Rethinking this place

I started this little blogspot on a whim about four years ago as a way to get back to journaling. I never thought about getting rich and famous off of it as I know some have. I thought it would be an easy way to share a little about our life and to share pictures with people so I sent the link to my family and some friends. I try to keep this light-hearted and not post anything that is too controversial or questionable. Occasionally, my mom or a sister or Paul has suggested that I might need to reel in a post and they are usually correct.

I've generally tried to maintain privacy--I've never posted our last name or too much information about where we live. In regards to our jobs, I've never posted the name of my school or Paul's company. Some of the settings are private--it's not on the main blogroll or accessible with the next post button. It could be found from a search engine although I didn't intend for it to be and I changed that today. I don't post lots of pictures of Paul's family because while they might know about this place, I've never directly told them about it. Not trying to hide it; just never shared it with them. Because of this, I try to keep them out of it.

I think I have a steady stream of a dozen regular readers, most of whom I'm related to. I keep an eye on the site meter and while there are some IP addresses from locations where I don't know people, I've come to think of them as "regulars" and I think they're fairly safe or they've linked from a friend's blog. I've only had one anonymous person even try to start a fight with me in comments on something I've written in a post and that lasted all of two exchanges. When I joined Facebook, for some reason, I added the address of this blog to my main profile. I'm still trying to figure that one out. I guess I thought it was among friends and what could be the harm. I think a few friends checked it out but I didn't have a huge spike in my readership. I just went on with life and didn't think much of it.

Last week, a post I had written about my former school apparently touched a nerve. I've removed the post at the request of my former principal. I didn't mean for it to appear as negative and disgruntled about the school as apparently it did to some of my former coworkers. I was very frustrated by my job last year--I won't deny that. But I never meant to imply that my coworkers were bad. In fact, if one were to read posts in which I talked about applying for another librarian position, you would see that it was with some hesitancy that I was doing it. I did enjoy the majority of my coworkers. I do think most are doing a good job. Are there those that weren't? Heck yeah. Do I think that those same negative teachers exist at my new school? Definitely and I said as much in the now-removed post. While I didn't mean to sound as disgruntled as apparently I did, there were just things that *I* thought should be dealt with differently--most of which didn't directly affect my job but yeah, it affected my morale. I was feeling put-upon as a result. For *me* personally, it's hard to want to do a good job and be held to a high standard when it feels like there is an unequal treatment. I guess I'll sound a little bratty when I say it just wasn't fair. So, I did something about it and it's been a positive change for me. But no one should think that I'm going around badmouthing my former school--give me a little credit for that. If anything, it's quite the opposite and I'm fairly certain most of my new coworkers know I came from there and how proud I am to see so many former students who have "done good" in high school. Yeah, there are turkeys and I admitted to my new principal when seeing the name of one such turkey that that was probably the only child that I'd personally wanted to stuff in a trash can.

Back to Sitemeter and rethinking this place. Since what happened last week happened, and I'll admit that I messed up with a poorly written post, I'm a little gun-shy. I've also started to notice more Albuquerque accesses as well as several accesses from APS IP addresses. I'll admit to playing around reading blogs when I should be at work but not since this school year started. Am I feeling like I'm being watched, perhaps to see if I'll mess up again? Oh yeah. Am I worried that what I'm writing is being reported to others and not in a friendly "hey did you read that?" kind of way? Definitely. Paranoid, perhaps, but that's just how I am.

Paul and I were talking about it last night--about what to do about this place. I don't want to give it up completely because I do like being able to share stuff with my friends and family, especially during this time of our life and when The Most Amazing Child Ever is born. But I'm thinking about making it a private access place or just changing the location I keep it. I know other sites allow only some posts to be private access. I don't know if I'll actually do it before I get over myself and the paranoia I'm currently feeling. Heck, I should change this place to All Jub, All the Time. He is a rather interesting little creature. Maybe I'd feel better if everyone just gave a little shout-out in comments. I don't know if that would allay all my worries. I do know there are lots of possibilities about the future of The Blue-Eyed Bookworm.

For a little levity, I just had to add this video:

I think the hardest part is coming up with a catchy title

I think I'm running out of things to write about. Life has pretty much settled into a mundane routine and work has settled down as much as I think it ever will. I've still resigned myself to finding a new job and/or continuing with an MLS. So while I'm working putting those things in motion, I don't have much left to say. I'm finally almost better. I thought I felt fine yesterday and I think my "big" day of laundry, grocery shopping, Target, and an evening hike with Paul was too much because after dinner, I felt crummy again. Today, I think I've pretty much shaken off whatever it was that ailed me because I've felt good all day. :::knock on wood:::

After church today, we had lunch with friends from church who are in our small group/Sunday School class. We were discussing how our SS class has gone from a group of about 15-20 to pretty much just the four of us and why that is. There have been several who have moved away, a couple who have just fallen away, and many others who have stopped coming because they are "too busy." What's frustrating is that we've tried to cater the class to encourage those people to continue to come to class--moving from a book lesson to a video lesson, keeping the class time, etc. There are many couples in our church that are our age--we see them and we've talked to them--and yet, we apparently aren't doing something right to get them to come to more than just the worship service. Knowing Paul's schedule (and that Keith travels pretty much M-F most weeks), we're trying to determine what exactly makes someone "busy." He doesn't do anything else with church because of his schedule but spending two hours a week at church is something that even Paul feels he needs to carve into his schedule. It's a downtime for him to spend with others. We've discussed visiting other churches--the reason we opted to go to St. John's was because it is where Paul grew up and where his parents attend--but I don't know if there are active 25-40 year olds at any church aside from the big churches in town, which don't really appeal to us. Keith and Dana are discussing moving back to the Southeast to be closer to family after Baby #2 makes an appearance in March. I don't know what we'll do then. Pray about it, I guess.

And then on the way home, we saw a lady flossing her teeth while we were at a red light. I'm all about good dental health but that's just weird.

This week is just busy enough. On Monday, I'm taking the afternoon off to help out at the JLA Golf Tournament. I've not worked one in the past because they are held on weekdays. But as I've got two or three personal days, 16 weeks of sick leave and not much dedication to the job, I decided I can afford a little do-gooder time. And my resolve to take ALL my personal time, and maybe use up some of that sick leave, became even stronger when my principal questioned my taking the half-day PERSONAL leave when I handed in the leave slip. I understand the school is under corrective action and absences are being monitored but it's a half-day and it's my personal leave time. I could take that time to run naked down Montgomery or just take a really kick-ass nap if I so desired. She had no right or any reason to question me, especially when I have obviously shown (with my accumulated weeks of leave time) that I'm not one to abuse the system. Whatever. She really got me going when she saw the second slip for another half-day of personal leave the day before an inservice. Not FOR the inservice day itself but the afternoon BEFORE. Yes, I did miss an inservice last year because we were in Jamaica but I discussed it with her as soon as I saw the conflict in August. I've never not shown up for an inservice and I even stayed for the entire painfully useless inservice last week. It is exasperating when I do things as required and I get questioned for it knowing that I could abuse the system like some of my coworkers and nothing would be said to me.

The rest of the week is shaping up with a meeting on Tuesday evening, a much-needed haircut on Wednesday, and our anniversary on Thursday. We may or may not have a Balloon Fiesta kick-off party to attend on Friday and Saturday is the start of the Balloons! I don't know if we'll go this year--after last year's whirlwind visit-o-rama, we don't have any company this year. I'm trying to convince Paul to go next Friday when I've got Fall Break for the Special Shapes launch. It's my favorite day to go. And if I can't find someone to go with me, I might just go by myself. Hmph.

A couple of weeks ago, we heard the tell-tale "thunk!" that indicates a bird had flown into one of our living room windows. It's not an uncommon occurrence. One summer, we had a hummingbird--a green fellow--that hit one of the windows once a week or more. He'd lay in the yard for a bit until he got undazed when he'd fly off. I never figured out which neighbor had the fermented nectar but the cat enjoyed watching the bird. After this particular thunk, Paul looked outside and said that there was a really big bird on our back wall. A really big bird known as a hawk:

Apparently, it has been chasing the bird when the bird flew into our window. The bird was laying in the yard, dazed and confused, and the hawk was watching it. Paul and I stepped outside to see if we could see the bird and the hawk flew over to the house across the street to watch the bird. The hawk gave up after a bit of me standing outside and the bird flew off a little later.

Huh. Maybe I'm not running out of things to say.