Where the line?

Have I created a busy life for myself, or am I engendering chaos?

My day-to-day work is stressful and full...and I often spend the day on the computer, wrenching my brain around concepts, rationales, and budgets.

In my private life

• I bowl on Wednesdays. **Update 2** I'm dedicated to finding us a sponsor for t-shirts this year!
  
• I chair a Board of Directors of the best event in town, the Okanagan International Children's Festival.
• I'm a member of the Board of the networking organization Penticton Women in Business.
• I'm going to be directing a short, one-act play for performance the first week of December.
• I'm helping to organize a local congregation's annual Walk to Bethlehem (a 3-day re-imagining of life in the Ancient Near East, complete with children's pageants and anachronisms).
• I periodically write book reviews.
• I (try to) have a social life.
• I'm presenting at BookCamp Vancouver on Friday.
• Oh, and I'm married, and trying to have a relationship that's more than coffee in the morning.
  

Where can I draw the line? What do I prioritize?

Then there are the things that I want to find time to do:

• Work on my book idea with my buddy who lives in Korea.
• Start work on a MBA.
• Catalogue my movies.
• Spend more time studying French.
• Blog more often.
• **Updated** Organize my photos, make albums even.
• **Updated** Learn to use Photoshop.
• **Update 2** I want to get a conversation salon started in town.
  

It has been an amazing Thanksgiving weekend, where my absolutely perfect turkey was consumed by a small group of close friends. I am grateful for the activities in my life, but I do wonder if I should pare them down.

I would welcome your thoughts and suggestions.

Lori

Cheating or Convenience?

Through the wonders of a Flickr-friend's holiday pictures, I've had an Aha! moment.

I must admit, this picture did not surprise me, instead it made me think: "Of course!!"


Of course there are professional teepee-makers. Why wouldn't there be?

My meeting-addled brain can't think of any parallels in other cultures at the moment...Please help below in the comments!

Lori

Random Questions

...arising from a roadtrip.

In this day'n'age, with the Internet always so there, able to be referenced at a moment's notice, you feel its absence when on the road, in a car. (No, I don't have an iPhone/Blackberry/what-have-you to do this on the road...plus we were traveling in areas without service!)

On our last road trip (this last weekend actually, the pictures are here), Metro and I had a number of questions/speculations. This time, we wrote them down. And now, I'm going to share them with you, because perhaps you'll enjoy them too.

Some were generated purely from the geography:

• Anarchist Mountain in BC's Boundary Country...were there really anarchists there? What's the story?
• Boundary Creek Provincial Park in Greenwood. Check it out. Looks nice.
• Why is the town of Salmo called Salmo? Was there a Mr. Salmo? What did he do?

Some were generated from roadside observations:

• No Tresspassing signs -- does putting one up an prerequisite for being able to actually shoo people from your land? If you don't have one up, can you still oust people you don't want?
• Roadside crosses -- there was an anthropological study done on these (at least one). Look it up. What a weird phenomenon. When/Where did the practice start?
• Fudge as a tourist attraction -- This one has always bothered me. Hell's Gate for years had nothing to do once you got over to the other side other than to buy and eat fudge. Is this just a Canadian tourist stop/trap phenomenon, or do other countries subject their tourists to it as well?

Others just arose from the depth of (mostly) Metro's brain:

• Are there such things as grasshopper breeders?
• What is the difference between an alpaca and a llama?
• What is the story behind the zuccamelon again?

More questions came up, but not when we had paper and pen available. C'est la vie!

We've not gotten around to looking any of these up, so feel free to offer up any resources. Or regale us with your own questions that niggle...

Lori

"Horseshoe Crabs Pile Up For Night Of Whoopee"

Well done, NPR! That's an enticing headline....

All Things Considered has this story today:

On the Delaware Bay shore, there's a swinging party that's been taking place for millions of years.

Those female crabs have this one night a year to, well, be mounted by up to 13 males:

If you're a female horseshoe crab, then it's your night. You'll swim to shore, meet a special someone and he'll clasp onto the back of your shell. You and he will crawl onto the beach together, where you'll spawn at high tide under the light of the full moon.

But the mate attached to your shell is not your only tryst. On this night, you will mate with up to 13 males, all at the same time. Thousands of horseshoe crabs will pile on top of one another, glistening shells covering the beach for miles.

Wow. The mind boggles.

Lori

Where, oh where, has credibility gone?!?

I apologize off the bat for the extraneous punctuation in the above sentence, but I'm trying to express my absolute disillusionment with...how shall I put this?

I'm disillusioned with the people in my workplace whose role it is to guide me...the people who are paid the big bucks to know more than I do. Do I covet their jobs? Good question. Up until today, not really. Oh, down the road maybe, but I'm happy with my responsibility load.

After today, I know I'll be applying to join their ranks the first chance I get.

"But," I hear you ask, "What happened today that changed your mind?"

One word, a neologism of this new Internet age actually, tucked glaringly in a sentence of official government guidance for me to refer to in my day-to-day work: "According to Wikipedia..."

Wikipedia!?!

Since when does a person who is paid to be a credible source of government policy guidance turn to Wikipedia for a definition of a word?

This is wrong in so many ways, I don't know where to begin...except to want to shout "Buy a dictionary!"

In frustration,

Lori

Cancer + Gambling = Feel Good Story

Okay, this does not happen every day:

A Buckinghamshire man diagnosed with terminal cancer is to collect a second winning payout of £5,000 after betting he would stay alive. (BBC News)

I don't really approve of gambling...and I sure as shootin' don't believe in cancer, but the two combined can make a great story.

As the spokesperson from the betting agents points out: "Never in 30 years in the business have I been so pleased to pay a winning client £10,000."

Jon, I hope you make it to next year, and your £100,000 payout.

Lori

Ah, the movies...

I follow a really great online comic strip, Multiplex -- about a group of people who work at a, you guessed it, Multiplex theatre. It's part geek tribute to great films, part on-going 20-something soap opera...usually amusing.

Today's strip just made me laugh aloud. Back story -- the characters always dress up as the characters of newly-opened, big films, like Watchmen.

(Click on the image to see it better.)

I love the look on the long-suffering supervisor's face. Take a look at the previous strip to understand just why he's so long-suffering this week.

And if you haven't seen Watchmen, go watch it. Yes, the book is better, as it always is, but the director was slavishly devoted to the look, the tone and the feel of the source material.

Ask me nice, I may lend you the graphic novel.

Lori

Book Mayhem

I'm torn...I'm appalled to see this happen to books, but also envious, wishing I could stop by for a rummage:

Thousands in scramble for free books after Amazon supplier abandons warehouse

The warehouse, whose lease recently ran out, once contained as many as five million books destined to be sold online.

After the lease expired, he firm running the secondhand book business moved out, leaving it full of books.

Managers of the industrial estate invited people to help themselves so they can free up space at the site.

Do I wish I could be involved in this feeding frenzy? Of course. Would I still be appalled at the cavalier treatment of the books if I were there? Probably not. I'd be hunting for my own treasures.

Ah well. It's too bad I can't join the madness, but I'm sure my husband is pleased!

Lori

Social Media Cat

more animals

This is how I feel sometimes when I'm on Twitter or Facebook.

That's when I know I need to go for a walk.

Lori

Periodic Table of Geek Awesomeness

From Geekologie -- the Periodic Table of Awesoments (as seen by geeks, of which I do claim some allegiance):
(Click on the link above for the full-sized version...and enjoy!)

You'll note that pretty much everything that is great is on the table, with spaces of course for the elements that are yet to be (or be recognized!).

Yours in geekdom,

Lori

You Can Shave the Baby

I wish I could un-see this:

(Source)

Sorry to do that to you.

Lori

Zombies in Austen?

I can't tell if this is a gag, or a real book....so it's here, instead of on my book blog...

From Chronicle Books, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies:

As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she's soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead.

Uh...Okay.

I feel gullible tonight. Maybe I should just go to bed. This will all make sense in the morning.

Right?

Lori

"I'm a Liver, not a Fighter"

Found this absurdity over at Rain's other blog Teenie Manolo, in a post entitled Ovaries of Danger.

Follow the links, to find this adorable little guy:
What every little kid needs, a stuffed liver to play with.

Unfortunately, the Uterus is not so lucky:

The irony of course is that probably many women would love to have their uteruses (? uteri!) recalled...while others would love to have one to play with.

But kids? Who'd have thought internal organ plush dolls be a desirable toy?

Ah well. I've had deeper thoughts on a Sunday morning before, that's for sure!

Lori

Tempus fugit...or shreds?

The Chrono-Shredder (discover via this blog) a very cool clock...if a bit of a fire hazard:

Designer Susan Hertrich describes her clock:

The Chrono-Shredder is a device that reminds us of the preciousness of our lifetime. It represents the passing of time by shredding the days of the year – printed on a paper roll – at a slow constant rate. To shred one day takes 24 hours. There is no "off"-button. As the seconds pass by, the tattered remains of the past pile up under the device…

Imagine waking up in the morning with an enormous pile of shreddies (as my hubby calls them) on the floor...would you, as the designer asks, start counting the finite hours of your day like calories?

Lori

A bit late, but the absurd is eternal

A belated bit of Christmas cheer via microwaves:

Happy Christmas from AKQA

What inspires people to spend so much time on silly projects like this?

Lori

Linguistics -- Funny Stuff

So many English gags depend on the difficulty speakers of other languages have with our language. Part of that is that so many people, from so many countries, study English -- so we have a lot of different accents to make fun of. (But trust me, English speakers are not alone -- every language is made a butt of some joke, somewhere.)

The fact that speakers of many Asian languages cannot wrap their lips around the English liquids /r/ and /l/ is probably the most demonized of any pronunciation problem. I did my BA in Linguistics and taught English as a Second Language for 12 years, 3 of those in Korea, so pronunciation is one of my interests.

Simply put, English /r/ and /l/ are two completely different phonemes -- two distinct sounds. In languages like Korean, what we hear as /r/ and /l/ are allophones of the same phoneme -- essentially the same sound, used in slightly different ways. To a Korean ear, 'pirate' and 'pilot' are the exact same word. Korean has its own complexities, and if more non-native speakers learned it, there would be (and probably are) loads of gags about how we pronounce their language. Hell, they have 3 completely different phonemes for where we would have the /p/ and /b/. [Fascinating stuff.]

All of that said, one of the funniest (and poignant) elements in the movie Team America: World Police (2004) is the characterization of Kim Jong Il of North Korea, especially his song, "I'm So Ronery":



I saw the movie for the first time this week, and had to watch it again last night 'cause it was haunting me a bit.

Imagine my surprise when this morning in my inb0x is a video of a Korean toddler singing "Hey Jude":



So cute, my teeth are melting.

Have a pun day! (Koreans also do not have the phonemes /f/ and /v/, they use sounds similar to our /p/ and /b/ instead.)

Lori

What will 2009 bring?

For me, it's bringing a job shift in 4 weeks. Literally packing up my stuff, and shifting to a different work location -- 4 blocks away and a level of government down. Talk about mixed feelings.

But 2009 is also a year of intentions I have set for myself. Would you like to hear them?

• I will be producing and directing a play. I've decided that I just have to create my own opportunities to direct in this town. (More on that later, as it unfolds.)

• I am going to get more physically active -- just 'cause it is going to happen. Raincoaster is attempting to share her exercise video fetish with me, by giving me a wealth of DVD workout fromage: Cardio Burlesque, Tahitian Cardio, and Belly Dance with Veils, to name just a few. I also intend on getting into snowshoeing, and back into X-country skiing.

• I'd like to go camping this summer. We totally missed out this last year, because Metro misunderstood "I don't like setting up in the dark and dining on lukewarm canned stew heated over a tiny burner, shivering" to mean "I don't want to camp ever" so he proceded to fill his weekends with plays, poker and sailing. What this intention really says is that I intend on filling as many weekends this year with activities my husband and I do together.

• Speaking of activities I'd like to do more of...I want to do more roadtrips, preferably with the hubby. I found this fabulous article on How to Road Trip that includes invaluable rules such as "The driver controls the music" and "No bogarting the Twizzlers"! Reading this just makes me want to go!
  

Here's a piece of open road from one of our recent day trips:


So what are your intentions for 2009?

Share with us, we'd love to know!

Lori

Proper Citations

Always important, especially on the Internet. (Or is it more, people should be just damn careful what they believe on the 'net!)

Found a good source of alternative source citing. Here's a sample:

Tattoos

When citing tattoos or other body art/text:

1. List the part of the body on which the tattoo was seen.
2. Name the person sporting the tattoo (if known).
3. Identify the location where tattoo was observed (if known).
4. List the date the tattoo was observed (if known).

Example: "This End Up." [Left Buttock, Unidentified Male Dancer; The Loading Zone Bar, Halsted Street; Chicago, Il: January, 31 1998?]

Have I ever told you the story of my one great regret?

I was drinking with the boyfriend-of-the-time in a bar and a couple of Australian sailors in Seoul, South Korea. One of the sailors, full biker beard and a prodigious ability to drink, started showing me his tatts.

Geishas on his shins...Some word on the inside of his lower lip....The usual stuff on the arms.

He then dropped trou and showed me the animals (?) on his butt cheeks.

And the tattoo on the head of his penis.

My regret?

To this day, I can't finish the story. I can't tell you what the image was, 'cause I was a little, uh, taken aback.

What goes through a guy's mind to get a tattoo there? Anyone got any insight?

Cheers,

Lori

Uh...Merry Christmas?!

Found this delightful holiday fun over at the Sneeze.

That alone should warn you.

What? Don't know the Sneeze? He's a delightfully twisted, intermittent blogger with a long-suffering wife, a precocious child, and a younger Lil' Sneeze who, so far, is not quite demonstrating much of any father-inherited oddness. (Do not read his Steve, Don't Eat It! series while drinking coffee, as you will laugh it out your nose!)

Anyway, here's a holiday video from a friend of his, Tom:



Oh, Santa!

Lori

What's Your Story?

I ask the question when I meet people...usually when I'm tired of the more normal "So, what do you do?"

Gads. I hate that question.

But, guilty as charged. I will ask it at networking functions, etc., mostly because I want to know. I would prefer to ask "So, where do you fit in the Space/Time Continuum?" but that nets me weird looks.

The time comes though, when I feel like daring someone to really tell me something interesting. So, I'll ask "What's your story?"

Most people just take it as a new way of answering the what-do-you-do question. They look a bit confused, then they tell me they work here, do that, what-have-you.

Not this guy. UncleWeed was introduced to me by Raincoaster at a DTES event. I had no connections at this thing, so I was not in networking mode. I wanted amusement, but wasn't expecting it here.

Until I asked UncleWeed the question. I suddenly, and for the first time since I started asking the question 10+ years ago, got a story. And for your enjoyment, you too can listen to the story on his latest podcast: the Taos Hi-Jacking Incident. (If you're feeling impatient, jump to around 8 min 30 sec for his reaction to my question, the story truly starts at around 15 min 30 sec.)

He understates how excited I was at the gift of the story...the unexpected, fantastic glory of being taken literally. Seriously though, doesn't everyone have at least one great story?? What's yours?


Happy Holidays,

Lori