Black lives matter - from blacklivesmatter.com
Posted in personal
June 6, 2020

Black Lives Matter

It seems strange, that I haven’t written here. I’ve been so busy on Twitter amplifying Black activists. (So I’m not silent. Just elsewhere) There isn’t much that I can say that others haven’t. Our country is deeply rooted in systemic racism. The structures of power, law enforcements, finance worlds, city planning – all work together in tandem to keep Black people in a position where they can never truly succeed. Even if you’re financially successful, you still find yourself unfairly treated or targeted by cops. And all these policies have worked their way until they’re internalized. What do you mean…

image of devices on a table
Posted in personal
March 20, 2020

Working from Home Tips and Tricks

View this post on Instagram Sharing some of the things I’ve picked up along the way. One of the things I didn’t mention is that I was struggling this week. And that’s why I curled my hair today. A post shared by Whitney Drake (@whitneydrake) on Mar 20, 2020 at 4:20pm PDT I do have a day job, and while I’ve been at the day job through two acquisitions and three names for the network – one thing has been the same. I’ve worked from home. So in this time of self-quarantining, I thought I’d share some useful working from…

corvid 19 shopping - long lines at a grocery store
Posted in personal
March 14, 2020

Kindness in the age of COVID-19

So much has been said about COVID-19. People focusing on the greedy people who stockpiled toilet paper – or people even worse, like the guy who drove through several states to buy up all available hand sanitizer. So that he could sell it on Amazon with a markup. This week was rough, my friends. Not just because of the news (though I am always concerned, since I am immune suppressed). But between my work transitioning fully to work from home to some non COVID-19 things going on in our home, it’s been stressful. So while I’d made some small purchases…

picture of zorro the cat
Posted in personal
March 9, 2020

Goodbye Zorro

Friday night, we said Goodbye to Zorro. For those who didn’t know – Zorro was our nearly 20 year old cat. That’s right. He was just a few months shy of 20.

Team USA responds to their victory over the USSR
Posted in hockey, personal
February 25, 2020

Team USA Responds, Missing the Point

After the 1980 US Hockey Team was criticized for appearing at the Donald Trump rally in Las Vegas, the team doubled down with their explanation that they were standing there for America. Blah Blah Blah. People were still livid, and now they’ve given more interviews to try to fix the situation. This still misses what Americans were upset about. It wasn’t the MAGA hats – though that was definitely the final kick in the nuts. It was that they attended a campaign rally and somehow equated it with a visit to the White House. Of the guys who didn’t wear…

image of David Ayres, emergency backup goalie
Posted in hockey, nhl, personal, Pirate, politics, representation matters
February 23, 2020

Do You Believe in Miracles? Not when it comes to the 1980 US Men’s Hockey Team.

If you know anything about hockey, just from pop culture – you probably know two things. The Mighty Ducks and Miracle – the movie about the 1980 US Men’s Hockey Team. The Miracle on Ice The Men’s Hockey Team defeated the Soviet team. Which was a big deal! Our national team was made up of mostly college players, the youngest team in competition – the USSR had a senior team who trained together constantly. They had that team cohesion and a government back training system and just steamrolled everyone. They’d won the gold the previous 4 Olympics. In the lead…

Posted in entertainment, movies, writing
December 6, 2019

Counting to Twenty: The Irishman and the need to self-edit

The National Board of Review is saying that The Irishman is the best movie of the year.  Look, I haven’t seen it.  My husband has – and even as a Scorsese fan, he said it wasn’t that great. Based on the reviews, reviewers seem to equate length of film and career as the arbiter of quality. But I’ll tell you why I haven’t watched it.  It’s too long. I have nothing against long movies, or movies created for Netflix.  As a matter of fact, I love new methods of storytelling. And I’d thought briefly that that’s what this was.  Something…

George W Bush in a Dallas Stars jersey, walking back after dropping the ceremonial puck before the game.
Posted in Pirate
October 11, 2019

When Kindness is a Trap

I’m a mom – one of the first things I did as a mother was teach my boys about kindness. Its importance to be a good human being. That you respect others. They weren’t very old when I started to teach them that there were exceptions to kindness. I’m not suggesting that they be cruel to others, but I wanted to make sure that they could recognize that some people do not deserve respect or kindness because of their actions towards others. Why am I talking about this now? For the home game opener for the Dallas Stars, I watched…

Posted in my health, personal, Pirate
October 10, 2019

Crohns Recovery – Week 8 at the gym

Crohns recovery means something different every time I’ve brought it up. Up until this last year, recovery meant laying down until a flare passed. Or sometimes it meant switching to a new medicine or doing a course of steroids. Ultimately, after two separate hospital stays of 3 weeks each, which included two major surgeries, recovery meant something else entirely. I lost 30 pounds. It was nearly all muscle tone, but that was a lot of weight to lose. I lost all my stamina after a year or so of “taking it easy” while my body ate away at itself. My…

Posted in my health
September 10, 2019

Crohns and the last year.

It’s weird to write this at last. I’ve told this story to so many people, in so many edited and abbreviated forms that I felt like I’d told you all what Crohns did to me. Here’s the short version, and I plan on writing about some of the things in more detail: last year I had a mystery discharge and after 4 months of constant doctors visits and lack of detection on what it might be, I went to the ER just before Halloween, to get a CT scan with contrast before having surgery for what we thought was a…