Drops of Awesome

Personal Blog of Author Kathryn Thompson

Stuff

Brainiversity – Giveaway

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brainiversity

***And the winners are Shaye and CBS! Congrats.***

I often feel that my brain is going to mush. I’ve tried reading Tolstoy, playing Sudoku, taking extended adult naps, brushing my teeth with my non-dominant hand and many other remedies for getting my brain in shape and improving my memory.

None of these were as much fun as playing Brainiversity, a new brain fitness game from Brighter Minds Media. Full of fun little brain stimulating activities, it gets you thinking on your feet and then tracks your progress as you complete daily quizzes.

I was excited about my progress as I continued to improve my scores from day to day. The excitement wore off JUST a titch when Laylee got on my computer to play by clicking on things randomly since she can’t read or do math and earned basically the same score as I had worked my way up to.

I’ll just chalk it up to the fact that she’s likely a child of unparalleled and even freakish genius, not that I am a moron who’s brain is in a state of rapid decay. Hopefully even if the latter is true, I’ll be able to reverse the effects by keeping up my daily brain-ercises.

If you’d like to keep your brain agile enough to help your kids with their homework, leave a comment on this post and I’ll enter you to win one of two copies of the PC-compatible version of the game. I’ll draw a winner on Wednesday at 10pm PST.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Tech Vader at the Gym

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Well I just wouldn’t be me if I didn’t take my techie nerdesty into the gym. I find that the more technological equipment I can strap to my person, the better I feel about the whole workout experience.

It started with tunes. I find it nearly impossible to work out without a good mix of sweatastic jams. And the mix has to be perfect. I spend weeks tweaking the mix, adding songs, deleting them, taking them for test runs and then adding and deleting some more from my MP3 player. Just when I think I’ve found the perfect mix, I get bored with it and start the whole process over again.

When I’m in my spinning class, the instructor picks the music and I actually don’t mind it. I think of her songs as stationary biking songs and my music as everything else music. And she does a pretty good job, serving as both freakishly awesome teacherly person and DJ simultaneously. On International Talk Like a Pirate Day, I greeted her in Piratese and asked that she conduct the day’s class in a manner befitting the occasion. Glad that I had reminded her of the holiday, she pulled from her CD wallet a disc entitled “Pirate Mix.” I kid you not. The first song was from the soundtrack of that one Johnny Depp pirate movie. The name escapes me… And we all let loose with a hearty “Arrrr Mateys!” and when the going got rough, we suggested that our instructor walk the plank if she felt so inclined.

Tunes ARRRRRR important. I keep my MP3 player strapped to my arm with a black band. It’s a cheap 1 gigger but I’m dreaming of the new Zune. Am I the only one who loves the Zune in all its hotness? Also, I ask you all why you are not downloading all of your music from the Zune site. It’s cheaper than iTunes and comes in a more versatile format, playable on all kinds of devices. If you have iTunes software, it will convert your Zune files into iPod-accessible format in a jiffy so you can play your songs anywhere.

Next in my oh-so-important Darth Vader-like arsenal of life-sustaining workout devices is my heart monitor. I lerve it so greatly. With that strap around my chest and that watch on my wrist I can always see how fast my heart is going so I know if I’m getting a decent workout or not. There are times when I look around the gym and feel like an over-sized mollusk, schlumping my way along on the treadmill and then I look at my heart rate monitor and see that I’m actually getting quite a nice workout. So I take heart and keep on keepin’ on. When I’m stronger and have shed a few layers of myself, there will be time for running like a gazelle. For now, I’ll settle for mollusk if it’s getting me where I need to be.

Truly I used to get so frustrated with my speed compared to everyone else around me. Now I just compare my speed today with my speed yesterday. It’s been 3 weeks and I already have to work much harder to keep my heart rate where it needs to be for a good cardio workout. It’s encouraging and the monitor helps me notice the teeny little baby steps I’m making.

A word of advice — if you’re going to get a heart rate monitor, spend the extra money and get one with a chest strap that keeps constant track of your heart rate. Attempting to save money, I originally bought one for $40 at Target that required me to stop moving and put my free hand on the watch to make a complete circuit in order for it to read my pulse. It was a big waste of money and really frustrating to use. Strangely enough, I found a decent Reebok chest strap monitor on Woot a few months later for $19.95. It works great and I love it.

The third piece of equipment that really keeps me going is my pedometer. I’d used one in the past and didn’t know what the big deal was with counting steps. Mine wasn’t accurate and I forgot to keep track so I could compare my activity levels from day to day. The one I have now, a $30 model from Omron, rests in my pocket or clips onto my belt and keeps really accurate track of how much I’m moving. It has a digital display that calculates number of steps, number of aerobic steps and distance traveled based on me entering the average length of my stride. It keeps track of 7 days worth of data at any one time, resetting itself automatically at midnight. I wear it to work out and try to beat my step record from the previous day.

Then I continue to wear it throughout the day, trying to log as many steps as possible. I have chosen to walk 2 or more miles to meetings just so I can see a higher number on the pedometer. The moral of the story is, if I make fitness a game, I’m much more likely to get on board and stay there.

The Phantom Experience

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From age 13 when my friend Erin’s family saved pennies in a jar to go to The Phantom of the Opera, I’ve dreamed of seeing the Broadway show. The more I found out about the plot of the musical however, the less I cared about the actual story and the more I wanted to see it simply for the music and the spectacle. Okay, let me be honest. I wanted to pay $50 just to watch the dramatic chandelier drop.

So today Dan and I paid the pennies from our jar and we watched the chandelier fall… in slow motion supported by super-thick wires. The way I remember hearing about it, the chandelier came crashing down on the audience, barely missing people’s heads and falling so fast that everyone screamed in delighted terror. There was no unscripted screaming in the theatre today as we listened to the hydraulics lowering the giant prop smoothly to the stage. No terror at all.

I would have walked out right then and there if it had been intermission and taken a long disappointed potty break out of spite if it weren’t for the fact that the music was so beautiful it made me cry. Now to be honest, I should put the tears in context.

I also cried when I saw Reba in concert… and Dave Matthews… and Dido. I cried at the So You Think You Can Dance live show and last week I cried at the gym when a muted commercial for The Biggest Loser: Family Edition came on one of the monitors.

But still, the music was gorgeous despite the egregious lack of diction from the chorus (we could not understand a word they were singing) and the pathetically un-near-deathness of the chandelier crash. And I got to wear some hot shoes and hold Dan’s hand (mostly because of the love and only partly because of the spiky hotness of the shoes).

The sets and costumes were gorgeous, making me want to light a thousand candles, buy a smoke machine and sew a velvet cloak with a hood to wear whenever Dan and I are cavorting around in underground tunnels bursting into song. I mean, Christine wears a hooded velvet cloak and “strange angel” psychopaths are swarming her practically all the time. What’s not to love about that?

The one question that haunted me as I left the theatre was — what did “keeping your hand at the level of your eyes” have to do with the price of eggs? Would shielding his eyes really have kept Raoul from the noose? Honestly?

Coming soon: The Phantom Experience — According to Dan

Off We Go

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As I head off this weekend with Eve, Fawn and friends, I leave you with a post that is not at all about vampires or dead bodies in a lake. It’s up over at Parenting.com.

This trip will likely be the closest I ever get to attending a Star Trek convention and I’m fascinated to be around real live obsessed fans. I enjoyed the books but I have a feeling that by going to Forks for the release of Breaking Dawn, I will be entering an untold realm of literary obsession that I may not be fully prepared for. I should have much to report on when I get back.

Faces in my Book

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I have been thinking about it for a while now and have come to the conclusion that Facebook = one of the best things ever.

This afternoon I had lunch with a friend of mine from junior high band. She lives in Canada with her husband. We haven’t spoken for 15 years. We found each other on Facebook, she happened to be coming to Seattle on vacation and voila, there I was in a gelato shop downtown with my whiny kids, telling junior high band stories.

For some reason my kids thought the stories were boring and for some reason Laylee resented being toted all over town with an ear infection. After 10 days of home-bound sickness, 3 doctor’s visits and the start of a second round of antibiotics, I decided that we just had to all become portable again. Not sure it was the wisest decision but it was so good to see my friend again and meet her awesome husband.

There are people you were sure would do great things with their lives and it’s so much fun to find out that they actually did. It’s especially fun when your 3-year-old son falls in love with your friend’s husband and refuses to let go of his hand while your normally gregarious daughter spends the whole time you’re together scowling and refusing to talk to anyone unless it’s to tell them how boring they are.

On Sunday I found myself talking on the phone with one of my best friends from high school who I hadn’t heard from in years. Where did I find out he was still alive? That’s right. Facebook.

I’ve also used it to hook up with friends from film school, 6th grade frenemies who have miraculously turned into unbeastly adult-type people who will talk to me now even if I don’t have an ESPRIT school bag, and old coworkers.

It’s like an online matchmaking service for your past, a high school reunion without the awkward moments, bad dancing or drunkishness.

What’s the most unlikely relationship you’ve resurrected on Facebook?

My Junk is Your Junk if You Pay Me For It

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I have a lot of useless junk in my house and I want to have money to buy new better junk that won’t become useless for at least another 5 minutes. I enjoy sorting through my junk multiple times and then sitting around all day trying to convince strangers that it has great worth to them even though to me personally it is, alas, junk. I especially love to haggle over a fiddy-cent price difference.

garage-saleSo my neighbors and I decided to host a garage-sale-ic event later this summer. I’ve been piling all garbage that is not compostable or recyclable up in my garage in the hopes that someone will want to give me money for it. I’ve scoured the house from top to bottom looking for any little thing that might not be enriching my health and happiness fully or that might be slowly poisoning me or my children to death with its questionably toxic toxicity. Phthalates in plastic, lead in paint, parabens in beauty products, mysterious things that clean really well in cleaning products and must therefore be carcinogenic.

So the Magic Date Ball, the too-short shirts, the old nail polish, and the stacking rings all had to go. I was going to wait until September to do a sale with my whole street but a friend asked me to bring a few things over to bulk up her garage sale this weekend and I decided to consider it a practice run.

I learned from my previous mistakes and decided not to dress up like a millionaire prom queen for the sale. A couple of weekends ago I went garage-saleing dressed in my nicest possible mom clothes and no one had any pity or mercy on me when it came to haggling. They gave me that look that said, “If you can dress like that, then you don’t need to get a deal from me.” I tried to give them a look that said, “But I got it at Ross! On clearance! And I just want my husband to think I’m hot for the day!” But it didn’t translate well. I was like a character on the show What Not To Wear — Garage Sale Edition, where all the rules are the exact opposite of the conventional show. So this weekend I wore ripped worn-out cords, an old t-shirt, no makeup and no jewelry.

Besides the toys and household items I was selling, I pulled together all the non-natural cleaning products and personal hygiene items I’d been planning to toss, marked them 50 cents or a dollar each and tossed them in big Tupperwares, not expecting anyone to buy them.

Surprise surprise! They were my biggest sellers. Seriously. People were all over my lightly used lotions, cleaners and nail polishes. Sweet.

In fact my favorite customer was an elderly woman with an Eastern European accent, which I will exaggerate slightly in the following dialogue to give you a feel for the way she talked and for added comic effect, who had her eye on my box of cleaners. There were 15-20 bottles in the Tupperware, marked at 50 cents each. She stood there for a while inspecting each one. Pinesol, softscrub with bleach, windex, stainless steel cleaner. She looked thoughtful.

“I give you two dollars for whole box,” she offered.

“Sure,” I said, glad to avoid a trip to the dump. “Let me help you with these.” I started to pull the bottles out of their case.

“No!” she said sternly. “I want the box.”

“Oh. Well. The box doesn’t come with them.”

“WHAT?! NO BOX!? I only wanted them because uff the box. This is horrible.”

“It’s my kids’ toy box. It’s worth more than 2 dollars.”

“Well this is horrible! I don’t want it now.” She started walking away and then called out over her shoulder, “Unless you give me all uff them for $1.50.”

“Um. Sure.”

“I luff you! You are vunderful girls!”

As she continued to shop through our junk, she would periodically call out how vunderful we were… because we gave her a 50 cent discount and because she LUFFED us.

As you can tell, I am a master bargainer/negotiator and saleswoman. I worked the sale hard, although not as hard as my friend’s cute 12-year-old son who walked past people muttering under his breath about Xbox games being the best thing ever and why didn’t anyone want his Xbox games? Didn’t people play Xbox games anymore? Wasn’t it great that we had Xbox games available at this very garage sale?

Can you guess who would get the money if any of his games sold? Yep. I almost had mercy and bought one from him. Almost, but not quite. The last thing we need is one more electronic game in this house. With Dan and his Call of Duty addiction and me with my love of the Wii, it’s a shock we ever speak to each other anymore.

Last night I created a Mii that looks like a demonic butt-ugly mutant and Laylee has named her Floraburr. Whenever I think of or see her, I laugh until my guts liquefy and drain out the corners of my eyes as hysterical funny-farm-worthy tears. Aaaahhh, the joy of my own electronical hilarity.
floraburr

Sony Reader Digital Book — Giveaway

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I was so excited to get my hands on the Sony Digital Reader, give it a spin and tell you all what I thought of it. When I supervised the media department at a public library after college, we were always talking about the latest technology in video, music and book readers. This was about 5 years ago and digital books were out there in the market but none of them truly felt like you were reading a book. I thought they’d never catch on.

For a few years now I’ve had the scriptures and a few other books uploaded to my PDA and it’s great for quick reference but not particularly enjoyable to use and I don’t want to feel like I’m reading from a computer. I wanted to review the Sony Reader Digital Book so I could tell you how the technology was coming along and all the reasons it wasn’t good enough.
sony
Well, that was a couple of months ago. The reader showed up at my house and I pulled it out of the box and started using it immediately. And it feels like a book. It’s small and lightweight and the screen is such that it looks like paper, truly. The font and spacing feel like a paperback except that you can CHANGE the font size. I like to keep it somewhere between itty bitty Lord of the Rings font and granny-needs-glasses large print.

There’s no backlight, which may seem like a downside, but what book glows? Not this one. It’s really like you’re reading from paper, only it always saves your place, you can fit hundreds of books in one small device, and most importantly you don’t have that lopsided page flipping problem. You know when you’re lying on your side reading and one side is always more comfortable to lay on, depending on how far along you are in the book and whether you’re reading the left or right page? But then you switch to the other page and you have to flip over on your other side or hold the book in some really weird way?

You don’t have to do that with this book. It is never lopsided and there are buttons on both sides to turn the pages.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one digital blog reader and wireless device, this is not the toy for you. But that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for this. It does also have a black and white picture viewer, an MP3 player, and two storage card slots so you can use it to store and use a TON of media. You can even play music while you read.

It has a long battery life and the screen is viewable even in direct sunlight… like… I don’t know… a book!

There are a few negatives. The books do load slower than I’d like because you know, I like it fast. The software interface for downloading and uploading books is not super user-friendly. I fancy myself somewhat of a techie and I had some trouble figuring out how to get the books on the device the first time. There is no way to use the book while it is plugged in your computer to charge and you have to buy the DC power adapter separately, which I would highly recommend. Sony also doesn’t have the greatest selection of books in the world. They have a good amount of classic titles and a lot of new releases but the selection is not as broad as that for the Amazon Kindle.

However, I prefer the Sony reader to what I’ve seen of the Kindle because I want a book, a real book, but better. I hope they continue to grow their inventory of content.

I waited weeks to do this review because I’m so enjoying using it and because of my advertising contract now I must pass it on to one of you. So weighing in at a retail value of $299.00, I give you the Sony Reader Digital Book. It also comes with 100 free classic titles from Shakespeare to George Eliot.

Now does anyone want to give me one? It’s on my wish list. Oh the joys of carrying my entire library around all the time!

If you’re willing to enter this giveaway, even though the reader is lightly used and has my cooties on it, leave a comment listing 2 non-religious books you’d like to carry around with you everywhere. I know you all love the Bible and the Koran. What else do you love? (I’m willing to ship within the US. Anywhere else, I’ll be happy to send it if you pay the postage.)

I’ll randomly choose a winner Sunday night at 10pm PST. Oh, and Sony wants me to let you know that they’re not responsible if you fall and hurt yourself while reading it or if it self-destructs when you disassemble it to see the little men turning the gears on the inside.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Daring Reads — The Host

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Have you read the vampire books by Stephenie Meyer? The teen vampire werewolf romance books by Stephenie Meyer? Me neither.

Okay. I did read them. A bit. Because they’re set in the Northwest and Ms. Meyer went to BYU so I feel some sense of loyalty. I was just going to dip my toes in and read a bit so I knew what everyone was talking about. That was a year ago. In August when book 4 is released, I’m going to Port Angeles with some girlfriends, staying up all night reading Breaking Dawn and tooling around Forks with the other tween wannabe mom-type people, visiting the various spots where Bella and Edward formed their bond of passionate and forbidden vampiric high school love. We picked a hotel in Port Angeles because it had a bookstore nearby that was willing to stay open until midnight on August 1st.

I wouldn’t call the Twilight books great literature but they are incredibly gripping page-turners and something about them makes me squeal like a wee girl, all the while rolling my eyes and saying, “I’m way too old for this.” And then I do things like book hotel rooms and beg bookstore owners to stay open until midnight.

Anyhoo, I recently read Stephenie Meyer’s first attempt at Adult Fiction, The Host and I was pleasantly surprised. While the teen series was fast moving and an engrossing narrative, it felt like purely a brain vacation. Packed with adjectives about the magnetically attractive hunkishness of Edward’s each and every bodily feature, from his chiseled passionately pulsing pectorals to the oh-so-steamy third-from-the-center eyelash over his liquid-gold left eye, I would classify the series as fun fluff.

The Host had a different feel. Although romance was a big factor and the book had its fair share of hot moments, it focused on deeper themes. War, intolerance, human cruelty, and alien medical procedures are just a few. The book made me think and feel and consider how I treat people. It was also really inventive and kept me guessing what would come next.

Stephenie Meyer kicked it up a notch as a writer and storyteller in the Host, which made the Twilight series seem like a warm-up exercise. I’m excited to see what she does next… that is after she’s finished writing a gazillion sequels.