agreed to. Even worse, I missed out myself, as I’d already eaten lunch at that point. When I got back to the office, I thanked her profusely, said she had made an office full of hungry people very happy, and pretty much committed to running those ads for the next 75 years.
Tanya was so tickled by our exchange, she made it a point to stop by the office to meet me in person. Said she appreciates people with a sense of humor and wanted to put a face with the name.
Whew! The whole thing could have gone sideways if she’d been a stick in the mud. Instead, everybody at CenturyCo anointed me a hero that day for generously treating them to pizza without taking so much as a single slice myself, and Tanya made her sale.
That, my friends, is a win/win.
I opened the refrigerator door the other day to grab half-and-half for my coffee, but I couldn’t reach it. The container was hidden behind a veritable jungle of green produce. None of which, I should point out, came from the grocery store.
You know your wife is a serious gardener when her vegetables and herbs start spilling over into the interior of your home, taking up precious appliance space.
Dill-scented milk is a small price to keep her happy, though.
The garden has been doing great, save for a minor incident Sunday night. It had been sunny and hot all day; when we went to bed, there was a little lightning flickering in the distance, but looking at the radar, it appeared the storm would miss us to the north.
About 90 minutes later, we were awakened by howling winds, flashing lightning, and—most ominously—the sound of hail pelting the windows. Tara’s usually on top of things, watching the forecast and covering her plants with hail netting at the slightest sign of inclement weather, but was caught unprepared this time.
The storm came in fast and furious, with 75-mph winds and a torrential downpour. The wind-driven rain was coming down so hard, water was running down the INSIDE walls of our home office. Umm, guess we’re going to have to lay down some caulk.
Luckily, the hail was marble-sized, and only lasted a few minutes. The garden didn’t escape completely unscathed…
…but it could have been much worse. Those zucchini plants could probably survive a nuclear war, so a little hail is nothin’.
At least it wasn’t a derecho.
Mark My Words 
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