Category: Blog Stuff

I was looking through my archives yesterday and noticed that tomorrow is the two year anniversary of blogging at my own domain! Yea me!

I was also reading through some of those old posts, which was both fun and enlightening. I was seriously depressed back then. And angry. And Bryan and I were not having fun being married to each other.

Yet, some of my writing was so funny! That was an era in which I wrote much more often, and wrote more stories about the funny, every day stuff. It wasn’t all just depression and marital strife here.

I miss that a little bit. While I think I’ve balanced myself out a bit more offline and actually act like a mother, there is a lot of hilarity in this house that I would love to write about if I only had the time.

So maybe from time to time I’ll dredge up an oldie but goody to share. Here’s my favorite from August 2005:

——

This post is going to be ALL ABOUT BRYAN, and what a great husband he is.

I do not give compliments well, that’s all there is to it.

Bryan told me that should be the first line of my very next post because I keep neglecting to mention all the fantastic, thoughtful things he has done for me this week. Not to mention all the fun we’ve had.

He has a point.

I tend to use my writing as a voice for the angst within, and there’s nothing very interesting about resolution: no suspense, no climax, no tension, nothin’.

So this post is dedicated to the one I love.

Tonight we saw The Violent Femmes play at Zoo Tunes, which is a great outdoor venue on a green lawn with blankets and picnic baskets and wine smuggled in tinted water bottles. Kids are running around everywhere, because kids under age twelve get in for free.

FREE, I tell ya.

In the words of Bob the Tomato, What more do you need to be happy?

There I was, sitting on my blanket, leaning against my picnic basket, listening to great music, reading the book Bryan bought me last week – the book he gave me as a sweet, unprompted gift; the book which he found while browsing Barnes and Noble because I was late picking him up for LAST week’s Zoo Tunes concert (Patty Griffin – talk about musical diversity!); the book which I LOVE and can’t put down – so I was sitting on my blanket enjoying the evening with my husband who was so gracious to me after I forgot the tickets and we had to drive all the way home after I had picked him up from work so we could theoretically get to the zoo early for a good spot, and we actually didn’t get there until ten minutes before it started and had to sit way in the back… and I was content.

The evening could have gone very very bad.

Jokingly, Bryan said, “You have the tickets, right?

Dramatically, I slammed the steering wheel and growled, “FUCK!”

I guess he thought I was kidding, you know, like “Oh no, I thought you had the tickets, ha-ha-ha,” but no, I really meant FUCK!

For the next hour as we made the round trip-and-a-half through evening rush hour traffic to get the tickets I said “I’m so sorry,” with, I believe, twenty-six different inflections and nuances because ONCE could never be enough in Zug Land when you’re an hour late for a show.

But darn it if that Bryan didn’t just blow my Keens off when he says to me, “Don’t worry about it, babe. I’m just enjoying the time I get to spend with you.”

And here’s the best part: HE DIDN’T SOUND LIKE A COMPLETE CHEESEBALL WHEN HE SAID IT! He really meant it. He wasn’t saying it through clenched teeth as he really thought to himself, “I need to set up a color coded charted and timed system to ensure this doesn’t happen NEXT week….”

He was very sweet, and I finally relaxed, and we had some of our best conversation of the evening during that drive.

It was pretty surreal to see Gordon standing there right in front of me as he sang (well, not RIGHT in front of me, more like at the other end of a football field, but still, it was surreal). He just has one of those distinct voices that you think is make-believe – kind of like Elmo or Grover – and to see that a real person makes that sound was, well, surreal.

I had the same experience the first time I saw Stevie Nicks sing.

The climax of the evening came during ‘Add It Up,’ the song that was The Femmes’ greatest – their paramount, if you will – which of course they saved for the last song of the evening, at which point all bodies leaped (leapt?) up from their picnic blankets to dance.

Tattooed bodies, magenta hair, average thirty-somethings with kids: they all danced. Children danced hand in hand with their parents, doing the jitterbug, or the twist, or some such dance.

Have you ever heard the words to ‘Add It Up?’

Watching the children dance with their parents, Bryan says, “I think I’m scarred.”

I had a blast last night, but after it ended at 10:30 I sat around waiting for Bryan to break down all his video gear. This took over an hour and was not something I could really help with, so I ended up using his cell phone to send about 800 twitter updates to break the boredom. [Sorry everyone. Truly, I am.] After taking the babysitter home across town, I didn’t get to bed until 1am.

As the evening started with a mixer-type game, I sat next to Bryan and the video equipment like some kind of groupie wall flower. Then one guy came up and asked Bryan about his camera, and they began talking Geek. Then another guy came over and asked me what kind of camera Bryan was using, and I was like, Uh… I don’t know, but they’re talking about it if you want to sit here an jump in. As I got up to let him have my seat, he feigned like it wasn’t necessary for me to give up my seat, then totally just plopped down and turned into the conversation.

Maybe you had to be there, but I thought that sort of ferocious hunger for tech knowledge was kind of funny.

After losing my seat, I found a Stranger and sat in the back row of seats and read, waiting for Something To Happen. Eventually my friend Beth found me, and we were high school excited to see each other: “I WAS GOING TO CALL YOU!” “NO WAY! I WAS GOING TO EMAIL YOU!”

Again, maybe you had to be there.

The presentations were amazing, and I can’t even imagine the pressure of getting out all that information with such precision timing. I will post the videos of my favorite ones once they are uploaded to Blip.tv. There was one about art, and another about buying a new car, and several about building community. More thoughts on my thoughts when I’m not sleep deprived.

Also, Randy Stewart took an amazing picture of me and Bryan, and I can’t figure out how to embed it into my blog, but please click here and go see how happy and content we both look.

I am an awkward conversationalist in new settings. I like knowing people, but I hate meeting them. What’s to talk about? I usually resort to talking endlessly about myself, which is never fun for anyone… including me.

So at the KOMO blogger meetup I experimented. I wore my Stay At Home Blogger t-shirt in hopes it would help to break the ice and start conversations for me. And did it ever. I met some great new people, sent some business to BabyBrewing.com (the t-shirt maker), and may have even found a new web site to contribute to should I ever find the time to write something a little better than a shitty first draft (I will now sheepishly link to this embarrassingly positive review of The Pile I’m Standing In).

I asked my friend if she thought I should wear the SAHB shirt again to Ignite Seattle tonight. And she was like, Do you really want to risk forever being identified that way? And I was all, Good point.

At Bryan’s suggestion, I decided to wear last year’s Gnomedex t-shirt. I didn’t attend, but Bryan did, and noticed that Ponzi kindly had women’s sizes made. I predict this will be a big hit in starting conversations, as this year’s Gnomedex starts tomorrow.

Also, if you look closely you can see a cartoon image of Chris’ face in the design.

And I ask you, what girl wouldn’t want Chris close to her… heart?

I was invited to a blogger meetup last night at KOMO tv that Chris Pirillo helped organize. I was expecting to find the usual crowd of familiar faces that I see at these events, but was pleasantly surprised to meet some new people.

Elisabeth came with me – she is the administrator for Mars Hill’s network of blogs, and she found out just how difficult it is to say Vox Pop Network several times in a row when people can’t hear you (“Did you say, Box Top Network?”). I also met SJ from I, Asshole – who I think I may have met at Blogher 2006. Not sure, but after reading her About page this morning, I feel like I’ve heard her story before.

I also met the woman from Slumberland, the woman from Folly’s House of Mirth, Mike from Mount Rainier Climbing, and Elizabeth from A Wild Ride. When Elizabeth saw my Stay At Home Blogger t-shirt she asked if I had a ‘challenging child,’ and I nearly had beer spewing out my nose. Turns out her website is a resource for parents with challenging children! We exchanged business cards and she gave me some information on contributing stories to her site.

Looks like I’m getting the hang of this networking thing.

Funny story: This guy named Randy Stewart asked me about my Stay At Home Blogger t-shirt because he works from home and thought it would be really funny to have one. I gave him all the info and we started talking about other things, and we were talking for quite awhile. Then Karen Anderson joined our group and the two of them started talking about Ignite Seattle and how great the video presentations were that Bryan Zug did.

And I was like, ‘Uh… he’s my husband.’

And suddenly Randy was freaking out and tells me we actually met before at Northern Voice, and can’t get over the small world. He also took this great picture of my arm.

Even more funny, is when I came home to tell Bryan who I met: I mentioned meeting this energetic guy who used to work at Yahoo and thought my shirt was cool. Before I said his name, Bryan interrupts me and says, ‘You’re talking about Randy Stewart, aren’t you?’

Want to win something? If you click on the group photo above you can see a larger version of it. If you can spot me in the photo, send an email to jen at zugbot dot com describing where I am. I’ll draw randomly and send one person a mix CD from my collection.

Should any of you care, I’ve added a Twitter feed to my sidebar.

And for my next trick I will post our weekly dinner menu, list of scheduled errands, and a chart of my menstrual cycles.

Just kidding.

Maybe.

Since switching to my new, sexy, and perfectly shaded color of blue website, it took some troubleshooting to get my Last.fm player up and running again. But the roughly four hours over several days that I put into it made it worthwhile, in my opinion. The new player I downloaded is fun because it has a flashing ‘listening now’ sign on it if I currently have something playing in iTunes, plus their designs were much more simple and fit better in my sidebar.

If you’re looking for a music sharing site, you should check out Last.fm. It’s free (unlike Rhapsody), and uses an rss feature to load your recently played tracks into a chart directly on your website.

Pretty cool if you like that sort of thing. Which I do.

Does anyone who went to Blogher last year (2006) remember whose blog had song titles (or lyrics) as blog post titles????

Welcome to the new era of Jen, and the new era of The Pile I’m Standing In. I’m very excited about the change happening in both, and I felt my blog needed a new look to reflect how I feel. Poke around a little to see what’s new, and definitely check out the About tab at the top – I’ve updated it to reflect the new beginnings I am embracing. Other new things are on the way as I continue to tweak, but I was too excited to share this with you now!

(That paragraph contained the word ‘new’ six times.)

Bryan helped me out tons by doing all the fancy technical tricks he does, including finding the most perfect color of blue to set as my background. But I’m happy to say I’ve turned into quite the geek, too, having learned enough html to find my way around the template codes and do most of the template customizing myself.

So without further blabbering by yours truly, feast your eyes on this…

(and now you must satisfy my vanity by commenting with all your oooo’s and aaaahhhhh’s)

Here is the final installment of the podcast I did with The Kindlings Muse. It was great fun, and I hope to have the opportunity again – if for nothing else than to wear that cool Madonna-mic again.

For as much as I hate it when the media pits two extremes against each other as if that one extreme opinion represents everyone on that side of the fence, it does make for a more interesting debate. I see now why nobody ever interviews the guy with a balanced point of view – there isn’t really much to argue with if he’s not saying anything controversial. Before we went on the air Scott Erickson asked if he should pick a side and be the Devil’s advocate, but it didn’t seem organic to do it that way.

So, while this experience wouldn’t be categorized as The Great Debate, it was an awesome opportunity to educate, inform, and work out my thoughts.

I had a wonderful time with the folks over at The Kindlings Muse on Monday night, but it reinforced why I prefer the medium of writing over voice or video – namely, that I hate the sound of my voice, and when I’m trying to figure out what to write next you don’t hear me say, ‘Um’ over and over and over….

But other than that it was a fun night of conversation over a topic that I have a growing interest in. The podcast is being posted in three sections, so here is the first. I will link to others as they come.

Participating as part of a moderated panel was a great first experience into public speaking because I didn’t have to be the person with all the answers, and I also wasn’t responsible for setting the direction of the conversation. But at the same time, I came prepared with all sorts of interesting things to say based on my experience, and we either didn’t have time for it all, or the conversation just didn’t go in a certain direction.

I think one of the things I would have been interested in exploring more is the very basic idea of ‘what is community?’ It seems to me like what the original Inklings group had going on was an ‘iron sharpens iron’ style of accountability where they spurred one another on to do and be great things (Author Larry Crabb calls it Soul Talk). That doesn’t magically happen just because you sit down in a pub over a pint and start talking, and it is not merely a matter of information exchange – whether in person or via the internet. You have to be committed to one another, and desire to see other people grow and change for the better, and you have to do it within the context of love and relationship.

I think there are plenty of groups who meet in person that do not possess this kind of intimacy that inspires us as humans, just as I think there are many people who have discovered kindred spirits online and continue to be challenged by those relationships. To me it is not about online or offline, it is about relationship.

But alas we did not go there fully. Perhaps another time, no?