Hi, do we know each other?

Facebook is driving me nuts.  I'm sure a lot of you feel the same way.  The company keeps changing its privacy policy and setting its defaults to public.  Every time the privacy policy changes, I have to remember to go into my profile and re-set my settings to private so only my friends can see my personal info.  If I haven't been on Facebook for a few days, who knows how long my info has been out there.

On top of that, Facebook has changed the format of its "Likes, Interests, and About Me" section so that if I've indicated I like something, everyone who likes the same thing can see me.  I'm only on Facebook because so many of my friends are, so it's an easy way to keep in touch.  I'm not interested in connecting with people I've never met in person before, so I don't want total strangers who happen to have read the same book and liked it to know that I like it too.  I'm fairly certain I'm not the only Facebook user that feels this way.

Also, Facebook is making assumptions about my personal tastes.  If my "Likes" can't be found on a FB fan page on Facebook (like the book Trust by Frances Fukuyama), Facebook assumes (without consulting me!??!) something else (like the book Trust Me, which I've never read before).  While I appreciate the suggestion, I prefer to have a say in the creation of my own likes and tastes.

The new Facebook is really annoying.  I am considering removing all of my Likes, Interests and About Me info.  After this weekend's FB chat snafu, I've disabled my FB chat function.  I'm probably going to stop sending personal messages over FB as well -- I'm not certain the company cares about my privacy and needs over its need to monetize my information by sharing personal information without my consent or knowledge.

My profile is/was hard to find online -- other than the oversharing due to the issues listed above, only my friends can see me.  Today, some random person from somewhere in Asia sent me a friend request.  Thinking that it might have been someone from high school that I didn't remember, I responded with a message that read, "Hi _____, Thanks for the friend request.  I can't see your picture clearly, so can you remind me of how we know each other?  Did we go to high school together?"

His response: "Yes you can go !"

I'm going assume the answer to my question is NO.  We obviously will not become fast Facebook friends.

Astronaut squirrel!

F reports success in her squirrel endeavors.  Astronaut squirrel takes off!!!

Squirrels and their nuts

Remember the squirrels in England that loved their coconuts?  http://allcarbon.blogspot.com/2010/03/nice-nuts.html

Well, F has finally gotten around to creating her coconut helmet. She reports that the "stupid squirrel

can't figure out how to get inside my coconut helmet."

When I grow up...

I love the movie Ghostbusters. And, I think it was because of that movie that I've always wanted to live in a converted firehouse. While other girls were fantasizing about castles, Prince Charming and unicorns, I wanted to live in a firehouse when I grew up. An old school one with a pole through the floors. By the time other girls my age were hanging dream catchers over their beds, I was thinking about how cool it would be if I could convince all my close friends to live in this firehouse with me. We could convert each floor into an apartment or two, have a couple of dogs and cats, and use the ground floor (with its big red fire engine garage doors) as a workshop and garage. That way, I'd have the best of both worlds -- my friends when I wanted to see them, and my own place when I didn't. Naturally, I never actually lived in a firehouse. Neither did my friends.

Now that I'm older, I no longer fantasize about a firehouse full of friends. Lately, I've had a new thought as I've read about a slew of Napa and Sonoma vineyards under financial duress, and I've been fantasizing about a new future. Instead of a firehouse, it'd be awesome if my friends and I could pool together about $2M for couple of acres of vineyard (complete with farmhouse and barn) an hour or two outside San Francisco. It'd be enough acreage to make about 300 cases a year, which definitely wouldn't be enough to make a profit (unless we're talking about Screaming Eagle), but it might be enough for us to be hobby vintners and have a place to go get away, be outside, work the land and hang out. It'll never happen, but with Ghostbusters far behind me, it's nice to have such thoughts.

K, M and Montie in Philly

I go to Philly to have dinner with college bestie K, her bf M, and their cute doggie Montie. K's getting her MSW and is usually crazy busy, so it was good to see her.

Sharing PBRs with K and M.

Montie offers me one of his toys. :)

K suprised me with two more pairs of split toe socks. I love split toe socks!

Happy birthday, K!

I haven't seen K in over two years. We went to college together. He and his lovely wife are expecting their second child in a month. It was so wonderful to get to celebrate his birthday with him!

K celebrates his 32nd bday in K-town.

Happy birthday, MN!

MN re-celebrates her 29th birthday at the White Slab Palace.


With A.

With A, M and MN.

So true

A friend recently wrote an extremely insightful piece about being ok to be mediocre or to fail. It spoke to me because I often put so much internal pressure for me to meet my own standards at everything I do, that I end up over analyzing or over stressing myself out to the point where I am paralyzed by fear of failure and can't make a decision. It's one of the reasons I no longer play the violin, it's one of the reasons I don't play team sports, and it's been one of the central reasons why I haven't been aggressive about looking for work. It's good to be reminded that failure can sometimes be a victory. It's ok to be mediocre, it's ok to fail, because it gives room for improvement. I thought I'd share his words with you:

Instead of writing about massage this month, I thought I'd tell you about my student teaching I've been doing this spring. After 6 intense but successful weeks at a performing arts high school, I've spent the past couple of weeks at an elementary school. I don't mind telling you those kids have been kicking my butt! While it's true that I get along with the youngin's very well as individuals or in pairs, I seem to be less successful when there are 25 of them in a classroom. I was kind of caught off guard by this fact. After all, back in the day I used to counsel camp without any trouble, so how different could it be?

Let me tell you, it's different. First of all, camp has a completely different discipline code from school. At camp, a bit of hyper-activity is accepted. From my memories, it was even encouraged. It's part of camp culture, and the good news is it only takes about 2 minutes to realize that this doesn't translate so well to the school environment. The bad news is, by then it's too late. It takes a far subtler skill than I currently possess to regain control of a roomful of kids who think your exasperated efforts are a funny game. (The teacher I work with can do this as if he has a magic wand- I have no idea how!)

The second difference is, when I was 18 years old, I was often still able to work under the assumption that I could do anything; if no one got seriously maimed, I must have done a good job. I didn't get trapped by my own self-awareness, and in return I did things more naturally, learning new skills without stress or burnout.

Eighteen was about the age my self-awareness started catching up to me. Through most of my 20's, with everything I did, every new skill I learned, I tried too hard, thought too much. At first I got a lot of praise for this, but eventually I started to run into brick walls. Tension started catching up with me, and I began getting worse at all the things I wanted to get better at. About the time I started massage, I began to figure out the error of my ways. As I learned that new skill, I also started learning how not try too hard, how to give myself space to be mediocre or downright bad at something, then calmly and slowly figure out how to make it better. Then I could usually find the balance between instinct and analysis, and gradually improve.

Nowadays, learning a new skill is a strange and interesting process. Particularly when the skill is one you have to learn publicly. As a teacher, you can't hide when you don't know what you are doing, and your audience is not going to be patient and polite while you figure it out. And so everytime I step in front of a class, it is a nervous, stressful experience. On the other hand, I've done enough things badly at this point in my life that I'm not scared of being scared anymore. Part of me can step back, watch myself in the third person, and enjoy seeing the process unfold. This allows me to jump in and take risks with the same sort of abandon I did when I was a teenager; only this time I have a better sense of where I want to go and how to try to get there.

Will I be able to figure it out with the elementary schoolers? Will I be able to find the magic my teacher possesses? I don't know. I may not have the time to find out. To the relief of all the mothers reading this, I hope to work at the high school level. But either way I've got a lot of learning to do. I don't know a teacher of any age-group whose first year was not a stressful, steep learning curve. I can only hope do it smoothly as possible, and still find enjoyment in the process. Even on the days I'm no good at it.

Happy Birthday, K!

K has an important birthday this month! We celebrated her new decade with dinner at The Park.

Even better news is that she's recently engaged. Congrats to K!

Happy Bday, W!

Happy bday, girlie! W's bday two weeks after the fact, but we're celebrating nonetheless!

Thank goodness for good friends!

In "Is Urban Loneliness a Myth?" Jennifer Senior explores living alone in the the Big Apple:

Manhattan is the capital of people living by themselves. But are New Yorkers lonelier? Far from it, say a new breed of loneliness researchers, who argue that urban alienation is largely a myth.



There are good public-health reasons to be concerned about loneliness. In the last couple of decades, researchers have started measuring the effects of social isolation, and they aren’t pretty. There’s been an avalanche of studies, for instance, showing that married people are happier and healthier, while the odds of dying increase significantly among the recently widowed, something known as the “widowhood effect.” There’s evidence suggesting that strong social networks help slow the progression of Alzheimer’s. There’s even better evidence suggesting that weak social networks pose as great a risk to heart-attack patients as obesity and hypertension. There’s also evidence to suggest that the religious people who live the longest are the ones who attend services most frequently rather than feel their beliefs most deeply. (It’s not faith that keeps them alive, in other words, but people.)


Studies show that loneliness is associated with morning surges in cortisol, the stress hormone, and increased vascular resistance, which results in higher blood pressure. They also show the lonely drink more, exercise less, get divorced more often, and have more family estrangements and run-ins with the neighbors. And they’re fatter. In one of my favorite experiments described in Loneliness, students were divided into two groups and told to evaluate … bite-size cookies. Specifically, researchers took aside each of the kids in one group and told them that no one wanted to work with them, so they’d have to work on their own. The others, by contrast, were each privately told that everyone wanted to work with them, but they’d still have to work on their own because it would be impossible to work with so many people. Then all of the participants were handed a plate of cookies and told to evaluate them. On average, the ones who had been told they were universally liked ate 4.5. Those who had been told they’d been universally rejected ate 9. “Is it any wonder we turn to ice cream,” the authors ask, “when we’re sitting at home feeling all alone in the world?”


Given how many New Yorkers live alone—in Manhattan, 25.6 percent of households are married, whereas the national average is 49.7—one would think we’d be at an increased risk for practically all these conditions. But Cacioppo points out that loneliness isn’t about objective matters, like whether we live alone. It’s about subjective matters, like whether we feel alone. To determine how satisfied people feel with their relationships, research psychologists generally rely on a twenty-question survey called the UCLA Loneliness Scale, which breaks down our connections into three groups: intimate (whether we have a partner), relational (friends), and collective (church, colleagues, baseball teams, etc.).


The results of these surveys have crucial—and positive—consequences for urban environments. Loneliness, it turns out, is relative. Widows are likely to feel better in a community with more widows (Boca Raton, Florida, say) than a community with only a few single elderly women. And singles are likely to feel better in a town with more singles … like New York. It’s true that marriage is still the best demographic predictor of loneliness. But Cacioppo stresses it’s a very loose predictor. People can have satisfying connections in other ways, after all, and people in bad marriages might as well be on their own: Cacioppo’s latest study, based on a sample of 225 people in the Chicago area, shows that those in unhappy marriages are no less lonely than single people, and might even be more so. Nor do rotten marriages do much for your health. A couple of years ago, Cacioppo teamed up with Linda Waite, co-author of The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better Off Financially, whose conclusions about the health-positive effects of the institution drove feminists and fatalists like myself into a tizzy. They recruited a new pool of sample subjects and more or less asked the same questions Waite originally did, but also inserted questions to see if their participants were lonely. And what did they discover? That married people were indeed healthier—if they weren’t lonely in their marriages. If they were, the health benefits were so negligible the researchers considered them statistically insignificant.

“In our data,” adds Lisa Berkman, the Harvard epidemiologist who discovered the importance of social networks to heart patients, “friends substitute perfectly well for family.” This finding is important. It may be true that marriage prolongs life. But so, in Berkman’s view, does friendship—and considering how important friendship is to New Yorkers (home of Friends, after all), where so many of us live on our own, this finding is blissfully reassuring. In fact, Berkman has consistently found that living alone poses no health risk, whether she’s looking at 20,000 gas and electricity workers in France or a random sample of almost 7,000 men and women in Alameda, California, so long as her subjects have intimate ties of some kind as well as a variety of weaker ones. Those who are married but don’t have any civic ties or close friends or relatives, for instance, face greater health risks than those who live alone but have lots of friends and regularly volunteer at the local soup kitchen. “Any one connection doesn’t really protect you,” she says. “You need relationships that provide love and intimacy and you need relationships that help you feel like you’re participating in society in some way.”


read more digg story

Happy Birthday J!

J and D come to NYC to celebrate J's big bday!

J's Big Day!

C-dogg comes to town!

A very fit, muttonchopped, post-Primal Quest C-dogg was in NYC for work. He and his co-worker Z rocked the Big Apple with late nights, drinks and nibbles at The Rusty Knot, 230 Fifth, Corner Bistro, Cibar and Pete's Tavern. Having C in town was great fun, but after two post-2am worknights in a row, I'm in dire need of sleep.

I'm off to count sheep. G'night!

Team Shasta finish Primal Quest

in the Top 20! They're so awesome!

For a blow-by-blow, check out MontainWaz's blog.