This year for Yule, we gave our son Dru a fun quest to complete. Y’all can join in the fun remotely. (:

The quest began when we handed Dru this piece of paper:

At first, he didn’t know that it was a clue, but when we told him we weren’t giving him anything else for Yule (it was technically true, because he was going to find them himself) he figured out that this clue referred to the game “Ticket to Ride” on our game shelf.

Inside Ticket to Ride he found an action figure of Hercules (he’s into Greek mythology) and his next clue:

He noodled for some time about what this could mean. “Nemean Lion crossing? Aegean Boar crossing? Hydra crossing? Dragon crossing?” but then he figured it out! “Unicorn crossing!” he said, and went outside to investigate the sign outside the front door of our apartment!

An action figure of the Cyclops was hanging from the lower nail. He grabbed the Cyclops but couldn’t figure out where the next clue was. After a bit of looking and searching, he pulled the sign off the fence find the following clue taped to the reverse side:

“The rats!” shouted Dru. He remembered the names of Kyeli’s new rats: Suki and Hikari. Love and light. So we all tromped upstairs to the rat cage! Hanging on the cage was… the key to our car.

Dru took the key, said, “The car?”, and we all went outside to the car. He unlocked it and found on the steering wheel an action figure of the Minotaur and a big sign saying:

So he put the key in the ignition, started the car, and…

Hold on a sec. This bit requires a bit of backstory. In September, we wrote and recorded a little song for Havi. It was a song about milk. (scroll down or search for “milk”).

Ever since September, Dru will occasionally randomly start singing the milk song. It’s so cool to hear our son sing “Selmaaaaa the duck…” while he’s in the shower. (: So that’s your backstory. Now back to today!

Dru started the car, and… this song came on.

After thinking about it for a few seconds, he shouted, “The fridge!” and we all ran back inside and we followed him into the kitchen. He opened up the fridge, and what did he find behind the soy milk? An action figure of Poseidon and the final clue:

We forgot that it had been so long since the last time we’d been geocaching that he wouldn’t immediately recognize a pair of coordinates. We gave him a slight hint by showing him a map of the world with longitude and latitude marked on it.

He figured it out, so we went geocaching! Dru entered the coordinates into our GPS and we got in the car. I drove while Dru sat in the passenger seat telling me which way to turn. Eventually we got close and Dru told me where to park. We parked there, got out, and walked across the street to the nearby woods. After a few minutes of bushwhacking through the trees and brush, Dru reached the final destination of his quest: a big gift-wrapped box filled with all sorts of goodies! Inside the box was an action figure of Zeus, the new Percy Jackson and the Olympians book, the Time Turner from Harry Potter, Glory of the Roman Empire, and a check.

Here are all the action figures of the Greek gods and other beings of myth, arranged heroically:

It was a nice haul and a fun adventure — for Dru and for all of us. (:

Several people have remarked that it’s not easy for them to identify which of us posts which posts. So we made a fun new speech bubble thingamajig! At the bottom of each post, the blog will display an icon of whichever one of us posted it, along with a speech bubble. It probably won’t show up in the RSS feed, though, just in the blog. So if you’re reading this in an email or a feed reader, click through so you can see the pretty new shiny thing! (:

NOTE: This is completely off-topic and will probably only interest you if you’re interested in recording podcasts or creating other audio products. Commence geekout in 3… 2… 1…

At this Tuesday’s Communication for the Holidays course, Calliflower failed to record the first two-thirds of the course. We re-recorded it ourselves using Audacity and stitched the two halves together, but it became super loud when it switched to the second half.

We tried using Audacity’s normalize function, but all that does is soften or louden the entire file by a fixed amount, based on the loudest part. Listen to how loud it becomes all of a sudden:

Normalized MP3 (13 seconds)

But The Levelator solved the problem. It softens or loudens the file smoothly, and can soften or louden different sections independently. So if a loud person is talking, it’ll soften them a bit, and then later if a soft person talks for a while, it’ll louden them. It’s awesome. Listen to how much clearer the first half is, and how much smoother the volume transition is:

Levelated MP3 (13 seconds)

You can see the difference visually, too! Normalized is on top, Levelated is on the bottom.

Hooray for the Levelator!

I’m helping organize an exciting project for the month of December, and I wanted to let y’all know about it. It’s the Triiibes Blog Project, a blog about leadership, community building, and modern-day tribes. I wrote the first post, but the rest will be written by other members of Triiibes, Seth Godin’s social network, to participate and write articles — one post a day for the rest of December.

If this sounds interesting to you, check it out or subscribe for December. It’ll be fun!

Today is our fourth anniversary, and in a way, our first.

We’ve grown as individuals and as a couple more in this past year than ever before. We’ve come from an unhealthy toxic relationship based in fear, and moved into a remarkably healthy, mutually beneficial relationship based entirely in love and respect.

We love each other more now than we ever thought possible. We’re closer now than we ever thought possible. We’re happier now than we ever thought possible.

Pace is my partner in business, in life, and in love. We’re creating our life, shaping it into what we want it to be, sharing life and love and laughter every step of the way. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Four years today, baby, and hundreds more to come. (; I love you.

In keeping with our annual tradition, this Samhain Eve we’re reflecting on everything that’s happened this year. It’s been a long year.

Samhain is the end of the old year and the beginning of the new; a perfect time for reflection and introspection. This post is different from all the other posts in our blog; it’s a glimpse into the whole of our year, not just the bloggy bits. We don’t give a lot of context here, so feel free to ask if you wish.

In November, Pace had fun with Ruby and Rails while working half-time as C9’s CTO. (She had not so much fun being a sysadmin, though.) Pace planned an elaborate anniversary surprise for Kyeli, and it turned out wonderfully. We spent the day in San Antonio in a five-star hotel, walking up and down the Riverwalk and fully enjoying each other. Kyeli invented the word “pocketopus,” meaning a pocket-sized octopus, and made a promise to be more reliable. Pace shared her transition story as an offering for the Transgender Day of Remembrance.

In December, life was good. Then our poly triad broke apart (although obviously Pace and Kyeli stayed together). That’s enough said about December. We don’t want to go into detail.

In January, life continued. We got rid of a bunch of our old stuff, and Pace read Stumbling On Happiness. She noodled about honesty vs. predictability and intent vs. outcome. We began the difficult process of helping our son deal with the separation.

In February, we moved to a two-bedroom apartment in the same complex. Kyeli acquired the most amazing cat ever, Phineas Nix. He has extra toes and ambition to take over the world! Kyeli did a powerful ending ritual and cast her old wedding ring into the sea. We did an Imbolc ritual together to dissolve old bonds and begin new ones. Pace AAAed a couple of 8s and briefly experimented with not playing one-player video games. Kyeli realized how silly Groundhog Day is. We learned that passion is water, not fire, and Pace started planning Kyeli’s birthday surprise!

In March, Pace walked a labyrinth to find out who she really is. We celebrated Kyeli’s birthday by taking an overnight vacation to Galveston. It was the best day ever, but it could have been the worst day ever. We had a $300 dinner at Clay Pit to celebrate Kyeli’s birthday. Kyeli did lots of self-work, had lots of epiphanies, and grew a whole lot. She also had a car accident and re-injured her shoulder. (She’s pretty okay.) We played a bunch of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Pace narrowly avoided getting scammed by a jerk named Gary.

In April, we left C9. We read The Four Hour Work Week, which greatly affected our plans for what to do for our next business and how to do it. Pace started dealing with the depression she had been feeling since (and months previous to) the divorce. She acquired a spiritual womb and energetic ovaries. We went to Poly Big Fun and gave our first Usual Error presentation with just the two of us. It went well! Pace played Rhem 3, and Pace and Kyeli played Myst Uru. Kyeli learned how to futz — how to build up her general problem-solving skills — and began fully coming into her own self. The plans for Kyeli’s birthday surprise were delayed but continued inexorably. (:

In May, Kyeli’s birthday surprise finally came to fruition. We flew to Boston to visit friends in Philadelphia, and on the way there we learned that 300,000,000 frightened people trump liquid. We came home to find the door to our apartment removed (they replaced it later). Pace made a list of concrete things to do to help with her depression. Improving her eating habits helped. Caffeine helped. Mourning helped. Forgiveness helped. Becoming the Insurance Agent of Divine Justice didn’t really help, but it was cool. Pace played through all of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, and we bought Samus, our new gaming desktop. After 20 grueling hours, we managed to wipe Vista and install XP on it. Kyeli learned that knowing the worst possible scenario makes everything less scary. Pace had an epiphany about motivation. She started two new side projects: an ontology of video games and Meme Wars, an online CCG.

In June, Kyeli helped Pace let go of her belief that the true nature of the universe probably sucks. Pace finally integrated her headspace and heartspace aspects by loving and accepting all parts of herself. She continued making progress with her depression and gave up searching for a perfect role model. We gave our cherry wood table away and we went back to being vegetarian. Kyeli got the new Alanis CD and avoided the yearly zombie uprising. Kyeli was incredibly emotionally scarred by The Happening. We started thinking about motivational alchemy and habits.

In July, we decided to make the Usual Error Project our career! (This is when things start happening really quickly.) We settled on the exact naming and capitalization. We set up the company as a general partnership. We set our goals and priorities. We decided to self-publish the Usual Error book. We worked hard on the second draft of the book. We rearranged our environment to support our goals, our passions, and our happiness. We joined Toastmasters to improve our public speaking skills. A couple of friends lent us $22,500, and Pace AAAed her first cata. Kyeli stopped being really hard on herself and started Twittering. We acquired another kitten, Gryphon. Kyeli started exercising every day and made big changes to her diet. She learned about accomplishing long-term goals.

In August, Pace proposed to Kyeli. She said yes! (We wanted to get remarried with just the two of us.) We set a date: November 20, 2009. We finally came up with a satisfying answer to our question about the ethics of communication. Pace’s obsession with commas and quotation marks began. We lost $900, and it was AWESOME! Megan made an awesome logo for the Usual Error Project! After a lot of hard work, we finished the second draft of the book. We played through Braid with our family up in Dallas. Pace allowed herself to believe that wealth, fame, and success come easily to her. She played through Persona 3. We realized that it is our ethical imperative to help make the world a better place. We spent two full days at Austin Java to finish up the third draft of the book, and we did it!

In September, we lost $8000, and it was no problem. We merged all our other blogs into paceandkyeli.com, pulled over some relevant posts from LJ, and began the 30-day blog-o-thon, all because Steve Pavlina believed in us. In Pace’s Ice Breaker speech at Toastmasters, she announced that she would be quitting her day job. We played lots of Spore and learned the importance of taking 5-minute breaks. We continued noodling about love-based motivation vs. fear-based motivation. Meanwhile, ten of our friends were busy editing the third draft of the book. The embiggenation-induced growing pains began. We reconciled our goal of helping people with our goal of making money. We became experts at lots of things, and deeply regretted using the word “expert” instead of “competent” or “skilled”. We made our first podcast and (unrelatedly) made it into the top million websites! We thought about buying a duplex with Kyeli’s mom and brother to convince them to move to Austin, but ended up delaying those plans. Pace learned the difference between being 99% honest and being 100% honest. A former world champion of public speaking gave a talk at Toastmasters, and we learned some useful things from it. We sang a song about milk, covered our coffee table with post-it notes to figure out our business plan, and improved our organization skills.

In October, we figured out how to address the issues that come up with the “it’s always okay to talk about how you feel” policy. Steve Pavlina made Pace cry and Kyeli got Pace pretty pink flowers, got down on one knee, and proposed to her in front of everyone. Pace had a lovely 31st birthday! Kyeli bought a beautiful left-handed bass guitar and took Pace to see Alanis in concert. Kyeli struggled with overwhelming stress and self-neglect but is now on the upswing. We helped a friend with some problems she was having negotiating with her partner. Marty finished up the illustrations for the book, and Pace finally got over her punctuation neurosis. Megan, Kyeli, and Pace stayed up until 3am working on the new Usual Error Project website. It’s beautiful! Pace co-authored an e-book with Seth Godin’s triiibe! Her case study was about bi poly kinky pagan gamer geeks. We launched our phone-in course, Communication for the Holidays. Pace reflected on how being an entrepreneur is like being transgendered. After going through 1500 pages of our editors’ suggestions, we finally finished the fourth draft today! Next comes layout and design, then we’ll be ready to publish!

Pace wrote a poem to reflect on the old year and bring in the new. We’d like to share it with you.

a year of change and growth
a year of pain and hurt
the best year of my life
(not the happiest)
but the best.

a choice, a change: divorce.
a choice, a change: grow past old patterns, old crutches.
a choice, a change: shell breaking, comfort forsaking.
a choice, a change: a path with a heart.

this is my change. this is my choice.

fully awake
i enter this new year
this new life
wide-eyed
with delight.

I’ve found some new and excellent blogs and RSS feeds to read lately, and I want to share them with you. I used to bookmark sites that updated their content regularly or occasionally, but now that I learned how to use Google Reader, it’s so much easier. I can add more blogs and feeds without it taking up a lot more of my time or annoyance. In the past month I’ve gone on a feed-adding spree! Here’s what I’ve been enjoying.

I’d also love to hear what you’re reading and enjoying!

Us

• Pace and Kyeli (duh)
• Comments for Pace and Kyeli (duh)
• link:http://freakrevolution.com/ – Google Blog Search (so we can see who’s talking about us (; )

Friends and/or Awesome People We Like To Support

• Martin Whitmore | Youngstown Crab Company Project (I have no idea why this shows up as “Youngstown Crab Company Project” for me. Marty is our favorite artist, and has very little to do with crabs.)
• Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog (This is that guy we talk about all the time.)
• Virtual Magpie (the equivocal adventures of Megan M.)
• worldmegan
• Seth’s Blog (This is that guy we talk about all the time. No, the other one.)
• The Fluent Self (This blog is all about milk.)
• Small business marketing ideas – Starting a home business | IttyBiz (Naomi kicks ass.)
• Oliver Danni’s Healing and Energywork Site
• Words Words Words

Fun Stuff

• The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks (This is hilarious!)
• Slow Wave (A webcomic where he illustrates people’s dreams that they email him. It’s awesome and ridiculously funny.)
• Bob the Angry Flower
• Speed Demos Archive
• XKCD
• Astronomy Picture of the Day RSS Feed
• LOL BOTS
• LOLTHEORISTS
• Slashdot: Games

How To Be Awesome

• Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog
• The Fluent Self
• Zen Habits
• Productive Flourishing
• Comfort Queen
• Persistent Illusion
• The Art of Nonconformity
• Idealist Coach: Strategic Life Coaching & Consulting
• Soul Shelter
• GET RICH – The thinking woman’s guide to more life, love and luxury

Communication and Relationships

• The Simple Marriage Project
• The Polyamorous Misanthrope
• Said What I Meant
• communicatrix

Business, Small Business and Ethical Entrepreneurs

• Small business marketing ideas – Starting a home business | IttyBiz
• Success in Sweatpants
• The Heart of Business
• The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss
• erica.biz – Erica Douglass shows you how to build an inspired, successful business.
• Social Media Power

What The Heck Category Do I Put These In?

• Slashdot: Science
• Write to Done
• 200 Nipples Blog | New Shirt Notice
• ct2 (I think this is the good stuff from Kevin Kelly)
• Lifehacker: Roundup
• A design and usability blog: Signal vs. Noise (by 37signals)
• The Daily Triiibunal
• Noel Lynne Figart
• shinsato.com
• The Born Again Yesterday Page

I hope you enjoy some of these, and please share some of your favorite blogs or feeds with me too!

Oh my gosh, my friend Oliver sang me a birthday song, and it is the coolest song ever! It’s not the “Happy Birthday” song, it’s an Oliver original! He even alludes to five chapter titles from The Usual Error and answers the age-old question “What rhymes with Pavlina?”

Listen!

Darkness broken by the flash of lightening, the silence of sleep disturbed by the loud echoes of thunder. Rain pours down, tap-tap-tapping on our window. Her breathing deepens as she settles into sleep, and I curl around her, contented as sleep claims me.

Morning banishes the storm, sunlight streams through the window. She wakes, her soft brown eyes peering through the haze of sleep, grins that sweet sleepy smile, and our lips brush for the first time this day – my favorite moment. We snuggle, our warm skin pressing together under our floofy comforter, kittens napping on our knees. We discuss our day, full of togetherness and joy, laughter and love.

She is my love, my partner in life, in business, in dreams. We fill our days with passions and determination, we face fears together, we challenge each other, we comfort each other. I am filled with love and light, joy at her every moment with me.

Happy birthday, Pace. I love you.

Kyeli got me pretty pink flowers! Aren’t they beautiful? (: