I Never Promised You an Organic Garden

It is official… we bought a Wii. After three weeks of desperate searching, the McKimmy household finally found a reasonably priced Wii and accessories on eBay and won the auction.

It was quite an interesting experience. Instead of standing in crazy lines every weekend and making innumerable impromptu visits to stores that might sell them, Matt and I employed our technology-know-how to find our Wii. We used rss feeds to craigslist searches for Dayton, Indy, and Cincinnati that emailed us when a new Wii became available, and for a short time even sent me text messages. We also signed up for services like wiialert.com and itrackr.com, which sent us text messages when a wii became available in either brick and mortar or online stores. The technique that finally paid off was an rss feed to a honed search string Matt created that alerted us every minute to any new “buy it now” Wiis that appeared on eBay in our price range.

I am very excited to play with it and hopefully it will be worth all the trouble we went through to get it.

Because I have a lot of friends who are football fans, namely Steelers’ fans, I spend many Sunday and Monday evenings watching football. I am not a fan of watching football. I would much rather play. But since I love hanging out with my friends, I see plenty of games. To help keep myself entertained over the years, I have come up with my own interpretations of what the referee’s hand signals “really mean”.

	Raise your hands if you’re sure!		I AM Michael Jackson
	Stop in the name of love		(In your most perky cheerleader voice) Ready! OK!
	Would you like to go roll down a hill?		You must be THIS tall to play.
	I’ve lost my watch… I think it’s over there.		The field is not flat enough.
	Hunting boots or tennis shoes? Hunting boots or tennis shoes?		Yes Master!

I probably won’t ever be asked to ref a football game, but I definitely keep folks entertained.

We have made a good start toward actually accomplishing at least one of our New Year’s Goals. We have set up a special can to put recyclable items in, and we have called to order a canister for recycling pickup. It is something we have been wanting to do for a long time now but have been putting off for one reason or another.

It is definitely a promising start. Hopefully we will be as good at completing or keeping up with the others.

After taking almost a month long hiatus, I am back to blogging.  December was quite a jam packed month, so I could never quite find the time to sit down and write.  Things seem to be a bit calmer now, so I am back.

With the beginning of a new year, it is inevitable that I have been thinking of “New Year’s Resolutions”.  However, I have decided to make goals for myself instead of resolutions this year.  What is the difference, you ask?  Goals are small measurable things that I can do to help fulfill a greater vision or a resolution.  So far I only have a few, but I think that is a good start.

1) Blog twice a week – this is something I have been neglecting.

2) Go to the gym twice a week – I really need to get back in shape.  If nothing else, I need to keep from gaining more weight and not being able to fit into my bride’s maid dress this May.

3) Start recycling at home – Matt and I are actually working on this one together so hopefully it will happen.  We need to start with the first sub-goal of calling and ordering recycling services.

4) Learn Javascript – This is a somewhat work related goal, but I definitely want to accomplish it.  It will definitely require some sub-goals to complete, but I know it is attainable.

If you are looking for something fun to do on Saturday or an alternative to Christmas shopping at the mall, head over to the Clear Creek Co-Op for their Annual Alternative Holiday Bazaar.

The festivities start at 9am and last until 5pm. There will be lots of local artisans, hot tea, and live music. I will be there selling the fabulous jewelry that Emily and I made.

Stop by, check things out, and buy some jewelry!

Wow!

With a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend just finished, I thought I would post some of the things I am thankful for:

• A great family (mine and Matt’s), who came all the way from Virginia to spend Thanksgiving with Matt and I
• A dog who doesn’t bark at my cat non-stop
• A job I love
• A husband who is a whiz in the kitchen among other things
• Two working vehicles
• An amazing group of friends

I love Halloween as much as the next guy, but I made a few observations this year, which were some what disturbing:

• Adults, mostly female, seem to mistake the day for “Dress Like a Hooker Day”
• Candy has become drastically over priced – $10 for a bag of 150 pieces are you kidding me!?!?!?!?!
• Kids don’t say trick or treat; they just stand there with an open bag
• Churches seem to think that a “sin” themed haunted house will scare you Christian
• And my favorite of all… trick or treat has a time limit…what happened to drive around until your parents flat out refuse to take you to any more houses?

I wanted to share a couple interesting items I saw on the web this past week. The first I was pointed to by Mark Stosberg:

Complaints Choir: Complains Choirs have swept eastern Europe and are now becoming popular in the USA & Canada. Essentially a group of people get together, form a choir, come up with a list of complaints and put them to music. There are numerous choirs across the globe but my favorite so far is the choir from Canada:

The second is from the Simpsons’ movie website, and it allows you to create your own Simpsons characters . I of course created Matt and I:

For once I am proud to write a post about a corporation that I think is actually trying to make a difference in our “beauty” obsessed culture. Dove has started a campaign to showcase real beautiful women and warn young girls of the dangers of having such a distorted view of what real beauty is.

They have many different facets to their campaign. Here are three that caught my eye:

1) The Dove Self-Esteem Fund
“The Dove Self-Esteem Fund was developed to help free the next generation from self-limiting beauty stereotypes. Committed to reaching 5 million young women by the end of 2010, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund invites you to play a role in supporting and promoting a wider definition of beauty.”

2) Real Women have real curves:
Six women, no professional models, from age 21 – 60 are the new bodies & faces for Dove. They appear in Dove’s new ads.

3) The Evolution Film:

The best part… their campaign website does not “pimp” their products!