Sitting on the train – it’s pretty warm already this morning – it was very
mild yesterday. I feel renewed focus today – I think because I went to sleep
so early last night – after being treated to dinner at The Pepper Lounge by
Mierka as a thank-you for building the MookieJam website the past 2 years. I
really look up to Mierka and the growing magnitude of MoookieJam is pretty damned
stunning. The third jam is far off but already she is getting contacts with
some of the top artists and musicians in the city to be a part of this third
fundraiser. She was talking about when they gave teh grant away at the last
benefit. a grant for an artists with MS to be able to continue their art and
life with a grant of financial support. She said that insisting that this was
in public and at the benefit was the best decision she made because it made
the cause tangible. That everyone was crying seeing all of the hard work that
we’ve done over the past two years reach the focus of the cause – artists with
MS. And it was good to talk to Mookie because she is such a go-getter. I admire
her so very much and hope one day I can be half the badass that she is. We talked
a lot about my caoching work and upcoming creativity workshops and she said
that sounded like the same stuff she feels when she’s working on MookieJam.
That yeah, we all like to do art, but when are you going to reach for and contribute
to something greater than yourself.
A bigger ad goes in the Chicago Reader tonight and then I have a free teleclass
tonight to show off what the class is about – got about 27 people signed up
for that. Need to schedule at least four more free sessions to try and build
up my customer base – I hope people take the plunge with me. I keep trying to
stay focused on just opening up lots of doors and putting out lots of empty
vessels for the rain to collect in. One thing that is slightly maddening is
I’m always thinking of better ways to have gone about stuff – more channels
I could be exploring. Work has quieted down considerably since the initial boat-rocking
of my leave. I fear that M____ is going to really be pissed off at me and treat
me like an asshole in meetings – but that’s alright. I need to get the gumption
to serve it right back to her.
Right now, Mark, John and I are totally stumped on why certain pockets of employees
can’t get the online courseware to function. We thouugh it was the network,
we thought it was the connection, we thought it was their operating system…
the only left that I can think of that we haven’t really considered is the hardware
these people are running. Mark and I were livid the day we ran across the recommended
technical requirements for the courseware and it said Windows 98 or better with
all this RAM – when 90% of the machines in the company are still running Windows
95a (95a – yes, the first 95 release!) and a company-stilted flavor of Win95a
at that. Again, fluffly HR people make bad techie decisions.
But tha’ts okay because I got Anthony Kiedi and Red Hot CHili Peppers in my
head rocking me to the Jackson stop. This CD is probably the most overplayed
one that I own. Along wtih Voodoo-U adn Jagged Litle Pill. Ron and I rented
Lord of the Rings Tuesday night – I swear this movie is virtuousity. So excellent.
It seems to drag a little more in the first third when seen on a smaller screen
– but once the Fellowship is formed it really starts to rock. My favorite sequence
is still the cave troll in the Mines of Moria. When Aragorn and what’s-his-name
look out the door and say, ‘orcs… and they’ve got a cave troll.’ That is totally
awesome – that reminds me of hours and hours spent in imaginary worlds and Dungeons
and Dragons. I think what i enjoy so much about the movie’s combat is it’s specificity.
Each parry and stab and arrow and punch is specific and tactical and fully backed
up by the caracters, plot and story. And the cave troll sequence is dominated
by this enormous computer-generated creature and all the players are all over
teh scene with orcs and the progression of the fight is so awesome. I love it.
I remember when I first saw ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ and I wanted desperately
to be in a move where I got to play alongside imaginary characters. I remember
as a kid I always loved to read ‘The Making of…’ books – I’m always so intrigued
at the story behind how a movie came to be – the myraid decisiosn in what amkes
it to the screen and what doesn’t. Peter Jackson – the director of LoTR talks
abot the upcoming Two Towers and says that they have been able to develop a
computer imaging program that can create 10,000 soldiers and orcs and endow
each one with it’s own intelligence and abilities and send them into eachother
and let the computer play out and generate their battles. Totally stunning.
Ron and I are going to go home in a couple of weeks to take a bunch of stuff
to storage in Indiana. It will be his first time meeting the parents. I told
him that I could totally introduce him to my grandmother as my boyfriend since
from her era that was just slang for a close male friend. I remember how bristled
I’d get when she’d call Sterling (one of my chlidhod comrades) my boyfriend.
Eeek! Grandma that’s gross! I don’t know if I chronicled this or not but mom
was visitng Grandma at the long-term care place she’s in and Grandma was amazingly
lucid and was talking quite a bit. She turns to mom and smiles at her and says,
‘Rock on!’ This coupled with Grandma’s classic saying, ‘Eveyrthing’s gonna turn
out alright.’ always grounds me. I alwasy feel re-connected when I visit Grandma
– loking into those steely blue eyes that have seen more turmoil and struggle
than I could ever dream about. Yes, Agnes, Rock on!
I caused a quite a stir in the coaching community when I revealed that I’m
preparing an article on the recent case in Colorado of a coach being investigated
by the state Psych licensing body for operating as an unlicensed psychotherapist.
I have to get the article out soon to keep the buzz going – then do interviews
with other people – it will be a great way to dive traffic to my site. Very
excited about that. Once I get hte DSL installed in the new apartment I’m going
to re-up the Dreamweaver classes and also start to roll out the HTML clas and
the sessions on planning/designing your own website. I try to keep in mind that
I got to start somewhere – and the more ground I cover as I start out, the les
ground I’ll have to cover in building. So start big and stay big – let the business
fill the form, n’est-ca pas? Or as we say in Taglog – Diba?
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