Stormy's Corner

Caleb the Intrepid Explorer

Caleb antelope hunting in Wyoming.

A good article on Mommy Blogs

I don't think Stormy's Corner is a 100% mommy blog but sometimes it's more mommy blog than other times.  The Denver Post has a good article today about mommy blogs (and how much money they are making for some women.)  The opening paragraph had me laughing.  I definitely had that "nasty case of whiplash!"

Julie Marsh started blogging as she recovered from a nasty case of the type of whiplash women often experience after shifting at warp speed into motherhood.

A move to southeast-suburban Parker only a few weeks before had compounded her malady. Her husband wanted to pursue a great job opportunity. Her kids - a toddler and an infant - would love their new fenced-in backyard.

Bye-bye, awesome job at a New York City music company, Marsh thought. Hello, stay-at-home mommydom. Bye-bye bustling neighborhood filled with friends, boutiques and coffee shops. Hello chain restaurants, strip malls and driving, driving and more driving.

Fortunately, my blog didn't make enough money for us to live off of.  I say fortunately because I don't think sitting at home writing all day would be my favorite career ... now if they write a blog post a day and make it ... well, then, I need to work on my writing!

Too many good books ...

In case you are wondering why I haven't posted any book reviews lately ... it's because I have been getting so many good books that I've started lots of them and not finished any of them.  I'm currently reading:

• The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World  by Alan Greenspan.  I'm currently listening to this one and it's really interesting but the second half of the book has had a lot of economic and financial concepts in it that are fascinating but sometimes require me to listen twice to actually get what he's saying.
• Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition  I'm learning Ruby, the programming language.  This book is good but not something you read cover to cover in one setting.
• The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life  Very interesting.  The preface starts out explaining why some cities have been more successful than others in the new economy.  Diversity and tolerance correlate very highly with creativity.  Cities that entice high tech workers are also attractive to people with alternative life styles.  Lots to think about.  But not a quick read.
• The Good, the Bad, and the Undead (Rachel Morgan, Book 2)  In my unending search for new good science fiction I stumbled onto the vampire, witch and werewolf subgenre.  I've been enjoying them.  (And I haven't read Book 1 in this series yet as I got this one first through Paperbackswap/Bookmooch.  But Book 2 is good so I will be reading Dead Witch Walking (Rachel Morgan, Book 1))
• Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win  I haven't officially started this one yet but I just got it in the mail today and it's sitting on the table next to me, tempting me ...

So I'll let you know how it goes.

Boy Calls 911 Because Mom Driving Drunk

I don't know whether to be sad for the mom or proud for the kid.  This eight year old called 911 not once, but several times, as his mom kept taking the phone away from him and hanging up.  I hope she gets her life straightened out soon for her kids' sakes.

Vancouver-area mom arrested after son calls 911 about her driving

Atheism on the rise?

A BBC article says that atheism, or maybe agnosticism, is on the rise in the US.  Surprisingly they gave 9/11 as a reason people maybe more likely to be agnostic since they see terrible acts committed "for my God."  They pointed at recent bestsellers as evidence of this growing atheism:

• God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
• The God Delusion  I have the audio for this one but I haven't listened to it yet ... I've had it for months if that says anything.
• Letter to a Christian Nation

Note that there are three times more atheist in Europe that there are in the US.  Also, Christians are still clearly a majority in the United States.

Is homework good for kids?

The Truth about Homework clearly argues that homework is not good for kids - or at least that the cons of homework outway the pros.  I think I definitely learned more in the classroom than I did from any homework but I learned two things from homework:

1. How to write papers.  We never wrote a whole research paper in school.  I can remember writing my first papers in sixth grade.  (I can also remember my mom telling me I could do much better - something the teacher never would have told me as I got A's on them!  Mom was right of course.  The question was, did it matter?)
2. How not to procrastinate.  When we moved to Spain when I was in 7th grade it would take me several hours a night to do my homework - mostly because I was struggling with the Spanish.  Carmen, our next door neighbor who watched us after school, would feed us a snack right after school and then we would all sit at the dining room table working on school work until we were done.  To this day, I am not a big procrastinator.  Just sit down and do it.  (And this is why I got to play pool and go out in college while my roommates slaved away!  Come home, go to your room where it's quiet, do your homework, come out, say hi to everyone and then go to the pub while they sit around talking and doing homework.  I think we all did the same amount of socializing and homework but I think I felt less stressed.)

I also enjoyed doing my math homework and doing a lot of math problems probably cemented the how-to that I learned in school.  Other than that, I can't remember getting a lot out of my homework but maybe my parents would have a different opinion ...

Why do you blog? Do you care who Violent Acres is?

Blogs are like diaries but they are public.  They are obviously meant to be read, to be shared - otherwise why put them on the web, right?  That said, there are some blogs that make you wonder why people are writing that in public.  And I have to admit that lately there's been a few times where I had to stop myself from writing something on my blog - something I was upset about, wanted to share, but probably shouldn't share with the whole world.  (For example, imagine you are upset with something a colleague did or said at a meeting and it's so Dilbertesque that you want to write about it.   I had second thoughts on the wisdom of writing about that ...)  People that write blogs like that try very hard to keep them anonymous.

There are a couple of blogs that I follow that I'm not sure why I read them.  One of those is Violent Acres.  I feel like I'm reading someone's diary and yet I enjoy reading it.  Some of the things she says are things people never say in public but make total sense to me.  Like why are women obsessed with being fat?  Or of course she's writing for traffic not for herself, or she would have just written in her diary and stuffed it under her pillow.  So I can't understand why this reader got so upset about it:

This is why I’m done reading Violent Acres:
“For the official record, though, of course I write for the traffic. If I were ‘writing for myself,’ I’d type this shit up in microsoft word and put it under my pillow. I’m here to entertain you. If I wasn’t entertaining you, I’d likely stop writing…despite the fact that this site does turn a profit.”

That absolutely sickens me. Some of the things that V wrote about were very personal, tragic, and terrible. Very few people (me being one of them) would understand what it is like to go through some of the things that she wrote about. And now I found out that she wrote these things for a profit? What am I to think about that? Were any of them actually true? Did she embellish her stories to draw more people in? It is my belief that anyone who writes for traffic can’t be trusted to write honest content.

Basically, they no longer plan to read her blog because it was written for an audience!  Did they really believe that Violent Acres was writing a diary in public for herself with no regards to who read it??  They obviously wanted Violent Acres to keep up the charade.  (By the way there's a lot of hoopla right now - people are trying to figure out who Violent Acres is.  I agree with the group that says "I don't care."  It's highly unlikely I know the person anyway ... and I'm not really worried if her stories are 100% accurate or not.   I read them because I enjoy reading them.) 

What makes you happy?

These things make people happy:

1. Having friends
2. Being healthy
3. Not living in poverty
4. Being married

Money doesn't make you happy.  (Neither do kids according to many studies!)

How much caffeine in your Starbucks coffee?

Ever wondered how much caffeine was in your Starbucks coffee?  Between 6 and 20 mg/oz depending on what type.  Here's the chart with all the info.   Diet Coke (my drink) has 3.75 mg/oz and Mountain Dew has 4.5 mg/oz.  So coffee is worse than Mountain Dew!

Best infant costume

If Caleb was still crawling, this is what he'd be for Halloween. Since he's walking, I have something else in mind and you will have to wait and see!

Never forget the diapers (or toilet paper) again!

I signed up for Amazon Subscriptions a couple of days ago and today we got our first shipment - a big box of diapers and a big box of toilet paper delivered free to the door.  Free shipping, 15% off and they will send us diapers on a regular schedule!  I signed up for diapers once a month and toilet paper every three months (they have all of the non-spoilable grocery type stuff available) - their website and email reminders make it really easy to change how often you want to get things, add a shipment or skip a shipment whenever you need to.  You get the 15% off and free shipping every time. Hopefully once I get it set up we'll never have to think about diapers again ... except when we are changing a particularly stinky one that is!  Now that's my kind of shopping.

Thanks to ParentHacks for telling me about Amazon Subscribe & Save.

Have you been to New Orleans since Katrina?

I haven't been back to New Orleans since our trip in 2004, but a friend of mine just went and said it's still fabulous.  His trip report (written by his wife) is here.  Until 2004, I went at least once a year.  I've celebrated several New Year's Eves, several Jazz Fests, and several French Quarter Festivals in New Orleans, not to mention just random visits.  It's a great city and I'm glad to hear it's still a fun place to visit.  Hopefully some day it will be an attractive place to live in too.

One of the things that's held us back is taking the kids.  Or rather not wanting to take the kids.  I was going to take them until Frank painted this picture for me ... Caleb wandering down the street in the French Quarter picking up everything interesting he saw in the street.  Ugh!

Best book trading site

The New York Times has an article about book trading sites and I was disappointed to see that they choose BookMooch as the number one site and didn't even mention PaperBackSwap.  I am a member of BookMooch and PaperBackSwap so I think they are both good, but I far prefer PaperBackSwap for several reasons:

1. First and foremost, they keep the wishlist in an order.  So if I've said I'm interested in the latest Harry Potter book, when it becomes available, they will tell me and give me 48 hours to decide if I want it or not.  The next person on the list has to wait for me to decide if I want it or not.  They get the next copy.  BookMooch emails everybody that wants it at the same time, so I'm never, ever going to get a copy of Harry Potter from BookMooch.  Eventually, it'll be my turn on PaperBackSwap.
2. The PaperBackSwap interface is much easier to understand than BookMooch.
3. PaperBackSwap lets you print postage.

Note that I quit using TitleTrader, one of the other ones mentioned by the article.

Which book trading site is your favorite?

Drinking while pregnant: now it's ok?

I only got grief once for drinking when I was pregnant - it was a glass of wine on my birthday - but I've heard and seen of many instances of strangers telling women they shouldn't drink because they are pregnant.  Well now they are saying that 1.5 units of alcohol a day is ok!  Again.  (One of my friends was told to have a glass a wine a day when she was pregnant - her kids are now in their 30s and doing fine.)

We'll see what they say next year ... in the meantime, relax, and let the pregnant woman have a glass of wine.  Believe me, she is way more worried about her baby's health than you will ever be!

Swapped babies: to swap back or not to swap?

The TV series Private Practice told the story of two moms whose babies were switched at birth.  Turns out it's not all fiction.  These Czechoslovakian women had their babies swapped at birth too.  After an initial agreement to swap back they've changed their minds and have decided to keep the babies that they have been raising.  Unfortunately, one of the dads doesn't like the decision.  The babies are 10 months old ...

... I can't even imagine being told that Caleb wasn't "mine" and that I had to give him up.  I think I agree with these moms.  By now he's mine no matter what!

(Private Practice went on to give the story another twist ... one of the babies wasn't expected to live past five and her father is the one that made the switch.)

Are you a left brain or right brain thinker?

Supposedly, if you see her spinning clock-wise you are right brained and therefore more creative.  Spinning counter-clockwise?  You're left brained and logical.  My problem?  She spins one way for a couple of seconds and then all of a sudden she's spinning the other way and there's a little skip.  I think the picture changes.

Picture linked from i-am-bored.com.

 

The Right Brain vs Left Brain Test If you see dancer rotating clockwise, you are right-brained (creative), counter-clockwise, left-brained (logical).

Building a secret apartment in the mall

Eight artists built themselves a one room studio in the mall parking garage and kept it a secret for FOUR YEARS!  It's one of those interesting crimes that makes you wonder how you could do it and not get caught.  (Unless you are homeless or want to make a statement, there's probably no real reason to create a one room studio in a parking garage.) You can read more about it in the Rhode Island news: 1 room, no view.