So it’s about time I update my blogroll … I’ve found so many terrific blogs. I review them for work, so I stumble across some really great finds. Sometimes they’re not exactly appropriate for work (where I’m looking for a health focus), but I scribble them down so I can add them to my own Google Reader at home. Plus I’ve met some really cool people on Twitter and in the blogosphere and would love to add them to my “friends” blogroll. I also have a few family members who are blogging now, including my son, who (of course!) I think is a brilliant new talent!
So, without further ado, I present the first installment: blogs that make me laugh.
I’ve already told you about Cake Wrecks. I still read that one every day and find it to be hilarious. But I have a few others in my “Funny” folder:
The Typing Makes Me Sound Busy – J-Money cracks me up every day with her adventures as she approaches 30, not really sure where she’s going or how she’s getting there. Her rapid-fire punchlines and stream-of-consciousness humor have a bit of a Dennis Miller sound (but make more sense!). Her site was nominated for Best Humor Blog in the Blogger’s Choice Awards. She never lets me down.
Amalah – Amy Storch’s tales of mommydom make me laugh as often as they make me tear up. This editor-turned-blogger weaves us through her tales of raising two small boys in Washington, DC, battling confusing “learning evaluations” for her older son (who she constantly worries has a learning disability) and wondering if she’s taking as many pictures of her second son as she should (they’re adorable!). Her writing style is top-notch and always has me tuned in the next day. She’s a 2007 Weblog Awards winner for Best Parenting Blog. (more…)
You say it’s not going to be you. You put your manuscript on a flash drive; you diligently back it up; you take care not to have only one copy. You know there are such things as fires, floods, and crashed computers – you’re smart. You take precautions.
But then … it happens.
Backing up a manuscript is sort of like the good behavior you exhibit after getting a speeding ticket. Right after the ticket, you’re careful. You say you’re never going to do it again, and you drive around with extreme caution – for years and years, even. But then you start going a little faster. And a little faster. And faster still. You forget the danger. You forget the ticket. And then you see the lights flashing in the rear-view mirror again. …
The lights flashed for me again recently. I had spent a whole day making changes to my manuscript: it was one of those thrilling days where I had no obligations, nothing to do but write. In fact, I told my husband I wasn’t getting out of my pajamas unless absolutely necessary. I planned to spend the entire day with the laptop, making changes to my manuscript that were long overdue. I had thought them through during vacation and was eager to get started. It was a sweeping change – involving changing a character and her motivations – and I had numerous notes and several snippets of dialogue written in my head. It was all concentrated into one area – Act III (for me, about ten chapters, all in one file, where all the changes take place for the character’s arcs). It was a glorious day – I worked from morning until late in the afternoon, tweaking and polishing. I wrote for hours, excitedly telling my husband how much better this book was going to be. I went into my seventh hour. I was on fire. (more…)
So I went on a walk today in my quest to get back into shape. (And by “in shape” I simply mean able to do a simple hike at Yosemite without panting and having my lungs feel like knives are ripping into them. …) Sheesh. …
Plus, I need to lose weight, and I know exercise is a huge factor I always ignore.
So the quest was on. I decided to start by carving out a simple hour on the weekend. When I was younger (and more spontaneous and less picky), I think I used to be able to just “go on a walk” without much difficulty. But now … holy cow … now the moon needs to align with Saturn for things to be “just right” for exercise.
First, I couldn’t find my old running shoes. Well, I couldn’t find ONE shoe (which is really the same thing, right?). One was right there in my closet, but the other was nowhere. I remembered that my daughter borrowed them once for P.E. early this year, and I tried to picture where she might fling them when finished. I looked under the bed, in the depths of the closet, under the nightstands, in her room, in her bathroom. Argh. Plan thwarted. Back to bed.
The next week, I had found the shoe (it was under my armoire, by the way), but when I went to get ready, I realized I didn’t have any socks. I tried to hobble together some combination of my daughter’s socks (which are quite huge) and my husband’s (which, as we’ve discussed here, are BLACK), but I couldn’t bring myself to go out into public like that. Plan thwarted. Back to bed. (more…)
Hi, all! Now that you’ve hopefully found some helpful tips in my post Twitter 101, and are not so freaked out by followers anymore, you might be ready to move on to Twittering 201. You should be following at least 50 people, and therefore at least 25 people are probably following you (if, that is, you have a decent bio and photo avatar). You now have a Twitter community!
Keep adding to your community by finding more and more people – add at least 5 to 10 a week. Read what they have to say. You don’t have to read every tweet — think of it like tuning in to a radio show for a half hour a day: Just get on Twitter, read what’s going on with “your people” during that half hour, jump in if you feel like it, write to a few folks you like, then log off. Tell your new friends interesting things about your common interests – cool things you’ve read or things you’ve seen. Ask people questions with @replies. People will also continue to find you, and your community will grow. Keep watching how people interact to get the lingo down pat.
Now here are some fun things to do as a “second level”:
1. Add your blog stream. If you have a blog, you can have your blog posts upload to Twitter automatically. Do this at www.twitterfeed.com. (I have to admit, I had help with this from my company’s SEO guy, so I can only answer the simplest of questions on this – like the name of the site. …) Once you feed your blog into Twitter, the title of each post will go up within a half hour of posting. (I get a lot of clicks to my blog this way.) (more…)
Rainbow near the base of Vernal Falls
I’m still coming off my high from vacation. … I like the John Muir quote I put in my sidebar. (Everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature can heal and cheer and give strength to the body and soul after. …) My son and I found it in the Yosemite visitors’ center. I think Muir is absolutely right. We all need a place where we can go to unwind, to connect with nature and the simplest, most beautiful things in life — sunlight on a brook, a deer in a quiet meadow, the smell of pine trees, the crunch of needles underfoot, the laughter of your child, the relaxed posture of your teenager, the feel of your husband’s hand in yours. … It reminds you of the beauty of simplicity, and the naturalness of beauty. It reminds you to think about what’s important.
Where do you go to get reconnected?
Hi, all! I’m blogging over at Health Bistro today on “The Art of Packing for Vacation” — especially with kids! Have you found yourself without that all-important children’s Tylenol or the swim plugs for the ears? Come on over and discuss packing tips with me!
Bear in Yosemite
Okay, this was a first for me. (Suburban Southern Cal doesn’t turn up many bears.) You really know you’re on vacation when you turn around a see a bear nearby. We saw this one right in the meadow near Sentinel Bridge. Fascinating. He looks small in this picture, but really the trees are just huge!
We also took the hike to Vernal Falls. It’s nice that the kids are older and we can do cooler hikes. But gosh, this one just reminded me how OUT OF SHAPE I am! I used to do these much easier. I had to look the hike up in my guidebook when we got to the top because I could have sworn it said “easy” (and I was appropriately horrified). But at least it said “moderate” (400 ft gain). Anyway, so beautiful. It’s called the “Mist Trail,” and my daughter said it looked like something out of a fairy story, with all the ferns and mossy rocks. (You half expected the Seven Dwarves to come marching around the corner.) So pretty …
Please continue to share any Yosemite stories you have! I love to hear them! Love the wildlife? Ever seen a bear? Have you taken a hike that ended up being more than you bargained for?
View of the valley floor when you first come around the corner on the 41. It literally takes your breath away. That's El Capitan on the left, Half Dome in the distance on the right, and Bridalveil Falls in the foreground on the right.
I need to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to say that I’m in Yosemite, and I can never get over how beautiful it is. … I wanted to take our kids to the “Top 3″ national parks, which are Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, and Yosemite. So far our assessment: We LOVED Grand Canyon, are even MORE in love with Yosemite. It’s just hard to believe so much beauty could exist in one place.
We “hiked” (it’s an easy walk) to Lower Yosemite Falls the first day. We’ll see what’s in store for Day 2. …
Now that you’ve hopefully read my post Twitter 101 and are starting to follow some fun people (please send comments and tell me who you found!), you are probably getting some followers back. This freaks a lot of people out. So, before we move on to Twitter 201, I thought I’d throw out a few notes on how “following” works:
1. First, do not let the word “follow” freak you out. Twitter should have named this something else because “Joe is now following you on Twitter …” has a terribly predatory sound. Especially to women. (Especially when accompanied by an avatar with a guy with barbells who looks like he could snap your neck in two.) But do not let the term “follow” intimidate you. Think of it as “Joe wants to network with you.” Because that’s what it is. People “follow” you because they perceive you to be someone they can network with.
2. Many people have “auto-follow” set up. This is why you get immediate follows. Don’t freak out. Auto-follow means the person doesn’t even look at who they’re following, they just follow anyone who follows them. This is fine. Relax.
3. It’s considered “polite” to follow anyone who is following you. You don’t have to, of course. If you think their tweets are going to be weird or annoying, then don’t follow. But the truth is, you never know who is going to send the tweet that could be of vast interest to you. For this reason, I follow tons of people. I’m always surprised by the interesting things various people say. (more…)
