Blogging

  • Calling All Wordies!

    I saw this over at the hidden side of a leaf.   A fun site called Free Rice, where they give you a word with a list of 4 synonyms…you pick the right one, they donate 10 grains of rice, which are paid for by advertisers to the page.  Kind of like The Hunger Site, but with learning!  For each correct answer, the next word gets a little harder. For each incorrect answer, the next word gets a little easier. Hey, you can show off (at least to yourself), learn something, and have fun, all while helping to alleviate hunger. Fun!

  • Seether – Veruca Salt

    I’ve decided to post this video today to divert myself from posting a review of The Almost Moon, which I finished a few days ago, and which I wrote the review for on Tuesday, but I don’t want to post it today because I just posted a book review YESTERDAY for crap’s sake, and can’t I just slow down with the books or something? And I had a good excuse with Number the Stars and Ethan Frome, as they are very short and easy reads, but now I’m back to regular grown up books, and I can’t stop. Would it disturb you to know that as a tween, I used…

  • If All of the ‘Cool Kids’ Jumped off of a Bridge…

    Would you? Apparently, for me, the answer is sadly, yes. I had no intention of joining NaBloPoMo this year. Just a few weeks ago, I was considering giving up blogging, wondering if I had anything left to say. My hiatus may have only lasted 6 or 7 hours, but it was real in my head and heart during those long hours. 😉 So, when I saw that it was time again for National Blog Posting Month, with its goal of posting at least once a day, every day, during the month of November, I thought, um, that kind of goes against my new blogging philosophy, my “I have a life”…

  • Awards…

    The lovely Scarlett over at From the Shores of Introspect and Retrospect has awarded me the Nice Matters Award! I like the little picture of the Cheshire Cat in the picture…if you’ll remember, the Cheshire Cat wasn’t truly nice, was he? I mean, he’s not mean by any real stretch of the imagination, but he does have a tendency to go off in his own little direction, and brings up philosophical points that may or may not be especially helpful to poor Alice. I’ve been known to do the same thing myself, though it’s been years since I’ve known anyone named Alice. So…the crux of this award seems to be…

  • Hey, I’m “published”!

    Back when Maya was in 4th grade, I went along with her class on a field trip to the Black Diamond Mines, in Antioch, CA. I took some pictures, of course, ‘for the blog!’, and they live on Flickr. Fast forward a year and a half, and I received an email from the folks over at Weekend Sherpa, wanting to know if they can use one of my pictures for this week’s newsletter! How cool is that? It’s the first on one the page, of the graveyard. And, how cool to find a website like this, that talks about groovy things to do in Northern CA, little hikes, big hikes,…

  • Stopping Abuse

    I read over on Roc Rebel Granny about blog against abuse day, which was last Thursday. I didn’t read about it in time to do a blog post at the time. Coincidentally, I read about a study which suggests that teens with several close friends, especially same sex friends, are less likely than other teens to be in abusive relationships. Here is the article, in its entirety: Teenage girls who stick close with their circle of friends are less likely to take abuse from the boys they date, a new study suggests. The intricacies of the teen years include more than the physical sprouting and associated zits. Teenagers begin to…

  • Confession Meme

    I surfed over to Relaxed Parents from Ms. Mamma’s comments, and found this little meme. It talks about blogging, which I’ve been thinking about since my pseudo-hiatus-thing*, so I thought I’d play along. Ten Blogging Confessions 1. Do you promote your blog? I’m not sure HOW to promote my blog. I haven’t really signed up for any services that might do that. I do leave my url when I comment, but I don’t comment randomly. I only comment when a post makes me want to chime in. 2. How often do you check hits? Rarely. I was pretty interested in it for awhile, but when I discovered that the majority…

  • September 11

    Last year, I participated in the 2996 project, which was an attempt to recognize all of the people who died on September 11, 2001. I was assigned a name, and I did a bit of research, and copied and pasted what I found about Mr. Abad. After that, I felt the need to write something more personal, and since I (happily) didn’t lose anyone that day, I wrote about my thoughts and feelings at the time. I was kind of proud of this post, so I’m repeating it for you today. Edelmiro Abad of Brooklyn at a wedding with his close-knit family: his wife, Lorraine, and in white from left,…

  • Duh…

    I mean, I totally knew this about myself…. You Scored an A It’s pretty obvious that you don’t make basic grammatical errors.If anything, you’re annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs.As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they’re only human.And it’s humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes. The It’s Its There Their They’re Quiz Thanks, Mom, for correcting my grammar all of the frikkin’ time, so that I don’t even know the rule or why something is right or isn’t, I just KNOW it, deep down in my soul. (That wasn’t sarcastic…really, thanks.) Too bad spelling doesn’t work that way…

  • OK, I guess it’s ‘blogthings’ Thursday around here…

    You Are 60% Good You are a fairly good person. You strive to live a moral life whenever possible. You are usually kind, generous, and loyal. However, you do have a dark side that even you may not see. When it comes down to ethical decisions, you tend to take the path of least resistance. So you may end up lying, cheating, or engaging in other bad behavior… because it’s just easier to do so.You are also probably: Conflicted and confused about the current course of your life Right now you are on track to being: A slightly crooked politician Sorry mom. I know that politicians suck. Honestly. And I…

  • Anti Racist Meme

    I was tagged for this one by Shelliza. She doesn’t say if she was tagged, or if she made this meme up herself. But I’ll go for it. 1. I am: Mostly British. Some of my family came to the U.S. as recently as maybe 4 generations ago, from England. Some of them came over back in the mid 1600s. I remember growing up saying I was English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh. I did our family genealogy a few years ago, and couldn’t find any Welsh, and the Irish and Scottish were both disputed. Some of my family came over as indentured servants, some as farmers, I don’t think any…

  • I’m Greg?

    I’m copying Beenzzz today, and putting up a quiz thing. I never thought of myself as the Greg type…more the annoying middle child. But hey, I’ll take what I can get, because Greg is WAY cooler than Peter or Jan. Maybe. You Are Greg Brady Outta sight! Suave and all American, you tend to be clean cut and upstanding. You’re friendly with most people and a huge flirt (sometimes even with family members!). What Brady Are You?

  • Stupidity

    Awhile ago, I signed up to be a blogger over at Top Blog Mag…they have four bloggers a week write posts on one theme. The theme this week is ‘Stupidity”, and if you’re at all interested in finding out what I did that was stupid enough to get me fired from Mr. Steak back in 1984, click on over and check it out.

  • Links of Love

    (This picture is of Shrimp Paulista, the last link of love today…enjoy!) Once in awhile, it’s fun to point people to some blog posts that they might not otherwise see…so, because I love you all, here are a few that I enjoyed this week (and maybe one or two from last week…): Py Korry bought a fancy space-age type turntable and rooted through our album collection, starting a new feature on his blog called “I could give a rip”, in which he rips a hard-to-find song from LP to MP3 and uploads it for your downloading pleasure. The debut song is one of my old school faves, “Some Girls”, by…