Outside the Comfort Zone

October was the busiest month I’ve had, work-wise, in a really long time. Possibly ever. We had two week-long events which required that I (and my team) get to work early, be “on” all day, and then stay out late – really late – to follow everything through. It’s not brain surgery, I know, and I […]

You’re Beautiful, It’s True.

On Friday, I sat down with my boss to discuss how things have been going since I transferred into her department earlier this year. We talked for 2 hours, and probably could have gone on longer if it hadn’t been 5:30 on a Friday afternoon. I won’t detail the whole conversation, but there were two things […]

What’s Going On?

Last weekend my family converged on an island in Lake Champlain, VT. Tents were erected, bonfires were ignited, lots of food and drink were consumed. It was a lovely time away from all the distractions of the modern world. Technically, we did have cell service but I let my phone die the first day and so […]

Music Heals the Soul

When I was a kid, sometimes Mom would go out in the evenings and Dad would supervise our after-dinner activities, which consisted of fidgeting around while trying to complete homework assignments on the dining room table, having a “bed-time snack” and then being wrestled into pajamas and teeth-cleaning routines. Kris and I would get pretty […]

Color Me, Don’t Color Me

The year is 1991. Kids really do wear their hair in aqua-net-encased creations of spiked mullets and towering bangs (the grunge wave has not yet reached our suburban landscape). My personal soundtrack consists of anything REM, the Bryan Adams’ single “Everything I Do”, and Disney’s Little Mermaid soundtrack. I think I am turning out to […]

Speak the Truth, Even if Your Voice Shakes

The following TED talk resonates with me in so many ways; some of which I will explain below. In the video, Ash Beckham talks about the difficulty of coming out of the closet. When you hear ‘coming out’, you may think it only applies to gay people, but there are many kinds of closets and […]

Ugly

I told my sister that if she wanted to name her daughter Isabella, she’d better be sure she would be pretty. You can’t have an ugly girl named Isabella. Yeah, or else the boys will say things like, “Bella… not!” My co-workers laugh. I smile awkwardly, hoping they cannot sense the lurch in my stomach […]

Thoughts on Bullying, Part 1.

Every Friday morning, NPR airs a short segment called Story Corps. I often catch it on my way to work. Last week, it was a story told by a father whose 14-year-old son committed suicide after being bullied relentlessly. In recent years, there have been a lot of stories of kids killing themselves after being bullied. My heart […]

Stalling

Fear not, dear blog-readers. I have not abandoned you. I’ve been otherwise occupied, and admittedly I am stalling a little. There are things I want to write about that are not really EEC-related and I’m having an internal debate about whether it’s a good idea to expand the scope of this blog to just being […]

Wherein I Air More of My Flaws

I’d really like to be one of those people who sends a Christmas card to everyone I’ve ever known. I love sending handwritten notes to people and I love making cards. This year was pretty much an epic fail as far as that goes, thanks to chronic procrastination, an inability to say “no” to anything, […]