Random Giggles

There is a blog meme going around that I’ve heard someone is waiting for me to participate in. Unfortunately, I won’t be. At least not exactly.

The meme is a list of 100 books that you are supposed to mark the ones you have read. Unfortunately, how this list came to be is suspect. The meme starts by saying the list is apparently sponsored by the BBC. That word, “apparently” stood out to me.

I didn’t want a list that was apparently sponsored by someone if they had not actually sponsored it. So I went to the BBC website and found the actual list of books they did come up with. The actual list is different from the apparent list. The claim of how many the average adult has read on the list is completely bogus and does not come from the BBC at all.

I blame the folklore side of me for trying to track down the truth of this.

Here’s the actual book list. I’ve put the titles I’ve read in bold and put an asterisk in front of the ones I want to read. The ones I really liked get a smiley and a frowny next to the ones I really didn’t like.

BBC’s Big Read - the top 200 favorite books in the UK.

Edit: On second thought, that list was long and distracting here. I’ve made it a page on my B.Log. Go check it out there.

Now, for those of you who did the fake list, why not give the real list a try?

Also, what have we learned from this activity? We’ve learned that I have very different tastes in books from the BBC’s general audience. I have around 30 books on my to-read list right now, and not a one of them is actually on this list of 200 right here. And I’m not going to read a book just because it is on somebody’s list. There’s only so much time in this life, I want to spend it reading the books I want to read.

Also, we’ve learned I should not write blog posts when I’ve been dealing with financial aid stuff, or my lack thereof. It makes me cranky.

Do I read? Of course I read. I had to start a whole different blog just to keep track of my books. Of course it’s only a partial list from the last five years. All the books from before 2003 aren’t on that list. Go check out the other blog. Giggles Reads B.Log

By the end of this week I will be an aunt. I’m still not sure how I like the sound of that. But I’m excited for my nephew to be here. Several months ago my sister was helping a friend of hers make some receiving blankets. My brother-in-law commented to her that they looked real easy and she could make a bunch for their baby. My sister told him she didn’t need to because I was going to make blankets for their baby.

That’s my job in the family, I’m the blanket maker. And I’ve actually had to laugh at myself as I’ve found myself getting a bit defensive when I find out someone else has made a blanket for my nephew. I’m the blanket maker! Don’t they know that?

My sister was right though, I made a lot of blankets for the baby. My mom has one receiving blanket and four sets of bibs/burp rags to match it that she will bring to my sister when the baby is born. I mailed three more blankets with matching bibs and burp rags to my sister last Monday to make sure my nephew could come home from the hospital in a blanket I made him. And then I scrambled to finish his quilt. These are the three sets I mailed last week. I’ll have to see if my mom or sister can get a picture of the sets my mom has with her right now. I hope the kid likes ducks.

During the Olympics I worked on hand quilting my quilt, but I also took one week to cut, piece, and quilt Goobi’s quilt. I hope he likes frogs too. I love how this turned out. I got it in the mail Friday afternoon and mailed it priority. My sister got it yesterday. This is the quilt I had Brett oooo and aaaah over last week.42D

A friend of mine emailed me a few weeks ago and asked me what I knew about blogs because she was going to be teaching a lesson on them for an Enrichment Meeting in Relief Society. I then turned the question to people I know who blog. Together we all came up with some great information and put together a document with all of our ideas. I thought I’d share it with anyone else who is interested.

I want to thank all the contributers - Mr. Me, Book Guardian, Fran, Laylabean, Estrogen Garden, and Daphne’s Daddy.

If we missed an important point you want to share, feel free to add it as a comment to this post.

Security:

• Remember that unless you set it otherwise, anyone with the internet, anywhere in the world, can read your blog. And not everyone in the world is a good person.
• Do not give the full names of your kids. One parent I know uses just their first initials. Another parent gave her kids nicknames that she uses on their blog. She also would blur their faces slightly when posting pictures of them.
• Be careful when mentioning where you are, cities, schools, things that could be used to find your kids.
• It’s better to mention a vacation after you are back than before you leave. No sense telling everyone your house is going to be empty for that time.
• Blogs can be set to private so that only the people you invite can see them
• Tagging posts make them more searchable.
• Remember the privacy of others. If they aren’t your kids, don’t mention their names or specifics about them without talking to their parents first.
• Several people I know use nicknames when talking about other people, even other adults, to protect privacy.
• Individual posts can be marked as private and will not show up with the rest of your posts. The only time they will be shown is to you when you are logged in.
• If you are paying for your own domain, it can be worth it to pay the tiny extra to have an anonymous domain where there is no name or address associated with it when people look it up.

Comments:

• You can turn comments off completely
• You can set it so you have to approve them every time before they post.
• You can set them so that a person has to register before they can comment.
• You can set it so an email address (all blogs require an email address before you can comment) has to have an approved comment before it can comment again.
• You can have comment notifications emailed to you so you know when someone comments.

Blogger:

• Part of Google
• You have to have a Google account to create the blog and comment.
• Free
• Apparently blocks spam without you having to know about it.
• Free templates
• No coding knowledge needed - would definitely recommend Blogger to someone who has no previous web design experience

WordPress:

• Can be downloaded to your own server* if you have one.
• Can use their site for free as well (*do not have to have server).
• Comes with Akismet that holds spam so you can go through it occasionally and see if a real comment got marked as spam by accident
• Free templates (not as many as Blogger)
• Good support forum

Live Journal:

• Limits the number of links you can have.
• Comments are nested (so a comment on a comment will appear under that comment and indented rather than at the bottom of a list)
• Free

iWeb:

• Available on Macs
• You have to have your own paid for server or pay to upload it to their server to use it.
• Simple drag-and-drop layout for it.
• Is set up to do drag-and-drop podcasts as well.

Websites vs. Blogs:

• Blogs can be commented on
• Generally geared towards a specific purpose such as displaying a portfolio
• Blogs can be searched, tagged, indexed
• Usually need to know HTML/XHTML or web design to create a website

Pictures, Video, and Sound:

• Available photo systems: Flickr, Google’s Picasa (must have a google account)
• Crop your pictures. Lose the extra headroom, don’t cut people off at the joints (shoulders, elbows, waist, knees, ankles).
• Resize your pictures. Generally the size your camera takes is way too big for a computer screen, and it will take forever to load, especially if people are using dial-up instead of high speed internet. Anything below 450×600 is a good size.
• If you want to include videos use a software to compress before uploading or upload to Youtube and embed the code, or make it easy on yourself and link to it.
• If you are including photos or images on your blog, the polite thing is to host them yourself, either through something like Flickr, Picasa, or on your blog. Linking to photos hosted by other people without their permission uses their bandwidth and is considered bad form. Also remember many images on other sites could be copyrighted.
• Podcasts, an audio broadcast, can be added to your blog. You will need software (some can be downloaded for free) that lets you record sound and a computer microphone.

Reasons to Blog:

• Blogging is another type of journaling, only with pictures.
• Blog for yourself. If other people like it and read it, that can be fun, but it needs to be for you.
• Blogs are great places to list what you’ve done, where you’ve been, what you’ve read.
• It can be a lot of fun to go back and see what you wrote in the past, and you can even link to past entries when you reference things.
• Elder Ballard had an article in the July Ensign about sharing the gospel using the internet (M. Russell Ballard, “Sharing the Gospel Using the Internet,” Ensign, Jul 2008, 58–63). A blog can be a way to share your testimony and spiritual experiences with the world. You can even include links to the Church’s site for talks and scriptures as you reference them.
• You can use a blog to voice your concern about different issues. I was very surprised when a political rant I wrote last year got picked up by a few other people. But I was able to share my view on the matter through my blog with people I would not have talked to otherwise.

Other:

• If you are interested in your blog statistics, some blog providers can tell you those, or you can use Sitemeter.com for free or http://easy-hit-counters.com/ as well.
• It’s nice to ask people if you can link to their sites before you do.
• Many blogs have it so that more than one person can contribute. Then you and your husband, you and your siblings, friends, can all write on the same blog.
• When you are reading a blog, they have what is called an RSS feed. It is indicated by the little orange box in the address bar. That means that you can subscribe to a blog with a reader/feeder (common ones are: Google, Yahoo, Bloglines). When you subscribe to a blog, the reader/feeder will let you know when they have posted something new. Then you don’t have to continually check a blog to see if they have written something new. Some blogs even let you subscribe to the comments.
• Blogs are made up of pages and posts. Pages are generally an “About me” page or something that you want to stay in one place permanently. A page will be the only information that shows up on the browser when you are looking at that page. Posts are like a continual long list of entries, with the new one being added on at the top of the list. They will appear with more than one on a browser window. You can set your blog so any number of posts show up at the same time.

I watched the men’s gold medal basketball game last night. Would somebody PLEASE tell the announcers how to say the Spanish names? If I heard them mispronounce “Jimenez” one more time I was going to throw something. It grated on my ears every time. The stats guy can get the commentators all kinds of information, why not a pronunciation guide?

But the Olympics…

The passion.

The drive.

The desire.

The emotion

The pushing to the limits and then beyond.

The love. The love of family. The love of sport. The love of teammate. The love of country. The love of all that is above.

The Olympics are unlike anything else humanity has ever put together. For two weeks we get to see the best. There are blemishes, humans are not perfect, but it is pretty darn close.

And I will miss them.

When do the next ones start again?

Yes, I cheered out loud during the last leg of the women’s 4×400 relay. That last straight was just, wow! I didn’t think she could do it, but that was incredible. I cheered for the men’s marathon too.

Gotta say though, I wasn’t that excited about the men’s 4×400 relay. But that’s mostly because I think two of the guys on it are, well, jerks. We swept the men’s 400m. But the gold and silver guys seemed upset with their finishes and didn’t even put their hands on their heart for the ceremony. Instead they stood there almost with scowls on their faces. The bronze guy on the other hand, he dove for the finish of the 400m and was singing along with a smile on his face for the whole time. Him I like. The other two, I don’t like so much.

I watched some canoeing earlier today. Those were fun races to watch. Then I read this online tonight: Canoeing-Kayaking not for the faint hearted. It talks about how several of the silver and bronze medalists required medical attention either at the end of the race or even on the medal podium as they were fainting or throwing-up. The gold medalists had enough adrenaline apparently that they didn’t have any problems. Even without a slight fear of water, I don’t think that’s a sport I’m going to pick up.

The Olympics have seriously screwed up my sleep. Okay, that’s not true. But everyone else says it so I thought I would. They’ve actually been just fine for my normal sleep routine. I’m very glad I haven’t already been teaching the last week. But normally the week before school starts I at least think about trying to get into a normal sleep schedule. Instead, I’m just going to jump straight into it on Monday. We’ll see how well that goes.

I’m going to miss the Olympics though. I love the individual stories of all the athletes. I love the amazing displays of what a human body can do. I love the insane speed, the mind blowing flips and turns, and all done with incredible gracefulness (I think the ribbon is my favorite part of the rhythmic gymnastics, it’s like painting on air). I’ll be sad to see them end. I have rearranged my schedule slightly tomorrow so I can watch the closing ceremonies. So one more Olympic blog post and then I’ll start talking about other things.

While we are getting me a Chinese fan and a Chinese kite, can we get me a Chinese cone hat too?

Okay, running a 5K or a 10K on a track? That’s got to be one of the most boring things in the world. Amazing how fast they go, but I think just one mile on a track is boring. Why would I want to run 3, 6, or 9 miles on a track. Around. Around. Around. Around. Over. Under. And through! Except without the over, under, or through. I did run track in junior high, but I’m a road runner now. Of course they run that distance at least twice as fast as I do, but still, that’s too much like a hamster on an exercise wheel for me.

So proud of the female runner from Bahrain. She just goes to show that where there’s a will, there’s a way. And she found a way to be true to her religious beliefs and still compete in the Olympics. I just hope her body suit was made of something very breathable.

I think the runners that yelp are funny. You hear it more with the hurdlers, but some of the pure sprinters do it too.

I liked Johnson’s messy bun during the exhibit after the gymnastics competition. It went well with the whistling music: I’m footloose and fancy free and doing things on a four inch bar you couldn’t do in your dreams. And I thought Liukin’s choice of music was perfect. Made my eyes moist.

BMX did not disappoint. And I love the pictures of the race as well. The photographers at the Olympics are just incredible. And of course Bob had a great comment to go with the finals as well: “Coming up next is BMX, about which I will tell you candidly, I know nothing, but it is exciting.” And then later saying something to the effect of: “That’s the thing about the Olympics. You got synchronized you got badminton you got weight lifting you got… All constituencies served.”

I decided the baby quilt didn’t need more free motion on the stars. I couldn’t figure out how to do that so it would look the way I wanted. But they needed something. So I figured out what that something was, and now it’s done. I even got it mailed this afternoon and the mail lady told me it should get there on Monday. So now that the quilt got finished before the baby, the race is to see which one my sister and brother-in-law will see first, the baby or the quilt. I took pictures before mailing it and I’ll put them up after it arrives at its destination. I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.

Run at a dead sprint for 1, 3, 6, 26.2 miles so that when you cross the finish line you collapse and sprawl out on the track like someone hit a whole bunch of flies with a fly swatter (Did you see the men’s 400m last night!? They were all sprawled out on the ground just beyond the finish line). Then get up, weak, sweaty, and out of breath, and run around the track one more time, slower this time at least, carrying a flag behind you.

But that’s what runners and field athletes dream of. So somewhere inside you, probably in your heart because your legs don’t have anything else, you find something else to get you around one more time.

And if Kenya is doing that lap, I love watching it even more. If just one of them gets a medal, any medal, then each Kenyan in the race gets a flag and they do the victory lap together, because nobody does a race completely alone. That’s team work, if one succeeds, they all succeed.

The Deseret News Marathon used to run down the whole parade route. Now it is just a block. But that block was my victory lap. I started and finished a marathon that morning. That makes me victorious. All those people watching the parade did was sit on their backsides.

I think BMX racing is one of my new favorite Olympic sports. That’s some intense stuff there.

And I want a pretty Chinese kite to go with my pretty Chinese fan that I want.

On the baby quilt front - the first box arrived today, the baby did not. So that’s good. I’ve quilted the stars on the quilt. But as I’m looking at it I can’t decide if I want to do some free motion in them or not. I’ll sleep on it (the idea, not the quilt), and make a decision in the morning.

Saturday night I watched Phelps win his eighth gold medal. It was memorable. It was history.

But I really enjoyed watching the women’s marathon. No, I will never race at their level (the winner went about a 5:30 or so pace, that’s almost twice as fast as I ever hope to go), but in a lot of ways, I’ve been where they’ve been.

One of the runners was interviewed before hand and said that the body is not meant to go that far, so you have to train it to trick it into doing that. Looking at the sprinters though, I have to believe the body is not supposed to move 30mph either and that requires a bit of trickery as well.

Watching the marathon winner finish was inspiring, but I think even more was watching those who weren’t going to get a medal continue pushing and struggling till the finish. With something like that, it’s the finishing, and for a few, even just the starting, that is important. Almost brought a tear to my eye.

I’ve enjoyed seeing just how international the US team is alone. There are athletes and coaches who grew up in other countries and probably could still be competing for that country. But they have adopted the United States and want to represent the United States. Without these immigrants, the US team wouldn’t be doing nearly as well. Thank goodness for diversity. I love how much of it is staying in the family for so many of them as well.

Another thing I really like seeing is how many of the athletes have added gold somewhere on them. The gold headband. The gold nail polish. The gold shoes. The power of positive thought, and more power to them.

The quilting. I’ve put the spool quilt on hold till I finish up the baby quilt. I got the quilt top finished and basted Saturday afternoon. Saturday night I got quite a bit of quilting done on it. But Sunday my free motion quilting foot broke. I’ve actually sewn enough to break a foot. That’s a bit of a piece of pride for me.

So I brought the feed dogs back up and did the straight quilting for the border and then put the binding on. Monday I got most of the binding stitched to the back. I finished it today. That’s my least favorite part of quilting. If it’s going to look nice it has to be done by hand. And since I don’t do it but very rarely, it hurts my fingers. I don’t need callouses for quilting, but for binding I do, and I just don’t do it enough. The last few inches just really hurt.

But the binding is done. And I bought a new free motion foot yesterday, so it’s back to quilting now. Depending on how distracting the Olympics are tonight, I might finish it up completely tonight.

Sunday Brett looked at what I had finished and did the ooooo and aaaah I asked for, and even threw in a free ooooh. Then he told me the baby was going to be finished before the quilt was. I agreed that was a possibility. So yesterday I mailed off a box of receiving blankets for my nephew. I sent it priority, so it should get there tomorrow, which should be before he gets here. At least from talking to my sister today that box will get there before he does.42D

Update: I have finished all the free motion quilting on the baby quilt while watching the Olympics tonight. Who thought that green thread on green fabric was a good idea? I could barely see my stitches in a few places. Now I just need to straight stitch 16 stars and it’s done. I’ll do that tomorrow afternoon. I need to get up early to get a free t-shirt tomorrow.

Last night Michael Phelps won his seventh gold medal of the Beijing Olympics, tying the previous record for gold medals in a single Olympic game. And he has one more race to go.

And while that moment was certainly memorable, and his reaction when he realized he’d out touched the other swimmer to win, I had other moments that I liked more. Like his mom’s reaction. I would love to know what was going through her mind, but I doubt even she could tell you what she was thinking. I think she was in shock.

And Cielo Filho from Brasil, when he won the men’s 50m freestyle (”splash and dash,” he didn’t take a breath the whole race), that was memorable. He was overwhelmed as he left the pool. I wish they would’ve shown his medals ceremony.

Speaking of fast things - less than 10 seconds to run 100m? Wow! I was thinking of what I can do in ten seconds while watching that. Not much. And yet in those ten seconds there is time for strategy, and more than just “run like crazy.”

Beijing is 12 hours ahead of New York right now. That means when it is 8am in Beijing, it is 8pm in New York. So the New York prime time coverage is live. When looking at the schedule, that means that what is scheduled for Thursday morning we watch on Wednesday night. What is scheduled for Friday morning we watch on Thursday night. And so on.

Then, Arizona is three hours behind New York due to Daylight Saving right now. According to the clock. But my prime time coverage starts at 7pm, not 8pm. And somehow that means I’m only 11 hours off of the schedule when I’m watching it. So if something happens at 11:30am on a Thursday, I’m watching it at 10:30 pm on a Wednesday.

Does your head hurt yet?

Wednesday night a huge storm moved through Tucson. My lights flickered several times. The lightning was intense. The thunder was rolling through all night. About 11pm a HUGE wall of water moved through my parking lot. The storm alert on the bottom of the screen was warning people “DON’T DROWN.” I found that funny, but it really isn’t because there are people who do in the flash floods.

I kept hoping that power wouldn’t go out because I didn’t want to miss any of the Olympics. It flickered several times around 8:30. Power didn’t go out for me, but it did for about 15,000 people in Tucson, and as of Thursday night, there were still 4,000-7,000 people without power. The power company went around handing out blocks of ice and cold drinks today as the temperature got near 100 degrees. Oddly, that storm won’t register on our monsoon total this summer because only a trace fell at the airport. That’s a desert storm for you though.

Amanda and I have continued to enjoy the Olympics together. We’ve started commenting more on the actual sports and athletes instead of the commentators, for the most part. Bob still cracks me up. After Phelps‘ win tonight he said “Yeah it’s impressive. Yeah it’s historic. But at this point, it’s also ridiculous.” And then yesterday he was just waving that scorpion on a stick around during that segment.

I am amazed when there is a tie in the swimming. They time those things down to the fraction of a second, and it’s just amazing to me that two people can finish that exact close.

Part of last night we had to figure out where the term pommel horse came from. According to what Amanda found, this is where it came from (I don’t know where she got this information, you’ll have to ask her):

Gymnastics event for men. It uses a padded rectangular apparatus supported by legs and with two pommels (U-shaped handles) on the top. The gymnast performs various swinging and balancing feats, holding himself over the horse by means of the pommels or by grasping the front (neck), centre (saddle), or rear (croup) of the horse. The apparatus stems from a wooden horse used by the Romans to teach mounting and dismounting.

Although I’d like to see a horse stand still for what they do with the pommel.

The gymnastics judges have plants on their table. That’s interesting.

Two big OUCH moments during the men’s all around on Wednesday. I hurt just watching them fall like that. I hope they are okay.

They were talking about the research and improvements in the swim suits this year and there was a British man who explained that they were designed to hold the “wobbly bits” tight. So there’s no fat flapping around. Wobbly is such a fun word and I laughed at how it sounded when he said it with his accent.

Watching medals ceremonies I’ve noticed that other countries don’t put their hands over their hearts or salute or anything like that. Although there is Lochte, who looks more like he’s feeling his spleen than putting his hand over his heart. I love that Phelps still gets emotional, it hasn’t gotten old for him. I think if it ever does get old, that’s when it’s time to stop.

Speaking of getting emotional with the medal, I got emotional watching the medals ceremony for the women’s all around tonight. I think my favorite outfit was the Chinese girl who got bronze. That was pretty with the gold sparkly swirls on it. But for Liukin to win, when her father won 20 years ago, and have him there with her coaching her, what a family legacy. They said her mom doesn’t watch, so as soon as she knew she made sure her mom knew. (Pssst, Amanda, telling me that you understood what the guy with the flowers said, meant he said it in English, kind of gave a bit away. ) I really liked the music for the bronze medalist’s floor exercise though. That was fun music.

Also, on the quilt. I am happy to report that all of the blue border that was available has been quilted. Yippy! Next is the spools. I needed to roll it a bit first and wasn’t sure how I was going to do that by myself. I can’t hold both corners tight at the same time. So I was very glad that Brett randomly stopped by tonight. We’ll need to work on his c-clamp skills, but he has a good idea of what’s going on. So I got it rolled once.42D

During the prime time coverage tonight I didn’t work on that quilt though. My nephew is due next week. And I want him to go home from the hospital in a quilt I made. So that means I need to make his quilt and get it shipped, fast. Anjuli, you cannot have him till you get a box from me. I was able to cut out and piece the whole top tonight.

Due to the limited space in my apartment, I’ve had to lay out the baby quilt underneath my bedspread on the frames. It makes me smile to see the two like that.

This is going to be one cute baby quilt too. I’ll try to get it basted and start the quilting tomorrow (machine quilting on this one). Hopefully I can get it in the mail on Monday, and I’ll ship it fast.