Last week my voice turned into a croak. That was a bad sign because I had a big weekend ahead. My daughter turned 18 years old and I was hosting a party for friends and family here. I made her cake and all the food. Every one could tell I wasn’t well but I pushed on. The party was a great success. Lots of fun for all the kids teenagers young people. I visited with my sister, whom I haven’t seen in over 5 years, and my nephew. I really enjoyed that.

Fifteen minutes after the last guest left, my fever shot up to 101 degrees and the kids were piling blankets on top of me. That was Sunday. Today I learned just how sick I am because I finally stopped being stubborn and went to the doctor.

Being stuck in bed, when there’s piles of work to do, is no fun. But, the week wasn’t a complete loss. This is what I learned…

1. I want a makeover. After watching one daytime TV show after another, buried under the blankies, inhaling Vicks like a little kid and watching beautiful size negative 4 women prance about the screen, I’ve decided I want to be entered in some makeover contest.

2. I want those diet secret pills that promise me I can be negative 4 in two weeks with no exercise whatsoever.

3. SEO’s get on Oprah.

4. I still have no idea how delegates work, but I think I have a handle on Super Delegates.

5. When Hillary wears blue, it really brings out her blue eyes.

6. I’m not superhuman. After dealing with what I instinctively knew was bronchitis for a week, I finally gave in and went to the doctor. She said there’s a really bad strain of it that comes with a bonus sinus infection (which is why I can’t breathe) and no amount of organic food and vitamins would have saved me. She kept trying to tell me I’m human…go figure.

7. I found a station that runs Charmed re-runs. This is important. When I was in first grade, I wanted to be a witch. A nice one. Who could make boys fall on their butts and stuff.

8. Eric learned how to use the new dishwasher, that we’ve had for about 4 months or so.

9. Jennifer pretty much has me burning with curiosity about Twitter. I can’t join. Every one will say “I toldya so!”

10. Work doesn’t stop coming in. Thanks so much for waiting me to get better.

11. Spammers don’t stop coming just because you’re too sick to log in.

12. While waiting for my antibiotics today at the drugstore, I was looking for Valentines Day cards for the kids and husband. There was a section for “Funny”. I like funny. But when I tried to find funny “Husband” cards, there were 4 columns for “Wife”, and one with a mixture of “Girlfriend”, “Pets” and two slots for “Husband”. One of the husband slots was empty and the other card wasn’t funny.

Over in the serious and romantic section, there were “Wife” cards all over the place. I managed to find 4 cards for husband’s and one that I liked that didn’t sound dysfunctional or co-dependent in a “Honey, be my valentine or I’ll let the air out of your tires” kind of way.

My daughter had tried to find a Valentine card for her step-dad but couldn’t find any step-dad ones. Where are all the cards for men?

I decided to pass this tidbit of discovery to Eric, to show how hard I worked, sick and all, barely able to breathe, no makeup in the store (sheer blasphemy!) and hair pulled up in a pony tail…well, some of it. I didn’t fuss. Anyway. I told him I really had to look hard for a card for him and that most of the cards are for women, and the funny ones…well, do women not have a sense of humor I asked him?

He told me he was lucky to get a card. A friend of his got his wife a card and flowers and he hesitated after giving it to her, kinda waiting for his gift from her. She hadn’t thought to get him anything.

I don’t get it.

13. I have a question. Does working from home make your immune system messed up?

Happy Valentines Day to all the happy people.

Apologies in advance to my friends who are “working” in Las Vegas and Chicago at the two popular search engine marketing conferences and one user experience show - all going on this week. I’m at home, all warm and cozy and haven’t yet had to race to a press room or freak out over a dead laptop battery. Sheer heaven.

For those of us who stayed home…

Donna has an excellent how-to on creating social site profiles - Using Social Profile Pages To Your Advantage Why?

They often show up prominently in the search engine results pages. If someone searches for you by your brand name, or nick, there’s a very good chance your social network profile pages will show up in the top 10 results. The reputation management / branding aspects of this alone makes the act of creating profile pages a worthwhile endeavor.

Scott has been doing some keyword “research” in much the same way I do people watching, only he got into the math, whereas I would never get past the “cool shirt” stage. According to Blondes ARE the most popular… (Bah!), blondes are searched for the most, as are cats and Hentai, the latter of which up until today I had never heard of.

When I’m Not Doing SEO

I was tagged by Barry (aka Rustybrick) because we’re both at home lounging around eating bon bons while everyone else is blogging conferences.

I’m no longer an SEO (officially), but I refer work to my SEO Partners and follow the industry because when they need usability help, they may want somebody besides Shari and Matt. (giggle) So, being officially tagged, when I’m not doing anything for Cre8pc, UsabilityEffect and Cre8asiteforums, with the few remaining ounces of energy I have left I:

1. READ. I read an enormous number of books. Usually I have several going at once. They’re in my car, backpack, every room of the house and my office. For fun, I drive to Borders just to read there, instead of here.

2. Sports. As in spectator. Working from home allows me to attend my son’s sporting events in football, wrestling, hockey and baseball. I’m the equipment carrier, snack/water mom, taxi, and start to cry whenever he does something amazing. I’m pathetic that way. Related sport: Trying to keep an eye on daughter and her boyfriend.

3. In Winter, when I’m not working, nothing makes me happier than baking bread or preparing a meal with the kids, who have a knack for and interest in food and putting together fresh/whole/organic dinners. I love making big pots of homemade soup on cold days. Spring, Summer and Fall I have the gardens to tend to for flowers, herbs and veggies. I weed, rescue hockey pucks from the beds and thank my vegetable plants for producing for us as well as they do.

For “When I’m Not Doing SEO”, I tag:

Sophie Wegat
Barry Welford
Elizabeth Able

I Am One of 50

One of my articles on usability and seo has been chosen for The Top 50 SEO Posts of the Year. The beauty of this is discovering a new blog with business advice. Thank you for the honor!

The Perpetual Super-Novice is the perfect article for those who are looking to understand the big picture. It talks about product design, what people want from it, and what motivates them to keep using it. In addition, it touches on how people look for help or more information on it. This is where search comes into play, among other things. Much of the relationship between seo and usability has to do with understanding user behavior. As the article states:

Now let’s think about how people behave when they’re intrinsically motivated to learn more about how something works. What do they do? They do things like

* asking other people
* searching reference content
* searching the Web
* browsing forums and other archival sources of information

Finally…I just love this latest from Jeffrey Zeldman…Stealing design. At the moment he has 10 comments for a blog post that consists of one full sentence.

The man is brilliant.

This week was powerful. It was the end of my son’s football season and I was so impressed with him that for two days I was in deep thought, even lying awake at night with the realization that my 14 year old son had become my hero. When everything that could go wrong, did, he scored the most amazing touchdown in the last 2 minutes of one of the games that had all the parents on their feet. And all he did was to show his heart.

Passion has always been my guiding light. It’s an odd light because others don’t always see it, when you know darned well it’s right there. This week I struggled to come to a decision about where I’d go with my usability work. Was I any good at this? Is there something else I can offer? How does usability work improve life for anyone? The answers came in this week’s discussions in several places about user personas, as well as positive feedback on work I had done for someone new.

User personas are about improving an experience for someone other than yourself. My light flickered and things felt right again.

Last night I presented a rough outline of a plan for the future of Cre8asiteforums to my friend and Co-Administrator, Bill Slawski, that I’d struggled and agonized over for months. The forums are five years old and its earlier incarnation was formed in 1998. I’m burned out one minute and energized the next. Is this normal? Where is the forums administrators support group?

It was funny to watch Bill read my official 4 page brain dump and see him making faces. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking and that drove me nuts. We had a meeting, surrounded by friends, one of my other moderators, Li Evans, and my husband, Eric. It was the moment where I needed to make a personal commitment to move forward and ask Bill if he was ready to stick it out with me a little longer. He said yes.

In a social media environment, what can we do to make our forums thrive and contribute value? For Bill and I, the answer is different because we’re different in how we think a forums should be run and what they’re for. Next week I’ll announce the first part in our projected plan to take the forums into a new direction, with an emphasis on contributing ways to support those who believe in building better web sites for a better world.

I don’t think it was any accident I was given the example of my son, Stefan, and his approach to his life in sports.

He’s very committed, even when he’s in pain. If the other team has 3 guys on him, he fights them off with one arm. When they pile up on him, the ball doesn’t leave his grip. When they’re losing, he still believes in himself. When their Quarterback was out on an injury and the offensive line lost its will, he did what Team Captains do. He tried to offer encouragement and instructions on what to do next, even though he was angry on the inside. In a sad losing game with no score for his team, he “chopped” his way down the center, for the last two minutes of the game and by brute force, got the damned touchdown.

When they were squashed in their last game of the season by an undefeated team (Stefan’s team was undefeated last year), his Dad and I walked out to meet him on the field afterwards to check on his condition. Before we could even reach him, a group of members from the opposing team and four guys from the High School Freshman team, where he’ll play next year, came out on the field, walked up to him and shook his hand.

Respect is something you earn.

Here are my notable article picks for the week, with my thanks to those who inspire me:

Designing for Nonprofits: User Experience Professionals Can Make a Difference in Society

We all find ourselves looking in the mirror at one time or another and asking ourselves if we’re doing all we can for the good of society. What’s it all for?

Those of us in the user experience (UX) profession can actually do something about it. As information architects, interaction designers, usability consultants, and developers, we don’t have to change our careers to do something good for society.

Balancing Usability and Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is the process of designing a Web strategy so that search engine spiders will get the best picture of the Web site that they can. Usability is the process of designing a Web strategy so that visitors will be satisfied with their experience.

Design Engineering: The Next Step

Interaction design determines who the users are, what goals they are trying to achieve, and then creates a tangible, visible plan for how the product will look and behave to get those users to achieve those goals. Over the last few years, more and more companies have adopted interaction design methods. They have flight plans. Why, then, are so many organizations still repeatedly visited by those three ugly horsemen of software apocalypse?

My friends at DT are in the news (again) - Digital Telepathy Helps You Build Your Web 2.0 Startup

The concept is simple: Digital Telepathy offers three design my business options with varying service levels based on the length of each plan. The 15 day plan provides a wannabe startup with market research, strategic alignment, scalable revenue model, instruction manual for project completion and a concept summary delivered as a “Biz in a Box”.

This was a no-brainer for a “bookaholic” like me - Top 5 social web sites for book lovers

Search Engine Land’s Secrets : Mining SearchCap. Perfect for those who equate statistics to Fruit Loops. I am number 57.

Building a Data-Backed Persona is a detailed, well written article on a topic that’s on steroids.

Video presentation by Jared Spool - Delight by Functionality

And finally, Green Communities and Social Networks. Bill hit many of us in a good place with this list, giving us some new ideas and ways to meet others who dream.

I love fireworks. I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been the one who makes sure either myself, or anyone I’m with, is planted firmly underneath a show of fireworks every July 4th. I’ve been so moved by some fireworks displays that I get all choked up.

July 4th is one of my favorite holidays because of fireworks. I may like it better than Christmas. So when my friend, Matt Bailey from SiteLogic, mentioned his family has an annual July 4th gathering and they go nuts with fireworks, I was listening. And then he said the magic words…”Do you wanna come on out for that?” Guess what I said.

Sooo, we’ve made plans to drive the motor home and my car out to Ohio. We’re bringing 4 kids, but not our beloved golden retriever, Dakota, because he has no tolerance for fireworks or thunder. This weekend we head on out. I’ll be sharing the driving of my car with the two 17 year old girls, who will get some experience with long distance driving. It’s a 7 hour drive but with 4 kids, there will be stops. Eric will be driving the motor home and the boys will keep him company.

When we arrive in Ohio, we’re staying for several days at a campground near the Bailey’s. Then, on the 4th and 5th, we live at Matt’s. Then it gets real, because unless we hook up to his house, we won’t have some of the luxuries you get when you drive an RV up and plug it into everything from electric to cable TV. Although the motor home is self sustaining, with a generator, etc., the moment there’s no way to plug in the TV for the boys’ video games will be a shock.

There was a funny piece in Newsweek about traveling nowadays with kids that talked about what a vehicle looks like when everyone has cell phones, ipods, radios, CD players, and DVD players. I know from past experience that every electrical socket in the motor home had cell phone chargers dangling from it. Now every kid has a cell phone and there are three ipods, so I’m picturing a jungle of wires.

Matt says I can blog from his house. If that’s the case, I may show up next week. I’m not sure how much I’ll be on top of the news but I may drop by.

Thanks to those who have recently found this blog and have linked to it or mentioned it in your blog. I’ve noticed, and am pleased to meet you. A few old friends have linked or recently emailed encouragement as well.

It means a lot to hear from you.

I give my kids every t-shirt I get while covering Search Engine Strategies conferences. They look forward to whatever is kid-friendly inside the SES earth-friendly canvas bags when I return home.

While uploading pictures taken over Mothers Day, I noticed that my eldest son was wearing his SES shirt during our visit to Longwood Gardens.

Playing with buttercup flowers…daughter, who went to her prom the night before despite breakup with boyfriend, and son who broke thumb sliding into second base during a game:

Son selling SES to plants:

Moi, on Mom’s Day (and so NOT thinking about usability and seo!):