Media-crity

…to come for D-Blog Day. Sigh. I thought I had more time but alas, cake decorating calls!

And yes, haha, diabetic taking a cake decorating class. That will figure into my post.

Lisa has thrown down the gauntlet, suggesting that we (the people whose blogs she reads) make an effort to post about 10 things on a topic every week.

This week is 10 Favorite Websites. For me, this changes a lot depending on what I’m obsessing over.

1. Universal Hub: Adam, the webmaster, combs a ton of RSS feeds looking for interesting, breaking, quirky stories about Boston. It’s the first place I check when something breaks because it gives me what people are saying, not just the quick hit blurb the mainstream news has. There’s a real community feel there that makes it more personal than going to boston.com or WBZ’s website which, most of the time, doesn’t even have the story up right away. I also enjoy his snarky headlines/comments on some of the stories.

2. Facebook: Enough said. I can’t get enough of finding out when my friends are making dinner or going out or using the bathroom!

3. Twitter: Like Lisa, I was suspicious of Twitter. It seemed pointless. But now, especially with the search feature, I’m a convert. Plus it’s nice to have somewhere to make a note of odd things I might encounter but don’t know who to tell, like the man riding a unicycle like a road bike a few weeks ago.

4. Center Field: A fantastic Sox blog with a plethora of Pedroia-related posts. That gets an A+ in my book.

5. Call of the Green Monster: He’s been on hiatus since August but it’s still full of side-splitting baseball-related (okay, mostly Sox-related) parody stories. I was going to link my favorite post but I couldn’t pick one, so go read all of them.

6. GMail: I love love love GMail because I was able to link it to my home email, allowing me to check all my email accounts in one place AND not have to deal with my hosting provider’s crappy webmail anymore. The search function is phenomenal. And it has gchat.

7. Goodreads: I’m not as active on Goodreads anymore but I do go back from time to time. I love being able to go back and see what I’ve read or what I thought about a certain book.

Flannery’s book montage

Powered by Goodreads.com

(this is getting hard)

8. Pandora: Streaming radio that plays songs based on a particular artist. I’ve had great luck finding songs this way.

9. Extra Bases: Boston.com’s Red Sox blog.

10. Group Recipes: They call it a Food Social Network but I call it a damn fine way to store recipes, and find new ones. The best part is the tag system, which is true of so much of the internet. You can search by flavor, season, cuisine, anything.

Baseball will be the death of me. I can’t take the pressure!

Not much else. Plugging away at chemistry. I swear, every day is like Memento with that class. I get it, I go to bed, I wake up, I forget everything.

Oh, hey, we also joined the 2000s and got Tivo! Switched to Verizon FiOS and got us a shiny box of FREEDOM. Because I have not caught one new episode this season. Between studying and class and, well, “Kate said ‘Let’s go have a beer …’”

Thinking about doing Nanowrimo this year but I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I’ve written two short pieces of fiction in the past couple of weeks, the first in 4 years. And it felt really good.

Nursing school apps are due Nov. 1. Where did the past year go? We’ve been in Boston 13 months, I’ve been at my job nearly a year.

Oh and yes, I did change the blog layout again.

Still struggling to find a theme here. I hate how narrow the main body of all of them are. I just want to choose a background and have floating content above it. Preferably in boxes with rounded corners. And a WIDE main column. Wide enough to post some freakin pictures.

Speaking of, a plethora of my new hair!

Also, Amanda, I promise I will post more soon! I’ve just been so annoyed with the layout I haven’t had the heart. I should teach myself to make my own theme.

I just switched to Wordpress and am still working out the kinks. However, so far it seems to be worth the day I spent wrestling with the install and my shaky FTP client.

Stay tuned and stuff.

I just deleted all my 6+ month old tweets and put a box on the sidebar. I like twitter because I can send little updates about weird things I see in the street and want to blog about but always forget about by the time I get home.

Now I don’t have to take a picture and send it via flickr!

Today I went looking for any other blog reports of Saturday’s melee and found none so I submitted my link to Universal Hub and it looks like the story was up there within minutes, which would explain the uptick in traffic this afternoon.

Today I was also a LOT more aware of my fellow passengers and how close my accessories were getting to their personal bubbles. Can’t say that I didn’t bump into anyone but I also didn’t get my face bashed in so I consider it a good day. Here’s hoping KG is out there ingesting/shooting/smoking more or less of what he had ingested/shot/smoked on Saturday. I’m still shaking my head in amazement at what little provocation it took for him to completely lose it.

I drew this handy diagram, which I’ve also added to the original post, to show just how little of OG’s hat hit KG’s arm. The rest of the drawing may not be to scale but that sure is.

Everytime I look at this picture Kenny Loggins’ “Danger Zone” plays in my head. So I’m just gonna stop now. Yeah.

So I’ve been a little slack on the picture posting but the truth is that my days are all pretty much the same. Work, gym, home, dinner, sleep. And since the phone-on-the tracks incident I’m loathe to whip my phone out to snap a pic of something interesting on the subway platform. Then there are things like yesterday’s melee but I sure as hell wasn’t in any position to be taking pictures of THAT. Nevermind that either or both participants likely would have just turned on me.

So, maybe a mix of pictures and stories is in order.

Like today. Today I made this cannellini and parmesan soup that I posted about over a year ago. I switched up the recipe a bit, using a small handful of frozen chopped onion instead of chopping a large one, adding some minced garlic, and of course the ditalini. The soup was fantastic if I may say so myself, though not terribly soupy. I liked it but anyone looking for more liquid might want to decrease the casta by a quarter to half.

It’s now packaged into some small tupperwares to bring to work for lunch along with my ciabatta and cheddar. I’m really looking forward to it.

Also, I have calf muscles! Hooray! Not sure how I’m going to do with the couch-2-5k but it’s definitely doing SOMETHING. It better be since I just got me some fancy new sneakers. I went to Boston Running Company in Beacon Hill and got my feet videotaped while I walked on a treadmill to analyze my gait and get properly fitted. It was a cute little shop and the proprietor is so friendly and helpful. If you’re in Boston and thinking about taking up running, or even walking, I’d highly recommend BRC.

Tomorrow it’s back to the old work-gym-dinner-bed grind. Right now, though, just bed.

Still stand by this VDay post I mae two years ago.

The gym was deserted tonight, though that didn’t surprise me. However, I was there with my husband so it was okay.

I gotta say, it’s dizzying to watch the video for OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” while actually on a treadmill. I don’t think I recommend it.

I’ve been meaning to do this with some sort of regularity and the new year seems as good a time to start as any! I hope to photopost one interesting picture of something I see throughout the day. It should be easier to stick to, I hope, because I don’t have to be at my computer to do it.

Isn’t technology awesome?

Man I wish I wasn’t a sucker.

16.5 hours til 2007 is history! I cooked/prepped most of the party food last night. After work today will be the mac & cheese, actually baking the sausage nut streudels, and making the pigs in a blanket. The party menu and recipes can be found here on GroupRecipes with a few edits. I could not for the life of me find frozen artichoke hearts so fried artichokes are out. I’ve also added this dried cherry (well, cranberry for me) and green onion spread.

Eeeek, gotta finish getting ready! Happy New Year if I don’t manage to post again!

Oh, and I resolve to make more real posts, fewer Tweets/Photos.

Donors Choose is a non-profit that allows public school teachers to submit proposals for projects they’d like their students to do or for improvement in their classrooms. Proposals are for special supplies like microscopes, for field trips, for guest speakers, even for rugs, books, and shelves to set up a library and tennis balls to put on the bottom of chair legs to preserve a new floor.

Then, as a donor, you search through the proposals using a number of different options– a specific type of proposal, a keyword, a specific region or school, a hurricane-affected school, anything. You choose the proposal(s) you’d like to fund and either make a contribution toward it or pick up the tab completely.

The Blogger Challenge comes in with bloggers all over setting up challenge pages where they challenge their readers to meet certain monetary goals for their selected proposals. There is also currently a contest going on for the month of October where the bloggers who make the most impact in a few areas (amount raised, number of students impacted, number of readers engaged, and most creative incentive to donate.) For the last one, Sars of Tomato Nation apparently shaved her head (video is on YouTube somewhere) after challenging her readers to raise $30k. Now she’s upped the stakes with prizes and a pledge to wear a tomato costume for a day if readers fund $40,000 more.

I don’t stand a chance against such awesomeness, but I’d still love it if my few readers would get involved in some way– either by donating to my challenge, starting your own, or just talking up Donors Choose.

I have 8 proposals on my page so far. I’m picking proposals that speak to what was important to me and I can’t imagine having gone without when I was in school. Things like a fully-stocked library, the freedom and tools to explore my writing, and the excitement of having a hand in a real TV broadcast.

I also included one from a teacher who wants to bring a Media Literacy program to her students.

There’s one really awesome one that I’m waiting to go live. Below is the teacher’s description of his project. I almost wish I was still in school so I could participate.

I have a student who has some serious problems with reading. At the end of last year I made a deal with her that if she would read them with me I would buy her a copy of each Harry Potter book, and that we would try to read all seven by the end of the year. At the start of this year I thought what was an even better idea was to get a small group together, all classmates and friends, some strong readers and some with weaknesses, and we’d read it as a circle.

Despite quietly asking around who might be interested, word got out and now many, many students want in. Worse yet, there are three other teachers who want to be involved.

And this afternoon, the worst thing of all happened.

I was talking to the tenth grade English teacher (the one I was supposed to be working with this year) and somewhere in this utterly insane conversation we realized that with four teachers involved we could split the kids into four groups.

And since there are four houses at Hogwarts…

That’s right, folks, we’re going to sort the students and have four “houses” in competition to see who can read furthest into the series by the end of the year. I think we’ll also find a way to discuss the books with the groups based on the philosophies of the houses.

I need to stop having these ideas.

The big push is for the month of October, but many of these will remain open long past that so keep DonorsChoose in the back of your mind when deciding where to spread a little extra cash.

THANKS!

I’ve added some awesome new blogs in the sidebar there that I want to call attention to.

–It’s a Baby, Not Brain Surgery
Funny stories from a Labor & Delivery nurse.

–One Girl, One Journey
Funny stories from the general manager of a hotel

Also, I added a section for Project 365 photoblogs I follow.

Can I say the word “blog” more? Blog blog blog.

In the wee small hours of the morning, the new layout was born. Most of the time was devoted to finding the exact right shade of green, deciding what color the main text boxes should be, and figuring out how to have a list of the tags/labels I’ve used in the sidebar without switching my entire blog over to be hosted on blogger’s servers.

There are still little things to be done, like putting more blog links and a GoodReads widget, but for right now, I’m just glad everything that’s there is working.

Everything is working, right? Please tell me if something isn’t.

No, not for my own blog. A new focus in seeking out other blogs. I keep up with some diabetes message boards, especially since getting Sheldon here. I’d occasionally check blogs people linked. From one of them, Six Until Me, I heard about a social networking site for diabetics, Tu Diabetes and signed up. I’ve been having fun with it for the past few days, finding some friends, exploring.

The creator of SUM friended me, too, and I checked out her profile and found that she’s around my age and from my area so I started reading her blog more and reading what she links to. Through that I discovered dLife and her columns. I’ve spent a better part of this evening reading them, laughing and nodding along.

I’ve often toyed with starting a diabetes-focused blog, even set one up on blogger, but I couldn’t focus on it, didn’t feel I could give it everything I wanted to. Here, I talk about everything from TV to stuff I see around town to, yes, even my health. Everytime I tried to write a diabetes-specific blog, I felt like I was just saying the same thing as everyone else. I’m the kind of perfectionist who gives up before even starting if I don’t think I can do it perfectly the first time, I guess. At the same time, when I was going through some of the things I’ve been though (retinopathy and the associated surgeries, namely) I had a hard time finding personal experiences online. Now, finding all of these other blogs, I feel that maybe I have a place after all. I’ll keep thinking about it and reading what others write in the meantime.

And Kerri, if you read this, thanks for sharing your story online and giving me the perspective of someone I can identify with.