a map in my own mind

Now that I’ve shared my 1/2 brain cell with half the western world, I just gotta ask… What’s the big deal about the mistaking an “r” for a “t”? (See yesterday’s stupid pet trick)

Genetic, generic… are they really so different?

OK, OK.. I’m sure my DNA string musta snapped someplace and I’ve totally embarrassed my parental units.

And for that I do apologize!

I just got a really short email. Maybe it really was spam. But it sure made me laugh. It came from a yahoo address that looked like a real guy, I mean no collection of letters and numbers that are clearly fake. The subject was Hello, which normally I don’t open. But sometimes I get a flash of ESP or something and I do. Here’s my reward for this morning:

I don’t need a life coach, but your picture shows a really lovely woman! Kudos to your folks’ genetic material.

Hey guys.. that picture? It’s me! It’s not very recent, but I still look pretty much just like that! I had a professional photographer take it because I wanted a good shot for this website and I wanted to control (to the best of my ability) the picture they run with my obituary… And no, I’m not planning on going any time soon. (Check out my article on the value of a good photograph here.)

And by the way, I don’t have “folks.” It’s just me here, doing the coaching and the marketing and everything else that needs to get done around a small business office. I have a lot of experience running a business, and sometimes, when I get in the flow, it seems pretty easy. But if there’s something going on in my business, it’s only because I am doing it.

Thanks for visiting.
Come back soon.

Sometimes the little things can surprise you!

We’ve got huge computer issues in my house. We’re O-soo-cutting-edge here. But our latest upgrade rendered my connection to the network printer just about nonexistent–painfully slow when it worked and sporadic in its choice of what it deemed worthily of ink.

So I decided, as a stop gap, I’d buy the cheapest littlest printer I could find. I could just put it on a table in my office and stop running up and down the steps to see if my print jobs happened. If they ever get the network set up right, then I could ditch the little printer and go back to the mother ship for quality.

I bought a little HP Deskjet F2120 — all-in-one printer, scanner, copier. I paid about $39 for it at Target. There was just one printer cheaper at $29 but that only came with the color ink cartridge and the black cartridge was another $15, so I picked the HP. In fact, I did not know about the all-in-one virtues, or the OCR or the double sided print capabilities. I just wanted little and cheap.

What a surprise! This little baby is F A S T .. much faster, at least in the black and white mode, than the fancy Cannon we run on the house system. I’m not sure how it will last. But as most of what I print is just to read, mark up and then toss, I’m thinking this could be a nice little addition to my office equipment.

Tis the season for anxiety and stress..
And so be on the look out for signs of heart attacks in women.

Huh? What about the searing pain you ask?

If a person complains about intense pain in their chest, we seem to have learned to ask about deep pain or throbbing in one or both arms. I can never remember if it’s generally the left or right arm. So it’s best to check both. You might also ask about back pain, breathlessness, and clammy sweating.

But studies are showing–and women are saying–that the signs of heart attacks in women are just different from those in men.

Depending on which study you read, between 30% and 43% of women who had heart attacks did not experience any type of chest discomfort. But 95% of women did experience some collection of early warning symptoms–either daily or several times a week–for a month or more before having a heart attach.

According to an article called “Women’s Early Warning Symptoms of Acute Myocardial Infarction,” published in Circulation, by the American Heart Association, on line Nov 3, 2003 here, the most common early warning symptoms for women are:

And ain’t this the season for all of those!

They also mention

• general weakness
• cold sweat and
• dizziness

And the most interesting of the lesser named early warning symptoms were

• Vision change
• Cough
• Choking
• And a change in the taste of cigarettes!

When women did experience chest discomfort, they generally didn’t call it pain, but rather aching, tightness, or pressure. (Although, once upon a time I had a dentist who told me I was feeling pressure and not pain… so I’m pretty sure I’d equate pressure and pain!) They also call it sharpness, burning, fullness or tingling.

Clinicians need to include this longer list of descriptors when assessing women with suspected of having a heart attack or at risk for one rather than asking only about chest pain.

The study would not say whether the symptoms were predictive of an attach. But in my mind, it’s sure worth paying attention to. They also acknowledge that most of the women in the study were white, so they can’t be sure if ethnicity might make a difference.

Women often brush off these kinds of symptoms as sort of the cost of doing business as a woman, a mother, or a general over-achiever. But when you’re body keeps feeling just not right, pay attention! Don’t brush it off.

If you ain’t right.. you probably ain’t right!
I want you back here reading again next week!

In college I saw a Ziggy card whose sentiment has always stuck with me. It said:

Think of all the people in the world worse off than you…
There must be at least eight!

And then I stumbledupon this website that compares the earth to the
largest known star.

Man when you see how small the earth really is in comparison… Well, I gotta say that my problems truly are pretty insignificant.

How about yours?

I just saw a post on the Poynter website about the awards given by the American Society of Magazine Editors. Texas Monthly Magazine is a real magazine and they won a prize for the best cover line: “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, Dick Cheney Will Shoot You in the Face.”

I just love the joke of it!

I have done a fair amount of graphic work for my own marketing and advertising and for a few clients. I still do pretty much writing and editing for several publications, in particular, these days for the ADHD Coaches Organization. Sometimes I think of these kinds of headlines myself. But generally someone else tells me they’re inappropriate or I chicken out before I actually use them.

I admire Texas Monthly for having the stones to use this cover!

So what’s this got to do with me and Map the Future?
Coaching is all about the client and not about the coach… or what the coach might think is funny or not. It’s likely you’d never see this side of me in a coaching relationship.

So, while I think working with me should feel fun, or at least not onerous, sharing these little bits of my humor in my blog show more of me than you might see when we work together. I hope that you’re not offended by what I find humorous. But if you are, then maybe we’re not the best match. But if you feel like we might be on the same page because of my humor, that’s a good thing.

Sometimes I read something I mean to write about, and then it totally slips my mind — like this piece from Possibility Virus blog of Michael Bungay Stanier. It took me so long to get around to this gem that the original post doesn’t seem to be available any more. Good thing I copied the article he referenced.

Nikki Weiss wrote the piece called “Leadership Tips from my Dad.” You can read her whole article here. I was struck by this part:

“I wish she had the courtesy to treat me like a stranger.”

This leadership principle is so amazingly simple. It says: “If you don’t like me you can be indifferent to me, but mean is unacceptable.” I notice a fair amount of meanness in the workplace that takes the form of passive aggression. We’ve all seen it but maybe not put quite that same name to it: gossip, withholding or not fully sharing information, criticizing management, and not supporting colleagues.

If you wouldn’t even treat strangers like that — then that’s mean.

And that for me is the bottom line of respect. Why is it that we treat strangers better than we treat people we know? Sometimes even people we are supposed to love — like spouses or children.

In John Gottman’s book, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail and How You Can Make Yours Last, he outlines the Four Horsemen of divorce — criticism, contempt, defensiveness and withdrawal. These are the behaviors that most likely to be evident in problematic relationships. And problems in relationships can feel a lot like mean.

I sure know when I see these behaviors in others. But catching it in myself might be more difficult. How do you keep yourself from sliding into mean? What can you do about it?

It is with deep incredulity that my family talks about my college independent study in game theory. It was way cool, but pretty out of character given my deep dislike of games in general.

I am also terrible at video games. Maybe it’s an eye hand coordination problem but I couldn’t even make the Donkey Kong jump in the right places. I could, however, play Dr. Mario with complete disregard for everything else going on around me. Heck, I could even play that in my sleep. I’d watch those pills keep dropping for hours. (It is true: You shouldn’t play video games, even solitaire, right before bed. Keeps your brain fired up when it should be slowing down. Read a boring magazine instead!)

However, I am so tired of people, parents mostly, complaining that video games killed play time or that video games made a kid commit unspeakable violence. If your kids can’t tell the difference between video games and reality, then you have a much bigger problem than thinking the games are making him do it.

But I digress.

I was tickled to find that librarians are being encouraged to play video games or at least to acknowledge that people who do play video games view the help desk differently. InsideHigherEd.com is an online source for news, opinion and jobs for all of higher education. The June 25 article reported on the annual meeting of the American Library Association.

Ever watch a little kid with a new video game? Notice him furiously reading the directions first? Na.. didn’t think so.

“With video games, ‘you can play while you are inept,’” said James Paul Gee, the author of Why Video Games Are Good for Your Soul , You can poke around in a video game. Try the same things in different orders and get different results (Or, so I’ve heard). Gee also said there are “lowered consequences of failure.”

I remember my engineer husband’s frustration when my geek son first started tinkering with the insides of computers. “HE DIDN’T READ THE INSTRUCTIONS! He doesn’t understand circuit theory.”

Says the kid, “Don’t worry, Dad. They’re designed to only go in one way!”

On demand learning is a very powerful thing.

Maybe it really doesn’t matter if you know all the rules before you jump in. In fact, what if waiting until you have all the information just keeps you from getting started.

So start now; or start over. Click AA,BB, jump, jump in a different place, see what happens.

If there is no blood, you can always change your mind.

When I was growing up if food hit the ground, my mother just said, “You can eat that.”

When I was in college, back in the 70s, my engineer not-quiet-yet-husband first told me there was an actual rule about eating food that fell on the floor. He told me food was safe to be picked up from the floor and eaten a full SIX seconds after it fell!

I know other people who actually believe that food is safe up to a whole TEN seconds after it falls!

And now today I have learned that the five-second rule has, in fact, been scientifically proven. I read it first in Kevin Cowherd’s column in the Baltimore Sun today. I checked it out on The Connecticut College website where they reported that two smart women, Molly Goettsche and Nicole Moin, both cellular and molecular biology majors, took it upon themselves to prove the rule using apples (who would eat them after they fall on the floor), Skittles (which everyone knows actually DO last for ever) and agar plates (that’s real science!)

The results prove, Goettsche and Moin said, that you can wait at least 30 seconds to pick up wet foods and more than a minute to pick up dry foods before they become contaminated with bacteria.

They’ll be great mothers one day, I feel certain.

Whoever says that engineers and geeks don’t have a sense of humor is just nuts!

For so long I have hated Power Point presentations.
So many speakers making stupid stuff jump and fade and zip… just because they can. Too much attention to the process and not enough to the product. Reminds me of when I built my first website and my hobbiest webguy wanted things to blink… Just because he knew how to do it!

YUK!

Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, AU) reports on a study done at the University of NSW.. oooo, science. In part the paper says:

… the research shows the human brain processes and retains more information if it is digested in either its verbal or written form, but not both at the same time.

They also make a point for presenting students with problems including the answers — instead of asking students to figure them out for themselves. I’m not sure how I feel about that so I won’t comment on that for now. But I digress.

I originally caught up with the story at The Register (whose tag line I just love: biting the hand that feeds IT)

I was also glad to read comment after comment reminding the world that presentations are performances. It takes a certain kind of person to actually enjoy standing in front of a crowd and sharing information — not reciting it from memory, or from notes, or horror of horrors, from a prescripted page.

All this speaks to my current frustration with conferences looking for speakers. They want quality presentations but then they don’t include a way for the judges to hear the speaker or even to get references from people who have heard the speaker. (Hm, maybe speakers should ask for contact information of anyone in the audience who would be willing to say they heard you speak. That sure would be an easy way for people to give you a “tip” for your time.)

No matter how interesting the topic, a poor performer won’t teach much. But a speaker who is really engaged with his or her audience, someone who knows the subject and can make it real, doesn’t need much more than the illustrations on a blackboard, er, powerpoint slide to make the points.

I have a fascination with gadgets and ideas that just might help. Check out my post about practicing yourself out of bed from the other day…

But how about this! LifeHack.org showed me a new possibility: an alarm clock that moves around the room.. all by itself. Looks like it only moves after you hit snooze. But what if it moved ALL the time? Not being able to even find it to hit snooze would seem to be a real benefit!

Got my speakers going and checked the sound on the link for the last post.
Then I stumbled on this similarly produced pencil and paper reply. I just had to share it.

I’m thinking here about conversation and growth of ideas.

The original Wesch video Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us explained something, the follow-up by CoryTheRaven questioned the thought. It reminded me that some time ago I saw this post from ResourceShelf about a Webcast Online: Why Large Companies Should Out-Innovate Small Ones

They referenced a weblecture by Dan Hesse where he suggested that big companies “make it impossible for the smaller guys to compete.”

But the fact of the matter is this: Ideas don’t come from teams. Ideas come from individuals. It is key to growth of the idea that others participate in the development of the full concept. But the idea has to start someplace.

Somebody has to ask that first question. Somebody has to say — out loud — in a meeting, “The Emperor has no clothes.” Somebody has to say, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we didn’t need to use candle light to see?”

Or perhaps better put, someone has to first imagine that there is a question. Ask it and begin to find the answer.

So
Happy viewing. Happy thinking. Happy writing.
Share your thoughts or ideas, or no one gets the benefit.

Tell me what you think.

Try practice.

I know that final push to actually be awake in the morning is a struggle for lots of people. My DearHusband hits that snooze alarm the first time at about 5:15 am finally finds himself on the way to the shower between 6:15 and 6:30 (Yes, I KNOW, that’s a lot of snoozes!)

I’m glad my oldest son finally moved out. It was time; he was 20 something. I was tired of trying to set off a nuclear bomb under his bed every morning to get him moving.

Some people with ADHD take their meds an hour before they really have to get up and then, thanks to the better living with chemicals, they can just get up.

But when I saw this suggestion by David Seah over at Better Living Through New Media . He was talking about his experiment to get up every day at 6 am. He’s trying practicing getting up… Well, it boggles my mind. He sourced StevePavlina.com
who suggests:

This is going to sound really stupid, but it works. Practice getting up as soon as your alarm goes off. That’s right — practice. But don’t do it in the morning. Do it during the day when you’re wide awake.

Steve has a couple of articles about getting up and getting going like How to be an early riser and this one that my father would have just loved called Bear Bombing (You just gotta read that! But don’t call children’s services on me.. I only laughed and IMAGINED it would work.) They all sound pretty logical, but I wonder if a mother could make a kid practice? THAT’s the time to get this straight, when the kids are small and require only a shake or two and not a neutron bomb!

I’m not sure it would work. If you’ve tried it an it worked for you, I’d sure like to know about it.

Happy waking.

Kerch

In the December 31 column “On Blogs” by Troy McFCullough in the
Baltimore Sun “‘07 may be year bloggers break free of all the hype.”

Daryl Plummer, chief Gartner fellow, is quoted by the Associated Press about blogs:

“A lot of people have been in and out of this thing. …Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they’re put on stage and asked to say it.”

Then this morning, according to ResourceShelf, which is “.. where dedicated librarians and researchers share the results of their directed (and occasionally quirky) web searches for resources and information.” (If you aren’t actually a librarian, you might have NOT idea about the kinds of quirky things these pros can dig up. How about the “Atlas to Plucked Instruments”? Wait, I digress…)

The ResourceShelf reported this morning:

More than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites, according to a new national survey of teenagers conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

Past President Bill Clinton may made the most famous denial of his association with marijuana in March of ‘92 when he said simply, “I didn’t inhale.” But he certainly was neither the first nor the last to get poked because may — or may not — have dabbled in drugs. The more accessible the forbidden is the more people will try them. (n.b. I am NOT encouraging or condoning drug use or experimentation. I am mother, for cryin’ out loud!)

Today, checking on a candidate’s past drug use is as common as checking on the attitudes and dalliances of his youth. It’s part of the business of politics. Tomorrow, it will be checking them on the internet or in the archives of ancient online BulletinBoards, UserGroups, MySpace,YouTube and other such on line social networks.

In my opinion parents today go way over board by teaching children to fear strangers. We all need healthy respect for that with which we have no experience. We don’t (please tell me you don’t) send money to Nigerians who send emails offering us millions of dollars for our help. We don’t eat food we find in the street.

We can be polite if someone asks for directions. But we don’t get in the car with them to take them to their destination. Respect vs. fear.

I am not making a statement about drugs here. Don’t suppose I am. Don’t infer it. I am not talking about drugs.

However, I am talking respect.

We must not fear MySpace or the internet. We must be careful; we must it wisely. Because in the end, the ether is absolutely NOT PRIVATE. And your mother WILL find out what you did here.

Happy New Year.
Watch what you say!

Kerch

Yesterday two of my friends sent me links to this article in the New York Times: Saying Yes to Mess. One friend — this would be the friend who does NOT have ADHD – attached a note saying: “I should not send this to you. It only reinforces the futility of your struggle.” The other one, a comrade in the struggle, said: “Yesssss! Up to a point, anyway.”

Personally, I think that’s the key. “Moderation in all things.”

My father, not one big on moderation, insisted, “There is a place for everything and everything goes in its place.” If I would just always put stuff back where it belonged then I’d always know where it was. And I would never waste any time looking for the thing. But, in fact, I do know where most of my stuff is. And maybe the time I spend looking for what I can’t find offsets the time I would spend cleaning it up.

I believe moderation is making the piles neat enough so they can be contained and do not threaten to topple or explode. Moderation is putting all the collected out-of-place stuff into one box so I know where to look for it. Or so it’s contained and more easily sorted later. Moderation is understanding that clean enough is just that.. clean enough. I prefer one of my grandmother’s mottos: “It’s better dusty than broken.”

I asked a neighbor who always seemed to have a perfectly neat house, “How much time do you spend each day doing house work?” She listed the time she spent cleaning up the kitchen and making beds and doing a little laundry, running the vacuum and dusting a little. I’m sure it was about two hours – every day! Man, I got stuff to do in those two hours that’s more important TO ME than cleaning. But you gotta know what your priorities are. Clean house was never one.

My husband likes his underwear folded neatly and put in his dresser drawers. He can’t understand why I shove my mine in the drawer just as it comes out of the laundry basket. He thinks it doesn’t take any time to fold underwear before you put it in the drawer. Have you ever actually figured out how much longer it takes to turn an undershirt right-side out and fold it? Let me tell you, it’s a lot longer than just shoving it in the drawer! And when I can no longer look in the drawer and tell the difference between panties and bras, I should just get locked away in a home!

If I take the plastic wrap off the new container of mushrooms and put it on the kitchen counter, my husband seems to think that I should stop everything and throw it immediately away. He claims it doesn’t take any time to do that. But that’s not true. Besides, if I stopped to put the trash away, I might forget the important part of the job I had set out to do, like, maybe, make dinner!

Jerrold Pollak, a neuropsychologist at Seacoast Mental Health Center in Portsmouth, N.H., pointed out in the Times article that which we messies already know: “Total organization is a futile attempt to deny and control the unpredictability of life.”

Life is unpredictable – and messy! I can’t control the weather. I can’t control when the phone rings. And I can’t control where the lid of the spice bottle falls.

By the way, if it goes under the stove, I just put a plastic bag over the top of the jar, secure it with a rubber band and call it a day. I am NOT putting MY hand under the stove to pull out that lid! And if I fished it out with a broom handle, you wouldn’t want it back on the jar anyway! So why should I waste time fetching that which I can not see and is not in my way and is of no further use anyway?

David H. Freedman, who the NYT calls a “mess analyst,” and Eric Abrahamson are authors of “A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder,” out in two weeks from Little, Brown & Company. They suggest this great “mess strategy:” … “create a mess-free DMZ … and acknowledge areas of complementary mess.” For me it could mean that there shall be no, er, very little mess in the living room. But the basement? That’s a whole different world. If my dear husband wants to keep every scrap of wood that he ever cut off the end of a board, he can do it in the basement.

Einstein’s oft-quoted remark, “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk?”

I knew I liked Einstein!

I was trying to figure out the conversion from ounces to mililiters. I was looking at some cool little bottles I’ve been using to keep my assorted vitamins and old people medications straight. American Science and Surplus has all kinds of stuff you didn’t know you needed including these great little glass bottles.

I searched Google for a site to convert ml to oz I turned up a bunch of sites with conversion functions. Then I noticed in big type right up there at the top 1 ml = 0.0338140226 US fluid ounces and a link for more information about the Google calculator.

I checked that out. Did you know you could just enter some math equation into the Google search bar and get an answer? Who knew?

Where the heck was that when I was a kid? Oh wait, the first computer I ever saw was a big as a house and you asked it questions by means of punched cards. As I write this, it sounds a bit like a sophisticated Ouiji board. That just doesn’t seem right!

Oh well.. Lucky for kids these days.

The fashion industry is really beginning to get it. Older women, with money, have a place on the fashion runway. Most (OK, maybe just many) 50+ women would look a bit clownish in the newest fashions I’ve been seeing in my newspaper during this run up to the big fashion shows this year. But we have money. And we don’t want to wear all that polyester that seemed to make up such a huge part of our past wardrobe possibilities.

So now, GAP, the perennial purveyor of “in clothes” for the +/- 20 somethings has Forth & Towne, their new chain aimed at 35-plus women. But if as they say, 40 is the new 30, then what’s the point of a new GAP for 35 — er 25? — year-olds.

From the article in MediaPost Publications MediaPost’s Marketing Daily

In their 40s, women are going through all kinds of angst about their age, and about wanting to look younger. But by the time they turn 50, women are much happier with who they are.

Here’s what I think is really juicy about that..
It’s not just that at 50 women are happier with who we are, it’s about having the confidence to know that what is, is. And, wherever you go, there you are. You can’t control what you can’t — so make the most of what you’ve got. (OK, enough with the cliches already, I apologize.)

This is not about settling. I haven’t given up. I just try to see the tornadoes a little sooner. Experience reminds me that I WILL get sucked in. So I need my brain to tell me to move the heck outta the way…. faster than I did the last time.

What does your body feel like when your personal tornado is coming? What if you paid attention to that before it hit you over the head with a 2×4?
How do you know when you’re gonna get trapped again? I’d love to hear about it.
Drop me a note, leave me a comment.

Thanks

Good news, good news.

According to a statement by the DEA:

Today, DEA is unveiling a proposed rule that will make it easier for patients with chronic pain or other chronic conditions, to avoid multiple trips to a physician. It will allow a physician to prescribe up to a 90-day supply of Schedule II controlled substances during a single office visit, where medically appropriate.

What great news for people with ADHD who just plain forget to go to the doctor’s every month, who forget to go to the pharmacy when they know they’re running low. What great news for mothers who wind up paying, on O SO many levels, for kids that run out.

Thank you, DEA. Seems like you’re doing the right thing.

Sometimes, they say, it’s a good idea to let people know what you’re thinking while there’s still time to adjust the plan.

I run a support group for adults with ADHD at St Christopher’s Church in Linthicum, MD, on the third Wednesday of each month. We meet in the church basement so if you come, park on the side and come in through the third door in the back. (Sounds a bit mysterious, doncha think?)

Here’s the back story to the new idea:

We often get a visiting family member of one of the adults - a wife, husband, mother, sister, aunt — someone who thinks the adult with ADHD needs some help. We all understand it’s important to educate the “others” in our lives. The group is always supportive of new people and their “other,” but I don’t like those people to come more than once. The person who does not have ADHD sometimes takes over the meeting with their questions. And that’s not what we’re about.

But last night, someone suggested we might plan one meeting particularly for adults with ADHD and their “other” who ever that may be. This would be one time when we’d be happy to see all those “others” out there and answer what ever questions they have and offer what ever help we might give.

We’ll likely have the meeting on the west side of the Baltimore metropolitan area. But lots of stuff could change.

What I’m curious about is this: What would you like to learn from a meeting like that? Do you think it’s a good idea? Would you come and bring someone?

Drop me a note and let me know what you’re thinking.

I look forward to hearing from you. I like the help of others!

Thanks for thinking.

Kerch

I wish I were cool. Really I do.

No need for my parents to worry. My head was “screwed on right.” That’s what my parents friends told them. I was definitely not cool, though.

I wasn’t a real nerd. But I did belong to the library club (I loved fixing the broken books but not shelving them). I also belonged to the radio club. I had a novice ham radio license and everything. WN3OHB I always figured the OHB stood for Old HamBurger. I never got far enough along to be allowed to use voice transmission. I just joined the radio club because what ever “those guys” were doing, I could do it too. (Hey, at least they weren’t jumping off of bridges! I don’t think we had bungee jumping when I was in high school.)

I read in early June about the Webby Awards, given for innovations and excellence on the web. Awarded by The International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences this is the leading international honor for Web sites and the innovators behind them.

What fascinated me in the original buzz I heard about the award was that the acceptance speeches could be only five words long.

FIVE, no more, no less.

There, that coulda been my whole speech!

I’ve been thinking about short stories, short speeches, Short People (I used to sing that Randy Newman song to my kids when they were babies.. “Short people got no body” Perhaps I’m a little warped, but still not cool.)

But this morning I decided check out some of the award winners. and their websites based entirely on some entirely unknown quality that I found in their award speech.

In the Lifestyle category, FoodNetwork.com won a People’s Voice award:

Thanks for always being hungry.

That seemed appropriate and made me smile.

But in the Marketplace category Retail: THE BOOK OF COOL also won a People’s Voice award with this little speech:

Even monkeys fall from trees.

I gotta tell you, I have this thing about monkeys. Maybe I got it from my son who has a thing about monkeys. What ever the reason, I checked out the website.

I found the link to The Book of Cool site in the June 13, 2206 Wired story about the awards. I found such a cool flash intro that I watched it all the way through. Generally I hate those pages that make we wait until I can find the information that I want. I skip them when ever possible. But immediately I got sucked in. Oh yea, I’ll buy this stuff. I want to be cool. Not just live near “cool.”

I’m hoping that maybe, with help from the book and 9 hours of DVD video they’re selling, just maybe I can learn to be cool.

On the otherhand, perhaps:

I make my own cool.

What would you say if you only had five words? What affirmation would you choose? What does that say about you?

Post a comment. Share your five words.

I can’t wait to read what you write.