Making this blog work!

Too many blogger template choices these days, and as the years keep passing, what people can now do with blogger compared to those early years…..why, I remember when you got the bare bones basics with blogger.  Then I learned enough html to be able to add to my blogger html template.  I thought I was doing pretty great, until the ‘feeds’ came along.  I couldn’t quite figure out how to make that work for me too well. 

Blogger then went into Beta and changed some things around, and the html templates didn’t work as well.  Blogger then offered updated user-friendly layouts, and keeps adding some competitive new features that helps bloggers keep up with being 'cool’. 

You know back in the days when I was at least on the computer technology curve, sometimes even ahead of the curve – as a user, not a techhie – I thought it was way cool.  As the years have passed, the technology has become absolutely amazing, and a whole new generation is being raised with computers, I know I’m no computer whiz.   So, with that, I’m glad that blogger technology along with those creative people out there who like to make lively, fun new templates has made it easier for me to give my blogs a periodic update with a whole new look.

Consequently, I have changed most all of my blogs several times by now, using the blogger features as they have upgraded over the years, using cool new templates as they have evolved over the years – primarily thanks to creative people who just weren’t satisfied with the limited choices of blogger templates.

So, in line with updating all my other blogs, this blog, Bundelz, is getting an overhaul now.   When I put this blog together a ways back, I had intended to try to blend and integrate various aspects of my life, and thought I could do it with this blog, or at least compile a list of all my different blogs and websites in one place.  I wasn’t altogether successful.    But maybe I can give this blog some attention again, now that I’ve dressed it up anew.

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No Impact Man blog - urban New York family experiment - one year of no impact

Well good for him and his wife and their small child. He decided to put into action and action plan to reduce his family impact on the environment - in the urban setting of New York city. Instead of mouthing all the assortment of platitudes, he decided to make a committment, reduce their environmental footpring and is blogging about it.

While I self congratulate on the efforts we have made in our family towards reductionism, No Impact Man takes it further. I'll be following along with his blog and maybe commenting from time to time. It's not easy to make so dramatic a change so suddenly, so it sounds like his blogging will serve as a kind of 'how to tutorial'.

We moved away from urban setting/city to try to find more meaning in our daily lives by going backwards in time. And we did so before it was 'popular' to be environmentally conscious about the effects of global warming. We were doing fairly well with what was then termed 'intentional,meaningful, simple living'.

Then Sept 2001, then President Bush decided to invade and occupy Iraq. Two members of our family found themselves in Iraq. One was already military, the other enlisted after 9/11. We hadn't been a military family for decades, since we were in our 20s during Vietnam war and now here we were again a 'military family'. After a bit of internal ambiguity, I decided to become a military family speaking out borrowing from my own life experience as a young military wife during Vietnam war, and as what is affectionately termed a 'military brat' being raised as a child on military bases.

I threw myself into this new arena (for me) of activism, in earnest hope that with enough voices, enough counter energy, surely Americans would not want to support the creation of another Vietnam type situation. I gave it all up to trying to be among the contributors to end this war in Iraq the first year, the second year, the third year, the fourth year. Now as we move into the fifth year, I find I can not keep up that level of intensity and want to put some other of my life elements back into balance. Returning to some of the philosophies of our intentional lifestyle, I find they are now repackaged with new labels as a result of the buzz around 'global warming'.

Good, great, and I'm down with that since the more concerned citizens taking action steps towards another kind of counter revolution the better. A different kind of activism! I already have blogging outlets for my thoughtful reflections and opinions about how this Administration is managing the war in Iraq, so I don't need this blog as a pulpit or venue for expressing those concerns. Along the way of my journey these past four years into activism, I've also been exposed to and learned a great deal about environment, intentional corporatism, and the grotesqueness of full blown consumerism as thieves in the night taking from people's lives their very consciousness of meaningful living.

So Mr. No Impact Man, it's great to have run across your blog today and thank you and your family for what you are doing.

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Tying it all together

I've been blogging for about 3 years now, learning some of the ins and outs as blogging has grown in popularity, along with more sophisticated formatting. For clarity, I'm a blogger user - using others' formatting and designs. I've played around with templates, learned more about html and css and so on and so on. Somehow along the way, I managed to create themed blogs that rather compartmentalized aspects of my life as separate one from the other.

You'd think I wouldn't have come to have ownership over some of the blogs I created that are really more stubs of intention than fully grown blogs. Yet each does speak to an aspect of my life and I continue to be reluctant to let go of them or delete them. Perhaps with this blog, I can tie the elements together to create a more full album of the many aspects of my life.

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My online Neo Pets = My many, many blogs, feed me, feed me.

Wow, been feeding all my other blogs, and overlooking this one. Well ya know, if the President would just shape up, I wouldn't be so busy with all the other blogs. Enough about that, see my other blogs for stuff like that. Here is where I try to post family stuff. Which is not to say that the war deeply affects our family, but once in a while, I gotta take a light break.....it's such serious business, the war, the troops, Iraq, our country.

So Lance, the cat, has made himself at home, is doing real well, adapting well and has rather taken charge of the house. Now Jake, on the other hand, is just still pouting over the whole business. We put a pillow and the food dish for Lance on top of the freezer on the porch. He likes that cause he jumps up there and can lord it over Jake, who looks at me with those sad eyes and an expression of "Why, Why, why me, what did I ever do to you?".

When I take ol' Jakers for a walk or better yet a drive, he is all excited once again and knows I love him best. Lance doesn't seem to know though, that Jake comes first, he thinks he comes first. Now Lance follows me around everywhere, including when I walk Jake...what kind of cat follows you around like a dog does? But no car rides for Lance. That is special only for Jakers.

Our small village entertainment: We threw old bread out for the birds, well, okay, the crows then. There are a lot of crows that live around here and they won't let the smaller birds get to the bread. We threw out three loaves, not torn up. So Jake goes over and sniffs them and decides they are not edible for him. But he somehow thinks they are his, so he sits down in the road and stands guard. The crows won't come down with Jake sitting right there. We are watching out the windows, and it's getting pretty amusing as Jake takes his job of guarding the bread loaves very seriously, it seems.

Along come some of the other dogs that live on our street, sniff the bread and decide it's not for them either, and walk off. Jake continues guarding the loaves. The crows hover all around but won't fly down to snatch the bread. After a while, another stranger dog (means doesn't live around here) came along, sniffed the bread, decided it was for him and picked it up in his mouth and walked off with it. Well Jake is seriously offended and puzzled and looks at the stranger dog and then back at the loaves and is confused about what to do. If he leaves his guard spot the crows will fly down, but he also wants to retreive the bread loaf from the stranger dog.

In his confusion, he decides to get up and go after the stranger dog, and the crows start circling downward. The stranger dog drops the loaf about 50 feet down the road, decides he doesn't want it after all. Jake, meanwhile has drifted over to the neighbor's place across the street as one of them has come out of the building and Jake knows they give him real and fun food treats. While he is over there begging for a goodie, the crows then spot the loaf the stranger dog dropped and see that Jake is occupied, so they swoop down and start having a feast. We are watching out the windows, laughing and being thoroughly entertained, wondering what Jake will do when he turns around and sees the crows are at the bread loaf.

Sure enough, Jake turns, sees the crows, dashes after them and chases them off, picks up the bread loaf and isn't sure what to do with it. He wanders back to the other two loaves, wanders back to the neighbors with the loaf in his mouth, wanders back home, just carrying that loaf of bread and not sure what to do with it. He decides then, that the best thing to do is to bury it. So he digs a hole and buries one loaf. Meanwhile the other two loaves are sitting on the road and the crows are still hovering, waiting. We are by this time laughing as we watch from the windows as this drama of nature unfolds. Lance has taken an interest by now and has been running from window to window trying to keep up with the birds.

It had all the markings of being a long afternoon's entertainment for us dull, boring people in our dull, boring village. The neighbors decided to take a walk, and Jake usually accompanies them, so he was delighted to go for a walk, and after all that careful sentry work guarding the bread loaves from the crows, he just walked off as if it never happened, and the crows then were free to feast. But no, two more stranger dogs came along, sniffed and decided to eat the two remaining loaves which they proceeded to do in short order, leaving nothing for the crows.

And that is life in the Village.

Now, about me and my blogs. I have, let's see now, 8 blogs at blogger, and 6 blogs here at blog-drive, 1 blog at live journal, 1 blog at blog city, another blog at bloglines, another at msn spaces, so that is 18 blogs. Plus I have also a few websites that I have built. And I have a list of about 6 more places where I could build other blogs. So ...... that is tooo many blogs, for sure, and I have to feed them all. That is why I call them my online neopets, cause I have to feed them and some get fed every day and some don't get fed for weeks at a time and lately, some don't get fed at all.

Lastly, let me recommend 2 movies for ya to watch. 1) Open Waters, it's an independent film and very unusual...different and we enjoyed watching it. 2) The Village, M. Night Shymalan which we enjoyed watching this one because the ending surprised us and it's nice to be surprised. There wasn't much in the way of clues along the movie to tell us what to expect for the ending, which is why it was a surprise. We liked it. Now, if you watch these two movies, let me know what you think, ok?

Till next time.............this is Gram offering up a gem.......

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Catching Up on Cold Winter evening

I'm wiped out. Where did I leave off, oh yeah, New Year's. Well let's see, since Sweetie has his new computer, we are happily engaged now in our mutual hobby, him online with his puter and me online with mine. Now I've got him thoroughly addicted to blogging and he's making em left and right.

Joy is blogging now too, so got several in the family blogging away. I have done change-overs to many of my older blogs, and I like what is happening. Dying to Preserve the Lies has a new template, that I installed! I was so pleased with that I made another brand new blog, installed my own template and liked it too. It's called Back in The Day, Everything 1950's and 1960's.

Then I worked over another old blog, used a lot of new tricks on it and am liking it too. But aside from some major workshop activities on blogs, we installed the Mozilla modem and so I was having to adjust some to how it works. We both reallly like how it works, and then I talked Lica into using it on her puter too. I think she likes it, but I haven't heard back from her. It's the tabs, you can open so many pages simultaneously!

So then I started getting the extensions, and got bloglines. It stores up the rss feeds so you can be in one place and read blogs, news, just about anything all in one place on your bloglines. We also got G-mail so was adjusting to that new email and sharing the invites around. Then I installed the companion email to Mozilla, which is Thunderbird and liking it well enough to make it my primary email instead of Outlook Express.

We aren't using then Internet Explorer or Outlook now, but keeping them both installed. So it's been a whole new computer landscape while I've adjusted to all the new goodies. Now I'm here back at blog-drive and it looks like they've changed the environment. I'll be catching up with all the blogs I made at blog-drive, but not for a bit, I'm tired.

Oh, and then there is the discussion board I made, and it's been sitting there not doing anything, but I talked to Randa in chat today and got her in there, she'll probably get something going with it in Teenz and Poetry. Next I have to go back to all my thousands of blogs (I exaggerate, but there are like 20 or more) and tie them all together. Oh, and yeah, I was also working on a new website too, so will have to link all these pieces up into one large networking.

It's like having a lot of children, and they each need different attention. Guess it's a Lietta version of neo-pets. Lance insists on jumping up in my lap while I'm online, so it's Lance, me and the keyboard and Sweetie across the way happily engaged in his online entertainments.

Drop in the temperature here, so it's chilly, downright cold, but I'm not complaining, cause Lica tells me it's like in the teens where they are, and that's frigid. Then there is is Sis in Utah and I'm sure it's cold there, not sure what kind of temperatures they get there, but colder than here.
Okay, enough for now, got to keep up this blog, been neglecting it.

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Holiday Slideshow instead of Holiday Letter or Card

Tx to Bree, I found this great new blog n slideshow space today. So I spent the entire day creating a Holiday slideshow of our life, family and friends out here in the Village on the Bay where we live. It was a pleasure to build it and a very user-friendly site. I know I already sent out emails to share it with family, and just once more here is the url to go visit the slideshow with now 246 pics in it. Just click on the link below.

Village View

Once you see the Holiday Greeting slideshow from the Ruger's, I'm sure you will want one of your own and I'd love to hear about it if you make one. To see Bree's, as she has included some great family pics in hers, click on link below.

Gurlz Wanna Have Fun

Gonna keep this short, have been painting again, and have done 4 in the last week. Feels good to be painting again after this long dry spell where I focused on election and after election heartbreak. I've worked in the blogger communities now for 6 weeks since election trying to help move along the vote fraud information. But you all know that already.

Sweetie has a better computer than I do, with a bigger screen and it downloads the digital pic card, and now he has the vibrating computer chair. Oh sure, he never checked out why the vibrating chair stopped working and then I give it to him and he makes it work again. I want it back! So he's over there now in his corner working on his own computer with all his projects and we don't have the tv turned on, we have the relaxing Souncscapes music playing which is always nice to have as background when working on the puter.

Tomorrow I need to get some stuff done around the house and have a nice welcome for Lisa's family...they are making the long trip to come spend a day or two with us and I want to make them feel welcome

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