An overdue ramble ~ totally random

I'm overdue for a blogging braindump, so here we go:

~Twitter~
It's sad but true, but when I want to know what I've been up to now, one of the first places I consult is my Twitter-stream.

~Invisalign~
The new braces are going well. I'm almost two weeks into it. I start my second tray tonight. I'm still lisping a little bit, but fewer people are noticing, so it's getting better. Why the lisp? The retainer hits me across the back of my front teeth, so when I make an S or T sound, my tongue hits the plastic.

~Blogger Followers~
My photo blog has just exceeded this blog with followers. That blog is a little more focused in topic, so I think that helps. Plus, I've been concentrating my Entrecard drops on that one.

~Obama~
Yay! I haven't officially blogged about it, but I'm THRILLED that Barack Obama won the presidential race. I've been closely following him since I voted for him in the senate primary four years ago.
I guess soon I can retire the "Smush Bush" stress doll I bought back in 2004.

~Anonymous linking~
So, I discovered this site, anonym.to that allows you to create links to websites that won't trace back to your site. Not sure why you'd want that, but it's out there. How did I discover it? Through my Flickr stats.

~Flickr stats~
For the most part my Flickr stats are pretty regular. I get about 50 views of photos a day, give or take, with it sometimes spiking up into the 200s or 300s if I've shared an album with family. Over the summer it suddenly spiked to over 1,000 views on one day only, but I couldn't find any apparent reason. No one photo was getting significantly extra views. Today I looked at my stats and found that the photos of my Invisalign retainers are getting a lot of views -- like 75 in one day -- but it's not from a specific source, just Flickr and this Anonym.to site I mentioned above. It's not like I captured the look of my retainers with incredible photography. Make me wonder why so many people are viewing those photos...


~Blog Blast for Peace~
I meant to participate in Blog Blast for Peace earlier this month. I didn't. But let me just go on record now as saying that peace is good. I highly recommend it. Please, can't we all just get along?

OK, actually, I would have put more effort into the post had I written it. Who can argue against peace?

~NaNoWrite Month~
While I'm on the subject of things I wanted to particpate in but didn't, let me throw in National Novel Writing Month. I should have been doing this. But, rest assured, I am back on the writing bandwagon. It's been slow-going. I mean how long does it take to write a 10-page scene?!?! Apparently a couple hours a page. Gah. But I am trying to get it polished up -- this is no messy first draft -- because it's part of a book proposal that Jules and JC and I are working on together. It *will* be in the mail by the end of the month.


~Doodle Week~
For some reason, I didn't participate in Doodle Month last month, either. Don't know why, since I've been involved since the beginning. But, it's coming up again soon and I intend to redeem myself. Maybe on Thanksgiving Day I can get my nephews to help me doodle? Hmmm....

~Smoosh Your Boobies~
Claire and Olga the Traveling Bra had a fun idea for ending Breast Cancer Awareness Month last month. They held a contest for people to put paint on their breasts and smash them against paper, creating art. Another thing I wish I'd done, but couldn't find paint in the house at the last minute. (OK, could have used latex paint left over from our walls, but, really, I didn't want to go there.)

~WoW Expansion~
So, World of Warcraft came out with its expansion set Wrath of the Lich King. We haven't bought it yet. Holding out for over the Thanksgiving holiday when we have some time off (and I'm not otherwise writing). I know it will be a total time suck once I get into it -- a really, really good total time suck.

~Christmas Shopping~
When we were at my sister-in-law's house on Nov. 1, she had all her Christmas shopping done and wrapped. The gifts were stacked in a corner of the dining room, waiting. Inconceivable to me. But, now, I'm starting to think Christmas. I'm putting together my Amazon wish list, which neatly allows you to add products from other web pages not related to Amazon.com. Neat feature. Plus, I'm putting together my own gift-giving guide, where I shamelessly plug my friends' merchandise and other things that strike my fancy. Look for it soon.

~Weight Watchers~
I went back to Weight Watchers last week. So, because I'm counting points, I'm looking at the nutrition information on food, especially at the restaurants I like to frequent. I had the nutrition info from the website of my favorite lunch spot that I'd printed out two years ago. It showed my favoite flatbread pizza as having 9 points. Doable. For some reason I reprinted it last week only to find that they'd updated the flatbread pizza section. That same pizza is now 15 points! What makes it especially hard is that I'm allowed only 21 points a day, plus the 35 anytime points for the week. Well, as you can guess, that pizza is now right off my menu. Gah!

~My stupid emo baby name~
In the spirit of the newly born Bronx Mowgli, my Simpson-Wentz Baby Name is Harlem Cruella.

What's yours?

Twitter and the state of the economy

Wow. Is that a boring title: "The state of the economy". Bear with me, though. This is not an economic dissertation, but rather two lessons from one social event.

The setting: Marwen's Paintbrush Ball 2008, a charity dinner and live auction for a prominent Chicago visual arts program for "under-served young people".

How: Through the generosity of a friend's employer, who purchased a bundle of seats at the dinner. (Thank you.)

The players: JC, Marriott and myself,
plus hundreds of other people.


Lesson 1: Twittering live!

I've been playing around on Twitter for a few months in a very limited capacity. Twitter has been described by many people as "micro-blogging", but I like to describe it as blogging meets instant messaging.

Basically, you create an account and publish posts (aka Tweets) that are limited in size to 140 characters max (this figure has to do with the maximum number of characters allowed by instant messaging programs, or something like that).

You can choose to follow the Tweets of other Twitterers, and talk directly to those Twitterers by throwing an @ before their Twitter name.

Twitter in its simplicity plays nicely with other applications, so there are a lot of tools out there to make your Twitter experience more versatile. Like TwitterFox for my FireFox browser, which keeps me updated on new Tweets with little popup notices in the lower corner of my browser window, and TwitterSync, which updates my Tweets to my status window in Facebook.

So, for instance, I Tweeted this on Saturday afternoon:

Up until Saturday, I'd only ever published my Tweets from my computer. But Twitter is supposed to be more mobile than that. So before I left, I set up my Twitter account to work with instant messages from my cellphone. This was actually a challenge for me, because I don't *do* instant messaging.

Here we were, in the middle of a fancy dinner, with a live auction going on in the background, and I was plugging away at my cellphone trying to perfectly compose a Tweet. As you can see, I was reaching for subject matter, and even gave up toward the end when I couldn't find the "$". That figure is supposed to be $8,000.

Next step was sending a photo Tweet. I'd signed up for TwitPic right before I left the house, but I was inexperienced at emailing photos from my phone, so this was yet another technological hurdle that I had to overcome. Which I did.

When the opportunity came to raise my auction paddle and bid on an item I could afford, I grabbed it. (Nevermind that it was a "raise your paddle if you want to give a straight-up charitable contribution to Marwen" fake auction. I got to use my paddle! As did about a hundred other people.) So I snapped a photo with my phone, gave it a subject line, and emailed it off to TwitPic.


This is what the photo looked like, by the way.

And those three Tweets are my sum experience with Twittering live. (Except for those observations Twittered live from my desk chair, which often say something to the effect of "Is it lunchtime yet?" I never claimed to be the most fascinating person on Twitter. :P )

Lesson 2: The economy affects everyone

If you look up at that second Tweet, you'll see that the "Fighter Pilot for a Day" experience was auctioned off for $8,000. That seems like a lot of money to me. It's well out of my discretionary spending budget. But, the thing is, that same exact experience went for a lot more last year. All the live auction items did.

If my figures are right from last year, that same fighter pilot experience went for more than $20,000.

Quick! Someone do the math. What percentage change is that?

Another great for-instance? A local fashion designer auctioned off a wine-tasting party in his loft for 30-40 people. He supplies the wines, which are premiere.

Last year, there was a bidding war for the party. When the bidding hit $21,000, the designer decided he would happily host two parties and gave the prize to both bidders, raising $42,000 for Marwen.

This year, the party -- one party -- went for $10,000. Nothing to sneer at, certainly, but nothing like last year. What's the percentage change?

My interpretation of the change in bidding patterns? Everyone is tightening their purse strings. If they're not directly feeling the pinch, they're feeling more conservative as they watch those around them who are.

And just in case I was doubting my interpretation, I saw this article on the New York Times website yesterday: It’s Not So Easy Being Less Rich.

This snippet summarizes the theme of the article:

The wealthy don’t generally speak publicly about their finances, in good times or bad. ... But people who provide services to the wealthy — lawyers, art advisers, personal trainers and hairstylists — say they are getting an earful about their clients’ financial anxieties.

Interviews with the people who actually see the bank statements, like divorce lawyers and lenders, say their clients are definitely living on less than they did a year ago, regardless of how expansive the definition of “less” may be.

I think that's exactly what I was seeing live on Saturday night. Generous spending, certainly. But not nearly as generous as last year.