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Archive for » September, 2011 «

Something Something Complete

Good gravy, I’ve been busy.

I wanted to make sure I had a volunteer gig set up for today, September 11. I remember what happened in 2001, and I also remember how people came out of the woodwork to help each other. I try to schedule something wherein I can give to my community. Today, that something was the suicide hotline; I (wo)manned a chatroom and talked to people who needed an empathetic ear, for a total of five hours. It’s something I do roughly once a month, and it’s not something I talk about often. Today, I heard from a few individuals who were very triggered by the date, and one in particular who had a sibling on one of the planes. Everyone was really cool.

After that, I left the house for a few hours with a task in mind; I was to meet up with a friend to acquire a car. The car has been acquired, it’s sitting in our parking spot, insured and all that good stuff. I haven’t driven a station wagon before but apparently I will now, hee.

Hubby spent the last couple of days dogsitting for a serviceman friend who had to go do army stuff for the weekend. Having sat in the friend’s house for a couple of days without A/C in sub-100°F heat, hubby was quite ready to get out of there for a bit. We went on a minor joyride to get him some edibles and me some noms. We then housesat together until our friend got home. We awayed with ourselves to home, soon after leaving once more to go to the store, because we could, and were way too gleeful about it. “Hey honey, I’ll go wait for you, out by THE CAR!” “THE CAR” was our exclamation for much of the day, giggling fiendishly at all the stuff we can now do with it.

I’m chomping at the bit to get more fabric and go nuts with sewy things, but I’m thinking it’ll be mildly prudent to sit on that and have gas money set aside for the week. Upon writing that, I realized that my roommate will likely have need for me and said car, so that will push the gas need up a bit.

Gosh, I cannot tell you how happy I am to be mobile again–Portland is a nice city but never being able to get out of its limits really gets to one. One longs very much to see the stars without city light pollution, for example.

The moonrises and sunrises have been dramatic lately–there aren’t any forest fires in the immediate area, but there are a few in the Cascade Range, creating a vague haze along treetops and hills. The satellite and the star are much redder. In fact, the other day, I was startled to see that the sunlight streaming through the blinds was shining on the walls a very vivid red.

So, I was using zingiber.us as my “business” website, but after considering it, (and I kept wanting to share my sewing tinkerings which are not at all business-like,) I decided to copy the few entries I had over to this domain, and make a blog out of it. Why? Because it was bugging me and now it’s not. Also, most of my usernames are identical to this URL, and why double-up on stuff like Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, and the like, if I could use the same thing for everything?–

I am sorry, I have had a very long day and my writing-themed brain cells went to sleep hours ago. I think I’m going to follow them to bed.

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Charitable Goings-On

I’ve been busy again!

Recently, I finished up a Facebook app for an organization for underprivileged kids in India. I was given two weeks to incorporate custom social media links to Twitter, Blogger, and a few other major websites, create badges for subscribers, and create a portal script through which the public, the fundraising organizations and major corporation representatives, and the Indian organization could communicate, share ideas, develop and participate in contests and fundraising campaigns. It was a really ambitious project and I wasn’t sure two weeks would be enough. Constant contact through Skype and Yahoo, and a little subcontracting on my part for the easiest, most time-consuming portions, and the project was completed just this morning.

I love my informal team, my cohorts are always willing to step up and help whenever I ask, especially on these unpaid ventures. We’re all professionals, some of whom work from home and some of whom are just connected to the internet seemingly 24/7 for professional purposes. Thanks, guys and gal!

Also on the volunteer front, I had a small influx of fresh photos and descriptions for animals to be listed on Petfinder. I’m usually told when an animal whose profile I developed has been adopted, if only to update the adoption status and depreciate the profile. Seven of the eleven animals, four cats, a puppy, and two birds, have new homes. Another two cats have promising leads; their fosters will let me know what comes of them.

I was looking at some of my other domain names, and wondered if I might make a personal blog out of one of them. I keep wanting to write about my offline crafting ventures and ideas, but I don’t really think zingiber.us is the right place to put those thoughts. There are a few entries that could be cross-posted to both blogs, but I’m thinking it will be a largely separate entity. I’m still brainfarting about that one.

Oh! I have a standing engagement to write weekly posts regarding another charitable company’s goings-on, copying the info on a few different social networks, for eleven weeks. They forward me their emailed conversations, so that I can glean some sort of overview of what’s going on, and try to encapsulate the weekly news tersely and accurately. It’s what I call “spinning“, wherein I flex my writerly muscles and summarize what the client wishes for me to convey to the public. As a subset of that, I’m in charge of @replying those who take the time to comment on the company. I’m wearing my social media manager hat for that.

I’ve been spending a few hours of each day off the computer, sewing of all things. My SO’s been listening to an audio book in the only room with good lighting; I’ve been considering listening to podcasts while I do my thing, so that I’m amused. It’s not that the audio book is boring, but I don’t want to listen to that every day. But enough about that non sequitor. I think about more projects I could be doing online, and I write them down if they seem especially important or attention-getting.

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