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Gonzaga #1

While Gonzaga has always been #1 to me, the polls released last Monday also had Gonzaga ranked #1.  As an old Zag who remembers when the teams were good but went unconsidered by the selection committees during my college years, this is a moment to be remembered.  It feels like a reward for not only this year’s team, but also for all the previous teams that paved the way to lead to this moment.

It’s no secret that I love March, so to have my favorite team ranked #1 in the first poll of my favorite month is amazing.  I can’t wait for Championship week and the NCAA tournament!

Here are some articles to get you in the mood for March Madness!

10 potential NCAA tourney heartbreakers

March Madness: 50 things to know

 

Women going go to work 

Over the past couple of weeks, a couple of women in visible leadership positions have made headlines.

First, there is Marissa Mayer at Yahoo who made captured headlines because of her decision to ban working from home.

Here’s a link that recaps what I know about the story.

Honestly, I am surprised by the backlash.  I’ve worked at companies that allow working from home, and I have definitely benefited from working at home, however, I can’t imagine if everyone worked from home all the time.  I’m sure that there are industries and professions that are prone to having employees work from home, but in my experience, you build stronger relationships when you meet someone face-to-face and work side-by-side with them.

Besides, if it was a societal norm to never physically interact with the people in your life, the Manti Te’o girlfriend story wouldn’t have been a story at all.  But it was a big story because no one can imagine building a relationship that you never meet in person.

 

Leaning into work

The second lady making waves is Sheryl Sandberg, COO at Facebook, who wants women to “Lean in.”

She’s written a book called Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.

I have no plans to read the book and haven’t spent a lot of time researching it, but from what I can gather, she wants women to not be afraid to lead at work.  It’s not about getting a specific title or following a certain timeline, but rather, knowing when the opportunity is right for you and not being afraid to go after it.

Here’s my question: What’s wrong with her saying this?  It makes sense to me and I can’t imagine how this is controversial.

 

An aura of green and blue.

At this year’s NW Women’s Show and stopped by one of the booths to get my aura read.  It turns out that in total I have a balanced aura that includes red, green, and blue.  I didn’t get a lot of information on what the red represents in my aura, but the Green represents that I like to connect and build relationships with people.  The blue is that I look at the bigger picture of things.

Sounds about right to me.

 

Fair Game

Years ago (before I had a Kindle), I read Valerie Plame Wilson’s book, Fair Game.

Today, I watched the movie. It was incredible.  Naomi Watts and Sean Penn were fantastic and it is amazing that this was based on real events, and wasn’t an idea made up by a paranoid conspiracy theorist.  What broke my heart the most wasn’t even what Valerie and Joe Wilson went through, but rather her contacts that were abandoned because her identity was leaked to the press.

They were normal people who were caught in the middle and then discarded because of a political power play.  It’s not just outrageous or disgraceful, it’s probably one of the most anti-American, unpatriotic decisions our American government could ever make and stand by.

 

Justin Timberlake

Watching Justin Timberlake host Saturday Night Live for the 5^th time leaves me a bit speechless.  I never would have thought that the kid from ‘Nsync would move on to a solo career, acting, and SNL and be so good at all of them.  Creativity and style like his definitely do not come around very often.