I have been messing with WordPress and importing posts, templates etc. for most of the weekend. Then I realized I was messing with blogs so much I hadn't remembered to post. Mike helped me out and installed WordPress on my hosted space alongside this blog and I successfully imported all of my posts and comments from here over to there. There is still work to do before I am ready to make the big switch over to the new format, though, but I am getting much closer. I still have to get a template set up that works with all of my old posts and photos.

As far as life in general, work is busy, school is good (I got a 95% on my last paper) and the animals are all mostly fine. The neighbors are still loud and annoying, our water heater sprung a leak last week, and Louie (the fat black dog) has gingivitis. Exciting, huh?

All I can do at this point is to express my frustration at being stuck with Movable Type when all I want is the freedom offered by Wordpress that would allow me to post protected posts among other things. But alas, no luck there. I am stuck with cumbersome MT and all of its problems. Help!

My long time blog buddy Mike tagged me with the following:

Post 10 random things about yourself- Choose five people to tag and a reason you chose them and make sure to tell them- Don't tag the person who tagged you

After so many years of blogging these things get more and more difficult to do, because I feel like I have already told you guys everything. Let me think. I am going to have to go back quite a way to come up with these.

1. When I was little and we had a TV with no remote control, my dad would tell me to turn the TV up "a hair's breadth." For years and years I thought he was saying "a hare's breath" and I wondered why a rabbit's breathing had anything to do with it.

2. For some reason, I thought that there was a trolley on the back of a penny for quite a long time. It turns out it is the Lincoln Memorial (duh). I have no idea why I thought it was a trolley. Stoopid.

3. The directions that I would take as far as my career were all foreshadowed by poster contests from grade school. When I was in sixth grade, I won a patriotic poster contest. The theme that year was "freedom" and my entry was called "The Wings of Freedom." My poster featured drawings I made of the Wright Flyer, a U.S. Airmail plane, a WWII plane, and the Space Shuttle Challenger, which we had just lost earlier that year. Strangely my career followed the progression on that poster: I started out as an aircraft mechanic and then moved to the space program. The really odd thing is that I won another poster contest in first grade. It was a poster contest for pedestrian safety week, and I drew a little girl whose ball had rolled out in the street. She had stopped and asked an adult to go and get her ball. And such my career has followed this early cue as well: I am in school getting a degree in Occupational Safety and Health. Hmmm.

4. I have had a dirty mouth since I was very little. One day while driving around town with me in my carseat in the back, my dad honked the car's horn at someone. From the back of the car, little three year old me piped up, "Asshole!" My vocabulary has only gotten worse since then.

5. When I was about four, I used to sleep with every one of my toys and books in my bed so none would get jealous.

6. Middle school was the worst time of my life. I still think middle school girls are evil little bitches.

7. My sister and I used to fight a lot, but we did share some good times playing with toads and roly-polys. We were two little weirdos. The toads that were misfortunate enough to wander into our yard would be subjected to much torture in the form of us dressing them up in Barbie shoes and hats and such nonsense. We tried to be gentle, but I don't think they appreciated our fashion sense.

8. When I was four and in kindergarten, I broke my left wrist roller skating. I thought casts were so cool back then and the only thing cooler was crutches. I used to draw little girls with broken arms and legs and casts and crutches all the time.

9. When I was little, my dad used to call me Finnager. It took me way too many years to figure out that it was actually Finnejer, which was Jennifer rearranged.

10. My life may seem boring a lot of times, but I currently can't remember what it feels like to be bored. I know I have been bored in the past, but it has been so long that I just can't recall the sensation. All I know now is that there aren't enough hours in the day or days in the week to do everything I want to do. I still hear people around me, adults even, say they are bored and I find it strange that they have time to be.

Phew. That took a lot out of me. I can't even think of who I should tag to do this meme next. I'll have to get back to you on that.

Good night!

I have been absent from this blog for the past few days, partly because i have been busy, but mostly because I had no access to post on it. Something went screwy with Movable Type (imagine that!) and I got an error page whenever I navigated to the blogging interface, saying that the directory was not found, or something like that. It is fixed now, but something really has to be done about this blog. I want to convert over to WordPress or something that is not riddled with "issues" like MT is, but I do not have the technical knowledge to attempt it myself. Oh well.

So, what have I been up to lately? The past two Saturdays we have had someone come in and reglaze our shower and our tub surround. They have this process where they etch the tile, then they spray what is essentially like an enamel glaze over it, changing the color of the tile and filling in little cracks and voids. Our shower and tub surround were not in terrible shape, but were covered in cheap grey tile. When the shower was tiled, they did a really crappy job of grouting it, and some of the unfired edges of the tiles could be seen at the grout lines making it look like it was dirty all of the time. The floor of the shower was a lost cause; we had never seen it look halfway decent. There were also two tiles in the shower that had fine cracks in them radiating out from where they had been cut to go around the sill at the bottom of the shower. The tub surround had its own issues: two edge tiles that had popped off because they hadn't used enough mortar, one tile that had the ceramic surface chipped at the corner, some holes drilled in a few tiles where a shower door had been installed before we removed it, and the grey no longer matched anything in the room after we replaced the vanity last year.

We couldn't fix the edge tiles that had come loose because one of them had split in half and they were so thin that we couldn't find any that would match without sticking out. The tile store people said they were Brazilian tiles and that they are no longer made. We had a few extra of the tiles, but not the edge pieces, so Andy cut them to the same size as the edge pieces and installed them. The holes in the tiles were filled with Bondo and sanded smooth. Then the whole thing was sprayed with white enamel glaze. We went with white because it looks clean and is very neutral so it should appeal to the widest range of buyers when we go to sell in a few months. We had to do something to make the bathrooms look their best- the glazing has a five year warranty and it only took about half a day to complete each bathroom. Way easier than chipping out all of that tile and redoing it. This way it looks nice and is functional with no problems for a prospective buyer, ad if they so choose, they can tear out the tile and redo it. We just couldn't go that route with everything else we have going on right now.

These pictures show the before and after of the master bathroom- I'll post pics of the downstairs bath once we get everything back together. We still need to reinstall the faucet handle, shower head, shower curtain rod, etc.

No, it is not the house, sadly, as we were supposed to start construction today, but that will probably happen later this week. Believe it or not, we are held up right now because of some cross-hatching the county wants on our survey. Cross-hatching which is there, on the drawing, but since our builder drew it on there, very neatly and well scaled, it is no good. The county says that the surveyor has to do the cross-hatching. I kid you not.

Oh, so back to the construction zone, thing. That is in reference to this blog, which will be moving to a new blogging platform in the very near future. So don't mind the construction debris and dust, I'll get things cleaned up around here soon enough and have everything working as soon as possible.

Yes, I know my blog looks all wonky. What I don't know is why it is that way. I didn't do anything to it, it just isn't feeling well or something. I will try to get emergency resuscitation for it. Please pray.

Through the course of keeping this blog, which I started over three years ago, I am continually amazed at how it has changed my life. I have been able to meet and make friends with people I never would have encountered, have new opportunities posed to me, and reconnect with people I lost touch with and thought I would never see or hear from again. About every few months I will get an email from an old friend from somewhere in my past that happened to find me here. I have heard from a friend Andy and I worked with in Wichita when we first met on the job, a friend I knew in St. Thomas for the year plus I spent in the Virgin Islands, and lately a friend from summer camp. It is so great to be able to communicate with these friends again after so many years.

These people have all found me basically at random, by stumbling across my blog, possibly by searching for terms that happened to be included in posts I wrote since I wrote about my past. I think that maybe I could help accelerate finding old friends by listing who I am looking for here, and maybe at some point they, or their friends or families, will search for their names and find me. It is worth a shot, right?

So, if you find your way here, I am looking forward to getting back in touch with:

Kathleen Otonicar of Marietta, Georgia, who shares my birthday of November 4th
Lisa Norred, formerly of Lee Avenue in Tally
Ellen Ogle, who attended Auburn University
Amy Deyo, Obie's little sis, was an exchange student in France in 1992- I think she is now Amy Harter
Hilary Whitener, stepsister of Cali Garner
Cal Sutton of Phoenix, Arizona- USAir RJ Pilot
Beverly Kalloo- of St. Thomas (A.H. Riise) and Ohio, was with Jay Eisenzimmer in 1995
Kathy Coursey of Florida State University, took photography classes in 1996-97

There are others, but I'll start with these few as an experiment to see if I find any of them. In the meantime, one of my friends here locally, who I met through dog training classes, has decided to start her own blog and needs some readers and comments to get her going. Please go visit her over at Swurl and say "Hi." *whisper* Ask her to post photos of Leta, who is the most wonderful Golden Retriever in the entire world!

Some readers lately have been having problems with the feeds from this site since I upgraded to the latest version of the software I am using.

I do know that the following two feeds work fine, so please try these:

feed://www.for-the-birds.net/rss.xml

feed://www.for-the-birds.net/atom.xml

Thanks, and please continue to report any problems because I can't fix them if I don't know they are there!

I was reading a post on Melanie's blog tonight about how her oldest daughter might have juvenile diabetes, and something struck me. Since I have been blogging, I have seen and shared so many experiences with with so many of you. I saw Mary get married, Stacey get accepted to Grad school, Heather move to Texas and get a new pet bird, Nicole have a new baby, Patrice get divorced and start a new relationship, Kim lose weight and gain a dog, Valerie get a new job and party hard, Glitter have a new niece and possibly find true love, Zube have a much anticipated baby, Anne expecting, RG lose her Grandma and still succeed in life, Dawn get her dream job, Laurie publish a book and lose a cat, Rob get a new telescope, Melanie's son diagnosed with Tourette's syndrome, Poppy go through trying times at home and get quiet on the internet, Ellen decide to adopt and then decide to place it on hold, Kristy lose her Dad and get a new job, new boyfriend and a new lease on life, Carol-anne get a new job, Mike get a new car, Fyrchk start dating a co-worker and go private on her blog, HDW go through more crazy things than any ten people should, Steph go through a major move, Stacy discover that she was suffering from Celiac disease after years of wondering, Nicole turn girly and get a pet hamster, and Beth's basement flood.

In the time I have been blogging, I have adopted four dogs, had my oldest dog die at over eighteen years old, adopted a cockatoo, bought 1.69 acres in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, acquired 7.59 acres here in Florida and spent a year and eight months getting permitted to build a house on it, had a dog diagnosed with diabetes, returned to flight with Space Shuttle launches, and experienced many other life events. Isn't it crazy the way we share our lives with each other now online? I know my life is much enhanced from knowing all of you that I have met through this blog. I hope yours is better for knowing me as well.

This humble little blog has been undergoing some necessary updates yet again today. If you tried to post a comment and had any issues, please try again as I think the bugs are mostly worked out now. I know my blog was asking for registration information earlier but it is not required and you are free to post comments just as before.

Thank you for your understanding of this inconvenience :)

You will probably not notice the changes, but there are some things going on behind the scenes of this blog. I am trying out Movable Type 4 which is still in beta mode, so there may be some issues. Still, it looks much better and there are lots more features; hopefully some of them can help me with my little spam problem. The interface on my side of things is very nice and blogging will be much easier for me now, so bear with me if you find any problems. And please let me know if you do find any bugs in my blog.

It sucks, because I really don't have too much time to blog lately, that I have to spend the vast majority of the time I do have dealing with spam comments that have overrun my blog to the point of nearly shutting it down- exceeding its disk space. I had to stop tonight and purge over thirteen thousand spam comments from my junk comment folder as it will not get rid of them by itself even though Movable Type is supposed to per the settings I have selected. It is not working right, unfortunately. To me it is really sad that I cannot get through a day without being spammed to high hell. Such an abuse of a fantastic resource as the internet, that will serve to ruin it in short order, but oh well. Sucks.

Okay, so this is a continuation of yesterday's post where Dawn tagged me to write eight facts/habits about myself and my lazy ass could only complete four. So here are the rest:

5. I am known as "Gadget Girl" at work, even though I don't think I am all that knowledgeable of computers and electronics. Everyone brings their new cell phones to me and asks me to show them how to do different things. Today it was pairing the phone with a bluetooth headset. I don't usually know how to do whatever they are asking but I find those things pretty easy to figure out. I have used a lot of different phones and PDAs, so I am familiar with a lot of the menus the different manufacturers use. It is not that I am particularly savvy with these kind of things, it is just that I am more so than most of my co-workers, so hence I am Gadget Girl.

6. I have experienced a dramatic change of my life around the beginning of October last year. If you have been around here since then, you may or may not have realized that it happened, but I definitely have. The big change has been due to finally being medicated effectively to control the chronic fatigue/fibromyalgia that has been bogging me down for at least five years now. It took several months toget the right medication and dosage, but there was improvement all along the way. I am taking Adderall now daily and it has made my life completely different than before, and made me feel "normal" again for the first time in years.

7. I almost always name animals with human names, and most of them have middle names as well. My current pack of dogs goes by Cody Joe, Louie Leroy, Annabel Lee, Denny John, Michaela "Mickie" Sue, and Ramona Jean. My birds are Charley Bean and Holly Mae. I have to admit that Virgil the tortoise doesn't have a middle name yet, but he is the only one. And each kid is called by many different pet names, i.e. Annabel is called Bella, Miss Belle, Anna, Annakins and Ramona is called Ramonita, Mona Jean, Twerp, Little Bit.

8. I sometimes feel sorry for inanimate objects. Okay, I know this one is weird, but sometimes I feel bad for choosing say, a nicer plant at the nursery when I am afraid the one left behind won't get the chance to fulfill its destiny. This extends to items of produce at the grocery store once in a while, but I try not to think about it when I am choosing fruit and vegetables. I know that this is a completely ridiculous thing, but I can't stand the idea of wasted potential. I think this is the same reason that I used to sleep with every single toy and book I owned as a small child. I was afraid for any of them to be left out. Yes, I was a slightly demented child, and yes there was hardly any room in my bed for me with all that stuff.

And that is the end of my eight things, and now I am supposed to tag eight people to complete this meme. I am not big on tagging people on these things so I usually break the rules of the meme by not tagging anyone, but this time I will actually tag Heather and Spinning Jenny as they both have new blogs and this will give them something to post and help people get to know them better. Maybe one of my eight things should have been that I am a horrible meme breaker!

Dawn tagged me today, so here is my best effort.

Here are the rules:

List 8 facts/habits about yourself .
Post the rules at the beginning before those facts/habits are listed.
Tag 8 people and post their names, go to their blogs and leave them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and ask them to read your blog.

Gosh this stuff has gotten really tough, especially now that I have been blogging so long I feel that I have already revealed so much. But I am going to give it a good try, anyway. Here goes:

1. One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone asks to call me back, I give them the number where I'll be, and they call one of my other numbers. This happened to me today- I called to find out about getting my glasses fixed and they had to call me back. I gave them my number at work, since that is where I was. Of course, when I got home, they had called and left a message at the house, where I was NOT. That annoys me to no end because I was waiting for the call. The message said that they couldn't get me at the number I gave- that must have been because they never DIALED it because I was there the whole time. Annoying!

2. This probably comes as no surprise, but I have endless patience with animals. I don't know why because I am very IMPATIENT with people, but I am very understanding with animals and love them to pieces. I will work with them over and over on the same thing and rarely get frustrated. I always try to remember where they are coming from and what drives them and that reminds me why they do what they do. I often remind Andy that what one of our animals is doing at that moment that is annoying the piss out of him is just instinctive. He is usually not impressed.

3. I hate rain, for the most part. Yes, I realize how life giving and necessary it is and all that rot. It still pisses me off, though. I take it as a direct affront when it rains, as though it is only doing so to piss me off. Fortunately it doesn't rain that often here, other than in the afternoons in the heat of summer. I know it is completely stupid to feel that way, but that is what happens. I do love wind, however, even though I have long hair and it goes all in my face.

4. I have a natural curiosity and love of learning. I feel like a big ol' dork sometimes, but when something puzzles me, I feel a genuine NEED to figure it out or understand it. I spend way too much time researching and learning just to satisfy my own curiosity. Sometimes it would be nice just to leave things at face value, but I CAN'T.

This rest of this Meme will have to be continued tomorrow- I need to think of some more unique stuff and my brain is getting too cloudy with sleepiness. I am sure you understand.

I was all set to post last night and then, it was gone. My internet connection, that is. The connection was out last night until after I went to bed, so I couldn't get anything done on the computer, which I find very frustrating. We have been good paying DSL customers for five years and have had issues with our connection for the past three years. Only recently did we find out that when they upgraded our speed, that due to the distance we are from the originating point we were 3000 feet too far away for the wires to handle that much data that quickly, which is why we have had a really crummy connection for so long. It has been very slow and bumps us off the internet frequently so we have to go "reset" the modem by unplugging it. It has never really worked to our satisfaction, so I am kicking it to the curb in favor of cable.

More later- I gotta go to work now.

This morning, the spammers were hitting my blog so hard that they crashed the hosts server. My site was disabled temporarily by my host until they could disable the scripts that were allowing this to happen. I got no warning, and all of a sudden my site was gone. I didn't know how to fix what they wanted me to fix and since my site was suspended I couldn't have made the changes anyway. They disabled the scripts for me, but I have no idea if that will cause anything on this site to not work properly. They suggested that I move my site over to something more stable, like WordPress. Like I have any idea how to do that! Melanie, help! Ever moved anything over from Movable Type? I have 800 posts and 3600 comments, tons of photos and all of that nonsense, so I think it would be quite a chore. Why do the damn spammers have to ruin everything?

Well, I have been working hard almost all day today, both at work and at home, and now it is almost time for me to go to bed, so this will be quick. Melanie from Plaid Toaster and I had a lovely long chat tonight- it seemed short, but after I got off the phone, I realized that we talked all the way through an entire thunderstorm from beginning to end- it was clear out when she called and we talked through getting cut off from lightning when our power went out. When I got off the phone the rain had stopped and it was clearing up again. Can you believe that, Mel? We also talked through an entire load of laundry that was washed and dried. I think that means we are both a little talkative. He he.

Speaking of talking, I have been listening more carefully to myself when I talk because I think I might have a tendency to oversay certain phrases such as "you know" and "oh yeah." Charley, my feathered kid, helps me with that kind of thing because if I say something a lot, he picks it up and starts sayingit back to me. When you have a large green bird mocking you by repeating back the things that you say all the time but don't realize- in a perfect imitation of your own voice- you know it is time to revise your speech patterns! Gah!

If you have commented here before, you have probabaly gotten an email from me at one time or another. I do make an effort to respond to a lot of the comments that I get and I appreciate them all. I am really going to make a concerted effort to respond to even more of them, and I have copycatted what Stacy at Jurgen Nation is doing by responding in the same box as each individual comment. It makes it way easier to keep track of that way. You will see my response at the bottom of the comment in bold type if you come back to see if I had anything to say. Thanks Stacy, great idea!

My hand has been forced. Thanks to the little hotlinking theives mostly at MySpace, I have been forced to enable hotlink protection on this site. My bandwidth for the month, 20GB, is nearly exceeded already and it is only the 22nd. Not cool. So no more linking to my pictures using IMG tags while I pay for it. I have enabled the hotlink protection in the past and it caused some issues with the way this site was viewed, so I am hoping that will not be the case this time. If anything looks strange, then please let me know and send me the exact copy of the address of the page you are viewing that looks funky. Also, if you are using an RSS feed to read this site and the pictures do not appear, send me the address of the feed and I can fix that for you. I added the RSS feeds that I use to the whitelist, but I know there are lots of others out there. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: Based on Poppy's comment, perhaps I should have been more clear. I don't care if any of you, my readers, hotlink to images on this site, but that doesn't happen anyway, because you all understand that it is not a good practice to do so. The problem is that other people on forums and tons of people on MySpace and Live Journal and Xanga and so on use my images as backgrounds or in their comments or whatever using IMG tags rather than saving the photos to their own computers and uploading them and they are eating up my bandwidth like crazy, so it has to come to an end. MySpace users alone accounted for 5016 links to my site from an external page without any page views so far this month, which means they are using bandwidth to view the photos but are not visiting my site, and I had to upgrade to a more expensive hosting package.

Aaagh! I've spent the time I should have been posting here and then some sucked in to reading a post and all the comments of one of Stacey's posts at Jurgen Nation. Girls, you have got to go over there and check out all of the great beauty recommendations! Stacey asked readers for testimonials on their favorite beauty products, jeans, drinks, etc. And guys you can stop over there and tell us what things you notice and like on women, or just add some hilarity to the conversation as some of the guys have already done. Stripper smell, WTF? Hysterical! So, go check it out and leave your best recommendations there as well.

Ah, so today I finally met Glitter, as I'll call her here, the pseudonym she uses on the internet. She and her boyfriend came over for the day to meet me and we had a good time. She was down in Orlando for a week from Boston, and was able to take a day to drive over and hang out.

They arrived this morning, and it was wonderful to meet her, but felt like I already knew her so well that meeting in person was merely a technicality. She was exactly as I thought she would be: beautiful, sweet and funny. So we all set out to go on the Kennedy Space Center Visitor's Center tour. The tour is so-so. There are some neat things to see, but knowing all of the stuff out there, I think they could do a much better job and make it much more interesting. I think they liked the tour, but I so much wanted to be able to show them areas of the center that I visit on a regular basis that would be very exciting, but alas, those are not open for touring, except on rare occaisons liike last November when they held a "friends and family day" at KSC.

After the tour, we went to a nice casual seafood place right on the water and sat outside on the deck. The weather was fabulous and we had a really nice time, and then we headed back to our house where I gave them the grand tour and my two "girls," Annabel and Michaela tried to smother them with kisses and force my guests to pet them. They were being such silly little girls, but they are terribly loving little dogs. Glitter and her boyfriend loved our little teddy bear Cody, of course, and the very suspicious Louie kept his distance while I restrained Denny, who still needs some serious obedience training. Charley kept saying "Hi Charley" over and over. What a fun and relaxing day.

I was reading an article in a computer magazine the other day that was talking about the different virtual currencies that are part of video games and how people are making real money through them. Apparently there are items that can be earned and used in the virtual worlds of video games that are played by millions of people, and some of them actually have an unofficial trading rate on eBay. There are enterpreneurs that are making big money from these games and now the IRS is thinking of stepping into the virtual world with its hand out.

This is not very far fetched, as people are making real income this way. Pondering this makes me think of Blogging, and some of the blog traffic exchange services out there. Consider BlogExplosion. You can list your blog there and then earn credits by surfing blogs or playing different blog games. But credits can also be bought with real cash, and renters can even "rent" space on your blog with credits. In essence, if they can buy credits with real money, and they pay you to rent your blog space, then they are actually paying you, right? And there are other blog traffic exchange services that actually allow users to sell their credits for cash if they choose. How long before the IRS steps in and wants a cut of that too? Maybe not now while the monetary amounts are relatively low, but you can bet that will change at some point. How long before blogs income is a commonly reported type of income on tax returns across America?

I am taking a day or two off from blogging, I think. It won't be a long break, but I have a lot of stuff going on with work and all and need some time to relax. Not that I will be doing anything cool; I'll probably just be watching mindless television, but I need that every once in a while. So, don't worry about me, I'll be here with my feet up :) I'm sure I'll be back posting by Saturday.

I get hundreds of spam or worthless comments on this blog everyday, comments that serve only to publish links to spammers' websites and increase their page rankings with search engines. I think most bloggers deal with this in some form or another. I have some pretty sophisticated comment filters that instantly junk it, and it ends up in my junk comment section. Generally I do a quick scan of my junk comments before I delete them just to make sure a real comment wasn't inadvertently junked. Most junk comments are just made up of tons of links to other sites, or they might say "nice site" or "good site" or something to try to appeal to the bloggers sense of vanity, I guess.

But I have noticed a new type of spam comments lately. Ones that contain the usual links, but will say "Please do not delete, I need money for my children" or "Do not delete URL, I need the money." Of course all of those get deleted from my junk folder just like the rest, but it is funny how brazen the spammers have gotten. To me it is just like saying, "I am going to steal this from you, but it is okay because I need it." It is really sad that there are people out there with nothing better to do than try to pollute the websites of others with their shitty spam.

I think we need a National Do Not Spam list where we could list our email addresses and websites and it would be illegal for someone to spam us, kind of the like the National Do No Call list was supposed to be, although hopefully it would be more effective because it would not make exclusions for political campaigns and financial institutions. Either that or wouldn't it be great if there were a way to send a little electrical shock through the internet to zap the spammer every time they send an unwanted comment or email?

Over a year ago, I posted this post about how I thought the practice of docking the ears and tails of dogs was a bit barbaric. There were some really good comments discussing the issue at the time, and some interesting views on the topic. Just last night, I got another comment about it and this is one I will share. Here is what the commenter had to say, unedited:

How do you feel about a man being circumcised? Yes, we could say that the pain is cruel...but speaking from my own experience...you do not remember it. So, did it really happen. If a tree falls in the middle of a forest with no one around...does it make sound? You saying that it is wrong and NOT to do it...is no different them to take MY freedom away to have it done. People push their beliefs on others...debating them is one thing...forcing them is another!!!

My reply to the commenter was as follows:

Rodney,

Thank you for your coment.

If you had read the comments above yours, you would see that I had already answered your question about circumcision when other commenters brought it up, here is what I said about that:

"I don't even know what I would do if I had a son, but I feel it is slightly different in that there are some hygiene issues and a social stigma involved with circumcision."

Not having a penis myself, I do not really feel qualified to offer more than that on the subject. The issue with dogs ears and tails is different in my mind because it is not done for any purpose other than aesthetics, and I do not even think it looks good.

You saying that I am taking away your freedom to have it done, well that is just silly. I am talking about dogs, and you are talking about penises. What dog would choose to have its ears or tail cut off? There is no social stigma for dogs, they don't care what others think of them. And there is no health or hygiene benefit to tail and ear docking. You are comparing apples and oranges.

I don't know if you noticed, but the site you posted the comment on is a personal blog. A blog is a place for a person to post their personal beliefs, opinions, and so on. I am not forcing anything on anyone. If you don't agree with my opinions, you are welcome to make use of the little X at the top of the window and close it and not visit my site anymore. Or, you could choose to expand your horizons a little bit and maybe learn something by reading the opinions of others that have differing views from your own. I read blogs every single day written by people who see things completely differently than I do, and I think it is a good exercise to do so; it is an eye opener.

Jen

Here is the reply I received from him:

Well Jen,

First of all my must of not received the whole blog...because there was nothing about circumcision that I read and I even went back to what was forwarded to me. When I was writing about freedom I was not speaking of my penis as I was choice.

Hygiene...? That is questionable! I have several friends whom have not been and they are healthy.

You said that this was a personal blog...that IF I did not like it...then click on the "X." I disagree with you and the way you think. If all you wanted was other peoples opinions that are the same as yours then why discuss it at all. So, when you read the other blogs...do you not reply? Taking about narrow minded...WOW!

BTW...they do not cut ears off....

Do you kill insects? Any kind? If you are going to protect life...than all life...right? You probably are the first one to squash a mosquito biting you.

and lastly...if you are going to make a comment about someones comment...then spell comment correctly!!!! It's called spell check! "Commenters"...I don't know about that grammar...how about "other whom have commented"???

But, if you would like to share other ideas...let me know!

Rodney

And then my response to him was this:

Well Rodney,

You are really smart to pick on my one typo in the same email where you write the statement "First of all my must of not received the whole blog." Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. And all the comments were there, right on the very page you posted your comment on, just above the little window where you typed it in. Here's a link so you are sure to find it: http://www.for-the-birds.net/2005/12/barbaricism.php.

And you are wrong. I do value the opinions of others that are different than mine. I hear them out and they make me think. I do not respond well to people who make personal attacks and claim that I am FORCING my opinions on others when they came to MY website and no one held a gun to their head and made them read. And yes, I reply to many of the blogs I read and offer my opinions when I have something pertinent to say, but I do not attack the author in my comments and tell them that they are forcing their beliefs on me.

By the way, they do cut part of the dogs' ears off in many breeds. Have you ever seen a boxer or a doberman or a pit bull? Their ears are not pointy like that when they are born, a large piece of the ear flap is cut off and then the remaining piece is splinted during healing to make them stand straight up. Don't act as if I am some kind of moron when it is you that don't know what you are talking about.

As for your correcting my grammar on the word "commenters," you might check the dictionary first next time. A derivative of comment is commenter. It is a real word and I have used it properly.

Jen

So, what do you guys think? Apparently we bloggers are FORCING our opinions on poor unsuspecting people that are unable to close the page or move on to something else. What a load! If I can't express my beliefs and opinions on my own personal blog, where can I?

Update- there has been more communication. Notice how in this email the whole focus has shifted away from the original issue.

Ms Jen,

By the Way, I really was not attacking you and your point of view...that is what is wrong with non-personal communication. I was being a "commenter" myself!

And NO, I did not have the whole tread...it was sent to me and when I commented...I did not go back to read the whole blog...I ass-u-me-d my secretary sent me everything.

Rodney

And my response was:

Mr. Rodney,

Spell check isn't all it is cracked up to be. It hasn't caught all of your mistakes, such as "speck" instead of "speak," "taking" instead of "talking," "tread" instead of "thread," and "them" instead of "then." But let us not make this about grammar and spelling. I have made one typo in my original email to you, which I typed before six o'clock in the morning and was still half asleep, and you have continued to focus on it rather than discuss the issue at hand.

And yes, you WERE attacking me and not just being another commenter. It was the statement where you wrote, "You saying that it is wrong and NOT to do it...is no different them to take MY freedom away to have it done. People push their beliefs on others...debating them is one thing...forcing them is another!!!" that is a direct attack on me, saying that I am forcing my beliefs on you. I don't think there is any other interpretation of that statement.

As far as you not seeing the other comments, fine. I don't know how you could have typed your comment into the little box on my page without seeing them, but okay, you didn't. As for why your secretary would be sending you a post of mine from my little personal weblog, I have no idea. Perhaps you and she should be focusing more on your jobs and not worrying about what I have to say. Don't you have more important things to do?

Jen

I found out today that if all goes well I will be getting to meet in person another blogger I have known for about two years now. She is coming down to Orlando for a week in February and we are planning to get together. I can't wait- I just know we will have a great time. I just love the way the internet can bring friends together that ordinarily never would have met.

It gets tough to even think of five things that you don't know about me, after blogging for almost two years and completing many memes. I feel like I have told so much already. So when Chris tagged me with this meme, I had to really rack my tiny brain. Here goes:

I always dread work when I am not there, but once I get there I generally enjoy myself. Of course I love my time off, but I have a lot of fun with the people I work with and sometimes feel some real job satisfaction that makes it all worthwhile. I guess I sort of forget about the good stuff when I am off? Who knows?

Although I am a major animal lover, I am not particularly enamored with cats. Let me explain. My mom developed a severe cat allergy in her early twenties and could hardly walk past a cat even outdoors without getting itchy, watery eyes and such. So we were never really around cats much growing up. I had an opportunity to befriend some cats that lived near me when I lived in the Virgin Islands, and they were fun, but I missed the "neediness" of dogs. Cats seem so aloof to me. And then I developed an allergy to them in my twenties just like my mom, so I never really got a chance to form relationships with cats. I don't dislike them, but I will forever be a dog person.

I am the fastest two to three finger typist that any of my friends or aquaintences has seen. I never learned how to type properly, but I am fast at executing text the way I know how. It sounds really silly, but in high school I didn't want to take typing because I was afraid that if I was good at typing I would be forced to be a secretary or receptionist and I had much bigger plans for my life. What a dumbass! I wish I had learned to type. I could probably be really fast if I knew how to type properly.

I am a little bit OCD. I love for things to be arranged perfectly. I will sometimes fix displays at the store that are out of place and I compulsively clean the break room at work- which I don't even use- just because it makes me feel better. We have a "hanger staging area" in our closet. When an item of clothing is removed from the hanger, the empty hanger is placed at the end of the rod on the bottom rack where the empty hangers can all be gathered quickly to take to the laundry room. I always push in chairs, straighten tables, etc. everywhere I go, more so when I am stressed. Disarray makes me feel uncomfortable.

I am not so much into the whole concept of a "meal." I never really thought much about it before, but Andy thinks it is weird that I am content to eat just a vegetable or just an entree with no side dishes as a meal. Just one thing to eat is generally good enough for me, I don't need anything else.

And there you have it, that is all I can think of right now that you might not know about me. Shoot. I feel like an open book, so it was certainly a challenge. Thanks Chris!

The last few days have really shown me how much blogging has impacted my life. My Christmas card list this year for the first time included several bloggers, and I have gotten Christmas cards from Gry, who also sent me a fabulous carved wooden bear necklace from Finalnd where she lives, Anne, Nicole, and Stacey already, and Stacey even made me a lovely Christmas ornament that looks just like our parrot, Charley.

I talked to Melanie on the phone yesterday for for a good long while and was hoping she would be able to hear the double sonic booms of Space Shuttle Discovery returning to Kennedy Space Center over the phone, but it wasn't very loud this time so I don't think she could hear it on the phone.

And the day before yesterday, when I read that Melanie's sister-in-law was snowed in at the Denver airport, I tried to think of ways to help and remebered that I knew bloggers in the Denver area. I was amazed to find that after I sent just one little email to HDW asking if she could help, she went out of her way to contact a friend and fellow blogger, Kath, who lives right near the Denver airport. Kath generously offered a place for Mel's sister-in-law, Kristin, to stay and I think that is just great. Kristin had already gotten help from some military aquaintances of her husband's by that time, but I am sure she was tremendously grateful for the offer. It is wonderful to think of the network of people we have here on the internet, connected through our blogs. What a small world it has become!

Dawn tagged me to do this Christmas meme, so here goes:

1.Wrapping paper or gift bags? Depends on the gift, but in general wrapping paper is usually nicer.

2.Real tree or artificial? I like the smell of a real tree, but in real life they are too much of a hassle, so artificial.

3.When do you put up the tree? I like to have the tree up for a good while as it is quite an effort to put up our nine foot tree, so usually before Thanksgiving. We didn't put it up at all this year, though. No room.

4.When do you take the tree down? Towards the end of Christmas break.

5.Do you like eggnog? Ick. No. I don't even like eggs, really.

6.Favorite gift you received as a child? A doll my mom made for me.

7.Do you have a nativity scene? Nope.

8.Hardest person to buy for? Andy. I can't keep a secret so it is about pointless anyway.

9.Easiest person to buy for? Niece and nephew, Lauren and Jakey.

10.Mail or email Christmas cards? Mail them.

11.Worst Christmas gift you ever received? I don't recall any bad gifts.

12.Favorite Christmas movie? A Christmas Story, it's a classic.

13.When do you start shopping? A few weeks before Christmas, I guess.

14.Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No.

15.Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Grandma's cuccis!

16.Clear lights or colored on the tree? I have some little pearlized white globe lights I like on the tree.

17.Favorite Christmas song? Let it snow. Perfect for a Florida native, huh?

18.Travel at Christmas or stay home? Stay home!

19.Can you name all of Santa’s Reindeer? I never really tried.

20.Angel on the tree top or a star? I have a Boyd's Bear dressed as an angel.

21.Open the presents on Christmas Eve or morning? Christmas eve, definitely.

22.Most annoying thing about this time of year? Lines at the post office.

23.Do you have Jesus in your heart this Christmas? Sure do.

24.What would you like for Christmas? To be able to build a new house on our land!

Amen!

Here is the photo from when fellow blogger Stacey and I met finally last week. I'd love to meet more blog friends in real life, so let me know if you cruise out of Port Canaveral or are in the Cocoa Beach/Merritt Island area.

Last night the real world and the blogging world became the same as I met Stacey from the blog I need a [permanent] vacation out for drinks. Well, I only drank water because I had to work today, but you get the idea. We have "known" each other for about a year and a half now, and Stacey and her friend were in Cocoa Beach getting ready to leave on a cruise out of Port Canaveral. They were staying just a few miles away from where I live so I went over and met them. Meeting a blog friend is the greatest thing. It has the neat component of meeting someone new, but you are already friends and have a lot to talk about. It was so cool how we just "clicked" right away and I am sure we would be great friends if we lived closer. I was only able to stay a couple of hours, but I hated to leave. Stacey's friend took a photo of us together, so hopefully when they get back she will post it on her blog. She is even cuter in person than in pictures if you can imagine that. Their cruise returns Friday, and we are hoping- just this once- that the shuttle launch that is scheduled for Thursday is delayed until Friday, because Andy won a launch car pass and I would be able to take them up close to view the launch on the space center. Fingers crossed.

For those of you who don't already know, I have started up another blog in addition to this one, called Tortoise Hollow. It is a blog that is about the long process of building our new house on the seven and a half acre piece of land we bought back in January. Check it out at www.tortoisehollow.com and stop back regularly for updates on our progress and lots of photos and details.

In other news, after two years of watching me write on this blog, Andy has finally decided to give it a whirl and has started his own blog. It is just a Blogger blog to start out and he is very new to the blogging thing so please be nice and go over and say "hi" to him. I think if he gets some comments it will encourage him to keep writing, and if he keeps at it eventually he will "find" his writing style. His blog is called One Dead Monkey and the title refers to a phrase we hear often at work at the space center, "One dead monkey doesn't stop the circus." See his blog here to read the rest of the story.

Giddily laughing on the phone, sharing things about ourselves. Not quite a real first date, but I talked to one of my blog friends on the phone for over an hour today for the first time. We have been joking that it was like we were on our first phone date. Kids, dogs, husbands, bodily functions; all of it was fair game for conversation. We had such a nice chat and it still amazes me that it is possible to find real friends on the internet. Without blogging the two of us would never have met. What an interesting time we live in, really. Have you met people on the interenet and gone on to be real friends? I know some of you guys have, because I have read about it on your blogs, but what about the rest of you?

This tribute to Robert Speisman is part of a large project of 2,996 bloggers that have gotten together to each honor one of the victims of September 11th on the five year anniversary of the tragedy. Click on the link "2996" in my sidebar to find the home of the project and visit some of the other tribute posts.

The person that I am honoring today is Robert Speisman, a husband and father from Irvington, New York. Robert was among the 64 people who died aboard American Airlines Flight 77 when it crashed into the Pentagon after being hijacked by terrorists. He left behind his wife Rena, his parents Jack and Joyce, and his three daughters, Tara, Brittany, and Hayley. I know they miss him terribly. My heart goes out to his family, who has had to suffer his loss these last five years. I cannot even imagine the pain they must have felt and the loss they still feel to this day. I am so sorry for your loss, Speismans, if you are reading this. This world is a little less special without him. I wish I had the opportunity to know him.

I have found a ton of information on Bob Speisman in my quest to complete this tribute, and it is obvious that this man, who was an executive with the diamond company Lazare Kaplan was well loved by all who knew him. Many fond stories of him were shared such as playing frisbee with 45s and LPs when he was in the record business and his early Sunday morning basketball games that took place for at least a decade.

In my research for this tribute I found this fascinating piece written three years ago by Robert's niece, Juliet Spiesman, and I just had to reproduce it here because it is a great bit of writing and deserves to be shared. I hope she doesn't mind that I share it with you here. She called this piece "The Laughing, the Burping, and the Love."

"Every family has that relative, the person who breeds life into routine family get-togethers by saying outrageous things at inappropriate times and teasing everyone relentlessly about whatever it is they are most embarrassed about.

We love you, Uncle Bobby. Thanks for being unforgettable."- Juliet Speisman 2003

This fabulous tribute gives us only a tiny glimpse into the life of Bob Speisman, but it is enough to know that he was a man that was the life of the party, well loved by all and terribly missed. To his family I would like to say that I am proud to know of such a great individual and hope that I have done their loved one justice in this tribute. Speismans, you truly have something to be proud of and I am really touched by what I have learned through this project.

Ugh. I am tired and should be sleeping right now. I am sitting on my bed, so at least I am almost there. Anyway, I am working on a new blogging project unrelated to this site and it has had me very busy coming up with ideas. It is still top secret, but if you want to be let in on it when it is revealed- leave me a comment and I will send you the info. Very cryptic of me, huh?

I have temporarily turned on comment moderation not because of malicious comments, but because I am being spammed up to my eyeballs. I will look into a captcha or word verification soon.

After the death of my poor dog Ollie yesterday, it is with a heavy heart that I post today, but the show will go on. Blog Food Expo was something that I thought up a couple of weeks ago for bloggers to share their favorite recipes, all on the same day, and they will all be linked here, or to my co-conspirator Melanie's blog, Plaid Toaster. She is the co-host and did the nifty little graphics. She is also one of my favorite people on the internet and has th