I'd just like to note that I have twelve drafts of blog posts, several of which keep growing. This is a nice mental exercise, but I need to stretch that _posting_ muscle. It's been a month since I've used it.
The lovely and talented Jenna over at That Wife does weekly "brain dump" posts, which I enjoy, so for a change (and for a bit of a shout out to her - she had her baby boy on Monday! Go Jenna!), I shall dump a few things that have been rattling around my brain lately.
First: speaking of recent arrivals, my sister had her baby a bit over two weeks ago, and I was able to fly out at the last minute (thanks to my parents who paid for the ticket) and be there. The actual story is long and it was, to keep it short, not exactly what my sis was hoping for, in terms of a birth experience. However, her baby girl is just beautiful, is very healthy, and loves to eat. If one has to make a choice between a birth that kind of sucks and a baby who's not healthy, well... not much of a choice, right? My niece is strong and beautiful. At the risk of over-the-top schmalz, she resembles her mother.
I first got to see my niece when she was just under 2 hours old, and I got to hold her when she was 23 hours old - the newest baby I've ever held. I expected to be scared, but I don't know if it's pheromones or the fact that she was completely asleep most of the time or what, but I didn't have my usual newborn worry about breaking her at all. She's cool.
Second: another lovely and talented blogger (and one of my only readers!), Erin over at Just One Week, had a giveaway a few weeks ago for those cool LobotoME notepads... and I WON. I've never won a giveaway on a blog before. Thanks, Erin!
If you're reading here and you like blogs that are actually updated regularly, you should check out Erin's. Her project is cool and her writing style is very enjoyable.
Third: my best bud from preschool-through-high school started an online book club, which is a brilliant idea. I'm too cheap to buy a book every month and I think all the copies of the first book had been stolen from the library, so I didn't get to read the first book. But I own the second book, so I have no excuse. I just have to finish the great book I'm reading at the moment, which shouldn't take long.
Fourth: I'm not actually all that behind on my master's thesis. I'm in the final stage of approval before I can go out in the field! I'm looking forward to doing actual work on this thing rather than proposing.
Fifth: Something else that is starting to take up more of my time and energy these days is triathlon training. The last couple of weeks I've been alternating running and swimming each day. My 13-week countdown starts next week, so I suppose this could be called pre-training before I start actually training (which will have to include a day or two on my bike each week).
What's surprised me so far how tired I am these days. I've trained for races before (nothing longer than 8K... I have crappy knees) and I usually had more energy once I got into it, but I think this triathlon training is a different animal: there's not really a lot of space in the schedule for an all-out rest day, and I think I just need more sleep than I did before. I probably need to change what I eat, as well. I do crave sugar less than I use to... and I want protein all the time. Which presumably means I'm developing muscles.
I need to note that this is for a sprint triathlon, (6 laps swimming in a pool, 12 mile bike, 5K run). I cannot imagine what those Ironman people do. Or how much they eat and sleep.
Side note: for pretty funny commentary on Ironman training, go to Fat Cyclist. He's nuts, but he's doing this to impress a chick. Except she's already agreed to marry him, so I'm not sure why he's doing it, really...
Another side note: my husband has been running with me, which is so nice because he's my favorite running partner and we can chat while we jog. Also: my mother-in-law signed me up for a 5K in hubs's home town on May 1, which is good timing for my training. I totally lucked out on in-laws.
OK! Brain dump complete! How's everybody doing out there in internet land?
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Get out and ROWE
This morning on NPR I heard a story about "Results Oriented Work Environments" - the office environment of tomorrow, today!
In ROWE workplaces, people can work remotely, for the most part, unless they're scheduled to cover some face-to-face customer service type meeting. This means that "cubicle farms" are left mostly empty while workers rotate who's actually present. Managers of ROWE offices claim that the workers who do this are more productive because the hours they are working are actual working hours, rather than "butt in a chair at the office" hours (or what they call "presenteeism"... a term that's a bit too cute for my taste).
My taller half disregarded this idea, saying it's just another way to squeeze even more hours out of workers, for the same pay. As I was commuting to my office, though, I found myself wondering just how much of my job I could do from somewhere else... and whether I would be more productive and possibly happier if I tried it.
Which inevitably got me thinking about how much more time I could spend in natural light.
You see, at my workplace I have my own office, which I understand is a luxury, especially for someone my age. To be able to close a door is very nice on days when I need to be on the phone for a while, or am working on number crunching that needs concentration, or just don't want to deal with interruptions (though a closed door isn't necessarily a guarantee of that).
But my office is windowless. I spend hours of my life sitting at a desk, facing a wall, under fluorescent lights, and seeing zero natural anything, unless you count the plant that lives on my metal office shelf. I'm fairly certain this contributes to the lack of fulfillment the job gives me, which I've written about before.
Really, I could just as easily call people or reconcile receipts from... anywhere. Except for running the occasional conference and being secretary for the occasional meeting, I could do, probably, 80% of my job remotely. And the rest of that stuff could be scheduled for days when I plan to be around.
Heck, if I was able to work from somewhere else, my boss could give me a cubicle and assign my office to someone else.
Listening to the story about workers telecommuting, or only going in to the office once a week, I caught myself dreaming about setting up shop on a screened-in porch, with my coffee, in jeans and a sweatshirt, and logging my work hours to the sound of birdsong.
(Note: I don't have a screened-in porch. But it sounds nice, doesn't it?)
All this daydreaming is made worse by the fact that my desk at home just got moved and rearranged (does anyone else out there correlate "rearranging furniture" with "fun weekend"? Or is that just us?) so that it now faces two windows. As I was finishing a class project yesterday, I enjoyed swaying trees, changing evening sunlight, and puffy clouds. Just the occasional glance up helped my mental state considerably, and I got the project finished hours before I had originally expected to.
Of course, the usual tradeoff of working from home and/or working someplace comfortable is that you'll just never stop. This is certainly the case for most people I know who work from home, but the difference is that those people work for themselves. They're either running small businesses or they're independent contractors. My brother is a solid example of this: he has a home office, which means he works, like, 18 hour days, then staggers down the hall and falls in to bed, basically. And he's usually doing that six or seven days a week. He's got to be the most demanding boss ever, but he's his only employee, so nobody complains.
But if instead of running your own business you were reporting to a supervisor via e-mail and Skype, would it work? In a mostly self-managed job like mine, I think it would. And I think I'd be willing to give it a try.
Perhaps it's time to chat with my boss.
In ROWE workplaces, people can work remotely, for the most part, unless they're scheduled to cover some face-to-face customer service type meeting. This means that "cubicle farms" are left mostly empty while workers rotate who's actually present. Managers of ROWE offices claim that the workers who do this are more productive because the hours they are working are actual working hours, rather than "butt in a chair at the office" hours (or what they call "presenteeism"... a term that's a bit too cute for my taste).
My taller half disregarded this idea, saying it's just another way to squeeze even more hours out of workers, for the same pay. As I was commuting to my office, though, I found myself wondering just how much of my job I could do from somewhere else... and whether I would be more productive and possibly happier if I tried it.
Which inevitably got me thinking about how much more time I could spend in natural light.
You see, at my workplace I have my own office, which I understand is a luxury, especially for someone my age. To be able to close a door is very nice on days when I need to be on the phone for a while, or am working on number crunching that needs concentration, or just don't want to deal with interruptions (though a closed door isn't necessarily a guarantee of that).
But my office is windowless. I spend hours of my life sitting at a desk, facing a wall, under fluorescent lights, and seeing zero natural anything, unless you count the plant that lives on my metal office shelf. I'm fairly certain this contributes to the lack of fulfillment the job gives me, which I've written about before.
Really, I could just as easily call people or reconcile receipts from... anywhere. Except for running the occasional conference and being secretary for the occasional meeting, I could do, probably, 80% of my job remotely. And the rest of that stuff could be scheduled for days when I plan to be around.
Heck, if I was able to work from somewhere else, my boss could give me a cubicle and assign my office to someone else.
Listening to the story about workers telecommuting, or only going in to the office once a week, I caught myself dreaming about setting up shop on a screened-in porch, with my coffee, in jeans and a sweatshirt, and logging my work hours to the sound of birdsong.
(Note: I don't have a screened-in porch. But it sounds nice, doesn't it?)
All this daydreaming is made worse by the fact that my desk at home just got moved and rearranged (does anyone else out there correlate "rearranging furniture" with "fun weekend"? Or is that just us?) so that it now faces two windows. As I was finishing a class project yesterday, I enjoyed swaying trees, changing evening sunlight, and puffy clouds. Just the occasional glance up helped my mental state considerably, and I got the project finished hours before I had originally expected to.
Of course, the usual tradeoff of working from home and/or working someplace comfortable is that you'll just never stop. This is certainly the case for most people I know who work from home, but the difference is that those people work for themselves. They're either running small businesses or they're independent contractors. My brother is a solid example of this: he has a home office, which means he works, like, 18 hour days, then staggers down the hall and falls in to bed, basically. And he's usually doing that six or seven days a week. He's got to be the most demanding boss ever, but he's his only employee, so nobody complains.
But if instead of running your own business you were reporting to a supervisor via e-mail and Skype, would it work? In a mostly self-managed job like mine, I think it would. And I think I'd be willing to give it a try.
Perhaps it's time to chat with my boss.
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Surprising myself
My sense of hindsight is excellent: I am quite skilled at seeing and analyzing things I've done in the past. If only the same could be said about my foresight. Is this common?
In speaking with other folks who are living through graduate school programs of different stripes, I've concluded that I'm not the only person who does this, especially when it comes to projects like, say, a thesis: the process convinces us that we, folks who are pretty smart and have accomplished some tough academic tasks in the past already, cannot do this thing.
Some grad school programs seem to pride themselves on destroying the confidence of their students. (Law school is particularly cruel: IF you survive, THEN you get to take a multi-day exam which covers a million things you didn't learn in your three expensive years and which you will probably fail.)
Combined with this culture, I have a chronic tendency to think I peaked in the past. When I was in high school I honestly thought that my intelligence had spiked in seventh and eighth grade, because those were years I qualified for the regional spelling bee. Spelling skills, folks. That was my smart-peak. Then, in college, I looked back at high school and thought that then - then! - was when I had reached the pinnacle of my brilliance. I competed in mock trial all four years. I wore a suit and argued a case in front of real judges at seventeen! Can that be topped? I think not.
I realized this the other day, while I was procrastinating from editing my thesis proposal. I was picking up some items at the little health food store next to my workplace, and I heard my least favorite store clerk lecturing two undergrads about something or another (he lectures. Hence he's my least-favorite). Mr. Lecture said: "You're in school now - you're the smartest you'll ever be. It's all downhill from here."
Oh, my God. Really?
And I realized there's a part of me that has always subscribed to that point of view: it's all downhill from here. You'll never be smarter than this. The peak, you dolt, has already passed.
The inevitable thought that is born from this line of thinking is: why bother doing anything else then?
A day later I sat down with my draft thesis proposal and, upon reading, realized that it is actually kind of good. Imagine this: in different ways, I've been working on parts of this document for at least a year and a half, and at this point it's not horrible. My hindsight kicked in and I saw myself working on my pilot project last spring. Even though that was a large project crammed in to a totally unreasonable timeline, I managed to complete it and do so fairly well. Then I saw myself researching for the rest of the literature review as it now stands, this past fall, and I recalled my professor telling me it was "outstanding". I thought she was being nice... and then I remembered that she is actually a fairly tough evaluator.
So where was the peak? Because of course it's already passed, right? Because there is a peak, isn't there?
I decided to go ahead and submit my draft proposal to my advisor, so she could give me suggestions for things to fix. She contacted me three days later and told me I'm ready to defend it as it is. I met with her exactly a week after I sent in the "draft", we talked about it, and she approved it. Now I'm working through all the human subjects research protocol before I begin actually researching and writing my master's thesis.
Maybe this can be done. Maybe, to stop using the passive, I can do this.
Wouldn't it be convenient if my foresight was as sunny as my hindsight? Have you ever thought you peaked in the past?
In speaking with other folks who are living through graduate school programs of different stripes, I've concluded that I'm not the only person who does this, especially when it comes to projects like, say, a thesis: the process convinces us that we, folks who are pretty smart and have accomplished some tough academic tasks in the past already, cannot do this thing.
Some grad school programs seem to pride themselves on destroying the confidence of their students. (Law school is particularly cruel: IF you survive, THEN you get to take a multi-day exam which covers a million things you didn't learn in your three expensive years and which you will probably fail.)
Combined with this culture, I have a chronic tendency to think I peaked in the past. When I was in high school I honestly thought that my intelligence had spiked in seventh and eighth grade, because those were years I qualified for the regional spelling bee. Spelling skills, folks. That was my smart-peak. Then, in college, I looked back at high school and thought that then - then! - was when I had reached the pinnacle of my brilliance. I competed in mock trial all four years. I wore a suit and argued a case in front of real judges at seventeen! Can that be topped? I think not.
I realized this the other day, while I was procrastinating from editing my thesis proposal. I was picking up some items at the little health food store next to my workplace, and I heard my least favorite store clerk lecturing two undergrads about something or another (he lectures. Hence he's my least-favorite). Mr. Lecture said: "You're in school now - you're the smartest you'll ever be. It's all downhill from here."
Oh, my God. Really?
And I realized there's a part of me that has always subscribed to that point of view: it's all downhill from here. You'll never be smarter than this. The peak, you dolt, has already passed.
The inevitable thought that is born from this line of thinking is: why bother doing anything else then?
A day later I sat down with my draft thesis proposal and, upon reading, realized that it is actually kind of good. Imagine this: in different ways, I've been working on parts of this document for at least a year and a half, and at this point it's not horrible. My hindsight kicked in and I saw myself working on my pilot project last spring. Even though that was a large project crammed in to a totally unreasonable timeline, I managed to complete it and do so fairly well. Then I saw myself researching for the rest of the literature review as it now stands, this past fall, and I recalled my professor telling me it was "outstanding". I thought she was being nice... and then I remembered that she is actually a fairly tough evaluator.
So where was the peak? Because of course it's already passed, right? Because there is a peak, isn't there?
I decided to go ahead and submit my draft proposal to my advisor, so she could give me suggestions for things to fix. She contacted me three days later and told me I'm ready to defend it as it is. I met with her exactly a week after I sent in the "draft", we talked about it, and she approved it. Now I'm working through all the human subjects research protocol before I begin actually researching and writing my master's thesis.
Maybe this can be done. Maybe, to stop using the passive, I can do this.
Wouldn't it be convenient if my foresight was as sunny as my hindsight? Have you ever thought you peaked in the past?
Monday, March 1, 2010
In like a...
Well, it seems that February was a bust at the old blog, but in "meatspace" I had a lot going on:
I did more traveling than I usually do, all solo, which is quite unusual for me. It's nice to be by my lonesome every now and then, but as usual I was reminded what a great travel companion I have in my husband. After a few evenings of only being able to talk to him for a few minutes on the phone, I also remembered how much I don't miss the long-distance dating we did. I mean, dating was fun. Needing a phone to connect with each other wasn't.
All the traveling was for the two baby showers held for my sister. The one I hosted turned out pretty well, and I was proud of its special twist: I asked everyone to bring their favorite children's book. She got a pile of great books! This had the doubly-good effect of taking up so much time, the one game I had planned got scrapped. Nobody was sad about this.
My sister got some important necessary items at her showers, like a stroller and a baby seat... and clothes, clothes, clothes. We were wondering how many onesies a kid can wear at the same time. I started mentioning that babies need their clothes changed all the time, but as we started unpacking two showers' worth of cute outfits in the nursery I realized that there is perhaps such a thing as too many clothes for a baby. Especially one born in the spring... don't babies just hang out in their diapers during the summer?
Before the traveling (fortunately!) I had the flu for the first time in... years. It took me at least 24 hours before I admitted it was the flu. I thought I was just tired, or lazy, or something. Turns out not wanting to move and hurting everywhere was on account of the 101-degree fever I was rocking. Ohhh.
Having the flu for three days confirmed for me that our apartment is too small. It's workable for the two of us on evenings and weekends; it's not entirely bearable when one of us is quite ill and wants to sleep/watch TV/make 37 pots of tea and the other is about six feet away in his office trying to grade papers and prepare for the class he's teaching that night. Alas, it seems unlikely we'll move soon, so I just need to stay as healthy as possible.
Perhaps with that in mind, I started swimming in earnest during the latter half of February. I hope to have more to mention in March about my certainly ill-conceived plan to participate in a sprint triathlon in July. The longest atheltic event I've participated in up until now was an 8K last March, so I have some nervousness about the swimming and biking bits. Which I understand is two-thirds of the race.
Most importantly, I hope to make this less of a "first of the month" blog and more of an "occasional" blog. I admire bloggers who post daily, but I know myself well enough to know that this, at least at this point in time, is not one of those blogs.
Happy March, everyone!
I did more traveling than I usually do, all solo, which is quite unusual for me. It's nice to be by my lonesome every now and then, but as usual I was reminded what a great travel companion I have in my husband. After a few evenings of only being able to talk to him for a few minutes on the phone, I also remembered how much I don't miss the long-distance dating we did. I mean, dating was fun. Needing a phone to connect with each other wasn't.
All the traveling was for the two baby showers held for my sister. The one I hosted turned out pretty well, and I was proud of its special twist: I asked everyone to bring their favorite children's book. She got a pile of great books! This had the doubly-good effect of taking up so much time, the one game I had planned got scrapped. Nobody was sad about this.
My sister got some important necessary items at her showers, like a stroller and a baby seat... and clothes, clothes, clothes. We were wondering how many onesies a kid can wear at the same time. I started mentioning that babies need their clothes changed all the time, but as we started unpacking two showers' worth of cute outfits in the nursery I realized that there is perhaps such a thing as too many clothes for a baby. Especially one born in the spring... don't babies just hang out in their diapers during the summer?
Before the traveling (fortunately!) I had the flu for the first time in... years. It took me at least 24 hours before I admitted it was the flu. I thought I was just tired, or lazy, or something. Turns out not wanting to move and hurting everywhere was on account of the 101-degree fever I was rocking. Ohhh.
Having the flu for three days confirmed for me that our apartment is too small. It's workable for the two of us on evenings and weekends; it's not entirely bearable when one of us is quite ill and wants to sleep/watch TV/make 37 pots of tea and the other is about six feet away in his office trying to grade papers and prepare for the class he's teaching that night. Alas, it seems unlikely we'll move soon, so I just need to stay as healthy as possible.
Perhaps with that in mind, I started swimming in earnest during the latter half of February. I hope to have more to mention in March about my certainly ill-conceived plan to participate in a sprint triathlon in July. The longest atheltic event I've participated in up until now was an 8K last March, so I have some nervousness about the swimming and biking bits. Which I understand is two-thirds of the race.
Most importantly, I hope to make this less of a "first of the month" blog and more of an "occasional" blog. I admire bloggers who post daily, but I know myself well enough to know that this, at least at this point in time, is not one of those blogs.
Happy March, everyone!
Monday, February 1, 2010
Public Displays of Education
Today marked a deadline that I realize I was half-ignoring over the past few weeks: this was the last day to apply for spring degree conferral at my university. And apply I did, today, after hemming and hawing. This means that my department will review whether I can walk in the commencement ceremony in June, and if they deem me worthy, they'll invite me to do so.
My hemming and hawing was driven by what I worry is a lack of worthiness for the ceremony. As of March, I will be finished with the course work I started in September of 2007, which is admittedly an accomplishment. But there is essentially zero chance that I will have defended my master's thesis by the time graduation rolls around. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of participating in a ceremony that says, "You've finished!" while I will likely return to field work or coding data the next week - certainly moving along in the process of my thesis, but not finished by any means.
So I'm slowly gathering the opinions of people around me. The way I see it, I have three choices:
1) Walk this June.
2) Don't walk and have a party instead at a later date.
3) Walk in 2011.
Well, I guess there's a fourth option:
4) Do nothing.
But who knows how many more degrees I'll get in my life? I think I should do something to commemorate this. So option 4 will be tabled for the moment.
I've found myself wondering for whom the commencement ceremony is organized, anyway. As someone who has worked at many graduations over the last 6 years, I have long thought that, though it's important to recognize and celebrate the graduates, commencements are at least as much about thanking the family, friends and colleagues who supported those folks through school. I'm interested in walking across the stage and getting a master's hood because, sure, it'll look cool and I've worked hard for it, but I think I'm more interested in taking my parents, siblings, in-laws and of course my husband out for a meal, to thank them for three years of encouragement, support, love, and laundry assistance. Do I want to make them sit through a ceremony? What if it's a ceremony at the crack of dawn on a Saturday? Is that thanking them? Or just being selfish?
And what if I'm asking all this of them and I haven't even earned the degree? The idea of that makes me feel... greedy, I think.
I also worry about what I perceive as my disordered enjoyment of graduation ceremonies. In my previous job, I organized two graduations a year for adult high school learners. In my current job, I volunteer each spring to marshal a graduate school commencement ceremony. For each of these, the ceremony required a long day on my feet, organizing a large group of people - but I love them. I understand that most people do not enjoy graduations, and that probably a majority of the population loathe them - they are long, the involve speeches, there are a lot of people you don't know there who are crossing the stage while you wait for the one person you care about.
Do I want to "thank" my loved ones with that?
Am I over analyzing this? (Uh, probably, Schmei.)
What would you do?
My hemming and hawing was driven by what I worry is a lack of worthiness for the ceremony. As of March, I will be finished with the course work I started in September of 2007, which is admittedly an accomplishment. But there is essentially zero chance that I will have defended my master's thesis by the time graduation rolls around. I'm uncomfortable with the idea of participating in a ceremony that says, "You've finished!" while I will likely return to field work or coding data the next week - certainly moving along in the process of my thesis, but not finished by any means.
So I'm slowly gathering the opinions of people around me. The way I see it, I have three choices:
1) Walk this June.
2) Don't walk and have a party instead at a later date.
3) Walk in 2011.
Well, I guess there's a fourth option:
4) Do nothing.
But who knows how many more degrees I'll get in my life? I think I should do something to commemorate this. So option 4 will be tabled for the moment.
I've found myself wondering for whom the commencement ceremony is organized, anyway. As someone who has worked at many graduations over the last 6 years, I have long thought that, though it's important to recognize and celebrate the graduates, commencements are at least as much about thanking the family, friends and colleagues who supported those folks through school. I'm interested in walking across the stage and getting a master's hood because, sure, it'll look cool and I've worked hard for it, but I think I'm more interested in taking my parents, siblings, in-laws and of course my husband out for a meal, to thank them for three years of encouragement, support, love, and laundry assistance. Do I want to make them sit through a ceremony? What if it's a ceremony at the crack of dawn on a Saturday? Is that thanking them? Or just being selfish?
And what if I'm asking all this of them and I haven't even earned the degree? The idea of that makes me feel... greedy, I think.
I also worry about what I perceive as my disordered enjoyment of graduation ceremonies. In my previous job, I organized two graduations a year for adult high school learners. In my current job, I volunteer each spring to marshal a graduate school commencement ceremony. For each of these, the ceremony required a long day on my feet, organizing a large group of people - but I love them. I understand that most people do not enjoy graduations, and that probably a majority of the population loathe them - they are long, the involve speeches, there are a lot of people you don't know there who are crossing the stage while you wait for the one person you care about.
Do I want to "thank" my loved ones with that?
Am I over analyzing this? (Uh, probably, Schmei.)
What would you do?
Friday, January 22, 2010
Shower forecast
As I mentioned recently, my only sister is expecting her first child in the spring. I happily volunteered to host a baby shower, and the invitations have gone out: it's happening in a few weeks. Since my sister and brother-in-law have chosen not to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl, and since I know that, even if she did know, my sister wouldn't want to have a party that's all pink frills or blue trucks, I'm aiming for a gender-neutral celebration of new life.
With the help of my creative taller half, I settled on a bird theme, in part because I found this adorable card stock:
(Um, I thought I was being clever, using this for a baby shower. Apparently that's the intended purpose - which I discovered when I did this image search. Whatever. My grandma still thinks it's cute.)
Something my sister and I share is a tendency toward being not the girliest of girls. We're both life-long Girl Scouts. We enjoy hiking in the woods and working in dirt (though her thumb is much greener than mine) and all that stuff. We are tentatively planning to do a triathlon together (there's another post for another time). I tend to hang out with guy-friends. She works in a very male-dominated science field.
All this is to say that meditating on a traditional, all-female baby shower hosted by me for her feels a bit off. On one hand, I very much want to celebrate what my sis is doing, and I think she's going to be a terrific mom. On the other hand, baby showers can veer into the creepy with a quickness, and I do not want to do that.
One baby shower I attended last year was so exhaustingly weird that I had to spend a full day recovering from it afterward. Honestly, I felt like I had a mild case of the flu. The games were so... awful. We had to sniff disposable diapers that had been filled with melted candy bars to determine what the candy had been. This might have been tolerable if it hadn't been the FIFTH activity we were put through (Decorate a bib! Do an icebreaker! Do a forty-minute-long celebrity baby match game! Guess a name! Eat these color-coordinated cookies! Go! GO! GO!!).
It was terrible. Then, when the expectant mother cried at the end with what I perceived as genuine gratitude for all the gifts and support (and, hey, maybe exhaustion at the end of a four-hour long gamefest?), some of the women laughed at her and made a crack about hormones. Huh?
I know.
So... I want to limit this event to one or two games that can serve as icebreakers, with an emphasis on eating good food and cake and enjoying the gift-opening. I'm trying to figure out how to carry the bird theme through the prizes and favors (if those Robin's Eggs chocolates come out before this shower, I'm in business!), and I'm considering which games would work best for the crowd. There will, of course, be a mix of people ranging from my shower-wary self to the "OMG LET'S PLAY GAMES" high school friend of my sister, but if she's disappointed, it's not her shower, right?
If any of my 1.5 readers have ideas for shower games that are actually fun, or prizes I should seek out, please share! As long as I'm not snorting faux-feces, it's going to be better than at least one party... but I'd like to keep the standards a bit higher than that.
With the help of my creative taller half, I settled on a bird theme, in part because I found this adorable card stock:
(Um, I thought I was being clever, using this for a baby shower. Apparently that's the intended purpose - which I discovered when I did this image search. Whatever. My grandma still thinks it's cute.)Something my sister and I share is a tendency toward being not the girliest of girls. We're both life-long Girl Scouts. We enjoy hiking in the woods and working in dirt (though her thumb is much greener than mine) and all that stuff. We are tentatively planning to do a triathlon together (there's another post for another time). I tend to hang out with guy-friends. She works in a very male-dominated science field.
All this is to say that meditating on a traditional, all-female baby shower hosted by me for her feels a bit off. On one hand, I very much want to celebrate what my sis is doing, and I think she's going to be a terrific mom. On the other hand, baby showers can veer into the creepy with a quickness, and I do not want to do that.
One baby shower I attended last year was so exhaustingly weird that I had to spend a full day recovering from it afterward. Honestly, I felt like I had a mild case of the flu. The games were so... awful. We had to sniff disposable diapers that had been filled with melted candy bars to determine what the candy had been. This might have been tolerable if it hadn't been the FIFTH activity we were put through (Decorate a bib! Do an icebreaker! Do a forty-minute-long celebrity baby match game! Guess a name! Eat these color-coordinated cookies! Go! GO! GO!!).
It was terrible. Then, when the expectant mother cried at the end with what I perceived as genuine gratitude for all the gifts and support (and, hey, maybe exhaustion at the end of a four-hour long gamefest?), some of the women laughed at her and made a crack about hormones. Huh?
I know.
So... I want to limit this event to one or two games that can serve as icebreakers, with an emphasis on eating good food and cake and enjoying the gift-opening. I'm trying to figure out how to carry the bird theme through the prizes and favors (if those Robin's Eggs chocolates come out before this shower, I'm in business!), and I'm considering which games would work best for the crowd. There will, of course, be a mix of people ranging from my shower-wary self to the "OMG LET'S PLAY GAMES" high school friend of my sister, but if she's disappointed, it's not her shower, right?
If any of my 1.5 readers have ideas for shower games that are actually fun, or prizes I should seek out, please share! As long as I'm not snorting faux-feces, it's going to be better than at least one party... but I'd like to keep the standards a bit higher than that.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
The return of the return, and suggestions of kisses
That was certainly a long break, wasn't it? So here's a short post to parallel my last:
I am still alive and am getting back into the patterns of work, school and life in general. This includes planning an upcoming baby shower for my impending niece or nephew, seeing the dim but strengthening light at the end of the graduate school tunnel, pondering possible moves of both career and geographical natures, and - fortunately - reading some good writing.
I finally subscribed to Roger Ebert's blog, after having read several excellent posts over there (I think blog-subscription is a commitment I take a bit too seriously sometimes). He posted again today, about the subject of making out, of all things.
Mr. Ebert writes "It is more erotic to wonder if you're about to be kissed than it is to be kissed." Upon reading that I recalled one of my heart-poundingest memories of high school, when I was riding in a car with a boy and he merely put his hand over mine. I recall becoming a bit dizzy from the least physical contact possible. Fantastic.
So if you require a good long post that will hopefully conjure up a few good memories of your own, head over here. If you find you haven't many memories of this sort of thing, it might time to go make out with someone, don't you think?
Happy new year!
I am still alive and am getting back into the patterns of work, school and life in general. This includes planning an upcoming baby shower for my impending niece or nephew, seeing the dim but strengthening light at the end of the graduate school tunnel, pondering possible moves of both career and geographical natures, and - fortunately - reading some good writing.
I finally subscribed to Roger Ebert's blog, after having read several excellent posts over there (I think blog-subscription is a commitment I take a bit too seriously sometimes). He posted again today, about the subject of making out, of all things.
Mr. Ebert writes "It is more erotic to wonder if you're about to be kissed than it is to be kissed." Upon reading that I recalled one of my heart-poundingest memories of high school, when I was riding in a car with a boy and he merely put his hand over mine. I recall becoming a bit dizzy from the least physical contact possible. Fantastic.
So if you require a good long post that will hopefully conjure up a few good memories of your own, head over here. If you find you haven't many memories of this sort of thing, it might time to go make out with someone, don't you think?
Happy new year!
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