what’s in jenn’s head?

Something that’s been bothering me recently is sizing of plus-size clothing. It’s never the same, no matter where you go. A 1X at one place is a 2X in another or a Large in another.  A lot of places are also now using what I like to call “feel better” sizes. Instead of a 1X, 2X, etc. they’re now a 1, 2, or 3. Or, an 18/20 is now a Large. And don’t get me started with the place that uses a shape & number for jeans sizes. For example, a yellow triangle with a 3 is actually a 20 (or something like that). When I asked the girl how it worked, she had to count on her fingers to figure out what my size would be. (I walked out without jeans, went to a store that sold them using normal sizing and bought 2 pair.)  If you’re comfortable being a plus-size woman, why do you care what the number is? If you’re not comfortable with it, why do you want to lie to yourself?

I thought there were standards for this sort of thing? I understand that the better they make us feel, the more likely we are to keep them in business but why make it so frustrating?  Unfortunately, some places are starting to make it so difficult that they’re losing business…or, at least losing some of mine. I don’t want to “feel better” about the size I’m wearing. I want to know exactly what I’m wearing so I can a) easily find clothes that fit and b) finally say “whoa! it’s time to do something about this!”.

This question was a bit too long for Twitter so I figured I’d post it here. Any advice that anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated.

Daffy is currently on doggy anti-anxiety meds (yes, we’re under advisement of a vet AND behaviorist and yes, they’re necessary – for now). The last few days, she’s not been interested in eating her dinner, which is a side effect of the meds. The first few nights, we’d give her some out of our hands and then try to get her to eat out of the bowl. She’d eat what was in our hands but wouldn’t touch the bowl until around 7:00 pm. Saturday and Sunday, she didn’t eat it until almost 10:00 pm. Today, I tried putting her food into a Buster Cube and it worked for a little while. I think she ate about 1/3 of her dinner but hasn’t touched anything in the bowl.  Again, I know this is a side effect of the meds and she’ll eventually eat.  Here are my questions:

1) Should we leave her bowl of food out so it’s there when she’s ready for it?

2) If so, how do we keep that from becoming a habit? (normally, we feed her around 5:00 every day)

A few times in the past I’ve taken her food away if she’s just being stubborn and won’t eat. Then, I’d put it back down later and if she still didn’t eat it I’d take it away again until the next day. (I’m not evil – I’d give her abt. 1/2 a cup in the AM so she didn’t starve waiting for dinner time). Because she’s not being stubborn and just not ready to eat due to the meds, I’m concerned about taking it away from her. What are your thoughts?

It took me a lot longer to get to this than I had expected but, anyway, here it is:

I had a meeting with my manager a few weeks ago and he gave me homework for our next meeting.  We’re working on mid-year reviews and he asked me to think about what I would like to do. Sounded simple enough, right? Then, I began to think about it. I had no freakin’ idea! There are so many options! Everything I could think of that I liked to do had nothing to do with my day to day job. I began to feel overwhelmed and a bit panicky.

One evening, my husband and I were talking about it and I said, “You know, I really love writing process documentation and creating flow charts and creating forms and just generally making things easier for people.” He looked at me and said “Jenn, why aren’t you doing what I’m doing?” I just looked at him. Holy crap! He was right! All the stuff  I love to do at work was related to User Experience! Not from a web perspective, but that’s OK since I wouldn’t be able to apply that in the current organization I’m working in.

So, that is why I had asked for everyone’s recommendations on a book or a site they found very helpful. As I’ve been thinking about it more and doing a bit of reading, I really think I’ve finally found what I’d like to do!

The next step was to talk to my manager and get his buy in. My next meeting with him was this past Monday and it went great! I told him how the one thing I’m working on already is directly related to UX. He said he thinks we could really use someone in that type of role on the team. So, it’s all working out perfectly!

Now my next step is to learn as much as possible and, something else I would really like to do, go back to school. We do have a degree assistance program at work and my manager said to work up a plan and we’ll talk through it to see what we can do.  What I’m working on now is trying to determine the best track to follow. I’m thinking that communication and psychology should be included, but not sure what type of degree would be the best. If anyone has any suggestions, please, feel free to let me know!

Later on, I’ll do a post about what prompted this. Right now I just wanted to put up a short post where I can list the results.

Earlier this morning, I sent out the following message on Twitter:

UX friends: If you could recommend 1 book &/or site to someone thinking of getting into the field, what would it be? PLS RT

I’ve received only a few so far but I also received a message from someone else interested in the list, which is what prompted me to add it to my blog. As I receive recommendations, I’ll add them to this list.  Feel free to leave your own in the comments, or, send me a tweet!

Without further ado, here is the list so far:

• A Project Guide to UX Design by Russ Unger & Carolyn Chandler || http://tr.im/puhe ~ 3 recommendations
• Sketching User Experience by Bill Buxton || http://tr.im/qu5K ~ 2 recommendations
• Communicating Design by Dan Brown || http://tr.im/px90 ~ 2 recommendations
• Information Architecture for the World Wide Web: Designing Large-Scale Web Sites by Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville || http://tr.im/pugo ~ 1 recommendation
• Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web (2nd Edition) (Voices That Matter) (Paperback) by Christina Wodtke || http://tr.im/qtWx ~ 1 recommendation
• So You Want to Be an Interaction Designer 2006 Essay by Dan Saffer || http://tr.im/qtYn ~ 1 recommendation
• IxDA mailing list || http://www.ixda.org/ ~ 1 recommendation
• IAI mailing list || http://iainstitute.org/en/ ~ 1 recommendation

Thank-you to those who have give recommendations so far and thank-you in advance for those to come!

You may have noticed the sea of green avatars on Twitter and some other social applications recently. If you ask people why, they’ll tell you it’s in support of the protesters in Iran. But what exactly does that mean? What are they actually supporting? If you ask different people, you’ll probably get several different answers. These are my answers to why.

First, these are NOT the reasons I’m green:

• I am NOT green because I think that Mousavi should have won the election. Nor do I think Ahmadinejad is the right choice. I don’t know who should have rightfully won. They didn’t ask me to count all of the ballots.
• I am NOT green because I believe the US, UK and whoever else are evil. I don’t. I love my country and the freedom and rights I have.
• I am NOT green because I believe that Islam is the one right religion. I don’t believe that there is ONE ‘right’ religion. I believe there’s one religion that is right for you as an individual. I have my own set of beliefs that encompass many religions and am still searching for my ‘one’.

So, why AM I green?

• I AM green because I believe that we should all have the right to disagree with something or someone. If everyone agreed with each other, what would we talk about?
• I AM green because I think it is unfair to beat or murder someone because they think differently than you. People are different. I can’t think of one relative or friend who is exactly like me. Can you? It’d be a pretty lonely place if we killed all those different from us, wouldn’t it?
• I AM green because I believe peaceful protests should not be met with violence. I saw a video from Tehran on YouTube the other day of a man handcuffed with his shirt pulled off. He was not resisting, he was not fighting, yet, the cowards hiding behind ski masks beat him. I cried watching it and it brings tears to my eyes now just thinking about it. How can someone treat another human being like that?
• Finally, I AM green because I am a human being that doesn’t believe other human beings should be treated the way those protesting in Tehran are being treated.

Again, these are just my answers to ‘Why is your avatar green?’. You may agree, disagree, have answers of your own or just not care, which is fine because, well, that is your right.

With the U.S. Presidential Election quickly approaching, I guess it’s fitting that my post has to do with the candidates (more specifically, Barack Obama) and the issues I have with small minded people.

I received an email from a co-worker/friend that had been forwarded from one of their friends that had been forwarded from one of their friends and so on. One comment in the message really struck me [copied with grammatical errors and all]:

“I have always had a problem voting for someone that was born with an American name but changed it to not another , more appealing , American name, but to another Islamic appealing name. Thats OK ,UNLESS, you choose to run for THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and not choose to change your name back to your American given name to prove perhaps,love for your country.”

Let’s just get this out of the way. The name given to him at birth was Barack. It was his father’s name. His nickname was Barry. Based on an article in Newsweek (http://www.newsweek.com/id/128633), Barack is an African name, not Islamic.

So, last time I checked, none of our Presidents had an “American” name. Let’s go through the list, shall we?

(looked up at http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com)

Hmmm…I didn’t see one name with an American origin.

When I looked for names with an American English origin at Baby Names World, I found names such as Bubba, Fable, Kodiak, Scout and Seven. I think I’ll name my kid Tron…it was a cool movie.

Apparently this person has some insider information that I, or probably most of the country, wasn’t aware of. When did one of the requirements of Presidency become “You must have an American sounding name”? Here’s a snippet of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution (the part that talks about the Election, Installation, Removal of the President):

“No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.”

Nothing in there about the person’s name…or their religion for that matter. (by the way, he’s a Christian, not Islamic or Muslim. Not that it matters, though. Right?)

I’m tired of the fact that most Americans shrink in fear or violently lash out because of the Middle Eastern, or Muslim, or “someone different than you” family that moved in down the street or next door. So what? Did they do anything to you? Did they hurt you, torture you, kill your cat? No? They just moved in and live quietly? Just because they are Middle Eastern, or Muslim, or different than you, that doesn’t make them terrorists out to get your family. Maybe if you actually take the time to know them you’ll find out they’re really not much different from you and want the same things out of life.

I guess that, in the end, my question is: Does it really matter? If someone came along and they were the perfect candidate…could solve all the worlds problems with the blink of an eye. No more taxes, made money and food appear on every table. Rid the world of homelessness, starvation, acne. If someone could do all that, would it still matter if the person’s name was Yasir or Rafiki or Abdul or even Helen? I’d like to think it wouldn’t, but something tells me it would.

And yes, Governor Palin, I do thank the veterans for the fact that I have the right to protest, bitch, moan, groan and vote for someone based on their qualifications, not based on their name or religious affiliation.

Some of you may have read the story somewhere. There’s a 9 year-old little boy (Brett) in the Children’s Hospital in Birmingham who has a rare brain cancer that is believed to be terminal. There’s a hospital in New York that has a treatment that is undergoing clinical trials. Brett’s family is on Medicade, which will not cover the treatment because it’s still a clinical trial. The treatment (doctors, nurses, travel, staff, etc.) will cost about $100,000.00. So, in a desperate plea, Brett’s father, Joe, reaches out to the online community (I first read about it on Fark: http://tinyurl.com/5ureh4). In an amazing show of human compassion, the family raises almost $40,000 (For donations please visit: http://tinyurl.com/4oa7xs)! The story is starting to get a lot of press. The hospital in NY is now telling them that it wasn’t the money, it was something else and to please stop contacting the media. The story keeps changing.

So, I signed up to get updates on Brett from the Care Page that was set up for him (http://tinyurl.com/3p4s94). I just got another update today that was a sad reminder to not take the people in our lives for granted. Here’s a portion of the post from Tanda (Brett’s mom):

Brett’s birthday is October 9th. He’ll be 10 years old! I hope he will feel up to a little party here. There were plenty of times in the past few months when I didn’t think he’d make it to his birthday. It’s hard not to get angry knowing that this will be the first birthday when he couldn’t eat his own cake, blow out his candle, open his presents or get to play with his new toys. Last year he wanted a Ninja Turtle birthday. I made him a green cake with the turtle shell design and he got, like, ten thousand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys and accessories. And we bought him a footlocker to keep his favorite toys locked up so his brothers couldn’t lose or break them. Now, I’m going to use his footlocker to keep all the things in that help me to remember what he was like before he got sick and became the silent shadow of himself. I miss him. He used to drive me absolutely crazy because he wanted to do everything his own way (which was usually the opposite of mine) and we clashed ALL the time. But now, I would do anything to hear him argue with me. I would welcome his sarcasm and I would not say a word when he came in the apartment with wet, muddy clothes. If I got to hear him say “mom” one more time, I would be the happiest mother in the world.

Oh, god. How did we get here…?

So, thank your children for yelling at you or throwing a fit, because they’re still able to. Thank your mother and/or father for asking you the same question 50 times, because they’re still here to ask. Thank your husband for coming home late without calling, because he still came home. And thank whoever that you’re still able to be a part of it all.

So, apparently, I have some “very rare” pictures of a now somewhat famous wrestler. I put “very rare” in quotes because every site that I saw that had this guy dressed up as previous characters were marked as rare or very rare. So, why can’t I put it?

If you’ve ever watched the ECW, you may have seen Jonathan Rechner — better known as Balls Mahoney. I’ve seen this guy wrestle many, many times, but under a different name.

Way back when I was 18, my ex and I used to go to wrestling matches in an almost deserted strip mall in Berlin, NJ. (I knew about the place from an ex before that – we used to go and help set up the chairs before the matches and then take them down afterwards) The matches were fought by students of the Monster Factory Wrestling School, owned by Larry Sharpe (yes, “Pretty Boy” Larry Sharpe). I LOVED going to these things! It was like old time wrestling — not the “soap operas for men” we have today. There were always big name wrestlers coming through, too! I remember seeing The Bushwackers and King Kong Bundy. He is one big man. I went up to him to say hi and ended up holding his cup of water for him while he signed autographs. Wasn’t smart enough to get one myself (an autograph that is) though.

Anyway, when he started out, Jonathan Rechner wrestled as Abbudah Singh. He was my all time favorite out of all the guys there at the time. Here are some pics I took:

There was another time he showed up at the matches, but this time he was Xanta Klaus. We knew it was him, but he wouldn’t admit it. I believe that was his first character for the WWF. We did get our picture taken with him:

So, aside from meeting Bobby Darren when I was a little kid, this has been my only other brush with the famous. I’ll take whatever I can get.

By the way…if you’re interested, Monster Factory is still operating and has moved to Bellmawr, NJ. I think they have matches every Saturday at 2:00…check their website for actual info: http://www.monsterfactory.com. I’m thinking of checking it out one of these days.

I’ve been discovering a lot of new stuff lately. Partly because of trying to be greener and partly because of becoming vegetarian. Two of my new faves are fruits. I’m almost convinced that they transport crack or something with them because I can’t get enough!

• 1) Mangoes – If you told me a few months ago that I’d actually be craving mangoes, I’d have told you that you were crazy! I’d had mango flavored stuff before and never liked the taste at all. A few weeks ago, our grocery store had pre-cut mango on sale. So, I figured I’d try it, seeing that I had never had the actual fruit before and, if I didn’t like it, Michael does. I was on the fence, but ate the whole thing (it was a snack size container) to give it a fair chance. Last week at the store, I saw a giant organic mango and decided it give it another try since I still wasn’t sure. After dinner one night, I peeled it, cut it up and proceeded to eat the whole thing. I couldn’t help myself! It was the most fantastic thing I had ever tasted! So, this past week, I bought two smaller mangoes. I just had one with lunch and it’s all I can do to not eat the other one! I think I need to buy more the next time I go to the store!
• 2) Avocado – Again, if you told me a few months ago that I’d actually be craving avocado, I’d have said you were off your rocker! I can’t even remember how it came to be that I tried avocado. I know it was in a salad I got at Don Pablo’s but I’m not sure if it was listed on the menu and I decided to give it a try or if they didn’t list it and it was a surprise that it was on there. In any event, it was on the salad, I tried it, I loved it. Last week, I knew I was making tacos for dinner one night so I decided to buy an avocado to have on taco night (incidentally, same night as “inhaling giant mango” night). I ended up putting the avocado right on my tacos and, oh my god….BEST tacos I ever made. If anyone’s interested, here’s what I used that night and what I’ll use in the future:
• Ortega Hardshell Taco Dinner Kit (no palm oil in this one! I don’t remember seeing high fructose corn syrup either.)
• LightLife Smart Ground (original — it’s also vegan)
• organic canned black beans
• sharp cheddar cheese
• sour cream (low/no-fat has palmitate in it — a.k.a. palm oil! use less of the regular instead!)
• avocado (grow a houseplant with the seed! mine’s sitting in water right now — keep your fingers crossed that I did it right!)
• homemade salsa (homemade by a local farm – not me)
• shredded romaine lettuce
• taco sauce (from taco dinner kit)

So, now I can’t get enough mango or avocado. If you have any other ideas of what to cook with mangoes or avocados I’d love to hear them! Don’t worry if it’s not vegetarian — I can always adapt it!

…has gotten soooo much better!!!

So, many of you may know that we (hubby and I) love everything that’s comfortable. Soft, squishy pillows, fluffy blankets, soft socks…you name it and we probably love it. For the most part, I LIVE in cotton clothing. As part of my new “greening” process, I’m even more conscious about what I buy. Now, I’ve discovered something new (to me anyway)…100% organic cotton. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this stuff sooner?!?!? I recently purchased 3 t-shirts at Target and I’m in love. I don’t know if they have a high thread count or what but they’re super soft, extra comfy and as light as can be. I need to find more of this wonderful fabric STAT.