I’ve always wanted to be on Amazing Race, but I don’t think that’s in the cards for me, since I probably wouldn’t even be able to get the time off work.

But I just read about the Great Urban Race (thanks Kat). It’s only five hours max and a similar mix of clues and running around. I’m so sad I missed it this year but I’m keeping it on the radar for next year. Check out the link – there are races all over the country, even in my lovely hometown of Madison, WI.

So I’m thinking about creating a web site to market my writing skills for freelance work. I would offer my services on anything from editing text to helping craft resumes. (Not just writing articles.) Any thoughts on a good name for the site? I thought Re:Write was kind of clever, but I don’t know if that would sound like all I do is retool things for people rather than the play on words “in regards to writing.”

It’s amazing how much more relaxed I feel now that I don’t have to worry about planning the wedding anymore. Here’s the link to the professional photos and to the collection I put together.  I also have wedding shower and honeymoon pictures on flickr. Better late than never, right?

Poor Mexico. First drug cartels, now an earthquake and swine flu.

Yesterday I was so excited because I stopped into a Mexican bodega for something to drink and found a pina flavored Jarrito (pineapple soda). In Mexico they used to “recycle” the bottles by buying 2-liters of the soda, pouring it into the glass bottle and recapping it. You could always tell because the soda came up to different levels in each bottle. No wonder I was sick so many times there. But I did survive, thankfully.

My little Jarritos experience prompted me to buy a “huevos rancheros” burrito from Whole Foods later that day. Mexicans don’t really have burritos, and the huevos rancheros usually have more of a tomato sauce flavor to them than the burrito filling. So, overall, it missed the authenticity test by miles. But I have to say, it was tasty. Maybe I can get some real Mexican food if this flu scare results in lower airfares.

My head is swimming with words like “twitter” and “convergence” and “web ninjas.” I guess that’s natural after spending Friday and Saturday at the Society of Professional Journalists regional conference.

Saturday was really cool because we had the chance to attend sessions focused on the technological end of sharing information. These were hosted by Barcamp, a free conference where the people who attend actually present the sessions. There’s a board with blank note cards in each hour-long time slot, and you can literally pick one up, write a topic that you want to discuss on it and then wait to see who shows up. It was such a cool concept. You end up with a much more collaborative, interactive forum rather than a session where someone is talking and everyone else is listening for the majority of the time.

Anyway, I learned quite a bit. It also pushed me to test out the latest fad – twitter. We’ll see how much time I have for it. I worry that it’ll become like blogging – something I enjoy doing but find myself forgetting to do because I just have too many other things going on. I wonder how much more time I’ll have when I’m done with the wedding planning. Seth thinks I’ll just find other things to fill my time. He’s probably right.

I heard some pretty incredible live jazz when I was in New Orleans a couple of years ago, but the musicians I heard this past weekend in New York have blown that out of the water.

We went to Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola at Lincoln Center for a friend’s birthday. (Good call, Clair.) I think my favorite part was the dance-off between the trumpet and trombone players, peppered with competitive musical riffs. At the end of the show, a horde of current and former students joined in a classic funeral march. I wouldn’t have guessed they were students by the quality of their sound.

If I hadn’t been so exhausted from the trip up, I would’ve stayed for the late-late night set that started at 1:30 a.m. I highly recommend checking this place out if you happen to need something to do in NY. There’s discounts for student IDs and paid admission to the late show gets you free entry to the late-late set.

In other news, the past two months have been packed with wedding planning. I didn’t think my dress alterations made for exciting blogs, so that’s why I spared you the details. I also went to an exercise conference in late February. I’m now certified to teach “striptease aerobics,” which means I can “officially” require my cardio students to get raunchy in class.

Okay, I’ve been bad at updating this again, sorry. I never realized how much time it would take to plan a wedding, so that’s my very legitimate excuse.

We’re loving Philly so far. We had friends from NC, NY and PA over to ring in the New Years. The night ended with fireworks over Penn’s Landing, an impromptu dance party in our living room, and a record 11 people sleeping over. We watched the Mummers parade the next day. I have to join one of these groups next year, it looks like so much fun.

One of the bands marched through our neighborhood on their way to an afterparty in South Philly, so I went downstairs to watch.

The rest of January has been pretty mundane – lots of wedding planning and a trip to NY to see my parents and go dress shopping. This month will be busy. We’re heading to Florida this weekend, then I’ve got an all weekend fitness workshop and somewhere in there we have to finalize more wedding details.

Seth, Tigger and Sunny

I try not to post my work on this blog since there’s already a newspaper site to do that for me. But this is one story I thought might be of interest to some of my friends who have no reason to visit The Courier-Post Web site. There are also two sidebars that go with the story – links are on the right side of the page.

I’m always amazed at how strongly people react to stories about illegal immigration (see the 30 plus comments on this story.) I’d be outraged too if a rapist – whether legal, illegal, a minor or whatever – got out on a bail and committed another violent crime. But I certainly don’t have the same reaction to someone who gets caught for speeding and sent home to Mexico for unpaid traffic tickets. Yes, this guy – the main example in my story – should’ve paid his tickets in the first place and he might have never been in this situation. That said, I don’t think his actions make him a horrible criminal. How many US citizens have done the same thing?

I know that isn’t an entirely fair comparison because illegal immigrants have already broken the law by entering the country without permission. I’m not going to argue that illegal immigration shouldn’t be considered a violation of civil law. The question is how it should be addressed, and I have a lot of conflicting opinions on that. I just wanted to point out that I don’t think people realize how difficult it can be to follow the law when you’re living in fear that any interaction with police could lead to deportation. In some cases, illegal immigrants can’t follow the law even if they want to. They can’t get US identification, which means they often can’t get car insurance or registration for that matter. How many of those “crimes” can they commit before officials label them a criminal who must be sent home?

A site called NowPublic contacted me recently wanting to use one of my Day of the Dead photos with a story on the holiday. The premise of the site is “crowd powered media” – in other words, all the content is contributed by members of the public rather than trained journalists. I’ve seen sites like this before designed for smaller communities. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. If newspapers keep laying off reporters, this might be all that’s left for learning about what’s going on in the world!

Practically the entire reporting staff was assigned to cover the parade honoring the Phillie’s World Series Championship on Friday. Somehow, I was sent to Citizens Bank Park stadium, where I was supposed to cover the closing ceremony. Seth was EXTREMELY jealous that I was not only able to get in the stadium but also into the press box.

To be honest, most of the day was pretty boring. After hours of interviewing fans, you start to hear the same things over and over again. I had been instructed to get to the stadium around 10 a.m. to make sure I didn’t get tied up in the overloaded public transportation system. As a result, I was really ready to go when the Phillies parade finally made it to the stadium around 4 p.m., at least two hours behind schedule. But, there was an unexpected bonus – all the reporters got a chance to go on the field to interview the players after the ceremony. I felt bad that I was there instead of some other reporter who’s a bigger Phillies fan. Of course, this was the one time the players weren’t wearing their names on their shirts, so it was even more obvious that I was clueless when I had to ask my coworker to help me identify who was who.

Here’s a picture of shortstop Jimmy Rollins that I snapped with my phone.

Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins

I also want to add that I had a much better impression of Phillies fans on Friday. There were still plenty of people who had been drinking beer for hours, but they weren’t as destructive. I think the daylight helped. They weren’t selling any alcohol inside the stadium, either.