Archives for June 2008

Picture, Thousand Words, Etc. And So Forth And So On

8 June 2008 by

So basically it was so hot here today that even the squirrels had to lie down.

I’M SO NOT KIDDING.

And I’m really trying not to be that person who TALKS INCESSANTLY ABOUT THE HEAT, but MY LANDS, PEOPLE, it was somewhere around 240 degrees in the Home Depot parking lot this afternoon.

But clearly that is an exaggeration. Because obviously 240 degrees is impossible.

In reality the temperature was only, like, 193.

Which is totally cool and refreshing in comparison.

My cousin Paige and her little boy are here for a few days, and we are having the best time watching these two cousins chase each other up and down the hallway while they make truck noises.

Tonight I made breakfast for supper, and as I watched those boys dig into their grits with great enthusiasm, I couldn’t help but think that Papaw Davis – their great-grandfather they’ve never met – must be looking down from heaven and grinning from ear to ear at the sight of them laughing at each other while they ate their bacon.

Come to think of it, Papaw Davis would be beside-himself-wild about every single one of his great-grandchildren. But I can’t talk about that anymore or I’ll cry.

So now I’m going to watch “The Next Food Network Star” and “Design Star” and if “Nashville Star” comes on I’ll watch that, too, because I’m pretty much a sucker for any sort of reality-esque TV with the word “Star” in the title.

As always, my tastes are terribly sophisticated.

Hope y’all have a great week!

Filed Under: Family Fun

Summertime Book Giveaway

5 June 2008 by

One of my favorite things about writing on this here wideworldintertubeblogsite is that I get to share stuff I like with you, the internets. And today, I am ever-so-delighted to share some books by Marla Taviano, who has one of the most down-to-earth and engaging writing styles that you ever did see, amen.

Marla writes about stuff that many of us can relate to – marriage, babies, and the, um, activity that leads to the babies – and she does so in a way that makes reading her books feel like you’re talking with a girlfriend who has been right where you are and knows exactly how you feel.

No self-righteousness, no here’s-what-I-think-and-you’re-wrong-if-you-don’t-think-the-same-thing. Just practical, sound encouragement from someone who is grounded in Truth and wants to spur on her readers as they make their way through a season of life that can sometimes get a little cuckoo.

Triple love that.

Marla is giving away five copies of her books, and if you’d like to win one of them, here’s all you have to do:

1. Click here to visit Marla’s website.

2. Take a look at her three books. You can even read excerpts while you’re there.

3. Come back here and tell me which book you’d like to win.

4. That’s it!

I’ll leave this giveaway open until next Monday, June 9. At that point I’ll use random.org to draw for five winners.

And if you think you can’t possibly wait until then, or if you know that you’d like to give Marla’s books as gifts, you can take advantage of what she has dubbed her Fancy BooMama Special (picture me, eating fried chicken and blushing) and buy all three books for only $20.

Personally, I think that three brand-spankin’ new books for $20 is a mighty fine deal indeed.

I hope y’all enjoy digging a little deeper into Marla’s books – I know you’re going to love them.

Have fun, everybody!

This giveaway is now closed.

Filed Under: Rambling

In Which I Go Back To The Search Engine Well

4 June 2008 by

A few more search engine terms that have brought people to the blawg:

cb handle names – Now I’m no CB expert, but here are a few right off the top of my head.

Completely impromptu, mind you.

Sugarlips.
Foxy Lady.
Road Warrior.
Hot Mama.
Big Daddy.

Really, I think just about any adjective coupled with the words “Mama” or “Daddy” would work beautifully.

Although “crusty” or “scaly” might be the exceptions to that adjective rule.

bacon fat butter compare – Well, I mean, how could you possibly compare?

I find that they are equally delicious.

Though I am slightly partial to bacon fat because if I want to have bacon fat on hand, then I have to fry some bacon.

And that is never, ever a bad thing.

jody calls – Well, you are very fortunate.

Because Jody never calls me.

Needless to say, I have missed her terribly.

And the fact that I have no idea who Jody is?

Totally inconsequential.

how to get on boomama’s blog – YOU JUST DID!

I can’t even imagine the complete absence of thrill you must feel.

It has to be the most underwhelming moment of your entire life. Such a non-event!

I’m beyond teary-eyed.

i admit i need god’s power – You and me both, sister.

You and me both.

youtube dave barnes – Now you may not know this, but I sort of enjoy Dave Barnes.

And his YouTube stuff?

GOLD.

For whatever reason, this one is my favorite. Because I’ve always been a fan of a mock dance-off.

And then this one? And this one?

Interweb delights, my friends.

mama jig’s +fried chicken – I am unfamiliar with Mama Jig’s fried chicken, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that anyone who goes by the name “Mama Jig” CAN FLAT FRY UP SOME CHICKEN.

And I now feel that my life will not be complete until I try Mama Jig’s fried chicken.

Because I believe in goals.

layer cake props – Really?

Well.

Okay. I guess I can handle that.

BIG UPS TO THE LAYER CAKE!

WOOT!

OH, HOLLA.

Don’t you ever change, layer cake.

Don’t you ever, ever change.

Filed Under: Rambling

Server Switches! And More!

4 June 2008 by

The last month or so has been a little dicey for me web-wise, mainly because my interblogwebsite has been highly uncooperative. And if you don’t know anything else about my technical skills, you should know this one critical piece of information: I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA HOW ALL THIS STUFF WORKS.

And since I have no idea what I’m doing, I am deeply, completely dependent on the people who keep this blawg-o-mine up and running behind the scenes. I daresay that Emily has developed a pronounced twitch in her left shoulder just from seeing my email address appear so frequently in her inbox, but she has been an absolute champ in terms of keeping me afloat in these murky techy waters. The same goes for Jules, Heather and Laura. They have jumped to my troubleshooting rescue more times than I can count.

Because I’m telling you: if not for every single one of those people I just listed, my header would be half-way down the page and my posts would be trapped on a server just south of nowhere. Not to mention that there would probably be some easy-listening music playing incessantly in the background, and you’d never be able to turn it off.

Ever.

So anyway.

Last week Emily – who has been great about monitoring my traffic and bandwidth usage and blah blah I’m typing the words but they have lost all meaning blah blah – made a couple of recommendations about webhosting and servers and whatnot, and I would be more specific if I had any idea at all what I was talking about, because I am the same person who only realized a couple of months ago (thanks to Anne) that there’s a thing called a cPanel that goes along with my blog, and I can access it and set up email addresses! And look at stats! And upload files! And more!

One of Emily’s recommendations was that I move the blawg to Fused Network, and so that is exactly what I did. Except that I think we all know that I myself didn’t move one thing. I just sat on my little barstool and commenced with the hand-wringing, because while I’m not good at many things, I am an excellent hand-wringer.

Award-winning, in fact.

But as it turns out, the hand-wringing was fairly minimal. There were some hiccups as a result of me posting when I was still floating between two servers, but David at Fused and Emily at Swank could not have been more helpful. In fact, once I signed up with Fused, David actually CALLED ME ON THE TELEPHONE to touch base about the whole process, and even though we must have exchanged about 40 emails over the last day and a half as I have tried to wrap my head around the whole server-switching process, he never once replied with, “Hey! Can’t you, like, TAKE A CLASS or something?”

Because I seriously need to take a class, y’all.

However, there is one lingering issue, and I think that’s why I started writing this post to begin with, but you can never really be sure with me, and besides, I take great pride in using 500 words when only 50 are necessary, and anyway, HASN’T THIS SERVER STUFF BEEN SO FUN TO READ ABOUT?

Ahem.

The lingering issue is that for some reason Bloglines seems to have decided to quit picking up my RSS feeds. I have no idea why. I’ve sent them a couple of emails, and OH, ARE THEY EVER GOING TO GROW TO LOVE MY RAMBLING BRAND OF CRAZY, but I haven’t gotten a response yet and don’t really know if I will. So if you subscribe here via Bloglines, you probably need to unsubscribe and then subscribe again, making sure that you select the Feedburner feed and none of the others.

There. Isn’t that so delightfully, needlessly complicated?

Last thing.

I’ve decided that, after the first of next week, I’m going to take a little hiatus from giveaways for the rest of the summer. I have a fun book giveaway scheduled for tomorrow, and a cool gardening-related giveaway scheduled for the first of next week. And once those are over, I’m going to take a giveaway vacation.

Unless I run across a CD that I think you can’t live without. Because I will always make an exception for music.

I will also make an exception if someone wants to give y’all some cash money.

But the main thing is just that as much as I love doing the giveaways, the correspondence involved with a giveaway takes up a pretty good chunk of email-related time. And a break from that end of things is gonna be a mighty good thing. Our summer is shaping up to be pretty busy, and there’s a five year-old who lives here who wants to go swimming and go to the movies and play with friends and run around in the blazing hot sun while his mama wonders if it’s possible to die from sweating.

Fun times. Precious memories.

Happy Wednesday, y’all.

Filed Under: The Interweb

Let’s Try This Again: A Real-Live iPod Giveaway

3 June 2008 by

If you’ve been trying to access this post, you should have better luck now. However, I’m in the process of restoring all the comments that didn’t make the transition, so if you know you filled out the MIR form and left a comment here, you may not see your comment for an hour or so. If you still don’t see your comment by the end of the night, just send me an email and I’ll get it fixed.

Thanks for your patience, everybody!

So the people at the Gospel Music Association do this little thingy called Music in the Rockies. Music in the Rockies is a place where songwriters and performers and worship leaders can go and get all sorts of great training. And here is where I could start a big huge list of all the people who will be performing at this year’s MIR, but instead I’ll just direct you here because y’all are very, very good at the clicking and the reading.

Another component to MIR is that they have sessions where parents can learn how to protect their kids in the music industry. I know some of you have super-talented kids with some mighty big dreams, and this would be a great opportunity for you to learn how to help facilitate those dreams AND make sure you and your family head into the music industry with your eyes wide open.

MIR also provides the chance to get some feedback from successful professional musicians and other music industry people, which I’m guessing would be pretty invaluable if you’re wondering if you or someone you love has what it takes to make it professionally.

Needless to say, I will not be attending MIR. Because I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I do not have what it takes to make it in the music industry, nor will I be leading worship at any time in my whole life, unless of course it becomes all the musical rage for a 30-something woman to sing classic Amy Grant songs in an off-key monotone.

FINGERS CROSSED!

So. All that being said.

Here’s how you can have a chance to win a real-live iPod Nano, which, by the way, can play music and movies and TV shows and everything.

OH, it is very fancy.

1. Click here.

2. Look for this image (I can’t provide direct links because it’s a Flash-enabled site, so instead I’m relying on visual aids, and I do hope it all works beautifully):

MIR

3. Click on the image, and you’ll see this box pop up:

Photobucket

Fill out the form – and you don’t have to give your phone number. Just fill out your name, email, and address – so that if you win they know where to ship your fabulous prize.

4. Come back here – and this part is OH-SO-IMPORTANT – leave me a comment letting me know that you filled out the form. I’ll draw for a winner from my comments, but I’ll have to verify that you actually filled out the form before I announce the winner (so make sure you use the same email address on the form and in my comments).

5. That’s it! The giveaway will stay open for one whole week – until June 9, 2008. As always, I’ll use random.org to draw for a winner.

And you will NOT be inundated with mail or with email if you fill out the form. I made a point to ask. You’ll receive an informational email about Music in the Rockies registration, and you can unsubscribe from that mailing list with the click of a button if you never want to receive another email from them again.

But I figured that filling out a form was a small price to pay for a new Nano. Call me crazy.

(CRAZY!)

(Beat you to it!)

Happy iPod’ing!

This giveaway is now closed.

Filed Under: Rambling

More! Techy! Fun!

1 June 2008 by

I’m moving to a new webhost sometime in the next few hours, and if all goes as planned, you won’t even notice.

And of course I’m not really the one moving. The blog is moving. I am quite happy here in my circa-1974 home, thankyouverymuch. But the blog wanted more room to stretch out or entertain or somesuch nonsense.

The blog is so demanding.

Anyway, if you have any trouble accessing the blawg, just know that it’s temporary, and I’ll be back with All The Average just as soon as possible.

Thank you and have a lovely Monday.

Filed Under: Rambling
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