Author: maggeh

Google Bought Measure Map!

It’s been a rough period around the Mason household. When Bryan gets stressed out, he loses things. Expensive things. I can figure out how distracted he is by how much equipment disappears.

In the last few months, we’ve replaced phone, a digital camera, and an Apple laptop (as you may remember). Bryan also spent a few hours crawling around in the grass, searching for the only set of car keys we have.

This, my friends, is why my poor husband has been so stressed out. As you may or may not know, Bryan is the COO of Adaptive Path, which is the company that created Measure Map. That means he has spent a lot of time on the phone lately.

Congratulations, Mr. Mason! Screw the roses, this is the best Valentine’s Day gift a girl could ask for. I’m so, so proud of you.

Any day now, I’ll let you start carrying the car keys again.

Guests

A highlight from Merlin’s 5ives:


“Five things you can bring along to help make the party all about you

1. your doggie

2. your 12-string

3. your new Nikon

4. your puppet friend

5. Dianetics”

Tragedy

I’m tutoring in an elementary school classroom, and reading timelines the students have created. My favorite:

Election

Oaklahoma City Bombing

Iraq

Trade Center

My no-good, rotten, makes a big deal out of everything sister is born.

This Morning

It’s 7:30 a.m. This young man is wearing a black jean jacket and walking along with his hands in his pockets. When he spots us, he bends at the waist and runs across our path with his head lowered. His hair bounces across his eyes as he jogs. Bryan and I exchange a glance just as the man begins making startled-crow sounds, “CAW! CAW! CAW!”

Once he’s passed, he straightens again and resumes his natural gait.

Rub Some Dirt in it

We hear a radio story about how injuries are way up among kids because the push to excel at competitive team sports is growing.

Me: Screw that. Whatever happened to just going out in the yard and playing? I guess if they really, really want to be on a soccer team or something, but it would suck to shuttle them from event to event so you can feel like they “excel.” They should just be kids; play however they want to play.

Bryan: As long as they win.

Me: Exactly.

The Thirst Quencher

Say you wake up, and it’s still dark, and you’re groggy, and you’re thirsty.
Say you stumble into the kitchen, and you see the silhouette of a container of cranberry juice on the counter. Say you’re sleepy, so you don’t stop to think about why it’s not in the fridge, or why the cap feels funny.

In that situation, my advice for you is not to drink it. It’s probably olive oil.

Girls Girls Girls

Heather, Eden, and Melissa just left town, and I miss them.

Eden’s face, always seems more familiar than it should for the few times we’ve met. She looks and acts quite a bit like Ms. Champ. They both share that walking-painting quality. But today I came across pictures of Eden as a young ‘un and realized that she also looks related to me.

Heather had 24 hours here, so we stayed up until 4 a.m. pinky swearing, talking about boys, discussing new hairstyles, and getting drunk. Actually, only I got drunk, Heather just smirked at me. This is because Heather, who weighs fifteen pounds, could drink a team of seasoned Teamsters under the table and still remember to keep her knees together because she’s wearing a skirt.

Melissa is similarly evolved. She and I had a semi-serious conversation about whether it’s appropriate to teach your children how to moderate a buzz to spare them years of experimental suffering at the hands of bourbon. We decided no.

Elsewhere

The fantastic DIY magazine ReadyMade just launched a blog, and I’ll be posting there every Tuesday. In other news, Bryan sent in a description of our engagement for the February edition of the magazine. We’re under the subtitle “The Pyromaniacs.” Go see.