36 posts tagged “blogger”
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Caroline
I've been focused so much on posting and participating in online communities that I haven't had much time to read my blog roll or do any commenting recently. Being that half the blogging community is partaking in NaBloPoMo, there's a LOT to catch up on. I logged on to Google Reader to find upwards of 1k unread blog posts waiting for me. Admittedly, 700 of those were photos from Flickr contacts, but still! People! I can't keep up!
So if you get a comment from me on a post that you wrote six days ago that has absolutely no relevance now, I apologize. In blog-time, it's still last Tuesday.
Speaking of slow things, did I mention that I have a laptop now? It's a little iBook, a retired veteran of the Maine Laptop Initiative program. It has an 800 Mhz processor and a whopping 128 Mb of RAM. It took me fifteen minutes to type this paragraph because the cursor can't catch up to my typing. That's how slow it is. I type a sentence, then wait five minutes. It's an exercise in patience. An agonizingly slow exercise. And I'm going to need to stop using big words like "agonizingly", because the computer almost choked on that one.
My iMac is much more "with it", as they say, but it's so nice to have a laptop when I just want to curl up in my chair and surf the Web from the living room.
Currently I'm enjoying:
ArtAndGhosts - surreal art and prints
Beehive Kitchenware on Cutable
New art prints at The Shiny Squirrel
The new Indie Fixx Shop
I blame lolcats for the new kitten
... and about a thousand other blogs in my catching-up travels that are so very slow, because it takes ten minutes to load Google Reader. But whatever.
Also, a huge thank you to Kerryanne of solobooks.etsy.com for the blog feature last weekend!
More cute kitty pictures here. These are the select few where he's actually sitting still--he had a lot of extra energy to burn off during our visit last Friday. He'll keep our older kitties on their toes!
We've tentatively changed his named from Ichabod to Pippen (aka Pipsqueak, aka Pip)... but it could change again before we bring him home! The poor kitty will have an identity crisis before he's 10 weeks old.
There would totally be kitten pictures here right now, except we're visiting my parents, and Tim forgot the camera cable. So instead of white fluffy kitten happiness, you get a Warhol-esque portrait of yours truly, courtesy of Photobooth. I know, I know, it's a rather poor substitute, but thankfully you get to hear from lil ol' me every single day this month. Surely this means kitten pictures can wait until tomorrow, no?
So now that I've committed myself to this whole NaBloPoMo thing, I actually have to, you know, write stuff. And I thought, "Gee, what the heck am I going to write about? I need a subject!"
The S.O. solved that problem today, when he flooded my e-mail inbox with photos of puppies and kittens from PetFinder.com. Sites like PetFinder should be banned to people like me who have no resistance when it comes to small fuzzy things.
And hey, even better! All those adorable animals just happen to be from the local Humane Society, which means we should go look at them!
Now, we've been pretty comfortable with our two-cat family for several years. We adopted Nala and Stitch when they were kittens and now they're playful, affectionate, tear-around-the-house types at 5-and-a-half and 5 years old, respectively. They get along well, and while we'd gladly adopt a farmhouse full of cats if allowed, we've been wary of upsetting the delicate balance.
Well, delicate balance be damned, because T & I can't visit an animal shelter without falling in love, and there are so many kittens and cats there who need homes. And hey, what's one more, right?
So, because I have no willpower, we will be picking up Ichabod II* (Icky, for short) from the shelter on Thursday. He's an 8-week-old kitten with a pure white coat and quite a voice. He's the last of his litter, and he looked so lonely in his kennel... as soon as he saw us, he started crying and rubbing against the bars. When we picked him up, he crawled up on our shoulders and purred, and... we didn't stand a chance.
Nala and Stitch will be displeased with the new addition at first, but there is plenty of room in the house for all three cats to hide in separate corners--or heck, they can each have their own floor! We'll introduce them slowly and go from there.
I admit, I feel a little bad for adopting a kitten instead of an adult cat. I know that the adult cats have a more difficult time finding homes, but I think integrating another adult with our two would be difficult. My hope is that Nala or Stitch will be more apt to befriend Icky because he's still a baby and therefore less of a threat.
Pictures coming forthwith! We're going back to the shelter to visit our new kitty for a few minutes this evening before heading north for the weekend. And now I will have something to blog about, even if it's just pictures of a cute Icky!
*Not his official name yet. His shelter name was Sirius (as in the cloud, hah), but we're not big on that one. I'm not entirely sold on Ichabod, either, but Tim loves it and is standing firm. It's Ichabod II because Ichabod was a kitty from my childhood. I have reserves about re-naming, but we'll see.
That's right, folks. Last year I hailed NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) because it provided me with ample daily reading from some of my favorite bloggers.
This year, I'm taking the challenge. I'm going to blog every single day for the entire month of November. If you don't hear from me by the 20th or so, it's because I've written myself into a nonsensical-blog-post-induced coma. I'm pretty sure the technical term for it is "NonBloPoCo". A full month of me could prove fatal.
That's right, my NaBloPoMo comes with a disclaimer. It's very possible I might bore you to death. You've been warned.
Happy Halloween, dear Internets!
It's been a happy day, indeed, because I was featured not once, not twice, but three times on TalentDatabase.com! Three times! Why? Because I'm addictive, like crack. Being that I'm so irresistible, I can't blame you for you clicking that big ol' banner to your right and getting your fix. Nor would I blame you for, say, buying out my entire shop. But I digress.
If you're not familiar with it, TalentDatabase is a great resource for artists and designers who are looking to network with other like-minded indie folks, and it's a good place to get your work out there. So humor me, indulge my narcissism and be my friend!
And if that wasn't enough to make my head swell to the size of a small city, I also spied a photo of my very own on the front page of Etsy this morning. It also happens that I am rapidly approaching 900 hearts there. 900! That's a very big number! I'm thinking I should do something special for my 1,000th heart. Maybe a signed photo of yours truly. Hey, what do you mean, "conceited?" ;)
Even ThisNext honored me with a 2007 Maven award this week. What does it mean? That I know how to spend money, and that I spend far too much time on the Internet - two of my most enviable talents. They're so good to me!
I've also been hanging out more at ColourLovers lately. This site has been in my top 10 for a long time, but I hadn't worked up the nerve to start creating my own palettes until recently. I'm not as terrible at the whole color thing as I'd originally thought. If you have an eye for color or you're in need of some inspiration, please come join me!
Aside
from all that excitement, the hubs and I stepped out last night (past 7
p.m., even! Amazing! We're such old farts) to do some impromptu
Christmas shopping. Normally we're not on the ball with these things
this early in the season (as far as I'm concerned, "Christmas" doesn't
qualify as a word in the human vocabulary until at least December), but
Tim got an idea in his head and I think it's a good one.
It also has something to do with this pledge you've been hearing a lot about these days - namely, to avoid Wal-Mart (and others of their ilk) like the plague this holiday season. Except we're not really buying handmade, we're making things, which I think is just as good, right? I'd tell you what we're making, but there are people reading this blog who will eventually benefit from our scheming, so I have to keep it secret.
OK, time to pass out treats to the local ghoulies and ghosties, lest our house be egged and covered with toilet paper!
This weekend, in an effort to branch out a bit and explore my options, I opened two new online shops for my prints: One at Dawanda and one at eCrater. I'd heard good things about both venues via the Etsy forums and figured it couldn't hurt to see what the fuss was about. So I opened up shop and listed a few prints at each (the same works are available at each shop).
My initial impression is "they're pretty cool". Both shops have slightly different ways of getting things done. When compared to Etsy, some aspects of shop maintenance are simpler, and some are more complicated. Dawanda is definitely more friendly toward international customers, and eCrater is intuitively designed. Overall, I think Etsy still leads the pack in terms of community, traffic, and design... but it can't hurt to have more options, right?
I also designed a new banner for my Etsy shop to reflect the current Web site design at sixhours.net. I like this one much better!
Well Fall, it's been fun, but now we're watching the leaves drop like flies and I'm certain that means Winter is around the corner. That's right, Winter, I'm lookin' at you - I know you're out there, biding your time, ready to strike. I can smell hints of you in the morning, when the ground is covered with frost and the air bites your nose like a rabid chihuahua (does that make me the queen of bad analogies? It totally should).
Ah well. I'm just thankful you've waited until now to show up... any year that I don't have to turn on the heat before November is a good year. And at least Fall gets to go down in flames, so to speak--just look at those leaves!
I'm busybusy with photo geekery this week. Yesterday evening I matted a bunch of prints for a December solo show at The Shiny Squirrel. The prints will be packed up and shipped to New York this weekend. It's not looking so good for a photo shoot tomorrow, though... we're expecting rain. The only rainy day of the entire week, of course. Le sigh. Maybe I can reschedule for Sunday.
It's been so busy that I've neglected the poor DVR, but that's no problem. I intend to spend a portion of the weekend sitting on my butt and catching up on my favorite shows - there are new episodes of Ghost Hunters and Scrubs to be had, as well as a slew of Halloween-related Food Network specials.
Other plans for the weekend include some super-secret crafty Christmas gift projects, a relaxing bubble bath with my new best friend, some light reading, and hopefully I can squeeze a warm cup of cocoa in there somewhere. Maybe the oven and I will square off again and try another apple crisp, this time without the burnt part.
Boy, life's rough sometimes! ;)
For someone who's been down on herself for not doing enough photography this year... I've certainly done more than I expected to! And the year's not over yet. I have a tentative shoot scheduled for this weekend, provided the weather holds.
I have a shameless self-promotion thing I'd like to share. If you're an artist, designer, or craftsy-person, you should apply to Trunkt.org, a juried showcase of lookbooks from talented indie artists. A basic account is free (if you're accepted), and it's good exposure for your work and your shop--every little bit helps, right?
More to the point: If you use Sixhours Photography as a referral, you can help me to get an upgraded account--something I'd love to have, but can't really afford. So, if you've been thinking about applying but haven't yet, why not give it a try?
OK, that's my spiel. Back to your regularly scheduled programming!
