I love the new Nikon. My life this week? Not so much.

It’s hard enough coming back from vacation, but coming back from vacation to discover that I made an error on my office rent check date — a really STUPID error — cost me $655 in legal fees did not start the week well. In fact, it royally pissed me off.

After writing the check, I can hardly stand going to that office, just because the landlords who shall not be named right now knew damn well I never postdate checks and after being there for twelve years, they certainly could have called me to clarify that I really meant JUNE 1st and not JULY 1st. No, they sued me instead.

I felt stupid. And bullied. And just generally half-cocked in a pissed off position.

It’s hard coming back from vacation more tired than when I left. That’s the price for spending vacation days at major Irish Dance competitions, especially when we fly home very, very early the day after the competition.

Sticks is being a complete grouchy reclusive, my house is overcrowded, there are no prospects for it becoming less crowded anytime soon, and all of it has left me feeling hemmed in and pinned down.

Thank God for BlogHer next week. Four days of NOT dealing with this stuff. Glorious heaven.

I suppose I should. If it were “stepfathers day” I’d have lots to say, because I have one of the funniest, kindest, quirkiest stepdads on the planet. He still kisses my elbow when I walk in the house and sneaks cotton balls in my purse when I’m not looking. (I told you he was quirky) Those cotton balls bring back memories of sneaking in at 3AM trying not to let anyone know I’d just gotten home, only to be caught out when I let out an involuntary scream while turning the covers back on my bed. Under those covers, there would be the carefully laid pattern of cotton balls, placed for maximum possibility of inadvertent contact.

See, I hate cotton balls. There is something about the texture of them that gives me chills down my spine if I even think about them, much less touch them. The idea of picking one up, or inadvertently plunging my finger into the center of one just about sends me into orbit. Call it sensory disconnect, or just weirdness. Because it’s just this side of utterly bizarre, my stepdad thinks it’s funny to tease me with them. It never fails to get a laugh (even from me sometimes), and he also reminds me that it could have been one of my brother’s snakes in that bed instead of cotton balls. The boas, in particular, seemed to love getting out of their nice warm man-made houses and finding their way to the foot of my bed.

With a great stepfather like that, writing about my real father on father’s day would be one of two things: mean-spirited or phony. It makes more sense to remain silent. There is one thing, though. My dad is the one who taught me how to love jazz, and to respect the artistry behind the music. It makes me sad to know that he won’t have an opportunity to see his grandson carry forward the tradition of the music he loves best. Beyond that, the other stories are not ones I care to tell, especially on a day where fathers are celebrated. Flaws and all, I know he loved me as best as he could. He just couldn’t get around himself enough to make it count when it needed to.

So instead of writing, I’ll just wish all dads out there a great day, blow a kiss toward my stepdad’s elbow, and remind the kids to behave.

Let me start this post by saying that it’s not supposed to be 97 degrees in Camarillo in April. It’s especially not supposed to be 97 degrees on a day where DG performs outside at our local Celtic festival in full costume, with only two other backup dancers. AND…when she has a competition the next day.

This competition meant a lot to her. After the last one, she has been practicing, working, practicing. Beyond the obvious desire to do well and finish in the money, Nationals looms large on the horizon, and is the next big goal ahead of her dance-wise. Like our presidential candidates, momentum means a lot. This competition was DG’s Pennsylvania primary. She didn’t have to finish first, but she did need to close the gap and finish strong.

She did, too! Jumped up 7 or so places to 8th. Unfortunately they only gave trophies to the top 7, but it’s the first time I had to fight back happy tears over a non-trophy finish, because she was, in this biased parent’s estimation, brilliant.

Here’s a little excerpt of what we call Irish dancing in hell….full costume, 98 degrees outside, dancing in the sun. Yowsa. Didn’t she do a great job? This is a new dance for her — she’s working on polishing it up for her set dance at Nationals.

I have had at least three decent, if not inspired, ideas for blog posts this weekend. Every time I start to write them, I have to turn off the wireless modem so Sticks will give up on what he’s doing and go to bed. This is because he likes to stay up till 4 and then drag himself out of bed in the morning and drive the 35 miles to school in a sleep-deprived and groggy state. Obviously, this doesn’t work for us, so cutting off the network is the only way to keep him from being a danger to others when he drives.

That means that if I don’t get it done by midnight it might not get done at all, which is what has happened. If I actually could stop obsessing on the Pennsylvania primary and the reports around it and think about other things, I could open up all the articles I want to open before turning things off, but no…I don’t do that either.

Instead, I will say congratulations to Steve Gillmor for his new partnership with Techcrunch and the re-launch of the Gillmor Gang. Despite the relatively chaotic first show, there are golden moments, and the end is definitely causing a blog post to ferment for me. Think communities, open and closed, vibrant and dormant, online and offline. Lots of thoughts rolling around on that.

In other news, I bought a webcam and am slowly sticking my toe into trying real-time video chats and some other experiments. To that end, I spent some time tonight learning by visiting QueenofSpain’s (aka Erin) show tonight on Stickam, which is a very cool site for real-time video chat (as long as you use IE — can’t get Firefox to work right). The topics? Zappos and politics.

Still, I blame the kids for everything. It’s only right when they insist on causing me grief. It’s either that, or the fact that gas has now hit $4/gallon and I’m walking everywhere.

Technorati Tags: zappos, gillmor gang, techcrunch, rambles

I suppose you’d like one for all those pictures I threw up here — pictures from the Blackberry because I was stupid and forgot the good camera for which I am kicking myself.

A long, long time ago my high school sweetheart and I broke up over his roommate, who I subsequently married. Said roommate had a sister who I became (and remain) great friends with. About 26 years ago, ex-boyfriend called heartbroken because he’d been dumped. The wheels of my plot were set in motion that night.

Sister-in-law was living with us at the time, with her young son. I invited ex-boyfriend over to the house to drown his sorrows, then left for the market. A year later, I stood up at their wedding.

It’s 25 years later, their son is married, a business owner and their daughter is a (very tall) lovely college graduate who has a lovely boyfriend with a great sense of humor. They threw a party for their parents. A vow renewal. I thought it would be pretty straight up, but when Elvis came out to do the ceremony, everything changed into a great celebration of a couple who, through thick and thin, has stayed together and remains committed.

I take no credit for anything beyond introducing them. As incompatible as I may have been with my ex-husband, I truly love his sister and regard her as the salt of the earth, and let’s face it — that first boyfriend always has a special place, so it was only natural to play matchmaker where it seemed so — necessary. She’s the kind of person who keeps everything glued together no matter what, that reliable, steady type who just really loves her life and those in it. The folks at the party tonight reflect the strength of their partnership.

The party was grand, from the appetizers, to the soup, to the salad, to the filet and fish. But seeing their daughter’s boyfriend marry them (having been ordained in the Dudeist church) — that was something special. Hence, the spatter of photos.

I loved sitting at a table of strangers half my age and extolling the virtues of the Blackberry over the iPhone. Technology is the great equalizer — there were things they knew that I didn’t, and vice versa. What fun it was to hang out and not feel old or intrusive! Hearing their kids talk about how cool it was to have parents that stayed together and talk about how they wanted to honor that — also very cool.

Perspective and nostalgia, all in one evening. Merging my past into my present, seeing the next new generation admiring the older while forming the newer, all wrapped up in Elvis priest.

A night to remember.

Tomorrow will be the capstone of a weekend of dance and fun. Hope you have a great one, and tip a Guinness for me…I’ll be driving.

Technorati Tags: st patricks day, irish, irish dance

“As for the future, your task is not to foresee it, but to enable it.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It’s the season for high school enrollment and planning for DG, and it’s an interesting dilemma. Unlike Sticks, she has no ‘mainstream passion’ that she can channel into her high school years, which means we can plan her academics easily enough but not the electives.

In a sincere effort to help, she was descended upon by five “career women”, who explained that she really only needs to focus on one goal — getting to college and studying for a career in accounting, dentistry, teaching or medicine.

She was appalled. She told me she felt pressured, boxed in, angry a little bit that they would limit her future so severely. She said she might want to travel, to see the world, to feed the poor in Afghanistan, help build Iraq, and why were they so narrowly putting her into such a tight pathway?

I agree. Are we so focused on our girls being traditional successes that we would push them into the traditional “men’s careers”? And why just those four? What about rocket science, web design, social media, art?

Here’s what one of them said to a bright and talented girl drummer: “The band won’t get you anywhere; math will.”

Such narrow thinking! Imagine a world 20 years from now where we pushed our daughters into dull, boring, uncreative jobs, where we told them they needed to train for employment instead of entrepreneurship? Why aren’t we encouraging them to think past the traditional, into the ‘cloud’? Why not technology, why not the web?

This reminds me of the narrow thinking of my mother, the cautious “don’t give up your day job for the arts” ever-practical and incredibly stifling advice. Surely we can do better for our daughters.

I told her I want her to tune that stuff out and listen to me. At age 14, she shouldn’t have a clue as to what she wants to do, but should be encouraged to learn at her very highest potential, to explore, to dig deeper than the surface, and to dream of what she thinks she can do rather than what they tell her she should do.

The rest will follow.

Technorati Tags: futures, college, career, dreams