Archive for March, 2007
The Treasure Hunt is complete!
March 31st, 2007
Yay! I finally finished Lorelle’s WordPress Treasure Hunt. And one day ahead of schedule, as set by my 2007 blogging goal deadlines. Oh, I had a few slip-ups, but for the most part I worked on them during my lunchhour at work, doing about 3 per day.
So, what did I learn?
- Sometimes it pays to procrastinate. A few of the treasures I found were written after Lorelle initially posted her challenge in last October.
- Is it plug-ins or plugins? Initally I went for the former, but have now decided on the latter. Not just because that’s what Lorelle uses, it’s also easier to type.
- I’m not afraid to use emoticons. I’m not really looking for credibility anyway. Yet.
- I’m not a multi-tasker. (Ok, I knew this before the challenge, but I thought I’d add it here.) While doing the challenge, I let some of my other blogging habits go to pieces. I didn’t check my feedreader (not even for Lorelle!), and I certainly didn’t blog consistently (which was 2007 goal #2).
- I found more than one site to help me create my first WordPress theme (goal #4). Yay!
- There are some really cool blogs out there, where I can learn a thing or two. And some of them are by women. Go Girl Power!
- I found some plugins that look interesting & useful. I’ll be trying them at some point.
I plan to go back over the list from time to time, sort of like this entry (I’m so glad I made the Treasure Hunt a page & not just a post), and will go into more specifics of what I learned, what I liked, what I’m trying, and what’s working (or not working) for me. I may even be adding a few new Best Sites links.
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Thursday Thirteen
March 29th, 2007
I found this intersting website courtesy of one of my few (but selective) LiveJournal friends. I’m planning to participate, but apparently I have to post a few Thursday Thirteens before I can join the community. So here’s my first Thursday Thirteen. And to show just how unimaginative I am, I’m borrowing my first Thursday Thirteen from nuj (LJ friend mentioned above).
Thirteen things I plan to list in future Thursday Thirteen posts
(in no particular order)
- 13 things about me
- 13 movies I love
- 13 people I admire
- 13 reasons to watch Supernatural
- 13 blogs I like
- 13 things I learned on the WordPress Treasure Hunt
- 13 places I’d like to visit
- 13 places I’ve been to that I really love
- 13 places I might move to when I retire
- 13 memorable events in my life
- 13 household items I need to get rid of
- 13 of my favorite foods
- 13 songs that move me
Now all I need to do is go peruse some other Thursday Thirteen posts. And comment!
Posted in Blogging, Thursday 13 | Comments (0)
Spring is sprung (redux)
March 28th, 2007
Well, spring has really sprung now! It sprang up yesterday. In the course of one day, the forsythia blossomed, and the first of the many trees to flower in this area burst forth. When I went to work yesterday morning, it was the same ol’ same ol’. When I came home there was color all about. I don’t know what the trees are, but they have little white flowers and they’re all over the place. The cherry blossoms will bust out any day now. (They’re almost on schedule this year, for a change.) But I have to wait another month or so for my favorites, the trees outside my front entryway, to bloom. (My neighbor, who knows her flowers, says they’re almond trees.) Every year there’s at least one day when they are in full bloom and it rains. The blossoms are so heavy, the branches bend down over the walkway & I have to duck to avoid hitting them. It’s sort of a rite of passage for me. I ususally stop & take a little time to just reflect on how beautiful they are and revel in the moment.
Of course, all this beauty comes with a price. The seasonal allergies will interfere with my sleep, and the post-nasal-drip will cause me to make the most disgusting hacking noises in order to clear out the most disgustinly gross mucus.  But it’s a small price to pay to say good-bye to winter.
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Tuesdays are fun again
March 27th, 2007
Ok, I really don’t know if they ever were fun. I suppose at some time in my life I looked forward to Tuesdays. But right now I’ve really enjoying them. American Heiress is one of the last two telenovelas My Netwok TV is running. But instead of it running for an hour every night of the week, as the previous telenovelas did, it’s running for two hours on Tuesdays only.
I’m not really a fan of soap opera type shows, but I wanted to watch this because it stars Alicia Leigh Willis. I fell in love with her during the brief time I watched General Hospital. (I’ll write about my GH watching experience & Alicia, & why I came to adore her some other time. Right now I want to focus on American Heiress.)
Alicia plays the title character & has top billing. Yay! Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much out of the show. But I have to say, it is some great guilty fun! What I love is that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. During the extended teaser, I found myself laughing out loud more times than I can count. And it continues to delight me.
A lot of my fellow Alicia fans have tuned in to see her. Their take is that they like Alicia’s character, Elizabeth Wakefield, and her leading man, but don’t care for anyone else. And the general consensus is that her leading man, a pilot named JD Bruce, played by a guy named Carter MacIntyre, is “hot.” Personally, I didn’t see the hotness factor when I saw the commercials. But he’s the type of guy who grows on me. I’ve been extremely impressed with his acting. He has a wonderful comedic timing that plays well off of Alicia, and they have a delightful chemistry together.
Unlike many of the other viewers, I really like the rest of the cast as well. Yes some of it is silly, and many of the characters are exaggerations, but that’s part of the fun of the show.
What’s also cool is that I’ve found a blog by one of the writers on the show. He’s been hawking the show on his blog, and tells us the show is only going to get better! He also mentioned that when he first saw video of the show, he was really impressed with the actors. He said that unlike some of the other telenovelas, this cast can actually act. I absolutely agree and am having a blast with the show. Watch it! (I’ll fill you in on what you’ve missed so far.)
Posted in Couch Critic | Comments (0)
Spring is sprung…
March 22nd, 2007
… the grass is riz,
I wonder where
the birdies is.
I love that little stupid little rhyme that heralds spring. I don’t ever remember a year where I’ve been so glad to leave winter behind. I don’t know why; it wasn’t a particularly hard winter. I think maybe I’m just be getting too old to worry about shoveling the car out of a snowbank. Oh, and the grand slip on the black ice didn’t help. My lower back is still a bit sore. And then there’s the sinus problems caused by the dry air and dry heat. But this year I kept a humidifier in my bedroom, and it seems to have worked wonders. I’ve had some pretty good nights sleep without waking up to a nose full of bloody snot mucus.
My, that was a lovely picture, wasn’t it? So let me leave you with something much more pleasant.
Last week, as I was heading out to the car to go to work, I heard some rustling in the bushes behind me. I figured it was a squirrel trying to find some food, but turned around anyway. Two birds were fluttering about. One was very red, the other was not so red. In my glee, I uttered, “Aww, cardinals!” But apparently I disturbed their amourous revelry. The male flew back to the trees, and the female flew across the entry into the bushes. I can only hope they resumed their affair once I left them to the peace and quiet of the morning.
And yes, where there’s a new season, there’s a new theme. 
Posted in Musings | Comments (0)
Treasure Hunt status
March 16th, 2007
Man, I hate it when work interfers with my blogging goals. And life, too.Â
I have three (3) uncompleted draft posts in my dashboard (and another one in my head). One saying I’m moving at a snail’s pace in completing the Treasure Hunt. That part is still true. (Or at least it feels like it.)  Another laments the fact that I feel like I’ve been at it forever, and I’m not even half-way through the list. And also says that if I keep at it, hopefully I’ll be able to make daily blogging a habit.
Well, it hasn’t happened yet. In fact, I think this is the first opportunity I’ve had this week to update the hunt page. I was a little worried that I might not be able to finish by my stated goal date (March 31), but I did some calculations and I’m well within my tolerance level. I’d initially planned to find 2 treasures per day. But I found myself being able to do three. Then, I’d be all hep to continue on, and I’d start to research the 4th item, and I’d immediately run out of steam. The mind is a powerful engine, indeed.
Oh yeah, the other draft post and the one in my head have nothing to do with WordPress. They’re a little dated, but maybe I’ll post them this weekend. And update my theme because spring is springing up.
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Presents from cats
March 4th, 2007
This morning about 4:30 a.m., my male cat woke me up. He’s a very vocal feline so this wasn’t particularly unusual. However, he was fairly insistent; and when I got up to go to the bathroom, I recognized a particular type of play where he takes his toy in his mouth & throws it up in the air. So I turned on the light, and sure enough, there it was. A dead mouse. I disposed of it in the garbage (which goes out tonight, thank goodness!), but apparently he didn’t see me. He continued sniffing around the area where he’d been playing with it, wondering where his prize had gone
When he was little, I guess I praised him a little too much for bringing his toys to me. I thought I was teaching him to play fetch, but all I did was create an attention monster. Now if he wants my attention, he’ll bring me one of his toys. When he was younger, he’d wake me up in the middle of the night playing with his toys on the bed. I tried putting them in the drawer of my night stand, but the little bugger learned to open the drawer. So now I have to put them under my pillow if I want him to settle down.
One night I woke to the bed shaking. Sure enough, he was playing around with his toy. I groped around for it & found it, but it didn’t like one of his felt or furry mice. The fur felt smoother, even “silkier” than his toys; and I knew what it was before I turned on the light. He’d brought me a real mouse.
At least this one was dead. Several years ago, I was in bed reading before turning out the lights. Neiter one of my cats was in bed with me, which was highly unusual. Then I heard some small, odd noises coming from the bathroom. Sure enough, both cats were had a mouse that wasn’t quite dead yet. It was awful! I knew that the humane thing to do was kill the poor little thing, but I didn’t have to nerve. I ended up throwing out on the balconey, to die a slow, agonizing death. (Yes, I am just that big of a wuss.)
I’ve thought about brining in an exterminator, but it wouldn’t do any good. I live in a condo, and even if I got rid of the mice in my place, they’d just migrate in again from downstairs or next door. One of my neighbor’s says the condo company needs to exterminate not just all the buildings, but also all the land around the buildings. Since I doubt that will ever happen, I guess I’ll just have to live with getting a present once every couple years.
Posted in General, Musings | Comments (0)
Let’s play catch-up
March 3rd, 2007
I’ve managed to fall about 3 days behind my blogging & treasure hunt schedule this week. First of all, I didn’t spend much time online on March 1, since it was my favorite day on QVC. (Big Bonanza Silver Day.) Some years I totally forget about it, but this year I’d been saving up my purchasing power for the big day, not buying anything since Christmas, so I was really looking forward to it. I left work early & never even logged on when I got home. Oh wait. I take that back. I did log on so that I could order a couple of things online, rather than phone it in.
Then yesterday, our (unclassified) network was down for pretty much the entire day. In a way, that was good. I was able to get some work done on the classified network that I’d been putting off. And another woman said she got a lot of filing done. Supposedly the network came up at lunchtime, but I was heavily involved on the classified side, then went out to lunch with a bud. By the time I’d finished my “classified” work, the net was down again. It didn’t come up until after 4:00 p.m. And while I did stay a little late to get the urgent e-mail answered, I had no desire to stay there later than necessary.
So now I have to put in a little extra weekend time to get back on track. That’s not bad, per se, but I have a tendancy to forget about the blog on the weekends. Fortunately, I remembered today. And with any luck, I’ll remember tomorrow.
Posted in Blogging, Work | Comments (0)