Book Commercials & Misanthropic Observations

Bye, bye, blogger

I am actually giving up on even trying to publish through blogger and tapping into my own atom feed to add this post.
I have a redirect in the header of that page, but this post is for friends like Pat Stream who read blogs through RSS and wouldn’ get the redirect that way, Pat. I’m still gettting to know it. but I like it alot, and it runs on my own mySQL.

Blogger, it’s not me, it’s you.

Dear Blogger,
Thank you for introducing me to the blogworld. You were so helpful and easy to use. I will continue to use the skills I learned from creating blogger templates both in work and hobby, but well, you are just not coming through for me anymore.

You are unreliable and I am tired of your “publish is taking longer than expected” error. Sometimes you are there for me, and often you aren’t. You are making me look bad, blogger. Do you know how many mornings I have wasted writing a brilliant post only to never actually get it published? I’m hurt.

I’m moving on - to the open source b2evolution. Of course it will take me a while to edit the new templates, but well, a change is a good as a vacation, right? You understand…

No, no, don’t do that, plenty of people still love you. Just not me.

Wow! Has it really only been 2 days?

I left on Friday morning to fly out to Philly and visit my brother, Alex, and his wife, Kaui, for about a week. I would have blogged about how excited I was earlier, oh wait I did - IT JUST NEVER PUBLISHED THROUGH BLOGGER.

Things I was greatful for on the trip out here:

• Patient and kind security guards – no kidding. They were really nice even though I am one of the worst at getting through that gate in a timely manner. I had no idea makeup is now considered a liquid to be separated from your bag.
• The ticket- Alex turned in some frequent flier miles to get me out here. That was really generous, I know they could have easily used them to go to their time-share in Aruba or something equally fun.
• In general friendly fellow travelers. I had my pony tails petted by a very flamboyant man in his 20’s who just thought I was “the cutest thing”, I learned all about someone’s 2 new adopted daughters, his job, his recent fiasco trying to get home after a flight cancellation, and his wife’s new job. My seat mate (this plane was so small my carryon had to be checked after all. There were only 4 seats across and 19 rows in this puddle jumper) was such a large man I felt sorry to see him in that little seat. He just sort of spilled out into my seat and I was grateful to be small, so that maybe there would be a little extra space for him. I scootched to the left as far as I could to help him not feel like he was crowding me and then asked him about his tattoos. He happily chatted the whole rest of the time.
• I was so happy to see Alex.
• His car is one of those square things with huge windows and I could see everything on the drive home. I told him this was a perfect car for alligator alley in Florida – that stretch of highway through the swamp in which there are alligators along the side of the road. That was one of my favorite car trips ever and I would do it again in heartbeat, especially in Alex’s car.

I’ll have to continue this later- I’m more interested in visiting than blogging. My story includes a trip to musicians friend and a gift for paul, a wild night out. See video here. Some old friends, a new friend, Cecelia – Note: Gregg fuchs, I have an LA real estate agent for you. She was very kind to keep checking on me last night as I had a terrible sort of stomach flu. I would have much rather been downstairs with everyone else. They were playing the PS2 version of American Idol. It sounded like so much fun!

Dear Mr. Telemarketer,

Our telephone number was not created as a convenient marketing tool for you. We pay a monthly phone bill because we value the ability to instantly contact our friends and family across the nation with a simple phone call- not, as you seem to believe, to create an open line that you can use to tell us about your product at any time.

When you call and I answer, I will not swear at you, or mess with your head by pretending not to understand English or waste your work time by listening only to tell you no.

Mr. Telemarketer from Custom Homes, do not cop an attitude with me as if I owe you a minute of my time. I did not ask you to call, I owe you nothing, and I am well aware that you will not somehow be brought to Jesus if I will just listen to your spiel.

When I tell you within the first 5 seconds that I am now purposely not ever going to use your services because I do not want you to get the impression that telemarketing works, it might be wise cut your losses by simply ending the phone call so I can get back to getting ready for work.

The Dress is Done!

We thought it true to the June Cleaver style to take the photo in the kitchen.

This original will be seen at all 3 Easter services this weekend.

I also whipped up a matching tie for Paulers. He wanted a shirt, but well, it took me this long to get the dress done. The tie is a little skinnier than I expected, we’ll just pretend he’s a keyboard player for Duran Duran. Yes, we will be “that couple”. We also occasionally talk to our dogs in baby talk and call each other “pookie“.