myJaxonIf we don’t go crazy once in a while, we’ll all go crazy. - Hawkeye

I so totally have yard envy. I completely blame my father since it really is all of his fault. He loves his yard and likes to take care of it. Plus, he has an awesome backyard. Let me show you. This is his back yard: (going from left to right)

Isn’t this an amazing backyard. It’s so big I couldn’t even get it in one shot or even two, but I need to take three pictures. The last (fourth) shot was a closeup of the flowerbed he put in awhile ago. My father has just under an acre of land and pretty much all of it is unused land. The yard is split in half with a line of trees and he even has a huge garden out in one corner. There is so much room here, we could easily build Ian a huge play structure of his own and we would never have to go to the park. Talk about the parties we could have…the playdates…just the enjoyment of such a yard. Yeah, I’m envious. Because this is what I have:

Don’t get me wrong, I love my yard. We did really good considering the area we live in. But when you grow up with the yard up above and spend a long weekend enjoying it. Coming back to mine is kind of…dull.  In theory, we could put up a swing set for Ian, but it would take up a lot of space and we really don’t have that much to begin with.  At just under .25 acres, our lot is kind of small.  It works for us though.  Especially since we don’t have the time or energy to put into our yard that my father does for his.  However, it’s still a shock going from one to the other.  I’m allowed my yard envy…after all, I’ll get his someday.

Literary Escapism is going to be participating in the upcoming Book Blogger Appreciation Week which takes place September 15th - 19th. Already, there are over 200 blogs participating and the organizers are starting to get things in order. This also means we’re eligible for the 2008 BBAW Awards. This is where I’m going to need help from my readers. In order for Literary Escapism to even be in the running, I need someone to nominate me. There is a huge list of categories that a blog can be nominated in, so click here to find out all the details. You DO NOT have to have a blog to make nominations.

Rhinoa found an interesting quiz on her site. Do you want to know which Tarot Card you are, then take this quiz. I know the basic idea behind Tarot Cards, but I’ve never really dealt with them too much, so I wasn’t really sure how to answer the last question (which tarot deck do you prefer), but all the rest were pretty easy to answer. Anyway, if you do take the quiz, let me know what you are. I find these things to be interesting. Here are my results:

You are The Moon

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.

The Moon is a card of magic and mystery - when prominent you know that nothing is as it seems, particularly when it concerns relationships. All logic is thrown out the window.
The Moon is all about visions and illusions, madness, genius and poetry. This is a card that has to do with sleep, and so with both dreams and nightmares. It is a scary card in that it warns that there might be hidden enemies, tricks and falsehoods. But it should also be remembered that this is a card of great creativity, of powerful magic, primal feelings and intuition. You may be going through a time of emotional and mental trial; if you have any past mental problems, you must be vigilant in taking your medication but avoid drugs or alcohol, as abuse of either will cause them irreparable damage. This time however, can also result in great creativity, psychic powers, visions and insight. You can and should trust your intuition.

So I ended up playing with my site last night. I’ll think of one thing that is quick and easy to do and then I start finding other things that should be done that are just as quick and easy and next thing you know, it’s 4 hours later and I’m still messing with my site. Thankfully, that didn’t happen this time. Well, it did, I just remembered to go to bed during those 4 hours. Now that I have the new, shinier WordPress version, all of my pages are working now, so that has been added to the sidebar.

I’ve also been working on Open Source Cook a little. Not a lot, but my cookbook is now working and is up over there. I’m talking about the list of recipes that I’ve gathered over the years and haven’t necessarily tried yet. As I try them, I’ve been adding them to OpenSource, so you’ll see all of them at some point…hopefully.

Literary Escapism is still going good. If you missed it, I had my first interview with an actual author a couple weeks ago. Lynda Hilburn was kind of enough to answer a few questions for me, so that was exciting. I just finished reading Acheron by Sherrilyn Kenyon and the book was so good, I can’t find a book that can compare. So I’m going into one of my reading funks. I’ll still be reading, but a lot less than I normally do, so there won’t be as many posts over there right now.

Let’s see what else has been going on. I still have my mySpace page, but I’m really not using it anymore. I signed up for one since a few of my friends exclusively use it and I wanted to keep up to date with them; however, now I’m using Facebook more and more. Facebook is so much easier to use and I can post links from other sites to it really easy, unlike with mySpace. So I’ve been hanging out over there. If you’re on facebook (or even myspace), look me up.

Jesse has also gotten me to sign up for LinkIn. It’s a professional connections social network. I’m still really new on it, so if you’re on it, let’s connect.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here yet, but Jesse bought us an account with Flickr so we can use their bandwidth for viewing all of our pictures. As such, I’m currently uploading a ton of photos to the site as our connection lets me. I have all of the pictures from 2006 and 2008 up there, but I haven’t had a chance to add any other ones yet. Draccus seems to be a little stabler right now (still not perfect, but what do you expect), so I might start uploading again tonight. The one thing I’m really liking about flickr is it allows others to leave comments for individual photos and that’s really nice. I love seeing what people have to say about my photos since I tend to be a little camera happy. Especially with Ian.

I think that’s about all that’s been going on lately. Nothing really exciting, just a lot of work on the house. I’ll post about the house a little later this afternoon since we have done some changes.

Ellen Degeneres Vs. John McCain: Gay Marriage

Seriously, it has to take some cajones to go on a talk show with a lesbian and talk about gay/lesbian marriages as contracts. I’m not entirely sure of McCain’s position on the subject, but something tells me it’s not the same as Ellens. He is republican afterall.