Happy Mom's Day!

The Royal Wedding

K and I finally sat down to watch the Royal Wedding (yes, it gets capital letters) last night, almost a week late.  Aside from one picture, I had managed to avoid all images of the wedding (thanks, mom!), although I did hear a little bit of chatter about it on the radio.

So, let's dispense with some of the formalities:
- Kate Middleton - sorry, Catherine Dutchess of Cambridge - is beautiful, and seems like serious princess material.
- Little sis Pippa was smokin' hot in her white dress.
- Harry is way cuter than William, although does bear the burden of being the second son in a royal family.  Less than ideal.
- Loved the queen's yellow and Mrs. Middleton's ice blue.  Both lovely.

Now, on to some of the more interesting things that have turned up:
- Princess Beatrice's hat now has its own Facebook page.  Also there's a Tumblr page devoted to it.  It's taken on a life of its own.  I also am amused by the fact that she can't sit up straight in the car.
- This looks too good to be fake, and I love it.  Wait for number one.
- Fun collection of worldwide newspaper front pages here.
- As K pointed out, imagine what it's going to be like when Pippa gets married.  What a letdown.
- Really?  Do people do this?
- Oh, wait.  There's more kitsch.  But honestly, I kind of love #10.  #11 is pretty funny too.
- The T-Mobile spoof on the viral wedding video from a couple years ago is actually kind of clever.
- Katy Perry celebrates the day.

Seriously though, everything was lovely, and Kate will hopefully breathe a little life into the British monarchy.

Electronic Communication, Addendum #1

Check out this article from the Times, arguing in part that our gizmos and gadgets (as toys, not just methods of communication) can actually bring us closer.  Not sure I buy it quite yet, but it's a viewpoint.

Electronic Communication

I've been pondering this post for a long time.  It's still not finished - I'm sure there will be addenda over time - but it seems high time I get some of it out there.

For all the convenience it brings, I've lately been reminded of some of the shortfalls of electronic communication.  Yes, I realize that I'm writing about said problems on a blog, which is by definition a form of electronic communication.  The irony of that is not lost on me.

1.My first beef with all this fancy-schmancy electronic communication is that it's so, so easy to misinterpret.

1a. When words are written, and especially when they're written quickly - as most e-mails and texts are - very little thought goes into considering how these words will sound when they're echoing through the recipient's head.  It takes an incredibly skilled writer to convey the finer aspects of the spoken language in words; things like subtle humor, momentary hesitation, and a slight change in tone are often lost when what was once audible is translated to visual.  And that's for skilled writers.  For most of us Joe Schmo writers, we shouldn't even attempt that, because it's never going to come out sounding the way we think it will sound.

1b. But it's not just the writers: it is the annoying habit of most readers (including me) to err on the side of interpreting the worst from the written words, rather than the best.  What might have been intended as a joke sounds like an insensitive barb; what may have been meant as a question or favor sounds like a dictate or order. Taken together, all this hasty writing and limited reading create a perfect storm of miscommunication.

2. Second is the issue of real life - remember that? - encroaching on one's digital communication. (How dare real life do such a thing!)  Truth is, this is bound to happen.

2a. Sometimes it's intentional: the person sitting across the desk commands more attention than the person at the other end of the e-mail.  Sometimes it's accidental: you forget your phone when you leave the house, so cannot supply the immediate responses to text messages that people are used to.  Either way, the person on the other end of the message doesn't know what the hold up is with your reply.  Maybe you had been doing the back-and-forth with some frequency, and they're expecting an answer.  Maybe they said something a little bit edgy, forward, funny, controversial, [insert adjective here], and they're eager to see how you will respond.  When you don't, they start to assume the worst: "maybe I went too far," "maybe he didn't think that was funny," etc.  In reality, you just left his phone in his car, but there's no way for your communication buddy to know that for sure.

2b. Sometimes even when you are supplied with the immediate response you're looking for, the attitude and tone of the reply are colored by things that have happened in someone else's day.  Unfortunately, you have no way to know what's been happening in said other day, and your day might be quite different.  Maybe you are bright and chipper, while the other person just had a cup of coffee spilled on them immediately after being bitten by the neighbor's dog.  They're not going to be in a top-'o-the-morning mood, and their text will probably reflect that.  Which brings us back to complaint number one: problems with writing and reading.

2c. Because real life usually is more pressing, often you can't give a serious conversation the attention or focus it deserves. (I'll just bypass for now the question of why you're having that serious conversation over text or e-mail at all.  Let's [for the sake of my sanity] assume it's because it's the only possible method of communication available to you.)

Anyway, you're having this important conversation.  And it's true that you could give it 100% of your attention.  You could just sit on the couch with your phone or computer awaiting a response, and then carefully craft your reply.  This could happen, but it usually doesn't.  We've gotten so used to the convenience of being able to do other things with our phone as a minor distraction that we don't even think about it anymore.  So you're having a serious text conversation about something, and you realize you need to run to the bank before it closes, and because you can, off you go.  But then your conversation becomes fragmented, and is only receiving a portion of the attention it deserves, whereas we'd (hopefully) never treat a face-to-face conversation about the same serious subject with that kind of dismissal.

3. Sometimes conversations should just be given more respect than that!

3a.  It might be that the person you're communicating with via text doesn't know you that well, or you don't know them.  If that's the case, just pick up the phone and call.  I'm a big fan of erring on the side of formality when the rules aren't totally clear (the red dress post is getting all kinds of references these days - see the last paragraph).

3b. Or should I call it 2d? Sometimes the conversation is just not a good one for the text or e-mail arena.  I don't have hard-and-fast rules about this, but I try to keep text conversations to light chit-chat and plan-making.  E-mails can get a little heavier, because I typically spend more time on them.  But if things start to get too serious, I like at least telephone usage, or face-to-face if possible.

4. In voice communication, you have to hear yourself talk.  And you have to hear, and hopefully see, the other person talk, too.

Some people love to hear themselves talk; others hate it.  Whichever camp you find yourself in, hopefully you can at least listen to yourself, rather than just hearing.  I think if you can really listen, you're much more likely to convey your point with precision, and hopefully with a lot less collateral damage.  If you're listening, and thinking as you go, you can craft sentences so they have exactly the impact you want them to have. How will this sound?  Is this really the point I want to make?  Am I choosing the right words?

Which is not to say that this can't also be the case with writing.  Good writers are incredible at sentence crafting and the conveyance of ideas.  But usually when we write for the everyday reader, we're not crafting, we're just thinking on paper (or on screen, as the case may be). Sometimes I'm good about reading through e-mails I've written before I hit send - which helps with this problem a bit - but I certainly don't always do it.  If you can be very diligent about reading your words before you ship them off to someone else, you can probably cross this off your list of problems.

4b. Seeing, or at least hearing, someone else conveys worlds of information that you don't get from the words themselves.  If you're face-to-face with someone, you can immediately see in their expression if something you've said didn't come out right, or if they're not getting your joke, or whatever.  There are tons of books about the art of conversation, and this one in particular has a fascinating section about those split second expressions that we may not even know we see in someone else's face, but we pick up on and interpret nonetheless.  Those expressions don't show up on your LCD screen.

5. I'm going out on a limb a little bit with this one, but I think it's becoming more and more true as solitude becomes harder and harder to find: we're becoming dependent on others to know what we're thinking.  Hear me out.

When our only methods of communication were face-to-face or voice-to-voice (and I suppose I'm talking land lines for purposes of this particular complaint), we had to spend some time with our thoughts before we could verbally vomit our problems all over someone else.  Even if that stewing time was just as long as it took you to drive home from work, you were alone, with no one to talk to, and you got to think through your issues all by your own self.

Now the inclination is to immediately fire off an identical text to your 23 best friends, and within seconds you will have 23 (or at least 16 or 17, depending on how many people left their phones in their cars) different ideas about how you should respond to whatever dilemma you're facing.  And it's reassuring to know that your friends are there for you, certainly.  But sometimes you have to remind yourself that it's your life, and all the opinions and if it were me scenarios in the world often don't amount to a hill of beans when the real decision is yours alone.  Spending a little time alone with your own thoughts before you get all that extra input seems like a good way to start sorting them out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a total luddite, just a little bit of one.  I'll whip out my phone as quickly as the next gal to look something up on the all-knowing interwebs or dive into a game of backgammon.  But I try not to let technology stand in for an actual relationship or genuine communication.  A quick text or e-mail is a great way to just say hello to someone you haven't talked to in a while, but texting alone does not a friendship make (or maintain).

I haven't read it, but this book seems like it'd be right up my ranting-and-raving alley, if I ever get back to reading books for fun.  [This was the last book post I wrote - almost two months ago!  Oh, ha!  Look at that.  I wrote about Dracula on Valentine's Day.  Funny that I didn't notice it at the time.]

52 Weeks of Dresses - Week 1

Upon seeing this post, T asked me if I had actually worn the red dress anywhere yet.  Answer: no.  So he decided I needed a date worthy of the dress.  That's happening this weekend, and I'm not sure of all the details yet, so the story will have to wait.

But, in thinking about that, we hatched another plot involving my many dresses: 52 Weeks of Dresses.

It is what it sounds like.  Basic rules include going somewhere once per week to which I get to wear one of my many dresses.  (I don't actually have 52, but I do have a number that is embarrassingly close to that, and by the time the year is out, I probably will have scrounged up a few more.)  I'm not going to be super serious about sticking to the once per week rule, just because I travel a lot so some weeks it will be hard to make it happen (dresses at regattas don't really work out too well).  But maybe some weeks there will be more than one dress-worthy event; it doesn't have to be fancy to be dress-worthy.  Really it just has to be somewhere other than my house.

Take Friday, for example.  I wore the same pink dress I wore to the screening of Bhutto that I went to with L, only without the black button-down over it. (Sorry, we forgot to actually take a  picture when we were out that night, although I will make a point to do that in the future.)

On the agenda was dinner with two of T's friends at a place on Olive called Kim Son (which doesn't appear to have its own website).  We started off with spring rolls and crab rangoon, which were good but not the best I've had.  Then I had my first genuine bowl of pho, the traditional Vietnamese soup, and it was delicious.  I had the beef version.  It's like the soup version of the DIY spring rolls I like so much at Mai Lee.

So, there you have it: Week 1.  51 weeks to go or thereabouts, depending on my dress count.  And before you go there, let me answer the question for you: yes, we thought this one through.  What if this relationship doesn't make it 52 weeks (it is pretty new, after all)?  I guess that will be the end of this little adventure, unless I care to continue it on my own.  What if it lasts longer?  Well, I suppose I'll need more dresses.

Wouldst? Really?

I'm sure everyone with a predictive text-enabled smartphone has had one of these experiences.  I've had a few myself.  But today's concern is about auto correct and the built-in dictionary.

I had to add the following words, among many others, to my phone dictionary: atrium, babysit, bunnies, damn, decongestant, insecurities, it's (with a lowercase i!), khakis, kickball, lacrosse, megaphone, mimosa, muddling, pesto (which isn't even English, technically, so that makes sense), pigtails, pomegranate, procrastinating, regatta, rowers, snuggling, sunscreen, swat, tiramisu (ditto), winery, workhorse.

But my little phone dictionary will auto correct to words like wouldst and shan't.  Really?  It knows wouldst but not bunnies?

Animal Farm

It's April in St. Louis and it's raining - what's new?

The other day I was looking out at the dreariness and this is what I saw:

But look more closely... 

That's right, the frogs that have taken up residence in the as-of-yet unfiltered pool are now making a bid for the lawn furniture.  Nowhere's safe!

The North Face

Here's to good customer service and a company that stands behind its products!

I'd had an anorak parka - my skiing jacket - since high school.  This past February, I noticed that the liner was starting to flake into pieces, and was getting all over everything.  This coat was over 10 years old, but nevermind that:

The Song I'm Loving Today

Something Like a Broken Heart (Hanna-McEuen)

K and I discovered Hanna-McEuen by accident when we were living back east.  K indulged me by agreeing to go see at Pat Green concert at the Ram's Head in Baltimore.  I knew a few Pat Green songs (Baby Doll, Wave on Wave, Don't Break My Heart Again), and small venues are always cool.

Turns out that Hanna-McEuen, a band neither of us had ever heard of, was opening, and they were great!  They're cousins, each the son of one of the founding members of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (most famous for Fishin' in the Dark and a cover of Mr. Bojangles).  Their eponymous album - which is, in fact, their only album - is full of soulful alt-country ballads with subtle harmonies. And they're not bad musicians either - check out the live version of Fool Around.  For a sad song, give Ocean a listen.



Tried a thousand times, used a million lines
Tryin' to explain.
'Cause they don't have a word for the kind of hurt
That never goes away.
When I try to think it though, it all comes back to you.
I don't know why goodbye's so hard to understand.
This pain I have is real and I'll tell you how it feels
If I ever get the chance.

It's like a lonely Friday night downtown,
Where everyone I know is out.
The radio's my only friend around,
And all I do is think of you.
It's a little like an old sad song,
It kills you but you sing it alone.
The melody just tears you all apart,
It's something like a broken heart.

I could drive a hundred miles and never touch that dial
'Til the station fades.
'Cause nothin' that I hear will ever make it clear,
Words just slip away.
And the more I think it through, the more I think of you.
I don't know why goodbye's so hard to understand.
You're never hard to find, 'cause you're always on my mind
No matter where I am.

Just like a lonely Friday night downtown,
Where everyone I know is out.
The radio's my only friend around,
And all I do is think of you.
It's a little like an old sad song,
It kills you but you sing it alone.
The melody just tears you all apart,
It's something like a broken heart.

It's like a lonely Friday night downtown,
Where everyone I know is out.
The radio's my only friend around,
And all I do is think of you.
It's a little like an old sad song,
It kills you but you sing it alone.
The melody just tears you all apart,
It's something like a broken heart.

What I Watched -- The Conspirator

Mom took K and I to see The Conspirator on Sunday night.  I had heard a bit about Mary Surratt on NPR last week, but didn't realize it was (presumably) related to this Robert Redford-directed movie about her trial.

The movie, while a little bit historical, is really a legal procedural.  Baby-faced James McAvoy carries the drama forward as Frederick Aiken, the new lawyer cutting his teeth on Mrs. Surratt's case, initially against his will.  As he comes to see what a sham her trial is, though, he not only begins to support his client but also questions his own faith in the legal system.

I could draw parallels until I'm blue in the face between this movie and the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals, but I don't want to - partially because I don't like politics, and partially because I'd rather talk briefly about the legal system's development, or lack thereof.

In my current practice, I am eternally frustrated by the inadequacies of the legal system: everything takes forever; there are procedural rules that might be useful if anyone ever bothered to follow them; however, it's no wonder they don't, because breaking the rules doesn't create garner any sanctions (what then, I ask, is the point of the rules?); some clerks - though by no means all - are useless at best and obstructionist at worst; some judges - though by no means all - can be frustratingly inconsistent from sentence to sentence, much less day to day; and for most of America, it turns out that capital-J Justice often is whatever you can afford to pay for.  I spent much of the movie thinking about then and now, and that old cliché: "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

Mary Surratt is played with a powerful combination of grace, restraint, and anger by the lovely Robin Wright.  The remainder of the star-studded cast includes Evan Rachel Wood as daughter Anna Surratt, Alexis Bledel as Freddie's girlfriend, Dodgeball's Justin Long, prolific actors Colm Meaney and Tom Wilkinson, goofball Kevin Kline, The Boondock Saints's Norman Reedus, and the recognizable but not-too-well-known Danny Huston.  One unfortunate consequence of the diverse cast: diverse accents, which distracted me a bit from the film.

Bottom line: fascinating history, but only a decent movie.  I was interested, but not enthralled, until the last few scenes when Aiken is fighting for his client's life - that's when McAvoy really hits his stride.  The colors and light are good, if pretty typical of Redford shoots; however, credits here go to McAvoy and Wright.