November 9: Thoughts on collecting moments one by one

I had a very busy weekend. On Saturday, while Lauren was recuperating from her stagette, I went to a great professional development conference called Writing Matters, which is for students and alumni of the Print Futures writing and editing program at Douglas College. Since I’m an introvert, normally the thought of a networking event makes me feel like doing just about anything else, such as organizing my collection of pens or filing away seven years’ worth of bank receipts. But this conference was different. I knew people there.

When you’re an introvert, going to a networking event where you already know a few people is a lot easier than facing a room full of strangers. Plus, having the people you know to talk to helps when you’re meeting new people. I had several conversations on Saturday between the various seminars, and I always managed to find a friend to sit with.

The seminars themselves were amazing. I went with an agenda in mind: to learn a few tips on how to survive as a freelance writer and editor in today’s job market, where in-house editorial jobs are disappearing. And I was not disappointed. I came away with several notes. The most memorable speaker was Judi Piggott (blog: The View from Zero Gravity), who spoke with a great deal of humour about the realities of the current job landscape in communications.

The most intriguing concept she talked about was being an intrapreneur, or an entrepreneurial person who finds and creates work within an organization. She read a passage from Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie, who constantly found ways to be a creative person in a huge corporation that needs to be on the creative cutting edge: Hallmark Cards. At one point, MacKenzie relates in the book, he was transferred out of the comedy cards division to the main corporate building, where he was allowed to choose his own title. He chose the title of Creative Paradox. That alone makes me want to read this book.

On Sunday, I had lunch over at my friend Jeremy’s place. The lunch was a way of thanking me and others for helping him move a few weeks ago. I was late, but after scarfing down my soup and sandwich in an effort to catch up with all the people who’d arrived on time, I had a really nice, relaxing afternoon with some friends. Conversation abounded.

One of the conversations involved author Donald Miller, who wrote the 2003 New York Times-bestselling book, Blue Like Jazz, which I only recently discovered. That book is now being turned into a movie. But it was his ideas on story that he came up with while working on the movie adaptation that really caught my interest.

Here’s what his website has to say about his most recent book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, which he wrote while adapting Blue Like Jazz for film.

Years after writing a best-selling memoir, Donald Miller went into a funk and spent months sleeping in and avoiding his publisher. One story had ended, and Don was unsure how to start another.

But he gets rescued by two movie producers who want to make a movie based on his memoir. When they start fictionalizing Don’s life for film–changing a meandering memoir into a structured narrative–the real-life Don starts a journey to edit his actual life into a better story. A Million Miles in a Thousand Years details that journey and challenges readers to reconsider what they strive for in life. It shows how to get a second chance at life the first time around.

I like that idea. I like the idea that we write our own life stories, and most of us tend to write them very poorly. We spend our time numbing ourselves from the world around us, playing as voyeurs and watching Reality TV instead of making our own reality into something worth watching.

This made me think about the purpose of this blog. I’m meandering a bit here, but that’s only because I’m still thinking this through. Our life is a story, and it’s up to us whether we make it an interesting one or a boring one. Puddle Splashers is about collecting moments one by one, but more often than not, Lauren and I simply aren’t putting in the legwork to collect those moments. We shouldn’t be doing things in order to write about them on the blog. That’s backwards. We should be doing interesting things that we want to do but that we have let apathy or fear stop us from doing. Then the material for a blog on moment-collecting will come along on its own.

My life story is really boring right now; even I’m not that interested in it. As the author, it’s up to me to throw in a plot twist. I hope to be back soon with more to say on the subject. Perhaps by then I’ll have ordered my thoughts a bit better.

November 7 & 8: It’s Party Time (And I Like The Way You Move)

Holla devoted blog followers!! I hope you’re having a good weekend and partying it down before you have to get back to the daily grind of the work week!

On Friday was Margarita’s bachelorette party where a bunch of us girls went to party Gastown style! First we headed to Chill Winston, a really nice restaurant where they had great food and a really cool atmosphere. I definitely recommend it if you’re out that way. Then we headed to the Lamplighter lounge for some drinks and dancing. It was a nice pub with a good atmosphere and the music wasn’t too bad either. I won’t say anything more than “what a night!” What happens at a bachelorette party stays at a bachelorette party!

Anyway, the next day Margarita and family headed off to Cuba to see her and Zoltan get married in just two days! I spent yesterday recovering of course! I don’t know why I think I can drink! I’m such a lightweight!

Tonight I’m hanging with my Mom and my brother who I haven’t seen since he left for Toronto in August to be a star! My Mom’s making ribs for dinner (yummers!), and we’re probably just going to hang out, which will be really nice. I’ve missed my little bro!

Has anyone else partied this weekend? If you leave comments I’ll probably be more motivated to update more often, haha!

Here are a couple choice pics from early in the night on Friday. The camera was strategically put away once we got to the pub…

Here’s the beautiful Bride-To-Be with her red feather boa she was more than happy to wear:

And here I am with the lovely Krista who sadly had to leave early in the night because of work the next morning:

November 3, 4, 5 & 6: Tutor 9-1-1

In the blogging business, there are two types of blogs: Those that post every day, and those that apologize for not posting regularly enough. Puddle Splashers falls into the latter category.

Lauren and I haven’t been able to collect too many interesting moments this week, as I’ve been frenetically applying for jobs, and Lauren has been busy with schoolwork. It’s the same old story. But let me see if there are any moments I can think of from this week.

On Tuesday, I created a flyer offering my tutoring services. I have two versions: one for college and university students, and the other for middle school and high school students. A mockup of the university version is below. Lauren suggested using a black border and printing it on coloured paper, which helps it to stand out from all the other leaflets out there. The white space is actually an envelope full of smaller versions of the flyer.

Why Tutor 9-1-1? That’s my niche, I suppose, in the tutoring world. There are so many people offering tutoring work that it’s hard to gain anyone’s attention. I have yet to see if it works.

On Wednesday, we walked around the SFU campus putting these tutoring flyers up. We went through several places I’ve never been to. It was an adventure, but SFU is such a maze that I was glad Lauren acted as my guide.

On Thursday, I drove all over the city applying for jobs and giving out copies of my resume to all and sundry. But what I really wanted to do was celebrate Guy Fawkes’ Day by watching V for Vendetta. “Remember, remember, the fifth of November…”

Tonight, Lauren is hanging out with a few of her friends. It’s a stagette for our friend Margarita, who is marrying Zoltan.

This may sound lame, but I plan to spend a nice, relaxing evening reading a book or writing fiction. Tomorrow I’ll be busy all day long at a networking conference, and I need to get a good night’s rest.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

October 31 & November 1 & 2: Hallo-weaned

For Halloween, we changed plans at the last minute and had a games night with our friends Edwin and Maria. Lauren and I brought enough ingredients to make several quesadillas, and we also had a cake and chips. Needless to say, we were all quite stuffed by the end of the night.

We had a rousing game of Monopoly as well. Now Monopoly is not my game. I don’t like it, and it doesn’t like me. I don’t remember the last time I’ve ever won it. But the others all enjoyed the game, and I enjoyed their company. That’s all that mattered.

Lauren seemed to be poised for the big win, but Edwin advanced like a dark horse candidate and took the win. Here he is with his earnings:

On Sunday, I went back to Edwin’s place for dinner with the guys. Our friend Zoltan is getting married in less than a couple of weeks, and we wanted to wish him the best. Of course, the grilled burgers and chicken were pretty good, too.

Today’s Monday, and Lauren and I are getting back into the grind of the school week and workweek.

At this point Halloween seems a bit played out. We didn’t even dress up this year. Talking with a few people over the last couple of days, I’ve learned how low the numbers of trick-or-treaters have dropped to in recent years. Ten years ago, for example, my friend’s parents had 100 trick-or-treaters. This year there were only five. With fears over possibly poisoned candy and now the h1n1 flu virus, Halloween as I knew it when I was a kid seems to be on the way out. Are we being Hallo-weaned? Perhaps so.

See you later, and please excuse us for the bad pun. I’m sorry it had to come to this.

October 26, 27, 28, 29, 30: The Bad Bloggers

Okay, so we haven’t really been inspired to blog as of late and therefore the tardiness in our blog posts. Once again we have let mediocrity take over our lives and did not want to bore you guys with it. Kai has been busy with his job search and I have been busy with school and when it comes to finding things to do, Kai and I are sadly unimaginative…and unorganized. So we need your help!! If you read this, please leave a comment with a suggestion or two of fun and inexpensive (and sadly, not time-consuming), things for us to do. If you do, we promise we will give you the full credit when we post about it! We might even have prizes (probably not, but don’t you want to post and find out???). So help us! We don’t want to be pathetic anymore!

On a nicer note, Maria is coming home tonight as well as the rest of the crew from my church that went to Israel! I really want to go to the airport to see them, so I hope this headache I have right now dissipates before them. I’ll keep you updated. And, tomorrow is Halloween so we would love to hear about your scary adventures! Kai, Maria, Edwin and I and anyone else who wants to come are going to Potter’s House of Horrors tomorrow night. Sadly, we are not dressing up but we do plan on having fun!

Here are some pics from some cool houses I saw in Langley all dressed up for Halloween! Maria, those spiders are your “welcome home” gift!

October 24 & 25: SYTYCDC Season 2 Finale

This was a nice and relaxing weekend for me and Kai as we basically chilled for the most part. Yesterday we chilled in front of my laptop watching old episodes of Dexter as well as Modern Family, Community, and Cougar Town. I also helped my Mom yesterday with some moving and shopping.

Today wasn’t that much more eventful except that tonight was the season finale of So You Think You Can Dance Canada Season 2, which also happens to be the season my brother, Taylor James, was in!! He appeared in the finale in the opening piece that all the top 20 dancers were in, which was a beautiful dance by Sean Cheesman. I’m excited because my little bro is coming back to Vancouver for a visit in less than a week! After his experience on the show he decided to stay in Toronto to live and work as a dancer and choreographer. I’m really happy for him that things are going so well for him there, but I do miss him:( He has had some awesome opportunities in Toronto to work with choreographers who are well known and respected for their work such as Blake McGrath, Luther Brown, and Sean Cheesman.

Here are some pics from the show!

And just for fun, one of my bro and his very proud sis!

Congrats to Tara-Jean for winning SYTYCD this season!

October 22 & 23: Rainy days

Hey everyone, it was my turn to post for the last couple of days, and I dropped the ball. Not a literal one, only a figurative one. But you understand what I mean.

Thursday and Friday were both very rainy days, and Lauren and I haven’t seen much of each other. On Thursday evening we went on another library run, only this time we skipped the local library and went for the central branch in Vancouver.

I love the VPL. In fact, I’ve been involved in a few events there over the last few years. The latest was the Word on the Street book festival near the end of September this year. I volunteered for the Word on the Street and had the honour of acting as the venue coordinator at the Canada Writes tent. I met several authors and enjoyed various readings. The volunteers who acted as my helpers were great to work with, too.

Since we at Puddle Splashers try to put pictures in every blog post, here are a couple of pictures from that very cool event.

The weather was very nice on that day. You can see the side of the library in the above picture.

The above picture shows what my tent looked like. Canada Writes looked very much like the other venues there.

On Friday, Lauren was seizing the day by hanging out with her mom, and I… Well, I was just happy to stay home watching a movie and reading the books I picked up at the library. That’s what a rainy day is for, right?

Today’s Saturday, and the weather is beautiful and sunny, much like it was in the pictures above. So far we’ve just been driving around on errands, but we’ve been looking at all the leaves changing colour, from green to various shades of yellow and red. It’s all so beautiful. And we’ll have more pictures for you soon.

Until then, ciao!

October 20 & 21: Flickr!

Sorry for the late post everyone! Kai and I were busy yesterday talking about new plans for Kai’s job search. We bought a book called “The Job Search Solution” by Tony Beshara that has an awesome step-by-step plan for landing a job in this abysmal economy so we spent the evening last night going through it together and making big job searching plans. Just incase you were not aware, Kai is in need of work. He is an excellent employee and would like to find a job in editing, writing, or web design (or all three!), but he also has experience in administrative work and warehouse work if you know anyone hiring in those areas. Please drop us a line if you have heard anything, no matter how small, of anyone hiring! This would be greatly appreciated. You can check out Kai’s website on the link to your right:) We’ll keep you updated on this exciting job search adventure!

Now for item number two: Flickr! A few months ago I “bought” a camera using my Airmiles and have been taking pictures of events ever since. Recently I have started taking pictures as more of a hobby of pretty scenery and the like, so today I opened a Flickr account so I can share these pics with you more easily! You can check out our (my?) account here.

Here are a few of my faves:

You can check out the rest at Flickr, and don’t forget to add us if you also have a Flickr account!

October 19: COMIC STRIP FUN!

Hey everyone! Since Lauren’s really busy with homework, and I felt like doing something creative, here’s a one-page comic strip I created this evening. It’s based on a true story.

Tomorrow promises to be a much less lame post… probably. Don’t hold us to it.

October 17 & 18: Helping Hands

Okay people, here’s the dealio-oh. It’s not easy writing a blog that has so many interesting things in it everyday that people want to keep tuning in. Kai and I aren’t the greatest in the planning department so we’ve decided we can use the blog to improve our ever-deteriorating planning skills by thinking of what we are going to do before the day of (I know, crazy right?). We actually did have one such plan in place and that was to attend a workshop on how to build up immunity, but unfortunately that was cancelled and we still don’t know the inside secrets to share with you guys. So bear with us as we get the hang of this “really living life and then blogging about it” thing.

Anyways, I am ashamed to admit we did nothing of any consequence yesterday as I worked on boring old schoolwork and Kai… well, I’m not really sure what Kai did. He paved the path to hell with good intentions… oh, and he bought me some groceries and brought them over, which brings me to my blog topic: Helping Hands.

If there is one thing Kai and I are pretty good with, that’s helping people. For example, yesterday he brought me groceries and I sewed up a hole in his jeans pocket and burned all my pictures onto a disc for him. Today, Kai helped his friend Jeremy move along with some other very helpful people and I went to my Mom’s to put all her Ikea furniture together for her. I can tell you I did a fabulous job on the dresser, but it must have tired me out because when I put together her TV stand I had to take it all apart again as I had put a shelf on upside-down. That was a little embarrassing as I boast about being a professional at putting Ikea furniture together. Oh well, the point is we love to help others, to the best of our abilities, and uh… I lost my train of thought. Something like “help others because it’s good for your soul.” I swear I had a much more magnificent point there. Okay, I had nothing.

We don’t actually have any pics of us helping others. I would like to say that’s because we think it seems cheesy to take pics of yourself doing good deeds, but the real reason is we forgot. So to compensate I give you updated pics from my apartment so you can see how the leaves are changing colour quickly (refer to photo on October 14th). It’s not fascinating, but it’s beautiful:)