Train Ride To Random: 2012

Monday, December 3, 2012

December 3, 2012 Going Viral With Taxes And Decorating

Okay!

How would you like to help me with a little project?

The project has to do with getting a couple of things to go viral with one being my profile page at Epinions and the other one being an opinion piece I wrote there about paying taxes.

Let's start with my Epinions profile page.

Here are my stats--not sure whether or not they are unique hits (as they are with my counter), but it's doubtful--since joining Epinions in June of 2000:

Activity Summary

Reviews Written: 296

Member Visits: 20,584

Total Visits: 96,783

Due to other parts of my life (both positive and negative) getting in the way, I haven't been as active there as I once was, but I've still been writing there on various occasions and plan to be doing quite a bit more of it in the time to come.

It seems as if quite a few of us are starting to become more active there again.

While I don't know if it will ever be as lively there as it once was (though who can tell), I believe that it's still great and will be getting even greater as time goes by.

Not long ago, I put a new counter on my profile page, and it's now (as of Monday night, December 3, 2012) up to 2240 unique hits!

Of course, I'd love to see that number keep continuing to grow in size.

It's the Christmas season now, and it's just not enough to decorate my profile page a single time.

Instead, I'll be changing it more frequently than I usually do clear through January 7 of 2013.

This year, decorating online will, likely, be the extent of my decorating.

Hopefully, Christmas of 2013 will find both my mom and me back to our usual decorating activities.

One thing that will have changed is that we'll be housemates instead of neighbors when Christmas rolls around again in 2013.

We're both really looking forward to this!

When you read this blog-entry, I hope you'll share it with at least some of your friends in order to help my Epinions profile page and my opinion piece about taxes (not to mention other writings I've done there over the years and those I'm yet to write) to become more widely read.

If anyone reading this just happens to think that my tax piece makes at least some sense, please share it with our lawmakers on The Hill as well as with other elected officials, etc. living close to you.

So here are links to them:

Epinions Profile Page
http://www.epinions.com/user-ainsleyjo

Dear Don (Or To Whom It May Concern), Please Hold Me To This Promise...http://www.epinions.com/content_5683060868

On this note, I'm going to sign off and start sharing this here and there...

glitter-graphics.com

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Autumn Prompts 2012

glitter-graphics.com

It's now Thanksgiving Week of 2012, and I can't believe how quickly this year has gone by!

Already, it is in the early stages of Tuesday, November 20 while I'm writing this.

A new group has just formed over at Writing.com, and I was invited to be a part of it.

It's called Blogging Circle Of Friends, and it's loaded with all sorts of activities to encourage both writing (your own) and reading (others) blogs.

The blog I've chosen to use for this is called Begun On Birch Bayh's 81st. Birthday.

Why is there a period following 81st?

For no other reason other than I must have been tired when I created the blog and thought for a moment that I was writing the abbreviation of street.

What can I say!?!

I launched it on January 22, 2009, and

(1) I had just turned 56 a little over a month before, so I guess that would have made me eligible to be entitled to have a few senior moments here and there.

(2) Even when I was younger, I could be a little scatterbrained at times.

(3) Finally, I was (still unaware of this) dealing with MRSA (or, at least, the broken skin that would lead to this) and would be ending up in the hospital a little over four months later. It would be then that I would be officially diagnosed with lymphedema. This is a story in and of itself...

I was in the hospital for a little over a week and, then, spent several months in therapy (first, in-home, and, then, outpatient).

For those who don't know, lymphedema is an incurable-but-manageable condition that is about some of my lymph nodes being compromised.

In my case, it mostly affects my legs and feet, even though my entire body is considered to be involved in one way or another.

Click here and here to find out more about lymphedema.

A lot of things started going on over the past few years that have distracted me from some of the regular writing that I've done in the past.

Don't get me wrong...

I still write.

I definitely still write!!!

In fact, I've been, among other things, working on a book.

However, I've had to spend a lot of energy on so many things in so many directions that I have to limit myself in how many places I can be at once or I'll end up wearing myself out and doing nothing well.

One project on which I've been working is finding ways to become more organized online to the place that it's more easy to get from one place to another--meaning that I can get around to do more.

This is ongoing...

But let's cut to the chase for now.

One thing that Blogging Circle Of Friends (created and led by a really neat person named Cindy) is doing is offering daily prompts to inspire bloggers to write on a given topic in their blogs.

As of this time (wee hours of 11/20/12), I finished and posted my first one (for 11/19/12)right before the midnight deadline when the 19th became the 20th.

It has already been well-received, and I felt as if I had ended up sharing something people needed to read, internalize, and, hopefully, further share.

Anyway, I'm going to start providing links to all of the entries I make in my blog during the remainder of the autumn of 2012 (prompts and otherwise). Then, it will be time to create a new page for the winter of 2012-2013.

For the prompt-inspired, I'll be making the hyperlinks to them show the date of each one and what is given as a prompt. For other entries, I'll be making the hyperlinks out of their titles.

Okay! Here we go...

November 19, 2012:What advice or words of wisdom would you like to leave for those who come after you?

November 20, 2012:The topic is skydiving. Would you do it? Or have you done it?

December 3, 2012: What is your greatest regret? You cannot change the past, but if you could, what would you do differently?

Next entry will go here...

Don't be a stranger! Please keep returning!

(Winter will be here soon, so stay tuned...)

----------------------------------------------

glitter-graphics.com

Monday, November 12, 2012

!!!!!!!Cute Critters Galore!!!!!!!

Got these in an e-mail today from Sharen and just simply couldn't resist sharing them!

First there was this adorable baby dolphin who ended up meeting this baby penguin...

Then, there was a firefighter giving a kitten oxygen...

After that came a baby owl, a turtle the size of a grape, an embarrassed walrus, a cat with a permanent top hat, a pug with pug slippers, a baby hedgehog taking a bubble bath, and an otter showing you its baby...

Then came the story of two dogs and their very special friendship complete with wonderful pictures...

Lily is a Great Dane that has been blind since a bizarre medical condition required that she have

Both eyes removed. For the last 5 years, Madison, another Great Dane, has been her sight.

The two are, of course, inseparable.

Finally, here are a few other pics that were included in the e-mail "just because."

I hope you were blessed and warmed by this message.

Remember:

"People will forget what you said; People will forget what you did.

But people will never forget how you made them feel."

The angels we have been waiting for are already here.

Table Of Contents (Page One)

glitter-graphics.com

Welcome to the Table Of Contents for Train Ride To Random, which can be found just below this introduction.

You will still be able to find the regular Blog Archive at the bottom of any of the pages here, but this is just one way of finding entries and opening them up in one or more separate windows without leaving your original page(s) behind.

Each page of this TOC will contain 25 hyperlinks. Once 25 have been entered on this page, there will be a new page of 25 more places for linking to blog-entries, and so-on and so-forth.

Hopefully, I have made navigation a bit easier for you without insulting your intelligence. Not trying to insult your intelligence--just trying to make it easy for me and thought you might like it that way, too!

Happy Reading/Viewing!!!

Monday, October 15, 2012:

My Last Epinions Profile Page For September

Monday, November 12, 2012: