Musings From My Minivan
Valentines Day, a time when that is supposed to be about “us”. At least that’s what the latest Hallmark commercial says. “Us” isn’t such a bad notion for adults who have an “us” to celebrate, but I think we have to be careful about pushing the whole “us” thing on kids too early. [Read more...]
I have traded in my minivan keys for the key to GM’s new Chevy Cruze this week. The car was delivered on the first Chicago Public School snow day in twelve years! Needless to say I didn’t get to take it out for a spin right away. But once the snow stopped falling it was back to the business of life for me and my family, and that meant bundling up and off for school, (much to my children’s chagrin). [Read more...]
It’s week five of the Kodak Vlogger Challenge. The last week. What a journey. Over the past 6 weeks I have talked about so much concerning vlogging. [Read more...]
It’s week 4 of the Kodak Vlogger Challenge. This week I’m talking about how I actually capture my vlog. There was a time when I would edit my videos with an opening caption, underscoring, an occasional pop up window and closing credits. I enjoyed the process, it was a great learning process, but it took a lot of time. Less so as I got better at it, but still more time than I had ready at hand. So, I changed course and stopped shooting to edit, and started shooting to upload, with a finished product in mind. [Read more...]
It’s week 3 of the Kodak Vlogger Challenge. This week with my Play Touch camera I am capturing original content. Okay that’s what I always do, but the real question is where to get ideas. For me I never have to look farther than my home most days. [Read more...]
I just returned from Blogher and boy are my arms tired! (Hee! Hee! that was for Liz Strauss! 
SMILE!) Actually they are from all of the stretches I was doing at the Go Red For Women Better U Program booth. But that’s another post for later. What I want to talk about here is why I am ENERGIZED. I’m energized because on the expo floor at Blogher I had some really thoughtful, productive conversations with brand representatives from P & G, Pepsico, Nintendo, Johnson and Johnson, Nickelodeon, and 1800Flowers to name a few. Almost all of the representatives were new to me, and only a handful had first hand knowledge of my work on PBS and with Miss Lori’s CAMPUS. So I was going in COLD, as we say in sales. Yes, sales, because that is what I was doing, selling myself. (Wait, that didn’t come out right.) I was selling my BRAND. (That’s better.)
When I visit booths on the expo floor I am shopping for a connection and then I am selling my expertise. I’m not there to grab as much swag as I can, (says the girl with the 48lb suitcase.) No, I am there to do business. Network. Connect. How do I do this? Well there’s a long answer to that short question, which I am going to delve into in a series of posts here over the next few weeks. But for our purposes today I want to talk about one idea. That is to be “B.I.G.” on the expo floor. “What do you mean Miss Lori. I have to wear high heeled shoes?” No, (although I won’t lie to you being tall has it’s advantages in a crowd), you need a “B.I.G.” presence and approach. I will spell it out for you. [Read more...]
Working in the performing arts and social media means that I travel a lot and goto a lot of events. As such I have to have a well stocked, functional purse at the ready for me. Next week I am headed to NYC for Blogher conference. A perfect time for me to clean out the purse and get ready to be social! Here are the 10 most important things that I carry with me. [Read more...]
Do you believe in fate? I have to admit that I have wanted to, but my life hasn’t really rolled along like that. However, I do believe in gut instinct. Although, truth be told I believe it to be a muscle that you have to learn to exercise properly. I have always had “feelings,” but I haven’t always known how to listen to them, or to act upon them. This year I have had a recurring notion happening in my life. (Well, I have had a lot of them, but only one appears to be particularly positive.) Wait, I should back up to the beginning…last year.
My daughter has been struggling with an illness for a while now, but she has yet to be diagnosed. She has an enlarged pancreas but no one can seem to figure out why. It’s been excruciating emotionally, watching her struggle so. Particularly during the holidays last year. What made it worse was that with the piling up of medical bills money was really tight. For my beautiful daughter the one wish I had for her, beyond having her get better, was to be able to take her to Disney World. I wished it deep in my bones. I spoke it every night. I told the World. I put it out there, even though I had no possible way of fulfilling such a dream. Well, that is until I got a fateful email from Disney inviting me to be a part of the first Disney Social Media Moms Conference. And just like that a dream was fulfilled. Okay, but this is where the fate thing starts actually. (And you thought this was just going to be about my daughter? Who by the way is doing, better but still hasn’t been diagnosed and still suffers daily.) While attending the #Disneysmmoms conference I had the unique opportunity to not only meet, but hear an absolutely phenomenal woman speak. Maxine Clark, CEO of Build a Bear Workshop. Listening to her story, to her ideas about children, and community, and responsibility, and friendship… well I fell in love right then and there. No, I’m serious I started drawing her name in my notebook with little hearts around it. (Wait, strike that. I don’t want to get arrested for stalking). Okay, but it’s true that I was absolutely enamored. The little voice inside of me said, You are going to work with this woman!” Well, actually it wasn’t just the little voice inside of me, it was the big voice outside of me too. Because I told Maxine plainly that I absolutely wanted to work with her somehow, someway. I wrote about it, I tweeted it, I updated my facebook status about it. Well heck, I had such great success giving my dream up to the universe before, why stop now. [Read more...]
I’m going to the OSCARS®! (Boy it’s fun saying that!) Kodak is sending me and 10 other bloggers to work the red carpet bleachers at the OSCARS®! Woo Hoo! However, with all that I have been busy doing for the past weeks, (months, year, decade…well whose counting), I find myself not as prepared as I would like to be for the event. For one thing, I have not seen all of the movies that are nominated. With my own live performance schedule, and my main job as personal chauffeur for my children, getting to the theatre is hard won. Plus, my subscription to US magazine expired over a year ago, so I am totally in the dark about whose hot and whose one the way of the leg warmer. So, I need the cliff notes for the OSCARS®. [Read more...]
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