04Jul
This is my personal blog where I love to share my love of spending time with family and friends, travel, driving, good food, and a good book.
HERE’S WHAT I LOVE
Family and Friends – Sitting out on a back porch or around a campfire telling jokes and sharing a cool beverage or a lovely glass of red wine is just about the most perfect evening one could imagine.
Driving – I love driving. Sitting behind the wheel of any rig is about the most zen and calming place in the entire world. You can’t text – you shouldn’t chat on your phone – you just have to focus on the road. Any rig includes sports cars, SUVs, RVs, or rental moving trucks – minivans are more “kid movers” and have their own set of rules but I still enjoy driving them because typically they are like driving a hoover vacuum cleaner – they almost drive themselves.
Conversations in a car are fabulous because for some reason everyone has a reasonable expectation that what is said in the car stays in the car. Additionally, conversations in a car are generally very civil because everyone knows that if the discussion gets heated there is no walking out of the room.
TRAVEL – It almost goes without saying that when I drive I like to drive somewhere. While my kids were young most of our adventures were going places within driving distance. This kept us in the US and occassionally Canada. Now the kids are older and my adventures have expanded a bit. The kids are great travellers and we can all be ready to go anywhere in a very short amount of time taking only one carry on sized piece of luggage – this also goes to my love of technology because I can pack the smart phone and a netbook in my purse now and be on my way still ready for business wherever we go. One of the things that is most fun for me is when we can go somewhere and stay awhile and meet the local folks and find out about their lives and what its like to live in different parts of the world.
Good Food / Good Wine – Actually any food and any wine is good if shared with good people. But I do enjoy the occassional night out for sushi ( yes sushi is real food ) or a really well prepared flank steak. And as far as wine goes, I am one of the founding members of the Women Who Wine. This was not an elite selection process as it was more about geography than enology. My education as a wine enthusiast has essentially just begun and I am calling it “From Box Wine to Bordeaux”. You can follow this journey on the Women who Wine website.
Video Games and all things Techy – I love all things techy and anything that can simplify my life (even if it takes 60 hours to figure out how it is going to shave a few minutes off my daily routine in the future)
It is an amazing time that we live in right now and I am pretty much thrilled to have been born in the 60′s and have had the chance to watch the evolution of the tech world from watching really bad black and white sci-fi B movies on TV as a kid, to being around when the first man stepped on the moon, to being in the very very first computer class in our high school (learning to program in basic – talk about complaining in math class about never using this stuff in the real world once we graduate – sometimes I use Math but I never use basic – but it was still fun ). I got to see the transformation from homes with bedrooms and living rooms to homes with home offices and personal computers.
I was around when Atari introduced the joy stick. How cool was that! I spent hours playing pong on the TV screen and marveling at being able to control what was going on with that game. Of course we moved on to GameCube and the Xbox and the Wii which I love. I love playing video games with my kids especially if there is even a glimmer of hope that I might be able to win one.
We had kids who turned 13 right as MySpace was hitting the scene and so became involved in the web 2.0 world out of sheer necessity.
I love being able to see if my kids are online at midnight when they should be asleep and offline. I love being able to keep in touch with my friends and family even when we’re miles away. I love being able to check out what’s playing at the movies without leaving the comfort of my own couch. And I particularly love sharing inspiring moments with other moms out in cyberspace.
The camper’s motto is that you leave your campsite better than when you arrived and that is what I hope for in the 2.0 world – to share a smile and a laugh and a dream and leave this place a little better than when we arrived.
A GOOD BOOK – There is almost nothing better than curling up on a comfortable couch with a great blanky and a great book. My dream vacation is going somewhere and finding an exceptional used book store. I love a really good worn in copy of an Agatha Christy novel that has that wonderful old musty smell. The last couple of years were a struggle for some reason until it was discovered that I needed glasses. Now I am back in business. This last year I have torn through a number of great books. Some fiction some non-fiction. I can put down a book if it is not working for me at the time. I had the Alchemist by Paul Coelho on my book stack for 2 years before I could finally pick it up and then I read it in two days. With a good book, timing is everything. So far my favorite books of all time have been A Confederacy of Dunces, Candide, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Story of Leon I mean Noel, Les Miserable, and pretty much every Nancy Drew and Agatha Christy novel there is.
I think the best thing we can do to help other people around the world is to help them learn how to read and have a love and thirst for knowledge. Sharing ideas and encouraging open discussions will lead us all to a better more peaceful world. (That’s pretty much the 60′s flower power thing in me coming out but I really do want world peace).
SUMMARY
Family and Friends
Playing Video games with the kids
A Good Book
A Nice Glass of Wine
a Great Adventure – particularly if there is driving involved
That pretty much sums it up.
BIO
Mary is an Internet expert with over 15 years of website development experience focusing primarily on bringing together moms online. In the mid 1990′s, Mary moved her offline bookclub online as founder of Stayathomemom.com. The bookclub was featured in Book magazine and other Internet publications as one of the first of its kind.
Mary has been a guest on the Oprah Winfrey Show discussing the topic of connecting with your kids. Additionally, Mary partnered with Parry Aftab, a leading privacy and security lawyer, in early 2009 to formally organize the group of Moms who had been volunteering their time to help keep kids safe online. Together, they founded Wired Moms as a division of Wired Safety ( WiredSafety.org ) to be a coalition of Moms and Moms groups coming together to connect families through technologies and innovations that make our lives easier and more fun.
Mary developed the social network for both Wired Moms and Stay at Home Mom on Facebook and Twitter ( @wiredmom @wiredmoms @sahm411 ) and can be found with great regularity out on the Tweetdeck.
Because of her children’s early interest in Myspace.com and other social networks, Mary has also developed an expertise in practical applications of using Web 2.0 strategies for family and business uses. Another benefit of raising teenage boys in the late 1990′s and into the new millennium is that Mary has become somewhat of a video game expert as well and loves to talk about the new trends, ESRB ratings, and video game conferences with anyone who shares the enthusiasm for connecting with the kids by playing games with them.
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