Categories
People

Song for the babies to be

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Three couples on the eve of welcoming new life into their homes: Gary and Fiona TurnerTom and Wendy Matrullo, and Michael O’Connor Clarke and his wife Sausage(?) .

It seems only fitting to play one of my favorite lullabies:

Hush my love now don’t you cry
Everything will be all right
Close your eyes and drift in dream
Rest in peaceful sleep

If there’s one thing I hope
I showed you
If there’s one thing I hope
I showed you
Hope I showed you

Just give love to all
Just give love to all
Just give love to all

Oh my love…in my arms tight
Every day you give me life
As I drift off to your world
Rest in peaceful sleep

I know there’s one thing that
you showed me
I know there’s one thing that
you showed me
That you showed me

Just give love to all
Let’s give love to all

Creed, Lullaby

Categories
Just Shelley Places

Found Gift

I rented a car and drove to Crissy Field and spent a glorious afternoon walking around the Golden Gate Bridge and the beach. The tide was low and the waves were strong so a lot of surf boarders were out. Takes guts to surf around the GG Bridge.

Weather was awesome — brilliant blue skies, cool enough to make walking comfortable, and just enough breeze to blow that wonderful sea spray smell into my face. After all the rain, Crissy was full of all sorts of plant life and the sharp, fresh, green smell from the Field was the perfect accent to a perfect day.

Best of all, absolutely best of all: I can walk reasonably well on water packed sand or dirt (concrete’s disastrous for me); that combined with using a great deal of caution, and I was able to walk the entire beach without having my knee go out AND with relatively little pain. At the end, I jumped up on the sea wall, spread my arms wide, and screamed “I am woman! Hear me roar!” “G-rr-rrr-oarrrr!”

Well, I wanted to and thought about it but there were people around with dogs and I didn’t want to scare the dogs.

Wait, wait! The day’s not over. Tonight I got home and my Mom had sent me a Christmas present — a beautiful Meade ETX-70AT telescope. How did she know that I’ve always wanted a telescope? How did she know which one I wanted? It was about the best Christmas present I’ve ever had. I feel like a kid again!

When you have a day like today, it becomes a found gift — a day that fate gives you, rather than one that just happens.

Categories
Diversity Weblogging

Diversity, Inc

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

All that talk the last two days about diversity gave me a great idea for a business. I am so excited, I just can’t tell you how excited I am about this incredible new opportunity.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I introduce to you:

Diversity Dolls

Yes, you heard about it here, first! Diversity Dolls! Now, the next time you have an important meeting or conference and you want to show that you’re interested in diversity, just blow up one or more Diversity Dolls, dress it in the appropriate clothing and position it in the room or around a table. Instant diversity!

Diversity Dolls are very lifelike, and you can order them with the hairstyle of your choice: sophisticated short or slightly weedy, techy long. And you can get Diversity Dolls in all races, sexes, and ages.

Not enough Blacks and women coming to your meeting? No Problem! Order a couple of black female Diversity Dolls and you’ve solved two problems with one purchase. You can’t beat that! Need to show religious diversity? No problem! Rent a Priest Diversity Doll!

These dolls inflate in minutes, can be posed sitting or standing, and all have lifelike expressions. In fact, you’ve seen Diversity Dolls at the last conference or meeting you attended and didn’t even know it, that’s how lifelike these dolls are. And unlike real people, Diversity Dolls won’t drink up all the Starbucks Lattes, eat up all the Krispy Kremes, or ask questions during the meeting!

However, for those times when Diversity Dolls just won’t do, then step up—rent a real Diversity Person! Yes, you can rent a real live, walking, talking person of your preferred demographic, attired in appropriate garb, and with characteristics and speech to match the focus of your meeting or conference. Is this a deal or what?!

Business meeting? Diversity People will wear suits and make a lot of useless marketing statements. Technical conference? Diversity People will wear jeans, button down shirts, and talk about Linux and Open Source a lot.

But what if you don’t need a real person? What if all you need is a name? For instance, if you’re holding a technical conference and the ratio of men to women speakers is 10:1, you don’t need more women — you need more women’s names.

No problem! Diversity Inc. is proud to offer you a fine selection of Diversity Names, names guaranteed to sound female regardless of culture and language. For instance, one of our choice Diversity Names is the following:

Shelley Powers

Now, isn’t that a nice name? Well, it’s yours for a small fee! You can rent this name by the day or week for an incredibly low price. What’s more, if you need to have your Diversity Name blog the conference, we can provide this service for an additional, nominal fee, and no one will be able to tell the difference between the weblog of a real attendee and a Diversity Name weblog!

Folks, I have to tell you, it’s not often that I can fulfill a genuine need for my fellow webloggers. It brings a tear to my eye when I think about all the good I’ll be able to do here for you, at Diversity, Inc. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Air to blow up dolls not included

inflatable_doll.jpg

Categories
Just Shelley

Slashdot let the dogs loose on Mark Pilgrim

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Ah, oh. Mark Pilgrim was mentioned prominently and positively (deservedly so) in a Slashdot interview on accessibility. That sound you hear is Mark’s 3GB bandwidth allowance being sucked dry.

In the re-design of my traditional web sites and weblog (still in process, not rolled out yet), I used Mark’s guidelines to ensure accessibility with my designs. I found that enabling accessibility doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly difficult if you just follow the steps; and if you think about it, the people that need this little extra effort don’t need to hear our whining — think how frustrating it must be for a blind person to go to web page after web page and not be able to ‘see’ the contents?

(Hmmm. Was that last paragraph a little too ‘J’, even for an INTJ? Too bad.)

Categories
Just Shelley

Enough already

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

In case you’re wondering if I’ve decided to focus this weblog on “–isms that must not be named” only, no worries. I have no more intention of becoming a Fem-blogger as I have of being a war-blogger or a tech-blogger or a cat-blogger.

Life’s too rich to only focus on one aspect of life, no matter how important that aspect is.

Besides, as I was out and about visiting other weblogs, I became aware that I’ve been guilty of quite sexist behavior, and that’s a rather lowering realization. So, as all good webloggers do in these times, I’m returning to my roots — cat pictures, and Big Click of the moment (thanks to Jeneane for link):

Back to work, Bird!