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Wednesday, March 03, 2004

random thoughts, ebay addiction, weight loss

A few thoughts that have rattled around in my head over the last few days:

• Do the makers of those flashy, jiggly ads designed to look like Windows error messages (comics.com usually has at least one going) honestly think we're going to fall for their scheme? I have more faith in my fellow man than to believe that ANYONE would be clueless enough to go around clicking on those, especially more than once. All they do is give me a headache.
• If you happen to watch the original 70's version of "The Love Bug", and you are for one second fooled by the scrub-brush laden location (with a very cheezy cardboard mock-up of the corner of the Ahwahnee Hotel in one scene; this is boggling, since anyone who knows what that hotel looks like would presumably also know what its setting looks like) which was used to stand in as "Yosemite Valley", you need to take a four-day weekend and take a vacation to Yosemite RIGHT NOW, that is an order.
• This is a genuine question. What's up with everyone disguising the names of places and businesses in their diaries/journals/weblogs? (KM@rt, TuIsa, etc) Is this to avoid having search engines find those terms? Why? I'm not being facetious here; I'm genuinely curious.

There were more but I can't think of them right now.

My seven-year-old son has discovered eBay. It must be a genetic thing, since his father is clinically addicted to that site and can sit there for hours looking at Dodge Charger stuff, most of which he will never buy, "just to see what they're going for." However, it's not MoPar parts that draw my son; it's Legos. And Star Wars stuff. And generally anything else he thinks up that would be fun. ("Hey, Mommy, let's see if doubleyou doubleyou doubleyou dot ebay dot com has any light sabers.") And women are supposed to be the ones who love to shop! T was setting up a computer for a friend of his; when he was testing it in our garage, our son saw it and asked if THAT computer has an eBay in it.

This is the first time since mid-January that our seven-day forecast doesn't have rain in it. We celebrated yesterday by going for not one but TWO walks around town. Today the kids will ride bikes and I will break out my inline skates. Stay tuned for reports of tomorrow's celebration; I'm sure it will be equally riveting. ;-) Seriously, though, we've enjoyed the rain, but we're really glad to be able to see the sun for a few days. I don't know how larger families do it -- it's hard enough cooping up just my two kids inside all day.

I sang in a chorus concert on Saturday. This was the first one I've done since last spring, so it was also the first one I've done since losing weight. It certainly was nice not having that extra thirty pounds pressing down on my feet for an hour and a half. It didn't help with singing "Stomp Your Foot" (WHY did Aaron Copland write that song? And WHY do chorus directors insist on including it in programs season after season? aargh!!), but a girl can't have everything. I still have fifteen pounds to go (and may decide to lose more once I get there -- I'm not sure fifteen pounds will be enough to solve some of my more problematic problem areas) but it is a nice feeling of accomplishment to be where I am. When I was weighing our luggage for our trip to Florida, I stood on the scale with a huge duffel bag packed full of my kids' clothes, and the number on the scale was the same as it was last summer, only that had been without the duffel bag. It was a mental image that will stay before my eyes every time I feel like slacking on my diet, that's for sure. Ack.

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