Wednesdays child is full of woe

I can't get the childrens rhyme out of my head today. You know this one? It goes -

Mondays child poem

Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

I'm a Wednesday child, and the first time I heard this as a kid I remember wondering why being born on Wednesday had to be so bad. Everyone else on that list has good things going on for them - good looking, graceful, a traveler (now that's what I'd be picking!), loving, giving, hard working, "bonny and blithe and good and gay" - hey, Sunday rocks! Want to bet a Christian wrote this dity?

But why do we Wednesday kids have to get such a bad rap?

Tea is better for you than water -

- or so the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition tells us.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5281046.stm
Good news for me, since my tea intake is way up lately. My body has taken a strange dislike to coffee, and most days it isn't worth the hours of indigestion that follow my preferred daily half-pot. Since late spring I've been weaning myself off the java, and now I'm (sadly) down to less than a cup a week. I've missed my coffee; I'll miss it even more when cool weather finally hits us around ... December. Guess I've finally got a reason to be glad Florida gets mild winters - a short cold season to suffer thru without my morning jolt. Studies show green tea may help ward off cancer and Alzheimers - yet more reasons to refresh from the leaf, not the bean.

I'm keeping an eye on the tropics this week, as most of the gulf and east coast is. Ernesto is giving Haiti a rough time today, and is slowly moving north. So far the storm is tracking with more of an easterly curve with every update; we may get lucky yet again and have this miss us by many miles. Fingers crossed.

Let's Say Thanks

Dad sent me an email this morning with a really cool site.
Let's Say Thanks.

It's a great way to send a message to the people who are actually standing on the frontline in the "war against terror".

Now if only Xerox would give us a quick and easy way to send a message to the people who are sending the soldiers there.

**(You don't actually need Xerox for that... you can Register to Vote, or send a message to any of your representatives. Don't forget to Vote!)Publish

"I wish..."

"I wish I could not have a brother, like Madison doesn't have a brother." - Samantha Steele, age 4, random thoughts.

Blogger Beta

I got an invitation to Vox on Friday. Yeah, I know, just what I need - another web community site to suck more of my time up. But... a few good friends who live thousands of miles away are active there, and not active anywhere else I play online these days. So I played around and made a site there.

I had my invitation sent to my gmail account. Blogger is owned by Google, who owns Gmail. And within 24 hours I had gotten an invitation to have my Blogger account expanded to the new Blogger Beta. Coincidence? hmmm...

Anyway, so I've heard that the new and improved Blogger allows tags (or labels, as Blogger calls it). It's something that I've missed - or at least it's been missed by the anal-organizational part of me, the same part of me that loves Google Spreadsheets, although not as much as Excel, and color coded file folders, and sock drawers sorted by lenght and color.

So I played around with the new 'improved' version. And what's the first thing I find out? There is no HTML editing yet in this shiney new beta! Is it just me, or is that a step backwards in flexibility and customization?

Anyway. Meh. I've got my labels, and lost my shiney template.

Vox is pretty nifty, although it has it's own limitations. It' has limited templates as well (is it really that much of a challange to let us add our own html and css to your nice web portals?). It doesn't have a customizeable links page at all, unless you're trying to link to someone on Vox. But it does have a very cool catalog system built right into the site, that lets you keep track of your books, videos, music, and photos. And since Vox is owned by Yahoo!, who also owns Flickr, there's a direct import of your photo's from Flickr.

Which comes in very handy for something else Vox does - the Vox hunt. It's a photo scavanger hunt. Today's is "Take a picture of something striped." My picture of something striped turned out needing a bit of editing, which has to be done on the desktop, and I'm way to comfy in bed with the laptop... so it'll have to wait til tomorrow. But it's a great reminder to break out the camera - and yesterdays Vox hunt was for a "Tall, Cool One" - there were some great pix in that set!

And Vox also does a Question of the Day. Today's was "What was the last wedding you went to? Were you in the wedding?" I wasn't feel particulary creative as I tried to recover from a near-death-experience disguesed as a family get-together, but hey - that question tickled my memory enough to get a few lines out of me.

QotD:
Here Comes The Bride
Aug 19, 2006 at 7:30 PM

What was the last
wedding you went to? Were you in the wedding?
Last one was my baby sis's wedding almost two
years ago! They had the ceremony in a classy ballroom, and
the reception was in the same room immediately after. Great wedding!
Major points for food, bar, music, and all the family making it to the event
with no drama.
Bonus points for the 3 year old that got
'lost' and started a security lockdown of the entire hotel and galleria who was
found 10 minutes later going potty.

I'm not trying to make anyone link-surf here. In fact, I'll probably make a habit of posting my Vox info here - I'm making the effort to stay connected to my friends over there, but I'm not making anyone follow me around the web ;)

Hope you're having a good weekend! And if you'd like to give Vox a try, leave me a comment or send me an email - I've got a few invites to give out.

Friday Techie Facts

I stole this from Dakota, who admits it came from someone else, via someone else, etc...

TECH-OLOGY

Number of contacts in your cell phone? 89
Number of contacts in your email address book? 274
What is the wallpaper on your computer? none - I keep it blank
What is your screensaver on your computer? the monitor turns off after an hour idling to save power
Are there naked pictures saved on your computer? No! I hide incriminating things where the kids won't find them. My computer would be the first place they'd look.
How many landline phones do you have in your home? 3 different lines, 5 phones (4 of them 2 line phones), and a fax machine
How many televisions are in your home? 6 that work
What kitchen appliance do you use the least? The dishwasher - it's been broken for 2 years.
Number of computers - 3 desktops and 3 laptops that work
Number of email accounts - err. 9 active, but they all funnel into my gmail account now.
Number of game systems - 5 systems (PS1, PS2, XBox, XBox 360, Nintendo 64); 4 handhelds (Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gamboy Advance, Gameboy DS) *most of this is my son's
What is the format of the radio station you listen to most? NPR
Favorite gadget - my Sidekick cell phone. Since I activated the email and web browsing features, I am in love with this thing. I spend less time checking email, since I can see at a glance that no one wants to talk to me about anything but penis enlargement and refinancing my mortgage.

How about you?

How Karen lost her groove

It's been a long summer. Going to be even longer, since it's officially not over for another September 23rd, but getting my largest bundle of joy off to school to start his 7th grade year marks at least the beginning of the end for me.

Next week the smaller bundle of joy will return to school (pre-K : where my baby thinks she's a big girl and starts asking to wear lipstick). And I will start grasping at the slender threads of sanity that are still within reach, hoping to emerge from 2006 a non-institutionalized person.

Not that there hasn't been plenty of fun this summer - there has. My two favorite sisters (ok, both my sisters) visited with their families. There was the week long trip that I'm still recovering from. Summer football, and weekly radio shows, and a golf tournament (sometimes two) every weekend. A family situation that is still unfolding that has kept us on our toes around the inlaws.

And not nearly enough time to write, either blogs or books.

Now it's time to start getting that groove back. 6am wakeups, and 9:30 bedtimes - summer is definately over.

I've never been so happy to welcome the fall.