On my fun end of a week ...

(this was actually a while ago, just getting to publishing it now). Friday, I drove up to a local University to drop off our bid. I sent a note beforehand to let them know I might be a few minutes late, there was construction. Sure enough, got caught in a 30 minute slowdown. I was 13 minutes late. They said, “hey thats great. We won’t look at it” Then on the way back, the old landlord refused to acknowledge that we were tenants, so they refused to refund our deposit. As I told my wife later in the day, had I been kicked in the groin, my day would have improved some.

Had a karate tournament the next day. The judging wasn’t quite what one might like. It was apparent during the sparring. I blocked a kick about half a meter from my body with my left fist. Somehow, in this universe, this resulted in a point for my opponent. Yet my punches and kicks, which were largely un-answered, yet landed nicely, didn’t get points. Finally, I had had it. I blasted right past his defenses with a well placed kick, and hit him square in the chest. My opponent went flying about 2 meters back into the scoring desk, knocking it over, messing up the score, the score cards, the timer, scaring the score keeper and timer people. They paused the fight for about a minute to get everything back together. There was no possible way that this kick would not have scored a point. Yet it did not. I think the fight was a metaphor for the week. I did not win the fight on points. The opponent reached me once. Yet got 4 points. I connected with him 10+ times, including some to the halo (surrounding the head). There is no way they could have missed this. Yet … they … did. I was told I won according to all the observers I spoke to. Could be comforting words, but they had specific examples they pointed out as judgement mistakes. There was no possible way we could miss on that RFP, yet a traffic jam set the probability of the business to zero. Our old landlord is contractually bound to honor their agreement to us, they refuse, and there is little I can do to compel them without costing us far more than this is worth. I’ve learned from all of this. No, I know, fairness is an illusion. Thats not what I am writing about. Its positioning. We are going to adjust lease language with respect to deposits. We are going to make damned sure we get RFPs physically at the site a day early …. though given our past history with this university, it wouldn’t matter anyway. These are the folks whom asked us to help our competitors as they didn’t want to buy from us, but they liked what we proposed. Yes, really. They did that. Blew me away.