Liloia.com

Update 2

Ok, well I have been officially asked to continue to come down to Shelton for 2-3 days a week for the next month. The office that I am working in is supposed to be hiring 6.5 people over the next few weeks. I don't know how one can hire .5 of a person but I am sure that they will work it out. Once these new people come to Shelton I get to help in training them. Hooo boy.

The upside is that I won't have to be here longer than 2 nights/3 days at a time and I will get to be home to play more Zelda.....uh...I mean play with Trevor.

Speaking of Zelda, this game is unbelievable. Ok, I have to hold myself back or else I would talk about it for pages and pages. Suffice it to say, I love this game.

Monarch Butterflies

Really fascinating stuff. This is a recent study released by Univ of Mass - School of Medicine detailing the effect of sunlight on migrational patterns of Monarch butterflies. Um, ok I am a geek. There you have it, so stop laughing long enough to read this. Really cool stuff.

Monarch butterfly guided by sunlight changes

Ok, now that you finished reading this you can start laughing at me for being into the migrational patterns of butterflies. :)

Early Adopter

I would love to be an early adopter, but I'm too poor to make the cut. When I read essays and marketing books about early adopters, the authors neglect to say that these people have to be fairly wealthy to remain on the cutting edge of new products. Especially in technology. Did you have $2000.00 to toss away on the first generation of DVD players? I had to wait until they came down to $88.00 at BJ's. So nix on being a technology early adopter.

I'm part of the highly-coveted niche market of early adopters for products under $10. Got an innovative new nail clipper design? I'm there. Dunkin Donuts coming out with a new flavor? I'll stop there after work. Got a fridge that's also a telephone and a home gym? Ask this guy.

In that vein, last night at the dollar store I decided to become an early adopter of LifeSavers Fusions for $1.50. The commercials, while forgettable, show a futuristic-looking candy with a spherical neon core surrounded by a sparkling crystal-clear mantle. In reality, the neon center is an amorphous blob that bleeds into a cloudy layer stippled with bubbles. Less futuristic and more Manufacturing Mistake #0745.

Yes, I smelled the candy. And it smelled like someone was eating a hard candy... four offices away. The candy was practially odorless -- a technology that Dr. Scholls should be contacting LifeSavers about.

LifeSavers Fusions aspire to taste like Jolly Ranchers, but they're actually the genetically watered-down second cousins of that bastion of hard candy. The first flavor that hit me was neither kiwi, nor strawberry. It was a salty/sweet tang, not unlike antifreeze. I made it to the (purportedly) kiwi core of the first one, but only got as far as the "strawberry" (notice the quotes) mantle on the second try. The cherry/strawberry didn't stay in my mouth long enough to get past the first wave of flavor. If I had been looking for a cherry cough drop, I would have bought something marked Halls.

The only area in which LifeSavers Fusions succeed is their pleasing and mouth-fitting round shape. Something the Jolly Rancher branch of the confectionary family has yet to master.

OxyClean saved my son's life

It's a rare day when a preschooler lets his parents sleep until noon on a Sunday. It's an ever more rare day when he doesn't destroy something while they're sleeping. Those days are so rare that I haven't encountered one yet.

This past Sunday was one of the much more common days when you wake up and look at the clock, realize it's noon and groan with happiness that you've been able to sleep for so long. Then you go into the bathroom and notice tiny red fingerprints on the foamy soap dispenser and the stepstool. At first, you think "Blood! Who's bleeding!" But then you take a closer look and the fingerprints are sticky and pasty -- and a shade of red that has only been found in veins on the silver screen. "What is this stuff?"

Next you head into the kitchen where there are more gooey red marks on the hard-to-clean wood part (Never the glass. Never ever the easy-to-clean glass.) of the kitchen table. You call out to your preschooler, "Trev? Where are you and what is this all over the house?"

At the sound of the phrase, "all over the house", your husband bounds out of bed, wishing to witness the destruction firsthand. You both crouch near the soiled table and decide that it's red ink from a Chinese chop set. Not AC Moore stamp pad ink which is thin and starts to run on a humid day. This is thick Chinese ink paste, bought thirteen years ago in Stanley Market, Hong Kong and made from a recipe older than America itself. It's the same ink that kings and emporers used to make chop signatures on their official documents and it laughs in the face of Windex with Bleach.

While you're scrubbing with futility, your preschooler enters from the living room with his hands hidden behind his back. Which is never a good sign. Your husband demands them front and center and they are slimy with ink. He is sent to the bathroom and your husband checks out the living room.

"Oh my god, what did you do?!" comes the shout you were half expecting. You run in to find that the offending preschooler has used your couch, carpet and coffee table as canvases for three distinct works of art. The green couches now have red handprint accents ground deep into the bumpy tweed-like fabric. On one cushion he experimented with circles. The coffee table appears to be a staging area, where excess ink was rubbed off before application to the couches. The light gray carpeting was apparently an acceptable substitute for a moist towelette -- it was used to clean all painting implements after the work was complete.

The boy knows that this is potentially the worst trouble he has ever been in. He feezes in the hallway and you hope that he's thinking to himself, "What I did was wrong. I'm responsible and I'll never do it again." But what he's really thinking is more along the lines of, "I like snacks."

You send him into his room and banish him to the bed for the rest of the day. You confer with your husband and you both agree that if you killed him, someone would probably notice. So you take out the OxyClean instead and pray that it has the power to save your child's life. After two hours of scrubbing, those enigmatic enzymes have dissolved every trace of the paste ink -- and the preschooler is napping quietly in his bed. Thank you OxyClean. If he knew, Trevor would thank you too.

My Commercial

I wrote a Volkswagen Beetle commercial on the way to work today. If you're from an ad agency and you'd like to use it (because you make commercials that are conceived by random people all the time, right?) just let me know. I'm happy to share. No really, I am.

FADE UP TO TWO BOYS IN THE BACK SEAT OF A FAMILY CAR

BOY 1: (punches Boy 2 in the arm) Punch buggy green!

BOY 1: (looks out the window and punches Boy 2 in the arm again) Punch buggy silver!

BOY 2: (looks out the window, searching for a long moment, then smiles devilishly -- the camera pans to catch their car passing a Volkswagen dealership)

TITLE CARD:
The New Beetle
No punchbacks.

I also wrote a rap song that samples Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli's Time to Say Goodbye. It was a very productive commute.

Another case of...

getting out of criminal charges based on your celebrity status.

CNN.com - 'Godfather of Soul' pardoned - May. 21, 2003

I am SOOOO glad that the State Representative for South Carolina spoke on James Browns behalf at his pardon hearing because...

"I've been a fan of James Brown all my life. I've listened to his music all my life," Kennedy said. "I think this is something that he deserves. He has been one of our great entertainers in this country. He's done so much for the country and for me as a young person growing up here."

...and not because he served his time and is rehabilitated. And we wonder why the criminal justice system is flawed.

Oh and..

Oh and I forgot to say that they are sending me back to Shelton, CT again. I will be spending 3 or so days a week there for at least another month. That's better than being there for the whole week.

Extension

Yesterday, I found out that my company is extending my position until Spetember 30th or so. Good news, bad news. So this means that I have guaranteed work through the summer and that I am not going to have the pressure of looking for a job. The bad news is that although it looks as if the sales position in my company is a sure thing, there are still a few loose ends. The position has not yet been approved and once it is approved it may not be slated to begin until 3rd or 4th quarter of this year.

Gift horse, mouth and all I cannot complain. I have a job for at least three more months, maybe four and the prospect of having a great job at some point during that time is really good. Now I just have to wait....again.

Also a few recruiters have contacted me recently for open positions that they are trying to fill, so that is good. I'll keep you all posted.

Boston never looked....

so good.

I am back. Thankfully. I don't think that I could have taken another day of it. After three weeks of working in Shelton, we were given a reprieve in order to attend the goodbye party for my department last night. It was a really good time and it was nice to see everyone together in one place. It is also nice to be back in Massachusetts. I have Monday and Tuesday off (well, I have to work in the Boston office) and then Wednesday through Friday I will be in Shelton again. I think that I may be going back there again for the entire week after that but it will be nice to have a few days home.

Tonight Tara and I are headed out to see The Matrix: Reloaded. It opened yesterday and this will already be my third time seeing it. It is a REALLY GOOD movie. Morpheus is quite the powerful character in this one and there are a few new baddies to hold your interest. The story is a little tough to follow and some may want to bring a thesaurus with them into the theatre, but did we expect anything else from the Wachowski brothers?

I am leaving right now to catch a train to meet Tara. Later!

I said consummate Vs!

I'm justifiably concerned because Trogdor is leading the tattoo poll. It got me thinking... do I really want this on my body? Maybe I do.

Ink Me

Bryan thoughtfully alerted me to the upcoming Boston Tattoo Convention. And what are little brothers for if not to encourage you to get ink?

I told him I'd go and I may very well get a tattoo of my own. But what to get? It's going to be on me forever and ever, so I'm understandably confounded. But I'm willing to let random online people guide my choice -- please vote:

And my boyfriend can stay over...

You know, Dave complains a lot about being away. But you can't refute that there are some positive effects from his absence.

Top Ten Benefits of Dave Being Gone

1. I don't have to see a single episode of Law & Order
2. A single bottle of ketchup lasts an entire week.
3. No syringes showing up in random places around the house.
4. No 6:30am wake up calls.
5. Whining has been reduced by approximately 50%.
6. No one eats the sour cream I'm saving for a recipe.
7. I can stay up late blasting the soundtrack to Xanadu without being pelted with anything.
8. I can remove the Mallomars from the diabetic-proof vault.
9. All of the clean laundry remains in convenient and easy-to-reach piles on the floor.
10. Five days of Zeppelin-free living.

E come vivo? Vivo!

Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme is a beautiful thing. The only change that could have made it better would have been Franka Potente as Mimi, but I won't quibble with casting choices. Our Mimi was perfectly waif-like. She was about to waste away before our very eyes. And she had a rocking feminine trenchcoat.

The beginning of Act Two, when the stage manager calls for the scene to start and the neon lights go up, was breathtaking. The entire audience gasped in unison. I don't think I'll forget that lively scene any time soon.

I had read reviews before going and I was skeptical of the choice to leave the curtain up during the entire show (i.e. you can watch scene changes and actors taking places), but it wasn't nearly as distracting as I had imagined. Even when four stage hands in black crouched at the corners of a set piece for the entire scene. There was just too much going on in the opera to bother looking at them.

I don't feel qualified to make a judgement on any of the performers' vocal abilities except to say that it was pleasing to the ear and every one of them managed to convey the sentiments of their character despite the language difference.

My only wish was that I had been a tiny bit closer to have seen the actor's expressions. But not at $150 a ticket. We still have to pay rent, Baz!

And thank you to Dave who got the hint and got the tickets. You rock.

Today

Today is my birthday. I am 29.
I am spending this day working in Shelton away from my family and daily routine.

And it sucks.

People have been nice and all. Wishing me happy birthday, my parents and Tara called me to do the same. That was all very nice. But I know that at the end of the night I will be alone in my room at the hotel. The rest of the trip this hasn't bothered me but today I am feeling very lonely because of that.

Normally on someones birthday, (Tara, Trevor or I) we would go out to eat, or make their favorite meal. Then we would probably head home all together and have some ice cream cake. I am not going to have that tonight and I am a little annoyed by it.

Okay that's enough of me whining. I am over it.

Update

Update on life from Shelton, CT

- They have asked most of us to stay on for another couple of weeks. I hope Trevor still recognizes me when I get back

- No news on the sales job yet. I'll keep you posted

- I am sleeping horribly, but it is ok because the coffee and diet soda is keeping me propped up quite nicely.

- No matter how great a hotel says their TV selection is, don't trust them.

- I now know what the word "weary" truly means.

Mamma's getting paid for blogging!

Well, not really. But part of my job is now to update a weblog for Web professionals called, "Save As..." on CIO.com. I'm finding it much harder to come up with relevant subjects because apparently Web developers aren't interested in pictures of my kid. Go figure.

It's a prototype for a handful of upcomping CIO Magazine weblogs, so expect it to be tweaked often and possibly disappear completely if reaction is poor. But you won't let that happen, will you?

Back in town

Last night I arrived back to our little apartment after spending the last week helping my company in Shelton, CT. I don't think that I have been as stressed or pushed as hard to get something done like what we accomplished this week ever.

The team of people that I am working with are unreal. Some of them I was fortunate enough to get to know during PerkinElmers integration with Packard Bioscience that I participated in last winter (2002). The others working with us are phenomenal people and I am glad to have time to spend with them. We have been showing up at 8 and staying to almost that time at night. The most impressive and hardcore work happens after the Shelton staff all go home. We band together and get all of the work that wasn't handled during the day and slam it out. It is really quite a sight.

Normally hotel beds have those really awful velour-ish blankets that are just horrid. They are thin, uncomfortable and just plain annoying. The hotel we are staying in has great pillows in excessive quantities and full comforters on the beds which are really quite nice. That said, I haven't slept more than 4-5 hours a night since I got there. I am looking forward to two nights this weekend to catch up and get back on track.

We head back down to Shelton on Monday for another full week. We are supposed to be taking a hands-off role this coming week and allow our replacements the room to make their own mistakes and grow into their positions. It is not going to happen. This group is not ready for the challenge that they have been given, and are unprepared to face it in a reasonable time frame. I am sure that given the right amount of time to get used to the business, they will be fine. All of this only goes to show what a great group of people we had in Boston. I will miss all of them.

Open letter...

Open letter to the driver of a green PT Cruiser, Massachusetts license number 1881LJ. I'd like to introduce you to something the rest of us like to call The Yield Sign, or more familiarly The Yield (as in "He had The Yield!"). Although The Yield is rarely considered to be among the major arcana of traffic signals, he still serves an important purpose in the world of accident prevention.

Let's say, in a purely hypothetical example, that two cars are approaching the exact same point in space at the exact same moment in time. Now I hear you say, "But Tara, that's clearly in violation of the laws of physics!" And I say to you, "You're absolutely right. Something must be done." Because without intervention, the PT Cruiser might suddenly find it's rear fender embedded in the side of a Kia Spectra (hypothetically).

I also hear you cry, "Two objects hurtling on a collision course... shouldn't one let the other go by?!" Early civil engineers, anticipating such space-time paradoxes, instituted a simple, yet elegant solution to this quandary of physics. The Yield Sign. You see, while The Yield doesn't have the raw power and control of The Traffic Light or the stoic efficacy of The Stop Sign, it does have a gentle dignity all its own. It prevents those two cars, the PT Cruiser and the Kia, from coming into direct contact by effectively telling one of the cars, "Please wait while the other goes by."

How brazen, yet coy.
Such quiet power.
The Yield Sign.

Now, Mr. Driver of a green PT Cruiser, Massachusetts license number 1881LJ, you may have mistaken The Yield Sign for some other type of common signage -- an ad for Denny's perhaps? But I assure you, The Yield was pointed in your direction and for whatever reason you chose not to recognize it's authority. Our door handles nearly kissed, our fenders nearly tangled in a passionate embrace, I nearly said a Very Bad Word in front of my preschooler as I made rapid downward pressure upon my braking apparatus. I can only hope that some personal emergency like violent diarrhea was the cause of your recklessness and that you don't display that devil-may-care attitude in other areas of your life. I would hate to see you get hurt. Really.

Wouldn't you rather walk AGAINST it?

Aunt Bernadette is doing the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer and she is trying to raise $2000 for the cause. If you would like to help out, just follow this link to her personal page:
http://www.avonwalk.org/site/TR?pg=personal&fr_id=1025&px=1023421

Her letter:

Did you know that every three minutes, another woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer? I didn't, and I was shocked to learn how prevalent this horrible disease has become in this country. I realized I personally knew a lot of woman who had breast cancer. My own mother is a survivor of breast cancer. Two of my cousins have had breast cancer, one is fighting to beat it and the other died long before she should have. She was only in her thirties. Two of my friends from high school have had breast cancer and thankfully are doing well. I also can visualize many of the faces of breast cancer patients I've cared for in the last twenty-five years. Women today have so many more options on how their cancer will be treated. We have come far in treating breast cancer but we have much further to go. It is because of all these brave people I know and patients I remember that I have committed to helping fight against breast cancer and am writing to ask for your help as well.

On September 20-21, I'll spend the weekend walking, along with thousands of other people, in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. My goal is to walk 26.2 miles on Saturday and 13 miles on Sunday.

I'll spend the next few months training, fundraising and preparing for the event. My husband, Dave, and my sons are very supportive of me and understand most of my free time will be spent walking. It's the biggest challenge I've ever taken on, but I'm very excited about doing it because I know it will make a real difference to the millions of people affected by breast cancer.

The money raised goes to the Avon Foundation Breast Cancer Crusade, a 501(c)(3) public charity whose mission is to provide access to care and to work toward finding a cure. They provide funding to organizations all over the country in five areas: medical research, clinical care, support services, educational and advocacy seminars, and community-based, non-profit early detection breast health programs.

I'm required to raise at least $1,750 to participate, but I'm setting my goal even higher, and I plan to raise at least $2000 . Please help to support the breast cancer cause and me by making a generous contribution to my efforts. You can make your donation online by simply clicking on the link at the bottom of this message, which will bring you right to my personal page, or if you prefer, you can send a check. Checks should be made payable to "Avon Walk for Breast Cancer" and sent to me at 23 Fairfax Dr. Livingston NJ 07039. Please remember to check to see if your employer will match your donation.

Please also remember as you're making your donation that in less than the time it took to read this e-mail, another woman in the U.S. was diagnosed with breast cancer.

If you know anyone who might be interested in helping in the fight against breast cancer, please feel free to forward this email to them.

Thank you for your support.

You can find out more about the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer by visiting www.avonwalk.org.