Work | this woman's work

15 years ago and iPad for school

Aug 112010

Way back when I graduated college no one had laptops, none of the coffee shops had wifi, it wasn’t possible to mail PDFs and only graduate students (and peer mentors — I was one) were given university email addresses. (Mine was psu00019@odin.pdx.edu — so I was the 19th student to get one.)

I imagine thing have changed some.

Thanks to Julia, I have an iPad. She surprised me with one last month to get me ready for school and to thank me for working my hiney off for Support for Special Needs. (She gave me an iPad and had nothing to give her so I installed a bunch of plugins as a gesture of my love and respect.) Here’s what I have installed on my iPad in the hopes that it might save me from lugging around my dang laptop, which is heavier than it looks:

Evernote — This lets me grab web pages and things from my desktop and have it sitting and waiting on my iPad, which I am thinking will be useful for research. I’ll add here, too, that I’m basing some of my app grabs on what would be useful to me as a regular old writer and assuming that it’ll work for school, too.
Simplenote — An Evernote alternative — I’m not sure which I’ll like better yet.
Dropbox — HUGELY useful. You can use this across computers, too. Anything you put in your desktop Dropbox then becomes available to you on other computers. You can also make things public to make a large file for someone. I used to use it at work a lot and also with our printer since sometimes I had trouble getting large files to upload in their system. Now you can also access your files on the iPad.
iStudiezPro — Let’s you track your schedule and assignments for school along with your professor’s contact information. A tidy way to keep track of all my school demands without cluttering up my regular calendar.
Penultimate — I bought this thinking that with a stylus, I could get away with taking notes by hand at school but I don’t think that’s going to work. I got a Pogo stylus and it’s just too clunky. I still might use it for drawing charts though. I think visually and sometimes I chart out a writing project when I’m first pulling together my notes.
Note Taker HD — This looked like maybe it would work better than Penultimate and you know, it might. I haven’t totally given up by somehow making the iPad work as a traditional notebook.
iAnnotate PDF — This is amazing and is so going to save on printer costs!!! You can take notes on a PDF — highlight, tag, etc. — and then email it to yourself or others or read it from the iPad. I use Dropbox to get notes from my desktop to my iPad and then work on them there. I love research and when I’m working on something, I tend to do more than I need. This will help me keep track of the scads of documents I usually print out and scrawl all over since you can also file them easily and then do a search to find the ones you want. I LOVE THIS APP!!
Corkulous — Again, I am a visual thinker. You have to watch a video to get this but it’s a way to brainstorm and then organize it. I use in real life corkboards a lot but now that I moved my computer upstairs, there’s no place to put them. This solves that problem.
ToDo — This goes with Corkulous. It exports the to-do lists you add into your brainstorming apps at Corkulous. So basically if you’re, say, planning a paper you can use Corkulous to keep track of all of your ideas and then add the to-dos, which will show up in your daily planner. You can use tags and folders to track your to-dos. I like things to be compartmentalized so this will help me. It also imports to-dos from my iCal (Apple’s native calendar application) on my desktop and the to-dos in my Mac Mail. I use Mac Mail strictly for Support for Special Needs. Like I said, I like things compartmentalized.
Voice Memos — Simply a voice recorder so I can theoretically record lectures. (I’m unlikely to do this so really it’s just for Madison to record herself singing on it.)

I also bought a foldable bluetooth keyboard. It was originally designed for the Palm Pre so the keys are kinda funny but it’s smaller than a novel and I can tuck it into my bag and this way I can take notes on the computer without my computer.

Lemonade stand

Parenting 15 Responses »

Jun 062010

She posed for this. Very deliberately.

Madison is saving for a hamster and a hamster cage. We’ve estimated the costs to be around thirty bucks if we have to buy the cage new.

Madison is determined. First she put a sign up on her door asking for donations and taped three ziploc bags — one for bills, one for change and I’m not sure what the other one was for. Luck, maybe? Between Pennie and her grandparents, she made out pretty good with donations at our Memorial Day BBQ.

Seeing that her patrons were tapped out, she next turned to MAKING money. She considered her meager options and decided on a lemonade stand.

She’s been planning it all week but the weather hasn’t cooperated. Today was the first day to try even though it’s awfully windy and a little bit too cool for her “beat the heat” slogan. But she was undaunted. We headed out this morning to get packets of Kool-Aid (a rare treat) and then she and Noah made the sign. She’s been out there since 11am (it’s a little after three now) and I think she’s making pretty good money. We have two police officers come by (separately — the first one sent the second) and several neighbors. A couple of people stopped but not as many as you’d think — don’t people know it’s good karma to buy lemonade from kids? And then Alissa and her three boys came by, which was really really sweet. (They said it was on their way but the truth is we live far enough into our neighborhood that it’s rarely “on the way” for anyone.) Two women stopped because they were impressed with Madison’s hollering. They paid two bucks a cup apiece figuring she deserved a tip because, “She’s doing it right!”

Madison is very pleased and has drunk up a whole bunch of Kool-Aid so she’s also multicolored. She says, “I’m going to keep doing this because I want more money. It’s a good way for a kid to make money if all your teeth have falled out.” This is because prior to needing a hamster, she was happy to just count on whatever tooth might fall out next to keep her in pin money.

Since deciding on the hamster, saving has been a long and difficult process (even though it’s only been less than two weeks). Impulsivity has long been Madison’s master and having to leave her money at home on a random trip to CVS has been excruciating. Especially when she saw that they had ring pops. Ring pops! Has there ever been a candy more coveted by a child than Madison coveted those ring pops? She wailed, she gnashed her teeth. She would have rent her clothing if only she knew that it was such a thing to do. But she’d made a commitment to herself, “A hamster is more important!” she said. I promised to help her see the decision through having kept my opinion out of the making of it. (For the record, I was torn. On the one hand, ring pops will rot your teeth. On the other, I am philosophically against purposefully inviting rodents into one’s home.)

Then just when she felt sure that a hamster was a much better buy than a ring pop, Noah announced he was going to CVS for batteries and she had to revisit the whole decision again. Wailing. Gnashing. etc. Truthfully my patience was ebbing but I told her if she could only make it through this Great Temptation, it would be easier for her in the future.

(You know how people love that children are so bright and shiny when they see the brand new-to-them miracle of a rainbow or snowflakes or lightening bugs? Likewise their pain is harsh and razor-sharp when they experience the brand new-to-them agony of jealousy or coveting or waiting for a hamster when there are ring pops RIGHT THERE begging to be eaten!)

I told her that saving IS hard and that’s why lots of people can’t do it but she CAN do it, even though it’s so dang hard but that she’s not imagining the hardness of it, no siree. And after the tantrum waned she sighed and we sat and ate hummus together and she said, “Did you have a hard time saving for things when you were little?” Now the truth is, I didn’t because I am a naturally miserly person. I had a hard time spending when I was little. One of my life lessons is to not agonize over letting GO of money, which is why god in her infinite wisdom and sense of humor married me to Brett who is not a spendthrift but who doesn’t see the point in never splurging. (I couldn’t handle a spendthrift — that’d be grounds for divorce with all my money neuroses. It’s hard enough to be married to a man who sometimes buys brand name cereal when it’s not even on sale.) Anyway, I didn’t tell Madison that I was great at saving, just that I knew how hard it was to wait for something and she was relieved to know that you can be little and struggling but that there is hope that the struggle gets easier.

Then yesterday we went to the library and got seven books on hamster care and now she’s enjoying flipping to the photos of all the little skinned looking babies and shoving the pictures in Brett’s face because she knows it freaks him out.

I hate to say, seeing as how I hate Hate HATE the idea of having a pet rodent in my house, but I think this kid may have her hamster this week. I’m pretty dang proud of her. And I dearly hope she gets one with a fairly decent life span because she’s put a lot of effort into this.

The kids are trashing the joint

The Story of My Life 1 Response »

Jun 052010

We’ve been having some serious storming in Columbus this week and the kids have been inside more than usual because of it. One of their most favoritest things to do is run wild in the rain but if there’s any lightening around then they have to stay under cover. What this means is that they are CRAZY and LOUD today because they are stuck inside and excited about an event we had this morning (summer reading kick off at the main library downtown) and one we have later today (birthday!). Plus we moved my office out of the basement because we need a dehumidifier down there to clear out the mustiness, which has put my office right in the middle of kid central. I’m sitting here typing at the desk in the kitchen and the kids are next to me wrestling and beating on each other with plastic carrots. (They’re pretending to use each other as drums.)

There are plus sides to being up here mainly that it’s much easier to keep an eye on them and then there are obvious downsides like it’s hard to focus on what I’m doing here with this much happy rough housing happening within arm’s reach. (I just yelled at Noah for hitting Madison too hard with the carrots and she said, and I quote, “Mommy, quit doting on me!” I think I need earplugs but then how would I hear the phone ring when Brett calls for his ride home? Decisions decisions!)

Sometimes our life feels alarmingly make-shift. On my good days I think about how clever we are MacGyvering it all like this and on bad days I wonder when someone is going to come and save us from ourselves. Like because the desk upstairs isn’t erognomically sound and because spending two days on it this week made it impossible for me to use my right arm to raise my coffee mug to my lips this morning, I had Brett fix the creaking top drawer so that I could pull it out and set the keyboard on it to bring it down slightly lower. We found this desk on the curb and took it home because we fell in love with its midcentury drawer pulls and formica top. It is pretty, definitely, but it’s hell for someone who makes her living banging on her keyboard. And I think, who does this? How could my body be falling apart this badly when I’m still piecing things together and making do just to get through the day? I mean, if I’m going to have to get old, couldn’t I at least have all the stuff I expected to get as a grown up? Like financial security and a house that’s big enough to get away from these dang noisy kids and an office with a working desk and a door?

I am in a permanent state of wry amusement, honest to goodness. We are just ridiculous.

But the kids are happy and healthy and after an hour of careful stretching I can type AND drink coffee with my right arm, which is a treat, let me tell you. Which is to say, I’m grateful for the smallness of things like the smooth formica top on our pretty desk and Madison’s vocabulary and Noah’s slapstick sense of humor and thunderstorms in the spring that water the garden so I don’t have to.

Not one but two radio shows tomorrow

Adoption, Parenting 22 Responses »

May 182010

Jenna and I are going to be on Dawn Davenport’s Creating a Family radioshow tomorrow along with an agency worker with experience in open adoptions. You can send Dawn (not me, other Dawn) questions you’d like her to ask us by emailing her here: info @creatingafamily.org (remove the space when you copy and paste it).

I’m also going to be interviewed by the CBC tomorrow morning talking about banning racist kids’ books (I’m against banning) although I don’t know when that one airs. I’m headed to our local NPR (WOSU) stations in the morning for the CBC interview and then rushing home to do the other interview on my phone.

Tonight I plan to toss and turn hoping that I will not sneeze, burp or cough on air; that I will be able to speak intelligently without a lot of umm-ing or saying “like” a lot; that I will not overtalk my interviewer; and that I will remember what I had to say. I would like to spend a lot of time worrying myself into a froth today, too, but I have a lot of client work so unfortunately I won’t be able to indulge in being neurotic.

I’ll let you know how it goes tomorrow and also when it’s all supposed to air in case you want to listen in!

Stay tuned

work work work 6 Responses »

Apr 262010

When I left my last job, I wasn’t happy about it. I had high hopes going into that gig and I was disappointed when my plans never made it past the planning stage. See, the folks there hired me to do something specific and I was excited about rolling out the plan I pitched. Then as I hung in there, it became clear that their tech wasn’t going to be able to play out the way I hoped and rather than wait for however long it would take, I made the decision to leave that job to someone who would be happy to work under their tech constraints instead of hanging in there in continued frustration.

When I was talking to my dad about it, he said, “Well, take that plan and figure out another way to execute it.”

Well, I thought about it. I knew the plan was a good one and I knew that with the right tech support it could also be really fun. Then Brett asked me who I’d most like to work with around it because I knew I didn’t want to (and wouldn’t be able to) do it alone. That made me think of Julia because I like her and I’ve liked working for her and probably I would like working WITH her. So I approached her with the bare outline of an idea and she immediately saw the possibilities in it and began filling out the details. Together we hammered out a complete vision. I’m the tech gal and she’s the community connection and we are pretty good at playing off each other’s strengths and challenging each other to push through our weaknesses. Together we’ve put together a (if I do so say myself) pretty terrific project, which launches on May 1st.

We’ve been working on this since I left my job so that’s two months or so and I am SO EXCITED about it! And it’s been occupying a lot of my free time. (My computer to-do list goes: clients/assignments; this project; my own stuff so you can understand why my blog has so suffered.)

I will be typing up a lot of loose ends this week but stay tuned for the link this upcoming weekend and an announcement about our launch giveaway next Monday. It is going to be GREAT!!!!!