Mishmash Musings

I don’t keep in touch with very many people from high school or college, but I do occasionally hear things about old classmates from time to time. In the past couple of days, I heard some terrible news: two former high school classmates passed away recently. One was suffering from bipolar disorder and deliberately jumped from a moving vehicle, while the other suffered fatal complications during childbirth.

Even though I didn’t know either of these classmates very well when we were in school together and even though I never kept in touch with them, the news of their deaths has shaken me quite a bit. I know things like this are bound to happen, but still… it’s kind of strange to be at that age where deaths, terminal illnesses, and other tragedies start to strike. I guess it’s even more jolting because when I last saw these people, we were 18 and ready to take on the world.

So much can change in 15 years that it feels like high school was a lifetime ago.

RIP, fellow Huskies.

Because I stay up late (11:30pm) and wake up early (5:30am) every day, I usually take a 2 or 3-hour nap during the day to help catch up on my sleep. What happens is I’ll wake up, do some blogging, check emails, and go through my Google feed reader, then log off for a while to get my husband off to work and my son off to school. I then come back home, do the bulk of my writing, go pick my son up again, and fix lunch for both of us. After that, my son generally drops off to sleep, which is when I curl up again as well.

But I’m now trying to go to bed earlier (10:30pm) and wake up a bit later (6:00am) to see if I can eliminate my nap altogether. I think I could get a lot more done during the day if I work through the time my son is sleeping, and I’ll also be able to fit in more playtime with him as well.

I’ve been doing this for about a week now with some success. It’s hard to get out of a napping habit that I’ve had for years and years, but I’m starting to get the hang of it!

I’ve been getting headaches almost daily for the last two weeks. They’re not full-fledged migraines or anything like that, so I don’t think this is anything I should be overly concerned about. But still… it would be nice to know what’s causing them! I’ve been trying to regulate my caffeine intake and sleeping habits, and that has helped a bit. Nevertheless, I would just rather have this problem go away altogether.

I usually take ibuprofen for my headaches, but have been reading some alarming stories about how this drug can cause stomach ulcers after prolonged use. That’s the last thing I need to addto my list of health ailments, so I’m now looking for an alternative headache treatment. I want something effective (relief within 30 minutes would be great) and safe to use on a daily basis, if necessary.

Do you know of any products that fit this bill? What do you recommend for minor headaches?

If you have a blog, then chances are you’ve embedded a YouTube video in a post at some point. I used to do this quite a bit, but haven’t been to YouTube in a while since I’m trying to cut down on the amount of time I waste while online.

Anyway, I was over there earlier today and noticed that you can now customize the way a video looks when you embed it. These are just really simple tweaks, like adding a border, changing the default player color, or including related links, but they do make for a better looking result.

Take a look and try it out for yourself!

I used to be very interested in politics when I was in high school, but became pretty disillusioned with the whole scene during college. Since then, I haven’t paid much attention to local and state elections, and just barely keep abreast with what’s happening in national elections.

But one thing I have always enjoyed about campaign season is getting free products from the various candidates. I live in a suburb of Chicago, so during national election years there are always a bunch of rallies within driving distance. I sometimes go to these functions with friends, and end up coming home with everything from t-shirts to buttons, bumper stickers, keychains, and promotional pens. I’ve already gotten a bunch of swag this year, and the Presidential campaigns haven’t even really heated up yet!

I don’t care whose name is on this stuff. I’m not picky when it comes to freebies!

I just read an AP article that said a hardcover signed 1st edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone sold for over $40,000 at a recent auction. Are you kidding me? That book was published in 1997 — just 10 years ago! And it’s already “worth” $40,000? Good lord.

I guess the person who bought it is viewing it as an investment. I mean, I’m sure the book will be worth much more than that, say, 25 years from now. But still…. I had to do a double-take when I saw the incredible sum paid for a 10-year-old book!

J.K. Rowling sure hit the jackpot with her idea of a boy wizard, didn’t she? Over 400 million copies sold worldwide — wow!!!

As I mentioned a couple days ago, my husband and I have a dream of building our own home someday. We want to buy a couple acres of land in a warm state, hire an architect to put our ideas down on paper, and then get a contractor to build a house we can settle down in.

Even though this dream is still years away, we’re already keeping an eye out for nice properties. Whenever we see land for sale in California, Arizona, or Nevada, we take some time to consider whether or not the property would be a good fit for us. We’ve even made a couple of phone calls to follow-up on parcels that looked like very good deals, but so far we haven’t actually made a purchase yet.

We’ll keep looking though, because we’re excited about making our dreams come true!

After being away from the Internet all weekend, I am still trying to catch up on some of the news stories that broke the last few days. For example, what’s up with illusionist David Copperfield? I read that he had his warehouse raided by the FBI, and that agents confiscated something like $2 million in cash.

First of all, why would anyone need to keep $2 million in cash in a friggin’ warehouse? If he needed the cash readily available, why not stash it on his estate or something? A warehouse hardly sounds secure, know what I mean?

Second, what exactly is the charge against Copperfield? I didn’t follow this story from the beginning, and the current articles I’m reading assume that people already know the basics. The only thing I’ve been able to glean from the articles is that Copperfield allegedly “forced himself” on a woman. What does that mean? Attempted rape? Rape? And why is the FBI involved in something like this?

It all seems very strange to me. I hope some answers come out in the next few days or so…

I read an interesting article last week about how the current mortgage crisis shows that families simply don’t feel the same way about their homes as they used to. The author wrote that in the past, people would fight tooth and nail to preserve their homes, doing anything to avoid bankruptcy or foreclosure.

But these days, it seems that people don’t form that sort of attachment to their residences anymore, which is one of the main reasons that they’re letting their mortgage payments lapse and don’t care when the banks move in to repossess the property.

I completely agree with what the writer’s viewpoint in that article. A few of my friends are actually like that, and one of them knows foreclosure is imminent. I can’t imagine living that way (especially when kids are involved), but thee you go.

I would love nothing more than to have a home that my family could settle into for a couple of decades. Right now we’re just in a townhouse, but are saving up for a nice single-family home somewhere. Once we get that, we’re going to stay put (at least until we retire) and we’ll do what we can to make sure the home remains in our family. For instance, we’ll purchase mortgage life insurance in the event that one of us dies early and we’ll make sure that we always have at least six months worth of salary saved up for emergency payments.

I’m not saying these things are a guarantee against foreclosure, but they’re certainly better than going down without a fight!

We had to go away unexpectedly this weekend, so that really got me off track as far as my writing and blogging projects go. I’m way behind now and will have to work at least 5-6 hours per day this week in order to meet all of my obligations.

That probably doesn’t sound like a lot to those of you who have regular jobs, but that’s double the time that I usually put in.

Oh, well, enough complaining. Time to get some work done!

I have a stats program installed on this blog, and one of the things it does is tell me which keywords people used to get here through search engines. I love checking out what people are searching for, especially when it comes to my blog.

As you might expect, there have been some really outlandish searches (which I should really start jotting down so I can reprint them here). For some strange reason, a lot of the funny ones involve the term colon cleanse, with people apparently wanting to know what ordinary household products you can and can’t use to cleanse your colon.

You know, if I were going to do something as sensitive as that, I’d just as soon stick to products that are made for that purpose!

I know this is going to seem strange to a lot of people, but I’ve never seen a single episode of The Daily Show. A lot of my friends love the show (and host Jon Stewart), but I’ve never really been into that sort of thing.

But that might change now that The Daily Show has gone online. I just read today that the show has its own website, which is completely separate from the Comedy Central website. The best part of the new Daily Show site is that if features clips from all the shows that have aired since 1999 when Stewart took over as host.

That sounds pretty cool, so I’m going to head over there right now to start watching. Maybe getting a taste of the show through these clips will turn me into a regular viewer!