I have gained and lost the same 20 lbs several times over the last 8 years, and I am sick of it.
I need to be working towards something fun and interesting, or at least a concrete challenge. And I need a buddy, or a buddy group.
Possibilities:
We are at one of those bad stages of unpacking, where you feel like you’ve been working on it forever and you still are barely halfway done, if that. There are nice moments, like finding the framed wedding pictures that have been in boxes with useless labels like, “living room,” for 2 years. But mostly it is exhausting.
Partly as a result of working on the inside of the house, I’ve been almost completely ignoring the jungle yard. My biggest accomplishment over the summer was to clear a 5′ wide path through the raised beds, to the raspberries. My ignoring the yard means that my cleared 25 square feet or so is now 4′ tall weeds. And without the promise of raspberries, I’m finding it harder and harder to get motivated.
We also got back an estimate for the massive insulation project that was recommended by the home energy auditor. It came in a few dollars short of $10,000. Ha! Sure. We’d love to. Right after winning the lottery. Do you have a cellulose blower I can borrow? How hard can it be?
At least the roof and the paint look fabulous. And the alarm system doesn’t annoy me as much as I worried that it would.
As I emerge from more than a week of the insane chaos of packing, moving, and unpacking — including the 50% of our stuff that has been in storage for 2 years, since we put our Atlanta house on the market — I’ve begun fantasizing about my upcoming trip to NYC.
I leave TOMORROW! Alone!
I’m going for BlogHer and BlogHer Business, and also for my niece Hailey’s Simchat Bat.
When I read Susan Getgood’s great post about what events and panels she’s planning to attend, and why, I got inspired.
Here are my plans:
Wednesday, 8/4: Arrive in the late afternoon and find my way into the city. Evening with my sister, BIL, nephew, and niece.
Thursday, 8/5: BlogHer Business. I’ll be attending the full conference, starting with breakfast from 8-9, continuing through the Thank You reception at 6:30pm. The panel I am on is The FTC Guides, One Year Later, which is one of the breakout sessions at 1:30 pm. My co-panelists are an amazing group of women: BlogHer’s co-founder and COO, Elisa Camahort Page, Stacey Ferguson from the FTC, and WOMMA’s Executive Director, Kristen Smith. In the next session, I think I’ll be going to the panel Parenting Magazine Presents: Is Your Messaging to Moms Outdated?
At some point, I’ll also be sneaking out to connect with my BlogHer roomie, Julia of Support for Special Needs.
In the evening, I’ll also be attending the Queerosphere party!
Friday, 8/6: BlogHer Day 1
6:30 am: Cheering at the 5K Tutus for Tanner event. With a children’s tutu on my head as a hat. Probably a violet one, but possibly iridescent lavender. This tells you how much I admire and adore HerBadMother.
7:15 am (-ish): Breakfast with the Sprout Band of Bloggers (invitational event).
There are 3 awesome looking sessions in the morning, so I will probably be sneaking in and out.
In the afternoon, I’m torn too. I have no idea what I’ll be at in the first session, but in the 2:45 – 4pm, I will probably go to the Writing Lab session on Layout.
Friday evening, dinner with the extended family in town for Hailey’s Simchat Bat. We’ll see about parties etc. I have no specific plans and will probably crash.
Saturday, 8/7: BlogHer Day 2
8 – 9 am: Breakfast at BlogHer. Smith alumnae meetup at the breakfast area? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
10 am, Simchat Bat for Hailey, followed by lunch at my sister’s.
Noon: Susan Getgood will be doing a book signing for her new book, Professional Blogging for Dummies. Congratulations, Susan! I want a signed book. If I don’t make it back from lunch in time, I’ll try to track Susan down for the autograph later.
1:30 – 2:45: The Writing Lab “Publishing Ecosystem” session with Penny Sansevieri and other great women (but I’ve spoken with Penny previously, and she is a huge part of the draw).
Edited to add: Or possibly the “Personal: Grief, Loss, Tragedy, and Community on the Internet” panel featuring the awesome and inspiring Cecily Kellogg, whom I adore. If anyone can make that topic also funny, it will be Cecily. And I’ll bet that lots and lots of the infertility/pregnancy loss bloggers I know and love will be there, too.
(I have enormously mixed feelings about the topic. I still feel some residual guilt over being a worse blog reader, and over being one of the people who drove up Bri’s stats in the immediate aftermath of her miscarriage. Until Cecily told me she was on this panel, I hadn’t even clicked on the description. But the whole group is very impressive and dynamic, AND I am a big believer in supporting your friends whenever possible.)
3-4:15: Geek Lab, building and tweaking WordPress Themes. I need to figure out how to update this blog’s look and feel.
Closing keynote.
Dinner – hopefully Indian
Parties: Sparklecorn and Green Affair. I never did get off of the Blogalicious waiting list, I’m sad to say.
Sunday, 8/8:
Possible breakfast gatherings with LesbianDad and other BlogHerQueers, and/or the Stirrup Queens, and/or an IVP gathering.
Home again, home again, jiggity jig.
Most of you who know me in a day to day way have heard my big news already, but word is trickling out in a semi-random fashion to the rest of the world.
No, we’re not having another baby.
I’m starting a Ph.D. program this fall!
The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee has a terrific School of Information Studies, and the school’s doctoral program offers a concentration in Information Policy. Those of you who know me professionally know that information policy is exactly what I am most interested in, especially as it relates to issues of privacy, security, and social media.
The prospect of teaching Information Policy means that eventually, hopefully, I will have a job where I think and write about the things I find most interesting, without the problem of needing to find clients to address their problems or confusion in this area.
In the shorter term, I’ll be working as a research assistant to Dr. Sandra Braman, analyzing how privacy was (and was not) designed into the architecture of the Internet, at least insofar as those choices were documented in the official design standards documents known as The RFCs. (The project looks at all law and public policy issues that arise in the standards process; my focus is privacy.)
We’ve been working on the first 10 years of the process so far, but there are thousands of additional documents as the RFC process continues to be the way that Internet design decisions are made. Rumor has it that I will also be working for other faculty, but I have yet to hear anything concrete; I’ve been working with Sandra since February.
My law practice will continue. It has never quite made it to the status of a full time job, although I have had the good fortune to work with some terrific clients, and I will continue to work on appropriate projects as they come up. But I will no longer be “beating the bushes” trying to turn it into a full-time practice.
We move tomorrow! We move tomorrow!
We are so ready to be homeowners again. This apartment, while the right short term choice, doesn’t work well for our family. And it has some plumbing and electrical quirks that we will not miss at all, not in the slightest, teeniest bit.
Nor will we miss duplex living. Our original neighbors were very, very quiet. In fact, we heard them more when they were out of town, because the relative who dogsat for them was not as good at keeping the dog from barking, and he liked the tv louder than they did. Their replacements are also very nice, and pretty quiet, but we hear them and their dog anyway.
I do not promise to have no complaints about the new house, and I promise to continue venting about the challenges of getting the jungle under control. But I could not possibly be more excited to get into a home of our own again. No one tramping around above us! No one we have to call to get them to call the plumber! Paint colors of our own choosing! No more rug underneath the table where we eat!
(And indeed, that rug will be thrown in the trash. I never liked it, and now it has 1.5 years of Noah’s and Josie’s un-vacuum-upable food particles ground into it. But the chairs and table have presumably done no damage to the delicate hardwood floor below.)
Josie’s last scream of waking up in this house. (She spends tonight at Grandma & Grandpa’s.) Must go.
I was not going to go to BlogHer this year.
Not because I lack love for BlogHer — I love it, I’ve had a blast every time I’ve gone, I’ve made or improved friendships, learned new things, tried new things, and generally wished that it would go on about 3 more days.
No, this year, I wasn’t going to go because it wasn’t really in the budget, and it also falls the weekend before Jill’s birthday.
Then the wonderful BlogHers asked me to speak at BlogHer Business 10. And that does change things. My co-panelists and I had a great discussion today, and I am confident that the presentation will be lively, informative, and fun.
Now that I’m going, I’m getting SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO excited. More friends, more learning, more new blogs, more fun in NYC, more time to spend with awesome blogospheric friends.
In a wonderful moment of the universe aligning, that weekend will also be my infant niece Hailey’s Simchat Bat. BlogHers and public speaking AND family celebrations! And being without my own small children waking me up at 5 am. I couldn’t be more excited.
(I just wish I weren’t also trying to pack, move, and unpack between now and then. Then being in 2 weeks.)
See those dark circles? The ones under my eyes? They are likely to get worse before they get better, given everything still on the list to sort out between now and when I leave for BlogHer and BlogHer Business FOUR WEEKS from yesterday. That’s in 27 days, for those of you counting.
Professional Items:
Personal Items:
Um. I think I should get off the computer.
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