Testing, testing, one, two, three... Is this thing on?

So my last post was in November of 2010.  It's now July of 2011.  Been awhile.  Might be awhile again before another post comes up.  There's just too much of life to live.

But I did want to point out one thing.  From the inception of this blog until now (really my most recent birthday which was three weeks ago, I just didn't get around to fixing things here until today because did I mention that I haven't posted since November?), I've gone by the name "Leia."  This was for reasons of security due to my location at the beginning, then for privacy later on.  But there's just something about a 35-yr-old woman, married, with three kids calling herself "Princess Leia" that's just odd.

And it's not that I mind being odd....but it's really just time.  So I decided that I would "come out" on my birthday.  If there's still anyone out there with me on a feed-reader (or who is still inexplicably manually checking for updates) who didn't already know it, my actual name is Melissa.  VNB's actual name is Ryan (and he's still my "Very Nice Beloved").  AJ's actual name is AJ.  Joanna's actual name is Joanna (see...I'm sneaky like that).  Oh, and I had a baby in March.  Her actual name is Lucy.  We also have a cat whose actual name is Monkey.  That's only been mildly confusing to the children, to my great surprise.

Does this mean I'm going to begin posting regularly again?  Doubtful.  Please don't lay guilt-trips on me to do so if we're related by blood or marriage (or even if we're not, I've just mostly gotten the pressure from relatives).  That's seriously counter-productive with me.  The more you pressure, the less I want to write.  And no, it's not Facebook that's "killed" my blog.  I don't post there much either.  As I said earlier, there's just too much life to live to stop and write about it all.

Mostly I just wanted to make note of the change and explain why it's occurred.  Back to living life!

Hello! And a Little Tidbit...

So, a crazy thing has been happening lately.  People have been reading my blog.  I don't get it.  I've hardly posted in like two months and yet random people that I don't know keep following my blog.  It's not even halfway through the year and I've already surpassed my page-load stats from last year.  Granted, I think I forgot to add in the counter code back in for a little while last year after Blogger changed some things up, but still.  I'm not really sure why you're here, but you're welcome to stay!  Maybe one of these days I'll get on the ball and actually post regularly!

In the mean time, here's a little tidbit I've been thinking a lot about lately - the church's definition of "success." Churches have limited resources, so they have to use some metric to determine which ministries get money and  how much.  Frequently that metric is "we've always done it, so we have to keep doing it."  While that's not necessarily the best of metrics, it's also far from the worst.  I'm not talking about that one right now.  Next to that one though, the metric tends to be "results."  But how does a church gauge results?  Well, we're told not to judge, so it's not like we can look at the people involved in the ministry and decide whether or not spiritual growth has occurred.  So what do we do instead?  Well, we look at the numbers.  How many people are coming?  How many people have had a need met by the ministry?

And we want to see results right away.  Because it's God's money and we don't want to waste it.

So what would you call someone who plugged away at their ministry for three years.  Heart and soul poured into it.  Every moment of every day he was either meeting needs, teaching, or preparing to do one or the other.  And at the end of those three years, even with miraculous things happening, there were only 120 people who were "regular attenders."  Oh, there were other hangers-on, but really only 120 were into it.  The modern church, I think, would call that man a failure.

I'd call Him Jesus.

Maybe we should rethink our metrics and our definitions of success.

Fooled You!

So there for a while, I was posting almost _regularly_!  Bet you though I was gonna keep it up, didn't you?

Fooled you!


Just kidding....it's been super busy these past few weeks.  Really, I'll get back to posting here shortly.  I've got at least one book review that's overdue, another one due soon, one more "deep pondering" that's been percolating for a while (having to do, ironically, with book reviewing), and some fun stuff from the kids.

On a funny note, I had that "Fooled You!" quote in my head.  I knew it was a quote from a favorite movie, and I could picture the actor's lips (and hear his voice) as he was saying it....but it's taken me like half an hour to remember which movie it was from (Dark Helmet says it in Spaceballs).  Now I have visions of Rick
Moranis' lips stuck in my head.  Nice.

Ignore the Man Behind the Curtain

Just diddling around, trying things out. Don't mind me...

Template Update!

So last fall, I won a new blog design in the Fall Y'all Bloggy Giveaway carnival over at Bloggy Giveaways. After much discussion, Linda from RS Designs made me a lovely banner, background, and divider. Being my usual self, I have yet to install it. But today's the day! So apologies to both of my RSS feed readers if you get like five hundred "new posts" from me today and to anyone else to sees this while I'm trying to figure out how to make it work.

In the mean time, if you're bored, hop on over to the new giveaway carnival over at Bloggy Giveaways (this is now officially a quarterly thing) and spend an infinite amount of time signing up to win free stuff! Last time I walked away with a new blog design, a book, and a lavender-scented rice "heating" pad.

I have no plans at this point to host another giveaway of my own...but you never know what I might come up with before the week is out.

NaBloPoMo

Na-WHAT? you say? Well, that's short for National Blog Posting Month - similar to the National Novel Writing Month, except that instead of writing a novel in a month, I'm supposed to post to my blog daily for a month. I figured it was good exercise since I've been so bad lately about posting.

So why haven't I mentioned it before, you ask? Well...I figured I'd wait to tell you till I got to a day when I couldn't think of anything to write about. So, since I didn't have anything else to say this morning, I'm member #6008 of NaBloPoMo. Surprise! Aren't you excited to know that you'll be hearing from me on a daily basis this month?

Hopefully it won't end up like that commercial with the two girls who are writing a song every day for a month - "Day 28...Great..."

Coming Soon to a Blog Near You!

Woohoo!!! Not only does my blog _have_ a winner, my blog _is_ a winner! One of the many offerings this time around was custom blog redesigns - and I won one!!!! It's so exciting! Until now, it's just been "Blogger Template #9" (or whatever it is) and it was starting to get _really_ old.

So now I get a very new design, courtesy of Linda at RS Designs!!! Woohoo!!

But now comes the hard part - figuring out what it should look like!

And on that topic, I think I'm ready for a new tag line. "My travels, my trials, my triumphs, and what I've learned and am learning through them." just doesn't seem as appropriate now that I'm a work-at-home mom in suburbia, MD. Back when I was a "carefree" humanitarian worker who lived in Baghdad and went to Cyprus on vacation, it made a little more sense. Now, the travels are far more "domestic." As in...which grocery store are we hitting today?

I'll be keeping the "Who Said Anything About Common Sense?" title, just not the tag line. So if any of you out there have suggestions, either leave a comment below or email me!

I have no idea how long this process will take, but be prepared for the new look's roll out sometime "soon!"

Pics from Hotlanta

So we spent Labor Day weekend with VNB's Aunt D and Uncle R in Atlanta. We had a great time (although AJ's used to having four adults at his beck and call all day now, which makes for a very whiney household) and have lots of awesome pics....which I haven't gotten together yet.

So stay tuned. Hopefully this weekend sometime I'll manage to scan what needs to be scanned and come up with pithy descriptions for your enjoyment.

Reply-To

I only know of two people this has affected, and a lot of the folks I email (or receive email from) don't read my blog, but I figured this was the best way to get the word out.

For some reason, Hotmail decided of its own volition to change a setting in my account so that my 'reply-to' address is one that hasn't worked in several years (leia@pobox.com). Back when I was overseas, for a while I was emailing from Hotmail, but receiving my mail through Pobox because of various technical issues. I stopped being able to get access to the pobox account, however, so I changed the setting which made that my 'reply-to' address.

For some reason, Hotmail has started sporadically sending my replies to that account again (which, as I said, stopped working a while ago). So if you're trying to reply to an email that I've sent you and it bounces for some reason, check to make sure the correct email address is in your 'to' line. I've fixed the setting, but since it did it on its own and seems to be doing it randomly, I wanted to alert you guys to it.

Weird....btw, I've also alerted Hotmail to the "ghost in the machine."

RSS feed

Hey All!

I just wanted to let everyone know that I've been publishing a RSS feed for a while now. "What's a RSS feed?" you ask. Well, I have no idea, technically, I just know that you can subscribe to it (through many different websites or programs) and it will tell you how many times I've updated this site since you last checked. Basically, it saves you the bother of checking my site itself to see if there's anything new (since I'm not exactly the most consistent of bloggers). This is especially helpful if you have lots of sites that you keep up with.

Now, more HTML-savvy folks than myself would put a button on the sidebar that you could click and it would automatically add it to your current list of feeds. But I'm not one of those people. So do it yourself. It's really easy.

I don't know all of the RSS readers out there, but I use Bloglines and so does my one RSS feed subscriber (Hi, Valentina's Buddy!). I know that Google does too. You'll have to register with them, but that's just so they know who's subscribed to what. It doesn't (or at least shouldn't) cost you anything.

Anyway, check it out if you're tired of checking to see what I'd posted day after day, only to find nothing new.

Wild America

So, spurred on by my FIL, I tried again to capture AJ crawling on video. As with any good nature photographer/videographer, patience finally won out and after a few more attempts, I succeeded. Then I tried downloading said video (and some others) onto the computer. Something happened during the downloading process to where it didn't actually work.

Long story, short. The video _is_ on the memory card (I can see it from the camera), but now, when the computer recognizes the camera at all, it says that there are no pictures there to be downloaded.

I've rebooted the computer, I plugged, unplugged, and replugged the camera into all available ports. I've tried just looking at the camera as another hard drive. My next step (when I get around to it) will be to uninstall and reinstall the camera software. If that doesn't work, then I may see what I can do with the memory card slot on our printer (another place to see it as another hard drive, possibly). I'll also try plugging the camera into my mostly-dead laptop to see if it's the computer or the camera.

Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated. As I don't think a new digital camera (especially of the quality that I would want to buy) is in the budget right now, please hope that we get this figured out.

Caught up!

So until yesterday morning, I had over 3000 email messages in my inbox, over 1700 of which were unread. Now, the VAST majority of the unread were automated things, with only a forward or two from a real person - there was no actual corresondence that I hadn't read. But over the past two days I've taken the time to actually _delete_ all the stuff I don't need anymore and am now down to 46 messages!!!!! So, if you wrote to me sometime in the last year and a half and I have yet to respond, you're now on the short list. I intend to email a bunch of you over the next week or two so that I stop feeling guilty about not replying (and because I really do like talking to and hearing from you, I'm just not much with the replying all the time).

Of course, the result of the emails is that you'll likely write back...at which point I'll get overwhelmed with all the emailing I need to do and will probably hide in my cave again. So, apologies in advance if I don't reply back right away to the email you'll probably send me relatively quickly after I reply to the email you sent to me 10 months ago.

Google Video

So I've got my "What I Do During Meetings" post almost ready to go (I started during the meeting yesterday and was continuing on it during this morning's meeting).

Unfortunately, Google Video (formerly You Tube) is in the process of upgrading or something...and since this particular post is not nearly as funny/cute without the video, I'm not gonna post it until I can upload stuff.

So for those of you who have been anxiously awaiting the next post...well...sorry...it's coming soon, I promise!

Changes

So, way back almost two years ago, I pledged that I would never set up a counter on my blog. Well...things have changed drastically in my life, and I think I'm going to go back on the letter (although not the spirit) of that pledge. You see, back then, VNB was "just" my "VeryNiceBoyfriend" (although he became my "VeryNiceBetrothed" about 10 days later). Now I'm posting images of our son for anyone on the web to see. So I want to see who it is that's looking and make sure they're not coming in from some weird search or something. Which means keeping track of stats which are easily available through a counter.

I'm still not going to let myself obsess about the numbers of people reading, because this blog really is just an outlet for my random thoughts (and why the heck not share those with the world?). I think that's still conforming to the spirit behind that pledge, if not the letter. But I _do_ want to make sure (to the best of my ability) that there aren't any wackos out there with pics of my little man.

I still have to research and add the counter though, so it may take a little while. Just know that I didn't add it lightly and that it was for good reason.

I'm also thinking about adding a "blogroll" to the sidebar. These are just other peoples' blogs (or other websites) that I read regularly. I like them for various reasons, so I'm happy to give them a little free advertising. Check 'em out, once I get 'em posted. It's not usually _required_ "netiquette," but I'm probably going to email the folks first to get their permission, so that may take some time and will mean that it probably won't be stable for a little while.

I might also join a "blogring" which is basically just a community of bloggers who share some similar trait like "mommy bloggers" or "Christian bloggers." It's always good to have friends.

And how is it exactly that Blogger.com doesn't have the word "blogger" in its spellcheck dictionary?