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Another Saturday in the office

I am surfing the web today for fun sights and blogs. Any tips?

Some favorite links are: The Writer's Almanac for provoking thought, Clark Howard for money-saving tips, the Internet Movie Database for movie stuff,

A signal its over. Why is he patting me on the back?

I am sometimes quoted in the Dream Girls dating newsletter. This months newsletter says that January is national breakup month. Seems men are likely to wait till after the holidays to breakup. Hummm, years ago my former fiancĂ© broke up with me on New Years Eve, I guess he didn’t get the newsletter. The two major reasons for Jan. breakups. New Year's resolutions and a desire to break up before that commitment causing Valentines day.

I did a peace for Cosmo on the signs it’s over and Dream Girls mentioned a cue that’s a big signal of male displeasure, a little pat on the back. Women tend to give a man a pat on the back, when a man they are not attracted to gives them hug. They pat to say to the man, “I am not accepting this hug as a sexual contact.” Or, it could send a stronger message, “Down boy.” Men as well as women, use the pat as a signal there is a lack of sexual interest signal. That does not mean that every pat says, “Let’s call the whole thing off.” But is does sometimes mean you are being admonished subconsciously or treated as a child. Note that the bigger the pat the less intimacy communicated.

Photos reads from the Golden Globes, and Brad Pitt

Monday I read photo of Reese and Ryan Witherspoon at the Golden Globes for these weeks US Weekly. . In the first photo Ryan is leaping up out of his chair and signaling like a circus ringmaster for the attention to go to his wife. This is an unusual thing for a husband to do. Usually the husbands lean over and kiss their award winning wives. The jumping up photos shows Ryan’s great joy, and perhaps his great alcohol consumption. Another photo showed him holding her from behind and kissing her passionately on the ear while she hold her head down and her arms across her body trying to keep her dress and makeup from being messed up before she gets the award. She is smiling, but you can tell she wants to wrestle out of his arms and go get her trophy. The full set of photos showed a husband very happy and unusually exuberant open discovering his wife’s win. I loved them. Hurrah for the Golden Globes for creating a place for the actors to come and have fun and be spontaneous.

My favorite Golden Globe moment was when the actress Merkerson won a best actress award and came up and said, “I 53… I am having a hot flash.” Love it that a women in a performance arena said her real age!!!

I read photos of Brad and Angelina today for Life and Style Magazine. He is so much more relaxed with her since they announced they are pregnant. He looks happy. I say that even though I am enough of a square that I wish he had gotten divorced before he had started a new relationship. Seems like such an obvious thing to me.

A Voice Fit for a Dog, paralanguage

A Voice Fit for a Dog

I was having dinner over at my next door neighbor’s house when their cat named “Women” crawled up and my lap. I began to talk to her in a very high sweet voice. My neighbors started laughing and Roger said, “Oh, my gosh!”, “That is your BO BO voice!” “What are you talking about?” I replied indignantly. Roger answered, “We go to bed at 9:00 at night and we can here you at the kitchen door when you come home late greeting your Dog Bo as you unlock your door” He said, “Your voice goes up really high and lilts like your talking to a baby and you say, “Hello Bo Bo, Hello my sweet baby ”
My neighbors laughed and Roger continued using a funny high pitched imitation of my apparently already funny voice, “Hello BO BO.” He repeated. I was so embarrassed. I thought greeting my dog was a private ritual and hadn’t realized how hysterical my voice would sound to someone else.

You have the power to change your voice to sound sweet or mean angry or condescending just a lift here a change in timbre there and you can send a message of love or hate.
I like my BO BO voice. It’s filled with all the love and tenderness in my heart for the little four legged creature who always greets me with a waggely tail and a lick.
So now when my neighbors tease me, imitating my BO Bo voice, which they love to do, I smile knowing they are teasing me about all the love in my voice that’s wafts through their bedroom window late at night.
Paralanguage, the science of your vocal variations is part of nonverbal communication and like your body language it communicates so much of your true feeling. The words, "I love you." can mean a hundred different things depending on the way you say them.
Notice your voice today. Ask yourself what messages it is sending.

Where you sit at the table or Hide the vegatables under the mash potatoes

Hide the vegtables under the mash potatoes
I was the baby of the family, significantly younger than my siblings. In fact my sister Robin, who is twelve years older than I am, went off to college the same week I started first grade. This age differance obviously effected our family dinners. I was down at the end of table playing with my food, trying to hide the broccoli under the mash potatoes, because no self respecting six year old eats anything green, while the rest of my family was focused on adult interaction.

Every family has its dinner ritual. And your childhood rituals effect your adult interactions. One of the most important nonverbal patterns that tend to develop at the family dinner table is where you sat and who you talked to. Nonverbal Communication research shows this pattern effects your future conversational behavior dinners and meeting behavior as an adult.
As a child I didn’t exactly fit in. Oh! I tried. After all I loved begging the center of attention. I would interrupt the conversational flow with exploits of the number of minnows in my latest catch and how high I swung on the swing that day. I always had to fight my way into the conversation. , using an extra loud voice. I had more energy and enthusiasm than a high school cheerleader and facial expressions and chair dancing to rival Steve Martin. I would even sit on my feet so I would sit higher at the table thinking it was just a few inches of height that separated me from the fun.
My antics would work in the short term. I could always get the first part of the story out. But if I went a second to long, the adults would shush me and continue on and I would be the small silent food magician pushing potatoes around again.
Occasionally my enthusiasm would disturb them far too much and I would be “allowed” to eat in the basement family room in front of the TV. I would hear the family laughing upstairs over the sounds of The Virginian or Flintstone Cartoon and would take the opportunity given in my absence from the table to flush any food I didn’t like down the toilet. My mother always said, “You eat so much better when you’re not distracted by us talking” It was lonely downstairs. I felt left out. But I felt left out at the table as well.
Now here is the kicker. Years later I began to go to grad student meeting then faculty meeting and then corporate meeting. Sitting around any board room table I felt like the little kid at the end being ignored. I even sat on my feet! But I was silent most of the time. It took several years of speaking in front of audiences at the corporate level to get my confidence up enough to speak in a board room. The patterns created at the family dinner table are very strong.
Yesterday I went to a business meeting at a restaurant. The booth seat was low, I asked for a telephone book to sit on. I guess I am too old to sit on my feet.
Where do you sit at the table?