Draft #4

This is the 4th time I’ve tried writing a post today. It’s a tough subject for me, however I feel compelled to write it.

When I was in Grade 7 and Grade 8, a teacher changed my perceptions. She taught me something about myself that was so new to me, I really didn’t understand. It was the first time in the public school system that I finally felt like I could do something well. No, I didn’t struggle in school – from a school standpoint, I always did okay to well, and was one of those kids who didn’t need attention – I didn’t have academic problems, nor behavioural issues, so teachers just ignored me. I was used to that. My goal was to not be noticed – I performed well as a wallflower.

So, when this teacher began to tell me and show me that she believed in me, I was floored. If it’s possible, for the first time, I think I finally felt acceptance and love – that she appreciated all my capabilities, from my strengths to my weaknesses. She praised me when I did well, and showed me how to improve. Everytime she spoke, it could only be explained as warm and accepting of my efforts, skills, and growth. She eased me away from wallflower profile I was so comfortable with, slowly put me into the spotlight and told me I could.

One day in Grade 8, someone important to me made me cry. They told me I wasn’t good enough. My teacher took the time and made me take a moment in private. I don’t remember exactly what she said to me, but the general summary of it was that sometimes, people just don’t understand who we are, or just how special we are. All I really remembered was the thought and idea that my teacher understood me, knew me and still liked me, just the way I was. She went further to say that other peoples’ opinions are not nearly as important as what you believe about yourself. She told me that in her professional opinion, I had very strong skills and that I had to believe in myself first and foremost.

All my life, I had no confidence, really didn’t think I was worth much, and generally thought I wasn’t good enough. She was the first who showed me otherwise, and when I doubted, she again showed me.

It has taken me a very long time to gain confidence and believe in myself. It’s been an uphill battle, and with each step, I’m so thrilled and happy that I had help along the way from key people who have believed in me and pushed me further. Many do not recognize that little Grade 8 girl in me now and though I can have my moments of self-doubt, I am so grateful to be surrounded by so many who believe in me, and accept me, just the way I am.

- Daisy

November 11, 2009

Today just before 11am, I was parking my car.  I was outside one of those big box stores because I was in need of stuff.  I saw the clock, and heard the radio telling me it was fast approaching 11am.  I knew it wasn’t in me to stop my shopping cart mid-way in the store at 11, so instead, I decided to sit in my car.

It felt surreal as I sat listening to the radio as I watched people outside going about their business.  When the radio station began to play the bugles, I remembered one time in the late 1980’s when one of my teachers told us his personal story of the war including his family’s involvement.  It was deeply moving, touching, and it was the first (and last) time I had ever seen a teacher cry in front of a class.

Stranger still, I sat in my car during the minutes of silence.  For brief moments, I wanted to open my car door and yell at the folks still parking, packing and unpacking their cars to remind them to take a moment, yet I didn’t think my act of yelling would be appropriate.  Instead, I closed my eyes, and I thought about how lucky we are.

The radio jolted me back into the present, and I took my keys out of the ignition.  I then climbed out of the car and smiled as I thought it was a strange ritual to have turned on the radio, to hear silence when I could have easily just left the radio off.  Yet, the experience wouldn’t have been the same.

Below is a poem written by a Canadian that I will always associate with Remembrance Day.

- Daisy

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 – 1918)

Link to Neato Photos

Well, how cool is that?!!

It wasn’t until I stared and stared at the second photo with the guy’s hands at the top, and his shoes at the bottom, that I finally clued into the true accomplishment of his poster photos.

And the blog these photos are on, I only just found in the past few days purely by accident, and I’m happy to say it’s got some interesting links and goodies consistently.  Plus, Torontonian to boot.  Take a look around, and be sure to check out the cool Wall-E prototype, and the crazy cat in a tub.

- Daisy

detailed, or big picture?

Some people get frustrated with my attention to details.  It actually comes quite easily to me for anything written and in front of me.  I love to be immersed in the details, I jot down some notes, and process the information quite readily.  It’s quick, simple and easy for me.

Except when it doesn’t matter.  I am the queen of taking too big a bite and trying to chew through it all.  Since I tend to bite off too much at least once a quarter (usually 3-4x a year lasting approximately 6-8 weeks – more about this in another post), I find myself in a constant battle of ruthlessly prioritizing and slashing less important items.  One item that consistently gets slashed due to time constraints is memory for the music and the choreography for my classes.

It’s just not that important in the big picture.  My brain can only process a limited amount of information, and the time it would require to get it 100% is not worth it.  So, I get usually 90-95% depending on where my head is at and what else I’m working on.

The amazing part is that this regular process of biting too much that causes ruthless prioritizing has resulted in delivery of more for less – I consistently get things done well, and faster than originally anticipated, especially amongst the chaos.

So…  am I a detailed-oriented person, or a big picture person?  Both.  I love having the capability to see/work in both worlds, and choosing the appropriate mix depending on the situation and need at hand.

As I journey through life, I am beginning to realize the nonsense and limitations of labels since they can be very limiting and show someone like me as either lying, or having multiple-personalities with strong abilities in opposing traits of the same coin.  I can see both the forest and the trees at the same time.  Apparently, I’m not the only one either so stop looking at me like I’m strange.

What do you see?

- Daisy

A brief walk down memory lane

As I watched this video, I almost (okay, not really) came to tears thinking about all the hours (days) that I have lost spent playing some of these games.

In particular, my fond memories are of:

1972 Pong (Atari, Arcade)
1980 Space Invaders (Atari, Atari 2600)
1981 Pac-Man (Namco, Arcade)
1981 Frogger (Konami, Atari 2600)
1982 Donkey Kong (Nintendo, NES)
1989 Tetris (Nintendo, Nintendo Gameboy)
1991 Lemmings (Psygnosis, PC)
1992 Wolfenstein 3D (ID Software, PC)

The early 80’s ones drove my crazy since I only got to play them once in a while, but never enough time to get much better at any of them.

Tetris will likely be one that I will always love, in any decade.  Even as I type this, I want to play a quick game, though I know there’s no such thing.

Wolfenstein 3D wins multiple rewards.  It was the game that turned me off games for a long, long time – I suppose it was that good.  I have fond memories of trying to study, or finish projects, or do something related to my education, but instead I was scaring myself silly opening scary doors, and shooting down people at 3 and 4am in the morning.  It was during one of those nights when all my room-mates where asleep, and I had been opening creepy doors for the past 4 hours non-stop that it occured to me I was foolishly addicted, so I quit Wolfenstein cold turkey.

During this time, I was raving to others about this cool thing I had called an email address where I could write to someone else immediately; we could have an electronic conversation in real time across many kilometres, and we didn’t have to pay a fee to write!  It was an incredible tool vs the very expensive telephone, and the slow-moving snail mail.  I was also distracted by the world wide web, discovered usenet groups though for the life of me, I can’t remember any of the alt.?? groups I used to read?

Nostalgic?  Absolutely.  1992’s Wolfenstein was a teenager ago - 17 years to be exact.  It’s hard to believe how much has changed in that timeframe and you know only more will come.

Enjoy the little video – and tell me your fond memories too.

And enjoy this one too! 

- Daisy

 

6th Row to the Tragically Hip

So it’s not the best photo (what do you expect from a phone afterall?) but it does show just how close we were to the Tragically Hip on Thursday at the ACC.  It was great.

- Daisy

Smart and Addictive

I found a game that’s smart and addictive, except I should give credit where credit is due – my son found a game… While I watched him play it, I had to interupt and ask “can I try that?”  Let me begin by saying I normally am not that big a fan of the silly games he plays, but this one, oh my goodness, I’m hooked.

I love it on so many levels.  I’ll try not to overanalyze it, but I just might so bear with me.

You open a store with a gas station, a tire station, and a car wash.  Customers arrive at your store, and you need to click on the car, and click on the station where they want service.  Some customers want more than one service.  When all the service is done, you send them through the till and wave goodbye.  One rule is that there can be no more than 1 car in any one particular service area.  Simple, right?   Of course it is.  And of course customer service is a big part of this as well.  Customers who end up waiting a long time at any particular area start getting irite and begin honking their horns.  You continue to work through the levels, make money, you get a good (hopefully) reputation, and you start to get options (that cost money) to upgrade your stations, and/or open up new services.  They all come with different price tags, and different issues.

What do I love about it?  It requires you to multi-task, think parallel and linear, improves your memory a little, and all kinds of good things. 

Examples?

Blue car wants both wash and gas, while red car that just came in wants gas.  Send blue car to wash, and red car to gas.

Some service is slower than others.  Be careful of the order you send cars through the different service depending on what all the other ones need.  Slow service is a great way to keep certain cars simply ‘out of the way’ while you take care of the backlog!

Upgrades, upgrades, upgrades – are you aware of what the bottlenecks are?

Tick-off factor.  Some customers will be ticked off because you now have three cars all waiting for gas and there’s no where else to send them.  Sometimes, instead of ticking off two customers and taking care of them ‘in order’ but late/long for both, it’s better to have only one ticked off more than two ticked off slightly.

How do you stay sane when you’ve lost all track of what everyone is looking for?  How do you stay calm and work through it?  Have you been able to determine the patterns, bottlenecks, and other hands-on data, and what do you do with the information when you consider upgrading and/or opening new services?  How do you decide if/when you should upgrade or add on new services?

I love it!  And my 6 year old loves it too!  Try it out and tell me what you think.

- Daisy, who consistently gets 100% customer satisfaction at this game, and when it falls below, knows the days are numbered.

Brain Fritz and the Telly

I’ve never seen a scientific explanation for deja vu until today (that’d be yesterday now). It suggests that deja vu is simply the ‘feeling’ of familiarity of the situation or event. It suggests that it could be a pfzz I’ll call it where your brain may be processing the short-term information (what’s happening right now) as coming from long-term memory, and therefore, the misinterpretation of having experienced this before.

Wow. Really? Well, strike me down with a bolt of lightening, that seems to make far more sense than trying to use previous lives, and other tricky paranormal ideas to explain it. The simplicity of this theory really is just amazing.

I don’t think I’ve been exactly well the past few days and although I haven’t been hallucinating, my brain seems to have been a little on the fritz. Perhaps it’s a tumour and I should check it out. Or perhaps I should spend an unheard of number of hours catching up on last season’s Grey’s Anatomy on youtube. Holy mackeral, they killed George off? Yeah, just where have I been hiding, you ask. Obviously, I’m not with it when it comes to television. Not only did I catch up on little snippets of Grey’s, I also watched this season’s Survivor for the first time. Remember, I’m a Survivor freak who’s been watching every episode since Season 1. Obviously, I’ve been missing out. My, oh my, where does the time go?

Plus, I can finally say I finished Season 3 of Dexter and it was Capital A for Awesome. It only took me weeks (I think it was actually months) to watch it on DVD. Wow. I miss TV. Maybe I’ll catch up again on another truckload of the stuff in another few months or so.

Focus, Daisy, Focus. No wait, how about Hocus Pocus? I used to be scared to death of scary things like ouiji boards, ghosts, and other unexplained things. Well, now I think I finally have the courage wiggle my fearless fingers at some of it at least. Take a look at this site for interesting scientific explanations.

- Daisy

Dreaded Beauty

Horizon filled to the brim with water
Sounds of waves enter my ears
Cooling mist on my face
Sun-warmed sand under my toes

Others are mesmerized by the beauty
Of toes and ankles cooled
While I deep-breathe to control
The roar of my heart

I’ve been here before
I’ve walked away before
I’ve run away before
From the dreaded beautiful world

Repeated mantras and processes
Designed to calm are useless
It’s everyone’s dream
Yet it’s my horror

There’s a screaming silence
From somewhere within
A feeling I can not control
As it overwhelms me head to toe

Objectively, I get it
Subjectively, I need to disappear
Take me away from my fears
Snap the uncertainty away

I know I am capable
Of looking fear in the eye
And laughing my way through the water
But not today.

- Daisy

First time for everything

This is going to sound strange, however I have never done this before. For the first time ever, I’m typing on my laptop in my bed, in my bedroom. Dun dun dun! Seriously, I’ve never done this before. Sure this puppy has been on the front step, in the backyard, in the library, at client’s offices, but never before has it been in my bed.

So, why, you ask?

My laptop usually stays in the office most of the time when it stays home. I actually did the ol’ shutdown thing about 15 minutes ago and got ready for bed. As I was getting ready for bed, I realized I have met a lot of very interesting people. It occurred to me that I’d like to thank them for coming into my life. But that’s so hokey and I know if I called them up, or emailed them and said that, they’d laugh at me, and wonder what I’ve been smoking. So, of course, I realize I could easily thank them here, and they’d never know I was seriously hokey! Ahh, it satisfies my urge to say thank you, without making folks feel uncomfortable. Damn, why didn’t I think of it sooner?

Here goes, and in no particular order – to the new folks I’ve met in the last 12 months who have made an impact on me.

Photo King – you’re like the little brother I never had. I can tell you stories, give you advice and, sigh, you treat me like I just gave you the most valuable information ever. No wonder I’m more than happy to give more. I’m also thrilled to bits about your latest news.

Energizer – where have you been all my life? I can’t believe I’ve only known you for maybe 6 months – it feels like decades, and I wish we could find a way to have daily chats. You always lift me.

Step Girl – I’m so excited for you! Thanks for your email – you are so cute, and it never ceases to amaze me how a little friendly email like yours can make my day.

Em + Van – So completely tickled that I met both of you, and can’t wait to see what you are both able to deliver together. Remember that power in the sum of the parts – I know you’ll rock it together.

- Daisy, who wrote most of this the other night and couldn’t possibly hit publish from half-sleepy eyes.