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June 29, 2006

the visual display of quantitive information

The best thing about working from home is that when someone says the word “edutainment” in a kick-off meeting, you can mime hitting yourself in the face with the receiver for the remainder of the call and no one is the wiser. It’s not that I’m against entertainment or education or even combining the two it’s just, do we really need to make up words? There’s plenty of terrific words already out there, folks. Let’s choose ‘em wisely.

Speaking of using words to effectively communicate your goals and intentions, I like this from our friends at the Onion. I especially like: "After everyone left the room, I sat down and went through Ron's final presentation in slide-sorter view," Williams said. "Man, I gotta tell you, it blew me away. That presentation really utilized the full multimedia capabilities of Microsoft's PowerPoint application." For anyone who has gone to see Edward Tufte’s excellent presentation on visually displaying data and yet still needs to use PowerPoint on a regular basis, you will perhaps share my enjoyment. If you haven’t seen Mr. Tufte, suffice to say that he's not a huge fan. I just got a new consulting gig and I am going to do my darnedest to try and incorporate lasers, a fog machine, and rock kicks into the final presentation just to spice things up.

I have the quasi-secret goal of getting someone to pay me to blog for work. In project meetings, I tend to say things like “The importance of two-way communication and viral marketing and customer-centricity and yam yammerdoo and…heyyyyy, I know! I could write a blog!” I succeeded once with a blog about communications that was up two weeks and had at least one loyal fan. I consider that a success in much the same way I consider son of max a success because my sister-in-law laughs when she reads it, especially when I make fun of my brother (Hi Pea!) Although I’ve been writing this blog, um, considerably longer.

Thus concludes the entry where I attempt to not mention the fact that a giant baby came out of my crotch three years ago. This offspring referral avoidance is somewhat in reaction to a friend recently telling me he didn’t read “mommyblogs” and therefore didn’t ever visit my site. Boy howdy did that twist my panties! I’ve thought about why that term bothers me and I think it's because I find it both reductive and borderline sexist. Just because you are female, have a child and write a blog doesn’t mean that’s all you do or write about. I eat sandwiches, am I a sandwichblogger? I have a hound dog, should I start hounddogblog.com? Shall we refer to male blog writers as “penisbloggers”?

All right, that’s enough of that. I am now going to pour myself a delicious drink and go outside to look for fireflies. Rumor has it they have arrived here on the EC.

Posted by Max at 09:24 PM | Comments (1)

June 26, 2006

spawn of max

The Summer Bummer party turned out to be indeed a bummer, at least as far as the weather was concerned. It was raining so hard it seemed dangerous. So Saturday morning I kicked the boys out of the house and got to work turning our little house into Daycare II: The Weekend Version. Basically, I asked myself WWSHTD? (what would sugar-high toddlers do?) to guide my planning and went from there. Craft tables were stocked with crayons and pipe cleaner, train tables were set up in guest bedrooms, gummy worms were affixed to the top of cupcakes.

Everyone seemed to have a good time, even though it was a little weird. At one point, I found myself in Bean’s tiny room, knee-deep in frenzied toddlers who were either lying on each other, hitting themselves with things, or screaming and I thought Geez, will someone come and deal with these kids? And then I was like, oh yeah, it’s my party.

Bean had fun and I got to meet some other parents for potential red-hot play date action, which was kind of the goal of the party. I made a point to showcase our enticing backyard through the black curtain of rain (“I know the inside of the house is kind of crappy, but can you see that shape out there? That’s a swing set!”) to try and ensure repeat visitors. The next morning Bean and I ate leftover cupcakes and put google eyes on everything, which was a whole different sort of fun.

In other news (and this is the segue into the non-mommyblog portion so for those who prefer your blogging spawn-free, here you go! Enjoy it while it lasts.), my husband wiped out on his bike yesterday thanks to the aforementioned rain and hurt his leg. So we got to take our third trip to the Urgent Care Clinic in nine months (first and second) to see if it was broken or what. It was just a bruised bone, thankfully, and I also got learn of this magazine’s existence while waiting in the lobby, so that was a plus. Things like cheerleading make me so glad I don’t have a girl. When little girls are pretend cooking and making crafts and being so sweet I’m like “Oh…I totally want a girl!” But then when I see nine-year olds wearing half-shirts and glittery eye shadow while a guy hoists them by their crotch ten feet in the air so they can do a big spin while their bums flash everywhere I say “No thank you!” (Oh wait, that turned mommyblog. Oops!) There’s enough trouble in the world for a boy to get into: it seems utterly hopeless to try and keep a girl safe.

Let’s try this again. Yesterday we whizzed through the Boston Museum of Science in an effort to keep us all from going Plum Crazy from the rain. There was a gorgeous display of glass jellyfish made in the 1880’s by father/son glassmakers and naturalists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. The models are so beautiful and strange. Since not as much was know about the world then, they seem infused with a sense of wonder and imagination lacking in our modern times. A nine-year old in purple hot pants passing for beauty just doesn’t seem right.

Posted by Max at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

June 12, 2006

joy in repetition

Back in the 70’s, my mom had both a kiln and a wild hair to redecorate my bedroom. I was not a super femme girl but nor was I a tomboy. I think if she had covered my room in sticks and stacked piles of books against the walls, I would have been pretty happy. But she decided I needed a more fitting environment for a blossoming young lady, which in her mind meant a ceramic lamp in the shape of Becky from Tom Sawyer cradling a puppy on her pinafored lap*. The lamp was to match my new canopy bed, pink rose wallpaper and other girly-swirly puffery. I felt largely ambiguous about the redecoration project, but I did have one small request: that Becky's puppy be brown with blue eyes. You would have thought I’d asked for a meth lab filled with hookers the way my mom reacted. “No way,” she said in her most conversation-ending voice, “dogs don’t have blue eyes.” I insisted that some of them did, I had seen them in books! But my mother stuck by her brown-eyes-only canine theory and, since she was the one with the kiln, Becky clutched a brown-eyed pup when she emerged glazed from the fires. Girl and dog stared at me forlornly for a number of years, until I was able to pawn the thing off on my sis as part of her initiation into All Things Pink and Wonderful.

I was recently reminded of the dog lamp when I was planning the Bean’s new “big boy” room.
“We’re painting your room!” I told him a few days before the big event.
“Oh! Green, my favorite color?” he gasped, eyes widening in surprise and excitement.
“Um, no, blue actually! My favorite color!” My smile faltered a bit. Crap. Why wasn’t I painting the room his favorite color? He can’t even say the word green without following it up with the phrase “my favorite color”. But I pressed on, painting the room two lovely shades of blue. I then hung up pictures from the chosen big boy room “theme”, which was…outer space! That meant spaceships and robots! Lots and lots of shiny robots with round robot heads and stretchy robot arms and metallic robot bodies clinking along on robotic wheels. I made a grand to-do about the robot lamp and paintings and aren’t robots cool etc etc. A few nights later, a sobbing Bean recounted his first Bad Dream, a dream filled with the only thing he’s decided he’s afraid of: robots. Down came the paintings, away went the comforter, so long to the futuristic lamps.

Then the other day, the Bean and I were at Michael’s picking out materials for his invitations to Spring Fling 2006. We had already talked about what he wanted on the invitations, which was frogs (because they are green, his favorite color.) As we cruised the stamp aisle, my wandering eye fell upon little birdie stamps of all shapes and sizes.
“Oh look! How cute! Birds!” exclaimed the crazy birds-on-stuff lady.
“I want dolphins,” replied the Bean, spying the Ocean Creatures stamp section.
“But look how cute these guys are! Look at the robin!” I held one up.
“I like a whale.” He reached towards a giant sperm whale stamp. “I wanna whale on der!” As a compromise, I bought him a rubber whale and secretly tossed a couple of stamps in the cart when he wasn’t looking. I’ve been working on the invitations the past few nights, after he’s in bed. So, ahem and ta-da!

Somewhere, a blue-eyed dog is howling.

* For the first time in recorded history, the Internet has let me down. No combination of becky lamp ceramic or puppy could find the lamp of my pre-pubescence. Maybe it wasn't actually Becky, but I just thought of her as such? I used to pretend my Madame Alexander dolls** were the back-up singers for Air Supply, so crazier things have happened. Also, I did stumble across this lamptastic bargain.

** Feck, I kind of want this one now! What the hell is wrong with me?

Posted by Max at 11:00 PM | Comments (1)

June 08, 2006

winding down to wind it up

My gig as a work-at-home contractor for a long-time client is coming to a close soon, which means the end of long-distance staff meetings, IM gossip sessions with my former office pals, and mixing business with laundry. It also means I’ve been casting about for other sources of income, since my husband and I love to do things like live in a house and eat. Somehow in life, I’ve found myself inexplicably skilled at a couple of very specific and apparently not too common things: I’m an oligopoly of content management! This has made for a flurry of recruiter commotion, trips to other continents and most recently, meetings at Big Companies where they give you free sodas and make fun of you for wearing your interviewiest finery.

The meetings were in, you guessed it, Seattle, so that’s where I’ve been for the past week. It was the first time I've spent any serious time there since we moved away. I drove around in my rented Saturn Ion, peering at things like a toddler looking for bugs under backyard rocks. I love Seattle and more than that, I love my friends there. These are friendships nearly a decade old, forged in bars and break-ups, weekends in Vegas and camping, marriages and childbirth. But to me, at least on this trip, Seattle itself seemed like the tail end of really good yard sale. The Eames chair and the Fiestaware have been snatched up by savvy hipster collectors and what’s left are chipped Rainier Beer mirrors and broken foot massagers destined to languish in the “Free” box the next morning.

I could go on about my six-hour, unfed interview process (again with the no food! What’s with those folks, do they not need to eat?) and how by the end I was nearly hallucinating with hunger/fatigue/headache, or how I sort of fought with one of the interviewers because he was a dick and frankly I wasn’t in the mood but instead I wish to discuss TV.

It’s recently come to my attention that nearly every man I know hates the show Big Love as much as his wife/girlfriend enjoys it. This seems odd to me. My friend T. and I were enjoying Mai Tais one evening and extolling the virtues of polygamy to her increasingly annoyed husband. He suggested that in the finale of the show everyone should die and that next season, they could show eight episodes of a blank screen, which would be better than the actual show. And T. and I are like are you kidding me? You could have sex with three different women! There would be lots of folks to help out with the kids! Home-cooked meals every night! Think of it, it would be great! Then the subject of multiple husbands came up and she and I simultaneously gagged on our drinks, muttering, “What are you f-ing kidding me? Like I want to pick up three guys’ dirty socks.” My conclusion is that polygamy is a pretty great idea for the ladies since you’d have to do way less housework and also have more friends around to talk to especially when your husband straps an effing lamp onto his head and chases after fishies every night of the year.

My husband really does strap a lamp to his head and go fishing at night. Apparently when he does this, his rubber-coated water-walking feet look so sexy that horseshoe crabs are constantly humping him. Multiple loving wives or getting it on with crustaceans in the water, which is better? I fear my husband has made his choice. Ladies, you have my number. Call me, we'll work something out.

Posted by Max at 11:10 PM | Comments (1)