Season's Tweetings

The Night Before Christmas 

for 

Social Media Breakfast Minneapolis/St.Paul

'Twas soon to be #Christmas

#SMBMSP

And tweeters were tweeting

Like @NicoleDeB

Plus @AlbertMaruggi

@keithprivette @rickmahn

@sborsch @mitchellhislop

And @arikhanson

@MegCanada tweets @MrChristopherL

@bstemmler keeps filming

@stremcha rings a bell

@chrisnulty and @philson

@leeodden @gregswan

@quick13 @bradwellman

The tweets just go on:

@mnheadhunter @ThreeDeep

And @desaraeV

And @amysbryant and @davidtc

@timbursch @donmball

Tweet @myklroventine

Who RT's @Kayloire 

And @audiencemachine

This tweeting could go on

'Til 2010

So unhand your handhelds

And #MacBooks and then

Eat #bacon and celebrate all that you can

'Til #SMBMSP happens again.  

Playing catchup with reality

Despite the title of this blog, I have rarely jumped to the heart, but a humbling 24 hours has pushed me.

I look in the mirror and see:  Susan.
Others look at me, and see a senior citizen.
It's not just the last 24 hours.  There was the woman at the gym who didn't understand why I hadn't considered Silver Sneakers exercise classes. The aqua aerobics instructor who asked if I was going to the luncheon at the Senior Center.
Then, yesterday, the eye doctor who said my blurry vision was caused by cataracts.  
Cataracts?! I gasped.  People my age get cataracts???
Yes, he nodded, scanning my chart for my age, 50% of people over 62 have cataracts.*
I'm 58; but to him, I am appropriately aged for cataracts.
Today at the coop, the cashier cautiously wondered if I'd be using the Tuesday discount.
What discount?
For seniors, she explained, over 62.
My perception of myself has clearly not caught up with reality.
Reality gallops apace, while I remain: Susan.

*FWIW: I checked the NIH statistics. Only 15.54% of 62-year-olds have cataracts.  Among white people my age, the rate is 8.84%.

Dance to the music of time

When Alison Young asked me to bring my musical bucket list to her MPR feature, Music With Minnesotans, I was at a loss.  I had none.
Instead, I looked back at my life through the lens of classical music, and this was the result.



It was a delight.

Neither shallow nor deep

Image via WikipediaWhile I did reserve The Shallows, the much-touted book about what the internet is doing to our brains, I did not read it.

I have, however, experienced it.

Sunday, just for the old-fashioned heck of it, I shelled out $6 for a New York Times.  What a pleasure to spread out in bed with it.  Lounge on the couch with it. Read it on the treadmill.  Section after section, reading all day and into Monday, when my beloved New Yorker arrived.   It's the last magazine to which I subscribe, and I've been reading it less and less.

But so quickly had I returned to the reading-on-paper habit, that I sat down and read The New Yorker.

This morning I dialed up (!) the New York Times and ordered Sunday home delivery, then proceeded to sit down and begin reading Julie Salomon's Wendy Wasserstein biography, "Wendy and The Lost Boys."

Aren't I literary!

Not really.  This is Standard Operating Procedure for the pre-internet me, 

And I like it.

Related articles

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• Author brings Wendy Wasserstein's complexities, gifts to light (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Pick your poison

Image via Wikipedia
Fairview/UofM vs Tria/Park Nicollet.
Back in July, I had an idiotic fall that smashed my wrist.
Treament and surgery were done at Tria, an orthopedic clinic affiliated with Park Nicollet.  The surgeon was good, the day surgery team a marvel of efficiency, and the hand therapists hard-working and resourceful.  They tried every therapeutic trick and torture device to fix the wrist, but four months later, it is painful and almost immobile.   Each department was good at its single mission-but too narrowly focused.  "When do you see the doctor?" my hand therapist would ask, shaking her head at my lack of progress.
I sought a second opinion at Fairview/UofM, a teaching facility, where a Professor of Orthopedics quickly diagnosed the problem:  two tears in the soft tissue.  Loved the way the diagnostic team worked there.  But systemically, what a mess.  Bad followup.  Calls are not returned.  Appoinsments scheduled in the wrong department.  Just plain sloppy, systemically.
So, what to do?  I need a working right hand.  

Pyramid of Egregiousness | Name It. Change It.

Pyramid of Egregiousness | Name It. Change It.

Apropos of nothing

Image via WikipediaWhich must be something like east of the sun.
My son came home from camp with a duffel full of mysteries.
Like where were his fins?
How did his soap return unscathed for the second year running?
And what happened to the other 19 socks?
This kid went to camp with ten pairs and came home with a single sock
"I have issues with socks," he explained.
There was some childhood trauma I was unaware of?
The sock industry gave money to Tom Emmer's campaign?
Who knows?  Who cares?
He came home tall, happy, handsome, 16 pounds lighter, he learned to water ski, and I've got a bar of soap he can use for the third year in a row. 

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