Naomi - I know you know me

Naomi Stories Preface

2011-12-09T12:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I just saw Jeff's comment on another blog re: his excitement about my yearly blog, and was just thinking this morning that I should start documenting my life stories. I was journaling (I know what you're thinking, why journal when you can share your innermost thoughts online with everyone!?!), and trying to remember what I really liked to do as a child in the hopes that I could glean some life direction from it, and I remembered that I always loved Dr. Seuss books, but more the moral-ly ones like The Lorax and The Butter Battle Book. I was really bummed when I did my senior project on Dr. Seuss in high school and discovered that his most popular and beloved book was The Cat in the Hat. What kind of moral message does that have? But, then as I reflected more I realized that every time I've tried to write something that had some sort of deep message, it was kind of crap, but the stories I tell that are just my ridiculous observations that don't really go anywhere, those are better. So, maybe I should just always stick to Cat in the Hat in terms of my own writing.

Okay, all that (way too much) to say that I'm going to just start capturing my Cat in the Hat stories on my blog and saving them so that I have a collection for Linus and anyone else who wants to look back at the silly stuff that I've witnessed along the way. I believe I've already captured the bunny story, the Bot fly story (Ann, you may want to read that one again - I hope the link still works!), and the Blackberry jam story. All classics!

I'll post another oldie, but as Jeff suggested, I'll probably have a lot of really good ones from when my whole family comes out for a week in a few weeks. Stay tuned!

Being pregnant = wanting to wander through a maze of crazed mothers and toddlers

2011-06-17T12:38:00.000-07:00

And other myths perpetrated by The Gap...

So, I meant to post this a bit ago, but didn't want to lose this gem, even though I've related the story to a few of you already.

So, when I first decided that I was going to give up the good fight of wearing my normal clothes due to some agonizing meetings where I couldn't find a couth way to unbutton my pants, I went out in search of maternity clothes. Now, Ann and Christine both sent me boxes of all of their maternity clothes, but alas they're both too short for me to wear any of their pants.

So, I decided to start off at Gap Maternity searching for a couple pairs of work pants. I wandered into Gap and circled the store twice, seeing not a thing that looked like it was maternity. There were lots of salespeople, but no one asked why I was taking laps around the store, and I of course didn't want to ask.

I finally and cautiously poked my head through the door to Baby Gap and then recoiled. It was a Saturday, and the Baby Gap was a blur of strollers, crying babies, running toddlers, and frazzled mothers. "Surely," I thought, "Surely, the women's maternity clothes can't be in there!" Glancing back at the salespeople who were avoiding my pleading look, I decided I wasn't going to come back another weekend and I must brave the Baby Gap.

So, in I went. Waiting patiently for mother's to move strollers so I could pass, who didn't notice me until I said excuse me three times in a subsequently louder voice, and then they'd move ever so slightly without looking up from the jumpers they were poring over.

I finally made my way to the back of the store, and there was the maternity section and with only one woman in it who was sans children. The selection was pretty lame, but I found black pants and a pair of jeans that worked.

However, I was really shocked that maternity clothes were in the back of all the kids stuff. I've since found that this is the case at Old Navy as well. But why is it? Is it cause these stores assume that pregnant women will be shopping with children and they want to keep the children away from the quiet adults in The Gap, or is it because they think that pregnant women just want to be around children as much as possible. If either of these are the reason, I think they've misjudged pregnant women, or at least this one.

My last thought is that they think forcing pregnant women to walk through the kids clothes will get them to buy cute little kid clothes in anticipation of their baby, or at least remember how cute the clothes are at Baby Gap for after their little one comes along. I get this sales-oriented angle, but man, someone should have warned me about this! Someone starting their 2nd trimester, as I was at the time, is not ready for this kind of shocking introduction to motherhood. Let me at least get through the 2nd chapter of "What to Expect" first!

At any rate, I've now found ways around the Baby Gap, like Pea in a Pod, and buying flowy dresses at Ross and other discount stores...

So, that's my latest. Not much else is new. I think despite my anti-maternal perspective toward The Gap, I'm becoming more maternal. Molly Brown has become my baby for the time being. I've noticed that I can't say no to her anymore and I keep wanting to snuggle with her. She resists a little, but then gives in when she sees me getting out the ice cream, since she knows she can get me to give her little doggy scoops in her bowl if she stares at me while I'm eating. So, there ya go. More later. :)

Metamucil

2011-04-12T18:37:00.000-07:00

So, I believe that all of my blog readers know by now that I'm pregnant. I've told most people at this point except work, cause I just haven't felt like it yet. So, if I have any co-workers are reading my blog, I guess you get the inside scoop.

Anyway, I thought my newish with-child status deserved some blog entries. So far I haven't read any serious books on pregnancy - I'm just reading "Exploiting My Baby, Cause It's Exploiting Me," so naturally when my doctor asked me yesterday if I'd started reading any books, I told her "No." Anyway, I just got another as a gift on "A Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy" (thanks Sally!), which also looks like a cynical pregnancy book, and so I've decided that since these cynical books are such a hit, but all kind of get at the same things, I would start writing my blog on my hilarious pregger-related stories. Don't worry, I won't get all TMI with ya'll. No dilation reports here my friends!

So, my first unique, or what I think is unique, pregnancy story is that when I was first pregnant, the first thing I purchased in acknowledgement of my new state was a big canister of Metamucil. I had never had Metamucil before so I went home that evening and thought it would be nice to have it with hot water and treat it like a cup of tea. Now I don't know if this was a freak event or just what Metamucil does in hot water, but it turned into clumps of soft sponginess instead of dissolving into the water. And, not having had it before, I assumed that this was part of Metamucil so I made myself drink the whole thing - it was super gross - drinking orange globs floating in my water. You can imagine my dismay the next day when I tried again with cold water and everything dissolved and wasn't quite as horrible.

Anyway, that's my first story that I haven't seen in any funny pregnancy books so far, probably cause everyone knows you're supposed to mix Metamucil with cold water. At any rate, there you go. I'll be back with more later

New Year's Themes

2010-12-30T10:26:00.000-08:00

So, I actually got a request for a new blog post, and never being one to disappoint my fan (Jeff), here's a little treat for ya'll, and by ya'll, I mean Jeff.

As we come to the end of 2010, I decided that instead of setting new year's resolutions, I would instead develop a list of words or themes that I wanted to emulate in the new year. My words included: clarity, focus, sustainable, listening, etc. Of course as I was listing these words and feeling very conceptual, the structural thinker in me insisted that I create projects and yearly goals, because my words were too fluffy to actually have any impact on my life. So, always a slave to my structural brain, I started writing down projects like, hang/frame all the pictures and art in our house, clear out the upstairs, take the GRE, apply to PhD programs, update and publish material from my thesis.

You can see the conceptual jutting back in again as this list went on. I then thought to myself, "Self, what will happen in the new year?" and began that list, which then made me wonder, "Self, what did I accomplish in 2010?" As I started that list, I decided it was too narrow, and instead chose to construct a Naomi timeline starting in 2005, which I will share with you (you're welcome).

2005
- finished MA
- Started teaching for UCOL
- Met and started dating Brian

2006
- Started working for AI

2007
- Got engaged

2008
- Got married

2009
- Job/title shift
- Bought a house
- Designed a couple courses for UCOL
- Joined the FMC leadership council

2010
- Built up AI's customized workshop branch
- Started UCOL's Diversity & Inclusivity Committee
- Joining Conflict Center Board
- Got a puppy

As I finished my Naomi timeline and forecasted happenings in 2011, it occurred to me that I had no idea what Brian was hoping to do or wanted me to do in 2011, so I put my spastic planning on hold and announced at dinner that I had a great couple's exercise that we should do together for the new year. You can imagine how excited he was about this. He insisted that I share my random lists with him, which I conveniently had outlined on notebook paper in my purse. So, I shared with him my conceptual word list, and he only laughed out loud at the word sustainable, since my idea for sustainable for 2010 had been for him to start a composting bin in the backyard, which he didn't want to do...

At any rate, I think tonight we are going to set our couple's conceptual words and goals for 2011, so I'll let you know how that goes. Or not post another blog until the end of the year (more likely).

I hope you've enjoyed your glimpse into my mind. Now you all know why it's so difficult for me to make decisions. - Naomi

2009-12-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays ya'll!

I thought as a little holiday treat, I would blog all of my holiday thoughts today!

Firstly, I am wearing the same kind of earmuffs that I had when I was little. I remember we had a red pair and a blue pair, and I think I liked the red. What I'd forgotten was the headache you get from wearing earmuffs for long periods of time...

As a hilarious holiday prank, my friend and coworker, Andrea, and I are trying to figure out how to hack into our company website to loop holiday pics from our company party from this year and past years. I'll be sure to include the link if we succeed!

My white elephant gift for this afternoon's party is a Halloween doormat that someone left in the kitchen with a note saying "free to a good home" - as if you need to qualify that for a doormat, especially a Halloween one after Halloween has gone by...

Our first married Christmas!

2008-12-22T20:42:00.000-08:00

Well, as you can see we found our tree and put the lights up. It's probably as big as our apartment can handle. The tree also has ornaments up on it now. Many of the ornaments were made by Brian when he was about five years old. So, I think it'll be funny when people come over and ask if our children made our ornaments, and I'll get to say, "no, my husband made them - I'm so proud!"

We have all of the gifts wrapped now, and all the gifts for the Marshalls were mailed last week. I will of course miss being in Michigan for Christmas - having a Christmas sauna, participating in the neighborhood pagan ritual after church, being forced to sing songs I don't know in the choir, having a sip of scotch with my Dad, and having a box of wine with my Mom.

But, of course, they'll have Thora at home, so I'm sure they'll make due without us, since we're not nearly as cute, although I would argue that I am equally entertaining.

But, we're looking forward to a nice Nishi Christmas here in Denver! And, I'm glad to be able to sing in my own church choir, since I've been to the practices and know what we're singing pretty well - it should be nice.

Anyway, merry Christmas all! I wish you a peaceful season and new year! - Naomi

First Post by Naomi WM Nishi

2008-11-22T15:07:00.000-08:00

Howdy ya'll,

I thought I better jump back on my blog and give people an update. Married life is going very well so far. These are the differences I've noticed so far (in about three weeks of marriage)

- Brian now asks my permission before going out without me

- I have even more bling on my left hand that I can stare at if I get bored at work

- I'm excited to do holiday family stuff - now I've always been excited about that, but this year we're getting a Christmas tree. Brian says a small one, but I'm thinking medium-sized.

- I still get all teared up when I think about the wedding.

- I want to get a dog now, and I want to name it Professor Otis Aardvark (no one better steal it!)

I think those are the big ones. Otherwise, I'm excited for Thanksgiving! I think this is my 6th Thanksgiving up at the cabin, my 3rd with Brian, and my 1st as married to him. If you would have told me this would happen the first time I was at the cabin with Brian for Thanksgiving. I would have said no way, cause it seemed like he didn't like having people there that weren't his family. I'm actually surprised that he wasn't instantly enchanted by my hilarity that Thanksgiving - but maybe I'm more subtle-y hilarious than I think. That's hard to say.

In other news, I just booked tickets to Houghton, MI in early February for me and Brian. We're going up to see our niece Thora and for Winter Carnival. I'm super excited; I've haven't been to Tech since I graduated, and winter carnival is the best time to go. I'm a little nervous that we'll get stuck in a blizzard somewhere, but we'll risk it. Anyway, peeps, just wanted to let you know that I'm back and blogging. Cue sigh of relief from all my loyal readers....

Wedding Hair Au Naturale

2008-09-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

All right, so I nixed the buying of the fake and I chose another hairdo and Christina worked some magic with my short layers and below is the planned wedding hairdo...

The Do's and Don'ts of the Bachelorette Party!

2008-09-23T19:25:00.001-07:00

Do talk all of your friends into dressing like pirate hookers...

Don't wear a penis headband with a veil...

Don't wear a candy necklace and sash with a veil...

Do sing at the top of your lungs while dancing, dressed as a pirate hooker....

Please future brides, take these words of advice: Never would you accessorize with a phallus or phalluses. And, marriage or the anticipation of it doesn't justify doing it now. But, what it does justify is dressing like a pirate hooker, especially when your birthday and International Talk Like a Pirate Day was the day before!

Hair Travesty

2008-09-09T10:14:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought I'd let you all know that I had my first crazy bride moment. I almost cried at my hair trial appointment...

Let me fill you in. So, my hair dresser of about three years left town a few month ago, so I was forced to find someone else to give me trims. I've been growing my hair out for over a year now in preparation for one day - the wedding day. Normally, I would have chopped it by now, but no, I've diligently grown it out. So, anyway, I found a hairdresser nearby that I got haircuts from. The first time I went to her, I explained why I was growing my hair out and what my wedding hairdo was. I told her that I didn't want her cutting layers in my hair in case it might put my dream do in jeopardy. She assured me that she could put in some layers and it would be fine.

I then decided to use Cheetah Shoes' hairdresser, Christina, downtown to do my hair for the wedding. I drove downtown on Friday to do my test hairdo. I showed Christina my pictures of the hairdo and she began working on my hair. She hadn't gotten too far when she gave me the bad news - that I had too many short layers in my hair to do what I wanted. I asked her if we could do anything similar, but everything she tried, my layers were too short. At that point, I was biting my lip and holding back the tears. I finally said "I'm just so mad because I told the other hairdresser what I was doing and she said I could still do it if she cut the layers."

Poor Christina was on egg shells and she called over other hair dressers to discuss. They decided that the only thing to do was to go and buy fake hair to make the hair knot out of and then if we couldn't find fake hair to match, we'd just dye my hair to match the fake hair. So, that is where we stand in my ongoing hair saga. Stay tuned to see if Naomi, Cheetah Shoes, and Christina can find matching fake hair, or if our heroine must dye her currently faded reddish dyed hair to match the fake hair they do find...

It's Pirate Naomi

2008-07-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm sure that most of you think that I've just been ignoring my blog and all of my loyal blog fans. But, in truth, I just didn't think that my fat pinch blog had gotten enough play on the comment board. But, all right, if that's all you have to say about fat pinching and my brilliant wellness initiative idea, I'll give you my next brilliant idea that was also coincidentally born out of the wellness initiative at work.

You see, there was a t-shirt design contest at work that stemmed from the walking contest (of which I am not a part of). The winners of the walking contest were going to get t-shirts with the winning design from the t-shirt contest. At my work place, the leadership believes that everything should be competitive if you want people to do participate. So, anyway, I tossed and turned thinking about how I might design a t-shirt that really got at the heart of the walking program. And, late one night I had a vision of the image below.

Despite, the clear creativity and depth of my t-shirt design concept, I'm sad to report that Cheetah Shoes won with her design, cause it was apparently more design-y. Oh well, you win some, you lose some even though my t-shirt was inspired by God herself...

Fat Pinch Test

2008-04-14T19:51:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I don't have a good theme for today. No new dress pics or controversial letters to post. But, not to worry, the matching shoe pictures should be on there way soon.

So, at my work place, we have a wellness initiative that provides different healthy programs, including the claymation day that you may remember from a previous post. Part of the WI is a walking program that I don't participate in because I generally like to do other activities like running or yoga or something else instead. My friend at work, Cheetah Shoes, and I are both walking program haters. We didn't want to do the 10,000 steps a day that was required for the reason I stated previously. So, instead of participating, we tried to foil the walking competition by changing the numbers in their stupid excel spreadsheets (team players we are!)

Well, today it was suggested that we create our own team that could do other activities besides walking, but we had to set a goal that was above what we normally do and have a way to assess ourselves. Naturally, I suggested that our team measure how fit we were by employing the ever-popular high school fitness test - the fat pinch test. Strangely, nobody wanted be on my team after I suggested that. My other idea was to have a "crazy week" where we add an extra challenge to our team every once in awhile. We could have special challenges, like, do an activity you haven't done in a year (like tree-climbing perhaps, but of course that rules me out, that's a daily activity for me).

Anyway, nobody but Cheetah Shoes seems to appreciate my creativity in forming an activity team. Oh well, we'll see where we end up and if we can recruit anyone to the fat pinching team.

In other news, Brian passed his level one PGA tests today. He was pretty excited and relieved not to have to worry about it for the rest of the week.

And, lastly, I'm sure you all already know this, but Brett Michaels has found his rock of love. It's Ambre! I was shocked, but oh so happy. I'm sure that this true love match means that there will be no Rock of Love III. But, I don't want to speak too soon. The reunion show is this Sunday, and we'll find out if they're still together. From the looks of it Heather and Daisy get in a big fight on the show. Hard to believe that these classy dames can get all bent out of shape on TV. And, you're welcome for the update!

The tour ends here,

Naomi

My Latest News Appearance

2008-04-09T12:52:00.001-07:00

Well, I sent a letter to the editor of the Denver Post this week, and they printed it. Judging from the comments, I was a hit! And, when I say hit, I mean there may be a witch burning on the capitol steps this week.

http://blogs.denverpost.com/eletters/2008/04/09/a-response-to-tancredo%e2%80%99s-anti-immigrant-stance/

It's admittedly one of my more impassioned letters, where I started getting a tad poetic. I think that just ups the backlash, although, I'd have to go look at my past letters and comments to be sure...

Runners Up

2008-04-07T20:37:00.001-07:00

So, I posted the worst of the dresses I tried on... But, I wanted to post my favorites of all the dresses I tried on (theee dress is not included), because again all pictures of that dress are too revealing and inappropriate for the blog. I'm saving that for the wedding ceremony! Please feel free to comment, but know that it would be sacrilege to say you like any of these dresses better than theee dress.

This one I thought was cute. A little sparkly and bright white though (although that's hard to see in the picture).

I love the top of this one. I was thinking I could do ivory lace and pale yellow ribbon in the middle....

This one was the poof - iest ones I really liked. I was seriously considering it until I saw it cost like one million dollars - sonofa!

I especially liked the back of this one (although I would have had a yellow sash)

This one was really pretty too - simple with a nice train (although I didn't want too much of a train). What am I, a peacock?

And, with that, I think I'm out of wedding dress blogs. I've had a good run. Stay tuned for.... flowers and hotel block!

Not Theee Dress

2008-03-31T20:34:00.000-07:00

So, I ordered my dress this weekend. I ordered the jacket as well, since everyone seemed to like it. I still don't think I'll wear it for the ceremony, but I'll wear it for some pictures and to the reception or something. Laura, Shannon, and Anne-Marie came dress shopping with me last weekend, which was so much fun, and Laura took a bunch of pictures. So, I thought I'd start off posting the dresses that did not make the cut...

This dress was the biggest dress they had in the store and weighed the most. When I walked down the hall it brushed against both walls - super sweet!

This one, I liked the pattern and material, but the halter didn't look very good. Laura thought it was a dress for older women, and I think she had a point.

This dress had some little sleeves that you put on separately. They look especially flattering when I squish my back like this...

So, these were the least favorites. Next post, I'll post the ones that were favorites, but not as much favorite as the one I ordered. And, sorry, I can't post the pic of the one with me wearing my dress, because I can't risk Brian seeing, it's inappropriate for the blog since my butt is hanging out of it, and I want it to be a surprise for everyone at the wedding. Although, I know you've all seen the dress....

Theeee Dress (I think)

2008-03-24T11:37:00.001-07:00

Okay, I think I found my dress! To see it, go to www.sanpatrick.com and click "Chic" on the left menu once you're in the site. My dress is the first one in that category and it's called "Binefar."

If you're Brian, ignore those instructions cause you don't want to see my dress. In other news, I have purchased the wedding signature scent and am wearing it daily, and especially on days that I do wedding stuff. I'm trying to condition myself to think wedding when I smell it. It's a long and complicated process, let me tell you.

We also now have a caterer, so according to Martha Stewart and the "Simple" wedding planner, we're on track. Next step, order theeee dress and look for a florist and cake-maker. I'll keep you posted!

FSF Pictures

2008-03-04T14:13:00.001-08:00

Okay, first of all, I had a record number of comments last blog. And, I have taken that to mean that yes, I am as hilarious as I thought I was... Super Sweet!

Secondly, I now have last week's fun shirt Friday pictures (disguises were used to protect the innocent and those who looked drunk...)

The winner was...

The loser was...

Here's Cheetah Shoes / Aids Awareness Shirt...

And, here is my dickey and vest!

And, lastly, here is the monster I created on Imagination Day at work, complete with followers and a sacrifice!

The Signature Wedding Scent

2008-02-27T19:48:00.000-08:00

Well, I was just about to post a blog about how Brian doesn't understand the difference between hearing and listening (I'm sure we'll come back to that eventually) when Brian said he was going to bring up my mid-week drinking in a comment if I did blog on his listening. And so, to avoid that topic until Brian forgets his threat, I thought I'd go back to an idea suggested to me a while ago, where I discuss my different perfumes and suggest what they say about me and my life. What prompted this, you might ask. Well, I'm glad you asked, because I'm pleased to announce that I've found my wedding scent!

What is a wedding scent you now ask? Well, despite common belief, it is not a perfume you use to douse the church and everything wedding-y with, nor is it the fragrance that you spray on every person who attends the wedding. No, much simpler than that. I, the bride to be, will wear the chosen scent on the wedding day, although I've dabbled in the idea of spraying the invitations with the wedding scent - we'll see.

The chosen wedding scent, which I still need to go buy, is Vera Wang's "Truly Pink." I suggest you all go to the mall and smell it and post your opinions as comments, as it is not too late to abort the wedding scent plan... yet!

You are probably now wondering, "Naomi, what is the fascinating and complex path that led you to this decision on your wedding scent?" And, I'm not surprised, I questioned my very self on that! And, without further adieu, I'll tell you.

Now, if you know me at all, you know that my personal signature scent is Love Spell from Victoria's Secret. It has been for years. In fact, I would posit, that I would not in fact be engaged now if I hadn't had such an appropriate signature scent to cast a spell over my special guy (who hears everything I say, but isn't really listening).

But, is Naomi one-sided? Surely Love Spell doesn't get at the deep mystery that is SupNomes! And, it's true, I have many sides, all of which can strangely be defined by my other perfumes...

Here they are in chronological order (high school to present)

CK One: Calvin Klein: This androgynous scent shows that I do not subscribe to traditional gender roles, which is mostly cause my Mom made me wear boys jeans when I was little.

Curve: Liz Taylor - This sassy smell shows that I'm not a straight shooter. I'm likely to throw curve balls in my walk of life - so watch out!

Happy: Clinique - I'm generally a happy person, except when I'm deep in critical thought, like when I'm blogging.

Cool Water: Davidoff - Hello! I'm from Michigan.

Inis - My Mom bought this for me when my parents were in Ireland. So, naturally this perfume represents my Irish roots and my parents, who are somewhat Irish.

Dune: Christian Dior - Ann gave me this one. Jeff brought it back for her from Europe and she didn't like it. So, I inherited it. What does that say about me? That I will take anything free and never get rid of it. But, actually I wear this one; it's my professional scent. Which also shows that I am professional.

Basic Instinct: Victoria's Secret - Surely there is no need to explain this one.

Glow: Jlo -Don't be fooled by the rocks that I got, I'm still, I'm still Nomey from the block.

And, that sums it up. And, now I'm ready for my wedding scent (sniff). Life moves so fast. I wonder what scent I'll get for each child I have and what that will say about them. Perhaps they should be named after the scent. Aww! little Glow and Dune!

So, don't forget your task to go and smell my proposed wedding scent and let me know if you think it fits me and my very mysterious self.

Fun Shirt Friday!

2008-02-22T07:32:00.000-08:00

Today is not only my Happy Latte Friday (mmm, delish), it is also FUN SHIRT FRIDAY.

Here's my sweet announcement sent to my colleagues...

Good morning,

I’m happy to announce that tomorrow is FUN SHIRT FRIDAY in honor of Tunde, who has said he is gonna bring it! So please wear a fun or favorite shirt (keep it work-appropriate people – especially Tunde!)

Naomi W. Marshall

America’s Next Top Model

Hopefully, I'll have pictures to put up later...

Good times with wedding invitations

2008-02-04T14:44:00.000-08:00

So, our latest wedding task is getting addresses for the save the date cards. Brian is sooo excited about this part, as shown in the following email to his friends...

***************************************************

Hello Everyone,
I am writing because I need your mailing addresses. Once I have those, I am going to send you a card that says “save the date – October 25th.” Then, after several more months I will send you another card (this one being much more expensive) saying “Brian and Naomi are getting married October 25th, would you like to come?” And then you will reply back using the card that was inside the card that was inside the extra envelope, checking “yes” or perhaps “no.” Only after spending thousands of dollars on stationary and postage will you be aware that there is a wedding going on (October 25th in case you forgot already) and hopefully I will also be aware of whether or not you are coming.

Wedding correspondence is a model of efficiency.

Thanks,
Brian

Check out www.naomiandbrian.com

**********************************************

My favorite part is our website pitch at the bottom. I think I'll start including that in my email signature, so people are clear on where to go for the dets...

Saying "Condom" in a Meeting

2008-01-24T15:11:00.000-08:00

Well, not to over introduce our topic for today, but as you may have guessed, I was in a meeting today. This was a sort of meeting of the minds between marketing and the conference development team. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly; the President talked about the history of marketing at the company, the marketing team told us what their roles were, and then we were invited to just shout out ideas for ways to work together to meet our corporate goals. We were not invited to shout out different types of contraceptives, but I wasn't listening closely enough. At one point I offered a data sharing scenario, where if I'm talking to a conference speaker and they make a random comment about our competitors, we should share that with those people doing research on our competitors. Alas, what type of word comes out when you try to put random and comment together. That's right, I suggested that we capture random condoms to the marketing team, my fellow Conference Directors, and our President.

Naturally, this was the highlight of the meeting, and for the next 45 minutes I was thrown into a giggle loop, where I just tried not to burst out laughing every time I remembered I'd said condom in our meeting. Sonofa! After the meeting, though, I was thanked by several colleagues, and it was said that my saying "condom" was the best part of the meeting. My job here is done.

Fun Shoe Friday!

2008-01-15T13:50:00.000-08:00

So, one of my many job responsibilities here is planning our corporate Fashion Fridays. And, as you probably guessed, this job responsibility was assigned by me to myself. It all began when I decided I needed a reason to wear my super-cute pink and gold paisley heels. They were feeling very lonely in their carefully preserved shoe box. I decided to start keeping my shoe boxes to store my shoes in when I saw that Carrie in "Sex and the City" did it. You can imagine Brian's surprise/annoyance when we were opening all my moving boxes to find a bunch of empty shoe boxes that I refused to throw out.

Anyway, I'm getting side-tracked, so I'm starting a new paragraph. I sent out an email announcement to all of my colleagues whom I thought would like to share in my justification for cute shoe wearing. Fun Shoe Friday was a hit! We even created a collage to commemorate the day (see above).

The only problem with the original Fun Shoe Friday was that it didn't include everyone, so we held it again last Friday, and I sent out a company-wide announcement and follow-up. It was glorious! The day swirled with purple suede, brown peep-toe, checkered and comic book sneakers, and even Italian leather. The winner wore heels with swirls of hot pink and neon green - awesome! I believe our next fashion Friday will be fun scarf and tie day - I can hardly wait!

2008-01-09T15:54:00.000-08:00

Well, I thought I should post something today in fear of you crazy commenters taking over my blog. Sheesh! Please remember that all comments should be in regard to my blog. The only exception to this rule is if you want to talk about how hilarious and super sweet I am. So, let's keep on track people! The topic of my drinking log came up amidst the comments, so I thought I'd post that today. This also conveniently recounts the week I got engaged...

Monday, September 10, 2007

Friends birthday celebration

People: the Birthday boy, B-day boy’s sister and her husband, me, and my boyfriend

Dinner at Bennie’s Mexican restaurant – two margaritas ($15/pitcher – 5 in pitcher)

Bar hopping after

People: Same as above, including an extra friend who joined

Drinks: two glasses of Cabernet ($6/glass)

At the end of the night I got into a heated debate about violence with the birthday boy himself. I probably would have let it go if I hadn’t had a few.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Dinner and drinks at The Spot – a local Denver bar

People: me and my boyfriend

Drinks: Two 90 Shillings beer ($4/glass) with my Ahi Tuna Burger

Went for a walk at nearby Washington Park. Got a little mad at my boyfriend wanting to move in together, but not get married. I reminded him that it was me who'd have to break that news to my mother.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Golfing

People: my Boyfriend, his co-worker, and his girlfriend

Drink: One Fat Tire beer ($6)

I played the best game of my life! (of course I’d only played twice before)

Dinner: Pasquini’s Restaurant, Denver

People: my boyfriend and I

Drinks: Two glasses of Sangria ($18/pitcher) with my Portobello Pizetta

Had dinner and went for a little walk through the neighborhood, where my boyfriend unexpectedly proposed, and I accepted (decision not affected by Sangria / the crying that accompanied may have been – undetermined).

After-Engagement Party: Fiancé’s (formerly boyfriend’s) apartment

People: Fiancé, his roommate, his parents, and his three sisters

Drink: One glass of champagne ($?) with Strawberry pie

Greeted my new family members, and recounted my surprise that my fiancé had kept this from me for two months, and laughed about sending my mother an article earlier in the day about how more and more people are waiting till their 30’s to get married, so she would stop harassing me to get married.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

Stayed in made dinner and watched a movie

People: My fiancé and I

Drinks: Two glasses of Pinot Grigio (one with dinner/one after watching the movie) ($8/bottle)

Friday, September 14, 2007

Dinner: Wahoo’s

People: my fiancé and I

Drink: One bottle of Sol Beer ($3.50)

Out downtown: Rio bar and restaurant

People: my fiancé, me, six of his college friends (all guys)

Drink: One frozen mango margarita ($7)

We chatted for awhile and watched the friends get drunk, but we were tired and went home after the one drink.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Dinner: at home

People: my fiancé and I

Drink: One glass of Pinot Noir with dinner (Chicken pesto sandwich with corn on the cob) ($8/bottle)

Fiance’s friend’s farewell poker party

People: my fiancé, me, a bunch of people from his hockey team, some neighbors

Drinks: About five beers (approximation, the host kept refilling my glass all night) ($? – they had a keg). Got on the computer on myspace and facebook and started leaving messages for random friends telling them that I was engaged. (Couldn’t remember who I wrote to or what I wrote later on). Left my myspace page logged in and the party host and a friend of his went in and changed my profile to include a bunch of inappropriate comments.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Hanging out at home / cleaning / doing some work

People: just me

Drinks: Two glasses of Pinot Noir ($8/bottle)

The wine made the cleaning and working a little more pleasant.

Skinny it up!

2008-01-07T14:37:00.001-08:00

Well, Operation "No Fat Brides" is in effect, you'll all be happy to know. I've been working out diligently and watching what I eat for like a whole week. And, when I say watching what I eat, I mean it in the most literal sense. I don't really feel any thinner, but I'm thinking that it'll melt off all at once - keep em' crossed. I could probably speed up this process if I tried to moderate my drinking, but heck, I've got like ten months, so there's no need to go to that crazy extreme! This whole operation wouldn't be that essential if it weren't for the fact that my fiance has no body fat at all, and only out weighs me by about two pounds. Oh well, I'll look at it as incentive to achieve my new year's resolution of being in the best shape of my life.

In regard to my quest to learn how to be married, I gave it some good practice this weekend. On Saturday I did a bunch of laundry and emptied the dishwasher. I was feeling ahead of the game until Brian came home from work, finished the laundry, made the bed, and cleaned the room. Sonofa! Brian's ahead of me on half my resolutions. Perhaps, I should make the "learning how to be married" resolution less competitive with my future spouse. I may be missing the point.

I have to say, I'm very impressed that I've got my loyal blog readers back here so quickly! I feel kind of like a celebrity. Thank you Shannon for pointing out that it has been said that the definition of "hilarious" is Naomi!

Super Secret Mission

2008-01-04T15:55:00.000-08:00

Mission Accomplished!

Last night I headed to the local Walmart, forcing Brian to come along for backup, and semi-faked an ailment at their medical center. I decided to go with allergies, after first asking my Dad if it would be bad for me to get another flu shot. He said it was probably best not to get shots that I don't need and suggested that I go with allergies to see if I could score some Singulair for when my allergies actually flare up. As Brian went off to scope out Xbox video games, I headed to the medical center. I was asked if I had insurance. I said no (lie #1) and then told that it would cost $65 to meet with someone about my allergies. I said okay, and took the paperwork. In a panic, I tried to call Rachel to ask if she wanted me to pay the $65. No answer (sonofa!) I walked over with my paperwork with my maintained lie that I had no insurance. They took me in the back room where the nurse practitioner asked me about my allergies. I told him that I was from Michigan where I'd had allergies, but that ever since I'd moved to Denver, my allergies were worse. He asked when I moved to Denver. And, I said four years ago (strange look #1). He was like, you've been living with horrible allergies for four year and are just now coming in with symptoms? I was like "yup!" Anywho, in the end he told me that Singulair was too expensive since I didn't have health insurance (lie #1 back to bite me). I said okay, and he gave me a prescription for flonase.

The end! I hope writing this doesn't expose my covert operation!

What is this!?!

2008-01-03T13:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, my friends, in the spirit of the new year and my wedding year, I have been advised to resurrect the blog.

I realize where I went wrong last time. I had my most brilliant blackberry jam blog waaay too early in the year. And, after that, how could I top it? And so here we are. For this blog, I'm going to focus on my new year's resolutions:

1 - blog consistently
2 - get in the best shape of my life
3 - get married
4 - learn how to be married (hopefully I'll do this before getting married, but if not, I'll just figure it out as I go)
5 - publish my thesis (this is 2nd or 3rd time this one has made the resolution list - sonofa)

Status on each:

1 - blogged today (can't yet qualify as consistent)
2 - been running (still not in best shape of my life)
3 - get married (found the guy, set the date, but goal not yet achieved)
4 - observed my parents over holidays (learned that you should roll your eyes at each other all the time and I've got it down!)
5 - I looked at my thesis again for a few minutes (I think that's step one to publishing!)

In other news, I'm running a covert operation for my cousin Rachel tonight. I have to go into a Walmart health clinic and fake an illness and assess if I like it there for her magazine. And, I've been worried about it all day. My coworker and I determined that a headache won't work cause they may want to give me a Catscan. Rachel suggested allergies, so I think I'll go with that. Flu shot would have been easiest, but I already got one. Is it bad to get more than one? Hmm... Well, I'll let you know how it goes.

Lastly, someone today suggested that I do stand-up because I'm hilarious. And, I agree!

A very sad story dedicated in loving memory of my delicious jam

2007-02-15T11:48:00.000-08:00

At work in the mornings I like to skip breakfast and then eat something around 10:00 am. I've devised this eating plan, because I realized that whether I eat first thing in the morning or not, I'm hungry at 10. My latest snacking passion is a toasted bagel with butter and Blackberry jam - I loooove it! So, I brought a bag of frozen bagels to work, a tub of butter, and a jar of Blackberry jam. Now, I've been eating a bagel daily, and I had noticed yesterday that the jar of jam was almost gone. I thought to myself, "Self, you better cool it on the jam; a jar a week is way too much!" After that I didn't think much about it.

So this morning, I actually decided to eat at 9:30, which is not that important but I want to stick to the facts - no exaggerating this one. I walked into the kitchen and got one of my frozen bagels and put it in the microwave for 20 seconds so that I could pull the halves apart. I did that, and then put the bagel into the toaster. As I was toasting, my coworker walked in and asked how it was going blah blah, and I answered good blah blah. He walked over to the fridge mid-conversation and pulled out some bread, peanut butter, and ......my Blackberry jam.

I don't remember what happened after that. I know he kept talking, but I can't remember if I said anything or if I just stood there dumb-founded. I'm guessing the latter. I watched in horror as he made himself not one, but two peanut butter and jam sandwiches. I watched the rest of my jam disappear into the dark abyss of bread, and held back a tear as he turned the jar upside down, scraping the bottom to get the last bit out as my little bagel toasted.

The climax of the situation was when he said, "Oh dear, I'm out of jam, and it's delicious Blackberry!" (and that my friends is a direct quote). He walked hurriedly past me as I stood astounded and tossed the empty jar in the trash at the same moment as my bagel popped out of the toaster, slightly burned since I had been too confounded to watch it.

I opened the fridge with a dwindling hope that I would see another jar of Blackberry jam in the fridge, but of course there was none. I took out the butter, and woefully buttered my plain bagel, trying not to imagine what could've been...

What I love most about Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T13:32:00.000-08:00

People who walk around the office asking everyone else if they like Valentine's Day and then explaining why they think it's a stupid greeting card holiday and that they don't think it's worth their time. Strangely, it was worth their time to have the same conversation about Valentine's Day with multiple people in earshot. To save us all time, those people should just email their stance on Valentine's Day to the whole office, so we'll all understand how they feel about it...

All right, all right I was talking about myself. Note to self: next year just email the whole office instead of going door to door (or open space to open space for the cubies).

Anyway, happy Valentine's day if you're silly enough to celebrate it!

Side note: great coverage on conflict diamonds and using child slave labor to get chocolate on Democracy Now! this morning to get you in the spirit!

Ode to Botfly

2007-02-08T17:04:00.000-08:00

Ode to Botfly, you're so neat
When you're planted in squirrel feet
into a spiky larvae you will grow
What that bump is he'll never know
Then one day you'll come of age
with your big black spikes and your color beige
out of the warble you will pop
when you've got a Botfly, the fun won't stop!

http://botfly.ifas.ufl.edu/

Two for two in published letters

2007-02-01T13:03:00.000-08:00

So, my latest pro-immigrant rights letter to the editor has been published by the Rocky Mountain News - that makes it two for two - suhweet!

http://blogs.rockymountainnews.com/denver/letters/2007/01/immigration.html#more

Immigration
Monday, January 29 at 3:14 PM

I felt that the January 23rd article entitled, “Senators: Worker ID program needs fixing,” should be titled, “Senators: Worker ID Program needs nixing!” The article recognizes many of the flaws of the Worker ID program, but ignores the fact that to remedy such a system would include the issuance of redesigned high-tech ID cards — likely including both Social Security cards and visa cards with biometric features — at a cost of at least $4 billion.
And, to what avail? This system would still be fraught with problems.
For instance, this system would require the creation of massive government data bases of our most private information posing a substantial risk to U.S. residents’ personal privacy and civil liberties, which are already dwindling under our current administration.
This system would also put the responsibility of “proving citizenship” on the shoulders of the worker. It isn’t hard to imagine that under this system many eligible workers could be victims of “defensive hiring,” which are employment practices that weed out people perceived as immigrants, or whose ethnicity suggests that they might be in the category of workers for whom verification is time-consuming and costly.
There is already rampant discrimination against “Arab-looking” individuals in our airports. I’d rather not add a system that will promote even more discrimination against people who “look like immigrants.” I suggest we get rid of the current Worker ID program, and start looking for a solution that actually solves the problem and doesn’t forfeit our civil rights and promote even more societal discrimination.

Naomi W. Marshall
Denver

Hello to my loyal readers!... Hello? Anyone reading anymore?

2006-12-22T13:19:00.000-08:00

Ok, so no very good reason for not blogging since September. I'd review what's been going on, but it's not worth it.

So, Booskie (my car) is totally in a drift of snow, and I'm wondering if I'll be able to dig her out before spring at this point. In other news, I got some cleaning done during the blizzard, and even did a small documentary on the blizzard and the idiots trying to drive around yesterday in it when I got bored and found my video camera in my cleaning process.

I'm not feeling very Christmasy despite all the snow. I've been too distracted by my trip last week and then the blizzard to really focus on Christmas time. So, I will be cramming for Christmas this year. That's right people, christmas carols nonstop! I'm sucking on a candy cane and trying to envision sugar plums as we speak! And, in the spirit of Christmas, I'm trying to drop fewer F-bombs as I get my car stuck, dig it out, and remember all the things I was supposed to have done.

Anyway, have a merry christmas, and hopefully I'll have internet at home first thing in the new year, and perhaps I'll blog more, and perhaps I will not - only time will tell...

I gotsta job!

2006-09-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

Well people, at long last I will be gainfully employed, starting in October. Cue choir singing the Hallelujah Chorus, cue bells, cue dove release, cue parents' and boyfriend's sigh of relief.

I accepted the position of Conference Director at Academic Impressions, Inc. (www.academicimpressions.com) on Thursday. I will be developing these academic conference programs and recruiting key note speakers for the conferences, which are focused on mostly administrative groups in higher education. I'll spend half my time researching and putting together programs and about half finding speakers and working with them to make sure they're on board with the material I've put together for them.

Anyway, I'm stoked!

I started my job hunt last November, and I thought I'd review some stats from my almost year of job seeking.

Number of times I cried in the bathroom at DU cause I was never gonna find a job: 1

Number of times I threatened suicide if I didn't find a job soon: 3

Number of times I got mad at Brian when I asked him for career advice and he didn't say what I wanted him to: 5

Number of weeks homeless: 2

Number of times people asked me how the job hunt was going: 5,000,007

Number of times people told me they were sure I'd find something great while their eyes darted about because they figured they were probably lying: 3,000,0000

Number of times I made up the type of job I was looking for rather than tell someone that I had no idea: 5,000,001

Number of friends I watched find a job before me: 8

Number of friends I watched quit their jobs and find another while I was still looking for a first job: 2

Number of friends I watched quit their second job and find another job while I was still looking for the first: 1

Number of phone interviews: 5

Number of on-site interviews: 7

Number of PT jobs I picked up while job hunting: 5

Number of full-time job offers: 1

Number of full-time job offers accepted: 1

I guess it all worked out in the end. Thanks to all my supportive friends and family! - Naomi

And Again!

2006-08-28T09:50:00.000-07:00

People,

Little did I know that my stunningly concentrative face was in the Rocky Mountain News last week too! As you might have guessed, the paparazzi won't leave me alone this week, thanks to all my press exposure last week. My agent has insisted that I name my look that has been in all the papers. Of course Blue Steele and La Tigra were old, so we finally came up with the "White Pensivity"

Rocky Mountain News Article

Naomi in the News!

2006-08-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

So, I began my day yesterday with the usual protest/demonstration. This time for civil liberties with the ACLU. It was really exciting! We marched into this little coutroom like room, and the Public Utilities Commission sat up on a little bench. And we sat there with our goofy liberty crowns and signs.

Our little ACLU lawyer guy who looked like he was about 12 addressed the committee, telling them that the time for an investigation into phone companies violating civil rights was now. It was just like the movies...er kinda. Then Rachel, who I've been working with at the ACLU to develop a kids' curriculum on civil rights, unpacked 1,800 petitions signed by Colordo residents and laid them on the table. At this point, I yelled "Heellls yeeeah!" Okay, I didn't, but that's what I was thinking.

Later in the day, Rachel emailed me and said that she thought my "beautiful face" would be in the Denver Post today. So, this morning, I fervently looked through the paper to be confronted by this picture.

Sonofa! Why do I always end up looking like a zombie or retarded in pictures that get circulated! (Please refer to 6/2/2006 post "Deep Reflection During Director's Speech" and/or if any of you can remember the last time I was in the Post for a Women's/Peace protest - same thing going on.)
Oh well, next protest I'm gonna act like a model, flipping my hair, smiling at all times, putting vaseline on my teeth so I can keep smiling and not get lip stick on my teeth - brilliant!

You can see the full article at http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_4227587#

Dead Bill Dream

2006-07-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

Last night I had a dream. Before I start, let me preface by saying that in the office where I work, I'm the only person here all summer. I have no windows. I just sit here and make up things for me to do by myself. During the school year, Bill is here. He's a professor with an office right across from me. He's a great guy, and the only person I really feel like I can consider a co-worker, cause I never see any other people.

So, last night I dreamed that Donna (the Ex-Communication Director) came to drop some work off for me. She brought with her a bundle of flowers and went in Bill's office and put them on his desk. I looked in and saw lots of bunches of flowers.

I asked Donna why she put flowers in Bill's office, and she said "Oh, didn't you know? Bill died yesterday!" Then, I started crying and a bunch of other people drifted in crying to put flowers in Bill's office, like a funeral. I think Alison came too and was crying, but I wasn't sure if it was for Bill or about something else.

Anyway, I wiped my eyes and got back to work, which is weird cause in my dream I had stuff to do and that's not the reality of the situation.

Later, I looked in Bill's office and he was in there working and the flowers were gone.

I was like, "Bill, I thought you died."

And, he was like, "No, I didn't."

And, I was like, "Oh!"

The end.

The lawnmower [Wo]man

2006-06-28T09:22:00.000-07:00

When I was little I saw the Steven King movie "The Lawnmower Man" It was about a guy who was dumb and mowed lawns until these mad computer geniuses converted him into some sort of crazy computer killer. I'm not sure how I saw that movie. I'm sure it wasn't Mom-approved. In fact, I just googled it to make sure I hadn't just made it up.

Anyway, none of this has to do with the story I'm going to tell you all today.

So, I'm house-sitting out in Highlands Ranch for 2 1/2 weeks total, and they have - you guessed it - a lawn. Now, I house-sat for these people last summer and had lawn-mowing duties, but Brian and I had just started dating and he claimed that he "really liked" mowing the lawn, so I just sat on the deck with a delicious drink while he did it.

So, this year I brought up the lawn-mowing with Brian, and he said he'd do it, but as the grass grew higher and higher, there was still no mowing going on. Finally, Brian said that I'd better just do it - sweet!

Now, I don't understand what the problem is. I mowed the lawn at home in Michigan plenty without too much going wrong, so I would think that this would be a relatively simple task, but no.

Here's how it went. I put the dog, Ruby, in the house where she began barking and high-pitched yipping and didn't stop till the fiasco was over. I pulled the lawnmower out of the garage and looked it over. I tried pulling the handle bar thingy and pulling the cord, and this did absolutely nothing. I then decided to start fiddling with everything. The fiddling included putting the blade all the way down. Now, in Michigan, you had to put the blade up and down depending on if you were mowing or not. But, I guess that's just cause it was a riding mower. I tried holding down the handle and pulling the cord again - nothing.

It was at this point, that one of my old harbor experiences popped into my mind. I had been sent by my Crew Chief, Andy Lappan, who I'd grown up with and was the same age as me, to mow the harbor lawn. I fondly think of Andy as my Arch Nemesis. But, anyway, there I was in the same damn situation trying to figure out how to start the damn lawnmower. I think I starred and fiddled with it for 1/2 an hour before Andy came up to "help." "God, girls are so stupid!" he said, "I can cook and sew, why can't you start a lawnmower?"

"I can't cook or sew either," I replied, and in my head said, "but at least I didn't fail out of community college, you A-hole!" After replaying that dialogue, I returned to the present, where I was even more irate at not being able to start the lawnmower and determined to prove Andy Lappan wrong.

Finally, I found the little choke button thingy and pressed that a few times. then I tried holding the handle down and pulling the cord again and eureka, it started. Now, if you think back to my fiddling paragraph, you'll remember that I put the blade all the way down, which I remembered as the dirt started shooting out while the lawnmower cut below even the roots of the grass. Of course, happy I'd started it, I just started pushing along, thinking, "huh, that grass is really short, I don't think I should be seeing so much dirt." I stopped the lawnmower and pulled the blade back up to its original position. Hmm, hope the Rutenbecks don't mind that I turned their front yard into half a baseball diamond - oh well.

I finished the front yard and headed for the backyard while screaming at Ruby to shut up. As I began the backyard, I noticed that a lot of cut grass was being left on the ground. I kicked the grass bag, and sure enough, it was full - probably full of dirt from the front yard. Anyway, there was a little handle on the bag, which I naturally tried pulling, and of course the bag wouldn't come off. The Andy dialogue came flooding back as I kicked the bag some more and called it a Mo-Fo (but didn't actually abbreviate). This cursing and kicking was only interrupted by interludes of screaming at Ruby to shut up! Finally, after fiddling some more, I got the bag off and finished the mowing, all the while muttering and cursing the dog, the lawn, and Andy Lappan under my breath - stupid Andy Lappan.

After recapping this story for Brian, he apologized and said he'd never let me mow a lawn again.

Mountain Trip cont.

2006-06-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

All right, sorry for the delay. I needed a few days to wallow in misery over my latest job rejections. All done now. Not that I've found a job or anything, but I've returned to the happy, let-life-run-its-course, Naomi state that you all would rather hear from :)

Now, where were we?

Ah, yes, graduation day. Mom and Dad and I went to campus so that I could give them the tour and introduce them to my co-worker peeps. We went to a DU graduation party where we all had the little sandwiches that I'd ordered from catering. Peggy, my supervisor, doesn't think anyone eats the little sandwiches, but she let me order them anyway after I talked about them for a long time.

Graduation was nice. Brian drove in and I made him sit with my parents instead of Alison and Gro. I don't know if he wanted to or not, I just didn't give him any options. During the ceremony, I forgot that if you leave your name card behind when you go up to get your diploma, they just hand you the mic, and then you can give a few shout-outs before they rip it out of your hand. So, they just read my name, but the guy pronounced my middle name right, so I couldn't complain too much.

After graduation, I met up with my parents and Brian. Brian gave me a flower lei, which was nice. I wished he'd given it to me before though, cause then I could have felt just like LC on Laguna Beach at her high school graduation!

The next day was the BBQ/ Brian's b-day. Nothing hugely hilarious happened that day. When my parents and I were preparing the food, there was a lot of arguing over which store to go to. We ended up at Whole Foods. Mike was very disappointed by my Mom's lack of ferocity. She told him to "watch it" a couple of times, but I think that Mike was refraining from calling me a hooker and/or telling me I have a dirty whorish mouth, so there wasn't much for mom to yell at. Mom and Dad also liked little Delicious, and played with her, and by playing with her, I mean Dad kept grabbing her by the head and throwing her to the ground. But, everything turned out nice. My parents met and liked the Nishi's, and I made my delicious sangria, which Ann and Jeff are fans of. Don't worry guys, I have a whole nother jug of cheap red wine for sangria making with your name on it!

Anywho, Sunday was my parents' last full day here. We started it by going to Halima's (my Somali Bantu Refugee student's) house. When I called to let them know they were coming, it went something like this...

Naomi: Hi, this is Naomi. My Mom and Dad are here and we're going to come visit you.

Halima: Naomi? My Mom and my Dad is coming?

Naomi: Yup, my Mom and my Dad are here and we're coming to visit you.

Halima: ok

We haven't really worked on possessives yet, like mine and yours, so Halima kept referring to both Mom and Dad as "my Dad." Anyway, we had a nice time there. They made us a bunch of food, and Mom leaned over and asked me if they'd be insulted if we didn't eat it all. I said no, it was after all like 10:00 am and we had heaping full plates of rice and some sort of meat in front of us. We also were each given approximately four beverages: fanta, coke, chai, and bottles of water. We stayed for about 2 hours and my Dad tried to help one of the kids set up the printer for the computer. After we'd eaten and drank as much as we could, little Malut woke up, who they told me later was afraid of my Mom. Not sure what she did, but I agree, she can be frightening :). Finally, we said good bye to the kids and Halima, who called, "Goodbye my dad!" as we walked out the door.

We then met up with Brian and drove to Boulder. We walked around the little town area and Mom bought a T-shirt that said "Dyslexics of the World Untie!" Of course, it took me like half an hour before I realized that it said "Untie" instead of "Unite" - probably should have bought myself one. We had dinner at a pasta place and then headed out. For the trip finale, we went to Shannon's (Brian and Alison's little sister's) sing and dance performance. They were great!

The next morning I dropped Mom and Dad off at the airport and then headed to work, exhausted and mopey . It was a lot of fun.

Mountain Trip for the Marshalls

2006-06-15T07:43:00.000-07:00

Well, at long last, my parents came, they saw, they quarreled, they left.

My parents arrived around 10:00 am last Wednesday. I, who was worried about getting to the airport too early and having nothing to do, was instead late in picking them up. I'd factored in the time it would take to get luggage, but was foiled as I should have remembered that if my parents can do carry-on, they will, and they did. We stayed pretty close to the itinerary.

Wednesday - we went to the Spicy Pickle for lunch. We then went and dropped off my parents' bags at as Jeff calls it, "my tiny girly apartment." We headed out for CO Springs and Garden of the Gods. I handed my car over to my Dad, since I figured that was easier than having my Mom yell at me as I ran through red lights and such. My Dad was a little confused at the stop light on the on-ramp of the highway. I just told him it was cause people in Denver like to drive like they're in a car race. But, we headed out. It was a nice day at GOG, and I couldn't help but compare it to Ann and Jeff's snowy trip down there.

My Dad kept looking wistfully at Pike's Peak, and making comments about how it would be fun to drive up there, but we could do whatever everyone else wanted to do. Next thing you know Booskie (my car) was chugging up Pike's Peak. I froze my ass off at the top, and my Mom almost passed out from lack of oxygen, but we made it. On the mandatory brake check on the way down, the ranger told us that our brakes were way too hot and to let them cool off for 1/2 hour. Five minutes later Dad decided he just wouldn't use the brakes anymore, and we continued careening down the mountain. It kept raining on and off that afternoon, and Mom, who was sitting behind my Dad, kept yelling every time she got pelted with rain coming in through his window. Of course, upon her screaming, Dad would roll his window down the rest of the way. My Mom would then scream more and throw punches into the back of Dad's seat. I threatened to separate them, and they calmed down.

We got back to Denver and met Brian for Burger/beer night at the Bull and Bush. My Mom behaved herself, and Brian managed to not seem too nervous for their first meeting.

Those of you who are Alison's blog readers already know that since my parents decided to stay with me in my room, I slept with Alison, and as she is still in break up recovery mode, having me in her bed instead of Tim made her cry. But, she must have cried pretty quietly cause I slept right through it! My Mom complained about how hot my room was and that they should have stayed in a hotel (which is of course what I predicted). My Dad rewired my whole room with fans strategically placed for ultimate circulation - brilliant!

Next morning was Estes Park day. We cruised up through Loveland at about 60 on a 75mph road. I think my Dad was trying to let Booskie rest up before her next mountain expedition. The park was nice. We saw elk and some moosen (including a baby) in the woodesen.

My Dad had climbed Long's peak after high school, and explained the proper Long's peak climbing techniques - go early in the morning to avoid thunder storms, and go around the diamond face and up the back. He looked at all of the hiking books on Long's peak in every gift shop. Mom almost bought an Indian flute at a gift shop in Estes, but then decided she'd get an Irish flute in Canada instead. We finally got back to Denver and went for Mexican with Brian and Alison.

Okay, I'm running out of steam, I'll explaaaiin the trip more later. - Naomi

Deep Reflection During Director's Speech

2006-06-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I think I sent this picture to most of the people who look at my blogsite, but thought I'd put it up in case I missed someone... This picture was sent out to all of my co-workers and professors, so I'm especially proud of it!

In a sad attempt to explain this picture, I'd like to say that this was a farewell party for the Director of the School of Communication. One of the speakers started tearing up, so I believe that this is my sad/empathetic/trying to see around someone's huuugee heeead look.

Why didn't anyone tell me I look like a moron when I'm empathizing! - sonofa!

LQTM

2006-05-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

Well, since I post all of my zingers against, I decided in the spirit of making my blog fair and balanced, I'd post Mike's latest expenditure of wit...

From: Mike
To: Naomi

Your blog has been served.

Reply-
From: Naomi
To: Mike

Lol, you're an idiot. - Naomi

Reply -
From: Mike
To: Naomi

LQTM

Reply -
From: Naomi
To: Mike

Did you get that from Brian?

Reply -
From: Mike
To: Naomi

No, everyone says that.

From: Naomi
To: Brian

See, Brian. I told you that you didn't make up the LQTM (Laugh Quietly to Myself) online abbreviation!

From: Mike
To: Naomi
CC: Brian

I really hope at this point you're full of excitement that you think you've proved Brian wrong in that he made that up when in fact if you recall I was in the car on the night of this discussion and did say I had never heard that before.

I hope you forwarded the last message onto Brian to prove your claim cause that would simply make you look foolish.

Get it together STM!

From: Naomi
To: Mike
CC: Brian

You're an ass!

Itinerary Amendment

2006-05-27T08:12:00.000-07:00

Well, while we wait for my mother's backlash against Ann's last comment, I thought I would make a quick amendment to the itinerary.

On Saturday, June 10th - Friend Day
- the BBQ is actually Brian's birthday party BBQ
- it will be at 6:30 pm, since that is after the golf tournament Brian's in that day (keep em crossed that this will also be a golf tournament victory party)

Brian would like me to note that he hates my blogsite and doesn't have time to defend himself on it.

Mom and Dad's Itinerary

2006-05-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

So, my parents are coming to Denver for my graduation, and I've mapped out our agenda, as follows...

Mom and Dad's Parent/Daughter Graduation Trip Agenda

Wednesday, June 7 - CO Springs Day
8:00 am - Mom and Dad arrive
8:30 am - Drive to Naomi's
9:00 am - Naomi apartment tour
9:02 am - Go get breakfast/coffee/snack (tentatively, if hungry)
10:00 am - Head to Colorado Springs
11:00 am - Wander around Garden of the Gods
2:00 pm - Get a late lunch or snack (depending on what we ate before)
3:00 pm - Let Dad drive around / maybe go to Pike's Peak
6:00 pm - Head back to Denver / call Brian to see if he can meet for dinner
7:00 pm - Have Dinner (maybe Bull & Bush - it's hamburger/beer night)
8:00 pm - Go home and hang out
10:00 pm - Bed time

Thursday, June 8 - Estes Park Day
8:00 am - Wake up call and breakfast - raisin bran, oj, and coffee
9:30 am - Head to Estes Park
11:00 am - Arrive at Estes Park - let Dad drive around
1:00 pm - Have lunch - maybe picnic?
2:00 pm - See what Mom wants to do
5:00 pm - Have dinner
6:30 pm - Head back to Denver / call Brian to see what he's doing
8:00 pm - Arrive at home and hang out
10:00 pm - Bed time

Friday, June 9 - Graduation Day
8:00 am - Wake up call
9:00 am - Go out for breakfast
10:30 am - See Denver sights
2:00 pm - Go to Communication Graduation Reception at DU
3:00 pm - Give Mom and Dad a tour of DU
4:00 pm - Naomi assembles for graduation
5:00 pm - Commencement
7:30 pm - Go out for Dinner (maybe Domo)
9:00 pm - Head home and go to bed

Saturday, June 10 - Friend Day
8:00 am - wake up call and breakfast - maybe make omlets at home
10:oo am - free time - maybe walk to Ten Thousand Villages
12:00 pm - Go to the Ashley Family BBQ at the park
2:00 pm - Go to grocery store for BBQ at Brian and Mike's
3:00 pm - Get to Brian's and start making food
6:00 pm - BBQ starts
6:02 pm - Mom yells at Mike for disrupting mother/daughter bonding time
9:00 pm - BBQ Ends / Head home
10:00 pm - Bed time

Sunday, June 11 - Boulder Day
8:00 am - wake up call
9:30 am - Go out to breakfast with Brian
11:00 am - Head to Boulder
11:30 am - Wander around Boulder / hike
1:00 pm - Get a sandwich at the place Brian likes
2:00 pm - Wander around some more
6:00 pm - Get dinner at the Italian place
7:30 pm - Head home
8:00 pm - Hang out
10:00 pm - Bed time / Brian goes home

Monday, June 12 - Mom & Dad Leave
5:00 am - wake up call - breakfast - raisin bran, oj, and coffee
5:30 am - Depart for Airport
6:15 am - Arrive at Airport
6:17 am - teary goodbye
8:00 am - Mom and Dad fly out and Naomi goes to work

Sweeney Todd

2006-05-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

So, here's a trivia question for ya.

What was the name of the Barber of Seville that was also the name of the opera featuring him?

Picture this, you're at bar trivia night, you're in second place with 51 points. It's the last question where you can wager up to 25 points. Your team name is "America's Next Top Models," which you have cleverly shortened to AN-T-M. The last question has been asked, and although the obvious answer is Figaro, Mike insists that he knows this one, because the little girl in the movie "Jersey Girl" had done a play about a barber in the movie. There Mike sits, staring intently at the table, willing the name of the barber to configure in his mind. At long last, he screams, "I've got it!" He furiously scribbles "Sweeney Todd," and wagers 25 points and like lightning runs the piece of paper up to the announcer - so sure that he has won it for AN-T-M.

Although, you are distraught at all your hard trivia work being trashed in an instant, you decide it was all worth it, when Mike, with eyes ablaze, crumples with just one word from the announcer... Figaro. You watch as the horror of what he has just done consumes his face, and realize you can rag on Mike for the rest of your life, just by singing

Sweeeeeeeney Todd, Sweeney Todd, Sweeneey Todd, la la, la la, la la, laaaaaaaaaaa to the tune of Figaro.

Happy Anniversary to me!

2006-04-25T14:44:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't have much to say today, but since I have to sit here while I'm uploading a helluva lot of pictures, I decided I better write something before I got complaints.

So, by the title, you've probably guessed it - it's my one-year anniversary - aww yeeah! And, you guessed it again, this is my new relationship record!

Last year on this day, Brian text messaged me to ask if I wanted to see "Kung Fu Hustle" with him..sniff... Anyway, assuming that he'd have to work late at the golf course, we celebrated on Sunday. I tried to make a reservation at the place where we had our second date (Brian says this was our first date), but low and behold they'd gone out of business.

Then I called to make a reservation at Domo - a country Japanese restaurant that we went to last summer. A long message played on the voicemail. I spaced out and didn't hear most of it until they said to leave a message with the day and time you wanted to make a reservation, so I did. Of course, the part of the message I spaced out for was when they were saying that they were closed on Sunday (when I made the reservation for). So, we showed up and it was closed. Our concilation was Elway's, which was good - but didn't hold any sentimental value. I guess it does now.

Anyway, pictures are done uploading, and I'm tired of writing since I decided to make a title for 136 pictures - I'm writed out!

Peace!

Happy Easter Up the Keister!

2006-04-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter (yesterday)! - Sorry about the title, I wanted to say something more interesting than just Happy Easter and all I came up with that rhymed was keister.

I had a very nice Easter. Brian and I went to church in the morning and that was nice. It started with the choir singing a few songs. When they got to their last song, a bunch of them started ringing bells. Brian pointed out that one guy in the back of the choir was taking his bell ringing to the next level by trying to out ring everyone else. "Yeah," I said, "That's our Pastor - Vern." A few minutes later, Vern had looped around and was walking in the back of the sanctuary (where we were standing). "No seats left?" he asked Brian. Brian said no, and Vern replied, "Well, I guess I can sit up front cause I'm preaching." We couldn't argue with that.

During the day, Brian and I walked around a deserted outdoor mall and then finished watching King Kong, which I didn't like - it was sad.

For dinner, we went to the Nishi's where we had fondue, which was delicious! We ended the night with Brian and Shannon leg wrestling. I believe the final score was (Brian-5, Shannon-1), but I think Shannon was letting Brian win.

Scholastic Recognition (I wish)

2006-04-11T10:34:00.000-07:00

It is the dream of every aspiring academic to go to a conference in their field and be recognized.

So, you can imagine my thrill when this actually happened to me! A little background: This weekend I went to the Rocky Mountain Communication Association conference in Greeley, CO to present a paper on Multicultural Picture Books. The conference was the morning after Brian's sister's rehearsal dinner, where there was much drinking and merriment, including the Oompa Loompa dance (danced by me and Shannon (Brian's 13 year old sister) to everything but the Oompa Loompa song). Anyway, needless to say, all the merriment transformed into a massive headache for my conference. But, I digress!

As I wandered around the conference, trying to figure out if I wanted to hear the presentation on "Rhetorical Criticism" or the one on "Gender use of expletives" - that one was hilarious by the way - certainly didn't expect to hear the work "Fuck" repeatedly at 8:30 in the morning. It sure livened it up! Ah! Digression again!

Okay, so I was wandering around when one woman looked at me with recognition, and said "Hey, I know you!" For a flashing moment, I thought "Wow! My research is so compelling; everyone is starting to know who I am - I will surely be offered a prestigious job in research soon!" As my eyes lit up, the woman said "Yeah! I can't believe it! You're Karaoke Girl!" As I laughed nervously, she yelled across the room, "Hey Sasha, I was right, it's Karaoke Girl!" As all of the academics looked over to see "Karaoke Girl," who would later be discussing white privilege issues in kids' books with them, I tried to look around too (pretending that I had no idea who Karaoke Girl was). Apparently, these two Communication Grad students had been frequenting Ogden St. South as had I and their group had decided I should be dubbed - "Karaoke Girl."

So, there you have it: my first recognition at a conference. We'll see which grows faster, word of my research or my "Karaoke Girl" title. Unfortunately, I think it will be the latter.

I'm all alone...

2006-03-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

in the office today. So, don't worry it's not as hopeless as it sounds. It' very odd. Oh wait, it's finals week, I forgot. And no, I wasn't trying to set you up, I just figure things out when I start blogging... why no one's here? should I wear white pants in winter? what is my purpose in life? I think I need to blog a lot longer before the answer to that last one epiphanizes. New word - hurray!

Well, now that I have your attention with my introductory random stream of consciousness. I'd like to announce that we may have some new blogging eyes visiting the "Naomi - I know you know me" site. Apparently, my mother has given my blogsite address to many of my elementary and high school teachers. My mother of course did this after I said "Don't handout the blogsite address all around! I don't want to have to censor it!" Being my mother, she chose to do the opposite of my request. I always forget that she likes to do opposite. But, after thinking about it, I decided that that would be okay, since my blog readers already include my parents and I don't think there is anything on here that shouldn't be read by my teachers, especially since my mom tells everyone everything anyway, so I'm sure my whole home community is kept well-informed of my life (probably more than they like). I thought I would just give fair warning to those who like to blog in the comment section of my blog.

So, anyway, welcome to my wonderful teachers, if in fact you do decide to visit my blog.

Anyway, funniest story of the week happened last Friday when Brian and I decided to stop at the Ogden for a little karaoke. I've been on this kick where I only want to sing songs I've never sang before, which of course has resulted in some hits and some terrible mistakes. So, on Friday, I noticed that Scooter (the karaoke DJ) had added some new songs to his karaoke book (many of which were from Musicals). You can imagine my excitement. I, of course, feverishly scribbled down "All That Jazz" from Chicago on a piece of paper and had Brian run it up to Scooter.

I sat there thinking how great this song was going to be. I was going to ham it up. These barflies were going experience Broadway at the Ogden St. South! They would never be the same. At long last, Scooter called my stage name: Naomi W. Marshall, and I walked to the front in anticipation.

I'm not sure when exactly I realized that I had made a horrible error, but it must have been sometime in the 5 minute overture when everyone starred at me, wondering what the hell I was doing while I just stood there in panic. I realize now, that anytime you see the word "overture" on a karaoke screen, you should just bolt for the nearest exit. The song went very slowly and of course had a long interlude. I think that it must have been strangely entertaining for some, because while I stood there praying for everyone to ignore me and to just return to their conversations and drinks, everyone just seemed to stare at me dumbfounded. I believe at one point, I stopped singing and apologized to everyone in the bar for doing this.

At long last, at another pause in the song, I turned to Scooter and asked him to just put me out of my misery, which he did. With my Broadway dream in a shambles, I walked back to my table with everyone still looking confused. Brian then got up and sang "One Night in Bangkok," and was a hit and luckily took everyone's mind off my terrible flop.

I'm not sure why I always want to sing Musicals at karaoke, but I can't help myself. You'd think you could sing "Life is a Cabaret" in a bar, but you just can't and have it work. So, at the end of the night after longingly looking over the song list from Rent in the book, I resolved to stick to Mariah Carey - now, those are hits!

V for Vendetta

2006-03-09T09:10:00.000-08:00

Good call, Jeff.

Yesterday as I hastily picked a title for my blog, I was thinking of the new movie coming out where Natalie Portman shaves her head, thinking it was called "The Libertine," and thinking what an appropriate title it was for my blog. Very proud of myself, I went home and was watching TV and the preview for "The Libertine" came on with Johnny Depp. Immediately, I realized my error. Of course the movie, I was thinking of was "V for Vendetta," but that doesn't work with my haircut story anyway. I'm surprised that Mike didn't figure it out, being the self-proclaimed movie god he is.

Speaking of movie expertise, and since we're just past Ocars, I thought I'd do a review of the latest movies I've seen. I'm sure this will bear a great amount of influence on whether or not you see these movies :)

King Arthur (I know it's old, but I just saw it) - Sucked it

Crash - Good

Brokeback Mountain - Great!

Corpse Bride - Sorta sucked it

The Exorcism of Emily Rose - Good

Saw II - Good

Pie - Sucked it

Rent - Pretty good, but the song about rent was really stupid

History of Violence - sucked it

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Great!

That's all I can remember for now.

The Libertine

2006-03-08T10:34:00.000-08:00

Well, apparently my blog yesterday wasn't controversial enough for Mike to make a comment. You can imagine his disappointment when my blog didn't attack him. I'll try not to disappoint him in the future.

Anyway, yesterday I cut my hair the shortest I've had it since I was 5. In fact I think this is the haircut I had when I was five. It is now the same length as Brian's, but I flip mine out and the back is a little longer I think. Anyway, I went to Mike and Brian's house sporting my new do. Brian said he thought it was cute, which was an upgrade from last time's no comment. Mike, of course, said I looked like a (and used a derogatory term for a lesbian). Mom, be sure to add this to your list of reasons to lay the smack down on Mike.

Anyway, I feel like cutting my hair this short makes me feel more independent, more liberated. I told my supervisor that I was defying societal hair restraints. I made the mistake of telling Brian that my hair made me feel independent and now everytime he looks at me he tells me how independent I look.

As we discussed hair, I told my supervisor, Peggy, that I would shave my head if it was for a good cause, so now she is on a quest to find a cause for me to shave my head. Hopefully, she doesn't find any...

Mr. Cuddles and Sucka

2006-03-07T10:36:00.000-08:00

What up?

So, Mike requested that I blog again, so that he would have an opportunity to leave long Naomi-bashing comments. So, not wanting to disappoint, here we go.

Last week Mike and Brian got a new addition to their family - Mr. Cuddles. Mr. Cuddles is a rather large Piranha. Mike and Brian spent a whole day getting Mr. Cuddles and then standing in front of the tank watching him and waiting for him to eat the gold fish that they had immediately dumped in his tank. The day after Mr. Cuddles moved in, there was a tragedy in the house. Sucka, Mike and Brian's Sucker fish committed suicide, as he was no longer able to stand the lack of attention he was getting with Mr. Cuddles there. Mike and Brian found Sucka on the carpet the next morning. RIP Sucka.

Much to Brian and Mike's dismay, Mr. Cuddles doesn't seem to want to eat when people are watching. So, naturally, they've decided to starve him for a week or so and then feed him so that he eats immediately in front of him. I though that was very nice.

Anyway, in my life, the Winter term is coming to an end, so I'll be a little less busy. I'm not teaching my ESL class for Focus Points anymore, which is a relief, but I think I will be teaching Effective Business Writing for University College this Spring. That should be interesting, as I'll be drawing on my experiences at Marshall and Associates for much of it. With a little less going on, I'll hopefully be able to follow through on my job applications, instead of just sending my cover letters and resumes into the application abyss. - Wish me luck!

In other news, (and yes I do consider my life events news) I think I'm going to be presenting my thesis research at the Rocky Mountain Communication Association Conference. Apparently the professor heading up the conference scheduling was very impressed by my paper submittal, so that's exciting for me.

The end of last week and this weekend were the School of Communication Summit, which I helped to organize and run and the IIC 10-year anniversary events, which I headed up. I'm sooo happy that it's over and everything managed to work out all right. I saw my thesis advisor, who came back from New Mexico University to attend the events and she kept urging me to apply for PhD programs. Apparently, an IIC student applied to the doctoral program and UNM and was one of seven students out of 70 applications offered a full ride to the program, with Mary Jane's (my advisor's) recommendation. So, I started thinking about applying - they have a really great Intercultural Communication program at UNM. Anyway, we'll see. If I'm still working random jobs this Fall, I think I will apply to PhD programs.

All righty, enough random thoughts for today. - peace out

Should I not wear white pants in February?

2006-02-07T09:39:00.000-08:00

Special Olympics, eh? Hmm, don't worry Mike, you'll get yours when my Mom comes to town. - chirp chirp (with the little birdy feathers).

Anyway, the topic of today's blog, you guessed it! - white pants in Winter yay or nay?

I got a new light purple sweater yesterday from Ann Taylor that was like 60% off - suhweet! Anyway, I thought to myself, "Self, that sweater would look cute with your white pants that you haven't worn for a long time cause it's winter!" And I decided to go ahead and wear them today. I asked Brian what he thought in many different forms of questions to make sure he wasn't harboring his true feelings, e.g., "Do you like these white pants?" "Should I wear the white pants or jeans?" and "If someone (not me) was wearing white pants, what would you think about that?" But despite my tricky play of words, Brian's answers stayed constant. But, then I thought, I'm not sure that Brian's sense of women's fashion meets my standard. So, I then thought to myself, "Self, why not poll the very fashion-savvy readers of your blog?" So, let me know what you think.

In other news, the Bachelor is down to 3 perspective life partners, and I don't think any of them are particularly wonderful. I like Sara the school teacher, but I don't think she's right for Travis, the Bachelor, who I decided doesn't have a very good sense of humor.

Keeps it real! - Naomi

Blogging on my Blog

2006-02-02T10:05:00.000-08:00

Mike, you're starting to use my blog to state personal thoughts. Be advised that all comment conversation on the blogsite should revolve around me. ;)

Anyway, back to me, so today I had a phone interview for a position at JVA Consulting - a nonprofit consulting firm that supports other nonprofits. Anyway, I ended up doing the phone interview with little warning. I grabbed a notebook and pen and ran out of my office to find some quiet place to sit. My "office" is actually just a desk in the middle of a room with other offices off of it, and students constantly walking in and asking me where the printer is. Of course the place I chose instead was not quiet. There were undergrads running around, sitting next to me, and yak'n it up while I tried to focus on the interview. Yeah, I'm dumb, but they wanted to have the phone interviews this week, and I couldn't figure out when would be better. Anyway, mistake #1. Of course, being the coffee addict I am, by the time I had the inteview, I'd had plenty of Joe and coupled with the adrenaline in my body, I was shaking seizure-style. I like to think that my voice wasn't shaking, but perhaps that's wishful thinking.

The interview started off, by the interviewer (also named Naomi) asking me if I could commit to a year (it's a full-time paid internship) and if I had any conflicts in March. I said that I could commit and had no conflicts in March, which is sorta true. My stats class actually ends on March 14th and I really want to finish it, but figure worst-case scenario, i'd be willing to drop it. I'm hoping that if I'm offered the position, I'll be able to finagle it, which again might be wishful thinking.

Anyway, enough about that. I'll be mad at myself if I don't get a face to face interview; I should've managed this one better. Aww well.

Ann, I deleted my text messages, so now you should be able to send more. I don't know why they bounced and the last one that said they were bouncing came through.

On another note, I hope Heath Ledger wins the Ocar for Best Actor for Brokeback Mountain, for Mike's sake.

I'll leave it there for now, and open up the blog for ridiculing comments and Mike's personal thoughts :) - Nomes

Buh-ring it!

2006-01-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

All right, there's a lot of smack-talking going on in the comments of my blog. I'm gonna have to start censoring. I would like to thank you all for affirming that I am not in the least bit intriguing. Although apparently Brian had a dream last night that I was convicted of a crime in Germany and sentenced to two years, but I wouldn't tell him what I'd done. He figured I'd been dealing drugs or was a prostitute - naturally. I decided he had that dream to make me feel better about not being intriguing in anyway.

In the dream, I told him that if we stayed together until I got out of prison, then I'd tell him. He apparently came and visited me two times while i was in the slammer - Aaww!

In other news, I googled myself and I found sites on me that included DMS, King County Landsat Metadata, African Americans and Entrepreneurship GMAC research paper, and Michigan Tech track reports. No one could ever link my past together if they googled me, probably cause I'm so intriguing like that!

A couple weeks ago Mike wanted to go see Brokeback Mountain, because he was "curious." So, he, his friend, Brian, and I all went. It was really good! I hope it wins the Oscar. I love Heath Ledger including when he's playing a gay cowboy. The most memorable part of the movie was at the most emotional point when Heath Ledger said to his gay cowboy lover, "I wish I could quit you!" and Brian burst into laughter, while I wiped my tears away. Anyway, go see it.

Peace out!
and Mike, roof roof, with the little puppy ears.

Lots-O-jobs

2006-01-23T09:58:00.000-08:00

Hello - to those of you who ever look at my blog anymore.

I probably wouldn't considering how infrequently I say anything anymore!

Anyway, I thought I would just say what I'm up to. I realized today that with all the jobs I have at DU now that I have a student status, staff status, and faculty status, which I think is funny.

But yeah, I'm still working halftime as the DMS Program Assistant, I began this term as an adjunct instructor for the English Language Center, which consists of me teaching English to beginning ESL students for 4 hours on Saturday morning. This means that if I go to church on Sunday there are no days to sleep in, which sucks it! Of course, I skipped church yesterday and slept till 10:00 and then went and got delicious Krispy Kreme doughnuts and coffee for me, Brian, and Mike. Mike called me a hooker for not remembering to get sugar in his coffee. I told Brian to defend my honor, but he didn't. So now my honor is tarnished!

Anyway, back to my jobs. So, I also have a Research Assistantship for the Office of Sponsored Programs. So far I've just been doing copying and menial tasks for it but I think that I may start doing some actual research for it shortly.

This week, I'm starting my other ESL class for Focus Points Family Resource Center on Tuesday and Thursday evenings. I'm also taking Statistics and Spanish this term. So, that's four jobs and two classes. When I add up the hours that I'm working it isn't too bad, but all the running around to everything is annoying.

Anyway, the job quest is still on. I applied for a full-time internship for a nonprofit consulting firm last week and I think that would be a great next step for me, so keep em crossed! I keep thinking if I get a nice 8 - 5 job things will settle down a bit, but of course knowing me I'll keep teaching my Saturday class and finish my research assistantship and just be more busy.

Everything I'm doing is fun, so I think that makes it harder for me to quit anything when I take on more stuff. That and I have a great talent to finding part-time work. Too bad I can't convert that talent into finding full-time work.

Anyway, enough rambling.

I think it's weird that people post comments to my blog and say they found it "intriguing." I don't think that's how I would describe it. I kinda don't think they read it and it's just a tactic to get me to look at their site. Of course their sites always sound boring, not like the Park Ranger that emailed Jeff and found his site intriguing - that guy's site was hilarious!

Peace out! - David the NOME

The Christmas Bunnies

2005-12-20T09:19:00.000-08:00

Well, I thought about telling you all about the housesitting from hell that I did this week, in which I spent 2 nights sleeping in a house that was 47 degrees, but then I thought to myself, "Self, it's Christmas! Why don't you tell a lovely Christmastime story!"

So nestle in kiddies, for a magical tale, entitled "The Christmas Bunnies"

Twas a month or so after Christmas, when all through "the M"
There came a great snow that none would condemn (well okay maybe a few)
One such soul, overjoyed by the snow
Was the Marshall family dog - Pokie, as you may know
Pokie loved to chase bunnies but found it quite tough
for as fast as she ran, she was not quick enough
But with a blizzard a brewin and the snow gettin deep
Pokie could catchem and killem before they made a peep (although I'm not sure rabbits peep)
Lois Marshall looked out her window at the great massacre
and yelled to her husband, Tom, to remedy the stir
"Take these bunny carcasses out to the middle of the lake
for the hawks, so our children won't see them for heaven's sake!"
But, Tom thought to himself "It's a long ways out there.
I'll put them on the kids' tree fort and no one will care!"
But then the next morning Naomi and Christine started out
to play in the snow, cause that's what snowin's about!
Through the deep snow to their tree fort they ran
and as they approached, Naomi thought up a plan
"The snow up on top of our fort would be fun
I can play in the snow and sit in the sun!"
So, up there she went, not knowing her fate
or about the dead bunnies, Tom had left there as bate
She frolicked about in the great pristine snow
While Christine played herself in the tree fort below
When all of a sudden Naomi felt something strange
No, this wasn't snow, it was some sort of mange!
Before she had time to figure out what it was
Out popped a bloody bunny, all gory with fuzz
She screamed bloody murder and scrambled about
and as she did this, more dead bunnies jumped out!
These bunnies were crazy and back from the dead
but Naomi tossed them off as they went for her head.
As Christine sat in the fort making cakes out of snow
She heard the commotion, but still didn't know
What in the heck could be brutally attacking her sister
but as she looked out, a falling rabbit just missed her
Christine started hollering and making a fuss
as the gored little bunnies fell she just had to cuss!
Lois Marshall ran to the door to see what was the matter
and she saw the rabbits and Naomi screaming like a mad hatter
She yelled at her husband, "Tom, what is this vice?
I told you to take those dead rabbits out on the ice.
Tom thought, "Sonofa! My plan has been foiled!"
As his daughters sat terrified, stunned, and recoiled
Tom and Lois consoled their children and then put them in their beds
where visions of zombie bunnies danced in their heads
The moral of this story is one you might know
If you ever visit the Marshall's, don't dig in the snow!

Merry Christmas!

"Real World"

2005-12-16T09:56:00.000-08:00

Okay a little ranting treat for you all today...

I am sick and tired of hearing people refer to their job/life as being in the "real world," in the form of "just wait till you're in the 'real world,' then you don't get any time off for Christmas," or "Oh, I'm so tired, just wait till you're in the 'real world' then you'll know what I mean."

Do people who use this term realize how offensive it is? It completely invalidates a person's life and work.

I'm offended by the "real world" reference on many levels, which I will of course layout below...

A. People assume that if you have a "student status," you're not working, when in actuality most of the graduate students I know tend to be working harder than those in the "real world" with both school and work. I worked 20-50 hours a week while I was in school and writing my thesis, not including school work as a full-time student and unpaid volunteering.

B. I happen to be very involved in my community, where as most of the people I talk to in the "real world," aren't. If you don't know what's going on around you, are you in the "real world?"

C. I was a Technical Writer for two years before I went back to school, and I found that world a little less real than I find my world now that I've invested in myself and my education.

D. I'm a life learner, and plan on returning to school throughout my life and to be a University Professor, so I'm working on what I want to do.

Don't berate academics just because their path may be different than yours. Some of us are doing what we're doing to make this world a better place, including me.

Well, time for me to drift home on a cloud through the twirly swirly gum drop forest to my happy cotton candy home, where I will dance about and call all my friends who, like me, are not in "the real world," to chat about the fun of living paycheck to paycheck. ;)

Happy Holidays!
Naomi
"Don't get mad, just explaaaain it!"

Happy Thanksgiving!

2005-11-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

Thanks Laura and Alison for helping my de-wack my blog :)

So, I had a job interview yesterday, and I think it went pretty well, but now I feel really anxious. I'm not even sure if it's the right job for me, but not knowing if I'll get it or not is driving me nuts. I couldn't sleep last night and now I feel like a zombie.

On a lighter note, I don't have to work tomorrow, so I get a 5-day weekend! I'm going to spend Thanksgiving with the Nishis at their cabin in the mountains. It's so beautiful up there - I love it. I think I should read a whole book while I'm there, but I'm not sure what to read. I haven't read the 5th Harry Potter book yet, but I feel bad when the majority of my leisure reading is spent on Harry Potter books - even though they're great. I finished Memoirs of a Geisha about a month ago. It's my sister's favorite book, and I thought it was really good. My Gramma Weidner before she died kept telling me to read The Secret Life of Bees. She really loved that book, so maybe I'll go get that one and I'll also bring along the Arundhati Roy book on war that I've been meaning to read. Then I'll have a selection.

Sweet! My blog is a decision-making tool for me! It would be really nice if I could find out about that job before Thanksgiving, but hopefully my anxiousness was just temporary and I'll chill out today.

Anyway, take it easy and Happy Thanksgiving!

Why is my blog being wack?

2005-11-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

I don't understand why all my postings are down here now, and I don't have time to figure it out! Sonofablog!

Job Interview!

2005-11-17T09:25:00.000-08:00

So, I have a job interview on Monday for the Manager of MBA Recruitment! I'm really excited. The more I think about it, I think that this job might be a pretty good fit. The nice thing is that I'm not desperate for the job, so it'll be an interview where I'm trying to find if the job is a good fit for me while they figure out if I'm a good fit for it. but I would love to work full-time at DU. And as MBA programs have the lowest rates of minority and women enrollment, my research for GMAC and the IIC degree would be used in planning outreach and recruitment for these groups.

In other news, last night Brian and I made dinner for Alison and Kate. Brian wanted to make meatballs, so I told him he could make those, and I'd make the spaghetti with veggie sauce. When we went to the store later, Brian said he was getting the Boca fake-meat crumbles to make meatballs. I thought that was sweet; I hadn't expected him to do that. It made up for my finding McDonald's wrappers in his car!

The Minority Report

2005-11-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

Howder-do!

I know hilarious things have been happening in my life, but I can't think of any of them right now - sonofa! this weekend we're going to go watch Michigan Tech play Colorado College in Hockey. I wonder if CC is any good? I think they are. I wonder if Tech beat them last year? I bet they did. I wonder why I don't go look at stats and figure out the answer to these lingering questions. Cause I don't care that much.

Anyway, latest news with me is I'm now job hunting. I applied for the position of MBA Recruitment Manager for the Business school here at DU. I think it'd be fun, although not exactly what I had in mind. I figured I'd just start applying to anything I look qualified for/looks interesting.

My Minority report papers are out on the web. go to link to see them. I'm a coauthor of the "Blacks/African Americans and Entrepreneurship" paper and acknowledged in the "What Leads to Minority Enrollment..."

I was excited to see them. My little publications list is getting longer, although the topic areas are all over including an article I wrote for the Washington State Technology Transfer on ArcIMS when I was at Marshall. At least the docs are getting more interesting - I think...

Other news, I've started listening to only Christmas music to get myself in the holiday spirit and so I can get through all the Christmas cds I own before Christmas is over. I wake up to John Denver and the Muppets Christmas cd every morning and listen to my Christmas mix on the way to and from work. My only exception to my constant carols is when I'm in Brian's car, since he has yet to subscribe to my Christmas music extravaganza. Don't worry, I'll bring him over to the red & green side!

I'm thinking I'll send out a Christmas letter and cards this year. I've had my Christmas cards for about 3 years now - I think it's time they left my possession. I also bought some red lipstick, because a lady on the radio said it was the number one holiday accessory every woman should have. Of course, I think it was a Revlon commercial. Brian doesn't like my new blood-red lipstick and I can't imagine why - it's nice! I got two compliments on it!

Anyway, happy holidayish times! - Naomi

Pre-Halloween Trick or Treating and Delicious Stew!

2005-11-04T18:33:00.000-08:00

This last Sunday, I went over to my Somali Bantu family's house to carve pumpkins for Halloween. I brought them two bags of candy along with two pumpkins. They promptly gave a Kit Kat to the 6-month year old, Malut (my Godson). After he finished that, they gave him a carmel apple sucker.

After the pumpkin-carving extravaganza, the kids decided they were going Trick or Treating. I tried to tell them that Halloween was the next day, but they wouldn't hear it. We made make-shift costumes out of construction paper and using my Crayola markers. Habiba was a cat and I was a rabbit. Every house we went to, the people looked at us like we were crazy, while I just laughed nervously. I think we hit 5 doors, before the kids gave up. It was pretty hilarious.

Wednesday I made some delicious lentil stew! I was so proud of myself. I doubled the batch and everyone that had some unanimously agreed...delicious!

And that's my latest!

Happy happy happy happy happy anniversary

2005-10-25T10:28:00.000-07:00

So, today is a momentous occasion. I have been seeing the guy I'm seeing for 6 months. Now, I know that some of you are saying "Pishaw! 6 months is nothing!" (if any of you actually ever say "pishaw" - I'm not sure of the spelling) and I don't think the guy I'm seeing thinks it's a big deal, having been with his last girlfriend for 5.5 years.

However, the significance here, is that 6 months is my new record for dating someone! To commemorate this, I've written a short poem to show my esteem.

Ode to Brian

Ode to Brian with hair of black
who along with me loves a delicious snack
Whenst first we met on an extreme free style walk
As you caught some mad air, my heart did stop
We've come 6 months amidst all the bustle
We've moved on to football from Kung Fu Hustle
Never did I think I'd find any guy who
likes to sing karaoke with me like you do...

tear

Thesis Defended

2005-10-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Howder-do,

Well, for those of you who were on the edge of your seats to find out how my thesis defense went, sorry that I took over a week to get back. I PASSED with no revisions, which is of course as good as I could have possible done. It was hella-sweet, I must say. And I had my work review last week and scored as high as I could, even though I'm 15 to 20 minutes late for work everyday... heh! They have the highest of standards here at DMS ;)

You got served! (My thesis defense)

2005-10-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

Welp,
Tomorrow is the big day when I will defend my honor and my thesis before the committee. I have polished my Hatori Hanzo sword and prepared bullet points and am ready to BRING IT!

My advisor has assured me that it'll go much more smoothly than the proposal defense and one of the committee members emailed and said she was sure it would go very well. But, I will not fall for these clever tactics that my sneaky committee has devised to disarm me! They're gettin' served!

A Kid at Heart and When Drinking

2005-10-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday our old urban tribe (Sunday Night Porn Club) went out to dinner at Pasquinis. We ordered a bottle of wine to share. The server came back a minute later. He looked right at me and said I need to check your ID. Alison and Tim started getting their's out, but the server didn't even look at them. "Just mine?" I asked. "Yup!" he replied. It was hilarious! Brian is 2 years younger than me and Alison gets mistaken as her 13 year old sister's twin, but apparently I was the only one who looked like Icould be under 21.

Anyway, when the server came back with the wine, he felt bad that he had singled me out so he let me taste the wine. Of course, I then had to take my gum out of my mouth and hold it on my finger while everyone watched and Alison laughed hysterically.

Earlier last week, a freshman skate boarder hit on me and then a Starbucks Barista who looked about 17. Sup wid dat? Perhaps I need to transition my wardrobe to a more mature look or cut out my hella hip vernacular or stop putting my gum behind my ear when I'm drinking wine...

Ranters Anonymous - Okay, so everyone knows it's me...

2005-10-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I went with Brian to his friend (and really my friend too) Mike's to watch Monday night football and hockey. No sooner had the game begun when Mike and I got into a discussion/debate about whether or not it's useful for marginalized groups to protest and insist on acknowledgment, e.g., Black History month, and Hispanic month, etc. Naturally I was on the side of protesting and acknowledging, but Mike thought that when groups insisted on special treatment, it only furthered separation. He thought the imbalance of power between whites and people of color would "work itself out," and of course, I didn't think it would, because what would be the incentive for people in power to share it if no one was insisting that they do? Anyway, this went on and at some point, I thought, how did I get into this. Exactly what in the football game lent itself to a debate with Mike about race, power, and privilege. The whole thing finally ended and Mike went out to smoke a cigarette (yup, driving people to substances I am).

Then, on the way home, somehow Brian and I got into an argument about different listening techniques. I don't know how it began, but I'm sure I started it and kept fueling it until it was argumentative.

I began thinking about all these arguments I got into and when I did. At Christmas dinner I argued with my mother about religious vs. Secular volunteer groups, in Washington D.C., I argued with Kevin over every war memorial we saw and what voices were silenced by it. I believe there's an entry below that you can reference from that trip.

I had thought that these arguments were initiated by both myself and the other party, but now, I've changed my mind - it's just me. It's strange, but if any issues that I care about are even slightly hinted at, I start expressing my thoughts on them and going back and forth with the nearest person and begin to think that the fate of the world is hinging on my voicing this very important issue. It gets ridiculous! But I do have to say that these things I argue, I'm not arguing for argument sake. I truly believe in the issue at hand.

Anyway, my action steps, before no one wants to talk to me anymore, are to start paying closer attention to what's happening when I get worked up and to firstly, gage if it's an appropriate time to get into it, be careful that I'm listening to the other person (even though I don't think the main problem is me not hearing the other person) and being empathetic and cooling the critical voice in my head.

You're probably now glad that I haven't been keeping up with my blog entries if this is the insanity I'm going to talk about. It's at least kinda funny, but maybe more pathetic...

Are you the next American Idol? - No Sucka!!!

2005-09-15T09:08:00.000-07:00

So, as many of you have heard, in a very silly moment of my life, I decided to spend my entire Sunday sitting at Invesco stadium, waiting for my American Idol audition.

The morning began promptly at 4:00 am, when I deliriously stumbled out of bed, showered, did my hair and makeup and put on my sparkly green heeled sandals, grabbed my coffee, and headed to the stadium to stand in line for about 2 hours.

I got a little excited as the line started moving, but then realized we were not going inside to sit down, but were being corralled for some publicity shots. In the corral, I ran into a fellow karaoke buddy - Karaoke Matt. We had to shout "Welcome to Denver!" and "Welcome to the Mile High City!" and then cheer over and over and over again. My fellow-auditioners and I started using spirit fingers and jazz hands near the end. So, if you see spirit fingers on TV, it's us. Of course, Karaoke Matt kept flicking off the camera and making monkey sounds, so I'm sure that you won't see our section at all!

After an hour or so of that, we were herded into the stadium. We then had more publicity shots, where we all had to sing "Aint no mountain high enough" and wave our hands in the air. When were all hoarse, we all sat down and the producer wished us good luck and told us not to kill ourselves if we got cut. I made a mental note of this, and decided he was right and I would throw away the the bottle sleeping pills I had stowed in my purse for if I didn't make it.

So, then I sat and waited and waited. I went to go get some concessions after awhile and everywhere I went there was an extremely long line and people singing at the top of their lungs. I reconsidered my sleeping pills.

As I watched the auditions, I realized that almost everyone was being sent home. There were people with such powerful voices, I could hear them across the stadium, and they were on, but even they were sent packing. So, I accepted that this day would also end in my defeat, but I had to go through the total American Idol experience, so I stuck it out.

At long last, they took the last section down to the field for our auditions. I handed them my ticket that I had wanted to keep for memorabilia purposes and the form that I had to sign, saying that Fox now owned my whole being.

Now, one would think that I would have then at least gotten to meet Paula, Simon, and Randy, but nah ah. That's TV American Idol, not behind the scenes, where you go through multiple auditions before even getting the faux-first audition with the celebs.

They marched us down to one of 14 tents and four of us stood shoulder to shoulder in front of 2 or 3 judges. One by one, we stepped forward and sang a song until they cut us off (about 4 lines or so). Then we all returned to our little piece of tape. The judges all looked pretty bored, but when I sang they paid attention and actually smiled, so I felt good about that.

The guy next to me was goofy looking and sang a very strange song, so I thought for sure, he'd be in, but then they had him sing another piece, and he forgot the words - sonofa!

The woman in the middle without much hesitation thanked us for coming, but said we weren't at the American Idol level. Nobody in my group looked too distraught, and I was busy thinking about the nap I was going to take...

So, that's about it. I'm afraid I am not the next American Idol :( If you need me, I'll be at Ogden St. South where people appreciate me, because they're drunk!

Feng Shui

2005-09-06T12:39:00.000-07:00

Hi there!

I'm back, although I don't know for how long.... I turned in the first copy of my thesis to my advisor last week, so now I'm now on summer vacation until I get the thesis back from her, which could happen at any moment, so it's a threatening vacation.

So, with my new found freedom I decided to put away all the crap in my room and hang up my pictures. I pondered how I should decorate my room for quite awhile, and decided that simple, minimal, and peaceful would be my theme - feng shui, if you will.

As I started hanging things and moving things and taking a considerable number of things out to the garage for "storage," I began to notice the walls filling up and the floor space getting smaller and smaller. So, I was like "Crap!" This is the opposite of feng shui! I have every color scheme in the rainbow going on here, and crap all over the place. And despite my best efforts to have my room look sophisticated instead of like a college dorm room - even though the stuff I have is the same stuff I had in college, I had failed.

I began to get frustrated and considered throwing away all of my possessions and just sleeping on a grass mat. But then I thought to my self, "Self, why are you trying to be the opposite of what you are? The river cannot be the rock, nor the eagle the gazelle!" (I was still in my feng shui mindset when I said this to myself). And then I realized, my life is anti-feng shui. I am forever running around taking on too many tasks, making new friends, whose pictures I then have to hang on my blank, would-be-feng-shui-friendly walls.

So, I have now embraced my anti-feng shuity, as did my mother and grandmother before me and my room looks like a bag of skittles threw up all over it, which is more like me.

And yes, if you're wondering I haven't eaten yet today and am slightly delirious!

N-out

Dang!

2005-08-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I made a sexist comment. Yes, me - committed feminist, lifelong opponent of PETA and Pamela Anderson - but it was against guys, so not as bad, since I've never committed to being a masculinist.

I was talking on the phone with Brian who is up at a Father/son golfing extravaganza and he was telling me about the different tournament rules for the different days and I commented on the fact that I was surprised that they had things so well organized, since it seems like a guys getaway weekend wouldn't be. Looking back, I'm actually surprised I said that, considering who my father is... 6am leave for skiing trip, 8am arrive just in time to be the first skiers out, 11:30 am everyone meets for the picnic lunch we packed the night before, 12:15 return to skiing, 5 pm leave for home, etc.

So, after making the comment, Brian in overcompensating retribution said, "Well, I'm surprised that girls ever get anywhere cause they have no sense of direction and they're always talking so much, I don't know how they get out the door!" Then I said, "Whatever, you talk way more than I do!" (another false comment from me), and then to prove me wrong Brian tried to not talk for the rest of the phone conversation!

Anyway, it's amazing to me how as I get older, my relationships and conversations get much more mature :)

All right, I'm off to write some more nonsense for my thesis.

Peaceout!
Nomes 4 Life

My black MaryJaney shoes

2005-08-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

All right!

Sorry to keep you all in suspense. See Dad, I have been working on my thesis and all of my blogger fans are suffering! Is it worth it in the overall scheme of life? I'm sure when I'm on my death bed, I'll be thinking more about shoes than my life's research and work. Hello!

Anywho, so I decided after much turmoil and reflection to wear my black MaryJane-like shoes, a khaki skirt, and my black, sleeveless, collar shirt. I looked nice! Anyway, I had almost worn a pair of heeled sandals, and thank god I didn't. We walked the whole freakin' course and my feet began to hurt even though I'd worn my comfy/cute shoes. If I were to do it all over again, I probably would have worn sneakers, cause there were people wearing all sorts of things. I only wish I'd had a beret with the fuzzy ball on top! I met Brian's boss and coworkers before we went to the tournament. They told me that I could do waaay better than him. I didn't know what to say, so I told them I've tried :)

The International was fun though. We followed a few golfers around for most of it, but then Brian wanted to go watch someone else, and that was a dilemma for me, cause I felt like I'd built a relationship with the golfers I was watching. I didn't want new ones! However, we ended up finding a new group to watch, and I was able to relate to them too after awhile.

In other news, Alison, my dear roomie, has graduated, leaving only me and Kate left out of our year. And I applied for graduation - looks like the official date will be November - KC arms!

Anyway, that's it for now. I have 2 weeks to finish my research assistantship and the first draft of my thesis, so you may have a wait before the thrilling next edition of Naomi's life is posted. Of course, by that time, I'll be brain dead, but that won't matter cause I'm going to spend that whole week watching TV - KC arms.

N-luv

Four!

2005-08-05T07:57:00.000-07:00

So, today I'm going to an International golf tournament with Brian. Now, I know what you're thinking and yes, I was thinking the same thing...What am I going to wear!?!

This is a very difficult decision, especially considering that most of my clothes are in garbage bags, awaiting their new home (we move tomorrow). So, in planning what I would wear, I first thought I need to look nice but sporty, cute but sophisticated. Like a combination of Sporty, Posh, and Baby Spice. You with me? So, naturally, my first choice was my tennis skirt and a matching tank top, but then I thought, "Idiot! You don't want people to think you don't know the difference between tennis and golf apparel!" So, I scratched that. My next thought was khaki skirt, good, good, now I'm getting somewhere! And what do I wear with it? Well, I was thinking about my sleeveless, black, button-up collar shirt, but does that look like I'm trying too hard? Wouldn't I feel stupid if I got there and everyone was in jeans and T-shirts. I knew I should have been paying attention to those stupid golf tournaments on TV. TV!?! That's right, I could end up being on TV at this golf tournament. At least, I think it's something that gets broadcasted. Either way, better take that into consideration. Maybe my light green striped, sleeveless, button-up, collar shirt. A subtle difference, I know, but perhaps just the right amount of difference to keep me from looking like a fool!

Okay, until further notice, I'm wearing the khaki skirt and green-striped shirt, but that brings me to an even larger dilemma...shoes! Now, those of you who know me (and I think that includes all of you), know that I have a lovely selection of slides that would look fine with my ensemble. But, Hello! We're going to be walking on a golf course, and most of my slides have heels that will sink in the grass, making me look like a complete idiot! But, I can't wear flip flops, that would throw me too far to the Sporty Spice side.

Anyway, I'll have to mull this over a while longer. I'm open to suggestion...

Rain and the Spooky Boutique

2005-08-04T07:41:00.000-07:00

Howder-doo! (Ann told me that this has replaced the Ello Gov'na, and at first I wouldn't hear of it, but now can't stop saying it. Apparently a Tim Sturtz original.)

So, today it's rainin' like a mutha out and so instead of getting up at 6 am, like I'd set my alarm for, I decided the cool weather and the sound of rain was too lovely to get up before 7:30. It reminded me of when I had first moved to Olympia, and every day for the first month I was there, I was like "Ooh, rainy! I'm going to sit inside and watch movies and drink cocoa all day." After awhile, I realized I was getting nothing productive done and had to return to life even though it was raining. At least in Denver, I know that my productivity in the rain won't be an issue for very long.

Anywho, on Tuesday, Brian and I went to CPK (that's California Pizza Kitchen for those of you not in the know). Afterward, Brian had to buy a bunch of T-shirts at the mall, so we went to GAP to get those and then on the way back, I decided to stop at Steve Madden. Brian walked in the door and was like "Err, do you care if I go to the Mac store to get a new Ipod before they close?" I feigned distress, asking him, if he left, who would tell me if the shoes I was trying on were super cute or not! But, then I let him go.

Anyway, since I'd had a couple glasses of wine at dinner, I didn't spend the usual hour fretting over why I should or shouldn't buy the shoes, and I promptly bought a pair of high-heeled white shoes, embroidered with pink and gold designs. And I didn't need Brian to confirm it, they were super cute! (Don't worry Mom, they were 50% off!)

So, I went and found Brian at the Mac store, he bought an Ipod, and we were on the way out. As we were leaving the mall, I let Brian in on a little secret that I am now letting the rest of you in on. When I was say 9 or 10, there was a Beetle Juice cartoon on TV that I used to watch everyday. And one day, there was a show where the Wynona Ryder character went shopping in Beetle Juice world. At the post-mortem mall, for whatever reason, everyone in the stores was chanting "Shop till you freak at the Spooky Boutique!" Now, for whatever reason, 80% of the time that I'm shopping at a mall, I'm reciting "Shop till you freak at the Spooky Boutique!" over and over in my head.

Brian asked that I not say that out loud when I'm at the mall with him everytime we go. But, I never say it out loud! Anyway, of course now I'll be tempted to say it out loud to him everytime we do anything. I think the only person who could understand this is my sister, who also watched the cartoon with me and remembered the Shop-till-you-freak thing for a long time. Of course, she probably doesn't recite it to herself to the degree that I do.

It is because of stories like this that when I'm telling myself jokes in my head, you should never ask me to share!

I always wanted moccasins blah blah blah

2005-07-29T10:50:00.000-07:00

So, when I was in Canada with my Mom for my conference, one night we ventured down to the Niagara falls. We were in a typical Canadian gift shop, complete with maple syrup, maple leave adorned jewelry and apparel, and of course moccasins. Picking up a pair of the leather shoes, I chuckled and told my Mom that everytime we were in Canada when I was a kid, I had wanted a pair of moccasins, but then when I had finally gotten a pair, they weren't as exciting as I had thought they'd be so I never wore them.

Apparently, Mom didn't have her listening ears on because the next day when I came back from the conference, Mom handed me a gift - a brand new pair of moccasins. I laughed and she said "What? You said you always wanted some!" Apparently all Mom heard me say was "When I was a kid, I always wanted a pair of moccasins blah blah blah yada yada blah." She hadn't heard the moral of my little reminiscent story.

Now the moccasins have a special place in my heart, with another Mom story attached to them ;)

On another note, hurray for the IRA disarming. I hope it really happens then maybe Mom and Dad can bike Northern Ireland safely someday! That, and it'd be nice to have peace in the violence-torn country. They're both favorites!

Ode to Dad

2005-07-28T09:24:00.000-07:00

So, I just remembered that it is my Dad's birthday. So, in honor of my favorite Dad, I am dedicating my blog today to him. So Tom Marshall, this is your life!

On July 28, 19xx (numbers removed on account of it would make Dad look very old and I would have to do math), Thomas Joseph Marshall was the first child to be born to Mary and Robert Marshall. He would spend the majority of his youth on a farm in Ann Arbor, MI, where he would participate in fun-filled activities, such as lighting bags of gasoline on fire and throwing them at things, lighting the barn on fire, and shooting arrows up in the air and hoping that they wouldn't skewer him, his parents, or his siblings (okay, perhaps there was a little hope he would skewer a sib or two).

As the oldest of 7, he was the only O'Connor/Marshall to ever be an only child. But, it was short-lived as the siblings kept on coming, and before long he was sharing one bathroom and one towel with a family of nine.

When he had come of age, Tom ventured off to the great white north and Michigan Tech to become... an engineer. Although, he felt right at home in the freezing and beer-guzzling culture of Tech, he realized that engineering would not fulfill his career dreams and veered toward medicine. But, before doing that, he was able to defeat great odds (11-1) and find the woman of his dreams at Tech. Many men before him and after him said it couldn't be done, but he did it. Not only did he find his gal, but he found one who would buy her own engagement ring and propose to him - amazing!

So, with Lois, Tom went to medical school, and as he was in residency, the greatest event of his life happened. HI daughter - Naomi, the pride and joy of his life - was born. He knew that she would be brilliant and wonderful and he was right!

Eventually, Tom and Lois had two other kids, but I won't bore you with the details, and the family settled in Hubbard Lake, MI. Tom is a Doctor and the Medical Director there and everyone loves him, although not as much as he loves his daughter, Naomi.

The End. Happy Birthday Dad!

Don't stop writing writing writing. What do we do we write write write...ha ha h-ha

2005-07-26T09:34:00.000-07:00

So, I'm working on my thesis and I've realized that I have to write the sections fast or I start to get confused about what I'm saying. Por ejemplo, I'm looking at Dora's Thanksgiving currently and looking for my problematic trends in the book. In one section I look at exoticism in the book. Exoticism is when a cultural group is depicted as strange or outlandish. Now Dora has all these animal friends, including a blue, boot-wearing monkey, named Boots. Now of course, this is certainly not a "normal" thing. I'm sure if I were walking home and a blue monkey jumped out of a tree or my backpack started talking to me, I'd think it was odd. But, it's a kid's book, and silly things like that are frequently put in cartoon-like books to stimulate children's imaginations. So, although they put weird things in the book, they're not portraying Latinos as strange, really.

However, in the displacement section (displacement=removing a cultural group from current reality), I do talk about the strange surroundings that Dora and her family are in as a problem, especially for white kids who have no experience with Latino people otherwise. They might think "Latinos can't live next door to me, they live in the woods." In the child interviews, none of the kids thought that Dora was from their hometown. They thought she was from Alaska or Hawaii. Even the kid I interviewed in Denver didn't think that Dora was from around there.

Anyway, I think I've sorted it out, but like I said, I just have to keep writing, or else I start to change my mind, and I think that should wait till the next draft!

On a lighter note, I think I'm making grilled cheese and tomato soup for lunch - delisiosa!

The food is for eatinisen.

2005-07-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

All this talk of grammar has reminded me of the time I called a co-worker a "Grammar Nazi." This is not proper workplace behavior, so I don't recommend it!

One day my coworker (we'll call him Gary), whose job was not "Technical Writer" (that was my job) sent an email to the entire office asking people to please proof their emails before they went out. At the end of the email, he'd spelled a word wrong.

Five minutes after receiving the ill-fated email, Gary came into my office, asking me if I'd gotten his email and what I thought about it. Slapping a plastic smile on my face and gritting my teeth, I just said "Yeah, great - thanks!" Gary left, looking very proud of himself.

Five minutes after that, I received another office-blast from Gary saying, "By the way, I spelled a word wrong and nobody noticed it."

Irate, by now, I quickly emailed Gary back, telling him that I had in fact noticed his error, but wasn't going to be a Grammar Nazi for internal emails. He then emailed back, assuming I was calling him a Grammar Nazi, and said he felt really bad.

Of course, then I felt bad that he felt bad. But, honestly, what was I supposed to do. He was basically insinuating that I was incompetent. Anyway, the lesson learned that day was don't call coworkers Grammar Nazis, or really anything Nazi. - It's a good general rule.

Lake Siiiide!

2005-07-21T10:53:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was the start of the Nishi family reunion, and so my tribe and I headed on down to Lakeside, with our new tribal name - "Middle School Girls," on everyone's lips. We had our Mascot, Brian and Alison's little sister - Shannon, in tow.

Lakeside is a little amusement park by a lake. So, no, it's not just a clever name. We went on a few rides that I decided to give new names such as: "The claustrophobic's nightmare," "The jolty car accident," "the knee slammer," "The Puking Wheel," and "The Topsy Turvy Gut-Twister."

All in all, it was a fun time. Although, I gave Alison whip-lash when I got a little over-zealous in the bumper cars. I guess I always think that those rides are monitored or rigged so that no one can get hurt, but I proved that theory wrong. Of course, Timmy and I broke all the bumper car rules in the first 5 seconds of being there by doing a head-on collision immediately and then driving the wrong way around the track - whoopsy daisy.

Anyway, I'm heading home to the coffee shop to work some more. (yes, I call it home now)

Keeps it real! - david the NOME

Bored Beyond Belief

2005-07-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

So, right now I'm sitting in a Banner training that hasn't started yet, but I've entitled this blog with anticipation for what awaits me!

Efficiency vs. Customer Service

2005-07-15T10:57:00.000-07:00

So, the other day the-guy-I'm-seeing and I went to the movies. I think it was on Monday, so there weren't many movie goers. Prior to heading to our seats, I decided that I wanted to get some delicious popcorn and a coke to enhance my movie-going experience, if you will.

As I walked up to the counter, I noticed that there were about 15 registers. Tangent: Why do they have that many registers? You never see that many people attending them! So, since the popcorn/coke providers were hanging out (not behind any particular register), I simply chose one and approached. Apparently I had chosen the wrong one though, cause they didn't even look at me. Then another happy movie goer approached a different register and was promptly served. Growing all-the-wiser, I quickly got in line behind the girl who had chosen correctly, hoping to not be foiled again. Victory was mine as the young male attendant handed me my popcorn and coke. Since I never hold on to cash very long and was once again out, I used my credit card. With on swift move, the server swiped the card and handed me the receipt to sign without a word. As I reached for the receipt, without even a nod of acknowledgement that our transaction had concluded, he asked the person behind me what they wanted...

Now, perhaps I'm not being clear, which would be very hard to believe, but the point I was trying to make, is that there was no sort of customer service going on at this theater, but they were very efficient. The-guy-I'm-seeing seemed to think the efficiency trumped the customer service and was impressed. But I was left feeling like the attendant that I'd spent all that time with, talking about popcorn and coke didn't really care about me. I felt cold and alone and I don't think that my delicious popcorn and coke were quite as delicious because of it.

So, my question is, must we sacrifice customer service for efficiency? I think not!

Thong Th Thong Thong Thong

2005-07-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

Okay, so to update all of you who were wondering whose the mystery thong was... it was mine! I'm not quite sure how it ended up in the camper. Oh wait, it was probably from when I was in there throwing my clothes wildly about by myself. I should probably stop doing that...probably.

In other news, I just found out that I have to have the first draft of my thesis done by August, so my blogs will be less verbose, since I'll be spending all my verbosity on my damn thesis - sonofa!

My weekend hype!

2005-07-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

Ah, the weekend is upon us. Hurray! I suppose you're all wondering, "Naomi, what are going to do this weekend?" And if this is in fact your query, then you're in for a treat, because that is exactly the topic of my blog today!

So, to start off all the excitement, I'm going to be making Flan this afternoon for a dessert party tonight. Flan is a Spanish custard that's more eggy than my delicious creme brule and lower fat. You may be asking now, "Naomi, why are you making Flan instead of your world-renowned Delicious Creme Brule?" Well, I'll tell you. It's because this is for a dessert-party so I have to bring a communal dessert instead of the individualized creme brules. "Is that all?" you ask? Well, no. In fact, I have run out of propane in my torch and I can't seem to refill it, but not to worry, I'll figure it out eventually and will make the delicious creme brule again...

So, with Flan in hand, I'll be attending the dessert party at 8:00 with the rest of my urban tribe (Sunday Night Porn Club) - and we're using the word porn to mean any sort of entertainment. Under our definition, karaoke can be porn (especially if dirty-mouthed Stacy is there). Anyway, the dessert party should be fun. It's a couple event I think! So, that should be kinda funny. I'm not used to coupley things. What should I wear? skirt? pants? dress? tutu? Too many decisions already! But, at least I already have a dessert plan!

So, at this point in time, if I know you, and I think I do, you're wondering "Naomi! That's only what you're doing on Friday! There's a whole weekend after that that you haven't told us anything about!" And right you would be! So, on Saturday I plan to sleep in, go to starbucks, work on the minority report, lay in the sun, and then at night, go to karaoke (or porn if you want to use the tribal lingo).

So, that's about it. What? What's that you're asking? What am I doing on Sunday? All right, I'll go ahead and tell you. Sunday, I'll be mowing the lawn at the house I'm sitting and cleaning it up a bit before the family comes home (Henry, the cat, has made a mess of a whole thing of Q-tips) and Sunday afternoon, I'll be visiting my Somali Bantu family. I sure hope none of the kids put out an eye with the fireworks I brought them on the 4th of July.

And, that's my weekend, so stop asking already!

New place, land lord, golf, job, MBA, 4th of July, etc.

2005-07-06T12:55:00.000-07:00

Welp, Yesterday Alison and I signed the lease for our new apartment. It's nice! It kinda has a Seattley feel to it. It has all hard wood floors and the wall in the living room is white brick. It's in walking/stumbling distance of our favorite karaoke bar, my favorite thesis-writing coffee shop, and another great burger-bar. We're still close enough to Wash park so that it'll be about a 4-miler to run there, around it, and back.

It'll be sad to see the IIC party house go, although not so sad to see the IIC party house land lord go. Yesterday he gave me a lecture on how we need to clean the house so it's spotless and he can show it to future tenants. I was like "I hate to break it to ya, Neil, but you're not really an authority figure in my life so spare me the chat. Just ask me to clean and it'll be done, sucka!" Okay, I didn't really say that, I just ignored him, but you could imagine if I did, eh?

In other news, the guy-I'm-dating got first in his first P.A.T. tournament yesterday (and no, I don't know what PAT stands for), so he's that much closer to being a pro! There were 45 people competing and apparently it's pretty rare for first-timers to place in the top 5. He rocks!

I thought that I was gonna get kicked out of my DMS job come fall for a new student, but found out today that since I'm a university staff member, not a student worker, they can't get rid of me until I want to go. So, I'm half-employed until I find something more substantial - hurray!

On that note, I was thinking today that maybe I should get an MBA, focusing on non-profit and small business-ownership. I don't think I'm ready to open up my own non-profit just yet, but I'm starting to envision youth-focused intercultural education center that works with schools and students and is research-based. I don't know, but I certainly can't afford to go back to school again now unless I never leave the DMS office and can use my tuition waiver :) But, I don't think I can afford that either...

I had a nice 4th, although I spent most of it driving around asking myself "What am I gonna do today?" until the day was over. But, I did manage to get uptown to a BBQ with my friend Kevin and his posse and then watched fireworks with the guy-I'm-dating from Castle Pines golf course - it was pretty!

Love is in the air

2005-06-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

Well, okay, so I'm back from my trip to Michigan where I attended, sang at, and coordinated my sister's wedding festivities and now she is Christine Weidner Marshall Bier. It was nice, but exhausting. All my fam and friends were pretty much there, but it was rough cause the time I saw them was so short. I meant to tag along to Traverse City, but ended up having too much work to get done on the minority report, which is kicking my ass.

I also presented a paper on my thesis topic at Brock University near Niagara and it went very well; generated some interest, etc. The highlight of my presentation was when my mother, who was supposed to subtly sneak in and hear my presentation instead decided to announce to the symposium that she was my Mom and she just wanted to hear her daughter speak and then she was leaving. Ahh professional highlights of my career. Just when you think that maybe you're old enough and have enough experience to actually be taken seriously, you're quickly grounded by your family I find :)

Anyway, now I'm back in Denver and housesitting, after spending Monday night in the Minneapolis airport. Apparently all the hotels in Minneapolis were booked. So, that experience gave me a better feel for what it's like to be homeless. I slept on a bench with my bags entangled with my person, got too cold in the night too sleep, but woke up the next morning with a stranger sitting across from me watching me sleep. - good times!

Although, I haven't seen many of my peeps since I've been back, I have been updated on the Denver gossip. I won't mention any names, but apparently most of the people in my extended group of friends have paired off with others in the group. And it occurred to me that I never would have put any of the now-couples together. I've been genuinely shocked with each new relationship, including my own - it's all very twilight zoney. But everyone seems happy with it, so I guess it's good. Anyway, that's my briefing.

Keep it real, people! - Naomi

PS: to get a much better and longer description of the wedding festivities see Alison's (of my posse) blog http://alisonsperspective.blogspot.com

Highlighting my hair

2005-06-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

So, I highlighted my hair yesterday. In the morning, I talked with my Mom and told her what I was gonna do, and she was like "Don't overdo it or you'll look stupid in all the wedding pictures." Anyway, with that threat duly noted, I headed to the salon. And there my hairdresser gave me a nice subtle platinum blonde look. Okay, not quite, but it's always amazing to me the difference between my definition of subtle and my hair dresser's. I thought it looked really light, but when i got home one of my roomates didn't notice, so it must not be too bad; time and the wedding family pictures will tell.

Last night was the-guy-I'm-seeing's birthday (I call him that instead of his name). Anyway, being that he now has the karaoke-fever, he rented a karaoke room for a bunch of us and we went. It really adds a new dimension to karaoke when you're not in front of strangers but instead in a little, hot, and stuffy room with people you mostly know. For instance, any singing that ever happens in regular karaoke is right out the window. It is then instead about singing every song (even if it's not yours) at the top of your lungs with your mouth all over the mic and throwing in hilarious jokes. With that in mind, some of me and my posse's choices were Spice Girls, Barbie Girl, It's Raining Men, etc. Mark, one of the guy-I'm-seeing's friends gave him a birthday shout-out along with the chorus of each song he sang. At about 1:30 am, I started anticipating the fun day of work I would have today and that's when the fun hilarious karaoke room began to turn into my personal version of hell, where you just hear screaming in a cramped, unventilated room. I'm just kidding, but those are my worthless observations from yesterday. KC arms! - Naomi

Mountain Trip to DC

2005-06-07T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well, I figure I better update everyone, and when I say everyone I mean my Dad, since this is now his preferred mode of communication with me :)

So, I got back from DC on Sunday. It was quite a trip! I had meetings on Thursday and Friday and got briefed on my project for GMAC (www.gmac.com) - The Minority Report. Yes, that's the real name of the project. People kept saying it and I'd look at them to laugh, but they wouldn't even flinch, so I had a good chuckle in my head and told all my friends later on. They had a limo service pick me up at the airport and I stayed at the Ritz. It felt very weird. I was like "Uh, I'm just the Research Assistant. I'm already amazed that you're paying me." So, on the Minority Report (heh heh), I'm going though all the data from these surveys from mba.com and creating a report and executive summaries on the motivations and deterrents of minorities going to graduate business school. Of course, in my head, I'm thinking "Why would anyone want to go to graduate business school in the first place? - except for Jeff :)" But, the report is supposed to be 100 pages and the first draft is due in 2 weeks! What the heck did I get myself into? So much for writing my thesis (just kidding Dad).

Anyway, for the rest of the weekend, my friend Kevin flew out to visit some friends he had in DC and to show me around. We went to the Smithsonian - American History, saw the monument, the white house (just from a ways), Vietnam memorial, Korean memorial, the big Lincoln, etc. I of course did a critical analysis of everything we saw, which I'm sure Kevin enjoyed. But, basically, I just found it sad that all of the major attractions in DC that are supposed to represent America are tributes to white men. We went though the First Ladies section of the Smithsonian, and it was all dishes and clothes with one little plaque that mentioned that Hillary Clinton is a Senator. I was like "Senator Schmenator! Just show me her dishes!" And I also found it sad that in all the war memorials, no victims from Vietnam or Korea, etc. are represented, many of which were innocent people who never got to choose whether or not they were in the war. And I thought about how difficult it might be for US Americans whose relatives were from Vietnam or wherever - they and their family are simply not represented. I just feel that these monuments and memorials misrepresent war. They allow people to believe that war happens between men on a battlefield, when really, it happens in people's homes and women and children make up the majority of the victims. Anyway, that's just a snippet of the lecture that Kevin got, I'm sure you all wish you could have been there to hear it.

In all fairness, the Smithsonian does have a Native American section, but a DC native told us it wasn't very good, so we didn't go see it since we were short on time.

Okay, if you're still reading, I'll wrap it up, cause I should be doing more productive things. Catchya on the flip side! - Naomi

To the heart of America

2005-06-01T08:02:00.000-07:00

Hello! Sorry it's been so long since I've written. I know that my loyal blog fans have been disappointed that there have been no new messages. My research trip went well; kindergartners are hilarious. Tomorrow I leave on trip 2 of my June trip trilogy. This time to DC to get briefed on my research assistantship that I'll be working on this summer, along with working for DMS, for IIC, and writing my thesis. Ahhhh, summer vacation!

Last night, a crew of us, including 3 of the 4 members of our urban tribe (Sunday Night Porn Club) went to karaoke. My selections included hits from Ashley Simpson (I did more singing than she does during her song, heh heh), Madonna, Gloria Gaynor, and Alicia Keys.

Research Trip

2005-05-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

What up?

So, I thought I'd write something about my research trip since I'm not feeling quite as hilarious today. Not to worry; I'm sure I'll get progressively hilarious as the day wears on. I always do. Or perhaps I just think I do and I actually just get better at deluding myself. Hmm, hard to say.

So tomorrow I leave for Michigan to conduct my study on how kids react to/understand cultural elements in multicultural picture books. The books being used in the study are Martin's Big Words, Dora's Thanksgiving, My Name I Yoon, and A Smoky Night.

I thought I'd use my blog today to get some feedback on my research, even though it is still questionable whether or not anyone is reading my blog :)

So, tell me about your experience with multicultural picture books as a kid. How influential were they? Did you like them? Did you relate to them? What did they tell you about other cultures that perhaps you had little experience with?

In my research, I've identified 5 problematic themes that children in the majority or non-marginalized groups (specifically white people) tend to develop. They are...

Color blindness - the belief that all people are the same and have the same opportunities. Ignores power structures and privileges. Believes that racism is a personal attitude that can be held by minorities and majorities.

Stereotyping - over simplification or exaggeration of a cultural trait, oftentimes used to mock or belittle cultural groups. Examples: Little Black Sambo, Speedy Gonzalez, the Indians in Disney's Peter Pan

Exoticizing - Depicting a culture as odd, outlandish, strange, simplistic and beautiful or exotic.

Displacement - Tendency to believe that cultural issues such as racism occurred only in a historic or fantastic past, such as, seeing racism only in slavery and the civil rights movement (history) - shown in many books, or in fantasy (like the Star-Bellied Sneetches by Dr. Seuss). Can also be location displacement - e.g., showing racism only happening in the South

White Centrality - Making the white reader the primary audience and the center. For instance, books do this when they use us/they words and refer to white US citizens as "us" learning about people of color outside the US as "them." This reinforces an "othering" of minority groups

Anyway, that's what I'm working with. Please let me know if any of these ring true for you and your experience as a child learning about other cultures. Certainly some did for me. Holla!

Thursday Stats

2005-05-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

Good day! Here is my daily update...

Denver Temp: 74
Temp in the DMS Office: A balmy 32
Attitude Status: Strong to very strong
Thursday Endeavors: An alumni proposal development meeting and a mystery meeting (intriguing), figure out what I'm wearing to our "Bling" party tomorrow, come up with a Thursday theme song.
Lessons learned from yesterday: Do not go to yoga immediately after laying in the sun for an hour.
Feats accomplished yesterday: I had the courage to step onto my mat in yoga (it can be scary) & I made it through my four hour class without yawning, rolling my eyes so people could see it, and without laughing hysterically or shouting the word "No!" for no reason in the middle of lecture.
Hilarious jokes told yesterday: 37
Hilarious jokes told not just to myself in my head: 3.5
Silly encounters yesterday: a lady quoting Martin Luther King Jr. outside my office all day with no one listening...
Deep thoughts on my way to work:
Hmm, running late again.
Why do high schoolers need cell phones?
Why do I need a cell phone?
What is a cell phone?
How does wireless Internet work?
Will there ever be a boy born who can swim as fast as a shark?

Ello Gov'nas

2005-05-18T08:15:00.000-07:00

So, yes, I too have created my own blog. I'm not sure that this is a necessary thing for me to do, in fact, I'm sure it will just add to my distractions and closet vanity, but what the heck! Perhaps I won't even give the address to anyone. I will just talk to myself daily, which of course won't be much of a change for me, but now my inner thoughts will be accessible to the general public - which is as it should be.

So, down to business, and when I say business, I just mean time to say whatever ridiculous thoughts pop into my brain..... hmm, none so far.

Well then, I'll go ahead an wrap'er up for the day. Peace ya'll - Naomi W. Marshall