May 25, 2007

Let there be music

I have a small collection of musicals on VHS and DVD. My sweet son ran down a copy of the elusive Brigadoon while he was here on his visit last week. We didn’t get a chance to watch it while he was still here, so maybe I’ll do that this weekend. It’s not one that pops up frequently on cable, so I haven’t seen it in quite a while and am looking forward to it. It’s been replaced on my wish list by Meet Me In St. Louis. I read a review recently that said many people consider it the greatest movie musical ever made. I’m embarrassed to say that I know next to nothing about it except that it stars Judy Garland. I know next to nothing about St. Louis either, despite the fact that we camped in Missouri a few times on family vacations when I was a child. I’m sure we must have spent some time in St. Louis but I just don’t remember it. Maybe I should do some homework to get my mind prepared for the movie. I’m sure I could find out quite a bit by visiting http://www.schoolsinstlouis.com/ and maybe I’ll ask around on some message boards for more St. Louis information from folks who live there.

I’ve almost worn out my VHS copies of Carousel and Oklahoma, so I need to replace both of those with DVDs. My Fair Lady and The King and I have alrady been replaced, and West Side Story went astray somewhere. I think the only modern musical I have is Chicago. I kind of skipped over the decades from the fifties to this decade, so I might do some research soon and expand my wish list. Surely there were some good musicals during that period that I would watch more than once.

Technorati Tags: music, musical, movies

Along came a spider …

This visitor has been hanging around outside one of the windows on my screened lanai for a couple of days. I’m not crazy about spiders, especially large ones, and this gal spans over two inches. Still, she’s lovely to look at and not hurting anything, so I’ve left her alone. I haven’t been able to find a specific identity, though I’m sure she’s one of the Argiope spiders. The females apparently spend most of their time in their webs this head-down posture. I’m going to keep trying to get a better picture because there’s a feature that doesn’t show well here. The yellow shield on her back glitters and sparkles.

Technorati Tags: Argiope spider, Hawaii, photos, spider

May 24, 2007

Nanashi-Inc.net

I had a moment of panic after I posted my first Tueday Teaser a few weeks ago. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d offered to do linky-love reviews of blogs that I didn’t have an option of selecting. I had visions of trying to come up with something good to say about a really bad blog. What I wasn’t factoring in, just for that moment, was that stupid and unimaginative people rarely to do puzzles. When they bother to do them, they tend not to do them well. My first two winners prove the point, as both have blogs that are a pleasure to visit and a joy to review.

Lady Joana’s blog, Nanashi-Inc.net is an imaginative and eclectic collection of random ramblings and creative input. I’ve spent a little time there over the last few days and I’ve gotten to know a thing or two. The first thing I learned is that here is such a thing as hatelisting. Am I the only one who had never heard of this? Having read Joana’s reasons for starting a hatelist, I have to say it’s the logical outcome of some unpleasant experiences. I’m not a fan of anime, being old and too dense to understand the attraction. Nevertheless, I can’t imagine thinking that my own lack of appreciation for an artform makes me superior to anyone else (or should be a reason for judging their character.) Such narrowmidedness deserves to poked and prodded, so listing haters and bashers makes sense in my book.

While Joana’s love of anime is upfront and very evident on her blog, it’s only a small part of her contribution to the blogging world. She’ll be graduating from college soon and moving on to other pursuits, but I hope being outside of the academic bubble doesn’t rob her of the time to keep expressing herself creatively. Her blog is part of her larger website, and you really need to expolore it a bit and get to know her. Make sure you visit her Pen and Pencil page and acquaint yourself with her fiction and artwork. The gal’s a budding genius, I tell ya! She’s strongly opinionated too, and her rants had me alternately laughing out loud and nodding my head silently in agreement.

I have almost nothing in common with Joanna. Her bio and comprehensive “about me” indicate that we share brunette hair color and a few bad habits, but, really we’re world’s apart in our interests and passtimes. Yet, through the magic of the blogosphere, we’ve stumbled across each other and I’ve found a young woman I admire whose site I’ll be visiting time and again. The entire website is well-designed, attractive and easy to navigate. She’s installed an option that allows her visitors to select the skin on display while they’re viewing. I don’t know if she thought of that herself, but isn’t it an amazingly thoughful thing to do? Set aside an hour or so and go see for yourself. I guarantee, there’s something to engage and interest everyone who makes a little time to get to know my new friend Joana.

Technorati Tags: anime, blogs, personalitites

That was scary!

The server I’m on at BlueHost went down last night and only just came up. The folks I’ve been talking to over there tell me I may have lost some data, but so far everything looks pretty normal to me. I’ve never had anything like this happen before, so I’m not sure what I should be looking for. If you notice anything wonky, will you let me know, please? Mahalo!

Technorati Tags: blog, crash, domain hosts, servers

May 22, 2007

Tuesday Teaser photo verification

And Joana nailed it within minutes of the puzzle being posted! Joana, you will get two linky love reviews and your name will be entered twice in the drawing for the gift card at the end of the month.

Bear with me folks! I’m new to this whole thing & trying to find a happy balance between challenging and too tough!

Technorati Tags: blog contest, contests, Hawaii, photo contest, photos

Adventure vacation

I haven’t taken a vacation since I started my business eight years ago. It’s hard to walk away from from a sole proprietorship, even for a few days. That doesn’t keep me from fantasizing, though. In my dreams I’m a young and healthy woman of leisure. I travel the world seeking adventure. Ruggedly handsome guides lead the way and keep me safe as I climb Kilimanjaro. My sleeping tent and hot food are provided, and I awake each morning to the joyous sound of porters singing as the sun welcomes me to a new day. The high altitudes are a challenge, but the specially-trained guides know how to monitor for medical distress, so I can relax and enjoy my climb into the clouds.

I’ll celebrate my triumphant climb to the heights by rewarding myself with a photo-safari in Tanzania. The days will be spent observing the natural wildlife at Ngorongoro Crater, Tarangire National Park and the Serengeti, and in the evenings I’ll relax in the comfort of a classic safari lodge with my fellow adventurers. You’ll be on my mind the entire time, dear readers, and upon my return I’ll fill my blog with marvelous stories and wildlife phtotos. We’ll relive my vacation of a lifetime over and over, and you’ll all book your own trips with Tusker Trail because they were kind enough to sponsor my post that introduced you to the wonders of an African adventutre vacation.

Technorati Tags: adventure vacations, mountain climbing vacation, safari, vacations

Tuesday Teaser for May 22, 2007

Can you identify the item depicted above? Take your best guess and post it in the comments below. If your guess wins, you’ll win a nifty prize. Here’s how it works:

1. Write a comment giving your guess as to what the item is.
2. First person to identify the item wins.
3. The author of this blog will be the sole judge as to what constitutes a correct answer.
4. If no winner is declared, the prize will be added to a jackpot that will carry over to the next contest.

What will you win?

1. The author of this blog will write a LINKY LOVE POST (review) about the winner’s blog. The LLP will contain the url for your blog plus two deep links and will be posted here on Skeet’s Stuff, a PR4 blog. Skeet writes good reviews.
2. The winner’s name will be entered into a drawing for a $10.00 gift card from Starbucks or Amazon.
3. If no winner is declared, entries for the drawing will accumulate. Thus, if there is no winner this week but there is a winner next week, that person will have their name entered in the drawing twice and will get two Linky Love Posts. If there is no winner for two weeks, the jackpot the third week will win three entries in the drawing and three LLPs and so on. The LLPs may be for the same blog or for different blogs by the winner. If you win an accumulated jackpot and want the LLPs to be for a single blog, they will be spaced two to three weeks apart. If you win a single LLP it will appear within three days.
4. Drawing for the gift card will be held on May 31, 2007, thus the maximum number of people who will be eligble is four. That’s pretty good odds.

Other stuff

1. All comments to this blog are time and date stamped. The winner will be the first person (according to time and date stamp) to provide the correct answer.
2. No hints will be given.
3. Answers must specifically identify the item. For instance, if the item depicted were to be a button on a remote control, the answer “button on something electronic” would not suffice.
4. Decisions of the judge are final. Don’t argue with me. I won’t answer.
5. I will attempt to post every few hours as to whether or not a winner has been declared, but I am not continuously at the keyboard so please be patient.
6. Entries must be posted before 12:30 a.m. Thursday, May 24, 2007, Hawaii time (GMT -10, approximately forty-eight hours from now.)
7. This is intended to be an ongoing feature at Skeet’s Stuff. If it turns out to be a dud it will cease to exist, but all qualified winners will get their prizes.
8. Skeet’s Stuff is a do-follow blog, so you get some link value just for commenting.
9. Let the fun begin!

Technorati Tags: contests, photos, photo contest, blog contest

May 21, 2007

Family meals

I’ve only just realized today that I didn’t cook about half of the food I had planned for my son’s visit. The only “big meal” I did was a pork roast with fresh herbs from my garden, which I served with baked yams. I didn’t do the Mongolian Beef or Adobo that I had ingredients for. I still have a freezer full of chicken breasts, steaks and enough veggies to last me halfway through the summer. I’ll have to find some way to use up a pantry full of baking ingredients, too. Cookie recipes will have to wait until his next visit, which will hopefully be during the holidays next winter.

It’s not that we didn’t eat while he was here. We ate quite well - at restaurants. I’m not sure if he’s just gotten used to his bachelor way of having most of his meals out or if he was trying to save me from laboring in the kitchen while he was here, but we ate a lot of our meals out. I finished off the last of the “doggie bags” of leftovers last night. I wonder what it will take to convince him that I like to cook and want to do that when he’s around. I can’t imagine having him here for the holidays and not doing all of the traditional cooking that should come with that. Maybe if I start working on him now I’ll be able to bring him around to my way of thinking by then.

Technorati Tags: cooking, family meals, family visits

Bloggers beware!

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I blog for money. Some folks don’t like it, but its my blog and I don’t apologize for doing what I do. I hope to eventually be in a position where I can earn enough online to give up my day job, which is very physical and getting harder for me to do as I age. The blogosphere is full of folks like me, each with our own reasons, who want or need to make money blogging. There are a number of different companies that want to employ our services, and the prospect of developing blogging into a supportive income is not an unreachabel goal.

Last month I told you about a new service that was recruiting bloggers. After I wrote that one sponsored post for them I decided that they might not be people that I wanted to deal with. A number of us exchanged information about them on a message board and I was one of many who chose not to produce further posts for them. Today my friend Brett has shared some information that seems to expose them as less than honest. Go see what he has to say about Bloggerwave’s apparent bad faith move. It’s inevitable that some people would see the blogger/writer community as a target for fraudulent practices. Our best defense is the sharing of information, and that happens to be what we do best. If you are blogging for bucks or you know of others who are, I hope you’ll share Brett’s post and help us spread the alert throughout the blogosphere. There’s a lot of room for growth and innovation out there, but none for this type of shenanigans. Let’s get the word out and keep the marketplace open and honest.

Technorati Tags: blogs, blogging, fraud, paid blogging

May 20, 2007

My world is a happier place

I love my hose reel. I really do. Well, except when I don’t. I love having a neat little place to store my hose out of the way, but I hate that blasted thing when I’m trying to wind my hose back up onto the reel after I’m through using it. See, it wants two hands keeping the hose untangled and guiding it while a third hand turns the crank. Being blessed with the usual configuration of two hands, I always end up with a tangled mess. Sometimes the hose slips between the parts of the caddy and I can’t turn it all. When that happens I end up having to unwind the whole hose off of the wheel and starting over. Or leaving the hose in a messy pile for another day. I either need to get an accommodating roommate or find a hose reel that’s easier to use.

Ha! A clever inventor must have overheard my lament because the hose reel of my dreams is now available. You’ll have to go watch the video at No-Crank.com to see just how perfect the solution is. The only thing I can’t figure out is why it took someone so long to make the obvious connection. Water power is one of the first energy sources discovered and here you’ve got a hose full of water that needs moving in an orderly manner. 1 + 1 = a water-powered hose reel!

Ahhhh! That’s better!
Sheer genius, actually! It’s even got a little arm that guides the hose as it enters the reel so you don’t get tangles. I’m telling you, it’s the perfect solution to a problem that has vexed mankind for far too long. Now if we could just get someone to work on the whole war and poverty mess we’d have a pretty near perfect world.

Technorati Tags: garden hose, hose reel