Oscarina: digital + social

Photo No. 96: Charlie's Angels We Ain't

Me and my sisters...along with mom...trying to perfect our gun poses.

Books on my nightstand

These are the books on my nightstand. They're not ranked in any particular order, nor does a spot in the stack mean I'll actually read it. These are the books on my nightstand I'd like to finish.

I've got a nice combo of summer reading books, biz books I should finish, books to improve my work/life balance and books I find feed my inner geek.

I've started reading four of them and suspect that I'll finish them sometime this year...or not.

When I travel I try to bring along a book, but my own personal craving for hard cover or the so-called coffee table books makes me a shoe-in for the additional weight baggage fee. I'm struggle to keep my luggage light as it is. I swear most times I pick my bags up at the baggage carousel only to find a neon orange tag affixed that boldly declares HEAVY in ten languages.

But back to the books--here they are in order from top to bottom:

1. The Girl Who Played With Fire by Steig Larson
2. Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath (on a side note I saw one of the authors speak...such simple concepts that work brilliantly)
3. Take Back Your Life by Sally McGhee
4. The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandless (love, love, love this book)
5. The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
6. Lovemarks by Kevin Roberts
7. Eyetracking Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice

What's on your reading list?

Playing for Change: Stand By Me

Playing For Change | Song Around The World "Stand By Me" from Concord Music Group on Vimeo.

Blue Post: Death in America

The last two weeks have been a roller coaster of emotions--elation, sadness, excitement, and grief. Only six short weeks ago my uncle called to tell me that my aunt had been diagnosed with liver cancer. She had three to six months to live. Ten years ago she fought off breast cancer, however, it returned a few years ago. And despite her valiant attempts to fight it...it didn't work this time. She fought the good fight.

I planned to travel to Colorado to see her later this month, but she was ready and at peace with her fate. Extremely at peace and prepared for death. This wasn't to say that she was pleased about what was going to happen, but she was prepared for it. She said her good-byes and she spent time with her children and grandchildren. She was ready to go.

She passed away on April 2, 2009 at 11:43 PM MST.

As I mentioned her passing to my friends, colleagues, and family I was surprised at how limited our vocabulary is for death. We're confined to a few select phases and with those we're supposed to convery an overwhelming gamut of emotions--I'm sorry, my deepest sympathies, my condolences...when what we're really trying to say is this sucks. It's not fair. That blows.

After the funeral mass we drove to the cemetery--and I took this photo.

My dog is a German elitist

Seattle area is known for good dog parks—our favorite happens to be the Marymoor dog park. Over 40 acres of off-leash dog heaven where well-socialized dogs can sniff, chase, and poop with abandon. (Located at each entrance is a roll of plastic bags for picking up the last activity.) There are paths and bridges covered in wood chips to help keep the humans on track and out of the mud. Running through the park is the Sammamish River where dogs can leap in to catch tennis balls or those odd looking floats the hunting breeds prefer. We see little dogs and big dogs. Brown dogs, black dogs, and blue dogs. Dogs in purses and dogs in packs. Naughty dogs on leashes. Quivering dogs hiding under benches. Happy dogs and bark-y dogs. Dogs. Lots and lots of dogs.

There is even a dog wash…seriously for $8.75 you can wash your dog in a lovely waist-high dog tub. It operates like a car wash where you pay for 8 minutes and turn a dial to rinse, soap, rinse and then dry your dog. Love it!

Now, for all of the wonderful socialization opportunities and amenities of the dog park you would think that any dog would be stoked to go. Zoe is. She just doesn’t care that there are other dogs at the dog park. When we lived in Orlando we’d take her to other dog parks where she would play with other German breeds. I should mention that Zoe is a Weimaraner—she’s a big gray hunting dog. Her feet are webbed for swimming and she’s bred as a partner dog.

But she only hung out with the Deutsch dogs: Weimaraners, Boxers, Dobermans, and the occasional Shepard. She bypassed the labs and the retrievers, the terriers and the toy breeds in favor of her fellow countrymen. As she’s gotten older (she’ll be nine this year) she’s gotten less interested in any dogs. She loves the dog park and the occasional sniff, but she’s not going to chase your dog. Nor does she appreciate your dog chasing her.

I wish dogs had thought bubbles—like in cartoons—floating above them as they ran around. Zoe’s would say: Running! I love running! Wait…where’s my mom? Mom? Mom? Mom? Oh, there she is. Let’s run! Let’s run! No sniffing my butt. I’ll sniff yours, but hey! Where’s my Mom? Mom? Mom? Oh, there she is. That’s my ball. That’s my ball too and yes they will both fit in my mouth. Hey, no petting. Where’s my mom? Mom? Mom? Oh, there she is. Running! I love running!

Nude: it just makes sense

When I was a child I remember thinking that my mother chose the ugliest underwear—structured cotton panties and nude bras. She chose function over form. As soon as I got to pick my own foundation garments I pulled hot pink and canary yellow off the racks. Bought silky string bikinis by the armful and shunned what my girlfriends and I referred to as period panties…boxy cotton jobs with no trim and the tell-tale stains of womanhood.

Now I must confess that I wasn’t ‘all that’ when it came to the boob department. I could have slapped on a band-aid and called it good. As age crept up on me, so did my boobs. When I got pregnant with my son they were lovely—large and firm. He nursed for a year and two weeks later I got pregnant with my daughter. My girls, as I loving refer to them, held up well. Not so perky, but still large enough to create cleavage when necessary.

My daughter nursed for nine months and stopped. My boobs regressed. At my check-up last year my OB remarked at how stretched out the skin around my breasts had become. (She has since had a child of her own and I wonder if she’ll be pointing that out to future patients.) I no longer have boobs, I simply have the bags they came in.

Which leads me back to my mom and her fondness for functional, nude-colored bras. I realize now that they just make sense. My life is too chaotic to worry about sizzle and spark in my underwear choices. I've got to blend being a mother and a professional. I can work around a smear of snot on my shoulder, but it's much more difficult to play-off a peeping bra strap.

So I simplified my life--I bought neutral bras and panties...boring and perfunctory.

Black bikeshorts aren't opaque

Today was Ride Your Bike to Work today—as I made the turn into our neighborhood a biker zipped by the passenger side of my minivan. Naturally, I looked at his butt in those slim-n-trim bike shorts. Then I thought to myself, someone should tell him that black doesn’t automatically mean opaque. Crack kills.