Time to Share

Those of you who have been spared Andrew's and my accounts of the ups and downs of our attempts to purchase an apartment should consider yourselves lucky. That said, you're still completely free to reap the rewards of our move. We've got a few books and dvds that we're giving away (among other things like furniture and odds & ends). Before you judge us for owning the titles below, I'd like to remind you that these are the things we're parting with, and we claim no responsibility for owning them in the first place.

If you're interested in any of the below, let me know:

Books for my singer friends (I'm guessing)

• Puccini Librettos in New English Translations by William Weaver
• Giuseppe Verdi by Francis Toye
• Molto Agitato by Johanna Fiedler (I highly recommend this account of the Met behind the scenes)
• Great Singers on Great Singing compiled by Jerome Hines (do I have a friend who doesn't already own this?)
• The Harper Collins Italian Concise Dictionary (I had two Italian Dictionaries-go figure)
• Le Mariage de Figaro et La Mere coupable by Beaumarchais
• Le Barbier de Seville by Beaumarchais
• Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost

Books for everyone

• Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz (very funny account of the South--my first introduction freshman year of college)
• The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson (very funny, though slightly outdated, foray into linguistics)
  
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Your Job Survival Guide by Shea Gunther (I actually don't recommend this unless you love kayaking references)
• Moby Dick by Herman Melville (see above, only switch kayaking to whales).
• Dune by Frank Herbert
• Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein
• The Boat of a Million Years by Poul Anderson (no idea, you'd have to ask my husband)
• The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease (my husband swears he got this one from some coworker cleaning out her desk, neither of us has cracked it).
• Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
  
• Vanity Fair Portraits - a gorgeous coffee table book
• Many, many Terry Pratchett Discworld books. For specific titles, just ask.
  

DVDs

• The Importance of Being Earnest
• Clerks
• Le Divorce
• Shakespeare in Love
• Down with Love
• Young Frankenstein
• Chicago
• About a Boy
• Futurama - Volume 1
• Gilmore Girls - sixth season (why 6th? I have NO idea)
  

Fire Hose Friday

I thought my coworker was just being funny when I overheard him at lunch saying we should do "fire hose friday" to be so annoying, we would turn off everyone from following us on Twitter, so imagine my surprise Friday morning when I read:

OK guys, I'm declaring today #firehosefriday. Participants must tweet no less frequently than every 15 minutes. End of day goal: 0 followers

My first reaction: "hell no." Why? because I was afraid of losing all my followers (what few I had) and afraid that I wasn't witty enough to keep up a constant stream of interesting tweets all day. I thought I would come across as self-absorbed and annoying, because what kind of person could tweet so much and not be those things? So, because I realized I was really resisting this idea, I dove right in. I hoped to feel liberated by watching my twitter and facebook followers drop as the day progressed; I expected to be totally distracted from work and to eventually run out of anything worth mentioning. I braced myself for criticism.

What happened instead amazed me. I found I was less distracted through the day because I was focusing on the here-and-now. I wasn't dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, I was finding interesting and noteworthy things in my daily life, recognizing milestones or pleasant encounters. In fact, I actually had more I wanted to mention than I ever ended up tweeting. This awareness also made me do more things for others because I was enjoying myself so much--so much for being self-centered! Rather than detracting from work, I was so conscious of how often I was reporting my actions (and that my coworkers were all following me on twitter) that I worked in efficient, focused spurts throughout the day. I got loads done even though I was also taking extra time to enjoy a sunny, beautiful Friday.

I was also pretty surprised by the reactions I got from everyone else. Rather than being the huge annoyance I thought it was going to be, I got tons of messages saying how entertained people were, how I was getting them through their days. People would respond to things I said and suddenly I felt more engaged with my group of friends on twitter than I ever had. The abyss I thought I was sending my thoughts into turned out to be a group of caring, interested individuals who wrote right back. What's more, I didn't lose followers. (Well, ok, I lost one, but I don't know which one it was so I don't think it was anyone I cared about.) In fact, I actually gained 8 new followers through the course of the day, the most I'd ever gained in one day since joining twitter.

I consider the Fire Hose Friday experiment to be a resounding success and I recommend it highly to everyone. Though I don't think I would want to do it every Friday, I think I will try to do it again. After all, what have I got to lose?

(to see all the madness, follow me on twitter at chrissysings)

What's that? You DID notice? Well damn...

I remember, a long time ago, the day that my husband realized that even though he didn't really notice other people's shoes, they were noticing his. It's kind of a strange revelation, really, that something you couldn't care less about is actually something you are being judged by. So why am I writing in my blog at 1am on a Friday night?

Well, it turns out, people are watching. I'm at South by Southwest, a festival that is in many ways an excuse to drink and hang out between various talks and panel discussions. With topics ranging from the future of media to "how not to be a douchebag," the festival really runs the whole gamut. I've already been exposed to some really cool ideas and technologies and I'm learning a ton in a field that, frankly, I have tons to learn about. That said, I'm also learning that things that haven't mattered to me at all until now are suddenly things I'm being measured by. For example, mine is the lone, basic flip-top phone in a sea of smart phones--suddenly I'm a dork among dorks (and no, that doesn't make me cool at all). I am also not terribly witty on Twitter nor, I'm sorry to admit, in this blog. I'm also noticing, though, that when I admit that I don't know which open-source code they're talking about, or if I need a refresher on what LAMP stands for, people don't look at me like I have two heads, as would happen in the opera world if I had to ask someone what opera "Una furtiva lagrima" came from. I'm also noticing that everyone has been wonderfully open and welcoming. Can it be that despite all my terrible failings as a tech geek, I actually belong here?

I'll be trying to find out over the next few days. Stay tuned but please, avert your eyes from my cell phone.