I spent about an hour yesterday cutting a mat and framing an enlargement I had printed for my office wall. I am always on the lookout for new ways to make my work environment more pleasant. so when I read Ugly Productivity: 5 Steps to a Distraction-Free Workspace over at Zen Habits today I was horrified. The premise is that the more beautiful your office is, the less time you will spend working and the more time you will spend contemplating the beauty you’ve surrounded yourself with. “A gorgeous workspace with a view invites longing glances at a sun-drenched lawn, a lingering visual tour across the spines of our book collection, and excessive fiddling with the trinkets and toys co-habiting our desk.” Yeah, that’s got me written all over it. Sigh.

Tonight I took Alex to Boys’ Night Out at his school. It’s an annual fund raiser event (along with Girls’ Night Out) that gives the boys an opportunity to drag their parents to school for pizza and some educational lectures/experiences. The subjects this year were robots and rockets and the room was packed. Packed beyond overflowing, beyond any hope of finding seating, and very nearly beyond their ability to feed us. The robotics experts were faculty and students from the CS program I attended at the local uni and they brought lots of fun toys. The space exploration history expert was very entertaining and kept the kids captivated as well. Through it all though, I was thinking that they got forty or fifty primary school boys to show up for an evening science symposium and wondering how the same program will play tomorrow with the girls.

Categories: art, kids and parenting