Two Words

Projectile vomiting.

Now that everyone except parents have escaped, you may indulge in the guilty pleasure of reading someone else's horror story.

The kid's a bit dramatic. When asked if she's sick (we no longer do), she responds she's sick. This time, it really was a wolf. After a night where no one slept well, the cranky bunch trodded out the door. The wife took the brunt of this one. While en route to preschool, bang, out of nowhere, it happened.

Immediate turn around. Clean the kid, get her to bed, clean the car seat, vacuum the car, laundry, laundry, laundry all with sick parents. Playing with the kid and spending time being beat at Candy Land is the fun part. These incidents are where we earn our stripes. It reminds us of the utopia of boredom, we cut our time in pergatory, we're less queasy in most situations that used to shock us; years later we laugh at it while still feeling stabbed by the pain. Let's hope it passes fast.

Wish I could've taken the bullet on this one Hon.

Hiyaaah! Dave "meets" and interviews the Black Belt Mama

The mighty funny Neilochka of Citizen of the Month has launched a chunk of blogger fun called the Great Interview Experiment. Every person commenting (interviewer) on that post will interview the next commenter (interviewee). The series of answered questions, when finished and edited, will be published on the interviewee's blog.

My interviewee is Black Belt Mama. A Mom Blogger. A tough as nails Mom blogger. From the limited amount I've read she's got kids, she works the equivalent of 3 full time jobs as a freelance writer, she has a brown belt in more martial arts sub disciplines than I can pronounce and she's not afraid to nurse in public. A strong woman indeed. I'm currently crafting some questions about her, her blog and her future online directions. I'm hoping the questions will be up to her literary standards (or else??..). The rules dictate she publish the final interview in her blog.

The interview is posted.

I have not heard yet from the person interviewing me. Keep you posted.

yay!

In which I ponder another's professional life

Marketplace Money on NPR runs a "Day in the Life" segment that I find fascinating. Ever since I had the desire to stick knives in my phd advisor's eyes, I've created a hobby of thinking about the professional life of others.

In today's segment, we look into the life of an advertising/marketing executive. His task, the back panel of the Kix cereal box.

06:00 am Wakes up, showers, walks the dog, prepares breakfast for the kids, wife and they all sit about the breakfast table. He and his kids are munching on Rice Krispies. A captive audience, they ponder the cereal box and talk about their upcoming day. He thinks the back panel of the Rice Krispies is boring; he suspects his upcoming day working for the man will be equally lame, but forges on. He gives the family hugs and kisses and they all go off.

07:00 am He gets to work, drinks lots of coffee and surfs the web.
10:00 am Meeting. His Boss shows them a box of Kix and describes the specifications of the assignment. "These puffy balls of ... rice or something need to excite the kids and adults eating them and they need to buy them again when faced with that daunting aisle at the supermarket. Make it happen." The man leaves his minions to do the job. The man surfs the web while he waits for the creative process to finish.

Our exec sighs a bit, stares at his wallet sized medical insurance card family picture and goes off to design a cereal box panel. He figures it's too expensive to equip each box with a flat panel. All hope of engaging the kid is abandoned. The target of this campaign is the parent. Being in his 30's, our exec is beginning to realize a diet of McDonald's may be deadly, so, nutrition must be a significant factor in the choice of a breakfast cereal. Hmmm.

First the text. Googling "whole grain" pulls up several million results featuring that term. He's heard it a lot too and figures the phrase "whole grain" should be used on the back panel - 35 or so times.

Now the images. Time for brainstorming. "Say whatever comes to mind gang!" The coffee's kicking in. He believes others in the meeting are paying attention. Vitality, manly, happy families, children with energy, puppies, fidelity, fields of grain, virility, kids that are happy, ADD happy, pooping regularly, kids pooping regularly, diversity, ... He's got it. A simple approach. An image depicting maternal love. Timeless. And, we'll wrap some text around it. With goofy multi-colored happy fonts. All kids like purple. Use it. With the phrase "whole grain" included. Lots. There. Launch the campaign.

10:30 am His underlings go off and do the art and copy. He'll proof the copy next week. He surfs the web until 5.

wicked cold

Proof: Nature wins.

The definitive piece of evidence emerged last night; Nature wins.

We were invited to a birthday party at the infamous Chuck E. Cheese (aka CEC for the in-crowd) on 161 in Dublin last night. something strange happened. It was a wonderful party, but fascinating. CEC serves up ample quantities of sugar and fat in varied but edible forms. They also post on their menu "BEER." Before walking in, I heard this and thought it was funny. Turns out, there could have Trappist Monks serving Orval on tap and it wouldn't taste any different than BEER. When you walk in the door, you are hit with a pulsating barrage of blinky lights, a large animatronic rat, flat panels galore, electronic games, climbing structures, rides, colors, blinky lights and really loud, really old cover tunes sung by really mediocre cover bands.

I'm sitting there stunned and overwhelmed and barely aware of any of my senses (except sight). This place fits every parent's most frightening stereotype of what they don't want for their kids.

Then, Frankie all but exploded.

She has never enjoyed herself more. I believe she thought it was better than xmas and Halloween combined! And, she's a pretty happy kid to begin with. The fascinating thing to me? No matter how hard we try as parents, the kids are who they are.

Q.E.D.

Social Networks - Safe?

I've been thinking a lot about social networking sites lately. How can you surf the web and not stumble over them continuously? I graduated from Revere High School and went hunting for classmates that may have stumbled into the time-sucking portal called facebook. Of course I didn't find any, they're all busy raising kids, going to daycare, school, work, soccer and commuting in the suicidal driving capital of the world, Boston.

I did however come across this lucky lad. Jason is apparently popular with the ladies as this photo demonstrates quite clearly. What's going to happen when HR switches from viewing humdrum resumes to viewing profiles on facebook? Will they swoon as these ladies do over the irresistible Jason? Poke him? Will they experience a flashback of all the asshole Jasons who tortured them in high school and slip Jason's resume ... somewhere else?

Obviously, Jason will replace this image the night before he interviews (if he's not drunk), but what else lurks in his online repertoire of nifty photos that he may have created when, oh, slightly cognitively impaired?

Scary world. Job figures suck these days and maybe I'm too old, but "smooth with the ladies" isn't too marketable.

wiki or blog?

Given about 10 people who would like to post daily topics (or several times a day), comment on these topics and add some notes to the topic of discussion; a group communication tool, what's better - a wiki or blog. It has to be searchable, have categories, ... more later
An interesting comparison.