Wait! Come back!

Erm, let me explain this better… I work on the Internet. Yes, it’s legit. Yes, it’s FINE! Okay, one last try – I help build people build websites on the Internet.

(there. sounds perfectly normal).

Okay, I work on the Internet in a great community. If you become a member of the community, and you help people, you get known for your work. Especially for your work. If it’s really good work, you get really well known. You could say you’ve made a name for yourself.

Sometimes this work involves a lot of free work. Yes, work you don’t get paid for. It leads to work you DO get paid for, sometimes quite a bit. And like I said above, if you do good work and people know it, you get recognized and then you’re able to do well-paying jobs for other people.

This is how I got my job today. In fact (since maybe you don’t know me) both my husband and I work from home doing this very thing.

Well that’s all fine and dandy, you may be thinking, what’s this got to do with my kid?

I know your kid.

Yeah, YOUR kid. No! Not in a creepy way! See up there where I wrote about community? You might think your kid spends too much time on his computer, not enough time on homework. Your kid is also spending time helping other people. He’s also working. Yes, it’s a real job for some people, and your kid has done it on his own too. Pretty adult and mature of him, really.

And I know you’ve said to him he has to study hard to go to college to get a good job and make money.. but…
but…

He is.

He has a good job, though right now it’s part time because he has school. He makes good money. Or, at least he could make more if he had more time. There’s a few things he even does better than I do. I’ve seen his work.

He can’t learn this in university or college. Well, some of it he can, and maybe it’d be useful eventually, but he’s learning right now. He’s working right now. All on his own.

You should be really proud.

And lighten up, will ya? He’s a good kid, and he’s smart. Let him take a year off after graduation. I bet he’ll earn enough to pay for at least one year of university – if not two – and maybe by then you’ll see he doesn’t really need that at all.

But mostly? Maybe you’ll see he loves what he’s doing.

So we sat in the Bangor airport for a while, then got hurried onto the plane in record time. Our original flight had been canceled, so we were taking a side-trip to Philidelphia, and then another plane to NY. It was kinda rocky. Spent some time in the Philly airport. It was meh. Angry grumpy people everywhere, but the weather is not the ticket counter lady’s fault, buddy.

Then we walked out onto the tarmac into the wind and some rain to get on the dinky plane. Everyone move on back, there’s only seven passengers and we have to weight down the back. By this time I’m tired and woozy, so  when we are up in the air, rollicking away, and I see the stewardess twirling her hair furiously, then smacking herself in the head – well I just closed my eyes and prayed real hard.

The hotel was this artsy-fartsy one that looked like your crazy aunt with a serious art fetish decided to try her hand at the hotel business, just for kicks. Our room was slightly bigger than the one we have here at home. The bathroom reminded me of one of the later scenes in Sid & Nancy. Had a great view of the alley, and the place was across the street from the Museum of Sex. Welcome to New York.

Morning came far too early, but by the time we wandered to the front door we saw people we knew. So we desperately clung to them… er, I mean tagged along… as they found the nearest Starbucks. The heavens opened and the angel choir sang. We made our way to Baruch college, and I’m glad we had people to walk with, as the buildings are so tall it’s disorienting not seeing where the sun is. I would have gone speeding off confidently in the wrong direction.

So – college halls, crowds of people showing up milling around the registration room, door not open. “HI!” “OMG!” Not enough time, too many people, hot beverages in hand. Doors open, the rush occurs. Find the right table to register at, more hellos and ohmygoodnesses and smiles, big huge smiles all around. Hugs galore.

Ron and I exit as soon as we can, I’m up first and we need some quiet. I get all settled, look at the half-dozen people in the room and panic out loud. “Oh God, I was worried there’d be tons of people in a huge room. What if this is all there is?” no worries, they tell me – Opening remarks are going on, people are still in registration, and fair enough – in about five minutes the room starts filling. And filling.

I pace myself slower than usual only to find about halfway through I need to go way faster. We speed thru the rest. Some people leave, some people arrive, as I have another session hot on the heels of the first one. Then I am done and realize that I’m starving and I need to pee. Ron has enough time to relax before his session, so we find a quiet place to sit. A guy I had been talking to by email joins us to give an overview of his site. One guy pases by and does a double-take back to give me his card (”We’ll talk later!”) and another joins at the end after Ron heads to his presentation.

Ron discovers he has no slides though, and does his presentation off the top of his head, with only his three headings to go by. Miraculously, he manages and people get something out of it. I can’t even remember what we did next, other than talk, but eventually we made it back downstairs for lunch to find most of the food gone. While Ron excuses himself, I stand in line for a coffee with a sandwich for me, and manage to snag a kosher sandwich for Ron. “Here,” I say handing it to him, “you’re Jewish.”

While in line, another person outlines his idea for his site. We find a place to sit and again, we eat while this guy talks. Somewhere in there, someone not in my session mentions they saw on Twitter that my sessions seemed to be really good. OMG, I say to myself, I forgot all about twitter. I hope online and check out the backchannel, following the conference tweets. I blush furiously with no one to see me.

The rest of the afternoon Ron and I attend different sessions, which in hindsight was not a good idea given we had no direct communication between us, and the sessions were scattered between floors 5, 8, 11 and 13. Toss in every time I went somewhere, I found a new person to talk to that wanted to talk to me too.

But finally, we are all aligned, get back with a group and go back to the hotel. We call home & get them to call us right back ($2 right there).

After that, we ditch our coats and go to a bar. Yes, Ron & I went to a bar. We had food though, and more talking, this time with fellow devs, and eventually found out where the rest of the crowd was on the roof. Far less hot & noisy up there. And, you know, it was the roof. Great time on the roof because it’s just our crowd and we can hear. The city is gorgeous, the buildings climbing into the foggy clouds, full with raindrops and mistily blurring the lights up high. It’s picturesque to degrees I can’t even explain. Various big names are leaning on the railing with the NYC light in the background and my camera was back at the hotel. On purpose. I was enjoying the moment and participating in it, instead of capturing it.

But still, even now, one teeny tiny part of me wishes I had captured just one picture. Not just because of any “OMG, I got a picture of Matt/Mark/Andy!” but because it was just so gosh-darn photogenic and would have made and awesome picture.

My voice was giving out and Ron & I were both tired, so we leave early and head back to the hotel to try and get some rest. I fall asleep watching Mythbusters.

Thus endeth the first day.

- fabulous, amazing, awesome, wonderful, grateful, sharing, collaboration, all are fitting adjectives

- i had no idea how many people had read my words. Seriously. you guys, seriously.

- i really am funny, despite what my kids think.

- i did not love NYC like I thought I might. I mean, I *like* it, but I did not love it. It reminded me of Saint john if it had grown that big. I do want to go back though. There’s SO MUCH to see.

The weather impacted our leaving. Flights got delayed, canceled, rescheduled, delayed some more, then a “everyone get to the security gate NOW, this is the last and ONLY call”. We were told we had 15 minutes to be in the air. Then we were told we had to sit on the runway for 40. Then ten minutes later we took off.

Needless to say, that can leave you a little rattled.

The hotel we stayed at was like a guest room at your crazy Aunt Martha’s, who inherited a rooming house and liked art. The gal in the room across from us kept going outside in the hall to talk on her cell phone. The walls were thick. The doors weren’t. Otherwise the beds were comfy.

My presentation went well. I tried to pace myself, but then had to cram in the end. Then I did my second one directly after that. Tons of questions, and later I second-guessed a bunch of stuff and thought of things to do better.

Ron did his off the top of his head. Turns out he had no copies or notes from his presentation. Astoundingly, he got good feedback.

We mostly forgot to eat, split up for a different sessions and spent too much time trying to find each other. The second day was better. We wore our new WordCamp tshirts and both in black pants, so we were matchy-matchy & cute.

ooo! ooo! We went to a BAR! And we hung out on the roof. We threw in the towel at 9pm tho. I was asleep by 11, awake again around 5 or 6. Ron… well, he does not sleep well when we are away. But it was better than the night before.

second day, and it is an unconference based on popular items from the day before. Guess how was requested at the top fo the list??? ME! had a full room for that too.

in between, I talked myself hoarse & tried to stay hydrated. I met a TON of people I had been dying to meet.

other highlights:

- NYC pizza

- walking walking EVERYwhere. look waaaaaaaay up for the good stuff.

- “follow that cab!”

- Empire State building. At the top. At night.

- Canuckistan and I really do have an accent

- geeking out and talking code not on the slide. I think I scared some people.

- mah huzband is awesum.

- my 700+ new best friends are great too

YES: pics coming as soon as I get around to it. I have to walk all the way downstairs to get the cord…

you’ll note sleep is not on that list.

- unschools
- is crafty
- is crunchy in the AP sense (meaning, breastfed, gentle parenting etc..)
- is a low-key Christian who doesn’t go to church
- is near enough to get together face to face occasionally
- is ADD or at least semi-disorganized ;P so won’t mind if I am
- works at home like I do
- works as a WORDPRESS consultant like I do.

Pretty specific list, huh?

Found one.

Seriously, you’d think with all this in common we’d have nothing to talk about, but nope.

The college years

She squeezed out an intro post between school, homework and work. So there ya go.

Personally, I can’t wait for the post she writes while hopped up on chocolate covered coffee beans.

By the time I had Emma and she refused to drink cow’s milk, I had already realized that if I drank milk, she would be fussy. Lactose cannot pass through breast milk, but milk proteins can. It is quite possible she has a milk allergy. It’s only since last year that she’s tried ice cream. And still her older sisters will eat much more ice cream than she will.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to stop putting milk in my tea. To be fair, it’s the only time I have any milk or milk product other than cheese. When I was on Weight Watchers, I was actually astounded at the amount of milk I consumed in a day, even though I had always felt I put very little milk in my tea. Just enough to color it, I’d tell people who were pouring.

So I skipped the milk. And I felt better. maybe it was better sleep, maybe a coincidence, but I kept skipping the milk anyway because I don’t need the extra calories.

Then I had a glass of chocolate milk, which I DO like.

And I had a bowl of ice cream. (neopolitan. stirred until smooth. Like I’ve done since I was little.)

A few days later I was in a LOT of pain in the intestinal area. So much so that looking at the jug of milk makes me feel ill. I am not drinking milk anytime soon. I would like to recover fully before testing that theory again.

Cheese seems to be fine though. Whew.

By “legions of fans”, you know I mean family plus the dozen or so regulars, right?

We went to Fredericton today, so Meaghan could see her older siblings for her birthday, and to see Addison for his birthday. (whew! yes, it’s an all birthday extravaganza. But not really.) Sarah showed up more art and we went to Deluxe to share a fish & chip platter before lunch so we wouldn’t fall over from lack of food or get low blood sugar crankies. Then we went to Fabricville where I spent less than 4 dollars. A quick stop at the dollar store, then we could see Addison & Kaytlyn at his place over his lunch hour. A trip back UP the hill to a clothing store that didn’t have any shirts Meaghan wanted, down the hill to pick up Sarah;s stuff from school, drop her back at her place, and then the long drive home with the sun in my eyes the whole way.

I did clue in the put the visor over to the side window, but every time I put it back in front of me, I leaned over and my hand on the steering wheel went with me. Those quick dives onto the shoulder woke me right back up tho.

When I go to WordCamp New York, I fully expect half the people there to be the ages of my oldest child. Sheesh.

In other news, I moved this domain to a new server, and rolled it in as a second Site on my wordpress mu installation. Doesn’t matter if you get that, mostly it means NEW BLOGS really easy.

Because we all know I need more blogs, amirite?

Seriously, if you’re family and want a blog to pay with in the form of atypicalife.net/yourname/ just let me know. I have a ton of ideas. We’re working on a family food blog called “Never trust a skinny cook”. Meaghan & I spent two hours this morning looking at themes and still haven’t found one we like.

There may be a few wonky things here and there, like my flick pics along the top are gone, and I still need to move a couple of mom’s latest posts over, do up a new landing page for the whole network, but I’ll get it sorted.

Lastly, we backend up my computer and installed a new OS. I was limping along on Fedora Core 6, 64 bit version, which gave me no Flash, no pngs, and the chopiest javascript you’ve ever seen. Now? Oh my. I think I’ll be up half the night zooming thru things.

Kinda lovin’ the husband right now.

More to come – the girls are chomping at the bit to go trick or treating. It’s cold, wet and drizzling out, plus half my scattered neighbours aren’t even home.

Fun times, people. Fun times.

In our daily work day, we use a branch of WordPress called WordPress MU. It has mainly one dev, a guy in Ireland called Donncha. He has a blog here, and a really nice photoblog here. Over the past couple of years both Ron and I have become friends with him, as well as a few other people who work for Automattic, the company that runs wordpress.com (the hosted version of wordpress). They were in Quebec for a semi-annual retreat/meeting and since it was within what we’re willing to drive, we dropped in. (Well, D asked us if we’d like to as well…. we don’t normally go around crashing parties. Though the cookies probably helped.)

Being able to do this?

Awesome.

And this part?

Awesome.

The guy sitting there on the right, if you don’t recognize him, is Matt Mullenweg.

We stood around and talked an awful lot about work. It was pretty epic. There’s something inspirational and motivating about the energy of being around people who truly love what they do. We met a lot of other fabulous people, some of whom said, “Oh I’ll see you in New York, too.”

That’s right – Ron & I are also going to New York in November to speak at WordCamp NYC.

And that’s awesome.

Meaghan and Emma went with us, and Emma handed out quite a few Free Hugs, which everyone thought was awesome. Me getting only one pic of a hug? Not so much on the awesome side.

I know this is a brief post, and I am skimming over quite a few details. Some for privacy reasons, but mostly because I know if I start then I’ll head on over to the Freaking Out portion of my brain.

Like I did when I was telling my mom on the phone Sunday. I can freak out about things after we come back from New York.

Plus? When you meet people you look up to and admire and they say, “Oh, I know you! You’re famous!” well, that is all kinds of awesome.

And more than a little strange.

(NEW YORK! I am going to New York City, in Manhattan, to speak at what is shaping up to be a large conference. WOW.)