<p>Hugs to cd and kmc.
Glad the party went well, shaw! And 5 more to go!
Woody, D and I have “Beautiful” on our list of must see’s. Glad to hear you enjoyed it and Happy Anniversary.
In addition to eddie and analyst, I also miss sabaray. I hope that you are all reading the posts.</p>
<p>Good Morning! Still at the lake waiting for the workers to come and install the dock and boat lift. They called yesterday to see if anyone would be around so I volunteered to stay. 
It is so peaceful as not many around here have opened their cabins yet. This is the first year in 24 years that H or his dad haven’t been here to install themselves or supervise the big event. I think I will take my time heading home and hit a few antique stores on the way. I am looking for a sofa table for behind the great room sofa. I have an antique buffet I was thinking of using but now think it might be too wide. More shopping! :)</p>
<p>Happy Anniversary woody! Congratulations! Your trip to the City sounds heavenly!</p>
<p>Happy early birthday shaw!</p>
<p>Happy anniversary woody. </p>
<p>I wore these:</p>
<p><a href=“No results for Naturalizer danya portrait shiny | Zappos.com”>http://www.zappos.com/naturalizer-danya-portrait-shiny</a></p>
<p>They are more comfortable than they look. I can get through a long day of work in them, so I knew I could get through the banquet clean up.</p>
<p>I have this empty nest/retirement fantasy of spending at least a week in NYC every year, during “the season”…I would love to have time to see more than last year’s big musical.</p>
<p>Our local newspaper had an article about touring companies of musicals and equity vs. non-equity shows.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/columnists/nancy-churnin/20140426-to-present-equity-or-non-equity-in-dallas-that-is-the-question.ece”>http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/columnists/nancy-churnin/20140426-to-present-equity-or-non-equity-in-dallas-that-is-the-question.ece</a></p>
<p>cd and kmc - hugs! </p>
<p>Shaw - what a lovely wife! The food sounds amazing.</p>
<p>Work - is well work. As things are coming together my bosses temper tantrums are still on going but seem to last for a shorter period of time. Not sure it it’s because things are getting done or it he’s just less stressed. Not sure but he doesn’t need to stress me out with him. :)</p>
<p>This weekend we had a bunch of people over to do awards for a race that my husband’s race team sponsors. Lots of cooking was involved. Hardest was making a vegan chocolate cake. Come to find out she is vegetarian but not vegan like my husband told me. Making a vegan cake is not for the faint of heart if you are not used to doing it!</p>
<p>Epic MissyFail: I told older D the wrong day for younger D’s HS graduation. In all fairness, we discussed this while we were in Budapest AND graduation is on the last day of school, which it has never been before. It will be easy enough to cancel the plane tickets (Southwest) but it gets messy from there. I guess I’m not infallible. Or even “together.”</p>
<p>RM, It is very hard to make a vegan chocolate cake that is edible, let alone good. My sister-in-law now makes one that is surprisingly good. But, it took a lot of experimentation.</p>
<p>In our party, the food was very good, but ShawWife needed to hire some help (prep and cleanup) so that all of the things that had to come together at the last minute did so. She forgot to do that. So, I’ve already emailed someone to come out for the next one (hopefully she’ll be able to).</p>
<p>Our dessert was an extremely intense lemon tart (one of my favorites) from a bakery downtown run by a Chinese-American woman who was an honors graduate of Harvard College with a degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics and then left a career as a management consultant to enter the world of professional cooking. Can you imagine what her tiger mother said? Now she has four locations and is very successful.</p>
<p>There is a cupcake store near the DePaul campus that makes vegan gluten free cupcakes that really truly honestly delicious. </p>
<p>I have an idea, Shaw if CBB is up for it we will help at your dinner parties, just for food in payback.
I got notification that I can take a class as a non matriculated student. I am nervous, but mostly because it is online and my computer skills are marginal at best. I want to take a statistics class, but the only way I can do it is online, I took one but it was 30 years ago. so need a refresher. I guess I am trying to finally figure it out.
had a talk with D1 just miss her, glad her life is happy and good.<br>
D2 was home for the week, will see her on mothers day. Taking MIL to the lake for the weekend. she loves it. Some family is starting to back off, not convenient for them.
There is a French bakery in the next town, they are amazing and our go to for a fancy dessert.
I would hate six parties would consider it a form of torture.
MP are you having a party for graduation?</p>
<p>No, no grad party. D will have a pathetic end of senior year…only it’s just pathetic to me, not her She is so over high school, over her HS friends, over it all. She will skip every event that we will allow her to skip. There’s really nothing wrong with being ready for high school to end. It’s just a bit hard on her mother, wanting her to experience everything (that she has no desire to experience.) But for the opportunty to wear a fabulous princess dress, I’m sure she wouldn’t even be going to prom.</p>
<p>Is she doing OK, MP? given the earlier trauma, this may be a very healthy response.</p>
<p>Sure DTE. The online courses re I think pretty easy.The real problem is that statistics is perhaps the most useful course one could take if taught properly. If taught properly, you can learn about how to (and not to) draw causal inferences from data and/or how to make decisions under uncertainty. But, the way it is normally taught is completely formulaic and no one learns how to think (which should be the point). If there is an online course with great ratings, take that one.</p>
<p>We wanted to get everyone together for Mother’s Day. ShawD told me that she is going horseback riding. She has developed two outdoor friends. One is an NP student (somewhat older than ShawD but in the graduate program she is part of) and the other is a very sweet doctor where she is working (I think with the other NP student). He was in a two-year relationship that recently ended and he vowed to take a 6 month abstention from relationships. He’s so nice and the nurses apparently have a wager that this young nice considerate physician will not make it six months. It is working to ShawD’s advantage as he is willing to drive ShawD for any proposed outdoor outing – rock climbing indoors, hiking, and now riding. ShawD just bought a sleeping bag, tent, and backpack to take weekend trips with the two this summer at the REI basement sale. This is hilarious as we had to pull teeth to get her to hike with us and could almost never get her to camp. ShawSon is following my trails as a serious backpacker (I was but am no longer). But, ShawD recoils at spiders. Blood is fine (which is good given her choice of profession) but somehow can’t handle spiders. Go figure. So we’ll have to go for dinner instead of brunch and a hike.</p>
<p>My D2 hates spiders too, its a family joke. I am looking at Shaw D’s school, gee if I never figure it out do I have to grow up? </p>
<p>DTE, I think ShawD has to take a statistics class also, but she’s placed out of the basic one. Maybe she’ll see you there. </p>
<p>oh no Shaw I am very remedial, no placing out of anything ha I took a stats class over 30 years ago, still have nightmares.
NM your place sounds heavenly.
MP maybe you can take a short trip with her. I know I would be like your daughter. Perhaps she sees HS for what it is nonsense. I couldn’t wait to get out either</p>
<p>Well, I heard about a couple of very disturbing things this afternoon.</p>
<p>ShawSon called me for advice. A kid he knew from college and was a roommate in a big suite for a year was starving (literally). He had just gotten out of hospital or health clinic and was having problems with his heart. ShawSon picked him up – about an hour away. He had to sit down twice walking up the stairs to his apartment. I know little about the kid but he apparently had a worse than dysfunctional home life and didn’t ever want to go back home. He had some kind of problem – psychological or medical but I think psychological – and had to take a semester off. ShawSon helped him not go home and he did graduate one semester after ShawSon. He is tall and skinny and black with an African sounding last name and from some Minnesota or Wisconsin and I wondered if he were a Somali kid or something, but never asked. Anyway, he had a job as a web designer at the major local university arranged for when he graduated and it fell through just when it was supposed to start. He apparently became depressed and was trying to live on $100 per month plus $1000 total in the bank and was literally starving. ShawSon arranged with his former suite mates to kick in money and was wondering whether they should wire it to the kid or to ShawSon. He said, “I don’t think he’s doing anything bad with money like drugs or alcohol, but maybe they should wire it to me and I’ll buy and deliver the food because he doesn’t have the energy to make good decisions or take care of himself.” ShawSon’s former former suite mates found a food pantry that can supply him food for three days a week. He’s asked another to get the kid unemployment and find out what kind of social services are available. ShawWife and I asked if we could cook a bunch of food and ShawSon could bring it to him or if he needs some place to stay. ShawSon said they just need to get him back on his feet and help him find a job as a web designer. ShawSon asked where to look for that and I said monster.com or craigslist, but I really don’t know. Any ideas?</p>
<p>I’m proud of ShawSon for being both caring and compassionate and a leader but there is something really unsettling, almost heartbreaking about a kid who graduated from a great school who was starving. Back to my post of a few days ago, he had no structure or meaning and was not drawing on his community. </p>
<p>My assistant got a call late in the day that (I’m not sure I’ve got the details correct) her cousin’s boyfriend and father of the cousin’s child was killed today. They were separated and he lived in the Midwest and she moved back East with a two year old (?) kid. Not clear what the circumstances were, but he was under 30. I don’t have any emotional attachment there – it seems more like news I would hear on TV – but it just tells us how small our little worries.</p>
<p>Oh my, shaw. Kudos to your son for being so compassionate and involved – and for rounding up support from others. I’d like to think my D & S would be so “hands on” in trying to help. but I don’t know. Hel_, I don’t know for sure if I’d be so quick to jump in to help like that,as opposed to simply giving money. I’m not always that good about “taking the bull by the horns,” so to speak. And, yes, period wake-up calls about how small most of MY worries are is a good thing.</p>
<p>I have 2 brothers; they (both married w/ 2 kids) live in/one town away from my hometown. Trying to schedule any family activity is a logistical nightmare! Mostly this is due to one of my SIL’s need to have the final word/ultimate control over every little thing that happens in her life. My brother, it seems, goes along to try to keep the peace within his own home. We’re trying to find a time to celebrate my father’s 86th birthday. No matter that H & I have to drive 2+ hours to get there – she expects us to just show up when it’s convenient for her. Even worse, their S is graduating HS on 6/6; my other brother’s oldest D is graduating college in May. SIL whose D is graduating college emailed a “save the date” notice for D’s graduation party on 6/7; other SIL then announces that the ONLY day they can do S’s HS grad party is 6/7, so college grad party needs to be changed. WHAT? College grad D leaves for her job in Indiana in mid-June; HS S leaves for college at the end of August. Yes, yes, yes – I know these are minor worries. (See above.) I just have to shake my head at these antics, though. </p>
<p>Hey dte – great idea! I even worked one summer as a waitress … 
</p>
<p>^indeed.</p>
<p>With respect to the young man, job search is not for the faint of heart, so connecting him with social services, counseling and job readiness programs may be the best start. If he’s depressed, a question to my mind is has he actually prepared a cogent portfolio of work? And has anyone looked at his CV to see if it’s competitive and does his background justice? Shawson and his friends will want to help him in a way that teaches him to fish, as opposed to being given the proverbial fish. Because although he came from a good school, he may have not had the opportunity to learn the combined tactics of networking, self-presentation, and organizing the kind of details required for an earnest job search. Or, if from a particularly dysfunctional family or due to presiding history of mental illness, the social skills to be a competitive applicant. </p>
<p>Then there’s the phenom of sustenance. I think its difficult to graduate from a good school and find oneself without economic launch support, but if one for whatever reason will not or is not able to rely on one’s family for this, then one has to be prepared to spend double the energy … One part on working anything at all, in order to eat…and another on continuing to develop their professional skill and continuing job search. And that’s a tricky balance I’ve witnessed first-hand with mcson :)</p>
<p>When he chose to stay in Ann Arbor with mcgf in their horrifically expensive apt, he knew, or at least was warned, that he would have trouble enough just getting by, let alone progressing his artistic work or advancing his job search. Thats because he’s working two jobs 50 hours or more a week just to cover his bills. He was fortunate in that due to his alumni network being so robust and his undergrad volunteerism plenty that he’s had a steady stream of freelance, including a recent music video and the graphical development of an app interface. So at least he has something to show for his year of dalliance in terms of portfolio. But he’s expended a lot of energy networking just to do that, and he’s generally affable, so is able to seize opportunities. And he hasn’t written much music or advanced a serious job search.</p>
<p>Which is why I say getting your son’s friend’s psychological and medical house in order is the first priority. In the interim, he could likely pick up design/development work on elance.com depending on his degree of experience and whether or not he’s being realistic in mapping his combination of education and practical skills in his desire to work in web development. Eg. Was he a CS major looking to work more on the development side? Or a design major? If the latter, is he actually proficient in CSS3 and HTML5? Proficient with all aspects of Adobe Creative Suite? These are things employers look for in even front-end designers and liberal arts programs don’t typically deliver the combination of design and technical prowess naturally.</p>
<p>If he’d theoretically had a job in web design at his school, it’s possible that said title really meant more of a content maintenance role as most schools use customized content management systems (Drupal, Jorma, Wordpress) that already have a developed core off the shelf. In that case, perhaps he’s more of a content producer or digital coordinator in terms of skill set, as opposed to a developer. In that case, Shawson should use these phrases and set up an Indeed RSS feed for him to alert to local jobs in the discipline. They tend to be more entry level jobs in nature. I guess helping him define what he’s actually qualified for would aid him in his job search most.</p>
<p>While I’ve generally warned mcson off the exploitative nature and rates of pay at elance.com – because in mcson’s case he has access to and proof of more professional agency work if he wanted it – elance could help round out the young man’s portfolio of projects.</p>
<p>But just so you know, we’re a tiny studio in this field and we would not make a hire without direct evidence of production experience. That meant for example that our lead developer had to code on the spot for us, solve a coding problem and complete a design takeaway. Our content producer had to show extensive evidence of work, and made a freelance facelift for someone else on our referral that influenced our decision to hire. Her boyfriend, an MBA with an interest in copywriting and experience through his fellowship had to complete a take-home project for a client before he was hired to a local agency. </p>
<p>So these kind of demos are a bit of a pressure cooker for some and you need to be firing on all cylinders to do well. Which is why I am more concerned about the depression than the current lack of work.</p>
<p>At any rate, hope that gives some food for thought. </p>
<p>shaw that is indeed disturbing. I really feel for the kids who have no safety net at home. Your S sounds like a really great guy for wanting to help.
We are also in the final stretch of HS with our youngest and seeing a case of “senioritis”. Unfortunately, the next week and a half features 5 AP exams and regular classwork on top of that. There is still another month of school after the AP,s and at his school they do not let up. Projects, homework, tests and final exams till the end. S asked a girl to prom yesterday (it’s still 4 weeks away). </p>
<p>kmc, that is very helpful. I don’t really know his qualifications or what kind of job he had been offered. I will find out. I will pass this information on.</p>
<p>My impression is that he was not that social when he was in the suite – probably not a great networker. Look at how long it must have taken him to reach out. And that there were serious issues with his family – he was frightened to go back.</p>
<p>The job he had accepted was at the local state university down the road, not his own LAC. </p>
<p>And, I got the information wrong with my assistant. The person who was killed was her sister’s boyfriend and father of her niece.</p>
<p>Shaw, so sorry to hear of the death. The 30 year old son of one of my law partners died of pneumonia about 10 days ago…had been to the doctor, was on antibiotics. So much tragedy and loss in this world…and that is even with “modern medicine.”</p>