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I might be the only person who cares, but if you’re on the site (and not in the RSS reader of your choosing) and you look over there to the left, you might notice that there is no longer an “uncategorized” category. Or, rather, there are no longer any uncategorized posts. That took a lot of work! Things may not be perfect, but there are no longer any posts without categories, posts with more than one categories, or otherwise mis-labeled posts. (For drama, let me state clearly that there are currently 2,829 posts on this blog. That is a friggin’ lot of posts! 171 posts left until 3,000 – checked with a calculator before saying that. I’ll do something big then.)
Tags, on the other hand, need some work. That is a much bigger job, though.
(Did you notice in the site redesign that the categories changed? 5 points to the first person who correctly identifies the theme. If you can’t figure out what’s what, mouse over them and a description should pop up.)
Probably, but I really don’t have anything to say. Not yesterday, either. Plus, I’ve been going through the archives (yes, again – it is very tedious and sometimes I want to just scrap it all), which makes me feel like I’ve spent way too much time on my blog, even if I haven’t posted one word.
But now I have. Posted. 61 words.
Hello, dear. You know I love you, right? I love almost everything about you, and miss you terribly when you’re away, or when the forces of nature try to keep us apart.
I just have one teeny, tiny little request of you. Could you please… not acquire any new content for a day or two? I need a bit of time to catch up on all of the blogs, Flickr groups, forums, etc. that I love so much. It is pretty hard to do that already, and then when new stuff keeps coming in, the number of unread items in my Google Reader increases instead of decreases.
Pretty please? Then we can go back to holding hands and telling each other our life stories and dreaming about the future….
A commenter yesterday (I’ve just discovered her blog, and she’s just discovered mine) told me that I haven’t updated my 100 Things lists in a long time. I have now remedied that. I know most of you won’t be interested (and the changes are relatively minor), but maybe one day someone new will come around here. I also added in my link to that 25 Things Facebook Meme that I did a few months ago.
I’m working on a post based on an idea she suggested, but it won’t come until later today.
If y’all were having difficulties loading the site yesterday. I have no idea what was wrong, and things are a little messy here as a result of my trying to fix the problem. Things should be fixed by next week, though I still don’t know what the problem is (and it’s not doing it now, so that doesn’t really help)….
If you’ve been using a news reader of some sort (like Google Reader or… whatever else there is out there for RSS and Atom feeds) to read my blog, you might want to update it to the new feed address. I started using FeedReader at the beginning of the year, and really like the options I have and the stats I can get from it.
For you non-news-readers, perhaps you’ve noticed a few minor changes around here. I’ve updated the sidebar, cleaning it up a bit. (The only thing I wasn’t able to do was move that sitemeter image, despite my best efforts.) Archives instead of a calendar, removing the allconsuming stuff, etc. And, I’ve started a meme. As in, I created one. It’s called The Thankful Meme, and you can see a link to it over on the sidebar there –> right underneath “recipes.” Why don’t you join me?
I’m also going to try my best to work harder on cleaning up the archives some more, though that’s never fun. My goal is to get to the place where I wouldn’t have a heart attack and die if a family member said, “So I was reading on your blog….” Also, I’d like to put a link to it on my Facebook profile, but I can’t do that just yet. There’s a pretty big difference between a relatively anonymous private journal and a public personna attached to a blog. Plus, people from high school scare me.
I won!
 “Best Looking Blog” Spork Award (They're too sexy for this blog.)
Click on the picture to go to the original announcement and check out all the other award-winning blogs!
I need a wordsmith. I have all these categories, and all these tags, on my posts, and most of them don’t really work for me. I need something more clever, more creative. Can anyone help? The categories I have that I do like are:
- all things superficial
- life at home
- memes (because it’s perfectly descriptive, not because it’s clever)
The tags I have that I like are:
- fashion police
- any that refer to the name of an ongoing meme
- your mom
I think I need to change the pics category to a tag, since ideally posts would be in one category but have multiple tags.
So here’s my question…
Since tags are the easiest way to search the site (or most effective, perhaps), what do you suggest? What would be helpful to you as a reader? What’s the main content of posts that grab your attention? I have some ideas of what might work better, but I’d rather have your thoughts.
I cleaned up a bit more on the blog, behind the scenes, in the same lines of cleaning up all my bookmarks. I went through the 30+ drafts that I had and deleted most of them. They were quotes that I was saving as “inspiration” that no longer inspired me, and most I could barely remember why or when I’d first seen them. Definitely out of date and needed to go. I’m down to eight. Plus, it was good to know that drafts don’t count in my “total” posts number, which is actually just the total published posts, so I’m still on track to get to 3,000. Note: I’m at 2,335 right now.
And then, when I get home, after making dinner, I’m going to actually clean house. We had a showing today, very last-minute (the office called at 1:45 for a 2:30 showing), and the house was not very presentable. Thankfully, it was just a Realtor wanting to see if it would be a good match for his clients, so the fact that it’s not clean was OK. But, to be safe, cleaning should be done tonight. To be fair, the floors are clean (having vacuumed several times in the last week) and there aren’t any dirty dishes in the sink ( loaded up the dishwasher this morning, or maybe it was last night). But, the kitchen table is covered with boxes of Christmas decorations, the rug in the living room is coated in cat hair, and upstairs is very cluttered (the exception being the bedroom, except that I have two baskets of folded laundry sitting on the floor that I still haven’t put away). It’s not that we don’t try to keep the house clean, but that we have had so few showings, its hard to stay motivated and feel the need to keep it absolutely pristine 24/7. Plus, has anyone noticed that it’s nearing Christmas time? That means decorations and parties and, personally, cookie baking and crafting. Those are all messy things, right? [Editor's note: it should be said that I don't actually have any holiday parties to attend, nor do I think I'll be invited to any other than family functions, but that doesn't really mean my house is any cleaner because of it.]
But, my desk at work is very clean these days. I’ve managed to get rid of all the paper clutter that people like to thrust on me, and things are quite slow these days, so when projects come in, they leave quite quickly as well. I’ve re-organized my two minimalist filing systems, and since I’ve gotten rid of that one work task/chore of the monthly meeting, that means one less set of files I have to maintain. My email inbox is pretty clean too, which always makes me happy (or less stressed, at least). My work email, that is, since in Gmail I’ve got about half a dozen emails to respond to.
Today, the phone-answering system seems to be working. I answered this morning, and haven’t had to all afternoon. Let’s hope for another day like that tomorrow, which starts with a cavity filling at 8 am for me.
[Editor's note: later on today I promise that I'll post something with pictures of crafty things I've done lately, to make up for the boring-ness of this post.]
Yesterday, I discovered something that, well, I’m probably the second-to-last person on the planet to discover. I know I’m super late in the game, but… I just discovered Google Reader. I know, I know. I think I’d actually tried using it before, and couldn’t make it work for me. But now, by George, it does. And I think it’s made my life easier, or at least a little less complicated, and I’m pretty sure it’s made Firefox happier*.
If you took the time last week to check out my updated , you noticed that I have a lot of blogs that I read regularly. 84, to be exact. 51 of those were in my daily reading, and 36 in my “weekly” reading (which, when it’s particularly boring at work, I check daily also, I just have lower expectations as to whether or not they’ve been updated). [Editor's note: the numbers don't exactly add up because a few of the blogs on my list didn't have feeds, so they're probably going to get dropped soon.]
Well, now there are 84 subscriptions in GReader, and I just have to open the page and scroll through to see the sites that have updated, and can either read the new posts right there, or click on the title to read it on the original site.
Another thing that I like about GReader is that it totally changed how I was using another bookmark folder, “Today’s Blogging.” I’d throw links in there to articles I wanted to blog about (“today” meaning “sometime in the future, probably never, because there were a kajillion links in there and it was just too unruly), new products that caught my eye, funny quotes, craft projects I’d like to make, etc. And I almost never did anything with those links, other than let them grow into an unsightly mess (there were over a hundred last time I accidentally opened them all – a mistake I didn’t make again).
But, with GReader, I can make “notes” and share articles/links with others. Add into that Amazon’s new “universal wishlist” feature (OK, so it’s a few months old, whatever), and there are now a whole two links in my “Today’s Blogging” folder (neither of which can be added to GReader, otherwise they would have been). [Editor's note: it must be said that there are still 4 folders inside that TB folder, one of which is recipes I have bookmarked to share with y'all at some point, another of which is other kitchen-y things to share, a third a list of cookbooks that might make good gift ideas for my father-in-law, and one of patterns that I actually need to move elsewhere. So, it's not entirely cleaned up, but it's getting there. I do have a system. In fact, this afternoon, after mailing a letter for someone, I'm going to get rid of those last two folders, because I can do that.] I haven’t figured out the best way to actually share articles with people – I’ll try out a few things, preferrably through this blog, over the next couple of weeks. The one bummer so far is that while I can tag articles, they’re only visible to me, so that isn’t very helpful for sharing. Plus, the shared page (linked to above) isn’t customizable at the moment.
*Note: how did I manage to read so many blogs before using an RSS reader, you ask? Well, simply put, I stored all of my links in two folders, “Daily Blogs” and “Weekly Blogs.” Then I just used the link at the bottom of each folder that says “open all in tabs.” I think Firefox will be much happier now that I won’t ask it to open 50 tabs each morning, simultaneously.
It should also be noted that there are 13 blogs I’m currently trying to read through the archives of (all of which I’m already reading daily), and 24 in my “Blogs to Browse” folder, assuming I ever get to the point where I need more blog reading. I figure that GReader should definitely help with this problem. Soon, I’m going to figure out the “Discover” feature in GReader, which will only mean more blogs to explore. (By “figure out,” I mean “try.” It’s just a link. I’m pretty sure I can figure out what to do with that.)
How long has IE7 been out now? How long have I had this new template? I’m just getting around to finally changing my name graphics to reflect the fact IE7 supports transparent PNG files and that the background of my blog is not white. Whew! Not much changed.  got older. A few people acquired kids in theirs ( ). lost the frog. But mostly, they’re pretty similar to the old ones (except now they all have transparent backgrounds). In a few cases I changed the font, or couldn’t find the original clip-art on Microsoft’s website (I’m surprised at how many I couldn’t find, actually), but really, things haven’t changed much around here. Except that something that was bugging me (the white-background images on the non-white background of the blog) is finally fixed. Yay me. I could have done a better job with some of them, but I do still have the original flash files so now maybe I will when I feel like it.
I’ve been avoiding the work that’s been given to me, mostly because I don’t want to do it, and partly because tomorrow is going to be even more boring than today, and I have to save myself something to do or I’ll go crazy. Crazy, I tell ya!
is finally here! I know, it’s so exciting. I’ve been delaying because I don’t really have anything good to talk about or pictures to share or recipes to post… and I didn’t really want to whine and complain and rant on such a momentous occasion. (Let’s just say that I’ve been a little stressed over school lately and have weird new muscle twitches, including one in my lower lip.)
So, what to talk about instead? Well, yesterday my congressman John Kline came to the bus station in the morning to shake hands. He seemed nice, so I thought I’d look up what he stands for (since shaking a hand is nice, but if we are polar opposites I’m still not going to vote for you), but I forgot. This morning, my representative Sandra Masin came and talked to people at the bus station, and she seemed very nice (and gave me a flyer, much like the thousands that have been in our mailbox daily for the last three weeks), and I thought I should look her up.
The flyer helped jog my memory, so I looked it up today, and while I won’t be voting for John Kline (sorry, John, but I think we disagree on almost everything), I will be voting for Sandra. It’s a little hard to tell for the latter exactly where she stands on the issues from her website because it’s a much smaller political position (and because the person who’s running against her says just about the same things), but she is endorsed by a whole bunch of groups that I trust (maybe a better way to put that is that I know their agendas and I can get on board with them, like the Sierra Club and my union), so that cinched it for me.
My Thursday afternoon teacher has promised to cancel class next week if Obama doesn’t win, because he will be too sad to teach.
OK, enough politics. Now on to what you’ve been waiting for… the winner! There were three whole comments on the “” post, and while I felt tempted to add in the extra 2 comments on the “Shock and Awe” post, I didn’t think that was necessarily fair, plus the three original commenters are regular readers, which seemed right. I asked a co-worker to pick a number between 1 and 3, and she chose…
3!
So that means you, Susan, win! Congratulations! You get your choice of either two decorative pillows (such as for a couch) or two pillowcases (so sleep on). You didn’t leave your email address – I’m assuming you’re my Susan from college, and I’ll email you details. If by some strange chance you’re a different Susan, you’ll have to email me and let me know.
Sample Pillows:
 Fall-themed pillows for the couch  Brown and green pillows for the bedroom
Sample Pillowcase:
 Awesomely retro themed pillowcase
And, for the other two of you (and the rest of you), stay tuned in for an eventual real 3,000th post sometime in 2009 (probably, maybe 2010 depending on how life goes), with an even better giveaway!
So… lots of people who blog do some sort of special thing for their 100th post, or 200th, or 1,000th. Um, I’ve been blogging way longer than that (not that I’ve had that much to say, I just like to say it often, “aloud” to myself). I kinda missed 100, 200, 500, 1,000, 2,000… can you see where this is going? In approximately 3 posts, I will reach a grand total of three thousand posts. Oh my goodness.
So obviously, I should do something fabulous and give away a car. But, I’m not Oprah. So maybe a nice crafty project. But, I don’t have time these days, so it might have to be a small crafted item. Hmm. I’ll have to think about that. I’m quite good at pillowcases. Anyone want some of those?
Here’s the deal: leave a comment on this post and whenever I get around to writing that three thousandth post (sometime early next week), I’ll randomly draw a winner and everything will be fabulous.
Of course, if no one leaves a comment, as often happens on this blog because despite the nearly three thousand entries, I really don’t talk about much of significance most of the time which means I’m not that popular, then I’ll just have to sit at home and eat chocolate ice cream by myself. And no one wants that. I barely fit into the few pairs of pants I own. So please, leave me a comment!
Editor’s Note: the author is not so good with numbers. It won’t actually be 3,000, but rather 2,300. Nonetheless, the giveaway will occur as planned. My bad. But, this does give me 700 posts to figure out an awesome giveaway for the real 3,000th post.
OK, this may be a really silly and tiny thing, but I am totally in love with the left sidebar menu on Sew Mama Sew!. See when you hover over the items, a little bird appears? I love it! I would do something like that if… well, if I had any idea how to go about it and/or the time and energy to tweak my blog template (which was, for the first time ever, completely designed by someone else who I paid to do it because PHP is beyond my skill set when it comes to websites).
A while back, I mentioned that someone I knew only through their blog (and who probably doesn’t even know me) had broken up with their significant other and how weird of an experience that was for me as a non-involved person in their lives. Well, they recently got back together after much secrecy and are now engaged, and so now I’m quite happy for them, in a weird way.
And to further prove that I am still attempting to figure out how to navigate the blogosphere (whoever thought up that word should be shot), a few days ago I left a comment on someone else’s blog (something I rarely do but am trying to do more of because how else do you create relationships and I always wish that more people commented on my blog so maybe I should comment on theirs…. Anyways, I commented and was very long-winded and probably pretty b*tchy (not towards the person, per se, but about someone in their life that they care about deeply) and potentially offensive. I didn’t mean to be, but apparently I was in a mood and not able to censor myself or step back and think about how what I was saying would sound to this person. In other words, I was talking to hear myself talk, not to be helpful. This person has consequently taken down their post, which is a bummer since I was actually interested in what other people had to say (not in response to my comments, but in response to the original post, because I did actually find it an interesting subject, my comments notwithstanding), and they will probably never again come and read my blog or comment.
So, yeah, I screwed up. Hopefully I won’t make that mistake again. I have made some positive progress in recent months towards forging relationships with people via their blogs (I am theoretically making a veil for someone’s wedding because I offered it as a possibility for saving expenses), but this week I took a step backwards.
Well, I’d like to think that I learn from my mistakes. Hopefully next time I will try to remember what the other person is truly asking and wants to know/hear, and not just spout off my own opinions. After all, I don’t want to turn completely into my mother (and this is her most offensive trait to me, for while you always know where she stands on an issue without asking, it can occasionally be her downfall or hinder her relationships).
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thankful
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