12 Days of Blogging

Everybody is at it. Hot Cross Mum, The Potty Diaries, Nappy Valley in New York and Expat Mum. They've all come up with versions of the 12 Days of Christmas. I wanted to join their club, so I've done one of my own, about blogging.

Incidentally I have, actually, already done a truncated version of the well-loved carol, counting down the body parts I've lost, but that was a long time ago: (all my hair, 4 wisdom teeth, 3 moles, 2 boobs, and a lymph node, I believe it went.)

Anyhoo, here is one about blogging. I'm going to cut to the chase, and start at the 12th day.

On the 12th day of Christmas, my bloggy friend sent to me:

12 Tumblrs Tumblring
11 DiggIts Digging
10 Blogger Updates
9 Wordpress Downloads
8 RSS feeds
7 Pics a-Flickr
6 Tweets re-tweeted
5 BritMums Live!
4 Angry Birds
3 Facebook Friends
2 Gurgle Loves
And a Rise in my Site Meteree!

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Quantum Jumping

Now then. The other day I was chatting to my younger brother on Skype. For some reason, his camera is at desk level and can't be moved, so I see a huge chin and big nostrils, and if he doesn't turn off the light behind him, it looks like he has a halo. Or perhaps since I saw him last summer he has turned into an angelic creature with a weird face. All things are possible.

Which brings me right to the heart of this post. Am I the only one, or is everyone else getting bombarded with adverts for Quantum Jumping? They're everywhere I go in my virtual life. They invade my gmail account. Whoever is organising the campaign must have a huge advertising budget (and no, this isn't a sponsored post, before you wonder).

This is what the Quantum Jumping website says:

The abundant you. The inventor you. The creative you. In alternate universes, everything you desire has already taken place. Tap into this infinite potential with Quantum Jumping...

Every decision you make in life causes a “split” in reality...

In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives...

And then:

This revelation may be a little hard to swallow...

Yup. That last one, I go with.

Help. I'm just getting to grips with the fact that something called 4G might exist. I'm not ready for alternative realities. Actually, and perhaps this is why I find Quantum Jumping a little threatening, I'm a really bad one for 'what if?'ing in my life. I have come to see that it's a very unproductive activity, so I've been trying to drop 'what if?' in favour of 'what next?' - a much more helpful approach. Quantum Jumping is the ultimate 'what if?'. Not only can you explore what hypothetically you might have been or done, but it seems that you can literally do so.

I asked my younger brother if he thought one day we'd be able to get beamed up and down by Skype, rather than just being able to see and hear each other through the medium of a screen. He said something about molecules.

So what do you think? Are you all getting the ads and links? Who is behind it all? Is it possible to explore our other virtual lives? Am I, perhaps, a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, a supermodel or a kindergarten teacher, a hooker or a zookeeper, and I just don't know about it? And if we can hop about from one life to another, from real life to virtual life, will we all still need to go to Cyber Mummy to meet up?
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Google, Blogger, my dishwasher, and my ill child

Am I the only one who is getting fed up with Google? (Oh yes, you can always rely on me when it comes to being up there at the vanguard of blogging technology.)

First and foremost, I never know whether the word should have an initial capital or not. And is it different according to whether it's a noun or a verb? Do you write "I looked on Google" or "I looked on google"? Do you write "I Googled an old friend" or "I googled an old friend"?

Then there are the glitches. My Google Reader (ooh, initial caps there, it seems) now opens two copies of the blog I want to read when I click on it. I have no idea why. I didn't change any settings. It just started doing it. I'm annoyed.

A few days ago, again for no apparent reason, the format of my gmail page changed. I can't sign out from it. The words 'sign out' used to be in the top right hand corner, but where they were, there is now my name. If I click on my name, I get a drop-down list, which does have 'sign out' on it, but it won't let me click on it. If I try to, before I can get the cursor there, quick as a flash, it whisks the words away and reloads the page. I'm annoyed.

Blogger is full of glitches too, and they're getting worse. Does anyone else think so, or is this just me? I sometimes get an email notifying me of a comment on my blog, but that comment doesn't appear on my blog itself. I'm guessing that for every time I notice this, there are several when I don't pick it up. Life is short, Bloggy Peeps, and when I'm reading comments from my email account, I don't bother to go to my blog to check that they're there. It's just that I've noticed a few times. I'm annoyed.

Plus, our aged dishwasher needs new baskets. The plastic is all peeling off, leaving sharp rusty stumps, which I've cut myself on. The cutlery basket has holes in the bottom, so that if you don't stand the cutlery up in just the right way, it falls through. Because the model is such an old one, it would cost us $280 to replace the baskets. That's $150 for the bottom one and $130 for the top one. We can buy a new dishwasher for that. I'm annoyed.

AND... when children are off school because they are sick, you have to pick up work for them. There's always loads of it. Loads. It's like the teacher feels the need to punish you for letting your child get ill. (Note I say "you", not the child - because where do you think the burden of this task falls?) It's bad enough for one day, but if your child has been off for three, they pretty much have to write a couple of theses as they struggle back to health. I'm annoyed.