The truth hurts......

Caviar and Blinis at the Club..... or Roller Derby?

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 11:50:44 -0400

Roller Girls

Cathy -go-Lightly

Denise tattoos Kevin

One of those and one of these

T-shirt time

Roxy Contin on the Jam

Waiting for the action

Derby Heads

It's not like Wrasslin' or anything. It's more like a video game come to life. With names like Roxy Contin, Hilda-Beast, and Rocky Slamboa it's all very tongue in cheek and very crowd oriented. They don't get paid. They collect food for the food bank. And it's a place other than a bar for Gay people to get together and have a little hoot. They have half time competitions (even though there are three periods). We got free t-shirts for donating canned goods but we also bought several. They make a really big deal out of it. The Roller Girls make all kinds of charitable appearances and it is just plain fun. Next time we will sit in the "suicide seats" right down front and hope that we don't end up with Slammy Lou Harris in our laps. Or perhaps some of the girls will wish for that,lol! Anyhow, it is just a great way to have fun with youngins without having to try and be one of them. The costumes and personas are just outrageous and it's all in good fun.

Kevs

Oh my. Look what he happens to be wearing. He gives Vox a good name. I had on my Crusty's Pest Control shirt.

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If you're going to have a Memorial Service... why not make it memorable!

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 21:05:39 -0400

Pickett

Yeah, it's me and I'm still here. You all know I've been going through some losses lately and we tried very hard to face a big loss yesterday and I think we succeeded. We had my friend Sue's Memorial Service yesterday and it went off with only a few hundred hitches and it was just as she would have liked it.

I spent a few days trying to get this thing together but was missing a key ingredient. The person we were arranging this for was the person who would normally take care of this type of thing for me. I was a big, fancy wedding planner in Beverly Hills but it doesn't mean much when you are doing something for a friend and have no help (because she was the help).

I wrote words down several times and met the the Hospital Chaplain and the Pastoral Care Department a few times last week. I bought parchment paper and photo paper an discussed a few readings and musical selections. In our inimitable style we freeballed and just ended up letting it happen as it would and it therefore happened just as it should have.

It's hard getting thousands of people to abandon their work stations when life and death are on the line. Nurses can't usually sneak off for an hour in the middle of surgery. Most people in a Hospital take their breaks, if they take one, rather on the fly and when they can so scheduling something just doesn't work. So we decided to set a book out in front of the Gift Shop in the lobby so that all Sue's friends and collegues would certainly pass by and get the info they needed and be able to jot a quick passing memory for Sue's family.

I sat up Monday night with a picture of Sue opened in my photofilter, airbrushing shadows out. Erasing wrinkles. Faux tanning my friend. You always want to make people look good. They would want it that way. So we do, right? So I decided to give Sue a facelift because she was obsessed with having one. We would tell her she didn't have a wrinkle on her face but she insisted she needed one and would get one when she could. So I gave her one. I tanned and toned her. I raised her cheekbones. I puffed her lip up a hair and then I rubbed out spots and shadows and enhanced the color and the clarity of the picture. She would have loved seeing the picture so I did it for her.

I got to work and was sick as a dog. Migraine. Nauseating, eyesplitting, sound sensitive migraine. And a bad one! I was so close to throwing up for so many hours and the kids just said "You're just stressed Mr. Myke. Relax, we'll take care of everything". And they pretty much did. Flowers.Check. CD Player, CD, sound check. Check. Photo. Check. Pastor. Check. Guest Book? Ci. Alright then. "You guys go downstairs, close the store and hang a sign up and I'll make a few calls". It was about ten minutes until the service began and I saw Sue's Sister-in-Law and brother come into the lobby with her niece Laura, their daughter. I had a chance for a quick hello but before I spent a minute with them a Nurse came careening across the lobby and asked me if this was Sue's family. She and Sue knew each other as good friend's for so many years without ever asking each other what their names were. You do that at work when it's a really big place. It's a really big place. I found her personally to share the news when we found out Sue had died. She was very winded, almost jarred when I told her initially. But for her family to see such an immediate response from such a busy and critically needed person to rush across the lobby to great them and share a quick moment to me was the pace for her service being set. It was just as I would have written it if I was given the chance to. So I showed them the Chapel and excused myself briefly.

I ran up to the Gift Shop to check on the kids. Marian had been putting cold compresses on my head to relieve the pain and the other wee ones and old gals ran around closing shop for the very first time in over three years for Sue's service. We close at night but are open every day year round. Their idea. They don't want people to not be able to have things on holidays.

Okay, so they all scurried downstairs and shooed a few people away (nicely). And I followed and stood in the lobby looking around for attendees. You want there to be people there. I was scared we wouldn't have enough room but you always want a full house to remember people with.

The Chaplain opened with a few messages from well wishers from the Memory Book we provided a day before. By chance he read mine first. It went to the effect of "I look behind me and you're not there. I get confused and people don't recognise me without you there". Then another one from a student who said how scared she was when she first started there but Sue made her feel comfortable from the minute they met and she has loved this place ever since.

The Chaplain read from Proverbs about the Lady Merchant and her dedication and her desire to get things done, and correctly. We picked that together.

The room was very quiet and I started thinking "if nobody gets up soon we will have dead air time and it will feel awkward". I jumped up and stood at the podium and froze like stone. Then I shook a little. Then I sobbed uncontrollably and when I finally could force a few words out the best I could come up with was "this is finally real, isn't it"? (muffled and whiney and tearie).

I shared a few things I'm sure but what I can't remember. Then my boss got up and he was crying also. He said some nice things. His Admin was next and she began to cry and what touched me was her sensitivity given she and Sue spent many years at odds with each other. You always clear up things in the end and they certainly did. I did the things they used to so they didn't have to do accounting with each other any more, or payrolls, or invoices. I did half with one and the other half with the other and all three of us got along. When Aileen cried my heart lightened. Like the Grinch when his tiny heart starts to grow. Ping. Full blown emotion was now in progress an I was realizing my friend really died and not only that but I lost the best Assistant I ever had.

Then we started hearing from friends and a recurring theme was about how there was no Myke without Sue or Sue without Myke. We were a team, or perhaps even a show. We were both boisterous and laughed louder than everybody but it made other people laugh just to hear us laugh. It made us laugh too,lol! She was the quiet one. She was Teller and I was Penn.

I acknowledged a few Dignitaries and pretty much everybody else by name. As she would for me. I heard funny stories about pranks and sensitive stories about volunteering at "Children's" but I heard so much that I wanted her family to hear and that made me happy. I wanted them to see the playful and funny but also the sensitive, well thought of, often times turned to sister/auntie that we knew. The Kathie's were there. And Connie (I reminded everyone that Connie was the only "hippie" Sue ever liked,lol)

After a few quiet moments of nice memories my friend Will came in the Chapel door. Will is a Rapper. An MC if you will. His group is called ATM. Addicted To Money. Will and Sue were friends. He is a thug and she is a Princess and they met on common ground and decided to be friendly since they would be in the same vicinity much of the time. And they did. They would laugh. Willie would ask Sue why she wouldn't go out with him. She would swat him in the arm or just glare at him. He should have frozen to death from some of those looks. They had a "mutual understanding" and I was touched that he remembered to come or that he would come at all. Big thug and all.

Cathy shared that we were trying to get Sue to go to Roller Derby with us. We tried so hard and she would have laughed so hard if we could have gotten her there. Kathy Wheaton, a very well to do Boston Desperate Housewive came and we hadn't seen her for months. Sue and Kathy talked fashion for hours because Kathy had money and Sue had a history with fashion. Kathy and I are Yankees. She laughs when she tells people she's from Nashville because she has the heaviest Boston accent you have ever heard in your life.

Then Marian shared the story about Match.com and how we gave Sue a fake name and were going to call her Geraldine Pope on her profile. We would secretly arrange dates and have Sue meet people from the internet. She was just terrified we had already done something and that people would find out. I always took candid pictures of Sue smoking and she thought I found one of those and we had already posted them on the net. (We hadn't, but we considered it).

So, after some rememberences from the family and some of the ladies she volunteered with it was time for us to play our musical selection. We picked Tennessee Homesick Blues by Dolly Parton because Sue always played Dolly in the morning. People can't be mean if they hear Dolly Parton. You know how grumpy people are? Well her strategy was to play it and like mind control they would have to be nice to us. I looked over to Darius, the appointed DJ and our troubled youth this summer and he was asleep in the chair. Uhm, timing? "D" I shoutedd in a whisper. "DEEEE"!, I shouted again rasping an starting to move. I finally tapped the CD player and got his attention and we finally heard the song and it reminded me, if nobody else, of every morning I spent so happily looking forward to each day at work with my dear Miss Pickett. My whacky nut. My sidekick and cohort. My dearest friend. I had flashbacks all last week and I missed our routine. "Blueberry muffin Pickett"? "Got 'em".

And now she is really gone and for Christ sakes I'm crying again. I'm just getting too old for all this. I can't stand that everybody I care about is dying. Mom. Dad. Grandma. Gulliver. Et tu Sue? Et tu?

I'll miss you and I can promise you that your name will be mentioned every single day that I reside at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. ( A remarkable hospital according to US News and World Report). I am guessing that before I ever get to say a word somebody will come up to me daily and say "Remember when Sue...................."?

And I will Pickie, I will.

I know you loved Johnny Cash but I refused to let the kids play "A Boy Named Sue" at your memorial . But I hummed it to myself and to you Myrtle. I bet a few others hummed it as well.

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The Best of the Best...According to US News and World Report

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 07:50:27 -0400

Vanderbilt Medical Center

America's Best Hospitals

Five days at an Honor Roll medical center

By Sarah Baldauf , Lindsay Lyon

Posted July 10, 2008

What makes a hospital a "best"? A smart, caring workforce armed with the latest technology? Of course. But if that were the magic formula, the only names you'd see in the "America's Best Hospitals" rankings would be those of high-profile, big-money centers that can afford to lure top talent and purchase every new device. Hospitals that fly below the radar, like the 17 facilities in the heart rankings that were cited by fewer than 1 percent of heart specialists who responded to our annual survey, would never appear.

A great hospital is different because of an internal culture of excellence. Set at the top and embraced by caregivers, medical standards are high and emphasize not only doing well but striving to do better—to hammer down the number of infections, to boost survival of high-risk surgery patients, to systematically squeeze out errors rather than painting a scarlet "E" on those who make them. If such goals cannot be achieved by using conventional means, invent new ones.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville is no stranger to Best Hospitals—last year it ranked in nine of 16 specialties. But this is the first year it has been named, along with only 18 other facilities, to the elite Honor Roll for its high rankings in multiple specialties. The hospital is huge and growing, with 847 beds; more than 1.2 million patients streamed through its doors in 2007. Most come for routine care, but many come because they need the level of advanced care that only a major referral center can provide.

Last month, two U.S. News reporters paid a five-day visit to the sprawling campus to sample the state of medicine practiced there and get at the personality of the place. They found a blend of pioneering and progressive skills, delivered with a healthy dose of humanity and southern gentility and propelled by that all-too-elusive culture of excellence.

Be sure to check out the photo gallery.

I am very proud.

I make those I serve my highest priority.

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Home ...............again

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:46:38 -0400

I just got back from Atlanta. I went on a buying trip and spent tons of money. I like what I do. I just miss my family when I'm gone.

The ATL

Perimeter Center Marriot ATL

From room 811

Lindberg Station on the MARTA

The Market

The only Mall I go to

20 story spiral staircase

In the tube 25 stories up

Suzanne from SouthEast Marketing

Returning to Nashvegas

Werthan Mills Mural

Farmer's market Entrance

The Shack

Werthan Lofts

Waiting for daddy

After a long trip I only need to see the little red tail wag and all the cares in the world just melt away. Of course I need to see her daddy's moustache also. It doesn't wag but it wiggles and curls. I had a good trip. Productive and always fun. I have fun at all costs. I'm getting weary and am planning on taking a few days off next week. It's good to be home. It's where the heart is, isn't it!

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John McCain in Columbia and hostages freed?

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:51:07 -0400

Would anybody like to bet a plug nickel that John McCain returns home with hostages that were freed in Columbia today on his new plane?

Funny how all the news channels were trying to figure out why John was in Columbia. Later I heard that hostages had been rescued. Ingrid Betancourt was released after 6 years in captivity. She was a former Columbian Presidential candidate and had been captured and held for years along wth an assortment of American contractors and several other Columbian Nationals.

They are saidd to be going to a military hospital (Brook Army Medical Center) in Texas to be treated for any ailments and to be debriefed.

The timing seems very odd. McCain was briefed by the Columbian President about the Mission.

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One door closes, another one...............closes.

nobody@vox.com(Dancing Bear) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 21:41:36 -0400

Grieving

This afternoon I got a call informing me that my Assistant was dead. She was 62. I was told by the Police Department. They are not sure when or how she died. She was on vacation this week and was due in Monday.

Ms. Pickett

Geneva Sue Pickett was a good friend, a die hard employee, and one of the most generous women I have known. She volunteered regularly and was a company girl all the way. She enriched my life, improved the quality of each day, and made me laugh so hard that I peed my pants every single day that I knew her.

To say that I will miss her is like saying the sky is blue. Currently the only thing bluer than the sky is me. I was informed rather abruptly and unexpectedly and it has not fully sunk in. I then had the task of informing thousands of people while trying to maintain a brave face for the kids.

She was at my side, generally trailing two or three steps behind me. I walk fast and have long legs. She was generally taking notes and scrambling along behind me from building to building and ready and willing to follow me off the face of the Earth if that's where I was going.

I had many names for Sue. I called her Myrtle, Mable, Edna, Ethel, Pickett, Pickie, SueSue and I called her often. She was my enforcer and made my daily efforts possible by screening hundreds of calls and putting out forest fires for me all day long and covering 64 acres of chaos. She paid bills, placed orders, met with vendors, and rode shotgun along side of me from the minute she walked in each morning until she decided to leave at the end of the day.

Ethel

Sue could never find her glasses but generally had two pairs on her head while she looked for them. She would put people on hold after she hung up the phone. She could outwit any computer with her cunning and crafty ways and would always win any battle she had with them. They would submit, smoke, and then crash. They could not keep up with Pickett. She was just too sly for technology. The more buttons you punch in the shortest amount of time gets the job done.

She was the Senior Women's wear buyer for a very posh chain of Southern Department Stores for 30 years and lived, for the most part a very priviledged life. But in her lifetime she got more out of working with sick people and sick kids then she ever got out of going to lavish parties, fashion shows, and trips abroad. She was presented an award last year for her numerous hours volunterring at the Monroe Carell Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt. He died last week of cancer and was a good friend of hers.

Miss Pickett1

If I couldn't find her I need only head out to the employee smoking area and would most certainly find her enjoying a conversation with a patient or a co-worker. Since smoking will be banned in two months throughout the campus we had many discussions about how she would quit. I knew I would be chasing her out of stairwells or find her spraying air freshener under her desk as smoke billowed by.

So at this time I have no idea how or when she died. I made arrangements with her family to start the process of insurance and 401K stuff because they will of course have to make plans. They were on a family vacation and she decided to stay home with the dog so it didn't have to go to a kennel. Her nephew came home early for a business meeting but everyone else was in Florida. Her niece called me and we talked for a bit but we had both just had our worlds pulled out from under us. They were all in the car on the way home and had no better idea than I did what happened.

My world will be considerably less funny, much more chaotic, and empty in a way that nobody else will ever fill. I will miss the smell of her blueberry muffin in the microwave. I will miss her answering the phone with the receiver upside down. I will miss the odd calls at all hours of the day and night. But most of all I will miss her friendship and loyalty.

There isn't enough time left in my own life to tell all the stories. But in her little niece Sarah will live the little bit of devil Sue left for us all to enjoy. She brought great joy to Sue Sue and her stories about Sarah made me laugh out loud every Monday morning.

Myrtle Sue

A funny and recent memory was when her female co-workers tried to talk her into getting her set up on Match.com. The plan was that when she went on a date we would meet her there and sit at tables in close proximity in case any "funny business" was going to happen. We almost talked her into it.

I am grieving Sue. I will never forget you and will miss you every day. You were a hoot and you were a true humanitarian. Kevin was going to come and get me when I called him but I didn't want to let you down. The kids in the Gift Shop refused to close because they didn't want to let you down either.

I remember when you told me never to worry about you having a heart attack because you were missing a key ingredient. A heart. But I think I'll find out in the next day or so that you had one and it was so big and so full that it just couldn't take the strain from it's own size any longer.

It looks like Marian is going to have to get a "noogie" every morning since you won't be there. I went in the Chapel to get away from everything and Eddie came in to sit with me. I think he must have been trying to keep the lightning from striking by me being in there but I knew you would approve. Maybe I'll pop in again if you promise to come see me when I'm there. I'll call Victoria and Keesha later on if I can. Usually you do all this stuff for me so I'll have to figure out how to do all this stuff.

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