In My Copious Free Time

It just LOOKS like a small world

2009-10-08T08:14:14-04:00

Tilt-shift photography is awesome. I don't know quite how it works to take life-size scenes and make them look as if they're the world's most detailed miniatures--it just does. I just came across a terrific example of tilt-shift video. In some places you can tell it's live action because of people's movement (long shots work better), but in many places you'll find yourself thinking, "That can't be real."

Maybe I'm just excited by this because I'll be there in 29 days, in the flesh--and in actual size.

Why are there so many songs about rainbows?

2009-06-25T06:45:00-04:00

I've been doing a lot of iTunes clean-up lately. Serious cleaning - I've deleted about 600 songs and I've done a lot of editing of poorly named or untitled tracks. (Several years ago someone gave me CDs of the Billboard Top 100 for the years 1960-2001, so needless to say I had a HUGE amount of music just from those CDs, which included a lot of stuff I just didn't care about.)

Anyhow, in the clean-up I discovered I have "The Rainbow Connection," so I loaded it onto my iPod that I keep in the car. I played it last night for Alex and he really enjoyed it. When I told him it was Kermit the Frog singing he thought a moment and said, "He's not bad for a frog."

Personally, I think his singing is just average for frogs. His banjo playing, however, is second-to-none in the amphibian world.

I'm Gonna Be (13 Miles)

2009-06-24T08:13:07-04:00

First of all, how awesome is MTV Music? So what if they don't play videos on MTV anymore - they play them whenever I want, on demand, on my computer. Sweetness.

The Proclaimers |MTV Music

Because the new iPhone has built-in Nike + AND I had to get a new sensor since the old one finally died, I decided to start anew on the Nike + website, which syncs run information directly from the phone. Innocuous enough, right? Well, I started playing around on the site, something I'd never done since I never really used it consistently in the first place. I noticed the training programs link and once on that page, there it was, staring me in the face:

HALF MARATHON

In all honestly, it looked more like this:

HALF MARATHON

Imagine that in some spiky font with little heat lines coming off of it, as if it just rose up out of the bowels of hell. Also, imagine it flashing.

It looked big. It looked scary. (I know you're thinking it - "that's what she said.") It looked impossible.*

So naturally, I signed right the hell up.

I usually run 2 miles a day, sometimes 2.5 miles. On a good day, I'll run 5k, but let's face it, I'm not a distance runner. I've run a 10k. Once. So I'm really not sure what I'm thinking or doing**, but it just seems like the thing to try. Or do. Just do it. Do or do not, there is no try.

I'm going to go lace up my shoes and see if I can come up with more hackneyed motivational expressions. In the meantime, if you all never hear from me again, it's because running the first 4 miles was the end of me.

*Actually, it looked like a little, robin's egg blue square. I exaggerate.
**I suspect that a tiny part of this is being inspired as all get-out by Donna Downey's story of becoming a runner (in the midst of losing something like 50 pounds). I used to think I couldn't be a runner, like Donna thought. But now I am. I used to think I couldn't run very far or run something as big as a half-marathon. I want to prove myself wrong.

I want to be just like Cathy Z

2009-06-23T12:46:00-04:00

That's what you'd think, anyway since I'm shamelessly stealing her blog post idea. It's okay though, since she shamelessly stole it from Ali Edwards. And if you don't know who these women are, you should check out their blogs. Both are very talented visual designers and artists.

On with the larceny...

Outside my window... the treetop is swaying in the breeze

I am thinking... about a conversation I had with my boss yesterday and about the housework I need to do tonight.

I am thankful for... Google Reader.

From the kitchen... this is so not applicable to my life, but I will say that the kitchen still smells like the pizza we had for dinner last night.

I am wearing...olive linen pants and a gauzy black top and black flip flops.

I am creating... plans in my head for the scrapbook pages I won't have time to work on tonight.

I am going... to finish this client contract revision today.

I am reading... well, at the moment I'm reading a data report for a client, but the book I'm in process of reading is I Was Told There Would be Cake

I am hoping... that I get everything done that needs to get done before I leave for vacation.

I am hearing... the sound of the a/c.

Around the house... I dunno - it's there and I'm here.

One of my favorite things... cashews.

A few plans for the rest of the week... finish up the work on my desk, get a pedicure, cut Alex's hair (or take him to get it cut), clean house, pack, fly to Alabama to visit my family on Thursday.

Second best check memo ever

2009-06-03T23:39:49-04:00

In David Sedaris's story "Youth in Asia," he relays the story of how his mother sent him a check to cover the cost of having his cat cremated. He writes:

In the left-hand corner, on the line marked MEMO, she'd written, "Pet burning."

Tonight, I got a check of my own.

It's no secret I'm a big fan of David Sedaris. (I'm just going to skip over the not one, not two, but THREE different random lists I've posted that mention him.) Tonight he was at Borders and since Joe left for Minneapolis to visit his brother today, I took Alex with me to the mall for the reading. He started with a new story (one he said he'd never read) about the preponderance of public making-out in Paris. (Aside 1: I really wanted to say "necking" there because "public making-out" seems awkward, but who on earth says "necking" anymore? Aside 2: I thought I'd turned into a prude when I saw all the public making-out in Paris in March, so it was a relief to know that it isn't just me.) He went on to read a fable about a cat who visits a baboon for some grooming before attending a party and then read a bunch of entries from his diary.

The normal Q&A followed and I asked if he had any good books to recommend, and he did, joking that this was going to seem like a set-up since we were in a bookstore and I went along, laughing and saying I'd pick up my check after the reading. During the Q&A, however, he said he had a project that maybe we could help with. "I need a nerd," he proclaimed. He was going to pick someone and then suggested someone in the crowd might be a better nerd-spotter, but then people wanted clarification. What would this nerd need to do? A job description was in order. Sedaris revealed that someone had said they saw him on Twitter ("Tweeter" he called it), but he is not, in fact, on Twitter. He was disturbed that he had an impostor and needed help putting a stop to this and would pay someone $50 for this service. Being a long-time Twitter-er and having one of its founders as a friend (meaning I can send him a direct message), I immediately piped up "Oh, I can take care of that!"

Brash? Probably. But what the hell - I wasn't positive I could fix it, but I was damn sure I could come closer than anyone else there! Sedaris told me to come up and see him after the reading, so Alex and I marched over and waited in the priority line to talk to him.

And yes, my seven-year-old knows who David Sedaris is. He pronounced the whole event "cool" and said, "As far as I know, I'm the first kid in my whole second grade that has gotten to meet David Sedaris." No offense to Sedaris, but I assured him he's probably the only kid in his whole second grade who even knows who David Sedaris is. Sedaris also seemed impressed when he offered Alex some candy and Alex politely answered, "No, thank you." I'm not sure what was more remarkable to him - the manners or the fact that he turned down chocolate.

Anyhow, we had a short conversation about Twitter and what I would do to help him out and suddenly he pulls out his checkbook. I insisted he didn't need to pay me and he insisted that he did, and then Alex chimed in saying, "Let him pay you, Mommy!" So I let David Sedaris write me a check for $50. Then he pulled out a little note pad from a Ritz-Carlton and wrote his email address on it and gave it to me. It wasn't until after I'd left the bookstore that I noticed the memo line he wrote:

Twitter end

Some people would be most excited about the check. Some would be most thrilled over the email address. (Not that I'm not.) Perhaps I'm easily amused, but it's the check memo that does it for me.

From the wilds of the upstairs bathroom...

2009-05-26T12:45:44-04:00

Tara Youknow

Too excited to sleep

2009-05-10T00:35:09-04:00

Tomorrow, on Mother's Day, we leave on a vacation to Walt Disney World that represents a lot of firsts. Our first official stay as Disney Vacation Club members. Joe's first vacation from his new job. When we planned this trip, we were really trying to fit it in between some other work events of mine (which later were rescheduled, naturally). But now that it's upon us, I'm delighted with how the scheduling has worked out. We're leaving on Sunday - this means that on Friday I just had to worry about wrapping things up at work. I didn't have to rush myself through knowing that I had to get home to finish packing, zip over for the traditional pre-vacation pedicure, etc. So Friday ended up being much calmer than I've ever experienced a last-day-of-work-before-vacation day being. That left me (and us) with a full day to wrap up whatever we needed to. We ran errands, finished up the laundry, finished packing at a leisurely pace. And we're returning home on Saturday evening at about 7:30. That gives us Sunday to recover. This couldn't have worked out better if I'd planned it myself. Except that I did plan it myself.

Needless to say, we're all excited. On the way to school earlier this week, Alex made a giddy little sound and said "Oh Mommy, I'm so excited! Four days until Disney!" I asked him what he was most excited about and he immeditaely responded, "The place with the fountains where I get to push the elevator button." Now, keep in mind that the child always gets to push the elevator button. I'm so fully trained on this matter that it isn't unusual for me to get in an elevator and then wait, forgetting that I am "allowed" to push the button. But what was this place he was so excited about? I asked a few questions to try to identify the spot and then he said something telling and (stifling the urge to giggle) I asked "Kiddo, do you mean the parking garage at the airport?"

"Yes!" came the resounding and enthusiastic response. All this effort and expense and the kid's favorite thing is a parking garage.

He then moved on, saying that the night before we left hewas going to say he's too excited to sleep. Of course, this is an inside joke with us - several years ago there was a commercial with two little kids, unable to sleep because they're so excited about their trip the next day to Walt Disney World. When the mom tells them it's bedtime, the little boy says....well, I'll let you see for yourselves...

So that's us. Except that, while I am excited, I am definitely going to sleep! This is another first! I can't remember the last time we went on vacation and I got more than 2 hours of sleep the night before. Sometimes I don't get any sleep given the early morning flights and my packing work. But getting about 5 hours on vacation eve - that's a vacation in and of itself.

And now, excited or not, I'm off to bed!

The payoff of housework

2009-04-18T11:37:07-04:00

I've been cleaning house all morning - lovely way to spend a Saturday, right? I was just straightening up Alex's work table, sorting through school papers to keep and toss and deciding which drawings to save. Lately Alex has been writing more, jotting down short thoughts on a page and then drawing all around them. I just found this one (all spelling and punctuation is his:

If i had war to peace i would end the war in IRAQ and go up to hevan. Then i would save some other people who were sick. And get along with everybody. And make every planet have life.

How did I get so lucky to have such a sweet child?

Feeling at home in Scotland

2009-03-11T19:57:01-04:00

I arrived today in Aberdeen, Scotland for a few days of work (after which I'm on to a few days in Paris - w00t!). Our little group of three went out for some lunch and as we walked out of the pub to return to the hotel, strains of something familiar hit my ears. I could just barely make it out - is was so indistinct that I wasn't sure which direction the sound was coming from, or that I was even hearing it at all. (I have a tendency to hear phantom rings, so other phantom noises surely aren't that far off.) It sounded like an electric guitar, but was I really hearing what I thought I was hearing? As we walked through a courtyard and onto the main street, the sound became not simply clearer, but unmistakable. There I was, on Union Street on a gray day in Scotland, listening to a street performance of a song that made me grin from ear to ear.

The man was playing "Sweet Home Alabama." They might as well have rolled out a red carpet, because I felt totally, cosmically welcomed.

Warming up my passport

2009-03-09T03:18:10-04:00

In 30 hours I leave for a work event in Aberdeen, Scotland. Thanks to some excellent sleuthing by our crack travel person, the best fare was found through Paris and since it's no more expensive to stay over in Paris a few days than to go straight home (cheaper, actually), I'm staying a few days.

It's been a couple of years since my last trip to Europe, and my one day in Paris. If you read the part about the Paris day trip, you'll see that it was short and that the only food I consumed while on the Continent was a single Tic-Tac, which did not stay with me for long. I'm not sure what I regret more - having so little time (particularly at the Louvre) or being unable to eat a single bite of French food. Let me go on record now as intending to correct both of those tragedies.

In preparation for this trip, I got a phrase book and accompanying CDs and I've been practicing my French.

Ou sont les toilettes? ("Where's the restroom?" very important)
Combien ca coute? ("How much?" - also very important!)
Je voudrais la crepe, s'il vous plait. ("I'd like a crepe, please." I plan on saying this frequently.)

And of course, the obvious:

Je suis desole, je ne parle pas francais. ("I'm sorry, I don't speak French.")

Aside from their practical use, these CDs have provided their fair share of amusement. The first time Alex was in the car as I listened, he was terribly puzzled, exclaiming "What IS that?" I told him and he seemed satisfied. I guess the ridiculousness of what he was hearing was too much for his 7-year-old brain to bear, because a few minutes later he asked, "What IS that?" again.

Before going on I should explain that Alex loves to watch "Super Mario Galaxy" tutorial and game play videos people post to YouTube. In the game, when your character dies, the words "you lose" appear on screen. Because he watches videos from people around the world, he's seen this phrase in several languages. Anyhow...the turning point in Alex's acceptance of the language CDs was when the "Emergencies" track began. On of the phrases was "je suis perdu" which means "I'm lost." Alex immediately recognized the word and from that point on he's listened attentively and recited many of the words and phrases along with me. He even greeted Joe with a hearty "Commet allez-vous?" ("How are you?")

There is one thing that puzzles me about these CDs, though. Logic dictates that anyone purchasing such a CD is unfamiliar with the language it covers. It isn't a big leap to assume that the purchaser is visiting a new, unfamiliar place where the language on the CD is spoken. Makes perfect sense, right? So I'm going about my merry business of stumbling through phrases when the phrase "Can you recommend a babysitter?" came up.

Excusez-moi???

What kind of person goes to France with little to no French language skills,and asks a person who is undoubtedly a stranger (one who speaks little to no English, apparently) to recommend yet another stranger to watch their offspring?? I'd tell you what kind of person does that, but my phrase book doesn't cover "stark-raving lunatic."

And now my last load of laundry is done and it's time to get some sleep.