penn

Post not in RSS

I am not sure why, but my most recent post didn't show up in google reader. So for those of you who read me here, feel free to check out Country Living, my most recent post. I think something went wrong with my post scheduler. I'll keep checking back, as I have a number of posts scheduled over the next week or so. I'm working on getting our whole trip out west up and blogged before we leave to head back to Minnesota.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog, stumbleupon readers! I just now checked my stats and realized that I've been seeing a huge jump in traffic from stumbleupon. Apparently, someone linked my dating ideas, and it's become somewhat popular.

As an aside, thank you so much to the people who have been giving more ideas for dates. Perhaps I'll have to show the post to my boyfriend and see if he can stretch his boundaries a little! Sadly, in my own life, I've only had the chance to try out a few of the ideas listed there. I've played with sidewalk chalk during a date, and I've pulled out cribbage boards all over the place. Interestingly, in the small town in which I live, not one person gives us a strange look when we start playing cribbage in a restaurant. I'm not sure if that means card games are commonplace or that no one really pays attention to other people anymore.

Other posts you might like include a description of a camping date (complete with my boyfriend's first geocaching find), a description of how to find a geocache (for those of you that would like to try it for a date), and my travel archives from visits to Europe, New Zealand, Chicago, Detroit, Tangier, Pittsburgh, DC, Seattle, and moving across the US (more than once!).

I hope a few of you decide to stick around. Feel free to leave comments, and welcome to the site.

Another awesome blog

Last Sunday, I let you guys know about the really awesome Slice of Pink. This week, I'd like to highlight some wonderful posts I've been enjoying over at Keep up With Me, a blog authored by the wonderful and talented Zandria.

Zandria is an empowered, single woman living in Washington D.C. She does blogging for Blog Her, an online community for women who blog. I've been reading Zandria's blog for a few years now; I believe I started sometime after I returned from studying abroad in the Netherlands. Zandria also studied abroad there (in Amsterdam), but we didn't meet up then. I'm hoping to meet her on my "spring" break trip to Virginia and Maryland at the end of February.

One of her more thoughtful blog posts is Being single doesn't mean unhappy during the holidays. I love Zandria's single gal posts, as it's a happy reminder of the very best of being single. Sometimes this is single in a not-married sense; more often, her posts cover single in the no-boyfriend-no-obligations sense. When I read her posts, I realize how far we've come in the past decades in terms of women's rights.

Another good BlogHer post concerns living in a small space. This is potentially useful for me as I consider my next move. I especially love the idea of living in a wee little Tumbleweed House

She also posts great recipes, such as this chicken with roasted red pepper, turkey sausage, and sweet pea sauce over rice. I also like the graham cracker balls. Maybe I'll make these both some day!

And, of course, Zandria is participating in 101 things in 1001 days, which I will post, eventually, someday, once I finish cleaning up my list.

Slice of Pink

I don't normally do this, but I am so entranced with this new blog that I've been reading through her archives for the past several days. I'm mildly ashamed to admit that I'm already back in January 2007 . . .

Anyway, I found Slice of Pink (which my fingers apparently want to type as "Slide of Punk") through Janet's comments on a few of my recent posts. I'm pretty sure she got here via my friend Zandria's blog. And then I started reading, and I haven't stopped.

Since I'm so taken with her blog, I thought I'd direct y'all to a few of my favorite posts from there. Granted, this is not a complete compendium; I haven't made it through all her archives or anything. But these are some posts that really struck me as I was reading through. I missed a lot. She is in law school now, but she used to be a high school photography teacher, and she supervised the robotics group. Talk about someone who matches my own teaching aspirations (okay, I want to be a photography and biology teacher). That just makes her extra rad.

Blogging Challenge

Perhaps my readers wonder why I've had a sudden jump in posting (and why I posted three things last Saturday!). One reason is that I feel bad about how little I posted last semester. I just did not give my blog the love it needs.

Second, and more proximately, I'm participating in a blogging challenge spearheaded by Chris at Something to Write Home About. We both decided to blog more often. Therefore, we're doing a weekly blog challenge for the next few weeks (not sure how long it'll go on, honestly. I intend to participate for at least a month and then re-evaluate). There's a few other people blogging, and I'll try and include links to their entries from time to time.

With the blogging challenge, we intend to write 5 days a week on topics we've all decided. So you can safely assume that most of the random posts not related to my daily life are probably blogging challenge posts.

I like hedgehogs

And this is why:

Two posts I like

I've had these up in my browser forever, as I've been meaning to comment on them. I have to sadly admit to myself that I don't have time for that right now, so I'll just link you guys to them. Enjoy!

Reusing Plastic Bags -- mind, I'm a big fan of canvas. I personally feel it's better not to bring the plastic bags into the home (tho they do come in handy every once in awhile). The author agrees. And I think she has a great further point that it's better to continue to reuse existing plastic bags rather than throw them all away. So kudos to her for reinforcing a point that doesn't often get made. Personal admission: I like to rewash and reuse ziploc bags too. I don't really do it when I have a roommate, but when I lived by myself, I was always using ziplocs (bought meat in bulk and froze), and 20 ziplocs lasted me 4 months.

Everything I know about environmentalism I learned from Star Wars Kinda cute, with rings of truth :-)

Captcha

I'd like to take a moment to apologize for the new commenting system on my blog. I realize that all commenters (myself included) now have to type in some letters from a box before being allowed to comment.

I think it's a huge pain, and I don't like doing it on other sites.

That said, deleting spam comments was beginning to be a bigger pain. I was leaving for vacation, and I didn't want to deal with three trillion spam comments when I came back. In my mind, spam comments block conversation and limit the flow of ideas (not that that's been happening much recently here . . . ).

For now, captcha is staying up until I can figure out something better. Perhaps when I have more time, I'll try taking it down for a little while to see how much spam I get. But for now, I just don't have the energy to deal with extra spam around here.

I write reviews

over at Undisclosed Location Reviews. I totally forgot to mention it before, but I do. Happy contributor :-)

Anyway, I've got three up right now, and I'm sure I'll keep them coming. If you're on the lookout for more entertainment choices (mostly, food, drinks, movies, TV, music, and books), this would be a good place to scout out some new ideas. There's a fairly diverse crowd that (sometimes) posts over there, but it's developing into something nice and fairly fun.

Sweetest Blogger Ever

award goes to Mikey for always chatting my blog up.

Seriously, I really appreciate the compliment. I enjoy reading Mikey's blog too, as it's usually a dose of new thinking for me, and it's never so heavy that I can't read before lunch. Of course, I never know what songs he puts up on his random lists of lyric snippets (if I can get even one, it's a major accomplishment). But blogging is all about new worlds, isn't it? And Hey Freak is a pretty darn funny new world for me.