Room to Think

You know, it's pretty impressive when you can manage to create a 7 letter word with 5 vowels in it. I don't know about you, but many-voweled words remind me of lost lands in fantasy stories where magic still exists and mystical creatures thrive. I'm probably wrong about this, but I can't be proven wrong until I see for myself. I must visit the Aeolian Islands to find a dragon. or a will-o-the-wisp. or a wizard. or beautiful elusive maidens washing their hair in waterfalls or something. Or maybe I just want to go because of this: and this: and this: So....it's true they're the touristy islands. They're the hot vacation spots. But I think next friday I'll go into more detail about which island holds which secrets...should be fun.  =) But I feel bad for making you read so much yesterday, so this post is strictly for looking. Happy Florence Friday!

So apparently I really need to work on keeping promises. I keep telling you "I'll follow-up on this post tomorrow"...and I never do! Not in reference to the "tomorrow" bit, anyway. I do try to finish them eventually . Usually it's before my next blog day. That's why I end up with so many TEDtalk Thursdays, I think. Wednesdays are just so busy! Turns out that my new schedule makes Thursdays busy, too.  hmm...Oh well. 3am on a Friday is still Thursday to me, as you all well know! Last night I introduced you to Tim Leberecht, a marketing guru who is used to a certain degree of chaos. Every time I listen to the video, I swear he says that he works for a company called "Frog", where one of their "giving employees more control" exercises is speed dating all the old and new employees together. **I do hope you noticed that his talk is under 7 minutes long. I also hope this means that you actually did watch it.  =D With my new inte...

Happy Tuesday! I'm certainly happy. It was a good day at the new internship, and I only had to sit in traffic for an hour in trade for 3 glorious hours of hardcore volleyball. I haven't played at that level in a long time. I'm positive the endorphins are still flowing. It's also been a long time since I've hurt as much as I know I will in the morning. So in favor of stretching and sleep, I'm going to make this a two-part TEDtalk Tuesday/Wednesday-- just give you the TEDtalk tonight, and continue the discussion tomorrow. Hope you're all right with that. I'm going to go do yoga now before the tendon in my knee decides it's never going to stretch back out again. See you in the morning! P.S. This guy's name is Tim Leberecht. He's a marketing guy. I'm trying something new this week and posting a business talk, instead of my usual technology-psychology-design-video game topics. It's less than 7 minutes long, and full of pictures.  =...

Hey-o! This is my first post of the new year and I'm attempting to get used to a "working person's" schedule. [read: getting up at zombie hours of the morning, rushing through the beautification process, skipping breakfast, scraping the frost off my car, stressing out while I wait for it to heat up, and waiting in an hour of traffic just to get to work on time. After work, I wait in traffic to get home, enjoy what little free time I have between all the activities we have going on, and go to bed at grandma hours of the evening, just to do it all over again...all for unpaid experience and a shot at a really fun job.  >.<  I'm a sucker, yet again.] It's 11:30pm on the first Friday of 2013.  (yeah, I typed 2012 first.  I hate getting used to new dates!) and there's a strong possibility I'll be getting up early (read: 5am...that's BEFORE zombie hours!) to attend one of FIRST Robotics' Kickoff sessions. I've never been to one, and cu...

This lovely lady's name is Jane McGonigal. She's a game designer who has spoken at TED conferences before, but recently had a pretty bad experience with brain trauma.  I like her particularly because she starts off her talk letting us know that she plays her life as a game. She's a gamer I relate particularly well to. She likes goals. She likes secret missions and side objectives (the side objectives are my favorite. I often play those before I even get to the main storyline). And she treats this talk the same way. Her goal is to extend our lifespan by 7.6 minutes. The only downside of this goal is its measurability...but it's a nice way to begin a talk.   For now, I'm just going to post the talk...seeing as it's 1am already. I'll do a follow-up either tomorrow or the next day(eek! double post on Friday!), but this week has really been a busy one. So, I'm treating it like a game, and hitting as many objectives as I can without skipping a...

So...this post is about awesome friends. Mostly because I got the content from this post from an awesome, awesome friend of mine, who also happens to enjoy daydreaming about Italy. Except that he wants to go back to live there...I think I only want an extended stay. He sent me this link the other day. 100 Things to Know if You're Going to Italy click on it. It's gigantic for a reason. You know you want to. I haven't gotten through the whole list yet, but #84 has pretty much established that I'm not going to be marrying an Italian man. I'm also probably not going to get married in Italy. "#84: Purple being the color of Lent, it is considered a color that brings bad luck. Avoid the darker purple hues for evenings at the theatre, and it's definitely a forbidden color at weddings!" Evidently, I need to brush up on my Catholic "What Not To Wear". A few of my awesome friends over here would be stunned  if I didn't have purple ...

Fun Fact: The ancient Greeks used to have spoken word poetry a sport in their Olympic games. As an English major, I never took the chance to really study spoken word poetry...sometimes known as slam poetry, or performance poetry. But even that's not quite right. Spoken word poetry really means that you're breathing life into the words on a page. I always appreciated spoken word--I loved watching poetry slams. But since I never considered myself "good at poetry", I tended to steer away from the classes I had a hunch I wouldn't do well in. That means I missed out on some pretty badass classes. Those poets know how to express themselves. They know how to connect.  They know how to make their listeners feel. "If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom", she's gonna call me "Point B." Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I'm going to paint the solar system on...