Fair Trade Soapbox

So this past Friday, the crew of Pezheads - The Movie trecked to Gainesville, Florida, in the hopes of conducting an important interview. When that fell through (grumble grumble) we moved on to Plan B, which was to interview random people about their thoughts. We happened to be in Gainesville during the first week of classes at UF which means that the entrance to the Reitz Union was filled with student groups trying to recruit members. So we got to say hi to Steve Lammers from RUF in Gainesville, as well as Chris's friend Alan who works for Campus Crusade. Also, right next to where we were set up, was a group of grassroots-types who were informing people about Fair Trade. And they were giving out stickers, which is always a way to get Chris and my attention. So I went over to talk to the girl and learned all kinds of cool things about Fair Trade.

I mean, I already knew about Fair Trade with regards to coffee, especially, mainly due to an article in an old re:generation magazine. But it was good to get thinking about it again. I believe strongly that as a Christ-follower, I should be concerned for the well-being of others... and not just other people in Savannah, but other people living everywhere. That's why I think that healthcare should be more widely available, and that's why I get mad at people who support Right to Life but not Right To See A Doctor After You're Born Whether You've Got A Great Job Or Not. (yes, I am upset that I make too much money to get free healthcare but not enough see a doctor after I've paid my rent). Anyways. Back to Fair Trade.

I would do a terrible job of trying to explain the whole idea behind it, but Oxfam Fair Trade does a fabulous job for me. So you should read up about it there. The super-short version is that companies that sell coffee are buying it from the growers for less than it cost these growers to produce it, because they can. Then they sell it to us for ridiculously high prices so they can buy a new Mercedes. And I think that's disgusting. What Fair Trade does is pay growers a fair price for their coffee... above their cost of production. This still is a low enough price that companies can afford to do it without losing much by way of profit. And it's just socially responsible.

I'm really not one to rally for ... well ... anything, mainly because I'm not a big fan of debates, and rallying for something requires debating people who don't agree with you, or struggling with frustrations against people who just don't care. So I tend to just have my own convictions and stick with them, without doing much to try and do anything about it. Terrible, I know. But it's true. The same way I don't walk around trying to "evangalize" to every non-christian I meet, I also don't walk around yelling at people for drinking Starbucks coffee. But I do try to "vote" based on how I spend my money, however small a contribution that is. Chris and I, eventually, want to open a coffee shop... at which point I want to serve only Fair Trade coffee. But in the short term, I was thinking "I should only buy coffee from places that serve Fair Trade Coffee." But that opens a whole new can of worms.

The only place I know of near me that serves Fair Trade coffee is The Sentient Bean. That's great when I'm at home, because it's about a half-mile from my home. (And I MUST point out that their double espresso is 50 cents CHEAPER than the coffee shop 2 doors down from my office, and at least 25 cents CHEAPER than Starbucks, neither of which buy their coffee at a fair price. Think about that). But although there are 6 coffee shops a very short distance from my work (less than a mile, and most less than half a mile), none of them serve Fair Trade, so to say that I'll only buy Fair Trade coffee paints myself into a corner of Not Buying Coffee... an idea I'm none too fond of.

But the cute grassroots girl at the Reitz Union told me that they were able to make it a requirement for coffee shops on UF campus to sell Fair Trade... even the Starbucks that moved in! So then I thought "Well, maybe I should go into these coffee shops and suggest they buy Fair Trade. Then I would be able to get coffee downtown. And I would be doing something good. I mean, it's quite likely that these people have never thought of it before, and so they aren't consciously ripping off coffee farmers in 3rd world countries.

So that's my new plan. And by ranting about it here, I may feel a little more fire under my butt to actually do it. Stay tuned.

Oh yes, and I must point out that the Christian Study Center of Gainesville serves fair trade coffee (way to go, Dr. Horner!). And coffee shop owners can buy organic Fair Trade coffee directly from Sweetwater Coffee in Gainesville. Man, I love Gainesville.

new computer

My new apple has arrived! Finally, I'm back on a mac... and a sleek thin 15" powerbook that fits nicely in my backpack, at that. =) Much happiness. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must return to customizing my new extension of myself.

books

Today I finished reading Blue Like Jazz. I would definitely recommend it... the author is just really honest about his thoughts about God and spirituality, and just dealing with things in life. It was great... and awesome because he was so open to admit that he doesn't know everything, that he has faults, and here's what he's learned from some of his faults, and here's what he's learned about God and about life and about love from other people. Very great food for thought. And he's a bit of a hippie liberal, which is great too, because a lot of his non-conventional thoughts on stuff really resonated with what I think... and it's just good to remember sometimes that not every Christian is a die-hard Republican.

I also finished listening to the audio book of Lord of the Flies today. Good book. Disturbing. I had a friend in High School who had read it and felt it was necessary to add "I have the conch!" to many conversations, so I kept being reminded of that throughout the book. She also felt it was appropriate to interrupt conversations with "But I'm cute!" ... that has nothing to do with Lord of the Flies, I just remembered it.

I'm going to bed now.

apples and green peppers

So when I said my computer wasn't functioning well, what i really meant was that it won't boot up. I suspected it had big problems, but thought maybe, just maybe, a cord came loose and that once I dug around through all the cords, it would start up again, but I was wrong. (Sorry, John, but you can still have it if you want to try and make it boot up). So I finally bit the bullet and ordered my new laptop. I mean, I'm a web designer. I can't very well be without a computer. So I'm all kinds of excited for when my shiny new apple comes to my door. It should be soon.

In other news, I gave up on my green pepper plant about a month ago. It was crawling with bugs and flowering but not actually creating peppers, no matter how hard I tried to pollenate the flowers. So I gave up, stuck him out on our back porch where I was sure we'd forget about him (it's kind of a pain to get to our back porch, and it's nothing to look at, so basically the only person to go out there is Chris, when taking out the garbage). Well, much to my surprise, it's completely thriving out there. Chris watered it while I forgot about it, and the rain's been helping with the watering, too. Plus, green pepper plants love heat, so I guess it's having a great time in the 97 degree whether as opposed to the 78 degree weather indoors. Because, much to my surprise, I have a single solitary green pepper growing on it now. Oh joy and happiness. I can't wait for it to get big so I cut him up and eat him. Now at least I know never to try and grow a green pepper indoors. Or tomatoes, cuz that one is still gigantic but lacking in fruit... I guess they need to be outside for that stuff to happen. ::sigh::

The Sleeping Bag of Myself

So in between working, prepping for the SAT classes I'm teaching soon, and sleeping, I've been doing a lot of reading lately. That's what happens when I don't have a TV... I have to find some other form of entertainment, and reading is a long-loved pastime I haven't done enough of lately. I devoured all the Harry Potter series as audio books (so I still don't know how that chick's name is spelled, cuz I haven't seen it)... and I really enjoyed them, as well as enjoying the ability to "read" and do other things at the same time, as long as those other things didn't require thought... like laundry or crocheting. I've also been doing actual reading, too (as opposed to listening). And it's been great, I've been devouring lots of stuff... some beautiful, some just bizarre, some a little of both... but whereas watching too much TV made me stupid, all this reading is causing me to internalize a lot.

Right now, for instance, I'm reading Blue Like Jazz and although some of it is just so-so, some of it is amazing. So I have all these beautiful little stories in my head, and then I don't know what to do with them, other than go through life absorbed in the beauty of these little stories. I'm way too much in myself and not in the world, I guess. It reminds me of a phrase from a book I read earlier this summer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, where Oskar talks about "zipping up the sleeping bag of myself" ... or something like that. I thought that was a beautiful phrase, and I guess that's kind of what this is like. I'm probably not making any sense, but that probably goes along with the rest of it, too.

no interesting title

Well, let's see... i haven't posted for a while because althought I've been waxing and waning between super busy and waiting on feedback from everybody about everything (like I am now) there's not much to talk about. I'm trying to make enough $$ in freelance work to get a new apple laptop, as my 5-year-old mac has decided to pretty much quit functioning on any useful level, and considering it's so old, I've pretty much given up trying to get it to behave any better. So Chris and I have been sharing his computer, but we both need it too often so that causes problems. But I need a couple other projects to go thru before I'll be able to get a new machine... so I just dream about it a lot.

I managed to finish (barely!) crocheting a baby blanket for Luisa before her shower last Saturday. It turned out very well, i must say. I was very proud. And Luisa seemed to like it, so hooray!

And... for now that's it. Nothing exciting to share about my birds or my plants (which although they're flourishing, never did really provide me with much in the way of produce). Oh! Katie gave me a wonderful goldfish shower curtain that makes me smile. I took a picture and will have to post it soon.

So that's all for now. Sorry to be so darned boring lately.

busy again

Well, I spent the past weekend in Indiana, visiting my family up there. It was a lot of fun, and great to see everyone again. I hadn't been up there in almost two years. Since I've returned, I've been busy with work, freelance projects, and crocheting (I told Luisa that I would make her a baby blanket, and the shower is this Saturday, so I don't have much time yet to finish it). So... haven't had much time to post, and haven't thought about much other than all the things i have to do. I need to get working on prepping for the SAT classes I'm teaching next month, too. I'm feeling stressed for the first time in a long time. Not a bad feeling... just different.

service rant

I don't know what's going on with companies that do their business online lately, but I haven't gotten proper service from anyone without complaining in over a month. Really, it's ridiculous. We ordered stickers to sell for the movie, and they wouldn't have arrived in time if I hadn't emailed a complaint at how long they were taking (once I complained, they printed and mailed them off overnight that day so that we got them in time). We ordered business cards that were supposed to arrive within 10 days, but they didn't arrive within 20 days and so we didn't have them for the convention. I emailed multiple times with no response, so I called and they printed them and mailed them out within 2 days. I registered a website name for a client on Tuesday, and as of today although my payment had gone through, the info hadn't actually been processed and I still couldn't access the website. I emailed on Thursday and got no response, so today (Saturday) I emailed and said that I had 5 sites with them currently (which I do) and that all further sites would be hosted with someone else if I didn't get an immediate response, and low and behold, the site was up within 2 hours. Really. Ridiculous. I'm having similar trouble with freelance work, where I am not getting paid unless I harass the accountant(s) regularly. I'm starting to get really frustrated with the way things work. Why can't any companies do their job unless I complain that they haven't done their job? Is anyone else experiencing this?

PEZ recap

This should be my last plug about our documentary for a while. Just so you know.

The PEZ convention this past weekend in Cleveland was awesome. Really. I know it sounds strange, but it was great. Even though the three of us drove 13 hours straight overnight getting there, have to wait 5 hours upon arriving at the hotel before we could check into our room, slept very little while we were there, and then drove back 13 hours straight overnight, it was all worth it. We set up a mini studio in our room to film interviews, the guys spent most of the weekend filming rooms or doing interviews, and I spent the bulk of my weekend meeting people, figuring out when people could do interviews with us, and making sure the guys were fed. I walked close to 10 miles during 2 days without even leaving the hotel, and it wasn't that large of a hotel. I didn't even realize it at the time, but looking back, yeah, it was pretty much nonstop walking. But I loved it. I like meeting people, and everyone was so nice and helpful and fun. (Even the older dealers who don't really think we're going to finish this and have a good product were very nice tolerant of us and barely even let on that they weren't taking us seriously.)

The one thing that never ceases to amaze me, though, is the amount of money people sink into their collections. Chris had a (what I thought was reasonable, even generous) $40 allowance on PEZ for the weekend, and then I gave him another $10 on the last day. But he would mention to someone (anyone!) "Yeah, I have a pretty small budget of what I can spend this weekend" they would always reply "Yeah, me too" but it soon became clear that their idea of "small budget" was something like a couple hundred dollars or more. I met an 11 year old who has been collecting for "9 or 10 years" and who must have spent over $500 on PEZ over the weekend, judging by what he told me he had already purchased when we interviewed him on Friday. Intense.

But yes. Much fun. And we have a lot more planned, although there's only one more convention we're going to film, and that's in November. But we have a lot more filming to do, overall.

So yes. That's all the excitement for now. I've actually got quite a few things keeping me busy right now, so it will probably be a while before I can post again. It's good to be busy.

PEZ-a-mania

We're here! Me, Chris, and Chris left Savannah last night at 7:30pm, and we arrived in Cleveland this morning around 9am, slept in the car for an hour, and then started wandering the hotel. We can't check into a room for another 30 minutes or so, so we're killing time in the lobby with their wireless Internet. Looks like it will be a fun weekend, although right now we all just want to take a shower and a nap.

This will probably be my only post from here, but later today we'll start posting photos and updates at our PEZheads - The Movie website, so check there.

Crazy Busy Weekend

Well I had quite a fun weekend. Friday night my friend Angela and I drove to Columbia, SC (a little over 2 hours driving) to see Tiffany and her boyfriend. They were in town just for the weekend, and I haven't seen Tif in almost 2 years, and I've never met her boyfriend, so that's why we drove there. We had sushi and coffee and yakked about college and stuff we did 4 and 5 years ago... it was fun. Then Angela and I drove back home, and I was in my bed by around 1:30am.

Then Saturday, my brother and his girlfriend came up to visit from Jax. We wandered downtown and went to Fort Pulaski and such. I haven't seen them in ages, too (at least 8 - 10 months). We had fun. It was really hot, though, and I think we all baked in the sun. So we spent some time just hanging around in my apartment playing with Google Earth. If you think google maps are fun, you've gotta download Google Earth. We were zipping around the world, looking at my grandparents' house in rural Indiana, visiting the Eiffel Tower and the Colisseum... I love this program. (Chris and Matt's girlfriend were entirely uninterested... those losers). I always sucked at Geography, so I guess this stuff is fascinating to me because I feel like I can see stuff and get a better sense of the layout of things. Especially if I have an aerial view of "That's Grandma's house, and there's the country store we always go to, and that's where they are in relation to each other" and stuff. Much fun.

I think that's about all the excitement for the weekend. Much fun. And this weekend we go to Cleveland for that PEZ convention. Oh, the excitement never stops!

Not much to say

Katie was here over the weekend for a visit, and we had a lot of fun. It was great to just spend time, hanging out with her. And we watched Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which I was interested in seeing because it has Alexis Bledel (Rory from Gilmore Girls) in it, and I think she rocks. It seems like the movie was filled with TV actors, because another of the main characters was Joan of Arcadia, and some West Wing guy was in it, too. If you check some of the other actors on IMDB, lots of them have at least made TV drama appearances. Anyways. I was expecting it to be pretty lame, but was surprised to find that it actually have a good deal of emotion... I liked it. It was a good sappy girl movie. And I hate sappy girl movies.

My bro and his girlfriend are coming to visit this weekend, so I'll have another weekend of playing tourist and tour guide. Should be fun. The only things I like about Savannah are the things I take people around to when they're visiting, and I don't do those things regularly, so I love company.

Aaand... that's it. I'm out.

I'm a PEZhead

As many of you know (but some may not), Chris and I, along with our film major friend Chris, are making a documentary... about... PEZ. Go figure. Anyways, we're going to Cleveland at the end of the month to film a huge PEZ convention. Should be all kinds of fun. And I've had a website built for our venture for months (literally. Months.) but I just now made it live for the world to see, because I had to wait for a few kinks to be worked out with the Chrises (How DO you pluralize Chris, anyways? Is it Chriss, Chris's, Chrises, or maybe Chreese?). Yeah, this post is getting ridiculously rambly. So anyways.

The point is, go check out our website for PEZheads - The Movie. This month the guys are really getting their butts in gear with it, so there should be semi-frequent updates and such. Hoorah.

Guest(s)

My good friend Katie is coming to visit from Gainesville... she should be here sometime this afternoon. I'm excited. She was supposed to come visit last summer, but the hurricanes kept canceling our plans. Not this time! Dennis will not stop us!

I've only gotten far enough in our plans to know that we're going to Sakura for their sushi lunch special ($4.95 for two rolls, salad with ginger dressing, and tea! You can't beat that!) ... then we'll probably just wander downtown.

Sunday night her husband and father will be staying with us after their Re-Trek a bit north of us, then they'll all head home Monday. Should be fun.

After the weekend

Man, it's hard to return to work after a long weekend. It was a pretty good weekend, too. We spent lots of time with friends, which is the best, in my opinion. Thursday night was Girls' Night at my house... I made my homemade tabouli, and we just hung out for a while. Friday night we met with the other Chris about our PEZ movie (business cards and stickers have been ordered)... Saturday night we went over to Chip and Chris's house, and Angela fed us leftover enchiladas (yum!) ... and then we hung out, and then we watched a strange video-game movie called eXistenZ. Sunday I did work for half the day, and then Angela came over and we hung out forever... and then MONDAY, my Chris made lasagna, and Angela and Robbie came over to eat it... then they left to study and go to work and such, and then Angela and Chip came over that night. We were supposed to go downtown for fireworks, but I wasn't feeling up to it (girl stuff) so we hung out instead. Which, I think, was more fun than standing shoulder-to-shoulder on River Street with 85% humidity to watch some fireworks. I mean, Disney World spoiled me forever from normal fireworks, anyways.

So yes. Good food and good friends makes for good times. Not a bad way to spend the weekend.

But the fun doesn't stop there! This Friday, Katie comes to town for the weekend. It will be the first time she's made it up to Savannah, so I'm looking forward to showing her around. I'm sure it will be more good times.

What's IMDB?!?! (incredulous look)

So I realized that a service I considered to be really well-known isn't so well-known. And yes, I'm talking about IMDB, the same site I was rambling about yesterday. Chris and I will sometimes make comments to people such as "I need to IMDB that movie" or "Well, I checked him out on IMDB and..." and typically no one bats an eye. But lately people have been asking "What's IMDB?" and this is, for some reason, shocking to me. I am starting to even suspect that some of the people who didn't bat an eye at comments were just afraid to ask what it was. I mean, I expected to have to inform my Dad, because Dads never know the cool websites. But these are young, relatively savvy people who are asking what it is.

And so I want to make sure, for any of you who have been afraid to ask, IMDB is a super-cool site which keeps a comprehensive database of everyone who's had anything to do with any TV show or movie. You can have fun playing the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game just by clicking through different actors and what they've been in and who's been in it with them. Chris and I love finding out how many movies a certain actor has been in with a certain director (for example, Johnny Depp with Tim Burton). You can also find out that Johnny Depp is already slated to be in 7 movies coming out between now and 2007, and one of those is a Tim Burton movie. See how much fun this is?

And by comprehensive, I mean that you can find our friend and PEZ documentary partner Chris Marshall because he interned on Swimfan (and the lower half of his body and his hand are in it, but he's not credited for that). And, for you Gainesville folks, did you know you can also find Lori Taylor and her 1970 movie, Mark of the Witch? (And if she hasn't told you her story about the movie, you must ask her).

Ahh yes, I love IMDB. You should too.

look-a-likes

Well, today we checked on a new church, and saw Batman Begins, among other errands and running amock. I must say, I enjoyed the movie. Of course there were plenty of things that were unrealistic (it's a comic book, after all) but there were a lot of things that seemed a bit more plausible, and I like it when a movie like that has realistic elements. Not to mention Christian Bale is just cool. The movie seemed filled with big-name actors, as well as actors who look like other actors so I kept wondering (like a guy who looked remarkably like Anthony Hopkins)... when I checked them all out on IMDB tonight, I was happy to not other people making comments about certain actors looking a lot like the people I thought they were (like the Anthony Hopkins guy). Not only that, but the pastor at the church we checked out happened to look a lot like Val Kilmer... who just happens to be a former Batman... I just love it when things link up in weird ways like that.

Good Times

Our pastor and his wife from back in Gainesville (who have now themselves moved to Philly) are vacationing in Tybee Island (right by Savannah) this week. So Chris and I were able to get together with them last night and have dinner and such. It was great to get to catch up with them. Good times, good times. And now I can finally say that I've been to The Lady and Sons, which is apparently a requirement for Savannah, because she has a show on the Food channel. The food was good, but not quite good enough to warrant all the hype. But at least now we've been there.

Tonight is RUF, which I've been looking forward to, not just because of the message but because afterwards we get together with friends, and that's always fun. Summer RUF is a different animal because it's so much smaller, so you get more opportunity to talk to the few people that are there, instead of feeling overwhelmed by the 50+ people you don't know. It's funny, I wasn't looking forward to summer because so many people go home for the summer term, so a lot of our friends were going to be gone, and I figured we'd be pretty lonely this summer. But so far, we've actually been able to hang out with people MORE, and meet and become friends with NEW people... very cool.

Extremely Loud

Saturday we went to Tallahassee for a wedding, Sunday we returned to Savannah. It's a 5 hour drive, so I got to do a lot of reading... I read a book that Chris had already finished, that we borrowed from a friend of ours, called Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. All I can say is... wow. This was an amazing book. I laughed out loud, I fought back tears, and a couple of times I just had to stop and sit and feel incredibly helpless... that's how amazing it was. I would definitely recommend it.

I guess soon I'll have to read Everything is Illuminated but Chris checked that out from the library, and then he returned it so our friend Angela could check it out, so I guess I have to wait for her to finish it. That's okay though because I may need a short break from emotion after that one... maybe I'll read something else in between, or maybe I'll be too busy to read for a few weeks (more likely). Anyways.

Hot!

It is really, ridiculously hot today. Not even 10am, and weather.com tells me it's 84° outside, but with 77% humidity, it feels like 96°! But wait! There's more! By 2pm it will be 92° and feel like 101°! Bleh. This Floridian is being baked to a crisp! There's even a Severe Weather warning due to the heat. The only thing that makes me feel better is knowing that it's about the same in Gainesville, with a "feels like" temp of 100° today. At least I know I wouldn't be better off there.

Stupid sun. And global warming.

Envy

It came.

It's not mine. I got it for Chris, since I already have a Dell MP3 player. But my Dell is nothing compared to this baby. I'm so jealous. He's gonna spend the next couple days transfering music from CDs onto the new iPod. It's so slim, and pretty, and... I WANT IT!

Ah well. For those of you that didn't believe us that we could actually get a free iPod, take that. For those of you that helped us out, THANK YOU! And if one of you wants to post a comment with your link to freeipods.com, maybe someone will see this and say "Man, I want one too!" and they can click your link to get started while helping you on your way to 20 GB of happiness.

Sprout Crazy

So I've been sprouting some mung beans over the past couple days so I could make Phad Thai tonight with them, and man do these things grow like crazy! I started out with 50 cents worth of dried mung beans. Mung beans are small and green and about half the size of a dried black bean. 50 cents worth is about half a cup, give or take. Well, after soaking them over night and then leaving them in a jar for 3 days (rinsing them about every 8 hours, as directed) I now have more sprouts than I know what to do with.

Exhibit A.

I easily have 5 cups or more worth. These things grow like crazy! So I made some weird mustard and bean sprouts stir fry for lunch with almost 3 cups worth (I have enough for lunch tomorrow, too). And tonight I'm making Phad Thai with the rest of them... hopefully. I may still have some left over though, and I'll need to come up with yet another item... a salad, maybe. They're yummy, and fun, but getting a little out of hand. Next time I'll try just sprouting 15 cents worth and see where that gets us. I have a feeling that will be closer to right for one meal.

My next adventure will be to try sprouted black beans & rice. We already like black beans and rice, so we'll see how it is once they're growing... I just started soaking the beans and some brown rice to try it out. The best part is Chris doesn't sound scared of my experimenting (he loves the Phad Thai) so that's always good, considering he's such a picky eater.

Hurricane Season again!

Wow, it seems like we just escaped last year's brutal hurricane season, and it's upon us again. That means I'll have to start keeping a cursory eye on NOAA again. This hurricane season I'm not at the TV station, so I don't get a daily hype about how "This one is really going to kill us all." But considering the next few years are supposed to abound in hurricanes, and not only do we live on the coast, but most our family and friends are in Florida, I feel like I'm obligated to watch out for them. I miss the days when classes were cancelled in college and I had no idea why, only to find there was a hurricane coming right for us. Ignorance was bliss.

I feel like I can't compose a proper sentence, or think in proper sentences, because I just spent about an hour today learning how to get certified to grade SAT essays for The Princeton Review. The cool thing about essay grading for them is that you can do it from home, and you get $1 per essay and each one shouldn't take more than 2-3 minutes to grade. But it's hard to figure out the right way to grade them. And between learning how they should be graded, and taking the certification test, I read about 3 dozen bad high school essays. Lots of poor structure and poor reasoning and poor spelling. My brain hurts.

Unfortunately, I did all that only to discover that there was currently only 1 essay that needed grading. That's right, one. So I made $1.00 today. Woot.

I don't feel like I wasted my time because there will eventually be more to grade, plus it gives me more insight into teaching the essay writing portion of the class. But it was still a buzzkill to only get to grade 1 essay after all that.

Such is life.

These make me laugh...

A Softer World posts fake cover letters to companies... I believe he actually sends these to companies... and they're funny. Go read them. Now.

I have no words...

I really don't know what to say about this, other than to direct you to read this strange article.

Certified!

Well, it was a nervewracking last day, but I did get certified to teach SATs for the Princeton Review... woo hoo! I have no idea when I'll get to teach my first class, but I'm "in the system" now, so I just have to wait and see. Yay.

They call me Mama Kendra...

So I'm in Atlanta again for Princeton Review training. And apparently the way I've learned to teach isn't the way Princeton Review wants me to teach AT ALL. So I'm trying to re-learn a new way to teach that goes against everything I had to do for New Horizons. The main problem, apparently, is that I'm "too nurturing." That's not really surprising... I mean, the guys I worked with at the TV station did nickname me "Mama Kendra" for a reason, but I thought that was because I brought them Cold Eaze when they were sick. But considering it's just my nature to be "nurturing" it's kind of hard for me to figure out how to turn that off to be the "Rockstar Trainer" they want... I asked a few questions for clarification, and what I came out with is that I:

1) Talk too slowly

2) Make sure people are understanding what I'm saying

I understand we have a limited time to teach all the material, so we need to keep moving. But I thought I was explaining things about the same as he was modeling it for us, so I'm trying to figure out how to cut it down... I guess I'm just not giving the class enough credit to know how to do some of this stuff. I just got so used to having to teach with the assumption that people don't know how to open a file on their computer after I've showed them 3 times, so I'm so used to a super-systematic approach to teaching and need to break from it. But the thing I'm having a super hard time wrapping my head around is that I'm talking too slowly. All my life I've heard "Hold on, slow down and start over" when I'm telling people a story. The main criticism I've had in class presentations in school was that I could have spoke a little slower. I mean, when people are nervous, they talk faster. I talk fast in general. When I started teaching for New Horizons, the big thing I learned was that if it sounds to me like I'm talking a little too slowly, I'm really talking at just the right speed. So I really worked at slowing down my speach when teaching, until it became automatic. And I never, EVER had anyone ever tell me I was talking too slow. Usually people appreciated my not going through things at breakneck speed. And now I'm being told that I'm speaking too slowly and I need to speed it up. And this is what they said after I gave a teachback while being super-nervous which should mean I talked too fast anyways, despite my best efforts. I don't understand. I really don't.

So tomorrow I have my last teachback. I will try to speak more conversationally, more quickly, and less nurturingly. If I succeed, I should get certified to teach this stuff and make a little bit of money. If not, I go back to normal life without SAT prep. Stay tuned...

Slight Reformed Frustration

So Sunday, Chris and I went to church at IPC less than a mile from us. We prefer to go to a church out on Whitemarsh Island, but the drive is a little too far, so we thought we'd give this one a chance again (we hadn't been there in months). Anyways, in the bulletin under an announcement about evening service out on Point Pleasant, was a note that a lot of people go out there early to enjoy fellowship before the service (and I guess it's at an outdoor park or something), but that we needed to keep in mind that not all recreational activities are permitted on the Lord's Day - only activities that are glorifying to God are permitted, as stated in the Westminster Catechism.

So Chris and I figured, if they took the time to print this in the bulletin, there must be some sort of specific idea they have as to what is and is not permitted. But we certainly didn't know what that meant. I mean, I know people who won't go to a store on a Sunday because they believe you shouldn't work. When Chris and I lead Youth Group in Gainesville, we weren't allowed to take the kids to see The Passion Of The Christ on a Sunday, because some elders had a problem with us watching a movie on Sunday. But considering everyone has a different idea of what's permitted, we had no idea how to take this message int he bulletin. I asked a couple friends who attend there, and they didn't know either.

So yesterday I asked our RUF minister, who is also a member at the church. He went back and forth on making sure I knew that some members of the church believe this, and certainly the pastor does, but there's different ideas as to what extent to take that, and... basically... never answered my question. We tried to push him to give us some sort of answer, "Okay, well if we were to go out to Point Pleasant, what recreation could we do and not do? Would we be allowed to play Frisbee? Or is that not focussed enough? Are we expected to just get together and sing hymns?" and still, no answer. This was surprising because Tom is usually very straightforward about anything you ask him, so this was obviously a touchy subject.

So after all this time, I still have no idea what IPC means in their bulletin when they make the distinction of only engaging in worshipful activities on the Lord's Day. Certainly they meant something. Certainly they put it in there with certain activities in mind to encourage, and other ones to discourage. But if no one knows what's being encouraged and discouraged, what's the purpose? Doesn't this really just start getting a little too law-based? (without any definite law, even!) And if no one can agree on what the standards are, how are they supposed to enforce the standards? I start envisioning a bunch of Pharisees bickering over whether or not Jesus can pick a grain on the Sabbath.

So I'm a little frustrated about the whole thing. I was started out just being curious about this particular church's stance on this issue, and now I think I'm just a little more turned off by this church. Bleh.

(Yes, that's right. When it's time for me to wrap up this post, the best I can come up with is "Bleh." That's all I'm left with. Sorry.)

Another Weekend in ATL

Not a whole lot of excitement going on around here. We recently got a storage unit, so Chris has been slowly relocating some of our clutter to the storage unit. It will be nice to clear out a lot of our stuff, since our apartment has virtually no closet space, and it doesn't look like we'll find a better place to move to any time soon.

This weekend I go back to Atlanta for the second weekend of SAT prep training with Princeton Review. As long as my teachbacks go well and I don't get cut, I will be certified to teach high schoolers how to beat the SATs. Then I'll be (hopefully) scheduled to teach courses and do tutoring for it on evenings and weekends. Fun fun fun!

I think I'm going to switch up the audio books and listen to Harry Potter this time around. Give my mind a break before spending the weekend thinking about quadtratic equations and proper grammar.

Last night I had the most fitful night's sleep, with weird dreams that kept waking me up and confusing me, and a huge non-dream plane flying about 10 feet above our apartment at 3 in the morning (I dunno what was going on, but it was LOUD and it was CLOSE, and it freaked me out!). Considering I'd been woken up earlier because I dreamed someone was breaking into the house, I was utterly confused when I was woken up by real noises, because I wasn't entirely sure it was real. (Then Chris confirmed it this morning). Bleh. No more ice cream before bed for me!

Where did the weekend go?

Well, I had a great long weekend, but although I thought it could never end, end it did. Faster than I expected. And now it's already Tuesday. Yipes.

I went on a bit of a shopping spree this weekend, because I was seriuosly in need of some new clothes. Luckily, my need to clothe myself happened to fall on a weekend where all the stuff I wanted was massively on sale at the mall. I bought 3 pairs of capris (with lots of pockets! hooray for functional pockets!), 9 shirts, and a zip-up sweatshirt for a total of $150. How awesome am I? I'm very excited. The most I spent on any one item was $30 (for the capris I'd been eyeing for 2 months, on sale from $56); the least I spent on any one item was $2.99 (for a super-thin pink shirt for layering). Now I should be set on clothes for another 2 years or so. (really, I rarely buy clothes)

Chris is between quarters in school now, so we got to actually spend some time together hanging out. Spending time with the hubby is good.

My overreaching goal for the weekend, though, was to get as much sleep as humanly possible. I've been feeling majorly sleep deprived, so I was determined to remedy that this weekend. I didn't really get to do much sleeping in (Monday morning I woke up at 9:30 on my own, which was strange) but we went to bed pretty early most nights, so I got some decent sleep, then I managed to take a nap EVERY DAY which was the best part. So I was feeling pretty good for once. I'm gonna see how long I can continue to get some decent sleep and see if it lasts.

Last night we went over to a friend's house and watched a very strange Japanese movie called Casshern. I will go on record saying this was the strangest movie I've ever seen in my entire life. The graphics were crazy awesome, but none of us had any idea what was happening most the time, and it really seemed like the creators couldn't decide what sort of style or feel to give the movie, so they used every one they thought of at least once (even what appeared to be claymation for about 8 seconds). Really, really strange. Kind of painful for the last 45 minutes or so because we didn't know how much longer it would drag out, and didn't really know what was happening anyways.

I think it's coming to the US sometime though... maybe they'll tidy it up a bit for us before it does. Let's hope.

ATTN: T.V. Execs

Today's soap box is all about the silly TV Execs and their lawsuits against sites that post links to TV show bit torrents. If you don't know what Bit Torrent is or about the Powers That Be and their absolute fear and hatred of Bit Torrent, and you don't care, go ahead and skip down the page to other less tech-centric posts.

So I tend to watch a few TV shows. Some I'll watch if I have nothing else to do, some I'm a little obsessed with and have to catch every episode of. One of the latter is The OC (I can't help it. I must know what Adam Brody (ie Seth Cohen) will do next). I'll use them as my main example rather than bore you with all my TV shows. When the first season of The OC came out last year, Chris and I started watching it and got hooked. This was Before The Days of BitTorrent (well, before we knew anything about it). We would try and rush home so we didn't miss an episode. Then one day we had to travel down to Lakeland, and try as we did to make it there before the show started, the world was against us, and we missed it. There was no replay, and so we just didn't know what happened in that episode. The OC is one of those continuing dramas, so missing an episode meant we missed some major stuff - we were out of the loop. The next week something came up where we missed another one. At that point we just gave up and stopped trying. We had missed too much, it had fallen off our radar - The End. As far as we were concerned, we never needed to watch it again.

Later on down the line Chris learns of this program called Bit Torrent which is a super-simple file sharing program that makes it easy to download files, and one of the things he found to download were old episodes of The OC. He decided to download the whole last season so we could find out what we missed. So we watched them all, got hooked again now that we knew what happened, and now we were all about watching the next season. So when Season 2 started this past fall, we tuned in. On the TV. Complete with commercials. If it weren't for Bit Torrent, The OC would have lost a couple of viewers. But now, with Bit Torrent, if we missed an episode for some reason (like we had something to do on Thursday night), we could download it and not have to miss it. Rather than falling out of the loop, having this easy source of watching missed episodes meant we were much more likely to watch it when we were home on a Thursday night. Again, TV shows being available on Bit Torrent actually meant that The OC had MORE regular viewers than it would have otherwise.

"Okay," says Mr. TV Exec, "but I'm sure that your case is rare. There are plenty of people who only watch shows they've downloaded, and so they miss all the commercials, and we lose money." Well Mr. TV Exec, I hear you. But think about this. No matter how hard you try to quash this illegal trading of your property, someone is gonna come up with a new way to get around it. You guys thought going after Napster would solve everything, but now file sharing is even more prolific than it was when Napster and Kazaa were your enemies. You're going about it all wrong. People have lives. They aren't all sitting at home waiting to watch your shows. The people with enough money are Tivo-ing your shows and skipping commercials anyways. TV viewing as we know it is evolving whether you like it or not. So rather than fighting it, evolve with it. Here's what you can do.

First of all, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Start making the torrents available yourselves. Right after a show airs, make it available for download on your site. This way you have control over the quality, plus you get a great sense for how popular each show is. Download stats are a lot more complete than those silly Neilson ratings, anyways. But what to do about lost advertising? well...

Start with a little more product placement. As much as I hate it, you do it anyways, so just do it a little more. On one episode of The OC, Alex and Seth were talking about a movie, and Alex said something like "I'll be sure to NetFlix it for you." Hello? That is the perfect type of advertisement for these file-sharers. Who is more likely to sign up for something like NetFlix than a computer savvy person who's media-obsessed. Perfect product placement! Then you get Marissa to come to school with a bag of Burger King and have her say she's been craving a Whopper all day. Now all these weight-obsessed girls say "Well, skinny Marissa Cooper eats Burger King, so I can too!" I know, it's sleazy, but since when have you been worried about that?

But you don't want to over do it with the product placement. If all our favorite shows turn into 60 minute commercials, we'll stop watching them. So you supplement it with ads on the bottom quarter of the screen. Not on top of the show, we hate that. Use the already available real estate. When I download a show from HDTV, there's already a significant amount of black above and below it in full screen mode. So use a bit of that real estate to post ads every now and then. When Alex says "I'll NetFlix it for you" you post an ad for NetFlix, complete with URL, in that bottom portion. When they're driving down the road, post your car ad. Music's playing? Time for an iPod ad. If you're posting the show yourselves, you can even keep the commercial breaks in there, but be aware that we'll skip through those. That's why you just posts mini-ads while the show is happening, and we can't escape them.

I'm sure I'm gonna piss a lot of people off with the mere mention of ways to bombard us with more advertising, but I'm just being pragmatic. When my TV is ruined in an electric storm right before all the season finales, I'd rather be able to download them easily with commercials than miss them altogether. (Hello, I've watched every episode of Lost during its regular Prime Time slot, and you tell me I can't watch the last two hours because my TV shorted out and it's wrong to download media that I watch for free anyways when it's aired? Gimme a break!)

So, to recap, TV Execs, chill out and evolve with the technology. Downloading is big business, if you're not afraid to try it out. Oh yeah, and if you use my ideas, I want you to pay me whatever you're paying those silly lawyers who are trying to stop TV file sharing. You know you'll make more money in the long run my way.

I've got soul, but I'm not a soljah

So, James Brown. Yeah. In case you didn't read Chris's posts yet, James Brown played a free concert down at Forsyth Park (4 blocks from us) tonight for SCAD graduation. So we went. There were a lot of people there, as you would imagine, being that James Brown was performing live in downtown Savannah for free. I wasn't really that excited about going, because I'm not really all into James Brown. I know, shoot me, but just because people tell me I'm supposed to revere an artist doesn't mean that I suddenly do. It's not like James Brown's music bothers me; it doesn't offend my senses like Country music does. It just doesn't rock my world. Besides, I've seen him before, at the Alachua County Music Harvest back in college (affectionately known as "Back In The Day"). And he wasn't all that exciting then. So I was expecting more of the same, and I got it.

But since this is my blog and I can say whatever I feel like here, I will elaborate just a little about the experience. And you can't stop me.

James Brown has a PR Announcer who spent the first 15 minutes before The Man came on stage trying to remind us that we really wanted to see him. Really. He just kept yelling "Are you ready for Ja-ay-yay-mes Brown! Jay-ay-ay-ames Brown!" and other sundry things that always ended in a long rendition of his name. I thought the thousands of people crowded around the stage did't need any more convincing that they wanted to see this guy, but apparently James Brown Himself thought it necessary to pay someone to spend 15 minutes before his set telling us how cool he is. So finally he comes on stage and plays a little music. Then the Announcer needs to remind us that we are, indeed, listening to Ja-ay-aymes Brown, just in case we had forgotten. Then The Godfather of Soul told us he was now (after an hour of playing) going to "Get Up And Do My Thang." After he said about a dozen times that he would, indeed, "Do His Thang" some girl in his band asked everyone a few more times if we were ready for James Brown to "do his thang." I guess he wasn't getting enough encouragement. After 10 - 15 minutes of that, he played one more song. Not even a big song that everyone knows. Nothing major at all. And then that was it. I guess "his thang" is to jam for a few minutes and then get off stage. W00t.

Now I guess I can't really complain since I didn't spend any money for this experience. Well, I'm sure Chris's tuition helped out a lot, and we'll be paying that off for a long time. And when I saw him at Harvest he was about 45 minutes late getting on stage anyways, so I should be happy he started on time. But really, when you're The Godfather of Soul and you're as well known as he is, why would you need to pay some guy to spend 30 minutes of your set telling people how great you are? Shouldn't he be secure in his awesomeness by now? At any rate, because I'm easily annoyed, this whole announcer hooplah and lots-of-hype-without-lots-of-performing just ruined any possible enjoyment of the show.

The End.

Since I wasted a lot of space here complaining about the show, I'll wait til tomorrow to ramble about the other stuff on my mind.

(* the title is from a song by The Killers that Chris was playing in the car today)

Updates from the Bay Window

I realized it's been a while since I last gushed about my plants and my birds, so I thought I would give you all an update.

The tomato plant just keeps getting bigger, but I only have 5 tomatoes growing on it. I was hoping for many more. I guess trying to pollinate it didn't really work. But I don't know what else I could have done. It's at least 7 feet tall now, though. Crazy. And the pepper plant has flowered a lot but hasn't grown any bell peppers, so I guess that was a flop. It's also infested with aphids that I can't get rid of, no matter how much soap spray I attack them with. Alas.

My parsley is still faring well, though, and I've started some basil from seeds and they seem to be behaving, although it will be a while before I know if it really worked.

As for the birds, the baby is now eating solid food, but he's still really picky about what he eats. At least now he's eating other stuff when I don't give him millet. And they're both in the same cage, and they don't fight when they're in the same cage, but they also don't really cuddle with each other. Bubs just tries to stay away from the little one, and that's about it. Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of time to love on them lately, so the little one doesn't like to be out with me now. I need to work on him some more. And Bubs is back to pulling out feathers, which is why we bought the other one in the first place. So I guess he's either still bored with the other bird in the cage, or it's just a habit he's not going to break. Alas.

And that's it. I probably won't talk about my plants and pets again for a while since they're not nearly as interesting as they were for a while.

ATL Last Weekend

So I never did remark on how the weekend in Atlanta went with the Princeton Review Training. All in all, it was pretty good. They put me up in a nice hotel, my food was comped, and the trainer was pretty energetic, which kept my attention. He was a bit rude to everyone, and demanded a LOT of work from us Saturday night (then after we all lost sleep studying to be prepared to teach a section of the book, he came in Sunday morning whining that he was in a bad mood and didn't get much sleep because he was out partying the night before. Oh yeah, we all felt a whole lotta sympathy for him). But at least he was a good at the teaching aspect of things.

While I was in town, I got to see Brooke for an evening, and we caught up on each other's lives, so that was nice. And my brother-in-law, Sam, met up with me for lunch on Saturday, which was also cool. Not a bad weekend, I must say.

I'm not a big fan of driving long distances all by myself, and 4 hours straight is, to me, a long distance. So I really wasn't looking forward to the trips there and back. But my rental car was very enjoyable, and that made things easier. It was an Elantra, and I really liked how it handled, and how easy it was to set and adjust the cruise control. I also got a couple books on tape for the trip, so I could keep my brain working, and I think that made it a lot easier. I started out with C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce." I really enjoyed that one. I can't for the life of me remember the proper term for this kind of book,* where he's telling a fictional story but throwing in a lot of theology and "stuff to think about" in the middle, much like "The Screwtape Letters." But the second one I tried was "The Abolition of Man." This was NOT a story, it was 3 essays on related topics of thought, and was way too philosophical for me. I would try to tell you what it was about, but I couldn't keep my mind focussed on it, so I really have very little idea. I tried, really hard, through about 3/4 of the book, until I realized that I hadn't been paying attention and really had no idea what he was saying, and finally gave up. Alas.

* Whoever is first to tell me the literary term for this kind of writing will receive my eternal admiration, and perhaps a cookie.

More Cool Websites

Continuing my recent raving over cool websites and web browsers that make life just a little better, I've got two more to add to the list.

Backpack. You can sign up for a free account or upgrade if it suits you, but this is a pretty cool tool. It's really new, so there are some features missing that will be added later, but you basically get 5 pages of space to keep track of your life online. Like I've said before, I use 3 different computers on a daily basis, so it's nice to have a place online to store things that I'll want from anywhere. With Backpack I'm able to keep a page of info about grad schools, freelance projects, Princeton Review training weekends, or whatever all at my fingertips. For example, instead of trying to keep all my info for the past weekend in Atlanta in a million pieces of paper or a few different emails, I used Backpack to keep one page online that listed links to Google Map directions, my hotel info, my food stipend info, meeting times, car rental info, contact information, etc all together on one site. Then I could print it all out together when I needed to hit the road. Super cool.

While we're on the topic of how the internet can help you make plans, AAA has a website where youc an calculate the cost of gas on a road trip. You input where you're at, where you're going, the make and model of your car, and then it will calculate the current price of gas with the gas mileage on your car to give you a good approximation of how much it will cost you to take that road trip. Very cool for budgeting.

I love technology.

Princeton Review and the ATL

Tomorrow I head to Atlanta for the weekend. I'm going to be in training with The Princeton Review to get certified to teach SAT Prep courses. They're paying for expenses for the weekend, and I'll be in class Friday night and all day Sat and Sun. Then I do it again in two weekends. When I'm done, I'll be certified to teach SAT Prep classes, and then Princeton Review will schedule times for me to teach classes or do one-on-one tutoring in the Savannah area, on nights and weekends. I have no idea what to expect, or how many hours I'll get a week for it or anything. But the pay is decent, I'll get to teach, and it will keep my brain fresh.

I've always been really good at standardized tests (that's not to brag, it's just a proven fact that I am good at taking tests), but I haven't had to do math in 6 years. When I was 19 I took Calc II in college, decided that I wasn't going to do chemical engineering, and then never had to think beyond basic math skills again. I don't remember the Special Triangles from geometry, or algebraic equations (FOIL anyone?), or anything like that. It's true, if you don't use it, you lose it. So I'm kind of looking forward to being forced to remember this stuff again. Plus I figure I'll eventually have to take the GRE for grad school, so what better way to get in the groove than to learn how to be a pro at the SAT?

At any rate, I was looking forward to going until today, when I woke up feeling like I've got the flu again. I have never been sick so much in my LIFE. I don't know where it's coming from. I'm sleeping well, eating well, drinking lots of herbal tea... why do I keep getting sick? I feel fuzzy, my head is pounding, my throat hurts, and I'm sluggish. I'm having a hard time thinking, or doing anything. And I have to drive 4 1/2 hours tomorrow and then sit in 3 hours of class, sleep in a hotel room, and then spend another 7 hours in class. Rinse, lather, repeat. I'm just hoping I can make it. If I don't go, I'll never get to go. They only do this training once every 6 months or so, and I couldn't make it in December. Man, I feel like I can never catch a break lately.

So please pray for me. That I feel better, that I have a safe drive, and that all goes well in the training. But mainly that this illness goes away.

Special Two-Part Blog: Kill Your TV and Good Grief!

Okay, last post of the day. Promise.

Unfortunately, this is gonna be a bit of a whiny post.

Part 1: Kill Your TV

Yesterday I made a comment to Chris about how dumb I feel lately. The synapses in my brain don't quite connect, I feel like I can rarely hold my end of a conversation, because halfway through I'll completely forget what we are talking about and what I was going to say. Names and titles and simple words escape my vocabulary. Collegues are almost afraid to talk to me knowing what they'll get themselves into. Why am I getting so dumb? Considering I've never tried illegal substances, it can't be blamed on pot. And I don't drink enough to blame it on liquor. I would blame it on sleep deprivation, but I feel that's only part of it, as I'm at least getting 7 hours of sleep a night (better than High School, when I was pulling all As in AP classes). So it finally struck me. It's the TV. Television is making me into a moron.

For years I hardly watched any TV, if any. It's only been in the past two years that I've started turning it on randomly, to relax and not worry about stuff. The past few months it's reached its peak, though. I get home from work around 5:30 and I have nothing to do for the rest of the night. Chris is gone most the time with school or work. Almost everyone else I know are students, so they never have time to get together (and I got tired of making plans only to have them cancel on me). Plus, I'm usually kinda tired once I get home and don't really care to go back out. So what do I do? I turn on the TV and I work on the computer (usually simultaneously). That statistic about people watching 7 hours of TV a day? That's me. There are about 7 tv shows I really care about seeing in a given week, but I'll watch useless TV if it's my only option. And it's rotting my brain.

Lucky for me, I tell Chris, the seasons are ending. Half my shows have had their season finale... the rest are one or two episodes away. So I tell Chris "As soon as these season finales air, I need to stop watching so much TV." (I cannot state with enough emphasis how much 22 year old Kendra would have scoffed at 25 year old Kendra for her TV dependence).

Today, Chris and I walk into the apartment at the same time after work and school. Something smells really weird. We scour the house looking for the culprit, and can't find anything, but that strong smell is still there. Finally, Chris goes to turn on the TV.

Nothing happens.

We had a storm about an hour earlier. The lights flickered at work. I notice that a couple of clocks are blinking, so obviously the power went out here, too. Nothing else on the same power strip has been affected, though. Just the TV. My beautiful, 27 inch TV is gone.

No Gilmore Girls for me.

Now, believe it or not, I think this is hilarious. This kind of stuff happens to me a little too often, to tell you the truth. Whenever I have an addiction-of-sorts that I can't seem to control, or don't really care about controlling, God steps in and makes it impossible for me to continue. I had a $25/week espresso habit in college. One day it dawned on me that my espresso addiction was a little over the top, but I wasn't concerned about it, and certainly didn't plan to cut back. Soon after I became completely intolerant to coffee. Not just regular coffee, not just espresso, but decaf, too. I shake, my vision goes weird, and I feel like I'm going to pass out. And my veins HURT. I still can't drink much of it... maybe a decaf with lots of milk once a week or so, and that's only after I had to stop completely for 2 years. So when my TV is destroyed a day after I realize it's making me into a dumb sloth, I'm not all that surprised. It's just par for the course.

Chris is taking this a little harder than I am. He's more concerned about the destruction of a good piece of electronics (that should have lasted another 15 years), and the cost of replacing it, especially with our tight budget. Even worse is the knowledge that I have no intention of running right out and replacing it.

Especially considering I can't tell you how many times in the past two hours I've almost reached for the remote.

Part 2: Good Grief!

The second part of my saga is the fact that one other thing has been damaged due to this storm. Our router no longer sends signals through the ethernet cables, but somehow the wireless portion still works. I'm thanking God that my computer wasn't fried, but it's pretty frustrating that now I can't get internet to my Mac. I had some business to take care of, too, and there are all sorts of things on my Mac (emails and email addresses and such) that are on there, and do me no good without internet. So I've had to keep transfering files to my thumb drive and over to Chris's laptop, only to discover that Microsoft's e-mail program for a Mac (Entourage) is completely incompatible with Microsoft's e-mail program for a PC (Outlook). Can you believe it? How is a person supposed to be convinced to switch from a Mac to a PC if they can't even properly transfer their contact lists? Entourage only exports contacts as a Tab-delimited file, which amazingly is complete incompatible with Outlook's "Import Tab-delimited file" command, or ANY OTHER Outlook Import command. I tried converting the tabs into Windows-friendly tabs, I tried importing it into Excel, saving it as an Excel file, and then importing it into Outlook... nothing works. Nothing. So back and forth I go. Stupid computers.

I want to close this sob-fest by pointing out how blessed we are that neither computer was injured in the storm, that at least wireless internet works (and that's what we use 80% of the time), and that absolutely nothing more major happened than a busted TV and a loss of internet to one computer. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to whine about the things that go wrong. I mean really, what fun would that be?

PEZ and Recipes

Okay, so I'm a little blog-happy today.

I am trying to come up with an easy way to keep track of recipes online. Being the domesticated woman I am, I find myself often talking about recipes with friends, and I'm always saying "I'll email you this recipe..." but darnit, that takes alot of work! What I want to do is find a recipe website that will let me put all my favorite recipes into its database, then provide a link on this website to my recipes so that my friends can find them all in one place. I've tried signing up for Recipezaar, Epicurious, and AllRecipes with that in mind, but none of them have anything close! Recipezaar is the only one that lets you post your own recipes, but they have to approve it for their list, so I can't keep private recipes without paying for their premium service. Even then, my recipe list would only consist of ones I've added myself, not of recipes that I've saved to my recipe box from other users. I thought of trying wikipes, because at least there you can make a page from a search, so I could link to a search page of recipes by "kendra skeene", but with wikipes I run the risk of other users deciding to edit my recipe, thereby messing it up. No good. I could make my own database for it, but it wouldn't be as complete, because it wouldn't automagically show nutrition info like many of the other services offer. Bleh.

The point of all this is to say that if anyone knows of another recipe site that would cater to my all-too-specific needs, please let me know. There's a lovely little link below labeled "Comments" where you can tell me your ideas.

Linkability

Yesterday I decided to make a PHP database to manage the links that Chris and I have on our links page. It seemed easier than editing the HTML and uploading every time I wanted to add a link, and although it took a couple hours to create the database, port everything over, and write an admin interface for Chris and I to manage them, I think it will save us time in the long run, AND encourage us to add links, now that it's so easy. What does this mean? Well, it means I went a little link-happy and put a whole bunch of extra links on my side. It's really a reference for me more than anything else, since I am on 3 different computers on a daily basis, and get tired of trying to figure out where I saved that bookmark. Now I still have a million random bookmarks in a million places, but anything I might want from anywhere is there on that page.

One of the new additions to the Reference section is Answers.com. I just discovered this site, and it beats the pants off dictionary.com and thesaurus.com. It's basically your one-stop answer shop. Good stuff. I just had to share.

It's the SPAMiest!

The amount of SPAM mail I receive just increased quite a bit, and I'm wondering if it's something I did or just SPAMmer getting busy. Mainly, I just started getting a whole bunch of SPAM that's all in German. Very odd, but the worst part is that since it's not in english, my SPAM filters don't always recognize it as junk, so some of it makes it into my Inbox. Jerks. Is anyone else getting this stuff, or am I special?

Update: I think someone who works at SCAD stole their database and sold it to some German company, because all the German spam is being sent to student.scad.edu addresses, and they're also sending out mail using my old scad address as the reply-to. I have my scad email configured to forward to my personal email address, so that must be the culprit. Proof that our data is safe nowhere.

Firefox

Anyone who spends any time reading articles about web/tech stuff has at least heard some of the buzz about Firefox, but for those of you that don't read that stuff, I feel it's my duty as a web designer who spends way too much time on the internet to enlighten you about this Internet Explorer alternative. It's a web browser. Big whoop. Why would anyone want a different web browser? Well, some people claim it's got less security bugs than IE does, so it's a safer browsing experience. I also think it's a more ENJOYABLE browsing experience, for a few reasons. I will now expound on those reasons.

Tabbed Browsing. If you spend any time with IE, you probably have at least three browser windows open at any given time. This can get frustrating after a while, especially if you have borderline OCD about organization, like I do when I'm on my computer. The solution? Firefox (and pretty much every non-IE browser) gives you the option to have ONE browser window, with multiple "tabs" at the top to keep track of all your open pages. Want to follow a link from an article or blog post, but want to finish reading the current site? Right-click the link and choose "open in new tab" and it will load silently in a new tab that you can get to when you need it. That's my preferred browsing method. I currently have 5 tabs open, which saves me from 4 extra open windows. I love tabs.

Extensions. This is my second-favorite thing in the tech world. From my Tools menu in Firefox, I can choose "Extensions" and from there click a link to a Firefox hosted web page that lists all the code-lets I can install to make my browsing experience even better. Smart people love making random gadgets that run with Firefox to let you do cool things. Some of them are super-useful to my web work (like widgets to sample colors and measure areas in a web page). Others are just convenient, like the ForcastFox Extension that displays the weather in the bottom right of my status bar. Right now I know that it's Hazey and 75 degrees outside, the high today is 83, and tomorrow will be partly cloudy, with a high of 83. And I didn't even have to go to another tab. It's just magically there for me. I love extensions.

Finally, from a designer standpoint, it does a better job of displaying code the way it's supposed to. IE is really buggy and doesn't display things right. Unfortunately, since most people use IE, that means a FEW pages won't display correctly in Firefox, because the designer coded their site for IE and didn't test it in any other browser. So if you do go to a site that seems "broken" in firefox, it really means the designer didn't know what they were doing. In contrast, some pages will work better in Firefox... such as the Pez page on this site, where the full list scrolls in a smaller area instead of stretching the page, because it knows how to do things that IE doesn't. Little things like that are easier.

So now that I've bored you all with my weird rambling, if you wanna check out the new great thing in web browsing, go ahead:

Happy Birthday to Chris!

Today is Chris's birthday. He is an old man of 26 years. No wonder he's bald.

In case you missed the last time I posted this, or just forgot about it, an easy way to wish Chris a happy birthday is to click this link: http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=8151333 and sign up for a trial of something. (For example, you can sign up for a trial of Blockbuster's mail-in-DVD service, at a cheaper rate). Just make sure you don't use your primary e-mail address. Go sign up for a Yahoo account or something and use that, because you will get spam mail from it (but you HAVE to use a real email address). In case you're thinking "Oh, I'm sure someone else will do this for him..." no one else has, other than Chris's brother, and Shane. So go ahead and click the link and make my hubby very happy.

Things That Don't Exist

In case you ever thought of something and wondered whether or not it exists, you now have a website you can visit to see if it is on the exhaustive list of things that don't exist, and you'll have your answer. Good to know.

Gainesville, part 2

Yesterday we went back to Gainesville for Chris to take some more pictures. It went well, and we got to see the Gearys, and a couple of Chris's friends. Fun, but way too much driving.

Yesterday was also, for me, "TV Advertising Influences" day, because I made two purchases based on TV commercials. I decided for lunch to try Arby's turkey reuben because it looked good on the commercials. Not only did I realize that fast food is ridiculously priced (what ever happened to 99 cent sandwiches??), but I was reminded that things never are as good as they look in the commercials. The "toasted" bread was mushy. Not so good, in general. Then I decided to try the new lime Coca Cola. Again, not that exciting. I rarely drink soda, but this coke didn't taste any different from regular, to me. So I've learned my lesson not to buy stuff from commercials.

Bubs (the older lovebird) is pretty mad at us for leaving him alone all of yesterday, so we've had to pay for it with unstoppable squawking from the eldest lovebird today.

Bloglessness

Well, since pretty much no one I know has updated their blogs in DAYS, I figured I had to post something just to make up for the silence abounding. So let's see... well, the birds are doing well although still not liking each other. The tomato plant has grown another 6 inches since I last reported on it (now about 5 foot 6 inches tall), and has a couple green tomatoes about the width of my pinky on it.

Tomorrow is going to be another day of driving down to Gainesville to take pictures, then coming all the way back all in one day. Chris's teacher told him he should go back and take more photos "in response" to the work he's already done... and tomorrow is the only time in the forseeable future that he can go. Which means I have to go, too. What fun.

Yeah, I have nothing more to say right now. I'm gonna go eat lunch.

PEZ and PHP

I've spent the past week or so writing a script to search our PEZ database, so it's easier to find what you're looking for. I know. SO MANY people come here looking to see what PEZ dispensers we have. It's such a common occurrence. Well, it was more of a practice, writing the search function, and I had the PEZ database already so I figured that was a good place to start. And once it was completed, I figured I might as well actually put it up on the site. So if you click the "PEZ" link at the top of the page, you will notice that you can now search for specific keywords in the PEZ list, OR you can browse by category. So, for example, if you know Chris's birthday is Monday, May 9th, and you see some Star Wars PEZ at Wal-Mart and wonder if we have them, you can choose "Star Wars" from the drop-down list and check to see if what you saw is already in our list. How nice!

With that in mind, there are a couple things that Chris will work on adding to his list in the near future. One thing is adding images, so if you see the new trucks at the Party Store and want to know if we have them, and you view our Trucks list, and you wonder "Were the trucks I saw R4 trucks, or not? How would someone know this stuff?" you would be able to click on the icon to the right of a certain truck to see a picture of it, and realize that no, the fancy PEZ trucks you saw were NOT the ones we have, and, in fact, you would make Chris's day if you were to buy him some of the fancy new trucks. The other thing on his To Do list is to add a "Wish List" of PEZ he doesn't have that are currently available in stores, so you could just choose to view his Wish List to see the PEZ he's currently lacking. But these things won't happen for a little while longer. But for now you can revel in how cool it is that I wrote code to allow you to do AND and NOT searches for PEZ dispensers. Yes, I have entirely too much free time.

Birds

So I'm rather obsessed with my bird situation currently. Having a new one really requires a lot of time and attention... I have to make sure I train him right when he's little, and I'm still trying to make sure Bubs feels loved and becomes friends with the new one. Much energy. The new little one is doing well. He's eating when I feed him, and he's also munching on his spray millet in his cage. And after just two days, he's already getting on my hand when I put it in the cage instead of hiding from it. He's already learning to step up... and I'm working on the potty training, although I expect that to take a while. Right now I just wear a shirt I don't care about whenever I'm home, because with two birds I am pooped on about 3 times as often as I was with just one. But anyways, yes, they're doing well, although still not into each other.

As for the name situation, I'm having a tough time calling him So and So... it just doesn't work for me. I keep calling him "Little one" without meaning to, and sometimes The Littlest Elf. So I thought maybe I'd just call him Li'l Brudder and that would work since it's still a Homestar reference... he's just... little... and requires a name with "little" in it. I don't know. I can't help it. Maybe he'll be one of those pets that has a name no one calls him, and then has a nickname that everyone calls him. ::Shrugs::

I'm done for now.

Chris

Just to add to the digital photo-ness, here are a couple pictures of Chris doing his thing this past Saturday along HWY 301 while I sat in the car.

Oh yeah, and my tomato plant is past 5 foot tall, and budding all over, and my green pepper plant is finally producing some flowers. I can't wait til I actually get food from these guys.

So and so

As promised, here are some pictures of my new baby lovebird, and a couple of the old one. Chris decided he got to name the bird, since it's my bird... don't ask me how that logic makes sense, but he puts up with a lot because of these birds, so I conceded. So, I present to you our new lovebird, So and so Li'l Brudder:

And the old one, Bubs:

For those of you wondering about the names, they are from Homestar Runner... Bubs was already named when we got him, but we decided to continue the trend with So and so, but that may have changed to Li'l Brudder. And that's the whole story.

Busy Weekend

Our weekend included driving all the way to Gainesville, FL, having dinner with a couple friends, and then driving all the way back to Savannah, GA, in one day. The real purpose was for Chris to take pictures along Hwy 301, which he spent a good 3 or 4 hours doing, so we didn't really drive all the way to Gainesville to have dinner.

Our next bit of excitement is that we got our lovebird, Bubs, a new lovebird friend. He's been a bit lonely since Chris and I are gone so much. The new lovebird is a baby, still needing to be hand-fed for a week or so. He's very cute. Bubs and the new baby aren't quite friends yet, though. Bubs doesn't quite know what to make of the new addition, so he's been cranky with it (they're in separate cages for the baby's protection). This will no doubt be an interesting week or two of birdy-drama. Pictures and updates to follow.

Survival Skills

If you're stranded with just a can of soda and some chocolate, you can start a fire for survival. Good to know.

UNDERpopulation?

I found this article via Ryan's website, and thought it was interesting enough to share. Basically talking about how families are having less children than they used to, so now there aren't enough young people to support the older generations. It's a bigger problem in Japan and Europe, according to the article, but it's becoming an issue here, too.

It's interesting because it's not something I've ever thought about, and certainly not something I've really witnessed. Granted, anyone who knows me is aware that Chris and I are not anywhere close to thinking about having children, and don't know if we ever will be. But in my experience, we're an anomoly in the world. I mean, I actually have friends that chide me for not wanting kids. In the 7 months I worked at the TV station in Savannah, 4 people there had a new baby. Most of our married friends in Gainesville have had at least one. In fact, I can only name THREE married couples in Gainesville I know that are NOT with child, and two of them have been married less than a year. My point in this is that I certainly haven't seen much evidence of people not wanting children, with the exception of myself.

I can list plenty of reasons why I lean more towards the Japanese standard. The article says that we're all too selfish and concerned about ourselves, and that's probably true. When it comes down to it, I see children as messing up what I want for my life, and not allowing me to do what I want. But another part of that is that I've seen plenty of parents who are just as selfish, but they had children in spite of their selfishness, and wound up either treating their children as burdens to their own lives, or just not knowing how to parent, and so raising spoiled horrible children with no manners. I know that I don't want to do that, and so I figure my best option is not to have children if I'm going to screw them up. I guess my point here is that I don't think my generation is any more spoiled than our parents' generation... there's just more of us who have decided not to screw up someone else's life because of our selfishness.

Just to make myself clear, my parents raised me great and I don't think they were selfish at all, and I definitely wouldn't say they are the reason I don't want children. Just had to throw in that disclaimer before everyone starts thinking my parents left me home alone every weekend to live their own lives or something. They didn't. (But they did stop taking me out to eat when I was too big to order from the kid's menu... but that means they stopped taking my brother, too, so that poor kid missed out on 2 extra years of restaurants. Yeah. Life sure was rough.)

Heathers

Last night Chris and I watched Heathers for the first time ever. Now, before I hear all the "What? You've never seen HEATHERS?" comments, I do want to point out that I was, uhh, nine years old when it came out. And it's not exactly appropriate for children. So it's not all that surprising that it's missed my radar all these years. But the main reason we watched it, I think, is because it's constantly being referenced in pop culture, so we figured we had to watch it to get all the references. Sort of like how everyone has to watch A Clockwork Orange, or Sofie's Choice... speaking of which, I hear a reference to Sofie's Choice at least once a week (usually in the form of "This isn't exactly Sofie's Choice"), and I've never seen that either, so that's next on my Official Pop Culture Reference Movie List (otherwise known as the OPCRML). Yeah. I'm off my tangent now.

In summary, Heathers was a really messed up movie. It was more disturbing than I expected it to be, but I think I'm disturbed by odd things. But it was great to laugh at silly 80s fashion in the movie, like the massive shoulder pads... knowing all the while that shoulder pads will probably come back into fashion. And that, my friends, may be the most disturbing thing yet.

My Tomato Plant

I don't really know why I'm all about posting pictures all of a sudden, but I am. About a month ago I bought this tiny tomato plant (about 8 inches high) and I read up on what I should do to grow it indoors... so I planted him in a big pot with a lot of peat and percolite in with the soil, and set it by my south-facing window to try and give him the most sun possible while still indoors. And now he's HUGE! I keep thinking it will stop getting taller, but he just keeps going... about a foot a week, it seems... before long I'm gonna hafta get him a bigger pot.

He's flowering, but no tomatos yet. In comparison, I also bought a bell pepper plant at the same time (that's him next to the huge tomato plant) and he's only about tripled in size since I got him. I'm not sure what to expect from them as far as actually producing fruit, but they're fun to watch anyways.

My Morning Trek...

Usually when people ask how we like living in Savannah, I say it's a better town to visit then it is to live in. And it's true: when you're visiting, you're not concerned about the high crime rate, the cost of living or the ridiculously low pay scale. But I must say I've really been enjoying my 1.3 mile bike to work lately... and I thought I'd share some of what I see every morning.

Forsyth Park

Forsyth Park

Forsyth Park

Forsyth Park

Store on Bull Street

Okay, that's all I have to say today.

shameless begging

Chris's birthday is less than a month away... May 9th, to be exact... so I've picked this time to do a little shameless begging, if you want to do something for him that won't take you much time but will make Chris very happy... click this link and sign up for a trial of one of their items. We've been trying for almost a year to get people to sign up for this... if 5 people sign up Chris gets a free ipod, but we've only gotten 3 people to do it, so far. It's really not hard... just click through a few things then sign up for something (like a trial of the Blockbuster mail-in DVD service or something). Even better, if YOU want a free ipod, get 5 more people to sign up for you, and you get one, too! The only downside is that you'll get a lot of spam mail through this, but if you have a yahoo e-mail address (or hotmail, or whatever) all that spam will go straight to your spam e-mail box, and you'll never hafta see it. If you don't have a yahoo email account, sign up for one of those first.

The important thing is that you have to click through the above link for it to be counted towards Chris's ipod.

Trust me, he will love you forever if you do it.

Mmmm.... Shellfish...

My parents came to visit this weekend, and we had a great time. We walked all over downtown (great walking weather!), and ate some yummy food at some yummy places... actually, we pretty much filled the whole time they were here with either walking or eating. Oh, and I showed them where I work and stuff, but that was part of walking around downtown. They brought their yorkshire terrier with them for the trip (her name is Corkey), and since Savannah is such a dog-friendly city, we were able to take her with us on a few of our excursions. Sunday morning she went down to Gallery Espresso with us for breakfast (they let the dogs inside, believe it or not), and then walked around downtown, then we took her with us to Tybee Island, where we went to The Crab Shack for lunch. It's all outdoors, and Corkey was able to sit under the table the whole time. She was so happy to get to go everywhere with us.

Anyways, The Crab Shack was a lot of fun. They have a big shellfish platter that is supposed to feed 2, but was enough for all 4 of us... crab legs, shrimp, clams, crawfish, sausage, corn, and potatoes... yum! It was awesome. It's all outdoors, and they play Jimmy Buffet, and there's a hole in the middle of the table with a trashcan underneath to throw your shells and stuff... really a very clever setup. We had a great time.

So my belly is happy... and I'm sure I've burned off all the calories walking around downtown. Lots of fun.

My final though, I decided to grab a Google Map (maps.google.com) of the downtown area, and all the highlighted parts are where we walked at least once this weekend. Like I said, lots of walking.

The Office

So considering the name of this website, I'm not sure if I'm "allowed" to write about this, but I'm going to anyways. If you've ever worked in an office, you need to see the new tv show "The Office." It has quickly climbed to the top of my "Good TV" list, and it's probably the only sitcom on that list. Really, this show cracks me up. I think I've seen each episode (there have been 4 aired) twice. The best part is when you feel like you're watching past coworkers on the screen... I'm constantly identifying with it, and it makes me laugh. I will throw in the disclaimer that it doesn't remind me of where I work NOW, so much as where I've worked in the past, where we had sales people and fake-motivational speeches all the time. I had a manager who would promise contests with rewards and then "forget" about them immediately, after we'd done our part. Ya know, it's so much funnier when it's happening on TV than when it's happening to you. So yes. The Office. Good stuff.

Love your neighbors?

First of all, I'm sick. Again. With something completely different from when I was sick a couple months ago. In fact, I don't remember feeling like this since I was a little girl. I'm pretty miserable, but that's not the point of this post.

The point is that I am having some real issues with our new upstairs neighbors. We had a woman in the apartment above us until December, and she was great (and quiet). She had a good sized dog, but even he was pretty quiet. Never heard much of anything from them. NOT SO WITH THE NEW NEIGHBORS! Perhaps we were a little spoiled having no one up there for 4 months, but these guys are LOUD. I think they could be in the running for the loudest neighbors EVER. They stomp their way everywhere, bang their way through the day, and one of them has spent the last 90 minutes playing a saxaphone... HE HAS NOT STOPPED and I'm about to lose my mind. If I wasn't housebound (and couch-bound) by this flu-or-whatever-it-is I would have left to get away from it. Not only that, there's been some repetitive tapping on the floor (MY CEILING) as well. Needless to say, they've made our decision of whether or not to move at the end of May VERY EASY. We were wondering if we needed to... we do. We really do.

Google Maps

Well, I must jump on the bandwagon and mention how much fun I've had playing with Google Maps and its Satellite feature. And to save you the trouble of trying to find cool places yourself, this website links you to all the cool landmarks. You can also see my neighborhood pretty well. Weird.

PHP Productivity

I've been teaching myself PHP recently, and man is it fun! I know, that sounds weird, but really, I'm having a blast learning it and getting my websites to do all kinds of cool new things. Today I managed to solve 3 of the PHP tasks floating in my head (one with much help from Paul), and I'm just really excited about it. I know, I'm kind of a nerd, but I don't care. I'm being productive, and I'm loving it!

Name the States

So I'm sick... I've been sick for a week or so... which means I'm recouping on the couch... and have the TV on just for noise. Which brings me to the purpose of this post.

There's this TV show called Street Smarts, where the host asks random people on the street random questions and the contestants have to guess whether or not the people knew the answers or not. This particular episode is solely asking people on the streets how many states are in the USA. This is one of those things I just thought everyone KNEW. You learn it when you're tiny and you just always KNOW it. There are 50 states. 50 stars on the flag to represent all 50 states. 13 stripes on the flag to represent the 13 original colonies. The last two states were Alaska and Hawaii, making 50 states. But SO MANY of these people think there are 51 or 52 states. One woman guessed 42 states. Weird. And I always thought I was a loser because I can't list all 50 states. I never memorized the Animaniacs song that listed them all. But at least I knew there are 50 states.

Gee whiz fact: Texas is NOT the largest state. Alaska is twice as big as Texas. True story.

Magnolias in Savannah

There's a lone pink magnolia tree in Forsyth Park that I saw the other day on my bike home from work. I just had to get a couple pictures, so I walked over there this morning before running some errands with Perrin. I didn't even know what they were, but some guy on a bike stopped and informed me. He actually gave me it's entire multi-word scientific name, a bunch of random facts about it, and then told me to be on the lookout when the Gingko bush blooms in a month or so. Then he took off on his bike. Very random.