Who wants to hear about my cat?!

So once again, I'm trying a new blog design. I think it's looking more or less okay for now. My technological ability is fairly limited so unfortunately none of my blog visitors will be treated to any fancy-shmancy layouts or gadgets here. My one concern is this font I'm using for my posts. I feel like it looks far more serious than anything I'll actually ever be saying.

I have been pondering ways to spice up my blog a lot lately. Probably the best way to start would be to actually write posts on more than a monthly basis... I hear that really helps bring in the crowds.

I've been considering whether I'd be able to pull off a "themed" sort of a blog, but that poses a couple of problems. First, I have to come up with a theme. That would involve me knowing a fair amount about a certain topic, or having a hobby I can showcase on here. That really narrows down my list of options. Let's see... I could write about my cat, who I spend quite a bit of time with but doesn't really do much that anyone other than me, my boyfriend, and my mom would be interested in hearing about. Then there's women's rights, but I don't know what kind of an audience that would bring in, and my current readers (AKA my family and friends) already get stuck listening to me preach about that topic quite a bit in real life. So that leaves... books. I know a lot of books and I spend a lot of time reading. But there's still the problem of my thinking of things I can write about related to that topic. It's bad enough that I can't think of things to write about for my hodge-podge of a blog that I'm running right now. Looks like maybe a theme wouldn't work out so well for me. The title of the post alone will probably mean I only get 5 hits on this post tops.

You know what I should probably write about? Crop shirts. I did a post about them a while ago and it's still the number one google search that brings people to my blog. Those poor suckers. They are probably some young fashionistas looking for some stylish crop t-shirts online and instead their search brings them to my blog post where I basically rip up the whole idea of the things.

Well, looks like I'll have to ponder this some more and try to ramp up the interest level of my little blog somehow. Maybe I should just write about my daily life and hope that people actually find it more entertaining than it actually is. That's what everyone does on Facebook, at least.

Sports analogies are hard.

So just as a continued update from my last couple of posts... I totally scored a hat trick. Except it in no way involved anything remotely athletic. Finished all three books in a series in three consecutive days. One book per day. Pretty nice, I'd say. Except that whipping through books like I do ends up costing me quite a chunk of cash. The good news is that I'm now onto reading a book that a co-worker lent me, so that's free plus it's a bit of a thicker and in-depth read so it might take me a little bit longer to finish. Unless the story is really good... then maybe I'll have read four books in four days by this time tomorrow. What sports term means four in a row? I have no idea... sports are obviously not what I'm best at, which might be obvious considering that this is probably the first and only time I have mentioned anything sports related in this blog. Anyway, it hardly matters. It's another dreary day in the neighbourhood so off I go to pursue my usual challenging work day of interneting and reading novels.

Nerd Alert!

* Okay so just as a note, I began writing this post on a Tuesday and am now finishing it on a Wednesday. If there's any disconnect, that's why.

I am such a bookworm. Between waiting for three hours for my car to get fixed yesterday and an extremely slow work day today, I've officially finished two books in two days. It'll probably be a hat trick by 4:30pm tomorrow.

This prompted me to think about how much I love reading and learning. I'm not really one of those people who loves to read anything with words... some things I find uninteresting or I just hate learning it. Like math. I can be good at it if I try... and it can be useful... but I so hate to do it. English is my cup of tea though. I used to literally get excited for my English exams in high school. Couldn't wait to challenge my creativity and skills. I kind of miss getting to take English courses. My college program had Writing Skills but it wasn't quite the same. I am wondering if Nursing requires any kind of English course... seems like probably not... more like Writing Skills again I suspect. Report writing... snore.

Another thing I am slightly (aka massively) OCD about is grammar and spelling. I sit on the board for a local non-profit, and at our last meeting I had a whole bunch of corrections to mention about a letter that had been sent around for us to proofread. We had a little debate about the use of a word, and the librarian who had written the letter (along with some other board members) thought that he was right in his usage. I disagreed. Even so, he said that he was glad to see a young person take an interest, because he generally feels concerned about the younger generation and their awareness of proper grammar these days. So anyway, a few days later we all get this email from him saying that I had been correct after all. Moral of this story? I win. And I rock at editing. ;)

All that being said... please don't judge my grammar or writing abilities based on these blog posts LOL. Mostly I just throw these together when I'm bored, so I really care a lot less about how they turn out.

Sometimes I wonder if I would have liked to work towards becoming an editor of some kind. I think I'd prefer doing that over writing my own pieces. Or maybe both, I don't know really. I can see myself enjoying proofreading and editing newspaper or magazines articles, or maybe books. Who knows... I could still wind up doing it... I seem to have a long career as a professional student left ahead of me...

Exercise & Talents (The two are not related...)

Good god... now I remember why getting in shape is so daunting. I went for a lovely long bike ride yesterday (with an ice cream stop about half-way) and felt super! I'm so fit and active! Go me, hurrah! ...Fast forward to about five hours later... pure agony. Couldn't walk... or sit... or even lay down, really. But, do not depair loyal blog readers! I plan to get back out sometime this week and do it all again. I am really going to try to commit this time... no, seriously, I am.

Enough about exercise though, I'm getting tired just thinking about it. Let's talk about talents for a few minutes here. My mother and I had a discussion about this a few days ago while I was demonstrating one of my talents for her. Do I have a lot of them? No. Sadly, I was not granted the musical, athletic, or genius genes. I think I got some extra "shortie" genes and not enough of the others. Bummer for me. Alas, I do have a few talents in which I take some pride. Are they useful or money-making in any way? Not so much. My main talents are: Baking, reading, spelling, and hula-hooping. I'm also pretty OCD which gives me good organizational skills. Now, try not to get too down because you don't have these superior talents yourself. I'm sure that you as an individual have many of your own talents... and I would love to hear about them! We as humans often tend to sell ourselves short on our true abilities (after all, I didn't even mention wiggling my ears as one of my talents). I wonder if this is connected to the fact that people are often sparse with their compliments towards others? Seems like a potential cycle... people do not realize they have real talent because others do not acknowledge it... then the green eyed monster prevents us from acknowledging others achievements, because we as individuals feel that we have few talents ourselves. Just some thoughts from Jessica-land...

How old is too old...?