- I don't mind getting older; I mind getting uglier.
~ Chrissie Hynde - No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.
~ Lily Tomlin
Fabulous Quotes
On the Bright Side
Q: What's the best thing about having your period?A: For five days, my man agrees with everything I say.
Big Lots Security System
Big Lots is a bargain-basement, bottom-of-the-barrel, super-discount store that sells discontinued crap (but great for affordable wrapping paper!). The store's approach to electronics security cracked me up--I just HAD to take a picture :P Impressive!
Salt Love
If you love bacon, then you probably like salt a whole bunch, too. Latest ambition: make some groovy, flavored salts!
What started as a curiosity is now starting to get serious. Last Christmas, I ordered two salt sampler sets from Salistry.com... This was a great way to taste some interesting, different salts from around the world and test how they pair with different foods. Well, things haven't been the same since and, lest we spend a lot more money on replacing the little, tiny, now-empty boxes of flavored salt that have become staples with our meals, it is time to "get down to brass tacks" (where the hell did that saying come from, anyway?) and make our own.
So to begin: the hands-down favorite with our weekend sunny side/over-easy/soft-boiled egg orgies has been lemon thyme salt. Thanks to chef/food blogger Sophia Lindop, here is a simple recipe for us to try and modify (soon!).
What started as a curiosity is now starting to get serious. Last Christmas, I ordered two salt sampler sets from Salistry.com... This was a great way to taste some interesting, different salts from around the world and test how they pair with different foods. Well, things haven't been the same since and, lest we spend a lot more money on replacing the little, tiny, now-empty boxes of flavored salt that have become staples with our meals, it is time to "get down to brass tacks" (where the hell did that saying come from, anyway?) and make our own.So to begin: the hands-down favorite with our weekend sunny side/over-easy/soft-boiled egg orgies has been lemon thyme salt. Thanks to chef/food blogger Sophia Lindop, here is a simple recipe for us to try and modify (soon!).
Lemon Infused Maldon Sea Salt
Quick and oh so easy!
Ingredients
Maldon Salt
Lemons
Method
1. Use a microplane grater to make the rind.
2. Allow the lemon or lime rind to dry a little so as to not add moisture to the salt.
3. Infuse Maldon salt with the rind, using proportions that work for you - I love lemon rind, so I used quite a bit. Mix well and store.
Use on salads, on lamb, beef or chicken, in pasta, with risotto and more. Just remember that lemon rind turns bitter when cooked for too long, so add at the last minute. This is also a great gift idea! Hope you enjoy it as much as we are!
PowerPoint Superheroes
Bad PowerPoint is not the fault of the presentation tool.It is the fault of the presenter and/or designer.
In my professional endeavors as an instructional designer, I always strive to provide clients with something creative and fresh (yet practical), especially when it comes to PowerPoint! Sadly, most prefer that I remove the fun part (that keeps things interesting), in favor of straight, oftentimes exhaustive screen text.
But never fear. There is help for lousy PowerPoint design!
These are my presentation "bibles," if you will:
Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design & Delivery
by Garr Reynolds
Buy it here on Amazon
Slide:ology: The Art and Science of
Creating Great Presentations
by Nancy Duarte
Buy it here on Amazon
Do your audience the hugest favor ever and read these books! And if you are too busy/lazy to do that, hire me.
WSJ: Speaking Truth to PowerPoint
Wall Street Journal | July 31, 2009Dunkin’ Donuts insists that “America runs on Dunkin’.” Actually, America runs on PowerPoint. Slide, by slide, by slide.
But maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe—while we reconsider how we bank, manufacture cars, emit carbon and visit the doctor—we should also rethink how we PowerPoint. Maybe cutting the cord is change you can believe in.
This is the bold message trumpeted today by a few anti-PowerPointers—“SourPointers,” let’s call them. Do they stand a chance?
PowerPoint—the Microsoft program for creating slide presentations—is ubiquitous in boardrooms, government offices, military bases and universities. Like Xerox, it is a brand name-cum-archetype. Microsoft estimates that there are 500 million PowerPoint users world-wide.
Standing athwart these legions is José Bowen, a SourPointer who serves as dean of Southern Methodist University’s School of the Arts. In addition to being a professor of music, Mr. Bowen is a jazz musician who has played with Dizzy Gillespie and written for Jerry Garcia. So he knows performance. And he insists that PowerPoint undermines it, serving as a crutch for professors and lulling students into boredom and passivity. He encourages his SMU colleagues not to use the program in lectures—to “teach naked,” as he says.
T.X. Hammes brings a quite different background to the ranks of the SourPointers. A retired colonel in the Marine Corps and an expert on counterinsurgency warfare, Col. Hammes wrote in this month’s Armed Forces Journal that PowerPoint “is actively hostile to thoughtful decision-making.”
Throughout the Defense Department and military, he writes, the agenda is driven by vague, oversimplified and easily misunderstood bullet points. While decision-makers once read and slept on “succinct two- or three-page summaries of key issues,” today they are harried by the pace of PowerPoint and “are making more decisions with less preparation and less time for thought,” Col. Hammes charges.
As Newton stood on the shoulders of giants, Mr. Bowen, Col. Hammes and other SourPointers are propped on the shoulders of Edward Tufte. A renowned design guru and former Yale University professor, Mr. Tufte travels the country giving six-hour lectures that people in the fields of advertising, programming and publishing pay hundreds of dollars to attend. Upending PowerPoint is a chief goal of his work.
Mr. Tufte’s case against PowerPoint is lengthy, detailed and not subtle. The program is evil and wasteful, he wrote in 2003—a “prankish conspiracy against evidence and thought.” On the cover of his self-published pamphlet, “The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint,” Mr. Tufte depicts Josef Stalin overlooking a large, rigid Soviet military parade and declaring “Next slide, please.”
When the Columbia space-shuttle disaster occurred over Texas in early 2003, Mr. Tufte fingered PowerPoint as a culprit. He argued that shuttle information vital to NASA analysts had been shunted to the bottom of a typically cluttered PowerPoint slide.
And he wasn’t just demonstrating a critic’s overzealous imagination—he was right. As the Columbia Accident Investigation Board concluded: “It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide”—the one Mr. Tufte singled out—“and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation.” The board called PowerPoint use “endemic” and “an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA.”
Brands have been destroyed by far less weighty associations. And yet the PowerPoint juggernaut rolls on. The reason is not just PowerPoint users’ laziness, or the software’s many attractive features. It’s that PowerPointers and SourPointers offer different answers to a basic question: Are poor slide presentations the fault of the presentation tool or the presenter?
“Any general opposition to PowerPoint is just dumb,” argued Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker in an email. “It’s like denouncing lectures—before there were awful PowerPoint presentations, there were awful scripted lectures, unscripted lectures, slide shows, chalk talks, and so on.”
Computer programming pioneer Larry Wall has argued similarly, stating: “I do quarrel with logic that says ‘Stupid people are associated with X, therefore X is stupid.’ Stupid people are associated with everything.”
So perhaps all we can say is, “next slide.” And please pass the doughnuts.
Mr. Feith is a Robert L. Bartley Fellow at the Journal this summer.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W11
Vera's First Ham Bone!
Since ham is pretty close to bacon, I just had to photograph Vera's first ham bone!
Mmmmmmm, ham bone.
Ham bone, meet Vera.
Vera, meet ham bone!While Vera declined comment, her final ham bone verdict seems apparent.
Why are the Boy Scouts...
...Meeting in the custodian's closet?!?
A quick picture I took of a sign permanently mounted on a basement door in the Aldersgate Methodist Church (St. Louis Park, MN).
Don't ask what I was doing in a CHURCH... I promise you it had nothing to do with organized religion!
A quick picture I took of a sign permanently mounted on a basement door in the Aldersgate Methodist Church (St. Louis Park, MN).Don't ask what I was doing in a CHURCH... I promise you it had nothing to do with organized religion!
Smashburger BOMBS: Golden Valley, MN
Don't even THINK of comparing this place to the close-to-eclipsing-perfection Midwestern burger institution, Culver's.- The store layout is lousy, featuring unbelievable disorder and confusion at the soft drink fountain, and pity the fool waiting in line to order, right in front of the high-traffic dining patio door
- The sliced tomatoes were white AND hard (Mr. Yuk face, here!)
- My burger was so greasy that even I was turned off (hard to believe, I know)
- The bacon (yup!) I paid extra for did not arrive until I was already done choking down the greasy patty and (did I mention?) the white AND hard tomatoes
- The menu we snagged on a previous drive-by said beer and wine is served there: IT ISN'T!
Love,
The Bacon-Cheeseburger-with-Mayonnaise-Lettuce-and-Tomato Guru
Gotta get me some of these!
Not much use in Mexico, where I had BETTER be when the snow flies! But aren't they SUPER-CUTE? (Georgia is already in line for a pair, too ~ she approves of my taste in all things cool and cute).
WSJ: This Boomer Isn't Going to Apologize
Wall Street Journal | June 19, 2009 Last weekend I attended my niece's high-school graduation from an upscale prep school in Washington, D.C. These are supposed to be events filled with joy, optimism and anticipation of great achievements. But nearly all the kids who stepped to the podium dutifully moaned about how terrified they are of America's future -- yes, even though Barack Obama, whom they all worship and adore, has brought "change they can believe in." A federal judge gave the commencement address and proceeded to denounce the sorry state of the nation that will be handed off to them. The enemy, he said, is the collective narcissism of their parents' generation -- my generation. The judge said that we baby boomers have bequeathed to the "echo boomers," "millennials," or whatever they are to be called, a legacy of "greed, global warming, and growing income inequality."
And everyone of all age groups seemed to nod in agreement. One affluent 40-something woman with lots of jewelry told me she can barely look her teenagers in the eyes, so overcome is she with shame over the miseries we have bestowed upon our children.
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that graduation ceremonies have become collective airings of guilt and grief. It's now chic for boomers to apologize for their generation's crimes. It's the only thing conservatives and liberals seem to agree on. Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana, told Butler University grads that our generation is "just plain selfish." At Grinnell College in Iowa, author Thomas Friedman compared boomers to "hungry locusts . . . eating through just about everything." Film maker Ken Burns told this year's Boston College grads that those born between 1946 and 1960 have "squandered the legacy handed to them by the generation from World War II."
I could go on, but you get the point. We partied like it was 1999, paid for it with Ponzi schemes and left the mess for our kids and grandkids to clean up. We're sorry -- so sorry.
Well, I'm not. I have two teenagers and an 8-year-old, and I can say firsthand that if boomer parents have anything for which to be sorry it's for rearing a generation of pampered kids who've been chauffeured around to soccer leagues since they were 6. This is a generation that has come to regard rising affluence as a basic human right, because that is all it has ever known -- until now. Today's high-school and college students think of iPods, designer cellphones and $599 lap tops as entitlements. They think their future should be as mapped out as unambiguously as the GPS system in their cars.
CBS News reported recently that echo boomers spend $170 billion a year -- more than most nations' GDPs -- and nearly every penny of that comes from the wallets of the very parents they now resent. My parents' generation lived in fear of getting polio; many boomers lived in fear of getting sent to the Vietnam War; this generation's notion of hardship is TiVo breaking down.
How bad can the legacy of the baby boomers really be? Let's see: We're the generation that spawned Microsoft, Intel, Apple, Google, ATMs and Gatorade. We defeated the evils of communism and delivered the world from the brink of global thermonuclear war. Now youngsters are telling pollsters that they think socialism may be better than capitalism after all. Do they expect us to apologize for winning the Cold War next?
College students gripe about the price of tuition, and it does cost way too much. But who do these 22-year-old scholars think has been footing the bill for their courses in transgender studies and Che Guevara? The echo boomers complain, rightly, that we have left them holding the federal government's $8 trillion national IOU. But try to cut government aid to colleges or raise tuitions and they act as if they have been forced to actually work for a living.
Yes, the members of this generation will inherit a lot of debts, but a much bigger storehouse of wealth will be theirs in the coming years. When I graduated from college in 1982, the net worth of America -- all our nation's assets minus all our liabilities -- was $16 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve. Today, even after the meltdown in housing and stocks, the net worth of the country is $45 trillion -- a doubling after inflation. The boomers' children and their children will inherit more wealth and assets than any other in the history of the planet -- that is, unless Mr. Obama taxes it all away. So how about a little gratitude from these trust-fund babies for our multitrillion-dollar going-away gifts?
My generation is accused of being environmental criminals -- of having polluted the water and air and ruined the climate. But no generation in history has done more to clean the environment than mine. Since 1970 pollutants in the air and water have fallen sharply. Since 1960, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh have cut in half the number of days with unsafe levels of smog. The number of Americans who get sick or die from contaminants in our drinking water has plunged for 50 years straight.
Whenever kids ask me why we didn't do more to combat global warming, I explain that when I was young the "scientific consensus" warned of global cooling. Today's teenagers drive around in cars more than any previous generation. My kids have never once handed back the car keys because of some moral problem with their carbon footprint -- and I think they are fairly typical.
The most absurd complaint of all is that the health-care system has been ruined by our generation. Oh, really? Thanks to massive medical progress in the past 30 years, the chances of dying from heart disease and many types of cancer have been cut in half. We found effective treatments for AIDS within a decade. Life expectancy has risen and infant mortality fallen. That doesn't sound so "selfish" to me.
Yes, we are in a deep economic crisis today -- but it's no worse than what we boomers faced in the late 1970s after years of hyperinflation, sky-high tax rates and runaway government spending. We cursed our parents, too. But then we grew up and produced a big leap forward in health, wealth and scientific progress. Let's see what this next generation of over-educated ingrates can do.
Mr. Moore is senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal's editorial page.
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W13
Playing a Made-Up Game
"It began this way: Gwen Martin, 44, was divorced from Doug Zalk after 11 years of marriage and two daughters, Erica, 14, and Georgia, 10. Mike Martin and Christy Kendall, both 48, were divorced after 11 years and three kids: Ellie, 13; Maisy, 10, and Henry, 9.Then Gwen married Mike, Christy married Earl Kendall, and the rest is blended-family history.
Together the two couples share five children, and they function so well as an extended family that in April 2008 they took the kids to France for spring break. The joint outings work because, Mike Martin says, he already had a respectful relationship with his ex-wife. After their split, Christy Kendall vowed "to aspire to the best divorce that ever was."
If the mission's been accomplished, it's probably due to nature, says Gwen Martin: "I truly would choose to spend time with every person in this equation, outside of the circumstances that brought us together."
The other reason? Effort. "We put the kids first, and put our egos on hold," says Earl Kendall, 50, who has a college-aged son. "Like everyone, I would certainly prefer to get my own way all the time. But in order to make this work, you can't."
The Kendalls and Martins have learned what some people never do: Confrontation usually breeds hostility -- and lasting ill will. Also, Mike Martin says, "fundamentally, our values are in alignment and we strive for solutions -- with one superordinate goal in mind: the kids' happiness."
Like all kids who move from one house to another, the transitions and re-entry to a different household mid-week can be challenging. But Erica Zalk, 14, says that for the most part, "it's really a lot of fun; there's always someone to play with."
And although certainly they can be annoyed with one another, the parental quartet has become adept at stuffing it.
"It's taken practice and effort," Christy Kendall concedes. And editing. If she's peeved, she pounds the keyboard on her Mac. "I sit down and bang out 200 angry words -- and then I delete all that's not necessary -- and I end up with 20 straightforward words, saying what I want."
Gwen Martin puts it this way: "If I have any advice, it's give everybody the benefit of the doubt, and don't put your stake in the sand."
Kate McCarthy is a Minneapolis freelance writer.
"Blended Family" (Mr. Yuk face here!)
Mr. Yuk means NO! Stay Away!OK, fan base (of maybe one)... The term "blended families" IS BULLSH*T. Probably embraced by:
- Everyone who loves the ADD label
- And voted for Obama
- And has jumped on the "green" bandwagon because it's trendy, not because said persons are TRULY willing to change their lifestyle choices in the interest of preserving Mother Earth
Marriage doesn't have DO-OVERS. Maybe you should have planned better in the first place? And to try to put a positive spin on your "do-over" is even more pathetic. I feel sick... Ipecac syrup*, anyone?
(*Used to cause vomiting in emergency situations, such as poisoning or overdose.)
More, from the Becoming a Stepmom blog:
"Another problem with the word blended is that it creates an assumption that two families will easily and smoothly merge into one new family. But as members of stepfamilies know, it’s not as easy as pressing a button and everyone has found their place in this new family of strangers... It’s more like curdling in the beginning than blending.”
No sh*t.
Spoilt Brat?
OK, now HERE is some really cool sh*t that is strange yet beautiful.From the lovely Sheelah Goh comes "THE HEIRESS, Spoilt Brat Decadent Goddess Wrist-Cum-Ankle Cuff with Victorian Taffeta Trim, Bollywood Brocade, Amethyst, and Hessonite Garnet."
I am seriously considering this as a crazy/exotic wedding accessory for myself and my maid of honor that I know for a fact people won't be able to stop talking about... But is that a good thing?
God Bless Bacon I
What other better title for my first post in this blog that no one is going to read anyway?My friends and I have nothing to hide... we are ALL card-carrying members of the Church of Bacon. We worship it.
So what better treat to find in the June 22, 2009 issue of People than a gift guide suggestion of BACONNAISE?
Lo and behold--in my usual surf-y fashion--I stumbled upon other J&D's bacon gems worth buying (or at least coveting) that I have decided you should know about:
- Bacon salt (num num num)
- Bacon-flavored lip balm (GET OUT!)
- Ultimate bacon lover's gift pack (hint hint)
But you can "bet your bippy" (exactly what IS a bippy, anyway?!?!) I signed up for Amazon's "Alert Me" service. They are gonna e-mail me when (if?) these items are ever again available to order.
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