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Journal Online

When I most twitter

Like the rest of the blogging/podcasting/web2.0 world, I’ve been nuts for Twitter recently. I’ve actually had a twitter account for at least 5 months, but I didn’t really get hooked until recently when I started using it with GoogleTalk. After that, I added some more friends and felt more desire to twitter by text when I’m out.

In doing this, I’ve realized some times when I most want to twitter. It makes sense, really. These are times when I’m away from a computer and usually not really doing anything. I twitter when I’m waiting for something; waiting in line, waiting for lunch. I want to twitter when I’m driving, but I wait for a stop light. I twitter while babysitting, especially when the kids are watching a movie.

Really, this makes sense. These are occasions when I might be blogging, but I’m away from a computer and by the time I get home or back to work, I’ve forgotten about it.

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Fandom Journal

Elbow in the Butter Dish

Earlier this evening, I was having dinner with my grandparents and I happened to put my elbow in the butter dish. I didn’t actually get my elbow in the stick of butter, it was a much reduced stick of butter, but I did get some butter on my elbow from the sort of butter residue on the dish. My first thought was the scene from Harry Potter in which Ginny sticks her elbow in the butter dish because she has a crush on Harry and is nervous.

My first reaction was, oddly enough, to rub it in. Now I’m comparing my elbows, and I’ve been thinking. Could ordinary butter be the solution to dry elbows?

Betty Botter Bought some Butter
“But,” she said “this butter’s bitter.”
“If I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter.”
So Betty Botter bought some better butter for her batter.

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Journal

Tired of AM talk radio

I am tired of talk radio on AM. It blares from every radio in the house with ever-increasing volume. Always KRLA with people like Dennis Prager and Michael Medved and always some sort of controversial topic. And while more often than not I’d generally agree with the hosts, it’s definitely not something I want to hear 24 hours a day. It’s not something I want to eat lunch listening to. But it is, it’s buzzing from the clock radio in my grandparents’ bedroom, blaring from the stereo in the den, playing loud and clear from my grandfather’s “shop” boom box in the back yard, and even streaming on my grandparents’ computer. I always try to turn off the streaming one when I’ve noticed that it’s on and nobody is in there because, well, it’s streaming.

But really, I went into the kitchen and I was making some shells and cheese for lunch. Getting tired of the hugely loud talk radio discussion about the 9/11 movie, I changed it to the classical music station. There was no one else in the kitchen or the two rooms on either side of it. Several minutes later my grandfather came in the door and put something down on the table, then he went outside. About a minute later I realized that the radio had been turned back to the talk radio. He had changed the radio and left the room again!

Okay, I love my grandparents, I really really do. But sometimes I just don’t understand. Who knew there could even be so many radios in one house. Why does there need to be talk radio playing at all times in every room? I’m not against spoken audio, I mean, I love podcasting and I listen to tons of podcasts. Another thing that I notice is that AM band radio doesn’t sound that great. I noticed that some of my grandfather’s favorite shows are now available as podcasts, some of the KRLA shows and also the NPR All Things Considered shows which they always listen to on Sunday afternoons, a welcome change. Even our church puts the sermons out as a podcast now. I brought up the concept of podcasting to my grandfather and the shows that were available and I even set up itunes to subscribe to some of the shows I thought he’d like with a smart playlist to show the most recent shows, but the sticking point seems to be that it isn’t live.

The point of it not being live confuses me. To me this seems like the opposite of the “time-shifting” revolution that everyone seems to want now, and I suppose it is. I realize that my grandfather is in his 70’s and live radio is what he’s used to, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to listen to audio that’s not live. At any rate, I’d be happy to have some of the radios playing something else for part of the day.

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Kids these days

Kids today compared to when you were a kid

I’ll be 22 in June. We always had a computer or two, at least at my grandparents’ house which is where I actually spent most of my time. Actually, I think they might still be in the closet somewhere. I wasn’t intune enough to know their specs at the time, but one was an IBM type with the yellow/black screen and a dot matrix printer that you could make banners on when someone had a birthday or came home with a new baby. The other was an apple that seemed to mostly play games, it had a green screen. My grandpa was an engineer.

I don’t know, I think that part of things like computers being incorporated into our lives is that we take them for granted. I mean, think of the things that we take for granted that people in past generations didn’t have? refridgerators, microwaves, etc.

I grew up and went to school in Orange County, CA

When I was little I’d play with dolls, barbies combined with other small toys like my little pony and quints. and when I was old enough I read. I read alot. I have two younger sisters.

I have a cousin whose 8. She’s my uncle’s daughter, and her mother started leaving them and other behavior like that when she was 2. Sidney(cousin) is a very smart girl, but she’s not always respectful. I think part of the problem is that my grandma always lets her get away with things. She says it’s because Sidney always has to go where she’s told and doesn’t have a choice. She’s a kid, that’s what you do when you’re a kid. You go home when your parents say it’s time to go home. I don’t understand why she’s allowed to watch pet ER while we’re having dinner.

We first got internet access in I think 1995. Maybe early ’94. We got dial-up and I used netscape 3.0

when I see the jr high kids walking down the street after school, I think it looks about the same as when I was their age. I mean, styles have changed but there are some kids who dress younger, and some who try to dress older, like when I was their age.

But school seems to have changed. Even high school is different from when I left it. I graduated in 2001, and my younger sisters currently go to the high school I attended. There are more dress code rules. My freshman year in high school there were, like, three dress code rules. There are more graduation requirements. I was fortunate enough to graduate before Algebra 1 was required which is lucky because I failed the second semester of it like three times. There’s this test now that you have to pass to graduate, although my sister said she already took it and it’s easy. Even the policies for picking kids up from school are different. Now siblings can’t pick up students without a note from the parents. Or they call the parents for confirmation, even if they’re going home sick through the nurse’s office(that’s the one that seems silly to me. I mean, I’m on her emergency card. She went through the nurse, they called me to pick her up… you still need to talk to my mom?)

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What is this wet stuff?

It’s raining really hard. I can’t even remember the last time I saw it rain this hard. There are huge puddles all over the place. I must say that driving in the rain in my mom’s car is alot easier than in mine. The wipers work, and it doesn’t leak and it isn’t as slippery. I found a raincoat in the hall closet, and I put it on. I think it’s my grandmother’s but it was pretty nice. A long heather purple coat with buttons and a tie. That’s about the only nice thing about rain.

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Enough Excitement

There has been too much going on for so early in the day. My cell phone was already kind of broken, but it still kind of worked, but when Jerrod called me this morning and I tried to answer it it just broke. whatever had been keeping it actually functioning must have broken. Great. I had to look up his number from a gmail he’d sent with it inside one time when I’d left my phone somewhere. It was totally early, by the way. And I called him from the house phone. Then I called my dad to tell him about how completely broken my phone was now, and as soon as I was back in bed my grandma came in all frantic and said she needed my help but the proceeded to run out the front door. I figured the dog must have gotten out. I wasn’t dressed so I went back to put on some jeans and a sweatshirt over my pajama top. Then I had to run back to slip on shoes. I asked if belle got out, and she said she got belle but Daisy is missing. Daisy is my uncle’s dog who is big and yellow and has a bad hip. Oh dear. So I went down the street from a different direction and found her halfway down the street. She came, but followed her own path getting home. It’s too early for this stuff.

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Aught 5

First blog of Augt 5. I’m excited about being able to say it’s Aught 5. I hope I’m writing that out correctly. I spent a while thinking about it and guessed that it would indeed be aught because of course naught means, like, none or nothing, I googled it and dictionary.com confirmed my suspsion. I’m sure you’ll also notice that I’ve changed my blog’s style. I like to leave my decor up till New Years, so I had to take it down today. I’m still very much enjoying the corkboard theme, and It’s been fun changing the background pattern and colors as I think the corkboard looks great with all of them. I went with the hearts partially because when I went into target the day after Christmas they already had the Valentine’s Day merchandise out, and I can’t resist all the pink and heart-shaped stuff.

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Redefining Laziness

Apparently, some people are doing that very thing, in which the dictionary will someday read like this.

Lazy – Working 100 hours a week and on holidays, including Easter, the most important holiday of the year, the celebration of the most important historical event in human history.

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Real Lame

Is it just me, or is Real Media, like, the lamest format ever. When you play a vidoe in real format, it acts like it’s streaming and buffers and stuff, even if it’s playing off your hard drive. At one time, maybe it was fine, but it just seems silly now. Why is it even still used, and why is it not at least improved?

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The Weather

Someone asked me how the weather was today. The weather? It seemed so strange to me. What is there to say? it’s not raining or anything. It’s just normal. I said. Jerrod said that California is really one of the only places you can say that. It seems normal to me. I always thought that talking about the weather was a joke from The Music Man. Surely there’s nothing to actually say, is there?