I'm a Whiner

I have decided that I am too poor to buy Christmas presents for people that I don’t see.

Usually we have to buy stuff for all of the kids under 18. This ends up being the ‘how cheap can I get a gift that is even remotely age appropriate’ game. I am not a fan.

Since we are not doing so well monetarily, I have made the executive decision that I will be finding (or making) a few gifts for people that actually mean something to us as a family or me personally. This means that the things I give will actually be things I think will mean something to the person. So much better for everyone involved. No one gets a bunch of crap they don’t want or need!

Why does everyone seem to think that more crap is better than less not-crap?!?

It is so frustrating that I just refuse to participate. Give me a holler if you agree or have a rebuttal.

breathe

Holy Crap…

Only 3 more weeks until the wedding

I think I am going to pass out.

I must remember to breathe!

and breathe

Come on, it’s not that bad, everyone in the history of weddings, has made it through this.

Stupid control issues

and breathe

It’s not like we have boutonnieres to make or food to buy and make or stuff for the guest book or pictures to print for the center pieces or figuring out how to decorate the church so it doesn’t look like a gymnasium or make sure everything comes together so that we can decorate the church, get married and then undecorated all in like 5 hours…

and breathe

cause yeah, all of that is left to do

CRAP!

 

Oh yeah and hopefully I still fit into my dress………

 

and breathe

Email handling - please read and delete my name & address per below

For those of you who think some of your e-mail buddies could learn a thing or two about e-mail etiquette.

 

-----Original Message-----
From: I didn't listen to the e-mail

To: Everyone and their brother (Hi spammers)

Sent: Because people should know
Subject: Email handling - please read and delete my name & address per below

 

I am sending some instruction on e-mails to you. You can print them and check them out at your leisure.

 
 
IMPORTANT!! HOW TO HANDLE E-MAIL APPROPRIATELY

A friend who is a computer expert received the following directly from a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails.  Please read the short letter below, even if you're sure you already follow proper procedures.


Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail?  Don't you hate it?


Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. Sometimes even e-signatures with addresses and phone numbers.

As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every e-mail address that has come across his computer. 

Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and they will make five cents for each hit. That's right, all of that inconvenience over five cents.

How do you stop it? 
Well, there are several easy steps: 

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top). That's right, DELETE them. Highlight them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do.  It only takes a second. Then scroll to the bottom and make sure no names addresses or phone numbers from you or anyone else is left on the e-mail either.

You MUST click the 'Forward' button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message.  If you don't click on 'Forward' first, you won't be able to edit the message at all.

(2)  Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc: fields for adding e-mail addresses.  Always use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses. 

This is the way the people you send to will only see their own e-mail address. If you don't see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that's it, it's that easy. When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say 'Undisclosed Recipients' in the To: field of the people who receive it.

(3)  Remove any 'FW:' in the subject line. You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

(4)  ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading.  Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it?  By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent.

(5)    Have you ever gotten an e-mail that is a petition?  It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book.  The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses. 

A  FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein. If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient.  Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition.  (Actually, if you think about it, who's supposed to send the petition in to whatever cause it supports?  And don't believe the ones that say that the email is being traced, it just isn’t so!)

(6) There are also those e-mails that say something like, 'Send this e-mail to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.' Or, sometimes they'll just tease you by saying something really cute will happen.
This will not happen!!!!! (Trust me; I'm still seeing some of the same ones that I waited on 10 years ago!)  I don't let the bad luck ones scare me either, they get trashed.  (Could be why I haven't won the lottery??)

(7) Before you forward an Amber Alert, or a Virus Alert, or some of the other ones floating around nowadays, check them out before you forward them.  Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for YEARS!  Just about everything you receive in an e-mail that is in question can be checked out.  Just go to www.truthorfiction.com or http://www.snopes.com/ these sites have search areas where you can type in a few key words and bring up what you want to see.

It’s really easy to find out if it's real or not.  If it's not, please do not pass it on. If it is true, then pass it on. If there is something saying Snopes verifies this or seen on Truth or Fiction, go to the site to check it out. Please, in the future, let's stop the junk mail and viruses being passed via forwards.

 

(8) Remember, as easy as it was for you to delete previous e-mail addresses for you, it is just as easy for someone to change the e-mail itself. What started with certain information can be changed very easily.

 

(9) Links in e-mails can lead to pages you don’t want to go. Please be very careful clicking on links in e-mails if you aren’t certain where the original e-mail came from.

 

As an example I can type www.snopes.com but if you click on that link you will see that it takes you to Google instead. So, please be very careful.

 

E-mails are great fun and can be informative, but please be aware that not everyone that uses e-mail has your best interests at heart.

Costume Contest updates

Alright, no one has any guesses so far; I must have made it too hard. Here are some updates on what I’ve done with the costume so far:

 

Out of the shells I made a necklace and earrings (the earrings are the prize for whoever guesses)

Out of the black satin I cut 4 wonky trapezoids, then sewed them together to make a dress leaving the bottom ¼ unsown and cutting up from the bottom in the center of each piece about ¼ of the way up

Out of the purple satin I cut 8 very skinny triangles and sewed them to the 8 bottom sections of the dress

I have straightened 19 hangers and attached 16 of them together at one end in sets of 2 and taken the last 3 and made a big circle

 

I think that’s it so far. I only have another week to work on it, and I still have so much to do. Crap.

 

Hopefully I will have some decent pictures this year. Last year all of the pictures were very dark (I guess that’s what happens when you only take pictures with your phone).

grieving a stranger

I don’t really know Nancy W. Kappes, Paralegal. The only exposure I’ve had to her is through The Bloggess. I came close to meeting her when Blogher was in Chicago, but ended up not being able to make it.

 

This woman I never met was also from Indiana and I always felt closer because of that.

 

But I feel strange grieving a lady I’ve never met.

 

R.I.P. Nancy, you will be missed by people you didn’t even know existed, let alone made laugh endlessly at your wonderful inappropriateness.

 

questions answered and hints given

So I just had to call and talk to my credit card company…

 

Yeah, that is just not a fun call to make when you’re trying to find out any information.

 

But I have to give them props. The first call I made was super frustrating, so I hung up and fumed a little bit. But. Then I calmed down and called back and got a different representative, and she patched me through to the people I needed (yay). I talked to the next rep’s supervisor because she couldn’t answer my questions, but wasn’t trying to feed me a line.

 

Here is the best part… The supervisor was actually able to answer my questions and give me options!!! I know holy crap someone that could actually do their job.

 

Color me super pleased!

 

PS on the costume front: I have just cut into both the black & purple satin, making several purple triangles and a few black quadrilaterals

My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster *Updated*

It took me a while to finally pick this up (really download for listening), but I have to say, Hoorah!

 

Jen Lancaster is so good at what she does it’s silly.

 

In Such a Pretty Fat, she made me want to get healthier, even if I have to work at it, and in My Fair Lazy she totally makes me want to get off my ass and do something interesting. Open my mind to new things. Her Jen-aissance might just be what I need too.

 

I think if more of the American populace were to dig into cultures and do it to learn, we might really grow as a country.

 

But enough of that, this is simply a really funny look into one woman’s attempt to find culture and class instead of being cultureless and clueless.

 

Look into it, it makes me want to do things instead of watching others do them for me.

 

 

Mystery Costume

I have finally started work on my costume this year. I have been putting it off for a while now. I was going to be Peggy Bundy but I just wasn’t feeling it. I have decided to go with something I have been thinking through for a while…

 

Here are your clues:

 

Purple Lamé

Black (crepe backed) Satin

Purple (crepe backed) Satin

Coat Hangers

Pillow Stuffing (tmi?)

Green Corduroy

Lime Green Tulle

Possibly a Hula-Hoop

Lots of Hairspray

White Hair Color Spray

3 Sea Shells

Misc Make-up

 

 

I will do my best to come up with a gift for the first person to correctly guess, and so you can have hints along the way I will let you in on what I am doing occasionally.

 

Right now I am making Purple Lamé yo-yo’s and I took apart a pair of dark green cords (as an aside I am attempting a skirt for regular wear out of the top of these).

 

I hope to find some way to post pictures by way of e-mail entries but I’m not too hopeful.

 

P.S. Salt, no giving it away ;-)

well crap!

I guess we just won’t be enjoying anymore pictures.

 

I’m sorry.

 

That means I will have to learn how to make thousands of words make sense.

 

Boo!

 

Wish me luck!

 

Also, I will be deleting those test e-mail-to-blogs.

They anger me.

This is a test

This is a test of the e-mailing blogger system.

If this had been a real blog, pictures would be posted here:

With instructions to follow, such as:

Please leave comments regarding content

Feel free to exit without commenting due to severe cases of lurking

Encouragement to enjoy the rest of your day

Not to fear. Barbie’s fate does not have to be yours, simply follow the rules and no one gets hurt.

This has been a test.

Thank you

blog by phone *Updated*

I have come to the realization that trying to blog with only a qwerty phone keyboard sucks. It is hell, especially when you have 2 big thumbs.
Boo.
What I really need to look into is blogging by e-mail. That should be an option. Especially since I am too poor for internet or a computer (at home).
Whatevs.
Guess the phone will just have to be good enough for now.
:-P

*Update*

I am slow.
Have set up my blog by e-mail.
Posting might occur regularly now.
Please pay no attention to the (wo)man behind the curtain.

Somewhere near the beginning.

Alrighty then.
I guess I can start at the beginning of the drawn circle.
At some point in my single digits (I think this was probably when I was 4 or 5) I became a christian.
I lived with my grandparents, my grammy is a nurse and papa is a (substitute) pastor, for a year or so during that time.
I don't remember the moment, just that I wanted Jesus to be in my heart.
Several years later I was baptised. I was 11. My papa did the honors.
A little while later I made a commitment to remain a virgin until marriage. I even got a promise ring.
I tell you all of this to give you some background for the up and coming set of posts. Because even with a really strong background of faith (and the faith itself has not faltered) I fell really hard when it happened. Then I stayed there for a while.
Hopefully this will be a good thing, but I am sorry if my words fall short for you. Writing is not really my gift, but I feel like someone might need to hear what I've been through to know that forgivness is a beautiful thing.

Yay! revisited

so, i just had this post all typed up and mostly ready to go and i deleted it. now you're getting a short little note instead. ready?

got a new phone with unlimited web for a month. love it!!!

also debating whether to do a series of posts from my stupid teenage / early 20's years.

sorry the post is short and totally un-capitalized. i didn't really feel like going through all of that again. small phone keyboard and all.

let me know how you feel about the series and we'll see if my thumbs can handle the outcome.

Black Friday Anyone?

I am totally getting married!

On my 13th anniversary.

Which is on Black Friday - Every Year. (Yeah we're strange like that)