Cosmo Mafia

No it's not a harem of ladies who lunch whilst sipping pink drinks with their pinkies out as they plan the demise of their hated hairdresser. The Cosmo Mafia is apparently a group of gentlemen who hang out in steak houses with an older and scantily clad lady impressing her with their pink drink choices. Or perhaps their message was that they were so manly they didn't have to fear that femininely fruity beverage. Either way, Scott and I spent less time talking over his birthday dinner, than eavesdropping on the booth next door. Some lessons we learned include "It's about having lots of money and having people take care of you. That's what real love is." Ah apparently Scott and I weren't totally aware of the meaning of true love. It's taken us a few years, but now we know. We also learned some other life lessons through our eavesdropping. "It's not good to meet up with sketchy guys who you don't know very well. Even if you meet them in a public place, they could have guys waiting in the car." As a crime detective novel might say, I couldn't get a read on these guys at first. They came in wearing suits, a pair of fairly tall broad gentlemen, at least 60 years old. One had curly black hair that had turned mostly silver, pulled back into a low ponytail. The other one looked like a slightly hefty and greasy Richard Gere. It was really their drinks choice that threw me off. Then this 50 some year old lady comes in and shrugs off her coat to reveal a backless yellow number that I'm not sure I would have worn with confidence. But the gentlemen seemed to enjoy it. They didn't seem like normal businessmen or academic types. They didn't have that professional veneer, but they did seem to have money... Eh fuggedaboutit.

Das Rheingold

I went to see my first opera last night! I saw Wagner's Das Rheingold at the Metropolitan Opera House. It was a really great production, but we had gotten the cheap 'day-of' tickets that are standing room only. This opera was the first in the tetrology Der Ring des Nibelungen, and the shortest, but still clocked in at two and a half hours without intermission. Needless to say, my feet hurt quite a bit afterward.


I don't know if any of you are familiar with this opera series, but it seems like Tolkein's Lord of the Rings was strongly based off of it. In Das Rheingold a gnome forsakes love and steals the Rheingold from the Rhinemadiens, using it to forge a ring of power. This ring give him domination over everything and he uses its power to amass wealth and intends to eventually conquer the world. He forces his brother to craft a helmet that allows him to change his shape, or even become invisible (sound familiar?). Eventually, the ring is stolen from him and he curses it such that those who possess it will meet ignoble demises until the ring is back in his possession once again.


Kinda cool right? I want to see the other operas, but I don't think I could bear to stand again. I think the longest one clocks in at just under six hours...

Don't you get ESP...N?

I'm always surprised when I finally get around to updating my blog. See I write blog posts in my head all the time. So when I finally get the time and a computer in front of me and I see some old post that was way before the one about sushi class, and deaths in the family and holes in people and birthday presents and paper extensions and well, you get the point. If you could just read my mind, this would be updated a lot more frequently. I thought maybe twitter would help, but I can't text twits because I don't pay for texting on my phone. Yup that's right folks, every time you show me the love and send me a text I rack up a 15 cent charge. Only Scott pays for texts. Maybe I should have asked for textability for my birthday. I did get it in a way. I am typing on my very own brand new shiny blue tooth keyboard. So nice. I even have a mouse to go with it. Sooooo much better for using in photoshop. Thanks Scott!

Back to the Logo-Drama

Previously on Logo-Drama.... Adrienne asked her loyal readers to select between options A, B and B'. None of which were overwhelmingly popular. This time on Logo-Drama Adrienne will again present some options for her fledgling photography business, in the hopes that one will meet with mass approval and prevail as the new logo. If not... it's back to the drawing board. dun dun duuuuuunnnn! Let me know your thoughts people :)

I <3 the Internet

Warning stream of consciousness ahead!

Well I guess it all really started from a magazine. Today at work we recieved our regular subscription to Museums magazine. It sounds really exciting, I know but in it was an article by an interesting woman who I sheepishly admit I thought was a man because it was about gaming. She wants to use gaming in all sorts of great ways, including saving the world and having a game designer win a Nobel Prize. In the article she talked about happiness and how video games are really great at producing happiness based on some basic principles happiness researchers (yup they exist) have found. This all connected to museums because she thought museums should be at the forefront of creating happiness and that they could use the principles of gaming to do so.

Sooooo I've been thinking lately about my degree topic (educational technology) and how the part I'm really interested in is individualized instruction. I really think that's where technology has a chance to shine instead of just being annoying and hard to work/incorporate into the classroom.

When I first heard about gaming and ed-tech I thought, 'eh'. I've seen Scott play and play and play and didn't really want to have much more involvement than that. But when my professor described the way games can become really great individualized instructors my interest was piqued.

Anyway, back to Jane McGonigal, who happens to be the lady I was talking about earlier. She's awesome. I found her blog and she has some great stuff there and great ideas in general. I am always a fan of the "make the world a better place" ideas. But doing that while having fun is even better. She talks about how people spend 20 hours a week on World of Warcraft and compares that to the amount of time it's taken to build Wikipedia to it's current state. Basically WOW players could have make Wikipedia in a few months. She also links to this site where you play a game of exchanging and building on ideas the Signtific Lab. Their name bugs me because I always want to pronounce the G. So that was interesting, so is her Top Secret Dance Off. You can browse her blog for yourself to find all these crazy things.

I don't know if this gets anyone else excited, but I can't wait for the future and to meet people like her and to create games to educate people well and change the world and GRRRR just DO something with my life.

p.s. I was going to make a super secret dance and post it, but I made the super secret dance video and decided that it should remain secret.

Knowledge is Power

The things I learned on the way to the Path station.

1. If your culture requires you to wear a head scarf it's really nice in the winter. If you add to that the benefit that you don't need to buy a hands free phone attachment and that you can just stick your phone in the scarf instead, then you've almost convinced me to convert.

2. When an Asian lady pops out of her car with a handful of pamphlets and thrusts one at you as she says "glow-ba-wa-me" always take the paper. You will find out all kinds of great things. The first thing I learned from the paper was that there will be a picture of a lovely blonde asian, a blasian if you will, (come to think of it, the same term could be used for a caucasian, i just like the term, no disrespect to anyone.) The second thing I learned was that "Yes. Thank you, Master." is a "Question." The final bit of knowledge I gleaned was that in order to prevent Global Warming we all have to become vegetarians.

3. I learned something else, but then I forgot it. Too much cognitive load this weekend sorry all.

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Overload!

Ahh yes, just the way I like it, finishing homework at 1:00 AM on a Saturday. I thought I was supposed to be doing something else. Well If I'm lucky I'll get to see time jump for daylight savings. Anyway, here's a shot from a 1 year old's birthday party that I did last weekend. I'm going back to do another family member next week. Busy busy. I just can't say no to people who want pictures! Phew, at least spring break is coming up so I can catch up on things. Funny how it only means I don't have my 2 hour class on Monday, but it makes a large difference! I really am loving it all, I just wish I had more time.

From Tunrolo

Hurray Procrastination!

So I'm supposed to be reading about Cognitive Load and Split Attention effects etc. Instead I'm writing a blog post. In my research I came across a site that is not only excellent for procrastination, it also teaches you something AND helps the poor. Awesome! www.freerice.com is basically a vocabulary quiz, though they have other topics. Every question you get right donates 10 grains of rice to the UN world food program. I learned some great words already such as osculate=kiss, extirpate=destroy and gimcrack = showy but cheap. I hope you've all been thoroughly distracted and entertained. If you weren't, then just give in to your bibulous tendencies and come back later.