Jan. 31: Month in review

January 2014 is almost over. I’m kinda glad.

I’m also glad that today is Friday, because we all need a little Ponch now and then, right?

You’re welcome, Fancy Lori™. I know you like the Ponch pic. ;)

Special days I celebrated this month and how:

• New Year’s Day was celebrated in high style here at the House of Manullang. Three of the four of us were sick and napped throughout the entire day. Wheeeee. We’re the funnest.
• Jenn K’s birthday! We went to a wine bar, where I tasted a wine I actually like. I took a picture of the label so I can look for it in stores—so far, no luck. Figures. Time to place a special order, and I don’t even know how or where to do that because I’m so wine-stupid. After the wine bar we checked out a new local place, Valley Growlers. Big thumbs up for their fab selections! I think Jenn K had a good birthday, but none of us really remembers for sure, including her.
• I went to a baby shower for Erin, my niece. So fun to celebrate a new baby, even though he made me a great-aunt and that makes me old. More on Baby below.
• There was a celebration in our family when the Seahawks won the NFC championship, and there will be more celebration this weekend when they compete in the Super Bowl. As I am neither a Seahawks fan nor a Seahawks hater, I was not a celebrator nor a throw-things-at-the-wall-er (Loveliest Lori, I’m looking at you…). It sure is nice to have such happy boys in the house though. I also like seeing happy Seahawks-adjacent Facebook posts from happy Kim F’n, happy Melodie, happy Jordan family, happy every Manullang/Nienhuis, and happy neighbors. Happy is good.

I saw things with my eyes:

• Downton Abbey and Sherlock have started up again on PBS, and that makes for some happy Sunday nights here. The If-Downton-Abbey-Took-Place-Entirely-On-Facebook summaries that appear the next day at this site are priceless.
• I watched, for the first time, Mommie Dearest. Wow, I say, both for Joan Crawford’s awfulness and Faye Dunaway’s ridiculous over-acting. Still, it was oddly entertaining. One of the best things about Amazon Instant Video is having access to lots of movies (mostly trash) that I’ve never gotten around to watching.
• Last year I watched (and kinda loved) the documentary Grey Gardens, and this month I finally saw the Jessica Lange-Drew Barrymore movie version of it. Both were fascinating in that train-wreck/I-can’t-look-away way.
• Who needs to wait for the DVD release of Frozen, like a sucka? It’s online! Bootleg video, anyone?
• Armistead Maupin’s final tale from his Tales of the City series was published last week, and he was at Powell’s the other night for a reading and signing. He was as entertaining as always—I love that man. I’m thinking about re-reading the first eight books before I start the new one, just to experience the whole series in one great big delicious bite.
• I read Amy Tan’s latest novel, The Valley of Amazement. It contained a bit more detail about life as a courtesan than I really needed to know, but was beautifully written, as her books always are.
• I’m not entirely sold on e-books; I like holding actual books in my hands, turning pages, the eyestrain, all that. However, if a book is interesting enough, I’ll attempt to read it on my iPad. I just finished When You were Older, by Catherine Ryan Hyde. The story is set in the months following 9/11; I thought the author did a good job capturing the emotions of that tense time. (Someday I hope NOT to associate certain books with whether or not I read them on my Kindle app, but this was the second I’ve read start-to-finish.)

This month’s good and bad:

• NEW BABY NEW BABY NEW BABY NEW BABY!!! Erin & Kevin’s son was born four weeks early, but he’s doing well. I met him when he was two days old, and OMG, I forgot how lovely it is to hold someone else’s newborn! What a little sweetheart. Picture proof:

Baby Max (with Erin’s piggies in the background)

I love this pic of a very tired Erin and her sweet boy
(Totally stole it off their blog, but with permission)

• Debi visited! We need to see each other more than once a year. Boo.
• I opened an Etsy store and am going to sell my gemstone jewelry creations. I’ve been beading like a madwoman—it’s a very fun creative outlet. I’ll post the store info here when it’s all ready for shopping and sharing with your friends. I feel like I’ve been asking a lot of favors lately, so I apologize in advance for yet another.
• There aren’t enough creative new ways to use four-letter words that convey our frustration with the results of my PET scan. The cancer is back. I have a biopsy next week, and will meet with the oncologist soon after to decide on our next course of action. I’ll do my best NOT to turn Stuff Jen Says back into an all-cancer-all-the-time blog, but will also try to share news as it happens.
• And while I’m on the topic, I’d like some credit for not using more of those four-letter words on my blog. They sure come out of my mouth more than they end up here. Somebody praise me for my restraint RIGHT NOW.

I likes to share the silly stuff:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to enjoy some February. You should do it too. Laterz.

Oct. 2: Birthdays and blog challenge review

Before I do anything else, I want to offer sincere apologies to two of my friends whose birthdays I let pass unacknowledged. I am greatly ashamed, and offer the following super-duper lame explanations.

Hawaii Laura, I don’t really have a good excuse but-cept that I was on Facebook for just a very short time on LaurApeber 30 and missed the reminder (not at all because I lost interest in the month after KimJenber/JenKimber ended). I contacted the Hawaii Department of Transportation and had these signs made and installed throughout the islands. My guess is that you’re too busy out paddling in the surf to travel via highways, so here’s a pic:

Margaret, I’m gonna use the hardly-on-Facebook-on-Monday excuse for you too, and add that I’m also kind of a jerk. I rented out letters and space in the West Hills to apologize; here’s a picture in case you missed my message:

(This is obviously that one section of the West Hills in which there are no trees and also let’s pretend there was blue sky this week. Yes, let’s do that.)

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Blog Challenge Review Time

So. In September I challenged myself to blog every day. With one exception, I got a post up each day of the month, and it’s time to reminisce. Cue the music.

• It was fun, mostly in the beginning. By the end it was a little less fun and felt kinda chore-like.
• It prompted me to work on my blog design, which I hadn’t tweaked in a very long time. The background, the color scheme, the layout… it’s a big change. As it’s much bolder than I’ve had before, I’m not sure how long I’ll keep it, but for now I think it’s fun and cheery.
• It sort of prompted my mom to start her own blog. THAT might be the best result of all. Yay, Mother Mary! (Check out what she posted this morning—a tale about my mother in all her passive-aggressive glory.)
• There were days I felt extra-stressed to get a post written. Mostly those were the recipe days, in which I had nothing recently-made to share and knew I’d have to either make something or word the post so it sounded like I’d made it recently. My real accomplishment is that, except for the seasoning, the recipes I posted were made specifically for this blog challenge, but please do not ask me to do that again.
• (Why were there so many recipe days? Because I created this challenge with Sherilee, whose blog is deliciously recipe-heavy. I must have been drunk when I sent her my list of topic ideas and said, “Add whatever you want.”)
• I’ve tried bunches of different ways to write blog posts using my iPad, but nothing works as well as my tried-and-true method on my oh-so-cumbersome laptop. Knowing I would have to lug it out every single day was annoying.
• It definitely helped my chances of success to share the challenge with someone else. If I hadn’t been worried about the Wrath of Sherilee™, I may not have lugged out the laptop every day.
• (Sherilee is really not that wrath-y, but I know we would’ve given each other grief if either had failed.)
• I can’t make any promises, but there’s a good chance the desired result—getting back into a habit of blogging regularly—might actually manifest itself. Mission accomplished, right?

Thanks to all of you who tuned in throughout the month, putting up with my inane rambling and leaving comments here and there. ‘Twas cool to have you along.

Sep. 21: Using social media

It’s Day #21 of the September Blog Challenge. Today’s topic:

Discuss ways that blogging or social media has changed you.

I started blogging when I was pregnant with our first child back in 1999 so I could easily share information with friends and family. The habit (however frequent) has become such a part of me that it’s hard to remember how I communicated with people before that. I suppose group emails (ugh) and handwritten/typed letters, right? Nowadays I have a tough time finding a postage stamp in my house. My blog has also become my preferred method of journaling, although I am far less personal on my blog than I would be when writing only for myself.

Believe it or not, I think about what I’m writing and, in most cases, what other people will think of it. I try to be careful with the amount of detail I share on my blog. One way my blog has changed my life is that not a week goes by without someone pausing in their conversation to tell me DO NOT PUT THIS ON YOUR BLOG.

Whatevs.

Besides my blog, “social media,” to me, is Facebook, Pinterest, texting, and email. I don’t do much on Twitter these days, and while I have Instagram and Tumblr accounts, I rarely post on them.

Facebook has changed my relationships TONS. On the positive side, I’m able to keep in touch with people I care about and reconnect with old friends. I love that Facebook has made me better friends with some people than ever. Having just celebrated a birthday, I have to say that Facebook birthdays are the BEST. What sucks? I now know about friends’ political and religious views that make me super-sad… I am surprised at how many people I know don’t know how to spell… and how many are totes cray-cray.

  
 

 
 

Pinterest, on the other hand, makes me LOVE people! I get on there and think MAN, MY FRIENDS HAVE GREAT TASTE!

Texting has nearly eliminated my need to call people on the phone. I love it. It’s mostly a good communication tool.

  

Email has been around a lot longer than the rest, and I have always found it one of my favorite ways to communicate. But spam sucks. So do people whose email addresses change every other day.

 

But to answer the question of today’s blog challenge topic, how has social media changed me? … It got me through the scariest fight of my life. I truly believe that my outlook during cancer treatment would have not been nearly so positive and hopeful without the support of friends and acquaintances via social media. That’s the kind of thing that make it worth putting up with all the sucky stuff in social media.

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If you’re a blogger and want to do our blog challenge with us, let me know and I’ll send you our list! Otherwise, tune in here (and on Sherilee’s happy little blog) every day in September.

Dec. 13: In which Jen bitches a whole bunch

Before I get to the funny pics, I need to vent. It’s my blog, so I have the right to do it and I’m gonna. So pfffftt.  Note: I removed a section of this post, for several reasons. I’m sorry.

1. On Tuesday there was a random shooting at Clackamas Town Center. This is scary for tons of reasons, but for us, Clackamas Town Center is the mall we shop at most often—it’s LITERALLY too close to home.
   
   I’ve always joked that of the three largest malls in the Portland area, the worst crimes shoppers might face would be…
   1. Lloyd Center: gunfight or gang activity
   2. Clackamas: fist fights or gettin’ beaned by empty PBR cans
   3. Washington Square: whapped by a Coach purse in a random swinging
2. Turns out I was wrong, and that makes me mad.
3. I know we’re supposed to focus our thoughts on the heroes of the event—the positive things that happened during this tragedy, the ways people showed kindness to strangers—and all the ways it could have been so much worse, but what I think more than anything is that people are assholes. The shooter’s aforethought (stealing the gun, getting dressed in camo clothes and a hockey mask, planning for a crowded mall, etc.), not caring at all that it would affect thousands of people for the rest of their lives… only an asshole would commit a crime like that. Maybe an insane asshole, but definitely an asshole. Also a coward, who shoots himself at the end.
4. BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE. There was recently another tragedy in our area in which a father woke his kids up in the middle of the night and shot himself in front of them. How do witnesses ever recover from something like that? I don’t think they do. Yep, all signs point to ASSHOLE.
5. GUNS. Say what you will for or against gun control; I don’t care. I just hate guns. I hate them, hate them, hate them.
6. I’m not done venting! (Does that make you mad???)
7. WHO MAKES THESE DECISIONS? Clackamas Town Center used to be in Clackamas, but now it’s in Happy Valley. Clackamas is not actually a city. There’s a county called “Clackamas,” and Clackamas is a region that makes it on the news when, say, Tonya Harding does yet another stupid thing, or when there’s a mall shooting, but that’s it. Wikipedia says Clackamas is a “census-designated place” (well, that clears it right the eff up!). On the other hand, Happy Valley, which is all around Clackamas, is a city. Happy Valley has changed its boundaries about eleventy times since we moved here in 1997, and I honestly don’t even know where we live anymore. There are signs in three different places on the way into my neighborhood that say “Welcome to Happy Valley,” but technically we are still in Clackamas. Why doesn’t stuff make more sense?

And now I shall share the silly stuff I’ve been saving up for y’all.

 

Mother Maaaaary:

 

 

Y’know how the past few election losers have quietly disappeared
for a while, not giving all sorts of reasons/excuses the other guy won?
I respected Dole, Gore, Kerry, and McCain for their post-election behavior.
Romney, take a cue and shut the holes in your perfectly-coiffed head.

 

Redneck advent calendar