Oh, the New Year, it as come at last. Except not at last, more like: ALREADY?! Is it just me or do the years get shorter as you grow older? It’s really like an odd Vortex of Time. The days seemed to fly by when I was walking the halls of Garces while the years seemed to drag on forever, but now the days drag on while I sit at work bored blogging but the year seems to pass by in a few blinks.

I know I said before that I would blog and list some resolutions but, yeah, I totally failed the only resolution I made this year the second day of the new year. Which is actually one day longer than I made it last year so, YAY? I plan on getting back on track with that but since I feel like not making myself feel like an Epic Failure at the end of 2008, I’ve decided to list a few things that I’d more call “goals” than “resolutions”. Meaning if I don’t get them accomplished I’ll just be “lazy” instead of a “failure”. Ahh, wonderful semantics.

Goal 1) Grow enough back bone to start taking some real street photography shots. When I look through photostreams all over the internet, I’m always drawn to these little moments in time perfectly captured forever in a single frame. They are so much more “real” than posed shots. The problem is managing to get a shot without GETTING shot. By like, a gun or something. While I have no problem pointing the lens at my family and friends obsessively, I’m not quite to the point where I feel comfortable doing it to random people on street corners. I think that a better zoom lens would help this but until I feel like shelling out that cash, I need to become comfortable doing it with the equipment I have.

Goal 2) Start to explore some of the fantastic culture around me. We live 5 minutes from Downtown San Jose but I actually WENT downtown exactly three times last year and I only drove one of them. I *hate* driving downtown. It’s all full of one way streets that are narrow and the sidewalks are at street level and some of them are ‘bus only’ and some of them have the light rails like, ON the sidewalks and it’s just NERVE WRACKING.

But, I just need to get the fuck over it. My first adventure will be to the The Tech museum this weekend.

Goal 3) Take a class. I haven’t decided yet between English or Photography but I’m leaning towards English. And I don’t want to do it online because I’m too easily distracted. I want to sit in a classroom with other students in front of an actual teacher that keeps me on my toes.

Goal 4) Get my car on the track. This is big step for me and just typing it out actually makes me heart race and my palms get sweaty but it’s something I want to experience. Ben has done SO MANY of the things that I want to do and doing something with him that he is so passionate about is important to me.

Goal 5) Get in a LEAST a blog a week. heh

Goal 6) FINALLY finish 365!

So there ya go. I really hope that so far 2008 is treating you all well!

So as part of my 365 challenge, I’ve joined a group called 30 secrets in 30 days and I think it’s kind of a cool idea so I’ve decided to cross post some of the submissions here.

Here is secret #2:

I’ve struggled for a long time to “find my place” in life. I am a complete tomboy. I love autorcrossing, having a bad ass car to drive, change my own oil and can put my spare on my car in less than 15 minutes. And I’m a total geek. I’ve been going to LAN parties full of smelly boys since I was a teenager and actually lied to my girlfriends about where I was going to avoid the comments. I still play MMORPG’s but FPS’s will always be my first love. I usually code my own websites and am a complete photography and Photoshop geek. But I’m also a shoe-aholic. Those brown Steve Madden shoes are at least 10 years old and that bag of MAC is from last weekend. I’m a closet girly girl.

The problem is that I’ve never been welcomed completely by any group. The girly girls get very pissy about the fact that I can hold my own in my car and don’t have any problem talking “shop” with the boys. Even though it’s never been about getting attention, that’s the card they always throw out there. And the boys can’t ever seem to fully look past the boobs. And the geeks don’t get the makeup, shoes and car talk.

On top of all this I’m a MOMMY. I had two more arms, one with a book and the other with a bunch of Cassidy’s mismatched socks but the layers on this thing were getting to be a little too much to deal with so I left it at 6. Cassidy takes up the majority of my time but I thought that this should be more about ME and MY identity.

I’m not sure I’ll ever fit into any mold and I think it’s stupid that people can’t look past one aspect to fully embrace the other. The only person that’s ever looked at and loved and valued every different aspect is Ben. He gives me hope that someday more people will follow his lead.

OMGHI!

I know that I’ve been Teh Suck at updating regularly and I could totally lie to you and say it’s because I’ve been SO BUSY with… THINGS! Important things! Things that take important time!

The truth is I just haven’t felt like writing.

But since it was Christmas and all I thought that I should take the time to make some kind of Christmas type post so you don’t all think that I’m some horrible holiday hating Scrooge or something. Because that’s only partially true.

I do love the holiday season. I love the house lights (and really think that they should stay up all year and not just because I hate taking ours down, they are pretty and the neighborhood seems so boring and bland after New Years), and I love cookies (as witnessed by the two pants sizes my ass has expanded in the last month), and I love the music (as long as it’s MY MUSIC and not that crappy mall muzak shit, Kenny G playing Silver Bells with that horn thing he uses puts me in one mood; the mood to sleep). Ben and I just had a rough few months prior to the Christmas season so it was hard for me to get into the mood right away and it didn’t really hit till about a week before The Big Day.

I think one of the hardest things for me to grasp this year is that this is probably going to be Cassidy’s last “Santa” year. She’s already really skeptical but I could tell that there was still a glimmer of magic in her eye as she asked the questions you expect a kid to start to ask when they are putting the pieces together. Next year she’ll have become one of those precocious 10 year olds that pretends to believe in Santa because she knows she’ll net a bigger profit if Santa is involved. She’ll start to complain about having to take the lights down, and she’ll start rolling her eyes at the Kenny G musak and she’ll see the cookie making as a chore instead of a fun activity and it’s all just kind of depressing.

But! I still made the most of it and Christmas day was great and she ripped open 30 presents in 4.7 minutes flat. We now have more Hannah Montana CRAP in the house than I’m comfortable with and I’m pretty sure that I funded the next month of Hannah’s life with said CRAP.

And I wrapped some of Ben’s presents in Alliance wrapping paper. That alone made Christmas day ROCK.

And now the obligatory list of fabulous loot. I’ll keep it to the big and fantastically bad ass things.

• KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer in Red from my mommy. <3
• Senseo coffee maker also in red from Cassidy.
• Tickets to see Beauty and the Best in May when it comes to the city from my dad. It will be Cassidy’s first Broadway type play and we are both really excited.
• A really nice laptop bag from Ben.

And last but certainly not least was DxO from Ben. It deserves to be separate from the bullets because it is THAT bad ass. It’s this really advanced photo correction software that uses all these complex mathematical algorithms to correct photos caused by known “flaws” in camera body and lens combinations. So in layman terms, it make pretty pictures EVEN PRETTIER. They have a free demo if you have a DSLR and want to give it a try.

And now, the look forward to 2008 which will require another obligatory post about the past year and what I expect for the NEXT year and I’m sure that “Rinse, Repeat!” isn’t going to cut it so I’ll be back sooner than you think! But just in case I don’t, have a great New Years Eve everybody! Drink lots, don’t drive and ring in the year with people you love and don’t want to punch in the face if you do get too drunk!

*hugs*

I’m always fascinated when people throw the “narcissistic” ball at bloggers. And there really isn’t a valid way to argue against it, right? I write about me because I assume that you are going to be interested in what I have to say about me. So yeah, anybody that has a personal domain carries around a healthy amount of The Veinâ„¢.

My dad likes to tease me about the narcissism of blogging and self portraits but we laugh about it because, it’s TRUE! I love me! IT’S ALL ABOUT ME! And my dad bought me the PJ’s to prove it so really, I blame him.

My question to YOU is why YOU care so much? I write about me because I think that I am awesomely fantastic. But why do you read about me? And when you do, and you’re so appalled by it, why do you come back? Over and over. To read more and more. Why do you take time out of your day to comment or email and tell me how vein I am? Because all you’re doing is inflating the ego. I HAVE FANS! I must write more! MORE!

It’s this never ending debate I see rampaging the internet every where I turn. The bloggers write about themselves and the haters write about how much they hate you writing about yourself. “Mommy bloggers” are especially prone to this because a lot of parenthood is about failure. Lots and lots of bumps and bruises and finding out what works by realizing what DOESN’T. I’ve not come across a SINGLE mommy blogger that doesn’t have at least ONE regular commenter there telling them in every comment thread:

“I can’t believe you gave your child SODA! You fucking monster!”

“I can’t believe you posted yours child’s PICTURE on the INTERNET! What about predators?!”

“I can’t believe you told the WORLD about when your child fell down and cracked open his head! Where were you? Probably BLOGGING, you horrible, unfit, asswad! Get off the internet and raise your kids!”

And here I am saying it: I don’t get YOU. At least my focus is on ME. I write because it’s an outlet. I have this grand illusion that people will actually want to read what I have to say, that maybe they will enjoy it and get a little chuckle, or walk away with a new perspective, or just slightly less bored than when they sat down. But at the very core of it, I write because when putting it down “on paper” I have to actually form my thoughts and opinions into complete sentences and organize them in paragraph form and I’m foced to confront them. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gotten half way through a blog post and gone, “Ohhhhhhhhhhhh.”

Epiphany!

I sit down and blog knowing that today I will probably learn something new about myself, and two years from now I can look back on today and see how stupid I was back then. YOU sit down to read what I have to say to pick it apart and twist it into something evil and wrong and *gasp* vein!

So you tell me, who sounds like the bigger fool here?

P.S. - I don’t really have any haters. The “I” here was written to speak for bloggers as a whole. Remember, I’m too awesomely fantastic to have haters. BAM!

At what point in your life do you realize that holding on to animosity and grudges rob you every second you dwell on them? I guess everybody has to find that realization in their own time and in their own way. For me, it happened in the last two weeks. If you’d have asked me six months ago if I was aware enough to know this I’d have said yes, but I’d have been so very wrong. And in another six months I might think the same thing about this moment right now… But for right now, I’m there. I’ve chosen to not carry around those feelings like an egg on a spoon, always afraid that a gust of wind will come along and knock them off to stink up my life.

I let go. I hope others can do the same in the long run. I guess time will tell.

I’ll be back to blog soon. Once to post this in more depth but behind a protected post. I’m adding a plug in to let “select” registered users read them. I’ll let you all know more when that takes place and how to gain access.

And! Ben and I are having a little debate about how far Neo’s ability to bend the space time continuum extends and we need The Internet’s opinion to settle it.

Jenn posted this meme the other day and I sat down and wrote out half of it and got sidetracked and didn’t finish till today.

1. Do you try to look hot when you go to the grocery store just in case someone recognizes you from your blog?
Hell no. I try to look as ridiculous as necessary so the majority of the people don’t want to bother me. Sometimes I just write “CRAZY!!” on my forehead to get the point across better. The two exclamation points are necessary for that. I think that anybody who’s read my blog would understand my secret code and understand that they are exempt from the “bothering”.

2. Are the photos you post Photoshopped or otherwise altered?
Most of them. I add a black and white border to pretty much every picture I take. Also, on a lot of them I duplicate layers and change the top layer property to make the colors pop. I also take all my shots in RAW form now so if I really want to manipulate something I start out by playing with hue/saturation before it even gets touched as a JPEG.

3. Do you like it when creeps or dorks email you?
I enjoy email of all kind. Especially from creeps because then I forward them to my friends and we have a good laugh.

4. Do you lie in your blog?
Please reread #1. I prefer to use “embellish a LOT” to “lie”.

5. Are you passive-aggressive in your blog?
Wow, #1 really answers a lot of these questions for me!

6. Do you ever threaten to quit writing so people will tell you not to stop?
Seriously? I have people telling me all the time to WRITE MORE ALREADY so not a problem. But I wouldn’t anyway.

7. Are you in therapy? If not, should you be? If so, is it helping?
Not anymore. But I have been and yes, it helped. Imagine #1 if I hadn’t!

8. Do you delete mean comments? Do you fake nice ones?
In over 4 years I’ve deleted ONE comment but for the most part, I don’t like to censor people. And no, I don’t fake comments. I’d have a lot more comments if I did!

9. Have you ever rubbed one out while reading a blog? How about after?
Who in the hell writes these things?!

10. If your readers knew you in person, would they like you more or like you less?
I’d like to think more but The Blond might prove otherwise.

11. Do you have a job?
Fo’ sho’, yo.

12. If someone offered you a decent salary to blog full-time without restrictions, would you do it?
I really don’t know. I’d love to be paid for writing because I actually enjoy writing much more than I ever talk about it here but I don’t think there is anybody out there that would actually PAY to read the insanity.

13. Which blogger do you want to meet in real life?
All of them! Seriously, I’m fascinated by people and how different upbringings, locations, opinions, etc all vary.

14. Which bloggers have you made out with?
BEN!!

15. Do you usually act like you have more money or less money than you really have?
I don’t think I go either way. We live comfortably but everybody has their money issues and we are certainly not immune to that.

16. Does your family read your blog?
Yes. My dad reads and comments. My mom reads although I’m not sure how much because she pretty much refuses to acknowledge its existence and curls up into a fetal position and shakes whenever I mention it. Cousins read and comment. I know that more people have the address but have never let on that they are reading and if they ARE the should COMMENT.

17. How old is your blog?
The blog dates back to, gosh, you expect me to actually remember that… I’ll just go with a long time. I’ve had personal domains since 2003 and anything before that is certainly forgettable so I’ll just stick to that.

18. Do you get more than 1000 page views per day? Do you care?
Let me go check!

So according to AwStats my page views jump to over 1000 on the days that I actually post, but the rest of the time it hovers around 750-1000. I really think that page views are a silly way to judge a blogs relevance though unless you are using them for paid blogging. Quality over quantity and all that jazz..

19. Do you have another secret blog in which you write about being , slutty, or a liar?
If you consider this another secret blog then, yes! Yes I do!

20. Have you ever given another blogger money for his/her writing?
Nope.

21. Do you report the money you earn from your blog on your taxes?
On my other blogs that are specifically to make money, yes.

22. Is blogging narcissistic?
I think it’s probably one of the highest forms of narcissism second only to taking a lot of pictures of yourself. But I think unless you let your ego get the better of you, there’s really nothing wrong with being a bit narcissistic.

23. Do you feel guilty when you don’t post for a long time?
I do actually. But not because I think the readers want it. I feel guilty because that means I haven’t taken the time to sit down and hammer things out.

24. Do you like John Mayer?
As long as he leaves me alone in the grocery store, we’re cool.

25. Do you have enemies?
Enemies? I don’t think so. ‘Enemy’ is a strong word. I certainly have people I’d like to backhand sometimes but the one thing I’ve learned well from Ben is not to hold on to those feelings. Life is too short to walk around hating people.

26. Are you lonely?
No. I have a lot of people to love.

27. Why bother?
Because never trying seems like a silly alternative.

• When you get to the grocery store and there is not a single cart outside, run. As fast as you can. Away from the store. That is a sign that every cart is in use IN the store and venturing in will lead to cussing and general feelings of discontent.
• Never assume that handing in a paper is the end of an assignment. In 4th grade, it only means that you’ve STARTED and two weeks from that point there will be a “project” to turn in that your nine year old will suddenly remember to tell you about 48 hours before it’s due.
• When you go to hack illegally upgrade your iPhone, it’s not best to start that 74,526 step process at 11:30PM. Because to get from 1.0.2 to a jailbroken 1.1.2 you have to upgrade to 1.1.2, then downgrade to 1.1.1 then jailbreak, then hack, then upgrade to 1.1.2 again, then jailbreak… again. And at 11:30PM you have the patience and clarity of thinking of a gnat.
• Don’t ever trust that America’s Tire has a mother fucking clue about anything related to tires. Or to understand how studs work. Or that they should probably check to see if wheels are STAGGERED before they put them back on your car. Because they won’t. And they’ll screw up your studs, put the front wheels on the back and the back wheels on the front somehow try and blame YOU because you have boobies instead of balls and “you’ll be out of her in 35 minutes” will turn into the most frustrating 4 hours OF YOUR LIFE.
• Cats will, without fail, wait till you have mopped all 2000 square feet of house before going outside, ingesting large amounts of grass and then throwing it up in various spots around said house. Cute little green packages of warm love… for me to step in.

Thanksgiving is tomorrow! We have company coming and I’m cooking enough food to feed 70 people. So if you are in the Bay Area and have nowhere to go, come on by, pull up a chair, enjoy the gluttony, and be thankful for stuff! If not, have a great Thanksgiving wherever you may be headed.

I’m a website Nazi. I like eye candy. Web 2.0 graphics and simple design that allows content to shine while not feeling like you are being slapped in the face by a decaying trout. I like different without being tacky. I’ll close a blog simply because it’s header image is a blend of Avril Lavigne from 12 different angles in the same outfit. Even if it’s the most profound, well thought out, earth moving piece of literature, it’s just too painful to have to scroll past that image. The same image I’ve been looking at since 1995 only then it was a still innocent and cocaine free Britney.

And I feel like a hypocritical asswad for writing that given the state that aflux is in right now. There are times I come to the site and am actually a little embarrassed. It’s not that the design isn’t nice because it is. It’s a beautifully coded theme but it’s not MINE. There is nothing original about it at all. You can google the name and come up with thousands of pages of people using it. Yet I’ll sit here and judge YOU for doing the exact same thing.

I guess this is all leading up to the fact that I’ve realized this now and am ready to do something about it. I’m ready to comit more time to making it into something that you, the reader, will enjoy. Before now I’ve always been about me. I blog for me and that won’t change but in the times that I’ve let the site sit idle for weeks between posts and watched the site stats fizzle and comments come to a halt… I really miss you guys! I’m not about having the most comments, or visitors, or how little the number of my technorati score becomes… I miss YOU GUYS. I miss interacting with the people that for whatever reason, seem to want to hear what I have to say. I miss writing. I don’t expect to become the next dooce, or have the following that RSM has and honeslty, I don’t think I’d want that. I’ve only been hatemailed a handful of times and I’d like to keep it that way. I’ve seen the kind of spazzed out cocksuckers that even my tiny little corner of the web can attract and I never want to deal with ALL THAT.

I have a design started. It’s a much bigger undertaking than anything I’ve attempted before and I can’t believe how much things have changed in the world of web deign. It’s been a good two years since I’ve designed and coded something and it actually feels really good to “get my feet wet” again.

This is also me saying publicly that I’m going to try and stop the asswadishness. I’m not going to judge a site based on it’s color scheme or how painful the sting is as the trout whips across my face over and over and over again. I’m going to be better about returning comments. Because if you have taken the time to actually read and respond to me, the very least I can do is take the time to get to know you better and let you know that I care.

PS - Hopefully I’ve kissed ass enough that you don’t hate me for the new text links. I’ll be writing more about them very soon. Please don’t hate me?

This morning I woke up with the imprint of the remont control on my stomach. Hot, right? I can’t help it. It just comes to me naturally.

So I’m in kind of a rut. After being sick for almost two months straight and living in jeans and tshirts (which is actually what I wear when I’m NOT sick but whatever) and I haven’t done anything with my hair except put in into ponytails and my entire MAC obsession sat there in the bathroom untouched and unloved and I am SO UNWORTHY!!!!

Anyway, I’m ready for a change. I’ve put on makeup EVERY DAY THIS WEEK. I even did a fantastic smokey eye for work today that had FIVE shades of eyeshadow and EYELINER! Do you hear that? That’s the devil trying to melt the ice forming in Hell. Somebody get that man some salt!

So here is where I ask the internet for help. 99.9999% of the time my hair looks like that first picture. I spend stupid amounts of money on shampoos and conditioners and serums and balms to make it healthy and shiny and it is that stuff… but that’s all it is. I need change.

I conned the manger at Walgreens to sell me a really nice set of curlers for half of what they are supposed to cost and have played them for the last two nights. The second picture is one of the outcomes. It looks great, right? The problem is that about 30 minutes later it looked like picture #1 again. It frustrates the hell out of me.

So girls, I need your help. Tips, tricks, magical potions, whatever! What are you hair secrets? How in the hell do you get those curls to hang around past the appetizers?

I’ve been trying to write this post for three days now but it’s just not happening the way I want it to. I can’t get the words to formulate correctly into sentences that properly convey what I’m trying to say and it feels like if I don’t say it correctly or enough or with the proper amount of conviction that its a failed attempt.

I’m going to try again and see how it goes.

Last Friday a parent at Cassidy’s school very RUDELY questioned Ben’s parental authority… in front of Cassidy. That’s really the nicest way I can say it. I tend to fill the sentences with F and C words when I tell it in person. Man, backspace keys rule.

In reality she basically said to Ben: “You’re not her father so you don’t make that decision.”

Seriously, five days later the emotion those words stir up are… violent. Caustic acidic emotions that I want to spit directly into her face. Instead when I saw her that afternoon when she tried to speak to me I kept it very short and sweet:

“Do not EVER presume to think you can tell my fiance or daughter who IS and IS NOT her parent. Ben has raised Cassidy for over HALF HER LIFE. He IS HER DAD.”

What is a dad? Is a dad somebody that makes sure her teeth are brushed every morning? Who takes the time to explain long devision over and over and over with he patience of a SAINT? Who makes her laugh so hard she turns red and cries? Who helps gang up on mom and frustrate her to the point of actual brain combustion? Who makes sure she gets to school on time? Who provides food, clothes, toys and health insurance?

I think so. And Ben is all those things and so much more. He does all those thing, not out of a sense of duty, but because he loves Cassidy. Blood or not, she is his daughter.

This is not to say that Troy is NOT her dad. He is. And Mary is her step-mom and Amber is still her grandma and Big Troy is still her grandpa.

Ben and I have both taken the time to explain “step” people to Cassidy before. She knows that Nana is my “step-mom” and that I have “step-sisters”. But she also knows that Papa loves my step-sisters as much as he loves me. Equal. Not less or more. And she understands that while one Nana is my “mom” and one Nana is my “step-mom”, we love both grandmas equally. And they both love us just as much back. To us, “steps” just equal more love! Why have ONE Nana when you can have TWO!?

To Ben:

You are an excellent father. I know that. You know that. Cassidy knows that. Anybody that truly knows you, knows that. When she does something she is so proud of she wants to burst, you are the first person she runs to tell. When she wants somebody to explain something thats really important to her, it’s you she turns to. When I have a question or a concern, you are the first person I turn to. When I start to second guess my parenting or a decision I’ve made, you are the first person I turn to.

You are not only her father, you are my equal partner in raising OUR child. She will be the product of our upbringing. I can’t tell you how thankful that I am that she has you in her life, that WE have you in our lives. I can’t keep every moron out there from saying idiotic things to you, but I can remind you that the three of us are one family and that I love you and I look forward to raising Cassidy together with you. Until the day she turns 18 and we kick her out of the house.