Once the label's off it's all dog's breakfast

As with many couples, my husband and I each have a few habits that drive the other nuts. We've been a couple for almost 20 years, and fortunately, we've retained our ability to tolerate being annoyed by one another for the sake of the positive parts of our relationship.

One of those things that makes me crazy is that, once food has been put into refrigerator containers (notice I avoided using the popular brand name!), food in our fridge becomes persona non grata to him.

Being overly practical, as I noted in my last post, I don't like to waste things. And it's hard to buy food in the exact quantities you need. Plus, I don't like eating out too often - both packaging and an empty wallet irk me.

So if there's leftover food in the fridge, I try to bring it for lunch or eat it again for a day or two. For my husband, the same food ends up as a biology project.

Yesterday, we figured it out. He forgets about food in the fridge unless it's been bought recently...and STILL HAS ITS LABEL (all caps intended - it freaked me out that much).

He's often thought we had "no food!", when I could see lots of possibilities in the fridge and cupboards. It turns out that, besides not loving the idea of leftovers, he's got the mental model that food is not as appetizing when it is not packaged.

Thank g*d he doesn't feel that way about women =:->

Turning labelling on its environmental ear

Along with thinking waaahhhyyyy too much about what everything around me means, I spend lots of energy on finding ways to re-use common products.

My motivation is not all planet-motivated, though that's a much more trendy way to position it these days. I have been an ardent re-purposer of things since far before it became trendy.

I don't aim to brag, as this quirk is partly also motivated by my overly practical - some have said neurotic - need to put everything to good use.

Finally, it's been more motivated of late by my commitment to simplifying my life; my system involves not bringing any more stuff into our home. This year I proclaimed "Make the most of what you already have" to be my mission statement for '07. It's a spiritual mantra, but I also mean it literally.

Prodded on by debt and lack of free time (I have a 3-year-old - nuff said?), I need to cut down on the cash I spend on stuff it turns out I usually don't need - hence the word "already".

That toddler I mentioned brings with her the need to manage a whole other whack of stuff besides my own. So, I am simplifying and - with an attitude of gratitude - making the most of what is already here.

And so to the point...
In a roundabout way, this brings me back to the title and its photo.

One of the ways I re-use or re-purpose things is by finding creative ways to re-use product packaging.

Since so many more types of product now enter my home - the kid again! - I have more colourful options from which to choose. So I'm finding new re-uses, too.

The Hello Kitty bookmark above is but one example. It's torn from the insert on her Size 3 underwear (of which she currently goes through scores per week). I also use the rigid cardboard box illustrations as "buddies" for my daughter; we laminate or stand them up for her to act out little plays with. Or, we give them to her to draw, colour or put stickers onto.

Thumbing the nose at - or propagating - the Brandish Invasion?

I once saw a 60-minutes about a guy in the U.S. who had written to every marketing company he could, in order to begin receiving sacks of junk post. The segment took you through the time he spent writing to these firms, and walked you through his shed, where he kept most of his "winnings." Only at the very end did we find out that by guaranteeing this mail he had secured all his home heating material for that winter - and then we pan to him feeding flyers into his woodstove (you almost can hear the maniacal laughter in the background).

So my little revolt is not quite at that level. And indeed, I might feel rather smug at having thumbed my nose at the product's original makers by ripping its package into fragments of its former likeness.

But then, you could also argue that I am only working to further propagate the company's brand - and even placing the product in unexpected, and therefore, effective, places.

But either way, I still think it's better than sticking it in the recycling bin.

Breaking it down - and knocking it out

At the end of day one of a major contract, I'm numb from absorbing billions of pixels of formal communications. I spent the day learning about the company for whom I'll now be writing and developing information over the next few months.

So I'm going to write something more off-the-cuff. As that poor guy in Mr. Osborne's class said in a posting a few months back: "My brain is full."

I find that so much of my idea generation has to do with finding commonalities between things, or aspects that link them together. If I am going to write anything down - especially here - I will also hope that the product of bringing disparate things together might be something unique, and if not that, at least something worth sharing. After all, there are no unique ideas, only unique iterations, right?

I've been accused by many of being someone who "thinks too much." Since starting to commit my ideas here, I'm now more on the lookout than ever for the deeper meaning of signals everything around me can offer.

Take my last workout with the heavybag in my garage. A former karate student, I still like to mix it up with the bag; I never stopped loving to kick and hit things. (Ah...now one gets why the cheesy choice of photo this week - and no, it ain't me.)

So last time I'm there wailing away on it - it's one of those water-filled base kinds that sit on the floor - and it starts spinning in a predictable pattern, so that it bounces back rythmically toward me with each punch. Each time, I go back in with the right hook in response. It becomes a dance of sorts, as the bag does its wobbly spinning thing each time I club it: bam-wobble-bop-bop-wobble-bam.

And it's this dance that boxers and sparrers of all disciplines rely on in predicting the next best place to go in and punish one's opponent. We also look for signals in the way other body parts might "telegraph" the fighter's intentions, like the eyes getting really wide when someone's about to strike. Dancers act on and often mirror the signals of their partners in a similar fashion.

And isn't it therefore a kind of communication that one has with one's training bag/sparring partner/opponent? See? It's all communication.

Or DO I just think too much? D'you think so? Lemmeknow by posting your comment...

And remember, you can still win this month by posting your comment! [see sidebar top left]

Toronto newsies enjoy clearer, more readable media

I haven't talked much about the mainstream media, and indeed my blog aims to examine what goes on mostly outsideof it. But as a clear language and literacy advocate, I'm sort of excited about what's been going on there lately.

In the last six months, both CanWest Global's TV news and the Toronto Star have launched ad campaigns focusing on how they're making the complex more simple for us.

The Global TV News has been tagging "News. Understood." to its commercials for months, complete with the earnest faces of its anchors as proof. This didn't surprise me, as they've always used a very direct - almost in your face - reporting style.*See Endnote 1*

I was more struck though when I saw that the Toronto Star is now making much on radio ads of its new, more readable, visual layout. It kind of takes me back, as when I have done readability assessments of clients' materials in past, I've often quoted the Star's reading level as an example of what Grade 8 looked like.

Back then, the Star used the more traditional, serif body and heading fonts. Now, as you can read for yourself, Your new Star's redesign improves readability," and "adds new features."

And they've done a very good job of practising what they preach, IMHO. The nice sans-serif blue typeface, the ample whitespace surrounding smiling photographic images...all good stuff for reading ease and consumer appeal.

This medium lends itself naturally to these features: many Web sites follow a "newspaper style" layout, to separate columns of info and images. Witness CNN's site, which has remained a terrific example. **See Endnote 2

The problem is, many sites try to cram too many columns in there, so things like logos and thumbnails end up looking like wads of crushed insects. CNN still only uses three columns, while some sites are up to five or six! Not surprisingly, Global's News site for Ontarians is similar: three main columns.

Interested in clear design? Have some favourite sites of your own? Lemmeknow...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Endnote 1
(I admit that I find their reporting tactics to be on the American-style fearmongering side. Personally, I get tired of being asked so often, so urgently "Is this the kind of school you want your child in?". Leslie Roberts' radio show on CFRB, however, is brilliantly sensitive and candid - second only to the also brilliant John Moore.)

**Endnote 2
I could have done without the double-wide, animated, hot-pink Victoria's Secret ad in the extreme right column.

Quickie divorce and remarriage via Facebook

The other week I finally got onto Facebook, the online social networking tool that's been reported on frequently of late as a forum for misguided teenage bullying and careless regard for personal boundaries.

I would not likely have signed up, but when I saw how many of my over-30 friends actually had a profile, I couldn't resist. I just LOVE finding out what makes people tick, and it turned out I was able to locate a whole whack of former colleagues with whom I'd lost touch. Above is the Face that greets my friends on my page(the only ones I've set up to see my profile info).

This week, I found a snag in Facebook's generally intuitive and bullet-proof navigation and user settings.

Since I'm just getting used to how my info displays, I've been adding and removing things from my profile. Take my birth year: I don't mind people knowing when my birthday is, but don't necessarily want all my Facebook friends - or those who want to be my friend - to know I'm pushing 40 (they might kick me out of the club!).

It's common to see where your Facebook friends have altered their profiles, too, as you will get a news feed about the change each time one of them makes it.

So, this week while fiddling, I removed not only my birth year but also my marital status. I'm figuring it's not relevant for these purposes - everyone on my Friends list knows I'm happily partnered, as evidenced by the pix of my daughter and husband available to Facebook friends.

But, when I changed my selection in the drop-down menu from "married" to blank, the newsfeed to my friends said I had changed my status from married - and next to the note was a broken-heart icon!!! So, even though I'd simply wanted the entire category to disappear, the system read and reported my change as though I had become un-married.

When I corrected the error a day later, a couple people jokingly wrote that I sure did work fast: divorced-then-remarried within a day!

Of course, it was the system's fault. It did not allow me to simply remove the mention of marital status and have that change recorded as such. Just goes to show how systems that automatically draw conclusions based on the information that's inputted are only as reliable as those who set them up; this one did not allow for the subtleties of how one might handle that particular chunk of her personal info.

It scares me to think of what happens to people who don't pay as much attention as I do (and I'm not nearly the savviest tech user around), when they choose what information they share, and with whom...