Kiki’s Korner

I was patient. I did my research. I saved my pennies. And yes, I went against my husband’s wishes (ha!) when this weekend, while said husband was in Europe on business, I bought an outdoor sectional for our deck.

And man, WE (as in he and me) are so glad I did.

It is not exactly the set I wanted, BUT it looks pretty darn close, is $2k less and special bonus actually way more comfortable than the Pottery Barn set I had been staking out for three years. Woot!

The only negative about the collection is I felt I was in Ikea-hell having to put it all together. Even came with those stupid key thingies you have to use to screw the bolts in. WTF? Is this how everyone does furniture now?

Oh well. They are all together now. It was worth it. My fingers will heal. The sectional is fantastic.

I have always loved our flat, and having a deck that gets a lot of afternoon sunshine. When our dining table got rusty, my deck time went away as I hated the white chairs we put in their place (temporary measure that lasted two years).

It is like we have our deck back. And it feels good.

Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, CA

On May 13, 2008 I started a little project called ‘365 days of me‘ where you take a photo of yourself, everyday for one year, all in an effort to capture your mood, your actions, your life.

My vanity project came to an end yesterday.

It is kind of cool to scan back through your photos and see where you were, what you were feeling and who you spent time with. Looking back, the last 365 days has me: Losing a job. Gaining a job. Also gaining another 10 pounds. Traveling. Spending more time than I should with our cat Ele. Being sick. A lot.

And one of the days found me in the bathroom, finally removing my belly button ring. Seems silly I know, but I had kept it as a reminder of my youth and my desire to get back in shape so I could wear it proudly. Realizing I had just turned 40, and I had not been to the gym in over a month…it had to come out.

I enjoyed the project, but will admit it started to get hard around month nine as you try to figure out creative ways to capture yourself without repeating shots. There are way too many shots of me staring into the webcam, but it was easy and, hopefully, each one was different enough to tell the story of that day.

I am glad I stuck with it for all 365 days and am now looking for my next project. Thinking something centered on food. Maybe one meal from everyday. Might just help me figure out where all these calories are coming from…

This is a post I have been trying to write for months. Typical me wanted to do some research, poll our community, do more research and then write this really thoughtful piece about the pros and cons of auto DMs, and I finally realized today…I just need to get it out there. It won’t be perfect, but at least I will have said my peace.

I am not a fan of the auto DM and I want people to stop sending them out. Please.

What was once a feature being used to tell people a little more about you has now become nothing but a promotional tool and a total annoyance. On any given day, the Social Media Club account sees 50-75 auto DMs that range from ‘get rich quick’ to ‘get 18,000 followers in two days’ to someone simply saying ‘thanks for following me!’. None of these have value to me.

The first two are spam, the latter is sweet, but honestly – I would rather you not send that auto DM as it doesn’t tell me anything about you. I understand your desire to recognize the follow, but all it did was cause me to spend an extra minute in the day hitting the delete button. Multiply that by 50 tweets a day with the same message and it has suddenly become a big annoyance.

As the Twitter community grows so does the number of auto DMs we receive. What was once manageable, now requires 10-15 minutes a day culling through our DM ‘spam’ trying to find the real messages someone actually took the time to pen PERSONALLY.

It makes me wonder if there is some secret ‘getting started with Twitter’ handbook being passed around to everyone signing up for a new account that says the auto DM is a good idea. Trust me, it might have once served its purpose, but it is nothing but an irritant to me.

So please, I beg of you. Turn the auto DMs off.

If you are really interested in getting to know me/us, how about we go a little ‘old school’ and do the following:

• Reach out personally 1:1 and let me know a little about you.
• Learn a little about me before you reach out. If you do, you will know that I don’t like to receive ‘get rich quick’ DMs (and I am starting to block people who send those out).
• Understand I am not going to promote something you did just because you asked me to.
• I am not going to click on a random link from someone I don’t know – no matter how enticing the tiny url looks.

And please know I do appreciate the thought of you thanking me for following you, but let’s both just do this telepathically and save me wearing down of my delete key.

Please.

Note: This was cross posted on Social Media Club.

Not sure what possessed me to torture myself like this, but I went out and bought myself a Wii Fit*.

I set the bugger up. I step onto the balance board. It lets out a little sigh. It proceeds to tell me I am a fat ass and turns my svelte avatar into the fatty that you see on this screen. Nice.

I am fat. 50 pounds overweight to be exact. My scale tells me that every day…for free!

I sit here contemplating why I just spent $100 on this contraption (included the sleeve that protects it from your stinky and sweaty feet), when I decide to go through the menu to see what else it can beat me down on before I package it up and ship it back to Amazon. For giggles, I decide to try out their yoga. 45 minutes later, I have blown through the yoga, did some strength training and played a couple of balance games.

I am hooked.

Best part of it, I woke up the next day feeling these things…I think some people call them ‘muscles’…in my sides that were a bit sore from the ‘workout’ the day before.

What do you know, Nintendo might be on to something. ‘Playing’ a video game has the potential to help me shed a few pounds off this fat ass and might just possibly turn me into a phat ass. ::fingers crossed::

*DISCLAIMER: The Wii Fit link above does go to my Amazon referral page. If you click on it and choose to order the system, I think I will make something like $1.

Heuer and I were treated to a private concert from new Sony artist, Chris Mann, in the Berkeley Hills thanks to our pal VDog.

I had not heard of Chris before Victoria’s invite, and was pleasantly surprised to find this guy can really belt it out. He reminds me of a good mixture of Jason Mraz and Adam Levine, the lead singer from Maroon 5. If you like either of those artists, you will love Chris Mann. His voice raw enough to pierce you at the core, mature enough to be in total control of his instrument. Could hear him sing for hours.

He was joined by his buddy, Chris Jagich, a music teacher from L.A. who strummed the guitar along side Mann. Chris (and Chris) played a handful of songs to the 20 of us in the room and the 40+ folks following along to the live stream VDog set up since they could not join us in person.

Have I said how much I love Chris Mann’s voice? I really do.

After the concert, I decided to Google him and found he remade the Kanye West song, Heartless. Love it. Even better is our girl ‘VDog’ is in the video, about half way through – holding up the ‘fool’ sign (at 2:18 in the video). Woot! You a hunny VDog!

Chris’ album is supposed to hit in September – keep an eye out for it. Sure to please.