DragonBlog

What to do, kids, when you encounter an ATHEIST!!!

Thanks to linkage through Davezilla.com I found this little nugget of religion today. Now, normally I don't get all shocked and what-not when people get all zealous about their religious views, but...

Well the link is to the area of their site for kids. And to start with, the lamb's head spins when you move the mouse on and off it. And it makes a noise like it's in pain!

Oh.. and there's thong underwear included in their online store products too... I mean c'mon! What are they thinking?

I must quote now:

"If you find an Atheist in your neighborhood,
TELL A PARENT OR PASTOR RIGHT AWAY!

Very advanced witnessing techniques are needed for these grouches. Let the adults handle them."

I have no words. (I already posted most of them in the comments over at Davezilla) I don't want my child exposed to such radically skewed and one-sided views, for one. I mean...

*stares in dumbfounded horror*

Breathe, Amy. Breathe.

I'd better stop now, before I hurt something trying to explain my reaction to their site.

and all the plugs were plugged...

Ah, the things one can accomplish with 11 hours, a little caffeine, and the desire for more open space. My computer is now completely across the room from where it was. My desk is now cornered such so that I can peer 'round my monitor and see the middle of the room. Where we plan to drop the playpen tomorrow so our son can return to his rightful place at the center of our universe.

My husband's desk is now in the corner where mine was, but in a different configuration altogether. The home gym has moved to a new place in the room where it can make acquaintances with different dust bunnies than in it's previous realm, and somehow the mini fridge with all the soda pop in it has moved so that it is still completely across the room from me. Ah, well. I've got a new corner and the space in front of the window is clear so it may even get opened this year. Depending on the glare on my screen. >:-)

And I only lost two nails in the whole process. Not bad, considering I've just washed down a couple aspirin to head off the back pain. I'm still surrounded by clutter and boxes of all the stuff that needs to go back on the shelves, but I think I'll like it here for a while.

And there was only a couple of problems when bringing the computers back online...

Problem number one. All plugs plugged, all cables cabled, all things relatively secure and in place. I expected to have the speakers in the wrong plug. I usually get that one wrong the first try since it's marked kinda weird. That's not the problem. The problem is that when I try to use the keyboard, the mouse stops working. Huh? I thought I had a hardware conflict or something, so I start unplugging my USB cables and firewire cable. Still doesn't work. I switch to a different keyboard and mouse, but still have the problem. Confused, I start looking in the computer for address conflicts and stuff like that... Then my husband mentions something about how it should work, since we have "all the plugs plugged". Ah-HA!!

I have a wireless keyboard. It's set up with two plugs - a ps/2 plug and a USB plug - so you won't need to have an adapter, and I had plugged them both in without thinking. My keyboard was conflicting with itself (which explained why I had two keyboards listed under my hardware manager) and my mouse was just shutting down out of exasperation! We pulled one of the plugs, plugged all the other stuff back in and now it all works just fine.

Problem two, was getting back online. Our little LAN is set up kinda funny and I pulled everything out in such a flurry, I forgot to notice which port the internet went directly into and got it wrong when setting it all back up. A little trial and error and we were back in business again.

Aaaaaahhhhh... I feel so much better now that my computer is back online. I wonder if there's a 12-step program for me?

"Hi, my name is Amy, and I'm a geek computer addict..."

Now for some well-earned cookies and then bed. :-)

Commence with moving furniture...

About to unplug.

From the internet.

From the wall.

Oh Dear.

*tears out hair*

Pray for me.

Striving to achieve Awakedness...

Well, today didn't necessarily go any better than yesterday. I did not wake up to the alarm, but did wake just a wee bit before 1:00 pm at least. The night before, while tossing and turning in bed, I had remembered to check the alarm. It SEEMED like it was in the ON position, so I went back to my tossing and turning and thought nothing more of it. My husband had obviously been nice enough to turn it on for me. Unfortunately, it was in the RADIO position.

Normally, radio does not wake me up. I've tried favorite stations, not-favorite stations, talk shows, and even talk shows in other languages. The problem is, I sleep right through it. All it does is skew my dreams in rather odd ways. I have rather vivid, unusual dreams to begin with, and I don't always (with some rare exceptions) like people messing with them! It's just not right to be slaying the evil orange aliens by squirting them with a new-and-improved toothpaste! Nonetheless, it doesn't wake me up. I mostly just wake up annoyed.

Regardless, since I don't USE it, my clock radio isn't SET to a radio station right now. In fact, it's sitting at the far end of the dial I think, and might even have the volume turned all the way down. I use the buzzer. After at least five snoozes, the buzzer stands a chance of waking me up. Some times it takes 10-20 snoozes, and I have been known to turn the damned thing off in my sleep, but out of all the settings on the alarm clock - it's the only one that has the remotest chance of getting my ass out of bed.

My absolute BEST bet, used to be a phone call. That would wake me right up. But I've learned to sleep through most of those too, as they are usually from telemarketers that I don't want to talk to anyway. I must have trained my sleeping self not to buy anything, as I'm not suddenly inundated with subscriptions to Good Housekeeping, or tickets to charity balls.

There has only been one thing in my life that had the absolute assurance of moving me from a sound sleep to stark wide-awakedness. Three hard pounding knocks on the adjacent wall. My mother used to do that to me when I was young. She'd bang on the wall instead of yell for me. Not that the sound of "AMY MARIE GOODWILLIE GET UP HERE!!!" wouldn't still send chills down my spine if I were to hear her voice saying it. Especially since she's dead now, but that's a whole other blog. And has a great deal of weight on why I was so happy to take on another person's last name when I got married. To hell with that "keep my maiden name" crap. I couldn't WAIT to have another person's last name. I figured if I never got married I'd just legally change it. Fortunately, love intervened and simplified matters. :-)

Of course, part of my problem is that my mother was a night person too... It's probably partly learned and partly genetic, as I've tried very hard on several occasions to swing my schedule back to what is considered the "norm". But my mother would stay up to all hours and you were NOT, under any circumstances, allowed to call our house before 11:00 am. I'm not strict on that at all. But people who know me, know that they can't expect me to speak coherently prior to at LEAST 9:00 am. There's reasons I keep notepads and pens by all the phones. I once made a date with a guy while asleep and had to call him back to find out when it was and if we'd really set one up. It was truly embarrassing.

"Hey, um... Did we talk on the phone, like, an hour ago?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I was, um... when did we say we were getting together?"

"Huh? Saturday. Did something come up?"

"No, no... I was... asleep when I talked to you. I can't remember the details."

"Glad to know our relationship is so exciting..."

That's not verbatim, but the relationship wasn't very exciting or long-lived anyway. It was way way back in high school and he was a few years older and ready for more mature things in a relationship than I was. Driving down the street with my hand down his pants may have sounded like a good idea to HIM at the time, but as a freshman in high school it wasn't something I was quite ready for yet. It was a magical moment. One that ended the relationship when I flatly refused.

And to think, only a couple years after that, I dumped a boyfriend because he WOULDN'T try to get in my pants. He was too much of a gentleman for that. Then I waited another five years, got back together with him and eventually married him, but that's all for ANOTHER blog. In the meantime, I'm hoping to be sleepy enough soon so I can go crawl under the covers and snuggle up next to him.

mmmm.

Oh, before I forget again... I finally got my "permanent link" links working properly so I may link to previous posts occasionally when they relate. Yay me!

Also, we may do some rearranging of the room our computers are in tomorrow. This may mean no blogging from me for a day or two, we'll see. It depends on if and when we move my desk, which is quite a chore and requires a TON of plugs getting pulled.

So, if for some reason I don't post tomorrow, you'll know why. Hopefully it won't come to that. :-)

My Mommymeter & Today's Confession...

I didn't realize what some of the aspects to having a child would be. There are things nobody tells you, even after you endured the frightening saga put forth by the childbirthing class, where they handed you bits and pieces of things they might have to use on you or your baby during the birthing. You thought that was bad, but nobody prepares you for the post-delivery "gushing" "leaking" that occurs and the fact that you no longer have control over when your bladder decides to empty for those first few weeks. I did have one friend who discreetly gave me a package of liners to put under me in the bed.

"You're gonna need some of these." she assured me. "Just trust me."

She was SO right.

And nobody told me about the "mommymeter".

Now, I realized a few years ago that I did, indeed, actually have one of those "maternal clock" thingies and that it was, indeed, ticking away at me. We still waited until WE were ready and in a better position to have a child. And I feel that, on the whole, I'm enjoying the motherhood experience far more now than I would have if we'd rushed into it at any point previously.

Now that I have a child though, I have found I have a mommymeter. This is located in a previously unused portion of my brain apparently, and wakes me up or alerts me at the slightest stirring of my child. I found out about my mommymeter during that very first day, when Jareth would stir in his little plastic cart in the hospital room and I would suddenly be awake and watchful even though I'd just pulled an all-nighter to bring him into the world. Needless to say, I did not sleep a whole lot those first three months before he slept through the night properly. The first month was especially harsh as the mommymeter is connected in directly to the breastfeeding meter. I was only able to breastfeed for the first month though, so that simmered down after a while at least. Wide awake and leaking down your shirt brings whole new issues altogether.

Sometime last week though, my mommymeter stopped working properly. On Monday morning, I woke up and it was 3:00 IN THE AFTERNOON !!!!!

Fortunately, Jareth was playing happily in his crib and didn't seem to notice the discrepency in time from when he normally is gathered up. I, on the other hand, suffered miserable guilt all day long. His normal waking time is 10:00 to 10:30 am. Or, at least, that's what we seemed to have settled on for me to get enough sleep with my nights being so messed up. He wakes up earlier than that, but happily plays with the few stuffed animals I have tucked in there with him. I have woken up to the sound of him chattering away in a happy little voice and making the crib gym thingy make it's music.

I just don't know why I'm sleeping so late. I did change one of my medications lately, so perhaps that has dulled the sensory range of my mommymeter or something. Definitely something I'm going to bring up to my doctor. In the meantime, I've set up an alarm, to wake me at 10:00 am. So far, it's not doing me any good. On Tuesday, I hit snooze about a billion times. On Wednesday, I forgot to turn the darn thing on the night before. Today, I must have turned it off in my sleep. I'm getting up somewhere between noon and 1:00 pm now.

Jareth is fine with it, but I need to find a solution. I feel guilty leaving him in his diaper for so long if nothing else. He's such a good baby. He deserves better.

*sniff*

I'll be a better mommy. I gotta. I just love my little guy SO much!

Boys and their toys...

Well, the new website is coming. I was making some serious progress on it tonight, but it's not ready to put up anywhere just yet. I did get a few things working that were irking the bejeezes out of me though. yay!

My son is one smart little devil. I'm not just saying that because I'm his mommy and I want him to be smart. No... he IS smart. And it's going to be one interesting ride raising this little bugger...

He got this toy for Christmas. It's a yellow platic toolbox with a red plastic hammer and some various-colored plastic shapes. When you "hammer" the shapes through their respective slots in a center section of the open toolbox, it makes noise and blinks bright flashy colors in the middle. It's supposed to help him learn to associate putting the shaped blocks into the shaped holes. All sorts of brain skills involved, not to mention hand-eye coordination. And it didn't try to teach my child some economic or social lesson while he's less than a year old. I'm trying to be very picky about what kind of things my kid's toys are teaching him.

Unfortunately, he has circumvented the entire process by learning to press the little red button that the blocks are supposed to push in while going through the holes. That button, naturally, is what triggers the toy to make the noise and the flashy lights. So now, after he's done picking the blocks out and winging them gleefully across the room - he presses the little red button to make the noises and lights go.

He also got a LeapStart Learning Table, which either makes music or teaches him the alphabet and such, depending on which mode it is in. He loves to sit, playing with some other toy and reach over to "turn on the music" on the table. He's also figured out that the part that opens and closes does not need to be closed completely in order to stop the music. He'll happily waggle it back and forth at the point it needs to be in order to affect the sound on/off setting.

The kid's too smart for his own good. On top of that, he's the product of his parents. I'm going to have to watch out for when he gets to the stage where he'll start taking things apart so see how they work INSIDE instead of using them for their designed purpose... Most kids get into trouble for breaking something glass by playing ball in the house or some other such nonsense. I dread the day when I come home to find the dvd player strewn across the living room floor with him sorting through parts. Fortunately, I should have quite a few years yet to warn him off of the expensive-to-replace items. I already have an old computer box set aside so that his first computer can be built in it. Had that before he was even born. The scarey part is, I'm tempted to start building it NOW. They make computer programs for toddlers now! Talk about a head start... :-)

Tidying up...

Well, I've at least made it so all the links in the dark blue squares up at the top now GO somewhere. It's a start, even if half of them are going to old, icky pages that I totally want to redo to match the overall scheme. The About page is new, kinda whipped up suddenly, but at least there IS something now.

Also added this link to my "fun stuff" links on the sidebar - another one of those whack-the-penguin fun things, only this time you're throwing snowballs to whack penguins into a target. Didn't know there was another one out, found it over on Aaron's Rantblog.

Yesterday, on Davezilla.com he posted a link to this ("Careful! Poop on there!") which was funny as hell. Perusing the site it was at, I came across this other one (Sorry I Fouled Your Door) which struck me as really funny too. Both stories are the type of ones you can really only find funny AFTER the fact, but when they are being told by the people who endured them and THEY can find the humor in it, then there's no reason why WE can't enjoy a good laugh as well.

On a frustrating note, I've finally found the problem with my "permanent link" stuff for the posts, and why they don't actually work. Now I just have to figure out how to properly fix it. I thought I had it all tidied up last night, but for some reason Blogger refuses to understand that I keep all my archived files in an "archives" folder. Foiled by my own organizational skills! *grumble* For some odd reason, my husband's works perfectly. This leaves me even more ticked off as I helped him set it all up in the first place. Lately I've got more passwords to services, html code, css code and other stuff spinning in my head I can't keep anything straight. My Opera browser let's me have a "notes" area where I keep a lot of the scripts and stuff copied down, but it's getting messy to sort through.

I am the queen of notes. I have little slips of paper everywhere. I am slipping in slips of scribbles.

On another note, the "rules" page is now up on Quick Shtick Writing, although it's just a quick page that I threw up, so there may be revisions coming yet from Brian. He did do his paragraph for tomorrow morning early, as he's got an early meeting at work tomorrow. I'll post my next one tomorrow like usual.

Blogopoly?

So, there's this Blogopoly thing I found through another site. Looks fun, I just wish someone would set it up as a flash or shockwave thing. Would be really cool if it was online-playable.

But, the winner of Guardian Unlimited's Best of British Blogging "Best Written" award, Belle de Jour didn't appear to be listed!! Shocked and dismayed, I submitted the following:

So, even if he doesn't include it, you too can save the image above and use it for your own blogopoly pleasure!

I found the link to blogopoly listed at this blog, which I'm not blogrolling out of personal pacifistic views. However, as I live in the Chicago suburbs and this guy aparently lives somewhere in Chicago, I've been keeping my eye on his site out of morbid curiosity concern.

Reduced Fat Quick Shtick...

So Quick Shtick Writing has moved into it's next stage this past week. In discussing how it's gone so far, Brian and I decided that the first section is not a chapter at all, but actually a Prologue instead. I'll have to drop in and adjust the posts accordingly to reflect that to any readers. Other than little changes like that, I don't see us really messing with past posts as it would change the scope of our little experiment. If we could go back and change something that already happened, it would make it too easy on us - part of the point is we each work with what we are given.

The prologue was intensely dramatic, perhaps overly so. Chapter 1 (for lack of a better term at the moment - we don't know if this is just a story or something longer) is looking a bit more reasonable, and introduces new characters. We still aren't entirely sure who the "good guy" and "bad guy" were in the Prologue... we're waiting for this story to sort of tell itself as we plod along.

I'm often intimidated by the magnitude of the projects I start in writing form... I have these lofty ideas that I cannot seem to capture on the paper without going on and on in detail that has the potential to bore the reader. It seems as if all the stories I start want to be created on some epic scale that I don't realistically have the time to complete.

This project is thrilling me, as it is much easier to commit to adding a paragraph (or a certain amount of text anyway) each day. Brian writes his in the morning usually, before he goes to work, and I get up all excited to see what he wrote and ponder it. If I haven't written mine by the time he gets home from work, he takes care of our son while I type it in and then he reads it so he's got the evening to ponder over what he'll be writing the next morning. Sometimes he'll get excited and write the next one right then instead... The weekends are more a two-step, he posts-she posts process.

I'm curious to see where the story heads next.

Sharing my Bananas...

Okay, so the title is an inside joke that only about 8 or 10 people would get, and only three or four of those might ever even see this post. It's relevant to sharing one's wisdom and/or karma, and we'll just leave it at that.

I still had the link to this open in my browser, in the hopes that it would help me be motivated to sort through my clothes and maybe ship some out to Rebecca, who lost everything in a fire. So many other things have been taking precedence lately that I haven't gotten to it, and it seems that when I have time I'm also too wiped to be sorting through a bunch of clothes. So, after reading the site and one of the news articles that showed a picture of her with bags of donations to sort through, I thought money would be a whole lot more helpful to her anyway. I'd already mentioned it to Brian, who had suggested that I send some of the money I had left in my PayPal account.

I'm usually hard pressed to specifically donate to any causes, since I believe that a lot of them just use the money to make more flyers and hire more telemarketers or air more commercials and in the end only a smidge of the money makes it to the cause anyway. I'd often rather give my time or, if I'm going to donate money, I'd prefer to cut straight to the source. In this instance, it appears it will be going directly to the source. It's not much, but hopefully it will help. It certainly can't hurt, and I've been in situations where people have helped me out in small ways that have meant a lot to me. I like to pass the karma along if I can.

Besides, in this instance it was money I earned off an ebay listing that sold, so it's just been sitting there getting dusty other than one other small purchase of a gift I couldn't resist giving. And I left a teensy bit in the account so it will remain active for my next ebay listing... once I get my hands dirty in the boxes in our garage and in storage, that is. Over the last ten years, I managed to inherit two generations worth of pack-rattage, and I've been starting to wade my way through and weed it into a more manageable mess.

Other than that, today was slack-off day. Other than some minor chores in the morning, we roleplayed, we played with our son (whose trying to master his new skill of sitting up on his own - which he only just figured out last Sunday in front of an audience and everything!), we rented Solaris on DVD, and cheated a wee bit on my semi-diet.

As for the movie... we might watch it a second time before it's due back. Brian and I both seemed to reach the end thinking "I'm not so sure I liked it", but after discussion we realized that it was a really interesting film.

This is the point that I will mention that there is a distinct difference between a "film" and a "movie" to me. A "movie" is usually made for the masses. A "film" feels more intently devoted to the making of the film - you can feel it from the screenplay to the way the audio is cut, from the light playing on a person's face to whether or not there is contrast in the colors the main character is wearing and the surroundings he/she is in.

I know that there is thought put into all these aspects in "movies" as well, but a "film" gets classified by me as such because it came off well. And, just because I classify something as a "film", doesn't automatically mean I liked it. In this case, overall, I did. The lighting was well played, the colors reflected or contrasted to the mood of each scene well, it was a story set into a scene, as opposed to a scene which contained a story, which is something I often like. I also liked the open-endedness of the ending that allowed you to peer at it from your own perspective and decide what it meant for you. Many times, movies like that don't go over as well in the theatre, as people "don't get it". Usually, those are movies I enjoy watching and chewing over. Fodder for discussion with Brian.

And now, my family is off asleep, and I blog away. And end to a lovely day.

I think I'm glowing a little. *glow* G'night!

Wishes...

Spent most of today rearranging furniture. Seems I can't keep anything the same way for very long. Changing my blog's look, changing my living room look, and starting to itch to change how my windows desktop looks too. Brian came home early from work today as the computers there were down, so we did the living room today instead of tomorrow, which means that most of tomorrow we plan to slack off. Officially. I think I'll put it on the white board where we list the important stuff that needs doing and the grocery list... in big red letters: SLACK OFF. Maybe I'll put a big red box next to it so we can check it off as "done" on Sunday morning.

Didn't leave myself much time to blog today, got distracted a little while ago and ended up putting another 20 items (books mostly) onto my Amazon wish list. Lots of people link theirs, so I might as well link mine too. Assuming I have the link right. It's not like I'm expecting anyone to buy me anything off of it until... oh... April. (hint, hint, nudge, nudge to those who are related to me or otherwise are normally inclined to buy me birthday gifts) Talk about making it easy to buy in advance for me, assuming you have internet and a credit card. Of course if you don't have internet, you're not reading this anyway so nevermind (points south towards her uncle - yeah, you!).

One of these days I'll just put a permanent link up on my page to my wish list and my son's wish list, which I maintain. Of course HIS wish list has items on it that he can't HAVE until he's 4 or 8 years old, but looked SO COOL I had to put them on so I don't forget they exist! Like lego castles with dragons and stuff!!! And little lego knights to protect them!!! Oh, I am gonna have SO much fun now that I have a kid!!! Makes all the poopy diapers worthwhile.

I just have to make it into, through, and beyond the terrible two's. Or so I keep hearing. *looks around nervously*

It can't be THAT bad... can it?

Yeah, I know... someone will remember I said that a year and a half from now when I'm complaining...

I hear the "I told you so" echoing backwards from the future.

*sigh*

One day at a time... baby steps, right? Or baby knees right now, as he's trying to crawl.

Fiddling about..

I ran off and did errands today and such, but I've been messing with my blog template again tonight, making it all blues and such. It's getting better, but it's still not where I want it. *sigh*

I have a song from this album by The Who banging around in my head right now...

"I'm your uncle Ernie
I'm glad you can't see or hear me
as I
fiddle about
fiddle about
fiddle about...."

One of the nastier moments in that particular "rock opera", but I'm applying the lyrics to the more current moments where you don't get to see all the horrid color combinations I made before uploading the current version.

Nor do you get to hear the expletives that run through my mind (I have a child now, I can't say them ALOUD!!) either.

At least this blog didn't suffer any red yet.

I'm so busy messing with this blog, I wonder if they've missed me on Horizons? Probably not, as I haven't made many new friends over there. I'm still mourning the loss of my EverQuest friends, since none of them seem to have converted.

Ah, well... the virtual sun will still rise tomorrow too.

RED??? eww...

On a whim, to check something else, I looked at Quick Shtick Writing in Internet Explorer.

IT WAS IN RED !!!!

ewww!!!

It's supposed to be in maroon and gray...

It's better now.

AND, my work site is up: www.doingforyou.com. I'm already having possible re-design ideas for it.

*yawn*

maybe later. *falls back asleep*

Messing with the mix...

As you will probably notice (unless you've only just now blindly stumbled in here - in which case... *waves*) I'm messing with how the site looks. Since I'm having to wait until my business site is up I can mess around here some. I've uploaded my business site and made some nameserver adjustments and all, but every time I've checked it today it still didn't do squat. So I had to fiddle with something. It seems that browsing through other people's templates and making minor adjustments to them is something I can do one-handed while I have a small child sleeping on my shoulder...

So forgive the dust while my links resettle and such. There are quite a few of my links that lead... well.. back to here at the moment, until I have somewhere else to point them. I think I have all the other links up, but they looks kinda sloppy.

When I publish this post, I'll get to see how blogroller reacts to the new code. So if it looks even worse than before, you'll have to forgive me, but I have a couple other things to tend to whilst I have both hands free and I may not get to it until later or tomorrow.

Point of note - I post most of these at 1 or 2 am... that's still "nightime" the previous day, so when I make references to "today" or "tomorrow", you might want to take that into account. I'm a night owl mostly and my son seems to be letting me keep some of my schedule intact. He's such a little angel.

Until next time... *waves*

My own little piece of the Internet...

Well, I finally bit the bullet today and bought myself some webspace. Not for this site, mind you, but for the work site I've been putting together. Within a couple of days I should have it all up and running and then I've got to actually advertise myself and all that. How exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time.

What good is a blog if I can't promote myself here some... when it's up (not right now - it just basically says "coming soon" on it at the moment) it'll be at www.doingforyou.com. I might be so bold as to link it again once it's actually got something up there that says anything worthwhile.

I just can't wait until it's all up and set... then maybe I'll be able to justify time to fix my personal site. Kinda hard to let myself play when I should be doing the same stuff, but towards the goal of making a little money.

No news blurbs for today... tried some, but came up kinda dry. Sorry. Not every day is exciting. I mean c'mon... I washed diapers today for crying out loud! How much more homemaker-boring can a girl get? Tomorrow (once I've recovered), I may even do the rest of the laundry... oooooh!

Gosh... I can't wait. The sorting alone just gets me all a-twitter!

*mutter, mutter, mutter*

I think I'll just go play some solitaire now...

Project #1 - The Beginning of Quick Shtick Writing

I had an idea.

It seemed like it might be a good idea, but I chewed and gnawed on it for a bit, tried to see what it would taste like with my rather vivid imaginary tastebuds...

On February 11th, I said:

"Screw this, I'm just gonna DO it. NO harm lost if he isn't interested in participating..."

Thus began Quick Shtick Writing. I set up the blog, and made the first entry. I sent him an invite for the new "team" blog.

He was interested. He still is, even. "He", of course, being my husband, Brian. He writes. I write. And sometimes, we even write together. Mostly our wedding vows, which I was very proud of. One of these days, I'll put them up on my site somewhere. We spent hours and hours at coffee shops, summing up our feelings for eachother and some of our history into something resembling a wedding ceremony. And it all rhymed. It was the coolest thing I'd ever been involved in writing. It made for a beautiful ceremony.

So, Quick Shtick Writing is the two of us, writing together. But, the real fun is that we are doing it at an approximate one paragraph at a time rate... I write one, he writes one and so on. Some "paragraphs" will be kinda continued by the next person, some will consist of dialogue which will sorta seem like more than one little paragraph, but you get the idea. We're taking turns writing it. And we're not planning ANYTHING in advance. We're writing it on the fly and so far it has been changing every time one of us posts.

There are NO preconceptions.

We only talk to eachother about what's BEEN written, but NOT what ideas we might have for the future. (usually it involves conversation around here like "ARGH.. you gave him a GUN?" or "Doughnuts? It's a Doughnuts box now???"... it's quite fun)

I'll be adding a "comments" thingy to it soon. I'm currently playing around with how it looks to make it more publicly presentable now that we've decided to share. Once the comments are up (today/tonight I hope) let us know what you think... It's an exercise in writing that we're trying out and it has the potential to be great loads of plot-twisting fun.

Enjoy!

Blogrolling along...

Well, I've added myself to the whole "blogrolling" community now. My "blogs I often read" section is now called "blogs I roll" and I can easily and quickly add new blogs to the list with a couple of clicks on my mouse. Really kinda cool.

Trouble is, I can't seem to make it still look the same as all my other links yet...

*pout*

I at least made it finally the same colors as the rest, but the text is too big and the little list boxes to the left of each link are only sometimes showing up seemingly at random.

I refuse to believe, however, that I've reached the end of my abilities to figure this one out... if nothing else, I'll set it up differently, but in a way *I* like it to look... we'll see what happens.

Valentine's Day, was lovely...

Breakfast in bed, snuggle with my little boy and his bottle, bathe and dry off (with... um... help/hindering... hehe), then off to shop for new bras and underwear whilst my little boy and husband charm all the salesladies... lol. Then we take the 'roundabout way to dinner (first restaurant had a 2-hour wait, so we tried for plan B, C, and eventually landed at D - 30-minute wait), where we fed our little angel his dinner in shifts as we ate ours.

Finished the evening off driving home and discussing the conversation we'd heard at the table next to us - three men sitting in a packed restaurant at a 6-person table and talking about hiring/firing policies in Corporate America. I am, once again, thankful I don't worship the Almighty Dollar as one of them seemed to. I do have to wonder at how they ended up there, discussing business, on Valentine's Day, when I saw at least one of them was wearing a wedding ring... I guess it's a lonely marriage to a Corporate American. Can we make that a politically correct term? Segregate them into different bathrooms and busses perhaps? I don't want them polluting my aura... :-P

Nonetheless, I have new undies and bras (and we got a discount, since Brian's company is owned by the same one as the store we went to), and the Corporate Americans got some of our money today. I suppose that makes us all happy. In a short-term kinda way. But I win - They'll probably spend the money they got, if they aren't already in debt like most companies - I get my breasts held aloft for at least another year. Yay me! There's more to MY hoard than coins...

Sweet Dreams...

Cows...

This article (at the bottom, on blogging) found while reading Word Shadows last night, got me to thinking about this blog.

In the continuing effort to figure out what all I want to use this forum for, I'm playing. The article mentions including news. Well, I'm not much for news. Brian reads stuff at CNN.com and keeps up with the world better than I do. He reads faster than I do, for one. It takes me a while to read an article, and I'm just not the type to sit glued in front of the television set, even for the 20-minute news. If I want to know something specific I google it and ask Brian what he's heard. If something major happens... THEN I get more thorough.

But, somebody says you need news in your blog for it to be interesting... Far be it for me to fall away from the pack completely. I might need the safety of the herd later on... you never know.

Sooooo...

Every so often, I'm just going to come up with a word and google it with the word "news" added and see what comes up. It won't all be new news specifically, but I will have hopefully learnt something new.

Today's word was "cows". Don't ask why... I don't have an answer for you other than "it was the first thing that popped into my head."

The following information was learnt about "cows news" today (comments in italics are from me:

Lightning strike kills 13 cows:

"The cows died where they stood - all in an area of about 15 metres. They were very close to each other."

Lightning Kills 20 Pregnant Cows

Wow... I didn't realize that lightning was such an epidemic for cows!

Keeping Cows Safe From Terrorism

"Some see America's farms as tempting morsels for evildoers looking to sow economic chaos...

bad pun! *smack*

...If there is an agricultural attack, experts agree, it's most likely to hit America's increasingly centralized livestock supply. Nature-made assailants, like "mad cow disease," have shown how vulnerable our animals can be, noted David Heymann, Anderson's colleague at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. Moreover, groups like al-Qaida have shown an interest in biological assaults. And animal ailments are much easier to handle and spread than plant diseases...

I read an article about the flu that talked about some animal diseases being more deadly to humans.

..."There are five major feed lots in the U.S. and a pound each of FMD (foot and mouth disease) sprinkled close to them destroys the cattle industry. You'd have 40-foot-wide trenches 50 miles long to bury all the cattle," Anderson said...

eep... mass cow graves... not good.

...With this less-than-impressive track record of terror, John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, is hard pressed to understand why agro-attacks are generating so much concern...

um, gee...'cause we need to eat and a good majority of us eat beef and/or drink milk. Sounds like a pretty logical terrorist target to ME, and I'm not even a terrorist.

..."Why are we getting around to that one, but we're dragging our heels on protecting passenger planes from shoulder-fired missiles?" he asked. "We're spending a couple of hundred million dollars over the next couple of years thinking about it. And that's a proven threat."..."

perhaps because most people DON'T have access to shoulder-fired missiles, but could have ways to create poisons. It would be far a far easier plan to implement than having to go through all that smuggling and black market stuff to get yourself the missile and the thingy to launch it with.

EU quota likely for flatulent cows

"Gas emissions from flatulent cows could soon be restricted by a EU quota system as penal as that imposed on milk production, an agricultural expert has predicted."

Okay, so how do we tell poor Irish Bessy that she can't fart anymore or the government is gonna come and fine her owner?

---
If you want to read the full articles, use the links, I paraphrased them quite a bit. They aren't very recent articles anyway, but were amusing to me. Maybe the next search I do will include the date so I can get something more recent. *shrug*

So, anyway, Belle de jour received a mystery rose... My money's on The Boy. After the recent van?-sighting by N...perhaps The Boy is pining, what with Valentine's Day tomorrow...who knows. I'm hoping we'll get to find out the answer.

More prattle from me later perhaps...

More links for fun stuff, quizzes, etc.

More links up under "Fun Stuff". Found most of them while perusing the archives of Word Shadows. Similarly found the two I did earlier as well.

I did the following at Heart Maker:

first, a reminder for myself:

2nd, a statement of the obvious:

3rd, a wee valentine for me:

4th, for Brian, what every man REALLY wants for Valentines:

5th, a wee valentine for my sister:

6th, a wee valentine for my sister's boyfriend (RPG means RolePlayingGame and is NOT anything naughty, it's played with books and paper and dice and stuff):

7th, and last, a little heart-felt identity:

okay. I'm done now. Good night.

Been there, drove by that...

Seen this thingy on a couple of sites now... here's the states I've passed through or stopped in - most of them during the year I spent traveling in the motorhome with Brian. It's a little inaccurate as I don't remember what path we took to get to St. Augustine, Florida, so I'm missing at least one state that we passed through. I'm not entirely sure we didn't drive through slightly more of the northwest - possibly Montana, when we hit Seattle, Washington. I have a huge paper map that our friend Matt gave us just to mark our travels on. One day I'll have to pull it out and mark it up when I finally put together that scrapbook I'm saving all those brochures and other crap for. You know - once I've forgotten everything I saved the things to remember with... I'll try to get that done shortly after I finish my wedding album... One of these years.

create your own visited states map

Oh, how cool!

Product Rant Alert!!!

Will the person who is responsible for the inception of the design for women's underwear please stand up?

Thank you.

*Begins beating said person with a big blunt stick*

It MUST have been a man's idea. I'm not usually so quick to point fingers at the male gender and drop them into a stereotype like this, but if a man had to wear women's underwear all day....

Wait...aren't there actually some that DO?

Masochists. They must be.

ARRRGH!

For some reason, all the underwear I own seem to have the idea that they were meant to be thong underwear. In an attempt to achieve their unrealized potential, they spent most of their time working their way up THERE, until I, in a rather ungraceful moment, must reach up and YANK them back into submission!

*sigh*

Last time I was out shopping, I picked up four new pairs of underwear - two each in two different brands. Because they were designed to be like men's boxers, but for women. There's this chick on the bowflex commercial that wears these white spandexy boxers that look exactly like I'd want my underwear to be...So when I saw these in the store, I snagged them into the cart with some relative glee.

Pair #1 - potentially comfy if I lose more weight in my thighs. At the moment, they threaten to cut off the circulation in my legs if I were to wear them for too long. I weigh more than I'd LIKE to weigh, but I'm not obese...sheesh. For now, they will hide in the back of my underwear drawer until I drop another five or so pounds and try them again.

Pair #2 - Had high hopes... They don't cut off my circulation anywhere... However. BIG HOWEVER. They are designed as if someone took REGULAR women's underwear and added a little extra to the bottom. They look cute on the packaging, but the seams are running up the back in the same fashion as if I was wearing my usual underwear! So I'm wearing "boxers", but they are STILL trying to ride up my ass!!!

Next time I'm going to buy men's boxers and be done with it.

Some days I hate being a woman. Don't even get me started on the "mascara" topic.

*sigh*

Apparently some women even LIKE thong underwear.

Masochists. They must be.

Color me in pixels...

I almost forgot. I made this at Mr. Piccassohead. Sort of a Real Life self portrait. *giggle*

I might have to go back and try my hand a my DragonSelf and my InnerFairy...hmm.

Links up...

A bunch of new links are up now. You'll find them over there

Just in time for Valentine's Day...

I SO need to get some links up on the sidebar... if nothing else, for my own sanity. I find myself busy reading other people's blogs and then don't have time left for my own postings. I've got 30+ windows open in my Opera web browser right now and I generally get upset when I start having to scroll. Too many things I'm reading or researching for setting up my professional web site... anyone that knows of a quality web hosting company that can put up my site without any ads and for a nice low price and all... let me know.

I bookmarked and closed all my writing workshop links earlier today, just to make room... so now I'm DOWN to 30 open windows...

So, me(ish) has another project up. The previously mentioned mayfly project was hers, with her sister, if I'm understanding correctly. Now, it's her and her (beau?) doing be my anti-valentine. Apparently it's been going on for a couple years or so now, but I'm still a newbie blogger and all. I sent a few of these out to some select people myself. What fun!

Anyway, I'd better go mess with my sidebar now and drop in a few more links to some interesting blogs and other stuff I've found...

"Control? This is Houston..."

Okay, so now that I'm pretty much wrapped up from being sick, I get to see every OTHER doctor on the planet...huh? Bleh... Doctor's appointment yesterday, Doctor's appointment Monday, but today was Jareth's turn to visit his pediatrician. Today, in fact, IS his 9-month "birthday" so to speak, although I've been referring to it more as his "birthd.." He doesn't get to have the rest of the word until he's actually a year old. The 9-month doctor checkup happened to get scheduled the same day...

All is good - He's a little taller than average, heavier in weight than average but actually almost thin for his height, and he's got a slightly smaller head than average - but in that instance, size doesn't matter - I've seen the look in his eyes and he's thinking all the time... The doctor gave him an overall "thumbs up" and gave me some instructions on how he should be proceeding on what he's eating and drinking. I'm now allowed to give him whole milk instead of formula if I choose to (although I think I'd rather stick with the formula until the one-year mark - it's chock full of all sorts of good stuff for him) and I was told I can now give him most table foods as long as it's cut up all small and doesn't have a skin. There are some exceptions - like popcorn - to avoid as choking hazards.

Upon leaving the office, I had this image run through my head:

A man sitting at a console with a microphone/headset on, looking intently up at a larger screen.

"Control? This is Houston. We have a GO on solid foods. Repeat, a GO on solid foods."

Naturally, this was why I had saved the grocery trip for after the appointment... I bought some Zwieback toast and such to start him out. I had thought he'd need to wait for more teeth to arrive (he's only got two, although more are on the way), but apparently he's allowed to have small stuff he can gum to death before swallowing.

I often have to wonder how we ever survived before all these "modern conveniences" like knives and fire... at what age did children start to eat solid food then? Did they have to wait for enough teeth so they could rip the raw flesh of their prey apart after the father had beaten it to death? Or was cro-magnon-baby just a vegetarian? Maybe worms... little ones? The right size, but a bit squirmy if you ask me...

And to think... when I began typing this post I WAS hungry for lunch...

*shudder*

"Houston, this is Control... HOLD on solid foods, we need to re-align the appetite module first. Repeat, HOLD on solid foods..."

*sniff*

I'm buried beneath an avalanche of tissues.

If I just LOOK at a box of Kleenex, my nose begins to burn and bleed.

I'm sick. I went to the doctor on Thursday, for a prescription refill, and mentioned that my throat was bugging me a little. He said it looked fine.

It was just a prelude to my sinuses exploding into an agonizing drip-a-thon.

On a positive note, my throat's all better...

When I'm not hocking up swallowed snot or sneezing another clump of brain matter out...

*sniff*

If I never post again, it's because I accidentally sneezed up my frontal lobe.

Oh... and my nearly-nine-month old son... is afraid of the sound of someone blowing their nose. His face scrunches all up into a big pout that erupts into wailing tears as if someone seriously scared the crap out of him or gave him his immunization shots...Of all things to make him cry, it would have to be related to my already feeling like crap and not particularly wanting a little boy screaming at the top of his lungs in my arms...

I had to make my husband come home today and rescue me. He's staying home tomorrow too. He's even going to run out and buy the "good" tissues in the morning... the kind with lotion in them. Maybe I'll get to retain some of the walls in my nasal passages after all. He's also going to look for some sort of nasal spray... I normally get all freaked if I accidentally inhale powdered sugar from a donut into my nose, but right now I feel like snorting a jar of vapor rub mixed with vaseline.

*sniff*

It's probably just a bad sinus infection, but I'm still glad I got Jareth the flu shot. I just hope I don't accidentally give this to Brian. Keep your fingers crossed all.

In the meantime, I'm going to head back to bed for a couple more hours of Nyquil-induced sleep.