Blowing & Drifting » borrowed content

The iPast is iPrologue

Christopher Tassava — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:26:27 +0000

I recently started reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. So far, I’m not finding it to be profound, but it is full of interesting stories and quite a bit of insight into why Jobs became the man he was when he died. I was particularly struck by this anecdote, from the early 1980s as Jobs struggled to define the Macintosh’s distinct visual style:

This was all the more remarkable to me because I’m reading the bio on my iPad, which is of course a rectangle with rounded corners.

Upper Peninsula Cool, Eh

Christopher Tassava — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:19:11 +0000

Late last year, I was flabbergasted to discover that one of the cool little shoes-and-clothes shops in our fair city was carrying kromer hats, which are the the de facto official cap of the Upper Peninsula. I had many a kromer when I was growing up, all purchased from the company in Ironwood that’s been making them for years and now calls itself “Stormy Kromer.” They’re great hats, no doubt, but cool? Apparently so – an argument substantiated by both their presence in that Northfield shop and, even more shockingly, in a list of “63 Perfect Things” in the February 2012 issue of Outside Magazine:

What’s even more amazing is that, seventeen items earlier, the land of the kromer is listed as another “perfect thing”!

I wish some of this U.P. cool would rub off on me, eh.

Shameless Plug + Shameless Request (Or, Did I mention my wife just published a book?)

Christopher Tassava — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:25:26 +0000

All right, friends. This blog has been awfully quiet for a while now, but I’m going to break the silence with another post on Shannon’s book.

As you know if you’ve recently read this blog or her own blog, you know that her book – The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual – was published last month. Right now it’s available only through Barnes & Noble as an e-book for their “Nook” reader, but later this month the book will also be published in the traditional format (and be available in other e-book formats). Right now, the Nook version is available for just $5, which is a great price (if I do say so myself).

That’s the plug. Here’s the request: if you are a stay-at-home-mother or know one (maybe you’re married to one!), please go buy the book! Like I said, it’s pretty inexpensive, and I think you’ll enjoy the book on several levels – for advice, for tips and tricks, for hearing a voice that knows the experience of a stay-at-home mom. And if you do buy it and like it, please post a brief review on the book’s B&N webpage. Positive reviews will help raise the book’s profile as we get closer to the full launch (and, frankly, stick it to the jerks who are posting illiterate, uninformed negative reviews. Constructive criticism or polite disagreement, we can handle, but five-word smears? No thanks).

Thank you!

In return, I promise I’ll help you (or your loved ones) when you publish a book, okay?

Authoress in the House!

Christopher Tassava — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:03:42 +0000

Over our lives together, Shannon and I have enjoyed some everyday accomplishments – buying houses, having kids – and some less-ordinary ones – earning doctorates. Yesterday was a day for a very un-ordinary accomplishment: the publication of Shannon’s first book. This is the culmination of a lifelong dream and a lot of hard work. It’s an amazing thing to see your wife’s book on the Barnes & Noble website. (Check Shannon’s blog for more details. )

Julia’s 2011 Christmas Book (Sorta)

Christopher Tassava — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:37:36 +0000

True to tradition, Julia is making Christmas presents for the rest of us. She started making me a book – How to Be a Good Daddy! – but then abandoned it. This is a shame, given that the first page is GENIUS and because I would love to read the other chapters, especially number 6, “Get Rich!” (Click on the images to see bigger, more legible versions on Flickr.)

Games Girls Play

Christopher Tassava — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:45:43 +0000

Here is a partial list of make-believe “games” that my daughters play, and what explanation of each that I can offer:

Kitchen (cooking and serving food in the play kitchen)
House (being a family)
Old Fashioned (being the Ingalls family, or another pioneer family)
Rich (being a rich family)
Poor (being a poor family)
Mrs. Cinderwick (throwing Littlest Pet Shop Animals all over and exclaiming, “Mrs. Cinderwick!”)

Evening Entertainment

Christopher Tassava — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 02:02:05 +0000

Tonight the girls entertained themselves while I cleaned up the kitchen with the “Naughty or Nice” game at santaclaus.net.

They laughed for literally a half hour straight, putting everyone they could think of into the game: themselves, their friends, classmates, fictional characters. And on and on. Santa’s a pretty soft touch; he hardly ever gives anyone – even the Ingalls girls’ nemesis Nellie Oleson – a poor rating.

But my god they loved it.

More Big Book News from Shannon!

Christopher Tassava — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 17:15:21 +0000

Uh, wow. Big honking news!

Holiday Gift-Buying for all the Moms You Know (Including Yourself)

Faithful readers!

In just a few short weeks, in mid-December (exact date to be determined; I will update you!), my first book will be released by Booktrope Publishing. (OMG! Insert screaming and jumping up and down here.)

A comprehensive handbook for happy and healthy stay-at-home motherhood, The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual: How to Have a Wondrous Life Amidst Kids and Chaos is a combination of professional self-help advice for taking better care of yourself, and real-life anecdotes and practical strategies for making your life as a stay-at-home mom easier and more fun. It’s for stay-at-home moms of all kinds (total novices or experienced SAHMs), with kids of all ages, and includes plenty of ideas and resources for any mom who could use some help keeping her kids entertained, her house reasonably tidy, and her sanity intact.

Originally, my book stemmed from this blog, but it expanded into a much larger project when I decided to use my expertise as a clinical health psychologist to address the parts of at-home motherhood that seem to trip women up the most (time for yourself; sleep; fitness; nutrition; mood; taking care of yourself and not just your kids; balancing parenting with other relationships; stress). Who doesn’t need help with all that, right? But don’t worry–it’s also a fun and funny read about life in the trenches of motherhood, with excerpts from this blog as well as examples of mothering craziness from my own life and the lives of other moms I know.

Plus, if you buy my book, you’ll get to read about just how grim my life was during my first year of motherhood, before this blog and before I had any other mom friends. Wouldn’t you love to find out just how much chocolate I consumed that year? And how much I cried? And how crazy I was? Sure you do.

My book comes out right before Christmas, so bookmark Amazon.com and get your mouse ready to click. I’m sure you know a mom or two who could use this book. Maybe you.

Big Book News from Shannon!

Christopher Tassava — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:32:28 +0000

Yesterday, Shannon passed a pretty cool milestone for her book, and wrote it up in her usual, wonderful way. As her biggest fan, I say, “Congratulations!” and ask, “Is it time to crack that bottle of Champagne yet?”

Wondrous Life
Yesterday I saw my book, The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual: How to Have a Wondrous Life Amidst Kids and Chaos, fully laid out for the first time. On the computer, I mean, but still! The designer sent me a file of the entire thing, every page, laid out how it will look in print, and with the cover mocked up and everything. How cool is that? It was definitely one of the most significant and exciting moments of my life.

Of course, I had that significant moment while also preparing to go volunteer in Genevieve’s kindergarten classroom and fielding an e-mail from Julia’s teacher about the fact that she had cried at school because she was scared about having a substitute teacher for the afternoon. So I couldn’t exactly drink in the moment and reflect on the hard work and events of the past two years that have led to the imminent publication of my book–you know, how it’s the culmination of a lifelong dream and all that? I was a little too busy e-mailing Julia’s 2nd-grade teacher and making sure the soup for dinner was started before I went over to volunteer in kindergarten. Which is the exact sort of thing the book is all about, really. So it’s all kind of fitting and wonderful.

“Comet: God Particle”

Christopher Tassava — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 01:42:14 +0000

With the opening of Carleton’s new Weitz Center for Creativity, the College gained several great new spaces for the display of art and other visual materials. The crown jewel is the Perlman Teaching Museum, which is right inside the front door of the Weitz Center and which has two excellent inaugural shows running right now.

The smaller exhibit comprises wonderful photographs taken by Carleton professor John Schott of the the Weitz Center’s previous incarnation, as the Northfield Middle School. This show is very good, but it’s physically and conceptually dwarfed by the other exhibit, “Seeing Is Knowing: The Universe,” which includes numerous objects, ranging from Renaissance books on heliocentric theory and early 20th century drawings of celestial phenomena to recent scientific images of the cosmos and contemporary art that deals with the universe.

For my money, the best thing in this exhibit is maybe the biggest, and certainly the brightest: artist Tristin Lowe’s massive neon sculpture “Comet: God Particle.” It’s a stunner, literally and figuratively.