Well, I told myself I wasn’t going to whine too much. I lied.
There have been things in life people have told me would hurt and they did, but it was never as much as anyone said. Childbirth, yeah that sucked but not quite to the level people talked it up. The after pains post Ellie were miserable, but even then. . .
The tonsillectomy?
Crap.
Great big painful buckets of crap.
The doctor told Tim that my tonsils were a lot bigger than they appeared during the first examination. When I’m brave enough to open my mouth and look in the mirror it’s gross and scary.
But.
I can breathe through my nose better than I’ve been able to in years and I kind of hope after I’m all healed up that maybe I won’t snore (as much).
I haven’t had food since last Thursday night. I miss food. I think fondly of food, I daydream about cooking and eating.
But.
Would I even think of taking a single bite of anything today, even six days later? Not on your life.
I’m managing to drink Ensure, but that’s as thick as I can handle and I’m sick of chicken and I’m sick of sweet. I don’t understand why I’m daydreaming about stuffing, but I am.
And grouchy? I’ve been taking crabby to new levels.
On the upside, today is the first day that the pain medicine does more than take the edge off. I have made progress on the book, not as much as I hoped, but progress is progress and as of today or tomorrow I should be done with the last of the drier subjects. There is a reason not many comedians make their living on dry wall repair.
I kind of have this fantasy that tonight, I’ll be able to actually lie down and sleep. I’ve spent the last few nights dozing through episodes of Bones. Why? Because it takes my mind off of dreading the next swallow.
The telling thing? I’d go through it again if it will prevent damage to my joints. Here’s to no more strep and to no more over-reactions to strep.
The past eight days have been amazing. Last Friday I had the incredible experience of flying to New Orleans, courtesy of Zatarains and Weber Shandwick. I had the most amazing time attending Jazz Fest and getting to experience some amazing New Orleans restaurants.
You can see the photos from my trip over on my Flickr stream, but here are a few anyhow. I know the white balance is off on the last, but you get the gist.
We had such an amazing time and I wish I could focus enough to give the experience the write up it deserves.
Tuesday I flew to NYC and back. I got to see the Gramercy Park Hotel, which if memory serves (and it probably doesn’t) was the setting for at least one story in Stephen King’s Everything’s Eventual. While waiting for the meeting I amused myself by working on the basic plumbing chapter of the book in their incredibly posh lobby. There’s something wonderfully ironic about sitting on a velvet couch, in front of a giant fireplace and Boterro painting and writing about plunging a toilet.
Maybe I’m just weird.
I also kicked myself repeatedly for not bringing my camera.
Is it silly to be proud of myself for learning how to hail a taxi? It’s never been a part of my world. Next time, I’ll try out the subway. I know, I’m sheltered.
I concluded my week of wonder by having my tonsils yanked out yesterday. It’s all about balance.
I’m hoping tomorrow I can back off the medicine enough to get back on track with the book. I’m more than halfway done and as soon as I can knock out these last few chapters on basic home repair I can start on my favorite topic, food.
I glanced at the new follow list: a ballet dancer, a priest, and a librarian. I knew there was a joke somewhere, but it was Notoriously Nice Mike who penned it.
A ballerina, a priest, and a librarian walked into a Tweetup. The ballerina said, “Twitter allows me and the other members of the dance company to schedule our practices”. The priest said, “It lets my parishioners contact me when they need comfort”. The librarian said, “It helps me find answers to our patron’s questions when I’m on the reference desk”. @AndyParas, who was sitting at the same table said, “Yes, but were any of you in a traffic accident on your way here?”
-Mike
I’ve admired Peter Shankman for a long time and sharing the quote here is slightly out of context, but I had to share anyhow.
I think too many people go out there and try to [...] build a blog as a way to a book deal and that doesn’t work. It’s like playing basketball in the street and hoping to get picked up by the NBA.
In October I was struggling, trying to figure out what I was going to do, whether or not I was even going to keep the site going. I thought it was a scam at first and I know the book won’t be a best seller. I have very realistic sales expectations; it’ll be friends, family, their friends and family, and a few other, wonderful people. The big deal is the ride and I love it; I’m enjoying every minute.
Who wouldn’t be a fan of that? It’s to protect the children.
If you go to the About Section:
About
A place to express our mutual concern about allowing Registered Sex Offenders to have access to information contained on Facebook.
Positions
Keep Facebook safe for everyone
Security for parents and families knowing there kids can browse facebook safely
Over a million people already belong to this.
I get the sentiment and I agree with it in part, but not in full. It seems as though zero thought was given to the whole idea (not even going to touch on what I hope is merely a typo).
What level sex offender? Oh, that’s not mentioned. So, we’re to keep people off who have a public urination charge?
So just for giggles, we’ll pretend that there was actual thought given to this portion and that it only applies to those offenders to whom the label predator would apply.
Who would bear the burden of enforcement?
Parole officers?
Facebook?
A watchdog group?
What would stop someone from creating a fictitious account? It’s not rocket science.
Parents, educate your children about online safety, even if you don’t have the Internet in your home. Kids have access at the library, their friends’ houses, even on their friends’ smart phones.
Even if some measure were passed saying predators could not use Facebook, this would do little to protect kids. It could even make the situation worse by providing a false sense of security. You do realize that there are plenty of offenders in the world who have yet to be convicted.
It could be allergies today, the pollen count is sky high, but again with the not being able to swallow?
I am so over this whole ordeal; my tonsils are coming out the end of April, as the first available date was smack in the middle of Tim’s outage where he couldn’t take any time off for any reason. This has totally put the kibosh on the major cookout / picnic /barbecue series I was organizing for May, but hopefully by June I can try. Friends and family are on notice that I’ll need their help in the first ten days. We haven’t figured out what Tim can take off yet.
Ever try to write with a pounding headache? Yeah, not so much is happening and my hopes of making this month’s soft deadline are withering quickly. I’m trying though.
I accidentally published this as a page yesterday.
Just another video for relatives. Mark’s been working hard on learning the violin, too. Last night were just goofing around and he wanted to make up a song to share. -We’ve been working on bowing and I’ve just been letting him have at it sometimes to get a better feel.
I am finally coming around to uncoupling affiliate sales and multi-level marketing in my head. For some reason I had the two concepts linked and refused to even investigate affiliate sales. Now that I have finally educated myself and understand the concept it makes a lot more sense and has lost the skeeve factor.
For those who have no clue what I’m talking about, multi-level marketing plans are often linked to pyramid schemes. Of course no MLMer will ever say that, they’ll skirt the issue and explain how it’s nothing like a pyramid scheme, but here’s what it comes down to. With MLM (remember Amway?) a person not only works to sell products but to recruit other sales people and in return gets a percentage of that new sales person’s cut.
A ridiculously over simplified example. Joe invents Company X and sells products 30% over their cost. Joe keeps all 30% either as profit or to reinvest in Company X. Joe meets Bob who agrees to sell the product at the same price as Joe. Bob gets 20% of each sale either as profit or to reinvest in his version of Company X; Joe gets that missing 10%. Bob of course wants to be like Joe and have people under him, so he recruits people who each get 15% and Bob gets 5 and Joe of course gets 10. In the real world it’s much more dynamic than this and people move up and down according to how many people are under them and where on the feeding chain they currently swim. Yes, it’s nothing like a pyramid scheme, I get it, you said that already.
I am uncomfortable with this concept and feel it falls into a morally grey zone, especially when naive, new sales people are goaded into pressuring friends and family to buy products they may have zero interest in through guilt or a desire to help them succeed. It doesn’t matter if the products are superior or not, if I’m emotionally blackmailed into a purchase, I do not gain a favorable impression of the company.
So, that’s MLM what are affiliate sales? With affiliate sales or at least what I’ve seen so far (and anything outside of this will probably make me drop the whole idea) is I place advertising for a product on my site or newsletter. If a reader clicks through and makes a purchase, I as the referrer, get a cut of the sale. The cost of the product is the same whether they came through my ad or not. I’m ok with this, it doesn’t feel as manipulative. Now, there is always emotional manipulation in marketing, but this doesn’t seem to put anyone in an exploitive position. I could be wrong, but my highly attuned guilt radar is not sounding.
Over on Home Ec, I’m slowly adding some affiliate ads to the site. Most of these will go to old posts that receive a lot of search engine traffic that doesn’t necessarily stick around. The ads will be for products related to the search, appliances under appliance repair, fabric under crafts, kitchen gear I love, etc.
Other random things:
I’ve really gotten into listening to podcasts lately, whether playing chauffeur, doing the dishes, or folding laundry, they keep my mind occupied.
Here are a few I thoroughly enjoy:
Spycast – Run by the International Spy Museum, this podcast is endlessly fascinating focusing on espionage intelligence. I also happen to just enjoy Peter Earnest’s voice.
Stuff You Missed in History Class – I picked this one up on a recommendation by James. I never would have called myself a history buff, but these short shows pack a lot of information that would be useful the next time I play Trivial Pursuit. I’ll still fail the pop culture category.
BlogCastFM – The Up and Coming Blogger Series. I have a narcissistic interest in this one. If you’re not interested in professional blogging, skip it; it will have zero relevance to your life. As blogger / website developer it’s a good reminder of where I need to be placing my focus and sometimes the enthusiasm can help keep me plugging away. The blogging world is so weird with no real definition of what constitutes success. On one hand, I’m “living the dream” with the book deal, but on the other I still feel like a complete nobody.*
*Hush. I get to decide when I don’t feel like a nobody / noob.*
