Sick Day

I almost forgot to update the blog, because today I'm engaged in serious combat.

I woke up with nothing more than a tickle in my throat and a general feeling of malaise.  However, as the day goes on, I find it's trying harder and harder to turn itself into a full-blown head cold.  This cannot stand.  I battle on.  My enemy is wily, but I am determined to emerge victorious from this conflict.

This entry is, therefore, the blog equivalent of what TV Tropes refers to as a Sick Episode.  Tomorrow I'll be back to Working Through The Cold.  But for today, since I don't have to be anywhere or do anything absolutely compelling, I've decided to just take it easy.  Unfortunately, the husband person still had to go to work and was thus unable to spend his day fussing over me.  (This of course implies that he would have done such a thing if he were home, which I think most people realize is unlikely, but I can cling to my fantasies.)

In between brief bouts of semi-unconsciousness, I'm amusing myself by wandering around several of my favorite websites.  For lack of being coherent enough to share anything else with my readers, I thought I'd pass these on to you.  Have a great weekend and stay healthy - but if you're stuck in bed with a laptop, give these a try.

• TV Tropes (world's greatest time sink)
• xkcd (nerdy webcomic full of stick figures, science jokes, and pop culture references)
• Tumblr (I'm still new to this so I don't know how to describe it)
• Manly Guys Doing Manly Things (a silly video game-inspired webcomic my sister got me into)
• Not Always Right (funny and bizarre tales of adventures in customer service)

More Mail for Service Members

Once again, please spread the word about Holiday Mail for Heroes. In addition to that, Debbie Tenzer of Do One Nice Thing has provided her friends with some other avenues by which you can spread some end-of-year cheer to our hardworking service personnel.

If you're like me, you've got a ton of leftover Halloween candy. I only had three kids ring my bell all evening! So here's a great way to keep it from going to waste (or on your hips): Send it to Operation Gratitude, which will share it with our deployed servicemen and women. They also accept other items too, but only until December 5th. Find shipping guidelines, addresses, and other important information here.

Do you clip coupons? Find yourself with coupons for products you don't use or need? Consider sending them to the Overseas Coupon Program, which will make them available to military families stationed in other parts of the world. This will help the families of our personnel stretch their budgets and buy things they need. Even expired coupons are accepted!

Operation Birthday Cakes, via the website BakeMeAWish.com, will send birthday cakes to deployed military personnel.

With Cup of Joe for a Joe, you can provide a cup of coffee to a man or woman in the military for just two dollars. Or adopt a whole platoon for thirty dollars! Something warm to drink can warm their hearts. Okay, that was a little cheesy, but you know what I mean.

Debbie, who is awesome like that, has several other ways you can support our military troops. To read more of them, visit Do One Nice Thing.

Centepostary

This is the 100th installment of It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time!

One year ago, I launched this little project - not really sure what I was going to do with it, in truth.  But the situation in which I then found myself lent a lot of credence to Janis Joplin's maxim that "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."  I actually said that more than once.  So I tried a few things.  Some of them didn't work, like my photo book, which never sold a single copy (except the one I bought myself).  Some of them, like this blog, did.

It's been an interesting year.  I've interacted with people I never expected to meet, like Do One Nice Thing's Debbie Tenzer and author John Scalzi and the staff of Walter Reed Hospital.  I've discovered organizations and charities I didn't know existed, like Water.org and Caps for Good.  It's been a learning process.  In largest part, it's been a lot of fun.

So what's next?  Good question.

They say "do what you love and the money will follow."  Well, this is what I love to do.  I'm not getting rich, but it brings in a little cash now and then.  I am, however, open to expanding the situation.  So I'm some degree of excited to share with you the existence of official merchandise for the blog.

If you've ever wanted the blog's name on a t-shirt, a postcard, or a host of other merchandise, now's your chance.  Or maybe you'd like something featuring the little purple flower.  Or some of my other nature photography.  Or an original design I made for the Sherlock Holmes fandom.  Whatever you think might appeal to your senses, please check out my Little Shop of Laura's. 

Yes, the name is a pun on Little Shop of Horrors.  After a whole year of this, my puns shouldn't really be all that surprising anymore.

Thanks for making the first hundred posts so much fun!  Here's to another year!

Pirates

Arr, mateys, it be International Talk Like a Pirate Day!  This be nothing more than an excuse to party like it's 1499.  Dress up, talk in strange tongues, and remind everyone why it's the pirate's life for you!

This, of course, is my way of saying that I don't know what to write today's blog post about, so I'm just being silly instead.  I'm trying to keep a tiny but persistent cold from getting a firmer grip on my sinuses, and that's taking up an unfair amount of my energy.  Please drink a rum for me, since I can't just now (and probably wouldn't even if I could).  Arr.

The Goddaughter Inquiry

As I mentioned in my previous post, my goddaughter Kristie got married last weekend.  Kristie and her new husband Alex are regular guests in my house; they come to stay with us at least once a year.  They are easily two of my favorite people in the world, and I will sometimes talk about them at great length to anyone who will listen.

It's well known among my friends that I am thirty...something.  (Let's leave it at that.)  Kristie is in her mid twenties.

Of course, if you do some math, that suggests that I became a godmother when I was around ten or so, since most godparents get the job when the godchild is still a baby.  Obviously that wasn't the case here, but while I was sharing wedding details with her, my coworker Sunita asked me to explain how this all came about in the first place.

Well, it's kind of a long and needlessly complicated story, but here goes.

Some six-odd years ago, I met Kristie and a small pack of other geeks who were interested in the same movie I was - The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  Specifically, these geeks ran an online roleplaying game where they played as characters from the movie or additional characters they'd created.  Through a series of small and generally not noteworthy circumstances, I ended up in the role of Captain Nemo on the board, and unofficial Team Mom off the board. See, as it turned out, these guys were all considerably younger than I was; Claire, the eldest (who was a bridesmaid on Saturday), was a ripe old 20.

Now, what does this have to do with my being a godmother?  Well.

As the oldest and only married member of the group, and the only one who didn't still live with his or her parents, I issued a general sort of invitation for "the kids," as my husband and I had started to call them, to visit.  I had great fun pointing out that both he and I had been investigated by the FBI, who found nothing, so their parents should have no qualms about our being upstanding citizens.  (It's true, too.  We were both federal employees for several years, the background checks were required.)  The two members of the group who live in England, the aforementioned Claire and Sarah, decided to actually take me up on this and arranged to come over during Sarah's spring break from university.  Kristie, who lives in Tennessee, decided to bring her little brother Jonathan and join the festivities.

This turned out to be a Really Good Thing for me, because while Claire and Sarah were here, my grandmother died.  I knew it was coming; I even warned them it was a distinct possibility; and Kristie and Jon arrived the day after she went.  The four of them were my greatest consolation during the very difficult days that followed, and I cried like a baby when they all left.

I'm getting to the point, honest.

Claire returned that fall for my 30th birthday party, at which Kristie and Jon were also supposed to join us but a hurricane got in the way.  A month later, my grandfather - husband to the grandmother I just lost in the spring - also died.  Kristie came two weeks later, which was a comfort, and we had a good visit.

Close to Christmas, I got an unexpected phone call.  Kristie was on a road trip with her college choir, and they were stopping for supper at a Wendy's not too far from where I live, and would I like to drive over and see her for a bit?  Of course I would!  But I wasn't really prepared for what I found when I got there.

Kristie explained that trying to tell her friends that she was going to Pennsylvania to visit her 'internet mom' was a little awkward.  I guess if you're not used to the concept, it does sound kind of peculiar.  She also explained that in her church, the kids pick their own godparents.  So as a result of these two facts, she'd decided that if we were willing, she'd like Kevin and me to take on the job.

And that's how I acquired a nineteen-year-old goddaughter in the middle of a Wendy's parking lot.

Random Thoughts From This Past Week

Have you ever felt like your entire life is really one big show, and nobody ever gave you a copy of the script?

And in a similar vein, ever wonder who the heck hired some of these extras?

It's not so much that I'm really good at thinking outside the box. It's more like there is no box.

No matter what I'm doing at any given moment, I always have this nagging feeling that I'm supposed to be doing something else.

I have a giant bag of Swedish fish, and you don't; your argument is invalid.

Less randomly, I wanted to remind pet owners here in these United States that they can request a free pet safety kit from the ASPCA. The kit includes a window decal, which lets firefighters know how many pets to look for if your home catches fire, and a magnet for your refrigerator that bears the toll-free emergency number and website address of the ASPCA's Animal Poison Control Center, so you can get in touch with them quickly if your pet gets into something that's not good for them.

And hey, we're having more storms, which means I'm in more pain, which means I'm ending this here. Have a great weekend and I'll see you Monday.