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Blogs Programming

Adding features

Things are mellow at work, so I’m working on my WordPress skills by adding a searchable database of all my dvds to my site. Once all the info is in, I’ll create a template for viewing them, and add them to the nav.

It’s a small thing, and it’s mostly for my own use, but I’m looking forward to being able to search my disks by actor, director, writer, and/or year of release!

Categories
Blogs Miscellaneous News Travel Work

So much has happened since June!

Let’s see…

In July, I took out my bike a few times, hung out with friends, bbq’ed on my new grill, got busy at work, and generally settled in to my awesome apartment that I still love.

In August, I got super busy at work (thanks to Pacific Standard Time!), celebrated a birthday (the towel one), started my own little poker group, and spent a few days in Dallas VISITING MY BRAND NEW NEPHEW who is awesome and wonderful and will rule the world.

In September, I BOUGHT ALL THE THINGS for my nephew (and not-yet-born niece), launched most of my work projects, got my hair cut, had a bunch o’doctor appointments (kidney stones are still there *sigh*), started on ADD meds, joined a pool league (Wednesday nights!), spent a small fortune on a new pool cue, and took an auto repair class for women at Santa Monica College with Michelle (awesome class, I highly recommend it!).

This month, I shall be going home for a week to spend even more time with my totally awesome nephew, and, as all the gods are my witness, I shall lose some weight off my enormous posterior. No really, I saw a full-body reflection today, and it was NOT PRETTY.

I’ve also been reading a lot of The Bloggess, and if you haven’t discovered her yet, you should hie thyself over there ’cause she’s hysterically awesome. Start with this post if you don’t believe me.

Categories
Blogs Links Video Work

Do I even know what I’m talking about?

Last week I was in Houston for a conference, where I taught a workshop/tutorial on how to create a WordPress blog, and presented at another workshop on how to attract an audience to your blog.

The first one was a piece of cake–I could create a dozen WordPress blogs in an hour, and be watching TV while I’m doing it. Part of me felt like a big fake for the second one, though–I have few if any followers on any of my blogs. I’m ok with that, since it’s not my job to get readers (I just like to ‘talk’), but if I needed to, I know how it’s done. I’ve been swimming in the social media pool since before it was ever called social media. I know what attracts readers, and what keeps them, because I’ve been sucked into blogs, websites and posting boards….and I’ve left them. I’ve been anonymous, and I’ve had followers–I’ve even given an autograph or two in my lifetime.

I didn’t say any of that at the workshop, I just let them all assume I knew what I was talking about, because in actuality, I do. I’ve just never put it to the test.

Also in Houston, I saw bats. A quarter million of them. It was pretty awesome.

Categories
Blogs Pop Culture

Favorites of 2010

I don’t generally do top ten lists or lists of favorites, because let’s face it, I have the attention span of a fire ant, and all my favorites are likely to be from November and December, and maybe October if something in that month was truly spectacular. But I do have some favorites to share from this year (and yes, two of them are from the past two months, sue me), so I may as well lay them out there.

Favorite book(s) of the year: The Hunger Games trilogy
I can safely say this was my absolute favorite book of the year for two reasons: 1) Books are actually the one thing I keep track of, and looking back over the list from 2010, nothing even compares to The Hunger Games; and 2) I loved these books so much that I bought six extra copies of the first one to give away over Christmas, to try to suck other people into them.

Favorite new blog of the year: Mark Reads
OMIGOD I LOVE THIS WEBSITE SO MUCH! And yes, it’s deeply tied to my favorite book of the year, because Mark happened to be reading and reviewing The Hunger Games when I discovered his blog. The kick is that he only reads one chapter per day, then writes his review/recap, and if you’ve read THG, then you know it’s ridiculously hard to put it down at the end of a chapter, ’cause they all end in cliffhangers. Reading Mark’s journey through the book has enhanced my own memories of reading it, and now, reading his recaps of Catching Fire continues to make me chortle with glee. AND! He’s recapping his second reading of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone! (Which I just reread myself before Christmas.) Seriously, I cannot gush about his blog enough. Go read for yourself!

Favorite song of the year: Hey by Lil Jon & 3OH!3
I listened to this song on repeat for every morning for a week when I first found it, and every time it comes up on my ipod, I still listen to it at least twice. It makes me happy.

Favorite new (to me) TV show: The Vampire Diaries
I’d watched the pilot when it first aired, decided it was too Twilight for me, and gave up on it. Then over the summer, many of my friends whose judgments I trust couldn’t stop talking about how great it was, and how much it improved after the sixth episode. So, I gave it a shot. I Netflixed it in September, and OMIGOD! Fell totally in love. Immediately bought the first five episodes of season two from iTunes, and now I watch in real-time like everyone else. Sadly I have yet to pull my sister in, but I intend to keep trying.

Favorite movie of the year: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1
I had to look up the movies of 2010* to even remember what I saw this year, but that means I can definitively say that yes, Harry Potter was my favorite of the year. I thought it did a great job of staying as true to the book as it could, and really benefited from the decision to turn the last book into a two-part movie. Red was a close second (so much fun!), with Hot Tub Time Machine and How to Train Your Dragon vying for third.

And that’s all I’ve got. Not a bad list. I’ll try to keep track of my media choices over 2011 so hopefully I do this again next year. 😀

*Beware the many popups on that link.

Categories
Blogs Links News Travel

Six months in 500 words or less

May 1st?? May freakin’ first?!!! Wow, someone needs to kick my ass. Let’s see if I can summarize the past holy-wow-six months.

May:
TroubleBad news first: My cat Trouble died. It was a terrible terrible thing, and I still blame myself for being too busy to take her to the vet sooner. She spent almost a week in the vet hospital before she passed, and I visited her every day. I wasn’t with her when she died, arriving about 30 minutes too late. 🙁

June:
Was the “official” photographer for a meet and greet fan event with Nick Brendon.

IMG_6450Got a new friend for Jack–this is Dr. Zeva Tinycat, although she’s no longer quite this tiny, as she eats like the shelter cat she was. She’s two and a half, loves string and meowing a lot, doesn’t like people food, and bounces on the stomachs of my houseguests when they sleep on the couch.

Started seeing a therapist. She’s cool, albeit expensive. The expense adds a little to my stress, but I feel it’s the one thing I can’t really talk about with her.

July:
Spot of my perfect momentDrove out to Zion National Park in Utah by myself and spent a couple of days hiking. It was an incredible experience. The park was beautiful, and being on my own and beholden to none was very freeing. Next time, though, I’d rather share the beauty with someone–and the little travelled trail I’d discovered.

August:
For my birthday I got my first ever kidney stone. Yeah, it sucked donkey balls. It hit two days before, at work. I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, where my boss hung out with me until I was released (and it was *his* birthday). Spent the rest of the week on my couch in much pain. Bonus, I still have two more stones hanging out in my kidneys that could drop at any time. Yay.

September:
IMG_8398Spent nine days at Disney World with nine friends and relatives to celebrate my sister’s 40th birthday. We had a BLAST! Seriously, one of my best vacations ever.

October:
Work project kicked into high gear and the stress became the center of my life. Not the greatest month ever. However, I did make it to Carnaval in West Hollywood for the first time in about seven years, so that was cool. It’s still just as fun and crazy as I remember. And I spent four hours on a Saturday helping to assemble holiday boxes to send to troops in I believe Afghanistan. That was cool.

So now it’s November. The work project is still in progress and still stressful, but should be launching in a week and a half. Unfortunately it coincides with a Fitness Challenge being held at the work-site gym, where eight teams of eight are competing to lose the most (percentage-wise) in seven weeks. I’m blogging my progress with that little event over here, but I must say, not being able to eat chocolate when I’m stressed is doing bad things to my general disposition.

I’ve been crocheting this whole time. All summer I’d work on granny squares–boring, basic squares, each made from a full ball of Plymouth Encore. I now have 20 squares that need to be joined into a blanket. Don’t know when that’ll be happening. I also made one ginormous granny square blanket for my sister’s birthday.

IMG_8734

So that’s the past six months in a nutshell. Hopefully it won’t be another six months before my next update. 🙂