T-H-A-N-K- Y-O-U

Before I get on to the rant of the day, I have two things to say.


Number One - I heard you all loud and clear on yesterday's post. And to pull out my oft-used When Harry Met Sally line


You're right. You're right. I know you're right.


So now I've revised my New Year's Resolutions to these:


Don't worry.

Be Happy.

Practice Reciprocal Commenting.

Find out what the hell a Show Pony is.


I don't promise that you'll all notice the difference overnight, but you will notice it. I love the give and take aspect of blogging, and I think that I'm ready to stop using my last year's upheaval as an excuse to not take part in both.


Oh, and also? Thank you. I appreciate the honesty, even when it was a little rough to read. I'm being absolutely truthful when I say that there are days lately where I feel like a big, huge, grumpy whiner. And I need to know that if I do it too often here, someone will slap me. I guess I can take it if people think I'm a comment whore. But I sure would hate to be boring.



And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming...



I hesitate to start throwing the F-word around, but I'm going to have to. Facebook. There. I've done it. One of the (far too many) things I'm really enjoying about Facebook is the word games that you can play. I like the solo ones well enough, but the best games are the Scrabble games I play on-line with people. I love Scrabble, you see. And, if I do say so myself, I'm not a bad Scrabble player. At least I never have been before. I can't seem to beat my mother, but I hold my own with everyone else.



But something very strange has been happening. One of my co-workers challenged me to a game and then proceeded to hand me my shorts. I mean he destroyed me. At the same time, he and I were involved in a three person game with yet another co-worker. He killed both of us. (I finished second - I lost by a lot - but I beat out the person in the number three slot by a nice spread). At the same time still, this third person and I were involved in a two person game and I beat her quite handily. Still with me?


When all three games were over, we started rematches. And before I knew it, after just two moves, this damn guy had me down 100 points. In two moves. To add insult to injury, the third person all of a sudden had a dramatic improvement in her game and was beating me as well.


WTF?


Today at work I cattily asked him if he played the game with a dictionary on his lap. He said, "Here. I'm going to show you a little secret." Then he pulled up some website called something like wineverygame.com (or close. I blocked it out on principle). Well, you put in the letters you have tiles for and it makes words for you. IT MAKES THE WORDS FOR YOU. Then he tried to tell me that it was still a skill game because you still had to find a place to put the words. Evidently, the third player in our trio had been filled in on his little secret right before our rematch, which explained why she was all of a sudden stomping on me. And then he said


"I thought everybody played that way."


Not me, brother. I'm a purist. So then I challenged him to play me with no dictionary and no website - the old-fashioned way. Think of it as Missionary Scrabble, I suggested. And to prove he could beat me anyway, he took me up on it.


We'll just see about that.

confessions of a confused correspondent

I have just two things to say today.


Number One - This is my 600th post.


Number Two - I'm pretty sure I've lost my mojo.


Do you suppose there's any connection?


The honest truth is that lately I feel like I'm struggling with this blog. It isn't that I don't have ideas on what to write about. Oh, god, do I have ideas. I'm blessed (cursed?) with the ability to run at the mouth on most any subject. It's just that I worry that it's too insular, too whiny, too self-absorbed recently. Yes, I'm aware that blogs are, virtually by definition, self-absorbed. I get that, but still can't help worrying that I'm becoming a little stale.


Certainly, there are other factors as well. Time is always an issue, and lately it seems even more so. I've held onto the blogging because, in a life that seems to always be taking care of other people, this is something that's for me. Something I love, and receive enormous satisfaction from. I may begrudge the time I spend cleaning, or driving to and fro, or hounding kids to take showers, but I never ever begrudge the time I spend blogging. It's a pleasure. I climb into bed, wrap up in a fleecy blanket and type away. It's for me, and it's something I genuinely look forward to. Better than late night television and cheaper than therapy.


But I'd be lying through my teeth if I said that I didn't love all the reader feedback. And this is where the waters get murky. I fully understand that you must make comments on other blogs to receive comments on your own. It's like the cardinal blogging commenting rule. This past year or so I've been really bad about doing it. (Hint: Notice title of blog. Did you think I was kidding?). And even though I know you have to write a blog for yourself first, it's still been a little humbling to see my comment count fall by two thirds - and still dropping.


So I've been pondering the chicken and egg dilemma. Is this happening because I'm a rotten commenter or because I've run out of interesting things to say? This is not a plea for more comments on a daily basis. I know I have to earn those. It's more a request for some honest feedback. I really want to keep doing this blog, but there's a part of me that is afraid it may have run its course. I'd like to think that one of you would tell me if I was full of crap, self-centered or worse yet, boring.


You would, wouldn't you?

out of curiosity

Hypothetically speaking...


How long should you give yourself to come up with a post idea once you've actually sat down at the computer? How many times might you get distracted by word games on Facebook, or a Scrabble game where you're getting your shorts handed to you, before you give up on the post and call it a night? How many times is too many to check your Yahoo account, or the local newspaper headlines - which oddly enough haven't changed a bit since you checked them three minutes ago? Head over to the Trader Joe's website to find that in the 24 hours since you've last looked, they're still not planning a store in your area, casually make sure you aren't a Missed Connection on Craigslist, check your pending auctions on eBay, look into your stats on Site Meter, read a bunch of posts by people who can actually write on Bloglines, make sure there haven't been any earthquakes in California or that there aren't any snowstorms heading your way...and then, still with no idea at all of what to write, repeating the whole cycle?


Hypothetically speaking...

humor me...

I'm going to be lucky to get a coherent sentence or two going here, so I'm not going to push my luck.


I have a request.


I'm so confused with bloglines and google reader and bookmarks and all that crap. I have x number of readers on one and y on another, and yet I know that a lot of readers are on neither. So today, just this once, I'm trying to get a head count. If you read this blog, could you just leave a simple little comment, even if you normally don't? It doesn't need to be fancy. Honest. I'm just curious.


It's De-Lurking time. And since I know most people don't read every day, I'll keep checking back.


Thank you.


I'm going back to my Chardonnay now.

by the numbers

100: Approximate number of gruesome crime scene photos I've had to look at in the past week.


2: Number of those photos that are still creeping me out.


872: Times I've rechecked to make sure my doors are locked, or looked over my shoulder out in public or woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.


100: Percent of men I'm convinced are serial rapists underneath a pleasant and civilized veneer.


2: Feet I jumped out of my chair at work today when one of the docs thought it would be cute to sneak up behind me and stick his finger in my ear.


3: Number of times I asked him what the hell he was thinking.


0: Number of times he had a reason that made any sense.


98: Percent chance that the tumor on Izzy's leg will return if we don't do anything.


10-15: Percent chance it will return after radiation treatment.


4: Years it typically takes for any kind of regrowth with radiation.


18: Number of radiation treatments the doggy oncologist recommends.


231: Dollars per treatment.


2,000,000,000,000,000,000: Total cost of treatment.



3: Number of children who have volunteered to eat ramen noodles for a year.



7: That's how old he just turned. Happy birthday, Star Butt. You are one loved mutt.


500: Posts on this little ol' blog - as of today.


Wow.