The past few days have been filled with fantastic moments, great learning, and wonderful people. On Saturday, fabulous students and staff from my office and another office in the Dean of Students put on a day-long leadership summit for the campus, featuring Paul Wesselmann as the keynote. Students were encouraged to tweet throughout the day with #TXSummit, and it was great fun to see the learning moments that students were tweeting and sharing. Paul’s message was PERFECT for what the students and staff needed to hear, and he was an incredibly engaging and thoughtful speaker.

The coolest piece, however, was that I FINALLY got to meet Paul in person. You see, Paul and I have been connected to each other for quite some time, and have spoken via phone and email throughout the past five years. Here’s the story copied directly from my blog post on the day I first met Paul: 

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 05, 2007

Give A Little Bit

Today was by far one of the coolest days of all time! (with an introduction like that, you’ve got to be hooked!) After a crazy and outrageous day of sending emails back and forth with friends and random people involved for hours this morning, I finally got a phone call around 3:45pm from none other than Paul, the creator of The Ripples Project. Who is Paul, you ask? And what is The Ripples Project? Allow me to enlighten you.

Paul Wesselmann is an inspirational speaker who travels the country/world motivating others and spreading joy through others’ lives. Years ago, Paul created The Ripples Project, which has grown to have 15,000+ people involved. Each Monday morning, Paul sends out a Ripply email with fun quotes and inspirational tidbits across the listserv. Throughout the week, members of The Ripples Project can email in suggestions for quotes and inspirations to include in future Ripples. The listserv is setup so that Paul is the only member who emails the others (i.e.- there’s no way to email Paul specifically, nor is there a way for other members to send out mass emails to the list) - which I’m sure is to protect his and others’ email inboxes from getting clogged and jammed with Spam.

Paul (and The Ripples Project) has been an inspiration to me throughout the past six months or so since I joined the project, and my friend, Steph - who got me hooked on the Ripples emails - told me today that his weekly Ripple emails remind her of me and my positivity and excitement for life, and that maybe this was a sign that I should meet Paul. Little did we know …

A couple weeks ago, I introduced Susan, my officemate and friend to The Ripples Project. She signed herself up, and Paul received an email request from her to join the listserv. Paul thought Susan’s email MIGHT be that of his friend, Tim (Tim and Susan share the same last name) who was once a part of the same grad program at the same institution Susan and I are in. Paul sent Susan an email asking if it was Tim … and it started a Ripple of emails throughout the day today involving at least ten people by the time the stories ended this afternoon, when we all discovered that Paul - the Ripples guy - has loose connections to nearly everyone involved and has a direct connection to me through one of my undergraduate mentors/great friends and his partner. Paul found my office phone number online and called me, and we chatted for about 45 minutes - and now, I am friends with Paul, the Ripples guy. :o)

Paul has assured those of us involved that this story (albeit MUCH MUCH longer than what I’ve written here) will have to appear in a future Ripply email. Fun times!

What excitement! What fun! I love meeting new people and learning new things. And who knew this connection had always been there all along? We could’ve gone our whole lives without having met, and I would still continue to read the Ripply emails each week and wonder about this Paul guy.

Hello, Friend! You’re no longer ‘The Ripples Guy’ anymore. You’re now my friend - and for that, I am thankful.

Sweet Dreams!

~Justin

“You Give a Little Love and it all comes back to you! You’re gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do!”

(Join the fun! Sign up for The Ripples Project and begin receiving the weekly inspirations, too!)

POSTED BY J AT 11:28 PM

It was really fun to find this blog entry today, and revisit the random and oh-so-cool story! Here’s a photo of us together on Saturday. Small world, right? :)

Occasionally, my awesome boss and friend Janelle and I will make something fun to surprise the office with, and today was one of those wonderful days! Janelle and I both took the day off of work to recoup from having worked all day Saturday, and we met up for a few hours to make these fantastic treats, inspired by this awesome blog. Here are our instructions, slightly modified from the blog, based on the materials we were able to find. (Check out the original post for other fun options!)

Materials:
Wax Paper
Rolling Pin
Knife
Scissors
Fold-top Sandwich Bags
Heart-shaped Stickers
Tape
Assorted chocolate bars (we used Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Three Musketeers bars, Hershey’s Cookies & Creme bars, and Hershey’s Chocolate bars)
Laffy Taffy
Airheads Candy
Tiny Valentine-themed Cookie Cutters (we used the inserts for a linzer cookie cutter)
Toothpicks
Valentine-themed nonpareils (sidenote: How do you pronounce this word, anyway?)

Step 1: Separate the candy bars into desired sizes
We cut the Three Musketeers bars into fourths, broke the Hershey bars into groups of three at the natural breaking points, and didn’t do anything to the Reese’s cups - they’re cool as they are.

Step 2: Prepare the taffy candies
We heated the Laffy Taffy candies in the microwave for 7 seconds (or less) to make them more pliable, then rolled them out onto the wax paper with the rolling pin to make them thinner. Wepressed nonpareils into some of the candies BEFORE cutting out the desired shapes, and found it easiest to press the round sprinkles and the sugars into the taffy by pouring them onto the wax paper THEN pushing the taffy down into the sprinkles/sugars, whereas the larger nonpareils were easier to push in with your fingers.

Step 3: Use the valentine-themed cookie cutters to cut out shapes from the taffy candies
We tried using Walton’s heart-shaped fondant cutters first, but found it harder to get the taffy out of the shapes, so we used the inserts from the Walton’s linzer cookie cutters instead, which was much easier. For especially sticky issues, we used toothpicks to help remove the candy.

Step 4: Press the taffy shapes onto the chocolate candies
Be careful not to smash the Three Musketeers or Reese’s cups, and not to break the Hershey bars!

Step 5: Cut about half of the fold over sandwich bags off of the open end, and use the remainder to bag the candies
We used tape to secure the remainder of the bag to the back of the candies, then placed heart-shaped stickers on top to finish it off. The original blog had some GREAT bagging ideas that look fancier than ours, but we were satisfied with our result.

We’ll be bringing these delightful treats to the office tomorrow, and sharing with friends and colleagues for the big day. Happy Valentine’s Day, y’all! <3 

Phillip needs to look at the last minute date options article. :)

petitetiaras:

Rapunzel’s Flynn Rider on the cover of NYLON Guys. View the whole collection.

Where in the world?!?

thedailywhat:

Carmen Sandiego IRL of the Day: There she is!

[@adamkovic / reddit.]

Earlier: Waldo IRL.

World Cup fever has taken over my office, and I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to the groans and moans of coworkers shouting about their disdain for every bad call, missed goal, and score for the other team. (Working in an officle - a cubicle with a door - means I get the pleasure of overhearing a lot of fabulous things that others may not realize they are sharing with me.) Now, I’m not an avid follower of soccer (aka- el fútbol americano - yes, I paid attention in high school Spanish class), but I definitely don’t enjoy missing out on things (what Marc would refer to as ‘FOMS - Fear of Missing Something’), so I decided to join in the fun by creating a fantasy pool on Yahoo! Sports.

Shocked that I’m not an avid follower? Didn’t I play soccer in my childhood, like most other elementary school kids? In all actuality, I did, for two years (to my knowledge), before dropping out during the third year. Let me explain. My first two years, I served as the goalie (at least, in my mind, this is what happened. I have no idea if this is true or not - but I definitely know that in my mind, I was the best goalie to ever play on the Loveland Parks and Recreation team. Definitely.) I am fairly certain I spent much of the time standing in front of the goal and thinking about how great of a goalie I was.

In my third season, my parents dropped me off at practice wearing a red hoodie. (In all actuality, they may have been there watching the practice, but again, in my mind, I was all alone. Hopelessly alone.) The coach lined up the kids, and started calling out different field positions, and each boy would take his turn running to the field triumphantly to show the other guys that he knew what he was doing. Given my not-so-extensive-yet-self-congratulatory experience in the world of soccer, I watched as the other boys ran to their positions and I kept creeping closer and closer to the front of the line. My anxiety rose steadily as I watched boy after boy run onto the field, seemingly knowing everything about the sport. These guys were geniuses - and I quickly realized I was not. Instead of watching and learning from their brilliant knowledge, I panicked as I realized that I only knew of one position - goalie.

My spike in blood pressure due to my nerves was exacerbated by the teasing of the bully behind me in line, who made it very clear that red hoodies were not in style that season by repeatedly pulling the hood over my head and laughing maniacally. (I still have an aversion to red hoodies. Jerk.) As the last kid before me reached the front of the line, the coach yelled, “Oh this one’s easy - GOALIE!” And as he ran to his position on the field (I mean, who doesn’t know where the GOALIE stands? Clearly, he won this round…), I started bawling. Needless to say, that was the end of my soccer journey, which may have contributed to my not-so-avid followership of the sport.

So why get into the sport again now? Other than my regular battle with FOMS, I must admit I had an additional incentive to join the World Cup fun in the office this year. Meet my motivation:

“Hello. My name is Michael Ballack, and I am ridiculously attractive. Also, I am a German Midfielder in the lovely game of soccer.”

“What’s a midfielder, you ask?”

“Don’t ask JBrady.”

“PS- I hurt my ankle, and won’t be playing in the World Cup.”

Wait, what? That’s right, Ballack is out of the game (at least for now, to my knowledge. Then again, we’ve already established my expertise in all things soccer…). But it’s okay. My pool is actually doing pretty well, thanks to the advise I got from my coworker. “Just cheer for Mexico. Jose (our admin associate/friend) would want you to.” That, and the fact that soccer players are generally a rather attractive group.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAL!

Dear Fashionistas,

Bonnets are back. That’s right, you heard me correctly - all the latest rage.

Now I am not talking about the traditional mid-18th century brimless house bonnet – those are so last century. I am referring to the ever-so-brilliant calash bonnet, with the intensely large stiff brim – you know, to protect your hair from the gale. (Thank you, Wikipedia, for clarifying such an important distinction in headdress history.)

How do I know they are back in style? Well, as Susan and I were leaving campus on Thursday, we caught a glimpse of a woman walking across campus wearing a burnt orange UT shirt and a daffodil yellow bonnet with a tiny pattern (perhaps floral?) – she was really too far away to tell what the pattern was. Since Austin is the fashion capital of the world, we see plenty of trendsetters walking our campus.

Don’t believe me? Consider the following t-shirt:

Not-so-fashion-forward, you say? InStyle Magazine, Teen Vogue, College Fashion, and the Fashionable Housewife (among others) beg to differ. Perhaps we’ll see tie dye bonnets soon.

Admittedly, tie dye shirts can be seen around town on many-a-fashion-forward Austinite, whereas the bonnet has yet to achieve such mass appeal. That being said, one can definitely understand how I might have questioned my initial assessment of this woman’s sleek and saavy sense of style. I decided to put out a feeler into the social media world and see what kind of responses I could get. I shared the following letter on facebook:

Dear Random Woman walking across campus, Susan and I want to know why you are wearing a bonnet. Please advise. Sincerely, Justin

Over the next twenty-four hours, I received a handful of outstanding conversational comments, including:

MR: is she the sun maid raisin girl? that would be fun…that is the only person I can think of who wears a bonnet :)

CK: Or, Holly Hobbie!

MR: oh fun game! Maybe strawberry shortcake?

JB: Perhaps a Precious Moments model?

TR: Perhaps she is Menonite

AM: Perhaps its Baby Jane.

LD: Omg can’t a girl wear a bonnet anymore!??? Maybe she was honoring one of the many fashion icons from little house on the prairie!

While the comment game provided some great entertainment, it also demonstrated the general population’s discomfort with fashionistas. I am truly sorry, 2010 Bonnet - perhaps the world just isn’t ready for you.


(Old woman in sunbonnet, (c. 1930) - Special thanks to Doris Ulmann for this fabulous photo)

Gotta love The Onion!

Fascinating article about Dennis Crowley, co-founder of FourSquare - the popular location sharing iPhone/smartphone app.

“Crowley sees these video-game-style rewards as reason enough for Foursquare users to make more effort to explore the real world — and, in the process, to have more fun with their daily lives.”

CNN does a great job explaining the app for those who are unfamiliar, and provides a fascinating profile of Crowley, using FourSquare lingo to propel the article. Check it out, and sign up today! :)

(Thanks, Allison, for sharing!)

Awesome Combo! :o)

snack-sizelife:

In Farmington, N.M., we saw the coolest pair of signs EVER! Hilarious.

I became a FourSquare user on September 11, 2009, while visiting Austin for my interview for my current fantastic job at The University of Texas at Austin. My friend Tim had integrated his Twitter account with FourSquare, and introduced me virally to the location-sharing concept, which didn’t seem to have a large following at the time. Miami and Austin happened to be two of the fifteen cities allowing check-ins, so I continued the ‘game’ upon returning home - but it didn’t get interesting until I moved to Austin.

In March, FourSquare introduced an enhanced (and MUCH better) iPhone App during SXSWi in Austin, and the game exploded as thousands of people converged in Austin for the conference. This (older) article from Mashable highlights the reasons why I support location-sharing (within reason, and with considerable consideration for safety and privacy). I particularly like number five, as it relates to higher education.

Enjoy!