So right around the time of my birthday I promised myself that I would give myself one hour for blogging and writing here every day (at least during the week).  I figured that blogging would be a good way to start my day and it would put me in a good mood and, most importantly, it would keep my blog up to date and (hopefully) entertaining for all of you!

Yeah.  Whoops.

This always happens.  I get caught up in “must get work done before play” and “must find work so I can pay the rent” and “work! Get! work! done! Naaaoooooowww!”  and suddenly there are cobwebs all over the place and tumbleweeks a-rollin’ right through here.  I don’t mean to neglect this space.  It is my most favorite space to pay attention to and nurture on the internet (though Twitter is an awesome second) but here it is Friday and this only my third post of the week and the other two were decidedly lacking in the story telling/entertaining department.

Blame Battlestar! ZOMG.

Speaking of which, can I just say that Captain Ty (sp? too lazy to look it up)’s wife is eleven shades of annoying and I kind of hope she gets her face eaten off.  And every time I see the leader of the resistance I think “that’s the guy that tries to steal Castle’s AND Leonard’s women!”  which has nothing to do with BSG but everything to do with other television loyalties…which could mean that I need professional help.

Yeah.  This post is all over the place!  But there you go.  It’s Friday evening.  I’ve been buried in work and seem to have misplaced my coherent and followable thought communicatory abilities.

Have a great weekend!

I bought this theme a few months ago thinking “if I spend money on it, I will keep it forever and ever and it can help brand me!”  The fonts are a little light and the header graphic isn’t quite the right color so I changed those in my own little theme editor (aka Theme Editor in WordPress) and guess what happened:  I can see my changes just fine.  On the computer that I used to make those changes.  The theme still looks the same everywhere else.  Weird.

I would really like people to be able to read my headlines and so I’m shopping for another super cute theme that is the same basic layout as this one.  Three columns with main content in the middle, an awesome header and a nav bar.  Suggestions?  Anyone?  Who is your favorite (affordable) blog designer?  I ask because it’s the end of the month and I really don’t have the time to spend hours searching through all of the free portals that are out there–especially when none of them seem to cater to the “I want something super cute but not so cute I’ll vomit” crowd.

So? Anyone?

This morning I was just stumbling out of bed and toward the kitchen when I heard “ALL A’S BITCHES!” roared from my living room.

Will’s grades came out today and he got a 4.0 for this term!  Every day I’m given another reason to be proud of that guy.  I didn’t even laugh much as he trotted through our apartment, pumping his fists and chanting “ALL A’S BITCHES!” over and over again. Honestly, it was a pretty good way to start our morning.

Another good way to start the morning is with blog work.  I’ve given myself an hour or so to work on this site, get caught up with e-mails and twitter messages and just generally keep up momentum.  I discovered yesterday that there is a big quote from my w00tstock post on the w00tstock site (I knew the link was there but didn’t know about the pulled quote) so that has me super jazzed.  Thanks Powers-That-Be at the w00tstock site!

Now let’s get on with the post!

If you were playing around on Twitter at all last night (and let’s face it, you probably were) you probably saw the #booksthatchangedmyworld trending topic.  I watched it for a while and noticed, at least with the people I follow, that the books fell into one of two categories.  There were the traditional “smart” books–stuff by Hemmingway, Steinbeck. Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, people we all studied in lit classes.   There were also the “lemme prove my geek/hipster cred” listings: Douglas Adams, Orson Scott Card, Chuck Palahniuk and Hunter S Thompson were all well represented.

I’m not saying that any of these people were being poseurs.  It is likely that all of these books and authors really did change the readers’ worlds in some way.  I remember reading Ender’s Game for the first time and being blown away by it.  I remember what it was like to fall in love with Shakespeare and the language of Austen and Dickens.  I remember appreciating Virginia Woolf (oh! There is a doggie daycare chain here in PDX called Virginia Woof and every time I see one of their locations I launch into a diatribe about how totally and completely horrible and inappropriate the name is.  Seriously: do these people not know Virginia Woolf’s story? Gah! Oh look–I’m doing it again).  So all of these claims are more than likely totally legitimate.  After all, Twitter is a diverse universe.

At the same time I kept thinking “what about all of the regular stuff?”  So I listed a few of the books that changed my world: On Writing, Bright Lights Big Ass, We Thought You’d Be Prettier and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.

I know that Jen Lancaster and Laurie Notaro are, by most, considered to be “light and fluffy” but you know what?  They were the first real humor-for-humor’s sake books I read.  Sure I’ve skimmed some Dave Barry in my time but until I read We Thought You’d Be Prettier by Laurie Notaro I had no idea that publishers would publish funny essays as they were.  Until then, I’d thought that all books–even funny memoirs–had to follow a theme or tell a story.  We Thought You’d Be Prettier blew my mind because it is exactly the kind of book I’d like to put together myself someday but hadn’t known was possible.  Bright Lights Big Ass gets a nod because it never fails to make me laugh.  I’d never had a book that I could pick up, open to any page and find something to laugh or smile about before.  I’ve now read that book so many times it is very nearly falling apart.

The other two books I listed, Stephen King’s On Writing and The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles by Julie Edwards (you might know her as Julie Andrews) got listed simply because they changed the way I think about things.

On Writing is the only Stephen King book that I have read all the way through.  I learned more about writing and being a writer from this book than I learned in all of my schooling put together.  I read that book for the first time in 2004 and I still get twitchy when I use an adverb (which means I twitch a lot–those adverbs can be very handy).

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles changed the way I look at things–it taught me how to literally see the forest for the trees (or whatever the cliche is).  The book is all about learning how to look deeper at things, to examine them and see them for what they actually are.  It taught me about paying attention to even the little things that seem unimportant.  And it’s a super good story.

Today I took a look at the topic on twitter and saw that more kids’ books are making the cut.  I saw some Bernstein Bears, some Lois Lowry and a couple of Baby-Sitter’s Club mentions. Have I mentioned my love of the Baby-Sitter’s Club here before?  I have? Okay good.  Because those books helped me grow up and but for the limit of 140 characters and not wanting to spam the thread, I would have listed them last night too.

So what about you:  What are the books that really changed your world?  And why?

FTC Annoying Stuff:  NONE of those links are affiliate links.  I linked them because they are sites and products that I whole heartedly endorse.  Nobody paid me for any of that stuff.

Other note: This would be longer but I used up all of my scheduled “blogging for fun” time. Now I have to get to work!

First: Hello all of you people who found your way here because of a super awesome blog post by a super awesome writer! I’m going to talk about that very thing in just a minute!

Before I write anything else though, can I just take a moment to talk about my awesome husband?

My awesome husband has spent the last three years both working full time and going to school full time. He has been studying Civil Engineering with emphasis (emphasisses? emphases?) in Structural and Transportation Engineering. There have been 23 hour days, weeks with no days off and even though there were times when I’m sure he felt like he was beating his head against a brick wall, he refused to give up. Yesterday was his very last class as an undergraduate student. He has one final due Monday. He has one final due Thursday and then? He is done. His graduation ceremony is on the 12th and his days as an undergraduate student are over. He will officially have his degree.

I am so so proud of him! I am so so proud of him that yesterday I got up at five in the morning so that I could go with him to school and watch him give his very last undergraduate presentation. They were presenting what is called a Capstone project which is a project that they work on in groups with different city planners and professionals to help better the city of Portland and its surrounding areas. The projects that they work on will actually come to fruition and impact different parts of the city. Cool huh? The presentations were open to the public so I grabbed a seat in back and…watched four hours of engineering presentations.

The presentations started at eight. Will’s presentation was at 8:40. He had to stay until noon and watch everyone else’s group present because he was, technically, in class. I stayed the whole time because I didn’t want to be rude and because I thought it would be cool to learn more about stuff happening in Portland. I like learning about my city and the projects that go into making it awesomer. Plus, I just like learning.  Except, as it turns out, if you do not actually understand engineering, listening to four hours of engineering presentations will not be as interesting as you hope it will. I understood Will’s presentation because I’ve listened to him talk about it for months. For the rest of them, even though I did my best, it was pretty hit or miss. I understood just about every word individually but when those words were put together to convey engineering ideas I got very very lost. But I did TRY to pay attention. I tried very hard not to check my e-mail, read blogs or look at Twitter. Which might be how I didn’t know about a certain very awesome blog posting until later.

After everything was done we went with one of Will’s friends, S, to get some rice pudding (there is a new place downtown called Pudding on the Rice that S loves). Will and S were talking about engineering stuff that I couldn’t make heads or tails of so I stopped trying to be polite (being amongst friends who don’t give a rat’s behind about my manners kind of has that effect) and decided to check my e-mail, which is when I saw it. In my e-mail there was a pending comment from someone named Megan (Hi new pal Megan!).  It’s up there on the W00tstock post. Go ahead and check it out.  I’ll wait…

Yeah!Intriguing!  I was standing there in the middle of Pudding on the Rice thinking “what has Wil Wheaton posted on his blog and why would it cause me to have some sort of reaction that might be bigger than my reaction at having gotten retweeted?”  (which was pretty big). So I opened up Google Reader on my phone to see if Wil’s latest blog post had been fed there yet and lo and behold…

“Holy Crap that’s ME! OH MY GOD!” I shouted loud enough to startle everyone in Pudding on the Rice and a few people walking by.

I would like to tell you that, after this (very eloquent) explosion, I was dignified and calm and acted like a normal person to whom this sort of thing happens all the time. I would like to tell you that I did not freak out. That I did not start bouncing all over the place like some kind of deranged clown doing a pee-pee-dance while hopping on a pogo stick. I would like to tell you that I did not shove my phone in front of Will’s face and say “LOOK! LOOK!” I would like to tell you all of these things but I would be lying.  And friends don’t do that to each other.

I’m not going to give you a play by play of the next few hours. If you follow me on Twitter you probably saw a whole bunch of reactions come out of me.  If not, well…why aren’t you following me on Twitter??

I am pretty sure that I don’t need to explain to you why this is awesome from a blogger/geek point of view. You all know how awesome Wil Wheaton is already. I don’t need to tell you again.

What’s funny is that both Will (husband Will…  This is going to be challenging) and I spent a good fifteen minutes trying to explain to S why this was such a big deal for me. Don’t even get me started on the not quite irony of me having to explain just how cool it all was when the very blog post I was referenced in was one that talks about how Wootstock is a place where geeks like me (us, really)  don’t have to explain themselves or defend the things they think are cool. It’s just too………yeah. You know? If I could raise one eyebrow, this would be the moment to do it.  But let’s get back to the story.

What you might not know is just how much this means for me personally.  I’ve been reading Wil Wheaton since early February 2004. I’ve never been that into Star Trek. I’d seen Stand By Me….when I was 9 or 10. I found Wil’s blog when I was looking for examples of blogs to read to help me figure out how to better approach my own. He’s the first blogger that I read regularly.  For me, Wil Wheaton has always been a writer. For a writer I admire to think enough of my work to point to it? Is…just…. I don’t have the right words for it so I’m not even going to try.  Suffice it to say that this is a huge deal.

Later yesterday evening,when Will (notice the double l there I’m not about to awkwardly segue into some creepy daydream) and I were telling one of the guys he works with about Wil’s blog post, the guy said “Oh my gosh! It’s like if Julia Child had written about the other Julie in that one movie!”

He pretty much hit it right on the head.

So. Thank you Wil Wheaton for liking my work enough to feature it on your site. I am honored. And Thank You for everything else you do as well. And Thank You to everyone who has clicked on that link and found themselves here. Welcome! I hope you will stick around!

And Contragulations to my husband Will (notice 2 L’s? Again: NOT going creepy stalker here) on his finishing his degree.  I am so so proud of you!

Two weeks from right now I’ll have been married for a little over twenty four hours.  I’m sure that everyone is getting sick of the wedding stuff but still.  Two weeks.  Just sayin’.

I wrote a little bit in my last post about going to see Julie and Julia with Will.  What I didn’t write was that one of the reasons that Will agreed to go to the movie at all was that he was trying to make up for the little situation I wrote about here and to cheer me up because I had a thoroughly melt downy Monday.  The stress of wedding planning (and reception planning and “just get through it” ness) was (is) starting to get to me big time.

Obviously Julie & Julia did the job it was supposed to do.  It cheered me up immensely, made me laugh and reset my brain (nothing hits my reset button like two hours in a theater watching a movie).  More than that, it makes me anxious for the time when I can get back into blogging and building this site the way I want to.  I write here all the time about how much I love blogging and how much I want to put more effort into this blog and how I need to make this blog a priority.  Part of that anxiety comes from the fact that, while I love my current job of writing content for others, my real dream is to be able to write the way I do here and earn money for that.  I don’t necessarily mean earn a living through this blog (though that would be nice) but writing the way I want to about what I want to.

Again, any clients who might be reading this site: I love working with you! Truly I do! Keep hiring me!

What the Julie & Julia movie really did for me though was remind me of why I started blogging in the first place and why I keep at it more than five years later even though no book contracts have been offered and I don’t earn jack crap in ad revenue (hello, I have two tiny text ads over there, what else do I expect?).  It’s easy to read Dooce and Miss Britt and think “I wish I could do that” and get caught up in the “how can I find that kind of success” ness of blogging and lose track of why I keep coming back here day after day.  And it was good, even in my melt downy state, to be reminded.  It felt good to be inspired to get back to this space.  I’ve felt the drive and the stress of “I’m slacking on my blog” and the envy of the success of big bloggers but I haven’t felt the inspiration.  The need to keep track.  The need to really put myself out there.  The need to communicate.

When I started this blog (back in the day when it was on Blog City and called something completely different) I told everyone it was because I wanted to start really being true to who I was and to do something with all of the creative energy I felt was being sucked out me hoover style as a retail bookslut/coffee slinger.  Looking back I realize that I started blogging because I had two friends in Las Vegas and within a month one of them died and the other flipped out and disappeared and I was suddenly completely alone and just needed someone to effing talk to even if it was just the faceless ether that was the internet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that time recently.  I don’t talk about it often beyond “yes.  That was my dark time” but I remember it.  I remember it with startling major megapixels, LED plasma 52″ flat screen bazillion dollar television-like clarity.

That feeling of being lost is, according to the movie, sort of why Julie Powell started blogging: to have something to do, something that was just for her, something to commit to, to focus on so that she wouldn’t feel so adrift.  I get that.

And you didn’t think I could bring this thing full circle.

The main point (that my long windy self has tortured long enough) is that I am excited to be able to start blogging regularly again.  It might not start with any real predictability or reliability until a few weeks from now (getting married and trying to plan a wedding and trying to wrap up all of my work projects in the next 5-6 days kind of throws a wrench into all of that inspiration) but it will happen.

Soonish.

Today’s blog post wasn’t written by me, though it certainly does speak to something that has been on my mind recently.  The post was written as part of the Blog Share project thought up by -R- at And You Know What Else? The idea behind the project is pretty neat.  So read on and give this person a lot of comment love!  Oh and after the post there is a list of other blogs (including mine) that are participating this time around if you want to check out some more awesome writing.

Here is my anonymous poster’s post:

I decided – or realized? – this December that all I want in life is to be happy. That’s it. That’s all. Nothing more and nothing less. Okay, well maybe disgustingly happy. That would be alright. But I don’t care about fancy cars and millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account. I don’t need an executive-level job, I don’t want designer clothes. I just want to be happy.

But try as I might, through all the soul-searching … I can’t for the life of me figure out what that is. How I get there. What I need to reach that point. And really, how can I get there if I don’t even know where the destination is. It’s not like you can set your GPS to “Happy Ness” (like Loch Ness). No, that would be too easy.

But then, I wonder. Does everyone “get” to BE happy? Or is that a luxury reserved for just a select few? All those sappy smiling faces in Christmas cards and Facebook profiles… are they special? Or were they just patient? What did they do to deserve that, and what did I miss? Sure I  have a  “whole lifetime” to get to that point, but time slips away so quickly it seems. Just yesterday it was summer, just the week before that, university. If the past slips between your fingers with such ease, then the future must as well.

Sometimes I take an analytical view of happiness. I look at those who I “want to be” … those lives I want to live, and I dissect what they have in common.

And the common denominator seems to be finding that “perfect someone” and raising that “ideal family?” Why do we define happiness by these things? And I’m not talking about what we see in the media and toxic magazines (well, maybe I am, how much are our world views shaped by those exterior forces anyways… but I digress). I’m talking about the people I see as having “it all” … why do they all have serious, committed, relationships, budding families and peaceful lives.

None of this constant questioning of who they are, why they bother, and reaching for the “next” – whatever that is.

Maybe the problem begins with the fact that I don’t really know who I am. That I’m just constantly conflicting myself. How can I possibly nail down what I want, when I can’t even decide who I am.

It changes with the weather, with the audience, with the day. I never thought I was fickle, but I am. Not in my relationships (no, when I love I love hard and fast and with unstoppable passion), but in my actions, in my feelings, in what I do and how I react to situations.

Take Valentine’s Day.

First, a bit of context. I am dating someone right now. We’ve been together for almost a year. But things have cooled off a bit recently. We are still together, but we recognize that there are exterior forces that mean we’re not exactly going to be getting married in the next year… or really the near future… but we enjoy each others’ company, we get along very well, and well… there’s chemistry.

So Valentine’s day came and went. Without even a “good morning, happy V-day” or a lame little e-card or anything. It was like it NEVER HAPPENED. And I was torn. Kind of.

Part of me wants to be wooed. Part of me wants a special gentleman to present me with a bouquet of flowers – or just a single rose – and a simple, yet incredibly romantic “I love you” and maybe a dinner at home.

I, in return, would list the many ways and reasons why I love him back. Why he’s special, and why I can’t imagine my life without him.

Not an engagement ring. Not expensive jewelery. Just a simple, touching reminder of what two people mean to each other.

But the other part of me is cynical. Valentine’s day is a Hallmark holiday. It creates tension and dashed hopes. It’s cliche. Cynical-me ex-nay-ed the letter… that absolutely disgusting profession of love and adoration because it’s “silly.”

So which one is “me”? Am I the hopeless romantic, or the hardened cynic?

Will I be the natural, hopeless romantic if I’m with the “right guy”? Or will I always second-guess myself, my intentions, my feelings?

Who the hell am I? And when do I get to figure that out? And when I DO figure that out… does that mean I can begin the real pursuit of happiness? And where will that lead me? And what lies in between? More of this ambiguous identity and happiness purgatory?

I know there’s no quick solution. I know there’s no magic-pill fix. But really, believe me when I say I would do anything just to be happy. Just to be one of those shiny smiley faces, with only the “normal” worries, and “normal” fears…

Not this constant questioning of self. I’ve had enough of that.

***

Here is a list of the other blogs that are participating:

And You Know What Else
Andrea Unplugged
Blue Soup
Bright Yellow World
Bwildered
Caity of the Keps
Catheroominations
Citystreams
Daily Tannenbaum
Did I Say That Outloud?
Dispatches From The Failed Mommy Club
Face Down
For The Long Run
Full Of Snark
Heidikins
In Java, Literally
Just Below 63
LizLand
Malfeasance
A New Duck
NonSoccer Mom
The North Is My Snowcone
Not The Daddy
Operation Pink Herring
Pants, Pants, Pants
Red Red Whine
Sassy Buster
Sauntering Soul
Shushing Action
Snarke
Snow-Covered Hills
Swimming With Sharks
Thinking Some More
Trueish Story
Way Way Up
Whiskey Marie

So um…. you might have noticed that the look around here has changed.  I’m not really sure if I want to keep this theme or not… I’m not in love with the listing of the posts below, but I can’t figure out how to change it without fubaring the rest of the site.

In unrelated news I only got three and a half hours of sleep last night.  This has made me VERY FUN to live with!

On Saturday my blog turned five years old-which you can’t really tell because I took down all of the archives when I relaunched seven (almost eight) months ago.  It’s hard to believe that it was that long ago that I sat down full of pretention and “damn it I am going to make a website that will Say Something Important” and five years later I still regularly sit down to…well, okay I hope that most of the pretention is gone and my whole “I will Say Something That Matters” has become more of a “I hope someone thinks this is funny” but…still. Five years!  I was trying to come up with a big ol’ “wow, what a five years it has been” post but everything I could think of expounding on sounded contrite.  So instead I will leave you with this list:

In the last five years I have:

Had five jobs (though two of those jobs were with the same company just in different locations)

Moved three times

Visited ten different states (in about as many days)

Been invited to six weddings

Attended four of them

Had one serious boyfriend

Who turned into one fiance

Watched approximately 1,3o9,846,509,389,569,088 hours of television

Read many many books

Voted in two Presidential Elections

Written well over a thousand blog posts

What a five years it has been!

Okay my dear Internet readers, I have the awesomest news:

Last week, right after I put up my contact form, I got an e-mail from a woman (I’m not sure if I’m allowed to name her or not, so I’ll play it safe) who works for Weber Shandwick with a contest offer!  This is awesome for two reasons: 1) I have never had anybody offer me anything to give away on my site before and 2) The offer is for Pepsi stuff.  PEPSI.  As in the caffeinated goodness that flows through my veins instead of blood because I drink so much of it.  As in holy crap, IT’S PEPSI.  Offering stuff to giveaway on my little site! So without further ado:

Here is the prize: The Ultimate Pepsi Super Bowl Party Pack: • 1 football • 1 beverage pail • 1 snack helmet • 2 key chains • 2 hats • 2 t-shirts • 5 Pepsi 24 pack coupons • 5 Frito Lay coupons

Neat, right?  I put it in bold because it is exciting!

Here is how to win:  Leave a comment in the comments section of this post before Sunday night telling us about your favorite Superbowl Commercial of all time! It doesn’t have to be Pepsi-related (hello, who can forget the Budweiser frogs?), just as long as it originally aired during the Superbowl it qualifies. Don’t worry about repeating, as long as it is Superbowl commercial-related, your name will get entered into my magic prize paper bag.  On Monday morning I will pick a name out of the paper bag!

Here’s the legal stuff:  Must be a US resident to win (their rules, sorry outside of US readers!).  Can’t be related to me (my rule to keep the shady-ness at bay). Must be old enough to enter a contest without needing a signed note from a legal guardian.  Must feel comfortable e-mailing me your mailing address if you win (because I’ll send that on to the prize people and they will mail you your prize).

Honestly, I’m so excited! My very first giveaway, how exciting is this?!?

So last night while I was typing my post about going to visit Fiona in school I got seriously fed up with Typepad and, in a fit of “arrrgghghghghg” switched my blog back over to WordPress. This? Borked up my blog for many hours. Hell, some of you might still be seeing a GoDaddy parked page for all I know. Also? The “helpful” tech support people at HostGator, where I have my hosting? They aren’t actually all that helpful.

ANYWAY–never before has my “I better save these files in case I decide to switch back” come in so handy. I tease Will all the time about his need to save things that, to me, look like little bits of broken plastic but to him are some super important piece of….something, but the truth is that I do the same thing with computer files. And this time? It so totally paid off! And, unlike with Will, I didn’t have to tear the house apart looking for that “thing! It’s a little piece of metal that looks like it got broken off of another piece of metal! And it’s red! or gold!….or silver!….or black!”

Today, in between getting actual work done, I will be working at putting my sidebars back into some semblance of order (that’s one of the nice things about Typepad–my blog is still on their servers, so I can make sure my sidebars look relatively normal.

One thing I am going to work my arse off to do, though, is fix the coding in the comments section. Because that is seriously ugly stuff.