A peaceful morning walk along the river… perfect for deep & meaningful conversation.

Kind of excited about my latest techie adventure. A few days ago I shot two video clips on my iPhone, then I downloaded the iMovie app and edited the two clips together.

I think I’m inadvertently amassing a diversity of skills and tasks I can perform while in my pajamas watching 30Rock, and having an iPhone makes this much easier.

If I wanted to, I could have published the finished video to YouTube right from my phone, then posted it to my blog using the WordPress app…. RIGHT FROM MY PHONE.

Amazing.

But I wanted to add intro titling, and the iMovie app doesn’t have this function so I downloaded the edited video to my laptop and added the titling there before posting to YouTube.

Pretty fun. Except I have no idea why the size formatting is off. Will have to figure that out for next time.

Jack Black, We Salute Thee.

We probably shouldn’t have watched School of Rock right before bed. And maybe the marshmallows were a bad idea. But Ruthie’s fits of giggles over Jack Black’s silliness was worth every minute of delayed bedtime.

And this encore presentation? Awesome.

I recommend you turn the volume down or your speakers might blow. Also, stick with it long enough to see Thomas’ dramatic slide at about 1:03.

Everything’s Amazing & Nobody’s Happy

Bryan played this video for me the other day and prefaced it with, “You’re going to be mad at me for about 5 seconds, but then you’re going to think it’s really funny.”

I’ll admit I wanted to be mad, but I know myself too well – I embrace my inner Eeyore and live it proudly. I complain loudly. I whine dramatically.

I know I’m the one who takes for granted all the blessings in my life – my house, my job, my kids, my gadgets, my amazing husband who beats me over the head with his optimism and grouch-crushing humor.

For instance, I complain DAILY about the shoddy wifi connection in my bed. IN MY BED. Oh poor me. I can’t access the internet on my iPhone in my bed for TWO WHOLE MINUTES. What a terrible tragedy of epic proportions. I remember when I had to plug my giant computer into the wall where I worked to get an internet connection – I didn’t even have the internet at home.

I’ve actually heard this rant a thousand times from Bryan’s own lips. In a glass-half-empty/glass-half-full kinda world, he’s more likely to say, “Isn’t it AMAZING that we have this AWESOME GLASS???”

And that’s what I get, now, whenever I Eeyore about something that isn’t going my way. I get Bryan all up in my face with his big grin and wild eyes yelling, “BUT ISN’T OUR LIFE AMAZING???”

I love that guy.

Ignite Seattle: The Sanity Hacks of a Stay At Home Mom

Here it is. My ignite presentation.

I’m pretty proud of it, just to let you know. I think maybe I like public speaking because I never really get nervous at the time of presenting.

I DO, however, have a nervous breakdown SEVERAL TIMES during the preparation of a presentation – particularly this one, as I feared NOBODY WOULD CARE about what a stay at home mom has to say to this particular crowd. But as you can tell by the laughter at appropriate times, I think I pulled it off.

Huge huge HUGE thanks to Bryan & the kids for putting up with my irrational mood swings, the growing laundry piles, and the generally chaotic home environment as I prepared for this event. Also, Bryan put up with a disproportionate amount of verbal abuse whenever he said the words “bullet points.” But in the end he was avenged, and did his victory lap around the house.

Also, big thanks, of course, to Brady and the selection team for picking me. Yea!

It was great fun, but I’m so relieved to have my regular life back, slaving away at home.

This one’s for you, Mom.

Bryan has a reputation among our family and friends for making things happen with video and computers (he recently strapped a video camera to his life vest when we went white water rafting), so we received all sorts of requests for my reading to be recorded.

He sent me to BlogHer equipped with our Flip, and Kristin shot this video for me:

The most frequently asked question I heard was, “are you nervous?!” Honestly, I have to say I wasn’t. I had a rush of adrenaline as I waited for my turn, and maybe a little flutter in my chest as I prepared for the trip, but over all I felt pretty confident. Like I said before, speaking in front of a crowd is not what keeps me awake at night – especially when I’m just reading from a page. What made me more nervous over the weekend was having a single conversation over breakfast with a complete stranger. I’m so terrified of 1:1 conversation that I kept excusing myself to refill my coffee mug or find more pineapple.

But midway through Saturday I was even getting my networking groove on, and made some great contacts and met lots of new (to me) bloggers. I even got daring and tossed out a Tweet-up opportunity, risking breakfast with total strangers – ON PURPOSE. Laurie responded, and we ended up having a great time standing in line for an hour waiting for a great breakfast. I can’t say I would have been that patient alone, so having a couple bloggers to chat with while waiting spared me a mediocre breakfast somewhere else.

The whole experience was amazing, from receiving the announcement I’d be reading, to the curtain call at the end. Upon returning to normal life, fellow keynote reader, Schmutzie, twittered, “Someone run into my cubicle and call me adorable, STAT. I can’t take this lack of specialness a moment longer.”

I whole heartedly agree with that feeling. Thank you, again, Mrs. Kennedy, for opening the doors wide to the blogging community and giving us an opportunity show off what we can do.

Out of the mouths of babes. Or not.

We were snuggling in a chair after a hard few days and Ruthie gave me a kiss. Then she came at me with her mouth open and said, “Let’s kiss like this, and get married!”

I laughed and said, “Will you show my camera your kisses?”

I expected her to turn away in a huff, because she does. not. perform.

Maybe it’s the strict toast and water diet after a day of puking, but she consented to perform! And what I got for my money was oh so much more.

And by the way? Hilarious about the “sign language.” I have NO IDEA where she got that – this was the first I’ve “heard” about it.