Well, I've decided to quit smoking. I joined the stop smoking center, and have been going through the steps they recommend to quit. I took a questionnaire about how addicted I was, and on a scale from 1-10, I was a 7. They recommend that I use a nicotine replacement therapy, so I went to La Leche League and checked which was best for a breastfeeding mother, and they said the patch is best. It doesn't spike your nicotine levels like a gum would.

I've been visualising myself doing things without smoking, and meditating on it, and drinking more water, and I started doing yoga again last night. I've decided that I need a new yoga DVD. The one I have is a great strengthening workout, but it doesn't have the breathing and relaxation exercises that I need... and I also need a focus on stretching the neck and back, as I have a lot of problems with mine (battle scars and all), and it helps me to feel better... If anyone has any recommendations for a good one for that, please let me know asap.

( cut to save your friends screen )

I have been wanting to learn to belly dance since.. forever. Yesterday I decided to do some hunting on the internet for belly dancing in my area, and found that the community college in Bullhead has a class, and it's quite reasonable. I'm extremely excited about this! I found a belly dancing group on LJ and from the posts I've seen in there, everyone is super cool and nice.

This is something that is going to be great exercise for me, and it also represents (in my mind) femininity, courage, strength, and showing respect for the Goddess and all other women. I will have some things to overcome, and I know that. It's not in any way going to be easy for me to get this down, but I am just determined enough to get it down. I posted this thread in the group about my disadvantages, and we'll see what kinds of ideas they have.

Other than that, Brian has Collin at work again, and I need to get off of here now, and go do some housework. I'm afraid that I didn't feel very well for a couple of days this last week, and I let things slide, so back to work i go.

I also had issues with the girls just flat out ignoring me when I told them to do something. And I was too preoccupied to take them by the hand and make them do it. Today I have basically sent them out to play, and i'm not going to mess with it. Probably not the best choice in regards to getting them trained to clean up after themselves, but it definitely the best choise for today in hanging onto my sanity. (I got pretty frustrated with them yesterday, and am not up to going into battle once again today)

Someone broke the "rich text" mode link!

Anyhow, to my series of events. So, I have Geico car insurance, and I was on their site one day trying to figure out how in the hell I pay my bill. When I signed up, they insited on a credit card, and not a check, and now they will only accept an online check, and the credit card doesn't work anymore. This is really a difficult thing for me, as I don't have checks for my checking acocunt, just a visa check card. Is there anyone who thinks that checks havn't become obsolete in todays world?

I was thinking...'This place has aweful user interface, and I think could only be topped in dificulty to use by the damned US post office web site- Now THAT place has made me wanna get a gun and blow my PC away!' Geico isn't a whole lot better, and then I noticed that they had won a Webby Award. 'What kind of idiot would give this place an award?' I thought, and went in search of the Webby awards. Once I got there, I was going through the sites that had won, and sites that had gotten honerable mention, and I happened across this place called Boing Boing. With a name like that, I had to go look.

I was imediately enamored by the whole thing. It says that it is a directory of wonderful things, and it is! Now, i'm not exactly one that is hip on curent events. When there's something big like a huricane or something, i'm right there keeping track, but for the most part, I don't care much for watching the news, and i'm sure not some political follower.

I've been trying to get myself more versed in the way of politics recently, but I have found that I get lost when reading things, because I don't know who the people are that go with the names! Pathetic, huh?

I believe that it is an important part of being ballanced to stay up to date on things outside of your own little world. But, i've had a hard time doing that, for the reasons mentioned above. So, here comes Boing Boing into my life.

There's some political things in there, but for the most part is is pop culture, and things that really interest me! They make me go "ooooo", and I like that. Now I had my way out of my own little world, and was becoming educated in things that were outside of my home, and outside of life, and outside of Oatman AZ. 'More people should know about this!' I thought, and then found that it already has more than a million readers every month! OMG.. what rock have I been under? This is what I meen- far too wrapped up in my thing, and unballanced.

I was a shut in! All I had to talk about was the newest color of crap in Collin's diaper, for crying-out-loud! That and the latest traumatic event in my life. No wonder people thought I was a drama queen. Sheesh, there's like- nothing to me.

I quickly became a fan of Cory Doctorow, one of the editors of Boing Boing, and found myself searching through his posts before the others when I opened up the blog. He made me laugh, and he made me think, and I just really enjoyed reading his stuff. It wasn't long before I was asking myself, 'When does this guy sleep?'

He was blogging about lectures he'd given, and things he'd read, and places he'd been, and I noticed all of this within a week of reading the stuff! Envious, I guess is what I soon became. This guy is only 2 years younger than I am, and he is so up to date on all of the latest gadgets and technologies, that it blows my mind!

Now, I had computers in high school, and they were well before Windows was even thought of, and after I left high school, I just completely let go of the technology world. Once I got my own PC, 6-7 years ago, I had to teach myself how to use it. I felt this huge sense of accomplishment because I figured out how to hook the damned thing up all by myself, and then I went on to getting on the internet, and figuring out how to get to a stupid chat room, and then on to figuring out how to play this lame-ass text game called Evernight/Cannon. That was about it, really. I try to imagine having a notebook and being able to conect to the internet from various places, and it feels like I blew a circuit..I meen, how could that possibly work? If you put an i-pod in my hand, I wouldn't know how to turn the damned thing on.

When I met Brian, he was really into all of that, and if something came up that I wanted to know more about, I just asked him. The guy was brilliant in my mind. He made my site and taught me how to use it, and edit it. I was really thinking that I was something using that html, php, and mysql! Now, of course, I have completely absorbed him into my world of diapers, bills and jobs, and he no longer can answer my questions. LOL

Yet, here's this Cory guy from MY generation, and he is hip to all of that. I wanted to know more about him. I went to his Blog and saw that he had done an In-game book signing and there were pictures of the game charactors getting their virtual books signed by this guy, and I was like.. "You-can-do-that!??" The pictures sure made me realise just how lame Evernight/cannon really was. *eye roll* And to think, I had spent time crying over things those idiots had said to me on their message board. Lordy.

So, anyhow... A book? All that, and he's writen books too? Seriously, when does he sleep? Judging by the way that he describes his sci-fi book, I figure this would definantly not be soemthing that I would normally be interested in, and most likely wouldn't buy it, unless I already knew I would like it.

"Cory Doctorow: Hmm-- it's not an easy book to summarize. Alan is a serial entrepreneur who moved to Toronto to get away from his family. His father is a mountain and his mother is a washing machine. He has several brothers, including one who is an island, three who nest like Russian dolls, a precognitive, and a demonic savage. When he was a teenager, he murdered the latter brother, with his other brothers cooperating. And now that brother is back form the dead, stalking them all. Alan has fallen in with a gang of anarcho-info-hippies who are using dumpster-dived hardware to build meshing WiFi repeaters in a mad bid to unwire all of Toronto, or at least the bohemian Kensington Market streets. Meanwhile, his neighbors-- a student household-- contain a girl with wings and a mean-spirited guitar player/bartender, who, it appears, may be in league with the demonic brother.

So that's it in a nutshell. A very large and n-dimensional nutshell."

Hmmm.. huh? A washing machine? A demon? Well, that's OK! Because I can read it for free online. Brilliant!

Now, here I am exposed to a literary genre that I wouldn't normally be exposed to, and I don't have to risk the out of pocket expense to try it out! Here's his views on the money he makes from his writing:

"On this page, you will find downloadable full-text versions of my book in open formats that contain no DRM (a stupid, scientifically bankrupt technology that seeks to restrict how you use and copy digital files after acquiring them). They are licensed under terms set out by Creative Commons, terms that allow you to undertake unlimited noncommercial distribution of the book. Share this book! That's what it's for. In the words of Woody Guthrie, "Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do."

What's more, if you live in the developing world -- a country not on the World Bank's list of high-income countries -- you can do much more. You can make your own editions, charge money for them, make movies, translations, plays and anything else you care to, and charge whatever you want, without sending me one cent -- you don't even need my permission. See the FAQ for more. The only restriction is that you can't export your versions to the world's high-income countries where all my paying customers are. Deal? Deal."

How cool is that?

So, there you have it. My horizons have been broadened, i'm learning things, and experiencing things, and have become a fan of a guy I never knew existed, and all because Geico's web site sucks. *grins*