You know what I just noticed? As I was sitting here, staring at my last blog entry, waiting for inspiration to hit me, I noticed what I thought was a little black speck on my MacBook screen. Only when I reached over to wipe it off, I realized that it wasn’t on my screen, but actually on the webpage itself. And it wasn’t a black speck. It was a tiny little smily face emoticon dealio, placed there by the deisgner of the template I’m using.
I love shit like that.
Random little, inconsequential treats. Small, playful gifts left behind, planted by someone for no purpose other than to give someone else, a stranger, just a tiny moment of glee. Reminds me of some of the Brownie good deeds I did as a very young girl. Dropping happy messages on the ground, written on scraps of paper, never really knowing if anyone would ever find them, or if they’d end up in a bird’s nest, or washed away with the rain, into a storm drain with other street debris.
It’s fun to find these gems. It’s fun, too, to hide them. So there it is. A challenge for today: do something small today that may make someone else happy for no reason, even if it’s just for a split second. See if it doesn’t make you feel a little giddy too.
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P.S. — Did you spot the smiley? It’s up there on the top right corner of the home page.
P.P.S — I just realized that the smiley only shows up on FireFox (or “Fox Fire” as my elderly website visitors seem determined to call it).
I’ve been blogging for a while now. I started out in earnest back in March of 2007 at eleven-bee.xanga.com, and then in January of 2009, I registered my own domain name, and began using RapidWeaver to build my blog. RapidWeaver boasts on its website that it “is ideal for anyone looking to create a beautiful website. Whether it’s your first or five-hundreth [sic] website, RapidWeaver has all the tools you need to quickly create pages you’ll be proud of.” The good people at RapidWeaver failed to mention that this software is also great for those bloggers who hope that all entries from their blog will be mysteriously deleted at random times, without any warning whatsoever. For those people, RapidWeaver is perfect.
All was going well until May of this year when I realized that everything I had previously written had been deleted. Poof: gone. I jumped onto the RapidWeaver community online and discovered that there were numerous threads describing exactly this phenomenon. The response from the RapidWeaver people was decidedly understated. It was the equivalant of a cyber-shrug. “Sorry?“, they seamed to be saying.
So what did I do? I picked myself up, brushed myself off, and then kept on blogging using RapidWeaver, until… August 3rd when (insert record scratch sound here) my blog disappeared again. That’s when I came running here to WordPress. Same domain name, different website, and so far, so good. (Knock on big wood.)
WordPress allows me to track things like the number of visitors that come to see what’s new each day, and also the words that people search my site with. And so, for those of you searching for “trilogy financial services,” “san francisco mexican bus,” and “preparation h feels good on the whole,” (quite an eclectic selection of blog topics, don’t you think?) I’m working on restoring things on the old site, which I am now hosting, for archival purposes only, here.
But from here on, I’m looking forward to a more predictable blogging experience at WordPress. And in the meanwhile, here’s a little something for RapidWeaver:
There is an excellent scene from season one of Weeds where Nancy Botwin, America’s favorite pot dealing soccer mom, has to hand over her Land Rover to her dealer as collateral for a debt she owes. In turn, the dealer hands her the keys to a tricked out 1980’s Cadillac hoopty, complete with those hub caps that continue to spin even after the car has stopped moving. On her way home, Nancy is stopped at a stoplight when some thugs in a fancy Escalade pull up next to her, their window rolled down, their stereo bumping. Nancy’s got an arm resting out her open window as she glances over and then turns back to turn up her stereo, ostensibly to show up the guys in the car next to her. And out blares the tell-tale Bum, bum, bum bum… Bum, bum, bum bum — the theme song to All Things Considered on NPR.
Aw yeah.
I felt a little like I was channeling my inner Nancy Botwin today as I was bouncing around the neighborhood with my windows rolled down, and my stereo blasting… Kenny Rogers. The Best Of, baby. Cuz that’s how I roll.
Everyone considered him, the coward of the county…
This is the kind of music that typically begs to be played quietly indoors, isn’t it? Maybe in the basement? When there’s no one else around? Today when I got home from work, I found a package on the kitchen counter, a padded envelope from my friend C in California. A few months ago, when I learned that he was, for some reason, heading to Cracker Barrel, I had jokingly urged him to pick up a copy of Kenny Roger’s latest greatest hits cd for me. I had completely forgotten about my off-handed comment until I ripped open the envelope today.
Kenny hasn’t aged gracefully physically, and really, his music is just as cheese-tastic today as it was when I first started listening to him oh so many years ago. But there’s something about him… It just brings back such good memories, which, frankly, is a little surprising because usually when I think of those young tween years the word that most often comes to mind is “awkward.”
I popped the cd into the car stereo this afternoon as I set out to take care of some errands, and found myself singing along, word for word, to all of the songs. You got to know when to hold them…. But we rely on each other, uh huh… I used to think the lyrics to Lucile were “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille. Five hundred children, and a crop in a field.” But when you listen to the digital recording, it’s clear that we’re talking not about 500 children, but five hungry children. See? I learned something.
Anyway. My point is… What? Nothing really. Just that I had a fun time this afternoon singing bad 80’s country songs by myself and remembering those days long ago when the Columbia Music Club suckered an eleven year old me into unknowingly agreeing to to buy a whole shoebox full of cassette tapes of bad pop music. It was all about Kenny Rogers and Air Supply back then. Life was indeed simpler.
I’m just glad that I don’t care (much) what people think when they see this middle-aged soccer mom cruising the neighborhood, grooving to undeniably ungroove-able tunes…
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Apropos to absolutely nothing, here’s a sweet little video that features the two neighborhoods where I lived prior to moving here to Stepfordton. I thought this was hysterical.
eleven bee 