Anna! Sweetie! dahling, I LOVE you!

Check out Anna’s entry on Childhood, Remembered!

Chris, Linda, don’t you MAKE me come put the smack down on yo ass!

I have to go finish reading Anna’s entry now 🙂

Ethan’s teacher Ms. Maria is from Brazil, and she was a doctor in her country. She has been taking classes to become certified here in the US, and it was with a sad heart that we learned she will be leaving Ethan’s school to persue her chosen profession, and her last day with Ethan’s class will be Friday.

Another mom left a note in all the kids’ backpacks on how she’d like to organize a booklet for Ms. Maria so she will have something to remember her time at the school. So last night as the kids were eating dinner, I sat down with paper and pen and tried to pry something cute and nostalgic out of Ethan. The paper started, “I will miss Ms. Maria because…” and we were to fill in what Ethan will miss most. The ensuring conversation pointed out how very much a 3 year old Ethan is.

me: So what do you think you’ll miss most about Ms. Maria, Ethan?
him: Um… I don’t know.
me: “I will miss Ms. Maria because….” *waits, looking at Ethan*
him: because when I get bigger, I will go and look everywhere and I will FIND HER.
me *decides to focus on the positive and ignore future stalking tendencies*: I hope we will see Ms Maria again someday. Do you like it when she gives you hugs?
him: Mmmmm. Yeah. (very non committally)
me: How about when she sings songs in spanish? Do you like that?
him: Yeah!
me: Ok, *writing and talking* “… she teaches me songs in spanish.” What else do you like about Ms Maria, Ethan?
him: *thinking*
me: *trying to prompt him* “I will miss Ms. Maria because…”
him: I will miss Ms. Maria because she toots!
me and james look at each other and can’t help giggling: *hee hee* Honey, I’m not going to write that. What else? Does she help you cut with scissors?
him: No, I can CUT ALL BY MYSELF!
me: Ahaaa.. did Ms. Maria SHOW you how to do it by yourself?
him, getting excited: YEAH! SHE DID!
me: Ok, I’ll write that down! “.. because she showed me how to cut with scissors all by myself.”
me (thinking we got enough mimsy pimsy stuff and it’s time to go for the heart strings: But really Ethan, you’ll miss Ms. Maria because you love her, don’t you?
Ethan: Yeah, I do!
me: *writes that down*
Ethan: And because she colors with markers!! WRITE IT DOWN!
me: Ok. *writes it down*
Ethan: And because she’s a stinky butt! WRITE IT DOWN!
me: I don’t think so.

Ms. Maria’s farewell note:

I will miss Ms. Maria because…
she sings me songs in spanish, and
she showed me how to cut with scissors all by myself, and
I will miss Ms. Maria because I love her. And she colors with markers.
Ethan P.

I did the whole letters with a dotted line for his name so that he could trace the letters of his name. He was very proud when he was finished.

The little stinky butt 🙂

I think I’d like to start a meme. Just ’cause. SO NERRR.

I was thinking about weird things I did (and sometimes still do) as a child. These are kind of typical things, not necessarily “original” things that ONLY I did, but my weird brain did some of them in a different way, but enough with the explaining and on to the listing.

Childhood, Remembered:

1. Everyone knows the whole step on a crack and break your mother’s back, thing. I never really heard that saying as a child, but I think everyone sort of instinctually goes through a thing with this, I’ve seen it with Ethan, and it’s amazing to see him only walk on certain colored tiles when we’re in a mall, or some such place. Walking in a certain/on certain things, I guess is something everyone has done in their lives.Here’s the kooky way I did it when I was a kid. I was very much into the “cracks” and not stepping on them. Maybe my brain decided that it was too easy, because I then started inventing new invisible lines that I couldn’t step on. For example, if I was walking down a hall, and there was a corner, I would envision the line of the wall continuing on the floor, even though the wall stopped at the corner, and I would not step on that “invisible” line. This is what I saw in my head:
   If there were no corners, I would draw a 45 degree line coming from the corner of a tile and not step on that.
   I would sometimes get very elaborate, because if you look around, there are angles and corners that can create lines everywhere if you continue them past their natural stopping place, the lines multiply and multiply and you couldn’t walk anywhere. I didn’t get obsessive or anything about this (I didn’t go hopscotching everywhere because of all the imaginary lines I couldn’t step on, for example), it was just a fun game that I grew from the original “don’t step on a crack” habit. (I just said crack habit. hee hee!) I still do this today, sometimes, and even if I don’t always avoid stepping on the lines, my mind seems to automatically draw them on the floor as I walk, if I’m not busy looking elsewhere. The lines are always 2 dimensional though, on the floor, even though there’d be plenty of fodder for 3-d lines going every which way.
    
2. Everyone has scary dreams, and I remember talking about the dreams we had as children with someone recently. They stay vivid in my mind, even 25ish years later. I had the typical scary dream that something or someone was going to “get” me and I would round a corner and see it, and could not move my legs. Pretty typical. I also had a couple of dreams where I was the one that would have to “save the day” .. these dreams always featured me and my family in trouble by bad things or bad people, and somehow at the end, someone would declare dramatically that “Amy can save us!” and then, somehow I would, or would at least try. I can think of at least 2 or 3 dreams where in a rush to escape the evil gonna-getchas, everyone would pile into our van, and somehow in the rush, I would end up in the driver’s seat, and *I* would have to drive. I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old, because of the location of these dreams, so it’s amusing to think back about these dreams when I had to do this complicated driving thing or me and my family would all be “gotcha-ed.” I remember being a pretty decent driver, with this very stern, “I can do it, I HAVE to do it!” mentality the entire time.
    
3. One thing that I did that I’m sure everyone has done, and I had no special Amy slant, was jump around the room on random things, following the self imposed rule that I couldn’t touch the floor. Ethan does this now, it’s pretty funny. I don’t know how it is that everyone makes up the same game when they’re little, but we all totally do. Ethan will lay down the couch pillows and jump from pillow, to rug, to his coat on the floor, back to pillow, and proclaim, “I didn’t touch the BUBBLES!”
    
4. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I had this huge thing against medicine of any sort. Someone sometime must have tried to explained how it helps your body feel better, but I just imagined little “things” (organisms? nano-bots? the “things” in my mind were totally scary and alien) entering my body and doing things that my body didn’t necessarily want done and it weirded me out to the point where I would hold a pill in my mouth until my mom left the room and then spit it out. I think it was also because I hated swallowing pills. (becoming a woman and the onset of cramps put a stop to this fear pretty quickly.)
    
5. I always felt like clothes fit me better the second day I wore them. If I had my way in the first grade, I would have worn the same clothes for the entire year. I definitely had favorites, and would try to wear them as often as I could. This stemmed an actual feeling of pity for my other, less favorite clothes that I didn’t want to wear, and sometimes I would wear them just so they wouldn’t feel bad, but then I’d go back to my favoritism elitist ways. I don’t remember all the clothes that were my favorite, except for one nightgown that I wore until it either was too small, or fell to pieces. It was a satiny material in soft pastel colors that was very smooth and soft, and it was very full, so that when I spun around it billowed out around me and made me feel like I was wearing a ball gown. Ahhh.. I still miss that twirly nightgown. A girl needs twirly clothes. Always remember that, people! Twirly clothes!

   Ethan definitely has favorite clothes, and the primary was a pair of red pants made in a sweatpants material, but weren’t quite like sweatpants (no elastic at the bottoms, for example). He had a red shirt with blue sleeves that he had to wear with it, and he called the ensemble his “red clothes” and delighted in saying, “Look mommy, I’M ALL RED!” I had to prepare him gradually when they were too small, that soon, we would have to put his red clothes away, and finally I said one morning when he was putting them on that that was the last time he’d be able to wear them. He took it surprisingly well, and the next time they came up and James tried to give them to him to wear, he informed daddy that they were too small, and he couldn’t wear them. He has other favorite clothes, and they seem to be his favorite because they are all one color, all gray, all blue, etc. I’m definitely saving those red clothes, though, it’s like an end of an era.
   Jocelyn doesn’t have any favorites really yet, except a purple poncho which, let’s face it, is just fun, no matter your age. She also is enamored with underwear and we got her some with Dora the Explorer. She gets mad when we put a diaper on her, and sometimes starts exclaiming, “umberwear, mommy! umberwear!”

So there are a couple of “typical” things that everyone has from their childhood (with some cute kid stories tossed in). I don’t think it will be a very hard meme, and it’s interesting to think about the things from childhood that define who you were/are and how you thought/think.

I am going to tag CHRIS, ANNA, & LINDA – these are all folks I know, so if you don’t participate I will beat you soundly 🙂 I will also tag two folks I don’t know in real life, but read them religiously, and so let’s see if they will also participate, though if not, who can blame them for ignoring some random chick and her silly meme: Rockstar Mommy and leahpeah, I TAG THEE!

And if you want to do it too, that’d rock! Let me know, and I will link to you!

– amy

you must go visit this site:

http://www.yogabeans.com/

It’s a hoot.

Anyone else notice how I had a whole daily post thing going for about 2 weeks there?

And then this weekend I BLEW IT!

Oh well 🙂

I have been meaning to write about the birth of my kids for some time now, maybe because someone out there might enjoy hearing about it, but mostly because it is already faded in my memory and I want to have it down so I will remember it when the memory is totally gone.

It actually took us a while to get pregnant with Ethan. I think it took about 7 months. We weren’t too worried, but I must have been a wee bit worried because I remember I had bought an ovulation test and had started using it the month I turned up pregnant. It was pretty exciting, being pregnant for the first time. People would always ask me 2 things (and, it’s always what I ask others who are pregnant, so I’m to blame too) 1) Do you have morning sickness? and 2) Have you had any weird cravings?

I DID have morning sickness, but it was only super bad in relation to my prenatal vitamin. The one that is chocked so full of iron it makes your poop black and not want to come out AT ALL. The iron also made me want to puke until my stomach went on strike. One morning I popped my vitamin and then headed to work only to have to open the door and puke out my breakfast onto the road at a stop light. Once I clued in that my stomach couldn’t handle the vitamin, I started taking it at night RIGHT before bed and I did much better. I still had that general nauseous feeling, but it was never bad enough to actually make me vomit. I would also start to feel all queasy if I needed to a) pee, or b) eat something.

I never thought I had cravings. UNTIL!

I was really hankering from some Taco Bell. Well, there is a place in Bethesda MD that I used to go to every day, when I worked there, called California Tortilla. MMmmmm. Love me the california tortilla (they have since franchised and I get me some CT lovin’ on a much more regular basis, oh yum). Well, I had been wanting taco bell lately, and one weekend we were going to go the the rennaisance festival in Maryland. James had mentioned how CT IS on the way (sort of) and maybe we could make a pit stop for some California Tortilla burrito love. I waited for the excitement to grow, and it was at that moment, I realized that I did have cravings.. Even though I loved California Tortilla burritos more than life itself, I did NOT want one. I did not want the crunchy bbq ranchy CT goodness! I did NOT want the best chips int eh world dipped into the perfect queso one has ever tasted! NO! I DID NOT! I wanted to go to Taco Bell, and no CT alternative would suffice, IT HAD TO BE TACO BELL!

That is when I realized that YES, I HAD WEIRD CRAVINGS!!? 🙂

I would have to say that the best part of pregnancy is the 2nd trimester. The trimester when you’re showing, but not huge. The trimester when you’ve lost that queasy butterfly in your stomach so you may vomit, feeling. The trimester when you are randy and horny as hell and sex is still fun and not a complicated exercise in strange positions, and it is also the trimester when you actually feel that little life inside of you moving about and you’re certain that’s what it is and it’s not just gas (the 1st trimester, I could never be SURE).

The third trimester, just plain sucks. You stomach becomes huge, and absolutely rigid and hard and not at all amenable to being bumped. That is the worst part of being pregnant, I think. The no bumping. After I had both my kids, I used to just walk around the house bumping into things with my stomach, JUST BECAUSE I COULD. The waddling, the back aches, the unable to pick up anything off the ground without huge effort.. it just sucks. And it lasts FOREVER.

Overall, I would have to give pregnancy a thumbs down. Sure, I can get kind of nostalgic about it now that it’s over and I have 2 darling kids to show for it, but in general, I don’t fancy pregnant. When some women go on about how they loved being pregnant and blah blah blah, I just cannot relate. It’s long, and you can’t drink a lot of things you like, and what with needing a crane to turn over in bed the last month and a half.. I definitely am glad there won’t be any more pregnancies in my future (so we THINK).

I remember going to the doctor when I was pregnant with Ethan. Fairly early on, they detected a growth of some sort near my uterus that they couldn’t really figure out what it was. They kept sending me in for ultrasounds often to track the unknown thingee, and they pretty much decided it was fluid filled, and wasn’t going to hurt anything, but they’d still monitor it. They decided it was probably a symptom of endometriosis (i bet I’m so getting that wrong, it’s been a while) and may dissipate on it’s own in time. They knew he was a big baby from the get go, and when the ultrasounds at the end of the pregnancy pointed out he was breech, along with this mystery thingee to monitor, they scheduled me for a c-section. We had taken childbirth classes, and learned all about the different stages of birth and what happens and why and blah blah blah.. I was so devastated to learn I would not get to experience ANY part of that. The c-section was scheduled Thursday, the week before his due date. It was downright eerie going to bed the night before, knowing that the next day we would meet our baby.

James didn’t want to know the sex of the baby, and I was ok with going along with that, thought it was FREAKING HARD PEOPLE. It was a bit exciting, not knowing what we would have until the big day arrived, but when pregnancy #2 rolled around, I told James we weren’t doing that again. I needed the info! Gotta have the 411! Purple or blue, I gotta know! We decorated the baby room with a beautiful green paint on the walls and a John Lennon “Musical Parade” crib theme that wasn’t really gender specific. I think I felt like I knew it would be a boy, but who knows, hindsight is 20/20, right? I KNOW that I would have been surprised if it turned out to be a girl.

So the morning came, and we arose early and got ourselves to the hospital. I don’t remember much of the waiting, but somehow, I got myself in the gorgeous open green hospital gown, and had to go into the operating room by myself, while James waited outside in the hall, while I got my epidermal.

Oh. My. God, was it awful.

First of all, when an epidermal is normally administered, the ladies are already experiencing pain and are probably just relieved to have some relief from that pain. It is quite another thing to go walking in totally normal and pain free and have them shove a 3 inch needle into your spinal column. When you are totally fine. Without pain. It was so awful, I can’t tell you how awful it was (and yet, in spite of not being able to tell you, I will attempt to anyway).

I remember the nurse standing right in front of me and her hands on my shoulders, pressing down. They told me to look down and keep my back rounded (yeah, YOU try to keep YOUR back rounded when you have something bigger than a bowling bowl in your uterus) and my shoulders down. The anesthesiologist (heretofore known as the Evil Needle Man, or ENM) was supposed to administer a local anesthetic which was supposed to numb the area, so that when the Big One went in, I didn’t feel it much. Well, I felt it much.

It hurt. SO. BAD. I have never had to urge to SPOUT PROFANITY so vehemently before (or since!) in my life. I could not KEEP myself from cussing out that guy and everything in the room, because of the pain. The nurse had to keep pressing on my shoulders and saying over and over, “shoulders down, back rounded” because a split second would go by and I would forget and tense my shoulders up to my ears and straighten my back.

It hurt so so so so so so so badly. It was AWFUL.

I am happy to report that when the time came for epidural #2 (with jocelyn) it wasn’t nearly so bad. In comparison, it was a sweet summer breezy breeze.

Anyway. After the epidural was in and working, my whole body was altered. I was no longer in a “normal” state. I could not stop shivering. It wasn’t the “i’m cold” shivering, but the, “every muscle in my body is totally tensed to the point that they are shaking and I can’t stop them” shivering. My doctor had talked to me before about the possibility of watching the operation in a mirror. She said that a c-section can seem so weird to some women because they don’t even feel like it is happening to themselves. At the time, I thought, hell yeah! I want to watch! How cool would that be! Like my very own personal version of “Birth Story”, except with my own abdomen, and my own baby.

However, in the moment, I had to devote every moment of my attention to breathing, and trying to relax and not shiver. I felt like someone was sitting on my chest and every breath was a huge effort. When I told the ENM that I was having a hard time breathing, he assumed it was because of the angle of my head/neck, and fetched me a pillow. I then had a neck-based headache for the next week because my muscles had tensed themselves in this odd position and there they stayed for the next week.

The birth/operation itself was surreal and strange. I felt a lot of pressure and tugging, and I remember asking, “Have you started yet?” and the doctor laughing and assuring me yes, they’d started, a few minutes ago. I remember she announced, “It’s a boy!” and they showed him to us both over the curtain, but it was too high and I didn’t see him. They went and cleaned him up and performed all the APGAR tests, and then brought him back to my side. I wish I could say that when they showed me my son, I was overcome with joy and elation and everything else fled, but honestly, I still was just trying to get through it all. James sat with him in his arms next to me for a while, and I turned and looked at him as long as I could before my neck rebelled and I had to turn my head upward again and close my eyes and think, “breath, breathe, breathe, keep breathing..” It is blurry now, but they wanted to take Ethan into the nursery for some reason, heat lamps or something, and since I had another 30-40 minutes to go, James left my side to go be next to Ethan (at my bidding, lest anyone think he was a callous idiot husband).

So they finished up the c-section, my doctor reported to me on the state of my uterus (pretty bad scarring from endometriosis) stitched me up. The first part of a c-section is quick. They slice through the abdomen wall, and then through the uterine wall, get the baby out, all in the first 5-8 minutes. Then, they have to make sure everything is out of the uterus (placenta, etc.) sew up the uterus, sew up the abdomen, etc. and that takes another 30-40 minutes. It pretty much sucks, having your baby outside of you, while you are stuck on the operating table waiting for them to finish sewing you up. It doubly sucked for me, because my baby and my husband weren’t in the same room as me, and I had to lay there and concentrate on the ability to breath in and out, and listen to ENM plan his weekend on his cell phone (which consisted of a fishing trip, and don’t bring your skanky girlfriend, because she’s a ho and will ruin the entire trip. This is what I heard, after having my son removed from my uterus. Oh joy.)

They finished, and the massive drugs part of the epidural was tapered off and morphine was kicked in so that the whole shaking shivering breathing problems abated. They took me into the recovery room where I laid there, waiting, in a very surreal, weird state of mind. I remember being very calm and watching the clock, wondering where my baby and my husband were. I laid there for an hour and a half before James came back in. I had asked where they were, and they told me that they were giving Ethan a bath. When James came back in, he told me that they wanted to keep Ethan under the heat lamps for a little while because he was a little cold from his first bath. So it wasn’t until about 2 hours later, when they finally brought my baby in for me to hold.

He was, the most beautiful baby I had ever seen. He had the most precious little head, and if there is ANY pros for c-sections, it’s that the baby’s head is perfectly shaped, no weird cone-head that often comes with a normal birth (this is so not a pro. i’m just saying. you take what you can get.) He had the fuzzy dark brown down all over his head and I immediately noticed he had the same “tornado” that his daddy has. James’ hair grows in a swirly swirl near the front right over his left eye. I have buzzed his head often, and I always have to be careful getting all the hairs over that spot that grow all which ways, so I noticed it on Ethan’s head right away. It just melted my heart 🙂 He had gray eyes that didn’t seem to look right to me, and a few months later when they started to turn brown, it seemed to give his face a better coloring. The gray made him washed out, and when they finally went brown, he stopped looking sickly to me.

After that, it stopped being surreal, and started being the wonderful, exhausting experience it’s supposed to be. I hardly let him leave the room after that, and a few days later, we all went home to figure out our new identity as a family 🙂

ok, not really. but it is still a fun story!

This happened at the first “real” job I ever worked, when I lived in Atlanta. I was working as a fledgling HTML coder at a web design firm. I will always be grateful to this first opportunity, because they had some of the best graphic designers ever, as well as excellent programmers and project managers, and it was at this company that I really learned a lot, and got a good basis for my entire career. I think about some of the other shops I worked in and am RELIEVED that my first position was in such a professional shop which gave me a such a great start to grow from.

(Some of the other places I’ve worked, ho boy.)

And of course, now that I’ve told you how stalwart and professional and above-board this company was, I will toss all that and tell you about ALL the shenanigans that were carried on and oh how they were amusing!

Now, I’m going to tell you a secret. You may not have ever heard this before, so brace yourself. It is a bit shocking.

The majority of traffic on the internet is for porn.

That’s right, I know, SHOCKING! You have never ever heard that before, had you? There is actually a very fun little song about this, which you should go hear. I saw it in a video sung by World of Warcraft characters, but if you’re not a WoW person, just ignore the weird video and watch it anyway, because the song is dang funny.

LISTEN LISTEN LISTEN!!

So anyway. My company in Atlanta didn’t really have a ton of porn clients or anything, but they did have one. They had the client before I started working there, but apparently it was kind of a big deal when they were approached by this porn company to get their porn website up and running. My company initially said NO, not interested, but then the porn company threw so much money at them that they wouldn’t be self respecting business to say no! So, they asked this one web designer if he would mind doing the work and acting as the sole person on this project, and he was fine with it so they took the contract.

So it wasn’t too odd to walk past this guy’s desk and see pictures of naked women. Well, one day, he was working on a little shockwave interactive thingee. The girl (animated, not photographed) was dressed in minimal clothing- lingerie, bra, underwear, you know, and the user would click on an article of clothing, and she’d make some sexy sound in her sultry voice and the clothing would be gone, until the user had clicked it all away. Maybe they made the user pay 5 bucks for each click, who knows.

So my friend is doing this little shockwave movie, but the client didn’t send over any sound. The developer is a guy, so it wasn’t like he could make the sexy “OOH!” and “Ahhhs!” So he tells someone his dilemma and eventually all the gals in the entire office are gathered around his desk tittering into a microphone for him. Including yours truly. And who was the best?

That’s right, that’d be me.

So my claim to fame is that there was a little porn clickity movie somewhere that had my voice gasping “Oh baby!” and “Mmmm!”

It’s a cool story, especially at parties. And especially if you start it with a blatent, “I was in PORN!”

But it’s not over yet! The funny part of the story has yet to come!

The VP of sales in this company.. well, he was kind of a pervy horn dog. And knowing about this porn contract, he would always come over to the developer’s desk and check out whatever it was the web designer was working on for this particular client. Sometimes he would even request that the developer send him a copy of his work.

As the developer worked on this shockwave movie, he KNEW that Pervy VP would want a copy. So, while he had all the office ladies gathered around laughing and gasping into the microphone, he had one lady say, “YUMMM-EEEEEEH!” This lady had a very distinctive voice, as she had been smoking for about 20 years. Very husky, very low.. almost man-nish. In fact, I would have to say a lot of the time, she sounded like a (bad) drag queen.

So he made one version of the movie for the client. A normal version. Then, he made a second version for Pervy Sales VP guy. This version changed the ending. The last article of clothing to go is obviously the underwear, leaving the girl naked for all to see. Instead of seeing what you would usually see after sending the underwear bye-bye, he put … shall we say, very generously proportioned male genitalia there, along with this woman’s voice, saying, “YUMMM-EEEEE!” sounding all drag-queenish. It was HILARIOUS, — especially thinking about Pervy VP guy and the look on his face when he would get to the end.

Ahh yes.. those were the good old days.

The days when I was in porn.

I totally get sucked into things at costco.

I usually can’t make it out of there w/out spending $100, so lately I haven’t been going except for the absolutely necessities. Like those Costco rolls, they are like a little roll of heaven, they’re so good. They are a necessary part of The Ride Home From School, when everyone (ok Jocelyn) is fussy and hungry. I wouldn’t dare show up to get my kids without some sort of snack. I would be in hell (even more so than usual) on the way home. So Costco rolls = necessity. So is soy milk. Kirkland branded Silk vanilla, which is what Milk! INtolerant! girl Jocelyn drinks. ANYWAY.

So yesterday before gettign the kids, I stopped at Costco. I went in for rolls, and right there in the front, they had …. ipods. I think they had the nano, but my eyes went right to the video, which they had in black and white.

I kept thinking, “It’s under $300.” (it was like, $289.)

Then I kept thinking, “they don’t have the 60gig.”

And then I thought, “My entire hard drive is 30 gigs and I still haven’t filled it, and that’s including programs and shit.”

And then…? I didn’t think, I just grabbed it and went in search of rolls.

Do tivo shows play on video ipods yet? Because suddenly, I actually care 🙂

– amy wishes they made a purple iskin.

Greg isn’t really a dork.

Took a picture of the seedlings this morning, in good light! yay! but you’ll have to wait until this evening to see it.

Got an invitation to BlogAds from RockstarMommy – she is the best! Thanks chica.

They gave me a “free ad code” to send to my friends so that they can submit ads to be displayed for free on my site for the first few weeks.

…. DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS???

I don’t care if you have nothing to shill. Here is your chance to make a little graphic, or even just write some text, and post it on the sidebar of my site. Do you realize the possibilities? I’m thinking I need to make something that proclaims Greg is a dork, and put it up for all to see. Other possibilities:

• James drinks chocolate milk every night.
• I HATE PEAS! (i don’t, i’m thinking of this one for you)
• Andrew has more shoes that Zappos,
• I refuse to let dishwater touch my skin,
  and, of course,
• Greg is a dork.

Think outside the box people. Devise your personal manifesto. Divulge your secrets in ad-form. Shill away!

Click here to submit your ad:

http://www.blogads.com/bnzsbjofofu/crazymokes/advertise

And email me for the free code. Remember, I still have to approve them. Neener neener!

Do you have an opinion on either of these? Tell me. I’m torn because while the 30D is supposed to be out any day now, the upgrades from the 20D to 30D are fairly minimal, not the “everyone run to the stores and upgrade!” sort of changes that happened when they went from 10D to 20D. So when it finally does ship, the 20D might drop some more in price making it a better deal. However, there IS the upgrades that it has, site metering, bigger LCD, and some other stuff I can’t remember atm. I’m leaning toward the 20D which seems nearly as good for cheaper, cause you KNOW we’re going to need the other swanky stuff to go with it, like some lenses and maybe the battery grip and possibly a flash. Oy to the vey. Talk about dropping some cash. the 20D after it has hopefully dropped in price some is looking better and better.

Remember how I mentioned googling photography classes recently? OH MY GOD — LOOOOOOOK at this cool photography thingee I found in my googling. Basically, you take your camera and you go take pictures in DC while a professional photographer gives you advice, pointers, how-tos and more. They have a “safari” for the cherry blossoming which, if you don’t know, is a big deal in DC this time of year, and it sounds fabulous. I wonder if I could get my hands on a new camera by April. Anyone else interested in this? Angie???? I didn’t sell you that camera at the yard sale forever ago, but maybe you have another one and maybe you’d want to learn how to use it better! Tamara? Chris? Ann? ANYONE maybe? EMAIL ME YO!

Safaris I want to go on:

• Cherry Blossoms at Sunrise (this is freaking early, but I still would love to do it)
• Great Falls Macro Intensive Workshop
• Waterfall Photography at Deep Hollow Falls
• Canon 20D Safari (ooooohh yeah! this one is already past, but i’m sure they’ll have another)

wouldn’t it be awesome to go on these ones?

• Chincoteague National Wildlife Preserve
• Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

I’m not even going to get into the ones in other countries. Sigh.

-amy dreams in digital.