Category: All good things

Snaps

Ok so.

Snaps is now up and running. All I’ve done so far is pull in all the pics from my previous attempt at doing the pic-a-day thang and add my pic for today. Until my spanky new camera arrives (which apparently is going to take bloody forever. It hasn’t even SHIPPED yet) pics will be taken with my very crappy digital camera.

I’m not.. The design.. Ugh. The theme I found for Snaps does not please me but it was the best of the lot so far. I’ll keep it the way it is for now until I find something better. I don’t actually know why I’m blogging all this housekeeping stuff except that I’m bored out of my gourd right now and nothing is appealing to me. I’m all finished with all of my BBtL editing. Did my group scene as Geraldine in episode 4 last weekend so that’s done too. I’ve no more sites to muck about with. Nothing’s on telly, I don’t feel like watching any DVDs, the thought of going out to a movie or something doesn’t appeal. Maybe I should just go to bed.

I’ll tell you what I really want to do. I want to play with my new camera. *sigh* Damn Amazon. Ship it already!

Oh I did have one nifty thing happen today. Got a call out of the blue from a stringer for Presstime magazine which is an industry mag for the media. She ended up interviewing me for the June/July issue. Mostly it was about using the Cover it Live tool for our site redesign launch last month. For some reason everyone thinks that was a spiffy idea. Fine with me 🙂 Anyway, it was fun.

Any day now I’m expecting a nice pair of Jack Bauer PJ pants in the mail. I’ve been getting some fun swag for pimping a few things over on 24addict.com. Ooo I’m a whore 🙂 And I don’t care. I loves me some swag.

Ok, off to find something to unbore me.

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Snapshots

I read this story on Mental Floss about a man who took a Polaroid snapshot every day from 1979 to 1997. And I was in awe. It really is a wonderful way to tell the story of someone’s life. I tried doing it for a year (from 2005 to 2006, but I fell short by a few months) and found it difficult to find interesting things to take pictures of every day, considering that my daily life is pretty much routine. I thought it would be boring to look at yet another picture of my cat, or some video I bought.

But maybe I was wrong-headed about it. Looking at it from a different perspective, say, after I’m dead, even the boring pictures might have some kind of meaning for my family and friends. Something my daughter could have. Well I don’t want to go all morbid here, but maybe it would be worth reviving the pic-a-day thing. Yeah. I’m sitting here pondering this and the more I ponder, the better the idea sounds. Which is what I thought the first time I did this project, but I’m going to quit caring whether people think the pics are dull.

Plus, thanks to a fabulous birthday pressie gift card (Thanks dad!) I was able to get a very nice new digital camera that I have been wanting for a very long time now. So I think it’s fate that I found that article the morning after I bought my new camera.

So expect a new section of ukmelia soon for the photos. And if some of them are boring, well, that’s life 🙂

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Ugh. Facebook.

Well I got myself a stupid Facebook account. I don’t know why I have such an aversion to Facebook. But for some reason I’m just not very fond of it. Perhaps I’m too old to appreciate the ability to send imaginary “chocolates” across the intertubes to people I’ve never met.

I don’t know. I consider myself about as far from Luddite-ness as you can possibly be without knowing how to compile C++ code and yet maneuvering around Facebook befuddles me. I just figured maybe I should join up lest I be considered Unwired by the masters of the online newspaper industry like Steve Yelvington or Howard Owens.

As an aside, I totally love the word ‘Luddite.’

I’m actually a pretty wired chick. But I’m not a journalist, so I don’t think it counts. I belong to wiredjournalists.com, I’m MySpaced, Twittered, I have more blogs than I can keep up with, I’m now Facebooked,  I keep up with the industry, I heart liveblogging, and it’s nearly 10pm and I’m online, blogging. I do not, however, own a blackberry. I suck at txting. I had a palm pilot once, but I’m afraid it collects dust in a drawer now. Sometimes you just need to disconnect, you know?

Anyway, yeah. I’m in Facebook now and I do not wish to share my political or religious views, nor do I feel strangers need to know my educational background unless they plan on hiring me or dating me. So far I’ve added a Buffy application and become a fan of Whedon’s Dollhouse Facebook page. I looked at users who went to my high school and only recognized one guy, who I always thought was hot, but he was far too popular and good-looking to even remember my name. Though I was pretty popular in high school too. But it was a huge school and we moved in slightly different orbits and now almost 20 *gulp* years later, I really don’t give a toss what he’s up to.

Man, I sound like a shrew 🙂 Facebook’s ok, I guess, but I doubt I’ll be using it much. I’m also thinking I should maybe buy a domain of my real name. What I would do with it I don’t know because my online presence is pretty established at this URL. But I’m feeling this overwhelming urge to buy it “just in case.”

I’ll mull it over. Now if you’ll excuse, me, I’m going to check work email one last time and then climb in bed with my Dresden book.

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A nothing kind of post

You know, I have the best blogging intentions, I really do. But when it comes to this one in particular, I draw a big blank when I look at the editor screen. No one *really* cares that I’m in love with my new laptop because it’s so damn spiffy. But that’s all I can think of to talk about. It’s sleek and sexy. Powerful enough for my needs. i spent an hour playing with the speech recognition software. Shannon came home to find me saying things like, ‘Switch to Firefox’ and ‘Select all’ and giggling like a kid.

And don’t get me started on the fact that this sucker’s got Bejeweled on it.

Sunday I’ve got my first group recording session as Geraldine, the poet who’s prose is as bloody awful as Spike’s. Funny side note, some of the other actors sent me a bunch of Geraldine-esque poems and haiku for my birthday. I laughed 🙂 Here’s one that cracked me up:

Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator

Bwah!

I’ve got some scenes to edit as well. This Buffy thing keeps me busy. Which is a good thing. Not tonight though because I am up late posting election results on the site. I’m very sleepy atm but the state results are only 80% counted. Obama is beating Hillary by a few thousand votes, but McCain has more than both of them combined. Ah the joys of living in a red state.

I wish I had wittier observations atm, but frankly, I’m tired and headachey so I think I’m gonna go read until the final results are in. I promise better postage next time.

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Mom day, Melia Day

It’s the tail end of Mum Day now which, this year, segues neatly into my bday tomorrow. For those of you counting, I’ll be 37. Yep, 3-7. Three years away from the big 4-0 or as some like to think of it: death. Because 40 is just old.

Silly really. I don’t feel like I’m in my late 30s. I’m not sure how the late 30s are supposed to feel, but I know I definitely don’t feel old. I know I don’t look my age either which I guess is cool, but even if I did, I don’t think one’s age is something a person should be ashamed of. One of the fine actors in the Buffy Between the Lines phrases his birthday greetings like this: “Congratulations on your continued survival!”

I dig that. I’ve managed to live for 37 years. I’ve never broken a single bone or had a life-threatening health issue. Never been in a bad car accident. I’ve raised a child by myself (a pretty damn cool one too) and put myself through college and have been lucky enough to find a career in a field that I absolutely love. Plucked up the courage to transplant myself and Shannon in the UK for a while and I have zero regrets about that. I have a fabulous family that I love and who love me, had a great childhood free of trauma (unless you count the bell bottoms I had to wear in junior high when everyone else was wearing leg warmers and wishing they were Pat Benetar), and I have good friends.

37 years of that kind of life is pretty cool if you ask me.

Of course I’ve had bad times too. Pretty traumatic divorce followed closely with the death of my father (technically stepfather, but he was my dad. It’s hard to refer to him as stepdad but I always feel I need to qualify it to avoid confusion when I talk about my very much alive and well biodad that I’ve reconnected with and is part of the above-mentioned awesome family), a couple of other fairly hard breakups, and I’m not gonna lie, it’s damn hard to raise a child on your own. Then losing mom was.. Well suffice to say I’m still working on dealing with that. It’s been a little over 7 years now and I still can’t dwell on it. I can talk about her, and I can write about her but I don’t want to think too much about what happened. But couple that with losing my aunt to cancer shortly after mom and ugh. Hard.

So my life’s not been all roses. And no life is. It’s all of these things – good and bad – and influences and people and events that shape who you are. And that’s a good thing. But despite 37 years of good and bad, it doesn’t FEEL like 37 years. And so when I turn 40 I don’t think I’ll feel 40 either. It’s just a number, which is, I suppose what most people say when they reach these years. But to me, it does just feel like a number and isn’t really indicative of how I should think, feel or behave. I think if I want to go out right now, find a big rain puddle and jump in it, I will 🙂

So having said all of this, I’ve decided to quit letting it bug me when these young whippersnappers at work tease me about being old. It doesn’t bug me when my friends and family do it, so I’m not sure why it bothers me when someone I don’t know very well does it. Next time it happens, I think I’ll just yell at them to get the hell off my lawn.

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Fish oil and potential changes around here

So I know very well that eating fish is totally good for you. Problem is, I can’t eat fish. Well I can, but I hate it. Like, vehemently despise anything fishy. I’ve never been able to ‘develop a taste’ for it and I’ve tried everything from bacon-wrapped shrimp drenched in honey butter to smoked conger eel.

No matter what I try, there is a gagging, disgusting ‘fishy’ aftertaste that is the same no matter what the seafood is. And it makes me want to heave. So I’ve given up the though of ever liking seafood. But I want to take advantage of the health benefits of fish, the omega-3 oils and all that good stuff. Everything I’ve read says those are so great for you. So I bought some fish oil supplements.

Now, I’ve never braved buying them before because I fear that fishy aftertaste. But several people assured me you don’t get that with the supplements. Well, I’m here to say that, uh, yes you do. At least I do. And it’s making me ill. So no more fish oil thingies for me and I’ll try to get those health benefits elsewhere. Right now, I think I’m going to go gargle garlic or something to kill this aftertaste.

In other news, I’m seriously considering giving up Blogger for WordPress for this blog. And I feel guilty about it. I’ve been with Blogger since before Google bought them. And I love Blogger, I really do. It’s a wonderful platform – especially for beginner bloggers. They make it so easy to get right into blogging which is helpful when trying to convince someone who’s reluctant to blog because it seems too hard to set up.

But I’ve been using WP at work for a while now, and I really like it. I love the plugins and it just seems to have more features that I like compared to Blogger. It seems like Blogger is far behind in development. It should the ability to have categories by now and they’ve only just released the ability to set posts to publish in the future. Come on Google, give some more time and love to Blogger.

I haven’t decided if I want to tackle porting all these posts to WordPress, or if I just want to start from scratch and leave these archived. I’m still pondering. If you see a completely different layout one of these days you’ll know I made up my mind. One of the cool things I discovered with WP is a podcast plugin that I think is used over on the Buffy Between the Lines site (which is powered by WP). I tested it out on my TV blog last night and it’s fantastico. I’ve been thinking of doing a little podcast around here and this would make it so simple to do.

What else is up… I’m using a little stimulus check money to stimulate the economy to buy a new laptop. It’s so not a high end one, but I don’t need anything fancy. All I do at home is some photoshopping, some coding, some video/audio editing and writing so I don’t really need a $2000 laptop. But I do need one of my own. I use my daughter’s and she’s going to be needing it herself soon. I can’t be laptopless 🙂 Plus hers is feckin’ heavy as evidenced by the fantastically colourful bruises on two of my toes where it fell on them yesterday. I back and forthed on whether I should go to the ER last night because I thought they might be broken. But I don’t think they are now. The swelling is gone and I can wiggle them now.

I’m still writing. I’ve sort of halted the CherryPop story on Ficlets while I concentrate on fleshing it out. I gave up on the idea of writing in a coffeeshop or something. 1. I would be forced to buy a mocha and I’ve given them up for the most part and 2. Nosey clerks bother me.

Anyway, that’s me caught up for now. I’m picking up the new laptop tonight. I can’t wait! Off to look for garlic now.

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