Facebook is weird.

I am not a huge fan of Facebook. In fact, Facebook is lucky if I log on once a month. Recently, however, I’ve had more people requesting to be my friend and such. People from high school that weren’t even my friends or people I barely talked to suddenly want to be my “friend” on Facebook. Why? So they’ll be able to boast that they have 200+ friends and need little ol’ me to push their friend count higher? Do they have any intention of establishing a meaningful relationship with me? Are they just bored and adding everyone they’ve ever known regardless if they even like that person or not? It all seems a little silly to me.

I usually don’t add people to my friends list on any site unless I know them from somewhere whether it’s real life or an online community like The Quilting Bee. This week though, I’ve added a few new “friends” to my Facebook, all of whom I went to school with at one time or another. Once of which was never really a “friend” of mine. I barely spoke to her the whole time we went to high school together, although we did have a few classes together. I decided to be nice and go ahead and add her (out of curiosity mostly). Last night I spent some time looking through her photos on Facebook, and it was indeed confirmed that she married this guy we went to school with. They dated in high school (and they were sort of this odd couple), and are now married and appear to have a daughter. I felt kind of slimy looking at her photos. It was like I was spying on her life or something. It felt sort of uncomfortable. After it was all over, I felt kind of bad that I had wasted 20 minutes or so of my life that I will never get back.

Let me just add in here that I haven’t really stayed close friends with anyone from high school. I really had no desire or need to. Does that make me an awful person? Were my friends really my friends if I don’t even associate with them now? On the flip side of the creepiness of looking through people’s photos, I did have two girls add me as their friend on Facebook, and it was kind of nice to hear from them and how they remembered good times we had in high school. One congratulated me on my marriage and wanted to know what I’ve been up to for the past 7 years. I just still find the whole concept of Facebook a little bizarre, and it’s kind of a more upscale MySpace in my opinion.

What do you think about Facebook? Do you add everyone you know to your friend list, or do you just add people you are friends with? Do you use Facebook to satisfy your curiosities about people you used to know? Why would someone want to have over 200 “friends” on Facebook if they don’t even know, like, or care about some of them?

I posted a little snippet on Monday about how school let out at 12:45 that day. We were supposed to get some pretty bad winter weather and… we did! It began to snow, freeze rain, and all of that wintry mix stuff. Needless to say, on Tuesday schools were closed. Colin still had to work because the college he works at like never closes. On Tuesday (last) night, a state of emergency was declared in my county. Schools were closed today too. Colin left to go to work, and I checked the college website one last time after he left, and turns out, the college DID close today! He got to come home! It was neat that both of us got a snow day together. And guess what - tomorrow there is no school either! I am so thrilled!

We haven’t had decent snow days in a long time! While we don’t have a lot of snow, we do have a lot of ice. Ice is all over everything. A lot of people were without power which is part of the reason a state of emergency was declared. The sun actually came out for awhile today, so some of the ice has started to melt. If it gets warm enough tomorrow more should melt, and we should go to school on Friday, but who knows! I was expecting I might have to go tomorrow. It’s neat to work at a school and still get snow days.

This does mean that I will need to get an extension on the testing I’ve been doing in the lab though.

Could it be? I am actually writing on my blog? *gasp!*

So, many of you probably wonder where I have been and what have I been doing all the time I have been MIA. One word can sum most everything up - work.

I’ve been super busy at work. ESS (extended school) has started back, so I do that on Mondays and Wednesdays until 4:00. By the time I get home from work, I am just exhausted. I don’t feel motivated to do a whole lot. Ever since I got my laptop, my desktop has been rather lonely and is probably collecting dust. Since most of my files and stuff are on my desktop, I haven’t been working very much on my website or anything. In other words, one of my favorite hobbies (aka the internet) has been on vacation. At least, my blogging has been on vacation. I have many emails I need to reply to as well. I’m trying to get caught up on everything. I still have to add a whole ton of cauldrons from The Quilting Bee Halloween Activity. Pathetic. I’ve been visiting the blogs I frequently visit, but since several of them are participating in NaBloPoMo I haven’t been able to keep up very well.

Okay, enough with the explanations and/or excuses. I haven’t actually been at work this whole time. I mean, I do get to come home every afternoon. I’ve been doing some pretty neat things. For example, I have made my very own lip balms, bath salts, sugar face scrub, and soaps. Making lip balm is really yummy. I love my peppermint kind. In fact, I’m planning on making a whole bunch of bath/body stuff to give as Christmas presents. I’ve also been working with Sculpey/Fimo more. I made a cute little octopus. He was a test of sorts. He turned out pretty good. I think I’m going to make some charms and other jewelry out of clay. An octopus is a good practice animal because it’s only made of little balls of clay.

I painted this one with pearlized acrylics. He reminds me of bubblegum. I also sewed a little tree softie. I got the template for it from a really cool book called Softies. There are some neat projects in there. I didn’t follow the pattern exactly. For example, my eyes are different, and I didn’t give him a mouth. This was a practice tree. I didn’t have the right colors of thread to use. The leaves would look better with colored thread instead of black. It was good experience though. I sewed the trunk and leaves on the tree using my sewing machine. The rest I hand sewed.

The artist who created the cute tree pattern has a website called Little Odd Forest. Check it out for some super cool stuff.

Here’s the other bit of excitement that’s happened. Last Friday night, Colin and I were going to go see The Bee Movie. Before we went, I decided I was going to try to make some beads from clay. I started cutting my clay with this flexible blade that I bought. After cutting a few pieces, my finger got in the way, and I sliced through my finger. It made an awful sound. A little flap of skin was hanging from my finger. I didn’t freak out too bad. I ran water over it and wrapped it up. I decided I probably needed a doctor to look at it.

I went to the doctor and ended up having to have four stitches. The two shots the doctor gave me numbed three of my fingers and bruised me really bad. I’m still bruised. I also had to have a tetanus shot. That made my arm hurt all week. I’m supposed to get my stitches removed sometime this weekend or possibly Monday. I am afraid it’s going to hurt. Wish me luck with that. It’s my ring finger on my right hand and since I am right handed, doing even the simplest things have been tricky. I have a new respect for people who are missing a finger or limb.

Oh! Duran Duran’s new album, Red Carpet Massacre, came out on the 13th. I had to buy it, of course. I love Duran Duran. I was a little worried about this album. They did some work with Justin Timberlake and Timbaland. As a result, the songs are very R&B-ish (not my usual style). The more I listen to it, the more I will get used to it I know. It was just pretty disappointing. Their last two albums have been totally awesome. The only standout song from Red Carpet Massacre is Falling Down. The video for that was apparently banned in England for nudity and such. Typical Duran Duran. Anyway, if you’re looking for some new music to check out, check out Duran Duran’s Red Carpet Massacre.

Thank God it is Friday. I so need a break. Work today was especially busy for me. Next week I only have to work two days because of….Thanksgiving! Yay! A five day weekend!

P.S. I’ll try to blog more often. Also– I am working on my new layout again. Hopefully I’ll get that up before December. No promises though.

I last updated here on September 25th. Shame on me.

I just wanted to post real quick and let everyone know what the scoop is.

I’ve been sick for going on 3 weeks now. I’ve missed 3 days of work, had a week of Fall Break, celebrated Canada Thanksgiving, and went on a mini-vacation with Colin to Chattanooga, Tennessee. I took almost 1000 pictures while in Chattanooga. I hope to upload the pics sometime soon. I have to go back to work on Monday. I’m not really looking forward to it. I won’t go into a lot of details about that right now….

I’ve been in a crafty sort of mood. I have so many ideas about things I want to make!! Now all I need is time to do it all in. Hopefully, I’ll make some progress with that soon.

Oh, and I’ve pretty much got my new layout finished. I’ve just been tweaking things for a couple of weeks now. Should be totally done soon. *hopefully*

Tonight is the last race of the season for my dad. *crosses her fingers for him* Hopefully he’ll do pretty good. It’s going to get cold tonight though. I’m going to have to bundle up. Hopefully I won’t cough too much and annoy people. I have been coughing so much I annoy myself.

This post feels so cheesy! Oh well. My blog.

Yesterday I got to thinking about fish. I needed to clean Chunk’s tank, and I was thinking how he looked lonely. I thought maybe I’d get him a friend. Of course, Chunk is huge. He possibly might have eaten one of my fish before who went missing. Also, he’s in a 10 gallon tank by himself. If I got him a friend, I’d probably need a 20 gallon tank. Then I was thinking how I wanted another betta fish. While in the swimming pool with Colin, I decided I wanted to go to the pet store.

I actually went to Wal-Mart first. Apparently, they don’t sell fish there anymore (not here anyway), which is good because last time I looked at fish at Wal-Mart, every single fish in every single tank was belly-up dead. Terrible. I went to our small, local pet store E&L Pets to see what they had. I found a nice 20 gallon tank with stand for about $140.00. I don’t think I really need to spend that much money on fish right now. So, I decided I probably wouldn’t be getting a friend for Chunk or a bigger tank. I looked at the betta fish, but none of them really jumped out at me.

I came home empty-handed. I did some looking online to see about finding a good gravel cleaner to use on Chunk’s tank. I came across this one that looked really good at PetSmart. Unfortunately, the closest PetSmart is in Evansville, Indiana. After agonizing over what to do, I decided at 6:30 I wanted to go to PetSmart. Colin hates fish. He wasn’t too happy about my decisions, but we went with me anyway.

When we got to PetSmart, we looked for the gravel cleaner thing, but all they had was a 50 foot one. I had wanted the 25 foot one. We got some cat food, cat litter, the 50 foot monster, and then I started looking at fish. I looked through all the betta fish (and there was a lot). I finally found a tiny female I liked that was kind of iridescent blue. She also has a sort of rainbowy patch by her face. I looked around at the other fish too, and found some Calico Telescope fish that caught my eye. The biggest one in the tank is the one I noticed first. It was a pretty fish. And then I noticed… the fish only had one eye.

A one-eyed fish? I had to have it. I decided at that instant I wanted that fish. I decided I’d put him in the 5 gallon tank and not get a betta fish. I asked the lady if something was wrong with the fish. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t sick or something. I thought maybe an eye was missing because another fish ate it off or something barbaric like that. I noticed there was a smaller one in the tank with only one eye too. She went to ask her manager about it. I waited for what seemed like forever. When she finally came back, she said nothing was wrong with the fish. He just has one eye. She also said PetSmart couldn’t sell me the fish because they can’t sell animals with missing body parts or ones with extra body parts. But… she said they could adopt him out to me and let me have him for free. So of course, I snatched him up.

Colin reminded me that I have several small betta tanks I could use if I still wanted to get a betta fish too. Duh! So, I grabbed the female I had been looking at and we headed to the check-out lines.

While standing in line, the girl in front of me told me how pretty Mr. One-Eye was. I think she was curious why it said “free” on his bag. I told her why he was free and that I wanted him because I have a one-eyed cat. She told her mom, so then the mom had to look at it. Then the cashier girl had to show it to another girl who works there and tell her how I am getting a one-eyed fish because I have a one-eyed cat. Yes, it seemed everyone was interested in my slightly handicapped pet choices. The total came to like $100.00. Once outside I looked at my receipt. They had charged me too much for the gravel cleaner. I went back inside to check, and suddenly there were 25 foot cleaners on the shelf. So, I exchanged the 50 foot one for the 25 foot one and got $32 back.

We got home at around 10:00. Colin read the directions for the gravel pump. We couldn’t hook it to the kitchen sink, so we had to hook it to the bathroom one. It wasn’t working like it was supposed to. We finally got it to work, then it stopped working. It was very frustrating. Water was everywhere. The bathroom sink was filling up and not draining fast enough. Colin began pulling wads of hair out of it. Hair that wasn’t ours. :sick: It was pretty rough for awhile. We were both tired and getting frustrated. Finally, we gave up. Colin went to Kroger and bought more water, and I started cleaning the gravel like I always do which takes forever. I think we finally got all 3 fish settled into their own tanks at around 1:30-ish in the morning (Chunk, Dazzle the betta, and Freebie. We were tired and hungry so… we went to McDonald’s and got Happy Meals.

Sometimes I feel like an old lady. Like, seriously. I have so many health related issues. Granted, none of them are serious, so I am thankful for that. At this moment my head and neck hurt, my left ankle and foot have been sore for a few days (it hurts to walk on it, no idea what I did), my eyes feel sore, I have a feminine issue, and I’m tired. It could be much worse of course. It’s just silly sometimes how “old” my body feels. I’m 24 years old for crying out loud! Oh well. This probably sounds dramatic.

I joined StumbleUpon and installed the Firefox toolbar. I’ve found some cool sites so far. This one is pretty neat. It’s an interactive web radio. You choose the genres you like, and then click on a mood, and it gives you a random song. It’s fun to play with, and colorful! Check it out!

So, I just installed and activated the flickrRSS plugin. I entered my ID.

Now I’ve got some strange dude’s pictures showing up in my sidebar. What gives?? I even used that idGettr to make sure I had the correct ID. My user name is squigglybee but when I enter that into the idGettr, it says “Uh oh. There was a problem.”

What did I do?!

Oh…..maybe it’s because I just joined Flickr and my account hasn’t been reviewed yet? So….I guess…I need to remove the code from my sidebar so I don’t have a strange dude showing up….

I don’t have a whole lot to say today. I didn’t work today.

I woke up this morning and went to pee as usual. As I was going to wash my face, I got really hot, really dizzy, and my chest hurt a little. I felt like I was gonna barf. I knew I needed to sit/lie down as soon as possible. I walked out of the bathroom and headed for the bedroom.

When I open my eyes, I’m next to the bookshelf in the hallway on the floor. I didn’t know where I was at first. Then I realized Colin and Pouncy were sitting on the floor next to me. Pouncy was chewing on my hair going, “meow, meow, meow” which translates to “mommy! what are you doing on the floor!?”

So yeah. I passed out. I have rug burns on my knees. The right one really stings. My head was also a little sore. I had clipped my hair clip onto my nightgown, so luckily I didn’t fall on top of that or that would have really hurt.

Needless to say, I didn’t go to work today. I felt weird after passing out. I was supposed to start the Scott Foresman online testing today, but I just did not feel like going to work after passing out.

Anyway, staying home from work meant I got to see Pouncy in her super-crazy-hyper morning mood, watch Digimon with Colin, and realx and hang out. Yay for rest.

Spring break is next week. Whoo-hooo!

I just ranged on my local library. The site is http://www.publiclibrary.org and it is a disgrace! Here’s the email I sent them:

I have lived Hopkins County for all of my life, and I must say that I am highly disappointed by your website. You have a domain name that could get you so much traffic. I imagine other libraries would kill to have the domain publiclibrary.org And yet, you do virtually nothing with this website. Much of the content hasn’t been updated in forever even though people have submitted link changes (AR list link changes, for example). It’s highly unattractive. The navigation is in no logical order and is confusing. It’s hard to find the information you’re looking for. It comes across as very unprofessional and unorganized. The flashing graphics included on several pages are un-necessary and slow down connection speeds for patrons using dial-up internet. You shouldn’t include the date the page was updated unless you plan on updating it frequently. I found several pages that were last updated in 2004. The preschool page is a rainbow mess. This is all very distracting to a patron.

I believe you need to find a professional web designer to design your website. It needs a major overhaul. It makes me sad to see my local library make itself look so amateur. I would like to see the website look more updated and professional. I suspect that visually imparied patrons could probably not utilize this website at all because I am guessing this website does not meet accessability standards. I tested the site with the W3C Markup Validation (http://validator.w3.org/) service and found it to have 579 errors. I also tested it with Bobby/WebXact (http://webxact.watchfire.com/) and it does not comply with all of the automatic and manual checkpoints of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

By the way, I tried to type in my web address in your contact form, and it doesn’t even give you enough room to do that….

I’ve tried to get them to change typos and mistakes on their site several times. I also sent them the new link for the Accelerated Reader lists like 2 months ago or something (?) It’s just so sad that their site is so bad. I wish someone would email me back, but I expect they won’t. I don’t think they even check their email….

Oh, I am so tired. I had a mega-busy day at work today. First, I finally discovered how to get the Scott Foresman online reading assessments working. So, I had to create classes for each grade level, enter in ALL the students’ names in the school in 1st - 5th grade, and create their user names and passwords. I started workijng on this two days ago I think. I finally finished up this afternoon. Also, I had many updates to the school website to work on: creating new daily activity pages, adding more On Demand instruction information, and a couple of ORQ’s (open response questions). Not only that, my room was a revolving door all day of 4th graders working on their portfolio pieces. The thing that exhausted me the most was trying to teach 2nd graders how to type using Microsoft Word. Yeah….

So as the world knows, Sanjaya didn’t get voted out last night. He didn’t even fall into the bottom three. I am disturbed. I don’t know what is wrong with America. Chris Sligh should have made it way beyond Sanjaya and Haley both. At least Blake is still there, safe and sound for now.
I’m going to watch Survivor in about 15 minutes. Survivor is getting pretty boring these days. Same old, same old. I still think they need to have a special Survivor where game show hosts compete. Like, Ryan Seacrest, Jeff Probst, Phil from The Amazing Race, and Julie Chen from Big Brother could all be on there. I think it would be funny.
The weather has been so nice lately! It’s 72 right now. I’ve been wearing skirts all this week. It’s felt great. It did pour down rain yesterday and the other night, but at least we didn’t get the bad severe weather that some places did.

I’m working on a header image, and I added a little “Random Comments” section over in the sidebar. I’ll probably make some pretty random comments there. Should be fun.
Tomorrow is Friday! Hooooo-ray!!

I am seriously disturbed. How is it that Sanjaya still remains on American Idol? He’ll be on the live tour. He’ll be on the American Idol CD. He is just wrong on so many levels. The guy NEVER sings! He just does weird, funky things. I liked him during the auditions. Now…I wish his hair would get an infection and cause him to have to drop out of the competition.
I still like Blake. He’s my favorite! Go Blake! Didn’t like your song choice tonight dude, but you’re still cool by me!

On a side note- I got the Gravatar plugin to work. Yay for little tiny images!

Yesterday was another super nice day. I think it must have been around 80 degrees (F). Colin and I went to Subway to get lunch. We took it to the park and found a nice picnic table in a semi-shady area next to the water. We had a visitor. Meet Beuford.

Beuford, as Colin affectionately named him, was only a few feet away from us almost the whole time. I tossed him a piece of my bread. He eventually got in the water and swam away. He was a funny dude. I took more pictures, and when I get a Flickr account, I’ll post more photos there.

After eating our lunch, Colin and I played “baseball.” This means, we each had our glove and a baseball. Some people would call this “playing catch,” but it’s the closest I get to playing baseball!
Let’s see, yesterday evening we watched a very interesting show on TLC about these two conjoined twins who turned 16. They look like one person, but with two heads. We also watched The Amazing Race. Tonight I’m excited because TLC is finally going to bring back One Week to Save Your Marriage with Dr. Robi. I thought the show got cancelled or something because it was never on anymore. I guess they were just making new episodes. Little People, Big World starts back at the beginning of April. Yay for TV!
I have ESS this afternoon from 3:00 - 4:00. As a matter of fact, I have it Monday - Thursday for the next two weeks! It can be quite boring sometimes. Oh well. Working extra days means extra pay at least. Spring Break get here soon!

So, I’ve just been tweaking a few things here and there. I changed my WP URL in my admin, so now all the links point to the correct place.

Colin and I got our first Netflix of the movie earlier- Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny. Oh yeah. Seriously messed up. It was a good laugh though. Our next movie is about some feral children.
My arm and hand are soooo sore right now, so expect a lengthy post tomorrow full of juicyness.

i got a wedding dress on saturday. ^___________^ it’s so lovely-riffic! i wanna wear it now. ^____^ if i did, i’d get more kisses from brandon. (brandon, one of my third graders, has kissed me twice now…)

(i think most everyone knows, but i haven’t posted here in awhile…i’m getting married!!)

we went to pennyrile on sunday. my mom was supposed to talk to someone today, but i think we’re probably booked for june 16th, a friday. (is it june yet?)

mrs. williams is so demanding. she wants specific hallway displays, lesson plans full of stuff, she’s going to start checking our plans on monday for the whole week, etc. etc. etc. but…whatever! apparently (i heard this from anne) the lady at the board of education has never seen a school with so many unhappy interns (my school). it’s not just me. yay. ^__^

report cards went home today. well..they were supposed to. about 5 of my kids got theirs. our assistant was working on all 3 classes report cards/forms to be sent home. the report cards are ridiculous. 4 separate ones (writing, math, reading, homeroom). there’s 3 carbon copy sheets and the white sheet has to be torn off… anyway, tandria didn’t finish my class. we got them finished after school. (and after our meeting. i left school at 5:00 :P)

i was supposed to be observed tomorrow but i got a message from the secretary saying anne had a family emergency. mrs. williams will be mad probably. oh well. my lesson will go on.

i did my first word wall activity today. the kids loved it. it was fun for me too! ^___^

it’s raining, cold, and it might snow. maaaaaybe the rain will freeze, it will snow, and school will be cancelled! *crosses fingers*

american idol is on tonight. yay! something to watch on tv finally!

I just typed this whole entry here, and then, it like…disappeared! Woosh! Gone! *lots of tongue sticking out!*

So anyway, there was the tornado in Madisonville. Katee hasn’t been to school since..Monday I guess. My parents don’t think they’ll go back until after Thanksgiving since it’s a short week this week. Lots of damage and destruction. Looks like a bomb was dropped from what I hear. Luckily, people had warning and time to go to someplace safe. The “tiny” town of Madisonville just got a bit tinier I guess.

We (Colin and me) went and saw Harry Potter Friday night. Colin thought we should wait until we go to Hopkins to see it, but I wanted to see it on opening night!! I bought our movie tickets online. Colin insisted we get there early. We got there almost an hour and a half before. There was no line, as I had predicted. ^_____^ We were one of the first few people to go in the theatre. We got to pick our seats and so we picked nice ones. ^____^ It was a good movie! Way, way, waaaaay better than the book in my opinion. ^____^

Short week this week! Yaaaaay! Whoooo-hooooo! Only two days of kids and school!!!

Some of my kids have been driving me bonkers. One boy has been doing cartwheels, throwing pencils, kicking chairs, and he has this insane maniac giggle he does. Anyway, Thursday he was placed on three drugs. Maybe he’ll be better? It’s sad the answer these days is to stick kids on a drug, but hey, maybe it’ll help him? Another boy has been totally off the wall. They’re both so distracting. Some days I want to yank my hair out and choke them. I’ve behaved though. ^____^ And survived.

Happy birthday to my mom and Lan!

She called me on the phone this morning and was like “Well, I haven’t heard from you.” And I’m thinking, “Do I usually call her before 1:00 on a Sunday?” I hung up and then it hit me- today is her birthday!! I called her back and admitted I was being dumb and wished her a happy birthday. I’d been thinking about her birthday all week! Oh well. ^___^;; She forgave me. She loves me still. ^_______^

Well, stuff to do, places to go, and all that jazz!