To Keep You Busy

The clock is ticking and we will soon be taking off for vacation. I think I've done everything that I'm going to get done before the trip. At this point I'm just at the computer having fun (for a change). So let me take this opportunity to give you some things to amuse you in my absence . . . This is mostly for Tina because I know she'll be looking for ways to waste time while I'm away. ;-)

First of all, I forgot to post more pictures from San Francisco, so if you would like to see them, please click here.

I have been enjoying the reactions of most folks when I answer the very popular question of "Where are you going?" Three years ago I remember all the strange questions we got about Croatia. "Why would you go there? Is it safe?" I didn't quite understand the safely questions until we were actually there and Karlo showed me the war-torn buildings. I never really paid much attention to world news back in the 90s so I was clueless. Seems like we are not getting the same reaction to telling people we are going to Croatia this time and I think that is because of two reasons:

1. Instead of saying that we are going to "Croatia" I'm saying "Dubrovnik" which is the city in Croatia where we are staying. For sure nobody has even heard of Dubrovnik so they don't ask many questions.
2. As soon as I follow up the Dubrovnik sentence with, "Then we are sailing to Montenegro" that's when Dubrovnik and Croatia loose any spotlight.

People's immediate reaction is, "Where the heck is Montenegro and why the heck would you go there on vacation?" Now I have to admit, if it wasn't for Karlo I would not be going there on vacation, and more importantly would have no idea where Montenegro is either!

So if you're in the same boat and are curious about both Dubrovnik and Montenegro, grab a cup of joe, sit back and come to the Adriatic with me . . .

First a little info about Dubrovnik:



Next, a little introduction to Montenegro. This is where we will be sailing and biking. Please keep the biking portion in mind when you see the mountains touching the sea. Can you imagine the pedaling involved to get anywhere around there? Yikes.



Oh, and one last thing . . . I also finally got around to adding a blog posting on my web site.

Hope you enjoyed the distractions. Be back in two weeks to distract you further . . .

Feel Good Show

I struggled with my back and shoulder pain all day yesterday. I decided that I needed some yoga after work and really thought it would help. Unfortunately it didn’t. Every time I had to raise my arms straight up over my head (which was constantly during this routine) I was in pain. And of course the yoga didn’t really clear my head, despite me trying really hard to just focus on my breathing (and pretend the searing pain didn’t exist.) All it all it wasn’t very successful at making me feel good, but I’m still gad I did it. Yoga is an important part of my day and I wish I could be more committed to doing it more often.

After I got all the other little evening tasks accomplished it was time to relax. I watched American Idol and Glee and that’s when it hit me. For that one hour between 9 and 10pm I was completely pain-free. I enjoyed watching Glee so much that it completely removed me from whatever stresses I had and I got lost in the entertainment. God I love that show. It is just a pure joy to watch. I should get the complete season on DVD and use it as therapy.

I accidentally stumbled over more therapy this morning. A fellow yogi posted this on her blog and I loved it so much that I’m printing it out. And now I want to post it here so I’ll forever have it in my "blog book." Her posting was called 10 Things to Do To Simplify. I’m only going to list the ones that are the most appropriate for me:

• With yoga – stuck to the foundational postures. No fancy moves or crazy arm balances.
• With work – chose to not participate in drama.
• With email – CHECK ALL. DELETE SELECTED.
• With home life – it’s not dirty… it’s lived in.
• With schedules – one thing at a time. No more multitasking.
• 15 minute only blog.

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." ~Confucius

Here’s a Thought

Maybe it’s not the long and complicated flights, or figuring out transportation in old European cities, or the chance of being delayed and missing the boat, or the fear of getting seasick that is making me stressed. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the thought of being with Karlo non-stop during the entire vacation. Do I have the endurance for that? Can I put up with him for that long? Are my nerves ready for this? Have you ever locked yourself in a closet with a 4 year old? I’m thinking it’s gonna be something like that . . . The more he annoys me the happier he is and Lord knows he wants to be happy on his vacation. I’m doomed. I better pack a straight jacket and maybe a pacifier to keep him still and quiet. Or lots and lots of chocolate treats to reward him for being good ;-)

The Test Results are In

OK, there weren’t really any tests, but I know, without a doubt, that my sore neck is not caused by falling asleep funny on the coach, but rather stress. And how do I know this? Because the pain has taken its usual course of moving from my neck to my upper back and shoulder. I’ve been down this road enough times to know exactly what it is. That, combined with the fact that I’m now experiencing IBS attacks before I finish swallowing my last bite of any meal tells me everything I need to know . . . I need to de-stress, relax, and actually start to look forward to vacations.

And the funny thing is that I do feel relaxed. I mean, I’m not physically or consciously feeling stressed, but I can’t seem to control what my subconscious mind is up to. I’m actually ahead of schedule. We are still days away from taking off and I got all the important things covered. I’m packed, dog sitters are lined up, I figured out how to shut down my side business, bills are paid, work . . . who cares about work. I’m ready and I shouldn’t feel stressed. What the heck is wrong with me? Perhaps I should have a few cocktails on the plane. Oh well. I may not be looking forward to the travel, but at least I am looking forward to going to the library tonight. Maybe just the sight of all the books will make me feel better.

Preparing and Practicing

This weekend was all about preparing and practicing for vacation. Most of Saturday was spent in the “preparation” stage. I had a ridiculously long list of things to do before vaca and I systematically ticked things off throughout the day. I even got so far as to get all my clothes pulled out and arranged. I did a packing dry run to make sure everything fit in my bag. On this trip we can’t bring real suitcases, but rather gym bags because there is no room to store the suitcases on the sailboat we’ll be one. Here I was hemming and hawing over what to bring and feeling the pain of having to pack so lightly. That’s when it hit me that we’ve taken overnight biking trips when we had to pack everything we needed in this tiny lunch tote:


Can you imagine that? We arrived to a bed & breakfast and had civilian clothes (and shoes) to go to dinner in, plus our toiletries, and the next day's biking clothes all stuffed in that little cooler. OK, minus Karlo’s big sandals. Those didn’t fit in the cooler and instead where bungee corded to the front of the bike. But the point is that we are masters of light packing so this should be no big deal. This is luxury in comparison to many of our vacations.

It’s funny how your definition of luxury can vary widely. To me, a luxury vacation is defined by daily bicycle mileages of under 50 miles, not having to pitch a tent, and mildly warm showers. So despite the fact that I have to pack light, have no access to wifi, with very limited electricity, and I have to take ‘sailor’ showers, I still will consider this a luxury vacation.

So the packing planning was done on Saturday and today we spent most of the day practicing the whole ‘vacation state of mind.’ We lounged leisurely on the deck, went for a slow bike ride (just for the fun of it), went kayaking, and generally didn’t accomplish a whole heck of a lot. It felt good.

Now my only concern is the fact that I work up with a killer stiff neck. Did I fall asleep funny on the couch last night? Or worse . . . am I starting to get my stiff neck and shoulder pain from Hell due to stress? Oh Lord, I hope it’s not the latter. I don’t feel like I’m stressed about traveling, but getting to Europe is never quite easy and we don’t have a large room for error. If we miss that boat . . . it will be a long swim to catch it. Deep breathes, positive thoughts, and lots and lots of Ben Gay.

Dancing the Night Away

We finally figured out how to have some fun and succeeded at having it this past Friday night. As it turns out, fun is much easier to be had when alcohol and dancing are involved!

After work on Friday there was a charity event right in the building where we work. One of our fellow co-workers is a breast cancer survivor and she hosted an amazing wine and beer tasting, combined with a silent auction and raffle. It was a ball. I tried to win every imaginable raffle prize, and even bid on the some silent auction items. I came home a big fat loser, but it didn’t matter. All the wine tastings made me perfectly happy! And after the auctions ended the music got cranked up. We danced and danced for over two hours . . . in my high-heeled work shoes. OUCH. But it was worth it. We had so much fun. Didn’t matter that I woke up the next day with toes so sore that I couldn’t walk in my slippers.

My Love Hate Relationship With Apple Continues

I broke down this weekend and actually called the Apple store at Westfarms. If they had the iPad model that I wanted in stock I was driving over to get it. But luckily they didn't have it, and I'm glad. I got all caught up in the thrill of it while out in San Fran. I went over to the Apple store and fondled one and half of the thousand people attending that conference had one. It was impossible not to sit next to someone completely engrossed in one. Then flying home I sat next to, not only one guy, but two with iPads. Three people in the row, one a hip graphic designer and two nerdy guys and I'm the one without an iPad. What was wrong with that picture? I tried really hard to focus on my old fashion book. I stared at the same page for an hour while my eyes were shifted to the side, completely spying on the guy next to me. How could you not be drawn to that beautiful piece of art?

But I have since cooled my jets. I know there are other products coming down the pike and I'm truly disgusted by the Apple vs Adobe battle going on. I am fiercely loyal to Adobe and totally got a kick out of their new ads that appeared today. Click image to enlarge if you want to read.

I've said this a million times . . . I don't approve of Apple's arrogant business practices. So today when I found this news of a Google/Verzion tablet posted on a blog, I was thrilled. These new tablets will be sure to run on the Android OS and that is more than likely what I will end up for a phone. Wouldn't it make more sense to have a phone and tablet using the same aps? I'm thrilled that I didn't buy the iPad and can not wait to see all the other products that will soon flood the market.

And this evening sealed the deal. I just got my new little Sansa mp3 player. Sansa was the first mp3 player I ever owned and continues to be my favorite. I'm sick of running while holding the iTouch - fearful that I'm gonna wipe out and smash it (although I would be doing myself a favor). So I bought this new little gadget just for running. I came to the iMac to load my music and guess what? All the music that I ripped lately (most of my CD collection) is all in a Mac-only format that will not transfer onto my Sansa. PERFECT. Freakin' Mac! Why does the company that makes the best products have to be so controlling? I just don't like it. It's like they want to make your life easier, but only if you conform to living your life the way they say you should.

Working Like a Dog

That phrase always makes me laugh because I personally never saw a dog working. But none the less, the title was fitting for my day today. I got up at 5:30 AM and hit the computer. I worked non-stop until lunch time, when I finally took a break to eat and take a hike. Of course my hike lasted an hour and a half, during which time I burned 650 calories. That was my only relaxation for the day. Then it was back home for house chores and more computer work. Basically, my day looked something like this.

And let me just preface this by saying the pictures are terrible. Now I normally don't share my bad and blurry pictures, but I personally find this subject matter impossible to sharply capture. Don't forget, I'm a landscape photographer and usually the landscape is moving while I'm trying to take a picture of it.

So without any further ado, here's my day in pictures:







This last picture is especially bad, but too funny not to share. Look at Cooper's sideways tail and tongue sticking out. How does he run like that?

Soggy Slippers

Dammit!

Oh well. I didn't let my soggy slippers ruin the day. I managed to run around the house in my socks all day yesterday just fine. I spent the entire day scrambling. I, of course, have loads of things piling up after being away last week. Not only did the house need some major cleaning, but I had lots of business stuff to do. Then Karlo informed me that after this weekend, we only have one more before we leave on vacation. That put an entirely new twist on my time crunch. Holy cow, I'm not ready to go on vacation. I'm not ready to kick back and relax. I can't relax until everything is done. But of course I know that, in my life, everything will never be done. It's just not physically possible to do all that I want to do. But at the very least I need to plan my packing, get some cash, find our passports, shop for incidentals, find power adapters, stop the mail, arrange for dog sitters, find our travel docs, oh my goodness the list just goes on and on and on . . . In fact, I better stop wasting time and get back to work!

My Unstable Relationship With Shoes

For someone who cringes at the thought of going barefoot, I am really starting to hate shoes. Why is it so darn impossible to find shoes that fit and don’t hurt? I struggled with the decision as to what shoes to bring with me on my trip. I ended up with my brand new slip-on Keds (can’t go wrong there, but you look foolish walking around a city in them), my super comfy “I Love Comfort” black flats that I tested out in Europe and are flawlessly comfortable, and a pair of super cool Sketcher sandals that I bought last year.

So here’s how it shook down. The Keds were great, but I found out something interesting about slip-ons. They are extremely difficult to wear when you’re climbing very steep hills. It’s almost impossible to not walk out of them. It’s hard to explain. You would have to find yourself the steepest hill and try for yourself. Definitely not the best San Francisco shoes.

Next day I tried the black flats. As always, they were comfy, but somehow they either stretched or my feet shrunk. Could be because I was cold. Who knows. But now I had the same problem as the Keds, only in the reverse order. Try walking down a steep hill with shoes that are too big. I was constantly walking out of them and tripping. So incredibly annoying - and dangerous - and embarrassing. uuugh

Next day I broke out the trusty Sketchers. I bought these last summer and I remember having to go through the Hell of breaking them in. They gave me terrible blisters on the tops of my toes and just when I was ready to give up on them I realized that they were getting more and more tolerable to wear. By the end of the season I could walk miles in them. Well, it wasn’t the shoes getting broken in. It was my FEET. They apparently built up enough calluses to withstand the poorly designed shoes. So every season my feet have to endure the ‘breaking in’ process all over again. This year I’m starting with fresh soft feet that were not at all happy to be rubbed raw.

That’s it, I decided to head to the store in search of new shoes. I was thrilled to have found two pairs that fit and were comfy. Yeah. I wore one pair yesterday. Can you guess what happened? The super comfy shoes ended up killing me by the end of the day. I barely hobbled back to my hotel. I supposed if you sat, or perhaps stood in one place all day they would be great. But who does that? I give up. I’m buying another pair of funny looking Keens. To hell with fashion. I tried and it just doesn’t work. I’m a high tech girl in need of high tech shoes!

Socialnomics

Despite the fact that Karlo will call me a geek for weeks after this posting, I am still going to publicly admit that I am one. I am in my glory here at this web conference. I’m learning some fascinating things about the world wide web and the massive growing beast of the social medias. Everybody knows that Google is the number one search engine, but did you know that YouTube is #2? That’s right, YouTube. How many times did you go to YouTube when you wanted to find out general information? How much easier would it be to sit back and watch your answer instead of having to read it? You are probably like me and search for answers the traditional way, via Google . . . and then find hundreds of pages that you immediately click away from because there’s just too much text to read. How do I expect to learn the answers if I refuse to read? I like to blame my poor eyesight on why I’m so lazy, but the truth is that I don’t have the patience to read and apparently neither does most of the rest of the population. We would rather just have somebody tell us, or better yet, show us what we need to know.

I just find it fascinating to learn all about what is going on presently that I’m not already aware of. I think I have a pretty good handle on lots of things web-related and boy oh boy, the truth is, I don’t. There’s just SO MUCH stuff out there. And it changes by the day. How can you ever possibly keep up? Hearing about and seeing what’s possible today one thing, but hearing about what coming down the pike is even more astonishing.

One of the presentations that blew me away today had to do with Smule. Smule offers musical apps for your iPhone or iPad. Did you know that you can play your iPhone like a musical instrument? And use it to pitch control your voice and sing along with people on the other side of the planet? Check out this video for more on that:

Watch video here.

And speaking of video, this one sums up the whole reason that I’m out here for this conference. Maybe you have to be a geek like me to really appreciate it, but I found it fascinating.

Watch video here

The San Fran Follies Continue

Yesterday was the first day of my conference. By the way, I’m here for a Web Design and Social Media Marketing conference. Luckily this subject matter is wildly exciting to me so the days are sure to fly by. I got out before 5 PM and since the day was the warmest day forecasted for the week, I mustered up the courage to take a trolley ride to Fisherman’s Warf. The ride was fun and I’m still trying to figure out what gets those trolleys up the insanely steep hills around here. Not that I have a list of places that I would never want to bike, but if I did . . . San Francisco would surely top that list. It is truly amazing how steep these hills are. Riding these trolleys is like a roller coaster ride.

The warf was fun. I’ve been there before a couple of times so I knew all the places to go. I remembered my buddy “CA Sue” taking me to the spot where all the huge seals hang out.

Are they even seals? I’m not even sure exactly what these beasts are.

And I remember taking pictures of Karlo in front of Alcatraz. In lieu of Karlo I found a ‘free bird’ who might have just broken out of Alcatraz.

I strolled around the pier . . .

Had a great dinner at this amazing sourdough bread factory . . .

And then the best part. I cruised through the store at Ghiradelli Square. After meals I crave chocolate and thought I would go and buy myself a treat. To my surprise and delight they hand you a full size square when you walk in the store. I think it’s supposed to entice you to buy more, but it backfired in my case. I was totally satisfied with my one little square and walked out without buying anything more. Sorry Karlo!


After that I high-tailed it back to the trolley line as by then I was frozen solid. But what else is new? I should have packed a scarf.

Where Are The Rice-a-Roni Treats?

I think I forgot to mention that I was headed to San Francisco . . . This was a very last minute business trip that I sort of dreaded taking. Not that I don’t like San Fran, it’s just a hassle to drop everything going on at home and waste two days out of my life in the air. Traveling here was especially hard because I had to leave the house at 5 AM on a SUNDAY–and that Sunday just happened to be in the 80s at home. Not fair!

But I’m making the most of it here. I had all of Sunday afternoon to stroll around the bustling streets of the city. I lugged my 5 pound camera with me, in hopes of trying this new concept of “street photography.” Since my new photography mentor just happens to be one of the best street photographers in the world, I wanted to try really hard to have something to show her. But as usual, I failed miserably and was nothing but annoyed that I had that darn camera around my neck all afternoon for no good reason. Most of the city sights make my skin crawl and I just can’t bring myself to capture them. So instead I went shopping . . . to the Apple store . . . to fondle the new iPad. Probably shouldn’t have done that.



After all the drooling at the Apple store I took off in search of China Town. Hiked up the steep streets just for the exercise of it, cause you know I'm going nuts not working out. I still had more time to kill so I found a Borders and happily crawled into a corner to browse some books and drink some drinks. Before I knew it, it was time for dinner (my fourth meal of the day due to the time difference) and I cruised through the mall right night to my hotel (dangerous). All in all it was a very long, but relaxing day.