Bye Bye Blogger?

I haven't been totally happy with Blogger for a while. Too few templates. Not enough flexibility. The beta changes helped, but I was still looking for something more. Along came WordPress. I've been checking it out this weekend and I think it will do everything that I need it to do and give me room to grow.

Here's the link. No word yet on whether the move is permanent, but it's looking promising.

At least 25% girl

You Are 28% Girly

You are a pretty hardcore tomboy, and a very free spirit. Gender roles be dammed, you like to do things your way.

How Girly Are You?

I guess this works with my job, huh?

Not Bad for a Canadian

You Are Not a Dumb American

You got 8/10 correct. You know a good deal about American history, but there's some basic facts you have wrong. Time to go back to history class!

Are You a Dumb American?

Just So Wrong

This ad showed up in my Google ads:

Purpose Driven Software

Eady-to-use church management soft- ware for Purpose Driven Churches.

www purposeware.com

A) Please stop with the "purpose driven" everything! I'm begging you.

B) The phrase "Eady-to-use" made me laugh and laugh. Perhaps they can ad a spellchecker to their very easy software.

C) In the layout of the ad, there was no line break between "soft-" and "ware". Seriously.

Random

I love having random days off. Especially when going into work would have meant building an ark!

Brrrrrrrr....

Never underestimate the power of a strong windchill. Just sayin'.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Melodrama

Is it just me, or are weather forecasters put on this earth to cause me stress? Do they have to pass some kind of test to prove that they can over react to anything? Do they feel their worth is proven by their power to make us cower on command?

I ask because weather.com seems to be having some kind of a fit. Yesterday I checked and there was something yellow across the top of my screen. And it was blinking. In effect the message is "hey idiot - if you haven't been paying attention something's going to happen soon." This I find useful. This tells me to be careful what I plan and make sure I'm wearing suitable shoes (that could be my mantra for every morning).

This morning the banner is flashing orange and tells me something major is about to happen. So, I go and read the warning. 3 inches of snow. Okay, I'll bring my laptop home tonight and be prepared. Not exactly what I would call major. And why must everything flash?

Now I went on and there's a red blinking banner telling me there's a SEVERE WEATHER ALERT. Same storm as this morning, upgraded to 5 inches.

While I appreciate that I should take some precautions, is this really SEVER WEATHER? Seriously? Where does that leave us to go with say tornadoes, hurricanes, major flooding or anything else that might be severe? How do you make it more attention getting than red and blinking?

I appreciate that the kind folks at weather.com are trying to warn me, but given the state of my nerves this week, flashing something that indicates that the world is going to end is a little too much drama for 5 inches of snow.

Or maybe it's just that I'm Canadian.

Tancookisms

If you recognize any of these phrases or use them in regular conversation you may just be from Tancook, or drunk. This is from my aunt.

This is your heritage. Teach it to your children. They won’t respect you anyway so you
have nothing to lose.
Barney’s horse gulp – eat too fast
Butz – to hit , bump
Doudle – to jiggle
Flutched – tired out , done in
Gramma Doots – unkempt , bedraggled
Gutzin – eat a lot
Herbie Herbie – You’ll be sorry
Klutzy – thick , heavy ( as in a cake )
Krutz – cut ( as with scissors )
Kooss - kiss
Loompygutz – feel sick ( as in ate too much )
Misgabor – misshapen , something that didn’t turn out right
Mollysogged – all messed up , bedraggled , ruined
Mootz – in a bad mood , moody , feelings hurt
Mowled – tangled
Mowlygooch – talkative
Rootch – wiggle or squirm
Row in your guts – looking for a fight or to pick a fight , upset
Sadie Arch – didn’t turn out they way you thought it would , “ now are you satisfied ? “
( as in : “ you’ve been up to Sadie Arch’s” )
Sallywynder – slap
Seen off – cheated
Shushally – silly, giddy
Sisagie – dilemma , a mess
Sivy looks good in anything – you always look good no matter what you wear
Souddle – rinse out , slosh , to lose something
Stood off - stale
Stoof around – stand around being useless , idle
Swift day for Eugene – had a really good time
Tearing a dirty gutter – going really fast (as in how Grampie does everything)
Yaymer – to whine , complain
With a roosh and a bang – to do something haphazardly , in a hurry

And people wander why I'm more than a little bit crazy!

Evil Snowman

Icicles

Tattoos

I'm speaking in church tomorrow morning and I now have a Superman sign tattoo on my hand. Ha! I also have a tattoo on my arm, but I think it's too cold to wear a short sleaved shirt tomorrow.

Craptacular

I have a zit on my lip. What's with that? It's the oddest thing. There's no way to cover it up - it's half on my lip and half on my upper lip. Can't cover it with make up. Can't cover it with lipstick. Instead I look like I'm in a Halloween costume or something.

Aren't zits for teenagers???

I'm just really thankful I don't have any big meetings today.

Live To Tell

I took my mother our for a driving lesson this morning. Quite a switch of roles. I'm still in one piece. She seems fine. No cars have scratches. Another Christmas miracle!

And the Man of the Year Is.....

Me.

Well, you to, but this is the closest I'll ever be to being Man of the Year (on many levels), so I'm going to enjoy it for a moment.

Yes, Time magazine named the contributors to Web 2.0 as Man of the Year for the way the web is shaping the world and how we communicate. It's an interesting thought. Blogs, wikis, utube, facebook, etc are all a part of our daily lives and have huge influence on how business works these days.

I really liked this quote from the article:

Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.

The web has it's ups and downs, but I have really enjoyed keeping a blog, staying in touch with friends via facebook and posting my pictures at smugmug.

Turns out people really can change the world, for better or worse.

Random Mumblings

Today my brain's full of random thoughts and not necessarily one thought strong or cohesive enough for a whole post.

1. What's with Christmas coming? I'm seriously not ready for it. It's not so much the presents (pretty close to done) or the cards (got them started). Mostly I'm just not emotionally ready for Christmas. Who do I talk to about getting another week in November?

2. Three weeks until I jet off to Canada. Whoo hoo! Hoping this year it will be less frantic before I go. I know. I'm naive.

3. I started a new book this week called Let Prayer Change Your Life by Becky Tirabassi. So far it's really interesting and inspiring. I do somewhat suspect (given her reliance on her own experience as a stay at home mom) that you need to be a stay at home mom to let prayer change your life. Anyhow, it's been good to be challenged by her writing about answers to prayer and how often we ignore them. Last night my small group had what could have been a really conflict-ridden night. Instead it was a really good discussion. I came home and thought "Wow - I guess I didn't need to be concerned and pray so much about it." BZZZZ WRONG. Maybe it went well BECAUSE we all prayed so much about it. I can be pretty dense. Maybe this book will beat some of that out of me.

4. This morning one of my non-bosses sends me something for review and comment. I read it, hate it, shred it, send it back to her. Oops. Evidently by "review and comment" she meant "skim and tell me I'm brilliant". You'd think people that work with me would know me well enough to know that when you ask for honest feedback you're going to get it.

5. McDonalds has applied for a patent on the making of sandwiches. That's a little freaky to me. In other news, I'm told Google wants to run my life. They can duke it out with God.

6. Conflict. What's with all the conflict in my life? And what's with these things coming in clumps? Everything seems fine and then one day everyone seems to be at everyone else's throats. Is it something in the water? Was there a memo I didn't see?

Good News

The lost has been found. I got a call from the Boston Park Plaza Hotel saying they have found my Bible. Perhaps they quickly learned that lying about not finding Bibles is a bad thing.

However, I was pretty sure this would happen when I went out and bought a shiny new Bible this weekend. I guess you can never have too many though.

I never thought a Bible could be cute, but this new one definitely is.



So, good news here tonight. Hopefully this will be the start of some good things happening.