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"Words" Cabaret in a Riad in Fez Morocco

Travel Tuesday

 

Isn't it amazing what children can come up with when left to their own devices?

 

This is the tale of two 11-year-old Australian girls who decided to put on a little show for the wonderfully warm people that made the experience of Dar Seffarine fabulous during our stay there in April 2009. Dar Seffarine is a Riad located in Fez Morocco. (A Riad is a traditional Moroccan house or palace with an interior garden. The Riads were inward focused which allowed for family privacy and protection from the weather in Morocco.)

Recipe for Kale That You Will Love, Guaranteed

Meal Monday

Everyone knows we should all eat more leafy greens. They are high in fiber, low in calories and are awesome sources of Vitamins A, C, and beta carotene (although cooking destroys much of the Vitamin C), as well as a decent source of some important minerals, including calcium and iron.

And kale is at the top of the heap, even better than spinach. Plus, we get the benefits of sulforaphane, another one of those miraculous cancer fighting compounds. Bottom line: this plant will make you live forever and your children geniuses. Really.

Summer is Here: Time for Another Suite Life of Zack and Cody Marathon (Not!)

Family Friday

I thought I had exhausted this topic, but it appears that The Suite Life of Zack and Cody has again popped its shaggy little head(s) into my eight-year-old son’s repertoire of must-sneak TV.

Since summer vacation started, the television has been on slightly (OK, much) more than usual.  Luckily, my son gets so sucked into what he watches that he typically doesn’t notice the stealthy creep of parental feet until we are virtually on top of him.

One day this week, I walked up to my mesmerized son, who was perched stock-still in front of the TV.  It took about ten seconds for him to notice me, at which point he jumped two feet and started to sputter.  Apparently, he was simply walking by the TV and it turned on by itself.  And Zack and Cody just happened to be on.  Despite the telltale double-shaggy-blond-heads, he did not fully realize that the show was indeed Zack and Cody until the exact instant I appeared.  Uh-huh.

A few days later, I note that my son is playing what appears to be a very G-rated computer game, something involving soft fuzzy bears.  I leave the room, returning a few minutes later.  This time, the game he is playing appears to involve Zack and Cody!  How can this be?

Managing Email's Insanity

Technology Thursday

I shouldn't be writing a post about managing email as my email is currently in a state that can only charitably be described as "a mess." And I feel like I've written this post before. I'll probably write it again, too! Anyway, the folks over at Google recently put up a post full of tips for managing email in gmail. Almost all of my non-work mail now flows through my gmail account. Some of the tips I've already implemented, such as:

Smartphones: The Working Mom's Scourge or Savior?

Work Wednesday

Fresh on the footsteps of Father's Day weekend, which happily - for my husband - coincided with the beginning of the iPhone 3G S era, The New York Times kicked off the workweek with a little too close to home discourse on smartphone manners. Close to home because my husband and I now have, between us, two BlackBerrys (work-issued), one Treo, and one iPhone. (And we use them a lot.) 

The article, describing the phenomenon of heads bowed - not in prayer- in meeting rooms and around conference tables - framed the etiquette issues surrounding smartphones:

Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out  for pizza.  Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril.

Although the Times reported that the "etiquette debate seems to be tilting in the favor of smartphone use," the traditionalist view was more than well-represented on its website. Indeed, the nearly 200 comments were almost unanimous in their condemnation of smartphone users who email,text, surf, game, Twitter, and Facebook their way through meetings.  And the rest of life.

Rude, rude, rude, repeated the posters.

Self-important, self-centered, self-absorbed, charged others, using words like "infantile," "toddler," "second childhood," and "kindergarten" in their indictments.  (I'm puzzled by the number of references to children. Codewords for our need for instant gratification? Perhaps a clue to the generation gap?  For me, they brought to mind the image of my three-year-old son - who loves fruit of all kinds -  running around our house pretending to "eat" my 'Berry.)

Others reserved their disapproval for smartphone use that goes way beyond meetings to restaurants, theaters, the kitchen table, and even funerals!  One poster (Jeffrey from New York, comment #25) even forecast that constant smartphone use would "empty[] our lives of all quality, meaning and humanity."

I agree with the traditionalists.  (Even if I think Jeffrey overstates the case.) But I have to admit that I act with the (so-called) techno-evangelists.  I am a BlackBerry abuser.