she's just saying...

Who's your daddy this year?

Notice I didn't ask who's your Papi.

Really? Snow? June 9?

I missed this weird little event as it didn't hit the Museum south of town. I hear that children were screaming on the playground. Everyone said it was hail, but it sure looks like snow to me. Maybe we just can't face the S word after May.

The hostas took a beating and I've lost all my irises in flower, but otherwise life goes on in the high desert. I'll take this over 95+ degrees any day. That's coming next, of course.

The "working" part of the back deck. I call that snow.

Top 26 Tuesday: Museum edition

 Random things I've done at work recently:

1. Took closeups of a chorus frog for the local paper
2. Approved a new radio spot after music editing
3. Set up a webpage to sell tickets to our Live Bats show
4. Analyzed the results of our visitor survey
5. Approved the layout of three print ads
6. Toured a photography producer and location scout
7. Wrote exhibit copy for our new Quilts exhibit
8. Ran the cash register in our store
9. Wrote a presentation for the next Board meeting
10. Bussed tables in the cafe
11. Negotiated radio and TV buys for the next quarter
12. Got to know the new pioneers at the Homestead
13. Planned press for the new spotted owl eggs
14. Wrote a positioning statement and new taglines
15. Oversaw video editing of our news coverage
16. Approved merchandise purchases for the store
17. Developed a new blog for the Museum
18. Sold Museum memberships
19. Worked on high-end donors for our Challenge grant
20. Uploaded animal videos to our Youtube page and website
21. Demonstrated how to play "pick-up sticks" to kids
22. Discussed the layout and colors of new signage
23. Attended live animal shows (owl, skunk, hawk, badger)
24. Wrote the creative brief for our new TV commercial
25. Stamped hundreds of toddlers' plump little hands
26. Pet our very gassy goat

Noah the Toggenburg Milch Goat

PS: I'm neither bragging nor complaining - just enjoying the variety!

I'm so confused

The Red Sox have a new look this year, and I'm very confused by it all.

Quoting from several sources here:

"The changes were done to put more of an emphasis on returning the visual elements that have made the Red Sox such an influential brand within the sport of baseball. The club will also go with the "Hanging Sox" -- which has been around since 1931 as the new primary logo, and it will be used more frequently and will be displayed on new caps that the Red Sox will wear with their alternate jerseys at home and on the road.

For long-time fans, the new road jersey will be a trip down memory lane, in that it will resemble the road grays worn in the 1980s during the days of Jim Rice, Dwight Evans and Bob Stanley.

The "retro roadies," as the Red Sox referred to them in a press release, will feature the word "BOSTON" in blue lettering across the chest.

"The origin of this was Turn Back the Clock Day in June of '07 in San Diego," said Red Sox COO Mike Dee. "Everybody thought the gray was a bluer gray because of the blue lettering. The bordering makes the same gray look bluer. Basically, we've taken what was the red 'BOSTON' on the front and replaced that with a blue 'BOSTON.'"

The alternate road uniform will be a combination of white pants and blue jersey with "BOSTON" in red lettering across the chest.

No changes have been made to Boston's primary home uniforms. The alternate home red jerseys will still be used for Friday night home games, and will now be accompanied by alternate hats which feature the new "Hanging Sox" logo. The alternate caps will also be worn on the road with the alternate blue tops for Friday away games.

"If you look at the outerwear that we wear on the road, we've pretty much gone to blue as a road color and red as the home color," said Dee. "This is really an exact continuation of that. We have blue dugout jackets on the road and red dugout jackets at home; blue BP jerseys on the road, red BP jerseys at home. This gives us a blue theme to the road uniform and then a blue alternate top."

The "circle Sox," which had been the primary logo, will now be the secondary logo and will now include better graphics and clearer font. The "B" will be the third logo.

"The decision to change [to "Hanging Sox" as the primary logo] was made given the long-time iconic stature of the 'Hanging Sox,' which possesses an instant appeal and recognition of the team," the club said in a press release.

All the changes were meant to be subtle in nature.

"There's several changes, but we think they're traditional in nature and aesthetically pleasing and will be warmly received by the fans," said Dee.

Of Mice and Monkeys

Now this is impressive:
 

Remember that little blogoversary contest I ran? Probably not. Well, I was very cleverly guilted in my last post into actually delivering the prize to the local winner, Chris K., a blog buddy. (I'd call him a bluddy, but that's not so cool, actually. That's his photo montage above, and I even stole his post title.)

For his patience, I tucked in a little surprise with the catnip mouse he won.

Its use temporarily stumped him, but he quickly figured out what it must be...

...a monkey poncho.

So now it appears that in addition to the whippet sweater and the poultrywear, I'm into simian wraps.

And you have another must-read blog to visit!

Top 10 Tues: social networking rant edition

So while I'm on the subject:

Social networking trends I don't much like:

1. Personal blogs that carry ads between posts.*
2. Calling your social networking followers your "tweeple." (OK, I liked it for about 3 days.)
3. Self-congratulatory Facebook updates.
4. Mom blogs that are actually about pushing product.
5. Flickr's latest homepage layout, especially as a paying member.
6. Facebook apps that are covers for crappy ads.
7. LinkedIn self-inflation self-importance.
8. Widgets that won't work.
9. Bit.lys, TinyURLs, is.gds, blip.fms, etc.
10. A list like this at the end of every post:

Addthis Ask Blinklist del.icio.us Digg Fark Facebook Google LycosMa.gnolia Mr Wong Netscape Netvousz Newsvine Reddit StumbleUponSlashdot Tailrank Technorati Wink Yahoo

*I defend your right to include whatever you want on your blog. I just don't like ads in the middle.

A twit no longer

I'm over Twitter.

I'm an admitted trend-follower. An early-ish adopter. I jumped on Twitter awhile ago, for work reasons, really. Turns out a lot of museums tweet about their exhibits and events.

So I got a personal account and started following/being followed, from locals to Obama. At the beginning it was cool -- you were supposed to answer the question "What are you doing?" I like the premise of brief broadcasts about what random folk are up to at a particular moment. Sort of like an in-the-present haiku. Almost zen, you could say.

But most tweets I receive now are not fun to read. In fact, they're pretty unreadable. Due to the limitations of length and the desire of most twitterers to promote something, most messages end up looking like a bunch of hieroglyphics. You can retweet, reply, hashmark, include shortened URL photos and links, all of which have their own code. So a typical message looks like this:

@jensmith RT @OR_150: Westward Oregon! A Sesquicentennial Celebration, comes to Bend May 29-30. http://bit.ly/zv3QL

This is one I actually sent the other day. Even I don't remember what I included here. [Note to Jen: I changed your last name to preserve your innocence. Ha.]

Here's another one from one of our local weathermen:

BMacNewsRT @AdamClark905: Detailed Bend Forecast is out: http://bit.ly/1os5n

From a local who shall not be identified:

excellent, r/t @turoczy Finally, trending by town. Here's Portland http://bit.ly/36s2qJ or follow @happn_in_pdx

From Major League Baseball:

MLB#Nationals just announced Grand Slam Flex Plan at http://is.gd/LJw6 as latest addition to MLB.com Fan Value Corner at http://is.gd/LJwJ

Who wants to read stuff like that?  Not me. I guess that actually makes me a trend-follower anyway, as there's a growing Twitter backlash abuilding.

Summer dusk

Occasionally a certain sound or smell or quality of light can transport me right back to my childhood in the suburbs of Pittsburgh.

The look of dusk after the sun has set, the sky still light enough to see with; a turtledove cooing; conversation on a porch in the distance; the green smell of a watered lawn. Put these together and I'm a little girl again lying in my bed listening through the window to the laughter of the grownups and the clink of iced tea glasses on the porch below.

I can almost taste the feeling. It's a sweet and painful pang of nostalgia and primal memory.

But now I'm the adult with the icy drink, sitting on the porch, enjoying the early summer green all around me in the oncoming dusk.

Confessions of a fangirl

LeBron was spectacular in the 4th quarter last night.

"You never want to disappoint the home crowd. It was win or go home,'' James said. "You have to do everything sometimes.''

I can relate.

But seriously...

It's weird to me that I'm so into watching professional sports. Not just watching, but following. I read Sports Illustrated. I stay up for Sports Center. I even listen to sports talk radio. Really.

Weird because I never played team sports growing up. NEVER, unless I was forced to in gym class. Always last to be picked (btw, how come everyone says they're the last? That's not statistically possible). I always swam, skied and took ballet, but never competed. Physical competition made me anxious. I think it still does; I don't know because I avoid it. It's not about fitness; I was a scuba divemaster and an aerobics instructor. But I won't even play volleyball at a beach picnic.

So why am I glued to the baseball game streaming on the computer, the basketball finals on TV and reading about the football draft? Where could this have come from? I was always the arts & crafts type (still am).

Watching the girls at Henry's meets and games, I'm envious of their unself-consciousness and their team camaraderie. I realize I missed out on an experience that would have been confidence-building and valuable. Maybe that's why I'm drawn to the culture of professional sports. Or maybe this is why:

In which I direct you to a much funnier blog

Stop what you're doing (which would be reading my blog) and run, hop or flutter over to this post from my reciprocal blog pal Kathi D.

Most. Hilarious. Post. Ever. Involving chickens, sex, aprons, camo, Madonna and dogs.

(Given those words above in one post, my blog traffic could get really interesting.)

Here's a hint:

Go enjoy. You will eventually come back here, right?

In which I knit. And garden. Though not at the same time.

This blog is supposed to occasionally focus on knitting. However, when summer finally arrives in Central Oregon, my knitting switch goes off and the gardening switch is triggered.

We only get about four months of gardening in here before it starts to freeze at night, so Central Oregonians go into a bit of a frenzy trying to pack it all in between May and September. It's a real challenge to garden in the high desert. The weather is dry, scorching and freezing, so it takes a pretty hardy plant to thrive. The temperature last month ranged from 31 degrees to 82 degrees, though not in that order, so you can see the issues we face.

But I digress. Knitting. I'm working on the tweedy cabled cardigan that is going along pretty quickly. I don't have a lot of motivation to finish it until fall, but I don't want to lose the rhythm of the pattern, so I work on it sporadically.

I'm also oddly stuck in a never-ending loop of coffee cozies and felted mice.
the latest cozies

Each can be completed in the space of a movie so they're pretty gratifying. This occasionally happens to knitters, getting stuck on repeat on a certain pattern. I'll snap out of it eventually. Meantime, I'm producing a lot of little convenient gifts. I seem to have a problem taking the final step of delivering them, but that's just logistics, right?

In memory on Memorial Day

I'd like to share this again with you. This is a repeat of last year's post, updated for the anniversary date.

Jay Zemotel, Fairbanks, 1978

I didn't realize til just this moment that it is May 25, the 24th 25th anniversary of my husband's suicide. What a long time ago that seems. Truly another world, another lifetime.

Jay was a bluegrass guitar player and singer from Boston. He and his friends had a band that was very popular in Fairbanks, the town we lived in in the late 70's. When we met, it was love (or something like it) at first sight. He was wild and smart, funny and fatalistic. He did everything to the extreme: music, motorcycles, drugs, alcohol, love. He had a ponytail and a crazy dog and I thought he was everything I'd never experienced. I was a sheltered, suburban, private-college girl and he was the real world. He could walk into any bar and be at home. At the time that seemed like something.

I grew up during our short time together. Learning to live as a couple, on my own truly for the first time, trying to mesh very different backgrounds and values. There was love, fighting, fear and finally awareness. I was in way over my head and was going to drown with him or remove myself from that quicksand. Before the divorce was final, he succeeded too well at one of his occasional attempts at suicide, something I still believe he didn't mean to do.

For years I couldn't listen to a certain type of bluegrass without crying. Now it brings me closer to him. I have nothing left of our life together except some photos, and the only people I know who remember him are my family. He lived hard, tried to be happy, and loved me the best he could. I remember you, Jay, and you live on in my heart.

crabapple

Not bad for a point and shoot.

patching things up

Perfect early summer day here today. I'm doing my favorite weekend activity: patching the pond liner. I've figured out that as usual, my impatience is the problem. You have to let the patch cure for a full day, and I can never wait that long to fill the pond and get the waterfall gurgling again.

Impatience is one of the deadly sins I struggle with, along with sloth, gluttony, envy; actually most of the other ones, but those aren't what I'm talking about here. (And let's just ignore lust, thank you.) You know you're impatient if you always swear during the interminable five seconds it takes for your computer to start up. I try to take that moment just to breathe, but I grit my teeth.

Anyway, the patch should hold this time. I did it all correctly, using a hair dryer and a number of other random tools. While I wait, I'll remind myself to enjoy the moments; this summer day, a three-day weekend, my burgeoning garden, kids' voices playing baseball, my blooming crabapple. These are the days.

Big Steve's little kitteh

My brother has now gotten into kitten fostering. Here's one of his latest.
moar funny pictures

T.T.T: Workphrase edition

Phrases I use a lot at work.
After 20+ years in advertising, I've picked up a number of catch phrases that come in handy, or at least I seem to say a lot. These can actually be useful, as opposed to the bizarre biz-speak I wrote about here.

1.    Let’s not fix it in the room
This is a classic ad agency line that’s useful when a client/boss/colleague wants something changed in a piece of copy or concept, and everyone starts to throw out suggestions right there in the meeting.  It means “let us go away and work on it and we’ll come back with an alternative.”

2.    Give it the overnight test
Sleep on it and come back with your thoughts tomorrow.

3.    Reach x frequency
Not a catch phrase as much as a useful concept. This is the basic media measurement of how well you're communicating. Reach means what percent of your target is receiving your message and frequency means how many times they get it. The balance of the two is the art of media, and communication. (Shout-out to KG here.)

4.    Off strategy
Only once you’ve identified what you want to accomplish with a marketing effort can you then judge the creative. No matter how clever/funny/original an idea is, if it doesn’t meet your objective, it’s off strategy. You’ll see people trying to retro-fit the strategy to the cool idea, but it’s not good marketing.

5.    Mother-in-law research
When a client or colleague takes the idea home and gets a random opinion of it. This is not the optimal way to test creative. Also known as “secretary research” back when they existed.

6.    Fast/cheap/good
Pick two of the three. That's all you get.

7.    Share of stomach
Like market share, but on an individual consumption basis. Originally only applicable to food products, but I have used it instead of "mind share" which sounds too brainwashy.

8.    Need-to-know vs. nice-to-know
When I design a research survey, clients often want to throw in all kinds of questions on the theory that “If we’re going to ask them this, let’s find out that.” That’s fine if you have all the time in the world to ask questions, but respondents burn out after 3-5 minutes max. So we need to identify the need-to-know questions versus the nice-to-know stuff. Not that easy.

9.    Sick Demo Well
This is an advertising formula that describes 50% of the commercials out there. Something is wrong, the product is introduced with a demonstration of how it works, then everything’s all better.  Cold medicine, motor oil, chainsaws, airlines, you name it; it’s sold via this formula, 'cause it tends to work, and it's easy.

10.    Let’s take a step back
This is my go-to phrase for any crisis or tortured/detailed/panicked plan. In other words, let’s identify what it is we’re trying to accomplish before we launch into random action. It’s a great phrase that calms the room and puts things into a workable perspective.

And the Lucky Strike Extra (another old ad phrase):

11.     “Got a minute?”
This is never a good question. It’s usually followed by the layoff conversation, so when you hear it, say no, you’re too busy doing crucial stuff that will save the account.  I speak from experience.

Dreaming of hummers

The other night I dreamt that the hummingbirds had returned to my garden, but I didn't have the nectar feeders out, so they flew away. So yesterday I dug out the feeders, sterilized them, cooked up some nectar, filled them and hung them up. And now I wait for that wonderful whirring sound buzzing my head as I sit on my patio and enjoy the waterfall. Um, once the waterfall is working again, of course, which means figuring out how to patch it so that it stays patched. But that's another story as you know.

Last year we had a wonderful hummingbird summer. My goal this year is to take a better photo of them, still with my little point-and-shoot, which can actually take great shots. Though not this one.

Quick word quiz: name the only word in the English language that ends in mt.

Answer is in the post above.

Sox-Mariners again

So conflicting. Can't they both win?

Aporkalypse Now: The Latest Hamdemic

When Henry was a small boy, the whole house went through an unpleasant bout of pink-eye. First he had it, then of course Daddy-Mark and I got it. I remember it was right before Christmas because we were too scary-looking to go to any holiday parties. Then a few weeks later, Henry was complaining of a muscle ache one night, and declared he had “pink neck.”  It’s one of those cute kid sayings that enters the family vernacular.

I thought of this recently while thinking about swine flu. (I couldn’t actually recreate that train of thought again, so don’t ask.) Everyone except Egypt now knows that pigs got a raw deal in this pandemic by being blamed for the new strain of virus. (FYI: Officials in Egypt ordered destruction of all 300,000 of the country's pigs. In related news, Afghanistan's one known pig was quarantined. I am not kidding.) Pigs are being dragged through the mud, so to speak.  We already have chicken pox and mad cow disease. What animals will be blamed for our illnesses next? Camel cancer? Hippo hepatitis?  It’s unfair, I tell you.

Meanwhile, remember to disinfect your sty and cover your snout with your hoof when you cough.

The boredom of boredom

I am soooo bored.

I don't get depressed, I get bored. Boredom is my nemesis. "Boah, boah, boah" as Katherine Hepburn said. (Quick: name the movie.) Or technically, dysthemia, as I discussed in a previous post.

I'm one of those people who has to be working on a project. Not just a little "project," but a big life-changing absorbing overwhelming passion, or I get bored.

My bookshelves chart the projects I've been consumed with in the last twenty years: books about:

art
scuba
sailboats
Oregon
dog training
climbing
homebuilding
landscaping
Buddhism
adopting
child-rearing
self employment
personal growth
turning 50
and
knitting.

It's a bad sign that I can't think of any books I want to buy or check out from the library. Nothing, no project in my sights, no curiosity, i.e.: no passion.

As a long-time therapy student, I understand that "projects" are a way of distracting myself from the existentialism of life. As a Buddhist, I know I need to just sit, accept, be. But, it's so boring!!

My relationship had passion. Nothing like never-ending drama for keeping life interesting.

Eventually, another passion will make itself known. And you'll hear about it first, my faithful readers. But in the meantime, I'm really bored.