Last fall when my mum came to visit, she fell in-love with one of my skirts which she ended up wearing almost every day. She wore it above to the Getty Museum, she wore in during our walk through the Venice Canals, she wore it up on our trip to Solvang. She tried to wear it on the plane back home!

I kept it because for the past five or so years it’s been one of my favourites; something to wear when I need a pick me up or want to be really comfortable. I couldn’t part with it. They say those are the things that make the best gifts.

So when my mum had surgery a couple of months ago, I packaged up the skirt and wrote a note. It was called the “Happy Skirt” – something that we’d pass back and forth whenever one of us needed it to feel better. It was her turn. I can’t tell you how happy she was to have this skirt, to think of where she’d been in it before and where she’d go in it when she was better. It was the perfect healing gift for her.

While flowers are a nice thought and often appreciated there are downsides to sending them such as lots of people having the same idea (my mum had dozens of bouquets in her small room), being hard to manage or take home and inducing allergies (a lot of patients have heightened allergies right after surgery and sneezing can be really painful).

The average price of flowers sent to a hospital room is $35 and using that amount as a guideline, here are some flower-alternative get better gifts:

1. One of the other benefits to giving my mum the skirt was that it was comfortable and easy to put on. Because of the type of surgery she had, pants or tight fitting things would be problematic, a skirt that buttons up entirely in the front isn’t. If you know the person well, clothes can sometimes be a good option if you think about what the problem is. If they’re having any kind of leg surgery, a new skirt is great as is nice, loose yoga pants.
2. A maid service is another great way to help someone heal, especially if they are told to stay off their feet or not move their body. You can hire a one-time maid service from various companies or you can offer to go over and scrub some floors yourself. It’s especially nice if you can have it done before they come home from the hospital and then have a two week follow-up.
3. Cooking can be challenging. Some people can’t get out, some people can’t stand and cook and some people have difficulties knowing what they’ll want to eat day to day as they adjust to being post-op. Consider a meal delivery service or coupons for local restaurants that delivery. Also think about doing a grocery run for them, stocking up their fridge with necessities so when they come home they have liquids and easy to digest food.
4. Nothing makes you feel uglier than surgery; everything that goes into your body is going to affect your skin, your hair and you whole well being. A spa treatment gift certificate is fantastic whether it’s for a massage, a manicure, a pedicure, a hair cut – anything that will help the person get back to normal quicker is always a good thing.
5. Do a DVD/Magazine/Book run and have all that waiting for them at their house. If they’re into cooking, grab some unique and different cooking magazines. Do they love home? Stock up on all the latest. Pick some DVD’s to go with it and they can lay in bed and read and watch until their hearts content.
6. If they have pets, consider a dog walking service or doggy day care gift certificate. It’s really hard to be bed ridden or fatigued and have to take Fido out for walks. Or consider donating your time for a couple of weeks to do some dog walking or cat sitting or bird feeding.

Amish settlements have become a cliché for refusing technology. Tens of thousands of people wear identical, plain, homemade clothing, cultivate their rich fields with horse-drawn machinery, and live in houses lacking that basic modern spirit called electricity. But the Amish do use such 20th-century consumer technologies as disposable diapers, in-line skates, and gas barbecue grills. Some might call this combination paradoxical, even contradictory. But it could also be called sophisticated, because the Amish have an elaborate system by which they evaluate the tools they use; their tentative, at times reluctant use of technology is more complex than a simple rejection or a whole-hearted embrace. What if modern Americans could possibly agree upon criteria for acceptance, as the Amish have? Might we find better ways to wield technological power, other than simply unleashing it and seeing what happens? What can we learn from a culture that habitually negotiates the rules for new tools? (via)

I often feel like a great contradiction; I have long been an advocate and avid user of technology (having been on every computer since the Commodore 64 & Apple ][) but at the same time have completely resisted so much of it – it took me years to get a cell phone. And although I’ve been online since 1988 and had a web page since 1995, I am really hesitant about spending lots of time reading other blogs and updating my own. I love connection and sharing information but still feel confused about Twitter and Facebook. I totally keep up to date on everything new media and tech because I both love and work in it but at the same time I read lots of books, garden and spend a great deal of time outdoors, disconnected.

Over the past two years I’ve had a really hard time trying to put all of this into words and accurately describe (or even catch up) to how I’m feeling about technology as more of it’s created and incorporated at crazy speeds. Because it’s not going away and really, I don’t want it to. It’s just trying to figure how to be a part of it instead of swept up in it.

With the addition of Twitter, RSS Feeds, and Facebook, I’ve found myself receiving the same bits of information several times over. For example, I used to just subscribe to a blogs feed and access their info that way. But if that person is on Twitter, they’ll also tweet about their new post and link to it. If they’re on Facebook, chances are their Twitter hits their Facebook profile and I’ll get an update there, too. LinkedIn now offers the same. So instead of getting one piece of information one way, I’m getting the same information 3 or 4 different ways which results in an overload.

But what happens if you then remove that person from your Twitter feed? Will they think you aren’t their friend? This has happened to me. People have equated my Twitter removal with a friend removal even though in real life I did a lot more and gave much more support than just clicking “follow” on Twitter. So once you incorporate technology, removing it becomes really hard because of social and sometime business consequences.

A lot of my work is in new media so if I’m not Twittering up a storm or talking about the same things as everyone else or Diggining’ every post, it can seem as though I have no idea about these things. The truth is, I do and almost always know about them from the beginning before main stream thanks to all my geek friends who build the stuff and I get to test it out. But there comes a point where I ask myself, in my personal life, do I need this? How much value does it have to me? How much value does it have to my readers? Am I overloading us both? Am being redundant? Am I just saying whats already said to several mediums just to stay relevant, but not even really being relevant?

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Jack and I reading the last issue of Domino. What will we do without it?

My parents never subscribed to any magazines while I was growing up and I honestly don’t think I could have told you what one was until I saw my first National Geographic about age 8. But when I hit 15 I discovered Vogue and my magazine obsession began. Fashion magazines were my main indulgence until my early twenties; I learned Italian through Italian Vogue, I feel in-love with the 16 series in New Zealand and then, in America, found InStyle.

But when I got my first real home – the kind where I bought furniture and knew I’d be around awhile – my magazine interests changed to decor magazines. Back issues of American Victoria, Country Living, Elle Decor, House and Garden along with the English magazines Country Home and Country Living, my French staples Marie Claire Maison, Marie Claire Idees, and Maisons Cote Sud and my Danish loves Boligliv, Isabella’s.

There came a point, however, a few years ago when I was so tired of magazines; the same old, same old. So I stopped getting them and last fall recycled dozens and dozens of them.

But one magazine I have really liked – and was even going to subscribe to this year – was Domino. I couldn’t tell you one person who didn’t like it. In fact, when I went to the newsstand today, the two men that run it said, “You know it’s the last issue, right?”

“Yes,” I said, “It’s a sad day.”

They couldn’t understand why it was stopping publication since it was their best-selling magazine. They told me how much they both enjoyed reading it (big, tall, scruffy men reading Domino. Loved it!) and didn’t know what they would read in its place.

Neither could I.

One of my favourite features was the fact they included paint colour names for most of their stories. I also loved how they combined fashion with home, frugal items with luxury ones, were young and fresh but had lots of traditional ideas, too. It was a great mix of ideas that I often find lacking in other magazines which focus one just one idea (modern, country living, arty etc.).

So with Domino gone, what are you reading now? Are there any magazines you can replace it with? Web sites that are filling the void?