The Slackery Cometh

To my readers and business affiliates:

I will apologize for the recent "slacking" and probably forthcoming as well.  Between work stuff, school stuff and communication stuff, I don't have a lot of time for internet usage.  My 3 month old is attached at the hip, which makes anything other than hunting and pecking virtually impossible.  I have to use my sparse times before I start teaching and after my classes are done for the day to get as much done as possible.

I have a lot to say, just no time to say it!!  Plus we just moved, so I have been using that baby napping time to try to put stuff away.

I will try to churn some pithy words out soon!

Don't forget about me!!

Speechless

...that's what I've been lately. I have nothing interesting to say on Facebook, Twitter or this blog. All I think is worth talking about is how cute the kitten is when it plays with random objects or how Ozzy and I are attached at the hip...

So, I apologize if you've been waiting for something witty or a rant, I guess no news is good news. Semester starts again on Tuesday for me, so maybe I'll have something to say then. And next weekend I am driving to the town that my grandparents lived in. They were special to me and I have really fond memories of the place, so it will be nice to reminisce with my family there (my husband never met them.)

How about you? Do you have any exciting news to share with me?

Oh, and Millionaire Matchmaker is back, woo hoo! I love seeing the deplorable ways in which the rich live! Money doesn't buy class you know!

The Ups and Downs of Internet Communication

Ah, the wonderful world of the internets. (We miss you, G.W., lol)

Ever since I started my blog in late November, I've become a machine of useless social media knowledge. I started using Twitter around the same time as I started my blog because I was told that to not tweet was to be a useless stain on the Gucci dress that is humanity.

So, I embarked on the whole Tweeter/Blogger past-time and have since come to several conclusions about the good, bad and ugly of internet communication.

On a side note, I am a pop culture fanatic. I live in a small town in Iowa and don't want to be thought of as a corn growing, pig wrangling, toothless farmer. Not saying that many Iowans are, just saying I know the stereotype is out there and I don't want to add to it by being out of the loop with the rest of society.

So, here's a few things I've learned:

1) Don't trust anyone. Now, I haven't sponsored any Nigerian princes or anything like that, but it never pays to get your hopes up about something until it has actually happened. All that happens is the person on the other end drops off the face of the earth and you're wondering what you did wrong. You did nothing wrong, some people are just commitment-phobes.

2) A good blogger reads other people's blogs. You would have to be awfully cocky to just assume that if you write it, people will flock to you in droves. Just like a good author needs to know what other people are writing, a good blogger needs to do the same. My theory is that if you're a fun person to tweet with, you probably have a blog worth reading. So, I love to check out new blogs and find myself subscribing to them left and right. It enables me to see what they're doing right and also get a few kicks reading their posts. A few that I've come across that I love are:

The Juggling Homemaker
Jackass Letters
His Boys Can Swim
24/7 Moms

3) It's okay to be friendly. So many people that are trying to gain notoriety or fat wallets off their site/blog are robots. Seriously, it seems like they have robots generating their content or their tweets. All they do is shove their guides/tips/training whodads down your throat. And to these people I say, "Boooooring!" I don't want to follow people that are snooze-fests. Nor do I want to go to your website and watch your training videos. I want to talk to people with personalities as lovely as mine! Okay, so we all have different thoughts and you can't please everyone all the time, but I want to get noticed for my witty repartee, not my SEO, CEO, VIP, LMAO, XYZ status.

4) You and google may become best friends. You don't just wake up one day with all the knowledge there is about blogging, tweeting, html, acronyms, etc. If you did, I'm jealous. So, familiarize yourself with google and wikipedia. For instance, I was dying to have a three column blog, but being the tightwad I am, didn't want to pay someone to do it for me. Alas, after many attempts to find my answer on google, I finally found something that worked! I learned to make button links, create my own header, what abbreviations and application names mean on twitter. You name it, I googled it. Knowledge is power and google has made me the Queen of Sheba.

Well, that's enough points for now. Four IS my lucky number, you know! I hope with this post that I might have helped at least one person. If not, at least it gave me something to do to pass the time until the mail gets here.

A Writer Writes, Always

I got the title from the movie "Throw Momma from the Train." Where they got the quote, I did not bother to google, lol.

I love writing (and talking) and therefore I love blogging! I would hope you've figured this out by now! I think that writing is very therapeutic and I'm more of a personal writer, but used to love to write fiction, be it short stories, poetry, etc. Now, I'm just about blogging and personal essays.

But, I totally give props to those people who are out there to get their work published or to find a home for their writing. It is hard to get recognized and there are many aspiring writers out there who need a voice! I love creative thinking and writing!

So, if you are a writer and you have a website to promote, let me know and I'll add it to this list. Or, if you want me to read your work, let me know.

As of now, I have two aspiring writer blogs I'd like to promote. Here are their sites:

1) Nick Piersee
2) Hello, Welcome to the Show

The Wonderful World of the Wide Wide Web

Isn't technology amazing? If you think back to all of the things that you now think you couldn't live without- cell phones, computers, internet, dvr, satellite and then wonder how the settlers did it, I'm sure you would cringe at the thought. I have been alive pre-internet, but just can't imagine what life would be like without it. I've done several semesters of college on the internet, blogged, ebayed, facebooked, socialized, made purchases... all things I couldn't have done before those crazy people (NOT Al Gore) created the information super highway.

I love meeting new people. I love getting new followers on my blog and on twitter. It makes me feel good to know that people care about what I have to say- something that is few and far between in real life.

Thankfully I don't have to worry about getting sucked into a life based solely on the computer, though. As aforementioned, I love meeting new people and hearing their thoughts and having pleasant conversation, but it's like having two sets of friends- and these are ones that go away when I shut my computer down at night, lol. No 3am wake up calls because their husband is out cheating on them!

Anywho, just wanted to share this random thought that I had. You can now go back to playing solitaire.

Oooh, the technology!

Ever since deciding to do a blog, I have been jumping head first into all these websites that I had yet to experience. I joined twitter (www.twitter.com/hamsterkitten) and twitter moms- hamsterkitten again, joined blogs, looked at blogs, uploaded pictures and did more googling than normal. I'm exhausted, lol! And of course I have to do most of this during naptime or after the kids go to bed because L does not like me to be on the computer and A likes my company for some odd reason.

Anyway, I have had to get advice on how to do things along the way (thanks to those who helped) and now I just hope that people will start to mosey on by and see what kind of thoughts I am sharing with the world.

Oh, the internets, lol! (quoting good ol' G.W.)