Joan's randomness: January 2009 Archives

Remember a couple of weeks ago, I talked about the new Virtually Organized Web site?

And remember that I said its owner, local professional organizer Debbie Jordan Kravitz, was giving away a site-warming prize?

I WON!!! I am getting a $50 gift certificate to the Container Store. (Here's her post declaring me the winner, if you want proof.) I can't even tell you how much it made my night late last night to find that out!

Debbie's only request is that I plan out my project and THEN buy, rather than just adding additional clutter. And I think I know what I'm going to do. I'll soon be posting photos of my just-started scrapbooking work space, and I saw a couple of neat things at the Container Store Web site that would be perfect fits.

Thanks, Debbie! :)

Guess what I just did?

I printed out my honeymoon photos! (Guess it was about time... we're coming up on our fourth anniversary in May.)

Here's a fun one. Don't laugh at me.

Had a crazy day at work today. So, as I was leaving for home, I thought: I'll just blog tonight from the house computer.

Sure.

It's 11:40. My procedure for using the Internet tonight has been, since about 8:15, as follows: Launch Web site to check work e-mail. Go pack up two or three Christmas boxes. Come back. Web site seems to be trying to load. Pack some more stuff up. Come back. Yell at computer a little. Go pack some more. Come back to find e-mail has finally loaded. Click first new message, from Hubby. Go pack some more. Come back. See message: "Internet Explorer has caused an error and will shut down." Weep gently. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So here I am, at 11:42, and the chances of me uploading a picture to the blog interface are about as good as this computer's chances of lasting us till we get our tax refund. NEW COMPUTER BABY!! :)

The wonderful people at the Associated Press today took beautiful photos of my favorite baseball player, Chase Utley.

Not a baseball fan? That's OK. I like it all right, but mostly, I just think he's cute.

And even better? It was Hubby who told me about the pictures! How great is that?

Yes, it's almost the end of January. Yes, Christmas is over with. (Though my decorations are STILL not all down, ugh.)

But this was our family's Christmas card photo this year, and I completely forgot to share it!

Isn't my big furry baby cute? :)

No, not for me (well, nothing drastic, anyway.) But Sarah Girl got a good 5 or more inches taken off last week.

The motivation for the drastic change? She wanted to look more like Kit, her new American Girl doll.

That's a lot of hair to lose at once!

Our hairstylist is my friend Amanda. She's so cool! :)

Here's the finished product... they really did end up looking a lot alike!

Well, I finally got all of 2008's photos off the digital camera.

Hey, January's not even over yet. For me, that's pretty good.

Besides the many, many photos taken by Sarah, I had some good shots of my own.

I'll be putting up a "year in Joan's life" slideshow sometime later this week, but for now, here are a couple of my favorites.

Mom, with some Christmas biscotti and pizelles made by my sister Carol (you can see, food makes my family happy.)

My mom and my girl at Christmas.

Mom, all my sisters, my brother and me when my brother visited from Arizona this summer.

Hubby and Girl with a monkey (not real!) at the D.C. zoo.

And, my summery shoes! On the beach in Avalon, N.J.

Enjoy. May 2008 bring good memories for all of you, and here's to even better times in 2009!

Shamelessly copied from one of the sites I told you about yesterday, I'm an Organizing Junkie, who got it from I Can Haz Cheeseburger...

And brought to you by ME. I am proud of my OCD - but NOT sure how I could get cats to do this. Any suggestions are welcome.

Over the weekend, I had two neat Web sites in my daily calendar.

The first, new7wonders.com, is open for your vote on the "New 7 Wonders of Nature" worldwide.

The voting is done in rounds, so you can vote once in this round, then the winners will advance to another round of voting, when you can make your picks from those selections.

I took this picture in Niagara Falls during our big family road trip in the summer of 2007. It's one of the choices for the new natural wonders list, and I happened to like it, so I voted for it.

Anyway, that was from Saturday. Helpfully, the next day's calendar page offered this site, which gives you a virtual tour/computer reconstruction of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one of which is still around today.

There have been tons of attempts to update the list, some of which are documented here.

It got me thinking: What if we had a "Seven Wonders of York County" contest? What would be your nominees? The idea would be to pick things that are unique and that have great value to "our culture," however you define that!

I'll throw out a couple of contenders:

The fairgrounds
The Shoe House
One of the markets

Agree? Disagree? Any other ideas? Throw as many at me as you can think of, and I'll put them all up for vote.

Here's a lesson learned the hard way:

Don't let your digital photos back up on your camera for a year.

Further, don't do that, then hit the Kodak insta-print kiosk at Wal-Mart and tell it to print them all for you at 28 cents a pop.

Most especially, don't do that before checking the camera to make sure you've erased the 100-plus shots your daughter took of herself, the cat, her stuffed animals, the back door, her thumb, etc.

That was an expensive lesson to learn.

I'm going to a scrapbooking retreat in Gettysburg this weekend, so what I really wanted was to print out the Christmas pictures, so I could make a Christmas album. I don't think there's any doubt, 380-some pictures later, that I'll have enough photos to work on in the next 72 hours!

You remember my new daily calendar with a weird Web site each day?

Well, yesterday's was super-funny. There's this company, Blendtec, that makes super-high-quality blenders. And they have this video series called "Will it blend?"

It's divided into "Try this at home" and "Don't try this at home" sections. Of course, the "don't try this" ones are the funnies.

Here are some of my favorites:

iPod
stun gun
Bic lighters
glowsticks

In the interest of helping my daughter keep in touch and share her excellent story-writing with our far-flung and sort of huge family, we recently set her up with her own e-mail address.

She's had a lot of fun writing to her grandmas, grandpas, aunts and others.

But... it might be a bit too much fun. I apologize in advance to the said grandmas, grandpas and aunts, if you're reading this blog, because she's gotten a little carried away.

Case in point, the e-mail Hubby got last night at work. All it said was:

SEND      ME    MORE      EMAILS

All-caps, with weird spacing like a ransom note.

I'm a bit afraid.

As my Christmas gift to myself, I get a page-a-day desk calendar each year. Last year's was made up of Scrabble puzzles; this year, I wanted to go with something a little different.

So, in keeping with the half of my job in which I'm the online editor, I picked the "Page-A-Day 2009 Wacky Web Sites calendar: 365 for the weird & wired."

I'm looking forward to trying out a new site each day. Lucky you, readers, you'll get to share in the ones I enjoy.

Today's is pretty fun. This page from Tulane University lists the "special" holidays and commemorative days for each day of the year. Today, for instance, is the "Festival of Sleep Day," and if you remember how I spent part of Christmas Day, you'll know why I like that idea so much! (My birthday, ironically, is Square Dance Day. Won't be celebrating that one!)

January is, among other things, Hot Tea Month (yay!) and also Prune Breakfast Month (boo!!!) Oh, and Diet Month. Don't get me started...

Most of the first day of 2009 is gone. I had a great New Year's Eve with Hubby and my best friend and his fiance; we went to Mount Joy for dinner at Bube's Brewery's Catacombs and then stayed at the MeadowView K farm guest house for the night; got back home this morning and have just been having a relaxing day since.

Pictures of our trip to come once I get back to work and get them off the camera. For now, here's a view of the farm from its Web site:

We talked at dinner about what our best memories were from 2008. Today, we talked with our daughter about what her best 2008 memories were, and we talked about what good things we hope happen in 2009.

I didn't really make a "resolution" this year. I'd like to be happier, lose weight and keep the house neater, but I'm not sure those count. They're not very specific, and honestly, I say that every year. But who knows? Maybe this will be it!

Anyone out there make any resolutions? Want to share? (Or, what were your best 2008 memories?)