JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

Alas, I’ve run out of Computer Time so I apologize in advance for my lack of linking in this post (will try to make up for it later)…but I want to make a quick post about SXSW. I leave tonight for Austin (red eye flight) and I am looking forward to getting away this weekend, enjoying an invigorating conference, and seeing new and old friends.

Bloggers in Love – Sunday March 12 at 3:30 pm – is a panel and discussion I’ve wanted to do for years. Thanks to Hugh Forrest for helping it come together and letting it happen at SXSW. Thanks to Lisa Williams for being the moderator and fairy godmother. Thanks to Jeneane Sessum, George Sessum, Chris Pirillo, Ponzi Indarasophang, Heather Champ and Derek Powazek for agreeing to be on the panel and share from their lives. I look forward to learning and listening to new perspectives and stories from people on the stage and in the audience as we have conversations.

Besides Bloggers in Love, I hope to be at some of the Blogher sessions, also Blogging While Black, James Suriowiecki and whatever else catches my fancy. I wish I had time to post a proposed schedule (as Lisa Willilams and Betsy Devine did). I want to check out Fray Cafe on Sunday night.

Mostly I want to make great connections. This may be the last conference I am attending for a while (no more on the calendar for 2006 at this point) and I’d love to get together with people and have fun. I hesitate to put my phone number or hotel in this post, but if you’d like to see me, please comment below or email my yahoo account (harrowme). I arrive Saturday morning and leave early Monday morning.

I hope to check email again tonight but then I will be without a computer until Monday night. The resuscitated laptop we do have is not worth the effort to take it. Please reach me by cell phone if you have my number.

Looking forward to seeing everyone who will be in Austin!

From an interview with E.L.Doctorow in Time magazine last week…(you have to pay to read it on-line)

Time: Are you surprised you’re still writing great books in your mid-70’s?

Doctorow: How old are you?

Time: Um, 36.

Doctorow: Ah, yes, well, that’s a 36-year-old question.

Dave Winer tagged me a while ago…

Four Jobs I Have Had

1. Research assistant, immunology laboratory, studying the effect of stress

2. Milkshake mixer at a burger joint in Bellevue (no longer exists)

3. Watercolor artist, Arts and Crafts Fair (sold a painting!)

4. Volunteer coordinator at a 501(c)3 in Silicon Valley

Four movies I can watch over and over

1. Memento

2. Wings of Desire

That’s all, so far!

Four TV Shows I Love to Watch

Does figure skating count? That’s the only TV we watch.

Four Places I Have Been on Vacation

1. Florida (honeymoon!)

2. Germany (twice)

3. Canada (too many to count)

4. Italy (Venice!)

Four Favorite Dishes (I am planning to eat three of the four later today…I can’t wait!)

1. Chicken curry (homemade, with bones)…or any curry

2. Salmon

3. Raspberries

4. Chocolate chip cookies (homemade, with three or four kinds of chocolate)

Four Websites I Visit Daily

1. Blogher

2. Scripting News

3. Scobleizer

4. Bainbridge Buzz

Why do I visit these four daily – actually more than once a day? Because they are often updated frequently and have intense comments, conversations that I can’t read well in my aggregator, hot posts and news that attract traffic and start trends immediately.

I read – or used to read until I lost the laptop recently- dozens of blogs in my aggregator at least once a day.

Right now I am actually reading dozens of sites a day, and experimenting with visiting blogs instead of using an aggregator, but these four are the ones I put when I first considered the answers.

I also peek at CNN.com and Seattletimes.com for news.

Four Places I Would Rather Be

Well I’m pretty happy at home, with my own bed, bath and books to savor…but here are a few places I think I would enjoy…

1. Relaxing at the beach alone with my husband

2. Bicycling around Sunriver, Oregon with my family

3. Eating dim sum in Vancouver, B.C.

4. Visiting Australia

Four Bloggers I Am Tagging

Since I am so lousy at responding to “tags” how can I ask anyone else?

Jenny also tagged me a while ago, to list “five weird habits” about myself.

I actually can’t think of too many, at least ones that I am willing to list here!

1. I bit my nails into adulthood, until I started dating Ted.

2.I am particular about my toenails and cut them short and sometime at angles.

3. I wear wool socks non-stop six months of the year. And I’m crazy about fleece, so practical and warm!

4. I can crave protein, in ways that make my friends squirm. I used to eat raw eggs for breakfast, mixed in a glass with milk and vanilla (stopped doing it many years ago though, after some microbiology training). In college, and ocassionally now, I will eat tuna from the can, no mayo or dressing or bread. Eggs and tuna are economical sources of protein, and I find I can think and function much better after such indulgences. I do also like fruit, salads, yogurt…

5. I often stay up too late writing blog posts…!

I have five children this week. No, I’m not announcing a pregnancy of twins or progeny from a previous life (rest assured that neither of these scenarios exist). A friend of mine needed a place for her younger two kids to stay this week somewhere close to Olympia. She’s a good friend, a bit ahead of me in life, enough to have encouraged me and given me a bit of wisdom and direction I needed while I was wandering in college in Rhode Island years ago. (Friends and family at our wedding may remember that her husband helped marry us.) So I was quite happy to help her. In my care the past three days I’ve had her 11 year old son and her 8 year old daughter. I confess last week I had my moments out of fear and stress when I wondered why I had agreed to watch these children whom I’d barely met. I used to babysit their older sisters, but that was eleven years ago, before we moved away from Rhode Island.

However, we all are getting along well, to the point that when I told the kids we might visit our friends this summer (they now live in the Pacific Northwest), my kids cheered and begged to go (hope that is okay with you, my husband-who-is-at-eTech).

I’ve gotten some looks this week as I’ve wandered around with five kids in tow. Friends and even some fellow islanders who are familiar with our family can tell which ones are mine. But when we walked around downtown Seattle, I received some stares. A small crowd of five kids in a family is an unusual sight. And it’s possible that they could all be mine, except for the fact that two of them are only seven months apart. Yes, people have asked questions, people from the woman who scooped up sundaes at Cold Stone Creamery to strangers on the street of downtown Seattle.

“For today, they are mine,” I reply with a smile. Sure, taking care of two more kids is costing me a good amount of time and energy this week. But isn’t it worth it? Isn’t this what life should be about? Shouldn’t this be something that happens all the time, normal and not worth a stare?

Tuesday was the one day we had freedom in our schedule, so I took the girls kids (I’m learning a lot about boys!) to downtown Seattle. We walked onto the ferry where we ate lunch. The two visitors wanted to stand out on the deck and feel the wind blow against them. Then we stopped by Ye Old Curiousity Shop on the way to the Aquarium. After an hour or so of watching fishes and sea otters, we hiked three blocks of stairs up through Pike Place Market to Cold Stone Creamery where I got each kid whatever he or she requested, no matter how large. Then back through the Market and to the boat, picking up plates of Ivar’s fish and chips for the ride home (our friends said they had never had fish and chips).

That morning I had heard of Dana Reeve’s death on the radio. Between Elena and Dana, Joey’s dad, and other sorrows in news and blogs (or even posts like this one), I want to seize each day. It cost in a number of ways to take that trip to Seattle with five kids. But I wanted to take the opportunity to let the kids touch a sea star and watch a shark swim. I wanted to let them laugh at the sea otter pup and let them gasp at the wonder of wolf eels and octopus eggs. I wanted them to taste chocolate and mint, fish and fries, to savor the sunset over the mountains, the salt of the sea and the wind in their faces. I wanted to take the day and all it had to give and give it to these children, three of mine and two friends.

As we walked past the fish market at PIke Place I told the kids how the employees throw the salmon when someone purchases one. Carpe salmon came to mind. Of course as a play on carpe diem, seize the day. But I see two aspects of carpe salmon. One image is of abundance: I’ve read that the first people who lived in the Northwest could grab salmon out of the streams whenever they were hungry. That’s how rich this region was. And of course, the original carpe diem – seize the day,or to quote from the Wikipedia page, first Robin Williams (I have a little Dead Poets Society story too) make your lives extraordinary. or make every moment meaningful. Catch whatever comes to you. Take the opportunities.

I want to take every opportunity I have to love others, to pour abundance into them. I only have today. And two more kids to enjoy in it.

I was so sorry to hear Joey deVilla’s dad died last week. Although I never met him, I admired him from the words Joey wrote about him on his blog. And who can’t love the photo of him from Joey and Wendy‘s wedding? I’m so sorry he is gone and I am thinking of Joey and Wendy, Joey’s mom and Joey’s sister and her family, Joey’s little nephews who have lost their grandfather….

When Joey’s dad became ill last month, Joey and Wendy let me know that they wouldn’t be able to be at SXSW and participate in the Bloggers in Love panel I had organized. We’ll miss them. Hugs to all in the deVilla clan, along with our family’s thoughts, prayers and sympathy.