Category: Interesting

Rescue Bots – Theme song lyrics

Gregory has been obsessed with Rescue Bots for a whole year at this point, and it’s actually a pretty good show.

For those of you who are not familiar with the show, Rescue Bots are transformers who transform into a fire truck (Heat Wave), a police car (Chase), a bulldozer (Boulder) and a helicopter (Blades). Whoever came up with this idea knew EXACTLY what 2-3 year olds would LOVE. It is GENIUS. Not to mention the entire collection of merch they have been able to get kids to “need.” I have been a victim of commercialization in this regard, and they are Gregory’s favorite toys. Most recently they came up with DINOBOTS – the same characters now transform into dinosaurs. There is no end to the marketing genius of these ideas!!!

For a while I’ve been coasting singing the theme song, but today I said NO MORE. I will learn these words! So, here they are in their pure glory.

A routine patrol with four Bots in stasis
Years later awoke in the strangest of places
Earth was their home now and in addition
Optimus Prime gave them this mission:

‘Learn from the humans, serve and protect,
Live in their world, earn their respect.
A family of heroes will be your allies,
To others remain robots in disguise.’

Rescue Bots, roll to the rescue,
Humans in need, heroes indeed,
Rescue Bots, roll to the rescue,
Rescue Bots.

With Cody to guide them and show them the way,
Rescue Bots will be saving the day.

Rescue Bots, roll to the rescue, Rescue Bots.

Enjoy!

ina

February 2, 2015
Celebrity look-alike babies

Ok, this was just too cute to pass up.

November 24, 2014
Have I told you lately that I love you?

ina: How long has it been since I told you I love you?
hubby: It’s been a while… (*)
ina: What if I told you I love you tonight?
hubby: That would be nice
ina: Yeah, it would be (walks away)
hubby: (…) Well played.

(*) Disclaimer: I tell my husband I love him almost every day… he was just doing a funny by pretending to be ignorant of this glaringly obvious fact.

January 11, 2014
Cograf Comunicaciones – La historia del Cometa Halley

I’m sorry for non-Spanish speakers. This made me laugh to TEARS. Enjoy!

Cograf Comunicaciones – La historia del Cometa Halley

La siguiente es una de esas típicas situaciones de “incomunicación corporativa”…

El Presidente de la compañía le dice a su Gerente General:

“El lunes próximo, a eso de las siete de la tarde el cometa Halley se hará visible. Es un acontecimiento que ocurre cada 78 años. Reúna a todo el personal en el patio de la fábrica, todos usando casco de seguridad, que allí les explicaremos el fenómeno. Si llueve, este raro espectáculo no podrá ser visto a ojo desnudo, en ese caso entraremos al comedor donde será exhibido un documental sobre ese mismo tema”.

El Gerente General al Jefe de Producción:

“Por orden del presidente, el lunes a las siete aparecerá sobre la fábrica el cometa Halley. Si llueve reúna a los empleados con casco de seguridad y llévelos al comedor, donde tendrá lugar un raro espectáculo, que sucede cada 78 años a ojo desnudo”.

El Jefe de Produccion al Supervisor:

“A pedido de nuestro gerente general, el científico Halley de 78 años, aparecerá desnudo en el comedor de la fábrica usando casco, porque va a ser presentado un documental sobre el problema de la seguridad en días de lluvia”.

El Supervisor a su Asistente:

“Todo el mundo desnudo sin excepción, deberá estar en el patio el lunes a las siete, donde el famoso músico Halley mostrará el vídeo bailando bajo la lluvia. El show se presenta cada 78 años”.

El Asistente a los Empleados:

“El jefe cumple 78 años el lunes y habrá una fiesta en el patio y el comedor con el famoso conjunto Bill Halley y sus cometas. Todo el que quiera, puede ir en bolas, pero usando casco, porque se va a armar una tremenda joda”.

Source: http://www.cograf.com/asesoria/lecturas/cometa.php

ina

December 27, 2013
“5 Signs You’ll Get Cancer” by David Brownstein

Catchy title, ain’t it? Yup, that’s what I thought, too. You see, it was 7pm on a Sunday, baby was down, I had had dinner, my husband was watching Dr Who (a show I have absolutely no interest in), so what is a girl to do? Browse the internet.

Somehow in my click-surfing, I came across this video. Before you invest the 40 minutes the video requires to watch, let me give you some information:
You don’t have to watch it, I summarized my take-aways below. Note, I did not summarize the VIDEO, I summarized the things that caught my eye.
Dr David Brownstein has an impressive list of published books on holistic methods, nutrition and enhancing your immune system. See it here: DrBrownstein.com.
I had to constantly remind myself that he IS trying to sell something, so I had to take every word with a grain of unrefined organic sea salt. Despite his yellow-journalistic and alarmist style, I thought he had some good advice for us all.

Good advice for us all

Don’t smoke. You’re an idiot.
Conventionally trained doctors are not trained on nutrition and prevention of disease, but more to treat them with medication/surgery. Seek holistic doctors that will help you get your immune system back in order naturally.
Iodine good. Bromine bad. Iodine is great for you because it helps cells in your body through their regular life-and-death cycle (so they don’t become cancerous). Avoid bromine, which apparently is in every food known to man. Bromine appears to counter the effects of iodine, so if you’re not getting enough iodine, and on top of that you’re getting bombarded with bromine, you are pretty much screwed.
Red meat doesn’t give you heart disease. Chemicals in red meat are the ones that are bad for you. Only consume certified organic beef, chicken, pork, fish, fruits and vegetables.
White refined sugar is the enemy of the State, while artificial sweeteners are Osama Bin Laden himself. Instead, use pure organic stevia, raw honey, or unrefined cane sugar.
How to eat yogurt. Buy plain yogurt and add natural fruit yourself.
Foods to avoid. white rice, white potatoes, cookies, cakes, chips, all processed food in boxes, bags or cans. Refined flours, oils and salts. Oils: canola, corn, margarine, cottonseed, soybean oils, or anything that says “Partially Hydrogenated” on the label. Salts: table salt.
Foods to eat. oatmeal, nuts, anything made with organic whole grain flours that have not been bromated, yams/sweet potatoes. Oils: organic butter, coconut oil, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil. Salts: organic unrefined sea salt.
Soy is good? Try NOT. Only fermented soy is good (found in miso and tempeh). Everything else is crap.
Get rid of heavy metals in your body. No doctor will test you for this, so you have to find yourself a holistic doctor who will agree. It’s supposed to make a huge difference in your well-being and your well-feeling. Metals to test for: mercury, nickel, arsenic, cadmium, lead and aluminum.
What’s mercury in? albacore tuna, swordfish, shark, mackerel, shellfish.
Watch your vitamins! Most common deficiencies: iodine, vitamin b12, magnesium, vitamin c, vitamin b1, vitamin D, sulfur, zinc, chromium, potassium
The book they were trying to sell you. The Guide to Healthy Eating by Dr David Brownstein.

So what did I get out of this? Well, that most likely I will be getting cancer along with everyone I know, unless I actually make a change. That was pretty much his point, so I guess I owe it to myself to make some adjustments? (I end that sentence with a question because I have not decided to do anything yet) This is just a good jumping off point to start figuring out better ways to nourish myself and my family. What about you?

ina

December 15, 2013

Three Historic Events

This was an eventful weekend in history, and this would not be an opinionated person’s opinion blog if I didn’t weigh in on every single event.

The Royal Wedding of Will & Kate
I woke up at 5:30am on Friday, April 29th, and decided to have breakfast in front of the TV… And there it was: the Royal Wedding was in procession! I got to see the invitees go in, Princes William and Harry arrive and take their places, the much-awaited wedding gown of Kate’s, and the exchange of vows.
The commentators said that this was as close to a fairy tale as we get to see in real life. This made me look at the whole thing with a new set of eyes. It’s so true: the Prince found his Princess in college, had a 9 year relationship, and decided to finally marry when they were both good and ready to say “I do” (or “I will” as they actually did say).
I have full faith in this fairy tale ending for them, and I am sure they will go on to do great things with their new roles in life as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. Congratulations!

Osama bin Laden is dead
Sunday, May 1st, at 11pm EST, President Obama addressed the nation to inform us that Osama bin Laden had been located and killed by US forces. Turns out he wasn’t in a cave at all, but living in a large compound in Pakistan, near a military base.
I cheer with Americans for this long awaited triumph over one of the lords of al-Qaeda.
This is a great moment for the world and says a lot about Obama’s presidency. On the flip side, the fight is not over. Osama bin Laden gave terrorism a new life, and the movement expands beyond himself. I see this event as (hopefully) a pivotal point in the fight against world terrorism, but there is still much more to be done.

My 30th Birthday
Lastly, on April 30th, I turned 30! It was a great weekend full of celebration with friends, Facebook messages, phone calls, hallmark cards and presents.
All through my 20s I dreaded turning 30. That was the end of life as I knew it. What can I say, Sex and the City makes you feel like life after 30 is spent wishing you were 20 again. But then I started thinking: ten years ago I had NO IDEA what my life was going to be like, I had not met 99% of the friends I have now, and I had not met my husband. Think about it: 10 years is a really long time to do something with your life!
All I have to say is that I couldn’t have asked for a better way to spend my first day of a new decade. I feel renewed and very much alive! I love happy beginnings! “I’ll do it better in my next 30 years” 🙂

I’ll leave you with this 30th bday song by Tim McGraw (man, there’s a song for everything, isn’t there?)

Youtube video with lyrics:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoR78-PomKc]

My Next Thirty Years

Tim McGraw
Performed by Tim McGraw

I think I’ll take a moment, celebrate my age
The ending of an era and the turning of a page
Now it’s time to focus in on where I go from here
Lord have mercy on my next thirty years

In my next thirty years, I’m gonna have some fun
Try to forget about all the crazy things I’ve done
Maybe now I’ve conquered all my adolescent fears
And I’ll do it better in my next thirty years

My next thirty years I’m gonna settle all the scores
Cry a little less, laugh a little more
Find a world of happiness without the hate and fear
Figure out just what I’m doing here
In my next thirty years

Oh my next thirty years, I’m gonna watch my weight
Eat a few more salads and not stay up so late
Drink a little lemonade and not so many beers
Maybe I’ll remember my next thirty years

My next thirty years will be the best years of my life
Raise a little family and hang out with my wife
Spend precious moments with the ones that I hold dear
Make up for lost time here
In my next thirty years

In my next thirty years

ina

May 2, 2011

Answers to GED by 16 yr olds

I don’t know if these are real, and I don’t really care. These are FUNNY! 🙂 Enjoy 🙂

The comments in blue are side notes made by someone out there along the way. I thought they were funny, so I kept them in.

ina

— Original Message —

The following questions were set in last year’s GED examination
These are genuine answers (from 16 year olds)………… and they WILL breed.

Q. Name the four seasons
A. Salt, pepper, mustard and vinegar

Q. Explain one of the processes by which water can be made safe to drink
A. Flirtation makes water safe to drink because it removes large pollutants like grit, sand, dead sheep and canoeists

Q. How is dew formed?
A. The sun shines down on the leaves and makes them perspire

Q. What causes the tides in the oceans?
A. The tides are a fight between the earth and the moon. All water tends to flow towards the moon, because there is no water on the moon, and nature abhors a vacuum. I forget where the sun joins the fight.

Q. What guarantees may a mortgage company insist on?
A. If you are buying a house they will insist that you are well endowed

Q. In a democratic society, how important are elections?
A. Very important. Sex can only happen when a male gets an election

Q. What are steroids?
A. Things for keeping carpets still on the stairs

(Shoot yourself now , there is little hope)

Q. What happens to your body as you age?
A. When you get old, so do your bowels and you get intercontinental

Q. What happens to a boy when he reaches puberty?
A. He says goodbye to his boyhood and looks forward to his adultery

(So true)

Q. Name a major disease associated with cigarettes
A. Premature death

Q. What is artificial insemination?
A. When the farmer does it to the bull instead of the cow

Q. How can you delay milk turning sour?
A. Keep it in the cow

(Simple, but brilliant)

Q. How are the main 20 parts of the body categorised (e.g. The abdomen)?
A. The body is consisted into 3 parts – the brainium, the borax and the abdominal cavity. The brainium contains the brain, the borax contains the heart and lungs and the abdominal cavity contains the five bowels: A, E, I, O, U

Q. What is the fibula?
A. A small lie

Q. What does ‘varicose’ mean?
A. Nearby

Q. What is the most common form of birth control
A. Most people prevent contraception by wearing a condominium

(That would work)

Q. Give the meaning of the term ‘Caesarean section’
A. The caesarean section is a district in Rome

Q. What is a seizure?
A. A Roman Emperor.

(Julius Seizure, I came, I saw, I had a fit)

Q. What is a terminal illness?
A. When you are sick at the airport.

(Irrefutable)

Q. Give an example of a fungus. What is a characteristic feature?
A. Mushrooms. They always grow in damp places and they look like umbrellas

Q. Use the word ‘judicious’ in a sentence to show you understand its meaning
A. Hands that judicious can be soft as your face.

Q. What does the word ‘benign’ mean?
A. Benign is what you will be after you be eight

(brilliant)

Q. What is a turbine?
A. Something an Arab or Shreik wears on his head

— End of Message —

April 28, 2011

Cállate y vente pa’ca

I got this as a forward message from my mother, and I think it’s fabulous.
Sorry to those non-Spanish speakers… there is no translation in any sense of the word. You’d have to have lived in Chávez’s Venezuela to even grasp the references.
Enjoy.

(if someone out there knows the origin of this text, please leave a comment with the original link. Thanks!)

ina

Post-post: I found the blog of the author. Here it is: The King Alan Brito Oxidao

Callate y vente pa’ca
por Alan Brito Oxidao

Yo no sé qué es lo que se ha creido Hugo Chávez. Que valiente. Que bravo. Criticar todo el día al imperialismo yankee desde un micrófono. Claro, la comodidad del palacio presidencial te lo permite. Así cualquiera se despepitaría hablando todo un santo día.

¿Porqué no te vienes para acá a denigrar sobre el capitalismo?
Vente a sufrir con uno en carne propia lo que es el capitalismo salvaje, para que sepas y descubras lo que es tener que salir de la casa en busca de comida y encontrarla sin problemas. Para que sientas en lo mas profundo de tu ser lo que siginifica tener que vivir toda la vida sin rejas. Para que sufras todas las noches como nosotros lo hacemos cuando tenemos que ir a dormir sin tener que pasarle el seguro a las puertas. Aquí tiene uno que vivir bajo la angustia de poder dejar la puerta del garaje abierta y arriesgarse a que nadie te robe nada del garage. Ni siquiera una bicicleta nueva. Nojoda! que bicicleta?……equipos de golf y de pesca.

Yo no sé si tú te has enterado Hugo, pero aquí uno vive traumatizado con la facilidad para adquirir los bienes. En esta vaina se consigue de todo a toda hora todos los días del año. No como ustedes allá que no tienen un carajo y son felices.

Desde Venezuela es muy fácil criticar Hugo. ¿a quién no le gustaría vivir en la revolución? Por eso es que se les hace fácil criticar. Vengan a sentir en sus bolsillos lo que es el capitalismo salvaje. Vengan a sentir de cerca lo que es mantener la piscina limpia y los jardines con flores y pajaritos. ¿quién créen ustedes que le dá de comer a las ardillas y a los pajaritos salvajes todos los sábados? Ni de vaina se calan ustedes esa maraca ¿verdad? Que bolas…..¿ustedes saben lo que es ir a una playa y tener que dejar las ventanas del carro abiertas y que nadie te robe los CD’s? No ¿verdad? Bueno, esa es nuestra tragedia aquí. Eso es lo que tenemos que calarnos nosotros los que en mala hora abandonamos nuestro paraiso venezolano. Y eso no es nada, la vaina se pone peor.

Hace unos días una amiga salió de compras y dejó el carro encendido y de ñapa, con el aire acondicionado a todo dar. SORPRESA!!!….al regresar el carro todavía estaba allí, y de paso, con el volante mas frío que mojón de pinguino. Por mala leche para ella nadie se atrevió a robárselo. A la pobre por poco le dá una vaina cuando vió que el carro todavía estaba donde lo había dejado. Si no hubiera sido por un par de atracadores que al verla sufriendo y toda desesperada, la ayudaron, a lo mejor le hubiera dado un ataque de…..coño, no sé….. de lechina rusa o algo así. Esas son las vainas que los ustedes los revolucionarios no tienen que sufrir. Nosotros en cambio, nos calamos esta vaina todos los días aquí en este maldito imperialismo.

Ahhhh! y otra cosa….ni se les ocurra salir a comprar café o tomates, coño porque es que los consigues en cualquier parte a cualquier hora. Que arrechera. Pero ustedes critican porque tienen la papa pelada. A ustedes les acaparan las vainas y después se las venden cuando ya están vencidas, podridas, verdes, con moho, con bacterias jugando dominó, etc, etc, y uno aquí tiene que calarse esta vaina de la comida fresca a juro. Que bolas! Vénganse pa’cá a calarse este sufriemiento con nosotros nojoda, envez de estar despotricando gratuitamente del capitalismo salvaje que nos está matando de felicidad.

Dígame el transporte, la vivienda y los bienes. Ese es otro peo mas que tiene uno que sufrir en esta vaina. Aquí todo el mundo tiene mas de dos carros, mas de dos casas, mas de cinco televisores, tarjetas de crédito a patadas por ese culo, lavadoras, secadoras, lancha, motorhome, etc, etc. Toda una locura este imperialismo salvaje. ¿quién en su sano juicio podría tolerar esta calamidad sin volverse loco? NADIE!!

Yo invito a todos los camaradas revolucionarios para que se vengan a ver los toros aquí en el ruedo y no desde la barrera. Vengan a sufrir con nosotros y a ayúdarnos a acabar con este gobierno imperialista que ni siquiera sabe lo que está pasando en mi urbanización. Me dá arrechera conseguir una biblioteca cada ocho cuadras, en donde gente de todas las edades, principalmente los carajitos que…… pobrecitos, no tienen la culpa de esta vaina, tienen acceso gratis a cualquier libro o video disponible. Esa vaina no se le hace a nadie. Y si son canchas deportivas, coño….ya vengo….voy a vomitar.

Que arrechera! Me cayó mal pensar en canchas deportivas. Pero buah! que carajo. Así se sufre en esta vaina. Y les agradezco una vaina, no me pregunten por los hospitales…de eso mejor ni hablemos. Como extraño Barrio Adentro.Por eso es que me arrecha tanto la criticadera; porque ustedes tienen las vainas papayita allá y uno aquí calándose esta vaina todo despreocupado y sin tormentos. No como ustedes, afortunados de mierda!

A los apoyan la revolución, e inclusive, hasta los bolsas de la oposición que tanto se quejan en Noticiero Digital, los invito a que vengan a ver como se sufre en esta vaina. Criticar desde Venezuela donde no hay un carajo de nada, es muy fácil. Vengan a joderse aquí con nosotros, donde hay de todo y para todos. ¿o acaso ustedes créen que eso de tener que vivir sin tragar humo de autobuses o de bombas lacrimógenas (en chavista: “lagrimojenas”) es papayita? Nooooo! están muy equivocados amigos, compadres y camaradas. Aquí se respira aire con olor a pino, a grama recien cortada, a flores silvestres, a rosas de múltiples fragancias, a jardines, a calles límpias. Vengan a calarse esta vaina con nosotros para que sepan lo que es malo.

Nadie sabe lo que es capitalismo hasta que no lo sufre. Uno aquí rogando por tener aunque sea una calle con aguas negras donde los hijos de uno puedan jugar tranquilos y que no tengan que regresar a la casa todos limpiecitos; nojoda… y ustedes allá en el paraiso revolucionario criticando día y noche en medio de ríos de aguas negras. Coño que sabroso. Agarren un avión y se vienen a vivir bien aquí con uno, pa’ que sepan lo que es malo de verdad-verdad.

¿ustedes saben lo que es no poder ver un maldito perro realengo en ninguna parte? ¿qué vaina es esa? ¿cómo puede ser posible que en un país “desarrollado” como este, no se pueda ver ni un perrito realengo muriéndose de hambre y con siete borrachos detrs de el dándole patadas por el culo? No es posible! Pues bien, así tenemos que vivir nosotros en esta mierda de imperialismo yankee.

Yo quisiera pelar bolas y pasar arrecheras todos los días, pero en esta vaina, es imposible. Aquí, para arrechera de todos, los servicios públicos funcionan casi a la perfección. Ser policía en el imperialismo por ejemplo, es sinónimo de éxito. No es como ser policía en la revolución. No. Ni de vaina. Que vá! Pero mejor no vamos a hablar de eso para no correr el riesgo de herir la suceptibilidad de algún policía “gringo” que pueda estar leyendo, porque esa es otra vaina….esos carajos hablan, leen y escriben hasta tres y cuatro idiomas.

Por todo esto mis amigos revolucionarios es que yo quiero pedirles a todos, y en especial a tí, Hugo Chávez, que se vengan a sufrir en el capitalismo salvaje que tanto odian. Para que sepan lo que es malo de verdad-verdad y no anden comparando su revolución bonita con esta mierda imperialista y acaba mundo.

Quiero que sepan que si yo tuviera la forma de emigrar rumbo a Venezuela, lo hubiera hecho hace siete años, o por lo menos, esta mañana. El problema es que según el Ministro de no sé que vaina, las visas para Venezuela se las están estampando a los solicitantes en las nalgas, porque pasaportes no hay. Yo no quiero enseñar las nalgas compatriotas, camaradas, compadres y amigos. Pinga! Mejor espero a que lleguen los pasaportes. Prefiero calarme esta vaina aquí estóicamente que andar en los pasillos de la ONIDEZ enseñando el culo.

Quienes quieran venirse para los Estados Unidos a pelar bolas y a calarse este maldito imperialismo, escríbanme. Yo los ayudo. Aquí tienen casa, carros, comida, plata, golf, pesca en alta mar, y mucha playa. Pero mucha, no son guebonadas, mucha. Y de las mas arrechas del imperialismo. De esas playas que los turistas de todo el mundo prefieren visitar para pasar arrecheras con todas las comodidades.

Bueno, con esto los dejo. Tengo que darle caviar al gato porque tiene media hora ladillándome para que lo atienda y después tengo que sacar el perro del sauna.

Un abrazo.

The King,
Alan Brito Oxidao

April 11, 2011

That’s what she said

This is a Google Talk conversation between me and my husband. I’m telling him about a problem I’m having at work dealing with an incompetent individual.

ina: I’ll try to be tactful.
ina: but it’s so hard!!!!
hubby: that’s what she said
ina: (that’s what she said)
hubby: 🙂
ina: yeah, saw that one coming a mile away
hubby: that’s what she said!
ina: HAHAHAHA
hubby: that’s what she said 🙁

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! How does he do it????????

ina

March 3, 2011

Quaint?… not so much!

I just found out that the hospital where I work made the transition from horse-drawn ambulances to electric trolley at the end of the 1800s, and they made the transition to automobiles around 1910. If you don’t give it a second thought, you might think “well duh, they had to transition at SOME point,” but if you do stop and think about the amount of planning, money and TRAINING that goes into implementing something as complicated as a new method of transportation, your mind starts to get blown.

Lately we are walking on egg shells trying to get some physicians to change their ways (like… ummm… checking their email!)… can you imagine having to train a whole fleet of new drivers? The kind of resistance the hospitals must have encountered, and the amount of money that it must have taken to buy those shiny new cars?

I guess they weren’t as simple-minded and “quaint” at the turn of the century, were they? I tip my hat to the project manager for that particular venture.

ina

Photo credit: http://firegeezer.com/2009/02/10/horse-drawn-ambulance-to-be-restored/

February 2, 2011

Envy and Friendship

You know those movies where someone is so jealous of someone else (their life, their boyfriend/husband, their house, their car) that they can’t seem to get a good life going for themselves? Think Whitney Houston‘s sister on The Bodyguard (1992), or Lindsay Lohan in Mean Girls (2004), or Glen Close in Fatal Attraction (1987). You want to tell them “snap out of it! Get your own life! Don’t you know that what makes their lives so appealing is that they have YOUR attention without even trying? That’s what you really want, isn’t it? Everybody else’s attention and envy.”

Ok, maybe you haven’t given it much thought yourself, but I have. I have been on both sides: I have been sickly jealous of someone else’s small town celebrity, and I have felt the piercing eyes of the envious on the back of my neck.

The first position, envying someone, is a consuming one. All you think about is “them” and how great their life is. You stalk them on Facebook, you comment on their status or pictures just so that their fame rubs off on you a little bit. You think about them every day and wonder what it is that “they” have that you don’t. Why don’t people like you the way they like them? You second guess your whole lifestyle: maybe I should have done this or done that in my life. You can’t seem to carry a normal conversation with these people: you always jump in the defensive and find yourself explaining your life choices, while they’re probably thinking “I just wanted to tell you I had a date… how did this conversation become about you and your own problems?” It’s hard being friends with someone you envy: you don’t genuinely have their best interests at heart (which is kind of a requirement of friendships, isn’t it?).

The second position is just as uncomfortable. You are purely and genuinely happy in your own life, with your own significant other, house, cars, careers, and you don’t give a second thought to “what might have beens.” You feel lucky and happy. But you are aware that there are those who wished their lives had turned out a little differently, and you remind them of those things they could have had if they had been dealt different cards. There are others who may simply have a strong opinion on how you decided to live your life, and you are aware that they would have never picked your husband, your house, or your age to start a family. You know who they are, and you are apprehensive about sharing little victories/news with them. Again, it’s hard to maintain such a friendship.

This topic came to mind lately when someone flat out said to me that they hated hearing that their friends were getting married, buying houses or having babies. I knew that was the case… but hearing it said out loud made it all the more disturbing. Are we really friends? Or is this just a ruse fueled by a common history when, at one point, we did care about each other?

Taking part in those destructive downward friendship spirals has made me appreciate my true friendships. I have fostered great relationships with people whose company I enjoy. People I laugh with, share news with, and whose opinions are always out in the open. I call them friends. I don’t feel the need to walk on egg shells around them because I know they are secure and happy in their own lives, and anything I say will purely be a reflection of myself, and not them. They tell me things that I don’t want to hear sometimes, but their candor is so much appreciated, that I feel free to express myself with the same honesty without fear of judgment. For instance, one of these friends was actually averse to me having kids at this point because he feared for my career prospects at my new job, and he said it out loud and without reservation. I knew how he felt, and yet he said he was happy for me when I got pregnant. Was he being fake? No, because he has never hidden how he felt about it, and because I know he does genuinely care about me. That’s a friend: truth, trust, no judgment, and fun.

Here’s to people who make us laugh.

ina

Photo credit: http://www.womensselfesteem.com/jealousy.html

January 31, 2011

“I am Number Four” Jokes

I just saw the preview to the new movie I am Number Four. It was all going well until I got to the name of the movie: I am Number Four.

Immediately a billion jokes at the expense of that name came pouring into my head. My favorite were:

The sequel would be “I am Number Five”

This movie could be about the corporate world (more like “I am a number”)

Alternate title: “I wasn’t even good enough to make it on the top 3”

Alternative title: “Thank God I’m not Number 2”

I’m sure I could think of a few more, but these were right off the top of my head. Needless to say: what an awful title for a movie!!!!!!

Here’s the trailer, if you’re curious:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5djHG3hPu0]

ina

January 25, 2011

Dear Facebook… a word.

Another one jumps ship: my friend Pensive Kid has decided to cancel his Facebook account. He recounts his decision in his latest post called So long Facebook, my “Friends” will be missed.

I have thought of joining the ranks of the unfriendable many times before. The closest I have gotten is keeping an account, but having no wall posts and only one profile picture. But now that the Pensive Kid has jumped ship, I feel a sense of urgency in revisiting the topic.

Let’s see what great things Facebook has brought to my life:

I have gotten back in touch with old friends that I never thought I would ever talk to again

I catch the occasional news story status update that makes me write to that person and reestablish contact

…

For the life of me I can’t find any other joy that Facebook has brought to my life…

In fact, I have gotten a bit more aggravation from being a member over the years:

During my “post a status update and a picture about everything and everything” phase, I would get really mad when people didn’t comment on a witty status update, or a really good picture, or would untag themselves from my pictures

Looking through some high school “friends’” pictures in exotic and far away places made me feel jealous and horrible about my own life (“Why am I not helping out the starving children in Africa??? Why haven’t I climbed to the summit of a mountain in Switzerland??”)

Reading other people’s status updates and noticing that they would get 25 comments on the first day (compared to my average of zero) would upset me (“am I not as interesting as they are?? are they not my friends, too???”)

There was a lot of aggravation when someone would not accept my invite, and there were sleepless nights when someone I did not want to friend would repeatedly send me friend requests

I’m sure I could think of a few more. The point is that, the more I think about it, the more I think that Facebook is the source of all evil: it brings out the worst in us because its whole premise is to create a medium through which we can boast (look at the places I’ve been, look at the Vera Wang wedding gown I got that you didn’t, look at how many friends I got).

The Pensive Kid took more of a physical relationship vs digital relationship approach: physical relationships are more meaningful and we should be devoting time and effort into those, and not our digital personnas (do they really resemble our real life selves?).

So why do I hang onto this devilish thing? The 64 million dollar question that comes to mind is: but what if someone wants to reach me??? I’ve been trying to answer that question… wouldn’t they have my email address already? I’m also on LinkedIn for professional purposes, they could find me there as well. So really, do I need to hang onto this thing for the remote possibility that someone out there may be wanting to get back in touch with me?

I’m not ready to answer these questions yet… I really hope to get there soon. And when I do, we’ll have a little “I quit Facebook” party on this blog 🙂

Happy Facebooking… for as long as you enjoy it.

ina

Photo Credit: http://www.twrtoday.com/Why-I-Hate-Facebook.asp

January 25, 2011

Lunch with a stranger

I sat with a stranger for lunch today, due to the lack of empty tables at the cafeteria.

We got to talking and she asked me if I was from Brazil (I get that a lot), so I corrected that I was from Venezuela. The rest went something like this:

Lady: you guys have an ocean, right?
ina: actually we have the Caribbean Sea, which is connected to the Atlantic Ocean. Venezuela is at the north tip of South America, across the sea from Florida
Lady: wait… I thought Venezuela was in South America
ina: It is…
Lady: Maybe I’m thinking of Central America
ina: oh yeah, that’s around where Mexico is, Nicaragua, Panama
Lady: No, that’s not it…

Gotta love the lack of geographical reference with which some people roam the Earth.

Happy Thursday, everyone!

ina

January 20, 2011

Nobody wants to hear you talk about your kids

I gotta say something that is both sad and true: people just don’t want to hear you talk about your kids. Yes, you can include me in that group any day.

Why is it sad?

Because when you are a parent, your children become the center of your universe, and their accomplishments speak volumes of yourself. They are your life and they are the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to you. So if someone doesn’t want to hear about your kids, that translates into them not wanting to hear about you. So what do you talk about then? The weather? The local sports team? Your kids are the best topic in the world! But it puts others off, which makes you sad.

Why is it true?

Because when we hear others talk about themselves or their kids, what we hear instead is “My problems are more important than yours/My life is better than yours.” Even with single child-less people this is true: we simply cannot avoid comparing ourselves to others. So when the topic goes to kids, two things can happen: if the listener has no kids they won’t be able to relate, and you are purely alienating them from the conversation; or if the listener has kids, they won’t be able to help themselves and start comparing your kids to theirs, creating animosity and defensive tension in the conversation. I dare anybody out there to say one thing about their kids to another parent, and have that other parent not respond with something “better” about their own kids.

So, now that I am expecting a child, I am becoming more and more aware of when I should bring things up. I’ll make the obvious confession that my pregnancy is ALL I think about: day and night, minute by minute, hour after hour. I want to shout every pain, every decision, every symptom, EVERYTHING from the rooftops. But when I’m around others I’m trying to keep quiet, just answer their questions, and try to keep my endless ranting on every little symptom to myself. Not only for other people’s sake, but for my own as well: I can tell when I’m boring others, and that kind of rejection would hit a soft nerve with me.

So I might be able to manage the talking part (as much as I can without being inhuman), but I can’t seem to be able to stop blogging, so I’m just blogging my pregnant thoughts in my family Blog. Not that anyone is interested in reading that stuff anyway.

So sad… so true.

ina

January 13, 2011

Funny Xmas Wishes 🙂

I got this as a forward (yes, those are still around). Thought it was funny enough to share 🙂

IF A FAT GUY GRABS YOU AND PUTS YOU IN A BAG, DON’T WORRY, I TOLD SANTA I WANTED A GOOD FRIEND FOR CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

ina

December 24, 2010

Top 4 sentences I’ll never forget

I’m going to shamelessly copy off Christine‘s blog entry titled Sentences I’ll never forget and give you my own list of sentences I will never be able to shake.

1) “I wasn’t thinking that, you came up with that on your own”

My mother said this to me one time when we were together and I may have been eating something fatty, to which she gave a disapproving look. She has implied that I am overweight many times in the past, so that time I preemptively told her that I didn’t care what she thought and that I was happy with my weight. She proceeded to say that she had not opened her mouth at all, and that if I felt self conscious about my weight, it came from within me, not from her. And she was right: I was very self-conscious about my weight. I may have been right in thinking she was disapproving of my over eating, but that was irrelevant: *I* was the one who accused myself of over eating.

This was an eye opening concept: everything you think is coming from inside your head. You can infer feelings and thoughts from someone else’s body language or subtle comments, but in reality, if something is not sitting well with you, you should internalize it and take ownership for your own feelings and not blame others for them.

2) “Why do you feel the need to make a scene?”

I was seeing a therapist when I was in college. She was a very nice and very insightful woman called Dolores. I always thought that if my life was a sitcom, my therapist’s name would for sure be “Dolores” (it means “pain” in Spanish). Anyways, one time I was running late for our appointment and I sprinted up 4 flights of stairs and ran right into her office completely out of breath and sweating a little. I was trying to explain what had held me up as I was trying to catch my breath. She sat there quietly waiting for me to finish talking, and then she asked me why I felt the need to make a scene. I told her I wasn’t trying to, that I was genuinely tired and out of breath. Whatever I tried to tell myself about that particular scenario, I realized later on that I fully agreed with her.

We think that making a scene (however justified it may be) will incite feelings of sympathy from the other person towards you, when in reality people can see right through your drama and they don’t find it relatable, only annoying.

Armed with that new valuable life lesson, I vowed to never make a scene when I went into her office again. I still try to apply it to my daily life, and even though it is difficult not to express my true feelings sometimes, I always feel bad afterwards when I have given out too much emotional information that helps the situation nothing, and simply makes me look dramatic and desperate.

3) “I’m not going anywhere”

After 7 failed relationships, I was under the understanding that boys come and go, that I will always have a wandering eye, and that I am just simply not the settling down kind. Then one day, an incredible man came into my life and simply said those words to me while we were going through a rough patch: “I’m not going anywhere.” He could have said many things in that situation, and I do mean he could have given me a speech… but he didn’t. He was quiet, listening, sympathizing, and then just said those words to me. I felt understood and taken-care of. It all just clicked: this is the man I’ll be spending the rest of my life with. Such simple words, such a strong feeling.

4) “That needs a good biting”

I stopped biting my nails in college. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I was a nail biter.

Once, when I was little, I was holding my father’s hand and noticed that one little piece of skin was protruding from the side of his fingernail. I pointed it out to him and asked him what he was going to do about it. He said “All that needs is a good biting!” and he proceeded to bite the little piece of skin off. I was appalled!!! What kind of a person would give me such a hard time over biting my nails and then go and do it himself???

I never forgot that! It just comes to show you that being a good example for your kids is not just about telling them what to do right, it’s about doing it yourself because they WILL notice that you don’t do as you preach. Now, I understand that there was absoultely nothing wrong with my father biting off a piece of loose skin, even now I do it. The lesson came in knowing that children get easily confused in what constitutes right and wrong because they live in a black and white world: you should do this, not do this. So, when you have kids, just remember that it’s not enough to say things, you have to follow them yourself as well.

December 22, 2010

Snowy day in Norwood

This morning we woke up to a couple of inches on snow on the ground, and counting! I ♥ winter.

ina

A view of the grounds by the train station

The creek by the train station

That's my walk commute ahead of me

The tired steps of commuters like me… or of dog walkers

December 21, 2010

Devious Radio DJ

I’m onto you, radio people. You play a sped-up version of songs so you can save precious seconds in your broadcasts. It became obvious to me when Taylor Swift songs started sounding like the chipmunks version! Ridiculous.

I wag my finger at you, radio industry air space managers. You can’t fake me!

ina

December 10, 2010

Spying on my house

Wanna see something hilarious?

I have the habit of remote desktoping into my computer at home throughout the day (that way I don’t have to connect to my blog from my work computer for important updates, such as this one).

Today I clicked on the camera icon on my Quick Launch by mistake. I moved to close it right away, thinking the camera might not even work when you’re remotely connected, only to realize that I was wrong! It does still work! So I caught a glimpse of the guest room at home (where I keep my laptop and my blow dryer, obviously, who doesn’t?).

If walls could talk, I’d catch them red handed! I guess this solves that philosophical mystery.

I just thought it was hilarious!

…

Maybe you had to be there.

Hello, Guest Room

ina

December 7, 2010

Commuting Woes

Charlie Ticket

Yesterday, somewhere between the subway and the commuter rail station, I lost my monthly MBTA pass for the month of November.

Tragic.

“But ina, can’t you just call a hotline, show them your receipt, and get a replacement?” Why, that’s a great idea! Only that the MBTA doesn’t provide replacement for monthly cards. I guess it would just be too easy to rip off said Transit Authority by claiming a lost pass when really you just want a free one for your buddy, spouse, kids, etc. My only choice is to drop the $186 and buy a new pass (it is only day 3 into the month, after all).

This is an outrage. I don’t have a better suggestion for how they can manage this situation (other than changing their technology such that they’d have the ability to deactivate the old card). So I’ll just exercise my right as a consumer to stand on my soap box and just complain about an imperfect system that just cost me $372 in these tough economic times.

I wag my finger at you, MBTA. Not cool.

ina

November 3, 2010

Starve a Vampire, Donate Blood

I donated blood last Friday for the first time in my whole life! I think that’s a really big deal, but I haven’t been successful in getting the same reaction out of other people. Anyways, I thought I’d share a few myths and maybe encourage one person out there to donate as well.

When I was in college the Red Cross would stop by our campus for blood drives. I remember stopping by their booth and asking them about the requirements. The first was weight. I did not meet the 110lbs minimum to donate. Furthermore, I had traveled outside the United States in the past year (I used to go back home to Venezuela twice a year), so that was my double wammy.

Then I had this “episode” (still in college) where my platelet count mysteriously dropped to dangerous levels and I was hospitalized for three days. If they didn’t want me to donate blood before, they REALLY won’t want me now!

Which brings us to contemporary times. I had never donated blood and I had my list of reasons. Case closed, right? Wrong!

I now work at a hospital, and part of the orientation was to let us know the Blood Donation Center is always open for new donors. The girl presenting was SO nice and bubbly and made it sound like such a good time that I thought I’d email her and ask her if I could donate.

Her answers were:

1) The 110lbs limit is only applicable on their “mobile” units. In the hospital the lower limit actually is 100lbs.
2) The list of countries that would cause a deferral has been adjusted such that they only care about travel to rural areas where malaria may be present. Therefore, traveling to a metropolitan city, such as Caracas, is not a concern.
3) As long as my platelet count episode was not part of a continuous blood disorder, and my platelet count was fine now, I should be able to donate.

So, with those points as reassurance, I walked right into the Donation Center determined to close the deal.

They had me fill out a survey first. They want to make sure you have not had exposure to AIDS. In my opinion, there were some questions that were not really pertinent to whether you’ve had exposure to diseases or not. Maybe it was just the way they were phrased. For example, they asked if you have paid for sex in the past. I understand they mean to ask if you have had sex with prostitutes, but I’m sure there are plenty of people who may ask for money in exchange for favors who don’t have their own corner. I don’t know… I guess I don’t see what the “paying” part has to do with your exposure. Another question asked if you are male and have had sex with another man since 1977. That just seems like an ignorant question that associates AIDS with being gay. So yes, I had certain political views against some of the questions.

Disclaimer: I can’t say for sure which questions would get them to turn you away if you answered yes to them, though. They did ask if my mother had been born outside the US, and they didn’t turn me away. If you have questions about your eligibility, you should ask your nearest donation center!

Once that was done with, I went in and did the deed. They had a Halloween theme and all the nurses were dressed in costumes (my pumpkin earrings fit right in!). The assistant was very sweet. She was in training so I got a 43-year veteran to guide her. I felt like I was learning alongside her. 10min later I was off and on my way with a sticker and a T-shirt that said “Starve a Vampire, Donate Blood” which I thought was very clever and cute 😉

You’re allowed to donate blood every 56 days. I already put it in my calendar to make sure I donate as much as possible. I love hospitals. I’m so weird.

ina

November 2, 2010

Quitting

There have been times in my life when I have felt like a failure. Times when I know I could have done better, but for some reason decided it wasn’t worth the struggle. Times when I just quit.

Failure tastes like ass. It makes me feel devalued, lazy, and, in some cases, even insensitive. At the same time, when I look back at my decisions, there are very few that I would change. Sometimes quitting is all you have in order to move forward in life.

In terms of jobs, I just quit mine (last day is tomorrow), but after investing 8 years on my career at that company, I can’t think of this new stage in my life as anything other than a huge triumph. I have finally proved to myself that I can take risks and I will be able to stop wondering “what if.” This “quit” was all about one thing: turning down complacency. I must admit the feeling of failure in this case is quite minimal.

In terms of hobbies, I quit mine all the time. I just can’t excuse sticking to something I no longer enjoy just for the sake of not quitting. At the same time, it makes me wonder whether I’m really that much of a flake. The feeling of failure is “Medium” in these cases.

In terms of friendships, you have an added element in the mix: someone else’s feelings. Do I regret quitting on certain toxic friendships? No… Usually it all works out for the best anyway, and whatever is meant to be is meant to be. However, the urgency to “break up” is usually unilateral, which makes me feel like crap for choosing to be selfish and guarding my own feelings over the other person’s. This situation gets a HIGH/HOT/Five rotten tomatoes rating for feeling like a failure. After all, if I can’t even keep my own friends from hating me, then what does that say about me?

Quitting… Such a simple word; so many different ways to feel about it.

ina

October 14, 2010

♫♪ All the Cereal Ladies ♫♪

I am a big (indirect/emotional) supporter of the arts, so when my friend Kristen said she had re-written the words to the song “All the Single Ladies” to sing about cereal, that’s just something I had to read! It was so funny that I asked her permission, which she very kindly granted, to share it with the world (or… just you, mom).

Here it is. The worldwide premiere of All the Cereal Ladies.

All the Cereal Ladies

Click here for the link to the real song, so you can sing along

All the Cereal Ladies
by Kristen

♫♪ All the cereal ladies (7x) ♫♪

♫♪ Now put your spoons up
Up in the cupboard, I just woke up
I’m thinking ’bout my Boo Berry
You decided to eat, you don’t want Wheaties
Cuz they taste just like eating paste
Do you want Kix or Cookie Crisp
Don’t worry ’bout nutrition
I tried crispix and wheetabix
Ya can’t beat a bowl of trix ♫♪

[Chorus]
♫♪ Cuz if you liked it then you should have put some milk on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it
Don’t be sad if you can’t find the prize in it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it ♫♪

♫♪ whoa oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat (x2) ♫♪

[Chorus]
♫♪ Cuz if you liked it then you should have put some milk on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it
Don’t be sad if you can’t find the prize in it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it ♫♪

♫♪ I got Pops on my lips and some Golden Crisp
Wonder what happened to the 80s themes
Ghostbusters, Mr. T and Smurfs
I really think about these things
I need no granola, did I mention
Don’t worry ’bout nutrition
Cuz Cracklin Oat Bran,
Chex, or Raisin Bran
Can be eaten on another day ♫♪

[Chorus]
♫♪ Cuz if you liked it then you should have put some milk on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it
Don’t be sad if you can’t find the prize in it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it ♫♪

♫♪ whoa oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat (x2) ♫♪

♫♪ Don’t treat me to omlettes and bagels
I’m not that kind of girl
Cap’n Crunch is what I prefer, what I deserve
Is Flutie Flakes for me, Frosted Flakes in me
And delivers me bowls of Cheerios, I want Cheerios from the box
Put it in my stomach
And make them Honey Nut
If you don’t, I’ll eat Honeycomb
Or whatever I’ve got at home ♫♪

♫♪ All the cereal ladies (7x) ♫♪

♫♪ Now put your spoons up
whoa oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat (x2) ♫♪

[Chorus]
♫♪ Cuz if you liked it then you should have put some milk on it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it
Don’t be sad if you can’t find the prize in it
If you liked it then you shoulda put some milk on it ♫♪

♫♪ whoa oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat oat (x2) ♫♪

ina

October 14, 2010

10,000 hours

Source below*

It has just been brought to my attention that a person must practice a task for 10,000 to become an expert at it. Knowing that gives me a very soothing feeling: it means that, no matter what I set my mind to, all I have to do to become an expert is to do it for 10,000 hours and I’m all set!

What a relief! No more “if”s and more “when”s! Pick something! ANYTHING! Learning the bones in the human body? Playing piano? Lifting weights? Running an X number of miles? Never worry again! You have the answer: 10,000 hours later you will be a star! Go ahead, start a Blog called “Ten Thousand Hours” and track your progress! You might even get a book deal or, better yet, a movie deal!!!! GASP!

How long is 10,000 hours anyway? 416 continuous days (a year and a couple of months) of no sleeping, eating or working. Mmm… What if we practiced an hour a day? Doable, right? That’ll be like 27 years. Huh… Ok, what if we did more like 10 hours a week (a hardcore hobby)? That’s 19 years.

Mmmm… better call the whole thing off. I’d probably get bored by month 5 anyway.

ina

* Image source: http://mully1.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/10000-hits/

September 9, 2010

Venezuela makes the AA warnings

I love it when my country makes headlines. Unfortunately they have all pretty much been for negative things over the past 10 years, except when it comes to Miss Universe pageants, but I digress.

This sign was posted at the American check-in counters at the airport this morning.

Warning

Man, it’s great to start the morning with a full dosage of crazy.

ina

September 5, 2010

What is a “Mess”?

I used to think that a “mess” was a pretty universal concept understood as things placed in a disorderly fashion. What I didn’t realize was the gradient involved in what constitutes a mess for one person versus another… until I visited my mother.

I’d like to challenge your “mess” savvy. Take a look at these two pictures. I want you to guess which one made my mother scream out “You are messing up my whole house!” 🙂

Good luck 🙂

Possible Mess #1

Possible Mess #2

ina

September 3, 2010

Help the Hoarders

I heard a news story today that stirred up a lot of feelings in me. I’m still trying to sort them out… but this post is what I got so far.

The story was about a 67-year-old woman who disappeared 4 months ago, and was found under a pile of junk in her own home.

Her husband reported her missing, and was living in that house the whole time. Neither he nor the search dogs (which came looking for her THREE times) could identify the smell of her corpse over the smell of all the other crap she was trapped under. And these were the kind of dogs they used to recover people out of the 911 debris!

Picture unrelated to news story. Credited to momlogic.com
Hoarding is a very real condition that affects thousands of homes in the United States. It is not pretty and it is very hard to overcome.

Why did this story stir me up? I still really don’t know… but you wanna hear what’s messed up about this whole thing? The first thought that came to mind when I heard the story was “I wish I got one month to clean up that house, and leave it in complete order.”

You see, there are certain little things that get to me and they are very hard for me to let go of. Call it borderline OCD if you like, but it’s a character trait that makes me the anal person I call “me.” My hubby Brian has tried to make me see that it’s OK to let some things go, but not very successfully.

One of my friends has mastered the art of living in a pile of clothes. She doesn’t hoard STUFF, she mostly just can’t organize clothes to save her life. She quite literally cannot see her own bedroom floor. I offered to help, and we got as far as identifying which clothes she would keep and which clothes she would give away. We never made it past that point. We scheduled a couple of appointments, but she always ended up canceling. It’s a frightening prospect to have to go through all of that stuff. It would be overwhelming for anyone… but simply and inexplicably exciting for someone like me.

I have often thought of starting my own organizing business. If any of you watched the latest episode of My Boys (TBS sitcom), you know that Kenny wanted to start a closet-organizing business. I loved how easily he set up his next step: “I’ll just set up a website and see what happens.” He organized one of his friends’ closet for before and after pictures, and he just went for it. It was that simple. I drooled the entire episode. What a dream.

Could I do it? I don’t know… maybe I’m just afraid of the confrontation aspect of the job. After all, you’ll have to get people to let go of things. It takes convincing and a lot of negotiations with the clients. I’m not sure I like that part of it.

If I decided to do it, when would I find the time? Maybe I could start taking small clients and do it on weekends… I don’t know… I’m afraid! I tend to jump into things way too quickly. Maybe I’ll put a pin on it and think about it some more.

It’s exciting to dream, isn’t it?

ina

August 31, 2010

Funny Enrique

Sometimes Enrique Montoya, my coworker, comes up with the funniest stuff.

This morning I got an instant message from one of our higher ups. The message said:

B.K.: ho
B.K.: hi
ina: hi B.K.

Two hours later, that was all there was in the chat window. Still nothing. Not wanting to pry about what he wanted, I left it alone.

Fully understanding that the “ho” was a simple “hi” typo, but not being able to let it go (which speaks to my maturity levels), I just decided to turn around and joke with Enrique. This is how it went:

ina: B.K. sent me an instant message at 8:41am. He said “ho” then said “hi”. I responded with “hi B.K.” and then he didn’t write again. Was he really just feeling the urge to call me a ho and say hi?
Enrique Montoya: You should message him back and write: “Pimp” and then “hi”
ina: LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Enrique Montoya: Ho’s up, pimps down
ina: that would be appropriate workplace behavior… what did you call it?… a CLM? ( = Career Limiting Move) lol!
Enrique Montoya: yes, grasshoppa, you learn fast

Sometimes he really cracks me up 🙂

ina

August 31, 2010

Table Legs

I think it was my sister, Monica Geller, who once gave me this piece of advice: you’re a table, and you need more than one leg to stay up.

Think of all your feelings, hopes and dreams as the vase on the table, the flowers, the plate, the silverware, the arts and crafts projects, the books you want to read. Now think of the legs as your relationships. You need more than one to keep your things on the table. You can think of each leg as a group (friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances), or as individuals (your partner, your siblings, your parents, Erin, Christine, Tori Amos, Alicia Keys, Angela, etc). You could have 8 or 9 legs, or more! The point is to diversify your support system in order to be happy, so if one relationship is in trouble you have other legs to lean on.

ina

August 25, 2010

Best quote ever

Last weekend my husband, Brian, and I celebrated my newly found freedom (from class) by getting some McDonalds and watching Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

A quote from that movie has been bouncing in my head all week. This is what Jean-Luc Picard answered to the question “You don’t use money in the 24th century?”

“The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.”

— Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: First Contact

I often fantasize about what it would be like to really think of my job as a calling, a duty, a source of satisfaction. I’ve often said that I know this (job) is not what I want to do for the rest of my life. For that reason, it’s hard to think of it as something I would do even if I weren’t getting paid for it.

However, that same quote also gives me hope for future jobs. New community, new goals, new management, new chance to prove myself. Maybe if I were to start from scratch, learning a new technology, a new business model, I’d be more open to brainwashing. I remember when I started working and I truly wanted to do a great job and be the best at everything. I’d give anything to feel that way again…

Sigh…

ina

August 4, 2010

Vivid Dream

I usually dream at night, but only every so often I remember my dreams without even trying.

Last night’s dream stuck with me.

I was at a game (baseball, maybe?), and I had to step over people’s legs to get to my seat. The girl who was next to my seat said something rude about my inconveniencing her, so I turned around and pulled at her hair for being so damn passive aggressive. She let out a little scream and was going to pull my hair, but I pinned her to her seat by the arms with both my hands. She looked at me like I was crazy. I kept telling her “stop doing this” as she kept her girly cries. I told her that her comment was unnecessary and uncalled for, and she just had to stop. She felt ashamed for having behaved that way, and I felt like I really got through to her. I felt like I was asking her judgmental walls to fall, and it was working. Almost like a Vulcan mind meld or something. She asked me “how do you know me?” Our connection was so strong that she felt like I completely disarmed her.

After that, we became great friends.

Sometimes I do wish I had that power to disarm people. I have been in discussions with people where they completely close off, and I just wish I could dissolve their hard front, especially because I am the kind of person that wears her heart on her sleeve. This is a stupid quality that makes me completely vulnerable, and has gotten me into trouble more than once. However, when others choose not to be transparent with me, I get tired and close off at that point. Why would I make myself vulnerable to someone who doesn’t welcome it or will just put on a front and then go talk about me behind my back? It’s just not worth it.

Anyways, I could analyze this dream five ways to Sunday. I’m of the school of thought that every thought I have is a projection of my own feelings onto something else. I hate people who are not transparent like that girl, because I have been that girl. I block off to the world when I feel like I’m being attacked or misunderstood. In the dream I am telling myself to stop being so petty and shallow and to allow myself to be open. I’m thinking of one particular situation that stressed me out yesterday. I wish I could be a grown up about it, but my inner-ina is tantruming.

ina

May 20, 2010

Taylor Swift Tix

Taylor Swift in Concert
It is no secret that I am a Taylor Swift fan. I can’t wait for her concert in June!

If you missed out on getting tix to see her in Foxboro, I’m selling a couple of tix on eBay:

Click here for tickets on eBay

Good luck in the auction!

ina

May 20, 2010

When will we reach equality?

Living in a culturally diverse city such as Boston has its advantages. Not only do we get a variety of culturally inspiring options for meals and entertainment all around the metro area, but we enjoy certain freedoms not granted to all equally everywhere else. I’m specifically referring to the right to marriage by gay individuals.
I have had the opportunity to talk with my gay friends about marriage. I know a few who moved to Massachusetts particularly to exercise this right, or to simply have the option to do so in the future. Some others do not live in this state and are not planning on moving any time soon. One friend in particular preferred to define marriage in her own terms: love, trust, commitment. She did not need a piece of paper to define her relationship; however, she was hopeful that the time would come, and that things were moving in the right direction.
Currently, 5 states grant same-sex marriage licenses (Mass, Connecticut, Iowa, New Hampshire and Washington DC), but this license is only recognized at the state level, plus in 3 more states (New York, Maryland and Rhode Island). I finally understood what this meant after another friend told me “I can’t move to Florida: I’m not married there.” Now there’s a sentence you will never hear a heterosexual couple say. It is outrageous to think that you can be free in one state and a second-class citizen in another.
The revocation of same-sex marriage in California was a disappointing blow to the gay rights movement. It’s a step in the wrong direction and it slows down progress towards the goal of equality for all. I still have no idea why anyone would go against that very simple concept, “equality,” which has made this country the “land of freedom”?
My friend expressed her opinion that most of the opposition rests in the older demographic, and younger people were in favor of equality, for the most part. I joked that all we have to do then is wait for the opposition to grow old and die off before she can get equal rights. Sadly, she somewhat agreed that it might in fact take that long.
What do you think? Is equal rights an unachievable goal on our generation? If you disagree with the equality argument, why do you?

May 12, 2010

Misunderstood: America Loves Drama

Yesterday I wrote a an article about why it is that women are not fulfilling leadership roles. From personal experience I shared that I just don’t feel like it, and wondered if THAT was the real reason the executive boards don’t represent the real world: 50% of the population are women, so why aren’t 50% of the leadership roles filled by women?

Many attribute the phenomenon to glass ceiling, labyrinth and sexism theories. The question was: Millennial women of the world, why aren’t we filling those roles? Have you been put down by men and society? Or do you just not want the job?

The response was shocking. I did not immediately get responses from working women answering that question; instead, I got comments basically saying I was undermining the sexism that women suffer through all over the world. Someone even said that my article couldn’t have been written by a woman at all. I kept wondering why people weren’t answering the right question? Why were they focusing on the sexism aspect? (which, by the way, had nothing to do with the question of whether Millennial women want the leadership role or not). The discussion got out of focus and the debate steered to the most dramatic and far-fetched assumption: this is a sexist article and the author is promoting that women want to stay at home and have babies! The horror!!! Not the case, not the point, and the debate I meant to start never actually took place. To be fair, I did get one person who contributed to the discussion saying that feminism progress is about having the CHOICE to do what we want, as opposed to being measured in % of women occupying seats in boardrooms. That was a great contribution, and I wish I had had more comments like that.

A fellow columnist is going through this same issue right now. Ramin Setoodeh wrote an article called “Straight Jacket” on Newsweek about why there aren’t more gay actors playing straight roles. His argument/opinion was that they were not believable. I personally don’t know why there aren’t more gay actors playing leading roles, but would be really interested in hearing people’s perspectives on it. What do gay actors think about that? What does the population as a whole feel when they see openly gay actors playing heterosexual romantic interests? I guess we will never know, because the media simply put a homophobic label on the article, and on Ramin himself, who is actually gay, and decided to focus on that drama instead.

People of the world: there are MANY interesting topics we could be discussing. If we continue to focus on the exaggerated notion that everyone must be racist, homophobic, sexist or not politically correct in order to bring them up, we will never get to the bottom of certain topics, such as what are the current job trends for women? What is the trend on their career choices? How do you think gay actors are fairing? Are they being pigeonholed? What do they themselves think about the roles they play? Do they think they are believable as straight love interests? I guess those questions are too hard to concentrate on while we have our fingers ready to point.

You can read Ramin’s rebuttal here.

ina

May 12, 2010

What Women Want

For a few years now I have been wondering where my ambition and drive went. I distinctly remember wanting to rise through the ranks, and become the youngest most successful [insert interesting role here] in the world. But now, after working for the same company for 7 years, when I look back on those ambitions I just want to lie down and take a nap. It seems exhausting to even think about it.

I had dinner with an old acquaintance recently. She and I both started at the same company out of college, and she has since moved on to bigger and better things. She is a product specialist at a pharmaceuticals company, and will be moving from Florida to the Midwest this summer to work out of the headquarters of her business. I still see that drive in her, but I can no longer relate. I just want to have a fulfilling 8-5 job, settle down, start a family, and take up an interesting hobby or two on the side. Moving halfway across the country to chase after a job is not an option I would consider now. Did I mention that I’m only in my 20’s?

There is no doubt in my mind that women can do whatever they set their mind to in this day and age. If that is the case, then why do we still see a shortage of women in leadership positions? Is it really because the sexist white boys club that is the executive demographic is putting them down? Or is it because women of our generation have simply traded a high-stress work life for a high-quality and more appealing livelihood? Who said that “accomplishing what you put your mind to” translates into a career of leadership, anyway?

According to this article by Wellesley College: Women Must Face ‘Labyrinth’ of Challenges to Achieve Leadership Positions, “only 6% of the Fortune 500’s top executives are female. Of those firms, just 2% have women CEOs.” There are obviously still women out there whose careers are very important to them and they strive on their own success and the success of companies they represent. These are amazing and strong women who appreciate the opportunities available to them and without whom we could say goodbye to the idea of ever having a female President. We need these women! Unfortunately they are a scarce resource nowadays.

Maybe the answer to why most women are not taking on leadership roles is not sexism, but more simply: they just don’t want to.

What do you think? Do you still have that drive? Do you know women who once had a professionally rich future and now are toning it down?

ina

May 11, 2010

It’s the Final Countdown!

I can’t wait to finish school! So much so that I drew the weeks left to finish my MBA on my work white board so I can strike them out as they pass.

It"s the Final Count Down!

Oh, and those are my coworkers and me doing a little dance of joy at the end 🙂

ina

April 26, 2010

Love… ina Nutshelll

I decided to create a new blog called Love… ina Nutshelll inspired by an article I read by John D Spooner on The Improper Bostonian last week. His article was about “writing” and how he’s frequently asked to provide feedback on aspiring writers’ work. His first request to every single one of them has been:

Today is Thursday, write 700 words on Love by Monday. It should be easy for you

… and he is yet to receive a single word in response.

I thought that was an interesting assignment, so I decided to take on Mr Spooner’s challenge, and really explore what it is that I have to say about Love.

I hope you enjoy these thoughts, whether you have found Love in your life, or are still searching for the One.

ina

April 26, 2010

Girl Crushes

Tonight my girlfriends and I were talking about girl crushes. No, not lesbian crushes. Just girl crushes.

I define a girl crush as a feeling of admiration towards another woman. The object of such admiration may be beautiful, generous, funny, driven or any other trait I wish I saw in myself.

My most recent girl crushes, going back to junior year of college, have been: Angelina Jolie, Jenna Elfman (Dharma & Greg), Jenna Fischer (The Office), and Taylor Swift.

What do I do when I have a girl crush? I find out everything there is online about them, watch every video, see every picture, read every blog or twitter entry made by them. It’s infatuation in full action.

At the time of the crush, I feel like I need to be around them and maybe their trait will rub off on me. If I ever got to meet Taylor Swift, I would want to know everything that goes through her mind. I’d want to know what makes her tick.

Girl crushes also happen in real life. Back in 2005 I saw a wonderful woman in my company who appeared to be leading a whole conference on her own. I went up to her and talked to her. I followed up and ended up working alongside her in organizing the same conference for the next 2 years. She was a true inspiration and I felt like I was a better person just for being around her.

Now, about my crush on Sarah Palin… that’s just 100% superficial 🙂 The woman is just freakin’ gorgeous.

Do you have admiration crushes? Who are they on?

ina

April 15, 2010

Joined Tumblr

I joined Tumblr. I don’t know why. It’s just another blogging tool, right? Can someone explain to me what makes it different?

http://inanutshelll.tumblr.com/

ina

April 15, 2010

My latest Civ2 game

I want to pay attention. I really do. But there is something about sitting next to a phone listening to people talk about things I don’t care about that just turns me off. I get fidgety and nervous about upcoming meetings, and just get distracted. Writing my thoughts down is usually my first form of procrastination. Hence, a whole blog just for stuff in my head 🙂

I got just a handful of hours of sleep last night. You see, I started a Civ2 game this past Saturday (that is ALL I did on Saturday), and I’ve been staying up until 12 or 1am playing. Man, I love that game.

Civilization II

The year is 1873. The Zulus and I (Inazca of the Aztecs) have launched space ships and they are scheduled to land in Alpha Centauri in 1874. I have never run into this scenario before where my spaceship arrival date is the same as another civilization’s. So I don’t know who would win! So Brian, a non-Civ player, suggested that I obliterate the Zulu civilization and see if that destroys their space ship. I had 10 years to pull this off (he suggested it back in 1863), so I switched every city from making (Capitalization) to making a fighter plane or a mechanized infantry and headed for Zulu soil, and used my 5,000 gold to buy some immediately. I do run a Democracy, but the Zulus declared war on me (without provocation), so I took the opportunity to destroy them.

My problem: There is 1 year left to go (my current turn), and, even though I think I could capture all of their continental cities, I have no hope for capturing their islandic cities. There isn’t a transporter in close enough range to transport ground units on the island, and, as you may know, air units cannot occupy enemy cities even after it has destroyed all of their defenses. So I think I am going to lose. The turn isn’t over yet, but I just can’t think of a way to make it work.

I could go back to a previously saved version of the game, but it was a LOT of work to change all of my cities to produce a military unit. It took me a good 15 minutes to do it because I must have like 100 cities. Then the air units can only move so many steps each turn (so they can’t really attack in the first turn they are available), and the ground units are not guaranteed to make it to Zulu land (even over railroads) because the Russian cities are in between, and I’m not at war with them, and it’s difficult to get around their city radius and units’ space of control.

I think this game has run its course. It was a good game. May the best space ship conquer the next galaxy.

ina

April 13, 2010

Capture It, Remember It

Taylor Swift
I had a dream last night where I went backstage and hung out with Taylor Swift and her band. This is not the first time I’ve had this dream, and every single time I feel too excited and nervous to behave normally, and just end up feeling like I’m trying too hard and it gets totally awkward 🙂

I know I probably just completely confused you, so let me clear that question on your mind: No, I’m not a 15-year old girl still living at home blasting Taylor’s music and crushing over boys. I am a 28-year old home-owner who blasts Taylor’s music while her husband is in the other room with his headphones on.

My crush on Taylor started through country music. I have been listening to country stations pretty exclusively since the first time I had to commute (2002). Taylor captivated me in two ways: she was 16 when she first came out, and she wrote every single one of her songs. She stood out as a real artist in my eyes. At the moment she started to come through I had been hooked on Carrie Underwood, who was nice to listen to and challenging to sing along to, but her songs did not speak to me. All of the sudden in comes Taylor with her songs about boy crushes and she took me back to my school days. I bought her CD (which is something I normally DO NOT do) when she had only release two singles so far, and had won zero awards. I like to think of myself as the first one to discover her in a 30 mile radius (remember that I live in Massachusetts… not the most country-friendly state).

I’ve seen Taylor grow up and become a real, generous, funny and just genuine artist with the savvy and initiative to not only write her own songs, but also design and direct her own shows When you see a show or hear a song, that it ALL Taylor, not some label executive experiment, and that’s something that I respect tremendously.

Taylor just became the very first female country artist to fill up Gillette Stadium, thanks to me, in part 🙂 I’ll be there on June 5th cheering her on. I can’t wait 🙂

ina

April 12, 2010

Friend Refresh Party

I was talking to Enrique Montoya recently, and I made a confession which I’m still utterly embarrassed to admit out loud. I told him that my 29th birthday is coming up (that’s not the confession), and that I did not want to organize a party with friends (that’s not it either). This is it: the reason was that I did not think I could handle receiving 43 rejections all at once for my own birthday.

I have a long and sad history with rejection, going back to my childhood years. Fear of rejection is just one of those traumas that lingered. I do try to be aware of it so it doesn’t control my feelings in every situation in my life, but there are times when I find myself actively expecting my friends to decline my invitations to hang out because I’m just not cool enough.

This is a sad and dysfunctional part of my psyche, and it’s the raw nerve of my insecurities. For some people it may be their weight, other physical appearance, romantic life, or even professional inadequacies, but for me it’s the simple act of hearing “No” that sets me off.

As a disclaimer to my friends out there, it’s OK to say No. It’s unavoidable a lot of the time I am a thinking adult, and I understand that. Period.

So anyways, Enrique suggested an innovative approach that made me laugh. It’s called a Friends Refresh party 🙂 As its name suggests, it’s a party where you weed out the not-worthwhile relationships in your life. This is what the invitation would read, more or less:

You are cordially invited to ina’s 29th birthday party!
Please follow these guidelines to RSVP:
1) If you are able to attend, please send back a message with a lot of exclamation points and smiley faces with your RSVP
2) If you are not sure if you can make it, do not reply until you are sure one way or the other, up to 4 days before the event. If it is a Yes, please follow the instructions on step 1, else, move on to point 3
3) If you are unable to attend, please wait until 4 days before the event and check your calendar again. If the answer is Yes, please follow the instructions on step 1, else, move on to point 4
4) If you are POSITIVE you will not be able to attend, then screw you and never call me again.

I know as well as you that my issues are inside my head, but it was fun to put the blame on others for even a few minutes and have a laugh about the whole thing 🙂 Good times.

Long Live Social Natural Selection.

ina

April 8, 2010

This, I believe.

Disclaimer: I wrote this entry as a way to pour my heart out to cyberspace. It may sound naive at times, and it may ignore the fact that religion as well as politics have a constant power struggle that is bigger than all of us down here. But I still wanted to say that religion is something pure to me, and so so personal and beautiful.

With the Catholic Church under the microscope recently, I feel the need to put my thoughts out into the world. I have so many things to say, I guess I’ll just tackle them point by point.

First, let’s talk about the scandal and get it out of the way:

Child molestation charges
What those priests have done is despicable. It’s not only a crime, but it has destroyed those kids lives forever. I can’t even imagine the horror they and their families must be going through. This topic angers every person out there, Catholic and non, and it’s a BIG freaking deal.

Pope resignation requests
Should the Pope resign over this? I have heard two stories that are not necessarily mutually exclusive: that the Pope did not respond to requests for action from US church authorities to do something about the problem a couple decades ago, and that the Pope was one of the leaders in establishing a more stringent and vigilent community from the inside, without resorting to the media to publicize what was going on (which is now criticized). I don’t know the details of any of these stories. I can only have faith that his apology was heartfelt, that he recognizes this is a problem, and that he will give it priority in our lifetime for resolution. I don’t think that a resignation would help the situation, but strong action on the Pope’s part would.

Priest celibacy vow in question
The most ridiculous thing I have ever heard a friend of mine say is “They should let priests marry, so they don’t have to relieve their urges on children.” I cannot tell you what an ignorant and off-base comment that is. If any human being has difficulty sticking to a celibacy lifestyle, they will find a way to cheat (wouldn’t be the first or the last time), but they do NOT all of the sudden turn into child molestors for “lack of women” in their lives. That is just incredibly ridiculous. To prove the point, I’ll ask the question out there: men who have difficulty getting girls and think they will probably never find a loving woman, are you now looking into children because they are easier targets? The answer is a resounding NO. IT DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY. Pedophiles are sick individuals who are into children from the start. It was NOT a choice rooted in lack of options. These people are truly SICK. Allowing priests to marry should not be a solution to the child molestation problem. It might be a modernization alternative to look into, but do not be fooled by thinking this makes any strides into solving the child molestation issue. In fact, I’d venture to say that the priesthood has been a safe haven for child molestors and therefore it attracts pedophiles into it. It is probably the most pedophile-friendly profession out there. It’s very sad, but it’s a definite possibility. Something has got to be done to bring sanctity back into the priesthood and shoo away molestors.

Now, let’s talk about the religion itself

Sorry if some of these thoughts sound a bit unrelated an detached from one another… I just have a lot of things in my head that want to come out:

The Catholic religion is under fire. This won’t be the first or the last time, and it is by no means the ONLY religion that gets criticized.

The first thing critics will do is say “the [whatever] religion must change their stance on…” – here’s where I say Not So Fast. Changing a religion to accomodate the times or the latest scandal is a mistake.

It is no secret that every Catholic has their own interpretation of the religion, and their own way to live out in their day to day. Many are on birth control, many have pre-marital sex, many have extra-marital relations, many support abortion, many never go to church, or do other similar things that are considered against-Catholic beliefs. Some of the church’s core beliefs may not seem to tie with pop culture, but people will continue to live out their lives the best way their conscience allows them to. That’s the beauty of our community: nobody is “holier than thou,” and everybody assumes everyone else is sinning. In Catholicism, we are all sinners by default, and you will not find a clique in a church that kicks out other Catholics for sinning (how hypocritical would that be?). Sure, there are certain exceptions (like not allowing a certain senator to take communion because he supported abortion — how ridiculous was that?), but for the most part it’s a pretty accepting religion. In churches I have been a member of, there have been support groups (internal communities) for gay individuals and for divorcees. The church “laws” may be against certain actions, but, as a community, the concensus is acceptance and avoid judgment. Again, there may be stupid exceptions out there, but this has been my experience and it’s what I love about my religion in particular.

Like I said, we are all different and live our Catholicism in different ways. We are all not cut from the same stone, and being Catholic does not mean believing in every single thing the Church puts out there. The key point to remember here is that Catholicism is a religion with a set of beliefs, just like all the others. Trying to change the core beliefs of a religion to fit the times is like trying to get someone to change their sexual orientation: it is simply not even something someone would have a choice over. Beliefs are exactly that: things you BELIEVE. Nobody can tell you you can’t believe on something anymore. So, for people to come and say “Catholics have gone too far and must change whatever” is as outrageous as expecting Jewish people to start believing in Jesus. Demanding a change in beliefs is just not a solution.

At the same time, there is a difference between changing beliefs and evolving.

I do call myself Catholic, and, although I do have some disagreements with my church around certain issues, I do firmly believe in the items written in our “Creed.” Everything else has been added and interpreted from the Bible at some point or another, and some things are just no longer current, and (in my opinion) should be revised; not because they are hot topics, or because there is a scandal around them and we are in fire-fighting mode, but because we Catholics have a single defining trait, and that is LOVE. Anything that goes against this one important trait, must be revised (in my opinion). Just because the core beliefs stay the same (such as what’s written in the creed), does not mean that the church is not allowed to evolve in other aspects. To illustrate, it’s the difference between believing Jesus was born of Virgin Mary (faithful belief), and condemning the thought that the world is round (sign of the times).

If you really want to understand what the Catholic religion is about (FOR ME), think of it as a permanent focus on what would Jesus tell us to do? He’d tell us to not turn others away, to not reject others, to not judge others. I am not perfect, and I don’t follow these teachings to the letter: I’m a sinner, and I will be one every day of my life, and that is ok, because we learn from our mistakes and sinning keeps our conscience actively teaching us what is right from wrong. In any case, those are the messages Jesus left us. Jesus never said “gays are an abomination,” or “priests should be celibate.” Those were not things Jesus ever made a statement about. Jesus focused on loving others just as you love yourself. And that is what Catholicism means to me. Everything else is secondary.

These are my thoughts on my religion. I find it sad that critics delight themselves in throwing the first stone. Do they deserve to be put on a pedestal? I don’t think so. But I guess this is part of that power struggle I mentioned earlier.

In conclusion, child molestation is wrong and something has got to be done about this. The church should work in tandum with local authorities in this matter, without turning it into a witch hunt (which would be a slippery slope) with the purpose of saving the sanctity of priesthood and restoring the faith of the community in its religious leaders.

We all need a little bit of faith, and just remember why we love our religion in the first place: God’s love for us, our love for others, unconditional compassion, and forgiveness. That is all you need to know.

ina

April 6, 2010

New Blog

I started a new blog where I will chronicle my journey through the wonderful world of recipes and cooking for the week. You can visit it at:

http://inakitchen.wordpress.com

ina

March 28, 2010

NPR Spring Drive

NPR has donation drives every quarter or so. I listen to NPR often enough that I really should contribute, but I never do. My reasoning is that $25 are really not going to help them much. Then I think "If everybody thought that way, then they would not get any donations at all," and my response is that my donation has NOTHING to do with everybody else’s. We all make the decision to donate completely independent from one another. So it’s not like my not donating is making others not donate, and vice versa.

If somehow my donation actually did make more people donate, then I would totally do it.

So here is the deal: if you feel the same way, I invite you to donate WITH me. That’s really the only way my argument will be shot. Just email me if you’re interested (see my "About Me" page). I won’t make a donation until I find a partner

ina

March 22, 2010

Natural Disasters and Marriage

My husband, Brian, and I are currently going through our very first calamity: the torrential rains in the Boston area have managed to flood the lower floor of our modest abode.

I just have a couple of tips for anyone who wants them:

Crisis situations bring out the best in some couples, and the worst in others. I hope you are in the first group, like Brian and I are so fortunate to be.

When crisis first strikes, kiss your significant other right away. It might be the last time you see them in a good mood for a while.

Be a team. If they stayed up all night taking care of the problem while they let you sleep in ignorant bliss, then don’t complain about picking up the slack the next day during the day while they sleep.

They are going through this as much as you are. Be supportive of one another. If they snap at you, cut them a break; this is not a usual situation and they are as frustrated as you are. They will forgive you quickly for snapping at them as well. Give and take.

Always remember that this, too, shall pass. Do you want to be remembered as supportive during a crisis, or as whiny/bitchy/selfish? You are a strong person, let that part of you shine.

That’s all I got. Back to checking towels and HVAC water levels.

ina

March 15, 2010

Give an inch, take a mile

This was funny, and Brian actually asked me to blog it. Who am I to say no to that? 🙂

ina: You won’t believe the day I had. So busy. I’m so hungry.
hubby: Did you have lunch?
ina: Oh you won’t believe my crazy lunch story if I told you!
hubby: Why? What happened?
ina: So I got to work at 8:03am…
hubby: Wait wait wait. Lunch starts at noon! Why don’t you start at noon! What an elaborate ploy to tell me about your full day!

Hahahahahaha! Ohh, it was so funny.

ina

March 12, 2010

Making Lemonade

I don’t really believe that "things happen for a reason." This phrase implies that if something had not happened a certain unexpected way, you’d miss out on something better. So, if things DO go according to plan, does that mean that you missed out on better opportunities? Do you really think your life would be better right now if your plans had derailed along the way? I don’t think you believe that, either.

What I do believe in is "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade." If something fails to go according to plan, something wonderful could STILL happen (although nothing beats the wonderfulness of a plan executed to the tee, but that’s just me).

Why am I talking about this? Because I just got handed a big lemon: I missed my flight. I did everything right: I got up at 5am, I made it to the airport at 6, I made it to the gate at 6:20, over an hour before my 7:35 flight. I heard the attendant at my gate say that the Boston flight was right on schedule and we might even board early. I listened to NPR and blogged until my sister, Monica Geller, called me at 6:50, and I talked to her until 7:25 or so. I was wondering what was wrong with my flight, but nobody had moved around me and there were no announcements coming from the booth. I assumed the flight was delayed.

At 8am, I finally had the common sense to ask the person sitting next to me "Excuse me, are you going to Boston?" the response stopped me in my tracks: "No, I’m going to Orlando." I got up in a flash and went up to the counter. There had been a gate change, which I had failed to notice, and I had missed my flight.

This is NOT the first time I travel and this had NEVER happened to me in my life! My eyes welled up with tears of utter frustration and anger at myself for not thinking of double checking my gate while I waited to board. So I’m stuck at the airport until 11:40am CST, connecting in Ohio, and landing in Boston at 6:45pm EST. Compare to my original flight, non-stop, arriving in Boston at 11:00am EST.

So what possible lemonade could I squeeze out of this completely frustrating and enfuriating situation? None that I could think of!!! I sat down and called the leader of my 4pm meeting ask him to reschedule. We had never met before, and he turned out to be a very friendly person. We ended up talking for 30 minutes straight! He’s lived in Spain and Venezuela and he even threw some Venezuelaisms at me, like "epa chama! Vamos a comernos unas cachapas!" I was stunned! He even lived close to where I used to live. By his stories and timeframes, I place him in his mid-fourties. It was a great surprise, and I am absolutely positive that we would have not had the chance to get to know each other this way had my plans gone without a glitch.

So there you have it: you can’t just DECIDE to make lemonade with the lemons. Life also has to provide the juicer.

ina

March 3, 2010

How to Reject an Invitation

You might think there is no right way to decline an invitation, whatever it may be for. But there absolutely is.

I love my friends, but I am surrounded by people who just don’t know how to let people down easy. Here’s a lesson for my dearest friends to better themselves one rejection at a time.

If someone is inviting you somewhere it’s probably because they actually want you to be there. So when you respond with a dry rejection, or don’t respond at all, it makes the requestor feel like crap. They feel guilty for having tried to intrude in your plans, or they feel like you simply did not want to go and you didn’t even care enough to come up with a decent excuse. Either way, it’s just not a nice feeling.

So what is the right way, you say? EASY! Just ADD something kind! Take a look at the difference:

🙁 Not Nice: I already have other plans.
🙂 Nice: Oh this sounds like so much fun! I’m so sorry that I already committed to something else, but definitely let me know for next time!

🙁 Not Nice: I can’t make it. Go without me.
🙂 Nice: Oh man, I have this really important meeting in the morning and I totally need to prepare that night. Why don’t you guys go ahead without me, and we can try again for later this month. What a bummer!

🙁 Not Nice: (No response)
🙂 Nice: I’m so sorry it took me so long to get back to you, things are crazy busy right now and I don’t even have time to write this note! Sorry that I can’t make your party, though, sounds like fun! I’ll fill you in later, we’ll talk soon when things get easier!

Signing off now with a public announcement to think about others’ feelings, guys. That’s what separates us from savages.

ina

March 3, 2010

Thank you, Santa

This is the cutest thing you’ve ever seen. Brian found this way on top of the master bedroom’s closet. It belonged to the previous owners. The parents must have hid it and told the kids they sent it to the North Pole. How cute is this???

Dear Santa, Thank you for the gifts last year. Love, The X family

ina

February 27, 2010

Organization Master

I’m a pretty organized person. When I have meetings, I save the meeting notes into their particular folder for that project in a folder called “Minutes & Notes.” However, sometimes I create lists of things to do on a Notepad, and when the end of the day comes, I need to save it SOMEWHERE where I’ll remember to open it and take it up the next day. Well, that last part never happens, but I do save it somewhere. That’s my desktop.

Many times, though, the name “TO DO.txt” is already taken by another file, so I have to come up with better names, like “OPEN THIS NOW” or “YOU NEED TO DO THIS.” Sometimes I’m just running late for my train and I don’t have time to come up with a creative name for every single one of my notes before I shut down my computer. Therefore, things like these happen 🙂

I need a better naming convention

Thought that was a funny one. Enjoy your desk jobs today.

ina

February 25, 2010

Blackberries in Venezuela

Blackberry Curve

One of the things that I really did not expect to find out there was the astounding penetration of Blackberries. You see, for some reason “texting” is not as widely used as the Blackberry Messenger (through users’ PIN codes) is. In consequence: if you don’t have a Blackberry, you are out of the loop.

My cousins basically sold me on the idea of getting one… literally. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought they were selling the devices themselves! They even let me play with theirs while I was there to get used to the feel for it, and to really experience this PIN phenomenon.

The difference between using PINs and texting is that (1) you pay for texting, while PINing is free, (2) you can have chats with whole groups of people, which you can’t do with texting, and (3) you can PIN to international Blackberry users (text, pictures, movies) for free, while nobody can figure out how to text internationally.

All of these reasons were enough for me. My sister Tina Fey and my father have Blackberries, and they chat with my cousins and aunts and uncles every single day. I want to be in the loop! Now my husband Brian can’t wait for me to get it so I can be in touch with my family. He doesn’t even want to wait for me to get my new-every-two with Verizon (May 2011): he’s trying to come up with the money to get me one right now!

Blackberry, here I come!

ina

February 22, 2010

Blogging without Obligation

I saw this icon posted out of PeaceGrrl’s blog, and I quite like it. I have added it to my Widgets to the right.

Now, that’s a creed I love going by (click on the icon to read more).

It’s time to stop procrastinating and getting my 1-page paper done. I can do this!!!!

ina

February 21, 2010

Ode to my Artistic Eye

I am not an artistic person, but sometimes I get inspired, and I just go with it.

I took a walk in my town today. The following are things that caught my eye, and I couldn’t help but whipping out my cellphone and taking a picture of them. Most of these are from a lake that has a small dam, off which a creek flows. You’ll need this information to understand the very first picture name 🙂

This is my art gallery for today. Enjoy the beauty of the photos, and have some fun analyzing the artist’s intentions and meaning of the names.

ina

The Dam Creek

Rocky

Cold and Icy Beach

Walking on Water

Grim Retirement

Hope

Self-Portrait

February 20, 2010

The Big Tipper

You should know that Brian is an excessively good tipper. Whenever we go to a restaurant, he asks me how much to leave for tip (which I do quickly in my head by moving the comma two spaces and multiplying by 2), and then proceeds to add a full dollar or two to whatever amount I tell him. Sometimes this results in disproportionately large tips.

We were out having dinner at Chili’s and he liked how we were served. Uh Oh. SO he decided to leave a 30% tip. I fought it, by God, I really did, but to no avail.

After dinner and a movie, we stopped by the Friendly’s on Route 1 for some ice cream. Our waiter, Eric, was a superstar. He was hilarious, and made us laugh more than once. I even saw how he was charming up a group of old ladies a couple of tables away. He was awesome! So…

ina: he’s a charmer! We should leave him a big tip.
hubby: (imitating me) "Ooh, he deserves 21%! Let’s go crazy"
ina: you gave 30% to that other woman, who wasn’t even that good! So he deserves that!
hubby: the check was $8.00! (imitating me again) "Ooh, let’s give him $2.50!"

I burst out a laugh so loud and so sudden that I startled the old ladies, who turned to look at me. Then I accidentally knocked over my glass of ice water, and the waiter looked up. I signaled him that I had it under control, still laughing at Brian’s clever come-back, and proceeded to pick up my mess.

I left him a 100% tip. We had the best time we’ve ever had at a Friendly’s. If that’s not worth $8 of entertainment, I don’t know what is.

Here’s me asking you to reward your waiters, especially if you had a better-than-average time 🙂

ina

February 20, 2010

Mr. Funny Man

Brian was on a roll today. He was making me laugh so hard, that I started to feel like we don’t spend enough time together! 🙂

We were being lazy bums this morning, liying on the couch watching the curling olympics and just trying to figure out the rules of the game. Then a question came to mind that I seriously did not know the answer to:

ina: hunny, you know the olympic torch? You know, for the inauguration of the games? Where do they bring it from?
hubby: I don’t know… Greece?
ina: Really? Every time? Wouldn’t it make more sense to bring it from the previous host city?
hubby: I really don’t know the answer to that..
ina: come on, hunny, give me something. Just make it up.
hubby: They bring it from America.

I laughed so hard. He definitely made my morning 🙂

ina

February 20, 2010

Good Advice on Saying No

My good friend Christine wrote a blog entry this morning that really hit home for me. It’s about the power of saying No, in order to get what you need. I think everyone should read it (it’s not long):
http://christinelaubenstein.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/refuse-refuse-refuse-so-you-can-get-what-you-want/

This post made me take action on something for myself, and it couldn’t have come on a better day at a better time. I hope you will find it as enlightening and encouraging as I did.

ina

February 19, 2010

My Personal Heroine

I had lunch with my friend Angela a couple of days ago, and she told me she was running a Triathlon (3.1 mile run, 10 mile bike ride, 1/4 mile swim in the ocean) in June.

I thought it was extremely ambitious of her to embark in such a long and difficult journey. I’ve never set out to get fit to run a marathon or anything like that. I’ve always thought “that’s for fit people” or “that’s for runners” or any other excuse not to do it. My favorite excuse right now is “I’m too busy.” Thing is, Angela is not one of those super fit people who run marathons every year.

Still, at first I didn’t think this was SO unique. After all, I know other people who have signed up for Cancer walks (Charlotte’s sister), half-marathons (Erin), or full marathons (my next door neighbor, Fred). I always think “that’s nice of them” and I might donate some money to their cause, if I feel generous. To each their own, right?

I thought that way until she told me the most remarkable detail: she can’t swim. For the life of her, she does not trust herself in water depths where she can’t reach the bottom. She went on her first training session, and ended up crying of frustration after freaking out when her chin was underwater at 4’6″ depth. She went into the locker room, composed herself, and came back out. She’s doing a little better now, although she recognizes she has a long way to go before she is comfortable swimming a quarter of a mile out in the open sea.

This story almost brought a tear to my eye. She told me that, as it turns out, not only fit people join these events. She has seen overweight people training for it. These are usually people with a strong desire to support the cure of the disease they are representing. It’s not just fitness, it’s not just generosity, and it’s not just people with too much time on their hands. These are people who want to make a difference.

I donated what I could to Angela’s race (proceeds go to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society). She has a goal of $3000, and after my donation she’s at $160, out of which she put in more than half. If you want to encourage her to go on, you can go to her page and click on the DONATE NOW link. She also has a blog to chronicle her journey, which I’ve added to my blogroll.

Angela’s blog: http://angelagovila.com
Angela’s donation page: http://pages.teamintraining.org/ma/HyannisT10/angelagovila

You can do it Angie!! We love you!!

ina

February 18, 2010

My Trophies

No, it’s not notches on my bedpost, it’s my books.

Every time I read a book cover to cover, I put a little star sticker on the spine of the book, and put it up on my bookshelf.

I didn’t read much growing up. It wasn’t until I came to the US for a year in high school that I started to take reading more seriously. Not that we didn’t have books to read when I was in Venezuela, I was just not into them. I’d read a little bit, and it would be enough to pass the test. I also remember not reading books at ALL and getting to the test completely clueless as to what the heck they were asking me about.

The first book I read back-to-back, that I remember, was The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath. Maybe it was the excitement I felt from actually finishing a book in English, but I fell in love with that book, and I wondered if I would get the same feeling of accomplishment no matter which book I read. The second book I finished cover to cover was A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce. Again: I LOVED it. I love the rush of finishing a book. I love the rush of knowing there are 30 pages left and I could be done in the same sitting.

Last June I got hooked on the Twilight Series, by Stephenie Meyer. Each book is more than 500 pages long, and I managed to read all 4 of them in just 6 weeks. I think those are my biggest trophies to date.

I once rented a book from the library, which Erin suggested to me, called Happens Every Day: An All-Too-True Story. I read it in less than a week, and returned it. Ever since then, I have felt this void in my bookshelf. Like there is a book-shaped whole in it, and a star sticker left unused. I’m seriously considering buying the book (I buy them used and cheap), just so that I can put a sticker on it and fill that void. Without it, it’s as if my reading it had never happened, and I just can’t live with that. It’s the same feeling Dexter has about his blood slides. I can TOTALLY relate.

Do you have trophies?

ina

February 18, 2010

Another day, another dollar

Here I am… On the train on my way to work. I got a billion things to catch up with when I get in, not the least of them being the 983 unread emails I discovered while taking a peek at my work account last night. I’m just happy that my counterpart in Asia decided to respond to my meeting request for last night with a "New Time Proposed" reply. Nice. I love canceled meetings.

I did manage to get the house in order and most of the laundry done yesterday. I didn’t write mt paper due today yet, though. I figured one victory per day was ambitious enough. I’ll write it tonight. Quick papers are my specialty.

It was snowing this morning when I left. It was quite nice. The flakes were all fluffy and welcoming.

It’s Snowing on my Commute

Then got on the train and I got this little bastard drawn on the back of the seat in front of me. Staring at me in the face. I KNOW I have to get back on my diet, little Ninja man.

The Diet Ninja

Have a good day everyone.

ina

PS: More Venezuela posts to come. Still got more to cover. Stay tuned.

February 16, 2010

Immigration

I just went through immigration/customs in Dallas. There is nothing more terrifying to a foreigner than to go through immigration at the airport. Depending on who you get, you might be treated like the nice person you are, or the criminal they assume you might be.

Usually they take your information and ask you questions to try to trip you up. Before I had a greencard, I had a work visa provided by my employer. Questions at immigration ranged from “where do you work” to “how far is your work from where you live?” — just to see if you got your story straight. I was so nervous when I answered, that I was always surprised they never took me to the little room for questioning (as it has happened to other people I know).

This was my first time traveling as a greencard holder (aka Permanent Resident), so I got to get on the short line! The foreigners line was a mile long! Nice. This is how it went with the officer:

ina: (handing over passport, greencard and driver’s license) Hello
Officer: (takes my documents and starts scanning) Hello, how are you today?
ina: Good
Officer: How did you get your greencard?
ina: Through my husband
Officer: Where does he work?… or is he a citizen?
ina: He’s a citizen
Officer: How did you meet your husband?
ina: College. 7 years ago, now.
Officer: Fair enough. How long was your stay in Venezuela this time?
ina: One week
Officer: (handing over my documents) Thanks, have a good flight.

And that was it. I was nervous as hell that he would notice the different last names in my greencard versus the passport, but he didn’t say anything about it.

(singing tune from West Side Story) Tini nini ninAmerica… tini nini ninAmerica!

Good to be home. I got a few more blogs to post and it might take me all week to get to all of them, but stay tuned!

ina

February 14, 2010

Venezuelan Women

Every time I tell someone that I am from Venezuela, I get “Ooh, the land of the beauties” or some variation of that. I am often proud to be from a country that is known for its beautiful women, until I realize that I don’t really consider myself one of them, and I just get depressed 🙂 nah, I’m kidding, I’m a little more secure than that, but I do feel that Venezuelan women are in a whole separate league that I can’t even scratch the surface of.

I just can’t express how beautiful these women are. I have several cousins who have the perfect smile, the perfect body, the perfect sexappeal, and they stun me every single day.

Last Tuesday I went to observe the pole dancing class that my cousin Lara Croft had been attending for about a month at that point. Turns out that my other distant cousin, Jessica Rabbit, is also in the class. I was in such awe at their sensuality, that I could not bring myself to record a fun video, as I had planned. I feared that I would have to give my blog an R rating if I posted it. That’s how sexy it was. My jaw had dropped to the floor, where it stayed for the durationg of the class.

When I talk about beauty I’m not even talking about height and slenderness, since my family’s average height is 5’2″; it’s the face, the features, the sense of fashion, the total awareness of their own bodies and their own radiance. There is just no other place on Earth where you will find this many gorgeous women per square foot.

Now, it is true what they say about this being a beauty-obsessed society. Getting a boob job is now the most common sweet fifteen present parents give their now grown daughters. I am totally against going under the knife for the sake of aesthetics. And yet, if you eliminated all women who did resort to surgery, you would still not surpass the exquisite quality and splendor of the Venezuelan woman.

From the land of the beauties,

ina

February 13, 2010

El Avila

I noticed that a couple of you clicked on the Avila picture, and might have been disappointed to see that you couldn’t really enlarge it much.

Here. I have posted it again. This time, you can click on it and get the full size version. It’s great for wallpaper 🙂

El Avila

Thanks for your visits!

ina

February 12, 2010

Business Idea: The Blog Chip

Sometimes I wish I had a “Blog Chip” in my brain that would capture my thoughts and clever little sentences and post them here automatically as I think them. That way I wouldn’t have to struggle so much to remember things that happened days ago to post them. It’s totally worth the effort of trying to remember though — enjoy these next posts about my trip.

ina

February 8, 2010

An Unconventional Hobby

I’m on my way to meet with a local business owner, Sweet Dee (reference to "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia"), to continue helping her with her finances and budget, on a volunteer basis. This is the story of my favorite hobby in the world.

I don’t do this for resume building, I don’t do this for network expansion, and I obviously don’t do it for money; I do it because it’s fun. There, I’ve said it: Hi, my name is Ina, and I like to budget for fun. (Hi Ina).

It all started back in 2004. I had been out on the real world for 6 months, and I noticed that my savings account never had more than $2,000 in it. At the time I was making around $1400 bi-weekly, so I had NO idea where my money was going! I decided to take advantage of the American Express consultants that came to my job site one day, and I scheduled a free consult.

At the meeting, they walked me through what it takes to budget, and how they could help me straighten my finances out. They made it very clear that the first step was to keep track of where my money went every hour of every day. But first, they would need $600 from me. That was more than 25% of my savings! So I told them I could not afford it, and they should call me in 6 months, when I have kept track of my spend and we can analyze the data more thoroughly. I even put the 6-month mark on my phone calendar. The day came and went and they never called, which was a relief because by that time I had already firgured out the secret to financial health: AWARENESS of where money goes, and automatic transfers to ensure savings.

This became one of my disciplined obsessions. I learned all I needed to know to increase my credit score and keep it high, I knew what expenses I could live without and which I needed to lower, and I started a Roth IRA account to save for retirement in addition to maximizing my 401k. I was on top of it!

Fortunately, Brian was even MORE anal about his finances than I was when we met. So we would give each other tips, but mostly I learned a lot from him. By the time we got married, out credit scores were 750+ each. We couldn’t have found a better life partner. But then came the decision: who should manage our finances once we got married?

I loved keeping track of everything, but I used homemade speadsheets, while Brian used Microsoft Money, and all of our accounts together (more than 26 in savings, checking and credit cards combined) would have made my spreadsheet too complex and unmanageable. So the answer was easy: he would take it over.

The lack of tracking left a void in my soul, until I found a friend, Charlotte, whose finances were a serious mess and who had no motivation or inclination to straighten them out, even now that she was unemployed. This was a golden opportunity to get back into it and help out a friend. It has really paid off!

Then I offered my humble services to an entrepreneur, Sweet Dee, who admittedly had no clue about her finances and could barely stay afloat. I was interviewing her for a class paper last semester, the topic came up, and I just asked if she needed help, and she said yes 🙂

And that’s the story of my very unconventional hobby. Sometimes "you just gotta do whatever makes your heart sing" (CEO of Dancing Deer bakery).

Do you have an unconventional hobby? What makes your heart sing?

ina

January 29, 2010

Lost in Translation

There is a phrase my mother is very fond of saying: "Yo conozco mi ganado" which literally means "I know my cattle." It’s something she says when she speculates about what we, her daughters, are going to do or how we’ll react to a situation.

I have been trying to use that phrase with Brian because it always comes to mind, but he doesn’t speak Spanish, so it just sounds like a weird thing to say, and he just doesn’t get it.

Last night:

Brian: I’m too tired, I’ll do the dishes tomorrow morning
ina: No you won’t! I know my cattle!

(a few minutes later)

Brian: did you set up my alarm?
ina: oh no, sorry, you asked me to? I totally forgot.
Brian: yeah, I knew you would. I know my cow.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!! I don’t know how he does it.

ina

January 28, 2010

It’s the little things… like Milk Duds

When I went to school last night I never imagined that a little fella would be waiting for me at the library.

(click to enlarge)

What is a Milk Dud doing in the library? It’s like it knew I was coming and it wanted to say hi 🙂

My mother is fond of saying that beautiful days are a postcard from God, to show you how much He loves you and to remind you that the wonderful world He made for you is for you to enjoy and appreciate. Well, I think God was trying to cheer me up with this little postcard 🙂

ina

January 28, 2010

Popularity is a double-edged sword

For the most part I’ve been keeping this blog private. I know it’s “public” in that everyone can access it, but I have never pushed the link onto anyone I know. I don’t hide the fact that I have a blog, but I don’t want to make them feel obligated to visit, and I prefer it that way. I got my loyal readership, and nobody to please but myself 🙂

Since I’ve been talking about my blog with my sister, I decided to give her the link. After all, she is always asking me what’s up, and I have the strong feeling that she would become a loyal reader out of pure joy of reading about what is going on on my mind. I thought it would be OK to do that, after all, I haven’t said anything about her, so she shouldn’t find any offense in these writings… right?

Wrong! She was offended that she WASN’T in it! LOL! 😀 So, here it is. A blog dedicated to my older sister: Monica Geller.

Hope she enjoys her given name 🙂 I’m sure she’ll get it 🙂

Have a good day, Mon!

ina

PS: And to break the ambiguity, I have another sister who is 1 year younger than I am. We’ll name her Tina Fey (because she looks like her), and she’s the one that will be graduating in May and going back to our home country.

January 28, 2010

Chicken vs Penguin

Sometimes we don’t realize how similar we really are.

Check out the winner of the Nikon Festival: http://www.nikonfestival.com/blog/2009/12/15/chicken-vs-penguin/

ina

January 26, 2010

Naming

I added a “Who’s Who” page so you guys can keep track of all the fake names that are so abundant on this blog.

I didn’t change the names of people whose blogs I read if they have not changed their names themselves.

I haven’t mentioned it on the blog yet, but I’ve decided to name my husband Brian… just because I think he looks more like a Brian than he does his real name 🙂

I’ve also decided to use funny names, so we can have some fun here 🙂 I’m particularly proud of my neighbors’ names: Fred and Ethel 🙂 I hope to have more funny names appear here 🙂

Enjoy!

ina

January 23, 2010

First News about Conan’s fate

The news have started trickling in. This one from the Buenos Aires Herald:

On Sunday, attorneys from both sides were putting the final touches on a financial settlement that ends O’Brien’s seven-month stint as “Tonight” host. The payoff to O’Brien is said to be close to $40 million.
The pact also includes sizable severance packages for O’Brien’s longtime executive producer Jeff Ross and the rest of the “Tonight” staff, some of it possibly coming out of O’Brien’s settlement paycheck.

And NBC has already started the re-build of Jay Leno’s image in this article in the Tennessean:

“Jay doesn’t have the power to make these decisions. The decisions are made by NBC,” [Tracie Fiss, a co-producer who has worked with Leno for 18 years,] said.

If FX actually picks up Conan’s show, it’s said to happen either soon or in the fall at the latest. I just hope they put him in the same time slot as Jay.

If that happened, Leno can say goodbye to his ratings, since he would ACTUALLY be competing with Conan (as opposed to before when they were shown at different times on the same network). In the same time slot, we could call this a fair fight. Good luck, chinny!

ina

January 18, 2010

Awaiting official Conan news

NBC is expected to announce today that Conan O’Brien and his staff are out, while Jay Leno will take back "The Tonight Show."

I read today that a network exec was calling Conan names. Truth is that Conan is too nice a guy to survive in such a hostile corporate world. Jay Leno, on the other hand, has a shark for a lawyer and will take all or nothing.

I’m waiting patiently for the official statement from either side.

Conan: we’ll follow you wherever you go. Thought of coming back to Boston, maybe?… no?…. just an idea… 🙂

ina

January 18, 2010

Lip-Kissing Subculture

As I watched Jeff Bridges accept the Golden Globe for best actor for the movie Crazy Heart, I could not help but notice the peck on the lips he gave to his wife, followed by another to presenter Kate Winslet. I don’t think I could describe the look of surprise on my face.

Since I came to the US I have found that most people around me are not 100% comfortable with a peck on the cheek as a daily greeting to someone they see every day (as it is the case in my home country), but seem to be relatively unfazed by the act of kissing babies on the lips (which I find unusual, at best, to this day). I can’t say I have personally witnessed good friends kissing on the lips, but I have seen it in so many shows (eg. Beverly Hills 90210 when Andrea left town for good) and movies (and now award shows) that I’m really starting to wonder what’s up with this lip-kissing subculture.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Is this normal now?

ina

January 18, 2010

Team Conan

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, NBC is letting Conan O’Brien go in favor of returning Jay Leno to the Tonight Show (read the story from the Washington Post here).

Here is Conan’s full statement from Tuesday, January 12, 2010.

People of Earth:

In the last few days, I’ve been getting a lot of sympathy calls, and I want to start by making it clear that no one should waste a second feeling sorry for me. For 17 years, I’ve been getting paid to do what I love most and, in a world with real problems, I’ve been absurdly lucky. That said, I’ve been suddenly put in a very public predicament and my bosses are demanding an immediate decision.

Six years ago, I signed a contract with NBC to take over The Tonight Show in June of 2009. Like a lot of us, I grew up watching Johnny Carson every night and the chance to one day sit in that chair has meant everything to me. I worked long and hard to get that opportunity, passed up far more lucrative offers, and since 2004 I have spent literally hundreds of hours thinking of ways to extend the franchise long into the future. It was my mistaken belief that, like my predecessor, I would have the benefit of some time and, just as important, some degree of ratings support from the prime-time schedule. Building a lasting audience at 11:30 is impossible without both.

But sadly, we were never given that chance. After only seven months, with my Tonight Show in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime-time by making a change in their long-established late night schedule.

Last Thursday, NBC executives told me they intended to move the Tonight Show to 12:05 to accommodate the Jay Leno Show at 11:35. For 60 years the Tonight Show has aired immediately following the late local news. I sincerely believe that delaying the Tonight Show into the next day to accommodate another comedy program will seriously damage what I consider to be the greatest franchise in the history of broadcasting. The Tonight Show at 12:05 simply isn’t the Tonight Show. Also, if I accept this move I will be knocking the Late Night show, which I inherited from David Letterman and passed on to Jimmy Fallon, out of its long-held time slot. That would hurt the other NBC franchise that I love, and it would be unfair to Jimmy.

So it has come to this: I cannot express in words how much I enjoy hosting this program and what an enormous personal disappointment it is for me to consider losing it. My staff and I have worked unbelievably hard and we are very proud of our contribution to the legacy of The Tonight Show. But I cannot participate in what I honestly believe is its destruction. Some people will make the argument that with DVRs and the Internet a time slot doesn’t matter. But with the Tonight Show, I believe nothing could matter more.

There has been speculation about my going to another network but, to set the record straight, I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next. My hope is that NBC and I can resolve this quickly so that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.

Have a great day and, for the record, I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.

Yours,

Conan

Conan is getting a really raw deal here. We love him and want him to keep going! The problem here is the importance of the time slots to NBC executives, and how their ratings went down when they moved Jay Leno. I would argue that it’s not even about the ratings of either show, but about how the local networks news shows were hurt by the Jay Leno show being put at 10pm. The News are one of the few shows (and sports) that just don’t work on DVR — you want to know the news, or the score, as it’s happening. So for the news, the time slot matters a lot.

But what about shows like Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien? Does the time slot really matter in the era of DVRs?

Let me share something with you that you won’t get anywhere else:

In my MBA class, our teacher would sometimes bring people in industry to discuss our case studies with us. Sometimes he would have them on the phone and we’d be able to ask them questions about the cases we read. It was quite the amazing class format, and we got to talk to some people we would have never met before. One class, we got to talk over the phone with an Anonymous network executive.

She kept stressing the importance of a good line up in different time slots, and how revenue is generated from sales of airtime for commercials. My question to her was “with the increasing trend of DVRs and online watching, have they considered new ways of making money in the future when live TV is no longer relevant?” Pretty obvious question to ask, but I really was curious about the answer. You wanna know what she said??? She said that they have noticed that people’s TV watching habits revert to live TV as people get older (what?? How do they even know this?? DVRs are not a lifetime old yet!). I followed up and told her that the younger generations, or at least myself, definitely watch more DVR’d TV than live TV. So she asked for a pole around the room to see the % of people who watch live TV. Only a couple of hands were raised. She chucked that to be because we have a specific group of people in the MBA class, and we might not be representative of their real audience.

She also said that if that trend was true, they would go out of business. So people better start putting more importance on live TV, or there will be no shows to watch at all. Talk about not evolving with the times.

When we hung up the call, I openly expressed how deluded the networks are, and how they are completely ignoring the fact that new trends are driving them out of business.

I just wanted to illustrate to you why the time slot matters to them: it’s how they make money. If the ratings are low, the companies who advertise will not pay as much money for the time. All this is happening while most of us are here thinking “who cares? I fast forward through commercials anyway!” But they do care, because people who watch the news might stick around and keep watching Leno. Unfortunately they really screwed up that strategy by replacing the news 10pm slot ALTOGETHER.

From Conan’s perspective, I don’t think he cares about time slot per se. I think he really cares about the fact that he is being totally disrespected and his contract is being broken by a network that pretty much made him hang tight for 6 years before giving him the Tonight Show. Did you know that? He signed the agreement to host the Tonight Show back in 2003! He passed on multiple more lucrative offers for this opportunity. He moved his family and the ENTIRE crew (and their families) from New York for this. And now, they are bumping him back to his Late Nite schedule. That is NOT how you treat the Tonight Show’s host. That’s how you treat a second-rate less-important whatever show. That is NOT what Conan deserves, and Conan is right to stand up for himself.

I just hope that Conan finds a new home that will treat him with the respect he deserves. We love him, and will continue to DVR his work. After all, my DVR knows no network. Just shows.

ina

January 15, 2010

What’s up?

My husband was scrolling through the on-demand movies on Verizon FIOS. I suggested a couple movies, but he wouldn’t take any of them. So he suggested:

hubby: "Up"? "Up" is supposed to be good.

(I knew about the movie, and I do want to watch it at some point, just not right now. I didn’t respond at all)

hubby: (insisting) "Up"? "Up"? "Up"?

ina: (taking a golden opportunity) What’s up?

hubby: "What’s ‘Up’?"? (confused that I might have not heard about the movie before, but then…)………… Wait, are you being funny?

We both LAUGHED SO HARD. Ohh, I even shed a tear.

I guess you had to be there 🙂

Merry Christmas!

ina

December 24, 2009

Pass please

So I had my first teaching experience at the high school level (read about the experience here).

I did want to tell you about something funny that happened there. For about 35 minutes I had Hall Duty… which is really Bathroom Duty. It consists of sitting at a desk in front of the bathrooms asking kids if they have a pass. Kids try to go into the bathroom without stopping by me, but I always stopped them and asked them to show me their pass.

Everything was going fine. I was cutting up some color paper for an idea I had for a class, and just asked kids for their passes. The passes were just pieces of paper with something written on them… at least in the beginning.

At one point, one kid was going in and I asked him for his pass. He looked at me like “oh, I don’t have one…” and I asked him which room he came from. He said he didn’t know. Then he took a protractor out of his pocket and showed it to me, he said “here, this is what they gave me, this is my pass.” I looked at it incredulous, and looked back at him. He looked smug, like he was putting one past me (I was clearly new around here). I thought “what do I look like to you, stupid?” So I wrote down his name, and he went in the bathroom.

What to do? Nobody ever told me what to do if a kid didn’t have a pass! So I ran to the office (100 ft away) and told the Vice Principal about the situation. He said he’d take care of it, and I went back to my desk duty.

After about 10 minutes, the VP comes by and he asks if the student is still in the bathroom. I said No. He said “oh, I heard he got a protractor pass?” I was a bit stunned “yeah, he showed me a protractor.” The VP said that was in fact his pass: sometimes teachers have a pass that is related to their subject matter so that it’s clear what class the student is coming from. I told him I thought he was messing with me, but now I knew, and thanks for the follow-up.

A little while later, another student showed up and I asked him for his pass. He showed me a bottle of hand sanitizer — “Oh, that must be Health class,” I thought (LOL!). Another student showed me a paper-made megaphone; that must be debate class? The passes got more and more ridiculous! I was cracking up by the end of Bathroom Duty 🙂

ina

December 5, 2009

Apologiesformywife.wordpress.com

(This entry is directly related to the entry called Review of Lunch at Lakeside Grille at Ramsey Golf & Country Club)

ina: I am pissed [about the service]. I’m so reviewing this place on my blog.

hubby: I’m going to have to start a new blog of my own called “Apologies for my Wife”: “Sorry guys, she didn’t really mean it…”

ina: HAHAHAHAHAHA

How does he make me laugh so much? He just cracks me up.

ina

November 28, 2009

About this morning

Last night I was in bed by 10:10pm. I took with me my little notebook where I write down what to do the next day, and this is what I had written down for about a half hour before I could settle on the next line:

5:00 Wake up

For the life of me I couldn’t think of anything I would like to do. There are many things that I certainly NEED to do, but none that I really WANT to do. I was facing yet another day of oversleeping and starting work in a rush, which I have never enjoyed but has become all too common in my life.

When I lived in Connecticut and I had that restrictive diet and budget restrictions, I was the happiest person on Earth. I had a mission and deep focus. I would wake up at 5am, make a cheese and ham egg-white omelet for breakfast and be at work at 7am, even though I didn’t have to be there until 8am. There was power in doing things my way. It felt great. I never veered off course, and I never regretted what I did. I was so committed, it was inhuman.

Now? It doesn’t seem like I have a mission. Now that the house is all set (we finished cleaning it up for the housewarming), there is nothing for me to do with any relevant urgency. I’m grasping at straws to figure out what to do with my time. Yes, I could be doing homework, I could be tidying up my closet, I could be deep-cleaning the bath-tub even, but I don’t have a passion for doing any of that…. I don’t have a passion for anything.

So I resorted to opening up my little Excel random-generator of activities. It’s nothing complicated, you can download it here if you want, but I can’t guarantee it will be up there forever. All you have to do is list all of the things that you need to do, or that you enjoy doing, on Sheet2, and just refresh Sheet1 whenever you want the sheet to tell you what to do next. This helps in these cases when I’m completely lethargic (or bored, in other words) and I have no motivation to do any single thing.

Last night, my spreadsheet told me to write a letter to my niece and nephew (who live in a different state far far away). I thought that would be a good way to get my creative juices going in the morning. So my list for the day shaped up to:

5:00 Wake up
Write a letter
Omelet for breakfast
Shower/get dressed/watch House
Deliver letter
Google search teaching ideas for subbing
Start work

It’s 6:07am, I better go make a yummy breakfast. Wow, I couldn’t even get excited when I wrote that. It’s just going to be one of those days, isn’t it?

ina

November 24, 2009

Opus is not his name

I was watching Mr Holland’s Opus, when my husband walked in during the funeral scene of Louis, the football/drums player. He noticed that Mr. Holland was not standing next to his wife. Not having seen the movie in several years, he asked:

hubby: Did they separate? Did she divorce him, Opus?

ina: No, no, they’re just not standing together…

wait … a … minute…

ina: … you do know that “Opus” means “song” or “hymn” or something like that, right?

hubby nods in confusion… “why is she asking me this?”

hubby: Yeah… why?… what did I say?…

ina: You just called him Opus.

hubby: I did??? LOL!!!!!!

We both laughed hysterically. Oh, these are the moments.

ina

November 23, 2009

Savings Program

I had a nice weekend. In my opinion, weekends are best enjoyed when you do *something* on Friday other than work and TV: it makes Saturday feel like a Sunday, and boom, you got yourself a nice extra day off. It’s all psychological.

Friday felt like a Saturday because so many exciting things happened in my head. I started my new regimen of eating at home and trying to spend as little money as possible. Here’s the train of thought:

We bought our house 5 months ago, and the “big ticket expenses” have not stopped since then! Between electricians, inspectors, tree cutters, a lawn mower, dinning room table and chairs restoration, new sectional sofa, new floors, new carpet, new ventilation system for the bathrooms, and air duct system cleaners (catch my breath), our total expenses for the past few months were WAY higher than before, and there is still no sign of our tax rebate for new home buyers (they sent the check to the wrong address and it will be several more weeks before we get it). Anyways, our budget is shot! My husband and I vowed not to make any large purchases for a while starting December.

So that’s one reason to save (to get out of the hole we carved ourselved into).

The second reason to save is that, if I’m going to get a paycut when I change careers, we are going to need to start getting used to living on less. Starting in January, my husband and I will basically take half of my salary and put it somewhere where we can’t spend it (Savings? Mortgage?), and see how we would do if my salary suffered a 50% cut (strive or struggle?). I want this to succeed so my hubby can be more comfortable with the career change, so I have vowed to save as much as possible! No more eating out if I can help it, and if I go out, watch the amount and keep it under $10.

Nobody said it would be easy, but you should know that this is not the first time I have put myself through similar restrictions with much success. When I lived in Connecticut, I went on the Atkins diet for a month and I was very disciplined at buying the groceries, making the food at home and even weighing my food so I could keep track of it all on Nutrawatch.com. I managed to lose around 2 pounds per week, and I stuck to it as if my life depended on it. Also, I watched my budget so carefully, that I was a master at having lunch out with coworkers on just $3 soups. I never felt deprived because (1) I was extremely committed, and (2) I knew chocolate chip cookies and yummy chips and salsa were always going to be there for me, so it would be OK if I didn’t have them for a while out of my own choice. The best rule to remember was: cravings last about 15 minutes. If you want to eat something outside of regular meals (not because you’re hungry, but because you’re just bored), just distract yourself for 15 more minutes, and you will have forgotten all about it. Just don’t set an alarm clock for 15 min, the alarm will actually remind you of the craving 🙂

Health Disclaimer: The best way to lose weight is to consume fewer calories than you burn through exercise. Extreme or restrictive diets, such as the Atkins, should not be followed in the long term. Deprivation of nutrients (carbs, in that case) is not good for your body.

The point that I’m trying to make is that I know I can do this while I’m still passionate about it. The question is: how long will it last?

I’ll reveal my results every few weeks. I am keeping track of the savings I have incurred (based on what I believe I would have spent money on before this “program,” such as lunch out or pizza take-out), and keeping track of the new expenses I would have not made if it wasn’t for the program (such as groceries for the week).

This should be interesting. Wish me luck!

I found a blog entry from the MassLive “Living Well Eating Smart” Blog called Saving Money? Make meals at home. Check it out for more tips.

ina

November 23, 2009

The Droid… again

ina: I hate the Droid. If you had to choose between the Droid and me, I know you would pick the phone.

hubby: That’s a tough choice… I guess I could cuddle with the phone, and it would be great.

ina: But can you really *sleep* with your phone?

hubby: There’s an app for that

ina: LOL!!!

November 22, 2009

On Racial Humor

Back in College, my husband and I were obsessed with the show Scrubs. We would get together in his room with some take-out and watch episode after episode. Oh, good times.

In one of the early ones, Nurse Carla Espinoza, who is Dominican on the show, is condescendently called “Nurse Fajita” by one rude patient. This was SO hilarious, that the joke has lived on. I shared it with one of my friends recently, and she brought it back up after lunch today. She just couldn’t get enough of it. We went on to make fun of Nurse Fortune Cookie, or Nurse Chow Fun. We were clearly poking fun at this racial reference to ethnic foods in what was an insulting context on the show… but we laughed anyway.

My friend, who is of Philipino descent, asked why it seemed like more and more racial jokes have crossed over from the Taboo-zone of long lost inappropriate jokes, to our Earthly plane. I proceeded to share my theory with her:

In my home country there is a wide mix of races. There is no real clear distinction between black and white (most people are mixed), and racism is simply the farthest issue from our minds. Sounds too good to be true, huh? But that is how it is in most countries. So what does that kind of open and non-judgmental atmosphere do for the plane of acceptable jokes? The result is that it’s all fair game. I remember growing up having a black teacher whose skin was so dark, we would constantly make up names for him related to the color of his skin. It was of course no more acceptable and no less rude than calling a teacher any other name, but it never had a “racist” connotation. It was just plain rude.

In other cases, the color of someone’s skin is used to create terms of endearement. In fact, “mi negro” or “mi negrita” are two of the most used pet names in the Spanish language, which literally mean “my black man” and “my little black woman”, respectively (you don’t even have to be of African descent to use these).

TV shows in such countries are filled with stereotypical representations of other nationalities. I grew up watching hilarious skits where bakery-owning portuguese immigrants and pizza-shop owning italians would get into all sorts of trouble. Clearly racial, never racist.

I remember coming to this country being completely color-blind. It is very sad that over the past ten years I have been bombarded with “white vs black” connotations everywhere, and now I understand the animosity between the races. After all, blacks are constantly profiled and put in a terrible light by the media. At the same time, blacks continuously cry “racism” at the drop of a hat. We are the ones who make ourselves different by profiling ourselves and creating separate communities according to race. Why can’t we all consider one another part of the same community, even when we don’t share the same historical background?

Racism is simply destructive and unproductive. Case in point: I know of a certain school (name, city and state, shall remain nameless), where the student population was mostly black and hispanic, that purposely put black students in the same Spanish class as native speakers of the same grade, even though the black students were only at beginner level. Logic dictates that you should split students in language courses by skill level, but the school principal (who was black, if you must know) refused to do so, for fear of giving the impression that the black students were being segregated. The result was a class period full of students of varying skill levels where the teacher struggled to implement two different curriculums at once, in an impossible attempt to challenge every student, and not bore one half while discouraging the other. The only ones who suffered in this nonsense were the students, who were deprived of the opportunity to develop their full potential.

But I digress… we were talking about humor, right?

Nowadays we are starting to see more and more racial jokes become more acceptable on US TV. Does this make us more racist than before? Or are we really starting to enjoy each others’ differences and adding a little more humor to our lives?

The show Scrubs has gone a long way at helping whites poke fun at blacks, and blacks to do the same to whites. Add an over-the-top Dominican nurse, and you got yoursellf the most racially progressive show on television.

How do you think the US is doing in terms of race?

ina

November 17, 2009

Some College

I always thought that “Some College” in those surveys, where they ask you “Highest Level of Education Reached,” meant something like “not any special kind of college, just a whatever college” when it apparently means “a few semesters” or something.

LOL! I’m such an idiot.

ina

November 16, 2009

On Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin was on Oprah today, and she will be on 20/20 and Good Morning America this week, and I plan on watching every single appearance! I would like to buy her book, “Going Rogue” by Sarah Palin, after I’m done with “A Civil Action” for the book club.

Sure, I was for Obama. Sure, her little rants are a little Miss Teen South Carolina 2007. Sure, she’s not to be trusted with the Presidency of the United States (I refrained from saying she was not qualified, as many people are so fond of saying, but the truth of the matter is that she was actually more qualified than Obama, resume-wise). But, by golly, the woman is gorgeous. I have a mini girl crush on the lady. I could not get my eyes off any TV airing she was in during the campaign in 2008. Yeah, this is serious.

How do you feel about Sarah Palin?

ina

PS: You should definitely watch Jimmy Kimmel’s dissection of Miss Teen South Carolina’s speech. It’s laugh-out-loud hilarious.

November 16, 2009

On Getting Fired for Blogging (Part II)

I started reading the Dooce blog from the beginning. I’m only on the August 2001 archive (4 months after its inception), and so far I have to say that this Heather woman has some issues. The continuous profanity definitely takes its toll on you after a while — but then, if she thought nobody was watching, shouldn’t it be OK for her to voice her frustrations in whatever way she wants?

Only once (so far) has she said something inappropriate about work… like her post on the Reasons she should not be allowed to work at home. That was a bit over the line. On the other hand, you would be surprised how many people work from home and do things like attending a phone meeting while in the bathroom. That was just an office urban legend I heard a while ago (a guy in an interview flushed the toilet while on the phone with the recruiter), until this actually happened on a conference call I was in a couple of weeks ago (people, learn to use the MUTE button!).

So, is it wrong to come clean and say out loud what a lot of other people are in fact doing while they work from home? Is it even OK for me to even mention that I believe that these things DO happen, but people don’t talk about them?

Back to the freedom of speech and getting fired over blogging, I have a question: if companies are not cool with you using company time to blog, where exactly is the line drawn? For example, I come up with ideas for new blogs ALL the time. Is it OK for me to write my ideas down during the day so I can post them after work? Or should I just make sure that I am not using company resources to write these ideas down? Should I just write them all up on my phone and email them to myself to post later? In a court of law, can my company prove that I was doing non-work related blogging while at work even though I posted the entry at 5:05pm (technically outside work hours)? Do they own my brain power while I am on their clock? Where is the line???

There are no explicit guidelines in my company, so I’m basically at their mercy. Whenever they feel like firing me, they will just make up some excuse and do it.

ina

November 16, 2009

On Getting Fired for Blogging (Part I)

As I was thinking of what to put on my About Me section, the inevitable question arose: should I post my picture or not?

I looked at other bloggers I follow: @na at How to wash a shower curtain and the all-time favorite Katie’s at Twenty Something, and they both have their pictures up. They both talk about personal things as well as their feelings about work. Still, it does not stop them from “facing” their readers (who may include their family members and coworkers). So, am I being paranoid to overthink this?

What am I afraid of, exactly? Mostly retaliation from my company. Because of this fear, I came out to HR and told them that I had a blog and I did speak about work. They said that as long as I wasn’t writing anything explicit about the company, its products, customers, or inner-workings in a way that would be damaging to them, I should be alright. I should be all set for all those facts, since I do keep my entries somewhat vague and never reveal my company’s name. However, people who do know me know where I work, and anyone who sees my picture will be able to tie my entries to my company.

In a perfect world, freedom of speech and expression are untouchable. But then you read things like these, and it makes you wonder:

Bored Teenage Office Worker Fired over Facebook Entry (the teenager never mentioned the name of the company)

Dooce: a coined term based on Heather Armstrong’s firing over her personal blog at dooce.com

Employee fired by Starbucks over blog (the employee kept a personal blog to update family and friends, and he used it to vent about his boss, whose name he never even revealed)

Flight Attendant Fired for Blogging (supposedly for posing inappropriate pictures in uniform, when in fact it was just pictures of her and her coworkers, just like many other male counterparts had posted online)

Have a blog, lose your job? (an article about the fired bloggers)

Nintendo employee fired over blog (she wrote anonymously under a pen name)

Not even a pen-name can save you nowadays… but what is considered inappropriate? Am I allowed to share my feelings about my job and my career out there? Is this just about blogging during work hours? The law doesn’t seem to be on the side of bloggers… if it was, then companies would have to identify who in the organization is actually doing non-work related activities during work hours, not just blogging.

The jury is still out on this one, so I’m going to have to play it safe and continue to censor myself: no picture, no company name, no talk of coworkers, no blogging at work, no explicit mention of my dissatisfaction with the actual work or company environment itself…. wow, that last one is going to be tough. How do you prevent people from speaking up about their current experiences? Whatever happened to freedom of speech? I guess it’s dead and it costs too much money and time in lawyers and courts to make it worth all of our whiles. This is how dictatorship works, you know? They got their thumb on you until you decide it’s not worth the aggravation.

It’s just messed up.

ina

November 15, 2009

On the US Education System

Last Friday I had my first substitute teaching gig in the Greater Boston area (the school shall remain nameless). It was a pre-K special education class with two teacher’s aids. One of them took the lead and I just sat back and did as I was told throughout the day.

Overall, it was a good experience. I happened to come in on the one day of the month when they celebrate the corresponding teachers’ birthdays. Needless to say, there were plenty of sweets and cakes and yummy goodies. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong day to start having breakfast before work (boo).

I felt like a fish out of water most of the time. The teachers were 45 years and older, and they seemed to have been doing this forever. This just seemed like THE place to be for women between 45 and 65 who have children. I wonder where all the women my age are. Are there careers where women in their late-20s/early-30s conglomerate? Where are you, girls???

In the classroom, the slow pace of the class was driving me crazy! I am and probably always will be an extremely energetic type A personality, and I really felt like we could have made the class far more educationally entertaining and dynamic for these 4-year-olds. They definitely need to burn off some energy themselves, and sitting around "drawing" on outlined shapes did not really challenge them. I put "drawing" in quotation marks because most of them were not even encouraged to use more colors or draw withing the lines. They literally just scratched the outlined figured with a single crayon back and forth. Now, I’m not one to judge on what constitutes "art" and "freedom of expression," but kids are there to LEARN. If nobody ever encourages them to try different things and approaches, do they ever expand their skills and knowledge at all? Maybe the teachers could have them draw on two figures: one within the lines and try to copy a model (for hand and color coordination skills, as well as following directions), and another one whatever way they see fit (encouraging their creativity).

One thing is for sure: kids have very malleable minds. If you set expectations high, they will stretch to try to meet those goals. If you set expectations low, they will remain in their comfort zone and never really challenge themselves. In other words, and pardon my candor: treat kids like morons, and you will raise morons.

One clear example was when the main aid asked another aid whether she had ever used the laminating machine. The other aid, who is a high school senior, said no, but that she could easily figure it out. For the record, I believe her. The main aid said, "mm, no, I better show you." It is NOT rocket science! It is that kind of hand holding that makes for very "comfortable" and unchallenged kids. I could tell the high school senior felt the same way as I did about it.

Those were just a couple of the things that I had an opinion about (oh yes, there’s more!). At one point in the day, the main aid asked us for what word, besides "Kite", could we think of for the kids to learn about the letter "K" in an upcoming class — does anybody else find it strange/silly/stupid that the figure they used for the letter E was a guy with a shirt that said "Ed", and for the letter "I" it was a monkey which, apparently, was scratching an ITCH? — The other aid came up with "Kangaroo" which I thought was a great one. The main aid dismissed it and asked us to keep thinking. "Kitten" was out, because the kids had already learned about "Cat." We couldn’t think of anything else, so I asked her what was wrong with Kangaroo after all? Her answer: "oh, I can’t cut out a kangaroo in construction paper…" !???! Are you telling me that the future leaders of this country will not be able to learn about kangaroos because YOU can’t DRAW a kangaroo???? She is a 65-year-old woman who has been teaching small kids for 27 years, and at this point is simply unable to meet the demands of the job. I asked the aid if she needed help with that, and I proceeded to draw and cut out 25 kangaroos for the next class project. The problem here is that it is EXTREMELY difficult for unionized teachers in Massachusetts to get fired, and they will not leave until they can realize their full pension potential upon retirement. And THAT is the formula to the failure of the school system in the US. That, my friends, is how you end up with burnt-out individuals who have been repeatedly doing the exact same thing over 20, 30 and 40 years in some cases. Check out this article in the Boston Globe. It describes what the state is doing to make strides towards higher quality of education, despite the unions.

Anyways, it was only my first class and I was there playing second fiddle (actually, more like third, since there were 2 more senior aids). I wonder what it would be like to lead my own classroom and have full say on how the lessons play out. Would that be fun? Exhausting? Would I get sick of it quickly? Would I hate the fact that I would get no recognition or rewards from my "bosses"?

As I was leaving, I said goodbye to the teachers, who were incredibly kind to me, and really considered whether this is a life I would like to lead. I don’t have these answers yet… but I’ll keep you posted 🙂

Are you a teacher or have you had experience in this? What is your opinion of the current school system?

ina

November 15, 2009

$1 Double Cheeseburgers at Burger King

I heard something funny on NPR (National Public Radio – WBUR 90.9 FM Boston) this morning: Burger King franchise owners are suing Corporate for making them push the promotion "double cheeseburger for $1" when in fact it costs them $1.10 to make them.

Here’s the funny part, and I quote: "So they have to eat up 10 cents in losses. And that don’t taste too good. They’d rather have it their way. So they’re suing."

LOL. I just thought that was a GREAT closing line. You could tell the announcer was smiling when he said those words 🙂

Find any interview or news story on the NPR archives at http://npr.org

ina

November 13, 2009

Veteran’s Day

As I walked out of class, I passed by the college bus stop and saw a young guy (a student, for sure) in sand-color camouflage military uniform. I walked right up to him, and this is how it went:

ina (pointing at the guy): Today is Veteran’s day!
Soldier (smiling, looking down all the way up from 5’11" off the ground): Yes, it is.
ina: So I get to congratulate you?
Soldier: Yeah, I guess so
ina: Where are you going, do you need a ride?
Soldier: Oh, no, just waiting for the bus, it’ll come any second
ina: Come on, it’s Veterans Day! I’ll give you a ride!
Soldier: No, seriously, I haven’t gone to war yet! I appreciate it, though
ina: Are you sure? My car is right there!
Soldier: Really, I’m fine
ina: Alright, have a goood night!
Soldier: You, too!

And that was my attempt at saluting the troops: attempting to kidnap a soldier against his will 🙂

A warm salute to the troops!

ina

November 11, 2009

My Own Internal TV

Do you ever find yourself having to re-read the same paragraph on a book (or website or whatever) over and over again because you were distracted thinking about something else? Well, that happens to me a LOT. I am in class (on a break) right now and I swear I haven’t actually listened to a single word the teacher has said in the past hour. Only, I can’t rewind him over and over again.

I noticed this uncanny ability to tune the outside world out while I was in college. I noticed that people talking around me did not catch my attention one bit while I was watching TV or something on my computer… Even if they were talking about me! It helps when I go to sleep, actually: a band could be playing outside my door, and the noise wouldn’t faze me one bit.

Over the years I have learned to hone this skill more and more. I like to call this my internal TV. I can take myself out of any situation and transport myself to a different world at any moment. I tend to use this while I drive: I turn on NPR, which just turns into a soft murmur in the background, and I turn on my own channel to Dexter or something else I like. My brain just can’t shut off!

If you’re anything like me, I lost you three paragraphs ago. Go back to the beginning and try reading this again 🙂

Does this happen to you, too?

ina

November 11, 2009

On Gay Marriage

This morning I did something unusual: I turned on the TV to the Today Show. I wanted to get the weather forecast, instead I caught an interview with Miss California, the controversial Miss America contestant who answered Perez Hilton’s question on Gay Marriage with a brutally honest “marriage should be between a man and a woman, no offense to those out there.”

I’ll cut to the chase: I’m for Gay Marriage.

Now I’ll tell you why:

I am a 28-year old immigrant from a country that is Catholic in its majority. I was raised going to Church and my mother wouldn’t be my mother if she didn’t thank God every other sentence. I got religious education at school and I was the only one in my family who actually *chose* to continue to go to Church with my mother after turning 16. I realized that I feel at home in Catholic Churches after giving other denominations a “try.” My being Catholic was both instilled since birth and a choice I made once I was able to answer the question of which religion I’m most comfortable in, later in life. I am proud of my beliefs.

One of the causes that have made Catholicism (and Christians in general) so looked-down upon in America is the issue of Gay Marriage. If there is one thing I learned from Jesus is that we should love our neighbors like we love ourselves, that we should treat others the way we would like to be treated, and that we are all His equal sons and daughters. Where in these teachings did He ever say that gays are an abomination? Jesus would have NEVER told us to treat a certain group differently or to create different laws for them.

The official stand of Catholicism in this issue may differ from my personal view, but where the heck did the government get off getting in the middle of this argument? Have you ever heard about the separation of Church and State? Why is the government all of the sudden taking sides with a particular Church/set of beliefs? The government should be advocating EQUALITY for all its citizens, not cherry picking the laws based on people’s religious beliefs.

I would propose to leave the religion-specific marriage rituals with the Churches and continue to grant them their constitutional right to uphold their beliefs. As for governmental rights of married couples, eliminate any discriminatory statute (such as “between a man and a woman”) and allow unions between two people with the full support of the law.

As for Miss California, I applaud her standing up for her right to free speech and not to lie just to win a contest. This IS America, after all.

ina

November 10, 2009

The Droid

To say that my husband is an erudite tech is an understatement. He is a lurker (yes, there is a name for what he is) in all of the technology forums. He just knows everything that is going on in the tech industry. He would be able to tell you on any given day whether the Comcast network was down in a certain town in a certain state. He’s just like that.

Well, just like all other tech junkies out there, he has been waiting for the new Motorola Droid to come out forever. I swear the thing turns him on more than I do. He finally got it on Monday (he ordered it on Friday but had it shipped to his office address so that he could actually get other stuff done over the weekend). Well, the darn thing has a GPS that is the latest thing (see a demo of it here), and I’m just jealous of the attention he has been giving a stupid device, so there is a certain level of animosity between me and the Droid. Yesterday I must have said “I hate the Droid” a billion times, and kept telling him to shut the thing up while I drove.

I got home from work before my husband did today. He called me and asked me if I’d like to go to Home Depot with him to buy some stuff. I said sure, and then heard the GPS’s voice in the background. I yelled out “IS THAT YOUR GPS???” to which he responded quickly and nervously “NO!….. IT’S MY GIRLFRIEND!”

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!! Oh, man, never a dull moment with this one.

ina

November 10, 2009

Generation U (for Unemployed)

This post hopes to complement Katie’s the recession is really still on? blog post.

There are a few things that one can’t argue: the recession is still upon us, unemployment is reaching the highest levels in 30 years, and finding a job may be as difficult as getting into Harvard University. Young professionals are roaring out loud across the world because they were handed a raw deal: adults said “study, work hard, and you will succeed”, and the young ones are still waiting for their future to materialize. All such tantrums aside, I’d like to talk about the current situation on the ground.

Many of my close friends were laid off from their jobs in the past year, and none of them has found a job yet. For some it has been just a couple of months, for others it has been 6 months, and for others it has been a year or more. When asked how they feel about their situation, the answers vary, but a general theme seems to be recurring: they are having the time of their life. Sure, no job means no career, means no clear long-term security, means a sense of uneasiness. On the other hand, they know this is just a passing situation. They will eventually find a job and life will go on. In the meantime, they are going to the gym, volunteering in organizations that mean something to them, going to the public pool to relax, visiting their families more, spending more time with their friends, even picturing themselves in different career paths and contemplating going back to school. Generation U has been handed the opportunity of a lifetime: take some time off work, while still getting paid close to what you were making in your full-time job, and just figure out what you want out of life.

I have found myself envying their situation. Collecting unemployment only sounds less than desirable from a career perspective, but it *is* a paycheck, and it is allowing them to lead a life with no strings attached and with complete freedom to look at life from outside of the working world.

At the same time, those of us who were not laid off have nowhere else to go. We grow increasingly resentful of our jobs and employers, and wish we could just get out. The days become boring and drag while we stare at our screens, update our Facebook status, and post blog entries. People are not machines: there is no way you will ever find a single person in the world who can claim a full 8 hours a day productivity every day of the week, every month of the year. It is simply not possible. Our lives are simply wasting away before our very eyes.

The final result is a fleet of workers who don’t have any motivation to get back to work, and a fleet of workers who just don’t want to be at work, period. Is this a sustainable situation? Without a shift in the job market that favors higher levels of work satisfaction, the United States is just headed for a future of a dissatisfied zombies workforce. I can’t stretch my brain enough to calculate the future repercussions of this trend, but something has got to change to get employers to understand that this is not the 1970s anymore: workers will not stay just because they are getting paid. Something has GOT to change at work.

Read more on the Culture Rx: ROWE: Results Oriented Work Environment. That would be a great start at getting our lives back: smashing the clock and just focusing on results. I would be able to get up whenever I want, go get my toes done, run errands, and STILL get my job for the day/week done.

This recession is just the beginning. We need change.

ina

November 10, 2009

Hello World

I have decided to start a new blog to post thoughts.

Several blogs have inspired my starting this one. Among them:

@na’s blog at http://howtowashashowercurtain.com. She just rocks.

My friend’s blog at http://coffeetabledeclarations.blogspot.com. I loved immersing myself in a world where you can read books at work, and where animals and inanimate objects come to life. Warning: it’s a story, read from the start.

Katie’s blog at http://twenty-x.blogspot.com/. She’s a couple of years younger than I am, but going through the same philosophical process “what do I want to do with my life?” Great reading.

This blog is named “Currently Under Construction” as a really obvious analogy to my life at the moment.

Please note that the URL is inanutshelll with 3 Ls just because inanutshell (2 Ls) was already taken.

ina

November 9, 2009

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Category: Interesting

Cograf Comunicaciones – La historia del Cometa Halley

Good advice for us all

Why is it sad?

Why is it true?

IF A FAT GUY GRABS YOU AND PUTS YOU IN A BAG, DON’T WORRY, I TOLD SANTA I WANTED A GOOD FRIEND FOR CHRISTMAS!

1) “I wasn’t thinking that, you came up with that on your own”

2) “Why do you feel the need to make a scene?”

3) “I’m not going anywhere”

4) “That needs a good biting”