Conversations over Dinner

We’ve been used! Actually, we were held up as examples — in a very positive way.

My son is currently attending graduate school and is also working as a teaching assistant. I never would have imagined that we would become a topic of conversation in his class, but that’s exactly what happened.

His field of study is mass communications and media. His point was that our work — web design and blogging — are fields that did not exist just a short time ago, and we are among a large number of people managing to earn a living online.

The lesson he was trying to impart is that when new technology becomes available, you’ve got to jump on board and find a way to go with it. New jobs are waiting to be invented, new enterprises waiting to launch. We have to keep on top of new media and use it to our fullest advantage!

I’m so proud of my son and all he has accomplished these past several years and, yes, we’re very flattered!

I’m thinking about a friend tonight. Well, not a friend exactly. More of an acquaintance. Well, not an acquaintance exactly. You see, we’ve never met.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be sitting here, thinking about someone I’ve only known online, I would have told you that you had me pegged wrong. I’m more practical than that. More careful, more tentative. It’s just not my nature. A year ago, I hadn’t yet made my entrance into the blogosphere.

It was last August when Jake and I started Conversations Over Dinner, as a fun way to pass the time. Then on to MS Maze, The Health Central Network and In The Trenches Productions in a matter of months. Before I knew what hit me I was forging “friendships” with people online, people I would never meet.

Multiple sclerosis is one reason. Reading other MS related blogs helped me to deal with the things I thought were unique to me. I started to leave comments on other blogs and people began leaving comments on mine. By reading about their experiences, my own life was enriched.

I have a fantastic working relationship with the good folks over at The Health Central Network, but we will, in all likelihood, never meet. It all comes down to emails and phone calls.

Over at In The Trenches Productions, a group of women is working hard to reach out to women over the age of 40, and to keep them present and accounted for in the media. I admire what they do. My contact there is Debbie Zipp. I’ve never met her, never spoken to her on the phone. We’ve exchanged some wonderful emails, divulging a few tidbits of ourselves here and there, and I can only say that I genuinely like her.

I have a handful of online buddies out there that I’ve come to care about. I read about their struggles and their triumphs, and I wish them well. They do the same for me. It’s a strange new world, indeed.

So back to that “friend” I was thinking about. She’s had a harrowing couple of days, lost in airline hell. She has MS and I know, all too well, that she is very, very uncomfortable and longing for home. Hang in there, Sunshine!

I am a neat person. I wouldn’t say I’m a minimalist, but I come close. I don’t like clutter and I need plenty of open space around me.

I have a nice little work space and mange to keep it tidy, even though Jake keeps my filing inbox full.  When it comes to my computer, things have been in disarray for quite some time. Too much is going on - too many files, too many emails, just too much. I have been unable to accomplish my goals for all the computer clutter.

These last few months have been dedicated to fixing all that. We’ve merged four blogs down to two, for starters. I have been on a mission to unsubscribe to all the emails which serve only to waste my time. I have been through my long list of bookmarks and deleted the time wasters. I have whittled down to two professional networks — Freelancers Union and Linkedin.

I have added subscriptions and bookmarks to the sites which will help me to accomplish my goals. Jake promises to make a new website for me soon, which will serve that same purpose.

I’ve been working on completely turning things around and getting organized is a big step in that direction.

When it comes to feng shui, you can’t forget about your computer!

Dinner was late this evening, due to my mistiming of turkey legs, but it was worth the wait. We had no fresh vegetables, so I had to make do with canned. Now we are off to the grocery store to restock the kitchen.

The buzz over dinner had to do with an exciting proposal I received this afternoon. For the second time since we launched our blogs last August, I have been approached for a writing assignment. This time my article will appear in a national print magazine, and I am honored to have been asked. Naturally, I will share details upon publication in July. Onward and upward.

Well, Jake came through. Three blogs down to one. Between the Blogs, Conversations Over Dinner - Mandy’s Version, and Conversations Over Dinner - Jake’s version, have been merged into one. If you have any of these sites bookmarked, they have all been redirected to the same place, but you may want to update your bookmark to ConversationsOverDinner.com. I think we lost a few previous posts in the process, but most posts from all blogs remain intact. MS Maze remains its own entity.

Today was a perfect day. Sunny with a cool breeze and clear, blue skies. I was fully prepared to put shoulder to grindstone, but Jake convinced me to run a few errands with him, which lead to lunch at our new Thai restaurant. He had the right idea. What a lovely afternoon! When we returned home, Jake went out to work in the yard, while I did some light housekeeping. The MS is acting up, but this particular bout is not following the usual pattern.

I feel I have a lot on my plate right now. Some good, some not. There are some haunting medical issues still to be addressed, some changes with my work, and a trip on Thursday. I am thrilled to say that we are flying out to my son’s college graduation ceremony, which will be held on Saturday. He is all signed up for grad school and will be pursuing his masters. I am so happy and proud!

We had some friends over for dinner last night. Had a very nice time, too. They had recently taken a two-week sailing and island-hopping vacation down in the Caribbean and so we watched a DVD slideshow that they had made. Now normally if your dinner guests are bringing a slideshow of their vacation you try to think of places to run and hide. But in actuality, I had asked Mandy to call them to request that they bring the CD. They’re nice folks and they’re very animated when describing each place they visit. Lots of fun.

Something else they spoke of that put a bug up my rear to emulate was their newly purchased bicycles and what fun they’re having on weekends taking them here and there for long (20-30) mile bike rides. My ears perked up because I used to love riding my bike. Still got it too — it’s in the shed, rusting away. But never mind that, now I want a bike. But — there’s always a but, right — there’s Mandy’s MS. Truthfully, when MS flares up, Mandy has no balance. None. Asking her to ride a bike would be like asking her to commit suicide. But — another but — there may be a solution.

Tandem bikes. Yep, those bicycles built for two.

So today we went to the store to inquire about tandems. Par for the course around here, they didn’t have any in stock. But they were nice guys and they did take the time to pull down a catalog for us to look through. We’ve decided that next weekend we’re going to go find a place where we can rent a tandem to see if that type of bike will be a solution to the problem. I can do the grunt work and Mandy, so long as she’s able to at least balance herself, can just kind of go along for the ride. Her legs will have to move with the pedals, but I’ll be doing the work. I’ll let you know how we make out in a future post.

Other than that, not much has been happening. I just finished a big web design project for a Canadian company. The site went live this week and everyone is quite thrilled with the results. With a little luck, that job will begat future jobs. Meanwhile, I’m still involved with trying to teach myself some programming languages so that I can start designing using some of the newer technologies like Air, Flex, etc. It’s coming along pretty good.

So that’s it for now. Sorry for the long time between posts. I’ll try to do better.

Technorati Tags: home

Some of you may have noticed that I haven’t been blogging lately. No excuses. Just haven’t had much to say. The few things that did warrant a blog were more suited for one of Mandy and my other blogs called BetweenTheBlogs.com.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working. Not making a nickel, mind you… but working nonetheless. I’ve got two projects that have taken up a lot of time. One is for a Canadian company whose website I’m redoing. The other is for a trade association. That one is just about done… and just about beginning. I was asked to create a site that will act as an umbrella to a whole host of sites that will be offered to their member companies. It works great and should be rolling out fairly soon. I’m excited to see what happens with it.

In between the other two projects, I’ve been trying to teach myself scripting languages. I don’t have much occasion to program, but certainly see the obvious benefits to knowing how to do so… at least for smaller projects. I learned ActionScript last year and now I’m working on JavaScript. They are both object oriented programming languages, so the similarities are great. I imagine that will be the case with many others.

Mandy and I have been carefully watching the goings-on in the presidential race. So far, I have to give it to Obama. I like the way he’s handled the flap with his minister and certain remarks made that created discomfort among, mostly, America’s non-African American population. Personally, I read the minister’s remarks and found very little with which to take issue. You may not like what he had to say, but that doesn’t dispel the underlying truth. Ah, but that’s another matter altogether, isn’t it?

I would like you to know that our dinner conversation is pretty much like it has been. We sit down every single night to a nice, home-cooked meal… Mandy’s cooking, not mine… and talk about the day. We’ll cover a host of topics, ranging from Mandy’s work, to mine, to politics, family, the cats… dead and alive… and pretty much whatever else we can think of in 30 minutes or so. I wouldn’t trade those 30 minutes for the world.

Oh… here’s a tip for anyone who might be reading this. About two weeks ago we started having problems with the water pressure in our home. It was not low pressure from the town’s side (had it checked,) but something from within the home. Well, I tried best I could to figure out what it was. Bought new low pressure shower heads, flushed out the water heater, pretty much did whatever I thought might help. Nothing did.

So I called a plumber.

At $180 per hour.

Should’ve been a plumber. Ah… but that’s another story too.

So in comes the plumber. And, as expected, he can’t find a thing wrong. He’s about to give up and leave when I remember that when I was changing one of those shower heads, I noticed that we had white chalky stuff building up within the shower head. I chalked it off (no pun intended) to calcium, or lime, or just lousy water. As a last ditch effort, I mentioned this to him (because I had just remembered it!) He took a look and thought it might be from the water heater. It turns out that towards the later part of the 90’s there was a big effort made by some company in Utah (or Ohio) to notify consumer of faulty dip rods in a bunch of water heaters…. all different brands. The plastic dip rods basically started to corrode and fall apart. When that happens, you see these little plastic white pieces (plastic!) getting stuck in your fixtures. They get stuck and… guess what… clog up the fixtures and cause… guess what… LOW water pressure.

$1,100 and 3 hours later we’ve got a new water heater and couldn’t be happier. This morning’s shower just about blasted me through the wall!

Something to remember if you ever run into the same problem.

Technorati Tags: freelance

Date: August 19, 2007

Menu: Ham, brussels sprouts, salad, wine.

“I’ve got a little sore under my tongue,” I said between forkfuls of ham. Mandy looked perplexed. “What kind of sore?,” she asked. “I don’t know,” said I, “Looks like a pimple, but it’s not. Just forget about it. I’ll gargle with some salt water and see what happens.”

So went the dinner conversation this evening.

Over ham and brussels sprouts, we spoke about Emily, Mandy’s daughter and my step-daughter, who just started college this past week. She’s a great kid, but she’s a little shy and, like so many just stepping out into the world more-or-less on their own, she’s self-conscious and unsure of herself. Her biggest problem right now seems to be the laptop she just bought herself. It doesn’t work right. More on that saga later.

Conversation turned to my daughter, Mary, and her husband, Mike, who are preparing for a trip to Maine. They’ve got an RV and love to ride motorcycles. She told me this evening that they’re going to be staying in Maine, but then biking up to Nova Scotia to explore that part of the world for a few days. God bless them. They sure do travel a lot. I think it’s great, but I worry that they’re going to put themselves into a financial hole if they aren’t careful.

We spoke about this blog… and the companion blog that Mandy is starting. We had the is idea just last night. Mandy’s really excited about it, but is a bit concerned about privacy and all that. Me too, but I said we’d just have to feel our way and make sure we don’t go overboard in any one area. After all, dear reader, there are plenty of nuts out there and you might just be one of them.
So that’s it for night one of Conversations over Dinner. Not too exciting, but stay tuned. Some of them are a lot better. Some worse. My guess is that you may see a lot of yourselves in our conversations. Maybe you’ll even begin to see behind the mask of the person sitting across/beside you each evening.