Boulder is Beautiful, But Moreso When My Friends Show Up!
June 20, 2008
Last night I was lucky enough to get a ‘hallpass’ from GeekDaddy who readily agreed to handle Buttercup on a solo basis while I drove my happy butt up to Boulder during rush hour.
The trip was relatively uneventful - except for the usual gridlock on I-270 that could be written off to a stalled semi last night. Which of course put me in to Boulder 20 minutes later than I planned. Luckily for me, the wonderful Erin Kotecki Vest (@QueenofSpain) who I was picking up for a working dinner was also running late!
I arrived at her hotel room to be whisked into a quick hug followed by a 20 minute session of the two of us attempting several solutions to resolve an issue caused by a gorgeous blouse that happened to have cleavage down to her belt. The solution I had proposed prior to Erin’s trip turned out to be a torture device that did nothing to lift, support, or shape and are not something I recommend you repeatedly remove and reapply to an area as sensitive as the one they are designed to be applied to.
After discovering that even with two of us alternately lifting, seperating, taping, retaping ad nauseum we weren’t ever going to be able to make this work, we moved on to new options. The safety pin acquired from the Hotel’s sewing kit was not sufficient on its own, no matter how positioned. In the end, we conceded and I just sewed her into the blouse attaching it to her bra… which amazingly withstood the entire night’s activities and only made us 30 minutes late for dinner.
Fortunately, we were dining with an amazingly understanding group of people who appreciated the efforts fully. We sat down to some of the best tapas I’ve ever had at the Med which I followed up with a caesar salad and a slice of the Speziata Pizza (Extra virgin olive oil, roasted garlic, grilled chicken, sautéed jalapeños, chili flakes, cilantro, fontina & avocado) that was simply to-die-for. The only thing that outdid the food was the company at the table. Which is all I can tell you without having to kill you, because it was a ‘working’ dinner as I mentioned…
Afterwords, we attempted to move to the Rio to meet up with more folks from Twitter, only to discover that they weren’t really that interested in having our business, so at the suggestion of the wise Micah Baldwin (@micah) we relocated to the rooftop of the Lazy Dog on Pearl St. and twittered it to everyone and sundry.
Not surprisingly, there were many folks in the Denver/Boulder and surrounding areas who wanted to meet both Erin (@QueenofSpain) and Aaron Brazell (@technosailor) who were both in town to meet with Lijit. I know there’s no way I could ever list them all, (or remember them all for that matter because there were folks there I never got a chance to talk to,) but here’s a partial list of some of the amazing folks I got to spend time with last night:
@QueenofSpain, @technosailor, @zsazsa, @DaveTaylor, @micah, @tarable (and her way cool BF Adam), @Penguin, @AnnePMitchell, @DaveWebb, @MotherGooseMous, @Greeblemonkey, and @KristieMcNealy with her adorable son who stole the show… along with more than a dozen others I am of course spacing out right now!
All in all, I had a marvelous time with some incredible people - but I also realized something about Social Media that I consciously ‘knew’ but didn’t really understand until last night. Social Media has allowed me to really connect with some of the most amazing folks on levels I haven’t on the internet until now. I’ve met tons of people on the internet - and some I’ve known for years - but in the past, meeting them still held a certain amount of trepidation. But last night was just like moving friends into realspace. I didn’t feel like I was getting to know people, just finally getting to hug them in person.
Reality Check
June 16, 2008
It’s 10 o’clock on a Monday night.
I’m sitting here watching Unbeatable Banzuke on G4 with the husband and Twittering a bit… thinking about going to bed early and actually sleeping a full night…
Then I realize that I’m also actively avoiding thinking about my blog. That’s because it’s sitting here, mocking me with the fact that I promised myself I’d write today and didn’t.
Yes, yes… it mocks me. What? Your blog doesn’t mock you? It doesn’t sit there calling you a sissy because you can’t spend a few minutes typing to get something from inside your brain out there into the world? Hm. Maybe I need to lighten up on the allergy medications.
Honestly, though… I resolved over the weekend to turn over a new leaf when it comes to this blog. I need to quit having half-written impulse drafts sitting around waiting for me to finish them. I need to write something other than “um… I’ll write something soon.” I need to realize that this is MY blog, not the other way around. I can bend it to my will. I can use it to communicate and to expound and to ruminate!! (Take that thesaurus!) I just have to quit being afraid of it.
That’s right, I just admitted that I’m afraid of my own blog.
Before you start wondering if you should contact GeekDaddy and see about getting me a psych-eval for the voices in my head and fear of inanimate/virtual objects, let me explain.
When I started this, I didn’t know what I really wanted from it. I’ve blogged regularly for 8 years. This was just another arena to me. But I’m finding that I want to actually craft this. I want it to be something worth reading when my friends and random strangers click thru to it. And in order to do that, I need to start writing for real. Not just tossing off a post every so often to keep from feeling guilty or to blow off steam.
And that means that I need to start living up to my blogging potential - and I always get this chill up my spine when someone uses the phrase “living up to my potential” - I see myself as 70-something, living alone, mad as a hatter with a bunch of cats… and there’s someone shaking their head and ‘tsk tsk’ing as they say “she never really did live up to her potential.”
So yeah. I suffer from performance anxiety like everyone else - but I describe it a bit differently than you might.
Doesn’t excuse me from following though with my resolution. I’m planning on implementing sort of a ‘batch processing’ system as described here on problogger.net but in my own usual scattered kind of way. I would’ve started today, except that I was “batch processing” the grocery shopping instead.
I’m trying to implement a number of changes in my life simultaneously. Yes, I know they say it doesn’t work as well that way, but it’s the only way it’s ever worked for me. Change everything at once rather than putting anything off. So I’ll be blogging more regularly and hopefully with more of a focus… I’ll be attempting yet again to lose weight and get in shape. Unfortunately, I’ve got further to go with that than I did last year at this time - but that’s another post. I’ll be working on a number of opportunities that I hope will be leading me in a direction I want to go careerwise once Buttercup is back in school.
I hope you’ll continue to join me as I throw all the knives up in the air and hope I can juggle them successfully without too much bleeding… if anything, it should be interesting to watch.
So I’ll see you tomorrow… which is, after all, the first day of the rest of our lives.
Tweaking Again…
June 9, 2008
Okay, it’s still a standard WordPress template - and yeah, I’ll get around to customizing the site sometime this Summer with something professional - but I was going nuts with that light grey text on the last design because it hurt my eyes.
Besides, I had to get the new logo in the banner and this seemed like the most compatible setup.
Now, if only I could finish one of the posts in my drafts folder finished so there were more content, eh? Yeah, I’ll work on that too - but Buttercup has been sick since Friday and that takes precedence over everything else.
Something soon tho, I promise!
Well, At Least She Learned Something in Pre-K This Year!
June 4, 2008
The following exchange happened earlier this evening…
(Buttercup, with crayon in hand, writing on a manila folder)
Buttercup: “Mommy, what’s the next letter in ‘the’? I’ve got T-H.”
Me: “E, honey.”
she writes an E
B: “Mommy, how do you spell ‘egg’?”
Me: “E-G-G, honey.”
writes it
B: “Mommy, how do you spell ‘by’?”
Me: “B-Y, Buttercup…”
writes it and starts writing her name
Me: “I’m guessing you know how to spell your name…” smiling.
B: “Yes, but Mommy? How do you spell ‘illustrated’?”
I burst out laughing in surprise
Me: “Um, that one is a little longer honey.”
Yes, she actually had me spell the whole thing out for her and wrote it on there… but wow.
I mean, I realize they talked about that sort of thing at school, because we spent a month singing the praises of “Eric Carle” and “Leo Lionni” but I wasn’t expecting ‘illustrated’ to come out of her mouth just then.
Kindergarten should be fun next year!
