Travel. Love it. Hate it. I dream of going to London, Paris, Greece, Italy and other places. But then I think about all the work it takes to do overseas travel and the desire goes away… for a little while. Maybe it will be easier to do overseas travel when my life calms down — after the kids are grown. So I’m in no hurry.

Going nine years without going someplace new is a bit much. (The last few trips have been to … Austin… Austin… San Antonio slash Austin… Not a big deal when you live in Texas and they were all for events, conferences and even a volleyball tournament.) It’s not that I put off travel for when a better time comes. Life worked out that way.

I do the best I can to enjoy the moment and appreciate my life every day of every year. Working in a home office makes that possible. Some days — rainy or freezing days for one — I don’t care to walk my dog. Other days I appreciate that I can do this activity and it forces me to take a break from the computer that I might not take except to exercise.

Early this year, I got an invitation to a family event in Savannah, Georgia. Well, hey, I haven’t been to Savannah (I’ve been to Atlanta) and I love these cousins. We tried to go, but the unreasonable airfare didn’t work for us. It turned out to be a good thing because I received a surprise award that same weekend.

Another invitation arrived for a family event in Nashua, NH. The cousins are not just family, but dear friends. At one point, we lived within 30 minutes of each other and got together a few times. I’ve been to Nashua, so the location didn’t excite me. After researching, I find out the best airfare meant flying into Boston and making a road trip to Nashua instead of flying straight to NH.

Boston. I’ve never been there. When I lived in Washington, DC, I managed to visit Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York. Never made it to Massachusetts.

****IDEA****

Since I have to fly to Boston, why not go a couple of days earlier and take a mini-vacation in Boston? That’s exactly what I’m doing. I did my research and managed to get a place in the North End near a lot of the action including the Freedom Trail. So I hope to squeeze it all in two days. It may be short, but it’ll be powerful to discover a spot in the U.S. that I’ve never visited and one with a rich history.

By the time this post goes live that I’ve had a grand time in Boston and I’ll be on my way to Nashua, NH. I hope I have lots to great stuff to report in the next link post. In the meantime, I hope you had a great week and you enjoy the little moments. Despite the hectic week before my trip, I took a breath and did my marching band routine to celebrate back to school week!

Here’s a funny sign fail from right here in Boston!

Brain food…

• Cold Calling and Receiving Call Backs: Cold calling works. It’s not the only option, but it works.
• TweetPsych: Creates a psychological profile of any public Twitter account and compares it to the thousands already in the database. [Link: Top 10 Exciting Things to Do on Twitter]
• Three Keys to Being a Subject Matter Expert on Twitter: Sometimes we need to be more than just aggregators.
• 10 Rules for Negotiating Contract Work: Not a fun topic, but important for freelancers. [Link: bkmacdaddy]
• How to Develop a Case Study: A good way to market B2B services.
• 14 Resources for Free Fonts and Premium Fonts: I love fonts — just not Comic Sans.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Howdy Fail: Sure hope this sign wasn’t found in Texas, y’all.
• Comprehensive Gaming Console History Video: Geeks, prepare for memories to come flooding… they did for me.
• 15 Funny Engrish T-Shirts: Warning: A lot of cuss words.
• 10 Signs You’re in a Bad Niche: I suggest not working for peanuts especially the literal kind.
• Netflix Origami: Now you know what to do with the Netflix flaps besides throw them in the recycle bin. And a Netflix fail.

What was the last new place you traveled to? Share your experience.

Three generations

I’m a lucky daughter because I have a caring, sweet, intelligent and energetic woman for a mother. Growing up, I hated that she had all these evening meetings. Part of that was her job of seven years working for a community center that required nighttime meetings because they included volunteers with day jobs. Besides that, she was also on the board for non-profit organizations, and those meetings were at night.

Despite these meetings getting in the way, I’ve always wanted to be a regular volunteer like her. I volunteer almost every week, but not for as many hours as I would like — must balance my time between kids and business. She was even president of a local non-profit organization while pregnant with me and raising a 10-year-old and 12-year-old. (Yes, I was like an only child. No, I was not a “surprise.”)

She also did whatever she could to provide me with the support I needed to learn how to communicate due to my profound deafness. She drove three-year-old me to Dallas (an hour from Fort Worth) three times a week so I could go to Callier Center for speech therapy. I can’t tell you how many sad stories I’ve heard about people who were deaf and had parents that didn’t bother to learn sign language so they could communicate with their child. Just makes me more grateful for my mom.

P.S. Still need a gift for Mom? How about a computer game? Big Fish Games is offering 30% off on all games except Collector’s Editions and special deals. Or maybe you’ll like one of these far out ideas from Oddee. Gotta love the tee that says, “You can’t scare me… I have kids.”

Brain food…

• Show, Don’t Tell: Showing tells more and in a more interesting way than telling. I read these articles whenever I come across them because I need constant reminders and tips. [Link: Brad Shorr]
• What’s in a Publishing Contract?
• 5 Ways to Find Local Clients: You can apply a couple of these to find non-local clients. [Link: Karen Swim]
• Do You Need an MFA? When my kids are older, I’d love to pursue an online MFA. I’ve yet to find any — found some in other types of writing or media, but not MFA. Lots of short residencies, but not exactly what I’d like.
• SMU Cox School of Business Has Free Research Page: SMU Faculty Research Page covers accounting, marketing, finance and investing. May be a good resource for business writers. SMU rocks. I even attended the business school for one semester. Who knows? Maybe I’ll get a master’s from there — just not business.
• Tools to Help You Write with Resonance: Links to lots of readability tools and resources.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Paper Airplane: Building a World Out Of Paper: Whoa… How do artists do tiny little things like the food trays? With lots of patience…
• Unusual Wedding Cakes — Have Your Cake and Eat It Too! I admire cake designs and catch the cake contests on Food Network in the summer.
• 12 Coolest Covered Cars: Well, the glass car shouldn’t have any problems with theft.
• 25 Awesome Illustrator Cartoon Tutorials: Saving it here… love to try ‘em someday… which will probably never come. I can’t draw and always wanted to learn how to do it the computer way.
• 10 Most Unique Stadiums: Betcha you’ll say, “Wow” at some point.
• A Sampling of Chinglish: “Hot Marxism…” nuff said.

Share a favorite Mom or family memory. Or share why your mom or a special family member means a lot to you.

Ah, I got nothing today — no stories, nada. Just lots and lots of work since I had a few appointments not related to business. At least, it’s been beautiful and sunny all week.

Brain food…

• Bite-Size Edits: “Bite-Size Edits takes a text, chops it into pieces, and serves those pieces randomly to editors. Players get points for editing text, for providing useful comments, for helping to get a text completely edited.”
• Using Web Tools For Creating and Managing Contracts: Important topic. I had one client (I had worked with him before without problems) who failed to live up to his part of agreement and I had no contract for it. (I know. Shame on me.)
• How to Make Better Decisions: “Accepting ownership of consequences and balancing responsibility with your own personal goals lets you overcome stress, enabling you to making empowering decisions.”
• I wish I would have known: Answers from 11 top freelancers: Focus on designers, but applies to others including writers. I wish I would have known that my inability to use the phone like everyone else would be a big barrier to getting clients. But reflecting on my life and career — the path that got me here was the best route.
• The Five Best Mispronunciations I’ve Ever Heard: I love malapropisms every since I learned about them reading The Rivals
  . They’re fun. They inject humor in a conversation. Just heard one on NCIS this week: A character from another country said in reference to Kennedy shooting, “…shot from the book suppository.” More discussions over at Nathan Branford’s blog.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Cool and Unusual Business Card Designs: I love these round ups. Such creativity! And 10 free orange business card templates.
• 15 Entertaining Toilet Paper Designs: Notebook paper for writers. That’s productive!
• 15 photos that are real, not Photoshopped: My heart fell into my stomach looking at Dean Potter on tightrope walk in Yosemite.
• Cool Cupcake Creations: Tasty! Glad I haven’t seen these locally… they’d be tough to resist!
• Another 12 Unfortunate Logos: Aw, c’mon. How do you end up with these logos? Logo work isn’t something that’s done in five minutes and usually involves at least two people. Someone HAS to catch these!