Calm before the storm, language, and other stuff

Junior's coming home.

After three months living our in Seattle, he is headed back home this evening. He has the one direct flight from Sea-Tac to IAH, which, unfortunately, lands in Houston around 2357 (that's 11:57 PM for you non-regs). This is the same flight we took home back in June and we did not get back to the house until 0130. I'm looking at a late night for moi and I will still have to go into the office tomorrow (something about more project testing). Of course, once he hits the ground, the fun begins. Plans are to head north to Austin next Saturday to move into his apartment & get ready for school, so this should be an interesting week ahead.

Speaking of my project, I got a funny observation Friday. Among all of the things I am doing to prepare for this system upgrade, one of my other jobs is to train the rest of the production group on what the new system will look like and how to use it. Spent the last three days conducting training sessions to demonstrate the new system. Basically it was numerous 2 hour workshops on how to use the new features. I consider myself decent when it comes to public speaking. I've been a Toastmaster before so I am comfortable speaking to groups of people, but doing back-to-back sessions over several days is not my favorite hobby. As you teach the subject over & over, you become more relaxed with your groups and you tend to slip into a more casual role and can have more fun with your audience. Where am I going with this? Well, in my Friday class, I was halfway through my spiel when one of the participants (a director) handed me a scrawled note that said (and I quote):

Please do not say

crap
shit

Were in mixed company

Save a complaint

Now, I am an old Army guy and sometimes my language can be classified as "coarse" but I honestly do not remember saying SH*T in my sessions. CRAP, yes, but SH*T, no. I wasn't sure how to take this input (I don't think laughing would have made him happy) aside of smile and thank him for his observation. Now I'd like to note that, out of this "mixed company" class, there was one female engineer whom I know very well and she has a pretty extensive repertoire of non-PG13 language. And since when is CRAP an offensive word? If this is out of bounds, then I am guilty of far worse offenses.

So, to any & all sensitive readers whom I may have offended with my language, I would like to appologize right here. Oops. My bad.