March 21, 2009 • randomness •

Saturday Review 3-21: This week around the blogiverse

Bulletin Board

****PSA of the week, via Donna (SoCal Mom), Los Angelista, and the LA Moms Blog: emergency preparedness (and the chance to get a free “disaster kit”)

****Plans are moving forward for the Book Blogger Retreat. It’s tentatively scheduled for July 18-19 in Portland, OR. Unfortunately for me, I’ll have to miss it – that’s the weekend before BlogHer’09 in Chicago – but it looks like Trish (Hey Lady!) and her team are making some good plans.

****The Spring edition of the 24-Hour Read-a-thon – renamed “Dewey’s Read-a-Thon” in honor of its founder, and now hosted on its own blog – will take place April 18-19. (I always seem to have other plans during Read-a-thon weekends…but I’ll be thinking of everyone who tries to go the distance!)

New to my Google Reader
A Piece of My Mind
At Home With Books
S. Krishna’s Books
Café of Dreams
Shelf Life
Tip of the Iceberg
A host of new feeds from the personal blogs of members of the Silicon Valley Moms Group – thanks to Monica Brand for creating a feed file for easy uploading!
Across the Blogiverse

Author Phyllis Schieber’s discussion of motherhood with a 25-year-old son truly resonated with me for obvious reasons. Other parental reflections: strong – and totally justified – feelings about deadbeat dads; positive feelings about grandparents; why the “new” Dora isn’t necessarily an “improved” Dora; are kids’ movies soap operas in disguise?

In this economy, people need to look out for each other; the underground Pokemon/Bakugan economy, where “free trade” may mean “trade for free” (a/k/a “just give me that one”)

Margaret and Helen‘s dream

It’s an east coast/west coast thing – Florida style (and I can vouch for that, having grown up in Tampa Bay…well, not in the water)

Do you have a geeky spouse – or are you the geeky spouse? Refer to this checklist (via The Park Bench) if you need to make sure. It actually describes life around my house pretty well – it’s a bit scary. And if you’re spouse-free, here are some tips for living the single life (#5 is my favorite).

Got too many Twitter followers? 10 easy ways to shed them. More numbers – 13 trivial annoyances (I agree with at least 10 of them).

Would you rather buy the clothes where the models are smiling?

>Parent of the week, via Not Always Right

Movie Theater | Massachusetts, USA
(A customer comes in with four very young kids.)
Customer: “Does [R-rated police drama] have any nudity in it?”
Me: “No, but it’s incredibly violent.”
Customer: “…but there’s no sex or nudity, right?”
Me: “No, it’s just really violent and bloody.”
Customer: “I’ll have one adult and four kids, please!”

>For the birds, via Not Always Right (nothing especially pointed about this one – it just made me laugh)

Call Center | Winchester, KY, USA
(I work at a call center for truck drivers.)
Me: “Thank you for calling the service center. My name is ***, are you experiencing a breakdown?”
Trucker: “Yeah, I need a new windshield.”
Me: “OK, sir. What happened to your current windshield?”
Trucker: “A bird went through it.”
Me: “Alright, a bird hit your windshield and cracked it, correct?”
Trucker: “No, the bird went THROUGH the windshield. It’s sitting in the passenger seat now and the windshield has a hole in it.”
Me: “So, what kind of bird is it?”
Trucker: “… a dead one.”

Blogthings Quiz of the Week:
The snippet in the feed reader for this quiz was “Are you more physical, mental, or spiritual?” Turns out I’m mental. Like that’s a surprise to anyone…

You Are Mind
If you dream it, then you can do it. You are very mentally sharp and strong.
You enjoy challenging yourself both at work and with studies. You love mastering difficult tasks.

You thrive in new environments, even stressful ones. You are able to study everything objectively.
You have a upbeat attitude, and won’t be deterred easily. You are open minded and optimistic about the future.

Bookmarks: Reading-related reading

Despite the fact it’s better known for other forms of entertainment, SoCal does have a thriving bookish community, and My Friend Amy will be telling us more about it in her new recurring feature, “So Cal Lit Scene.” As a fellow resident of said scene, I’m looking forward to this!

Question and answer: Is there an “unspoken code” to lending paperbacks?

The tendency to be distracted by books starts young

Public library=Ponzi scheme?

A current list of newly-defined Bookwords (to be updated as new ones are added); an interesting discussion of novel structure

Books that caught my eye this week:
Her Last Death, by Susanna Sonnenberg
It Will Come to Me, by Emily Fox Gordon
Safer, by Sean Doolittle

Have a great weekend, everyone!

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6 comments

  2. Amy – It jumped up a LOT this week, between that feed file of SV Moms bloggers and some new blogs I found through people who entered my giveaway. The current count is 466, but some of them are far less active than others. Yikes, it is a lot, isn’t it?

  4. April – Their blog is awesome. I wonder what my dad would think of them? I think they’re all around the same age now :-).

  5. My Google Reader must have had a bug. I missed four of your posts that suddenly decided to show up in my reader today. I was wondering why you were being so quiet. 🙂

    I was thinking the same thing about the read-a-thon. It never seems to be at a good time for me. Oh well. Maybe next time.

    Thanks for the links, Florinda!

    I am mental too! Or mind, rather. 🙂

  6. Wendy (Literary Feline) – And I was wondering why a few of last week’s posts hadn’t been visited by you yet :-).

    Nice to know I’m in good company with the whole “being mental” thing :-).