la la la lalala

Good weekend. Great weekend. Probably Top 10. Maybe Top 5?
Today was ridiculously lazy. Slept in. Watched the weirdest movie I've seen in awhile. (seriously, "You, Me And Everyone We Know" is the weirdest movie you will watch this year, I guarantee it). Made a trip to the grocery store looking fairly grungy (hey! I brushed my teeth) for eggs and bacon. Then made said eggs and bacon. And, you guessed it, had a delicious brunch. At 2:30 in the afternoon. That's what Sundays are for, right?

I've finally caught up on my google reader (there was some READ ALL use, sorry guys!) and I hope to be around more. I forgot how much I love the blogs of the people I read. You people are interesting! And it's a nice reminder that even someone I have never "met" is going through the same type of life trials that I am familiar with. It's life, huh?

In my catch ups, I've been trying to pay attention to people who have a twitter account. I'm trying to make a rockin' list of my favorite bloggers who tweet. Because if I like your blog, I bet you're just as funny/awesome in 140 characters. And I am an uber-twitter fan :)

www.twitter.com/bailann

I don't mean to sound morbid...

...but as a single woman, I've decided I'm glad I have people knowing what I'm doing. Facebook, Twitter, and the dreaded check-in services (personally, I'm a fan of Whrrl).

I've heard arguments that (especially as a single woman) these sites are dangerous. People know EXACTLY where you are if you check in constantly. They know your habits, know where you like to shop and what bar you like to visit on Mondays after work for margaritas with friends.

But for me, I've realized, that's a GOOD thing. I'm not broadcasting my home address (my friends already know where I live). Any number of weird things could happen in public - no matter where I'm at and no matter if I twitter about it or not- and the odds of it happening because of someone who I'm friends with on Facebook are low.

Thinking about it, I'm more worried about the other people in the world than the people who know me "online". And because of that, I think having a Facebook and twittering about my life are actually good things. Helpful, even.

A few months ago, when my friend Ashlee was actually using her Twitter account, she jokingly said for me to call her mom if she hadn't tweeted by noon every day. I asked her to do the same thing. We laughed but thinking about it now (and here's the morbid part) if something WERE to happen to me (KNOCK ON WOOD, please) I'm pretty sure what I was sharing online would be a helpful part of figure out where the heck I was all day and who I was spending time with.

Last weekend, when my roommate was gone, I decided to go for a walk. It was the middle of the day, but WHAT IF? My roommate would have come home a few days later to discover the cats hadn't been fed in days and if it was a work week (and I hadn't taken taken those days off for vacation) I'm pretty sure my coworkers would be concerned and call, etc.

But if the last thing I had done online was post a Facebook status about "taking a walk" I'm pretty dang sure that would be helpful to the police searching for me.

So, don't feel weird if you know where I am or what I'm doing a lot of the time. I am totally okay with that.

/morbid post over

Being Social

I still live in the college town where I went to school. I happen to love this. I get to enjoy people, places and things very unlike how I did when I was a student (I have more time now, strictly working 40 hours a week when, as an undergrad, I had a full-time schedule, p/t job and double full-time activities load).

A few months after I started my full-time job, my closest friend Megan, moved to Japan with her boyfriend, now husband. Other than friends who were still in school, I didn't know many people other than my coworkers and my friend Ryan (late 2008 we spent most of our time watching episodes of LOST and Six Feet Under - we were exciting). And friends who moved to Kansas City might as well fallen off the end of the earth as often as I get to see them... (they clearly forgot how awesome Lawrence is).

Last winter (Feb 2008) my friend Briana dragged me to, what she was calling, a "tweetup". Yes, I was using twitter and conversing with local people, but did I actually want to meet these people?!

Short answer: yes, of course I did!

Now the people I've met via Twitter I see almost weekly. We have Lawrence Margarita Mondays at The Sandbar, lunch a few times a month, dinner sporadically and, every so often, shenanigans down on Mass Street (I even found someone to crash with while I was in between leases). This is in addition to the official monthly tweetups hosted by the Lawrence Tweetup organization.

Tonight, I'm heading to the Re:fresh! Art Show at the Barrel House downtown after Lawrence Margarita Mondays and the local tweeters get a VIP box!

Cheers to being social!

Walk Kansas

There's nothing like being forced into an exercise challenge. Totally kidding. Kind of.

Actually, I don't know if I would have signed up for Walk Kansas on my own, but I'm glad I'm being guilted into it by my friend at Phera's Focus.

From what I can gather, it's a team of 6 (and anyone else you choose to force into the challenge by including them on an email list) that sets exercise and healthy eating goals for a few weeks beginning March 7. Hey! That's today!

Goals include 150 minutes of exercise for the week and eating a certain number of fruit/veggie servings every week.

I'm off to a good start today:
20 minutes on the elliptical and 15 minutes of weight machines
1 serving of fresh mixed fruit
1 serving of edamame (with a dash of salt!)

And I'm heading over soon to a park in town with a 2-3 mile walking/hiking trail with a couple twitter friends. The nice thing about knowing lots of people in town on twitter is being able to find someone to do SOMETHING with at almost any time night or day. This will PROBABLY be helpful in being motivated to get exercise. Also, motivating is the gorgeous spring weather we've been graced with here in NW Kansas. Fifty degrees?! YES, PLEASE!

I like the idea of this because it's not about losing X amount of weight or inches. It's about improving your lifestyle by becoming more active and eating healthier foods. It's also nice to have other people with the same goals to complete against/with. I certainly don't want to miss any goals that anyone else on my team are meeting!

? of the day, via J. Mraz

http://twitter.com/jason_mraz/status/5236198545

What my Dad's missed...

or, the past 6 months of my life. I haven't talked to my Dad since the end of March. The brief argument was silly but because of the challenges/issues we've had my whole life it's not something I'm going to let go of until we've figured it out and neither of us have attempted communication since then. I need to tell him how he's hurt me and how he's disappointed me. And then I'll tell him about my six extraordinarily, ridiculous 6 months:

I was in my first wedding. I went to two more weddings. I planned and was maid of honor for another wedding.

I moved twice. Once into a home of someone I barely knew. It worked out well.
It was an amazing and challenging summer, all at the same time. This summer gave me a different perspective on marriage, on kids, on life. Gave me the adult/parent version. I've shifted away from being the kid and shifted to being the adult.

I have an awesome new group of people I call friends here in the small city in which I live. I wouldn't have thought it to be such an important thing, but it has been. I needed the grown-up friends. Not just the people I still know from college. But I've also come to appreciate my friends from high school and college so much more. They know who I was at 15, at 18, at 22, at 24 (and it's surprisingly different And, sometimes, they know exactly what to say.

I dated someone who was actually closer in age to my dad than me. (I won't tell either of them that. Though, I may be tempted if either happens to piss me off anymore...) We ended up not knowing each other very well yet, or maybe because of, the way he ended it hurt. Actually, it made it ten times worse. (Let's just say I don't like things to be ambiguous. I'm big on honesty and knowing what the heck is going on.)

I was admitted to a graduate program. I completed my first class over the summer, despite all the drama listed above. I started my 2nd class. I realized, despite being almost 25, I am VERY different from 22-year olds, fresh out of their undergraduate experience.

A moved in with a complete stranger and it has turned out phenomenally well. I've had good/bad roommate situations, but this one is the most surprising.

I've been on the hunt for the perfect dog. Sammie should be joining the family next week!

I'll tell my Dad some of this, he doesn't need to know it all. It's been six months? Wow, life is moving fast.

*blogger only lets you use 10 tags. So in addition: weekend, women, men, puppy, harry potter, kansas, lawrence, hope, learning.... because life is full of everything.

In time, the younger generations will be in charge

My 9 year old explaining to a table full of adults why gays should be able to marry: "Love. That's why."

-A most insightful and hopeful comment found via twitter. I retweeted, obviously.

Ok, A or B? 1 or 2?

Look to the left. I currently have two ways to import twitter updates.

Number One: The RSS feed with my twitter page in the website.
Number Two: A twitter-specific widget.

Which looks better? Very similar, yes but also importantly distinct. Thoughts?

Also, busiest 48 hours of my adult working life. WAY behind both work and personal emails. Behind with my google reader Behind with INSANE facebook status debates (that story to come this weekend!). Also behind with my BEDAing. *sigh* What are you gonna do? Life gets CRAZY!

EDIT: Removed the RSS feed. That does not update automatically (every time I tweet) and does not show how long ago the tweets were. So, there ya go!

Blogger Question of The Week

How do other blogger users get their tweets to update automatically onto their blog? Is it a specific gadget google already has? Or is it your own html (which *might* kill me if I try to figure out... help!

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OR! Is it using a RSS feed? (Which I don't totally understand but will now attempt to figure out...!)

BEDA

Maureen Johnson is young adult fiction writer. Don't ask me how I found her blog, but I did and it's hilarious. (And I am no longer a young adult. What does that say about my maturity level since she's writing FOR young adults? No se...) Well, she made an offhand crack (via Twitter, I believe!) to blog everyday in April because she had been neglecting her blog (or something). Well, her followers thought it was a real thing and thought she should do it. Well, now she's doing it and, I guess, it is a real thing.

So, even thought I missed the first few days (with family, you never have time for anything, let alone BLOGGING), I'm going to attempt this. Should be easy, no?! (ESPECIALLY since THIS counts as today's entry!!!)

You can even follow the project on Twitter: @BEDA09

All aTwitter

About a year ago, a friend I know from an internship we did together, invited me to this new social networking website. I joined (I was probably bored or avoiding homework) but didn't do much with it. Last summer, said social network was prominent in several news events; during an American's imprisonment in a foreign country and was used to communicate information during the November Mumbai attacks. After President Obama was elected, another friend, still an undergrad at the local university, was planning a trip to the inauguration so I started frequenting this site a bit more. Starbucks, CNN, other Lawrence residents, former coworkers, National Debt, The Daily Show. And if you keep paying attention, the number of people you follow could balloon to 124 people by March.

Yes, I Twitter.



When people who are barely familiar with Twitter try to explain it, they get the basics: 140 characters per "tweet" and the question, "what are you doing". The thing is, these are the basics. And to make a judgment on Twitter based on this information and the fact that the people you track is called "following" leads to some pretty unintelligent and uniformed commentaries on Twitter. And it's happened. Google "Twitter" and I'm sure you'll find said evaluations about Twitter.

The thing is, Twitter has evolved from communicating just "what" you're doing and is now communicating anything you can share in 140 characters. Usually, news and media information, but also pictures (with the use of TwitPic) and sports scores (a helpful tool during March Madness day games). Without being involved, those evaluating Twitter cannot accurately comment on the tool.

Although, I'm not currently pursuing a career in any type of communications (marketing, PR, etc) I am a proud graduate of KU's J-School. So,I've rationalized my use of Twitter to stay up to date with media and networking developments. Just in case I eventually jump back into any type of communications. And really, it's also a lot of fun.

@bailann