I never really thought about it before, but when my 2009 calendar arrived today I realized that I have a “theme” for each year.  Last year I had the Girls Can’t WHAT? drummer calendar riding shotgun next to my desk.  That was appropriate since my band went to Nashville and I was pouring a lot of time into music.

I still love drumming and playing in my band, but this year’s focus has shifted a little bit and I think subconsciously I knew what it was but I couldn’t quite put it into words.  While picking out a calendar, I was repeatedly drawn to one particular design that I created back in early 2007.  I couldn’t figure out why I picked that character so much but when I opened the package this afternoon, the first word that popped into my head was adventurous.  I thought back to all of the goals and plans I made for this upcoming year and sure enough, adventurous is the perfect description.  No wonder I chose the pirate for 2009!

Aaarrr, matey.  What be yer theme for this year?

No this is not a belated post.  I know it’s the 5th day of January. 

I wanted to write about a little experiment my family did last year in hopes that you might consider it for this year.  In order for this experiment to work for us, we had to start at the beginning of the year.  What was the “experiment”?  We stopped giving adult gifts.  No I don’t mean those kind of gifts - I mean we stopped giving gifts to the adults in our lives.  This little brainstorm came about a few years ago when we found ourselves surrounded by stuff we didn’t really need.  Don’t get me wrong, it was nice stuff, but it was just…stuff.  We didn’t need it.  We didn’t even know where to put it.  We appreciated the thought, but we were thinking why on earth do we run around like crazy buying this same “stuff” for other people?  They don’t need it either and they probably don’t have any better storage options than we do.  So we came up with an alternative solution.  Read more

I think this is the first time I have been tagged for this one.  I have Lorna Jane to thank for this. 

Hmm…I’m going to cheat and steal 7 answers from my facebook entry of 16 things, but I’ll be nice and expand on some of them.  That’s fair, right?

1. I have a collection of puzzles like rubik’s cube, pyramids and missing links on my desk that my friends and family mix up for me and then I solve them whenever I am on the phone and need something to do with my hands.  I just put my pyramid back in order this morning.  Who wants to fess up to scrambling it?
2. My first two cars were a Camaro and a Corvette - both red. Now, thanks to my two lovely children, I drive a silver mini-van.  There is some kind of twisted irony in there somewhere.
3. When I was 14, I was hit by a drunk driver and I have metal plates in my back. During a routine scan last month, they discovered that one of the screws is cracked. So I guess you could say I have a screw loose.
4. My entire kitchen is decorated in Coca-Cola, however I usually only drink water and green tea.
5. I am a total computer geek. If I could implant my iPhone in my arm, I would do it.
6. I don’t like chocolate - unless it is mixed with peanut butter and even then I only like it in small quantities.  On the flip side, I absolutely love celery, but not with peanut butter.
7. My high school friends know me as a trombone player, my friends after high school know me as a drummer.  I think it’s funny to connect with high school friends on Facebook and have them say “You play drums?”  It’s even funnier to explain to them that I majored in percussion in college.  Guess that was a well-kept secret back then. 

Now for the hard part…finding 7 people to tag:

1. Kelli
2. Cali
3. BikerBetty
4. Jan
5. Julia
6. Jenn
7. You…pick up the ball and run with it! Facebook-It, Twitter-It, whatever.  Just post your link in the comments. 

Here are the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some wierd.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

These were the top selling Girls Can’t WHAT? designs for the month of December 2008:

1. Police Officer	2. Hunter	3. Hockey
4. Martial Arts	5. Drummer	6. Guitar Player

Yeah, you read that right.  It’s an all-girl band from Saudi Arabia, a country where women are still seen as second-class citizens.  Knowing what the norm is for their country, these four female college students, Dina, Dareen, Lamia, and Amjad decided to buck the system anyway and form a rock band.

“Maybe we’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.” - Lamia from Accolade

So not only are they female, but they play rock which in itself has been a form of music much rejected in their culture but seems to be making a splash among the young adults.  So kudos to Accolade for taking a stand and paving the way for future Saudi rockers.

Here is their only recorded track (so far): Read more

Wishing you all the best
during this joyous holiday season.

I’ve just initiated a soft launch of the new Girls Can’t WHAT? site. “Soft launch” means that the theme is essentially in beta. There are still bugs to be fixed and I am methodically working through them one browser at a time. For the most part, the site is functional, however, there is so much to test I can’t be 100% certain there aren’t major issues to reckon with (probably in IE).

Please report anything strange you may encounter in the comments of this post and I’ll look into it asap. Comments, complaints and general feedback are also welcome.

Sports are becoming less and less of a mystery to girls everywhere as more and more of us are streaming into the gyms and onto the fields to play. I am a big fan of diving right into education when I don’t know much about a subject and if I ever have a question about sports, I look no further than The Cheer ‘Em On Sports Guide by Carol and Clay Cavanaugh.

This book is packed full of information covering the more common sports: Baseball, Basketball, Football, Soccer, Volleyball and Wrestling. It is more than just a summary of the different sports.  Not only do you get an overview and history of the sport, Carol and Clay walk you through the offense and defense, explain the terminology and help you get acquainted with the lingo for each sport. There are excellent diagrams with each section explaining the field, the positions and much more.

Read more

I’m a freelancer.  Yeah I sit at home all day in shorts and a t-shirt, iTunes cranked working on whatever I feel like working on all day long.  Ok so it’s not quite like that.  I do get to wear whatever I want, but I have to turn the iTunes down when clients call and my work is usually dictated by whoever screams the loudest. 

I mentioned a while back that I was reading an amazing book for freelancers by Michele Goodman called “My So-Called Freelance Life”.  At the time, I didn’t think I would learn a whole lot from yet another book about freelancing.  After all I am an established, disciplined and diligent worker and I have more work than I know what to do with most days.  What more could I possibly need to know?

And then disaster struck.

Read more

Have you ever fallen for this trick? Someone sticks their fist out as if to hand you something and your immediate reaction is to put your palm out to accept it. Next thing you know, the “gift” turns out to be a discarded candy wrapper or a bug or something equally as lame. Hopefully you only fall for it once and then after that you learn to pause and ask what the other person is holding before blindly accepting your fate.

While we may learn not to accept trash from our friends as a joke, sometimes I think we fail to apply this instinctive behavior to real life situations. How many times have we accepted a commitment only to find out it’s not the “gift” we expected? Our knee-jerk reaction is to just accept things when they are handed to us. We often fail to realize that we have a choice. We can refuse. We can say “no”.

We don’t have to be fooled by the “gift”, we can choose to get more information and then make a better choice. I hope that 2009 is a year for you to pause before accepting and that you choose your gifts wisely.