This whole blog-a-thon thing reminds me a bit of the idea of 'morning pages' as discussed in Julia Cameron's book The Artists Way. Morning pages go like this - each morning you get your notebook and you write either three pages or for a half hour - NON STOP. The idea is that at about one and a half pages (or fifteen minutes) you'll run out of 'safe' or 'normal' thoughts and some deeper truths will start coming out - how you REALLY feel about things, etc. With people blogging at LEAST every half hour (or if you're a maniac like SOME PEOPLE, every ten minutes), it might reveal some interesting results, in say, a few hours, once the new edge has worn off.
posted:4:16 PM | link |

Does anyone know WHO started dying cheddar cheese orange and why? See - I grew up eating sharp cheddar cheese that my mom called 'farmer cheese' and it was off white, just like monterey jack cheese is. You could also get like triple and quadruple sharp cheddar cheese, which would almost cut the inside of your mouth with its sharpness (still good though - LOL). But none of it was ORANGE, and it didn't need to be. I bring this important matter to your attention because we had stored a small end piece of monterey jack next to this California Orange Cheddar and the jack cheese turned a little orange where it was touching the cheddar. OH, THE TRAUMA!!!
posted:3:17 PM | link |

Yesterday the landlord came by on his tractor to scrape the wild parts of the yard and the side yard/pasture to get rid of all the dry dead grass there (fire hazard - BTW - what makes me want to spell 'hazard' with two z's? - Bo and Luke Duke would be so proud - *snort*). Anyway, our dogs were out there today and our black lab seems to be a little depressed at the barrenness of it all. She didn't run around sniffing at all - hardly anything to sniff anymore but bare ground. Then she lay down looking sad. It IS weird - rather like when you remove all the furnishings from a room and stand in the emptiness - lots of room, but not much personality.
posted:1:31 PM | link |

Oh, I just LOVE the Opera 5 browser! In particular: I just set a pretty aquatic .jpg I created as a foreground skin. You can do these really cool mouse gestures as short cuts - hold right mouse button and move mouse to the left to go back, move to the right to go forward, move up and down to reload - I may never use those corresponding buttons again. (It's all tom's fault - when I stopped by the other day he said, "Oh, you gotta see this..." *grin*) And it's STILL "the fastest browser on earth".
posted:1:01 PM | link |

Yay - today's the Blog-A-Thon day and tom is participating - posting at least every half hour for 24 hours and being sponsored to raise money to help bring books to third world countries. Go tom! Stop by - give him a pat on the back, encourage him with comments, etc. *grin* You can also access other blog-a-thon-ers from the 'ring' links on his page. Let the games begin! (er... in about an hour and a half, actually - noonish, I believe.)
posted:10:26 AM | link |

I couldn't help myself. I was eating crackers with peanut butter and jelly on them. The dogs were looking at me with those eyes. So I put healthy dollups of peanut butter on a cracker for each of them. Their tongues are still thwapping in and out - LOL. Mom was right - I AM easily amused.
posted:1:53 PM | link |

SPOON!!!!! "Java Devil, You Are Now My Bitch!" - yes, the live action show of THE TICK is FINALLY FINALLY going to be on FOX starting in November (8:30 on Thursdays). Starring Patrick Warburton (who you probably know as David Putty from Seinfeld, among other things.) as The Tick. HERE is a positive review of the pilot. If you are unfamiliar with The Tick, let me tell you one line from the Christmas Special.... The Tick and his sidekick Arthur are about to be overtaken by a veritable 'river' of thousands and thousands of 'cloned' Santa Clauses who are bent on robbing the city and The Tick yells, "Oh no! It's a YULE TIDE!" *evil grin* (links via metafilter)
posted:12:46 PM | link |

I keep getting this URGE to run out and buy things like a new copy of Windows ME/200 before XP becomes the only one available, and like a new car before things like this come standard. And John just mentioned that he heard that companies were thinking about putting in a technology where if you leave the car and there's something that weighs about as much as a baby in a baby seat in the back seat, the lights and horn will go on and off... but is there ever really a substitute for simply WAKING UP and becoming AWARE of what one is doing? (I've not determined if I meant that last remark sarcastically or not - LOL.)
posted:11:05 AM | link |

I've been editing web pages all day and my eyes are about to cross or fall out or something. That is all for the moment.
posted:5:20 PM | link |

I'm reformatting a lot of html pages for the cc site and I created a couple of keyboard macros to help me along - I just love 'em. You press a key combination and all this stuff starts blinking and rearranging itself before your very eyes. *grin* For work, I once wrote a 12 page macro for WordPerfect - now THAT was a macro. These pale in comparison, but they still get the job done! :-)
posted:7:56 AM | link |

I've discovered something. I've had this life-long belief/tendency that I have to slow myself down in order to keep pace with the 'pack'. (I really don't mean that as superior as it sounds - it's not like that really - LOL) This is aptly mirrored in my tendency to get distracted and feel frustrated instead of focusing on what I want, which in turn refuels the belief. It comes out in small things like walking into the kitchen and having one of the dogs walk in front of my feet - so I have to slow myself down instead of tripping or kicking them. It happened a LOT yesterday and really brought this attitude to light.

When I worked as a technical writer, I practically FORCED myself to feel patience when someone would come to me with a WordPerfect problem that was REALLY easy, but that they didn't want to work out or learn, they just wanted to be told. And because I got a lot of kudos about it, I convinced myself that it was the right thing to do/feel and everyone told me how patient I was. But deep down, I was still feeling the frustration.

Now, I'm determined to retrain myself. There will always be people to 'help' and interact with along the way, but I won't be LOOKING for instances to pull off the road every 10 feet anymore, so to speak. In a small sense, I won't LOOK for those things that might interrupt, like a dog in my path. A lot of people say that we avoid 'problems' by being ready for them or aware of them, but that hasn't been my experience. I avoid problems by focusing on what I INTEND to experience, and then if glitches DO occur, I don't get dragged down or held back or frustrated by them because my energy is STILL going towards the goal even as I work something out, instead of focusing so exclusively on the problem itself. If you see a problem, you're part of the problem? And don't worry, when I'm in the flow, the dogs just don't get in the way at all - interesting, eh? LOL.
posted:7:48 AM | link |

They had lots of shooting stars and fireballs on the east coast last night, and last night when John and I were driving home at about 9:30 p.m., I saw a whitish flash in the dark sky. But we're on the WEST coast!
posted:7:22 AM | link |

The more I learn about Unix/Linux, the more fun I have. Oh, the power! *evil laugh*
posted:9:24 PM | link |