Because What I Need are MORE Distractions
Leaving the office Tuesday night, I got caught in a discussion that started with how mortified my boss, Maiya, was that I linked to her site.
By the way, that’s her website listed under the section labeled “City of Newcastle”…riiiiight…THERE.
Are her pictures of Barley’s snow day are freaking adorable or what? He’s an awesome dog. Unbelievably sweet and good natured and ‘volunteers’ at all my events. What’s really awesome is, Maiya was going to get a cat and name it ‘Hops’. I forget why she didn’t get the cat, but I like to think that if she ever got a rabbit, she’d name it ‘Beer’.
After mentioning how much I liked her site and the cool little service that made it, the conversation quickly shifted to the ridiculous amount of blogs and online accounts I subscribe to, and ended with the observation that I might need to consider some sort of withdrawal program. Maybe. Just a tad.
As of this writing, I have no actual accounting of all the sites within the intersphere on which I have registered. Maybe it’s not such a great idea to broadcast that fact.
I would guess it’s somewhere around 200. It’s entirely possible it’s way, way worse than that.
A few years ago, I started a project to go through all my email accounts and use all the subscription notices, newsletters and service updates to record all the different sites I got junk from because I signed up for god-knows-what-free-thing. The list was gi-normous. I had to use Excel. I think I got about 85% done before being sucked into a fresh round of ‘oooh! Look at the cool thingy thing I can do here! I’ll totally use THIS.’
Thus the Rambling Map of Jules’ Distracted Interests and Intentions was forgotten. And now I can’t find it.
*Sigh*
I have four personal email accounts. One for family & friends. One for spam. One for business. One freebie from Yahoo.
I use eBay and Paypal and as of this Saturday, Craigslist. My favorite picture posting service is Flickr, but I have at least five others, including Shutterfly and Kodak and Moo and Imagekind…oh, and Yahoo and LiveSpaces, and possibly a few more. I thought about Smugmug for about 5 minutes, but decided I wasn’t that good. At least, not yet.
For my website and blog, I’ve got an account with Yahoo Small Business, WordPress and Technorati. I also have an old Geocities account from before I sucked it up and paid for hosting service, which I kept because I figured I could always use it for testing. Then I have the statistics sites like Statcounter, Sitemeter, Google Analytics, and Feedburner. Because they all slice the pie chart a little different, and for some whacked out reason, that’s what I like about them.
Since I’ve got friends on other blog services, I use Typepad, Blogger and Myspace. Very infrequently. It’s just nice to know it’s there if I need it.
This summer I finally jumped on the social networking bandwagon with Linkdin, Myspace and Facebook, which opened my own personal pandora’s box along with them. As previously mentioned, I signed up with the eBay Blogs PBwiki. And that was cool. But then I joined the eBay Alumni Network, and I started finding eBay Peeps (ePeeps, for short) that I actually knew. Then I joined Facebook, and I found EVEN MORE! It was AWESOME! And addictive! I get it now! (It’s like High School. Only better, because I look WAY prettier now. And I’m popular! See? I have 21 friends. Obviously so much more important than substance.)
Yesterday, I don’t even know how I found it. But I came across PC Magazine’s 100 Favorite Blogs. And now I’m doomed. Because despite the fact that neither the Redhead Papers nor Dooce were listed, there are at least 20 new ‘must have’ blogs to add to my Netvibes feed reader. Because it’s really going to cut into my Yahoo! Mah Jong time if I have to read them all individually:
- Cute Overlord – ok. ePeeps? There are LAMBS. (ePeeps + Lambs = BFD.) Non-ePeeps? Kittens. Puppies. Pants for eggs. You heard me.
- Overheard in the Office – Loud female lawyer: “I’ll show you yours if you show me mine! Wait, the other way around…”
- Parent Hacks – Yellow Pages Booster Seat. Hiding veggies in food. Painting swimsuits on naked dolls. All sorts of kid-neutralizing tips I’ll never get to use. Fun to imagine, though.
- Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books – This just makes me think of my mom. Except for the bitches part. She and my aunt LOVE romance novels, and I can’t stand them. Because they don’t require brain power to read.
- Starbucks Gossip – My love of caffeine is just like my love of online accounts. Totally out of proportion. Did you know Seattle and Dallas are #1 for the most & least caffeinated cities? Apt, I think.
- The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs – Holy hell. I’d been hearing about Fake Steve Jobs for months now, but never looked him up. Was. Missing. Out.
- Web Worker Daily – Gah. Too much to summarize. I’ll try this: telecommuter kernels of wisdom on things like: How to deal with web rage and rudeness. Timely.
- Cocktailnerd – Nerd. Cocktail news. Does it get any better than this? I don’t think so.
- Improv Everywhere – Maiya was just telling me about these folks. Staged an off the charts “Thomas Crown” incident in Best Buy in Manhattan. Employees laughed. Managers freaked. Police were all, “gimme a break”. Hawesome.
My list of Shit that Needs to Get Done was already so big that I think if it were incarnated as a physical object, it would be the sleek, black, infinite monolith from 2001 and I would be the splattered blob of goo just beneath it.
Which is why it feels so much better to just surf on over to Facebook and waste an hour (or two) seeing what my peeps are up to. And working on my score for the “Everlasting TV Show Trivia”. I’m shooting for the ranking, “All-Knowing, All-Seeing Universal Queen of Television Everywhere”. Not sure if that ranking exists, but what the hell, I’ll be a trailblazer if I have to.
Stupid resetting score…
Jules Jewels #3: Into The Ocean
Ignore for a moment the eyeliner and black nail polish, and see the words…
Artist: Blue October
Eulogy
Shortly after I spent the afternoon condensing my grandmother’s entire life into a four paragraph obituary for the Dallas and Albuquerque newspapers, my uncle and mother returned from their day at the mortuary to join The Drinking.
“Here,” I said, passing a copy to my uncle. “I need a review.”
He took it, sat down on the couch and lit what was probably his 600th cigarette of the day. “Sure. Thanks for doing this.”
“I’m glad to,” I answered, sitting without a second thought down into her recliner. “Thanks for trusting me to write it.”
“Hey, you got a pencil?” He reached out, “Shouldn’t that be ‘stretches’?”
“Oh, here. Hmm, I don’t know.” Translation: It’s ‘stretch’. It is. But I’m not going to correct you for three reasons. A) it’s your mom’s obituary. B) you’re a lawyer. C) I can’t really think of the proper explanation as to WHY I’m right at this particular moment because of, I don’t know, all this tequila in my margarita mix?
“Amie called and she’s bringing up the Hymn book,” Mom walked out of the kitchen with her own margarita, sat on the couch opposite her brother, and continued, “we’ll have to go through and pick out a few.”
“I have reached my limit of sonly obligations today. There is not one more thing I am capable of dealing with tonight without a cigarette in one hand and a bourbon in the other.”
“We don’t need them ’till Monday.” Mom clarified. “I’m done tonight, too.”
“Oh, and Jules,” he turned and pointed at me, “you’re doing the Eulogy.”
“MEH?!”
Mom had hit me up about this earlier. I was SO NOT cool with it. I mean, what the hell would I say? That she was my grandma and I remember she always baked really good cookies at Christmas? She was a mother to three children, one grandchild, and a host of unrelated yet beloved individuals, a military wife, friend, researcher, bridge player, historian…the list goes on 86 years behind and around me, and you think I’m the best representative for this? ARE. YOU. KIDDING! ME?!
“Just me?! I’m it?”
“What about Kenty?” she suggested.
“I’ll call Kent. I bet he’d love to do it. But you’ll speak for the grandchildren.”
“ooookay…”
So I procrastinated for the next two days and stayed up until 3am writing my speech the night before. Then I scratched it and wrote a new one two hours before the service. Then I decided I hated them both, and mashed the two together. 20 minutes before we started.
GAH.
Gareldine “Garry” Marjorie Adams
1921-2007
When I was asked to speak on behalf of the grandchildren today, I was extremely overwhelmed. How do I even begin to relate what she meant to each of us? So instead, I thought I would talk about one of the ways she was with me recently, even though I live hundreds of miles away, and how she will still be with me, no matter where I go.
Two weeks ago, I was tying big puffy bows on a dozen shovels for a groundbreaking ceremony. I hated those bows – mainly because I found that I couldn’t just run up to Michaels and buy them ready to go. I had to make them. Because god forbid my shovels go without foofy ribbons to add that extra touch of class to my event.
Now, I’d never made a puffy bow in my life. After several hours of wrapping and tying and twisting and fluffing, I realized two things:
1. My bows were, very clearly, stupid.
2. If Grandma had just 5 minutes with me, the heavens would open, the light would shine down and the angels would sing upon the most beautifully perfect bows the world had yet to see. And City Council would love them, dip them in brass, mount them on the office wall and tell visitors,, “Hey, you seen those bows Garry’s girl got? That’s twelve loop velvet right there.”Then I stopped daydreaming and fiddled with those bows some more, because they started to remind me of what she always used to tell me.
“Do something you love, because you’ll be doing it a loooong long time.”
It’s something she wished for all of us, and that I know all the grandkids are trying to figure out as best they can. I think I’m getting close, because I have a job where I get to make stupid, puffy bows, and not only are they important, they make me happy.
“Do something you love.” That’s everything I know about my grandma right there. She did everything she loved, she did everything with love, and she loved each and every one of us with a quiet, steady strength.
Like a star, she never wavered. Her patience and generosity were like the ocean – her cool, graceful touch connecting us over the greatest distances, leaving gems of wisdom, tenderness and unique love on the shores of our lives.
Her life was all love, and she loved us a loooong long time.
We are so grateful to her. She gave us so much – so much that we’ll take with us and remember in our actions and thoughts, and pass down to those who come after.
And I think that’s all she would have wanted.
October 31, 2007
Palm Chapel, Daniel’s Family Funeral Services
Albuquerque, NM.
Garry and Jules. Two gals never known by their given name.
