Fear Factor

Nationals Beat the Mets 5-1,
originally uploaded by Island Spice.

First, you will note that it's BASEBALL season and I don't care what you think about baseball, I love it. It means summer and hot nights and the sound of balls cracking against bats and the smell of the barbeque. It means flip flops all day and watermelon for dessert. Besides, it's a great game. So, here's a picture of the Nationals, DC's home team (finally).

Second, and most recently:

They say that you have to confront your fear in order to overcome it. I hate making phone calls. Any excuse will do: I have a hangnail and can't possibly call until it's taken care of. I'm sleepy, I'll probably slur my words. Someone is vaccuuming in the basement, better wait 'til it's quiet. It's 4:47, I'd better wait until 5 PM exactly.

Well. Yesterday. We have our weekly program meeting at work. The boss wants us to follow up on the conference invitations that we have sent out because only 109 people have responded. We sent out 615 invitations. ... I'll let the enormity of that number sink in. Yes. That's 506 follow ups, and 506 phone calls. Between Rami and I, it worked out to 253 each.

At 5 o'clock, the boss stops by, "So did you finish all those calls?" I looked up with glazed eyes. "I'm through 175. I'm going home." If I talked in my sleep last night, I bet I said, "Hello, this is Catherine with CSIS and I wanted to confirm that you received the invitation to a conference we're holding on May 25..."

We finished all 515. The number of RSVPs we got proves that it was a successful endeavor. My general aversion to making phone calls persists, and is perhaps aggravated (I never ever want to make a phone call again) but now that I've called 250 strangers in two days, heck, returning a voice mail message? No sweat.