Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:02:10 -0700WeeblyMon, 23 Jun 2008 15:27:26 GMThttp://www.mariannephinney.com/blog/charlotte-a-memorialPublished on June 23rd, 2008

This week was both exciting and sad. On Wednesday, Tony graduated from high school at the F.L. Chamberlain School in Middleboro. A very nice ceremony, good speech, and a nice lunch on a beautiful summer day. We got home and our oldest kitty, Charlotte, was still very lethargic and hadn’t been eating. She had been getting slower over the past few days but it had really become noticeable over the weekend. She had lost weight and wasn’t eating very much.

I called the vet and got an appointment for the afternoon. I was afraid she was pretty sick but was hoping that whatever it was could be treated and she would be her old self. It was not to be. On the way to the vet in the car, she mewed softly but not at all like her usual protest at being in the carrier in the car.

The vet said that she was very sick, but couldn’t tell what was wrong without some further testing. So off Charlotte went for x-rays and blood work. Her blood levels were elevated, but the worst was her kidneys. One was shrunken completely so as to be non-functional and the other was smaller than it should be. Even if we had tried to treat her, she would have been uncomfortable for a long time and might not get better.

I have done this three times now, making the decision to euthanize a cat who has been part of the household for over a dozen years. Charlotte was the heir to Amaretto, who barely survived the move from Texas in 1994 only to be felled by a severe urinary tract infection. We got her from the Dedham Animal Rescue League, a small ball of tortoise-shell colored fur. She was named after the spider in Charlotte’s Web (not the Bronte sister) because that was one of Tony’s favorite books when we got her. She never spelled words in a web, nor did she have any offspring, but she was quiet and affectionate with her family.

I called Peter and Tony at home; they came down to the vet’s office immediately. We petted Charlotte and talked to her, and told her we loved her and that she was a good girl. Finally I took her on my lap and the vet gave her a shot of Valium. She relaxed and became very calm, almost sleeping but not quite. Finally, the vet took her to give her the final shots.

What should have been a happy celebration day became very sad, with all of us in tears. I’m sorry it had to happen on the same day as graduation, but I know that Charlotte isn’t feeling sick any more.

We miss you, Charlotte. You were “Some Cat”.

]]>Fri, 30 May 2008 15:32:07 GMThttp://www.mariannephinney.com/blog/may-30th-2008An old cliché is “to a carpenter, every problem looks like a nail.” I sometimes think something similar works for Project Managers. To a project manager, every job seems like a project. You know you’re a project manager if:

• You’ve ever planned a vacation with Microsoft Project.
• You talk about your to-do list as a set of deliverables.
• Nothing is ever late; it’s rebaselined.

When I taught project management, I often used the example of producing a stage show (something I do quite frequently in my other life). It’s a classic project: it has a clear start date, and a very clear end date that cannot slip. There’s nothing like the vision of audience members standing in the lobby, tickets in hand, to clarify a deadline. You can’t tell your audience, “Sorry, we had some technical difficulties, we’ll open tomorrow night. You won’t mind coming back, will you?” They are your stakeholders, and they’ve laid down good American greenbacks to watch your show. You have to be ready.

Yet I’m always surprised when a production doesn’t run smoothly during the rehearsal and build phases. Where is the project manager (producer)? Why isn’t the set built, the costumes ready, the prop list complete? Why don’t the actors know their lines? (OK, I’ve been guilty of the last one – learning my lines later than I like. That doesn’t make it right.)

As in the business PM world, the reason things don’t happen on schedule in a stage production is…you guessed, communication breakdowns. Volunteers didn’t know they were needed, the vision wasn’t clear, the requirements weren’t defined. In the last show I was in, the script called for a full moon in the last scene. Come technicals, we went out for that scene to see the lights for the first time, and there was a beautiful gobo of a crescent moon. Unfortunately, the lines were, “Have you seen the full moon? Somehow everything seems full tonight.” So at the last minute, the lighting designer had to come up with a new lighting effect for a full moon. No one’s fault, but the requirement for a full moon wasn’t clearly articulated to everyone on the team.

So where do you manage projects? For me, it’s at the theater, at home, in the community – oh, yes, and at work. It’s all the same process, and the same skills, especially soft skills, are needed no matter what the venue.

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