Blogging
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Learning About Brain Fever
One great thing about having a child Maya’s age is showing her the books that I loved as a girl, and seeing if she enjoys them as much as I did, or not. Recently I went through my bookshelf and found a few she might enjoy: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. This book was HUGE when I was in the 5th and 6th grades. I think I got it from the bookmobile that used to come to our neighborhood. If you’re a man, or a woman who spent too much time living under rocks, so you don’t know this book, it’s about a girl named Margaret, who is…
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Thursday Thirteen Organics
  Cherry and I were at the grocery store on Sunday, buying groceries for dinner. We had a short conversation about organic foods, and how it’s important to support organic and sustainable farming whenever we can. It’s better for the earth, better for the environment, better for our health, and it tastes better. Of course, there is always the issue of the pocket book, because organic foods typically cost between 50% and 150% more than conventionally raised food. We all know that organic food is healthier for us than conventionally raised food. This is even more true for children, due to the fact that their bodies and brains are still growing and developing.…
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Stupid Grammar Rules
English grammar is a tricky field to negotiate, with many little rules that can easily bug the hell out of you…I have my pet peeves, which would be rules that make sense to me, and people misuse them and abuse them and drive me crazy, but also, there are many rules that just make no logical sense whatsoever. I was thinking this would be a Thursday Thirteen, but I couldn’t think of enough stupid rules to make my list. So I turn the question over to my loyal readers…besides the five below, any really stupid grammar rules that you think need to be retired? Split Infinitives. I never even understood…
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Lame Meme
OK, I got nothing today. It’s Monday, after all, and besides that, my Brother and my SIL are coming to visit! YAY! They live in Alaska, and don’t get down this way as often as we would like. And us up there? We went in ’99, but haven’t gone back since. Dang it all. Stupid poverty. 😉 Anyway, since I need to get all of my WORK work done early, plus wash the sheets on the bed where they’ll be sleeping, and swiffer the floors, I’m going to keep this quick and easy today, OK? This will be a lame meme about your favorite foods, in different categories. I figure,…
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Bitacle?
So I’ve heard about this Bitacle thing…you go to the site, and they have content from people’s blogs there. Here’s what I got when I searched on my url: http://en.bitacle.org/blogs/blogsearch/jellyjules Mostly what I’ve read is on people’s blogs, saying, if you’re reading this elsewhere, don’t. It’s stolen. This content is only valid if you’re reading it on my site. What does this mean? I mean, I know it’s an example of someone stealing content, and putting it up on their site, but they’re not claiming to have authored the content, so I’m not sure what the difference is between this and, say, bloglines. It’s not plagarism if they link to…
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Thirteen Thoughts
My brain is scattered today, like the birds screaming outside of my window…a big raucous mess that occasionally gels and quiets down, and then start screeching again. Not sure what’s up with them, or with me, but this is the best I can do today. Thirteen Random Thoughts: 1. I’ve decided to try life without Diet Coke (not all at once…no need to evacuate the region). I know, I already cut back on the wine consumption (not giving it up, just cutting back). I think I was out of whack with how much I was consuming of both of these things anyway. BUT, don’t worry. I won’t be giving up…
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One Reason Condo Living Sucks
Hello Melissa and Lotus recently posted pictures of how they manage their books. Lotus has a very asthetically pleasing solution. Melissa’s house looks pretty much under control, though I’m not so sure about her DH. They asked the following question: How do you keep your books organized? Always looking for a chance to humiliate myself, I thought, OK, I’m game, I’ll take some pics and show you all the disaster that is our book collection. We started out well, even having a custom bookshelf built to fit our little hallway, to make room for more books than store-bought shelves were going to afford. But, we live in a little condo,…
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Time for Bloggy Love
Last month, I was on the ball, and gave a ‘perfect post’ award. I kind of thought of doing that again, but for me to do that would mean keeping the idea in the back of my head all dang month, and remembering which blog would be worthy, and comparing it to others that would be worthy, etc. etc. etc. I know, I can copy and paste the URL into a draft, or I could go all 20th century and write them down on a piece of PAPER or something, but instead, I just think, “Wow, that was good stuff”, leave my comment, and move on. I read great stuff…
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Autumn
raindrops pattering cool crisp air in our faces first rain of the year That was my first attempt at a haiku. Sorry ’bout that. For those of you who live in green states, meaning states where it doesn’t turn brown and dry and brittle in the summer, where you get rain or snow all year round, you don’t know how refreshing it is to know that the green hills will be returning…it’s nice. Last night was our first rain this season…we went out for a walk in the drizzle, and listened to it pattering down on our umbrellas. We had to towel off the dog when we got home. We…
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Misc. Friday Stuff
1st off, I’m really enjoying Maya’s caterpiller. Yesterday, I thought it was getting ready to go into its little cocoon, so I moved it into my ‘office’ so I could watch it. (Maya was at school all day, so she wasn’t missing it or anything.) It didn’t cocoon, though, it was just molting, but it was very cool to watch it eat eat eat all day. It’s a VERY hungry caterpiller. I tried to take a beautiful picture of it, but my camera isn’t up to the task, and they all came out blurry. If you want to see a beautiful picture of what I was going for, check here. (Used without…
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New Digs
Welcome to my new home. I still have some moving in to do…I’m going to try to bring over my HaloScan comments (maybe…that seems kind of daunting, actually), and then I have to go through my entire blog, post by post, categorize them, and clean up any broken pictures, that kind of thing. But I kind of thought, I would rather just move over, so I can get started. If you’re wondering WHY I moved, it was a combination of things. Blogger has a lot of problems, and I’m hoping to have better luck on my own domain here. Blogger beta has categories, but I haven’t tried it yet, so…
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Curse You, Blogger!
For not letting me in this morning, when I wanted to write all about how I had this crazy dream last night, when my (athiest) mother was guiding me all around Sacramento, feeding me pizza and telling me how important it is that Maya and I be baptized. (Ted was already baptized, so she’s not worried about him. And the pizza? The only other option in this dream was Olive Garden. I wonder what that means?) For all of you who, like me, are terribly bored and horrified to read about other peoples’ dreams, I suggest you send a check to Blogger, because the 12 hours since I woke up…
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Perfect Post Award
I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and award a perfect post. My mom received a perfect post award last month, which was pretty impressive considering how new she is to this whole bloggy world, but not at all surprising when I consider her heart, warmth, and damned-smartness. The other place I’ve seen these awarded is over at Mom101, who is one of my biggest blog crushes. Love her. Her site is where I first heard of the concept, which originates with Mama K, the queen of Petroville. The problem of course is, how to pick one perfect post out of so many wonderful submissions? Every day I go and…
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Happy (Belated) Birthday, Sesame Street
I have a couple of Portland related posts in mind…one is about the yummy and not-so-yummy restaurants we went to, one about books I read or bought there…one about the beautiful world of Forest Park. But I had to stop and do this, because Issa and Mom-101 did it several days ago, and it will soon be too late to jump on the bandwagon. Stupid vacation. So, this started on Mrs. Davis’s blog, where she talked about popular culture influences you had as a child, due to the new season of Sesame Street starting on August 14th. She gave out a bunch of linky love on the 14th, but I…
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Convoluted Vacation Wrap Up
Hello Bloggy Blog Blog Blog, I’ve missed you so. I’ve posted, sure, but it’s not the same as actually writing something NEW, and I haven’t been reading my friends’ blogs, and I haven’t been commenting, and boy, I have a LOT of catching up to do. Let me start by saying, I’m still Biff, because I’m thinking…One Week Ago Right Now…I was getting ready to go to Seattle…on vacation. Sigh. So, today I’ll tell you what we did on our vacation to the Pacific Northwest. (Mostly Portland.) We left home and drove to Ashland, where we hoped to see a play, but we got a bit of a late start,…