Not a liar, I swear

So, looking back through past archives, I realized that I actually DIDN'T complete last year's NaBloPoMo. So! As double duty, I'll be playing catch up and trying to post 2-3 times a day this month, back dating the posts and linking to them here because I can't have a blog archive that doesn't have a (30) next to each and every November.

And now, a slow loris getting tickled.

NaBloPoMo take 4

So, I never let a November pass without doing NaBloPoMo or National Blog Posting Month. I will post everyday but as you can tell from my previous post, life is a little !!! right now, so the posts may be very short and not so sweet.

Small things that have changed my world

- an arm case for my iPod so that I don't have to carry it while I work out. I did this for way, way too long.
- suitcase with four spinner wheels. I like it so much, I'm sometimes just walk around my house, spinning my luggage. JUST BECAUSE.
- greader, even though it has been entirely too long since I'm on top of it on a regular basis.
- baked cheetos. so amazingly delicious.

Glug, glug

So, I’ve totally drunk the NTC kool-aid. Oh, you say you don’t know what that means? Non-profit Technology Conference in the hizzouse, babeh! I just got back from Atlanta and boy, are my arms tired! Thank you, I’m here all night.

(Note: just typed that as “hear all knight.” Because no one at the Round Table will be overlooked.)

I've been to conferences before and had some eh sessions and some pretty stellar (hurting the next day, have to vomit in a trash can on the street [sorry, Mommy]) off hour good times, but I think this is the first time where I was engaged both in personal conversations with new folks AND with the actual work part of the conference. Who woulda thunk?

Maybe it isn't fair to compare NTC (relates to work I'm actually doing every day) to AAM in Philly last year, which was all about work I wanted to be doing but would have little hope of doing it at all in the near future, hey, here's a beer to cry into. Instead, I found myself taking notes and marking in the margins what I wanted to do when I get back to work. I was exchanging business cards and saying we should follow up and because I'm a nerd about being a nerd, this excited me.

Y'ALL, I WAS RECOGNIZED.

As in, I was walking down the street on my way to a happy hour outside the conference center and someone stopped me and said , "Hi, are you Tatiana? Do you work for Oceana? I GET YOUR EMAILS [emphasis mine because!!]" She was awesome (hey, Lori!) but honestly - who would have thought that little pic of me at the end of an email asking you to nominate the next ocean hero (until April 18th) would land me in the public eye. Well, social media do gooder public eye.

All of this is to say that I'm so excited that NTC is in DC next year. The good times, they won't be stopped.

As for the social side of the conference, let me just say: Thursday night was a fantastic dinner, where I broke sushi rolls with Wendy Harman aka American Red Cross Twitter lady. During the meal, she was just cool. Friday, after the party [roof top, basil gin lemonade, lunging with new Aussie best friend], was the after party [Coca Cola museum, dancing, whiskey sours, splits, had director of the whole shebang comment on my skillz, zomg], and then an after after party [beers, pizza that I don't think we bought, detailed retelling of epic love stories]. Cut to a four hour nap and I cried at lunch because I was so tired.

Tired little nerd goes to sleep with images of next year's conference dancing (literally, there is dancing) in her head.

Bullets

- I'm 99% sure that I'm willing to buy what will be one of my most expensive pairs of shoes but I don't want to buy them online without trying them on first. I need to find a brick and mortar storefront.
Karel, shut up. I know you hate them.

- I remember her story on FAO Scwharz from a long time ago but rediscovering her today has been tops. If I ever make it up to New York, I will have to find her. Not in a creepy, stalker way but in a fan of her self-deprecating humor kinda way.

- I know that many people have already given to help out Haiti, and I'm impressed with the American Red Cross's text giving campaign, though mostly from a way to use social media to mobilize people than as a way to help people in need. I'm not going to slight anyone who gives and is trying to help, but I recommend checking charities out on charitynavigator.org before giving. The American Red Cross only gets three (out of four) stars. I chose Doctors Without Borders, because in addition to getting four out of four stars, they are taking down an inflatable hospital. Moon bounce healing FTW.

Interview Time

For the second time, I participated in the Great Interview Experiment. And with everyone in the world to chose from, I got interviewed by someone in my backyard. And I interviewed someone who lives in Melbourne, where I lived for 6 months. Small world.

So, without further ado, here's Carla's interview. She's a magnificent writer, so you are in for a treat.

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Hi Carla, sorry it took me so long to get to you with questions, you've already completed yours! Impressive. I just wanted to read your blog a bit and make it a bit more personal.

I do have some questions in mind but I want the interview to be a bit more organic and conversational, so I'll just feed you one at a time.

You mentioned you are in Uni getting your Master's and you are a mom with two young kids. How do you do it all?

Xanax. Yep they are everything that people say they are... Seriously though...you forgot to add in the busy Cafe that I own! How do I do it all?

The kid's part is relatively easy. Once they can wipe their own tushies and open a pack of cornflakes in the morning everything else is chocolate brownies! (well forgive me- but I like chocolate brownies better than a piece of cake.)

Business...well to be honest I just halved that workload recently by selling one of my cafes earlier this year. I'm not sure if I had the seven year itch with them...but I'm glad that I made the decision. My hubby who works in the technical-sphere said he has noticed a huge difference in me on the scale of calm to frazzle.

I was tired of frazzle.

As for the studies, it would have been easy at that point to sit back and enjoy some quiet time, but instead I applied for the post-grad masters course in writing because I felt that it was time to release a dream that has been sitting dormant inside for awhile. I'm not sure if it's a win or a fail yet... but if you want something bad enough you simply find or make the time for it. I truly believe in the old adage that we can only be the best mothers and the best wives and the best friends that we can be when we are happy within ourselves.

Plus the kids get a big kick out of sitting down to do our homework all together...

I can't believe I left out the cafes, especially since I worked in a variety of them for EIGHT YEARS! That makes that Xanax super super important. Three of my four parents were in school at some point during my childhood, but we never did our homework together - lucky kids!

Eenywho, on to my next question. I studied abroad in Australia (Melbourne Uni, even!) and have long wanted to live abroad again. If you could pick up and move anywhere with no drama, where would move and why?

You've lived in my beautiful town of Melbourne... so it's no surprise that I'd say- I wouldn't live anywhere else in this world! (...and I've crisscrossed the globe so I know what I'm talking about...) But for the purpose of this exercise I will say London, England. I'd like to say it's for the history, or because it's the perfect geographic base to allow me to trace back through my European roots of England and Ireland and Poland and Russia, or due to any other number of intelligent and culturally significant reasons...but really...the truth is...it's because men with British accents make me swoon...

Feel free not to use the you-tube link... I'm a little mad for Colin Firth so I thought I'd share (perhaps overshare!!!) LOL

When did you live in Melbourne?

Great question by the way!

I'm enjoying the way you are doing this... it allows me not to think too much ahead and it does feel very conversational...

Oh the link is a keeper. I LOVE Colin Firth as well. One of my life goals is to make a man with an accent fall in love with me.

I was in Melbourne from February-June 2003 - almost seven years ago! My little sister spent her semester abroad at Bond in Queensland, so I got the chance to visit her this past April. As lovely as the beaches were, I'm a total Victoria snob.

You mentioned crisscrossing the globe - do you have a top five foreign locales that everyone should visit? Did you do much of this traveling with your kids? I also lived for year in England when I was growing up and me and my large family drove all over Europe. So while I can say that I've been to Venice and Paris, it was as an 11 year old with all my siblings - I imagine it would be a different experience today!

I feel blessed to have been able to travel, and I understand the importance of exposing my children to the greater world in which we live. They are by now pretty good travelers having journeyed across Australia and having done four trips abroad to such far away places as China and Japan.

I find this an interesting question…particularly since what is foreign to me may not be foreign to you. And I’m intrigued that you have asked me for five places, not one or three but five, so let’s see if I can give you a place to visit, somewhere. I have been, somewhere to satisfy each of your senses…

Sight
Beijing, China
Beijing is for me the ultimate in contradictions, it's all high-tech lightning speed nestled beside ancient hutongs and revolutionary scars. It’s all about the sights. The bustle of humanity, the snaking Great Wall, the immensity of the soul-breaking Tiananmen Square and the most delicious of them all, The Forbidden City- home to the Dynastic Emperors and their hundreds of Empresses and Consorts and Concubines and a mind boggling array of offspring. The grounds of which are now visited by Chinese tourist families, who sightsee the magnificent ancient ways of privilege and excess, holding the hands of their single children tightly.

Touch

Pentecoste Island, Vanuatu

Every year the local men of this island village perform an amazingly-scary ritual called N’gol or Land Diving, jumping head first from hand built scaffolds miles in the sky. And between them and death is their Gods and a single ropy green vine. But this is not what will touch you in Pentecoste. As we snorkeled the azure waters pointing in delight at extraordinarily coloured corals and fish, my daughter met a smiling and happy island girl on the soft sands of the beach. And by the very nature of little girls there was no shyness or awkwardness over language barriers, there was just an immediate friendship. They showed each other their bags.

My daughter had her DS and ipod and lollies and toys and other girly treasures.

The smiling and happy island girl had a shell and the stub of an old grey-lead pencil.

It was a lesson in the material nature of happiness given to my daughter, like a gift wrapped in banana leaves, that touched all of our hearts.

Taste

Rome, Italy

In Rome I was taken to a restaurant that screamed so badly of cliché it almost made my eyeballs bleed red, white and green. From the expected check of the table cloths right through to the stubs of melted candles stuffed into old bottles of chianti, still in their little straw bikinis. The waiter seeing that we were foreigners took it upon himself to organize the menu. He said it would be traditional. I wasn't holding out for too much.

But what followed was a meal that was operatic to the palate.

Simple pane, bread slices drizzled with olive oil, melanzane- vinegared slices of purple skinned eggplant, forkfuls of mushrooms clinging to tomato drenched tagiatelle, tender osso buco scattered with shavings of aged romano cheese and flat leaf parsley, and limone gelato so glacial and lemony-brutal that our lips remained puckered in ecstasy till the following morning.

Hear

New York City, U.S.A

Good Lawd, the cacophony of New York is the sweetest clang of music to my ears. It’s a heady brilliant scream of conceit, from a goddamn sexy bitch who has every effen right to be conceited.

Traffic and music and words and food and art that’s the hiphop-techno-crunch-folky-rock-ballad of your soul. And the taxi driver who drives with one hand on his horn and the other waving the bird as he screams out the window at the arsehole who just cut us off.

Don’t worry, no probs, we’re in no hurry! we say wide-eyed-petrified from the back seat.

S’okaaaay the taxi driver sings bringing his head back into the cab,

Relaaaax man!

This is how we do things in New York.

Smell

Melbourne, Australia

On any given summer evening there is a smell that wafts, tantalizingly over the suburban fences of my home town, Melbourne.

Can you smell it? Come stand at the front of my house, yes, right here on the footpath. Lift your nose to the air, breath it in deeply. That’s the inhalation of Australia.

It’s blended gum leaves, fresh cut lawn, and steaks grilling on the bbq. You can almost taste the potato salad and smell the coconuty sunscreen on the children who are running around in their bathers eating sausages in square bread squirted with tomato sauce. The salty air of the ocean is twenty minutes to one side and dark mossy smells from the foresty mountain ranges are twenty minutes the other way. And in between, is the brackish upside down river that courses through a city so multicultural that it simply smells of the foods from all nations.

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I mean, am I right or am I right? The lady spins a yarn. Thanks, Carla! It has been a pleasure.

ETA: Sorry the font is and has been all kinds of wonky, I've been trying to figure it out, but why deal with html at home when I get enough of it at work? Not that I'm drowning in it or anything, but a little goes a long way...

Homestrech and GIE

The end of November is in sight and good thing, too, since I'm losing steam. In fact today, I'm not even going to really write here but instead point you to MamaKaren's interview of me, as part of Citizen of the Month/Neil's Great Interview Experiment. Thanks for the great questions, MK!

And I'm out.

Party in the USA

How could you improve on this?


How about this --

Wannabe fashion blogger

So, I don't have the check book or the time to be a dedicated fashionista, but I do follow several fashion bloggers. Today, the independent line M641 was featured on Broke and Beautiful.

What do you think?
Sam says that I need to let go of the Renn Fair, but I think I like it! And while I love getting huge deals at the big chains, I do like to be a hippie sometimes and support independent outfits.

Intervew

So, last year, I did Neil aka Citizen of the Month's Great Interview Experiment. And it was fun! So when he posted that he was doing it again, I jumped. Kinda literally, in that I was the 5th person to comment.

And now I've frozen up! I'm hoping that some great questions will come to me over the weekend... or that you guys will have some ideas? Please, pretty please?

What are some questions that you would ask a random blogger?

I tip my hat to you, Al Gore

You're welcome, the hundreds and hundreds who follow J-money.

Some people may poo poo the importance of blogging and while I still love reading mags and books, there is something about the connectivity of the internet. It makes it so much easier to talk to someone whose writing I admire... and even though it may be something like a House five day forecast, it makes me happy that I can send something along to someone who is famous in their own way... and it matters!

The Internet: more than a series of tubes.

NaBloPoMo

So, today is November 1st, which means one thing around these parts: NaBloPoMo. This marks nablo's fourth year, and my third (god, let that sink in), so be on the lookout for daily posts. May not all be words, probably a fair amount of pictures and songs on the busier days.

Some changes you might see. I've been thinking a lot about my various blogs, for work, for me, and how much easier it would be to combine them all here. A few major things are defining me at the moment: my new job (E-Activism Fellow at Oceana! w00t! go me!) and the fact that I'm a single gal in DC. These things are always subject to change, but for some reason, segmenting my writing feels a little like segmenting up my life. So, that means that there will likely be more work and dating writing here on these parts. But we'll see, we shall see. Sharing an email I'm sending out to over 300,000 people is one thing, writing about my latest dating debacle when I know my family reads this is another. So... we'll see.

In a totally unrelated note, today, I've watched Sleepless in Seattle, About Last Night, Vikings v. Packers, parts of Ghostbusters, Knocked Up, Brothers and Sisters, and Game 4 of the World Series. Let's here it for a solid couch day.

Pop Waffle's Guide to Halloween

Spelling

I can be all about something but then they have to go and misspell "Colombian" and it is all over.

i can haz updates!?!11?

So, the end of April through the end of May almost killed me and it just may still. I basically got back from Australia, went to a four day conference in Philly, finished up school, graduated with my master's, found a new place to live, and will be moving on Sunday. So yeah, to say that this time in my life has been a bit busy is an understatement. I've been dying to be able to sit down and pump you all full of the fun thing I've been doing and thinking but when I get home from work/internship/other city, all I want to do is watch so much TV that my butt falls asleep.

But! my trip to Australia provides me with a more than legit reason to post on my work blog, so that will certainly have to happen soon.

Oh and PS, maybe the reason I've been slow to blog? I'm obsessed with Google reader and often comment on the things I share there. Seriously, go get a reader.

Also, my museum blog is back up and running. Because I'm so good at keeping on top of the three blogs I write for now. It is very museum centric, so I'm tempted to say it will be boring to those of you not in the biz, but come on, I'm hilarious and I can make exhibition development exciting to EVERYONE!

Because y'all care

I will be live Twitter blogging the Top Chef finale. I totally ripped this from Pop Waffle, who is HILARIOUS, go watch it all.

Follow me here.

I can haz blogz reederz!

I never thought the day would come- I made it onto iambossy! Actually, I first typed that as "iamboozy" and while I am not currently in that state NOW (nor is she. or at least I hope not. It is in the morning. Though it is always 5 o'clock somewhere) I thought it was apt. Whew longest parenthetical EVA.

But welcome if you are clicking over from Bossy! This is just what I needed to jump start my Monday. That and a jug of wine. I mean....

Waste of space

So, I have been a total bump on a log this weekend. Main example: I've watched almost the entirety of New Adventures of Old Christine. The only reason I didn't finish? Not all the links on sidereel were working. It certainly wasn't because I was motivated to do anything.

MAIN EXCEPTION: I made a King Cake! As a strong contrast to my two previous baking for the office- vegan ANZAC biscuits and vegan lace cookies- my king cake (sadly, sans baby) is made of store bought cinnamon buns in a can. With psychedelic icing.

Pics to follow. Right now, I have to go rest from my strenuous FIFTEEN minutes in the kitchen and watch the Oscars and Big Love.

Etsy, my love for you grows

I love it when people turn me on to Etsy shops because it gives me just that. much. more. to want to buy. Just what I need, right?

But what do I love even more? Contests! And winning things!

Head over to Softspoken and Oh! How Lovely! to participate for yourself. See how nice I am, sharing the wealth? Though if you win, you need to give me something in return. Like a milkshake. Or a kitten.

I'm going to be OLD

According to the death clock, my last day on earth will be on Friday October 5, 2085 when I am 102 years and 4 months old. Of course, with things like this, you get a different response each time you submit the same variables. So far, the youngest I will be is 96 and the oldest is 106, but I average around 102.

What is keeping me alive so long? My relatively health BMI, the fact that I don't smoke, I'm female, and that I'm optimistic. Apparently, my ability to laugh at myself and others will keep me around for a long time.