Category: Uncategorized

If you’ve just landed on this site, please stop for a moment. I request your feedback on color schemes that tend to keep your interest. Do you have a preference? Clearly, I have no desire to cause severe eye strain by placing yellow text on white background (or any other such atrocity). However, I only know what colors appeal to me. While I could just make the site to suit my personal tastes, I would like to ensure I don’t chase away readers because they don’t like pinks or purples.

Please leave a comment and let me know!

Today, I read the final installment of Dooce’s birth story. I think that’s one of the best birth stories — if not the best — I’ve ever read. Her style is so vibrant, in-your-face (yay cliché phrases!), and humorous. I adore humorous people, and at times I try to emulate them in anyway I can. I don’t believe I do a very good job of it, but I suppose it’s the effort that counts. In any case, I must post this discretionary piece of advice for those of you who aren’t quite fond of “foul language.” I personally don’t mind it, especially seeing as how it brings me comfort — I did grow up in NYC, where rush hour traffic consisted of car horns honking and people cursing. I guess I also felt a little more inclined to enjoy her work after reading her “about” section, in which I learned she’s a fellow English degree holder. I also learned she’s living my dream — neither parent has to work thanks to the wonders of the Internet. Rock on.

It would seem I’m most certainly accumulating good reading. One of these days, it might be nice to become one of the read rather than just being the reader. To dream big is to live in my world.

I have had a passionate love affair with fresh fruits and vegetables lately. Because it’s summer, so many delicious fresh produce items are available. To me, nothing says “summer” like a sweet, juicy slice of watermelon. I’ve also been enjoying some fabulous nectarines, which I believe are superior to their fuzzy-skinned counterparts — who actually wants a mouth full of fuzz? I’m also delighted to be consuming so many tomatoes. They’re excellent sliced up for burgers and sandwiches, chopped up for salads, or just by themselves.

I absolutely wish I had a garden full of my own home-grown produce. For starters, I don’t have to pay the grocery store, the truckers who transported them, or the farmers who grew them. I answer to myself — okay, maybe my husband as I am the opposite of a green-thumb, and I would definitely require his green thumb skills. Moreover, I wouldn’t have to worry about where my food came from in the event of a recall. If I got sick? I’d have to chastize myself for improper food safety protocols. I could have fresh, delicious, organic produce that traveled from my backyard to my kitchen. Considering I’d like to live in southern New Hampshire, I think I also might like to try out hydroponics — because why should I have to resort to pricier options at the store just because we’ve got a few feet of snow on the ground?

I have decided to sign up for HostGator’s affiliate program (see my banner on the side bar) because they’ve treated me so well and provided such excellent webhosting since I switched to their services nearly a year ago. I admit, they had two particular deciding factors when I signed up — 1) I was able to pay month-to-month to test out their servers and service, and 2) I’m a *Florida* Gator, why shouldn’t I be hosted by a *Gator* company (even if they’re not affiliated with the University of Florida). Convenience and coolness aside, I have yet to experience downtime as a result of their services (please note I did have some downtime last November due to a lapse in memory to renew my domain name — oops!). I highly recommend them if you’re in need of webhosting.

I’ve also included a link to YouData in the side bar as well. They didn’t seem to have any handy little banners for me to use, so I decided a text link would do just fine for now. I’ll figure out the aesthetics of my link at a later date.

Life has been rather busy these past few weeks, considering I finally got our Spring newsletter pulled together and approved for printing. Needless to say, I’m extremely proud of this accomplishment, considering I designed the layout. I employed my husband’s graphic talents for the cover, but everything else was by my own hand. I delved into the realm of bleeds this time around. CMYK? Child’s play at this point.

I must also admit I’m rather frustrated that I had been posting so much, making a few bucks here and there using [redacted], and then I went from a Google PageRank of 2 down to a 0 within a matter of months. I see that my page statistics have gone up, so I’m really not understanding that logic. Of course, [redacted] doles out opportunities based on PageRank. Yes, you guessed it — I haven’t seen a reasonable offer in weeks. Well, so much for that little money-making stint.

Of course, I’ve also committed one of my usual crimes — I started something and haven’t gone forward to finish it. I began that series on child birth in the United States months ago, and I haven’t even followed up on my own personal journey. I think if it wasn’t for the daily postings by Brenda Della Casa, I’d probably feel like an awful writer at this point. Thankfully, her musings tend to cheer me up or brighten my attitude, even if only minutely.

And in case anyone happens to be wondering, I still have no idea what layout design I’d like to go with. For now, the white ibis will have to do. I’ve seen plenty of them on campus lately, anyhow.

I noticed today that my pagerank, which was once a shiny little 2, has been lowered to a 1/10. I felt the lump form in my throat. I realize I’ve been very lazy about writing non-sponsored posts these days, but I didn’t realize I would lose some of my minuscule clout on the web. I’ve actually seen page hits from more than the googlebots indexing my page as they so often do. Of course, I realize I don’t do much in the way of SEO, which would more than likely boost my pagerank at least a level or two. I also realize cross-posting my entries onto my BlogSpot blog may actually be hurting my rank. Perhaps it’s time to rethink the cross-posting. But is it really about pagerank? Really, when I search for my handle/ alias, my website returns first — and my full-on website sits a big, fat zero right now in Google’s pagerank system. Maybe I’m overreacting a bit.

I had stalled on adding a couple of sidebar options simply because I wasn’t sure what to put the coding. In randomly needing to add some coding to my theme, I realized I had been an absolute fool. The file “sidebar.php” jumped out at me — Look at me, you silly woman! I realized this entire time I was merely being lazy and ignorant by not even looking at that one, simple file that would’ve clearly shown me where to put the coding. So, I’ve added some buttons finally. I’m not necessarily proud of myself for just now realizing it, but I’m happy to at least have gotten that handled. Now, if I could just stop being lazy about AdSense….

In the mist of economic struggles, climate change, and growing concerns with our oil dependency, the renewable energy field has flourished. Universities and research groups have spent countless hours searching for viable alternatives for fuel. In fact, the department I work for is home to the Florida Institute for Sustainable Energy (FISE) lab. I enjoy hearing about the innovated research and technology right here in the department. You can either check out UF MSE or Renewable Energy Future for more information regarding renewable energy.

As you well know – if you’ve been reading my blog – I’m most certainly not part of a traditional family. Of course, the “traditional” family has essentially passed into history as more parents raise their children singly, parents remarried, both parents go to work, or mothers head to work while fathers stay home. These once taboo situations are now common. We are part of the modern family dynamics. A site aptly called Modern Family offers information for those of us not of the working dad/ SAHM/ 2 kids/ 1 dog/ a white picket fence genre. Check them out to see what you think.

When my grandparents moved to Florida back in 1995, my sister and I spent the summer visiting them. Of course, we went to Disney World because we had never been there before. This was the first of several visits to Disney World. I’ve been to the Magic Kingdom (the main park in Orlando) and Epcot Center. Of the two, the Magic Kingdom is absolutely my favorite because they have so many rides and fun attractions. I love the Thunder Mountain roller coaster, which doesn’t go too fast or drop too much. Each time I’ve been to Disney, I make a point to go on Thunder Mountain. Of course, I usually find myself getting dragged onto the more terrifying rides like Space Mountain (a roller coaster in the dark) and Splash Mountain (think water flume crossed with a roller coaster with an enormous drop at the very end).

I think my favorite experience it Disney has to have been for “Grad Nite.” Grad Nite is an event where high school seniors go to Disney World at night after they’ve closed the park to the general public. First, we stopped off at Pleasure Island, a little night club section of Disney World. They have several genres of music to choose from. We stayed up all night to go on rides, see some musical performances, and try our best at staying lively. I admit I got fairly cranky towards the end of the night, but it was absolutely worth every minute of foot-throbbing fun. I also think there’s something to be said about riding the rides at night – the Haunted Mansion feels a bit spookier, you watch the stars while you coast on Thunder Mountain, and you still scream in terror when you drop down from Splash Mountain. Of course, you don’t really notice the difference in Space Mountain, but I usually duck down, hold on tight, and scream my lungs raw.

I highly recommend going to Disney World in Orlando, FL. You can buy Disney Tickets from orlandofuntickets.com, which has some of the best deals on Disney Tickets. It’s a lot better to buy in advance because tickets can be extremely expensive at the park on the day of entry, so plan ahead.