Domestic Geek

A long time ago, waaaaay back before I even had a blog, a coworker at the place of pizza employment was going through a divorce and had to get rid of his birds. I was told they were parakeets, so I agreed to take them in. Well, imagine my surprise that one of them was not a parakeet at all. After a bit of research, it turned out that one of them was a Peach-faced Lovebird — not only an expensive bird, but one that has quite a long life span. Marcus named it Kane after a popular WWF wrestler at the time that wore a red leather face mask (we later learned it was a girl when she laid eggs, but the name stuck). She's been in the original cage that I was given when I got her. Marcus and I both felt it was a little small for her, it was a pain in the butt to clean and the plastic bottom was actually cracked. We had planned on getting a new one, but circumstances and finances had never aligned right for us to get her a new home.

Now, I need to mention before I continue this story that I used to be quite the garbage queen, especially back in my pizza delivery days. Many a day I would come home with "treasure" that I had found in someone's trash and it would drive Marcus crazy, especially when it would sit around being more clutter. I promised him a few years ago that I would quit bringing home other people's trash.

About a month ago we were coming home from the store and as we turned the corner onto our street, there, perched upon the stuffed Hefty bags, sat a huge bird cage. I excitedly asked Marcus to pull over so I could get it. He said I wasn't going to take it and I begged for him to please stop the car. He gave in, and even though it was raining pretty steady, I got out and snagged it.

As per my procrastinating ways, it took a couple of weeks before I got around to cleaning it up (it was rather filthy from a parrot or something) and got it ready for her. It was missing the seed and water cups, so I found a suitable water dish and a couple of new wooden bars. While I was out getting those, I saw the same cage at PetSmart retailing for $119 (though the model originally came with a stand). Score! I was feeling quite happy that I had snagged it for free! Well, we got her all moved in and it took a few days for her to get accustomed to the new digs, but she seems quite happy now and her old cage has since ended up in the dumpster.

I couldn't believe that someone would just throw a cage they had obviously invested such a chunk of cash in, but I am so glad that they did.

I've decided to participate in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). All you have to do is post (a quality post) every day during the month of November — just the incentive I need to get out of my blogging slump.

In addition to being a cool month-long project, the NaBloPoMo site also has some great social networking functionality. I'm really looking forward to finding some new reads, especially since my friend Laura started a Colorado Bloggers group there. I love reading about areas I'm familiar with from other people's points of view.

Today I got my last $5 payment from paid blogging that I had pending. I have found nothing on any of the paid blogging services that I wanted to write about in the last 30 days. With Christmas coming, the timing of this couldn't be worse. I've tried not to care about PR and all of that other stuff, but this blog dropped from a 4 to a 2 this time and I was a little surprised that it made me a little sad. I joined that one paid blogging service briefly where you fit contextual links into your posts and I just couldn't do it. I can't write about subjects I have no interest in or can't support just for the $. Since their service is an all or nothing deal, I had to pass. Oh, well.

Marcus asked me today when I told him that my last payment had come if that meant I was done for good. No, I'll still do it if I can find acceptable topics at a worthwhile price, but that doesn't seem to be the case for now. I AM going to have to find another income source, though. My raise has helped a tiny bit, but the OT that everyone kept saying was coming has yet to materialize. If I want out of this mobile home park and back on the road to financial security, I need to make more money.

On the positive side, not writing paid posts has been a bit of a relief. In fact, staying off the Internet as much as possible has been a good thing. My kitchen is getting cleaner. I've watched a lot of movies that I got through Netflix. I've been getting more sleep (I wonder if the information overload from constant surfing or the searching for acceptable paid blogging topics was causing my insomnia). I'll admit that I feel a bit lost without the constant online stimuli. I have to retrain myself to be happy with a book or a walk. It is kind of frightening how addicting it is and how much time I've wasted mindlessly being online.

I'm sad but also relieved that the Vegas trip fell through. It was for a blogging conference and I haven't been into blogging much lately. I would've loved to have met some of the people going, but I'll meet them all one day if I'm meant to. The fact is that the timing of it was bad and I really don't have that kind of money to spend right now. When I do go to Vegas, I want to really enjoy the experience, not feeling guilty that I went and not having the funds to do the things I really want to do there.

Just a heads up that things are going to be wonky as I get my Pink October theme back up. Silly me thought I had backed up my theme right before I changed it for Blogathon, but I neglected to grab the style sheet. D'oh. Fortunately, I have a backup from last April, I just need to mesh the right hex color codes in. Be patient. I also promise this theme will not be here for the whole next year.

UPDATE: OK, we are officially PINK for October! The only problems remaining are those that I've always been too lazy to fix (like my comments sidebar). The whole purpose obviously is to bring awareness that October is National Breast Cancer month and to promote education about the disease itself. Head over to the Pink for October site for details and to sign up (once they fix the submission form). Of course, you can still go pink without signing up for the site.

It's hit me recently what I am finding so disturbing in the blogosphere right now. Most sites out there seem like clones of one another. Everybody, especially those doing paid blogging, are so wrapped up in all the sidebar crap and having all the social networking links on their posts and the tags and the rss feeds and somewhere along the line, something got lost...the blogger's personality. With the popularity and ease of use of platforms such as blogger and wordpress and the multitude of free themes available, it's rare that I see imaginative and creative designs about. I really hope this is a trend that doesn't continue.