Dave, this one is for you...

I've been reading the blog of my Washingtonian friends, Dave and JJV, and have been struck by just how many references the lowly rutabaga has garnered in this blog of sophisticated political commentary. So, Dave, I thought you might be interested in this event, as reported by the Ithaca Journal. Apparently, playing with rutabagas has a long and glorious history in these here parts of upstate New York. As you so aptly noted in one of your comments, there is not a whole lot to do up here. You should know, oh man from Lyons. Perhaps Bryan has a future here.

Christians Beware! You are being conspired against!

Gotta love the comments expressed at the end of this article in the Ithaca Journal.

My number 1 worry at this time of the year is being greeted with Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. Jayzus. Don't these right wing nut jobs have anything better to do than make up delusional conspiracies against Christians? The poor Christians. Isn't being able to go to any country and declare war and remove leaders and kill thousands of innocent civilians in the name of Jesus good enough for them? I love the reference to the left wing media. The Ithaca Journal is such a poor excuse for journalism that I don't think they could put together a consistent bias if they tried - they're too busy trying to figure out how to use the spell checker.

What the Hell is this Blog About?

I was talking to friends today at the skating rink and told them I had worked all weekend on making a blog. After explaining what a blog was, C. asked me what my blog was about. Good damn question. I don't know the answer - but I think I better develop an answer or this will be the most boring blog in the universe. I've had some ideas - concentrate on detailing the life of unschoolers (but what if the ICSD bureaucrats get a hold of it - my reports will be shown to be the exercise in creative writing that they are). I could write down the political rants that I bore my children with almost every day. I could take pictures of my knitting projects, but everyone does that! I could just post pictures of my gorgeous children.

The tricky thing about blogs is that they are public - although the chances of someone winding up on my blog are miniscule, it is theoretically possible. So one has to censor oneself. I really should cut down on my swearing, as my children read it. As if they don't hear enough foulness coming out of me when I'm driving.

Well, I'll ponder this question a while longer.

Being Productive for a Change!

Yesterday was a most productive day - I got to cross a lot of things off my holiday to-do list. I had a problem keeping track of my list though - I lost it at least 3 times. I spent the most time and energy on our holiday letter. I've never written one before. I got this brilliant idea to make it look like the thing that I've been slightly obsessed over the past few days - a blog! Very smart, no? I'm going to try and take a picture of it and put it here. OK I'm going to do that now. Well, that didn't work. I was going to rant about how much I hate my new camera (Olympus Stylus 710) but then I tried my old camera (Olympus C4040) and it didn't work either. So I'll get to that rant some other time. Now that I've made the letter I actually have to send it out, which means looking up addresses and buying stamps and making return address labels with a Christmas theme and figuring out who should get the letter and who should just get a card and who gets the holiday cards and who gets the Christmas cards. No wonder I passed on this whole activity for the past two years. Unfortunately, I do enjoy receiving cards and I'm learning this year that if you do not send out cards you do not get cards. I did other things too, like make some phone calls, tie up some loose present ends, get the presents for church, etc etc. I felt so good about being productive that I thought I would try to do it two days in a row - but alas, I pretty much failed. Today was definitely a low energy day.

UPDATE (12/15): In the middle of the night I got this brilliant flash of how I could get my holiday letter onto the blog. I scanned it and uploaded it as a jpeg. Now that I write about it, somehow it doesn't seem so brilliant anymore. Just stunningly obvious.

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Widgets?

Last night while I tried to sleep I was plagued by thoughts of widgets. What are they? Do I need them on my blog? I think a week or so ago I heard a show on NPR about some woman who had got an award for her widgets. Or maybe it was an article in the NYT. At any rate, I heard (or possibly read) the whole piece and still didn't know what a widget was in the end. And then yesterday, as I'm looking through various Blogs for Dummies type sites trying to figure out how to do pictures (get them, put them where I want them, make them the right size - really none of which I was able to figure out), I saw more about widgets. And I still don't know what the little f'ers are.