Thanks to all of you out there who reached out to me in various wonderful ways after I wrote my last post. I very much appreciate the comments, the shares of my post, the texts, the phone calls, the Facebook messages, and everything else. I have spent the last two days alternating between anger and exhaustion over the whole thing, yet I am still able to tell myself that this is a First World Problem, and that it will eventually work itself out. I don’t have any news yet. In this case, no news isn’t good news; it’s just no news. I have sent additional information to Feedburner and am…
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Plagiarized.
No, *I* didn’t do it. Someone else did. I found out today that someone grabbed my old Blogspot url, activated the feed, and copied and pasted six of my old posts (words AND pictures) there under the name Diana Reneina. The sidebar is full of text link ads. I am beyond annoyed about this. At first I was kicking myself for deleting the Blogspot url, figuring I should have kept it. Truth be told, though, anyone could post any of my stuff on any site. I found out that my old feed from my old url was showing up in Google Reader for those people who never physically unsubscribed to…
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Painting It Red
After talking about it for a year and a half, the time has finally come. We are FINALLY making preparations to paint J’s (D’s former) room. As in, we bought the paint. If his room were just any old traditional color, I wouldn’t be blogging about it. Some of you may recall, however, that the color has been an issue for some of us in the house (Jim) ever since we first applied it to the walls because of the anticipated amount of work it would eventually take to cover it. Let me refresh your memory: You can read the background story here. When D started college and J eventually…
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Screech!
That’s my blog you hear, screeching to a halt. Practically. This thing has been loading slower and slower a n d s l o w e r over the past couple of weeks. I’m not sure how many of you have had problems with it but I can tell you that I, more than once, have nearly been driven to throw my laptop against the wall. My active imagination told me that my blog was overloaded with tasks on its to-do list, much like me. I imagined that Suburban Scrawl, like Melisa, tends to–oddly enough–get slower when overloaded. It was a good theory. Then I decided that it had given…
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When The Few Ruin It For The Masses
When D left for college for the first time in September 2010, we were wide-eyed parents, navigating the parent end of secondary education in the best way we could. Like anything, there were little surprises here and there (nothing we couldn’t handle: don’t worry, all of you with younger kids!). One of those little surprises was the occasional appearance on our monthly college invoice of small charges: $1.50 here, $1.10 there…I had no idea what was going on. Was it a charge to fix the cable? Did they charge us to change a lightbulb in the dorm? No clue. Rightfully wanting to know what we were paying for, I made…
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Let The To Do List-ing Begin!
After yesterday’s announcement, I was pretty keyed up and had the absolute worst night of sleep in recent memory. It took me two hours to fall asleep in bed because I was thinkingthinkingthinking, and I was wide awake again after about two hours because I was thinkingthinkingthinking. I came downstairs at about 3:30 a.m., turned on the television and opened the ole’ laptop. I worked on a post, checked emails, and scrolled Facebook–but not for long because my friends were all sleeping at the time and there were few updates posted since I had gone to bed earlier. I finally went back to sleep on the couch and got about…
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Another Example Of How Time Flies, For Your Reading Enjoyment
Today J and I officially begin the in-person part of his college search by taking our first campus tour. (That’s not the example of how time flies.) (Well, it’s ONE example, but not the one referenced in the title. Wait for it.) We are starting in hyper-local fashion, by touring a small, private college located in our own town, one that I toured twice with D. J’s new Admissions Advisor at the college happens to be an alumna there. As it happens, she worked at the front desk of the health club where I was also employed, when she was a student of this college herself. She used to wave…
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It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
I stand with so many other people around this time of year who are annoyed with the stores, malls, and restaurants that begin their Christmas decorating (and sales) way too early. In fact, this year I saw so much red and green before Halloween I had to look at a calendar to check the date more than once. I don’t enjoy the barrage of Christmas music, in elevators, on the radio, in stores, everywhere. It’s partly because I’m Jewish, I suppose. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy a good Christmas tune–Mariah Carey’s recent take on “All I Want For Christmas Is You” is my modern favorite–it’s just that…
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With Apologies To My Future Daughters-In-Law And Grandchildren
It’s no secret that I am not a fan of the pomp and circumstance that comes with holidays. I have never much enjoyed decorating for holidays–I even wrote my fourth post on Suburban Scrawl EVER, about it–because it makes my house seem too cluttered. (I have enough problems being okay with our everyday clutter!) I don’t like holiday stress. I adore my family, but I don’t like the pressures of family togetherness and making “picture-perfect” memories just because it’s a certain day. With the exception of birthdays, which we love around here, I’d rather enjoy fun times being together on any old, “normal” day. Yes, I *do* realize this is…
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Getting Back On The Horse
After the traumatic morning I had on Sunday, I waited as long as I could to get gas in my car. In other words, I waited until I was thisclose to empty. I figured that it probably wouldn’t be smart to drive by the gas station on the way home without stopping, so I took a deep breath and turned in, parking myself at the pump on the far end. Seriously, I was nervous. The funny thing is, I’ve been pumping gas since I was sixteen: nearly twenty-seven A LOT of years now. It took that one moment… that one HORRIFYING, SCARY, EMBARRASSING moment …to screw it all up. It…