I’m hanging out over at Amanda’s today, talking about things not to say to me as the parent of a child with special needs.
Go read! Do it now!!!!
Category Archives: Web Schtuff
7 Quick Takes: A Relatively Boring Week
Take that, Joel Osteen! I don’t remember who shared this during the week but I love it! It’s a series of /joel Osteen tweets with responses taken from some of Luther’s more *interesting* responses. As I despise Joel Osteen for many reasons, this made me proud to be Lutheran.
A useful tool. One of the parody accounts I follow mentioned Perfect Potluck. If my church wasn’t an older congregation, I would totally suggest this for the next gathering. I might even suggest it for the next family gathering.
Orphans. Do you see these two darling children?
Brett still needs a mama. Iris finally has a family committed to her and they are compiling their dossier to send to her country.
OMG NCIS!!!! I’ve loved the episodes of NCIS from the last two weeks. It was sad to see Ziva that dejected but I think it was a good way to wrap things up with her. I also love that the new NAVSEC is female. I forsee that this will be an interesting thing for story lines.
The Millers. I’m currently watching it and it’s interesting enough. The mom is kind of like an American version of Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances. The father is incompetent in a comic way. It’s not addicting like The Big Bang Theory is but it works for 30 minutes.
Respite. I’m headed to San Jose for the weekend for some respite. It’s been an insane week with some less than pleasant portions. My parents will be happy to see Daniel and I could use some TLC from my mom as well.
Bliss. Daniel’s latest “falling asleep” thing has been curling up in our laps while we’re watching TV and cuddling until he falls asleep. I know this isn’t a forever thing so I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.
{Virtual} Coffee Date (vol. 9)
Once you’re done here, go visit Karianna and the other coffee drinkers.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you how well Daniel’s audiology appointment went this morning and how he wore his hearing aids for 8 STRAIGHT HOURS without taking them out. It was amazing. I just hope I can get them in correctly tomorrow as I won’t have his audiologist helping me.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you about this news story and how I have no sympathy for them. (The gist of it: she ran a red light and her fine was $100 more than on the sign.) Suck it up, buttercup! You ran the light. You were caught on film. You can pay your fine. I’m glad the judge didn’t see through your sob story.
If we were having coffee, I’d ask you to pray for Mary of Passionate Perseverance. She tweeted and posted on Facebook that she and her daughter Courtney were in route to Georgetown ER after Courtney had 3 seizures in 30 minutes and turned blue. Serious prayers are needed for Courtney that the doctors can figure out what’s going on and how to treat it as well as prayers for Mary and her family because this is a terrifying situation.
Thanks for having coffee (or herbal tea since it’s pretty late at night) with me. See you next week!
52 Weeks of Blogging with a Purpose: How My Childhood Impacted Who I Am Today
This week’s topic: how my childhood impacted who I am today.
This should be an interesting list.
[+] I am compassionate because my mom modeled it on a daily basis. She’s the one who would give money to people with “out of work” signs and buy the ingredients for a separate Thanksgiving dinner for the food pantry. I also had lots of service opportunities through school and Girl Scouts.
[+] I am creative because I had parents who encouraged me to read whatever I wanted, draw, and write stories. My mom has “books” that I made when I was 5 and 6.
[+] I am shy because I was bullied in school and consequently am really wary around people until I know I can trust them.
[+] I am good at thinking on my feet because of Girl Scouts, particularly my Senior troop. We got to do lots of activities where we had to think through all the steps independently and they taught me how to rely on my own everywhere from a job interview to the wilderness.
[+] I am focused because I wanted to be the best at everything and my classmates in middle schoo; and high school gave me a run for my money.
[+] I am a blogger because I was bored one afternoon in February 1997 (I think it was the 10th) and heard about this site called Geocities that allowed you to build your own personal website. I started blogging three years later.
[+] I am a Christian because I was blessed to have a neighbor who read me the Gospel when I was 6 years old and showed me what it was to be a godly woman. She was one of the Scripture readers at my wedding and I miss her so much! (She lives in Oregon now. The last time I saw her was 7 years ago when I was in Oregon for my grandfather’s funeral.)
[+] I am addicted to georgraphy because I had a first grade teacher who handed me a map and explained how it all worked. I knew all my state capitals before the year was up. Playing “Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego” obsessively in second grade also helped.
[+] I am a good cook because my mom had my brother and I “helping” her from the time we could pull chairs to the counter. It took her three times as long at first but we could follow a recipe by the time we were 7 and cook dinner by the time we were 9.
[+} I am a classical music lover because my mom had it on all the time. She also did the “You-Sing-It Messiah” with me in high school and college. By the time my awesome Music Appreciation class rolled around in high school, I knew more than most of my clasmates.
Now go see Becky and what everyone else was impacted by their childhoods.
Five Favorites: Blogging Hacks
These are some of the things that I do that help me with blogging every week.
Text files with the codes for memes. I have a folder on my desktop that has all the HTML for the memes in which I take part weekly. Some bloggers will provide code, others might provide an image, and others let you figure it out. If you participate in the Quick Takes at ConversionDiary.Com every week, Jen gives you the necessary code and you just have to save it as a text file. I run WordPress on my domain so I can generate necessary code even though I know enough HTML to write my own. It’s not pretty but it works. 🙂
Bookmark folders.I mostly run Chrome so I usually don’t do this one in exactly this form, but I would if I did almost everything in Firefox. In Chrome, I bookmark anything that looks interesting and then just look at any bookmarks from the last few days when I’m writing my Quick Takes or doing my Five Favorites.
Create drafts for the week ahead of time. On Sunday night, I do my Simple Woman’s Daybook entry and then create drafts for the other memes I take part in during the week. I tend to be up late so I do get some quiet while working on them. 🙂 Having the drafts allows me to just plug content into the correct draft. If something happens like the Pope’s interview last week and I want to respond to it, I just cut and paste the text for the drafts into EditPad and move some stuff around. I wouldn’t worry about it except that my URL’s are generated when I save something as a draft.
Read other blogs. Sometimes, someone will write something that needs to be shared. If I wasn’t in the habit of reading probably 50+ blogs, I’d definitely have some problems finding content. Thankfully, not all of them blog daily and I have a feed reader (Bloglovin) that creates a list of posts for me. The other benefit of reading other blogs: if you leave comments, the other bloggers might visit you and you’ll find some interesting people.
Join memes and link-ups. This kind of goes back to #1 (where I tell you to store the codes in *.txt files) but many times, these give you a topic or a framework for something about which you can write. The Simple Woman’s Daybook and Blogging with a Purpose are two that I enjoy. There are scores of others. They also help you find other like-minded bloggers and expose your blog to people you might not otherwise get to know.
Go love up Hallie and the others.
7 Quick Takes: Jaguars, Prayer Requests, and Twitter Personalities
Colbert does it again. Stephen Colbert takes on allegations by FOX Noise that the Syria conflict is a sign that the apocalypse is coming. You know, I’d believe the verses they were citing… if they didn’t refer to the fall of Jerusalem in the 6th century BCE.
The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive
Orphans. Do you see these two lovely children?
Brett still needs a mama. Iris finally has a family committed to her and they are compiling their dossier to send to her country.
Click on their names to see their Reece’s Rainbow pages.
Prayer Request. One of the benefits of blogging is that you get to meet interesting people as well as people who you swear live inside your brain. Thomas in both of those categories. He has the strange habit of saying things to me that make total sense after I’ve been struggling with them and I think the two of us could probably solve the problems of the world if we could sit down for an extended period of time.
Right now, Thomas is dealing with some devastating news. His wife is pregnant with their twin boys and having complications at 21.5 weeks that might cause her to lose the babies. We’ve been asked to take part in a novena to St. Gerard on their behalf, ending on September 24th. If novenas aren’t your thing, please just pray HARD.
Another prayer request. Elizabeth of Keep On Spinning got some craptastic news: the cancer is back. She’s been fighting this for 5 years — since just after the birth of her son George. They’re doing a massive amount of testing but it’s looking like this is a fast-growing one. Prayer is needed.
Anonymous Twitter profiles. Christianity Today interviewed Rev. No Respect and Church Curmudgeon in a two-part interview. Part I is here. Part II is here. I recommend both parts.
Forty to Forever. Wanna help out some orphans? I’m part of the Forty to Forever fundraiser and we need prayer warriors. If you’re interested, here’s the sign-up page.
New jaguar. Nope. Not the car. The Sacramento Zoo is getting a new one and the old one is shipping out on Sunday. I might be persuaded to make a trip to the zoo this weekend to say good-bye. Once the new one comes, it will be mentored by the zoo’s female jaguar, Tina.
For more Quick Takes, visit Jen at ConversionDiary.Com.
{Virtual} Coffee Date (vol. 5)
Once you’re done here, go visit Karianna and the other coffee drinkers.
If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that Thomas of Fuller Life finally revealed the gender of the twins. Note to self: get Thomas’ wife Alison a 12-pack of mani/pedi coupons and find someone nearby to take her for “girl time”. (Kidding, Thomas… when I do get mani/pedi’s, I’m usually reading something on my NOOK during the pedicure part and trying ignoring the outside world during the manicure part.)
If we were having coffee, I’d talk about how much I don’t want to go to the Social Security office tomorrow and how much I hate dealing with them. They screwed up Daniel’s SSI (AGAIN!!!!) and I have to go bring them copies of my 2011 and 2012 taxes… which they should already have. Seriously, I think they pulled numbers out of their butts for the latest determination. Oh well… I needed to clean my purse out anyway (they search it) and this will give me a chance to do some reading.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you about the serious cuteness of the red panda cub this weekend at the Sacramento Zoo. The tiger cub was also pretty stinking cute, especially as it pounced its mama wanting to play.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you how addicted I am to the CW summer show, Breaking Pointe. I was able to cheat a little bit and look up who is still with the company on the Ballet West website but the whole process of whether Ian or Zach got the contract with the company and the saga with Allison and her fiancé as well as with Christiana and her husband Chris.
If we were having coffee, I would tell you how irritated I am that Qubo stopped showing He-Man at night. Seriously, that was my fall-back when the 9:00 shows on the other networks were disappointing. It was also a tie to my childhood.
Thank you for having coffee (tea) with me this week. Same time next week!