Things I Really Must Remember at the Holidays

I'm on Christmas break, and I've spent this week rolling around ideas in my head for the obligatory Christmas post, but they haven't seemed to gel into anything coherent just yet.  I have some nice pictures waiting in the wings, though.

In it's place, I'm writing the things I really need to remember at the holidays.  In no particular order, these are things that I know, but always conveniently forget when I actually need to use them.

1. I don't actually like champagne.  It always seems like such a festive idea- ah, a little alcoholic bubbly in my fancy glass.  Champagne inevitably turns me into a giggling idiot school-girl and gives a horrible headache in the morning.  Better to drink Martinelli's, which at least has the benefit of being so sickeningly sweet that I can only drink half a glass before I give up and switch to water.

2. It is never a good idea to eat more than 2 rum balls/cookies/pieces of fudge for the duration of the day.   I mean, literally the entire day.  I should only have 2 sweet things in any given 24 hour period, otherwise I turn into something like that Jane Krakowski character from 30 Rock who says "Me want FOOD!" and I eat the whole damn plate.

3. Just because it is on the holiday buffet doesn't mean it has to go on my plate.  Under normal circumstances, I would not attempt to eat a slice of roast/turkey/ham and some bread and some cranberries and some potatoes and five different kinds of jello and several random vegetable servings.  My stomach didn't magically double in size for the holiday, so it's unlikely that a plate heaped as high as the centerpiece will actually get eaten.  Which goes along with...

4. It is acceptable to get seconds, but it's probably not a good idea.  If you couldn't finish the plate the first time around, what makes you think it'll work now?  Seconds at the holidays should probably come a good 4 hours after the firsts.  After a nice long nap and a Tums.

5. If it's sung by a campy/not talented musical group/artist, it should not be allowed in the Christmas playlist.  Reference "Little St. Nick" and any holiday remake by Britney Spears.  I rest my case.

The Joys of Geocaching

Today, I took a much-needed mental health day off.  It's been quite the day.

I've been reading Maphead by reigning Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings.  It's a really fascinating read.  Today's chapter was all about Geocaching, something that I'd never heard of until today.  As soon as I read about it in the book, I went right home and created myself an account.  Then, I downloaded the Android app (which has the privilege of being the first paid app I've ever downloaded.)

The app is cool; once you've logged in, you can use the GPS system in your phone to locate Geocaches close to your current location.  I discovered that one is located right on the creek trail that runs behind our apartment complex!

So, I saddled up the dachshund and asked the app to show me a map.  It's cool; it shows the location of the cache and your current location, and a straight line connecting the two.  It also shows your distance from the cache in meters.

I walked along the creek trail (a path I have walked hundreds of times) like I was seeing it for the first time.  I wasn't just going for a walk; I was hunting for hidden treasure!  The trail is simply full of possible hiding spots, so I had to really be disciplined and look at the distance that I was from the cache before hunting around like a weirdo.  (We wouldn't want muggles- non-geocachers- to mess up the place.)  Ringo and I went off the beaten path- he looked for squirrels and I looked for the cache.

My first geocache!

Since it was my first time, and I wasn't sure what I should be looking for, I had to ask the app to give me a hint.  The hint told me it should be about 4.5 feet off the ground- which was enough for me to discover the cache hidden inside a tree!

I yelled out, "Oh, I found it!" and Ringo dutifully wagged his tail, though I'm sure he would have been more excited if the cache had contained dinner.

Inside the cache was a small log book and some kind of European coin.  Silly me; in my rush to get out and hunt, I left my pen behind!  I will just have to bring Scott back, let him find the geocache, and then I can sign the log myself.

I am excited to pursue this hobby because it can be as easy or as difficult as I want it to be.  Finding more reasons to be outside discovering new things is always wonderful.

Thoughts on Oprah's Lifeclass

I've been getting emails from Oprah.com since I was in college and was actually home at 4 pm to watch Oprah.  Since Oprah stopped shooting The Oprah Winfrey Show and started running the Oprah Winfrey Network on cable, she's started this thing called the Oprah Lifeclass.

Since I'm in a place in my life where I'm not home at 4 pm any more, I meant to set my dvr so that it would start recording at the beginning of the season.  Well, I forgot, and then we had to get a new dvr box, and now I've finally recorded it.

I'm so glad I did.  I've always admired Oprah's wisdom, grace, and poise.  She's basically who I want to be when I grow up, insofar as I'd also like to be admired for my wisdom, grace, and poise.

Anyway, tonight's episode (the first I've seen) was about aging gracefully.  The show is really interesting because Oprah gives her candid thoughts about interviews she'd done with famous people previously on The Oprah Winfrey Show.  Though the majority of the episode tonight didn't resonate with me, since I'm not a) a supermodel and b) past 40, Oprah's ending thoughts rang true.

"I refuse to let a system, or a culture, or a distorted view of reality tell me that I don't matter."

Man, those are some good words, Oprah!   Nobody should ever feel that they don't matter for any reason, not just aging.

In my work, I've found this interesting niche as being "the girl who knows stuff about tech."  So far, that's gotten me pretty far- I wouldn't have gotten promoted to communications coordinator if I hadn't proven that I can figure out tech stuff on my own very quickly.  And I'm proud of that.

But on the other hand, I don't want that aspect of myself to define me.  Just because I'm proficient at Googling for whatever I'm looking for, and won't ever quit until I know how to do it, doesn't mean that that's all I am.  I don't want the other parts of myself to not matter.

So I'm having an "Aha! Moment" that I probably need to broaden my elevator pitch.  As a society, we are fixated on work.  Whenever you are introduced to someone, the first thing you ask them is, "So, what do you do?"  And then we get a boring answer about what somebody does behind a desk for 8 hours a day.

I don't want to not matter, so instead of giving boring descriptions of my job, I'm going to come up with interesting things to say about my whole self.  It will take time to come up with what that is, because I've let myself fall into the trap of defining myself by my work.

I think there are 2 questions here.  1, what is the system/culture/distorted view of reality that's trying to tell me that I don't matter?  2, what do I believe about myself that is at my core, the thing that will sustain me as everything around me changes?

More exploration needed.  I'm pretty excited about this.

Getting Up While It's Still Dark

Now that fall is upon us, Scott and I have noticed that it's become much more difficult to get up in the mornings because the sun hasn't risen yet.  My alarm goes off at the same time, but I find myself hitting snooze much more than I used to.  We've also noticed that it's much harder to stay awake with the shorter days and longer periods of darkness.

Scott grew up in a household that had a light box.  No, not the kind for growing illegal plants in your garage.  The kind for fighting off Seasonal Affective Disorder.  A quick search for such products on Amazon revealed that we could get a Phillips Wake Up Light that would slowly light up prior to alarm time, and then at alarm time would play a radio station or soothing sounds of our choice.

After a couple days of use, I honestly can't believe that I've survived this long without this product.  I really, really needed this when I was teaching.  How many groggy mornings could I have avoided with this simple machine?

We've now got two of these light boxes, one in the bedroom for waking up, and one in the kitchen that we use while we eat breakfast.  Both of us can already tell a difference.

Send an Email When a Google Form is Submitted

I'm building a new website to save my department from the terror that is Drupal.  I've used RapidWeaver, which I highly recommend for all you Mac users out there.

We need to have web forms that can be submitted for various things- being added to our mailing list, reserving a meeting space, inquiries about applications, etc.

Being married to a Google software engineer, I think to myself, "Easy!  I'll create Google Forms and embed them into my webpage.  No PHP, no database, cloud storage, easy to edit, it will be great!"

The creation of the forms and embedding them into the web page was easy.  An unforeseen issue, however, was the fact that each form on the website corresponded to a different staff member's job.  There's currently no easy way through the Forms interface to set up an automatic email to an outside email address when a user submits the form.

Today, though, I did manage to find a way to duct tape a solution together.

(Full Disclosure: I am NOT a software engineer and I did NOT write this code myself.)

First, I found a help page that described the code to insert in the script editor of the spreadsheet where the form's data gets stored:

Use Tools>Script Editor in the new Forms interface to pop up this screen.

Here is the code:


function emailAlert() {
  var Spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
  var SS = Spreadsheet.getSheets()[0];
  var submittedData = SS.getRange(SS.getLastRow(), 2, 1, SS.getLastColumn()-1).getValues();
  var headerData = SS.getRange(1, 2, 1, SS.getLastColumn()-1).getValues();
 
  var yourEmail = 'email';//Change it to yours
  var emailSubject = 'Form Submission';//Change as per your requirement
  var htmlBody ='<table><tbody>';
  for(var i=0; i < SS.getLastColumn()-1; i++){
    htmlBody += '<tr><td>'+headerData[0][i]+'</td><td>'+submittedData[0][i]+'</td></tr>';
  }
  htmlBody += '</tbody></table>';
  MailApp.sendEmail(yourEmail, emailSubject, 'body', {htmlBody : htmlBody});
}



I was super proud of myself that I even got the script to run at all.  But then I was like, "Wait, it needs to run automatically when the form is submitted!  Crap!"

So Scott pointed me to another help page that describes setting up triggers for a specific event.  You can have the script run automatically whenever the form is submitted:

Select "Current script's triggers..." to add a new trigger to this script.

The last pull-down menu allows you to select "On Form Submit."

On testing, this combo has worked beautifully!  I am certain that I'm not the only person in the world who needs this kind of functionality, and I find it interesting that Google doesn't have all of this information in one easy-to-find place!

Cooking? Meh.

I've recently come to a pretty big realization, one that took a long time for me to admit to myself.  I've tried to fight it for a long time, because I've felt like the opposite should be true.  But it isn't.  And it's time that I be true to myself.

::Deep breath::

It turns out that I just really don't like cooking.  A lot of my friends enjoy cooking as a hobby.  I mean, a lot of them.  You'd think that through the many years of dinner parties, where we all get together and spend the evening cooking a big, adventurous, elaborate meal, that I would have picked up the Joy of Cooking through osmosis.

Unfortunately, though, it seems that it's not that easy.  It's not that I'm unwilling to cook.  I understand on an intellectual level that I must know how to apply heat to food in order to sustain my body.  But I simply don't enjoy the process of doing so.

You have to get all the food out of the refrigerator.  Boring.  You have to get the cutting board and knife out of the cabinet.  Boring.  You have to wash the veggies.  Boring.  Then you have to actually cut the veggies.  Super boring.

By the time I've accomplished my part of the process, Scott's already nearly finished with his.  He's much faster than I am.  It doesn't seem to matter which part of cooking I do, Scott is always faster at his part.  By the time I'm finished chopping up the stupid vegetables, I'm already so frustrated with the whole process that if it were up to me, we would just eat nuts for dinner.

Next comes the negotiation with Scott.  "If you sautee these vegetables for me, I'll clean the kitchen myself."  We both know it's a farce.  We will both clean the kitchen together after we eat and watch an episode of Eureka on Netflix.  But really, I can't stand to put the stupid veggies in the stupid pan which I will inevitably make too hot and then the dumb things will burn.  So Scott, forced into a corner of either cooking the veggies himself or not having veggies at all, cooks the veggies.


Like I said, for a while, I felt bad about this horrible secret.  But then I realized that it's ok.  Lots of people have to do things every day that they don't like.  And I understand that just because I don't like cooking doesn't exempt me from doing it.  At least, part of it.  I do, after all, manage to successfully chop up those veggies.  Sometimes I do even apply heat to them, much as I dislike it.  But I really can't see having cooking be a hobby.  To me, it's thinly-veiled work.

So the next time we have a dinner party, don't be surprised if I'm not jumping for joy at the prospect of chopping up those onions.  Cooking just isn't my thing.

From Flower Bed to Dog Bed

Yesterday Ringo was out on the patio and decided he was sick of sitting on the ground.  So, like the clever doggie he is, he repurposed a planter that hasn't done so well.

I had a difficult time getting him to come inside.  Not sure why he thought it was comfortable.

Wearing Ridiculous Shoes

Well, it's finally happened.  After a year of marriage to Scott, he's finally gotten me to purchase the ridiculous five finger shoes.  We spent the morning walking around Stanford, and I was wearing my usual flip-flops.  My feet hurt so bad when we got home that I could hardly walk.  I decided it was high time to give my feet some TLC (I do, after all, get regular pedicures, why wouldn't I want comfy, foot-friendly shoes?)

So, we headed off to Zombie Runner and tried on some shoes.  At first, I just tried on the regular-looking minimalist shoes, being wary of the toe shoes.  But Scott tried on a new pair of toe shoes and was raving about them so much that I figured I should at least try them.

Sure enough, they're pretty amazing.  And not actually all that offensive to the eyes (mine are pink):

So there you have it.  Scott is turning me in to a fashion disaster.  Soon I will need to go on "What Not to Wear" because I'll have forgotten that plaids and stripes actually clash.

On Squirrel Patrol

Recently, Scott started hanging a nice little bird feeder out on our patio.  Though it makes quite a mess on our driveway below, we really enjoy having the little finches, juncos, and doves in the mornings and evenings.

However, the seeds also attract squirrels.  Ringo the tiny dachshund can't stand squirrels.  He is quite convinced that during our walks, if we would just let him off his leash that he could easily catch the squirrels.  Never mind that his legs are only an inch and a half long and he can't climb trees.  Just you wait.  He'll get one someday.

Ringo happened to catch a glimpse of a squirrel through the glass patio door one day.  Ever since then, he has been on hyper squirrel alert.  Our living room windows look out on to the patio, though they are quite high in the wall.  Ringo has discovered that if he climbs up on the back of the couch and stands up, he can see out.

If he happens to see a squirrel, or small child, or any other wildlife he can't stand, he runs to the patio door and barks like a crazy person until we let him outside.  He sniffs around out there until he is content that he has scared off the offenders.  Then he can finally come back inside and snuggle in his blankie, his domain safe for another day.