No, you may not have a bite of this taco, for he is my Darling Dog.

Bluebird of Yippee by ~bumblefly on deviantART

www.bumptop.com



duuuuude.

I'm not sure how to introduce this, so I'll just launch right in. I encourage my friends to comment, no matter what you have to say. I want real, thoughtful feedback, or even just gut reactions. Yes, this is based on specific things, but it applies to so many people and situations. I was going to generalize and say, "Why do guys ____" but I'm sure there are women who do it, too.

Some people need to learn how to apologize.

I don't mean grovel, I don't mean beg forgiveness for a wrongdoing, I mean just the simple act of expressing that you didn't mean for something to happen. Whether you didn't mean to do the thing you did, or whether you just didn't mean for someone to get hurt over it, saying "Sorry about that," is essential to keeping friendships.

Let me say it again. Saying, "Sorry about that," is ESSENTIAL to keeping friendships.

Now I am going to generalize a bit, because stereotypes happen for a reason, and I fully admit that there are exceptions in both directions. Guys seem to be more reluctant to do this than girls. I think it's because they want to keep their appearance of toughness, independence, and self-respect. I've gotten the impression that guys will just never ever apologize, because they think doing so would mean bowing to the person they're apologizing to and giving them power. So it actually takes a guy with MORE confidence to apologize, because they can realize that saying they're sorry for something that happened does not cut them off at the knees or kick them in the balls or otherwise diminish them.

When you have friendships, you always have misunderstandings, missteps, unintentional hurts. If you slap a dude on the back, and he screams at the top of his lungs because he had just gotten a tattoo, and you didn't know, you should apologize. You didn't do anything wrong, because you didn't know about it, you didn't do it on purpose. Saying you're sorry at this point means, "I'm sorry that what I did hurt you." Now that you are aware of it, you won't slap his back again for a good long while.

Over the internet, things can be worse. Easier to do something hurtful completely unintentionally. You always read silly little internet articles about this, about the importance of being clear, and using smilies to express sarcasm or playfulness. (Those smilies get cheesy pretty quickly, though, I don't really advise using them to punctuate the intent of every single thing you say.)

One of the easiest things to do is unintentionally ignore someone, which can cause the feeling of being snubbed. The person not getting a response doesn't know that you're currently reading over your sister's thesis paper. Or that you had to leave the computer to clean up after your cat's daily puke. You can start taking the online presence of your friends for granted, just assuming the company of simultaneous online-ness is enough. But it's not!

What if you came home from work or the store, reading the mail as you walked in, and the person at home greeted you. Yes, you're distracted. Yes, you might ignore the greeting for a moment. But you realize that if you don't acknowledge your friend/family memebr at all, it's rude. At this point in time, the appropriate thing to do is say, "Oh, sorry, I was reading the mail/juggling groceries/something." You're not apologizing for reading the mail, you're not making yourself less of a respectable person, you're just being a sociable human being, a friend.

A friend of mine with a relatively new child is teaching her politeness early. She taught her girl to say "please" and "thank you" within the family and everybody else. Someone commented on this, and said, "Oh there's no need to be polite, we're family!" and this shocked both my friend and myself. Politeness is doubly important between friends and family. It shows respect, affection, and a general concern for the well-being of your friends. When you appreciate something, you should thank for it. When you regret some action or consequence, you should apologize for it. Unless the apology's recipient is a complete *insert terrible word here*, you will be respected and liked MORE because of your expression of care.

tl;dr: You're being an inconsiderate jerk if you don't ever apologize. Stop treating apologies like they're going to kick you in the nuts or make you less of a man or woman. If you like the person, and you hurt them, even (especially!!) unintentionally, apologize for the hurt, and things will be so much better.

Today, I had a very long visit to Wal*Mart. I feel like a new person, because of some things I got.

- $5 discounted Swiffer WetJet, to inspire me to clean (and I do feel inspired!)
- A nice little mouse with snap-in usb receiver for the netbook to please my geekiness
- a $15 pair of jeans that ARE COMFORTABLE and ACTUALLY LOOK GOOD. Flared leg bottoms, and some decoration on the back pockets to accentuate the fact that they actually FIT my bottom, and don't just sag and show off the fact that I have very little to show off there
- delicious food, a few unhealthy, mostly healthy! (I've learned to like broccoli in most formats, what a leap for me!
- a cute pair of $5 sunglasses, which I can actually wear, because.....

( because... )

This morning I got to my bus stop 3 or 4 minutes early, so I decided to hoof it up the hill to the next stop. WHEW. Halfway through, my legs said, "PLZ NO" but I kept going.

Then a while after I got to work, I put one of these in my water bottle:

Lipton's Energize To Go Iced Tea Mix, Blueberry Pomegranate flavor! 0 calories, 100mg caffeine, and 160mg "protective flavonoid antioxidants" per packet. Very tasty, and probably contributed to my energy and good mood. Yay!

Eurgh, javascript doesn't seem to want to load on Livejournal. Just go look at the link.

I think I'll only leave the big ripening tomato a few more days. Today, though I discovered three of my cherry tomatoes are turning red! Daniel decided he wanted to eat one orange, so here it is, our very first picked tomato. He said it tasted kind of green (to be expected), but quite good. So exciting!

Here is my first reddening tomato. It looks redder here than it really is.


Second, there's about a gazillion grape/cherry tomatoes growing, and I can barely wait for them to ripen! Yes, I don't remember what type I planted. lulz. There's maybe six or eight more clumps like these two, filled with little round stripy tomatoes.


And lastly, I was starting to worry that I was doing something wrong with this African Violet, but here is a flower beginning to unfurl! And there's about 7 more flower buds all around the top, under the topmost leaves. I'm excited for them to bloom!

(View Auction)







Feel free to spread this around.

I've never tried to grow so many plants un-casually!

I have:
cilantro
african violet
the beginnings of another pot of violets (hopefully)
tomatoes
hummingbird vines
sunflowers

the last two of which I seeded just tonight.

I've been using gmail as a To Do list that I can't minimize down, like its actual list function. I turned on special stars, and send myself an email for each item, with the item as the subject line so it's right there in visible list form, then mark each item with a purple star. I make an effort to do at least one purple-starred item every day. So far I've met or exceeded that every day since I started. It helps keep me from feeling overwhelmed, because I don't feel pressured to get them all done Right. Now. *pleased!*

Red Panda by ~bumblefly on deviantART


This game is lots of fun! We traded in a bunch of games, and picked this up. It's a little bit competitive, a little bit cooperative. And that goes for within the household AND worldwide. You can see what rank you are among everyone who goes into the online ranking, and you can also combine your steps with everyone else's throughout the world to walk from earth to the moon, and beyond. You don't have to carry it in one direction, you can just put it in your pocket. And you shake it to check to see if you've reached your step goal for the day - if you haven't, the teeny light flashes red, and if you have, it flashes green. It syncs with the DS card via tiny IR panels in the card and the Activity Meter. It is all kinds of awesome and fun and comes with two Activity Meters!

And, finally, the UP movie is wonderful. Really wonderful. I mean it. Go see it.

First: Apologies. I've been trying very hard to not post complaining things. Today I break that effort.

----------------------

My cat.

My cat is very demanding at Way Too Early in the morning.

To punish me for not popping straight out of bed at the break of dawn, she:

1. Sat on my hair and patted my face every 20 seconds or so to keep me half awake
2. Vomited on the carpet
3. Came back to sit on my hair again, except this time with stomach-acid breath!

That finally got me up, so I fed the critters, and came back to bed for a while, where I proceeded to have a distressing and frustrating nightmare.

And now, I have a headache, a sore throat, and a greatly wobbly and tired head. A-whoopee!

Since I moved my computer into the kitchen/livingroom, we've had both Daniel's and my computer on one circuit. Didn't think about it, didn't realize it was one circuit... until the breaker started going "lol u dont get powerz." When I investigated it, I learned that between our two computer, monitors, speakers, we're pulling about 23-24 amps. On a 15 amp breaker. No wonder!
I now need to get an extension cable for my computer so I can plug it in next to the microwave. My computer setup pulls about 13 amps... I wonder how much the microwave uses when it's on. o_o;;

http://www.tweenbots.com/

This is really really interesting, fascinating, and CUTE. I demand that everyone go look.

Okay, this is hilarious. I decided to read my LJ from the very beginning, and I got to a dream I had on Christmas Eve 2002. Please keep in mind that World of Warcraft was not released until almost two full years after this.

"we were at the local gaming store, and they had made a new Warcraft type of RPG game (Warcraft was the game that came to mind in the dream, probably just because we recently saw a trailer for a Warcraft movie) -- in a pill. You took the pill and laid down, and it put you in the game, so that you could hear, see, feel, do everything yourself. It essentially made you dream or hallucinate the game, but it also put you in the deep sleep that inhibits actual movements and speaking."

Tablet 002 - Bluebird WIP by ~bumblefly on deviantART