Mel’s Spot

After weaving in and out of the boutiques on Devine street, glancing in the windows at 5 points, and giving the place next to Starbucks a generous second try, I’d just about given up hope for decent shopping in Columbia.

Last weekend in a final attempt I decided to brave the mall. This mall is in the middle of retail chain hell (or heaven, depending on your need at the time). If your goal is a quick errand, forget it. I’ve never seen so many logos and shopping carts in my life. You name it, it’s there.

Anyway, there is a mall there and it has the usual suspects: The Gap, Ann Taylor, Victoria’s, Express, and of course that pretzel place that smells soooo good. I spent two hours roaming the mall, trying to convince myself I didn’t need Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, or a pretzel. But my only success was avoiding the pretzel.

Depressed and tired of dodging strollers, I headed through a department store to get to my car. It was there in the distance I saw an oasis. An oasis in the form of Free People. This department store, Belk to the locals, also had an amazing selection of Sevens.

My bank account may be in trouble, but I might just make it after all.

And just when I thought it was safe and clear,
To enjoy my house without any fear,

A salamander thought he’d come hang out,
Across my living room, he slithered about.

I screamed when I saw him, he froze in his spot
Could this really be happening again I thought.

With no knight in shining armor to come to my side,
I knew I’d have to face him, I couldn’t just hide.

He and I had a moment where our eyes did lock
Both frozen, unable to move from the shock.

Our goal was the same and it was up to me,
I had to earn his trust and set him free.

I gulped a breath of courage and opened the door,
I invited him out by stomping the floor.

And I’m convinced fate took control,
As the salamander began to stroll.

Across the carpet and out he did go,
How I succeeded I may never know.

Now I have a message for any amphibian or reptile,
That is thinking of staying at my place for a while.

I have no interest in becoming your friend
So pretty please, let the invasions end.

(unfortunately, this is also a true story…)

There was a frog on my doorstep this evening. A hopping, ribbiting frog. It seemed he was waiting to come in, much like a cat or a dog.

But, he was a frog.

And he did not seem to mind, even when I told him to shoo.
So I waited, and waited, for him to unglue.

But there he sat–content on my doormat.

At this point the fairy tale went awry and impatiently I let out a cry:

Save me, save me from this would-be prince
Who doesn’t have the decency to move or wince.

But even when Scott opened the door, the frog just stood there as if he would evermore.

So out the back window my knight in shining armor came (okay, so he had a broom)
To battle the frog for passage to my domain.

Sir Frog lost his sit in and leapt away kiss-free
You see I’ve already got a prince, and there’s no better than he.

(True Story)

In journalism classes you learn how to write a lead that grabs the audience’s attention and sets the tone for the rest of the article. There are several different types of leads. For instance, the anecdotal lead gives a personal example pertaining to a bigger issue. The delayed lead intrigues the reader with suspense or an unexpected angle. The narrative tells a story before feeding you the news.

True to my past, I’ve been working on this entry for a while trying to figure out the best way to introduce this bit news that I have to share with you. But, for the life of me, I can’t come up with an entertaining way to lead this story, so instead you get the direct lead: I’m moving to South Carolina to be with my boyfriend.

See, told you it was newsworthy! I suppose this is a bit of a delayed lead in that the real story is that I’m moving next Wednesday!

We decided a while ago that if I could find a better job in Columbia that I would move out there. And to everyone’s surprise (especially mine), I found an amazing one working for a web development firm that focuses on usability. The best part is that it’s less than a mile away from where we’ll be living, and equally as close to Scott’s university. Actually, the best part is that I’m going to be doing really interesting things with web usability and information architecture. I’ve been doing a lot of that with my soon-to-be old company and I’m very excited to be moving my career in that direction.

Needless to say, there are some major changes in my life that are about to take place. For one, I’m moving to the South. Honestly though, I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything by leaving California. Sure, the Bay Area will always be home and it’s where my family is, but I’m building my adult life now and it just wasn’t gelling for me here.

Perhaps the biggest change is that I’m going to be waking up next to someone every day. I’ve never done that before, so this is a pretty big deal for me. I can’t help thinking about how my life will change now that I’m living as a pair instead of solo…

For starters, I probably won’t be able to go weeks on end without shaving my legs anymore. Also, I can’t let my room explode every time I get dressed because no one else can navigate through a floor of clothes quite like I can. I will probably cook more because I’ll have someone there to help me eat it.

I’m sure that I have plenty more quirks that will need some tweaking in order to accommodate living as a pair instead of solo, but the pay off is that I get to spend time with my bud (oh, and I’ll have someone around to kill spiders for me). The fun part is that WE get to develop our own quirks and tendencies. WE get to define our relationship and our home. Of course, I’ll always be me and I’ll always have my own life, but it sure is going to be fun discovering how he fits into it too!

In true new year’s resolution spirit, I’ve got some issues with this weight loss thing…

I’ve been serious about losing weight since September 2007, so I can’t really call this a new resolution, but I’m definitely taking this opportunity to reevaluate my progress.

I use Daily Plate to monitor my calories, which has an impressive library of nutrition facts. You calculate your basal metabolic rate (BMR) based on your age, height, and weight. Then, you create a calorie goal to either lose weight or gain weight. Without going into too many details, when I started my calorie limit was 1,330 if I wanted to lose 2 pounds a week. It was fine, but I definitely had to pay attention to what I was putting into my body. Of course, I’m a big fan of exercise so I also committed to a spin class twice a week and at least 2 other days of exercise. Long story short: it worked.

Today, I am almost half-way to reaching my ultimate goal. I was stoked and decided to enter my new weight into my calorie calculator, somehow expecting to be rewarded for my progress.

Was I ever wrong… Apparently, now I need to consume almost 300 less calories to lose 2 pounds a week! Eating only 955 calories a day is just not an option. This can’t be right… Can it?

If you removed the words advancing, superior, competitive, state-of-the-art, optimized, leading, and innovative from all the company overviews and fact sheets in the Silicon Valley, you’d have nothing but commas and conjunctions on the page.

What do those words mean? Sure they are defined in the dictionary, and they can even carry a useful message. But when you string them together in one sentence, what do they really tell you about a product or service? Tech marketing says nothing. Rarely do I walk away from reading a company’s website with a better understanding of what the company does and who they serve. Sure these are complex products, after all, I may never understand virtualization but dammit it has to be useful to someone and that someone probably doesn’t care that it is pioneering some landscape in the most superior way possible.

In school, we were taught to communicate the benefits clearly and concisely. But in reality, everyone is trying so hard to differentiate themselves from their competition that they lose sight of what they actually want to say. As a result, everyone is saying nothing in as many multisyllabic words as possible.

One website I was reading seemed to get it. It told me exactly what made its wireless modem different from another wireless modem: “[we] make Wi-Fi reliable enough to be used as a utility in the home, office, and hot spot around the world.” I get that… Now, compare that message to a competitor: “[we] provide seamless mobility to the enterprise workforce…” No one actually speaks with that kind of language; why on earth should you approach your audience that way? Sure they are basically saying the same thing, but there is no ambiguity with the first message. The second message isn’t terribly abstract, but what does seamless mobility really mean? That you can use your wireless devices anywhere without any problems? Sure, but notice that I have to assume what we’re talking about, because for all we know the message could be referring to really sleek scooters.

More and more I’m let down by this industry that I was so eager to join. I’m not discouraging fluff, I’m just sick of fluff that fails to streamline the integration of key components of the communication message.

I’d like to pitch a commercial concept for Skype.

There once was a couple that encountered the predicament of living 2,500 miles apart (Show split screen of sad girl and sad boy). Even worse, they had different cell phone carriers (see girl’s eyes pop out of their sockets at the sight of her phone bill). But never fear, Skype is here! (enter hero) This internet calling service allows you to talk via your computer just like you would on a phone, but for FREE. What’s more, the voice and picture quality is pretty amazing. Yes, you heard me right folks. Skype allows you to video conference as well as instant message. Now, thanks to Skype, the girl and boy are a happy couple again. They can talk for free and see each other on a regular basis. (Cue the annoyingly happy music and throw in some chirping birds).

Seriously though, it’s weird how being able to see the other person’s facial expressions makes all the difference. Of course, in some ways it makes you miss the person more because you can see what you’re missing.

Fine print: The “skype me” setting is hilarious and should be used with great caution. I thought that it just meant you were available to talk with people on your contact list. Not long after I set my status to “skype me” did at least 8 men offer to show me part of their anatomy that they assured me would be the largest I’ve ever seen. After deleting my account, creating a new account, and double confirming the security settings, I was still receiving some of the nastiest ims I’ve ever received (remember the early days of AOL chat rooms?). Come to find out that the “skype me” setting not only disables all security settings, but it means that you would like to be contacted by anyone and everyone.

No alcohol until Thanksgiving. That’s 80 days of soberness…

What have I got myself into?

I’m sorry I know I promised tales of wild adventures, but it was a really smooth, uneventful trip. We had fun, and we got along the entire trip (Scott may not share that opinion, but that’s what the comment box is for:)). We spent most of our time counting cows and solving lateral thinking puzzles (well, ok, Scott solved them and I just asked a lot of questions until I got bored and begged for the answers). Nothing was as entertaining as watching Scott bob his head to old school rap.

Crossing the dam led us into Arizona and also a new time zone. The desert gave way to forest in Flagstaff, which was a nice change of scenery. Back in the desert, we stopped to climb on some Arizona Sandstone—the subject of a debate that I lost…

I was upset to find that there was no sign welcoming us to New Mexico, so I’m not exactly sure when we crossed that border. We watched the sun set in our rear view mirror and still had a couple hours to go before we reached Albuquerque, NM.

As to be expected, we watched a thunderstorm light up the sky until we found our exit off of I-40. Hungry and tired, the only place that was open was “Whataburger.” Apparently, character spaces are overrated at this place, with menu items like “Itsaburger,” “Lottaburger” and my personal favorite, “Justaburger.”

Day two

Before leaving Albuquerque, I wanted to check out the downtown area, especially the Native American jewelry shops. Turquoise in hand, we continued on I-40 headed for Oklahoma City, which we were both looking forward to visiting again.

Unfortunately, we had to pass through Texas on the way. The welcome sign also reminded us that this was the proud home of our President. Yippy. It seems as if the feeling was mutual because the sky turned gray and Texas-size raindrops pelted our windshield for most of our drive.

I was looking forward to Cadillac Ranch as a funky excursion, but as it turns out it really is just a row of old Cadillacs in the middle of a dirt field. We made it out into the middle of the dirt field just in time for a dust storm. Clearly, we were thrilled.

As soon as we made it into Oklahoma, the clouds lifted and so did our spirits. It was funny because when we got to our hotel, it was right next door to the hotel we stayed at 5 months ago when we were there looking at OU for Scott.

Day Three

I’m really glad we visited the Oklahoma City Memorial this time. Except, I can’t tell you how odd it is to be driving in the city during rush hour with virtually no one on the road. It’s just kinda spooky. Nonetheless, OKC is definitely a special place.

At this point on our drive, we were saying things like “it’s only 100 miles away” or “it’s already been 300 miles.”

We stopped in Memphis, specifically at Beale Street, which is where many early Rock and Roll musicians got their start. The bars looked like a lot of fun, but since we still had 2.5 more hours of driving ahead of us, we decided to not drink and drive.

We paid tribute to the King in Graceland and rocked to his music on our way to Tupelo (his birthplace).

Day Four

It was our last day of driving and we had to cross 4 state borders before we were done. Tennessee and Arkansas were very green and there really wasn’t much of anything besides trees along the interstate. Heading south into Alabama, we had some amazing BBQ at Dreamland in Birmingham.

Atlanta gets the prize for the scariest drivers and most intimidating gas stations.

We reached our destination (Columbia, SC) at around dinnertime. The air was sticky and heavy, which brought back wonderful memories of my summer in Boston last year. I was also excited to see Dunkin Donuts, something I miss dearly on the West Coast.

Scott’s new home

I’m not the best person to comment on this because I really wasn’t happy to be leaving him there. His house is really nice and his roommate is cool enough. He is pretty quiet and plays video games most of the time. Oh, he also has a sniper rifle and an AK-47 in his room… but it’s okay because they aren’t loaded and he only uses them on the weekends. (Gulp!)

The university was pretty and the music building was very impressive. USC’s gym rivals BU’s gym, and I can’t wait to go to a football game in the fall (except, I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to say “Go Cocks!” with a straight face or any sort of conviction).

I just found this in my drafts folder…

As my cousins get older, I’m realizing that my time as the cool, exciting cousin is limited. Soon they won’t tear through the house to be the first to hug me when I come over. And in a couple years, hanging out with their big cousin will be punishment, rather than reward. And even though I am 13 years older than James, he will tower over me before I know it (we have the same shoe size now).

With this realization, I’m trying my best to savor this time with them now by taking them on individual dates. They each get to choose their adventure; in the past it’s been bowling, the movies, or even seeing a show. It was James’ turn this weekend, and a while ago my 9-year-old cousin said he wanted to go to Planet Granite. (This is what I get for giving them open reign to choose any activity they want). So, blindly I said yes, thinking I’d sit and read a magazine while an instructor belayed him to his heart’s content. Apparently that’s not how it works at Planet Granite. You can rent a harness and shoes, but you can’t rent a person to make sure your cousin doesn’t die while climbing a 40-foot wall. Since I already promised him we’d go, it was either brake his heart or become belay certified. There was no turning back. Surprisingly his mother was all for me holding the rope to which her son’s life was tied.

So for an hour this morning I learned how to tie some knots and use a little pulley thing (clearly I paid close attention during my lesson). What I do remember is how to check the knots (10 = x). I laughed at the instructor when he told me it was my turn to climb. He won the argument when he said I wouldn’t pass unless I did it, so up I went. It was so fun! I never considered that I might actually be good at rock climbing since it requires upper body strength and coordination, two traits no one would ever mistake me to possess. I tapped the top and let myself slide back down with an odd sense of accomplishment. After all, how often do I try new things like that anymore? For the rest of the day, I belayed for James or we climbed without our harnesses on the smaller walls. When he begged me to leave, I was a little sad it was over.