Author: slickiris

When a workout makes you cry, and it’s not because it’s a tough one.

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Crossfit has a long standing tradition of creating workouts of the day, or WODs, in honor of service people who have fallen in the line of duty. Generally very tough, these workouts are referred to as Hero WODs. Typically the Hero WODs are performed on the day commemorating the event and include either weight or reps that correspond to a significant number to the fallen heroes. One of my favorite Hero WODs is the HotShots 19, dedicated to the 19 firefighters who lost their lives while defending homes in Yarnell, Arizona on June 30, 2014.

Happy Halloween, Blessed Samhain!

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Today is one of the oldest and holiest holidays in the Celtic tradition. Halloween or Samhain (sah-ween) is the time when we honor the harvest, the end of summer. It is this time when the veils between the spirit world and the physical world are thinnest. We decorate our homes with symbols of the harvest, carve faces into pumpkins, inviting in their lively spirits; and don costumes of ghoulish beasts to remind ourselves of death and to make it seem just a little less scary. We remember our dead and give thanks to be alive.                   Some seek communion with loved ones, others guidance from the ancient ones, and many quietly memorialize their dead with small remembrances and prayers. We are our great grandmothers and great grandfathers, they are in our bones, our eyes, our DNA. To honour them is to honour our bodies and our lives, to remember that from which we came and to give thanks for the bounty we are blessed with. This is the night when the gateway between  our world and the spirit world is thinnest.  Tonight is a night to call out those who came before. Tonight I honor my ancestors. Spirits of my fathers and mothers, I call to you, and welcome you to join me for this night. You watch over me always, protecting and guiding me, and tonight …

When Work is Play and Play is Work

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Tonight my son found his little toy laptop in a basket of toys. He pulled it out and started typing “letters” to his daddy. After a few minutes, he prompted me to ask him to play with him.   Me: Will you play with me? Son: I have to work. Me: (stifles a giggle and a sob at the same time) Ok, will you play with me when you’re done? Son: (types furiously for a minute and then closes laptop) Ok, now I am done with my work, I can play with you Mommy. I had such a reaction to this. Being a single, working parent means that sometimes I have to say no to playing because I am (insert activity required for daily existence) and then I have to make myself stop and just play with him, which feels hard, like I’m working at it. So of course the guilt starts in strong when he’s showing what I am modeling as not being available to him… But then I thought that maybe modeling working and then …

I Took My Daughter to GCUC 2015 and This is What We Learned

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The 4th annual Global Coworking Unconference was held in Berkeley, California last week. It was an amazing event, and I really felt like this was the year that GCUC grew into it’s own. The attendance was the usual mix of people looking to start or just starting their coworking spaces, veteran operators/owners, vendors and people in the general shared office and real estate world. Everybody came excited to learn, share and make new connections and see friends they hadn’t seen in a year. The irony for me was that, even though GCUC was in my own back yard, I wasn’t able to participate as much as I have in years past. I’m happy to say my kids come first for me these days and well, they did last week too. Actually, I decided that Thursday was “Bring Your Daughter to GCUC Day” and had my 15 year old join me. She loved it and was disappointed when I told her she had to skip GCUC on Friday to attend school.   Anyway, what with all of my …

Rocky Horror at the Del Mar

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This post is about parenting, police, and a healthy dose of humor and gratitude. My daughter has reached the age where she likes to go out with her friends on her own. I knew this would come, it always does, right? I did it. In fact, when I was much younger than her, I was sneaking out of my house, going to parties with my friends, drinking wine coolers and “cruising the loop”. Ah, the joys of rural, small-town teenage life! So, yeah, I knew this time would come. I’ve prepared myself for it. My daughter and I have talked about it, adnauseum- the requisite conversations about not getting into cars with drunk people, about letting me know where she is at all times, about calling me if she’s in trouble… no matter what. So far, so good. She’s been open and honest with me and I’ve trusted her. So on that Wednesday, as we assembled her costume- a bustier, stockings, lacy dance shorts and character shoes- her plans for that weekend’s performance of Rocky Horror were revealed to …

Girls in Tech First Annual Retreat

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Saturday October 10 was the inaugural Girls in Tech Managing Directors Retreat. The retreat was held at the University Center on the campus of UCSC. Seana Norvell planned and executed the retreat with the grace and efficiency of a seasoned event coordinator. From the casual mixer at Cafe Mare the evening before to the little bags of saltwater taffys and mini steno pads for note taking at our seats, Seana manged to make each participant feel welcome and included. The speakers and workshops were excellent and the highlight of the day was resoundingly the public speaking course taught by Kristin Schaefer and Bronwyn Saglimbeni. Another fave was the VP of New Business Development at Google and General Manager of Google.Org Megan Smith, Megan gave an inspiring talk surrounding the web, interconnectedness and online activism. I was pleased to have the opportunity to catch Megan afterward for some one on one time in which we shared our passion for helping people and discovered a common influence  – our activist mothers. Not least was the fireside chat …

Blog & Breakfast Thursdays

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One of my favorite things about our community at NextSpace is watching the users define the experience. Today we kicked-off a community blogging event that many hope will spread across the globe. Spawned from a conversation between members Mahesh Grossman and Margaret Rosas, the idea is to provide a forum for people to get a weekly blog post out. By providing an incentive (breakfast), a goal (hitting the “update post” button) and a sense of belonging (many people gathered with an in kind goal) this event will serve to ease the self-induced pressure many people feel about getting their blog posts out. While this version is local to NextSpace, the idea clearly has legs. A global “Blog and Tweet Thursday” movement just might take off. While the official Twitter hashtag has not actually been set, the two most popular are #babt (Blog and Breakfast Thursday) and #batt (Blog and Tweet Thursday). Mahesh thinks that it would be most powerful if people across the world were blogging and retweeting each others’ blogs at the same time …