A Day (Off) in the Life: March 16, 2016

A Day (Off) in the Life: March 16, 2016

The second annual “A Day in the Life” Blogger Event is hosted by Trish at Love, Laughter, and a Touch of Insanity. I wrote about a workday for last year’s Day in the Life. This year, I’m looking back at a midweek day off from work. This photo collage is from the night before this year’s Day in the Life, at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara where Paul and I saw Loreena McKennitt on her Trio Tour. Because […]

My Infomagical Week [Show and Tell Sunday]

My Infomagical Week [Show and Tell Sunday]

I learned about Infomagical from Bryan, and decided to try this challenge for myself last week. Since I knew I had a packed week of work ahead of me, it seemed like as good a time as any to tackle a project designed to help manage information overload and improve focus and creativity: “Infomagical (is) a collective FOMO course correction. (I)t’s not about your gadgets per se, it’s about all the stuff on them, and all the stuff coming […]

Damage Control; Or, 5 Things I Tried This Week

Damage Control; Or, 5 Things I Tried This Week

“I am this close to burnout,” I said to Paul as we were driving back home from his mother’s house last Monday. We were just 18 days into 2016–the mythical “Blue Monday”–but between parenting both our parents since Thanksgiving (one way or another) while observing the holidays with our kids and trying not to let our work go undone, I’ve been feeling a bit crisp around the edges. This week, I tried a few things that […]

RISE To Meet a New Year: #OneWord for 2016

RISE To Meet a New Year: #OneWord for 2016

Reading Kerry’s reflections on her “words” for this year and last, I realized that her one-word resolution for 2016 had been mine for 2015. My #OneWord for the year had chosen with good and hopeful intentions, but even before February arrived it looked like it might not be something I could live up to, and before long, I pretty much forgot about it entirely. The year of cancer didn’t bring me all that much I wanted to […]

True Stories: A Day in My Work Life

True Stories: A Day in My Work Life

Previously posted on The List App, where it was composed in something approximating real time A SPECTACULARLY UNPRODUCTIVE DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN ACCOUNTING MANAGER (Or, further evidence of the existence of Monday and the hazards of technology) 5:00 AM: Get up with alarm (woke up about 30 minutes earlier, not on purpose) 6:35 AM: Leave for work (distance: 40 miles) 8:10 AM: Arrive at work, irritable from a 40-mile, 90-minute drive 8:20 AM: […]

#GivingTuesday 2015: Give Some Thought to Giving!

#GivingTuesday 2015: Give Some Thought to Giving!

(A version of the following was originally published here in 2014. Images used with permission.) I work with words online, but in my offline life, my job involves working with numbers. I’m one of those “bean counters” in the Accounting Office getting in the way of your creative ideas because there’s not enough money to do them. I have attempted to compensate for the dry soullessness of my profession by using my powers for good–that is, […]

Thankfully Fabulous Friday, And What Comes Next

Thankfully Fabulous Friday, And What Comes Next

I’m not officially participating in Jenn’s Thankfully Reading Weekend–although I will be very thankful for any reading time I get this weekend!–but today’s post comes via her and Michelle. Michelle asks what makes today a Fabulous Friday. Well, the fact I slept way past 5 AM and am writing this post while still in bad certainly helps, but it’s mostly because of this thing that happened yesterday:  The walker is something new that came home […]

Show-and-Tell MONDAY: Recapping Sunday

Show-and-Tell MONDAY: Recapping Sunday

The day started with a motorcycle and ended in a hospital, but despite what you might suspect, one had nothing to do with the other! But to begin by backtracking, this happened last Sunday: Yesterday. Paul and I began our morning with a ride to Malibu on his motorcycle, where this happened along the way: When I took my phone out of my jacket pocket after we got home, I found this text: An hour […]

Roads Not Taken: A Chronological List of Rejected Career Options

Roads Not Taken: A Chronological List of Rejected Career Options

WHAT I WANTED TO BE GROWING UP, CHRONOLOGICALLY “Teacher” and “nurse” were how most girls my age answered the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” back when we were growing up. I never said either. “Accountant” was where I ended up. It was never on the list at all. “Wife” and “mother” were nearly always assumed to be on the list, but for me–already a burgeoning 1970s second-wave feminist in […]

A Surprising Truth: I Miss Being Called “Ma’am”

A Surprising Truth: I Miss Being Called “Ma’am”

“Please stop calling me ‘ma’am’” I begged her. “I’m only five years older than you are!” “Sorry, I can’t help it,” she said. “It’s how I was raised.” “It’s how I was raised” explains a lot of Southern habits. This was Memphis, Tennessee, and so it was almost certainly true that she was raised to do it. She meant well by saying it and had been raised to say it with respect. But I hadn’t been […]

This Is Not the Shaggy-Dog Story We Thought It Was

This Is Not the Shaggy-Dog Story We Thought It Was

 You think you know someone… When we first brought our dog home in November 2014, he came with a story: “Chester is an adorable 3-year-old petite Golden mix who loves to receive cuddles and attention, and gives plenty of kisses in return. Chester’s favorite pastimes are chasing tennis balls and making a game of giving the ball back to his people, playing with his knotted rope, and getting walks – there is so much to sniff along […]

The Book (Purge) Report

The Book (Purge) Report

I declared my intention to do it over a month ago. It’s been nagging at me for far longer, but as it approached, I became ever more excited about undertaking it. I took last week off from work to get it done. The Big Book Purge of 2015 is now history, and so are nearly 400 books that have left both my house and my LibraryThing catalog. That’s a good-guesstimate number–I didn’t do a physical […]