At Large: Writing, Life and the World...

Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't. In an effort to tame this broadly focused blog of mine, I've started using tags in the headlines of each of my posts. The tags are based on my old description for this blog, which was "Illuminating writing, life and the world at large."


Writing,
Life,
and
the World
at large

Writing: These posts have to do with the subject of writing.

Life: These posts are my personal journal posts.

The World: Happenings from around the world that don't necessarily impact me, but I find them interesting.

At Large: The fun stuff, like quizzes, some memes and random things that don't fit the other headings, like posts about the blogosphere in general.

Every once in a while a post will come through with no tag, and that's because I think it covers the broad spectrum, such as the Things I've discovered posts that I've started running on Fridays.

The added benefit to me of doing these tags is that I can easily filter out the articles that I don't want syndicated in the BlogRush widget (see the right column of this blog).

Things I've discovered this week

All 5th- and 6th-grade girls have long hair
It's not a scientific sampling, mind you. But, when I went to my nephew's school production the other night, I noticed this trend. Of at least 150 students in 5th and 6th grades, half being girls, I only noticed *one* girl with short hair. One.

Footloose represents the entire decade of '80s music
Yellow Submarine represents the '60s, the Hustle and Y-M-C-A represent the '70s, and Achy Breaky Heart sums up the entire '90s. At least they did at my nephew's school production of "On the Radio", about music through the 20th century. Granted, it's an elementary school production, and these songs have a distinct visual element that's fun for families, but it still disturbs me. Did I mention how much I enjoyed my nephew's performance?

Playing is more fun than working
Duh. Everyone knows that. But I mean it more in the sense that sometimes I'd rather spend hours manipulating my photos than connecting three sentences together in an effort to write. How's my novel coming? Don't ask. But look what I made.

I can't sleep late any more
I was thrilled to have Monday off for President's Day. I didn't have to get up for work, and I didn't have to get up to go to my workout class. A true day off. Except, I woke up at the same time and couldn't get back to sleep. Bah.

BlogCatalog
I signed up with BlogCatalog. It's kind of social networking for bloggers, and a good place to browse blogs. Haven't played around with all that much yet.

BlogRush
I also signed up with BlogRush, which is a syndication service for bloggers. There's a widget in my right column that shows headlines from five other blogs. Somewhere out in the blogosphere, a headline of mine appears on someone's widget. Hopefully, someone or two will click through and find this post.

Mosquito Ringtone
I'm not buying this ringtone. It's just that I've been reading about the mosquito on news articles online, and was intrigued to actually get to hear it. The mosquito is a high-frequency noise that most adults can't hear because we lose that frequency as we age. It was developed as a tool to deter teens from loitering outside businesses. So, on the ringtone site above, they have samples of the mosquito played at different frequencies. I can still hear the mosquito at the 40 and younger frequency, which is good, because I'm still under 40.