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 |  Chaos is that voice at the end of the day that says, "Bet you didn't see that coming." |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** "It turns out that an eerie type of chaos can lurk just behind a facade of order - and yet, deep inside the chaos lurks an even eerier type of order" ~Douglas Hostadter I imagine that chaos and order are like those Russian nesting dolls, and they fit together to some infinitesimally minute level at which we must just give up ever grasping what lies at the core. Still . . . if I had to bet, my money would be on chaos. "Our real discoveries come from chaos, from going to the place that looks wrong and stupid and foolish." ~Chuck Palahniuk I know that place well . . . every wrong, stupid, and foolish acre of it! I used to think it was a dead end, or worse, a complete navigational failure, but sometimes that place was exactly were I needed to be. So what does any of this have to do with me, my blog, or the entries that will follow? I don't know, but pull up a chair. I'll invite some chaos, and we'll see what happens. "It's a cruel and random world, but the chaos is all so beautiful." — Hiromu Arakawa |
| Today I got a membership card at the local wholesale club store. I got a free 60-day trial offer in the mail and I needed some Diet Coke, so I figured what the hell. I think this is my third trial membership there. I won't spring for a paid membership because I doubt I'd save enough in a year to come out ahead. Anyway, I got my Diet Coke and scoped out the aisles. They've rearranged since I was last there. In addition to the Diet Coke I ended up getting a bottle of 300 Zyrtec, and A bottle of 7,000 Ibuprofen. I live in a house with very little storage, so the bulk packaging concept has limited practical value and yet it fascinates me. There are things that are okay to buy in quantity, like batteries and diapers. But, other stuff sends a questionable message when purchased in bulk, like condoms and pregnancy tests. Oh I digress. The whole point of the story is that it is that the offer was for a free 60 day trial membership. When I went up to the membership desk he did his thing, snapped a picture and as he hands me my card he says "This is good until the end of December." After the initial flash of panic thinking there might only be 60 days left in 2011, I realized I was getting the 101 day free trial which is 68% more free days than advertised (unless I got the math wrong - which apparently happens a lot when calculating 60 day intervals). Yeah! More free day. Then it hit me. We are entering the final 100 days of 2011. Damn that went fast! When I got back from the store the girl-child was looking at colleges on-line, and that didn't do anything to ease the feeling that time is rushing by. I sat and looked at the websites with her. I explained to her about how to read the course catalog and the degree requirements. They had pictures of dorms and dorm rooms posted and she kind of cringed at the idea of a roommate and communal bathrooms. I told her it was all part of the experience and everyone should have to share a room at least once in their life. I'm not sure she bought it. |
| I can't believe this. I finished my final paper for my class last week, but this week I'm working on the final exam. At first I was happy that it was multiple-choice. I mean, it is open-book, so how hard can an open-book, multiple-choice exam be? Well, I will invent a couple questions just for fun to illustrate the quirky nature of my examiner. 1. How hard can an open-book, multiple-choice exam be? A. Softer than an over-ripe avocado B. It is regulated by the autonomic nervous system C. Yes, I saw the new Harry Potter Movie D. Depends on what you've been smoking 2. All is fair in _________________. A. Love and war B. A perfect world C. None of these D. Choice 1 only 3. According to Gilligan's theory of attraction , when Mary Ann offers the Professor a coconut it means that . . . A. She wants to help him build a radio to signal for help, but is limited to a supportive role due to traditional gender stereotypes. B. The coconut represents her willingness to "put out" because it is a vessel for "free milk." C. Mary Ann was raised in a traditional family by nurturing parents. D. Both A. and the second half of C. 4. "Two Road diverged in snowy woods. I took the one less traveled by." Why? A. Evolutionary Theory B. Cultural bias in the media C. Adolescent egocentrism D. Environmental paradox 5. You're car dies on the side of a deserted highway late at night and you can't get a signal on you're cell phone. What type of thinking will you use in this situation? A. Creative thinking B. Critical thinking C. Quick thinking D. Oh shit! I've-seen-this-movie-thinking For the record, I changed question number 4 at least three times without changing the answer choices. Think maybe that's how the instructor rolls. It would definitely explain some things. |
| Can you believe it? I'm actually writing something! Yeah, I know I write here in my blog, and I just finished writing a paper for school, but I haven't written anything outside of that since Nano last November. I'm working on a very short story. Seventy eight words to be exact. It is for an off-site contest, and I'm pretty excited about it. I've never participated in any off site writing contests. So far, I've written five version of the story. Each version clocks in at 78 words, but each has a slightly different slant. I'm really amazed at how much can be said in so few words. I forgot how much I enjoyed flash fiction... although this is like micro-flash fiction. The kids had off school today for teacher in-service. I took the day off work so we could all trundle off to get our Military IDs. Since Tony has been in for nearly a year now, and will be leaving soon, it seemed like a good time to do it. Hell, it seemed like the ONLY chance we'd have to ever get it done. And so we went. And so we waited. And waited. On the way home, we stopped at the AT&T store because the girl-child needed to replace her phone and had an upgrade coming. She's been saving her money for a particular phone and was very excited about it. And so we went. And so we waited. And waited. Not much of a day off, but I feel like I accomplished some things in spite of all the waiting around. |
| Today at work, we invented a new game. We called it "uncomfortably close." It was kind of like a staring contest, but instead of staring we violated each others personal space until someone (Also known as the loser) took a big step back. Some might call it juvenile, but really isn't juvenile just a pejorative way of saying young-at-heart? It brought back memories of being crowded in the back seat the back seat of my Dad's car with two older and therefore bigger brothers. I always got stuck in the middle and I hated sitting on the hump. I remember one particularly long road trip through the desert southwest in the back of a Datsun B210 hatchback. The backseat was so tiny that they folded it down and we laid back there with blankets and pillows. That was back in the day before anyone cared about seat belts. Why we had blankets though is a mystery since it was probably 100 degrees in the back of that un-airconditioned car. All we had for air flow were those stupid triangular vent windows. Anyway, somewhere between the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the Petrified Forrest my brothers introduced me to the classic childhood game of I'm-not-touching-you which was usually followed up by a parent mediated game of let's-see-who-can-go-the-longest-without-talking. Amazingly enough, I've never even been tempted to take my children on a long road trip.  |
| The other day while I was making dinner Zack walked into the kitchen and announced "There are some people who just shouldn't sing." Zack has always had a good ear for music. As a toddler, he had a significant speech delay, and often didn't respond when we called his name. We had some concerns about his hearing, but those concerns didn't last long because he was an amazing mimic. He could sing the words of a song, but could sing the tune pitch-perfect. It was pretty obvious he could hear. Now that he is in his third year of chorus, he has become more sensitive to, and less tolerant of, off-key singing. Hence his pronouncement, "There are some people who just shouldn't sing." "I'm probably one of those people," I said. He looked at me without saying anything for a long moment trying to determine whether I was joking or serious. "Really," I said. "I don't sing well and a lot of people would probably say I shouldn't sing at all." "Excuse me," Zack said looking very serious, "But I think I've created an awkward moment." He turned then and walked out of the room. I managed to quell my laughter, but that child amuses me so!  Tony is going to be away again this weekend. It is his drill weekend. I've gotta say that it is probably a good thing. I am trying really hard to be laid back and just enjoy the limited time we have together, but somehow it feels like I've completely lost control of my life for the duration of the month. It is making me a bit crazy. Every time I try to make dinner, I come up short on some key ingredient I need because Tony used it up and didn't (1) tell me we were out, or (2) make the trip to the grocery store while I was at work and he was home all day. Also, I have finally gotten Tony to take his dirty dishes into the kitchen, but he wasn't putting them in the dishwasher. I asked him why he kept piling them in the sink until it was full and he told me "That's just how I roll."  I've lost control of the TV, the kitchen, the alarm clock, and the bathroom. <Sigh> |
| We had our annual Agency day event at work today. It was a day out of the office, so that's always nice, but there were a few too many boring presentations. The day started off with a very un-boring video about how rapidly the world is changing. Some of the statistics in this video are kind of mind blowing. For example, if the registered users for MySpace were a nation, it would be the fifth most populous nation in the world. Anyway, this is a link to the video: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2696735/did_you_know Here is another link you might enjoy from The Oatmeal. It is on proper use of a semicolon, and is the type of entertaining grammar lesson I could have really benefited from back before I became so entrenched in sloppy writing habits. http://theoatmeal.com/comics/semicolon |
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." Viktor Frankl Yesterday marked the ten year anniversary of 9-11. I had every intention of letting the occasion go unmarked in my blog. I tried very hard to avoid the media coverage involved, but bits and pieces seep in despite the effort to screen it out. So I thought I may as well give in and allow myself at least a few moments to consider the anniversary of a day so pivotal that it drew a line across our collective existence and created a new era; the Post 9-11 Era. My children are of the Post 9-11 world. I asked my 16 year old what she remembered. She has a vague recollection of knowing something horrible had happened. She remembers people trying to explain what happened, but not really understanding. She remembers the schools being locked-down that day for the first time ever. Lock-down protocols and drills would come in the aftermath of 9-11. My son was only 2, and this year was the first time he really asked questions and tried to find out more about what happened. Up above I quoted Viktor Frankl. If you aren't familiar with Viktor Frankl, he was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatric who survived three years of imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps being liberated by American troops in 1945. He wrote about his experiences and the experiences of other prisoners in his book Man's Search for Meaning. Frankl lost his wife, and both parents in Nazi camps. Rather than responding with hatred, Frankl sought meaning in his suffering. In Man's Search for Meaning he wrote of the experience, "Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love." If we want to continue to grow and enjoy freedom, then our end response to suffering cannot be a legacy of hatred and anger. "The salvation of man is through love and in love." And the consequence of hatred? As Frankl wrote, “Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of. And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.” |
| With Tony leaving at the end of the month he is trying to assure himself that we will all be okay in his absence. I try to remember the reasons behind his idiocy and recognize that it all comes from a place of love. Still, there are times when his concerns come across like a no-confidence vote in our ability to tend to the simplest of tasks. It also seems, at times, that he has no faith in my ability to manage the kids. At the rate he is going, they are going to be relieved when he goes because it will mean they no longer have to listen to his continual lecturing on how they will need to be more helpful and responsible in order to help me out. Anyway, I probably have been overly lax in making the kids follow through with a routine of chores. I blame this, at least in part, on Tony. I think it is wrong to insist my kids do chores that I can't get their father to do. Since Tony will be gone, I guess I don't have to worry about that anymore, and it probably will be a good time to start assigning chores. I remember when my brothers and I were growing up, and my mother was going to school. At the start of each new semester she would have a family meeting and set up a schedule of assigned chores. We would negotiate and try to get out of less desirable chores by volunteering for easier ones. Dusting was always an easy out and preferable to scrubbing toilets. I would also pick laundry duty over kitchen duty too. Anyway, the process always seemed to break down when it came to vacuuming, not because no one wanted to do it, but because my mother couldn't spell it. Pretty soon the chart would look like this: TUESDAY vaccum vaccuum vaccume vacc At that point she would crumple up the new chart in disgust and go looking for a dictionary. Since no one ever put anything back where it belonged, she'd have to hunt for it and this would allow us all a chance to escape. As long as we stayed out of sight for an hour or so, we were usually in the clear. Sometimes though, a chore list would get finished, and for a time, it would even be enforced. This was when my mother would break out the stopwatch. She had this theory that if we saw how quickly our chores could be done and over with, we would stop spending 30 minutes of whining and wheedling to get out of it. She would get the stop watch ready, yell "go" and time how long it really took to empty all the trashcans, make a bed, vacuum the living room and so forth. To this day, every time I open the dishwasher unload it, I take a look at the dishes inside and think "7 minutes. 9 at tops." I was a competitive kid. I think maybe I need to invest in a stop watch. |
| I was going to take the boy-child and go down to Bethesda, Maryland for the weekend with Tony. He has to go down for a junior officers conference, and Zack and I were going to tag along and visit the sites in DC. Well, we've had a change of plans. Do to extreme flooding in the wake of Hurricane Irene and Lee, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation is advising motorists to refrain from any non-essential travel in the Eastern third of the state. I live in the northeastern part of the state. We are counting ourselves as very fortunate that we haven't been impacted by the flooding. It is really awful in lower areas. Sections of the Turnpike and many other interstates and major roads are closed due to flooding. Given all that, I've decided that Zack and I are going to stay home. I imagine the trip down to Maryland will be a bit more arduous than I care to endure since there really isn't a way to get from here to DC without traveling through the eastern third of the state. Tony will be going regardless. He has orders. Zack was pretty good about the change in plans. I don't think he was excited about traversing the flood area. That boy has a healthy respect for natural disasters. I promised to make the trip down with him some other time. He really wants to see the Air and Space Museum and the Museum of Natural History. He also wants to see the National Zoo. The plan had been to leave the 16 year old home by herself to tend the animals. I asked her if she was disappointed that she wasn't going to have the house to herself. She said "No, but I guess I should call everyone and let them know the party is off."  Speaking of parties, my mother-in-law called to ask me if Tony would like a send off party before he leaves for North Carolina. I resisted the urge to tell her that I was planning my party for after he left.  Instead, I told her that she was asking the wrong person. Anyway, she talked to Tony and he told her he didn't want a party, but agreed to a dinner before he leaves. He reminded her that he is going to North Carolina, not Afghanistan. But Tony's family motto seems to be "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing." |
| I just finished doing my weekly homework, and it was a bit more interesting than usual in that I got to discuss theories of love. Steinberg has a model of love that is often depicted as a triangle with the three points being passion, intimacy, and commitment. Lets see if I can make a visual representation here... (you'll just have to imagine the sides) intimacy  passion commitment Of course not all relationships have all three elements, and a relationship can be made from any combination of the three elements though obviously with differing results. Steinberg proposed various labels for these different types of love. For example, if you've got all passion and no intimacy or commitment then it is infatuation. Affectionate love, on the other hand involves lots of intimacy and and commitment and not much in the way of passion. You get the idea. A relationship evolves overtime, and the amount of each element involved can ebb and flow. It is difficult, for example, to have a highly passionate relationship when you have a two year old slipping into your bedroom every night to crawl into bed between the two of you. For whatever reason, Tony and I started off our marriage with a high degree of commitment. There have been times that I thought about leaving my marriage, but I don't think I've ever entertained the idea very seriously. Mostly I get distracted by alternate scenarios in which he would suddenly drop dead. I know that is a horrible thing to say, but in the words of Chris Rock, "If you've never held a box of rat poison in your hand and stared at it for a good long while, you've never been in love." Moving right along though, I've seen the triangle thing before, but this weeks lesson had something new to offer. Steinberg had another interesting theory about love. According to this expanded theory, each us develops our own personal "love story," that sets a pattern for our relationships. He said a lot of the success or failure of relationships ties to the compatibility of the love stories. Steinberg gave some examples of classic love stories. First is the travel story which goes like this, “I believe that beginning a relationship is like starting a journey that promises to be both exciting and challenging.” Then there is the gardening story . . . “I believe any relationship that is left unattended will not survive.” There is even the pornography story... “It is very important to be able to satisfy all my partner’s sexual desires and whims.” Yeah, none of those are my love story. I think I might have the Operation Iraqi Freedom love story . . . "I believe that a relationship involves committing the fullest possible extent of your resources. Shock and awe is good. Exit strategies are bad. You have to have the staying power to eventually worm your way into any lingering pocket of resistance because it's all about winning hearts AND minds, but you can't do that without getting your hands dirty... and piling up massive debt." Maybe I need to work on that. Go ahead, it's sharing time. Tell me your love story. |
| In the Special Kay household, one of our Labor Day traditions is to actually do very labor intensive home improvement projects on Labor Day. Since the weather outside was alternating between raining and pouring, it was just as well we had a project planned. So, starting bright and early this morning, we put in our new kitchen floor. Since this was our third room, and it had only one floor register to trim around, it went relatively smoothly. The biggest challenge involved moving and replacing the major appliances without marring the new floor. Okay, that was the second biggest challenge. The biggest challenge was cleaning under and around all the major appliances. They don't get moved around a lot for cleaning purposes, and it showed. We are trying to get the room picked up and put back together tonight, but we are both kind of pooped from the all day marathon, so I think we've arrived at the moment when good enough is good enough. My job was getting the computer set up again. During the month of September, we will be trying to patch up and paint the walls. There was bead board paneling on the lower half of the wall, and we decided to remove it without fully realizing that it had been put up with generous amounts of adhesive in addition to the nails. So the walls look terrible, but the floor looks awesome. The rest will catch up eventually. Before I call it quits, I have to share this. Yesterday I was at the grocery store trying out the whole "connected to everyone" thing. Well, a woman approached me and asked if I planned to spend more than $40 on my groceries. I was only in the second aisle or else I image the answer would have been obvious, so I told her as much. She pulled out a coupon and handed it to me explaining she would not be able to use it. The coupon was for $8 off a grocery order of $40 or more. I thanked her for the coupon and continued my shopping. So I guess being approachable has its advantages. |
| Borders is closing. Between the economy and business practices that put them behind the curve on the ebook revolution, they are going out of business. I find this very sad since Borders is our one and only local bookstore. Okay, there is a weird used bookstore on Main St., but that hardly counts. I don't think the owners are really that interested in selling books. They just like to collect rare volumes. This is a community that needs a bookstore. I'm really hoping that maybe Barnes and Nobles will move into the space that Borders is vacating. When I was at the beach this summer, I couldn't help but take notice of the island bookstores. The small little island had one store that sold new books and two stores that specialized in used books. One used bookstore had signs up for local writer's group meetings and family game night. Where are these things in my community? There used to be a writer's group around here that met at the library, but apparently they kind of died out for lack of new blood. In any case, the book store seems like a major step backwards for community literacy. I did, however, manage to pick up a few books at the going-out-of-business sale. ****Important Announcement**** We interrupt this blog entry to bring you the following ridiculous quote from television. Tony and the girl-child are watching the show "Finding Bigfoot," and someone on the show just said "Not every Squatch is a rocket scientist." Really? I challenge them to find ANY Squatch that IS a rocket scientist. For that matter, I challenge them to find a Squatch at all. But then... I guess that is the point of the show. Seriously, this goes in my book of memorable quotes right alongside of "We believe this is the first time anyone has attempted to strap a video camera on a wild boar." ****We now return you to the regularly scheduled blog entry currently in progress**** Awhile back I read a book about character development. In the discussion on how to create likable characters, it advised that clever characters are likable, but intelligent characters are not likable UNLESS you give them some major personality flaw to offset their intellect. As I thought back over the books I could remember, this does seem to hold true. Genius is most often prefaced with evil, and intellectual seems to equate with smugness. Hell, "intellectual" has been repeatedly used as a derogatory label in the world of politics, but I don't really get this aversion to smarts. I mean, if a Squatch can be a rocket scientist, why can't the president? Why can't the protagonist in a novel? Well finally, I think I've found an exception. At the Border's sale I picked up a novel by Susan Isaacs. I picked up one of her novels at the library book sale last year and really enjoyed it, so I keep an eye out for her books. Anyway, it seems that she is able to develop smart, cerebral characters who are likable, and manage not to be deeply flawed. Please tell me you can think of other examples of literary smarts. If so, do share! |
| Friday afternoons at work get a little weird, but Friday afternoons before a long weekend can get down right bizarre. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** We briefly entertained the idea of producing a stop-motion animation video, but sometimes less is more - a concept I intend to apply to this blog entry. |
| As I was saying, simple isn't always easy. If you think about it, starting a fire by rubbing two sticks together is a simple, but if you ever tried to do this back in your scouting days, you know it isn't easy. Maintaining the mindset that I am connected to everyone I encounter during the day would be extremely difficult for me. Sure, I'm willing to concede that we are probably all more alike than different, and to some extent we're just going through the motions and clinging to the behavioral baseline we've dubbed "normalcy," but here's the catch, I don't want a connection to everyone. Truth is, I have a pretty strong desire to disconnect myself from large segments of the population. This, I think, is a perfectly natural by-product of shopping at Wal-mart and living in a world were Jersey Shore gets a third season, but Firefly is canceled after just one. Undoubtedly it is this attitude that keeps me from making more social connections. Everything always seems to boil down to my crappy attitude, but in my own defense, being true to who I am is probably better for my physical and emotional well-being than amassing social capital. In the Mythos of Kay ,"I am not a joiner," is right up there with "I can't wear purple ." partyof5   made the astute point that some of us are just loners. I haven't done any research, but if I did, I suspect that eventually the data would show that any health benefits of social connectedness level off if you control for personality factors. In other words, if your network of friends, family and acquaintances meets your individual social needs, you will derive a benefit from that regardless of how large or small that network is. I'm calling it my "size doesn't matter," hypothesis. Truthfully, I have a small group of female friends. These relationships are pretty loose in terms of how often we actually connect, but that's the way I like it. Most female friendships seem to have a lot of rules that I can't quite get down, and I feel like I'm perpetually at risk of offending. It has taken me years to find a core group of women as offensive and therefore, as forgiving as myself. I need to work on my ability to make connections though because eventually I will be moving (possibly frequently), and life might get a little lonely if I don't figure out a way to crack open the doors and let people in a bit more readily. This is something I'm going to try to ease into. We'll see how it goes. Alright, I was going to spin off onto a tangent about connecting on-line and how it isn't enough to show up here either. You can't just throw words out into the void and expect them to connect with an audience. You have to make the effort to read and comment and connect, but I'm ready to move on with this line of thinking. I have a short attention span after all. So purple... what can I say? I was out of work for two days with the eye infections, and went back in this morning. I wore one of my new purple tops. I was sitting in my office when my co-worker Jim came walking up the hall. He stuck his head in my door. "You're back!" he said. "Yep." "Wow... maybe you should have taken another day. You look like you're still pretty sick." "Thanks. I wasn't sick at all though. I just had an eye infection." "Oh. Sorry." So maybe my mom was right all along. |
| Today we will journey deep inside the mind of Kay and examine for a minute those very things that make her tick, or fail to tick as the case may be. You see, on some fundamental level, Kay is utterly dysfunctional. She is a nut job going through the daily masquerade of normalcy. At least this is what she used to believe and it is the sort of belief you shake easily. Have you ever had a dream about finding something you lost in real-life. You wake up thinking "Of course! Now I know where it is!" and then you fall back to sleep and by morning all you have left is this vague belief that it's not really lost. It's just missing and you know where to look . . . not that you do. On some level you know it's bogus, and so you don't look because if you did you'd shatter the illusion. Sometimes the belief that all is not lost is enough. What does any of this have to do with Kay? Well, utterly dysfunctional Kay likes to believe she is a nut job going through the daily masquerade of normalcy because it feeds her belief that - while incredibly dull - her life represents a nearly superhuman victory over her more flake-ish tendencies thus giving her a sense of accomplishment would be otherwise unattainable given her level of hard-won mediocrity. She figures the obstacles overcome into her score like a handicap hoping to come out on par. The thing is, Kay's dysfunction is - all illusions aside - completely and utterly normal. None of us are untouched as we move through life. Everyone struggles, falls, gets damaged -broken even - and struggles some more. Normal is not an act. It reminds me of the old joke "I'm unique . . . just like everyone else." Kay is utterly dysfunctional and utterly normal And this brings us to the meat of the discussion. You see, Kay has been working on a project she was assigned at work. It is a group project for the Agency's annual team building event. Kay's team was assigned the topic of wellness and Kay, specifically, was assigned the topic of social wellness. This is what happens to Kay when she misses the first two organizational meetings. Social wellness? Kay? Hmmmm... So Kay does some homework. This is not hard because Kay has been to loads of conferences and workshops that talk about the importance of "social capital," and "social reciprocity." She can certainly throw together some information about how critical relationships are to one's health. Seriously, the research is all there. People who are socially isolated die at a rate that is 2 to 3 times higher than people who are more socially connected. Kay finds list after list of things people can do to build social capital. Get involved. Participate in community events. Volunteer and help others. Take an inventory of your interests and find ways to connect with the people who share them. There are a lot of ideas, but Kay is not satisfied. There must be something more. Kay knows this because she has tried it. She's gone to the PTA meetings and the festivals and even tried to get involved in church-y things when the kids were very little. None of it took because the cliques seemed so entrenched and Kay, feeling on the outside, always retreated. Not that Kay doesn't have friends, she just sucks at making friends. Most of the friendships Kay has are the result of many years of practical associations. Neighbors, coworkers, husband's friend's wife. Okay so showing up is part of the answer, but it isn't the whole answer. Showing up is not enough. Making a social connection takes effort. Surely there is something in all the research and writing that is (forgive the term) actionable. And this is what Kay finds . . . Along the lines of fake-it-til-you-make-it, comes this little gem. If you want to make social connections, you need to first convince yourself that they already exist. You need to continually remind yourself that you are connected to everyone you encounter throughout the day. Because if you do that, you will feel connected. You will be nicer, friendlier, less shy and awkward. It is elegantly simple, but Kay knows quite well that simple is not easy. Kay also knows that her blogging time is up for the day and this is going to be a two-parter. |
| This morning I woke up to find my right eye sealed shut with an accumulation of crustified discharge. Ick. After applying a compress and prying eye open, I noticed it looked rather red. Not good. I called off work and after repeated phone calls to primary care physician, eye doctor, and the insurance company, I was able to get in to see the eye doctor who boldly diagnosed an infection. He prescribed antibiotic eye drops, but cautioned that if the infection is viral they really aren't going to do anything for me. Hopefully it'll clear up quickly. I hate that gooey-eyed feeling. Today was the first day of school for my kids. There are four school districts in my county, and my kid's go to the only one that didn't close schools today. I asked if they were disappointed, but both of them seemed happy enough to get the first day over with. Tonight when he was getting ready for bed Zack told me "I had so much fun today!" YES! I'm glad the year is off to a good start. I've been tumbling some ideas around for the past couple days hoping for something to gel, but so far that hasn't happened. Maybe tomorrow I will try to articulate the train of thought. Maybe writing it out will help me follow my own thinking to a conclusion. Maybe not. For now though, it is just lose change rolling around in my head, distracting me from what I should be focusing on. Now, I need to get off the computer and finish reading, filling out, and signing the traditional first day of school pile o' papers. |
| Let's just take a moment to reflect on this past week: 1. I averted a major financial crisis. 2. I survived an earthquake. 3. I discovered that my whole life was based upon a LIE 4. I survived a tropical storm that brought almost 6 inches of rain and major winds to the area. 5. I blogged every single day. Seriously, if I can come through all of that unscathed, I must be practically bullet-proof. Bullet-proof, but really tired. I'm probably tired because the wind and rain kept me up most of the night, but since the governor declared a state of emergency, I took certain liberties and declared No-Pants-Before-Noon Day. I did manage to get dressed before I ate lunch though. Later, when the sun made an appearance and the storm appeared to be clearing out, I made a quick trip to the mall. Zack grew over an inch this summer and his school uniform pants were too short (although given the flood waters, that could be a good thing). I know this sounds like something I should have figured out sooner, but if you'll recall, I didn't have money for back to school shopping so I was in denial about the length of his pants. Now he is happily set for school. Of course, we just got word that the first day of school has been pushed back til Tuesday. Turns out the creeks are rising and won't crest until later tomorrow. Also, huge parts of the county are sans power. I think I'll go cook some dinner now before we lose power again, and practice being very, very grateful that we didn't get hit worse. Oh, and while I was at the mall I also bought a short skirt and two purple tops. |
| It is amazing how many things I've held on to and believe just because my mother said them so many times. One of those things that I've been told all of my life is that purple looks terrible on me and I should never wear it. I'm not sure why I believed this so fervently. I know it seems a petty, superficial sort of thing, but growing up as a redhead, I was always pretty much told that greens and blues were the only colors I looked good in and there was quite a limited number of other colors that were even passable. I know black as it makes me look really pale and washed-out, but I wear it any way. I also wear red because I like red, but it probably isn't a great color for me. Yet somehow I drew the line at purple. I don't recall ever owning a purple clothing item. In fact, there have been many times when I've been shopping that I've said, "I really love that dress. To bad it only comes in purple." Which is kind of crazy because I don't dislike the color. So here is the thing I've discovered . . . I went shopping and there was this purple dress on summer clearance. It was my size, and I liked the cut, so I tried it on. It didn't look terrible on me. It actually looked quite nice. I didn't buy it because I decided I didn't like the pattern, but I may have to consider adding purple to my wardrobe in the near future. My mother now has zero credibility. My guess is she's been wrong all this time, and my hair actually does look better long and my skirts probably do look better short. Thank God I figured this out before I turned 40. |
| Every time they talk about Hurricane Irene, I think of the song Come on Eileen, but I mentally substitute Irene for Eileen. So yes, Pennsylvania has preemptively declared a state of emergency in anticipation of massive flooding in the wake of this storm, but at least in my mind, this natural disaster has an upbeat soundtrack. I am stocked up on diet coke, toilet paper and chocolate, so I think we'll be okay. Now we can sit back and speculate about whether the kids will start school Monday or whether the school year will open with a rain delay. On a different note, Friday's at work just keep getting weirder and weirder. This Friday we were creating three dimensional rebus puzzles with crap from our offices. Seems like our offices tend to accumulate all kinds of strange props. Emma still has a police-like hat that was part of a Halloween costume from a few years back. She also has a severed plastic hand. and a really big stuffed Aflac duck. She put the hand and the hat on the duck and asked me to solve the rebus. I guessed "copping a feel." Police hat = cop and hand on duck = feel. Right? Wrong. Apparently the correct answer was HANDiCAPped DUCK. I never was very good at those sorts of puzzles. We got our new kitten today. His name is Jasper, and he and the other animals are trying to establish terms. I was going to post a picture, but somehow I've lost the knack for resizing them so they'll load on wdc. You'll just have to take my word for it when I say he's adorable. Last night I had a dream that I was being recruited as a spy. I told them that half the time my family can't reach me because I've misplaced (or laundered) my cell phone, and didn't think I was cut out for the spy biz. When they persisted, I asked them why they might possible for a second think I would make a decent spy. They told me that was exactly the point. No one would EVER suspect me. |
| I've been a big fan of Pandora for a long time now. I think the music genome project is just amazing. If you aren't familiar with it, they've basically taken huge amounts of music, analyzed it, and broken it into components and all this data and analysis goes into computer algorithms which then predicts and plays music based on your likes and dislikes. The more feedback you provide the system, the more it "learns" about your preferences. Of course, sometimes the results are mixed (check out the ven diagram in this cartoon to see how it all goes wrong http://xkcd.com/668/ ) Anyway, the thing I think is way cool is that the genome project has taken on comedy. What fascinates me most about it isn't the end result of comedy being added to the Pandora library so much as the audacity of the project itself. To quote E.B. White, "Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it." Trying to find out why something is funny is risky business because the analytical process can, by its very nature, render the subject grotesquely unfunny. Plus, it's really hard! Zack went through a phase a while back where every time he said something that made me laugh, he wanted me to explain to him why it was funny. It's tough to do, and maybe that is why I have such admiration for Pandora's undertaking. They are analyzing comedic clips, rating them, and breaking them into humor components. So, for one example, they have an axis for delivery style that has deadpan at one end and manically animated at the opposite end. This makes sense, but how many factors are there? Where is the fart joke factor? I'm really curious. At the end of the day, I think it is all to possible that a comedy clip can have all the key components necessary to align with my preferences, and still manage to just not be funny. Funny is such a nebulous kind of thing. With comedy as with so many things in life, the total is greater than the sum of the parts. But I still look forward to giving it a listen. |
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