Jami is Annoyed with Blogger

Hello fans. In case anyone is following here, I am moving my blog at least temporarily to my FaceBook page, as Blogger keeps deleting my paragraph breaks for no reason I can discern. Anyone else having this problem? Or know how to deal with it without having to add them all in manually?

Jami Micros Again

Another microfiction monday. Dang I'm good...

The good folks of Iowa never caught the USSR’s most stylish spies.

Bea’s hat contained the secret plans; Fay’s transmitted them to Sputnik.

Jami Starts Microfiction Monday

Patrick put me onto this - you have 140 characters to tell the story that goes with the picture. Sounds like fun. I can't guarantee I'll get to it every week and yes, I know today is Tuesday, but since yesterday was a holiday, I call it fair.

Looking for his lost parents, Thurston IV realized how the 3-hour tour became 3 years.He wouldn’t live long enough for the colors to appear.

Jami Responds to a Challenge

My good buddy, Patrick in a comment after one of his recent posts, offered me a deal: He'd watch Expelled, a movie about academic freedom in the world of science and research, if I'd watch Religulous, Bill Maher's "current take on the state of religion in the world." Now I am willing to accept this deal, Patrick, and my apologies for taking so long to get back to you, but between the flu and the growing of new life in my very own body, I've been a bit distracted, however, I want to explain why I don't necessarily agree that these two are equivalent. I have not yet seen Religulous, though I've seen a few cuts and the trailer. I will absolutely agree with Bill Maher on the two points I've seen him make which are: 1. People do stupid, evil and terrible things in the name of religion 2. Religions can be broken down to look foolish in the eyes of non-believers. For point 1 - it's absolutely true that all manner of stupidity and atrocities in the name of their religions. The Crusades, 9-11, ethnic cleansing, it's a long and disgusting list, hopefully embarrassing to each religion involved. However, does that mean that religions, plural or individually, are to blame? How many horrible things have been done in the name of love, loyalty, wealth, pride or country? Should we abolish these things as well? Or is the point that humans, as a group, can take a good concept and twist it to satisfy some evil within? The fault lies not with the religion itself, but in the people using it to justify actions that in most cases falls well outside that religion's beliefs. More fault may lie with the others in the religion who refuse to chastise someone solely because they claim the same god. But to call all religion bad because some misuse it - that's a dangerous path to go down. 2 - Again, having not seen the movie, but from the reviews even on IMDb, a fairly "neutral" party, Maher got interviews with various religious leaders by misleading them as to his identity and intent. After getting these interviews, he seems to be trying to show how nonsensical each religion is when looked at objectively. I personally don't think that faith is the absence or ignorance of facts, but the logical jump you make once you decide where the facts point, and when they can go no further. I can no more prove my god exists than someone can prove conclusively that he doesn't. All I can say is that even in the Bible, it warns that God uses the things that seem foolish to confound the wise, so I will believe what I believe and if it sounds ridiculous to you, that is what you have decided. I'll respect what you believe, or don't, if you'll respect that I do. On the other hand, the point of Expelled is not to prove or disprove evolution, creation or intelligent design. It's not a treatise on if there's a god. It's a disturbing look at whether scientists should be allowed to question evolution. Ben Stein didn't deceive anyone in his quest to answer the question - Is evolution provable? and If not, should people who study and teach this be allowed to voice the opinion that there may be an unexplained force involved. Stein offers no opinion on any god in particular, instead he focuses on people who have lost jobs and livelihoods by merely mentioning that evolution may not provide all the answers to the beginning of life on earth. So Patrick, if you're still game, let me know.

Jami Admits When Wrong

Not long ago, I posted this about the apparent lack of costumed superheroes in our society. Clearly, my research department dropped the ball on this one. Here is the link to the World Superhero Registry. It's a registry of, in their own words, "Real Life Superheroes". You can also shop and get Hero Support on this site. I had been woefully unaware of this resource. There seem to be no heroes listed in my area, the closest one being Cincinnati. Also, I am interested that almost everyone lists their notoriety as "Medium". Not sure how one judges that. Just saying. So. There you have it. Consider the post corrected. And sleep better, knowing these fine folks have your back. If you live in their area.

Jami Finally Gets to Blog

Ah - busy as usual. It's no excuse. I have used my normal blog time this week to play Plantasia on Yahoo. I don't know why, I just couldn't stop playing it. I'd be composing my blogs in my head while killing beetles and watering my cacti and then it would be waaaayyyy too late to blog. Here's what's gone on, in the real world: Eddie had his last Gymboree class. He handled it totally well, even composing and singing the "Last Gymboree class! Last Gymbo class for meee!!!!" song while I sniffled back tears and couldn't even think "this is our last parachute time" without getting all mushy. Eddie had preschool orientation and his first day (today). In typical Eddie fashion, we had the following conversation: Me: Did you have fun? Eddie: No Me: Did you play any games? Eddie: No Me: Did you sing any songs? Eddie: No Me: Did you color? Eddie: No Me: What did you learn? Eddie: Nothing! Me: Was Miss Courtney nice? Eddie: NO! Me: Okay, do you want to go back? Eddie: YES!!!!!! My MOPS group started this week - yay! It reminds me of those few days when you go back to college before classes start; you see all your friends you haven't seen all summer, you catch up, meet a couple new people, get back into the flow, but there's no boring classes or stressful homework. That's MOPS, preclass college days for mommies. My brother, his wife and their adorable son visited (Note: All my nephews, my one niece and my 2 1/2 goddaughters are all adorable, except the half-goddaughter who is almost sixteen and would certainly NOT want me calling her adorable - but she is). Eddie loves hanging with his cousins, although he views this one with some suspicion as Z is younger and therefore likely to steal trains if we aren't vigilant. Eddie and Z played at the park and spent some time at Grammy's house. Good times. That's about all the news for now. I'll try to tear myself away from the virtual garden again soon.

Jami Has Not Vanished, I Promise

Sigh, so the place we stayed did not have an internet connection that I could access. That's the first week I was missing. Then we got home and apparently the extended power outage we missed turned off our wireless connection, which took us a good time to figure out and that confused our poor wireless card, which had to be uninstalled and reinstalled and at that point I had, I don't know, a bazillion emails. Plus, on the work front, my division has been sold, so I had to attend online training sessions. This is not fun. Not that training is ever a hoot, but when training the wide variety of people in our company, it's sort of like being in one of those old-fashioned one room school houses, you know? Where I'm the teenager who is listening in on the teacher working with the little ones. Think I'm being arrogant? Here's the actual conversation that started one of the conference calls that I was on - the instructions we received ended with "Once you are connected, please mute your phone. If your phone does not have a mute button, you can use *6 to mute it for the conference. *6 again will unmute it for questions". I connect, mute my phone and hear: Man 1: Hello?? Am I in the right place? Is this (company name) training? Woman 1: Yes. Please mute your phone because there are going to be close to 100 people on this call and the background noise becomes distracting. You can unmute it for the Q&A. Man 1: Should I mute it now? Woman 2: Hello? Is this the training thing? Man 1: Yes. Should we mute our phones? Woman 1: Yes, please use *6 to mute your phone. (long pause) Woman 2: It's not working! Man 1: I should mute my phone now? Won't there be role-call? Woman 1: No role call, we can see who is connected. Please mute your phone. Woman 2: I'm trying to mute my phone, but it's not working. I pushed the star and the 6 and nothing happened. I did it a bunch of times. Should I hold them both down together? Woman 1: No, just push the star and then the 6. Man 1: So mute it now? Woman 1: yes, please mute your phone now. Woman 2: it's still not working! Man 1: you're pushing the star thing and the 6? Woman 2: yes. It's not working. Man 1: it worked for me. I muted it and then I unmuted it. Woman 2: What does mute mean, anyway? I'm not making that up. I don't know what the heck she expected it to do, but she was apparently muting and unmuting her phone over and over and insisting it wasn't working, because she couldn't tell that there was a difference. Later in the call, another woman asked if she would have to get her own computer because she didn't have one and hadn't ever used one and she was at her daughter's house who had set the whole thing up for her. One woman said, and I still haven't figured this out "I have to have dial up connection, you know, because of the Amish out here." Can anyone explain that to me? So, anyway, with vacation, new job training, my birthday party and my actual birthday (today, BTW), blogging had sort of slipped down my list. But I'm back, baby. For now, anyway.

Jami Insists You Watch This

If you enjoy any combination of the following:

• Joss Whedon projects
• Superheroes
• Musicals
• Neil Patrick Harris
• Seriously hilarious shorts

Go, right now to Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog which is only available for a very brief time but is so very laugh-out loud-at-your-computer wrong. You will forever regret missing it. Watch all three acts now, before it's too late.

GO! GO!!!!

Jami's Friday Feast

Feast 185 I haven't done the feast in a few weeks, but this week I did mine and EDW's as well, here, because I figure that my made up answers tell you as much about me as her truthful ones would tell you about her. Also, because I'm lazy. Appetizer What does the color dark green make you think of? Oh, so many things. A nice hideaway in a wooded area where you can't really see the sun for all the trees. My senior prom dress. My living room curtains. The Jaguar S-type I lust after - haven't decided if I want it in green or grey. Soup How many cousins do you have? Exactly two. Small family, I guess. Salad On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how honest are you? 8.5 Main Course Name something that is truly free. Someone going commando? Or did you mean at no cost? Dessert Using the letters in the word SPRING, write a sentence. Seriously, Prince really is not gay.

Jami Uses Dirty Words, But Not Here

Not on my very family-friendly blog. Nope, I used my potty-mouth to sully EDW's blog while she's away. So you can check it out here, but I am warning you, you will be offended if you don't like swearing, so in that case, just skip it and assume I was both funny and clever. As usual.

Jami is Annoyed

Arghhhgh! The space bar on the lappie is breaking. It's sorry of quasi-stuck. It works, as long as you really hit it good. Which is really not conducive to fast typing. Yes, I tried cleaning it. Not that I'm a techno-guru, but it looks to me like the little thingy under the space bar has broken on both sides. Grrr. So if I start blogging-like-this, you'll-understand....

Jami Waits For a Better Offer

Ah, spam, bane of the inbox. Awhile ago, and I'm too lazy at the moment to find it, I blogged about how I at least want my spam to be creative. Publishers Clearing House has had a few clever ones, including the one that provides you a script to read on camera when you win. So helpful. The Nigerian ones vary greatly, and appreciate the ones who have clearly put more effort into it. Last year I received one that offered me not only my share of$37million, but also the author's youngest brother as a spouse. Now that's quite a deal. The last several Nigerian style ones I've gotten (sometimes called 419 scams) have been for rather paltry amounts. $ 7 million, less your expenses? Bah, barely worth my time. $12 Million split between you and me, with $1 million for your lawyer? I don't think so. $6 million split three ways?? Why don't I just go dig pennies out of the sofa. It seemed the trend had been higher and higher numbers, but maybe they started to think that we can't be that stupid. Maybe a few mill sounds more likely? Also, I get a nice mix of the business variety and religious ones. The aforementioned $7 million one earlier today cleverly combined both, as a mission founded by a person "WITH YOUR SAME SURNAME" (which was never mentioned, interestingly) had somehow stumbled on this money and without the founder, who apparently recently passed away, they needed to get this money out of the country so the government wouldn't take all these important christian funds. I wonder, if these people put half this effort into writing fiction what fabulous stories we'd be treated to. Ah well. I do recommend this site which posts actual email exchanges, including pictures and sometimes phone calls, between the scammers and "scambaiters" who creatively mess with the criminals. Kids, don't try this at home.

Jami Catches Up

Friday was a bad day. Not giant tragic things, just one of those days where stupid things go wrong and everything is frustrating and you just want to scream. Nothing I wanted to share, so I poured all my feelings into a blog post about a friend I had who purposely drifted away. I really loved the way it turned out, just exactly what I wanted to say. Then I posted it and got an error message. Grrrrr!!! So I go to where they save them, since they auto save and it had saved . . . the first 5 words. "Sometimes I wonder where you" AHHHHHHHHHHH. Couldn't reconstruct it, couldn't even bear to try. Saturday went better. Good parts: Dinner with MOPS group, Improv featuring Kevin Smith and Seth Rogan. Bad parts: waiting in freezing temps 1/2 hour past the time the show was supposed to start (although we enjoyed the other couples around us), the rude people who talked through much of the show and losing an hour's sleep. Sunday was fine. Monday - um, normal. And today. It's the Husband's birthday. We had dinner at Red Robin (yummy!) and Eddie fell asleep in the car on the way home. I went to MOPS, for the first time in a month due to snow cancellations. We're going to have tea and watch TV and chill. See you tomorrow.

Jami Guest Blogs and Stews in Her Jealousy

Yes, that's right, I am honored to be a guest blogger over at EDW's place while she whoops it up in Vegas. Soooo jealous. If wishes were horses, I'd be selling a few of them to fly my butt on out there and join in the debauchery. But wishes are not horses. It's true. And since my son is either insane or systematically trying to destroy me as part of some evil toddler plot, I can't write another post at this time. So go there, read that and if I'm not committed to an asylum by tomorrow, I'll post here then.

Several Quick Notes

Whoo, so many things going on, I have an idea for a more coherent entry, but first, a few quick things. Thanks to Paperback Writer who not only wrote extremely nice things about me, but also posted a picture of me to go with them. PW is one of those people that I just decided I was going to make be my friend, and I don't know if she remembers this or not, but I think it started when I invited her to go to the deli for a sandwich. I am sooooo glad I did, because we are frequently on the same frequency . .. Congrats to Monica and Joe who had a beautiful son, Nathan, Monday afternoon. Monica either had history's easiest labor or super-drugs because not only did she describe the process as "a few painless hours" and "not comfortable", but also, in the picture she sent from the hospital, (you know the one, where the woman usually looks like she just wrestled a Kreemorian Fangor Beast and won, but barely) Monica has perfect hair and perfect make-up!! If she tells me what they gave her, I'll post it here for any Future Mommies, so you know what to ask for ;-) And lastly, I'm in Pittsburgh's FreeCycle, which is a loose association of people who give stuff away for free instead of throwing it out. You can give away stuff, and you can request something you need. This morning I saw a post for "WANTED: Machete". Now, I am sure there was a TOTALLY rational explanation in the post, but me, I prefer to leave it my imagination. You just never know when you're going to need a machete. Check back later for Pork Chops and Cookies.

Props to the Movie Guys

Hey folks, Check out my new friends the Two Movie Guys: http://2movieguys.blogspot.com/ who have a fun movie review site, and, in their wisdom, have recognized my awesomeness. Drop by, read a good review and leave them a nice comment. I'll leave their site up here ------> for if you want to check it out later.

Jami Cracks Under the Pressure of Blogging

As mentioned in a previous post, I remember dreams every night. As many of you know, when something stressful is approaching I usually dream that something about it went very, very bad (remind me to tell you the one about the Christmas play with the "charred corpses of our enemies . . ."). And, if you didn't notice yet, I'm a big dork. No, really, it's okay, I know. So I started this blog and thought "no one will want to read my randomness, and that's fine" but then - a few people read and - BAM! I'm a glory hog (which we also all knew). Two or three comments and now I want the whole world to read it, and comment (positively, of course). I check it all the time to see if there are new comments. Like the first time you had an email account and you checked it every minute to see if there was email - that's me. This all ties together because last night the blogging invaded my dreams. In my dream, my dear friend who posts as Paperback Writer was copying my posts to her new blog, almost as soon as I'd posted them here. And, since PW is way cooler and more popular than I am, tons of people were reading and giving her glowing comments. It was sooo cruel. PW assures me she would never do this (which I already knew), but it was still disturbing. The pressure of being this funny (and yes I realize this one wasn't that funny) must be too much for me. And I'll be back in 5 minutes to see if you've commented. Please say something nice, I need the sleep . . .