The bright and shiny
Well, I blew the Nablopomo thing, forgot to post something Thursday and I didn’t even realize it! But the pressure is off, which is good news for you my dear readers because my content was really stretching it. Now I can go back to only writing when I have something worth writing about.
Thanksgiving is insanely early this year, isn’t it? I think this is the earliest it’s allowed to be, in fact. So you know what that means, right? Extra Christmas time! Yay!
(I know some of you are groaning, and some of you just don’t care, because you don’t celebrate Christmas or you’re sick of the hype or whatever. You have my permission to click away, no worries!)
Thank you for staying. So, Christmas. It’s always been my favorite time of year. Since I was a child I’ve separated the “reason for the season,”, the birth of Jesus, from this thing we call Christmas which is really a secular celebration of light in the darkness that has a similar counterpart in most traditions and religions. It’s the shiny Christmas I go nuts over.
I love the lights more than anything else. As a child we’d drive home at night from visiting relatives and as my brother and sister would fall asleep I’d stay wide awake watching the lights, so December was a special treat as I’d watch the holiday decorations zoom by. I still love to drive around and see the displays. I’m not a huge fan of those giant blowup things, give me old-fashioned C9s, please (which are becoming harder and harder to find! And C9 shaped LCDs don’t count, sorry.) I still have a couple strings but we don’t even use them ourselves anymore. They still make me happy when I see them, though.
I love pulling out the boxes of decorations from the attic. I don’t have a lot of sentimental things around my house, but my tree is almost entirely covered with meaningful ornaments each year. I really need a second tree.
It’s the only time of year I really go all out making my house look nice. The rest of the year I just try to keep it clean. Clean enough, anyway. But in December I put some effort into it!
And of course there’s the music. I love Christmas music, every type. The day after Thanksgiving I go into iTunes and recheck all the songs in my Christmas smart list and put them into heavy rotation. And I haunt the net looking for a few new ones to add.
For one month each year I cave to the cheesy, the superficial, the sparkly, the bright and shiny.
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Time on my own
One of my Twitter friends (wait, don’t go, this post isn’t about Twitter!) who goes by the name Shika, posts horoscopes daily. I think she gets them via SMS from somewhere and reposts to Twitter. Anyways…
I don’t put much faith in horoscopes, but they’re fun. And the horoscopes for my sign, Cancer, that Shika has been posting are surprisingly fitting at times. Of course, I’m sure the horoscopes for, say, Virgo, would also be fitting for me at times, but let’s ignore that thought for now.
I was excited to see this horoscope today:
Time on my own? Seriously? I can have that?
OK, I spend most of my days alone. Pat’s at work, the kids are in school. I can go anywhere, do anything.
But a slightly extended “time on my own” where I only have myself to answer to sounds pretty tempting. I always feel like I have to get things “in order” before I take time for myself. Of course, things are never “in order.” So being physically apart from all that I’m comfortable and familiar matters. I have important choices and decisions to make, and being surrounded by what’s familiar isn’t giving me the giant shove I need to get there.
When I do take time for myself I usually fire up the MacBook and hang out online, which is fun but not especially inspiring over the long term. What I need is a trip out of my comfort zone, without even my husband along, not because I wouldn’t enjoy his company, but because I need to break my habit of deference to and reliance on him as well, or it’s still all the same.
Is this making sense? Is it a realistic, non-selfish, well, it’s inherently selfish, but is it a rudely selfish thing?
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Is this a bit better?
Ok, that was a little lame. Posting a video of me saying I have nothing to say.
Also, my hair looks crappy and I look tired.
But I’ll leave it there, because I likes to keep it real.
Busy, crazy day tomorrow. Starting with not so fun stuff, ending with a girls night out at one of those prepare your own meals places that are all the rage with the moms clubs these days. The proprietor is a local woman I’ve become friendly with and I’m happy to support her. I even ordered six meals, but that was before I realized they are about half a tray each, and I’m not sure how I’m going to jam six half trays into my bizarrely set up new freezer drawer. But I’ll manage. Or we’ll eat a lot Wednesday.
And on that note,
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Username: Email: Login: Password:
I’ve got a long list of things I’ve been meaning to get around to, and the one I’m about to tackle is my insane password collection. Over the past ten years I’ve been keeping track of my web logins and passwords in an increasingly unwieldy excel file. I once tried to organize it by type of site. I put all my financial login info on one sheet, all the shopping logins on another, blog logins, business logins, forum logins, socnet logins…
That made it worse, in fact it got so bad I just printed out all the sheets and now scribble updates and changes and new passwords on the paper.
And some sticky notes.
Today I’m going to get this stuff organized. I expect the list to be cut way down, I don’t think some of these sites even exist anymore! More importantly, I need to get the financial info gathered up. If I became, as they say, incapacitated, I can guarantee the phone and cable bills wouldn’t get paid, because they don’t come in the mail anymore. Getting Pat to sit with me and go over the way I have the financials set up isn’t gonna happen, so I can at least get it all in one place so he could figure it out! It would give me some peace of mind, anyway!
Time to fire up the spreadsheets, & turn on the Giants game!
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Saturday
Ah, Saturday. If I was organized, and smart, I would get all the annoying things like paying bills done during the week.
Instead I pretty much ruined my Saturday by paying bills today. Made it worse by realizing I was a day late on a credit card- one we rarely use, we used it for a discount that I totally obliterated by not paying in full on time. Of course they’ll also hit me with a late fee, which I’ll try to whine my way out of. At least they can’t raise my rate- I don’t think. It’s already 22% on that card, yeesh!
But then my friend called to invite me along on a girls trip to NYC to see Jersey Boys in January. My first reaction- no way, I have no moneys! But she’s a pusher and convinced me to go.
And it made me happy, so Saturday isn’t ruined after all.
Have a great weekend!
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Tweeted:
- [seesmic] French-flavored cookies – http://tinyurl.com/yqq4jd #
- Listening to: The Osmonds – One Bad Apple http://tinyurl.com/27bfz4 #
- @PreppyDude Oh yeah, although I was always a Jay fan. #
- Good morning tweeties. It’s cold but sunny in NJ. My kids have no school, so still asleep. #
- Today & tomorrow all NJ public schools are closed so teachers can attend their convention (if they chose to) in Atlantic City. #
- These are known as "Jersey days" at Disney World due to large # of families from NJ who take advantage of low crowds, low prices. #
- Arguing with child about what shade of orange to paint his bedroom, offering compromise, he’s not biting. #
- Being told repeatedly by various medical professionals not to worry. This fact alone is causing me to worry. Stop telling me not to. #
- @bizzybee It’s a small dark room with a huge bunk bed, too! And, yes, I’m ok, thanks. Nothing to worry about
# - @DougE Sim at Utterz is great, he even changed part of the UI based on an issue I had. #
- headache. ow ow ow ow ow. #
- new post at banannie –> Treadmill http://banannie.com/blog/2007/11/08/treadmill/ #
- My 9 year old son has all the Pokemon songs memorized. This is a good thing, right? #
- If this headache doesn’t go away I’m going to bowl really badly tonight
. # - Apologies to facebook friends, I haven’t been in there for awhile. Maybe tonight? #
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Treadmill
treadmill from banannie on Vimeo.
My mom called.
“I was reading your blog today.”
She’s concerned about me putting my life online.
I assured her it’s only the parts of my life I want to share online. And today, I have no idea why, I want to share me running on the treadmill while listening to Foo Fighters.
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I got nothin’
Arrgh, I have nothing for you today! I promise to write something compelling and thought-provoking tomorrow, but it’s been a long day and I need to spend some time with this online class I’m taking. Life is taking twists and turns a little too fast and I’m trying to get back in control!
—————-
Now playing: The Osmonds – One Bad Apple
via FoxyTunes
(yes, really.)
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pre-alpha
I’ve made a couple videos on the new service Seesmic today.
Seesmic post one in which I give some feedback.
Seesmic post two in which Tim makes faces.
Seesmic is pretty cool, but still in “pre-alpha” as they’re calling it. It’s so new I don’t even have a profile page I can link you to. The premise is “video twitter,” it makes it easy to use a webcam to post quick, short videos, and even have video conversations much like Twitter. I was very fortunate to get an invitation to play and give my feedback (by begging on Twitter…) and it’s even more fun than I thought it would be. Hopefully in the not-too-distant future we’ll all have webcams and be able to “video twitter” any time from anywhere.
Know why I’m so enamored with these new technologies? They’re fun. It’s exciting. Simple as that.
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I really don’t have anything to say today.
I’m not sure how long I’m going to last with NaBloPoMo this year. I don’t even know if I want to post every day. I have so much going on right now (all by my own choice, of course) I’m feeling overwhelmed and if I decide to drop something this will probably be the first to go.
Of course, there are those prizes if I do make it. But then, the competition for the prizes is fierce, it’s not like a guaranteed reward.
I’m learning how to let things go when they aren’t working for me. I’ve been saying “someday” for years and years, and I’m coming to realize that for a lot of the things I thought I’d do someday, someday ain’t comin’. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on.
I’m not quitting, at least not yet. I’ll just take it day by day.
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A simple way to thank some soldiers
My friend Sprite (or as she’s known on Twitter BlondeByDesign) has been sending awesome, fun care packages to a bunch of soldiers stationed in Kandahar. Look at this stuff!
Our Twitter pal Jim Long (newmediajim) went to Afghanistan on assignment for NBC and at Sprite’s request found Danny and his men, who she promptly adopted.
As you might expect this is an expensive undertaking. If you’d like to help you can find out how here.
You could also send a Christmas card or email to a soldier to help make the season a little merrier. (The email is a project of yet another Twitter friend, Dayngr!)
No matter your opinion of the war, these guys have volunteered to protect us. This is a simple way to say thanks.
(Oh oh! did I mention you can win some fudge, too??)
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TwitterPoster makes me feels speshul
Someone (in Spain apparently) has whipped up this cool little Twitter Poster. It shows the Twitter members with the most followers. The big thumbnails are the real power users with thousands of followers. The small ones are listed from most to least starting at the top left.
That’s me about 2/3 along the third row down with 420 followers at the moment. A lot of them are spammers I don’t follow back.
It’s kind of a silly thing, but I like that it’s visual, and gives you an idea of how small the Twitterverse really is. And you can guarantee that every person on this screen is at least somewhat interesting, because if they weren’t they wouldn’t have enough followers to be included. You don’t see the spammers who add 3000 people but are only followed back by 20 (there are some people who just follow everyone back.) So it’s a useful way for new Twitterers to find interesting people to follow. I plan to take some time myself to find some new voices in there.
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Where the snow is
Mobile post sent by banannie using Utterz.