When life gives you clusterfucks, pedal gratefully.

Theme of the past two weeks — Clusterf*ck.

Fake Snow Clusterf*ck

I visited Seattle for the first time recently.  Quite lovely!  Their coffeehouses really ARE cool.  I thought the Chicago java-scene was pretty good.  Oh man, we have a lot of catching up to do.  The variety, the natural wood, the hanging art, the mismatched furniture, the sleek yet comfortable design, the walls of colorful books, the quaintness.  We do that.  But they do that better.

This is a Starbucks that serves beer on tap and is trying out the bar/coffeehouse vibe.  That patio come summer is going to be people-watching central.  Boyfriend complained that they served beer in a chilled glass, I guess that’s a no-no?  But the important part of the photo is the snow.  Or the lack there of.  Starbucks baristas were jumping up and down, squealing, and snapping photos of the “snow.”  There was half an inch.  I chuckled to myself.  Cute Seattle-ites.

Then Boyfriend and I tried to find a watering hole later in the day.  Business after business, block after block, everything was dark and shut down.  At first, we thought they just really loved Martin Luther King (it was MLK Day).  But then we saw –

On door after door after door.  It stopped being cute.  More than one sign said, “For the safety of our staff…”  Oh Seattle.  You don’t know snow.  This?  This is someone with a mild case of dandruff sneezing lightly.  But the city quickly became a deserted madhouse, with closed streets, illegal sledding, and pig-noise baristas.

Made me appreciate snow plows, salt, and hearty Midwesterners.

Real Snow Clusterf*ck 

Heavy backpack, sleep in an unfamiliar Starbucks corporate housing bed, slushy, steep hill walks, and an 11:35pm flight back to Chicago led to a re-aggravation of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.  I lay in bed my first couple of days back from Seattle with back spasms of an eighty-three year old.  While I wanted nothing more than to indulge in a Daily Show marathon, I had so many projects to catch up with.  One was a presentation that I was giving at Lean StartUp later in the week.

I pushed aside all of the “Must do this now!” items on my To Do List and diligently crafted my How To Make A Living Doing What You Love story.  Creating a Prezi is not easy when groaning, horizontal, and typing on a laptop propped up by pillows.  But I finished just in time.  And then it started snowing.

The thought of trudging downtown through the wintery mess 6pm on a Friday night with a screeching back was not appealing in the least.  I hadn’t showered or been out of pajamas in two days.  Maybe I should back out?  But as a constant host and event planner, I know how frustrating it is when people cancel last minute, either as participants or as audience members.  So a few hours after I got the 2:48pm email telling us the event was still on as scheduled, I winced, slowly cocooned myself in outerwear and an I feel great! smile, and headed out.

A thirty-minute train ride and a twenty-minute frustrating IKEA moment — you can see the huge blue and yellow store right there but can’t get to it due to a maze of confusing driveways and highway exits; construction had the building where I was going completely blocked off save for a ridiculously hard to get to unmarked entrance — I arrived.  Weird-sweaty (hot in freezing weather), I signed in, got a badge, rode up to the seventeenth floor, and introduced myself to the hosts.

“I’m sorry.  Due to the weather, we only have time for Kevin to speak.”

I didn’t know who Kevin was but I immediately hated him.  I leaked my best That’s ok, I know it’s not your fault, what good is it going to do anyone for me to be annoyed? sentiments and trudged back into the snow.  Two-hour, $4.50 trip that took me from my house to my house.  Awesome.

I arrived home to find Boyfriend.  Decided to let go of my annoyance and view the situation from a “Now I get to hang out with someone I really like!” stance.  We playfully walked a few blocks to Riverview Tavern (thank you Chicago businesses for remaining sane and open during snow!), hand-holding and climbing snow drifts, and talked about how to world dominate via entrepreneurism over burgers and fries.

What Happens When People Are Open to Scary Yet Fun Clusterf*ck 

The new Fear Experiment class started.  (Recently featured on Gapers Block!)

Twenty non-dancers and eighteen non-improvisers sign up alone to work with a group of folk they don’t know and a teacher for three months learning their non-craft in preparation for performing in front of what last year was a sold-out 700 member Park West audience; gaining a few more seats due to not building out the stage, 750 are expected this year.

Would you have guessed that these people met just ninety-minutes before this photo was taken?  Positivity, energy, and laughter has been radiating since Day 1.  Incredibly uplifting to witness.

Public Radio Clusterf*ck

WBEZ had a wonderful idea to host a free Make Your Own Job event, where you could pick up some tax, legal, and funding tips along with a helping of inspiration.

WBEZ had a not-thought out idea of no registration required.  I biked up to Catalyst Ranch and saw a line about sixty deep hopping from foot to foot outside the front door.  After about twenty minutes, I made it inside the lobby and was greeted with “We’re at capacity upstairs.  You can put your name on the wait-list.  There are about eighty people ahead of you.”

I hung out in the lobby for another twenty minutes or so.  All of the work I had to get done weighed heavily on my mind; I decided to go home.

Another wasted two-hours.  I pedaled steeped in annoyance.

As I diagonal’ed it up Elston, I recalled the numerous people in line holding leather-portfolios of resumes and dressed in obvious I’m trying to make a good impression; please hire me! suits.  I went to the event to take a break from work.  To have fun.

I thanked the universe I wasn’t one of the suits and continued pedaling the rest of the way home steeped in gratitude.

Can being happy really be that simple? I think so.

The website where I saw this said “Thanks Gustavo Vieira!” in attribution; not sure if he’s the creator or the pointer-outter, but Thanks Gustavo Vieira!

This image resulted in a head nod and an aloud “Amen” from me this morning.

Which resulted in a recollection of a David Sedaris quote I stumbled upon around Thanksgiving — “I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn’t like it, and changed.”

Which resulted in me questioning, So many people are unhappy in some area of their life – social, professional, romantic, physical, spiritual… – why can’t it be as simple as them making a change to bring themselves happiness?  What’s the roadblock?  What do people need to take that seemingly simple, yet obviously not, step?  Though perhaps fuzzy to see through my gripes about skinny jeans or people thinking me giving them my business card is permission to add me to their mailing list, I’m ridiculously happy.  In every aspect of my life.  Things pop up that cause me stress, pain or disappointment.  I’ve got flaws, vices, and annoying traits.  I don’t have everything I want.  But somehow I continually navigate past negativity and unattained-desires and end up in Life is Greatville.  Why is that?

Thanks to Sedaris, my turkey-consuming family was consequently subjected to a trip-over-words excited “I have no idea what I’m doing and am making things up as I go but it feels right” brain dump of ideas centered around stupidly scarily moving away from what’s been my self-employment bread and butter over the past seven years, video production and teaching, towards focusing on using my own path to help folk live fuller lives.

I spent the post-Thanksgiving Friday revamping my website to reflect this lightbulb moment.  Throw something up there, take the next few months to hash out what exactly you’ll offer, maybe then convince a friend to let you guinea pig the new service on him/her…  That was the plan.  Two days later, I had my first sign-up.  And then another.  And another.  And another.

Life is wonderfully, oddly, randomly amazing.  You just need to participate in it.  And not worry about the What ifs.

Do something out of your proverbial comfort zone.  Do something you’re not “qualified” to do.  Do something that scares you.  Do something.  Just Do It.

Fantastically, there are vehicles out there to help you Nike life in the face.  Like The Leap Year Project.  Like Fear Experiment [starts in seventeen days!  Sign up for the wait list today!].  Like _______.  What other vehicles exist that encourage people to live full and engaged lives?  I’m ready for more leaps and more fear.

How Charmin toilet paper almost ruined my Christmas/life

Have you ever tried to stop the remnants from an overflowing toilet with your hands?  On Christmas Day?  At Boyfriend’s parents house?

I just returned from my second trip “down South.”  Last year provided an eye-opening week of foreign customs, some which I quickly ran, er drove (you must travel by car down South) from and some which I’d like Chicago to adopt.

This year was to be less-stressful, less “must impress mom, dad, nieces, nephews, brothers, step-brothers, college friends, high school friends, church friends, the entire town.”  I knew to expect deer sausage, deer heads and a gun safe.  I knew there was no kneeling or rosaries at Mass church (am I the only one who didn’t know Baptists don’t call it Mass?).  I knew where to find my bedroom, Coke Zero, and the toothpaste.  I knew we’d play Trivial Pursuit, I’d feel like an idiot and not get any pie slices.  I knew there’d be times people around me would be speaking English and I wouldn’t understand what they were saying.  I knew activities would be worked around football and that the TV on all the time and at max volume wasn’t rude.  I knew how to work the shower.  I knew that the Christmas sweaters worn were not ironic, hipster, going to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party outfits but I’m going to genuinely celebrate the season with this bedazzled reindeer emerald green knit-top.

I knew all this and still managed to almost have possibly the most embarrassing moment of my life.

Christmas Day in Louisiana.

Menu

• Biscuits
• Green-bean bundles
• Mac ‘n cheese
• Squash
• Brisket
• Sweet tea
• Sugar cookies with orange icing and cranberries
• Spice cake

Roster

• Me
• Boyfriend
• Boyfriend’s mom and step-dad
• Step-brother #1
• Step-brother #2, wife, nine-year old daughter and seven-year old son

Two things you must know -

1. Step-brother #2 is the last person on earth you’d want to do something blush-inducing in front of.  There’d be no “she’s a guest” mercy.  There’d be retelling of the story for the rest of my life.
2. When my stomach started grumbling from indulging in too much Southern goodness, everyone was at the table.  I knew it was just a short while until the group moved to the couch and la-z-boys, which so happen to be directly across from the bathroom.  Dumb architect.

Stuff happened in the bathroom.  But I blame the toilet paper not the stuff for the heart-attack inducing, lose all ability to have a rational-thought scenario that ensued.

I buy Scott because it’s cheap.  It also happens to be very thin.  Boyfriend’s mother buys Charmin, probably because she’s very sweet and likes her guests to experience comfort from head to toe.  It also happens to be very thick and quilted.  Without thought for where I was or what resources were at my disposal, I grabbed the usual amount of TP that I use and flushed.  Swirl, swirl, stay in bowl.  I stared.  Sometimes the Toilet Gods just take an extra few seconds.  I stared.  No movement.  Bowl halfway filled.  No worries, just get the plunger from next to the toilet.  Not there.  No worries, just get the plunger from under the sink.  Not there.  Teeney panic.

Use toilet brush to move stuff around.  Use it irrationally like a plunger.  No movement.  Medium panic.

The big decision.  Do I flush again in hopes that equipment-powered movement will unclog the clog?  We all know what will happen if it doesn’t unclog.  Overflow.  Which basically would mean I’d need to breakup with Boyfriend, hitchhike back to Chicago, never again cross the Mason-Dixon line, and join a convent in the secluded White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Life has been good to me lately.  Everything is falling into place.  The Toilet Gods will take care of me.  Flush.

Rise, rise, rise.  Oh shit.  Literally.  Rise, rise.  Rise.  I start to open the bathroom window so I can climb out; it’s too bad I have to leave my macbook behind, I’ve got some big client projects on there.  And Boyfriend is really nice, I’ll miss him.  Rise.  I irrationally position my hands next to the rim to catch the horribleness.  A millimeter from utter disaster, the liquid stops.

I stare.  I wring my hands.  I sweat.  I hear everyone chatting and laughing just feet from the door.  I send Boyfriend a mental message of Help!  He doesn’t get it.  I look at the silver knobs on the pipes.  I take off the tank cover and stare.  I wish I had read a DIY plumbing book on the flight down instead of a book on how to be a more effective leader; motivate people my a**, I need an empty bowl!  Staring and almost-crying surprisingly accomplishes nothing.

I open the door.  There everyone is.  Save for Boyfriend’s mom!  While this will be mortifying, it’ll be less so if it’s just her.  I find her in the kitchen and utter words you never want to say to your pseudo-mother-in-law.  “Hey Carol, do you have a plunger I can use?”

I could feel her embarrassment for me.  She went in the back bathroom, retrieved The Savior for me, and said to my quickly retreating back, “If you need any help in there, just let me know.”  Pray to God it doesn’t come to that.

For once, I was happy to be chunky as I walked through the living room; perhaps my extra rolls would shield the plunger from all those eyes.  For once, I was happy the TV was on and everyone was zoned in.  I wasn’t sure, and am still not sure, if I made it through undetected.  Boyfriend said he saw me pass through but didn’t know I had a plunger in hand.  I can only hope the same for the rest of the family.  And thank Baby Jesus no one got up to go to the bathroom while I was on the plunger hunt.

I slipped back into the Room of Horror.  You may not know that delicate plunging is a thing, but I mastered that skill.  With only a millimeter to play with, this was the ultimate test.  Soft plunge, soft plunge.  Nothing.  Soft plunge and a promise to be a better person.  Nothing.  Soft plunge and the hardest wish I’ve ever wished.  Gurgle, gurgle, swirl, swirl, glurg.  OH MY GOD, THANK YOU.

I make this promise to you today, America — I will never have a plungerless bathroom.  AND if my dream of building my own house is one day realized, the bathroom will be nowhere near the main entertaining area and in fact, might have a secret “avoid embarrassing moments” tunnel to the outside.

Happy holidays all -

Do all financial planners inspect your ovaries?

I’m lucky.  My mom has never been the type to do the annoying, “So you seeing anyone?  You gonna get married?  I’d loooove to have grandbabies someday….” [voice trailing off in a passive aggressive way]

You know, the questions one inevitably gets asked over the course of his/her single-dom.  From relatives, friends, coworkers, your hair stylist, the CTA booth guy at the Addison El stop –

• Have you kissed yet?
• Have you had the “I’m not seeing anyone else, are you?” discussion?
• Have you made it past the three month mark?
• Have you said “I love you”?  Who said it first?
• Have you slept over?
• Have you slept together?
• Have you met his family?  Has he met yours?
• Have you farted in front of him?
• Have you cried in front of him?
• Have you gone on vacation together?
• Are you going to move in together?

Today I coalesced with a financial planner.  Pre-meeting, I assumed he’d have me squirming, but because of my sad 401(K) and my confusing NASDAQ for a candy-bar name.  I did not expect to spend a portion of our sixty-minutes together emitting nervous squeaks because I wasn’t sure how to answer relationship inquiries.

Financial Planner: You’re dating someone?

Me: Mm hmm.

So, how’s that going?

Great, really good.

Yea?  How long has it been?

Almost two years.

Ya think… Are you heading…  So… [raised eyebrows]  Do you think you’ll get married?

[squeak][squeak]

[chuckle] Ok.  What’s your housing status?  Rent?  Own?

Rent.  Neither of us have an urge to buy. [bracing self for rent vs. own lecture]

Good, good.  I rent too.  [surprise!] I think that’s a good decision.  For metropolitan dwellers, just makes sense. [listed cons of owning]  And kids, what about kids?

Ick. [squeak] [oops - reminded myself that not everyone shudders upon seeing couples with babies.  and toddlers.  and tweens.  and teens.]  I mean, not any time soon.  I’m selfish with my time and money, I just want to spend it on us.  [almost referred him to this blog post on how I think my womb? my eggs? my ovaries? are on indefinite vacation in Nigeria or Brooklyn or Schaumburg, but the way his eyes lit up when he talked about his two year old, the way he tried to convince me that parenthood is "the best thing ever," I just smiled.]  Maybe.  Down the road.

That’s it.  I have no poetic wrap-up or insightful insight.  Just caught me off-guard.  I’m not a nervous-squeaker, so the number of high-pitched noises that escaped my body today has me a bit unnerved.

Being in a room with Kevin Bacon stopped me from committing a heinous crime

*If you’re reading this in a reader/have your images turned off, you might want to head to the original post to see the pretty pictures*

I’ve wanted to strangle many people recently.  I actually researched sun ‘n sand get-away deals, because as I told Boyfriend, “I need to be in a different country than ______,” and if I had found a “too good to pass up” deal, I might’ve been typing this from a Costa Rican beach.

But Responsible Saya won out over Spontaneous Saya, and so I type from exotic Chicago.

Usually this is where I’d list all of the sufferings suffered by me.  The reason my last post was on September 11th is because I’ve been nutty-busy.  Most of it has been nutty-good.  But too often, what’s stressful and frustrating clouds all things lovely and requires an expenditure of energy that just isn’t worth it.

So I’m trying a new tactic – Positive Venting.  Focus not on my clenched fists but on the awesomeness that has sprinkled my life as of late, in hopes that recognizing why life is glorious, no matter the size of the glories, will dissipate all negativity –

Why I love life!

• Sticking it to the IRS
• Learned that if you use Paypal or a similar type of payment site for your business, you can write off those annoying convenience fees
• Sticking it to Jesse White
• For the first time in eleven years, I got to ignore my license plate sticker renewal form because when Boyfriend moved in, we decided we didn’t need to be a two-car household and so I sold Rosita last Spring
• $99 to buy more must-have bags and fake-diamond jewelry
• Helloooo Financial Planner!
• While I’m financially-proud in some ways in regards to my seven-years of self-employment – I don’t live with mom, have no debt, and am able to occasionally supersize a meal – I’m not proud that ATM withdrawals and random checking deposits are about the extent of my financial planning
• I’ve taken small steps: opened a health savings account, reopened a savings account, hired a tax-guy
• But my 401K is covered in dust, I have a feeling I should be IRA’ing, CD’ing, or NASDAQ’ing it, and I throw my statements into the file cabinet without unfolding the tri-folded paper
• So I made an appointment with a financial planner.  And wow!  The Taking Charge of My Future Crown sat atop my head instantaneously, and felt fantastic.
• And it was studded with rubies no less because Financial Planner focuses on sustainable and responsible investing, and 10% of his profits are donated to local community non-profits
• Dining with strangers
• I attended a Grubwithus meal, where you choose to attend a meal based on the restaurant, the date/time, or the other people attending
• It’s a fun way to explore the city and restaurants, as well an interesting way to meet others
• I spent a Tuesday night at Logan Square’s Gosu with five guys and two girls
• Lots of yummy food at a reasonable $27 price (taken care of pre-meal, so no dealing with cash night-of)
• And folk say nice things about you on the website: Saya is definitely the hostess with the mostess! She took charge of the table introductions and kept the conversations flying, all while making it look easy and effortless! Its one of the few times I’ve seen where the far ends of the table were sharing stories and laughs. Don’t hesitate, if you get the chance to grub with Saya, do it!
• I was one of five finalists in CRAIN Chicago’s “Day in the life of an entrepreneur” contest
• My high-school students claimed the person who won won because of his “tug at the heart-strings” music
• Noted.  Need more Yanni.
• In my after-school program, I’m teaching entrepreneurship to 5th and 6th graders
• Choose a business, name your business, research your competitors, write a business plan, create a logo, create a commercial, meet with funders, etc.
• In our ninety-minute “board meeting” on Monday, the kids diligently wrote in their journals, discussed what makes a business successful, and did mock pitches (practiced eye-contact, firm hand-shakes, articulate speaking, professional body-language)
• Darius, who plans on opening a restaurant, replied to “Who is your target clientele?” with “I won’t let people in whose clothes don’t match.”  Be warned Chicago.
• Fear Experiment
• Selection of the next round of Fear Experiment’ers occurred and what a group!  A rapper, a lawyer, a social worker, a biologist, an interior designer…
• New crop of non-dancers and non-improvisers will rehearse January – March and perform at the Park West April 28th
• Can’t wait to a) introduce them to each other and b) introduce them to the rest of the FE-family, now at sixty-three alum
• If you think you might want to meet new folk and/or challenge yourself come the new year, it’s not too late to sign up for the wait list
• Can’t believe how in two years a desire to “dance a hip-hop routine on stage” has turned into a two-times a year extravaganza at the Park West
• Boyfriend and I were asked to co-present at one of Chicago’s premier events to help celebrate a big milestone for the organization (being mum on the details as it’s ridiculously soon and we have next to nothing prepared; worried about sucking — me not him.  The downfall of dating an improv guy, he’s ALWAYS funny and on-point)
• TEDxMidwest
• I attended this two-day gathering of folk who’ve climbed Mt. Everest, won MacArthur awards, invented stuff, and convicted klansman, and included random celebrities like Kevin Bacon, the “I’m a PC” guy, and Wes Craven
• TEDxMidwest brings together a remarkable line-up of fascinating, innovative and influential speakers whose talks challenge, move and inspire.  TEDxMidwest brings together some of the most amazing people working across of a variety of disciplines, who all share a common bond of curiosity and strong desire to make a difference.
  
• Though it was pricey, $100+, it was worth it
• They had an open SWEETS-bar!  Cookies, the good kind of trail mix with M & Ms, movie theater boxes of candy..
• Learned how UGGs became so popular via Kevin Bacon – actresses needed easy on and off shoe-ware when going from their trailers to movie sets, so they’d put on UGGs; when photos of them appeared in the press wearing these silly boots, the rest of the world had to have them.  A weather and efficiency statement turned into a fashion statement.
• Disclaimer: I took away much more than candy and the history of UGGs, it really was an eye-opening experience
• Discliamer #2: I love my UGGs
• A happy Mac ‘n Cheese client
• I wanted you to be one of the first to know.  I had my first paying client for travelightly!  The company was a random idea last December and I only had the guts to do something about it after going to your Coffee session and listening to you encourage others to start their own business.  I can’t thank you enough for always being supportive of people with crazy, random ideas and telling people that it’s okay to take a chance.  Without you, and Dance Experiment, I probably wouldn’t be where I am right now, and I have to say, I’m extremely happy where I am.  Thank you thank you thank you.
• Note: Dance Experiment was the predecessor to Fear Experiment
• One of my life highlights was being awarded the Martin Luther King Scholarship in college, which paid for 75% of my tuition senior year and put me in a group of people with whom I’m humbled to be connected
• I was just asked to participate in celebrating thirty years of the award which brought back tons of great memories
• Birthday celebration
• I meant to have an intimate, hanging out on couches evening in honor of turning thirty-three, but “Oh this person should meet that person!” after “This person should meet that person!” resulted in twenty-two lovelies sharing pizza, wine and pumpkin ice cream at our place
• Boyfriend gave me a pair of Boston College yoga pants I eyed back in April when we visited BC, a set of Lock ‘n Lock tupperware, and a premium subscription to Pandora (no ads!  unlimited playtime!).  A frugal, type A, efficiency-loving trove of treasures.
• Friend from college sent a box that reminded me of those awesome summer camp carepackages -
• candle
• magazines (Entrepreneur, Inc., and Ode: intelligent optimist)
• silicon oven mitt
• baking pans
• a pumpkin bread recipe that her husband made and brought to my dorm in college when I was sick (he even went as far as to bring it warm out of the oven, with butter and a knife, and then proceeded to fix my futon couch)
• note to have Boyfriend bake the bread while I relax on the couch reading the magazines
• Chicago Ideas Week (CIW)

• Inaugural year of this gathering of speakers and innovators, at venues all over the city
• I attended sessions on Social Entrepreneurship and Creativity, as well as Ignite, a platform where folk get five minutes to talk about whatever they want
• Wonderfully executed, fantastic range of topics, and an accessible price-point for most of the events
• The infectiousness of fear is catching on!
• If you’ve followed Mac ‘n Cheese over the years, you know I’m a huge proponent of doing things that scare you and that push you out of your comfort zone, a la doing things solo (The Solo Life/Mac ‘n Cheese Minglers) and doing things you’re not great at in front of an audience (Fear Experiment)
• Just learned of The Leapyear Project which asks, “What risk will you take to change your life, your community, or your world for the better?” and encourages people to document that risk in 2012 (a leap year)
• Women’s Innovation Network (WIN) event
• I biked down to the Fairmont Hotel for my first WIN Spa ‘n Cupcakes, a nice 2pm break in the day
• Mingled with about forty others, mostly women, mostly business-owners
• Regina Taylor, actress from I’ll Fly Away, Law & Order, and Lean on Me, spoke about her career and offered advice

• What I do is dream and make my dreams concrete
• You have the power to name yourself
• Be both teacher and student
• Expand yourself through creativity
• There are 10,000 people in this room, via the circles within our circles; connect with one another
• Favorite takeaway: new friendship with an uber-positive gal name Dawgelene Sangster, who is the founder of Think Royally, a non-profit that supports women in leading positive lives.  Quite a mission from a survivor of domestic violence, molestation, and rape.  I was so impressed with Dr. Dawj, as she’s called, that I selected her to be in CRAVE Chicago, a book featuring our city’s need-to-know female entrepreneurs due out soon!, and asked her to present at Potluck! 2.0, an evening of Chicago’s finest talking for six-minutes each on whatever they want
• Self-Starter Supper Club
• Hosting an evening of food, drink, and entrepreneurial-folk as we get inspired by speakers Mari Luangrath of Foiled Cupcakes and Paul Lee of Lightbank
• Guests are encouraged to come solo
• Meeting new people surrounded by couches, inspiration, and the Avett Brothers, yes please!

Strangle who?

Easiest way to grow your business? A Dutch bike, a prezi, and laughs.

If you’re reading this in a reader/have your images off, head to the original post/turn those images on!!  Pretty pictures.

Thought

If iTunes spent as much time and money releasing a cure for _____ as it does releasing new versions of iTunes, there would be no more _____.

Rant

I have tired of people needing a “click here” after a brightly colored underlined phrase.  Color underlines = “this is a link, click on me if you want more info.”

Thought #2

AOL/yahoo/hotmail accounts are to gmail as powerpoint is to prezi.  Old school vs. welcome to 2011; stop listening to your discman!  Gave my first prezi last week, so fun to create, hopefully fun to watch.

Lessons Learned After Seeing Seven Presentations in a Week

You think that by talking fast you’re doing the audience a favor, that you’re communicating “I know your time is precious, I’ll get through this quickly so you can go on with life.”  But all you’re communicating is that your words aren’t worth the audience’s time, which makes the audience feel like you’re wasting its time.

Not only do you get winded by fast-talking, the audience gets winded by it as well.

You think by saying “Please interrupt me, ask questions” that it’s ok to speed-talk, but no one does or feels they can.

Don’t apologize.  It makes you sound unprofessional and like you’re not an expert.  You are skilled and wonderful and full of goodness, that’s why you’re up there.  Own it.

Why has talking during presentations become so prevalent!?!?!  People were talking during an instructor trying to teach a class and during a facilitator trying to lead a discussion.  Whispering doesn’t make it ok.  Leaning in close to the person you’re talking to doesn’t make it ok.  Jot down the amazing thought! you had so you can communicate it at an appropriate time.

Phones on vibrate are as disruptive as phones that ring.

I need to take heed of these lessons learned, especially that of the fast-talker.

Business Tip

I’ve noticed an interesting yet random yet I’ll take it! business trend sweeping Chicagoland.  Regardless of what type of business your business is, place a Dutch bike [aka a cruiser or an upright] in a prominent position [aka the front window].  I first noticed it with Homemade Pizza a few years ago and since then, various others in the city.  Folk are catching on to how awesome the Netherlands are.  Let’s be honest — I’d definitely pick the tax-attorney with a Dutch bike in his lobby than the one without.

Laugh-Filled Info Session = Laugh-Filled Thing the Info Session Was Giving You Info On

If the information sessions about a service you offer look this fun, that service has GOT to be pretty amazing.  I’m pretty stoked to be offering a ridiculously fun and unique way for strangers to meet others, challenge themselves, perform at the Park West in front of 700, and make genuine, life-lasting relationships.  Fear Experiment [FE] info sessions this week and next week [attendance at one is mandatory to participate].

FE Participant: “I’d probably rank my experience in FE as one of the top 5 best experiences of my life.  It’s very rare to meet so many amazing, adventurous, open-minded, and accepting people when you’re an adult.”  Amen sister.

Two Jobs I Would Like

Live-tweeter and live-artist.

The former, you get paid to go to an event and tweet about it as it’s happening.

The latter, you get paid to go to an event and sketch about it as it’s happening.  The above was created by an attendee of Potluck 1.0, an event Boyfriend and I threw a couple of weeks ago.  Smashing success!  Keep an eye out for 2.0.

The crazy thing is these ARE real jobs.

Have a lovely week friends!

Bikes, geeks, beer, tweets: why I want to hug you all

If you’re eyeing this in a Reader, you may want to head over to the blog to see the pretty pictures

Two very different events this weekend but both with the same outcome – increased love of humanity and this city!

 

Someone compared me to a virus, infecting folk with the entrepreneurial-strain.  Some websites resulting from my pricks - Little Piggy: Sweets by CC, TeamPete, Debbie Hillman: food consultant.  More coming!  [Hmm... wonder if About.me would send me to an entrepreneur conference or send me a Starbucks gift card for every referral?]

Nothing pleases me more than people getting paid to do what they love and I got to experience this live! this weekend.

As one of my dreams is for Boyfriend and I to workshift, taking our offerings to Amsterdam, London, San Francisco, I’ve been encouraging him to take a stab at making a business out of his passions and skills.  And guess what?!  You can create a successful business plan out of a love of  bikes, beer, and improv!

Ways To Turn Your Love of Bikes, Beer, and Improv Into A Business

1. Some of the Fear Experiment participants [FE] hired Boyfriend to continue as their improv teacher post-adventure; two and half hour class once a week, going on three months

2. He was such a wonderful FE1 instructor, I hired him back for FE2.  [Info sessions in September!  Come learn how you can be a part of an adventure of a lifetime]

3. He’s been accepted as an improv instructor for Dabble, one of the hottest startups in Chicago  [Upcoming class!  Good for those who don't want to commit to a full program/just want to stick toe in improv water]

4. At the companies requests, he’s submitted various proposals for workplace improv — inject fun and hands-on’ness to staff development!

5. We co-curated a Brew Mingler, where folk learned how to brew beer via Brew Camp and board game’d it with strangers

6. On the heels of successful “just for fun” forty-mile rides to Three Floyds in Munster, Indiana, and Two Brothers in Warrenville, his first TeamPete bike excursion was Saturday — huge hit!

Saturday Morning – Bike Tour of Chicago

1. 10AM – homebrew class at Brew Camp.  Bonus!  Homemade just out of the oven cookies made with beer ingredients!

2. 10:43AM – detour to our place to get our extra bike for a girl whose bike got backed over by a car that AM.  Yay for strangers helping strangers!

3. 10:53AM – eleven-mile ride to The Plant, a nonprofit dedicated to promote sustainable food production, entrepreneurship, and building reuse through education, research and development.  All of its power and heat needs will be met via food waste from landfills!  Home to the New Chicago Brewing Company.  What a way to see Chicago, going from Irving/Damen/Lincoln to 47th and Racine.

  

4. 12:15AM – as the crew starts a tour of The Plant, I hop on my Dutch baby and ride up to Lincoln Park for the second event that made me want to sing Kumbayah

5. 2PM – TeamPete meandered Back of the Yards, Bridgeport and Greek Town, then onto Haymarket Brewery for lunch

6. 5:30PM – Final destination!  Local Option, a good beer bar, to enjoy new friendships, new experiences, and tired quads

Saturday and Sunday Afternoon – Social Dev Camp[SDC]

I attended SDC last year for the first time, having little clue what it was but intrigued by the idea of learning amongst creative strangers.  And by the word “camp.”  Though they talked in a foreign language most of the time - cloud, API, CMS – it was a wonderful experience, so it was a no-brainer that I return this year.

SDC Loveliness

1. Something for Everyone – Lectures in a huge auditorium.  Unconferences in intimate classrooms.  Panels.  Q & As.  All-night Hackathons.  Hanging out on couches and armchairs.  Diet and regular Pepsi.  Uber-geeky, techy topics [HTML5 and Beyond] to big picture, flowery topics [The Importance of Being Awesome].

2. Caliber of Speakers – from the founder of Reddit to a guy who had a NY Times best-seller within two days of launch to local must-knows, they knew their stuff and wanted to share their knowledge

3. Smooth Operation – mics, clickers, projectors, and wireless internet that worked.  Central location, easily accessible by CTA.  Easy registration.  Snacks and lunch.  Effective moderators.  After-party a few blocks away.  Not even Hurricane Irene could bring SDC to its knees!  Keynote speaker Alexis Ohanian’s flight was cancelled, but thank to Skype and tireless organizer efforts, we still got to enjoy the message of and interact with someone who is now my new fave!  [Alexis, just sent Mr/Mrs. agent a request for you to be an underground supper club speaker cause you rock it hard!]

4. The People – from the organizers to the attendees to the speakers to the volunteers, this is why I love going to events like SDC!  Familiar faces from last year, familiar faces from an event the day previous, new faces introduced to me by the Queen of Connecting Heidi Massey [check out I.C. Stars, the amazing organization she works for!], new faces introduced to me by virtue of sharing a power-strip.  Common thread amongst them was friendliness and a desire to help one another.

5. What I Heard/Learned [thanks to  Jeff Cohen, Chris Courtney,  Jonthan Ozeran, Julien Smith, Sundeep Kapur, Emile Cambry, Alexis Ohanian]

• When you can take your own ideas and bring them to life, it’s empowering
• If you want to join a community that is the epitome of community, Ruby on Rails! [if you don't know what ROR is, neither did/do I, really; but jump in anyway!]
• Development can be funny
• Red Eye’s traffic to its Missed Connections app is rivaling the traffic of “when is the next train coming” app; yea priorities!

[Tangent: check out this Chicago Reader Missed Connection -- guess who it was for?!?  Always wished that relationship had worked out, what a great How We Met story]

• We’re the 1^st generation of folk who consume/create/own media at same time
• Give value that no one else can deliver
• Your audience is your best asset; make them work for you, which they’ll do if you do above
• People need more connections and unity, not more advertising and technology
• Want venture capitalist help?  Get someone else to tell a VC about you.
• Purposefully insert a mistake into internal communication and give a $5 gift card to first employee who finds it; they’ll find other mistakes too
• Be willing to disrupt yourself
• Social Entrepreneurship – get on this train!
• Social Change film festival coming to Chicago
• Turn regular joe’s into fans by giving them nuggets [this is the foundation of my e-newsletter!]
• Write actionable subject lines in your email [story of how someone accidentally left a note to himself of "insert witty subject line here" on an email he sent to his network, and that ended up getting a gazillion helpful responses]
• You don’t have to spend a lot on advertising to be successful.  Reddit total advertising budget = $500.
• People will not love crap.  So don’t make crap.  Start with a product people actually want.
• Great user experience = great [free] marketing
• Website buttons with amusing names work well
• Your product should feel like it was made by human beings [the design, the copy, etc.]
• Whatever you create, create it around community
• Don’t only drink the start-up kool-aid, spill it!!

Random Musings Post-SDC

1. It took me a year to “get” Twitter.  SDC last year was my first experience with live-tweeting, where you tweet about what you’re experiencing in the moment.  At first I was appalled that people were laptop’ing and iphon-ing during talks; how rude!  But I realized, no, that’s not rudeness anymore, that’s reality.  Most of us can handle doing multiple things at once and ironically, while it looks like you’re totally disengaging, in some ways, it makes engaging with others that much easier.  And fun!

And now I would like to be paid to be a live-tweeter.  Anyone want to hire me to live-tweet their wedding?  Bat mitzvah?  Family reunion?

2. If you still use Internet Explorer, don’t admit it.  People will snicker.

3. You’re at something good when you need to clone yourself to be in two places at once.  Where to go,where to go, Social Media unconference or Thick Value for meaningful, ethical enterprises!?!?  Oy!  Which child do you love more?

4. It’s lovely to see folk who are so proud of their love of dungeons and dragons.  Arms shot straight up when asked who had the D & D love!

4. I would like to be paid to be a speaker.  Even if payment was just airfare, hotel, and a nutter butter.

Anyone want to hire me to talk about things that really matter, like why your bed shouldn’t be in the corner if you’re over twenty-five, how to transform your inability to dance into cash and laughter, and the best ways to find that someone you want to wake up with for the rest of your life?

Remedies for When People Rip You on Your Blog

Yesterday was a not-great day that can best be summed up with how it began -

Meeting Instructions: Please arrive no later than 8:30 a.m.

Left a bunch of must-do! work to rush to meeting on opposite side of the city.  Nothing was set up.  Lights off.  We arranged the tables and chairs.  Sitting around.  Meeting did not start until 9:20.  One of the main reasons seven years ago I decided self-employment was for me.

Will bypass all the other not-greatness that occurred between 8:30am and 6pm because who wants to dwell on bleh!.  The point is, if you asked me this morning about yesterday, I would say it rocked.

Last night was the inaugural Potluck!, curated and hosted by Boyfriend and I -

Potluck! brings together several of Chicago’s best and brightest, funniest and handsomest, wittiest and engaging-est for an evening of rapid fire musings on whatever they choose to muse upon.  In the vein of Pecha Kucha, Ignite, and TED Talks, each presenter will stuff 10 pounds of awesome into a 5 pound bag…er, into a six minute talk.

When you’ve had a bad day, the last thing you want is forty-seven people over.  Or so I felt at 6:53pm.  And then they started to trickle in.

Remedies for Bleh!

• Strangers and your friends meeting, liking one another, and exchanging info to keep in touch
• Learning new things [i.e. internet dating is a great source of inspiration for launching a start-up and an auger is a drilling device used in farming]
• Jock Jams a la Pump Up the Jam
• Photos of men in suits doing the splits
• Folk being introduced to a fun new presentation tool and collectively whispering “Prezi” every time it did something cool
• Seeing a couple that met via her and Boyfriend
• The name “Bliss Brown”
• Do something for the first time, worry it may crash and burn, and it not only going great, but exceeding all expectations
• No tech issues
• A BYO event where folks share their goodies with strangers
• An audience filled with people who came solo, with friends, with significant others
• Presenters who are calm, cool and collected
• Presenters who are nervous
• Presenters who are sick and dealing with serious family stuff, yet still manage to not only participate but to knock it out of the park
• Presenters who change their topic hours before go-time and still rock it
• A woman filling a sketch book with things inspired by what she was experiencing
• Live tweeting at an event of yours for the first time and ensuing tweets -
• @iLive40: I found inspiration and had some good laughs at #potluck 
• @mjwex : New people, new ideas, contagious energy! 
• @sarahjindra: Thanks to @sayahillman and @goteampete for organizing a fun and inspiring night of talks!! Awesome #Potluck
• @brandon_weiss: No guest towels in the bathroom? Wtf? #potluck 
• Twitter lesson learned – make your hashtag specific unless you want to be reading about stuff that has nothing to do with your stuff, i.e. #potluck1.0 instead of #potluck
• A tweeter sitting next to a sketcher
• A room full of laughter, engagement, friendliness, diversity, and comfort

So thank you to Megan, Arnie, Sarah, Griffin, Marcy, Heather, and Drex for setting the Potluck! bar so high.

Thank you Boyfriend for being the bestest collaborator.

And thank you Audience for being so fun, nice, and not storming out when you had to use toilet paper to dry your hands because we forgot to put guest towels out.

Nights like last night makes you shrug at musings like “Not a fan of how Saya does business so I won’t be attending any of these events,” part of a reflection on my life from someone commenting on my last post.

Onwards and upwards!  I love my life.

See more Potluck! 1.0 Photos

That bit*h stole my business idea! How I’m going to get her back.

If you are reading this in a reader, you might want to head over to the original post to see the image.

I received this in my inbox this morning:

Wait!  ”Have Coffee with Jill”?!?!  That sounds exactly what I’ve been offering for a year now!  She stole my idea!  Her webpage is almost word for word my webpage!

I’m so mad, so incredulous, so about to go all Johnny Cochran on her…

Except that I’m not.  Any of those.  In fact, I was the one who not only convinced her to do it, I’ve been helping her along the way –

Jill: “Do you paypal invoice each person individually when you are ready to invoice for coffee?”  Ensuing instructions from me to her on my process.

Our first conversation, at Schuba’s a few months ago, was Jill being incredulous that I charge people to have coffee with me.  People seem to think “Let me buy you a beer” makes it worth it to me to give up time I could be working on a paying-project.  Change that to “Let me pay your health insurance for the month,” you’ve got my ears.

“Don’t people get offended when you respond to ‘Can we grab a drink?’ with ‘Sure, sign up here and pay me $12′?”

I’ve never had any blow-back, so to speak.  Most people sign up.  As soon as I put it on my website, touted it as a service I offer, made it official, any weirdness I felt dissipated.  I used to say yes to every request.  I just don’t have the time any more.  I need to make a living.

So, why aren’t I hopping mad that now someone is making money off of my idea?

Number one, I like Jill.  She and I are similar in that we both cobble together random ventures that oddly and wonderfully provide us a salary.  We’re planning a joint event come October.  I already have, and will continue to, benefit from having her in my life, benefits that far outweigh the money that may go to her instead of me on the off-chance that a person only has $12 to spend, has to choose between the two of us, and ends up in a coffeehouse sitting across from Jill instead of from me.

Number two, my response to all the inquiries I get about expanding, partnering, franchising Coffee, the Minglers, Fear Experiment, is “Go for it!”  I don’t own the ideas.  And the world would be a better place if there were more fun, challenging, affordable, unique offerings.  Enough with the guarding of goodness!

Number three, a major part of most of the services I offer is the man behind the curtain — me.  While I’m not everyone’s cup of tea, many people seem to enjoy sipping me.  The personality of the curator is key in “experience-based” services.  And I don’t think everyone is cut out to play that role.  I’m pretty confident that a good portion of society couldn’t have sold seven-hundred $24 tickets to the Park West last April to see bad dance and bad improv from a bunch of amateurs, nor have twenty-five people pay $15 to bring food and drink to her house tomorrow to play board games.

I must say, seeing my baby touted so in a prettily designed email that went out to hundreds, thousands?, makes me feel all MBA’y and LLC this and VC that, even though I’m just an English/Socoiolgy BA with no business plan, no power-suit, and a savings account a week-old.

So world, take my Coffee idea and have your way with it.  No revenge will be administered.  If you become a millionaire off  it, maybe offer to buy me dinner.

You too, Little Fish, can be in a Belmont el stop ad, & other stuff learned at Media Day

Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending The Chicago Innovations Awards’ Media Day, which was a wonderful experience even though I almost killed myself multiple times and sadly couldn’t ride my Dutch bike home.

The Chicago Innovations Awards [CIAs] shines a bright light on the creative spirit of Chicago. We focus attention on the most significant new products and services, regardless of sector or industry, introduced in the region.  A bunch of local folk doing awesome things are nominated, i.e. the CTA bus tracker and Groupon, and a group of judges selects ten winners.

Media Day resulted from the CIA asking last year’s nominees “What are your three biggest challenges today?”  They expected the answer to be money; it was awareness.

Not only did the CIAs listen to their constituents but they offered up a solution that was:

a) free of charge (and thus accessible to all; as a little fish with not a lot of cash to spend, I really appreciated this!)

b) well-organized (welcome table, name tags, printed program, breakfast/snacks/lunch, appropriate AV accoutrements/set-ups, signs, schedule that was adhered to)

c) fun (held at the not-yet-opened Museum of Broadcast Communications, a very cool space!  And they were very open to folk poking about.  I rode down in the elevator with the President, who gave me his card and seemed very interested in engaging with the community.)

d) informative

e) diverse both in formats and in speakers

Media Day was billed as a way to educate Chicago ’s top innovators about how to gain visibility in the marketplace, and will feature panel discussions, talks, and interactive seminars with media experts who represent a cross-section of today’s ever-changing media landscape.

And it did just that.

Here are some of my take-aways -

 

Moderator

Dan Miller, Co-Founder, Chicago Innovation Awards, former Business Editor, Chicago Sun-Times

• nothing is more annoying than getting a story pitch that’s not appropriate for your medium/outfit
• nothing is going to happen if you keep your ideas in your computer/in your desk drawer >> make the ask!!!
• marketing/advertising can be affordable

 

Editorial Panel

Michael Arndt, Managing Editor, Crain’s Chicago Business

• prefers email for initial communication
• subject line should says entrepreneur/something new
• tell your personal story
• don’t just say that you’re celebrating two years; have it be human interest, overcoming obstacles, something that’s different/unique
• writing from aol or hotmail, it’ll likely end up in junk/spam’; get gmail
• insists that its content be first; if Trib/another media outfit runs it first, Crains won’t run it
• Trib and SunTimes aimed at business consumers, Crain’s aimed at businesses
• better to go to Crain’s if want VCs, investors, etc.
• exploit us; it’s a two-way exploitation.  Media want your stories, you want their reach.
• startups don’t have a home in Crains print, as it usually focuses on bigger companies; startups should pitch to Ann Dwyer who focuses on entrepreneurs

Eric Benderoff, Tech PR Firm, used to be Chicago Tribune Technology Reporter

• you are your own media company and that’s never been around in history
• it’s your ability to be creative that’ll get you noticed
• be consistent with social media message and with what’s going on in your industry
• if you’re starting a company, you need to start a blog
• hire someone to write you blog (at least $400-$600 a post, or negotiate a monthly/yearly fee since writers like to budget/know what they’ll be making)
• do at least 1 blog post a week, 3 is ideal
• must have Facebook/Twitter presence
• email headline/subject: be direct, to the point, keyword rich
• PR Newswire is good to post on if you want to be high in GoogleSearch

Sandra Guy, Business Reporter, Chicago Sun-Times

• paint a picture, tell a human story; “just show me the human face” (Dan Hewitt)
• tell story as someone no one knows about and as someone who is local/part of community
• wants to talk to my customers to find out what do I do for my clients; line up a few of them
• helps if you agree to have photo/video taken, as an image is a reader-hook
• professional associations are great to hook up with because you can network while you’re learning, i.e. Association for Women Journalists
• what catches her eye on a website is creativity and level of expertise
• traditional media picked up by so many aggregators so still worth it to get in a paper though some say it’s dying
• play up in a press release/email: that you’re local, your expertise, your creativity
• have your friends tell your story

 

Marketing and Advertising Panel

Cher Ames, Director of Marketing/Promotions, WBBM 780

• radio is always effective as it always has been
• have to be consistent, takes time to build a brand
• radio is intimate/engaging
• chances are when you’re listening to radio, that’s all you’re doing
• demographics of listeners: males 35-55
• they can do all the production in-house

Greg Green, Director of Agency Strategy, Google

• 97% of people research online before they buy something
• search ads should be complementary to other mediums
• just focusing on demographics (age, gender, etc.) isn’t enough, it’s interests and timing too

Joe White, Chicago Sales Manager, Titan

• handles advertising on CTA
• digital screens at CTA allows for immediate messages
•  a couple of hundred dollars a month can get you an ad at the Belmont Station

 

Social Media Strategies

David Armano, Executive VP of Global Innovation & Integration, Edelman

• 2006 started blogging and in a year and a half, was in Business Week as best of 2007
• 70,000 followers
• immersed himself in the space and participated
• rule for presentations > always insert a slide last minute to keep presentation relevant
• Dell is doing some of most advanced things in social media, has a social business intelligence plan in place
• in a connected world, participation trumps broadcasting
• “For brands today in this fragmented world, getting us, as multifaceted people, to take action and engage is one of the biggest challenges marketers face” Christina Smedley, Edelman Global Chair Consumer Marketing
• Best Buy does a great job with their Twelp Force (twelp as in help on Twitter)
• for the first time, this year’s trust barometer shows trust and transparency are as important to corporate reputation as the quality of products and services (2010 Edelman Trust Barometer)
• community management = the act of engaging members of a specific group in a participatory fashion
• “Community is at the core of social media. It’s about sharing ideas, connecting people and creating together.” Suzanne Marlatt, Community Manager for Edelmandigtal.com
•  the five c’s of community:

1. Content – can’t start a community without bringing something valuable to the table
2. Context – way you talk to members, being knowledgeable about how they want to engage with you
3. Connectivity – matchmaking folk who can help each other
4. Continuity – have to grow/sustain it, keep them vibrant and healthy, seed it – feed it – weed it
5. Collaboration – great indicator if a community is doing well; are they working together to benefit each other and you?
• businesses that have lean budgets often use community managers
• community manager traits: most are already working in those roles,  represent an organizaiton but have own personality, understand how to produce content

• social media challenges
• unclear objectives
• measurement and ROI
• underperforming social initiatives
• misaligned skills and competencies
• lack of coordination and integration
• closed business culture (example of Apple embracing people making their own apps for iphone instead of fighting it)
• if you comment on a business page, company will take notice
• social media empowers the individual
• customers make your company better
• example: Starbucks green stick in coffee cup lid that makes it spill proof for when you drive/walk; that was a customer suggestion that got tons of support
• Stages of Social Business

1. Crawl: monitor, listen, establish infrastructure

2. Walk: leverage platforms, produce contests, participate

3. Run: Engage, respond, leverage employees

4. Fly: Scale, systemizing and integrating into all biz functions

• twitter and blogs make up 65% of all conversations; majority are positive or neutral in tone, with only 11% negative
• what to measure: attention, engagement, authority, influence, sentiment

 

Crafting a Message

Tom Thomson, Content Specialist, Disney Institute

I wasn’t able to stay for this session, but stemming from the energy pouring out from the Disney employees setting up what looked to be a hands-on, group activity, it looked to be an engaging experience.

I also missed the tour of the museum, which looks like it’ll be an amazing space upon completion.  They rent out the raw space for events, in case you have something that’d fit with the cement-ducts-wires-unfinished scenario.

A big thanks to all the speakers, sponsors, and coordinators.  In a culture where little is free or without hidden agenda, it was refreshing to attend a well-put on event whose participants simply seemed to want to be of service and share their knowledge.  That’s nice.

How my narcissism/frugality almost killed me today; a great day!

If you’re reading this in a Reader, head to the original post if you’d like to see the photos!

I attended an event this AM [more about the event in a future post] around which three awesome things occurred –

1) I gave an elevator pitch in an elevator!

The Founder/President/CEO of the Museum of Broadcast Communications and I rode down together.  I thanked him for providing the space, he asked what I do.  I quickly learned I need to hone the Mac ‘n Cheese Productions mission statement.  When it was just video production, no sweat.  But how does one fit underground supper clubs – bad dancers/bad improvisers facing fears and performing in front of 700 at the Park West – people coming to one’s home for an evening of meeting others with the caveat that they must attend solo – entrepreneurial chats in coffeehouses – connecting female business-owners via a Guidebook and non-networking networking events – into a twenty-second spiel?

While I love what I do, sometimes I wish I was a dentist or a receptionist or a welder.  One word and you know exactly how I spend my days.

Well, now that I write that… maybe that’s exactly why I love what I do.  It’s so varied and rich and ridiculous, it’s impossible to one-word it.

 

2) Unexpected universe-love!

Last night I brainstormed with Boyfriend ways to get his business off the ground.  I thought of companies that seemed like they’d be the type of company that would be open to corporate improv as a new twist on staff development.  Two of the companies that came to mind were Edelman and Google.  Today’s event had nine speakers — one was the Director of Agency Strategy at Google, one was the Executive VP of Global Innovation & Intregration at Edelman.

Stars aligned.

Just like a few weeks ago, when after Boyfriend was hit by a car on his bike [shake of fist at bad lady driver at Damen and Division!], I took his bike to the Dutch Bike Co. to get a tune-up and ended up chatting with the owner about the Bike the Brewery tours Boyfriend leads, to which said owner exclaimed, “Let’s talk partnership!”  And later that week I was introduced to a woman who a mutual acquaintance thought would be a good feature in the guide I’m producing on inspiring business-owners [still looking for more submissions!  Brick & mortar, online, blogs, social networks... ], and turns out she’s the owner of Roscoe Village Bikes!  She ‘n hubby are also interested in Boyfriend’s bike events [even suggested a Tour de Fry!  As in riding around Chicago to the best french fry establishments.  Um, yes please].

Just like, after a brainstorming session I had with myself yesterday about how to meet more high-powered women for my various projects, the phone call I got post-event today when a fellow Boston College alum called to share the news that I was invited to join the Council of Women of Boston College.  The Council is a hundred or so women across the country who are CEOs of this and VPs of that, in possession of resumes peppered with phrases like “supreme court justice” and “global head,” and with lots of acronyms and ampersands, which we all know stand for success and being well-connected.

Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket.

 

3) I infected another person with Entrepreneurial Disease!

Two items currently in my living room:

 

 

Which beg the questions -

1) What does a thirty-two year old do with twelve school photos of herself?

2) What does one do with an incredibly large photo of herself?

3) Is it possible to transport an incredibly large photo of oneself on a Dutch bike?

Disclaimer: I did not order the school photos.  A school where I teach digital media had me pose for the yearbook and four months later, these pictures showed up in my mailslot.  Nor did I order Large Saya.  A wonderful writer did a piece on me and various other entrepreneurs, and decided to photograph some of the folk he spotlighted.  These portraits were then hung in a conference room at TechWeek, which just concluded; he emailed us to say we could pick them up and in my ever-love of efficiency, with the event this morning being just a few blocks from his office, I thought, bike smike!

 

Answers -

1) What does a thirty-two year old do with twelve school photos of herself?

Mom and Boyfriend’s Mom got three of them.  Nine of them still available!

 

2) What does one do with an incredibly large photo of herself?

Undetermined.  Suggestions?

 

3) Is it possible to transport an incredibly large photo of oneself on a Dutch bike?

No.  I don’t suggest you ever try it.  I almost died three times today, as I attempted to bike home from River North with Large Saya and the wind almost blew us into traffic.  I gave up and train’ed it.  This led to many stares, a few comments – “Nice face!” – and one in-depth conversation with a CTA employee who was riding home from her shift at Merchandise Mart up to Paulina to get her car.  She asked why I was carrying my face around the city.  I explained, she asked how I came up with the idea for my business because she wanted to start her own as well [turning recycled goods into art projects] but was nervous to take the leap, and we spent the next twenty minutes discussing self-employment.  By the time we reached Paulina and she gave me back my face after carrying it down in the elevator, I had convinced her to leave turnstiles and walkie-talkies for birdhouses made of construction scraps.

 

Lessons learned at TechWeek by someone who perhaps should’ve been barred from entering

**If you’re reading this in a reader, you might want to head over the to actual post, so you can see all the pretty pictures!**

Before I get into today’s post, a mention of my last post, Five fights I had before 8AM.  Someone sent me the message “I read your blog from yesterday. Sounds like you had a crappy morning. Hope things are looking up.”  From the majority of comments received, i.e. “Your latest blog made me smile,” it seems that most people got that our “fights” weren’t really fights and that all of my gripes were just silly, inconsequential reflections on living with someone, but just in case there are folk running around the world thinking Boyfriend and I experienced tension over a loaf of bread, it was all in jest!  No actual anger transgressed.

Ok, onto today’s post.

Much like Social Dev Camp and BarCamp last summer, I once again recently found myself at an event where I wondered:

• What am I do doing here?
• What language are they speaking?
• When will security escort me out for being a fraud?

That said, there were plenty of things that happened that made me think, maybe I do belong at TechWeek, a week-long festival, conference & expo celebrating the technology, web, and interactive communities –

• Noticing my nametag, the registration-lady exclaimed, “Saya?  From CRAVE?”  Turns out this would happen numerous times throughout the day, where someone I know only via Facebook, email or Twitter would introduce themselves to me as we met IRL ["in real life" for those of you who don't speak digital]
• Whereas there were only a few folk I knew at Social Dev Camp and no one familiar at BarCamp, I couldn’t go two steps without bumping into someone already in my random universe.  How we make connections/where relationships originate fascinates me –
• someone who interviewed me for his site on entrepreneurs
• an attendee at the High Tea where I sat at the head of a conference table, with a cup of tea and a biscuit, and talked too much about my career path; a life highlight to have “High Tea at 4pm” in my calendar
• a speaker at one of my past events for entrepreneurs
• someone I met in my living room at a Mac ‘n Cheese Mingler
• the co-organizer of an event where I talked about my Housing/Boyfriend/Employment criteria lists [which apparently made an impact; I went to this event again on Thursday, as an audience member this go-round, a few months after my talk, and had numerous people greet me, "Hey, you're the list girl!"]
• members of a ladies in tech Facebook group I’m a part of
• the owner of my neighborhood bike store who I selected to be featured in a publication spotlighting awesome female-business owners for her new business that helps independents sell, and consumers buy, at discounted prices
• a gal who asked me to coffee a few months ago after stumbling upon my website [who I just learned attends talks, draws images inspired by the speaker, and sells them for $200 a pop!  Fascinating way to make money]
• One of the speakers surprisingly name-dropped me into her presentation.
• Oh and, the giant photo of me on the wall.

Though TechWeek is well, a week, I only went down to Merchandise Mart on Monday, to attend the sessions put on by SPARK Women.  SPARK Women was touted as a conference designed to encourage women to get started and make the leap into entrepreneurship while understanding their unique advantages and challenges.

Session #1: Jill Salzman, Rockstars, Babies & the Mothership

I learned that one need not spend six weeks creating slides.  Jill’s slides – “2009,” a photo, a two sentence quote – perfectly complemented what she said and allowed the audience to mostly focus on her and her words.  When it comes to presentation slides, simpler is better and very effective.

Jill wove together personal stories with six business lessons.  I found myself laughing and nodding/swaying/amen’ing in agreement throughout [my "Stevie Wonder/black woman in Church" state as Boyfriend calls it].

How to be a Serial Entrepreneur

• Lesson #1: make it up
• Lesson #2: sleep
• Lesson #3: give yourself the promotion
• Lesson #4: tell your cousin
• Lesson #5: tell your dentist
• Lesson #6: tell everyone

Jill opened a music management firm and discovered she was great at publicity and booking, so she added those services.  When I started Mac ‘n Cheese Productions, “productions” meant video production.  But then I discovered I was good at identifying unique, fun, comfortable ways to help others make connections, so I added board games in my living room and dancing awkwardly in front of a sold-out Park West audience of 700 to my services.  When you find out that you’re good at something, brainstorm ways to turn your likes into cash.  That way, when you’re spending hours “working,” you won’t feel that you’re working at all.  I don’t feel I’ve worked a day in my seven years of self-employment.

Jill’s cousin sent anklets from Bangkok for Jill’s kid and everyone kept asking her where she got them, so she had her cousin send more and started selling them.  Long awesome story summarized: Jill found out another cousin of hers was living next door to Gwen Stefani’s parents, so sent said cousin a set with a note to give to Gwen’s parents, hoping they’d give them to Gwen.  Two months later, this picture was taken, Perez Hilton wrote “Stylin!” and had it on his show, which resulted in a People Magazine mention.  The business blew up.

I love that Jill very common-sensically observed a money-making opportunity and didn’t let the fact that she didn’t have an MBA or a background in imports or accessory-ware experience stop her.  She also didn’t go crazy and order a gazillion Bumble Bells.  She placed orders as needed, always with a few extra on hand, but never a warehouse full of dust-collecting baby anklets.  AND Jill has optimistic balls!  She frickin’ sent Gwen Stefani’s parents a handwritten-note.  What are the odds that that would actually turn into something?  Huge proponent of this type of thinking — go big.  If you shoot for the stars and fall just short, well that’s still pretty darn good.  So, Tim Ferriss, Jill and I are hosting an underground supper club for entrepreneurs in the Fall; I know you usually charge a million dollars for speaking engagements, but would you consider a free dinner, unlimited Franzia, and hanging with cheeky girl-hosts instead?

I can’t remember what story this relates to but at some point Jill said, “I didn’t spend a penny, not a penny.”  Oh, the resonation!  It’s the stories of everyday people who successfully start businesses not with a $500K loan from dad, lottery winnings, or savings they accumulated making Ridiculous Amount of Money at some corporate job, but with bartering sessions, a camera purchase with a payment plan that allowed for a year to pay for it with no interest accrued if paid on time, and having no shame in telling everyone and anyone about your business that resonate with me.  I had enough in savings to buy a Venti skinny vanilla latte when I started Mac ‘n Cheese.  My mom helped me buy an iMac.  An aunt gave me a $3000 loan.  The rest of the help I received was people referring folk to me and/or hiring me themselves.  I quickly realized the art of networking, the huge pay-off to going solo to things [you're forced to meet new people or  you look like an idiot standing by yourself at the punchbowl], and to sign-up for a range of activities that I wanted to do anyway [guitar, improv, volunteering, alumni club], with the thought that if nothing comes of the activity other than you have a good time, that’s great; if you get a client out of it, cherry on top!  And more often than not, the latter occurred.

Jill, and most of the speakers I heard at TechWeek, is a huge fan of tell everyone your idea.  Don’t be worried about people stealing it.  I’ve been approached for years about franchises, trade-marks, copyrights, most recently at Fear Experiment when a patent lawyer came up to me post-show, pressed his card in my hand and said very sternly, “You need to call me right away.”  I don’t know, naive perhaps, but my thought has always been, if someone wants to steal one of my concoctions, more power to them.  I kinda stole the Mingler idea from others, tweaking it to fit my interests and needs.  It’s the curator of the events that drives the events’ success or failure, and call me crazy, but a six-foot biracial kinda-Jewish with a Jesuit-degree girl who wasn’t named for the first year of her life, didn’t get immunized until she was a junior in college, raised by a self-taught organic gardener single-mom, and grew up sans TV, microwave, tupperware, and car is hard to replicate.

Jill talked about how no one ever showed up to her online events, like webinars.  She learned the power of face to face.  And to that, I say amen!  People are hungry for opportunities that get them away from the computer screen, texts, and TVs.  Which is why I have an ever-growing list of folk who want to pay money to do something they’re bad at in front of A LOT of staring eyes.  Speaking of which, Fear Experiment Round Two mandatory info sessions coming soon, make sure you sign up to be alerted to dates/times!

Session #2: Kerry Knee and Mahlia Mustafa, The Fundamentals of a Winning Pitch

Kerry, the co-founder of Flirty Girl Fitness had many slides that scared me, due to the graphs, numbers, and vocabulary not in my vocabulary.

But she obviously knows what she’s talking about, with a very successful business that is thriving in an economy where many are failing.

She said to diversify your offerings.  Besides pole-dancing [and many other types of] classes, she also sells DVDs, clothing, poles, instructor certification [2500 people pay $40 a month].  A pal of mine once suggested I create “Minglers in a Box” and sell them to people interested in starting Minglers in their cities.  A Fear Experiment [FE] audience member asked at the show where he could get an FE tshirt.  Wheels spinning of stuff to sell in the Mac ‘n Cheese online store…

Kerry also pointed out that the investor is investing in YOU more than your idea.  If you’re passionate and likable, that’ll take you far.  I learned this recently when I had a practice session for the MIT Whiteboard Challenge [a whiteboard, a marker, an idea, and five minutes to convince a panel of judges to give you prize money] and knocked it out of the park, so said the panelists, with my personality, but then fell flat on my face in the actual competition when I lost that nervous, infectious energy.  And also ran out of time before I got to describe the success and money-making potential of my project, the two most important facts.  Oy.

Session #3: Funding Basics: What options are available?   Are they right for you?

This was a panel, wonderfully moderated by Desiree Vargas Wrigley of GiveForward [like Kickstarter but for medical expenses].  I used Kickstarter to raise money for the Fear Experiment program, over $5000 in a week; imagine doing that for a “real” cause!!

There were a lot of interesting bits, here are a few things that stood out –

Matt McCall, venture capitalist

• When you go into the board room to ask for money, act like “you are lucky to be talking to me, maybe I’ll take your money”
• Girls of working mothers are more independent and resilient than those of stay at home moms

Cliff Turner, angel investor

• If you don’t get funded, ask why you didn’t get money
• Don’t forget to ask for money; sometimes it truly is as simple as just asking

Jessica Kim, business owner

• Raised a couple hundred thousand from friends/angels with a minimum of $10K to invest
• Tell friends and family “If there’s a chance you will ever feel bitterness towards me, I don’t want your money”
• Worst meetings were when she tried to fit a certain mold; just be yourself!

Rona Borre, business owner

• Started with a $100K loan from dad and a promissory note
• By month two, was cash flow positive and able to pay back Dad

Kurtis Trevan, Silicon Valley Bank, was also on the panel and said good stuff.  I just neglected to write specifics.  Sorry Kurtis!

Session #4: Penelope Trunk, Keynote Speaker

Penelope is a writer, mostly about careers, has a very popular blog, and is married to a Wisconsin farmer.

Many people did not like her message, or lack of a message they said, and were appalled that she was the Keynote.  Penelope doesn’t have a filter, is very crass, and often says what others will not [she has Asperger's Syndrome].  She’s blogged about her abortions, her miscarriage in a boardroom, what it’s like to have sex with someone with Asperger’s, and lots of other really personal and controversial topics.

That said, while I may not have agreed with everything she said, I enjoyed her randomness, her un-pc’ness, and her humor.  With seemingly most of the people I know who saw her upset in the aftermath – a girl I rode down in the elevator with commented, “I was so inspired by today, [Penelope] really took the wind out of those sails” – I second-guessed myself and wondered if the fact that I wasn’t offended meant I was a horrible and/or dense person.  And then I decided not to spend any more time reflecting on the subject.  I thought she was weird and funny and out there, I chuckled, covered my eyes, and “Oh no’ed…” various times, and when I got home, I subscribed to her blog and asked the SPARK organizer how I could get the free copy of her book I had won.

Penelope started off saying she was going to list 7 Things that People do in Startups that Annoy Me.  I may have missed one, or she may not have gotten to seven as she was all over the place, but there’s what I gathered -

1. People who go after funding when their company shouldn’t be funded

2. Worry that people will steal your idea — pitch everyone!

3. Don’t ask for help

4. Horde equity

5. Go to all women stuff

6. Aren’t nice

Random Penelope Thoughts

• Own your idea, say it’s your company, take ownership of it!
• Funders are always rich white guys with a yacht and two families
• Don’t have cursive fonts on your resume
• People who like your idea will want to share it with their most connected folk
• Women who are 29 have to get pregnant and women who are 35 want to work part time, so women want to be with men because men are willing to make work their lives
• As a general rule, you never want to be in a room full of women
• Investing is a people business so be nice
• You need help from everyone
• Follow-through with investors, entrepreneurs, employees
• Be the humble, kind generous person because you’ll need it
• For a tech conference, a room of ½ and ½ men and women is ALL women
• It’s crazy how bad your eggs get when you’re 35
• You have to be married to your company when you’re a startup
• Every sector where it’s all women sucks (teacher, nurse)
• No matter how much women make, they all want to be with a man who makes more
• You should always have a partner [female is best if you're a female]
• Trait that unites all startup founders: ability to understand weaknesses and find those to surround you to compensate
• Divorce rate for entrepreneurs is through the roof

She recounted how she put on her blog that she’d have a book for sale in three months, without having ever written a book and not having started this one, and made $25K in two weeks with pre-orders.  Wow.

So my take-aways from TechWeek, where I felt like I kinda belonged and kinda didn’t:

• Things will fall into place if you’re proactive and start the wheels turning
• Small steps can lead to huge things
• Go big even if it seems unrealistic
• Use simple slides
• Tell everyone you know about what you’re doing
• Be passionate
• Get people to pre-order something I have no experience making and haven’t yet started
• Elston is a great street for biking; Elston is a horrible street for walking one’s flat-tired heavy Dutch bike six-miles home after a long-day TechWeek conference

Five fights* I had before 8AM today

1. Soap

The soap in the shower has become a sliver.  Do you use it up like a good-economical person should do, or do you open a new bar and leave the sliver, willing it to somehow disappear?  Obviously, you suck it up and use the teeny soap for a few more washes, saving you billions.

Boyfriend retorts: “At that point, there’s so much hair on it, it won’t stick to the big soap, which is what you do with teeny soap; you stick it on the big bar.  So I can’t use it and have to open a new one, and use just that one.”

2. Bread

He opened a new loaf.  When there were still two pieces left of the old loaf.  But he refuses to eat “the butt.”  So again he leaves it, for the Magical Elf who tiptoes in at night to use soap slivers and eat bread butts.

3. Peanut Butter

“This is the worst thing ever.”  Boyfriend’s reaction to the amount of peanut butter I left in the jar, unwilling to believe there was enough to make his breakfast.  ”You want this toast?”

I took the jar and scraped just the right amount of peanut butter onto each slice, and the then empty jar went into the trash.  More billions saved.

4. Dishwasher

“Nice knife placement.”  Boyfriend insists that if you put the knives all the way to the right in the dishwasher silverware-holder, they will cut through said-dishwasher.  I place the silverware in whatever compartment I see first and do not subscribe to the Knives of Ridiculous Strength & Power school of thought.

5. Sleep

I was entrepreneuring at 2:34AM.  Not in the I stayed up late sense, but in the I went to bed at 10pm and got up naturally at 2:34 sense.  I’ve been known to do a 4:30, a 6:23 before; this wakeup was an early one!  But I can’t control the entrepreneurial spirit within.  When it calls, I listen.  And that’s why I’ve been able to cobble together a living playing board games, hanging in coffeehouses, meeting interesting folk in my living room, and doing bad improv in front of a sold-out Park West.

“I can’t even describe my anger level right now.  This is the worst thing ever.  Can we talk about your sleep habits?”

While I’ll give him that routine and consistency is good, is healthy, Boyfriend just doesn’t understand what happens when you do what you love for a job.  Yet.  He’s on his way to becoming a passion-based entrepreneur too.  Check out his shiny new website!  He’ll be excitedly Macbooking at 3am in no time, as he finds a way to cobble together a living on (good) improv, beer, bikes, and connecting creative-types.

*Fights = sarcastic barbs lovingly thrown at one another; no actual material items thrown at one another

Does everyone want to entrepreneur on their laptop in Amsterdam?!?!

As I finished a book this morning in bed, Craving Success: a startup junkie’s path from passion to profits, I had one of those moments where you feel like someone is living inside your head as he/she shares your exact thoughts with your exact words –

You know how people always ask that question, “if you could change anything about your life right now, would you?”  I’m happy to say I wouldn’t.  I have a working life that allows me to practice a style of doing business that is engaging and motivating.  I do what I want, when I want to do it.  I don’t use an alarm clock because I live naturally.  If I can work ’til 2am and get up everyday at 10am I am happy.  If I can travel to Amsterdam with my husband and a laptop and continue my business (or start a new one there) I am even happier. - Melody Biringer, founder of the CRAVE company

In the past almost seven years of self-employment, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve cited the fact that I wake with the sun not with an annoying beep as one of the great perks of being one’s own boss.

Ever since our trip to Amsterdam, Bruges, and Paris last summer, and our first professional collaboration [smashing success!  Sold out 700 seats at the Park West], I’ve wanted nothing more than to travel the world with Boyfriend, entreprenuring in London, mingling in Germany, Fear Experimenting in New York.  Me leading underground supper clubs and adult summer camps, him leading corporate improv sessions and bike the brewery tours, as we grow our businesses and perhaps start some news ones via our Mac Book Pros*, seated in a European coffeehouse booth in jeans and flip-flops, preparing for a day of sight-seeing followed by a night of connecting folk to folk.

A great travel blogger recently asked me about what my dream is for a post she’s working on, if I’m living it, and if not, what’s holding me back.  My answer was basically that yes, I’m living my dream; my one tweak would be to add more travel.

I’ve been kicking around adding that component for awhile, as I’ve been approached numerous times about taking my world to the rest of the world.  This morning, after reading Melody’s thoughts on scalability and her ideal work scenario, I had one of those just do it! moments.  Too soon to say if it was life-changing, but the wheels are turning and the adrenaline is rushing.

Excited for Mac ‘n Cheese On the Road!  Mac ‘n Cheese International!  Mac ‘n Cheese Remote!  I’ll work on the title.

But weeeee!  Exciting.  And scary.

*No, he still doesn’t fit Boyfriend Criteria, stubborningly refusing to go Mac over PC.  Working on it.

Four days in the woods with three guys – what a lady learned

If you’re reading this in a Reader, head over to the website so you can see the slideshow!!  The stench is palpable.

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What I learned after a Thursday-Sunday backpacking trip to North Manitou Island, Michigan, a place about six hours from Chicago with no cars allowed, the lone lady in a group of four –

• One need not spend a bazillion dollars on the bestest equipment REI has to offer.  Wearers of expensive hiking-boots 0, Blisters 2.  Wearers of $30 gym shoes 2, Blisters 0.
• Who knew you could be bad at stuffing something into a something?  There is an art to rolling a sleeping bag.  I do not posses the skills to do so.
• “Do you like to hike?” is not the whole question.  “Do you like to hike with 20 lbs on your back?” is the whole question.  Two very different answers.
• Men love euphemisms for “going number two” and can fill many an hour creating/discussing/laughing at them.
• If you’re the type of person who constantly wants to know the time, bring a watch.  Asking “What time is it?” every three minutes is grating.
• There is an adorable, sweet Ranger on the island – Ranger Phil – who looks to be early 30s, single, no kids [I asked].  Ten days on, four days off.  Ladies, who’s ready to uproot from civilization and become Mrs. Ranger Phil?  I think I saw a taser-gun!
• Port o’Johns and Woods Bathroom’ing truly underscores that the way women and men are constructed is really really unfair.
• A lady gets an illogical sense of pleasure when three men not only eat but hard-core enjoy PowerBar Pria 110 Plus nutrition bars, specially formulated to help fuel active women’s lifestyles without weighing them down.
• I am at an age where being the odd-one-out because I’ve never been divorced is becoming common.  Divorcees this trip – 3, non-divorcees this trip – 1.  Weird.
• I never thought that I’d turn down a food-item with “sausage” in the title.  Fish Sausage.  Bleh.
• The wilderness makes hair grow abnormally fast in places on your body that you didn’t even know hair could grow.  If someone were to open a waxing stand on North Manitou, he/she would make a killing.
• I don’t know if there was a big sporting event or Charlie Sheen moron’ed it up again or if someone’s best friend stole her boyfriend this weekend, but birds gossip A LOT.  Whatever happened to water cooler afternoon chit-chat?  Enough with the 4:30AM gossip-mill, Birdies!
• Being without cell phones/email/internet is crazy-frustrating when not planned, crazy-nice when planned.
• I have never loved anything as much as I loved the zipper on our tent; what power, what muscle, to keep the most annoying creatures on earth [mosquitoes and flies] at bay.
• Naming state capitals and major league baseball teams a) is a great way to pass the time when climbing mountains with a small yak on your back, and b) can make you feel stupid and/or a little maniacal.
• Axe-wielding, eye-patch’ed lunatics love to lurk around your tent all night, but for some reason, choose just to mess with your mind and not to chop you into pieces, and then disappear with daylight.
• Trees as laundry racks are fun.
• Phantom Bugs keep biting two days after you return to civilization.
• It’s really really nice camping with people who’ve actually camped before.  Things on the trip that I wouldn’t have thought to bring: toilet paper, a shovel [bathroom holes], duct tape, rain tarp, headlamp, summer sausage, sleeping pad, bungy cords.
• Follow your gut, it’s almost always right.
• Never follow your gut, it’s rarely right.
• A car that you can only open with a beeping key-button thingy is annoying in real life, and uber-annoying when in nature.  Sorry fellow campers — I kept forgetting stuff in the car!  At 6AM.  Oops.
• Having to tie your food in a tree before bed is annoying.
• I still feel weird getting naked outdoors, even if I know no one is within eyeshot.
• Freeze-Dried Food in a Bag ain’t all that bad.  Hello Chicken Vindaloo, Katmandu Curry, and Chana Masala.
• New favorite Bachelor Party idea — to the wilderness, Boys!  In matching t-shirts no less.
• Poorly drawn maps suck.
• When you’re around others who smell bad, you don’t really smell that bad.
• It is not a backpack if it doesn’t have a hip-belt.  Do not fool yourself into thinking you are camping-ready just because your “backpack” is of the Eagle Creek variety.
• Rain Insurance should exist.
• I’m as obsessed with people who do stuff alone in the woods as I am on the mainland.  A guy took the ferry over with us on Friday, alone; I eyed him, very curious as to his story.  On the return ferry Sunday, aha!  We sat next to each other and I found out he chose to celebrate his 21st birthday backpacking solo for a few days.
• Lake Michigan doesn’t have to have be ecoli-laden.  Lake Michigan can be as crystal clear as the water in the Caribbean.
• It takes three minutes of not being able to find the campsite at 3AM after a walk to “the bathroom” for my panic button to be pressed.  Thank god for the reflectors on one of our backpacks in the distance as I wildly swung my head-lamp’ed head around in certainty I was about to die.
• Going to bed at 9pm is odd enough.  Add into that equation full daylight, surreal.
• Wooden signs reaffirming you made the right turn are the best things ever.
• Taking your shoes off after a day of hiking is the best thing ever.
• Seeing the small dot of a ferry coming to rescue, er, pick you up, is the best thing ever.
• You can still be a hardcore backpacker if you bring along a French Press.
• You can still be a hardcore backpacker if you bring along wine.
• Camouflage comes in many many many different styles.
• Camping is the ultimate bonding experience.
• A Dairy Queen Blizzard in South Haven, Michigan at 3:30pm is not quite enough ice cream in a day.  A Scooter’s Concrete Mix-In back home at 8:30pm is not quite enough either.  Another Scooter’s Concrete Mix-In at 8:32pm, after accidentally taking from the walk-up window, and then eating a few bites of, someone else’s order, is just right.  So what if his was vanilla and you ordered chocolate, making your mix-up pretty incomprehensible.  His fault for not claiming the treat fast enough.

How a lovely relationship has closed my womb

It’s always been a given that I want to have kids.  That is, until I came into a loving, healthy, fun, stable, invigorating, hilarious relationship.

My interest in and experience with tykes began for not the most noble reason — as a freshman in high school, I needed ten hours of community service to become a member of the National Honor Society and was looking for a quick way to fulfill the requirement [my life was very busy with watching A Different World and ashamedly shopping at Lane Bryant; not a lot of time to spare].  The flyer read – “Do arts ‘n crafts with kids in an afterschool program Wednesdays.”  Cutting and pasting for a couple of hours didn’t seem daunting, and so that’s how I found myself on a school bus from Evanston to Cabrini Green.

After my ten hours, I kept returning.  My interest in public housing and all-issues inner-city was piqued, the immediate love and rockstar status the kids anointed me every week was intoxicating.  A year later, I was coordinator of the program.  That plus my standing Saturday night babysitting job for two kids, both until graduation, cemented children into my formative years.

While in college, I mentored a teen, created a pen-pal program between my freshman residents when I was an RA and kids who lived in public housing, was a summer camp counselor, and interned at Teen Voices Magazine.  Post college, I coordinated a Saturday morning volunteer program at an Englewood elementary school for five years, taught and continue to teach digital media to hundreds of Chicago Public School students in under-resourced neighborhoods, and continue relationships with various kids I’ve met over the years.

All this is to say, other people’s kids have been a constant in my life and I knew that one day, I’d complement [replace?] your kids with those from my own loins.

Over the year and half that I’ve been dating Boyfriend, of course I’ve done the obligatory girl-thing, where you write your first name and his last name, where you envision what type of food on a stick you’ll have at your wedding, where you conjure up images of the results of a DNA-smushing, where you think “Wow, Boyfriend will be such a good dad!”…

But weirdly, as we’ve gotten more serious, my urge to procreate has lessened.  To the point now where I don’t know if I want to have kids.

We bike thirty-five miles to Three Floyds Brewery in Munster, Indiana.  We Trader Joe’s at 9:30PM.  We go on two-week European vacations where we fly by the seat of our pants, pack light, and eat street food.  We go to late-night improv shows.  We do bar trivia.  We get to Millennium Park hours early to get good seats for Iron & Wine.  We have a GoogleDoc of eateries we want to try, many of which are bars/pubs, none of which are Chucky Cheese.  We cringe when we see large families or tiny-beings within a year or two of each other.  We already have to schedule get-togethers weeks/months down the line.  We have dreams of European bike trips, more professional collaboration [do you need someone to lead your office in team-building/improv activities?!?  Contact me!] and the creation of Boyfriend/Girlfriend LLC.

I don’t want to spend my money on diaper-genies and jars filled with mashed peas.  I don’t want to spend my time car-pooling other people’s critters, baking for school fundraisers, or devising discipline scenarios.  I don’t want our conversations to revolve around sitters, field trips, tap class, and report cards.  I like an empty backseat that we can fill with doughnuts or six-packs or bike accessories.  I like that we can leave for an outing carrying nothing but keys and a wallet.  I like that we don’t fight.

I’m sure there are parents who answer questions about the ’80s at Riverview Tavern on random Tuesday nights, who talk about TV shows that aren’t brought to you by the Letter R, and who have tons of energy and are always up for whatever.  It just seems few and far between.

For now at least, I choose spontaneity, light backpacks, and 3AM Golden Nugget pancakes.

New Address: Saya & Boyfriend, Chicago, IL

There are two car households.  Are there two refrigerator households?  My food fills mine, and I’m just not sure there’s room for any beer and chicken fingers.  Crossing fingers Boyfriend brings his own when he moves in on Saturday.

I’ve lived with guys before, but never of the romantic variety.  I have many thoughts and questions.

Are there two peanut-butter households? [heavenly creamy & why would you do that to yourself chunky]

Two toilet-paper households? [Scott just makes frugal-sense 1000 sheets per roll & Charmin waste of money thick-cut bacon depth 3 sheets per roll]

Two bread households? [refrigerated* or pantry-ed]

*I do not like cold bread, but a) it stays fresh longer and b) I always warm up my bread anyway.

I ate a pint of ice cream in one sitting earlier this week.  I have not done that in…years.  But a voice at Trader Joe’s said to me, “This is the last time you can consume a pint of ice cream in your home and not be judged.  Buy it!  Do it!”  Here’s to those days being over and that voice hopefully silenced; she’s stupid.

In my love of efficiency, I do not stir drinks that most others stir.  Hot cocoa?  Powdered mix in mug, hot water on top of mix, drink.  Lemonade?  Powdered mix in jug, cold water on top of mix, drink.  Coffee?  Coffee into cup, powdered creamer on top of coffee, drink.  Boyfriend hates this and makes a face to prove it each time I do it.  I hope he can internalize his gags and just accept my adorable tendencies.  The amount of time I save…

Exciting news!  You may know my strong feelings about beds, placement of and design of.  If you’re over twenty-six, your bed shouldn’t be in the corner; the only part that should touch the wall is the headboard.  Which of course you should have.  I’ve been able to complete those two parts of the Bed-Trifecta for years, but alas, the final segment has eluded me.  Size.  But with the ousting of my ten-year old IKEA full-size eyesore in exchange for Boyfriend’s queen-size adulthood splurge, I will finally be a card-carrying member of my own club.

I have lived alone for eight-ish years.  I’m an only child.  I’m self-employed and work from home.  I’m a Scorpio.  I’m the biggest fan of Saya-Time.  And Saya-Organization of Items.  And Saya-Chore Schedule.  And Saya-Fall Asleep with the Radio On.  And Saya-Adjust the Thermostat.  And Saya-Pull the Shower Curtain All the Way Open When Done Showering So Mildew Doesn’t Grow, It Doesn’t Make Sense to Do it Any Other Way.

Yet, the only thing I’m nervous about is that I’m not nervous.

Dear Life: Next Chapter, I’m ready!  And don’t tell Boyfriend, ready to compromise.  And giddily-excited.

How Shakespeare made me feel thin

Check out others’ musings on William Shakespeare’s impact on their lives, as bloggers around the world chime in in celebration of his birthday

I visited Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s birth place, a few years ago.

[attempt to conjure up story about how while I walked down the cobblestone paths that his lyrical feet pitter-pattered upon and while I stood in front of his childhood home, a bolt of inspiration struck and was the impetus of my now best-selling, award-winning novel]

Nothing of significance happened.  I bought an apricot jam for my mom and for myself, a British flag knit-cap that I wear to and from the gym, ate an expensive lunch, meandered in a musty-chapel, and took the train back to London.

My Shakespeare Moment occurred not in England, but in Evanston, Illinois at Chiaravalle Montessori School, where in second grade, I was cast as Titania, the queen of the fairies in Midsommer Night’s Dream.

I have no recollection of the actual play – rehearsals, fellow actors, lines, audience reaction, any of the story beyond a mischievous elf? named Puck.  What I do remember is that I wore what in my seven year-old mind was the most breathtaking dress in the entire world (probably more appropriate for a 1973 disco-queen than for a 1593 fairy-queen – full-length, billowy, A-line, with silver sequin along the top, and made of the brightest fuchsia material known to mankind) and that I felt important and girly and beautiful.  And that I haven’t had that feeling many times since in my thirty-two years.

I started growing, upward and outward, in third-grade, so the feminine roles always went to Ashley, Jessica, and Jennifer.  Leading roles always went to, well, those who could act.  Acting is not one of my skills; the Fear Experiment audience members a couple of weeks ago witnessed that train-wreck as I attempted to challenge myself by doing something that I’m bad at [improv] in front of many [700], and I opened the three-hour show with a scene in a gynecologist office when the crowd suggestion was “optometrist.”  So needless to say, I have not been a part of many theatrical performances in my life, let alone cast in a lead role.  But there I was, Titania.  Queen.  Someone with a name.  Someone with servants.  And because I have no memory of tears or running off stage or peeing in my pants, I can only assume that I rocked the role.  As Titania, I was appropriately-sized and oscar-worthy.

I’ve achieved many things and have a lot to be proud of and thankful for.  Graduating from a good school [Boston College], celebrating six years of self-employment, living in a wicked cool converted toy-factory, belonging to a supportive family, dating a Southern boy with cute cheeks and a sweet heart.

But a second-grade play of which I remember little is what I point to as a life highlight because it made me feel like a pretty girl.  That’s weird.  Sad.  Makes me take pause.

It is a powerful force how we feel about ourselves physically and how we see ourselves fitting [or in my case, not fitting] into stereotypical gender roles.  Powerful enough to make us lose perspective and become a tad irrational.  But oh how lovely I felt.

Thank you Sir William for allowing a big-boned Midwestern girl to feel like a tiny-boned pink princess, even if that sounds superficial and really not that important in the grand scheme of things.  Queen Titania curtsies before you.

So that’s what a panic attack feels like

You might think my panic attack yesterday had to do with the fact that I’m performing at the Park West tonight in front of 700 people, as Fear Experiment has finally arrived.  And coordinating the event.  Which entails a silent auction, dinner, a slideshow, playbills, ticket-taking, music playlists, reserved seats, two films, thirteen volunteers, a photographer, two videographers, a makeup artist, fifty-five nervous nelly non-dancers and non-improvisers dancing and improvising, and a bunch of other stuff my brain can’t process anymore and refuses to articulate at this moment.

But my panic attack had nothing to do with Fear Experiment.

While chatting with my yoga teacher before class yesterday, she nonchalantly said, “We’re moving to Santa Barbara in October.”

What?!?!

We’ve been together for about two years now.  She was my first.  I’ve been with others, five, six, maybe seven; none of them compare.  In fact, most were horrid.  We see each other one to three times a week.  She’s been with me through fat-days and skinny-days.  She’s seen me progress, she’s seen me struggle.  She’s stepped in my sweat puddles and inhaled my stinkyness.  She’s witnessed me in heartbreak, she’s witnessed me in love.  She’s given me the ability to do half a push-up after a lifetime of no push-ups.

I really don’t know what I’m going to do.

No, there is no other yoga teacher in the entire city of Chicago!  No, I will not embrace change or give someone else a chance!

If I freeze or start crying on stage tonight, it’s a good bet that it’ll have nothing to do with the fact that I just made a joke nobody laughed at or that I just fist-pumped left when I was supposed to fist-pump right.  It’ll  be because I’m envisioning life without Yoga Teacher.  My own personal Fear Experiment in the middle of the real Fear Experiment.

When you look in the mirror, who do you see?

I was driving home from one of my schools yesterday, blasting silly pop music, window slightly open, about to get on the highway at 45th, when a red light slowed my homeward-progress.  I made a small groan.  Not because of the stoppage but because of the pan-handler advancing my way.  Just came out of a very rough class with some very surly teenagers [who doesn't love ending the quarter with a "Fuck you, old lady!"] and wasn’t in the mood to play the avert my eyes-feel like a horrible person for being annoyed by someone in a not so wonderful position game.  But steadily she came.

A woman, about sixty, long brown well-worn trench coat, brown knit cap, tan face smothered with wrinkles.  She stopped at the first car and shook her cup.  The driver ignored her.  She shook her cup once more, with a steady gaze into the window.   C’mon light, c’mon light, change.  Oh no, quick do something, maybe she’ll pass you.  Suddenly adjusting my ponytail in the rearview mirror was the most important task in the world, compelling all of my attention.  I could feel her advance.  I work hard for my money, why should I have to part with it?  How do I know what she’s going to do with it?  She can’t get a job?  Ugh, I’m the worst person in the world.  Give her a dollar.  I just bought a purse I don’t need at Target and I can’t give her a buck?  The worst person ever.  Oh man, I wish my window wasn’t cracked.

She shook her cup at me.  I shook my head in her general direction, tight-lip smile, and continued to stare straight ahead.  Is this the longest light in the world?  She mumbled something, my Katy Perry was too loud, I couldn’t hear her.  Was probably something about hunger or the lord or having a heart.  Usually I would continue to stare anywhere but in her direction, with a what I hoped was a “I’m really sorry for your circumstance but I’m not going to give you money so please go away” look.  She mumbled again.  For some reason, I made eye-contact and allowed a much bigger than usual smile.  She grinned and started talking again.  I turned down Katy Perry.

“What’s that?”

“You know who you look like?  Julia Roberts.”

I sputtered in surprise, she turned back to the curb, and the light changed.

I still don’t get this oft-cited comparison.  But if someone who has a lot more significant issues to deal with in her life than frivolous People magazine celebrity chatter deems it so, ok, I’ll take it.

I’m sorry I asked you not to clap for me

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Continuing on the Solo Life, where I try to do one thing a week/month by myself, and continuing on the scare the crap out of myself journey, last night I was a part of Ignite Chicago.  Ten-ish people get up and talk about whatever they want for twenty slides, each fifteen seconds long.

Now you may be saying, Saya, this sounds exactly like Pecha Kucha, which you presented at in September 2009; why would this scare you?  While very similar – can talk about any topic for an allotted amount of time with an allotted amount of slides – there were four major differences.

1) No notes!  This was not an Ignite-rule, but a Saya-imposed rule.  I’m in complete awe of people who are effective no-notes presenters.   I thought I’d get in some practice last night.  I wasn’t worried I’d forget what I wanted to say, but notes are a security blanket for me.  So in essence, I presented naked.  Not pretty for you or I.  But accomplished.

2) Five minutes!  Pecha Kucha was much much longer at six minutes forty seconds [aka twenty second slides instead of fifteen second slides].  The amazingness I could’ve spewed with that extra time.

3) Life!  September 2009 was a long time ago.  I’ve done so much since then – traveled to Amsterdam/Paris/Belgium, snared a boyfriend, sold-out the Park West for a little dance ‘n improv show of mine, eaten at a Chick-Fil-A [and many other Southernesque things], added Coffee to services offered from my business, been featured on a bike blog with my Dutch baby, accepted a position as the Chicago partner for CRAVE Chicago, eaten sushi, and pushed a shopping cart around Chicago for seven hours – how can I be expected to talk about my life in less time than two years ago?!?

4) Preparation!  Or lack thereof!  I’m a planner.  I like to create, revise, take a break, revise, break, revise.  For Pecha Kucha, I had, and used, three months.  For Ignite, I had five days to create my slides and my words.  During a ridiculously busy period.  At first I was irked to be given such little time.  But then I embraced it as a challenge.

So, I was nervous.

Ignite took place at one of my favorite venues in Chicago, Catalyst Ranch.  Exposed brick, mismatched comfy furniture, free gum balls and jolly ranchers, every bright color in the universe, high ceilings.

I was second at Pecha Kucha, second to last at Ignite.  Definitely prefer the former.  Being towards the end only furthers the amount of time you question yourself and the amount of people who leave [though I only saw two early-exit'ers last night].

Wide range of topics – how to get rid of your crap, how to make bacon, a person finding solace in driving, how to get and keep customers, myths of the cosmetic industry…  my title was “How to Get Paid To Do What You Love.”

Wide range of presentation skills and approaches, from seated reading from an iPhone, to juggling while talking, to steady eye-contact with the audience to steady eye-contact with the screen.

I’d like to improve in two areas -

1) Speed.  I become a motor-mouth at these things.  I marvel at those who get tons of info out in a controlled and non-frenetic pace.

2) Fluster.  I get flustered when a slide changes before I want it to, which results in sweat, babbles, ums, uhs, overall incoherence.

I learned that sometimes less is better.  Though the presentation could’ve been better in various ways, and perhaps would’ve been if I had more prep time, I got a great response.

Ran out of business cards, line of folk to chat with me afterward, lovely tweets and emails!

“@sayahillman @IgniteChicago Your #ignitechi presentation was great – Who knew you could make a living that way – incredible”

“@sayahillman #ignitechi great talk Saya, to-do lists can be strategic as well as tactical.”

“@timjahn @startupstella Much Thanks for #ignitechi last night – especially liked how personable it is for people that go alone @sayahillman”

“@caseyfictum thanks for coming! @sayahillman is my hero “

“I thoroughly enjoyed your presentation and speaking to you last night at Ignite Chicago, Saya.  A lot of what you said will greatly influence the way I’ll navigate independent employment moving forward.”

Great time!  Worth the extra deodorant I had to apply.

Tip: don’t tell the audience not to clap for you.  Upon hearing we sold out the Park West [700 seats!], they all very nicely hooted and clapped.  I replied, “Don’t clap, I don’t have time for clapping!”  Classic smooth move.

Girl’s post on the internet has brought Boy & Girl to this

The First 18 Steps in a Relationship

1. December 2009 – Boy meets Girl, bearing a six-pack and wearing slippers, in her living room filled with thirty-nine other strangers, after he sees a post about Mac ‘n Cheese Minglers on an improv message board; he sticks around at the end of the evening and piques her interest with talk of BBQ and spreadsheets

2. January 8, 2010 – Girl has plans to stop by Boy’s improv show and then jet off to a friend’s moving away party; she stays four hours later than planned and doesn’t arrive in Bucktown till 1AM [note how she calls Boy a "new friend" in the post]

3. January 23, 2010 – Boy asks Girl to a neuroscience workshop and BBQ; they end up at neuroscience workshop and the Hungry Brain for drinks.  They have fun.  After a few hours, her contacts bother her, and she says, “My contacts are bothering me.  I should go home.”  Boy thinks Girl is making up an excuse.  He drives her home.  They sit awkwardly in his car for twenty-minutes.  Weird side hug.

[Girl finds out later that Boy felt deflated after contact comment and thought it meant Girl wasn't interested.]

4. January 27, 2010 – Girl asks Boy to improv show.  Boy and Girl sit on couch post-show and share their lives.  Girl is clued into maybe this is a date after Boy rubs the same spot on her left calf for two hours.

5. January 29, 2010 – Boy in Wisconsin for bachelor party.  Girl texts him while out for drinks with a friend that the bar she’s at has Cribbage, a game they had just discussed.  Girl comes home to change before heading out for a friend’s birthday.  Boy texts her.  Flurry of texts back and forth.  Girl never makes it to birthday party, instead choosing to lay in bed, waiting for her phone to vibrate.  Boy admits he likes her and that he can’t help go against the advice he was given of not contacting Girl over the weekend.  Girl admits, to herself, that she likes Boy.

6. February 14, 2010 – Weird Valentine’s Day timing, early in the relationship, is it even a relationship?  What do you do?  Girl gives Boy a collage of inside jokes/photos, and a mix CD.  Boy gives Girl a vase filled with Fig Newtons [she loves them].

7. February 2010 – Boy installs a movie screen at Girl’s home.  Boy takes Girl out for her first sushi.

8. March 2010 – Boy and Girl throw a Taboo game night party, half her friends, half his friends.  Boy and Girl buy airline tickets to visit her friends in Amsterdam.  In July!  Girl falls asleep at dance rehearsal and Boy almost drives off the road en route to Peoria due to weeks of going to bed at 4, 5, 6AM.

9. May 2, 2010 – Boy meets Girl’s family.  Everyone loves Boy.

10. July 3, 2010 – Boy says “I love you.”  Girl says “I love egg mcmuffins.”

11. July 14 – July 28, 2010 – Boy and Girl go to Amsterdam, Bruges, and Paris, and have the time of their lives.

12. September 7, 2010 – Boy gives Girl key to his place.  Girl gives Boy key to her place a few weeks later.  Girl brings up living together at some point down the road, Boy agrees it’s a good idea, down the road.

13. October 1, 2010 – Girl meets Boy’s mom, when she comes to visit from Louisiana.

14. October 31, 2010 – Boy and Girl go to Mumford & Sons concert.  Best concert of their lives.

15. December 23, 2010 – Boy and Girl drive fourteen hours to Louisiana for Christmas.  Girl’s first time in the South. Eyeopening.

16. January 2011 – Boy and Girl embark on first professional collaboration, he improv teacher, she improv student.  It’s great.  They discuss future collaboration opportunities.

17. February 2011 – Girl says how about moving in end of May.  Boy says how about end of April.

18. March 11, 2011 – Girl reserves Uhaul for end of April.

Prescription for your headache

If you read this in a Reader and can’t view images, you might want to head over to the actual blog to see the slideshow

Venue-search, spreadsheets, deadlines, nagging, lower-back pain from computer-hunching, working weekends, working for pennies — this makes all the headaches worth it.

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How often does one get to be in a father/son scene, in what starts as a seemingly innocent game of catch only for the game to quickly deteriorate into a shouting match of son not living up to father’s expectations and father accused of being fake, from the women he dates all the way down to his mustache, with a super-fun partner surrounded by a super-supportive crowd of adventurous, diverse, intelligent, and fearless people?

Just another Thursday night.

Photos courtesy of the Amazing Rich Chapman

This is rehearsal for Fear Experiment: the Show, 4/9 at the Park West.  Info on how to get tickets.

Eating chocolate blind

I was chatting with a teacher at one of my schools early one morning when I noticed his eyes darting back and forth between my eyes and my chin.

“You have a little bit of chocolate right there,” he said, pointing to the nether-region of my face.

Embarrassed to a) be a chunky girl with food on her face and b) be a human being with anything on her face, how hard is it to look in the mirror?, I nodded knowingly – of course there’s chocolate on my face -  quickly wiped my hand across my chin and replied, “Oh yeah.”  Giggle giggle.  I can’t believe I left the house like this, though not surprising.  I love chocolate.  And feel bad when I eat it, so often consume it in odd ways.  Quickly.  Eyes closed.

But as we parted ways, I perplexedly walked to the studio.  I hadn’t eaten chocolate in… days?  When was the last time?  A pudding.  That was like, last Wednesday.  Did I leave the pudding lid in bed and roll in it last night?  In a stress-coma, did I not only swap chocolate-peanut butter with my lotion, but proceed to moisturize with it?

And then I had the same feeling as when I walked home from Schuba’s one night, after a few drinks, and stood in front of a business on Southport for ten-minutes staring at the words painted on its window – Blind Cleaning Service.  Wow!  That’s such a wonderful thing they’re doing, giving jobs to people who can’t see.  And what an undertaking, cleaning without the ability to see!  I wonder how they do that.  How do they see where to dust?  If they’ve gotten all the lasagna out of the pan? That training must be fascinating and really in-depth.  I’m not sure I’d hire a blind maid.  But kudos to people who do.

The next morning, I popped up in bed and exclaimed, “Ohhhhh!  Blind Cleaning Service.  Like blinds.  On a window.”

And that’s how I felt when I realized the teacher had said, “You have a little bit of chalk right there.”

What kind of life does one lead when she’s told at 8AM on a Thursday that she has chocolate on her face and it doesn’t phase or surprise her?

Why I had an amazing experience yet still want my money back

I had a most wonderful evening a couple of weeks ago, climaxing with tickets to the sold-out Decemberists show at the Riviera.  It was a great concert, with high-energy, a crowd who was there to actually listen to the show, new and old songs, an easy to get to and easy to see in venue, non-ridiculous ticket prices, and a nice boy next to me.

So, why do I want my money back?

I was driving to one of my schools yesterday, a twenty-six-ish minute drive.  I listened to Sons & Daughters on repeat the whole way there.  And home.  Singing at the top of my lungs.  I do not know why I love this song so much.  Weird lyrics.  Amazing harmony.  Guitar-picking that makes the heart melt.  Rounds – who doesn’t love rounds in songs?  Boyfriend says it’s the crescendo.  Whatever the reason, I love it.  And the Decemberists didn’t play it.

I’ve gone to concerts before where there was a song I really wanted to hear and the artist didn’t play it.  But I’ve never not gotten over the fact, usually just shrugging my shoulders and saying “Oh well.”  Yet here I am.  Three weeks later.  Upset.  Fist waving.  Cursing Colin, who I’m sure is a perfectly nice man who doesn’t deserved to be cursed at.  Demanding he repay me.

Or at least give me a private in-home concert.  Playing just that song.  Over and over.

Spending Friday night calculating last year’s mileage makes me make bad choices

You know how everything will be ok if you can just reach 120, 150, 200?  That random, elusive, magic weight-number.

My number has always been what it says on my driver’s license, so I can stop living the lie I’ve been living since I was sixteen [well, I got down below it a couple of years ago.  For seven minutes].  Re-attained today!  180.  178.8 in fact.  Which is great.

But.

I was at Target on Friday.  Healthy healthy week.  A good week.  A bit stressed at the end, with my CPA tax-meeting looming [and I never wish self-employed, home-business, 1099s from a bazillion different companies taxes on anyone!] thus having to get all my financial papers in order, plus walking away from a great-paying job because the client has been a huge source of stress for months, plus having a really important part of my current baby Fear Experiment [FE], crumbling and potentially being a disaster, plus having tons of editing and teaching projects to do, the projects that actually pay my bills, yet spending most of my time on FE which nets me enough to buy a venti latte.  And so I went to Target for Kleenex and shampoo, and left with those things and a bag of Hostess donuts.  My nemesis.

I waited to check-out behind a thirty-something woman, who looked to have just come from the gym across the street.  Black leggings, ponytail, flushed face, sweat-spotted t-shirt.  And oh my, such a healthy selection in your cart [I love looking in people's carts!].  Yogurt, GoLean, bottled water, greens, mushrooms, Cliff bars… I could tell, she meant business.  She power-walked out of the store.  Those quads, that ass.  <—— jealous.  I put my stuff on the belt and hoped the cashier wouldn’t guess I was going to inhale every one of those donuts as she swiped them across the scanner.

I got in my car.  Groceries in the trunk.  Except for my nemesis.  She sat in the passenger seat.  I got a couple of blocks away.  Pulled up to a red light in front of Diversey Rock ‘n Bowl.  Stuffed a donut in my mouth.  The. Best. Ever.  Ate another one.  And another one.  Looked over to my right.  There was Athletic Lady from the store, in her fitting SUV; I bet she hikes on the weekends.  Ugh, she’s so perfect.  But then, oh no, oh wait… you’re not…

She cracked her window, inhaled deeply, and let her hand hang heavily on the glass, cigarette ash falling to the street.

There I was, making such wonderful choices all week, with my salads, whole-grain bread, green tea, and daily sixty-minutes of cardio.  There she was, filling her cart with longevity, clear skin, and light-yellow pee.  Yet there we sat, undoing all that goodness that took so much effort, in just a few seconds.  With donuts and cancer-sticks.

 

And this is how much I weigh two weeks later.

Just like my life has been a rollercoaster of emotion the past month, so has my attempt to shed pounds, er, be healthy.

Unlike the typical peaks and valleys format of The Life Rollercoaster though, The Be Healthy Rollercoaster was mostly all speeding downhill, arms waving, huge smile, yelling in excitement.  Started at 187.  Got down to 181!

But then these things happened -

Saturday shopping at IKEA.  Damn you delicious Swedes and your buns.  Saturday Fear Experiment potluck.  Damn you good and ridiculously-generous cooks.

Ended at 184.

That’s ok, I’m not terribly upset because besides the Swedish Experiment hiccup, it wasn’t terribly hard.  I didn’t alter my exercise regimen at all, just limited myself to three regular-sized meals and a couple of healthy snacks per day.

According to random Ideal Weight and Height Chart, I should be 176 [no comment on how I'm ignoring that it says "144-176," I can't fathom anything below 170].  So that’s what I’m striving for.

Come April 9th, the date of the big Fear Experiment Show at the Park West, when I’m going to be hysterically funny in front of 700, I’m also going to be hysterically svelte.  I’m not sure what that means.  I hope it means less jiggle and being able to fit in the size 8 shorts that’ve been sitting in my closet, tags on, untouhced, for a year.

Onwards and upwards!

I Hate/Love/Hate/Love My Life

This past month has been a rollercoaster of emotion, where I’ve teared up out of happiness and out of frustration, numerous times…

Where’s My Power Suit?

After seeing an interview of me on Beyond the Pedway, a guy asked me to be a participant in a project of his –

I convene a roomful of senior business folks.

On behalf of a non-profit or government agency.

For a 3-hour, full-contact, pro-bono strategy session.

To begin to solve a single intractable, fundamental challenge.

Innovative idea!  I was tickled to be considered “senior business folk.”  I can’t reduce a fraction, none of my clothes are by Italian designers, and I’ve never eaten at Gibson’s Steakhouse.  I’ll try to be business-y regardless.

On the Air

While I’ve been interviewed many times, for newspapers, magazines, radio, and TV, I’ve never been live.  I had my first “oh god, what if  I say Nazi or poo or reveal _____’s secret I swore I’d never tell” experience when I was interviewed on WGN-radio about being an entrepreneur.  The interview took place in the showcase studio, overlooking Michigan Avenue.  I felt bad for the passersby who saw the mics and headsets, and felt the 90 billion watt soundwaves emanating from the Tribune Tower, and thus eagerly pressed their faces to the windows to get a glimpse of Angelina and Brad only to see a 6′ frizzy-haired ball of nerves who finds it impossible to only make one piece of toast in a two-slot toaster regardless of how hungry or not hungry she is.  But overall, it was a very enjoyable experience.  All six minutes.  I slipped in something about Fear Experiment, which was my only real goal.  And I must not have sounded like a complete fool, as I got a bunch of new sign-ups for the Minglers, my newsletter, and my business, who said they heard me on the radio.

The Trouble with Turning Fun into a Job

While last year’s Dance Experiment was pure fun, this year’s incarnation has not been.  When I’m actually improv’ing, it’s wonderful; the other stuff?  Bleh.  Most of the stress is rooted in high-class problems, like an increased size and performing at the prestigious, and very expensive, Park West, but that doesn’t make the twenty-hour plus weeks spent on something that’s garnishing me financial peanuts easy to swallow.  If I do this again, it’ll have a higher participation fee to compensate me for my time.  And I’ll make sure to clearly state expectations of participants at a mandatory pre-adventure meeting.  Learning experience.

Due to the popularity, I added Improv Experiment to Dance Experiment, which resulted in Fear Experiment – forty-one adults, and fourteen students of mine from a high-poverty community, pushing themselves in dance and/or improv, in preparation for a show in April; that more than doubled the participant numbers, which has made for much more time spent on coordinating.  The annoying type of coordinating.  Like sending an email titled “Here’s the Date of the Show!”, and then getting nine “What’s the date of the show?” messages.  Or sending “please send me ____ by _____” messages once, twice, five times.  Being put in the role of a nag is not fun.

Hugs!  From Friends and Strangers.

One source of stress has been trying to find a printer who’ll donate the printing of our playbill; if we don’t get it donated, we don’t have a playbill.  After two months of many of us reaching out and getting rejection after rejection, I came up with the idea to make our need a Kickstarter project.  Kickstarter is an awesome website which gives little-fish a chance to get their creative projects funded.  You ask for an amount, you have a deadline in which to raise said-amount, and if you get enough people to pledge 100% of the amount by the deadline, you get the money and the pledgers get cool rewards; if you fall short, you get nothing, they get nothing.

The outpouring of pledge-love has been overwhelming.  It looks like we just may pull this off.

Mom On-Line!

My mom and I have had a consistent relationship since I was a child where I’ll suggest a genius idea, she’ll hear it but not be ready to embrace it – she’s a big “on my own time” person – and five years later, will follow-through on my genius suggestion and usually end up very happy with her decision [Exhibit A) switch from PC to MAC, Exhibit B) back up your computer].  After retiring from the landscape and garden business about five years ago, she became an “equitable food and farm economies” consultant.  While very rewarding, interesting, and much-needed, it’s proven tough to generate a consistent cash-flow.  A year or so ago, I suggested she create a simple website as a possible way to help increase income.  Four years earlier than tradition, with little help from me, my non-techy mother created a website!  And it looks great.

A Little but Much Needed Pick Me Up

I accidentally stumbled upon a recent blog post by one of the Dance Experiment participants from last year, which made me smile.  Thanks DJ Sparklebomb!

Really Universe?  Do You Hate Me That Much?

On a Sunday when I was up against multiple deadlines, and had already spent all Friday and Saturday working, I began working on my e-newsletter at 6AM.   Worked on it until 5PM-ish.  Was about to hit send and noticed that my logo was an old version.  I selected the logo and pressed delete.  Or so I thought.  I must’ve selected the text box of the entire email.  Everything disappeared.  And the auto-save that is usually a blessing decided right then to enact itself, saving the just updated version, so no undoing my last action.  In one second, I undid a day’s worth of work.

Helping Others Be Able to Shop at Trader Joe’s Tuesday at 10:30AM

There’s a huge tech conference this summer in Chicago and I was asked to be a part of a committee to put together a workshop for women entrepreneurs.  Fun!  Collaboration with inspiring people!  Helping others do what they love for a living!

Generosity Exemplified

An extremely-skilled photographer is driving into the city from Algonquin – it took him about two hours last night – at least once a week for three months to document Fear Experiment.  For free.  And sharing the photos with all the participants to do with what they please.  Improv rehearsal at one location, dance rehearsal at another location, the elementary school at another location.  Heartwarming.  Thank you Rich Chapman.

A Night On the Town

I went to the sold-out Decemberists concert!  Indian dinner beforehand, no reservation yet seated right away.  Arrived at the Riviera just as the opening band finished, and found two great seats.  They didn’t play Sons and Daughters which causes me to react in weird ways, and was the only song I really wanted to hear, but it was still a lovely evening.

A Week in My (Tired) Shoes

I was asked to be a guest blogger on my alma mater’s career center website, for their RealJobs project, where alum give insight into their professional life, blogging once a day for a week.  It couldn’t have come at a worse time as far as “I don’t have time for this!”  But I blearily typed up a post around midnight each night, recounting the days activities.  Now, looking back and hearing the feedback from others, I’m glad I made the time and glad I said yes.  Always have to remind myself of all the support I’ve gotten from others who are equally as or more busy than I am.  Not all about me, not all about me.

Reminder to Keep Plugging Along

And on that note of having perspective and realizing your life is pretty darn good, regardless of people who don’t follow deadlines and of drivers who block intersections so that you have to sit through three green lights before you can go, these two recent occurrences remind me, deep breath!  You’re fine.

One, the blog posts by my Fear Experiment students.  Adorable!

Two, my Fear Experiment students learning dance from their Fear Experiment partners.  Adorable!  Both the actual moves, and the bringing together of these two groups.  Busy adults taking time out of busy lives to give back.  Isolated kids opening themselves to new people and new experiences.

Let’s see what this next month brings –

This is how much I weigh.

I’ve been of the more-robust variety since third grade.  At my highest weight, I was sixty pounds heavier than I am now.

But I find no consolation in that.  That was a long time ago, this is now.

Two years ago, I worked really hard to get in shape.  Revamped my pantry, discovered yoga, stuck to workout and eating goals, and dropped twenty pounds in a common-sensical and healthy way.  Became the lightest I’ve been my entire adulthood.

Yet, I’m now ten pounds heavier than I was a year ago.

Nothing I’ve been doing is working, probably rooted in eating spoonfuls of dark chocolate peanut butter straight from the jar, with the justification that I bought it at Whole Foods, so it must be healthy.  My drive and will-power has dissipated.

So, in the spirit of a craving for health and all the positivity that comes with that, and in the spirit of a project I’m currently entrenched in, Fear Experiment… I’m 187 pounds.

See you in two weeks.

Why I Cried at the Gym Last Night and Cheated on My Boyfriend

A few months ago, Boyfriend mocked me by closing his eyes, making his best “Yeah, I’m grooving to jazz” face, and rocking back and forth in his chair; he said I looked like I was in church, feeling the power of the Lord.  We weren’t listening to jazz nor in God’s house though, we were at a literary event at the Hideout.  The host talked about his job and the professional world in general, around the themes of find ways to do what you love for a living, that it’s more important to be fulfilled than to be rich or prestigious, and various other anti-cubicle sentiments.  I know I was in agreement with him at the time; I didn’t realize I was Stevie Wonder at the time.  Whatever.  Boyfriend was probably just upset that I was going to cheat on him a few days later, at a very swanky downtown venue.

Last night at the gym, not only was I Stevie Wonder, I was hormonally-unstable pregnant lady; I laughed one minute, cried the next, praised Jesus/Allah/Michael Jordan, made love to the TV screen with my eyes, held my hand over my palpitating heart, and felt at peace, understood, and saved, all while elliptical trainer’ing [and then stationary biking, I couldn't leave without seeing the end].  And it was all because of Other Boyfriend [the one I cheated on Boyfriend with].

Ricky Gervais, fresh off hosting the Golden Globes and the ensuing controversy about whether he was too mean, was on CNN’s Piers Morgan show.  First of all, he’s British.  So that means he could call me a chunky, ignorant bitch and I’d say, “Thank you.  More, please.”  Second of all, he’s completely right.  About everything [I'm not referencing the Globes, I hate award shows so didn't watch; but whatever he spewed, spot on I'm sure.  Here, I'm referring to his CNN interview].  During which I Stevie Wondered the hell out of him.

I read Chris Brogan, Chris Guillebeau, Tim Ferris.  They’ve all got great philosophies about being an entrepreneur and doing what you love and life priorities and time management.  I nod, highlight, and copy and paste.  I watch Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.  I chuckle, forward, and “So true!”  But Ricky, man.  He’s just the perfect combination of wit, philosophy, honesty, and everyday-ness.

In the CNN interview, he said, “I do this for me, really… My strategy is to make me laugh. If there’s anyone in the world like me, that’s a bonus. I’m very Darwinist about this.  You do your own thing, and then you see if you survive. And I wouldn’t have it any other way, because if you start second-guessing and you’re trying to find people that are like you, or change it to make certain people like you, you’re finished.”

This reminds me of a George Bernard Shaw quote: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

I realized that my professional life has become very Gervais/Darwin/Shaw-ist, and it’s the best!  I find something that I want to do, like badly dance a hip-hop routine on stage, play board games in my living room, help inner-city kids, and hang out in coffeehouses, and turn that something into rent money [though I definitely need to take an Appropriate Pricing class; the amount of time I spend on these projects is in no way appropriately compensated].  I feel so lucky that my nutty ideas are not only fun, amazing experiences for myself, and not only have they allowed me to remain happily self-employed going on six years now, but that they also bring personal growth, laughter, and new relationships to a large group of others.

Participants in Fear Experiment, my latest venture, recently shared the following sentiments:

• “8:30-10:30 on Thurs [Fear Experiment time] = one of my favorite parts of the week.”
• “It’s awesome to have an instant new circle of friends in the city!”
• “So damn excited and having a blast.”
• “A challenging, yet enticing experience that is making me face my fears head on.”

To think that I had some part in bringing such feelings to others is utterly gratifying.

Ricky reflected, “If you start trying to be cool and sexy, you’ve lost it…there was a Roman emperor, apparently, who used to walk the streets…and he hired someone to whisper in his ear, ‘You’re just a man, you’re just a man.’”  Of course it’d be great to be cool and sexy.  But I don’t want to force it.  I’m about comfort, no make-up, crystal-light, cheeseburger and fries, low-key, low-maintenance; I dress up by wearing flip-flops with sequins or making my hair part on the side rather than the middle.  I just want to do the things I enjoy doing, and hope cool and sexy comes with them.  I constantly remind myself, “I’m just a man.”  Well, you know what I mean.

“[The Ricky Gervais Show is] another passion project. Everything I’ve ever done has been a labor of love. The Flanimals box that is now being made into a movie, I used to make my nephew laugh, you know? ‘The Office,’ I used to work in an office and people watch. ‘Extras,’ I was just thrown into this new life, and I made notes and poked fun at it.  And this was me in a room with Karl Pilkington and Stephen Merchant, just chatting.  As a comedian, what you try and do is be as funny on stage or on telly or in a film as you are in a pub with people you know and trust and drink with.”

He takes his life experiences and interests, and turns them into projects.  Bill-paying, laughter-inducing, universally-loved projects.  That’s wonderful.

“I enjoy the hard work. That’s what I enjoy. I enjoy this. I wake up and it’s a privilege that I can have an idea. Nothing gives me an adrenaline rush like an idea. What a privilege that I can have an idea and start working on that…And Bob Dylan said, ‘A man can consider himself a success if he wakes up in the morning, goes to bed at night, and in between, did exactly what he wanted.’”

Exactly.  I work hard.  Really hard.  I spent last Friday night, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday working.  But it wasn’t work.  I loved it.  I had to make myself take breaks to eat.  I bypassed a party because I wanted to Photoshop and Dreamweaver.  Absolutely it’s a privilege that people want to join me in my adventures; without them, the adventures wouldn’t be anything.  And absolutely it’s a privilege and an adrenaline rush that I can have an idea, like gather together random strangers who suck at improv for two months of improv class and then perform a show, and a week later, have twenty people signed-up and paid for the experience.  And two weeks later, have the Park West booked for the show.

Ricky also made comments on religion and being an atheist , he and his girlfriend of twenty-five years choosing not to marry or have kids, spirituality, and the secrets to a successful romantic relationship, that I won’t go into now, but that I totally Stevie Wondered.  I actually printed out the transcript from the show.  What the heck am I going to do with twelve pages of a TV show transcript?!?  It just seemed the right thing to do.

I haven’t cried in public since the Starbucks incident.  It was weird then, it was weird last night.  But Ricky SPOKE to me on so many levels.  So there I was, sweating on a stationary bike, with tearing eyes and a snotty nose.  It felt so good, like someone engulfing me in a huge bear-hug, to hear someone say exactly what I think.  With a British accent no less.

This has nothing to do with any of the above.  But it made me laugh.  And laughter is a great way to start a Friday.  And I’ve got to put this transcript to use somehow.

MORGAN: Last year, “TIME” magazine listed you under the “100 Most Influential People” as an artist.
GERVAIS: I couldn’t keep a straight face.
MORGAN: When you see lists like that, you must laugh, don’t you?
GERVAIS: Oh, I love it. I love it. I complained. I said, “Why is Nelson Mandela above me?” I said, “He did nothing for 25 years.”

Pizza en route [shhhh!]

To thank Boyfriend’s parents for hosting us over the holidays, we sent something that each of them mentioned loving multiple times while we were there, a Giordano’s pizza.  Of course, that may have just been to make us Chicagoans feel better about our corrupt Governors, our frustrating residents who “save” parking spots via old furniture, our hapless Cubs, and our bone-chilling cold, but I think the love was genuine.

When I got the below tracking update in my inbox this AM, I shook my head in one of those “Wow, technology!” moments.  Yesterday at 11:13AM, Chicago FedEx was notified that there are two people in Louisiana who enjoy deep-dish; today at 8:32AM, Louisiana FedEx is driving to Boyfriend’s mom’s school to deliver said deep-dish.  And if all goes well, today at 6:23PM, Boyfriend Mom and Boyfriend Dad will be slicing into a piece of sausage-deliciousness.

I complain about slow-servers, spam, down-Twitter, junk-mail, post-office lines, ever-rising stamp prices, Farmville-status updates, people who recklessly Reply All.  Not today.  Big WHAT UP, technology!  You rock.

• Jan 4, 2011 8:32 AM, On FedEx vehicle for delivery, MONROE, LA

• Jan 4, 2011 8:29 AM, At local FedEx facility, MONROE, LA

• Jan 4, 2011 5:13 AM, At dest sort facility, SHREVEPORT, LA

• Jan 4, 2011 4:22 AM, Departed FedEx location, MEMPHIS, TN

• Jan 3, 2011 10:57 PM, Arrived at FedEx location, MEMPHIS, TN

• Jan 3, 2011 8:15 PM, Left FedEx origin facility, ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL

• Jan 3, 2011 3:03 PM, Picked up, ELK GROVE VILLAGE, IL

• Jan 3, 2011 11:13 AM, Shipment information sent to FedEx

How do you choose how you part with your money?

I had the privilege of traveling to Rwanda a few years ago to shoot footage for a non-profit that’s helping to rebuild the country post-genocide.  My host when I was there, a Rwandan nun named Sister Anna, shared with me some of the atrocities she, her family, and her religious order endured in ’94, and introduced me to many of her orphaned nieces and nephews.  One of the nieces has two children, Patience and Benin, who though we could not talk, as they spoke no English and let’s just say my Kinyrwandan is a bit rusty, captured my heart.  Patience loved learning how to use my camera and Benin serenaded us with a never-ending round of “Jesus Loves You.”  Their mom, who still suffers from depression relating to the genocide and thus finds it difficult to work, shared biscuits and orange pop with us, biscuits and pop that Sister Anna had bought on the way to their house, discreetly slipping the goodies to her niece so that she would have something to offer the guests.

Upon my return to the states, Sister Anna asked if I’d be able to sponsor the education of Patience who was then age nine.  There is no public education in Rwanda and to attend a year of school costs $400, which in one of the twenty poorest countries in the world, is astronomical.  I couldn’t pay that amount on my own, so decided to reach out and see if any one in my network would be interested in a joint-effort.  Three years later, thirty-eight people have donated once, twice, three times an average amount of $10 to $20 resulting in us being able to send Patience to school.

This generosity is on my mind now as on December 29th, I sent an email to past donors, and on December 31st, included an ask in my e-newsletter.  Just three days later and with very little effort on my part, our goal has been reached and we’re able to sponsor Patience’s education for another year.  What really got me is the range of participants – liberal, conservative, single, gay, married, New Yorker, Bostonian, Chicagoite, rich, just getting by financially, corporate, artsy, white, Puerto Rican, Asian – that many of them are more distant friends than close friends, and that some ,who heard about the opportunity via friends, are people I’ve never met before.

What makes people decide to jump on board one good cause versus another?  What makes someone decide to give money to a total stranger to help a boy she has no connection with?  What makes you decide to part with $20 in this way?  Whatever the reason, it’s a marvel.  Truly.

Thanks Louis, Donna, Erin, Julie, Lindsay, Yanira, Megs, Beth, Lee Ann, Erin, Ed, Julie, Cortney, Julie #2, Lauren, Laura, Shannon, Dan, Kim, Doug, Leslie, Raj, Marcy, Megan, Gary, Lori, Aditya, Megan, Mike, Erica, Ted, Karen, Michelle, Rhonda, Pam, Dana, Nancy, and Heather!!  Good karma your way in 2011.

A Northerner’s perspective after a trip to the South

Whenever I’d say that I’ve been to Florida and Texas, people would respond, “Oh that’s not the South!”  Well, now I can say I’ve been to the South.

I visited Boyfriend’s family in Smalltown, Louisiana over the holidays.  One of the few positives of the fourteen hour drive is that I really bulked up my “States Visited” list, adding Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Louisiana.  The other positives of the drive are being able to throw anything you want in the car and not be charged a checked bag fee, and… well, that’s it.

Upon our return to Chicago, I chuckled to myself as I felt like I did upon our return from Europe this summer; what strange customs these people have, some ridiculous, what are they thinking?, and some enlightening, why don’t we do this?

The South wins:

• Friendliness.  The accent, the instant love of strangers, the hospitality.  On one of our three Chick Fil A stops, as we were buckling up and about to pull out of our parking spot, a guy knocked on our window.  Of course my initial thought was what is he selling and how do we get rid of him?  Turns out he’s part of the Metropolitan Biking Association or something to that effect; he saw our bikes on the back of the car, and invited us to come sit with him so he could tell us the best trails to try.  And what could’ve been an awkward, painful, and long experience, staying with Boyfriend’s parents and being with his family 24/7 for five days, was anything but that.  They were the ultimate hosts, cooking us delicious food, taking us out to eat, letting us use them for their Sam’s Club membership, planning activities like excursions to Moon Lake, the Coca-Cola museum, Antique Alley, and Christmas Eve mass. [Yes, I went to church!  And yes, I enjoyed it!  Probably because it was heavy on the singing and light on the sermon, and I didn't have to stand and sit and kneel and stand and sit and kneel - learned that Baptists don't move as much as Catholics.]
• Dress.  Jeans and tshirts.  Was sure I’d have to wear ruffles and taffeta to church, but no, jeans and a sweater!  Wardrobes based on comfort are wardrobes I can get behind.  I often felt like the most dressed up, which never happens, and that was just because I had on a shirt that didn’t have a collegiate or professional sports team monogram.
• Waffle House.  Like an IHOP but better.  You order hash browns smothered, covered, chunked, diced, peppered, capped, topped, and/or country. And they’re everywhere.  I usually hate chains but this is a chain I can get behind.
• Y’all.  C’mon.  Miss _____.   Miss Sue Ann.  Miss Alice.
• Incredibly strong bonds of friends and family.  Sunday night, Boyfriend’s mom got together all of Boyfriend’s childhood friends and their parents at Johnny’s Pizzeria.  Even though lives have taken many divergent paths, everyone acted as if they had just been playing mudball in the yard just days previous, instead of thirty years previous.
• Subdivisions.  I hate them, but I like that kids can play in the street due to lack of traffic.  And many of the subdivisions we drove through had houses that were all different, as opposed to the cookie-cutter ones you often see.
• The Big Green Egg.  A better way to grill.
• Dessert pizza.  Cinnamon pizza, pineapple pizza, brownie pizza.
• Sweet tea.
• Biscuits.  Specifically Sister Schubert’s rolls.  Serve these at your next soiree!  Instant hit.
• People’s names.  Crew, Bishop, Madison, Jackson, Cameron.
• Integration.  While Chicago is diverse, it’s segregated diversity.  It was cool to see restaurants and stores filled with different races.  Though neighborhoods seem to be segregated, like it is here.
• Option to flavor your pop with syrup [chocolate, vanilla, etc.]
• Straws in drinks.
• No tolls!  We didn’t pay any tolls the entire trip.  I can’t cross the street in Chicago without paying a toll.
• Green bean bundles.  Green beans wrapped in bacon and covered in brown sugar.
• Everywhere you go, someone knows you.
• Chick Fil A.  The food was fine, but it was more the culture that enamored me.  The employees seemed to genuinely mean it when they said, “My pleasure” after each interaction.  And they were old and young, black and white, male and female; the most diverse fast-food employee range I’ve seen.  There was a woman dedicated to walking around to tables asking if people wanted free refills [see below for thoughts on refills].  Free mints and cheerios.  Uber-clean.  Soothing background music.  Closed on Sunday for God.
• While I think I would miss snow and seasons, I think I could get used to sixty-degree December days.
• Bayous.  More exotic than ponds and lakes.
• No one wears bike helmets [much like Amsterdam].  Though no one bikes either [see below; not much like Amsterdam].
• People in general.  We could use some of their warmth up North.

The South loses:

• Must. Drive. Everywhere.  No sidewalks.  No bike lanes.  We saw three bicyclists and boy did they stick out.  We had to bike on the highway to get where we wanted to go.  No train.  A bus but it doesn’t seem to go many places.  I would feel incredibly suffocated, isolated, dependent.
• One car per person per household.
• All pop is Coke.  “What kind of Coke would you like?”  “A Sprite.”  That’s weird.  I could handle it being called soda.
• Confederate flags.
• High fives.  They high-five everything.  My wrist still hurts.
• Subdivisions.
• Car choices: SUVs, mini-vans, and pickup trucks.
• Rotel dip.  It’s not that I don’t like it, I do.  But isn’t it just cheese dip?  Why the need to call it something so exotic?  After all that hype, I was disappointed not because it wasn’t good, but because it was something I’d had but with a different name.
• Instances of stereotypical man as the dominator and woman as the submissive.  Cringed a few times upon hearing husbands talk to wives or wives tell stories of big life choices being made by the male with little if any input from the female.
• Lack of blocks, lack of a grid system.  I like being able to say, “Go two blocks east and one block south.”  There you’d have to say, “Go to the first Waffle House, turn left, and go until you see the Love’s gas station, then take the first right.”
• Strip mall central.
• Yards are too big.  The vastness of the yards bothered me.
• Animal heads in the living room.  In the bedroom.  Anywhere but on the body of a living animal, really.
• Pepper jelly.  A greenish-yellowish jelly with peppers, spread on cream cheese, as a cracker dip.
• Spitting tobacco on the floor of a bar.
• Most houses are ranch-style, with only one level.  They have the space to build out, as opposed to us who must build up.  I like me some stairs.  Same for schools, malls, etc.
• Grown-ups getting mad at kids who don’t say “Sir” or “Ma’am.”  I felt bad when I asked an eight-year old a question and she got in trouble because she didn’t Ma’am me in her answer.
• Driving stick for the first time in eight years in Memphis, Tennessee, which is basically a clusterphuck of clogged highways.
• Camouflage clothes.
• Christmas ribbon.  Common to frame your home’s entrance with bright ribbon and plastic balls.
• Lack of coffeehouses.
• Caked-on make-up, bleach blonde hair, fake tans, and the most unnatural looking highlights.
• Gravy.  On everything.
• Not being able to buy ice [or anything for that matter] after 10PM.  Used to our 24-hour stores.
• Obsession with sports, high school, college, and professional.  If I never see the color purple [LSU's color] or a fleur de lis [the Saints' symbol] again, it’ll be too soon.  Lawn signs like “Connor, Neville Panthers basketball” and “Haley, River Oaks cheerleading” are everywhere.
• Pizza cut in long rectangles.  Pizza should first be in triangles and if necessary, in squares.

Things that don’t win or lose, but that stood out:

• Free Refill Culture.  People make decisions based on refills.  Servers at fast-food restaurants come to your table, ask if you need a refill, and if you do, take your cup up to the machine.  Boyfriend once got up and got his own refill, the server looked horrified.  It’s common to ask for a To Go Cup and as you’re leaving, to fill up one last time; we’d finish our meal and all line up at the machine.  If the machine is behind the counter, it’s natural to ask the cashier.  People carry around Styrofoam cups everywhere.  I had more Diet Coke in the past week than I’ve had in the past year.
• Hugs.  I like to hug.  But I like to hug people I’ve known for at least two minutes.  I’m not a hugger of strangers.  The South is a hugger of strangers.
• Churches churches everywhere.
• Cats and dogs roam free.  Tons of them wandering the neighborhoods.  We had two dogs follow us a mile when we went out for a walk; ended up having to drive them home.  I guess it’s cool that they don’t have to be chained up like in Chicago, but it still seemed odd.
• Carports instead of garages.
• Hunting is king.  I would never do it [I almost died cooking last year's Thanksgiving turkey] and don’t like the concept, but I guess I could tolerate other people doing it.  Couldn’t believe how prevalent it is.  We had a car filled with deer meat on the way back, courtesy of Boyfriend’s Dad.  The first thing I was shown at their house was the as tall as me gun safe.
• They love to talk food!  Eyes lit up when I said I’d been to Magic Grill, the Creamery, Johnny’s Pizza, Waffle House.  They excitedly wanted to know what I had, what I thought of it, how it compared to Chicago.  If you ever want to break the ice quickly, talk restaurants, grilling, or sauces.
• Garages used for boats, lawn mowers, and freezers [to hold the deer you just shot]; cars parked in driveways.

A wonderful trip.  I appreciated how I was raised and the perks of big-city life, and I appreciated small-town ways and Southern culture.  I would definitely like more South in my future – the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia.  Sounds like Nashville may be next on the list for a wedding, though I wonder if it’d be more fun for Boyfriend [and me?] sans moi since it’ll be his gaggle of closest friends, from college, with tons of inside jokes and references I don’t get and having to explain this and rehash that, but that’s another post for another day.  As a true Louisianan would say goodbye, Go Tigers! [high-five]

What do the homes you’ve lived in as an adult say about you?

I recently peeled back how I came to make a new acquaintance, whom I met in blind-date type of situation; that unearthing took me back ten years and brought up people and times and visions of myself I haven’t thought of in forever.  That got me thinking about where we live and how that changes over the years.  Just as I found it fascinating to retrace how I came to know this new person, it was also a fun journey to retrace dwellings.

Think about where you’ve lived since you became an adult – any smiles come to your face?  Groans bubble up inside your throat?  Wistful for something?  Proud of how far you’ve come?

For each residence, some questions to reflect on -

• What did you do for a living?
• Who were you dating?
• How much money was in your checking account?
• What was your happiness level?
• What activities made up your social life?
• Who were your friends?
• Who did you live with?
• What were your priorities?  [in housing, in life, in love, in work, in family]
• Why’d you choose this place?
• Why’d you move?

Below are the six apartments I’ve lived in post-college, in chronological order –

1. Fremont Street, August 2000 – August 2001, age 21 to 22

After graduating from Boston College in 2000, I was supposed to go to Kingston, Jamaica to teach English at a boys Jesuit highschool, where I had stayed as a junior on a community service trip.  A month before I was supposed to leave, the program was canceled due to violence.  And so I found myself living back home with mom, in a too small 1-bedroom Evanston apartment, working at Cafe Express.  In order to be an adult, I had to get a downtown job to which I traveled via the El, I had to get an apartment in the city by myself, and I had to buy a couch.  Luckily, all three were realized within a couple of months, and I soon found myself with a Wacker Drive work address and a Wrigleyville home address.

One evening in my living room, I heard a loud buzzing and thought I was being attacked by locusts.  It was the crowd at Wrigley reacting to the Cubs game a few blocks away.  That was cool.

I learned that courtyard buildings, while pretty, are not for me; I don’t like looking directly into my neighbor’s apartment.  No more of those.

2. Sheffield Avenue, September 2001 – December 2002, age 22 to 24

I can’t believe I paid what I did in rent that first year out of school.  My non-profit salary definitely did not encourage a Wrigleyville one-bedroom.  But I was very into being “normal,” which is why I lived in that neighborhood and why I had a gym membership at LPAC; after an abnormal childhood, I was ready to be Ashley who drove a Jetta and shopped at Whole Foods and Anthropologie.  I decided I could give up the living-solo life if I could stay mainstream and with-it by remaining between Irving and Belmont, Halsted and Clark.  Three roommates and I [one was a friend of a friend and two were Craigslisters] moved into a four-bedroom, two blocks from my first place.

While there were many wonderful things about having roommates again, I eventually came to realize that the roommate phase has passed for me, and adopted the saying, “My next roommate will be my husband, if and when that happens…” and began the search for my own place.

3. Seeley Avenue, January 2003 to December 2006, age 24 to 28

When I first moved to Chicago, I couldn’t believe that anyone lived west of Ashland.  “Out there” was so far, so foreign, so not on the redline or close to the Lake.  After two years in Wrigleyville,  I couldn’t wait to move to the other side and my housing criteria did a 180.

• Within walking distance of stuff, but not in the armpit of congestion
• On the brownline
• Building with only four to six units
• Quiet street
• Easy parking
• Neighborhood feel with mix of families and young folk
• No drunk fratties screaming outside your window at 2AM or peeing on your lawn

I loved loved loved this place.  It was huge, I talked the landlord down $200 a month so was getting it at a steal, and it was in Roscoe Village, which I’ve come to view as the best neighborhood to live in in Chicago.  So many warm memories here, one of which is making the huge transition from being a 9 to 5′er to being self-employed and working from home.

After four years, a dishwasher, laundry in the building, and a non-enclosed porch became important.  I also dipped my toes in the “buying a place” water, and unfortunately, pricey Roscoe Village was out of the question for that endeavor.  So I moved to Ravenswood Manor where one-bedroom condos were more in my price range, to try it out and see if I wanted to take the homeowner leap.

4. Wilson Avenue, January 2007 to May 2008, age 28 to 29

Amazing how much more space you can get if you move to a neighborhood a little further out!  Huge two-bedroom for the same amount as my previous one-bedrooms.  Dishwasher!  Laundry!  Porch!  But hated living on a busy street, especially one so narrow that everyone parks half on the curb and half off, and even that way, my mirror was knocked off three times.  Also did not feel the safety I felt in the other neighborhoods, nor did I enjoy running outside due to the cat calls, or walking around due to a lack of cuteness that the other areas had.  And it was just too far.

Every time I drove through Roscoe Village, it whispered sweet nothings in my ear and I felt a twang of wistfulness.  I had to move back.  Even if it meant staying a renter, paying more, and having less space.

5. School Street, June 2008 to July 2009, age 29 to 30

There was nothing great about this place except it was in Roscoe Village.  And it had a completely rehabbed kitchen; the faux-marble countertops and the faux-cherry wood cabinets seduced me.  I knew it wasn’t permanent so dealt with the lack of character, too many units, just graduated-college tenants, low ceilings, long-haul to the train, and horrid closet space.

By this time, the Minglers were really taking off.  One hot, sticky July Mingler, as forty guests wiped sweat out of their eyes as they tried to make good first impressions with potential dates, employers, friends, I knew it was time to find somewhere more conducive to what had become a real part of my business.

6. Ravenswood Avenue, August 2009 – current, age 30 to ?

I never wanted to be that person who moved every year and swore to myself, this would be the last one for awhile.  By this uprooting, I was VERY clear on what I desired in a home; people laughed when they saw how specific I was and said dismissively, “Good luck!”  But here I am, living in utopia, a Roscoe Village converted toy-factory, and the happiest I’ve ever been.  Besides deciding to become self-employed, moving here was the biggest business risk I’ve taken in the six years on my own.  Signing the lease was very scary as it’s a bajillion more than what I’ve ever paid.  But a main reason why I moved here was so that I could do more revenue-generating activities, and thus far, it’s worked out even better than expected.

Where have you lived?  What have those homes said about you?  What’s your housing criteria, and how has it changed?

Tip for meeting strangers in public

I was chatting with a lovely group of people yesterday at one of my Coffees and the topic of meeting strangers in public came up, more specifically, how awkward it can be and how easy it can be to avoid said-awkwardness.  This seems a very applicable topic in this era of relationships birthed via social media rather than in person, and of bar/coffeehouse-gatherings.

One of the Coffeemates recounted an icky experience she had with a Meetup group.  She decided to join a Meetup for a Bears game watch, so she could meet new people and share her love of sports with other fans.  The group was to convene at a bar, which of course, was packed.  She wandered around for awhile looking for the group, but couldn’t distinguish the Meetup fans from the regular-folk fans, so ended up watching the first half by herself at the bar and the second half at home.  First off, we all know how awkward that feeling is of being in a social setting searching for someone; you feel like everyone is staring, everyone is judging.  And second, how disappointing for her!  She had taken time to travel from Wrigleyville down to the Gold Coast, and had expectations of a fun day of new connections and rah rah rah! spirit.  Stories of people pushing themselves out of their comfort zones and challenging themselves only to be thwarted by others’ lack of foresight are frustrating and twinge of the heart-inducing.

I myself encountered a similar situation last weekend, when I went to a CommuniTeach event at a coffeehouse.  I’m very comfortable in situations where I know no one and have no qualms about going up to strangers to start a conversation; in fact, I thrive on such scenarios.  That said, I had a very uncomfortable and awkward five minutes at Leitza’s.  I arrived at 3PM, right when the event was supposed to start.  Twelve or so people had RSVPed, so I scanned the tables for a good-size group.  They were all individuals or groups of two or three.  I discreetly peered at faces, looking for visages that looked like they’d meet at some random coffeehouse with a group of random strangers to talk about a random topic.  I walked to the back, I walked to the other room.  I asked a barista if there was another location, thinking perhaps I had written down the wrong address.  I hung out in the bathroom and stared at my overgrown eyebrows.  I walked outside and looked for another entrance.  I went back inside and ordered a drink, this time not caring that a small non-fat latte with sugar-free vanilla syrup takes a half hour to make, this time hoping he’d actually have to travel to Ethiopia to go get the needed espresso beans.  Everyone was whispering about me.  I knew they were talking about how lost and lonely I seemed and my acne scars.  About the time I got stood up for a date because I was chunkier than he had thought I would be.  About the time my front-closure bra popped open and broke as I was racing to an interview, leaving me with the choice of go home to get another bra and be late to the very important interview, or be interviewed with two boobs flopping around and possibly hitting the interviewer in the eye.  About my inability to do simple math.  And just as I was about to chalk it up to a failed attempt to try something new and return home with my tail between my legs, I saw a group congregating at the end of the bar.  I went over, asked if this was the CommuniTeach, stuck my hand out, introduced myself and sat down.  And had a lovely time.

All this is to say, for the love of god, when you’re meeting strangers in public, if you’re the creator of the group or if you initiated the meeting, a) you should get to the location at least fifteen minutes before the start time to stake out an appropriate space, both in size and in visibility, and b) you should tell people to look for a distinguishing something [for Coffees, I tell people to look for a red pipe-cleaner flower in a Cola-Light bottle] so that they’re not wandering around, kicking themselves for every stupid thing they’ve done in life and wondering if this was Stupid Thing #307.

Know these folk, they make life good

Days like today make me thankful to be a human being.

I led my second Coffee this morning, the new service I rolled out a few weeks ago in response to the myriad of “Can we grab coffee?” requests I get, usually from people who want to talk “how to make a living doing what you love” shop.  Three coffeemates met me at 11am at Bean ‘n Bagels in Lincoln Square.  One wants to start a life-coach side business, one wants to explore staying within her field but tweaking it to better align with her interests, and one is quitting her job and giving up her apartment in the next few weeks to do who knows what!  I think she put it – “To do something that doesn’t suck my soul.”  We had a lively, supportive sixty-minute discussion that was a nice balance of talk about yourself, ask questions about others, share ideas, get motivated.  As happens with all my ventures, this arm of the business was an accident, as I just do what I love to do, in this case hang out in coffeehouses, facilitate new connections, and converse with passionate people, and surprisingly, people not only want to come along for the ride, but are willing to pay for the ride.  One of the coffeemates commented, “This is exactly what I needed.  So invigorating and motivating.”  Heartwarming, and a motivator to keep plugging along as health insurance rates rise and paying for heat in a converted toy-factory sucks and friends talk about this Caribbean vacation or that Master’s degree.

At 3PM, I headed to Leitza’s Bakery in Bucktown for my first LearnIt.  It’s part of this awesome site called CommuniTeach, where you teach a skill or learn a skill from people in your community, for free.  Skill can range from cooking to yoga to photography to Spanish to magic.  How to do Good in Chicago was the topic this afternoon.  There was the facilitator, Sarah, who is also the founder, and six “students.”  It was informal and informative, low-key and comfortable.  Everyone came solo.  A great way to meet people.  A great way to share knowledge.  I’m considering being a LearnIt teacher, though I’m not sure how many sign-ups I’d get for Boxed Wine, Bacon-Wrapped Anything, and Board Games.  The only “issue,” which I’m running into in Minglers and Coffees as well, is being someone who can, in a non-bitchy way, keep people from monopolizing conversation.  It’s definitely a skill, as is being self-aware enough to realize when it’s someone else’s turn to talk.  Unfortunately/fortunately, I had to leave early because of my next engagement, an interview for one of the coolest projects I’ve come across recently.

 

Tony, Melissa, and AJ are driving across the country – 45 cities, 65 days, 55 stories – for their Rise of the Cubicle Farmer endeavor.  Described as “an epic journey to discover the changing landscape of work,” their primary goal is to “tell inspiring stories of entrepreneurs who walked away from conventional lives and started using technology to share their art with the world.  We are hoping to educate and empower aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners to follow their lead.  To show them that the tools are out there, they just have to start leveraging them.”  And so that’s how I found myself being interviewed in my freezing [the heat was too loud] dining room.  I’m nervous about the interview as they plan on making it live without much if any editing; I’m used to the security blanket of the delete button.  But they were so fun and easy to chat with, and so excited about how they live their life, that I’m pretty sure their positivity infected me in such a manner that I don’t come across as a total knob.

Definitely check out both Sarah’s project and the Leons’ project[s], some uber-creative people doing some uber-amazing things!

And now I’m on my way to a Latke Party.  What other way could there be to end such a day than with crispy potato patties.

Life is good.

How I beat my jiggly fat and wound up on a blind date

As I was riding Daisy, my new love, to the Belmont El stop on Saturday, to meet a girl I had “met” just days previous and only “spoken to” via Facebook and email, with a plan of spending the rest of the day with her traversing the streets of Chicago, I retraced the long route I had taken to find myself in such a situation.

• Winter 2001: Met Laura when I moved back to Chicago from Boston post-graduation and was looking for a way to meet new people; I joined the Lymphoma and Leukemia  Society’s Team and Training program for the San Diego marathon; Laura was in my pace group.
• Spring 2004: Met Katy when Laura invited me to join a volleyball team.
• Winter 2006: Met Katie when Katy brought Katie to a New Year’s Eve party hosted by friends of mine.
• Summer 2008: “Met” Brad when Katie e-introduced us because we’re both in the video, non-profit, entrepreneurial realm, and then met Brad when he came to one of my Mac ‘n Cheese Minglers.
• Summer 2010: “Met” Patty when she reached out with a “I’m friends with Brad and was introduced to the work you do through his participation in the Dance Experiment” email, explaining that she worked for Groupon and was spearheading a new initiative that she thought I might want to collaborate on, and then Fall 2010, met Patty when she came to one of the Minglers.
• Fall 2010: “Met” Leah when Patty posted something about the Minglers on her Facebook page and invited me to do the Sadie Hawkins bike ride; Leah saw the mention of the ride and chimed in that she wanted to go but that she needed a date [you had to participate in "couples"]; Patty suggested that Leah and I be dates.  After a few FB posts, messages, and some emails, we solidified plans.

And that’s how I found myself riding down Belmont Saturday for a blind date.  Would she like me?  Would we have things to talk about?  Would the date end with a handshake, a high-five, an awkward hug?  Would there be a second date?

It’s an interesting exercise to map out how the people in your life come to be in your life.  Such random connections, small-world incidents, seemingly minuscule decisions that turn out to be life-altering choices.  If I had decided to let the fact that I had never run more than a mile in my life and that I was slow and that I had lots of jiggly fat and that I knew I’d be surrounded by Lincoln Park trixie girls who showed up to training in the most expensive ‘n cute athletic wear, who never sweat no matter how much they ran, and who had muscles and abs and ate organic, if I had decided to not show up that first day and instead stay on the comfort of my couch, which almost happened, my life would be very different today.  And I’m pretty sure, not for the better.

Now, the real capper to this meandering down How Did I End Up Here Lane would be if I play Leah’s birthday in the Lotto and win a bazillion point two gazillion dollars…

On the prowl, but in a friendly way

One of the oft-discussed topics at the Minglers is how to meet people once you exit through the gates of dormitories, activity clubs, cafeterias, and homecoming dances and into the sphere of rent checks, 401(k)s, and TPS reports, and I’ve noticed the subject come up in various scenarios as of late.  A recently-made acquaintance has a blog-eventually-going-to-be-a-book dedicated to her search for a friend.

Work is where you spend most of your hours so it’s great to have 9 to 5 buddies with whom to grab lunch Chipotle or off of whom to bounce an idea.  But having friends outside of the proverbial cubicle is a good thing.

Here are ways I’ve met some Grade A folk since moving back to Chicago after graduation -

Improv: There’s nothing like having your toes sucked by someone within ten minutes of meeting him, on stage, in front of thirty eyeballs, to form a kinship.  I took improv because it scared the bejeezus out of me, and it was horrible and wonderful, and a goldmine for making new connections.  Not only do you befriend the people in your class, it’s highly encouraged that you attend shows on a regular basis [for free if you're a current student!], so you end up getting to know other audience members.  Bonus, we live in the best city in the world for the art form, with a range of options – io, Second City, Annoyance, Playground to name a few.

Guitar Class: Old Town School of Folk Music [OTS] is utopia; I think they pump wafts of cotton candy, 2 for 1 sales, jeans that fit just right, and snuggies through their vents.  Everyone, from the staff to the students to the performers, is warm and welcoming.  Much more than guitar is offered, from yoga to hip-hop dance to Irish drumming.  I would recommend group classes rather than private lessons, if your goal is to meet others.  And I would recommend the Lincoln Square location over the Lincoln Park one, as it’s more adult-centric.  I spent many a Tuesday night at the Grafton with my classmates post-strumming.  OTS also has a very generous and easy to apply for scholarship program.

Volunteering: Nothing like building volcanoes with kids from not-so-nice neighborhoods or serving food in a homeless shelter to foster community.  Chicago Cares and One Brick provide schedule flexibility, diversity of area of focus such as environment, AIDs, and literacy, and opportunities conducive to meeting other volunteers [sometimes, such as in one-on-one tutoring, interaction with other volunteers is limited].

Gym: When I’m squeezing my thighs together and grunting on a resistance machine, or feverishly sweating on the stair climber, that’s not the time to chat about whether the British or the American version of The Office is better.  But before/after spinning or yoga class, absolutely.

Church/Temple, etc.: I don’t do this so can’t speak from experience, but stemming from the hoards of twenty- and thirty-somethings streaming out of the buildings on Sundays, and from friends’ Facebook pictures of retreats and outings, it seems that if you go to houses of worship hoping to find a friend in God, you’ll probably find some flesh ‘n blood friends along the way as well.

Alumni Group: Check to see if there’s a local chapter of the college you attended.  My group has athletic, social, volunteer, spirituality, and networking events.  Being so far from campus [Boston] creates a nostalgia-bond.  Most of my BC Chicago friends aren’t people I knew while in Chestnut Hill, but ones I met post-college.

Interactive Activities: events that encourage discussion and interaction in a relaxed manner

• Underground supper clubs/other unique dining experiences – Clandestino, City Provisions, Across the Table, GrubWithUs, Karma Kitchen
• Mac ‘n Cheese Minglers/Mac ‘n Cheese Coffee
• Meetups – Helps groups of people with shared interests plan meetings and form offline clubs in local communities around the world.

I also highly recommend doing things solo.  Go to a concert, gallery opening, poetry slam, cooking class by yourself and emit your best Officer Friendly vibe [arms uncrossed, brows unfurrowed, mouth unsneered].  Don’t go with the expectation of meeting someone, go because you want to see the band or learn a knife sharpening technique.  That way, you won’t be disappointed, and anyone with whom you make a connection will be the cherry on top of an already yummy sundae.

Many more ways to expand your social circle, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind.  I posed the inquiry to one of my go-to websites to keep my life filled with adventure and got some interesting responses, some of which I had never considered.

What have you found as successful avenues to adult friendships?

Not every reference needs to be from the WSJ

I would like to steal and claim as mine a line from a well-written and fascinating article about public radio,  specifically about the show This American Life – “It’s about life the way most of us experience it, where heartbreak or lunch is as important as stock prices or distant revolutions.”

That description resonates deeply with me.  I always say my interests are Seinfeld-esque.  Those every day routines and actions, performed by people with frizzy hair and acne, who drive Honda Civics and have homophobic Uncle Joes, that aren’t anything special singly but become fascinating because they’re universally experienced by us regular folk.  When you’re at a party and the conversation hits one of those awkward lulls, throw out an opinion about on-line dating or people who stop at the bottom of an escalator to tie their shoe or Trader Joe’s mango chicken sausage or loud grunters at the gym.  Chatter will commence immediately.

Not to negate discussions on the Sudan and healthcare.  But sometimes it’s nice, and ok, to rehash storylines from Teen Mom – how will Maci adjust to Nashville now that she and Kyle have broken up? – or discuss the secret gold-mine that is the Wholesale District, where you can buy adorable yuppie purses, jewelry, hair bows, and scarves at back alley prices.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year

It’s one of the best times of year for those on the “school year” calendar.  Time to look for a 2011 planner!  Or if you’re like me and incredibly stoked about the prospect, time to buy your 2011 planner!  The downside of such nerdy passion is that the selection is currently limited – no cute designs or energetic colors to choose from, as the main crop has yet to come in.  But the post-it I have stuck on the last week of December in my 2010er with all the “transfer this to new calendar” notes has run out of room, so I decided to bite the bullet.

It’s not just the intoxicating fresh, blank pages and the opportunity to fill them with beautiful penmanship – though like a New Year’s diet, the attempt for neat and pretty quickly dwindles to a good intention – but it’s also the promise of what’s to come, what will fill the lines.  Looking back at the past ten months, I shake my head at the randomness, unexpectedness, and goodness.

From dancing horribly in front of three hundred and fifty people to traveling for the first time to Amsterdam, Belgium, and Paris to improving horribly on stage at one of Chicago’s improv institutions to being a girlfriend to a sweet boy who unexpectedly appeared in my kitchen one evening to being a first-time sushi eater to beating out one hundred other teams to win the DFL [Dead Fucking Last] Prize in the Chiditarod to being rubbed down in my first professional massage to seeing Ray LaMontange, David Gray, Counting Crows, Steve Martin, Ricky Gervais, and Mumford ‘n Sons live to witnessing a mature young lady whom I met as a wild third grader via a volunteer program walk across the eighth grade graduation stage to the creation of a cologne based on my Boyfriend Criteria — I didn’t plan on any of it.

I can’t wait to see that which I don’t plan on come to fruition in 2011.

 

Maybe I don’t have to run for mayor now…

Disclaimer: this post is spurred on by excitement and passion, rather than actual vetting and factual knowledge.

I’m in a position I’ve not been in before.  After hearing a radio interview with the guy, and reading about him, I think I found a candidate for mayor of Chicago that I’d actually be excited to vote for.  Someone I’d plant lawn signs for.  Someone I’d man a phone-bank for.  Someone I’d wear a button for.  Someone I’d host a coffee for.  President & CEO of Urban Prep, a network of all-boys public schools serving low-income neighborhoods, Tim King.

As someone who’s been entrenched in the public school system since I graduated college ten years ago, as a program manager at a non-profit that taught literacy, as a volunteer, as a board member, and as a digital media teacher, I’ve heard Tim’s name various times over the years, all in positive contexts.  None more than this summer, as his school achieved a wondrous feat — 100% of the 2010 class, the school’s first graduating class, is college-bound.  Considering where these young men started academically [only 4% of them were reading at or above grade level freshman year] and considering all the hurdles that come with their home circumstances [85% come from low-income households situated in struggling communities], that’s an amazing accomplishment.  My eyes teared up when I saw the photo above of the young men finding out that they were ALL going to college.

From the surface, it seems like he’s done a wonderful job at Urban Prep and has created a public-school model that should be replicated nationally.  In the radio interview, he came across as a balanced listener and speaker, a leader people respect and want to follow, and an intelligent, innovative, caring, and warm human being.

When asked if he’d consider running, he didn’t say yes.  But he didn’t say no.  Typical politician.  Except that that’s the only way he seems to be a typical politician.  A breath of fresh air.  Which is what Chicago desperately needs post-Blago, and Ryan, and Stroger and…

“Mayor King, City of Chicago” — I like it.

Give all the angry people Dutch bikes

I have never had so much fun traveling to a meeting downtown, the bank, and the dentist.  I smiled at Republicans.  I whistled church hymns.   I winked at men attached to their iPhones and their football games.  I high-fived girls in skinny-jeans.  I hugged PC-users.  I saw my reflection and Halle Berry stared back.

If you want to inject giddiness, carefreeness, and love-for-all’ness into the mundane, the routine, the everyday, do yourself a favor — get a Dutch bike [also known as an upright or a cruiser].  I fell in love with them when I borrowed Uncle Dan’s in Denver and college-friend Erin’s in Amsterdam this summer.  But I already had a bike.  A Lady with Two Bikes?  Who am I?!?  Someone who lunches at Gibson’s, sips cosmos, and buys jewelery somewhere other than Kohl’s?  I resigned myself to being a wistful Lady with One Bike.

But then last Friday, I was hurriedly and weirdly shooed out to Boyfriend’s garage.  An early birthday present!  And our Amsterdam friends, in town for the weekend, verified it as authentic-Dutch.  Bliss.

New Dutchies are expensive.  Troll Craigslist ["criusers" appears to be the best keyword to search with]; there are a lot of seemingly good deals out there.  If you already have a bike, sell it.  Give it away.  Or become You with Two Bikes.  On a cruiser, you’re ten pounds lighter, your teeth are whiter, and everyone wants to be your friend.

Will you elect me Mayor of Chicago?

I may throw my hat into the ring for Mayor of Chicago.  I in no way think I’m qualified, nor do I have any interest in being Mayor Hillman.  That said, the disheartening story after disheartening story of a politician done wrong makes me think that a) I don’t want to vote for any of the current options, b) I’d rather elect someone who’s never been in politics, and c) I may have a chance with the simple platform below.

If elected Mayor of Chicago, I promise:

• To not do anything bad with money – embezzle, launder, counterfeit, steal
• To not cheat on my boyfriend
• To not hire Uncle Marvin to do the city’s taxes or Cousin Glen to design the city’s buildings
• To not take money from people who want favors
• To not spend any money on my campaign; I have no money to spend and think it’d be an awesome challenge and accomplishment if someone without gazillions could win
• To step down if it’s evident I’m not a good fit or there’s someone who’d do it better
• To not plaster my name all over the city via street signs, highway signs, park signs, building signs
• To say “I’ve screwed up” when I screw up
• To say “I need help” when I need help
• To have a salary that lets me pay my bills, not incur debt, save for retirement, and have an occasional trip to Michigan, dinner at the Purple Pig, and pedicure – but no more

You’re skeptical.  People have promised this all before.  Well, let me ease your fears the way I let people know I was serious back in the nineties, back in the Bulls’ heyday – I swear on BJ Armstrong.

Well, if you can like me when I look like that…

Imagine the worst possible scenario EVER –

• You win the lottery but accidentally throw away the ticket
• You spend six months editing a film, only to lose everything when your hard drive crashes the day before you planned to a major back up
• Huge pit stains on your way into a job interview
• You chat with a guy online over a few weeks, find yourself falling for him and sharing intimate details, only to meet him in person and discover that “Juan” is actually “John,” your brother
• The tattoo you get, what you thought was the Chinese symbol for “peace,” is actually the Chinese symbol for “I heart Rush Limbaugh”

All wrong.  The worst case scenario EVER is one I found myself in last Friday.

Boyfriend’s mom was in town from Louisiana, and I was supposed to meet her for the first time Friday evening.  I had a text and voicemail from Boyfriend when I left the gym at about noon – “If you get this in the next five minutes, call me.”  They were down the street and had Giordano’s leftovers that they didn’t want to go to waste or cart around on their downtown adventure, so he wanted to know if I was home so he could throw them in my fridge.  Five hours before the agreed upon time.

I may not be a supermodel in regular-mode, but I am a sight for sore eyes post-workout.  Hair frizzing out in ways you didn’t know was possible, flushed face dripping with continuously-forming sweat beads, faded spandex clinging to rolls and bulges,  stench waves that I can only imagine smell like raw onion, vinegar, liverwurst, diesel gas, and rotten eggs emanating from my pores.  And my place was a disaster, with random dirty dishes, Percy the handyman droppings, Chicago alley acquisitions, and bras strewn about.  But what am I going to do, say no?  And so that’s how I found myself meeting Boyfriend’s mom for the first time looking [and smelling] like a tore-up street tramp in a tore-up trailer park.

Memories of the following evening up at my mom’s in Evanston, with the combination of comfy Italian food at the dining room table in comfy jeans and flip-flops, Pictionary, and Molly’s cupcakes, I hope replaced images of the day previous.  My invitation to Christmas in Louisiana was not revoked, so there’s hope…

Laughter and creativity is all around, Chicago

A couple of new installments to the Solo Life, my attempt to take advantage of all Chicago has to offer while also pushing myself out of the proverbial comfort zone –

A week or so ago I went to Write Club at the Hideout [with others].  Highly recommended!  Time Out’s take: Set up like a boxing match with three rounds, the night features dueling writers who are assigned two opposing themes (e.g., Fate versus Free Will or Mind versus Body) and are given exactly seven minutes to expound on the topic. Afterwords, I chatted with the host and he mentioned a few other literary events in bars he thought I might like.  And that’s how I ended up at Ricochet’s this past Saturday afternoon.

What first intrigued me about Paper Machete was the time.  3PM on a Saturday.  Odd times and unique venues have become draws for me [which is why I found myself giving a presentation at ING Direct a few weeks ago; a bank with no tellers that's a coffeehouse?!?].  It was different and fun to be heading out to such an event during the day.  Unfortunately, Apple Fest, whatever that is, was going on a few blocks away, and a requirement to get in was that you have the ugliest dog dressed in the ugliest dog-sweater and the biggest, most obnoxious baby-stroller and a lack of care for others around you.  I had about twenty minutes to kill before the show, so found myself weaving in and out of that minefield.  Quickly regretted that decision.  Ricochet’s had been on my list of bars to check out for awhile.  It’s small, low-key, comfy, unpretentious.  The back area was full when I sidled up to the bar.  Billed as a live magazine and parlor show, Paper Machete has guests comment on current events.  The host dazzled the audience with a few songs and remarks, and then welcomed up the guests, including a guitarist.  The styles and topics were all very different, but all witty and interesting.  From Glenn Beck to Apple Fest to abortion in Mexico to being an aspiring playwright to homosexuality.  A fun and cheap [it's free!] way to spend an afternoon.  I’d definitely go back.

Wednesday I headed the opposite direction, both literally [downtown] and figuratively [expensive], and went to see Ricky Gervais at the Chicago Theater.  Of course, as often happens when I’m trying to be by myself, I ran into friends within two seconds of stepping in the lobby.  Caught up with them and then excused myself to go be solo.  I first became aware of Ricky as the original Michael Scott in the original The Office, across the pond.  A Brit, of course I loved him instantly.   And then throw in wit, political incorrectness, and a willingness to laugh at oneself – I loved him passionately.  I haven’t been to a venue like the Chicago Theater in a long time, and never for a comedy show, always for a play or a concert.  What a great time!  The opening act, Tom Something or Other [sorry Tom], was hilarious.  Ricky was a natural, so comfortable on stage in front of a packed house, no um’s and ah’s.  He talked about Noah’s Ark, fat people, fear of flying, Africa, telling jokes at dinner parties, gay marriage, and how rich he is and we’re not.  Used a few props to complement his stories, a huge pointer-stick and a huge TV screen with shots of a book he won for “regular attendance” in elementary school, but other than that, it was just him, dressed in all back and running shoes, with a large can of some kind of drink.  I haven’t laughed that hard in a long time.  And it’s a weird wonderful feeling to belly-laugh along with hundreds of strangers.  What a majestic venue and a majestic entertainer.  Fully worth the ticket price.  I wish he’d come over and play some Taboo with me.

Calvin Klein, Axe, and me!

I remember sitting in Lower Dining Hall in college and a friend pointed to a guy in line with a backwards baseball hat [a requirement to get into Boston College for males; for females, your name has to be "Jenn."  Or "Jen."  BC let me slip through so they could fulfill their 1996 "exotic" quota].  “That’s Mike Gabelli.  As in Gabelli Hall.”

I don’t know what it’s like to have a dormitory named after me.  No one has ever dedicated a book to me or acknowledged me in a film’s credits.  It seems like everyone in Chicago has an honorary brown street-sign but me.  I don’t know what it’s like to go to a restaurant and be able to order “the Saya April Reuben.”  A musician did once give me a shout out at his show – “Thanks to Saya and her crew for coming out!” – which I took to mean he wanted to marry me, but it turned out he had no such desire so I don’t count that, and still sigh every time I hear Train’s Drops of Jupiter.

But I now DO know what it’s like to have a custom-made cologne, inspired by yours truly, created, and it’s pretty damn cool.

I [stupidly?] gave a presentation a few weeks ago to an audience of techies, as part of the Solo Life and as a challenge for myself.  Though the forty-eight hours leading up to and including the presentation were stressful and horrid, one of the resulting goodies was that little vial above.  I shared some of my various lists, including my Boyfriend Criteria; number one is “Smells like Campfire.”  When I shared this with the group, a few chuckles rippled through the crowd and a guy raised his hand and asked, “Do you want him to always smell like campfire, or just occasionally?”  Perpetually, of course, I responded.  After my talk, the question-asker found me in the hallway and said he was a chemical engineer always looking for fun projects, and that he could probably create a campfire scent in an afternoon.  I thought he was joking.  But his various ensuing phone calls, texts, and emails, including a “Can you come be in the presentation we’re giving to a grant committee about creating the scent?” showed me otherwise [they won the competition by the way!].  And when he showed up at a Mac ‘n Cheese Mingler a couple of weeks ago with this vial and I sniffed the liquid, I knew he was for real – oh my goodness, yum!  It totally smelled of acoustic guitar, s’mores, jeans and hoodies, and John Denver songs.

If you’re interested in Smoque [the sassy name of the campfire cologne] or some other amazing scent [he's also trying to perfect a bacon-scent], you can sign up to be kept abreast of the project’s progress.

Saya-inspired scent, check.  Now, how does one get one’s face on a stamp?

Grape-Stuff this, suckers!

Things of which I’m moronically proud:

• I always wake up before the alarm clock
• The number of compliments I get on my iTunes playlist at parties/Minglers
• When I’m able to refrain from touching my temperamental hair all day and I have non-frizzy, in-tact ringlets as the sun sets
• I don’t have cable
• I own no make-up
• Ratio of Facebook friends I’ve friended vs. who friended me; I haven’t friended anyone in… a year?
• The number of Facebook friend requests I ignore; usually limit “friends” to people I actually know, not open season for every Tom, Dick and Harry I meet at a party or an event
• When I’m able to say “Oh, I haven’t watched TV in weeks [months]“
• When I can bypass traffic with an array of shortcuts/alternative routes
• When sweets can stay in my house for more than twenty-four hours
• I drink coffee black
• When my old UPS guy from five years ago sees me and gives a honk and wave
• When tellers at my bank waive away my license because they know me
• Using the last of shampoo/conditioner and throwing the bottle in the trash
• When I know what lane to be in to avoid merging cars, potholes, slow spots, blinding sun, etc.
• Sixty-minutes on the stairclimber sans the need for music, TV, or magazines
• The number of entire scores of musicals I can sing
• I don’t have to walk up any stairs to enter my home
• The number of links that come up when you google my name [though this is also scary and a little TMI]
• I was the 1989 Camp Echo Grape-Stuffing Champion; forty-three green grapes in my mouth
• When I bump into random people I know in random places
• How often I have to reorder business cards
• Always having extra toilet paper, kleenex, and paper towels in stock
• Ratio of people who ask for my business card vs. people I ask for their card; I haven’t asked for anyone’s in… forever
• When someone mentions a more obscure NPR host/reporter and I know who they’re referencing

Things of which I’m not proud/things that are weird and I probably shouldn’t share:

• I love the MTV show Teen Mom and schedule gym-time [cable!] around when it’s on air
• An hour or so before every Mingler, I hope everyone will cancel so I can spend the evening at a coffeehouse noodling around on a creative project [But as soon as the first guest steps in the door, that feeling immediately evaporates and I'm in hostess heaven!  Weird cycle.]
• I have an always expanding list of names for my unborn children
• The extremely high-level of satisfaction I get from 409ing my doorknobs after the last Mingler guest leaves
• I cross the street and hide behind traffic-light boxes to avoid the Save the Environment people

It was a first date. He said he hated immigrants. There wasn’t a second date.

The various reactions I’ve gotten to yesterday’s post solidify my thoughts that dating is the universal’ist of all universal topics.  We’ve all got steps to celebrate [When did he bring a toothbrush over to leave at my house?  When did I assign him a speed dial number?], wounds to lick [minimal if any in this current adventure but tons of past unreturned phone calls and attempts to love], stories to share [my contacts really were dry and bothering me, it wasn't an excuse to end the evening as he defeatedly thought!].

I love hearing your highs and lows, how you met, pet peeves, what you’ve learned about others, what you’ve learned about yourself.  Hmmm, maybe I should make a film on the topic.

Mine is an off-brand Crystal Light type of relationship; do I miss the days of champagne?

I was cleaning out my text message inbox the other day and came across a bunch of texts from January, from the beginning of relationship with Boyfriend.  And all of a sudden my eyes started leaking.

What is it about that time frame?!

In many ways, the honeymoon period, as it’s often called, usually in reference to the first three months of a relationship, is horrid.  The uncertainty, the uncomfortable clothes, the awkward placement of arms and/or mouth at the end of dates, the not knowing if it was in fact a date, the deep longing for a piece of bread-basket bread yet the self-denial out of fear of appearing piggish, the hours spent straightening hair because you know he’ll be disappointed if he finds out you have curls, frizzy curls, the pressure to do things together rather than just be together, the game of not being the first to suggest the next hanging out, the wondering if he/she is still dating other people…

But the honeymoon period is also delicious.  You can’t stop smiling.  You think about the other person.  A lot.  You see the other person.  A lot.  Till 5AM one day.  Till 6AM the next day.  On a school night.  Your goodbyes start with a hug and “I’ll miss you,” and thirty minutes later you’re still standing in the middle of the room, clutching, and swaying, and not leaving.  You are flawless.  He/she is flawless.  You never question his/her feelings for you because it’s diarrhea of the mouth with how wonderful you are and how appreciative he/she is to have you in his/her life.  Friends are giddy to hear about and meet this shiny new object, so excited that they internet stalk, combing Facebook and blogs and websites.  Fueled by deliriousness and happiness, you consistently work out and choose broccoli.

And then you stop making the bed when he/she comes over.  You wear elastic waist-band pants.  You inhale a mammoth 10PM two-scoops of ice cream.  You fart.  You talk about bowel movements and what iPhone apps you utilize during said bowel movements.  You don’t say yes to every invitation extended.  You act irrational.  You choose other people over him/her.  You cry.  You make him/her cry.  You pretzel on the couch and listen to impassioned tirades about entrepreneurship or football instead of lovey-dovey dinner at Nightwood.  You see flaws.  You have flaws.  And the honeymoon period ends.  And I miss it.

But yet, the next stage, whatever this is, well, it’s got its own niceties.  I like that some of our nights are made up of mesh shorts and homemade chili and iTunes and off-brand Crystal Light.  I like that one of us feels comfortable enough to fart in front of the other [the other would like to get there but is not yet there].  I like that we have ten billion shared Google Documents, from restaurants to try, to costs form our Europe trip this summer, to places to take his mom when she’s in town, to our current weights and minutes of exercise a day.  He’s met the family, I’m about to meet the family.  He’s seen my stretch marks [which in itself is not nice, but the fact that he still tells me I'm beautiful, that's nice].  We’ve had tense moments and we dealt with the tense moments in a way that reassures me we can deal with stuff, whatever stuff.  He said I love you.  I said I love you.  I have his key, he has my alarm code.  He’s Cheeks and I’m Sweatshirt.

I can’t delete some of the texts from January.  Or February.  Or March.

Does wistful mean something’s wrong?  I feel it implies a longing, a void, a sadness.  Is it possible to be wistful, whilst happy?  Because I am, and I am.

**Update** As I was penning this post, this text came in from Boyfriend: “Life with you is so much better than without you.”  Or September.

Jazz Boyfriend

I feel you, girl.  I once balked at a third? fourth? date with a guy because he became Mr. Jazz when we went to hear the god awful “music.”  Squinty eyes, head bobbing in a meaningful way that saved dolphins caught in tuna nets and taught ESL to inmates, sucked-in cheeks, pursed lips that demonstrated a love and gentle understanding of humanity, one eyebrow arched left, one eyebrow furrowed right, tapping fingers to beats that vibrated in parts of his soul he didn’t know existed, passionate yet constrained collarbone glistening from beneath his open button-down shirt in the flicker of a red-glass candle.

Best blog post title ever

I added blogger to my repertoire a little over a year ago. It seemed appropriate timing that the article How to Grow Traffic To Your Blog appeared in my GoogleReader recently, as it caused me to celebrate this “milestone” by reflecting on the 365 days of its existence.

The article’s list of eight tips and how Mac ‘n Cheese Lifestyle stacks up –

1. Great titles help - mine aren’t amazingly witty but they’re not uber-dry either
2. Graphics don’t hurt – occasional use of photos and video
3. Brevity is the game – eek.  Some of my posts weigh as much as an encyclopedia.
4. Share your blog – when I post here, the post is automatically shared on Facebook.  I’ll include links to certain posts in my e-newsletter [400+ readers] and my Mingler emails [700+ readers], as well as in pertinent comment sections on other’s blogs.
5. Subscriptions or no? – I’m happy that just one person subscribes.  And I find the subscription list intriguing.  Random family members, random friends, strangers, random acquaintances, boyfriend, boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend.

(I like to joke that my mother and I are the only ones to read my blog.  But my mother doesn’t read it.  The one time she did, it was because a) her sister forwarded her a post, and b) the post was about her.  To my knowledge, she’s not been back.  I don’t take it personally.  There is no rule that parents MUST take an interest in their offspring’s activities.  I put the shoe on the other foot and concluded I probably wouldn’t subscribe to her blog; I just can’t get jazzed about dream analysis, life-changing ketchup, and food policy.)

6. Guest posts – never asked anyone.  I wonder what Ricky Gervais’ boyfriend criteria would be?

7. Consistency – I’m consistently inconsistent, does that count?  I like the once a day school of thought but life has a way of getting in the way.  And I don’t have something amazingly interesting to say daily.  Sometimes not even weekly.

8. Market your blog – the article suggests business cards or postcards with your blog address.  I can’t imagine ever spending money on this irrelevant tool of narcissism.  The time spent already boggles my mind.

I’ve also read in numerous places that encouraging dialogue via asking readers questions is key.  Often a blog’s comment section is more interesting than the actual post.  Not doing very well in that area, the question-asking.

So all this begs the question, why do I blog?  I’m not really sure.  It’s kind of like journaling.  Kind of like therapy.  Kind of like a soapbox.  Kind of a way to connect.  Kind of a way to stay on people’s radar’s.  Kind of a way to pretend I’m a writer.  Definitely a procrastination tool.  For now, I’ll leave it at I blog because blogging is what all the cool kids are doing, and since I wasn’t a cool kid in middle school [read 250 pounds, clothes ten sizes too big and only in hunter green or navy blue, front teeth you could stick a finger in between, frizzy hair, and a fear of having a personality], this is my time to wear Girbaud jeans, strut around with my yellow Sony Walkman, and sit at the popular table at lunch.

Heart string tug

Image from this morning that I can’t shake – one of my students, eighteen years old, sat and watched one of her classmates present to the class as she leaned back in her chair and sucked her thumb.

An eighteen year old sucking her thumb is striking enough.  That coupled with the facts that she has a three-year old son [meaning she was a fifteen year old mother], her son’s father was shot and killed in a street argument shortly after the baby was born, and her current boyfriend proposed last week [she said "Maybe," not sure if she wants to be tied down], my brain kept attempting to process the juxtaposition of childhood and adulthood.

I felt pride for her, as she wakes up at 6AM to travel south to take her son to daycare and then back north to get to school by 7:50, and as she has serious dreams and goals, rooted in wanting to open her own hair salon.  I felt sad for her, thinking of the sacrifices she’s made and will have to make.  She’s climbed more adulthood rungs in her short life than I have in my thirty-one years.  I felt young and old, selfish and wise, deserving and lucky.

Testosterone? [knock, knock] Hellooooo?

I was doing some number crunching the other day for tax purposes, updating my totals for the Minglers [events I throw out of my home as a way for people to expand their networks - social, romantic, professional; the one caveat is that everyone comes solo].

It was interesting to look back to the very first one, June of 2007, and see how far they’ve come and how different they are.  The first two years, they weren’t actually Mac ‘n Cheese Minglers, they were Mac ‘n Cheese Dinner Parties.  I kept the invite list to seven or eight guests, and served a full meal.  We’d socialize for a bit, sit down for dinner and conversation, and then bust out the board games.  While I enjoyed the intimate nature of the evening, I decided to tweak the format at bit for a few reasons:

• When I first started the dinners, I knew everyone signing up, so I could choose guests based on personalities and who I thought would hit if off.  As word of mouth spread and I got some press, I no longer knew everyone and thus could only use what little info I knew.  Age became my main selection parameter.  This resulted in some dinners where people didn’t really mesh, and in such a small group, that can be awkward.  And disappointing both for me and the guests.
• Because only seven to eight people could come at a time, people were on the wait list FOREVER.  Some people had to wait months.
• Cooking a full meal for seven to eight people is a lot of work.  Planning the menu, shopping, cooking, cleaning.  Not to mention expensive.  I spent too much time in the kitchen, when I wanted to be interacting with the guests.
• The price of the dinner parties was $40, plus a bottle of wine or an appetizer/dessert.  While I think that was reasonable for a meal and an evening out, events that are $20 or less are more up my alley when I’m a paying patron, and I would’ve liked the dinner parties to be in that realm so that cost was never an issue in someone deciding whether or not to participate.
• I’m an ok cook.  Some dishes come out amazing, some like poo.  Regardless, I realized, guests were not coming for my food.  Some activities out there, like the underground supper clubs that are all the rage right now, you go to for the eats.  Guests came to the dinner parties to meet new people.

So taking all this into consideration, I changed the format:

• The dinner parties became minglers.
• The ideal attendee number is twenty to thirty, though I have gone as low as eight and as high as fifty.
• Cost is $15 plus a drink or snack to share.
• At first, the evenings consisted of informal chatting and board games played in teams, where you rotated every twenty minutes or so to another game, playing another team.   Because people were only really able to chat with their teammates, there were often many guests that didn’t interact at all.  And while great team spirit formed, the constant game playing didn’t lend itself to conversation; guests got to see how each other gave clues and drew pictures, but didn’t learn much about each other beyond that.  So I tweaked them again.
• The current structure is informal chatting followed by a big group activity so that everyone hears a few things about everyone else.  Then, to get that intimate feeling that makes for such a homey, comfortable vibe, guests are broken into small groups.  To help facilitate discussion, a few questions are provided.  Everyone in a group shares their answers with one another, and eventually we come back together as a large group and share. Informal mingling happens again, sometimes just conversation, sometimes people pull out board games.  Often, when I [niecly!] kick people out around 1AM, a group of them head out to a nearby watering hole for some post-Mingler action.

About 100 people passed through my doors the first two years, in the dinner party phase.  About 700 people have Mingled in the past year and a half.  Overall, everything is going along swimmingly.  Friends have been made, significant others begotten, jobs procured, resources exchanged, unique, affordable and fun experiences had.  The one constant hurdle though has been the female to male ratio.

While the Minglers are not a dating service, though yes people do get dates out of them, I like to keep the gender numbers balanced for the dynamic it creates.  It’s weird when there’s twenty females and two males.  But I can’t keep up with the number of female sign-ups.  My database is, and has been since Day 1, about thirty to one, female to male.

Why more men don’t attend has become a hot topic at recent Minglers.  The guys who come often come over and over; they seem to have a good time.  So why is there such a disparity?  Guests cite that most of the activities they go to, especially if they’re in the meet-new-people vein, are female-heavy; based on the bulk of activities I’ve gone to in the past few years, I would concur.

I learned recently when I heard the founder talk at a conference that 77% of Groupon users are female.

A female Mingler guest, who has been to about four or five Minglers, recently recapped her experience at an event where people sign up  for a meal at a restaurant and are seated with other individuals who’ve signed up: The makeup was good — everyone came solo, and I felt totally comfortable going solo.  One amusing thing was that the ratio was 3 guys, 5 girls (pretty good).  But two of the guys were in relationships…as were several of the women.  It launched us into a discussion about why guys do or don’t sign up for thinks like this, Minglers, etc. — the guy’s take was that women are just more interested in “meeting people” in general, and guys just don’t want to work as hard at it. or plan ahead.

Where are all the men?  Why don’t more of them attend Minglers and similar activities?  I can’t believe they’re all stereotypically in bars or on their couches watching football and drinking beer.  I can’t believe they’re not interested in meeting new people.  I can’t believe they’d rather the traditional stuffy networking events or Match.com over couches, flip-flops, and Taboo.  Sports leagues, improv, guitar class – these all seem to be male-dominated.  I know I joined all three of them with the main goals of meeting new people and having new experiences, not necessarily to hone skills.  Wonder if the guys were there to work on their spiral throws, object work, and bar chords, new people be damned.

A million dollars* to anyone who can shed some light on this topic.

*”a million dollars” is code for “immense gratitude from females near and far”

My naked presentation… Success! Failure! I don’t know!

I wrote in my last post that I think the worst position one could find oneself these days is as a bad presenter at a tech-conference.  Not only is every form of capturing-device capturing your every move – video, photo, audio, keyboard, I think I saw a sketch artist in the back corner – but the audience is, WHILE YOU’RE TALKING, blogging, tweeting, IMing, Facebooking their opinions of you.  The jury is still out [I refuse to look at the related Twitter pages out of fear of seeing "Wht is this chick tlking abt?!?  And who is she?!?  FAIL!"], but I think I may have fulfilled this role this past weekend.

Sometimes I have great ideas.  Sometimes I have very very stupid ideas.  On Thursday, I got a mass email from the organizers of Social Dev Camp, the conference I attended last weekend that was very much out of my realm and weird and foreign but fun, productive and engaging nonetheless.  The email listed upcoming events that they thought conference attendees would be interested in.  And damn it, they were right.

This caught my eye:

Aug 21-22 – BarCamp Chicago
BARcamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.  Cost: Free (Participation, or Food/Drink to Share)

My Thursday afternoon thoughts: This Saturday and Sunday!  Hmm, I already have various plans, but maybe I can make it work since it’s a freeflowing-drop in-informal type of event.  I had such a good time at SocDevCamp, it’ll probably be worth it.  It’s free.  Ok, I’ll go, at least for part, sit quietly in the back, soak up some new knowledge, maybe meet some new people.  Yea!

My Thursday afternoon thoughts, an hour later, after poking about on the site a bit: Anyone can present?!?!?  Maybe I should… no.  I’ve never been to one of these, you should always attend an event first before being a speaker at said event.   And all the other presentations are way-techy.  SEO?  Drupal?  Zconf?  Eek.  So not my area. What would I even talk about?  And it’s so… so open, so informal.  I mean that’s great, and that’s part of what’s so intriguing, but I like order and the known and things happening like they’re supposed to happen.  This set-up screams the opposite of that.

My Thursday afternoon thoughts, an hour later: But SocialDevCamp, which attracted a bunch of the same type of people who’ll probably be at BarCamp and had some similar unconference workshops, was a very positive experience.  I met people I would never normally meet.  I learned.  And this would be a HUGE personal challenge.  It’s only a day away.  I normally only do things where I’m in the spotlight when I have months to prepare.  And I’ve never given a presentation without notes, pages and pages of copious notes.  I could use notes, but all of the quality speakers I’ve seen in the past few weeks have gone note-less and conversational, which was so effective and engaging.  I should try going naked, just me and the audience, no paper between us.  And the quality-speakers all used slides really effectively, I have yet to master slide creation.  I always put too much on them, too many words to read, too many pictures to look at.  And  I say what’s on the slides, which defeats the purpose of the slides; they should complement your words, not reiterate them.  This is a chance for me to try going note-less and to try to create good visuals.   I’d get sixty-minutes.  I can work on pacing.  I usually only get five-ten minutes.  I can not be a motor-mouth and just speak normally.  Oh god, one of the only slots I could do, the 1PM Saturday slot, is open.  Crap.  Do it.  “How to Be an Accidental Entrepreneur & Non Traditional Ways to Meet Others by Saya Hillman.”  Done.  Crap.

5:45PM Thursday: Have to go downtown to present at Innovate.Create.Repeat., a networking event for entrepreneurs and artists.

7:45PM Thursday: Wait!  That’s the five-minute buzzer?  I have two more slides to go through.  Oh well.  I used notes.  And people couldn’t read some of the text.  Oh well.

9PM Thursday:  I’ve got to get home to start creating my slides for BarCamp.

Midnight Thursday:  Fifteen slides done, I’m so tired.  To bed.

Friday morning: Can’t work on my slides till afternoon.  But not to panic.  I’ll have a good seven hours before the Mingler guests show up at 8:30.  I’ll finish the slides, go to the gym tomorrow around 9AM, get to BarCamp early so I can check out the space, watch a few of the presentations, set up my laptop.

8:15PM Friday: Crap.  I have about ten more slides I have to create.  And I still have to practice sans notes.  Crap.  And time myself, I have no idea how long this is.

2AM Friday night/Saturday morning: The last of the Mingler guests leave, I clean up, set my alarm for 6AM, and fall into bed.

8AM Saturday: Back from the gym.   I may not be able to get to BarCamp as early as I’d like, but I can do this.

10:45AM Saturday: Finished!  Ugh.  That took longer than I thought it would.  Only one run-through??!?  And not a smooth one at that.  Hmmm.  Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.  I gotta go.  What’s the address?  Transfer from the Brown line to the Red line, walk a mile.  Oy, it’s hot, I don’t wanna be all sweaty.  I’ll be ok, I’m leaving enough time so I won’t have to run in the heat.

11:50AM Saturday: What the?!?!  215 E. Ohio is a restaurant.  This can’t be right.  Did I write the address down incorrectly??!  Try 210 E. Ohio.  That didn’t work.  Oh man, I’m sweating.  And I missed some of the talks I wanted to see.  Argh!  Where is this thing??!!?

Noon Saturday: Fine Argo Tea, I’ll buy a $4 iced tea so I can get a password to use your “free wifi with purchase” so I can get online and look up the address.  Why can’t I log in?  Lower-case s, 4, 3, capital D…. I tried that!  Again and again and again.  Argh!  Maybe that guy will let me use his laptop really quickly.  Oh thank you kind sir, you’re my savior.  Oh my god, I’m an idiot.  215 W. Ohio, not E. Ohio.  Two mile walk, with my laptop, in 90 degree weather, and a herniated disk-related limp.  Great.

12:25PM Saturday: Paper towel and deep-breath yourself in the bathroom.  Sit in the back of the talk already going on and hope your sweat-drenched shirt dries in the next thirty minutes.  Oh no, there’s so much light in this room, my slides are going to be impossible to see.  That white sheet?  That’s where I’ll be projecting my slides??  Oh god, the panel up there is so tech-related.  Oh god, the audience members are asking such tech-questions.  What the hell am I doing here?  I’m going to be talking about how I ran a marathon, took improv class, and what I look for in a boyfriend, and will actually utter the words “Shoot for the stars.”  These people don’t want to hear that.  They want active hub, API, firewall, and IPX/SPX.  If any of them stay for my talk that is, they’ll probably all go to whatever other presentation is going on simultaneously.  All that work for what?  Maybe I should sneak out and go home.

1PMSaturday: There’s people here, that’s good.  About thirty?  No formal introduction of me I guess.   I’ll just start talking and they’ll be quiet.  Man that sucks you can’t really see my slides.  Don’t get distracted or discouraged by people walking in and out, that happened in the last presentation, that’s how this structure works.  “Hey guys, my name is Saya…”

2PMSaturday: Finished!  And I didn’t die.

Though I had six heart attacks and spent a couple of days waffling between completely self-inflicted nervousness, stress, and loathing, I’m glad I did BarCamp.  Here’s why:

• Though perhaps the topic wasn’t what this crowd would normally get stoked about, they seemed relatively interested.  There were a few laughs.  Good eye-contact every time I scanned the room.  And the few people that did leave came back quickly, making me think/hope they just had a potty-break or the like.  No mass exodus with no return like I witnessed at a recent presentation.
• I talked for forty-five minutes with no notes.  And remembered almost everything I wanted to cover.  Can now cross off number 66 on my Life To Do List.
• If the light situation would’ve been ideal, I would’ve been very happy with my slides.  They complemented what I was saying, they  offered nice visual examples, they helped people understand what I was talking about, they weren’t overstimulating.
• People asked questions and made comments during and after.  Granted one of them was, “So do you want your boyfriend to perpetually smell like campfire or just occasionally?” but it showed me people were listening, and my response got a chuckle.  If I had been the absolute worst, people would’ve had nothing to contribute [as happened at the aforementioned people walking out presentation - moderator asked a few times if anyone had questions, no one did.  People rushed to get out.  Awkward.]
• People came up after to introduce themselves and chat about various things.  Activities they thought I’d be interested in, how I found where I live, and oh my god!, a chemical engineer who offered to make a custom cologne that smells like campfire [that's number one on my list of Boyfriend Criteria].
• I went up to one of the event organizers and made an apologetic statement about perhaps my material not being appropriate for the forum and that I hoped it didn’t come across as self-promoting.  He assured me that there were a lot of entrepreneurial types in attendance whom he thought enjoyed themselves.  He said it was good and thanked me for participating.
• Various audience members have signed up for my e-newsletter and for the Minglers.  And they’re all male which is great for the Minglers, since I can’t keep up with the number of females who keep signing up, and like to try to keep the gender ratio balanced.
• I came home to some new people following me on Twitter [you're going to be disappointed guys, I've been on Twitter for about a year now, and have only tweeted four times] and to some nice emails, with phrases such as “I think what you’re doing with Mac and Cheese Productions is really cool” and “Cool talk at BarCamp.”
• I continued the Solo Life.
• The history of BarCamp is really interesting.  I had never heard of it before three days ago.  Awesome concept that I plan to share with my network.  More people should know about this!
• I did something out of my comfort zone.
• I learned new things.
• Met some really cool people who I see keeping in touch with.

[If you'd like to be kept abreast of Campfire Cologne, or if you have a scent you'd like to see created, check this out.  Created by one of the guys who approached me post BarCamp.]

Summer camp for geeks… and I think I may be one!

Pics by Paul Saini

In continuation of the Solo Life, I attended a two-day conference this past weekend, party of one.  But like has happened with the last few Solo Life attempts, being alone amongst strangers was thwarted.  A Dance Experiment participant and a Mingler guest were present.  But as we were all there to make new connections and learn new things, we remained in opposite corners and didn’t latch onto one another simply because of a familiar face.

The conference, SocialDevCamp, was billed: Come for two days of developer-centric sessions about making the most of the social web. It’s the unconference for social application and platform developers, mobile social developers, evangelists, and enthusiasts. At SocialDevCamp you’ll join hundreds of passionate developers and creators for a weekend of robust talks on social applications, platforms, APIs, mobile applications, identity management, and new media.

I’m not sure why my interest was peaked initially.  I don’t even know what a platform or an API is.  Quite honestly, it was probably the words “unconference” and “camp” that caught my attention.  I like anything non-traditional [hence my creation of Mac 'n Cheese Minglers, un-networking events] and an unconference sounds like a way to learn outside of the typical lecture-hall type scenario.  And camp?  I love capture the flag!

While there were no panty-raids or bug-juice chugs, SocialDevCamp was a wonderful experience.  It was held at IIT and attracted over 200 attendees, from all over the country and at least one international.  The schedule was set up so that you chose from three simultaneously-occurring topics, with most sessions lasting for sixty-minutes.  Two of the three were larger lecture-hall type scenarios, with Q & A at the end.  And then one was a more intimate, sit in a circle, open discussion.  I found both formats engaging and informative.  Topics ranged from Trends in Social Commerce to Developing for the Mobile Web to Social Entrepreneurship.  The big-wig speakers were Andrew Mason of Groupon, Chris Messina of Google, and Ben Huh of the Cheezburger Network; I missed Chris due to hosting a Mingler Saturday, but Andrew and Ben were very funny, interesting, and knowledgeable.

What I took away from SocialDevCamp

• You might as well be listening to a walkman and wearing acid-washed jeans if you’re taking notes via pen and paper rather than on a laptop.
• New professional goal of mine > pull up in a cab to a conference ten minutes before start time, with slicked-back hair and a crisp button-down shirt, nothing else in tow, and saunter purposefully, head high, through the sliding doors, knowing that the world is awaiting your arrival.  To be a conference presenter.
• I question what type of Creative-Type you are if you’re a PC, not a Mac.
• The Power of Yes > improv taught me this with it’s Yes and! philosophy.  It’s amazing what can happen when you just say yes.
• Business cards are becoming obsolete.  QR Codes, like a barcode, were put on our conference badges.  If someone wanted your contact info, they could take a picture of your code with their phone and your info was automatcially and instantly uploaded to their mobile-device.
• I totally judge you by your screensaver.
• Don’t be the type of company to passive-aggressively remind people to clean out the company fridge.
• There’s a lot of cool technology and a lot of awesome organizations out there.  A Space Apart, Sprout Box, Empire Avenue, Lightbank, Woopra, Ice Rocket, Weave the People, Firmology, TwitterFountain to name a few.
• Keep on creating a better product and you won’t have to worry about competition.
• Don’t keep asking an audience for a round of applause for a speaker.  If they feel like applauding, they will.  It’s awkward when you request a standing ovation and no one stands.
• Use blogs as recruiting tools.
• Don’t be afraid to apple-pick good ideas and smush them together to create your own version of greatness.
• Help clients to realize they need something they didn’t know they needed.
• It’s really nice when cost is not a factor when considering whether or not to partake in an opportunity like SocialDevCamp.  Total cost was $30, with two days of lunch included.  Being self-employed, with a large clientele of public schools and non-profits, I appreciate that.
• Groupon seems like a really really cool place to work.
• Give clients info relevant to them when it’s relevant.
• Improvisers make good customer service reps.
• 80% of your money is spent within ten miles of your home.
• Social Proof your service.  Buttons like Digg’s digg this, Facebook’s Like, and Twitter’s retweet lend social proof that someone thinks highly of what you offer.
• People are hungry for unique ways to meet others, ways other than LinkedIn, Match.com, bars, speed networking, and the like.  I mentioned the Minglers in one of the sessions and had a ton of people come up to me afterward for business cards and to exclaim what a novel idea they are.
• Being a good presenter is difficult.  Do your visuals complement or detract from your spoken words?  Can you be professional and knowledgeable while also being light-hearted and funny?  Can you teach without preaching?  Can you relate personal stories without sounding narcissistic?  Can you appropriately pace yourself for the allotted timeslot?
• People use Groupon not just as a discount-provider but as a cityguide, as a way to try out something they haven’t tried out before.
• Move to where your clients are going to be, not to where they are currently.
• Remember MySpace.  Don’t celebrate success too quickly.
• I think the worst role you could find yourself in this day in age is a bad presenter at a tech conference.  People will unmercifully tweet about you while you’re talking, and the disaster will be videotaped, photographed, blogged, tweeted, Facebooked, and laptopped for all to relive over and over and over.
• Dollar for dollar, people who spend their money on experiences rather than on items have happier lives.
• Even if you know nothing about Perl, weaves, APIs and cloud platforms, you can still have a good time and make good connections with experts on said topics.

All in all, a very successful Solo Life activity.  I am looking forward to returning to camp next year.  Crossing fingers for a water-balloon fight.

Will you guacamole me?

Whenever I eat an avocado at home, I wish I was married.  It’s been pounded into my head that while the delicious fruit is good for you, chock full of “healthy fat,” it’s also has a high-caloric number.  So what’s a frugal single girl to do when she wants avocado on her salad?  She’s certainly not going to only use part of the food and throw the rest away.  And she’s found no acceptable way to save half for later, as God cruelly dictated that this creation go brown within seconds of touching oxygen.  Of course, I could get a roommate.  But I swore those days were over years ago, after broken, un-replaced wine-glasses, floor-peeing cats, and jerky boyfriends who made your skin crawl and were always splayed on your couch.  And it seems extreme to get a roommate just so I can enjoy avocados.  But marrying for the fruit?  That seems just about right.

Dawns on me that my two reasons for wanting to be married are both produce-based.  Which makes me think I should diversify my matrimonial-desires.  There has to be more to marriage than fruit and veggies.

Only the best intentions

There are many things that when I start them, I have the best intentions. But somewhere along the way…

Loading the silverware-holder in the dishwasher:

• Supposedly it’s better if you load them so that the they’re upright, less of an issue of nesting, where a spoon lies in a spoon and then doesn’t get fully cleaned.
• And it makes sense to put all the knives together, spoons together, you get the picture.
• I begin doing both things but quickly spiral downward, crazily and lazily mixing forks and knives, some up, some down.

Buying a non-single-serving-size package of sweets, knowing that today is the day I discover will-power:

• Whole box of powdered-donuts gone in a night.

Reading a book:

• I feel guilty and stupid and that I’m wasting brain-cells when I’m not reading a book.
• I’ll start one and make sure to leave it next conveniently to the bed.
• The current book, Good Without God, has been there, with my bookmark about a quarter through, for six months.

Shopping at Target:

• I need sponges, toilet paper, and toothpaste.
• I leave with sponges, toilet paper, toothpaste, conditioner, a cardigan, a purse, earrings, mixing bowls, and a diet Dr. Pepper.
• This is obviously a problem for other people as well – there’s a Facebook group with more than 100,000 members I went to Target to buy shampoo and spent $150.

Shopping at Trader Joe’s:

• See Target above, and swap “sponges, toilet paper, and toothpaste” for “rice pudding, chicken mango sausage, and greek yogurt.”

There are many more, but I sat down to start editing a video project and used this blog post to put off the syncing, blading, and sequencing.  So in an effort to finish what I started, I’ll stop here.

You can’t see what my plans are for the weekend, take that!

I realized recently that my Facebook feed hadn’t had any updates from a few people who seem to update their status’ regularly.  Curious as to why, I did a little poking around and discovered, gasp!, that I was no longer friends with them.  I hadn’t defriended them which meant they had, gasp!, defriended me.

Out of curiosity’s sake, I’m very tempted to message them and ask why.  Of the ones I can identify, I can’t recall there being an incident between us that would result in such an action, like me stealing a boyfriend or ditching his/her wedding in favor of a flip-cup tournament at Barleycorn.  One is the ex-girlfriend of a guy friend who I think friended me initially to find out if he and I were romantically involved.  One is the friend of a guy with whom I had a tumultuous “are we dating, are we not dating” ride, with whom I no longer interact.  One is the friend of a friend, a gay guy I met at a party who immediately fell in friend-love with me; he penned emails about how fun I was and how he wanted me to join the Board of a non-profit he was involved in due to my passion and skills, he invited me to group outings and parties, he initiated plans between just the two of us.  And then, nothing.  No contact for months.  And now I’ve come to discover I’m no longer his FB friend.

Why do you defriend someone on Facebook?

Reasons I’ve defriended people:

• I don’t know you or barely know you, and accidentally accepted your friend request
• I thought the better of the “accept friend request,” usually for professional reasons; there are some people I don’t want privy to my non-PC rants or to certain pictures of me rolling around the grassy fields of Amsterdam

I haven’t defriended anyone because I’m no longer friends with or dating him/her, but I could see those as viable reasons as well.  There are people whom I haven’t defriended but I have limited the amount I see them in my feed, usually because of their annoying Mafia Wars or Farmville posts, or their all too frequent boring updates like “Boo” or “Tired today.”

Which leads me to wonder -

1. Have I unknowingly pissed people off in the past year?  People who decided the best course of payback was to cut me off via a social network rather than confront me?

2. Am I a person you like at first but grow to hate?

3. Am I an annoying Facebooker?  Too boring, too frequent, too narcissistic?

How many GBs in that thing, baby?

You wouldn’t think this external hard drive would be an avenue to procuring dates, but it’s led to me being asked out more than any sassy skirt or flip of the hair ever has.   When I’m editing video projects in the coffeehouse-world, guys often use them as conversation-starters.  It’s like bumming a cigarette or commenting on my BC t-shirt – “My second-cousin’s ex-girlfriend’s dental hygienist went to Boston College!” – a way to approach without being Sketchy Pick Up Line Guy.  There’s the safety of coming across as just being friendly and tech-quisitive, and if all goes well in the discussion of firewire ports and transfer speeds, he can slip in a “Hey, my buddy, who crazily also uses external hard drives, is throwing a party Friday.  There’ll be a lot of computer-users there.  Maybe you’d be interested in coming?”

Another coffeehouse-move: “Do you know the password to get on-line?”  Some establishments offer free wifi but you have to sign onto their network with a password.  It’s usually posted somewhere obvious so the baristas don’t have to spend their shift repeating “greenjellybean_123.”  But if you conveniently forget to wear your contacts so you can’t read the blackboard, you can lean over to the girl at the next table and ask her.  Who knows, she may be so smitten with your piercing non-contacted blue eyes that she’ll ask you to dinner.

S-a-y-a. Pronounced S-i-g-h-a. Spelled S-a-y-a.

I’ve written about my name before.   An email received recently, from the Editor in Chief of a major Chicago web publication, in response to my topic suggestion, spurs another post on the topic - Thanks, April.  We’ll get that up there soon.

When you get an email from me, it says from Saya April Hillman.  When I sign emails, my standard sign-off is Cheers, Saya.  Yet countless times, a responder has begun their email to me with April.  Sometimes Sara.  The latter I can understand.  You just thought I misspelled my own name and helpfully corrected it.  But when you skip my first name all together, that’s a bit more puzzling.

When you meet someone in person and you have an unusual name, by the time you reach age seventeen, you usually have a method to facilitate the process.

Hi, I’m Bill.

Hi, Saya.

[quizzical look by Bill]

Like Maya, but with an S.  My mom liked Maya Angelou but didn’t like the name Maya — take out the M and put in an S.

Ohhhhh!  Great.  Nice to meet you Saya. [look of relief by Bill]

When you write me an email, are you worried about mispronouncing my name via text and thus decide to spare yourself the embarrassment and me the hurt feelings and skip straight to my stress-free middle name?  Or perhaps you think Saya is some crazy new slang the kids are using these days, inserted before someone’s moniker, like a What’s up, Bill?!?  Saya, Bill! And you’re above crazy new slang and thus refuse to stoop to its level.

I’ve never had someone I know do this to me.  In the past year, it’s usually been Mingler guests, signing up to attend an event or asking me what they should wear.  It doesn’t bother me (much), I’m just curious as to why.  Next time someone April’s me, I’m going to ask.

Are you off-limits?

Is there unwritten [actually, written would be more helpful] code on what you can and can’t blog about?  Who you can and can’t blog about?  Pictures you can and can’t include?

There are some subscribers to my blog who, while I love that they subscribe and that they spend precious moments of their life reading my inane ramblings, I’d sometimes rather they not be privy to my no-filter thoughts.  Thankfully my mother cares more about windmills, trains, and community gardens than about pet peeves, dating, and fashion no-no’s, so she doesn’t read my posts about birth-control or other such topics you’d rather your mother not read.

There is one post and one bullet-point in a post that I’ve deleted in the year I’ve been blogging.  The post I deleted because I was bemoaning actions taken by Mingler guests and it came to my attention that many of them tune into my words; I put the shoe on the proverbial other foot and realized it’d be very off-putting if after attending an event, I read someone complaining about or mocking me at said-event; I don’t even think I’d want someone to write about me in a flattering light.  Of course, I never use names or identifying details, or pictures if there’s a negative slant, but it’d still feel icky nonetheless.   I was asked to delete the bullet-point by the person it referenced; even though it was meant to be a compliment, I can see how it came off as a back-handed compliment, like one of those “You look so nice today!” comments which makes you wonder what the commenter thinks of your appearance on most other days.  I also surmised, incorrectly, something about the person, and she corrected me.

One of the aspects I like in others’ blogs is an author’s honesty, intricate level of detail, and relatableness.  I strive to achieve those traits.  But sometimes there’s a line you can’t/shouldn’t cross I guess.  There’s been some stuff, mostly family, friend, and dating related, that I’ve stopped myself from penning.  Figuring out how to be authentic and reflective and all-encompassing without causing discomfort to others is a tricky thing.

Saya? Saya??? Saya????

I’ve always prided myself on leading an active life, filled with classes [improv, guitar, salsa, yoga, writing] and activities [Pecha Kucha, Second Story, Clandestino, Second Friday Art Walks, Chicago Cares, Boston College Chicago alumni group, bike groups], cultivating old friendships and forming new friendships.  I often find myself coordinator,  due to my Type-A, only-child personality and “Just do it!” attitude, inviting everyone to do everything and providing the key details to make something happen.  I have also always loathed when friends fall off the face of the earth when they start dating someone.  In the past week, as I return to reality after fourteen days in Europe, I’ve come to a startling realization.

I’ve been dating someone for seven months and in those seven months, the Cruise Director hat has amassed layers upon layers of dust.  I rarely organize social outings.  I’d say I only go to 40% of the things I’m invited to.  The Solo Life is inconsistent.  And it’s not because Boyfriend and I spend 24/7 together, we don’t.  But when we’re not together, I’ve found that my default setting is stay at home or go to a coffeehouse and do work, immerse myself in creative project, or read.  To be alone.

This makes me ponder – was I leading an active life only in hopes of meeting a guy? Was it all lip-service, the challenging oneself by embarking on The Solo Life, my supposed drive for personal development and new connections by regularly attending networking events and parties?  Am I that girl I can’t stand whose every decision, consciously or subconsciously,  is rooted in the chances of finding The One?  Or a practice-run for The One?  I bristled when a friend commented the other day that I didn’t go out because I had no need anymore.  But was she right?

Part of my disappearance has to do with what was going on when I met Boyfriend.  Life was nutty.  I was finishing up a year and a half of improv class, ending with an eight-week run of shows.  High stress and a rollercoaster of emotions, as I’m not good at improv, and am not used to sucking at something.  I was also in the midst of Dance Experiment, both as a participant and as the coordinator.  And as the videographer and editor.  Ridiculously fun but ridiculously time-consuming.  Added stress of spending crazy amounts of time working on a project that I wasn’t getting paid for.  This was also my busy time of year as a teacher [I teach video and photography in various low-income schools across the city], as new projects started and old projects ended, and I had to prep for all the end-of-the-year presentations.  Throw into the mix hosting events [Mac 'n Cheese Minglers, underground supper clubs, comedy night] and the honeymoon period of marathon-dates and staying up till 3, 4, 6AM, I was exhausted.  Once Dance Experiment, improv, and teaching ended, I knew I wanted to take time off from activities.  But I somehow also found myself taking time off from my social-butterfly life.

Since my return from vacation, I’ve reconnected with a lot of friends.  I’ve made a ton of plans, both social and professional.  My leg injury, though painful and horrid, was a path of re-entry for many of the lovelies in my life, as they inquired into my status, and offered their sympathy and their help.  An ex stopped being an ex, and just became a comforting shoulder.  More chatting with Mom.  All this is to say, I think Saya-Hiatus is over.  I’m rested, energized, and though now walk with limp, am ready to jump back into it.

I McMuffin you

I have to edit a project for two lovely real-estate agents who hired me to make a video for their website to attract potential clients.  These are the reasons, the burning questions clogging my head, progress on said-video has been slow today.

What’s etiquette for Reply All’s? I personally loathe the gazillion back and forths, unless it’s applicable that everyone be included in the response, and usually will BCC to avoid Reply All’s.  If someone sends an “Anyone interested in this activity?,” I usually just respond to the sender.  If someone sends a “Who can drive to this activity?,” it would be more appropriate for people to respond to the group, though my preferred method would be for everyone to respond just to the sender, and then the sender compile the responses and send one follow-up group email with the updated info.  Tricky situation.  Sometimes I’ve spoken up and felt uber-bitchy.  And sometimes the group email strings are fun and funny.

What’s the best “How We Met” story you’ve heard? I was at a BBQ this weekend and was intrigued by a couple with an interesting tale:

• They both attended the same college but didn’t know one another
• They were both in College X’s network on Facebook
• One night, drunk, the girl was skimming through the network and saw a pic of the male
• She thought he was cute and “poked” him
• He followed up the next morning with a “Do I know you?” message
• They emailed back and forth for a couple of weeks, then met in person, and are now married!

I once had a Missed Connection placed in the Chicago Reader about me [which are now called "I Saw You"] and ended up dating the guy for three months.  That was about three months too long, he was a tool, but oh how I wanted it to work out so we could retell the story at our wedding!

Would you rather get a personal gift or a practical gift? Gift card to Borders or a fave book from a friend with a note to you scribbled in the flap?  When it comes to weddings, I go back and forth between getting something in the registry or giving something like a photo collage of the couple’s relationship.   For my half birthday [really!], my boyfriend gave me a wireless router and handmade stationary that he designed and sewed [with the help of a friend] because he heard me say that I wished I could get internet on my rooftop deck and that I love stationary but feel guilty buying it.  For his birthday, I gave him a scrapbook of “This is why you’re great!” notes/letters/photos/poems/collages from friends and family all over the country who secretly sent them to me, and a garage door opener so he didn’t have to get out of his car to open and close the garage anymore.  It seems we both loved both types of gifts, the cold and technical and the warm and fuzzy.  Not sure which is better.

Why is there a new version of iTunes to download every other hour?

Should coffeehouses embrace squatters, those who sit with laptops for hours on end? Good for business, bad for business?  What’s appropriate etiquette when it comes this scenario – minimum purchase, time limit, size of table, eating your own food, conducting business, cell phone chats, asking others to watch your stuff, sharing tables, etc.  Coffeehouses in NYC have started to cover up outlets so that people can’t plug in.  I see both sides.  Frustrating when I go to a cafe for a quick drink and paper-read, only to be unable to find a seat due to laptoppers.  Being self-employed with a home office, I often go to a cafe to work for a change of scenary and stay three, four, seven hours.

Why is the initial “I love you” so hard to say? Vulnerability, putting yourself out there, I get that.  But it still shouldn’t be SO difficult!  I once very much wanted to say it, and started to say it – “I love…”  Nervousness got the better of me.  “I love…Egg McMuffins” is what came out.

Why do bars and restaurants advertise “Free Wi-Fi?” And who are the people whom take advantage?

When should you comment on someone’s physical appearance? I currently limp due to a recent trip to Europe and a client of a client, whom I had never met before, commented on it yesterday at a video shoot.  Albeit very nicely and out of concern, she had no clue as to whether it was a temporary or permanent situation, and my first thought was that I would never make such a comment to someone I don’t know — what if I limp because of a horrible beating I endured years ago, a situation I’d rather not rehash to anyone let alone a stranger?  And how many people do we know who’ve been in the “How far along are you?” situation, when it turns out a woman is just pudgy, not pregnant.

Should guys kick in for birth-control pills? Condoms seem to be a more equitable method, whose ever house you’re at, you use his/hers.  But the pill, that’s technically all on the female, yet don’t both parties benefit?   $20, $40 a month can add up.

How do you deal with constant requests to “get coffee”? For the past year or so, I’ve averaged about three requests a week to get coffee.  Usually it’s a friend of a friend or a Mingler guest, sometimes it’s a friend or a peer.  It’s usually someone who wants to work in a field I’m in [teaching, digital media, event planning] or who wants to become self-employed, and they want to pick my brain.  I used to always say yes.  Now I pick and choose.  Part of me feels horribly bitchy, part of me feels when you add them all up, they take a large chunk of time that sometimes nets me something, but often nets me nothing.  Shouldn’t I just do them out of the goodness of my heart?  I remember all the “coffees” people granted me when I was first starting out, that were incredibly helpful and I so appreciated.  But I also remember that I have a huge rent check due in a couple of weeks, and the hour with you is probably not going to help me pay that.  I’m in the process of adding “Coffee” to my business, where I’ll gather small groups of people who’ve contacted me for intimate, networking, brainstorm sessions.

What are some off-the-beaten-path steps in a relationship? We all know about the first kiss, the three-month mark, meeting the parents, first trip together, first sleepover, first fight, first fart, first “I love you.”  But what about more non-traditional ones?  When you give him the alarm code to your house, first time he buys you tampons, first time you let him see you without makeup or without your hair straightened, pooping with the door open…

Why don’t people handwrite thank-you notes anymore? I apologize to everyone who has ever done me a favor, and that’s a whole bunch of people, to whom I didn’t send at least a thank-you email if not a thank-you snail mail.  A card and a stamp goes a long way.

Why do guys so enjoy sniffing their body parts/functions? Armpits, nether regions, belly button, farts, burps.

Guiltee pleasure

General policies I try to follow when it comes to my music selection:

1. No to songs and artists that use ridiculous spelling – Ke$ha, “birthdaze,” and “holla”

2. No to songs that turn an innocent and lovely childhood experience into a sexual innuendo  – “Sun-kissed skin so hot it’ll melt your popsicle”

3. No to songs whose music video includes a girl shooting whipped cream from cans attached to her breasts

4. No to songs that mention “daisy dukes”

5. No to Snoop Dog

Unfortunately, Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” is catchy, delicious, and I’ve had it on repeat for the past two days.

Update: YouTube seems to be not letting people embed this song anymore, which is why you may see a large blank space above.  If you’d like to watch it, and you really should, head over to the Tube and check it out there.

Holland vs. America

I love making lists, ranking things, and comparing and contrasting.  My recent jaunt to Europe was a treasure-trove of new material.  Here are some preliminary observations on which country is better –

Holland Wins

1. Diet Coke – they call it “Cola Light” which is more exotic and fulfilling-sounding

2. Sitting Outdoors – people turn their chairs so that everyone is facing the street and can people watch.  Very common to see two people sitting side by side, instead of across from one another.  Adds a “relaxed, soak up life as it marches by” vibe.

3. Fresh Food – much less processed/preservative-laden food

4. Biking – images of what makes Dutch biking wonderful

• Bicyclists have the right of way over pedestrians, cars, trams, squirrels
• Bike lanes actually mean something and don’t randomly stop and then start up again a mile later
• Traffic lights have the usual red, yellow, green lights for cars, and then another set of red, yellow and green lights for bikes, including a left-turn signal for bikes!
• The majority of bikes are uprights aka beach cruisers which has you sitting straight up, instead of hunched over like on most of the bikes found here; you feel more friendly and more able to take in your surroundings; I found myself wanting to wave at everyone I passed
• There are “parking garages” and bike racks everywhere (see the pic above)
• Dutch bike locks are attached to the bike which makes locking up easier; while in use, you leave the keys in the lock, ensuring you never ahve to fumble in your purse or pocket for keys; for added security, many also use mammoth chain-link locks
• You wear your regular clothes when biking; people in spandex, cleats, and helmets stand out; not even children or babies wear helmets
• Fenders go all around the bikechain so you don’t have to worry about getting clothes caught and/or dirty
• Multiple people on one bike – was common to see a kid in the front and a kid in the back, or an adult riding sideways behind the “driver”
• Decorations – fake flowers, streamers, bright paint colors
• Most bikes are beaters, not sparkly shiny toys (this is usually to discourage theft, and actually some of the beaters are really nice bikes made to look crappy)
• Everyone rides, regardless of age

5. Men’s Fashion – pants that fit right [aren't too tight/too loose, don't hang off the ass, aren't tucked inside shoe tongues], bright pastel colors without fear they make you gay, relaxed and comfy yet well-put together and classy, adorable bags and glasses frames

6. Height – this 6′ gal fit right in!  Average American: 5’9 male and 5’4 female; average Hollander:  6′ male and 5’7 female

7. Childbirth

• Home-births and natural births are more common than hospital births and drug-laden births [I'm a home-birthed drug-free baby, thanks Mom!]
• Breastfeeding is heavily promoted and not something that needs to be hidden
• Extensive network of mid-wives
• Sixteen weeks of maternity leave, 100% paid at your full salary
• Up to six months of unpaid leave if desired

8. Prices of Touristy Things: was pleasantly surprised at how places that very easily could’ve gouged tourists [bike rental, boat tour, museum, etc.] refrained from doing so and kept prices reasonable; for example, a boat tour in Amsterdam was about $10, in Chicago, it’s about $20

9. Svelteness – nary an overweight Dutchie to be found

America Wins

1. Grocery Stores – can always find one open and can always find what you need within one store; in the Netherlands, they close early and are teeny

2. Late-Night Cravings – unless it’s a craving for a hooker, pot, or alcohol, you’re out of luck.  We wanted ice cream around 11PM, nowhere to go!  Everything closes early.  Perhaps this is better for the waistline, but still… give me the option of choosing to be fat

3. Size – I realize we’re made fun of for our “bigger is better” attitude, but when it comes to certain things, bigger is better!

• Washer/dryer: we could fit a pair of jeans, a sock, and a towel in the laundry
• Fridge: average size is like the microfridge we use in dorm rooms; you have to lay your drinks down on their sides, the house we stayed at had three precarious levels of bottles and cartons; I prefer my liquids upright
• Sink: teeny in the kitchen and in the bathroom, large enough to hold one plate (sideways) and one drop of water, respectively
• Coke: when you order a “Cola” at a restaurant or bar, it either comes in a thimble or in a microscopic bottle
• Apartments: like doll houses over there

4. Customer Service

• Servers seat you and give you a menu
• Servers check in to see how your meal is going and if you need anything else
• Servers bring you the thing you asked for, like silverware
• Servers bring you the check
• Servers don’t seem pissed off to serve you

5. Women’s Fashion – too many onesies, balloon pants, and leggings in the Netherlands!

6. Men Standing at Bars – Dutch way to stand is with back of hand pressed against the back, down the pants (see pic above)

7. Water – I’m ok with water not automatically being on tables in restaurants, as it saves a lot of drinking and dishwashing water, but don’t like that you’re often met with “We don’t offer that” upon a request for a glass of tap water; you often have no choice other than paying for bottled water

8. Free Refills of Soda – this is commonplace in the US, unheard of in the Netherlands

9. Ice – due to teeny freezers, not only do most people not have ice, you can’t even buy ice; Dutch custom to BYOI [seriously, when you go to a party, you bring a bag of ice]

10. Improv – only based on one show in the Netherlands, but you’ve got to start judging somewhere… funnier, wittier and more natural here

It’s a Tie

1. Bathrooms

• In Holland, there are two separate rooms, a water closet (WC) where the toilet and a tiny sink are, and the shower room, where the shower and a slightly larger sink are
• I like that you don’t have to worry that while taking a long shower, someone is outside the door doing the pee-pee dance; they can use the WC
• But having two rooms takes up a lot of space, in apartments where space is minimal already
• Plus there were times I was naked in the shower room and all of a sudden had to use the bathroom, but being in a friend’s house, couldn’t very well run out of the shower room to the WC

2. French Fry Sauce

• Ketchup in America, Mayo in Holland – hands down, America wins
• But Holland’s second place sauce makes this one a tie – curry sauce!  Yum.

3. Eggs – they don’t refrigerate eggs in Holland.  I guess it’s not necessary, they don’t seem to have a large amount of salmonella deaths.  And why clog up what little fridge space you have?  But it still seems odd.

Ebony, my earth-angel

Due to travels [Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France], it’s been awhile.  I’m taking advantage of the fact that my right leg might need to be amputated to catch up on everything I’ve neglected for the past month, awkwardly splayed out on a coffeeshop couch, ignoring the “Where does she think she is, her living room?!?” stares.

It’s been a weird couple of days.  I just returned from two weeks in Europe, on a wonderful adventure that included lots of bikes, french fries, breathtaking blue skies, chocolate, outdoor markets, boats, and aimless sauntering.  Because of the good price, I took a not so ideal route home: Amsterdam > Oslo > Stockholm > Chicago.  Ridiculously high costs – $50 to take the train into Oslo during an eight-hour layover so I disappointingly didn’t, and food so expensive I had to guiltily settle for $15 bacon-flavored chips and chocolate biscuits -  and having to sleep in the airport, uncomfortable and freezing, has led me to hate Norway, which by all accounts is a lovely country not deserving of my loathing.  A too-bad ending to a picturesque trip.  And then there’s the possibility of becoming a peg-leg.

A few days before returning to the States, my right buttock started to hurt.  Then my right thigh.  Then my right calf.  Then my right foot.  Not a sharp pain and not all of the time, so I was able to get around, even going for runs, walks of 7-8 miles, and biking the Dutch out of the Netherlands.  But the pain started to get more intense and more constant, probably due to the long flight and the running with suitcases.  I wasn’t worried though, since I wasn’t training for a marathon or facing days of heavy lifting and mountain-climbs.  I’d just return to Chicago and low-key my social and professional life, lounging at BBQs as others brought me margaritas, editing videos in the calm of my Wilco-infused home-office.  But while driving home from dinner and drinks last night, the pain was so intense I started bawling and almost had to pull over.  It was if I was giving birth through my thigh and foot, while simultaneously being sliced with razors while someone poured vinegar into the cuts, while the dentist drilled my teeth which stupidly had relocated to my leg.

Being self-employed, I am reluctant to see medical professionals since I pay for everything out of pocket [I have a Health Savings Account, which is health insurance with an uber-high deductible, catastrophe insurance basically].  But when I couldn’t feel the bottom of my foot and when tingling sensations followed by strange pulsations overtook the bottom-right of my body, I became worried and the pain became too intense to be a “ride this one out” situation.  And that’s how I found myself at the infamous Cook County Hospital today.

I’ve never been to a public hospital before.  Tip: don’t show up at 1PM.  After fighting horrible traffic, hobbling from the parking garage which conveniently is fifty-three miles from the main entrance to the info desk only to be told to go across the street from the sparkly new building to the dingy scary building that was swarming with scary-looking people and wandering the halls due to poor signage searching for someone to save my life, I finally got to the appropriate waiting room and was greeted with the words, “Registration is closed for the day.  You may come back at 7AM tomorrow.”  I sat down on a scary-looking chair and started to cry.  After a few minutes of wretched self-pity, I realized I only had a few minutes left to make it back to the parking garage before the first thirty-minutes were up and the rate would increase; if I had actually been a patient, I only would’ve had to pay a nominal $3 fee, but because I only attempted to be a patient, I didn’t have the required documentation to show the parking attendant and thus would have to pay the full rate.  So crying and hurting, I hobbled across the worn, cigarette-strewn grass fifty-three miles back to the garage.  I made it to my car with five minutes to spare.

Ok, deep breath, it’ll be ok.  Your leg hurts because you were traversing Europe.  You just saw a lot of people in much worse shape than yourself.  You’re driving home to sweet digs in a sweet neighborhood.  I drove down the ramp, silently heaving and wiping away slowing tears.  And then I saw the line of cars.  And the one parking attendant.  I broke down again.  Fifteen minutes later, ten minutes over the deadline, defeated, leg throbbing, I pulled up to the gate.  The nameplate on the booth said “Ebony.”  She looked to be early twenties.  I gave her my ticket.  She glanced at it and asked, “So what brought you to the hospital today?”

“Well I tried to be a patient, but didn’t make it in time.”

She nodded and took my money.  Sweet sweet Ebony then handed me back a surprising wad of change – she charged me the $3 patient rate.  I mustered what I hoped was a Thank You, Nice Nice Lady smile but probably looked like a drunken, snotty sneer, and began the trek home.

So now instead of visiting with an out-of-town friend who won’t be back till December, instead of swaying my hips at a friend’s BBQ, instead of returning to my beloved yoga and stairclimbers, tomorrow I’ll be clutching my bag in an uncomfortable chair in a depressing hole in the wall, retracing my steps to figure out what I did to my leg, envisioning how hard my life will be as a cripple, maybe for twenty minutes, maybe for six hours, before an overworked resident gives me a once-over and shoves a prescription for pink-eye ointment into one hand and a bill for $3,000 into the other hand.

I hope I’m able to remember that it’s all relative and to have some perspective.  And to think of Ebony, sweet sweet Ebony.

Lessons learned via the key-card

I’ve stayed in two hotels in the past three days and this is what I’ve concluded:

• When and if I get married, no head table.  Or if there is a head table, it’ll be round.  The long table with everyone facing out is weird.  It’s like you’re displaying your Caesar salad-eating skills to the world.
• Bosses who peer pressure you to do shots, that’s an odd situation.
• Friends who peer pressure you to dance at weddings, that’s an annoying situation.
• My dream home will have high toilets, enough space and appropriately-placed hooks for toweling-up post-shower while actually in the tub as opposed to outside the tub, high water-pressure, queen and/or king-sized beds for everyone even babies, bedding made-of the silkiest most expensive Egyptian fabrics, and pamphlets about suggested activities in the foyer.
• Indiana and Wisconsin are very different from Chicago.
• When and if I get married, everyone is barefoot.  Bride, groom, wedding party, guests.  Maybe even the waitstaff.
• Smokers leave behind a stale, icky, I want to shower every five minutes to remove the stench aroma.
• I’m sad for vegetarians.  They don’t eat meat.
• You can never have too many potato dishes – potato salad with a side of mashed potatoes is ok.
• It’s really frustrating when semi-trucks hauling cans of beer overturn on the highway, especially when it’s on the other side of the hideway but traffic still sucks because of perhaps the most annoying group of people in the world, gapers.
• Buffets are nice.  Now if only someone could invent a no-calorie buffet.
• A margarita is not a margarita if there’s no salt on the rim.
• Fruit that someone else washes and cuts is still the best thing in the world.

Strangers inhaling goodness in my yard

Partnered up for another underground supper club collaboration, this one with Chef Efrain of Clandestino, following our collaboration in December.  Fifty-six guests classily stuffed their faces in my yard,  accompanied by acoustic guitar and flowing glasses of wine and wine wisdom.  Thank goodness the rain stayed away, it turned out to be a perfect night.  As always, wonderful mix of people.  Those who came solo, as a couple, in large groups.  Young and old, introverted and extroverted.  Favorite memory from the night – one table was all family, celebrating the dad’s birthday.  It was him and his wife, their grown children and significant others, and a four-year old granddaughter who amused herself on lawn furniture for the evening, and loved her first quail experience.  Wonderful gift!  Spending time together, doing a unique activity, something other than a private room in a restaurant, with no one slaving away in the kitchen cooking and cleaning, enjoying family-time but also meeting new people.  What a way to celebrate, with fifty something people you just met joyfully singing you Happy Birthday!  Another yea! point of the evening, one table loved my ice breaker so much, they asked for Round Two of the game.

Menu -

• bacon-wrapped strawberry
• grilled oyster w/ oregano butter, quail egg, and cilantro gremolata, Paired w/ Nacre Semillon
• grilled quail salad w/ city farm greens and tarragon vinaigrette, Paired w/ Que Saudade Verdelho
• grilled pork blood sausage w/ fennel and fava beans, pickled rhubarb relish, Paired w/ Suspiro del Moro Alvarelhao
• grilled hanger steak w/ Cabrales cheese, russian blue potato mash and purslane salad, Paired w/ Old Woodsbull Syrah
• And for dessert:  frozen ricotta strawberry custard, almond cake, balsamic caramel

Why let happiness sit in your wallet?

I am editing at my current favorite coffeehouse, Knock Box [see list of faves], and a woman ordered a delicious-looking sandwich.   Thick toasted whole grain bread, avocados, cheese, a cup of fresh fruit – that’s all I can decipher from my table.  The server brought it to her twenty-three minutes ago and there it sits, untouched! as she types away at what must be the cure for cancer because I can’t think of anything else that would keep her from inhaling that thing.   When it comes to food and gift cards, I lack the ability to wait.  Friends mention gift cards they’ve had for weeks or months and I stare at them incredulously.  I’m lucky if I can refrain from immediately running away from the gift-giver, yelling “Thank you!” over my shoulder, to go redeem a card.  Shopping is fun.  Shopping with other people’s money, oh my goodness.  I don’t think food has ever sat in front of me for longer than a minute, and if it has, it was probably because I was on a date in my younger dating days when I cared about first impressions and games and emitting attractiveness, and thus waited ninety-seconds before digging in so that he wouldn’t think I was a complete pig.  Now I could care less and run to meet my food as it’s brought out from the kitchen.

No better way to spend a Monday evening

Jasmine and Tomika graduated from 8th grade!  I got a text from Jasmine on June 8th – 2 day i found out that i am graduating i am so HAPPY THANKS 2 THE PEOPLE THAT BELIEVE IN ME. How far she’s come from the precocious and academically-struggling third grader I met through a volunteer program six years ago.  I was so honored that she asked me to join in the celebration, especially since each student only got four tickets, and she has a very large family.  I felt like a proud Mama, shopping for flowers and gift cards, running around taking pictures, meeting their teachers and friends.  Jasmine led the Pledge of Allegiance, Tomika won a leadership award, and they both won academic and perfect attendance awards.  Both surprised me with their tears as they said goodbye to friends and teachers.  Their school is in Bridgeport, worlds away from their Englewood neighborhood so seeing elementary school pals will be difficult.  Very glad their grandma made the decision to send them to a better school than the one down their street, but it was an adjustment, dealing with a school bus that often didn’t show up to pick them up, being two of a handful of black students in a predominantly Hispanic school, having to make new friends at the middle-school age when kids can be so brutal to one another.  But they did it and shined at it!  High school graduation up next and then, I’m biased,  graduation from Boston College??!?  I wonder if they still have their BC Superfan shirts I brainwashed them with six years ago.

Household tip to bring a little sunshine to your life

In case you’re feeling a little down, a quick ‘n cheap pick me up — wash your shoes.

I noticed how dingy my slippers looked the other day so threw them and a few pairs of shoes in the washer.  Goodness, they’re sparkling!  Feels like I had a shoe shopping spree yet didn’t swipe the credit card once.  I actually caught myself smiling at them yesterday.  Combine that with stumbling upon a bar that has free Foosball, being entertained for six hours exploring the city with our only expense a couple of sandwiches [appreciation for friends who enjoy walking, architecture, and sunshine!],  dinner paid for with a gift certificate, and entry to an improv show in exchange for videography services, it was a frugal girl’s dreamday.

Best city ever?

Yesterday was one of the loveliest days I’ve had in awhile and it ended with an affirmation of why I love this city.  Rode my bike down to a free concert in Millennium Park, where two bands played as a part of Music Without Borders.  I really dug the first one, The Very Best from South Africa.  You couldn’t help but move to the beat.  The skyline as a backdrop was breathtaking.  And for all the controversy over the Park and it going a gazillion dollars over budget during construction, it is an amazing venue.  The lawn was filled with blankets and baskets, twirling kids with wild hair, and bare feet.   My favorite aspect was the diversity of people – age, race, ethnicity, local vs. out of towner, solo vs. group.  One big rainbow mix!  People drank without being drunk, people sang and swayed without being annoying, people cuddled without being gross, people chatted without being intrusive.  Cell phones were away, my new “blanket in a bag” is perhaps the best invention ever, and the whole evening cost nothing.

And now for a day of playing hooky with a friend.

Just lovely.

Thank you world for making me feel cute today

So often I or a friend will say, “Ugh, it’s such a fat day.”  You feel ugly, sluggish, undesirable, pudgy, rotund, your clothes are tight and bunch in all the wrong places, you have sausage toes, sweat is coming out of every pore, you smell like asparagus water, your hair won’t listen to your pleas to remain calm and unfrizzed.  Today is not one of those days!   Today is a skinny day.

• I was asked to suggest some Chicagoans for a project (requested to keep the project mum for now).   Some of the list I submitted are youth with whom I’ve worked.   Their teachers shared their reactions with me today; the kids are besides themselves with excitement that they were chosen.  It’s warming to bring a little bit of goodness to youngns who deal with gangs and homelessness and poor academic skills and low self-esteem and [insert low -income, inner-city stereotype] on a regular basis.
• I not only have consumed a small fruit-farm today, making me feel fresh and healthy and less guilty about last night’s late-night cheeseburger, but I have tubs of cut-up watermelon and pineapple in the fridge.  The one reason I would like to get married is to have someone to cut produce for me.  I hate chopping, peeling, making big things smaller, and would be ridiculously happy if someone said to me, “Yes I promise to be faithful and love you til death do us part, but more importantly, I promise to keep a fully-stocked fridge of sliced strawberries and washed lettuce for you.”
• Jasmine invited me to her eighth-grade graduation.  From precocious third-grader whom I had to continually pull out into the hallway to “deal with,” to young lady about to enter high school.  There’s an answer to the question, “Does volunteering really accomplish anything?”  I don’t know if it’s done anything for her, but it certainly has for me.  Filled-heart.  Can’t wait to see her accept her diploma.
• In my video class this morning, one of the teens greeted me with a snarl and an “I don’t want to do this, this is boring.”  I let her be teenagery while I focused on the rest of the students.  After a walk down to the park to shoot our slampiece and watching a few of her peers enjoy being in front of the camera, she came up to me and said, “I’ve memorized these lines, can I say them?”  We recorded her part and moved onto other students.  A few minutes later she came back.  “I’d like to do these lines too.”   She ended up being in the video more than anyone else.
• I get to use my Blanket in a Bag for the first time!  I am positive the outdoor concert tonight will be elevated a couple of notches due to my new B in a B.  Water-resistant on one side, cuddly and snuggly on the other.
• It’s gorgeous out.  Slight breeze.  Sunny and warm, without being overbearing and steamy.  Oh happy hair.  Oh happy biking.  Oh happy Chicago in the summer.
• Frank, my Emerald Isle fixer-upper, was finally able to fix the leak in my roof.  Bittersweet.  Sad that Irish brogue will be whispered no more outside my bedroom window, but happy that water will no longer drip down on pictures from my time in Rwanda.
• A friend just returned from Amsterdam, where I’ll be going for the first time in a few weeks.  She shared pics today – it looks magical!  I haven’t been on vacation since June of last year and am very much ready to leave behind voicemail, rendering video, burning DVDs, e-newsletters, FB status updates, watering my very needy plants, stairclimbing at the gym.  And cutting up my own fruit.

God I’m skinny.  All is right.

I’m sorry, I don’t really care about your fractured collarbone

I’ve ranted about random emails/messages/FB friend requests before. I’ve gotten to the point where I just usually ignore and move on, as they’re usually from guys and usually have a smarmy vibe to them.  But the latest one left with me a twinge of sadness.

Last summer, I inexplicably became a big biking fan overnight and jumped in various random activities such as Critical Mass, a Tweed Ride, and a pub crawl on bikes.  On such a high after the Critical Mass, I rushed home and spent the rest of that Friday night surfing the web for other two-wheel-centric goodies.  I stumbled upon Chainlink, “a one-stop resource for Chicago cyclists to find rides and routes, share information and connect with other cyclists.”  I created a sparse profile and jotted down upcoming events of interest.  I don’t really use it to “connect” with others, I’ve answered a few messages from people I’ve met on outings, but usually just sporadically check it for events.  Over the past year, I’ve gotten a handful of messages from strangers, guys who simply say, “Hey what’s up?” or something like that.  Ignore.

Then I got this one yesterday -

Subject: crash last saturday

how is it going, was riding my bike like last Saturday looked down at the rear derail-er for about 10-15 seconds but before I could look up smack into the back of a parked so I got a fractured collarbone. That of fun of riding a bicycle in the city. Hope to hear from you soon.

I won’t even spend time on the spelling and grammar, that’s been done. First of all, why do you care how it’s going for me?  Do you want to hear how stoked I am that my teaching programs are all ending and I get to spend the next week unveiling my students’ projects and basking in the kids’ excitement and pride?  Do you care that I was delicate with my lower back today in yoga out of fear I’d tweak it again as I did a couple of weeks ago?  I’ve got lots of upcoming travel plans, all very different from each other – Wisconsin, Michigan, Denver, Amsterdam – and I’m excited for them all, want to hear why?  Second of all, I’m very sorry about your fractured collarbone.  But why do I care?  And “hope to hear from you soon?”  What exactly is it I’m supposed to say to you?  Offer to bring over some chicken soup and Seasons 1 and 2 of The Office UK?  Refer you to a doctor?  Ask you out for a drink because it’s obvious we’d hit it off, being fellow-bikers?

The sadness I felt when I got this message I think has to do with how it came to me.  I viewed Chainlink as a utopian site, a community of fun-loving people looking to pedal Chicago together.  Not as John Barleycorn-on-the-web.  Who knows, maybe he messaged me because he really does care how it’s going for me.  Which if that’s the case, I’m doing well, thank you.  Or maybe it’s his way of saying, “Be careful out there!”  But if he’s using the website to look for chicks, boo.

Grow a pair!

I was privy to an e-conversation about an upcoming party which made me very appreciative of one of my personality traits.  A friend is throwing a party.  Another friend is planning on going to said party.  Petrified at the thought of arriving at the soiree knowing only the host and thus really knowing no one since the host is never able to quality-chat with guests, there were multiple back and forths between the petrified friend and other pals, figuring when they would all arrive so that gasp! she wouldn’t have to choose between introducing herself to new people or standing awkwardly by the plant with a safety-blanket beer in hand pretending to want to be standing awkwardly by the plant with a safety-blanket beer in hand.

I’m so grateful that the thought of arriving at a party where I know very few is something that yes, scares me, but that I also enjoy.  That’s actually how I spent New Year’s Eve, choosing the party where I’d only know a few instead of the parties where I’d know everyone. It’s fascinating to me at my age that so many of us revert back to middle-school tendencies, worries, and actions.  And I don’t mean to put myself above this behavior.  While I’m a 31 year-old when it comes to going to parties solo, I definitely have my 13 year-old moments in other areas of my life.  Choosing not to list them.

Crap.  Just overheard a girl say, “You have to be really hot to have short brown hair.”  Damn that haircut.  All this pressure!

United States Postal Service, I heart you

I recently spent a day on the deck composing a gazillion Thank You notes, as many people in my life have been quite lovely recently.  It so happened that I was going to see about twenty of the gazillion a few days later.  It crossed my mind to save the time and expense of sending the notes, and just hand them over in person.  But I quickly nixed that idea.  There’s something so nice about mail.  I even prefer a mailed letter to a dropped-off letter.  The stamp, the postmark, the thought of the adventure it took to get to me.  And especially these days, when it’s all Evites and FB-vites, and when etiquette has dissipated to nill, handwritten snail-mail is just one of those wrap me in your arms and squeeze tight niceties.

Speaking of which, I just received a USPS Thank You note from a guy who recently attended a Mingler.  There was an audible “awwww” on my part.  So sweet.  Especially from a male, whose species don’t often travel the Thoughtfulness Path.  To be thanked for something that I do, yes because I enjoy helping people network, but also because it helps me pay the bills, so profusely, and not just by him but by many other Mingler guests often causes me to not know how to act.  So I’ll just say thank you.

I should probably say that via snail-mail.

Happy Mother’s Day, thanks for the Lean Cuisine!

I was raised on organic peanut butter, the kind you have to refrigerate, the kind with oil at the top, the kind impossible to spread – the kind every kid hates.  Extrapolate that to every other food/beauty/household item and you’ve got my childhood.

What I had > What I Desperately Wanted

• Tom’s Natural Toothpaste > Aquafresh
• Organic peanut butter > Skippy
• Egg noodles with hand-grated sharp organic cheddar > Kraft Mac ‘n Cheese
• Odd-sized dolls with ugly clothes > Barbie
• Reusable canvas bag > new plastic shopping bags that you could throw out and never use again
• Brisket, green beans, and mashed potatoes from scratch > Swanson fried chicken, corn, and brownie TV dinner
• Nature’s Own shampoo > Salon Selectives shampoo

But I realized something yesterday as I excitedly and guiltily opened up a 280 calorie Lean Cuisine.  I’ve been so indoctrinated with the belief that processed/frozen is bad and fresh/local is good, I now view such not-so-bad for you items like frozen dinners [the healthy ones] as treats.  Which is not-so-bad for my waistline.  Thanks Mom.

I may start burping and scratching myself inappropriately…

I’m worried about myself.

I was sick a couple of weeks ago and when feeling icky, enjoy dousing myself in ginger-ale/sprite-type beverages.  I also like comforting myself with, “Well, I can do _____ because I’m sick” — lay in bed and watch the Office UK for hours, skip the gym, ignore emails and phone-calls, eat macaroons for dinner, drink directly from the Fresca two-liter.  Now I can’t stop imbibing straight from the bottle, and weirdly find comfort in toting two-liters around with me, much like a child with her blankey.

I played poker [Texas Hold 'Em?] for the first time on Saturday.  Though I think I completely screwed up on many hands, forgetting all the different rules – at one point, I folded with two Aces -  I did manage to win a couple.  Surprised at how much I enjoyed it.  And I say that after losing all my money [five dollars!].  For a cheapie to say she enjoyed losing money… what concerns me though is that at the gym yesterday, I was flipping through the channels and stumbled upon a poker tournament.  And unlike in the past where I would quickly keep stumbling, I stayed.  And watched poker on TV for an hour, mesmerized.  !!

Somehow I have transformed into a bottle-swigging, TV card-game tournament enthusiast.  Break up with me now.  This could get ugly.

It’d be nice to refamiliarize with the term “direct deposit,” but…

These are the things I no longer know, since leaving the 9-5 world five years ago for the Land of Self-Employment:

• Paid vacation days
• Paid sick days
• Holiday parties
• 401(K) contributions [from myself or my employer]
• Guilt-free frivolous spending – unfortunately, I still spend frivolously, it’s just wracked with guilt
• Office volleyball team
• Health insurance with a $0 deductible; heck, health insurance with a deductible under $5000
• Dental insurance
• Co-worker happy hour
• Regular income
• A lot of income
• Free office food left over from conferences and board meetings
• Co-pays – everything’s out of pocket now
• Water cooler gossip
• A savings account that one can see without using a microscope
• Bonuses
• Hawaiian shirt Fridays
• Summer hours

But this is my office, just outside my bedroom door.  And I get to go to Amsterdam for two weeks in July and still have as many vacation days as I want.  And yesterday I spent the day hammering and potting and Home Depot’ing and water-sealant’ing in the bright sun, with a thirty-minute break to watch the Office UK in a deck chair with a glass of iced tea, while footage transferred inside.  And I work shoeless, in shorts and a tshirt.  And I get to go to Trader Joe’s, yoga, and the post office on random Thursday mornings, leaving my weekends to be week-endy.  And I’m the happiest I’ve ever been.

Cheap ‘n easy remedy for stress

Yesterday I did two out of the ordinary things, which both turned out to be lovely and now are on my “Do more often” list.

I had to drop off a DVD at a client about two miles away.  Decided to forego the car and ride my bike, which I use often in my personal life but not so much when my work-hat is on.  Then, instead of taking bus-filled, car-filled, strip mall-filled, Mexican restaurant with ugly neon signs-filled Ashland, which perhaps would’ve been faster, I took leafy, quaint Greenview.  Instead of a focused get from Point A to Point B, blinders-on attitude, I meandered and noticed gorgeous architecture and a tree filled with pink flowers.  Instead of curses for weaving black sports cars driven by men with too much hair gel and button-down shirts with too many top buttons unbuttoned, appreciation for this amazing city filled my heart.  Instead of a roll of eyes at bank after bank after bank, there was a smile at a teeney corner bar that I didn’t know existed called “Side Street Salon,” where I just know an elderly man named Slim who calls everyone “Darlin” sits inside, on HIS stool, drinking Schlitz, waiting for his next Connect Four opponent.

Yes.  I will be biking and enjoying more.

Just another Tuesday evening…

When your day ends with a stranger telling you, “I like listening to you talk,” your life is pretty charmed.  And weird.

Had another collaborative event last night at my place.  Paired up with City Provisions, an organization that has its fingers dipped in many things, from catering to supper clubs to farm dinners [they take you to a farm to learn about farming and to eat good food] to running a deli [coming June 2010] to general caring about the world [they're organic/local/sustainable 'n stuff].  After an uber-successful event with Clandestino in December, I decided more such endeavors would be lovely.  So I approached the owner of City Provisions (CP), Cleetus Friedman [yes!  Cleetus Friedman.  Do some research on the man, he's fascinating.  Leader of Temple Bacon Shalom, for Jews who love pork].  A few months later, another amazing evening in the books.

Cleetus gathered a gaggle of  Grade A-folk to pull off Dishes Inspired by Music – a DJ who created a playlist to complement the food, beer boys from Pipeworks Brewing who paired five of their beers with the food, a photographer, a sustainable farm who provided the food, a crew of ten staff and volunteers to set-up, serve, and break-down, and me [wait, did I just call myself Grade A?] who provided the venue and overall hosty-ness.  And of course the guests!  Forty people.  Some came solo, some in pairs, some in groups.  Some had been to my Minglers, some had been to other CP events, some were total newbies to both CP and Mac ‘n Cheese.

Highlights:

• Um, the food.  Oy.  Amazing.  Check out the menu above.
• Met so many quality people, both those “working” and the guests.  Chicago is full of goodness.
• The crazy amount of joy people had about my home – think it’s the karma of it being converted toy-factory.  The gushing was full-on and all-night.  Love that “comfortable” and “homey” were thrown about as often as they were.
• The brothers who own Merz Apothecary, only the cutest bath, body and natural health product store in the world, on one of the cutest streets in Chicago.
• How excited people got to take my card to sign up for my newsletter, the Minglers, and/or the Mac ‘n Cheese Productions email list.  I’ve never had a job where people clamor for my business card.  Now I can’t keep them stocked.
• The owners of Sunday Dinner, who bring intimate groups together for good food, in a home environment.
• Someone complimented me on my website and said they really liked it.  That makes teaching myself webdesign in two weeks of hell, armed with a Photoshop manual, Dreamweaver manual, and many large lattes, worth it.  I spent a whole day trying to figure out why my homepage wouldn’t load.  I had “index” as “Index;” after I fixed the capitalization, worked like charm.  Grrrr.  Seriously, a whole day.
• A few friends sprinkled in with the strangers, from a teacher I work with [we're having her students create pamphlets that show the positive side to Humboldt Park via photo and text] to one of the Dance Experiment gals, whom I met at a Mingler which she heard about via Clandestino.
• The collaborative nature – so wonderful to see individuals offering what they’re good at, whether it’s beer-brewing or cooking or pointing to the location of the restroom, to create a cohesive, warm, invigorating atmosphere for a diverse group that leaves happy and full, not just of food, but of goodness

A rental car full of sweaty Irishmen with small thighs and MacBooks

Apology to the girl on School Street yesterday, I didn’t mean to stare.  But all I could think was, “Wow, you could fit a rotisserie chicken between your thighs.”  What it must be like to not hear a whooshing sound when you walk due to skin-rubbage.

On NPR this AM – “Never in the history of the world has anyone ever washed a rental car.  People only care about what they own.”  I like that quote.

It defeats the purpose of the action when you first mop up the puddle of sweat and then use the same towel to “wipe down” the stairclimber.

A guy asked me to watch his baby [MacBook] at a coffeehouse while he went to the rest room.  Airport security warnings pinged around in my head, and “Oh god, I hope there’s not a bomb in it” was my immediate reaction.  I miss the days when I’d just look up and smile, feeling good that I had the look of someone trustworthy and enough muscle to fend off any would-be baby-stealers.

I’ve had deck-building Irishmen working outside my bedroom for the past week.  Much like I think pretty girls can and do use their looks to advance in the world, so it goes with British-accented men.  They could pop their head in my window and ask to use my toothbrush to spread their tar and I’d say yes.  Irish-brogue.  Mmmmmmmmmm.

I’m really happy.  I usually gripe and judge here.  So just wanted to write that.

And curtain.

Aieee, it’s been too long since I last posted.  I don’t know how the world has continued spinning without a snarky opinion on something that doesn’t matter at all.  But the past few weeks have been crazy with Dance Experiment-ness.

One of the best experiences of my life, yet unexpectedly time-consuming!  Extra rehearsals, coordinating volunteers who helped at the ticket booth, as ushers and photographers, buying gifts, keeping track of ticket purchases, editing video, trying to convince the venue not to make me find a new venue three weeks from the shows, burning DVDs and CDs, making sure the tshirts, the pizza, the programs, the dancers all got to where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be, and on and on…  all worth it.

Since our two performances on April 8th and 9th – 350 people came out! – heartwarming reactions have been pouring in, including many notes of comfort, due to AV issues at Friday’s show which had me in tears backstage.  Simply amazing, to be shrouded in such support and love, much of it from complete strangers!  Here are just a few –

Blog post by a friend of one of the dancers

Blog post by the grandmother of one of the dancers

Because of you and dance experiment I was inspired to do something that scares the shit out of me! I played softball last night in a co-ed league…..and just ordered a meal outside and ate by myself!!!

I volunteer for a Film Festival that I think your final documentary would fit into perfectly.  I know that your adventure and the positive energy displayed by all would be a fabulous addition to the Film Festival.  I truly enjoyed the evening and would love to help create the same for a wider audience!

I just wanted to send a quick little note to tell you how much I enjoyed Friday’s performance!  I am a close friend of Racine’s and had been anticipating the final show since she first told me about it!  Everyone was awesome and the Marconi kids touched my heart.  I am thinking (if it’s not too late) that I might just want to try my hand, or feet rather, at the next session.  If you could forward on any information you have, I would really appreciate it!

Congrats on such a successful production of The Dance Experiment! I totally agree with the dancer who said when you come up with an idea people just latch on. You make everything seem like a ton of fun and definitely worth trying.

As for screen malfunctions, consider this: each night, the theater was filled with Two Degrees of Saya. Everyone was a direct contact of yours or a friend of a contact. So really, everyone somehow knows who you are and what you do and came out to watch because they are in some way in awe of your determination. The fact that something went wrong with the video can’t possibly be as important as what went right on the stage.  You’ve run a Marathon, so you know – what it’s like to see how far you can push yourself four months; how many perfect strangers are willing to get up incredibly early and stand around just to applaud you for exercising. That’s what I saw happening on the stage – 17 first Marathons; 17 huge accomplishments by 17 really gutsy, determined people. And I’m pretty damn sure that the whole audience, that collective Two Degrees of Saya, would agree.  How lucky for the rest of us that, when you run with life, you don’t mind if we “draft” behind you.

I didn’t expect to do a Dance Experiment 2, but I’ve gotten tons of “Sign me up!  I want to do the next one” comments.  Come Fall/Winter, I think we’ll give it another go.

Who wiped down my sink?

In continuation of using my unique living space to host a variety of events, I had my first Night of Comedy! on Friday.  I invited three improv groups to perform over a two-hour span.  Was great fun, both the actual performances and the socializing pre and post.  Witnessed lots of contact info being exchanged, which always makes me happy.

Two weird things -

1. My bedroom being used as a Green Room

2. Someone cleaned my house during the event and I don’t know who.  Or what they think of me.  I had a very busy afternoon – was at Soldier Field until 6pm, serving as a judge for the City of Chicago’s Junior Citizens Scholarship – so didn’t get home until 6:45 and people started to arrive at 7.  I wasn’t able to do my usual pre-hosting routine, which includes cleaning.  Luckily the downstairs was in fair shape.  My bedroom and upstairs bathroom though were in need of some 409.  I thought oh well, no one’s really going to be hanging out up there, if at all, and so left them.  The sink had a nauseating amount of my hair all over it, the dust bunnies under the bed were thick, and a coat of dust lay over most everything.  When I went upstairs at the end of the night, the sink was spotless and Kleenex filled with my hair lay in the garbage can.  Was someone so disgusted by my personal hygiene, or lack thereof, that they couldn’t use the facilities without a scrub down?  Or were they just trying to be helpful, not wanting other more judgmental people to discover my dark side, and thus thought they were doing me a favor by wiping down the sink?  I had mixed emotions.  Yea for a clean sink; boo for someone thinking I’m a dirty pig.

Another reason to act illogical and asinine in a relationship

Do you want the exes of your significant other to be goodlooking or horse-facey?  I can see both sides.

If they’re all hot, you by default must be hot as well.  And he chose you over them, so that must mean you’re the most hot.  But then what if he realizes that [insert name] is really hotter than you, and subsequently breaks up with you to go back with her?  Physical looks are the basis of any relationship, no?

If the exes are not much to look at, does that mean you too are a plain jane?  Or does that mean you should revel in the fact that he’s moved up the good-looks ladder in dating you, because of course you’re stunningly beautiful, and thus you have nothing to worry about as far as him ever leaving you for the past because who would leave brie for processed cheese food?

Of course, none of this should matter because what’s important is the person’s heart and morals and intelligence and sense of humor and how often he volunteers at a soup kitchen and how often he calls his mom and how his paella tastes…

Gripes o’ the day

I can’t stand when condo buildings put signs out as purchase-enticement, “Only three units left!”  And there are only three units.

I also can’t stand people who don’t know how wide their own car is.  Numerous times in the past few weeks, I’ve been stuck behind someone who has stopped to either let someone else from the other direction pass or because they think they can’t get around whatever obstacle is in front of them, no matter that the width of a football field is available for them to access.  If the street really is that narrow and being patient is necessary, fine, I can exercise patience.  But in most situations, the person mistakenly thinks their car is four times wider than it actually is, slowing down the rest of the world with their inability to estimate.  I’ve got to get to Target for another purse I don’t need, move!

I bet Oprah would throw the soap out

I’m cheap and I’m clean.  This combination has led me to a quandary.

I have two soaps in my upstairs bathroom, a bar I use for face and a pump I use for hands.  Whenever I host events, I move the bar into the shower, so that people don’t mistake it for hand-soap.  I forgot to do that Saturday, a night that had twenty people in my house.  Now I don’t know what to do.  Do I wash my face with the bar soap, taking a chance that I’ll be rubbing other people’s hand-germs into my skin?  Or should I toss it, throwing away a just-opened, pricey Neutrogena bar?

Man, just like I can’t wait for the day I’m rich enough to indulge in a Whole Foods salad bar meal, I can’t wait for the day when I’d  toss potentially hazardous items without a second thought.

I think I’ll wash the soap…

Sorry, I can’t go to the concert/party/show, I’m going grocery shopping

I hesitate to write this as it doesn’t do much for my coolness factor.  But who cares if you ask me to sit with you at lunch or go to prom with you.

Friday night, on a high from my first ever public display of my inability to dance, in front of a paying audience no less, after me and four other Dance Experiment participants participated in a show at the Playground, I found myself grocery shopping at Jewel at 2:34AM.  The supportive smiles and gleeful cheers from the crowd, and the audience members and other performers who came up after to tell us how much they enjoyed our bit had me unable to settle into bed when I got home around two.  Always trying to be as productive as possible, I decided to cross off an item on my errand list.  I think I found a new favorite activity!  Errands at ungodly hours.

Pros -

• The parking space closest to the door
• Aisles all to myself
• Fully stocked shelves
• A calm ambiance that had me in a slow-paced saunter from tortillas to milk to seltzer
• No checkout lines
• Ridiculous amount of good coupons (don’t know if this had anything to do with the time of day, but I’ve never gotten so many keepers, such as a FREE 1/2 gallon of AlmondMilk, no strings)
• More free time during daylight hours since I won’t have to grocery shop!

Cons -

• Girl with a very loud floor buffer would occasionally interrupt the zen-like atmosphere
• I had to bag my own groceries since there was only one employee at the register

*Bonus* – I filled up the car at the Roscoe/Damen Speedway on the way home.  Double-productive.  And the gas station was on the right side of the road, no unnecessary turning required.  Triple-productive.

Would I be president by now if my name was Alexis?

I love names.  When I worked at Crown Books the summer before sophomore year of college, we were told to choose three sections for which we’d be responsible – straightening, re-shelving, dusting.  I chose Current Events, a section I don’t remember, and Health.  I had no interest in cholesterol levels or micro-biotic diets, but Health had the pregnancy sub-section, which housed the baby name books!  I loved thumbing through the lists and choosing my favorites.  At that point in time, I just knew that if my name was Jessica, Amy or Kelly, I’d be more normal and beautiful, and have more friends.  The summer before heading off to Boston College from Evanston, I seriously considered changing my name to Alexis.

I wasn’t named for the first year of my life.  My birth certificate just said “Baby Hillman” for twelve-months.  People called me “Baby.” My mom wanted to get to know me and let my personality dictate who I’d be for the rest of my time on earth.  While I agree with that philosophy, and hate when expectant parents refer to their unborn kid – “David’s kicking so much lately!”  “We play Bell Biv Devoe for Chelsey all the time, with the hopes she’ll be into old school rap.” – I think my mother’s route was a little extreme.  I’d wait a day or two, and see if he/she struck me more as #13 or #25 on the list of possibilities.  OR, maybe even go off-list!

I like names that are easy to pronounce and easy to spell, but that aren’t your run of the mill Mike’s and Jen’s – Amelia, Aidan, Ava, Olivia, Avery.  While I’ve come to be fine with my name – don’t love it, don’t hate it, just neutral – thirty-one years of spelling and pronouncing it for others has tired me, and I’d love a name that didn’t have an obligatory follow-up conversation (which is why when I give my name at a restaurant or at karaoke, I say “April,” my middle name).

I am not a fan of juniors, IIIs, or the like.  I think dubbing your kid John, Jr. when the father’s name is John is narcissistic.  Don’t like the “carrying on tradition” argument.  The baby deserves to be his/her own person, regardless of what’s been done in the family for years and years.

All this is to say I have a new pet peeve, which I discovered out and about in the city yesterday.  I don’t like when businesses name themselves after the street/s or neighborhoods where they’re located.  Bel-Port Liquors, corner of Belmont and Southport.  North Central Auto, guess where that’s located?  But you can’t always count on a name telling you the right location, some businesses find themselves in a pickle for not having the foresight to think they eventually might move and then end up being “Wrigleyville* Cleaners (* = located in Bucktown).”  So either you’re a business with a name that says you’re lazy and uncreative, or you’re a business with a name that says you’re lazy, uncreative, and unable to envision the big picture.

Oh babies.

How long can you be in the vicinity of a baby without kissing its head?  An informal, unscientific study at a coffeehouse says most people can’t go longer than a minute and a half.  Which can be awkward when a random stranger waiting for a skinny vanilla latte leans over and slobbers on your baby’s cheek.  But, understandable, baby-head is quite irresistible.

All I wanted was Skippy peanut butter

Yesterday, I came home from the gym, started the coffeemaker and then hopped in the shower.  I can’t begin to communicate the intense feelings of efficiency and normalcy I experienced as I got dressed, knowing that downstairs brown liquid was aromatically dripping into a pot.  The same feelings surface when I’m doing laundry while editing a video, or running the dishwasher while weeding the courtyard.  Good lord, the ecstasy when I do three or four household chores at once!

There’s the obvious multi-tasking, killing two birds with one stone type deal – many people experience joy at that I think.  But the sensations of normalcy, those are probably a bit more unusual.  I think they’re rooted in my childhood, and in what I did and didn’t have, and in what I viewed as normal back then.

Most kids wanted a My Little Pony or a Game Boy; I wanted a vacuum, toaster, microwave, car, washer and dryer, real trash bags (not recycled Jewel bags), an answering machine, Tupperware (not recycled plastic tubs that at one time housed impossible to spread organic peanut butter with oil on top), and ziplock baggies (not the kind that just folded over, ones that actually zipped shut).  I grew up in a one-bedroom apartment, with a single-mom.  No TV, no car.  My friends all lived in houses, with two parents who drove Volvos, and saved leftovers in matching plastic tubs with blue tops.  Their kitchens were filled with amazing items, like food processors and coffeemakers.  I thought if I could just make toast or clean a rug without having to beat it on the back porch that I’d be a little less different than everyone else – which was a tall order for a non-Jessica, biracial, overweight, six-foot tall quasi-Jew.

Spandex + Strangers + Bad Dance = Goodness

I’ve been so humbled, surprised and wrapped in warm ‘n fuzzy emotional-goodness in the past 24 hours, since first posting the trailer to the Dance Experiment online.  I had no idea what to expect when I concocted the idea and it could’ve been a disaster in so many ways – the studio rented, the participants selected, the choreographer hired, the venue rented, the schedule, the footage procured, the elementary school kids selected.  But it’s been an amazing ride, and we’re only half way through rehearsals!

Sample reactions:

• How awesome — props to you for doing it, Saya! I wish I could be there. Maybe a DVD version?  Someone should really document the whole process on DVD, from inception to rehearsals to finish. It has a lot of potential!!
  
• Sometimes I really wish I lived out there so I could see some of these things you do. Good luck!
  
• This is so amazing!! What a cool idea and how fun that you are part of it! Will the full documentary be available?
• It looks like you guys are having an awesome time! If Saya ever does Dance Experiment 2 I’m in.
• Looks AWESOME!! I am sooo excited for this!! You’re going to video the shows, right?  I wish I were in the show!!!
  
• Is it weird that the video made me a little teary?
• DE has been such fun so far – what am I going to do when it is over?  I think we need to plan a reunion tour of some sort!
  
• Just watched the trailer six times in a row.  I’m so proud to be a part of this group!
• I agree that we need to do something when this is all over. I can’t imagine not seeing all of you each week!

Info on the performances: http://www.macncheeseproductions.com/DE.html

I’m one of you now!

I HATE fish.  I hate looking at them, eating them, smelling them, talking about them, thinking about them.  I spent sixty-minutes each day for a week hiding in the bathroom at Camp Echo because my counselor wouldn’t let me switch out of the fishing class I had signed up for – I tried to make myself do things that scared me even at age 11 – but quickly thought the better of when I realized that part of fishing class was interacting with fish.

That said, up until yesterday, I had never tried sushi.  Never been to a sushi restaurant, never partaken in a sushi discussion, never been able to live the sushi lifestyle.  And that last one was killing me!  It’s such an adorable food.  People are always talking about their latest sushi excursion, and much like how I feel about the dog-park, I’ve always been standing outside the sushi window, my face pressed up against the glass, desperately wanting to be inside with everyone else.

And so, on February 19th, 2010, I became one of you.  And I loved it!  We told the waitress that I was a sushi-virgin, that I hated fish, and that I liked spice.  She recommended three varieties and they were all delicious.  The first picture is a Spicy Snowball – which from now on will be my karaoke name – which is rice spheres topped with white tuna and a truffle, scallion and soy sauce.  The middle picture shows Creamy Maki – shrimp tempura, unagi, sweet crab, masago, and mayo rolled in avocado – which taught me that anything wrapped in avocado, just like anything wrapped in bacon, is amazing.  The third picture is Crunchy Salmon – salmon, cucumber, and spicy mayo – my least favorite because it was the most fishy, but still yummy.

Embarrassing moments of the Sushi Experience:

1. I had to ask for a fork – chopsticks is not one of my abilities

2. The waitress brought me the chopsticks reserved for four year-olds, rubber-banded at the top and said, “Why don’t you try these before I bring you a fork?”

3. I unscrewed the soy sauce bottle top, not realizing there was a little spout in the cap; the waitress horrifyingly asked, “Wait, is it not coming out of the top???”  I fumbled to screw the cap back on, being thankful I’m mocha-complexed so that blushes aren’t noticeable.

4. The waitress hesitated in disgust after we ordered pork dumplings, I’m guessing because they’re something an Average Joe would order.  She begrudgingly obliged.

Embarrassing moments aside, it was lovely and I’m excited to now be able to participate in sushi-talk.

Addendum: for some reason, there is one fish dish I like – Costello’s pineapple tuna salad.

The Incredible She-Hulk

I had trouble getting my Irish green cardigan over my upper arm yesterday.  The first thought that popped in my head was not the usual self-loathing “I’m so fat my Irish green cardigan won’t even fit over my arm.”  The first thought was “Yea for yoga, dance rehearsal and occasional weights!  They’ve made my biceps so huge, my Irish green cardigan won’t even fit over my arm.”

Self-image progress!

Is late afternoon egg ‘n ham too much to ask?

I’m not one to go to bed super-late, sleep in past 7:30, or drink much, if anything, these days, but I went to bed at 5:57AM this morning after a night of consuming a few too many Pabst Blue Ribbons and slept till 11:30.  Well, I actually woke up at 9:30 and lay in bed listening to Car Talk and Wait Wait – Mo Rocca, why won’t you answer any of my marriage proposal emails?!? – flipping through all the things I should’ve done yesterday and need to get done today but unable to make my legs swing out from under the covers.

That’s all besides the point.  What’s important is that never have I craved an Egg McMuffin like I did while laying in bed and never have I been more disappointed that I can’t make time stand still.  McDonald’s needs to serve breakfast all day, at least on the weekends.  Enough with this 10:30 cutoff.

Stranger love

Strangers have been so nice recently!

1. I left my Shuffle in an unlocked gym locker; returned twelve hours later, and it was still there.  It being “lose weight” season, I can’t even begin to estimate the number of ladies who opened the locker, looked inside, and bypassed the opportunity at a free music-player.  Sad commentary on society perhaps that someone not stealing something is thought to be such a nice gesture.

2. A guy who came to one of my film screenings a couple of weeks ago emailed - I have a drop down screen that I can give to you for free.  I just got it in the mail from purchasing a projector about 4 months ago and I really don’t have a use for it but I thought it would fit perfectly in the space you currently are showing movies.  I can drop it off sometime tomorrow or over the weekend,  let me know when you are going to be around.

He’s dropping it off in an hour.

3. Someone was forwarded a copy of my newsletter, Smatterings, and noticed a blurb I wrote about wanting to fundraise money to send Jasmine to summer camp.  She wrote to me – I would love to donate, I think I could donate $100. I wish I could donate more but you know how it goes. I went to Camp Echo for two summers and have a lot of good memories from my time there. I hope this helps get Jasmine to camp, let me know how I can get the money to you.

She doesn’t know me, she doesn’t know Jasmine.  Such generosity!

4. A girl on the Belmont bus noticed I was having trouble clasping a necklace around my neck.  She offered to help, and put it on as I held up my hair.  I wonder if she noticed that I had just had it in my mouth seconds earlier.  Sorry!

Stop friending me

My usual reaction to a Facebook (FB) friend request from someone I don’t know is to roll my eyes and click “ignore.”  I’m curious as to the number of stranger-friend requests Facebook users receive on average.  I get a handful a week, which considering the scope of FB, doesn’t seem like much, but it’s still annoying. I don’t use FB to network, I use it to keep up with friends and share what’s going on in my life with friends.   My annoyance probably has to do with the fact that most of them are guys and it feels like I’m being hit on.  This of course may not be true, perhaps it’s a friend of a friend who suggested we should connect, but if you don’t include a message, how will I know that?  I’m not on a quest to amass the most “friends.”

Breaking with tradition of “ignoring,” I actually followed up with the most recent stranger-request:

Connection?

Between David Mark Okeh and You

Saya Hillman January 26 at 8:27am

I’m sorry, I don’t think I know you. Can I ask why you sent me a friend request?

David Mark Okeh January 26 at 8:36am Report

Yes you don’t know before, but i contact you as a businessman, i am a business i trade on gold dust gold bars in my country Accra Ghana, and i contact you to know if you are interested to do business with me or are you into gold business too?.Thanks
Mr. David Mark

So it wasn’t my beauty but my stench of naïvety.  I have a Nigerian uncle who needs a mere $430 for an amazing business venture that guarantees all investors a 150% return whom I’d like to introduce Mr. David Mark to.

Middle-finger to screen.  Ignore.

***************************

UPDATE

Always trust your instinct.  Ew.

David Mark Okeh January 28 at 4:13am Report

Hello,You look good , I am David from Accra Ghana, I am humble, honest and very quiet guy here. I am new to computer. I need a relationship very good one. I do not care how long it will take us to develop it, what matters most is honest and transparency. Do not ignore this or think that I’m coming from Africa it wouldn’t work.
Let me hear from you.
David.

Brainwaves, welding helmets, nerdy men, oh my.

Saturday brought with it a trip to a Hackerspace, Pumping Station: One (PS1).  Have no idea what I just said?  Neither do I.

According to the ‘net, Hackerspaces are community-operated physical places, where people can meet and work on their projects.  PS1 is near Elston/Belmont, a raw space room in a warehouse that also has a lone hairstylist chair and a bunch of mismatched though comfy armchairs and couches.

Our over-arching goal is to facilitate creativity in and through the merging of art, technology, and culture.  Weekly meetings are held at 8:00pm every Tuesday at the space, and are open to the public. Visiting at other times requires accompaniment by an existing member, but we’re pretty friendly.

PS1 has occasional presentations on various topics.  The one I went to was on neurofeedback.  Have no idea what I just said?  Neither do I.  Basically, this is what I saw/took away:

• A mom and son team, the mom a psychotherapist who uses neurofeedback with her patients, became big fans when it cured her narcolepsy and migraines, as well as lessened her ADD symptoms
• A volunteer got hooked up to various wires that went to a screen we were watching, and began to listen to music
• We watched as he manipulated the music with his brain, consciously and subconsciously – i.e. clenching his teeth would cause the colored bars, which represent different parts of the brain, to jump
• A typical neurofeedback session lasts 10-30 minutes
• The aim is to end each session with the client feeling relaxed and alert
• You can use it to train your brain for increased focus, improved meditation, and to alleviate various medical conditions
• It’s a personal trainer for the brain

You can become a member of PS1 which allows you open access to the space, for $30-$50 a month, depending on whether you want voting rights and a locker if I remember correctly.  They also offer random free/low-cost classes that anyone can take, from woodworking to electronics to Arabic.  It seems like a lot of people just go to hang out there, like I would a coffeehouse.  Everyone I met was very friendly.  Members toured us around with the type of glee I imagine I might have when touring someone around my first house.   I’m not sure why one would need a huge phone booth type structure, with “Police Booth” pained on the side, but they were certainly excited to share it with us!  Supposedly, it does time travel.  One of the members told me he saw in the future that I become the first black/white female President.  So there’s that.  And an unexpected highlight – we were sitting next to 1/2 of the Dollar Store team and member of the band Baby Teeth, Abraham Levitan.  He always wows the Dollar Store crowd with his ability to whip up catchy, intelligent and funny diddies based on performances he saw play out just minutes before, that he then sings and pianos.  And added highlight to that highlight, he was wearing sexy footwear!  Which of course I told him, which I’m sure was the peak of his night.

The evening was interesting.  Probably any place you go where the first thing you have to do is fill out a liability release and where you find yourself in a welding helmet will be interesting.

Who cares what kind of glass you’re drinking from?!?

I just replied to an email with the phrase “invigorating to have complete strangers come to your home to be entertained.”  Someone either is a stranger or isn’t a stranger.  That’s like saying, “I can’t go out for drinks, I’m kinda pregnant.”  You are or you’re not.  Redo sentence.

Why are people so scared to drink wine out of regular glasses?  I stopped putting out wine glasses when I host large groups of people because they kept getting broken, they’re annoying to load in the dishwasher, and they’re on the other side of the room from said dishwasher which is too far for me to travel back and forth a gazillion times to get them out and put them away.  I direct people to the regular juice glasses, half of which are full size and half of which are…half size.

It never fails that the following occurs:

1. Someone asks where to find a glass for wine

2. I point at the juice glasses

3. He/she surveys the selection, hesitates, and raises his/her eyebrows

4. The hand inches up to the glasses, cautiously and pauses in mid-air

5. The eyes dart from the full-size ones to the half-size ones

6. He/she takes a half-size one

a. If no half-size glasses are left, he/she stands in front of the full-size glasses for no less than twenty-minutes, running through all the possible scenarios that may play out if a full-size glass is grabbed:

• Will be unable to control/monitor the amount of wine consumed and will be naked, singing “True Colors” within an hour
• Others will assume you’re an alcoholic and either stay far away because they don’t want to deal with that mess, or offer to be your sponsor
• The world will end because you’re doing something non-traditional

You’re… welcome?

I’ve been having weird encounters with “Thank you’s” recently.  Weird meaning I don’t know how to react and that I feel odd accepting the Thank You.

When I went to Rwanda a couple of years ago, I met a little boy, Patience, seen above with his sister and mom, with whom, even though we couldn’t talk with another because my Kinyarwandan is a bit rusty, I fell in love.  His aunt was my host while I was there, shooting video for a non-profit.  Their family, like so many others, fell victim to the genocide.  The parents of Patience’s mother were killed and she was abused, and suffers post-traumatic stress depression today.  Patience and his family, like many Rwandans, are very poor; when we went to visit his house, his aunt stopped at the store on the way over to buy a couple bottles of orange soda and some cookies, and quietly slipped them to Patience’s mom when we arrived, so that she’d  have something to offer us.  They were extremely gracious hosts.  I loved teaching Patience to use my camera and listening to his sister Beigne sing “Jesus Loves You” in her broken English.  When I found out that Patience may not be able to continue his education because the family didn’t have the $400 necessary to send him to school for a year, I reached out to my network to see if anyone would be interested in co-sponsoring him, since I couldn’t afford it alone.

I was overwhelmed by the response, and in five days, had amassed the $400.  Thirty people gave average donations of $10 to $20, three of them complete strangers who were forwarded my inquiry.  That’s my favorite type of fundraiser, lots of people giving a little!  That was last year.

This year, due to the economy, I wasn’t going to send out another ask.  But then Patience’s aunt emailed to see if we could co-sponsor him again.  I timidly reached out.  Five days later, $400.

• Hi Saya, Here is the $20 for Patience. Thank you so much for organizing this and allowing us to help.
• Hi Saya! Thanks for setting this up.
• Hey Saya, here’s my payment. It’s so nice of you to do this again this year!
• Thanks Saya!

I found it so odd people were thanking me for taking their money, especially since it’s for someone they’ve never met and have no connection to.  One of the benefactors even let me know she has the above pic on her fridge.

On a very different yet similar note, on his way out the door, a Mingler guest recently grabbed my hand and said while staring into my eyes, “Thank you.  You’re doing the Lord’s work.”  Not being super close to God and since I had just met this guy hours previous, I wasn’t sure how to react, I think just smiled.  It was his genuineness that got me.  And his serious tone.  In my head I thought, “Dude, I’m not curing AIDS; I just create nametags, wipe down counters, and point to the bathroom.”

• Your events were one of the highlights of 2009.  It is so nice to see people making an effort to have a good time with people they know nothing about.  It is very cool that we all come into your place under the same conditions (no one knows anyone). Very unique and freeing.  Thank you for making these events available to us, Saya.
  
• Wanted to say THANK YOU so much for a wonderful time last night, had a great time. Thank you for opening your house to allow people to come in and make friends with total strangers.  Can’t say enough about what a great time I had last night, I look forward to attending an other Mingler in the future.
  
• I definitely want to say thanks again for a great evening.  I had a wonderful time.  And what’s more, I get a second type of pleasure just knowing that there are folks like you out there–valuing people and human connection as you do–and working to make events like this happen.  The world is a better place because you’re in it.
  
• Wow, what a great party!  I just wanted to tell you that I’m so glad I finally made it to one of your Minglers. I had so much fun, and met a bunch of great people.  I love your place, and loved the format of the party.  I’m so impressed at how well organized everything was.   It was really clear that everyone had a great time.  So thank you!

The way Mingler guests have been thanking me, I feel like they think I’m hosting them out of the goodness of my heart.  I do enjoy helping people make connections and definitely get a thrill when I see contact info being exchanged or hear stories about dates, friends, or jobs procured because of me, but there’s no way I’d be doing these events if I wasn’t making money on them.  The Minglers were created out of complete selfishness – I wanted to make a living in jeans and flip-flops, without leaving my home, playing games, and meeting new people.  And now I have people bringing me presents, sending thank-you cards, and writing really personal “I just got divorced, thank you for helping to ease my transition,” “I’m really shy, thank you for bringing me out of my shell,” etc. type emails to me, all because I don’t want to commute to a downtown cubicle to deal with an idiotic boss.