Stripped · Thoughts

Hey all -

For those of you who are SCA-dians, Memorial Day weekend means Quest or Roses. My honey and I usually do Quest, but for some reason this year I really didn't want to camp it. I just 'had that feeling" you know the one...

Anyway, I thought it was because of the weather or maybe the construction around Quest...but the weather was lovely all weekend and I even got razed by some for not camping at least the one night even though Adam had to work. Friday my dad got out of the hospital and was home and doing fine. We found out my grandmother was in the hospital on Saturday (she'd been in sicne Tuesday but my aunt couldn't find my phone number to tell me and had not called my dad...*roll*). I spoke with her on Sunday and she sounded fine and told me not to bother coming down and I was already feeling guilty about talking Adam out of camping at Quest, I didn't want him to miss the whole event. So we went to Quest on Sunday and didn't drive the extra hour to see Gran in the hospital.

Then on Monday I found out why I had that feeling. We woke up to a phone call from Dad saying Gran had passed away overnight. I spent the morning dealing with getting myself back together because I had to function today and talking to my dad and trying to keep him ok because my #%$@! brother and sister-in-law have no house phone and decided to leave the cells off or beyond hearing range since they had a rare oportunity to sleep in. Now I wouldn't begrudge them this if she didn't make it a habit of calling me at 7:30 in the FREAKING morning when she knows I don't usually wake up til at least 8 on a week day and 10 on weekends.

I finally at 9:45 had to call a friend who is renting thier spare room at the moment and have him wake them up and tell them to call Dad. Needless to say I was not in the most wonderful mood....spent most of teh rest of the day getting calls from dad off and on because he couldn't get in touch with my aunt or his cousin. He was feeling very isolated dow in FLA and unfortunatly my dad and I together when we are both upset is a very bad thing. Instead of making things better we tend to make each other worse.

For those who would like the info:

http://www.bradleyfuneralhome-marlton.com/

If you click Obits, Gran is the first listed (Rose Batchelor). All the details for funeral, viewing, etc are on there.

If you comment...

1. I'll respond with something random I like about you.
2. I'll tell you what song/movie reminds me of you.
3. I'll name something we should do together.
4. I'll say something that only makes sense to you and me (or just me).
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you.
6. I'll leave you a quote that is somehow appropriate to you.
7. I'll ask you something that I've always wondered about you.
8. If I do this for you, you must post this on your journal so you can do the same for other people.

SOme of you might know that I'm also on MySpace. I'm on both because different groups of friends settled on different sites online. I like to keep up with both so I'm in both places. No big deal, bt recently especially I've been noticing the difference between the two and the similarities.

I've tried to join a couple communities or groups here on LJ and found myself either swallowed up by the avalance of posts or there is no traffic at all on the community. I didn't think it's a big deal, I just decided it wasn't for me and bowed out, but others started seriously attacking each other. One group was described as a Baking Adventure for everyone, however if someone dared to say hello without posting a recipe or god forbid posted a longer recipe or pic without an LJ-cut they got yelled at called names and generally abused. The owner of the community even stated posting what I considered very antisocial rules.....so I ended up leaving a group where I'd found some really cool recipies because I couldn't stand watching people be that mean.

Now at first, this made me hang aroudn on MySpace even more. I found the layout easier to work with and I didn't see as much cattyness. However, recently some of my friends have gotten more serious about blogging. Yes, I said serious about blogging. I'm not meaning to cut on them or judge them, because many are very good writers and they view this as a way to get thier stuff out there. I do have a problem with how seriously they are taking the 'ratings' on MySpace. MySpace ranks the "Most Popular" blog entries. Notice it's ENTRIES and not whole blogs, my first problem with it.

Apparently, very recently there was a huge blow up between the 'serious' bloggers who are writers and artists trying to get thier stuff out there and use thier ratings to show publishers, record people, and other's in whichever biz they are into how much of a following they can achive AND the party bloggers who are posting about parties, sex RP blogs, or basically what they consider trashy blogs. A friend of mine likened them to "girls gone wild' or graffitti. I'm still not sure I agree with the graffitti since graffitti can be beautiful art and the thing that defines graffitti as graffitti is that it's defacement of someone ELSES! property and these blogs aren't seeking out other blogs and posting party comments....they are creating thier own and basically minidng thier own business.

Anyway, the serious bloggers don't like the fact that party bloggers are knocking them off the rankings. I guess my main question is when did blogging become a contest? The fight apparently got very nasty and very heated and just as catty as those comments which made me I leave communities on here.

So it seems both sites have equally nasty people, but I have noticed on LJ if you feel like just writing to keep up with your friends or doing meme's or whatever your not considered less of a blogger for it. Blogging is esseniallty an online journal, whose right it is to tell someone else what should or shouldn't be in thier journal? Why should I be considered less intellegent or less worthy because I write about what I did on the weekend instead of writing a poem or posting a treaties on some social issue? Am I unaware of some definition of blog that says it should be someone 'serious' something intellectual and non-personal?

I even saw a list of blog rules that stated as #1 that you should take yourself out of the blog. WHAT THE #%@%@? I write about whatever I've done or what I'm feeling because I want to share that with my friends.....Anyway i just needed to babble about that for awhile.

I love Fridays off. I know it means I have to work on Saturday, but that isn't so bad and usually so does Adam so it's not like I'd be able to spend any time with him if I wasn't working. Even though almost all Fridays off ROCK, yesterday was especially great!

I had an open house scribal, which no one showed up to, but that is cool. It just means that I had all morning and most of the afternoon to totally get lost in my latest scroll. I almost finished painting it. Well actually I guess I did finish the painting. I still have a little bit of detail work that I will most likely do with a micro pen and a bit of white work, but the main art is done and most of the shading. I'm so proud of myself for this one I could scream. It came out so much better than I thought it would. After it's officially given out I will post a pic online for those interested.

So that was from roughly 9 AM til around 3ish. I emerged when my sister-in-law called me and I got distracted shortly with emails. Good News, my brother has a job again. It's better paying than his last (not counting the dumb place that hired him for a week then laided him off!) and with the same company (Uhaul) and it's a step up. Now he's not in service, but is a manager. I never worry about him. No matter what happens, he always ends up ok money wise and job wise. It's a little un-nerving, but in a good way. Anyway Allie and I shopped together (online) and chatted for a bit then I decided to bake. There was a recipe that I have wanted to try for 2-3 weeks. Cherry Crunch Cookies. They are really good and actually for cookies, fairly good for you since they have fruit bits in them instead of chocolate chips or something like that. Adam's comment was that they tasted like they needed salt *roll*

So I baked cookies and I made Chocolate Cherry Brownies. They turned out good, if a little strong on the cherry flavor. Around this time Adam comes home from work. I'm in the kitchen switching trays of cookies in the oven. When I look up I see a bunch of flowers, a stuffed tiger, a Tigger/Eyore pinwheel, and a box of Bunny Cones. Wasn't that sweet? For no reason other than he loves me, Adam got me a single red rose, a white carnation, a red carnation, and a white carnation with purplish/red edges plus all that other stuff I listed. For those that don't know, I collect Tiggers, which the florist didn't have so he got a tiger.

If the day ended there and we'd just hung out and watched TV the day would have been great, but we decided to go out. We'd just bought an Entertainment Book and there was a place in it called Wild Noodles. Ok, the name just is too cool so I had to try it. It's so NEAT!!!!!

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LONG! Commentary on the restaurant behind the cut...;)

After dinner we attempted to see V for Vendetta, but our timing was off and it wasn't in the theater nearest us, so we just stopped at Price Cutter to check for something that was on sale. They didn't have it so we went home and watched Dr. Who and snuggled up.

All in all....and very good Friday off.

I'm in such a good mood. I love animals and it's just blowing my mind that we started a Read to Dogs program at my library. We're upto aruond 35 kid signed up and I have about 10 volunteers and now we're branching out to one of the schools!

I looked at the calendar and for the next month I have at least one dog a week coming into the library and usually 3-5 of them throughout the week. I shouldn't have favorites, but I do of course. We've also made two of the papers in our area and one gave us a full page spread with artwork.

I know most of you are thinking "Read to DOGS???" but it's really a litteracy program and it works and there have even been studies. For those interested the theory goes like this....( Read more... )