I stumbled across this video at blondebydesign a few days ago, so I thank her for this little Internet diamond~~

This video is SO worth almost 7 minutes of a persons day.

I’ve watched it over and over and still can’t make it through without laughter that reduces me to tears. The real payoff is at 4 minutes. However, one must watch the prior dialogue to get a good appreciation of this little old ladies witty demeanor. She’s hilarious through the whole thing and I can only hope to be as spunky as she is at that age.

So my question is, did you make it through without laughing? My guess is you’ll have to watch it twice to hear a few things you missed during uncontrolled bouts of laughter.

Listerine anyone?

Since I moved blogs/journals, I had to re-register through a few websites I utilize to keep my blogging in order. This registration process is sort of like a kid being processed for a new school. Each station you pretty much do the same thing, name, email, blog name.  Then they torture you a bit with verifying thy blog and usually your good to go. (unless it’s the Google verification system, which to use my best descriptive word, sucks)

But a couple of them want to know “what kind of blog do you own?” I.E. The category we should stick your slice of the apple pie in. Category? “Who Me”, I thought? Could I be summed up into one classification of bloggerdome? When I tried to skip it, or get around it, one place warned me sternly that according to the powers of blogwisdom, not sticking to a ‘theme’ of some sort is a recipe for blog disaster.

I’m human, and my mind went somewhere like,  ”Oh shit! I don’t want to fall through the cracks of the blog highway like sad little drops of uncategorized thoughts.” 

So, I tried to figure out which identity I’d pretend to be. For example, I looked at Technorati’s main category choices, which in turn each breaks down into little sub-catagories. I couldn’t even get past the big daddy 6 divisions, let alone find my social standing in the subcategories.

1) Technology: Oh, I have a thought or two about technology, and bitch about it from time to time, but I’m pretty sure I want to stay a zillion miles away from that topic of terror.

2) Sports: Hmmm, the one and only time I wrote about sports was my disastrous experience with the Greek God Golf instructor and his remarks about my boobs being an asset to the sport. Again, my qualifications are sorely lacking.

3) Business: Well, the reason I never mention my business (es) on here is because this is my escape from that reality. No thanks……..

4) Politics: Simply put, I’ve just never gone there with my journal. I’m a girl from Idaho, we are trained here not to talk publicly about politics and religion and it’s hard to unravel oneself from such mentality in a group atmosphere. So, again, no dice on the category.

When I saw the last two catagories I perked up with possibility that quickly fell as flat as an _ (that’s an underscore in case you didn’t get my subtlety)

5) Entertainment:I thought, well, I entertain myself with a blog, surely the people that visit my website get some form of entertainment. But, I didn’t see “blog that entertains with randomness” located in the sub-catagories. This is Perez Hilton’s zone, and the people who review TV, music, and video games. So I gave this category the middle finger and moved with great expectations to #6

6) Lifestyle: These were my choices. Architecture (seriously, they get a whole sub-category?)  Art ( I like it, but don’t make it or critique it, or take photos)  Autos ( LOL)  Fashion (nope, nadda, zippo)  Food and Wine ( Ah no )  Health and Fitness ( I wish)  Home and Garden (my house wishes)  Travel (sometimes)  Pets (umm no again)  Parenting ( I qualify, but don’t write about it often enough to earn a label) and finally, Literature. ( which I mention from time to time, but this isn’t a book blog either)

Clearly, I was screwed. And then I thought with shock and wonder, “What in the hell, (pause please)  have I been writing about for the past 5 years?”

I have no definable qualities to claim. I don’t even have a mold to try to squeeze into. I’m a flop home with no house rules. Barely 5 years old and having an identity crisis. I’m not sure what to do with my discoveries, other then say, “Ahh, I write a blog and it’s about, you know, stuff.”  I’ve never until this point looked at the whole picture of what I write here.  I’m a mishmash of whatever flows from my fingers. A compass spinning wildly and unwilling to settle on a direction.

This crisis made me think of all the other blogs I read. I realized many of you do have blogs with purpose. You know what you want to talk about and generally stick to a theme. I can also think of a few that are a bit like mine. Random with a subcategory of  eclectic. It makes me curious, could you fit into one of the above catagories or are you hovering around like me, lacking a blogosphere team hat?

I feel like I’m in a limbo haze. The little space one resides in before jumping off the edge of comfort… and landing at the bottom of another possibility. More simply put, I’m experiencing the apprehensions and excitement of change.

This will be my 3rd journal home in less then 6 months. The first home, I realized to late, I was merely a tenant. A renter if I may. But,  I had paid my bill on time, I was loyal, I had resided @ Intheshadowoftheiris, for 5 years. Long enough to have dust bunnies under the couch and a thread bare welcome mat outside the door. And then, AOL served me an eviction notice without cause, or provocation. Homeless without a reason beyond, “we are closing the AOL hosting of journals and will be sucking your words into the abyss of the Internet without a second to spare. We suggest you go to Blogspot.” My guess is it has something to do with the impending world domination of Google.

So I went to Blogspot, pulled up a some cardboard and created alittle home for myself at Latentthoughts. I have no complaints with Blogspot and feel grateful I had a place to stay out of the cold and rain. However, I don’t like taking chances. I learned my lessons with AOL and the fact Blogspot is a piece of Google, who can shake things up and make changes any time they rightfully feel like it….because fact, I am only a renter there…….well, I’m not interested in rolling the dice with my home anymore. A renter I am not and I’ve realized that extends to my writing space as well.

I’m not interested in starting over again, ever. Which brings me to Provocationofmind. I own it. Signed the deed, paid the money, experienced every possible agony in the new construction of it, and it’s all mine. Google can send it’s spiders through to check content, but there’s no way Google can stick an ad in it, unless I decide I want to entertain the potential of adsense. That will be my choice. No one can shut me down because they don’t have the budget anymore, or force me to move to another blog site via yet another takeover. The way I see it, the only way I can experience a foreclosure here is to forgo paying my domain fee a year from now. I imagine, no matter what, I can handle that 7 bucks~~

I think I’ve tweaked, tailored, adjusted, hammered and nailed everything to my satisfaction here at my new home. Now I just need to hang some curtains, stock the fridge and go pack up at my other house. Hopefully, when I post the notice of desertion on my door over at blogspot, my friends and neighbors see I’m just in another subdivision and not on another planet.

For everyone coming over from my blogspot site……Welcome and Thank You! For anyone else new to the world of my words, Hello, my name is Rebecca…and your name is?

Code is Poetry.

Those words have been mocking me for well over a week now from the (add your cuss word of choice)… WordPress help site. Every page turn, every seek and destroy mission, has been met with those taunting words on the screen. ~~~Code is Poetry~~~

In my humble opinion, some wise ass programmer added those illustrious words to a help site to taunt the individuals that don’t know their //:o( –!php/B.S.,  from two sticks on the ground surrounded by shredded newspaper. I would assume that if someone comes crawling to a help site, more then likely they are in ‘error hell’ and experiencing an Internet crisis. A person in panic can’t embrace mutual appreciation or opinion, that “code is poetry”.

I would also venture, based on sheer volume visits, I’m an authority on help sites and this topic (now). So I will speak for the mere humans, us people. We the people, who need help that is,  think code was created to toy with a persons rational, patience and mental stability.  Meaning, it can reduce the most civilized and patient person into a rabid swearing psycho. Doubts? Just ask my family………..

Oh, for the love of all things Google. I shouldn’t just blame WordPress. I’ve just come to abhor the expression, “Code is Poetry”. 

Over the last week, it’s been all about setting up 4…yes four..different websites. Three for work, and this personal one.  Despite my infantile abilities, I decided, or perhaps, arrogantly thought, I could handle it. At this point in time, I think my ambition far exceeded my capabilities. The time it takes to look foreign geek squad words up in google, then cross reference them between help sites, to piece together one sentence of advice in a thread that may, or may not even fix the error…..oh, and I can’t neglect to mention resorting to YouTube in the most dire of moments. Play, pause, go to website, play, rewind, pause, back to website….repeat 20 times.

I can now claim that I have crawled around in the bowels of computer coded swamps, and survived. (So did my websites) I can also claim that now that I’ve been to hell and back, I’ve got it down, no problem. I could do it again and again in 1/3 the time it took this last week. Woot.Woot. Me

I should say Thank You I suppose. To the help sites of WordPress, 1&1, Wise FTP, Google, Yahoo, Youtube, Aweber, and all the other random sites I crawled through. You’ve all helped me test my patience to the far extreme and I didn’t punch my computer, commit murder or even leave any nasty comments anywhere.

Code is poetry. Ha.

Rebecca Anne

I randomly plucked dusty books from various locations around my house . I decided a proof positive picture of my book guilt was in order.

<~~~All these books, over there, are unread.

A Fraudulent book impression sprinkled within my bookshelves.

And although no one has asked for a confession of any sort, the burden of my counterfeit book behavior is making me come clean. For the record, since I’m making this official and all, that’s just a small example of my non-read, yet remains on my bookshelves like a used book….. guilt. (there’s always a drop of  ‘someday’ lingering)

I didn’t start off as a guilty poser. Every book I’ve purchased was above board, laced with innocent reading intention and full consumption hope. I’ve never bought a book based on a shallow notion it would look good on my bookshelf. Or thought that,  just by a books mere presence, my overall book stock would go up. However, I have probably bought a book or two, To Read,  just in case…..you know…..someone smart and whip brilliant finds me fascinating enough to say, “Oh, Rebecca, you sound so book knowledgeable, pray tell, what was your interpretation of  Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina.?”

Hey, just when you think it wouldn’t  happen, it would……..

With all that being said,  I can claim to having cracked the spine on every one of those abandoned books. A valiant effort certainly commenced. Each book had it’s chance to wrap it’s arms around me and take me to a new world. Every one of those books bored me to tears until I simply tossed them aside for something a bit more interesting, a bit more entertaining and a lot less monotonous.  

This might be a good moment to mention, so that I don’t come across as (gasp) illiterate, the classics I’m referring to are mainly pre- 1940′s style of writing and living. There are a few I’ve enjoyed, a select few.

Sigh. I feel such shame in my lack of enthusiasm for the majority of classics. I’d like to adhere to the notion that it  takes a certain sort of mind frame, or a unique personality to bask in the (supposed) pleasure of swimming though classics………..Evidently, I do not fall into that category. For those of you that possess the tenacity and virtue to wade through these books….For one, I’m jealous and furthermore, I applaud you, admire you and of course grovel for your understanding and acceptance that not all of us ‘get it’……….

This also concludes all previous ambitions I held of joining a Jane Austen Club. I have a feeling if I tried to sneak into one, those devote Austen souls could sniff out a cliff notes impostor in 10 minutes flat. I’d be flogged before I could say Pride and Prejudice.