Archive for the 'General' Category

Notes of the Urban Blues

January 23, 2008 | General, Travel

cross posted to Marketing Roadmaps

I haven’t been posting here too much because I have been jamming to bring up two new client blogs, a podcast and doing media & blogger outreach for Electrified: The Story of the Maxwell Street Urban Blues. Hopefully after Sundance, things will settle down a little bit and I can get back to posting more regularly. I may even have some cool pictures from Sundance to share with you all.

In the meantime, if you’d like to follow the action at Sundance and the big Electrifed party at Harry O’s on Friday with Kenny Wayne Shepherd and Hubert Sumlin, you’ll find me over at the film’s new blog, Notes of the Urban Blues. Friday, I’ll be interviewing Phil Ranstrom, writer/director/producer of Electrified at the HP Broadcast Studio, and during the party Friday night (and into the wee hours Saturday morning), we’ll try to get some clips up in near real-time. I’ll also be live-tweeting so please feel free to follow me at twitter.com/sgetgood. And don’t worry, I won’t be hurt if you follow me just for the weekend and then unfollow

Notes of the Urban Blues was designed by the very talented Leslie Doherty of Swank Web Style.

Tags: Sundance, urban blues, Maxwell Street, Phil Ranstrom, Electrified

Hannah Montana Wrap-up

January 8, 2008 | Douglas, General

Well, I was crazy enough to take three kids to the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus concert just before Christmas. With all the holiday to and fro, plus work, I just finished making souvenir HP Photo Books for the two young ladies who joined Douglas and me at the concert.

HP is one of the sponsors of the tour, which is how I got the tickets in the first place.As a result, unlike most concerts, bringing a camera was actively encouraged. Kids can create an HP Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus Memory Book at www.disney.com/hannah, and purchase a book online, or print it out at home.

Since the pages were designed for the larger HP Photo Book format, it was very easy to add our own pictures and create the books. I think it would make a nice souvenir for any Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus fan, whether they attended the concert or not.

My favorite pictures? This one, of the keyboard player snapping a pic of Miley at the end of the concert:

And this one, of poor Douglas, who wasn’t feeling so well and fell asleep toward the end of the concert. Hard to do when you are sitting in row six but he managed it.

Tags: Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus, Disney, HP Photo Book

WhyMommy & give Peas a chance

December 21, 2007 | General, Parent bloggers

cross posted to Marketing Roadmaps

Over the past week or so, a movement took shape on Twitter to support a fellow blogger Susan Reynolds recently diagnosed with a difficult-to-treat form of breast cancer. As a result of a comment she made about using frozen peas to relieve pain in the affected breast, folks started adding images of peas to their Twitter avatars in a show of support. I don’t know Susan, but many friends and acquaintances do, and I truly admire bloggers facing life-threatening diseases who write about their battle in an effort to help others.

So, I decided I would put up a new Twitter avatar. A decision made easier when the Queen of Spain’s talented husband offered to make pea avatars for people, meaning you wouldn’t be subjected to my sketchy graphics skills.

However, I decided I didn’t just want peas. I’ve written before about a courageous woman fighting inflammatory breast cancer, Susan Niebur, also known as WhyMommy, who used her blog and the community of mommy bloggers to spread the word about this rare form of cancer.

I wanted my avatar to honor both Susans.

So today, in their honor and also in memory of friends and family lost to cancer, my Twitter avatar is a pink Y, for WhyMommy, wearing a pea necklace, for Susan Reynolds.

Tags: Susan Reynolds, WhyMommy

Red Sox Nation

October 23, 2007 | General

GO RED SOX!!!!

In Support of the League of Maternal Justice

October 10, 2007 | General

Tomorrow, I promise to post some pictures from our last two weekends in Vermont. Today, however, I post in support of the League of Maternal Justice. And I remind you, this is from a woman who chose to not breastfeed for my own personal reasons, but will defend to the end another woman’s right to do so, wherever and whenever her child is hungry. (YouTube video embedded below)

Tags: League of Maternal Justice, Facebook, Facebook sucks, breastfeeding

Long may it wave

September 11, 2007 | General

A word about breast cancer

August 4, 2007 | BlogHer, General

cross posted to Marketing Roadmaps

Just before BlogHer, I started reading Toddler Planet, the blog of an incredibly courageous woman who had to change her plans to attend the conference because she had been diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer, a particularly nasty and often undetected form of breast cancer, and her chemo was scheduled to start the same week.

She has written a post about the disease and asked fellow bloggers to repost as much or as little of it as they wished to help spread the word.

Here is WhyMommy’s post:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer. Six weeks ago, I went to my OB/GYN because my breast felt funny. It was red, hot, inflamed, and the skin looked…funny. But there was no lump, so I wasn’t worried. I should have been. After a round of antibiotics didn’t clear up the inflammation, my doctor sent me to a breast specialist and did a skin punch biopsy. That test showed that I have inflammatory breast cancer, a very aggressive cancer that can be deadly.

Inflammatory breast cancer is often misdiagnosed as mastitis because many doctors have never seen it before and consider it rare. “Rare” or not, there are over 100,000 women in the U.S. with this cancer right now; only half will survive five years. Please call your OB/GYN if you experience several of the following symptoms in your breast, or any unusual changes: redness, rapid increase in size of one breast, persistent itching of breast or nipple, thickening of breast tissue, stabbing pain, soreness, swelling under the arm, dimpling or ridging (for example, when you take your bra off, the bra marks stay – for a while), flattening or retracting of the nipple, or a texture that looks or feels like an orange (called peau d’orange). Ask if your GYN is familiar with inflammatory breast cancer, and tell her that you’re concerned and want to come in to rule it out.

There is more than one kind of breast cancer. Inflammatory breast cancer is the most aggressive form of breast cancer out there, and early detection is critical. It’s not usually detected by mammogram. It does not usually present with a lump. It may be overlooked with all of the changes that our breasts undergo during the years when we’re pregnant and/or nursing our little ones. It’s important not to miss this one.

Inflammatory breast cancer is detected by women and their doctors who notice a change in one of their breasts. If you notice a change, call your doctor today. Tell her about it. Tell her that you have a friend with this disease, and it’s trying to kill her. Now you know what I wish I had known before six weeks ago.

You don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

P.S. Feel free to steal this post too. I’d be happy for anyone in the blogosphere to take it and put it on their site, no questions asked. Dress it up, dress it down, let it run around the place barefoot. I don’t care. But I want the word to get out. I don’t want another young mom — or old man — or anyone in between — to have to stare at this thing on their chest and wonder, is it mastitis? Is it a rash? Am I overreacting? This cancer moves FAST, and early detection and treatment is critical for survival.

Thank you.

Please spread the word, and if you are so inclined, make a donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

So you say it’s your birthday

July 5, 2007 | Douglas, Family, General

Today is indeed my birthday. Douglas and David did a wonderful job of surprising me with birthday presents this morning:

  Flowers selected by Douglas.

 This is a digital photo frame, very cool.

I did not expect either of the gifts as I knew David had already ordered these dishes from LL Bean and we had also gotten each other a Broadway in Boston subscription (Dave’s birthday is two weeks after mine.)

I guess that’s why they call it a surprise

Now some people worry that having a birthday in a holiday week is a no fun. I’ll admit, having a birthday near Christmas, as my brother does, isn’t too great. Folks either forget or give you just one gift for both birthday and Christmas, which really sucks for a child when quantity of gifts is the preferred measure.

But Fourth of July week. Man, oh man, Mom-101, do not worry about Thalia. Even if you don’t read her my comment about the benefits of this birthday week, she will figure them out for herself.

Here’s the deal:

If you live in North America and your birthday is in the first week of July, you can pretty much celebrate the whole week.

In the US, it is easier if your birthday is in the few days after the 4th, and I imagine in Canada, it works best the closer your day is to Canada Day. You start with family celebrations on the relevant holidays, and sometimes that takes a couple of days. If any of your friends are around, maybe your mom will take you all to the movies or something. And then, when the holiday week is over, and your friends are back in town, you get the birthday party.

The fireworks?  

 They’re for you.

(From flickr under a creative commons license. Photographer has great fireworks shots. )

The rest of the country may be celebrating Independence. Your family…. it ends up being all about you. Don’t believe me? Ask my mom. When she asked if we could come over for a cook-out this week, it was for my birthday celebration, not the Fourth of July.

Born near the Fourth of July? It’s not bad at all.

BlogThings

July 2, 2007 | General

I’ve always loved BlogThings, and couldn’t resist these two. Ruby is my birthstone, and Buffy… Well, I do love the show and Buffy got Spike. What else is there to say?

Your Gemstone is Ruby

Daring, enthusiastic, and spontaneous. You are energetic and passionate, with an appetite for life.

You Are Buffy the Vampire Slayer

"We saved the world. I say we have to party."

I’ll try to post some puppy pictures before the holiday. If I don’t get to it, Happy Fourth of July to everyone who celebrates US Independence Day.

Are you a feminist?

June 19, 2007 | General

A post about our weekend outing to the Collings Foundation in Stow Mass is coming.

In the meantime, are you a feminist?

Tip of the hat to PunditMom - lately I haven’t had time to check out BlogThings, and I would have missed this one.

You Are 100% Feminist

You are a total feminist. This doesn’t mean you’re a man hater (in fact, you may be a man). You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It’s a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.