i lied

I said I’d be posting more soon, and I didn’t.  Don’t hate me because I’m a slacker.

I really mean it now when I say I’m going to start posting again real soon.

For starters, I’ve just set up del.icio.us to automatically blog my favorite bookmarked links of the day from now on (fingers crossed it actually works!).  I don’t actually post bookmarks to del.icio.us every single day, but at least on the days I do, there will be something new here to see.

Also considering posting more photos here.  Not just of house stuff, but kid stuff.  I’m going to watermark the crap out of them, of course.  But I want to share.  (if you are an orkut kid - keep yer mitts off my pictures, I mean it!)

That’s it, more later!

really!

I’m here!  I promise I’ll be posting more soon!  Lots going on, very busy - but will post more soon!

Kthanksbye. 

tgif!

Long time no post, eh?  I thought I’d brush the cobwebs off the blog and post a few random things while Kat eats her breakfast.

• I logged into WordPress today to see that it looks completely different!  I wanted to update the look of the blog, I think it’ll have to wait a couple of days while I click through and explore.
• floor update - it’s taken longer than we thought.  Jason cut his thumb on a coping saw and it slowed him down considerably.  We’re in the home stretch though, only the laundry room left!
• after the laundry room floor is done, we’re going to take a break (a forced break, actually - Jason has business out of town and then we have family coming into town for Kat’s birthday), but then we’ll move on to tiling the bathrooms.
• speaking of Kat’s birthday, because we took on the flooring projects, her bedroom won’t be done by her birthday.  I feel terribly guilty about that.
• I got Jag a little fish tank for his room; he’s loving it so far!  He picked out all the decor… red gravel, a skull for the fish to swim through/hide in and a few little plants.  He’s got a reddish purplish male betta and 3 rasboras in there now, and we’re thinking of maybe adding a couple of cory cats soon.  He’s been good about feeding them everyday without me asking.
• I’ve been feeling yucky for a long time now, and finally found out this week it’s vertigo.  Not fun.
• Kat’s had a verbal explosion lately.  She’s singing, counting to 10 and pretty much saying everything she needs or wants to say.  It’s funny to finally understand what’s going on in that little mind of hers - she’s quite a character!
• I’m in a photography slump, one of those where I don’t feel like taking pictures, and the few pictures that I do take, I’m really unhappy with.  I know this is pretty typical for all photographers (this isn’t the first time I’ve been through it), but it’s always so painful for me.  I’m ready to get back into the swing of things and feel good about my work again!  I’m thinking of updating my version of Photoshop and investing in Lightroom in hopes of a fresh start.
• I’m addicted to the Packrat application on Facebook.  I’m too embarrassed to say how much time I’ve wasted playing at night after the kids are in bed.
• I bought this as part of Kat’s birthday gift, and it is just sooooo cute.  Seriously.  I almost hope she doesn’t like it so I can keep it for myself.  (also, I bought it from that very site and the transaction was flawless)

That’s all I’ve got for now - it took me over an hour to type just that with all the interruptions.  More later!  (and email replies as well, I’m WEEKS behind - I’m so sorry!)

last.fm

I’m going to start noting when I add to the growing list on my Elsewhere page, because I just know you want to know where I spend all my online time, right?  Ha!

Anyway, I’m on last.fm now.  Really neat site, I only found it last week.  I’m a numbers kinda girl, I like seeing lists and statistics.  Seeing my most listened to tracks is cool to me.  It’d be fun to have some friends on there to keep track of too - so if it’s your kind of thing, join and add me!  I’m always looking for new music, so I’d love to see what you’re listening to.

Also, I once attempted to add my facebook profile url to the Elsewhere page and it didn’t work.  I don’t know how to do it, but if you are on facebook and haven’t already added me, look me up!  I can be found under my current last name, or my maiden name if you know that.

Thatisall.  Fornow.

back to real life

It seems like it’s been forever since I’ve been home alone with the kids while Jason worked.

 Jag had half a day on the 14th, which also happened to be the day his Aunt Sara came into town for a weekend visit.  At the last minute, the kids and I hopped into the car and followed her home to Orlando to surprise my Mom.  Poor Mom had been so down about not seeing the kids since April, and especially not seeing them around the holidays.  The surprise was awesome.  There’s video of it on my dropshots account, if you have that link.  I think it’s on my Elsewhere page, if not I’ll come back and link it in the comments of this entry.

So anyway, we were in Orlando for the whole week.  Got home Friday night (drove the entire 9.5 hours with 2 kids all by myself - go me!!), then Saturday morning Jason’s Dad came in for a weekend visit.  Jason was off work Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue and Wednesday.  So today is his first day back to work, and therefore my first day back to real life in *counting on fingers* two weeks!  Eeep!

So far so good, Jag’s only been sent to his room once so far, and Kat’s already down for her nap.

For those of you who watch my flickr stream, I’ve mentioned briefly in my private photos but I’ll mention it here as well for those who don’t have access - I took all my kids and family photos private last week.  Honestly, the orkut thing never really bothered me much.  It was just annoying.  But then I had a large, nationwide builder steal my photos, make and frame prints, and hang them in their model homes - all without asking and without paying for them.  They were my personal, family photos - photos of the kids, of me and Jason, even of my Mom and her husband.  That really upset me.  I’m still dealing with that.  And then I was alerted to a flickr account last week where someone had stolen and used pics of Jag in their stream.  That was pretty much the last straw.  All along I’ve been very aware that this sort of thing could happen, and I took the orkut stuff in stride.  But I just got tired of worrying about it.  Tired of wondering who else was stealing my pictures that hadn’t been caught yet.  Flickr’s not as much fun when you keep everything private, but I feel good about my decision.  Maybe later down the road when there’s not much activity on my stream, I can start sharing publicly again and keep a low profile so as to not attract the thieves.

In the meantime, I will still share some here because the general public on flickr does not know about this blog.  I’ve got a smaller number of people checking in, and yes I’m googable, but I’m just not as easily found here.  However, there will always be more shared for family and friends on flickr.  If you are reading and would like access, and you aren’t a weirdo thief, then leave a comment here with the link to your flickr stream and I’ll add you as a friend.  (or you can flickr mail me if you’d feel more comfortable)

Moving on… lots of other stuff going on too.  For instance, we cancelled our Costa Rica trip.  No fun, eh?  Two reasons.  One, Kat is still nursing, and recently she’s picked up the nursing a good bit (not really sure why)… we don’t feel good about the idea of weaning her for a vacation since she’s only 19 months old.  And two, we decided that although we’d love to go to Costa Rica one day, we’d rather go to Peru first.  And March isn’t the time to go to Peru.  We’ll have to schedule that for another time, maybe next year during the summer months.  So now we’re trying to figure out what we’ll do with our March time.  Jag has 3 weeks off school for spring break, and I refuse to sit home those entire three weeks.  I’m thinking of maybe renting a cabin in Maggie Valley for a week and inviting my family to come stay with us (hopefully Jason could make it too, but we recently found out that one of his employees might be leaving soon so we’re not counting on it - I guess another good reason we decided against Costa Rica, eh?)

This is getting long.  I still have plenty more to say but I’m sure nobody wants to read it all in one entry, so hopefully I’ll remember to post more later.  Hope you all had a Merry Christmas and you have a Happy New Year!

Oh, a couple of pics!

 

i’m around

I haven’t disappeared totally yet.  Don’t want to give up on blogging.  I’m just always putting it off and then I forget what I was going to blog about to begin with… and THEN I sort of get out of the habit of blogging so when I do have something to say and I do have a minute to type it up, it seems awkward and forced.

I need to get back into the habit again.

Lots of nothing going on here, at least nothing big.  We’ve all been sick, Halloween came and went, Thanksgiving is around the corner (didn’t realize just how soon until a few days ago - eep!), lots of school stuff going on with Jag (meetings, field trips, etc) and Christmas is creeping up on us too.

I have to say, I’m really stoked about Christmas.  As usual, I have lots of big ideas and probably won’t find the time to make them happen.  Last year I gave up on big ideas without even trying.  Made my life easy, but it wasn’t very much fun.  So this year I’ll drive myself crazy trying to make things happen.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’m also feeling very overwhelmed by a cluttered, disorganized house.  I have so many things I want to do and I don’t know where to start.  At this point, *everything* has become priority - our dysfunctional laundry/mud room, the messy master suite, the shove-stuff-where-ever-it-fits kitchen cabinets, the kids’ toys that seem to be reproducing in the closets at night and are slowly leaking out onto the floors of every room…

I don’t know about you, but when I’m disorganized, I feel like I can’t *do* anything.  I put projects off until x, y and z are cleaned and out of the way.  So to get to my Christmas projects, I feel the need to get my house straight.

Argh.  Overwhelmed.

Yeah, anyway - still planning on blogging, just need to make myself do it.  Watch for more posts soon!

feed reading

If you haven’t already, you should definitely try keeping up with your blogs through Google Reader.  I use it, and I love it.  I set up a personalized Google homepage and added a Google Reader widget that shows me all the newest posts from my favorite blogs.  Easy peasy!  You can add me to your Google Reader by clicking this button:

or by clicking on the new link on the sidebar over there —>
(I also added email subscriptions for those who prefer that)

I think I have five readers now - woohoo! 

a note about the switch

If you were a registered user at the old blog, your registration didn’t transfer so you’ll want to do it again.  Sorry for the inconvenience!

(eta, I can’t seem to figure out how one registers now that I’ve made the switch - maybe you can’t!)

this blog and some other stuff

So I made a blog change.  It’s not huge, in fact it shouldn’t really be too noticeable to most (especially since there are only like 3 people reading - hullo, 3 readers!).  I had set up a WordPress blog through my host, and honestly?  It sucked.  I had very limited customizing options and I had limited access to stats.  SO, I switched to a WordPress hosted blog with a much more feature-rich version of the interface and just forwarded my domain to here for now.  You three readers can change your bookmarks, or not.  I’m not getting rid of the domain name so I’ll keep it forwarded, I hope to eventually install something on my own server myself, but until I find the time, this will work.  (NOTE:  I just realized that if you read me through something like Google reader, you will have to switch to the new url - sorry ’bout that!)

Not totally crazy about the template but I haven’t taken the time to look through them all yet or see about the customizable ones so it’ll do.  It’s SO MUCH better than the last one though!

I seem to have lost my blogroll in the move though, and didn’t think to save it all before deleting the old blog, so I’ll need to make some time to sit down and redo it.

On to other news…

We spent Labor Day weekend in Atlanta.  We got it in our heads that we needed to get away, so we sat down at the last minute and booked it all.  It was a really fun time, but completely exhausting.  I learned after the first full day that while I’m okay weight-wise, I’m not exactly fit.  My endurance sucks and if I don’t start working on it soon, I’m going to be in a world of hurt for our big vacatoin next spring.

Did I mention our big vacation next spring?  I think I might have said we were thinking about it, but it’s pretty definite now… Costa Rica!  Kid-free!  Woohoo!!  Lots of hiking, kayaking, zip-lining, etc, so I really need to get in shape!  I’m going to have Jason drag the elliptical machine back in from the garage as soon as he has a few free minutes (the poor man is non-stop lately) and when the weather starts to cool off, I’ll be able to do bike-rides and walks with Kat.  That’s the start of my plan.  I’ll do that for a couple of months and see how it goes before I take it any further.  I’ll try to keep note of my progress here as I go.  In fact, I’ll add a new catagory for it.  Oh, and one for my travel notes too.

I’ll close with a few of my Atlanta shots.  I rented the Canon 10-22 for a week.  Love love love that lens.

    

    

    

Not finished processing yet, but this is the bulk of what I’m putting online.  You can see the rest here:  Atlanta - Labor Day Weekend 2007.

i don’t know what i’m doing

1)  Why the heck am I blogging again?  I’ll answer that later.

And 2) I’m new to Word Press and I can’t figure out how to change the theme to something other than the defaults provided with the software.  Not crazy about the current theme I’ve got going on here.