– This post by Annie made me smile.

– Heather has the greatest ideas for celebrating Valentine’s Day with your family.

– Paige has written the sweetest post about the blessings of being single.

– And all I know to say after reading this very funny post of Shaw-awn’s is Oh. Bless. His. Heart.

One of you is about to be the proud owner of a sassy new HP Photosmart C6380 All-in-One Printer, Scanner & Copier.

And it’s wireless!

So. Who is commenter #378?

amber d.

Congratulations, Amber! You should have an email from me in your inbox, and you have 48 hours to respond. If I don’t hear from you within 48 hours, I’ll draw for another winner.

Thanks so much, everybody, for your great response!

1) Yesterday I got an email from a reader named Staci (hey, Staci!) who wanted to know if she could subscribe to my posts via email. And since I’ve been blogging for three whole years now, it makes perfect sense that my first reaction to Staci’s request was “Oh, no – I don’t think my blog has that feature.”

Y’all better move out of the way or I’m gonna run this blog right off the road. I AM NOT QUALIFIED TO BE OPERATING THIS VEHICLE.

Anyway, I did some digging around in Feedburner (the only reason I know about Feedburner is because my previous blog host moved all my feeds there, but since I’m really not sure how the whole “feeds” thing works I can’t talk about them for too long or my head will explode). Anyway, after clicking around a bit, I discovered that yes! I do have the email subscription feature! but it had never been activated!

So I activated it and copied and pasted the code into my sidebar and really, I’ve never felt more fancy.

2) Have any of y’all seen “Slumdog Millionaire”?

I saw it last weekend and thought it was really good. But the more I’ve thought about it this week, the more I think it changed my life a little bit.

What did y’all think?

3) A couple of you (and by “a couple,” I literally mean “two”) have emailed to ask why I didn’t do an American Idol recap this past week. There are a couple of reasons (and by “a couple,” I literally mean “two”).

The first reason is that I was tired.

The second reason is that, like so many businesses that are suffering right now, our sweet friends at Culture11 had to suspend operations last week. The news was unexpected and obviously very sad for all the people who worked there – not to mention all the faithful Culture11 readers.

I’m hoping to resume the AI recaps next week, though I realize that between The Bachelor, American Idol and The Office I may have a little too much television on my bloggy plate right now. Which is really no different than my real-life plate.

My real-life plate also contains a good bit of bacon.

Several weeks ago I got an email asking if I’d like to try to HP Photosmart C6380 All-in-One Printer, Scanner & Copier (be sure to memorize the official name because there will be a test at the end of this giveaway). Since I haven’t had a printer for about, oh, EIGHT YEARS, I quickly answered the email and said, “Yes, please.” Because I figured having a printer of my own might be a smidge more convenient than sending attachments to my husband and asking him to print them for me. Which is pretty much how I’ve run this operation from the get-go. All fancy-like, you know.

The printer arrived early last week, and while I was thrilled to try it, I wasn’t nearly as thrilled as my daddy, who happened to be visiting and COULD NOT WAIT to open the printer box. In fact, he was the one who unpacked everything and unwrapped all the manuals and whathaveyou, and I’m pretty sure that if I’d offered to give him the printer he would have done some hitchkicks in my dining room.

(Not that he’s really the hitchkicking type, you understand. But he was mighty impressed by everything the HP C6380 can do. I think it was the first time he’s ever thought this whole blogging thing just might have some merit, and that is totally fine because I know how deeply new electronics speak to the heart of every man.)

Later that night I got a chance to really put the printer to the test, and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to set up. For some reason I still expect to have to enter some MS-DOS commands when I install new software, but the HP installation was easy breezy and over in just a few minutes. Plus, it’s a wireless printer, so I didn’t even have to fool with any pesky cords. I have the printer neatly tucked away in an area where it’s pretty much out of sight (I’m not a fan of the electronic clutter), and it works like a dream.

And the next day, that sassy new printer really made a believer out of me. I realized that I’d forgotten to pick up a birthday card for a friend, and I was just about to pull out a piece of stationery and write a note when I realized WAIT! I HAVE A PRINTER NOW! I CAN MAKE A CARD!

Sometimes it’s the little things, you know?

So I went to the HP website and found a card I liked and printed it out right then and there. IT WAS A WONDER, not to mention that it was quite a bit more professional-looking than when I used to print out cards on my daddy’s dot-matrix printer when I was in high school.

We have given our HP printer a work-out this last week, and it’s been such a treat. The wireless feature is fab, and I’m so excited about scanning in old pictures (something else I’ve never been able to do because I’ve never owned a scanner before, which pretty much makes me an embarrassment to the entire internet). It probably goes without saying that I’m tickled that we now have a piece of home-office equipment that does everything we need.

(Except it doesn’t wash windows or do laundry.)

(I imagine that it will be several years before they add those particular features.)

SO, if you’d like to win an HP Photosmart C6380 printer of your very own, leave a comment on this post and tell me how this printer would make your life easier. This contest will remain open until Sunday, February 8th at 11:59 pm.

And if you’d like additional chances to win, check out the BlogHer HP giveaway round-up page.

Have fun, everybody!

This giveaway is now closed.

I don’t really know how to explain why I’ve been so scarce around here lately without doing a significant amount of oversharing, but yes. I’ve been a little out of my bloggy routine this week. After we got home from Travis‘ (phenomenal) concert, I tried to tackle my to-do list, and I think I didn’t give myself enough recovery time. Because Tuesday afternoon I had what my mama would call a sinking spell. Just bottomed out. Got all weepy and worried and whathaveyou. Felt way overwhelmed and burdened for a sweet friend. Fell apart after David and I realized that Hoopty Laptop is for real, straight-up dead this time (she quit working last week, and we suspected it was a power cord issue, but it’s not, and Hoopty, She Is Dead.)

(Poor Hoopty. Her passing makes me think of a WH Auden poem, which I will paraphrase at this juncture:

[Hoopty] was my North, my South, my East, my West;
My working week and my Sunday rest;
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought [our] love would last forever. I was wrong.

And I didn’t really love my computer. But I liked her a whole, whole bunch.)

It hasn’t helped that I’ve been listening to way too much Shawn Colvin, and Shawn Colvin always makes me cry because it reminds me of when I was in grad school and my friend Bubba was going through a difficult time and I used to think about him when I’d hear her songs and REALLY, I’M NOT AS CODEPENDENT AS I MAY SEEM, I PROMISE.

Fortunately we had an old Mac desktop in our garage, and the husband got it all set up for me in the dining room. It works great. I’m very, very grateful to have it as a back-up. I just miss Hoopty. As Melanie said earlier this week, Hoopty has been really good to me except for all the times she crashed when we tried to record all the podcasts you’ve never heard.

So there was that.

And then Tuesday night I read this week’s Newsweek that featured article after article about how horrible everything is and how it’s not going to get any better and how the entire global economy is collapsing on itself and how we’ve zigged when we should have zagged and, no kidding, I really thought I was going to have to take some sort of nerve pill when I finally closed that magazine. So I’ve made the very mature decision to stop reading and watching the news. It freaks me out. And I really do think that if the news media would report positive stuff for a solid month instead of focusing so much on the gloom and doom that things really would get better. Because we’d all feel better. And when you feel better, you act better. I know that’s simplistic. But it couldn’t hurt.

However, I won’t know if they decide to report positive stuff or not because I’M DONE WITH THE READING AND THE WATCHING.

In the happy column, the five year-old has never in his whole life been more delightful company. We have had the most fun week together. Monday night when I was cooking supper he grabbed my camera and took pictures, and when I transferred pictures to my computer the next day I laughed my head off.

Apparently his craft is heavily influenced by Pixar and Nintendo.

Okay. Two more things. Maybe three.

My sweet friend Merritt is flying into town tomorrow and I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE HER FACE. We haven’t seen each other in over a year, and I’ve already warned her that I will probably cry when I see her. The crying isn’t necessarily unusual in a week where I cried over a power cord, but my Merritt-related tears will be infinitely more heartfelt. OHMYWORDI’VEMISSEDHER. Cheese dip and guacamole for everyone!

Also: “The Office” and “30 Rock” are re-runs tonight, and all I have to say about that is NO FAIR.

Finally: your hair looks really good today. Really. It does. FABULOUS.

And I believe that’s all.

Such great news! So, so happy for Kelly, Scott and their sweet baby girl.