You might have noticed that some of your favorite sites are offline today, or have messages talking about ending internet censorship.  They are in response to the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act, and designed to give us a taste of what our internet might look like if either of these bills passes.

This video offers a much better explanation than I can give:

You might have heard that SOPA has been shelved and are wondering why everyone is making such a big deal out of this.  Well, that information isn’t entirely true.  The DNS portion of the bill should be removed, but other parts of it are still very much in play, including ISPs being required to block access to blacklisted sites.

Here is a Wired article that gives a good explanation.
And another on CNN.

You can go to Google to sign a petition urging Congress to vote no on SOPA/PIPA, or here you can find contact information for your representative and call.

This isn’t just something that geeks are getting upset about, nor is it something that is designed to only stop those that are pirating content.  It’s not designed to protect the little people, the indie artists.  Please take a moment to read up on it and contact your reps.

Kim at Miss Zoot wrote about finding common ground with your teenager in More Proof That Your Teenager Can Enrich Your Life.  Obviously, O is not a teenager yet, but I know that time will be here before I know it.  However, it’s a great thing to keep in mind for me now, because I currently view teenagers as alien creatures from another planet.  They might be young, but they might also just know a lot about great books, music, movies, TV, etc.  Your life could be enriched because of a teenager!

Amy at Just a Titch and Kate at Suburban Sweetheart both wrote about online interactions and online happiness.  Kate had a slightly different take on it in her post than Amy did in hers, but I agree with both of them.  To Amy’s point:  Think before you Tweet.  If someone tweets “I love to do the hokey-pokey” and someone else immediately tweets “Gah, people that like the hokey-pokey annoy me,” that’s kind of bitchy.  If the Hokey-Pokey Lover then tries to engage the other person in conversation and that person ignores them, well, that’s even bitchier.  This is an off-the-wall example, but I see things like this happen all the time.  To me, it’s the equivalent of sitting in a lunch meeting at work and hearing the person on my left say “I love pepperoni pizza” and me turning to the person on the right and loudly announcing “Gah, I hate people that like pepperoni pizza.”  I don’t know anyone that would do that, so I don’t know why we do it online.  I don’t think people are trying to send passive-aggressive messages (in most cases), they just see something that triggers a thought and they throw that thought out on Twitter.  To Kate’s point:  We really don’t need to waste energy on people we don’t — and won’t — see eye to eye with.  I’m a bit sensitive to this subject because southerners are often accused of being unwilling to see the world outside of their limited worldview, and the internet is a great place to learn about other races, religions, genders, cultures, subjects, pretty much everything.  I think it’s good to engage with people that have different opinions and backgrounds, but if your personality just doesn’t click with someone (and sometimes it just won’t) it is perfectly fine to just unfollow!

Angie at Lariats and Lavender wrote an amazing post on transgenderism.  She even used one of my “questions,” which was worded as a demand, and for that I am sorry, Angie!  Transgenderism is something I’ve had a really hard time wrapping my brain around and, as an outsider, it can be very confusing to see someone you know (especially casually) go through HRT and SRS.  <— and I’m totally not defining either one of those acronyms, so you have to go read her post. Ha!   I appreciate her writing on this subject so much, because I’ve never had the guts to go to anyone transgendered and ask questions.

Other weekly wrap up sorts of things…

Favorite spam comment of the week:  “But to those who have a love affair with the grit and grime which is the motor city, this is simply a metamorphosis.”  That is some deep stuff there, Spammer.

My Instagram:  As part of the #janphotoaday challenge, started by Fat Mum Slim, a picture of me as a child next to Olivia as a child.  Like mother like daughter?

Anyway.  How was everyone’s holiday?

Olivia was sick over Christmas.  She started getting congested the Wednesday before, but we figured it would just be a little cold.  She was looking really rough and running a fever on Friday, so we went ahead and took her to the doctor.  She was diagnosed with her first ear infection and given her first prescription for antibiotics.  I thought meds wouldn’t be a problem, she takes Advil and Tylenol just fine.  Woo boy, was I wrong.  We had to put her antibiotic in applesauce to get her to take it.

She was still feeling pretty bad during the Christmas Eve festivities with my family, and on Christmas Day she seemed even worse.  I could hear her wheezing across the room and she was so miserable, so we loaded her up and took her to the ER.  We would have gone to her ped on any other day, but being Christmas, we were stuck with the ER

She got a dose of oral steroids and a breathing treatment and then promptly passed right out.

I was already starting to cough a bit on Christmas and then I started getting worse.  The week between Christmas and New Year’s, I was diagnosed with walking pneumoia.

So, fun holiday, we had it.

I’m hoping to get my site all updated and get back into the rhythm of blogging.  I’ve missed you

She talked of experiences with “Welfare Queens” and mentioned people tapping on their iPhones while checking out with food stamps.  While I don’t doubt there are people that abuse the system — which is who the author kept insisting she was talking about, she swore she was glad that aid systems are there for people who “truly need” them — I disagree that working as a cashier will give you a clear picture of who the abusers are and who are truly in need.

She assumes the person tapping on his iPhone is paying for that phone himself and is incredulous that a person that can afford a $25+ a month data plan can’t afford groceries.

Imagine with me.  Imagine there is a man that works in an IT department for a mid/large sized company.  IT departments generally aren’t rolling in dough; they aren’t designing, manufacturing, marketing, or selling anything that makes the company money.  They’re a necessary evil to keep things running and companies generally like to spend as little as possible on those kinds of things.

Imagine this man has worked at this company for 10 years.  He started making just under $20,000 a year.  They paid for him to get a college degree, but didn’t give him a raise or promotion when he graduated.  They’ve given him a 2% raise every year, except for that one year when they cut his pay, and those couple of years where raises were frozen.

Imagine that his wife divorces him, leaving him with 3 kids and a single income.  What does he do?  Does he move to another location, a smaller house or apartment?  Does he put the kids in a new school district? Does he make his teenage daughter and son share a bedroom?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

New tech gadgets are coming out at work, which he’s going to have to support, so his bosses decide to give him a company iPhone.  It costs them a few hundred bucks, it doesn’t need approval all the way up to the CEO so the purchase isn’t a big deal (like a raise would be), but it’s viewed a nice little perk of the job.  He gets a cool new smartphone! Now he just has to support the rest of the smartphone users, and is on call pretty much 24/7 with the corporate email access and such.

But, he can’t feed his kids with an iPhone, so he needs help.  He gets whatever assistance he can to help keep a roof over his kids’ heads, food in their bellies, and their lives as stable as possible.

And as he stands in line at Walmart, tapping out an email to a user on the other side of the globe on his company-owned iPhone, the cashier is judging him.  She’s judging his food choices.  She assumes that if he can afford an iPhone he can afford groceries.  She’s labeled him a lazy slacker that doesn’t have a job.  Has reduced him to nothing but a drain on society in her mind.

Is this the situation the cashier saw? Who knows. There is no way to know.  Which is my whole point.

Life is complicated, with gray areas all over the place.  Maybe we need to stop trying to define the gray areas in other people’s lives.  Just acknowledge that we know next-to-nothing and move on.

If you weren’t reading me then, about a zillion years ago, I said I wanted to run a half marathon and then I never followed through with it.  This is not unusual when it comes to things that involve fitness, especially running.

I don’t know why, but I’ve wanted to run a half for a while now.  Since motivation is not my strong point, I’ve wanted to run while raising money for a charity I believe in.  First, it was Run for PKD.  Then I got pregnant, had a preemie, lost my mind, was diagnosed with cancer, and then I had surgery.

Somehow I found out about the American Cancer Society’s DetermiNATION program and learned that one of their races is the Nashville Country Music Half.  I almost signed up for it, but I have a really hard time committing to these kinds of things.  For one, I’m committing to run/walking 13 miles.  Two, I’d be committing to raising $1300.  I’m neither a great runner nor fundraiser.

Then Friday, I was going through the mail when I came across a newsletter from the Melanoma Research Foundation.  At first, I was just excited to see that Carrabba’s and Too Faced are both Partners of MRF.  Now I can buy makeup and eat at Italian-food-chain-restaurants while supporting a good cause! But then I opened the newsletter and started reading about Miles for Melanoma.

There’s no fundraising minimum.  You just sign up for a race, sign up for a fundraising site, and go for it.  Some cities have training teams, and they have resources for people that want to start a team in their city.  They have a 20-week training program for a full or half marathon, complete with a spreadsheet that calculates your start date.

The Nashville half is on April 28th, meaning my training program would start…December 17th.  Next week.

No fundraising requirements. Fun, walker-friendly race.  Raising funds for the organization that I turned to for information between diagnosis and finding a surgeon. The organization that gave me the knowledge and confidence to turn away from the first surgeon I met with and find someone else.

Y’all, I think I’m doing this.

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Here are some pictures from right after we bought the house and right before we moved in the house.  Obviously, I don’t stage my pictures, so please ignore the crap lying in the floor and stuff like that.

These rooms aren’t really complete, once they are more put together, I’ll show each one.

Olivia’s Room

• Carpet replaced with white oak engineered hardwood flooring
• Outdoor window awning removed
• Popcorn ceiling removed
• Dark trim painted Olympic Ultrawhite
• Flat, dark door replaced with raised panel white door; brass hardware replaced with brushed nickel
• Oversized ceiling fan replaced with white flush mount fan
• Light switches and outlets replaced with white
• Walls painted Behr Whitened Sage

I have this weird thing with ceiling fans.  They are a necessity in the south, but I hate walking into a room and the ceiling fan just jumping out at me, so I prefer white ones.  A lame attempt at getting them to fade into the ceiling as much as possible.

Master Bedroom

• Carpet replaced with white oak engineered hardwoods
• Trim and walls below chair rail painted Olympic Ultrawhite
• Wall above chair rail painted a vary pale blue, and I can’t remember the name
• Dark flat panel doors were replaced; hardware replaced
• Replacing light switches and power outlets
• Popcorn removed

Living Room

• Painted fireplace, bookcase, and trim Olympic Ultrawhite
• Painted walls Olympic Toasted Almond
• Refinished existing oak floors
• Replaced switches and outlets
• Removed popcorn ceiling
• Removed door leading to hallway and door between living room and den

Den

• Replaced carpet
• Painted walls Olympic Toasted Almond
• Painted trim and doors Olympic Ultrawhite
• Removed popcorn
• Replacing switches and outlets

So that’s where we’re at now.  More pics to come!  We’re loving it so far, even with our stuff spread all over the place, it’s really beginning to feel like home.

(And an FYI, just in case you’re looking, they are the only place I’ve found that will put prescription lenses in the big plastic-framed sunglasses that I love so much.)

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I’ve probably mentioned my horrible vision before.  I was lucky enough to inherit my dad’s eyes; we actually have almost identical prescriptions.  I started wearing eyeglasses in the 5th grade, when I was having trouble reading the board.  My mom took me in for an eye exam and I couldn’t see the second line.  This was good in comparison to now, when I can’t see any lines, just a white square where the eye chart should be.

From the 5th grade until the 8th, I wore prescription glasses.  I was lucky enough to get contacts in the 8th grade, which was a great thing for me, because I was horrible about not wearing my glasses before then.  Honestly, I don’t remember why I disliked them so much, but I just never seemed to remember to put them on in the morning.  I thought I could squint and kinda sorta see things, so all was good.

My brother played hockey on a travel team when we were younger and we would usually try to do something in the towns that we visited.  When he had a game series in Knoxville, we decided we would go visit the zoo.  It was a dreary and chilly day, but it didn’t matter, we were going to the zoo anyway.

The problem with dreary and chilly days is that the animals don’t like to be out in them either.  All of the big animals, like the elephant and rhinoceros, were tucked away in their enclosures.  We made our way around the zoo to look at some other animals and stopped near the bird cages, which were on the opposite side of the rhinoceros enclosure.

I looked over to the rhino enclosure and got all excited. “Look guys! The rhinoceros came out!”  My family stared out into the enclosure, looking puzzled and asked me where exactly this rhino was.  I mean, it’s a rhino, how can one overlook a rhino?

I kept pointing and emphatically going “THERE! Don’t you see it???” when my dad turned to me and said “Lisa. That is a rock.”  Then he told me this is exactly why I should wear my glasses.

Y’all, twenty years later my family still teases me about that.  They frequently talk about the rocknoceros.  They talk about that time we went to the zoo and I was the only one that “saw” a rhino.  They even have my husband in on it.  We went to Gatlinburg a few years ago and when we passed the sign for the Knoxville Zoo, he exclaimed “Home of the rocknoceros!”

So, it’s not just important to buy glasses, you also need to actually wear the glasses.

But to get you started with that first part (and “reward” you for reading my childhood stories), I have a few discount codes for you!

• Take 20% off any frame in our iSee Eyewear collection and get free shipping within the US. Code: iSee20FS
• Take 10% off any order of prescription glasses. Code: Blog10

Seriously though, after you buy them, wear them. Seeing fake animals isn’t as cool as you would think.

It seems that every time I log on to Twitter lately, or browse the internet in general, I am just bombarded with negative, sometimes fairly hateful comments.  People who like Twilight suck. People who don’t like Twilight suck. People who like The Hunger Games suck. People who don’t like the Hunger Games suck.  Harry Potter fans suck.  People that hate Harry Potter suck.  People that think Bradley Cooper is the sexiest man alive must be blind, can’t they tell the sexiest man is really Ryan Gosling.  People that think Ryan Gosling is sexier are insane, Bradley Cooper is clearly hotter.  People that don’t get OWS are idiots.  People occupying Wall Street are idiots.  People that support Joe Paterno are idiots.  People that don’t support Joe Paterno are on a witch hunt.  If you’re still a Penn State fan at all, you suck.  People that think Kim Kardashian is famous for doing nothing are annoying.  People that think Kim Kardashian is a great person are insane.

Really, I could do this all day.

We are fast approaching the holidays, a time that is supposed to be filled with warmth and love, surrounded by friends and family.  It’s supposed to be a cheerful time, a fun time, full of food and friendship.  And booze.

I am not feeling any impending holiday cheer right now.  I’m feeling that everyone is in a hole, feeling like they’re drowning, like the funk is just going to drag them under.

I think we need a little cheering up.

I know gifts aren’t the solution to everything, but who isn’t cheered up when they go to the mailbox and find a package?  A little surprise someone sent just for them?  So, I thought a Secret Santa Swap might lift our moods, just a little.

The details…

• Sign ups close on November 25th.
• Secret Santa assignments will be randomly selected on November 26th.
• You have until December 16th to mail your gift!
• The gift limit is $25.  Please try to keep it around $25, and if you know this is out of your budget or don’t think you will be able to find and ship a gift by December 16th, please do not sign up and leave your partner without a gift!  I want to make sure everyone that participates gets a little surprise and enjoys the exchange.

If you are interested in joining the fun,

click here to sign up!

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Edited to add: After you get logged in to Elfster, you will want to modify your profile. Click on the “gear” icon in the top right hand corner of the screen and select Settings. On the Profile tab, change your mailing address, so your Santa knows where to send your gift! You might also want to change your name to include your blog name and/or Twitter name so your Santa can easily recognize (coughcoughstalk) you.

If there is something you do not want or absolutely can’t have (like if you have an allergy, please let us know) you can add it to the “Do Not Need” list on your page. Just click on your name anywhere in Elfster, like on your left sidebar, and then click on the “Do Not Need” tab.

One last tip — you probably want to turn off any ad-blocking plugins you are running (and they have annoying flash ads, I’m so sorry). Ad blockers seem to screw up some of the site functionality. If you have questions, let me know!

This year, I went a little overboard with the pictures. Maybe.  Maybe not.

All pictures taken by the lovely Sarah at Click Photo Designs.

Now … on to the really important parts of this post!

First:  If you remember last year, I wasn’t happy with some of the products I got from Shutterfly.  I ordered Christmas cards that turned out OK, and photo books that I wasn’t too thrilled with.  I found out that it is because Shutterfly turns something called VividPics on for all of their pictures.  In most cases, if you take a photo straight out of your digital camera and print it, it’s going to look washed out.  So Shutterfly does some boosting on these so they print well.  BUT, if you are editing your pictures, or printing professional pictures (that you have rights to print, of course!) they will end up looking over-saturated and have too much contrast.

So, if you do color correction editing to your photos, or are printing professional pictures, make sure you turn off VividPics first!

In the photo album, select all of the pictures and click the Edit menu.  Select the “Apply Effect” option.
On the right side of the picture, click the check box that says “Don’t apply automatic corrections to this picture” and then click the “Apply this effect” link above the check box.

Second important part:  I have THREE codes for 25 free holiday cards from Shutterfly!  To all you Erin Condren fans, she has Shutterfly designs too!

FIRST THREE PEOPLE TO LEAVE A COMMENT GET 25 FREE CARDS!

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I received free holiday cards from Shutterfly in return for this post. Three giveaway codes were also provided by Shutterfly.