Ruby Tuesday

So I was looking at my post titles and trying to come up with one for today and I don't think there are any songs with "Tuesday" in them. So if you can think of any let me know and I'll change the title.

Nothing big really happened today. I watched some more videos for my research and got some more of the details worked out for my conference in March.

I was also able to get a massage appointment for Saturday so maybe I'll be able to get the kinks worked out of my back then.

Other than that I'm just trying to be better about getting to bed early so I can get some decent sleep.

Note: So Lance suggested this title.

Just Another Manic Monday

Well luckily I had the day off today. So I got three loads of laundry done and the dishes cleaned. I was also able to watch some videos I got for research for my museum program I'm giving in April. I was also able to get more dance business cards and postcards ordered.

So it was a pretty productive day on the personal front.

Rainy Days and Sundays...

We found more mouse evidence in the garage. Now it is unclear if this is just evidence we missed last time or if this is a second mouse. So we have put a live trap in the garage again. This activity feel right in with the rest of the day since we spent most of it doing household chores (changing the bedding, laundry, and dishes).

I have one last pair of pants to hem, but I think I’ll have to call in re-enforcements (a.k.a. my mom). It seems that the tweed pants that I need to hem have lining in them as well. So I’m not sure how to hem them so they will turn out looking good. I’m pretty sure if I try to do it without my mom’s help then I will end up with lining sticking out from under my pants.

The only exciting thing that’s really going on is that later this week we are going to go to a horse show. Well its not just any horse show it’s the famous Lipizzaner Stallions. I'm so excited. I've wanted to see these horses in person for like 15 years when I first saw the Disney movie about them Miracle of the White Stallions. And now I'm finally going to get to see them!

It's Raining Men

Ok, its not, but it is hailing. It's good that we're getting rain because we've had a drought going on in the state and problems with forest fires and burn bans. However, since it is hailing I'm doing a short post and then shutting the computer down.

Do Your Own Work

Well there's not much going on so I don't have much to blog about. We took Magaidh to a local park tonight for her walk. It was pretty nice because we had the park all to ourselves since it was after dark.

So I've been paying attention to the whole controversy of James Frey's book A Million Little Pieces. I have to say Ryan and I discussed it and we see this as just another example of media outlets not doing all their own work.

First mistake: a big publishing house like Doubleday should have been able to fact-check any book they publish. And yes, I realize this is a memoir and those are books based on people's memories, so inherently, they probably shouldn't be held up to the same level of scrutiny as an autobiography, but they also should not be out and out lies.

Second mistake: Oprah's people copy their homework from the publisher. I'll explain. On her show yesterday, Oprah said that she was contacted by someone (I don't remember who she said) 8 days after she announced Pieces as her book pick and they informed her that there were inaccuracies. What did she do? Her people called the publishing company and talked to several people within the publishing company, including their legal department, and the publishing company assured Harpo that everything checked out. So they copied the publisher's work. Why didn't Oprah's people take the extra time to contact the jail that Frey was suppose to have been held in themselves? Why didn't they even try to go directly to the source for the facts?

It seems that this has become a big problem for many media sources. Somewhere along the way they have forgotten how to go directly to the root of a source to get the facts straight. Take the recent heart wrenching tragedy in WV. Every single news source reported the wrong information. Each one of them noting a different news source as their source of information. Imagine if any of them had actually had the brains to not depend on someone else's work. Imagine how things would have been different if they had actually done their job and gone directly to the mining company to check the correct number of survivors and fatalities. You have to think that at least some of them would have got the correct information.

And the insane thing is that none of these media sources are willing to own up to their mistakes. And none of them are even really reporting on the news that they all screwed up. Do they think that the public at large is stupid enough not to realize how badly they are doing their jobs? Well obviously they do and I hope that we, the public, can prove them wrong.

Thursday Night

It's been a pretty quite day. I kept forgetting to call my massage therapist. I gotta do that cause my back is in pretty bad shape at the moment.

Class was really good and we got through the whole first section. All the women in my class are so beautiful and I really hope that this class will help them realize how beautiful they are. Oh, and they are so much fun. They have great senses of humor.

So since I was at my own dance class I taped "Dancing with the Stars" and for some reason the stupid thing cut off in the middle of the next to last performance. I was pretty upset because it looked like it had the potential to be a good performance.

I'm really happy with the show on the whole, since its making more people aware of ballroom dance (which I also have a background in). I think it does a pretty good job of showing people what ballroom dance is; however, I think if you really want to understand how to ballroom dance, or to understand how it should be taught, than you should watch Ballroom Bootcamp. Now that's a good dance show.

A Good News Day

So I had my review at work today, which went well. The director of the museum took me to lunch to honor my 4 year anniversary with the museum and that was nice. Then I found out that I received the scholarship to attend the state museum association conference. So yeah! Of course that now means trying to figure out lodging and car logistics. This is difficult for two reasons. One the conference is in Smackover, two we only own one car.

Last night I did finish the Rex Stout book I was reading. So the new book is now up for you to see what I'm reading. It's called Yankee Doodle Dead by Carolyn G. Hart. It was recommended to me by my mother-in-law and that's about all I know about it. I guess I'll see if I like it, but so far I have liked everything my mother-in-law has recommended to me. It's good to have a librarian in the family.

The Lone Pooper Theory

So far we haven't caught a second mouse, so maybe there was just the one.

I'm typing this not even knowing if I'll be able to post it or not. Our internet connection keeps going in and out. Which is unusual for our cable modem and very annoying since we both have research we need to do on the internet and our blogging to do. That's why I'm actually typing this up in my word processor to then copy and paste it in blogger.

On the other hand it means that I'll probably be able to finish my book tonight and start a new one.

The Runaway Mouse

Ok, so our mouse didn't run away; we caught it in a live trap and I, being the one home at the time, took it half way across the field from our subdivision and let it go. It ran the opposite direction from the division. We set the trap out again since we didn't know if we had more than one rodent.

I spent some time working on a website for my jewelry today. Most of the work was just getting the layout set up and deciding what I want it to look like. I also did some updates on the troupe website. Some of which were dancer bios that I helped some of the girls get together.

I'm over 2/3 of the way through my book and I've been enjoying it a lot. I'll be said when I don't have any new Nero Wolfe to read, but I know I'll enjoy re-reading any of these books. They're that good.

The Mouse and the Motorcycle

Ok, the mouse in this instance didn't have a motorcycle and in fact there may be more than one mouse, but I really liked that book growing-up. I'll back up and start from the beginning.

I was in the garage this morning packing up the rest of the stuff that needed to go into the attic. And that's when I saw a mouse run across the garage floor. The rest of the day was pretty much spent cleaning up the garage and letting Magaidh search the garage and setting out traps.

I have mixed feelings about letting Magaidh go after the mouse (or mice). On the one hand, she is a terrier and that's what they've always been bred to do. She has already killed 3 moles and 2 mice, but they were all outside in the backyard and she did it before we knew anything about it. So in some ways I feel like this is the nature way of things. People have breed dogs for this kind of work for years and if I don't let her do this I might be denying her fulfillment of her destiny.

On the other hand, do I really want my dog chewing on something that could be carrying diseases. And then turning around to give me doggy kisses!

Dinner with Friends

The day started with belly dancing class. It is always great to go to classes on Saturday because I'm not the teacher. I can just sit back relax, learn, and perfect.

The rest of the day was pretty much spent doing household chores like putting stuff back in the attic, cleaning the garage a bit, and doing some lawn work. This type of work will continue through tomorrow, as we have been so busy traveling recently with the holidays and such that we are behind with a lot of this stuff.

We took a break from all the chores to have dinner with friends at a Mexican restaurant. I introduced one of them to peach daiquiris and I think she now has a new favorite drink, even if it is just the non-alcoholic version until she reaches 21.

Not Much Going On

Well like the title says, there's not much going on.

We are going to get the Christmas decorations into the attic tomorrow and I'm going to hem my pants. Other than that the big plans are dishes and laundry.

Can you stand the excitement?!

Exhaustion

Well, I had class tonight and there were not 51 people there, but there were a lot. We might have to talk to the Jones Center about using another room. The only problem with that is the current room is the only one with mirrors. Which is a blessing and a curse, cause sometimes the students get to caught up in watching themselves in the mirror. But I'm tired from teaching.

I didn't get back to working on hemming my pants; however, I am a third of the way through my book. I'm also working on trying to decide which song I will do my next solo to, it's a long process.

Work is going well. We've had some huge collections come through with a lot of items that have to be cleaned and I'm not talking just dusting. I'm talking totally taking a waffle iron completely apart cause there is some kind of gacky, gross gooey stuff all over it that needs to be cleaned off.

So that's what has been going on today.

I'm Shaking in my Hipscraf

So one of our troupe leaders called me last night to let me know that the Jones Center, where we hold our classes, called her to let her know that there are now 51 people signed up in my class!!

I'm flipping out, I've never tried to teach that many people all at once. We usually team teach, meaning that one of the advance instructors comes to one of the beginning classes for the whole session to help out, and the woman who usally comes to my class can't come this Thursday because she has a wedding.

So I emailed some of the other instructors and some of our previous students to see if at least one of them can come Thursday night to help me out. I also had to go to Office Depot tonight to make more copies of the handouts. So I spent most of the night collating the copies and stapling them.

Needless to say that because of all this I didn't have time to get any further on hemming my pants.

Nearly at the End

Well, we got all 3 trees down last night, but we still have ornaments, tree toppers, tree skirts, etc. to pack away in boxes and get back into the attic. Also I got 2 of the 3 pairs of pants I need to hem penned up; I just didn't have enough time to actually get the sewing done tonight.

As you can see I've added some more "trappings" to my little side bar with my current reading selection(s) and music selection(s). I'll discuss them a bit.

My current reading of the Rex Stout book: For those of you not familiar with Stout, I believe, if my calculations are right, he wrote a total of 43 novels and 66 novellas in his life. 33 of these novels and 41 of the novellas were Nero Wolfe stories. I'm not sure how to explain Wolfe as a detective other than he is a great character, as is his confidential secretary/man-on-the-go Archie Goodwin. I got hooked on these novels because of the A&E Nero Wolfe television series of the books starting Timothy Hutton. After I finish this book I'll have 2 more Wolfe books left and then I will have read them all.

As far as the music goes: I love Enya and I love Loreena McKennitt. All three of these cds are great music that is quiet and un-intrusive. It's good to listen to while working as it does not distract or while trying to go to sleep.

Making Progress

So today I finally got through with a lot of the stuff I was trying to get accomplish on the troupe website. I got it published this afternoon. I still have some more stuff that I need to do for it. One is another photo gallery that will take a bit of work because I have to edit the photos first. The other is a class feedback page, which I can't really do until I get feed back from the students first.

We also got the tree down from out of the library and all the other Christmas stuff out of the library. We got all the ornaments off the main tree in the living room and we've gotten most of them packed away. Ryan is actually working on the rest right now and I will be joining him when I finish writing this. So that just leaves the little tree in the bedroom.

So I got all that done and still didn't get around to hemming the three pairs of pants that I've gotten piled up waiting for me to wear and I really need to get them added to my wardrobe. Maybe I'll be able to get to them some time before the end of the week.

So off to work on packing up more Christmas stuff so the house can get back to a little more normal.

Follow Me Boys

So today Ryan and I went on a hike with 2 other couples that we went know from college days. It was a 4.1 mile hike at a place called Pigeon Roost Loop near what's left of Beaver Lake (I say that cause the lake is down at least 15 feet). It was a pretty nice hike I personally could have taken it at a slower pace, but then I'm a slow person and didn't want to hold my friends back.

Apparently, some of the others thought it would be nice to do the longer 8 mile hike with a break for lunch. I think I'll conveniently be sick whenever they decide to do that. This hike was really taxing my joints towards the end.

It was nice though and I found myself constantly humming either "Colonel Bogey March" from the movie Bridge Over River Kwai or "Follow Me Boys" from the Disney movie Follow Me Boys! starring Fred MacMurray. It's one of my favorite live-action Disney movies.

Other than that I spent the day recovering from the hike resting on the couch and getting some really progress done on the troupe website which I will probably publish tomorrow after I get a few more things done.

Quiet Day

It's been a quiet day in my home town. . .

I got to go to the Saturday dance classes today so some extra exercise for me this week. Ryan and I had a nice afternoon nap with Magaidh. Then we got around to working on taking down our Christmas decorations.

We keep ours up until Epiphany and then we take them down as soon as we can after that and this was the first chance we've really gotten to work on it since Epiphany. We got all the outside stuff taken down and boxed up. But we are still working on the 3 trees in the house.

On the other hand I was able to get more work done on the troupe website, although there's still a lot more that I want to do for it. Which is why I'm not going to write any more here for tonight.

Time's a Wastin'

I won't be writing much tonight as I have some other things I also need to work on.

I need to set-up my emailing list for my class in case I need to get a hold of them. I have some updates to work on for the troupe website and I need to do some work on my jewelry website as well. I also have some emailing to catch up with.

As I'm writing this I'm watching "Diamonds Are Forever," yes, more Bond. It's at the part where they go to the Circus Circus Casino. When I was in grade school my family took a trip out west and visited a cousin who lived in Vegas. We went to Circus Circus and I remembered loving it. The kids got to play all the carnival games for free so the parents would be free to spend their time gambling. I'm not sure my sister and I ever won so many stuff toys at once.

Start Your Shimmies

So the first class of the semester started tonight. I had 29 students show up. I ran out of all my handouts before everyone could get one!!

Aside from running out of handouts, I forgot to bring a sign-in sheet for the class and I also forgot to bring change when they paid for the class. Sigh, it never fails that even with all the best preparation time and effort put in, you still for get stuff.

We're still trying to get all the dates figured out for dress rehearsals and performances for this session. I'm also hoping that I might be able to find some belly dancing jokes to tell at the beginning of class. Or maybe I'll teach them one Arabic word during each class. That might be fun.

Busy Day

Well, its been a busy day.

I have yet to fold my laundry cause I've been working on updating my resume for my director so she can try to get me a scholarship to a museum conference in March. I really should have updated my resume more recently than 4 years ago.

Aside from trying to remember what I did and when for my resume. I've been hurriedly trying to finish getting the handouts for m belly dance class together before tomorrow night when classes start up again.

None of this is really difficult work, its just time consuming and there are so many other things I'd rather be doing like reading or choreographing new routines.

There just never seems to be enough hours in a day.

Bond. . .James Bond

Today has been pretty uneventful for me so I'm having a hard time thinking about what to write about.

AMC is showing a marathon of James Bond movies, which I love. Ryan and I were talking about them the other day and I can't remember why, oh wait I do now.

On the radio they were talking about this Al Quaeda guy we captured that Bush said was a really important capture and it turned out the guy was the coffee and copier boy. And a lot of people thought it was funny that Bush called him important. Well we were discussing that he could actually have some useful information as people don't think about the coffee/copier boy being around and will go ahead and talk in front of them. It could be that this guy may have overheard some important stuff.

Then Ryan made the comment. "Just imagine if someone captured Moneypenny." To which I said that would make a really good Bond movie, if Moneypenny got capture and Bond had to go rescue her. Ryan thought he would have to kill her, but I think that would be terrible cause you can't just kill the character of Moneypenny like that.

And what about Q, what if Q got captured. Although, I think Q maybe be clever enough to escape as he could just make some stuff to help him get away. Of course, they've already done the kidnap M and rescue her. So maybe it wouldn't be that fun to kidnap any of the others after all.

I guess I thought of something to blog about after all.

On the Road Again

Sunday, after going to church, we drove down to Ryan's parents for dinner (4 1/2 hours) and then back up to my parents (about 30 from Ryan's) to spend the night since I had a doctor's appointment in Little Rock this morning. Since this was such a short trip we decided to get a dogsitter.

For holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas), and other longer trips, when we go to visit our families, we usually take Magaidh with us. Magaidh is our Scottish terrier mix that we adpoted from the shelter 5 years ago. Her name is the Gaelic form of "Maggie" and you pretty much pronounce it like "Maggie" with a Scottish accent.

We love traveling with our dog, she's a part of our family and she's just so cute. Whenever we travel with her, I feel like we are bringing a real genuine piece of home with us. And it's always nice to have her to pet and snuggle while you are away from home dealing with what can sometimes be the stress of travel. However, there are down sides to traveling with a dog.

We never go inside anyplace together until we get to our distination. We always take turns walking her while the other goes in the gas station to use the bathroom or get snacks and pay for the gas. We just don't feel right leaving her by herself in the car. And a lot of times it is hard to find nice places to stop with her. Unfortunately most of the state rest stops are in decay and very run-down. Most aren't safe to stop at now-a-days either. So we want to find places to stop with her that have nice, safe, and pretty walking paths, but those seem few and far between.

It seems that most of the state rest stops are probably run-down because they are not maintained well. The have no attendents. Most of them are just public bathrooms with snack machines outside and then walking trails and picnic tables. I think perhaps the state should talk with gas station businesses about taking over these rest stops. They could put in a smallish gas station, not one that is colored the way that they normaly are all bright and everything, but maybe more subdue like park buildings with their normal gas station logo. The station can still have showers, etc. for truckers, but the benefit would be that you would have employees who are there all the time to make sure that the area is kept clean and in repair and a nice walking path that you can get out at and stretch your legs.

I personally would stop at a place like this, as I find car trips can be painful and daunting if they are too long. I'm always wanting to get out of the car and walk for 5-10 minutes. This particular trip, since we didn't have Magaidh, we were able to stop and go places together to walk around. Unfortunately, the only place we could really find to do that was in the local Wal-Mart. I mean it was nice to go to a climate controlled environment that had stuff to look at, but when you've seen one Wal-Mart you've seen them all.

This experience has just led me to believe that we need more museums and parks along the major roadways in the state.

Baptism by Praise

Well Ryan and I have been without a church ever since ours closed about a year ago for financial reasons. We haven't really been looking for a church during this time. We were so invested in our previous church that I know I personally had to take time to heal and I just wasn't ready to go back to organized religion until recently.

A few days ago some friends of ours who had gone to our previous church had invited us to go to church with them as their youngest daughter was being baptized this morning. Of course this was something that Ryan and I were proud to be invited to as we know both of their children well and we were able to see their oldest daughter baptized in our former church home.

So we show up for the 8:30 am service. I have to first explain that Ryan and I feel we are traditionalist when it comes to the type of worship service we prefer. Even though we are in our late 20s - early 30s, we seem to go against the grain of people our age who are into the praise services that seem to be so popular in churches these days. Although we admit we have never attended a praise service before, we just didn't think they would appeal to us.

And we were right. Don't get me wrong, we love our friends and are happy that they have found a worship service that fits them. And more power to the people who enjoy praise services, I just didn't get anything out of it. I'm the type of person who likes to feel like I've been to church when I go to church. I do not like to feel like I've just been to a music concert or theatrical presentation when I've been to church.

It started with the music. I'm a trained musician so I like having music in front of me when I sing. I found reading the lyrics off the wall a distraction. I also tend to not like the "form" of praise songs. The repetitiveness of them annoys me. As an anthropologist I realize that a repeated phrase of music, be it instrumental or vocal, can become very powerful in a ritual. I have even been involved in some occurences of this and really loved it and found meaning in it. However, praise music never seems to take advantage of the potential power of this type of music; to take a simple phrase like "You are the rock of my salvation" and sing it three times does not really get you to that altered trance like euphoric state that was the original intention of that type of music. I also didn't like when they finally did play a traditional hymn because they did not use the traditional rhythms for it. None of the congregation sang the song the way the band was performing it because they were all singing it the tradtional way. I say if it ain't broke don't fix it.

I also missed the traditional bulletin. I like having the worship format laid out for me. It tells you what you're going to sing when you're going to sing, what scripture will be read and when it will be read, etc. It's great cause its your little roadmap to how you should act and when, but they don't have those in the praise service. Oh and if you happened to be someone walking in off the street and didn't know you were going to a praise service, you should be able to tell right away from the graphics in the "bulletin" if you are in a praise service. In traditional services you get graphics of Mary, Jesus, the Bible, or a person in prayer, etc. For this bulletin the people were in a kind of jumping-jack pose, like perhaps they were supposed to be dancing or just waving their hands around like the footage in all those commericals for the praise worship CDs that are sold on TV. Again, not my cup of tea in my worship service.

Then it was time for the sermon and I thought, "well finally I know what to expect." Are you with me? If you are then you know I was wrong. The lights dimmed again (I can't remember why they were dimmed the first time) and I remember thinking "Why do they keep fiddling with the lights? Its not like we're in the movies or the theater where you need the lights dimmed to tell you to sit in your seat and be quite cause the shows about to start. We're in church, we are all already quite and in our sits like we have been for the past 20 minutes or so."

Then on the 2 projection screens on either side of alter came on again. And what do you think comes on? A clip from the nightly news! I have to say this upset me for numerous reasons. Again, like I've said before, I go to church to go to church. If I want to watch the news I'll stay home and watch the news. The second thing that upset me was the content and I know this is just a me thing. I actually don't even watch the news at home because I find it so upsetting. The clip was showing the reaction of the WV families when they found out that news reports were wrong and the miners were not found alive. I was extremely upset by this because I felt like I was intruding on a very private moment in their lives, not to mention the emotional magnitude that this clip had on me. The third thing that upset me was there was no warning about it. I mean you watch TV, and even with the news, they say things like "warning the following content may not be suitable for all viewers."

And I just didn't appreciate being way-laid in a church that way. Could they have not put a little note in thier "bulletin" saying that they were going to be showing this clip in worship, so that people could leave if they thought it would be too upsetting for them? When I go to church I expect to experience feelings of peace, comfort, and solace. I do not expect to feel like I'm intruding on other people's pain, frustration, and hoplessness. I do not expect to feel powerlessness, helplessness, and horror as I watch fellow Americans struggling in dispair during their darkest hour. That is just not the kind of church experience that I'm looking for.

Preparedness

Belly dance classes start back next Thursday and I'm very excited. This will be my second semester teaching. I spent the night making sure I had enough copies of the choreography and handouts covering definitions and muscle diagrams. The outcome is I need to get more. I have 17 registered students and people who aren't registered always show up which is fine. Last semester I ended up with about 30 students. Thank goodness they never all showed up at the same time cause room would have been tight.

I also need to do some more work on the troupe website. I have some class pictures to add to our class information page. I'm also planning on adding a class calendar and feedback page as well as trying to get the girls to write their bios who have not yet. I also need to check back with three of the girls who are writing articles and reviews for the website as well.

But in order to work on all this I have to stop writing here.

The Call of the Wolfe

I have a few big projects going on at the moment.

The first is to get ready for a presentation in March about belly dance costuming. I'll be presenting information on ways to make belts and bras with very little sewing. Yes, it can be done. I have 2 belts that I've made this way and one bra and they have held up for over 3 years now. However, I have a small problem, I don't really need a new belt & bra set at the moment and I'm having problems coming up with any design for ones I might need in the future. So I've asked one of my troupe members if she would like me to design and make one for her. And you know what that means, yes, we'll be going shopping for supplies. I can't wait and it will be fun hanging out with my friend and getting to know her better through this project.

The second big project I have going on is for work. In April I'm going to be giving a presentation on the influences of Celtic music in Ozark music. The problem I'm running into is not a lot of references to back up my theories. Apparently its just not a topic people have been that interested in before. I'm thinking I'll to do a small timeline of Celtic history, some comparison of instrumentation, and perhaps even discuss a little about the relationship between Irish step dancing and Ozark clogging.

With both these things going on, as well as regular job duties and troupe duties, it doesn't leave much time for reading which is disappointing as I've finally found some copies of out-of-print Rex Stout books that I haven't read yet. I love the characters of Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe. I always get a good laugh from their repartee and witty banter. I'm so tempted to start reading one, but I know I need to devote my time these previous commitments.

When You Read You Begin with A-B-C

Ok, so a weird thing has occurred to me about blogging. I mostly set this up as a way to keep people who know me informed of what I'm doing. But last night when I got a comment from someone I didn't know, it was like "oh, yeah, other people could be reading this too, and they don't know me from Eve."

Now I feel the need to explain a little about myself. I have a BA and a MA in Anthropology. My BA emphasized Archeology and my MA emphasized Museum Studies. You will notice a link to the museum where I work at in the Collection's department. Basically, my job is to take care of the artifacts and I love it.

The other main link in my list is to the Middle Eastern Dance troupe that I'm a member of. I started belly dancing over four years ago and it has become a passion. I started teaching classes this pass fall and that has been even more rewarding than I could have imagined. My mother and I design and make a lot of my costumes ourselves and I have started choreographing solo and troupe routines. I even made this website for my troupe, which was my first website.

Currently, I'm trying to work on another website to show off my talents as a jewelry artist. I love making my own jewelry and have been asked by several friends to design pieces for them. Some pieces are geared more towards dancers, but than others are more subtle and would be great to wear to the office or out to dinner.

Something else I've recently gotten involved in, that I totally blame my husband for, is video games. Right now I seem to only like fighting games and I subscribe to the method of totally random button pushing. I don't learn what any of the buttons are for actually. I have no idea what button is a punch as oppose to the kick button, I just push buttons till the opponent is dead.

I went through the whole Soul Calibur II game that way and unlocked everything. Our male friends who play games were very impressed and proud. For Christmas last year they got us Dead Or Alive 1 & 2. I haven't been enjoying it as much as SC. For one thing that boss guy weird looking thing at the end is really hard to kill (see how I know all the technical terms and the names of all the characters).

So this makes it hard to unlock all the costumes cause you have to beat him every time to get a costume. So I found out that you can unlock the costumes by collecting all the items in the collections mode thing playing in survival mode. The problem here is to get the gold medal item you have to win 50 fights in a row!! How in the world are you suppose to do that?! I've tried all the suggestions on the online guides and nothing has worked. 4 of us have tried it and one of us finally got to 47 wins and then lost.

So if anyone has suggestions for how to get the gold medal in DOA 2 for the Xbox please feel free to let me cause I'd really like to move on in the game.

Learning Curve

So slowly, but surely I'm learning this blog thing.

My husband, Ryan, has had a blog for a while now. He and our friend Lance have decided to have a contest to see which one of them could do daily posts on their blog the longest.

I, like Ryan, have my money on Lance. He's been the more consistent blogger in the past and plus Ryan and I are going to be traveling soon to our parents in Central Arkansas.

But that's not what has helped me start seeing the coolness of blogs. It's really something that happened because of Ryan's blog that I saw the coolness potential. Yesterday Ryan was blogging about trying to decide what new programming language to learn this year (he's a computer program, or as my friend Kerry would say a geekboy!). On his blog he discussed some of the concerns that he had about a language or a framework (something like that, I'm not sure cause I'm not a computer programmer). Well, later that night the guy who developed this thing that Ryan was talking about commented on his blog and addressed some of Ryan's concerns.

Now I have to say, how cool is that? It's so awesome that we live in such a day and age where someone can pose a question and actually get an answer directly from the source. I mean, image what it would have been like 100 years ago. There's no way a common man could have discussed relativity with Einstein simply because he couldn't get to Germany.

Thus, I have now witnessed the power of the blog.

Shaky Starts

So this is a blog. Well, I'm not entirely sure I understand what the big deal is about blogs or why they are suddenly all the rage. However, I can see where this might be an easy way to keep all my friends and family informed about what is going on in my life since we are all so spread out all over the country. Plus, I have friends who are traveling in and out of the country either for business or for study abroad opportunities.

So blog I must. And I interrupt myself because my husband is reading this over my shoulder and I can't stand that and feel it is rude and intrusive. After all he can read this later along with the rest of you. I mean just because he's married to me doesn't make him any better than the rest of you. So why should he get to read it before y'all.

Y'all. Yes, that's right I'm from the South. Get over it. I think the rest of the U.S. has a problem with this Southern phase because none of them have been able to come up with an acceptable second person plural phrase. So the South provided the word for second person plural for the English language. And you can tell that a second person plural is really needed in a language by how many other foreign languages have second person plural words.

Ok, well now that I have rambled on for the evening about Southern grammer and why I have started this blog, I think I'll close this post.