CogBlogged Tagged ‘mom’

I do not have the fancy red shoes, but I do have a kick-ass red pickup truck! cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog My 2011 Road Odyssey closed its lop last night when I got home at 6:30pm to my home in Strawberry, AZ, 15,030 miles and 5 months since I left in late June. This last bit was a manic sprint, covering 2200 miles from Fort Myers Florida starting Monday morning. I do not highly recommend that travel mode. It was my choice, driven my the fact I signed up to do a trip to Australia starting.. next friday. Parked in my driveway, I did a short ds106radio broadcast of the coming home moment, walking in my door, and also archived it on my phone recorder. Coming Home I was just about 30 miles up the road, the place where the AZ 87 heading south [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Today was the day many people around here in Mom’s neighborhood were waiting for- a chance for them to show their love and sorrow and memories for Alyce at a memorial tribute at a place that became a hub for her, Temple Judea. A room full of people were there, each one with a dear story of how my Mom impacted them. There were at least 20 people from her neighborhood. In a time when people suggest we are more disconnected as neighborhoods, I offer Tall Pine Circle as an exception. For the week my sisters and I have been there has been a parade of neighbors coming by to share how special Mom was. And they did so again today. There were two ladies from the bank my Mom [...]

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by cogdogblog With the hundreds of tweets, emails, and thoughts I feel in the air regarding my Mom’s passing, I am more that “lifted” by my net. As Mom would say, “I am blown away”. I was asked to edit the audio part of her “Stories on ds106 radio” where she talks about butterflies. I’d heard her say this many times since my Dad passed away, that whenever you see a butterfly it represents the spirit of someone who passed. Now its easy to pass this off as not scientific, but I know it gave her a lot of comfort, and I found myself seeing a butterfly when I was doing my camping practice for this trip. And it makes me smile just thinking about her saying it. The photo above I took in Mom’s honor last August when I visited the [...]

Here’s a new assignment for your ds10ers; put your Mom on the radio. I have an unfair advantage that my Mom is (a) alive and (b) a good sport. On her annual visits to Strawberry AZ for Thanksgiving, she has let herself be recorded on how to use her Twitter account or her previous amazement at people tweeting to her. On my two day visit to her home in south Florida, I brought the ds106 radio station booth with me, and was determined to have her do a live appearance on the waves. Well, actually I did not say anything about the radio until we started broadcasting, I just said I wanted to record her telling stories. Here’s the archive of our fun time: CogDog’s Mom on ds106 radio (audio) So this was totally unstructured. I rolled in with a bit of Herb Alpert, since I recall this tantalizing album [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog It was during last year’s visit when my Mom asked me, full of both innocence and curiosity, to explain Twitter to her- we had a good time after I seeded the request for an explanation out to my contacts, and did they ever respond. We captured that conversation in audio a year ago — see Twitter in Mom English. This year was the follow-up…. a few months ago, thinking a bit of a nicer version of ShitMyDadSays, I decided to create a Twitter account for Mom, and then I would try and tweet some of the funny or insightful (or both) things she says during our weekly phone calls. You can follow here via @alycecookie. So tonight, I sat her down to show her how it worked. I showed her the cookie icon I added, and the bio I made up for her: [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by red5standingby A recent interest timesuck addiction um,, interest has been playing Words With Friends… with friends. I’ve been on a lucky streak, and have beaten a few people who are smarter and more educated (people who actually use words like “epistemology” in regular conversation. But its really not about winning, it’s the joy of playing, challenging your brain. Who am I kidding? It’s better to win! Give me the X on a TL box sliding down to the TW score. And maybe I will start using “words” like “QI” “XI”, “NEF”, “AE” in everyday language. But that’s not the point either. Here is the word I have been thinking about. cc licensed flickr photo “M” and cc licensed flickr photo “O” shared by Leo Reynolds I can’t remember if I was 7,8,9 when my Mom showed me this word game with the wooden tiles. [...]

Strange as it sounds, today I had to email my Mom a scanned copy of a copy of my own birth certificate to prove her own birth record. And perhaps the most challenging was helping her decode the email attachment so she could print the record. It goes like this. Her Florida drivers license is up for renewal and some new regulation (she says) requires her to bring a copy of her birth certificate. The problem is that back in 1929 Baltimore, records were not so rigorously recorded. The daughter of immigrants, whom-ever took the record information probably could not understand the name her mom reported, so Mom’s birth certificate lists her as Baby H********** (Polish sounding name); a later attempt by her parents to update it recorded the wrong name- her name is “Alyce” but the thick accent ended up with her official name being listed as “Ellis”. But [...]

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog Now that she knows all about twitter, is Mom trying to pull an Evan Ratliff disappearing act? She grabbed my new issue of Wired before I could even read it myself, and was quite absorbed in the cover article. Lest I blog the wrong impression that Mom and I have this fabulous Hollywood scripted movie relationship, let me fill you in that she still can annoy the hell out of me (she gets pleasure at “pushing my buttons”) and she can manage to frustrate me into a fit that flashes me back to age 16. On the other hand, for her having gone through the whole birthing process and raising/supporting me to reach adulthood, I give her a lot of slack. Everyone has a mom. I do love mine, but one is more than enough!

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog My mom is visiting me for the next 2 weeks. This morning, she said, “Can you explain this ‘twitter’ thing to me over lunch?’. I could not resist rushing out to tweet it ;-) which got some interesting responses, including one from Dean Shareski, who asked me to record the conversation. So at lunch time, I sent out a repeat request, and first sat Mom down at the computer to watch the Common Craft Twitter in Plain English video cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog and then turned on the recorder to capture our conversation (it was great because tweets were coming in as we were talking) Here’s what twitter can accumulate for the related tweets: http://search.twitter.com/search?ands=mom&ref=cogdog Here is our conversation Telling Mom About Twitter (15.8 Mb mp3)

cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog She called last week while I was traveling, and I must admit in the middle of a conference dinner when Mom called, I pushed her to voicemail. And then there was the rush of getting home and getting caught up in all the "stuff" that I realized without a high tech reminder I might not remember to call Mom. And of course, none of that really matters when I talk to her- she is the same as she ever was. Go Mom. Mom reads the blog but her method of commenting is calling me on the phone to tell me her comment. Mom can be 1.0, that’s fine. But I keep telling her I am writing for her, and to skip all the techno mumbo jumbo. Here’s your blog post, Mom!