Excuses, Excuses...

I've been busy...with work, with life, with family. These are lame excuses. Probably the same ones used by the negligent avian mother who laid first one...

then two...

eggs in my potted basil plant before disappearing completely. Actually, family was clearly not one of her excuses...

Sad ending to this story -- both of those eggs were destroyed, presumably by the alarmingly aggressive squirrels that leap from power lines to branches to my balcony with terrifying agility. I'm not sure what that means for my blog in this analogy...

In any event, I have clearly been avoiding this place. I have some guesses as to why, but none of them are particularly interesting, so onward and upward.

In the meantime, so you know work is not just an excuse and I have been writing somewhere, go read this. Really. It will make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I'll be back soon.

Happy 4th + Gratitude

I was just working on some social media stuff for Wells Bring Hope, and I had occasion to revisit the comparison of life in the U.S. to life in Niger that I created for our Girls Helping Girls campaign a few months ago... Tomorrow, as we celebrate independence (from the British, yes, but mostly from work), let's also shoot off a few firecrackers in celebration of the many, many other benefits that come with life in America.

{Our maternal death rate is shamefully high, but this is supposed to be a "rah rah America" post, so I'll say no more.}

Week 4: Contracting and Catching Up

This week I became an independent contractor, which is definitely something I have never done before. It's exciting and more than a little bit scary to be, for all intents and purposes, self-employed. I am super excited about the non-profit that I am now working for, and I know that I'm going to get to do all kinds of new things in this new role. More on my new gig soon. We're working on getting a new website up and running, so I'm going to hold off on sharing until everything is polished and shiny.

Since photos of me hard at work are a.) hard for me to take and b.) dull, I'm going to share another new thing that I did recently - I attended a "secret" show that was being recorded and will be televised in the next couple of weeks. A week or so ago, Tom used his magical powers to procure tickets to a secret show that Mayer Hawthorne was performing at a secret location. I don't know how he did it; it's a secret. In case you are unfamiliar with Mayer Hawthorne:

                              

The show was held in a ballroom at the Grand Plaza Hotel downtown, a lovely old hotel in a somewhat questionable part of town.

Randomly, the show was sponsored by Southwest, so instead of a bar, they had a table set up with bags of pretzels and roasted peanuts. Weird. Anyway, the show was being recorded and will air on PBS as part of their Artists Den series.

The show itself was a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to reliving it whenever PBS airs it.