Nuke.com Reunion!

This week I met up with some old friends. It’s been 15 years since we all worked together, on the site nuke.com.

If you go to nuke.com today, you’ll find that it goes to Ziff-Davis, because ZD eventually swooped in and bought most of Sendai Media Group. I was the online editor for the movie magazine Cinescape, and ZD did not want Cinescape. But I was technically part of Sendai Interactive and not Cinescape, so I moved to ZD, too, and became part of EGM and Gamespot.com–but that’s another story for another day.

Summer in Chicago Always Rocks

As a mother and wife my schedule gets filled up pretty fast, especially once we get out of the rainy spring weather (which took quite a while this year). I have been working quite a lot, but it’s a bit harder this time of year when my son is out of school and the camp schedule takes place. We’ve traveled less than usual this summer–New York City for a wedding, to the Indiana dunes in June and in August, to Philadelphia for another wedding–which is helpful because I can get more work and volunteering done at home.

This summer my work schedule is also complicated by a volunteer commitment. I have been volunteering at the Brookfield Zoo for around 13 years now, and the program is making all of us go through a re-training schedule that includes writing a research paper on a particular animal. Mine is the white ibis. So I have that on my to-do list as well.

But we are trying to enjoy the summer as much as possible, because my little boy starts full-time school for the first time ever this fall when he enters the first grade. That means he’ll no longer have the opportunity to accompany me on my visits to museums or other places as I check them out for various articles. He went with me, for example, to the Adler when I wrote about the new sky theater they have. And for the rest of the summer I have lots of plans–Navy Pier, bowling, street fairs, art festivals, restaurants–who knows if I’ll get around to them all. But it’ll be fun trying. And it is, after all, part of my job.

I love my work.

Happy New Year!

This winter break I spent a lot of time with my son, although he preferred to be in sports camp for at least the last week of his vacation. Fortunately for me, I finished the January-March issue of the Chicago Windy City Guide just in time to take the rest of the month off. Well, at least from writing about Chicago, although I did get in a quick blog post about visiting Deerfield’s Bakery at Christmastime…

This mainly means that I’ve been focused on developing content for VidThru.com. I’ve been helping to develop a new reviews protocol, and putting together a vision for the news section. It’s ambitious, but if we can move in that direction soon I’ll be satisfied. Currently on the site, I’m mainly trying to keep up with daily news and managing the freelance staff. We’ve given them permission to start producing reviews, but I’m sure especially in the beginning these will need quite a bit of work as we figure how to tweak the new format.

I also managed to completely transcribe my 50-minute-long interview with British actress Louise Jameson, which I did at Chicago Tardis over Thanksgiving weekend. This will go up on bellaonline.com within the next couple of weeks (in several parts, although I haven’t decided how to split it up yet). She was as lovely and poised as you would expect.

Now I’m back in my regular groove, and I will be updating here more regularly. I hope. The new year has begun and I have high hopes that 2011 will bring new challenges and experiences for me, both professionally and personally. My resolutions are: to play more games, spend less money, keep track of what I’m eating, and cook more foods from scratch. Also, to try not to get stressed out by the various volunteer obligations that I have, which mostly end in May.

Happy New Year to you all!