Wider world – Page 6 – My Truant Pen

Never say never

Fashion-wise, my life is an interesting synthesis. Clothes were not very important to me growing up. In fact, I recall distinctly that being enormously unstylish was a great way to drive my sister nuts. There was one particular hideous orange shirt I wore for years because she couldn’t stand it. In junior high one of my favorite outfits was an ankle length black skirt (with black keds from Payless — I don’t remember the sock color and blanche at the thought because I don’t think I owned black socks), a white turtle neck and my volleyball windbreaker (black, with white and green writing) over it. Stylin’. Through high school I regularly wore the light blue sweatshirt with puff paint displaying a winter scene with a dominant element being St. Bernards rescuing skiing penguins. It had a little plastic penguin charm, if memory serves. Towards the end of high school I started getting fancy with black slacks and jewel-colored silk shirts, and began to wear jewelry like a trumpet pendant. And, well, the trumpet pendant. (Oh Lord, let me have had black socks! Tell me I didn’t wear all this black with white socks!)

Fashion was never very important to me. I liked to dress up and look pretty, but invested hardly any effort or money in doing so, most of the time. I had rather baroque ideas of what pretty was. I generally wore very long skirts, not feeling comfortable that I could pull off/knew how to wear short skirts. I never wore heels or makeup. Anything I did wear, barring outside examples, was liable to be put to the same rigorous use (see also: hiking, tree climbing, river fording) that was my normal activity during those days. Yes, even (or especially?) on dates.

Me in the middle - probably my nicest outfit at the time

So through the most socially insecure times of life I generally dressed entirely pragmatically, with an emphasis on St. Bernards.

Then I went to college. I met this GUY. Eventually, I figured out this GUY had parents, who lived very far away and therefore weren’t particularly relevant. However, as we got seriouser and seriouser I began to realize that when you get married you get these things called in-laws. Finally, I met my mother-in-law.

Fashion-wise, she was diametrically opposed to where I was. Here I was in baggy jeans and a t-shirt. She was wearing more jewelry than I’d ever owned and was immaculately dressed in something extremely stylish. I seem to recall leopard print. Gradually, oh so gradually, she got to work on me. First it was a few summery dresses from Thailand. Who can say no to summery dresses from Thailand? Then it was some sweaters. They were nice sweaters! Then she helped me out when I needed to clean my closets. Closet cleaning is always easier with someone else.

Easter - apparently the camera adds wrinkles. I don't have those!

By the time Grey was born, when she came to visit we were having regular sessions of “What Not To Wear”. She’d bring me an item of clothes that pushed my boundaries a bit. Maybe it hugged where I was used to baggy. Perhaps there were colors that weren’t in my standard palette. Possibly it was a little more stylish than I was used to. And of course, every time she came to visit there was a new piece of jewelry for me. Yeah, I know. I suffer. And she’d point things out. Did I notice how the fit on this dress was baggy at the bust? How about how this one caught at the hip? She wouldn’t let her aged mother out in public in those shoes: why would she let her beautiful daughter-in-law? (All the training is accompanied, I should add, with copious praise.) The clothes got better fitting and more fashionable. The shoe selection got more diverse. The jewelry got bigger.

I started to catch on — to see the fun of wearing things that look good and fit. I learned to match the elements of my increasingly extensive wardrobe together. I figured out what MY style was and communicated it back to my mother-in-law, who promptly helped me focus in on those areas. (For example, I own nothing with leopard print.) I started having fun with it.

Thanksgiving - I take the pictures so I'm rarely in them

Yesterday we went shopping together, and I crossed a milestone. You see, for years I’ve declared all capri pants strictly out of bounds. Why? I’m not entirely sure except that I’d never worn them. But yesterday she found a pair with this really cute embroidery, and urged me to just try it on. What could it hurt? Well, she was right. They’re adorable, comfortable and fit beautifully.

I swore I’d never wear capris. Never say never.

I still think I’m in the sweet spot. I now know enough about fashion to be able to present myself in the way I choose, and to feel really good about how I look most mornings. But I also still have that early sensibility, of practical over fashionable. I don’t value myself or others based on clothing, or the state of a manicure. I don’t feel unsightly because I haven’t put makeup on. I’m not dependent on my external appearance in order to feel ok about myself — I know that’s not what matters. But neither do I rule out the entire arena of clothing as something other people do.

My current style vs. functionality in a nutshell

PS – In case you love the original jewelry my mother-in-law has made for me, she does sell her work. Here’s a gallery of some of her recent creations

Launch all zig for great Justice

In the fine tradition of mommy bloggers everywhere, I made a few cryptic posts in online forums (see also: facebook, twitter) where I said things like “Justice’s life as an indoor/outdoor cat just likely came to a close. $500 later….” and “Justice is missing. I’m guessing someone has taken him in. Time to canvas the neighborhood.” and “Good news: Justice made it home. Bad news: his leg looks broken. At the animal hospital now with an unusually quiet and calm cat.” and “$500 later, the news is not so good. Looks like multiple fractures & torn tendons.”

Then, of course, I was silent all day. Well, here’s the full scoop.

Justice is an indoor/outdoor cat. For years he was an indoor only. The thing is, he’s super duper social. He was literally going berserk before we got a second cat, and even with a playmate, he still seemed really unhappy inside. A few years ago, cognizant that this was likely a trade-off between quality and quantity of life, we started letting him out. And he’s loved it. The other day we were walking in the neighborhood when one of our neighbors, whom we’d never met, called out, “Hey! It’s Justice!” Justice loves people, attention and scritches. He follows us on walks. He’s a dog in a cats body, and extremely popular.

Usually, he’s great about showing up at mealtimes. Once in a while he misses one, for reasons I’m not aware of, but shows up again promptly. He’s gone missing a few times, and he’s usually been “taken in” by someone entranced by him. One woman accused us of letting our pregnant, declawed cat wander loose. HE may have needed a diet, but he’s actually a great hunter (too good, really, he keeps catching squirrels) and has a fully functional set of claws, as my stairs attest.

But last night when we came home, he wasn’t waiting at the steps. Yesterday morning, when we woke up, he wasn’t strolling in looking non-chalant. (Note: he is of course fixed.) And then yesterday, after a very long day, when I got home he still wasn’t there. I called and called at the door. (Thane chimed in, which was cute but a little heartbreaking.) I had to wonder if he’d been permanently adopted by someone, despite his collar and chip? If he’d fallen afoul of a coyote or a car? Just as I was prepping to go call through the neighborhood and see if anyone had seen our local celebrity, I heard the tinkle of his bells. Slowly.

Justice and Grey meet for the first time

From under the car there emerged a familiar figure. (He likes hanging out under the car.) But only three of his four legs were touching the ground. He looked quite bedraggled and ungroomed. And he had a serious air, quite unlike him.

I got him inside and took a look. The angle the leg was at looked anatomically improbable. 8 pm. I heaved a big sigh and called our vet, who had information on a local 24 hour animal clinic on the phone. Justice and I, and my husband’s Kindle headed out to spend a long quality evening in a vet hospital waiting room.

The vet said that yes, it was broken. The X-rays show that he fractured multiple tarsals and snapped the tendons in his leg. He’ll never have normal use of it again. We’ve splinted it, and he’s in a cast for 6 to 8 weeks. (Note: cat in a cast = very pathetic sight.) But he’s eating. He looks tired, but ok. He’s still trying to move around, and he’s purring and interested. Hopefully the damaged joint will fuse. It will never be as strong as it was. He’ll probably always have a limp, but cats are very adaptable.

We’re not really sure what happened. I suspect it took a great deal of grit for him to get home — I’m grateful that he did. The vet said it didn’t look like anyone hit him with a car. Most likely his leg got trapped, and it was the weight of his own body that did the damage. So I guess we’ll see how this turns out, and how he recovers.

Constantinople, not Istanbul

Today I bought tickets for Istanbul.

In August, my husband and I will have been married ten (10) years. That seems momentous somehow. How can I possibly be old enough to not only be married, but to have been married a DECADE. So although this isn’t the time of life of the greatest free cashflow (hello daycare!) sometime last summer I decided that we would go.

In our decade of marriage, we’ve really had three kinds of travel vacations: family, beach and exotic. Family speaks for itself. That’s our backpacking, trips to Victoria, hanging out in Atlanta, etc. That usually happens once or twice a year, although perhaps not this year. Beach? We’ve made three of those. We went twice to Cozumel, Mexico — once before we had kids and once when I was pregnant with Grey. We really like snorkeling. When I was pregnant with Thane, we went to Belize to snorkel there, which would’ve been more fun if I hadn’t been wrestling with a herniated disk.

Three times, we’ve done “exotic” travel. When Grey was about 6 months old, we went to London because I’d never been and because (I think really) I wanted to prove to myself that my life of adventure wasn’t over because I’d procreated. Grey threw up about 6 times a day every day we were there. We have not traveled internationally with kids since. For our honeymoon, we went to Greece. We spent two? Three days in Athens? Then another blurry 5 or so on the island of Aegina, discovering that we liked snorkeling together and could be entirely content with a schedule that had us both reading two books a day. Then, in 2004, we went on a trip that was the best week of my life. We went to Vienna for a week. Ah! What can be said! There were museums and weapons and friends and Hungarian Goulash and alpine meadows and fortuitous pfeiffer-steak and it was just the best week I’ve ever had. We took a train through the alps to Vienna, because I had longed since my sophomore year of college to gaze up at the glimmering tongues of flame of the Pentecost, writ in gold, on the mozaic-strewn St. Marks, where Giovanni Gabrieli wrote music to fly over the heads of worshippers. And we did. We stood in St. Marks and heard music and saw mosaics and it was amazing.

We have figured out, with this scope for comparison, those three exotic and three beach vacations, that the journeys of the mind (and museum) are more worthwhile. Beach vacations are fun. It’s enjoyable to read and relax and snorkel. But it’s like the difference between candy and a meal… the nourishment of the other travel is so much greater. It may not give quite the quick hit, but it’s worth it.

On reflection, the destination for this adventurous 10th anniversary trip was decided by a pair of books, the Sarantine Mosaic series by Guy Gavriel Kay. I read them in Victoria last summer. In college I’d taken a course in Early Christian and Byzantine Art, and amazingly we’d studied Byzantium as part of it. I’d loved it. I drank it in. I dragged my new husband to every church I could find in Athens, including quite a few that were by no definition Byzantine. These two books really touched on an authentic feeling of what it was to be Byzantium (although it’s a fictional setting, it’s clearly Byzantium. I highly recommend the series. Keep your eyes open for Procopius!) And I wanted to dig deeper, and drink more fully from that history.

So it came together — a journey to a place of great history and depth. Byzantium. Constantinople. I want to stand in Hagia Sophia, great wisdom, and see what she has become and imagine what she once was. My husband has placed a vote for The Sinking Palace. We’ll be staying at a hotel that overlooks the Bosporos. I’ll likely bring along the Iliad, and perhaps we’ll make a day trip to Troy.

Can we catch lightening in a bottle? Can anything ever be as amazing as Vienna was? I don’t know, but it seems like there’s no better place to find out than Constantine’s New Rome.

Amsterdam

So here I am in Amsterdam, completely jetlagged. I’m spending two days in The Netherlands before flying to Strasburg and driving to my final destination in France. The recommendation I had from those experienced in this particular trip was to catch what sleep I could on the plane over, and then NOT SLEEP as soon as I could get into my hotel room. I’ll go to sleep tonight and then I’ll be more or less on the correct time zone.

So a coworker and I, fresh off the plane, wandered Amsterdam today. Friday was apparently the Queen’s birthday, the proper celebration whereof requires massive amounts of beer. The remainder of the weekend was then dedicated to the pursuit of cleaning up all the mess inspired by the beer. So we wended our way past canals full of boats down picturesque cobblestone streets, gazing at all the interesting shops that were closed because it was 9 am on a Sunday morning. A cold rain is falling — a rain for which I and my wardrobe came completely unprepared.

We pondered going to one of the big museums, but a line of umbrellas stretching around the block, very much like the line of Nannies in Mary Poppins, combined with cold blowing drizzle and extreme jetlag, dissuaded us.

Of course, everything’s going to heck in Boston without me. Without my calming presence, the water lines go all kerfluey and break and the entire city of Boston and environs is under a boil water order (yes, that does include my family). My eldest son has contracted a truly nasty cough, which apparently kept him and everyone else us last night, running hot showers (with untreated water…) and applying Vicks. I’d feel more sympathetic, but even with the disruption in sleep they’ve gotten far more than I have. Then again, I figure I have to stay up another 3 hours or so… they’re just starting their day.

It is an odd feeling, to have woken in the morning on continent. To have played frisbee on the town square and eaten a snack at your own table, and in the space of the same waking day — the same change of clothes — to be so very far away in a land where everyone rides bikes and canals are more common than left turn lights in Boston.

I’m not sure how much time I’ll have to keep updated. Sadly, although my meetings will be happening far from their usual locales, it may have less of the local flavor than you might wish. That’s a short way of saying that on Wednesday, we’re going bowling.

But my room has a lovely view of a canal, with house boats and ducks. From where I sit, you can see a turgid, modern windmill on the horizon. The wind whips past my window, but it’s warm in here and I feel infinitely better after a post-flight shower. Tomorrow, we meet with our colleagues here, and then fly that hour South to begin the serious rounds of meetings. And I have slides to Powerpoint before I sleep.

Tax day

So today is sacred to the Doing of the Taxes. I have to admit, taxes are super-un-fun for me because we often end up owing money. Very large chunks of money. Amounts of money that could be a lot of fun in other circumstances. So I have all the joy and happiness of doing taxes just so, at the end, I can have the thrill and fulfillment that come with writing a Very Large Check to the federal government.

So imagine my chagrin and disappointment when I logged in incorrectly to my tax website (which I use, you know, once a year) too many times and they told me I’d have to wait 20 minutes before logging in again. Oh, horrors! Despair! And I was so looking forward to it!

On a completely unrelated note, I can’t figure out why it takes me all day to do taxes, can you? Nope. Boggles the imagination.

So for today’s offering you get a completely unrelated and random grab bag of Stuff I’ve Been Thinking About. All of which may or may not get written in 20 minute interstices between incorrect logins.

Thing 1
So for several weeks now, my husband has been talking about his “Secret project”. He’s had this box that he works on that I’m not allowed to see. He spent many an evening in pursuit of his secret project. I was getting the distinct feeling I was about to be seriously outclassed on Valentine’s Day. Desperately, I bought some Hazelnut Lindor Truffles and hoped for the best.

Well, he gave me half a dozen red rozes, and a box of chocolates from Fine Chokolader.

Here are the roses:

A closeup:

Aren’t they lovely? I was taken completely by surprise by his hard work and the gorgeous outcome. Then he showed me the rest of the box — all these practice runs and different flowers. It was hours and hours of effort. It is gorgeous. And best of all, these flowers won’t wilt or fade. Thank you, love.

Thing 2 – the Olympics in Vancouver
When I was young and still learning how the world works, my family took a trip to Vancouver BC for Expo 86. (Funny, I could’ve SWORN it was Expo ’88, but the internet must know better than I!) This was a huge deal to my young mind. I remember distinctly the amazement at having my passport stamped by all these countries (or, er, their booths as the case may be). I remember the robot taking a picture with us. It was hot, I recall. And Vancouver was this mecca of excitement — the most important place on earth at that moment! (Or so it felt.)

I suspect my opinion of the importance of the World’s Fair was greatly affected by growing up in proximity to Seattle. If you heard about he history of Seattle, which I did rather ad nauseum growing up, you couldn’t miss the importance of the 1962 World’s Fair in taking a provincial town and turning it into a world class city proud of itself and its accomplishments. It was for the ’62 World’s Fair that Seattle built the Space Needle. My father was a Boy Scout volunteer for those games. It was, and still is, a Big Deal.

Finally, for the last couple years my husband and I have vacationed across the straight in Victoria. Which, for the record, is totally not like Vancouver. But I have a sense of fellow feeling, of “I’ve been there!” that makes the entire thing even more fun to watch!

OK, the tax software has finally let me in, so I suppose I should have at. Watch this space for more procrastinatory dialogue AND/OR bonus whining about having to pay more than was withheld.

(Note: I’m actually philosophically delighted to pay taxes. I generally think they’re a great idea, although my confidence in the system has taken a bit of a hit lately. However, that doesn’t prevent me from whining about it.)

What I learned from my job hunt

So as has become abundantly obvious, I just finished a successful job hunt. This represented the first time I’d actively looked for work in over 9 years. (I was poached for the position I had last. Ah, 2003!) I was intrigued by some of the things that were different now than I remember, I learned a few things, and I got some feedback. I figured that maybe what I learned would be a little helpful.

I should mention that my experience was highly influenced by my location and skill set. I live in Boston, which is a pretty darn good job market. I have a highly technical background with 10 years experience divided between pure programming and project management. For this market, that seemed to be a selectively in-demand skill set. I’m not sure if my advice applies if you’re coming out of finance or manufacturing, however. So your mileage may vary.

1) The jobs available are not online to be found. YOU have to be online to be found. I would say that 80% of the jobs for which I was well-qualified were NOT on any of the job boards. Right now, hiring departments are getting ground down under the weight of all the people who say they’re sending out hundreds of resumes and not getting any responses. In order to counter this, tons of companies who have jobs are not willing to post them on their website or on Monster.com. They simply don’t have the resources to wade through the flood of resumes, 95% of which will not be suitable, that they’ll get if they post anything.

So instead, they are calling recruiters. The recruiters aren’t posting any but the hardest to fill positions. They’re trolling Monster and Dice for resumes. The jobs they’re calling about, you cannot find by yourself. So if you are looking for a job, your first step is to make sure your resumes are on the job boards and are up to date. Change them regularly to look “active”. Be extremely polite to recruiters, and if they call for a job that doesn’t work, let them know what you ARE looking for and ask if they have anything else that might suit you.

Early on, there was a posted job I was extremely excited about. It sounded right up my alley. I applied through proper means. I did research and figured out the email address of the would-be-boss of that position. I used my network to find a back door to get my resume in. I got absolutely NO feedback from any of these three methods. I’m guessing they had either filled it or were just swamped. But the recruiters have consistently called with interesting positions that weren’t anywhere else, and they could only find me because my online information was relevant and up to date.

2) Think hard about your acronym set. I’m a programmer, and my resume is pretty much a laundry list of acronyms. How it works when they’re deciding to interview is that there’s a set of acronyms they need, a set of acronyms it would be cool to have, and the set of acronyms you offer. You almost always have to match the one or two they NEED, and then the rest are a bonus. Initially I was all over my main ones: Coldfusion, SQL, FLEX, Javascript, CSS, HTML, AJAX. I was taken by surprise about which one actually made a big difference in how my resume was approached: SAAS. That stands for Software as a Service. It’s not a technology. It’s not a methodology. It’s really how technology is delivered. But for recruiters, it was an important acronym to match up. For some hirers, they were excited that I had a background in that, since it apparently said something about my background and experience I hadn’t realized. So look around at what you do. There may be some descriptors you haven’t considered that are assets.

3) The interviews you bomb are your chance to get better. I like people. I like learning new things. Interviewing (you’re going to hate me now) was actually a lot of fun for me. Even if you don’t get the job. Even if you totally and completely blow the interview, it is a fantastic opportunity for you.

The first interview I went on, I blew a bunch of highly technical questions, and it turned out that I wasn’t a great fit for their open position. But I consider that interview a total win. Here’s what I did to make it a win.

Make friends with the interviewers. You may not match that position, but what about the next one? Or maybe the next company they’re at? Or if you’re ever in a position to hire? Interviews are really a fabulous opportunity to grow your professional network, and shouldn’t be passed up. Plus, it’s a joy to meet new people and get to know other people who do similar things. Look at it that way, instead of being adversarial.

Never make the same mistake twice. In that interview, they asked me what I knew about the HTTP protocol’s various methods and to discuss the HXTML specifications and how they were different. I had No. Clue. I got as far as “get” and “post” for HTTP (after having to think for a minute to remember what it stood for!). Then I was asked about security (like SQL Injection attacks), and it became obvious I wasn’t as well versed in that as I could have been. I clearly failed that portion with a big ol’ “F”.

Now I could’ve argued that those questions were completely irrelevant to what I was going to be asked to do, and that 15 minutes with Google would clear it all up. That would’ve been true. I could’ve been angry to be asked such off topic questions. But what I DID do was decide that while I’d gotten tripped up on those once, I wouldn’t be tripped up twice. I went home and read a book on HTTP. I went online and read about XHTML. And my husband also had a book on Deadly Security Sins in Programming, which I read appropriate section of.

(If you’re curious:
-HTTP has eight methods: get, post, put, head, delete, trace, options and connect.
-XHTML has additional constraints over HTML including: Case sensitivity, requirement for closing all tags, quotes are ALWAYS required around attributes, boolean values must be made explicit, and you cannot have implicitly created tags like head or body.
-Security is a bear. Obviously you have to be careful not to permit unescaped values into your database which can be executed, but my conclusion is “gosh, it’s hard”. I’d never considered how to make sure that the data doesn’t execute when you read it back OUT of the database!)

That company actually ended up not hiring me for that position, but tried to make a different one just for me that would play more to my strengths. That didn’t work out, but now I have friends there. It’s a small world. It never hurts to have friends.

4) Print your resume on nice paper and bring 3 copies. Chances are excellent your interviewer will have a crappily formatted, web-printed copy of your resume done on bad printer paper, which will look like all 500 other resumes currently piling on top of their desk. Printing a copy of your resume ahead of time shows you’re prepared. There’s a tactile sensation that’s a pleasure with better quality paper. I recommend an ivory paper so there’s not mistaking you went out of your way to make an impression. (Also, don’t worry too much about length. My resume took 3 pages because I have 3 pages of experience to talk about. That didn’t seem like a problem. If I’d tried to get it to 2, I don’t think it would’ve been as strong. After about 5 pages, though, consider eliminating some of your less relevant experience and having different resumes for different skill sets.)

5) Get to know the person at the front desk, if you can. Best case scenario, they’ll give you information about what’s happening, help you avoid stupid mistakes, and cheer for you. Some particularly smart interviewers ask receptionists afterwards what THEY thought. Worst case, you didn’t spike yourself. The receptionist at the second place I interviewed helped me with some minor issues, and offered moral support by cheering for me and saying he hopes he’ll see me soon. Now, when I show up for my first day of work, I’ll at least start out with a friendly face!

6) Send. A. Thank. You. Note. Yes, it’s the 21st century. Yes, people have email, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In and text messages. Do it anyway. Step 1, before you even interview, should be to go to a NICE stationery store and buy NICE thank you notes and make sure you have stamps that are not Simpson themed. When you get home from the interview, sit down immediately and write a thank you note to every person whose business card you got during the process. Talk about how grateful you were for their time. Explain how excited you are (if you were) about the position. Close by saying how you hope to be working with them soon. Mention something the two of you talked about.

It seems super obvious, but especially in technology that sort of formality and politeness can really set you apart. Everyone mentioned that they were very grateful for the notes. I think it showed that I’m the kind of person who knows what the proper protocol is and can execute it quickly and graciously. How I treat my interviewers is a sign about how I’ll treat my clients if I work for them.

7) Do your research!!! I’m not being innovative on this one. Pretty much every job hunting advice column says this. But it makes a huge difference. I’m pretty sure that the tipping point for the job I got was that I’d not only done research, I’d practically google-stalked them. I had read their employee handbook, was up on their financials and latest products, could talk about their corporate history, had a question about a previous big technology decision, knew my interviewer’s last two huge projects, knew what she looked like, and had done a sample application in the new language they would be asking me to program in. This was particularly great, since I didn’t have a lot of time to review the offer. By the time it came, I felt like I was already part of the team, I knew so much about them.

The very first question my second interviewer asked was “Why THISCOMPANY?” and I was able to give an essay for an answer. I suspect that was all she was really looking for.

So that’s what I did. I’m not sure how big a difference the finer points made, but it gave me confidence to know that I was doing the very best I knew how. Good luck to you, in your job hunt!

Truck day cometh

This time of year, my thoughts always trend the same direction. I turn on the radio in the Febrarian gloom, headed back from a late-running meeting at church. I’m greeted by the latest and greatest in politics, politics, disasters, the economy, politics and boring stuff. Oh! How I wish! How I wish a turn of the dial would bring me instead to my darling, my baseball. Ah, to be in the fifth inning and relax into the voices of Joe and the has-totally-grown-on-me Dave O’Brien. I needn’t hover, finger over the power button, in case the next story is about some horror my young son will question me about in detail.

Baseball is the most perfect of all radio forms. It’s interesting enough to engage the attention when there’s nothing important happening, but not so interesting you miss your exit (usually). The rhythms and patterns are utterly familiar and evoke the sense of warmth and the slow evenings of summer. It happens often enough that many of the times I wish it was on it is on. (I admit to lusting after satellite radio ONLY for baseball even more often!) There are no horrors lurking in the broadcast, no tragedies hiding under the rain tarp. Some of the most fun times are the worst games, when the broadcasters have completely given up on covering the action in any more than a perfunctory manner and have started riffing.

For all it’s reliable consistency, which is a joy, there’s always the possibility of the unbelievable. Ellsbury stealing home. A pitcher cracks a grand slam in a NL game. The tumult, the “what just happened?”, the impossible coming to pass, the million ways you can say “He’s pitching a no-hitter” without actually SAYING “He’s pitching a no-hitter”.

I can’t wait.

But, the winter passes! The frigid north once again turns its face towards the sun. Truck Day is February 12th!. The names will be different, the faces, the clutch hitters, the streaky ones. I’ll have to sit down sometime in April and figure out who the heck is playing this year. But it comes!

Attention Citizens of the Commonwealth

Raise your hand if you like the fact that running for national elected office requires raising millions of dollars, which then indebts the recipients? Anyone? Anyone?

I’ve thought about this probably more than I need to, and I’ve come up with one, fool-proof, Constitutionally valid solution to this problem. We, the citizens of the United States of America, need to stop making our voting decisions based on paid media advertising. Then poof! All the need for money disappears!!

Our elections are not a media production, where we should vote for the best-produced and scripted candidate. It should not be the responsibility of our elected officials to motivate us to get to the polls. If you are a person who cares about the future of your country, and you are blessed enough to have a say in how it is run, it is your responsibility to educate yourself and make your preferences known at the voting booth.

Imagine a world where people spent even half an hour researching the positions of the candidates and then selecting the one who best meets their criteria of policies, ideology, background, and non-obnoxious speaking voice. (Ok, so maybe I have a few unique criteria for elected officials who will be interviewed regularly on the radio.) I know that asking the voters of America to spend half an hour or an hour to do research to figure out who they want to represent them is much harder than raising millions of dollars and hiring lobbyists, but with such an evenly divided electorate, if even a small block of voters started doing this, it might have a real impact.

For the voters of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, we can start doing this right now.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 19th we have an election for US Senator.

There are three candidates who will be on the ballot:

Martha Coakley is the current At tourney General for Massachusetts, and is the Democratic nominee.

Here’s her official website

Scott Brown is a Massachusetts State Senator and holds the Republican nomination.

His official website is here

Joe Kennedy (no relation to Teddy or JFK) is an independent who describes himself as “The Tea Party Candidate”

You can read his official site here

Unfortunately, while there is often a site offering a “by the issues” guide to voting for many major elections, I could not find one for the Massachusetts special election. The Boston Globe has a page that has links to several substantive issues, including transcripts of the debates and statements issued by the candidates.

Turnout for the special election is predicted to be extremely low. This is not “election season”. The campaign was short, but just long enough for Senator Kennedy’s death to have been a bit forgotten. The election keeps getting buried by other issues (the holidays, the economy, Tiger Woods, and now the tragedy in Haiti).

Voters of Massachusetts — you have something a million dollars of out-of-state money cannot buy: the right and responsibility to vote for the candidate of your choice.

Having done my research, I will be voting for Martha Coakley on Tuesday. Regardless of who you choose to vote for, I urge you to do some independent investigation, make a decision, and show up on Tuesday to cast your vote.

I am fantastic

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but blogging is really a feast-or-famine kind of thing. You have a great weekend with time enough to think and read a book, and suddenly you have like 6 posts all thought out, including a societal indictment and discussion of good bras. This after the last month where you hoarded and scrimped anecdotes in a desperate attempt to make your life sound interesting, at least to yourself.

Well, I’ve discovered that hoarding good blogging material is a little like hoarding Thanksgiving leftovers — if you don’t use them right away, they go bad. So you might as well whip up a nice tall open-faced turkey sandwich and enjoy already.

This weekend was marked on the calendar as “I am Fantastic” weekend. I put it on the calendar so I would take it seriously. There are always things that need to be done, and making myself look and feel good is usually at the bottom of that list. That’s ok short term, but sometimes you need to invest in yourself in order to give as wholly to the other people who count on you. “I am Fantastic” weekend started at 1:30 at Intimacy Copley Place in Boston. I’ve spent the last 5 years pregnant, nursing, trying to get pregnant, rinse and repeat. The body changes involved in that have made any investment in undergarments a losing proposition. That time is now over, and I was ready to invest.

I figured a really good bra would cost about $50. I added $25 on to my estimates to be safe. I had trouble imagining a bra could cost more than $75. The fitting was interesting. My fitter had a zip up dress so she could model the combination she was sporting that day. (In her defense, it looked great on her 10 months post-partum self!) She sat me down and gave me the lecture on proper care of my bradrobe. (I’m not making that word up.) Then she brought out the samples. I figured I’d start with two — one that would work under anything and one that would be very, uh, appealing.

None of the bras had price tags on them. This should have clued me in that I was in over my head.

I got two bras that were — are! Fantastic. They look awesome and make me feel awesome. One is extremely comfortable, and I suspect the other will be once I break it in.

But man, I totally and completely underestimated just how much a bra could cost. I’m pretty sure if I’d been shopping in a less, uh, intensive environment I wouldn’t have bought the more expensive one. I’m pretty sure if I’d seen a price tag, I wouldn’t have tried it on in CASE I liked it as much as I ended up doing. I find myself ashamed to have paid so much for something — this is a kind of indulgence I don’t really feel comfortable with. The more expensive bra cost $180.

I walked out of the store sort of shell-shocked into this mall that takes it for granted. The beautiful people all around me were likely all wearing $200 bras and $500 shoes. I looked around and I felt like I was all wrong: my shoes are a little scuffed, my pants are not designer. I was wearing makeup (unusual for me) but we’re talking Wet-and-Wild folks. My top, which seemed pretty in the morning, seemed dowdy and unsophisticated in the glare of the marble. My favorite courduroy jacket seemed threadbare in the soft lighting. My purse is hopeless — a $20 Target creation overflowing with children’s toys and touched by white wall paint in the corner. I hugged it close to my body hoping no one would notice me. As I hunted desperately for safe ground (aka Starbucks) I hoped no one would see me or call me out or notice how wrong I was. I wondered just what criteria the numerous lurking security officers used for escorting someone out. (One hopes more than a terrible purse.) I felt like there was exactly one part of my entire self that was ok for this place: the new bra.

These environments are set up to make you feel like you are not good enough. They also try to let you know that your failings are not permanent — if you spend enough money, pay enough attention and do the right things, you might perhaps hope to walk those halls between the Prada store and Monolo Blalik with confidence that you are all right. You are presented with the false hope that this is a winnable path to being acceptable.

I choose not to play that game. I vehemently reject the premise that “good enough” has to do with the right shoes and right clothes and perfection of physical attributes. It was a with a great sigh of relief that I crossed the busy street to Back Bay T stop, to a more normal world where I’m a perfectly ok person.

Did I mention I picked up “Twilight” to read during my sojourn? I enjoyed it as I switched from the Orange to the Red line. You see, I know Forks. My father lived there for a year when I was in my late teens. A boyfriend and I on a date had once wandered our way across the Olympic Peninsula, to many of the spots mentioned. I was that love-lorn teenager wishing to be called out as special in that tiny Northwest town. The bits about the sports — Volleyball etc. — ring very true. She must’ve grown up there too. So in addition to being a fun if flippant read, it made me rather nostalgic. Thank heavens I didn’t encounter it when I was 16 or I would’ve thought that FINALLY someone UNDERSTOOD me!

Anyway, on to my next stop. I got off at Harvard Square, with fading self-consciousness, and went to DHR to get my hair cut. Dale did an amazing job — I think this is the best cut he’s ever given me. I opted not to add some clarification to a rather vehement opinion Rob held about the middle ages (see also: completely monolithic society with total control over everyone — so not possible), and switched conversation safely over to “Red Dwarf” instead (they’re huge sci-fi fans).

And I emerged looking fantastic. I went home and had dinner prepared by my husband, got the kids in bed, and finished reading Twilight in the bath.

Truly, fantastic.

Not sure if you can really see the haircut -- I should've used a better backdrop

Explaining Facebook

Recently my mother-in-law and husband joined up on Facebook, adding themselves to the “everyone else I know” contingent. And in the last week or so, both have had questions or comments about it. So as a public service, I hereby offer this explanation of what the heck you do with Facebook.

1) What the heck does it mean when you post that you have “Mastery in Artichokes”?
Facebook offers a bunch of games like “Mafia Wars”, “Farmville” and “Fish World” — to name a few. These are cooperative games, so if I do something in my game, I can offer a “bonus” to all my friends on Facebook who also play. This creates an altruistic incentive for me to do things like announce my recent Artichoke victory. The other people who play the game can get points because of it.

Facebook games are funny things. They’re pretty simple to play. The way you “win” is by checking in on them regularly. They’re also highly interactive. For example, in Farmville you visit your friend’s farms (you can see what they’re doing with them) and help out in some way. You’d think this would be entirely the purview of time-wasting losers like me, but I’m continually surprised and amused by just who plays and how seriously.

You have three choices when your Facebook friends keep announcing they’ve found Lost Kittens. First, you could join the game. Why not? You don’t have work to do anyway. Second, if you choose not to join the game, the appropriate thing to do is politely ignore the posts and pretend you don’t notice that your friend just posted about finding a lost moose on a rollercoaster. Third, if you find them annoying (and who can blame you if you do), you can block all similar content by hovering over the offending post. A drop down will appear on the right and pick “Block Farmville” (or whatever is driving you nuts).

2) Friend regret
So someone you vaguely remember from High School asked to be your friend. You thought she was nice enough 15 years ago. But once you friended her, you discovered that she keeps posting about Artichokes, church events, and linking to her boring blog. You don’t want to offend her by “un-friending” her, but you also really don’t care about the Advent Workshop (November 22nd after church! We’ll be making Advent Wreathes!). If you look at the image above, you can see that there is a “Hide (Name)” option. The person in question won’t know that you are “hiding” them, and you can still check on their wall if you want to talk to them about something or see what they’ve been up to.

3) Have you forgotten that I live across the country/will be taking care of our kids while you go this event?
Yesterday I sent out an invite to Prayer at the Close of Day tomorrow. My husband made a growly noise because since I will be there, he can’t be. My mom pointed out she lives 3000 miles away. But often times if you belong to a group (like our church group), invitations will go to all group members. I didn’t actually pick each and every person and send the invitation to them.

If you find Facebook is sending you too many emails (or not enough!) Facebook has very granular settings for controlling emails. Click on the “settings” link in the upper right hand corner when you are logged in. The third tab in controls notifications. Scroll through and make choices appropriate for how you want to be contacted:

Hopefully these will help you enjoy Facebook more. If you have any additional questions on how it works, please feel free to let me know!