a peek inside the fishbowl

I have an amazing giveaway here from courtesy of the NAC!

There’s a new show in town called PSY, Mind-Blowing Circus and it’s performed by a group called Les 7 Doigts de la Main. Here’s a blurb from the NAC website:

PSY merges acrobatics of the body with acrobatics of the mind and soul.

For their fourth creation, Les 7 Doigts de la Main (also known as the 7 Fingers) delves into the rich and surreal underworld of the human psyche. PSY travels through a shifting landscape of distorted visions, fading dreams and fractured memories.

Insomnia, addiction, amnesia, paranoia, hypochondria. juggling, Chinese pole, German wheel, aerial rope, teeterboard. By juxtaposing these darker issues with the invigorating and life-affirming language of circus arts, PSY brings out the humour, beauty, and commonality of these various neuroses, all the while celebrating the power of the individual to surmount their ailments and self-imposed restrictions, finding moments of strength, courage and joy while flying through the air.

Hooo wee! That’s neat eh? According to the Boston Herald: “Watching PSY is like having the front-row seat to someone else’s fever dream. Les 7 doigts raises the bar on what cirque nouveau can do – not just physically but emotionally.”

Love. It.

Check out this video for an idea of what awaits (beware of the earworm of a song that accompanies it!):

Sounds pretty fantastic, don’t you think?

I always encourage people to bring their children to NAC performances, but please note this show is suitable for children 8+.

Interested in winning a pair of tickets? Leave a comment, but please read the fine print first:

• This giveaway is for two tickets to the June 21 show at 7:30 p.m.
• Please check your calendar before you enter, and only enter if you are certain you can make it. I don’t want to be chasing down the runner up the day of the show.
• This giveaway is open to anyone residing in the Ottawa area but is void in Quebec.
• Tickets will be waiting for the winner at the NAC box office on the day of the show.
• If you can’t post your comment because you’re behind a firewall at work (or whatever), you can email it to me for posting at andrea at quietfish dot com (Please note, I cannot be responsible if your entry is misdirected or gets stuck in my Spam folder!)
• One entry per person please! We want lots of people to have the opportunity to win.
• Good karma goes to those who tweet or post about this on their blog or Facebook page. :)

I will do a random draw using Random.org at noon EST on Tuesday June 19, 2012.

That’s it! Over to you! Thank you NAC for this great giveaway!

Last year I had the good fortune to find myself on a steering committee of something called the Social Capital Conference. I can’t remember how I got there exactly, but I certainly remember the whole experience. Social Capital was an experiment of sorts, a tiny seed that sprouted into something much larger than itself… as great ideas are inclined to do.

A bunch of us knew that Ottawa people have a thing for social media, that was a given. We’re early adaptors who love to use the tools and to share our knowledge with others. But the question remained: was there actually enough interest to sustain a whole conference about it? If we built it, would they come? It was Lara Wellman who first asked that question, or was it Kevin Costner? Hmm. :)

We got our answer soon enough. The conference sold out. We were elated, not only because it SOLD OUT, but we had a lot of really positive feedback come on the heels of those first efforts, which was very invigorating because hosting a conference is a LOT of work mixed in with an equal about of worry. e.g. Will we have enough coffee? How many tablecloths do we need, and omg why does it cost SO MUCH to rent an orange tablecloth??

We realized there really was interest in an Ottawa-area social media-related conference and that people would come out and support us.

Today we find ourselves approaching conference number two. Social Capital 2012 is a bit bigger (although not by much) and there are new and different sessions to choose from, but it will still be very much an intimate learnathon. (This is a term I coined half-jokingly to use as a placeholder when we were putting the website together and it kind of stuck. Funny eh?)

I won’t be speaking this year, but I will be hosting a roundtable for group blog-coaching sessions. Bring your questions about the art and business of blogging and I will do my best to help you!

The best part of this kind of event – other than the learning aspect of it of course – is the networking and one-on-one time that occurs. The social time that happens before*, during, and after the conference is very important. It’s been my observation that people who work in social media are amazingly generous. It was very easy to walk around Social Capital, find people I wanted to talk to, shake their hand, and ask questions. It was a wonderfully casual and easy-going atmosphere and I made a lot of great connections that day, both for business and personal reasons. And you don’t get this at regular business-type conferences, you really don’t.

Anyway, if aspects of social media are part of your work world, or even if you’re just interested for personal reasons, I urge you to check it out. You can buy your ticket online here.

It’s going to be GREAT. And if you know someone who might be interested we’d love it if you could forward the information to them too. The more the merrier.

* Speaking of social time, we are hosting a pre-conference mingle at Spin Kitchen & Bar! There’s more information about it here.

In the first post of this series I mentioned that my ill-fitting pants were a direct result of the terrible meals I was eating in the month before our move. I just wasn’t making time to feed myself properly. I almost always forgot to eat breakfast, so I’d eat one lunch at 11, and another at 1:00 or so. I’d eat a large dinner with the family at 6:00 and end my day with mindless snacking. Oh, and during the day I’d graze on buttered toast and handfuls of salty snacks. No wonder my pants started to get too tight.

I think healthy eating starts with breakfast. Breakfast is truly the most important meal. A healthy breakfast is a fuel injection and sets the tone for the rest of the day, don’t you think?

I’m trying to be better at planning meals (see post number four), and as part of that I am trying to focus on (1) eating proper breakfasts again and (2) bidding a temporary adieu to bread.

Let’s talk about breakfast first. I know that if I don’t eat a proper breakfast at the proper time, it messes with my meals for the rest of the day and I end up eating more food. I got off track in regards to breakfast for awhile so I am CLIMBING BACK ON THE BREAKFAST TRAIN.

Eating breakfast is one thing I know I am VERY GOOD AT. I am a breakfast robot and can happily eat the same thing every single day. I don’t even think about that bowl of blueberries and All-Bran Buds and plain yogurt and granola anymore. (Let’s be frank, I’m not doing very much thinking at that time of the day at all.) I also make a latte with lots of milk to fill up my calcium quotient.

I also know that I feel better when I consume a bit more protein in the first half of the day, so I bought myself some unsalted almonds to eat as a mid-morning snack.

Now, bread. It hurts me to eliminate bread from my diet for the next while but it must be done. Whenever I take bread out of the equation the extra jiggles tend to disappear, so it must go for now. Besides, if I’m not eating bread, I’m also not eating butter. This can only be a good thing.

I am sorry bread. I love you. I really do, but we have to break up for awhile. At least until I can straighten things out between us.

My next post for Operation Trim will reveal the four special words that are guaranteed to result in weight loss, so stay tuned. :)