Other Vague Language workshop dates include August 12 in Monmouth, OR; August 20 in Honolulu, HI; October 1 in Yuma, AZ; and November 10, 2012 in Minneapolis / St. Paul.

For all details, including times, locations, etc., see my calendar.

If you would like me to present my Vague Language workshop or any of my interpreting workshops in your city, please contact me.

• Go to Market & Powell and enjoy the old buildings and the excitement of the crowds, many of whom are residents, not tourists. Be there at the cable car terminus to help push the trolley car around so it faces back to where it came from. While there, go to the Gap in the Flood Building.
  
• Take the Powell–Hyde cable car to Ghirardelli Square.
  
• See the Six Sisters Victorian row houses from Alamo Square.
  
• Take in the view of San Francisco from Twin Peaks.
  
• Walk across the Golden Gate Bridge.
  
• Rent a paddle boat with a buddy at Stow Lake.
  
• Go to the Castro and get that Gay Card stamped. See a movie at the Castro Theatre. Explore Castro Street and the bars, of course. I love the walk–in pizza place on Castro just south of Market. (I just Google Mapped it and it came up Marcello’s Pizza. I don’t know if it’s always been under the same ownership, but I’ve seen that pizza place there every time I’ve gone to the Castro since 1985. The sit–down restaurant just down from there is really nice too (I just Google Street Viewed it, and it looks to be the Cove Cafe).
  
• Go to City Hall and, if possible, go inside. It’s amazing.
  
• Go to North Beach, San Francisco’s “Little Italy.” While you’re in the neighborhood, see Coit Tower.
• Eat! Other than the pizza place and cozy restaurant I mentioned, San Francisco has amazing places to eat.
• Last but not least, savor those “only in San Francisco” moments. I have at least one each time I go!
  
  

All the photos on this page were taken by me, Daniel Greene. All rights reserved.

In December 2009, I wrote a Review of 2009 and Goals for 2010 post in which I said I hoped to teach workshops at RID regional conferences and to “be a part of” the NAOBI conference. Fortunately, I did end up teaching workshops at both the RID Region V Conference in Salt Lake City and the NAOBI Conference in Phoenix– and those at NAOBI definitely made me feel “a part of”! At RID Region V, I taught my Genre Recognition workshop and my Speak & Spell workshop; at NAOBI, I taught my Vague Language workshop and my Vocal Technique workshop. I also spent quite a bit of time submitting workshop proposals, some of which were rejected and some of which are in negotiation. I am even scheduling a workshop date toward the end of 2012, believe it or not.

As with any enterprise, happy customers and word of mouth are the greatest sources of repeat business. One of my workshop participants at RID Region V requested that I come out to teach a workshop in her city; thus, I’ll be teaching my Vague Language (VL) workshop in Las Vegas (LV) on Saturday, January 15. In addition to that workshop, there are other happy customers from previous workshops who are working to bring me out to their communities. I appreciate their interest and efforts!

If you are interested in having one or more of my workshops in your location, please let me know. I love to teach and I love to travel. If you are reading this and you want one of my workshops, please reach out to me and we will make it happen.

I continue to take photographs and share them on Flickr. Some of my recent adventures include hiking Camelback Mountain for the first time, a weekend getaway to Jerome, going to the Arizona State Fair for the first time in the five years that I’ve lived here, going “full frame” by trading in my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and EF-S lenses for a used Canon 5D, and meeting a longtime Flickr friend from Brooklyn who visited me and my husband with his husband. It was great to bring the online life and real life together, and we all really hit it off. There are several other photo sets I’ve posted in months since my last blog post as well. The best way to keep up with what I’m up to in a visual way is to follow my Flickr photostream.

I’ve also really gotten into Facebook this year. I don’t add people I don’t know as Friends, and I don’t have a Fan Page, but I do enjoy keeping up with my friends through status updates, photos, videos, links, etc. I am sort of the designated photographer at gatherings of friends and coworkers, so it’s always fun to upload an album from a shared event and tag everyone in it who’s on Facebook– which is most of them. For a while there, I was spending a couple/three hours a day on Facebook, but I’ve cut back because I have so many other priorities. I felt I was neglecting my photography and Flickr social circle for a while there, so I’ve returned to spending a bit more time on that. One thing I love that Flickr added in the last couple of months is People in Photos, which allows you to tag your Flickr friends in photos the way you can tag your friends in photos on Facebook. Those friends have to be Flickr members in order to be tagged, so it’s most useful for photos from FlickrMeets; that is, when a group of photo geeks get together to go on a shooting spree. Not necessarily good for your neighbor’s family’s Thanksgiving party unless they’re all Flickrites themselves. Thanks to this new feature and my general hamminess, I can now point you to photos of me on Flickr. As of this writing, there are over 900, though I’m not sure they are all public!

Like many people, I also got my Twitter account this year. At first, I was frustrated with it and with the way some people twittered “too much.” After a while, I just learned to accept it for what it is. I must admit I only occasionally log in to check up on the people I follow, and I don’t follow a lot of people to begin with. I don’t really care how many followers I have or how many updates I’ve posted. I’m in no hurry to send my thousandth tweet or garner my thousandth follower, though I wouldn’t put it past myself to announce the milestones when they hit.

In addition to sharing my life publicly on Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter, I created my profile on LinkedIn this year to network with other professionals and share my professional achievements. My greatest professional achievements this year have been coordinating the Purple Communications booth and interpreting pool at the 2009 Arizona RID State Conference, being promoted to Video Interpreter / Trainer at Purple Communications’ Arizona Communication Center, and representing Purple as an interpreter at the National Black Deaf Advocates conference. Outside of my work with Purple, 2009 was the first year I developed and taught ASL interpreting workshops. I know I’ve already shared some of this in this blog, and I’ve even castigated myself for perhaps going overboard in tooting my own horn, but at the end of the year, I must say that I have a feeling of pride. I have been through some dark times in my life, and when you’ve been through that and come out on the other side of it, you cherish every win.

Tonight is the beginning of Chanukah, the eight-day Festival of Lights. I look forward to lighting candles, exchanging gifts, frying donuts and potato pancakes, and going to a party or two. I do think that, in some ways, the holiday season is the most wonderful time of the year. I love both Chanukah and Christmas for the festivities, the colors, the lights, the social events, the cold, dark nights, and yes, the gifts.

What do I look forward to doing next year? I hope that next year brings many more opportunities for me to train video interpreters at Purple Communications and in my own interpreting workshops. 2010 is a year for RID regional conferences, and I plan to submit presenter proposals in the hope of teaching my workshops at at least a couple of them. There is also the Conference of Interpreter Trainers in 2010, which I hope to attend and possibly present at. The National Alliance of Black Interpreters is hosting their conference right here in Phoenix in 2010, and I do hope to be a part of that as well.

What I wish to do in my personal life in 2010 is to show my family how much I love them, to show respect and support to my friends, clients, and colleagues, to take on new challenges and new adventures, to be happy relaxing and being, and to dive deeper into this rich experience we call living.

Did you know that APS has partnered with DBG (Desert Botanical Garden) to provide a free shuttle between the Valley Metro Light Rail station at Priest / Washington and the Desert Botanical Garden? I just found out a couple of weeks ago, and I’m riding it to the garden for the first time today.* This is a great convenience that I hope many people will take advantage of.

You can catch the shuttle by the gazebo in the parking lot of the little food court at the NE corner of Priest & Washington. It runs every 15 minutes from 9 AM to 7 PM.

*I sent this to my blog via Flickr in real time, but it didn’t upload. I guess it was interrupted by several incoming phone calls and it timed out. So I’m uploading it now to get the word out about the free shuttle.

I sang a cappella in the chapel (redundant, I know)! I’m laughing because I had just posed like an opera singer with my mouth open and my hands out and then cracked up because I embarrassed myself. There’s an interesting story behind this. A woman in our tour group asked me if I wanted her to take my photo with the chapel behind me because I had just sung in it. How did that come to be? Well, it all began when I saw our tourguide in the restaurant where we all stopped for lunch. He was sitting by himself at a table and I walked up and said, “Ah… tutto sole?” (meaning, “Aw… all alone?” in Italian). He asked me how I knew Italian, and I told him from musical terminology and opera. He asked if I were a singer, and I said yes. Then he told me we were going to be going into a chapel that was designed to be acoustically perfect, and he asked if I would be willing to sing a line or two so everyone could hear. I said sure. I was thinking I would sing the first few lines of “Que Gelida Manina” until we got to the church and I realized that a song from La Boheme would not be appropriate. I racked my brain for something spiritual to sing, and I recalled a short solo I had sung in my senior year at the School of Creative & Performing Arts: the “Benedictus” phrase from Hans Schubert’s “Mass in G.” For those of you who don’t know it, the phrase is “Benedictus qui venit in nomine domini” which is Latin for “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” I sang it and everyone was pleased. Several people came up to me to thank me personally. I was just glad that the pleasure I had in singing was not selfish, but was considered a gift to others, which is ideal. So, this was a perfectly spontaneous photo to commemorate a wonderfully fortuitous occasion.

(Taken by a fellow tourist in the courtyard by the side of the Cathedral of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy, with the chapel in the background.)

Why buy books when you can borrow? I love my public library!

I took this photo on my new T-Mobile G1 with Google. It automatically geotagged it before I emailed it to Flickr. For those who are wondering how to geotag photos with the G1, I’ll explain– and then you’ll see how easy it is!

When you go to the Camera app, hit the Menu button before you take a shot. Select Settings, and then select “Store location in pictures.” This setting will stick until you change it again.

For even greater accuracy; i.e. to pin your location down to Street level, go to the Home screen and pull up Apps; then select the Settings icon. Then select Security & location. Then select Enable GPS satellites and make sure it’s checked. Deselecting it will conserve battery power, but only when you’re using Maps or an app that uses Maps, such as Camera if you selected “Store location in pictures.” You can always deselect it if you want to save battery power and/or don’t care for pinpoint accuracy.

I love how effortless it is to take and share geotagged photos with the G1, and I am fully satisfied with its accuracy. My husband and I are going to the Mediterranean for two weeks, and while we’re there, I will take geotagged photos with the G1 in Airplane mode (because the GPS works even when wireless services are turned off), and when I find free WiFi hotspots, I’ll moblog them to our family website, smithersgreene.net

And when we get back home, I can’t wait to borrow another great book from the library!

I saw this beautiful bare tree stretched out against a sky whose clouds were similarly stretched out. It’s not exactly the iconic view of Tonto Natural Bridge, but it’s my favorite image from the visit.

On our Alaskan cruise in June, the ship held a talent show/contest. I hemmed and hawed about joining it, but finally decided to go for it at the last minute. I chose to sing “Our Love Is Here to Stay” by George Gershwin because the band had the music, and because I had sung it on my first cruise in 1993 on Norwegian Cruise Lines (which we were traveling with again). I could pick apart my own performance, but I’m sharing it anyway for what it’s worth. Several passengers came up to me after the contest and said they thought I should have won, although the woman who won was not a singer but a fabulous flamenco dancer. Anyway, enjoy!

Here are the lyrics:

It’s very clear / Our love is here to stay / Not for a year / But ever and a day.
The radio and the telephone / And the movies that we know / May just be passing fancies / And in time may go!
But, oh my dear / Our love is here to stay / Together we’re / Going a long, long way
In time the Rockies may crumble / Gibraltar may tumble / They’re only made of clay / But our love is here to stay.