One of those not-yet monumental birthdays is approaching within the next two weeks. It’ll be my last birthday before the big 3-0. Folks tend to focus on that one as the big one, the one to tease you for that it’s all downhill from here, that wrinkles and gray hairs are going to jump out of your mirror the minute you peek on your 30th birthday. So, I’m thinking this year is the perfect year to celebrate the youth that I’ll get to enjoy for a full 365 days before the infirmity of a 30 year old sets in. Each day will be enjoyed and savored. I’ll relish the ice cream cones that’ll go straight to my hips post-30, but which are reasonably safe in my twenties. I’ll revel with all of the energy that a late twentier has, as compared to a thirty-aught. I’ll lustfully live the life of today, rather than pine for the retirement of tomorrow. 29 will purposefully be lived as a year of delights, a season of flavor, and a period of joyous discovery. That way, if 30’s as bad as everyone makes it out to be, at least I’ll have had _some_ fun before decrepitude.

Blogs are taking over the Internet – they’re what we read now to get the spin, to get someone else’s opinion that we respect, and to get a different flavor of news or ideas than those to which we’d otherwise be exposed. That said, most material on blogs is pure drivel. Blog writers generally write for the chance to express themselves, and as folks on the whole have a generally low ratio of interesting things/thoughts to talk about versus mundane filling space things to talk about, thus the ratio of interesting or useful entries is low. Of course, some writers are better than others, and thus we can choose to bookmark them and avoid the rest so that WE don’t wade through the mire looking for the diamonds, but that doesn’t save the rest of the world from US as writers. Hey, I want to be thought of as insightful, as interesting – I don’t want to be one of those folks on the low end of the blogger totem pole. But I’m obviously not the best critic of my own entries…

So, how to solve it? How to protect my online reputation? Hire a ghost blog writer! Authors do it all the time – what famous person who’s written a book lately do you think really wrote all of their book? If they’re famous because they’re important, then generally their time is too well-filled to have the time to write a book! And so they hire a ghost writer to write the story they would have written, had they the time and the talent. The ghost writer shapes the story the person gives them, and crafts something better than would have otherwise emerged.

Blogs now being the source of our reputation on the web, ghost blog writers would solve the same purpose. A ghost blogger would take my snippets of ideas, ask me some pointed questions, and then mold an entry to be enjoyed by my breathless audience.

As the progenitor of this idea, I offer you the chance to apply for my ghost blogger position. Get in on the ground floor – the pay isn’t much (OK, it’s nothing), but you’ll be the first in on what’s sure to be a tidal wave of a trend. Be my online Ari Fleischer… and save me from inane entries such as this one.

Friday was our 5 year anniversary. Jason’s already commented on the occasion, and his was even on the “big day”, but I needed a few days to catch up and ruminate.

My folks never seemed to do much about their anniversary, so I guess I never grew up expecting the day to be something special. I think Dad might have gotten Mom a card and sometimes some flowers, but for all I saw, that was about it. Since Jason and I have been married, though, we’ve never let it pass without having some special moment to mark the event. This year we went out to breakfast before work (OK, really we delayed work to go eat French toast together), and then made plans for next weekend, since my work deadlines in particular made celebration on “the day” problematic.

I think that we ended up moving the big celebration around seems to suit us and our marriage style even better than a big run-up to the specific date on which we got married. Yes, we got married on July 11 in 1998, and that’s something worth celebrating. But that we’re also married on July 12, 13, 14, 15… is just as worthy of celebration. That we love each other, and work to keep that love strong, on every day of the year seems to be a better statement of our “us-ness” than the plans we make to mark that one day of the year.

It was fun to think about 5 years ago, though – how our wedding day played out, the fun we had at our wedding, the trip to the self-service carwash to try to wash the toothpaste off our car (when we sold the car earlier this year, it still said Jason + Tina on its hood, if you glanced at the paint job just right. Flouride apparently interacts with ClearCoat), the special dinner, our first night in our new apartment… [and we’ll leave the memories right there, folks…]. That day was a wonderful day, and a wonderful way to start our marriage. But as a day in a marriage, it doesn’t measure up to the times when you actually go through things together, when you look past your individual needs or wants to work through something as a couple, when you face something you fear and the experience makes you realize that your partner is even better than you ever realized at being the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. Those probably ought to be added to the calendar to be celebrated, too- and hey, I’d get a lot more beautiful roses and hand-crafted poems that way!

My blogging has been sporadic of late- too many other things pulling me in other directions. I’ll note, though, tech-geek that I am, that I’ve started keeping a list of blog entry ideas in a list in my Treo. I think it’s just there to remind me that occasionally I do have interesting thoughts cross my mind, fleeting and non-fleshed-out as they may be.

Looking at Movable Type’s handy admin page for my blog, I see that I’ve posted 99 different entries since the birth of this blog. No doubt some were better than others, and the general quality of the whole thing could be debated. But I’ve enjoyed the chance to take time to think and then write (preferably in that order). I’ve even had folks contact me because of my blog – the Girly-Girl post was quite the favorite for a while – even ended up with an e-mail penpal because of it. (Hi, Christine!)

Of course, I always wish I had more time to spiff up the site, to do something with style sheets ala the CSS Zen Garden, or to make the general functional interface of the site more useful, but hey, I wish I had more time to do lots of other things in life, too. I’d actually think it’d be a horrible thing if this site ended up winning out, priority-wise, over other aspects and interests in my life. On the list of goals in my life, a great blog ranks way down the list: that MBA, the first marathon race, the afternoon spent blowing bubbles with my daugher, the great dinner eaten out or (even better) cooked with my husband – all beat out a beautiful page design or even more frequent posting.

So I amuse myself with little snippets here and there, and I have a vain (probably in both senses of the word) hope that I amuse others, too. Now 100 entries in, I think the feet are wet, the oars are in, and I’m paddling somewhere, though as yet the destination’s unknown.

Sometimes there are just too many blog entry ideas running around to fully explain… So, here’s the brief list of things thought potentially worthy of expounding upon.
* the joy we experienced last night at a Dave Wilcox concert
* how lousy it is to be allergic to my own cats
* that expiring Microsoft certification exams ought to convince to me get up off my keester and finally get around to learning something about .NET
* hey, maybe I should figure out if it makes sense to concentrate (finally) on either the Microsoft path or the Java path. Or what am I doing fixating on technology, anyway – when am I headed back for that MBA?!
* hey, PHP is pretty fun! (would love to offer a link here to something cool I’ve done, but unfortunately, it’s work stuff, not fun stuff)
* the social awkwardness of wanting to revoke a turned-down invitation, but feeling as if to do so would be even worse than having turned down the invitation in the first place
* wouldn’t learning to ride a unicycle be cool? Post-pregnancy, that is. (No heart attacks, hubby/parents/in-laws)
* what it’d be like to win the $190 million Lottery – what amount of money is “enough”, and why is it that that number is so big for most folks?

I realized last night just how much rain we’ve been getting lately when I commented to my husband, “Hey, we didn’t get any rain today!”. I actually had to water my annuals out on the porch this morning… And there’s no rain listed in the forecast until this weekend. Stuff other than mushrooms might grow around our place again.

Sucking wind, just to get a little bit of air into my lungs past the goo in my head and chest that’s fighting to expel any bit of pollen, dust, cat dander, or mold that’s entered my environment. My body’s giving its best bunker bomber impression – targeting tiny particles with near-lethal force. Problem is that the invaders are many, and my ability to hold out in the onslaught is weakening. Slipping away in my own snot…

Seattle’s got nothing on us! According to the Post, our area’s only seen 17 clear days this year, compared to our usual average of 36. It’s rained every day for what seems like weeks. Our lawn is growing, both grass and mushrooms, and there’s been no opportunity to cut it because the brief periods of dry weather per day haven’t been long enough to dry out the lawn. My poor garden doesn’t have a thing in it yet. Time to get out there in my raincoat and plant between the raindrops.

My daughter’s even given up on asking to go outside. Instead we spend hours either reading (the same books, over and over again), or she asks to see her Baby Einstein videos (the same videos, over and over again).

Make the rain stop! Our first hope of some partly sunny weather, though remarkably cold for us for June, will be next Monday. Between then, it’s just more clouds and showers and thunderstorms.

Maybe it’s time for a vacation to Seattle! Might catch some sun!

Dreaming of Maui, the Caribbean, a 5-day cruise for two, heck even the 3-day cruise for two. Signed up for ClubMomyesterday. Had heard about it from a friend, and then got a flyer for it with my paper. It’s basically another one of these setups where, in return for directing business to specific merchants, letting them track their purchases, and letting them send you stuff, they pay you. Cora’s college fund is being supplemented by one of these schemes (BabyMint), and our local grocer effectively does the same thing through their shopper card, so I don’t have a problem with letting one more company pay me for the same information as the other places are snagging. Figure I’m getting a bunch of junk mail anyway that I’m not getting paid for – might as well set up the economics a little better in my favor.

Let’s see, the Caribbean cruise is 420,000 points. At 1 point per dollar spent at the grocery store, that’ll take – hmmm… better upgrade how we eat, if I’m ever going to get to go on that cruise! Some lobster, some filet mignon… a few shrimp. Hey, hubby, I’m _saving_ you money ’cause they’re going to give us this free cruise!

Why is it that my toddler’s pants usually have pockets, but my maternity pants never have pockets? Anything my daughter could put in her pants’ pockets would be so small as to be a choking hazard for her, while I can’t find a place to put my keys!