Things have been pretty quiet … or mostly quiet. Jessie’s mother is on vacation, so she’s spending the week with her. I miss her terribly, but I’ve had time to devote to a couple projects that I’ve been wanting to give attention to, so it works out for that.

Sew, sew, sew…

When I was younger, I loved to sew. I used to cross-stitch, make stuffed animals and various clothing items for myself and friends. I haven’t stitched anything in years, with the exception of a couple of costumes that Jessie needed for school about 3-4 years back. I had been wanting to start it up again, but wasn’t sure how or if I would have enough time.

A post on the Soldiers’ Angels blog yesterday has really kicked this need into high-gear. There are several sewing projects on the Soldiers’ Angels site, and several of them are various Blanket teams/projects — the newest being Blankets of Belief.

Now, I know I don’t have the time to commit to quilting or sewing blankets and such by hand, but there was a link on the Blankets of Belief page on how to make a “no-sew” blanket. These are basically fleece blankets that are constructed in such a way that no sewing is involved — if you can tie a knot, you can make one of these!

Sounds perfect!

As soon as I’m able, I’ll be stocking up on materials to make one of these. If it turns out well (read: pretty!), I’ll post pics on here.

Bama Angeling

I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Bama Angels site and have started expanding my “pimpage” to a few social networking sites. So far, it’s up on MySpace, Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, and FriendFeed. I’ve had a LOT of positive response from area Angels and now I need to work on finding information to post to Bama Angels.

I usually get announcements via word of mouth or The Birmingham News, but it would be nice to get all that other Alabama and military related news that gets missed!

If you know of anything, please feel free to send it my way!

Car Update

It’s in the body shop and I was told yesterday that they’ve ordered parts and will begin taking it apart and working on it hopefully today or tomorrow. Realistically speaking, I’ll be lucky if I get it back before the end of this month.

Not thrilled with that, but what can I do? ;P Have otherwise been going back and forth with the insurance company regarding other stuff that’s still unsettled and may need legal handling, but can’t really post about that yet. (will update when able)

I know I’m lucky that we don’t have to pay for all this stuff out of our own pockets (or rather, out of our savings accounts), but honestly, this whole process is enough to drive anyone bonkers!

Courtesy of Ike via Twitter, the dates and location have been set for the South by Deep South (SxDS) conference: September 26-28 in Birmingham, Alabama.

Not a whole lot up yet about it, but the blog does say that current tracts include:

• Social Media/PR/Marketing
• Web development
• WordCamp

Yep, that’s right — a full blown WordCamp, down here!

There will also be the 10th Annual Sidewalk Film Festival going on that weekend as well, so this should be fun!

Today’s my birthday. Even worse, it’s Tax Day. I’ve always hated that. As I tweeted just a little while ago, if one more person says to me, “Oh, you’re a tax baby!” I’m gonna slug ‘em!

Screw the IRS, this is *MY* day!

However, according to Beth, today is also known as Buy A Gun Day. I can dig that!

“Democrats believe every day is April 15. Republicans believe that every day is July 4.” — Ronald Reagan

There … feelin’ happy. Now how ’bout we celebrate with a little song?

Lyrics: (courtesy of Moron Pundit)

I want to keep my money
And give away absolutely nothing
To the government who moderates my spending
and obliterates depending on what time of the year
brutality is near

in the form of income tax
I’d rather take a fucking ax
to my face, blow up this place

with you all in it, I’d do it in a minute

If I could write off your murder
I’d save all of my receipts
because I’d rather you be dead
than lose a tiny shred of what I made this fiscal year

I’d rather you be dead than ponder parting with my second home
I’d rather you be dead than consider not opening a restaurant

I’d rather you be dead
I’d rather you be dead

Prepare the laser-beam
I’m gonna use it tonight

Engage the laser-beam
It’s gonna end your life

I’m gonna use it tonight

If I could write off your murder
I’d save all of my receipts
because I’d rather you be dead
than lose a tiny shred of what I made this fiscal year

I’d rather you be dead than ponder parting with my second home
I’d rather you be dead than consider not opening a restaurant.

Big thanks to Beth for the reminder. I love love *LOVE* Metalocalypse!

Someone told me last week, “You always find the neatest stuff!” Then I’m asked how I find these things. My response was something along the lines of a laugh and, “I have neat friends.”

Usually when I get something neat — a site, story, video, etc. — I bookmark it. Most often, I run across stuff by emails from friends or my feeds. Sometimes I surf and will just meander from one site to the next, bookmarking stuff as I go. Occasionally I will tweet something I find, or post it to my blog, but most often than not, it just sits in my bookmarks file. For a while I’ve thought about how to most effectively go about sharing the wealth. I’ve looked into a few things and have started sharing, little by little.

I’ve most recently started sharing items via Google Reader. I’ve also switched to a very awesome Twitter client, Twhirl, which makes make re-tweeting much easier. Something that I’ve seen done before, but haven’t attempted yet, perhaps start posting re-tweets on my blog.

Now, I’m left with the 500+ bookmarks I have right now. I may go the route of del.icio.us or something along those lines (Lord knows there are a million different franchises of bookmarking services out there), but I haven’t decided yet. I’m most familiar with del.icio.us, and if I’m able to seamlessly integrate it into one of my personal bookmarking services, I may start posting things there.

Time will tell … but for now, Google Reader and Twitter are my current carriers of goodies.

EDIT: Oh! I almost forgot about Friend Feed … this pretty much covers anything/anyone I’ve bookmarked, friended, shared, favorited, etc. recently. It rocks.

I have been messing with various parts of my theme over the last couple of days. Sadly, I have not yet widgetized this theme (shocking, I know) because I had so much custom code in it. I have been looking for a replacement to the Twitter swf and nothing I’ve run across so far has fit my liking (yet), but I did see a WP widget that looked promising.

Key word being ‘widget’ … OK, so I’m stubborn.

I know I could hack up the plugin code to make it work for a non-widgetized theme, but honestly, if I’m going to find new toys to play with, I need to clean up the playground — so to speak. Get on the ball, re-arrange my theme’s innards, banish those last handful of code gremlins back to the outer banks of Hades, and “get with the widgets.” *nyerk*

So, over the next few days, don’t be too surprised if I break something …