Healthcare reform is not the most exciting topic, but it’s an important one, and it is covered extensively in the June/July 2009 issue of MyBusiness, the magazine we publish for the National Federation of Independent Business.
One of my greatest objections to English grammar is the concept of the gender-neutral pronoun. I’m all for gender equality, but I object to the unwieldy sentences it has created. Take this egregious example from an automobile safety card:
“The passenger should keep his or her seatbelt fastened at all times to protect himself or herself in the event of an accident.”
Today, I opened up a FedEx envelope labeled “Extremely Urgent” and out jumped a bag of chocolate-covered grasshoppers. Since I’m a pretty picky eater, I didn’t even waste time pondering whether I would eat one. Instead, I walked down the hall and asked everyone I passed if they’d like to try one.
One by one, I got turned down—until I entered Bill Hudgins’ office, who jumped at the chance. After we picked out a sufficiently chocolaty one for him, he popped it in his mouth, declared it tasty and started jumping towards me (like a grasshopper). John Lavey walked by and saw the commotion and I offered him one, too.
As John opened his grasshopper wrapper, he told the story of how he once ate six cicadas as a bet. The prospect of eating a grasshopper — especially one covered in chocolate — did not faze him, and he ate it as though he had just popped an after-dinner mint.
Counting only Bill and John among the brave but determined to find more, I went back to the art department to challenge Ben Stewart. A few minutes of peer pressure was all it took—he was digesting grasshopper in no time.
I have two left! Any takers?
Oh, and it’s a commendable marketing campaign. The second I opened that FedEx envelope, Grasshopper (a phone service company for small businesses) had my attention.
As major magazines are decreasing page counts to deal with the economic downturn, custom publishers and the associations and corporate clients they partner with seem to be doing just the opposite, according to a new study by the Custom Publishing Council.
Released in April, the study—“A Look at the Volume and Type of Custom Publications in America”—found that the average number of pages per issue for custom publications increased last year from 22.2 to 23.2.
This week, I cleaned off my desk, read all the mail I’ve gotten recently and started responding to all the query e-mails I’ve received from freelancers and publicists over the past six weeks. I’m not proud to say that these things don’t happen on a regular basis, but that’s the reality of my job.
It’s so fast-paced sometimes around here that I can’t seem to make time for the little things like this—and so when I do, it genuinely feels like a new beginning.
And I love new beginnings, so this is probably the way it’s going to stay!
Well, tomorrow’s the big day. It’s going to be an unseasonable 86 degrees for the Country Music Half Marathon, which my husband and I are running.
It’s going to be rough, so if you’re out watching tomorrow, yell at me (and wish me luck).
But I won’t need too much luck. To prepare, I’ve been singing “Eye of the Tiger” to myself for about the last week. I think it’s working. Tonight, I’ll probably watch “Rocky.”
I’ll check back in on Monday to let you know how it went. To all of you fellow Country Music Marathon (and Half Marathon) participants out there, good luck!
UPDATE (Monday, April 27): I crossed the finish line! It wasn’t pretty, but I finished. It was a very pretty day, but one that would have been better spent by the pool (and not running around Nashville). Here’s hoping for mostly cloudy with a slight drizzle on April 24, 2010!
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Not sure when you’d use that word in print, but if you did, you’d probably have a dilemma on your hands (i.e. where to break it).
Adobe InDesign, the program we use to lay out the pages of all of the publications we publish here at Hammock, gave up immediately when I just typed the mega-word into a four-column page. Instead of helping me figure out the best place to break the word, it just made all the words in that text box disappear (Thanks, InDesign). So I’m on my own. Here’s how I would do it:
Last fall, when the economic downturn became a daily news topic, it didn’t take long to get a little sick of all of the doom-and-gloom reports. On one hand, it is what it is. The economy stinks. But on the other hand, come on already!
That’s why we decided to take matters into our own hands, and shine a different light on the economic downturn with the April/May MyBusiness cover story, “A Helping Hand: How small business is stepping up to end the recession.”
With exactly 33 days until the Country Music Half Marathon and a long run of only seven miles under my belt, I need to start focusing on things other than how in the world I’m going to perform on April 25. That’s why I got super excited when a course change was announced last week.
Let’s just say there will be a portion of the race where I’ll be two-stepping, instead of running. That’s right, this year we’re going down Lower Broadway, past all the honky tonks!
Anyone who’s driven down Lower Broad in the daylight knows that the honky tonks blast music all hours of the day, so I can only imagine what they’ll do when 45,000 people run, walk or two-step down the street.
Race organizers say in addition to making the course more interesting and scenic, the change will help alleviate some of the congestion on the course up ahead. And I think it will probably bring out more spectators, as well.
With less than seven weeks to go until the Country Music Half Marathon that Jamie, John and I are running (and probably walking for at least a few minutes), it’s the perfect time to reflect on what motivates us to take that next step on a training run or finish our early-morning walks (and by our, I mean Kerri Davis’). For most of us, it’s music. Here’s what’s on our iPods:
Great, now I want a piña colada.