Summer Projects

It's been a quiet few weeks here on the blog, mainly because it's been a loud few weeks in real life. Some news on what's to follow:

1) Flash Fiction Fridays - each Friday I'll post a short or super-short here, in this very space. Some might follow a theme, some might stand alone.

2) Technology/AV  - I've finished all of the training requirements for my new Project Engineer position. Hooray! Expect another AV post next week, and bi-weekly from there.

3) Literary+ -- this is a group of writers on the Google+ social network. They share encouragement, writing tips, cross-promotion of work, and even little projects and excersizes. I'll be participating in a serial with them, and will likely write something for an upcoming anthology (theme: The Stranger. I already have an idea or two).

3a) Literary+ Serial. Smoke and Shadows. Start following now. I promise I'll be along soon!

4) Blog-hop collaborative story - Remember Riley's story, co-written with Carrie K Sorenstein, Nicole Pyle? We're starting another one, this time with additional participants. First part is already upon Carrie's blog  here. I'll keep you posted.

There's also going to be at least one special guest poster here this summer! Stay tuned.

Summer Collaboration Challenge!

My more personal summer project isn't going to be on the blog; Chloe and I are working on a shared story together. They've just been learning to write stories in kindergarten, and I wand to give her the chance to practice over the summer so first grade won't be a complete "starting over". Her big passion at the moment is drawing, while mine is writing. So, to step each of us out of our comfort zones, I promised to illustrate each of my pages if she'll write a line on each of hers. The story so far - about a princess and her friend the dragon, is starting to take on a kind of meandering charm. Last night at bedtime when I asked her to name one thing about herself that makes her proud, she said that she's creative. Hopefully we can nurture that feeling.


Tomorrow I'll be back with a post about language, feminism, and breakfast food.

See you then.

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W is for work, to which I took my daughter

It's "Take your children (formerly take your daughters) work day. My employer, AVI-SPL, invited us to participate with our children. Given the greater presence men still have in the workplace, part of me wishes this were still a day for just girls, but it's still a worthy idea to let our children see another part of our lives. I do think it's important for girls to see the workplace as an option for them and am very disappointed that they can't have something for themselves. To not allow special opportunities for girls is, in my mind, an ill-advised commitment to formal equality as opposed to actual equality.

As an AV project engineer, my actual work activity isn't all that much fun to watch. Most of my day is spent sitting at a computer drawing on a CAD program. We do have more "hands-on" parts of the operation with our in-house fabrication and testing, fancy equipment in a couple of video-conference rooms, and a sense of how we work together as a team to get our collective jobs done. Someone at AVI-SPL also came up with the clever idea of creating an "autograph" sheet for the children to get the signatures of all of our local employees. This was a nice way to make introductions and explain what everyone does. When I was young, the grown-up world of "work" was a complete mystery to me. It's nice to make it something else.

Was this a successful experiment? On the down-side, most people's schedules and situations didn't allow them to bring kids. In fact, aside from Chloe the was only other participant was our general manager's nine-year-old daughter. They got along quite well, but it would have been nice to have a broader range of kids to interact with. The best part? That it's a different kind of moment we got to share. Will it give her an example of what the workplace is like, give her inspiration to try her hands at the field of technology, or teach her any other life lessons? Perhaps not. But one can't mistake her pleasure in  getting to take the trip into work with me, and mine at sharing a moment with my daughter.

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