Month: December 2004

Categories
BlahBlahBabble

Required Reading…

I am currently finishing up my review for the The Virtual Book Tour and will be posting it later this morning. This time around, we are hosting Jenny Traig and reviewing her book, Devil in the Details : Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood.

After I finish up my review, I will be sharing some of my obsessions – but I don’t like to think of them as obsessions – aren’t they really just quirks? Yeah. Quirks. I like to think of them as quirks.

Please check out the other participants today in the Virtual Book Tour:
– About.com Contemporary Lit Guide
– Accidental Julie
– All About George
– Brain Dump
– Ephemera
– Epistemographer
– Metagrrl
– Mighty Girl
– One Sweet Nothing
– Pamie, Author-to-Author
– Sooz
– The Elegant Variation
– The Heather Show
– Velveteen Rabbi
– Written Road
– Zulkey

The VBT is coordinated by the always fabulous Kevin Smokler. Enjoy!

Categories
BlahBlahBabble

Turning Japanese…

I have this terrible (and slightly inaccurate) reputation of being a picky eater. I personally don’t think I am as picky as some people I know – I just know what I want and I’m not afraid to ask for it. Just the way I like it.

Kathy & I are in Austin right now for a Stampin’ Up! meeting that we have tomorrow. We’re staying at her sister’s house for the weekend, so after we arrived tonight we all went out to dinner. Kathy’s sister suggested a Japanese restaurant, and Kathy had already asked if I was ok with that. Being the not-so-picky eater that I am, I agreed to go there.

See, to me, it’s one thing to be a picky eater as long as you are gracious enough to go to restaurants you normally wouldn’t like without complaining. There is nothing that I hate more than someone that complains about the restaurant the group picked. I didn’t complain. We went and ate Japanese food.

For those of you that I have had the pleasure of dining with … be impressed by the list of what I ate for dinner tonight (you’re going to be stunned!):
– Gyutataki – slices of medium-rare grilled ribeye in lemon ponzu sauce (it was a toss up between that and the Beef Negimaki and the Scallop Batayaki – Scallops! I considered scallops over beef!)
– Edamame – broiled green soy beans
– Asparagus Yaki – ok, no shock there, I love asparagus. This was sauteed and served with a great sauce

And… drumroll please…
– Two “tastes” of Kathy’s Smoked Salmon sushi! I ATE SUSHI!

I think that from now on, no one should be allowed to tease me about being a picky eater. All the naysayers have been proved wrong! I ate Japanese food – including sushi – and liked it! The statute for giving me crap about this has run out, and I have the photographs to prove it!

Categories
Geek Love

Let the World Domination Commence…

You guys thought I was kidding last week when I said I was working on my plans to take over the world, didn’t you? Well, I wasn’t. Nope, not at all.

World domination will now begin … Blogomania has partnered up with Moxie Design Studio to bring a little Moxie everywhere.

I am totally stoked about working with the Moxie Girls – Kathy and Joelle have been nothing but fabulous to work with, and I’m excited about working with Julie, Mel, Christina and Taughnee!

Holy crap though … Joelle didn’t say anything before about how I had to streak for initiation. Crap. Hopefully they will let me wear my tiara while I run.

By the way, nothing at Blogomania has changed; the doors are still open, no one is going anywhere. (Although I’m not offering design anymore – no time with hosting!) We’re just expanding things out into the world of Moxie!

I’m so excited – I’ve been bouncy around for a week now, waiting to share this with the world! Wheeeeeee!!! I’m officially a Moxie Girl!

Categories
Geek Love

NewsGator vs. Bloglines

Ben asked me earlier why he should use NewsGator Online over Bloglines. Hmmm. When I wrote my earlier post about NewsGator Online, I didn’t think of it as an “either or” sort of thing – I spotted NewsGator Online, I liked the clean interface (oh! Look! Pretty colors!) and I signed up – as “christine,” which is still pretty shocking. Then I wrote my first post about it.

Now I’ve had some more time to poke around and check things out. I like the interface that allows you to sort feeds into folders (I think it’s less clunky then bloglines.) I didn’t like how I had to hunt for the Bookmarklet to use to subscribe to feeds on the fly. However, I think I just found the coolest part of NewsGator…

You can sync with all the different options, including FeedDemon. Read feeds here, read feeds there, sync up. If you used their NewsGator for Outlook version (a fee service) along with the online system, you could sync up what you had read. Even better though, FeedDemon can sync with your NewsGator Online subscription.

I took a long time to warm up to Bloglines because I generally hesitate to use online services for things like that. I worry about what will happen when they go down – I’ll be stuck high and dry without my feeds. For a long time, I stuck with my desktop feed reader, and my only issue with it was if I read something on one computer, it was still marked as unread on my other computer. Blech. Who wants to double read?

So if you use FeedDemon on your desktop along with a NewsGator Online subscription – you don’t have to worry about that any more. Just sync them up. How great is that?

If I had known about this a month ago, I would have skipped over Bloglines. This solution meets every need I had – and then some. But I’ll save that gem for another day. (Sign up for your own NewsGator Online account and see if you can figure it out!)

(Pssst… wondering what the heck RSS even is? Learn more. Read blogs, news, and content easier. Have a MT v2.6x powered blog and an RSS feed? How about a full post feed? (Excerpts are annoying, if you ask me.) Get a better template for your blog.)

Categories
BlahBlahBabble

Jolly Flickin’ Holidays!

Excuse me for a moment while I point out that it is really, really, flickin’ hard to get in the “Ho Ho Holiday Spirit” when it’s 79 degrees outside, perfectly gorgeous and sunny.

Santa’s gift to Houston is the summer we always dream of having. Only problem is, we’re getting it in December.

I want to put up my Christmas lights, but it’s just not the same when you’re busy slapping the mosquitos on your legs and arms. Ugh. How do the people in Australia manage to find their holiday cheer in weather like this?