Category: metablogging

have you ever?

I made it through November with my 30 posts for 30 days. (40, if you want to add in those I did for the Ministry of Silly Blogs.) It wasn’t particularly hard for me to come up with topics for daily posts (though it was sometimes hard to work up the motiviation to post at all.) I didn’t manage to do too well on the list of my intended topics.¹

Another thought I’d had was to do a meme I’d seen at Stretched to the Limit, which had a big old checklist of things done in one’s life. Many of the things I’ve done on the list have some sort of story behind them, and I thought I’d work my way through some of them. In fact, I still might do that. But probably not for last month.

The instructions are to bold the “done” things. I’ve also gone and italicized things that I haven’t quite done, but where I have a story related to that thing. (It’s kind of a weird list of things, and it makes me curious about the origins. It reminds me a bit of the drinking game “I never,” or a related game where people state something they’ve always wanted to do but haven’t done.)

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg [I’m assuming this doesn’t mean the lettuce]
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby’s diaper [duh]
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity [possibly]
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope [probably]
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse [maybe]
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and didn’t care who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach [may not have been actually midnight]
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain [probably]
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Gotten flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents [not taking this literally]
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children [I don’t think quite yet]
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
98. Passed out cold
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach [possibly]
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad – and the Odyssey [just the Odyssey]
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life

So it looks like I’ve done 56 things on the list. How many have you done?

I’d love to take requests for stories or details on any of the above listed items. You could just pick a number, or several. At random, even. And I may even treat you to the tale of how I once ate sushi when I had dyed hair.

——–

¹ I guess this is my NaBloPoMo Post Mortem. My NaBloPoMoPoMo, if you will. It’s probably not post modern enough to be a PoMoNaBloPoMoPoMo, though.

some things about ThThTh

Some of you may have noticed that I like to put together lists. In fact, at this point, I have now tagged 96 posts as “lists.” That’s a lotta lists. I have also, for the past half year or so, started making a regular weekly list. A list of things. Things that have some sort of theme in common. And these themed things, I bring them out on Thursday. Occasionally I get asked what this is all about. Often people are just confused by my lists. And I’m okay with that. But I have been meaning to write some sort of ThThTh about page for a bit. And seeing as I’m a bit burnt out from the excessive blogging of NaBloPoMo reading and writing, rather than bring you a new list, I’m going to regurgitate a list of old lists. A nice, big mega-list of a meta-list. And maybe a wee bit of explanation.

What the hell is ThThTh?

ThThTh is a tag I use when I put together a list of things on a theme on Thursday. What these lists have in common is that they are lists of things that have one thing in common.

Why do you do this craziness?

Putting together these lists helps satisfy my desire…to put together lists. I like to categorize like things, and have been doing this in my mind for years. I have a tendency to collect things, as in the physical objects, but this new outlet for collecting collects a lot less dust.

What sorts of things are they?

I like to pick from among the universe of things, and not be limited to a medium or category. So my lists will include things like movies, books, folktales and myths, songs, cliches and other sayings. The lists may include toys, products, names, and other totally random things. (I also will more than occasionally put together lists of just one type of things, such as books, movies or songs. But I consider those a separate type of list.)

What sorts of themes are they?

I often pick themes that are somehow loosely related to something that is going on in my life, or something seasonal. Or sometimes based on nothing much at all.

My inaugural ThThTh post was on teeth, to pay tribute to the usefulness of teeth in producing the voiceless interdental fricative that we represent as “th” in the words theme, things and Thursday. I have now posted 24 ThThTh lists, on top of those themed lists I threw together before I’d settled on having Thursday be my special list day.

At this time, you can find lists on topics such as turkeys, turtles, trees, squirrels, birds, parrots, pigeons, pigs, and pigtails. There have been spiders, ants, bats, balls, shoes, and black clothing. There were blue, green and red dudes, vegetables, peaches, berries, pumpkins, apples, tomatoes, chocolate and cheese.

I even made one list of things I did not expect to make lists about.

support

Even though I had some things in mind, I’m really too tired to post much of anything creative. I’ve been staying up too late again, and perhaps pushing myself a bit hard. And I have some more work I’ve committed to doing tonight, if I can manage to keep my eyes open.

But I’ve been wanting to say some thank yous.

I really appreciate all the comments that people have left recently, especially on the posts where I have been writing about my grief. People have offered wise advice and shoulders to cry on, and I have been very touched by the sympathy and empathy. I have wanted to respond to each comment, but I have been feeling emotionally drained. I may yet manage to reply, but if I don’t, please know that I have read and valued those comments.

And for others of you who have read and thought sympathetic thoughts, I thank you, too.

I have also been very fortunate to have support from other friends and my family. I’m someone who likes to feel like I’m there to help others in times of need, and it’s been very heartwarming to know that people are there for me, too. I sometimes stubbornly like to think of myself as self-sufficient, but I know that my strength comes in large part from the support of those who care about me.

As you might expect, I am still working through my grief. But it has been very comforting to me to know that I don’t need to work through this alone.

Now with more Polysyllabic Nonsense

I think most of you have seen this item making its way around the bloggy world: the blog reading level score. I’ve seen it a bunch of places:

You wanna know what I got?

elementary_school.jpg

(Note that my blog shares this honor with Sassy of eye heart internet, who can even blog at the elementary school level bilingually.)

Actually, the first time I tried this, a few weeks ago maybe, I got junior high level. But apparently my writing skills are deteriorating.

What I find funniest, though, is that I also tried my other blog: The Minsitry of Silly Blogs. This is a blog I threw together on a whim to go along with a NaBloPoMo group I started. See what it scored?

genius.jpg The Ministry of Silly Blogs

It would seem that when I am making efforts to sound Officious and Pretentious, as well as Silly and Pompous, my writing appears more erudite. Even if what I am writing is Utter Nonsense. (Which is not to say that I believe that all those whose blogs scored higher than elementary school write Officiously and Pompously. But perhaps you all write Utter Nonsense?)

All in all, I find myself terribly curious about the means by which a reading level score is achieved. Is it sentence length? Average word length? Does anyone know?

What have you been up to, little girl?

upside-down.jpg

I’m terribly behind in updating the Phoebe Blog, where I try to document some of my daughter’s activities and accomplishments. That was my foray into blogging, and I still use the same software (iWeb) I started with. It’s somewhat cool in that I can compose everything on my computer and in that it links up automatically with my media files, but it has this irritating feature that doesn’t let you keep some drafts unpublished while you publish others. Since I now have about 10 drafts in various stages of completion, I’m pretty much stuck not publishing any of them till they’re all done. So the family doesn’t get to see what Phoebe’s up to.

Unless, of course, there’s an event like Phoebe’s run-in with the law yesterday morning. Then the whole family somehow learns. (Oh, right, now you want to know. Well, you know how some phones have an emergency number programmed into the speed dial? Did you know some phones have a big, pretty red button that is hooked up to such a number? Did you know that toddlers like to push buttons?)

We’re down at John’s parents for the holiday, by the way. We came down Tuesday night, to avoid the craziness of traffic that happens the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We’ve driven up to visit John’s dad in the sub-acute care facility each day after Phoebe’s nap. There have been a lot of late nights, too. And yesterday there was a lot of cooking. (We packed up the feast to take up to John’s dad’s.) I made mashed potatoes, delicata squash (which is much safer to cut than KC’s Death Squash), and my famous stuffed pan. (I like stuffing, but not the things that tend to be stuffed with it. So I just make the stuffing.)

Also, at the moment, my feed reader folders are stuffed full of 272 unread messages. (158 of these can be blamed on people I just started reading with NaBloPoMo. Curse you, NaBloPoMoPeople. Curse yooooouuu! Oh, right. I’m guilty of this madness, too. Curse me! Curse meeeeee!) I’m not quite sure when I’ll be able to catch up. Make that “if.”

how do I plead?

Erika of the fabulously-titled mmmm, brains has tagged me with a meme that intrigued me. (As usual, though, it’s taken me over a week to get to it.) The meme in question is on the topic of “guilty pleasures,” and was abbreviated from a longer assignment. The full thing, which I won’t indulge in, was as follows:

  • Name six guilty pleasures you wish you had the courage to indulge.
  • Name six pleasures you once considered guilty but have now either abandoned or made peace with.
  • Name six guilty pleasures no one would suspect you of having.

Erika just did the last one I listed. So I thought I could do that one. The trick is, who is this “no one?” I think most of my guilty pleasures are pretty public. So I’ll modify the task a bit further and name 6 pleasures that I feel guilty (or embarrassed) about, and that have been known to surprise people.

  1. I have a weakness for certain types of junk food. I like to eat healthily, and to eat good quality fresh food. But I have rarely turned down Nacho cheese Doritos, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups or donuts.
  2. Action movies. This is not a surprise to anyone who reads this blog, seeing as I have a whole project related to these. But I am a peace-loving academic who studies language. Why do I enjoy watching a good fight scene?
  3. Tuna. I stopped eating red meat and poultry over 18 years ago, but I can’t quite manage to give up all seafood. Most seafood and fish I could take or leave. Mostly leave, actually. Canned tuna doesn’t excite me. But a seared tuna? Or tuna sushi? I realize that it’s wrong on many counts. Over-fishing and all. To some extent I have the same guilt liking for salmon, especially smoked salmon.
  4. I like some music that I feel somewhat embarrassed about. Specifically some 80s music with boppy synthesized beats: Nik Kershaw, Howard Jones, early Depeche Mode. What can I say? I was a teenager in the 80s.
  5. Checking my blog stats. It’s a sickness, really. It’s not so much the numbers as seeing what people look at and where they came from. Since most of my traffic is due to search engine hits by people who probably barely stop to look, I like it when I see signs that someone looked around, such as visits to my “about” page or some of my favorite posts. (Comments are, of course, the best. Those get emailed to me. Not too surprisingly, I always check my email eagerly, too.)
  6. I like memes. I know I should be scornful of them. But I think they are fun. And I find it fascinating to see what different people do with them.

It looks like this memage involves tagging 6 people. This is the part of meming that I find the trickiest. Some people tolerate memes. Others loudly protest them. Others welcome them. I once had a good experience tagging a couple of random people: one I found through the WordPress “pants” tag, and one who I found using the WordPress “next” button. I had no luck getting Kevin Smith to participate. (Kevin, if you read this, you’re tagged, dammit. Or for that matter, I suppose I could tag this other Kevin Smith.)

So, I’m going to go all random again. I will tag the folks at these 6 blogs I found totally randomly through the NaBloPoMo randomizer. (Okay, it wasn’t totally, totally randomly. I did skip a few blogs where music played automatically, and a couple of very topic-specific blogs, like a birding blog and a chocolate blog.)

If anyone else out there would like to indulge in this meme, please consider yourself tagged.

the downward spiral

phoebe_park_jeep.jpgPhoebe and I got to have a leisurely day together today, after a long week of not having much time together. We celebrated by going to the local playground. It was a bright beautiful day. I had fun following Phoebe around on her rounds.

I didn’t have the camera with me this time, but I did get some pictures from the last time we went, about 2 weeks ago. This seems as good a time as any to share a couple of them. It was a bright warm day last time, and the trees were showing their fall colors. (Most of the leaves are off the trees now.)

phoebe_park_fall.jpg

And here’s a very short movie, showing Phoebe going down the big spiral slide. (See how much fun I have following her around?)

——-

What with participating in NaBloPoMo, on top of all my other life duties, this promises to be a busy month for me. I have all sorts of things in mind to write about this month, but I expect I’ll have little time and energy to follow through. And just to help keep me from letting my posts degenerate into a series of posts about what I had for breakfast, or possibly worse, posts that are just lists of stuff I meant to write, I figured I should jot down a list of my more honorable intentions.

Stuff I Mean to Write:

  • a bit of a wrap-up of my CSA adventure
  • at least one post on some language topic
  • at least one post of some redeeming social value.
  • at least one addition to the kick-ass women project
  • four more Themed Things Thursday Posts
  • at least one post on pants. A week.

under the wire (or what I had for breakfast this morning)

Here it is, past 11:00 at night on day 3 of NaBloPoMo. And I’m (moderately) at risk of not getting out my requisite post of the day. There’s a conference I’ve been attending this weekend that is put on by my program, so I haven’t been home a lot.

Mind you, I did have a moment, whilst I was sitting on the floor at the back of a talk, when I considered whipping out my laptop to compose a post. I did manage to control the impulse, in large part because it would have seemed a terrible breach of etiquette. I felt a bit like a junkie, though. “I’ll just post this once. It’ll only take a couple of minutes. No one will notice.” After the talk, I went with some friends to visit a friend who is in the hospital with her new baby. As we sat and visited, I looked longingly at the ethernet cable hanging out of my friend’s laptop. Again, I controlled the urges. And I waited till I got home. I even talked to John and ate a bit of dinner before getting out the computer.

But now this means it’s late. And I’m tired. So I should post something. And seeing as people have been known to joke about having their daily posts degrade to the level of “what I had for breakfast this morning,” I thought I might take up that topic myself. Because this morning, I had a really good breakfast.

    Brown Rice and Berry Breakfast
    1-ish cup of cooked brown rice (short grain brown rice is best)
    1 third-ish cup of frozen berries (this morning I had blackberries)
    a drizzle of real maple syrup (I like Grade B, the darker kind)

    I usually use leftover brown rice, that has been cooked in a rice cooker with a bit of salt and oil (vegetable or olive oil). I take a serving of rice, put it in a bowl, and drizzle the maple syrup over it. I then pop it in the microwave, uncovered, for about a minute and a half. (It’s important to get the rice really hot all the way through, otherwise the texture will have that pasty cold rice texture.) After the rice is hot (and removed from the microwave) I next microwave the berries in a separate bowl for about a minute, or until the berries are thawed and juicy. I poor the berries and juice over the top of the rice, and let it stand for a minute or two to cool. Then I eat it.

The taste is a bit like a fruit cobbler, but with a somewhat chewy texture. It seems almost too dessert-like for breakfast. But it’s very filling and nutritious: high in fiber, low in sugar (depending on how much syrup you drizzle), with a decent amount of protein.

more than I can chew?

bagel.jpgUm…I have a tendency to throw myself into things with great enthusiasm. And sometimes, this leads to me going a little bit crazy with the amount of things I commit to doing. This is one of those times.

Part of me thinks it’s not a terrible thing. When I get hyper-busy I often tend to get more productive and even overcome hurdles that have been holding me up.

I have thrown myself into several research projects for work/school, with goals of meeting deadlines for submitting to conferences in the next few months. One is even in the next few weeks.

I have commited to co-teaching a class in January, which I’m very excited about.

I told my violin teacher that I would play in the recital in early December.

And then not only did I sign on to blog every day for the month of November for NaBloPoMo, I’ve gone uber-crazy with enthusiasm for it. I’ve added a bunch of blogs to my feed-reading, and started a “group,” complete with its own blog.

You may also recall that I have various other roles that I play, such as “mother” and “wife,” as well as “daughter,” “sister,” “friend,” and “blithering idiot.”

What all of this means is that I will be spread particularly thin for the next few months. Like too little cream cheese for a really big bagel. Though there are some parts of the bagel that really require more cream cheese than others. It’s just possible that some parts of the bagel may get virtually no cream cheese. And I can only be thankful that bagels have a hole in the middle, meaning that at least some parts won’t require any cream cheese. I mean, if a Kaiser roll were the chosen baked-good metaphor for my life, there would be all that much more surface area. But why you’d want to go spreading cream cheese on a Kaiser roll is beyond me. It would probably totally fall apart, since it’s not as sturdy as a bagel. And I’m really hoping that the act of spreading myself around too thinly won’t lead to my life crumbling apart.