Tag: blogs

Tuesday briefs (4-19-11)

It’s been a while since I’ve given a brief update on all things personal — so here we go….

1. The boys are almost six months old! Crazy! They’ll reach six months in just a few days — April 21.

2. They’re both getting bigger and stronger each and every day. Ian’s been sitting up by himself a little longer than Hayden but I sat and played with both of them for probably 15 minutes tonight while they sat up and played with a ball and we only had one or two fall-overs from the two of them. We’re expecting Hayden to weigh in around 19 to 20 pounds for their six month check-up on Friday.

3. The spit-up attacks continue! We were told the five to six month mark is usually the peak of their spit-up attacks and as they learn to sit up and strengthen their muscles it should begin to decrease — we hope so. Laurie and I have both had 2-3 shirt/outfit days recently. In fact we change our clothes more often than we change theirs. For some reason most of the spit-up ends up on their bibs or on us.

4. They’re so much fun! They’re laughing at so much. In fact, Ian just entertained us for 5-10 minutes while he sat and laughed at the dog chewing her bone and Hayden just loves big raspberries blown on his belly. Of course they have their moments when they irritate us, because we have 100 things to do and they can’t stand to be left alone and only want to be held… but in reality — can we really complain about that? All our boys want is for us to hold them? Can’t be that bad…

5. The boys are in the midst of their 2nd week with their DOC Bands now and are doing great. They don’t seem to mind their bands at all. They sleep fine with them on and are now starting to wear the bands 23 hours a day. It’s amazing that we already see a difference in the shape of their heads — especially Hayden. At times it feels like we’re looking at a totally different boy.

The boys napping with their DOC Bands | Photo by Jonathan Blundell

5. Laurie just joined me in the Over-30-Club. While we still try and maintain that she’s still only 25, she did officially turn 30 on Saturday (sorry babe). But, perhaps lucky for her, she used to say, “two kids before 30” and it looks like she did just that. 🙂

6. As a follow-up to last Friday’s post, for Laurie’s birthday and our anniversary (4 years coming up next week!) I bought her an iPad. Somehow in talking myself out of buying one, I ended up peaking her interest more and more. So when the original gift I ordered didn’t arrive before Saturday, I told her we could combine the two gifts for an iPad. I think she’s enjoying it… just a little. (although I don’t think she’s ready to give her Mac Book Pro for it ;-))

7. My Fool Month of Purging Meat from my diet is going quite well. I’m actually surprised by how easy it’s been to avoid meat. I’ve passed up steak at least two or three times, burgers several times and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. Overall I don’t feel as lethargic or “bleh” after eating a full meal and I think I’m starting to see a bit more energy overall – but I’m not certain its from purging the meat or just sleeping better. Will I go vegetarian after April? Probably not – at least not 24-7, but it has proven that it’s completely doable and reminded me that I probably need to add a lot more plants to my diet regardless.

I think that about wraps it up. That’s most of what’s going on in my world.

Any questions?

Answering the question :: What should I blog about?

I have several friends (and family members) with blogs that get updated somewhat frequently. Others are far more occasional, and still others, I have to wonder if they’ve forgotten their password.

When I ask them about it, their usual response is, “Well I don’t know what to write about.”

I understand, I’ve had writer’s block before.

But there’s one thing I’ve found that gets me over my writer’s block every time — writing.

I know you’re all looking at me funny now but perhaps I can explain.
Continue reading Answering the question :: What should I blog about?

Open mic

Sun Studios Microphone

From time to time I like to check in and find out who my readers are and why they come to my little spot on the Interwebs.

So its open mic blog.

Tell me a little bit about yourself. Who are you? What do you like doing?

Mic check – one two, one two.

This is your chance to tell the world whatever you so choose… express yourself, share a passion, plug your band, etc.
Continue reading Open mic

What blogs do you read?

we love blog

I don’t keep a blogroll on the front page of my blog anymore. Instead, I have a page of links that include some family, friends, ministries etc. that I support or find interesting (more or less an archive of my old blogroll).

Blogroll’s always seem to be a pain to keep up with. Perhaps because mine are always changing.

However Charles Lee asked for some blog suggestions this week and I offered up my list. These are the blogs I check first in my reader and always make sure I haven’t missed anything before I hit the escape button (aka Mark All As Read). Continue reading What blogs do you read?

web 2.0 rant

[rant]

So I love this idea of ambient intimacy. I love that I can get to know the folks in my community better and better through things like twitter, and facebook status updates and even their blogs.

I love that I can learn so much about people in short 140-character thoughts and quotes and comments throughout the day.

But I’m also getting annoyed that twitter is starting to become a “link dump” and/or a “read my new blog post!” @tonyjones twittered about this last week and I originally thought, well that’s a bit unkind – then I realized how many text messages (aka noise) I get throughout the day that are nothing more than “read my new blog post!”

I hate it because while I don’t mind seeing these things in facebook’s news feed or on my twitter friend feed I also see them in my RSS reader. So having an announcement about them show up on my cellphone as text messages really bugs me.

I know, I know – everyone just wants to plug their stuff — and honestly I’ve plugged a blog post here or there too. But I guess what gets me about the whole scenario is that for those folks I chose to go the extra mile in getting to know and actually opt-in to get their tweets sent to my cellphone (rather than just following them via the web). I don’t need a reminder to check your blog. And the fact that you automatically send me announcements every time you update your blog (rather than just highlighting the really good stuff) — or send a mass of tweets 3 or 4 times a day that share all your blog posts from the last several hours — makes me that less interested in following you or subscribing to your twitter feed. All the automatic posts just add to the noise and turn me off.

Am I making any sense? Maybe not — but I guess that’s why it’s a rant.

In full disclosure, the encounter blog and website are setup to automatically post a tweet anytime and every time a new blog post is updated and/or we post a new announcement or podcast to the website. So you can probably rant and rave about that and argue that I’m being biased (maybe this is where my rant/argument falls apart). However, I would argue in response that both the blog and the website are updated on a fairly limited basis and I’m/you’re not following the encounter twitter feed because you want to get to know someone better – it’s setup as a “news/announcement/prayer feed” for folks interested in encounter.

So there you have it. What say you?

[/rant]

I better post a link to this via twitter to be sure everyone knows about it and responds. 🙂

[rant continued]

update :: I also hate reading RSS feeds that don’t show the entire blog post. I don’t want to have to click “read more” or “this post continues elsewhere.” Just put the entire blog post in your RSS feed — PLEASE! I’m dumping a lot of RSS feeds right now that make me click on another link to read — it makes the entire point of RSS rather pointless.

[/rant]