Other minor things can be found “after the jump” (just because I’m testing that functionality)

• Changed the date format to MM-DD-YYYY from DD-MM-YYYY. I really want to change it so the date shows up more prominently to the left of the posts, but that will have to wait until a later date when I’m feeling more motivated.
• Removed the Tag Cloud thing since I have not used a single tag on my blog in my life. I’m not sure if I’m going to start using tags or not. We’ll see. Until I do, that is staying turned off.
• Added two subscribe to blog entry functions. One is for when you comment on an entry and the other is for subscribing without commenting. I need to look into if there’s any tracking associated with that. I’d be interested in knowing how many people subscribe to threads.
• Removed the “Read More” link on the footer of every post. I don’t get why that was even there. You’ve already read the whole post. There is no more to read, so how can you “Read More”? Odd.
• Added back the PHP code to only show a random 10 links from each of my blogrolls on every page load. That way I’m not displaying every link in my database at one time.
• Updated the Copyright date to 2008. I really should put the PHP function there to dynamically pull the current year, but, eh – whatever.

I think that’s it. There’s only a couple more things I want to do, then I can leave it alone for a good, long while. Just like I used to. :-)

Yesterday, though, I was pleasantly surprised to find a site that could fill the bill I had in mind. In The Rooms is a brand new global recovery community that seems to get it. The site has most of the features you’d expect from a social media standpoint: profiles to fill out and browse, groups for fellowships, member-created groups, libraries for files, news, a blog, photo uploading, a daily meditation offering, and messaging between members.

I hope to make some friends “In the Rooms” and grow my circle of recovery friends around the globe even wider than it already is. That is always a good thing. If you’re in a 12-step recovery group, check it out!

Coincidentally, I saw a book meme online just now, so I thought I’d blog both things. Here’s what you’re supposed to do with the list below:

1 – Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2 – Italicize those you intend to read.
3 – Underline the books you LOVE, and strikeout the books you read but didn’t like.
4 – Post this list on your own blog

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5) To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9) His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11) Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare – Not sure if I’m read everything, but I’ve read most of his works.
15) Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17) Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch – George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy – I actually borrowed this from the library and had a hard time getting into it, but I’ll try again.
32) David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34) Emma – Jane Austen
35) Persuasion – Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37) The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39) Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41) Animal Farm – George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45) The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50) Atonement – Ian McEwan
51) Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52) Dune – Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62) Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69) Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72) Dracula – Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses – James Joyce
76) The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath – I didn’t hate the writing, but the subject matter was just too depressing.
77) Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal – Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession – AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82) Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94) Watership Down – Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
100) Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Damn, that’s a lot of books I haven’t read; I need to get busy with some of these classics. Which one should I start with first?

You can check out her work here: KathyBeekman.com

Isn’t her stuff just gorgeous? I want at least 10 of her pieces in my house right this very instant.

Edit: Her work in the gallery in Santa Fe looked much nicer than what’s on her website. Hmmm.

However, that all changed last week. I read an article in the Reader’s Digest about Wayne Gerdes, the World’s Most Fuel-Efficient Driver. You can read the story on Mother Jones. The thing that really triggered Wayne to be more fuel efficient was 9/11 and the realization of America’s fuel addiction. My longer daily commute combined with this country’s current state of affairs prompted me to finally change my ways. While I’m not going to get fanatical like this guy – he does some crazy stuff! – I am taking a lot of the practical ideas and applying them with some great results. Basically I’m not driving over 60-65 mph, I’m not breaking or starting suddenly and I’m turning into your typical granny driver. So far I’ve seen a 10% increase in fuel savings. That’s pretty amazing if you ask me. And you know what’s funny? My commute has been a whopping 5 minutes longer. All of that racing in and out of lanes, zipping around to be “first” didn’t really get me very far, I’m finding out.

I’m getting a great deal of satisfaction out of knowing I’m doing my part to reduce the fuel addiction in this country. Now if only everyone else would follow suit, we’d make a real impact. I want to take a copy of the article I read and throw it into all of the cars flying past me on the roads. I know I didn’t feel compelled to change just to follow the law, but when the bigger social and economical issues came into play, I changed my tune real quick.

Next time you’re flying down the highway, remember this stuff, won’t you?

Are you Twittering yet? Jump on the bandwagon! You can find me at http://www.twitter.com/anaisamy. Come join the fun.

We talked about my hair and she agreed that going slightly darker with some caramel highlights is the way to go. I’m so excited for next Saturday now, when I can get transformed into something like this: – Amy: Before & After!

I’ve used these makeover sites before, you’ve seen the results of such in the past right here on this very blog, I’m sure. However, Makeover Solutions has the best technology of all of the sites I’ve used thus far; the hair actually fit on my head! And not only does the hair fit, but I can also add highlights and lowlights to it.

What I really liked was the site did a makeover not only on my hair, but also on my makeup. There are a lot of options for eye shadow, eye liner, mascara, lipstick, lipliner, and lip gloss even on the free version. I saw all kinds of makeup brands for the paid version that were awfully tempting, too. I could spend hours on this site, as could most women I know. Fun!

I’ve researched everything else I can think of concerning the move, so it’s only logical that I check out sites for the types of shoes we’ll need. MetBoots.com has a great selection of competitively priced work boots on their site. Their free shipping over $100 offer is also attractive to me because I know I’m going to be doing a lot of online ordering once we’re there since we’ll be pretty isolated. You know I’ve become a true farm girl once I add a pair of work boots to my shoe closet. Stay tuned. ;-)

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]]> http://whateverifeellike.com/2007/08/travel-map/feed/ 5 http://whateverifeellike.com/2007/08/salt-pepper/ http://whateverifeellike.com/2007/08/salt-pepper/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2007 00:49:12 +0000 Amy http://whateverifeellike.com/2007/08/07/salt-pepper/ My mom asked me today how long I’ve been using the neti pot, which prompted me to go through my archives to research. Can you believe it’s been a month already? That means I’ve been off all medication for a full month! That is just awesome. I’m thrilled with the results now that I’ve found a good routine. I do the neti pot once a day or once every other day, depending on how my sinuses are feeling. If I get that “funny” feeling in my head, I know I need to hit the neti pot ASAP.

In addition to the neti pot, I’ve also been using Sinus Buster nasal spray. The Sinus Buster is basically Capsaicin pepper and it stuff burns like a mo-fo, but it is so worth it. I definitely believe the combination of the Sinus Buster and the neti pot has cured my sinus and allergy problems aka vasomotor rhinitis, as diagnosed by my doctor.

Who knew that squirting liquid salt and pepper up my nose every day was all I needed to feel better and get off of the prescription medications with their horrible side-effects? That kind of cracks me up, actually – apparently my nasal cavity doesn’t like it bland up in there.

So, yay for homeopathic remedies!