SYP Says

No, that's MY birthday

In a strange coincidence, my new boss, the EVP of Marketing at Musician's Friend, has my birthday--December 23rd. I have never met anyone in my whole life with my birthday (and neither had he), so this is truly odd. According to Discover Magazine,

In a group of 23 people, the odds are better than even  that at least two of them will share a birthday.

By Alex Stone DISCOVER Vol. 27 No. 05 | May 2006

Seems as if you'd need many more people before you'd find a shared birthday, doesn't it? But consider the reverse situation, in which nobody shares a birthday. Since all birth dates are equally likely, then the odds of picking 23 different ones out of 365 aren't that good—less than fifty-fifty. Among 200 people, there is a 99.9999999999999999999999999 percent chance that two birthdays will match! So why don't you meet more people who share your birthday? That's because a specific match is less likely than an arbitrary one. For any two people to share a birthday, any day will suffice; for someone to share your birthday, only one does.

Bad Blogger, Bad

I've been a bad blogger lately, committing the sin of all online sins: not updating my website. But I've been so busy, I implore, working at my new job at Musician's Friend and going on trips and entertaining visitors and watching Project Runway...yeah yeah, I know, excuses, excuses. Is it enough to say that real life intervened? Here's a quick recap of my life over the last several weeks:

JULY 19th: Jeff and I leave for Oceanside, CA for a beach party cum networking event. Every year for the last three years, my good friend, Phil Terry, CEO of the awesome customer experience firm Creative Good, gets 200 of his nearest and dearest friends and business associates together for a shindig that lasts a few days. We yak and surf and sail and swim and kayak. Although we could've gotten to Oceanside from Ashland in one day, we decided to stay overnight in lovely Bakersfield. Bakersfield's not as bad as Council Bluffs, Iowa, but it's close.

Me, the workaholic in Bakersfield

Here I am with Phil's mom, Helen. She lives in Oceanside (hence the reason why the party is there).

Jeff and I at dinner with Helen. I'm hiding my face because I am not a fan of getting my picture taken. :p

Phil with Sarah, the head of e-commerce for BabyCenter.com, and her family.

Our skipper, Monty, and I sailing the Pacific.

Phil and his friend Jeff, a filmmaker in LA

July 23rd: Jeff & I drive back to Ashland via Carmel-by-the-Sea. We spend the night in a cute inn and have a n expensive meal. Carmel is beautiful, albeit a bit snooty. Martin who is in charge of usability at Sun Microsystems, had warned us of this the night before while he was expertly strumming Jeff's guitar at the hotel pool, but we gave it a shot anyway. It was nice, but I liked Oceanside better, tell you the truth. Jeff about killed me because I made him take Rte 1 all the way from Oceanside to Carmel. That is a really long, twisty drive. One of the only other times I'd been on Rte 1 was with David Wauters, my friend and employee at the time (who is now at Bare Necessities--hey, let's hear it for guys marketing women's lingerie!). He was forced to listen to me practice whistling for the several hours it took to go from Santa Barbara where we had a Commission Junction conference to San Francisco. He's a real trooper. Some Rte 1 pics...

July 30th: My parents, aunt and uncle visit me in Ashland to see how and where I'm living now that I'm no longer a New Yorker. Well, actually, I'm still a New Yorker, I just don't live in New York anymore. It was really nice to see them. Oregon is a lot further than New York from Ohio, so I suspect I'll be seeing my family a lot less now that I'm here. That's a shame because they're a pretty cool bunch. Here are a couple of pics of us at Crater Lake.

My uncle Herb, aunt Yung, mom & dad

My parents & I

August 9th: I watch Bradley get booted from Project Runway. That Cher outfit was really bad (and not in a good way)--the top looked like something from an Ed Wood movie or an episode of Flash Gordon. If only he could turn back time...

August 11th:  I attend a going-away party at Musician's Friend's CEO's house (amazing home btw). Our EVP of Operations is moving on to a new job as President of MotoSports in Portland. I tell you this only because he is the only reason I ended up in Ashland. When I was interviewing for the job I have now at Musician's Friend, he looked at me, looked at my resume and said "Vassar? OH... [pause] you don't want to live in Medford...you'll want to be in Ashland." And being the impressionable person that I am, I accepted the job and promptly decided to move to Ashland, a town I'd never been to (let alone heard of), pretty much solely on his recommendation. Am I nuts or what. Don't answer that.

Phobophobia

I actually don't have a fear of phobias (aka phobophobia), but I do admit that other things give me the creeps. Some people's loves and hobbies are other people's phobias. Maybe I've seen too many bad movies, but watching "Chucky" gives me the willies, "It" made me forget Tim Curry as Dr. Frank-N-Furter, and I regret ever having watched "Magic" with Anthony Perkins as an alcoholic ventriloquist. (The '80s movie "Mannequin" starring Andrew McCarthy and Kim Cattrall was scary for an entirely different reason.) I've got a poll running on the right column of my site--vote and let me know what you're afraid of.