It’s been a long spring.  Life has been throwing me a lot of curve balls, and some days it’s been all I could do to stand in there and foul them off while I wait for a pitch I can take a hard swing at.

As baseball analogies go that one pretty much sucks.

Anyway.  I’m here.  I’ve got the love of my family and friends, I’m healthy, and I’m doing everything I can to keep my family healthy as well.  And I realize that sometimes the really crappy surprises life springs takes me down a path that I never would have gone down on my own.  I just hope that this particular path smooths out a bit as I get further down it, because the first few steps haven’t been a picnic.

We don’t get a lot of real coldness in NE Florida. “Real coldness” in my world is defined as “probably should stock up on wood for the fireplace since the temperatures may drop all the way below 50.”

So 17 degrees below freezing? (I’m working in the Fahrenheit world here, you Swedish lurkers – Hej!) That just doesn’t happen in my world.

Which is probably why I found this short video of “17 Below and 1 Cup of Boiling Water” entirely too entertaining.

Entertaining enough to still be cool after three or four views, at least.

Stay warm!

I blogged over at Beyond the Veil yesterday about my lack of inspiration. If you didn’t stop by then and give me a kick in the pants, it’s not to late to get your shot in.

Music was a repeated suggestion, so I worked on playlists last night. Since the Great Hard Drive Failure of the Fall, my music has been a big stinking mess, spread across no less than 8 hard drives – only 6 of which are in actual machines – and a box of CD’s. I made a big step to getting that organized last night, and got some nice playlists on my Phone.

And speaking of the new phone – what am I supposed to call this thing when people see it and ask what it is? With the iPhone, I rarely had to say, but if I did I could say iPhone and pretty much everyone knew what it was. Google Phone sounds weird. Superphone sounds like I’m trying too hard. Nexus One sounds like I’ve been watching too much Star Trek. Or reading too much Zelazny, but anyone geeky enough to know who Zelazny is probably is geeky enough to know what kind of phone I have no matter what I call it. This thing needs a nickname.

N1? GP? Slick?

Hubs just came out snickering and took me back to the bedroom.

Hush, the kids are home.

“I just saw a commercial for your hometown. At first I thought it was a Saturday Night Live skit.”

It really does look a bit like a fake commercial. But it’s also pretty cute, and has me giggling still. He saw it on ESPN, so this isn’t just a goofy YouTube viral ad, this is something they’re putting some real $$ behind. And you know, I’m ok with that. Also, ok with how they found a voice-over actor who can pronounce Louisville correctly.

Enjoy – it’s “Possibility City”

Ever found something that you love so much, you wonder how you went without it? What’s even worse is when this same something has been there for years, and you never even knew it wast there.

It’s “Yay! This rocks. How the hell did I not know about it before now.”

So ok, I’ve been using an RSS reader to follow the several hundred blogs / sites I keep track of for a couple of years now. I was all sorts of happy with myself about how much time it saved me, because I don’t have to sit there clicking on all these websites every day just to see if there’s something new. When it’s new, it pops up on one site and says “Hey, look whats new today”.

Using Google Reader it looks something like this :

Google Reader

But for all my love of reader there are two downsides. First, it’s way to easy to just read the post and go on to the next one. If I want to comment, I have to click through and reload what I just read at the original site, and gee is what I was going to say really that important anyway? Much easier to just skip commenting and read the next post.

Second, and this is the one that really bothered me more, is that I never even see some of these sites. Because I’m reading the content in the reader window, I miss all the fun stuff – the sidebars, the polls and page layout and fancy work that makes each site special. And the comments – sometimes half the fun is in what other people said. (Just because what I was going to say isn’t important, doesn’t mean that what someone else had to say isn’t!)

But wouldn’t you know the people working at Google felt pretty much the same way? And came up with a way to use the beauty of RSS feeds – visit only a site that has new content – and still actually let me read the site at it’s source?

Living with Lindsay has already written up a nice little post telling you how to get this working for your own Google Reader (it takes ’bout 4 clicks and 30 seconds and involves nothing more than dragging a bookmark up to your menu bar). And if her post ever disappears, you can just google “google reader goodie next bookmark” and find the simple instructions.

Google, what else don’t I know you’ve already thought of?

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I’m over at Beyond the Veil today asking “Is there *anything* good on tv this fall?” Let me know what I’ve forgotten!

I love the start of a new month. There’s over 4 weeks of projects, plans, and things to look forward to. My deadlines always seem to fall at the end of the month, so the first few days always seem relaxed compared to what I’ve just been through.

And it’s not quite as hot outside as it was at the start of last month. Another reason to be happy.

Today I’m doing some web updates on a few sites, then I’ll be shutting off the ‘net for a few hours to get some writing done. Abby’s about to be in a really bad accident, and I need to make sure she comes out of it a stronger person for it. Or at least, a more interesting one.

Damaged Books

I’ve got a warm, fuzzy place in my heart for Louisville. Besides being home for the first dozen years of my life, it has been A Place Where Many I Love have lived / still live. I don’t get back nearly often enough, but that’s the great thing about homes. They’re there when you need them.

Louisville was hit hard by rains and floods early this month, and one of the more painful physical losses was felt at the Main Library, and the Shawnee Branch. Both are still closed, and estimates of the damages have topped $5 million.

If you can donate funds to help with recovery, there’s an address here on the library main page. If you’re an author, publisher, or reader with new books to donate, please visit author Shiloh Walker’s website to find out more about what you can do to help.

There was a snake in my driveway when I got back from the gym today. Unfortunately for him, he was tiny, and hiding around the curve. I didn’t see him until we got out of the car that had just run him over, and he was doing the death flops by then. Poor little guy, he was less than a foot long, and just a little garden snake from what I could tell. I scooped him into the bushes hoping he finds a miraculous heal in there; at least the hawks won’t swoop down and have him for lunch. And the kids could stop standing there watching him flop.

I felt a lot like that snake this week. We got back from a quick trip to visit the family Monday, and the drive back wiped me out. I feel like I barely kept my head above water all week. This morning when I woke up and took a good look at the piles of toys, unread newspapers, unread mail, laundry, dog hair, recycling needing attention, pillows waiting to be washed, stuffed animals, and empty pizza boxes from last nights dinner – well, I wanted to go back to bed.

Instead I sucked down a cup of liquid energy and went to the gym, then dug in. And two hours later, oh joy, the piles had been dismantled. All except the one of mail waiting to be filed that is now sitting on my desk, which was formerly the only clean spot in the entire house.

That’s ok. My house smells cinnamony clean, and the sparkle of clean floors is making my whole day brighter.

Now if only it would rain, so I’d have an excuse not to tackle the pool and yard today.

Friday this week means a very, very long week is almost behind me. It’s been a good week. But a loooooong one. I’m very glad it’s a weekend at home.

I needed more of a pick-me-up than my coffee was giving me today, so I went by My Bookstore And More. Flawed is still hanging in there at number 3 on the bestseller list, even 10 days after release. That made me smile, which is more than I can say for my cup of Kona.

The house is still quiet, so I’m going to sneak in some work while no one is asking me to pour milk over their Frosted Flakes. I hope you find reason to celebrate today!