Category Archives: Blogging

Ever pack 3 days into one?


I’m pretty sure I did that on Thursday and again today.

Today I had 8 things on my To DO list – some fun, some chores, some money making blog work. I did 5 so that’s not too bad when you consider I also spent time with the boyfriend.

Anyway – my whole money saving goal was a) blown out of the water this week and b) a life saver when I needed cash and had to shut down my bank accounts on a Friday night! (possibly to be explained later, but everything is OK now).

So yeah, I’m at $3  in coins right now, but it will all be replenished if not next week, then by 4/15 for sure (and then some, there’s another teaser that I cannot explain just yet either!)

Exercise mid week went MUCH better! You saw the routine that I posted – I did that VERY diligently for the first hour & a half of Biggest Loser and that ended up being more than 30 minutes of course (damn commercials!) I did the same routine again while watching TV Wednesday night though not quite as long. Still, my abs HURT after two nights of all that!

I’ve begun the last step in my volunteering journey. Going out in a blaze a glory as a co-parent liaison for the varsity football program at the high school. We met Thursday with the coach and outgoing liaison and I have another meeting tomorrow morning because we have to launch right into planning for the first spirit wear website setup and sales and the budget for next year. That’s my main role – finances – which is right up my alley of course.

Speaking of football – so remember that 16 had a bum knee last summer? Well, let’s be honest – not just last summer – pretty much since he was 11 or so only it was never bad enough, long enough for him to complain and request a doctor visit. Last winter/spring he finally did and went through an MRI and then physical therapy and a regimen of icing/ibuprofren and continued stretches to try and get the knee cap to get back on track without surgery. A year of that which included the two months of complete rest with the concussion and there is still no change.

Tuesday, he has arthroscopic surgery. Two small incisions and they will look around to see if the MRI missed anything and also check to see if there is anything physically keeping the knee cap from resting in the right groove. If so, they will clean that up. They may also perform a lateral pressure release which…I cannot entirely remember! Anyway, just 45 minutes supposedly though he will be under anesthesia and he will end up with a pretty painful and swollen knee for a few weeks. BUT – once that heals, the ortho is saying he will be good to go and play football one last year. And that’s the whole goal isn’t it? As I said when we were there for a visit in early Feb – “Doc, bottom line, he has one more year to play football. Senior year. He can start if he’s healthy.  This is what he has been dreaming about for his whole life – to play varsity football for the Falcons. What can we do to have him ready to play flag football with the team in May, get back to weight training and be full speed in the summer?”

Check in time is 6:30am – umm..say what? Is there a bed for me to sleep on? :-)

Oh! I’ve picked up a writing gig to hone my skills and earn a wee bit of cash (for the play money fund most likely) $8 per purchased blog post. You search through the client list and find keywords and craft a 300 or so word post. If the client likes it and buys it – $8! I sold one this week and have 6 in the queue. 3 have been reviewed and are scheduled to be bought 3/21 – they get pulled every Thursday. It’s a fun challenge! You can either pick keywords that you know like the back of your hand such as the two I wrote last night on sports blogging and excel 2010, or you can try something totally different and take some time to research it a bit. I’m really loving it so far. I wont make Big Money with this company, but I will learn a TON. It is almost like landing an internship in copy writing/content writing. You have to cater to different companies across a vast spectrum of topics and style types. One company my LOVE your stuff and one might reject it. What I’ve learned from chatting in the forum with other writers is that once you find clients who like you and build up a rapport, you can almost count on them giving your posts 5 stars and moving them up in line to be purchased next.

First though, I need to have more than an hour at the end of every day to focus on it. In fact, I was supposed to block out some time today to do that, but it fell off the list. And now it is late….heck..really it is TOO LATE because we Spring Forward tonight! Yipes! That’s good though – it means I can run after work again instead of just on the weekends. Speaking of which, since I have a coffee meeting for football tomorrow I wont be joining Renee for the 3+ hour marathon. So instead, I joined her today out at Lake Hodges for a mere 90 minutes and 7 miles. Running out there the day after rain? AMAZING!

Lake Hodges

 

 

Dear Shirley


 

The weekend did not go as planned. Mother Nature not only didn’t listen to my plea for calm weather, she essentially threw a righteous temper tantrum that effectively canceled the Super Seal Triathlon. No cheering for my friends. No pictures. No cowbell. Just lots and lots of cold cold wind and rain and even hail. Consequently we treated our no running/no racing depression with lots of beer & high calorie food. OK, so that part wasn’t so bad :-)  I just want to say that I highly recommend both blueberry beer (can be found in your grocery store) and the Bloody Mary Brunch at Small Bar.

As an added treat,  I also found a lovely little surprise in my in box this weekend.

It’s been ages since anyone passed on a bloggy award to me. I guess that actually, you know, updating the blog now & then means more people might stumble across it and play along? :-) Shocking eh? I should really pass the award on to 15 since he has largely been the inspiration for writing (for better or worse!) Of course, he might not be so thrilled about that eh?

At any rate, I would like to send out a huge thanks and hello to new blog friend Scott at Raising a Realist for passing this along. He’s one of those YOUNG parents with an adorable daughter but he also has the added JOY of being a high school teacher. IOW, he really gets to spend his days with the likes my own Mr 15. Poor sap :)

So, the rules for accepting the award are:

  1. Thank the award-givers and link back to them in your post – DONE!
  2. Share 7 things about yourself. HAH – since my about me already has a few more than seven this might be difficult but for the newbies I will figure it out.
  3. Pass this award along to 15 other bloggers. 15?! Ack!
  4. Contact your chosen bloggers to let them know about the award. Will do!

Seven Things About Me

  1. I absolutely cannot handle violent movies. Images stick in my head way too easily and way too long. Why then, you ask, do you watch all the CSI’s and Criminal Minds and Gray’s Anatomy? Easy – at home on my TV I can look away easily and those are still somewhat tame compared to an HBO type show or a movie in a theater.
  2. Speaking of the theater… I have a very hard time NOT typing spelling that as “theatre” I learned how to read and write at a Montessori school where the teachers were all from Sri Lanka and had learned proper British English. Consequently there are still a few words in my brain that are spelled differently. I am not always aware of them, it’s just something that comes up as I am reading or writing now and then.
  3. My summer/early college jobs were a) Wild Animal Park food worker (traumatized by the site of maggots in a particular side dish has ensured that I will never eat that side dish again) b) Avon sales gal (HATED IT!) c) Office assistant at a periodontists where I filed charts and insurance forms. Just as boring as it sounds and convinced me I wanted nothing to do whatsoever in the medical/dental fields. IOW – all of those early jobs taught me exactly what I would NOT want to pursue as a career. Good process of elimination there considering I didn’t just automatically know what I DID want to do.
  4. (This is a lot harder than I thought to some up with these!) It’s been 12 years since I last made a car payment.
  5. I am the rare girl who does not like to shop for clothes. I’d estimate that the majority of the clothes in my closet are over 5 years old. Some are easily 10. There may even be items that I still wear occasionally that are pre-15 :-) Same with shoes. Sure, some of it is money but even when I might have had a more generous clothing budget I still didn’t shop much.
  6. Home or garden stores though? Oh yeah – let me loose!! There’s a frustrated interior and landscape designer inside me, I swear! Maybe that’s why I have no trouble doing content writing for a DIY pergola site :)
  7. (dear gawd, how happy am I to see that 7 pop up finally?!!) I’ve reached the age when, if I don’t write it down, it aint gonna happen. Well, it *could* be age, or it just could be the nature of how much I have to juggle but whatever – it’s my reality. And I’m talking some incredibly basic things too. Like remember to pick UP the dry cleaning you dropped off. I have to make a To Do list every Saturday morning for the upcoming week or I am lost. I love that my new phone has Siri because I’ve already asked her while driving to remind to do something when I got home (Put new pack of gum in car, take chicken out to defrost etc etc). Without Siri or my own To Do list notes I am pretty sure I would just sit in front of the computer reading and writing and watching videos and then wonder why my gas tank is empty, I have no clean clothes or food and for gawds sake why are the cats howling like that?!

And now, paying it forward:

The following bloggers are in my Reader or Subscription list so that means I liked their writing enough to not want to miss a single post, ok? OK! So give them a click please.

  1. Diatribes and Ovations
  2. Be Gay About It
  3. Child’s Play x3
  4. Juggling Life
  5. Mel, A Dramatic Mommy
  6. Miss Music Nerd
  7. museikchik
  8. My Imperfect Truth
  9. Old Blue Socks
  10. Broken Condoms
  11. The Unintentional Mother
  12. Dinosaurs Can’t Eat Pizza
  13. Visionary Gleam
  14. Three Cat Yard
  15. The Journey

Hey, it was easier to come up with the 15 than it was to come up with the 7!

And if you read all the way down to the bottom of this letter Shirley, I applaud you. Also? Cross your fingers for me OK? This is the afternoon that we go to the Dee Em Vee to get both 15 and 26 on the road to being fully licensed drivers.

I am still not entirely sure how I feel about that!!

But I am sure I will need a blueberry beer when I get home.

Love, me

One more stat from last year


Check out those top searches. Now, that first one makes sense of course. So does Halloween & peregrine falcon (gotta admit that’s pretty cool!) But….CLEANING? VODKA? Oh….lovely. One that like just about anyone else I loathe doing, avoid it unless it is absolutely necessary and I’d say my house is in need of it 99% of the time.

As for the other…well…..I suppose I should just own it….

Memo to my fellow bloggers – don’t be scammed!


Funny how things work out. I’ve recently been helping out a friend with something that should make us both some extra money. It’s taught me a whole bunch of new stuff about web marketing and search engine optimization and back linking and Google rules etc etc. Stuff I knew NOTHING about just 3 months ago. Now, as part of this process my friend has nudged me a bit about optimizing this blog – you know – optimizing potential revenue – and I reject that since this is basically my diary or just the random spewing of my mind, not something I want to feel pressured into updating.

(and….speaking of spewing – my cat just barfed so hang on…..SIGH…..)

So about two weeks ago I received an email from someone who had used the contact portion of the site asking me if I wouldn’t mind allowing a guest post. With a link to a site which they PROMISED was totally legal and not X rated and that I would have full editorial rights to the post if I wanted to change it and..oh hey…the would pay me!

Hmmmm….out of the blue? When I have been rarely if ever posting anything in here other than boring tales from my life and my kids in order to keep my mom happy? :-)

Turns out that due to this site being around for so long and having previously been featured by WordPress and also having enough popular images and it maintains some sort of decent overall page ranking. I was intrigued and wondered how much it would pay and could I get more info…. here was the reply:

Here is how it normally works:
1) We first agree on a fair compensation/post. Normally $100/post on a site like yours. 
2) I create and submit a guest post to you (or just send a link and anchor text if you prefer to write the articles).
3) After you review the post you let me know if there are any edits that need to be made and if you plan to publish the post.
4) You send me the URL of the published article and I submit payment to your PayPal in 1-2 business days. 

Remember, you will always have full publishing power over any post I send you and can always just send it on back if you don’t like it. After all, it is your site and you can do whatever you want!

Emphasis mine – sounds awesome right? Easy peasy! I host an article for them with a link to their vendor’s site – upon my pre-approval of the post and heck I could even write the article if I wanted as long as I embedded their key words and that all important link. Then – 1 or 2 days AFTER they see that the post is live – they send payment to my Paypal. $100/post! Sounds fantastic right?!

So..I then ask if they can send me a sample article, if there is a minimum amount of time the post needs to be up and is that perhaps why it takes 1-2 days to receive payment, and do they mind that I sometimes post barely once a week but then sometimes I get a flurry of inspiration and post daily pushing any recent posts (perhaps theirs) down a notch, but that I can control the posts and keep theirs as a Sticky of Featured one for a couple of days….

SILENCE.

What had been a next day response turnaround became….SILENCE.

Because she could tell I was onto their scam – get me to post something – ride the traffic for those 1-2 days – let’s say at least 2 since it would take a lot for folks to remember to check their paypal daily right? After two days you email them and receive dead air….but you might politely wait a day to hear back…so even if you then remove their post they have had 48-72 hours of riding your site’s traffic and you have received – SILENCE.

So my fellow bloggers who ALL get way more traffic than I do –  if you receive an email from someone at 43a.com – just delete it.

I mean – if you really WANT to pay me $100 to feature your site on mine – hey now, I’m all for it! Of course, considering that I just embedded a sentence in here about a cat barfing, maybe you want to reconsider. And if you don’t, well…then I gotta admit it kinda feels like I might be the one pulling off the scam!

 

 

Quirky things


I’ve been following a blog about a cat lovin’ woman in Alabama for about 3-4 years now. She lives on a small farm with pigs & chickens & dogs & a shit-ton of cats. OK, to be fair, she is a foster kitty mama and has perfectly set up rooms in her farm house to keep fosters or pregnant mama’s and babies segregated from her Permanent Residents. Of which, right at this moment, there are 14 I believe. Given that she currently has one cat who literally blew in after a tornado, a mama cat who birthed 6 kittens and yet another litter of 3 kittens that she is fostering – that is now 25 cats in the house! 25!! Yes, I did coin the phrase on her current blog header “My gawd, there are cats everywhere!” I’ve followed closely enough to have shed tears when Mr Boogie died and to cheer when fosters are eventually adopted, and yes, even when they end up becoming Permanent. I’ve had Andersen Kitty calendars hanging next to my desk the last two years. Over the years I’ve noticed in the comments that people write about the Crooked Acres clan appearing in their dreams. Robyn gets a huge kick out of that. This week, it happened to me and I woke up just cracking up (my cats everywhere phrase came from the dream). I even specifically talked about the current family of kittens (McMaos). Seriously damn funny to dream about people and animals you have never once met in real life! To be fair though – Robyn has posted videos of herself and the cats and just tons upon tons of pictures so in my subconscious mind it would seem like we regularly hang out :-)

What may be odder still than dreaming about an online only blog friend, is to dream about someone from twitter. Who has never posted a picture of themselves and who you have NEVER heard speak. There are a handful of folks there who I know 100% in 140 character increments only and I engage in conversations with them nearly daily. It hasn’t happened yet, but I assume it is inevitable as many of them have reported twitter friends appearing in dreams. I often wonder if I will picture them as their avatars (some use cartoons, some use generic animal photos etc). Will Socratic show up as a badger in my dreams someday? It would be weird, but I probably shouldn’t be surprised!

Also, how does it happen that in a very large city, and all the hours available in a day, that I would end up running into my supervisor and his wife at Macy’s two weekends in a row?

Then there is my quirky, cranky hip. Honestly if I think about it, this annoying pain has been there since my youth. I must have hurt something dancing or doing PE in high school or both or who knows….but as long as I could remember if I do any intense distance walking/hiking or make even a half assed attempt at running it would hurt. In fact, I used the chronic hip as an excuse NOT to run for all these years because it was a guaranteed trigger. And when it hurts – it HURTS. Getting up from a chair, putting on pants & socks & shoes or anything that requires putting weight on only one leg at a time becomes a challenge. I think I mentioned earlier that I thought the circuit workouts which had some good hip flexor exercises must have helped because the whole months of April & May I ran pain free. And then…..I sort of thought I felt it late last week. I noticed that I could touch my hip bone on the outside and that the muscle over it was tender. But it was very mild and went away quickly. Then I noticed it again running yesterday towards the end of my run specifically when I turned to look over my shoulder for cars so I could cross the street. Bad move. TWINGE. But, I got home, cooled down, stretched and it faded. It didn’t hurt this morning though might have felt tender to the touch sort of? So when I went out for my planned longer trail run this morning with The Boy & Renee and Eve, I wasn’t too concerned. Yeah, there was some awkward trail terrain, but it was fine. A little twinge here and there, but nothing too bad. Then….a damn freaking bumble bee or june bug flew up and I had to stop suddenly and dart to one side and TWINGE TWINGE TWINGE. Both times it was towards the end of the runs too so I was plenty stretched & warm. But…this time it is officially flared up Big Time. Now 7 hours after the run and it has hurt like hell all day. So I finally looked it up online and voila:

IT band - sitting over the bursa over the top of the outer hip bone

Trochanteric Bursitis. Caused when the IT band is too tight and so rubs against the bursa jamming it against the bone and causing it to become inflamed. The symptoms match mine exactly. Nice to finally know what it is. And to find some stretches to help with it once it heals again. So, my feet will be up for a couple of days. Targeted ice massage & stretching. Also, perhaps I shall be more careful about shifting my weight while I run. The bug thing? Well, that was a quirky event. But I can try to remember to stop before crossing the street from now on. No need to do it on the fly & risk this again.

Bursitis. Great. Totally sounds like an old person’s injury right?

Oh. Yeah. Shut up.

2010 in review – from WordPress stats. Kinda interesting!


The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 87,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at The Louvre Museum, it would take 4 days for that many people to see it.

 

In 2010, there were 195 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 1295 posts. There were 343 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 393mb. That’s about 7 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was June 16th with 733 views. The most popular post that day was Weekend Open Thread – let me live vicariously through you?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, facebook.com, groups.yahoo.com, search.aol.com, and blogger.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for baseball, adam lambert, washington dc, garfield, and rain.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Weekend Open Thread – let me live vicariously through you? February 2009
9 comments

2

What a drag it is getting (c)old December 2009
3 comments

3

American Idol post game analysis May 2009
4 comments

4

And we’re off! October 2009
4 comments

5

February is the Monday of months February 2009
2 comments

Why do you blog?


This question (the one in the title, not the one in the cartoon :-) ) was asked of me last week by a friend thinking of jumping into the blogging world.

“I blog therefore, I am!” I teased.

But really it is more complicated than that. I’m sure many of you who do have a blog (I know a few readers here don’t have their own sites, but just enjoy reading others) will have multiple reasons too.

I have many blog friends who are writers by trade. Their sites give them a place to practice their writing, or to support their books, or to hopefully attract publishers for future books. It’s a source of income for them either through ads on their sites or through the site helping them get published elsewhere. There are many many brilliant writers like that out there entertaining us regularly on every topic you can imagine. I love them and applaud their ability to earn from their sites.

In case it’s not painfully obvious, that’s not me ;-)

Writing of any kind has become an acquired taste. I have no natural talent. I’m a numbers gal. Very black & white. Very little nuance. My humor is almost entirely sarcastic which does not always translate so well online.

I’ve never been a diary gal. Way too impatient for that. Could never sit at the end of the day & write out events/thoughts/feelings. Didn’t feel the need.

I got dragged into this as a follower. Everyone else was doing it so why not me? And by “everyone” I mean a small hand full of people from my two main internet circles of friends.  Ironically almost every one of those bloggers has since gone silent. But here I am, still posting away almost 5 years later.

So, now that I’ve said all the things I’m NOT – WHY blog?

After the initial thrill of  “joining the club” I noticed some things. Like how feeling the pressure to update made me look at each day a little differently. With a ‘writers eye’ you could say. Which made me notice details that I probably was missing before. I also realized that it was a great way clear my head. If something is nagging at me, if I find a way to write about it, then that issue gets out of my head. I now do think of it as a journal. Different from a diary as there are no deep dark secrets being revealed  (trust me, there aren’t any of those anyway. Like I said. Black & White) but just a chronicle of life. I’ve had fun when something I wrote brought lots of people to read/comment even though that’s not my goal. I’ve loved “meeting” bloggers online and learning from their writing styles. I’ve actually learned to enjoy writing!

So – I blog for me. Because it’s added nuance & color & friendship to my life.

It’s also darn handy to have as a resource when you are arguing with your teenager over when something happened & you can search your archives and say “See? I was right! It was 2006!” and he has to just zip it!  :-)

Blog Post of the week with bonus (we love Twitter) edition


Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

May you be blessed with good weather and the time to enjoy some of the beauty around you. Remember to give thanks and honor those who have served and given the ultimate sacrifice for all we treasure here.

As my political friends pointed out – nice timing for taking a giant step towards repealing Dont Ask Dont Tell – just before a weekend when we honor those who’ve served & died. Don’t kid yourself that they were all straight eh? :-)

Well, there was lots of big finales on TV this week, but the one show that call all my friend’s attention was not even a season finale yet. Glee busted out probably it’s best episode of its short run – and there wasn’t even any Sue Sylvester in it! No, what made this episode an instant classic for many of us was one, critical scene. No, not even a song, but a fantastic rant by one character on behalf of another.

Erica dedicated a post just to this episode along with video of The Scene. I think she summarizes it certainly much better than I can :-)   BGAI Together – He is my son (with special video clip from Glee)

She is right that if you have a heart, you will need a tissue.

The bonus blog post of the week is more personal – plus it has to do with Adam Lambert which makes it automatically glittery  :-)

Making a Teen Girls’ Dream Come True unfolded last night over Twitter.  My connection to Debbie is through DailyKos. I have never met her, but we have mutual friends who I have met. Clearly we all don’t tweet about just one topic though. Debbie has mentioned her niece’s love of Adam before and I’ve mentioned to her that I can relate! But then that switched from fun banter to – hey, she’ll be back in CA when Adam is in Orange County and where can I maybe get tickets for her? Well, I knew from experience that the initial online sales had been almost impossible through. The scalpers got nearly everything and were now re-selling the originally reasonably price seats for double. I got lucky because I had connections to someone who DID get through and grabbed tickets at face value. But I also knew there were still a few folks out there with extras so when Debbie asked, I immediately thought of swan2029 who has been on my Adam buddy list for a few months now and had face value tickets. Well, as you can see from Deb’s post, the hookup worked!

So now when I drive up to Orange County on July 28th, here is who I will be meeting or going with:

  1. My son (MM who has been completely corrupted with my Adam adoration)
  2. One of my young buddies from the Padres blog, who also has a love of Adam will be riding along
  3. Meeting Jan & Kathleen there (Fantasy Spring, Jan originally from American Idol tour stop)
  4. Meeting Swan2029 (might meet her before that actually as now there is a San Diego date & she’s driving in to get tickets onsite)
  5. Meeting a gal from Malaysia who I chat with a lot on twitter
  6. Meeting the lady from the Adam fan site who sold me my son’s ticket.
  7. Meeting Deb’s niece & whoever brings her to the concert.

All people who (other than my son & Padres pal) – I would NEVER have met if not for Adam Lambert! Crazy huh?

Blog post of the week – a thoughtful conversation


First of all, I highly recommend putting The Women’s Colony in your RSS feed or your Google Reader or whatever system you use to read blog posts. A delightful blend of writers who cover topics large & small, personal & global. Plus, some very nice eye candy pics in The Cabana room (rowr).

This week, my friend Jenn wrote a post on immigration. A very hot topic these days thanks to Arizona. Jenn & I share similar views on this issue, but that is not why I loved her post. I love how she presents it. In A Portrait of “Them” she describes real life examples of immigrant families and how seeing their struggles play out impacts her views on the issue. But it’s not just the post itself that is worthy of reading. Dig into those comments. A really respectful discussion unfolds detailing many of the complexities of this issue – thankfully without the passions & anger & ultimate name calling that often derails this debate. I learned more in that comment thread that I have on any news site or other blog post or cable news show about the issues!