Michael Strahan is awesome. He’s cute and funny. I loved watching him play football and I’m so excited he’s joined the Fox NFL Sunday crew so I can still watch him “play”. 😀

The only way that fivesome could be better is to take Curt Menefee out and replace him with me.

But then I don’t know who would keep order.

Flan is just icky. I can’t get past the texture.

So long, farewell
Auf Wiedersehen, adieu
Adieu, adieu
To you and you and foursquare.

I loved it, I did. The badges, the points. Ahhhh.

If you want to know why I removed it, ask me.

All I’ll say here is foursquare stalking.

Sigh.

My Mom was a very creative person. When we were small, she made us groceries out of plaster of paris so we could play store. The produce looked SO real we wanted to eat it.

I’ll never forget my 6th birthday that had a Mary Poppins theme. She created Mary Poppins out of a hanger, sewed her outfit, including her carpet bag and this graced the center of my party table. We played the usual party games but I remember the prizes going along with the theme. I remember very specifically a yellow pin that looked like a parasol.  How I wanted to win those prizes!

When I was in fifth or sixth grade, Mom joined Weight Watchers. This was way back in the dark ages and, once her weight was lost, she became a lecturer for them.  She would draw her own posters every week to illustrate the point of her lecture and I think this was the first time I realized that Mom could really draw.

She drew a self portrait in the 80’s that my brother and sister and I saw here and there. We all agreed we needed to throw that away when we came across it while packing up her apartment last November.  She looked angry in the self portrait and I don’t think any of us wanted to remember Mom like that.

Mom was fun and she was unique. We always knew when she was angry though because her left eyebrow would raise, seemingly on its own.

I brought quite a few boxes of mom’s stuff home with me after we went through her storage units in May. I haven’t really had time to do much with them but I keep being surprised by the things I find when I take some time to look.

I was speaking with someone this a.m. who suggested I read The Traveler’s Gift. I told her that I have this book, it was in Mom’s things, and I pulled the book out of the box it was in while I was talking to her.

I just opened up the book and look what I found?

A little hand drawn, cut out, lady with a dog. I know Mom drew this. It’s like she’s still making me paper dolls. 🙂

It has come to my attention, that I may be obsessed with cardboard. That fact hit me last night as we were opening the new Mr. Coffee maker that we had to buy when I took the old coffee carafe out of the dishwasher and it was broken.

David was helping me to get the new coffee maker out of it’s packaging. If you’ve ever done that before, you know that with the styrofoam, etc. it’s kind of a two person job. Especially if you don’t want to break the new carafe.

As I was unwrapping the machine, I was handing the packaging pieces to David. After I thought it was all unwrapped, he said, “Aren’t you going to take that cardboard off?” pointing to the burner. Lo and behold, there was the most beautifully round piece of cardboard I have ever seen!

He tried to take it away from me to put it with the rest of the discarded packaging and I snatched it back from him. “No! I want to keep that.”

I stood there admiring my beautiful cardboard circle. Honestly, I have no use for it but I do love it.

This morning, I looked across the room and saw this:

What is that? Boxes. More cardboard. I just can’t bring myself to throw them away. I might “need” them.

I also have quite a collection of these:

These come to  me when my pageant contestants send their headshots.

I suppose I should really just throw all of these cardboard fancies away but it makes me feel kind of good when I can recycle one of the boxes or the one time I actually used one of the flat cardboard pieces to protect a mailing.

You’ve seen, I’m green, I’m the Cardboard Queen. 🙂

I’ve written before about the fabulous info we learn at the Bartlesville Marketing and Communications Association meetings and I have another story for you today.

Last Thursday’s meeting was about the impact of QR codes on your business. QR code? What in the heck is that? The pageant isn’t like a normal business so I was convinced I would learn nothing of any use to me. I didn’t really even want to go to the meeting, I was that sure it wouldn’t be worth it. But I decided that had to go to the meeting because I am the secretary of the association and I didn’t really have a good excuse not to go.

I am not a secretary kind of gal. I take horrible notes. I get too caught up in what’s going on, or too distracted by other things if I’m bored.  Attention span of a gnat. But being the BMCA secretary is awesome because I get to live tweet the event. That keeps me interested, focused and occupied. 🙂

Once Scott got started, I was enthralled. How had I never heard of a QR code before? They are big in Japan and you can find them on buildings and billboards and CDs. They are everywhere.

What is it? It’s a code, kind of like a UPC code, that when scanned, will take you directly to a website, dial a phone number or send a text. How cool is that?!

I felt a little Veruca Salt-ish. “I want it and I want it NOW!”

I couldn’t wait for the meeting to be over so I could get to work on my first QR code. This thing that I thought would have no use in my business, I suddenly knew had endless possibilities.

Here’s my new non-pageant business card. The QR code in the lower right corner, when scanned, takes you directly to the Rott-I-Tude facebook page. Awesome!

Expect to start seeing these in my life. I will for sure be putting one in the pageant program book and am thinking of putting one this year’s t-shirt for the contestants. And now, you will know what it is when you see it!

Scott referred to me as a social media queen but, honestly, I think I’m just a geek. 🙂

Click the link here to see David Austin’s interview with Scott Townsend about QR codes.

Today is my aunt Bonnie’s 75th birthday! Bonnie is my mom’s older sister. There were just the two of them and Bonnie was a big part of our lives growing up because she and Mom were close and we usually lived pretty close to them.

She is the polar opposite of my mom. Mom was always a dreamer, a little flighty – kinda like me. Bonnie represents a calm steadiness to me. When I was in bootcamp, our drill instructor asked us if we had to be in a foxhole with any woman who would we choose? I chose Bonnie.

Which bothered my mom. But I knew that if I were in a foxhole with my mom we’d probably end up getting our heads blown off and my best chances lay with her sister.

When I was young, Bonnie was a teacher. When I was in 5th grade, my regular teacher had to have surgery and Bonnie was put into our room as a long term substitute. One of my other uncles and aunt lived in Hawaii at the time and we happened to be studying Hawaii in school. When she called me out with this fact in front of my classmates, painfully shy little me wanted to just crawl under the table and die. I cried. I think that’s the only bad memory I have of Bonnie. 🙂

Last October, when I went out to be with Mom, I feel like I bonded even further with Bonnie. During the whole of Mom’s illness, death and aftermath, Bonnie did the heavy lifting. Oh we moved the furniture, but she handled the housing, insurance, funeral, etc. The heavy stuff. The hard stuff. She was there when I called, when I needed a shoulder.

I want to take today to tell you just how special Bonnie is to me and how blessed my sisters, brother and I are to have her in our lives.

I love you, Bonnie. May your day be as special as you!