Made me giggle #248

Toll Tag FAIL

Saw this on a car a couple weeks ago and had to snap a picture. I'm actually kind of impressed, though. Considering that the adhesive on these things is on the face, how in the hell did this person manage to stick it to the OUTSIDE of their windshield still facing the proper direction?

Spam-A-Lot

That, apparently, is where this blog resides. Sorry to do it, but I'm turning the annoying real-person checker back on since I've wasted far too much time lately deleting spam comments. To those of you who ARE real people, I apologize.

I Stole This Topic From a Xangan

I have a confession. Blogger and I, we're not exclusive.

I keep my book blog/reading log on WordPress, and a writing exercise blog on Xanga.

I don't like Xanga, but I signed up as part of a writing group several years ago -- our group leader was a Xangan and it was the only way to participate. I haven't posted anything to my Xanga site in ages and don't maintain it. But, while I was hanging out over there I found a few bloggers I enjoy reading and Xanga does offer the awesome feature of emailing me their entire posts, with images, in a daily digest.

Today's included this post by author Jeff Markowitz about books as gifts and asking people what books they gave or received for the holidays.

I love books as gifts, both getting AND giving. And I'm trying to encourage my 8 yo's slowly developing love of stories, so I buy her lots of books year-round.

For Christmas 2009 (since that's what we celebrate here at ScoopCentral) I gave lots of books:

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz

My baby brother (he turned 30 last year, but being able to call him that as long as we both live is one of the few perks of being the oldest kid) is in lurve. He's in lurve with a woman who has him reading new things and is a huge Koontz fan. I am not a huge Koontz fan (and yes, I have read more than one of his books) but I LOVE his "Odd Thomas" series. I told the Penguin (baby bro's super-secret codename stemming from a childhood obsession with the aforementioned flightless fowl) that if he was gonna read Koontz he had to read these and got him the first one for Christmas. Turns out he'd already read it (damn! hate when that happens) but didn't own a copy, so all was good.

Jigsaw Dinosaurs by Anne Sharp

This was a shameless re-gift. The girl is 8 and girly and kicked this off her shelves about a year ago. I am, however, aunt/great aunt to two little boys, one 6yo and one 1yo. Boys tend to hold onto the dino thing longer than girls, so this one was cleaned up, made sure all the puzzles had all their pieces, and passed on to my 6yo nephew. I hope he liked it as much as J did (I had to work this joyous season and didn't get to see any of dh's side of the family open their prezzies).

Fail Nation by failblog.org

Bought this for the hubs. His favorite app on his ipod touch is the one from failblog, so this just seemed to fit. And he's impossible to shop for and I was desperate. And it was on sale.

What can I say, visual humor has a limited lifespan for me, so I don't find it all that funny, but hey, it wasn't a gift for me...



The Pioneer Woman Cooks by Ree Drummond

I've been reading Ree Drummond's blog off an on for years, and I was SO excited when I found out her book tour was coming to Austin. I put it on my calendar 2 months in advance.

Then, a week and a half before the big night my dad told me he was having surgery and wanted me to be there. Since he normally waits til after it's over and done to tell me he's doing things like this I figured I should take the day off, drive to Houston, and be there.
The surgery was the day before Ree was in Austin.

I could go to the book signing, or I could work late and make up the time for the day I took off and get a nice, whole paycheck 3 weeks before Christmas. The paycheck won. But Lisa got to to go and took lots of pics! She even let me fondle her signed copy of the book over the holidays.

I bought this one for my mom because Ree reminds me a lot of my mom and it's rare I run across a cookbook my mom will like that she hasn't already bought for herself. Ma's kitchen has three bookshelves--nuff said.

A Scanner Darkly (Graphic Novel) by Philip K. Dick w/ Harvey Pekar

Basically just screen shots from the 2006 movie, but it's cool anyway. And my Dad2 is a sci-fi geek who read PKD before they changed his titles and turned his stories into movies.


The Hungry Scientist Handbook by Patrick Buckley and Lily Binns

Okay... So I was browsing ThinkGeek.com and saw this and ordered it for Dad2 without checking the description. He taught physics and chemistry for 20 years, I thought it would be appropriate. Then he opened it and started flipping through it. This is one weird book. But he seemed to like it.

Just, well, I don't actually EVAR want to know about it if he decides to make the edible undies in the book!

Finally, the books I bought the GirlChild. Frankly, there are too many of them for me to attempt to go find cover images on the web and think up witty bonmots. You get a list and Amazon links and you're going to like it!

(sorry, forgot my audience for a minute there...)

Bad Kitty Gets a Bath by Nick Bruel - It's too easy for J, but she loved the original Bad Kitty so much I couldn't pass up this older kid book...

Chucaro: Wild Pony of the Pampa by Francis Kalnay - She's a horse girl. Nuff said.

The girls also likes cats... All of the below are by Erin Hunter

Forest of Secrets (Warriors, book 3)

Warriors: Ravenpaw's Path #1: Shattered Peace

Warriors: Tigerstar and Sasha #3: Return to the Clans

The last two are graphic novels. I started buying them for her last year in hopes that they would eventually lead to her reading the full-length, no-pictures Warriors books. For a change, it worked! She just finished the first Warriors book last week and was SO proud of herself. It is her first longer novel that she read all on her own. She started book 2 this week, too.

Now, the big question:

What books did YOU give as gifts this year?

The girl is just amazing...

J is finishing up a poetry unit at school and her poem was so awesome (not that I'm biased) that her teacher (a) told me in advance that I would be surprised/wowed by it and (b) chose it as the opening poem in their class poetry book. Without further ado:

Her

by J

Her smile, so
beautiful
Blond, golden hair,
her light baby
blue eyes
Four years old
Too young
She left me.
I wasn't even born yet!




And yea, I teared up again just re-typing it.

For the new out there, my oldest daughter, S, died in a backyard pool drowning while I was pregnant with J. We've made an effort to make sure J knows about her sister and that we love them both, and well, obviously she's been paying attention.

And probably needs therapy, based on the above, but I'm hiding my head in the sand on that one for as long as I can...

na-NO-wrimo

I just pulled my NaNo buttons out of the side bar. I am at peace with my decision to abandon my 2009 NaNoWriMo project. That does not, however, mean I want the tally of my failure to finish to stare me in the face every time I see my blog--no matter how rare, based on my recent posting history, that may be.

Around November 18th I got few days behind, something I know from past experience is easily fixable. This year I let it be the final nudge over the edge on a decision I'd been contemplating for a week. Abandoning my tale.

This year's book sucked. The idea was weak, at best, and not one I was remotely passionate about. Some people say it's better to NaNo something you aren't passionate about so you won't worry about the quality. Me? I need to be invested in it, at least a bit, or it will never go anywhere.

I didn't have anything I wanted to say this year. I seem to have an odd-years NaNo curse. I win in years ending in an even number. I abandon the project as dreck in odd-numbered years. Kind of teh suck, but, on the bright side, it means I'll make it next year. Write?!?!

Stolen from Lisa

I'm home sick with day 5 of a headache and can't sleep anymore right now and don't trust myself to edit myself, let alone someone else's stuff, right now, so you get a shamelessly stolen blog post, courtesy of Lisa at Put It On the List - who stole it from someone else. Doncha love the interwebs?

Below is my vacation map. I've visited all of the places below and stayed long enough to do something memorable. If all I did was drive through on the way to somewhere else, or change planes, I skipped that state, otherwise I'd have to add New York, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Colorado :-)


visited 16 states (32%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Looks to me like I need to get out more :-)

I'd like to visit:

• Florida -- I want to take the girl to Disney before she's too old to enjoy it.
• Minnesota -- I did a series of articles a last year on Minneapolis and it looks like an interesting place to visit.
• Indiana -- Friends across the street moved up there a few years ago and it'd be great to go visit them. We were there as surrogate family when their oldest girl was born (4mos younger than J) and the girls haven't seen each other since they were babies.
• Alaska -- Friends and family tell me I ~must~ be part polar bear I like it so cold. Be nice to see for myself. And I wanna see whales that are NOT in a ginormous tank at Sea World.
• Hawaii -- I'd have to be insane not to want to go to our own US tropical paradise, right?
• New York -- Hokey, I know, but I'd like to see the Statue of Liberty. And a Broadway show that is actually ON Broadway at the time. I lurve musicals.
• Colorado -- My mom lived here for a while and, well, it just looks purty in the pictures.
• Maine -- Just cuz.
• Oregon -- Why? Cuz it's there. You hear about the attractions of California and Washington and Oregon seems to be the unloved middle child. I'm all about making a state feel loved. (did I mention I'm in a lot of pain and can't see straight and I reserve the right for this to make no sense whatsoever? I did? Oh good.)
• Illinois -- See notes above re: Minnesota. I did a similar series on Chicago and want to see the Adler, the Field, etc.
• Michigan -- I wanna see Mackinac Island. Read about it, have family that's been there (the hubs has family in Michigan so we might even HAVE family there, lol), and it sounds like a nifty spot to visit.
• Oklahoma -- Being a good lil Texan I have spent most of my life disparaging the state immediately to our North (and based on my one hotel stay there it was NOT without cause!), but the pictures and stories of the Pioneer Woman and Shannon from Rocks in My Dryer have just about convinced me that I may have been a little too hasty in my judgment.

That's all I can think of right now. Must be time to go back to bed.

Tuesday Tirade: The Answer to All Of Your Questions is NO

I moderate a small local moms' group. I joined a few years ago and kind of fell into moderating.

Lately, though, it's been a bit of a chore. Why? The economy, of course.

People are tightening their belts. They're getting more creative with their marketing, and trying to do more while spending less. Social media, whether its the evil FB, I really hate that site, almost as much as I despise MySpace, Twitter, online groups, whatever, is mostly about investing your time and your personality.

So let me be straight up: MY MAMAS ARE NOT A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR CRAP.

We are a small group, under 40 members. Biggest we've ever been was around 90 and that was primarily due to a lazy (guilty as charged!) moderator.

We're small so that people feel safe and comfortable talking about their families, their kids, their nursing problems, sex after babies, whatever the topic du jour is. People who stick around like our rigorous moderation.

When a woman joins -- Yes, it is a MOMS-only group -- we send her a note asking her to tell us more about herself and her family and how she heard about our little group before her membership is approved.

Don't answer the survey, don't get to join.

When she joins she's moderated for a while, either until she:

1. Unsubs after deciding we are not what she was looking for. This sometimes happens immediately, sometimes not til inflammatory topics (the mingling of religion and public education is good for weeding out the wimps) come round.
2. Posts enough that we feel comfortable letting her post without a babysitter.
3. Posts so damn much (that is ok) that it floods my inbox with crap to approve and I unmoderate her just to make it STOP.

We are serious about making our little group a place where moms feel safe and secure. We state upfront that if you are here to market your crap you are not welcome. Not if that's the ONLY reason. We have a lot of WAHM members and they talk about work, but, like everyone else with something to sell (garage sales, craigslist items, etc), are only allowed to actively market their biz one day a week. If you only post to market yourself, we will eventually kick you because that's not why the rest of us are there.

I say all this because the last week or so has seen a rash of service-oriented spam join requests. People with brilliant things to say for themselves (in the initial Yahoo groups form---I'm pretty sure they all gave up hope when they got the follow-up member survey) like:

1. I teach your children music. -- Really? No name? No indication of gender or whether or not you have a family or are just a perve who wants to eyeball our kids in the group photo albums? REJECTED
2. home work -- Are you offering to do it for my kids? Are you a maid service? A tutor? A work-from-home scammer? REJECTED
3. A dental hygienist for a local pediatric dentistry practice. -- This one was nice, but still a solicitation and therefore unwelcome. I'm still debating forwarding her spam to the practice to find out if they stand behind it or she was trying to drum up biz on her own...

That's a week's worth. I don't have time for it, we don't want it, and I guarantee you we will never let you in. We had a member in the past who harvested group emails for her home cosmetics sales gig---she posted normally, too, but we had to electronically smack her around and tell her not to do it again.

Maybe it's time to re-write our splash page? I haven't looked at it in years, but if it will make the spam stop...

Photo:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cursedthing/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Numero Uno

Candy tagged me with a meme! The challenge - answers must be kept to ONE WORD.

1. Where is your cell phone? right
2. Your hair? thick
3. Your mother? awesome
4. Your father? sad
   
5. Your favorite food? chocolate
6. Your dream last night? eh?
7. Your favorite drink? coffee
8. Your dream/goal? peace
   
9. What room are you in? office
10. Your hobby? books
11. Your fear? heights
12. Where do you want to be in 6 years? housewife
    
13. Where were you last night? Lisa's
    
14. Something that you aren’t? gourmet
    
15. Muffins? no
16. Wish list item? lawnboy
    
17. Where did you grow up? Texas
    
18. Last thing you did? phone
19. What are you wearing? glasses
    
20. Your TV? wii
    
21. Your pets? dog
    
22. Friends? thankfully!
    
23. Your life? complicated
    
24. Your mood? contemplative
    
25. Missing someone? S
    
26. Vehicle? BugTruck
    
27. Something you’re not wearing? socks
    
28. Your favorite store? Internet
    
29. Your favorite color? Red
30. When was the last time you laughed? yesterday
    
31. Last time you cried? stress
    
32. Your best friend? A-Moms
33. One place that I go to over and over? basement
    
34. One person who emails me regularly? xanga
35. Favorite place to eat? Baris

It's official.

As of a couple of hours ago, I am a nonsmoker. I have been a not-a-nonsmoker exactly half my life, with breaks for bearing, birthing, and nursing my girls.

I've known I ~needed~ to quit since the day I started. I just never really wanted to.

Well, I did, but I didn't. I wanted to quit for my health and to live long enough to be a burden to J and inhale less money, especially in recent years, but, well... The fact is I ~liked~ it.

I liked that it forced me to take a few minutes for myself.

I liked that, especially in these smoker-unfriendly days, it gave me an instant bond when I was in a group of strangers (at work, at conferences, etc) because we already had something in common, and as a collective group were persecuted for it.

I liked that it gave me an outlet for stress. Does a cigarette reduce stress levels? No, if anything it probably makes it worse, elevating the blood pressure and decreasing the amount of oxygen in the blood. But it gave me a minute to take time out and (not) breathe and relax and think and just, well, time.

Time I would otherwise not take for myself. The flipside of that, since I have gone to ridiculous lengths to ensure J did not know her mama sucked cancer sticks, is that I also used to make time to smoke. I didn't smoke anywhere near my house for a long time. Instead I would loop the neighborhood a few times on the way home from the grocery store til I'd finished. Or drive to a store twice as far away so I'd have time to smoke.

No more.

Did I quit for my health? Sure.

Did I quit to save money? Sure.

But mostly I quit because I had to.

See, I was a particular smoker. With the exception of the occasional deviation in emergencies when I couldn't find what I wanted, I smoked cloves exclusively, and a particular variety at that. --->

And I am old and set in my ways and I know what I want/like. And if I can't have what I like, I just won't do it.

And Uncle Sam says I can't have what I like. Someone decided that cloves were too much like the flavored cigs that Camel tried to make a few years ago (read that as Gateway Cigarettes-like other 'gateway' drugs) and they were no longer available for sale as of 9/22/09. I found out about the impending doom upcoming legal change on 9/13 and on the 14th went and bought as many as I could find within reason (7 packs). And smoked the last 4 cigarettes of the last pack today.

I am ~glad~ for the ban for the simple reason that it is forcing me to do something I've known I needed to do, but didn't want bad enough to do for myself.

That said... I'm still fomenting my rant about this because it's a stupid logic. If I start following this path I'll rant early and I want to save it for Tuesday, it's been too long.

Net result: Government being stoopid=good for Dy's lungs. Umm... yay?

(this post is both informational and a warning. In case I get all classic quit-smoking-nic-fit-bitchy, well, this is your warning and probably the only one you're going to get.)

PS - Anyone wanna give me odds on how long it takes RaidMan to notice I've quit? lol...

More Yarn Crazy plus NaNo Crazy Commences (sorta)

Because it's not like NaNo is coming up and I'll already be crazy... I've decided to do this. It looked like fun & will give me a chance to play with some yarns I wouldn't normally buy.

Now if I could just decide if I ~like~ my NaNo idea or not. I'm a bit tepid about it, and afraid that doesn't bode well. The Austin ML is putting together some plotting and planning events in October. I may go to one of those and see if it helps this plan gel or if I need to scrap it and start again. I have 31 days to come up with a plot after all...