Book Review: Stories I Only Tell My Friends by Rob Lowe

I have been a Rob Lowe fan since I fell in love with Billy Hicks years ago.  St. Elmo’s Fire was my absolute favorite film when I was in high school and on into my early 20s, and got me through many an angst-filled sleepless night.  When his biography crossed my desk, I knew I had to read it.  I figured it would be sort of a guilty pleasure, a look back at one of the Teen Beat/Tiger Beat idols of my teen years.

While I respect Lowe immensely for his work as Sam Seaborne on The West Wing, and for his continued sobriety after a life lived in the spotlight, my first impression of the book was not great. The sheer amount of name-dropping is nearly painful.  In all honesty, I don’t see how he’d tell his life story without mentioning all the stars and other important industry people he’s known, so it could be just my own impression.  Like Forrest Gump, he turns out to have known everyone there was to know.  Still, I feel a bit unfair saying so.  That was his life, and I guess it couldn’t have been told differently.

Overall, I liked the book.  It was interesting to read about his exploits, especially ones we followed so closely as teens–the days when we hated Princess Stephanie just because she dated him.  Reading about his time in The West Wing was probably my favorite part of the book, although hearing about his time with The Outsiders comes in a very close second.

To anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s, this book is not only a look at the life of one of the big actors of that time, it is a trip down memory lane too.  I definitely recommend it, and would be interested in hearing others impressions of it too.

Cross-posted on Goodreads.

 

Organizationally Challenged

Image by nist6ss via Flickr

That’s me.  Except when it’s not.  At home, I am a disaster.  I can’t seem to keep up with the housework, making dinner is a chore that I constantly have to remind myself to do, and no matter how much stuff I get rid of there always seems to be too much left over.  That’s “Home Me,” somewhere about half way between a beautiful house (although nowhere near Martha Stewart) and Hoarders.

Cut to “Work Me,” who is apparently a totally different person.  Here is a short excerpt from my review yesterday:

Her organizational abilities and attention to detail show in all the work she produces.

And no, my supervisor wasn’t just being nice.  At work, I am VERY organized.  I always have been, even when I worked in jobs I hated.  It’s even easier, comes even more naturally, in this job, which I love.

So how can I be so completely and utterly competent and organized at work and so…NOT at home?

In part, there are many more distractions at home.  Kids, husband, pets, TV, Computer; they all lead down a path that does not end in a clean and organized home or life.  Still, I’m trying to figure out ways to get my organizational skills, which based on my work life do in fact exist to show themselves at home.  Here are some things I know:

1) At work, everything has a place.  I’m still working on that at home.

2) At work, I move straight from one task to the next.  I do occasionally take a break, but only for a few minutes since I’m only there part-time.  On my “good” days at home, I do the same thing.  On the rest of my days, I can’t seem to build up any momentum at all.

3) I cannot plan any big projects for the two or three days a week when I have to transport my children to or from various places once I get out of work.  Just doing that, supervising homework, making and having dinner and getting M. bathed and ready for bed take up all of my time.  Those days are out as productive ones.

4) I need to make the most of the other four or five days a week when I’m home after work or off altogether.

How good are you at time management?  Work load management?

Related articles

• Third Thursday Thoughts: Getting Organized (susanheim.blogspot.com)
• Ohio – Omg! (addandsomuchmore.com)

 

Have you seen the blackout?

Today many internet sites, including Mozilla and Wikipedia, are blacking out their sites to protest SOPA and PIPA.  For those of you who don’t know, SOPA stands for the “Stop Online Piracy Act.”  PIPA is the “Protect IP Act” with IP standing for “intellectual property.”  Just judging by the names, they sound like a good thing, right?  I mean, if you create something to sell online or write something and don’t want it plagiarized, why wouldn’t protecting it be a good idea?

It’s a case of our government once again giving something a helpful sounding name, and using it to screw up our lives.  Anyone heard of the PATRIOT ACT?  Thanks to that you can’t fly without taking the chance of being, what under any other circumstances would be considered, sexually assaulted.  It’s what gives the government the right to monitor anything and everything they want.  Private phone calls?  No such thing. And I’m not even going to get into the practice of arresting “suspected” terrorists (or people suspected of a connection with terrorism) and holding them secretly without bail, without lawyers, for an unspecified period without so much as letting their families know what happened to them in some cases.

So what are SOPA and PIPA really and why are they so bad?  Their original intent is a good one–stopping copyright infringement.  They are, unfortunately, written in such a way that what they actually do is create a McCarthy-style environment rife with Blacklisting, bans and enforced monitoring of ever bit of information on the web.

That means if I say something like: “While I don’t promote internet piracy, it is amazing to see what is available out there.  For example, on KickAss Torrents you can download almost anything.” and WordPress allows me to post it, the Government has the right to shut down WordPress.  Not just my blog.  ALL OF WORDPRESS.

These acts would basically require all sites to monitor every word of content on their sites for potential copyright infringement risks.  For user-content heavy sites (Facebook, Twitter, any and all blogging sites, etc) this is impossible.  It would mean reading every post, every comment, every everything 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  This would, in effect, kill the internet.  Goodbye self-expression.  Goodbye self-promotion for authors and small business owners, and anyone else who uses the internet to create something.

These Acts could be passed as early as January 24th.  That gives you six days to contact your congressperson and express your opinion.  If they pass these acts, you can kiss a “free and open” internet goodbye.

You can visit Wikipedia’s blackout page to find out how to reach your representatives, and join the internet strike at AmericanCensorship.org.

For a somewhat lighter (and definitely NSFW) explanation of SOPA and PIPA, visit The Oatmeal.  But don’t say I didn’t warn you–The Oatmeal can be a strange and scary place.

Related articles

• Why Blackout? STOP SOPA/PIPA (emmiemears.com)
• Wikipedia “Blackouts” To Protests Against PIPA and SOPA (techpluto.com)

 

New Year’s Goal #1: Menu Planning

We eat take-out a lot.  Far more than I’d like or we can strictly afford.  Part of it is that I am genuinely too busy to cook on days when I work, then drive kids back and forth, then come home to more cleaning and unpacking and before I know it it’s 7:00 and we haven’t eaten yet.  Part of it thought, perhaps the greater part, is poor planning.  I don’t cook because I haven’t thawed anything (and I hate microwave thawing).  I haven’t thawed anything because I didn’t plan what to make that night.  While I do try to keep supplies for quick and easy meals on hand there is only so much pasta or so many hot dogs we can eat.

In an effort to save money, get us all to the dinner table (instead of in front of the tv or at the breakfast bar) and get everyone to eat better, I’m planning ahead.  I’ve done this in the past, and when I’m doing it I do very well.  I’m not actually sure why I stop planning ahead.  Whatever the reason, finances and the economy being what they are I don’t have the luxury of just giving up any more.

We first were trying a cookbook (which I will not name), that plans out menus and grocery lists for you, and you just follow along.  Chris hated pretty much every recipe I made from the book over the two weeks I used it.  I know some of the recipes are good, but these just weren’t.

Instead, we signed up once again with e-Mealz.  I learned about them on another blog a year or so ago and loved the easy recipes and the many different menu choices.  There are a number of stores you can specifically get a menu for, and there are specialized menus depending on your health needs.  The recipes are actually good, and are affordable.  The service itself is fairly inexpensive too.

No, they’re not paying me to say all that.  I’m just passing along a tip.  I use their menus to stay on track, and if you want to check them out feel free.  If not, don’t.  I’m not an affiliate, and don’t make money if you sign up.

So anyway, that’s Goal #1, and is my top goal for January, meaning it is what I am concentrating the most on this month.  What are some of your goals or resolutions for 2012?

Related articles

• Five tricks for thrifty menu plans (blogs.confused.com)
• Trim the waste from your weekly food shop (blogs.confused.com)
• Menu Plan Monday ~ Jan 2/12 (orgjunkie.com)