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Sunday, March 30, 2008

Goodbye to some memorable books

I’ve been thinning out my books - I don’t want to grow into one of those old women who end up surrounded by stacks of books, cats, papers, and piles of “stuff” - and had to admit that there were a couple of books that I knew I probably wouldn’t read again but that I enjoyed immensely the first time around. A lot of the time, these books are picked up during my travels because I finished the book I took with me and needed something to read on the flight home, or because the topic was something I was curious about and a book came up on the topic, or because the title was just too good to walk by.

Here are a few of my faves:

Dress Codes: Of Three Girlhoods---My Mother’s, My Father’s, and Mine by Noelle Howey - An autobiography by a teen who goes through her adolescence (an awkward time at best) at the same time her father goes through his own form of style adolescence as he prepares for trans-gender surgery. Told with a wry sense of humour that lets you in on her adolescent angst without too much earnestness.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman - The first premise of the book is that someone will eventually ask him if he’ll now recant something he wrote years ago, that no woman could ever satisfy him, and he’s say, of course, because he’s now married. But of course, no one would ever know if he’s telling the truth because there is public pressure to say the right thing. The whole Emo angst (hmmm, there’s that word again) about fake love drew me in, and then the titles of various chapters made me curious. Lise Loeb and Ice Planet Hoth ... Toby over Moby - OK, I kind of knew who Moby was ... I felt I needed to get out of the middle-aged closet, at least a little bit. I now read way more blogs and watch a lot less TV.

Black Rubber Dress, by Lauren Henderson - A whodunnit set in London where the protagonist is a low-rent, edgy sculptor of gigantic mobiles. She’s a bit of an anti-hero, so has the usual accoutrements like a male nickname and, if I’m not mistaken, tattoos and promiscuity, not to mention recreational drug use - the better the contrast to be able to critique the well-heeled crowd that make up the rest of the crowd in the book. A refreshing airplane read.

Genderqueer, edited by Joan Nestle, Clare Howell, and Riki Wilchins - I picked up this book because it’s subtitled “beyond the sexual binary” and discusses transgendered and intersexed issues intelligently, as well as the usual gay, lesbian, bisexual, and even quirkyalone, in a way. I bought it in Baltimore, where I was speaking at a conference, and used the book to describe situations where we except binaries and are made to stretch our minds when presented with more options. I was surprised at how many feedback forms involved a comment about how the presenter talked about (gasp!) sex! Really ... the inability to relate concepts ... but I digress.

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson - I couldn’t put this book down. It’s been a couple of years now since I read it, but I still remember the characters vividly. For weeks afterwards, I would wonder what happened to Ivy, Cayce, and Parkaboy. I wanted a sequel. That reminds me to check out Gibson’s latest.

The other two boxes of books will go into the donation box without fanfare. Some are well-loved, like Ann Marie MacDonald’s books, that I hope will be equally enjoyed by their next owner, and others I hope will be better enjoyed by the new owners.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Custom songs makes for light-hearted gifts

A long while back I heard about a site called Songs to Wear Pants To. In cleaning out a bunch of old business cards, I came across the site name and thought I’d see if the site was still there, and it is!

Andrew is a songwriter who creates custom songs based on whatever criteria you provide, no matter how odd. All you need is a little pancreas? No problem. Crazy candy theme? His pleasure. Polka loca? Of coursa. Celtic techno burrito? Why sure-o. The site even has its own theme song. I have to hand it to Andrew for the longevity of the site, the way he’s found to make money doing something he loves, and for finding a way to stay good-humoured about the weird and whacky requests he gets for songs.

Considering that my family is entering “birthday season” - a few of us have birthdays between late November and end of January, then just about everyone else’s birthday is clumped together between end of March and beginning of June; something like 18 birthdays - this may be the gift that everyone gets this year!

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Fitness quest update

Back in November, I made up my mind to get fit. I was tired of being hostage to my food allergies, which were getting worse, my joint pain, which was getting worse, and the excess weight, which has so much negative effect on my quality of life. A friend and client from Minneapolis had made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse - his payment terms for work done for his company would be that the cheque would be made out not to my company, but to a personal trainer of my choosing. Well, the strategy is paying off. I’m stronger, thinner, and have a better sense of balance (which I’d lost during the years surrounding my ship replacement).

It took me until January to find a trainer that I liked - I chose Matt Cole of Peak Exercise Sciences because he’s a MSc, BHK, CSCS, and RK. He’s not only knowledgeable about training and fitness and injuries and rehabilitation, but he’s experienced (he’s not as young as he looks, he assures me). And he has a disarming way about him - none of this bootcamp obnoxiousness which would have turned me off right away. As well, something that I needed was flexibility; as a consultant, I’m all over the place during the week, so I looked for someone who could train with me downtown or close to where I live, or at my townhouse complex’s fitness room when needed. He comes up with cockamamie exercises that are meant to improve my core strength, and just when I manage to master them, he finds something else that I completely suck at, and I start over again.

Yesterday, I went to The Running Room to invest in a good pair of sneakers which would accommodate my orthotics and my lift and let me get in a good workout without hurting my ankles or knees. And I put on a t-shirt I got at a conference, a t-shirt that was two sizes smaller than I usually wear, and it fit! And I put on some jeans, and realized I needed to wear a belt to keep them up, and my belt fit on my hips (a belt that would have barely fit my waist before), and I checked and I’m down 15 pounds. Whoo hoo!

I wonder why my joints still hurt. Must ask Matt about that. But hey, I’m more motivated than ever to keep going. Working out, riding my Trikke, watching my nutrition, trying to keep my stress levels under control. Stay tuned ...

Sunday, March 23, 2008

Redeeming social value of Will and Grace

My hairdresser tells me that when her sister and brother-in-law used to come to visit from Winnipeg, she was reluctant to send them out into the neighborhood - Vancouver’s West End - because of her brother-in-law’s rampant homophobia. So when they arrived this weekend to stay, and she needed them to busy themselves for a couple of hours before she could entertain them, she hesitated. But her brother-in-law said not to worry, he was going to head up the street to the local Starbucks.

Well, four hours later, when she and her sister couldn’t find him, they went on the hunt and sure enough, there he was, in Starbucks, and didn’t want to leave. Seems he was in the process of listening in on a number of conversations of the surrounding patrons and wanted to know how their conversations would end. It seems that a middle-aged gay couple was in the process of breaking up ("It’s so sad!") and a lesbian couple was talking about their impending adoption ("They sound so excited; they’ll make great parents.") It seems that after discovering Will and Grace and the humanization of the urban gay, we’re not so scary, and neither is walking around a gay neighborhood. Who knew that a TV show had such influence? Gotta love it.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Texting and driving

Note: Reposting this because I deleted it by accident while trying to delete nuisance trackbacks..

When I hear people calling into talk shows calling for bans on cell phones in cars, draconian measures such as building in phone de-activators, I roll my eyes and wonder what world they live in. Or, as they’d say in my business, they haven’t thought through their use cases, let alone the edge cases. (So even passengers wouldn’t be able to use their phones in the car? If I’m pulled over but in my car, I’d have to step out onto the highway to call for help? Now there’s a less-than-safe alternative!) Instead, I’m a believer in knowing your limits. At the point in time when I realized I could not safely dial and drive, I stopped. If I’m talking and have to attend to a traffic situation, I simply say, “hold on, hold on” and deal with whatever I have to deal with, no matter how long the silence gets. Safety first. Have I texted while driving? Sure, while I’m stopped at a red light. It might take me three or four red lights to tap out the message “very late. be there 30 mins” but the second the light turns green, I put down my phone and concentrate on the road. I never want to be like the driver of an F150 truck I saw weaving down the highway one night. I assumed the driver was drunk; when I passed the truck, I saw the glow of the open cell phone - the driver was meandering between two lanes while texting.

So yesterday, when taking the Super Shuttle from the San Francisco airport to the downtown Palomar Hotel, I was scared out of my wits. The driver was driving at 60-70 MPH over the Bay Bridge while text messaging the entire time. I was completely appalled. The other passengers didn’t say a word, which surprised me because I asked the guy next to me if he thought this was a safe practice and he was clearly uncomfortable, and it was only when I shrilly demanded that he stop that he did – until he had dropped all the other passengers off, and then he could not resist picking up his phone again while he made his way to my hotel. I don’t know if he was indulging in political discourse or an overactive libido, but it was obvious to me that whatever his motivation, it was pretty compulsive. (The hotel staff inform me that texting while driving is not legal in California, which means that his compulsion was stronger than his common sense on more than one front.)

I am returning to the airport on Wednesday but will make other arrangements (even take public transit, if I have to) to avoid such a hair-raising experience again. To their credit, Super Shuttle responded by saying that a complaint has been filed and forwarded to the local Quality Assurance manager for review, and I should get an answer within five days. Let’s see what kind of response they come up with. 

Sunday, March 09, 2008

Social networking reverting to a global local village model?

I was listening to CBC’s program, Spark, about a discussion with Washington Post’s Marc Fisher that was an editorial on a Snow Day story, where a high-achiever student called a school administrator to know why school hadn’t been canceled because of snow, and the administrator’s wife left a scathing message for the student, which got posted to FaceBook.

For me, the original story wasn’t so interesting [sidebar: Students’ judgments aren’t fully formed yet (hey, that’s why they’re students) and are supposed be learning from the adult role models around them. The administrator’s wife is evidently not fit to be one of those role models. I learned from one of my co-workers long ago that if you’re not prepared for your words to be published on the front page of the New York Times, you should abstain from articulating whatever you’re thinking. This woman learned it the hard way.] but the subtext to the story was: how technology, and in particular the social networking phenomenon, has potentially eroded our privacy, making us hyper-aware of our every move.

What’s interesting to me, being over 50 and from a small (and I mean small!) town in rural Ontario, is that what is being described is the social network from my youth, only on a much larger scale. In essence, what social networking has done is return us to the “global local village.” As Fisher was talking, I was doing a mental check in my head of the similarities.

In a rural setting, when a car drove by, you looked up and noticed who was driving by. My dad would say, “There goes old Jack. Must be going up to see Jim – heard the horse was sick.” The men of the community kept track of social comings and goings through the local coffee shop/feed store. Ours was called the Two-by-Four. When a petty crime happened, we all knew whose kids did it, even if the police could never prove anything. When I bought an experimental pack of cigarettes, the store owner told my dad. My mother’s big shame would have been for a teacher - they all lived within a few miles of there - to see me doing that. My mom told me I couldn’t wait at the corner store to get picked up from the school bus any more, with the cool kids who played the pinball game and smoked. I had to take a different school bus home now; I had to ride on her school bus. Privacy? What privacy?

We knew where our teachers lived, and they bumped into us everywhere. I took piano lessons from the prinicipal’s wife; another teacher went to the same church as my grandmother and lived two doors down from my aunt. Mornings, I walked a quarter-mile to the school bus stop, and in inclement weather, waited in the porch of the teacher who lived on the corner. There was no formal contact between teachers and students, but to be sure, students knew that their teachers were everywhere, and they were continually interacting, just as a part of their community status and part of community life. We knew lots about our teachers, all 12 of them, and they knew lots about all 350 of us.

If there were an angry outburst with a student, the next day everyone would know. (If a teacher’s wife were to have an angry outburst, that would have been unthinkable. It would have been gossip fodder for years!) In our school, the school bus was the unmediated public space – the low-tech IM - and by lunch time, all the students were mimicking the teacher’s words and tone out of earshot of the playground supervisors. Similarly, when our French teacher left his wife and children for a grade 12 student, we all knew – and he was gone. After all, you couldn’t really go far without someone seeing you and the rumors starting. And reputations were forever – the fact that I vividly remember the incident 32 years later speaks to it. The permanence lived on, just as a farm would go by the name of the owners for the last forty years, not the ones who lived there “only” the last ten. The grocer knew what you bought, and shared your reputation by the soundness of your food choices. The low-tech FaceBook was the gossip network, and it was kept active by men and women alike.

When I moved to the city, the anonymity was a novelty. The move away from local grocers to big-box stores was a novelty. Fill your cart with frozen dinners and there was no one to criticize your moral fiber. The tight weave that existed during my school years didn’t exist for my son, and other than some pre-internet circumstances that mirrored social networking (a chance discussion in a YWCA pool change room, with my son’s grade 2 teacher, both of us naked, discussing a problem my son was having, sticks out in my mind), there was little substance to the social fabric. But that has become the norm, and the norm is not easy to change. Instead of a new, not-yet-understood phenomenon, maybe we can see the social networking phenomenon as a return to the local village, albeit in a larger scale – a kind of global local village.

I recently gave up trying to keep my separate professional and private life separate, and decided to live my life the way I did as a kid in my rural Ontario roots. After all, search engines will inevitably find my personal blog when people do a search on my professional life, and vice-versa, so my best recourse is to conduct myself honorably and know that no matter what they find, there will be no embarrassing photos, no reports of unethical conduct, no blue-language rants, just me being me, going about my business, the way I would if I were driving to my parents’ farm, waving at the neighbors, and realizing that if they’re going out of their way to pass judgment, it’s just because they’ve got a little too much time on their hands. I predict that will become the new norm, and it won’t take another complete generation for the shift to happen.

Saturday, March 08, 2008

International Women’s Day

It’s been a couple of years since I’ve actually done anything for International Women’s Day other than take a moment for myself to think about the implications for my own life and the women around me. There’s not much discussion of it any more, just like there’s not much discussion of feminism any more. It drives me crazy when women say they’re not feminists, and that the feminist movement did nothing for them. (Oh yeah? Do they want to go back to the days when a bank manager wouldn’t give a woman a bank loan? Or give a woman a mortgage? Or give a woman a hassle about opening her own bank account, without the signature of her husband or father?) The completely irrational cop-out of “well, I don’t want to call myself a feminist because some thirty years ago, there was an urban myth about women burning bras that I don’t want to be associated with” drives me crazy.  The “I don’t want to call myself a [name any group] because there are some [name the fringe element to that group] that give that group a bad name” argument is so lame. I always want to respond with “well, I don’t want to call myself a lesbian because there were some incidents about man-hating separatists that I don’t want to be associated with. Apply that to religion, culture, status in life (motherhood, for example), profession ... anyhow, back to International Women’s Day.

I’m quite thankful for many of the women in my life. There are a couple that I want to throttle right now - I wish they’d renounce their womanhood so I could simply distance myself completely from them. I would like to be able to say that they have NOTHING in common with me, not even sex or gender. Well, one in particular I don’t consider to be of the same gender though she’s of the same sex. But life isn’t simple that way. We have to live with ambiguity and complexity, and interconnectedness of circumstance. I remind myself of this because even if I were able to say “we have nothing common,” it would still not give me license to hate. The difference in gender doesn’t stop me from deeply loving my grandsons. The difference in the values with which my granddaughters are being raised doesn’t stop me from deeply loving them. International Women’s Day reminds me of all these things, and more. - it’s a day for us, and for all those affected by us.

Friday, March 07, 2008

Happiness is genetic - go figure

Went to work out today for the first time since falling down the stairs. Hurt like hell, but didn’t want to leave it too long. When I came home, stiff and sore, I came up from the underground parking and saw a half-dozen robins hopping about the yard, pulling worms out. They paused when they saw me, cocked their heads to see if I was a threat or a passing phenomenon, and resumed their foraging for wriggling protein. It made me happy - spring is imminent.

Speaking of happy - I just read that British and Australian researchers have shown that half the differences in happiness are genetic, based on studies done on twins. Common genes result in personality traits that predispose people to happiness. Does that mean that certain miserable people I know will always remain so?

I wonder if they’ll ever find the tacky gene. If they do, I could certainly get behind certain pragmatic uses for genetic testing.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

Can’t afford to be sidelined for a day

Mostly, living in a strata situation is okay - less yard work, tree trimming, trash collection, and so on. But every so often, there are things that drive me crazy. Like having slippery outside stairs and not being able to just fix them - no, you have to wait for the powers that be to Do Something - which is not likely to happen unless you make a fuss.

So the bloody awful coating on the steps is slippery when the temperature drops to around the freezing point. Anyhow, despite wearing flat, rubber-soled shoes, I fall down the stairs and am in great pain. I’m pretty paranoid about my artificial hip and my remaining good hip, so I go get x-rays at Burnaby General. All day at emergency.

All bloody day it takes them to do an x-ray and tell me that nothing is broken, no hairline fracture. At some point, through my morphine haze, I hear a medical professional complain that all the beds are full, and I think to myself that if someone would come in and pronounce me releasable, they could have an extra bed. And probably another few of us, as well. They need some work process re-engineering in the emergency department there.

So I start my own little discharge campaign. First, I just get dressed. A nurse asks me if I’ve been OKed to get dressed. I say that I’m getting dressed before the morphine wears off and I can still move. Then, I go in search of water. A nurse wants my assurance I’m coming back. I say sure, of course. Then, I put on my jacket. She wants to make sure I’m not leaving. I say I’m freezing (which is true). Then I put on my gloves, mainly because by now, my blood sugar has dropped and I’m really, really freezing.

Now, the doctor comes in and says oh, you’ve had a hip replacement and I can understand why you’re really concerned about falls. And I think to myself, hmmm, isn’t that what I tried to tell you when I came in? I’m sure I mentioned that ... but it’s one of those things. I can talk,a but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the other person listens. Haven’t figured out how to exactly make the loop close, at least not all the time.

Losing a day at the hospital, then another day of being nauseous and on painkillers, a week before our big conference, is the worst possible time to be unproductive. Guess this weekend will be another working weekend - have to make up for lost time somehow. I’m really excited about the conference and want to put in as much time as I can to make sure it’s a success.