Stressed out

A while back I went to Planned Parenthood to do the usual embarrassing stuff I have to do once a year. I don't like it, but this year I tried to get it over with as soon as possible. Usually, I pay about a hundred dollars, and I get a pelvic exam, some lab work done to look for cancer and such, a prescription for birth control pills, and a packet of pills, and then maybe make another appointment for a mammogram. Then I go home with my pills and hope that the phone call telling me I have cancer doesn't come.

I have to go back every month or so to pick up more pills. I shouldn't have to go every month, but that is the way it has been for a while, as I do not seem to have enough money in my pocket to pay for more than one packet at a time. It's not so bad. While I'm in the general area I watch a movie and do some shopping or go to the library.

Anyway, this year I got the exam, but I was told that no lab work would be done, cause there was nothing wrong with me last year so there was probably nothing wrong with me this year either. That doesn't seem very scientific. There could be something going on this year that didn't happen last year, or the year before, or didn't get caught the year before, or whatever. Safe last year does not mean safe this year or next year.

I didn't argue. I came to get pills. Trying to talk sense to medical people leads to arguments, and an argument would lead to high blood pressure, and high blood pressure would mean having to wait for my pills, or maybe getting no pills at all.

I'm not sure what the pelvic exam was for, if not to collect samples to send to the lab. It seems like a pointless exercise, sometimes an embarrassing and painful exercise. It would be like going to get a blood sample taken, and going through having a needle stuck in your arm only not having a tube to collect the blood. But medical people seem very fond of giving pelvic exams, any time anything might be wrong with a woman. I don't know what they are looking for. My appendix is not in there. My tonsils are not in there. If I have food poisoning, it is not in there.

So far the dentist has not suggested a pelvic exam. I'm pretty sure we all know that my teeth are not in there.

So, I had the pointless exam, no samples taken for the lab, and did not ask for any blood to be drawn or a pregnancy test or anything else that might be done there. I did get a warning that my blood pressure needed to be good or I wouldn't get anymore pills. My blood pressure was a little high that day. People who work at this place don't seem to grasp that it has something to do with being there for an exam, and that blood pressure goes up if the patient is upset, and telling her that she might not get her pills might upset her. And this has come up before, and I have told them that this is the wrong thing to do, and that if they leave me alone it will go back down. I have something called "white coat syndrome" and I've had it for at least five years and I've told everyone about it. Still, they hover around and make it worse.

For some reason, the bill for the exam was almost a hundred dollars. I can't see why. It is usually just about that, with the lab work and a packet of pills. This was the same amount of money for no lab work and no pills. I didn't have another thirty dollars, so I left without my pills.

A bit later my husband and I went to run some errands before going out of town. We went to the library and some other places, and then my husband turned the car to go home, forgetting the most important thing. I still needed my pills. I didn't have thirty dollars, so he would have to go to the bank. He didn't want to do that, and he talked me into waiting til after the trip. We were only going to be gone a week, so that shouldn't be a problem, just that it worried me a bit.

Anyway, we stayed longer than that one week, and I worried that we wouldn't get back in time to get my pills. That, and the long drives, and the caffeine and some other things probably weren't good for my health. So when I went to get my pills I felt a bit nervous. I didn't feel bad physically, I just worried that the blood pressure would be a little high and that I would be stuck there a bit while I waited for it to go done. And then when I got there the woman who went to get my pills was gone a long time, and I worried about the delay.

By the time someone took my blood pressure it was 170 over something. They would not give me my pills. That upset me. So they took it again. I was so upset that it jumped to 190 over something. They still wouldn't give me my pills. Now they want me to go to the emergency room.

I have not spent a lot of time in emergency rooms, but I know that they don't do anything good for my blood pressure.

I can't believe that the nurse didn't just come out and apologize and give me my pills. If someone really thought that I was in danger, surely they would have done something to calm me down instead of suggesting I drive someplace.

That really made me feel bad. I told them I wasn't going to the hospital, that I was going to the movies instead. I had to do something to feel better, and I usually go to the movies anyway. Playing with a dog would have been better, or maybe a cat, but neither was available. I didn't feel much better after the first movie, but some was better than nothing, so I stayed for a second movie. I can't say that I felt good even then, just not as bad. So I thought that I would go somewhere else to see what my blood pressure was without the hovering people refusing to give me my pills.

Only the first place didn't have the machine, and the second place didn't have the machine, and the third place had the machine but when I tried it something seemed to be wrong with it. I tried it three more times and finally got it to work. By that time I felt even worse than before, and it was 185 over something. It was then too late to get pills anyway, so I gave up and went home. I'd probably feel better after some rest.

Looking online I found out that I'm not supposed to be using benedryl with the high blood pressure. So, I got some sleep, just not as much as I'd like. Still I felt so much better.

Until Planned Parenthood called, and apparently not to apologize and tell me my pills were ready. They just aren't going to part with those pills, even though that is why I'm getting the really bad high blood pressure. So I guess they just called to make themselves feel better, making me sick in the process.

After I calmed down some my blood pressure was measured at 163 over something. On a normal day, when there are not hovering people and idiots telling me that I can't have my pills, my blood pressure is 120 over 80. When I was on blood pressure medication a few years ago, it was 150 over something. I quit taking the stuff I gradually felt better, and a year later it was back to 120 over 80. So this is not something that I imagined. It is my body and I know what I'm talking about.

Funny that when you go to Planned Parenthood they totally buy that whole "it's my body" thing if you want to kill a baby, but if I want pills when I have high blood pressure it somehow isn't my choice to make.

Anyway, since my choice was taken away from me this month, I'm probably going to stay upset for a very long time, possibly get sick, etc.... And of course I don't have any birth control pills, so that's going to cause me a lot of other problems. People don't seem to understand that birth control pills are a medication that I need just like other people might need antibiotics or pain meds or anything else. People just think that you stop taking birth control pills and start using some other birth control method and that it's no big deal. It is a big deal. It's mood swings and physical pain and other problems, and for me it is also sometimes staying in the house and being afraid and depressed.

I'm going to have to get a new doctor. I'm going to have to go through this whole messy business with someone else, and I'm going to have to start from the beginning and say a lot of stuff that I don't like talking about, which probably will not help with the blood pressure. And I will have to pay for all this, after having already paid for Planned Parenthood to do this stuff, only I guess they think I just paid them a hundred dollars cause I wanted someone to look at my a**.

And then of course, there's no way of knowing if I will get a new doctor with half a brain, so I still might not get the pills, which means I will have to go through it all again.

Seems to me that I know a few bloggers who are in Mexico now. Maybe they could just buy some birth control pills for me.

Maybe I will make more videos

Today I am cleaning the dining room area, somewhat, as later today or tomorrow I will attempt to film another video. At least, I will if I find that dress I was going to wear, or if I find something else to wear. Anyway, I am partially redecorating the area with Halloween stuff, though I'm just moving stuff from the other room. I still haven't unpacked the other Halloween stuff from the boxes.

And then there's another video that I might work on. In fact there are several that I might work on, but not today. I believe that the contest is limited to five videos. The problem is narrowing it down to five, and which five, and once I've decided to film something should I spend the money to really film my idea.

For instance, David has this idea of feeding a hundred people with $20.09, but he hasn't quite figured out how to do it. I'm pretty sure I could make a hundred meals with that amount of money, though they would be very something very small and basic like soup. But it would be a very boring video if I'm just standing there saying that I know how to do it, without filming any cooking or anyone eating. But I don't really want to make a hundred meals next week. Maybe I could make ten meals for two dollars, and if you wanted to make ten times that amount it would add up to a hundred meals for $20.09.

But then, that is David's idea, and everyone knows that it is David's idea. I'm not sure that I should take his idea, even if he doesn't know how to make it work and I probably do.

In fact, I didn't even want to do the coupon thing cause David was already doing food. I used to do the coupon thing, but I mostly stopped doing it several years ago when I was trying to lose weight.

I know, now that you have seen my video, you don't believe that I was trying to lose weight very hard. Still, I was at some point, and I decided to stop eating so much packaged foods and start eating more fresh vegetables, and there aren't that many coupons for fresh vegetables, and it just wasn't worth the effort anymore.

I could do a travel thing, but again, if I didn't actually travel anywhere, that would be a rather boring video. Anyplace that I can actually get to for that amount of money is someplace that I've already been to and don't really need to go to again this week.

Maybe I'll only make three videos. That's probably a lot for someone who never made a video before last week.

I half want to do a video on things you can eat besides quinoa.

Yesterday, I went to look at one of the blogs written by one of David's readers. She doesn't write much, she just takes a lot of pictures. She had a picture of a garden bed she wanted to start. She currently has it right up against the fence. I tried to warn her that she should move it away from the fence, at least enough that she can walk all the way around her garden, but I couldn't get the comment thing to work.

Maybe David can warn her.

Yesterday, I got a comment from a new reader. And then he deleted the comment. That was odd, since he didn't write anything bad. Whatever.

And, yesterday, I got a look at the new CW show The Vampire Diaries. I didn't know that it was on, so I missed about the first five minutes or so. It looks to be a lot like Twilight.

I miss David's blog. Not that David's blog has gone anywhere, just that he isn't doing much with it right now. He's finished his first challenge, and he's come up with ideas for other challenges, but now he's wondering if he should actually do any of them. He has doubts about being able to feed a hundred people for $20.09. And he's back to school now, and he's busy with other things. There's not much time left for blogging anyway.

I keep telling myself that I shouldn't spend so much time blogging, and compared to what I used to do, I have really cut back. But I found a blog that I liked to read, and it's writer has gone back to his real life, and I miss reading it. It was a bit of fun.

Like this video thing. Next week it will be over, and I will again be waiting for things to get back to normal, which they never will. But I will be back to the same old stuff, without the distraction of the videos.

Same old stuff.

Dumb comments from someone else's blog

I've been reading a blog where someone tries to eat just a dollar a day. This is maybe the fifth such blog I have read, plus I tried to do it myself for a couple of weeks. I think that they are interesting.

Well, they get the occasional dumb comment. People don't like that they are pretending to be poor. Not that they were actually pretending to be poor. If they were even close to pretending to be poor they wouldn't go to the movies or do any social things which require money, they wouldn't drive their cars anywhere that they didn't have to be, etc.... These people weren't doing that, they were just setting limits on the amount of money they spent on food. They weren't pretending to be poor or making fun of the poor.

People who leave these negative comments need to get a life. But those people are usually in the minority.

And then there are a lot of us who try to give advice. And some of the comments were really bad advice.

So there are people who stop by and tell him to eat more vegetables or eat whole grains and such. And I have no problem with that. Vegetables are good for you, and whole grains are good for you. But it seems like some of these people were trying to get him to be a vegetarian. Again, I have no problem with someone being vegetarian, and that food choice is better for you than what most of us make. But this wasn't the good for you challenge, this was the dollar a day challenge. So maybe the good for you stuff might go a bit over budget.

The one that I really thought was dumb was the one who thought quinoa was the way to go. And so I pointed out that quinoa wasn't cheap, and at nearly four dollars a pound this was something to stay away from if you only have a dollar a day to spend.

Someone else replied that compared to other grains, quinoa was a cheap source of protein.

First off, the point isn't to get a cheap source of protein compared to other grains, the point was to get inexpensive food. Why get quinoa if it is a cheap source of protein compared to other grains, when compared to other foods it doesn't add up. A cup of cooked quinoa would have eight grams of protein (I could swear it was nine grams, but I just looked it up and it is eight grams), while an egg would be about six grams. But the cup of quinoa would cost more than an egg, so a better comparison would be two or three eggs which would be twelve or eighteen grams of protein for less money. Or chicken might be a better deal. When I got the chicken leg quarters ten pound bag on sale for $3.90, it says that it contains 30 servings at 17 grams of protein per serving. I think that is a little misleading, as this serving is a certain amount of chicken and not a whole piece of chicken. If you cut the leg quarters in half, you have 22 pieces of chicken, not 30, so you have to cook the chicken before you could divide it into servings. Still, even if it were 22 servings at 17 grams of protein per serving, that is $3.90/22 = about eighteen cents per serving. So you would get a lot more protein from half a leg quarter than from a cup of quinoa, and it wouldn't cost as much. From a pound of grain you get about eight cups cooked servings, so that serving of quinoa would cost you about fifty cents. You could have almost three pieces of chicken for that.

Quinoa is the in thing right now, so it is expensive. It does have a bit more protein than most other grains, but you could buy so much more other things for the money. Even if you wanted to stick with grains, you could buy a pound of rice for about a dollar and some other kind of grain for about a dollar, get about five or six grams of protein from a serving of each of them, and still have saved almost two dollars from buying two pounds of other grain instead of one pound of quinoa.

So if a person really had to get by on a dollar a day, even if he wanted to avoid meat, why would he spend his money on quinoa? Let us say that quinoa is $3.59 cents a pound (last time it was either that or $3.79, so I'm going to say $3.59 just because it is easier math to follow), and that a person only has seven dollars to spend for the week and he spends it all on quinoa. He'll get almost two pounds of grain, which will make about sixteen cups when cooked (hopefully a little more but probably not much), and if he eats a cup per meal he will probably have to skip breakfast most days and will get between sixteen and twenty-four grams of protein per day. And he won't have anything else to eat, just the grain.

With the same seven dollars, and still avoiding meat, a person could buy a pound of rice, a pound of some other grain, a dozen eggs, a pound of lentils, a pound of some other kind of beans, and an onion and a few peppers. And depending on exactly what he does buy and where and if he gets things on sale, he might have enough left over for some seeds to make sprouts from, some popcorn, and maybe even a few more vegetables.

And that's if you are trying to avoid meat, which was not part of the challenge. Otherwise you could skip either some of the grain or some of the beans and maybe get some cheap sausage or hotdogs, maybe a pound of hamburger if it is on sale, or maybe some chicken if it is on sale. And don't forget to look for those marked down packages of meat that are about to go out of date.

I thought that it was very odd that someone actually tried to make a case that quinoa was a good deal if you don't have a lot of money to spend on groceries.

But that wasn't even the dumbest comment on the blog. The dumbest comment was somebody trying to say how wonderful the blogger was by comparing him to Christopher McCandless.

Christopher McCandless???

McCandless is a guy who just sort of walked away from his regular life to wander around the country, do odd jobs, and hitchhiked to Alaska. When he got to Alaska, he didn't do anything normal like rent a room or get a job, he just headed out into the woods, didn't tell anyone where he would be, and lived in an abandoned bus for a couple of months. Then it was cold, and he ran out of rice, and he couldn't cross the river to get back. He wasn't able to hunt or fish much, and what he did kill he wasted, cause he didn't know how to preserve meat. He died, probably from accidentally eating the wrong wild plants, and not being able to get medical help.

If McCandless wasn't mental ill, he was at least very stupid.

And what does any of that have to do with trying to live on a smaller grocery bill? The commenter seemed to think that McCandless was some sort of hero. I would think a comparison with someone who wandered out into the wild without adequate planning would be an insult. And it doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything. The guy blogging about eating on a dollar a day didn't drop out of school or quit his job or dump his family and friends or any of that. He just spent less money on food for a few weeks.

It was just a little experiment.

McCandless???

Did somebody move to Frisco?

I used to write this thing called Freaky Fridays. It was a blog post on Friday explaining how all the visitors to my blog came to be there. Like some of them had Googled Freaky Sluts, or Giant Penis, or Rudy's BBQ, or Middle of Nowhere Kansas. A lot of people come here wanting to know how to get out of jury duty, or why poor people don't know how to spend money.

That sort of thing used to really interest me, and I wrote a funny post about it about every other week. But I really just don't have the energy anymore. So I think it has been a while since I wrote one of those posts. And sometimes several weeks go by that I don't look at the blog tracker at all.

Last week I had a look at it again, and I noticed that someone from Frisco was reading. Not reading and looking for anything in particular, just someone looking for this blog in particular. So I thought that it must be my old buddy the Absurdist. She hasn't blogged in a very long time, and I'm afraid that I've stopped checking her blog. So went over to have a look, expecting to see a new post, but no. It was the same as the last time I had looked.

Still, the next day this person from Frisco had stopped by several times. So I thought that it must be her, even if she wasn't posting stuff on her own blog anymore. I thought that I would mention her at the beginning of a post. Something like, "Hello reader from Frisco. If you are my old buddy the Absurdist, stop by and say hello. If you are not my friend the Absurdist, but a new reader from Frisco, maybe you could stop by and say hello anyway."

But I didn't write anything like that for a while. I was busy with the new business thing and not blogging everyday anyway.

And then I was looking at the blog tracker thing one day, and I noticed that the reader from Frisco had been there a lot that day. And then next to that, when there was often an empty space instead of a Google search, there was this bit about publishing a post. But the only person allowed to publish a post on my blog is me.

I'm the reader from Frisco?

So I had a closer look at the thing, and there is no mention of a reader from where I actually live, which cannot be, since I usually check my blog several times a day.

So apparently, the blog tracker thinks that I have moved to Frisco.

I have not moved to Frisco. In fact, I do not think that I have ever been to Frisco, and I cannot even remember driving through Frisco to get to someplace else. I am nowhere near Frisco. Okay, I am somewhat near Frisco, but I am much nearer to Arlington and Dallas and Irving and even Fort Worth, while Frisco is way on the other side of Grapevine.

I haven't even been to Grapevine in a long time.

So in case someone was looking at the blog tracker thing and noticed this before I did, let me say that I did not move to Frisco.

Weird.

601th post: Go check out this other blog

Okay, you apparently missed the big 600th post. So go back and read that. Then go and check out David's blog at twentydays.wordpress.com. David would like two thousand readers.

So all four of you (five if you count David), please go over and look at David's blog. It won't take you that long. In fact, it will probably take less time to read his entire blog than it does to read one of my usual posts.

Great. Now David is well on his way to getting two thousand readers.

Okay, now back to business as usual.

Might try the dollar a day thing again

I have found two more blogs on the subject, plus there were a couple of idiot guys on YouTube who might have ended their friendship over a few items from Taco Bell.

I would say that it started with the One Dollar Diet Project, but I suppose that they weren't really the first to try the experiment, and even the idiot guys on YouTube were about a year earlier. But for me and a lot of other people, the couple in California were the first that I heard about. Just see if you could buy food and only eat the small amount that would add up to a dollar a day. They bought a lot of stuff in bulk, used packages of condiments from fast food restaurants, and figured out that they could eat on a dollar a day, but not very well and they had to give up most of the vegetables and fruits that they liked. They're vegans, so they were already giving up meat, eggs, and diary. During the experiment they ate a lot of beans and rice and peanut butter sandwiches.

Two non-vegans from Michigan also did the 1 dollar a day thing at their blog Hope Heals. Their blog started out very similar to the first one, only they also ate eggs and cheap hotdogs. They then moved on to trying to be Freegans for a month, and are now doing this sort of random kindness thing. I was going to say that I didn't like the changes in their blog, but I've decided it isn't so bad. I was disappointed with their lack of posting in February, but it's their blog and they can write (or skip) whatever they want to. And I was at first disappointed with their March project, but I've looked at it again and they never really said that they were going to go out and help the needy. They just said that they would be doing little things for people when they thought they could help. They might accidentally help out someone who really doesn't need it or doesn't deserve it, but finding the most needy people to help for a month and then going away was not the point of the project. Just doing little things to make a person smile was the point, and maybe the point was to have fun doing it, which seems to be working.

Now I've found someone else in Michigan who decided to try this dollar a day thing in November of 2006. And he did it, though for the first few days he only had one meal a day. He figured that he saved just over two hundred dollars, which he donated to a local food bank. He called his experiment Hungry for a Month.

I found that blog from another blog called Less is Enough, which I found after checking back with the One Dollar Diet Project. The lady writing Less is Enough decided that she could also eat on a dollar a day, without being a vegan, and without stealing condiments from restaurants, and with more fresh veggies and fruit. And, for the most part, she did. The really interesting thing about this blog is that instead of trying to figure out how much the individual meals cost so that it added up to a dollar a day, she just went out everyday and spent about a dollar. If she had money leftover, she spent it the next day. If she wasn't going out on a certain day, she spent the dollar either the day before or the day after. She started with no food (not even salt) and thirty dollars, and at the end of the month she still hadn't spent her last $1.40, and she had just a little bit of beans, salt, and cornmeal leftover. So while she can't say for sure what her daily totals were, they averaged out to less than a dollar per day. For her next project, she's going to see how much it really costs to eat everything you are supposed to (three meals a day, fresh veggies and fruit, and all the food groups in healthy portions) if you are trying to stay on a budget. So I look forward to that.

Anyway, I'm thinking of doing it again maybe next week. It is easier to do when I'm by myself, and when I don't have any social obligations. I never know too much a head of time when I'll be by myself, but I don't think that I have any social commitments between this coming Sunday and the middle of next month. So that would be a good time to do something if I wanted to.

More free food

Okay, almost free food. I had some coupons that I forgot about. The coupons were in a RaceTrac calendar that cost seventy-five cents. I bought several, gave some away, and I still have at least five of them left. The free coupon for January is a free sandwich, and I hadn't used any of them yet. So yesterday we got these free sandwiches that are supposed cost about two dollars. Twelve coupons for seventy-five cents, so the coupons were about seven cents each.

For other people who started the dollar a day thing on the first of January, their month long project is nearly over. Me, I had sort of done some of it on the thirteenth and didn't do it for real until the twentieth. The plan was for two weeks, which would be over on the second day of February, but then I thought that I might try to make it till the fifteenth, which is the next day that I plan to go out with my friends.

While this was supposed to be a little experiment, just to see if I could do it if I had to, I now have to do it for real. At my husband's job they rarely have any work for anyone around the holidays. So he didn't work from about a week before Christmas until about a week after New Year's. And it isn't a paid vacation or anything. And we didn't save enough money for the time off, so when he went back to work he had to borrow some money to pay for the travel expenses.

He was supposed to work out of town for four weeks. Only all but two days of this week has been cancelled, and now we've been told that next week has been cancelled too. And the sales from the two weeks that he did work were not very good.

So that all sucks.

The other people I'm watching who are doing the dollar a day thing have decided to do something even more dramatic next month. I will not be joining them, but I will be watching.

Yesterday I ate:
.20 yogurt
.05 half cup cola
.05 popcorn
.18 black bean soup
.02 Christmas candy
.08 tomato
.07 sandwich (free with coupon from calendar)
free cookie
____________________________
.65 daily total for Tuesday

Dollar Days

So I've said before that I've wanted to see if I could get by with only spending a dollar a day for what I eat. I read a blog where someone did that for a month, and I'm now reading another blog of someone trying to do the same. I think that a month would be a bit long for me, but I was going to try it for a couple of weeks.

But, unless you are doing the dollar a day thing with someone, it is pretty hard to do by yourself, unless you are actually by yourself. That is, the dollar a day thing is hard to do by yourself if you live with other people, and the other people you live with are not doing the dollar a day thing. But if you live by yourself you eat alone and eat whatever you want to anyway, so it would be easier.

So I had thought that I would do this for the next two weeks, when I would have the house all to myself. Only the schedule has been changed and I will only have the house to myself for five days. So I'll be recording what I eat for five days, and we'll see if I can keep doing it after that.

The main thing that I eat when I am trying to save money is black bean soup. I was attempting to copy something they make at Campo Verde. To make the soup you need a pound of dry black beans, about a half pound of smoked sausage, one large onion, four to eight fresh jalapenos, and a bunch of cilantro. Soak the beans overnight, slice and quarter the sausage, dice the onions, cut up the cilantro as fine as you can, and slice the jalapenos. (The first time you should use four peppers, and then maybe add more the next time you make the soup. I like six, and I've gotten complaints when I used eight. Also, you might want to put aside some of the cilantro and jalapenos for garnish.) Put the beans in a crockpot or stockpot or dutch over, and cover the beans with water so that there is about two inches of water over the beans, then add the sausage, and then cook the beans and the sausage and maybe a bit of the onion, probably four hours high setting on a crockpot. During the last hour add the rest of the onion and jalapeno, and add the cilantro during the last five or ten minutes. Depending on how much water you use, you should get about twelve cups of soup.

So I figure I make this for about twenty-five cents a cup. Beans cost about a dollar a pound. I buy smoked sausage at about two dollars a pound (or 14 ounces now on some brands), because it is almost always either on sale or there's a two for one deal or sometimes they mark down stuff that's about to go out of date. You can use less sausage if you want to, as I have sometimes made it with only a quarter of a pound. And Kroger's has this really cheap sausage for $1.29, which I don't like as much, but you can get more, and it doesn't make that much difference in this recipe after it has been cooked for four hours. The onion and cilantro and jalapeno I get at a Mexican market, and usually all three cost less than a dollar (onions between twenty-five and fifty cents a pound, peppers are between twenty-five cents and a dollar per pound, and cilantro is between twenty-five cents and fifty cents per bunch) or sometimes there's a sale at other grocery stores. So a dollar for beans plus a dollar for sausage plus a dollar for veggies is three dollars, divided by twelve cups is twenty-five cents per cup.

Okay, so that's my soup recipe. Yesterday I ate black bean soup for lunch, a bit of popcorn, a half cup of yogurt, popcorn, one piece of Christmas clearance candy, and noodles with bean sprouts and broccoli and hot sauce. I had half of the noodles for breakfast and the other half for dinner. I also had a cup of Pepsi with my soup because a.) I really like a cola with my soup, and b.) I had already opened the bottle for a social thing and didn't want the rest of it to go to waste.

.25 soup
.05 popcorn
.13 Pepsi
.13 noodles
.05 bean sprouts
.12 broccoli
.04 hot sauce
.17 half cup of yogurt
.02 piece of candy
___________________
.96 total

And I had a few things that I can't calculate like salt on the soup and the popcorn and a dash of sesame oil on the noodles, but I think that's still under a dollar.

Okay, so if people were looking from the other blog, that's what I did, and maybe you can make something similar with what you have left.

Stuff that I missed while I was in Tulsa

In the real world I missed out on a few things, besides the usual I should have been at home sorting through the junk and I should have gone to school a couple of days, etc....

For years and years we had a local movie theater, and then the movie theater got old and went out of business, and then the building was used for various other things. That is something that rather makes me just a little bit sad, that old movie theaters are not movie theaters anymore and are often used as other things that don't really need to be in old movie theaters. I hate that old theaters became places to play bingo and such. If an old movie theater has to become something other than a movie theater, I wish that they didn't leave it looking like it used to be a movie theater, and I wish that it would be something that the people using it really like using an old theater and have use for the chairs being set up that way and everything like that, and not that it was just cheaper to use the old theater than to get some other more regular building.

I suppose that the best use of an old movie theater is to make it into a live theater. I have seen other places where an old movie theater is repaired and people go there to see live plays or magic acts or talent shows. So that is what has finally been done with our old movie theater here. Not that I plan to see a bunch of plays, or even that I plan to see any plays, but it's good that the local people who want to watch plays can now watch them in a building that is set up for lots of people to watch something. And it is a much better use of the building than converting it into a bank or a place to play bingo.

While I was away they had a bit of a re-opening ceremony, and the public was invited in for free to look at the renovations and to see a film about the history of the building and what they plan to do with it in the near future. So I would have liked have seen that, but I wasn't here. And I hadn't heard that it was going to happen, so I don't know for sure that I would have heard about it in time to go anyway. But some other people went, and maybe they would have thought to give me a call, except that they already knew that I was in Tulsa.

I missed a club meeting. I guess that I didn't realize that I was going to miss a meeting until the night before I left. I was somehow thinking that it was the next weekend. Oh well, that's okay. I don't guess that I've cancelled other trips because of club meetings and if I'd have had more time to think I probably wouldn't have cancelled this trip for this meeting either. Still, it is annoying that I've missed the November meeting. The November meeting is the last chance that I would have of casually mentioning such things as what I plan to get K for Christmas do you think that she'll like that and I don't have a clue what to get S does anyone have an idea? Not that I can't just call other people and ask, but I would rather have done that at the meeting and not make a big deal out of it. Also, at the November meeting we usually remind everyone of the official gift exchange and work out what some of the rules are, and then there is usually a bit of talk about the Adopt-A-Family project, though unfortunately we never seem to actually have a specific family until much later. So that stuff would have been nice to hear about, and I missed it.

And I missed watching a friend demonstrate chemical glass etching such as you can do with stuff you buy from Hobby Lobby. Not that I plan to do any such thing myself for a while, and not that the friend really needed me to be in attendance for moral support as there were plenty of others there for that. But I would have liked to have seen it anyway.

Interesting things happened in the blog world as well.

People have lost jobs. Now, one or two of these people were people who don't deserve to have nice jobs anyway, but unfortunately this sort of thing happens to good people too, one in particular that I can think of. I'm sure that will happen to a lot of people that I like before things get better.

Other bloggers live in California and are watching fire get closer to their homes. I'm sure that is a lot of fun.

There used to be this idiot blogger that I read for fun anyway, and she was into weird sex and all sorts of things of that nature. Anyway, I figured if she was dumb enough to write the details of this stuff, then it's her own fault if some of us read and make fun of her. She would write about having sex with someone that she hadn't known very long, and she would write about worrying about STDs, and she would write about having threesomes and such. But the baffling thing about all this is that she would then cry about how she could never find that one special person who would love her and only her. Like she's going to find someone special who loves only her while she's out f***ing everyone else who smiles at her. At some point, she deleted her blog, and we couldn't read about this stuff anymore. However, she is friends with another blogger, and we occasionally read something about her in the other blog. So a few years ago, this girl went to a party were everyone has sex with everyone else, right there at the party with an audience. And she thought it was just a party were everyone makes out with everyone else, not actually has sex. So after a while, she's a bit uncomfortable, cause people are having fun having sex and she doesn't want to have sex with anyone in front of everyone. And the other people at the party convince her that having sex isn't required and that she should stay anyway, which she does, but she's still a bit uncomfortable. So this silly girl now invites the other blogger to this same kind of party. Not that this other blogger wants to have sex in front of other people either. But what was the point of inviting someone to that kind of party if the first time you went you were uncomfortable? This doesn't seem the best place to meet people, if they are into things that you are not comfortable with. Anyway, the other blogger was okay with it and didn't have sex with anyone, but at most I think this was a waste of an evening, just to go and be able to say that you've been to this kind of party but decided it wasn't your kind of thing.

There's another blogger whom I actually care about who posted something about her sex life. And I thought that it was just awful, and I'm probably going to do a whole post about such things and won't go into it much here. But it just makes me wonder why people keep doing that sort of thing when it doesn't make them happy. Now I know that there are other bloggers who have written about that same thing, but those people were quite happy with what they had done. Now I don't see how you can be a decent human being and be happy like that, but some people are. But I don't understand why the people who aren't happy just keep doing the same thing.

And one other thing happened on my blog. Someone left me a comment on a post I wrote last year, talking a little bit about the question of what is art? Unfortunately, the woman was a blogless blogger, so that was kind of the end of it. It would have been interesting to see what she might have written about similar things.

I cannot tell other bloggers what or when to post, but...

My fellow bloggers are not posting what I would like to read, when I would like to read it. Or, at least, that is what some of them are doing. While I'm sure others are quite interested in knowing that a certain blogger went out with her friends and got drunk, what I'd really like to read is whether or not she's mostly gotten over her ex-boyfriend. Going out and drinking with friends could either mean that she is getting over the breakup or that she is not. With drinking, it's just hard to say. In either case, she is not required to let me know how the breakup is going.

Other bloggers have gone on a bit about superlambananas. I cannot say that I like or dislike the superlambananas much either way, and to tell the truth I can't remember if I was all that interested in the bulls of Kansas City or the horses of Fort Worth (which was like seven or eight years ago, and for all I know they stole the idea from yet someone else). But what does interest me in the case of the superlambananas is that the people blogging about them feel good enough to go out and look for the things, which is not always the case. So good for them. On with the superlambananas.

Other people are having problems with their parents. I suppose at some point that all of us do. But I'll be reading about someone having a problem with mom or dad, and then the next post is about some dumb thing that a politician or celebrity said, or something like that. Who cares about that? I can watch that stuff on the news if I cared about that. What's going on with the parents?

But what really, really gets to some of us is when a person just stops blogging for a while, or maybe forever. I realize that I do not really know these people, and it is none of my business if they choose not to blog sometimes or if they want to totally stop blogging. But I think that if you've decided to blog and let the world at large read your blog, you should realize that there are people reading the blog and wondering why you haven't written anything. If everything is okay, you should post something at least once a week so that people know that everything is okay. And if everything is not okay, and you've already posted something indicating that, don't just stop posting for a week or so unless you've already said that's what you plan to do. I don't care if you don't think that you have anything interesting to say, or even if you really don't feel like saying anything at all. After you post something that sounds like "I feel awful and just don't want to go on" post something everyday that just says "I'm still here, but nothing has changed" or "I'm okay right now, but I just don't feel like talking today," but post something so people know you didn't really fall off the face of the earth.

Other than that, I should not bitch too much about other people's blogging, or lack thereof. Sometimes a person isn't blogging very much because real life is great at the moment, and the bloggers are busy enjoying it. So good for them; absence excused. Other times, maybe life isn't so great, the the bloggers have to go deal with things, and I shouldn't beat up on them if they do not have the time or desire to post about whatever has gone wrong. Again, absence excused, but don't let it go on too long.

Now go post something.

Yesterday

Yesterday I had this moment of panic when I saw that S from Fort Worth had left a comment on my blog. S from Fort Worth has found my blog! Yikes! But on closer inspection, I think that it is a different S from Fort Worth. There are many people named S, and I'm sure that there's a lot of them in Fort Worth. Still, my first thought was that out of all those people that it must be the S from Fort Worth that I knew. Silly of me to think that, and more so to think it was something to get upset over. It isn't. "--if I did not want it heard, I would not have said it--" and all of that. And I've never said anything bad about S anyway.

Still, I would rather keep things the way that they are.

Anyway, that was just a minor thing that happened yesterday after I came home. The major thing that happened yesterday was I went to see the baby. I had seen the baby before, but that was more than a month ago when he was still in the hospital.

I have not spent any considerable time around either babies or pregnant women since I was maybe ten or eleven. You wouldn't think it was possible for a forty year old woman to spend so little time around babies and/or pregnant women. You would think that while you may or may not have been around babies and pregnant women when you were younger, depending on chance and the size of your family and your family's social contacts, you would be more and more likely to be around them as you get older. You might have a baby yourself, or friends might have babies.

But I did not want a baby myself, and I have been lucky so far that I've not gotten pregnant. I do not have many of the romantic notions about it that most women do. Not that I don't have them at all, but my main thoughts on pregnancy tend to run towards it must be a lot like carrying a parasite from an Alien movie, only that it takes much longer to die from it and you get really fat while you are waiting to die.

Also, I've never been overly impressed with the babies themselves. It seems that most other women automatically think that all babies are really cute and at some point they will just be unable to go on with life if they don't have one. I don't share that feeling at all, and I fail to see what is so wonderful about a person who just happens to be very small and bald. They can't talk or really do anything cute. I don't really get it.

So you might think that the reason I've not been around babies or pregnant women is that I've deliberately avoided them. You wonder if maybe I'm going along in my life, hear that one of my friends is pregnant, and then avoid her for the next five years or so.

Perhaps it is the reverse. Perhaps the pregnant women are avoiding me. And maybe this is true in a few cases. As a teenager I would sometimes here that someone from school or even from church "had to get married", but this was something I usually heard after the fact from somebody else. None of them ever came to tell me that they were expecting. Well, I suppose that if they didn't feel comfortable telling me that they were having sex it shouldn't surprise me that they weren't comfortable telling me that they were pregnant. So that was probably part of it. But mostly in those cases it was just that the friend and I had drifted apart somewhat before all of that happened, and then after there was actually a baby to think about she had a whole different life that did not include school or whatever it was where we normally saw each other.

Similar things happened as I became an adult. It wasn't that I refused to be friends with them anymore, but people get older and get married, and sometimes the getting married part means that they move away. And even when they don't move away, they tend to make other friends, and those other friends also want babies, so by the time there's actually a baby in the picture we don't see each other that much cause they spend more time with their new friends.

So at some point I was a single person with other single friends who didn't have any babies, and then a bit after that I was a married person who didn't want any babies, and I mostly had friends that were married and didn't have any babies. It just sort of worked out that way. Later still, I ended up being friends with either people who didn't have children, or people who were older and did have children but the children had all grown up.

Now there's someone who I've drifted away from somewhat, but not entirely. And she did not move to a different state or even a different county after getting married. Sure, she wants to make new friends who also have babies, that's only natural, but she hasn't yet done much in that direction yet. So I'm hearing this and that about being pregnant and baby stuff that I'd never heard about before.

I am so glad that I'm not going through any of this myself.

I'm not completely in the dark about such things. I did know that while a woman is pregnant that the baby moves around, that babies "kick". What I did not know was that it is something you can actually see happening. Really. It looks like something from Stan Winston's special effects studio.

Guess the Alien parasite bit wasn't too far off.

And I knew that pregnant women were always running off to the bathroom, because of the baby pushing on the bladder. And I knew that there was such a thing as an episiotomy, that often the doctor will cut a woman to help deliver the baby. And I knew that even under the best of circumstances the couple isn't supposed to have sex for at least six weeks. What I didn't know was that sometimes even after the episiotomy the poor woman tears even more tissue than the doctors thought to cut, and that after delivery the poor woman might still be running off to the bathroom and having gas and all of that. Sometimes, in a really bad case, it isn't just the baby wearing the diapers.

I am really glad that none of this is happening to me.

She looks really good now. You wouldn't know that she'd been pregnant less than two months ago, unless you maybe look at the stretch marks. And she didn't have a Hollywood trainer getting her back in shape or anything like that. I think she looks just the same is she did before, but she says she still has a bit left to go. But however she looks, she still hurts from the delivery.

As for the baby, he didn't cry much in the hospital. The new parents were then fooled into taking him home, where he cries whenever the mood strikes. But after a miserable two or three weeks, they are getting used to him. And the baby squirms a lot when held. I didn't think that babies this age moved around so much.

Other than that, it appears that he does nothing but eat and sleep. I know that isn't quite the case and that he is already learning stuff, like the important people speak English with a Texas accent.

Thanks for reading

It has been an interesting week here on the blog, if not so much in real life. People from all over the world came here to read about a certain convention getting canceled. And more people than that read my words on other sites where parts of my posts were copied. So people who didn't come here knew what I had to say because they were reading something on the sci fi channel site.

That always makes me feel a little warm and fuzzy when someone I don't even know decides to copy my one of my posts and put it on another website so that more people can read it. Maybe someday someone will do that and it won't be cool, but these last two times have been especially nice. I didn't even try to write anything particularly brilliant on those days, but someone out there still thought I'd said something that was worth repeating. I guess that I just happened to write the right thing at the right time.

The interesting thing about the popularity of the convention cancellation post is that my post was so popular for the very reason that I didn't actually go to the convention. I was just writing my normal diary type thing, and while I was sitting here writing, the convention was canceled, and I got some emails about it. So I was one of the first people to post about that. The people who were actually at the convention didn't do that right away, either because they were at a convention and didn't have their computers with them, or maybe some of them did have their computers but it took a while for them to calm down enough to write anything.

It wasn't quite like having my fifteen minutes of fame. But maybe it was like the blog had fifteen seconds of fame. And while that was going on, real life here was just an average week, mostly spent sorting through the junk and watching end of the world movies on YouTube.

I don't think that I'm going to get any additional regular readers from all this attention, or at least if I have they haven't left me any comments yet. But while this was going on I felt a bit of pressure to not write the usual diary stuff and either post important stuff like about memory problems, or if not important stuff at least stuff that the new people would find interesting like movie reviews. I was going to post about memory problems and a review of the new Hulk movie anyway, so that worked out, but I'm wondering if next week I'll just go back to the usual stuff or if I'll feel weird about posting about problems with mice.

Okay. Back to sorting junk and watching end of the world movies.

More Random Thoughts

My husband came home last night at almost midnight, and despite the fact that I went to a night class, I was already asleep when he got home. I woke up for a bit, but not enough to say anything coherent. Just sort of mumbled something about him being home and me going back to bed. I think if I was going to be that late that I would have just gotten a room. I worry about long drives at night, but he doesn't think about that sort of thing.

Having gotten used to the idea of him not being here for a few days, it was then odd for me the first night he was home. Woke up in the middle of the night, remembered he was there, and then tried to go back to sleep because I can't watch TV or get up and eat ice cream, etc....

At school I finally got around to spraying glaze on the leaf vase (or the "tree" as the professor calls it). I am not comfortable with the spray gun and might have made a big mess of it. We shall see.

The glaze contains "substances which are known to cause birth defects and cancer in California." Lucky for me that we're in Texas. I'd almost forgotten about my cut fingertips, but then I got glaze on them. That rather stings a bit. I still have three or four boxes of rubber gloves left, but I'm not sure where any of them are at the moment. I should have taken a box to school last time I had them out.

I finally got a plate and a bowl from my molds. The professor is quite happy with them.

I have just realized that there's only like a month left for school. And I've been told that this week's Friday afternoon session has been cancelled. And I can't go next Friday because of my friend's memorial service. I don't think that I'm going to get things done on time. I need to decide if I should drop the class before the 12th of April. I still need to clean the glaze off of the bottom of the "tree" so it can be fired, glaze the tall vase, pour and finish at least three more bowls and plates, finish the Triffid, finish the Martian Crickets, and I haven't even started the relief sculpture, the dragon sculpture, or the Alien face hugger. And I had meant to do extra stuff. I at least have a design for the relief sculpture. Maybe I should roll out some terra cotta and take that project home over the weekend.

I have just looked at a blog that I used to read. The author said that she needed a break and was probably going to give up blogging. I reminded her of all the time she had put into the thing and she said that she wouldn't delete the blog, just that she might not write in it anymore. A while back a couple of us checked on it, and for some reason instead of seeing a month old post we saw a post that was a year and a half old. Now it is even stranger. There's not a post, but a bunch of drug ads. It is very strange to see someone's thoughts on life replaced by drug ads. I hope that she is alright.

Time for me to get ready for school, even if there is someone in the next room who is still trying to sleep.

Now I feel all warm and fuzzy

This was just supposed to be the opening for this week's Freaky Friday. Only it got kind of long, so I decided that it needed to be a post all by itself. I will still try to do the Freaky Friday thing a bit later.

Okay, so my husband is a serious blogger. He is under the delusion that someday this silly stuff is going to make him some real money. That's what he thinks about a lot of things, and he's usually wrong. Anyway, I don't know if he enjoys the blogging anymore, but he's seriously obsessed with it and won't stop doing it even though it upsets me very much. And I was already pretty upset to start with.

One of the things that he does is submit absolutely everything that he has ever written to Digg and Fark and a bunch of other places like that. Not that this takes as much time as actually writing posts, but it does take some time, and it adds up. So he gets a lot of Diggs and some Farks and some other stuff and that one time he made the front page of Fark. For all of this effort he makes about a dollar and a half per day, and once in a while he writes a post for someone and makes about ten dollars. I'm thinking that if he does this during every spare moment of his the day, he might make about half of the money that we spend eating lunch.

Anyway, I don't do any of that. Blogging is supposed to be fun. I think some people make money blogging, but for the most part, that ship has sailed. You have to be in the right place and the right time for that sort of thing to happen, and we weren't. For the most part, if you just sit around trying to think of ways to make money, it just isn't going to work out. Sometimes you think of something that helps you or helps someone you know, and while you helping yourself you might as well see if other people are interested in what you're doing or what you've made, and sometimes this becomes a business opportunity. And sometimes you are very lucky and make enough money that you can quit your job. But even then, when you have a good idea that could help people, it just usually doesn't work out like that.

So I have this blog, which I don't think will ever make any real money, and it is way too much work to get a blog to make even pocket change. So I don't read books on how to increase traffic to my blog and all of that. And I don't submit stuff to Digg and Fark and all of that. And if I ever do submit anything to Digg or Fark or something like that, I'm certainly not going to submit every single thing that I write, unless I cut way back on writing.

Anyway, the thing about Digg and Fark and such isn't necessarily that you wrote something really cool. It's just that you've found something really cool. Maybe the really cool thing is something you wrote, or maybe it's just something you happened to come across while surfing the web. So you can find an amateur movie review from some college guy who got sneak preview passes to some movie you've really been looking forward to, or you really like someone's post on the greatest vacation spot, or whatever. And you think that's just so cool, and you think that other people will think that it's cool, so you submit it to Digg or whatever. Or you can have a whole blog of stuff that you didn't even write. You can just copy or link to something you found, and as long as you give credit and you weren't asked not to do that, it's probably okay. Flattery will get you...well, as least a word of appreciation.

Okay, so I have a link on this site, which I don't think I'd ever heard of before, and I don't think that I know this person. And I'm pretty sure that the post doesn't really fit in with the rest of it. But there it is, and it was submitted to Digg and got five Diggs.

Isn't that sweet?

On the same day I also found out that my post about going to the state fair was copied and translated into German. I'm afraid that I don't get why, and it wasn't that good of a post, but it's still kind of cool.

There was some other stuff I found that were supposed to have links to my blog, but then they either just didn't seem to work or they had been deleted. Maybe someone linked to my posts because of the name, without actually reading them, and then later decided they just didn't fit.

Getting Bored Now

I know. I know. If I've got so much time on my hands that I'm getting bored, I should get off my a** and clean something.


My husband went out of town yesterday. I have the place to myself for about a week. It takes a day or two to get used to. I don't have to schedule things around another person. I can eat lunch and dinner whenever and not wait around for him to come home. I could go out if I wanted, but that would just tempt me to spend money, which I am trying not to do. And I have the computer all to myself for the first time in almost a month.


I guess that is the boring part at the moment. Normally when I have the place to myself like this I would maybe watch a bit of TV, do a bit of cleaning, check messages and read a few blog posts, and then repeat the whole process. But as far as the blogs go, there just doesn't seem to be much going on.


Now, my friend up north is still posting, and some other people are still posting, but a lot of people seem to be taking a break. It is understandable. One of my readers spent most of last week in bed, and not in a good way. Two of my readers have recently broken up with their boyfriends, and to say that they broke up with boyfriends really makes light of their situations. I have just learned that one reader is having to deal with an ailing parent. Some of my readers have children, and no doubt at times the children get sick or have other problems. People take breaks from blogging once in a while. They have real life to deal with.


Still, it does seem unusually quite out there. I try to keep up with a few blogs in England, but there's barely anything going on there since maybe Wednesday. Possibly a meteor hit England and killed the bloggers in question? Probably not. Maybe the Internet is down for the whole country? No, that isn't it either, as I checked another blogger from there and she is still posting. And she didn't mention any meteors. So they just all seem to be busy at the same time.


There's a few blogs that I tend to read, not cause I'm friendly with the writers, but just to keep up with the soap opera drama of it all. One of them has decided to stop blogging. She was nice enough to warn her readers that she probably wouldn't be writing anymore. We all stopped by to wish her well, and some of us stop by again and again to see if maybe she's changed her mind.


A message-board that I used to be very active on shut down for a bit. It was supposed to upgraded and running again about a week ago, but so far it isn't.


I finally got some chat room time with a friend yesterday. But other than that, it's all been a bit dull.


I wonder if some of it has to do with New Year's resolutions. I think that some of us resolve to quit spending so much time on the Internet. And if your resolutions had nothing to do with the computer, maybe getting them done takes up some of your time, and that equals less blog time.


Okay, that's enough whining. Back to work.

A Silly Bit of Business

So over at another blog I read, they were having a bit of fun with this website that would rate your blog. Not rate it in the sense that they would say you are the best writer on the planet or that your blog is so boring that all the other bloggers are embarrassed for you, like I have seen on other websites. But rate it in the sense of what age is appropriate to view your blog, like a movie rating.

Anyway, this poor blogger was upset that her blog was rated PG-13. Not that she thought it was too harsh, but she couldn't believe that they received such a mild rating. At their blog they discuss all kinds of things that are not politically correct and swear and speak of many subjects that would not normally speak of, at least, not out in the real world. So she just did not appreciate the PG-13 rating.


Just for fun, I asked for the address of this website.http://www.justsayhi.com/bb/blog_rating

And I was surprised to get an NC-17 rating. The rating appears to come from the number of times certain words are used, though I am not sure during what time-period the offending words are counted. For a while I had slipped down to an R, while the other blog actually slipped down to a G.

I have checked again today, and the G rating is now at least back up to a PG for "ass (3x) fucking (1x)." My blog is again up to an NC-17 for "hell (16x) penis (10x) sluts (7x) dick (4x) hurt (2x) sex (1x)."

I entered more blog addresses to have a look at their ratings.

The blog written by the Bimbo's friend contains stuff about threesomes and bondage and all of that, but she only got an R rating for "sex (3x) shit (2x) suck (1x)."



Isn't this fun?



There is this other blog that I stumbled upon that I keep reading, not because I care anything about the woman, but because I cannot believe that real people actually live like this. I would say that she's like something out of one of Laurell K. Hamilton's books, only without the vampires, werewolves, fairies, witches, murders, police detectives, zombies, zombie raisers, etc... Oh, and also without the morals and the brains.

Okay, maybe she's not that much like Laurell K. Hamilton's characters after all. But you get the idea.

Anyway, the woman has multiple sex partners, and seems to go back and forth between writing how wonderful her life is and how miserable she is cause she can't find that one guy who will love her and only her. She doesn't want any mature advice like she should stop with the multiple partners and grow up and do something constructive to find just that one guy, etc.... But I'm still reading the damned thing, cause it's just so unreal to me that people behave this way and then whine about not being happy.

She seems a lot like the Homewrecking-Slut.

So the multiple partner woman who is actively out there looking for her one man gets a blog-rating of R for "sex (5x) fucking (4x) hurt (3x) pussy (2x) orgasm (1x)."

That makes her blog have the same rating as my friend from the Great White North who has "gun (9x) dead (2x) mame (1x)" in his blog.



So that's all a bit silly, but I was having some fun with it while taking a break from the current art project.


What is your blog's rating?

(Almost) Everyone is going to hell

I'm probably going to make a lot of people mad today. But at least read the post first before you decide to get mad.

Okay, so it's not that I'm telling everyone to go to hell, or that I want some people to just go to hell, or that I think that you're not a good person, or that people deserve to go to hell. Well, maybe I do think that some people deserve to go hell, but that's not the point. That's not why I am writing.

But the fact is, according to church theology, a lot of people are going to hell. So a certain person has wondered why people are praying for her, since she is Jewish and going to hell anyway.

Well, that is the point isn't it? People are praying for her because they don't want her to go to hell, but they are pretty sure that she is.

I just don't happen to be one of those people. She can go to hell if she wants to.

But I didn't write this to tell people that they could go to hell, even if they want to. I wrote this to apologize to all the other people out there that I'd rather did not go to hell, even if they want to. I apologize for not actively praying for those people. I've probably not given it much thought. I don't think that I've ever prayed for them before. Except for the little prayers I am doing right now for them, I haven't prayed for them before, and possibly I will not pray for them ever again.

Go ahead and say it, that makes me a terrible person. I care more about what is going on in ceramics class than I do about the souls of a few dozen people that I have never actually met. That kind of thing has lead to the downfall of America and civilized behavior and all of that. And I know that, and I am sorry, and I apologize. Many years ago I had all these big plans, but in the end I decided that I just wanted to lead my quiet little life and be left alone. But last year someone decided not to leave me alone, and perhaps that is just what I get for not sticking with the original plan. And, again, this year, I started something but then decided that what I really wanted was get my quiet little life back. But that's really not going to work either.

So I don't really have a good excuse for not doing what I ought to be doing. I just haven't been doing it. Forgive me.

And before anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, the Jewish person being prayed for that I do not care to pray for myself is NOT the person who leaves comments here and occasionally does sort of a Jewish Stuff for Dummies on his own blog. I'm not going to say anything silly like that man needs to turn to God. It doesn't sound like the man ever turned away from God in the first place. Just that I don't think that he's ever turned toward Jesus, and according to the teachings of my church, that is a necessary part of the process if you don't want to go to hell. So I should pray for my fellow blogger and his family, even though he does sound very much like he cares about God and does good works and all of that cool stuff.

There was a joke in school. To shorten it a bit, when you die and are going up the elevator in heaven, you have to be quiet passing a certain floor, because that's where the Baptists are. The Baptists think that only other Baptists get to heaven, and everyone else there just lets us keep thinking that, so they keep quiet and respect our privacy.

Anyway, back then I didn't really know many non-Christians and I don't think I knew any Jewish people. Back when I was having serious theological discussions, I didn't think up any Biblical arguments to win over the Jewish souls. Our discussions, mostly friendly, where against the Pentecostals. And for the most part we thought that the Pentecostals were probably going to heaven too, but we had these discussions just in case. And for the most part those discussions were not meant to save anyone from hell, just to point out that it is still better to be a Baptist.

I have been out of such things for so long, I don't think that I'd know where to start a religious argument with someone. And even if I remembered such things, a religious discussion with Pentacostals is probably very different from one with Jewish people, or Mormons, or Catholics, or people who don't claim any particular religion, or atheists.

So while I am wondering about silly things like if a certain person had a really stressful day at work, or if someone nearly strangled StepMonster, or if someone smashed a stroller into a useless twist of metal, or if someone is having too much to drink after breaking up with her boyfriend, there are more serious problems that are not getting my attention at all. A bunch of you are going to hell, and I just really wish you weren't. And most of the time that even goes for that other Jewish person who needs to turn to God, even if I have not yet prayed for her.

Why you are not in my blogroll

Maybe you'll notice that I just don't have one. It's not because I don't like you. More like, I don't care about the computer that much.

I like writing. I like reading. I don't like trying to figure out how to make things work. So I haven't figured out blogroll and linking and such yet. Maybe I'll get around to it later. Maybe I won't.

It's pretty much the same with the pictures. I thought I had finally figured it out, but the next post that I put pictures in had all of the pictures in the opposite order than I wanted. So the pictures were next to things that I wrote about other pictures, so it made no damn sense. So I didn't publish that post, and I've given up on the pictures for now.

There are other examples of my frustrations with computers. Another time perhaps.

Anyway, with a couple of exceptions, if you've ever left a comment on my blog, I try to check on your blog everyday. There are a few others that I check on everyday, and there are a few more that I read about once a week or so. I read every day that I have access to the computer, except those few Wednesdays that I am busy at school. And that goes for weekends too, if my husband will get off the thing long enough for me to read anything. And I try to post on Saturday and Sunday too, so some of you will have extra stuff to read on Monday.

So I'm sorry if I upset anyone. Yes, I know that it is nice to put up a link to your blog after you've put up a link to mine. I'm just not up to that right now.

And welcome to my new readers. Even the ones who aren't into Star Trek.

Missing an old blog buddy

(most of this was originally posted on December 14th in another blog)

Cabinboy has not posted anything since September.

I know that it is none of my business. He's a grown man, and it's a free country, and he's allowed to stop blogging any time that he wants to. I just wonder what happened to him, that's all.

It's not like he said he wasn't going to blog anymore. That would be nice, if people would leave a note saying that they're too busy to deal with the blog for the next year or so. But I guess they rarely do that. Just one day he didn't blog for a while, and then his next post was about his dog dying. And then the post about the dog was removed, and then nothing.

His mom hasn't posted anything on her blog since then either.

It's silly to think that anything happened to them. It's silly to be concerned about people I have never even met. I should get over it.

I wonder what happened to Cabinbabe too.

Happy Holidays, wherever you are.

(the following is new material)

Wonder what happened to Elranito?

That's why I originally started writing to many of you. I hit the next blog button and found Elranito. Started reading Anon 1. Starting talking to Rachel. Starting talking to David and some other old guy who reads Heinlein, and one of them (can't remember which) refered to me as "one of Anon's harem."

Anyway, the guy was blogging for about two months. He was debating about whether or not he should move back to Miami. Then something happened to his computer. Then he got a new computer and said how much he loved Sony, and that was the last blog post.

Does anyone know if he moved back to Miami or if he's okay and all of that? Maybe if he moved back to Miami he has such a busy social calender that he no longer has time for blogging. Hope that it is something nice like that, and not that he was killed in a terrible car crash trying to drive on the ice in the great white north.

Elsewhere in the blogsphere

A while back, a friend of mine from the great white north noticed that I had both a "stupid people" post label and an "idiot bloggers" post label. He wondered if maybe I should have an category about intelligent people. I should at least have a "nice bloggers" label.

Today is the 27th of March, and if I am not mistaken, Playtah is spending the day in Minnapolis. She is going to audition for Last Comic Standing. Everyone wish Playtah luck.

There. My first "nice bloggers" post. The whole month of March is not totally about morons after all.

Good luck Playtah. Knock 'em dead, or whatever it is that you are supposed to do at an audition.