FFI- GO COLTS!!!

And…here we go!

1. I know _I’m in desperate need of a house elf, it’s a hot mess around here!_

2. _Just ask any kid, December is_ the longest month.

3. You can’t help but _feel sorry for Saints fans… everyone knows the COLTS are gonna win!_

4. _The Big Blue has a message for the Saints_; bring it on!

5. Where have you looked _for signs of Spring?  Did you know I heard some robins singing the other morning_?

6. _My middle daughter, she’s a big Michael Jackson fan, informed me that the DVD of “This Is It”_ is now available.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to _reading some more of James and the Giant Peach with Mags, sort the laundry, do the dishes and make some of my special recipe spaghetti (OMG, it’ll have meat in it, even!  It’s been so long since I had my special recipe)_, tomorrow my plans include _maybe breakfast out with Mags at White House, a visit to the library, shoe shopping with Gwen for the dance she wants to go to, and hopefully finishing James_ and Sunday, I want to _go to church, have fun at the library’s pre-Super Bowl party, then watch the COLTS WIN_!

you can find more Friday Fill-Ins here.

Also, don’t forget to check out my giveaway!  I’m giving away a copy of Push by Sapphire, and the more people sign up, the more prizes!  If 50 or more people enter to win, I’ll add $10 to spend on Amazon.com for the grand prize!

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Falling Woefully Behind… or, Life as Normal

After having the flu and being down in my bed for a whole week, then each girl taking their turn with it, it seems like I will never get caught up.  In between being sick, Halloween and Trick-or-Treating, and parent-teacher conferences, we’ve had a dental emergency (Sam’s tooth broke while she was eating a sucker and the dentist has made a fake one to replace it), the dog has fleas, cats that went missing and were found, and the pizza man not only can drive to our house blindfolded, but also knows all our names and who ordered which food item and drink… and even brings a treat for the dog, whom he knows by name.  *Sigh*  So, it is NO surprise that our house looks like the city dump was relocated to our interior. 

It would seem that cleaning the house without being told is NOT an innate quality in children.  It would also seem that we were too much for our house elf, who has either ran away or committed suicide.  Alas!  I stand in the doorway of the kitchen, staring at the sinks, counters and table overflowing with dirty dishes and debate whether to clean it up, buy new dishes, or set fire to the room and declare it a total loss.  Should I clean the house?  or move…. hmmm….

Well.. I’ve been trying to clean it… though, frankly, the furry oatmeal monster growing in a bowl keeps giving me the evil eye and threatening to kill me in my sleep.  Equally frightening is the pot with what I’m guessing once was spaghetti… though, I can NOT remember the last time we had spaghetti… that the plague of orange lady bugs have claimed as their promised land and are prepared to defend it to the death.

On the upside, while I was sick I managed to finish Homer’s Odyssey by Gwen Cooper, which I absolutely loved.  AND while cleaning, I managed to finally finish Confessions of a Shopoholic by Sophie Kinsella, which was meh… okay, I guess.  I keep sitting down to write the review for Homer, and I just don’t know where to start.  I look at the screen for  a second, then click over to a game site.  I’ve just not felt up to writing a review, I guess.  Or, more to the point, doing the WORK of getting links, book cover, and thinking about what I want to say and then putting it into something that makes sense.

Okay… lol… so my confession’s over.  I’m off to start writing the reviews.  Or do dishes.. or just burn the kitchen down… still not decided yet.

Bloggiesta ~ I Didn’t Play, but I Wish I hadda!

I hate housekeeping. 

When I was a kid, and my mom was trying to force me to do my chores, I’d mouth off that I was going to get a maid when I grew up, so I didn’t need to learn how to do dishes or laundry or clean the toilet. 

I’m still waiting for my maid.

This past Friday and Saturday (June 19-20), Natasha at Maw Books hosted the first ever Bloggiesta… Olé!  The idea was to clean out the broken links, write the reviews you’re behind on, clean out the clutter, and in general bootify yer blog.

Housekeeping.  For my blog.  Blech!  Needless to say, I didn’t sign up. 

However, as I read through everyone else’s Bloggiesta updates and challenges, I found myself doing all the activities and wanting to fix up my blog, too.  I don’t wanna be the family in the trailer with four foot grass and the car on blocks while everyone else has mansions…  Wait, I wanna bootify my place, too!

So here’s some of the things I ended up doing.

1.  Updating Mt. TBR’s inventory page, adding a page for my ARC-alanche pile.  Unfortunately, I got about halfway through the TBR page when LibraryThing pooped out on me, so I’ve still got some more work on that.  It’s no where near what’s allon my TBR shelves.

2.  Stealing a page from Stella Matutina, literally, I’ve written up a review policy for Mt. TBRand linked it in my “contact me” widget on the sidebar.  I didn’t really have a policy before… not one set in stone, anyway, just a  kinda-sorta flimsy plan.  This fact is made painfully obvious by the amount of books on my ARC-alanche pile.

Other things to improve my blog, more on the cosmetic side of life:

One of the things that irk me is that I can’t find a theme that I like… I mean, really like.  The colors on this one seem a bit pale, and the sidebar and main area run together for some unknown reason sometimes, but my problem is:  I wanna knew layout, but hate all the wordpress ones, halp?  Is there a site somewhere that makes them to paste in the CSS thingy like MySpace does?

Another thing I’ve been wondering lately:  Is my site too busy?  Too many pics?  TMI?  Is it navigable and readable, or does it overwhelm and turn off?

A third, and major… in my opinion it’s big, is that there will be a book review change.  I’ve learned that blog posts look a lot different on Google Reader, and I’m beginning to see that the whole itemized list of title, author, publisher and date and page numbers… blah blah blah… is unnecessary.  Who cares what year it was published and how many pages!  It’s making the post needlessly longer.  From now on, the reviews will have the title, author and ISBN only and smaller covers.  Personally, I like the ISBN handy to grab and paste to my wishlist instead of having to sift through similar titles and other books by that author.  Smaller covers, again something I’ve learned from Google Reader, because, while the big ones with detail are pretty, they take up soOOoo much space.

Website Grader, FINALLY!  After months and months of trying to make the web grader inspect my blog, and every time the ‘tarded thing telling me my URL was invalid, I clicked the link “free seo tool” in the gray box to the right and MAGICALLY! it took the URL in the next page.  It was so frustrating to hear everyone tell all about the wonderful things they discovered through this thing, and I couldn’t even get past the front dang door!  BTW… I gots a 95 🙂

Meta whota whata?

Some of the things in the report from Website Grader made sense, but some things left me very confuzzled.  like Meta.  Meta tags.  Meta description.  I’m missin’ out on the Meta deal, but have no clue on how to get hip and get with it!  How do I add the Meta parcels?

 

File that under miscellaneous…

I took time to add the newer awards I’ve received, added the Viral Video Wednesday button, and put my 4Rchallenge button and linked them all up, so now they’re all good to go 🙂

RSS feed ~ Fail?

 

  IDK… I’ve tried to use the RSS feed (thank gawd for Google Reader!), but this is what I see:

Is this what I’m suppose to see?  With all the code and stuff?

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So that’s where I’m at on all the “Keep the Bloggie Beautiful” stuff, though… I figure it’s probably a lot like my desk.  No sooner than I clean it all up, someone will dump a load on it and I’ll have to start over.

Now here’s where I need your help, everyone…

What kinds of things would you suggest to improve Mt. TBR?  Any help is appreciated!

Friday Fill-Ins ~ Inka-Do Winka Sesame Tweeds

Oy Vey!  I’m so behind this week!  Here are my Friday Fill-Ins:

1. Why do we have to “suffer the little children to come?”  Why can’t we send them to boarding school?

2. Reading, obsessively checking my wishlist at BookMooch and going to bed at a decent hour are now habits.

3. I have a brain like an elephant and  the weight of a bird… no wait… it’s the other way around.

4. I had never heard the phrase “Inka-do winka sesame tweeds” and it is probably because I just made it up.

5. Nobody here ever replaces the roll of toilet paper the way I always do.

6. How was I to know that, while they make a delicious omelet, it’s illegal to cook bald eagle eggs.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to catching up on my blogging, finishing the dishes and reading a few more chapters of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, tomorrow my plans include catching up on the laundry and reading HP and the HBP, and Sunday, I want to have finished HP and the HBP and have posted the review and maybe a little gardening (though Maggie will be mad at me if I get it done while she’s gone to her dad’s)!