Mother’s Day Update

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Medley

Drafted this on Sunday – didn’t get around to posting until today. Oops.

Even as a parent, I still find Mother’s Day (and its ilk) to be a rather manufactured holiday. But even so, I had mimosas at bunch with TheGuy and TLG this morning and have been sitting around watching a baseball game since then while the boys are off giving me a little me-time and playing some minigolf. (TLG loves minigolf – they usually do 36 holes and he’d still be up for more.)

Status of projects: Project Rhubarb, in some sense the easiest, is almost done.  It was a refresh of the paint and fixtures in the living room, dining room, and main level powder room. Finally moving beyond the 11-year-old renter beige. Pictures soon.  Project Surround is not going well. Project RockStar is going slowly. And Project Hurricane has been going very well (high praise for it from high quarters just this past week, in fact) except for one key aspect over which I have basically no control, but for which I have scheduled a key meeting next week.

Recently read: Mechanizing Proof by Donald Mackenzie. A real tour de force. Highly recommended.  Currently reading: Jaron Lanier’s new book, Who Owns the Future? (So far – 10% in – recommended) and re-reading Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance.

 

Posted in Books, Journaling, ProjectHurricane, ProjectRhubarb, ProjectRockStar, ProjectSurround | Comments Off

Shared Culture

Posted on May 11, 2013 by Medley

Via Violet Impudence:

Fan fiction is a way of the culture repairing the damage done in a system where contemporary myths are owned by corporations instead of owned by the folk.

-Henry Jenkins

Posted in Books, General Musings, Media Dysfunction | 2 Comments

Boston

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Medley

At the beginning of each of my son’s tae kwon do classes, his instructor tells all of the 4-6 year-olds to find a square on the mat to stand in. Then he says: “Point to your square and say: ‘my square, sir!’” Periodically throughout the class, he urges them back to their squares: “Whose square?” “My square, sir!”

For awhile after 9/11, every time I took the Metro under or across the river into the city I felt a small bit of defiance. Defiance against those who seek to make us afraid to live and work and play in our homes and towns and cities.

So tomorrow, in Boston, NY, and DC; in Chicago and Houston and SFO; London, Madrid, wherever you happen to be – go about your day, take the train, drive your car, ride your bike.

And take a moment to plant your feet in the earth, look up at the sky, and remember:

Whose cities?

Our cities!

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Project Updates

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Medley

I have (as usual) some great blog posts that I’ve composed in my head, including one about parenting and cultural literacy.  But when I sit down to write them, I just get tired. Maybe another day.  For now, a quick update on the 2013 projects:

  • Hurricane: Still doing some data gathering, but I have a plan for the next step. Need to do some writing/thinking between now and then, though.
  • Surround: Minor progress by one metric. Surprising (positive) result awaiting confirmation, though.
  • RockStar: Some emails sent and a trip being arranged. So it appears to be on.
  • Rhubarb: Mostly just thinking so far, but the next action item is slowly coming into focus.

In other news, TheGuy has a ton of travel this year, so I’ll be trying to move forward on all of these in and amongst various bouts of solo parenting. That’s pretty hard. Although to be fair to TLG, it’s less the parenting aspects of it that are hard right now, than the ‘manage the household, and the fulltime job, and parenting.’  The household management leg of that triad usually falls to pieces when I’m solo parenting, and that drives me bonkers, because it takes us a long time to recover when entropy overtakes the house.

Posted in Journaling, ProjectHurricane, ProjectRhubarb, ProjectRockStar, ProjectSurround | 1 Comment

Big Plans, No Time for Retrospection

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Medley

I barely blogged at all this year, and only managed to eke out a few Holidailies this month. And really, the year flew by incredibly fast from my perspective. So, I don’t feel like I have the time or inclination really to do a big retrospective as an end of the year post. A few quick thoughts, though, just as a marker.

  • I’m really glad we managed a couple of little vacations this year, even if we didn’t venture very far. TLG also experienced his first plane flight and did very well.
  • One thing I’ve been doing since the beginning of 2010 is keeping a oneline journal. It’s no great literary feat, but it is at least a terse record of what was going on when. So I now have three complete years of 1-2 sentence descriptions of each. A sample: 2012-10-05 – Fri – Worked at home. [TheGuy] took [TheLittleGuy] to tee ball practice. Watched the Braves/Cards one-game playoff. It works for me – I have a reminder set early each morning to write the entry for the previous day. Voila. If nothing else, TheLittleGuy might be amused to read the mundanities of our day-to-day life at the turn of the century.
  • I think I spend too much keeping up with news that is utterly irrelevant to my day-to-day activities, not to mention harmful to productivity. I know far more about certain things (such as this week’s atrocious fiscal “cliff” fiasco) than I need to. What is the point? So I’m thinking of significantly trimming the amount of time and energy I put into following this stuff, with, perhaps, a complete Twitter/NewsBlur blackout for a week or two, as a sort of a news-fast, just to see if I feel any better. I’m going to have to actually remove the clients from my devices, though, because the habits are just too engrained.

And that moves into the realm of plans and goals for 2013.  I have 4 ambitious goals for the year. I’m not sharing details here, but I’m going to give them codewords and vague descriptions so I can talk about them cryptically.  Aren’t I fun? Here we go:

  • Project Hurricane: If I can execute on this, it has the potential to be a really high-profile, long-term result.  Challenge: High risk (even if it works) and getting what I need to make it work is not at all a certainty.
  • Project Surround: Requires a lot of focus and creativity, as well as some detailed data management. Challenge: What this project requires is not really in my wheelhouse.
  • Project RockStar: Also requires a lot of focus, creativity, and huge chunks of time (which–see above–I will try to steal back from my newsjunkie addiction). Challenge: Deeply psychologically/emotionally hard for me, but, if I’m honest, it may actually be squarely in my wheelhouse. Also, I have excellent support for this one. If I pull it off, it will be huge for me.
  • Project Rhubarb: A totally fun thing that will mostly require outlays of cash along with some time and planning. Challenge: Just finding the time to do the planning and convincing myself to spend the cash.

All of these are in addition to my full-time job and suite of projects at work, parenting TLG as he barrels on toward kindergarten, trying to be present and mindful for both TheGuy and TLG at home, and managing a household.  But I’m actually excited about each one. And I’m going to try to remember the truism that the way to get anything done is to give the task to a busy person, and assign myself (a busy person) the tasks associated with each of these projects.

Also: gotta’ stop reading the news.

Posted in Journaling, Parenting, Personal Organization, ProjectHurricane, ProjectRhubarb, ProjectRockStar, ProjectSurround | 1 Comment

Merry Christmas Eve

Posted on December 24, 2012 by Medley

Merry Christmas Eve. There was a tiny bit of snow earlier today – looked nice falling, but quickly turned to just a rainy afternoon. Obama (as Dubya did before him) gave FedGov today off, given how the holiday falls on the calendar. My DotOrg followed suit, so I got the day off, too. We have a good friend (and member of my personal advisory council – why yes, I have one, you might even be on it and not know it!) visiting for a few days. Credit to TLG for asking whether we had a gift for our friend when we gave him his “Christmas Eve” presents to open tonight.

We put the rest of our presents for TLG under the tree tonight and I realized I may have miscalculated. For the last couple of months I’ve been setting aside things I pick up for him, like socks, the occasional puzzle book, new toothbrushes, new pajamas, and such, and wrapping them so he’d have plenty of stuff to unwrap under the tree. Well, he has plenty of stuff. Between the useful stuff we’ve wrapped for him, the more fun gifts we got him, and then the gifts sent by family and friends, he’s pretty much set. Note to self: next year, no need to wrap white athletic socks and put them under the tree!

Here he is wearing one of his Christmas Eve presents – a sweatshirt from his tae kwon do school. Tomorrow I may suggest he wear it on top of another Christmas Eve present – crazy Christmas pjs with matching green slippers. He will look like one badass elf!

Christmas Eve present: TKD school spirit wear.
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First Proper Sing-Along

Posted on December 22, 2012 by Medley

I would deem tonight our first proper sing-along with the piano. We segued from Katy Perry’s “Firework” to “Jingle Bells.” All good.

Sing-along
Posted in Journaling, Music, Parenting | Comments Off

Not Ready for Christmas

Posted on December 20, 2012 by Medley

As usual, I don’t feel at all ready for Christmas. I could run down the list of things that are half done, or not even begun, but that would be depressing. On the plus side, we are not traveling, so there’s none of that stress.

And… yeah.

So the news? The news is pretty depressing. The Sandy Hook nightmare bringing forth Peak Stupid in the media and on the Intarwebz actually brought me the closest I’ve ever come to quitting Twitter and other news sources (at least temporarily.)

The wholly manufactured “fiscal cliff” garbage is also almost too much to take.

And it’s been a very long week at work. At least tomorrow is Friday.

Posted in Current Events | Comments Off

Three Strikes for Instagram – See Ya’

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Medley

Alas, I have missed a few of the “dailies” in Holidailies. I was in a big, long-planned meeting/workshop for two days this week. Two solid days in a windowless room with a bunch of [$REDACTED] experts discussing [$REDACTED] things.  (Those don’t really need to be redacted – it just entertains me; plus the topics are not relevant for the purposes of this blog post.)  I missed one bedtime and two wake-ups for TLG – but he and TheGuy seemed to manage just fine.

I also did not stay caught up very well on social media (for me that means twitter and my RSS feeds in NewsBlur). But one of the things I did lightly track was the big Terms of Service screw-up by Instagram. For me, this is Instagram’s third strike.

Strike One: Be bought by Facebook. Facebook is horrible. And it was clear then that it was only a matter of time before I’d have to bail on Instagram. But I’m lazy. And I always made sure to flow any Instagram pictures both to my phone photostream as well as to my flickr account. (And since they were on the phone, that means they get incorporated into my Aperture database.) I was just waiting for a decent alternative.

Strike Two: Start feuding with Twitter (or vice versa; whatever; I can’t keep track). Now, Twitter’s being ridiculous and difficult about various things itself, but Twitter provides a much higher value service to me than Instagram. And I’d liked being able to easily flow things from Instagram to Twitter.

Strike Three: Their TOS rudeness this week. That was a pure Facebook play: Assert something outrageous. Everyone gets upset. And then say you’ll walk it back just a wee bit. Whatever the challenges of monetization, the way they handled this was just insulting. Also, photographers (amateur or otherwise) are a distinct subculture, separate from that much broader subculture of people who play Farmville on Facebook. C’mon now; Facestagrambook were stupid. And venal, I suppose.

So – I’m done with Instagram. And that’s especially easier for me to say right now, since Flickr just came out with a nifty new mobile app (finally; thank you, Marissa Meyer?) that does what I need.  Eventually (there’s an action item OmniFocus, so that means it’ll happen one of these years) I’ll yank my content out of Instagram (and Facebook for that matter – but that’s a topic for another post) and put myself into read-only mode on those services. So it goes.

Like my ~big brother said, “It cycles, yo.”

Posted in Journaling, Photography, Weblogs & Citizen Writing | Comments Off

Sore Ear

Posted on December 16, 2012 by Medley

TLG got some water into his “bad” ear today – past the ear plug he was wearing. (This is the eardrum that never healed up completely after he had ear tubes as a toddler – eventually it will have to be repaired, but it’s not clear yet exactly when that will happen. In the meantime, it acts like he still has a tube–which is good in that it helps him not get completely blocked up when he’s congested.)  This is the second time that’s happened. The first time it was tap water, and it ended up infected. This time it was chlorinated water – so we’ll see. It was really bothering him all day today–I don’t think I’ve seen him this upset about body pain since he was teething.  So we spent most of the day trying alternatively to comfort and distract him.  He seems ok right now – I think most of the water has come out. But I’m still worried we’ll end up at the pede’s again this week for a round of antibiotics. Sigh.

He’s also got a couple of patches on his skin that look like what he had at the very beginning of a truly awful bout of poison ivy. I don’t know where he got into it again, or if he touched something that hadn’t been cleaned since the last round (we never determined a source), but that’s stressing me out too.

I recognize that possible ear infections and poison ivy are minuscule concerns–especially this week.

But I can’t bring myself to write much about what I’ve been reading and thinking about in light of the latest mass shooting in this country. If I started I might not ever stop. Fortunately TLG has not heard anything about it, so we haven’t had to have that conversation with him – and I’m happy to keep it that way for as long as possible. Although given the frequency with which these things are happening, it’s not clear how long that will be.

 

Posted in Journaling, Parenting | 1 Comment