One of my favorite book series is the Sweet Potato Queens written by Jill Conner Browne. Her books are an irreverant, saucy combination of self-help, memoir, philosophical ruminations and recipes all rolled into one. In her books, Conner Browne uses a very clever literary device— all of her friends are named “Tammy” to protect their identity. It occurs…
Have We Met?
Here’s a trend I’ve noticed when getting introduced to people via technology requiring the written word—email, Linked In, Twitter. When I first introduce myself, people will often reply something to the effect of “nice to ‘meet’ you.” The quotation marks around the word meet are significant. The meaning I derive from those quotations marks are…
Are You a Nosy Neighbor?
Are you a nosy person? I wouldn’t typically describe myself this way. On any given day, I go about my work, mind my own business and basically try to respect people’s right to privacy. Except that doesn’t seem to apply to my social media use. At what point did I turn into Mrs. Kravitz? (You…
Are Your Learners Twitterpated?
We were at the dinner table the other night and my husband tossed out a word that was new to me: twitterpated. He assured me it was a real word and made reference to the Disney movie “Bambi“. I thought he was mocking my Twitter use, so I looked it up. Sure enough, the online…
The 3 P’s of Trying New Things
This weekend marked yet another milestone in what has unwittingly turned out to be the “Year of Trying New Things” for me. The tough economy (and we’ve had it pretty rough here in Michigan) has had an interesting effect—it’s pushed me to try new things. Rather than hunker down and try “business as usual”, I’ve…