Staycation Days 8 & 9

A little late but that's because 1) we were enjoying staycation and 2) staycation is over now so back to the usual crazy :)

July 4 started with Facetiming the grandparents, a flag photoshoot (he was super enthusiastic about it, continually telling me "more flag Mom") and then a trip to the park.

After that, Cade decided it was just too exciting of a day to nap. Sad face for Mommy and Daddy. But despite being nap-free he did pretty well at the afternoon pool party. He alternated between playing and watching a movie. We brought out the mattress from his pack-n-play, laid it under the porch and streamed a movie for him on Netflix. Not exactly what I planned for our holiday, but Mr. SleepyPants couldn't handle a whole afternoon of playtime so quiet movie time was a nice option when he needed it.

On Sunday we went to the duck pond, had morning playtime with Holden, went to the gym/Kids' Club and gym pool. All before lunch. After a FANTASTIC almost 2 hour nap, he had an afternoon playdate with Holden and our babysitter, Emily, while Jenny and I went out for a very high quality, family friendly moving. Magic Mike XXL. Alright, not so family friendly, but tons of fun! And Emily said the boys had a blast playing together for 3.5 hours. I think it was win for everyone.

PR is not all martinis and manicures

A girlfriend posted this article to Facebook today and it could not be more accurate.

Having had my hand in the PR cookie jar in all my jobs, I can tell you, there aren't nearly as many martinis, manicures, happy hours or other fluff as most people think. There's a lot more prepping executives, writing and rewriting, calendar balancing, position statement creation, crisis communication planning and other non-alcoholic activities involved.

So why martinis and manicures the first thing that often comes to mind? I especially like this paragraph and its contribution to the explanation

On a New York Observer list of fictional publicists in pop culture, every notable character since the mid-'80s is a woman — typically sharp-tongued but not supersmart. Think Jennifer Saunders on Absolutely Fabulous, or Debi Mazar on Entourage. One of the most popular sketches on Comedy Central’s Kroll Show is "PubLIZity," a reality-TV parody starring Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate as vapid pseudo-professionals in neon heels. Even when they’re portrayed as savvy, like Sex and the City’s Samantha Jones, PR people are never intellectual heavy-hitters. They are the working world’s sorority girls: salad-eating, prosecco-ordering up-talkers, manicured to the hilt.

TV shows aren't where it ends though. The number of chick-lit books featuring women PR, advertising or other communication pros living in London, NYC, and LA and hopping between social and work events with no discernible differences doesn't help either. They are always being woo-ed by mega-watt smiles from millionaire men (sometimes married) and sneaking off to the coffee shop to gossip with their girlfriend co-workers. While my career has definitely included some coffee shops, the flirting millionaires have been notably few.

Even in college, the number of peers in the COM who told me they wanted to do food, beverage, fashion and entertainment PR kinda killed me. I mean, yes, I want to get paid to peddle wine too. But there are only so many jobs in those arenas. Much less glitzy fields like investor relations, nonprofit (my fav), tech (my other fav), education, energy, and health are where the bulk of the jobs are.

I suppose this whole soapbox is to say two things

1. The marketing and PR department at your company is not fueled by martinis. They are most likely sharp, talented individuals who could write a whole newspaper's worth of content before most of their non-marketing peers could spell their names.
2. If you are considering a career in marketing or PR, remember, most of the jobs are not glitzy but they can be rewardingly geeky.

Drop Out?

I'm watching The Voice and the contestant on stage dropped out of college to pursue music.

What would you do if your kid called home wanting to drop out to pursue their passion?

Mmm Feet

Thursday night in the bath I helped Cade find his feet. He was reaching for them but never got quite past his ankles. So I helped him a little and said "look! your feet! toes!"

Now he is ALL ABOUT THEM. Grabs them, looks at them and of course eats them.

In other news we had a super lazy day at home as a family yesterday. We watched a marathon of Netflix's new series "Orange is the new black." It's a good thing he is too young to know what is on the TV because it is definitely a grown-up show and if he were two years older, there would be a lot of earmuffs involved.

Not that that is going to stop me from watching at least 2 more episodes today with the wee baby.

Baby Bucket Update

Whittling my way through the Baby Bucket List I've been reading, napping and movie-watching like a champ. I recently finished Sharp Objects (don't recommend) and am more than halfway through Between Sisters (jury is still out). I also re-enlisted in Netflix's DVD service and this afternoon watched What to Expect When You're Expecting. As a pregnant lady, I found it HILARIOUS. Also I know the Baby Bucket List said "movie date" which we still fully intend to go on one of these days, but I would like to add to the list "catch up on movies" because I am going to do my best over the next 10 weeks (!!! just 10 weeks!!!) to watch all the movies I said I wanted to watch but never got around to. Netflix, you are about to get a work out.

Also here are a few new additions to the Baby Bucket List

• Finish our wedding-2012 "yearbook" (I'm at June 2012, not too bad if I do say so myself)
• Lots of Lexi walks
• QT at the gym (because 1. it makes me less achey and 2. I can)
• Cheryl-only activities when Ross is working
• West Wing on Netflix (Not sure if I'll watch the whole series but I want to watch at least enough episodes to determine if its worth committing to the full series)

And so that you don't think/I remember all the awesome things post-pregnancy, here's a list of things I'm looking forward to enjoying when baby boy arrives

• 12 weeks home with the little guy
• And as a result, lots of time with my hubby too
• Lots of baby pics, per my 2013 resolution
• Puppy kissing baby, and vice versa, for years to come, because nothing is sweeter
• An additional day each year to enjoy birthday cake
• Giving family/friends the best excuse ever to visit me/us (reserve your spot on the Google calendar now!)
• Shaving my legs
• Pants that button

Very Strong Opinions About Women Voters

I'm watching the electoral college votes roll in and listening to the political pundits chatter away about this demographic voting this way and that demographic voting that way. I can't help but notice, as I have throughout this election, the discussion of women. "Women care about X issue" and "Women are passionate about Y issue" and "He really depends on women voters in X state."

I'd like to point out a potentially little known fact: Women are half the country.

HALF. So perhaps it is a little presumptive to assume that HALF the population cares about one issue more than another. Perhaps implying that a full HALF of the population votes based on the same predictable 1 or 2 issues is a little insulting.

There's a lot of women voters out there and we are from all walks of life. Yuppies. Soccer moms. Old money. New money. Religious leaders. Secular leaders. Low income. Urbanites. College educated. High school drop-outs. Black. White. Asian. Hispanic. Business owners. Environmentalists. Government employees. The list goes on and on and on.

I think the campaigns and the commentators would be much better served to describe women voters through more narrow segmentation than "women." Do you ever hear "Well he really needs to win the male vote for this election"? No! You hear "White working-class men are critical;" a finely-tuned, specific segment.

Next election, please consider that women voters are defined by things other than their anatomy and speak to and about us as the diverse, critically-thinking individuals we are.

It's tough being a girl

A story on the local news tonight highlighted the height/size requirements for San Antonio's Fashion Week. While I can't find the story online yet to quote the exact requirements, I know it was at least 5'9" and size 0-something small. Many are arguing that plus size models should be included.

Interestingly enough, the story didn't mention anyone fighting for just a regular size 6 or 8, average height girl to be in the runway show.

This made me think about how tough it is to be a girl. Girls are given such conflicting body image messages both directly and implied. You must be skin and bones to model. But big is beautiful. Every body is great. As long as you are a size two.

Personally it is my hope that one day magazines, fashion shows, TV, etc will depict girls and women at healthy weights more than either end of the spectrum. How great would it be for "healthy BMI" to be the target of model recruitment? Because really at the end of the day, isn't achieving a healthy lifestyle what we want to teach girls?

Moms, Dads, teachers and other mentors can have an incredible impact but a little more help from pop culture on the importance of health wouldn't hurt.

Good news

In the perfect world, my workday is bookended by ABC News. Today was a day in that perfect world. And on two of the newscasts I watched, I got some news that pleased me.

1. Sam Champion is engaged! Sam Champion is publicly taking advantage of New York's same-sex marriage laws and getting hitched. Three cheers to Sam, his fiance and ABC News for publicly celebrating the upcoming nuptials.
2. Pflugerville ISD is set to offer domestic partner benefits. Now I give Pville a lot of crap for its overuse of "Pf" and my opinion of that stands but I'm a little prouder to live in the Pville area today because these domestic partner benefits include heterosexual and same-sex partners. I dig it.

There's a slew of things in the world that aren't exactly as we would all like them but happy news like today's makes me optimistic that things are going in the right direction.

It really is the little things

It's the little things that make us happy. Today those things are

1. New dishes at more than 50% off!
2. Learning that Army Wives is not a discontinued show that only lives on Netflix as I thought it was but is still airing new episodes on Lifetime. The  DVR is set!

California is where stars are born

The other day I was quite pleased to discover that my video editing software includes making slideshow style videos with photos. I guess this is a somewhat basic function for video software but I just hadn't played with it very much and didn't know the capabilities.

Anyways, I was excited and made this little 1 minute video on my trip to California as an excuse to experiment with the feature. Here ya go!



PS After basically hearing this song on repeat for 30 minutes while I sorted out the timing, Ross has requested a vote in the music selection for my Europe video. I didn't know I would be making a Europe video but apparently I will be. Song suggestions can be directed to my hubby.

Famous

Ladies and gentlemen, you are reading the blog of the wife of the most famous MetroRail rider in Austin.

Last night we jumped on the first weekend evening service of MetroRail for a night downtown. Jon & Erin jumped on at the stop nearest their house and a couple stops later, we jumped on. On the ride into town we joked about being a part of Austin history - first train ever for weekend MetroRail! Woohoo!

Ah, foreshadowing.

When we got downtown we noticed a reporter and cameraman and thought we'd have .5 seconds of fame as they captured footage of people getting off the train. Oh no, it was so much more fame than that.

Sheldon Green from KVUE interviewed me and Ross. He actually told me my first answer was too spot-on and asked if I was planted by CapMetro. (No, just years of professional PR work and training.) I thought my interview went fine but Ross' interview was excellent. He's such a natural! Laid back, guy-next-door sounding, and of course, good looking.

Anyway, we missed the news clip because as mentioned, we were having a night out on the town. But we know it showed because Nancy's friends, the guys at GFD and a couple of my friends (who noted my name was spelled "Sheryl") saw it.

In the absence of a video clip, allow me to share my husband's fame via the web story. And I quote

Friday night about 20 people hopped on board Capital Metro’s first permanent weekend train ride stretching from Leander to downtown Austin.

“I went on the website and it said (the train would arrive in) 30 minutes and it was on the second for how long it said it was going to be,” said Ross Black who rode with his wife to meet two other couples for a night out on the town.

Evening Update: Video clip!

What's Goin' On

Holy mole it's been a long time. Let me try to summarize...

• SXSW: Owned me for 5 days. It was a lot of fun and I had my first experience on the MetroRail here in town (success!). As expected it was also very busy and I was a tired girl when it was all said and done.
• New Job! Well, very similar job, new title. A week or so ago I was promoted to Sr. Marketing Specialist. Very exciting :)
• Date Night: Ross and I took advantage of a Wednesday night off together and saw a movie at the Alamo Drafthouse. Our flick of choice, John Carter, starred the kid (Taylor Kitsch) who plays Tim Riggins in Friday Night Lights. Given the premise of the movie, Confederate war vet ends up on Mars, it was better than I thought.
• Boston! And more importantly, Dr. Jane's wedding. More on that later.
• The Castaways: I finished this book on my flight home from Boston yesterday. It's about 3 couples who are all besties on Nantucket and the way the accidental drowning of their 4th couple friend affects them. It sounds more morbid than it was and I enjoyed all the soap opera like twists.

The Social Network

Tonight I finally watched The Social Network. I had some interest when it first came out but as I'm not much of a movie person, just simply never got around to it. But given my job and all, I thought I should watch it at some point.

It was a weird movie to watch. It starts in Boston, my freshman year of college at Harvard which given my romantic situation at the time was where I spent many a day. So there was a lot of deja vu in terms of scenes and some of the stuff talked about (ie Final Clubs). Of course it also starts with Mark Zuckerberg and his BU girlfriend breaking up and many not so nice comments about my alma mater.

Then there's the fact that a large percentage of my current employment is based on the existence of this site. So I supposed I'm a bit biased toward it and honestly want Zuckerberg to be a bit of a hero, king of the nerds if you will. But he doesn't come up smelling like roses. Really none of them do which is a shame if you ask me. Oh and ironically, as I sat there thinking "He's kinda a jerk" my first instinct was to post that where else but Facebook.

However I do really like the actor, Jesse Eisenberg, who played Zuckerberg. And Justin Timberlake is always good eye candy, even when he's a bit paranoid. So there's that.

Not my favorite movie by any stretch (though I wouldn't say I actively disliked it), but given that being in the right place at the right time probably is no small coincidence to my current gig, it was interesting.

Oh and what am I going to do tomorrow at work? I'm going to frequently tune in to to a live stream of a Facebook conference to learn about the latest development. The small worldness never ends.

The Lincoln Lawyer

Last year I read The Lincoln Lawyer. It was a really good book, very interesting twisty plot. A non-John Grisham Grisham-like read if you will.

Without giving it away, it's about Michael, a criminal defense lawyer in LA who is hired for a high profile assault case. It doesn't take long for his client's real colors to show through and the craziness begins.

Flash forward to now and our (very expensive) Netflix membership which I am determined to get the most of. I rented the movie on Blu-Ray and settled in Tuesday night to watch it while Ross was at work.

DISAPPOINTING.

I guess if you hadn't read the book but did see the movie, like Ross, you might like the movie (he did). But if you read the book you would have been disappointed in the movie, as is so often the case.

It simply didn't take long enough at the beginning to develop the characters which made the twists significantly less interesting. Also the first plot twist, the one that really matters, didn't have the dots connected very well. Even having read the book a few months before I was thinking "huh? how did he draw that conclusion?" Finally a few plot deviations are a given from book to movie and while they didn't have any major ones, I thought the ones they chose lessened the story quality overall.

Verdict: Book or movie. Not both.

Moneyball

I took a brief break from Friday Night Lights this weekend to watch Moneyball on BluRay with the hubs. Since we're both big baseball fans and since the book is one of Ross' favorites, we'd been really wanting to see this movie. In fact we had every intention of seeing in the theater but you know how it is, one thing leads to another and since movies are only in theaters for about 5 days now, it doesn't take much to miss the window of opportunity.

But anyways...

Though I'm not a huge Brad Pitt fan (I mean I think he's good looking but eh whatever, not into the hype), I loved him in this movie. He was really well cast. A bit of a gritty, muscular baseball look to him but sunny and tanned just like you expect a California boy to be. I also love the actor (Jonah Hill) they cast to be Peter Brand, Pitt's Ivy League genius awkward 20-something sidekick.

As we were watching it I thought about a post from the office blog and the point it drove home: when you can't win with business as usual, it's time to change the business. Even if we ourselves never actually change the rules, it's a romantic notion to daydream about, one perfectly fit for the romantic game of baseball.

Finally I indulgently loved how the movie included a few scenes from that old familiar part of Boston. Ah, nostalgia, how I love you.

Verdict: see the movie!

23 Hours in Phoenix

It's a Friday night and Lexi and I are curled up for an episode (or two) of Friday Night Lights. That's because after 23 hours in Phoenix, I'm a sleepy lady.

Instagram pic from front of AZ hotel

Since I'm sleepy, I'll give you the very brief version. Yesterday afternoon I flew to Phoenix to join up with the McPherson Co-op, a group of fundraisers and marketers for PBS stations across the country. I enjoyed dinner with the group, where I ate delicious chicken and learned TONS about the world of public media. As the intersection of charitable work and broadcast journalism, I found it to be super interesting.

Then this morning I spoke to the group about social media and shared a few ideas for how they could use it back at their stations. Shane, from KLRU (Austin's PBS station) spoke with me on the topic and is definitely leading the charge in terms of social PBS stations.

And after speaking but before reaching the 24 hour mark in the wild wild west, I was back on a plane and headed to Austin.

Let's honor Shane and his team here with a teaser video for a show on our local PBS station that I do believe I will have to start watching.

Latest Addiction

In high school I read Friday Night Lights and it quickly became one of my favorite books of all time. (Summary: small town loves high school football and goes to the extreme to support it [Interesting note, our friend Stacy grew up out there in West Texas. He and even more so his older brother, were high school students at that school during the time the book takes place.]) I was stoked in college when they made a movie of it but was sorely disappointed when I saw it. Such gratuitous teenage sex, drinking, drugs, etc and they totally changed the ending, I mean as dramatic as making the Titanic not sink. I was so disappointed in fact that when they made a TV series, I didn't even bother. I figured it was the same characters from the movie in a "what happens next" sequel style series.

Fast forward many moons to this holiday season. Our new BluRay player is smart and thus we can stream in Netflix. Totally awesome. The Friday Night Lights TV series was filmed here in Austin so locally it's discussed often and many people I know, with varying entertainment interests, have raved about the series. Rave reviews, filmed in my (new) hometown and now free on-demand via Netflix. What the hell. I'll give it a shot.

Well that was three days and 12 episodes ago.

First, the TV series is not an extension of the movie. It's just loosely based around the same familiar story of a small Texas town infatuated with its high school football team and the holy grail of winning state.

Second, the characters are so loveable. The coach with his guidance counselor wife and their daughter who is so over football. The unlucky start QB who suffers a major injury. Then the self-conscious second string QB forced to step up as an underclassmen and who develops a crush on the coach's daughter. It's wonderfully cheesey, dramatic and wholesome.

And finally, the oh-so-familiar scenes. It's like looking into my life at times. In some ways, literally: the game scenes were filmed about a mile from the house at Pflugerville High, which I just confirmed via Wikipedia but which I ran across the house to tell Ross when I recognized the district office building in the back of one game scene. (This makes living in a town with such an absurd name a little better. The realtor should have told us this back in 2009; I would have felt a lot cooler moving to P-ville if she had.) I also recognized the shopping center across from our house with the ridiculous ice cream sundae shaped building. You can't fake that kind of ridiculousness folks. And according to Wikipedia, there's one future episode filmed in Boston, including a segment at BU.

But beyond the neighborhood scenery, the plot has some crazy familiarity. Like the scene where the football players dress in drag as cheerleaders for a pep rally. Oh Friday Night Lights, that was so CLHS circa every year 1999-2003. Or the CheerAmerica Classic which I'm pretty sure I competed at and won my division in back in sophomore year of high school. And while we thankfully didn't have any injuries as severe as the starting QB in this series does, my sophomore homecoming date, starting QB Michael, did break his femur one week before the dance.

So basically take my new home, plus my high school years and add in a little more drama and scandal and you've got Friday Night Lights. It's no wonder I'm addicted. The only thing standing between me and all five seasons is the inability of our internet to stream both Netflix video and Ross' new online computer game addiction.

On the radio, whoa oh oh, on the radio

Coming in only second to my ABC World News debut, this morning I had my radio show call-in debut.

On KASE 101 every morning they have a Daily Dilemma and listeners call in to give advice. Today's was a heavy girl (size 14) whose skinny, pretty sister told her that to be in her wedding, she needed to lose 25 pounds.

Well as you can imagine, I had quite strong feelings about that. But it gets worse! One of the DJs suggested the heavier sister lose the 25 pounds and show her sister up by being hotter (than her sister, the bride) at the wedding.

I had to call in. First, what a B&%*#! Who tells their sister that?! Second, ugh, hello Mr. DJ losing 25 pounds when you are a size 14 isn't going to make you thinner than your skinny, pretty sister. Thinner than you were 25 pounds ago but odds are, not thinner than this witch of a sister. Thus that advice is not only ridiculous but irrelevant.

So yeah, I called in. And I gave them a piece of my mind. And they aired it!

I've done radio before for work but always live so I've never been able to hear myself. I've heard my TV interviews though and I often get a little squeaky. I was pleasantly surprised that there was no squeak in this interview, though I did ramble a bit. But hey, you read my blog. You're used to it.

Anyways, back to the Daily Dilemma at hand. How do you think the woman should handle her sister's wedding weight loss mandate?

Movie Review: The Help

Last night during the boys' fantasy football draft, Erin and I saw The Help. Having both read the book, we knew what we were in for.

I really liked it. I think the casting was spot on, most especially with the Minnie character (played by Octavia Spencer). Emma Stone did a great job of being the brazen, sassy Skeeter and I liked her defiant attitude. Elizabeth the Junior Leaguer (played by Anha O'Reilly) really did come across as easily pushed around and totally incompetent as a mother. Spot on to the book's depiction.

In our debrief, we discussed that for such a serious subject, there was quite a bit of humor. The audience was still laughing when some more serious scenes would start. Take that as you will, either as making light of a very serious subject or just as fun. I personally enjoyed it but I can see where it might lessen the severity of the issue.

I think the producers did a good job of turning an ugly piece of American history into a popular mainstream movie. In between cute and funny scenes are a few that are really disturbing, in my mind, especially the arrest of one maid. For me, it was the right balance of some hard-hitting, ugly historical depiction but enough fun entertainment to end on a overall positive note.

Verdict: Go see it. But of course, read the book first because that's always better, even in this case...though not by much.

Video Blitz

I'm not a big YouTube person but every once in a while I see a video that just knocks my socks off. And today, I'm gonna share some with you.

First, Girl Inc's Dear World. This has been my fav girl power video for several years now. Seriously, watch the video. It's phenomenal. (Although I am a little disappointed that they've disabled embedding. I think that's silly.)

Next The Girl Effect which I just discovered this week and I think is now tied as my fav girl power video. It's different than Girl Inc, dealing with girls in more extreme circumstances. It gives me chills.



Right before heading off to Canada I went to the Lights Camera Help Nonprofit Film Fest here in Austin. I was only able to attend one day but I saw this great little PSA from the Austin Ronald McDonald House Charities. I'm continually impressed with this organization's use of technology and new media.



I can't forget the Breast Cancer Resource Centers and their great "How We Serve" video that was shown at the Graphic V fundraiser back in April. It's a beauty!



And finally, because you know I have to include an ABCNews video (duh), this one on The Hunger at Home. Can you believe how many hungry kids we have in this country full of abundance? I've been excited about Junior League because I love all chick orgs and because I dig community service. But having been reminded how much hunger is a problem, even here in the US, I'm even more excited about my placement with the FIT (Food In Tummies) program.



Ah yes, and all those videos are why I love my job. Feel inspired yet? I sure do.