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Perhaps you’ve heard of the TLC show, Jon and Kate Plus 8? If not, perhaps I could come and live with you – your life sounds lovely.
Jon and Kate Plus 8 is a reality show, based on a family with two sets of mutliples – sextuplets and twins. Mimi is obsessed with this show and can’t understand why I don’t want to sit with her and watch an entire Saturday marathon of episodes (hint: it has something to do with all the screaming, crying and whining). I can take it in small doses though (the kids are kinda cute), so the other morning we were watching and suddenly Jon says he has a little work to do before he can go outside with the kids. They show him going over to the computer and pulling up the website for Allstate Insurance. Throughout this sequence, his voiceover is saying something about how his Allstate Agent wanted him to check some things out on the website. The Allstate website. Where you can get all kinds of helpful information about Allstate insurance for times when you need insurance for some stuff. Allstate.
I was laughing to myself about what a lame attempt at product placement that was when Mimi says, “Hey, mom, do we have an Allstate agent?” I’m glad she spoke up because I would have let the moment pass without pointing out how products are imbedded into programming all the time. We had a little discussion about whether Jon really needed to “do some work,” or if he was just trying to call attention to a company that is likely paying money to get him to do so. We came up with a few other more obvious instances (judges drink Coke on American Idol) and she decided it’s a fun game – sniffing out the product placement.
For now she’s looking mostly at visual images – we didn’t get into how entire scripts are written around products, because cynisism is unbecoming in a seven-year-old.
Last Friday I gave a presentation in front of about 30 people. I generally make it a habit to not prepare for presentations like these. I’ve always believed that I’m at my best when I just wing it. Completely illogical, but oh-so-convenient. This time, I decided to inconvenience myself and actually prepare what I wanted to say. I put together a little powerpoint presentation and outlined some important points on a scrap piece of paper. When I got the the hotel, I practiced my talk out loud in my room and even went to bed early. The result?
I sucked. Not completely, and not spectacularly, but I sucked nonetheless. It wasn’t that I didn’t know my stuff or that I wasn’t excited about talking about it, it was that I felt extreme pressure for having practiced in the first place. Normally I can say to myself, oh well, that was pretty good for winging it. This time, no such luck.
One good thing is now that I’ve actually tried to do well, and didn’t succeed to the point I had hoped, I’m determined to do better. While I was prepping for my talk, I found a really cool site called Presentation Zen, written by Garr Reynolds. He’s got a lot of really good content, including presentation tips broken out under:
Organization and Prep Tips
Delivery Tips
Slide Tips
It’s too late for me this time, but you can be sure I’ll use these tips for my next presentation.
Seems like every year it happens. I wait all winter for that perfect Spring Day, anxiously wondering when it will appear. I imagine the sunny warmth and all it will allow us to do; take a bike ride, play some ball, even rake the leaves that we didn’t get to last fall. The neighbors talk and laugh in little circles next to the street. I’ll take a run down to the park and then take the kids to get ice cream.
Except I can’t, because the kids are fighting.
I’ll just go to the store for a few things and when I get back they’ll be over it and we can get on with our day.
Except we can’t, because I end up at Urgent Care believing that I have burst appendix.
While I wait to get in, I’ll take these 6 ibuprofen just in case, somehow, these are only the worst menstrual cramps I’ve ever had in my life. Huh. Turns out they must be, since the pills seem to be working, so I can just slink out of here and get on with my day.
Except I can’t, because the doctor wants to see me now and tell me what an idiot I am for mistaking menstrual cramps for something life threatening, and how it couldn’t possibly have hurt as much as labor contractions (as I had described it).
I finally make it home with $100 of spoiled food in the trunk (there goes the cookout!), and find that the kids have been fighting so much, husband will not play or talk to them at all. Plus, he’s a little shaken (you see, I had called him on the harrowing drive to Urgent Care – you know, to say goodbye and I love you and it’s okay to remarry and move on with life – just don’t do it too quickly or people will talk).
He makes me a bed on the couch and I ask him to pull the curtains open so I can spy on the neighbors talking outside. I can’t wait for the first day of summer.
I held my eyelids up with toothpicks last night to watch this interview (yes, 11pm is late for me!). John Stewart is my unlikely hero for critical thinking and media literacy in today’s digital cluster#%@$. I don’t watch cable news anymore and really haven’t for years. It’s infuriating, and no one can express my frustration better than John Stewart. Though this interview is anything but funny – he said what needed to be said to Jim Cramer (Mad Money) and CNBC. If I taught high school, my kids would create their own Daily Show. Hmm…maybe I’ll ask my 5 and 7 year-old if they want to make a video about all the injustices they suffer under Parental Rule.
more about “John Stewart, You Complete Me“, posted with vodpod
I’m not really springing forward so much as crawling along at a snails pace. It’s amazing the difference one lost hour makes when every second counts. It’ll take about a week of me constantly calculating what time it really is, before I become resigned to this inevitability. Until then, sigh….
