Online Spring Clean

Perhaps for the purpose of this post replace the word spring with 'social networking' and then it is more accurate.

Today is a public holiday for the local show in my area. So instead of doing something useful with my time, I spend the morning online. Well actually I was wasting time waiting for the real estate agent to do the routine inspection but there is half an hour to go before the deadline and she has not arrived.

This morning I decided to clean up some of the clutter on those addictive social networking sites I am a member off. Mostly MySpace and Facebook.

On MySpace I went through and deleted around 50 'friends' all of whom were either random strangers or bands trying to force their music onto unsuspecting individuals. My MySpace is down to about 130 friends now. A good start but do I even know 150 people? No, but I do like to have a few favourite bands on there too.

On Facebook I deleted about 50 unused or pointless applications from my page. They were mostly stupid things like 'When will you get married?' or "Armies" or "Send puppies". They seem fun at first then you realise they are just slowing down your page and wasting time. My page loads much faster now.

Isn't it crazy how in this modern era we have so much time to waste on websites such as facebook and myspace and how so much of our energy that could be used for something useful is instead spent spying on friends pages and playing silly games. But it is not like I can really whinge. I am just as guilty as everyone else!

Cute Email I Had To Share

Very few forwards actually appeal to me. Most are annoying and lame. The occassional cute animal email gets my attention but this one was a rarity that I actually forwarded on.

What Love means to a 4-8 year old . . . Slow down for three minutes to read this. It is so worth it. Touching words from the mouth of babes. A group of professional people posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, 'What does love mean?'
The answers they got were broader and deeper than anyone could have imagined. See what you think:

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'When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore.
So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love.'

Rebecca- age 8


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'When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different.
You just know that your name is safe in their mouth.'

Billy - age 4


'Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other.'

Karl - age 5

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'Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French fries without making them give you any of theirs.'

Chrissy - age 6

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'Love is what makes you smile when you're tired.'

Terri - age 4

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'Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK.'

Danny - age 7

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'Love is when you kiss all the time. Then when you get tired of kissing, you still want to be together and you talk more.
My Mommy and Daddy are like that. They look gross when they kiss'

Emily - age 8

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'Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.'

Bobby - age 7 (Wow!)

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'If you want to learn to love better, you should start with a friend who you hate,'

Nikka - age 6
(we need a few million more Nikka's on this planet)

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'Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday.'

Noelle - age 7

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'Love is like a little old woman and a little old man who are still friends even after they know each other so well.'

Tommy - age 6

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'During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling.

He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore.'

Cindy - age 8

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'My mommy loves me more than anybody
You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night.'

Clare - age 6

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'Love is when Mommy gives Daddy the best piece of chicken.'

Elaine-age 5

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'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy smelly and sweaty and still says he is handsomer than Robert Redford.'

Chris - age 7

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'Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day.'

Mary Ann - age 4

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'I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones.'

Lauren - age 4

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'When you love somebody, your eyelashes go up and down and little stars come out of you.' (what an image)

Karen - age 7

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'Love is when Mommy sees Daddy on the toilet and she doesn't think it's gross.'

Mark - age 6

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'You really shouldn't say 'I love you' unless you mean it. But if you mean it, you should say it a lot. People forget.'

Jessica - age 8

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And the final one -- Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge.

The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child.

The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife.

Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there.

When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said,

'Nothing, I just helped him cry'

Men Possessed By Football

Have you ever noticed the way a simple football game can suddenly turn a typically calm, non-aggressive male into a complete psychopath. How one moment they are happy to chat about pointless things such as what is for dinner or the day that has been and the next, if you even considered saying a single word to them you would be crucified!

Football seems to have some sort of power over the personalities of almost every male. It becomes impossible to have a conversation of any type with them, at the risk of having your head bitten off. That is unless you are offering food or beer, then they may grace you with a grunt of approval.

You could come to them with a life or matter situation during this ritual of watching other men chase a ball around a field, and still they would not offer you a single moment of their attention. Then, the moment the game and all the after commentary is over, suddenly they magically morph back into their normal selves and wonder why you are avoiding them or are very annoyed with them!

My Obsession With Food

Lately, possibly the delayed effects of Christmas eating and now the excessive binging of chocolate over easter, I have noticed my weight increase. Only slightly. As in a kilo or two, however it is still noticable. Suddenly my usually easily hidden stomach seems to be on the bulging side and my fear in this spreading to the rest of my body has taken hold.

But why is it I find it so hard to motivate myself? It seems the more I think about getting back into shape (I am relatively thin, but somewhat out of shape), it seems that I start eating more.

Today I took my own lunch to work instead of eating the huge work lunches on offer. I took left over spagetti and meatballs and knowing that was carbs at lunch I didn't bother taking any other snacks. But of course it was a co workers birthday and there were cakes and biscuits and chips. So before and after my rather filling lunch I had hand fulls of chips, several lollies, a tim tam and a piece of fudge cheese cake. I wasn't even hungry.

This pattern extends to my home life too. Every night the sweet tooth kicks in and yet another left over easter chocolate is devoured. My sister made the mistake of giving me more on the weekend as we only just saw eachother for easter.

When will this bad habit cease? Not even watching The Biggest Loser every night seems to be motivation enough and the cold weather has kicked in. Cold weather = no motivation for me. I just want to hide in bed!

How I wish I did not love food so much!

The Cost of Holidays

We went to a travel agent the other day to organise our flights for Europe at the end of the year. Unfortunately to go for Christmas it means peak season for flights, therefore far more expensive and we need an extra flight to Munich a few days in therefore the cost of our return flights to Europe, including Paris, to Munich then at the end Warsaw to Paris and home again is just over $3000 Australian. Yikes. I was expecting something closer to the $2k mark but unfortunately this is how expensive it is to live these days.

Good thing I already have all that and more saved up but it means I probably have to pay for half my partners flights until he can save up and pay me back too.

Technology and the Stress It Causes

Why is it that all new technology never seems to last that long. Like for example, for a 25 year old, I have gone through so many computers because they have simply decided to blow up or something at some random time. I do not mistreat them or do anything that should fast track their death, but it always seems to happen. At least to me.

It was almost a relief but far more of a frustration to see that my partners X Box 360 stopped working the other day. Red lights flashing in the place there should be green. We hoped it would magically start working again the next day. It didn't. It is no longer under warrenty either. He has had it for about 14 months now. So typical. Two months ago he might have been able to get it fixed for free, but now we have no idea what happens and who to call. It'll end up being some random hotline that probably costs a fortune and isn't even located in Australia.

Our microwave is another example. Within the first few weeks we moved out, we thought we'd have a microwave chicken. The whole microwave shut itself down. It does this frequently now when we try cooking something, like popcorn. These days we only use the microwave for warming things up. And rarely at that. It has been taken in for repair at least 3 times under warrenty. The warrenty is no longer valid and they never fixed it anyway. So the time constantly turns itself off and the microwave beeps randomly. We never know when it will have it's last spin but we know the day is soon.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to have less of the modern technology we have these days. But then I enjoy technology.

Earth Hour

I would not say that I am a massive follower of world conservation, however the state of the world does concern me and I do try and do a little something here and there to help it last. We have been on water restrictions for about a year in my state and that does not bother me at all. Even now that the drought has broken, I see no reason to take off the water restrictions. There is no saying when it will happen again.

I think Earth Hour was a great idea last night. I did not go so far as to unplugging all our appliances, however we did turn off all the lights and television etc and left the house for a walk. Partially to kill time when there was nothing else to do and also to spy on the neighbourhood to see who else was going for the Earth Hour power down.

It was in fact very easy to spend an hour without the amusement of television or gaming consoles. My partner and I actually talked and enjoyed each other's company properly for a change. We had romance and communication, and I will gladly do it all again. Nothing like a good cause to get some quality time with your partner!