Monday, November 30, 2009

On the menu: we call this soup weather!

I've been making menu plans on the fly the last few weeks, but last night I sat down and wrote one out. (Scanner's acting up, so you get to miss out on my sloppy handwriting! ;) It's kind of soupy, but it's a good time of year for that with high temps under 70 degrees and all those extra Thanksgiving calories we just consumed!

Here's what I came up with:

  • Mon: potato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches
  • Tue: pizza at Nithya and Naveen's house (yay!)
  • Wed: our friend Jose from Peru comes over and the Hubs cooks South American food
  • Thr: turkey enchiladas
  • Fri: 3-bean soup (kidney beans, Peruvian beans, split peas)
What I didn't come up with: what to do with a bunch of leftover gravy. I have about 2 cups leftover, and I'm not wild about it, but the Hubs liked it. I guess I could freeze it for later. Any other suggestions?

Thanks to Jenna at Chive Talkin' for the menu plan inspiration!

One more thing: for the next 30 minutes, I'm donating $2 of every t-shirt sold in my shop to Heifer International. Would you like to help out and get some shopping done? (Read more here or start shopping!)

Friday, November 27, 2009

Thankful

So just a quick update before sleepytime. The first part of this week was packed with trying to tie up work projects, etc. before the long weekend.

We had an absolutely lovely Thanksgiving with my family - plus the parents of the Hubs.

Over in Bold Avenue's shop, I decided that instead of a Black Friday sale, I would donate $1 for each tee sold to Heifer International. You can read all about that over on my other blog. I'll just say that I would love to sell enough t-shirts to buy a family in need a water buffalo!

In the meantime, I hope you had a beautiful day and are finding many, many things in your life to be thankful for.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Change to blog comments

Well, we got a couple icky spammy comments. The kind that probably just get posted to a whole buncha sites and link to something totally irrelevant. So I've changed a couple of things around here:

  • I've removed the comment feed for now. (That was the "Little Stuff we're talking about" section on the right that showed recent comments.)
  • I'm requiring a sign in with OpenID or a Google account.
I've been reluctant to require sign-in, but I'm going to give it a try. I don't want to discourage human beings from leaving feedback and opinions, but I really want to keep the auto-generated trash out.

If you have a Google, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress or AIM account, you'll be able to sign in with your existing username. If not, please drop me a line (email address is in my profile) and let me know. (Although it might be a good time to set up a Google account. Google has all kinds of neat stuff like Gmail and Google Docs and Picasa....)

In case you're not familiar with OpenID, there's great information on their site about what it is and how to log in using it.

As always, I do welcome comments and relevant links. Wanna give the new sign in a try and tell me what you think?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Thanksgiving in Cinquain


My PerPoTues poem for November...


Thanksgiving
Family squabbles
Eating until stuffed
Maybe we're the turkeys
Gobble?

*****
Photo by me. (Yes, the turkey has survived several Thanksgivings and is living quite happily on a farm where no one is planning to eat him. I hear he has a girlfriend.)

Perfectly Poetical: Cinquain

From LSL Buttons

Happy Perfectly Poetical Tuesday!

This month's style is one you may not be familiar with, but it should be a piece of cake!

How to write a simple cinquain:

  • Doesn't rhyme
  • Has 5 lines.
  • 1st line is 1 word (which is also the title).
  • 2nd line is 2 words.
  • 3rd line is 3 words.
  • 4th line is 4 words.
  • 5th (last) line is 1 word.
As always, the topic is up to you. Write about the kind of thing you would normally blog about - food, family, random things that happen - or about Thanksgiving or about whatever you'd like. Have fun and remember to link your post to this one! Thanks!

Edited to add: I thought an example would be good, so I took 10 minutes and wrote this Thanksgiving-themed cinquain.




Friday, November 6, 2009

Failure to connect - part 2


The Pre-cellphonial Era

So back to the question: What did we do before cell phones were so commonplace?

Before I had a cell phone, I had a purple pager clipped into the pocket of my overalls. (Which I may have sometimes worn with one strap undone, hanging down the back.) (C'mon! It was the 90's, people!)

Back then - and even before my pager days - you always kept a quarter with you for the pay phone. When you called a friend, you called a land line (although you never thought of it that way - it was just a phone) that went to their family's house. If your friend wasn't home, you might have to leave a message on the family's answering machine or with her little brother, or you might get a busy signal and have to try again later.


Phonelessness

I left my cell phone at home went to Spain for my study abroad program in 2003, since I knew it wouldn't work in Europe. Some of my friends made the same choice, and not having a phone at the ready was definitely an adjustment.

Plans were not so fluid. None of this "just call me when you're on the way" stuff. You set a time and place in advance and had to stick to it. We made a bigger effort to be early or on time, since there was no updating a waiting friend on your status, if the bus was running late or something. And if you were the one waiting...you just waited. There was no contacting the person directly to find out where they were. You just stuck around, wondering where they were, wondering if they'd come, second guessing whether you and the meeting place right or if they could be waiting for you at that other cafe.


Phondependence

T-Mobile's outage at a superinconvenient time on Tuesday made me think some more about the way we use - and rely on - cell phones. I'm not saying we should stop. But maybe it's a good idea to not assume we'll be able to get in contact with someone at any moment. Think about the chaos that follows when a company's email is out of commission. Or how users of Twitter/Facebook/etc. are at a loss when their service of choice goes down.

The other night, I wanted to keep things flexible, because there were a number of unknowns - how long the train ride would take, when others would arrive, how ticketing would work, if I was going to do a contest for my unused tickets, if and when I was going to get something to eat beforehand. But I could've made a decision. I could've said I'll be in this place at this time. And here's the backup plan, if something doesn't work.

It's always good to have a backup plan.


Phontingency plans

Maybe I should be more firm in my commitments as a general rule. Maybe I should make sure that I have other contact information for the people I usually connect with via Twitter. Maybe I should double check that the important emails I sent are received.

Maybe I should do less assuming and more backup planning. Or maybe the cell phone should be the backup and not the plan. Any thoughts?

*****

Photos:
1) by sean dreilinger
2) by John Fraissinet
3) by Scott Ableman
4) by artolog

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Failure to connect - part 1



Network Error

Making plans to meet up with people at Ignite Phoenix last night was a bit of a challenge since everyone was coming from different directions, and I was taking the light rail and walking. So I told everyone I'd be there around 5:00 and to call me when they got there. I commented to my friend Rebekah, "what did we ever do before cell phones?!!"

Funny thing was that about 5pm my phone randomly stopped being able to make or receive calls and texts, even though the bill had been paid and the signal was good.

So I didn't hear from the person calling to say she'd be late or the person calling to say she'd be early or the person that was there somewhere but I never did find.

And I had let the Hubs know I was on the train, but couldn't tell him that I'd made it to my destination. I also didn't know he'd run into his own problems.

Transportation Glitch

Ignite had been on the calendar for months, but I don't think we thought about that when we signed up to lead a Life 101 discussion group at church.

We dealt with the schedule conflict by deciding I'd go to Ignite, leaving the car for the Hubs at his work, and he'd drive to Life 101. Would've worked just fine - had the Hubs remembered his car keys. I may have been able to help - had my phone been working. He must've sent me the text that began with "Transportation glitch! Forgot my car key. :P" about 6pm, but I didn't get it - or his other texts - until 8:30. (Which was very confusing!) His voicemails didn't come through until much later.

In the meantime, it all got worked out - with a little help from our friends. Chanelle ran me home, so I could try to locate my husband. Dale gave him a ride to church and back home. He took the light rail to work this morning, and, yep, the car was still there. So it all turned out fine.

But seriously bad timing for a network outage!

****
This was originally part of a post that was so long I decided to break it up. Part 2 is about the reliance on cell phones that this an example of, and it's coming up Friday!

Photo by tysoncrosbie. And, yep, that's me in the back. You'll recognize the Heart tee. ;)


More photos from Ignite.