Thursday, September 29, 2005

Actually accomplishing things today

Like reading: I know I'm totally behind on the whole Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants phenomena, but I'm totally on board now. Yes, it is technically, a young-adult novel, but it was fabulous just the same. (I don’t see much point in being snobby about what you’re reading anyways… who cares who it was meant for, if it was obviously meant for you?)
And it was excellent – well written and thoughtful, none of that “oh, it’s for teenagers, so we have to hit them over the head with lessons and meaning RIGHT NOW” crap that makes people leery of reading young adult fiction. Instead, it was smart and funny, interesting, perceptive and quirky. The story is about a group of teenage girls, all interesting and individual characters on their own, who have a strong and firm friendship. The Pants wind up being a symbol of their bond, as they spend their first summer apart.
I have no longing for my own teenage years, but the friends I had then are a different story. There’s something about that bond that Brashares manages to portray so realistically that you find yourself reaching for the phone or heading to classmates.com, in the hopes of tracking your own friends-from-then down.


And now I’m wondering about the movie: Did it do the book justice? (Do they ever?) I’ll be heading over to IMDB, but I think it got pretty good reviews.

This has me thinking about movie versions of books, good and bad.
Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

Books I had hard time reading, but enjoyed the movies:
The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood


Both movie/book were excellent:
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Green Mile
The Shawshank Redemption
The Harry Potter
Series
Little Women (both the classic and the newer versions)
The Stand (a T.V. movie, but still)

Movies that had only the barest resemblance to the books that birthed them:

Jurassic Park (What was going on there? As far as I could tell, the only thing the same was that they both had dinosaurs.)

Stephen King’s Lawnmower Man (Which had some freaky special effects, but a totally different story line than the book)
Shrek (Although I liked the movie version a lot, it wasn’t really based on the children’s books by William Steig, as far as I could tell.)

And a few more I’m kind of afraid of seeing, in case they don’t live up to some great books:

The Polar Express
Pride & Prejudice
(a new version comes out this season)

And one I’m hoping will be better than the book:
The Da Vinci Code (which I was not that impressed with, but everybody seems to like it) I know I'll come up with some more, but until then, how about you guys: Got some best, worst, afraid-to-sees? Let me know

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

There’s a million things I could/should be doing right now: Organizing my mess. Making all the phone calls I’ve been putting off for a week. Cleaning the files off the old computer. Writing, or polishing something I’ve already written. Figuring out when I can see my friend who I’ve been trying to get together with for 3 months. Working on one of the 5 craft projects I’m right in the middle of. Labeling or sorting files. Building lesson plans for if I ever go back to work. Even making lunch.

Instead, I’m sitting here, babbling. It’s mostly because I know school will be out soon and Nephew will be bustling in, full of energy and chit-chat. Then I’d have to put whatever I was doing away anyways, and try to find the energy to make it through the rest of our day. But even that feels like an excuse, because wandering around reading blogs and my favorite websites, browsing on E-bay and skipping though my music player are just about all I have the energy for today. So that’s what I’m doing, doesn't it sound wicked exciting?

Anybody else wasting their day? If so, I'd love to hear about it, help ease my own guilt a bit. :)

Saturday, September 24, 2005

If this doesn't work

Insert a picture of me banging my head against the wall here.

For whatever reason the last entry didn't post. So I'm trying again.

Well, it works if I go straight to the address, but the blog that shows up when I check it from here (the posting site), not so much. Oh well... so long as it's really there, I suppose it's no big deal.

Saturday is WERS day

My first real post for this blog = pressure. I'll start with the fact that I'm playing with the templates here on blogger, so even if it looks completely different anytime you click on it, I'm pretty sure it'll still be mine. :) So far, I don't like the way that the left information tab winds up at the bottom of the page... but my html knowledge is certainly not up to figuring it out, so I'll keep playing until something I like better comes along.




So listen, I don't know much about music... I will confess my ignorance of all things rap, hip-hop and alternative; I am sure to change the subject if you ask about who won a recent Grammy award or whose video is the best on MTV right now (especially since every time I turn on that channel, it's either Road Rules or My Super Sweet 16 - do they even SHOW videos anymore?); and I bet I couldn't recognize more than 10 of the "Top 40." (I checked - I didn't know most of the songs, but there were actually some names I knew - all of them older: Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, etc.)

So, yeah, I'm not up on today's popular music, but I know what I like. I'm eclectic in all things, perhaps most of all in my musical tastes. The IPOD shuffle is right up my alley: Since I've gotten my laptop, I've almost totally given up listening to the radio, instead shuffling my entire musical collection through Windows Media Player. I play them by genre (musicals, theme songs, ballads, oldies, big band, live, etc), by decades (I have a little bit from each, I think), or by length of song (which tends to produce the best variety, BTW). I'll listen to just about anything, with just one basic, guiding rule - NTE's Rule of good music - If there are words, I have to be able to understand them. I just can't enjoy a song if I can't figure out what is being said. There's more than one rap song that I've read the lyrics to and been impressed, only then I'd hear the actual song and not been able to understand any of it. If it's a song, I'm supposed to be able to figure it out while listening to it...Or else, why am I listening to it?



There's really only one thing I listen to the radio for anymore, and that is WERS.

WERS is the student run radio station of Emerson College. The actual station is located on their Boston campus, so my radio gets it clearly (88.9 FM if you're in the New England area) but, happily, you can listen to the broadcasts on-line:

Here's the link
http://www.wers.org
(I've also heard the hosts mention that it's available through ITunes, but I don't use that program, so I didn't really pay attention to how to do it.)

They play a unique jumble of musical styles (everything from jazz to folk, from sports programs to a church service), but, for me, WERS is all about Saturdays: On Saturdays WERS has three excellent shows back-to-back, starting at 10:00 in the morning.

First they play "the best of Broadway and beyond" during their Standing Room Only program.

The hosts for all of these shows vary, as the school year brings new students, so the formats may change from time to time, but the quality of the music they play doesn't.
Musical theatre at its best, SRO plays current Broadway hits, standards by classic artists and everything in between. Like all WERS programs, Standing Room Only has live performances in the studio by both locally and nationally known performers (this morning's live performances, for example, were from a local benefit for rebuilding after Katrina and an interview with Alice Ripley) and plays listener requests - often these make up the majority of the playlist. They also regularly give away tickets to local productions and give a calendar of theatre events going on around Boston.

After Standing Room Only, starting at 2:00 EST, there's All A Cappella. And, obviously, they play a capella music - which, in case you didn't know, is just music without instruments: it's all the human voice. I am a late-comer to this particular bandwagon, but I've jumped on full-force, because the kind of songs I've heard on this program are amazing. The program is populated by unique and awesome versions of many well-known songs, new and old, sung by professional and collegiate a cappella groups from around the country.

To round out my day of listening pleasure, there's the Playground from 5-8 pm I actually started listening to this station because of the Playground - hunting though the radio dial one day, I stopped when I heard a Schoolhouse Rock song. School House Rock? On the radio?! I kept the tuner there and they played one childhood memory after another.

Technically, the Playground plays 'children's music,' so there's some Pokemon or Wiggles that you may have to suffer through (ugh), but aside from that, they play everything from Disney standards to cartoon theme songs, from the Muppets to Weird Al's parodies. If you have kids and happen to be driving for the three hours that this show is playing, you will want to send them gifts. If you're a grown-up in a bad mood, listening to the Gummi Bears theme song or Ozzie Osbourne and Miss Piggy sing Born to Be Wild can improve your whole day.


I've been a regular listener to the station for about 9 years now, and have always been impressed with the shows - enough to become an WERS member during their twice yearly pledge drives. This is the only minor drawback for me - it's a "listener supported" station, which means there's no commercials, but they do come on for two weeks out of the year to ask for money... It's not a huge deal, but those pledge days can get annoying.

If this sounds like something you'd enjoy, please check it out and let me know what you think.

Phew! First "real" post = done.

Friday, September 23, 2005

This was the second day's posts/comments

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

An Update
First, I'd like to apologize to Amy for all the confusion... I have no idea what happened (and am pretty sure that it wasn't anything I actually did), but I still feel bad for the problem. Your blog certainly seems well-liked, and your readers are loyal. I hope they'll be able to read what you have to say again soon (and can promise to check it out myself, too).I've written two e-mails to blogger (and hope that Kristine isn't right about the fact that they may never get back to me). I also searched their questions and came up with this:Blogger accounts and Blog*Spot addresses do not expire. Therefore, we can't take away somebody's blog address to give to you. Occasionally people come back to their blogs after long absences, and we want them to be able to find their blog as they left it. If you find some contact information on the blog, you are welcome to deal with the owner directly, to see if they are willing to delete the blog so you can use the address. However, we do not give out contact information for the owner of a blog.So, if this was Amy's address first, I have no idea how I got it.And lastly, I just wanted to say thank you to those who welcomed me - especially given these odd circumstances. Hopefully, it'll all be cleared up soon. Thanks for your patience, as I'm probably (depending on how long this takes) not going to post on other topics in case I have to start all over again.


Amy said... Hey there,You are a good sport! Don't feel bad about anything. Totally not your fault. Blogger hasn't gotten back to me yet, so I am still stuck on how to figure this one out. My blog was over 150,000 words and 21 months of writing, so I really hope I get it back. I am off to see if there are any clues on B's website.And WELCOME to the blogosphere! 12:33 PM

mrt said... This is funny, in a very queer way.You start to blog... you get the readers... you get the spam.IAG - You have pulled the perfect WTF Tuesday without even knowing it.Amy - blove to you. I hope you can get your posts back. 1:05 PM

Anonymous said... you are a sweetheart - good luck! 3:20 PM

SQ said... Yah, just so you know New "Anybody's Guess" you are linked on my page so I'll keep popping in and reading you :-)Amy I hope they get to the bottom of this fast....that's awful to lose all those entries and I miss reading you! 8:27 PM

lb said... As Amy said, welcome to the blogosphere. So sorry your first experience has been less than stellar. I do hope Amy gets all her archives back and it gets worked out.On a good note, you already have more traffic than the average first week. Your handling it very well, and Amy is a very graceful, loving person....I'm glad if something like this happened it didnt happen with someone who is vengeful or mean spirited. 12:29 AM

Amy said... Hi IAG.I have talked to some other bloggers and the general consensus is for you to try and delete this blog, then see if mine comes back. Before you do though, save your posts. I guess you could try creating a new one and calling it itsanybodysguess.blogspot.com ?If you are willing to try this, let me know. Thanks! Amy 10:04 AM

JS said... I wonder if the whole blogger community harrassed Blogger, if they'd respond?Maybe we should all send them a help request about Amy's blog and see what happens?~Jason 1:53 PM


I said... Thanks everybody for your comments. I still haven't heard back from blogger, but, Amy I'm certainly willing to try deleting this blog in the hopes that yours comes back. I will look up how to do that and hopefully have it done tomorrow. Thanks again to all of you - it's been a strange and interesting introduction to the blogosphere, and I appreciate how kind you all have been, especially given this confusing situation. I'll definitely be back to check if Amy's blog has re-appeared, and if I decide to give this all another try, I'll let you know where I am. So, we shall see... Good Luck Amy!

I was also lucky enought to get some spam comments about viagra (if only you could see me rolling my eyes). But weren't they all so gracious? So that's why I'll try again.

See what I get?

I write an e-mail that the whole thing disappeared, and it comes back. It's like making a doctor's appointment: you think you're dying when you make the call, but by the time you get there, the rash has gone away, the swelling has faded, your throat no longer croaks. Oh well.

I figured I'd show you the posts from over there, just so you can see my stellar introduction to the blogosphere.

Here we go:

Tuesday, September 20, 2005 (Day #1)

It really is anybody's guess
Whether or not I'll be able to figure out what I'm doing here.Welcome to my blog - After way too much consideration (if you hang around long enough, you'll see that I consider everything way too much), I've decided to join the blogosphere. I've got tons of things to talk about, and I'd love to be able to ramble on with some of you, see what you all have got to say. I gathered during my own wanderings that a first post is usually an introduction to the blogger, but I'd rather you guessed. I'm sure that my posts will be chock full of information about me, and I think I'm going to leave the introductions for a while, see if we can't get to know each other by what we're saying here. This might not work, but since it's my blog, I can change it whenever I want, right?Instead, I'll give you some sort of background on the blog's title: It's Anybody's Guess = IAG.
See, I'm a bit late to the party here: all the witty names I could think of were taken, there's only so many ways to twist the word blog (which sounds weird to begin with), and basically, I have no idea what I'm doing here.
So IAG -
whether or not I'll enjoy this enough to work at it.
whether or not I'll be able to figure out the ins and outs of blogging and not shoot myself first. (Naively, I thought this would be easy, but am finding quite differently: case in point, the spell checker tells me there's no such words as blog, blogging, or anybody's... hmm perhaps I have chosen unwisely?)
if anybody will read - or enjoy - what I have to say
if I'll have anything to say
what I'll decide to talk about on any given day
if I'll just be rambling to myself some more
So, that's my introductory post. We'll have to see how it goes from here. Cross your fingers.



C said... Amy, I'm confused. What happened to your old site? 2:44 PM

Amy said... Hi Christy,This is not my blog! I am not sure what happened, but it looks like my blog address got hijacked. To the person who has this blog, no offense! 3:12 PM

I said... Well, see... I told you I was new to this. I didn't think they would have let me use the name if someone already had it. See what I know? Hope I haven't stepped on any toes. 3:46 PM
m said... Amy, and whoever the new person is: you can both write to Blogger to see what happened.Amy, you didn't let your blog lapse, did you? I mean, you were pretty regular about writing. It hadn't been months since your last post. 4:06 PM

SQ said... How weird.I have Amy's link on my Blog ~ have had it for months ~ and when I clicked it, I was brought to this blog.No offense to this person either, but Amy do you have another blog address so I can find YOU again? 4:08 PM

lb said... OMG, I clicked on my 'amy' link on my site and got here. I thought...what happened? This is not Amy. Where is Amy? Dosent look like Amy....nope. Amy has been blogging for a while....no offense to who is the new one to this...one would think that 2 couldnt use the same 1.
5:48 PM

Anonymous said... Amy where are you?? I haven't been able to click on your link for a week and then today I was brought to this blog you really should write to them to find out, and the person who has this blog now you should write too because the name was taken and they did let you use it strange and sad please get it fixed up we all miss your writing!! 7:02 PM

AE said... welcome to the blog world! 5:45 AM

JS said... I miss your blog Aim.I was able to locate a cache of all your blogs as far back as the beginning of August using Bloglines.com. I'll keep trying to find caches of your blog... I hoped you backed up! 9:17 AM

K said... Holy mother of christ this freaks me out.I have months and months and months of writing on blog. I would freak if I lost everything!Amy...(and sorry to the new anyone'sguess) but you really need to get to the bottom of this.... OR...You just take this as a sign to start fresh.It's up to you. Blogger probably is way backed up and will never get back to you about what happened. 10:30 AM

L said... OMG..Amy and new Anybody's guess..this is interesting!Can you both Blog? Amy keep us posted on where you are going and welcome to Blogworld other Blogger! 5:27 PM

mm said... Gosh, I wondered what happened....Welcome to you, new one, and Amy, we miss you. Freaky! 9:57 PM

JS said... As an update, I was able to find all of Amy's blogs I think.If this happens to anyone else, come to me. ;)~

Let's get it RIGHT this time

O.K. So this is my second try at blogging... my first having been, not quite as successful as I might have liked.

To provide a bit of background, my e-mails to blogger help:
(Tuesday)

I signed up for a blogger account yesterday, and am totally new to blogging. I assumed that if there was a current account with the name I had chosen, I wouldn't have been able to use it. I guess this isn't true, as I have 9 comments this morning about "hijacking" someone else's name. Could you please help? Obviously, if this is someone else's name (Amy it seems), there has been an error. I just don't have any idea how to correct it. I'd gladly start over with a new name, but I'd still like some explaination as to what happened and HOW, b/c I honestly don't know if I'll be comfortable blogging here if my blog might just disappear or get "hijacked." I'd appreciate any help you can provide, thanks.

(Friday/today)

I am not having much luck with your service. First, I'm given a blog name that apparently belongs to someone else. Then, I don't hear a reply to my questions about that problem, and then my entire blog disappears. I certainly hope this is not indicitive of your services, as I am seriously considering moving to another provider. However, I would still very much like to hear to you regarding these issues, so I know how to prevent/correct them in the future. I am giving it one more shot one another blog here (Never that Easy) and DESPERATELY would like it not to have similar problems. Thanks again for your help.



That's right... my entire blog disappeared. Thankfully, I had only two posts, but poor Amy (who had the blog first) lost a lot of her work. Months of work. And now, It's Anybody's (the name of the original blog, btw) what happened to either one of them. GOOD LUCK AMY!

But I'm willing to try again... mostly because of all the positive comments left during the course of that other nonsense. People were really welcoming, despite the fact that I had apparently 'hijacked' their friend's blog. So, now with (cross fingers here) my OWN blog, maybe people will be just as nice. Let's see.