Month: September 2008

Oh hey, look at that! Aflux went and got all pink on me!

As the massive HEADER WITH WORDS up there is pointing out, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month which means that people all across the country have free reign this month to play with their boobies as much as they want! Actually, you should play with them all the time, or so Ben says, because early detection is the key to beating breast cancer and of you aren’t TOUCHING THEM then you’ll never DETECT. So go on, go do your thing.

Okay, the perpetual 13 year old in me finds it hard to be serious when talking about breasts.

If you have a website you should go pink too. I know it’s a small contribution but if even one case of breast cancer is caught early then switching themes for a month will have been completely worth it. Pinkforoctober.org has links to cute pink themes for twitter, wordpress and other popular blogging platforms.

I actually really love themes that Teresa has made for wordpress throughout the years so check them out for sure.

Special thanks to ~bmjewell-stock over at Deviant Art for the cute pink ribbon brushes I used to spruce up Aflux.

Thanks for all the questions, girls! They were fun to get to answer. I’ll have to do this again sometime but now it’s your turn! If you do a question/answer session let me know. 🙂

Caitlin asked: If Cassidy had been a boy, what would her (his. lol) name have been?

YAY! An easy first one! WHEW!

So, I had that “mother’s intuition” and as soon as I found out I was pregnant I just knew it was a girl. When I dreamed of the baby at night it was a girl, the first thing I HAD to buy was a pair of little pink socks, etc. Anyway, since we all know I’m never wrong I had Cassidy picked out right away. Period. The end. No discussion. It HAD to be Cassidy.

ALL THAT SAID, I made a deal with her dad that if it was a girl, I got to name her, if it was a boy, he could name him. His choice was.. Troy. His name and his father’s name and I’d have NEVER EVER let that happen. Seriously, THREE?! I don’t think so thank you very much.

Caity asked: OK! If you could only keep 5 possessions of yours for the rest of your life, what would they be? (They can’t be people or electronics.)

NO ELECTRONICS?! Okay.

• My wedding/engagement rings
• The sunflower afgan my step-mom crocheted for me
• The box of pictures beside my desk I’ve been meaning to get scanned and uploaded FOREVER. It has pictures of Cassidy as a baby, me growing up, etc.
• The Bible Ada gave me before she died. Coming from somebody that is totally NOT religious, that sounds odd but that book means the world to me.
• All my makeup. That one’s kinda silly I totally need help to look this hot all the time! 😛

Steen asked: If you could live ANYwhere in the continental US (with your family in tow, of course) where would you go? And why?

Honestly, probably somewhere in Washington. I’ve never even been there but just based on what Ben’s said about it and how beautiful it is and how there are SEASONS and how everybody is more laid back and mellow. Somewhere close enough to a big city like Seattle to take advantage of Big City Life and a technology capitol had to offer but still far enough away to be able to really enjoy the GREEN and the outdoors.

Ashley asked: 1) If you could only eat one food for the rest of your life what would it be?
2) Do you wash your hair or your body first when you shower?
3) How often do you go to the grocery store?

1) CHOCOLATE! Seriously.
2) Hair first, add conditioner, wash body, rinse conditioner, wash face, DONE!
3) Less than once a week for sure. Now that we are trying eat at home all the time I’m trying to do it about once every week and a half or so.

Sandra asked: 1) What’s you’re favorite color on socks?
2) Which is your favorite toe and finger?
3) Which is the best weekday?
4) You’re only allowed to have one hair color for the rest of your life, which would it be?
5) What’s the best color of nail polish?

1) PINK!
2) Ring finger, pinky toe.
3) Friday!
4) Probably blond. It fits me best.
5) A nice vivid red.

Kaylin asked: 1) What’s your favorite thing to do when it’s raining out?
2) What’s your favorite book?
3) Obama or McCain- which is the lesser evil?

1) Curl up on the couch and watch a movie or read a book.
2) The Hobbit
3) OBAMA ’08!

Erin asked:1) You are given an island to run as your own country, however you see fit. What do you name it? What sort of government do you utilize on this island? What sort of perks do you use in your advertising to get people to vacation there?
2) And…. Where is one place on this Earth that you positively loathe or despise? And why?
3) And, to make things more positive… if you were to create your own fashion line, what sort of apparel would you offer?

1) Annapolis. I don’t know that I’d really NEED a government. It would be more of a dictatorship except I’d be kind to my peeps. Advertisement? Lets see… Well, so I think that my island would have officially been known as Maui so pictures of beautiful beaches, free alcoholic beverages, and naked people frolicking in the waves.

2) I loathe any place that breeds hate. I know that’s a broad statement but the Liberal in me wants to believe that someday places like that won’t exist.

3) Tshirts that are made to actually fit a woman’s body. And not just some flat chested 98 pound waif. REAL WOMEN. Shirts for big boobies and small ones, big waists and bigger ones, tiny hip bones and wide ones. Then jeans to match. And high heels that look smokin’ hot but don’t murder your feet.

ASK! ME! ANYTHING!

I want to interact with you all. I’ve been trying to be better about returning comments (if I haven’t, totally call me out on it because SHAME ON ME), and blogging more and reading more and the last few days I’ve been kinda BLAH and I need something to help take my mind off of it.

So, ask me anything, I’ll answer in the next blog post (and I’ll plug you along with the question) and be as honest as I can without legally incriminating myself in some way. 😉 ANYTHING. YOU. WANT.

GO!

UPDATE – It looks like everything got moved over an all I lost was one comment on this post. YAY! If you notice anything off or not working properly, let me know!

I’m in the process of transferring all of our many domains to my reseller account. For a long time they have been spread between my reseller and the servers at the company I used to work for and it seemed kinda silly to be paying two different places when I could consolidate it all into one.

The only reason I hadn’t done it before now is because it’s a pain in the ass to have to transfer and move everything and hope you didn’t miss anything and wait for DNS to work out and SOMETHING ALWAYS GOES WRONG.

So if posts or comments or the entire site disappear then you know why and hopefully I’ll get to fixin’ ‘er up soon.

From PCWorld:

Graphics chip developer Nvidia plans to lay off 6.5 percent of its workforce, the company announced Thursday.

About 360 people worldwide will lose their jobs by the end of October, Nvidia said. The Santa Clara, California, company plans to offer severance, counseling and job placement services for the affected workers.

Before I go any further, Ben still has his job.

This news was a total shock to me (to Ben too but I’ll let him expound if he feels like it and this will be MY reaction). If freaks me the hell out. 24,000 people at HP laid off, Ebay talking about laying people off, AOL, AMD, even small companies like BitTorrent. The really scary part about this is that the Bay Area job market is becoming saturated with qualified people geeks looking for work so the jobs that are out there are going to be snatched up fast.

I’m not even sure what more to say… I can’t imagine what all these families are going through. I’m scared for them and I’m scared for us and for you and for EVERYBODY. As we watch the stock market crash more every day, retirement accounts fail, house after house foreclose and thousands of people getting layed off I’m really hoping that there is a turning point soon because how much more of this can happen before desperation sets in?

I dunno, I’m sorry this is so down and depressing but it’s been weighing heavily on my mind all night and I’m just not sure how to work through this. Usually writing is helpful but even that hasn’t worked so I’ll just sign off here and say to all the families out there that have seen a loved one fall to one of these layoffs: We are thinking about you. I can’t offer you any more than that. We are here, we are worried, we are behind you, we care, stay strong.

Does this mean I have to start acting like an adult? I certainly hope not!

Thanks for all the comments and emails and tweets and plurks and MySpace comments and Facebook comments and OMG YOU GUYS ROCK!

*hands out cake*

So a question was posed on a message board about your feelings and if you share them with your S/O and it reminded me about a conversation that Ben and I had one night over margaritas and mexican food. I don’t remember EXACTLY the situation I had explained to him but I remember telling him how I had over reacted to something he had done but rather than tell him, decided to wait to see how I felt later that day. Looking back I could see that I was acting slightly nutcase-ish but we were talking about my mood swings in general. The gun part of the conversation is real and makes me crack up even today.

Copy/pasting my forum post:

I trust Ben explicitly so he’s always who I turn to when I’m feeling like I need to talk.

I’m not always the best person to be “in tune” to what I’m actually feeling about something in the heat of the moment. I suffer REALLY bad mood swings when I’m PMSy (like bordering on PMDD) and there are times when I know that I’m probably over reacting in the “feelings” department so I usually wait an hour and reassess how I feel. Sometimes I’m like, WOW TOTALLY OVER REACTED THERE! Or if I feel like I was justified in feeling the way I did, then I can tell him and he’s always REALLY open to listening to me. There are even times I tell him about the over reacting.

Me: Hey guess what. When you were doing the dishes earlier and you put them in the dishwasher wrong even though I’ve explained it you to a BILLION times I wanted to take the turkey baster and shove it up your ass, suck out your internal organs and feed them to you for dinner. HA! ISN’T THAT FUNNY!?
Ben: *blink* *blink*
Me: But see, I THOUGHT about it and looking back I can see that I was probably being a little reactionary.
Ben: And this is why we don’t keep guns in the house.
Me: To keep me from killing you or you from killing me?
Ben: Yes.
Me: *nods*

I like that we can laugh about the fact that I’m a psychotic nutjob.

It was NOT like this in the beginning. I can’t even imagine how Ben put up with me and my walls. I was so closed off to my own feelings there was no way for me to express them to other people without completely screwing it all up and either pissing everybody off or sounding like a complete jackass. And this is not to say that I’m perfect about this now because I am SO NOT. It’s still something that I struggle with and try to work on. It’s BETTER now but I still have quite a bit of room for improvement and I’m sure that Ben can see that much more than I do because now he can read me like a book and is, in a majority of the cases, better at assessing my feelings that I am.

Yesterday I twittered how every day I’m reminded how lucky I am to have such an amazing husband and it’s true. Every single day he does something to make me love him more, trust him more, value him more… and I know I’m not always the best at reminding him of that. He asked me what I meant when I twittered and I didn’t have the words at the time to properly explain what I meant so here it is:

I’m reminded every day what an amazing man I’ve married… because he hasn’t shot me yet.

So I walk into work this morning and before I can even set my stuff on my desk The Temp says:

Temp: My computer won’t come on.

I can see her computer from where I’m standing. It has lights on the front that are CLEARLY ON.

Me: It’s on.
Temp: No it’s not look. *moves mouse*
Me: Your computer has lights on and I can hear the disk spinning from here.
Temp: Oh. Well, how come this thing isn’t on then? *points to monitor*
Me: That’s your MONITOR.
Temp: Well my keyboard or nothing is working.
Me: When you hit capslock or number lock you don’t see lights?
Temp: Hits a random button, see, nothing.
Me: Capslock.
Temp: *hits it, looks at monitor* Nothing, see?
Me: The light ON YOUR KEYBOARD is on so it’s working.
Temp: Ohhhhhhh, but this still isn’t coming on.
Me: Did you try the power button?
Temp: Which one is the power button?
Me: *officially frustrated and completely over this conversation* The circle with the line through it.
Temp: *tries power button* Nothing,
Me: You should call IT.
Temp: Can you look at it?
Me: IT will be able to troubleshoot it for you.
Temp: Okay.

Five minutes pass. She’s on hold.

Temp: I’m still on hold.
Me: Did you check the connection to make sure it’s getting power?
Temp: Oh, no. *stands up, follows the cable TO THE COMPUTER* It’s plugged in.
Me: No, I mean is it getting power from the POWER CABLE.
Temp: Oh, duh. *giggle*
Me: *head desk*
Temp: Yeah, it’s all plugged in.
Me: IT will be able to troubleshoot it for you.

Boss comes over to say good morning.

Temp: My computer won’t turn on.
Boss: It’s on, see the lights.
Temp: I mean the monitor.
Boss: …
Me: …
Boss: Will you look at it real quick? I’m late for a meeting.
Me: *get up, walk to monitor, turn it around, push power cable completely into monitor, press power button, monitor turns on*
Temp: OH WOW! THANKS! I didn’t think to check there!

REALLY!? Because when I said CHECK THE POWER CABLE I meant, CHECK THE GODDAMN POWER CABLE!

&*#$%@*%

Welcome to my Thursday.

I get pretty annoyed when a blogger presents completely skewed and misrepresented facts then closes comments because OMG somebody might not agree with them. If your opinion was solid and you honestly believed in it, then it wouldn’t be necessary to hide behind censorship and moderation.

Okay so lets start with this:

Now, if it were Obama’s daughter, we all know based on his voting record and the statements he’s made (don’t take my word for it, go look it up) that he wouldn’t want one of his daughters to be “punished with a baby” so I’m sure she would be skipping off to the abortion clinic by now. Wouldn’t want to ruin Daddy’s image. Since when did babies go from blessings to punishments?

That block of text included a video of a speech that Obama gave. If you watch the entire video it’s pretty clear that he NEVER mentions abortion. Not even ONCE. Doesn’t even IMPLY it. He states that if his daughter “makes a mistake” (SEE: has sex before marriage) that he doesn’t want her to be “punished with a baby” (SEE: if she knows about hormonal birth control, condoms, etc, her chances of getting pregnant are nil).

Lets move on to this:

Oh wait, I forgot. Babies are only blessings if you want them. Otherwise, just partially birth them, stick a knife in their neck, and rip their spinal cord out. Problem solved, right? Well if that fails, just leave them in a dumpster or something to die.

Ummm, I’m not even sure where to start with this one. Maybe go read the wikipedia article about Intact dilation and extraction because your idea of partial birth abortion is clearly WAY off base. Knife to skull: Yes. Ripped out spinal cords: No.

Let me also state clearly I AM VERY AGAINST LATE TERM PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION. VERY.

BUT! At least when I speak about it I do so FACTUALLY. I also make sure to track down the opposing candidates rebuttal which explains his ACTUAL stance instead of just relying on what the right swinging media had to say about it.

I’m not about to sit here and say that Obama is the PERFECT candidate. He’s not. So far, none of them are. But you can’t just verbally regurgitate what the media has told you, or pick and choose the clips you want to use to prove your point, then expect that because you closed your comments down, that the truth won’t find it’s way to you. Or that there won’t be somebody from the “opposite side” that points out how wrong you are, even though you were unwilling to allow it to be addressed directly TO you. And saying that Obama would ENCOURAGE his daughter to get an abortion when your own clip to prove it NEVER even HINTS at the use of abortion, you make it pretty easy.

Just to be clear, normally I LOVE reading your blog. I know that when you get to the end of this and read that you aren’t going to believe me or won’t care but I think you have a beautiful family, two adorable little girls, an awesome little shop full of equally adorable accessories… but I don’t agree with you here and the complete misrepresentation of fact you presented drew me to respond.

And with that, I promise that’s the end of the political talk for awhile. Stay tuned tomorrow when we return to our normally scheduled vapid talk of nothing important at all.

According to this CNN article:

Palin said when running for governor in 2006 that she would support funding for abstinence-only education in schools, according to Eagle Forum Alaska, a conservative group that sent a questionnaire asking gubernatorial candidates their views on a range of issues.

Palin’s 17 year old daughter, currently a senior in highcshool, is five months pregnant. And unmarried.

FAIL.