World's Best Presenter/Hair Stylist

Last week I mentioned that I freaked out while giving a training. It was pretty bad. I had to give a training on this application that we use here at work. Simple enough, one would think right? However, when I got up there in front of the group (oh, and when I mentioned "the group" did you picture a large group of people? You probably did. However, this was NOT a large group. It was 4 people) at the podium I just locked up. Suddenly I forgot everything that I knew about the application and how to use it. I stammered, went on tangents and sweated. Did I mention the sweating? Holy hell. I dunno why I freaked out so hard but the flop sweat was in full effect. I wonder if the freak out was due in part to my past experience in front of an audience...a little flashback maybe? I dunno.

At one point I looked down at my notes (and while I'm on the subject of notes, I may very well be the world's worst note taker. Any notes that I take during meetings usually contain several asterisks and arrows with "important!" or something equally as helpful written next to them. Never any explanation as to why this part of the note is more important than others. I wonder if this is part of the reason why I was such a terrible student...hmmmm) and a drop of sweat landed on the inside of my glasses. Nice. I'm sure that absolutely no one noticed that. Do I take off the glasses, mop the brow and try to clean the lens or do just soldier on and pretend none of that happened. Let's go with pretending there isn't a problem since it has served me so well in the past (right gall bladder? Oh right, you're not here anymore).

I blazed through the rest of the training, not really caring if anyone was understanding what was being said and wrapped everything up with too much time remaining in the session. I believe the term is "train wreck". Not at all what I had hoped would happen. So after the people left I talked to the guy who used to do these trainings (Andy, who had agreed to sit in on the session) about what he thought and what I should do to fix the presentation. He gave me some pointers and I got ready for the training session coming up the very next day. And by "got ready" I mean I had a nice glass of scotch when I got home.

The next day came and we headed over to the meeting. I was a little less nervous than I had been because I had gone over the application several times just prior to this session in hopes that I could remain focused on what I needed to convey to these people. I was expecting about 7-8 people (again, not a large group) and we arrived about 5 minutes before the meeting started to set up. When the time came that the meeting was scheduled to start only one of the people who had accepted the invite had even bothered to show up. I opted to wait for a bit to see if we would have any stragglers wandering in late. After about 10 minutes of waiting it became obvious that no one else was going to show (this isn't a required training for the employees but it does help). So now it was me and this one woman. I said, "Well, I can show you how to use the system and it won't take as long." To which she replied, "I'd rather not if that's ok. If no one else is here I have work I can do." and she got the heck outta the room. Well, fuck you very much indeed.

But I was relieved. I know that the best thing for me to improve my pathetic presentation skills would have been to have had everyone show up and go through the whole damn hour of the training. But I was already overheated and nervous so having that lady bail was fine by me. The main problem then was that I then had to tell my boss that no one showed up and I'm pretty sure he's going to make those people get trained at some point. Basically I've only dodged this temporarily.

Moving on. On Saturday the Wiff and I had been invited to a birthday party for our friend's kid. She was turning 6 and good lord I have no idea what a 6-year-old girl might like. I left all of that in the capable hands of la Wiff and moved on to matters that I can handle. One such matter was to give myself a lil' haircut. The ol' mop had become a tad unruly and rather than go get it cut by, oh I dunno, a PROFESSIONAL (and a professional in the form of my good friend Kerry too. She rules), I went into the bathroom and got out the handy-dandy clippers. I surveyed the 'do and decided that a #7 would do the trick. I brushed out my hair (noting just how much goddamn silver and white there was and wondered briefly if Just For Men looks as shitty as I suspect it does) and started giving myself a trim.

I was making fantastic progress when my thumb popped the guide off of the head of the clipper just as I was making another pass and BZZZZZZZZZKKKKT! Ah, yes. A nice 2.5 inch wide swath. Hello scalp. How are you? Let's just take a look at this and see just how bad this is. Is it salvageable? Oh, no. No, it is not. Ok then. A wiffle it will be. God, whatta dope. Now to offset the lack of hair on the noggin I have decided to bring back the goatee. Actually, it's not really a goatee is it? Why am I asking you? It's just a beard thing that resides on my chin. It helps cover the second chin. There's no mustache and no "soul patch" either. Just the beardy thing. And all the little hairs that used to come in a bright red are now completely white. Wow. that's officially the worst paragraph ever. You're welcome.