Oct
30
Mobility is a fearsome thing
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October 30, 2006
Well, I didn’t have a chance to ask you what your weekend plans were before the weekend actually happened, and I totally missed hearing about what you had going on. My own weekend was pretty low key, as I mentioned we had hoped for a babysitter on Saturday night but that didn’t pan out, so we sat around and watched Mission Impossible 3, a movie which begs the question, how does Ethan Hunt know which self-destructing message-bearing items can be passively held while they poof into a harmless cloud of smoke, and which need to be tossed vigorously aside before they detonate in a skin-melting ball of flames?
We visited a Blockbuster with Riley yesterday in order to collect at least one horror movie for Halloween night, and for the first time out in public, we put him down and he walked next to us. It was sort of wonderful and sweet for about one hot second, then it rapidly became a nightmare as he yanked his hand away and began reeling happily around the store like a tiny shitfaced Frankenstein, wanting to grab everything and resisting our attempts to corral him with furious, head-turning howls. I wished mightily for a tranquilizer gun loaded with toddler-dropping ammo, but all I could do was try and minimize the chaos until we got him back into the car, where JB and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, “Oh shit.”
Back in the good old days, like two weeks ago, when Riley was just starting to toddle around the house, I took some video because it was so incredible and exciting and who knew that I was going to rue the day he took his first step. RUUUUUE.
Here’s a short montage of a few different clips:
Ah, happier times, before my son was mobile enough to trample an entire video store.
Okay, so get me all caught up, will you? What did you do over the weekend?
Oct
28
Real, not Memorex
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October 28, 2006
Metrics paradigm web 2.0 social user-generated platform lightweight dialogue media integrity brand influence content audience keyword search comment SEO optimize community aggregator feed engage commercial personal post blogosphere blog blog blog blog blog BLOG.
I have just summed up the blogging conference I went to on Thursday and Friday, except if you were actually at the conference, there were also lots of those mini-sized cans of Diet Coke and chocolate muffins. Which provided sort of a 1998-era vibe, but with reflective logos and – in comparison – at least some measure of restraint, revenue-model-prediction-wise.
It was a good conference overall, not every session did it for me but the majority of them were interesting and led by some very smart people. Oh! And I got to use my laptop the whole time, just like every other attendee (I think a lot of people were busily blogging the blog conference, which makes me think of those wooden dolls that are inside of bigger wooden dolls with smaller wooden dolls inside of them, you know what I mean?). There I was for two days, surfing the Bell Harbor’s wireless whatsit (series of tubes?) and listening to fancypants jargon. While drinking eentsy adorable cans of Diet Coke. Let me tell you, 48 hours of sitting on your ass power-guzzling carbonated beverages will cause some serious bloat.
Aaaaaanyway, the extra awesome part was that I got to meet Kristin and Mona:
(I stole this photo from Kristin’s site. A very nice young man who was far too fabulous for the coat check type job he seemed to be working took our picture. I’m clenching my own arm in that odd, Ari-from-Entourage-pantomiming-fisting way because I never know what to do with my hands when someone’s pointing a camera in my direction and I like to broadcast my awkwardness with as many uncomfortable physical gestures as possible. I’d apologize for my lank, crappy hair and my frumptastic outfit, especially as compared to the spiffily dressed, shiny-coiffed chicas on either side of me, but I think we can all agree this paranthetical has gone on long enough.)
I’m always hideously nervous about meeting people in person because it’s so much easier to hide behind a computer screen where I have a better chance at not stuttering or having food stuck in my teeth or sporting what appears to be a wig (Jesus, I’m fixated on my hair now, let me say that I had been walking outside where it was really windy and I made the mistake of brushing it afterwards which always causes this post-windblown limp-dick effect), but hanging out with these women was supremely fun and they were both sweet-natured-yet-snarky and downright attractive and I think they forgave me for being kind of a motormouthed doofus who wore a vest to try and cover her Diet Coke Bloat.
In short: squee.
I felt oddly disconnected from home during the conference, despite my ability to obsessively load Flickr images of Riley the whole time, and I was very glad to see my boy on Friday evening.
He looks more and more like some kind of KID these days, as his walking gets better and better (though not without setbacks, today he fell backwards onto his head in the driveway and now has a tiny divot back there from a rock) (also, ten years of my life now GONE, thanks to watching him keel over backwards like that onto the CONCRETE) and he gets bigger and bigger and I think the baby has nearly disappeared.
I took some photos and tried to capture him as my mind’s eye will probably always see him:
He is still my squishy.
We were going to leave Sir Squishy with a babysitter for the first time tonight – one of our favorite teachers from his daycare – but she never got back to us, after initially agreeing to come over. Instead, we’re homebound as usual, but with takeout pho and a Netflix on hand, so life is pretty good.
Plus, did you know Godzilla lives at our house? Because HE DOES:
(Oh, of course I didn’t do the stingray thing. I mean, everyone would think we were copying South Park now. Plus, the Godzilla costume has a button in one of the hands that makes the actual, no-shit Godzilla noise. How awesome is that?)
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