Saturday, August 30, 2008

New Squidoo Lens: Blog World & New Media Expo

This morning I created a new squidoo lens for the BlogWorld & New Media Expo, taking place this year on September 20-21 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I'll be attending this event, along with the E&E Conference on the 19th. I love squidoo because I can see all the relevant information about the event on one page... google news, blog mentions, twitter stream, flickr photos, youtube videos and other random comments about the event without having to search various locations.

Here it is, enjoy!



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Almost a Vegetarian

Yeah, so I've been following this Maple Leaf Foods listeriosis outbreak along with the rest of the country. If I wasn't borderline vegetarian before this, I most certainly am now. I've never been a huge fan of meat. I really only eat meat that looks entirely pristine - if it's processed it doesn't have any chunks in it; if it's fresh it is all meat with very little marbled animal-looking stuff. I just get turned off when I think hard about what I'm chewing.

So, as the story was breaking a week and a half ago I was actually off from work with some kind of infection causing severe cramping and stomach upset, so honestly at that point I was avoiding the news. I didn't need to hear about it between trips to the can. I tend toward being a hypochondriac anyway, that I figure if I don't think about it, it's not a possibility.

That said, I've now opened my eyes to the reality and keep watching the list of recalled meat closely for any indication that I or my family have consumed the listed products. I think so far we're mostly in the clear - we tend to get most of our deli products from Real Canadian Superstore, which uses Ziggy's brand meats I believe. At the same time, we do occasionally get meats from Safeway (big-man gets Capicollo there; RCSS doesn't carry it).

Here is a message from the CEO of Maple Leaf Foods:



Now, I heard on the news last night that even cheeses are affected... Yikes! What are we supposed to eat? This is just one more piece of evidence that cereal is a perfectly acceptable dinner food, as I have always suspected.

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Friday, August 29, 2008

Sweet Serenity

Big-man has taken mini-man on his first guys weekend. They've gone with a friend of ours and his two boys camping at Cultus Lake. Big-man is much braver than I; the thought of taking a not-quite-two-an-a-half year old camping for 3 nights scares the you-know-what out of me. It sounds like WAY more work than I'm interested in taking on, but then I've always been a little on the selfish side.

While they're off galavanting around the lake, the woods and the water slides, I get a weekend to relax and recharge my mommy batteries.

Today is Friday evening and I have enjoyed sitting to watch the evening news while eating take-out sushi (the sushi isn't unusual, but the news is - big-man can't stand watching anything to do with what's going on outside our apartment... I have yet to figure out why that is). I have also completely cleaned up and re-arranged mini-man's room, gotten rid of a garbage bag full of my old clothes, cleaned and moved a few large toys that I'll take to a friend this weekend, and listened to Hillsong United with Brooke Fraser singing Hosanna over and over again:



Tomorrow I plan to sleep in until at least 6am and then do whatever I want for the rest of the weekend :)

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Thursday, August 28, 2008

Unconditional Love, yes. But unconditional respect?


A book review and a concept to ponder...

Okay, the truth is this is not really a book review per se, but definitely a concept to ponder from the book I'm currently reading. I know, I know I said I have the attention span of a flea... truth is it is VERY rare for me to read entire books. I'm more of a blog, newspaper, magazine-if-I'm-bored, rss feed kind of reader. But every so often it's nice to curl up in bed and read something of the printed and bound variety.

I'm currently reading Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. It's based on the theory that what men and women actually need out of a marriage differs. Now, you might think, "Well, duh!" But the truth is, as humans, we generally try and offer people what it is we want from them, rather than offering them what they need. The result is that each can be left without the fulfillment they're seeking and, thus, the painfully high divorce rate.

The foundation of Dr. Eggerichs' theory comes from scripture:

Ephesians 5:33 states: "Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband."

When I got married, I thought what we were doing was committing to living together because we loved each other. What I didn't realise at the time, is that God's plan for marriage involves more than that. Firstly, the commitment is not to exist in the same space with one another, but to act. The commitment is to act with love towards one another, whatever form that really needs to take and so I've recently decided to dive in to figuring out exactly what that means.

The Ephesians passage above is interesting. Notice it doesn't say the wife is to love her husband. Huh. Men are commanded to love their wives as he loves himself! Wow. That's quite a tall order. But women are commanded to respect their husbands.

The truth is, we women and society as a whole, really expect unconditional love from our husbands. We believe its our right... whether we get ugly or fat or don't keep the house well enough, don't earn enough money, don't dress nicely or use enough wrinkle cream... we expect our husbands will love us no matter what. Unconditional, right?

Well what about the concept of unconditional respect?

Often we consider respect to be something a person earns by making right decisions, doing the right things, saying the right things. That's how a person earns respect, right? It can't just be given no matter what, right? Well, it would seem that's exactly what this scripture is saying. In the same way that women are still worthy of love from their husbands no matter what they do or how they behave, our husbands are worthy of our respect for who they are as individuals whether we agree with all their decisions, actions or convictions or not.

It's a great book and I would highly recommend it to anyone trying to figure out why their marriage isn't exactly what they signed up for. It's funny how more and more I find the words written in the bible just make sense when put into practice. Ironic?

Just a thought to ponder...

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Saturday, August 23, 2008

God uses pornography

I know I said my blog is G rated, and it is... well, mostly. With exception of a couple of words I'll keep it clean here. But I feel the need to share something that I found yesterday while innocently browsing audio podcasts on itunes. I was looking for marketing stuff and Christian stuff, semons etc. Then I saw something odd:



Do you see it? Let's look closer...



There it is. Right there in the middle... yep, you can read: xxxchurch.com - #1 Christian Porn Site. Huh.

To say I was taken aback is a serious understatement. At first I was shocked, then I was trying to figure out how that is justified. I figured, yeah, there probably are people out there who have found a way (in their heads only, mind you) to justify the use of pornography as acceptable to God somehow. I don't doubt that. God loves us all just the way we are right? God made us in His image and if we enjoy porn then God does too, right? Yeah... go ahead and believe that if you want. I finally decided just to move on despite wondering what on earth audio porn would be anyhow (ew); I tweeted about it and let it go.

It wasn't until this morning that I actually started talking to big-man about it and we both got curious. I was really apprehensive about going to the site. It's not that I'm a prude. Well, I guess I am a little, but it wasn't always that way...

I didn't make a decision for Jesus until I was 29 years old. I'd been in three long term relationships by then, lived with two partners, random encounters with others and have seen probably as much porn as the next person. I'm not saying this to glorify the sinful experiences of my past, but just to share that I'm not as crunchy as some of the Christians you might meet in your lifetime. But clicking on a site that would most definitely be offensive and could quite possibly challenge my beliefs was a bit of an uneasy proposition.

So this morning big-man and I decided to have a peek. It was like looking at something gross with one hand covering my face and fingers spreading open slowly, slowly to reveal whatever it was that was on the other side. What we found was one of the most raw, real ministry efforts we've ever seen. The site was created by a group of Christians looking to reach out to those people who use porn whether recreationally or addictively.



One of the most lofty goals they have is to open a church on the strip in Las Vegas. They have some compelling stats on the sex trade in Vegas to back up their reasons too. Sobering stuff. They're even looking for missionaries to help with their efforts in las vegas. That would certainly be challenging - I have not received that calling, but perhaps you have?



Pornography and other sexual sin can ruin relationships. It eats away at the core of what God intended for sexuality. I don't care if it's pornography, pre-marital sex, homosexuality, beastiality, incest, voyeurism, pedophilia, homosexuality or withholding sex from your spouse (yep, that's a sin too... are you guilty?), God calls it sin. Sin is sin, and you can be a Christian and fall to any of the above.

Just watch these confessions or check out any of the testimonials on this site for a glimpse into the lives of those who have suffered... like this one: Confesions of a beautiful, wonderful, interesting human being.

So yeah, God uses pornography. God uses porn like he uses any other struggle we face... to draw us to himself by showing us how much we need him; how broken we are; how far we are from how He intended humanity to live. Are you guilty?

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Thursday, August 21, 2008

The Registration Frenzy

Do you ever have one of those moments you regret instantly? Those ones that usually involve a 'send' button? Yeah, I had one of those yesterday.

Any mothers in North Vancouver know what I'm talking about... it's North Van Rec Registration Day. Now I am the first to admit we here in North Vancouver have one of the best, most comprehensive, recreation commissions anywhere. We have access to a host of programs across a wide range of facilities, all at prices that are highly subsidised by our local government. It's accessing those programs that can be a bit tricky.

The Fall Leisure Guide comes out early to mid August every year and showcases the myriad programs available for September through December. Well this year the magic date was August 20th: the date when registration began for the aforementioned programs.

Big-man and I decided we needed to get mini-man back into swimming lessons. He's quite the swimmer now - able to swim unassisted with water wings on and will willingly put his face in the water and blow bubbles. He also will swim under the surface of the water from one of us to the other and will jump in and swim up to the surface on his own (okay end bragging here). Now because he's still under 3 (he's actually a little under 2 1/2) he has to be in the parent participation program: Tiny Splashers. We decided, along with my mother-in-law (hereby referred to as 'Nona') that he would take a weekly lesson with Nona. As such, I ended up having to brave the repeated redials in order to get him in for the desired day/time slot.

I started calling at about 6:58am. Dial, busy signal, disconnect, talk, redial, busy signal, disconnect, talk, redial... I finally got through and put on hold at about 7:07. I was excited it hadn't taken as long as I'd thought it would, though 10 minutes of dialing feels like longer than it is. So there I was trying to get dressed while holding a phone to my ear and listening to CBC radio (couldn't they pick something a little more upbeat at that time in the morning?!), trying to fix lunches and get mini-man breakfast. That's a lot of multi-tasking. Not only that, but I was also trying to speed up the process by refreshing their online registration system in order to see if I could get in faster that way. Every couple of minutes a voice would come on saying something to the effect that they appreciate my business and that I'd be served faster if I hold rather than dialing back. About 7:22 it happened...

I heard an awful clicking sound and my heart sank. I got hung up on. I mean, it even sounded like someone picked up my call and put the receiver down on the base... no joke. I lost it. I can't even explain how angry I was in that very moment. I'm ashamed, really. So what do I do? I go online. I go to their "contact us" page and find a form.

I have to say, that level of anger is not a good thing to have when writing an email that someone is going to actually receive. I do believe I didn't use any profanity, but I really came off as a jerk. Not only that but the moment after I submitted the message I got through to their online registration form and was finished about 5 minutes later.

Once the registration was over, I had forgotten about being disconnected. I was just happy the entire process was over and in only about a half an hour... not too bad all things considered. It was only later that morning while sitting at my desk at work did I remember what happened. Actually it was upon receiving a phone call that I suddenly became keenly aware of what a jerk I'd been. "Hello..." I answered. "Hello. This is Ann Greenwell calling from the North Vancouver Recreation Commission..." oh no! I'd forgotten... Not only had I been extremely rude in my email to them, but the woman calling me used to be a business connection of mine when I used to place advertising in the Leisure Guide. Oh no. I don't know if she remembered me or recognized my name and/or phone number, but that just goes to show you should really think twice about voicing your opinion in the heat of the moment.

Lesson learned. Hopefully...

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Anniversary Weekend

August 14th was our 4th wedding anniversary. We were married on the anniversary of our first date, 5 years earlier, so it's really easy to remember yay! This year big-man surprised me with a lovely overnight away to the most unusual spot: The Silver Reef Casino just outside Bellingham, WA. I actually think it's technically in Ferndale, but that doesn't really matter. You might think that sounds like an odd plan, but for us it was perfect.

It was a simple plan: son at the mother-in-law's, drive down Saturday morning, enjoy some spa treatments, a little gambling, a nice dinner and some more gambling and more spa treatments, and then back on Sunday. It was very well planned and I have to give props to big-man. He's never been good at surprising me with anything. In 9 years he's never managed to actually surprise me on my birthday, Christmas or our anniversary. This, at least, he had planned entirely up until about two weeks prior when he finally broke down and told me the plan haha... yeah, we're still working on the *surprise* element of gift giving.

So here's how it went...

We left our place about 8:00am Saturday. Given we're up daily by 5am, that was no big deal. We had coffees in hand and a few things packed. It was a beautiful morning so we took off without the front panels on the Jeep (we have a hard top 4-door Jeep like this one where the top pieces just above the front seats come off independently from the rest of the hard top) and left them at home (more about that later).

Here's how it looked coming in to Vancouver from the North Shore:



And this was me all excited taking a pic of myself - yep I'm a big dork:



We then proceeded to accidentally follow Granville all the way in to Richmond instead of switching over to Oak to get on to Hwy 99... oops! So we had a nice little tour of Richmond before we finally hit the last stretch to the border. At the border we hit the duty free for big-man's necessities (read: booze & smokes) before we got to join the 90-minute queue of travellers trying to navigate their way to the U-S-of-A.

Anyway, after the 90 minute wait, lots of pee-pee breaks, the odd tweet and some good quality time, we were through the gates and on our way. We stopped for a quick breakfast at Jack In The Box and then arrived at the hotel at about 11am. Perfect timing.



Actually, the timing was good. They had our room ready even though check-in wasn't until 4pm or something. We had an executive suite on the top floor so there was a little extra security - you had to have a key to a 6th floor room to get the elevator to go there. Big-man had even managed to get the hotel staff to pick up a bottle of sparkling wine he knew I'd like and a long stemmed rose and have them leave it, with a card he sneaked in to them, on the bed in our room. Nice touch.





Pardon the bottle of tequila. That was from the duty free. Newest favourite drink is Blue Agave Full Throttle with tequila *mmm*.

So 11:30am Saturday the first item on the agenda was a couples' massage at the spa. It was good. The massage itself was good, anyway. The guy who was working on me started talking about how he divorced his wife for her putting her cold hands on him to warm up. A little inappropriate given it was our anniversary, but whatever. The Silver Reef is certainly not high end, despite what they'd like to think. At least the price isn't high end either lol.

After the massage we shared our bottle of sparkly. That's all I'm saying there...

Around 1:30 we went for some lunch at Panasia. The thing we started to notice about this 'resort' (and I must use the term lightly, it is actually a hotel and casino in the middle of a series of fields on a native reserve...) is that no one knows anything about anything that isn't part of their job. The hostess knew nothing about the beverages offered, nor did she know anything about the voucher thing we got with our room key. All she knew how to do was seat people at the table. The server on the other hand, knew about the beverages and the voucher, but didn't know what came with our food. We ordered a spicy duck dish that was supposed to come with little pancakes to roll it up in and she was very shocked that we would imply there should have been something else. No harm done. The food was okay. Not great; but okay.

After lunch I quickly threw $150 in the toilet. Well, I might as well have done so at the rate I lost it at the casino. At that point I wasn't having much fun, but big-man was enjoying himself, so we stuck around. When he was up a little, he gave me another $100 which I promptly handed over to the 4-card poker dealer. My excuse is that I was training for Las Vegas when I go to Blogworld next month. Meh. Truth is, I was training my self control from that moment on. I draw the line at $250 without winning a single hand.

Big-man made up for my losses at the tables and we got all prettied up and went for dinner at the Steakhouse.



Big-man, having spent many years in the restaurant industry in both the front-of-house and the back-of-house, was excited about table-side food prep. We ate Caesar salad (prepared tableside), he had a pepper steak (prepared tableside) while I had a lobster bisque and, for dessert, we had bananas foster (you guessed it, prepared tableside). Big-man bitched about the wine service (his glass emptied twice without being refilled promptly or, better still, beforehand), but over all he's just a tough cookie to please. I thought it was fine.

After dinner we returned to the casino where our final tally was me down $300 but big-man up $600. I took a photo of him rolling in the cash on the bed (which is pretty funny) but given he was in his underwear by that point, I figured I'd spare him. Some things are better left private. After deciding to quit while we were (collectively, anyway) ahead, we went for a swim and a hot tub before retiring to the room to watch the Olympic coverage on TV.

Sunday morning we got up and had some really bad coffee. Okay, admittedly I'm a coffee snob. We use a French press at home and use 5 heaping scoops of espresso roast for two mugs of coffee, so hotel coffee just can't do it for me. Big-man had decided to have another massage Sunday morning given he'd enjoyed the first one so much. I, on the other hand, decided to drive in to Bellingham to look for some real coffee... a Starbucks perhaps?

It was then that I realised it was raining. Remember that nice weather I'd said we had? Remember how I said we'd gone with the tops off the Jeep? Remember how I said we'd left them at home?! Yeah. Nice. So I'm driving down I5 towards Bellingham in the rain, with my hood on, in search of the happy green circle. I finally spotted one Starbucks just as I was passing it with absolutely no hope of doubling back. I kept going to Bellis Fair... found a McDonald's but that was definitely not what I wanted. So I decided to drive around some more...

I found the strangest thing: right beside Cost-Cutter was Christ The King Church. No joke. A big church in a mall... it was really weird. I'd planned to miss church that morning, being out of town and all, but then I felt compelled to drive right by the front door... 8:30am service. I checked the clock: it was 8:27am. Now I know when God is talking to me. "Don't miss church. You soooooo need a little godly influence don't ya thing?! You already threw away the money I provided for you playing stupid gambling games, don't you think you ought to think about me just a little while you're immersed in all things worldly? Besides, you'll like it." Yes God. I went in.

It was like violins started playing... as I walked though the door the first thing I saw was an espresso bar. Sweet. Then, I met a woman who works in the children's ministry and gets espresso vouchers for doing so. She was happy I'd dropped in and gave me one. Score! Thanks again, God. I finally make my way in to the sanctuary, wondering if people were frowning upon my attire: yoga pants, a hoodie and flip flops (my usual any time I'm not at work), just in time to see the pastor come in... wearning flip flops. FTW!!

After the service I had just enough time to get back to the hotel, get changed and have a swim and a steam before my mani/pedi appointment at the spa - my final pampering of the weekend.

The drive home was quick; just 10 minutes at the border. We were home by just after 3pm sitting by the pool at the mother-in-law's hanging with our mini-man, who we missed dearly.

It's really important for us to take time away from the hectic pace of everyday life. This was a nice break. Thanks babe... I love you. Now if we can just focus on not killing each other before we do it again, that would be fantastic.

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Thursday, August 14, 2008

Just joined Technorati

I'm not sure if it's a sign that I know a little about what I'm talking about or not, but I'm proud to at least know where to look to get the right information. It's like, I may not actually be cool, but I know people who are... oh yeah I do.

I'm currently following @mitchjoel, President of Twist Image, on Twitter. His post this morning in his blog Six Pixels of Separation was a great outline of several of the top tools for managing, or at least monitoring, your business reputation online. One of those means, which I have not explored thus far (and the only one to date - yay me!) is Technorati.

So this is how I spend the morning... 5:30am, signing up for new profiles in new online spaces while drinking a very large coffee. I'm still working on laying a foundation online to represent myself. For the record, www.michelleevans.com is not me.

Want to see the real me? Check out my Technorati Profile :)

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Google Rant

Dear Google,

I'm very frustrated by your assumed understanding of my needs (or my own lack of understanding of your capabilities, anyhow). I'm especially frustrated with the new automatic login to analytics. That would be uber helpful if I didn't mostly use google for personal reasons. Just because I have analytics and adwords accounts for work doesn't mean that's all it's good for - my google reader, my gmail and my igoogle are all on my personal account, as is that AdSense stuff that served me up canadiancheeserolling.ca... nice AND this very blog.

So I spend a good portion of each day logging out of my natural persona and logging back in as my alter ego: the business woman. I think I'm starting to actually develop some serious mental illness over this point of contention. I can't keep flip flopping back and forth! I'm already at risk of having the shortest attention span on the planet, but make me do it under two different identities and the fragmenting is almost unbearable.

Please, please find a way for me to have two accounts simultaneously. For the love of all things digital.

Sincerely,
A Dissatisfied Customer

PS - if anyone out there knows how to make Google understand my two separate logins from this one machine, please let me know via comment.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Not much of a blogger

Well, it's official: I'm not much of a blogger. It's funny, as much as I think I have great things to say every now and again, I don't actually have time to write them down at the very moment I think them up. I have the attention span of a flea, and thus there are no entries in my blog.

I'm not entirely sure what I want to do with this blog, to be honest. When I started it, I was just looking to ramble some random thoughts as they arose. I still think that's sort of what goes through my head, but it doesn't much make for good reading. There are so many topics I've thought about really pursuing to make me stand out from the crowd:

- Marketing - so many people do it, and many better than I could
- Online Marketing/New Media - see above
- Parenting - with one 2 1/2 year old I'm hardly an expert
- Christianity - well, it's hard to really share those deep places with the world
- Music - I only know about praise and worship music and artists

I'm also thinking of starting to build more Squidoo lenses. They're my latest obsession and I just earned a whopping $0.07! I know... totally thrilling.

Anyway, I'm currently waiting to hear back from my General Manager to find out if I get approved to go to BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2008 in Las Vegas in September. If I do, I'm sure I'll have far more ideas after. Until then, if you find yourself reading this blog, you'll have to make do with my random thoughts in no particular order and with no particular regularity.

Thanks for reading.