Why: A voice just came over the loud speaker to let me know that the library will be closing in 30 minutes

Picture: http://shelfelf.wordpress.com/2008/01/

That’s right, it’s 6:30PM on a Saturday and I’m at the library. Bentley University library to be exact, which isn’t quite as impressive as the google image I found of the Trinity College library, but an adequate library, nonetheless.

Adding insult to injury, for those not in MA, today has been absolutely gorgeous weather-wise. Low 70′s, sunny, the nicest day we’ve had in a while. It’s days like today that make it hard to be in school. I’m over halfway done with my MBA at this point so that’s encouraging, but I really do miss the downtime that I’ve given up in order to finish my classes. Weekends are homework and housework, weeknights are class and homework; I keep a running tally in my head of how I’m going to allocate my time each week so that I squeeze everything in. One week ends, and I start planning ahead for the next week.

Still, though, if I could go back in time by about 1 1/2 years and decide whether to start up the program at Bentley, I’d make the same decision over again. The degree will be nice to have, but I’ve also enjoyed the return to being a student. The classes have changed and I’m not as connected to the school and students as I was in undergrad, but I find the same satisfaction today in turning in a big paper or finishing a semester-long project as I did in my earlier school days. There’s something comforting in knowing that I can still do it–study, write, present in an atmosphere outside of my job, to a completely new set of people.

Why: We’re having a “book club” class session tonight in my e-marketing class to discuss Groundswell

Picture: http://u3asouthend.pbworks.com/Book-Club

It’s funny how the mind works, and how a picture can instantly trigger a memory that you didn’t even know you were still carrying around. I think that’s what I’ve enjoyed the most about my blogging (aside from the unexpected amount of comments!); having fun with the associations my mind makes as I browse through Google images looking for inspiration.

The image for tonight is a good representation of what I imagine when I think of “book club”. But, as soon as I saw this picture on Google images, my mind also jumped back to a memory I have from a few summers ago. It was two Septembers ago, to be exact. Right around the time of my birthday, and my parents had come out to Massachusetts for their annual summer visit. Whenever my parents make a trip out, we try to take a road trip to a part of New England that they haven’t been to before. This time, it was the islands of the Cape– we were tackling both Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, via ferry.

While we were in Nantucket, we decided to take a van tour around the island because the island is pretty spread out in places and my parents are old (j/k Mom and Dad!). Ara’s Guided Tours was our tour vendor of choice, and while the tour itself was nice, it was the other passengers in our van that really made this part of the trip memorable. We were taking our tour with a group of women– late 50′s, early 60′s– who all lived in Georgia and seemed to be traveling with their husbands (although the husbands were not on the van trip). These ladies were hilarious. They were cracking jokes with one another, heckling our tour guide, Ara, and just causing good-natured mischief throughout our journey. They called themselves the “Plead the Fifth” club, I guess because they tended to get into trouble here and there.

It was so much fun to be around these ladies and watch them all enjoy each other’s company. My parents and I really found them entertaining, especially as our poor tour guide grew more and more indignant as the tour carried on. And these ladies’ zest for life was contagious. Another couple on our tour even joked that they wanted to know where the Plead the Fifth ladies were headed next so that they could come along.

I realize that story was a bit off topic for the words “book club”, but it’s been fun to reminisce about the Plead the Fifth ladies.

Why: It’s kind of a long story, but I’ll try to keep it brief

Picture: PLEASE NOTE: I’m bending
my rules again today because I feel this story needs to be told and the pictures help pull it all together

I need to provide two important elements of backstory first:

First, when Lucy is home by herself, she has a tendency to pull articles of clothing that my husband and I have left out– a coat on a chair, gloves on the table, etc.– onto to the ground with her (under our dining room table) so that she can cuddle up with them.

Second, my greatest find this winter has been an extremely fun hat that is flapper-esque, straight out of the 1920′s. I picked it up from this little boutique in Jamaica Plain called Salmagundi . And I’m a little ashamed to admit this, but the hat contains the tiniest bit of rabbit fur on it. Normally, I wouldn’t condone the inclusion of animal fur on my clothing, but I had never come across a hat like this before.

Ok, now that you’re up to speed. It was really nice weather wise today, high in the 50′s, which meant no need for the hat this morning. After dinner tonight, I started to clear away our dishes from the dining room table and noticed that my beloved hat was on the ground in the normal “Lucy nesting area”. This wasn’t alarming at first, Lucy has cuddled with my hat before. But as you can see in the picture here– Lucy’s animal instinct came out tonight– and she tried to de-bunny my hat.

The once silky fur was covered in dog slobber and there are now bits of fur missing from my hat. I’m not sure my hat will ever be the same.

Why: This is the third straight day of rain

Picture: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/05/17/captivating-examples-of-silhouette-photography/

Rain, rain, go away. Come again another day.
Seriously. I’m ready for it to stop raining.

This is the most rain I’ve seen in a while. I made the mistake of wearing flats combined with pants that are a little too long to work today; by the time I made it into the office, my pant bottoms were soaked (along with my socks and feet). It’s days like these when “my” space heater is invaluable (I owe you one, Melissa!).

As for the picture: there are two things that I really like about this Google image:
1. If you look really closely, you can tell that it’s not actually raining. The silhouette with the umbrella and the dark lighting make it feel like it’s raining, but it’s not.

Umbrellas are such a great accessory, especially when you find a fun one. Too bad they only complete your outfit in the rain.

2. The movement in this picture is truly joyful. I feel like this picture (or others like it) could have inspired the entire Apple IPod silhouette campaign, although this picture appears to have come after the Apple ads. Perhaps the Apple ads inspired it, would that be an example of art imitating life?

Why: I’m reading the book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies for my e-marketing class right now

Picture: http://andygreenhaw.wordpress.com/2009/06/25/best-social-media-book-ive-read/

Online marketing, especially efforts related to social media, is an area where I have limited professional experience. I’ve worked on website overhauls and done some email marketing, but most of my interaction with social media takes place in my personal life. And while I find value in the social media vehicles I use like Facebook, Linked-in, Twitter (most recently) in my personal life, I have always been somewhat skeptical as to how these vehicles could be valuable for businesses.

Reading Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies has started to calm my skepticism, though. The book breaks it theories and recommendations into digestable pieces and reads like a plausible strategy instead of a vague hypothesis. It also does a great job of illustrating its techniques by providing case study examples from actual companies.

I’ve been impressed by some of the creative ways in the book that companies are able to leverage online technology in order to better reach their customers. One example that I particularly enjoyed was the “Will it Blend” videos produced by BlendTec Blenders. These are a series of videos where a guy named Tom in a white labcoat throws all sorts of things that should not be blended into a blender to see if the BlendTec blender is strong enough to blend it. On their website, you can see things like Ipods, lightbulbs, golf balls being blended into dust right before your very eyes. As you’ve probably suspected, BlendTec blenders aren’t cheap– the home versions go for $400+ dollars, but if your household blends a lot, you might be swayed to go with a BlendTec blender after seeing first hand that it’s indestructable.

A big takeaway from the book is that a company’s ultimate goal when it comes to an online strategy should be about building community. Whether it’s using Twitter to listen to customer insights, or starting a corporate blog in order to communicate new products launches, all of these efforts are working to strengthen the company’s relationship with its customer base. The BlendTec videos not only illustrate the quality of BlendTec blenders to potential buyers, they evoke a sense of pride in customers that already own a BlendTec blender and strengthen the company’s bond with those customers.

I’m about 2/3 of the way through Groundswell at this point, but am already ready to put the Sarah Martin seal of approval on it.

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Why: The road in front of our house is under construction right now– new gas line being put in

Picture: http://www.smera.in/hindi/indexhindi.asp

There are a lot of things I love about city living: walks at Jamaica Pond, fabulous restaurants; taxi rides to the airport, but today I was reminded of one of the not-so-great things about living in the city. It can be loud.

For one thing, houses are close to one another. When your neighbor is up at 7am shoveling their sidewalk, you hear it loud and clear. Plus, there generally isn’t a lot of space between houses and the street so activity in the street is a distraction. We’re fortunate to avoid the latter because we live on a dead end street, but today we were subjected to another set of noises associated to the city– construction.

Normally construction noises wouldn’t be much of a nuisance because I’m at work a good deal of the time they’re taking place. I was feeling under the weather today, though, and stayed home in order to sleep off a cold I’ve had the past few days. Good plan…until the jackhammer that started pounding at 10am and didn’t let up until early afternoon reminded me that our street is currently a work zone. Turns out it’s not easy to sleep through a jackhammer.

The good news is, this should lead to us getting a newly paved street– something we’re definitely in need of. The bad news is, signs out front indicate that this construction could be going on until April!

Why: With the news of Corey Haim’s passing, I’ve been thinking about what it must be like to be a child star. Google images was a goldmine of images of child celebrities I had forgotten about. So for today’s blog, I’ll just feature a few of the favorites I came across and discuss where these stars are now

Picture: abcnews.com
Child Star: Jaleel White (Family Matters)
Where’s He Now? Still acting it seems– he had a small role in Dreamgirls and guest-starred on a 2007 episode of Boston Legal

Picture: babble.com
Child Star: Mayim Bailik (Blossom)
Where’s She Now? Left acting to get her PH D in Neuroscience. Might be getting back into acting, though…

Picture: listoftheday.blogspot.com
Child Star: Peter Billingsley (A Christmas Story)
Where’s He Now? Still acting, he’s been in a series of movies recently, such as Elf, Iron Man, and The Break-up

Why: I wasn’t sure this “term” would show up in Google, but it has and there’s a good-sized collection of images

Picture: http://vi.sualize.us/vectormg/vintage/

(Side Note: My Grandma and Grandpa Nix had a television set that looked like the set in this picture! It had these cool silver buttons for the channels (limit of 13, I believe, can you imagine!) that as you changed the channel and pushed a different button in, the other channel’s button pushed out. This might not translate well over blog, but I can still remember the thud-like noise the buttons made and how fun it was as a kid to change the channels.)

Some nights, after a long day at work, nothing beats sitting down for a little R&R with retro television. My husband has been into Knight Rider lately, which I never watched when originally on, but have found entertaining. Was there anything that Kit couldn’t do?

My guilty pleasure when it comes to retro television, though, is the Golden Girls. Blanche, Rose, Dorothy and Sophia–what a crazy crew. I watched the show when it was originally on, reruns during summer vacation in grade school, and now we DVR it so that I can watch it when time allows. When now watching, I get a kick out of some of the comments that were contemporary at the time, but that I know went way over my head when I was a kid.

You just don’t have these kind of sitcoms anymore. The “live” studio audience, the catchy theme song set to a video montage of previous show clips, the underlying life lesson that will be discovered by the end of the episode.

If there are any other recommendations for retro TV to check out– I’d love to hear, we have plenty of memory on the DVR!

Why: I’ve been doing some running lately, trying to get ready for a 5k road race for St. Patrick’s Day

Picture: http://annapolisvalleyrunningclub.ning.com/

I go back and forth on my affection for running.

Back when I was growing up, it was something I had to do for the sports I played. Basketball running meant short, successive sprints that could really do a number on your shins. We would run washboard after washboard– and I think that washboards are a lot more rewarding for fast people: for fast people, there is the satisfaction of finishing first and seeing how much faster than everyone else you really are. For medium speed runners such as myself, washboards were frustrating. Oh, I finished fifth…again.

Soccer running was all about endurance. We’d run for much longer stretches of time and vary the speeds. There was some sprinting, but soccer is a game of constant running with minor bursts of sprinting and I tended to enjoy this conditioning more.

And now, running is something I do in spurts of a few months here and there, when the mood strikes me. I can’t say that I’m a committed runner: at times, I really enjoy the exercise, and at other times it’s the last thing I want to be doing.

When I am motivated to run, it’s slow soccer running– probably actually jogging, when it comes down to it. That’s what the upcoming 5k in Somerville will be. I’m doing the Somerville race because 1. it’s low pressure– a wide range of runners do it 2. it’s a chance to hang out with some friends and 3. it’s a nice goal to work toward.

Ask me again in three months and I probably won’t be into running at all, but right now the mood does strike me, so I’m running with it.