Yes, and ....

Really, improv is fun -- if scary -- to do.

Wrote about my experiences with it and Houston's improv scene recently for The Buzz Magazines.

Listen for a Change

This 30-second commercial, has been fascinating me for months.

I see it when I do my Duolingo Spanish lessons. I am such a nerd for this app. I do Duolingo every day, and while I am far, far, far from understanding Spanish, every once in a while, someone will say something and I will understand a word or two!

I am also a total sucker for this app’s tricks. Currently, I have186 crowns and 3,765 gems and I am on an 8-day unbroken streak. I feel a pang when I miss a day and mess up a streak but I don’t, though the app always tells me I could, spend a dollar or two to reinstate my streak.

But the commercial.

For Audible, the audio book company.

It’s just so well done.

I see it often because I am a cheapie and use the free Duolingo version, which requires me to watch ads. I always even agree to watch more ads to get more gems just because gems must be good, right?

Pretty slick that I am using Duolingo to learn Spanish and I get the commercial where a trucker is using Audible to learn Spanish.

But there’s this whole other story going on. The cute-as-a-button trucker is learning Spanish because he has a crush on an equally adorable waitress at a diner he apparently stops at a lot, and she on him. The commercial starts with his Audible book explaining that “para” is used "when you are talking about something for someone.” He goes into the diner and nervously asks her, in Spanish, for a table for dinner. She, beaming at him, says his attempt is “pretty good.” The ad finishes, as they walk away together, by asking, “Could Audible inspire you to start something new?”

Aww. Love it.

To Do Lists

Nutty.

I have ridiculous to-do lists. 

I am trying to be organized.

But even my lists are a mess. A day’s list for me is really several lists written on a Google calendar page. There are arrows, stars, exclamation points. Some things are circled, others underlined, some, but not all, numbered. This is what it’s like inside my head.

Still, I think it helps to write it down.

I work on my own. I often have several long-term projects going with lots of deadlines. And somehow, I managed to become the scheduler for our entire family.

I went through a phase where I read a lot of what my husband calls “productivity porn.” While reading a book about how to be efficient might feel like you are being efficient, spoiler alert, you’re really not.

However, once in a while, I would come across an idea that appealed. I’ve incorporated these into my to-do list, which might explain some of its complexity. I’ve written about this before.

I even read books about how to clean your house (really) and figured out how to do the least amount possible as quickly as possible to avoid ending up on the television show Hoarders.

Interestingly, one of the guys who wrote a book I liked, Tony Schwartz, turns out to be the guy who ghost-wrote The Art of the Deal for Donald Trump and is now abjectly sorry.

Another idea I like: Julia Cameron, who wrote a number of books about being creative (I liked her first such book the best), recommends, not a to-do list, but a ta-da list: Think about what you did get done, after you’ve finished your day. More often than not, although I feel like I didn’t do squat, I realize that I did do quite a lot. Yay!

Hey, whatever works.

By The Book

I’ve been volunteering at a local school through a program called Read Houston Read. If you’re looking for a volunteer opportunity, I’d recommend it.

You spend a half-hour each week reading with each child.

I think the kids, first-graders who are as cute as buttons, like it.

Read Houston Read books are about things like a boy in Africa who saves up his money to buy a bicycle so he can help his mother or a Chinese-American boy who gives his New Year’s money to a homeless guy with no shoes. There was one about the life cycle of a butterfly.

That’s fine, they’re well-written and their illustrations are well-done, but … meh.

This week, there was a book fair going on in the library, blocking access to the Read Houston Read books. The librarian suggested bringing books from home. So, I did: some of my own kids’ favorites.

One of my students picked My Life with The Wave. The other picked Elbert’s Bad Word. I also brought Sweet Dream Pie, Seven Silly Eaters and Harvey Potter’s Balloon Farm and, in case they wanted something to read to me, Dragon’s Fat Cat by Dav Pilkey, author of the Captain Underpants books.

When my own kids were small, we used to go to the library and check out piles of children’s books, whatever caught any of our fancies. Many turned out to be “meh,” but some fascinated my kids, we read them over and over. Those ones we bought to keep.

These books tended to trust the children more. Their story lines were more complex, contained magical elements and were told with wry humor. They didn’t hit you over the head with “life lessons,” but my kids, now 22 and 19, and even my husband still remember them. They were better.

Disneyfied

The windows on the top of the
castle are smaller than the
ones at the bottom, to make
it took taller.

I was just at Disney World.

The easiest impulse here would be snarkiness.

The money-making is shameless. You know those $3.50 lattes financial planners tell you not to buy or you’ll end up living in a cardboard box when you’re old? They are $7.50 at Disney.

In three days, I saw only four people use the stairs rather than the escalator. My husband and I were two of them. I felt like I was on the spaceship in Wall-E, which is a Disney movie.

In one restaurant, I could see 27 television screens from my seat and more screens hung over the stalls in the ladies room.

People have their weddings at Disney.
You can even buy these ears, $25 each.

Our hotel, the Dolphin, looked like it was constructed out of Styrofoam and was topped by 56-foot-tall dolphin statues. They don’t look like real dolphins. They are based on the “nautical dolphins” drawn on old maps.

That’s the thing: Everything is artificial at Disney World. But it’s so well-done. They’ll tell you some of their tricks (on your hotel TV): the streets in the medieval village at the Magic Kingdom are striped with brown. That alludes to how people threw the contents of their chamber pots into the street. At Todd English’s bluezoo restaurant, the lighting looks like the bubble rings of humpback whales.

There’s a word for this: “Disneyfication.”

Disney employees were strikingly nice and helpful. Wikipedia explains this is “emotional labor,” which can be done two ways: by “surface acting,” or faking it, or by “deep acting,” when you actually try to be that weirdly chipper person.

I hope it’s not a terrible job. Glassdoor gives Disney World pretty good ratings as an employer. And according to an entire genre, those attractive college students who dress up like Belle and Tarzan do about what you’d expect in their off-time. I'm glad.

Home Tours

I am a nosy person.

I especially love looking at people’s houses. They are such a reflection of the people who live there.

And now that I’ve discovered home tours, I realize that I am not alone in being nosy. I’ve been to three so far – and all have been jam-packed with attendees.

Each tour is different.

There’s the annual Azalea Trail home tour, sponsored by the River Oaks Garden Club. These are super-posh houses. Gargantuan. Unbelievably fancy. Honestly, though, they tend to look a lot like each other. These houses belong to a certain demographic who share the same taste.

Then, there are the twice-yearly home tours in my neighborhood. Some are old bungalows renovated by young designers and architects. Some are filled, every available inch of wall and surface space, with the owner’s art collection. (Many of the people in my neighborhood are artists and/or gallery owners.)

And then there was the first annual Weird Homes Tour of Houston, which I just went on. Wow. One home, billed as a 5,000 square foot one-bedroom, belonged to an artist who incorporates the cremated remains of multiple people into his paintings. (Who knew? People’s ashes vary in color.) Then, there was one, which was left dark and was filled, to its loftlike ceilings, with carefully built piles of, well, junk, that made my husband turn to me and say, “You know, if you were ever on a first date and the person invited you back here, you’d be certain you were about to be murdered.”

Hats off to the people who volunteer their houses. They do inspire me (fleetingly) to set up my own house. (Five years in and I am, right now, sitting in sight of some unpacked boxes.) But then I lay down till the feeling passes. :o(

Throwback Thursday

Oop, found this blast from the past while googling myself.

Wrote it a billion years ago and had thought it was lost to the mists of time. Was afraid to read it, frankly, but I guess it looks OK. :)

Life is Good

You know how it sometimes seems like the person who can tell you exactly what you need to hear at that moment in your life suddenly shows up?

Yeah, that recently happened to me.

Robert Flatt is a wonderful photographer and an amazing person.

And I wrote about him for The Buzz Magazines.

Thistle Downe

I love finding out about the fun things people are doing.

Like Thistle Downe.