Something I've always said, I like people who – I can't say I like them, but I prefer people who are just rude and mean, and are just really flat out about it, rather than people who try to hide behind it or hide behind the pretense of being nice or being honest or anything like that. Of course, I don't like rude or mean people, but I’d rather you just outwardly be, like, a rude person rather than – I like to call it nice-nasty. I didn't make up that term, but people – I don't like people who are nice-nasty. Like, if you've ever seen Mean Girls – I love how I'm saying “you” as if, you know, this is just a random person who's just talking, but like if you've ever seen Mean Girls, the way Regina George goes, Regina George is pretty nice-nasty a lot of the times. Like, when Regina George is like, “I like your skirt,” and then ((the girl's)) like, “Oh my God, thanks,” and she walks away. And then she goes, “That's the ugliest effing skirt I’ve ever seen.” I hate that. Like, what, like? Or like in middle school, the mean girl who isn't ever, like, outwardly mean or rude, but just like does little off-the-wall little mean stuff and like, goes, “Wow, like, I love your pants. Where'd you get those? Oh, wow, they’re sure, like, unique I guess, hahaha.” And then they go and, like, giggle with their friends and like, “Hahaha, oh my God, Gretchen, look at her pants. Those are so cute, hahaha.” And it's, like, just hearing the words you say, “Oh, that's not – that's not rude.” But, like, you know, you know you're being mean. Like, you know, you're trying to, like, make fun of them. I hate that.

I did learn once that -- I was on a team that was working with a team in India. Programmers. And I didn't experience this personally, but I had like a training module for business communication internationally, that it's more customary in India for them to like, have a short personal conversation before getting down to business. Like, "Hey, how's it going? How's your day going?" Or even getting to know you, like, "What is your hobby?" or something before starting work. Which in my experience in the United States, that is not as common. It's just like, "let's get on this call. Let's go through the agenda. Let's do what we're here to do." And the message was that if you do that, some people in India might perceive that as rude. Just goes to show that it's a subjective thing. Tough, tough thing to navigate. And so, what I took away from that is just be extremely patient. It'd be valuable to be generally aware of what's considered rude or not. Cuz you know, the goal is to not be rude. It's not constructive to a relationship usually. So yeah, you sometimes gotta -- sometimes instead of saying, "We got a problem," sometimes you gotta frame it as a challenge or an opportunity and that's just part of collaborating with people, I think.

So when I was in second grade, we went on this field trip to this weird museum and I wish I knew what it was called, but I have a feeling that if I describe it enough, somebody who's lived in Michigan their whole life will know what I'm talking about. But it's this museum where the basement is a whole town and it's a very mid-western town, you walk through and it's all these little storefronts and it's very quaint and cute and it's fairly big for being a town-based basement in a museum, like it's a very strange experience. So we were there in second grade and the upstairs had this rock-climbing wall. And there was also a bunch of -- there was a Warheads, like, dispenser, little candy dispensers up there too. And so, you know, my classmates were all surrounded by the -- we were all surrounding this Warheads candy machine and we're getting just an outrageous amount of them. And all of a sudden, I hear this bang and I turn around a kid in my class was climbing up the rock-climbing wall and had absolutely ate it, like slipped and hit his head on the rock-climbing wall and fell all the way down to the ground and he wasn't that far up, but it was still a fairly big fall. And I just remembered looking over and seeing he had hit his head and so he was bleeding, like he had a huge nosebleed. And I remember looking over the rock-climbing wall and it's covered in blood from where he landed. I shouldn't be laughing but it's like it's so traumatic for me. Like I literally thought, I think everybody in my class screamed. And my mom was supervising the field trip, so I ran back to her, and I was like, "Oh my God," and then everyone got to leave class early and they had to close down the museum. Or at least that part of them museum for the rest of the time that we were there at least, to clean it. But yeah, it was definitely a museum experience that left an impression on me.

We did make it to the capital of Vermont, which I'm blanking – it’s not Burlington. Is it Burlington? Um, and that was pretty great. We got like a touch of what I imagined New England felt like. I remember, the architecture on the houses – once we, once we got closer to a degree of civilization, there is that, like, New England feel to the houses, which I'm totally blanking on what they’re called, what you’d described it as. But definitely ended up getting, like, “Man, yeah, this does kind of feel like I'm out here in New England.” It was – I loved it. I loved the aesthetic. I made sure, of course, to be a full tourist and I bought some Vermont maple syrup. I know we have maple syrup in Michigan, but I don't know. It was kind of cool to buy the Vermont style and the tin that it came in was so – I loved it. I loved it. I loved the design of it all and even after I finished all that maple syrup, I remember I washed that tin out and I used it as a water bottle on my next road trip out west.

Anyway, we come around this bend in the road, and there's this magnificent stag elk. Um, it’s coming up the side of the road, up onto the road. He's got the whole, uh, the whole family with him. He's got the little ones and then the mom, and all of ‘em, all the, all the elk, the whole – his whole elk family. And so he's like the crossing guard, he comes out into the middle of the road and just stands magnificently, mind you, until the whole family gets across and then he kind of takes his magnificent head and kinda shakes it a little bit and continues his walk like, “Yeah, you mere humans,” you know. Anyway, a couple of times we saw elk on this route. Some real similar experience – magnificent animal, my gosh. They just, they’re just amazing. But the one guy – was driving, we used to carpool, and he, uh, starts beeping his horn at this elk and the elk kinda snort and looks at him, like, you know, “Really?” And I said, “What the h***’s the matter with you, stop beeping your horn, you want him to charge the car? You know, you got this Ford Astrovan,” or whatever it was. And, uh, so he stopped beeping the horn, anyway, and we gave the elk and his family time to cross, but that was probably the most magnificent animal I've ever seen in person. Or I guess that would be the coolest.

Oh, I know. You gotta go across the Mackinac Bridge. I mean, there's nothing like the Mackinac Bridge and the fact that our state is separated by that distance, and spend time in the UP. UP is the better half of Michigan. So, definitely need to go and do the bridge and see Mackinac Island. I mean, there's, you know, iconic, historic treasure that we have with Mackinac Island. Has to be on a list of things to do that are unique to Michigan. And I'd add to that and say, you know, up by Petoskey, just hunting for Petoskey stones. Whether you find one yourself on the beach or not, you gotta go look for them and then all the rock shops up there, you have to buy a Petoskey stone if you don't actually find your own. And you know, with them polished and varnished, whatever they do to them, to make them so shiny and beautiful and bring out the pattern is really cool and unique. So, that's another item unique to Michigan.