A Fool of Myself

Well, we did it. After months of deliberation, we have finally decided to add another member to our family. Last Friday, Ravi and I went to the vet for a check up and shots, and while we were there, we met Cosmo. Cosmo had been found in a crate on the side of a road, and a client of our vet brought him in. He’s been the resident office cat for the last few weeks, but the friendly staff at Cobblestone Veterinary Hospital have been looking for a permanent home for Cosmo.

And Cosmo was exactly what we were looking for: Bombay mix, male, neutered, with claws.

So we brought him home today. The adoption isn’t official; we’re seeing how he fits into our family for a few days. He’s made himself right at home, much to the dismay of Ravi, Cat Numero Uno. We made the mistake of letting Cosmo roam around on his own, and poor Ravi has been beside himself, hiding under one of our end tables. We’re currently trying to repair the damage we’ve already caused by leaving Cosmo in our office. He has quite the set up in there: litterbox, water, food, office chair, and plenty of toys.

I’ll keep you posted on Ravi’s bruised ego and Cosmo’s adjustment to the family. And soon I’ll be able to tell you if we’re officially adopting him and what his new name will be!

I’ve been tagged by kch at Run Faster to write a six-word memoir, which means I have to sum up the last 25 years of my life in six little words. I can say with confidence that one theme continues to pop up in the decisions I make, the random things I do, and in what happens to me:

Beat my own path. Never looked back.

Now it’s my turn to play tag, and these peeps of mine should write up some fine memoirs:

• Linden at L’s Pensieve
• lori at The McDonald Family Spot
• sarahTheQueen
• Cubicle Queen at Daily Adventures
• lifestudent at A Marathon Leap

And here are the rules of this little meme:

1. Write your own six word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag at least five more blogs with links.
5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

Editor’s Note Due to some protests that my six-word memoir is actually seven, I’m slightly revising it:

Blazed own path. Never looked back.

There. Are you all happy now?

If you hang around the blogosphere long enough, you’re going to run into Feedburner, a sort of Pimp My Ride for RSS feeds. Feedburner lets you track your feed subscribers, add flare to each item, recruit subscribers, and make money from your feed. In my Blogger’s Guide to Feedburner series, I’ll help you set up your own Feedburner feed and dissect the service with you. In this post, we’ll set up your feed and familiarize ourselves with the Feedburner interface. Interested?

Setupize

1. Go to Feedburner.com, and create your own Feedburner account. When you log in, you’ll either be directed to the My Feeds page or to a page that prompts you for a feed URL. Regardless, you’ll need your blog’s original RSS feed URL. Since you probably don’t know it off the top of your head, open a new tab or window, go to your blog, and double-click the orange RSS icon in the URL bar. (If the RSS icon isn’t present on your blog, you probably have the RSS feed turned off. Double check your feed settings from your blogging interface’s dashboard.)
2. When you double-click the RSS icon, you’ll most likely be directed to another page. Every browser renders this page a bit differently, so look for a URL (either on the page or in the URL bar) that resembles http://blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default or http://blogname.wordpress.com/feed/atom. Copy this URL, and paste it in the Burn a Feed Right This Instant text box. Click Next.
3. On the Welcome! Let Us Burn a Feed for You page, enter a feed title and edit your feed’s URL. The title and URL can be whatever you like; generally, the title should match that of your blog, and the URL should be similar to your blog title (subject to availability). If you’re going to change your feed’s URL, do it now. While you can go back and change it later, any subscribers you have will also have to update the feed URL in their feed readers. When you’re finished, click Activate Feed.
4. On the Congrats! page, click Next.
5. On the Get More Gusto page, you’ll see a handful of options to track some statistics for your feed and your blog. In my experience, these additional stats are not particularly helpful, especially if you’re already using Google Analytics. (Analytics is Google’s free web statistics program. To learn more, check out Linden’s Google Analytics blog series.) Click Next.
6. On the Your Feed is Ready for the World page, there are a few further instructions for specific blogging interfaces. If you’re using Blogger, click Redirect Your Blogger Feed to Your Feedburner Feed. On the new page that opens, skip down to Tracking 100% of your Feed Traffic, and follow directions 1-6. If you’re using WordPress, you needn’t do anything else to set up your blog.

Familiarize
Now that your feed is burned, familiarize yourself with the Feedburner interface, especially what you’ll be using most often. In the top left corner, you’ll see My Feeds, My Networks (we’ll discuss these on Monetize day), and My Account. On the My Account page, you have the option to edit your settings and add features to your account. On the My Feeds page, you’ll see a list of your feeds and their corresponding number of subscribers. When you click on a feed title, you’ll be directed to that feed’s Stats Dashboard. From here you can edit your feed’s details, delete the feed, or transfer the feed. You can also Analyze, Optimize, Publicize, Monetize, and Troubleshootize your feed. We’ll look at these more closely in coming posts.

Your feed is well on its way to being pimped out. In the coming posts, we’ll look at Analyzing, Optimizing, Publicizing, Monetizing, and Troubleshootizing your feed. For next week, subscribe to your blog using the new URL, and write a test post. If your feed isn’t working, we’ll address possible problems then.

• Monday: 3 easy miles
• Tuesday: Tone to the Max (60 min.) + Yoga for Athletes (40 min.)
• Wednesday: 5 easy miles
• Thursday: Tone to the Max (60 min.) + Yoga for Athletes (40 min.)
• Friday: Cycling (45–60 min.)
• Saturday: 6 easy miles
• Sunday: Rest

1. It would get me gifts.
2. I wanted to make someone jealous.
3. I wanted to be popular.
4. I wanted to enhance my reputation.
5. I wanted to say, “Thank you.”
6. I wanted to say, “I missed you.”
7. I desired emotional closeness.
8. I wanted to put passion back into my relationship.
9. I wanted to show my affection for the person.
10. I wanted to change the topic of conversation.

I’m so glad it’s Friday again! This week has been busy, but I have some worthwhile reading for you. Today you’ll note that there’s not the usual proliferation of fitness/health/running posts; instead I’ve got several cool designer-type stuff for you to check out.

• Bathtub With Built-In Bookshelves It’s no secret that I love books and bookshelves. And I can think of no better way to remodel a bathroom than with a bathtub that also moonlights as a library.
• Couple Wants Wedding Reception at Apple Store OK, so I didn’t get on the Mac train until I met my husband, and personally, I only have an iPod Shuffle, but I have dreams of owning my own MacBook one day. That said, I don’t think anyone can say that Apple Stores are not some of the coolest places to shop, so who wouldn’t want to have a wedding reception there? Why didn’t we think of that?
• Photoshop Express Now Online The designer that is slowly growing in me (courtesy of my hubby) is excited to try out the newly-released Photoshop Express, an free, online version of the photo-editing program we’ve all come to know and love.
• Pantone Offers Colorful Flash Drives I sent this to my hubby today because as a designer, he sort of lives and breathes by Pantone, the color authority in printing and design and the world. So now they’re offering flash drives in signature Pantone colors. If only they Pantone pens, i which I could choose the perfect pigment (in a Uniball pen, of course) with which to write and edit.
• Tricks From Madonna’s Trainer (via Daily Mail) I have envied Madonna’s toned arms (and mad dance skills) for a very long time, and now I know her secret! It’s her trainer and a repertoire of low weights/high reps and dancing.
• Letter To a Great Guy This one is a little random, and you have to watch the video and read the whole letter to really understand it, but here’s the gist: This guy was the first Canadian to medal in gymnastics. He broke both his legs in a training exercise. And he’s hoping to make a comeback. Yeesh!
• Do You Use Recycle Your Grocery Bags? My grocery store started selling reusable grocery sacks this winter, and I picked up a few at the first opportunity. Our consumption of plastic grocery sacks has gone down by an estimated 95%! What are you doing to be green today?

That’s your reading for the weekend! Enjoy

I took a little spring break earlier in March to go home and visit my family. Ah, family. Yes, mine is as crazy as the next, but I think this takes the cake: My mother has joined the sheriff’s posse.

My experience with the sheriff’s posse is slim; namely, I remember seeing them at events like rodeos and demolition derbies sitting astride their horses and ensuring that drunken chaos never ensued. Apparently, as I’ve been corrected, the sheriff’s posse does more than what I’ve described. If activated by the sheriff, they have the “authority” of the Henry County Sheriff’s Department and can take action—whatever that means. More than likely, if they’re activated, they’ll be called upon to do sweeps and searches and such.

So Mom (and my aunt and uncle) filled out their applications and were approved by the sheriff, which is no surprise to me because my mom has been on the HCSD’s A list since I was a kid:

• We moved out of town when I was in first grade, and during the week, my dad worked away from home, so it was just Mom, Jacob, and me in our house and just a handful of neighbors on our dead-end road. At the time, the 100-year-old cemetery on the corp ground just two miles behind our house was the party scene for local carousers, and the unusual amount of traffic generated by weekend parties prompted Mom to call the sheriff’s department time after time until local partiers got tired of fleeing from law enforcement every weekend. At some point, they found a new party spot, and Mom could sleep peacefully.
• In 2003, Mom’s daughter dated the deputy sheriff for about six months, and Mom got to know him pretty well. Now they’re on a first-name basis.
• In 2007, Mom was chosen by the sheriff to serve on a grand jury for a high-profile (for Henry Co. anyway) manslaughter case.
• And just this winter, Mom got a late-night visit from a pair of deputies who were looking for a stray teenage girl (who had been with friends at the cemetery when they abandoned her and who made her way to Mom’s house in the middle of the night).

At first, I thought this whole sheriff’s posse escapade was just another excuse for Mom to take her horse Duke out (after all, they get ride in local parades)—and part of me still thinks that’s an alternative motive—but it’s fun to see Mom do something a little out of the ordinary. Of course, this doesn’t surprise me—she’s always marched to the beat of a different drummer, and that’s probably why I do, too. I have an excellent example to follow!

One of friends who shall not be named sent me an e-mail yesterday asking if these people were in my family just because they’re from the same area where I grew up. And no, they’re not (but I did have to verify that with my mother last night). They do, however, live just a few miles from where my mother grew up and where my grandparents still live.I admit that I laughed a little when I heard the story: A redneck from backwoods Missouri used his .22 pistol to shoot a hole through a wall while he was installing his satellite dish and accidentally shot his wife. Sounds like something from CSI, doesn’t it? But this woman was a wife and a mother, and she was killed. That’s not funny at all.

So today I’m sort of in this weird mood about this news story. Part of me sincerely hurts for this family because they’ve lost someone who was very special to them. Part of me just wants to shake my head at the stupid things people do. And part of me wants to watch this video again, so I can laugh at myself and say, “I used to date the spokesman for the Henry County Sheriff’s Department!”

That’s right, the guy with the impeccable hair speaking for the HCSD is one in the long line of hearts I broke before settling down and marrying the man of my dreams!

Turns out I can’t do everything. I try to do everything, and most of the time, I can do most things pretty well. And if I’m completely clueless, I usually hike up my pants, say to myself, “You’ve got a Master’s degree. You can figure it out,” and give it my best shot.

And that’s how my morning started. By 10:30, the seemingly simple switch from cable to DSL at work had me cursing under my breath. Turns out, I’m not good at networking: computer or social.

Next time, I’ll leave it to the experts (i.e. Ben, the rockin’ LPC intern).

• Monday: 3 easy miles
• Tuesday: Tone to the Max (60 min.) + Yoga for Athletes (40 min.)
• Wednesday: 4 easy miles
• Thursday: Tone to the Max (60 min.) + Yoga for Athletes (40 min.)
• Friday: Cycling (45–60 min.)
• Saturday: 5 easy miles
• Sunday: Rest